97 Wooster Street

SoHo | built 1897

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. 1867

    The house on this lot becomes a branch YMCA for Black boys, independent of the city association

    In 1867 No. 97 Wooster Street, then a brick house, was converted into a Young Men's Christian Association branch for "colored" boys only. The New York Times later described it as separate from the city's YMCA, though the two worked together. The club stayed at least until 1889, after which the old houses on the block were torn down for loft buildings.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1897

    November

    George Pelham finishes a seven-story Romanesque Revival loft with carved faces and fern-capped columns

    Louisa and Samuel Friedline, a real estate buyer and a builder, bought the 25-foot lot in April 1896 for a seven-story warehouse and hired George F. Pelham as architect. Completed in November 1897, it has a two-story cast-iron storefront framed in beige brick. Carved faces hold up engaged columns on the fifth floor, and the entablature above the second floor looks like an unrolled fluted column.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1903

    May 11

    Firefighters rescue three trapped workers by hoisting a ladder from the neighboring firehouse roof

    Late on May 11, 1903 a fire broke out on the fifth floor while manufacturer Benjamin Lustgarten and two employees worked on the seventh. Next door at No. 99 Wooster was the firehouse of Engine Company 13, and Lt. George J. Irving climbed to its roof, raised a scaling ladder with a rope, and climbed to the seventh floor. The Tribune reported that he handed the men down, with Lustgarten partly overcome by smoke.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1968

    March

    Six artists who work in the building stage a group show in an empty studio lent by the landlord

    By the late 1960s the loft building, once a muslin underwear factory, had artists working in it. The New York Times reported in April 1968 that May Stevens, Bob Pittenger, George Gillson, Rudolph Baranik, Tony Balzano and Sue Aitkin had put on a three-weekend group show the previous month. They used an empty studio lent by the landlord, part of the early loft art scene that became SoHo.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1972

    September 16

    A.I.R. Gallery, the first women's cooperative gallery in the United States, opens with a show by all twenty founders

    Twenty women artists, among them Nancy Spero, Howardena Pindell, Harmony Hammond and Agnes Denes, rented a 70-foot space here with peeling plaster and warped floors and readied it with their own carpentry and wiring skills. A.I.R. Gallery opened to the public on September 16, 1972 with a group exhibition featuring every member.

    Source: thefeministinstitute.org

Further reading

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