What Makes a Historic House Great?

This weekend I visited two historic houses up the Hudson River: Kykuit and Sunnyside.

Kykuit is the Rockefeller estate overlooking the Hudson (“kykuit” is Dutch for “high place”). The house was built in the first decade of the 20th century and expanded over the years. The space houses the family’s amazing art collection – Ming pottery, Wharhols, Calder mobiles, Sargent paintings, and more.

Sunnyside is writer Washington Irving’s “bachelor pad” – which he ended up sharing with his brother and five nieces. It’s designed as a Romantic retreat, full of winding paths and crawling ivy. The house has been restored to how it might have looked towards the end of Irving’s life, in the 1850s. Many of the family’s furnishings are in place.

Both sites are accessible only by guided tour, which of course leads to a comparison of what we do here at the Tenement Museum.

In this case, both tours were informative, but I found myself thinking of what I really love about ours. We rely heavily on storytelling, and we have a goal with our programs: to promote tolerance and historical perspective on a variety of immigrant experiences.

Many historic homes focus solely on preservation and conservation of buildings, grounds, and artifacts. These museums tend to offer object-based tours – you learn about the antiques that the family collected, how the architecture changed over time, which firm landscaped the grounds. For art history lovers, this can be really enjoyable. But for those of us who aim to experience history – how people lived, how world events impacted individuals – we often find something missing.

I think the greatest historic house tours are those that incorporate storytelling and use objects to further our understanding of history. One of my favorites is the Seward House in Auburn, NY. This is the home of William Seward, the secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln most famous for later buying Alaska for the United States (“Seward’s Folly”). He was also New York’s governor and a US senator. We on the Lower East Side remember him as the namesake for our local Seward Park, the first municipal playground in the country. His life and times are incredibly exciting – an assassination attempt, travels around the world, working with the Underground Railroad – and the tour brings all those moments alive for you.

It helps that the house is filled with things that Seward and his family used. Everything there, with the exception of some carpets and curtains, actually belonged to the Sewards. This is so rare for a house museum portraying this era (mid/late 19th century). You can stand in front of his writing desk as a guide describes Seward’s important correspondence back to Washington. You can stand in Seward’s bedroom and hear about the assassin who came up the stairs and stabbed him in that very bed.

It’s an incredibly vivid way to bring history to life and reminds me of the best of the Tenement Museum – looking at a sewing machine and imagining Harris Levine sitting there stitching all those dresses, seeing the dim light in the kitchen and imagining a child bent over a slate practicing Hebrew letters. For us imaginative types, it’s an amazing way to connect to the past.

Have you visited a historic house that you love?

- Posted by Kate

A Trip to the Merchant's House Museum

Most of us who work at the Tenement Museum are, as you might expect, museum geeks. We read the trade papers (such as they are – you go Museum magazine!) and keep an eye on what other institutions are doing. As NYC museum employees, we get free admission to other city museums (an amazing job perk), and we often take staff field trips together.

Tredwell home, circa 1899.
Courtesy MHM.

Recently, we got the chance to see the Merchant’s House Museum, located on East 4th Street between Lafayette and Bowery. This row house, inhabited by Seabury Tredwell and his family from 1832 to 1933, is considered “the best preserved” federal building in New York City, according to the New York Times.

It’s an especially interesting house museum because it contains artwork and furniture that belong to the family. Some of the artifacts include a collection of 12 chairs credited to Duncan Phyfe (a renowned New York-based cabinet maker who also made fine furniture), two matching gas chandeliers (circa 1852), and over 40 dresses and other fashion items that the Tredwell women wore.

Glass chandeliers.
Courtesy MHM

Seabury Tredwell made his money from a hardware importing business on Pearl Street in the first part of the 19th century. Like many other merchants, he and his family lived in fashionable Washington Square, which was less crowded than areas further downtown. Over time, as that neighborhood in turn became busier, the wealthy tended to move north, but the Tredwells stayed.

Our guide Elizabeth couldn’t say for sure why that was. Records show that the Tredwells re-furbished their home in the 1850s and might have been reluctant to leave a property into which they’d just invested a large sum of money. Perhaps they’d planned to retire to their farm in New Jersey and simply never got around to it. In any case, members of the family lived there until the youngest, unmarried Tredwell daughter died in 1933.

