Becoming Fifth Avenue: The Brevoorts
“Becoming Fifth Avenue” is a series of posts in celebration of the bicentennial of the avenue, which was first laid out in 1824. The first segment, in Greenwich Village between Washington Square North and 13th Street, officially opened on November 1st of that year.
To celebrate Fifth Avenue’s 200th Anniversary, Village Preservation has launched an interactive map, highlighting the history and evolution of the thoroughfare between Washington Square and 14th Street, 1824 and the present. The earliest developments on the Avenue were primarily single-family, free-standing mansions and rowhouses, constructed by and for some of the wealthiest New Yorkers. One of the most prominent such families were the Brevoorts, who influenced the Avenue’s development in more ways than one.
Henry Brevoort (1747-1841), was a successful farmer whose 86-acre estate spanned from 9th to 18th Street, Fifth Avenue to the Bowery. Many of the Avenue’s early developments were constructed on parts of the estate, and his son, Henry Brevoort Jr., built one Fifth Avenue’s earliest mansions.
The mansion was number No. 24 Fifth Avenue, and was located at the northwest corner of 9th Street. It was built in 1834 and designed by celebrated architect Alexander Jackson Davis. Many other elite New Yorkers would soon follow suit, developing their own mansions along the street, all of which can be explored in our Fifth Avenue interactive map. Like many but not all of these early mansions, the Brevoorts’ has since been demolished. It was replaced by “The Fifth Avenue hotel,” in 1925.
In 1848-1849, the Brevoorts funded the construction of 10 through 16 Fifth Avenue, a row of Gothic Revival-style townhouses. No. 12 was replaced in 1903 by an apartment building. Nos. 14-16 were combined internally, and in 2021 demolished to make way for new much taller apartment building. The demolition and subsequent construction on the site caused significant damage to no. 10.
Across the street stood “The Brevoort House,” a hotel that opened by 1854 and was constructed on what was once part of the Brevoort farm. The building was an amalgamation of several townhouses, originally nos. 9, 11, and 13 Fifth Avenue. Between 1868 and 1879, No. 15 was joined at the interior to expand the hotel, and later, the rowhouse at no. 17 Fifth Avenue was also added.
For nearly a century, the hotel was a cornerstone of the streetscape and the neighborhood. The lower floor held the Cafe Brevoort, which was a popular hangout for Village artists and writers.
The hotel, and two adjacent rowhouses, were demolished in 1953 to make way for the Brevoort apartments. The large apartment building occupies the entire East Side of Fifth Avenue between 8th and 9th Street. In 1965 the Brevoort East was built, and sits on the eastern part of the same block facing University Place.
This information and much more can be found in our Fifth Avenue 200th Anniversary map. It’s one of more than a dozen Village Preservation maps that highlight the incredible history of our neighborhoods; explore all of them here.