William Dunning House

749 Washington Street | West Village | built 1842

Open on the map3 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. 1842

    Cigarmaker Edward S. Innes builds three Greek Revival houses at 749-753 Washington Street as an investment

    Innes erected the row of three brick houses in 1842, each three stories over a basement. William Dunning, who owned a lumber business at 488 West Street, bought No. 749 and lived there with his wife; their son William Jr. was born in 1847. The family moved to Manhattanville around 1851, perhaps after Dunning won a city contract to supply lumber for aqueduct repairs.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1871

    May 13

    Digging a new basement apparently undermines the house, and it is listed as an unsafe building

    Peter Huff bought the house in May 1870 for $9,400 and began improvements. On May 6, 1871 the Record and Guide reported that the cellar was being excavated and a basement built, apparently by digging below the foundation. A week later, on May 13, the journal listed the building as unsafe, with a cracked north party wall. The repairs were made successfully.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1998

    June

    Owners restoring the house since 1982 win a Front Stoop Award after rebuilding the long-missing stoop

    Katharine Schoonover and her husband Alan Straus bought the run-down house in 1982 and hired the restoration firm Preserv. The stoop had been removed in a 1951 renovation, and sixteen years into the project a rebuilt stoop won the Front Stoop Award from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation in June 1998. The restoration was completed in 2004, returning the building to a single-family home.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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