P.S. 150 Tribeca Learning Center (New York City, New York)

 school, interesting place, historic landmark

 Upload a photo

4-story Federal-style landmarked former mansion completed in 1810 with 3.5 floors. It was built for Robert Dickey, a merchant who dealt in imported goods including tea, spices, coffee and rice. He and his wife lived here until 1820, when the house was sold. In the 1820s it was owned by Peter Schermerhorn, and leased to William Bayard, Jr., followed by merchant Nicholas Low, and John C. Henderson, and began accepting well-to-do boarders in the later years of that decade. It continued to serve as a boarding house through the 1850s, though the stature of the boarders gradually declined as the area became more commercialized.

In 1869 Trinity Place was widened, and the original outbuildings rear yard of the house were lost. In the meantime, the Greenwich Street Elevated railroad had been built in 1868. Before long a second elevated train would be running behind the house as well. The neighborhood declined even more. In 1872 Edmond H. Schermerhorn commissioned architect Detlef Lienau to remodel the house. He removed the pitched roof which most likely had dormers; raising the fourth floor to a full story. The original splayed lintels on the second and third floors were replaced with plain stone lintels and he added a modern pedimented hood above the entrance door. The 1890 census listed fifty-seven residents in No. 67—all of them Irish.

After owning the house for nearly a century, the Schermerhorn family sold it as part of “the Carpenter estate” in October, 1919 to Rose A. McGuigan. McGuigan’s family and partners would retain the property until 1960. In 1922 a 1-story commercial extension out to Trinity Place was added, clad in ironspot brick. In 1940 the city began preparations for the mammoth construction project, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. Dozens of the still-surviving Federal houses like No. 67 were demolished, many of them very similar, including the bowed rear façade. One by one they fell until only No. 67, miraculously, remained.

The old house was purchased by Irving Schacter and Eli Goldhagen, brothers-inlaw, in 1960 and remained in the family for decades. Throughout the 20th century the somewhat abused building has been home to everything from a luncheonette to a cigar shop, a messenger service to a barber shop.

Beginning in 2012, the Dickey House was restored and renovated, preserving the rounded rear facade. In 2021, it was gut renovated to become Public School 150.

www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/realestate/streetscapes-dick...