Merchant's House Museum

The Merchant's House Museum stands as a rare survivor from nineteenth-century New York. While the city around it transformed into a towering metropolis, this brick and marble row house remained largely unchanged for nearly one hundred years. It was built in eighteen thirty-two as a speculative venture by a hatter named Joseph Brewster. By eighteen thirty-five, a wealthy hardware merchant named Seabury Tredwell moved in with his wife and eight children. The family occupied the residence continuously until the death of the youngest daughter, Gertrude, in nineteen thirty-three. Because the house was preserved with the family's original furniture, clothing, and personal items, it offers an intimate view into the private life of a nineteenth-century merchant household.