405 East 139th Street
Mott Haven | built 1892
Open on the map3 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.
- 1892
Irish-born builder William O'Gorman designs the row himself in the neo-Grec style
William O'Gorman emigrated from Ireland at 17, in 1863 or 1864, rose to superintendent for the builder Daniel Crimmins, and opened an architectural practice in Yorkville in 1866. In 1875, once the 23rd and 24th wards had been annexed, he joined Hermann Stursberg and shifted his business to the Bronx. For their East 139th Street row, finished in 1892, he served as his own architect and designed the houses in the neo-Grec style.
- 1892
The house is built with a Philadelphia brick front, incised stonework and cast-iron stoop railings
No. 405 is the first of twenty-one uniform two-story-and-basement houses, each 16 feet 8 inches wide, in the surviving part of O'Gorman and Stursberg's row. The fronts are Philadelphia brick with incised stone lintels and panels, under galvanized metal cornices decorated with large spade-shaped leaves. Stone stoops carry heavy cast-iron newels and railings, and the original entrances were round-headed double wooden doors.
- 1900
German and Irish families rent the row's houses, many with a live-in servant
The single-family houses on this row and its twin on East 140th Street were let as rentals. Census records from around 1900 show tenants who were mostly German or Irish immigrants or their children, in extended households, often with one servant. The heads of household included a draughtsman, a wool importer, a horse dealer, a glue broker and a pilot, along with one fire chief, a newspaper editor and a physician.
Nearby
- 407 East 139th Street2 entries
- 403 East 139th Street3 entries
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- 411 East 139th Street2 entries
- 413 East 139th Street2 entries
- 415 East 139th Street3 entries