The Painfully-Charming No. 21 West 11th Street

The delightfully charming house at No. 21 West 11^thStreet started out with less personality.  As the neighborhood experienced rapid development, physician Charles M. Graham commissioned the construction of an ambitious string of ten identical houses—stretching from No. 13 to No. 31.  The brick-clad homes were designed in an amalgamation of the familiar Federal style with the newly popular Greek Revival.

Two-and-a-half stories tall, their unassuming stone lintels and sills and modest proportions reflected the status of the merchant class families for whom they were intended.  As the block (and architectural styles) changed; so did the little house at No. 21.

At one point the dormered attic was raised to a full third floor.  A close inspection reveals the change from Flemish bond to running bond brickwork at the addition (the house next door, at No. 23, received the same alteration apparently simultaneously).   Then, sometime after the Civil War ended, the house received a flashy makeover.

The French Second Empire movement had swept Paris in the 1850s and 60s and now it arrived at No. 21 West 11^th Street.  The somber openings with their flat brownstone trim were changed to segmental-arched windows with ornate, pressed lintels and bracketed sills.   A fourth floor was added in the form of a highly-fashionable slate-tiled mansard roof and the Greek Revival doorway was modernized with paneled pilasters and an extremely elaborate cornice.

At the turn of the last century it was home to Dr. John F. Russell.   He was not only a well-known physician, but Vice President and Director of the Standard Emulsion Company.    Russell came from the Richardson family on his mother’s side; one of the original Puritan families in New England.  His uncle, William Adams Richardson, served as Secretary of the Treasury under President Ulysses S. Grant.

Dr. Russell made a name for himself in his unorthodox treatment of tuberculosis.  The disease was a scourge of crowded cities in the early 20^th century and Russell developed a homeopathic attack.  The New York Times noted in 1905 that he “has individual methods of treating tuberculosis and…has been particularly successful in curing the disease.  His treatment is a matter entirely of nutrition, and his effort is to cure patients in their own homes.”

The Russells had brought the doctor’s aging mother from Portsmouth, New Hampshire to live with them on West 11^thStreet.  Here, on January 20, 1906, the 91-year old Louise R. Russell died.

Within a few years boarders were being taken in at No. 21 West 11^th Street.  Among them was a private secretary, Alice Johnson, and the disarmingly handsome John Townsend Miller.  

Miller was 22 years old in 1911 and described by The New York Times as “a dapper youth.”  He was the son of John Francis Miller, former secretary of the Equitable Fire Insurance Company and grandson of John Miller, the former president of that firm.   The boy was sent off to Amherst College where he had joined a fraternity, Beta Theta Phi.   But on a visit to New York City, Miller was overtaken by the fast life and good times.

“I got the Broadway fever,” he later admitted, “I hit up a good pace and didn’t seem able to slow down.”  Miller funded his whirlwind of chorus girls and good times with money “from my mother, who had an independent fortune, I received a generous allowance up to a short time ago, when she heard of the gay times I was having and cut me off.”

After the boy pawned his expensive jewelry, piece by piece, he used his good looks to acquire other pawnable items.  “That was the beginning of my trouble,” he told police later.  “Mine all went after a while, and then I pawned a few things belonging to other folks.  It was very simple after having got the habit with my own stuff.”

One woman after another loaned Miller items of jewelry which he never returned.  His downfall began when he borrowed a gold watch and chain from Alice Johnson, valued at $100, in March 1910.  Unlike the other girls, after asking for her items back for over a year Alice went to the police.

On April 12, 1911 detectives saw Miller near Times Square.  They told reporters “he was unmistakable as he swung up Broadway, appareled in the latest Spring raiment, and carrying himself with a jaunty air,” according to The New York Times.

Miller was compliant and told police “Well, I’m glad it’s all over.”  Detectives reported he told them he was “bored by the attentions which he said a great many chorus girls and some few leading ladies insisted on showing him.”

According to The Sun he was held on $6,000 bail for not only pawning Alice Johnson’s watch and chain; but a $1,500 emerald and diamond ring from Dorothy Posner, daughter of banker Samuel Posner; smaller items from other women; and for numerous bad checks he had cashed.

