The Daniel Kellogg Mansion -- No. 54 East 68th Street

Photo by Alice Lum

In the decade following the Civil War the Upper East Side saw dizzying development.  Among the men responsible for the rows of speculative brownstone rowhouses was Anderson Fowler.  In 1879 he erected five high-stooped homes on East 68^th Street, Nos. 52 through 60, designed by brothers David and John Jardine.

A year later, on Saturday July 3, 1880, the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide remarked on the stunning growth of the neighborhood.  “In many particulars, ‘Lenox Hill’ is already in advance of the still famous ‘Murray Hill;’ especially in the magnificence of its palatial architecture.”  The article listed the names of important residents, including John D. Crimmins and Robert L. Stuart; then mentioned Anderson Fowler, himself, as one of the new homeowners.

“The names of other gentlemen, besides those we have mentioned, above, occur to us as owning beautiful residences in the same vicinity; among them Mr. J. M. Fiske, Hon. H. C. Van Vorst, Mr. F. D. Tappan, Mr. Anderson Fowler, Mr. Parker Handy, Mr. B. B. Atterbury, and others equally prominent, whose names do not chance to be familiar to us.”

Parker Handy, mentioned as one of Fowler’s neighbors, had moved into No. 54 East 68^th Street.  The title of the house was put in his wife Cornelia’s name.  Despite their significant move uptown, the Handy family retained its membership in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Handy had stepped down as vice-president of the Third National Bank of New York in 1870 when he purchased Peter Hayden’s firm, which dealt in precious metal bullion and coins.  Handy converted the business to banking, renaming it the Banking House of Parker Handy.  Before the end of the century the firm would be recognized as the standard for the determination of daily silver price quotations throughout the country.

But before then, Handy sold No. 54 to David H. Gould in April 1885 for $44,500.  As Handy had done, Gould put the property in the name of his wife, Mary.  The price the Goulds paid would just top $1 million today.

The Gould’s did not stay long on East 64^thStreet, however.  By 1888 it was the home of the Henry R. De Milt family.  The head of H. R. De Milt & Co. at No. 238 Water Street, Henry dealt in metals.  He was a member of the exclusive Union League Club, as well as the Republican Club, the Ohio Society, and sat on the Board of Trade and Transportation.

Social eyebrows may have been raised when an announcement was published in The New York Times on May 19, 1893 concerning daughter Ella Curtis De Milt’s upcoming marriage.  Ella was engaged to Charles Warren Ten Broeck, a member of an old Dutch family in New York.  The Times headline simply read “Miss De Milt’s Wedding To Be Private.”  It noted that invitations to the June 10 reception only had been sent out the previous day. 

It appears that Ella and Charles moved into the East 68^thStreet house, as she continued to entertain with her mother and sister here.  On January 3, 1895 The Times noted “Cards have been sent out by Mrs. Henry R. De Milt, Mrs. Charles Warren Ten Broeck, and Miss De Milt for a tea on the afternoon of January 10, from 4 until 7 o’clock, at 54 East Sixty-eighth Street.”

A few months later, in June, Henry heard rumors that the City was endeavoring to sell off Upper East Side properties for back taxes.  Apparently concerned about his property values and the upscale tone of his neighborhood, De Milt called a meeting of nearby homeowners on June 4.  The New York Times reported “Property owners interested in the east side lands met in the Continental Building, Court and Montague Streets, Brooklyn, last night, and discussed the questions as to the clouds upon the title of the property.”

De Milt’s proactive stance resulted in the organization of the East Side Lands Property Owners’ Association.

By the time Henry R. De Milt died in the first decade of the new century, the neighborhood was changing.  New homeowners either razed or drastically remodeled the old brownstones.  Where rows of chocolate-colored, carbon-copy houses had stood; now individual brick, marble or limestone mansions were rising.  And that was exactly what Daniel F. Kellogg had in mind when he purchased No. 54 East 68^th Street from the De Milt estate in May 1910.

Kellogg commissioned architect Donn Barber to strip off the Victorian façade and create a modern Edwardian residence.  The result was a limestone-clad French Renaissance beauty .  With the stoop removed, the façade was moved forward a few feet and the entrance was now just one step up from the sidewalk.  The service entrance was guarded by an especially handsome iron fence.  Above, two sets of French doors surmounted by classical pediments opened onto stone Juliette balconies.  Barber reserved his most striking feature for the top two floors—a two-story slate-tiled mansard with overblown dormers at the fourth floor and charming copper-clad arched dormers at the fifth.  Barber had created a slice of France off Park Avenue.

