A Brutalized Marble Commercial Villa at No. 572 5th Ave.

In 1915 the Budd haberdashery was surrounded by equally high-end shops -- photo collection of the Museum of the City of New York

As the first years of the 20^th century unfolded, Fifth Avenue above 42^nd Street was changing.  While a few staunch millionaires remained in their brownstone mansions, most by now had moved north along Central Park, leaving their homes to be razed or remodeled beyond recognition into commercial structures.

Between 46^th and 47^th Streets on the east side of the avenue, the elaborate Beaux Arts style Windsor Arcade engulfed the block front.  On the west side the Chevalier mansion at No. 574 had been transformed in 1903 into a Northern Renaissance fantasy to house upscale retail shops.  Its next door neighbor at No. 572 had also become a commercial building.

In 1906 the area was called by The New York Times “the gilt-edged section of Fifth Avenue.”   Once the most exclusive residential neighborhood in Manhattan, it was now home to the most exclusive retail stores—jewelers, fine art dealers and high-end clothiers.  That year Henry A. Budd purchased the building at No. 572 for $350,000.

Budd was a partner in his father’s haberdashery, Samuel Budd—more familiarly known as “Budd.”  Samuel had come to New York City in 1861 at the age of 26 from New Paltz, New York, to start a men’s clothing business.    The store remained on Fifth Avenue at 24^thStreet for 45 years, earning a reputation as one of New York’s most respected men’s outfitters.  But now, with high-end retailers entrenching themselves further up Fifth Avenue, Henry Budd intended to establish a second store.

Budd patiently waited for the lease, held by confectioners Charles A. Dean, to expire in 1907.  In the meantime he commissioned architect Augustus N. Allen to draw up plans to renovate the structure.  The Timesreported that Budd intended to “remodel it and open it as a branch store.”

And remodel it he did.

Drawing inspiration from Southern Italian villas Allen created a white marble façade under a red-tiled Mediterranean sloped roof.  A three-story arcade rose gracefully to the fifth floor where three openings were separated by Corinthian pilasters, simulating a loggia.   A frieze of carved shields and the name “Budd” surmounted the impressive bronze store front fabricated by Estey Bros. Company.

The elegant men's store featured a bronze storefront -- Architectural Record June 1916 (copyright expired)

The new Budd store opened for business in 1907, catering to the same wealthy New Yorkers who had lived in the neighborhood a generation earlier.    The store was widely- known for its custom-made cravats which ranged in price from $1.00 to $6.00—upwards to $110 in today’s dollars.  An advertisement in the New-York Tribune touted “All the cravats sold by Samuel Budd are made in his own workrooms; the styles are original and the silks used in their manufacture are woven expressly in exceptional qualities under the supervision of his agents.  The patterns are the work of expert designers.”

Budd leased space above ground level to other high-end retailers.  K. E. Hanley Company was among the first tenants, sellers of women’s apparel.   On January 13, 1907 the store advertised a clearance sale of women’s suits “made up completed of foreign materials in fancy velveteens, in colors, and French Broadcloth.  The models are particularly exclusive and the workmanship throughout bears our well known stamp of superiority,” promised the ad.  The prices hinted at the wealth of the store’s clientele.  On sale some of the suits were priced at $62.50—about $1,100 today.

Shoppers on Fifth Avenue are dressed against the chill in 1915 -- photo collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Men’s tailors Schneider & Schmittlapp was leasing space on an upper floor by 1915.

Samuel Budd died in 1912 at the age of 77 after half a century of outfitting moneyed gentlemen.  Henry A. Budd continued the family business until 1933 when the Great Depression took its toll.   On June 7, 1933 the Mutual Life Insurance Company foreclosed on the building.  It would be the first of a rapid-fire string of turn overs of ownership.    In May 1943 Clarke G. Dailey purchased the property, selling it four months later to Frederick Brown.   Brown quickly turned a profit, selling the building a few weeks later, in November 1945.

The area remained the “Queen of Avenues” for several decades—the very term “Fifth Avenue” being synonymous world-wide with high-priced jewelry, clothing and artwork.   But by the end of the 20^th century more tawdry businesses elbowed their way onto the Avenue and several airlines headquarters took over former retail buildings—often brutalizing the architecture with their modernizations.  And such was the case with No. 572 Fifth Avenue.   In the 1960s Irish International Airlines moved in, to be replaced by a two-story bookstore in 1971.  The upper floors were renovated to offices at the time.

The delicate panel carvings, the rope-twist detailing and the slender white marble columns hint at the lost elegance--photo by Alice Lum

Allen’s graceful Mediterranean villa lost its red tiled roof and the fifth floor windows were elongated, thereby losing the carved panels in the process that had created the loggia-effect.