Corrupt judges could be swayed by wealthy parents and the district attorneys found that a problem in this case.  Although he had pleaded guilty, when Miller’s case came up, Judge Rosalsky tossed it out saying “that Miller was not the notorious criminal persons said he was and that the District Attorney was not justified in asking for four indictments against him,” as reported in The Times on May 5, 1911. 

District Attorney Delehanty then made additional charges and the matter was brought before Judge Mulqueen in General Sessions.  Mulqueen simply transferred the case back to Judge Rosalsky who suspended sentence.

Unfortunately for both judges, their blatant corruption went too far for the press, the public and the system to ignore.   Two weeks later they were both under investigation by the Bar Association.

In 1921 the New-York Tribune reported on the sale of the house by Heloise de Forest Haynes to William B. Hale.  Within four years architect Adolf M. Martin was hired to renovate the structure, still described by the Department of Buildings as a “single family dwelling.”

After purchasing the house in 1933, Dr. Bernard H. Hannon did renovations of his own.  The New York Evening Post noted at the time of the sale that “the house will be occupied by Dr. Bernard H. Hannon as his office and residence.”  He commissioned architect S. Clements Horsley to install a doctor’s office in the basement.  Hannon would practice medicine from here for years.

Dr. Hannon’s name was on the distinguished passenger list of the Santa Paula in August 1940.  Other passengers included Beatrice Gainer, wife of the British Minister to Venezuela; Manual Sanchez, chief director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, and his wife; and Dr. Eduardo Calcano, director of the Venezuela Foreign Ministry.  The diplomats were all headed to New York on a vacation.

While on board Bernard Hannon would cross paths with Charleston, South Carolina residents Dr. and Mrs. Josiah E. Smith and their 17-year old daughter, Sarah.   While still five days away from port, Sara was struck with appendicitis.   Dr. Hannon performed an emergency operation at sea on the girl who, when she was removed to St. Vincent’s Hospital from the ship on August 15, was reportedly “progressing satisfactorily.”

The house became home to newlyweds Herman and Nina Schneider in the 1940s.  Here Nina created a writing room where she created poetry that was published in The Nation and started notes that would become her book “The Woman Who Lived in a Prologue.”    In 1959 the doctor’s office was eliminated, returning the house to a single family residence once again.

The Schneiders wrote educational books like the 1946 “Let’s Find Out a Picture Science Book” and “Quick Science: Science Experiments You Can Do in a Minute,” published in 1987.  In the meantime, Nina’s “The Woman Who Lived in a Prologue” was published in 1982.  It was deemed by Newsweek as “funny and harrowing, tender and tough, difficult, smart, ambitious, and fiercely alive.”

Entertainments in the Schneider house reflected their artistic circle of friends.   Frequent guests were W. H. Auden, Philip Roth, writer Hortense Calisher, abstract artists Linda Lindeberg and Giorgio Cavallon, and Mark Rothko.   Sitting at dinner one might find poet Stanley Moss, Stanley Kunitz, Betty Kray, the director of the Academy of Poets, along with Jules Feiffer, Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss.

The Schneiders left West 11^th Street to move to Martha’s Vineyard in 1980.    He died in 2003 and Nina, at the age of 96, died on September 8, 2007.

Their remarkably quaint house remains a single family residence—a standout on a wonderful grab bag block of architecture and history.

photographs taken by the author

Enrico & Paglieri's -- No. 64 West 11th Street

For seven decades Village patrons were greeted by Josephine Paglieri beyond much less brassy basement doors.

When Wall Street broker James N. Gifford inherited four wide plots of land from his brother, Andrew, the block of West 11^thStreet from fashionable Fifth Avenue to Sixth Avenue was already a mix of architecture.  The modest two-and-a-half story Federal-style brick homes of the 1830s shared the block with handsome Greek Revival houses of the following decade.

Now Gifford would erect four identical speculative residences in the newest trend:  Italianate.  Construction began in 1853 and was completed the following year.   The impressive proportions and details of the homes reflected the upper class purchasers whom Gifford targeted.   Up-to-the-minute arched doorways harbored deeply recessed double doors.  The red brick facades gently contrasted with the brownstone trim.

The somewhat grand homes enjoyed their highly-respectable status for only a few decades before becoming boarding houses—as was the fate of No. 64.  In 1880 Edward J. Ring and his wife arrived in New York from London with a theatrical troupe.    Mrs. Ring was an actress, known on stage as Maud Summerville, and in 1891 the couple was living here.

