The DeWitt and Victorine Cole House - 436 West 20th Street

 

Clement Clark Moore donated the block of Ninth to Tenth Avenues from 20th to 21st Street in 1818.  Six years later, the first building of the Episcopal Church's General Seminary was erected on the property.  Within a few years, the first genteel residences began appearing on the opposite side of West 20th Street.  In 1835, John N. Smith erected one of the first homes to face the bucolic spot, at 280 West 20th Street (renumbered 436 in 1865).

Faced in red Flemish bond brick above a brownstone basement, the 25-foot wide house was a very early example of the emerging Greek Revival style.  Handsome iron fencing with acanthus finials ran along the areaway.  Fluted Doric columns upheld the heavy entablature of the double-doored entrance.  The squat windows of the attic level interrupted the generous, layered wooden fascia below the understated cornice.

The handsome columned entrance and the layered fascia survived in 1941.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The house was home to the William A. Duncan family in the 1840s.  He was a paper merchant at 77 John Street.  Starting around 1853, it was operated as a boarding house run by Harriet Maurice.  Among her tenants that year were M. L. Candee, a clerk, and importer Henry J. Moore.  An advertisement in The New York Times on March 13, 1854 offered:

Boarding--Rooms furnished or unfurnished, with board for gentlemen and their wives and single gentlemen, in a house with all the modern improvements.  Apply at 280 West 20th-st.

An "M. Miller" boarded here in January 1859, when his room was burglarized.  The thief made away with "a carpet-bag containing a number of deeds and bonds, a pocketbook containing $585 in $5 and $10 bills on the Brownsville Bank, Omaha City, Nebraska, and some valuable papers," as reported by the New-York Tribune on January 18.  Miller reported the theft to Police Sergeant Lefferts, who concocted a wily scheme.

Signing an announcement in the local papers "Jones," Lefferts offered $100 for the return of the bag, and used his personal address.  On January 17, two "rough-looking Irishmen" rang the bell of the Lefferts house.  Posing as "Mrs. Jones," Lefferts's wife explained that her husband was out, partially described the bag, and asked where her husband could call on them.  When they left, she rushed to the Detectives' Office and reported the incident.

Wearing plain clothes, Sergeant Lefferts and Officer McCord went to 103 Perry Street, the address the men supplied.  Some bantering went on, during which the two men questioned "Jones" about the description of the bag and its contents.  Satisfied that Lefferts was the actual owner, they released it after receiving the reward.

"At this point of the proceedings, the officers buckled on their shields and told the two men that they were prisoners," reported the New-York Tribune.  A fight ensued, but a "few well directed blows from the clubs of the [officers] brought the fellows to terms, and they submitted to be handcuffed," said the article.  The prisoners insisted they had found the carpetbag on the stoop of the Perry Street house.

The West 20th Street residence continued to be operated as a boarding house through 1863.  The next year it was purchased by Dewitt (sometimes spelled De Witt) Clinton Cole and his wife, the former Victorine Selena Crapser.  A Civil War veteran, Cole (perhaps appropriately) was a coal merchant, his business located at 165 Tenth Avenue.  He and Victorine had four daughters, Helen, Victorine, Marguerite, and Bessie.

As was common, the Coles rented unneeded space in their home.  In 1868, the Dexter family lived here.  Edward and Elias Dexter ran an art and framing store at 564 Broadway.  They would have occupied the second floor, while the Coles lived above and below them.  An advertisement in the New York Herald on May 2, 1872 offered, "To Let--with owner (private family), second floor, 5 rooms, all conveniences, in an American family; house 436 West Twentieth street; location first class."

Dewitt Cole had an interesting avocation--breeding pedigree dogs.  On April 9, 1879, he entered his English Setter puppy Boson in the Gilmore's Garden dog show.  The New York Times remarked, "The English setter dogs were magnificent.  Such a lot was never seen in any country before."

In October 1885, the Coles hired architect M. H. Roullier to enlarge the house with a full-height, 17-foot-wide extension to the rear.  The renovation cost them the equivalent of $135,000 in 2025.

In January 1887, the Coles took in two new renters, the fascinating Reverend Royal G. Wilder and his wife.  On February 17, The Sabbath Recorder reported, "With the January number, the Missionary Review begins volume ten.  The address of the editor and publisher has been changed from Princeton, N. J., to 436 West 20th St., New York."  Wilder had established the publication in 1875.

Born in 1816 in Bridgeport, Vermont, Wilder graduated from Middlebury College and two schools in Mississippi before entering Andover Theological Seminary.  In 1845, two years after graduating, he sailed to India as a missionary.  Although he would remain there for three decades, it was not an easy mission.  The New-York Tribune explained, "The natives of Kolapoor were a bigoted class, most of them being Brahmins, and his greeting there was in the shape of a petition to the government for his banishment."  For 12 years, said the newspaper, Wilder and his wife were the only Christians within a population of 4 million.

Wilder's health prompted his return to America in 1871.  He wrote Mission Schools in India and, now in the West 20th Street house, continued work on Missionary Review.  His heart, however, was in India.  After moving into the Coles' home, he said, "My whole soul would leap and jump at the chance if I had energy enough to go back to that dear native mission field."

