75 Bedford Street

West Village | built 1836

Open on the map4 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. 1836

    Charles Oakley erects 75 Bedford as one of two identical houses beside an alley later filled by the narrowest house

    In 1836 Charles Oakley, perhaps the most prolific developer in Greenwich Village, built identical houses at 73 and 75 Bedford, each 20 feet wide. They were early Greek Revival homes with low stoops, doorways flanked by sidelights and brownstone lintels carved with modified Greek key designs. Number 75 was separated from the 1799 Isaacs house at 77 by a horsewalk, an alley to the rear yards, which was later filled with the city's narrowest house.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1845

    Builder Daniel Whitney and his large family settle at 75 Bedford

    Daniel Whitney, a builder born in Massachusetts in 1786, moved in around 1845 from 80 Bedford and later bought the house; he and his wife Hannah had sixteen children. His eldest son, also named Daniel, headed to San Francisco in 1849 and died there in early 1850, and another son, Benjamin, died of cholera in Vincennes, Indiana, that August. A string of family funerals held in the house followed between 1858 and 1861.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1891

    May 10

    A boarder at 75 Bedford, an elevated-train guard, is prodded with a club and arrested after a roundsman stops him

    George Pepper, a guard on the Sixth Avenue Elevated, boarded with the Miner family in 1891. On the night of May 10, Roundsman Londigran stopped him and his wife at Franklin and Varick Streets and demanded to know his business with her. Pepper said the officer grabbed his throat and prodded him with a club, then arrested him when he asked for a badge number. Londigran called the complaint a lie, and Pepper was told it would be investigated, the New York Press reported.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 2012

    Filmmaker James Oakley buys 75 Bedford for $5.8 million, sharing a surname with its builder

    A 1998 renovation had returned the house to a single-family home and restored its stoop. In 2012 the filmmaker James Oakley, who shares a surname with the house's builder, paid $5.8 million for it, and he resold it in 2017 for $7.8 million. The new owner hired architect M. N. Ahari to gut the interiors, leaving no trace of the surviving historic details inside.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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