404 West 20th Street is a historic building in Manhattan, New York City. Built between 1829 and 1830, it is the oldest house in the city's Chelsea neighborhood. It is a frame structure with a facade of red Flemish bond brick. Originally designed in Federal style, it was later modified to conform to the Greek-revival style of neighboring houses. Often called by its street address, it is also called the Walker House after its first owner, Hugh Walker.
As a structure within the bounds of the Chelsea Historic District, the building's historic integrity is protected by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first it remained much as it had been in the nineteenth. In 2016, however, a new owner proposed to greatly enlarge the building and to fill in the small alley between it and its neighbor to the east. The Preservation Commission approved the proposal, noting that the building's appearance when viewed from the street would not be substantially altered. Although neighborhood groups, including the city-founded representative Manhattan Community Board 4, vociferously disagreed, the commission stood by its decision in 2016 and reiterated its approval in 2022. The new owner has made no effort to effect the proposed changes, however, and the building remains vacant and in disrepair.
History of the site
Before European settlers arrived in the seventeenth century, the spot where the Walker House would be built lay on the northern edge of a Native American settlement called Sapokanikan. Lacking archaeological evidence and any Native American writings on the subject, current knowledge of the village comes exclusively from non-native sources. They say the settlement was peopled by craftworkers, traders, and fishers belonging to a clan of the Lenape indigenous people who occupied the place during the months when their beans, tobacco, and other crops needed tending. In the 1630s, as they expanded their holdings north from lower Manhattan, Dutch farmers mingled with the Sapokanikan villagers without serious conflict. However, in the early 1640s, New Amsterdam's director general, Willem Kieft, made an unprovoked armed attack on the Lenape and other tribes in New Amsterdam. The Indians' counter attacks forced the Dutch to negotiate a truce by treaty in 1645. The treaty established a legal process for resolving conflicts but resulted in the Lenape abandoning Sapokanikan.
A few years before the start of the war, Kieft issued a grant for farm land located where the Walker House would later be built. The land holder was a man named Jan Cornelissen of Rotterdam, also called Jan Van Rotterdam. A map made in 1639 by Dutch cartographer Joan Vinckeboons shows the property and its farmhouse. A detail from this map, shown here as Image No. 1, designates the property by the number 14 at center (the other number 14, to the right, indicates a second property granted to the same man). The map is oriented with north to the right so that the town of New Amsterdam, within its walls, is at far left. After Van Rotterdam's death in 1643, the property passed to his widow, who died in 1645. In 1652, the Dutch West India Company seized the property for non-payment of a debt and then leased it to Jan Jansen Langendye for ten years on his promise to pay the debt. In 1662, the New Netherland council granted the land jointly to Allard Anthony and Paulus Leenderts van der Grift. Since both men had held the position of burgomaster, an elected position analogous to mayor, the property, which had been known simply as land formerly occupied by Jan Van Rotterdam, became known as Burgomasters' Bouwerie (burgomasters' farm). After the British took over the colony in 1664, the governor of New York confirmed the two men as joint owners. In 1679, Van de Grift having previously acquired Anthony's interest in the property, he sold it to Jellis Jansen Mandeville. In 1701, Mandeville sold it to his son David. From this time forward, the property was called The Mandeville Farm. The document recording the sale, called an indenture, says it covered an area of fifty-three morgen, which at about one-half acre per morgen is equivalent to about twenty-six and one-half acres. It also says the property included at least one house, stable, orchard, garden, and meadow ground. It is named "Jellis Mandivill's Land" in a map made in 1773. A detail from a digital reproduction of this map is shown here as Image No. 2. The Mandeville farm appears on the top left (northwest) corner of this map.
It is also shown on a map of original grants and farms made by Jennie F. Macarthy and published in 1928. A detail from a digital image of this map is shown here as Image No. 3. The map shows the boundaries of farms on the modern grid of streets and each block has been given a sequential number. The Mandeville Farm covers some or all of blocks 713–717 on the west, followed by blocks 739–744, and parts of blocks 765–770. It is labeled "Burgomasters Bouwery" and "David Mandeville Farm" and it notes the grant from Governor Stuyvesant to Paulus Leenderts van de Grift and Allard Anthony dated March 14, 1662. In 1829, the Walker House was built in the northwest corner of block 744. From David Mandeville, the property passed to David Campbell and thence to James Rivington. Benjamin Moore obtained it from Rivington and in 1813 conveyed it to his son Clement Clarke Moore.
