The 1905 James A. Burden Jr. House -- No. 7 East 91st Street

photo by Americasroof

In 1898 Andrew Carnegie surprised New York’s wealthy class when he chose to buy land at 91^st Street for his new mansion, far north of Millionaire’s Row.   Carnegie had no intention that his proposed residence would be surrounded by neighbors of whom he did not approve; so he purchased several plots nearby that he could sell to whomever he chose.

Houses already stood on 91^st Street, just off Fifth Avenue.  At No. 7 was the home of Martin and Margaret Mulvey.  It had been the scene of an unhappy incident when the couple engaged in an argument one evening and Mulvey beat his wife to death.

Happier times would come for the address.   Three years before Carnegie bought up the land, James Abercrombie Burden, Jr. had married Florence Adele Sloane in one of the most important social weddings of the year.   Florence was the great-granddaughter of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt and daughter of the fabulously wealthy William D. Sloane.  Burden’s family’s fortune was made in the iron works founded by his grandfather in Troy, New York.  At the time of the wedding, the young groom had an annual income of more than $1 million.

Because the couple was married in Lenox, Massachusetts, Sloane made careful (and expensive) arrangements to ensure that those on the exclusive guest list arrived pampered and happy.   The New York Times called the guests “representatives of the best society of the land.”  Sloane hired special trains to transport them – Vanderbilts, Mortons, Depews and Stokes among them.    Tea was served on the way up and “Mr. Sloane gave a dinner on the train this afternoon on the return trip,” as reported in The Times.

Fifty freight cars were hired to bring 180 carriages to Lenox to transport the guests in fashion from the train station to the church.  The Curtis Hotel, one of the largest in Lenox, was emptied out for three days for the exclusive use of the wedding guests.   The wedding was, as the newspaper said, “one of the most elaborate and costly affairs of the kind ever given in this country.”

The bride received mostly jewels as gifts, which totaled around $700,000 in value.  But the bride’s father outdid them all.  He gave the couple a new mansion.

Land was purchased from Carnegie including the two plots on East 91^st Street where the Mulvey house and its next door neighbor stood.  Here the Burden mansion would rise.  Sloane commissioned architects Warren & Wetmore in 1901 to produce a grand residence that would reflect not only the wealth and status of its owners, but would have all the necessities for lavish entertaining.

Simultaneously the house next door at No. 9 was being built for Florence’s sister, Emily and her new husband John Henry Hammond – also another wedding gift from Sloane.  For the Hammond mansion, Sloane hired the esteemed firm of Carrere & Hastings.

photo by Alice Lum

 Construction on the Burden house began in 1902 and three years later the magnificent mansion was completed.   Decades later the Landmarks Preservation Commission would call it “the finest Beaux-Arts town house in the City.”

It was almost not to be, however.    On December 6, 1905 as the house was nearing completion, a workman paused to smoke his clay pipe in one of the rooms off the main hall.   He went back to work, leaving the still-lit pipe in the room.   When the foreman smelled smoke and opened the door to the room, he was hit by a rush of heat and flames.

One hundred workman rushed to the scene of the fire where carved wooden paneling was burning.  The men attempted to pry the paneling from the walls, but could not.  While firefighters were on the way, smoke blacked the Caen stone in the main hall and the Italian frescos on the domed ceiling above the staircase.  In the ballroom ceilings and walls were layered in soot.

photo by Alice Lum

The architects worked in harmony and the two houses shared a broad carriage drive.   The private entrances faced the drive rather than 91^st Street.  Frederick Field, John Hammond’s cousin who was reared in a Vanderbilt mansion on Fifth Avenue later remarked that the houses “boasted an elegant feature which our house lacked:  a drive-in entrance so that you could walk into the house from your coach or automobile without exposure to the stares of the less privileged.”

Within the drive was a stone “lodge” for the concierge who was stationed there unless the family was at home; at which time he would be found pacing up and down the covered drive.

