William Oland Bourne House
13 Vandam Street | Hudson Square | built 1829
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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.
- 1841
The American Female Moral Reform Society meets here to explain why it fired its publishing agent
Mary Ann Hawkins, president of the American Female Moral Reform Society, called an urgent meeting at 13 Vandam Street on July 6, 1841. The society, founded in 1834 to end prostitution, had to explain the dismissal of Reverend Charles Yale, publisher of its paper Advocate of Moral Reform, after an examination of the office accounts. By 1840 it counted 445 auxiliary branches and its paper had more than 20,000 subscribers.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1865
Minister William Oland Bourne offers prizes to Union soldiers who lost a right arm and practice penmanship with the left
William Oland Bourne, born in 1819, married into the Martin family and lived here from about 1850 to 1869. A minister, poet and political figure, he became chaplain of the Central Park Hospital and edited The Soldier's Friend. In 1865 he offered prizes from $50 up to $1,000 to soldiers and sailors who had lost their right arms and sent in samples of writing done with the left.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1891
A seven-year-old resident stows away on the steamship Teutonic and sails to Liverpool and back
Tommy Mulligan, who lived with relatives at 13 Vandam, vanished in the summer of 1891, and family watched the river for his body. He had slipped onto the R.M.S. Teutonic, and a purser found him wandering the deck once at sea. A stewardess looked after him in Liverpool, and he returned on the same ship on August 22.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1919
Developer William Sloane Coffin converts the house to apartments, and a sandal-wearing journalist moves in
Trinity Church sold 13 Vandam in 1919 to William Sloane Coffin, who made it bachelor apartments without kitchens. Among the first tenants was Frederick Burlingham, a former New York Herald Paris journalist known for wearing sandals. He had been briefly a suspect in the 1908 Steinheil murders and had made travelogue films, including one of a descent into Vesuvius's crater. He died in June 1924.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1965
Hugh and Marguerite Stix run the Rare Sea Shell Gallery from the house
By 1965 Hugh Stix, a retired businessman, and his Viennese wife Marguerite, a sculptor and ceramist, ran a Rare Sea Shell Gallery here, showing a collection of about 15,000 shells, many bought from native collectors on a year-long world trip. Marguerite made jewelry from shells, which Cartier sold and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis wore. She died in 1975, while the couple still lived there.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- The William Oland Bourne House - 13 Vandam StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
- Where Female Moral Reform was Born -- No. 13 Vandam StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
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