The Last Wooden Structure on the Upper West Side 

By Kaylee DeFreitas 

In a time when the Upper West Side was made of dirt roads and Broadway was known as “the Boulevard,” a three-story wooden building emerged on the corner of 100th Street. 

Henry Grimm was a trailblazer on the UWS frontier in 1871 when he built the woodframe building, one of the tallest in the area at the time. In the years prior, New York City had been devastated by a number of large fires — most notably in 1776, 1835, and 1845 — leading to several laws which prohibited the construction of wooden buildings in the hopes of preventing future disasters. These bans started in 1816, but it wasn’t until 1882 that they expanded to everywhere below 155th street, including the Upper West Side. As this prohibition was not in place for 100th street in 1871, Grimm was able to build his wooden structure without issue, and even when the new laws encompassed the property, it was allowed to stay.

The building was designed in the popular Italianate style of the time, which draws from Italian medieval structures, with low-pitched roofing and ornamentation (both of which can still be seen today, albeit in a state of slight disrepair). The building first served as a grocery store (operated by Grimm) with rental units upstairs. Despite being one of the early entrepreneurs who had a hand in developing the booming UWS, Grimm quickly faced hardship and failure. According to an article by Tom Miller of Landmark West!, “…he [Grimm] lost his business and home to foreclosure just five years later.” 

As the years passed, the UWS began to build itself up around the Grimm Building. Bavarian brewer Peter Doelger took over the building in 1894, opening a saloon and restaurant on the first floor, while the upstairs remained residential units. Though the name may not mean much now, Doelger was a prolific figure during his time, known for bringing German lager to the people of New York, and he owned many saloons that were widespread across the boroughs as a way to promote and sell his brew. A remaining relic of his reach is on 96 Berry St in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a small glass sign over the door stating “Peter Doelger’s Extra Beer.” When Doelger died, he left an estate worth over seven million dollars, which translates to over 220 million dollars today after accounting for inflation. For an immigrant who came to the states with nothing, this estate was an amazing feat, all due to his brewing empire. 

Prohibition ended the building’s saloon days, and made way for significant renovations upstairs. According to Tom Miller, the upstairs windows were expanded from single panes to the “expansive show windows” that can be seen on the second floor today. In the early 30s, the third floor was covered by billboards, which were moved to the roof space by the early 40s. 

For a few years in the early to mid 1950s, the upstairs was an occupied studio and performance space for the experimental off-broadway group, The Living Theatre. Started in 1947 by Julian Beck and Judith Malina, it was formed to be “an imaginative alternative to commercial theatre,” according to the group’s website. The group was an early contributor to the off-Broadway movement and is considered the oldest experimental theatre group in the United States. Some of the famous faces that played a part within The Living Theatre included Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, and Tennesse Williams. While only serving as The Living Theatre’s home for a little less than two years, the upstairs, sixty-seat, performance space saw quite a few productions mounted. At the end of 1955, the Department of Housing and Buildings announced the final curtain on The Living Theatre, stating that for safety, the space could only seat eighteen instead of the original sixty. The troupe then sought refuge downtown. 

By the 1980s, the wooden marvel on 100th street was beginning to show its age. The wood was rotting away and many of the upstairs windows were shattered and taped over. Despite the depressing exterior, history was still being made beneath the slats. On the first floor, a Cuban-Chinese fusion restaurant called La Tacita de Oro operated. And in the rundown upstairs apartment lived John Berry and his father. Berry was a founding member of punk band The Young Aborigines along with another, perhaps more recognizable band, The Beastie Boys. It was in this upstairs space that previously saw avant-garde performances, where The Beastie Boys performed their first ‘concerts’ and recorded their very first demos. Band member Michael Diamond described the building in The Beastie Boys Book, stating “…it was an old, squat, three-story wooden structure in the middle of a concrete jungle, like someone had forgotten to tear the place down when they were building the rest of the modern city.” 

The Beastie Boys moved on to bigger stages, but their memories from Berry’s ramshackle apartment stuck with them. In their Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame induction speech in 2012, the group said, “To John Berry’s loft on 100th Street and Broadway where John’s dad would come busting in during our first practices screaming ‘would you turn that f*ing shit off already’.” 

In the early 90s, the building had fallen deeper into disrepair and was in desperate need of salvation. Since 1986, Landmark West! had allegedly been attempting to have the building landmarked by the city, to no avail. In 1993, Hilos Fotios and Fanis Tsiamtsiouris leased the building with plans to turn the first floor into a restaurant called Metro Diner. As they went into this business venture, they realized that the building itself needed extensive renovations to ensure it was safe for operation. These renovations included adding reinforcements to the structure, patching the roof, as well as replacing the wood paneling; a decision that was upsetting to some locals and preservationists. These changes were necessary though, according to Mr. Tsiantsiouris, as he said to The New York Times in 1993, “If we hadn’t done something, in a few years this building would have been someplace in the middle of Broadway.” 

Today the building is still occupied by Metro Diner, with Salon Above operating out of the upstairs unit that used to blast the early musings of The Beastie Boys and host off-Broadway performances. As the world around the Grimm building changes, it continues to serve as a reminder to passersby to look up and take in the understated beauty and history of the city around them. While it is constantly changing and old buildings come down and new ones go up, some things remain. A wooden shadow to the towering glass skyscrapers encroaching, one must wonder if in another 153 years the Grimm building will still be the one that remains while the others fall to time.

Don’t miss Kaylee DeFreitas’s fascinating tale of the “ghost station of 91st Street” — HERE.

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