78 Greene Street

SoHo | built 1901

Open on the map4 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

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.

  1. 1901

    August 31

    Fur dealer Sol Cohen replaces his old building with a six-story Beaux-Arts loft in five months

    Sol Cohen, a fur importer who made seal and fur caps at the address, hired architect George Van Auken in 1901 to build something larger. Ground was broken on March 10 and the six-story building was finished on August 31, at a cost of $30,000. Its stripes of red brick and white limestone made it stand out on a block of cast-iron fronts.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1915

    A suffragist poll watcher at the Greene Street polling place calls in reinforcements against an electioneer

    During the 1915 elections the ground floor served as a polling place, and suffrage groups posted women watchers at polls across the city. When a man kept electioneering inside, the watcher on duty telephoned headquarters. Mrs. Frank H. Sumner arrived by automobile, saw the problem, drove to Police Headquarters to complain, and a policeman soon moved the man along. The New York Times reported there was no more trouble at that booth.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1934

    January

    Workers at a hardware factory in the building walk out on strike in the Depression

    By the 1930s the building housed light industry such as Geringer and Weiss, a hardware maker that the Daily Worker called a sweatshop. After the Hardware and Crockery Workers Union formed in June 1933, workers at three factories, including this one, struck in January 1934. Pickets stopped trucks from picking up or delivering goods, and the strikers asked for a 40-hour week for inside men and 48 hours for outside men.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1991

    Feminist artist Patsy Norvell, founder of A.I.R. Gallery, works from the building

    After SoHo turned from factories to art, artist Patsy Norvell worked from 78 Greene Street in 1991. She was a pioneering feminist artist who founded A.I.R. Gallery in 1972, which was the first American gallery to show only women's work. Meanwhile the steel-shelving firm B & Z Steel kept a showroom in the building into the 2000s, a rare business left from the district's industrial era.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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