The 1911 Jonathan Bulkley House -- No. 600 Park Avenue

photo by Alice Lum

In 1911 New York Times writer William A. Boring was excited about the high-end development of Park Avenue. The soot-belching trains into Grand Central Terminal had been converted to electricity and sent underground, creating a European-style boulevard rather than a train yard. “Park Avenue will be a residence street, and all the little markets, stores, etc., will be moved further eastward to cheaper property,” he predicted.

Boring noted that the moneyed New Yorkers were already beginning to build in the neighborhood. “The tide has already set in, and the increasing invasion of business in the Fifth Avenue district below Fifty-ninth Street is naturally driving the old-time residents there to the newer center…Park Avenue will eventually become the finest apartment thoroughfare in the city. In sharp contrast to the old time cheap flats that formerly monopolized the avenue everything of this nature now going up is of the best fireproof construction."

It would not be all apartment buildings though.

The “little markets, stores, etc.,” he spoke of had included Tscheppe & Schur’s pharmacy at the corner of Park Avenue and 64th Street, along with a small apartment building and a row house. By April 23, 1911 when Boring’s prophecy was read by New Yorkers, those buildings were gone.

“As one walks north from the lower Park Avenue apartment house section he enters the confines of the private house community at Sixty-fourth Street, where, on the northwest corner, a fine residence is nearly completed for Jonathan Bulkley.”

That same year other millionaires were building on Park Avenue, including Reginald DeKoven and Percy Rivington Pyne, indeed giving Boring something to be excited about.

Jonathan Bulkley was a busy man -- a principal of the paper manufacturing firm Bulkley, Dunton & Co.; Vice President of the Keith Paper Company; a trustee of the Washington Paper Power Company; and sat on the Board of Directors of the E. W. Bliss Company, the Home Life Insurance Company, the Ryegate Paper Company, the St. Regis Paper Company, the Massachusetts Corporation and the Turner Falls Electric Company.

To design their mansion at 600 Park Avenue, Buckley and his wife, the former Sarah Tod of Cleveland, chose James Gamble Rogers. The 44-year old architect produced a dignified white limestone structure in what has been called the Modern Renaissance style. Four small balconies at the second floor level, three on Park Avenue and one centered on 64th Street added dimension and interest to the gleaming white façade. The sloping slate roof above the stone balustrade that hid the fourth floor terminated in graceful pierced cresting.

The Bulkleys, who also kept a country home in Ridgefield, Connecticut, moved in with their three children, Jonathan, Sarah and David. Their doors were immediately thrown open to society. In December that year they hosted a dinner and dance for the debutante Alice Bulkley Moss. The home was also the setting for charity teas and lunches – both Jonathan (who was president of the East Side House Settlement) and Sarah were highly involved in philanthropic and social endeavors. Sarah was for several years the Vice President of the New York Y. W. C. A. and the Garden Club of America.

The 64th Street facade -- photo by Alice Lum

On February 22, 1927 Sarah Bulkley left the house at 3:00 to attend a tea. Around her neck hung a pearl necklace valued at $50,000 and her fingers were weighed down with several expensive rings. It was a fortunate choice of accessories for Mrs. Bulkley.

When she returned at 6:30 she found her safe opened and empty. Gone was all of Sarah’s jewelry – diamond bracelets, diamond and emerald rings and a lorgnette chain with 97 diamonds valued at $20,000.

Bulkley and his sons, who were 29 and 27 years old at the time, had been home all afternoon; none of the servants knew the combination to the safe other than Sarah’s personal maid, Ida Kaemfer; and police called it an “inside job.” All circumstantial evidence pointed to Ida.

Mrs. Bulkley, however, insisted that the maid was “above suspicion.” The case was never solved.

A taxicab sits on Park Avenue in front of the Bulkley mansion in 1929 -- photo NYPL Collection

The 83-year old Bulkley died of pneumonia on October 16, 1939. Two and a half years later, on June 21, 1943, Sarah Tod Bulkley died. The Bulkley children were grown and had long ago left No. 600 Park Avenue. The house was shuttered. The beautiful rooms, once the scene of brilliant dinners and dances, sat dark and silent for three years.

In June, 1946 the Royal Swedish Government purchased the house as the permanent residence of its Consul General. Concurrently, it obtained the abutting five-story mansion at 63 East 64th Street and would eventually collect three others.

Bas relief carvings grace the facade.  The decorative ironwork was originally painted black to contract with the stone -- photo by Alice Lum

 In 1999 the new Consul General of Sweden, Olle Wastberg, and his wife took up residency at No. 600 Park Avenue. It was time, they felt, to spruce things up.

The Wastbergs worked with Swedish interior designers to re-do the interiors. The Bulkley house was transformed, according to the Scandinavian press site Nordic Way, “into a showplace for modern Swedish design.” But despite the introduction of Swedish furnishings and art, the architectural detailing, paneling, and mantles were carefully preserved.

In 2004 a façade restoration was undertaken by Gertler Wente Kerbeykian Architects.

photo by Alice Lum

Five years later, as a cost-saving measure, the Swedish Government elected to discontinue its New York Consulate.  The handsome mansion, valued at around $12.2 million, now serves as the residence of the Swedish Ambassador to the United Nations.

The 1908 Edward Harkness House - 1 East 75th Street

Photo NYPL Collection

When Stephen V. Harkness died in 1888 his widow, Anna, was left with a substantial fortune. Harkness was an Ohio businessman who invested in John D. Rockefeller’s fledgling Standard Oil Company. It was a wise investment.

