78a. Charlton-King-Vandam Historic District

Location: Roughly bounded by Varick, Vandam, MacDougal and King Streets
Built: Mostly the early to mid-1820s
Architects: Multiple
National Register Number: 73001215
Listed: July 20, 1973
Visited: June 1, 2008



There were hills and swamps here, once. Britain took the land as if it could be taken, as empires are wont to do. Queen Anne gave it to Trinity Church, who leased it to British major Abraham Mortier. On this property, he built an estate called Richmond Hill, one author describing it as a "stately mansion, with its lofty chambers and beautiful mahogany staircases, raising its graceful portico of Ionic columns against a background of splendid oaks and cedars." When Mortier became the enemy during the Revolutionary War, George Washington seized it; this is was where he lived on July 4, 1776. When we won, Richmond Hill became John and Abagail Adams' mansion during John's tenure as Vice President. After the nation's capital moved south to DC, the property was owned by poor, sweet, doomed Aaron Burr, he of an infamous duel with Alexander Hamilton that fills an uncertain space in the school-taught minds of Americans. Burr made attempts at developing the space, but after the duel he was shit out of luck, and his creditors sold everything to John Jacob Astor, already mindbogglingly rich. He put the mansion on logs, and rolled it down the hill and out of the way. It carried on for a while. Sometimes it was a theater, and sometimes an opera house--a fashionable and respectable thing in those Rossini-tormented days-- eventually devolving into a saloon and, in 1849, rubble.

Except not completely rubble. When some of the surrounding streets were being widened in 1913, workers discovered fragments of the mansion had been subject to re-use. A gentleman by the name of George H. Brennan is quoted by the New York Times as saying:

"A part of the old theatre must have been used for the rear of the stable, for on some of the beams were evidences of ancient painting or fresco work, which, perhaps, formed a part of the old theatre decorations. People used to go to the stable to see these faded decorations and the proprietor always said that his horses occupied a section of the theatre as altered from Aaron Burr's residence."

Then, after this amazing discovery, this unearthing of a rare fragment from Revolutionary New York...they demolished it for good. Of course. Did somebody at least take photos of the damned thing?

I'll talk about the homes that replaced Richmond Hill next week.