Merchant’s House Museum

When hatter and builder Joseph Brewster finished the brick-and-marble rowhouse at 29 East Fourth Street in 1832, the street was one of the most fashionable in New York. In 1835 he sold it to Seabury Tredwell, a hardware merchant who had just retired, and Tredwell moved in with his wife Eliza and their children. The youngest of their eight children, Gertrude, was born in an upstairs bedroom in 1840.

The neighbourhood changed around them, but the Tredwells stayed. Seabury died in 1865 and Eliza in 1882; only three of the children married, and the unmarried sisters lived on in the house. Gertrude outlived them all, growing poorer as the century turned, and died in the upstairs front bedroom in 1933, at 93 – nearly a hundred years after the family had moved in. George Chapman bought the house and opened it as a museum in 1936 with the family’s furniture, clothes and belongings still inside. It is the only 19th-century family home in New York City to survive intact, and a National Historic Landmark since 1965.

Reports of Gertrude’s ghost began soon after the museum opened, and staff, volunteers, neighbours and passersby have added to them ever since: a woman in 19th-century dress seen in the house, footsteps, creaking floorboards, doors slamming, voices calling and unexplained smells. The museum says at least eight people died in the house over the years and invites visitors to decide for themselves.

Unusually, the museum leans into the question rather than away from it. Since 2007 paranormal investigator Dan Sturges has studied the house, and during the 2020 pandemic closure the museum ran research in the empty building. Each October it offers candlelight ghost tours, which combine the Tredwell family’s real history with the stories told about them.

A woman in period dress – usually identified as Gertrude Tredwell – plus footsteps, voices calling, slamming doors, creaking floors and unexplained smells, reported by staff, volunteers, visitors and neighbours.

The upstairs bedrooms, especially the front bedroom where Gertrude was born and died, the staircase, the double parlors and the basement kitchen; reports come by day and during evening ghost tours.

The Merchant’s House’s candlelight ghost tours are among Manhattan’s most popular October events, and the house is a fixture of New York ghost books and TV specials. It also plays a part in New York preservation history, as a survivor fought over by preservationists and developers.