52 Westervelt Avenue

New Brighton | built 1874

Open on the map3 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1. 1869

   Mary Eadie buys two lots, and a mansard-roofed frame house with a stable behind it stands here by 1874

   In 1869 Mary Eadie, wife of the block printer John Eadie, bought two Westervelt Avenue lots from the heirs of Orlando Lee; they are now Nos. 50 and 52. An 1874 map shows a rectangular house on No. 52 with a porch across its front and a two-story stable at the back. The couple appear to have lived here in the 1870s. Under today's stucco, the boxy shape and the mansard roof, whose gabled dormers have round-arched windows, still show the vernacular Second Empire design.

   Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

2. 1910

   A Curtis High School teacher shares the house with boarders, one of them an Ellis Island interrogator

   From the mid-1890s the house belonged to John H. and Alice Dobson Eadie, who lived here with their daughter and her husband, an ice dealer; another Eadie son, the veterinarian J. Archie Eadie, also lived here in the 1890s. By 1910 the occupant was William J. Blake, who taught at Curtis High School, with three boarders, one of whom worked as an interrogator at Ellis Island. Five years later the carpenter Fred Thuragraves and his family lived here.

   “In 1910, No. 52 was the home of William J. Blake, a teacher at Curtis High School, and three boarders, one of whom was an interrogator at Ellis Island.”

   Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

3. 1926

   The house loses its front porch and is joined to its neighbor at No. 50

   Between 1926 and 1937 the house was reworked: the porch across the front came off and the present projecting entrance porch went on, and a one-story extension replaced the rear porch added in the 1890s. In the same years No. 52 was physically linked to No. 50 Westervelt Avenue toward the back, at the second and third floors. Mary Eadie had bought the two lots together in 1869.

   “…the physical connection of Nos. 50 and 52 Westervelt Avenue near the rear of the houses at the second- and third-story levels.”

   Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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• 56 Westervelt Avenue3 entries
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• 60 Westervelt Avenue2 entries
• 62 Westervelt Avenue2 entries
• 42 Westervelt Avenue3 entries

All 55 buildings with stories in New Brighton