1799Gracie MansionArchitect: Attributed to Ezra WeeksLocation: East End Avenue at 88th Street Gracie’s life as the mayor’s house started with Fiorello La Guardia, some 140 years after it was built. Robert Moses was taken with the idea of an official mayoral residence, and suggested the Schwab mansion (1905), a French château even bigger than Frick’s (1914) or Carnegie’s (1903) Manhattan homes. La Guardia exploded. “What, me in THAT?” (His response probably doomed it. Utterly unsellable, it was demolished in 1948.) He resisted Archibald Gracie’s mansion, too; nonetheless, it was a good fit. It could never be mistaken for a house of the common man, but it bears so little resemblance to how the rich build their mansions today that it’s hard to think of it as some forbidding thing, a fortress aloof from the riff-raff. (Even with the brick wall.) Ed Koch loved the place, even living there in the middle of a three-year renovation. I can’t source where I read this, but he would sometimes stand on the lawn, waving at the tourists on the Circle Line cruises. David Dinkins got caught up in an inane controversy when he ordered a period headboard for his bedroom. It was rumored Rudy Giuliani had to leave it when he was palling around with girlfriend Judith Nathan in their St. Regis “love nest”. Michael Bloomberg prefers his East 79th Street townhouse. Dick.
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1799
Gracie Mansion

Architect: Attributed to Ezra Weeks
Location: East End Avenue at 88th Street

Gracie’s life as the mayor’s house started with Fiorello La Guardia, some 140 years after it was built. Robert Moses was taken with the idea of an official mayoral residence, and suggested the Schwab mansion (1905), a French château even bigger than Frick’s (1914) or Carnegie’s (1903) Manhattan homes. La Guardia exploded. “What, me in THAT?” (His response probably doomed it. Utterly unsellable, it was demolished in 1948.) He resisted Archibald Gracie’s mansion, too; nonetheless, it was a good fit. It could never be mistaken for a house of the common man, but it bears so little resemblance to how the rich build their mansions today that it’s hard to think of it as some forbidding thing, a fortress aloof from the riff-raff. (Even with the brick wall.)

Ed Koch loved the place, even living there in the middle of a three-year renovation. I can’t source where I read this, but he would sometimes stand on the lawn, waving at the tourists on the Circle Line cruises. David Dinkins got caught up in an inane controversy when he ordered a period headboard for his bedroom. It was rumored Rudy Giuliani had to leave it when he was palling around with girlfriend Judith Nathan in their St. Regis “love nest”. Michael Bloomberg prefers his East 79th Street townhouse. Dick.

1798227 Water StreetArchitect: UnknownLocation: 227 Water Street Not much in the way of documentation about this one, apart from the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission’s report on South Street Seaport. It says 227 Water Street became a corner site after Beekman Street was laid out, which means most of those windows and doors on the Beekman side are later intervention. It came pretty close to being demolished surprisingly recently, in 1993, only to be saved by a grant from the New York Landmarks Conservancy. Now it’s apartments.
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1798
227 Water Street

Architect: Unknown
Location: 227 Water Street

Not much in the way of documentation about this one, apart from the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission’s report on South Street Seaport. It says 227 Water Street became a corner site after Beekman Street was laid out, which means most of those windows and doors on the Beekman side are later intervention. It came pretty close to being demolished surprisingly recently, in 1993, only to be saved by a grant from the New York Landmarks Conservancy. Now it’s apartments.

1797Duane ParkArchitect: UnknownLocation: Hudson and Duane Streets This scrap of a Dutch farm is the second-oldest park in the city and “the first public space acquired by the City specifically for use as a public park.” It’s a tiny little thing, a tenth of an acre, but hugged as it is on three sides by beautiful 19th-century buildings, it only needs a few trees and park benches to be an effective source of quiet and rest.
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1797
Duane Park

Architect: Unknown
Location: Hudson and Duane Streets

This scrap of a Dutch farm is the second-oldest park in the city and “the first public space acquired by the City specifically for use as a public park.” It’s a tiny little thing, a tenth of an acre, but hugged as it is on three sides by beautiful 19th-century buildings, it only needs a few trees and park benches to be an effective source of quiet and rest.

