403 East 139th Street

Mott Haven | built 1892

Open on the map3 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. 1892

    William O'Gorman and Hermann Stursberg finish a 51-house row, ending it here with a taller house

    Partners William O'Gorman and Hermann Stursberg built a row of fifty-one single-family brick rental houses along the whole north side of East 139th Street, completed in 1892 with O'Gorman as architect. No. 403, at the west end, rose a full story higher than its neighbors and had a projecting angled bay. Stursberg's realty company held onto this house and the four beside it until the mid-1940s.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1900

    A gas company clerk's extended family shares the house with five boarders

    The 1900 federal census found one extended family living at No. 403, headed by a clerk for the Gas Company who was of Irish descent, along with five boarders. The 1890 police census had also listed residents here, three couples, a woman with her son and three single men, but the Landmarks Preservation Commission thought that listing more likely belonged to the tenement next door, since demolished.

    “The census of 1900 reported that a single extended family (that of a Gas Company clerk of Irish descent), plus five boarders lived in the house.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1941

    The house is fitted with sprinklers and a cellar exit as a multiple dwelling

    The first Department of Buildings records treating No. 403 as a multiple dwelling date from 1941, when an application was filed for sprinklers, new partitions, ironwork and an exit from the cellar. Other houses in the row changed later or earlier: No. 421 became a multiple dwelling in 1948, and Nos. 439 and 441 were turned into two-family houses around 1920.

    “Not until 1941 are there Department of Buildings records related to the building's status as a multiple dwelling.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Nearby

All 173 buildings with stories in Mott Haven