48 Commerce Street

West Village | built 1844

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. 1844

    Stewart builds a 19-foot Greek Revival house at the bend, a few steps from a brewery

    No. 48 Commerce Street was built in 1844 as one of two Greek Revival houses Alexander T. Stewart placed at the street's sharp curve. Three bays wide and three stories tall, it sat above a rusticated brownstone basement, with a stone stoop and a doorway framed by pilasters. It was meant for a middle-class family even though Alexander McLachlan's brewery stood a few steps away at No. 38.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1876

    October 12

    Ella Dey, daughter of an anti-slavery editor who lived here, marries in the house

    John H. Dey, an associate editor of the anti-slavery New York Evangelist, moved his family into No. 48 in the early 1870s. His daughter Ella, a schoolteacher, married James A. Baird, son of a Metropolitan Elevated Railroad vice-president, in the house on October 12, 1876. The Rev. Robert Russell Booth performed the ceremony.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1888

    Police veteran Gabriel Aiguier, who guarded the Tribune office in the Draft Riots, retires after 35 years

    Gabriel Aiguier, a policeman since 1853, lived at No. 48 with his wife and seven children. He had been stationed at the New York Tribune building when a mob attacked it in the 1863 Draft Riots, and was on duty during the 1872 Orange Riots. He retired in 1888 and moved to Brooklyn; the Times headed his 1903 obituary "Death of an Old Policeman."

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1921

    November 19

    Two sons of the house are killed in two years, the second outside a Cornelia Street speakeasy

    Patrick Gillen, who lived here with his widowed mother and brother, was stabbed in the head and died on February 21, 1920. His brother John, a longshoreman who hunted for the killers, was shot outside the Cinderella Tea Room, a speakeasy at 9 Cornelia Street, on November 19, 1921; his date, Elizabeth Seeley, was also wounded. Three young men were arrested, and in April 1922 one received 20 years in Sing Sing.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1926

    January 23

    Two buyers convert the private house into apartments with a fourth-floor studio

    On January 23, 1926, Winifred Wilson and Anne Hoody bought No. 48 and announced plans to remodel it into high-class apartments. They took away the stoop and shifted the entrance down to the basement level. A fourth-floor studio with large windows was added under a brick parapet, and in 1968 another renovation made a duplex below with two apartments on each upper floor.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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