The 1901 Scholle Mansion -- No. 46 East 74th Street

No. 46 East 74^thStreet was one of eleven identical Italianate brownstone rowhouses erected by developer Melville J. Scholle in 1870.  Four stories tall above a deep English basement, the handsome house was designed by brothers David and John Jardine.  The men would be highly active in the development of the Upper East Side throughout the rest of the century.

The house was first owned by the Hazelhurst family and it would quickly be the scene of intense sorrow.  Little Charlotte A. Hazlehurst, the eldest daughter of Thomas and Mary, was two years old when the house was built.  She died there on February 22, 1873 at the age of five.  Friends and family filed through the crepe-draped door the following Saturday morning for the little girl’s funeral.

Thirteen years earlier, in March 1860, British-born Isaac Phillips and Adeline Cohen were married by the bride’s father, Rev. Hartwig Cohen.  Not extremely long after Charlotte Hazelhurst's death the couple moved into No. 46 East 74^thStreet where their family would eventually include eight children.  Phillips was a wholesale fur dealer at No. 60 Broadway and was wealthy enough not only to afford a comfortable brownstone; but to have wedding portraits painted.

The portraits of Adeline Cohen Phillips and Isaac Phillips were painted around the time of their 1860 wedding -- http://www2.lib.unc.edu/apop/thishappyland.html?counter=3

By 1877 son Samuel Mendes Phillips was attending New York City College.  Of his successful siblings, Jacob Campbell Phillips would go on to study art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art School, the Art Students League, and in the private studio of William M. Case.  Naphtali Taylor Phillips would later become Deputy Controller of New York City.

Before long the house was home to the unmarried invalid, Julia Sand, who lived here with her brother.  When President James A. Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881, Julia was overcome with concern for the Vice President, Chester A. Arthur, who lived in New York near Gramercy Park.

Although the two had never met, Julia sent encouraging messages to Arthur.  One read in part “Disappoint our fears.  Force the nation to have faith in you.  Show from the first that you have one but the purest of aims.”  Arthur so appreciated her voluntary counsel that he paid a surprise visit to the house.

According to Candice Millard in her Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President, “After dinner on August 20, 1882, a highly polished carriage pulled up to the front door of number 46 East Seventy-Fourth Street…Sand was inside, stretched out on the sofa, having ‘disdained roast beef and scorned peach-pie,’ when she suddenly heard a man talking to her brother in the front parlor.  She was just ‘wondering who that gentle-voiced Episcopal minister…might be’ when President Arthur walked into the room.  Arthur would stay for nearly an hour, pleased to finally have a face-to-face discussion with one of his most trusted advisers.”

When Chester A. Arthur visited Julia Sand the homes along the block were identical copies of one another -- photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

Within the decade the house passed on to George Hillard Benjamin, a patent attorney with offices at No. 45 Broadway.  Benjamin and his wife, the former Jane Seymour, had three daughters.  Like all wealthy socialites, Jane entertained often.  Such was the case in April 1896 when “Mrs. George Hillard Benjamin and Miss Benjamin of 46 East Seventy-fourth Street have sent out cards for a reception for April 30,” as noted in The New York Timessociety columns.

Jane Benjamin would not live past the age of 46.  She died in the house on Sunday, October 24, 1897.  Her funeral was held in the house two days later.

Not long after the expected period of mourning, George remarried.  On Wednesday June 14, 1899 the Buffalo Evening News reported that George and his bride, the former Grace Holt Tremaine, “sail on the 28^th for a summer abroad, returning in the autumn, when they will reside at No. 46 East Seventy-fourth street.”

A socially high-profile event would take place in the Benjamin parlor on November 7, 1900 when daughter Mary was married to Henry Huttleston Rogers, Jr., the son of immensely wealthy oil tycoon.  Cherie Burns, in Searching for Beauty: The Life of Millicent Rogers, says Mark Twain sent a note to Mary that read “Dear Miss Benjamin, I feel a deep personal interest in this fortunate marriage because I helped to rear Harry Rogers and make him what he is.”  He joked that he had considered sending her diamonds, but could not find any fresh ones in this year’s crop.

