Charles B. Macy House

117 West 12th Street | West Village | built 1848

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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. 1848

    Elizabeth Walsh's 1848 house at 117 West 12th Street is the lone survivor of its row

    The Greenwich Village Historic District report calls 117 West 12th Street virtually unaltered: a three-story brick house with a stone basement, built in 1848 for Elizabeth Walsh and transitional between late Greek Revival and Italianate. Of the five houses numbered 109 to 117, it is the only one left, the others having given way to the twenty-one-story apartment building at the Sixth Avenue corner. Its paneled double doors, bracketed cornice and fine stoop ironwork stand out.

    “It was built in 1848 for Elizabeth Walsh and is the only survivor of a row of five houses (Nos. 109-117)…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1860

    Wine merchant Charles B. Macy moves his family into 117 West 12th Street

    Charles B. Macy, born December 4, 1807, and a descendant of the Puritan Thomas Macy, ran a wine business at 67 Liberty Street. His family took the house in 1860, after earlier occupants including Pierce Duffay, who listed his occupation as junk, and the builder Henry Boyd. Macy died around 1870, and his son Charles S. Macy inherited the house. By 1886 the son was a physician, serving as Clinical Assistant in Gynecology at the New York Homoeopathic Medical College.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1905

    October 11

    Homoeopathic physician Dr. J. Wilford Allen buys the house and hosts a college reception

    In 1905 Dr. J. Wilford Allen, a faculty member at the New York Homoeopathic Medical College and an editor of the Materia Medica Miscellany section of the journal The American Physician, bought the house from Charles S. Macy and moved his office here from across the street. On October 11 he and his wife invited the college's faculty and students to a reception at the house, with music and refreshments. In 1907 he was elected president of the Dunham Club, an association of homoeopathic doctors.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1921

    May 18

    A doctor from 117 West 12th Street examines an exhausted Marie Curie

    Marie Curie arrived in New York with her two daughters in May 1921 for a punishing round of degrees, awards and receptions. On May 18 The Evening World reported she was slightly indisposed and had been examined by Dr. Edward H. Rogers of 117 West Twelfth Street, a physician who practiced in the house. He found her exhausted by the voyage from France and advised her against attending many of the planned receptions and dinners.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1932

    February 5

    Dr. Charles Sibley is called from 117 West 12th Street to a 102-year-old Village statesman's deathbed

    In the early hours of February 5, 1932, Dr. Charles T. Sibley, who lived and worked at 117 West 12th Street, was summoned to John R. Voorhis's home at 786 Greenwich Street. Voorhis, 102, was well known in the Village and had retired the previous October after 58 years of public service, ending as chairman of the Board of Elections. Sibley, his doctor for many years, rushed over, but Voorhis died at 12:45 a.m. of a heart attack.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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