226 East 13th Street | Block : 468 | Lot #23

Description & Building Alterations

These three identical old law tenement buildings were designed in 1901, just before the change in tenement law, by Schneider & Herter. Each housed 28 families. The Renaissance Revival style buildings have double-wide arched windows on the first floor, flanking the raised-stoop entrance. 226 East 13th Street is missing its original projecting door surround, which would have looked like the one at 228 East 13th Street. Beaded moldings surround the front doors of all three buildings. The center two bays on the second, third, and fourth floors are each topped with a lintel with floral swags and a triangular pediment centered between the two bays. The sixth floor windows are flanked by pilasters, two of which visually support the projections of the cornice.

226 East 13th Street was featured in the Martin Scorsese film, “Taxi Driver,” in 1975. For more about the building’s movie career, please click on the link for our blog, Off The Grid. Just over ten years after it played the role of a decrepit building, in 1988 the building’s front stoop collapsed, bringing the door surround down on three young girls, killing two of them and severely injuring the third.