The surviving traces of the Budd Building could indignantly be called "ruins." -- photo by Alice Lum

But the greatest insult occurred in July 2010 when a two-story storefront of polished black stone and blue neon was installed.   Today only traces of the Budd Building remain.  What was once a graceful white marble villa with a bronze storefront is the victim of brutal architectural vandalism masquerading as “improvement.”

The Edith A. Logan Mansion -- No. 17 West 56th Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1903 the Fifth Avenue neighborhood around 56^thStreet was no longer the sparsely-developed land it had been before the Civil War.  In the 1870s a building boom resulted in developers lining the side streets with cookie-cutter brownstone rowhouses; their identical high stoops marching in military-like precision down the blocks.

One such developer was John G. Prague who acted as his own architect.  In 1870 the inexhaustible Prague erected a row of four-story brownstones stretching along the northern side of West 56^th Street.  Included in the row was No. 17.

The house was home to another real estate developer, Louis Ranger, by the mid 1880s.  No small-time operator, in 1886 he was busy constructing a “new building for stores” on 125^thStreet and Third Avenue at a cost of $130,000—about $3 million today. 

When the butler of neighbor Matthew C. D. Borden was murdered on a stormy Monday afternoon in May 1895 detectives scoured the area and focused on the shrubbery outside the Ranger house.  Borden lived at No. 25 West 56^th.  When his black under-butler, Ferdinand Harris, answered a knock on the servant’s entry door that afternoon, he was confronted by two white men who shot him twice and ran away down Fifth Avenue.   Harris died of a bullet through the heart.  A neighbor, Georgie Wheat, attributed the motive to “revenge through race trouble.”

Detectives combed the neighborhood and temporarily believed they had found an important clue at the Ranger house.  Their hopes were soon dashed, however.  “Still some other underbrush of embarrassment and doubt was cleared away during the morning by the setting aside of the ‘cartridge’ or ‘pistol’ box clue as worthless.  The box was found in the area of 17 West Fifty-sixth Street, and was supposed to have contained a pistol or cartridges, according to the range of imagination which penciled on it the address of Mr. Borden,” said The New York Times.  Instead, “What it had contained was a spokeshave, and its packing was a coarse, soft, thick, gray paper, used in packing such hardware.”

Ranger soon leased the house to the wealthy widower, Amedee de Pau Moran.   The social obligations normally in the bailiwick of female socialites fell on the shoulders of Moran.    In 1899 he began the whirlwind of teas, receptions and dinners for his daughter, Maria, associated with her debut.    On December 12 he hosted her “coming-out tea” in the house.  The tea was followed a few days later by a dinner dance and, on January 9, another was given—this one for both daughters, Marie and Rosalie.

By the end of the following year Louis Ranger was ready to divest himself of the 56^th Street property.  On December 14 The New York Times reported that it had been sold.  “The purchaser will make extensive alterations to the house,” said the newspaper.  The purchaser was German-born millionaire August Heckscher who had made his fortune in zinc and iron mining.

If Heckscher intended to make “extensive alterations,” he changed his mind.  In January 1903 he sold the house, still described as a “high-stoop brownstone with dining room extension,” to the President of the Columbia Bank, Joseph Fox.    Fox would hold the property for an even shorter time than Heckscher.

Four years earlier Major John A. Logan, Jr. had been killed while leading his men into action near San Fabian in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War.  Logan was the son of General John A. Logan who had distinguished himself in the Civil War and served as a U.S. Senator.

The dashing Major John A. Logan, Jr. left a sizable fortune to his widow in 1899 -- photo A. P. Webb, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWG6EAL&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

Logan’s widow, Edith Andrews Logan, left their Youngstown, Ohio home with her children—two daughters and a son—and traveled abroad for during her period of mourning.   Now, in 1903, she was in New York City with a substantial estate from her husband and two daughters who would soon be coming of age.

Two months after he had purchased No. 17 West 56^thStreet, Joseph Fox sold it to Edith Logan.   The 1870 house sat in the most exclusive residential district of the city; but it was dated and out of fashion.  Edith addressed the problem by hiring architect Augustus N. Allen to give the residence a make-over.

For a few years there had been an increased interest in colonial history.  Across the city neo-Federal and neo-Georgian residences were increasingly appearing.  Allen’s transformation of No. 17 resulted in a dignified brick-and-limestone Colonial Revival mansion.  The new Logan house bore noticeable similarities to the Henry B. Hollins house almost directly across the street, designed by Stanford White.

Delicate leading of the dormer windows and exquisite carvings reflected the high-end craftsmanship -- photo by Alice Lum

The first of the debutante entertainments was held in the house on December 14, 1907.  The Timesreported that “Miss Marion Louise Logan…was presented to society yesterday at a reception held by her mother at 17 West Fifty-sixty Street.”  The guest list for an “informal dinner dance” that Edith hosted for Marie Louise two years later in February included sons and daughters of the most illustrious families in New York.

