Abijah Pell House

311 East 58th Street | East Midtown | built 1857

Open on the map5 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. 1857

    A house stands at 311 East 58th Street by 1857, possibly built by Abijah Pell

    Tax records show a house at what would be numbered 311 East 58th Street by 1857, when the title was held by Charles Shute Pell, an educator who lived at the New-York Orphan Asylum as its superintendent. His brother Abijah, later called a leading builder of his day, may have constructed it. Abijah gave his address as East 58th near Second Avenue in the early 1860s.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1873

    April 19

    Abijah Pell is run over by a railroad engine in Newark and dies the next day

    On April 19, 1873, Abijah Pell is run over by a "pusher" engine used to move train cars in Newark, New Jersey, and dies the following day. Pell had been a member of the St. Nicholas Society and, like his brother Charles, of the New York Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor. His house on East 58th Street is then sold to John B. Huse.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1890

    February

    Mathias Down adds a two-story rear extension to the house

    Mathias Down, a Prussian-born merchant who owned several tenements, bought 311 East 58th Street in October 1877 for $10,000, after the previous owner had held it for just four weeks. In February 1890 he hires architect Charles Stagmeyer to add a two-story extension at the rear, at a cost of $1,500.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1967

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission protects 311 East 58th Street

    In 1967 the Landmarks Preservation Commission protects 311 East 58th Street, one of a pair of surviving one- and two-story freestanding houses on this block. The Italianate-style house dates from the late 1850s, so it predates the Queensboro Bridge, which went up a block away in 1909.

    Source: Forgotten New York

  5. 1998

    The Philip Colleck antiques gallery buys the house

    In 1998, a year after the death of its longtime owner, composer Charles Jones, the house is sold to the Philip Colleck Gallery, a dealer in 18th-century English antiques, for $1.1 million. The new owners hire architect Peter M. Bernholz to design the gallery and have a coat of old paint removed from the brickwork.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 43 buildings with stories in East Midtown