Edwin and Elizabeth Shuttleworth House
1857 Anthony Avenue | Mount Hope | built 1896
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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.
- 1896
Stone dealer Edwin Shuttleworth and his wife Elizabeth buy a hilltop lot on Mount Hope
Early in 1896 the Shuttleworths bought this corner of Anthony Avenue and Mount Hope Place, leaving a five-story tenement at Madison Avenue and 94th Street in Manhattan. Edwin was a small but prosperous dealer in "free stone" such as granite and limestone, with a yard at 434 East 104th Street. The landmarks report reads the move north as a step up, part of the middle class's turn-of-the-century migration to the Bronx.
- 1896
Edwin Shuttleworth acts as his own construction superintendent on the new house
Building Department files show that Shuttleworth supervised the construction himself, and the plans on file suggest he also shaped the design, above all its carving. The architects, Neville & Bagge of West 125th Street, worked mostly on the Upper West Side and did little in the Bronx; their drawings may originally have been made on speculation rather than for him.
“…according to Building Department files, acted as his own superintendent of construction.”
- 1896
A stone carver fills the house's entrance with terms, dolphins, Neptune and a portrait of Shakespeare
Neville & Bagge drew a fairly conventional chateauesque house, but the carving actually applied departs from their plans. Large male and female terms flank the front door above hanging fruit, holding up dolphin-shaped volutes, and the keystone shows a bearded god, probably Neptune. Medallion heads on the towers seem to depict famous men, one plainly William Shakespeare. The report suspects Shuttleworth gave a master stone craftsman free rein.
“It seems likely that Shuttleworth himself commissioned a master stone craftsman and allowed him free reign.”
- 1896
The Shuttleworths' house gets a smoking room, parquet floors and a single upstairs bathroom
Inside, a central hall and stair had two rooms to each side, with a smoking room across from the front parlor and a domed skylight over the stairhall. The parquet floors used woods from white mahogany to quartered hazel, and back stairs led to servants' quarters. Yet the family shared one bathroom upstairs, while the servants' lavatory sat in the basement beside the wine cellar.
“…there was a single bathroom upstairs, and the servants' lavatory was in the basement next to the wine cellar.”
- 1986
The city designates the house at 1857 Anthony Avenue a landmark
The Landmarks Preservation Commission had heard the case on June 14, 1983, when two witnesses spoke in favor and nobody opposed it. Three years later it designated the house, designed by Neville & Bagge and built in 1896, as one of the few large freestanding suburban houses still standing from the Bronx's years as a suburb. The report noted it was still a virtually unaltered single-family home amid apartment buildings.
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