66 Morton Street

West Village | built 1852

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. 1852

    Trinity Church builds a four-story house with an unusual faceted bay

    The Trustees of Trinity Church put up this four-story house in 1852. The Landmarks Commission notes that its polygonal bay was unusual for the Village at that date. Later changes shaved smooth the cornices and sills of the segmental-arched windows and lowered the entry to basement level.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1853

    September

    Nassau Swinsen advertises rooms with board at the corner of Hudson

    The Trinity trustees leased the new house to Nassau Swinsen, who ran it as a boarding house. His September 1853 ad offered couples rooms with board for six or eight dollars a week, with stages passing every five minutes. In 1856 Eliza Swinsen, probably a relative, took over, and her daughter Eliza J. later taught at Primary School No. 24 on Horatio Street.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1909

    June

    A boarder rallies Villagers here to extend Seventh Avenue and the subway

    Dr. Edwin Zimmerman, who lived with the Caragher family, headed the Greenwich Village Public Committee. The New York Times of June 26, 1909, described a meeting at 66 Morton Street where City Controller Metz spoke, held to rally support for pushing Seventh Avenue south to Varick Street along with the subway extension.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1922

    January

    A tenant is sentenced for receiving goods stolen by a gang of boys

    Louis Bernstein, who lived here by 1921, was sentenced on January 28, 1922, at age 22. The Evening World compared his operation to Fagin's, saying he had received about $8,000 in goods that a gang of boys he employed stole from stores over six months.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1957

    Poet Maurice Kenny rents a tiny room and befriends novelist Willard Motley

    In 1957 the 28-year-old poet Maurice Kenny moved into a room here he later described as not much larger than six by ten feet. Sorting the hall mail, he found that another tenant was Willard Motley, author of Knock on Any Door. The two became close, and within two years Kenny was working in Motley's house outside Mexico City.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1988

    The house becomes a favorite film location

    After Mary Kaplan bought the house in 1969 and restored the stoop and entrance, location scouts began choosing it. It served as the home of Harrison Ford's character in Working Girl (1988), Matthew Broderick's in The Night We Never Met, and Winona Ryder's in Autumn in New York (2000).

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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All 1,156 buildings with stories in West Village