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57 Great Jones Street
57 Great Jones Street is a building in the NoHo historic district of Manhattan, New York City. It first gained attention as the clubhouse of the Five Points Gang, a criminal organization that was said to be the "largest and best organized gang in New York," and it was the site of a bystander's murder during a gun fight in 1905. In the 1980s, when the building was owned by pop artist Andy Warhol, it served as the home and studio of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and was the site of his fatal overdose in 1988. In 2023, actress Angelina Jolie rented it for use as a space for artistic collaboration.
The building is a two-story brick structure on an "L"-shaped lot measuring about 25 feet wide and 75 feet deep. It possesses a facade that predominantly features arched windows in a Romanesque Revival style. Although residential tenants have sometimes lived there, most occupants have been businesses. Often used as a saloon in early years, it has also been occupied by small manufacturers, retail outlets, auction houses, restaurants, and galleries.
57 Great Jones Street is located in an area once dominated by the Canarsee, a Munsee-speaking band of Lenape Native Americans. It lies at the northern edge of an archaeological site dating from before 1651 known as Werpoes, or "watch hill". After a short-lived conflict between the Lenape and residents of colonial New Amsterdam, Director-General Stuyvesant created a buffer zone on the city's northern border. He granted small parcels of land to formerly-enslaved families on condition that they erect defensible fencing at a vulnerable point along the main road headed north out of the city. In 1659 or 1660 a formerly-enslaved man named Salomon Pieters received one of these plots, located in a place that would later become the intersection of Great Jones Street and the Bowery. A map published in 1928 shows the location as No. 4, directly above the grant to Luycas Pieters (No. 3).
In the decades following the American Revolution, the growth of Manhattan's population and the island's increasing prosperity brought rapid development north of the original city boundary, particularly along the Bowery. Starting with a few taverns to serve passing travelers, that street became an increasingly frequent destination for New Yorkers who patronized its "clothing stores, hotels, theaters, pawnshops, restaurants, bars, dance halls, and brothels", according to one historian.
The site of 57 Great Jones Street remained agricultural until the northward expansion of the city reached it at the end of the 18th century. In 1805 Samuel Jones, a prominent lawyer and politician, ceded the land on which, in 1806, Great Jones and adjacent Bond Street were constructed. Extending for two blocks from Broadway in the west to the Bowery in the east, it received the name Great Jones to distinguish it from another Manhattan Jones Street that was named after Samuel Jones's brother-in-law, Gardner Jones.
In the first decades of the 19th century, real estate speculators bought up the vacant lots that had been laid out on the grid established by the state-appointed Commissioners' Plan of 1811 and there followed a building boom that was characterized by one historian as a mania of construction. During this boom, fine townhouses were erected on the Broadway end of Great Jones Street, including one, at the corner, described by its owner, former mayor Philip Hone, as "a most delightful and comfortable residence". In 1845, a physician named Benjamin Bailey bought up land on the southwest corner of the other end of the street and built a house on the part of it that faced the Bowery. In advertising the land Bailey bought, a real estate agent gave the plot's dimensions: it was 26 feet, four inches wide on the Bowery side, 100 feet long on the Great Jones Street side, 25 feet wide at the back, and 107 feet 10 inches long on its south side. In 1847 Bailey added to this holding by buying a square piece of land measuring about 25 by 25 feet at the southwest corner of the parcel. A property map published in 1852 shows the configuration of the lot on which Bailey built the house and the two pieces of land that lay behind it. Designated as Lot 132 in Block 530 and together measuring about 25 feet wide and 50 feet deep, these two pieces of land, one lying behind 346 Bowery and the other lying behind 344 Bowery, became 57 Great Jones Street.
A real estate transaction of 1888 showed that a plot of land located at the back of 57 Great Jones Street and the back of 342 Bowery had by then been added to Lot 132. Measuring about 25 by 25 feet, this addition to the lot appears in a fire insurance map of 1891. The map mislabels the address of the lot as 53 rather than 57 Great Jones Street, and it treats 57 Great Jones Street and 456 Bowery as if they were the same building. It shows Lot 132 to have three brick buildings, the one facing Great Jones Street and two behind it. Fire insurance maps made in 1893 and 1897 give the same information except that in 1893, there is only one building behind the building that faced 57 Great Jones Street (a wood-frame structure) and in 1897, there is a brick building in that location and a frame building behind it. A fire insurance map of 1911 is similar to the 1893 and 1897 maps. It treats 57 Great Jones Street and 346 Bowery as if they were the same building, but it does give the correct house number to 57 Great Jones Street.
There is very little information about the design or construction of the buildings on Lot 132 during the 19th century. The New York City Property Information Portal (consulted in 2025) gave 1900 as the year the current building was erected. A photograph taken in 1905 shows the façade of this building and its neighbor, number 59, to the east. It depicts 57 Great Jones Street as a two-story building having a brick façade featuring three second-story windows in a distinctive Romanesque Revival style. The central 22-light window was contained in a round arch having a stone keystone and impost blocks and a brick lintel. The two smaller symmetrically placed flanking windows had a similar design. The cornice was also in Romanesque Revival style. The first floor had a doorway on the right side having a transom surmounted by a portico. Located one step up from street level, the doorway was accompanied by rectangular sash windows centered below the upper windows and matching them in width and height.
