On 2nd Avenue, historic Isaac T. Hopper House hits the market for the first time in 149 years

A historic East Village building is for sale for the first time since (checking notes) 1874.

There's a new listing for 110 Second Ave., aka the landmarked and currently vacant Isaac T. Hopper House between Sixth Street and Seventh Street. 

Per the listing via Denham Wolf Real Estate Services: The property is vacant and provides a unique redevelopment opportunity. Asking price: $7.1 million. The building also has "+-4,628 ZFA potential excess development rights." (Any alterations to the landmarked building must go through the Landmarks Preservation Commission and other city agencies.)

The Women's Prison Association has owned it since 1874.

Here's some history of the address of No. 110, built circa 1837-1838, via Village Preservation:

This three-and-a-half-story Greek Revival structure is a rare surviving house from the period when this section of Second Avenue was one of the most elite addresses in Manhattan. Additionally, it is also a rare surviving nineteenth-century institutional presence in this ever-changing neighborhood.

The house at 110 Second Avenue was constructed as one of four houses built for brothers Ralph, Staats, and Benjamin Mead and designed in the Greek Revival style. Although the only one remaining of the original four houses, 110 Second Ave. retains much of its original details characteristic of a Greek Revival row house. The façade is clad in machine-pressed red brick laid in stretcher bond, tall parlor-level windows with a cast iron balcony, a denticulated cornice, and a brownstone portico with ionic columns supporting an entablature.

In 1839 David H. Robertson, a shipbroker and tradesman, bought the house for his widowed mother, Margaret. Three years later, however, he declared bankruptcy. The house was foreclosed, and in 1844 it was auctioned and transferred to Ralph Mead. Mead was the proprietor of Ralph Mead and Co., a wholesale grocery business. He and his second wife, Ann Eliza Van Wyck, lived at 110 Second Avenue (then No. 108) from 1845-1857. After that, they leased the house but retained ownership until 1870. It was sold in 1872 to George H. and Cornelia Ellery, who then sold it in 1874 to the Women's Prison Association ...

In 1992, the Hopper House was renovated and re-opened as a residential alternative to imprisonment for women. The residents and staff were displaced when the six-alarm fire destroyed Middle Collegiate Church next door in December 2020.

In January, the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to allow the demolition of the remains of the fire-damaged structure to allow Middle Collegiate to rebuild on the site.

Previously on EVG:

• At the first WPA Arts exhibition