16 Minetta Lane
Greenwich Village | built 1853
Open on the map4 entries
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.
- 1821
A washwoman is the first recorded tenant, and a water carrier buys the house in 1828
The first known tenant of the house at 16 Minetta Lane was Mary Sandford, a washwoman who appears in the city directories for 1821 and 1822. In 1828 the house passed to Thomas Sandford, a "tea waterman" who delivered drinking water, and the 1840 census lists a Thomas Sanford in the 15th Ward with a household of 13 free people of color. The property went to a German grocer, J. M. Scheper, in 1842.
“The first tenant was Mary Sandford, a washwoman, who appears in directories of 1821-22. In 1828 the house was sold to Thomas Sandford a "tea waterman…”
- 1900
A German waiter and his African-American wife, a laundress, live at 16 Minetta Lane
The 1900 census, as cited in the Landmarks Preservation Commission's South Village report, records William Butcher, a waiter born in Germany, living at 16 Minetta Lane with his wife Olivia. She was a New York native and an African-American laundress. The report offers them as an example of the interracial households that settled in the area then known as Little Africa, around Minetta Street and Minetta Lane.
“William Butcher, a waiter originally from Germany, who lived at 16 Minetta Lane with his wife Olivia Butcher, an African-American native New Yorker…”
- 1928
Floyd McCathern turns the old house, once a blacksmith shop, into apartments
In 1918 the city issued a certificate of occupancy for a blacksmith shop in the ground-floor space of the front building at 16 Minetta Lane. In 1928 Floyd McCathern converted the front house into non-housekeeping apartments, probably giving the facade its present look, and designed a two-story house for the back of the lot, finished in 1929. In the 1990s the two buildings were joined under a glass roof.
“In 1918, a certificate of occupancy was issued for a blacksmith shop on the first story of the front building.”
- 1990
Designer Robert Isabel buys the house from a Broadway dancer who owned it for 32 years
Robert Swen Swenson, a Broadway dancer, owned 16 Minetta Lane from 1958 to 1990. In 1990 it was bought by Robert Isabel, who worked as a designer and event planner and lived in the house until his death in 2009. The front house was converted to a single-family dwelling in 1989-90, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Nearby
- Minetta Garage122 West 3rd Street | 2 entries
- Minetta Lane Theatre18 Minetta Lane | 7 entries
- 5 Minetta Lane1 entry
- Gerde's Folk City130 West 3rd Street | 7 entries
- 24 Minetta Lane2 entries
- 3 Minetta Lane1 entry