Hamilton Park Cottage
105 Franklin Avenue | New Brighton | built 1899
Open on the map4 entries
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.
- 1851
Merchant Charles K. Hamilton buys the hilltop land that becomes Hamilton Park
Charles K. Hamilton, a New York merchant born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, bought 32 acres in New Brighton with his wife Margaretta in 1851 and 1852. He was an early believer in commuting from Staten Island, and Staten Island historians recorded that he pushed for a bridge from these heights to New Jersey. The landmarks commission counts this house as one of the original cottages of the park he developed on the hill.
- 1859
A brick Italianate cottage rises in Hamilton Park, its porch joining two bay windows
Built sometime between 1859 and 1872 by an unknown architect, the house is a brick cottage in the Italianate style. Its signature is a central porch of three wooden arches that ties together the bay windows of the parlor and the dining room. Small third-story windows sit in the board beneath the cornice between carved brackets, and a second-story rear porch looks out over the Kill Van Kull.
- 1889
Edwina Fowler buys No. 105 after Hamilton loses his park to a mortgage default
Charles Hamilton defaulted on his mortgage in 1878, and in 1881 the referee, William P. Dixon, conveyed the whole Hamilton Park property to the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York. According to the commission, No. 105 Franklin Avenue went to Edwina Fowler in 1889. In 1894 the insurer filed a map dividing the park into lots to be sold one by one, ending its single ownership.
“In 1889, No. 105 Frankl in Avenue was sold to Edwina Fowler.”
- 1970
The city designates Hamilton Park Cottage a landmark with its owners' support
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the house a city landmark on October 13, 1970, after a public hearing held on April 28 of that year. The owners told the commission they favored designation, one other speaker backed it, and nobody spoke against it. The commission praised the porch set between two bay windows and the house's place in a planned suburban community built by a single developer.
Nearby
- Christ Church New Brighton76 Franklin Avenue | 2 entries
- W. S. Pendleton House22 Pendleton Place | 2 entries
- Pritchard House66 Harvard Avenue | 2 entries
- 1 Pendleton Place House1 Pendleton Place | 9 entries
- 62 Westervelt Avenue2 entries
- Anton Schock House82 Westervelt Avenue | 2 entries