 

photo by Alice Lum

The Sun later noted that it “is equipped with an elevator” and “with the land, cost approximately $150,000.”

Kellogg was unlike his banker, attorney and high-powered businessmen neighbors.  He was the City Editor and Financial Editor of the New York Sun.  Within a few years, however, he left the newspaper to take control of publicity for J. P. Morgan.

Along with Kellogg and his wife in the remodeled house was son Daniel Fiske Kellogg, Jr.  Like the previous young residents he would marry well.  On November 6, 1915 his engagement to Edythe Emily Milliken was announced.  The bride’s father, Charles Stuart Milliken was the President of the Guanajuato Consolidated Mining & Milling Co., one of the most productive silver and gold operations on the continent, according to The Mining Investor in 1908.

photo by Alice Lum

It would be more than a year before Daniel and Edythe married in the fashionable St. Thomas’s Church on Fifth Avenue.  The day following the wedding, on October 16, 1917, The New York Times noted that “On their return from their honeymoon, Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg will make their home at 54 East Sixty-eighth Street.”

Those plans did not work out.  Five months later The Sun reported that Kellogg had sold the house “to a buyer who is said to be a banker.”  A few weeks later, on April 11, 1918, the newspaper noted the Kelloggs had taken "an apartment at 555 Park Avenue.”

The buyer was 45-year old stockbroker Guy Richards McLane.  He had become widowed when his beloved wife, Dorothea, and their daughter died in childbirth on February 24, 1912.  Dorothea was active in the care for destitute Italian immigrants and a year later McLane and his father-in-law Dr. Henry van Dyke, established Dorothea’s House in Princeton, New Jersey in her memory.

The wealthy McLane was a member of the brokerage firm Jesup & Lamont at No. 26 Broadway; and Secretary and Director of Jeremiah Skidmore Sons, dealers in coal.  Almost three years to the day after purchasing the 68^th Street house, on Sunday morning, April 10, 1921, Guy Richards McLane died there.

The estate quickly placed the house on the market for $150,000—closer to $1.85 million today.  It sold the first week of June 1921. 

The house would become home to the granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller—Margaret Strong De Cuevas and her husband George.  Society and the New York press questioned her husband’s claim at nobility.  On June 6, 1937 The New York Times mentioned that the Rockefeller family “did not refer to Mrs. De Cuevas by the title Marquise, but simply as Mrs. George De Cuevas.” 

“Several years ago Dr. Strong [Margaret’s father] and his daughter were reported to have become estranged,” said the newspaper.  “This estrangement was reported sometime previous to her marriage to George De Cuevas, who is referred to as the Marquis De Cuevas.  The title is not listed in the 1937 edition of the Almanach de Gotha.”

When Dr. Strong had been asked by reporters”to confirm a report that his daughter had been married secretly to George De Cuevas, he said ‘I’m not in close touch with her.  She is able to take care of herself.’”

When John D. Rockefeller died in 1937, The Times noted that the Social Register listed Margaret’s and George’s address as No. 54 68^thStreet but “have passed most of their time abroad” and were not well known in New York society.  As a matter of fact, in October that year it appeared that the family would abandon East 68^thStreet entirely.

“Brill & Brill will sell at auction at the residence formerly occupied by Marquis George De Cuevas, 54 East Sixty-eighth Street, a collection of furniture, furnishings, paintings, Oriental rugs, antique and modern silver, china, glassware and linens,” reported The Times on October 24.

The house was sold to the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York as its new clubhouse.  The group quickly realized its mistake.  It later termed the townhouse “a white elephant” and quickly resold it for a bargain basement price of $90,000.  The New York Times reported on the sale on March 5, 1938, saying “A town house in an area of fashionable homes on the East Side passed to new hands yesterday.”

The hands were not all that new, however.  The buyer was Margaret Strong De Cuevas.  Margaret and George began buying up other property on the block.  In 1940 The Times reported that George De Cuevas “bought the adjoining house at No. 56” and in 1953 Margaret purchased No. 52 on the other side.

