In the 1880s, architect and developer William J. Merritt erected scores of rowhouses in the Upper West Side and Harlem, nearly all of them in the Queen Anne style. He completed a row of four such homes at 164 to 170 West 130th Street in 1884.
Anchoring the group to the east was 164 West 130th Street. Like its architectural siblings, it was 20-feet wide and three stories tall above an English basement. Its basement and parlor levels were faced in rough-cut brownstone. A dog-legged box stoop let to the entrance. The brick-faced upper floors were dominated by a striking metal oriel, and a shallow slate-shingled mansard was fronted by an offset gable filled with a checkerboard pattern with nubby bosses.
Merritt sold 164 West 130th Street to broker Frank M. Freeman and his wife, Julia B. Freeman. They remained for just over a decade, selling it on October 7, 1890 to George Edwin Marks for $16,000 (around $553,000 in 2024).
An 1879 graduate of Union University, Marks had married Louisa Ridabock in October 1888. When they purchased the house, their daughter Frances Louisa was 10 months old. Another daughter, Anna G., would arrive in 1891; and George Jr. would be born in April 1898.
Marks was a partner with his brother, William L. Marks, in A. A. Marks, the firm founded by their father, Amasa Abraham Marks. The company manufactured prosthetic limbs.
This and other illustrations in William L. Marks's 1888 "A Treatise on Marks' Patent Artificial Limbs" show remarkably advanced designs. (copyright expired)
Not surprisingly, given the trio of children in the household, living with the Marks family in 1902 was Margaret Morgan, a "nursery maid."
Around 1905, Edwin Marks sold 164 West 130th Street to the family of Benjamin Guion Glover. Born in Brooklyn in 1853, Glover married Louise Cromwell in September 1885. The couple had seven children--four daughters and three sons. They ranged in age from Beatrice Louise, who was 19 years old in 1905, to Marion V., who was just four.
The Glovers' second eldest daughter was Florence Elsie, born in 1889. The parlor of the West 130th Street house was the scene of her wedding to Harry Moore Vantine on October 8, 1908. Beatrice, still unmarried, was her maid of honor. Marion, now seven, acted as the flower girl.
Like nearly all well-to-do New Yorkers, the Glovers spent the hot summer months elsewhere. On May 30, 1909, for instance, The New York Times reported, "Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Glover of 164 West 130th Street will also leave town this week for the Summer. They will go to Bogota, N. J."
By the end of World War I, Harlem had become the center of Manhattan's black community. In June 1919, Benjamin Glover sold 164 West 130th Street to Dr. Percy C. Mundin and his wife, the former Eva Estelle Christian.
Mundin was one of a handful of black doctors at the time. He and Erin were married on June 24, 1902, and he graduated from the New York Homeopathic Medical College and Flower Hospital in 1919 (the same year he purchased the house). That year in July he was hired by the city as a temporary physician in the Department of Corrections earning $1,600 a year. (The salary, which would translate to about $28,200 today, was additional income to his regular medical practice.)
Dr. Mundin was a prominent figure in the Harlem community. Listed in the National Negro Business and Professional Directory in 1923, he was highly involved in the Imperial Lodge, No. 127, of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order Elks. He would rise to the office of exalted ruler in the group.
Eva Mundin died on July 8, 1928 at the age of 50. Dr. Percy Mundin sold the house around 1930. It became a rooming house, home to respectable tenants.
Among those living here in 1939 was Theodore Daniels. On June 24 that year, The New York Age reported that a "musical tea" was held in the Daniels' apartment to celebrate the reunion of Class No. 12 of Mother Zion A. M. E. Church.
The house as it appeared in 1941, the year two residents were drafted. image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
On April 5, 1941, eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbor would pull America into World War II, The New York Age reported, "The following Harlemites were inducted into the Army for one year of service during the past week." The list included two residents of 164 West 130th Street--Leroy Robinson and Charles J. McGee.
The following year, on December 26, 1942, the newspaper reported the engagement of resident Rosena Kelsey to Wilton Williams. Williams's address was listed as "U. S. Army."
Living here in 1952 was the Reilly family. Pernall Reilly, who was 18 years old that year, was in the wrong place on the night of July 11. She passing by the corner of 126th Street and Seventh Avenue (later Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd.) as another pedestrian, Lewis Hayden, overheard a man using "profane language," as described by The New York Age, "in talking to some women." Hayden and the man got into an argument which became violent.
The New York Age reported that Hayden, "pulled out a gun on the man, who started to run as Hayden fired four shots." When his firearm jammed, his intended victim rushed back and fatally stabbed him. In the chaos, Pernall Reilly was shot in the leg. She was taken to Harlem Hospital.
A renovation completed in 2003 resulted in an apartment in the basement, a duplex on the parlor and second floors, and one apartment on the third.
photograph by the author
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