1825William and Rosamond Clark HouseArchitect: UnknownLocation: 51 Market Street Back to the architecture of the rich. This is the late Federal style. At 83-85 Sullivan Street, completed in 1819, the toplight is rectangular and modest; six years later, at 51 Market Street, we have a rainbow of egg-and-dart, rosette, glass and lead. (The evolution here is muddied by the fact our 1820 entry has similar detailing.) And not that you can see it in this photo, but the lintels (the things on top of windows) are not the featureless slabs we’ve witnessed but have a little detailing to them. So just a touch more ornate than we’ve seen before.
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1825
William and Rosamond Clark House

Architect: Unknown
Location: 51 Market Street

Back to the architecture of the rich. This is the late Federal style. At 83-85 Sullivan Street, completed in 1819, the toplight is rectangular and modest; six years later, at 51 Market Street, we have a rainbow of egg-and-dart, rosette, glass and lead. (The evolution here is muddied by the fact our 1820 entry has similar detailing.) And not that you can see it in this photo, but the lintels (the things on top of windows) are not the featureless slabs we’ve witnessed but have a little detailing to them. So just a touch more ornate than we’ve seen before.

ca. 182465 Mott StreetArchitect: UnknownLocation: 65 Mott Street This tumblr has an in-built bias against the architecture of the poor. It’s easy to cover the buildings of the rich: there’s a lot of information about them. They were designed to be noticed and remembered. The buildings of the poor have evaded such historicizing, at least until relatively recently. Just like their inhabitants, they were treated as too lacking in distinction for comment. Also: they burned down to the fucking ground a lot of the time. Or got demolished. This one, though. It stood out. In a city where two-three stories was the norm, this was seven. It was brick where most of its neighbors were wooden and incapable of keeping out the elements. And according to Tyler Anbinder, this was the city’s first tenement designed as such. It never gained the reputation for filth and licentiousness as the Old Brewery (1797) did, with Herbert Ashbury claiming it was the site of one murder per night for fifteen years, and that when it was torn down, workman carried out bags of human bones. Anbinder scoffs at such colorful stories. But he notes that 65 Mott, with its seven stories and another five-story tenement in the back, meant there were “at least thirty-four and probably thirty-six two room apartments onto this 2,450-square-foot property.” Taking into account that the average two-room apartment in the neighborhood held five — with 46% holding six or more, and one-sixth holding eight or more — 65 Mott, at the height of its depravity, may have housed at least 180 people. “Even at the end of the nineteenth century, no other landlord had the nerve to squeeze so many families into so small a space.” To add to the grotesquerie was the darkness: as with most tenements, many interior rooms, especially stairwells, had no windows, and thus could be completely dark even in the daytime. And the less said about sanitation, the better. The subject makes me feel squirmy all over.
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ca. 1824
65 Mott Street

Architect: Unknown
Location: 65 Mott Street

This tumblr has an in-built bias against the architecture of the poor. It’s easy to cover the buildings of the rich: there’s a lot of information about them. They were designed to be noticed and remembered. The buildings of the poor have evaded such historicizing, at least until relatively recently. Just like their inhabitants, they were treated as too lacking in distinction for comment. Also: they burned down to the fucking ground a lot of the time. Or got demolished.

This one, though. It stood out. In a city where two-three stories was the norm, this was seven. It was brick where most of its neighbors were wooden and incapable of keeping out the elements. And according to Tyler Anbinder, this was the city’s first tenement designed as such. It never gained the reputation for filth and licentiousness as the Old Brewery (1797) did, with Herbert Ashbury claiming it was the site of one murder per night for fifteen years, and that when it was torn down, workman carried out bags of human bones.

Anbinder scoffs at such colorful stories. But he notes that 65 Mott, with its seven stories and another five-story tenement in the back, meant there were “at least thirty-four and probably thirty-six two room apartments onto this 2,450-square-foot property.” Taking into account that the average two-room apartment in the neighborhood held five — with 46% holding six or more, and one-sixth holding eight or more — 65 Mott, at the height of its depravity, may have housed at least 180 people. “Even at the end of the nineteenth century, no other landlord had the nerve to squeeze so many families into so small a space.” To add to the grotesquerie was the darkness: as with most tenements, many interior rooms, especially stairwells, had no windows, and thus could be completely dark even in the daytime. And the less said about sanitation, the better. The subject makes me feel squirmy all over.

1801Church of the TransfigurationArchitect: Henry EngelbertLocation: 25 Mott Street First it served Dutch Lutherans. Then, not long after, Episcopalians. It became a Catholic church as Irish and later Italian immigrants flooded the neighborhood, then known as Five Points, perhaps the most notorious slum in the world. And after Five Points had morphed into Chinatown, it would hold masses in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. For over two hundred years, this church has been a bit of proud Georgian-Gothic elegance no matter how demotic the surroundings.
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1801
Church of the Transfiguration

Architect: Henry Engelbert
Location: 25 Mott Street

First it served Dutch Lutherans. Then, not long after, Episcopalians. It became a Catholic church as Irish and later Italian immigrants flooded the neighborhood, then known as Five Points, perhaps the most notorious slum in the world. And after Five Points had morphed into Chinatown, it would hold masses in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. For over two hundred years, this church has been a bit of proud Georgian-Gothic elegance no matter how demotic the surroundings.

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.