1795Nicholas William Stuyvesant HouseArchitect: UnknownLocation: 44 Stuyvesant Street Oldest building in the East Village? So it seems. In 1651, the director-general of New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant, purchased large sections of what would later be known as East Village, Stuyvesant Town, and Stuyvesant Square. As farmland, the property would stay in the family for generations upon generations. By the late 1780s, Stuyvesant’s great-grandson, Petrus, was parcelling out the land into lots and laying out streets. One lot would be the site of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery (1799); another would be the site of this Federal style home, erected by Petrus for his son, Nicholas William. Stuyvesant Street is another one of Petrus’ gifts to Manhattan: it’s one of the very few streets on the island that runs true east-west.
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1795
Nicholas William Stuyvesant House

Architect: Unknown
Location: 44 Stuyvesant Street

Oldest building in the East Village? So it seems. In 1651, the director-general of New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant, purchased large sections of what would later be known as East Village, Stuyvesant Town, and Stuyvesant Square. As farmland, the property would stay in the family for generations upon generations. By the late 1780s, Stuyvesant’s great-grandson, Petrus, was parcelling out the land into lots and laying out streets. One lot would be the site of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery (1799); another would be the site of this Federal style home, erected by Petrus for his son, Nicholas William. Stuyvesant Street is another one of Petrus’ gifts to Manhattan: it’s one of the very few streets on the island that runs true east-west.

1794279 Water StreetArchitect: UnknownLocation: 279 Water Street One answer to the question “what is the oldest bar in New York City?”: there’s been one or another drinking establishment housed here since 1847. (Another answer is McSorley’s Old Ale House, as there’s been something at 15 East 7th Street with that name since 1854. Supposedly.) Again, we are not seeing the past unvarnished here, as an 1888 renovation added a new façade and upped the number of stories from two-and-a-half to three. But it is, as it appears to be, a wood-frame building. We won’t see too many more of these. Susceptible to fire, they were legislated out of existence throughout Manhattan—but as Water Street rests on landfill, which was thought to be unable to support brick buildings, wood-frame houses like these were given a pass here.
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1794
279 Water Street

Architect: Unknown
Location: 279 Water Street

One answer to the question “what is the oldest bar in New York City?”: there’s been one or another drinking establishment housed here since 1847. (Another answer is McSorley’s Old Ale House, as there’s been something at 15 East 7th Street with that name since 1854. Supposedly.) Again, we are not seeing the past unvarnished here, as an 1888 renovation added a new façade and upped the number of stories from two-and-a-half to three. But it is, as it appears to be, a wood-frame building. We won’t see too many more of these. Susceptible to fire, they were legislated out of existence throughout Manhattan—but as Water Street rests on landfill, which was thought to be unable to support brick buildings, wood-frame houses like these were given a pass here.

ca. 1793191 and 193 Front StreetArchitect: UnknownLocation: 191 and 193 Front Street To give this project a sense of flow, I’ve tried to select buildings that are relatively free of modernizations and true to the eras in which they were originally constructed, but the earlier you go, the harder it gets: after all, a building is a useful thing, and always subject to the demands of the day. Otherwise, it’s just an accent chair in a hotel hallway. 191 and 193 were built two stories high, possibly as a matching pair, then received story additions and new ground floor storefronts later on, and 193 has the slightly florid lintels and horizontal bands of the kind that came in fashion deep into the 19th century. These buildings are handsome, but bumps on our road. (The 1977 South Street Seaport Historic District designation report suggests the possibility 193 is actually later replacement for a missing twin. This makes sense to me as their story heights seem markedly different—not the type of thing that gets changed in an ordinary renovation.)
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ca. 1793
191 and 193 Front Street

Architect: Unknown
Location: 191 and 193 Front Street

To give this project a sense of flow, I’ve tried to select buildings that are relatively free of modernizations and true to the eras in which they were originally constructed, but the earlier you go, the harder it gets: after all, a building is a useful thing, and always subject to the demands of the day. Otherwise, it’s just an accent chair in a hotel hallway. 191 and 193 were built two stories high, possibly as a matching pair, then received story additions and new ground floor storefronts later on, and 193 has the slightly florid lintels and horizontal bands of the kind that came in fashion deep into the 19th century. These buildings are handsome, but bumps on our road. (The 1977 South Street Seaport Historic District designation report suggests the possibility 193 is actually later replacement for a missing twin. This makes sense to me as their story heights seem markedly different—not the type of thing that gets changed in an ordinary renovation.)

