Monday, December 6, 2021 – FRAGILE BEAUTY OF THESE STRUCTURES REMAIN VISIONS OF HOMES PAST

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

WEEKEND,  DECEMBER 4-5, 2021

THE  537th EDITION

THE OLDEST 

WOODEN HOUSES

FROM: UNTAPPED NEW YORK

Morris-Jumel Mansion

In a city built of glass, brick and stone, wooden houses are hard to spot in Manhattan these days. That said, some wooden houses have survived throughout the years from the 18th and 19th centuries. These houses were built back when the city was mainly farmland. When the city became industrialized, these wooden houses were deemed hazardous and new construction in wood was outlawed in 1866 on the island of Manhattan with the “fire limit” law of 1866. Thus, the few that remain in New York City today are extremely rare. Here are the ten of the most remarkable, charming wooden homes ordered from oldest to youngest that you can still spot in Manhattan:

Dyckman Farmhouse (~1785)

The only remaining Dutch Colonial style farmhouse in Manhattan is the Dyckman Farmhouse. The farmhouse was built around 1785 and originally stood on a 250-acre farm. Now, the farmhouse stands in a small park in the Inwood neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, and the farmhouse serves as a museum that tells the tales of the farmhouses’ residents and rural living.

In the 1660s, Jan Dyckman established a farm near the northern tip of Manhattan that was destroyed during the Revolutionary War. As a result, William Dyckman (Jan’s grandson) replanted the land and built the Dyckman Farmhouse around 1784. Three generations of the Dyckman family lived in this small home, but in 1868 the character of the neighborhood changed from rural to urban and the farmhouse became dilapidated.

Alice Dyckman Dean and Fannie Fredericka Dyckman Welch—the daughters of the last Dyckman to grow up in the house—saved the house from total disrepair in 1915. These women worked to restore the house by furnishing the interiors and landscaping the property. They preserved the historical farmhouse as a museum to showcase New York’s Dutch heritage. This past weekend, Untapped Cities Insiders were treated to a tour of the inside of the house.

The Dyckman Farmhouse is located at 4881 Broadway, New York, NY, 10034. 
 

Bridge Cafe (1792)

Completed in 1792, Bridge Cafe is the oldest surviving tavern and one of the oldest buildings in Manhattan. The building has contained in the past a porter house, a beer-serving grocer, and a brothel on an upper floor.

Located near the marina at 279 Water Street in the South Street Seaport area of Manhattan, the establishment attracted pirates and sailors who often hung out in the brothel drinking beer and whiskey. Besides serving great drinks, Bridge Cafe has gourmet food. In the 19thcentury, the building was described as a grocery, a porterhouse, or a liquor establishment and is one of New York City’s oldest historic taverns. But, beware if you visit this vintage bar, it may be haunted!

The Bridge Cafe is located at 279 Water Street, 11201

Hamilton Grange (1802)

In 1802, Alexander Hamilton’s two-story home—named the Grange—was built. “The Grange”  takes its name from Hamilton’s grandfather’s estate located in Ayrshire, Scotland. Hamilton commissioned McComb Jr. to build this 32-acre estate that sat on a hilltop, allowing  for views of both the Hudson and Harlem Rivers. This historic house is built in the Federalist-style, as seen from its large windows and long piazzas on each side of the house.

The Hamilton house required 14.5 million dollars of renovation and has relocated two times. In 1889 the house moved to Convent Avenue at 141stStreet where is was used as a place to worship. In 1962 the house became a National Memorial and in 2008, the house was moved to the corner of the north end of St. Nicholas Park. The current location of the estate was part of the original Grange acreage and today free admission and tours of the estate are offered. You can go into the house portion of the Grange on tours through Untapped Cities Insiders as well.

The Hamilton Grange is located at 414 W 141st St, New York, NY 10031.

Charles Street Farmhouse (~1810)
 

This isolated, peaceful, and secretive farmhouse that has survived for over 200 years was originally located in the Upper East Side on York Avenue and 71stStreet. The farmhouse dates back to the 18th or early 19th century according to the Greenwich Village Historic District Designation Report, and some sources actually date the house back to 1810.

