George William and Anna Curtis House
234 Bard Avenue | West New Brighton | built 1859
Open on the map5 entries
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.
- 1859
A frame Italianate country house goes up on Bard Avenue
The house was built in 1859 as a two-and-a-half-story wood-frame residence in the Italianate style, with a center gable and a one-story porch running the full width of the front. Its form echoes "An Ornamental Farm House," a design in Andrew Jackson Downing's pattern book Cottage Residences. A small one-story rear addition appears to have been added before 1967, as was a side entrance on the north, and the front has since been restored with new clapboards replacing aluminum siding.
- 1859
Francis and Sarah Shaw have the house built for their daughter Anna and her husband, George William Curtis
Anna Shaw's parents, Francis George and Sarah Sturgis Shaw, built this house for Anna and her husband George William Curtis and lived on the next parcel to the south. Curtis, a writer and lecturer, reportedly wrote over 2,500 Harper's articles and lectured on civil service reform, slavery and women's suffrage. One of the first trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he lived here for more than 30 years, until he died in 1892.
- 1923
Anna Shaw Curtis dies after decades in the house, which she later shared with her suffragist daughter
Anna Curtis survived her husband by over three decades and stayed in the house until her death in 1923. She worked with the Church of the Redeemer, sat on the Board of Education, and belonged to the Woman's Club of Staten Island as well as Richmond County's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. In her later years her daughter Elizabeth, whom The New York Times called a strong advocate for woman suffrage, lived here with her.
- 1925
The Curtises' son sells off the surrounding land, which is then subdivided
The Shaws kept title to the house and grounds until 1870, when they deeded them to Anna. Two years after her death, her son Francis George Curtis sold most of the property to Peter Larsen in 1925, keeping only the house itself, and the land was broken up into smaller parcels. Francis sold the house as well in 1928.
“In 1925, Francis George Curtis ... sold most of the property with the exception of the house to Peter Larsen, and the property was subsequently subdivided.”
- 2016
The Curtis House becomes a city landmark half a century after its first hearing
The Landmarks Preservation Commission first heard the case for the house on September 13, 1966. After a special hearing on October 22, 2015, where speakers from the Victorian Society, the New York Landmarks Conservancy and the Historic District Council backed it, the commission designated it a landmark on June 28, 2016, as the home of reformer George William Curtis and an example of a pattern-book Italianate country house.
Nearby
- Richmond University Medical Center355 Bard Avenue | 2 entries
- New York Chinese Scholar's Garden1000 Snug Harbor Road | 3 entries
- Calvary Presbyterian Church909 Castleton Avenue | 2 entries
- Dr. Samuel MacKenzie Elliott House69 Delafield Place | 3 entries
- Kreuzer-Pelton House1262 Richmond Terrace | 4 entries
- Church of the Sacred Heart981 Castleton Avenue | 1 entry