The Lost Proctor's Theatre -- Nos. 139-145 W. 23rd Street

photograph by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYW6WGQ3&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

In 1883 Manhattan’s entertainment district ran along West 23^rdStreet.  The thoroughfare was dotted with music halls and theaters between Fifth and Eighth Avenues.  Some were quite grand like the white marble Grand Opera House on the northwest corner of Eighth Avenue and Booth’s Shakespearean Theatre at the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue; others were noisier and robust like Koster & Bial’s Music Hall.  But when Salmi Morse tried to get into the act, he was met with stern opposition.

Morse purchased “the Armory,” an old structure previous used a “Dr. Sause’s church, on the north side of 23^rd Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, and set to work converting it to a theater.  His intention—a quite lofty one in his mind—was to stage a Passion Play here.  As rehearsals and $70,000 renovations continued, he applied for a license for run his theater.

Mayor William Russell Grace was the founder of W. R. Grace & Company and the city’s first Roman Catholic mayor.  He denied Morse’s application because, according to The New York Times, he “thought the play sacrilegious.”  Witnesses at a subsequent hearing were confused—testifying that rehearsals proved that the play was simply a reenactment of the life of Christ.  (It is quite possible that the religious mayor was offended by a church building being used as a place of entertainment; or possibly it had something to do with Samuel Morse’s real name being Solomon Moses.)

When Grace’s term ran out Morse reapplied to the new mayor, Franklin Edson, who also denied the license on the grounds that the play was sacrilegious.  The producer pressed on, continuing rehearsals in February 1883 in his Temple Theatre.  When police arrived to make sure he was not operating without a license, an offended Morse replied “My object is too dignified for me to try to bring out the Passion surreptitiously or to evade the law.”

Morse tried another tactic.  He planned a full dress rehearsal and issued invitations to prominent citizens.  The publicity of the several hearings regarding the supposedly irreverent play worked to Morse’s advantage.  According to newspapers, no fewer than 2,000 people crowded into the Temple Theatre.

“Gentlemen whose clothes and air were clerical mingled in the throng; the Hebraic element was noticeable, and there were many actors and actresses whose successes, such as they were, were made years and years ago.  Sealskins and diamonds were as plentiful as at a Wallack or Union-Square matinee, and everybody seemed to expect an evening of uninterrupted pleasure,” reported The New York Times.

An uninterrupted evening was not to be. The audience was thoroughly enjoying the lavish production when suddenly the producer’s attorney stepped in front of the footlights.  “He emphatically expressed his regret that in the midst of beautiful concerted sacred music Mr. Morse had been arrested by the Police.  A storm of hisses filled the house, and cries of ‘Shame! Shame!‘ were heard in the balcony and orchestra.”

Ironically, Morse received his license within a few months—public outcry no doubt having much to do with the decision—then died under suspicious circumstances (he drowned in a bathtub) a year later. 

The Temple Theatre was purchased by the Gospel Tabernacle and reopened as the Twenty-third-Street Tabernacle.  While it was supposedly a house of worship, the first thing the Tabernacle did was stage “Othello.”  On April 10, 1884 The Times reviewed the play, approving black actors on stage rather than whites in black face.  Heretofore there “were the minstrels and the ham-fat men, to be sure, but no self-respecting colored man would give countenance to such low-down imitations of white trash foolishness.  It has long been felt that no person in the upper circles of colored society could as much as think of a race theatre until one of Shakespeare’s best tragedies had been placed upon the boards by colored actors and actresses of undoubted ability.”

The Tabernacle Theatre did not survive and on June 21, 1888The Times reported that “The walls of the old church in Twenty-third-street just west of Sixth-avenue, which afterward became Salmi Morse’s theatre when the unfortunate manager undertook to produce the Passion Play, have been leveled to the ground, and work on the new theatre which is to rise on the site is being rapidly pushed.”

Impresario Frederick Francis Proctor built an impressive structure in the latest architectural rage—Flemish Revival.  The brick-clad theater, which quaintly recalled Manhattan’s Dutch heritage, featured a central and flanking stepped gables, picturesque capped dormers and a wide exterior balcony.  Large brass letters were embedded into the sidewalk spelling out PROCTOR’S.