In 1953 Margaret owned both houses.  photo by Alice Lum

Margaret’s purchase may have been prompted by her son’s wedding on February 3 that year.  By now The Times had apparently accepted her title.  The day after the wedding it referred to John de Cuevas as the son of “the Marquis and Marquessa de Piedrablanca de Guana.”

Margaret’s concern for historic properties in the neighborhood was manifested when in 1965 she bought the two handsome neo-Federal mansions at Nos. 680 and 684 Park Avenue which were threatened with demolition.  She donated the houses to charity.

In 1980, reportedly through the nudging of her cousin David Rockefeller, Margaret donated her own house, along with No. 52, to charity.  No. 54 East 68^thStreet became the Center for African Art, a favorite area of interest of Rockefeller.

The handsome French-inspired mansion with its long and involved history survives unchanged on a block of remarkable houses.

The Ludwig Dreyfuss House -- No. 52 East 68th Street

photo by Alice Lum

Brothers David and John Jardine were highly active in the development of the Upper East Side where they erected rows of speculative rowhouses following the end of the Civil War .  The developers acted as their own architects and in 1879 completed a row of five brownstone clad homes at Nos. 52 through 60 East 68^th Street, just two blocks from Fifth Avenue.  Four stories tall over high English basements, they featured dignified neo-Grec elements.

The houses at No. 52 and 54 were purchased by millionaire Anderson Fowler as investment properties.  Fowler had made his fortune in the West in the packing business and upon his retirement he invested heavily in mining and other industrial enterprises.  For his own family (which included nine children) Fowler chose another Jardine house, completed the same year, across the street at No. 41 East 68^th.

On April 14, 1888 the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that “Ludwig Dreyfuss has purchased the four-story stone front dwelling No. 52 East 68^th street.”  Dreyfuss had married one of the daughters of Marcus Goldman.  Goldman made his fortune providing diamond merchants and hide and leather dealers with ready cash in exchange for a note promising repayment plus interest.  The dealers in such promissory notes were known as “note shavers.”  Goldman was trading in as much as $5 million a year.

By 1885 Marcus Goldman had already taken Sam Sachs as a partner (Sam had married Goldman’s daughter, Louisa).  Now he also took his son, Henry, and Ludwig Dreyfuss into the firm, changing the name to Goldman Sachs & Co.

While Ludwig worked at the banking firm, his wife busied herself in worthy causes.  One of these was the Children’s Charitable Union, of which she was Treasurer.  The organization was founded in 1876 “to provide kindergarten instruction and classes in sewing for children of the poorer classes, without means to pay for tuition, giving them a warm noon meal.”

As the turn of the century arrived the brownstone house and its neighbors had become architecturally passé.  Dreyfuss commissioned architect John H. Duncan to modernize the home in 1900.  Duncan had designed impressive mansions, like the Philip Lehman house at No. 7 West 54^th Street; but he was best known for his imposing Grant’s Tomb and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza.

Unlike some of the other radical make-overs on the block, Duncan’s renovations would leave no question that this was Victorian brownstone wearing new clothes.   The brownstone stoop remained, but was given new iron railings with a swirling French design.  Duncan carried out the Beaux Arts motif on the first and second floors.  The parlor received a vast arched French-styled window behind an ornamental grill.  At the second floor the original trio of openings was replaced by a curved oriel window.

A swirling grill protects the interesting French-inspired window at the parlor level -- photo by Alice Lum

There is little doubt that Dreyfuss instructed his architect to take the renovations no further.  The upper two floors retained their neo-Grec windows and the original bracketed cornice.  The result is a residence straddling two architectural eras; looking much like an unfinished project.

The Dreyfuss family lived on in the house for another decade.  Then on March 25, 1911 the Record & Guide announced that Ludwig had sold the house.   “The buyer will occupy,” reported the newspaper.

“The buyer” was Albert B. Ashforth, President of the Real Estate Board, President and Director of the Albert B. Ashford real estate company, and a director and trustee in other firms and banks.  Ashforth was not merely wealthy, he was descended from what The New York Times would deem a “distinguished old New York” family.  He was a relative of historian and intellectual Henry Adams, and he held memberships in several clubs, including the Union League, Bankers, and Automobile Club.  His love for golf was reflected in his memberships in the Greenwich Country Club, the Garden City Golf Club and the Blin Brook Club.

