The Lost 1763 Rhinelander Sugar House

An early watercolor shows the builder's initials in wrought iron on the gable -- from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWE88MMX&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

Henry Cuyler came from a wealthy Dutch family and in 1763 was highly involved in the importation and refining of sugar.  That year he erected a substantial building at the corner of Prince Street (later renamed Rose Street, and finally William Street) and Duane Street.  His stone and brick sugar house was both a refinery and a warehouse for the storage of sugar and molasses.

In this depiction, the Sugar House sat behind the refined homes and was accessed by an alley.  George P. Hall & Sons, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWE88MMX&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

For Colonial New York, the sugar house was massive and impressive.  At six stories tall, it was among the largest structures in the colony and dominated the buildings around it.  Cuyler was not without competition in the sugar business.  It was a highly lucrative industry and by the time he erected his sugar house, there were several others in lower Manhattan.

Valentine's Manual of 1857 romanticized the structure, placing it steps away from the Rhinelander mansion and guarded by British soldiers.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Unfortunately for the Cuyler family, they chose the wrong side in the coming war of revolution.  Instead of backing the rebellious gang set on upsetting the Government, they remained Loyalists.  That did not work out well for them.  Following the Revolution, the Act of Forfeiture was passed.  Loyalists were banned from the State under penalty of death “without benefit of Clergy” and their property sold at auction. 

William Rhinelander, like Cuyler, came from an old Knickerbocker family, and he made a fortune in the sugar business.  By 1790 he had come into possession of Cuyler’s massive sugar house. 

During the British occupation of New York large buildings such as churches and sugar houses were used as prisons.  One of these was the Livingston Sugar House on Liberty Street.  It was under the supervision of a cruel officer, Sergeant Waddy.  Possibly old-timers, after the war, confused the two buildings; or perhaps stories that the last standing sugar house in lower Manhattan was once a prison made good tourist publicity.  In any event, local lore persisted that the Rhinelander Sugar house was a Revolutionary War prison.  In 1890 historian Wesley Washington Pasko, in writing on the Prisons of the Revolution in his Old New York tip-toed around the veracity of the legend.  “The Rhinelander Sugar House, still standing, is averred by all of our older citizens to have been a prison, and there is no doubt about it, but we have seen no contemporary evidence of the fact.”

Indeed, to this day, no contemporary documentation has come to light supporting the Rhinelander building ever being used as a prison.

Yet the story succeeded in drawing tourists and the warehouse was romanticized in etchings and documented by early photographers.  Somewhat amazingly, while nearly all the Colonial architecture of Lower Manhattan was either burned (the Great Fire of 1845 destroyed 345 buildings downtown) or razed, the utilitarian Sugar House survived. 

By the last quarter of the 19th century, the old stone Sugar House was surrounded by taller commercial structures.  photo by Robert L. Bracklow from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWE88MMX&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

By the end of the Civil War the venerable building had not served its original purpose of storing sugar for years.  Still in the possession of the Rhinelander family in 1872, it was used as a paper store by James T. Derrickson.  Victorian interest in historic architecture, however, was essentially non-existent.  Despite the dogged legend of the building’s role in American independence, within the next two decades the old Sugar House would suffer neglect and indignation.

In 1892 James Grant Wilson, in his The Memorial History of the City of New-York, wondered at the structure’s survival.  “Its solid, unbroken walls stand as a silent testimonial to the honesty of the dead and gone builder.  The date and the architect’s initials are still to be seen on the side of the building, worked in wrought-iron characters, quaint and old.”

photo by Hugo B. Sass from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWE88MMX&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

But as “quaint and old” as it was, it was severely abused.  “On the side facing toward the east many windows were walled up during the last fifteen years, but there were still six grated openings left.  Three were in the gable and the others along the south side.  Underneath them was a great vaulted passageway made of heavy masonry like the whole building.  Still another opening was to be seen alongside of it, half-hidden by rubbish, and the barred outline of another cell-window also visible after close examination.”

Wilson’s description served as a sort of obituary for the Sugar House.  That year the Rhinelander family decided to demolish it in order to erect a modern office building on the site.  As was typical of the time, newspapers followed the course of demolition with emotional, nostalgic articles that lamented the loss of another landmark.  But, as was also typical, no one raised a hand to protest.

