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520 West End Avenue

terrace house in Manhattan, New York

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ4640142 ↗
Source-derived summary

520 West End Avenue, also known as the John B. and Isabella Leech Residence, is a landmarked mansion on the northeast corner of West End Avenue and 85th Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

The house, built as a single-family residence, was built in 1892 as the residence of Isabella and John B. Leech. Leech was a prosperous cotton broker. The architect was Clarence F. True. At the time the Leech residence was built, West End Avenue was lined with homes belonging to prosperous families.

520 West End Avenue is a Romanesque Revival building, built of blocks of rusticated limestone on the first two floors with tan-colored Roman brick above. The detailing draws on Gothic Revival and Elizabethan Revival styles. Built on a corner lot, it was one of the largest homes on a street of townhouses. For a time it housed the Gordon-Winston School. It is now an apartment building.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “520 West End Avenue” is terrace house in Manhattan, New York. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through West, Avenue and terrace, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1892—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1892. For this dossier, West, Avenue and terrace is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “terrace house in Manhattan, New York” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4640142. Authority coordinates are 40.788, -73.978. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1892.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “520 West End Avenue”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 520 West End Avenue primary sources, 520 West End Avenue archive and West research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “520 West End Avenue”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “520 West End Avenue” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.