Wilder's condition continued to worsen, but he carried on his work diligently.  On October 8, he published an edition of Missionary Review and three days later he died.  The New-York Tribune said, "Mrs. Wilder, her daughter and one son will return to India to complete the work already begun there."

At the turn of the century, the Coles' second floor tenants were Henry and Mary Hughes.  A machinist, he worked for the Charles K. Rogers & Co. factory at 161-165 West 18th Street.  Hughes became obsessed about the possibility of fire in the old building.  According to the New York Morning Telegraph, he regularly told Mary, "It's a regular fire trap.  I have a premonition that I'm going to die in a fire, and I think it'll be in that building."

The newspaper said, "Some time ago, his premonition constantly preying upon his mind, Hughes had his machine transferred from the third floor of the factory to a vault which was considered fireproof."  Next door to the vault was a storage room where excelsior, used for shipping, was kept.

On April 18, 1900, fire broke out in the excelsior room.  While the other 110 employees quickly exited the factory building, Hughes was trapped.  "He had no exit--no escape from the death he knew, or thought, the Fates had destined him to meet."  Had Hughes not moved his workplace into the vault, he, too, would have simply walked out of the building.  Instead, he met a grisly demise.  On April 20, the New York Morning Telegraph reported, "His charred and maimed body was found yesterday morning in the vault in the basement where he was penned in, a victim of smoke and fire, precisely as he had foretold."

The Coles apparently had no problems with their renters until the Arthur Lewis family moved in.  The couple had a small son, Arnold.  Things went smoothly until Arnold contracted whooping cough and had to be kept home from school.  The peace of Dewitt C. Cole's quiet domicile was shattered.  On June 23, 1909, he and his tenant faced a judge.

The Evening Post said Cole told Magistrate Krotel in the Jefferson Market Court "that the small son of Mrs. Arthur Lewis made the day hideous."

Mrs. Lewis explained, "Your Honor, my boy Arnold has only two drums, four horns, a couple of whistles, and one rattle.  He's had the whooping cough, and I had to keep him at home.  So I got him these toys."

When does all this happen?" asked the magistrate.

"From one to five in the afternoon."

The article said, "Mrs. Lewis was told by the magistrate to keep Arnold quiet."

Victorine Selena Cole died on July 24, 1920.  DeWitt and his daughters noted that her funeral would be "private."  Still living here with DeWitt was his only still single daughter, Victorine.

On February 24, 1925, the New York Evening Post reported, "De Witt Cole, ninety, one of the oldest residents of Old Chelsea, died this morning at 436 West Twentieth street, where he had lived for more than fifty years."

In October 1929, the Cole daughters sold 436 West 20th Street to Aaron J. and Elizabeth Colnan, "for their residency," according to The New York Times.  Interestingly, they inherited renters, Cornelius Blauvelt Zabriskie and his wife, Augusta.  Zabriskie was the registrar and bursar of the General Theological Seminary across the street.  The couple had rented from the Coles as early as 1923.

Zabriskie had retired in the spring of 1929.  He died here at the age of 71 on February 22, 1930.  In reporting his death, The New York Times remarked, "He spent much of the early part of his life in the West."

Actress and swimmer Frances Gaar purchased 436 West 20th Street in 1962 for $12,000 (about $124,000 today).  She had appeared in the motion picture Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates four years earlier and now appeared in television shows like The Defenders.  A champion swimmer in college, a biography by the Actors Fund said she "turned down an offer by MGM Studios to be a stand-in for Esther Williams in order to study acting in New York."  Two years after moving into the West 20th Street house, Gaar returned to the water doing an underwater ballet in the 1964 World's Fair's "Sea Hunt" exhibition.  

Gaar rented rooms in the house, mostly to actors.  A long-time resident was actress Glenn Close, "who lived on the parlor floor for many years," according to The New York Times on October 11, 2009.

Frances Gaar died at the age of 89 in 2008.  Just before her death, she sold the house to Michael Bolla and Michael Daniel, developers, "who promised her they would preserve it," according to The New York Times.  Gaar donated most of the $6.1 million sale proceeds to the Actors Fund.

On October 11, 2009, The New York Times reported that the new owners were "rebuilding the structure...while preserving historic detail."  They had put it on the market a week earlier as "an unusually large family mansion" at $21 million.

Unusual paneled Greek Revival pilasters survive in the parlor level.  photograph by Chester Higgins Jr. / The New York Times April 27, 2011

The new owners converted it to "Chelsea Mansion," with short-term rentals.  The parlor floor rented in 2011 for $12,000 per month.

The house was on the market again in 2015 for $22.5 million.  In reporting the offering on March 18, Real Estate Weekly said, "The building has continued [to] attract celebrity tenants in recent years with Courtney Love among those calling 436 West 20th Street home."

Current owners have removed the Greek Revival entrance (perhaps to be reinstalled later) and replaced the complex 1835 fascia with a sterile example.  David Holwka, in an article called "The Seamy Side of 436 West 20th Street" in his Small House Lab blog on January 31, 2025, complains about the ongoing renovations that appear to be going forward behind the backs of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.  He points out, for instance, a "prominent steel I-beam above its roof ridge and a large skylight on its north slope."  There was, he says, "no evidence of applications or approvals for these additions."

The wonderful missing entrance, in place as late as September 2024, will hopefully be restored.

The 190-year-old house, the earliest one on the block, survives in remarkable condition.

photographs by the author