The 1899 Chas. Hudson Mansion -- No. 3 East 76th Street

An electric street lamp sits across the street from the newly-completed mansion.  The J. J. Wysong mansion would rise on the vacant Fifth Avenue lot next door.  In the background another Fifth Avenue mansion is under construction.  photo by Wurts Bros from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWP9OVC1&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

As the 19^th century drew to an end, Charles I. Hudson was doing well for himself.  He had formed the brokerage firm of C. I. Hudson & Co. with partner Albert H. De Forest in 1885, had garnered a substantial fortune, and lived with his family in a handsome home at No. 36 West 52^nd Street.  In 1894 he was one of the millionaire founders of the Thousand Islands Club, a private summer community “which embraces in its membership a number of well-known New-Yorkers,” as described byThe New York Times.

Now, in 1898 like many other wealthy New Yorkers, Hudson looked to move uptown near Fifth Avenue and Central Park, away from the encroaching commerce.  He purchased the lot at No. 1 East 76^th Street and laid plans for a fine new mansion.  His choice of architects is a matter of contention.  The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide mentioned on April 13, 1918, “Hiss & Weekes were the architects.”  Generations later the Landmarks Preservation Commission would credit Brite & Bacon with the design.

Whoever was responsible, the result was striking.  In 1899 the five-story neo-Jacobean residence was completed.  The regal composition was distinguished by a two-story bay of leaded casements that supported a carved-stone balcony.  The brick and stone façade culminated in a decorative parapet that hid the fifth floor from the street.  Although the mansion was a commodious 30-feet wide, an areaway between it and the property at the Fifth Avenue corner allowed the luxury of windows in  the western wall.

Hudson and his wife, the former Sara Kierstede, had four sons:  Percy Kierstede, Hans Kierstede, Charles Alan, and Hendrick.  With no daughters in the house, Sara Hudson was relieved (or deprived) of debutante entertainments.  She was highly visible, however, in the charitable events and causes expected of Manhattan socialites.  The family spent the summer seasons at its country estate at East Norwich, Long Island.

The family was doubtlessly embarrassed when Charles Hudson’s name appeared in newspapers for a physical confrontation on the floor of the Stock Exchange on March 5, 1900.  When a “telephone boy,” Florence E. Finnegan, upbraided Hudson for selling sugar below the price he was given, trouble ensued.

“Mr. Hudson is a man of middle age, and Finnegan has just attained his majority,” said The New York Times the following day.  The millionaire was unaccustomed to back-talk from a boy and became enraged when Finnegan answered “That won’t do, Mr. Hudson.  The order was 98-1/2 and I don’t turn in not’in’ different, see?”

After what The Times described as a “lively discussion” Hudson reached his breaking point.  “Mr. Hudson swung and landed with his right on Finnegan’s right eye.  The telephone boy fell, and when he got up he was without his glasses, but he had blood in his eye, figuratively and literally.  A crowd had to keep them apart.”

Hudson was suspended from the Exchange for 30 days—the maximum penalty possible.

The wealthy family of Mr. and Mrs. Charles M. Lea lived in Philadelphia; but as their daughter Majorie Vaughan Lea approached marrying age, they spent more and more time in New York City.  Marjorie’s debut into society took place in New York the same year that Charles Hudson had his skirmish with the young Finnegan boy.

Marjorie and her parents spent the following winter season in New York; and by October 1902 she and Percy Kierstede Hudson were engaged.  That same month Charles Hudson purchased a new private carriage house at No. 178 East 73rd Street.

Less than eight years later the remaining Hudson boys would begin leaving home.  In May 1910 Hendrick was married to Helen Morgan Frith.  Five months later on October 14, the engagement of Hans to Ethel Le Roy De Koven was announced and Charles’ wedding to Eleanor Granville Brown would soon be in the planning stages.

 Perhaps it was their sons’ impending marriages that prompted Charles and Sara to sell their impressive mansion in May 1910--or it could have been the construction of the newly-completed J. J. Wysong mansion on the Fifth Avenue corner that prompted the sale.  As the Wysong house went up, the Hudsons lost their view “overlooking Fifth avenue” that the Record & Guide had noted.

Whatever the reason, on May 15, 1910 The New York Times reported that Hudson had sold the house for $300,000—a satisfying $7 million by today’s standards.  The purchaser was Robert Franklin Adams.

With the construction of the Wysong mansion, the house numbers along the 76th Street block changed.  Rather than take the prestigious Fifth Avenue address, the new mansion took No. 1 East 76th Street.  That meant that the Hudson house became No. 3 and so forth down the block.

