Isaac Lawrence row house
321 Canal Street | SoHo | built 1821
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.
- 1821
Isaac Lawrence builds a row of brick Federal houses on the newly covered Canal Street
The canal that gave Canal Street its name was covered over in 1819, leaving an unusually wide street. Landowner Isaac Lawrence saw the opportunity and in 1821 put up a row of brick-faced Federal homes on the north side between Mercer and Greene Streets. Each house rose three and a half stories and measured three bays across, and Lawrence appears to have leased them at first rather than sold them.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1825
Painter Samuel F. B. Morse moves into the house and sets up a studio
Samuel F. B. Morse, 34, already known for portraits of Presidents Adams and Monroe, took the house on May 1, 1825 for $400 a year. He put his studio there, in the same year the city commissioned him to paint the Marquis de Lafayette. The next year he helped found the National Academy of Design and became its president. The telegraph inventor was gone from the address by 1830.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 2013
Owners tear down the unstable brick fronts of 321 and 323 Canal Street, and the bricks go back up
By 2013 the brick facades of the two old houses were judged unstable, and in July the owner, United American Land, filed for emergency deconstruction. The Landmarks Preservation Commission approved taking the fronts down, storing the nearly two-century-old bricks and reusing them. Approvals took two years; Page Ayres Cowley Architects extended the buildings to the rear and added shops below and apartments above.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- Resuscitated Relics -- Nos. 321 and 323 Canal StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
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