88 University Place

also 24 East 12th Street | Greenwich Village | built 1906

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.

1914
Kaliski & Gabay run a fine-arts auction house at 88 University Place
By 1914, the earliest date Ephemeral New York could document, the auctioneers Arthur Kaliski and Richard Gabay were selling paintings, rare books, rugs and other goods from this loft building. Their firm gave its name to the premises: the surnames and the number 88 are still spelled out in blue and white tile in a mosaic at the entrance.
Source: Ephemeral New York
1946
Auctioneer Arthur Kaliski dies; his weekend sales had drawn crowds of more than 200
Arthur Kaliski died in 1946 at age 63. His Brooklyn Eagle obituary, quoted by Ephemeral New York, said the Friday and Saturday auctions he conducted each week, holidays excepted, were treated as a good show and pulled in more than 200 people at a time. A 1947 newspaper advertisement for the house's sales listed a telephone number with a GR exchange.
Source: Ephemeral New York
1950
The auction house appears to close around 1950, leaving only its tile mosaic at the door
Ephemeral New York found that the Kaliski & Gabay auction house seems to have shut down around 1950. The mosaic reading Kaliski & Gabay 88 remains set into the front of this early-1900s loft building, in a blue and white tile typeface. By 2019 the building was home to a WeWork.
Source: Ephemeral New York

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