J. J. Ellis House

142 West 11th Street | West Village | built 1855

Open on the map5 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1. 1855

   Builder Linus Scudder and partners complete a row of eight Italianate houses

   In 1854 Greenwich Village builder Linus Scudder joined other tradesmen to build eight houses along the southern side of West 11th Street, in the block from Sixth to Seventh Avenues. Finished in 1855, each was 22 feet wide and three stories high over a tall English basement. Their doorways and parlor windows had elliptically arched cornices, and elaborate iron fences led through gates to the stoops.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

2. 1871

   June 18

   Dr. James J. Connolly kills his two small daughters and himself in the house

   On June 18, 1871, Dr. Connolly, resident surgeon at St. Vincent's Hospital, locked himself in the nursery with his two daughters, one two years old and the other seven months. A neighbor alerted the police, who forced the door that evening, and another doctor testified at the inquest that Connolly had been acutely insane. The Herald called it one of the most heart-rending cases of child murder and suicide the city had known, and crowds stared at the house for days. His widow Ellen was committed to Bloomingdale asylum that September.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

3. 1900

   A boarding house changes hands in a swap for an Irvington country estate

   The house became an upscale boarding house after the Connolly tragedy, owned by investor Jacob Huyler, and his son John S. Huyler kept it until 1900. That year he swapped it, along with a second Manhattan property, for Mrs. James Cunningham's 26-acre estate, Cunningham Castle, in Irvington-on-the-Hudson. Its use as a boarding house stayed the same afterward.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

4. 1920

   Oxford-educated English professor Alexis I. duPont Coleman boards here in the 1920s

   Alexis I. duPont Coleman, educated at Oxford, lived in the house as a boarder in the 1920s. He taught English at the City College of New York and worked as a freelance journalist, and he wrote for The Critic. A Wilmington, Delaware, newspaper said his literary writing in magazines, newspapers and an encyclopedia was known internationally.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

5. 1968

   Cabaret singer Cynthia Crane and playwright Ted Story buy the house

   The Villager reported on May 23, 1968 that Mr. and Mrs. Theodore H. Story had bought the house and planned to live in it. She was cabaret singer Cynthia Crane and he was playwright Ted Story. They started a renovation, finished in 1974, that divided the house into a duplex and four more apartments. The New York Times reported in 2011 that they had to sell after losing their life savings to Bernard Madoff.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

• The 1855 J. J. Ellis House - 142 West 11th StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
• Then & Now photos: 142 West 11th StreetVillage Preservation: Greenwich Village Then & Now

Nearby

• Uncle Charlie's Downtown56 Greenwich Avenue | 3 entries
• 54 Greenwich Avenue1 entry
• 52 Greenwich Avenue1 entry
• 58 Greenwich Avenue1 entry
• 50 Greenwich Avenue1 entry
• Henry J. Seaman House152 West 11th Street | 4 entries

All 1,156 buildings with stories in West Village