The 1890 Romanesque Wilbraham Hotel -- 1 West 30th Street

photo by Alice Lum

 The number of unmarried men in New York City skyrocketed between 1870 and 1890, when approximately 45 percent of the male population was single.  Finding respectable accommodations was difficult for these men.  Most boarding houses or apartment houses did not accept single men. 

As late as 1898 one observer commented that “the bachelor was not considered to be entitled to much consideration; any old thing was good enough for him…Anyone who was old enough and had the means to marry and yet did not, was not thought to be entitled to anything better.”

Bachelor flats began appearing in 1880 – apartment buildings specifically intended to house single respectable men.  The Real Estate Record & Builders Guide in 1890 noted that the bachelor flat “is a product of our modern life.  It is not a social fad, ready to disappear directly.  It has ceased to be a novelty.  It has come to stay, for it filled a gap in the life of every unmarried man who has become weary of the boarding house, the furnished room, or the hotel.”

Scottish-born William Moir had made his fortune in the jewelry business and his elegant cast iron store at 23^rd Street and 6^th Avenue was well known among the ladies of the upper classes.   Moir recognized the potential of the bachelor flat concept.  In April of 1888 he purchased through real estate broker Herbert A. Sherman the brownstone townhouses at 282 and 284 5^th Avenue. The transaction cost the jeweler $245,000.

Although this section of 5^th Avenue was still quite fashionable, the mansions here were slowly being replaced with high-end men’s clubs and exclusive retail shops.  Moir commissioned the brothers David and John Jardine, also born in Scotland, to design his “fireproof” residential hotel.  

The architects produced drawings for a six-story medieval-looking, Romanesque Revival influenced structure in red Philadelphia brick, Belleville brownstone, white limestone and cast iron.  However, in June 1889 an amendment was filed with the Department of Buildings increasing the height to eight stories, including a lavish mansard roof.  A month later an additional amendment was approved allowing a penthouse with servants’ rooms ad kitchen.

The rough-cut brownstone seventh floor and the imposing mansard were not included in the original drawings -- photo by Alice Lum

Competed in May 1890, it included a high-end, two-story retail space on the first floor with apartments above.  The Wilbraham was intended for financially-comfortable tenants.  Each apartment had a parlor and a bedroom and, the ultimate in luxury for the time, private bathrooms.  Typical of bachelor flats, there were no kitchens – residents ate in the communal dining room on the top floor.

The Wilbraham was the latest in residential design with electric lighting (and gas for those times when the unreliable electricity would fail), an internal communication system allowing residents to speak to the superintendent, an Otis elevator and steam heating.  Housekeeping services were also provided.

Intricate ornamentation like this heavily-carved capital cover the facade -- photo by Alice Lum

The Real estate Record & Guide was impressed calling it “the most elegantly appointed among the bachelor apartment houses in New York City” and “certainly the ‘crack’ apartment house of its kind…quite an imposing piece of architecture.”

That imposing architecture included monumental rusticated columns, medieval-style carvings, a large stone arched entrance with WILBRAHAM carved into a stone banner above, and the imposing slate tiled mansard (now covered in copper).

The Wilbraham as it appeared two years after opening -- King's Handbook of New York

Reflecting the elite tone of the area, china and glass merchants Gilman Collamore & Co. took over the retail space, explaining in their moving notice that the neighborhood of their former store at 19 Union Square had recently become “degraded.”

The exclusive shop was described by "King’s 1890 Handbook of New York City" as having “a veritable art exhibition in their usual display of fancy glass-ware and fine china.  The firm occupies a handsome sandstone and brick building…Their grand display-rooms are so laid out and arranged as to promote the artistic effect of the exceedingly choice stock of goods.”

The Jardines alternated thick, rough-cut blocks with narrower ornamented courses to create the piers -- photo by Alice Lum

Wealthy socialites stepped from carriages to survey Sevres, Royal Dresden and Royal Berlin china and “the products of the best English and German factories.”

Meanwhile high-toned bachelors filled the apartments.  The ever-feisty Colonel Thomas Ochiltree lived here, eating the steak smuggled in by a friend against his doctors’ orders when he was bedridden with an enlarged liver and weak heart.   Ochiltree fell into “a state of collapse” having eaten the steak.

Upon being revived, he instructed his physician that “it was a good way to go to the next world with a fine bit of meat between one’s teeth.”  As his condition slowly improved, he insisted that it was the steak – despite the period of unconsciousness—that brought him back to health.

Another Civil War Colonel Henry L. Swords lived here as did “The Copper King” Fritz Augustus Heinze and Judge William Frierson Cooper.

Although in 1902 "Appleton’s Dictionary of New York and Vicinity" said “Many buildings are now devoted especially to apartments for bachelors, among which are the Benedick, east side of Washington Square, the Jansen, Waverly Place, and the Wilbraham, 30^th Street and 5^th Avenue;” the Wilbraham had began accepting women in the early days of the century.

Upon the death of Mrs. Fannie S. Steel in 1910 The New York Times noted “For several years Mrs. Steele made her home at the Wilbraham Apartment Hotel, Fifth Avenue and Thirtieth Street.”

