Robert and Anne Dickey House

History and architecture

The large (nearly 41 by 62 feet), significantly intact Federal style town house at No. 67 Greenwich Street in lower Manhattan was constructed in 1809-10 when this was the most fashionable neighborhood for New York’s social elite and wealthy merchant class. As constructed, the house was 3-1/2 stories with a high peaked roof (probably with dormers), and featured Flemish bond brickwork, a brownstone base, splayed stone lintels with fluted keystones on the flat 4- bay front facade, and an elliptical 3-bay bow on the rear facade, a popular feature of the day, also with splayed lintels. Until 1820, this was the residence of merchant Robert Dickey and his wife, Anne. Typical of the period, Dickey conducted his business from the rear of the property on Lumber Street (later Trinity Place).

From 1823 until 1919, the house was owned by Peter Schermerhorn, ship chandler and director of the Bank of New York, and his sons and heirs. Until 1832 it was leased to socially prominent tenants, and was the residence of builder Ezra Ludlow to 1841. It became a boardinghouse and in the 1850s served a number of other uses. 1872 alterations (still extant) to the building (then a tenement) performed by the distinguished architect Detlef Lienau included raising it to a full 4th story with a molded metal front cornice and replicating the rear elliptical bow, installing a pedimented hood over the front entrance, and replacing original lintels on the front facade’s 2nd- and 3rd- story outer bays with flat stone lintels like those on the 4th story. In 1922, a one-story commercial extension was built on Trinity Place.

The Dickey House is one of only 5 surviving houses of Manhattan’s most elite neighborhood of the post-Revolutionary War era, which are among the relatively rare extant Manhattan houses of the Federal period and style, and is one of only 7 pre- 1810 houses located south of Chambers Street, the oldest section of New York City. The Dickey House is further distinguished as the grandest of these houses aside from the designated Watson House (1793, 1806), 7 State Street, and is the only remaining Federal style town house in Manhattan that has a bowed facade.