Thomas Barron House

39 White Street | Tribeca | built 1832

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Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1832

    Thomas Barron completes a three-story Greek Revival house at 39 White Street

    Begun in 1831 and finished a year later, the 25-foot-wide brick-faced house mixed Federal and Greek Revival details: pedimented openings, a columned entrance and two arched Federal-style dormers. Thomas Barron, born in New Jersey in 1790, had moved to Manhattan in 1814 and made a fortune in dry goods. His family lived here only briefly before Seth Grosvenor bought the house in 1835.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1856

    Seth Grosvenor, the house's owner since 1835, dies and leaves large bequests to schools and charities

    Seth Grosvenor, a Broadway merchant and bank and insurance director, bought the house in 1835 and died in 1856. His will left $30,000 to the Board of Education for a library at the Free Academy. The Society for Bettering the Condition of the Jews received $100,000, and the New-York Asylum for Lying-in Women, along with the Mercantile Library, each got $10,000.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1860

    The whole house is jacked up and a new ground floor with a cast-iron storefront is built beneath it

    In 1860 the Grosvenor estate had a store inserted by raising the entire house and building a new first floor under it, rather than adding a story on top. A lithograph by Brown and Adams, Raising of House No. 39 White Street, recorded the work. Finished in 1861, the new ground floor had fluted Corinthian columns, and a full top floor replaced the dormered attic. The four upper floors are still the 1832 house.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1884

    April 17

    Hosiery manufacturer Samuel Hopkins sails into the harbor with a friend and his son and none return

    Samuel E. Hopkins ran a wholesale hosiery factory in the building. On April 17, 1884 he took his business acquaintance Samuel West and his 12-year-old son Stoddard sailing toward the Narrows in a converted pilot's yawl, and a tugboat found the empty boat floating bottom up the next day. Hopkins's body washed up on Fire Island on June 9 and West's at Long Branch on June 15. The boy was never recovered.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1987

    The Alum Dance Foundation moves in, and the Samuel Alum Dance Company works here until 1989

    Around 1987 the Alum Dance Foundation, run by Samuel Alum, moved into the building as Tribeca was being rediscovered. The Samuel Alum Dance Company used the space until 1989, when a conversion began. Completed a year later, it left one apartment per floor above the store.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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