Generally attributed to James Renwick, Jr., Banta's five-story-and-basement Anglo-Italianate homes were completed in 1861. They varied from 16- to 32-feet-wide and (because of the triangular plot) their depths ranged from 16- to 48-feet. Among the narrowest was 25 Stuyvesant Street. Like its neighbors, its rusticated brownstone basement and first floors sat below four stories of red brick trimmed in brownstone. The tall, a stone bandcourse connected the fully-arched windows of the second floor. Each of the architrave frames of the upper openings were treated slightly differently.
Matthias Banta retained ownership of the house, leasing it originally to Margaret Madden who operated it as a boarding house. On August 20, 1861, she advertised:
Board--At 25 Stuyvesant Street. Second Floor of the new English basement house, a front and back Parlor, unfurnished. Also a gentleman and his wife or two single gentlemen can be accommodated with Board. House has all the modern improvements. Convenient to cars and stages.
Madden's venture was relatively short-lived. By 1863, two Fay families occupied the house. Signourney Webster Fay was a merchant, operating at 48 Park Place, and Emery Brigham Fay was a broker. Signourney and Emery were cousins, their fathers Nahum and Dexter Fay, respectively, were brothers.
Born in 1814 in Southborough, Massachusetts, Emery married Almira Allton Adams in 1838. They had five grown children. Signourney was significantly younger than his cousin. Emery was born in Boston in 1836 and he married Delia Almira Fay in 1860.
The Civil War interrupted the Fays' residency here. Signourney enlisted in the Union Army in March 1863. Emery and Almira moved to East 7th Street and, presumably, Delia went along with them. Upon Signorney's return from the war, he and Delia moved to Long Island.
The house was leased by the extended Claudius Buchanan Conant family. Born in 1819, his wife was the former Elizabeth Trumbull Mills. Living with the couple were their son, Clarence Mortimer; their daughters Elizabeth J. and Elizabeth Ann, and her husband John Richards Weed, and their son, Louis Mortimer.
In 1866, both Clarence and Louis attended the College of the City of New York--Clarence as a junior and Louis in the Introductory Class. Emily attended Normal College and in 1870 taught in that facility's "model school."
Also living in what must have been snug conditions was Alice Cunningham Fletcher. In their commentary to Alice's memoir, Life Among The Indians, Joanna C. Scherer and Raymond J. DeMallie explains, "During her adolescence, family problems, the details of which have gone unrecorded, prompted her to leave home and take a position as a governess to the children of a wealthy hardware merchant, Claudius Buchanan Conant."
With the Conant children grown, Alice remained with the family, which essentially acting as her patron. Joan T. Mark, in her A Stranger in Her Native Land, Alice Fletcher and the American Indians, writes, "Alice Fletcher's years as a governess came to an end around 1870, when she was in her early thirties. With Claudius Conant, her former employer, still paying her a substantial salary, she [lived] at 25 Stuyvesant Street on Manhattan and set out to explore the cultural life of New York City.
While living here, Alice became highly involved with women's causes. An article in the New York Herald on October 15, 1873, reported on the Woman's Congress, which the newspaper sarcastically said was composed of "about 120 'earnest' ladies, upon whom 'missions' have devolved." The article noted, "The secretary of the Woman's Congress is Miss C. Fletcher, No. 25 Stuyvesant street."
While still living here, she turned to anthropology and ethnology, making extensive trips to the West to study Native American culture.
Alice Cunningham Fletcher with Chief Joseph at the Nez Percé Lapwai Reservation in Idaho in 1889. The man on the left is James Stuart, Alice's interpreter. from the collection of the Smithsonian Institute.
Alice C. Fletcher became one of the most influential anthropologists studying Native Americans and helped write the Daws Act of 1887, which eliminated reservations and distributed communal land to individual households.
Claudius Buchanan Conant died in 1877. By 1880, Clarence Mortimer Conant was a physician with his medical office in the house. The family left in 1887 and the Banta family leased it to a proprietor who operated it as a rooming house. A succinct advertisement in The Sun on August 1, 1888 offered, "To Let--Newly furnished rooms, suitable for one or two, near 3d av. and 9th st. elevated station."