Among the nearly 70 young people dancing in the Logan ballroom were Marjorie Gould, Dorothy Bigelow, Katherine Lawrence, Eleanor Alexander, William Rhinelander Stewart, Jr., Harry Oelrichs, Frank Roche, Jay Gould, Anthony Drexel, Jr., Stephen Van Rensselear, Cecil St. George, and Count Antonelli.

A year later, on February 4, 1910, The New York Timesreported on the preparations for Marie Louise’s wedding to Henri de Sincay of Belgium.   Sincay had already arrived in New York on the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse with his best man, Count Henri de Baillett Latour and was staying at the St. Regis nearby on Fifth Avenue.  The wedding was scheduled for 4:00 on Saturday February 26 in the Lady Chapel of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.   Newspapers listed Marie Louise’s wedding party which included a friend from back home.  “Miss Majorie Gould, Miss Marjorie Curtis, Miss Frances Alexander, Miss Elsie Nicoll, and Miss Elizabeth Lattimer, a Southern girl, and Miss Constance Parmely of Cleveland, Ohio, are to be the bridesmaids.”

Outshining those socially-esteemed names were the male members.  “The ushers were Prince Henri de Vigne of Washington, who married a near relative of the bridegroom; Count de Balliet-Latour, the Duke of Vallombrosa, Baron de Morogues, John A. Logan, 3d, a brother of the bride; Anthony J. Drexel, Jr., who is to marry Miss Marjorie Gould; Gurnee Munn, Moncure Robinson, W. W. Rhinelander Stewart, Jr., and Maurice Roach.”

The ceremony was performed by Archbishop Farley and The Times said the chapel was filled “with a fashionable crowd.”  The newspaper also noted that “In addition to the guests, who filled the chapel to overflowing, many curious worshipers in the Cathedral found their way into the chapel unhindered and lined up to watch the procession.”

Following the ceremony no-doubt beaming Edith hosted a reception and breakfast in the 56^th Street house.

It appears that Edith considered selling the 56^thStreet house following the marriages of her eldest daughter and her son John.  On July 4, 1912 The New York Times reported that “The St. Anthony Association, which has occupied for its quarters the four-story house at 29 East Twenty-eighth Street…for over a quarter of a century, has sold the building and purchased for its new clubhouse the five-story American basement residence at 17 West Fifty-sixth Street.”  The newspaper said “It was bought from the estate of Edith S. Logan.”

If indeed the sale of the property, valued at about $135,000, went through; the very-much-alive Edith arranged to stay on in the house for awhile.  That same year marked young Edith’s turn to come out in society and in December her mother opened her doors for receptions and teas.   John had moved to Europe; but he would return for Edith’s wedding before the year was out.

Along with the 56^th Street mansion Edith retained her home in Youngstown.   It was there, on May 12, 1913, that she announced Edith’s engagement to neighbor Dewees W. Dilworth who lived at No. 22 West 55^th Street.    In reporting the engagement, The Timesdescribed young Edith as “prominent in the younger set and at the opera, where Mrs. Logan had a parterre box.”

Although her marriage to Dilworth on November 25, 1913 was not sprinkled with titled Europeans, it was nonetheless an important society wedding in the very fashionable St. Thomas’ Church on Fifth Avenue.  As expected, Edith threw a reception following the ceremony.

As an interesting side note, a decade later the Logan girls’ imperious and wealthy grandmother, Sarah H. Logan, died in Washington.  While she left the family mansion to John and bequeathed important heirlooms to Edith Logan, she pointedly ignored her granddaughters.    The will said that they “have treated me with such unpardonable indifference that I cannot forgive them or allow them to share with their brother, John A. Logan 3d, in my affections or benefactions.”

In the meantime, Edith Logan’s sale of the 56^thStreet house to the St. Anthony Association was completed in February 1914.  A social and charitable organization, it made renovations to the house to accommodate its use as a clubhouse.  Upstairs rooms were rented to single military or former-military men.  In 1920 U.S. Army Second Lieutenant Columbus Delano Ames was living here; and three years later retired Colonel Charles F. Height was here when he married Miss Sidney Hood.

In 1929 the Association purchased the Junior League’s five-story clubhouse at Nos. 133-35 61^st Street.  After altering it, they left No. 17 which they sold in July 1931 to the Home Capitol Corporation.  The firm happily reported that it leased the building in October that year for a term of 21 years for $350,000.  But its president, Charles C. Wagner, quickly sold the lease to the Royal Box, Inc.  It was the beginning of a shady period for Edith Logan’s former mansion.

Depression and Prohibition Era New Yorkers were starved for excitement and the Royal Box Club would offer just that.    In January 1932 The New York Times said “The Royal Box, which was opened only a few weeks ago, with lavish furnishings estimated to have cost $250,000, and catering to the most expensive trade, is known popularly throughout the city as 'Zelli’s place.'”

