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.

A Marble Palazzo for a Piano Store -- No. 433 Fifth Avenue



 Although the millionaire Theron Butler had died in his brownstone mansion at 433 Fifth Avenue in 1886, the house was still referred to as the Theron Butler house 24 years later.

By 1910, when the former president – now known popularly as Colonel Roosevelt – returned from his sweeping European tour, the days were numbered for the staid old home. On June 13 the piano manufacturer Hardman, Peck & Co., signed a 21-year lease for the property from the Butler Estate on which to build its new showroom and offices; agreeing to rent ranging from $17,000 to $23,000 a year.

Six days later the Roosevelt family borrowed the mansion from Mrs. Alexander from which to view the massive parade welcoming “Colonel Roosevelt” home. The Roosevelts lunched, surrounded by Butler’s art collection including works by Corot, Millet, Bonheur and Rousseau, then watched the parade pass under the windows.

“Few of the crowd seemed to realize that they had an opportunity of seeing the Roosevelt family at Mrs. Alexander’s house, 433 Fifth Avenue. Yet there, balancing himself on the edge of some board sloping to the sidewalk, was Quentin Roosevelt. In the centre window Mrs. Roosevelt, Mrs. Alexander, and Miss Alexander sat and chatted, while behind them glimpses could be obtained of a tall young man, who was identified as Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.” reported The New York Times.

“Miss Alexander” was Eleanor Butler Alexander, Theron Butler's granddaughter. Before long she would be the wife of young Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.

The next month plans were filed for the Hardman, Peck & Co., building. They called for “a six-story building of brick and stone, fitted with stores and showrooms.” The estimated cost of the structure was $50,000.

Before long the Theron R. Butler mansion was no more.

In its place rose a white marble Italianate palazzo designed by Harry Allan Jacobs. The 1911 Architectural Record glowed “The piano house at 433 Fifth Avenue, by Harry Allan Jacobs is one of the unqualified success of the year in the list of new business buildings.”

Flowers vined from the arcade and a theatrical drapery framed the shop window in 1911 -- photo Architectural Record (copyright expired)

At the second floor, Jacobs placed a triple-arched arcade that gave the façade depth and shadow. By placing the main cornice above the fifth floor, rather than atop the sixth, he downplayed the top floor and visually lowered the building’s height. Bas reliefs of musical instruments flanked the three windows below the cornice. A charming juliette balcony gave dimension at the fourth floor, over which the firm’s name was announced in a long panel.

A lighting fixture was suspended from the center of the arcade and a bas-relief panel over the doorway depicted children playing musical instruments -- photo 1911 Architectural Record (copyright expired)

The Record deemed it “one of the most exquisitely graceful buildings ever dedicated to a commercial use,” and said that of all the Italianate structures on Fifth Avenue this was “the most charming.”

Inside, heavy molded plaster ornamented the arches and ceilings.

Inside the Hardman, Peck pianos were displayed in a setting similar to a Fifth Avenue mansion. A graceful winding staircase curved up the rear wall beneath an arched stained glass window. Grand archways embellished with molded plaster separated show areas.


The 1911 issue of Bricklayer pointed to No. 433 as an example of the "extremely attractive small buildings" being built on 5th Avenue -- photo Bricklayer Magazine (copyright expired)

Hardman pianos rivaled Steinways and the firm enjoyed not only the patronage of the Metropolitan Opera Company and the famed tenor Enrico Caruso, but it was the chosen piano for the White House during the Franklin Delano Roosevelt term of office.

After more than a half-century in their building, Hardman, Peck & Co., moved to their new location at 33 West 57th Street in 1934. The bronze letters on the façade were removed, to be replaced with VIRIBUS UNITIS at some point thereafter. The reason for the Austrian imperial motto to appear on the building (which is loosely translated as “with united forces”) is unclear.

VIRIBUS UNITIS replaced Hardman's name mid-century -- photo by Beyond My Ken

In March 1958 Bill Meyer-Fifth Avenue, Inc. bought the building for a home furnishings retail store and wholesale showrooms.  But by the end of the century, the once-elegant piano showrooms were used as a discount merchandise store.  Hulking air conditioning ducts clung to the ornamented plaster ceilings and inexpensive backpacks were piled on the sill of the stained glass window.

A graceful staircase still winds upwards below a stained glass window.

Although the retail space is now used as an apparel store, the interior is still badly neglected.  Outside, the elegant marble palazzo has changed little.  The fifth floor cornice and balcony have been lost, the Austrian motto has been removed and the graceful arcade has been glassed in to maximize floor space inside.  Yet No. 433 remains an elegant fixture on midtown 5th Avenue.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The 1930 Perera House -- No. 49 E. 80th Street

At first glance the house might seem rather ordinary.  A closer look reveals an Art Deco rarity -- photo by Alice Lum

The Great Depression did not totally put an end to the erection of private mansions in Manhattan; but it certainly slowed things down.   Another factor contributing to the decrease in large home construction was the increasing popularity of “swell” modern apartment houses—free of the bother and cost of maintaining private mansions.  In 1930 only four Manhattan townhouses were built; but one of them would be like no other.  