Inside patrons were dazzled by electric lighting (although, as was customary, gas fixtures were available should the often-unreliable electricity fail).  The 1,550-seat auditorium featured gilded railings, velvet draperies and a gray-blue ceiling above red-toned walls.

While Proctor, at least initially, offered legitimate theater; he sought out innovative means to lure audiences.  On December 2, 1890 The Times wrote a critique of the afternoon performance the day before—during which bird-imitator Mable Stephenson shared the program with a one-act play “Barbara” and an exhibition of the new-fangled phonograph.

The newspaper (while noting the “not very numerous audience”) thought Mable “a remarkable mimic;” panned “Barbara” as “an early work and bears the impress of juvenility, and is based on a mock sentimental idea such as might occur to a very young person who had read too many books of fiction and not seen much of the world;” and had mixed thoughts about the phonograph.

“The exhibition was startling, but not pleasing.  The phonograph emphasizes defects and blemishes as the camera used to before photographers became artists.  A cornet is distressing enough at any time.  When its notes are treasured up on the phonograph cylinder and ground out by electricity the result is almost maddening.”

That same year David Belasco and Henry DeMille produced Men and Women here, a drama that dealt with the political and business life in America.  Later DeMille staged his last play, The Lost Paradise, at Proctor’s before his sudden death.

In 1892 Proctor switched from legitimate plays to vaudeville, becoming the first such venue in New York.  He offered continuous performances from noon to midnight six days a week.  For the price of admission a patron could stay all day and New Yorkers became familiar with his marketing slogan “After Breakfast Go to Proctor’s, After Proctor’s Go to Bed.”

In November that year Annie Eva Fay took the stage to conduct a séance before an audience of 1,500.   Although Fay was internationally famous as a medium and mentalist, The Times was not impressed.  “There was nothing in the performance given by Miss Fay last evening that was remarkable,” it said and added “It was the usual old cabinet performance, in which a lot of tambourines, banjos, guitars, and bells played the principal roles.”

The newspaper, as it would turn out years later, was correct.  Annie Fay was later exposed as a fraud.

Proctor managed to draw a wide variety of talent to the Twenty-third Street Theatre.  During the 1890s Ruth St. Denis landed an engagement here, dancing twice a day.  Her artistic talent, however, was in stark contrast to the sometimes-plebian vaudeville acts.  When the wealthy Mrs. Orlando Rouland saw St. Denis’s “hindoo” dance drama one afternoon, she was taken with the dancer; but appalled at the monkey act that followed.  She offered to sponsor St. Denis in a “proper uptown theatre;” the dancer’s first real break.

A newspaper at the time complained about the theater’s admission prices.  “At Proctor’s one has to pay fifteen cents to roost ‘among the gods,’ and the prices range as high as $1 for ‘a seat in a box.’”  But Proctor countered explaining it was “a first-class place of amusement at reasonable prices, that will combine the comforts and privileges of a ladies’ club with the entertainment of a select and carefully-managed theatre, where comic opera, the cream of the vaudeville stage, with musical sketches and crisp, bright comedy will be presented.”

Proctor was proud of his innovative “ladies’ club.”  Women of the 1890s were necessarily careful about their reputations and the theater was a perfect place to lose them.  On January 10, 1893 The Times noted that “The ‘ladies’ club’ idea is one that the management wants particularly to emphasize.  According to the announcement the ‘features include cozy parlors, dressing and toilet rooms, decorated and furnished artistically and luxuriously, where ladies may enjoy the same degree of privacy and comfort that they would if at home.’  This ‘ladies’ club’ idea is rather indistinct at present, but may develop.  The management reserves the right to exclude objectionable characters.”

A sign above the entrance announces "Moving Pictures" in 1895 -- King's Photographic Views of New York City, 1895 (copyright expired)

Proctor kept his theaters current with changes in public taste and technology.  By 1895 he was showing "moving pictures" and in 1899 he formed a relationship with filmmaker William Paley, screening his first kalatechnoscope projected motion picture at Proctor’s on October 9, 1899.

By the turn of the century F. F. Proctor had opened his second vaudeville venue, the Pleasure Palace on East 58^th Street.  He added a third, the former Fifth Avenue Theatre, in 1900.  Somewhat confusingly, he would call all three “Proctor’s Theatre.”