Demolition of the massive stone structure proved difficult.  Photo by Robert L. Bracklow from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWE88MMX&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

The long-lived urban legend that the Rhinelander Sugar House had been a British prison where American boys suffered misery and torture resulted in two of the windows with their wrought iron grills being preserved.  One was donated to the National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of New York and was installed in the Van Cortlandt House in the Bronx.  The other was incorporated into the new Rhinelander office building, demolished in 1968.

While the Victorian office building was lost, the window was not.  It was moved to a pedestrian zone behind One Police Plaza where it is maintained by the New York City Police Department.  And the legend came along with it.

On May 6, 1968 The New York Times wrote “A small, barred window from a sugar house used as a British prison during the Revolutionary War will be spared during demolition for the new Brooklyn Bridge ramp system.”   When the window was unveiled, it bore a plaque reading in part “This window was originally part of the five story Sugar House built in 1763 at the corner of Duane and Rose Streets and used by the British during the Revolutionary War as a prison for American Patriots.”

An urban legend, most likely untrue, resulted in this small piece of Colonial history to be preserved.

As is often the case, legend trumped history and in this case it resulted in a small chunk of historic preservation. 

Morrell Smith's 1933 Bank of the Manhattan -- 726 Madison Ave.

By the time the Great Depression spread its gloom over Manhattan and the rest of the country, Madison Avenue was no longer the thoroughfare of upscale mansions it had been before the turn of the century.  Although most of the houses had been razed for commercial buildings, or radically made over into shops and offices; on the southwest corner of 64^th Street the fantastic Queen Anne style mansion that had been for many years the home of Mayor Seth Low still stood.  Next door at No. 28 East 64th Street Irving T. Bush’s former home also survived; although both had been converted to small apartments and shops.  But neither would last much longer.

On March 1, 1932 The New York Times reported that The Bank of the Manhattan Trust Company had bought both properties.  The newspaper said that when the existing leases expired in October, “a new building of attractive design will be erected of which the ground-floor portion will be used as a branch bank office.”

While the depth of the Depression seems, in retrospect, to be the least likely time for banks to be expanding; the Upper East Side saw several new branch buildings sprout within a span of about five years.  One block to the south, on the southwest corner of 63^rd Street, Frank Easton Newman had designed a charming neo-Federal building a decade earlier for the Bank of New York.  Now his Colonial-inspired design seems to have set the trend for the new Upper East Side bank buildings.

The Bank of New York's branch at Madison Avenue and 63rd Street set a trend.

On November 14, 1932 architect Morrell Smith filed plans for the new Bank of the Manhattan Company branch.  Like Newman’s, his completed structure would pretend to be an elegant 18^th century town house.  Completed in 1933, it cost the bank $100,000—about $1.7 million today.  Smith’s attention to period detail extended even to the working wrought iron shutter dogs on the upper windows.  Rippled glass panes were used to simulate age.  Splayed lintels, slate roof tiles, a Chinese Chippendale roof railing, Flemish bond brickwork and a delightful second floor balcony on 64^th Street added to the illusion.

Not everyone was pleased.  At the beginning of the century architect Louis Sullivan harshly criticized the practice of borrowing from historic styles.  Now, in the age of airplanes and radio, many architecture critics agreed—the focus should be forward not back.  Among them was Lewis Mumford; whose history with the Bank of the Manhattan Company was already rocky (he called the bank’s headquarters building, designed by H. Craig Severance, “meaningless voluptuousness”).  He termed the Madison Avenue branch “quite defunct Georgian.”

Defunct or not, it was precisely to the taste of Vice-President Raymond E. Jones, who also served as treasurer and director of the Museum of the City of New York.  Jones was head of the committee to raise funds for the Museum’s new building—also Georgian Revival—completed just before the bank branch.  The Bank of the Manhattan Company had been founded in 1799 and Jones set out to replicate the best of that period’s design.  The first floor interiors were a step back into an elegant Georgian mansion.  Fluted columns, scenic wallpaper and a sweeping curved staircase caught the period perfectly.  The illusion was carried through to the teller desks where Smith forewent the expected cages in favor of open face-to-face counters.

