1844170-188 Sullivan StreetArchitect: UnknownLocation: 170-188 Sullivan Street So intact, so streamlined: apart from the poppy colors, it looks as if it was floated in from a cloud from an earlier time, a speckless row in a city with so many compromises made between the past and present. But it is no such thing. A company bought up this and another row on the other side of the block, both of which had been owned by a family who’d kept them in rundown condition for a couple of decades. Rather than demolish the rows and put up something bigger, as was custom then and now, the company developed them into homes for the middle class, “modernizing” them by removing Greek-Revival-and-after-details, and fashioning the interior space in the block into a communal garden area invisible from the street. As such, the Sullivan and MacDougal rows serve as very early examples of New York gentrification. And just as with nearly every other gentrification story the city has to offer, the middle class can’t touch the things now: Richard Gere lived on this row until a few years ago, and Anna Wintour still lives on the MacDougal side.
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1844
170-188 Sullivan Street

Architect: Unknown
Location: 170-188 Sullivan Street

So intact, so streamlined: apart from the poppy colors, it looks as if it was floated in from a cloud from an earlier time, a speckless row in a city with so many compromises made between the past and present. But it is no such thing. A company bought up this and another row on the other side of the block, both of which had been owned by a family who’d kept them in rundown condition for a couple of decades. Rather than demolish the rows and put up something bigger, as was custom then and now, the company developed them into homes for the middle class, “modernizing” them by removing Greek-Revival-and-after-details, and fashioning the interior space in the block into a communal garden area invisible from the street. As such, the Sullivan and MacDougal rows serve as very early examples of New York gentrification. And just as with nearly every other gentrification story the city has to offer, the middle class can’t touch the things now: Richard Gere lived on this row until a few years ago, and Anna Wintour still lives on the MacDougal side.

184347 Irving PlaceArchitect: UnknownLocation: 47 Irving Place Not many options available for this year. There is Ithiel Town’s Leake & Watts Orphan Asylum Building: a good subject, woefully under-appreciated, not even landmarked, but we’ve just covered Town. This paucity of 1843 buildings might be explained by a lingering depression triggered by the Panic of 1837, not that you’d never know from the opulence of the last couple entries. So we have this modest Greek Revival townhouse, built just south of Gramercy Park. Oscar Wilde may have lived here on his American tour, so there’s that. Next door (and next year) is what’s known as the Washington Irving House, even though Washington Irving — who Americans remember for penning “Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” and treat a little condescendingly as a kind of American literary superstar who came before the real heavyweights like Hawthorne, Melville, Poe — never actually lived here, this being the fiction of awesome crazy-lady Elsie de Wolfe.
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1843
47 Irving Place

Architect: Unknown
Location: 47 Irving Place

Not many options available for this year. There is Ithiel Town’s Leake & Watts Orphan Asylum Building: a good subject, woefully under-appreciated, not even landmarked, but we’ve just covered Town. This paucity of 1843 buildings might be explained by a lingering depression triggered by the Panic of 1837, not that you’d never know from the opulence of the last couple entries. So we have this modest Greek Revival townhouse, built just south of Gramercy Park. Oscar Wilde may have lived here on his American tour, so there’s that.

Next door (and next year) is what’s known as the Washington Irving House, even though Washington Irving — who Americans remember for penning “Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” and treat a little condescendingly as a kind of American literary superstar who came before the real heavyweights like Hawthorne, Melville, Poe — never actually lived here, this being the fiction of awesome crazy-lady Elsie de Wolfe.

1840The Cushman RowArchitect: UnknownLocation: 406-418 West 20th Street Just as Clement Clarke Moore drew up designs for the ecclesiastical buildings on his former property, he also laid a heavy hand on Chelsea’s residential development to ensure it was to his liking. The covenants drawn up for these homes included exacting specifications regarding their dimensions, their style, the materials they were to be faced with, and their spatial relationship to the street. They also banned much of the grubby aspects of the city — like manufacturing, stables, tenements — from appearing. It worked, to a point: when industrial development came, it stayed largely to the west, near the river. Restrictions like these were nothing new to the city, but never had they been applied so consistently to such a large amount of real estate. Control-freak-ish, sure, but the results were spectacular. It encouraged the construction of relatively unbroken rows of buildings like the Cushman Row, forming vast, almost martial walls of brick and stone on street after street. New Yorkers in this era may have been paying lip service to Greek values but their ambitions were Roman-size. (And yet — especially after 170 years of individuation — each Row member looks so homey.)
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1840
The Cushman Row

Architect: Unknown
Location: 406-418 West 20th Street

Just as Clement Clarke Moore drew up designs for the ecclesiastical buildings on his former property, he also laid a heavy hand on Chelsea’s residential development to ensure it was to his liking. The covenants drawn up for these homes included exacting specifications regarding their dimensions, their style, the materials they were to be faced with, and their spatial relationship to the street. They also banned much of the grubby aspects of the city — like manufacturing, stables, tenements — from appearing.

It worked, to a point: when industrial development came, it stayed largely to the west, near the river. Restrictions like these were nothing new to the city, but never had they been applied so consistently to such a large amount of real estate. Control-freak-ish, sure, but the results were spectacular. It encouraged the construction of relatively unbroken rows of buildings like the Cushman Row, forming vast, almost martial walls of brick and stone on street after street. New Yorkers in this era may have been paying lip service to Greek values but their ambitions were Roman-size. (And yet — especially after 170 years of individuation — each Row member looks so homey.)