Along with the vaudeville acts were plays staged by the Proctor Stock Company.  In May 1901 the group produced the two act musical comedy Cinderella at School; preceded and followed by “high-class varieties and novelties” including Lillie Western, “the musical artiste;” comediennes the Doherty Sisters; vocalist Kathryn Pearl; and Tegge and Daniels, “Dutch comedy.”

Variety acts included the Cycle Whirl in 1901 -- photograph by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYW6WGQ3&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

Buster Keaton appeared here with his family, The Three Keatons; and in 1903 the former boxer James J. Corbett took the stage in a one-man show telling audiences “some of the funny things that happen to a champion pugilist.”  That year audiences would be amused by the low-brow humor of the comic acts like Mooney and Holbein, and Barton and Wakefield.

“Did you ever hear the peacock story?”

“No. What is it?”

“Oh, it’s a beautiful tale.”

One quick joke would be followed rapid-fire by another.

“Did you know my sister who worked in the rubber factory?”

“Yes, What of her?”

“Well, she got bounced.”

Audiences were treated to more upscale humor when Will Rogers signed on on July 1, 1905 at $150 per week for two performances a day.  Sharing the bill was comedienne-singer Edna Wallace Hopper (who got top billing over Rogers), actor Charles Grapewin, the Elinore Sisters, To-To The Mysterious Musician, The Esmeralda Sisters and the Four Flower Girls among others.

Roger’s salary was nothing when compared to the amount Proctor was willing to pay for big names that would attract his audiences.  On March 17, 1905—when the average American worker was earning between $200 and $400 per year--he offered the famous actor Joseph Jefferson $5,000 a week for twelve weeks, “twenty-five minutes twice a day for six days a week.”  That would translate into about $95,000 a week in today’s dollars.

Jefferson turned down Proctor; but a few months later the famous Lillian Russell accepted.  “Many managers have tried to get Lillian Russell to go into vaudeville,” reported The New York Times on August 1, 1905, “and now F. F. Proctor has succeeded.  She has consented to appear in the Proctor theatres at a weekly salary which is said to be somewhere near the $4,000-mark.”

The theater is plastered with signs announcing the appearance of the great Lillian Russell in 1905 -- photograph by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYW6WGQ3&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

The star started her tour at the 23^rd Street theater in October, staying for several weeks.  The Times said “She will sing new songs and some of the old ones familiar to the vaudeville audiences of years gone by  She is going to get the handsomest gowns, the press agent says, that were ever seen on the stage.”

The days of live shows at Proctor’s Twenty-third Street Theatre were quickly drawing to a close.  Motion pictures were the new rage and on December 6, 1907 Moving Picture World announced that the theater would become a motion picture theater exclusively.  “Admittance will be five cents and ten cents.”  The magazine noted “With the change in style of amusement, the theater’s name will also be changed.  Thenceforth it will be the Bijou Dream.”

In the spring of 1929 F. F. Proctor retired.  On May 14 the Radio-Keith Orpheum Corporation purchased his four New York City theaters, including the 23^rd Street venue.  RKO screened motion pictures in the Flemish Revival building for only about seven years.  On March 7, 1937 a devastating fire swept through the theater.

RKO moved its theater into the former Grand Opera House on Eighth Avenue.  Before long only the brass letters in the sidewalk announcing PROCTOR’S would remind passersby of the long-gone 23^rd Street entertainment district.  Those, two, disappeared in the 1970s.

When the unexciting brick building was constructed in the second half of the 20th century the brass letters PROCTOR'S inlaid into the sidewalk were lost.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The Orchid -- No. 170 West 78th Street

In 1890 not only was the Upper West Side developing as sewers were laid and mass transit extended to the area; but apartment living was becoming more widely acceptable.  On the east side of Central Park apartment buildings would be known by their addresses; on the west side they more often took names, like The Dakota, The Wyoming and The Chatsworth.

Construction began that year on one more:  The Orchid.  Owner-developer Lorton Horton was busy in the area, having erected a multi-use structure containing a store, apartments and stables two years earlier at No. 371 Amsterdam Avenue.  He chose architect Frank A. Rooke for the project.

