The 1837 Rev. A. S. Francis House - 69 Bedford Street

 

The block of Bedford Street between Commerce and Morton Streets was a flurry of construction activity in 1836.  Prim, two-and-a-half story homes were rising along both sides.  Among them was a row of six houses constructed by John C. Hadden, a builder, and Sylvanus Gedney, a carpenter.  They formed the construction firm Hadden & Gedney.  The row was completed in 1837.  It appears that Hadden owned 69 Bedford Street, since he paid the taxes on the property.  Faced in Flemish bond brick, it featured a handsome entrance with narrow sidelights and a transom.

The house became home to Rev. A. S. Francis, pastor of the Bedford Street Methodist Episcopal Church which was almost directly across the street.  An interesting tradition at the time was the "pastor's visit," which, unlike the name suggests, had nothing to do with the minister visiting the homes of his congregants, but of their descending upon his house.  It was a sort of welcoming custom.  On January 27, 1838, an announcement appeared in the Morning Herald reading, "A Pastor's Visit--Will be given to the Rev. A. S. Francis. 69 Bedford street, on Monday afternoon and evening, the 29th of January.  You and friends are invited."

Among the participants was the renowned actor Edwin Forrest.  He told the Morning Herald,

On Monday evening I attended, according to a friendly invitation, the social and religious soirée given to the Rev. A. S. Francis, of 69 Bedford street, by his very excellent and respectable congregation, composed of a large number of worthy citizens, with their good wives, and pretty, smiling, charming daughters.  It was a perfect novelty.

Rev. Francis's residency would be short.  In 1840 Rev. Phineas Rice and his family occupied 69 Bedford Street.  He and his wife, the former Mary Howe, had six children, ranging in age from Thomas H., who was 22 years old in 1840, to Ephraim, who was 12.

Rev. Phineas Rice.  (original source unknown)

The Rices, too, would occupy the house for only a few years.  By 1845, 69 Bedford Street was home to Rev. I. C. Cheney.

Cheney was followed by the family of James Wright by 1851.  Born in 1798, Wright was a letter carrier.  He and his wife, Mary S., had at least two children, Maria J. and Gilbert.

It was common for families to take in boarders.  Although the house may have been snug for the four family members, the Wrights shared their home with Thomas W. and Mary F. Chadwick by 1853.  Chadwick had a china store at 232 Bleecker Street.  The couple had a toddler, James Howard.

Late in the winter of 1854, James Howard Chadwick contracted what The New York Times described as a "disease of the throat."  He died at the age of three years and seven months on March 7.  His funeral was held in the parlor two days later.

In 1855, Marie J. Wright was teaching in the Primary Department of School No. 45 on 24th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.  Her brother was now a clerk and also volunteered with the Amity Hose Company, No. 38.

More than a century before air conditioning would become common, wealthy families escaped the city each summer to fashionable resorts or country estates.  Middle- and working-class families, on the other hand, suffered through the sweltering heat.  Each day newspapers listed the victims of heatstroke.

On July 19, 1866, the New York Herald titled an article "The Hot Weather," and reported on the ongoing heat wave's effects on the "already prostrate Gothamites."  The previous day, horses and citizens had fallen in the streets.  On the list of casualties, the article noted, "Mary Boyle, servant at No. 69 Bedford street...died suddenly of heat."

James Wright died at the age of 69 on December 29, 1866.  His funeral was held in the house on January 2, 1867.  Mary S. Wright remained here into the early 1880s.

Thorne W. and Anna Williams purchased 69 Bedford Street in April 1894.  The following year, in July, they hired architect John Guilfoyle to renovate the house.  It was most likely at this time that the attic was raised to a full floor and a neo-Grec cornice installed.

Anna Williams died in July 1908.  It is unclear how long Thorne remained here, but in 1926 owner John Falatino hired architect Robert A. Fash to convert the house to "non-housekeeping" apartments, meaning they had no kitchens.  The stoop was removed and the entrance lowered to the basement level.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Occupying one of the apartments as early as 1934 was 22-year-old sculptor Edward Mansky.  

Early on the morning of December 2, 1937, three men fired shots at Owen McLaughlin, a stevedore at Pier 36 on the Hudson River.  In a similar attack earlier, Joseph Kirby, John Johnson, and Arthur Meehan had sought work at the pier on Vandam street.  When told there was no work, they "drew a revolver and fired two shots which lodged in the wall of the office," as reported by The New York Sun.  

The newspaper said, "Later that day a milkman found three .22-caliber revolvers in the hall of 69 Bedford street while making a delivery."  Forensic tests showed that the bullets recovered from the wall had come from one of the weapons.  Detectives arrested the three men whom they alleged "had discarded the weapons in the Bedford street tenement."

Victor Bockris interviewed writer and artist William Seward Burroughs II extensively for his book With William Burroughs, A Report From The Bunker.  Regarding his time here in 1943, Burroughs said,

I lived five months at 69 Bedford Street.  That was when David Kammerer lived around the corner at 35 Morton Street.  Sixty-nine Bedford Street was on the second floor; it was a furnished apartment; it had a couch and a few chairs and a table; it had a closet; kitchen, and bathroom.  Very mediocre.  I lived there by myself.  That was when I was working as a bartender and later as a private detective.  I didn't do very much.  I was working most of the time.  I had two jobs.  I spent a great amount of time at home in the pad.

That year Burroughs became friends with Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and David Kammerer, whom he mentioned in the interview.  Bill Morgan, in his I Celebrate Myself, The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg, writes, "The quartet of Allen, William, Lucien [Carr], and David spent hours hanging out together around the local bars like Chumley's...Their lively conversations ran the gamut from philosophy and art to drugs and sex."  

On August 17, 1944, The New York Times reported that Burroughs and Jack Kerouac had been arrested as material witnesses in the murder of David Kammerer.  He had been fatally stabbed by Lucien Carr, in Riverside Park. 

In 1950, the house was converted to apartments, two each on the first and second floors and one on the third.  A subsequent renovation completed in 2009 returned 69 Bedford Street to a single family home.  The stoop was restored and a period-appropriate entranceway fabricated.

photograph by the author

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