Adams was Vice President of the Adams Manufacturing Company.  A member of the exclusive University, Lotos and New York Yacht Clubs; the motorcar enthusiast was also a member of the Automobile Club of America.  A year after purchasing the house, Adams’ shiny limousine would be the victim of a runaway horse and cart.

On April 8, 1911 a horse attached to an ash cart was spooked in front of No. 36 West 52nd Street.  The driver was thrown from the cart and the panicked horse galloped onto Fifth Avenue, “narrowly missing several carriages,” reported The New York Timesthe following day.

“As the runaway tore down the avenue there was a wild scampering of autos and other traffic,” said the newspaper.  As the horse tore down Fifth Avenue with the ash cart careening behind, it approached Robert Adams automobile parked at the curb at 46th Street.  “The horse tore the running board from its side and threw out the chauffeur, Charles Bender.”  The collision slowed the animal enough that mounted Patrolman Plagge was able to get the horse under control.

Adams and his wife, the former Lona O’Brien, had two children, Edith and Robert.   While Sara Hudson had no opportunity to throw debutante entertainments, Lona Adams would.  Edith’s coming out was celebrated in 1913 and the entertainments ended with a reception in the house on December 30.

Three years later on February 2, 1916 Edith was married to Jules Glaenzer in St. Thomas’s Church on Fifth Avenue.  The wedding would be followed by “a large reception,” according to The New York Press two weeks earlier.

The following March Edith was back in the 76^thStreet house for the birth of her baby.  In 1917 the wealthy were most often still seen by doctors in their private homes; rather than hospitals and clinics.  In May Robert Adams Glaenzer was born in his grandparents’ mansion.

Only a few days later the engagement of Robert to Jennie Frances Marston was announced.  As with the Hudson family, perhaps the childrens’ leaving the house was cause enough to sell.  Adams sold the house for $225,000. 

In 1929 No. 3 East 76^th Street was owned by Mrs. Dorothy G. Pagenstecher.  I. N. Phelps Stokes had recently purchased the ten-story apartment building at No. 952 Fifth Avenue, around the corner.  On April 28, 1929 the New York Times reported that he had bought the Pagenstecher mansion “to protect the light of the apartment house.”  He paid Dorothy Pagenstecher $200,000 for the property.

Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes was not merely the son of fabulously wealthy Anson Phelps Stokes; he was an architect and partner in the firm Howells & Stokes.  At the time of the purchase he had just completed the authoritative 6-volume work entitled The Iconography of Manhattan Island.  He had married Edith Minturn in 1895 and the couple was immortalized by one of their wedding gifts--a double portrait by John Singer Sargent.

The newly-weds were immortalized in their wedding gift portrait.  Unlike so many of Sargent's society portraits, the Stokes are wearing casual clothing -- http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/38.104

On December 27, 1931 Stokes transferred the title to No. 3 East 76^th Street to Edith.  The mansion was converted to apartments—two each on the first four floors and a penthouse on the fifth.  The upscale apartments were home to equally-upscale tenants for decades.

Somewhat unexpectedly in residential design, the date of construction was carved within the ornately-carved Jacobean-style cartouch.

Then in 2004 the Hudson mansion was purchased by the Hewitt School and converted to classrooms.  The private girls’ school uses the house as its “lower school” for grades kindergarten through 4.  Despite its current use and expected alterations—the wonderful bronze entrance doors are gone, the first floor window has been converted to a doorway, and the servants’ entrance now contains a rather commercial-looking door—the wonderful and unusual neo-Elizabethan house is greatly intact.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The 1905 Gotham Hotel -- 5th Avenue and 55th Street

photo by priorguest.com

The first shovels of earth removed in 1901 for the foundation of John Jacob Astor’s St. Regis Hotel at the southeast corner of 5th Avenue and 55th Street signaled the beginning of the end of the area as Millionaires’ Row. A year later Fifty-Fifth Street Company purchased and demolished the mansions across the avenue at the southwest corner to begin construction of an elegant family hotel, the Gotham.

The group commissioned Hiss & Weekes to design the structure which would abut McKim, Mead & White’s Italian Renaissance University Club to the south, completed a few years earlier. As is the case now, architects of the time tended to treat each commission as a stand-alone project; ignoring the possibility of sympathetic treatment of surrounding structures. Hiss & Weekes felt otherwise.

They chose a consistent Italian Renaissance design and lined up stone courses and cornices, even mirroring the five arched windows on the Fifth Avenue side. The Architectural Record of 1902 was appropriately impressed. “We all know how woefully individualistic our builders have been,” it said, “resulting in a mass of fragmentary, inharmonious, clashing architecture, no attempt being made to work in common for the sake of beauty and uniformity. This great projected hotel of eighteen stories is designed to harmonize with the adjacent University Club, which is a fine piece of architecture.”

