532 East 6th Street | Block : 401 | Lot #26

Description & Building Alterations

Housing eight families, or two per floor over ground-floor shops, this pre-law tenement was built in 1862-1863 by William B. Astor as a speculative development.  This building and its neighbors to the east were identical buildings and were built in conjunction with Nos. 528 and 530 to the west, even though they varied in design from those two buildings.

Now missing its arched window lintels and part of its cornice, 532 East 6th Street has also been painted and the ground-floor shops were converted into apartments in 1958.

This building was the home of Carlos “Chino” Garcia, a prominent community leader in the East Village/Loisaida neighborhood for sixty years. Mr. Garcia’s work has included co-founding the CHARAS/EL Bohio Cultural and Community Center at the former Public School 64 at 605 East 9th Street that provided counseling, recovery support, job training, and a wide array of cultural activities and support to the public from 1977 until they were evicted from the building in 2001 after it was sold off to a developer by Mayor Giuliani. Garcia and fellow Charas leaders continued to fight for the building to be preserved and returned to community use. In 2015, Garcia provided Village Preservation with a wide ranging oral history discussing his life and community activism. In 2026, Mr. Garcia was honored as a Village Awardee by Village Preservation for his profound impact on the East Village, in particular the youth of the neighborhood.