57 Westervelt Avenue

New Brighton | built 1910

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.

1909
George Sanford Parsons buys half his in-laws' parcel and builds two mirror-image houses
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In 1908 Alice Vanderhoef bought a 130-foot parcel carved from the former estate of Manhattan merchant Ladislao de Escoriaza, and the next year she and her husband Henry, a hat manufacturer, sold half of it to their son-in-law George Sanford Parsons. By 1910 Parsons had built Nos. 57 and 59. No building records for No. 57 survive, but because it mirrors No. 59 it is attributed to the same architect, Thomas C. Perkins.
“…the Vanderhoefs sold the remaining half of the lot to their son-in-law, George Sanford Parsons, who by 1910 had constructed two houses, Nos. 57 and 59…”
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1925
An assistant bank executive and an accountant live in the Parsons house
In 1925 William H. Libby, an assistant bank executive, lived in the house with his family, and by the accountant James H. McDavitt. Sometime between 1926 and 1937 a one-story addition went on at the rear. The shingled house keeps its full-width porch with paired Doric columns and its angled corner bay under a polygonal roof.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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