Joe Zelli was what the newspaper deemed “the urbane and dapper restaurateur.”  He had served as a sergeant in the army in France and opened a café in Montmartre that became well known to thousands of American tourists.  The Times described the converted house.  “The restaurant occupies an entire five-story building; an imposing structure without as well as within, with a white stone façade and flower boxes decorating trim wrought-iron balconies.  Awnings of blue and gold are fixed over the big entrance door and the upper windows.”

In 1932 the iron balconies were decorated with colorful flower boxes -- photo by Alice Lum

The Royal Box not only served food; it served alcohol, and it drew not only wealthy New Yorkers but crime figures such as the flashy Al Capone.   Although other high-end speak-easies operated in the upscale neighborhood, like the Mona Lisa Club in the former Morton Mansion just down the block, federal agents seemed especially intent on closing down the Royal Box.

On New Year’s Eve 1931 the “Dry Police” smashed the front door, ousted about 100 patrons, and confiscated liquor.  “The agents drove up in taxicabs and rang the doorbell,” reported The Times.  “Admittance was refused them.  With an axe they smashed in the ornate front door.”

“When the agents had made their way in they found themselves in a setting which they admitted was the richest they had ever invaded.  The entire furnishings of the place were in modernistic style, but executed in exceptional taste in soft pastel shades.”

Despite their mission, the agents admired a life-sized statue of “Ease,” a nude female figure holding a bunch of grapes.  The great circular bar was inlaid with exotic woods, its top black-lacquered and rimmed in nickel.  “The third floor was no less beautiful.  Another bar stood in the corner at the head of the stairs.  It was of mahogany, with ornamentations of chrome steel.  The walls were of soft silver gilt and opulent hangings of rose hue were at the windows.  At one side stood a baby grand piano, decorated in keeping with the rest of the room…There were a half dozen smaller rooms as magnificent as the others.  There was a woman’s lounging room, with a costly fireplace, and on the fourth floor private dining rooms were being fitted up,” said the newspaper.

The patrons were allowed to leave, with the women going first.  Outside the cameras of press photographers flashed as well-dressed women rushed to taxicabs.  Back inside the agents found destruction.  “About 150 bottles of liquors of all sorts, from aperitifs to champagnes and cordials had been smashed by the club employes while the agents were battering their way in.  About 200 bottles of liquor were found in other places in the building.  On the top floor was an ingenious hideaway for drinkables.  One panel of the wall was found to be false.  What appeared to be an electric fixture was found to conceal a lock.”

Federal agents decided that the best way to stop the Royal Box from re-establishing its illegal business was to annihilate it.   Deputy Prohibition Administrator H. C. Bradford supervised a “gang of laborers” who were told to demolish the lavish interiors.  The two bars were dismantled and hauled away on a truck before Federal Judge Robert Patterson issued a stop order.  The Times reported on January 3, 1932 that “Demolition of the elaborate furnishings of the Royal Box, Joe Zelli’s night club at 17 West Fifty-sixth Street…was halted yesterday by an injunction restraining Federal agents from removing anything but the two bars and liquors.”

But the injunction was soon overturned and on January 22 a truck pulled up on front of the building as workers stripped the club of its furnishings and fixtures.   Zelli’s troubles were compounded when, in March, his creditors filed an involuntary petition for bankruptcy against the Royal Box, Inc.

The government agents got their way and the doors of the Royal Box Club would never open again.  Later that year the former mansion became the offices of Warren & Arthur Smadbeck, Inc. called by The Times “large holders of realty in this city and developers of country real estate.”  The firm would stay in No. 17 until December 1940 when they purchased the six-story office building at No. 125 East 23^rd Street.

The end of the modern marquee cleverly echoes the neo-Georgian fanlight over the entrance -- photo by Alice Lum

In the 1943 the first two floors of the house were converted to a restaurant, with the upper floors remaining vacant.   Three years later the restaurant space became a beauty parlor and apartments, two per floor, were installed upstairs.  Then in 1976 Takara Belmont, a Japanese manufacturer of furnishings and equipment for beauty salons, spas and barbershops converted the building to offices, a first floor showroom, and a single apartment on the top floor.

The Chas. MacVeagh Mansion -- No. 40 East 74th Street

Three years before the Financial Panic of 1873 and with the Civil War over, building was booming on the Upper East Side.  Developers Winters & Hunt were part of it, that year beginning construction of a long row of eleven brownstone homes stretching from No. 30 to 50 East 74^th Street.  Designed by brothers David and John Jardine (who would become developers themselves before long), the uniform Italianate rowhouses were rather stoic, offering as their most eyecatching feature their handsome columned entrances and hefty stone stoop railings.

Each of the houses was a carbon-copy of the others -- photo from the collection of the New York Public Library

No. 40, in the center of the row, was purchased by lawyer L. B. Clark.  In October of 1879 he leased the house to William H. Knapp for four years at an annual rent of $1,100.  Knapp’s rent translates to an enviably-reasonable $2000 a month today.

