203 Prince Street ca. 1978 The land on which 203 Prince Street stands (and the rest of the block) had formerly been part of Richmond Hill, the estate of former Vice-President Aaron Burr (who, by coincidence was arrested and charged with treason on February 19, 1807; he was later acquitted, but the charge and his killing of Alexander Hamilton so tarnished his reputation in America that he fled the country, eventually selling his property such as this). By 1833, leather inspector John P. Haff owned the property and several additional lots on the block. According to Daytonian in Manhattan, while Haff’s official profession was inspector of sole leather, he was also an authority on agricultural techniques and a speculative builder both in New York and New Jersey. In 1833 Haff began building three handsome Federal-style residences on Prince Street where well-to-do merchants had begun settling. Among these was No. 203, a Flemish bond brick home two stories tall with a dormered attic. The Haff family leased the property until ca. 1865, when it was sold. At this time, the neighborhood around No. 203 Prince had dramatically changed. No longer an enclave of the wealthy merchant class, the Eighth Ward had a growing population of poor immigrants. In 1877 the Episcopal Church of Saint Ambrose at Thompson and Prince Streets opened a mission house in 203 Prince Street, headed by the Rev. D. G. Gunn and managed by Mrs. Mary Laidlaw. Its purpose, according to The Churchman on October 13 of that year, was “to give assistance to the worthy poor, to visit the sick and needy, to relieve the distressed, to feed the hungry, and to give employment to those out of work.” Originally 2½ stories tall, the house had a full third floor added in 1888, when the original attic floor was removed. The architect carefully lined up the windows with those below and designed nearly-identical sills and lintels. Note the change in the brick pattern above the second-floor windows, from Flemish bond — alternating long and short sides of brick — to running bond — all bricks with long side exposed. Flemish bond brickwork is characteristic of federal architecture while running bond is more common to late 19th-century construction.

No. 205 Prince Street, ca. 1977. The corner house is one of two buildings said to have been constructed by Aaron Burr in 1834. Now owned by the artist Anna Thornhill and her husband Simon Nuchtern, the building today remains a residence and includes a studio for Simon's film and subtitling company, Katrina Productions. According to Thornhill, the cellar may have housed a Prohibition-era brewery. After Nuchtern and Thornhill purchased the house in the mid-70s, they hired architects James Swan and Thomas Pritchard to sketch plans for extensive renovations, including an ambitious and as-yet unrealized feature described in a 1976 New York Times feature: a roof made entirely of glass. Edmund Vincent Gillon's late 1970s photo was taken from Father Fagan Square, a small triangular plaza named after a Brazilian-born priest who died rescuing his fellow clergymen from a 1938 fire at the St. Anthony's rectory on Thompson Street.