Acme Office Furniture Inc.

33 Crown Street is a brick architecture currently houses Acme Office Furniture Inc., a company thich is a vendor of vintage office furniture.

Brownie Beauty Supply Shop

The earliest record of a building on this lot is from 1824, when two small wooden frame houses occupied Acme’s lot and what is currently the adjacent parking lot. The building that stood at what is now #33 was the office of John J. Stone, who advertised in a local paper that he was “now prepared to set Teeth of very superior quality, (better than ever before in New Haven.)” Living next door at about the same time was Billy Goodwin, who occupied #17 Crown and was noted in the paper for being “an Englishman by birth, and noted for his genial good nature.” By 1886, Goodwin’s house was demolished for a large, multistory brick residence, which was in turn demolished by 1901 to make way for a C.S. Mersick & Co. warehouse. Mersick, a hardware manufacturer and metal dealer, had occupied lots on State Street for several years. The company expanded, as the century turned and American industry accelerated, into a new brick warehouse, complete with an elevator and several floors, each devoted to a different specialty. The first floor made bicycles, the second floor was involved with printing, and the third and fourth floors held a corset factory. The frame house next door remained, but was now divided in three, holding a store, a dwelling, and a barbershop. Some time between 1901 and 1911, C.S. Mersick conceded some space on Crown Street to the Blakeslee Block, which housed a variety of industries under the Blakeslee name. The precise function of the company is unknown, but the Blakeslee Block did include such varied enterprises as real estate company and a locksmith. Blakeslee continued to occupy certain spaces on Crown Street, even as Mersick expanded its footprint to include by 1924 another warehouse, next door to the previously erected one and occupying the site that is currently Acme. Like its counterpart, this new warehouse was made of brick, and the two buildings were joined in the middle by a set of iron doors and two central elevators.

Acme, turning 100 next year, has been at this same location, balancing fans on top of chairs on top of desks, since 1968. Before Acme, between 1963 and 1967, the Brownie Beauty Supply Shop occupied the space.

33 Crown resembles buildings in the surrounding area that were built in the early 20th century.

Though records are not conclusive about the year the building was constructed or who occupied it immediately after its construction, 33 Crown resembles buildings in the surrounding area that were built in the early 20th century, with renovations from around the 1950s on the ground floor windows and doors.