[4] The brick Federal style house, which was unusually wide for its time[5] was built by Peter Stuyvesant, the great-grandson of Petrus Stuyvesant, around 1804 as a wedding present to his daughter, Elizabeth, and his son-in-law, Nicholas Fish, parents of Hamilton.

[6] The house remained in the hands of Fish family descendants until roughly the turn of the 20th century.

It served for a time as a rooming house thereafter before undergoing restoration in the 1960s.

The house is of national significance as the only surviving home of Fish, who served as Secretary of State during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant.

Fish successfully negotiated the 1871 Treaty of Washington with Great Britain, ushering in a period of peace and cooperation between the two countries.