Apparently quite satisfied with the location, in January 1908 John J. Gibbons, head of Gilman, Collamore & Co., purchased the building from Moir’s widow, Emily, for $1 million.  It was described by The Times at the time of the sale as “one of the first and finest bachelor apartment houses erected in the Fifth Avenue section.”

Gibbons expressed his belief that this part of Fifth Avenue “by reason of its accessibility, will continue to be the best for high-class retail trade.”  Gilman, Collamore & Co. would continue to do business here until 1920.

In 1927, the Gibbons estate sold the building which by now had more female occupants than male.  The Great Depression hit the new owners, 1 West 30 St. Corp., hard and the group lost the property through default to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1934.  The firm set about modernizing and improving the aging hotel.   

Architects Emery Roth and D. Everett Waid were immediately brought in to do renovations.  The penthouse was enlarged to create two new apartments, six apartments with kitchens were fashioned and office space was carved out on the second floor.  The New York Times pointed to the renovations as proof that “Fifth Avenue south of Thirty-fourth Street has not entirely lost its charm.”

In 1944 Metropolitan Life sold the building to Maxwell Handelsman “for investment purposes,” initiating a string of sales throughout the 20^th Century that included a 1984 name-change to The Tiffany.

Thankfully, the apartment building’s name has been returned to The Wilbraham.

Evidence for the need of a full restoration can be seen in the piecemeal facade repairs -- photo by Alice Lum

The building which the AIA Guide to New York City calls “lovely and lusty” remains as it was designed:  retail space on the ground floor and residential units above.  The intricate carvings of knotted geometrics and medieval faces are well worth a pause when passing the Jardines’ commanding structure.

The 1903 Hotel Mansfield -- No. 14 West 44th Street

photo by Alice Lum

By the turn of the century the concept of bachelor hotels had firmly been established.  In 1902, when the Hotel Mansfield was completed at No. 12 West 44^th Street, New York City had numerous such establishments where respectable albeit unmarried young men found upscale housing.

The location for the Mansfield was ideal for a bachelor hotel.  West 44^th Street was becoming the center of the club district and the Royalton Hotel, built four years earlier at No. 44, had proved the attractiveness and convenience of the neighborhood to well-heeled men.

Designed by the architectural firm of Renwick, Aspinwall & Owen, construction began in 1901 and would not be completed until two years later.  Replacing two carriage houses at Nos. 12 and 14, it would rise 12 stories and contain 126 rooms.   Working in the ragingly-popular Beaux Arts style, the architects used restraint in its ornamentation.  The central seven stories, of red brick with limestone quoins along the sides, were undecorated other than the rows of angled bay windows.

A rather elegant three-story carriage house stands next to the newly-completed Hotel Mansfield in 1903; a remnant of when the block was familiarly called "Stable Street."

The street level, however, gushed forth with Beaux Arts embellishment.  The two-story rusticated limestone base featured scrolled French ironwork at the windows.  A carved balcony over the arched entrance was supported by two lusty scrolled and wreathed brackets on either side of a cartouche dripping with floral garlands and carved ribbons.  Elaborately carved supports with snarling lions’ heads graced the third floor cornice.  Above it all was a gently curved two-story mansard.

Supporting a long column of bay windows (and an unfortunate window air conditioner) is a robustly-carved lion head bracket -- photo by Alice Lum

Even before construction was totally completed the Mansfield was drawing attention.  On November 11, 1902 the Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht Club held its meeting here in what it called its “city house.”

An early brochure noted that “The site—West 44^th Street—was not selected haphazardly.  It was realized that the well-to-do city bachelor free to choose his habitation unhampered by family ties, naturally preferred to live ’in the heart of things,’ yet sufficiently removed therefrom to be assured of comfort and privacy.”  The pamphlet noted that within a block of the hotel were the Bar Association, City Club, Harvard Club, Lambs’ Club, New York Yacht Club, St. Nicholas Club, Yale Club, Army & Navy Club, Century Club, Friars’ Club, Racquet & Tennis Club “and others.”

Each apartment was equipped with an ice box, each was connected to the office by telephone, and for an extra charge the “service of excellent valets” was available.

The upper stories explode in Beaux Arts ornamentation -- photo by Alice Lum

Admiral William Knickerbocker Van Reypen was appointed Surgeon General of the Navy by presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.  In 1906 he was also the head of the Red Cross Society, having succeeded Clara Barton.  Earlier, in September 1905 he arranged a two-room apartment in the Hotel Mansfield for his son, also named William Knickerbocker Van Reypen.  The Yale University graduate was entering his first year at Columbia Law School and shared the apartment with a roommate, E. E. Spalding, who worked in a downtown office building.

The 23-year old admiral’s son was preparing for his mid-winter exams in January.  Despite having been “one of the most prominent men in his class at Yale and at Columbia,” according to The Times, he increasingly he grew nervous and distracted as the test neared.  A cousin, Assemblyman F. D. Wells, said “He told me a few days ago that many of his classmates were extremely clever and that it would humiliate him very much if they should distance him.”

