Richard Cunningham House

44 Horatio Street | West Village | built 1848

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. 1848

    Bricklayers Richard Cunningham and Cornelius Lacost build near-twin houses at 44 and 46 Horatio

    Bricklayers Richard Cunningham and Cornelius Lacost bought adjoining lots on Horatio Street, Nos. 44 and 46, from John B. Ireland in 1847 and built homes for themselves. Cunningham's No. 44 is a three-story, 20-foot-wide brick house with a doorway above a shallow stoop, flanked by pilasters and sidelights, under a modillioned cornice; the two houses nearly match. A boarding house by 1855, it passed through the Mallaby family before later owners.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1855

    Two firemen who ring the Jefferson Market fire bell lodge in the boarding house

    By 1855 No. 44 took boarders, among them William Yonge Tufft and John W. Stinman. Both volunteered with an Exempt Engine Company on Centre Street and worked as bell-ringers in the Jefferson Market cupola, the wooden fire lookout where three men took shifts. Stinman had served as a fire foreman and a police patrolman; Tufft later changed his surname to Taft and joined the Metropolitan Police.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1856

    January

    A blind boarder's friends raise money for him, and the councilman collecting it is charged with keeping it

    Joseph Perkins, a boarder who had lost his sight and could not work, had friends start a collection in April 1855. Councilman Thomas Cooper gathered the donations but, by Perkins's account, kept the money. Perkins sued in October 1855 and a warrant was issued, but Cooper vanished until January 1856, when he was found and charged with breach of trust. He was held on $500 bail.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1857

    Resident William Taft, a Metropolitan policeman, fights in the clash with Mayor Wood's police

    William Y. Taft, a resident for more than twenty-five years, was among the first men appointed to the new Metropolitan Police in 1857. When Mayor Fernando Wood's loyal municipal police barred the new street commissioner from his office, the two forces fought in the bloodiest clash since the Astor Place Riots. At an inquest Taft said Bowery Boys helped his men and many were wounded. He died in the house on July 28, 1880.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1941

    Radio news commentator Mark Hawley buys No. 44 and returns it to a single-family home

    Mark A. Hawley, a radio news commentator, and his wife Adelaide bought the house in 1941, making it a single-family home for the first time in almost a century. They finished renovations that September but sold in October 1942 after leasing a duplex at 77 Park Avenue. Buyer William Rubin kept it a one-family house until 1966, when it was divided into two duplexes.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1971

    November 6

    Foreign Policy managing editor John Franklin Campbell, a resident, dies at 31

    John Franklin Campbell, managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine, lived in one of the apartments with his wife Brenda Lee Hughes. A former State Department Foreign Service officer, he wrote The Foreign Affairs Fudge Factory. He died on November 6, 1971, at St. Vincent's Hospital, aged 31, of an obstruction in his throat.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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