431 East 139th Street

Mott Haven | built 1892

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
William O'Gorman completes 431 East 139th Street in a neo-Grec style that was already somewhat dated
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No. 431 belongs to the 1892 row that William O'Gorman designed and built with Hermann Stursberg on East 139th Street; for it and the pair's 1889 row on East 140th Street, O'Gorman served as his own architect. The landmarks report notes that uniform neo-Grec facades like these were cheaper to build but somewhat dated by then, Manhattan having moved on to the Queen Anne style by 1880.
“Neo-Grec houses with uniform cornice lines, flat facades, and even fenestration patterns, while less expensive to construct, were somewhat outdated by this time.”
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1900
Census of about 1900 shows a draughtsman, a painter and a fire chief renting houses in this row
When this row was new, its houses were rented rather than sold, and census records from the turn of the century list mostly first- and second-generation German and Irish tenants, often living with extended families and one servant. Across the two O'Gorman rows on East 139th and East 140th streets, heads of household included a draughtsman, an assessor, a road inspector, a wood worker and a painter, as well as a fire chief, a newspaper editor and a physician.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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