David R. Doremus House

741 Greenwich Street | West Village | built 1854

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. 1854

    Builder David R. Doremus erects 741 Greenwich Street as a home for his family

    Doremus, who worked as a surveyor and builder out of 7 Wall Street, put up the 19-foot-wide brick house in 1854. His wife Ann and two of their nine children, Cornelius and Helen, were still at home. He sold the property in 1856 for $6,500 and had moved far uptown to West 82nd Street by 1860, when he helped found the Franklin Savings Bank.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1854

    An Italianate doorway and bracketed cornice mark Doremus's three-story house

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission describes the 1854 house as three stories of brick over a basement. A low stoop rises to an elaborately paneled Italianate door and frame, and the windows carry small cornices. The French windows of the second floor had diamond-patterned iron railings, and an ornamental bracketed cornice with a paneled band finishes the facade.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1868

    January 25

    A coroner's jury condemns the baby-adoption house run at 741 Greenwich Street

    By 1862 Catherine Putnam, calling herself Madame Parselle, ran a lying-in asylum here where unmarried women gave birth and infants were placed for adoption. After a month-old boy died in January 1868, a coroner's inquest heard a washerwoman say she had carried four or five dead children from the house. The jury found his death hastened by lack of proper care and urged that such establishments be broken up.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1893

    January 22

    A burglar leaves a sleeping resident at 741 Greenwich Street without clothes

    Early on January 22, 1893, a policeman arrested longshoreman Charles Howard on Bethune Street, loaded down with several suits of clothes. A letter in one coat was addressed to Patrick McGrath of 741 Greenwich Street. McGrath had slept through the theft and lost everything, even his hat, so neighbors lent him clothing to wear to court.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1897

    August 28

    A boarder at 741 Greenwich Street works the night a biscuit-factory colleague dies in a dough vat

    Daniel J. Quinn bought the house around 1897 and his wife Bridget ran it as a boarding house. One boarder, Thomas Hogan, worked nights at the New York Biscuit Company on West 15th Street. On August 28 his coworker Peter Dogget fell or was thrown into a mixing vat and died. Five months later a letter from Dogget's mother claimed murder, but police said they could not force the witness to return.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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