In 1868 Irish immigrants William Glass and his wife bought the house and used it for dairy and eventually they lived in it. They built a small brick house in house in front of the farmhouse which they used as a tea room and in the 1940s the brick building functioned as a restaurant: Healy’s Dining Room. Furthermore, in the 1940s-1950s the author Margaret Wise Brown rented the house. Brown is the author of the children’s book Mister Dog which shows an illustration of this house and she also the author of Goodnight Moon; thus, the house is sometimes referred to as the “Goodnight Moon House.”

The Glasses sold the farmhouse in 1965 to the Archdiocese of New York, but Sven Bernhard (Brown’s ex-fiancé) and his family went to court to save the farmhouse from being demolished to make room for a senior home. The Bernhard’s were successfully at saving the property but this came with the price of relocating the farmhouse because the senior home was being built regardless. Therefore, the farmhouse was moved to 121 Charles Street in Greenwich Village on March 5th 1967. In 1988 Suri Bieler and Eliot Brodsky purchased the farmhouse from the Bernhards.

The Charles Street Farmhouse is located at 121 Charles Street, 10014.

The Grove Street Home (1822)

In the market for a wooden house in Manhattan? Well you are in luck because a rare 200 year old wooden house at 17 Grove St. in West Village with classic clapboard siding is for sale for a soaring price of 12 million dollars.

The carpenter William Hyde built much of this three story home. The first two floors of the property were built in 1822 and the third floor was built in 1870. Additionally this home comes with a two story guest home with a separate address: 100 Bedford St.  One of the unique features of this home is the trapdoor that could have functioned as a holding space of a tunnel to hide people escaping slavery as part of the Underground Railroad.

The Grove Street Home is located at 17 Grove Street, 10014.

Rose Hill House (~1837)

In 1747, John Watts bought the Rose Hill House as part of a land purchase, and he developed the property to include a main house, additional houses, outbuildings, orchards, and gardens. The estate took on the name Rose Hill Farm after the property Watts owned in Scotland.

Watts, however, was exiled from New York in 1811 because of his loyalty to England during the American Revolution. The main house on this lot was burned to make room for individual lots. In the 1900s the house served as a junk shop with apartments above it. In 1979 the house was converted to a three-story bedroom apartment.

Today, the original framing and roof are left intact and date the house back to the 1790s. Interestingly, the house is located at 203 East 29thStreet and appears to look as if it is floating in mid air amongst New York’s brick buildings!

412 East 85th St. Wooden Home (~1860)

Located in Upper Manhattan is a rare surviving three story Italianate style wooden house of the pastoral era in Yorkville. It has a raised brick basement, a three-bay façade clad in capboard siding, a porch with a tall stoop, floor-length parlor windows, and a bracketed cornice. This home was built around 1860 just before Manhattan’s “fire limit” law in 1866. This law was extended north to 86thStreet and consequently this house is one of the last wood houses in the Upper East Side. When built, this neighborhood was a wealthy rural area and became the home of many German immigrants during the late 19thcentury.

For 50 years, John Herbst and his family lived in this house and they ran a monument shop there. Despite having many owners, the house always maintained its character. Currently the owners Catherine and Alfredo De Vido restored the house to maintain its history and is actually considered a landmark.

Twin Wood Houses in Turtle Bay (1866)

Just before the New York City passed a law banning wood houses up to 86thStreet, two wooden frame houses at 312 and 314 East 53rdStreet were built in 1866. Two carpenters decided to build these twin clapboard houses in the French Empire style on the Old Eastern Post roadbed. They include mansard roods, bracketed cornices, and round-hooded dormer windows.

The twin wooden homes have survived in Manhattan via industrial change when factories, tenements, and slaughterhouses were being built and for this these sister homes are breathtaking to see.

Blackwell House

This simple well-proportioned house, built for James Blackwell between 1796 and 1804, is the sole surviving building on Roosevelt Island which dates from the period when the island was still privately held property. The Blackwell family owned and farmed the island from the late 17th century until 1828, when it was sold to the City of New York. Blackwell’s Island, as it was long known, had been inherited by Mary Manningham Blackwell from her stepfather, Captain John Manning.

