Tour of NYC's Most Haunted Landmark: the Merchant's House

[00:00:00]What up everybody? Look at us, huh? We're outside of the Merchant's House Museum.

[00:00:05]We're going to do a special tour today.

[00:00:06]I'm going to take you inside this the first ever landmark building in New York. Pretty cool, 1965. But this thing is located here on 4th Street in the NoHo area. Before we start, guys, like and subscribe. Get that out of the way.

[00:00:17]You could kick back and just enjoy your pita chips or veggie straws or whatever you're eating. Check out the Patreon and all that. That's a huge help. There are extras on there. It's how fun these things, all that. Without further ado, I'm going to be joined by a special guest. He is a tour guide, historian, works here with the Merchant's House.

[00:00:33]Please welcome to the stage, I guess, Roland, everybody.

[00:00:38]>> Hey, how you doing?

[00:00:39]>> How you doing? Put her there.

[00:00:40]>> Good, good.

[00:00:40]>> All right.

[00:00:41]>> coming.

[00:00:41]>> Of course, thank you so much for having me. So, could you tell us something real quick about this house?

[00:00:46]>> Yeah, so the house was built in 1832.

[00:00:48]All of the merchants were moving up the city to find a wealthy residential enclave. Joseph Brewster built the house and he was a hatter. He sold top hats.

[00:00:57]>> Wait, what? Top hats? What? That's crazy. I noticed too that the house is covered in scaffolding right now, unfortunately, so we can't really see the front. They're doing some work on it. Well, we're going to go inside.

[00:01:07]That's the important part. We're going to talk about the history and also this is one of the most haunted places in New York City and we're going to talk about that as well. And I'm going to change out of this because it is hot as hell.

[00:01:17]Where all those spirits reside.

[00:01:20]>> [music] >> All right, so we're walking in through the front door of the house. It was built by a man named Joseph Brewster, then eventually got sold to a man named Seabury Tredwell and his wife Eliza, who had eight kids eventually and they basically made this their home.

[00:01:40]>> And they would have mainly used this door that we just came in when you were looking rich and fabulous. If you went into the other part of the house, that underground there, you would go into the family room, which is where they mainly entered and exited the house. This was mainly for show.

[00:01:52]>> Don't want to break anything, so let's keep it moving. So, now we are in the first room. This is the parlor room, right? This is kind of like the fancy room for entertainment. [music] They didn't hang out here as much as they did entertain people when they came over. Do you got the original piano, correct? It's the original piano.

[00:02:05]>> 1830s Nunns and Fischer.

[00:02:06]>> Yeah, and this is where people would come like at the end of the night after having the food or whatever, they have their quail or whatever you eat back then, and they would sit down [music] and someone would play a tune and they'd sing along and stuff, right?

[00:02:16]>> Yeah, they've actually said that's sort of like the Rolls-Royce [music] in the driveway. That because it was such a fancy piano that that's what you wanted in your family.

[00:02:22]>> Now this is a good time to mention as well that this is a haunted house.

[00:02:25]People have reported certain things about this piano. Could you talk about that?

[00:02:29]>> Yeah, of course. People have heard it from outside at night when nobody is here.

[00:02:32]>> They were hearing notes and everything even though the piano wasn't working.

[00:02:34]Like so the people would walk by and they were hearing, I don't know, Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen or I don't know.

[00:02:40]And they're like, "Well, what the heck's going on?" But but yeah, they they fixed it and then it stopped playing.

[00:02:44]>> Yes. House was built in 1832 by Joseph Brewster, who is a huge part of our story now because he is the one that we've linked to the underground railroad passage, which was found actually when the museum was open.

[00:02:53]>> We'll talk about that. Don't you worry guys, we're going to talk about that, too. So he he buys it, sells it to Seabury Treadwell, and Treadwell's family basically inhabits it for almost the next 100 years.

[00:03:01]>> Yeah, $18,000.

[00:03:03]>> $18,000.

[00:03:05]Ah, [sighs and gasps] man, to be able to take a time machine back to then and you know, buy a house. Then I'd be dead by now, so who why would I want to do that?

[00:03:12]And this is the dining room just opposite the parlor room.

[00:03:15]Uh I was hoping you could talk about this if this furniture is very famous.

[00:03:17]Is it Duncan Phyfe, right? Could you talk about this?

[00:03:19]>> mahogany table and 12 chairs that were bought [music] for the house and have been in the house the entire time.

[00:03:24]>> Mhm.

[00:03:25]>> You don't get that at IKEA. Tell you that right now. Now I think an important thing to mention is the plaster work which has been lauded by ornamental [music] plaster experts.

[00:03:32]>> Yeah, this plaster is total work of art.

