An unobtrusive Lower Manhattan structure might be the local embodiment of the phrase, “If these walls could talk…” The Robert and Anne Dickey House, located at 67 Greenwich Street (one block south of Rector Street), has been host to a stunning variety of uses since it was completed in 1810, as recently reported by the blog Ephemeral New York.
The only surviving Federal-period townhouse in Manhattan with a bowed facade, and one of only two intact townhouses of this period remaining south of Chambers Street, the Dickey House was originally built by one of New York’s merchant princes, Robert Dickey, who had made a vast fortune importing tea, spices, coffee, rice and timber. This enabled him to build a mansion on land that had only recently sprung from the Hudson River: What is now lower Greenwich Street was underwater, until the City authorized landfill east of Broadway in 1794, which resulted in the new thoroughfare three years later. His new home also contained two stables and a coach house (the equivalent of a modern garage) in the back, on Lumber Street — which is now known as Trinity Place — where there was also a large backyard.
Greenwich Street quickly became the Millionaire’s Row of its day, with fashionable homes commissioned by local magnates springing up in the decade that followed. Dickey and his family appear to have lived comfortably here until 1819, when a ship carrying several tons of valuable cargo owned by the importer was lost at sea during a storm. This ruined Dickey, and forced him to sell 67 Greenwich to the Schermerhorn family, wealthy shipbuilders for whom Schermerhorn Row in the South Street Seaport is named. The Schermerhorns rented their new property to the government of France in the 1830s, for use as their New York consulate.
The historic Dickey House on Greenwich Street, as it has appeared for more than a decade, padlocked, abandoned, and surrounded by scaffolding.
Until the 1840s, well-heeled residents continued to live in the townhouses that fronted Greenwich Street. But, by the 1850s, Dickey’s former manor (along with its now-vanished neighboring buildings) had become a boarding house, as the neighborhood became a residential district for stevedores, carpenters, blacksmiths, and the like.
In the years following the Civil War, viaducts for elevated trains were built along Greenwich Street and Trinity Place, which drove out the last vestiges of gracious living in the area, and effectively turned it into a slum. While it had a vibrant street life, owing to its large population of recently arrived immigrants, poverty also brought crime.
In April, 1871, the New York Times warned that, “for several years past the lower half of the City has been infested with basement houses of prostitution of the lowest character.” That month, police raided 29 of these establishments. “From these places thirty men and ninety-two women and girls, of the most degraded and homely description, were taken into custody,” the Times sniffed, “but the male proprietors of the places, by some strange mischance, were nearly all absent at the time of the raid, and so escape arrest.” Among these was Charles Iker, the proprietor of what the Times described as a, “House of Ill Fame,” headquartered at 67 Greenwich Street.
By 1890, the courtesans were gone, and a new wave of immigrants had laid claim to Dickey’s once-stately home: The U.S. Census for that year notes that 57 boarders were packed into the four stories of the building, all of them recently decamped from Ireland. As World War One approached, the Irish climbed the social ladder of their adopted country, and were placed by another cohort of new Americans: tens of thousands of immigrants from the Middle East made the area their new home, earning it the neighborhood the name, “Little Syria.”
In the years before World War Two, most of the remaining Federal-style houses on Greenwich Street were demolished to make way for the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, and the Battery Park Garage. For reasons that are lost to history, the Dickey House was spared this fate.
Largely forgotten, the building languished throughout the second half of the 20th century, serving as a luncheonette, a cigar store, a messenger service, and a barber shop, among other uses. Finally, in 2005, the City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission recognized 67 Greenwich Street’s historic status, and granted it legal protection from demolition.
For more than a decade, the structure has been empty, padlocked, and surrounded by scaffolding. But Dickey House is now on the verge of a new life. It is slated to be incorporated into the large residential tower that will soon rise on the adjacent site of the former Sym’s clothing store. This project, which will include a new public school at its base, will restore Robert and Anne Dickey’s little chateau to something resembling its original glory, with the merchant’s mansion serving as the part of the school’s entrance and facade.
(For the Ephemeral New York story about Dickey House, please browse )
THis was the home of my relatives many centuries ago.