Born in Venice in 1873, Lionello Perera immigrated to New York at the age of 21.   Two years later, in 1896, the ambitious young man established the private banking firm of Lionello Perera & Co., by taking over the business of his uncle, Salvatore Cantoni.   Cantoni & Co. had been in business since 1862.

Perera became one of the leading Italian bankers in the city.  He married Carolyn Allen and during the first world war, the couple worked tirelessly.  They helped establish the Italian Division of the American Red Cross and Lionello served as chairman of the Italian section of the foreign division of the Liberty Loan drives.

By 1929 his bank had merged with the Bank of America  and earned a seat on the board.  Now nearing retirement, as other Manhattan millionaires were having second thoughts about building new homes, Perera instead made plans.   He demolished the house of the socially-prominent William Adams Brown family at No. 49 East 80^thStreet and commissioned Harry Allan Jacobs to design an up-to-the-minute townhouse.

Despite the Depression, New York was smack in the middle of the Jazz Age, echoed by the geometric lines of the Art Deco style.  The face of Manhattan was being transformed with the sleek buildings of Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, and swanky Park Avenue apartment buildings.  Jacobs turned to the cutting edge style for the Perera house.

Completed in 1930 and perhaps the only Art Deco private residence in Manhattan, Lionello and Carolyn Perera’s house was like no other.  The architect told a reporter for The New York Times that the house reflected “a modernistic spirit in decorations as well as in materials, as representative of this materialistic, artificial and practical age.”

A stylish carved frieze in a sort of sea wave pattern separated the ground and second floors and would be more expected on a Madison Avenue office building.   An Art Deco grill protected the entrance door.  Jacobs relieved the otherwise severe rough-brick façade with creative brickwork—a band of sawtooth bricks sandwiched between terra cotta, and a zig-zagged cornice created entirely of brick.

photo by Alice Lum

Jacobs designed the interior appointments as well.  Lighting sconces and chandeliers took the forms of shells, geometric shapes and scrolls.   Stark black and white marble floors were laid in a checkerboard pattern.

The Pereras had five children, but already they were preparing to move on.  A year after their moving in, son Dr. Charles Allen Perera married Ruth Hoopes Brinton; and in 1933 the entire city took notice when a double wedding took place in the house.

On October 14 Lionello Jr. married Dorothy Fern Bittel, and daughter Nina married Charles Wood Collier. The brides wore near-matching gowns in the widely-publicized ceremony.   The Pereras hosted a wedding breakfast in the house immediately afterward.

Lionello Perera had retired in 1932 and he and Carolyn threw themselves into their charity and social works.   Mayor Fiorello La Guardia appointed Lionello to the Child Welfare Board of New York, and he became vice president of the Italian-American Chamber of Commerce.   Carolyn founded the Italian Welfare League in New York, was the head of the Henry Street Settlement Music School and with her husband helped to found the East Harlem Health Center.  Her love of music led her to help found the Toscanini Memorial Archives; and she sat on the board of the Marlboro Music School.

The social entertainments held in the 80^th Street house were most often connected with one of the charities.  Carolyn hosed a reception, for instance, on November 16, 1934 for the benefit of the Italian Welfare League; on April 1, 1940 she held a musicale in the house to provide scholarships for war refugees; and on March 14, 1942 she gave a tea for the Henry Street Settlement.

A month after that tea Lionello Perera was traveling on the Congressional Limited train to Pennsylvania Station when he suffered a heart attack.    The 69-year old millionaire was treated at the station when the train arrived at 8:10 p.m.; but he died thirty minutes later.

By January of the following year Carolyn Perera had returned to her routine of charity entertainments, hosting a meeting a tea for the benefit of the Grenfell Association of America.  Shortly thereafter, however, she moved to No. 51 East 91^stStreet, selling the house to Walter Edward Sachs.

Sachs was the grandson of Marcus Goldman who founded Goldman, Sachs & Company in 1869.   He was initially dissuaded from entering the family business because his two older brothers were already partners.  Walter’s parents set him on the career path of an attorney.  He attended Harvard Law School with what The New York Times called “disappointing results” and in 1905 he went to work at Goldman, Sachs.  Perhaps surprisingly to his family his financial skills, unlike his legal talents were exceptional.  He was credited with playing a leading role in bringing the firm through the stock market crash and making it one of the foremost investment banking houses in the world.  He would later be one of the first financiers to make an extended visit to the Soviet Union.

Walter and Mary Sachs’s second child, Philip Williamson Sachs, was born in 1949 and the couple's life seemed outwardly quite happy.  Like the Pereras, they were highly involved with social and charitable causes and Sachs was a participant in the development of the N.A.A.C.P.

