The Abused 1894 Bilger Stable - 49 Market Street

Market Street was lined with handsome, brick-faced homes by the late 1820s.  The family of Irish-born Thomas Dunphy occupied 49 Market Street in 1865.  Living in the house with Dunphy and his wife, Julia, were their daughter, Annie, and her husband, Charles Henry Hawkins.

A tragic and bizarre incident happened on December 13, 1865.  The New York Times reported that the 50-year-old Dunphy, "attempted to turn a summersault in his hallway, but fell heavily to the ground instead, fracturing his spinal column, and causing death to ensue."

Charles Hawkins was a butcher at 55 Market Street.  He and Annie continued to reside with Julia.  The couple would have five children, William, Sarah, Anna, Thomas and Richard.  

Following Julia Dunphy's death, the title to the house passed to Annie.  At the time of Annie's death in 1893, the neighborhood of her childhood had severely changed.  Private homes were being razed and replaced with tenement buildings.  In 1894, Charles H. Hawkins hired architect M. Muller to design a three-story stable building on the site of the former Dunphy house.  The structure would cost $10,000 to erect (about $365,000 in 2025).

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Above the expected configuration of the ground floor--a centered carriage bay flanked by a door and a window--Muller flexed his architectural skills.  Incised vertical lines in the brickwork below two bandcourses created the impression of double-height, fluted pilasters.  The cornice was a tour-de-force of the bricklayer's art.  Mimicking an ornate cast metal example, the brackets, dentils, paneled parapet and triangular pediment were all executed in brick.  Identifying the building as a livery stable was a carved horse's head.

Hawkins leased the property to James Bilger.  The lessee, most likely, had little or nothing to do with the business.  He was an established attorney and almost assuredly rented the stable to a proprietor.  In 1902, Thomas Hawkins sold the building to Lowenfeld & Prager.  (Interestingly, James Bilger acted as Hawkins's attorney for the transaction.)

Although in 1920 motorized vehicles had greatly replaced horses in New York City, when Lowenfeld & Prager sold 49 Market Street to Nicosia Bros. Company in August that year, it was described as a "modern stable."  Nicosia Bros. Company dealt in dairy products.  The building housed its delivery vehicles, horses, and its office.

Substantial change came in 1949.  With Prohibition in the rear view mirror, 49 Market Street was converted to a "restaurant, bar and grille" on the ground floor and an American Legion "clubroom" on the second.  In a slipshod attempt at a Mid-Century modernization, a red brick veneer obliterated M. Mullen's 1894 design.  Glass blocks filled the upper portions of the ground-floor openings, a brick diamond-patterned band separated the first and second floors, and the masterful cornice was removed.  The architect was apparently unwilling to destroy the sculpted horse's head, which now poked through the brick veneer.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

In the 1980s and '90s, the former bar space was home to a surprising tenant, Manhattan Custom Tackle.  Here anglers could purchase equipment for fly fishing.

In the early years of the 21st century, the 2,400-square-foot former American Legion space become home to the studio of multimedia artist Spencer Sweeney.  In the summer of 2017, Sweeney moved his studio to West 18th Street with a year left on his lease.  On November 12, 2018, The New York Times journalist Ben Detrick, reported that to make use of the now vacant space, Sweeney and artists Brendan Dugan and Urs Fischer "began inviting friends to the studio to make illustrations of human heads."  Detrick said the "Sunday night salon called Headz resurrected the spirit of Andy Warhol's Factory, the art club area and creative gatherings of yore in a gentrifying downtown where such avant-garde pockets are on the precipice of extinction."

Headz spread by word of mouth.  Nine months after the first gathering, it was "populated by contemporary artists including Kembra Pfahler, Joe Bradley and Alex Bag, improvisational jazz legends, night-life lurkers, skateboarders and Lower East Side teenagers."  At the end of the lease, the art parties ended on July 22, 2018, closing a colorful chapter in the many lives of 49 Market Street.

Today Happy Medium, an "arts club for casual artists," occupies the building.  And after more than 130 years, the stone horse above it all continues to survey the street.

photographs by the author