Stephen D. Barnes House
2876 Richmond Terrace | Mariners Harbor | built 1853
Open on the map3 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.
- 1853
Oysterman Stephen D. Barnes buys a lot on the Shore Road, beach included, for his home and trade
Barnes bought the land from neighbor David Post, and the sale took in beachfront on the north side of the Shore Road, now Richmond Terrace, that he likely needed for his oyster business. He and his wife Judith built their brick house about 1853 along a stretch called Captains' Row, where prosperous oystermen moored their boats facing their homes. In 1882 New York State gave Barnes rights to the water lot in front.
- 1853
The Barnes house mixes Italianate form with Gothic Revival finials and ogee-arched windows
Unlike the Greek Revival houses of the other oystermen on the Shore Road, this two-and-a-half-story brick house is chiefly Italianate, with deep eaves on paired brackets and a cast-iron balcony. Gothic Revival touches include a row of finials over the double doors and ogee arches above the first-floor windows. Writer Charles Gilbert Hine noted in 1925 that no other house on the North Shore looked like it.
- 1890
After a legal fight, newsdealer William Wheeler buys the Barnes house at auction
Following Judith Barnes's death the property was tied up in litigation, and in 1890 William Wheeler bought it at public auction, then transferred it to Jane Van Pelt Wheeler. In the early 1880s Wheeler had kept a saloon and boarding house in Port Richmond before opening a newsstand at St. George, which grew into a larger news distribution business.
“It passed into the hands of William Wheeler at public auction in 1890…”
Nearby
- Standard Varnish Works Factory Office Building2589 Richmond Terrace | 4 entries
- St. Adalbert's Church25 St Adalbert Place | 3 entries
- Church of St. Roch602 Port Richmond Avenue | 3 entries