Now Horton sought the architect’s talents again.  He owned the adjoining property encompassing Nos. 373 and 375 Amsterdam Avenue and rounding the corner to No. 170 West 78^thStreet.  For this site Higgs & Rooke would produce a massive Romanesque Revival block of tan brick, stone and pressed metal.  Stores lined the street level along Amsterdam Avenue and a grand entrance for the “French flats” faced 78^th Street.

New York architects, especially on the Upper West Side, were taking note of the city’s Dutch roots at the time.  Flemish Revival churches, schools and houses cropped up as quaint reminders of Manhattan’s beginnings.  Higgs & Rooke gave their nod to the movement with centered Dutch stepped gables on both elevations. 

A monumental arch sitting on clustered columns provided the 78th street entrance.  Exquisite carvings filled the spandrels and the address was handsomely carved into the stone.

The pressed metal bay windows, too, strayed from the Romanesque with swags and other floral motifs and unusual hefty beaded engaged columns at the third floor.  But the residential entranceway within the rough-cut stone base, there was purely medieval.  The deep-set, sturdy stone arch sat on clustered columns.  Exquisite snarled carving filled the spandrels and the street number was beautifully incised into the keystone.

Beaded, thin columns, festoons and ribbons made up the pressed metal decorations.

The Orchid filled with respectable middle and upper-middle class families, like the widowed Mrs. George Wesley Spencer and her daughter, Evelyn Grace; Edwin H. Hammer who was the New York agent for Keasbey & Mattison, makers of Bromo-Caffeine; and Dr. Robert W. Eastman; all of whom were among the initial residents.

On October 27, 1891 Mrs. Spencer’s apartment was the scene of Evelyn’s wedding reception.  Earlier that day she had married William Henry Blaine, a relative of the Secretary of State, James G. Blaine.  The Sun noted that “Miss Spencer wore at her throat a blazing diamond pendant, a present from the bridegroom.”

As privileged children of society neared their teen years they would need to learn to dance.  Debutante balls and cotillions were in their futures; and every well-heeled member of society would be expected to perform adequately at society’s many dinner dances each season.  On November 26, 1893 The New York Times mentioned “As the season lengthens the dancing classes increase in number, much to the satisfaction of the juvenile members of society.”  The newspaper noted that “Mills Lillian Barry of 170 West Seventy-eighth Street has arranged to give a series of dances in Hodgson’s Assembly Rooms” on Fifth Avenue to groom youngsters in dancing.

Dutch gables coexist with Romanesque elements in the hefty design.

Along with Dr. Eastman, several other physicians made The Orchid their home, such as Dr. Charles Good, and Dr. Philip R. Moale who was in the building by 1895. 

Dr. Good was still in the building at the turn of the century and after midnight on May 20, 1900 he received a frantic knock on his door.  Mrs. Ellen Wessels lived nearby at No. 2183 Broadway and pleaded for his help.  Her brother-in-law, Dr. Charles Smith Collins, who also lived at the Broadway address, was in trouble.

The Times explained “Dr. Collins had been ill for several weeks and had been in the habit of taking drugs to ease his pain and induce sleep.”  Around 10:30 that evening he had taken “a quantity of chloral.”  Mrs. Collins awoke to find her husband struggling to breathe and in distress.  The New-York Tribune reported “Dr. Good made every effort to counteract the effect of the poison, but failed to do so, and Dr. Collins died at 3:20 o’clock.”

Another doctor, named Swift, lived in The Orchid in 1903.  It was in his apartment on Friday November 27 that year that The Pathological Society held its meeting, according to The National Journal of Homoeopathic Medicine.

The attraction of the building to physicians was pointed out in its advertisements.  Most apartments contained seven rooms “all light” and rented in 1905 from $720 to $840 a year—approximately $1500 to $1800 a month in today’s dollars.  But the first floor apartments were larger, having two additional rooms.  An advertisement in The Sun on September 22, 1905 noted that these apartments were “extra large, suitable for dentist or doctor; rent $1,000.”

Among the tenants not involved in the medical field was stock broker Thomas M. Daly whose offices were at No. 32 Pine Street.  In 1903 the couple engaged the services of two servant girls, Annie Williams and her sister Frances.  The girls worked for a while, then gave their notice.  Shortly after they left, Mrs. Daly noticed things missing—specifically $2,000 worth of jewelry.

