
On Thursday, June 7th, the Merchant’s House Museum in Manhattan’s East Village is having its annual summer benefit party in its garden. This year’s event, titled A Greek Revival, will help support the museum’s Historic Furnishings Plan and provide important funding to a property very special to me and to the history of New York City. It is a house so unique and ripe with period decoration that I have chosen it to be the subject of the second post in our series, House of Details, where I focus on exceptional houses and reveal some of the features that make them so.
Our friend and director of the museum, Pi Gardiner, shared with us a brief history of the house along with comments on some of the house’s most interesting details:
The Merchant’s House Museum, at 29 East 4th Street, also known as the Seabury Tredwell House, is one of the great gems of New York. The red-brick and white-marble row house was built in 1832 and home to a wealthy merchant family for almost 100 years. Its importance stems from the fact that it is the only family home in the city from the early to mid-19th century to have survived virtually intact, including its original neoclassical decorations and furniture. The house was one of the first 20 buildings designated under the City’s new landmarks preservation law in 1965, and was landmarked for its Greek revival interiors in 1982. The museum’s collection of over 3,000 items ranges from a suite of 12 side chairs attributed to Duncan Phyfe to 40 19th century dresses owned by the Tredwell women. In 2011, the Merchant’s House celebrated its 75th anniversary as a museum.

These elaborate wrought-iron basket urns on Tuckahoe marble plinths flank the entrance to the house.

The vestibule features an elaborate fanlight and a faux-marbre wall treatment.

The mahogany newel post and hand rail are carved elaborately with acanthus leaf motifs.

This view illustrates the main entertaining space of the Tredwells’ impressive home, the front parlor, which includes a suite of Rococo Revival furniture. The curtains were recreated by Scalamandre based on the original curtains that were still hanging in 1933 when the last family member, Gertrude Tredwell, died at the age of 93.

When the Tredwells redecorated their home in the 1850s, they moved this spectacular Empire sofa from the parlor to the family’s dining room on the ground floor, replacing it with a more fashionable suite of Rococo Revival furniture, as seen in the previous image. The fabric is a reproduction by Scalamandre that matches the curtains in the double parlor.

These images illustrate some of the trimmings used in the house. Scalamandre recreated these tassels based on the originals that decorated the parlor curtains. We are not sure where this blue trim was used, but we think it may have originally been part of bed hangings. They remind me of little tassel soldiers - and is the blue not amazing?

One of a pair of matching patinated-bronze gasoliers, a design patent 1852, in the Greek revival double parlor. This grand ceiling medallion, one of a pair located in the parlor and dining room, is considered the finest extant example in the country.

Fluted Ionic columns stand on either side of the pocket doors to the rear parlor dining room which can be closed to separate the two spaces. This view highlights the architectural symmetry of these two spaces that would have been reflected in the pair of pier mirrors, one between the two dining room windows, and one between the two parlor windows directly opposite.

Particularly noteworthy is a set of 12 mahogany side chairs attributed to Duncan Phyfe and originally covered in black horsehair. They have been recovered in a new black horsehair with a jacquard pattern.

The parlor carpet is a reproduction of the original wall-to-wall carpet installed by the Tredwells.

This bedroom features another classically inspired reproduction wall-to-wall carpet and an elaborate tester bed with carved gilt-wood acanthus leaf finials. The bed in the next bedroom also features elaborate finials that are, instead, of pressed gilt brass. The matching beds were purchased when the Tredwells bought the house in 1835.

In the adjacent bedroom, a small Chippendale mirror, the earliest piece in the house, circa 1805, is flanked by two ormolu and opaline glass calla lily gas sconces.

And, finally, my favorite decorative detail in the house: the side of the mahogany pillar-and-scroll sofa in the rear parlor. When you climb the stairs from the ground floor, you can see this angle at eye level. Divine, no? The above is a painting of that view by Robert Van Nutt.
I would also like to share that the museum is currently facing an important preservation battle that threatens the structural and aesthetic integrity of this home. A large and inappropriately scaled hotel is being planned for the lot directly adjacent to the museum, which is in scale with commercial structures on Lafayette instead of the residential properties along this block of East 4th Street.
To help preserve this important home, I hope you will sign our petition.
































