Building at 240 Broadway

The brick building at 240 Broadway in the Williamsburg neighborhood was added to the National Register in 2021. The five-story brick building with a cast iron front was built as a new factory and store in 1891 for Louis Zechiel's fur business, which closed in 1898. Three stores occupied the ground floor by 1904, with a sweater manufacturer and tailor on the second and third floors. The upper floors were converted into 24 apartments which are now condominiums. The ground floor commercial spaces hold a lighting fixtures business and a nail salon.

The building at 240 Broadway is one of four cast iron-fronted structures that are still standing on lower Broadway in Williamsburg. The others are the first Smith-Gray building (103 Broadway, built in 1870), the second Smith-Gray building (corner with Bedford, 1881), and the Sparrow Shoelace Factory (195 Broadway, 1882). Architect Theobald Engelhardt was a very busy man in the late nineteenth century. The building at 240 Broadway is one of hundreds he designed, many of which were in the heavily German-American neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Bushwick. The front facade of the building, which seems to be the only cast iron front Engelhardt building, curves slightly to follow the alignment change of the south side of Broadway.

Louis Zechiel was a native of Baden, Germany and apprenticed as a furrier. Zechiel emigrated to the U.S. in 1848 at age 22 and married Carolyn Voltz, another German native. Louis became a successful fur manufacturer after establishing his business in 1856. Zechiel's store was on Broadway near Union St. for many years, where he specialized in fancy furs and sleigh robes. Louis passed many of the responsibilities for business operations to one of his four sons, William, in 1880. William was the oldest of the five Zechiel children and was born in New York in 1851. After returning to Germany to study at his grandfather George Zechiel's school in Baden, William was educated at the Hoboken Academy in New Jersey. William started working as a helper in his father's fur business at age 15. Louis died in 1896. By 1897, a number of other businesses shared the upper floors of the building at 240 Broadway with the fur business: Thomas McGovern undertakers' supplies, C.W. Loomis & Sons neckware, pants manufacturer Troutman & Company, and two upholstery manufacturers. The ground floor commercial spaces held a barber shop and a shoemaker in 1897. William Zechiel closed the fur manufacturing business and shut down the showroom in 1898.

A one-story rear addition to 240 Broadway contained a shoe factory by 1918. Cigars were being manufactured in the building by The Plaza Cigar Company by 1922, with Ben Lichtenstein as factory supervisor. A cafeteria and liquor store operated out of the storefronts by 1939, below a bowling alley and unknown factory operations. The bowling alley was named Williamsburg Bowling Center by the early 1950s when it was sued after a teenager was injured by a malfunction of its coin-operated Mercury Athletic Scale, a strength-testing machine.

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Dennis, Ward. Engelhardt's Cast-Iron Building, Novelty Theater. Accessed March 8th 2022. https://noveltytheater.net/content/engelhardts-cast-iron-building.

New York Supreme Court. Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Bronx: Doris Satin v. Williamsburg Bowling Center, Inc., 1951-1953. NY, NY. New York Supreme Court, 1953.

Property Shark. 240 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11211, Property Shark. January 1st 2022. Accessed March 8th 2022. https://www.propertyshark.com/mason/Property/182174/240-Broadway-Brooklyn-NY-11211/.

Schlegel, Carl Wilhelm. Schlegel's German-American Families in the United Staes. Edition New York Deluxe. Volume I. New York, NY. American Historical Society, 1916.