Richard Dongan House

234 West 10th Street | West Village | built 1848

Open on the map4 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. 1848

    Richard Dongan builds a Greek Revival house a decade after buying the plot

    Richard Dongan bought this plot about ten years before he built on it. His three-story house of 1848 was Greek Revival, with a simple pilastered doorway. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's district report notes that an alley beside it led to a large one-story frame stable at the rear.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1893

    July 7

    A suspect in the "Jack the Clipper" hair-cutting attacks gives this address as his home

    Frank Rodgers was arrested in Union Square just after midnight on July 7, 1893, for rifling a sleeping man's pockets. Police noticed that he resembled the man who had been cutting women's hair and fleeing, and he carried a razor, hair clippers and a knife. Rodgers told the Jefferson Market court he was a paperhanger living at 234 West 10th Street, but a reporter found no one there who knew him.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1907

    December 26

    Trucking executive Joseph Fitzhenry presides over the Tough Club, which feeds hundreds of Village children at Christmas

    Joseph J. Fitzhenry, who lived here with his wife and ran the trucking company J. J. Fitzhenry, Inc., was president of the Tough Club by 1907. Neighborhood boys had founded it in 1865, and three original members were still alive. Its yearly Christmas party for poor Greenwich Village children drew about 350 that year, who got ice cream and toys. The New-York Tribune reported it on December 26, 1907.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1928

    June

    Developers buy the house planning a six-story apartment building, but it survives

    In June 1928 the V. Green Company sold the house to the Morwin Corporation. The Times reported that the buyers meant to demolish it and put up a six-story elevator apartment house. The plan did not go forward, possibly because of the Depression, and by the early 1930s attorney Norman W. Wassman and his wife Emilie lived here. The house escaped conversion to apartments for the rest of the century.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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