Maryhouse (former Music School Settlement)

55 East 3rd Street | also 51 East 3rd Street | East Village | built 1840

Open on the map6 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. 1883

    July 12

    D. Landsmann founds the Jewish Mission, which later operates from No. 53 East 3rd Street

    D. Landsmann founded the Jewish Mission on July 12, 1883. A Lutheran author wrote in 1896 that he worked zealously among Orthodox Jews who had only recently come from Russia, Galicia, Poland and Hungary. The mission was being run from No. 53 East 3rd Street until 1903, when that house and No. 55 passed to the Music School Settlement.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1892

    December 16

    Louise Grotrian, committed to an asylum by her husband, loses her bid for release

    In 1889 Christian Grotrian of No. 53 had his wife Louise committed to Bloomingdale asylum and, allegedly as his housekeeper, moved Mina Fischer into the house. After he died in 1892, Louise pleaded before Judge Pryor on December 16 to be freed. Her emotional outburst in broken English cut the hearing short, and she was returned to the asylum. Fischer, executrix of the will, vowed revenge on a witness.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1903

    The Music School Settlement, founded to teach immigrant children, takes over Nos. 53 and 55

    Emilie Wagner founded the Society of the Music School Settlement in 1894 to bring music to immigrant children. It acquired Nos. 53 and 55 East 3rd Street in 1903 and added No. 51 in 1909. By 1916 a book on music in education counted 800 pupils paying twenty-five cents a lesson, with scholarships for the poorest, and said thousands had been turned away.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1904

    Grosvenor Atterbury's 1903-04 conversion gives the 1830s houses a Colonial Revival look

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission lists Jonathan Wilt as the original owner of the 1830s houses at 51-55 East 3rd Street. Grosvenor Atterbury designed the 1903-04 conversion for the Music School Settlement, and Bosworth & Holden handled further alterations in 1909. The commission classes the result as Colonial Revival, with an entrance with a fanlight, stone lintels and a modillioned cornice.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  5. 1974

    The Catholic Worker buys the settlement house and opens Maryhouse

    When the Music School Settlement moved to East 11th Street in 1974, the building was acquired by the Catholic Worker Movement, which named it Maryhouse. The movement was founded in 1933 partly by the journalist and activist Dorothy Day. Maryhouse offers shelter to homeless people, and by 1981 its workers wrote that it rarely had an empty bed.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1980

    November 29

    Dorothy Day dies at Maryhouse

    Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, died of a heart attack at Maryhouse on November 29, 1980. She had spent her later years at the house of hospitality, which occupies the former Music School Settlement buildings on East 3rd Street.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

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