25 Minetta Lane: Review and Ratings

Review of 25 Minetta Lane by Carter Horsley

This attractive, 6-story, red-brick apartment building at 25 Minetta Lane in Greenwich Village was erected in 1940 and has 63 co-operative apartments.

The building has a handsome, gated, garden entrance.

It was designed by H. I. Feldman and developed by the Belkind Realty Corporation of which Samuel Belkind is the president. 

It replaced three of seven three-story and four-story houses at the point where Minetta Street and Minetta Lane come together near Macdougal Street.

Bottom Line

A rather charming, Colonial-style apartment building built in 1940 with fire escapes and a very nice and handsome gated garden entrance near Sixth Avenue in what used to be “Little Africa” and the Greenwich Village turf where “The Iceman Cometh.”

Description

The building is divided into two wings abound front and rear light courts.

It has terra cotta stringcourses at the first and fifth floors and some of the façades has triangular pediments with circular cutouts and fire escapes.

Amenities

The building has a landscaped roof deck, a gated, garden entrance, a live-in superintendent, bicycle storage, storage and a laundry.  It permits pets.

Apartments

Apartment 4AB is a two-bedroom unit with an entry foyer that leads to a 16-foot-wide living room and a 12-foot-wide, eat-in kitchen and two angled bedrooms.

Apartment 5B is a one-bedroom unit with a small entry foyer that leads to a 10-foot-wide semi-circular gallery and a 17-foot-wide living room with a one-step-up, 10-foot-wide dining room next to an enclosed kitchen.  The gallery also leads to a long bedroom with a semi-circular end.

Apartment 2D is a one-bedroom unit with a 7-foot-wide entry foyer that leads to a 16-foot-long living room and an 11-foot-long windowed kitchen.

Apartment 4K is a studio unit with an 11-foot-long office that leads to a 19-foot-long living room with an 8-foot-wide dining area next to a 7-foot-plong enclosed and windowed kitchen.

Apartment 4L is a studio unit with a small entry foyer that leads to an 18-foot-long living room with bay windows and an angled and windowed, 8-foot-long kitchen.

History

An article entitled “Minetta Moments” by Jennifer Callahan in the January 30, 2005 edition of The New York Times provided a good history of Minetta Lane:

“The street’s history goes back to the 1640s, when there was no street, only land, water, the ruling Dutch and ‘partially freed’ slaves, a category of African-Americans allowed to own property but required to pay an annual fee.  The land where they lived was known as ‘the Negroes’ Farms.’  A stream called Manetta ran over the farms, and at some point, a path developed from the foot traffic that followed the stream.  This footpath came to be called ‘the Negroes’ Causeway.’…The stream was moved underground in the 1820s, and by 1830, three years after slavery was abolished in New York, many of the city’s 14,083 freed African-Americans lived in this area….From the 1840s until 1927, the lower end of Sixth Avenue must have felt like a cozy cul-de-sac, since Sixth Avenue ran only from Carmine Street and Minetta Lane up to Central Park.  Cozy, and then cozy, noisy, and dark, when, in 1876, the Sixth Avenue El started to rumble overhead….Writing in The New York Herald in 1896, Stephen Crane called the Minettas, ‘until a few years ago two of the most enthusiastically murderous thoroughfares in the city.’  Through neighboring streets like Sullivan were considered respectable, the Minettas, with their speakeasies, knifings and brothels, had a dreadful reputation….”

Tom Miller of the great website, DaytonianinManhattan.blogspot.com, devoted his May 30, 2010 column to “Little Africa” – Minetta Lane and Minetta Street:

“Unknown to most, in the 17th Century the Dutch living in New Amsterdam at the tip of Manhattan island collected an annual fee from ‘partially freed’ black slaves who were allowed to own property far north of the walled village.  The land that these early Afro-Americans farmed was around a brook the Algonquins called Mannette -- variously translated as ‘Spirit Water’ or ‘Demon Water.’

