87 Walker Street
Civic Center | built 1869
Open on the map5 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.
- 1847
An inventor shows a model "safety locomotive" at a house on the site of 87 Walker Street
Before the present building, a small brick house on this lot was the home of Dr. H. L. B. Lewis, an inventor who exhibited a model of his "safety locomotive" at the American Institution in 1847. Scientific American's September 11 issue praised the design as a wonderful invention that could not easily be thrown off the rails, and invited readers to visit his workshop at 87 Walker Street. The house was gone by the late 1860s.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1868
Banker Samuel D. Babcock buys the lot and hires Edward Wall to build a cast-iron loft
Samuel D. Babcock, a banker who had tried real estate development in 1859 with a marble-faced building at Broadway and White Street, bought the vacant lot on September 11, 1868 from John Fowler for $11,250. He hired architect Edward Wall, and the six-story cast-iron store and loft building was finished in 1869. Its first five floors are Italianate, with round arches and engaged columns, and the sixth is a Second Empire mansard with dormers.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1898
Firefighters fall through a burned floor while fighting a blaze in a cloak factory
A fire started in the third-floor cloak and suit factory of Gordon & Sopolsky early on a Saturday. The nearby engine company walked over without turning out its engine, and by the time an alarm was sent the flames had burned through a floor. Firefighter Henry Volk fell through while hauling hose, followed by Captain Joseph Martin, who was buried in debris and dug out; Martin hurt his back and arm, and Volk broke an arm and was hurt internally. None of the old tenants returned to the rebuilt structure.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1926
Federal agents trace crates of narcotics to a toy jobber's top floor at 87 Walker Street
In July 1926 agents of the Department of Justice opened a crate marked "bowling pins and balls" on the liner Arabic and found morphine. They followed a trucker on July 12 to 87 Walker Street, where they found ten cases in all. A federal prosecutor said five of them held 224 pounds of morphine, cocaine and heroin worth nearly $600,000. He later said the ring's headquarters were on the top floor, ostensibly a toy jobber's, and that over two tons of narcotics entered the trade between February and August 1926.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1979
A foreign-language newspaper printer with a Chinese sign becomes the main tenant as Chinatown expands
By the 1970s the Seven Seas Printing and Publishing Company, which ran six presses and photographic equipment to produce mostly foreign-language newspapers, was the main tenant. The New York Times described it on October 13, 1979 as the major occupant of the old building, linked by shabby stairs and a rope-controlled elevator, with a sign in large Chinese lettering. In the 1980s another Asian-owned firm, Lucky Bean Sprouts, took space in the building.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- Horsehair, Arson and Narcotics - 87 Walker StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
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