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57 Great Jones Street
57 Great Jones Street is a building in the NoHo historic district of Manhattan, New York City. It first gained attention as the clubhouse of the Five Points Gang, a criminal organization that was said to be the "largest and best organized gang in New York," and it was the site of a bystander's murder during a gun fight in 1905. In the 1980s, when the building was owned by pop artist Andy Warhol, it served as the home and studio of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and was the site of his fatal overdose in 1988. In 2023, actress Angelina Jolie rented it for use as a space for artistic collaboration.
The building is a two-story brick structure on an "L"-shaped lot measuring about 25 feet wide and 75 feet deep. It possesses a facade that predominantly features arched windows in a Romanesque Revival style. Although residential tenants have sometimes lived there, most occupants have been businesses. Often used as a saloon in early years, it has also been occupied by small manufacturers, retail outlets, auction houses, restaurants, and galleries.
57 Great Jones Street is located in an area once dominated by the Canarsee, a Munsee-speaking band of Lenape Native Americans. It lies at the northern edge of an archaeological site dating from before 1651 known as Werpoes, or "watch hill". After a short-lived conflict between the Lenape and residents of colonial New Amsterdam, Director-General Stuyvesant created a buffer zone on the city's northern border. He granted small parcels of land to formerly-enslaved families on condition that they erect defensible fencing at a vulnerable point along the main road headed north out of the city. In 1659 or 1660 a formerly-enslaved man named Salomon Pieters received one of these plots, located in a place that would later become the intersection of Great Jones Street and the Bowery. A map published in 1928 shows the location as No. 4, directly above the grant to Luycas Pieters (No. 3).
In the decades following the American Revolution, the growth of Manhattan's population and the island's increasing prosperity brought rapid development north of the original city boundary, particularly along the Bowery. Starting with a few taverns to serve passing travelers, that street became an increasingly frequent destination for New Yorkers who patronized its "clothing stores, hotels, theaters, pawnshops, restaurants, bars, dance halls, and brothels", according to one historian.
The site of 57 Great Jones Street remained agricultural until the northward expansion of the city reached it at the end of the 18th century. In 1805 Samuel Jones, a prominent lawyer and politician, ceded the land on which, in 1806, Great Jones and adjacent Bond Street were constructed. Extending for two blocks from Broadway in the west to the Bowery in the east, it received the name Great Jones to distinguish it from another Manhattan Jones Street that was named after Samuel Jones's brother-in-law, Gardner Jones.
In the first decades of the 19th century, real estate speculators bought up the vacant lots that had been laid out on the grid established by the state-appointed Commissioners' Plan of 1811 and there followed a building boom that was characterized by one historian as a mania of construction. During this boom, fine townhouses were erected on the Broadway end of Great Jones Street, including one, at the corner, described by its owner, former mayor Philip Hone, as "a most delightful and comfortable residence". In 1845, a physician named Benjamin Bailey bought up land on the southwest corner of the other end of the street and built a house on the part of it that faced the Bowery. In advertising the land Bailey bought, a real estate agent gave the plot's dimensions: it was 26 feet, four inches wide on the Bowery side, 100 feet long on the Great Jones Street side, 25 feet wide at the back, and 107 feet 10 inches long on its south side. In 1847 Bailey added to this holding by buying a square piece of land measuring about 25 by 25 feet at the southwest corner of the parcel. A property map published in 1852 shows the configuration of the lot on which Bailey built the house and the two pieces of land that lay behind it. Designated as Lot 132 in Block 530 and together measuring about 25 feet wide and 50 feet deep, these two pieces of land, one lying behind 346 Bowery and the other lying behind 344 Bowery, became 57 Great Jones Street.
A real estate transaction of 1888 showed that a plot of land located at the back of 57 Great Jones Street and the back of 342 Bowery had by then been added to Lot 132. Measuring about 25 by 25 feet, this addition to the lot appears in a fire insurance map of 1891. The map mislabels the address of the lot as 53 rather than 57 Great Jones Street, and it treats 57 Great Jones Street and 456 Bowery as if they were the same building. It shows Lot 132 to have three brick buildings, the one facing Great Jones Street and two behind it. Fire insurance maps made in 1893 and 1897 give the same information except that in 1893, there is only one building behind the building that faced 57 Great Jones Street (a wood-frame structure) and in 1897, there is a brick building in that location and a frame building behind it. A fire insurance map of 1911 is similar to the 1893 and 1897 maps. It treats 57 Great Jones Street and 346 Bowery as if they were the same building, but it does give the correct house number to 57 Great Jones Street.
There is very little information about the design or construction of the buildings on Lot 132 during the 19th century. The New York City Property Information Portal (consulted in 2025) gave 1900 as the year the current building was erected. A photograph taken in 1905 shows the façade of this building and its neighbor, number 59, to the east. It depicts 57 Great Jones Street as a two-story building having a brick façade featuring three second-story windows in a distinctive Romanesque Revival style. The central 22-light window was contained in a round arch having a stone keystone and impost blocks and a brick lintel. The two smaller symmetrically placed flanking windows had a similar design. The cornice was also in Romanesque Revival style. The first floor had a doorway on the right side having a transom surmounted by a portico. Located one step up from street level, the doorway was accompanied by rectangular sash windows centered below the upper windows and matching them in width and height.