I worked for Tiffany & Co. on a temp job from the summer of 2013 to the winter of 2014 and it was a pleasant assignment, mostly copy editing and proofreading in the multiple languages the catalogs were produced in, located in its business offices at #200 5th Avenue at West 23rd opposite Madison Square. It was a handsome office, all white with splashes of “Tiffany blue” (actually a shade of aquamarine). I got it from word of mouth, as an old friend and colleague “Movie Mike” Olshan knew the head of the proofreading department, Paul C. After a shaky start, by the end of my tenure, I was being told “we don’t know what we’ll do without you.” As with all my temp assignments after I left, they managed. Some of the columns, painted white, were embossed with the word “Carnegie.” Two industry titans in the same place, steelman Andrew Carnegie and Charles Lewis Tiffany.
Tiffany Place, one of my favorite Carroll Gardens streets because of its surviving Belgian Block pavement, is likely thought by area denizens to be named for Louis Comfort Tiffany, but maps show it as early as the 1840s — long before the famed glassmaker ever built a factory in Brooklyn or elsewhere. There was a state senator from the area named George Tiffany in the early 19th Century, and that’s likely the source. You will find the famed Tiffanys in Brooklyn, though, since the family, including Charles Lewis Tiffany of dry goods and later, jewelry fame, is interred in Green-Wood Cemetery.
See Comments for another likely origin.
#1 Tiffany Place, at the corner of Kane Street, is the largest of these brick houses on the street, and it is the building that caused the misconception about Tiffany Place being named for Louis Comfort Tiffany. Somehow, an idea got around (likely from real estate agents) that this was a Tiffany glass factory at one time. According to Lost City, the records don’t show it. The building had been home to Walther and Company, which produced “fancy papers” or paper used for wrapping or in wedding invitations. I was hoping the Belcher Hyde 1929 atlas would settle the issue, but it merely shows it as a large brick building.
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4/1/26
5 comments
There’s a help wanted ad in the May 26, 1854 that refers to a job (cooker/washer for private family) at 1 Tiffany Place, at the corner of Harrison Street in South Brooklyn. The November 7, 1892 New York Times indicates there was a bad fire in the area that caused $185,000 in losses to Walther & Co., which seems to have been covered by insurance. A December 26, 1986 Daily News article just describes it as an “old factory building.” The January 10, 1945 Brooklyn Eagle carries an article indicating members of the Walther family sold the factory building that had been at 1-19 Tiffany Place (and 102-108 Kane Street). A gent named Irving Kiprus bought the building, said to be assessed for $177,000.
Tiffany Place may actually be named for one Isaiah Tiffany, who along with Alonzo G. Hammond and Samuel Cheever, was one of the three Commissioners appointed by the New York State Legislature to “lay out Streets, Avenues and Squares in the City of Brooklyn.” Formerly known as Waverly Place. (Reference: “Map of Property in the Sixth Ward of the City of Brooklyn belonging to Kelsey Blake and Others late of the Heirs of John Cornell, deceased. 1838”)
Cheever Place is nearby and was marked as Cornell Place on the 1838 map. There is no Hammond Place, but there was a Hammond Avenue planned in the 1830s to run diagonally across the street grid from Atlantic and Smith to Green Wood Cemetery. Apparently never built, property owners petitioned the State Legislature (who had jurisdiction over these things at the time) to demap it, as diagonal streets make triangular lots and they didn’t like that. The City concurred, and about the mid 1840s Hammond Avenue was no more.
Re: “As with all my temp assignments after I left, they managed” … Kev, I luv ya.
Greg Gutfeld recently mentioned that some employers have stopped interviewing & have replaced interviews with “one week” (unpaid?) auditions”. What’s next? All AI “employees, all the time? Time to go retro.
Wow I forgot about that and lost track of Paul Chevanne, I hope he is well. Glad I was able to help you. I shared your struggle to survive for decades as a freelance editor and copywriter before getting lucky with a job at an ad agency that lasted 21 years. Well, your big hit is your book and my high points were contributing humor to NatLamp and scripting a comic strip for Frank Brunner in The Someday Funnies.