The Lancaster

39 East 10th Street | Greenwich Village | built 1900

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. 1877

    January 15

    A regimental surgeon dies after drinking the wrong bottle at 41 East 10th Street, an earlier house on the site

    Before the Lancaster rose here, a house at 41 East 10th Street belonged to the Renwick family and was leased by Dr. George Thompson, surgeon of the Ninth Regiment. Five days before he died, he took a bottle from his medicine cabinet that he believed held diluted hydrochloric acid. It was actually a strong mercury compound. He died on January 15, 1877, and the coroner found nothing to suggest he meant to harm himself.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1887

    May 28

    The Renwick family hires Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell to replace two old houses with the Lancaster apartment house

    In 1887 the Renwick family, which owned the lots, decided to tear down the old house at No. 41 and its neighbor at No. 39 and build an apartment house in their place. The Real Estate Record reported on May 28 that Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell had drawn sketches for a five-story building of Croton brick and terra cotta. The design combined Queen Anne details with Colonial Revival touches, and the name "The Lancaster" was cut into the brick above the entrance. Each floor held only two apartments.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1903

    February

    Captain Tom Miller, a 91-year-old gourmet, is found with frozen hands on the Lancaster's stoop

    Captain Tom Miller, a retired naval officer and Manhattan Club regular known across the city for his dinner parties, lived in the Lancaster. In February 1903, at 91, he walked home from the club at 3 a.m. without gloves in freezing weather. He was found on the building's low stoop with his hands frozen and died six weeks later at St. Vincent's Hospital. The Times remembered him for the odd new dishes he served and then named on the spot.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1903

    February 15

    Resident Archie Pell cannot be found after being subpoenaed in the Canfield gambling-house case

    H. Archibald Pell, a real estate broker and society figure who lived at 39 East 10th Street, was among the wealthy patrons of Richard Canfield's gambling house at 5 East 44th Street. After Canfield was indicted in January 1903, Pell and other millionaire players were subpoenaed as witnesses rather than charged. Several fled; Pell could not be found, and District Attorney Jerome warned on February 15 that they would get no mercy if they failed to appear the next day.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1904

    April 27

    A family of serial rent-skippers is arrested at the Lancaster after a Protective Association man recognizes them

    The family calling itself the Lippincotts moved into the Lancaster around 1903 with five children and a grandchild, and won over the Renwick estate's agent with an air of old-fashioned respectability. They ordered fine meat, flowers and cab rides on credit, a routine they had used in other apartment houses and hotels. A man from the Protective Association walked in one morning and recognized them under earlier aliases, and they were arrested on April 27, 1904.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1913

    August 7

    A children's court probation officer is blackjacked at her door in the Lancaster after a threatening note

    Antonia Friedman, who lived in the Lancaster with her husband and held the unusual post of probation officer in the Children's Court, had recommended that a girl from Gansevoort Street be taken into the Children's Society's care. After a note pinned to her door threatened her life, a man grabbed her by the throat on August 7, 1913, dragged her into the hallway and struck her with a blackjack. A fellow social worker living with her rushed out and the attacker fled.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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