49. Schermerhorn Row Block

A.K.A.: New York State Maritime Museum Block
Location: Block bounded by Front, Fulton, South, and John Streets
Built: 1811-1849
Architect: Unknown
National Register Number: 71000547
Listed: February 18, 1971
Visited: January 14, 15, and 28, and February 2, 2008
Additional Documentation: Historic American Buildings Survey; NYCLPC Reports



Worth $2.5 million in 1848--about $55 million today--Peter Schermerhorn was once one of the wealthiest men in New York City. And of course this means nothing to us now. My city guides variously call Schermerhorn a "ship chandler and developer," a "leading merchant," "one of New York's leading merchants...ran a ship chandler's business..." and so on: so many facts given without context, without a sense of scale, allowing the reader to brush off the guy's life like dandruff from a shoulder. Most of my sources don't even bother to clarify whether Schermerhorn Row was built by Peter Schermerhorn Sr. (1749-1826) or Peter Schermerhorn Jr. (1781-1852) or both, and I have respectable sources saying or implying one or the other. The Astors and the Carnegies and the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers are all a lot closer to us--they got far, far, richer, and left us a slew of surviving monuments attesting to this wealth. In contrast to their libraries and museums, the most tangible evidence of Peter Schermerhorn's career was these unsexy warehouses associated with the fishy stink of the seaport; hard labor, not exalted intellect.



Yet after a little Googling, I found something my guides didn't even hint at: Peter Schermerhorn Jr. was a fellow passenger on Alexis de Tocqueville's first voyage to the United States. Indeed, Schermerhorn suggested to the French sociologist certain notions that would later be key to his landmark book Democracy in America, including the inevitability of civil war, the the country's lack of party politics, and the blot of moneylust on the national character. That last one is an odd, possibly contradictory, possibly hypocritical stance for a millionaire to take, and in this bit of moral knottiness, a hint of the human being behind the name. It makes me wish there was more for me to chew on.



The constituents of Schermerhorn Row Block were originally built in the Federal Style, then remodeled with Greek Revival storefronts, then cast-iron storefronts, then remodeled again and again to fit the needs of its tenants until the Jan Hird Pokorny renovation removed much of the architectural accretions gained from over 150 years of use. Some architectural critics have decried this as a loss of the building's character. Paul Goldberger:

"The brick fronts have been sterilized, made so clean that all sense of time has been wiped out; worse still, the distinctions between the houses that make up the row have disappeared, and so this block looks more like a single overblown mass of brick than like a real 19th-century street."

I sort of know what he means. The bricks and the mortar are both a disconcerting frosty white, but it doesn't make the buildings look new, or even ahistorical. Instead--and I don't know how else to put this without resorting to lazy personification--they look shellshocked.



Still, you don't have to look too closely to find history manifesting itself. The renovation didn't straighten some of the lintels over the windows; in fact, they're so crooked it's almost a wonder how the buildings are still structurally sound. You get a better sense of just that inside Schermerhorn Row, subject to a recent interior renovation by Beyer Blinder Belle. The top floors of these buildings are now museum space, and while there were some good exhibits on ships and whaling--I was particularly fond of a segment from the silent Down to the Sea in Ships, shown in loop--mostly what I wanted to do was ignore the placards and vitrines, and look at the walls, the ceilings; the bricks, the beams. They had a hypnotic cast. Plaster and paint were still partially stuck to them. You could easily imagine these interiors' dusty days and nights, storing cargo from every part of the world. And while I know they're in perfectly fine condition and aren't going to fall down any time soon, they looked a little vulnerable, groaning with the weight of history, knowing more than I do.