When Jacob LeRoy moved into the new 22-foot-wide brick house at 19 West Washington Place (renumbered 80 Washington Place in 1881), the Washington Square neighborhood was rapidly developing into one of the most exclusive residential enclaves in Manhattan.
LeRoy was leasing the house from builder William W. Berwick. It was one of two identical houses Berwick erected in 1838 (he moved into the other one), and its Greek Revival design was the latest word in domestic taste. Three stories tall above a brownstone English basement, its stone stoop led to a double-doored entrance flanked by heavy brownstone pilasters that upheld an entablature and cornice.
Born in 1758, LeRoy was appointed Consul-General for Holland in 1786. Two decades later, he founded LeRoy, Bayard & Co. with his brother-in-law, William Bayard. It became the largest international trading firm in New York. He was, as well, a director in the Bank of the United States and president of the Bank of New York. Jacob married Hannah Cornell in 1786. The couple had 10 children who lived to adulthood. Their country home was in Pelham, New York, and Herman LeRoy owned massive amounts of land in western New York.
Hannah Cornell LeRoy had died in 1818, two decades before LeRoy purchased the Washington Place house. Living with him here were at least two of his children--his unmarried daughter Mary, who was 38 at the time; and Herman Jr., his wife, Juliet, and their two children, Herman Cornell and Anson Van Horne.
Herman LeRoy Sr. died in 1841 and by 1845, his family had moved to 25 Washington Place. William Berwick now leased 19 West Washington Place to George H. Moore, the head of the silkgoods firm George H. Moore & Co. In 1849, William D. Greene, who worked in the tax receiving department in the new City Hall, leased the house, and in 1856, the year William Berwick died, Mary Harvey lived here with her son, Robert H. J. Harvey. Mary was the widow of Robert J. Harvey, and her son was in the express business at 72 Broadway.
By the early 1870s, 19 West Washington Place was being operated as a high-end boarding house. It seems to have been a favorite of well-heeled young men attending Columbia College. In 1871, student Frederick Aycrigg Pell, who lived in Passaic, New Jersey, boarded here; and the following year The College Courant reported, "John W. Andrews, recently returned from abroad and is in the Columbia Law School. Address 19 W. Washington Place, N. Y."
A Miss Erskin ran the boarding house by the late 1880s. Her tenants in 1890 included Augustus W. B. Garrison, who arcanely listed his profession as "piano."
On April 15, 1895, The World published an extensive article on the Beef Trust--a group of meat packing companies that had formed an alliance to control prices. The headline read, "Boarders Suffer Next / Another Turn of the Beef Trust Screw Will Raise Rates of Boarding-Houses." The journalist had interviewed several boarding house proprietors, including Miss Erskin. She said the "only hope was in an aroused public sentiment against the beef combine."
Among the boarders here in the first years of the 20th century was editor Edith Lewis. Beginning in 1908, fledgling author and Willa Cather began sharing Lewis's rooms. David Porter, in his 2015 "Historical Essay" addendum to Cather's Lucy Gayheart writes, "After Cather returned to New York in 1908 and began living with Edith Lewis at 80 Washington Place, Lewis wrote, 'we went often to the opera, sitting high up, in the cheap seats.'" Cather would win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1923 for One of Ours. The two women would live together for nearly four decades, until Cather's death in 1947.
Edith Lewis and Willa Cather typified the erudite boarders at 80 Washington Place. In 1916, John Horace Mariano lived here (and would remain at least until 1921). A graduate of Columbia University, he was the Assistant Director of Community Service and Research at New York University. He was, as well, a member of the American Sociological Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Also living here in 1917 was philosopher Clifford W. Cheasley, and the following year two New York University students, Bruce Ford Bundy and Claire Elain Foster rented rooms.
On December 7, 1912, The Sun had published a succinct article saying that Helen Sousa, daughter of bandleader John Philip Sousa, and Hamilton Abert had taken out a marriage license. "The wedding will be at St. Thomas's Church on December 17," it said. Five years later, on July 5, 1919, the Record & Guide reported,
Lieutenant John Philip Sousa, U. S. N. bandmaster, has joined the colony in the Greenwich Village section. Lieutenant Sousa, who is soon to reassemble his band for concert work, is to live on Washington pl. about half a block west of Washington sq. He signed a contract for the purchase of the 3-sty house at 80 Washington pl, and his plans are to alter it into a fine home with a passenger elevator in it.
If, indeed, Sousa and his wife Jane actually had ever intended to remodel 80 Washington Street for their own home, they quickly changed their minds. On August 27, Sousa transferred title to Hamilton Abert for $100.
Abert hired architect Charles Volz in October to remodel the house to apartments. The stoop was removed and the entrance (including the Greek Revival enframement) were lowered to the English basement level, a few steps below the sidewalk. A fourth story was added with a large studio window. In place of a cornice, Volz gave the building a brick parapet with a projecting canopy.
image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
The renovations were completed in January 1920. An ad offered two rooms with bath and kitchenette and boasted, "Electric light, steam heat, elevator; everything absolutely modern. Up to date plumbing, built-in tub." Rents ranged from $900 to $1,500 per year--about $1,900 a month today for the most expensive.
Hamilton and Helen Sousa Abert lived in the building in what was assuredly larger than a two-room suite. Born in 1885, Hamilton had prepared for college at St. Paul's in Concord, New Hampshire and graduated from Yale in 1906. He was a stockbroker and secretary of the Manhattan Rubber Mfg. Co.
In May 1920, the Aberts advertised for help. "Cook and chambermaid-waitress, white, to do laundry between them; apartment, two in family. Call Abert." And as they prepared to go to their summer home, they advertised:
Couple, white, useful, butler and chambermaid; 3 in family; Long Island. Call Abert, after 3 Thursday, 80 Washington place, near Washington square.
The mention of a third family member was no doubt a typo. The couple's only child, Hamilton Sousa Albert, was born in 1919 but did not survive infancy.
Among the Aberts' early tenants was Rev. John A. Wade. His name appeared in The Evening World for an act of St. Francis-like compassion on October 7, 1921. The newspaper said, "Some time after midnight, when all the city excepting Greenwich Village was presumably asleep, a band of chilled and travel-worn woodpeckers, weak from hunger, fluttered to the ground in Washington Square." One of them, "wobbled into the air and went foraging." The article said it "must have been a wise bird, or else a lucky one, for he flew into an open window at No. 80 Washington Place."
Rev. Wade was aroused from his sleep, thinking there was a burglar in the room. The weakened bird did not attempt to flee when he turned on the light. "I fed him some cracker crumbs, which he devoured ravenously--or woodpeckerously," recounted the clergyman. "Then I dressed and took him out to the park, where I knew I would find [Police Officer] McCarthy." While the officer kept neighborhood cats away from the birds, Rev. Wade went for a loaf of bread. "We broke it into crumbs and the woodpeckers hurled themselves upon the breakfast like a flock of farmyard chickens," he said. "Gradually they regained their strength and spirts. At dawn they flew away."
At some point following Hamilton Abert's death in 1957, title to 80 Washington Place was transferred to John Philip Sousa, Inc. In 1970, five years before Helen's death, the corporation sold the building to the Cin-Cin Realty Corp.
In 2013, 80 Washington Place was returned to a single family home after a gut renovation by Clodagh Design. Around 2017, it became home to celebrity couple Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott and appeared in a 2023 episode of The Kardashians. In February 2024, it was sold after being listed for just under $20 million.
photographs by the author
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