Since the Merchant’s House Museum interpretation encompasses roughly the same time period as the Tenement Museum, our sites are complimentary, though very different. While 97 Orchard Street’s residents were working-class laborers, the Tredwell family was quite well to do (for most of Seabury Tredwell’s life, at least). It is estimated that 7,000 people lived at 97 Orchard for its 72 years as a residence, whereas 29 East 4th Street was home to roughly 14 people over a 101-year span, with a single person, Gertrude Tredwell, inhabiting the four-story residence for several decades.

It’s interesting to observe how different the lives of these two buildings’ residents were during the same time period. The Tredwells had a parlor for callers and bells throughout the house for ringing servants. Mr. and Mrs. Tredwell slept in separate bedrooms. 97 Orchard Street’s residents lived in three-room apartments and didn’t even get front door buzzers until sometime after electricity was installed around 1924. Married couples were lucky if they got to share a bedroom – and didn’t also have to share it with several children.

We were curious to hear about the daily lives of the family’s servants, since someone like our own Bridget Meehan probably worked as a domestic servant before marrying Joseph Moore in 1865. She might have spent hours in the basement kitchen, baking in a beehive oven and scrubbing pots before retiring to her fourth-floor bedroom, like the Tredwells’ scullery maids did.

We were very fortunate to be able to visit the building’s top floor, normally off limits to visitors, to see the former maids’ quarters. While the space has abundant light coming from several dormer windows and a large skylight, it’s easy to see how it might have been hot and stuffy in the summer and cold in the winter. And domestic servants rarely got a respite from their work, not even up here – Elizabeth told us that the large, open space in between the four, small bedrooms was used for ironing, mending, and other household chores. The only free time a servant had was typically Thursday evenings. You can imagine why marriage might have seemed a cheerful alternative for many working girls.

Gertrude Tredwell.
Courtesy MHM.

I heartily recommend a visit to all those interested in American social history. Check the calendar and find a day when they’re offering a special program, like a restoration and furnishings plan tour (August 25) or Gertrude Tredwell’s 170th birthday party (September 17). And don’t miss the ghost tours in October!

Admission is $10 for adults and $5 for students and seniors, and they're open Thursday - Monday, 12-5 pm. Click here for more information.

- Posted by Kate

"Apartment Houses of the Metropolis"

A model tenement house. 224-226 Avenue B; Plan of first floor; Plan of upper floors. (1908). Built by Charles I. Weinstein, 1904 / Architect - Geo. F. Pelham. Collection: NYPL.


A model tenement house. 310 East Houston Street; Plan of first floor; Plan of upper floors. Built by Charles I. Weinstein, 1905 / Architect - Geo. F. Pelham. Collection: NYPL.


Two model tenement houses. 504-508 East 12th Street; Plan of first floor; Plan of upper floors. (1908) Built by Charles I. Weinstein, 1905 / Architect - Geo. F. Pelham. Collection: NYPL.

These designs were meant to provide more air and light for residents, ideally making them more sanitary places to live than traditional tenement houses.

More Berenice Abbott on the Lower East Side

A stretch of Grand Street (no.s 511-513), outdated in 1937 when this photo was taken, that, miraculously, still stands.




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How to Research a Building Part 2

Earlier this month, I set off to research the history of random buildings in lower Manhattan, and discovered that 46 East Houston Street, a luxury condo just north of Little Italy, once housed immigrant apartments, a rowdy hotel and theater (known respectively as Scratch Hall and Dramatic Hall), and inventor Nikola Tesla's lab. Two mysteries remained: what did the original building look like? And did the lab and two halls ever coexist?

I headed down to the Municipal Archives office on Chambers Street to search its collection of tax photos - snapshots taken during the Great Depression of every single New York City building - for an image of the structure's exterior.


46 Houston in the 1940s, courtesy of the Municipal Archives

The hardest part wasn't locating 46 Houston in a cabinet full of microfilm; the images are organized by numbers assigned to buildings for tax purposes. Rather, it was threading the film through a malfunctioning scanner and printing out a decent copy. (During one attempt to use the machine, the spool used to secure the film to the scanner broke off.)

