428 Lafayette Street Building (Colonnade Row)

History and architecture

This building is one of a group of four remaining town houses which are unified in appearance by a beautifully executed two-story Corinthian colonnade. The group is one of the treasures of our architectural heritage and is a superb example of civic-minded planning.

Talbot Hamlin, the architectural historian described the buildings as "New York's most extravagant as well as most original attempt to build dignified, gracious and elegant houses for wealthy tenants, and it achieved instantaneous fame." This idea of unifying many town houses behind one great facade was a bold architectural concept, and planning of this type might well have set a precedent for the beautification of our City had it been more widely followed. The buildings are rich in historical associations. The wife of President Tyler lived there before their marriage; President Franklin Roosevelt's grandfather was another resident. John Jacob Astor, Jr. and Edwin D. Morgan, a Governor of New York, also lived there.