The Uneasy Marriage of Styles at No. 30 East 74th Street

photo by Alice Lum

In the first years after the end of the Civil War, before the arrival of the marble and limestone mansions of the city’s wealthiest citizens, developers lined the blocks off upper Fifth Avenue with rows of carbon-copy rowhouses.   Central Park, now nearing completion, was a selling point for the potential merchant class  homeowners.

Winters & Hunt were among the speculators transforming the rocky landscape into regimented blocks of homes.  In 1870 they commissioned brothers David and John Jardine to design a row of eleven Italianate brownstone-clad houses—Nos. 30 through 50 East 74^th Street.  The firm, D & J Jardine, was busy at the time designing similar groups of homes throughout the city.

This row, a block away from the park and just east of Madison Avenue, was not exceptional.  Four stories tall above high English basements, the houses shared the unremarkable architectural elements of hundreds of similar structures built around the same time.  One of them, however, would flex its individuality a few decades later.

Anchoring the western end of the row was No. 30.  By the 1890s it was being operated as a boarding house for upscale, respectable residents.   It was owned by the retired manufacturer and dealer of knit goods, Martin J. Weil.  The German-born immigrant had arrived in New York in 1852 at the age of 14.  Weil and his wife Malvina, had six children and the aging couple lived here with their boarders.

In 1895 The Chironian, a newsletter published by students of the New York Homoeopathic Medical College, announced that graduate Dr. H. Everett Russell had moved into the house along with his practice.   The well-heeled physician would live here through the turn of the century and his comings-and-goings during the summer social season would be noticed.  In 1902 The North American Journal of Homoeopathy reported that “Dr. H. Everett Russell, of 30 East 74^th Street, will be at Squirrel Inn, Haines Falls, NY from July 1 to September 25.”

Another boarder at the time was Miss Josephine E. Stone, a teacher in a nearby public school.

On October 7, 1901 Martin Weil died in the house at the age of 63.   Two months later, on December 11, Malvina sold the house.    Sometime before the house changed hands again, in 1905, Dr. Russell moved to the northeast corner of Bedford and Morton Streets in Greenwich Village.

The newest owner was George E. Marcus.  Marcus was a partner, with his father and brother, in the exclusive Marcus & Co. jewelers at No. 544 Fifth Avenue that The Sun deemed “a famous jewelry house.”  The newspaper noted that “His knowledge of art was used to great advantage in the business.”

Marcus & Co. created high-end items like this art nouveau wine cooler.

The days of taking in boarders were over.  Marcus moved into the house with his wife, Anna, and their son Herman (who would later be better known as Peter).  By now the neighborhood was one of high-end residences and modern mansions.   Wealthy homeowners often either razed their Victorian brownstones to replace them with more stylish residences; or simply remodeled them to reflect the current architectural fashions.

On September 8, 1906 The Sun reported that Marcus had filed plans for “a two story bay extension in the colonial style for the four story residence…at No. 30 East Seventy-fourth street.”  The newspaper noted that the cost would be $5,000—about $95,000 today.

Marcus hired architect George A. Glanzer to design the addition which in no way could be described as “colonial.”   Unlike most renovations in the neighborhood which obliterated the old brownstone facades; Glanzer left the top two stories untouched.  He lowered the stoop and disguised the first two floors with a neo-Gothic addition.  Red brick laid in Flemish bond was trimmed with brownstone quoins, carved eyebrows terminating in gruesome faces, and bandcourses.  Apparently both the Marcuses and their architect hoped no one passing by would look up.

Brownstone quoins and trim accented the red Flemish bond brick, creating a charming update -- photo by Alice Lum

The Marcus family summered at the fashionable cottage community at Moose Head Lake, Maine and entertained through the winter season in the 74^th Street house.  In April 1909 Herman’s engagement to Francesca Steele Butler of Washington D.C. was announced.  Soon George and Anna would be alone in the house with their staff of servants.

In 1911 the Marcuses completed another renovation when they added the picturesque second floor oriel with its intricately-designed multi-paned windows and quatrefoil-carved brownstone panels.  The artistic addition greatly improved the visual appeal of the house—although the starkly incompatible upper floors continued to be the house’s sore thumb.

The delightful oriel window was a second thought.  The original Victorian facade looks down from above.  -- photo by Alice Lum

The summer of 1914 was a particularly satisfying one for George.   On August 2 The Sun reported on the goings-on at Moose Head Lake saying, “Golf matches, power boat racing and dancing have surpassed all other interests here and the large influx of new arrivals has made this the liveliest week of the summer.  Each evening the Mount Kineo is gay with the younger set who dance, while the dansant at the Moose Head Lake Yacht Club has given an attractive feature to the summer life.

“To George E. Marcus of New York belongs the honor of breaking the amateur 18 hole record for the Kineo links, a seventy-five made in a medal play competition.  A crowd watched the hardest struggle ever seen in match play on these Northern links.”

The summer resort where he enjoyed his golfing triumph would become the scene of his death three years later.   George went to Moose Head Lake alone “for a short vacation” on Saturday July 28.   Three days later he decided to take a swim in the lake.  “It is supposed that while swimming he was seized with an attack of heart trouble and drowned before help could reach him,” reported The Sun on August 3.

