Serenade For A New York City Ghost

By Vera Haller | Newsday.com

3:26 PM EDT, October 24, 2002

Walk into the Merchants House Museum on East 4th Street and you are transported back in time, to the genteel life of wealthy New York in the 19th century.

Every detail of the house -- from the wrought iron staircase leading to the front door to the mahogany dining room table to the four poster beds -- has been preserved as though the inhabitants who lived there in the 1800s had just left for a family outing.

But according to legend, the museum holds more than a rich collection of period pieces. Some say it also is home to a ghost, the spirit of a woman who spent 93 years in the red brick townhouse, dying alone and impoverished in the bed in which she was born.

A teacup that moves from room to room, a piano playing in the middle of the night, a cold blast of air whipping through a room have all been attributed to the ghost of Gertrude Tredwell.

Pi Gardiner, the museums executive director, compares Gertrude to the character of Catherine Sloper in Henry James Washington Square, who was forced into spinsterhood by her domineering father.

Gertrude had a similar tale to tell.

She was the youngest of eight children of Eliza and Seabury Tredwell. Tredwell bought the house at 29 East 4th St. in 1835 to move his family away from the bustle of the South Street seaport where he worked as a successful hardware merchant.

According to the familys history, Gertrude fell in love with a doctor, Lewis Walton. But her father, an Episcopalian, forbade her to marry Walton because he was Catholic.

Her heart broken, Gertrude never married and stayed in her familys home until her death in 1933.

No one knows what happened to Walton -- there are no letters, journals or diaries that detail their lives.

While Gardiner said she doesnt know for sure that the museum is haunted by Gertrude, she said she did have experiences when she first began working at the museum 10 years ago that are difficult to explain.

Climbing the stairs to the bedroom floor and above to our offices, about three-quarters of the way up, I would get a chill up my spine, such that I stopped a lot of the times, Gardiner said. I told whoever was there that I was their friend, I come in peace.

The chills stopped after a while, maybe because now Gertrude trusts me to take care of the house and Im safe, Gardiner said with a laugh.

The list of inexplicable occurrences is long. Gardiner recalls stories of sightings of a woman in a gray dress and white collar who descended the staircase in the early morning to reports of piano music wafting from the front parlor in the middle of the night.

Weve had a number of parapsychologists and experts in the paranormal, as well as psychics, who have come through and told us their theories on why Gertrude is here, Gardiner said. Some people say she is upset and doesnt want to leave the house because of Dr. Lewis Walton. ... The most common explaination is that Gertrude is here taking care of the house.

Every Halloween, as peoples attention turns to the supernatural, the museum gets e-mails, phone calls and letters with requests related to Gertrudes ghost.

Gardiner said often they are psychics asking to talk to Gertrude.

This year, she got an especially unusual request -- a harpist wanting to come to the museum to serenade Gertrude.

Beverly Russell, originally of New Jersey but now living in England, said she was playing at several haunted locations as part of a project for a group, Harping for Harmony, which seeks to promote harp playing.

Having seen a story on television about Gertrude and the Merchants House Museum, she decided to contact Gardiner before passing through New York this month and arranged to come to the museum.

Ive been playing for ghosts now for quite a few months. ... Its just something I find very comforting for me, its a contact with the other side, Russell said.

She said that when she first entered the second-floor bedroom where Gertrude was born and died, she felt a cold whoosh of air, like the blast of an air conditioner, sweep through the room. Undeterred, she proceeded to play.

When I heard her (Gertrudes) story, her broken heart and such, I just felt connected and I wanted to play for her, Russell said.