The Commerce Street Twins

41 Commerce Street | West Village | built 1832

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.

1831
Hackensack milkman Peter Huyler builds the Commerce Street twins as a rental investment
Nos. 39 and 41 Commerce Street went up in 1831-32 for Peter Huyler, a milkman from Hackensack, New Jersey, who never lived in the Village. Greenwich Village's population had roughly quadrupled between 1825 and 1840, and he treated the pair of two-and-a-half-story houses as a long-term investment. A shared garden joins them.
Source: Village Preservation
1831
A legend says a sea captain built the twin houses for his feuding daughters, but nothing supports it
Local lore holds that a sea captain with two quarreling daughters built Nos. 39 and 41 Commerce Street so each could have a house, with a garden between them to bring them back together. Ephemeral New York found no evidence for the story. It credits a New Jersey milkman as the builder, and notes that one early renter of the houses was listed as a captain.
Source: Ephemeral New York
1873
Architect Daniel T. Atwood tops the twins with slate mansard roofs
In 1873 the Huyler heirs hired the architect Daniel T. Atwood to replace the peaked roofs and dormers of Nos. 39 and 41 with a full third story under slate mansard roofs. The change added French Second Empire character to the late Federal houses. Peter Burdett, the first identifiable tenant of No. 41, had moved in earlier, in 1842.
Source: Village Preservation

Nearby