In 1827, Thomas Parker erected seven, identical rowhouses along the recently opened Charlton Street block between MacDougal and Varick Streets. Two-and-a-half stories tall and faced in brick, their upscale details--marble stoops, double-doored entrances, and handsome stepped lintels-- elevated them above more modest homes rising in the neighborhood.
The complex openwork wrought iron stoop newels terminated with pineapples and four acorns. The motifs would have been familiar to potential owners. For decades, the pineapple was a symbol of welcoming; and because it was the seed of the mighty oak tree, the acorn connoted strength.
William Cox and his family briefly occupied 41 Charlton Street. Then, on January 20, 1831, "the house and lease of lot" were sold at auction. The announcement appearing in The Evening Post described:
The house is one of those much admired two story, marble stoop and basement, opposite the Richmond-Hill House. The rapid increase of this section of the city, the view of the river, the contiguity to one of the best markets, high ground and good water, having a well of excellent water in the back area not two feet from the kitchen, render this a desirable location for a genteel family. The lease is from Trinity Church, and has 35 years unexpired from 1st of May next.
(As the announcement mentioned, the house sat upon Trinity Church property, known as the Trinity Farm. While the purchaser would own the structure, he would not own the plot and would be obligated to pay annual land rent.)
Eugene L. Bell purchased the house. But, unfortunately, his residency was short-lived. The 32-year-old died at Bull's Ferry, New Jersey on July 24, 1833. His rushed funeral was held at 41 Charlton Street the next afternoon--most likely before most acquaintances knew of his death.
The Charlton Street house was next occupied by the Coddington family. Samuel Coddington was a commission merchant at 106 Water Street, and David J. Coddington was a copper smith at the same address. The family was supplanted by John Bishop, a shipmaster, beginning in 1836. John Jr. was a grocer on Front Street.
The Bishops left 41 Charlton Street in March 1840. At the time, it was common for families to liquidate their household goods and start over at their new location. An auction here on March 24, 1840 listed "genteel furniture" and expensive items, including a piano forte, French mahogany bedrooms suites, "elegant marble top centre tables," and an extensive parlor suite of "divans, sofas, ottomans, chairs." Also sold were oil paintings, cut glass, silverware and "china dinner and tea sets."
Around this time, the owner modernized the house. When he sold it in 1846, he boasted, "finished attic, marble mantels, Croton water, kitchen range." The Croton Reservoir on the site of today's New York Public Library first brought running water into households who could afford it in 1842.
In the meantime, Samuel T. Armstrong had been leasing the house since the Bishop family moved out. He and his son, Frederick W. Armstrong, operated a flour business, Samuel T. Armstrong & Son, at 23 Water Street.
When 41 Charlton Street was sold in February 1846, the Armstrongs remained as tenants for another two years. It was, once again, offered for rent in 1846. Tenants continued to come and go until William Cleary purchased the house around 1867.
Cleary's business interests were far-flung. He was a real estate agent, the proprietor of two saloons--one on Hudson Street and another on Varick Street--and by the 1870s added "drugs" and "lumber" to his resume, as well as a school trustee of the Eighth Ward Common Schools.
William Cleary and his wife had two sons, William H. and John. It appears that Cleary's sister and brother-in-law, Ellen and Michael Sullivan, lived with the family. When Ellen died at the age of 33 on April 21, 1868, her funeral was held in the parlor two days later.
In 1871, Cleary sold one of his saloons. His advertisement in the New York Herald on August 10 offered, "For Sale--The lease, stock and fixtures of the old established corner Liquor Store 343 Hudson street, corner Charlton, price $350. Apply on the premises, or to William Cleary, 41 Charlton street." His price for the business--equal to $9,000 in 2025--seems a bargain.
Three years later, in February 1874, the Real Estate Record & Guide reported that Cleary filed plans to "raise one story; cost $1,500." His builder carefully matched brick color and the original lintels, and installed a simple fascia board and cornice. Only the change from Flemish bond to running bond brickwork testifies to the addition.
The 1874 cornice survived as late as 1941. via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
The Cleary boys were young adults by then. William J. was working as a clerk by 1875, the year that his brother got into serious trouble. On May 30 that year, the New-York Tribune reported that John Cleary "had a fight last night with George Green of No. 9 Varick-place, at West Third and Wooster sts. Clary [sic] struck Green upon the head with a club, inflicting severe wounds."
Another funeral was held in the Cleary parlor on May 10, 1877. John Sloane was the husband of Cleary's sister. The 48-year-old had died, presumably here, on May 7.
The Cleary family left Charlton Street in 1879. They were followed in the house by Levi Heyer, a provisions merchant in the Clinton Market. Living with him and his wife, the former Phoebe Helme, were their teenaged sons, Henry H. and Louis F., and Phoebe's widowed mother, Margaret.
Unlike the Cleary's, the Heyers did not need the additional space. In December 1879 they advertised one room per floor for rent. "An American family will let three large Rooms, on first, second, and third floors, with or without Board on moderate terms."
Phoebe's mother, Margaret Helme, died at the age of 74 on December 29, 1879. His funeral was held here on December 31. Three years later, there was another funeral in the parlor. Louis F. Heyer died on October 9, 1882 at the age of 21.