Violent storms that rolled in later that day took down the telegraph lines, so the family could not be informed of the tragedy until two days later.   At 9:00 in the morning on August 3 Marcus’s body arrived in New York by train and his funeral was held that afternoon at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.  His obituary reflected Herman’s name change, “he is survived by his wife, who was Miss Anna R. Hand, and one son, Peter.”

Somewhat fearsome faces flank the entrance and parlor window -- photo by Alice Lum

Anna left the 74^th Street house, leasing it with all her artwork and furnishings for the winter season to Henry R. McLane, of Millbrook, New York.  She would continue leasing the residence, and the following year Mrs. Warren Kinney used it for the season.

Before long son Peter Marcus lived in the house.   An established artist, while here he endeavored to execute a series of paintings of Manhattan buildings which he brought together in a book titled New York The Nation’s Metropolis.   In its introduction J. Monroe Hewlett, the President of the Architectural League of New York, said “Peter Marcus is a painter not an architect, but he is also a designer experienced in the goldsmith’s craft and there is evident in these charcoal studies a pleasure in the delineation of the tracery of bridge cables and trusses, derricks, scaffolding and electric signs, that in contrast with his broad and greatly simplified expressions of architectural form and detail, adds vastly to the eloquence of his work.”

The year that the book was published, in 1921, Peter moved to Stonington, Connecticut where he died of a heart attacked on June 8, 1934 at just 44 years old.

On January 18, 1923 banker S. Barton Chapin purchased the Marcus home for $61,500.  He quickly turned a profit on the property, selling it in November for $70,000 to Colonel Lloyd C. Griscom “for occupancy,” according to The New York Times.

Griscom came to East 74^th Street with a broad and impressive political background.  He had served as Secretary of the United States Legation at Constantinople at the turn of the century; held the posts of American Ambassador to Italy, Minister to Persia, Japan, and Brazil, and in 1910 was the President of the New York County Republican Committee.  In 1919 he was made Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George at Buckingham Palace by King George for his service in World War I as liaison officer on the staff of General Pershing.  His far-flung interests by now included publishing several Nassau County Long Island weekly newspapers, studying painting with John Singer Sargent, and within a few years he would collaborate with John McGowan on a play, Tenth Avenue.

On September 17, 1929 the widowed 56-year old announced his engagement to Audrey Margaret Elizabeth Crosse, daughter of Marlborough Crosse of Southsea, England.  The wedding took place on October 3 at Marston Trussell Hall, Leicestershire.

photo by Alice Lum

In 1932 the Griscoms built a spectacular country home in Syosset, Long Island called Huntover Lodge, on a 54-acre estate.  When the house was completed they left East 74^th Street for good.  In 1938, the year that Huntover Lodge including Georgian paneling and rare prints and manuscripts burned to the ground, Mrs. Grace T. Lapham leased the house on East 74th Street.

In March 1950 the Harab Realty Corporation purchased No. 30 East 74^th Street and two months later announced plans for altering it into apartments.  Before the end of the year there were eight apartments in the building as well as an office.

photo by Alice Lum

Today the basement level office is a retail store and there are still two apartments per floor above.  The Marcus’s neo-Gothic addition remains an especially charming addition to the block; yet one still has to wonder why they stopped at the second floor.

A 1904 Horse and Carriage Auction House -- Nos. 126-128 E. 13th Street

photo by Alice Lum

By 1903 the Van Tassell & Kearney Auction Mart had established itself as one of the premier houses in New York City for the sale of carriages as well as horses. That year an ad appearing in the New York Tribune boasted “Finest display in New York of Carriages of the highest grade and most fashionable designs. Broughams, omnibuses, victorias, station wagons, wagonetts, traps.”

To the 21st century mind, Victorian horse-drawn transportation were “carriages.” But just as we differentiate among SUV’s, sedans, convertibles, sports cards and minibuses, the turn of the century buyer purchased vehicles specific to his needs.

Van Tassell & Kearney sold various vehicles including "gooch wagons," tub carts," and "governess carts."

Van Tassell & Kearney operated from buildings at Nos. 130-132 East 13th Street and Nos. 125 to 129 East 12th Street. In February 1903 two four-story brick buildings at Nos. 126 and 128 East 13th Street became available at auction and were purchased by John J. Sullivan. The cleared lot would become an adjoining showroom and auction space for Van Tassell & Kearney’s Auction Mart.

Completed in 1904, the masculine, utilitarian structure was designed by the prominent architectural firm of Jardine, Kent, and Jardine. Constructed of red brick and contrasting limestone, it was a brawny mass with Beaux Arts splashes – the visual focus being a large central arched window embellished with a carved cartouche.

Carved, decorative stonework added interest to the utilitarian structure -- photo by Alice Lum

Van Tassell & Kearney’s not only sold to New York’s most elite – among them buyers with names like Belmont, Vanderbilt and Mackay – but they were trusted by the wealthy to sell their own stock.

