The William Hyde House is not just a house but an advertisement display circa 1820s.
Built in 1822, the house not only provided the roof over the head of William Hyde, the sash-maker, but also served as the advertisement for his product – beautifully made windows.
The house is a rare example of a wooden house in Manhattan, since wood-frame homes were banned in 1866 due to the frequent and devastating fires in the city. The original house had just two stories; the third floor was added in 1870. Behind it, there is a two-story wooden structure built as Hyde’s workshop and later converted into a quaint guest house.
Subdivided into apartments in the 1920s, the building reverted to a single-family residence in the 1980s with museum-quality original features like ceiling beams, wide-plank floors, brick hearth, and distinctive clapboard siding.
According to StreetEasy, its original appraisal was said to be $100. According to Zillow, it was sold in the 1990s twice, yielding $1,255,050 in 1996 and going up to $2,220,000 in 1999. In 2019, it came on the market for a whopping $12,000,000 to be sold in 2021 for $4,999,000.
To me, it’s priceless.
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