The rising limestone hotel would be more restrained than its extravagant Beaux-Arts neighbor across the avenue; however for the entranceway the architects pulled out all the stops. The doorway gushes with elaborate sculptural ornamentation. It is capped by a broken pediment surmounted by the reclining figures of Ceres and Diana on either side of a bull’s-eye window. On either side are two double-story banded Doric pillars.

The elaborate 55th Street entranceway -- photo best-world-hotel.blogspot.com

Family hotels were intended for well-to-do New Yorkers who no longer wanted the trouble of maintaining a private home, and for out-of-towners who spent considerable time in the city and needed to retain a second residence. By October 2, 1905 the hotel was ready for occupation.

There were 400 sleeping rooms, both single and en suite, and by opening day all the rooms with a Fifth Avenue frontage were taken. A banquet hall and ballroom were on the second floor, while the third floor was dedicated to private dining rooms.

The New York Times was impressed with the appointments. “The furnishings of the Gotham, while extremely rich, are far from garish. There is not the slightest striving after gaudy effects, the whole atmosphere being one of good taste.”

The wealthy and well-known began moving in immediately. Mrs. M. A. Hanna, widow of Senator Hanna, was the first resident, following closely by Senator T. C. Platt’s family.

There was, however, a problem. The Gotham sat directly across 55th Street from the 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church, well within the limits that prohibited the sale of liquor in the hotel. After continued legal battles ending in failure, the hotel shrugged off the snag.

“We are in the hotel business and if our guests ask us for anything we don’t happen to have, there is nothing to prevent us from sending out and getting it,” explained manager Frank V. Bennett. “Suppose a man likes wine with his dinner, or a cocktail before it. Is there any law to stop us from getting it for him? Well, I rather think not.”

And, in fact, the hotel hired young boys fitted out with wicker baskets or milliners’ boxes, whose duties were to rush to a supply base a block from the hotel and fill guests’ orders for wine or liquor. Since the guests’ money was turned over to the off-site vendor and not the hotel, the liquor law was circumvented (although the hotel protested that “There is no attempt to evade the law.”).

Despite the clever ploy, the hurdles to getting a drink at the Gotham contributed to its foreclosure within three years of opening. In October 1908 it was put on auction, the mortgage under foreclosure being $500,000 with prior liens amounting to $2 million. The hotel, which cost about $2 million to build and between $1 and $2 million more to furnish sold for $2.45 million to Benjamin P. Cheney, President of the Hotel Holding Company.

Cheney immediately made changes. While the long-term residents stayed on, he focused more on traveling guests. And despite the troubles in its short past, the hotel still lured New York’s elite.

In the grand Louis XV ballroom on December 22, 1909 Mrs. Richard Stevens hosted her Christmas dinner for 60 guests, after which more arrived for dancing and a midnight buffet supper. Among Mrs. Stevens’ guests were Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Goelet, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson, The Marquis de Beauvoir, Prince Troubetskol and Mrs. And Mrs. Clarence Mackay.

Cheney’s new management resolved the financial problems and in 1914 he sold the profitable hotel to Franklin Pettit for $3.5 million. Pettit intimated that “it probably would be resold in a short time to some wealthy investor.”

Mr. and Mrs. George Bird, who had lived in the Gotham for 12 years, were shocked when they returned to their suite of rooms on January 17, 1918 to find that $25,000 worth of jewelry had been stolen in their maid’s absence. It was a rare tarnish on the Gotham’s sterling reputation.

In 1920 the newly refurbished and redecorated hotel was sold once again, this time to Julius and William Manges for $4 million. The Manges Brothers were on a buying frenzy of Manhattan hotels – having just purchased the Hotel Cumberland, and already owning the Netherland, the Endicott, the Martha Washington, the Great Northern and the Grand.

The Great Depression delivered a crushing blow to the owners and in 1932 the hotel was once again in receivership in a $2 million foreclosure action by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Within a few years apartments were being offered, each with “serving pantry and electric refrigeration.” By 1938 the street-side restaurant was closed and five stores were opened up on the ground floor facing 5th Avenue.

In an attempt to keep with the times, modern touches like the 1937 Alpine Room were added -- postcard from author's collection

The hotel was sold and resold until, in 1979, it was taken over by Rene Hatt who initiated a nearly-ten year, $200 million renovation. It was purchased by the Peninsula Group in 1988 which, ten years later, closed it again for a $45 million overhaul.

The Peninsula essentially gutted the building, keeping only the best of the interior details. Carol Franklin Associates was brought in to design the spaces, the hotel’s instructions being to give it “Parisian ambience.”

