James O. Smith House

9 West 8th Street | Greenwich Village | built 1851

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. 1851

    Dr. James Owens Smith builds his Italianate home on Clinton Place

    Physician James Owens Smith, a graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, completed this three-story Italianate house at what was then 81 Clinton Place. The high English basement rose to a parlor floor with French windows and a cast-iron balcony, capped by molded lintels and Greek Revival-style cornice brackets. Smith moved in with his sister Elizabeth and her husband, commission merchant Emile Henry Lacombe.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1887

    May 26

    Emile Henry Lacombe, raised in the house, joins the federal bench

    Emile Henry Lacombe, who had grown up in the house as the nephew of Dr. James Owens Smith, graduated Columbia Law School in 1865 and rose to become the city's Corporation Counsel by 1884. After inheriting the property following a string of family deaths in the 1880s, he was appointed to the United States Circuit Courts on May 26, 1887.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1903

    January 29

    Judge Lacombe sells the house to the Home for Friendless Girls

    Judge Lacombe sold the property to the Washington Square Home for Friendless Girls, an organization founded in 1865 that trained girls in housework, sewing, and skilled labor. The firm M. L. & H. G. Emery converted the house for lodging and added commercial space at a cost of $5,000. The Home operated from the address for four decades before relocating in 1945.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1952

    Composer John Cage keeps a studio in the building

    In 1952 composer John Cage had a studio in the building, where, according to David Revill's biography of Cage, field recordings were catalogued and spliced. The Washington Square Home for Friendless Girls had left in 1945, and a shop called The New Curiosity Shop opened in the ground-floor space in 1953.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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