Joseph and Josephine Bissell House

46 West 55th Street | Midtown | built 1869

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.

1869
John Stevens builds an Italianate rowhouse at 46 West 55th Street
Developer John W. Stevens completes a row of five townhouses on West 55th Street, including No. 46, designed by architect Thomas Thomas in the Italianate style. Louise Alker and her family are among the first residents, living there until 1886.
Source: Wikipedia
1904
June
Edward Tilton remodels the house for Dr. Joseph Bissell
After buying the house in January 1903, Dr. Joseph Bidleman Bissell hires architect Edward L. Tilton to remodel the Italianate brownstone in the Neo-Classical style, adding a four-story bowed bay. The $10,000 renovation is completed in June 1904 for Bissell, his wife Josephine and their four children.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1918
December 3
Dr. Joseph Bissell, a pioneer of radium treatment, dies at home
Joseph Bidleman Bissell, a Bellevue and St. Vincent's surgeon who pioneered X-ray and radium cancer treatment and founded a radium sanatorium in 1910, dies of food poisoning in the West 55th Street house on December 3, 1918. His widow Josephine sells the property the following year.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
2010
The city designates the Bissell House a landmark
New York City designates 46 West 55th Street a landmark in 2010, recognizing Edward Tilton's 1904 Neo-Classical remodeling of the 1869 rowhouse. By then the building, once home to a succession of physicians including neurologist James Ramsay Hunt, has been converted to commercial use.
Source: Wikipedia

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