Bergen House, ca. 1880.

Known as the DeHart or Bergen House, this structure once stood on a plot west of Third Avenue near 37th and 38th Streets. The home was supposedly constructed in the mid to late 1600s for Symon (Simon) Aertszen DeHart. A record of the visit of two Labadists (a 17th-century Protestant religious community) missionaries to the home in 1679-80 notes:

"They spent one night at the house of Simon DeHart, where they supped on raw and roasted oysters, a roasted haunch of venison, a wild turkey, and a goose, and sat before a hickory fire blazing half-way up the chimney."

Passed through generations of Simon's descendants during the 1700s, the home was sold away from the DeHart/Bergen clan around the end of the 18th or early 19th century. Captured here circa 1880, the home was demolished before the turn of the 20th century.

(Sources differ on the exact location of the house. All agree it was near Third Avenue —which was on the waterfront at that point— but some say 33rd Street, others, 37th, and still others between 38th and 39th.)