196 Eighth Avenue

 restaurant, apartment building

3-story mixed-use building completed in 1842 as a 3-story house and store (with a 2-story stable attached to the east end). It was owned by Augustus Reiner, who operated a grocery store on the ground floor. The grocery was taken over by John H. Eden in 1849. Like the Reiners, his family lived above the store. Henry J. Reichers joined into the business in 1860, and moved his family into the upper portion of the attached stable. Eden and Reicher worked together through 1863, after which Reicher took over the grocery, and moved into the main building. Reichersran his grocery store until 1868 when he moved his family to Brooklyn. Peter McDonald converted the store to a saloon and moved into the upper portion.

Throughout the rest of the 19th century the ground floor would house a series of saloons and butcher shops, until Prohibition began. The building was renovated as Reilley Brother's Hotel, with rented rooms upstairs and a restaurant in the former tavern space. A variety store occupied the ground floor in 1941, and in the late 1980s the Italian restaurant Twigs occupied the store space, followed by Tazza, a Mediterranean restaurant, which operated from 1997 into the 2002s, when it was replaced by Lasagna Ristorante.

The facade is clad in rusticated pink stone blocks above a ground floor of stucco, wood, metal and glass, which is painted tan and red and houses a restaurant. A red canvas awning covers the whole ground floor. On the west elevation the facade is two bays wide, each with double-windows in grey stone frames with splayed lintels and keystones.

The north elevation has similar windows, but in singles. There are two widely-spaced windows at the west end, with two more-closely spaced windows to the east. Further east, the building drops down the two stories, with three more windows. Both the 2-story and 3-story sections are topped by a stone cornice with a painted fascia. At the far east end is a 1-story, modern glass-and-metal addition, occupied by Good Head barbers.

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