The Village Gate, 158 Bleecker Street, on the ground floor and basement of the Atrium building, ca. 1975.

Designed by Ernest Flagg, Mills House No. 1 (today called the Atrium Building) was completed in 1897. The building was the brainchild of Darius Ogden Mills. His idea was to develop clean, "healthful" hotels which would allow struggling men to get a leg up. Between 1897 and 1904 he built three single-room-occupancy hotels as alternatives to slum housing. The Mills House No. 1 was the largest. While the rooms were tiny by any standards, only five by seven feet, each one looked out onto either the street or one of two 50 by 50-foot courtyards.

According to the New York Times, "each room had an iron bedstead, a hair mattress and pillow, a feather pillow, a chair and a clothes rack; there was no room for anything else. The walls stopped about a foot short of the ceilings, apparently to assure good ventilation." A stay here cost 20 cents a night.

In the 1970's the building was reconfigured into regular apartments, although the airy courtyards, glass skylights, and most of Flagg's exterior survive.

Between 1958 and 1996, the Village Gate, a nightclub, occupied the first floor and basement of the building at the corner of Thompson and Bleecker Streets.