This lovely Greek Revival brownstone at 14 West 10th Street has an awfully creepy nickname.
Built in 1856, it’s been dubbed the “House of Death” because a reported 22 former residents have haunted the place over the years.
“In 1974, a former actress turned psychic, Jan Bryant Bartell, detailed her experiences living in the house in the book Spindrift: Spray From a Psychic Sea,” states a New York Times FYI column from 2002.
“Ms. Bartell claimed that a number of tenants had died mysteriously and that the building was haunted by spirits.”
One supposed ghost is Mark Twain, who lived there in 1900.
“According to Ms. Bartell, a mother and daughter living on the ground floor in the 1930’s found an old man with white hair in the living room one evening. The startled mother asked him who he was, the figure replied, ‘My name is Clemens, and I has a problem here I gotta settle’ and disappeared.”
This brownstone has an eerie rep for another reason: It’s where Joel Steinberg beat his six-year-old daughter Lisa to death in a second-floor apartment in 1987—one of the most shocking murders in the city’s history.
Ephemeral New York 