In 1904 the book “Prominent and Progressive Americans” spoke of retired Dr. W. E. Woodend. “Dr. Woodend and his wife are popular members of society, and have been prominent in many of the horse shows which have come to be leading social functions. They maintain a fine stable of horses…In the New York Horse Show of 1903 their horses were conspicuous prize-winners, and in the course of the show captured no fewer than twenty ribbons.”

On March 13, 1906 some of Dr. Woodend’s geldings were among the 24 horses auctioned at Van Tassell & Kearney’s; the total sale amounting to $11,250 – more than a quarter million dollars today.

The architects created sunburst effects with creative brickwork around the oval windows -- photo by Alice Lum

A year later The New York Tribune reported that “Mrs. John Gerken, always one of the most prominent figures at the Horse Show, has decided to give up nearly her entire stable. Her failure to carry off as many awards as usual at the last horse show, she says, has nothing to do with her determination. Her only object, she says, is to get rid of the trouble and annoyance of a big stable. She will maintain only eight show horses. The rest will be sold on May 20 by Van Tassell & Kearney.”

That year was a good one for the firm.  In October the New York Herald mentioned “At Van Tasell & Kearney’s regular semi-weekly auction sale on Tuesday a cabriolet brought $760 and a brougham brought $825. These are record prices for second-hand carriages sold this season and are almost up to the standard of values current when automobiles were unknown. Not less significant than the prices were the number and character of the bidders who came to buy these and other carriages in the last week’s sales.”

The reporter said that Mr. Kearney was very pleased and “it looked quite like old times.” It appeared to the auctioneer that the fad of the automobile was fading and “the carriage horse is coming back.”

Van Tassell & Kearney custom-built this trap for "Mr. LaSalla."  The 500-lb. vehicle could be drawn either by one or two horses -- The Rider and Driver 1911

Although the era of the carriage horse would not come back, it would be a while before it disappeared entirely. In 1911 The Rider and Driver magazine marveled at the Van Tassell & Kearney’s operations. “Few people are aware of the magnitude of their premises and the extent of business they are doing with our wealthiest and most critical class of carriage buyers in town and country. Their patrons include members of the Cabinet and foreign ministers, prominent citizens, city officials; and at all horse shows, floral parades and summer resorts are to be seen every description of traps from Van Tassell & Kearney’s.”

In 1911 Van Tassell & Kearney introduced the "Horse Show Dog Cart," a small trap-type carriage --The Rider and Driver 1911 

The magazine described in detail the assembly of buildings, with underground space that ran from 13th to 12th Streets. “The basement is fitted up for accommodating one hundred and fifty horses, where they are stabled in well-ventilated stalls.”

The firm steadfastly refused to accept the invasion of the automobile into the staid tradition of horse-drawn buggies and carriages. On July 28, 1918, as more and more motorcars chugged along the streets and avenues of New York, a Van Tassell & Kearney ad in the New York Tribune insisted “The report that horses and carriages are coming back to their own in Newport is positively founded on fact.”

The prediction, of course, was not to be and before long the venerable auction house that refused to adapt to change was no more.

The cavernous building was used a a machinery shop in the decades leading to World War II. Then on December 28, 1941 the Delehanty Institute announced it would be using the building as instructional space. With most of the able-bodied men off fighting in the Pacific and Europe, the institute opened “a branch in machine shop practice for women” here. The former auction space was used for teaching women “assembly and inspection work, the reading of blueprints, and various mechanical aspects needed in defense industries.”

In 1978 artist Frank Stella took over the building, using it as his studio for 27 years. It was from here that the influential artist added free-standing sculpture to his painting and print-making art. In 2005 the building was sold to Isaac Mishan for $10 million. Mishan planned to demolish the structure to replace it with a seven-story sleek condo building.

A proposed 7-story condo was slated to replace the old auction mart -- sketch Gothamist.com

Preservationists rushed in. By September 3, 2006 the developer had construction permits in hand, but demolition permits had not be issued. At an emergency meeting of the Landmarks Preservation Commission the next day, politicians including State Senator Tom Duane, Assemblywoman Deborah Glick and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer pleaded to save the building. Local residents joined representatives from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the Municipal Arts Society, and the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America in the appeal.

During the meeting Johnathon Hayes who lived in the neighborhood asserted “The space cries out for adaptive reuse…We cannot live by luxury condominiums alone.”

Although to this day the Landmarks Preservation Commission has not designated the structure, the owners were swayed. They voluntarily allowed it to be listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places, giving up the right to alter the exterior or build on it in anyway inconsistent with historic preservation guidelines. In exchange they received a substantial tax write-off.

In 2007 the Peridance Center leased the building and began a nearly three-year renovation. When opened in December 2009, it housed six roomy climate-controlled, soundproof dance studios, a 200-seat theater for the Peridance Contemporary Dance Company, a café and boutique.

The handsome old auction house where Belmonts and Vanderbilts shopped for show horses is a faultless example of creative recycling of historic properties.

The Afred Rossin House -- No. 15 East 62nd Street

In 1871 brothers David and John Jardine worked both as real estate developers and architects.  Before the century was up, they would line blocks of the newly-developing Upper East Side with long rows of brownstone homes.  But this year they worked on a project as architects only; designing six neo-Grec style homes for contractors William H. and Charles Gedney.