Twain’s jocular offer of diamonds would have been superfluous, anyway.  The New York Times reported that Mary wore “a collar of diamonds and pearls, the gift of H. H. Rogers, Sr., and a diamond pendant, the gift of the bridegroom.”

The following year on May 7 the Benjamin family sold the 74^th Street house to Melville J. Scholle.  As it had been previously, the title was put in the name of Scholle’s wife, Jennie.  A wealthy broker and member of Scholle Brothers, Scholle would also take on the responsibility of Secretary of the Beth Israel Hospital Dispensary.

By the time the Scholle’s took possession of the house, the block was undergoing rampant change.  New homeowners were razing or remodeling the old brownstones into up-to-date mansions.  A year earlier the Scholle’s next door neighbors, the Ehrenreiches, became involved in an ugly court battle when Frank Froment remodeled the house on the other side, No. 50.  Moses and Hannah Ehrenreich took Froment to court over a matter of 4 inches of party wall.

It was an object lesson, apparently, for Melville and Jennie Scholle.  Within a month of purchasing No. 46, the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide noted that the two families had come to an agreement about their party wall.  That having been settled, Scholle went to work demolishing the old brownstone.

He commissioned Robert D. Kohn to design a modern home with all the conveniences of an Edwardian residence.  Kohn produced a Beaux Arts beauty of red brick and limestone.  The bowed lower three floors featured a second floor balcony accessed by French doors.  Above the large third floor balcony, the upper two floors could arguably called more English than French, rising to a dignified classical pediment.

The Ehrenreich family lived in No. 48 (middle).  Scholle demolished an identical house to build No. 46 (left).  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=24UAYWW8MDJ5&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

By January 11, 1902 the Record & Guide announced that the $25,000 structure was “ready for roof.”  Ten months later Julius F. Munckwitz, called by the periodical “the long-established and reliable painter and hardwood finisher,” had completed the interior work on the mansion.

Jennie Scholle was actively involved in charities, among her favorites being the Stony Wold Sanatorium.  The facility in the Adirondacks was “for the care of women and children suffering from tuberculosis in the incipient stage,” according to Health News in February 1915.  

By the time the Scholle family moved into the East 74^th Street house the children were growing up.  The family traveled to Berlin during the summer of 1909 where they visited Melville Scholle’s brother, Gustave, the Third Secretary of the American Embassy.  Only a matter of months later, in January, the engagement of Mildred to Joseph Sidenberg was announced.  The wedding took place in March 1910.

When World War I erupted in Europe, Robert Scholle enlisted with the American Ambulance Corps and in 1918 he was stationed in France.  By the time he returned to New York, the Scholles would be living at No. 55 West 55^thStreet.

Early in July 1919 the No. 46 was sold to Charles Sprague Sargent, Jr. for $100,000—about $1.25 million in today’s dollars.  Sargent had married Dagmar Wetmore seven years earlier and was a member of the brokerage firm Kidder, Peabody & Company.

The Sargents would not stay long in their new home.  On November 11, 1922 The Record & Guide reported that another moneyed stock broker, Henry L. Finch, had purchased the house from Sargent.  Finch was married to Mary Farquhar Baker, the daughter of fabulously wealthy banker Stephen Baker.

Within the year Mary and Henry would welcome a fourth son into the family, both in the house in June 1923.  The birth did not prevent the couple from boarding the steamship Parison August 11 that year “for a trip abroad,” as reported by The Times.  Two months, on October 29, they returned on the Majestic.

