Edward Mooney House, the oldest surviving raw house in New York City.

The oldest surviving  raw house in New York City, Edward Mooney House, is located at the corner of Bowery and Pell in Chinatown.  It was  built sometime between  1785 ( two years after the British evacuation of the City) and 1789, the year George Washington was inaugurated as first President of the United States and New York City became the first Capital of the nation.

 The land   where the house was built belonged   to  James Delancey, colonial politician  and loyalist.    James Delancey was born  in a house built by his grandfather, Stephen De Lancey. This house later became famous and known as Fraunces Tavern.  James De Lancey  assembled the largest and most select stud and stable of running horses in the colony if not the whole country. He was said to have been the “Father of the New York Turf" . James De Lancey built himself a mansion north of Broadway and Thames Street.  East and West De Lancey Farms ran from the Bowery, facing the Bayard Estates, to the East River (...)


When the British lost the war, Delancey’s assets were seized.  And Mr. Mooney bought the land from the forfeiture of James Delancey. 
 Edward Mooney  was a prominent wholesale meat purveyor.    He was an important figure in the wholesale meat business in New York and representative at   the City's  butchers in the Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen.
Mooney lived in the house until his death  in 1800. In the early 1900s this was  Barney Flynn's saloon.  It was headquarters of Chuck Connors, a local character and self-described “Mayor of Chinatown,” who led staged-to-shock slumming tours through Bowery dives and opium dens. Connors also helped future songwriter Irving Berlin get a singing waiter job on Pell Street.

A couple, Chin Po and Diana Liu bought   the building in 1991 and  sold the property in   January 2013   for almost $5.4 million, according to city records.