35 Charlton Street

Hudson Square | built 1829

Open on the map6 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. 1828

    An unfinished house on this lot is destroyed by what newspapers called an arson fire

    Before the present house, a new, unfinished building stood on this lot. According to the New York Spectator of October 13, 1828, fire was found in it about 6 a.m. the previous day; the building was destroyed and No. 33 next door badly damaged. The paper called it the work of an incendiary, and the Daily Advertiser recalled that several houses at the same place had burned a few months earlier. John Jacob Astor, who was building rows of houses on the old Richmond Hill estate, completed the row, No. 35 included, in 1829.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1829

    Astor's row is finished, leaving No. 35 a 25-foot-wide house of red Flemish-bond brick

    In 1829 the row that included No. 35 was completed. Like the rest of the row, the house had a 25-foot front, two and a half stories above an English basement, red brick laid in Flemish bond, and a peaked roof with dormers. In the late 1860s its owner, John F. Vanriper, raised the attic to a full third floor and added a modern Italianate cornice; the switch to running-bond brick and a different color still show where the old house ends.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1842

    January

    Owner John J. Earle is summoned to the Colt murder jury and gets out of it by claiming an opinion

    John J. Earle, a Customs House officer who had bought the house at auction in 1834, got a summons for jury duty in January 1842 in a notorious case. John Caldwell Colt, brother of the gun maker Samuel Colt, was charged with killing the printer Samuel Adams with a hatchet, packing the body in salt and shipping it to a New Orleans address that did not exist. Earle avoided service by telling the judge he had already formed an opinion.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1897

    October 17

    Paint-shop owner Charles F. Thompson, who lives here, is thrown from a buggy by a runaway horse

    Charles F. Thompson, a house painter who bought the house in 1881, was riding with his friend and fellow resident David M. Edsall in a buggy at Seventh Avenue and 135th Street on October 17, 1897, when a bolting horse slammed into it. Edsall broke three ribs; Thompson, 73, was hurled over the dashboard and at first thought dead. He suffered concussion and severe facial wounds and never fully recovered, dying of meningitis on January 20, 1900.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1944

    December 15

    Army doctor Charles H. Wilson, a resident here, dies when American planes sink his prison ship

    Brothers Harry A. Wilson and Dr. Charles H. Wilson were living at 35 Charlton Street when World War II began. Charles joined the Army in 1941 and, as a major, was captured at Corregidor; the War Department announced in July 1943 that Japan held him prisoner. The Japanese later loaded him and other captives onto a prison ship, and he was killed on December 15, 1944, when American planes sank it. Harry stayed in the house at least until 1947, when his brother's estate was settled.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 2012

    Comedian Louis C.K. buys the house for $6.5 million

    In 2012 the house was bought by Louis C.K., the comedian, filmmaker and actor born Louis Székely, for $6.5 million. By then it had been divided into apartments, in a 1957 renovation that included a duplex and again in 1989 as a triplex and a duplex sharing the second floor. He sold the house in April 2023.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 79 buildings with stories in Hudson Square