Like Jennie Scholle before her, Mary Finch had a pet charity.  On May 14, 1929 the New York Evening Post described her as “one of the attractive women in the younger married set who devote a large part of their time to charity.  She is especially interested in the House of Rest and she is president of the Junior Auxiliary of that institution.  Mrs. Finch, who is an enthusiastic horsewomen, will spend the summer in Red Bank, N.J.”  In fact, year after year newspapers would report on Mary’s activities in organizing the annual Butterfly Ball held by the Junior Auxiliary of the House of Rest.

The Finches would remain in the house through the 1950s as one-by-one the sons married and left home.  For several decades beginning in the mid-1960s it was the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Ivory Coast to the United Nations. 

Today Melville Scholle’s handsome Beaux Arts mansion is little changed on a block that, for the most part, is an amazing time capsule of Edwardian mansions.

photos by the author

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 Seligman House -- No. 126 East 74th Street

Developer Warren Beeman’s ambitious project of 28 brownstone rowhouses on East 74^th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues would take four years to complete.  Begun in 1871, they were designed by architect John G. Prague in the ubiquitous Italianate style.  To fit so many homes onto the block, Beeman skimped on their width—they were 18.9 feet wide as compared to the more expected 20 feet.

Among the row was No. 126 East 74^th Street.  Home to well-to-do owners from its completion in 1875, it was owned by Davis Rosenberg in 1905.  The neighborhood to the west had become highly exclusive as the mansions of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens lined Fifth Avenue.  By now the affluent residential character had spread east.  Rosenberg sold the house that year in June to Nathaniel A. Campbell and his wife, Elizabeth. 

Campbell was involved in real estate and more than once included Selena M. Campbell in the deals.  It is probable that the two were related.  Early in 1910 Selena (whose name was often spelled Selina in newspapers) sold her home at No. 56 East 69^thStreet and purchased No. 126 East 74^th Street from Nathaniel and Elizabeth Campbell.  The New-York Tribunemade note of her $10,000 mortgage—around $240,000 today.

Wealthy and unmarried, Selena M. Campbell devoted her time to charitable causes.  When she moved into No. 126 she had been Chairman of Industrial School No. 1 on East 109^thStreet for several years.  The purpose of the school was the “Education of poor children not provided for by the public schools.”

She was also First Vice-President of the Female Guardian Society and Home for the Friendless.  When it hosted a fund-raising bazaar on November 21, 1913 The Sunreported that “The society takes care of about 208 derelict children and the bazaar was held to wipe out a debt of $74,000 incurred during the last year, which is the seventy-ninth of the society’s work.”

Before Selena moved into the house she renovated the outdated Victorian interiors.  On April 16, 1910 the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that she had give E. Van Houten the contract to make “interior changes” to the house.

Selena Campbell was tireless in her efforts to improve the lot of the poor.  On February 1, 1915 she spoke at a meeting of the Presbyterian union at the Hotel Savoy.  The issue at hand was the ineffective operation of the Almshouse.  Prior to the speeches, 70 children from the Woodycrest Home for the Friendless, of which she was an officer, “went through a military drill” for the assemblage.

By 1921 the 74^th Street house was owned by Theodore Stanfield and his wife, Cora Leopold Stanfield.  Cora had been a leader in the New York Kindergarten Association since graduating from Teachers College in 1902.  She was also highly active in the Children’s Charitable Union.

Now 40 years old, Cora became ill and after a brief illness died on January 22, 1921 in the Nursery and Children’s Hospital.  The New York Times mentioned that “She had herself taught for several years in the kindergartens of the city schools and had urged the founding of a children’s theatre where classics suitable for young audiences could be performed.”

Theodore was the Managing Director of the American Metal Company and he, too, was involved with notable causes.  That year he served as Chairman of the Library and Entertainment Committee of the New York Institution for Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes.  He was a life member of the American Peace Society and a member of the Williamstown Institute of Politics.

Nineteen months after Cora’s death, on July 5, 1922, he married Suzette M. Stanfield.  Now retired, in 1923 The New York Times said “as a hobby [he] devotes a considerable portion of each year to analysis of world conditions.”