She notified police and detectives and Inspector McClusky began an investigation.  Before long he discovered that other women in the neighborhood had been robbed.  Based on the description of the two sisters “it was easy to trace the women to their home,” said The New York Times on December 27.

The police raided the Williams girls’ apartment at No. 201 East 97^th Street.  “Two trunks full of silverware, bric-a-brac, and costly furs, worth, in all, according to the police, over $10,000, were taken from the rooms occupied by the prisoners and sent to Police headquarters to await identification.”

Around the same time Dr. Daniel T. Millspaugh moved in.  He would stay in The Orchid into the 1920s.  The doctor ran his medical practice from here and operated the Riverlawn Sanitarium in Paterson, New Jersey.  Millspaugh’s advertisements for the facility promised “care and treatment of all Forms of Nervous and mild Mental Cases.  Alcoholic and Drug Addiction—selected Cases Only.”  Riverlawn offered “All Approved Forms of Treatment Used.  Baths, Massage, Electricity.”

The Orchid continued to attract white-collar occupants as World War I approached.  G. W. Sterling was Freight Traffic Manager of Pier 19 on the North River; Albert J. McCullagh was an “investigator,” and Thomas F. Dooley was a civil servant, earning $1,800 a year as an “attendant” in Supreme Court, 1^st District.  (Dooley’s salary in 1918 would equate to about $26,000 today.)

Although they were not considered wealthy, the residents were well-off enough that, like the Dalys, most had domestic help.  Carrie Strauss was working as a servant in one of the apartments in 1918 when, it appears, the family was preparing to leave for the summer.  She placed an advertisement in Gleanings in Bee Culture in April that year seeking “a position for the summer with a bee-keeper by a farmer’s daughter.”

Scandal visited  The Orchid in 1921 when Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Macgowan sued her husband, Claude, for failing to pay her $25 a week alimony.  Claude H. Macgowan had been manager of the Universal Film Manufacturing Company.  Their troubles started when he began seeing Elizabeth Stevens.

Mary Macgowan told Justice Delehanty on April 21, 1921 that her husband left her “more than two years ago, and was at one time living with Elizabeth Stevens” at No. 170 West 78^thStreet.  “A boy, David, was with the couple, Mrs. Macgowan,” reported The Times.  “Mrs. Macgowan says her husband lived at that address until Dec. 23, last.”

As if Claude Macgowan’s cohabitating with Elizabeth Stevens was not shocking enough, he kidnapped his children and brought them to The Orchid.  “Mrs. Macgowan further alleges that her husband spirited her two children, Claudia and Ursala, from a convent on Staten Island and took them to the apartment occupied by the other woman.”

Despite Macgowan’s affair with “the other woman,” residents of The Orchid were mostly highly respectable.  In 1922 Margaret Baker Morison, who was a 1907 graduate of Bryn Mawr College, was teaching English at Miss Chapin’s School.  That same year resident Mary G. Earl was working as a psychologist with the Department of Hygiene.

In 1968 a renovation resulted in two apartments on the first floor and three each on the upper stories.  The building, which had long ago lost its charismatic name, appeared in the 1977 film The Goodbye Girl.  Richard Dryfuss, as Elliot, and Marsha Mason, playing the part of Paula, shared an apartment here in the Neil Simon hit.

Higgs & Rooke’s eccentric structure retains most of its architectural charm.  Garish store fronts replace the originals on the avenue and the façade is inexcusably grimy and the metal elements rusting.  Yet it survives as a wonderful relic of a time when the West Side was flexing its muscle as Manhattan’s newest neighborhood.

photographs by the author

The Kleeberg Mansion -- No. 3 Riverside Drive

In 1919, two decades after the fact, The Northeastern Reporter explained the rise of a string of lavish mansions at the foot of Riverside Drive, all designed separately by a single architect.

“In 1896 one John S. Sutphen was the owner of the entire block between Seventy-Second and Seventy-Third streets fronting on Riverside Drive.  He formed a general plan to improve and develop the land, and filed in the office of the register a map dividing it into lots.”  The first sale, according to the Reporter was in June, 1896, including a plot “to one Kleeberg.”

