The Record
John Howe finished the house in 1855 and numbered it 217 West 20th Street. It became 333 in the renumbering of 1866. Christian Van Ness, who gave his trade as carpenter, bought it and lived here with his wife Catherine and their grown children, taking in boarders from the start. In April 1887 it sold to Jacob and Ellen Riger for twelve thousand dollars.
The Fifth Floor
The Rigers added it in 1893. They matched the brick and carried a bracketed cornice up over it, appropriate to the 1855 work, which is why the front reads as one date and is in fact two. The city's lot record still lists five floors on a lot twenty five feet wide and sixty deep, and files the most recent alteration to 2014.
What Stands Now
Twenty five feet across, five floors and a finished basement, all served by one elevator. Interiors conceived with Miles Redd. Hand run plaster, chevron laid white oak, five wood burning fireplaces, radiant heat underfoot. The garden level kitchen opens to limestone paving and mature lindens. The floor above holds a gallery sized for a grand piano and a living room under coved ceilings. The fifth floor is given over to the primary alone, with dressing rooms, two baths and a small kitchen for the night.
Across the Street
St. Peter's was consecrated on February 22, 1838, on land Clement Clarke Moore gave the parish, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission calls it the first of the English parish Gothic churches built in this country. Moore is also why the block looks the way it does: breaking up his Chelsea estate in 1835, he required purchasers to build houses of good quality. The roof garden looks straight at the tower.