The 56-year old Knapp was married with two sons and two daughters.  He was “in the steamboat and transportation business,” according to The New York Times; and was the supervising engineer for the Department of Charities and Correction.

By the time that Charles H. MacVeagh purchased the house at the turn of the century, the neighborhood was undergoing drastic change.  One-by-one the outdated Victorian brownstones were being razed or remodeled and MacVeagh would be quick to join the trend.  He commissioned architect Augustus N. Allen to rip off the old façade and produce a modern residence.

The once regimented block was now a medley of architectural styles.  No. 40 is at right.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The result was an imposing neo-Georgian mansion of brick and limestone.  The style had only recently made its appearance, presenting a stark and dignified contrast to the overblown ornamentation of the Beaux Arts mansions rising nearby.  A stone entrance portico supported an attractive balustrade balcony at the second floor where French doors were framed in carved limestone.  The configuration was repeated at the third story, where the balcony railing changed to cast iron.  The bowed façade stopped at this level, creating a spacious terrace at the fourth floor.  Above it all a copper-clad mansard with two dormers saw behind a stone balustrade.

The wealthy MacVeagh was a banker and First Vice-President and director of the Federal Steel Company.  The similarity of his name with that of Charles S. MacVeigh, who lived, coincidentally, at 40 East 71st street, has caused confusion for some architectural historians.   

Both MacVeagh and his wife, the former Fanny Davenport Rogers, were active in charitable causes; and Charles was a trustee of the Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf-Mutes.  A year after renovating the 74^th Street house, he became general solicitor and assistant general counsel of the United States Steel Corporation.

Wealthy New Yorkers divided the year between the summer and winter social seasons.  Houses were, for the most part, closed as the families abandoned the stifling city for Newport, Bar Harbour and other summer resorts.  While the winter season was taken up with dinners, dances and musical receptions normally; the MacVeagh family traveled during the winter of 1912.  As common they leased their mansion furnished.  On November 7 The Sunreported that Seymour Cromwell would be living in No. 40 “for the winter.”

Blacked bricks add a sense of antiquity.  Exquisitely-carved cornacopiae decorate the second floor doors.

The MacVeaghs had six children—all boys.  The absence of daughters in the household would not stop Fanny from hosting at least one debutante affair.  On April 16, 1915 she gave a brilliant dinner dance at the Colony Club for Margaret La Farge, the debutante daughter of V. Grant La Farge.  Soon, however, the World War would put a damper on social entertainments in general.

As Europeans suffered the devastation of war, Charles accepted the posts of vice-president, secretary, counsel and member of the executive committee of the Fatherless Children of France, Inc.; as well as President of the Immediate Relief to Italy Fund, Inc.  Son Charles Jr. went off to Company H of the Fourth Training Regiment in Plattsburg, New York.  On July 22, 1916 a case of measles was discovered in the training camp.

Interestingly, serious outbreaks of measles at the time were limited almost exclusively to Army recruit depots.  In 1911 a severe epidemic broke out at Columbus Barracks in Ohio, with a 5 percent mortality rate.  Now in 1916, Charles MacVeagh, Jr., found himself among the recruits in Plattsburg under quarantine.

Later that year, on November 2, The Sun reported that Lewis Cass Ledyard, Jr. had purchased the MacVeagh house.  The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported in February 1917 that the mansion “is now being extensively altered for his occupancy.”

The remodeling that the Ledyards commissioned was internal, leaving the façade unaffected.  The family included Ledyard’s wife, the former Ruth Langdon Emery, and three children, an 8-year old boy, and two daughters, 10 and 4 years old.  The renovations of No. 40 were barely done before the family moved into their summer estate at Syosset, Long Island.  Tragedy would soon follow.

At noon on August 10, 1917 the children’s nurse took them for a walk along the North Hempstead and Flushing Turnpike not far from the home.  Mrs. Howard Barney was riding in her limousine with some friends as her chauffeur, Jesse Hayden, rounded a curve that hid the pedestrians from his sight.

The nurse saw the approaching automobile and grabbed two of the children, pulling them to the side of the road.  She called to 4-year old Virginia to follow them.  But it was too late.

“The little girl did not see the automobile coming, and evidently misunderstood the nurse’s words,” reported The New York Times the following day.  “At any rate, she was in the middle of the road, and the machine bore down on her and passed over her body.”

Mrs. Barney “hurried with the unconscious child to her residence, a little more than a mile away from the scene of the accident.”  It was of no use.  Before Dr. J. S. Hall arrived, the little girl had died of a fractured skull and internal injuries.

Only five years after moving in, the Ledyards left East 74^thStreet.  In March 1922 the house was sold for $130,000 (in the neighborhood of $1.7 million today).  The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guidesaid that the buyer was “a well-known New Yorker who will occupy.”

