71 First Avenue Building Date : 1882 Original Use : Residential/Commercial Original Owner : George Roll Original Architect : Julius Boekell Description & Building Alterations This five-story old law tenement was erected in 1882, designed by architect Julius Boekell, along with the buildings at Nos. 67, 69 First Avenue and 129 East 4th Street.
The building features a bracketed cornice in Queen Anne-style. The window lintels and sills appear to have been stripped.
The site was formerly occupied by a three-story flat-roofed building known as Nos. 67-71 First Avenue, home to Roland G. Mitchell & Co.’s paraffine candle manufacturing company. The building burned down in 1882, and “the disaster [was] little regretted, as the manufactory has been a nuisance to the noses of the inhabitants of the Seventeenth Ward for a decade” (see New York Times article at sidebar).