The Burden house in 1905.  Next door is the John Hammond House, another wedding gift from Wm. Sloane -- NYPL Collection

The ballroom floor (or as the Burdens would have called it the “piano mobile”), was placed at the third floor, a surprising innovation that required guests to ascend the sweeping staircase.   The three great arched concave windows on the 91^st Street façade with the wonderful stone-and-iron balcony flooded with room with light.   On the same floor was the dining room and a reception room.    The ballroom was inspired by the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles and the walls were paneled in violet-colored marble.  Guests entered through doors 12-feet high.

The dining room (which the Times remarked should be called a “banquet room”) was used “as a supper room when dances are given and as a dining room when many dinner guests are entertained.”

The Hauteville marble staircase which the guests climbed had “a tread so low and wide that one ascends without being conscious of any effort,” reported The New York Times.

On the second and third floors, a balcony hallway with marble pillars looked down upon the stairway.  The murals on the staircase ceiling which had been soot-covered in the fire were executed by French artist Hector d’Espouy of Paris and depicted allegories of the arts.

The family quarters were on the second floor.  Here was Florence Burden’s French boudoir, furnished in gilt furniture.  The wall panels included medallion paintings.  Adjoining it was her “sleeping apartment” decorated in pale gray and turquoise, with Directoire-period furnishings.   James Burden’s bedroom was next door with “fine old mahogany furniture and green hangings.”

The high, concave arched windows of the ballroom are a focal point of the facade - photo by Alice Lum

The Burdens’ white marble and tiled bathroom was up-to-date with a tub and separate shower and, as The Times reported, “all the sorts of devices such as are used in the Turkish bath, including the needle.”

James Burden’s den was the definition of masculinity, paneled in English oak with brown leather furniture and antique carved English tables, “so old they are black.”  A Renaissance period mantle of white stone was flanked by built-in bookcases.

As was necessary at the turn of the century, there was an exotic Eastern room filled with cabinets of Japanese and Chinese curios – miniatures, carved ivory, snuff bottles and jewelry.  Japanese tapestries hung on the walls and the furniture was carved of teakwood.

Florence Burden’s portrait by Robert MacCameron was seen for the first time in February 1910 when the socialite gave a musicale – one of her favorite forms of entertainment.  The house was regularly alive with dinners, dances and musicales, with soloists from the Metropolitan Opera Company often providing the vocals.

On June 18, 1910 the Burdens were off in the Adirondacks, leaving the house in the hands of their 17 servants.  Taking advantage of their absence, the family chauffeur took the large touring car for a spin.   Along with him were two women, Susan McGee and Frances Burke.  The trio was having a great time in the Burden car.  But they were all, unfortunately, drunk.

The chauffeur careened across 129^th Street towards Lexington Avenue, swerving from side to side, until he drove directly into the side of a taxi cab.  The front axle of the Burden car was broken, the mudguards town away and the running board split.  The chauffeur ran away.

The joy ride had come to an abrupt end and the drunken young ladies were taken away to be booked on the charge of intoxication.

The Burdens accomplished a tremendous social coup when, in 1924, the Prince of Wales used Woodside, their Long Island country home in Syosset during his visit.  It would be in the same house, eight years later, that James A. Burden, Jr. would die of an embolism.

The widowed Florence Adele Burden left the house on East 91^st Street.    On December 16, 1933 the engagement of John Jacob Astor to Eileen S. S. Gillespie was announced.   “In the prospect of his marriage to Miss Gillespie, Mr. Astor had taken a long lease on the spacious house of Mrs. James A. Burden, 7 East Ninety-first Street,” reported The Times.

The lease included all of the Burden furnishings and artwork.   The Astors lived in the Burden house for several years, then on April 21, 1938 the contents were sold at auction by Florence, who was now Mrs. Richard M. Tobin.  Among the items sold by Parke-Bernet Galleries were 18^th Century Brussels tapestries, Adam-period furniture and artwork.  The $31,591 yield is equivalent to about $480,000 today.

