20 West 16th Street

20 West 16th Street is part of a set of five townhouses at 12–20 West 16th Street, on the south side of the street, flanked by the Thorne Mansion and St. Francis Xavier High School. With the expansion of the neighboring New York Hospital, the townhouses at number 12 and 14 were demolished in the early 20th century; number 16 was replaced with an apartment building by 1939, leaving numbers 18 and 20 as the only intact structures in Oliver's development. Across the street to the north are a group of houses at 5–9 and 17–23 West 16th Street (including the Margaret Sanger Clinic at number 17), which are all protected as New York City designated landmarks. All five houses at 12–20 West 16th Street were built by Thomas Oliver. As built, it measures across, with the longer dimension extending north–south and the shorter dimension on the street frontage. The roofline is high, and there is a rear extension about deep at the house's southern end. It is one of a few remaining Gothic Revival style houses in Manhattan; the style was not commonly used in the borough due to the small lot dimensions created when the Manhattan street grid was laid out. Facade The building is a three-bay-wide brick structure set back from a concrete front yard. It has a raised basement (placed just below ground level), with security grilles around the basement window. and is accessed by a brick stoop with an iron railing; the right-hand (west) railing wraps around a newel post at the bottom. The first-floor entrance door retains its original wooden panels with quatrefoil and trefoil motifs, which are topped by a pair of arch-shaped glass panels. Another entrance, to the basement, is located under this stoop. Openings for air conditioning units exist beneath some windows. The facade is topped by a cornice with wooden arches, which project about from the front (northern) facade on 16th Street. The inner facades of the arches have trefoil (three-leafed) and quatrefoil (four-leafed) shapes. The front (north) bedroom is separated from the rear bedroom by two restrooms and is connected to it by a hallway on the eastern end. The third and fourth floors are arranged as a single duplex apartment and are accessed directly from the stair from the first-floor hallway; this stair has entrances to both levels of the duplex. At the front of the house, a spiral staircase also connects the third and fourth floors internally. The third floor has a living–dining room in the front (with an arched marble fireplace), a restroom and kitchen in the middle, and a bedroom in the rear. The fourth floor was historically used for servant housing and consists of three bedrooms, a hallway with closets, and a restroom. == History ==

20 West 16th Street and the neighboring sites had been owned since 1825 by the Cowman family. In 1844, the family sold several lots to Thomas S. Gibbes and George B. Butler, real-estate agents for the Baltimore businessman Thomas Oliver, who constructed five townhouses there in the Gothic Revival style. 20 West 16th Street, the westernmost house in that group, was sold for $2,500 () to a trust owned by Oliver's sister, Emily Oliver Gibbes. The house, designed by Pearson, cost $6,009 () and was designed by Pearson. Othercontractors involved in the building's construction included the iron supplier J. Althouse, the plumber Nathaniel Sawyer, the mason Samuel McCorkle, and the carpenter John Sniffen. Woodford bought the house in 1847 and sold it seven years later to William A. Stebbins, whose siblings included the artist Emma Stebbins and the politician Henry G. Stebbins. The Stebbins siblings' mother, Mary, subsequently moved in. The Stebbinses retained the building for half a century and rented parts of it out, including to the dentist Robert S. Moore in the 1860s. The Stebbins family sold the house in 1907 to their neighbors, the Tallent family. The building was split up into a single-room occupancy and resold in 1927 to a labor union who used it as a dormitory. In 1954, a group of artists acquired 20 West 16th Street, planning to use the first floor for exhibits and the upper floors as sleeping quarters. It subsequently hosted exhibitions of the Terrain Gallery. The house was sold in 1962 to Helena Simkhovitch, and the politician Bella Abzug (later to become a U.S. congresswoman) lived there during the same decade. In 1968, it was resold to the family of journalist Isabel Logan Lyon in 1968. ==See also==