The 1845 Skidmore House -- No. 37 E 4th Street

The Bond Street neighborhood in 1844 was already well established as an affluent residential enclave.  Nearby on Lafayette Place was the white marble LaGrange Terrace, where wealthy homeowners like John Jacob Astor lived.  Over a decade earlier the handsome Federal style mansion of Seabury Tredwell had been erected on East Fourth Street.

Now Tredwell’s cousin, Samuel Tredwell Skidmore began construction of his own mansion, just three lots east of his cousin’s.  He commissioned newly-arrived English architects Thomas Thomas and Son to design the upscale home.  Unlike Tredwell’s Federal style mansion, the Skidmore home would be in the recently popular Greek Revival style.  Red brick contrasted with the brownstone details.  An especially elegant portico featured free-standing fluted Ionic columns.  The entrance, with its sidelights and transom, was marked by a highly unusual paneled door which pretended to be double doors.

Thomas Thomas and Sons' original 1844 watercolor and ink drawing is in The Winterthur Library in Winterthur, Delaware.

The house at No. 369 Fourth Street (later renumbered 37 East Fourth) was completed in 1845.  The Greek Revival style eliminated the peaked, dormered attic in favor of a low-ceilinged full floor with small windows.  Here the Skidmore servants would live, including Mary Ann Banks.  The nurse, who came to live with the family in 1830 after having worked for Skidmore’s good friend, attorney John R. Townsend, would have her hands full.  Skidmore and his wife Angelina had eight children.

The same year that construction began on the Skidmore house, William Sloane opened his carpet store at No. 245 Broadway.  From its opening, Sloane’s shop catered to the carriage trade and it appears his was the first to offer Persian rugs in New York City.  Two of the luxurious carpets would end up in the Skidmore house.  In 1845 Samuel Skidmore purchased two Persian rugs from Sloane for $25 each – in the neighborhood of $750 each today.

Skidmore was the head of Skidmore & Co., a wholesale drug firm at No. 58 Cedar Street. His friend, John R. Townsend had been Judge of the Superior Court in 1844.  So well respected was he that when he died two years later the members of the bar wore mourning for 30 days.  The Townsend family recognized Skidmore's integrity and astute business sense and put the significant estate in Skidmore’s hands.

The extent of Skidmore’s own fortune was evidence on September 18, 1860 when he came to the financial aid of the City.  New York City was $3 million in debt and on August 11, 1860 the Common Council passed an ordinance whereby private citizens and companies could buy city stock.  Called “The Floating Debt Fund Stock of the City of New-York,” it was hoped to liquidate the city’s debt.  Skidmore purchased $2,000 worth of stocks—more in the neighborhood of $55,000 today.

By now the Skidmore children were maturing and a nurse was unnecessary.  But the Irish-born Mary Ann Banks was elderly and, according to The New York Times, was “looked upon as one of the truest and most faithful friends of the family.”  Samuel Skidmore told Banks she could stay on in the house as long as she pleased.

Although Samuel Skidmore was active in Trinity Church and since 1845 had been a vestryman there, Mary chose St. Ann’s Church and was confirmed there in 1860.  Around a year later Mary’s brother arrived to visit.  He calculated that his sister’s age at the time was around 83 years old.  “In regard to her age, Mr. Skidmore said that she had always insisted that she was born a short time before the Declaration of Independence,” said The Times.  Mary Ann Banks was fond of retelling the story of the day she had shaken hands with General George Washington, and said that she frequently would see Martha Washington on the street.

Fearing she would be a financial burden, the aged woman was concerned that she would have enough money to pay for her own funeral expenses.  She took $100 to the Bleecker Street Savings Bank and deposited it as her nest egg for when the time came.

Skidmore’s business and fortune continued to grow.  By 1871 he was President of the Howard Insurance Company of New-York and would become a trustee of the U. S. Trust Company.

Skidmore's insurance company suffered heavy losses in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 -- New-York Tribune, October 12, 1871 (copyright expired)

In October 1875 the Skidmore’s faithful servant, Mary Ann Banks suffered a stroke which left her paralyzed.   Her mental faculties were unimpaired, however, and she wanted desperately to see the Centennial Exhibition being planned for 1876 in Philadelphia.  It would not be.

On June 27, 1876 The New York Times reported “Mrs. Mary Ann Banks, who had lived with the family of Mr. Samuel T. Skidmore, of No. 37 East Fourth street, for over forty-five years, and who has said to be more than one hundred years old, died at his residence yesterday morning.”  Mary’s concerns about her funeral expenses were unfounded.  The $100 she had left in the bank years earlier had grown to $250.

