Julian Baczynsky immigrated to the United States from the Ukraine in 1950, and opened the East Village Meat Market in 1970. The area had long been known as Little Ukraine, since a surge in immigration from Russia, Ukraine, and Poland at the end of the 19th century. It's the last of its kind in the neighborhood, and one of just a few remaining Ukrainian institutions in the area. It stocks imported items from Poland and Ukraine, but is known for smoked meats and sausages and hams, which are cured on the premises.
The building was built in 1900 as an "Old Law Tenement." These were tenement buildings hurriedly built by developers before the more stringent, and costly, provisions of the New York State Tenement House Act ("New Law") took effect in 1901. They were also known as "Dumbbell Tenements" because the apartment floor plans resembled a dumb bell, with small airshafts in the middle of the building providing the legal minimum amount of air and light into the rooms.
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| Dumbbell tenement floor plan, via GVHSP site |
Previously, the site had been a branch of the New York Hospital for expectant mothers, established in 1799.
East Village Meat Market
Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation
Wikipedia: Old Law Tenement
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