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With gratitude to and respect for all those who are interested in the history of New York City, we have digitized all the new building (NB) applications filed in Manhattan for each year, from 1900 to 1986, and turned it into a database searchable by a number of variables, like address, architect, owner and type of building.
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- If you just want to determine the date and architect of your building, and you live, for instance, on West 86th Street in a building you think was built around 1930, search for "86th" in the address field and work backwards from 1933 or so. Bear in mind that the present 130 West 86th may have been files as 124-132 West 86th, or even simply 128 West 86th.
- Some permits are not rendered in address form, but in "metes and bounds"--that is, "86th, 175'e of Amsterdam" indicates the building lot beginning 175' east of the corner of West 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. To interpret this, go to a library with a collection of landmaps of New York City (which give such measurements)--there are none on-line. It may be crude, but it's not that much trouble to eyeball, or even measure, the distances yourself.
- A limited alternative is www.nycpropertyresearch.com which gives the exact measurements of the building's plot, and some other details which can help in determining metes and bounds descriptions.
ADVANCED SEARCH TIPS: Use additional search parameters to--
- Find all the building applications filed by a particular owner or architect (including projects which were not built)
- Or find all the applications where the owner gave a particular address (which can help when one owner operates under multiple names),
- Or find all the buildings of a particular type built in a particular period.
- Another route to finding the NB application for a particular building is to go to the new web page of the New York City Department of Buildings which lists in many cases, the particular NB number for a specific address. Go to the Department's web site, key in the address, and then look under "Actions"; in most cases you will find an NB associated with your building (for instance, NB "336-11" is the 336th new building application filed in 1911). NB's were first issued in 1866; if yours is 1900 or later you should be able to get the details of that application here, simply by searching for the relevant year and application number. (Congratulations to Commissioner Patricia Lancaster and her tech staff for this astonishing upgrade to the Department's website.)
- The search engine recognizes word roots, wildcards (*) and leading and following blank spaces. Thus "farge" will return "LaFarge" and La Farge," but "_Farge" will return only "La Farge." A search for "LaF*arge" will return "LaFarge," "LaForge, etc.
CAVEATS:
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