Her funeral was held in St. Ann’s church on June 27 at 10:00 a.m.; after which she was buried in the Skidmore family lot in Greenwood Cemetery.

Skidmore himself was aging and within the year he requested to be relieved from his duties of the Townsend estate “on account of his feeble health and his advanced age,” as explained by The Times on March 16, 1877.  The family refused to have an accounting of the estate, saying that Skidmore’s flawless ethics made it unnecessary.

Townsend’s son, John D. Townsend, told the court, “More than 30 years ago Mr. Skidmore accepted at the hands of my dying father the trust which he is to-day prepared to resign…Yet from that day to this he has, without one cent of remuneration, and with a fidelity to the memory of his old friend, and faithfulness to his widow and children unsurpassed, continued to exercise his trust until now.  He leaves it increased in value, and bears with him in his later days the affectionate regards of those to whom he has been thus devoted.”

Samuel T. Skidmore lived for another four years, dying in the house on November 8, 1881.  By now the once-elegant neighborhood was falling victim to commerce.  The wealthiest families had long ago moved northward and the spinster Tredwell sisters at No. 29 and Angelina Skidmore were among the last of the private homeowners on the block.  Angelina stayed on in the house for just two more years, selling it in 1883.

The portico and entrance reflected the wealth and social position of the Skidmore family

It appears that by 1893 the Skidmore residence was being operated as a boarding house.  In 1892 a teen-aged Lillian Payne met Arthur Payne.  The New York Times would describe her as “a daughter of the tenement house, but is as pretty and as attractive a young woman as could be found in a day’s march.”

In order to make a living the girl learned “skirt dancing” and the newspaper said on July 10, 1893 “it was then she met Arthur Payne, an electrician about twenty-eight years old.  He is a handsome fellow, and the two were married about twelve months ago.”

The couple moved into No. 37 East 4^th Street; but the honeymoon was soon over.  Payne shortly neglected Lillian “and her friends say that she was obliged to go back to skirt dancing to pay the rent for their little home and buy food.”  Eventually Payne “tired of her” and the couple separated, Payne remaining in the 4^th Street apartment.

Although Lillian had her husband arrested around March 1893, her witnesses failed to show up and the case was dropped.  He convinced her to move back with him at the beginning of July, saying he would support her so she would not have to continue dancing.

The night of Saturday, July 8 was Lillian Payne’s last night of skirt dancing.  She left the theatre in Jersey City and reached home around 2:00 in the morning.  She found her irate husband waiting for her.

Arthur Payne demanded to know where Lillian had been, and when she explained she had come straight from the theater he retorted, according to The Times, “Don’t give me any bluffs.  You know you’re lying.”

Before Lillian could reply Payne seized her by the throat and threw her against a wall.  When she pleaded with him, he “gave her a terrible kick in the abdomen,” said the newspaper.  Severely injured, the teen made it out of the apartment and onto the street; but she lost consciousness in front of No. 85 East 4^th Street.

It was not until around 3:00 that morning that Policeman Wichman found Lillian unconscious on the rain-wet pavement.  She was taken into the home of Dr. C. E. Hirsch where she finally regained consciousness and told the policeman what happened.

“Dr. Hirsch administered opiates, and then the policeman arrested Payne,” said The Times.  In court he denied assaulting his wife and said she came home intoxicated.  The judge held him without bail.

In the meantime, Lillian was taken back to the apartment.  The New York Times said “In a small bedroom at 37 East Fourth Street yesterday Lillian Payne, a young wife not yet out of her teens, lay suffering great agony in spite of all that medical science could do to alleviate her pain.”  The newspaper hinted that the girl could die.  “There is a grave possibility that the husband may have to answer to a serious charge.”

While the once proud home continued to house renters, the rear of the building was used as a factory by 1895.  That year the Annual Report on Factory Inspection listed Harry T. Kremer’s artificial flower factory here, employing seven men and one female.  In 1901 the space was used by Spitz & Co., manufacturers of “muff linings.”  Spitz’s small operation employed three men and eight women and, like Kremer, surprisingly hired no one under the age of 16.

Hannah Rosenberg purchased the house in 1936 and would hold onto the property for more than three decades.  In 1966 Ralph H. Holmes bought it from Rosenberg, paying $35,000.  He announced his plans to convert it to “three apartments, a duplex for himself, and two rental units on the upper floors.”

The new owner’s admirable plans and the subsequent landmark designation in 1970 would seem to have guaranteed the structure’s future.  Nothing could be farther from the truth. 

