photograph by Carole Teller
In 1811, streets were laid out on paper that dissected land owned by Nicholas and Elizabeth Fish. Within two decades those pencil lines became actual thoroughfares. In 1837, ship carver Charles Dodge erected a row of brick-faced houses on the north side of East 3rd Street between Avenues C and D. Each 22-feet-wide and three stories tall above English basements, they were early examples of the blossoming Greek Revival style. Dodge's builder designed them as mirror-image pairs that shared a stoop divided by an iron railing. The side-by-side entrances were framed by brownstone Ionic pilasters that upheld a single layered entablature and molded cornice.
Charles Dodge apparently negotiated a deal with Elizabeth Stuyvesant Fish (Nicholas died in 1833) regarding ownership of certain properties. Upon her death in 1854, 287 East 3rd Street passed to her children: Susan Elizabeth, Margaret Ann, Hamilton and Elizabeth Sara. There is no indication that any of the well-to-do and distinguished Fish siblings ever lived in the house.
At the time of Elizabeth Stuyvesant Fish's death, the neighborhood around 287 East 3rd Street was the center of New York's German community. Only Berlin and Vienna had a larger German-speaking population. No. 287 East 3rd Street would have been home to multiple families. The Fish heirs retained ownership until October 1882, when they sold the house to Robert P. and Julia Kean Barry for $5,270 (about $167,000 in 2026 terms).
The sale did not end the Fish family's ties to the property. Born in 1843, Julia K. Barry was the daughter of Margaret Ann Fish and John Neilson. (Her great-grandfather, General John Neilson had served in the Revolutionary War with Nicholas Fish.) Robert Peabody Barry also had a sterling pedigree, a member of the fourth generation of Barrys in New York. The couple was married on April 19, 1866. They would be long-distance landlords--they lived in Virginia.
While 287 East 3rd Street was owned by distinguished figures, its tenants were working class. Living here in 1897, for instance, was mechanic E. Matthews. He was at work in a Harlem theatre, the Metropolis, at 142nd Street and Third Avenue on August 29 that year. High above the stage, he lost his grip and fell 60 feet. The New York Herald reported that he "received injuries which proved fatal three hours later."
Matthews's English surname was an anomaly within the mostly German rooming house tenants. More common were names like Lester W. Eisenberg (who was made a commissioner of deeds in 1901 and 1902), Max Schiller, and Dora Bruder.
On June 18, 1905, Max Schiller attended an outing of German families at a picnic grounds in Queens. (It was most likely a church event.) He boarded a trolly car of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit heading home that night. It smashed into another trolly car at around 10:00. "Both cars were crowded with men and women who were homeward bound from the picnic grounds," said The Sun. Max Schiller and five others were "painfully injured," but he was able to go home after having his cuts and bruises dressed.
Living in the house at the same time, Dora Bruder held an interesting job. She taught embroidery in the New York public vacation schools.
Around 1912, Jacob Beyerle acquired 287 East 3rd Street. While continuing to rent rooms, he moved into the house with his widowed mother, Margeritte Geier Bayerle, and his unmarried sister, Philippine. (Frustratingly, Philippine's name was alternately spelled Phillippina, Philippina, and Phillippine in documents.)
Born in 1869, Jacob was the youngest of eight children of Johann and Margeritte, who were 48 and 41 years old, respectively, at the time. He never married.
In 1913 Bayerle hired architect Louis E. Muller to update the house with plumbing and "new partitions." (The new walls most likely referred to the installation of bathrooms or water closets.) The renovations cost him the equivalent of about $32,700 today.
Jacob Bayerle died in the house on May 8, 1914 at the age of 45. His funeral was held in the parlor three days later. He left a $2,000 "personalty in trust" to his mother (about $65,000 today), and the remainder of his estate to his sisters Philippine, Maggie and Elizabeth.
Philippine, who received the title to 287 East 3rd Street, continued to take in roomers. The Schroeder family lived here in 1915 when 11-year-old George went to the Brighton Beach race track on April 18 to see the motorcycle races. The New York Herald reported that Thomas Sylvester, "was racing his motorcycle about the track when he lost control of it, and it shot over the rim and into a crowd of several hundred persons."
At least one spectator, 19-year-old Charles Shay, was fatally injured. George Schroeder was removed to Coney Island Hospital "with a broken leg, internal injuries and many cuts and bruises," said the article. He happily recovered.
On January 5, 1917, Margeritte Beyerle died here at the age of 89. Her funeral was held in the parlor two days later. Philippine sold 287 East 3rd Street in June 1919 to Max Schechter for $10,000 (about $181,000 today). His tenants continued to be mostly German, like A. Steinmetz and his wife, who announced the engagement of their daughter Bess to Harry Ornstein in March 1920; and apparel worker Joseph Rosenwasser.
In 1921, "a strike in the clothing trade" began in Port Chester, New York. A non-union man, Alexander Mangurick, took a job in a factory there to replace the union foreman. The Yonkers Statesman reported on June 11, that the Walking Delegate in New York City directed Joseph Rosenwasser, who was 34, and Nathan Popick to go to Port Chester "and at a convenient place give him a beating." The two men were arrested and charged with feloniously assaulting Mangurick.
image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
Patrolman Solomon Hollander lived here in 1930. The 26-year-old bachelor was attached to the Arsenal Station in Central Park. Because he was an epileptic and subject to random seizures, he was not permitted to patrol with a loaded pistol. In March 1931, he was charged with "brutally striking a business woman last Columbus Day in Central Park for sitting on the grass with two friends," according to The New York Times. Nettie S. Wheeler charged that when she did not move from the grass "quickly enough to satisfy him," he "dragged" her to the police booth on Fifth Avenue and "struck her in the face in the police station with his clenched fist."
Hollander denied that he had struck Wheeler and on the stand "insisted that he spoke courteously when he ordered Mr. Gibson and the two women off the grass." Mrs. Wheeler, he said, refused, saying, "I am a friend of the Park Commissioner."
On the same day of the alleged attack, according to another officer, Harry Gray, "Hollander was seized with an epileptic attack in the station." Hollander testified that he could not remember periods of that day. On March 24, 1931, The New York Times reported that he was found guilty "of twisting the arm of Miss Nettie S. Wheeler." He was suspended from the police force. Then came a plot twist. On May 9, The Times reported that a neurologist, Charles O. Fiertz, asserted that Hollander "was not responsible for his actions at the time of the attack." The conviction was reversed and a new trial was scheduled. That trial resulted in Hollander getting a ten-day sentence in the workhouse.
No. 287 East 3rd Street continued as a rooming house throughout the 20th century. In 2011, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation began a push to have the house and its fraternal twin at 285 designated individual landmarks. In addition to the historic importance of No. 285 in Black History (it was for decades home to Steven Cannon and his "Gathering of the Tribes"), both houses, stressed the petition, are "highly intact Greek Revival 'sister' row houses dating from 1837."
photograph by Carole Teller
And, indeed, while early 19th century buildings throughout the East Village were brutalized or razed throughout the 20th century, these two examples survive pristinely intact. Neither has landmark protection at this writing.
many thanks to artist Carole Teller for suggesting this post.
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