James Harper House

4 Gramercy Park West | Gramercy | built 1847

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.

1847
Former mayor and publisher James Harper moves in, with the mayor's lamps at his door
James Harper, a founder of the Harper publishing house and mayor of New York in 1844–45, lived at 4 Gramercy Park West from 1847 until his death in 1869. The two lanterns at the entrance recall a custom brought from Dutch New Amsterdam, when two lit lanterns outside the burgomaster's home signaled that he was in. The house was divided into apartments in 1953.
Source: Forgotten New York
1847
Alexander Jackson Davis is credited with the cast-iron porch shared with No. 3
No. 4 Gramercy Park West is built in the 1840s as a Greek Revival mirror image of its neighbor at No. 3, as one of the first houses around Samuel Ruggles's new park. Architectural historians generally attribute the ornate cast-iron porch, whose lacy arches carry a single roof across both houses, to Alexander Jackson Davis.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1965
Bob Dylan is photographed on the stoop for the Highway 61 Revisited cover
Photographer Daniel Kramer shoots Bob Dylan on the front steps of an apartment Dylan shares with his manager, Albert Grossman, in Gramercy Park. A Dylan fan later matches the door details in the photo to No. 4. Kramer has Dylan put on a motorcycle T-shirt and seats his friend Bob Neuwirth behind him with a camera, and takes just two frames. The photo becomes the cover of Highway 61 Revisited, released in August 1965.
Source: popspotsnyc.com

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