On January 3, 1925 the Ashforths' son, Henry, married Elizabeth Milbank Anderson in a fashionable ceremony in the Park Avenue Baptist Church.  A reception at the Colony Club followed.  The New York Times remarked that “The bride’s grandmother, Mrs. Milbank Anderson, was noted for her benefactions, having made large gifts to Columbia University.”

Three years later Albert B. Ashforth sold the house to his neighbor Margaretta C. Clark.  She lived across the street in No. 49 and bought Ashforth’s property “to prevent the erection of a high building which would seriously affect the light and air of her residence,” explained The Times on April 20, 1928.  The $125,000 she spent on the house would amount to about $1.6 million today.

A year later, on October 30, 1930, Silas M. Newton married journalist Nan O’Reilly.  O’Reilly’s astonishing career began at the age of 14 when she submitted a real estate article to the New-York Tribune.  For the next five years she was on the Tribune staff; then moved on to The Evening Post.  While there she wrote her first column on golf and forever after she would be associated with that game.  A year before her marriage to Newton she was made golf editor of The Evening Journal.  The newspaper introduced her to its readers as “The only female in captivity who has conducted a daily golf column.”

Silas Newton was an oil company official and a high ranking amateur golfer—the latter having resulted in the pair’s meeting and romance.  Although Newton was apparently highly successful, his fortune paled to that of his wife.  The New York Times said that “At the time of the marriage…it was said that Miss O’Reilly was heiress to an estimate of about $40,000,000.”

Above the updated lower floors, the Victorian house remained unchanged.  photo by Alice Lum

The Newtons moved into No. 52 East 68^thStreet.  As what was apparently a wedding present of sorts, Newton purchased jewelry for his new wife at the auction of the estate of Rita De Acosta Lydig. 

Then, on Tuesday evening, February 10, Nan removed her jewelry and placed it in a case on her dressing table in the second floor bedroom.  The next night, while dressing for dinner, she attempted to open the case but found one of the catches stuck.  “One of her maids assisted her,” reported The New York Times.  “When it was opened Mrs. Newton found ten of the most valuable pieces of jewelry were missing.”

Some of the items were those Silas had purchased at the Lydig auction.  The Times said the total value of the ten missing pieces was about $15,000—about $215,000 today and quite a haul in the Great Depression years.  “The ten missing pieces included a pearl necklace, two bracelets and rings,” said the newspaper.

More trouble would come to the Newton household five months later.  On July 8 Silas was arrested “on a charge of conspiring with two others to defraud a 74-year-old man of his life savings, amounting to $25,000,” according to The New York Times on the following day.  Newton dismissed the incident to reporters, insisting it was all a misunderstanding.

“He took his arrest lightly and said the entire matter would be cleared up.  He denied any wrongdoing, and told the detectives that if the complainant thought there was anything wrong, he should have called at his office,” said The Times.

Silas Newton most likely began taking the affair less lightly when the state of New Jersey began extradition proceedings two days later.  In addition to the fraud charges, he was being charged with being a fugitive from justice in New Jersey.

The scandal was no doubt an embarrassment to Nan O’Reilly who, according to The Times in 1937, “contributed to, or otherwise worked for, every newspaper published in New York in the last twenty-five years.”  The couple’s marriage did not survive significantly longer.  Divorced, Nan died in 1937 at the age of just 41.

By 1943 No. 52 was the home of Dr. Francis D. Gulliver and his family.  Gulliver was a specialist in diseases of the eye and was the author of articles such as his 1942 “Particles of Steel Within the Globe of the Eye” published in a medical journal. 

The year 1943 was especially noteworthy for the family.  On September 5 daughter Ruth Ann was married to Charles Daniel Sullivan; and a few months later the engagement of Frances was announced. 

A year earlier President Franklin D. Roosevelt had created the SPARS—the United States Coast Guard Women’s Reserve.  Among the first enlistees was Frances Gulliver and by the time her engagement was announced she had risen to the rank of Lieutenant.  Interestingly, Frances outranked her husband-to-be.  Richard O. Jordan was an ensign in the United States Coast Guard Reserve.

photo by Alice Lum

In 1952 the house was purchased by the Marquise Margaret de Cuevas and in 1984 it was converted to offices.  Today the house with the architectural split personality is owned by the Center for Inter-American Relations.

