Samuel Phillips House

226 West 13th Street | West Village | built 1910

Open on the map5 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. 1833

    A lamplighter's late Federal house with a second house behind it goes up at 226 West 13th Street

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission's Greenwich Village report says the two-and-a-half-story house was built in 1833 for Samuel Phillips, a lamplighter. It calls the design late Federal, with Flemish bond brickwork and muntined sash at the first floor, while the bracketed cornice and large double dormer came later. The report also notes a second house at the back of the lot.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1866

    September 5

    A boarder is charged in court with stealing $500 worth of cigars from his employer, the landlord

    Edward Sommerkorn, an insurance broker, and his wife Augusta moved into the house in 1865 and advertised a furnished parlor and a small room for $6 and $8 a week. Herman Siedenburg, 24, who worked for Edward and rented one of the rooms, was in court on September 5, 1866, charged with stealing cigars worth $500 from his employer. Augusta testified that she saw him take them from the house.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1875

    August

    A husband sends a marshal to strip the furniture from the boardinghouse his estranged wife runs

    Augusta Sommerkorn had stopped living with her husband Edward over his drinking and supported herself by renting furnished rooms in the house. In August 1875 Edward hired a deputy marshal who removed the furniture, leaving the lodgers to sleep on bare floors. Augusta sued to recover it and also began a suit against the liquor dealer her husband patronized, according to the Evening Telegram of August 26.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1897

    November 27

    A boarder gives birth on a Ninth Avenue streetcar while heading for the maternity hospital

    In the 1890s the house took in boarders, among them a clerk, a dressmaker and a young couple named Fernier. On November 27, 1897, Josephine Fernier realized her baby was on the way and boarded a streetcar toward the Sloane Maternity Hospital, but she had waited too long. The New York Herald reported that she gave birth in the car at Ninth Avenue and 59th Street.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1907

    June 14

    Ex-convict boarder Perrin Sumner marries his 75-year-old landlady and inherits her estate

    Perrin H. Sumner, who took a room under the name Horton Sumner in 1906, had been arrested repeatedly for swindling and forgery and sentenced to Sing Sing in 1897. He persuaded landlady Augusta Sommerkorn to deed him real estate, then married her on June 14, 1907, when she was 75 and ill in bed. She died ten days later without a will, and as her husband he took her estate; her brother Frederick began court action in March 1908 to undo the transfers.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 1,156 buildings with stories in West Village