The Record and Guide got it half right.  George Whitney was certainly a “well-known New Yorker;” but he had no intentions to occupy.  Whitney had just completed his own 40-foot wide mansion next door at Nos. 36-38 and his purchase of No. 40 was no doubt to protect his interests.

Whitney was a partner in the J. P. Morgan banking firm.  Coincidentally, perhaps, J. P. Morgan was the uncle of Lewis Cass Leyard, Jr.  Whitney would retain possession of the house until August 1930, when he sold it to Kenneth O’Brien.  Almost simultaneously he sold his adjoining mansion to Artemas L. Gates.

The original entrance doors survive within the rusticated limestone base.

In 1942 the house was divided into two apartments—a duplex and a triplex above.  In 1980 it received another renovation, resulting in a total of seven apartments.  Unfortunately, grand turn-of-the-century interior layouts and details do not often conform to modern apartment configurations.  Few of the mansion’s details survive.  Nevertheless, a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment was listed in 2014 for $7,000 a month—almost four times the equivalent rent William Knapp spent for the entire house in 1879.

Fanny MacVeagh would no doubt be puzzled by the choice of tile surrounding the fireplace -- photo blocksy.com

 non-credited photographs taken by the author

The 1904 Hotel Latham -- No. 4 East 28th Street

By the turn of the century Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens had all but abandoned Fifth Avenue south of 34^th Street.  High end retailers like art galleries and dressmakers took over the mansions not yet razed and replaced by commercial structures.  The side streets—like 28^th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues—rapidly saw the rise of high-end hotels.  These were as much apartment buildings as they were lodging houses for travelers.

In 1904 L. George Forgotston climbed on the bandwagon with plans for an upscale hotel stretching from No. 4 through 8 East 28^thStreet.  His would be just one of several Beaux Arts-style hotels lining the block opposite the still-fashionable St. Leo’s Church.

Forgotston commissioned architect Augustus N. Allen to design his Latham Hotel.  Twelve stories tall, it was surprisingly restrained at a time when hotel facades dripped with carved festoons and frothy ornaments.  Instead Allen’s two-story limestone base featured formal fluted Ionic pilasters.  The sole ornamentation of the brick façade above were the copper-clad bays which not only added dimension; but caught any wafting summer breeze.

Allen turned to an innovative building material for the upper floors.  Rather than the expected red or yellow clay brick his were a grayish color.  This was due to their composition—what the Real Estate Record & Builder’s Guide termed “sand-lime brick.”  A mixture of lime and sand, the bricks were pressed into shape by heavy machinery, then hardened under pressure in large cylinders.  The Guide noted “Its appearance is said to be very pleasing.”

As with all the hotels in the neighborhood, the Latham offered permanent and transient accommodations.  At lobby level was the Café Thomas and by 1907 it had become a destination spot.  What to Eat, in January 1907, said the café “is the headquarters of buyers for great mercantile houses in other parts of the country.  It has an interesting collection of prints and views reminiscent of old New York.  This restaurant is also a favorite resort of women shoppers.”

 

A postcard of the lobby showed marble walls and leather tufted furniture.

That year Mrs. J. P. Case was staying at the Latham and on April 11 her mother, Mrs. Sarah E. Anderson arrived from Baltimore to join her.  The following morning Mrs. Case woke after dreaming that something horrible had happened to her mother.  The Evening World reported later that day, “So strong was her premonition that Mrs. Case ran to her mother’s room and tried to arouse her.”

Tragically, Sarah Anderson had died of a heart attack.  “The shock undid the daughter,” said the newspaper.  Mrs. Case threw open a window and screamed for help.  Her shrieks caused guests in the nearby Prince George Hotel to flock to their windows.  She was put in the care of the Latham’s in-house physician, Dr. Bellamy.

“Mrs. Case was in a highly nervous state from her experience, and for a time it was feared she would be critically ill.  She responded to restoratives but Dr. Bellamy was obliged to remain by her for the rest for the night,” said The Evening World.

A 1909 advertisement lured tourists and businessmen -- New-York Tribune, June 6, 1909 (copyright expired)

A year later broker James R. Collins and his wife moved into the Latham.  They had previously been living in a suite of rooms at the Plaza where, according to the New-York Tribune “Collins spent his money lavishly.”

In May 1908 the Collins’ hotel bill there had risen to $250—in the neighborhood of $6,500 today.  The couple moved out, leaving a check for $125 as partial payment, and secured rooms in the Latham.  The problem was that the check was no good.

The New-York Tribune noted “Collins, it is said, was once wealthy.”  Apparently those days were over.  The Plaza management filed a complaint and on July 15, 1908 the Latham Hotel suffered an untidy scene when Collins was led out in handcuffs.

