Charlotte Selby House

44 MacDougal Street | SoHo | built 1827

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. 1827

    Mason Lewis Perego builds a Federal house and sells it to Charlotte Selby

    The mason Lewis P. Perego began this house in 1826 and finished it in 1827, in Flemish bond brick, and sold it in 1828 to Charlotte Selby. Born Charlotte Sanxay, she called herself the widow of the Englishman Skeffington Selby, though no record of a marriage survives. His will left her several Manhattan properties and government stock. She left the house around 1832, and later occupants included a cabinetmaker, a grocer and a mason who had at least ten children.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1875

    September

    Thomas Norton raises the attic to a full third floor and runs the house as a boarding house

    The Moore family sold 44 MacDougal Street to Thomas Norton in 1875, and that September he submitted plans for lifting the attic into a complete third story, at a cost of about $63,000 in today's money. Norton does not seem to have lived there. Tenants of the boarding house included a clerk, the printer-publisher Peter Eckler and a lawyer for the City of New York, John W. Brittingham.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1878

    December

    A star government witness skips court, and the Times reports he was at his MacDougal Street home all along

    John W. Brittingham, a lodger at 44 MacDougal Street, was the principal government witness in a federal conspiracy case, but he twice failed to appear for cross-examination. Once he was said to be in Washington; the Times reported on December 4, 1878 that he had been at home all along. The prosecutor asked for a subpoena. By 1881 Brittingham was the defendant, accused of embezzling from the city.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1891

    June 15

    Resident Michael T. Sharkey survives a night yacht sinking that kills two others aboard

    Michael T. Sharkey, a 33-year-old attorney who lived with his parents at 44 MacDougal Street, was a guest on the 46-foot sloop Amelia on June 15, 1891. After dinner in Nyack the yacht was struck by a tugboat around 1 a.m. and nearly cut in two. Sharkey survived, but Frank Jennings and William Bahn Jr., who had gone below to sleep, drowned.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1901

    March 19

    Former Assemblyman Michael T. Sharkey is sent to the Blackwell's Island asylum from his MacDougal Street home

    Sharkey won election to the state Assembly in 1898, but his career ended after he suffered sunstroke in the summer of 1900. In March 1901, his mother and wife said his condition had grown serious at 44 MacDougal Street, and after a stay at Bellevue he was committed on March 19 to the asylum on Blackwell's Island, the Morning Telegraph reported.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1920

    Peter Nervo and Joseph Balbiani remodel the ground floor for their bakery

    In 1920 architect Frank E. Vitolo was hired by the owners, Peter Nervo and Joseph Balbiani, to remodel the ground floor for their bakery, P. Nervo, Balbiani & Co. Both families lived on the upper floors. Two years later Vitolo returned to rebuild the storefront and bring the first floor level with the sidewalk. The bakery stayed for about three decades before the space became a garage and art studio.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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