The lobby appears plucked from an 18th century mansion -- photograph by Gryffindor

Upstairs was a spacious conference room which would be used by various groups over the years.  In December 1940, for instance, a series of forums entitled “The Common Defense—What Will Happen to American Economy in the World Crisis” was hosted by the League of Women Voters of the East Side Assembly districts.  For several years the meetings of the Joint Civic Conference of the Public Education Association held its meetings here.

As late as the 1990s the vacant lot next door was hidden by a paneled brick wall in keeping with the bank.  photograph by Edmund V. Gillon from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/Collection/%5b726-Madison-Avenue.%5d-24UAKVGG44Z.html

By the mid 1970s the building had become a Chase Manhattan Bank branch.  Morrell Smith’s and Raymond Jones’ insistence on period correctness resulted in a problem on October 7, 1976.  With no teller cages there was nothing to stop the thief who “jumped over the counter, took $5,900 and fled,” as reported by The New York Times the following day.

Today Morrell Smith’s remarkable 18^th century reproduction is a J. P. Morgan Private Wealth Management Office.  Meticulously maintained, it is in near-mint condition—a slice of Williamsburg on Madison Avenue.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The 1719 Fraunces Tavern -- 54 Pearl Street

In 1904, George Washington Glintenkamp was born in a room above a barroom on the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets.  The boy’s father was a German immigrant who, along with Mr. Precht, operated the tavern and rented the rooms upstairs.

The little rooms were mostly home to longshoremen who had lived here for years.  Patsy McGovern, who worked as a longshoreman on the East River for the Pennsylvania Railroad, had lived here for 36 years–the only home he had ever known in America.  But little George Washington Glitenkamp and Patsey McGovern were about to lose their homes.

The saloon run by Glitenkamp and Precht was Fraunces Tavern, an unrecognizable survivor from Colonial times that had recently caught the attention of the Sons of the Revolution.  The building had been the site of George Washington’s farewell speech to his troops and was now being considered for restoration as a museum.

Stephan Delancey was one of New York’s most influential and wealthy citizens in the early 18^th century.  Born in France as Etienne Delancy, the Huguenot fled his homeland under persecution by the French Catholics, landing in New York in 1686 and almost immediately changing his name to Stephen.

When Ann Van Cortlandt married Stephen Delancey, the couple received the land on Pearl Street from her father -- NYPL Collection

A year after Delancey married Ann Van Cortlandt in 1699, her father gave the couple the land at 54 Pearl Street as a wedding gift.  The lot was irregularly shaped and the Minutes of the Common Council of New York on April 14, 1719 noted, “Mr. de Lancey applies for a small strip of land to make his lot more regular in shape, as he is now going to build a large brick house, etc.”

Later that summer, Delancy began construction of the large, elegant home.  The Delancey’s would have ten children in the house, only five of whom would survive infancy.  By 1730, the family was living in a new house on Broadway and their Pearl Street home was being used for public purposes.

In 1737, dancing master Henry Holt advertised a ball to be given “in Mr. de Lancey’s house.”  In 1739, for two shillings admission, one could enjoy pantomime entertainments given in “Holt’s Long Room.”

Stephen Delancey died in 1741 and James Delancey inherited the house.  He would become Chief Justice, Lieutenant Governor and Acting Governor of New York.  Sometime around 1750 it became home to Colonel Beverly Robinson and doubled as the warehouse for merchant firm Delancey Robinson & Co.  Here in 1756 George Washington stayed as Robinson's guest before returning to the Indian Wars.

Two years after James died in 1760  the Delancey family sold 54 Pearl Street at auction.  Samuel Fraunces, a Frenchman born in the West Indies, purchased it for 2000 pounds, signing the deed on January 15, 1762.  Fraunces converted the house into the “Queen Charlotte,” or the “Queen’s Head Tavern.”  Shortly after purchasing the building, Samuel Fraunces would become notable as steward to General George Washington. 

