31 Morton Street

West Village | built 1858

Open on the map5 entries

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

1. 1858

   Caleb Brush Jr. builds a rental house at 31 Morton Street

   In 1858 Caleb Brush Jr. built a three-story brick house with a rusticated brownstone basement at 31 Morton Street. His family owned several vacant lots on the block, and he may have built his own home next door at No. 33 at the same time. He meant this one as a rental, and its tall parlor windows and bracketed cornice are typical of the Italianate row houses of the 1850s.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

2. 1875

   January 13

   A hotel bookkeeper who lived here shoots himself as police arrive to arrest him

   Jay F. Moore, who rented 31 Morton Street, kept the books at the Hotel Royal at Sixth Avenue and 41st Street. His employers had found thousands of dollars missing, and on the night of January 13, 1875, officers came to the hotel to arrest him. According to the New-York Tribune, Moore took a Smith & Wesson pistol from his overcoat in a closet behind his desk and shot himself in the ear.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

3. 1892

   A boarding-house keeper helps a destitute neighbor move her husband's grave out of Potter's Field

   Eliza Hague, a widow who ran 31 Morton Street as a boarding house, took up the cause of Catherine Schleider, who lived in a small rear-yard house across the street. After Schleider's husband died in September 1892, he was buried in Potter's Field. When a reporter wrote of her plight, Hague used her influence and the help of the Superintendent of Charities and Correction to have his remains moved to a proper grave in the Lutheran Cemetery.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

4. 1908

   A boarder is stabbed in her room by a man angry about a quarrel with his sweetheart

   Mary Burke boarded at 31 Morton Street in 1908, when a man blamed her for a quarrel with his sweetheart. According to the New York Times of March 17, Joseph Kingsley slipped into the house, found her room and stabbed her while she slept. Police arrested him, he pleaded guilty, and he was held for the grand jury.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

5. 1914

   Settlement-house workers, a social-center organizer and a suffrage leader board at 31 Morton Street

   By the 1910s the boarding house at 31 Morton Street sheltered people active in civic causes. Bertha D. Fuller, linked to the Neighborhood House settlement on Sullivan Street, lived there from at least 1911. In 1914 William Spinney, head of the Social Centre at Public School 95 on Hudson Street, and Mrs. Roger Hawson, a Woman Suffrage Party assembly district leader, were residents too.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

• Caleb Brush, Jr.'s 1858 31 Morton StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
• Then & Now photos: 31 Morton StreetVillage Preservation: Greenwich Village Then & Now

Nearby

• William Henry Knapp House65 Bedford Street | 5 entries
• 63 Bedford Street3 entries
• Diana Traphagen House67 Bedford Street | 5 entries
• 69 Bedford Street4 entries
• Upjohn Building59 Bedford Street | 1 entry
• 71 Bedford Street1 entry

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