Discovering two of the hidden backhouses secluded inside an East Village tenement block
Like so many New York neighborhoods of densely packed tenement streets, the blocks that make up the East Village contain secrets.
Hidden from sidewalk view behind walls of brick and masonry are private gardens, residents-only patios, early burial grounds, and backhouses—a second house (or rear house, as they were known in the 19th century) built behind a street-facing dwelling.
Discovering these backhouses isn’t easy, as they typically aren’t visible from the sidewalk. Occasionally a horsewalk behind a gate tips you off, but backhouses built before the mid-19th century typically don’t have these narrow walkways designed to lead to a rear stable.
But sometimes you notice hints. On a recent walk down East 12th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A, I came across a tenement with an intercom marked “423 Rear”—in other words, the entrance to the rear house.
A slender passageway beside the front house at 423 East 12th Street took me to the backhouse. This tenement-style dwelling was separated from the front building by a patio with tables and chairs, a landscaped circle of greenery, and artwork that gave the space a very East Village vibe.
Next door stood a second tenement backhouse behind 425 East East 12th Street; the dwelling had ivy crawling up part of the facade and was blocked off by a stone wall.
What’s the backstory of these backhouses? First, let’s start with the front tenements they sit behind (above).
Both 423 and 425 East 12th Street were constructed around 1850 by a man named Hugh Cunningham, according to Village Preservation’s East Village Block Finder. The building of these houses coincided with the rapid development of today’s East Village from farmland to a hamlet called Bowery Village and into a full-fledged urban residential neighborhood.
The growth of the area was fueled by Irish and German immigrants, who moved into hastily built tenant houses and converted single-family row homes.
Shipbuilding and manufacturing along the East River needed workers, resulting in a population explosion from 18,000 in 1840 to 73,000 by 1860, according to East Village/Lower East Side Historic District Designation Report.
Nothing more is known about Hugh Cunningham. But at some point, he decided to build identical backhouses behind each of his front-facing tenements.
Why he did so is also a mystery, but the motive was almost certainly financial. Cramming two houses on a lot designed for one would have doubled his rent rolls.
The practice wasn’t legal, but that didn’t stop owners from putting up backhouses out of view of the street in the East Village, West Village, Gramercy, Chelsea, and other older Manhattan neighborhoods.
There were no shortage of people needing a place to live on the booming East Side. Those who lived in the front tenements at numbers 423 and 425 in the 19th century held working class jobs, according to newspaper archives, like factory worker, laborer, and varnisher. It can be assumed that the tenants in the backhouses took similar jobs.
The backhouse behind 423 East 12th Street gained lurid notoriety in 1892, when carpenter Philip Cunningham—perhaps related to Hugh, but it’s unclear—murdered his wife by stabbing her with a knife and striking her with a lamp during a drunken fight.
“On the second floor of a dreary tenement house in the rear of No. 423 East 12th Street lived Philip Cunningham and his wife, Elizabeth,” reported The World. The couple “spent the greater part of their time drinking and quarreling.”
Neighbors heard a commotion on the night of the murder but didn’t investigate. “‘The old man is beating the old woman again,’ said the tenants to each other,'” according to The World. Cunningham was found in a bar and arrested.
These days, the two backhouses don’t make it into the newspapers, and tenants seeking peace and privacy probably prefer it that way.
Not surprisingly, they aren’t the only backhouses inside the block. A Google map view (above) shows at least three more bounded by First Avenue, Avenue A, East 12th Street, and East 13th Street.
About the Google map view, what’s with the large yellow tenement close to First Avenue constructed at an angle? It’s not a backhouse, as it’s connected to 407 East 12th Street.
The building is angled that way to follow a road laid out in 1787, before the city street grid came into play. The angle followed Stuyvesant Street, “which formerly extended east from its present-day location and at a thirty-plus degree angle to the New York City grid,” states Village Preservation.
One East Village block; many long-held secrets.