The Peninsula's grand staircase after renovation -- photo Carol Franklin Associates

Exotic African woods, enormous antique French chandeliers, and Italian marble were imported for the project. According to the designer’s website, “Security cameras were installed above ceilings to be lowered at the request of royal guests.”

The grand Gotham Hotel stands proudly once again after a century of sometimes tumultuous times.

The House that Minnie Young Built - 19 East 54th Street



19 East 54th Street on September 1, 1900



When Albert and Minnie young married around 1875, things looked good for the couple. Albert was a successful stockbroker and Minnie had amassed a fortune of her own in Virginia after the Civil War. Together they raised three sons and a daughter in a succession of fine homes.

Tragedy struck when in 1895 Albert died and then, only four years later, son Albert M., aged 25 years old, passed away unexpectedly.

The year that her son died, 1899, plans for filed for a new house at 19 East 54th Street. Minnie commissioned Hiss & Weekes to design her home. Possibly owing to her status of a mourning widow and mother, she dispensed with the architectural ornament currently stylish in grand residences of the neighborhood.  Rather than marble or limestone, Mrs. Young’s mansion was granite. The Italian Renaissance palazzo, overall, was dignified rather than exuberant.

Minnie Young’s home spoke restraint.

The interior was less so. Coffered ceilings, oak paneled stairways and a stained glass conservatory reflected the wealth of the owner. In 1900 Minnie moved in with her sister, Johanna “Jennie” Arents, and her son, George. Nine servants also lived in the house including a “hallman” named Pleasant Read. Other help included the cook, kitchen maid, parlor maid, laundress, and butler.

Minnie owned thoroughbred racing horses and a year after moving into No. 19 won four ribbons in the Millbrook Horse Show. Seven years later in 1907, her daughter, Mrs. A. E. Dieterich, caused scandal by running off to Paris with Harry Benchley, Alfred Vanderbilt’s horse buyer. Minnie steamed off to France with her son, George Louis, booking rooms at the Hotel Ritz and going almost immediately to her daughter’s rooms in “a hotel little frequented by Americans.”

The New York Times reported that “When she left the Hotel Ritz…it was with the expressed determination of bringing her daughter back with her.”

Minnie’s expressed determination was to no avail and a year later she steamed back into New York harbor without her daughter.

Later that year Minnie and her sister lost over $1 million when the investment firm of A.O. Brown & Co., of which Minnie’s son Lewis Ginter Young, was a partner, failed. The women, whom The Times said “had been liberally provided for by their father, who was prominent in the American Tobacco Company,” were “apparently not in the least ruffled by the ordeal.”

By the time World War I was over, the neighborhood where Minnie lived was no longer home to Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. The chateaux and palazzos of the great 5th Avenue families were being demolished or converted to retail space as their owners fled uptown. In 1920 Minnie Young followed suit. Moving to Park Avenue, Minnie leased her home to Lady Duff Gordon who did business as "Lucille." Lucille was a dressmaker to the wealthy and famous. It took Lucille a year to complete her renovations, including installing show windows in the first floor.  She opened in 1921, paying Minnie a monthly rent on the 21-year lease of around $50,000.

It wasn’t a good move for Lucille.

The next year, on March 21, 1922, The Times announced that Lucille was in receivership after an involuntary bankruptcy. Lucille’s attorney, Harry Bandler explained that the “embarrassment of the company” had been caused in part because “the company was obliged to move to its new quarters at 19 East Fifty-fourth Street during the year, which required the tieing up of a considerable amount of its capital in the improvements which were made in the new quarters.”

Adventure-loving antiques trader Arthur S. Vernay took over the house and it was from here that he sold to William Randolph Hearst the historic Elizabethan great chamber of Gilling Castle from Yorkshire, England. On April 6, 1933 Vernay bought the house, selling and exhibiting both the wonderful and the rare until he closed his gallery on October 20, 1940.

Minnie Young’s house was next home to the English-Speaking Union for several decades. A non-political organization it was conceived to foster global friendship and understanding among English-speaking peoples.

In 1962 the house became the salon of a celebrity hairdresser. Like Lucille, Kenneth used only one name. Here clients like Jacqueline Kennedy came to be beautified and here on May 16, 1989 fire ravaged the back portion of the house. The house sat, its interiors soot covered and rubble-filled, for over a year before renovation began.

Today Minnie Young’s dignified home at No. 19 East 54th Street is home to Interaudi Bank. While the exterior is pristine and preserved, the elegant interiors, except for traces here and there that managed to survive modernization and commercialization, are essentially gone.



 
 
photo Interaudi Bank