Marion Dickerman & Nancy Cook Residence / Molly Dewson & Polly Porter Residence
overview
This building was one of many apartment houses in Greenwich Village that attracted same-sex couples.
After its completion in 1923, this was home to a number of women in the circle of Eleanor Roosevelt, notably partners Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook and partners Molly Dewson and Polly Porter.
Eleanor Roosevelt, Marion Dickerman, and Nancy Cook in Campobello, June 1926. Photographer and source unknown.
Eleanor Roosevelt with Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook at Val-Kill in an undated photo. Source: National Park Service.
Nancy Cook and Eleanor Roosevelt at Val-Kill in an undated photo. Source unknown.
Molly Dewson at the Social Security Board, 1937. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
171 West 12th Street, c. 1965. Photo by John Barrington Bayley. Courtesy of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
History
The small apartments that proliferated in Greenwich Village in the 1920s attracted single men and women and childless couples, including many same-sex couples. The apartment house at 171 West 12th Street, built in 1922, was home to several lesbian couples active in progressive politics.
The most prominent early residents were Marion Dickerman (1890-1983) and Nancy Cook (1884-1962) who formed a lifelong partnership in the 1910s. Dickerman was an educator who was involved with the Todhunter School, a progressive school for girls, while Cook became the head of the women’s division of the State Democratic Committee. It is through this work that they met Eleanor Roosevelt. Together the three women built Stone Cottage, which adjoined the Roosevelt mansion grounds, in Hyde Park, and established the Val-Kill furniture company. Dickerman and Roosevelt may also have been romantically involved.
Also residents of the building were Molly Dewson (Mary Dewson; 1874-1962) and her partner Polly Porter (Mary G. Porter; 1884-1972). They were also friends of Eleanor Roosevelt, largely through Dewson’s work with the New York Consumers’ League where she and Roosevelt successfully campaigned for a 1930 law limiting women to a 48-hour work week. Dewson also headed the women’s division of the Democratic National Committee where she worked to get women to vote for Franklin Roosevelt.
Landmark Designations for LGBT Significance
In 1992, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission’s (LPC) first edition of Guide to New York City Landmarks was written by architectural historian Andrew S. Dolkart. The book included two LGBT mentions, one of which was 171 West 12th Street, making them the LPC’s earliest explicit acknowledgment of LGBT sites. Dolkart went on to co-found the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project in 2015.
Entry by Andrew S. Dolkart, project director (March 2017).
NOTE: Names above in bold indicate LGBT people.
Building Information
- Architect or Builder: Emilio Levy
- Year Built: 1922
Sources
Blanche Weisen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 2 volumes (New York: Viking, 1992).
Susan Ware, Partner and I: Mary Dewson, Feminism and New Deal Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).
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