417 Westervelt Avenue House, Horton's Row
417 Westervelt Avenue | also 79 Corson Avenue | St. George | built 1882
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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.
- 1882
No. 417 goes up as one of banker Harry L. Horton's twelve brick rental houses on Fort Hill
Harry L. Horton, who ran a Manhattan banking and brokerage firm and served as a president of the village of New Brighton, put up a row of twelve identical attached masonry houses here between 1880 and 1882. He meant them as affordable rentals for middle-class families, a rare type on an island of free-standing frame houses. No. 417 is one of just four in the row that survive intact.
- 1900
Selena Denton runs a boarding house in No. 417 while journalist Putnam Drew lives in the rear unit
The 1900 federal census found two separate households in this house, then numbered 12 Horton's Row. Selena Denton and her husband David lived in one unit, where she kept five boarders, three of them from a single family, plus a servant. The other unit, listed as "12 rear," was home to Putnam Drew, a journalist, and his family.
“Selena Denton lived in one unit with her husband David and ran a boarding house that had five boarders…”
- 1922
German immigrants Albert and Flora Lederman buy the house and mark a new bay with an "L 1922" plaque
Electrical contractor Albert Lederman and his wife Flora, both German immigrants, bought No. 417 in 1922 after living a few doors down at Nos. 415 and 413; by 1925 they had moved in. A full-height red brick angled bay on the Corson Avenue side dates from about 1922 and carries a concrete plaque reading "L 1922." Members of the Lederman family owned this house and three others in the row until 1960.
- 2009
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates 417 Westervelt Avenue, 18 years after a first hearing
The commission had first held a hearing on this house in October 1991. At a second hearing in August 2009, eleven people spoke in favor, among them Councilmember Kenneth Mitchell and the Preservation League of Staten Island. The landmark was designated that September as a rare example of attached masonry row housing on Staten Island.
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