One of the most popular meeting spots in Colonial New York, there were meeting rooms and sleeping rooms on the upper floors.  A document by Samuel Fraunces, dated 1776, described the building at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence as he attempted to sell it.  “The Queen’s Head Tavern is three stories high, with a tile and lead roof, has fourteen fireplaces, a most  excellent large kitchen, fine dry cellars, with good and convenient offices, etc.”

The tavern was gaining importance in the revolutionary cause.  In March 1764, an assembly was called “at the Queen’s Head Tavern” for those merchants who were united against the recent governmental action.  And it was here in 1768 that the New York State Chamber of Commerce was founded and continued to meet until it secured a room of its own in February 1769.

On August 23, 1775, the tavern wall was penetrated by a shot from the British warship Asia.  A year later, with the British occupying New York on September 21, 1776, a fire broke out in the Fighting Cocks Tavern near Whitehall Slip.  Before morning nearly 25 percent of the city was in ruins.  Samuel Fraunces’ tavern, however, escaped destruction.    

In the dark cellar below the tavern, four brick cells were outfitted with iron chains for the detention of prisoners.  

With the end of the war, Governor Clinton hosted a series of glittering receptions in honor of the commander-in-chief in what was now called Fraunces Tavern.  Here, on December 4, 1783, Washington assembled the officers of the Continental Army in the “long room” upstairs and bid them an emotional farewell.  It was a scene dramatically recreated by William Makepeace Thackeray in his 1859 novel The Virginians.

The new government, based in New York, leased the tavern for offices of the Departments of War, the Treasury and Foreign Affairs.  Later, as the capitol moved to Philadelphia in 1790 the building reverted to a tavern.

A devastating fire nearly destroyed the building in 1854.  The roof was burned through and on the Pearl Street side the walls fell outward, just above the second story.  The building was reconstructed and enlarged as a contemporary Victorian structure, adding two floors and erasing any noticeable architectural evidence of its early 18^th century origins.

After the 1854 fire, two stories were added and the historic structure looked much like any other mid-Victorian building - NYPL Collection

It was the Daughters of the American Revolution who first noticed Fraunces Tavern.  In 1894, headed by Mrs. Fay Peirce, the group took tea in the “Long Room.”

Later, a member would note in the Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine, “So great, in fact, was the interest and enthusiasm excited, that it was believed a Chapter committee would at once be appointed and charged with the duty of taking steps for the rescue of the ancient and famous hostelry from its present deplorable uses as a cheap tavern and ‘long shoreman’ restaurant and saloon.’”

The group did not actually move on the project until 1897, writing to Mayor Hewitt with an exhaustively long list of suggestions.  Included in their want-list were that the entire block on which the tavern stood be purchased with public money, that the building be moved to the opposite corner of the block and restored, that the rest of the block be planted as a park, that two uniformed soldiers mount guard there (in Colonial uniforms), that the Long Room be outfitted with portraits of Washington and other officers, that the rest of the building be made into a museum, and twenty-five cents admission be charged, and that an equestrian statue of Washington be erected where the tavern was standing.

Hewitt responded that the land alone would cost the City over $2 million and that such an enormous project, called Patriots Park, would not be covered by the Small Park Law of the City.  But, he promised, he would think about it.

Prior to the 1907 restoration the 18th Century structure was totally hidden -- Library of Congress

On March 20, 1900, Maurice F. Holahan, as President of the Board of Public Improvement of the City of New York, wrote to the Assembly of the State of New York, pleading for assistance.  He wrote of the “realization of the lamentable fact that the ‘march of improvement’ on Manhattan island has swept away almost every object personally identified with ‘the Father of His Country.'”  Fraunces Tavern, he implored, must be salvaged.

The New York Times, in a July 12, 1901 editorial, cautioned about asking for too much and getting nothing.  “The ladies who have carried the scheme thus far are entitled to the thanks of all of us,” it said.  “We trust however, that they will not endanger their cause by asking for too much from the city.” The New York Times did agree, however, that the tavern should be restored and “enough ground about it to be converted into a Colonial garden.”

