[Father Fagan Square.]
1977
[Father Fagan Square.]
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.