Today, usage of the words grand and great to refer to size is deemphasized, but when a number of NYC locations were established, that wasn’t the case, as seen by names such as Great Jones St. (which is wider than nearby streets) and Staten Island’s Great Kills (“kill” being old Dutch for “strait.”)
Today, great and grand refer more to value, though we hold onto terms like “great big” and the adverb greatly. Derivations of Manhattan’s Grand St/ differ (Sanna Fierstein in Naming New York says it was laid out as a grand boulevard leading to the 19th century’s planned Delancey Square) but the term likely refers to its width, which was considerable for then, especially in its eastern stretch.
All five boroughs have one or more streets named “Grand” and in most cases they’re of exceptional length (though not in Staten Island); Grand St. in Brooklyn and Grand Ave. in Queens are a continuous road and, as part of Broadway and 30th Ave. (originally called Grand Ave.) go all the way to Astoria. The most obvious example is the Grand Concourse in the Bronx.
When opened in the early-1800s Grand St. was thought to be “grand” or wider than its fellow streets. That wideness was blunted by the addition of parking and bicycle lanes, and the city has allowed dangerous conditions to arise by permitting the construction of outdoor restaurant sheds in the parking lanes on occasion, outside the bike lanes. This means that waiters have to wait for speeding bicycles, e-bikes and mopeds when delivering orders.
How did modern condominium #27 Wooster, at the southwest corner of Grand, get built in the landmarked Soho Cast Iron District? Prior to 2012, this was a parking lot and no historic structures had to be altered or torn down. I like the design, as it’s not a pure glassy front, and has equally-sized windows. I like its contrast with Belgian-blocked Wooster.
Constructed in stone with a cast iron front in 1873, the massive #80-88 Grand street at Greene was for many years home to importers C.A. Auffmordt & Co, now residences. Importers and merchants of dry goods dominated Soho before it was called Soho and changed character completely; these were built as utilitarian buildings.
If you’re interested in cast iron architecture, read “Cast-Iron Architecture in New York: A Photographic Survey” by Margot Gayle and Edmund V. Gillon Jr., Dover 1974, which is chockablock of photos of Soho in the 1970s. It was Gayle who wrangled the Department of Transportation into saving many of Manhattan’s original cast iron streetlamps.
The Italianate Odd Fellows Hall at #165-171 Grand St., the SE corner of Centre, was constructed from 1847-1848 with a Second Empire-style slanted roof addition in 1882. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a secret society, was founded in Manchester, England, in the early-1800s. The organization described its purpose “To visit the sick, relieve the distressed, to bury the dead, and to educate the orphan,” and in addition to be tile “Guardian of the Widow, and Father of the Fatherless.” The New York branch was founded in 1806. Like the Masons, the IOOF still has a wide worldwide membership. Such fraternities were unusual in England at the time of the IOOF’s foundation, hence the name.
The domed former NYPD Headquarters, 240 Centre St., located in a wedge between Centre, Grand, Broome, and Centre Market Place. Currently a luxury apartment building called Police Building Apartments, it was designed by Hoppin & Krohn and completed in 1909 just as the Beaux Arts movement was winding down and modernism was around the corner. The lions in front look more fierce than the two at the New York Public Library—as befits Police HQ. It was converted to luxury use in 1988, an early harbinger of the luxe trend that would take hold in Soho in the following decade.
This is an original Type 1A Bishop Crook lamp, recognizable by its thinner, garland-wound shaft and ladder rest, an homage to gas lamps. It was installed during the 1910s. Part of it was given a new paint job to relieve its rust and a new Bell lamp fixture some years ago.
One of the oldest taverns in NYC, on the corner of Grand, ONieals (the official spelling deprives it of two apostrophes), was established as Callahan’s around 1880. After the NYPD HQ went up across the street a tunnel was dug from the HQ to this bar for easy undetected access for cops and NYPD brass; part of it is now ONieals wine cellar. There was an upstairs brothel at one point, and the place continued to run as a speakeasy during prohibition. The NYPD HQ was retired in 1973, but the bar soldiered on and was purchased by its current management in 1996.
A McKim, Mead and White masterwork, the Bowery Savings Bank, rose from 1892-1894 on the Bowery at Grand, extending back to Elizabeth St., when the Bowery was a theater district and the center of the NYC entertainment scene, and still respectable—it didn’t descend into despair until the 1910s. This bank set the template for the Roman Classical Style revivals for subsequent bank buildings. Bowery Bank had stood in this location since 1834: this was the third building. The interior featured marble mosaic floors, yellow marble tellers’ counters, and cast-iron skylights and stairs. The building has been saved and is now the Capitale nightclub. It wraps around to #130 Bowery. After some mergers, the Bowery is now Capital One. The sculpted pediments, depicting bare-breasted women petting lions, were designed by Frederic MacMonnies, later famed for his Civic Virtue statue that has gone from City Hall Park to Queens Borough Hall to Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.