[00:03:35]Each piece is hand done. So [music] everything is put in there. It's not like you went to Lowe's and got some big piece, stuck it up there. Everything in here is is artwork. [music] >> Yeah, and part of the reason it's all original and still in the family's collection is because of Gertrude who lived here. She was the youngest [music] of Seabury Treadwell's daughters who basically was born in the house, died in the house, never married.

[00:03:53]>> She stayed in the house from 1840. She was born here and she died in 1933.

[00:03:57]>> [music] >> So, imagine the amount of history that she saw in that time period.

[00:04:00]>> And luckily we have uh we have her right behind us watching us right behind our shoulders.

[00:04:05]>> Only he can see her.

[00:04:06]>> Yeah. Uh you wait, you guys don't see her?

[00:04:08]>> I can't see her.

[00:04:10]>> I got to get out of here.

[00:04:11]>> saying that, but >> All right. Well, this is a very cool room. You can still It's very pretty. It says, "Please do not touch." So, I will not touch it.

[00:04:17]Uh and we'll keep moving to the next spot.

[00:04:20]>> [music] >> All right. So, now we're in the back bedroom on the second floor. This uh is the room that Gertrude Treadwell, who lived here till 1933, was born in and then in 1840 in this bed, this actual bed. This is also, supposedly, not not to spoil anything, the the most haunted room in the house, right? So, what have they done to to prove that?

[00:04:42]>> Well, we actually had a really good event just a year or two ago where three people on one of our tours, totally separate from each other, saw a woman roaming around behind the tour guide.

[00:04:51]>> Mhm.

[00:04:51]>> While the tour was going on. So, only three people saw her though. None of the other people did. And that was only two years ago.

[00:04:58]>> Yikes. And I I've heard that people have felt when they're walking through the hall, they feel people brushing past them.

[00:05:03]>> Yeah, people here singing. They smell cigars.

[00:05:07]>> Yeah, cuz they smell tobacco, right? In in Seabury's room cuz he used to tobacco guys. So, that all these things that still happen [music] to this day. Have you ever had anything happen? Have you ever seen anything?

[00:05:14]>> Nope. I'm waiting.

[00:05:16]>> You're waiting, huh?

[00:05:17]>> I'm I'm asking.

[00:05:18]>> Oh. Boo!

[00:05:20]>> See, it didn't scare me.

[00:05:21]>> I tried. I tried. This furniture, too, also original? Is that right?

[00:05:25]>> Yes, all this is original. That's the bathtub where they took a bath, probably once a month.

[00:05:30]>> Wow.

[00:05:30]>> The uh child sick bed slash uh guest bed.

[00:05:34]>> This would have been Eliza's room originally, Seabury's uh wife, uh which was separate from his bedroom, which we're going to walk in here in a second.

[00:05:41]They kept separate bedrooms.

[00:05:42]>> Yes.

[00:05:43]>> Oh, look at that. Uh you say that's progress. They But maybe that maybe they had it right. Maybe Eight children. They had eight children. Maybe you know, separate bedrooms is the answer to a happy marriage. And this would be where Seabury is good name, Seabury.

[00:05:56]This is where he where he would have lived and also where Gertrude died.

[00:06:00]>> Yeah, I mean Gertrude died in this bed and so did Seabury Treadwell in 1865 end [music] of the Civil War. So you can imagine what was going on outside in the streets in that year. And eight other people of the family died in this bed.

[00:06:12]>> Wow.

[00:06:12]>> It's set up so it's still his study. So we have his writing desk there as if he's writing and doing some work.

[00:06:17]>> Yeah, writing all his letters to people and stuff. Back when they wrote letters.

[00:06:21]People wrote cursive. Pretty cool.

[00:06:25]What are these dresses you guys have around the house? [music] >> So Pam Long is our textile conservator and she does an amazing job of keeping all the dresses and the collection from that intact. [music] There's 300 articles of clothing from the >> Wow.

[00:06:39]>> from Gertrude that she saved. This dress is 1900s and kind of shows the scope because one of the other dresses in the other room is from 19 is from 1850. So 1850 1860.

[00:06:51]So she saved a lot over a long period of >> Wow. Is that the chamber pot there, the bedpan?

[00:06:56]>> That is the wash up. There's a chamber pot.

[00:06:58]>> Oh, okay.

[00:06:59]Yeah, I guess you wouldn't keep the chamber pot up so high. That's kind of gross. You don't want to You also don't have to climb up there to go to the bathroom. So before we go upstairs, I wanted to show you guys one quick thing. This is the passageway that connects Eliza and Seabury's bedroom and they discovered a passageway, a secret passageway. You can see it right down here that is believed to be part of the underground railroad.

[00:07:19]>> So the house was built in 1832. Joseph Brewster as we mentioned, he's a hatter.

