Ransom Parker House

228 West 11th Street | also 228A West 11th Street | West Village | built 1838

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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. 1838

    Flour inspector Richard McCarty finishes a Greek Revival house at 24 Hammond Street, now 228 West 11th

    Richard McCarty, a Democratic Republican party man who held the city's post of Inspector of Flour, completed this brick house in 1838, when the street was still called Hammond Street and the address was No. 24. A smaller rental house stood in the rear yard, as was common at the time. The street was renumbered West 11th in 1864.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1838

    Greek Revival house keeps its original pilastered doorway and flanked stoop

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    The Landmarks Commission's 1969 Greenwich Village report pairs No. 228 with No. 226, the home built for Ambrose Kirtland, an assistant justice. It describes both as brick Greek Revival houses on stone basements that still have their original outer doorways, with pilasters carrying full entablatures, along with their flanked stoops and floor-length drawing-room windows.

    “No. 228 was built for the successful businessman, Richard McCarty. These fine brick Greek Revival houses with stone basements retain their original outer doorways…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1853

    Ice merchant Ransom Parker, founder of the Washington Ice Company, moves in around 1853

    Ransom Parker, born in Brookfield, New York in 1816, came to the city at seventeen, worked in the spring-water trade and in 1851 founded the Washington Ice Company. He moved in with six children from his first marriage and his second wife, Jane, and his son Ransom Jr. joined the business by 1863. His ice operation stood about five blocks away, at West 11th Street and West Street.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1893

    July 14

    A doctor in the rear house leads neighbors against a carpenter's 1 a.m. singing

    Dr. George H. Elliott, who seems to have lived in the rear house of 228 West 11th by 1892, backed onto the yard of 29 Perry Street, where Joseph Williams, an English carpenter and former sailor, sang loudly from 1 to 4 a.m. as his unfailing nightly habit for nearly a year. On July 14, Elliott gathered neighbors and went to Jefferson Market Court, and detectives arrested Williams. The judge told him he could sing by day.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1903

    November 17

    Ransom Parker dies in the house at 87 after about fifty years there

    Parker died at home on November 17, 1903, aged 87, having lived in the West 11th Street house for roughly half a century. By then nearly all his immediate family had died before him; only his daughters Mary Elizabeth and Priscilla were still living.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1936

    Rooming-house tenants of the 1930s to 1950s draw government attention

    By the Depression years the house was a rooming house. Earl Silverston, a lodger from at least 1936 through 1940, was closely watched by the Special Committee on Un-American Activities because he regularly voted for the Communist Party ticket. At mid-century another tenant, William Allen Van Der Roest, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War's International Brigades, was also watched by the government.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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