The house survived relatively intact through the 1970s.  In 1973 Barbara Hirschl opened Touchstone on the first floor, an art gallery “for artists who’ve never had a New York gallery show.”  New York Magazine said on April 30, 1973 that to see the artwork “in this long room with its two fireplaces, elegant white walls, high ceilings and hand-carved pine windows and doors, is to know just why  Barbara did it.”

A year later The New York Times art critic John Russell agreed.  In reporting on the opening of Otello Guardacci’s exhibition here, he said “This is one of the prettiest houses in town, built in 1845 and still blessed with its original carved doorways and window frames.”

But when Sol Goldman took possession of the vintage building, things declined rapidly.  Once the largest private landlord in New York City, Goldman died in 1987.  Little by little the landmarked house was allowed to disintegrate.  Landmarks Preservation Commission Chairman Robert B. Tierney issued a statement saying “We tried for years to get them to do the right thing by this building, but the owners refused.”  A building inspection in 1995 noted that it was “open to the elements.”

In 2010 the AIA Guide to New York City lamented “with each edition of this Guide less remained [of the house].”  The Samuel T. Skidmore mansion was near collapse.  In 2002 the roof had caved in.  Within the previous few years, according to Margaret Halsey Gardiner, executive director of the Merchant’s House Museum (the old Seabury Tredwell house), “with each passing year and each fire and each wall collapse” more of the original elements—shutters, doorknobs, the stairway newel post—were spirited away .

Finally the Landmarks Preservation Commission sued the estate of Sol Goldman.  Tierney said “after it became clear to us that they had no intention of taking care of this historically significant building, we sued.” 

Justice Walter B. Tolub of the State Supreme Court issued his ruling in December 2004.  The owners were ordered to “permanently repair and restore the exterior.”  Tierney hoped the ruling would send “a clear message that demolition by neglect will not be tolerated.”

The Atlantic Development Group leased the abandoned house, the windows of which were by now bricked up.  Working with the Landmarks Preservation Commission and conservationists, the firm of Gerner Kronick & Valcarcel Architects studied period houses and Thomas Thomas & Son’s original drawings.

When this photograph was taken in the late 20th century, the house was just beginning to show neglect -- from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWHBP5W4&SMLS=1&RW=1366&RH=631

Although the original details evident when Touchstone gallery was here had been ripped out or lost through fire and decay; the exterior was intact although highly abused.  By November 2010 the $4 million restoration and conversion to apartments was completed. 

Amazingly, the Skidmore house—snatched from devastation at its final hour—is reborn.  A reproduction cast iron fence approximates the original and six-over-six windows fill the openings, once bricked shut.  The sidelights and transoms of the entry have been restored and, most miraculous, the original door survives.

photographs taken by the author

The 1832 Merchant's House

 

East Fourth Street in 1832 saw the arrival of rows of elegant red brick homes with white marble trim as the street became part of the most fashionable residential section of the city, the Bond Street area.  That year Joseph Brewster built the home at what was then 361 East 4th Street.  Drawing on both Federal and Greek Revival designs, the house boasted the finest interior details available.  Matching black-and-gold marble mantles in the parlor and dining room, exquisite plaster ceiling moldings, a richly carved entry hall newell post of acanthus leaves and mahagony doors.  In keeping with the Georgian demand for symmetry, one such door in the parlor opens onto a brick wall, installed simply to balance a second door.

 

The house was purchased for $18,000 by Seabury Tredwell in 1835.  Comfortable after years of successful trade as a partner in Tredwell & Kissam, an importer of English marine hardware, he had retired that year to live off his interest and investments.  He moved in with his seven children, his wife Eliza who was about twenty years younger, and four English and Irish servants.  The Tredwells purchased only the most fashionable and costliest of furnishings, patronizing the workshops of New York cabinetmakers such as Duncan Phyfe and Joseph Meeks.

Interior photographs The Merchant's House

Five years later their eighth child, Gertrude was born completing the family.

Seabury Tredwell was a stern, religious father, the namesake of his uncle, the first American Bishop.  While design fashions changed he did not.  There were no alterations made to the East 4th Street house in his lifetime.  The children grew up in an environment of class and refinement.  A piano offered entertainment in the evenings.  Outside the elite of New York society rode by in black carriages on their way to the theatres just a few blocks away on the Bowery.  A New York paper extolled in 1835 that "The elegance and beauty of this section cannot be surpassed in the country."

At some point Tredwell had the entrance hall stairway moved forward to accomodate a mahogony-cabbed hand-hoist elevator when his daughter Elizabeth was afflicted with a back ailment (the elevator has since disappeared).  As times changed, so did the family.  The parlor was the setting of the weddings of sisters Elizabeth and Mary Adelaide.  Brother Samuel also married and left.  Then in 1865 the same parlor saw the funeral of "papa," Seabury Tredwell.

