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TAMMANY HALL
100-102 East 17th Street
Architect: Thompson, Holmes, & Converse and Charles B. Meyers
1929

On the southeast corner of East 17th Street and Union Square East stands the second of the district's institutional buildings, once the headquarters of New York City's Democratic Party political machine. Late in 1927, the Society of Tammany sold its headquarters on East 14th Street and announced the construction of a new Tammany Hall. Plams for the new building were to be made public in January 1928. The building was to be a Colonial Revival structure built of red Harvard brick with granite trim (limestone was later substituted). The Real Estate Record described the design as "a dignified architectural treatment, one of the chief motifs of which are the severe Colonial columns in the centers of the Union Square and the Seventeenth-street facades which recall the days of early American architecture."

The building, as completed in 1929, included commercial space facing Union Square (originally occupied by a branch of the Manufacturers Trust Company), a public meeting hall on the east side of the first floor, offices for the Democratic County Committee, and a series of committee and meeting rooms. In 1943, the building was sold to the International Ladies Garment Workers Union; the main meeting hall, named Roosevelt Auditorium, became one of the most important centers for union activities in New York City. In 1984, the hall was renovated for use as an Off-Broadway theater.