Spingler Building

The Spingler Building (also Springler Building or 5 Union Square West) is an eight-story Romanesque building at 5–9 Union Square West, between 14th and 15th Streets, in the Union Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Built in 1897 by William H. Hume & Son, it replaced a five-story building of the same name, which burned down in 1892. The Spingler Building occupies an L-shaped lot wrapping around 15 Union Square West to the north, and is also adjacent to the Lincoln Building to the south.

History

Site and previous structures

The site of the Spingler Building was originally part of a 45-acre land grant issued during the Dutch colonial period by Director Willem Kieft to Simon Congo, a free Black man. This tract was one of three ground-briefs that eventually formed the 86-acre Brevoort Farm; the Congo grant was the northernmost of the three, with the southern tracts granted to Bastiaen Elyssen and Egbert Wooterse.

Historical records indicate that Simon Congo conveyed his 45-acre parcel to Teunis de Key and Reynier Quackenbush prior to 1701. The property subsequently passed to an individual identified in early maps only as "Uncle", hypothesized by historian I. N. Phelps Stokes to be land speculator Garret Onckelbagg, before being purchased by Hendrick Brevoort (1670-1718), who was known as "Henry Brevoort of the Bowery."

On January 29, 1762, the land was divided when Elias Brevoort sold the southern half (approximately 22 acres) to John Smith, a wealthy leather dresser, while the northern half became the Burling Farm. Smith held the property until his death, after which his executors, including Mayor James Duane, sold the land on February 29, 1788, to Christian Henrich Spengler (later known as Henry Spingler), a German shopkeeper. Spingler purchased the farm for £950 (approximately $4,750), and the land subsequently became known as the Spingler Farm.

Union Square was first laid out in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, expanded in 1832, and then made into a public park in 1839.