Thaddeus Hyatt House

46 Morton Street | West Village | built 1854

Open on the map5 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. 1854

    Inventor Thaddeus Hyatt builds a row of four Anglo-Italianate houses and lives in No. 46

    Thaddeus Hyatt, a manufacturer of patent vault lights, bought lots from Trinity Church in 1853 and in 1854 completed four Anglo-Italianate houses at Nos. 46 to 52 Morton Street. They stand four stories high over English basements, with long parlor-floor French windows. Hyatt kept No. 46 for himself and sold the other three as soon as they were done, at a substantial profit.

    “Hyatt lived at No. 46, and sold the remaining three houses immediately upon their completion for a substantial profit…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1860

    Abolitionist Thaddeus Hyatt, who hosted John Brown at 46 Morton Street, is jailed for defying the Senate

    Whenever John Brown was in New York, he used Thaddeus Hyatt's townhouse at 46 Morton Street as his unofficial headquarters, according to Village Preservation. After Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, Hyatt raised money for Brown and his family and refused to testify when Congress called him. He was held in a Washington jail from March to June 1860.

    Source: Village Preservation

  3. 1921

    July 6

    A neighbor sues to keep her bedroom private from the philosophy professor's new extension

    In 1921 Columbia philosophy professor William P. Montague bought No. 48 and began adding a rear extension with a study upstairs. Celeste Herrick, who lived at No. 46, went to Supreme Court on July 6 to stop it, saying its windows looked into her bedroom and bathroom and cut off light to her garden. Montague said the glass was translucent or did not face her rooms, and Justice Whitaker denied the injunction.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1975

    Dance critic Francis Mason moves into 46 Morton Street, where Martha Graham came to talk until late at night

    Around 1975 Francis Mason and his wife, Patricia, took an apartment at 46 Morton Street. A former cultural ambassador in London and a critic and interpreter of dance, Mason had just been made assistant director of the Pierpont Morgan Library, and he was close to George Balanchine and Martha Graham. His obituary recalled Graham talking long into the night with him at his Morton Street house. The gardens there appeared on house tours.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 2012

    January

    Filmmaker Sofia Coppola and musician Thomas Mars buy 46 Morton Street for $9.85 million

    In January 2012 the house went on the market and sold ten days later to Sofia Coppola and her husband, Thomas Mars, a musician. They paid $9.85 million, about $1 million more than the asking price. In September 2015 plans were filed to convert the former Hyatt house back into a single-family home.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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