508 East 5th Street | Block : 400 | Lot #10

Description & Building Alterations

This row of nine identical buildings (506-524 East 5th Street) was built for owner William B. Astor as investment properties in 1859-60.  They each housed eight families above a ground-floor store.  These Italianate tenements had arched brownstone lintels and simple projecting sills and would have had raised stoop entrances. No. 508 has been stuccoed over, partially obscuring the original lintels and sills and several windows have lost their ornament entirely.  The small windows in the center of the facade were installed in the early 1930s.  The cornice has also been lost and the ground-floor shops have been replaced with apartments.

The Silence = Death collective, a political collective of gay artists, finalized its now-iconic “Silence = Death” poster while meeting in the apartment of musician Jorge Socarrás here in December 1986. The poster was designed in response to the AIDS epidemic, and was subsequently used by ACT UP in its demonstrations and outreach.