Another theatrical boarder was musical composer and director Fred W. Zaulig.  His broad background began in France when, as a teen, he fought in the Crimean War.  In 1863 he saw battle in Mexico under Maximilian; then settled in New York where he took up composing.

He was responsible for much of the music for the then-famous Kiralfy Brothers’ epic productions; working with the pair for over a decade.  He died in the house on West 11^thStreet on Saturday morning May 19, 1894.



Fred Zaulig composed music for the Kiralfy Brothers who were famous for their gala musicals -- image from the collection of the Library of Congress

In February 1895 Edward Holland sold the house to John McCabe for the considerable sum of $19,500—almost half a million dollars today.  Annie Chase ran the boarding house at the time and on October 21 she rented a room to “a refined-looking man,” as she described him.  He spent one night in the house and by the time the other boarders arose the next morning he had disappeared.  “So also had everything valuable that could be carried away—in all about $500 worth,” reported The New York Times.

Mrs. Chase was understandably upset—the items stolen would amount to nearly $12,000 in today’s money.  When she looked over the photographs in the Mercer Street Police Station’s rogue’s gallery, she focused on John Ford, alias Botts.  She pointed him out as her lodger turned thief.

Two days later Ford was arrested.  He vehemently denied that he was the culprit and offered to provide an alibi.  Annie Chase, however, “on seeing him, unhesitatingly identified him as the man to whom she had rented a room,” reported The Times.  He was indicted and held in The Tombs on $1000 bail awaiting trial for grand larceny in the first degree.

As Ford sulked behind bars for over a week, detectives Doran and Tinker noticed a man and woman frequenting the west side pawn shops.   Their behavior aroused the suspicions of the cops.  The female would take an item into a pawn shop; then deliver the money and pawn ticket to the man who waited in the shadows of doorways or in halls.

The detectives followed the pair to their residence at No. 336 West 22^nd Street and questioned them.  They claimed they were John G. Smaling and his wife Lena.  Their explanation for the long list of pawned valuables was so fantastic that they were taken into custody and an inventory of the items in their rooms was taken.  Among the pricey goods was a silver hair brush, stolen from the boarding house of Mrs. R. J. Fagan on Seventh Avenue; a silver card case (with calling cards) of architect Stewart Barney which had been stolen along with $600 worth of jewelry; and a clock listed by Annie Chase as missing.

Annie was called back, and after seeing John Smaling, admitted “she had made a mistake in her previous identification, and had testified against the wrong man.”   A much-annoyed John Ford was released after a week behind bars.

After John McCabe’s death his estate sold the house to an investor on January 24, 1907.  Change was about to come to No. 64 West 11^th Street.

By now Greenwich Village had become New York’s own Bohemia—luring artists, musicians, poets and writers.  They brought with them an avante garde lifestyle alien to the staid brick and brownstone homes of a generation earlier.  In 1908 the English basement of No. 64 was converted to an Italian restaurant, Enrico & Paglieri.  Above the entrance a wrought iron balcony was installed with the restaurant’s entwined monogram.

A postcard captured the cozy Edwardian atmosphere of bentwood chairs and trailing vines.

Enrico & Paglieri quickly established itself as a Village favorite; and many of its uptown patrons perhaps did not notice that the quaint atmosphere also drew another clientele: homosexuals.   While Julius’ bar and restaurant not far away at No. 159 West 10^th Street would forever claim the distinction of New York City’s oldest gay meeting spot—gays began drifting in around the 1930s—writers took notice of Enrico & Paglieri as early as 1916.

The beautiful wrought iron balcony railing incorporates the restaurant's initials.

Djuna Barnes, in her “Greenwich Village As It Is,” published that year, frankly addressed the gay culture of the Village.  Saying that “The greater part of New York is soulless as a department store,” she denounced the uptown “slummers” who visited the Village where “women smoke and men make love.”  Nevertheless, she precisely noted the establishments where gays and lesbians gathered.  Without mentioning the restaurant’s name, she printed its address “64 West Eleventh Street.”

The gay patronage of the restaurant was mostly discreet; yet it drew the attention of the notorious “Committee of Fourteen” around the same time as Barnes’ article (and possibly because of it).    The group was formed in 1905 by the New York Anti-Saloon League and originally conducted inspections to distinguish legitimate hotels from saloons, and in the process, root out brothels.   By the end of World War I it was involved in a wider scope of “vices.”