Museum staff member Chris Neville pointed me to a resource he used back in his days as a historic preservation consultant: the New York Public Library's online collection of postcard-sized photos of streetscapes, which turned up a high-quality image of the original 46 Houston (also known as 300 Mulberry Street). I also found an 1868 illustration of the building, which apparently housed a police station at the time, infamous for handling criminals ranging from Boss Tweed to an Italian woman who murdered her lover.


A 1913 photograph and 1868 illustration, courtesy of the NY Public Library

A trip to the library's 5th Avenue branch helped me solve mystery number two. I typed Dramatic Hall into a database of 19th century newspapers, and the headline of a 1894 Daily Tribune article popped up: "Dramatic Hall Torn Down." On a microfilm scanner down the hall (luckily, nothing broke this time), I scrolled through the May 1st issue and found the article on the last page, in a section of paragraph-long news briefs about the openings and closings of various New York City businesses. I wasn't able to print a copy, so I retyped it here (look out for some rather amusing descriptions of the building, like "nightly abode of an army of tramps" and a "breeding ground for disease").

Workmen yesterday began to tear down the four story building on the north side of Houston Street midway between Mulberry and Mott Streets, which was a well-known place of amusement in war times when the next block in Houston Street was known as "murderer's row." The building was called "Dramatic Hall' for 20 years after the war, although it degenerated to a dance hall with a bar-room on the first floor, and regular theatrical performances disappeared from the place forever. Several years ago, it was turned into a cheap lodging house and became the nightly abode of an army of tramps, fairly earning the significant name of "Scratch Hall." It became such a breeding place for disease that the Health Board revoked its license. In late years it had been occupied as a furniture warehouse. A seven-story business structure is to be erected on the site of the old building.

Tesla moved his lab into the top floor new building in 1896 (it would be interesting to find out what businesses occupied the other floors) - and it wasn't until nearly a century later that it was replaced with a luxury building. I browsed an interactive map of Manhattan for more details on the current building's status. Constructed in 1986, it's 12 stories high, about 86,746 square feet, and owned by the development firm Columbia 298 Mulberry.

So what next? A friend requested that I look into her apartment building on Avenue B, an ornate red-brick tenement that looked identical back in the 1940's (it was built in 1900), save the laundromat now on the ground floor. What caught my eye in the Great Depression tax photo was the building next door: an elegant structure reminiscent of a synagogue. I couldn't recall seeing it last time I was in the neighborhood, so a friend and I took a stroll over to Alphabet City one afternoon to check it out. In the mystery building's place (or perhaps near it - there's an empty lot next to the tenement) sat a drab 6-story nursing home built in the 1980s.


60 Avenue B, today and in the 1940s, when it stood next to a stunning temple-like building, now an empty lot or perhaps replaced with the Cabrini Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation; it's hard to tell from the pictures.

Speaking of temples, my friend Madhavi told me, there's a Hindu one near 7th Street and Avenue B. She'd worshiped there a couple times, and was curious about its history. We headed up a couple blocks to 96 Avenue B, a rundown gray-brick building just steps from Tompkins Square Park.

A sari-clad woman with an Eastern European accent greeted us in the entryway of a two-room space cluttered with statues of deities, some strung with brightly colored garlands. In the back room, wood carving of religious scenes covered almost every inch of the walls. According to the temple's website, extensive renovations were conducted on the "simple East Village space" before it opened in 2003. ( It claims to be the first Hindu temple in New York City, but there are much older ones in Queens, like the 30-year-old Ganesha Temple in Flushing that recently underwent renovations.)

About a decade ago, 96 Avenue B housed a vintage clothing store, Metropolis, dubbed the city's "best and cheapest" by the New York Times. It was one of several outposts of hipster culture in the neighborhood, including a tattoo parlor and a leather goods shop.

For at least part of the 19th century, the building was a three story tenement with a "cloak and suit establishment" on the ground floor. The landlady, an elderly woman named Mrs. Louis Thielmann, was hosting her daughter and two young grandchildren in her top story apartment when a fire broke out, prompting a dramatic rescue by a fireman that happened to be across the street.

Once safely outside, according to an 1888 New York Times article describing the incident, both the landlady and her daughter bestowed kisses of gratitude on the fireman.


