DITSON BUILDING

BROADWAY and East 18th are on the edge of yet another Landmarked District, the large Ladies’ Mile Historic District, which roughly runs between East 17th and 24th Streets, and midblock between 6th and 7th Avenues to midblock between Broadway and Park Avenue South; a sliver goes as south as 5th and West 15th.

With Rowland Hussey Macy leading the way in the mid-1850s with a flagship store at Sixth and 14th, and A.T. Stewart’s Cast Iron Palace further south at 9th Street, Sixth Avenue from 9th north to 23rd was lined with big, buxom Beaux-Arts buildings that catered to ladies who lunched and then shopped. In Ladies’ Mile heyday, over a dozen huge emporia lined the avenue…but were thrown into shadow by the Sixth Avenue El until 1939, when the el was razed. After that, the great stores could be seen in all their glory. But the glory would fade rapidly as the years went by; the buildings slowly decayed, and most were in sad shape indeed until, gradually and slowly at first, they began to be restored in the late 1980s. Today, Sixth Avenue is as busy and bustling a shopping street as it ever was.

Here’s the SW corner building at Broadway and East 18th, the Romanesque #867-869 Broadway, which went up in 1883 as the offices of music publisher Oliver Ditson; the building is known as the Ditson Building. In the late 1800s, Union Square was NYC’s entertainment district and home to a number of music publishing offices. Paragon Sporting Goods, founded in 1908, is the longtime ground floor tenant.

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7/24/25