Russell Trall House

52 Morton Street | West Village | built 1854

Open on the map4 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

    Water-cure physician Russell Trall buys 52 Morton Street as an investment

    When Thaddeus Hyatt finished his row at Nos. 46 to 52 in 1854, Dr. Russell Thatcher Trall bought No. 52. Trall headed the Hydropathic and Hygienic Institute on Laight Street and founded the New-York Vegetarian Society. He kept living on Laight Street and rented the Morton Street house first to a lard dealer, William J. Wilcox, and then to Charles H. Shepard, before moving in himself in 1863.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1860

    Charles Shepard runs a Swedish movement cure and water-cure institute in the house

    After the Wilcox family left in 1857, Trall rented the house to Charles H. Shepard of the publishing firm Fowler & Wells, which had published Trall's cookbook. Shepard opened the New-York Kinesipathic Institute there, and an 1860 ad offered the Swedish Movement Cure with water-cure treatments, with Mrs. C. H. Shepard, M.D., treating women. He moved the institute to Brooklyn Heights in September 1861.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1931

    June 5

    A tenant overhears screams from the neighboring house days before Starr Faithfull's body is found

    On Friday, June 5, 1931, Anita Valentine was cleaning her estranged husband's third-floor apartment at 52 Morton Street when she heard shrieks from the Faithfull apartment in the house behind, at 12 St. Luke's Place. The screams stopped suddenly, and she wrote about them in her diary. Starr Faithfull's body was found on a Long Island beach on June 8. Her death was never solved and inspired novels, including John O'Hara's Butterfield 8.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1959

    Dancer Joseph Gifford runs his dance theater from his apartment and plays the devil in Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat

    By the mid-1950s the dancer, teacher and author Joseph Gifford lived at 52 Morton Street and headquartered the Joseph Gifford Dance Theater in his apartment. He had begun with the Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman company. In April 1959 The Villager reported that the troupe had performed Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat at Kaufmann Concert Hall, with Gifford in the role of the devil.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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