836 Broadway Building
836 Broadway | also 838 Broadway, 72 East 13th Street | Greenwich Village | built 1876
Open on the map8 entries
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.
- 1845
Judge James J. Roosevelt and his wife live in a townhouse on this lot
From the mid-1840s until 1876, the Broadway frontage here belonged to the home of James J. and Cornelia Roosevelt. The house took up the width of two 25-foot lots and stretched halfway back, leaving a big rear yard with frame outbuildings. This was an earlier building on the site: James J. was a judge and former congressman, and a great-uncle of the future President Theodore Roosevelt.
- 1875
Judge Roosevelt dies in one of the last old houses on this stretch of Broadway
While his rich neighbors moved uptown and shops replaced their homes, James Roosevelt refused to leave the house he had built in the 1840s. He died there in 1875, at what was then No. 836 Broadway. Within a year the house and the one next door were torn down to make room for a commercial building, so this entry describes an earlier building on the site.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1876
The Roosevelt estate builds a six-story cast-iron store and loft designed by Stephen Decatur Hatch
After the townhouse came down, the Roosevelt estate filed for a permit in 1876 for a six-story store-and-loft building. Architect Stephen Decatur Hatch took advantage of the 50-foot Broadway frontage and an equally wide frontage on East 13th Street, which gave the building an irregular footprint with a formal front and a plainer back. Marc Eidlitz and Bartlet Smith were the builders, and the first tenant was the lighting and metalwork firm Mitchell, Vance & Co.
- 1889
Mitchell, Vance & Co. turns its Broadway basement over to electric light fixtures
The firm that made gas fixtures, clocks and bronzes here moved early into electric lighting. Daytonian reports that Thomas Edison, still working at Menlo Park, turned to Mitchell, Vance for his first permanent fixtures, and by 1884 electric fixtures were a large part of its line. In 1889 a trade magazine described a carpeted room on the main floor wired with current so buyers could see electroliers lit, and a basement given over entirely to electric fixtures.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1906
A fire starting in a hat factory wrecks the building and buries three firefighters
Early on a freezing morning, flames began on the second floor of the East 13th Street side, where a hat company worked, and raced up the elevator shaft. Seventeen fire companies responded. Captain Walsh and two of his men were caught on the third floor by a collapse from above; they were dug out burned and bruised, and a ladderman fell two stories. Damages topped half a million dollars, and the cast-iron facade survived so the building could be rebuilt.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1909
Strikers picket a tenant of 836 Broadway during the shirtwaist strike
By the early 1900s, garment firms occupied lofts in the building alongside its original tenant. During the shirtwaist strikes of 1909-10, workers picketed the garment factories along this part of Broadway. Newspapers specifically named 836 Broadway in connection with picketing of Freigat & Keim, one of the building's tenants.
“The 836 Broadway Building was specifically mentioned in the newspapers with reference to the picketing of Freigat & Keim, one of the tenants of the building.”
- 1921
The Roosevelt estate sells the building, and it fills with small garment and dental businesses
The Roosevelt estate, which had built the building in 1876 and held it ever since, sold it in 1921. Later tenants made or sold clothes-pressing equipment, trimmings and jewelry. By the late 1920s many lofts were display showrooms for dental and surgical suppliers, and in the early 1930s part of the building served briefly as a branch post office. By 2019 the antiques dealer Hyde Park Antiques, the owner, had long used the lower two floors, and New York University leased the upper ones as offices.
- 2019
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the 836 Broadway Building as an individual landmark
The Commission calendared the building in September 2018 as part of a cluster of Broadway buildings between East 12th and East 13th streets, chosen for individual merit and the intact character of the group. It held a public hearing on December 4, 2018, where eleven people spoke in favor and none opposed. The designation vote came on June 11, 2019.
Nearby
- 832-834 Broadway Building832 Broadway | 7 entries
- 830 Broadway Building830 Broadway | 7 entries
- 840 Broadway Building840 Broadway | 8 entries
- Strand Bookstore826 Broadway | 14 entries
- 827-831 Broadway Buildings827 Broadway | 9 entries
- 827-831 Broadway Buildings831 Broadway | 8 entries