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The House Biography

The biography of your house, bound in linen.

$149

Your house lived a life before you found it: the families who filled it, the street that grew up around it, the ground it was built on. We find that story in the archives, write it with care, and set it in a book as handsome as the house itself. Then it is yours to make personal, with your own photographs, memories and words.

Create a bookSee inside
Format
8 × 8 in hardcover, linen cloth
Pages
Matte paper, usually 24 to 40 pages, as the material allows
Cover
The address stamped on the front board and spine
Yours to edit
Change words and pictures, add photographs, memories and a dedication
Delivery
Printed after you approve the proof; shipped to you or to your client

Some houses leave a long paper trail and some leave only footprints. We look before we begin, and we never fill a gap with invention. The true story is always the better one.

The linen

Clothed in the perfect cloth.

Every cover is chosen for its house. As we learn the place, its slate roof, its brick, the woods it was built in, we match it to a linen that suits it, and you make the final choice. The result is a book that looks as though it could only belong to your house.

Deep forest · matte ivory pigment foil
Slate blue · navy ink
Natural flax · deep forest ink
Moss green · matte ivory pigment foil
Oxblood · muted gold foil
Tobacco · matte ivory pigment foil

Cloth colours on screen are approximate. Final cloths and foils are confirmed with our bindery.

Inside

Designed around what we find.

A typed card enlarged to the edge of the page, a map laid on blue paper, a census set out like a ledger. No two books are the same, because no two houses are.