“The Dutch interpretation was Mintje Kill, or ‘little stream,’ which eventually became ‘Minetta.’  The trout-filled brook flowed, roughly, from where 6th Avenue and 21st Street is today to the Hudson River.  The black farmers used the stream bank as a pathway, which became known in the 18th Century as ‘the Negroe's causeway.’   After the brook was covered over in the 1820s, the well-trodden path became Minetta Lane from MacDougal Street, turning into Minetta Street and curving towards Bleecker -- following the old stream's course.

“Here the first enclave of blacks in New York established themselves.  In 1827 slavery was abolished in New York and most of the city's large black population was centered in this area.  By the 1840s little curvy Minetta Street was lined with the humble houses of the poor while only three blocks away on Bleecker Street was the fashionable Depau Row. In these expensive, marble-halled homes wealthy citizens like the retail magnate A. T. Stewart lived.

“Many of the original residents of Minetta Street moved northward in the 1860s.  Emancipated slaves who fled the South, however, increased the numbers in what became known as ‘Little Africa.’   In the center of what is now 6th Avenue sat St. Benedict the Moor, the first black Catholic church in the city.

“As the century progressed, Minetta Street grew seedier and more dangerous.  In 1890 reformer Jacob Riis ranked Little Africa as the social ‘bottom’ of the West Side of Manhattan.  He described the homes where the impoverished blacks lived as ‘vile rookeries.’  Around the same time author Stephen Crane visited Little Africa, probably doing research for his ‘The Monster.’

“He spoke of residents by their nicknames: No-Toe Charley, Bloodthirsty (a large and ‘hideous’ murderer), Black-Cat (a bandit), and Apple Mag.  Dingy taverns called ‘black and tan’ saloons because they served both races dotted the area.  Minetta Street was notorious for its stabbings, murders and muggings until the new police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, took matters into his own hands.  Roosevelt replaced the captain of the local precinct and a crack-down was initiated.  In 1896 Crane revisited the area and remarked, ‘There is probably no street in New York where the police keep closer watch than they do in Minetta Lane.’

“Mixed in with the criminal element were the upstanding, industrious black citizens who simply had nowhere else to go.  As the century closed, there were 1200 blacks in the Minetta area and the number of black churches had grown.  Census records show in 1900 that living in this dangerous environment were families like that of Morgan J. Austin, a black waiter, with his Irish wife Annie and their eight children.  Their fifteen-year-old son was working in a laundry to help out.

“By 1910 the Austins had Annie's mother living with them, two more children were working, and they had taken in a lodger.  Minetta Street was no longer exclusively black.  Poor Italians and Irish searching for cheap housing mixed in.  The churches of Our Lady of Pompeii and Saint Anthony of Padua were built as the area around Little Africa became increasingly Italian.

“A few years later Vincent Pepe bought up almost all of the houses and tenements on both sides of Minetta Street.  On the west side he combined 15 buildings and created a common garden to the rear with an outside entrance.  Calling his development ‘The Minettas,’ he wrote ‘The artist, the writer, the creator of beauty in any medium - these are the men for whom the Minettas should be preserved.’'

“In the 1920s artists began looking towards the Village as a new Bohemia - like the West Bank of Paris.  Curving Minetta Street with its lowly buildings was undeniably picturesque.  The New York Times, in 1923 remarked that Minetta Street was ‘As free from noise and as peaceful as through miles away.’

“Artists began moving into the little houses where only recently several indigent families were crammed in.  In 1924 Pepe duplicated his earlier effort on the east side of the street with another garden-backed group of buildings.  The Minetta Tavern opened a block away in 1937 attracting regulars like Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Eugene O'Neill, E. E. Cummings, and Dylan Thomas.  The neighborhood was changing.

“No one would remember Little Africa by the 1960s.  No one would remember that Minetta Brook still runs under the pavement somewhere.  In 1960 The Fat Black Pussycat opened in what had been The Commons, a cafe on Minetta Street.  Here entertainment hopefuls took the stage hoping to be noticed.  Mama Cass Elliot started here.  So did Tiny Tim. And so did Richie Havens and Shel Silverstein.”