Jacob P. Roome House

7 Weehawken Street | also 177 Christopher Street | West Village | built 1900

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

    Carpenter Jacob P. Roome builds a Greek Revival rowhouse at 7 Weehawken Street

    Around 1830-31 Jacob P. Roome, a carpenter who served as the city's Superintendent of Repairs from 1807 to 1831, built this brick rowhouse. The Landmarks Preservation Commission lists it as a rowhouse and stable in vernacular Greek Revival style and counts it among the two oldest buildings in the Weehawken Street Historic District. Its pressed-metal cornice dates from about 1871.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1845

    February

    Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt buys 7 Weehawken Street at auction

    Roome offered the house at a property auction in February 1845. The buyer was Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, the wealthy head of the old Roosevelt family and grandfather of President Theodore Roosevelt. His family kept the property for decades, and the Roosevelt estate sold it only in 1920.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1876

    February 1

    The Roosevelts raise the house a story and advertise its new stable for rent

    After Cornelius Roosevelt died in 1871, the family raised the attic to a full third floor by 1875, added a bracketed pressed-metal cornice, and cut a carriage bay into the ground floor for a stable. On February 1, 1876 a Herald notice offered the stable with eight stalls and room for trucks, plus two upper floors as dwellings. Thomas Rudden and his son Philip ran the stable from around 1882.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1936

    April 8

    A longshoreman is shot in the leg and rushed from Christopher Street by a neighbor of 7 Weehawken Street

    On the night of April 8, 1936, John Haggerty, who lived at 7 Weehawken Street, was walking on Christopher Street near Greenwich Street with the longshoreman Robert Vaughan when Vaughan, 35, fell to the sidewalk. Haggerty hailed a taxi and took him to Bellevue Hospital with a bullet wound in the leg. Vaughan would not say how he had been shot.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1956

    The Oelhaf family buys 7 Weehawken Street for its marine repair firm

    The Oelhaf family acquired the house in 1956 for the Meier & Oelhaf Co., a marine repair business. In 1971-72 it was merged into one enlarged lot with 9-11 Weehawken Street and 177 Christopher Street, also Oelhaf properties. In 1984 William Gottlieb, a leading Greenwich Village real estate investor, bought the whole group.

    “It was obtained by the Oelhaf family in 1956 for use by the Meier & Oelhaf Co., marine repair…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Further reading

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