ca. 1790203 East 29th StreetArchitect: UnknownLocation: 203 East 29th Street This tumblr lives and dies by the completion dates of things, and here’s a farmhouse whose completion date comes with a huge margin of error. According to this Christopher Gray article, the executive director of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission originally thought “it might even be Dutch” (which means pre-1664, maybe?), then estimated its completion at around 1845; a consultant for its early ’80s renovation said he found evidence that would put it “no later than 1820 and probably 1790”; and the tax assessment records suggest all sort of confusing things. (I went with 1790 because, well, the AIA Guide to New York City did.) As Gray points out, the legal framework that routinely documents this kind of information today was put in place decades later—it’s the fruit of a much larger and crowded city, the growth of architecture as a profession, and the bureaucratization of everything.
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ca. 1790
203 East 29th Street

Architect: Unknown
Location: 203 East 29th Street

This tumblr lives and dies by the completion dates of things, and here’s a farmhouse whose completion date comes with a huge margin of error. According to this Christopher Gray article, the executive director of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission originally thought “it might even be Dutch” (which means pre-1664, maybe?), then estimated its completion at around 1845; a consultant for its early ’80s renovation said he found evidence that would put it “no later than 1820 and probably 1790”; and the tax assessment records suggest all sort of confusing things. (I went with 1790 because, well, the AIA Guide to New York City did.) As Gray points out, the legal framework that routinely documents this kind of information today was put in place decades later—it’s the fruit of a much larger and crowded city, the growth of architecture as a profession, and the bureaucratization of everything.

1789Edward Mooney HouseArchitect: UnknownLocation: 18 Bowery The Dyckman House was built to replace a structure destroyed during the American Revolution. This is another echo artifact of the war: Edward Mooney, a butcher, built this house on the confiscated farmland of Loyalist James De Lancey, some time after the British had evacuated New York. It is called Manhattan’s oldest surviving row house. We’ll be seeing a lot more row houses on this tumblr, as they were New York’s dominant residential type for over a century. A row house is a house built in a row of other houses—often supporting each other structurally through shared walls—and and built to be experienced as a member of a row: it derives its aesthetic impact from how it joins its neighbors to create a solid wall of building, and how it stands apart from them through individualizing detail. None of the documentation available online makes reference to the Mooney House’s fellow row members, though. We’ll have to imagine that for ourselves.
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1789
Edward Mooney House

Architect: Unknown
Location: 18 Bowery

The Dyckman House was built to replace a structure destroyed during the American Revolution. This is another echo artifact of the war: Edward Mooney, a butcher, built this house on the confiscated farmland of Loyalist James De Lancey, some time after the British had evacuated New York.

It is called Manhattan’s oldest surviving row house. We’ll be seeing a lot more row houses on this tumblr, as they were New York’s dominant residential type for over a century. A row house is a house built in a row of other houses—often supporting each other structurally through shared walls—and and built to be experienced as a member of a row: it derives its aesthetic impact from how it joins its neighbors to create a solid wall of building, and how it stands apart from them through individualizing detail. None of the documentation available online makes reference to the Mooney House’s fellow row members, though. We’ll have to imagine that for ourselves.

