Winthrop Mansion

138 2nd Avenue | East Village | 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. 1832

    Thomas E. Davis builds a Federal mansion on Second Avenue that Benjamin Robert Winthrop buys

    Thomas E. Davis began building Federal-style mansions on Second Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets in 1832, on land that had been part of the Stuyvesant farm. No. 138 was finished the next year, with Flemish-bond brick, a Gibbs surround around the arched entrance, and a peaked roof with two dormers. Benjamin Robert Winthrop, a descendant of both Peter Stuyvesant and Massachusetts governor John Winthrop, bought it.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1839

    Hamilton Fish, Winthrop's first cousin, moves into the mansion

    When the Winthrops sailed for Europe in 1839, Winthrop's first cousin Hamilton Fish moved into 138 Second Avenue with his wife and seven children. Fish was an attorney who had first run for the State Assembly in 1834. He left the house after his election to the U.S. Senate in 1851, and later served as Secretary of State under President Grant.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1904

    June 18

    Victims of the General Slocum fire lie in an undertaker's shop at 138 Second Avenue

    After the General Slocum steamship burned in June 1904, with only 321 of about 1,300 people aboard surviving, many unidentified bodies lay in Philip Wagner's undertaking shop on the ground floor here. The New York Times described hearses coming and going all day on June 18. Among the dead were 26 extended-family members of Henry A. Kohler.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1947

    Painter Esteban Vicente moves into an apartment in the former mansion

    In 1947, the Spanish American painter Esteban Vicente and his bride, Maria Teresa Babin, moved into an apartment at 138 Second Avenue after two years of painting in Puerto Rico. They stayed through 1949. Vicente, among the first New York School abstract expressionists, became friends here with painters including Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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