In the meantime, Louis's brother was embarking on a medical degree. In 1887 he was listed as Dr. Harold H. Heyer. It was most likely their common profession that resulted in Dr. John P. Nolan leasing space from the family by 1889.
Dr. Nolan received a subpoena to appear in court in June that year. Elizabeth Ann Goodrich, alias Swan, was accused of "a pious fraud," as worded by District Attorney William Jerome. For years, he charged, she had collected money "for an aged woman named Goodrich" and her husband, "a paralytic," from well-to-do merchants. Nolan had been summoned because he "could testify that Mrs. Goodrich's husband was really a paralytic." The sometimes testy doctor, however, "had torn up the subpoena...and declared that he would not come to court," reported The Sun on June 27.
Dr. Nolan was arrested. "He explained that he had torn up the subpoena because he had been bothered a good deal by Mrs. Goodrich and did not believe that the subpoena is a legal document. In fact, he did not read it," said the article. It concluded, "The Doctor paid the fine, and tried to look pleasant."
New Yorkers were incensed when they read the death of police officer George Davis in the newspapers on August 3, 1892. He had fallen ill during duty the previous day, and was taken to Dr. Nolan's office here. The Evening World reported, "The doctor is said to have declared that Davis's ailment was not serious." In the cab on the way to his home, Davis died.
The damning coverage threatened to severely damage Nolan's reputation. That evening a reporter visited him at 41 Charlton Street where he found the doctor "very indignant about the statement imputed to him."
He said the officer had been in his office for more than half an hour, "too sick to walk." He diagnosed him with "acute cholera morbus," gave him medicine, and advised him "to go to a hospital, as I considered his home too far for him to be carried even in a hack." He denied, "that I treated his sickness as something trifling."
Nolan treated a bizarre case following the election in November 1893. Fred Holmes was a longshoreman and a Democrat who lived at 274 Spring Street. That year, the Tammany candidate was defeated. Although his wife tried to comfort him saying, "There will be another election next year," Holmes replied, "But they beat Hill and I want to die."
Dr. Nolan was called in. He "prescribed the usual remedies for post-election paralysis," said The Sun. Holmes went to sleep and his wife went to her housework. An hour later, Holmes walked in the room and said, "Well, Mary, I guess I fooled you this time,"
"Of course you did, Fred. Now do sit down. Maybe the Democrats will win next time."
Holmes told her he did not have long, "I have just taken a big dose of carbolic acid." Nolan was called back, this time accompanied by a priest. Fortunately, Nolan was in time, and Holmes survived.
Although the Heyer family moved from 41 Charlton Street around 1893, Nolan remained. When he married in 1906, he and his bride moved to West 112th Street, but he kept his office in the Charlton Street house.
Ten years later, Elizabeth Nolan sued him in State Supreme Court to set aside a separation agreement she had signed in 1913. She had agreed to accept $5 a month and give up her dower right. (A dower right would have given her claims to real estate in the eventuality of a divorce.) The Sun reported on April 7, 1916, "They lived in the same apartment but did not speak, and Mrs. Nolan said that her husband so terrified her by his threats that she signed the agreement."
In 1917, Trinity Church sold 17 of the 375 dwellings it owned in Greenwich Village. Among the buyers was William S. Coffin, who purchased numerous properties, including 41 Charlton Street. He converted the house to studio apartments, advertising one of them in May 1918 as, "two large, light rooms, kitchenette and bath, electric light, stem heat, hot water, fireplaces." The parlor floor was leased to the St. Hilda Guild Art School.
Living here in the early 1940s was journalist Edwin S. McIntosh. Starting out just after World War I, he worked in several cities before moving to New York City in 1919 and joining The Sun. When he moved into 41 Charlton Street, he was a political reporter for the New York Herald Tribune. He covered the Sacco-Vanzetti execution and, according to the Daily World in 1944, reported on "virtually every political campaign in the last fifteen years."
McIntosh fell ill in the summer of 1943. Six months later, on January 12, 1944, he died at the age of 55 in Lenox Hill Hospital. Saying that he was "known to political figures and reporters everywhere as Ned," the Daily World reported that his funeral in Campbell's Funeral Home on Madison Avenue was "simple."
At some point around this time, the cornice was removed from 41 Charlton Street. A photograph after mid-century shows a brick parapet trimmed with the diminutive cornice that we see today.
Although no Certificate of Occupancy is on file to document the conversion of apartments to a single family home, a listing for 41 Charlton Street in 1993 clearly confirms that. It describes a "6-bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, 4-story one-family 1829 [sic] town house; dining room, eat-in kitchen, library, study, 8 fireplaces, original molding and detail."
The house was purchased in 1999 by art dealer Lisa Spellman for $2.7 million. She told Constance Rosenblum of The New York Times in 2010, it had been home to "Robert Morgenthau, the longtime Manhattan District Attorney, who was married here, and a fashion designer named Catherine Shannon, a great-granddaughter of Henri Matisse."
In 2010, Spellman authorized Oliver Stone to film here, as the home of actress Carey Mulligan's character in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
photographs by the author
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