A 1920s Project Revived -- No. 226 E 68th Street

As the turn of the last century approached, the block of East 68^th Street between Second and Third Avenues was lined with brownstone-clad homes built on speculation by John D. Crimmins.  The three or four story dwellings were little different from hundreds of others in the neighborhood.  Among the respectable families on the block was that of Isaac H. Rothschild who lived at No. 226.

The night of April 19, 1898 was a special one in the Rothschild house.  Daughter Blanche was married to Herman Meyers there that evening.  Newspapers related that Rev. Dr. Kaufmann Kohler of the fashionable Temple Beth-El officiated and that several of the groom’s relatives had traveled from St. Louis for the ceremony.  “The bride wore white satin,” said The New York Times the following day.  “A wedding supper followed the ceremony.”

Also living in the house was the bride's 81-year old George Newburger; Hannah Rochschild’s father. The elderly man's only son, Abraham Newburger, was the manager of the Armour & Co.’s East 35^thStreet branch and his nephew, Abraham H. Hummel was a respected lawyer.

Hummel passed down his old silk hats to his uncle, prompting The New York Press to comment “He was proud of the fact that his nephew’s big hats fitted him, and he was kept well supplied with them.”  Oddly enough it would be one of the used silk hats that would bring about the old man’s death.

Within a year of Blanche Rothschild’s wedding, Abraham Newburger was married.  The newlyweds were away on their honeymoon on Sunday March 12, 1899 when George Newburger boarded an uptown-bound streetcar on Third Avenue.  Looking smart in one of his old silk hats, he had just celebrated his 82^nd birthday. 

Just as Newburger and a few other passengers disembarked the streetcar at the intersection of Third Avenue and 125^th Street, Hook and Ladder Truck No. 14 was speeding across 125^th Street headed to a fire.  “Driver J. Sheridan noticed that passengers were alighting from a Third avenue car at the crossing,” reported The New York Press.  “He yelled to them to get out of the way.  Foreman Eugene T. Terpenny rang his gong vigorously.”

Everyone made it to safety, including George Newburger.  But in the rush to the curb his hat fell to the ground and was rolling in the street in front of the galloping horses.  Before anyone could stop him, Newburger rushed to recover his hat.  One of the horses struck the old man, knocking him to the ground, and the wheels of the fire truck passed over him.  Newburger suffered internal injuries and bone fractures.  He was carried into a cigar store where he died within a few minutes.  His nephew’s monogram was inside his hat and in his pocket was a matchbox engraved “GN” on one side and “Uncle George from Abe” on the other.

Later Hannah Rothschild identified her father’s body at the police station.

In the first years of the 20^th century architect Electus D. Litchfield was making a name for himself.  By 1915 he had designed the United States Court House and Post Office building, still under construction, in Denver; and the large Public Library in St. Paul.  Before 1920 he would purchase a number of the brownstone homes on the East 68^th Street block.  It was a time when outdated Victorian dwellings throughout the city were being remodeled as modern, fashionable homes.  Litchfield intended to transform them to the currently-popular neo-Georgian and Federal styles.

On February 20, 1920 the New York Herald explained the project.  “Plans are under way to form the nucleus of a new society neighborhood in the south side of Sixty-eighth street between Second and Third Avenues.  Electus D. Litchfield, architect, purchased twelve old fashioned houses opposite the Schermerhorn properties in the north side of the street and will alter them into the modern American basement type in accordance with the tastes and wishes of buyers.”

It was just the sort of thing that was going on in Sutton Place—a formerly dingy area now being transformed, greatly by architect Mott Schmidt, into neo-Georgian mansions for wealthy socialites.  The Sun deemed the 68^th Street concept an “interesting development” and reported that “A number of sales have already been made.”  The New-York Tribune, on February 26, said “Folks who live in the best Park Avenue apartment houses have displayed much interest in the houses.”

On February 26, 1920 he sold two of the remodeled houses.  No. 242 was purchased by Mrs. Winston Hagen.  The Sun called it “a newly remodeled American basement dwelling.”  The house next door, “a similar building,” went to Francis Danforth.

