161 East 78th Street House

History and architecture

There is a charm and sparkle in the appearance of this three-story red brick house with painted stone trim at 161 East 78th Street. Standing at the eastern end of two other similar row houses and sharing party walls with its neighbors, this residence and its adjacent dwellings to the west were built from one set of architectural drawings and specifications in 1861. They are in the vernacular of the period and reveal an Italianate influence in the style of the windows and especially in the modillions and ornate brackets of the cornice, crowning the residence. In uniformity of size 2nd quality of design, this House and its adjoining neighbors add color, character and dignity to Seventy-eighth Street.

A narrow areaway three steps down/the sidewalk separates the building from the property line. The deeply recessed paneled entrance door on the ground floor is enframed and enriched by plain stone pilasters and cornice-slab. At the second floor level a stone bond course, which continues on into the two adjacent houses to the vest, serves as a sill for the floor length steel French door6 at this level. The plain lintels of the first and second floors and the cap-molded lintels of the third floor windows are identical in the three houses as is the impressive cornice which adorns this residence at the roof line.

John Turner, painter, purchased the three lots at 157, 159, and 161 East 78th Street in 1860 for $$00 apiece. The houses were constructed by Henry Armstrong, a builder, who erected eleven houses on this street. In the tax assessment book for 1861, the owners were listed as Turner & Armstong, and the House was assessed for 31,800. Number 161 was bought that same year by Charles C. Wakeley for $7,000, and the conveyance carried the notation that "Both side walls of house on said lot being party walls."