[00:07:23]He builds the house. He lives here for 3 years with his wife and in that time period she approved for this passageway to be built. It doesn't exist in any other houses in New York City of this time period. So there's no logical reason for it to be there.

[00:07:36]As you can see it is built into the dresser and under [music] the dresser and it goes down to where the pocket doors are in the parlor.

[00:07:42]>> And those of you who don't know, the Underground Railroad was a basically a system of passageways, checkpoints, meeting points, uh what they would call conductors, people who would ferry people from one spot to the next. A lot of times from the border states into the north and then into Canada to uh freedom for escaped slaves. Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, another famous spot, what they called the Grand Central of the Underground Railroad. Uh so all of these things were these interconnected uh from like the late 1700s up until the Civil War. They basically believe people would >> would go down this here. This is the passageway. You take both drawers out.

[00:08:13]Of course, it didn't look like that.

[00:08:14]You'd pull the drawers out like the other side and then go down into it and stay for an designated amount of time.

[00:08:20]It wasn't like you stayed there for a long time. It was like hiding spot.

[00:08:23]>> Yeah. And it was dangerous, too. Even though New York uh freed they freed their slaves here at completely in 1827, it was still very dangerous cuz you had the fugitive slave acts that incentivized people to return slaves and punish people who didn't.

[00:08:36]>> And it was so tied to the economy because they were still making a lot of money here. New York was being built on money. Money, money, money.

[00:08:42]>> New York was being built on money, huh?

[00:08:44]For a change. All right. So now we are upstairs in the servants' quarters, correct? There would have been four servants, right? Four servants here?

[00:08:51]>> Irish servants.

[00:08:51]>> Yeah. And this is uh presumably what one of them would have looked like, I guess.

[00:08:55]>> And their name would have probably been Bridget. Bridget. Cuz there was a thing in the 1800s where they called all the servants Bridgets. Really? There were so many Bridgets. Yeah. It was just a way they changed houses so much that they would just call them the Bridgets.

[00:09:08]>> Cuz it's obviously a lot less ornate [music] than downstairs. You have the like the size beds like this, original kind of size, along with the 19th century bedbugs, probably.

[00:09:17]>> Well, that's why most furniture they have is metal because they would not have wanted to have them spread bedbugs cuz the prejudice is where they they were dirty, etc., etc. >> Yeah. [music] Servants, they were on call 24 hours a day. Like it wasn't like you could punch in, punch out. They had bells, which we'll see in the kitchen, but these bells that they could ring them any time they wanted to, right?

[00:09:36]>> Yes, there's actually one of the bells right down this hallway we can see.

[00:09:39]>> Yeah, it's also uh good that we have the servants quarters cuz it brings up all the stories of immigration.

[00:09:43]>> Yeah, cuz the immigrants had to take whatever jobs were available to them and the Irish they gravitated towards the servants cuz around that time, you know, you had this prosperous class coming up.

[00:09:52]They needed help with family and things like that and you got eight kids here.

[00:09:55]That's crazy.

[00:09:56]>> Yeah, and more and more of these houses are being built so more and more of them are getting jobs.

[00:10:00]>> There's also a a manual elevator here, too, no? It's one of the >> Yeah, they thought it was too modern when they made it a museum in 1936 so they took that out. Now, of course, we wish that they had left it. It would have been right at the end of this hallway, but they took it out. We just have to crank it.

[00:10:14]>> A hand crank elevator. Imagine having to do that. That's your job. It's like, I got to crank so these lazy bastards can't take the stairs. All right, anyways, let's go check out the kitchen.

[00:10:29]So, this would be the kitchen. Uh you have the bells up there. I think that's kind of cool. Those are the little bells they would ring to get the servants, right?

[00:10:35]>> Yep, the 1800s intercom system. Each bell would have a different tone that would go to each room so you could just hear the bell and the tone and know what room to go to. You wouldn't have to like read anything, write anything, etc. You could just go where the tone of the bell was. So, there's the beehive oven and then they upgraded to this. That hearth would have just been an open hearth.

[00:10:54]When they upgraded to those gasoliers, they got this oven and that would have changed everything for them.

[00:10:59]>> Right. Yeah, that's like going from like Magic Bullet to a microwave.

[00:11:03]>> Nice. Yeah, I'm saving up for a microwave right now so I I get what you're saying. There was once a school group that came here and a child wandered away from the group and then was was they found him later and he's like, "Oh, where they're like, "Where were you?" and he said, "I was talking to the man." They're like, "What? That's weird. That's >> [music] >> freaking Charlie or whatever." And on the way out he points to a painting.

[00:11:21]He's like, "That's the guy I was talking to." And it was a painting of Seabury Treadwell. Is that right?

[00:11:24]>> Yep. That's actually happened twice.