Like Charles T. Wills, W. H. Gedney & Son, would play a major part in building and construction in the second half of the 19^thcentury.  Their speculative homes at Nos. 11 through 21 East 62^nd Street would be completed in 1872—handsome Victorian residences with broad stoops and carved stone railings sure to lure merchant class homeowners.

By at least 1891 respected dermatologist Dr. Sigmund Lustgarten was living in No. 15.  That year he had written “The Primary Cause of Death Following Burns to the Skin, with Therapeutic Observations” published in the Medical Record.  Born in Vienna, he came to New York in 1889 and became the visiting dermatologist at Mount Sinai Hospital.  He instructed “many of the leading dermatologists of this city,” said The New York Times later; and was a consultant for the Montefiore Home and other institutions.

Dr. Lustgarten and his wife sold the 62^nd Street house in March 1899.  Shortly thereafter The New York Times revealed the buyer as Frank C. Hollins.  But as was often the case, Hollins was apparently acting as an agent to keep the actual purchaser’s name temporarily unknown.

A month later the same newspaper reported on the society wedding of Alfred Rossin and Clara Lewisohn.  The couple was married in the “the newly completed residence of the bride’s father, 9 West Fifty-seventh Street, one of the most beautiful of New York’s newer houses.”  Among the guests that day were some of Manhattan’s wealthiest and best known Jewish citizens, with names like Rothschild, Untermeyer, Stern and Guggenheimer.

The newlyweds would move into the former Lustgarten house—but not before updating the old Victorian.  Rossin commissioned C. P. H. Gilbert, who had recently completed massive mansions for Isaac D. Fletcher and Franklin Winfield Woolworth, to transform the old brownstone into an up-to-date mansion.

Gilbert stripped off the drab stone façade and replaced it with gleaming limestone.  The resulting Beaux Arts beauty bore no resemblance to its former self.  A rusticated basement and parlor floor base supported a bowed second story façade which, in turn, acted as a spacious balcony at the third floor. 

Prior to its remake, No. 15 matched its next door neighbor (right) -- photo by Wurts Bros, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYW1J2RFV&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915&PN=3#/SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYW1J2RFV&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915&PN=3

Rossin was President of the Public National Bank; and while he busied himself with things financial, his wife was involved with the Hebrew Technical School for Girls as its president.  Working along with her was her father, investment banker Adolph Lewisohn, who served as vice-president.  The school came under fire in January 1917 when Felix Warburg laid plans to update the curriculum.

Warburg was a banker and member of the conference board of the Rockefeller Foundation, which planned to revise primary and secondary education nationwide.  Shocking (and unacceptable) to traditional Edwardian minds was his announcement that Latin and Greek would be replaced by French and German in the “modern school.”  He fired back at criticism saying “It is questionable whether a child can be taught what he ought to know under our present system,” and Adolph Lewisohn back him up.  According to the New-York Tribune on January 22, 1917, he “said the community needed more schools like the Hebrew Technical School for Girls.”

Not far away, at No. 40 East 68^th Street, was the grand mansion of John Daniel Crimmins.  The wealthy contractor had created the lavish home by combining two older row houses.  On November 9, 1917 the aging widower died with seven of his ten children at his bedside.  Within three months of the funeral, the Crimmins family moved out of the family home.

On March 16, 1918 The Sun reported “The Crimmins family…will occupy the dwelling at 15 East Sixty-second street, a small house, in the future.”  Alfred and Clara Rossin used their house, valued at $97,000, as partial payment for the Crimmins mansion, which they purchased for $350,000.

Apparently the “small house” on 62^nd Street was not sufficient for the Crimmins siblings.  Just a year later, on May 5, 1919, The Sun reported that the house was sold to Howard Elliott for $110,000.  “The new owner plans to occupy the house after making extensive alterations,” said the newspaper.

The 59-year old railroad executive and his wife had two married daughters and a son.  He was President of the New York, New Haven & Hartford and the Northern Pacific Railroads.  He was, as well, a director of 17 other railroads, director of the American Railway Association, and sat on the boards of numerous other concerns.

Elliott came from a distinguished family.  His father, Charles Wyllys Elliott was a historian and author of several books.  The Elliott family traced its American roots to John Eliot who settled in Natick, Massachusetts in 1631 and was known as “The Apostle to the Indians.”  On his mother’s side was Samuel Howard, a member of the Boston Tea Party of 1773.

The Elliotts moved into No. 15 in 1919 -- photographs from the Library of Congress

Following his wife’s death in 1925, the semi-retired Elliott lived on in the 62^nd Street house with his son, Howard Elliott, Jr.  Three years later he traveled to Cape Cod to spend the summer in the home of his daughter, Mrs. Frederick Wilson.  There, on July 8, 1928 he suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 67.

Elliott’s entire estate of about $2.25 million was divided among his family.  On October 29, 1929 the house was sold to real estate operator Charles Brown.   He held the property for only 48 hours.  The New York Times, on November 1, wrote “After an ownership of two days, the five-story limestone residence at 15 East Sixty-second Street was resold yesterday by Charles Brown.”  The newspaper added that the buyer “plans to rebuild the house and occupy it.  The alterations will include the installation of an electric elevator.”

