Tall apartment towers, low-rise tenements, a multi-floor parking garage—East 87th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues has them all. It’s an ordinary block in a part-residential, part-commercial stretch of Manhattan.
But hiding on the north side of the street is something special: a two-story carriage house–like structure with elegant arched windows and slender doorways.
Under a coat of gray paint with black trim, 159 East 87th Street seems dwarfed by the modern cityscape. But this little holdout has a fascinating backstory—first as a Civil War-era firehouse, then as a short-lived studio of Pop Art creator Andy Warhol a century later.
The story of the firehouse begins in 1868, three years after New York’s first professional fire department made its debut in 1865. Before then, city firefighters were volunteers with a rough reputation; sometimes they were more interested in fighting each other than putting out the many blazes that plagued Gotham from the colonial era to the mid-1800s.
The same year the fire department formed, a volunteer company based on East 87th Street was reorganized as the Suburban Hook & Ladder Company No. 13. A “suburban” fire company operated more loosely than the full-time units, and the firefighters who belonged to these companies were paid less, states nyfd.com. (Below, the firehouse in 1929)
But the word also gives an idea of what East 87th Street was like in the 1860s: a sparsely populated section of the city dotted with walkup residences and riverfront estates of the wealthy. This was Yorkville, but not yet the Yorkville of tenements, factories, and German immigrants—who would transform the area at the turn of the century.
In 1868, the new firehouse at 159 East 87th Street was completed. The firemen (and their horse-pulled wagons) moved in. Over the next several decades, newspapers would contain numerous tragic stories of the blazes they were summoned to fight when local residents pulled call boxes on street corners.
On the afternoon of June 11, 1906, a terrible fire broke out inside a tenement at 209 East 97th Street. “The men of Engine Company No. 36 and Hook and Ladder Company No. 13 were at work on a ladder directly opposite blazing windows,” wrote the New York Times a day later. “Suddenly flames shot out to the ladder where the firemen were at work.”
Two firemen on the fourth floor, including Victor Cahill of Company No. 13, “were knocked from the ladder, and the crowd saw their bodies turn in the air and fall to the pavement below.” Both men were given last rites and were not expected to survive, per the Times. A woman and three kids also perished.
Company No. 13 remained in the firehouse until the early 1960s, when a roomier, more modern firehouse was built for them on East 85th Street. (Above photo, the firehouse in 1940)
In 1962, the firehouse was vacant—and an emerging artist who had been living with his mother nearby on Lexington Avenue decided to make it his studio. That artist was Andy Warhol, whose Campbell’s Soup Can paintings were now on exhibit. A 2016 article from Artnet News sums up the story:
“The fire house only cost $150 a month, but it was a wreck, with leaks in the roof and holes in the floors, but it was better than trying to make serious paintings in the wood-paneled living-room of his Victorian townhouse, as he’d done for the previous couple of years,” said Artnet News contributor Blake Gopnik in the 2016 article.
Warhol moved in on January 1, 1963, according to Artnet. Five months later, his lease was terminated—but his life as a celebrity artist and trendsetter was just beginning.
In 1965, the 95-year-old firehouse was bought by art dealer Daniel Wildenstein, who transformed it into a sculpture garden with dozens of works for sale by artists from Rodin to Canova.
A New York Times article noted that “not far from where the firemen used to slide down the brass pole hangs a painting by Vuillard that heated up one collector so much that he paid $200,000 for it.” (The fifth photo shows the Firehouse in its sculpture garden era.)
The firehouse remained in the Wildenstein family until 2016, when it was put on the market. (The sixth photo shows the firehouse in 2012, when it was still painted red.) The realtors handling the sale described the building as a “blank canvas” that could be used as a residence, commercial space, or community or medical facility, reported DNAinfo.
That same year, the 5,000-square-foot building sold for $9.9 million, according to The Real Deal. I can’t help but wonder what the firemen of Suburban Hook & Ladder Company No. 13 would think of the astounding price of their firehouse—a modest and functional space built that enabled them to respond to neighborhood fires and save lives.
[Third image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services; fourth image: NYPL Digital Collections; fifth image: Wikipedia; sixth image: New York Times]
Ephemeral New York 