Francis A. Minuth's 1889 19 Bedford Street

 

Cast iron piers on each side of the ground floor are all that remain of the 19th century storefront.

When Bedford Street was laid out in 1799, the Greenwich Village neighborhood around it was still rural.  Why the road was named for a London street, given the recent war with England, is a puzzle.  Bedford Street was lined with prim, Federal Style homes in the 1820s.  But by the third quarter of the century, the neighborhood saw an influx of immigrants, sparking a flurry of construction of apartment buildings.

Julius Ritter purchased the vintage house at 19 Bedford Street, between Downing and Hancock Street, in 1888.  (Hancock Street would later be eradicated by the extension of Sixth Avenue.)  He commissioned German-born architect Francis A. Minuth to design a five-story store-and-flat building on the site.  Completed the following year, the structure cost $14,000 to build, or just under half a million in 2025 dollars.

Minuth designed 19 Bedford Street in the Renaissance Revival style, cladding the four upper floors in red brick.  The brownstone trim included Renaissance-inspired architraves.  Those of the second floor wore molded cornices, the center of which was capped with a classical triangular pediment.  At the fourth floor, a pretty Juliette balcony supported by a single foliate bracket decorated the center opening.  Terra cotta shells filled the arches above the top floor windows, and a bracketed cornice with a paneled and swagged fascia completed the design.

The residents of 19 Bedford Street and the neighborhood in general witnessed an thrilling incident on April 29, 1915.  Police Sergeant Camille Pierne and Policeman Dennis Mitchell were on patrol at the corner of Houston and Hancock Streets that night when they heard a gunshot.  They pursued a man  who ran from Hancock onto Bedford Street, and then into 19 Bedford.  Before entering the building, Sergeant Pierne instructed Mitchell to enter 21 Bedford Street and then cross to No. 19 on the roof.

As Pierne started up the staircase, he dropped down as a bullet whizzed by his head.  The New York Evening Telegram said, "Pierne answered the shot from his revolver and plunged on upstairs."  At the top floor, the sergeant saw his query disappear up the ladder and through the scuttle to the roof.  Pierne reached the rooftop just in time to see the man "climb over a barb wire fence separating the roof from that of 21, " reported The New York Times.

When Officer Mitchell emerged from the scuttle of No. 21, he faced the "man running toward him pistol in hand," according to The New York Times.  Mitchell fired once, missing his assailant.  In the meantime, Sergeant Pierne had gotten tangled in the barbed wire, slowing down his progress.  Mitchel and the man got into a wrestling match.  The New York Times said, "In the street below a crowd which had seen the chase start shouted and yelled with excitement as each moment the men seemed about to fall into the street."  

Finally, Pierne got free of the barbed wire and "threw himself upon the man," said The Times.  "Between them the policemen dragged him back from the roof's edge and finally got him down to the street."  As it turned out, the gunman was 21-year-old Benjamin Lotta, who ran a barbershop at 18 Cornelia Street.  The target of Lotta's original shooting was never found.

Edward Neary, who lived here in 1923, maintained pigeon coops on the roof.  On the evening of May 25, he was "flying pigeons," as reported by the New York Evening Telegram, when he noticed smoke pouring out of the apartment building at 40 Downing Street.  Minutes earlier, a fire had broken out in the kitchen of Mrs. Louis Sibi on the second floor of that building.

By the time Neary arrived at the scene, Mrs. Sibi and her two children, Albert and Arthur, one and two years old respectively, were at the window.  She was screaming for help.  Neary rushed into the burning building and grabbed the boys.  He carried them down the rear fire escape, while Nicoli Pepetti, who owned the building, carried Mrs. Sibi down.  

Neary was hailed a hero, credited with saving the boys' lives.  The New York Evening Telegram reported, "the flames had swept up the stairways, 'mushrooming' on each floor."

A renovation completed in 1940 replaced Francis A. Minuth's 1889 cast iron storefront.  A plate glass show window flooded the interior with natural light, and rather unattractive concrete blocks took the place of the original storefront's cornice.

The 1940 ground floor renovation resulted in an ugly scar between the first and second floors.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Living in the building at the time was Mary Young, a widow.  Four years earlier, in February 1936, she had to be hospitalized.  Her attorney, Michael J. Horan, persuaded her to give him power of attorney.  Over the next four years, Horan "drew $10,000 from her bank accounts," reported the New York Evening Post.  The attorney was indicted on grand larceny in February 1941.  He was summoned to the prosecutor's office where he "suffered nervous prostration."  His condition prevented his being immediately jailed, and he quickly disappeared.   On September 25, the New York Evening Post reported, "An eight-state alarm has been sent out for Horan, missing since he walked out of his home at 106 Washington Pl. on Feb. 18."

When Mary Young died in her apartment here at the age of 93 in 1949, Horan was still on the lam.  Ten years after he first disappeared, on July 18, 1951, The New York Times reported, "Michael J. Horan, 78-year-old disbarred attorney, appeared yesterday in General Sessions and eloquently defended himself against an accusation that he had mulcted a widow of her life savings."  

In 1953, the city condemned 19 Bedford Street as well as several other neighboring buildings.  The move was the part of the plan first proposed by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses in 1928.  He envisioned an eight-lane highway, the Lower Manhattan Expressway, that would run from the Holland Tunnel to the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges.

Robert Mose's plan would have created Verrazano Street and eliminated the Bedford Street block.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

Moses's vision would include the creation of Verrazano Street, which would run through the Bedford and Downing Street neighborhood.  In 1957, a demolition permit for 19 Bedford Street was issued.  But Moses's grand project stalled.  Residents of 19 Bedford Street remained in their apartments, unsure of their futures here.

Twenty-nine years after the building was condemned, on November 13, 1980, The Villager reported on the city's plan of "demapping" of Verrazano Street--in other words, erasing the never-built thoroughfare from the map.  The tenants, who had been renting month-to-month from the city, were nervous.  Two months later, the newspaper reported, "Most of the rents in the buildings are very low and a large number of tenants are low-income or elderly people.  If the street is demapped, the buildings could be sold and the tenants evicted."

Of course, Verrazano Street was demapped and, happily, Robert Moses's extraordinary Lower Manhattan Expressway was scrapped.  No. 19 Bedford Street was sold by the city and the purchaser converted the building to five co-operative apartments, one per floor including the former storefront.  In eliminating the ground floor shop, a veneer of brick covered the unsightly concrete blocks of the 1940 renovation.

photographs by the author