NOHO, Manhattan — Sixty years ago, the Merchant’s House Museum in NoHo was the first building in Manhattan to receive landmark status. But for far longer, the house has been a home to some of the city’s most well-known ghosts, former residents who, the lore goes, never really moved out.

The building was inhabited by the Tredwell family from 1835 to 1933. The family patriarch, the merchant Seabury Tredwell, lived there with his wife and their seven children. The youngest child, Gertrude was born at the house and lived there her whole life before dying at 93. She has been said to haunt the building ever since.

“Her story really speaks to people because it’s incredibly romantic,” if you ask the founder and owner of Boroughs of the Dead Walking Tours, Andrea Janes, who also co-authored A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts, written with Leanna Renee Hieber. The book focuses on the lives of real women behind well-known ghost stories.

Janes says the ghost story stems from Gertrude having never gotten married. Seabury Tredwell never approved of Gertrude’s beloved gentleman caller and so she remained single.

“The spinster trope is a very powerful trope in ghost lore because all women left alone seem to attract or become ghosts,” according to Janes. She thinks that a genuine love for the house might be what truly motivates Gertrude’s ghost to hang around.

“How powerful and how inspiring to have this home and Gertrude be one in the same,” and that “when you’re here you do feel her and it is really beautiful,” says Janes.

While Andrea hasn’t encountered Gertrude herself, she suspects Seabury might’ve reached out. Janes recalls feeling a cold brush against her shoulder while standing near the Seabury portrait in the parlor.

The Merchant’s House Museum is open to the public and stages the house for Halloween to recall the days after Seabury’s death. It also offers candlelight tours. Learn more here.