438 East 140th Street

Mott Haven | built 1889

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
O'Gorman and Stursberg complete No. 438 as a single-family rental house
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Builder William O'Gorman, an Irish immigrant who had once worked for the builder Daniel Crimmins, designed this two-story-and-basement house himself for the row he developed with Hermann Stursberg, finished in 1889. The houses were built in the neo-Grec style, which was cheaper to construct but somewhat dated by then; in Manhattan, builders had largely moved on to the Queen Anne style by 1880.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1960
The row loses its eastern 29 houses to P.S. 40 in the 1960s
The south side of East 140th Street once held forty-nine two-and-a-half-story houses from this development, anchored by a taller house at each end. In the 1960s the eastern twenty-nine were torn down to make room for P.S. 40, leaving No. 438 among the survivors at the western end of the block between Willis and Brook avenues.
“…the eastern twenty-nine buildings of each of these rows were demolished to make way for the construction of P.S. 40 in the 1960s.”
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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