TREDWELL HOUSE
29 East 4th Street between Lafayette Street and the Bowery
JULY 16, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 147A

Tredwell House, variant image

The elegant Greek Revival doorway of 29 East 4th Street--also known as the Old Merchant's House--was not one of Abbott's discoveries. In 1935, the house had been purchased by the Historic Landmark Society, a private organization formed to maintain the house as a public museum.

Built in 1832 at a then-fashionable uptown address, the house was sold in 1835 to Seabury Tredwell, a prosperous hardware merchant, who moved into the house with his wife and seven children. In 1840, Tredwell's eighth child, Gertrude, was born in the house and, despite the neighborhood's decline, remained there until her death in 1933 at the age of 93. Gertrude Tredwell's longevity and resistance to change kept for posterity a pristine example of haute bourgeois New York life from the Jacksonian era. Thanks to the preservationist zeal of a distant relative, the house became a museum, and after near demolition in 1965, it was granted landmark status. In 1971, a major restoration was undertaken, and today it remains open to the public. Located a block from a seedy but chic stretch of the Bowery, the house is marred by graffiti and abuts an empty lot intended for high-rise development.

Abbott photographed the house on two occasions. In a view which shows most of the facade and adjoining houses, a sign is obtrusively affixed to the elegant column flanking the door. In a close-up of the doorway, the sign has been removed. Abbott chose to print the close-up.

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