The Preservation Commission approved the proposal, noting that the building's appearance when viewed from the street would not be substantially altered.

Although neighborhood groups, including a city-founded representative body called Manhattan Community Board 4, vociferously disagreed, the commission stood by its decision in 2016 and reiterated its approval in 2022.

Before European settlers arrived in the seventeenth century, the spot where the Walker House would be built lay on the northern edge of a Native American settlement called Sapokanikan.

[1][2] Lacking archaeological evidence and any Native American writings on the subject, current knowledge of the village comes exclusively from non-native sources.

[5][6] In the 1630s, as they expanded their holdings north from lower Manhattan, Dutch farmers mingled with the Sapokanikan villagers without serious conflict.

[7][8]: 655 A few years before the start of the war, Kieft issued a grant for farm land located where the Walker House would later be built.

In 1662, the New Netherland council granted the land jointly to Allard Anthony and Paulus Leenderts van der Grift.

[8]: 118  In 1679, Van de Grift having previously acquired Anthony's interest in the property, he sold it to Jellis Jansen Mandeville.

It is labeled "Burgomasters Bouwery" and "David Mandeville Farm" and it notes the grant from Governor Stuyvesant to Paulus Leenderts van de Grift and Allard Anthony dated March 14, 1662.

During his life, Patriots denounced him as an outspoken Loyalist; historians have since found that he was a useful informant in the intelligence service run by George Washington.

The parcel owned by Benjamin Moore was located directly to the north of the property marked "Oliver Delaney Esq.".

[20] Expressed in modern context, the estate, with the addition of Benjamin Moore's property, extended from Eighth Avenue on the east to river's edge at about Tenth Avenue on the west and from the north side of Nineteenth Street on the south to the south side of Twenty-fourth Street on the north.

Celebrated as the author of A Visit from St. Nicholas, Clement Clarke Moore was a wealthy landowner, scholar, and benefactor of the Episcopal church in New York.

At the time he received it from his parents, the estate that Captain Thomas Clarke had assembled was, as one writer said in 1892, "a quiet rural retreat on the banks of the river, far removed from the noise and bustle of the now crowded city".

The recipient was the Episcopalian church's General Theological Seminary where Moore taught Asian and Greek languages and literature.

[23][24] In 1833, Moore partnered with a builder named James N. Wells to offer leases for the construction of other buildings within the bounds of his holdings.

[25] In 1835, a real estate firm employed by Moore and Wells published an advertising map showing the lots that were available for lease, indicating which had been committed to lessees, and stating some of the restrictions placed on the leaseholds.

The map shows the lot occupied by the Walker House without any label save its number, 339, and a notation of its twenty-five-foot width.

[26] The heirs of both men continued to lease or sell empty lots and expired leaseholds into the twentieth century.

Walker, who earned his living as a grocer, complied by building a two and one-half story clapboard-sided frame house having a north-facing Federal-style facade of red brick laid in Flemish bond.

"[28] One of the new lessees who were named on the advertising map of 1835 was a friend of Moore and Wells, the merchant and real estate developer Don Alonzo Cushman.

[14] In any event, during the second half of the nineteenth century owners of the Walker House remodeled the front doorway in Greek-Revival style, raised the roof to give it a modillioned cornice, and replaced the wrought-iron railings.

[28] A 2019 article in The 'New York Times identifies the person behind the private corporation as British investment banker Ajoy Veer Kapoor.

[66] Immediately thereafter, Local groups and individuals began a campaign to prevent the owner from making the proposed changes.

The opponents included the city's local advisory committee, a representative body called Manhattan Community Board 4.

[65] A letter from the chair of Community Board 4 said that the proposed changes would, in effect, "demolish the entire house except for its brick street facade.

[68] A letter to the commission from the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation said the disrepair issue was "bogus or self-created, or both" and that some of the problems cited were caused by the owner's failure to keep the unoccupied house heated through the winter months.

[68] The Doyels, who sold the house to Kapoor in 2015, produced a letter to them from the commission's deputy counsel saying "I was in your home after its sale to the current owner when it was being inspected by an engineer from the Department of Buildings.

[67] After reviewing the critics' testimony and submissions, the commission granted permits to the owner to proceed with the proposed alterations.

[69] H5 Properties is a real estate marketing firm that specializes in producing virtual stagings and other renderings via a combination of photography and computer graphics.