1832Daniel LeRoy HouseArchitect: UnknownLocation: 20 St. Marks Place The website for the Old Merchant’s House, built the same year as this, quotes a New York Times article calling it “the best preserved” Federal townhouse in Manhattan. It’s hard to argue: the interiors and exteriors are almost intact thanks to an eccentric owner who just couldn’t let go. But the Daniel LeRoy house, a nearby contemporary, is my 1832 entry because I think you’re more likely to know it. If you read this, you’re probably part of a circle of music nerds, and if you’re also a New Yorker, you’ve also stopped in the St. Mark’s Sounds record store at least once or twice, as I have. What stays with me above and beyond everything else was the bright summer day I came here looking for a copy of the Wedding Present’s Bizarro. I remember it with a psychedelic glow consonant with the music I love from the time, 1992 specifically, all the dancey raveys and My Bloody Valentines. Plus CDs in longboxes. The dumb album cards that decorated the walls and windows. The bag check. I’ve gone there only once or twice since. But now that 99X is gone, I get my Doc Martens from Trash & Vaudeville, which is also housed in an identical building from 1832. Both of them (and a few others) are the remaining members of a block-wide row, each one of them owning those fancy rainbow-ribbon entrances and lintels with the faintly quizzical pediment common to late Federal style buildings. Townhouse details in this era project from buildings, rather than stay flush. They break the visual monotony you’d otherwise get from a row of similar buildings. They also let the rich show off. St. Mark’s was fashionable when it was built: Daniel LeRoy was married to Susan Fish, one of the Stuyvesants. (THEM AGAIN.) James Fenimore Cooper, one of America’s first great novelists, also lived where Kim’s Video once stood. Now Kim’s…Kim’s I miss.
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1832
Daniel LeRoy House

Architect: Unknown
Location: 20 St. Marks Place

The website for the Old Merchant’s House, built the same year as this, quotes a New York Times article calling it “the best preserved” Federal townhouse in Manhattan. It’s hard to argue: the interiors and exteriors are almost intact thanks to an eccentric owner who just couldn’t let go. But the Daniel LeRoy house, a nearby contemporary, is my 1832 entry because I think you’re more likely to know it.

If you read this, you’re probably part of a circle of music nerds, and if you’re also a New Yorker, you’ve also stopped in the St. Mark’s Sounds record store at least once or twice, as I have. What stays with me above and beyond everything else was the bright summer day I came here looking for a copy of the Wedding Present’s Bizarro. I remember it with a psychedelic glow consonant with the music I love from the time, 1992 specifically, all the dancey raveys and My Bloody Valentines. Plus CDs in longboxes. The dumb album cards that decorated the walls and windows. The bag check.

I’ve gone there only once or twice since. But now that 99X is gone, I get my Doc Martens from Trash & Vaudeville, which is also housed in an identical building from 1832. Both of them (and a few others) are the remaining members of a block-wide row, each one of them owning those fancy rainbow-ribbon entrances and lintels with the faintly quizzical pediment common to late Federal style buildings. Townhouse details in this era project from buildings, rather than stay flush. They break the visual monotony you’d otherwise get from a row of similar buildings. They also let the rich show off.

St. Mark’s was fashionable when it was built: Daniel LeRoy was married to Susan Fish, one of the Stuyvesants. (THEM AGAIN.) James Fenimore Cooper, one of America’s first great novelists, also lived where Kim’s Video once stood. Now Kim’s…Kim’s I miss.

181983-85 Sullivan StreetArchitect: UnknownLocation: 83-85 Sullivan Street Just a doorway. A reasonably intact Federal-style entrance is a rarity within a rarity. When the neighborhoods changed and the buildings went from residential to commercial uses, ground floors that once communicated hospitality towards one’s peers (and one’s peers alone) were accordingly altered to maximize foot-traffic and window-shopping for the greater public. Charles Lockwood’s Bricks and Brownstone says: “The usual Federal style doorway had a delicately leaded rectangular toplight and, often, leaded sidelights. The single wooden door had six or eight deeply set planels, often edged with a delicate egg-and-dart pattern or beading, and brass or silver doorknob and knocker.” 83 has no sidelights (these would be thin panes of glass to the side of the door), edge detailing, or a knocker, but still, pretty typical for the time. We’ll compare this to the more ornate Late Federal and Greek Revival doorways in later entries. Anyway, it’s good to know they finally removed the wreath.
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1819
83-85 Sullivan Street

Architect: Unknown
Location: 83-85 Sullivan Street

Just a doorway. A reasonably intact Federal-style entrance is a rarity within a rarity. When the neighborhoods changed and the buildings went from residential to commercial uses, ground floors that once communicated hospitality towards one’s peers (and one’s peers alone) were accordingly altered to maximize foot-traffic and window-shopping for the greater public.

Charles Lockwood’s Bricks and Brownstone says: “The usual Federal style doorway had a delicately leaded rectangular toplight and, often, leaded sidelights. The single wooden door had six or eight deeply set planels, often edged with a delicate egg-and-dart pattern or beading, and brass or silver doorknob and knocker.” 83 has no sidelights (these would be thin panes of glass to the side of the door), edge detailing, or a knocker, but still, pretty typical for the time. We’ll compare this to the more ornate Late Federal and Greek Revival doorways in later entries.

Anyway, it’s good to know they finally removed the wreath.