ca. 1784Dyckman HouseArchitect: UnknownLocation: 4881 BroadwayThe last farmhouse. It boasted a continuous chain of ownership by the Dutch Dyckmans from the 1660s to 1870s. At the top of the island, it took the arrival of the subway in 1906 for the farmhouse to truly connect with a city growing ever-northward. As apartment buildings and businesses started growing around it, it was purchased by the two daughters of the last man to grow up in the house, then restored, and then donated to the city as a museum.A book credited to the Dyckman daughters’ husbands (but judging by its point-of-view, possibly written by the daughters themselves) reveals quite a lot about what they believed they were preserving, and the assumptions not uncommon to historic preservation movement as it existed at the time: the farmhouse is relic of “the simpler life of our people” and “a fair country.” Its owner might have long sat on this wide front porch, settled comfortably in a deep slat-backed armchair, soothed by the hum of bees in the blossoms nearby, and watching lazily through the rings of smoke from a long-stemmed pipe the post-rider as he passed the thirteenth milestone, which was nearly in front of the old house. The authors say close to nothing about the farm itself, or how the head of the household tended it. And only a little about the black people who lived there. But they do find the time to upbraid the modern homemaker for not measuring up to their ancestors’ capacity for drudgery. The simpler life for who, exactly? The people behind the museum today acknowledge the Dyckmans’ biases, presenting a first-floor bedroom as it probably looked back in the day, and preserving the second-floor bedroom as it appeared when the museum first opened. The first looks spare. The second, suburban. (Check the second page, lower-right-hand corner.)
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ca. 1784
Dyckman House

Architect: Unknown
Location: 4881 Broadway

The last farmhouse. It boasted a continuous chain of ownership by the Dutch Dyckmans from the 1660s to 1870s. At the top of the island, it took the arrival of the subway in 1906 for the farmhouse to truly connect with a city growing ever-northward. As apartment buildings and businesses started growing around it, it was purchased by the two daughters of the last man to grow up in the house, then restored, and then donated to the city as a museum.

A book credited to the Dyckman daughters’ husbands (but judging by its point-of-view, possibly written by the daughters themselves) reveals quite a lot about what they believed they were preserving, and the assumptions not uncommon to historic preservation movement as it existed at the time: the farmhouse is relic of “the simpler life of our people” and “a fair country.”

Its owner might have long sat on this wide front porch, settled comfortably in a deep slat-backed armchair, soothed by the hum of bees in the blossoms nearby, and watching lazily through the rings of smoke from a long-stemmed pipe the post-rider as he passed the thirteenth milestone, which was nearly in front of the old house.

The authors say close to nothing about the farm itself, or how the head of the household tended it. And only a little about the black people who lived there. But they do find the time to upbraid the modern homemaker for not measuring up to their ancestors’ capacity for drudgery. The simpler life for who, exactly?

The people behind the museum today acknowledge the Dyckmans’ biases, presenting a first-floor bedroom as it probably looked back in the day, and preserving the second-floor bedroom as it appeared when the museum first opened. The first looks spare. The second, suburban. (Check the second page, lower-right-hand corner.)

1773273 Water StreetArchitect: UnknownLocation: 273 Water StreetThe third-oldest building in Manhattan, if you don’t count Fraunces Tavern. (The New York Times doesn’t.) There is less logic in survival than anyone can ever be comfortable with. It’s not a wonder why this building still stands—it’s a wonder God didn’t rain fire and brimstone upon it. Accounts of Kit Burn’s Rat Pit tell us that throughout the 1860s, this is where men fought men, dogs fought dogs, dogs fought rats, men with heavy boots stomped on rats, and men bit the heads off of rats. For fun. And money!Oh wait, actually, God (or some asshole arsonist) did set it on fire, more than once in fact, but long after its career of evil. After a bad one in 1976, it was little more a shell (you can see light coming through the roof here) for years until it recieved a multi-million dollar restoration into an apartment house. Fun trivia that amuses no-one but me: the architect behind the restoration also designed the United Nations’ logo and the Q-Tip box.
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1773
273 Water Street

Architect: Unknown
Location: 273 Water Street

The third-oldest building in Manhattan, if you don’t count Fraunces Tavern. (The New York Times doesn’t.) There is less logic in survival than anyone can ever be comfortable with. It’s not a wonder why this building still stands—it’s a wonder God didn’t rain fire and brimstone upon it. Accounts of Kit Burn’s Rat Pit tell us that throughout the 1860s, this is where men fought men, dogs fought dogs, dogs fought rats, men with heavy boots stomped on rats, and men bit the heads off of rats. For fun. And money!

Oh wait, actually, God (or some asshole arsonist) did set it on fire, more than once in fact, but long after its career of evil. After a bad one in 1976, it was little more a shell (you can see light coming through the roof here) for years until it recieved a multi-million dollar restoration into an apartment house. Fun trivia that amuses no-one but me: the architect behind the restoration also designed the United Nations’ logo and the Q-Tip box.