Earlier that year Jennie, the wife of wealthy banker Henry White Cannon, died.  New Yorker socialites were no doubt shocked a year later on September 18 when the 80-year old married Miss Myrta L. Jones.  The Times reported that “After a wedding trip the couple will live at 15 East Sixty-second Street.”

Cannon was a member of the board and a former president of the Chase National Bank.  His illustrious financial career included having been appointed Controller of the Currency by President Chester A. Arthur in 1884 and serving as a delegate to the International Monetary Conference in Brussels in 1892.

Myrta’s family was well respected in Cleveland society; but Henry’s pedigree was impeccable.  On his mother side was Peregrine White, born aboard the Mayflower on November 20, 1620 while the ship was moored in Cape Cod Harbor.  His grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War and died a prisoner of the British in Manhattan.

The millionaire’s age did not prevent him from fathering a son, Harry.  Each winter the family would travel to Daytona Beach where Cannon had owned a house on South Beach Street.  Henry Cannon’s health was been failing for some time in 1934, and it was at the Florida home in April, that he died.

Myrtle and little Harry accompanied the body back to New York and Cannon’s funeral was held early in May in Delhi, New York, where he was born.

No. 15 East 62^nd Street became home to Dr. Johan H. W. van Ophuijsen, an eminent psychiatrist and director of the Creedmoor Institute for Psychobiologic Studies.  Born in Sumatra, he was associated early in his career with Dr. Sigmund Freud and Dr. Ivan Pavov—pioneers of psychoanalysis.

He came to New York by invitation of the Psychanalytic Institute to teach in 1935.  He would teach there from 1938 to 1948.  He served on the psychiatric staffs of Mount Sinai and Lenox Hill Hospitals, and beginning in 1946 was attending psychiatrist at the Veterans Administration.

The New York Times would write of him, “Dr. van Ophuijsen stressed the importance of the role of the father in the psychological rearing of children, taking sharp issue with experts who had ‘told but half the story,’ he said, in blaming psychoneurotic symptoms—which in this country made many young men unfit to bear arms during the recent war—on the mother.”

Ophuijsen renovated a lower floor in the house as an office where he personally saw patients.  As well as living in here, he founded the Van Ophuijsen Center in the house.  In May 1950 he was stricken with a heart problem, “but flew to Detroit to read a paper before the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting,” said The Times.

Four weeks later, on Wednesday May 31, the 68-year old psychiatrist said good-night to his last patient of the day.  A few minutes later he suffered a heart attack and died in the house on East 62^nd Street.

The Beaux Arts mansion continues to be home to the Center, a philanthropic, non-profit institution that carries on its founder’s work.  Outwardly, it remains relatively unchanged since mansion architect C. P. H. Gilbert transformed an outdated Victorian to an modern Edwardian for wealthy newlyweds.

non-credited photographs by the author

The E. Hayward Ferry House -- No. 26 West 56th Street

photo by Alice Lum

Banker Henry Seligman was not interested in moving into the old brownstone he bought at No. 26 West 56^th Street in 1907.  He had just completed a new mansion for himself two houses away at No. 30.  Instead, he had two thoughts in mind:  protection of his new neighborhood and profit.

The house was one of five built by New Jersey-based real estate developer George W. DaCunha between 1871 and 1872.  Before long DaCunha would establish himself as an architect, designing structures like the 1883 Queen Anne-style Gramercy apartment building.  But for this project he hired the firm of D. & J. Jardine.

At that time the blocks just off Fifth Avenue had recently become fashionable.  Central Park was nearing completion, St. Thomas Church had been finished a year earlier three blocks to the south and fine residences had begun lining the avenue.    David and John Jardine produced five staid brownstone houses stretching from No. 22 to No. 30 West 56^th Street.   Their formal, restrained facades reflected the dignified and proper demeanor of the wealthy Victorian families who would live within them.

The house at No. 26 originally would have looked much like these, also on West 56th -- photo NYPL Collection

Before construction was completed DaCunha sold all five buildings to real estate speculator Jacob Tallman.  Three of the houses would be home to members of his family for years; however No. 26 was leased.    Then, in 1877, Tallman sold the entire row.  Henry E. Sprague purchased No. 26.

Sprague was a wholesale produce merchant.  He lived here with his wife Harriet for only three years before selling it to George S. Hart.  As was common in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the deed was put in the name of his wife, Anna Dudley Hart.  Hart had moved to New York from Connecticut in 1862 and established the firm of George C. Hart & Co., a wholesaler of dairy products located on Pearl Street.

By the time the Harts moved into No. 26 his business had offices in Wisconsin and Liverpool, England as well as a second branch in Manhattan.  Anna’s step-father, Henry L. Grant was a broker of streetcar stocks and through his connection George Hart became involved in the Central Crosstown Railroad Company, eventually becoming its president.   He would gain control of two other railroad companies and serve on the board of several banks.

Anna’s mother and step-father lived with them.  When she died in 1893, her mother and sister transferred title of the house to George.  A year later he married Frances Wheeler.

George and Frances had a country house in Willard, New York and stayed on at No. 26 West 56^th until 1907.  They had begun extensive travel in 1905 and, rarely being in at home, chose to sell.

