Diana Traphagen House
67 Bedford Street | West Village | built 1837
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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.
- 1836
Six rental houses rise on Bedford Street's west side, with carpenter Samuel J. Van Saun taking No. 67
In 1836 builders began a row of six houses on the west side of Bedford Street, in the block between Commerce and Morton Streets. The firm of Hadden & Gedney appears to have built all of them, and the carpenter Samuel J. Van Saun took title to No. 67 in the middle. It was faced in Flemish-bond brick above a brownstone basement and, like its neighbors, was meant for renters, who turned over quickly.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1855
Religious publisher Anson Davies Fitz Randolph moves in; his young son's funeral is held in the house
Anson Davies Fitz Randolph, born in Woodbridge, New Jersey in 1820, opened a religious bookstore at 669 Broadway in 1851, where he published and sold sermons and pamphlets. His family moved here in 1855. That September his four-year-old son Frank died while the family was at Woodbridge, and a few days later the funeral took place at the family's Bedford Street house. Alfred Stieglitz later photographed Randolph.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1899
Two neighbors trail a woman leading a stranger's child, and she is held on an attempted kidnapping charge
On the evening of September 30, 1899, the boarding-house keeper Lizzie Cullen of No. 67 and her neighbor Nellie Melford watched a young woman pick up a small child in the street at Bedford and Carmine Streets, kiss it and give it a penny. They followed her from place to place and then told Officer Henry Haggerty. Mary Farrell, 25, gave shifting explanations, saying first the child was hers and then that she knew its mother, and was held for attempted kidnapping.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1916
A Tribune reporter rides an ambulance to the house during the 1916 polio epidemic
On July 11, 1916, in the midst of the polio epidemic, a female New-York Tribune reporter went along on an ambulance call to 67 Bedford Street. A crowd gathered, and a woman hurried out to insist that her six-year-old, Johnny, was fine. The doctor said they could not take him because the family would not agree, adding that families dreaded sending children to the hospital. By early September the city counted 8,197 cases and 1,988 deaths.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1926
The Greenoak Company converts the house to apartments and adds a fourth floor
In 1926 the Greenoak Company converted No. 67 to apartments, adding a fourth floor, removing the stoop and lowering the entrance to the former basement level. The units were bachelor apartments without real kitchens. A 1972 renovation made a triplex below and one apartment on each upper floor, and a 2012 makeover restored a single-family house with a rebuilt entrance and a wall of studio windows at the top.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- The Diana Traphagen House - 67 Bedford StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
- Then & Now photos: 67 Bedford StreetVillage Preservation: Greenwich Village Then & Now
Nearby
- 69 Bedford Street4 entries
- William Henry Knapp House65 Bedford Street | 5 entries
- 71 Bedford Street1 entry
- 63 Bedford Street3 entries
- 73 Bedford Street4 entries
- 31 Morton Street5 entries