Merchant's House Museum

About Merchant's House Museum

The Merchant's House Museum, also known as the Old Merchant's House and the Seabury Tredwell House, is a historic house museum at 29 East Fourth Street in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Built by the hatter Joseph Brewster in 1831 and 1832, the edifice is a four-story building with a Federal-style brick facade and a Greek Revival interior. It was the Tredwell family's residence for almost a century before becoming a museum in 1936. The Merchant's House Museum is the only 19th-century residence in Manhattan with its original exterior and interior intact.

Brewster built the house as a speculative development, selling it in 1835 to the merchant Seabury Tredwell, who lived there with his family and servants. The structure remained in the family until the death of the youngest child, Gertrude, in 1933. George Chapman, a distant relative, purchased the building and transformed it into a museum. Over the next three decades, the museum's operators struggled to obtain funds to restore the deteriorating house. The architect Joseph Roberto completely renovated the building from 1970 to 1980, and the museum underwent further restoration in the early 1990s after the demolition of nearby buildings damaged it. During the 2010s and 2020s, museum officials protested the construction of a nearby hotel because of concerns that the project would further damage the house.

Text from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Photos of Merchant's House Museum

  1. Merchant's House Museum, Manhattan01ManhattanAjay Suresh from New York, NY, USA · CC BY 2.0
  2. Inside Merchant's House Museum02Inside Merchant's House MuseumEpicgenius · CC BY-SA 4.0
  3. Merchant's House Museum Jan03JanEpicgenius · CC BY-SA 4.0
  4. Merchant's House Museum Jan04JanEpicgenius · CC BY-SA 4.0
  5. New York City - 26 July05New York City - 26 JulyJazz Guy from New Jersey, United States · CC BY 2.0
  6. New York City - 26 July06New York City - 26 JulyJazz Guy from New Jersey, United States · CC BY 2.0

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Nearby museums

Make a day of it. 4 more museums are within a mile of Merchant's House Museum; the closest, Old Merchants House of New York, is practically next door.