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By J. Owen Grundy
But the little place has persistently been called the Old Oyster House, and it could be that it once served this purpose this purpose also. I.N. Phelps Stokes, the late celebrated Village neighbor in Grove Street, tells us in his "Iconography of Manhattan Island" that the neighborhood around Weehawken Street was an old oyster market where boats with heavily laden nets came in daily. Many oldtimers remember it as the home of the old fellow who ran the adjoining grog shop that faced the river.
Thomas A. Janvier, in his "In Old New York," explains that there were two settlements of a humbler sort on the shore of the North River. One of these, he says, was known as lower Greendwich, being at the foot of what is now Spring Street, then Brannan Street, while the other was at the foot of Christopher Street, then called Skinner Road. Of this latter settlement, the little house in Weehawken Street is perhaps a lone survivor. It was one of a row of five.
The Commissioners' Map drawn in 1797, when the State Prison (the forerunner of Sing Sing) was to be erected at the Site, shows an indentation to accommodate the little row. Janvier hazards the conjecture that the little houses may have been the ones indicaed on the Ratzen Map as standing at this point as early as 1767.
Today the little house in Weehawken Street still stands, not much changed for all its century and a half or more of humble existence. With a fresh coat of green paint, it looks rather proud of itself. Within, we found the reason why. Its present occupant, Capt. George A. Hunt, a retired mariner, comes from Maine. "Down East way, where I come from," he explained between puffs of his old black briar, "folks have an 'appreciashun' for things that seen a season or two. We don't believe in tearin' 'em down just 'cause they're old. Now take this place. I bought it couple of years or so ago. BOught it cheap, don't mind tellin'er. You wouldn't give ten cents for it the way t'was then. But I fixed it all up inside, reinforced it and everything. Just suits me now. And I've got a livin' here besides."
We were standing in the little store connected with the house, facing on West Street. On the wall hangs an enlargement of the drawing which appears in this week's Villager. We could see he was proud that the archaic place had a history behind it. Opposite the piers, he is in the environment he knows best. His shop deals in work clothes, canvas gloves, tobacco, and a strange assortment of odds and ends desired by the seafarers and dockwallopers, who constitute his friends and customers. "since the war, business has been pretty good here," he said, "plenty of shipping going in cross the way, you know. After this is over, I 'spose it'll fall off, like everything else. But still I'll be satisfied. I can afford to take it easy. Besides, I like the old place."
Originally appeared in the Villager on June 28, 1945
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