513 Grand Street House

History and architecture

Built ca. 1827-28 as an investment property by James Lent and Henry Barclay, the rowhouse at 513 Grand Street is a remarkable, rare surviving example of the Federal-style house in Manhattan. The modest, 17-foot wide house retains its original 2½-story height, peaked roof with pedimented dormer, Flemish bond brick work on the second floor, side entrance and evenly-spaced second story windows with stone sills and molded lintels. Located on Grand Street, a busy thoroughfare, a succession of tenants from the 1840s to the 1930s used 513 Grand Street as both home and place of business.

The first floor was remodeled in the 1940s when new owners converted the building into a single-family dwelling, replacing the then existing storefront with a new brick wall and two windows that reflect the building’s original style. The survival of 513 Grand Street and its neighbor 511 Grand Street in an area heavily altered in the nineteenth century to accommodate the increasing population of the Lower East Side and in the twentieth century by urban renewal is significant to the understanding of the development of the area.

The modest 17-foot-wide house at 513 Grand Street retains characteristics of the Federal style in its height, brick cladding, peaked roof, side entrance, evenly-spaced second floor windows with simple stone sills, and double-width pedimented dormer. The molded lintels are most likely replacements. The earliest known images of the house are a 1937 photograph by Berenice Abbott in her work for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration and the ca.1940 tax photograph.

At that time, the red brick building was strikingly similar to the house-shops of the early nineteenth century. The ground floor had a tripartite division with a full width stone lintel resting on piers between the two recessed entrances and display window. Given the lack of a raised basement and stoop and its location on a historically busy thoroughfare it is likely that there was originally a shop on the ground floor, and this may have been the original configuration. In the 1944 conversion to a residence, the central entrance and display window were replaced with double-hung, multi-light windows above a brick wall.21 In spite of these alterations, 513 Grand Street both alone and in concert with its neighbor at 511 Grand Street, is among the relatively rare, surviving and relatively intact buildings in the Federal Style in Manhattan.