Philip Kleeberg’s deed included restrictions similar to the others.  Kleeberg, “his heirs and assigns, shall, within two years from the date hereof, cause to be erected and fully completed upon said lot, a first-class building, adapted for and which shall be used only as a private residence for one family, and which shall conform to the plans made of being made by C. P. H. Gilbert, architect.”

At the time developers intended that Riverside Drive would rival or surpass Fifth Avenue with palatial dwellings.  Its superb views from above the Hudson River and the manicured Riverside Park were its answer to Fifth Avenue’s Central Park.  Sutphen may have been friendly with the mansion architect Gilbert; or perhaps he chose him to do the work simply because he knew and trusted his well-earned reputation.

Philip Kleeberg and his wife, Maria, wasted little time in setting the gears in motion.  Within four months, on October 3, 1896, The American Architect and Building News announced Kleeberg’s plans to build a “four-story brick dwelling to cost $55,000, on Riverside Drive, near 73d St.”  Including the price of the land, $145,000 according to The New York Times, the outlay would be more in the neighborhood of $5 million today.

The Kleebergs were relatively young and the aggressive businessman’s fortune came from a variety of enterprises.  Originally involved in the wholesale lace business, he was by now also President of the Frog Mountain Ore Company, Vice-President of the Colonial Oil Company, and held directorships in the New York Petroleum Company, the William Radam Microbe Killer Company, the Alabama and Georgia Iron Company, and the Empire Steel and Iron Company.  Years later he would invent a calculator and in 1916 become President of the National Calculator Company.

Construction of No. 3 Riverside Drive took two years and as it neared completion, The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide gave a hint at the high-end details when it reported that the Hernsheim Architectural Iron Works was at work on a “bronze vestibule gate for the handsome dwelling No. 3 Riverside Drive, Chas. P. H. Gilbert, architect.”  Construction was completed in 1898 and the Kleebergs, who had lived at No. 56 East 73^rd Street, now defected in a nearly straight line across the park. 

Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert had produced a sumptuous confection in a frothy style so nebulous as to put architectural historians at odds.  The AIA Guide to New York City calls it “freely interpreted Dutch Renaissance;” while the Landmarks Preservation Commission argues it is “French Renaissance Revival.”  Late 19^thcentury American architects were not wont to concern themselves with historical purity; and elements of both styles can be detected in Gilbert’s design.

American Architect and Architecture (copyright expired)

The architect set the entrance to the side, allowing for a spacious parlor looking onto the park.  The mansion’s bow-fronted façade stopped at three floors, allowing Gilbert to provide a “terrace” at the fourth floor accessed by a long square-columned gallery to the side.  The elaborate stone gables, ornamented with spiky finials and florid s-shaped brackets, culminated in deeply-carved shells.  In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek gesture, Gilbert perched a stone cherub holding a bowl of fruit at the pinnacle.

High above it all a stone cherub (one has been lost) surveys Riverside Drive.  The "terrace" would be the scene of tragedy.

The Kleebergs’s marriage may have been a bit shaky.  The title to the new mansion was put in Maria’s name, as was expected.  And the family, including three sons, moved in and outside appearances were maintained.  However Philip reportedly acquired a second home on the Upper West Side for his own use. 

Gradually the row of houses around No. 3 was constructed.  By September 7, 1901 the Record & Guide reported “three lots of the plot have been sold, one to Philip Kleeberg, one to Colonel W.L. Trenholm, and one to Mrs. Prentiss, all of which have been improved.”

For years nothing other than the expected entertainments and social functions at No. 3 was the norm.  Then, six years later after moving in, a heart wrenching tragedy would occur.  The Kleebergs participated in the routines of wealthy New Yorkers.  Philip and Maria spent the first two months of the summer of 1903 in Europe and upon their return she left for “the country.”  Society women at the time would summer in resorts or estates like Newport and Bar Harbor, while their working husbands would join them on the weekends.

On August 18 the 48-year old socialite returned to New York, a bit early in the season.  Six days later she hosted a dinner party “and a number of Mr. and Mrs. Kleeberg’s relative and friends were present,” said The Sun on August 24.  Following dinner the party took a drive along Riverside Park, then returned to the terrace of the mansion where they sat and chatted.

