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| The distinctive steep gables gave 102 Bedford its name "Twin Peaks" |
In the spring of 1925 millionaire Otto Kahn had lunch in a most unexpected spot – the tiny wooden tea room named The Little House on Greenwich Village’s Bedford Street. Lunching with him was builder Clifford Reed Daily who lived nearby on Sheridan Square. Daily was pitching a deal.
Behind The Little House sat the venerable three-story townhouse at No. 102 Bedford. A frame building sitting on a brick basement, it had been constructed around 1830 when Greenwich Village was experiencing a population and building boom.
By the turn of the century it had been owned by real estate investor Richard Bogardus who, judging from the fire escape he installed in 1901, rented the property to more than one family. After his death his estate kept the house for some years, managed by Van Vliet & Place, before selling it to “an investor” in 1913.
When Daily met Kahn for lunch, he gave an impassioned plea for financial backing for his “dream” that revolved around the old wooden house next door.
“I am only a dreamer,” he said to the financier, “and this is my dream.”
During the first decades of the 20th Century Greenwich Village was the new Bohemia for artists and poets. Daily envisioned a fanciful structure of angles and half-timbering, of dormers and balconies – a place that could set the imagination free.
“We are being herded into barracks,” he protested, “one the same as the next.” He ranted on that the existing buildings were “unfit for inspiring the minds of creative Villagers.” His dream, he said, was to create in 102 Bedford an “island growing in a desert of mediocrity.”
Daily purchased the house that same year and, with his grand dreams and Otto Kahn’s money in hand, set out on a $14,000 renovation.
A year later it was completed. According to building records there were two “non-housekeeping” apartments per floor – a total of ten which rented for $68.50 a month. The house was now five stories tall, slathered in stucco, with two steep gables. Tiny dormers and pseudo-balconies projected from the medieval-looking structure creating what the AIA Guide to New York City would later call “pure Hansel and Gretel.”
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| The little clapboard building where Otto Kahn met with Clifford Reed Daily sits in the shadow of the darkly painted Twin Peaks in 1940 -- photo NYPL Collection |
Clifford Daily christened his dream house “Twin Peaks.”
Although the National Geographic Traveler contends that “Otto Kahn remodeled the building after one in Nuremberg,” it seems that the whimsical design was more likely based solely in Daily’s imagination.
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| Two years after completion, Twin Peaks looms darkly above the tiny tea room, The Little House. -- photo NYPL Collection |
In a ceremony deemed by The Times to be “novel exercises,” screen actress Mabel Normand christened the house by smashing a bottle of champagne from a platform erected on the roof. Holy water was sprinkled on the building and acorns were burned to honor Pan by the Princess Amelie Troubetskoy, an American writer married to a Russian prince prior the Revolution.
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| Silent screen actress Mabel Normand christened the building from one of the gables. |
The apartments were charming with odd angles and quirky amenities, yet their small size – most only about 20 by 18 feet -- makes questionable the claims that Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Walt Disney lived here.
In the mid 1980s architect Stephen J. Kagel purchased Twin Peaks for $350,000, converting it to co-op apartments. In June 1998 the co-op owners put it back on the market for $2.5 million.
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| The eccentric doorways and interior details mostly remain -- photo cityrealty.com |
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| In the second half of the 20th Century the dark colors were replaced with a less oppressive color scheme -- photo New York University |