The Hotel Latham had much to offer.  As its advertisements boasted, it was just one block from Madison Square Garden, “one door from Fifth Avenue,” and was touted as fireproof.  There were 300 rooms which ranged in price from $1.50 a day and up, to $2.00 per day and up for rooms with private baths.

In the dining room a painted border depicts children in various seasons.

Perhaps the Latham’s most curious resident in the pre-World War I years was Marion Hamilton-Grey.  The young man “represented himself to be heir to the Dukedom of Hamilton in Scotland,” reported The New York Times on January 21, 1910. 

Police Inspector McCafferty received word that Hamilton-Grey, a suspected con artist, had recently come to New York.  McCafferty traced him to the Hotel Latham.  But the guest had recently left, leaving an outstanding bill of $10.50.  That bill was settled by the St. George’s Society, the inspector learned.  The Times explained that, according to E. D. Langley of the Society, “the young man represented himself as a nephew of Col. Hamilton-Grey of the British Army in India, and had declared that he had an allowance of $4,000 a year, but that this was being held up temporarily abroad because of trouble he had had with the executors of his father’s estate.”  The St. George’s Society paid the hotel bill and gave the man a furnished room on West 24^th Street.

Inspector McCafferty now took Detectives McKenna and Cassassa to the 24^th Street address where they found “their quarry” near 8^th Avenue. When the detectives told Hamilton-Grey they wanted to talk to him, they were startled when they heard the response.

“Why, you’re no man.  You’re a girl!” Cassassa said after hearing the voice.

“Well, what’s the harm in that?  I never said I wasn’t.”

Now in custody, the 19-year old girl said she had been born in Punjab, India.  Her father had been Colonel Hamilton-Grey and she was orphaned at the age of four.  An “old friend in India had advised her to adopt men’s clothes as an easier means of making her living, and she had followed his advice for the last ten years,” said The Times.

“The girl made a handsome youth in her boy’s clothing.  Her brown hair was clipped short like a man’s and she wore a gray suit, gray slouch hat, and gray overcoat with a gray stock.  She had black patent leather shoes and wore blue spats over them,” reported the newspaper.

The fine wardrobe resulted in her being charged with “masquerading in men’s clothing.”  She had her suspicions concerning who set the police on her trail.  “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that a wealthy widow of Newark was behind this,” she said at the police station.  “She fell in love with me and never forgave me when I wouldn’t marry her.”

Despite down-on-their-luck guests like Collins and Hamilton-Grey, the Latham continued to see well-to-do residents.   Among them were John Gilbert Gulick, his wife, and their son Earl.  On October 19, 1913 the New-York Tribune’s society page noted that they “have returned to the city from their summer home at Lake Hopatcong and are at the Prince George.  They will take possession of their apartments at the Hotel Latham to-morrow for the winter.”

Charles Vail, Vice President of the Transcontinental Freight Company rented rooms here in 1913—but his purposes were less upstanding that those of the Gulicks.  On the evening of December 12 that year he entered the hotel with a suitcase.  When he appeared in the lobby half an hour later he was in “faultless evening dress and accompanied by a tall, blonde woman,” according to The Evening World nearly a year later on November 20.

What the wealthy executive did not realize was that his wife, Emma, had a private detective trailing him.  After the couple had dinner at the Hotel Imperial, they returned to the Latham.  

The detective had checked the register where they were signed in as “Mr. and Mrs. Vail, Chicago.”  With Vail and the blonde upstairs, he summoned Emma.  She brought several witnesses with her and they commenced a raid on Room No. 1102.

The detective testified in the subsequent divorce case, “The woman pulled the bedclothes over her face, but wasn’t quick enough for Mrs. Vail, who struck her.  Then she went after her husband.”

Caught red-handed—or red-faced, anyway—Vail was directed to pay his now-former wife $100 a month alimony. 

The protruding bays extended along the side wall.

By now World War I was raging in Europe.  Far from the fighting, the Hotel Latham felt the effects.  Many of the tourists who stopped at the hotel were European and a large percentage of those were German.  By the end of 1915 the hotel had to close.

On November 25, 1915 the New-York Tribune reported that the hotel “will close its doors at noon to-morrow, according to an announcement made last night by Albert Pratt, the manager…The European war is given as one of the contributing causes to the failure.  Many German patrons since the war started have failed to put up at the hotel.”

The same day The New York Times reported that “Guests were notified last night that they would have to seek other quarters, and all employes received notice that their service would terminate tomorrow.”

The extremely short notice given to hotel residents resulted in tragedy for one elderly man.  Lawrence Peterson had been living here for a year and a half.  His father had been the owner of Peterson’s Magazine of Philadelphia, by now out of publication.  Mary Casey, proprietress of the Hotel Latham, told a reporter “he was the sole heir to an estate amounting to about $10,000,000.”

Petersen’s finances, however, were tied up in a trust and its executor, G. F. Kean, gave him only a few dollars a week.  Now forced to find new accommodations, the old man was panic-stricken.  The stress of his situation finally became too much.