Within months the Convent of the Sacred Heart purchased the mansion.  Five years earlier it had procured the immense Otto Kahn mansion next door at the corner of Fifth Avenue.     The private, all-girl school was among the most elite in Manhattan and the Burden House would be used for grades pre-kindergarten through 4.  Among the young ladies who would attend here were Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt and just about all the Kennedy girls:  Caroline Kennedy, Ethel Skakel Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Jean Kennedy Smith and Joan Bennet Kennedy.

In 1994 the Convent spent about $250,000 on masonry and ironwork repairs and façade cleaning.  Although the Landmark Commission called it “the finest Beaux Arts town house in the City,” the AIA Guide to New York City said “We’d rather dub it the finest Renaissance Palazzo, austere, monumental, and master of the street.”

However you decide to tag it, the AIA Guide got it right when they added “Those lucky students.”

The Resiliant 1887 Webster Hall -- 121 East 11th Street

At a time when most Victorian architects in New York City were vying for prestigious commissions for which they would be long-remembered, Charles Rentz, Jr. toiled away in his office in the German Savings Bank Building designing tenement buildings and middle-class apartment houses in the Lower East Side, along with some factories and stables.

Until 1880 the aspiring architect was listed in the city directory as a beer dealer; however by 1886 his architectural business had grown to the point that he had to move to his roomier office in the bank building. That same year construction began on his most memorial project: Webster Hall.

In July of that year former cigar-manufacturer Charles Goldstein had leased the land at No. 119-123 East 11th Street from Rutherford Stuyvesant for the hefty sum of $2000 a year. Goldman was in the meeting and dance hall business by now, already owning the popular Clinton Garden. He moved quickly to develop his new project. Only a month later the Real Estate Record & Builders Guide mentioned that Rentz was designing “a large ball and concert hall, to be called Webster Hall.”

The Guide went on to describe “a brick front trimmed with brown and Nova Scotia stone and terra cotta. The building will contain a main hall about 40 feet high, also a gallery, private boxes and reception rooms.”

Two months later construction began.

Next door was Saint Ann’s Roman Catholic school and when, in December, the pastor of the church discovered that Goldstein had applied for a liquor license he filed opposition; although to no avail. As the building rose, The New York Times estimated its final cost at $75,000, saying that it was “intended for balls, receptions, Hebrew weddings, and sociables, and not a ballroom.”

An early sketch of Webster Hall shows the original, complex mansard roof -- NYPL Collection

While many substantial buildings of the time were stressing “fire-proof” construction, Rentz went with spruce timbers for the interior framing. Goldstein had an apartment for his family included on the first floor.

A far cry from his tenement structures, Rentz’s Webster Hall was a splashy Queen Ann-style entertainment hall of pressed Philadelphia brick, ornate terra cotta panels and brownstone trim. Huge, decorative cast iron masonry supports embellished the façade between the second and third floors and the whole was topped by two stately mansard caps with elaborate dormers on either side of a steep central mansard tower. In February 1867, just six months after the first spade of earth was removed, Webster Hall was ready for its grand opening.

Musical instruments, cherubs and masks in terra cotta ornament the facade.

The Hall was a success and within four years Goldstein recognized the need to expand. In November 1891 he leased from Stuyvesant the plot next door where the home of Alfred and Eliza Goetz stood at No. 125. Two months later he filed for construction of a $10,000 annex that would include his family’s apartment in the basement, a saloon, restaurant and coat check rooms on the first floor, and a ballroom on the second with a gallery and sitting rooms on the third.

Construction of the annex began in May and was completed in November. The architect did not attempt to match the original structure, designing a Renaissance Revival building with large arched windows; however the two flowed nicely together.

Some of the exuberant terra cotta ornamentation is in heavy, deep relief.

From its earliest days Webster Hall was used not merely for entertainments and concerts, but was the frequent site of meetings and protests. On November 4, 1892 it was the meeting place of union workers who came together to endorse the nomination of Grover Cleveland and Adlai E. Stevenson. In a somewhat less-than-unbiased report, The New York Times said, “It was the earnest protest of honest men who work with their hands day after day for their bread against an iniquitous tax that robs the workingman for the benefit of the wealthy manufacturer and monopolist.”

