80 Irving Place (New York City, New York)

 townhouse  Add category

4-story Italianate townhouse completed in 1854. The mansion became home to Dr. James Rushmore Wood in 1865. He died here in 1882, and the house passed into the hands of former actress Agnes Ethel Tracy, who had just married millionaire Frank Tracy in 1886 and retired from show business. Frank died first, followed by Agnes in 1903, and the mansion was then home to the Ingraham family. By 1922 William W. Worthington, a 31-year old lawyer and member of the firm Mooney & Worthington and his wife were living here. By the time of the Great Depression the mansion was being operated as a rooming house. W. Savage bought the building in 1950, now divided into nine apartments. The property would continue to house “professional apartments” and offices until 1971 when three philanthropists contributed $75,000 to buy it for the newly incorporated Women’s Medical Center. It would become the first freestanding legal abortion clinic in the Western world. Then in 1987 the house was reconverted to a single family residence.

The facades are clad in red brick and heavily covered in climbing ivy. The narrow west facade is two bays wide, with the main entrance in the north bay. It has a low, 3-step stoop and paneled wooden double-doors topped by an entablature on scrolled keystones. To the south is a round-arched double-window. A low iron railing surrounds the property except for at the stoop. The upper floors on the west facade have double-windows in both bays, with brown wooden framing, brownstone sills, and brownstone cornices with small brackets. The windows are shorter at each floor, and at the 2nd floor they have wrought-iron balconies with bulging ends. The facade is crowned by a black metal roof cornice.

The longer south facade on 19th Street has a single-window on the west end of the ground floor, followed by an oval window, a smaller single-window paired with a regular-sized one, then two more single-windows, and at the east end are two brown garage doors. At the 2nd floor a small square-headed window replaces the oval window, and a projecting oriel window replaces the next bay. A double-window replaces the last single-window on the ground floor, and the top two floors are similar. At the east end the upper floors are set back behind the garage doors. They have three bays of single-windows, except at the 2nd floor, where there is a wider projecting oriel with rounded ends. The bracketed roof cornice continues all along the south facade as well.