91 2nd Avenue

East Village | built 1845

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.

1910
The Gershwins have a piano hoisted through the window of their second-floor apartment at 91 Second Avenue
Several sources name this house as the childhood home of Ira and George Gershwin, whose family lived on the second floor, in the heart of the Yiddish Theater District. According to the story, when George was about 12 the family bought a piano and it was lifted in through the front-room window. As soon as it arrived he sat down and played a popular tune he had been practicing at a friend's home on 7th Street.
Source: buildingblocks.villagepreservation.org
2005
A sixth story and an entirely new facade replace the nineteenth-century front at 91 Second Avenue
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The house went up around 1843-45 as a four-story row house for Joseph R. Stuyvesant or T. Donnelly, and was raised to five stories in 1886. Between 2005 and 2007 architect Israel Peles added a sixth story and replaced the whole facade. The Landmarks Preservation Commission, which listed the building in its 2012 historic district, records the stoop and cornice as removed.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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