97 Chambers Street

also 79 Reade Street | Tribeca | built 1858

Open on the map5 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1. 1804

   Dr. David Hosack, attending surgeon at the Burr-Hamilton duel, owned the mansion that stood here

   Before the present building, a magnificent town house on the site belonged to Dr. David Hosack, a professor of botany and medicine at Columbia College. He built it with his third wife, Magdalena Coster, the widow of a wealthy merchant. Hosack was the attending surgeon at the 1804 Burr-Hamilton duel and one of the principal founders of Bellevue Hospital in 1820. In 1846-48 the house was extended to Reade Street and converted to the Mansion House Hotel. This was an earlier building on the site.

   “He was the attending surgeon at the Burr-Hamilton duel in 1804. In 1820 he was one of the principal founders of Bellevue Hospital.”

   Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

2. 1858

   The Hosack estate replaces the mansion with an Italianate sandstone loft building

   In 1857 Hosack's estate demolished the mansion and began one of the first modern loft buildings on a block that had been entirely residential. The architect is unknown. The five-story Italianate building was faced in sandstone, with pediments over the windows, grouped windows at the center of each story and a pressed-metal cornice. Dry goods merchants including Dibblee, Work & Moore and Burnham, Plumb & Co. filled it by 1859.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

3. 1863

   July 13

   A dry goods firm on the ground floor claims damages from the Draft Riots

   During the Draft Riots, which began on July 13, 1863 and lasted three days, Burnham, Plumb & Co. occupied the ground floor of 97 Chambers Street, leaving its store exposed to attack. A few months later J. M. Plumb filed a claim for $191.12 in damages, roughly $3,720 in 2016 dollars. The riots killed at least 120 people and burned at least 50 buildings across the city.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

4. 1865

   July 2

   A hoop-skirt warehouse burns while its workers picnic, and a patrolman shoves a fire marshal out

   On the night of Sunday, July 2, 1865, while the workers of Wests, Bradley & Cary's hoop-skirt business were on their annual picnic, flames burst out of a window on the fifth floor, on the Reade Street side. The floor was out of reach of the steam engines of the day, and the firm lost $100,000 in skirts and materials. Patrolman Mortimer Downing, told to admit no one without a badge, shoved Assistant Fire Marshal Henry O. Baker, who had come in street clothes without his shield, out of the building.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

5. 1902

   May 1

   J. Newcomb Blackman founds the Blackman Talking Machine Co., a Victor wholesaler, in the building

   On May 1, 1902, bicycle dealer J. Newcomb Blackman and his wife, Ada, established the Blackman Talking Machine Co. here. It began as the exclusive wholesale outlet for Victor products, an odd neighbor for the bicycle and automobile firms around it. On May 1, 1919 Blackman announced that it would stop retail sales and deal only at wholesale, and the company remained in the building until it went out of business in 1932.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

• The 1858 No. 97 Chambers StreetDaytonian in Manhattan

Nearby

• 95 Chambers Street5 entries
• 99 Chambers Street3 entries
• 87 Chambers Street2 entries
• 85 Chambers Street3 entries
• 78 Reade Street5 entries
• 74 Reade Street3 entries

All 564 buildings with stories in Tribeca