Regina Kellerman: Locator of New York’s First City Hall, Dies at 84
Regina Kellerman, an architectural historian whose research led to the literal unearthing of New York City’s first City Hall, died on May 13 in Mount Vernon, N.Y. She was 84 and lived in Greenwich Village, the neighborhood in Manhattan where much of her work was focused and about whose buildings she may have known more than anyone else.
The cause was pulmonary failure, said David Hennessey, a nephew.
It was in 1970, after five years of work on a doctoral dissertation both in New York and the Netherlands, that Ms. Kellerman was able to pinpoint the exact location — on Pearl Street, near Coenties Alley — of the three-story building that was used as a stadthuis, or city hall, from 1653, when the city was incorporated by the Dutch, until 1699, when the building was torn down by the English. The site was excavated, and remnants of a building, which were removed, were found right where she said they would be.
Ms. Kellerman had a seemingly inexhaustible interest in the streets and structures of Lower Manhattan. In the early 1960s, when the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was making its initial recommendations for structures to be designated, she worked as a volunteer researcher, later becoming the commission’s research director. Her work was instrumental in the commission’s designation of historic districts in Greenwich Village in 1969 and in SoHo in 1973.
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The cause was pulmonary failure, said David Hennessey, a nephew.
It was in 1970, after five years of work on a doctoral dissertation both in New York and the Netherlands, that Ms. Kellerman was able to pinpoint the exact location — on Pearl Street, near Coenties Alley — of the three-story building that was used as a stadthuis, or city hall, from 1653, when the city was incorporated by the Dutch, until 1699, when the building was torn down by the English. The site was excavated, and remnants of a building, which were removed, were found right where she said they would be.
Ms. Kellerman had a seemingly inexhaustible interest in the streets and structures of Lower Manhattan. In the early 1960s, when the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was making its initial recommendations for structures to be designated, she worked as a volunteer researcher, later becoming the commission’s research director. Her work was instrumental in the commission’s designation of historic districts in Greenwich Village in 1969 and in SoHo in 1973.