The property at 50 W. 13th St. offers one of the few surviving links to the Manhattan neighborhood’s past, when the Village served as a hub for Black residents and a home to one of its leading Black citizens Jacob Day, who devoted much of his life to fighting discriminatory laws that blocked African-Americans from voting.
Rescuing an Off Off Broadway Theater With a Storied Past
Preservationists hope to save the 13th Street Repertory Company building, with a little help from the Underground Railroad.
New research shows that the 1840s rowhouse at 50 West 13th Street was owned by Jacob Day, an abolitionist businessman, who was one of the wealthiest Black residents of 19th-century New York City.Credit.Katherine Marks for The New York Times
March 12, 2021
When Edith O’Hara, the mother hen and indefatigable leader of the eclectic 13th Street Repertory Company for nearly half a century, died last fall at age 103, the future became decidedly shaky for one of Off Off Broadway’s longest-operating stages.