78 Walker Street

also 31 Cortlandt Alley | Civic Center | built 1907

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.

1893
The New York Dry Goods Exchange and the Dry Goods Economist occupy an earlier building on this corner
Before the present loft building, the corner of Walker Street and Cortlandt Alley held a three-story structure used by the New York Dry Goods Exchange, incorporated in 1893 as the first of its kind in the United States. It gave out-of-town dry goods houses a place to send representatives, meet buyers and sellers, handle correspondence and view samples. The same building housed the offices of the Dry Goods Economist, a trade paper begun in 1846 under an earlier name.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1907
Thomas Lamb's eight-story loft for the Tudor Construction Company replaces the Dry Goods Exchange building
The Landmarks Commission dates the present building to 1905-07, when the Tudor Construction Company had Thomas W. Lamb design an eight-story store and loft with a steel and cast-iron frame. It runs 48 feet along Walker Street and about 102 feet along Cortlandt Alley. Early occupants included the dry goods firm Wolf & Brother, Montgomery Ward & Company, a bookbinder, a stationer and a printing firm, and the district report describes it as later used for light manufacturing.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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