190-year-old West Village wooden house with storied history asks $6M
All photos courtesy of Allyson Lubow for The Corcoran Group
A 19th-century wooden house in the West Village that has lived many lives over its nearly 190-year-old history is now on the market. Built in 1834, the property at 392 West Street (also known as 6 Weehawken Street) was originally part of the open-air Greenwich Market and later operated as a tavern, cigar store, pool hall, speakeasy, and two gay bars. The building’s last owner, Jean-Louis Goldwater Bourgeois, made headlines in recent years after claiming he would leave the home to the Lenape people, the original Manhattanites. But when Bourgeois died last year, the house went to his estate and is now on the market for $6,000,000, as Gothamist reported.
The property was built on land that had been part of the colonial Newgate State Prison and later became part of the Greenwich Market (also known as Weehawken Market); it is considered the sole surviving portion of the market house. After 10 years of operation, the market closed and went on to house a saloon, a gambling parlor, an oyster house, bars, and an adult video shop.
Bourgeois, son of famous late sculptor, Louise Bourgeois, bought the building for $2.2 million in 2006. In 2016, Bourgeois announced he would be giving the building, and the land, to its original owners, by transferring the deed to a nonprofit group run by a Lenape tribe.
“Manhattan is a capitalist rock; this is a quiet protest against that,” Bourgeois told the New York Times in a 2017 interview. “I’m giving it back to whom the land was stolen from, and that’s really a joyful event.”
The deal never went through. When Bourgeois died last year, he did not leave the building to anyone (but did leave $50,000 to his house cat, the New York Post reported). And now, as Gothamist spotted, the house is on the market again.
Largely unchanged since the 19th century, the home sits within the Weehawken Street Historic District, designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2006. The district includes 14 buildings that represent the development of Greenwich Village along the waterfront, with its history as a “place of dwelling, industry, and commerce, much of it maritime-related,” as the LPC noted in its report.
The two-and-a-half-story shingled home measures roughly 2,400 square feet and is one of the last wood-frame buildings on the Hudson River waterfront. Any future owners would need approval from the LPC before any work can be done on the property.
“With frontage on both West Street and Weehawken, and zoned for commercial as well as residential, this versatile little gem awaits its next incarnation,” the listing from The Corcoran Group reads. “Bring your architect and your imagination.”
[Listing details: 392 West Street by Jessica Buchman and Deborah Kern of The Corcoran Group]
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