Receiving word that Enrico & Paglieri had “a reputation of being a hangout for perverts,” the Committee sent a female agent under cover to the restaurant.    After one visit she reported on two men who were “extremely effeminate.”   Another trip resulted in her report of “several girls whom I suspected of being this type but they made no definite motions or signs that they were such.” 

The agent was in untested waters.   Covert investigation of this type--expressly conducted to ferret out homosexuality--was new ground and she was frustrated in her attempts.  Eventually she gave up, reporting that there was no conclusive evidence to brand patrons of Enrico & Paglieri “as perverts” and the investigation was discontinued.

Paulo Paglieri and his wife Josephine lived upstairs while running the restaurant.   As other residents came and went, they stayed on.   When Paulo died in 1950, Josephine remained, operating the restaurant for another quarter of a century.    In 1975 Enrico & Paglieri Restaurant finally closed its doors for good after nearly 70 years of business.  The following year Josephine Paglieri died upstairs at the age of 95. 

Her passing coincided with the imminent conversation of the house to apartments—one per floor.  Mrs. Paglieri’s things, accumulated in the apartment over three quarters of a century, were unceremoniously tossed onto the curb.  On February 7, 1976 The New York Times printed a heart-wrenching description of strangers pawing through her life.

“People picked over Josephine Oliengo Paglieri’s belongings Thursday night.  Her books, furniture and clothes were strewn about the sidewalk and street, lying in the snow.”  One man, described by the newspaper as “a young hippie,” stuffed her old books into one of her suitcases—he focused on the leather-bound ones.   A woman gathered some of Mrs. Paglieri’s dresses.  “These are great for old clothes,” she muttered.

When a sanitation truck arrived, the old couple’s furniture crackled loudly as it was crushed.  “The desk fell apart when the sanitationmen tried to pick it up.  A lifetime of personal papers, letters, souvenirs and stationery swirled all over the sidewalk outside the restaurant that Mrs. Paglieri used to own.

“The sanitationmen shoveled and swept, and threw them inside the truck.  But one photograph remained on the street behind the vehicle.  It was a picture of Mrs. Paglieri as a young girl, with her family.”

The journalist watched from a few steps away.  “The driver of the sanitation truck picked it up.  He glanced at it while the desk was splintering under the weight of the garbage machine, and then tossed it inside with the other garbage.  He hopped into the cab and roared off, leaving behind a few papers fluttering in the wind.”

Three quarters of a century of Paglieri history at No. 64 West 11^th Street was over.

The handsome paneled entrance doors, deeply recessed, survive after more than a century and a half.

Another renovation to the house came in 1990 when the second and third floors were divided into two apartments each; and the former restaurant was converted to the foyer and lounge for The New School’s student center.  The walls to the basements of the flanking houses – Nos. 62 and 66—were broken through to create an expansive space for the student body.

The exterior appearance of No. 64, along with its three 1854 sisters, is nearly unaltered above the basement level.  And the ornate iron balcony with the initials E and P survives—a relic of a long-lived restaurant now mostly forgotten.

photographs taken by the author

"An Abandoned Woman" No. 260 W 11th Street

In 1828 John Mildeberger ran a highly successful tallow chandlery business.   He not only crafted candles but was a “soap boiler” as well; another by-product of the rendered animal fats.  The scope of his enterprise was evidenced that year in a court case over payment for a single delivery of soap.  The $638 in dispute would translate to about $16,200 today.  He was also a trustee of the Greenwich Savings Bank at No. 10 Carmine Street.

By now Greenwich Village was experiencing a tremendous building boom and Mildeberger got into the act.  He constructed several investment properties, one of which, No. 260 West 11^th Street, was completed in 1830.   Two and a half stories tall, it complemented the home built next door at No. 262 two years earlier—the handsome Federal style entrances being almost duplicates.  Mildeberger did not scrimp.  In addition to the exquisite doorway, he added high-end Gothic-inspired iron railings with openwork newels.  The newels were topped with pineapples (the symbol of hospitality).  Handsome molded brownstone lintels adorned the openings.   The two stories of Flemish bond red brick sat upon a brownstone basement level.

