Survivors

Sure, a landmark-district designation will allow ordinary buildings to survive in unexpected places, but they had to have survived long enough to make it to designation. The picture above is the west side of Broadway between 17th and 18th Streets, as seen in January from the north end of Union Square, designated as part of the Ladies’ Mile Historic District in 1989. Here’s a close-up of the block front:

Given that Union Square has been a popular site for development more or less continuously from the mid-1800s onward, it’s surprising that these six small buildings have survived. It’s worth taking a brief look at why. From the left:

• 857 Broadway, with the yellow-painted cast iron and pilates on the second floor. Built as a private house around 1847, converted to commercial use in the 1860s, got the cast-iron front added and was extended west (to the rear) along 17th Street in 1884. And I’ll mention, for reasons that will become clear in a bit, owned by the Goelet family.
• 859 Broadway, with the Verizon store. Built as a private house in 1841, converted to commercial use in the 1860s, got a glass storefront at the first and second floors in 1897. Owned by E. A. Newell in the 1880s and the Edwards Estate from the 1890s until at least the 1910s.
• 861 Broadway, immediately to the right of Verizon. Built as a private house in 1842, converted to commercial use in the 1860s (is there an echo in here?), got a first- and second-floor storefront in 1889. Owned by Ewen McIntyre in 1889 and William Walker & Sons in 1923.
• 863 Broadway, two buildings to the right of Verizon. Built as a private house in 1842, converted it commercial use in the 1860s, got the first floor storefront in 1885. Owned by the Huyler Company in 1885 and Ruth Livingston in 1897.
• 865 Broadway, with BlueMercury at the ground floor. Built as a four-story private house in 1843, it was used as a school in the 1850s and converted to commercial use in the 1860s. In 1869, the cast-iron facade was added to the existing building and a mansard roof built above; in 1874, the mansard was converted to a full fifth floor with a brick facade. The owner was Charles Wood in the 1860s and 70s, the estate of S. D. Beers in the 1890s, John Forsythe in 1907, and the Beers Realty Company (seller’s remorse?) in 1912.
• 867-869 Broadway, at the corner of 18th Street, is by far the best well known of the group, having been occupied by Paragon Sporting Goods for decades. It was built as a store in 1883, replacing a group of one- and two-story commercial buildings. Various owners, including John Forsythe in 1907.

In one regard, this is thee story of Manhattan’s development prior to World War II: a new high-end residential neighborhood was created, and then relatively quickly abandoned as commercial development made the area noise, dirtier, and less chic. It’s probably not a coincidence that the first house to switch away from residential use was 865, which was the one with small commercial buildings next door. But it seems that the reason this block was never demolished and replaced by something bigger was the combination of fragmented ownership and thriving retail. The various individuals and companies that owned these buildings were making money from them, and this had no great incentive to sell. The early 1900s, when Forsythe controlled both 867-869 and 865 was probably the moment where something might have happened, but it didn’t, thus demonstrating the element of luck in building survivals.