The Friends building

90 Bedford Street | also 20 Grove Street | West Village | built 1899

Open on the map5 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

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.

  1. 1898

    Three older buildings, including William Hineman's grocery at 20 Grove, stand on this corner before the apartment house

    This was an earlier set of buildings on the site. In fall 1898 Gustav Dohrenwend and Otto Leister bought three old structures from David B. Cocks: a three-story wooden house at 90 Bedford, a three-story brick house at 92, and a Federal-style brick house at 20 Grove Street. The corner held William Hineman's grocery, run by a Civil War veteran who had lost an arm at Second Bull Run, with rented rooms above. The partners demolished everything quickly.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1899

    Schneider & Herter complete a six-story apartment house with a canopied door and a cast-iron corner store

    The six-story brick building was designed by Schneider & Herter in 1898-99 for Leister & Dohrenwend, with a second entrance at 20 Grove Street. Its third floor keeps round-arched windows from the Romanesque Revival, and contrasting white stone lintels and sills stand out against dark brick. A foliate band course ties the facade together, and a canopied doorway repeats the foliate motifs. A cast-iron-columned store fills the corner.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1968

    July 23

    Sharon Krebs, a resident of 90 Bedford, is arrested for stripping naked and waving a pig's head at a Humphrey protest

    Sharon Krebs, a freelance writer who lived on the second floor from the mid-1960s, was already a known antiwar activist: in 1966 she was arrested for selling anti-Vietnam war flags and buttons from a folding table, and the case was dismissed a year later. On July 23, 1968, with Vice President Hubert Humphrey in town to speak at Columbia, 36 protesters were arrested. Two of them, Krebs and Key Martin, were jailed on $1,000 bail over charges of inciting a riot and disorderly conduct; they had stripped naked and waved a pig's head.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1970

    December 4

    Weathermen Sharon Krebs and Joyce Plecha, who lived at 90 Bedford, are arrested before a planned bank bombing

    By 1970 Krebs had joined the Weathermen, and her associate Joyce Plecha, 25, also lived in the building. On December 4 the two women and four others were taken into custody at dawn on the Upper East Side while getting ready to bomb the First National City Bank at 1275 Madison Avenue. Police searched Krebs's apartment and left with a box that included Vietcong flags. After guilty pleas in March 1971, Plecha received three years and Krebs the maximum of four.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1994

    September 22

    Friends debuts, and Village residents quickly recognize 90 Bedford as the show's apartment building

    When Friends premiered on September 22, 1994, its characters Monica and Rachel lived across the hall from Joey and Chandler. Producers tried to keep the building in the exterior shots secret, but Greenwich Village residents soon recognized No. 90 Bedford. Moustache, a Middle Eastern restaurant, holds the Bedford Street side, and The Little Owl joined it in the Grove Street storefront in May 2006. Fans still call it the Friends building.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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