Anna’s youngest son, Edward, moved to New York to manage the family business. A graduate of Yale University, he was quiet and unassuming, preferring not to involve himself with the New York social circle. When he announced his engagement to Mary Stillman, his mother offered her wedding gift: a new home.

On June 22, 1907, The New York Times announced that “Plans have been filed for the new five-story residence to be built by Edward S. Harkness at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Seventy-fifth Street…The house will cost $250,000 according to the estimate of Architects Hale and Rogers.”

The “Rogers” of Hale and Rogers mentioned by The Times was James Gamble Rogers. Rogers had just arrived in New York and was just starting his career. The commission would lay the foundation for Rogers’ successful career.

The lot he was given to work with was oddly shaped, a mere 32 feet wide and 100 feet long. To preclude the problem of a restrictive site that would create a very long, very dark and very narrow house, Rogers simply turned the structure to the side, creating an entrance on 75th Street rather than 5th Avenue.

Harkness then approached Stuart Duncan who had completed his large home at No. 1 East 75th Street in 1904.  He explained that Duncan would need to change his address.  Because of the orientation of Harkness' planned home, he needed the No. 1 address.  Duncan complied and his  residence suddenly became No. 3 East 75th.

While other millionaires in the early 1900s were constructing French chateaux frosted with exuberant decoration, Harkness preferred a more understated style. The home would be Italian Renaissance, reserved and stately. Rather than waste space on a ballroom which would rarely be used, the architect was instructed to focus on the library and music room.

The house consisted of seven floors – two floors being below street level. To reduce the appearance of ostentation, Rogers set the top floor back, disguising it behind an ornate stone balustrade thereby giving the impression of four floors rather than five.

The elaborate wrought-iron fence that surrounds the sidewalk moat is considered one of the finest examples of cast iron in the city. It was modeled after the fence encircling the Scalegari tombs of Verona.

The Architectural Record was impressed. Calling it “free from excess and exaggeration,” it added “if there is any façade on upper Fifth Avenue which gives an effect of quiet elegance by worthier architectural means it has not been our good fortune to come across it.”

In his “Gilded Mansions: Grand Architecture and High Society,” Wayne Craven wrote “The impressiveness of a mansion such as this lies not so much in its lavishness as in its monumentality and sensitivity to the true and basic principles of classical design. Although constructed of expensive material, Tennessee marble, that is about the only concession to ostentation visible in the exterior.”

To ensure the couple’s privacy, Rogers raised the street floor windows just above eye level. Inside polished wood rather than Caen stone or marble gave the house a more homey feeling. The main staircase was constructed of Cassis marble, ornamented by a continuous heavy bronze balustrade. A leaded glass dome lit the stairway.

Throughout the house leaded glass windows were designed for the east side where regular glass windows would have provided a view onto the wall of the neighboring house. In the basement Rogers designed an innovative refrigerated room. When temperatures outside fell, an exterior door would be opened and the electricity to the room turned off, allowing nature to cool refrigerate the space.

Courtesy The Commonwealth Fund

The second floor consisted of three rooms, the library, the music room and the gallery. The gallery connected the other two and was, according to the Architectural Record, “perhaps the most beautiful room in the house.” The frescoed ceiling depicted classical Greek and Roman scenes. A Carrara marble fountain with a bronze figure of Pan was centered in the space.

The library was paneled in rosewood, which continued upwards to the rosewood, coffered ceiling. The music room was the most ornate on the second floor with sophisticated woodwork, four chandeliers and a Venetian-inspired ceiling.

Photo The Commonwealth Fund

On the third floor were the Harknesses’ private rooms. Mrs. Harkness’ boudoir and bath spanned the entire 5th Avenue side while the master bedroom faced 75th Street. There were five guestrooms on the fourth floor, along with the valet’s room and a sewing room. The fifth floor was devoted to quarters for their eight servants – all Swedish -- and a laundry. The servants’ rooms were tiled with simple oaken doors in stark contrast to the amenities of the lower floors.

Entertaining in the Harkness house consisted of relatively intimate dinner parties and recitals. Rather than concerning themselves with lavish balls, the Harknesses focused on philanthropies; Edward no doubt following the lead of his mother, Anna, who was deeply involved with numerous charities. He felt it was “imperative for the wealthy to give back to society through generous benefactions.”

Anna Harkness founded The Commonwealth Fund in 1918, a foundation with the broad intention to “enhance the common good.” Mrs. Harkness felt that providing health care, especially to low-income and minority groups, children and the elderly was a desperately needed cause.

When Edward died on January 30, 1940 at the age of 66, his will directed that his estate would go to charitable and educational institutions upon the death of his wife, Mary. Mary Harkness died on June 7, 1950 in the white marble palazzo that had been the couple’s wedding gift.

The Harkness fortune of $60 million was distributed to charities. The collection of art masterpieces were bequethed to the Metropolitcan Museum of Art, including works such as a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral, and Hans Holbein the Younger’s Portrait of a Member of the Wedigh Family.

Photo The Commonwealth Fund

The Harkness House was donated to The Commonwealth Fund, which occupies it today. Only minimal changes have been made to the interiors to accommodate administrative offices. Rogers’ white marble façade remains untouched; a stately monument to unselfish wealth.