John Allen House

119 East 10th Street | also 119A East 10th Street, 115 East 10th Street | East Village | built 1870

Open on the map4 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. 1845

    Developer Joseph Russell builds a brick house as a speculative residence

    Joseph Russell, who worked in real estate on the former Stuyvesant farmland, builds the house in 1845, then numbered 189 Tenth Street. It is 26 feet wide and three and a half stories tall, with a brownstone basement. Its entrance has double doors, a brownstone frame with projecting ears, and a stoop with iron railings that wrap finial-topped newel posts.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1850

    Dry-goods merchant John Allen and his family occupy the house

    Merchant John Allen, whose dry-goods business is at 115 Broadway, lives here with his family by 1850 and stays until the spring of 1858. An auction of their household goods on April 27, 1858, lists rosewood suites in purple velvet plush, marble-top tables and a French mantel clock that had cost $150.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1920

    July 27

    St. Mark's Church buys the house for parishioner housing

    The New-York Tribune reports on July 27, 1920, that St. Mark's Church has bought the house to modernize it for parishioners. The church, at Second Avenue and Tenth Street, already owns several properties nearby. Earlier occupants included boarders, a physician and the artist Blanca Will.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1925

    Sculptor Alexander Stirling Calder's family lives in the house

    Sculptor Alexander Stirling Calder and his wife, the artist Nanette Lederer Calder, are living here by 1925. Their son Alexander "Sandy" Calder, later known for his mobiles, periodically lives with them. He lists this address in the catalogue when he shows his work The Eclipse at the Society of Independent Artists exhibition at the Waldorf-Astoria that year.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 572 buildings with stories in East Village