Joseph Randolph House
39 Harrison Street | Tribeca | built 1828
Open on the map5 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.
- 1636
The land under the house starts as Annetje Jans's farm and becomes part of a brewery estate
Director General Van Twiller granted the farm to Annetje Jans and her first husband in 1636. It passed to the English crown, then to Trinity Church by a patent from Queen Anne in 1705. In 1765 the church leased this portion for 99 years, and it became part of Harison's Brewery, which Philip Rhinelander bought in 1793. After William Rhinelander's death his executors sold the property in 1827, a year before the house went up.
- 1828
Joseph Randolph builds a Federal house at 329 Washington Street, now 39 Harrison Street
Randolph put up the two-and-a-half-story brick house in 1828 on land he already held, so it was not a speculator's project. It was one of six Federal houses whose pitched roofs and dormers survived intact, and the group wraps around a corner to show gable ends. The Landmarks Commission later called this arrangement unique in New York City.
“These houses were bui It for specific owners, already in possession of the property: they were not speculator's houses…”
- 1828
A circular-stair skylight survives only in this Federal house of the Washington Street row
The brick house keeps its arched dormers and paneled stone lintels above the upper windows, though the ground floor lost its original details when the row became warehouses. Its roof still holds the skylight that once lit a spiral staircase inside, a feature the Landmarks Commission said remained only here among the neighboring houses. The present metal cornice with modillions replaces the original one.
“The skylight which formerly lighted a circular interior staircase, remains only in this house…”
- 1969
The Landmarks Commission designates the 329 Washington Street House on May 13, 1969
After a public hearing on December 27, 1966, the commission designated the house, listed as 329 Washington Street, as a landmark in 1969. It described the house as a fine early Federal building that, with eight other houses nearby, kept a late eighteenth and early nineteenth century scale found nowhere else in the city. The report said the house would keep that character after restoration as part of the larger group of nine.
“…with eight other houses in the area, it preserves a characteristic late eighteenth century domestic scale and profile unique in New York City…”
- 1976
The city starts transferring title to the restored Harrison Street houses, selling them unfinished
After the nine Federal houses were gathered and rebuilt on Harrison Street, the city sold them with unfinished interiors, asking between $35,000 and $75,000. Title began changing hands in 1976, according to a New York Times account quoted by Ephemeral New York. Three of the nine, this house among them, had been moved in from a stretch of Washington Street that was slated for development.
Source: Ephemeral New York
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