{"nrhp_refnum":"93001599","name":"Sanger, Margaret, Clinic","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"17 W. 16th St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"New York","county":"Manhattan","state":"NY","lat":40.73812431300004,"lon":-73.99397414273388,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1993-09-14","is_nhl":true,"nhl_designated_date":"1993-09-14","areas_of_significance":["Health/Medicine","Politics/Government","Social History"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A three-story-and-basement Greek Revival brick row house at 17 West 16th Street in Manhattan, built around 1846, which housed the Margaret Sanger Clinic from 1930 to 1973.","why_significant":"The house was the first permanent home of Margaret Sanger's Clinical Research Bureau, a pioneering birth control clinic, and its location for over forty years. Sanger's earlier clinics no longer stand or were only rented rooms, so this is the most appropriate site associated with her work. The building is also a rare surviving swell-front Greek Revival townhouse with high integrity.","narrative":"A brick row house at 17 West 16th Street in Manhattan, built around 1846, served from 1930 to 1973 as the home of Margaret Sanger's Clinical Research Bureau. The three-story Greek Revival building has a curving swell-front bay running the full height of the facade, a high stoop with original iron railings, a cast-iron balcony, and a deeply set stone entrance enframement. Inside, it keeps a curving staircase, skylight, marble hall floor, fireplaces and plaster moldings. Sanger, a birth control pioneer, opened the nation's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916, but that building is gone and her second clinic occupied only two rented rooms. This house was the first clinic she owned through the Bureau, and it served as a model for more than 300 clinics by 1938. It also trained doctors in contraceptive technique. The house remains a single-family dwelling and retains a very high degree of integrity.","period_of_significance":"1930 to 1942","architect_builder":"Edward S. Mesier","architectural_style":"Mid-19th Century, Greek Revival","criteria":["A","B"],"status_note":"Currently used as a single-family dwelling and retains an unusually high degree of integrity.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:50:39.857904-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/93001599_NHL.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/93001599/eccb73701f-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/93001599/eccb73701f-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","author":"Beyond My Ken","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:17-23_West_16th_St.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Beyond My Ken</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:17-23_West_16th_St.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75315934","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger_Clinic","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759870"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/new-york/manhattan/sanger-margaret-clinic-93001599/"}