Interestingly, Litchfield held on to one of the houses as-is.  Rather than remodel No. 226, he and his wife (the title was in her name) leased it to the Hahnemann Hospital “for use as a home for nurses.”

Electus D. Litchfield’s grand scheme for a colonial-styled community that would rival the upscale Sutton Place was never fully realized.  Anyone walking down the block today sees surviving 19^th century brownstones interspersed with Litchfield’s neo-Georgian remakes. 

But in 2009 his cause was taken up again--most likely unknowingly--when No. 226 was demolished and construction began on a five-story neo-Georgian mansion.  The red brick and stone private home is nearly indistinguishable from Litchfied's revival townhouses designed 80 years earlier.

photos taken by the author

The Richard Hurd House -- No. 12 East 68th Street

photo by Alice Lum

As New York City recovered from the great financial depression known as the Panic of 1873, a boom in construction resulted.  In 1878 1,672 building were erected in Manhattan, followed by another 2,065 in 1879.  Among the developers taking advantage of the trend was Anthony Mowbray.

Mowbray had started building in New York in 1853 and, although he was a trained architect himself, by the 1870s more often relied on the talents of others.  The streets leading away from the completed Central Park presented alluring sites for rowhouses and in 1878 Mowbray began construction on a row of five brownstone-fronted homes from No. 12 to 20 East 68th Street.

Mowbray and his fellow developers were likely unaware that within a generation the East Side neighborhood they were creating would be overrun by the mansions of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens.  For now, they erected respectable upscale homes intended for the well-to-do merchant and upper-middle class.

Designed by architects Lamb & Wheeler, the homes were completed in 1879.  No. 12 became home to Oren Dennett and his wife.  Four stories tall over a high English basement, it boasted 12 rooms and two bathrooms.

Dennett was born in Maine in 1824 of what Refrigerating World called “sturdy New England stock.”  One of 13 children, he “surrendered the slow opportunities of farm life” at the age of 18.  Dennett traveled to New York where he took a job as a driver of an ice wagon for the Knickerbocker Ice Company.

The hard-working boy advanced (it was noted that he had “scarcely known a sick day”), becoming the foreman in charge of the company’s eight ice wagons located at the foot of Duane Street in 1850.  By the time he purchased the 68^th Street house he was a director of the company.

In days before electric refrigeration, the ice business was a grave necessity to homes and businesses alike.  In 1884 Dennett secured a large commission by landing the Department of Charities and Corrections account.

photo Refrigerating World, December 1908 (copyright expired)

While Dennett was busy in the ice trade, his wife upheld the image expected of a moneyed housewife.  While she did not sip tea with the Astors or Vanderbilts, she immersed herself in the appropriate charities and clubs.  She served as Vice-President of the Euterpe Club, a group that described itself as “mainly musical in its aims and work.”  In addition to luncheons and card parties for its members, the club organized “concerts and musical mornings which are given during the season at the Waldorf-Astoria.” Club Women of New York said these “are social events and are participated in by artists of high standing in the musical world.”

The no-nonsense New England upbringing of Dennett may have been responsible for his using public transportation.  On January 24, 1896 The Sunreported that the 72-year old “was severely bruised and shaken last evening by falling as he attempted to board a Fourth avenue car at Forty-third street and Vanderbilt avenue.  He was taken home after an ambulance surgeon had attended to his injuries.”

Later that year the Knickerbocker Ice Company was absorbed by the American Ice Securities Company, of which he was made a director.  Dennett was already highly invested in the New Jersey Ice Company and he turned much of his focus to that company, serving as President.

In 1908 the American Ice Company—which had been formed by the consolidation of several local ice firms—was under investigation and charged with price fixing.  Correspondence from executives of the American Ice Company revealed disdain for Oren Dennett, whose above-board business practices were deemed “inactive.”  A letter written earlier by president John D. Schoonmaker said in part:

“We will have to shake up old man Dennett.  We can’t stand any more nonsense from the Mountain Ice crowd.  Dennett will sit up, and it will tear the old man up pretty well if we start in there; but that don’t mean anything in dollars and cents to this company.  We will get ten to one when the time comes to throw up hands.”