And that is when Henry Seligman came into the picture.

On July 22, 1907 real estate speculator Wesley Thorn purchased the house and a day later transferred it, subject to a $55,000 mortgage, to Seligman.    Henry Seligman went to work to protect his new mansion from unwanted neighbors and to improve the look of the block.

He commissioned architect Harry Allan Jacobs to modernize the structure.  For some time now the steep brownstone stoop over an English basement had been considered passé.    Brownstone was no longer in fashion and American basements, with the entrance door directly off the sidewalk, had been the trend for nearly a decade. 

The beautiful entrance was inspired by an 18th Century townhouse in Paris -- photo by Alice Lum

Not only did Jacobs bring the interiors up to date—adding new bathrooms and plumbing, stairs and floors—he extended the front and rear and replaced the brownstone façade with gleaming white limestone.   Construction was begun a month after the purchase and was completed 10 months later in June 1908.  No. 26 West 56^th Street was now a house on par with the magnificent new mansions of the neighborhood.

The block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues would become known as “Bankers’ Row” as it filled with financiers and brokers.     Banker E. Hayward Ferry would add to the reputation when he purchased the house in November.   Seligman included in the contract a clause that the house would “be used and occupied as a private residence [by] one family only.”

Jacobs added a copper-sheathed mansard roof and fourth-floor balcony -- photo by Alice Lum

The Harvard-educated Ebenezer Hayward Ferry was a major force in the financial community.   He held directorships in the Phelps Dodge Corporation, the Curtiss Securities Company, Home Life Insurance Company of New York, the Northern Pacific Railway Company, Old Dominion, Company, and the Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Company.  The Ferrys summered at their Newport estate, “Edgehill.”

Mrs. Ferry, the former Amelia Parsons, was a graduate of Smith College.  Their only child, Harriet, had not yet married when they family moved in.

E. Hayward and Amelia Ferry lived here for nearly 30 years, despite the fact that by the 1930s most of the mansions of West 56^th Street had been converted for commercial purposes or turned into boarding houses.  The pair shared the house with their three servants, Alice Smith, Louise Condliff and Elizabeth McTieh. 

Down the block the elderly Henry and Adelaide Seligan were still living in No. 30, catered to by their live-in staff of eleven.  When the pair died in 1933, only months apart, the clause in the purchase contract for No. 26 was void and E. Hayward Ferry was finally free to lease the house. 

On September 5, 1935 The New York Times casually mentioned that the "five-story American basement residence at 26 West Fifty-sixth Street…was leased by E. Haywood [sic] Ferry to Albert and Charles Boni, Inc., publishers.”   The house, said the article, “will be altered extensively for use by the lessees as their offices.”

The publisher remained in the building until September 1945 when Major L. G. Lederer, an importer and manufacturer of handbags and accessories, purchased the house from the Ferry estate.  The firm, Lederer de Paris, shared the building with the Rumanian Legation which took over the entire mansion in June of 1947.

Then things took a shadier turn.

In July of 1950 a “long-term lease” was negotiated for the house with the Gold Key Club, Inc.   Key clubs were popular at the time as after-hours restaurants or nightclubs used by members only.   The members would supply the club with their own bottles of liquor which were stored on premises.  When the members arrived, they were served from their own supply of alcohol, no money was exchanged, and everything was perfectly legal.  Supposedly.

In their 2005 book “Id Do It Again! A Memoir,” former Copa girls Harriet Wright and Brie Austin described the Gold Key Club.    “…there were after hour places all over the area, the most famous being the exclusive Gold Key Club on West 56^th Street…owned by Vinny Bruno.  Anyone who wanted to continue drinking or had a special girlfriend to impress took their dates there—if they could get in.  It was members only.  This was literally one of those places where you rang the bell and waited to be ‘recognized’ before the buzzer let you in—another remnant of the old speakeasy tradition.”

In February 1956, District Attorney Frank S. Hogan did not give the club so rosy a description.   Calling it a “speakeasy with Chinese-type cuisine, very pretty girls and soft music,” he told reporters it was not a legitimate membership club but “actually an unlicensed after-hours bottle club where liquor was stored and sold in violation of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law.”

Hogan went on to say he suspected the club of being an “underworld enterprise” connected with Anthony Strollo, a “top underworld figure.”

The club, in 1956, had about 3,500 members and was patronized by well-known writers, film stars and prominent businessmen.  Truman Capote was said to have been a regular patron.   In a raid in February of that year 60 tuxedo-wearing members were handed subpoenas to appear before a grand jury investigating the club.

A year later the club was raided again.   President of the club John R. Durante, who lived in the house above the club, and Vincent Mauro, described by The Times as an “ex-convict,” were fined $200 each and given a 60-day suspended sentence.

Through it all the outward appearance of the distinguished house at No. 26 West 56^th Street remained unaltered.  In 1957 it regained its dignity when 28-year old fashion designer Arnold Saasi purchased the town house for more than $200,000.  He established his showroom as well as his home here.

