175 Belden Street House
175 Belden Street | City Island | built 1880
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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.
- 1818
George Washington Horton buys the tip of City Island, later called Belden's Point
The house stands at the southern tip of City Island, once called Horton's Point for George Washington Horton, who purchased 42 acres at the tip in 1818. The point was later renamed Belden's Point, and its street, first called Windmill Street, became Belden Street after the financier William Belden, whose home became the Morris Yacht Club.
- 1880
A picturesque cottage from a pattern-book design rises on City Island
With few records surviving, the Landmarks Preservation Commission dated the house to about 1880 by its style, when City Island was still a rural farming and maritime community, known for oysters, in the township of Pelham. The clapboard cottage, two and a half stories tall, closely follows a standard design printed in A. J. Bicknell's 1878 pattern book, with jigsaw-bracketed side porches, peaked dormers, bargeboards, bay windows and a slate roof.
“The design of the Belden Street House was clearly inspired by these books. A prototype appears, for example, in Bicknell's Victorian Architecture…”
- 1981
The 175 Belden Street House becomes a city landmark over two objections
After hearings in July and September 1979, at which one witness spoke for the designation and two spoke against it, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the house on July 28, 1981. It called the cottage one of only a few of its type known in the five boroughs and a rare survivor of City Island's days as a busy fishing and maritime community.
“One witness spoke in favor of designation. There were 2 speakers in opposition to designation.”
Further reading
- 175 Belden StreetWikipedia
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