45 Christopher Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 45 Christopher Street by Carter Horsley

This 17-story apartment building is close to the epicenter of Greenwich Village. At the east end of its block, it is across from the unusual and very attractive Northern Dispensary building, a triangular Georgian-style building that dates from 1831, and at the west end of its block it is across from a small, pleasant triangular park and the "Sheridan Square" subway station island, named after the other small, triangular "square" just to the south. Christopher Street, which is the westward, angled extension of 9th Street and begins at Greenwich Avenue This very handsome doorman building, one of the most attractive in Greenwich Village, was erected in 1913 and has 113 apartments and was converted to a condominium in 1986. The brown-brick building has a two-story stone base and an attractively enclosed watertank.The same block housed for many years the offices of the Village Voice, the now closed Stonewall Inn restaurant and bar that was the scene of a famous "riot" in 1969 by gays after a police raid, and the Lion's Head bar and restaurant that was for decades one of the most famous writers' hangouts in the city until it sadly closed in 1997.A large community garden is across from the foot of Christopher Street in the lee of the great Jefferson Market Courthouse Library landmark along the Avenue of the Americas and across from Balduci's, the famous food store. Cross-town buses run on Christopher and Tenth Streets and the Sixth and Eighth Avenue IND Subways have an express station three blocks away at Eighth Street and the Avenue of the Americas. The area abounds in restaurants, boutiques and antique stores, theaters and cabarets.