Answers to Questions About New York

Q. Can you tell me about the incredibly thin old building at 19 West 46th Street? It looks so odd in Midtown.

A. The five-story building, which houses the Akdeniz Turkish restaurant on the ground floor and a beauty salon on the second, is 12 ½ feet wide. It was built in 1865; the upper stories contain apartments. It lies on an eclectic block of buildings between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas that Christopher Gray described in The New York Times in 2006 as “an architectural thrift shop” mixing “everything from ancient brownstone to Art Deco.”

Several bloggers have done research on the short, narrow building. Postings on the Web site Scouting New York explain the narrowness: lots were often sold in 25-foot widths, and some commercial developers squeezed two narrow buildings side by side to increase profits. That happened in this case: No. 19 had a twin — No. 17 — also 12 ½ feet wide, but it was later torn down.

The writer of the blog Secondat, who asked that his name not be printed, said his great-grandfather Louis Windmuller, a merchant, had a long commute in the 1860s between his office on Reade Street and his home in Woodside, Queens. So he took an apartment at 19 West 46th Street, probably soon after the building was erected. In 1884, the Windmullers celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary there.

Thinness was no barrier to marital bliss, apparently. In 1891, an article about the wedding of Dr. Albert H. Ely and Maud L. Merchant said the newlyweds would be living at 19 West 46th.

Other newspaper articles detail a rich history for such a small place. Tenants have included an architect, a milliner, a car salesman, a homeopathic physician, a coin dealer, an art gallery and a lawyer who, as a young man in Oklahoma, prosecuted the Dalton gang.

Westbound Garbage

Q. I was driving on the George Washington Bridge recently and passed two New York City Department of Sanitation garbage trucks heading to New Jersey.  Where were they going? And do they have to pay the toll when they come back?

A. Sanitation Department collection trucks bound for New Jersey take refuse to a waste-to-energy company, Covanta Energy, in Newark, and to a solid-waste transfer station, Interstate Waste Services, in Jersey City, replied Matthew LiPani, a Sanitation Department spokesman. And yes, he added, the trucks pay the required tolls.