Patchin Place Landmarks and the Con Ed Fire on West 10th Street

If the dessert and pastry shop Ciao for Now is lucky enough to live up to its name, it will be back at its location at 107 W 10th Street. Along with village landmark Adam West (the barbershop, not the Batman actor from the 70s) and the apartments above, the shop caught fire due to a an electrical short in a manhole. The website of the Fire Department's Squad 18, which fought the fire reports:

With the winter season upon us the falling snow, salt and accumulating water cause numerous manhole fires. This is due to the corrosion of the insulation on the high voltage wires and transformers under the street.

Squad 18 was turned out at 2113 hours for smoke from a manhole, at the corner of West 10th and 6th Ave. Upon arrival a heavy smoke condition was emanating from the transformer vault. Additionally smoke was showing from one of the buildings. Fire was first discovered in the basement of 108 West 10th. Fire was also discovered in 102, 104, 106 and 110 West 10th street in basements first and second floors. A second alarm was transmitted around 2200 hours.

These buildings are a part of an extremely unusual, interesting and historic triangular shaped corner of the West Village as they are bounded on one side by Patchin Place and Mulligan Place on the other.

Mulligan Place is an alley that is identified only by cast iron script on top of its narrow gate on Sixth Avenue north of Tenth Street. The four buildings in this cul-de-sac were built in 1852 as second-class boarding houses for waiters (primarily Basque) working at the nearby Brevoort House hotel. These vintage homes were built on the property of Samuel Milligan, the original owner. Milligan's daughter Isobel married his surveyor, Aaron Patchin, who is remembered by Patchin Place.

Patchin Place, on West 10th Street (formerly Amos Street) just west of Sixth Avenue, is more conventionally laid out that its partner Milligan Place in that it's a straight cul de sac without Milligan's odd angles. No one except Patchin Place residents get to see it because of the locked iron gate, but Patchin Place affords one of Greenwich Village's most picturesque views of the old Jefferson Market court, formerly adjacent to a women's prison and today a library. Famous residents of Patchin Place have included poet E.E. Cummings and authors John Reed and Theodore Dreiser. Patchin Place also contains NYC's last functioning gaslamp (below). The lamp dates back to the gaslight era and has since been electrified.

Patchin Place was also home to e.e.cummings, and is where storyteller Diane Wolkstein lives. Today, signs were up in all the stores from the city calling for evacuation due to fire damaging the structural integrity of the buildings. Will these historic building survive? These buildings are a New York treasure, and must be saved.

Comments

[Buddhist shop]

i remember my memories with this place. I miss it.