This tiny garage built over a century ago holds out between two East Side towers
Take a walk down East 38th Street, and you’ll see several buildings along this residential stretch of Murray Hill that look like former horse stables.
The most stunning might be the fanciful Dutch Revival-style carriage house at Number 149, owned in the early 1900s by a financier named George S. Bowdoin.
Keep heading toward the East River, and the carriage houses start to look less like whimsical one-offs and instead resemble functional commercial stables that housed many horses for various owners.
But there’s one unusual stunner at 305 East 38th Street, east of Second Avenue. Crammed between two tall residential towers is this one-story holdout (above) with a delightful blond brick facade and two arched entryways that appear to be horse doorways.
Despite its horse stable appearance, however, this little charmer (below, in 1940) was built for an automobile, not an equine.
Considering that this holdout got its start in the 1910s, that makes sense; cars had already outnumbered horses and carriages by this time. According to the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide from April 1917, plans were completed for a “one-story brick garage, 25 x 100, at 305 East 38th Street.”
The cost of the garage: $5,000.
Who was the garage for? A fellow named Henry Hof, of 567 Third Avenue. Hof appears to have been a real estate man; his name shows up in early 20th century newspaper archives covering the leasing of new commercial buildings in prime areas.
How long Hof parked here isn’t known. But like so many of the horse stables on East 38th Street, this little garage was renovated into a residence at some point in the 20th century.
As the other buildings on this former low-rise block were topped and tall towers went up in their place, the garage became a holdout—a remnant of the New York of more than a century ago, with old-school ornamental brickwork and a curlycue ribbon of brick around the facade.
One contemporary touch to note: the ornamental iron window grills!
[Third image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services]