Captain Manning was granted a “patent” on the island by the British Governor Nicolls in 1668, a fortunate circumstance, since five years later, after mismanaging his command of New York’s Fort James during a Dutch attack, he was tried by court martial and publicly disgraced. Manning moved to his island retreat and evidently found solace there. Reverend Charles Wolley, writing in 1701, tells us that he had often gone to Manning’s Island to visit the Captain, “whose entertainment was commonly a bowl of rum-punch.”

In Dutch times the island was known as Varckens Eylandt, which translates to Hog Island. It was purchased from two Indian chiefs by Governor Wouter van Twiller in 1637 and was already being farmed by 1639 under land grants from the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company. Jan Alteras, Francois Fyn, Jonas Bronck and Laurens Duyts all farmed the island during the mid 17th century. The last of these by 1658, defaulted on his lease. But Duyt’s misconduct was far worse in the respects- he was banished from the province for “selling his wife into immoral slavery and for gross immoralities committed by himself.” Hog Island was confiscated by the British in 1667. During the Revolutionary War the island was occupied by the British and in 1782, when peace negotiations were in progress, American prisoners of war were quartered there.

James and Jacob Blackwell, who had inherited the island from their father Jacob, found themselves in financial straits after the Revolutionary War and attempted to sell the property. In an advertisement of 1784 James was able to boast that his 107 acre island, “was about four miles from the city,” included among other amenities, “two small Dwelling Houses, a Barn, Bake, and Fowl House, a Cyder Mill, a large orchard, stone quarries and running springs.” A buyer could not be found, but by 1796 James Blackwell’s financial condition must have improved since it was about this time that the Blackwell House was built.

With the purchase of Blackwell’s Island by the City, its agricultural use gave way to institutional development, beginning in 1829 with the erection of the penitentiary. The Blackwell House became the residential quarters for various institutional administrators. In the late 19th century the warden of the island’s Almshouse lived here. The house was abandoned during the 20th century and by the late 1960’s was in an advanced state of decay, its only hope for survival being complete restoration. The New York State Urban Development Corporation, as part of its redevelopment program for the island, instituted a survey of existing structures.

On the basis of recommendations made by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, a survey by historian Loring McMillen in 1969, and a report prepared the same year by noted architectural historian Henry Russell Hitchcock, the Blackwell House was assessed worthy of preservation and restoration. The well known New York architect, Giorgio Cavaglieri, was commissioned to evaluate the buildings on the island and which were of special interest with a view to preserving them. In 1973, he carried out a complete and highly sympathetic restoration of Blackwell House.

This unpretentious clapboard farmhouse, built in the vernacular style of the late 18th century, now consists of a two-story main section and a one-story kitchen wing, constructed soon after the completion of the main building. A larger addition at the north, of later date, was razed during restoration and a root cellar entrance was constructed at the northeast corner of the main building. On the east, a spacious one story front porch has been restored and rests on the original stone foundations. A simple wood rail surrounds it, and the wood shingled roof rests elegantly on slim Ionic columns. This facade like that on the west, has two windows at each side of the simple central doorway, and five at the second story, all with six-over-six sash. A delicately scaled dentil course appears beneath the eaves of the gabled roof. Pairs of dormers project from this roof at the east and west. On the the west side, the doorway is sheltered by a simple pedimented portico, an addition in the Greek revival style.

The Blackwell House is one of the few farmhouses in New York dating from the years immediately after the Revolutionary War. Now utilized as a community center, it still rests on its original site, now a handsomely landscaped setting , which preserves much of the proper scale and relationship of the building to its surroundings.

WEEKEND PHOTO

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FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

JUDSON MEMORIAL CHURCH

WASHINGTON SQUARE

SOURCES

UNTAPPED NEW YORK

Funding Provided by:
Roosevelt Island Corporation Public Purpose Funds
Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD
Text by Judith Berdy

Edited by Deborah Dorff
ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2020 (C)
PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS

Copyright © 2021 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com