The handsome Gothic ironwork was a step above the norm.  Note the extras like the twisted supports atop the newels and the scrolled holders of the cast iron pineapples.

Mildeberger’s daughter was married to the politically-involved Mark Spencer, who would go on to become a State Senator.  The wealthy soap and candle-maker’s inflexible religious bias was evidenced in one portion of his will.  He left one-third of his estate to his grandson, “upon the express condition that the said Seymour Herbert Spencer shall renounce the Roman Catholic priesthood.”  The inheritance would commence “at the time of such renunciation; and upon the further condition that the said Seymour Herbert Spencer shall marry.”

Whether Seymour Spencer gave up his religious vocation in exchange for his grandfather’s wealth is unclear.  Mildeberger died in 1871; but in 1838 No. 260 West 11^th Street had become the property of his son-in-law, Mark Spencer.

Louisa A. Bussing was leasing the house from Spencer in 1867, operating it as a boarding house.  An advertisement she placed that year resulted in a knock on the door on Monday May 27.  A man named Drury had brought his niece and hoped to find her a room.   She had recently arrived from Detroit, he explained, and had been staying at the Metropolitan Hotel.  Louisa Bussing deemed the girl to be respectable, and made arrangements for her to move in the following day.

Kate Norton was 19 years old and Louisa described her as “quite lively.”  She made friends with another boarder, Jane Reynolds, and each day her uncle, Mr. Drury, would visit her.  On the Sunday after she moved in, Drury and his wife both came to visit.

What all seemed to be a perfectly normal set of circumstances was anything but.  Drury was by no means the girl's uncle and Kate Norton was deeply troubled.  A simmering combination of Victorian proprieties, jilted affections, lies and deception was about to boil over.

In 1863 the smooth-talking Drury had seduced 15-year old Kate from her home in Chicago.  They lived together in Detroit as husband and wife for four years, all the while Drury promising Kate they would marry.  Then another woman caught his eye.  To Kate’s surprise and shock, he married the woman and moved to New York City where he opened a store.

Ruined and abandoned at the age of 19, with no means of support, Kate’s only option was to follow Drury.   Now, having been at Louisa Bussing’s boarding house more than a week with no change in her prospects; on Thursday June 6 Kate asked her friend Jane Reynolds to go to Drury’s store with her.  The meeting between Kate and Drury did not go well.

Jane stood aside while the two talked.  She said “she appeared to have some difficulty with Mr. Drury there; he went for a policeman, who advised her to leave the store, which she did.”  If Kate Norton needed any more evidence that her relationship with Drury was over; being expelled from his store by a policeman was all it took.

The girls returned to the West 11^th Street house around 1:00.  Jane went to Kate’s room with her.  Kate “partially undressed herself; she was about to lie down when I left the room,” Jane recalled, “she refused to eat any lunch, and asked me if I would come in and sit with her.”

After eating lunch, Jane returned to Kate around 3:30.  “I went to her room and found her lying on the bed in a deep sleep; she looked so strange that I became frightened, and called Mrs. Bussing.  According to Louisa, “I went up directly and saw her lying on the bed; perspiration was pouring down her face, and the blood seemed to be settled under her finger nails; she was also frothing from the mouth; her features twitched, continually, and her breathing was deep and irregular.”

Mrs. Bussing rushed downstairs and sent for a doctor.  He arrived, said that Kate “would recover, but he could not remain.”  Frustrated, Louisa sent for Dr. Newby, who stayed a while.   But by the time he returned later, Kate Norton was dead.  The landlady searched Kate’s pockets and found a bottle of morphine.

Also in her pocket was a note:

Oh, grandmother, do pray that I may be forgiven, for my heart is broke!  It is so hard to be treated as I have been by him I loved so much.  O! Ed., I love everybody and forgive all, and hope to be forgiven.  I cannot live.  I must die.  He does not love me; he hates me.  He had me put out of his store, but I forgive all.  KATE

The teen then added a final thought.  “Pray that I may be forgiven.  Oh! Ed., do not take my cross off my neck-chain.”

The press, moved by Kate’s heartbreaking tale, depicted Drury as a cad.  “Miss Morton had been seduced, as is alleged, by this man, Drury, who subsequently married another woman, and cast off his victim,” said The New York Times.

