BARBARALEE DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL by old new york
This lithograph, circa 1866, depicts a rather romantic view of the Dyckman property and the rural character of northern Manhattan at that time.
Days of Yore
A Manhattan farmhouse and a historic row house outlived their eras
to become New York City museums
Private residences that survived periods of drastic hange in New York City only to be preserved as museums offer glimpses of a world gone by. What is today the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum is the last
surviving Dutch Colonial-style farmhouse in Manhattan, while
the Merchant’s House Museum is the city’s only fully preserved
19th-century family home. The former represents a rural
landscape and farming lifestyle that has since disappeared, and
the latter the urban sophistication that replaced it.
The Dyckman Farmhouse was built circa 1785, when northern Manhattan was a vast expanse of undeveloped land. By 1820,
there were about 20 other functional farms in the area,
according to researchers. Over the years, the Dyckman family
lived here with varying numbers of farmhands. Though the
property was put on the market in 1787—listed as convenient
for fishing and including both salt and fresh meadowland, a
barn and other outhouses and a young orchard—it did not sell.
By 1868, however, much of the land had been sold off. Two
Dyckman family members preserved the rest circa 1915.
Built in 1832, the Merchant’s House near Washington Square
Park was home to a wealthy family by the name of Tredwell for
nearly a century. Gertrude Tredwell, daughter of first owner
Seabury Tredwell, lived in the row house for her entire life
(1840-1933), during which time she maintained it as it was,
throwing away or changing nothing. As a result, the current
museum’s collection, including furniture, fabrics, clothes and
carpets, is entirely authentic—a perfect illustration of an era
when New York City was transformed from a colonial seaport
into a flourishing metropolis, the center of the country.
The Dyckman and Tredwell homes each correspond to very
different stages in the city’s history—the former, a time when
residents of upper Manhattan lived off the land; and the latter,
when New York was just beginning to become the cultural Mecca
it is today. The Dyckman Farmhouse Museum and the Merchant’s
House Museum exist to make the wholly unfamiliar recognizable
to current New Yorkers. On the following page, Barbaralee
Diamonstein-Spielvogel examines these two historic structures,
each epitomizing significant periods we will never again see.
