Yonah Schimmel Building on the Market for $6M
The longtime tenement home of Yonah Schimmel Knishes is for sale.
Dubbed a “Prime location with heavy foot traffic,” the building at 137 East Houston has been on the market since last July. Its latest asking price is $6 million.
The broker-babble further notes that the buyer gets “tremendous upside in a premier location with low-supply and high-demand.”
The bigger question, or course, relates to Yonah Schimmel itself. We are assured by ownership that any potential sale would not affect their position in the property. Apparently the 111-year-old knish knoshery is on a long-term lease.
This corner building has seen it all. In fact, Yonah Schimmel was nearly knocked out fifty years ago, when a car plowed into the side and the facade collapsed.
As reported at the time, twenty-three-year-old Brooklynite Robert Sackett crashed his 1962 Cadillac directly into the body of 214 Forsyth Street. He had been driving eastbound along Houston at 8am, colliding with “two trees and a hydrant as [the car] hurtled east along Houston Street before smashing into the corner support of the old building.” This early-morning collision caused the entire tenement facade to collapse, killing the driver on impact and injuring some ten residents.
The New York Times noted that “the tenement, said to be more than 100 years old, with its front sheared away, looked like the stage set for some eerie play.
Look back: #FDNY firefighters at the scene of a building collapse at 214 Forsyth St., #Manhattan, on Aug. 1, 1970. pic.twitter.com/B4v5O9USUx
— FDNY (@FDNY) August 1, 2014
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