In the meantime, there were the longshoremen and the “cheap tavern” to contend with.  The Times admitted, “In the case of many of the longshoremen the changing of the structure into a museum will be literally turning them into the streets, their long years of residence in Fraunces’s Tavern having rendered them almost incapable of considering any other lodging as habitable.”

At a meeting of the tenants, ironically held in the Long Room, Patsy McGovern was vehement.  He reckoned that George Washington “would have never turned a decent man out of his home to make a ‘museum’ of a good, respectable hotel.”

When referring to the Sons of the American Revolution during the meeting, Glintenkam called them “Blisters.”  In explaining himself, he said, “I call them Blisters because everything they see seems to stick to them after they have gone away.”

Despite the protests, Fraunces Tavern was purchased by the City and restorations by architect William H. Mercereau began in 1907.  As the top two stories were removed, the original roof line could be plainly seen and the original bricks were identified by the mortar–the colonial mortar contained a great deal of oyster shells while that from the 19^th century was of lime and sand.  Mercereau matched missing bricks by using 18th century bricks from buildings in Maryland, or importing them from Holland, where the original bricks had been made.

On December 4, 1907, 124 years to the day after Washington bade his troops farewell here, the restored Fraunces Tavern was dedicated.

The building, in 1926, looks nearly exactly as it does today -- author's collection

Fraunces Tavern quietly continued throughout the 20^th century until January 24, 1975 when Puerto Rican nationalists detonated an explosive device in the 19^th century annex, killing four people and injuring at least 44 others.

Today the remarkable relic stands in the busy Financial District, looking much as it did with Samuel Fraunces purchased it in 1762–a rare and important piece of American and New York City history.

The 1783 Dyckman Farmhouse -- Broadway and 204th Street



The Dyckman House as it appears today

When the American Revolution broke out in 1776, the Dyckman family had been farming upper Manhattan for nearly a century. Jan Dyckman, a German immigrant from Westphalia arrived in the Dutch settlement below what is now Wall Street and soon thereafter purchased several hundred acres far to the north where he established his farm in 1661.

As land was added, the Dyckman farm stretched from river to river and roughly from today’s 213rd Street to the 190's. The original Dyckman farmhouse was located near the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, at Manhattan’s northernmost point.

As time passed wealthy country squires established estates in the area. The Dyckmans, however, referred to their land as a “farm” and famously raised cabbages and cherries. A second, larger house replaced the original, nearer to the Harlem River.  The Revolution would change the idyllic atmosphere of the farm.

Jan’s grandson, William, had inherited the land.  The Dyckman family fled north to Westchester in 1776 when British General Howe moved northward after the Battle of Long Island and took the Anthorpe Mansion in Bloomingdale, just to the south of the farm, in anticipation of the coming Battle of Harlem. After that conflict, the Continental Army took possession of the Dyckman house for a short time, followed by the British who occupied it until 1783.

The Dyckman family returned that year to find that the British had burned their home and their orchards to the ground. Undeterred, William’s eldest son, Jacobus, with the help of slaves, rebuilt between 1783 and 1785. Set on a stony bluff, it was built of fieldstone, brick and wood, with the upper story of clapboard.  Characteristic of the Dutch Colonial style so familiar to the family was the high basement and the low-pitched gambrel roof, curved to swing over a full-length porch. Two large parlors and two private bedrooms comprised the main floor, the second story being a large open loft space. A winter kitchen doubled as a heating source while a separate summer kitchen in the garden, with a small bedroom area above for, most likely, a cook, was used in hotter months.

The orchards on the 250-acre farm were replanted and in 1787 when William died, the farm had a barn, cider mill and several outbuildings. Jacobus took over the farm, moving his sizable family in to the homestead – eventually totaling eleven children.

As time passed, Jacobus–who became a New York City Alderman in 1822--renovated the home, partitioning off bedrooms upstairs in the 1820s and adding a wing to the north around 1830.  The building housed ten people in 1820 including Jacobus (whose wife had died in 1814), three sons, a grandson, niece, a white woman and freed black woman, one male slave and one freed black boy. Other family members and workers lived in three other homes spotted around the farm.

After Jacobus died in 1832, his sons Michael and Isaac lived on in the home for another two decades. Michael died in 1854 and Isaac in 1868.

