170 Second Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 170 Second Avenue by Carter Horsley

This Art Deco-style, 16-story building at 170 Second Avenue on the southeast corner at 11th Street was erected in 1928 by Saul Birns and has 77 co-operative apartments. 

It is across the avenue from St. Mark's-in-the-Bouwerie, one of the major landmarks in the East Village.  It is close to St. Mark's Place, Cooper Union, Grace Episcopal Church, other important landmarks in the vicinity. 

Mr. Birns also developed the nearly identical building at 162 Second Avenue, just to the south of 170 Second Avenue, both of which are highly visible, 103 Second Avenue, which subsequently became Ratner's, the restaurant, and Central Plaza, a jazz venue, and was acquired in 1966 by New York University.

Bottom Line

A handsome, Art Deco-style apartment building across Second Avenue from St. Mark's-in-the-Bouwerie.

Description

The beige-brick building has a stone second floor façade and broad bandcourses above the second and the 13th floors. 

The sixth and 13th floors have some decorative balconies. 

The top floor is recessed and the next top two floors of the building have several piers that are capped with finials and the corner has a rope quoin. 

The building is capped with a handsome watertank enclosure with arches similar to the one  atop 162 Second Avenue.

Amenities

The building has a 24-hour elevator attendant, storage, a bicycle room and a laundry.

Apartments

Penthouse A is a two-bedroom unit with a 14-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 19-foot-long living room with a fireplace, a 15-foot-long dining room and an 11-foot-long enclosed and windowed kitchen.  The unit is surrounded on four sides by terraces that are at least 8 feet wide. 

Apartment 8B is a two-bedroom unit with a 13-foot-long entrance gallery that leads to a 24-foot-long living room in one direction and in the other 16-foot-long dining room with a 9-foot-long kitchen with an island. 

Apartment 14B is a two-bedroom unit with a 15-foot-long entrance gallery that leads to a 23-foot-long living room and an 18-foot-long eat-in kitchen with an island. 

Apartment 11A is a two-bedroom unit with a 10-foot-wide entry foyer that leads to a 20-foot wide living room and a 15-foot-long kitchen with a breakfast bar. 

Apartment 2E is a one-bedroom unit with an 8-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 21-foot-long living room and an enclosed and windowed eat-in, 15-foot-long kitchen. 

History

Saul Birnsweig, who shortened his name to Saul Birns, for professional matters, owned the Saul Birns Company, the Atlantic Talking Machine Company, and the Metropolitan Phonograph Company (in this same year he was charged with mail fraud for ripping off foreign customers). By 1940, he was referred to in The New York Times as a 'pioneer East Side builder and realty operator.' 

Birns was a real estate developer on Second Avenue in the 1920s. In addition to the Saul Birns Building at 107-113 Second Avenue, around the same time he also developed No. 63 Second Avenue (at 4th Street) and Nos. 162 & 170 Second Avenue, the two sixteen-story apartment buildings between 10th & 11th Streets across from St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. 

When asked about his motive behind these developments, Birns told The New York Times: “My main idea in building fine apartments here was to check the migration from this east side centre. I found that many of the old families actually preferred to live here, but to secure better homes had been forced uptown… we have the advantages of a wide thoroughfare, excellent transit facilities to all parts of the city, besides being close to Broadway and the Wanamaker shopping center. All these things plus good accommodations are holding the people and the new movement has only started.” 

The Saul Birns building was constructed in 1928 for use as a bank, store & office building. Originally home to the Woolworth Store, it later housed the restaurant Ratner's. 

A November 11, 1977 article by John S. Wilson in The New York Times noted that "The Central Plaza. the venerable five-story building at Second Avenue and Seventh Street, which has, at various times, been a center for kosher catering, jazz and television, will celebrate its 50th anniversary Sunday by taking an affectionate look at its past while it makes a proud display of its present use as New York University's School of the Arts." 

"The celebration will take the form of an open house at 7, with dinner and dancing. The building's theatrical past will be remembered with a musical tribute to Richard Rodgers, honorary chairman of the celebration, and a jazz jamboree recalling the days when “Jazz at the Plaza” was a regular weekend event in New York. At the same time, the work of N.Y.U.'s School of the Arts will be displayed in award-winning films created there, a scenic design exhibition and classes in theater and dance technique...." 

"Jack Crystal. manager of the Commodore Music Shop, which had specialized in jazz records since the early 1930's, suggested to Mr. Birns in 1949 that the Central Plaza emulate the Stuyvesant Casino, two blocks north on Second Avenue, which had been holding jazz sessions every weekend since 1945, when Bunk Johnson, the rediscovered New Orleans trumpeter, made his first appearance in the East there. 

“On the basis that all jewelry stores are in the same location,” Mr. Birns said the other day, “it seemed logical to have more jazz sessions in the same area—the way 52d Street became concentration of jazz clubs in the 30's and 40's.” 

"Mr. Crystal began producing 'Jazz at the Plaza,' which became an institution for college audiences every Friday and Saturday for the next 14 years, until Mr. Crystal's death in 1963. With pitchers of beer and pretzels on the table, such stars of traditional jazz as Sidney Bechet, Wild Bill Davison, Willie (the Lion) Smith, Max Kaminsky and an endless galaxy of jazz musicians performed at the Central Plaza, Many of them were included in two films that were shot there, “Jazz at the Plaza” and “Jazz Dance.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Birns was finding further use for his space when it was not being taken up by weddings and bar mitzvahs. He rented it out for rehearsals of television shows and Broadway productions....'Playhouse 90,' 'Another World' and 'True Story' were among the other television shows that used the Central Plaza's rehearsal halls. Such Broadway musicals as Cole Porter's 'Can Can.' Richard Rodgers's 'No Strings' and Meredith Willson's 'The Music Man' were put into rehearsal there, taking advantage of the building's immense dining halls, which allowed the principals, the chorus and the dancers to rehearse in separate rooms before the show was put together. These rehearsal halls, according to Mr. Birns, were a key to N.Y.U.'s purchase of the building in 1966."