The harassment may, in fact, have torn “the old man up pretty well,” and he died in the house on 68^th Street on October 30, 1908 at the age of 84.  Cold Storage and Ice Trade Journal called him “one of the best known ice men on the Hudson River” and with a possibly intended pun, Refrigerating World said “Mr. Dennett had many warm friends in the ice business.”  The trade paper added “He was a man of strong character, with a genial yet forceful disposition; was able to select men adapted to their respective avocations, was assiduous in attention to his duties, and exacted the same honest consideration from those in his charge.”

On Wednesday, November 30, 1910 the house was sold at auction.  The buyer held the house for three years, then it was again sold at auction on February 4, 1913.  By now the 34-year old brownstones were not merely out-of-style, they were decidedly unfashionable.  Old rowhouses were being razed or drastically remodeled as an even wealthier class of residents moved into the neighborhood.

The house at No. 12 East 68^th Street was purchased by 46-year old Richard M. Hurd; but the family would not move in before substantial changes were made.  Hurd commissioned architect Andrew Jackson Thomas to completely renovate the Victorian residence.  A year later the transformation was complete—the brownstone duckling had become a neo-Federal swan.

photo by Alice Lum

Thomas removed the brownstone stoop and lowered the entrance to street level—creating the trendier “American basement plan.”  With the stoop gone, he was able to extend the façade several feet forward to the property line.  A dignified rusticated stone base featured the centered entrance flanked by fluted, engaged Doric columns that supported a prim iron-railed balcony.  At the second floor three sets of French doors were surmounted by inset, arched marble panels.

The openwork borders of the doors mimic the Greek key design of the frieze above -- photo by Alice Lum

The architect suggested antiquity by using burned headers in the Flemish bond brickwork.  A charming marble Juliette balcony graced the third floor and above it all was a dormered mansard which provided an additional floor.

Richard Hurd was a man of many interests and vocations and in addition to being Chairman of the Board of the Lawyers Mortgage Company; he served as a State Prison Commissioner, wrote “Principles of City Land Values,” and was a member of the American Rights League. 

Hurd was vocally opinionated—an attribute which repeatedly landed his quotations in the newspapers.  In a vociferous denouncement of a prison inspector and simultaneous defense of a prison warden, he told reporters on November 16, 1915: “Dr. Diedling, as a self-appointed investigator, and representing himself only, has the effrontery to recommend the removal of Warden Osborne and his indictment on various grounds.  In condensed form, Dr. Diedling charges that Warden Osborne’s methods have demoralized the discipline of the prison.  If by this it is meant that the old sternly repressive methods under which men were treated worse than beasts, and under which men went insane in large numbers, and suicides and attempted suicides were common occurrences, then the more such discipline is demoralized the better.”

When President Woodrow Wilson appointed a war cabinet in 1918, the outspoken Hurd was quick to react.  Writing to the President from his role as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the America Defense Society, he stressed:

“A Cabinet of well-meaning, mediocre gentlemen, who can handle the routine duties of peace times, cannot in all fairness be expected to administer the enlarged departments which have to be created to carry on the war with Germany.  Every warring nation in Europe has seen the necessity of strengthening its Cabinet, and America will be no exception.  The time to begin is now…Many of the mistakes and failures have been due to incompetence, if not disloyalty, below the Cabinet, but a stream cannot rise higher than its source, and the only effective way to get competent subordinates is to have competent heads.”

Later that year, when Supreme Court Justice John H. Clarke suggested that “the German people shall be invited to share in a just, even in a generous peace,” and supported the establishment of the League of Nations; Richard Hurd ignited. 

“Are there no moral distinctions between Germany, the red handed aggressor, and the nations who are giving up their young men to defend themselves?  Are the highwaymen, the murderers, the rapists and the torturers to be invited in as members in good standing to any league of nations devoted to such idealistic concepts as the substitution of ‘conference for strife of justice and peace for cruelty and war’?”

“Germany cannot be trusted,” he went on.  “The safety of the world does not lie in trying to coax Germany to be good, but in taking away her navy and her army and in imposing economic limitations that will keep her from the materials without which she cannot go to war.”

photo by Alice Lum

A year later the League of Nations not only came into being; but Hurd’s own American Rights League endorsed it.  It was all too much for the dogmatic Richard M. Hurd to handle.  On September 13, 1919 he resigned from the American Rights League.  In stepping down, he got in one last blow. 

