Secondary Resources

1. (Former) Cudahy Cold Storage Facility

The former Cudahy Cold Storage Facility, at 450 West 14th Street, was the first of four buildings designed and built expressly for through-passage of the High Line railway. The five-story Art Deco brick and cast-stone structure was completed in 1932 by engineers of the New York Central Railroad Company, as part of New York City’s West Side Improvement project. The “High Line Building” is an integral part of the history of the High Line railway, and is significant as a demonstration of the large-scale industrial design projects championed by federal and municipal agencies during the Great Depression in America.

2. Liberty Inn

The Liberty Inn, designed by Richard R. Davis, was built in 1908 for poultry dealers, the Conron Brothers. Originally known as the Strand Hotel, it accommodated sailors from the nearby piers. When the Titanic survivors were brought to these piers, the New York Times used the hotel as a headquarters. Other uses have included a boarding house, speakeasy, night club, and restaurant. Its many alterations reflect the changes in the Gansevoort area from shipbuilding to meatpacking to night-life hot spot, and it stands out within the area as one of the few buildings still retaining its original use, that of a hotel.

3. Historic Streetscape (West Side)

The Greek Revival, Italianate, and Second Empire style rowhouses along the north side of West 14th Street, between Seventh and Eight Avenues, were constructed between 1840 and 1860. Surviving in a nearly intact row, these buildings represent the period when West 14th Street, from Union Square to Ninth Avenue, was regarded as a fashionable address for upper- and upper middle-class New Yorkers.

4. Little Spain

At the turn of the century, Spanish immigrants settled in the area around West 14th Street. The degree to which this was the center of Spanish life in the city is visible in the number of services that were offered within the area, and particularly on this block. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the Casa Maria, a Spanish settlement house protecting the “temporal, social, mental, moral, and religious welfare of young women and Spanish speaking people,” the Spanish Benevolent Society, and St. Raphael’s Spanish Immigrant Society all located on this block, while still more, such as the Spanish American Workers Alliance, the Hotel Espanyol, and many other businesses serving Spanish and Spanish-speaking people located nearby. In 1902, the Augustinians of the Assumption established the Our Lady of Guadalupe Roman Catholic Church, the first Latino church in Manhattan, in order to “do [their] work for the Spanish speaking people.”

In 1939, the New York City Guide published by the WPA acknowledged that, while “the Spanish Colony has declined,” many remaining institutions “still preserve[d] the Iberian flavor.” Continuing waves of Spanish-speaking immigrants, most noticeably those from Puerto Rico in the second half of the twentieth century, have also gathered in this area. Today, the area serves the larger Hispanic community of New York with the Spanish Benevolent Society, the Asociacion Tepeyac de New York, the Centro Espanol La Nacional, Spanish-language bookstores, and the Lady of Guadalupe Church, albeit relocated and consolidated with the nearby St. Bernard’s. While there have been and continue to be many geographic centers for Spanish and Hispanic immigrants, 14th Street’s Little Spain is significant as being the first major gathering place for generations of Spanish and Hispanic immigrants.

5. 210 West 14th Street

It is here that French Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp lived from 1942 until the year of his death, 1968, on the top floor. Due to the fact that the building itself, an 1849 brownstone, has been altered since Duchamp resided here, the significance is lessened. While it is important to acknowledge this connection with the artist’s later works that have only recently been found and exhibited, the alteration means that less can be learned from the building than if it were not the case.

6. 244 West 14th Street

Constructed in 1930, 244 West 14th Street is a two-story taxpayer in the Art Deco style. One of fifteen taxpayers along 14th Street, this structure is the most notable for its patterned brickwork and stylized cast-stone ornament.

7. 240 West 14th Street

240 West 14th Street, a mid-nineteenth-century rowhouse in the Italianate style, is architecturally significant for the elaborate cast-iron window and door surrounds applied to its brownstone façade

8. 314 West 14th Street

Built in 1907 by retail druggists Daggett and Ramsdell, the three-story loft building at 314 West 14th Street is one of the earliest examples of the wave of commercial/ manufacturing loft development that transformed 14th Street in the early-twentieth century. Additionally, it is one of the few remaining single-bay loft buildings constructed on a twenty five-foot-wide lot on 14th Street.

9. 28 East 14th Street

28 East 14th Street is notable for its striking cast-iron façade that features central bay windows. It is possible that this address represents a last-minute shift in the utilization of cast iron (from commercial to residential) before its usage fell out of fashion.

10. 20 East 14th Street

Perhaps capitalizing on the prosperity of neighboring Baumann Brothers’ stores, 20 East 14th Street erected its own cast iron storefront in 1911. Though spare in detailing, it remains a good example of cast iron’s smallscale applications, both on 14th Street and in New York City.

11. 108 West 14th Street

108 West 14th Street is a notable example of the typical conversions from residential rowhouses to commercial entities. The double-height cast iron storefront is simple but is also a good example of small residential conversions.

12. 33 West 14th Street

The building is significant as part of the taxpayer properties created by the Van Beuren family on the northern side of 14th Street. The family’s speculation activities on 14th Street are recorded in the surviving taxpayers and these buildings reflect different periods of economic expansion and contraction on the street.

13. Fifth Avenue Commercial Buildings

The speculative commercial buildings at 1 West 14th Street/2-4 West 14th Street (on the northwest and southwest corner 14th Street and Fifth Avenue) provide a strong visible boundary between East and West 14th Street and illustrate the differing scale of the avenues and the cross street. Designed by Buchman and Fox and Robert Maynicke and constructed in 1902 and 1907, the buildings exemplify the incorporation of new technology into the preferred architectural styles of the period.

14. White Brick Apartments

14th Street is home to a number of mid-century whitebrick apartment buildings, notable for their monumental size (a result of the sale of large landholdings), their sleek modernist design, their use of modern materials (including white brick and aluminum), and, finally, their pretentious names, like the “The Victoria.” and “Wedgewood House.”

15. United States Post Office - Stuyvesant Branch

The Stuyvesant Branch of the United States Post Office was designed by architects Wechsler & Schimenti in 1949. Along with several banks and retail stores, this building is a wholly intact remnant of the residential boom following World War II and the opening of Stuyvesant Town in 1947.

16. 235 First Avenue

The First Federal Savings and Loan Association Building was built in 1949 as multi-story speculative office building and was designed by architects R.B. O’Connor and W.H. Kilham, Jr. This branch of this bank was established purposely to serve the residents of Stuyvesant Town, which opened two years earlier. This building is significant because its architecture directly reflects its purpose with the corner entrance, highlighted with columns and pediment facing Stuyvesant Town.

17. Historic Streetscape (East Side)

The tenements found in this area on 14th Street, between First and Third Avenues specifically, are architecturally significant because they create the desirable “neighborhood valley” connecting the busy commercial area of Union Square to the large housing complex of Stuyvesant Town.

18. 602 East 14th Street

As a “taxpayer” building meant to generate the taxes on an expensive piece of land, 602 East 14th Street is by definition a transient structure. However at some point select long-lived taxpayers such as this one become an establishment within the neighborhood. 602 East 14th Street stands as a counterbalance to towering Stuyvesant Town and its presence is essential to the local neighborhood character.

19. East Side Tenements

Historically, these blocks were part of a larger immigrants’ neighborhood that was formed when the Lower East Side, the traditional residential location for this group, began pushing north. Many of the former industrial sites were replaced with tenements as early as the 1850s. About twenty tenements and flats still remain on the south side standing in contrast to Stuyvesant Town to the north.