Kalustyan's Market

 store / shop, interesting place

5-story Italianate residential building originally completed in the 1860s, around the same time as the other similar buildings lining the block on Lexington Avenue. It is clad in red brick above a 2-story commercial base, with large plate-glass show-windows on the 2nd floor and a metal-and-glass storefront on the ground floor. There is a residential entrance with a glass door on the left.

The upper floors have three bays of single-windows with bracketed stone sills and stone lintels that are flat on top and curved on the bottom. The windows grow shorter at each floor. The facade is crowned by a bracketed white metal roof cornice.

The Chester A. Arthur Home, also known as Chester A. Arthur House, was the residence of the twenty-first President of the United States, Chester A. Arthur, both before and after his rise to national fame. Arthur spent most of his adult life living in the residence. Serving as Vice-President for President James Garfield, he retreated to this house after the July 2, 1881 attempted assassination of Garfield. Garfield did not die until September 19, and then Arthur took the oath of office in this building. The addition of the commercial spaces on the lower levels took place later, when the upper floors were divided into apartments.

A commemorative bronze plaque was placed inside the building in 1964 by the Native New Yorkers Historical Society and New York Life Insurance. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 12, 1965. The lower floors are now occupied by Kalustyan's Market. Established in 1944 by Kerope Kalustyan, an Armenian from Turkey, it originally sold primarily Middle Eastern spices and foods and, increasingly, an extensive selection of culinary products from around the world.

In 1988, the Kalustyan’s store was purchased by Bangladeshi businessmen Sayedul Alam and Aziz Osmani, who transformed the shop from an Indian/Armenian/Turkish store to one with over 10,000 food products from over 80 countries, and added an eat-in café/deli on the 2nd floor.