After his death, the family cautiously updated the parlor with the addition of a few up-to-date Victorian upholstered pieces.  Otherwise, as Gertrude would later repeat again and again, it was left "as papa wanted it."

photo NYPL Collection

None of the other Tredwell children married.  Eliza Tredwell died in 1882 and by the turn of the century only Gertrude and her sisters were left in the house, now numbered 29 East Fourth Street.  

It would appear that the Tredwell fortune was by this time drying up.  In an October 1906 letter to the The New York Times G. Ellsworth chided the editor for an apparent expose of the sisters' finances.  "As one of the oldest subscribers to your paper, I beg to insert this paragraph to contradict and absolutely deny the erroneous statements set forth in the columns of the daily Times of Saturday last respecting the surviving daughters of the late Seabury Tredwell.   Suffice it to say, despite the assertions made to the contrary, they are only in comfortable circumstances, and are practical, thoroughly good loyal citizens of the substantial old type of character handed down from generations back..."

In quick succession the parlor saw the funerals of Gertrude's sisters:  Sarah died in 1906.  A year later Phebe fell down the staircase to her death and in 1909 Gertrude's last sister Julia died leaving her alone in the last elegant home in the neighborhood.

The city outside the marble-arched entranceway to Gertrude's home was no longer the enclave of the privileged.  Commerce had taken over.  The street levels of once-proud residences were transformed into shops and warehouses.   The marble stoops were removed, the interiors gutted.  Where hansoms and cabriolets once transported the wealthy, trucks now clattered.

Gertrude, however, remained isolated in her time capsule, keeping everything "as papa wanted it."  Nothing was discarded.  Dresses and combs, books and letters, everything was kept intact and in place exactly as things were in 1835.  Despite her finances running low until she was nearly destitute towards the end of her life, Gertrude fought against the progress beyond her curtained windows.

In 1933, just short of a century after her father purchased the house, Gertrude Tredwell died upstairs in the same bed in which she was born in 1840.  She was 93 years old.

A cousin, George Chapman purchased the Tredwell house, recognizing its importance and the need to preserve it.  He opened it as a private house museum in 1936, supporting the cause with his own funds.   While his efforts saved the house, its contents and its integrity, he did not have the resources to maintain the aging structure.  When he died in 1962 its condition was perilous.  Water had been seeping into the brickwork causing the facade to buckle outward.  The chimney tilted dangerously to one side.  Inside the carpeting and fabrics were faded and worn.

That year The Decorators Club of New York City adopted the house as a pet project.  Scalamandre reproduced the draperies including painstakingly handmaking the heavy tassels.  The "Pompeiian" patterned carpeting was reproduced from a swatch cut from the parlor.  Yet the structural problems were more than the Decorators Club could tackle.

New York University architect Joseph Roberto was consulted and he plunged in to almost single-handedly save the building.  Over nine years of structural restoration brought the house back.  His wife Carolyn, an interior designer, worked with the Decorators Club to restore the furniture and interior accessories.

One night while the house was closed during the restoration it was broken into.  The thieves roamed throughout the building searching for valuables they could quickly resell.  They passed by the Tredwell silverware, the 19th Century oil paintings and the mahogany Federal knife boxes on the sideboard.  Luckily for the house in their ignorance they stole the workers hand tools.

As evidence of Gertrude Tredwell's preservation of her family's things, a volunteer one day was going through clothing in an upstairs bedroom.  Putting her hand into an evening cape, she pulled from the pocket the program from a play that had taken place in the late 1800s.   Like almost everything in the house it lay protected from time, never having been touched since that last Tredwell sister nestled it into her pocket after the theatre nearly a century ago.

In 1971 Joe Roberto received The Victorian Society of America's Preservation Award for his work on the Merchant's House.  He was consulted again in 1987 when the house was again threatened, this time by the intended razing of the three houses, long since altered almost unrecognizably, at Nos. 31, 33 and 35.  Because the Tredwell House and No. 31 were built together and shared a wall there was a genuine possibility of collapse.  Through Roberto's direction, enough of No. 31's interior wall was left to buttress No. 29  so that the old house came down without any damage to the Tredwell home.

It is often suggested that Henry James based his novel Washington Square on Gertrude Tredwell.  Whether or not that is true, when the 1949 film version, The Heiress, was in process the filmmakers toured the Merchant's house extensively as research for the interior sets.

Today the Merchant's House is widely regarded as one of the finest surviving examples of early 19th Century residences both inside and out.  From the grand wrought iron basket newells on the white marble stoop to the gloves and parasols in the bedrooms upstairs, Gertrude Tredwell's house remains exactly "as papa wanted it."