Twin Peaks

102 Bedford Street | West Village | built 1830

Open on the map5 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1925

    Spring

    Builder Clifford Reed Daily pitches banker Otto Kahn on a dream house for Village artists

    Over lunch in the tiny wooden tea room beside 102 Bedford, Daily, a builder who lived nearby on Sheridan Square, asked the millionaire Otto Kahn to back his plan to remake the old three-story frame house next door. He complained that Villagers were being herded into identical barracks and wanted a place that would set the imagination free. Daily bought the house that year and began a $14,000 renovation with Kahn's money.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1925

    A frame house of about 1830 is remade as the half-timbered Twin Peaks studio building

    A frame house of two and a half stories with dormers, put up around 1830, was changed beyond recognition in 1925 by Clifford Reed Daily, with financing from the banker Otto Kahn. It became a five-story stucco studio building with pseudo-medieval half-timbering, a deep overhang at the front and bay windows. Two steep gables on the roof gave it the name Twin Peaks.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1926

    May 21

    Actress Mabel Normand smashes champagne on the roof to dedicate Twin Peaks

    The New York Times called the dedication of Twin Peaks "novel exercises." The silent film actress Mabel Normand christened the building by breaking a bottle of champagne from a platform on the roof, holy water was sprinkled on it, and Princess Amelie Troubetskoy burned acorns in honor of the god Pan. Ten small apartments were ready to rent at $68.50 a month.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1927

    Daily loses 17 Grove Street to foreclosure and gives up Twin Peaks to Otto Kahn

    A year after the dedication, Daily could not pay the mortgage on 17 Grove Street, and Kahn's company, Hanover Square Realty, foreclosed on it. Daily also gave 102 Bedford back to Kahn. In the decades that followed, tenants ranged from Kahn's daughter to the writer George H. Faulkner and a series of clerks.

    Source: Village Preservation

  5. 1969

    Twin Peaks plays a disco in the film The April Fools in the year the district is designated

    In 1969 the film The April Fools, starring Catherine Deneuve and Jack Lemmon, shows the house as a disco, the same year it is included in the Greenwich Village Historic District. Its ten apartments, each with a fireplace, still have their slanted walls and unusual windows and doors.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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