Next time you’re in Chinatown, stop at the corner of Bowery and Pell Street.
The three-story house painted fire-engine red, the one with the name of a bank in Chinese and English letters on the front? It’s considered the oldest row house in the city.
It was built by Edward Mooney between 1785 and 1789. Mooney was a wealthy meat wholesaler who bought the land after it was seized from British loyalist James Delancey.
How old are we talking here? Well, in 1789, George Washington was sworn in as president.
Mooney lived there until his death in 1800. Since then, it’s housed a variety of businesses, including Barney Flynn’s, a late 19th century saloon frequented by Bowery character Chuck Connors (in NYPL sketch).
And like so many of the city’s super old homes, it also served as a brothel, according to ourchinatown.org.
The early Federal-style house still has lots of interesting details, such as the gabled roof, quarter-round windows, and original hand-hewn wood timbers.
“It is a unique example of the domestic architecture which flourished in Manhattan two centuries ago,” reports this 1966 document.
[Top photo: Wikipedia. Bottom illustration: NYPL digital collection]
Tags: Barney Flynn's Bowery bar, Bowery row house, Chinatown oldest house, Chuck Connors, Edward Mooney House, Former brothels in New York City, New York in 1780s, oldest house in New York City, oldest row house Manhattan, Revolutionary War New York City
Ephemeral New York 
January 16, 2013 at 5:25 am |
Buildings like this always make me wonder why they bricked up windows.
January 16, 2013 at 6:16 pm |
[…] Is the city’s oldest row house on the Bowery in Chinatown? (Ephemeral New York) […]
January 16, 2013 at 9:21 pm |
Did they brick up the Windows or were they always Bricked up..Most buildings of this age have the first corner Windows Bricked up.
Anybody know?
January 16, 2013 at 9:44 pm |
Terrific building! It’s maybe 10 or 15 yrs older than the rowhouse I live in up the block, but there are many similiarities, including the bothels: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/24/nyregion/more-suspects-in-smuggling-of-prostitutes.html
January 17, 2013 at 6:13 am |
About 15 years ago, a guy who ran a business in there told me that only the exterior was original, that a fire many decades earlier had wiped out the interior, which was rebuilt.
January 17, 2013 at 8:55 pm |
I love this place!
January 18, 2013 at 3:16 am |
It seems the bricked windows are in line with the chimney
April 5, 2014 at 1:07 am |
Yes, the faux windows would have been covered by shutters, as would all the real windows, but these would have remained closed at all times. They’re just there for balance.
June 14, 2021 at 3:45 am |
[…] left) has the edge when it comes to New York history. This 3-story house dates back to the 1790s, making it one of the oldest houses still extant in Manhattan. Number 136 is old by Gotham standards, but it didn’t go up until […]