The Abingdon

25 Charles Street | also 150 7th Avenue South | West Village | built 1903

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

  1. 1903

    March

    Three brownstone-faced houses of 1869 are bought and razed to clear the site for the Abingdon

    In March 1903 the brothers J. and I. Polstein bought three brownstone-faced houses built in 1869 at what were then Nos. 33-37 Charles Street, in the middle of the block between Waverly Place and West Fourth Street. They tore the houses down to build a six-story apartment house. Charles Street was renumbered in 1936, and the new building became No. 25-27. This entry describes the earlier houses on the site.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1903

    March 27

    Architect George F. Pelham files plans for a $75,000 Colonial Revival apartment house named the Abingdon

    Pelham's plans, filed on March 27, 1903, priced the six-story flat at $75,000. The Polsteins named it the Abingdon after the Earl of Abingdon, whose wife Charlotte was a daughter of Sir Peter Warren, owner of the 300-acre estate that once covered the district. Pelham gave it a rusticated stone base, red brick above, white limestone trim and Georgian-style window frames, with a few Beaux Arts touches.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1908

    June 11

    A resident serves on the jury that acquits the comedian Raymond Hitchcock

    S. Francis Short, a foreman who lived in the Abingdon, was chosen on March 11, 1908 as a juror in the trial of the actor and comedian Raymond Hitchcock, indicted on six counts involving young girls. The accusers' stories fell apart one by one, and the teenager Hugo C. Poecks pleaded guilty to organizing a blackmail effort. On June 11, 1908 Short and his fellow jurors acquitted Hitchcock of all charges.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1914

    August

    Seventh Avenue's extension saws a slice off the Abingdon and turns a midblock building into a corner one

    Real estate agent Charles C. Hickok had lobbied since about 1903 to push Seventh Avenue south to Varick Street, along a route that would pass through the new building. Work on the avenue and the Seventh Avenue subway began in 1913 and cut through the Village, leaving some buildings with sections sheared off. On August 2, 1914 the Times reported that a slice of the Abingdon had been sawed off. The building, once midblock, now stood on a corner, and the original brick was reused in the rebuilt part.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1920

    March 8

    A Henry Street Settlement nurse who lives here carries a sick toddler out of a burning tenement

    Ada Beazley, an unmarried nurse with the Henry Street Settlement, had an apartment in the Abingdon in 1920. On March 8 she was caring for a toddler sick with influenza, up on the fifth floor at 240 Spring Street, when a fire broke out in another apartment. The Tribune reported that she carried the child through a smoky hallway to a fire escape and passed her down to a human ladder of young men, just before the floor was wrecked.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1927

    March 7

    Perry Street neighbors post a sign asking the Abingdon's residents to stop throwing things into their yards

    The Abingdon's rear windows faced the back yards of the Perry Street houses. In March 1927 the residents of 32 Perry Street put up a new sign in their yard asking Charles Street not to toss things over. The Sun asked Abingdon residents, who denied littering and praised the view of the gardens. When the reporter pointed to orange peels in a yard, one resident blamed the cat.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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