Emma Lazarus House

18 West 10th Street | Greenwich Village | built 1856

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. 1856

    James Winslow's Italianate mansion is completed beside the Lanier house

    The banking firm Winslow, Lanier & Co. makes its partners millionaires by 1854, and senior partner James Winslow's new house goes up next to the Lanier mansion, finishing in 1856. The Italianate residence rises four floors above an English basement, with a brownstone base under the brick upper floors. Three arched openings mark the parlor level, and a dentiled cornice borrowed from Greek Revival homes crowns the facade.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1883

    Emma Lazarus writes "The New Colossus" after her family moves in

    Sugar merchant Moses Lazarus buys the house in 1883, and his daughter Emma, already an established poet, moves in with the family. After writer Constance Cary Harrison asks her for verses, Emma completes the sonnet "The New Colossus" in time for the December 3, 1883, opening of an art exhibition raising funds for the Statue of Liberty pedestal. The poem is mounted in bronze on the pedestal in 1903.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1887

    November 19

    Emma Lazarus dies in the family home

    Emma Lazarus dies at the house on November 19, 1887, at age 36. Newspapers blame congestion of the lungs, though she is now believed to have had Hodgkin's lymphoma. Her funeral is held in the house the next morning. Her father, Moses, had died there in March 1885.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1945

    Charles Abrams, a housing expert, buys the house

    Attorney Charles Abrams and his artist wife, Ruth, buy the house in 1945. Abrams is a housing expert who helps create the New York City Housing Authority and is one of the first to use the phrase "socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor." He dies of cancer in the house in 1970.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 518 buildings with stories in Greenwich Village