161 West 4th Street

West Village | built 1847

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. 1847

    The Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church builds a three-story brick school on the lot

    A school measuring forty by forty-five feet was erected here in 1847 by the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church. It occupied both this lot and its neighbor at No. 163 and served as a school through 1861. The church sold the building about fifteen months later to John H. Tallman, a mason and builder.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1847

    The church school here takes boys and girls, some from as far as New Jersey and Nyack

    From 1847 to 1861 the building served as a school with the address No. 183 Fourth Street. Both boys and girls attended; most lived nearby in Greenwich Village, but some came from New Jersey and from Nyack, New York. The Landmarks Commission traced the roots of the school's successor, the Collegiate School for boys, back to New Amsterdam in 1638.

    “Although most of the children lived in this part of Greenwich Village, some came from as far as New Jersey and Nyack, New York.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1863

    John Tallman splits the old school into two houses and adds a fourth floor

    Tallman took two mortgages in 1863, the first mentioning a partition run through the middle of the building. The conversion created Nos. 161 and 163 and added a fourth story. Half-windows at the left side of No. 161's upper floors, a doorway placed at the party wall and a bisected stoop still show where the old school was cut in two.

    “The alteration of 1863, into two buildings, with the addition of a fourth floor and other improvements, are indicated by Tallman's two mortgages that year…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1963

    February

    Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo are photographed on nearby Jones Street for an album cover

    Dylan's $60-a-month studio was at No. 161. In February 1963, Columbia Records photographer Don Hunstein shot the pair walking down Jones Street for the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Rotolo later recalled that it was unplanned, the street slushy and the two of them freezing, and that nobody asked her to sign a release or paid her anything.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

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