9 Bleecker Street

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3-story Renaissance-revival office building completed in 1884. Designed by Frederick C. Withers as a house, it is clad in red brick, three bays wide. It has projecting sandstone window sills, a wrought-iron fire escape, and a historic brick roof parapet featuring corbels and dentils. In 1893, a one-story rear addition, designed by noted architect William Tubby, was constructed by owner Mary Wright. At the time, the building was being used for the storage of cigar boxes. By the 1920s, when this area was the center of the city's fur trade, the building was occupied by a number of fur businesses. In 1945, it was purchased by Abraham Helman, whose trucking business, Helman Trucking Corp., occupied the building until about 1960.

By the mid-1960s, as the post-war decline in the city's manufacturing base left much vacant commercial space, loft dwellers had taken over the upper stories of this building. The building at 9 Bleecker Street has functioned as an informal headquarters of the Yippie movement since 1973. Short for Youth International Movement, the Yippies used for building as a meeting place and way station for freethinkers and political firebrands. The alternative magazine Yipster Times was published on the top floor. People met on the second floor to coordinate the distribution of medical marijuana. And in 1981 the ground floor shook when a crude bomb detonated outside. In the early 2000s, the group created a museum, with comedy shows in the basement, and a cafe opened on the ground floor. In 2013, however, the building went into foreclosure, and was vacated in early 2014.