Scaasi hired designer Valerian Rybar to decorate the house with “velvet-pillowed divans, velvet draperies and even velvet-covered banisters in terra cotta tones,” according to The Times.   The confused fashion designer proudly announced to all that the house had been designed by Stanford White at the turn of the century and that his dining room was “the room where Stanford White pushed Mrs. Harry K. Thaw in the famous red velvet swing.”

It did make for a good story, even if it was exceedingly off-base.

The house was sold in 1964 to the Martin Foundation, established to aid educational and social services.  The building housed the foundation’s headquarters and the offices of the Eleanor Roosevelt Cancer Fund, the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Foundation, the Dessoff Choirs and Hollywood actor-producer Sidney Glazier’s offices.

For the next two decades various other foundations and offices would come and go, including the Film Institute of America, the Federal Bar Association of New York and New Jersey and the Vassar College Capital Campaign.

photo by Alice Lum

Since 1988 the Spanish Broadcasting System has run its operations from here.  It is the largest publicly traded Hispanic-controlled media and entertainment company in the country.

The distinctive limestone mansion was designated a New York City landmark in 2009.

The Daniel Kellogg Mansion -- No. 54 East 68th Street

Photo by Alice Lum

In the decade following the Civil War the Upper East Side saw dizzying development.  Among the men responsible for the rows of speculative brownstone rowhouses was Anderson Fowler.  In 1879 he erected five high-stooped homes on East 68^th Street, Nos. 52 through 60, designed by brothers David and John Jardine.

A year later, on Saturday July 3, 1880, the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide remarked on the stunning growth of the neighborhood.  “In many particulars, ‘Lenox Hill’ is already in advance of the still famous ‘Murray Hill;’ especially in the magnificence of its palatial architecture.”  The article listed the names of important residents, including John D. Crimmins and Robert L. Stuart; then mentioned Anderson Fowler, himself, as one of the new homeowners.

“The names of other gentlemen, besides those we have mentioned, above, occur to us as owning beautiful residences in the same vicinity; among them Mr. J. M. Fiske, Hon. H. C. Van Vorst, Mr. F. D. Tappan, Mr. Anderson Fowler, Mr. Parker Handy, Mr. B. B. Atterbury, and others equally prominent, whose names do not chance to be familiar to us.”

Parker Handy, mentioned as one of Fowler’s neighbors, had moved into No. 54 East 68^th Street.  The title of the house was put in his wife Cornelia’s name.  Despite their significant move uptown, the Handy family retained its membership in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Handy had stepped down as vice-president of the Third National Bank of New York in 1870 when he purchased Peter Hayden’s firm, which dealt in precious metal bullion and coins.  Handy converted the business to banking, renaming it the Banking House of Parker Handy.  Before the end of the century the firm would be recognized as the standard for the determination of daily silver price quotations throughout the country.

But before then, Handy sold No. 54 to David H. Gould in April 1885 for $44,500.  As Handy had done, Gould put the property in the name of his wife, Mary.  The price the Goulds paid would just top $1 million today.

The Gould’s did not stay long on East 64^thStreet, however.  By 1888 it was the home of the Henry R. De Milt family.  The head of H. R. De Milt & Co. at No. 238 Water Street, Henry dealt in metals.  He was a member of the exclusive Union League Club, as well as the Republican Club, the Ohio Society, and sat on the Board of Trade and Transportation.

Social eyebrows may have been raised when an announcement was published in The New York Times on May 19, 1893 concerning daughter Ella Curtis De Milt’s upcoming marriage.  Ella was engaged to Charles Warren Ten Broeck, a member of an old Dutch family in New York.  The Times headline simply read “Miss De Milt’s Wedding To Be Private.”  It noted that invitations to the June 10 reception only had been sent out the previous day. 

It appears that Ella and Charles moved into the East 68^thStreet house, as she continued to entertain with her mother and sister here.  On January 3, 1895 The Times noted “Cards have been sent out by Mrs. Henry R. De Milt, Mrs. Charles Warren Ten Broeck, and Miss De Milt for a tea on the afternoon of January 10, from 4 until 7 o’clock, at 54 East Sixty-eighth Street.”

A few months later, in June, Henry heard rumors that the City was endeavoring to sell off Upper East Side properties for back taxes.  Apparently concerned about his property values and the upscale tone of his neighborhood, De Milt called a meeting of nearby homeowners on June 4.  The New York Times reported “Property owners interested in the east side lands met in the Continental Building, Court and Montague Streets, Brooklyn, last night, and discussed the questions as to the clouds upon the title of the property.”

De Milt’s proactive stance resulted in the organization of the East Side Lands Property Owners’ Association.

By the time Henry R. De Milt died in the first decade of the new century, the neighborhood was changing.  New homeowners either razed or drastically remodeled the old brownstones.  Where rows of chocolate-colored, carbon-copy houses had stood; now individual brick, marble or limestone mansions were rising.  And that was exactly what Daniel F. Kellogg had in mind when he purchased No. 54 East 68^th Street from the De Milt estate in May 1910.