No. 260 passed to Senator Mark Spencer’s son-in-law, Dr. Samuel Hall, who also dabbled in politics.  Hall ran for Senate in 1857.  The New York Times described Dr. Hall in 1873 as “a gentleman of wealth, leisure and culture.”

In 1872 Hall raised the attic to a full third floor.  Somewhat astonishingly, while the house got an up-to-date Italianate cornice; none of the existing Federal features were removed.  As a matter of fact, the brownstone lintels of the new section were carefully matched to the originals.

The house would see respectable boarders come and go throughout the years.  In 1884 James R. Steele was living here when he lost $25 to con artists Harry Rich and Andrew Levitt.  Detectives said Steel was a victim of “the old trick of advertising for treasurers of theatrical companies, requiring security, and pocketing the amount.”

“Miss Park” was here in 1906.  Possibly the daughter of boarders, she advertised in the New-York Tribune on November 13 “Young woman would read to invalid or child mornings or afternoons; terms very reasonable.”

In 1915 Margaret E. Hall sold what real estate men termed “The Hall corner.”  The Times said it was “one of the best known group of private dwellings in old Greenwich Village.”  For the first time since John Mildeberger erected No. 260 in 1830, it was passing out of the extended family’s ownership.  Included with the 11^th Street house in the deal were five similar houses at Nos. 278 through 284 West Fourth Street, around the corner.

By now Greenwich Village was the center of avante gardeideas, music, poetry and art.  In July 1920 Elizabeth Walton purchased No. 260, announcing she “will remodel it for her own occupancy.”  The unmarried Walton exemplified the forward-thinking nature of the new Greenwich Village population.  She was chairman of the New York Urban League, Inc. for Social Service Among Negroes.  It was a remarkable post considering the times and Walton’s race and sex.

The inherent racism of the first half of the 20^thcentury that Elizabeth Walton struggled to extinguish was evidenced in the opening paragraph of a New York Times article on December 4, 1925.  Elizabeth Walton spoke at a testimonial dinner the evening before; and even in its attempts to be unbiased, the newspaper was border-line offensive to 21^st century readers.

“Algernon B. Frissell, Chairman of the Board of the Fifth Avenue Bank, was honored at a dinner given at the Town Hall Club in West Forty-third Street last evening, when white and negro friends paid tribute to him as a banker and a benefactor of the colored race.”

Following Walton in the house was the well-to-do Horace Andrew Davis and his wife Anna.  The couple moved from Brookline, Massachusetts.  On August 12, 1926 they were back in Massachusetts to witness the wedding of their daughter Esther Fisher Davis to Ralph Wolcott Brown at the summer home of Dr. Hallowell Davis.

Like Elizabeth Walton, Anna N. Davis was a fighter and activist.  She was secretary pro-temp of the War Resisters League in 1928.  The New York Times remarked that she “was interested in social work.”  By 1930 Anna Davis was living in Memphis, Tennessee.

In the 1930s Thomas Augustus Mason and his wife, Julia Wells Mason purchased No. 260 and converted it to two duplex apartments.   Mason had been an educator, teaching at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire and then at Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, before taking the post of secretary of the Thirty-fourth Street-Midtown Association in 1927.  On Valentine’s Day 1937 the 58-year old was stricken with a fatal heart attack in the house.  Julia lived on here until her death in 1941.  When the house was sold by her estate that year it was described as “containing two duplex apartments of five and six rooms.”  The assessed value at the time would be about $300,000 in today’s dollars.

Eleanor Copeland Ripley lived here in 1944 when her 70-year old father, Herbert Lawrence Ripley, died in the house.  He was well-known in the railroad industry, having served as a civil engineer with the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad for years.

No. 260 West 11^th Street came on the market in 2001 for $3.2 million for the first time in almost 40 years.  The Observer noted “the duplex apartments have different styles; the lower one more contemporary, with a brand-new kitchen, and the upper one almost entirely intact from the building’s 1840 [sic] origins.”

The “Harvard educated couple” who bought the house took the upper floors, while renting the lower duplex at $6,000 a month while waiting to restore it.  That would happen four years later when the restoration firm Preserv completed what it described as a “complete rebuilding of the east and south walls, excavation and construction of a 2-story addition, and structural stabilization and rehabilitation.”

The charming house emerged as a single family home—a delightful relic of early Greenwich Village with a sometimes tragic history.

photographs by the author