![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/511grandstreethouse.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAll of these changes brought on a wave of speculative real estate development. James Lent and his nephew, Henry Barclay\u2014descendants of two old-money families\u2014decided they wanted to profit from the city\u2019s boom times, too.<\/p>\n
So Lent and Barclay purchased an oddly sized lot on lively, active Grand Street and completed the construction of two row houses in 1828. <\/p>\n
On the eastern side closer to Columbia Street was Number 513 (second photo), a standard, Federal-style 2\u00bd story dwelling with one dormer window jutting out from the peaked roof.<\/p>\n
Next door, they built 511 Grand Street, also in the fashionable Federal style. But this house had a wider front and an asymmetrical, trapezoid-like shape. <\/p>\n What accounts for the unconventional footprint? \u201cFaced with the irregularity of the western lot line, the builder added an extra triangular bay that tapers toward the rear of the structure, giving the Grand Street frontage its 29\u00bd-foot width,\u201d states a 2007 report<\/a> from the Landmarks Preservation Commission. <\/p>\n \u201cDue to the angle of the lot line, the extra bay is narrower, with the result that the placement of the single window and dormer do not conform to the symmetry of the rest of the house and its companion at 513 Grand Street.\u201d<\/p>\n Considering the housing needs in 1828 New York, this nonconforming charmer likely didn\u2019t lack for tenants. Though the names of the first residents of 511 Grand Street are unknown, renters through the early 20th century were tradesmen and laborers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe house was occupied from 1840 to 1853 by James Bulkley, a grocer and oil merchant, and from 1844-1873 by David Rengle, a German provisioner and butcher, who had emigrated with his wife from Bavaria,\u201d notes the LPC report.<\/p>\n \u201cCharles VanNostrand, a cartman, took up residence there with his family and a boarder in 1879-1880 and remained until 1899-1900 when he relocated to Harlem to be near his job,\u201d continued the LPC. <\/p>\n \u201cThomas Rooney, an Irish immigrant who worked at a nearby laundry and later took a job as a watchman in a department store, moved in with his wife and children around 1905 and remained as tenants until around 1916.\u201d<\/p>\n The Lent and Barclay families held on to the property until 1921, when they sold both 511 and 513 Grand Street to a fire department dispatcher. That man\u2019s son, a New York City policeman, owned the house until 1947.<\/p>\n It was under this family\u2019s ownership when Berenice Abbott, working for the Depression-era Federal Art Project, captured her iconic photo of the two houses (third photo). <\/p>\n She published that photo in her 1937 book, Changing New York<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cRoofing and skylights\u201d are written across the ground floor facade. In the fourth photo, taken two years earlier by Beecher Ogden, the facade looks largely the same.<\/p>\n Since then, the LPC report notes that 511 Grand Street has been home to a variety of business, from a linen shop to restaurants. Over the years, it\u2019s been renovated and redone, repainted and resurfaced. Windows and entrances have been replaced and skylights added. (Fifth photo, from 2013)<\/p>\n Remarkably, though, the irregular house built almost 200 years ago\u2014a holdout for two centuries\u2014is still intact and part of the streetscape. These days, the ground floor is home to Ost Cafe. <\/p>\n What about the upper floors? I\u2019d love to get a first-hand look. Luckily there are photos from Streeteasy<\/a>, which show the original fireplace and oddly angled, rregular-shaped rooms in all their nonconformist glory.<\/p>\n [Third photo: Berenice Abbott\/NYPL Digital Collections<\/a>; fourth photo: MCNY, X2010.11.2094<\/a>; fifth photo: Wikipedia] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York in the 1820s was an energetic, optimistic city. The opening of the Erie Canal made Gotham…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-250569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n