At one point Maria Kleeberg excused herself, saying she was going to the bathroom.  When she did not return, her sister became concerned and followed.  The Sun reported “She opened the door just as Mrs. Kleeberg put a bottle to her lips.  Mrs. Sands knocked the bottle, which was filled with carbolic acid, to the floor.”

In doing so, Maria’s sister was badly burned on the hands.  She rushed downstairs and instructed the servants to find a doctor.  Three doctors were sent for, but none of them was at home.

Notoriety was one thing the wealthy desperately attempted to avoid; so it was only through desperation that an ambulance was called for from Roosevelt Hospital.  It caused precisely the attention the family was attempting to avoid.

“The arrival of the ambulance caused great excitement in the neighborhood.  One of the rumors which were circulated had it that some one had been murdered in the Kleeberg house.  At one time there were at least 300 persons in front of the house,” said The Sun.

By the time the ambulance had arrived, Maria Kleeberg was dead.  The police, attracted by the ambulance call and the crowd, attempted to investigate.  In an attempt to avoid even worse publicity and scandal, the doors were barred against the police.  No information was given out until Detective Culhane refused to allow the body to be removed until he was let in.

Forced to face reporters, Philip Kleeberg insisted there was no reason why his wife should have committed suicide.  His only explanation was that she may have had “a fit of the blues.”

Kleeberg soon transferred the title to his son, 21-year old Gordon S. P. Kleeberg.  The young homeowner was possibly a difficult man to work for.  On February 23, 1906 he placed an ad in the New-York Tribune seeking a coachman.  “Good, careful driver; competent; painstaking.”  He asked for the “best written and personal references.”  Later that year another advertisement was placed, for the same position.  Then on September 21, 1906 yet another advertisement appeared.  “Coachman—Thorough horseman; care of horses, carriages, and harness; strictly sober, honest, willing and obliging.”  It would seem that young Kleeberg had unusually bad luck in finding a coachman; or he was simply too difficult to work for.

In the meantime the home life of William Guggenheim, known as “The Smelting King,” had become rocky.  Born into the fabulously wealthy mining family, his domestic differences with his wife, Aimee, became such that the couple separated.  In 1908 he purchased No. 3 Riverside Drive.  But he barely had time to unpack his bags.

On May 3, 1910 the New-York Tribune reported that Guggenheim had sold the house to “a Mr. Hopkins, who will occupy it.”  The development of the block was reflected in the asking price--$200,000, or about $4.75 million today.  The Tribune said that a negotiated price of $165,000 was said to be the actual sale price.  In commenting on the sale, the newspaper said “The house is one of the finest in the lower part of the drive.”

It was not uncommon in the first decades of the 20^thcentury for wealthy purchasers of real estate to play a cat-and-mouse game with the press regarding their identities.  A little over a month later, on June 14, the New-York Tribune said “The new owner is said to be a woman, who by the purchase obtains control of half the block.”

Finally, on July 16, 1910, the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide ended the speculation, naming Mrs. Angie M. Booth as the buyer.  “Mrs. Booth is the owner of the adjoining property on the north, including the southeast corner of 73d st.”

Angie Booth was the wife of Henry P. Booth, and in a surprising turn of events, she resold the property prior to 1915—to William Guggenheim.  Angie Booth would live to regret it.  Rather than move back into the mansion, Guggenheim initially ran it as a boarding house; then rented it to Dr. William H. Wellington Knipe at $4,000 a year for the first year, and $5,000 a year for the next four years.  It was a hefty rental price; but Knipe had income-producing plans for the property.

Dr. Knipe was “one of the first physicians in New York to become interested in twilight sleep,” said The Sun on January 22, 1916.  “Twilight sleep” was a procedure used on women going into labor that was intended to reduce the pain of childbirth.  The Guggenheim mansion became Dr. Knipe’s “twilight sleep sanitarium.”

Angie Booth, who lived next door to the house, and Mary T.Sutphen whose own mansion was at the corner of Riverside Drive and 72^ndStreet, were outraged.  They filed suit to close down the sanitarium.

