Nicholas Keane House

96 Madison Street | Two Bridges | built 1900

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. 1830

    Wholesale grocer Lewis Higgins lives in a Federal-style house later renumbered 96 Madison

    By 1830 Lewis Higgins and his family occupied this two-and-a-half-story brick house, which was then numbered 80 Madison Street and was renumbered 96 in 1852. It was one of the prim Federal-style homes built along the block in the 1820s and 1830s. Higgins sold groceries wholesale at the nearby Catherine Market, and by the mid-1840s the house had passed to the family of Jonathan Gardiner Fleet, who ran two livery stables.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1868

    December 3

    Boardinghouse keeper and ex-policeman James Hefflin is arrested for a $3,000 burglary

    In December 1868 the Evening Express reported the arrest of James W. Hefflin, who ran a sailors' boardinghouse at 96 Madison Street and was said to be a former policeman. He was accused of breaking into the saloon at 41 Market Street and taking $3,000 in cash and some cigars. Found upstairs with a jimmy and a skeleton key, he told the judge that a woman had brought him there.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1884

    May

    An injured sailor is laid up at 96 Madison after a beating by his ship's captain

    Thomas Jackson, a sailor aboard the William A. Lincoln, was beaten with an iron bar by the ship's captain on a voyage bound for Manila in February 1884. After the ship came back to New York, a crewmate, Abraham Weeden, had the arrest of Captain M. J. Daly carried out. The New York Times reported on May 20 that Jackson was recovering from his injuries at 96 Madison Street, then a rooming house.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1886

    September

    David Kane hires Bernard McGurk to enlarge the old house with a full top floor

    In September 1886 David J. Kane, of the family that had lived in the house since the Nicholas Keane years, hired architect Bernard McGurk to raise the attic to a full story and add a one-story rear extension. McGurk gave the openings pressed metal lintels, added a triangular pediment over the entrance and finished the top with an Italianate bracketed cornice. The house, the only survivor of the block's early years, still looks much as it did after this remodel.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1918

    April 3

    A ship steward is stabbed to death by a roommate in the building; the case is never solved

    Early on April 3, 1918, Shichisaburo Hosaki, a 25-year-old Japanese ship steward, was killed in the sailors' boardinghouse at 96 Madison Street after he scolded a drunken roommate, who slashed his neck with a clasp knife and fled. A fellow steward was arrested in Boston, and a Hawaiian musician was detained in Lima, Ohio, on suspicion, but both were released without charge.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 43 buildings with stories in Two Bridges