Webster Hall in 1913.  An elaborate entrance canopy stretches to the curb.  -- photo International News Service

In 1887 the Progressive Labor Party was born here and in October of 1898 a bizarre meeting was held by Richard Crocker of Tammany Hall who courted the votes of deaf mutes. “Some Republican deaf mutes attended and tried to convert their acquaintances, but one red-haired man indignantly replied in sign language that he was a Democrat to the backbone, and would vote for Van Wyck. The Republican tempter thereupon desisted. Other similar occurrences were noted,” reported The Times.

Upon Goldstein’s death in 1898 his widow, Annie, lost the Hall to foreclosure in March 1899; however she rapidly regained the leasehold. The non-fire-proof building experienced the first of a series of fires in 1902; although no serious damage was sustained in that fire nor the one that occurred a decade later in 1912.

A year later a fund-raising event for the socialist magazine The Masses initiated an annual masquerade ball that became famous country-wide.  And it was here in 1914 that the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America was formed, three years after the tragic Triangle Waist Company fire near Washington Square.

In 1923 the Wand Holding Company purchased the building for $65,000, doing a $220,000 remodeling of the space in 1928.

Then in 1930 fire took its toll on Webster Hall. A “mysterious explosion” resulted in a conflagration that destroyed the two top floors, including the wonderful mansard roof. Damages were estimated at $200,000; almost exactly what the owners had spent on renovations two years earlier.

Repairs were made, without the mansard, and in 1932 Webster Manor, Inc. leased the building at $22,000 a year “for catering, meeting rooms, dance hall and kindred purposes.” Webster Hall became a destination for young couples who danced to big band orchestras throughout the Great Depression years.

Author E. B. White wrote of a 2:00 am visit one morning during that period. “Webster Hall was surrounded by a ring of taxis a mile long. At the door, little groups of gate-crashers slunk about, drunk but hopeful. Inside, the familiar Webster Hall smell came drifting to meet us: sudden illness and old merriment.”

Here the young parents of Martin Scorsese would go dancing, and it was here that Pete Hamill’s parents met.

Once again, in 1938, the Hall was swept by fire. Firemen fought the blaze for three hours before it was extinguished. By then a watchman and a porter were dead and the interior was gutted.

Eleven years later a smoldering cigarette ignited a pile of trash, resulting in a 5-alarm fire that, once again, destroyed the interior and roof.

Refusing to be defeated, Webster Hall again rose from the ashes. RCA Victor Records established a recording studio here from 1953 to 1968. Perry Como, Lena Horne, Stan Getz, Harry Belafonte, Louis Armstrong among others recorded here and Broadway casts assembled here to do cast recordings; among them Mary Martin in Peter Pan, Liza Minelli in Flora, the Red Menace and Julie Andrews in The Boy Friend.

Concerts and meetings continued to be held here throughout the 20th Century, including a 1969 cab driver-owners protest against gypsy cabs. In 1980 the rock club The Ritz established itself in the building and crowds thronged to the hall to hear artists like Madonna, Eric Clapton, Kiss, Sting, Prince, and Tina Turner until it closed in 1989.

Despite a series of fires, exterior architectural details still remain -- photo by Beyond My Ken

Today the irrepressible Webster Hall continues its legacy as a destination for the bohemian, the political and the cutting edge of music and entertainment. While a succession of fires and remodeling have taken their toll on the architecture, the hall used by socialists and reformers, birth control activist Margaret Sanger and the Knights of Labor, Robert F. Kennedy and musicians from Beverly Sills to B. B. King, remains a significant part of Manhattan’s social, architectural and entertainment history.

In his 2004 book, "Downtown: my Manhattan," Pete Hamill wrote “On some nights now, I pass Webster Hall, at 125 East Eleventh Street, loud with hip-hop and DJs and crowds of the young. I hope that at least a few frantic young New Yorkers will find one another in the way my parents did. Someday, if they have long lives, they might even ache for the simplicities of Webster Hall.”

non-credited photographs taken by the author