Richard [Nicholls] Harison / Harrison - Onondaga and Oswego ...

early, three-story dwellings combined (in 1888) into one building with a commercial base. Sharing the same lot, but with its main
facade on Greenwich Street, is a five-story brick tenement, ornamented with Renaissance Revival elements.
The Harrison Street streetbed was repaved in 1936 with granite pavers. Portions of that surface are still visible despite the more
recently applied asphalt.
Historical Summary
Harrison Street was among the streets named by the Vestry of Trinity Church in 1790, laid out by the Common Council in 1795, and
deeded to the City by the church in 1802. The street was first paved in 1811 and 1820. The name Harison, as it was spelled in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, had long been associated with the area of Harrison Street. The extensive brewery
facility developed by George Harison, and others, between Greenwich Street and the North River appears on the 1766 "Plan of the
City of New York." This facility was offered for sale in 1776, but the subsequent ownership of this property during the late eighteenth
century remains undetermined. Perhaps the brewery site stayed in the Harison family, as suggested by the 1824 sale by Richard
and Frances [Ludlow] Harison of several lots on the blocks bounded by Harrison, Greenwich, Jay, and West Streets, property which
could have been the former site of the brewery.
It seems likely that when, in 1790, the Vestry of Trinity Church was naming the street, it was honoring Richard Harison, the then
prominent public official and officer of Trinity Church, rather than the former brewery owner. Richard Harison served Trinity Church
as a vestryman in 1783, and from 1788 until 1811, and as a warden from 1811 until 1827. Harison also held the positions of Clerk of
the Corporation of Trinity Church at the time of the rebuilding of Trinity Church, and was the first comptroller of Trinity Church,
retiring from that position in 1827. Richard Harison was one of the most prominent attorneys in the city and held the offices of
Recorder of the City, as well as Counsel and Attorney, from 1798 until 1807; he was a Federalist-slate delegate to the New York
State convention which ratified the Federal constitution. [sic (Richard Harison died in 1829) - President Washington appointed
Harison as auditor of the Treasury from 1791 to 1836 and as the U.S. Consul at Cadiz for five years.]
By the middle of the nineteenth century Harrison Street was completely built up with wood and masonry houses, several with stores
inserted at the ground story. The only visible reminder of that earlier period are the Greek Revival buildings at 19-21 Harrison Street,
which were combined and given a new commercial base in 1888. The earliest building on this block to be constructed for
commercial purposes is the store and loft building at 15-17 Harrison (1869). Redevelopment began in earnest in the 1880s and the
small houses were replaced by four- to seven-story store and loft buildings. The earliest structure from this period is No. 14-16, built
in 1882 as a factory for candy merchant Henry Heide. By 1885, spurred by the construction of the Mercantile Exchange on the
corner of Hudson and Harrison Streets, numerous store and loft buildings, mostly for the storage and distribution of butter, eggs and
produce, began to be developed on this street. This period of development continued through the early 1890s. In the 1890s and
later, many of these buildings were modernized by the addition of cold storage rooms, an adaptation which continued to make them
useful for the storage of dairy products through most of the twentieth century.
Two buildings on this street do not fit into this general pattern of store and loft development. These are a five-story tenement at the
southeast corner of Harrison and Greenwich Streets (1891), probably intended to house some of the many people who worked in
this food distribution area, and a small office building constructed in 1919 on the southwest corner of Hudson and Harrison Streets.
Today many of these late nineteenth-century store and loft structures have been converted to living lofts, with commercial ground
stories. Despite this change in use, Harrison Street retains much of its historic character. The most significant change in the
streetscape was the demolition of No. 3-5 in 1967; that site remains vacant.
Betsy Bradley
Virginia Kurshan
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A visitor from another province who wished to see the island might drive off in the morning along the Hudson on the road to
Greenwich, past the distilleries of George Harison and Leonard Lispenard from which he could glimpse further in land the
Mansion of Nicholas Bayard . . .
“Divided Loyalties: How the American Revolution Came to New York,” by Richard M. Ketchum, page 17.
http://books.google.com/books?id=2NZHgsedVrAC&pg=PA17&dq=%22vauxhall%22+%22george+harrison%22&hl=en&ei=yLHITK
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3pDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&sqi=2&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22vauxhall%22%20%22george
%20harrison%22&f=false
From the southern end of the island [Manhattan], in the heart of the city, Greenwich Road ran up the west side of the island along
the Hudson, or North River, passing a virtual catalog of privilege and wealth. First came Vauxhall [Gardens], an estate leased by a
British major, Thomas James. A few blocks to the east, between the road to Greenwich (later known as Greenwich Village) and he
Fresh Water Pond, was the former estate of Anthony Rutgers, where crowds gathered on Monday and Thursday evenings to watch
the fireworks, listen to a concert, and amble through the gardens. Beyond Vauxhall was the residence of George Harison,
surveyor of customs. Then came estates owned by the merchant Leonard Lispenard, Abraham Mortier, paymaster of the British
forces, Lady Warren, wife of the admiral, the importer John Jauncey, the merchant William Bayard, James DeLancey’s brother
Oliver, Colonel Thomas Clarke, and the attorney John Morin Scott.
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The Brewery in the West Ward formerly called Vauxhall and which lately belonged to George Harrison, Richard Nicholls and
James Leadbetter, is to be sold by Mrs. Jane Harrison or Richard Harrison, Esq., attorney-at-law, in the Broadway
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