Rectory of the Church of the Ascension

7 West 10th Street | Greenwich Village | built 1841

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.

1841
Richard Upjohn designs Manhattan's first brownstone-faced residence
After a fire destroyed the Church of the Ascension's earlier building in 1839, architect Richard Upjohn designed a new Gothic Revival church and rectory, both finished in 1841 at a cost of $46,459.75. The rectory rose two floors over an English basement and was the first residential building in Manhattan faced in brownstone, the stone that later gave New York row houses their nickname. Rector Manton Eastburn bought the narrow site to limit how long the church could be, saying it left "no room for high church doings."
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1921
May
A housekeeper finds an abandoned infant on the rectory's doorstep
In May 1921, housekeeper Mrs. John Graham found a five-pound baby girl in a basket at the rectory's door. Rector Dr. Percy Stickney Grant took the child in and baptized her Faith Willard. That October she was taken to Presbyterian Hospital with septic poisoning and pneumonia, and newspapers reported on the rector's grief as she lay dying.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Nearby