41 King Street

Hudson Square | built 1828

Open on the map6 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. 1860

    October 30

    Police raid the house and find Andrew Roberts running a counterfeiting press in a rear extension

    On October 30, 1860, three policemen with a search warrant entered the house after Captain Walling of the Detective Police was tipped off about a counterfeiting operation. Officer Bennett, watching the rear, opened a door he took to lead to the yard and found Andrew Roberts apparently at work making fake bills in an extension room. The search turned up packages of counterfeit notes, mostly tens, totaling nearly $4,000, along with copper printing plates and two presses; Roberts's brother Samuel was arrested at his saloon.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1861

    January 9

    Roberts brothers from the house stand trial over an express robbery; a witness says the gang met here to split the loot

    In January 1861 Roberts brothers from the house went on trial, with Lewis Stebbins and Porter Kellogg, over the April 1860 Adams Express robbery on the New Haven Railroad, whose haul of cash, notes, checks and a gold watch came to $25,060. A witness, L. A. Kinney, whom the thieves had approached to help open a small safe, testified that they gathered at the King Street house more than once to share out the money and plot what to do next. Samuel Roberts was discharged on the third day for lack of evidence but was at once rearrested on a counterfeiting charge.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1887

    March

    Builder George W. Lithgow raises the attic and adds a rear extension, but keeps the Federal stoop railings

    George W. Lithgow, a builder and contractor who bought the house in 1872, filed plans in March 1887 to raise the attic to full height and add a ten-foot, three-story extension at the rear. He did the work himself, so the job cost only about $1,200. The remodeled house gained a bracketed Italianate cornice, new double doors and parlor windows extended to the floor, but Lithgow left the delicate Federal iron stoop railings with their acorn finials untouched.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1921

    April 20

    Rev. A. Woodruff Halsey, a mission board secretary and Woodrow Wilson's Princeton classmate, dies in the house

    The Rev. Abraham Woodruff Halsey married Gertrude Lithgow, daughter of the house's owner, in 1893 and lived at 41 King Street. In 1901 he took the secretary's post at the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, and in 1904-05 he visited West Africa, where his wife took photographs that became stereopticon slides for his illustrated talk 'Snapshots in Africa.' He died in the house on April 20, 1921, aged 68, and the New-York Tribune noted that he had been president of Woodrow Wilson's class at Princeton.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1948

    October 11

    Philip Keeney, living at 41 King Street, swears an affidavit about his stalled passport application

    On October 11, 1948, Philip O. Keeney swore an affidavit giving his home as 41 King Street. He said he had applied for a passport on September 10 to travel to Europe for a library project, with passage booked on the New Amsterdam for October 16. A State Department security officer had phoned him at home on October 1 and questioned him on October 4, when Keeney handed over his itinerary and an outline of a book he planned to write, and said the passport would come within the week. It had not, and Keeney had to cancel the sailing.

    Source: archive.org

  6. 1949

    June 9

    Philip and Mary Jane Keeney, summoned at 41 King Street, face the House Un-American Activities Committee

    Philip and Mary Jane Keeney, librarians who moved into 41 King Street in 1947, were drawn into Red Scare investigations. A process server came to the door on April 5, 1949, with a summons for Philip, and both testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee on June 9. Asked about Communist Party membership, Philip answered again and again that his reply might incriminate or degrade him; Mary Jane said she was not a member but acknowledged writing a 1939 article, 'The Making of a Radical.' Both were later convicted of contempt of Congress, though never charged with espionage.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 79 buildings with stories in Hudson Square