5249 Sycamore Avenue

Riverdale | built 1937

Open on the map3 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. 1908

    George W. Perkins has an estate storehouse enlarged into a dwelling

    The oldest part of this house was a small square building with a short wing, put up around 1890 just south of the Cromwell estate's stone carriage house. In 1908 George W. Perkins, who owned the estate then, hired Robert Byers to enlarge the one-story brick storehouse and turn it into a place to live. Part of the old brick walls came down, a two-story shingled wood-frame structure went up on top, and a passage was built to link it with the stone carriage house.

    “In 1908 George W. Perkins, who owned the estate at that time, hired Robert Byers to enlarge it and convert it from a storehouse to a dwelling.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1937

    Hugh B. Griffiths has the house moved 30 feet and remodeled by Julius Gregory

    After the estate was subdivided in 1937, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh B. Griffiths bought the house, had it shifted about thirty feet northwest onto the new north private road, expanded it on the west and had architect Julius Gregory remodel it. The result is neo-Federal, with clapboards, shuttered six-over-six windows, a columned portico, a doorway with leaded sidelights and an elliptical fanlight, and a flat roof behind a parapet with slatted openings.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1960

    Hugh B. Griffiths, a Standard Brands frozen-foods manager, lives here until his death

    Hugh B. Griffiths (1897-1960) went to the Riverdale Country School and the Mount Hermon School and finished Harvard with the class of 1918. He started in sales at the Ward Baking Company in 1919, later moved to Standard Brands, and was managing that company's frozen products division when he died. He had lived in this house since moving and rebuilding it in 1937.

    “…was the manager of the firm's frozen products division at the time of his death…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Nearby

All 301 buildings with stories in Riverdale