Jacob Romaine House

7 Leroy Street | West Village | built 1910

Open on the map5 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. 1831

    Jacob Romaine finishes a Federal house with a horse walk to its rear yard

    Jacob Romaine built the two-and-a-half-story Federal house in 1830-31 on land that had been part of the Richmond Hill estate. Its horse walk is a plain wooden door that opened onto a passageway running back to the rear yard, where a small house stood.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1863

    August 19

    Civil War draft calls up several tenants of the house

    Louis Clark was inducted into the Union Army from the house on August 19, 1863, and the next day another tenant, Joseph Bernarde, had his name drawn. In March 1865 R. Donaldson's name was drawn, and the day after that so was A. Ellicott's. Several families shared the house, which held a dozen occupants by 1860.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1893

    A fire damages the house, and a basement store is added when it becomes a two-family home

    After a fire in 1893, No. 7 was turned from a single-family home into a two-family house, and the basement was fitted out as a store. The wood-frame house also received a new brick front between 1893 and 1899. By 1906 three families lived there, and in 1924 it went back to one family, still with the store.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1954

    November 29

    Biologist Robert Chambers, 74, gets a marriage license for a third marriage

    Dr. Robert Chambers, who taught biology at New York University as a research professor between 1928 and 1948, lived at No. 7 at mid-century. His wife Bertha died in 1946, and a second marriage to Karen Peterfy ended in divorce in 1953. A year later he and Eloise Parkhurst Huguenin, 73, got a marriage license.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1964

    Tony-winning stage designer Will Steven Armstrong turns the rear house into a pink Venetian fantasy

    Armstrong bought the property with his wife Jo in 1964 and stuccoed the old rear building in pink with green tile insets, calling it his Venetian fantasy. He had won an Obie for Ivanov in 1958 and a Tony for Carnival in 1962. He died on vacation in Mexico in August 1969, aged 39, and the rear house survives.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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