Local Landmarks and Landmarks-to-Be of Black History

February is Black History Month, the annual celebration of the heritage and culture of African Americans, and a time to recognize the many contributions and sacrifices that helped shape our city and the nation. At Village Preservation, we are committed to recognizing and furthering that legacy as we strive to protect historic structures in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. In recent years, we have helped gain landmark status for sites essential to local and national Black history, and remain committed to campaigns that will preserve even more significant structures. Here’s a sampling of our efforts.

Landmarked: The Jacob Day Residence, 50 West 13th Street

In October 2024, the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated 50 West 13th Street (near Sixth Avenue) an individual landmark, following a four-year-long campaign by Village Preservation to protect the endangered 1846 Greek Revival row house and preserve its history. From 1857 to 1884, the building was owned and used as a residence and place of business by Jacob Day, a prominent African American businessman, property owner, and advocate for the abolition of slavery and later for voting rights and economic opportunities for African Americans in the late 19th century. 

Newspapers of the period cited Day as one of the wealthiest African Americans and one of the most prominent and successful Black businessmen in New York City, at a time of extremely limited opportunity for Black New Yorkers. He was also a prominent member of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, New York’s second oldest Black church, which relocated to Greenwich Village at 164-166 Waverly Place in 1864. And he was involved with the Freedman’s Bank, established after the Civil War to help freed slaves economically, which was eventually run by abolitionist Frederick Douglass. 

Day was associated with other civil rights causes, such as his efforts in 1866 to end discriminatory practices limiting the franchise for Black men in New York. Day and his compatriots called for a convention for the purpose of revising the State Constitution to remove the rule that Black men own property worth $250, a quite substantial sum at the time, in order to vote — which was not required of white men. It took the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870 to end this legal discrimination on voting in New York. In addition, according to local lore and significant circumstantial evidence, this house and its back house (which dates to at least 1853) may have been used as part of the Underground Railroad during Day’s years at the address.

As the owner of the building, Day also rented out space for apartments. One tenant was Sarah Smith Tompkins Garnet, who lived here from 1866 to 1874. Garnet was a distinguished teacher at  Colored School No. 4 at 128 West 17th Street in the 1860s, then rose to the school’s principal from 1863 to 1894, one of the first Black women to serve in that capacity in the city’s public school system. While at 50 West 13th Street, she also was involved in numerous suffragist and abolitionist activities.

Not Yet Landmarked: 285-287 East 3rd Street

Nos. 285 and 287 East 3rd Street (between Avenues C and D) are two highly intact Greek Revival–style sister row houses dating from 1837 and built by Hamilton Fish, who served as the 16th governor of New York, a U.S. senator, and secretary of state under President Grant. No. 285 was the home of Steve Cannon and his organization the Gathering of the Tribes for decades. Both were incredibly important to Black life in the East Village, a vital center of African American culture in the 20th century, with roots extending back centuries earlier.

Cannon arrived in New York City from New Orleans in the early 1960s, with the goal of becoming part of the downtown scene where writers, artists, musicians, and many others expressing their artistic visions could gather and exchange ideas. He soon became integral to that scene, helping to establish cultural institutions such as the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival and the Howl Festival, and mixing with such noteworthy names as Norman Mailer, Miles Davis, and Leonard Bernstein. From his apartment, Cannon led the Gathering of the Tribes, which offered a gallery, gathering space, and networking center for underexposed artists.

The campaign for landmarking at this site was part of Village Preservation’s effort to ensure the LPC lived up to its own “Equity Framework” to designate more landmarks that honor the histories of underrepresented communities. You can send a letter to make your voice heard on preserving 285-287 East 3rd Street here.

Landmarked: 70 Fifth Avenue

In May 2021, the LPC voted unanimously to landmark 70 Fifth Avenue, which was a hub for a surprisingly wide range of progressive, human rights, and civil liberties organizations in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the most significant was the NAACP, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization founded nearby at Cooper Union on February 12, 1909. From its headquarters here, the NAACP pursued early campaigns against lynching, employment discrimination, voting disenfranchisement, and defamatory representations in the media, including the film Birth of a Nation. 

The 1912 Beaux Arts–style office building was also home for two key publications of the early civil rights era. One was The Crisis magazine, led by writer, historian, and activist W.E.B. DuBois. It was the first magazine for African Americans and voice of the civil rights movement for over a century, as well as a launching pad for Harlem Renaissance writers Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Countee Cullen. The other was another DuBois-led effort, The Brownies’ Book, the first magazine for Black children, one that had a significant impact on how young people of that period viewed themselves and others as well as the world around them.

Other groups headquartered in the building included the ACLU, the American Federation of Teachers, the League for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, the League for Industrial Democracy, the Women’s Peace Party, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, the Near East Foundation, and the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, founded to fight government intervention in the film industry and now known as the National Board of Review.

In May 2022, Village Preservation installed a plaque at the site honoring these many organizations.

Not Yet Landmarked: The Rest of South of Union Square

No. 70 Fifth Avenue is just one of many buildings we are trying to protect South of Union Square, an area roughly bounded by Fifth Avenue, 14th Street, Third Avenue, and 9th Street that we have proposed as a historic district. Featuring a diverse array of late 19th- and early 20th-century building styles, the neighborhood is a focal point for an array of social, cultural, and architectural movements. Many sites played key roles in Black civil rights and artistic movements, including:

• 80 Fifth Avenue, home to the International Workers Order. The IWO fought relentlessly for racial equality, operating under the principle that there would be “No Jim Crow in the IWO,” and supported campaigns for a federal anti-lynching bill and the protection of Black voting rights. It also organized the Harlem Suitcase Theater, which brought socially conscious theater to Black audiences in the Depression.
• Studios for Columbia and Okeh Records at 55 Fifth Avenue, where renowned record-producer, civil rights activist, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee John Hammond got his start with artists including Billie Holiday.
• 70 University Place, home in the 1950s of union organizer and civil rights advocate David Livingston, a confidante of Martin Luther King Jr.’s who set up a meeting between King and John F. Kennedy in 1960.

You can explore these and other essential locations on our South of Union Square Civil Rights and Social Justice Tour, learn more about the campaign, and sign a letter supporting designation of the South of Union Square Historic District.