817 Broadway Building
817 Broadway | also 48 East 12th Street, 819 Broadway | Greenwich Village | built 1898
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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.
- 1889
Seven brick buildings, home to the Union League Club and T. B. Harms, stand on the lot before Post's tower
In May 1889 the trustees of the William F. Weld estate acquired an L-shaped lot at Broadway and East 12th Street that held seven brick buildings. Put up as homes and mostly four stories high, they had since become stores, offices, a bank and art rooms. Among the occupants were Metropolitan Lodge 273, the Union League Club and the firm of T. B. Harms, which went on to become the nation's largest sheet-music publisher. These earlier buildings stood on the site before George B. Post's tower.
- 1897
Cloak maker Meyer Jonasson moves in with a retail floor and is bankrupt within five years
Meyer Jonasson, a German-born maker of suits and cloaks who had started in San Francisco in the 1860s, moved into the new building in 1897. He used three stories for retail and the rest for design and manufacturing, and the store was briefly billed as the "New Mecca". Jonasson fell ill that year and came back to tangled finances; some blamed the retail expansion, others the rent or a location too far downtown. He declared bankruptcy in 1902, and by January 1903 most floors stood empty.
- 1898
George B. Post's steel-skeleton Weld Building rises on caissons sunk to bedrock
George B. Post designed a fireproof steel-skeleton store-and-loft building for the Weld estate. Before the steel went up, crews drove 150 test holes down 25 to 55 feet to find rock, then sank steel caissons in 48 days, finishing in January 1896. Construction was completed in January 1898 at a cost of about $533,000, of which Post received a 5 percent fee.
- 1898
Critic Russell Sturgis praises the crown of 817 Broadway but finds the lower floors thin
In his 1898 Architectural Record essay on the works of George B. Post, the critic Russell Sturgis singled out this building's three-story crown as "free and dashing in design." He also praised the splayed piers of the shaft as a practical device that benefits the occupants. His complaint was that the lower stories look thin and slight, with inadequate reveals around the windows.
- 1960
After 1960 the garment building fills with political and social-service groups
For decades garment firms leased floors here, many as showrooms for factories elsewhere; Sweet Orr, a denim and corduroy maker based in Wappinger Falls, New York, was one. By the mid-20th century small publishing firms had arrived. After 1960 many tenants were involved in political or social-service work, among them the ORT Federation, the League of Women Voters and the Wiltwyck School for Boys.
“After 1960, many tenants were involved with political issues and social service. Organizations with offices in 817 Broadway included the ORT Federation, League of Women Voters…”
- 2019
The Landmarks Commission designates 817 Broadway after fourteen speakers back it
The Landmarks Preservation Commission calendared 817 Broadway on September 25, 2018, as one of seven Broadway buildings between East 12th and East 13th Streets with individual merit. At the December 4 hearing fourteen people spoke for designation, among them speakers for the New York Landmarks Conservancy, the East Village Community Coalition and the Historic Districts Council. The commission designated the building an individual landmark on June 11, 2019.
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