By 1845, when carpenter Patrick Cogan began construction on
the handsome three-story house at No. 193 Waverley Place, the building boom in
Greenwich Village had been ongoing for two decades. Cogan’s brick-faced house would take two
years to complete; but the results were worth the long wait.
Sitting on a high brownstone base, it was designed in the
highly popular Greek Revival style. The architect
worked with the somewhat narrow dimensions of the lot, resulting in the floor-to-ceiling
parlor windows being charmingly narrow.
Fine ironwork ran down the brownstone stoop and around the areaway.
As attractive as it was, the house was not intended for
wealthy residents. By 1859 Rose McMahon
lived here, listing her occupation in Trow’s New York City Directory as “washing.”
And by the 1880s it appears No. 193 was operated as a
boarding house, with a list of residents that continued to be heavily Irish. On November 4, 1883 83-year old Martha
McFarland died in the house, her funeral being held in the parlor two days
later. Sadia E. Baird was living here at
the time. The unmarried woman was a
teacher in the Girls’ Department of Grammar School No. 38 at No. 8 Clarke
Street. In 1884 she graduated from the Chautauqua
School of Church Work. Sadia’s interest
in the Chautaqua School may have been sparked by another boarder, Libbie I.
McLean. She, too, was a graduate and
served on the school's Sunday-School Parliament with Sadia.
It was about this time that the house received a little cosmetic
modernization. New double entrance doors
in the Queen Anne style were introduced, and the simple stone lintels were
updated with sheetmetal versions that were a bit more dimensional.
 |
| The entrance doors and pressed metal lintels were touches of 1880s updating. |
Amelia Mendez lived here at least from 1894 to 1898; and on
July 15, 1899 Daniel T. Edwards received his temporary license to teach on
Staten Island. Edwards was a graduate of
New York University and had already been teaching in New York for two years.
On Monday morning, September 17, 1906, Mary Farrell walked
out of No. 193 Waverly Place, headed to pray at the nearby St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church on Sixth Avenue. As she knelt in
prayer there, 19-year old “Tony” Adamos slipped into the pew behind her. Later that afternoon The Evening Telegram
reported, “She saw a hand steal over the back of the seat and grab her purse.”
As the boy ran out of the church, an usher chased after
him. Pedestrians heard his cry “Stop,
thief!” and according to the newspaper he was “joined in the chase by half a
score of passersby.” The petty thief
was captured by Policeman Leahy, who also recovered Mary’s pocketbook. Adamos’ irreverent crime landed him in jail,
held at a staggering $500 bail awaiting examination—nearly $13,500 today.
The house reflected the varied influx of immigrants at the
time. Greenwich Village filled with
Italians as well as the Irish. In 1912
75-year old Elizabeth Bell Operti died here.
Her obituary noted that she was the “widow of the late Signor E. Operti.”
In 1946 Fannie B. Davidson sold No. 193 to Jasper Earl
Weatherford. But a decade later it would
have a much more celebrated owner. In
1955 it was purchased by Dr. Rhoda Bubendey Metraux, the highly-regarded anthropologist
and, by now, the partner of Margaret Mead.
The two renowned anthropologists shared the house until 1966,
when they moved into an apartment on Central Park West. Living here with them was Rhoda’s son and
Margaret’s godson, Daniel. Both women
wrote extensively, of course, sometimes co-authoring books and articles.
Among the works published while she lived on Waverly Place
were Mead’s People and Places, The Golden
Age of American Anthropology, and Anthropologists
and What They Do.
As Metraux and Mead prepared to move uptown after 11 years here;
they planned a good-bye party for the house. According to Margaret Caffrey’s To Cherish the Life of the World: The
Selected Letters of Margaret Mead, they sent out invitations that read:
Rhoda
Metraux and Margaret Mead
Invite
you to a
HOUSE
COOLING
At 193
Waverly Place, June 11, at 8
The quaint Greek Revival structure continued to escape conversion
to apartments. It became home to Rev.
H. Karl Lutge, a priest on staff at the Episcopal Church of the Crucifixion in
Harlem, and his wife Sarah T. Dickson Lutge.
Sarah had taught English at Brooklyn College and Smith and Wellesley.
No. 193 received its cinematic debut in 1982 when it was used for the
exterior shots of the house where character Ivan Travalian lived in the motion
picture Author! Author!
 |
| Actor Al Pacino climbs the steps to the house in the 1982 movie Author! Author! -- http://onthesetofnewyork.com/authorauthor.html |
Still a private home, Patrick Cogan’s fine example of middle-class residential
design in the 1840s is a delightful survivor.
non-credited photographs taken by the author
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