Merchant’s House Museum

A merchant’s family lived here for almost a hundred years, and the house survives with their furniture and dresses

Local name: Merchant’s House Museum

Collection: Greenwich Village and the East Village · USA · Open in OpenStreetMap

The front door and the iron railings · Beyond My Ken, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

The story

Before you is the Merchant’s House, a brick town house from 1832. The museum calls it the only family home in New York from the nineteenth century that survives complete, inside and out. It was built by Joseph Brewster, a hatter who built houses for sale. The museum says Brewster opposed slavery and built a narrow hidden passage into the house where freedom seekers could hide. In 1835 the house was bought by a hardware merchant, Seabury Tredwell. He moved his family here from Dey Street in Lower Manhattan, to what was then a fashionable neighborhood. The house cost eighteen thousand dollars and was considered very comfortable. Seabury died in 1865, at the age of eighty-five. His funeral service was held right here, in the double parlor. The Tredwells had eight children. Four daughters and one son never married and stayed on in their parents’ house. The wealthy neighbors moved away, but the Tredwells stayed. The youngest daughter, Gertrude, died here in 1933. Three years later, in 1936, a distant relative, George Chapman, opened the house as a museum. Everything stayed in its place: furniture, china, books, photographs and thirty-nine dresses that belonged to the women of the family. In 1965 it became the first building in Manhattan protected under the city’s new landmarks law. Both the facade and the rooms inside are protected.

Visiting

29 East 4th Street. During restoration, the entrance is through Manuel Plaza, 35 East 4th Street. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., last entry 4:30 p.m.; admission is paid, tickets at the door. Five floors by stairs only, no elevator and no air conditioning; large bags must be checked at the entrance. Subway: the 6 train to Bleecker Street.