158 First Avenue | Block : 437 | Lot #6

Description & Building Alterations

Originally built in 1898, this six-story brick dumbbell tenement building on 158 First Avenue was built in the same project as 156 and 160 First Avenue. It served and continues to serve as space for a store and apartments. This building’s ground floor was home to the bar Downtown Beirut from the mid-1980s to the early-1990s, considered by many the quintessential East Village punk dive bar.

The three buildings share identical facade. No. 158 features bracketed cornice with decorative frieze, round-arched window openings with brick lintels and key stones at third and sixth stories, slightly projecting brick piers through fifth and sixth stories, ornamented panels, elaborate bracketed window lintels with molding or triangular pediments at second and fourth stories, beltcourses. There is metal pilasters with attached columns flanking the main entry, capped by a molded entablature.