On July 9, 1917 the engagement of Eustace Seligman to Maud Jaretzki had been made public.  Seligman was the son of esteemed Professor Edwin R. A. Seligman of Columbia University.  Educated at Amherst College, Harvard Law School and Columbia, the young attorney practiced law with Sullivan and Cromwell.  During World War I he served as Judge Advocate, trying cases of conscientious objectors.

In 1925 the Seligmans purchased the house from the Stanfields.  (Theodore Stanfield, incidentally, would suffer a nervous breakdown two years later and spend the rest of his life institutionalized.)

Like Selena Campbell, the new owners set out to modernize their dated home.  But the Seligman renovations would go far behind “interior changes.”  Architect Edward I. Shire was hired to convert the old brownstone into a modern upscale dwelling.

A decade earlier Frederick Junius Sterner made his mark on New York architecture by transforming Victorian brownstones into Mediterranean and Tudor fantasies.  Now Shire followed his lead and presented the Seligmans with a stucco-covered Mediterranean villa.

With the stoop removed, the entrance was now at street level.  Between the service entrance and the main door a window was guarded by an ornate Spanish-style wrought iron grill.  The second floor featured a Doric loggia with iron railings and three sets of French doors.  The upper openings were ornamented with quaint wooden shutters, and two sloping Spanish-tiled roofs completed the charming charade.

The house was photographed on March 31, 1927.  Note the side window at the third floor.  photograph by Wruts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWWVPB30&SMLS=1&RW=1366&RH=631

Inside Shire continued the motif with twisted wrought iron fixtures and balusters, stuccoed walls, heavy exposed beams and baronial fireplaces.

Although the Seligmans' rear garden was small, it was a source of pride to Maude.  Annually she opened it to the public for the Garden Tour for the benefit of the School Nature League.  Like Selena Campbell, Maude was less interested in glamorous dinners and dances than in social reform and charitable works.  Her teas and receptions most often were in support of a worthy cause.

Maude Seligman opened her pretty garden once a year for charity -- photograph by Wruts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWWVPB30&SMLS=1&RW=1366&RH=631 

Such was the case in November 1936 when “a number of prominent women” met in the house to discuss slum clearance, according to The Times.  Maude was an avid supporter of public housing projects as a means of providing dignified homes for the poor and eliminating the crime and disease-ridden tenements.  Other meetings Maude hosted in the house in the 1940s concerned aid to China and to Poland. 

Well-chosen antiques complimented the Southern European-inspired interiors.   photograph by Wruts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWWVPB30&SMLS=1&RW=1366&RH=631

On July 20, 1939 200 people filed into the house for the funeral of Professor Edwin R. A. Seligman.  The 78-year old economist was praised as a “counselor to cities, States and the United States” and was called “a leader in the field of economic relations.” 

In March 1953 Eustace Seligman’s mother suffered a fatal heart attack in Daytona Beach, Florida.  Her funeral, too, was held in the 74^th Street house.

The Seligmans remained in the home at least through the 1950s.  Today it is remarkably unchanged.  Even the original wooden shutters are intact as is the Spanish grill over the first floor window.  It remains a single family home.

non-historic photographs by the author

The Lilienthal House -- No. 48 E. 74th Street

In 1870 brothers David and John Jardine designed a row of eleven Italianate rowhouses along the south side of East 74^thStreet.  Before long the pair would not only be designing, but erecting speculative blocks of houses in the developing area.  But these new brownstones, stretching from No. 30 through 50, were the project of developers Peter V. Winters and William T. Hunt.

The row was completed in 1871.  Each carbon-copy home was four stories tall over a deep English basement.  Hefty stone Italianate newels flanked the steep stoops.  Intended for merchant-class families, there was nothing extraordinary in their design to set them apart from scores of similar dwellings being constructed in Manhattan and Brooklyn at the time.