Recalling the restrictions in the original Kleeberg deed, their lawyer explained “The plaintiffs contend that the block is restricted to residential purposes and barred from trade and business.”  His female clients were a bit more pointed, calling the sanitarium “a menace to the peace and quiet of the neighboring landowners,” and “obnoxious and offensive.”

The Sun said that Knipe felt his neighbors were “needlessly alarmed” and “said he had talked with many of his neighbors and they told him they preferred the proposed sanitarium to the ‘exclusive’ boarding house formerly conducted here.”  One of these was Lydia Prentiss.

The wealthy woman, who lived at No. 1 Riverside Drive, was placed in an uncomfortable position when her neighbors knocked on her door, asking her to join them as a plaintiff.  The stalwart socialite held her ground, however, telling the press she “didn’t think women should lend themselves to opposing the development of any treatment that would alleviate or diminish the pains of childbirth.”  It most likely put an end to Lydia Prentiss’s invitations to tea at either the Sutphen or Booth residences.

Although the courts ruled in Dr. Knipe’s favor; things returned to normal on lower Riverside Drive.  Eventually William Guggenheim moved back in and used the mansion as his private dwelling, restoring peace among the neighbors.  Highly educated and erudite, he was the author of several publications, many of them patriotic.  Among them were Our Republic Triumphant; Peace by Victory at Last, but with a Warning; A Greater America; and What Price Government.  His ardent patriotism was evidenced in 1940 when Italy declared war against Great Britain and France.  In 1920 he had been decorated with the Commendatore dell’ Ordine della Corona d’Italia by the Italian Government.  Now he renounced and returned the title, saying that the declaration of war came as “a profound shock.”

He remained in the Riverside Drive mansion until his death at the age of 72 on June 27, 1941.  The house became the property of the Seamen’s Bank for Savings, which leased it to General Boleslaw Wieniawa-D’Lugoszewski and his wife and daughter.  The Polish Ambassador to Italy at the outbreak of war in 1939, he had also been the aide to Marshal Pilsudski, dictator of Poland.

The 60-year old diplomat was subject to what the Polish Consul General referred to as “dizzy spells.”  On the evening of July 1, 1942, the general received word that he had been appointed as Envoy to Cuba.  Shortly afterward, wearing his pajamas and bedroom slippers, he went to the roof “to get a little fresh air,” according to Sylvyn Strakacz, the Police Consul General.  Moments later he fell to his death.

Despite the Consul’s assertions that the fall was the result of recurrent dizziness; The New York Times said “Police of the West Sixty-eighth Street Station, who helped remove the general to the hospital were uncertain whether the death was an accident or suicide.”

Like William Guggenheim, Gordon Kleeberg could not stay away from No. 3 Riverside Drive.  On New Year’s Day, 1944 The New York Times reported “One of the finest town houses on the West Side figured in the news yesterday when Lieut. Col. Gordon S. P. Kleeberg purchased the building at 3 Riverside Drive which was erected by his father in 1896.”

Although the newspaper got the architect’s name wrong, citing Cass Gilbert rather than C. P. H. Gilbert; it correctly described the interiors.  “Among its features still in a good state of preservation are a marble stairway, solid cherrywood floors and bronze grill entrance doors.”  The article said “Colonel Kleeberg intends to remodel the building into small apartments after the war and occupy the terrace suite.”

As promised, in 1951 the 37-foot wide mansion was divided into two apartments per floor.  Happily, much of C. P. H. Gilbert’s interior detailing was preserved.  In 1995 it was purchased by real estate developer Regina Kislin for $10 million.  She and her husband, photographer Anatoly Siyagine, embarked on a long restoration project to bring the house back to a private home.

Much of the interior detailing survives.  http://streeteasy.com/building/philip-and-maria-kleeberg-house

Included in the renovation were modern touches that Maria Kleeberg would have found shocking—an indoor pool, sauna and gym, for instance.  Seventeen years later she put the 18-room house on the market for $40 million.  Real estate listings noted “six bedrooms, eight and a half bathrooms, a two-room staff suite, four terraces, and an elevator.”  When no buyers appeared, Kislin reduced the price to $30 million in September 2014.  

The magnificent Gilbert-designed mansion survives as a stunning reminder of the first days of the development of Riverside Drive when developers lured millionaires from the east side of Central Park.

uncredited photographs taken by the author