[00:11:26]>> And other stuff has happened, too, like appearances of of Gertrude, obviously, and uh you know, [music] sounds, music and >> She's the first one on file. They were out front after her death and the house was locked and boarded up and she appeared on the front porch, opened the door, came out, shooed children off the front porch, and then went back in and all the neighbors recognized that it was Gertrude and she'd been dead for weeks.

[00:11:46]In this room even people will smell baking bread.

[00:11:49]Of course, none of this is working and nobody is baking bread. I mean, the family would have really never come into this room. Maybe Eliza because the woman of her stature servants >> They had a chef, they had like a chef's helper, they had a parlor maid, correct?

[00:12:01]>> and then what was it? Chambermaid?

[00:12:03]>> chambermaid >> Which is the one you probably did not want to get because that goes in term with chamber pot.

[00:12:08]>> Oh boy, that's a tough that's a tough gig. And they weren't paid very much.

[00:12:12]>> No, like a $2 a month perhaps and one afternoon off a week. It was really, really hard work, but they did get a clean place to stay, roof over their head, room and board, you know, medical >> You get health insurance, that's more than I get for making these videos.

[00:12:30]>> I can play that.

[00:12:30]>> It was not easy, but these are the immigrants that went on to form America and make, you know, become tailors and bakers and all of that.

[00:12:39]>> Nice.

[00:12:42]This is what would have been the family room. This is where everyone would have hung out and kind of just, you know, talked about the hot gossip of the time.

[00:12:48]>> eaten an apple, had a cup of tea, read a book.

[00:12:50]>> These are the original apples from 1832, right?

[00:12:53]>> They are they petrified here?

[00:12:54]>> Yeah.

[00:12:55]>> As I mentioned, [music] you entered through the door that's right out here.

[00:12:58]You did the front door was the one that was used [music] for when you looked rich and glamorous. So you would come in this door and you would come into the family room and this is where they hung out and were casual.

[00:13:06]>> Yeah.

[00:13:06]>> Something interesting is that there's still a black marble fireplace down here. That's cuz if you notice these windows are we're half level below ground, so it would have been cooler in the summer, warmer in the winters.

[00:13:18]But there's also a saying that if somebody came along and was trying to see what you had in your house, they would still see the black marble and they would [music] still be impressed by your wealth.

[00:13:26]>> Yeah, remember this is back when people didn't have like Instagram and stuff, so you can't really brag about what [music] you have. So, you got to have the windows showing your coolest stuff. You have your hoop dresses and everything, you know?

[00:13:35]>> The >> The ceilings are lower. It's definitely much more casual here.

[00:13:38]>> Yeah, you can see you can almost touch the ceilings [music] here. So, >> But for the people that height back then, this would have been like, you know, three times higher. Cuz everyone back then was 2 ft [music] 3 in tall.

[00:13:48]That was the average height. All right, well, we made the trip through the museum, through the house. Uh what do you think?

[00:13:53]>> Amazing, as always.

[00:13:55]>> outside in the garden in the backyard.

[00:13:56]Very nice. All right, if you ever come visit you can check it out. But I I wanted to mention the developer that just uh is in this process of trying to build something next to the museum, endangering the foundation of the museum, the museum itself.

[00:14:07]>> Yeah, so we're up against development next door, and it's not that the Merchant's House is against development.

[00:14:11]What we're against is that this is an 1800s house. So, the foundation of the house is literally pretty much like a cobblestone street, which can't withstand like jackhammering and all of that that would go on to build the building. It would damage the interior of the building, handmade walls, handmade plaster, that would all come crumbling down. And now with the recent discovery of the Underground Railroad Passage, that is actually on the wall that goes to where they want to build.

[00:14:34]>> What can people do to kind of battle this?

[00:14:36]>> We uh have a petition you can go online and sign. We really love when people come in, post pictures. We have many things throughout the year. We do uh the ghosts month is coming up in October. We have Christmas. People coming in and really word of mouth.

[00:14:50]>> Don't let this video be a replacement for visiting the house. Thank you for watching, obviously, but uh you know, come to the house, too. That's a very important thing. You got to come visit these things. IRL, people.

[00:14:58]>> Thank you so much.

[00:14:58]>> Give it up for Rowland there in your in your living rooms. Clap in your living rooms. I can see you.

[00:15:03]>> And everybody, please come in and visit.

[00:15:04]>> Yeah. But yeah, guys, thank you so much for watching, and uh and yeah, I appreciate it. You know, like and subscribe, do all that if you haven't yet. Check out the Patreon. Uh extras there, extra stuff, and yeah, I don't know, man. It's time to get out of here.

[00:15:17]We got to go uh got to go walk around.

[00:15:19]>> Ghost hunt.

[00:15:20]>> Yeah, let's go hunt some ghosts. Huh?

[00:15:22]Maybe we'll go find one at the burrito place down the street.