85 Chambers Street
also 67 Reade Street | Tribeca | built 1857
Open on the map3 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.
- 1817
A Reade Street stable built for merchant Henry A. Coster once stood on the lot
An earlier building on the Reade Street end of the site was a stable, built in 1817 for Henry A. Coster. The Landmarks Commission names Coster as a partner in Coster Brothers, which it says was probably the richest merchant house in New York in the early 1800s. The stable and a brick dwelling on Chambers Street were cleared for the present building, put up in 1856-57.
- 1857
The new building opens with a wire and hardware dealer, and hardware merchants fill it for decades
Carpet wholesaler Alvin Higgins built this five-story store and loft building in 1856-57, and Reid & Tracy, dealers in wire and hardware, were its first tenants. Hardware merchants kept filling it through the nineteenth century. Later occupants included a cycle and auto supply company, the skate maker Samuel Winslow, the Goodyear Rubber Co. and the firearms merchants J.L. Galef & Son.
- 1925
In 1925 the Chambers Street front is rebuilt in tapestry brick
Woline & Bull, Inc. rebuilt the Chambers Street facade completely in 1925-26 for owner Stephen Upson. It now has multi-hued tapestry brick above the second story, a stepped brick parapet and a limestone-framed two-story base. The simpler Reade Street front is substantially intact and keeps its plain Italianate details.
“…the present Chambers Street facade is the result of an alteration in 1925-26 by the firm of Woline & Bull, Inc., in which the front was rebuilt…”
Nearby
- 83 Chambers Street3 entries
- 87 Chambers Street2 entries
- 79 Chambers Street2 entries
- Peddie & Morrison Store77 Chambers Street | 3 entries
- 95 Chambers Street5 entries
- Irving House Hotel (surviving section)75 Chambers Street | 3 entries