Upon his death 148 acres of land, divided into 151 plots, was auctioned off. “This is the largest quantity of land ever offered for sale at one time within the City limits,” said The Times. Two years later another 92 acres, divided into 900 lots, was auctioned. The subsequent lay-out of new streets would place the Dyckman homestead at the corner of Broadway and 204th Street.

The farmhouse around 1895 - photo NYPL Collection

In the later years of the 19th century, socially prominent John H. Judge and his wife purchased the house at auction. Although The New York Times remarked “It fell into good hands, for Mr. Judge has guarded the old place from damage as jealously as if it were the home of his ancestors,” period photographs show the building in a state of serious neglect.



The neglected Dyckman farmhouse around 1900 - photo NYPL collection

The Judges never lived in the home, residing instead in their mansion at 27 West 94th Street. In November of 1913 the couple announced their intentions to give the house to the Daughters of the Revolution to convert into a museum. The caveat was that the Judges wanted to keep the valuable land on which the home stood – “Mr. Judge, however, has stipulated that the building must be placed on a satisfactory site in Isham Park,” noted The New York Times.

Despite the city’s promises, appropriations for the new site and moving costs were not forthcoming. In May 1914 the Art Commission photographed the Dyckman House as an architectural record, along with other threatened historic buildings. The future of the colonial building was shaky at best.

In an eerie coincidence, on December 18, 1914 Winifred Judge and Fannie Dyckman, widow of Isaac Dyckman, both died. Spurred by the death of their mother, Mary Alice Dyckman Dean and Fannie Fredericka Dyckman Welch purchased their family home to rescue it and present it to the city as a memorial to their parents.

As luck would have it, Mary’s husband was Bashford Dean of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Columbia University, and Fannie’s husband was architect Alexander M. Welch. While the sisters gathered family furniture and relics for the museum, their husbands spent over a year restoring the structure. Welch oversaw the restoration while Dean worked on the interiors. The architect carefully removed features not original to the house, such as the 1830s addition. By July, 1916, it was ready for presentation to the city.

The farmhouse as restored, around 1920 - photo NYPL Collection

“It is doubtful if any old house in the country has ever been restored with such care to preserve its former features,” reported The New York Times. “To get hand-hewn timbers and other old material with which to make necessary repairs, Mr. Welch purchased two century-old houses about to be torn down in New Jersey and part of many others. Every lock and bolt is more than eighty years old, and scores of hand-made nails were used. In the house itself little actual restoration was required, but the old smokehouse in the rear has been restored, as originally built.”

On the ground floor, a room was set apart to display Revolutionary and native American relics excavated on the Dyckman property and a Hessian hut was rebuilt behind the house, using original bricks.  A year later the sisters purchased two additional lots adjoining the house as a gift to the city. “The additional property will make it possible to enlarge the garden, which had been laid out in old Dutch style,” said The New York Times.

While a laudable, early example of architectural preservation, the restored rooms most closely reflected the Edwardian romanticized view of colonial life than the more realistic hardships 18th century farmers endured.  Helen W. Henderson, in her 1917 A Loiterer in New York, was not impressed, calling it an "almost too clean restoration." 

"Its proportions are unpretentious, for it was a simple farmhouse," said Henderson, "but the two Dyckman daughters, who presented it to the city, in 1916, have spared no trouble or expense in outfitting it with family heirlooms and Revolutionary trophies found in the neighbourhood, and in making the house as homelike and intimate as a public museum can hope to be."

Controversy swirled around the museum when in 1918.  While the United States was embroiled in World War I, German-born Park Commissioner William F. Grell abruptly dismissed the curator and another employee and replaced them with Captain Frederick Hensler and his wife “who are of German birth, but naturalized here,” according to The New York Times.

The newspaper went on to list Commissioner Grell’s memberships in German clubs and societies and lament the “precarious circumstances” of the fired employees.

Today the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum is owned by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. A member of the Historic House Trust, it is both a New York City Landmark and included on the National Register of Historic Places. Nestled among the modern buildings of Upper Broadway, the charming 18th century house is both a surprise and a delight.