By the turn of the century, the neighborhood had decidedly declined. No. 25 Stuyvesant Street was leased by Flanagan Bros., the offices of which were on West 34th Street. They sublet it to Annie Russell, a.k.a. Sadie Brown, who purportedly rented rooms. Her operation was much more than that, however.
Living here in 1901 was 21-year-old Alma Cirnicer. She worked closely with Meyer Rosenthal, who ran the Rosedale Hotel at 395 Bowery, to fleece naive "customers." That summer Kai Bronsted, a lawyer from Copenhagen, had been visiting friends in Brooklyn. On August 26, his last night in New York, he "determined to inspect the Bowery," as he explained to police. He said he met Alma "and accompanied her to the Rosedale Hotel, where he was robbed of $59," reported The Evening World.
Bronsted complained to Rosenthal, who pretended to help. They found Alma at Third Street and the Bowery where she handed him his empty wallet. As they were arguing, Detective Penz happened by and arrested Alma and Rosenthal.
At the time, the house where Alma Cirnicer lived was on the police investigators' watch list. A 1901 police report listed 25 Stuyvesant Street among "suspicious houses of prostitution." And on March 7, 1902, Edward Bicherer signed a deposition saying he had visited 25 Stuyvesant Street several times and found that "Annie Russell did unlawfully keep a place...for persons to visit for unlawful sexual intercourse, and for lewd, obscene and indecent purposes."
Annie Russell was charged for running a disorderly house...
and there unlawfully procure and permit as well men and women of evil name and fame and of dishonest conversation, to visit, frequent and come together for unlawful sexual intercourse and for purpose of prostitution and there unlawfully and willfully did permit said men and women of evil name and fame there to be and remain drinking, dancing, fighting, disturbing the peace, whoring and misbehaving themselves.
On March 29, 1902, Flanagan Bros. received a letter from the Police Department that said in part, "You are hereby notified that your tenant, Sadie Brown, in the premises 25 Stuyvesant Street, was convicted of the crime of keeping and maintaining a disorderly house." The letter demanded that if the tenant was not evicted immediately, the matter would be forwarded to the District Attorney.
The threat was successful. Flanagan Bros. did not renew its lease and in March 1904, Emil Neufeld took over. His roomers, many of them German immigrants, were hard working and respectable.
A roomer leans in the doorway of 25 Stuyvesant Street in 1941. At the left is the 1803 Stuyvesant-Fish house. via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
The estate of Eliza A. Banta sold the house in 1925 to Jacob Bellak, who continued to rent rooms. It quickly became the scene of a disturbing incident. On October 1926, the body of Catherine Braum was found "hanging from the ceiling of a room at 25 Stuyvesant Street," according to The New York Times. The death was reported as a suicide, but neighbors thought there was foul play involved. They insisted that the 65-year-old had been poisoned and her body staged as a suicide. Faced with mounting pressure, the District Attorney's Office ordered that Braum's body be exhumed for an autopsy. (Frustratingly, newspapers did not report the findings.)
Another shocking incident occurred on April 2, 1939. That morning, the Rev. Francis X. Quinn of the Church of the Guardian Angel was invited to a housewarming party at Eighth Avenue and 22nd Street. "Instead of going to this party in a limousine I found myself traveling in a police car," he told reporters later.
At 25 Stuyvesant Street, 23-year-old John Naumo was holding an elderly couple "as hostages in an effort to stave off capture by police," as reported by the Long Island Star-Journal. Quinn said he "arrived at the apartment an unwelcome visitor."
Naumo pointed his gun at the priest and said, "Come in father--with your hands up." The desperate suspect and the cool-headed cleric talked at length. Finally, said the newspaper, "After more than an hour of drama and suspense, during which the bandit asked the priest to get a glass and a bottle of beer from the icebox, the priest induced the bandit to surrender."
Through it all, 25 Stuyvesant Street was never converted to apartments. When it was offered for sale in 2011, realtor photographs revealed that the 1861 interiors were remarkably intact.
An photograph of the parlor in 2011 shows an original marble Italianate mantel and intricate ceiling plasterwork. via Brown Harris and Stevens realty
The house was purchased by award winning journalist and author Nina Munk. Her articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair among others. She sold it in 2016 for $6.5 million.
photographs by the author
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