215 Second Avenue | Block : 469 | Lot #36

Description & Building Alterations

This building was built for E. H. Lainey in 1858, and purchased by Andrew Mills in 1859. The Italianate row house was functioning as a tenement building by 1911, with one family per floor and shops on the ground floor by 1928. In 1938 an addition to the first two floors on the front of the building was installed, thus removing the raised-stoop entrance. Although the original arched lintels are still intact on the upper three floors, they have been stuccoed and painted, likely negating some of the detailing. The pressed-metal cornice was removed, possibly at the same time as the addition to the front of the building as it is not present in the 1980s tax photo. The addition has also been heavily altered since it was installed.

Socialist activist Rose Pastor Stokes lived in the building at 215 Second Avenue after marrying her second husband Jerome Isaac Romaine in 1929. Over the course of her life, Stokes frequently lectured on socialism and participated in labor strikes by hotel, restaurant, and garment workers. Stokes also worked with Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman to make birth control available to low-income women, and opposed U.S. involvement in World War I, for which she was convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1918. In 1921, however, the government dropped her case on appeal.