112 East 10th Street | Block : 465 | Lot #13

Description & Building Alterations

Originally built as part of Mathias Banta’s subdivision development on the old Stuyvesant family estate, this four-and-a-half story townhouse had a major facade renovation in 1927, leaving it proportionally similar but aesthetically distinctive from the Anglo-Italianate architectural style of its cousins to the east on 10th Street and Stuyvesant Street. Large triplets of loft-style hung casement windows replaced the twin arched openings of the house’s upper floors, accented with a simple stone sill underneath. A smaller, more understated cornice was installed, as well as a larger ground-floor window with a handsome flower box. The ground floor’s original rusticated stone walls, vermiculated accents, and elegant door surround with a bracketed entablature were retained. This house is the only portion of the original 1861 Banta development of the land that has seen significant exterior alteration.

Elizabeth Stuyvesant Fish willed that her estate, which included the land upon which this group of town houses is built, be divided equally amongst her four children, and the property was subsequently sold to Mathias Banta in 1858 for development on the condition that no “dangerous, noxious or offensive establishments whatsoever, nor any houses generally known as tenement house” be erected there. Banta subdivided the property into the present lots and listed the properties for sale in the newspapers. The lots were sold within a few months, and construction on the triangular piece of land encompassing nos. 23 through 35 Stuyvesant Street and 112 through 128 East 10th Street began in 1859. The architecture has been attributed to architect James Renwick Jr. The five-story buildings at 112-128 East 10th Street have parlor floors covered in rusticated brownstone with vermiculated panels at the bottom. The segmental-arched doorways have carved brackets and hold double doors, but the stoops are low and narrow. Each building is faced in red brick set off by Italianate-style stone window enframements from the second through fifth floors. They are part of the St. Mark’s Historic District, designated in 1969.