Fearing that he was losing his mind, young Van Reypen visited two “leading brain specialists” on Friday January 26.  But the consultations did not help.  On Saturday morning he left the Mansfield, then returned and lingered around the office area for a while.  When he took the elevator to his second floor apartment he was whistling a tune.

A little while later he had fired a bullet into his right temple.  A note to the family explained that he “believed his death would bring less distress to the family than if he should go mad,” reported The Times.

The wealthy young Vivian H. Egleston lived here in 1915.  A member of the New York Yacht Club just down the street, he no doubt found the location of the Mansfield most convenient.  A year earlier he had been smitten with debutante Frances Peck who was living in the St. Regis with her grandmother Mrs. Thomas Bloodgood Peck.  The two announced their engagement in February.

Egleston’s love for Frances Peck was, perhaps, exceeded by William G. Street’s love for his liquor.  Five years later, in January, the railroad director became alarmed by the passage of the Volstead Act, which would usher in Prohibition.  Street gathered up his alcohol from his apartment in the Hotel Mansfield and locked it safely away in the vaults of the Lincoln Safe Deposit Company at 60 East 42^nd Street.

Then he sued to restrain Colonel Daniel L. Porter of the Internal Revenue Bureau “from seizing his private stock of liquors,” as reported in the New York Tribune on January 13. 

The application for a restraining order was dismissed since the 18^th Amendment had not yet gone into effect.  United States Attorney Francis G. Caffey explained to Street that he “could avoid trouble with Internal Revenue collectors by removing his private stock to…a government warehouse.”

That the liquor remained in the vaults on 42^nd Street can safely be assumed.

At the same time multimillionaire John William O’Bannon was living here.  O’Bannon had run away from home in St. Louis on his 14^th birthday and found a job in New York City.   Over time the frugal boy managed to save $30,000 and went into business for himself.  By now his estate was valued at around $15 million and he was president of the Maxim Munitions Corporation and other firms and was adept at the stock market.  On May 26, 1920 the New York Tribune reported that his wealth “has increased $2,000,000 through stock dividends of corporations he had organized and promoted in the last fifty-five days.”

Then, astonishingly, O’Bannon’s mother appeared from St. Louis and began “lunacy proceedings” against her son.   He was removed from the Hotel Mansfield and placed in the Riverdale Sanatorium for forty-five days awaiting his hearing.

Finally, on May 25 a jury heard his case.  During the hearing O’Bannon cried out, “It isn’t right.  I think this whole thing is a farce.  I don’t know who is at the bottom of this.”   The New York Tribune reported that he “was pronounced incurably insane by three mental experts during the hearing.  The physicians at the same time agreed that the incompetent is a remarkable businessman and possessed of unusual memory.”

Five years later the Hotel Mansfield would initiate a major change in operations.  In April 1925 S. R. Real purchased the hotel, promising the National Hotel Review that he would continue operating it as a high-class bachelor hotel.  He soon changed his mind.

By September he had hired Wilson J. Hodges to manage the hotel.  A veteran of the hotel industry, Hodges made an immediate change.  The Hotel Gazette noted on September 24 that “The Mansfield, 12 West 44^th Street, New York City, formerly a bachelor hotel, now caters to both ladies and gentlemen.”

Yet the hotel continued to lure wealthy businessmen.  84-year old James B. Ford, Vice President of the United States Rubber Company, whom The Times called a “prominent sportsman and philanthropist” was still living here in 1928 as was Dr. J. S. Swartz, the treasurer of the International Mercantile Marine Company.

That would all change as newer, modern hotels and apartment houses replaced the aging residence hotels throughout the city.  By mid-century the once-proud Mansfield Hotel had become dingy and careworn.  Yet one original tenant lived on until 1962.

On April 25 of that year The New York Times reported on the death of Francis Skiddy Marden.  The former investment banker died in his rooms at the age of 94; the oldest member of the St. Nicholas Society and a member of the Harvard Club for 73 years. 

With Francis Marden’s passing, the last vestige of the old moneyed history of the Hotel Mansfield passed as well.

In the 1960s all traces of the original 1903 lobby had long disappeared.

By 1981 the hotel was, at best, shoddy.  New York magazine said of it on January 19 of that year “It lacks services, it lacks charm, and there’s a generally downside air of pinchpenny circumstances brought on by cigarette-scarred furniture and 40-watt bulbs.”

But with the turn of the new century old, dated buildings were being resurrected as trendy upscale boutique hotels.  In 2004 Brad M. Reiss and John Yoon purchased the time-worn Mansfield and began a two-year renovation.  Stephen B. Jacobs and Andi Pepper were hired to bring the vintage hotel into the 21^st century while retaining its historical elements.

Architectural details like the cast iron staircases with mahogany banisters were restored while modern amenities were added.  In stark contrast to the earlier critique by New York magazine, the 2004 edition of the city guide “New York City Directions” remarked “A makeover has transformed a rather mangy midtown flophouse into one of the loveliest hotels in the city.  The Mansfield manages, somehow, to be both grand and intimate.”

Over a century after it opened its doors, the revamped Hotel Mansfield is a fine example of thoughtful recycling of vintage structures in an urban environment.