The Times reported on November 26 “An old man, well dressed, but penniless, stumbled into the lobby of the Home Club, an apartment house at 11 East Forty-fifth Street, last night and told an elevator boy to summon a doctor because he felt he was reaching his end.”  The newspaper said “As the Hotel Latham was about to close by order of a bankruptcy referee he said he did not know where to go.”

The elevator boy suggested calling a taxi, but Peterson said he did not have a penny to pay for one.  Before a doctor could arrive, Peterson had died of a heart attack. 

Peterson had earlier pleaded with Mary Casey.  “He said he was more than sixty years old and that nobody would give him a home if he were put out of the Latham…It is believed at the hotel that this circumstance aggravated the heart trouble which caused his sudden death,” said The Times.

Within a year the hotel was back on its feet.  Like every hotel, the Latham had its share of heartbreaking stories.  Around the first of November in 1916 Brooklyn Union Gas Company employee B. L. Graham checked in.

In the first years of the 20^th century the leading cause of death in the United States was tuberculosis.  Around 110,000 Americans died each year from the disease, and those diagnosed were normally whisked away to be isolated in sanatoriums.  A few months earlier Graham had been diagnosed with the deadly illness.

Late on the night of November 2, when Graham had not been seen coming or going for some time, Manager Max Hoestmann sent a porter to check on him.

“The porter opened the door with his master-key,” reported The Evening World.  “On the bed he found Graham’s lifeless body.  He clasped tightly the picture of his wife.  By the bed was an automatic pistol with one chamber empty.”

Graham had shot a bullet into his head.  The newspaper described the photograph of “a remarkably handsome young woman in evening dress.  She was sitting.  A string of pearls hung gracefully about her neck.”  On the reverse Graham had written:

God keep and make happy this girl—the sweetest and most wonderful woman in all the world.

Following the war’s end the Latham remained a respectable hotel for years.  In 1920 Margaret Prescott Montague stayed here as her motion picture Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge opened at the three Manhattan theaters.  Montague told reporters that the purpose of her film was “to express the idea of the League of Nations, and, more fundamentally, to impress upon all the ideas of atonement and resurrection.”

The Depression years saw a change to the Latham and to its neighborhood.  Called by Rider’s New York City Guide a “quiet family hotel” in 1923, by 1931 it attracted a more sordid clientele.  On the evening of March 31, 1931 several men including a former vice squad policeman, Richard E. Ganley, were playing poker in one of the rooms.  Suddenly three men broke into the room with drawn guns and ordered the poker players to line up against the wall.

Ganley, however, pulled his service pistol and fired at the leader of the gang, William Horowitz.  What ensued was described by the Brooklyn Standard Union on April 10 as “a gun battle.”  When it was over, 53-year old Albert Shaw, one of the card players, lay dead.  Howoritz, badly wounded, was captured in the hotel lobby and charged with murder.

One of the Latham’s most renowned residents was photographer William Henry Jackson.  He was 99 years old when he fell and hurt himself here on June 26, 1942.  He was highly responsible for the creation of Yellowstone National Park when his photographs of the magnificent landscapes were presented to Congress in 1872.  Four days after his fall he died in Midtown Hospital and he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

But the most notorious guest of all would be Rudolf Abel who lived here in 1957.  FBI agents shadowed the man, finally knocking on his door at 7:02 on the morning of June 21.  In a search of the room the agents found a hollow shaving brush and hollow pencils, used for hiding microfilm; cameras for producing “microdots;” and other Cold War Era espionage paraphernalia.  He was arrested as a Soviet spy.

Five years later, in February 1962, the United States government exchanged Abel for Francis Gary Powers.  Powers had been shot down over Russian in a U-2 spy plane, creating an incident reported globally.

The respectable days of the Hotel Latham were already over and things would get worse before they got better.  By 1983 the city was using the building as a home for “displaced families.”  There were 25 homeless families living in the hotel that year.  On August 31 Philip Shenon of The New York Times described “At the Latham, in the light of bare bulbs and short white strands of neon lights, rats crawl across the floors, and paint peels on the walls.  Roaches, water bugs and ants crowd the sinks.  Toilets frequently do not work, and repairs are slow.  Halls and stairwells reek of mildew, urine, and marijuana.”

On January 25, 1988 one man was fatally shot and four others wounded in a gun battle over illegal drugs.  The bodies fell to the sidewalk directly in front of the Latham Hotel.

Two other hotels of the period survive alongside the Latham.

Today the once-proud Hotel Latham has been rescued by businessman and philanthropist Carl Celian Icahn.  Now called the Icahn House, East, the renovated facility houses the homeless and provides medical care.  Considering its sometimes harsh past, the exterior appearance of the Hotel Latham is astoundingly unchanged since 1904.

photographs taken by the author