88 Grove Street

West Village | built 1899

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. 1862

    Picture-frame dealer Thomas Wilmurt buys the 1827 Federal house and gives it a mansard roof

    Thomas A. Wilmurt, a picture-frame and looking-glass dealer, bought No. 88 in 1862 and remodeled the 1827 Federal house in the French Second Empire style. He raised the roof to a full mansard floor with two dormers, lengthened the parlor windows to the floor and added iron cresting and etched-glass foyer doors. The Landmarks Preservation Commission credits the mason Henry Halsey with building the house.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1909

    Landscape architect Ferruccio Vitale buys the house

    Ferruccio Vitale, an Italian landscape architect popular with wealthy New Yorkers, bought No. 88 in 1909 and lived here with his wife until 1915. He designed gardens for their Long Island estates and for numerous parks. In 1914 the New York Times called his garden at Brookside, an estate in Great Barrington, "the masterpiece of landscape planting."

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1915

    "Millionaire Socialist" James Graham Phelps Stokes buys No. 88, next door to his sister

    James Graham Phelps Stokes bought the house in 1915 and moved in with his wife Rose, preferring Village charm to Fifth Avenue visibility. His sister Helen lived at No. 90, and doors were cut through the shared walls so the two could visit easily. Stokes divorced Rose in 1925, and he kept both houses as one residence after Helen died in 1945 until his own death in 1960.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1918

    November

    Rose Pastor Stokes is arrested at No. 88 on a charge of illegal voter registration

    Rose Pastor Stokes made headlines for handing out birth control pamphlets in front of Carnegie Hall and was convicted of seditious utterances. In November 1918 she was arrested at her home at 88 Grove Street, accused of illegal registration to vote. The New York Times once called her the storm centre of many Socialist and Communist troubles.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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