E. C. Riley House

134 Sullivan Street | SoHo | built 1900

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. 1826

    July 10

    Two investors buy a Prince and Sullivan corner lot and build four houses, one on Sullivan

    A grocer, George S. Mills, and a carpenter, John A. Ryerson, bought vacant land at the corner of Prince and Sullivan Streets in July 1826. They built four houses there between 1826 and 1827, and this one on Sullivan is a Federal row house of Flemish-bond brick. A basement storefront was added in 1890 and has since been removed.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1845

    February 11

    A Swedenborgian family holds a teenage son's funeral in the house

    The E. C. Riley family, members of New York's tiny Swedenborgian New Jerusalem congregation, lived here. Their son E. C. Riley Jr. died of tuberculosis in February 1845, a month after turning 17. His funeral was held in the house the next day, and the whole congregation, fewer than two dozen people, was invited. The elder Riley also served as a volunteer firefighter with Engine Co. 17.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1889

    March 6

    A Philharmonic oboist's house is sold at auction after his death

    Louis Ohlemann, an oboist who was a member of the New York Philharmonic between 1851 and 1874, owned the house. After his death it was auctioned on March 6, 1889. Giovanni Farina bought it for $11,250 and moved in with his wife and sons, a sign of the block's shift to working-class Italian families. Within a year he had an architect convert the basement to a store.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1973

    A resident is charged with harboring a fugitive bank bomber captured at Myrtle Beach

    In the early 1970s a 25-year-old woman living in the house took up with Peter Phillip Mauchlin, a bank robber. In October 1973 he set off a bomb at a bank near Union Square that hurt ten people, having earlier escaped from the Federal House of Detention. He was captured days later in Myrtle Beach with her, and she was held on $10,000 bail for harboring a fugitive.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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