{"nrhp_refnum":"66000548","name":"Old Merchant's House","other_names":["Seabury Tredwell House"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"29 E. 4th St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"New York","county":"Manhattan","state":"NY","lat":40.72775152600005,"lon":-73.9922732352918,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1966-10-15","is_nhl":true,"nhl_designated_date":"1965-06-23","areas_of_significance":["Architecture"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A four-story brick rowhouse at 29 East 4th Street in the Astor Place neighborhood of Manhattan, built in 1832 in a transitional Greek Revival style and attributed to Menard Lafever.","why_significant":"The house is described as a uniquely preserved example of a fashionable mid-nineteenth-century New York townhouse. The Tredwell family occupied it for about a century with few changes to the exterior or interior, and its original furnishings and costumes survive. It illustrates the way of life of the prosperous merchant class.","narrative":"Number 29 East 4th Street in Manhattan's Astor Place neighborhood is a four-story brick rowhouse built in 1832 in a transitional Greek Revival style and attributed to Menard Lafever. It was one of a row of houses put up as a speculative venture. Seabury Tredwell, owner of a successful hardware business, bought it in 1835, and his family lived there for roughly a century. Gertrude Tredwell, born in the house in 1840, remained until her death in 1933 and kept nearly everything, so the American federal period furniture, mostly bought before 1860, and period dresses and costumes survive. Few notable alterations were made inside or out. The house has a stoop with iron grillwork, an Ionic doorway, parlors with Belgian black marble fireplaces, bedrooms, servants' quarters, and a working kitchen. It is valued as an unusually complete picture of a mid-nineteenth-century merchant's home and operates as a house museum.","period_of_significance":"1832, 1835","architect_builder":"Menard Lafever (attributed); built in 1832 by Joseph Brewster per the history section","architectural_style":"Transitional Greek Revival","criteria":[],"status_note":"Operated as a house museum by a trustee body and undergoing restoration at the time of the nomination; the house is described as unoccupied for several years after 1933.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:50:39.788225-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/66000548_NHL.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/66000548/d67427374d-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/66000548/d67427374d-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY 2.0","author":"Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Merchant%27s_House_Museum_(48072654706).jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY 2.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Merchant%27s_House_Museum_(48072654706).jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75315826","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant%27s_House_Museum","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3306353"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/new-york/manhattan/old-merchants-house-66000548/"}