A record of New York residents in 1789 suggests that David Campbell might have been a lawyer. Rivington was well-known publisher and bookseller. During his life, Patriots denounced him as an outspoken Loyalist; historians have since found that he was a useful informant in the intelligence service run by George Washington. Benjamin Moore was an Episcopal bishop and president of Columbia University. He was also the reluctant priest who gave last rites to Alexander Hamilton. He bought the parcel of land that had been the Mandeville Farm in 1789. The previous year, he had married Charity Clarke the daughter of a retired British Army officer, Captain Thomas Clarke, who owned a large property on the north side of the parcel. On her death in 1802, Clarke's widow deeded the property to Charity and her husband and, in 1813, they in turn deeded it to their son Clement Clarke Moore. Thomas Clarke had given his property the ironic title, Chelsea, after the old soldiers' home in London and the name came to be applied to the Manhattan neighborhood and historic district of that name.
A map published in 1776 shows the general location of the Clarke estate. A detail from a digital reproduction of this map is shown here as Image No. 4. The parcel owned by Benjamin Moore was located directly to the north of the property marked "Oliver Delaney Esq.". The Clarke estate contained orchards, copses, and open fields, while the Moore strip of land contained arable land and fields. The road that led to the southeast corner of the Clarke estate and that gave access to Clarke property and the Moore strip was called Abingdon Road or Love Lane. Expressed in modern context, the estate, with the addition of Benjamin Moore's property, extended from Eighth Avenue on the east to river's edge at about Tenth Avenue on the west and from the north side of Nineteenth Street on the south to the south side of Twenty-fourth Street on the north. Shown against the modern grid of streets, Clement Clarke Moore's complete inheritance of is shown on a map made in 1891. A detail from a digital reproduction of this map is shown here as Image No. 5.
Celebrated as the author of A Visit from St. Nicholas, Clement Clarke Moore was a wealthy landowner, scholar, and benefactor of the Episcopal church in New York. At the time he received it from his parents, the estate that Captain Thomas Clarke had assembled was, as one writer said in 1892, "a quiet rural retreat on the banks of the river, far removed from the noise and bustle of the now crowded city". In 1811, Moore joined other landowners in opposing the city's plan to impose a grid of east-west streets and north-south avenues on Manhattan north of Houston Street. Soon after they lost that battle, the city constructed one of the new avenues, Ninth, through the eastern part of his holdings and soon after that Moore decided to donate a whole city block between two projected new streets, 20th and 21st, and between Ninth and projected Tenth Avenue. The recipient was the Episcopalian church's General Theological Seminary where Moore taught Asian and Greek languages and literature. Construction of the seminary's buildings began in 1819 and was completed in 1827. Two years later, Moore leased a plot for construction of the first private residence to be built on his land. The plot lay across 20th Street near the corner of Ninth Avenue. The lessee was a man named Hugh Walker.
In 1833, Moore partnered with a builder named James N. Wells to offer leases for the construction of other buildings within the bounds of his holdings. Aiming to develop the property as a relatively low density residential neighborhood, the two men made a plan to prepare side streets and lay out a grid of lots, each 25 feet wide and 100 feet deep, for which they would offer long-term leases. The two men consulted with the leaseholders who came after Walker signed his lease and they mutually agreed to require themselves and subsequent leaseholders to build mostly single-family structures having ten-foot setbacks from the street. The houses were to be no more than two stories and to have back yards accessible only from the houses themselves, not via a side alleyway. The group prohibited stables and commercial buildings from side streets and required tree planting.
In 1835, a real estate firm employed by Moore and Wells published an advertising map showing the lots that were available for lease, indicating which had been committed to lessees, and stating some of the restrictions placed on the leaseholds. A digital reproduction of this map is shown here as Image No. 6. The map shows the lot occupied by the Walker House without any label save its number, 339, and a notation of its twenty-five-foot width.
Wells died in 1860 and Moore in 1863. The heirs of both men continued to lease or sell empty lots and expired leaseholds into the twentieth century. Asked the value of the Moore property in 1931, the head of the Wells realty firm gave an estimate of $40,000,000.
Lease and construction
Hugh Walker paid forty dollars per year for his leasehold in 1829. Moore's lease gave Walker seven years in which to build "a good and substantial house...being two stories or more, constructed of brick or stone, or having a brick or stone front." Walker, who earned his living as a grocer, complied by building a two and one-half story clapboard-sided frame house having a north-facing Federal-style facade of red brick laid in Flemish bond. The house was set back from the street, allowing for palings and a small garden. It was about twenty-three feet wide, leaving a space of about two feet to the edge of the lot on its east side. In 2011, a record in New York City's Automated City Register Information System described the property as "Beginning at a point on the southerly side of 20th Street, distant 100 feet westerly from the corner formed by the intersection of the southerly line or side of 20th Street with the westerly line or side of Ninth Avenue; running thence southerly, parallel with Ninth Avenue, 109 feet; thence westerly, parallel with 20th Street, 25 feet; thence northerly, parallel with Ninth Avenue, 109 feet to the southerly line or side of 20th Street; thence easterly, along the southerly line or side of 20th Street, 25 feet to the point or place of beginning."
Subsequent modifications