Allen St. sports a green median and runs between Division St. and Houston St. for eight long blocks. Its name honors William Henry Allen, a commander killed in the War of 1812. During the peak of Jewish immigration to this country, 1882 to 1924, Allen St. was only 50 feet in width and shrouded in darkness beneath the Second Avenue Elevated line. In the shadow of the tracks young mobsters began their careers and prostitutes plied their trade. On these blocks missionaries tried to convert the newcomers and a synagogue served as the stage for future opera stars. This diverse streetscape came to an end between 1927 and 1931 in the name of urban renewal, to give more open space to this dense neighborhood.
Allen St. was widened to 138 feet and in 1942 the train tracks were removed, but it was decades before this street would look like a respectable boulevard as intended by city planners. Because it connects to 1st Ave., it carries a lot of vehicles which discourages foot traffic.
Unless it’s touched up, this painted sign for Ideal Hosiery may not have too long a “run” left. This underwear wholesaler/retailer at #339 Grand St. and Ludlow not only has its 1940s painted sidewalk sign still intact, although peeling by now, but the building in which it’s situated was first built in 1832 as a private residence.
Over the years #339 Grand has functioned as the home of the Hebrew Benevolent Orphan Asylum Society of NYC, a kitchenware and stove store, the J. Freund mattress store, and since the 1930s, socks, stockings and underwear. It was once part of a concentration of such outlets in the LES, especially on Orchard St., that have disappeared one by one. Ideal has lost its sign on the Ludlow St. side of the building but its weathered, battered Grand St. sign seems ready to go the distance.
St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church at Grand and Ridge Sts. was organized in 1826 as the third Catholic church in NYC, following St. Peter’s on Barclay St. (founded 1785) and Old St. Patrick’s on Mott St. (1815). The first St. Mary’s, a frame house on the vanished Sheriff Street, was destroyed by anti-Catholic arsonists in 1831, and this large brick church was constructed to replace it in 1833. Every building surrounding it was torn down to make way for multi-family housing, and Ridge St., which used to intersect here, survives only as a pedestrian crossing.
In the 1830s there were just six priests and one Catholic bishop in the city. However, the ensuing decades found thousands of Irish and German immigrants arriving, many of whom were Catholics. The Catholic population dipped again around 1900 as German and Eastern European Jews arrived in the area. The ebb and flow continued after World War II as Puerto Ricans, again heavily Catholic, moved into the neighborhood. Today much of St. Mary’s ministry consists of Mexican, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, and other Spanish speaking immigrants. In addition, services in Mandarin are conducted.
In 1893 Lillian Wald started the Visiting Nurse Service with philanthropist Jacob Schiff, an institution that’s still going strong today. Wald also started the Henry Street Settlement, an organization bringing a wide range of arts and social services to its community. The Settlement has grown in its over-100 year history to encompass 18 buildings—and continues to expand. Oddly, Lillian Wald and Jacob Schiff had NYC thoroughfares named for them, but both have fallen into disuse: Lillian Wald Dr. had been E. Houston St. between Ave. D and the FDR Dr., while the middle lane of Delancey St. between Bowery and The Williamsburg Bridge had been known as Schiff Parkway. Neither are on street lists today.
Grand St. passes through gentrified Soho, Chinatown and, nearing the east end at FDR Dr., there are plenty of traces of Jewish Lower East Side. The Grand Street Mikvah, a striking Beaux Arts-style building with contrasting red brick and white stone trim, was built as a community center in 1904. The five-story building contained a library, gym, club rooms, bowling alley and an assembly hall that held 125 people, and an apartment for the janitor’s family on the top floor. In 1919 the building was acquired by the Toynbee House, an organization dedicated to aiding poor immigrants with educational, recreational and social services. The ATH above the front door was carved with the organization’s initials.
In 1941 the building was converted by the Jewish Association of Family Purity to a mikvah, or a bathhouse for ritual purification according to Orthodox Jewish requirements. It was again renovated in 1966 to meet the latest requirements and to provide updated plumbing. Men use the mikvah in the morning and women in the evening. In the basement, six concrete cisterns, each with a 1000-gallon capacity, supply water for the tubs of lukewarm rainwater used for total immersion. This is the only mikvah remaining on the Lower East Side, though several still operate in Brooklyn.
Across the street, you’ll find Moishe’s Bakery.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013).