East 78th Street Houses
East 78th Street Houses is the name for a row of five assembled brick buildings on East 78th Street in Manhattan in New York City . They are the remainder of a group that originally comprised eleven houses and was built in 1861 when the neighborhood was being built as part of a railway line extension.
They are among the oldest townhouses on the Upper East Side . Some of them were later supplemented and rebuilt, the two eastern ones were merged. Nevertheless, the historical integrity was sufficiently great that it was designated as a New York City Landmark in 1968 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
Description of the buildings
The row of houses includes buildings 157-165 East 78th Street and is located on the north side of the street between Third Avenue and Lexington Avenue . It's at the western end of the city block, closer to Lexington Avenue and just outside the Upper East Side Historic District on the southern edge of Yorkville . The neighborhood consists of residential buildings , mostly similar but larger buildings and apartment buildings.
The houses stand on lots that are 18 feet (about 5.5 m) wide and 102 feet (about 31 m) deep; however, the houses themselves only cover the front 40 feet of the parcels. The basement is free and there are two floors above it , giving the appearance of three floors. The main entrance is below street level. The westernmost of the five houses, 157, has a later added slate mansard roof with three dormer windows . The two eastern houses, 163 and 165, were in a house rebuilt and were on the roof of a penthouse .
The houses are more or less the same design; Lintels and cornices were painted black on houses 163/165 and white on the three other houses, as were the window bars. A brownstone belt runs across all five of the houses between the basement and the first floor; this belt is not painted on houses 163/165. The simple lintels are similar. The pressed metal cornice on the eaves is the same on all five houses and is supported by rounded consoles that are set in acanthus leaves .
The windows on the first floor of house 157 are protected by decorative window bars. The front door of the house is sanded and not painted white. The iron fence around the terrace is higher than in house 159 next door and identical to that of 163/165.
history
The opening of the Third Avenue Railway made what was then the Village of Yorkville interesting for building contractors, as this little town was now in the catchment area of Midtown and Lower Manhattan . The city was already developing rapidly northward, and wealthy residents had built large mansions along Fifth Avenue to 42nd Street .
By 1860 only a few streets north of 42nd Street were leveled. That year East 78th Street opened and a painter by the name of John Turner bought lots 24-28. As land prices rose, the houses were narrower than the Federal and Neoclassical style houses built earlier in the century , and brick was used in the construction instead of the more expensive brownstone.
The building contractor Henry Armstrong built the row, which originally consisted of eleven houses, a year later as a speculative object. He found willing buyers, for whom the lower purchase price was a worthwhile compensation for the longer commute. All houses were completed in 1861, so that the five buildings that still exist today are among the oldest houses on the Upper East Side, even older than the six houses 208-218 East 78th , which were part of a row of houses originally consisting of 15 buildings also began in 1861, but was not completed until four years later due to a lack of material during the Civil War .
Later in the 19th century, the mansard roof was added to house 157 , which was a typical feature of the Second Empire style . Houses 163 and 165 were given a third, slightly set back floor in 1911 and were combined. In the second half of the 20th century, the other houses were demolished to make way for the larger apartment blocks that are on the land today. The original city verandas have been removed from the remaining houses and the former servants' entrances have become the main entrances. Otherwise there were no changes to the five houses that are now used for private residential purposes until they were included in the National Register.
Individual evidence
- ^ 157 East 78th Street Landmark designation ( English ) New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission . April 18, 1968. Archived from the original on March 11, 2010. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 2, 2009.
- ↑ a b c d e Darlene McCloud: National Register of Historic Places nomination, East 78th Street Houses ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . August 1979. Archived from the original on September 21, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 2, 2009.
Coordinates: 40 ° 46 ′ 27 ″ N , 73 ° 57 ′ 31 ″ W.