William Delamano House

17 Vandam Street | Hudson Square | built 1826

Open on the map4 entries

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

1. 1825

   Baker Edgar Harriot builds a matching pair of houses at 15 and 17 Vandam Street

   Edgar Harriot, who worked in the building trade and as a baker, put up mirror-image houses at 15 and 17 Vandam Street on land leased from Trinity Church. Each was two and a half stories and 25 feet wide. An 1825 ad for 17 Vandam described a lot 113 feet deep with a stable for five or six horses and a carriage way. Its first owner, Jonathan Bayley, died within months of moving in.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

2. 1840

   Rebecca Seixas, widow of Shearith Israel's rabbi, lives at 17 Vandam Street

   By 1840 the widow Rebecca Seixas lived here with at least one son, Hillel M. Seixas, who was in the cigar business. Her late husband was Rabbi Isaac B. Seixas of Congregation Shearith Israel. She took in a boarder, the tailor James E. Hadden, who stayed through at least 1845. Before her, John Freeman had lived at the address in the mid-1830s.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

3. 1851

   December

   Scenic painter William Delamano, living here, unveils a panorama of London's World's Fair

   William Delamano, a painter of stage scenery and panoramas with a studio at 468 Broadway, lived at 17 Vandam by 1851. That December he designed a large allegorical painting to welcome the Hungarian leader Lajos Kossuth. His Grand Panorama of London's World's Fair, showing the Crystal Palace, opened the same month at P.T. Barnum's Stoppani Hall. In 1853 the New York Times praised his scenery for a stage version of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

4. 1893

   Walter McGinn, a Pulitzer scholarship contender, boards here and advertises help for stammerers

   William and Margaret Wilbur moved into 17 Vandam in 1893. After William died that August at 79, Margaret took in boarders, among them Walter F. McGinn, who placed among the top twenty students on the Pulitzer scholarship examination that year. McGinn was still boarding here in 1903 and used his rooms for private instruction, advertising in the Times for stammerers to join a practice society. The Department of Buildings later called the house an unsafe building in 1926 and 1927.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

• The William Delamano House - 17 Vandam StreetDaytonian in Manhattan

Nearby

• Michael Eagan House19 Vandam Street | 3 entries
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• William Oland Bourne House13 Vandam Street | 5 entries
• Israel Clark House21 Vandam Street | 4 entries
• 11 Vandam Street2 entries
• Horace Whitehorn House23 Vandam Street | 4 entries

All 79 buildings with stories in Hudson Square