565 Bloomingdale Road Cottage

565 Bloomingdale Road | Woodrow | built 1898

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. 1898

    Robert E. Mersereau puts up a pair of small rental cottages on Bloomingdale Road

    Mersereau bought a long, narrow lot carved out of farmer and letter carrier Thomas B. Du Bois's 11-acre farm, and old maps show that he built two nearly identical two-story frame houses on it sometime between 1887 and 1898. Each had a side hall, two rooms per floor, a center chimney and a gabled roof. Built to rent, the pair have long been known as the baymen's cottages.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1910

    Eureta Lee leases No. 565 and takes in the grandniece of a Sandy Ground founder as a boarder

    The 1910 census is the first record of who lived at No. 565. It names the tenant as Eureta Lee, a New York-born Black woman of 70 whose parents came from Delaware. Her boarder was Josephine Henry, whose father was oysterman John Jackson Henry and whose great-uncle was Captain John Jackson, a founder of Sandy Ground. By 1915 the house was rented to Susan Harmon, an oysterman's widow who worked as a domestic servant and laundress.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1922

    George H. Hunter, the subject of a Joseph Mitchell New Yorker article, buys the cottages

    Mersereau's heir and executrix, Gertrude M. Jacobus, sold the lot and its three houses in 1922 to George and Celia Hunter, the next-door neighbors at No. 575. George Hunter (1869-1966), once a cook on a fishing schooner, chaired the trustees of the Rossville AME Zion Church for more than 30 years and was the subject of Joseph Mitchell's New Yorker piece "Mr. Hunter's Grave." He sold in 1945 but kept looking after the houses for later owners.

    “…the protagonist in Joseph Mitchell's New Yorker article “Mr. Hunter's Grave,” was a major figure in the community…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1925

    Church organist Frances Landin Moore and her husband Murphy raise four children at No. 565

    By 1925 Frances Landin Moore, an oysterman's daughter who was the pianist and organist at the Rossville AME Zion Church, lived here with her husband Murphy Moore, a stock clerk from Woodstock, Virginia. Her niece Lois Mosley, who called her "Aunt Frank," later recalled that the cousins grew up as one family. Murphy had the children help him dig and plant vegetables across the backyard, and he trapped rabbits, possums and the odd snapping turtle in the woods behind No. 569.

    “She played piano and organ for the Rossville AME Zion Church.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Nearby

All 4 buildings with stories in Woodrow