Rev. Edwin R. T. Cook House

62 West 12th Street | Greenwich Village | built 1843

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. 1843

    Daniel Baldwin builds a row of sixteen Greek Revival houses

    Attorney Daniel A. Baldwin built an ambitious row of 16 brick-faced houses in 1843 along West 12th Street's south side between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, including No. 62. Each was three stories tall over a brownstone English basement. The doorways had earred stone frames carrying an entablature and cornice, a popular Greek Revival detail, and the parlor level had floor-to-ceiling windows.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1860

    Rev. Edwin R. T. Cook buys the house and lives there until his death

    Reverend Edwin R. T. Cook bought the house in 1860 and lived here with his wife Ann, his widowed mother Elizabeth, and at least three children. He was the organizer of the Episcopal parish of St. John the Evangelist, which moved in 1856 from a rented room into a former Presbyterian church. Cook died on July 24, 1865, and The New York Times reported that a large crowd attended his funeral at the church.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1903

    Widow Mary Ann Chisholm buys the house at age seventy-five

    Mary Ann Chisholm, a wealthy widow, bought No. 62 in 1903, when she was 75, and the sale was reported on May 30. The New York Times said she took in $300,000 a year from Manhattan real estate and from railroad stocks and bonds. She gave each of her four adult children $1,000 a month and died in the house on May 21, 1913, leaving an estate of $5.5 million.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1969

    Protests save the row from a New School demolition plan

    In 1969 The Villager reported that the New School for Social Research planned to tear down the houses from 50 to 62 West 12th Street for educational facilities. Tenants organized to protest, and a City Council member introduced a bill to bar the destruction of sound residential buildings. The houses were saved. No. 62 had been converted to apartments in 1954, and a 1985 renovation returned it to a single-family home with a rebuilt stoop but none of its Greek Revival interior details.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 518 buildings with stories in Greenwich Village