148 Waverly Place

also 150 Waverly Place | West Village

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

  1. 1839

    Lambert Suydam builds a row of eight Greek Revival houses that includes No. 148

    In 1839 Lambert Suydam, a former president of the Manhattan Gas Light Company, built eight Greek Revival town houses as an investment on land from the Alfred S. Pell estate, and moved into No. 158 himself. The Landmarks Preservation Commission says No. 148 and No. 150 keep their original anthemion ironwork at the stoops. No. 148 later gained a full fourth floor, yet it still has its Greek Revival doorway and pedimented window lintels.

    “Lambert Suydam built, as an investment in 1839, this row of eight Greek Revival town houses…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1892

    May

    General Daniel Sickles takes title to the house from his former mother-in-law

    By the late 1860s the house belonged to the opera composer and teacher Antonio Bagioli, whose 15-year-old daughter Teresa had married Daniel Sickles in 1852. Sickles later became a Civil War general and, in 1859, shot Philip Barton Key, whom he suspected of an affair with her. After Bagioli's death in 1871 his widow Eliza kept the house, and in May 1892 she transferred title to Sickles, who sold it in 1903.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1903

    September

    A boxer rooming here is arrested for a murder on West 23rd Street

    In September 1903 the 23-year-old boxer Frank Webster, who fought as Young Ryan and was said to be named Edward McGrath, was arrested at the house for the slashing death of Benjamin Rose. A fellow lodger had noticed Rose's name on the label of McGrath's new coat. A jury convicted him in February 1910, a judge set that verdict aside, and on February 23 a second jury convicted him of first-degree murder. The trial exposed prejudice against gay men, even on the bench.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1923

    July 10

    A Village society meets here and votes to mark the site of Richmond Hill

    In the early 1920s the house was a boarding house run by a Mrs. Margi, with a tearoom in the basement called Club Margi. The British philosopher and novelist John Cowper Powys lived on the second floor. At a meeting held here on July 10, 1923, the Greenwich Village Historical Society resolved to put up a memorial tablet marking the site of the Richmond Hill mansion.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1974

    August 24

    A resident walks into a Lexington Avenue bank with a briefcase of 'dynamite' and is shot

    On August 24, 1974, 27-year-old Paul Proud, a tenant of the house, walked into the Dry Dock Savings Bank on Lexington Avenue at East 59th Street and handed a supervisor a note demanding all the money. He claimed his briefcase held eight sticks of dynamite and kept a finger on a button. The manager slipped out and fetched police, and when a plainclothes lieutenant thought Proud had triggered the bomb, he fired. The dynamite turned out to be road flares, and Proud died at Roosevelt Hospital.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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