42 Morton Street
West Village | built 1887
Open on the map4 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.
- 1889
Mortimer Merritt designs a five-story flat for Mary McLaughlin that echoes its neighbors
In March 1889 the Real Estate Record reported a three-story, $30,000 apartment building planned for 42 Morton Street. Within weeks the plans grew to five stories and $35,000, with Mary E. McLaughlin, a developer and agent, as owner and Mortimer C. Merritt as architect. Finished that year, it nearly matched the flats built two years earlier next door at Nos. 38 and 40, and it mixes Renaissance Revival, Romanesque Revival and neo-Grec details.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1893
The landlord advertises the flats as the handsomest in the ward, with no children allowed
A February 1893 advertisement in The Sun called 42 Morton Street the "handsomest new, elegantly decorated house" in the Ninth Ward, offering portico stoops, private baths and closets, and a ban on children. The rent was steep for the era, with the cheapest apartment about $586 a month in today's money. Each floor held three four-room apartments, and a similar ad ran three years later.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1900
A wife tells a magistrate that the sub-basement her husband offered her at 42 Morton Street was unfit for her children
On May 23, 1900, Annie Prendergast appeared in court with her five-week-old baby and said her lawyer husband, Oscar, had abandoned her twice. The address he finally gave her was a sub-basement at 42 Morton Street, shared with a male friend. The magistrate ordered him to let her into the apartment and adjourned the case to June 14. The couple later reconciled and had two more children.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1945
A tenant is fined five dollars after an after-hours nightclub raid during the wartime curfew
Jane Holden, a 26-year-old who lived at 42 Morton Street, went to an after-hours Yorkville nightspot after the federal midnight curfew on nightlife began in February 1945. Police raided it, and on March 5 the Daily News reported that a magistrate fined fifteen patrons, including Holden, $5 each for disorderly conduct. The patrons had expected only the operators to be punished.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- An "Elegant Flathouse" - 42 Morton StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
- Then & Now photos: 42 Morton StreetVillage Preservation: Greenwich Village Then & Now
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