Leroy Place & DePau Row

In the 1830s, Bleecker Street became a prestigious address in New York City, with developments like Leroy Place and DePau Row. Leroy Place, designed by Alexander Jackson Davis for Isaac G. Pearson, a wealthy merchant and builder, was a row of identical, attached, Federal-style townhouses with continuous front yards. They were built from granite, attracting wealthy residents like the Clintons and Beekmans. DePau Row, built by Francis DePau, featured six unified houses with the city's first ornamental iron verandah, home to figures like A.T. Stewart. The houses had cast-iron communal balconies tied together, called “English Terrace Row”. Isaac Pearson petitioned the City to rename the block after the prominent international trader, Jacob LeRoy (Jacob LeRoy’s inventor of the Jell-O's grandfather.)

In the 1840s, the newly built Depau Row on Bleecker between Thompson and Sullivan Streets was home to well-to-do New Yorkers. By the 1890s, right, it was thought of as a wretched place, and was replaced by a bachelor hotel, left, later in the decade.By the mid-19th century, both developments declined as commercialism spread, leading to their eventual demolition.