Two years after the houses were completed the Financial Panic of 1873 set in.  The devastating depression was perhaps the cause of the foreclosure of No. 48 in July 1879.  The owner had company in his “embarrassment;” at the same foreclosure auction was No. 26 East 74^th Street, half a block away.

No. 48 was purchased at the auction by Moses Ehrenreich and his wife, Hannah.  The deed, as was customary, was put in Hannah’s name.  Ehrenreich was a member of Ehrenreich Bros., a well-known factoring firm in the retail coal business.  He would also serve as president of the Coal Exchange.

Hannah Ehrenreich followed the proprieties of a well-to-do Victorian woman.  When daughter Blanche became engaged to Dr. J. Lowengood, she hosted “at homes” on December 24 and 31, 1893.  In the 19^th and early 20^th century, announcing that one was “at home” was a signal that guests were welcomed to call.  It was a less formal method of inviting guests and one way socialites coordinated their entertainments.

The practice would be repeated in November 1902 when Lillian Ehrenreich became engaged to George H. Shumen of Boston.  But Moses and Hannah had other issues to deal with that year as well.

By the time Lillian met George, the East 74^thStreet neighborhood was rapidly changing.  As mansions rose along Fifth Avenue, the affluent district spread eastward.  Millionaires purchased the 1870s brownstones and either razed or remodeled them into stylish, modern residences. 

In 1900 Frank L. Froment lived next door to the Ehrenreich family.  That year, like so many of his neighbors, he stripped off the facade and created a fine American basement mansion with a bold three-story angled base.  Hannah and Moses Ehrenreich, however, were less than pleased.

To their eye Froment had overstepped his property line by four inches, crowding their stoop, and stealing that amount of brownstone from their home.  In 1901 they took Froment to court demanding that he undo the damage.

Court papers explained “in removing the old front his workmen cut some of the brown stone of which the front wall of the plaintiff’s house was constructed, and it was to restrain this interference with the plaintiff’s front wall and stoop, and to require the defendant to restore the premises to the condition they were in before this interference by him.”

The court was taxed with determining at which point in the party wall the property changed from Froment’s to Ehrenreich’s.  It would not be an easy task.  The New York Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ehrenreich; directing Froment “to restore the front of the plaintiff’s said house to its original condition” following a vertical line from the sidewalk to the roofline directly along the center of the party wall.

Any victory Moses and Hannah celebrated would be short-lived.  Froment appealed and they were all back in court in June 1902.  Following that hearing, the judge determined that the earlier judgment be reversed and a new trial ordered.

None of this resulted in good neighborly relations and before long Frank Froment moved from No. 50 to No. 52; leaving his newly remodeled home as a buffer.

The messy legal matter was put aside on June 17, 1903 when Lillian Beatrice Ehrenreich married George Harrison Shuman in Delmonico’s.  The New York Times reported the following day that “The bridal couple will leave New York to-day on the sloop-yacht Lamont for an extended cruise up the New England coast.  After their return they will be at home both in Boston and this city.”

After more than 30 years in the old brownstone, Ehrenreich sold it in 1911 to Dr. Howard Lilienthal, attending surgeon to Bellevue Hospital and visiting surgeon to Mount Sinai Hospital.  He would also serve as consulting surgeon to the Jewish Maternity and the Har Moriah Hospitals, and to the Hospital for Deformities and Joint Diseases.

There was good reason for Lilienthal's purchase.  Shortly afterward, on November 7, Lilienthal married Edith Strode in the Church of the Ascension.  “After a short trip South Dr. and Mrs. Lilienthal will occupy their new residence at 48 East Seventy-fourth Street,” announced The Times.

Before the newlyweds would move in, however, Lilienthal would do what nearly every other homeowner on the block had already done—remodel his new house.  He commissioned architect S. Edson Gage to strip off the brownstone and update the residence into a modern neo-Georgian dwelling.