The records do not agree on how to say it. The survey’s 1937 data page givesthe date of erection as 1831. Its own index card says the house was built in1831 by Seabury Tredwell, a claim the data page beside it contradicts, sinceTredwell did not buy until 1835. The 1965 city designation says begun1831, completed 1832. The national register form says 1832. The likeliestreading is the city’s: started the year the lot was bought, finished the next. Brewster was a hatter. Born in Preston, Connecticut, in 1787, he came toNew York in 1814, and by 1819 he owned two hat stores on Broadway, atNo. 102 and No. 202. Businessmen of the day often had houses built onspeculation, and Brewster did too, although the city’s two reports describeit differently: in 1965, that he built a row of six identical houses here; in1981, that two of the six were built for him. He lived in No. 29 himself, andin 1833 he sold another of the houses to a man named Henry Havens. Then, on November 2, 1835, he sold No. 29 to Seabury Tredwell for$18,000. The city’s report calls that a high price for the period, and reads itas a sign the house was considered a dwelling of outstanding quality.between 178 and 180 East 4th StreetFrom the 1831 deed, as summarized on the survey’s data page. The street hassince been renumbered.The block in 1891, solid brick fromLafayette Place to the Bowery, with theAstor Library on the same block. No. 29is on the Fourth Street side, just west ofthe lots lettered Everett Hall. G. W. andW. S. Bromley, Atlas of the City of NewYork, Manhattan Island, 1891, plate 11.New York Public Library, Lionel Pincusand Princess Firyal Map Division.
Typographic interludeA line from the 1831 deed, “between 178 and 180,” set large, beside the 1891 fire insurance atlas of the block.
From the sidewalk, No. 29 is a red brick house three and a half stories tallover a high basement, with a white marble stoop, marble sills and lintels,and a slate roof with two dormers in the front slope. It is 25 feet 6 incheswide and 54 feet deep on a lot 110 feet deep. The city’s 1981 report sayshouses of this type were built by the hundreds below 14th Street between1825 and 1835, and names only one other it considered still in originalcondition, at 59 Morton Street. The front is conservative, essentially Federal, and it saves its news for thedoorway. The survey drew it at three-quarter scale: fluted Ionic columns, asemicircular fanlight of carved wood, and an eight-panel door, with a notein the draftsman’s hand that the door, the trim and the fanlight are all woodpainted white. The surround is stone; the drawing labels it limestone, the1981 report calls it marble. Inside, the house changes its mind. The parlors are finished in the newGreek Revival style, with heavy cornices, deep ceiling rosettes and a screenof freestanding fluted columns between the two rooms. This was commonin New York: new fashions arrived first in the decoration and only later inthe shape of a building. Much of that decoration could be bought ready-made. By 1832, thecity’s report explains, steam mills were planing lumber and polishingmarble, and plaster cornices and rosettes were cast in workshops andshipped across the country. Its design, the report concludes, likely camefrom a skilled builder choosing well among mass-produced parts.Chapter threeFederal in front, GreekinsideThe architectureThe doorway is where the plain Federalfront shows off: fluted columns, afanlight of carved wood, and iron stooprailings, photographed in March 1936.Arnold Moses for the Historic AmericanBuildings Survey, March 5, 1936. Libraryof Congress, HABS NY,31-NEYO,30-3.The vestibule ceiling, the first thing over a visitor’s head: anegg-and-dart cornice and a rosette of curled acanthus leaves,likely cast in a workshop and bought ready-made. WohlfahrtStudio for the Historic American Buildings Survey, May 25,1936. Library of Congress, HABS NY,31-NEYO,30-9.
Architectural studyThe doorway as the federal survey photographed it in 1936, and the vestibule ceiling above it: a Federal front with Greek Revival rooms behind.
The survey’s floor plans show the arrangement the city would later call theprototypical New York row house plan, and they show it room by room. Ahall runs the full depth of the east side on every floor. The basement, halfabove ground and entered under the stoop, holds a dining room at the frontand a kitchen at the back, with a pantry and two closets between. Theparlor floor holds the front and back parlors, 24 feet and 23 feet 2 incheslong. Above are bedrooms, and at the top, under the slate, what the 1936drawing labels store rooms. Most of the daily life of the house happened downstairs. The 1981 reportargues that the front basement room was less a formal dining room than afamily room: meals, sewing, accounts, small children, all kept out of visitors’sight, warm in winter and cool in summer. The kitchen behind it has acooking fireplace that fills most of a wall, a brick oven beside it, a stone sinkwith a copper pump that drew water from a cistern in the yard, and two setsof brass bells for summoning servants upstairs. Upstairs everything is about symmetry. The two parlors are identical.The report points out that the southernmost door in the front parlor opensonto nothing at all; it was installed so the wall would match.11Every floor as measured in March 1936: kitchen and diningroom in the basement, twin parlors above, the hall runningthe full depth of the east side, and store rooms at the top.Richard S. Hertzberg and Oleg Devorn, delineators.Historic American Buildings Survey, 1936, sheet 1 of 9.Library of Congress.2Front, back and a slice through the middle. The sectionshows the whole stack at once: cellar, half-sunk kitchenfloor, tall parlors, bedrooms, and store rooms under theslate. Historic American Buildings Survey, 1936, sheet 2 of9. Library of Congress.3The main stair and its carved newel. In the 1850s this stairwas moved 42 inches toward the back of the house tomake room for Sarah Tredwell’s rope elevator. HistoricAmerican Buildings Survey, 1936, sheet 9 of 9. Library ofCongress.Chapter fiveKitchen below, parlorsaboveThe plan as drawn in 193623
Original drawingsEvery floor as the survey measured it in March 1936: kitchen below, twin parlors above, the hall running the full depth.
Inside, March and May 1936The front parlor looking toward the back parlor: mahogany sliding doors betweenfreestanding fluted columns, the Greek Revival interior behind a Federal front. ArnoldMoses for the Historic American Buildings Survey, March 5, 1936. Library of Congress,HABS NY,31-NEYO,30-12.The basement kitchen in 1936, its cooking fireplace filling most of a wall. The sink andstove had been taken out for the museum; both were later put back. WohlfahrtStudio for the Historic American Buildings Survey, May 25, 1936. Library of Congress,HABS NY,31-NEYO,30-17.
Facing photographsThe front parlor and the basement kitchen in 1936, one above the other in the house and side by side in the book.
No. 29 has always faced two different cities. To the west, at the end of theblock, ran Lafayette Place, where in 1854 the Astor Library opened itsdoors as a free reference library, around the corner on the same block. Tothe east ran the Bowery, and from 1878 the Third Avenue elevated railroadran down it, with stations at Ninth Street and Houston Street. The fire insurance atlas of 1891 shows the block as a solid run of brick,colored pink, from Lafayette to the Bowery. The Astor Library takes up along stretch of the Lafayette side. A stable sits behind the Fourth Street lots,and beginning a door or two east of No. 29 the mapmakers lettered EverettHall across several lots.Chapter eightLafayette Place to the BoweryThe block around itA strip of the 1891 atlas from Washington Square to the Bowery, every lot drawn andnearly every one built on in brick (pink). The Tredwells’ block sits between LafayettePlace and the Bowery, toward the right. G. W. and W. S. Bromley, Atlas of the City ofNew York, Manhattan Island, 1891, plate 11. New York Public Library.
Geographic panoramaA strip of the 1891 atlas from Washington Square to the Bowery, nearly every lot built on in brick.
She never married. The report repeats, and labels as something of a legend, astory that her father forbade her to marry a young doctor because he wasRoman Catholic. Whatever the reason, it says, she withdrew from societyand seldom left the house. The national register form, less romantic, callsher an instinctive museum curator who changed nothing and kepteverything. The title records show the house passing quietly among the daughters.On July 13, 1883, Seabury Tredwell’s executors conveyed it to Phebe for$20,000, and the same day she included it in a conveyance to herself and hersisters Julia and Gertrude. By the end she was living in reduced circumstances, and the house and itscontents were heavily mortgaged. After her death they were to be sold atauction. A great-nephew of Seabury Tredwell, a lawyer named GeorgeChapman, persuaded the relative who held the mortgages to cancel them,formed the Historic Landmark Society, and on April 27, 1935, Gertrude’sexecutors conveyed the house to it. Here the records part ways. The 1981 city report names that relative asEliza Nichols, Gertrude’s niece. The museum’s own history names the nieceand heir as Lillie Nichols. Neither cites the document behind the name, andthe deed itself has not been checked for this book.The back bedroom on the second floor, three years after Gertrude Tredwell’s death.The records say she died in the room where she was born, but not which room thatwas. Wohlfahrt Studio for the Historic American Buildings Survey, May 25, 1936.Library of Congress, HABS NY,31-NEYO,30-21.Chapter nineNinety-three years in one houseGertrude Tredwell, 1840 to 1933
Quiet narrativeThe back bedroom in 1936, beside the life of the daughter who was born in the house in 1840 and died there in 1933.

Researched in depth

We go deep into the record, through old maps, census pages, newspapers, photographs and local archives, until the house’s story comes into focus.

Yours to shape

Your draft opens in your browser, ready to read. Rewrite a line, add your family’s photographs and stories, and make it unmistakably yours.

Made to last

Linen over hard boards and soft matte pages, printed only when you say it is ready. A book to hand down.

Start with the address.

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