516 East 12th Street | Block : 405 | Lot #16

Building Date : 1894
Original Use : Residential

Original Owner : Wiedeman & Rosenbaum (likely)
Original Architect : Max Muller (likely)

Description & Building Alterations

This five-story Queen Anne style old law tenement has an eclectic assortment of ornamentation. Segmental arches on the fifth floor have keystones with carved faces while former Neo-Grec style window lintels on the second and third floors have unfortunately been cemented over. The building has a brick dogtooth pattern in a stringcourse below the fifth floor and another decorative brick stringcourse below the third floor windows. The cornice is missing and the underlying brickwork has been covered by a cementitious coating. Aside from the replacement windows and front door, the ground floor ornamentation is more or less intact in what may have been its original configuration.

By comparing the original details from this building and its neighbor at no. 514, one could imagine what both may have looked like when they were built in 1894.

Block : 405 / Lot : 016 / Building Date : 1894/ Original Owner : Wiedeman & Rosenbaum (likely) / Original Use : Residential / Original Architect : Max Muller (likely)

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What is the Building Blocks Project

What does a building mean to someone who lives there? A person who lives on the block? In the neighborhood? In the city? This site presents a wealth of historic information gained from GVSHP’s architectural research survey about the buildings located in the East Village.

The site explores the area generally considered today as the East Village: from a northern border of 14th Street to a southern border of Houston Street, Avenue D in the east to 4th Avenue/the Bowery to the west. You can explore the information about the blocks and buildings featured here in two ways.

Pick a block. Maybe it’s yours, or perhaps it is just your favorite place to shop, grab a bite, or just people watch. Then explore the buildings that make up that block. Or take one of the many guided tours on the site, curated by a collection of organizations and experts from the neighborhood. See how they experience the neighborhood. Then tell us what the neighborhood means to you. The site’s comments section allows you to open a dialogue with others who feel just as passionately as you do about the East Village.