131 MacDougal Street House
131 MacDougal Street | Greenwich Village | 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.
- 1829
A hat merchant's speculative row of four houses is done, and Nos. 129 and 131 sell for $8,000
Alonzo A. Alvord, a hat merchant with a shop on the Bowery, put up four Federal-style rowhouses at 125 to 131 MacDougal Street, starting in 1828 as the area around the new Washington Square turned fashionable. By March 1829 the work was finished, and Nos. 129 and 131 were sold together for $8,000 to two downtown merchants. The earliest known tenant of No. 131, from 1835 to 1838, was Thomas J. Field, a china merchant.
- 1855
Silversmith Henry Hebbard buys the house and lives in it for five years
Henry Hebbard, a downtown silversmith, owned No. 131 from 1855 until 1880, and he and his wife, Julia, lived there until 1860. His firm, Henry Hebbard & Co., was dissolved in 1859, and silver companies called Hebbard & Moore and Hebbard, Strong & Co. followed. Around the same years the neighborhood was losing its fashionable standing, and older houses nearby were turned into boardinghouses.
“From 1855 until 1880, No. 131 was owned by downtown silversmith Henry Hebbard (1819-) and his wife, nee Julia A. Douglas; the Hebbards lived here in 1855-60.”
- 1912
The owner of No. 131 is convicted of keeping a disorderly house, then pardoned by the governor
Katie Hicks, an Irish-born woman who owned the house from 1911, was convicted in 1912 together with Mary Chapelle, a French-born woman who owned the two houses next door at Nos. 127 and 129. The Landmarks Preservation Commission quotes a description of the pair as notorious keepers of disorderly houses. The governor pardoned them in 1913, and Hicks died around 1916, leaving the property to her children.
“…convicted in 1912 along with the French-born Mary Chapelle, the owner of Nos. 127 and 129, as "two notorious keepers of disorderly houses;" they were pardoned by the governor in 1913.”
- 1919
The family of theatrical agent and playwright Will A. Page buys the house
In 1919 two women of the Page family, Adelaide Helen Page and Sarah Crocker Page, acquired No. 131. Adelaide was married to Will A. Page, who died in 1928 and whom the New York Times called a well-known theatrical agent and playwright. The house passed to Georgia W. Page in 1922, and the family kept it until 1932, when the Milgor Realty Corporation took over.
“No. 131 was acquired in 1919 by Adelaide Helen Page and Sarah Crocker Page. Adelaide was the wife of Will A. Page (c. 1879-1928)…”
- 1924
Tearooms and a speakeasy move into the house on a block known for bohemian clubs
By 1924 part of No. 131 was in commercial use. Through the 1930s its tenants included the Kopper Kettle tearoom, run by Arch E. Horns, Teddy Morone's speakeasy, Murray's Tearoom and Henry's Laundry. The Landmarks Preservation Commission quotes historian George Chauncey, who called this stretch of MacDougal Street the best-known site of gay and lesbian commercial venues in mid-1920s New York.
- 1940
A Justice Department aide and a film magazine editor buy the house
Harold G. Calhoun, a political science professor at UCLA who served as assistant to the U.S. Attorney General from 1936 to 1945, and his wife Dorothy Donnell Calhoun owned No. 131 from 1940 to 1961. They had bought Nos. 127 and 129 two decades earlier. Dorothy had edited motion picture magazines from 1927 to 1935 and then worked as an assistant to Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, while also writing short stories, children's books and plays.
- 1951
The Calhouns lease No. 131 and its two neighbors for 63 years, and the Times credits Aaron Burr
In August 1951 the New York Times reported that the Calhouns, owners of No. 131, had leased it together with Nos. 127 and 129 for 63 years to the operator Thomas M. Graham, who planned to modernize the houses with the architects Knubel & Persich. In the 1950s the roof's two dormers at No. 131 were joined into a studio dormer and the ground-floor windows lowered into a storefront. The Times wrongly credited the old buildings' construction to Aaron Burr.
“The Times in 1951 reported on the Calhouns' 63-year lease of Nos. 127 to 131 MacDougal Street to operator Thomas M. Graham…”
- 2004
The city designates Nos. 127, 129 and 131 MacDougal Street as individual landmarks
On June 8, 2004, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the three Federal-style houses at 127, 129 and 131 MacDougal Street, the first three of thirteen buildings that Village Preservation and the New York Landmarks Conservancy had jointly proposed for designation. The three were landmarked a second time on December 17, 2013, when they became part of the South Village Historic District after about ten years of advocacy by Village Preservation.
Source: Village Preservation
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