Friends of the Lower East Side are lobbying elected officials to save 75 Essex, a historic building also known as the the Good Samaritan/Eastern District Dispensary building.
The building at 75 Essex St. has been on and off the market for many years and was recently listed again for $21 million in light of the Essex Crossing development plan.
Essex Crossing, announced by mayor Michael Bloomberg several weeks ago, sits on the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area plot and will be developed by a coalition of developers under the group Delancey Street Associates.
“Due to the endangered status of this important building in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, Friends of the Lower East Side has embarked on a campaign to save the Good Samaritan/Eastern District Dispensary building,” stated Mitchell Grubler, a founding member of the Friends of the Lower East Side.
The building was previously listed for $18 million three different times, by the Eisner Brothers. The neighborhood mainly consisted of tenements then, and the building was opened by the city as a center for medical care, where it continued to function for the impoverished for 60 years.
In January, Friends of the Lower East Side appealed to the Landmarks Preservation Commission to landmark the building, which did not happen.
The building sits on the northwest corner of Essex and Broome Streets.
