Cornelius Read House

328 East 4th Street | East Village | built 1900

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.

1841
Merchant Cornelius Read moves into a new Greek Revival rowhouse
Work begins in 1837 on a row of seven brick-faced houses on East 4th Street, and Cornelius Read, a lumber merchant, moves into one that is completed in 1841. It is originally numbered 557 Fourth Street and becomes 328 East 4th Street in 1863. The 22-foot-wide house has three stories over a brownstone basement, with Doric stone pilasters at the doorway.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1849
April 30
Cornelius Read dies and his widow Eunice is soon listed as running the lumberyard
Cornelius Read dies at age 51 on April 30, 1849, after a short illness. The following year his widow, Eunice, leaves the East 4th Street house. City directories then list her as operating the family's lumberyard on Mangin Street.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1928
A Hungarian synagogue takes over the house and its neighbor
Around 1928 the former Read residence becomes a synagogue. Number 328 and the house next door at 326 East 4th Street serve as a Hungarian synagogue until 1974.
Source: buildingblocks.villagepreservation.org
1974
The Uranian Phalanstery buys the house and its neighbor for its art commune
In 1974 the Uranian Phalanstery, an art-and-cosmology commune led by artist Richard Tyler and Dorothea Tyler, buys 326 and 328 East 4th Street. The group sells both houses to a developer in 2010 and moves to the Upper West Side. The new owners then add two stories to the pair.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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