16 Charles Street
also 18 Charles Street | West Village | built 1846
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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.
- 1846
Developer Patrick Cogan overextends himself on the Charles Street row and the houses go to auction
In 1845-46 financier Myndert Van Schaick and carpenter Patrick Cogan built a row of Greek Revival town houses on the south side of Charles Street. The Landmarks Preservation Commission describes Cogan as unsuccessful: he overextended himself trying to finish the houses and sell them. Van Schaick had lent him the money against a mortgage, and the next year he sued for the unpaid amount. The court put the property up for auction, and the houses went to the highest bidders.
“…upon Van Schaick's suing for the unpaid mortgage, the court put up the property at public auction…”
- 1917
Jane Olcott tries to turn the house into a suffrage cooperative and ends up running a rooming house
The Sun reported on July 15, 1917 that "suffrage cooperatives" had arrived in Greenwich Village, where like-minded women bought shares in a house to live together cheaply. Jane Olcott had meant to start one at 16 Charles Street, but her investors fell away: one went to the hospital, one took a job in another town, one married, and one lost her job and her allowance. Olcott took in roomers meanwhile and kept looking for a fresh group.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1917
A Greenwich Village roomer refuses the draft board's physical exam and is sent to the Tombs
Walter Franzer, who roomed with Jane Olcott, was called before the draft board on August 15, 1917, and flatly refused the physical. The Sun described his look as the usual Greenwich Village one, with a "nut" tie, sport shirt and curly locks. He said it was a whim: he had no objection to war but wanted to join in his own way, and the aviation service had turned him down because his draft notice was already posted. The 24-year-old was held in the Tombs to await the federal grand jury.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1925
The Alterman brothers join Nos. 16 and 18 into one symmetrical front with studio windows and a cast-iron canopy
The Altermans had bought both houses as investments in 1906. In 1925 they removed the stoops, opened big studio windows on the top floor, and made one shared entrance at the old basement level under a cast-iron canopy that was almost certainly salvaged from an Italianate rowhouse. The neo-Georgian doorway has leaded sidelights and oval windows on either side.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1934
Elizabeth Bishop, 23 and fresh from Vassar, moves into an apartment in the house
In the fall of 1934 Elizabeth Bishop, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1911 and newly graduated from Vassar College, took an apartment at 16 Charles Street. Although she had money from inheritances, her writing dealt mostly with the working classes. She later won the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1934
Alone with asthma over the holidays, Bishop writes "The Map" in her Charles Street apartment
Bishop's first winter in the city was hard. A severe asthma attack cut short her Christmas with her friend Margaret Miller and Miller's mother, and she went back to the Charles Street apartment for the rest of the holiday. She spent a depressing New Year alone on "adrenalin and cough syrup," according to biographer Brett Millier as quoted in a study of her New York years. In that lonely stretch she wrote her first major New York poem, "The Map," which later opened her first collection, North and South.
Source: ebandnyc.blogspot.com
Further reading
- The Cojoined Houses at 16 and 18 Charles StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
- Then & Now photos: 16 Charles StreetVillage Preservation: Greenwich Village Then & Now
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