The Ardea

31 West 12th Street | Greenwich Village | built 1901

Open on the map3 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. 1894

    November 12

    A construction worker seals a note about Tammany Hall's defeat in the wall

    Six days after the 1894 election in which Tammany Hall lost badly, a construction worker at the Ardea penciled a note about the result on a wooden casing and sealed it inside a second-floor wall. Decades later, workers renovating a resident's apartment found it. The message gives the date as Monday, November 12, 1894, and says only that it was left by someone who knew his business, without naming him.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1895

    Dry goods magnate George Hearn builds the Ardea apartment house

    Dry goods owner George A. Hearn hired architect John B. Snook to design a 10-story apartment house at 33 West 12th Street, part of a large holding of lots he had assembled between 12th and 14th Streets. Finished in 1895 and named the Ardea, Latin for heron, it has a rough-cut brownstone base, brown brick above, and cast-iron balconies across the front. Each original apartment had seven rooms, and three of the first seven went to partners in Hearn's firm.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1921

    May

    Marie Curie stays at the Ardea while New York honors her with radium

    Marie Meloney, editor of the Delineator magazine and an Ardea resident, led a fundraising campaign that collected $100,000 from American women so that physicist Marie Curie could receive a gram of radium. When Curie reached New York in May 1921 with her two daughters, she stayed at the Ardea, which served as her headquarters during a trip of college degrees, scientific awards, and receptions. On May 20, President Harding presented her with the radium that Meloney's campaign had paid for.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 518 buildings with stories in Greenwich Village