The style was currently quite fashionable among the moneyed set in New York and, with its dignified lines and lack of ostentatious ornament, created an appropriate home for the doctor.  Gage produced a handsome Colonial-inspired house that restrained itself among its more showy neighbors.

The house as it appeared when Dr. Lilienthal purchased it.  Frank Froment's pushy remodel is to the left.

The newlyweds placed evergreens on the balcony of their newly-remodeled home.  Someone forgot to close the hatch to the basement entrance before the photograph was taken.   both photographs 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=24UAYWWLG0_J&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915&PN=1#/SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWWLG0_J&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915&PN=1

A nearly-severe limestone base supported three stories of red brick trimmed with paneled limestone lintels.  A charming third floor balcony relieved the flat façade.  The fifth floor was disguised by a stone balustrade above the cornice.

As World War I broke out, Lilienthal joined the Medical Reserve Corps of the U.S. Army as First Lieutenant.  It is possibly his war duties that prompted the Lilienthals to lease the house furnished to Miss Mary Olcott of Ridgefield, Connecticut in October of 1917.

Then The Sun reported on May 30 the following year that “Mrs. Howard Lillienthal has sold the five story American basement residence…to a buyer for occupancy.”  The house became home to Dr. Arthur Stein.

Stein had graduated from the University of Strassburg in 1901.  By now he was Associate Gynecologist at Lenox Hill and Harlem Hospitals.  Like Lilienthal, he also worked at the Hospital for Deformities and Joint Diseases.  Stein and his wife, Alice, would remain in the house until June 1929, when they sold it to yet another physician, heart specialist Dr. Henry James.

James was well-regarded and had established himself as the physician of some of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens.  When Chauncey M. Depew, Jr., son of the well-known senator, died of pneumonia on January 25, 1931, it was Dr. James who was attending him.

1941 was a year of upheaval in the household.  On February 19, 1941 Henry James’ wife, the former Rosalie O’Brien, died in Doctor’s Hospital.   Then, just over two weeks later with World War II raging in Europe, their son, 23-year old Morgan James was inducted in the Army.

The doctor bounced back from his grief, however, and less than a year after his wife’s death he married Lady Thornton on February 8, 1942.  The wealthy bride was the widow of the chairman and president of the Canadian National Railways.

The last of the doctor’s sons, Philip Ranson James would leave the house in 1950.  Educated at Columbia, his engagement was announced in February of that year.  Somewhat ironically, his bride-to-be was Catherine O’Brien, who shared the same maiden name as his mother.  The couple was married in Southampton on September 10.

Seven years later Dr. Henry James died in the house of pneumonia at the age of 76 on July 14, 1957.  At the time of his death he had been Senior Attending Physician at Bellevue for 27 years.

The house was sold the following year in March to the Jewish Braille Institute of America as its headquarters.  The institution maintained a free circulating library of more than 15,000 braille volumes and a collection of talking books.  The house was completely renovated as offices, including the installation of an elevator.

The 21^st century saw many of the Upper East Side’s surviving mansions reconverted to private residences.  In 2005 No. 48 was restored as a private residence and in 2009 it became home to Hal Prince and his wife, Judith.  The theatrical producer and director paid $12.5 million for the property and set to work creating what one real estate columnist called “highly personalized décor.”

No trace of the neo-Georgian interiors remained after the renovation.  photo http://ny.curbed.com/tags/48-east-74th-street

The back wall of the neo-Georgian structure was replaced with glass.  There was now a four-story atrium, and in the basement a gym and staff suite.  On October 25, 2013 The New York Timesreported that the “robustly decorated” town house had sold for $19.1 million.

While not a nail head survives of S. Gages 1911 interiors; the exterior has been meticulously maintained.  And perhaps to Moses and Hannah Ehrenreich’s posthumous satisfaction, Frank Froment’s offensive house next door has been replaced by an apartment building.

non-credited photographs taken by the author