Weir Greenhouse
750 5th Avenue | also 500 25th Street | Sunset Park | built 1895
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1880
Florist James Weir Jr. commissions a wood-and-glass greenhouse at 25th Street and Fifth Avenue
James Weir Jr., a florist born in England in 1843, had moved his business to the Green-Wood Cemetery area in 1866. In 1880 he hired the Brooklyn architect Mercein Thomas to design a greenhouse at the corner of 25th Street and Fifth Avenue. It was a plain rectangle, 40 feet by 55 feet, with the entrance in a corner tower. An 1895 rebuilding changed it so much that little survives, so this is an earlier building on the lot.
“…in 1880 Weir commissioned a wood and glass greenhouse for the site at the corner of 25th Street and Fifth Avenue…”
- 1884
Historian Henry Stiles calls Weir's conservatory one of the chief attractions of Green-Wood Cemetery
Henry Stiles's 1884 history of Kings County and Brooklyn described the 1880 Weir greenhouse, an earlier building on this lot, as filled with rare exotics and native flowers. He wrote that people passing it counted it among the cemetery's chief attractions and praised how the plants were arranged for harmony of color and form around a central rockwork. The book also printed an illustration of the building.
“…find this one of the chief attractions of the Cemetery, which never fails to elicit the warmest admiration…”
- 1895
George Curtis Gillespie redesigns the Weir greenhouse with an octagonal corner entrance
In 1895 Weir applied to the Brooklyn Buildings Department for a permit to alter the building, and the work was extensive enough that little if any of the 1880 greenhouse remains. As in 1880, he did not hire a greenhouse manufacturer but an architect, George Curtis Gillespie, who kept offices in Manhattan and lived near the site. The entrance, set at an angle to the street corner, takes the form of an octagon.
“…hired architect George Curtis Gillespie who had offices in Manhattan , but lived near the greenhouse…”
- 1971
The Weir family sells the greenhouse, the last of the florists' glasshouses near the Green-Wood gates
The Weir family owned the greenhouse at Fifth Avenue and 25th Street until 1971, when it passed to the owners who still hold it today. Several florists' greenhouses had been built near the cemetery entrances in the nineteenth century to supply flowers and wreaths for funerals, and this was the only one left. The Landmarks Commission suggested it survived because of its site directly across from the main gates.
“The Weir family retained ownership of the greenhouse on Fifth Avenue and 25th Street until 1971 when it was sold…”
- 1982
The Landmarks Commission designates the Weir Greenhouse, the only Victorian commercial greenhouse known in the city
On April 13, 1982, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Weir Greenhouse, now called the McGovern-Weir Greenhouse, after a hearing on July 8, 1980 at which one witness spoke in favor. Its report called the building the only known Victorian commercial greenhouse in New York City. It noted that the greenhouse had been used without interruption for nearly a hundred years, serving visitors to Green-Wood Cemetery.
“…it is the only Victorian commercial greenhouse known to be extant in New York City…”
- 2023
The restored greenhouse is briefly visible as work starts on the Green-Wood visitor center around it
In July 2023 the construction fence came down for a short time, showing the landmarked greenhouse with fresh green paint and clean windows. A new terra-cotta-clad building by Architecture Research Office is planned to wrap around two sides of it, with gallery, programming and staff space. The Landmarks Commission approved the greenhouse restoration in 2015, the full complex in 2021, and the project received $4.5 million in capital funding in 2022.
Source: brownstoner.com
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