Frances Perkins Residence

121 Washington Place | also 121 West Washington Plce | West Village | built 1925

Open on the map6 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. 1904

    March 10

    Smith Lafayette Russell dies and leaves the house and most of his estate to his church

    Smith Lafayette Russell, who lived here with his wife and unmarried sisters, died on March 10, 1904. His will left $50,000 and the house to the Duane Methodist Episcopal Church, reportedly the largest trust ever created for a New York church. His widow Mary sued the trustees in 1906, and the estate settled with her rather than go to court.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1907

    Art patron Clara Davidge buys the house and goes on to co-found the Madison Gallery

    Clara Davidge, a painter and widow of Mason Davidge and daughter of Bishop Henry C. Potter, bought the house in 1907. She helped Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney organize her gallery and in 1908 opened the Madison Gallery with Henry Fitch Taylor. The gallery hosted the first planning meeting for the Armory Show of modern art, and she married Taylor in 1913.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1909

    November

    Poet Edwin Arlington Robinson moves into a studio built for him in the back yard

    Clara Davidge hired architects to plan a single-story studio in her back yard for the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, at a cost of $850. He moved in during November 1909 and stayed for two years, with breakfast brought to him and few demands on his time. He put together his collection The Town Down the River there, published in 1910.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1913

    October 1

    Newlyweds Frances Perkins and Paul Wilson rent the house

    After marrying in 1913, the social reformer Frances Perkins and the economist Paul Caldwell Wilson rented 121 Washington Place from Clara Davidge, moving in on October 1. They hired a German couple to run the household, and their daughter Susanna was born in 1916. By 1919 the family had left for a smaller apartment, as the cost of Wilson's care grew. Perkins later became Secretary of Labor.

    Source: Village Preservation

  5. 1925

    E. Dean Fuller gut-renovates the Federal house into a Georgian reproduction

    The attorney E. Dean Fuller, whose firm specialized in Mexican and Latin American legal work, and his wife spent a year rebuilding the house in 1925-26. Floor levels were changed to give a street-level entrance, and a four-story Georgian-style front replaced the old facade, with a broken-pediment doorway topped by a stylized pineapple. It was still a single-family home in 2016.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 2024

    Village Preservation unveils a plaque for Frances Perkins on the house

    In 2024 Village Preservation marked the house with a historic plaque honoring Frances Perkins, the labor leader who championed the New Deal and Social Security and became the first woman in a U.S. cabinet. It was the organization's 25th plaque, placed at the home where she lived during her Greenwich Village years.

    Source: Village Preservation

Further reading

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