An elegy for the short-lived Striker Cottages, built in 1850 in today’s Hell’s Kitchen
What did Striker’s Cottages—a row of eight tidy homes that once stood on West 52nd Street between 10th and 11th Avenues—look like in their prime?
The photo above shows six of the cottages in 1887, just 37 years after they were built. The latticework and cornices seem intact, and the full-length windows have unusual appeal—even with some of the shutters missing.
But broken picket fences surround spare front yards; the gravel road looks as sorrowful as the trees. Two women in aprons separated by a wood board in lieu of a proper fence stand at the far right.
It’s a far cry from the charming promise of these cottages, developed by General Garret Hopper Striker—the great-great-grandson of Mattias Hopper, descendent of a Dutch colonial family who owned the land since the early 18th century. Back then, the Hopper farm spanned Sixth Avenue to the Hudson River between 48th and 55th Streets.
“To Let: Eight entire new two-story cottages, piazza and verandah fronts, courtyards 35 feet deep, filled with elegant forest trees,” an 1850 ad in the New York Sun reads, reproduced in Old New York in Early Photographs, written by Mary Black in 1973.
“Each house containing four bedrooms, two parlors and kitchen, and hard finished walls with cornices and centre piece,” the ad continues, listing more amenities like access to the nearby Hudson River Railroad and near “three lines of stages running through the day.”
Despite the transportation options, Striker’s Cottages were still fairly isolated on Manhattan’s far western edge. The houses sat opposite Hopper Lane, a small farm road that “ran diagonally behind today’s 52nd Street in the block between 10th and 11th Avenues,” (above map, from 1854) according to a 1987 Daily News article recalling the cottages.
Why Striker (above), who resided in a circa-1752 mansion at the foot of 53rd Street until his death in the 1860s, built these cottages is something of a mystery. With decent housing desperately needed for the growing city population—and the days of large farms in Manhattan clearly numbered—perhaps Striker saw financial gain by breaking up some of the farmland he inherited.
The original buyers of these tidy homes on what was also known as Striker’s Row were likely middle-class and working-class folks, such as shop owners and office clerks. Over the next few decades the cottages traded hands, and far West 52nd Street became a grittier neighborhood of industry, horse stables, and tenements.
Ads in New York newspapers chart the decline. In 1866, three rooms in Number 7 were offered for rent for $15, though it’s unclear if that is by week or month. A year later, Number 6 had been broken up into apartments. In 1874, a “first class seamstress” living in one of the cottages advertised her services.
A few years after the photo was taken, Striker’s Cottages were demolished. Images of the cottages are hard to come by; I wonder if any photographer or illustrator captured the row in its early attractiveness.
Add the cottages to the list of houses built in New York City that met the bulldozer within a generation or two, with no trace of them or the former farm lane they faced remaining in the modern cityscape.
[Top image: New-York Historical Society, via Old New York in Early Photographs; second image: NYPL Digital Collection; third image: Invaluable; fourth image: New York Herald]