Kellogg commissioned architect Donn Barber to strip off the Victorian façade and create a modern Edwardian residence.  The result was a limestone-clad French Renaissance beauty .  With the stoop removed, the façade was moved forward a few feet and the entrance was now just one step up from the sidewalk.  The service entrance was guarded by an especially handsome iron fence.  Above, two sets of French doors surmounted by classical pediments opened onto stone Juliette balconies.  Barber reserved his most striking feature for the top two floors—a two-story slate-tiled mansard with overblown dormers at the fourth floor and charming copper-clad arched dormers at the fifth.  Barber had created a slice of France off Park Avenue.

 

photo by Alice Lum

The Sun later noted that it “is equipped with an elevator” and “with the land, cost approximately $150,000.”

Kellogg was unlike his banker, attorney and high-powered businessmen neighbors.  He was the City Editor and Financial Editor of the New York Sun.  Within a few years, however, he left the newspaper to take control of publicity for J. P. Morgan.

Along with Kellogg and his wife in the remodeled house was son Daniel Fiske Kellogg, Jr.  Like the previous young residents he would marry well.  On November 6, 1915 his engagement to Edythe Emily Milliken was announced.  The bride’s father, Charles Stuart Milliken was the President of the Guanajuato Consolidated Mining & Milling Co., one of the most productive silver and gold operations on the continent, according to The Mining Investor in 1908.

photo by Alice Lum

It would be more than a year before Daniel and Edythe married in the fashionable St. Thomas’s Church on Fifth Avenue.  The day following the wedding, on October 16, 1917, The New York Times noted that “On their return from their honeymoon, Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg will make their home at 54 East Sixty-eighth Street.”

Those plans did not work out.  Five months later The Sun reported that Kellogg had sold the house “to a buyer who is said to be a banker.”  A few weeks later, on April 11, 1918, the newspaper noted the Kelloggs had taken "an apartment at 555 Park Avenue.”

The buyer was 45-year old stockbroker Guy Richards McLane.  He had become widowed when his beloved wife, Dorothea, and their daughter died in childbirth on February 24, 1912.  Dorothea was active in the care for destitute Italian immigrants and a year later McLane and his father-in-law Dr. Henry van Dyke, established Dorothea’s House in Princeton, New Jersey in her memory.

The wealthy McLane was a member of the brokerage firm Jesup & Lamont at No. 26 Broadway; and Secretary and Director of Jeremiah Skidmore Sons, dealers in coal.  Almost three years to the day after purchasing the 68^th Street house, on Sunday morning, April 10, 1921, Guy Richards McLane died there.

The estate quickly placed the house on the market for $150,000—closer to $1.85 million today.  It sold the first week of June 1921. 

The house would become home to the granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller—Margaret Strong De Cuevas and her husband George.  Society and the New York press questioned her husband’s claim at nobility.  On June 6, 1937 The New York Times mentioned that the Rockefeller family “did not refer to Mrs. De Cuevas by the title Marquise, but simply as Mrs. George De Cuevas.” 

“Several years ago Dr. Strong [Margaret’s father] and his daughter were reported to have become estranged,” said the newspaper.  “This estrangement was reported sometime previous to her marriage to George De Cuevas, who is referred to as the Marquis De Cuevas.  The title is not listed in the 1937 edition of the Almanach de Gotha.”

When Dr. Strong had been asked by reporters”to confirm a report that his daughter had been married secretly to George De Cuevas, he said ‘I’m not in close touch with her.  She is able to take care of herself.’”

When John D. Rockefeller died in 1937, The Times noted that the Social Register listed Margaret’s and George’s address as No. 54 68^thStreet but “have passed most of their time abroad” and were not well known in New York society.  As a matter of fact, in October that year it appeared that the family would abandon East 68^thStreet entirely.

“Brill & Brill will sell at auction at the residence formerly occupied by Marquis George De Cuevas, 54 East Sixty-eighth Street, a collection of furniture, furnishings, paintings, Oriental rugs, antique and modern silver, china, glassware and linens,” reported The Times on October 24.

The house was sold to the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York as its new clubhouse.  The group quickly realized its mistake.  It later termed the townhouse “a white elephant” and quickly resold it for a bargain basement price of $90,000.  The New York Times reported on the sale on March 5, 1938, saying “A town house in an area of fashionable homes on the East Side passed to new hands yesterday.”

The hands were not all that new, however.  The buyer was Margaret Strong De Cuevas.  Margaret and George began buying up other property on the block.  In 1940 The Times reported that George De Cuevas “bought the adjoining house at No. 56” and in 1953 Margaret purchased No. 52 on the other side.

In 1953 Margaret owned both houses.  photo by Alice Lum

Margaret’s purchase may have been prompted by her son’s wedding on February 3 that year.  By now The Times had apparently accepted her title.  The day after the wedding it referred to John de Cuevas as the son of “the Marquis and Marquessa de Piedrablanca de Guana.”

Margaret’s concern for historic properties in the neighborhood was manifested when in 1965 she bought the two handsome neo-Federal mansions at Nos. 680 and 684 Park Avenue which were threatened with demolition.  She donated the houses to charity.

In 1980, reportedly through the nudging of her cousin David Rockefeller, Margaret donated her own house, along with No. 52, to charity.  No. 54 East 68^thStreet became the Center for African Art, a favorite area of interest of Rockefeller.

The handsome French-inspired mansion with its long and involved history survives unchanged on a block of remarkable houses.