“I fail to understand how a League formed to uphold American Rights can approve the surrender of American independence and sovereignty urged by Mr. Wilson.  I do not believe the world will be benefited or the reign of peace advance by the formation of a superstate to which the various nations will bear a relation similar to that borne by the States of the Union to our Federal Government, this superstate to control the world and to be conducted by small oligarchy of representatives at Geneva.”

With the war ended and his involvement in the various national committees over; Richard Hurd and his wife focused on their six growing children.  With four girls in the house, there would be debutante teas and receptions and, later, engagement events and weddings to plan.

On May 20, 1922 the Hurds announced the engagement of daughter Mary to George Francklyn Lawrence, Jr.  It was a socially-advantageous match; although the Lawrence name consistently outshone the Hurd name in the newspaper reports.  The wedding took place in fashionable St. George’s Church on Stuyvesant Square on November 25, 1922; followed by a reception in the 68^th Street house.

A year later in October it was Eleanor Hurd’s turn to be engaged and The New York Times noted that she had “made her debut in 1921 and is a member of the Junior League.”  Again it was not the Hurd name that drew the attention as the newspaper added “She is a sister of Mars George Francklyn Lawrence, Jr.”

In September 1934 the Hurds leased the house furnished to B. B. Howard.  They kept the house for two more years; leaving for good in 1936.  No. 12 became home to retired banker William Otis Gay and his family.  Like the Hurds, the Gay family was large—along with his wife, Annie M. Dumaresq Gay, there were seven grown children (William Gay was 70 at the time of the purchase).  Gay’s brother, Walter, was a noted artist living in France, whom The New York Times called the “dean of American artists in Paris.”

The stalwart banker had just retired the year before.  He had founded the firm of W. O. Gay & Co. in the 1890s and when the company dissolved in 1935 he was its senior partner.  An avid yachtsman, he served as vice commodore of the Eastern Yacht Club at Marblehead, Massachusetts and would become the first commodore of the Southampton Yacht Club upon its founding in 1937.

The Gay family summered at their estate on First Neck Lane in Southampton, Long Island; and it was here that William Otis Gay died at the age of 80 on June 13, 1946.

The handsome house became the Consul General of Lebanon.  It was the scene of high anxiety when a telephone call at 1:15 in the morning on July 13, 1948 warned of a bomb in the house.  The caller said he represented the Israeli fighting organization Haganah and said “Your house will be blown up in fifteen minutes.”

The threat, the fourth such call since November 1947, brought a crew of policemen who scoured the mansion.  “Finding nothing suspicious after a thorough search, the police departed but left a special detail to be on duty all night,” reported The New York Times.

Five years later on December 11, 1952, the Secretary to the Lebanese deligation to the United Nations was publically embarrassed when his 31-year old cousin, Akram Solh, was arrested at Idlewild Airport.  A Customs officer grew suspicious of the unusual depth of Solh’s suitcase and found a false compartment.  Inside were 35 packets of heroin, worth about $50,000 to $100,000 on the illegal market—more in the neighborhood of $850,000 today.

When his bail was set at $10,000, Sohl quickly mentioned that his cousin was the diplomat.  The Lebanese Secretary, Abdelrahman Sohl, was not so quick to claim close family ties.  “The secretary, who lives at 12 East Sixty-eighth Street…was not available for comment yesterday,” reported The New York Times.  “A representative of the Lebanese Delegation, admitted, however, that the men were distant relatives.”

A year later, in 1953, the Lebanese Government sold the house to Lester Woods who had been living at No. 130 East 65^thStreet.  Woods announced “plans for extensive alternations, including installation of an elevator.”  As it happened, Woods’ extensive alterations went far beyond an elevator.

The penthouse that replaced the mansard roof could be kindly described as "unsympathetic."  Or more accurately as "offensive."  photo by Alice Lum

The mansard roof was removed and a “conservatory” penthouse was added—resulting in a six-story structure.  The house was converted to a two-family residence with a doctor’s office in the basement.

Although the rooftop addition is unattractive at best, the lower four floors are intact.  The Hurds' dramatic 1914 transformation of the Victorian brownstone into a handsome neo-Federal home is virtually unchanged below the cornice.

photo by Alice Lum