Exploring the Many Row Houses of the Village Preservation Historic Image Archive

If we had to pick just one type of building to represent our neighborhoods, the top contender would almost undoubtedly be the row house. A ubiquitous feature of 19th-century urban streetscapes, many of these homes are happily still present throughout New York City (particularly in Manhattan and Brooklyn), and are plentiful in number in our neighborhoods of the East Village and NoHo, and most especially in Greenwich Village.

Originating in Europe as far back as the 16th century, row houses became extremely popular in New York City in the 1800s, as developers raced to keep up with a booming middle class population. Some were built as speculative housing, often as long rows of identical or subtly varying structures, while others were constructed by landowners for themselves and their families. Row houses in New York City, and our neighborhoods, date from the late 18th century to the very beginning of the 20th century, with a few more “modern” versions appearing in the late 20th and even 21st centuries.

New York’s row houses represent popular architectural styles of the day, from Federal (see more here), to Italianate, to Greek Revival. They feature an assortment of materials: typically a facade is composed of brick (in a range of coursing patterns), and then often at least partially faced with brownstone or limestone, stucco or paint of different colors, and decorative elements like ironwork and projecting stone elements. Stoops of varying heights, windows in an array of sizes and configurations, and intricate door surrounds also lend flair and differentiation to the variety of styles and designs.

There are so many row houses found within our neighborhoods, that to search for relevant images in our collections can be overwhelming. That’s where Village Preservation’s image tagging feature comes in handy! You can filter all of the images in our Historic Image Archive by category, and one tag option is for “row houses.”

Here is just a small sampling of the wealth of images to be found in our “row house” category:

Our Historic Image Archive collection that probably contains the highest concentration of row house photographs is “Historic Images from Landmarks Applications.” The images in the collection are taken from Certificate of Appropriateness applications to the Landmarks Preservation Commission for sites located within the area covered by Village Preservation – Greenwich Village, the East Village, NoHo, the Meatpacking District, and the South Village – since late 2009, when Village Preservation began maintaining these applications on our website.

These are applications for changes to landmarked properties that are substantial enough to require review by the full Landmarks Preservation Commission at a public hearing. Often, the applications include historic photos of the building or surrounding buildings as part of the documentation and argument supporting the proposed application for changes. Beyond the implications of the proposed changes that these applications bring, the images found within are important visual documents of the history of these buildings.

The above LPC designation photo of Washington Street, taken in the 1960s, shows an array of building types constructed at various stages in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The corner building is the only extant structure on the block that dates to the early 1800s. It was constructed in 1842, and would have originally been part of a row, prior to the adjacent houses’ demolition to make way for the apartment building and garage seen here. Interesting features of the surviving row house include the peaked roof, and the “blind” windows found on either side of the secondary facade.

Another type of image frequently included in LPC applications is the 1940s tax photograph. From 1939 until 1941, the New York City Department of Taxation collaborated with the Federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) to take photographs of every block and lot throughout the five boroughs. Today, 1940s tax photographs are invaluable resources for researchers and anyone interested in the history of NYC’s buildings.

This image depicts one of many rows of houses captured within the Linda Yowell Collection, a wonderful documentation of streets, buildings, and storefronts throughout Greenwich Village taken by architect and preservationist Linda Yowell. Her collection often shows details of individual buildings, streetscapes, or the neighborhood that are about to be or are in the process of being restored, altered, or destroyed. This includes everything from small details on historic storefronts or row houses, to huge changes like the demolition of the Women’s House of Detention.

According to the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designation report for the Greenwich Village Historic District, 388 Bleecker Street (seen in the above image, all the way on the left) was built in 1852-53 for Charles Schultz. Four stories high with a ground floor storefront, it has a paneled cornice supported by highly decorative and atypically spaced brackets, which you can just make out in this photograph. The adjacent shorter row of three brick houses (Nos. 390-394) was also built that same year.

Photos in our image archive can also be valuable to us when assessing proposed changes to historic buildings. The subject of the above photograph by John T. Krawchuck is 131 Charles Street, a building that faced the threat of potential severe alterations for years, which Village Preservation fought hard to prevent. The final application approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission thankfully preserved many of the building’s extant historic features. You can read more about the history of this building and our advocacy efforts here.

To check out the image tagging for yourself, click here to access the archive, select whichever tag(s) you are interested in, and then hit “apply.” You can view one tag at a time, or as many as you’d like. And whether you’ve accessed an image by this method or directly within a collection, all of the tags relevant to an image appear hyperlinked at the top of its page, so you can see how images are organized, and easily visit any of the tags. Have fun exploring Village Preservation’s Historic Image Archive!