A two-story building at 96 Avenue B houses the Radhe-Shyam Temple. During the Great Depression, it was a tenement house.

Coming up next: the history of a tenement on Second Avenue once home to a restaurant and a handful of interesting residents. And hopefully, some answers about the mystery building that once sat near my friend's apartment building on the corner of 5th Street and Avenue B.

-Liana Grey

Business Senselessness

Canal Street’s Jarmulowsky Bank building is a stop on the Museum’s new walking tour, Immigrant Soles. Here's a short history.



In 1873 prominent philanthropist and Russian immigrant Sender Jarmulowsky founded a bank on the Lower East Side. Through his astute business sense and community connections the bank grew, and in 1912 Jarmulowsky erected a structure at Orchard and Canal Streets magnificent enough for his successful company.

Unfortunately, Jarmulowsky died less than a month after the building was completed. Even more unfortunately, his bank failed only two years later, leaving thousands of its depositors penniless. Jarmulowsky himself had little to do with the bank's downfall. His seemingly risky business practices - granting loans to clients based on personality rather than financial standing - proved successful.

It was two of Jarmulowsky's sons who caused trouble, making bad real estate investments and mismanaging the institution they had inherited from their father. As World War I raged in Europe, crowds of Lower East Siders rushed to withdraw money for family across the Atlantic. Having squandered the bank’s funds, the Jarmulovskys couldn’t make good on their clients’ deposits.

Two thousand people demonstrated in front of the bank. Five hundred people stormed the house where son Meyer lived, forcing him and his family to flee over the rooftops. Shortly after the State took over the bank in May 1917, the Jarmulowsky sons were indicted for banking fraud and the bank closed. The building, however, still remains.

Over the Rooftops

Below is a 1914 NY Times article chronicling Meyer Jarmulowsky's escape from a mob of angry depositors. A brief summary: crowds gathered around the banker's home on Fort Washington Avenue, demanding their money. Fearing for his safety, Jarmulowsky scampered from his rooftop onto a neighboring apartment house, descended into the building's basement, and dashed across the street into a waiting cab, narrowly avoiding capture by the protestors.

Click to enlarge



Family Drama

Sender Jarmulowsky's descendants (at least those that made it into the NY Times' extensive archive on the family) were as prone to scandal as their ancestor was widly successful. Not only were sons Albert and Meyer indicted for fraud after forcing their father's bank to close, but a third son was sent to Bellevue's psych ward. And then there was a grandson who was jailed for stealing $1,625 from a jewelery store manager, and (perhaps the strangest of all) a granddaughter, Bertha Clark, whose elopement to a linen salesman in 1911 dragged her family into a messy lawsuit. When the couple was kept apart for 17 days by Clark's furious parents, the groom demanded $100,000 in retributions.

Questions for Curatorial - Short But Sweet

There was quite a bit of buzz last year about rezoning plans that would impose height restrictions on new construction in an 111-block radius of the Lower East Side. This was hardly the first effort to limit vertical growth in the neighborhood. Curatorial Director Dave explains.

Were there ever height regulations placed on buildings in New York City, especially tenements on the Lower East Side?

Height regulations were first placed on buildings in New York City by the 1916 Zoning Resolution. As the first comprehensive effort at regulating the height, area, and use of structures built in an urban environment, the resolution proved influential to other U.S. cities that enacted zoning legislation after 1916.

While the 1916 Zoning Regulation was in a sense formulated as a reaction to the ways in which a new building form, the “skyscraper,” blocked sunlight to the surrounding streets (resulting in the setback, pyramid-style designs typical of New York City high-rises) it applied to the entire city. Neighborhoods such as the Lower East Side were divided into height districts where limitations were formulated in relation to the width of the street. The Lower East Side was deemed a 1½ times district, meaning that no building was to be erected to a height in excess of 1½ times the width of the street. However, for each foot that the building or a portion of it was set back from the street line, three feet could be added to the height limit of the structure.

Although many of the tenements on the Lower East Side were erected prior to 1916, the height of those constructed after were subject to the limitations imposed by the 1916 Zoning Resolution.

Building height hasn't changed much in parts of the Lower East Side since the turn of the last century...



...although more of these have certainly sprung up over the last few years