188 Sullivan Street

Greenwich Village | built 1850

Open on the map3 entries

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

1. 1644

   December 15

   Pieter Santomee, a freed Dutch West India Company worker, receives the land that becomes this block

   The land that later held the MacDougal-Sullivan block, including the lot of 188 Sullivan Street, was conveyed on December 15, 1644, to Pieter Santomee, who had worked for the Dutch West India Company before being freed. The LPC's 1967 report traces it through Nicholas Bayard in 1755, then trustees who began conveying building lots in 1790, to the merchant Nicholas Low in 1796. His heirs held the block until 1920.

   “The parcel containing the Macdougal-Sullivan block was conveyed on December 15, 1644 to Pieter Santomee, a free negro. Santomee had originally worked for the West India Company and was later freed.”

   Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

2. 1850

   The Low estate finishes a row of Greek Revival houses on Sullivan Street, built singly rather than in pairs

   By 1850 the estate of the merchant Nicholas Low had completed a row of Greek Revival houses on Sullivan Street, of which 188 is part, six years after it built the MacDougal Street row on the same block. The Sullivan Street houses were built one at a time rather than in pairs. The LPC credits the Low family's long ownership, which ran against the real estate practices of the day, with keeping the block so little changed.

   “The estate of Nicholas Low in 1844 built the rows ... A similar row was completed on Sullivan Street in 1850. ... the houses here were built singly, rather than paired…”

   Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

3. 1920

   Hearth and Home, led by William Sloane Coffin, buys the block and remodels its houses for artists and writers

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   In 1920 the Hearth and Home corporation, headed by William Sloane Coffin, bought the block, which includes 188 Sullivan Street, to create modestly priced housing for writers, businessmen, artists, actors and musicians, not for the Italian immigrants then living in some of the houses. The architects Francis Y. Joannes and Maxwell Hyde removed the stoops, set the old doorways as windows in Colonial Revival frames and divided the houses into duplexes. Coffin then turned the backyards into a common garden, finished by 1923, and the houses were sold to individual owners in 1924.

   Source: Village Preservation

Nearby

• 186 Sullivan Street1 entry
• 184 Sullivan Street1 entry
• 170 Bleecker Street2 entries
• 182 Sullivan Street1 entry
• 174 Bleecker Street1 entry
• 172 Bleecker Street2 entries

All 518 buildings with stories in Greenwich Village