What seemed a contented marriage by 1960 was not and Mary William Sachs traveled to Birmingham, Alabama with her attorney that year where “quickly divorces” were common.  The Gettysburg Times noted that “Alabama is able to give a quick divorce to almost anybody from almost anywhere.”

 A year later she rethought her actions.   The Ellensburg Daily Record reported that Mary Sachs “is contending that her Alabama divorce from Walter Sachs…is invalid because neither she nor her husband was a resident of Alabama.”

Walter apparently did not join in her second thoughts.  Mary lived on in the 80^th Street house and Walter married the former Virginia Carver.

While the marital problems in the Sachs family were coming to a climax, a young girl from Brooklyn was making a name for herself on Broadway.  Barbara John Streisand, who changed her name to Barbra, had appeared on stage and in television but it was not until 1962 that her fame began to skyrocket.  That year she first appeared on Broadway in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, she appeared on The Tonight Show and her first album, The Barbra Streisand Album, won two Grammy Awards in 1963.

By 1969 she was a major star.  But she could not rent an apartment in Manhattan.  She was not only an actress, she was Jewish.

“I have been looking for an apartment in New York City for some three years,” she told The New York Times in December 1969.  “Immediately agents eliminated specific buildings from my consideration, presumably because of my religious background or occupation.”  When she presented a letter on her behalf from Governor Rockefeller to the board of No. 1021 Park Avenue, she was still rejected.  The lease on the 20-room apartment was $240,000.  Mrs. Thomas A. Halleran, the wife of one of the building’s directors said that Streisand was turned down because she was “a flamboyant type.”

Finally the actress and singer gave up.  She purchased the house at No. 49 East 80^thStreet from Mary Sachs for $420,000.  “This house represents a compromise for me,” she told reporters, “I’ve never wanted to live in a house.  But I’m going ahead with it anyway.”

Streisand filled the house with her cranberry glass collection, decorated the room of her 3-year old son Jason, with a vintage ice cream parlor bar, gum machine and penny candy and spool cabinet.  She replaced the windows of his playroom with the leaded glass panels from a Victorian gazebo that she purchased from the set of “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.”

Architectural purists no doubt cringed when The New York Times reported that she intended to paint the walnut paneling in the library red.  “The wood is ugly.  It should be lacquered a rose color.  No, we don’t have to remove the paneling, just paint over it.”

Streisand considered using the entrance door grill as inspiration for the garage door -- photo by Alice Lum

Streisand brought in the aging artist Erte to consider designs for the dining room (he suggested a painted wall to fill a framed recess) and, possibly, the new “service entrance” she planned for the first floor.  Working with architect Ira Goldfarb on that renovation, she had not yet decided whether to repeat the Art Deco grill of the entrance, or have Erte design something.

In the end the garage door was just a garage door.

Barbra Streisand sold the house just a few months later, moving her eclectic collection of Art Nouveau furniture, German Expressionist art, and early 20^th century glass to California.  The house remains a private home; one of the least noticed but most unique in the city.

The J. J. Van Alen House -- No. 15 East 65th St.

photo by Alice Lum

It took spunk to stand up to William Backhouse Astor and even more nerve to defy his wife, the indomitable Caroline Schermerhorn Astor.  But their eldest daughter, Emily, would prove to have both.

Emily became enamored with the wealthy James J. Van Alen and the couple openly courted.  Her father was vehemently against it.  Reportedly he exclaimed “Damned if I want my family mixed in with the Van Alens.”

With a resolve unlikely in a wealthy 23-year old girl of the period, Emily Astor took things into her own hands and married Van Alen in 1876.  Quite expectedly, the relations between the two families were strained.

The only son of General James H. Van Alen, Emily’s new husband loved England as much, or more, than his native land.  He leased a 15^th century manor house, Rushton Hall, in England and the couple spent their time there as well as in New York and Newport.  But their lives together came to a tragic end in 1881 when Emily, just 28 years old, died in the birth of their third child.

James Van Alen turned the rearing and education of his children to tutors and relatives in England.  In 1883 he was taken by an Elizabethan manor house where he briefly stayed, Wakehurst Place in Sussex, and based his new Newport cottage on it.  Construction began on the Newport version of Wakehurst in 1894.  It would not be the only time that Van Alen would copy an English mansion on American soil.

The same year that construction began on Wakehurst, Van Alen's brother-in-law John Jacob Astor was planning an enormous private stable at the corner of 65^thStreet and Madison Avenue.  The carriage house was to accomodate the monumental double mansion he was building for his mother and himself on Fifth Avenue at 65^th Street.  Among the wealthy residents of the area who were displeased was Miss E. T. Chisholm who lived at No. 15 East 65^thStreet.  She ran Miss Chisholm’s School for exceptionally wealthy girls.

Miss Chisholm signed her name to a letter written during an “indignation meeting” in which area millionaires condemned Astor’s “great discourtesy” and accused him of “offending the sentiments of the community and injuring the neighbors and their property.”

By the early years of the 20^th century Van Alen’s children were grown and James Van Alen made a reputation for himself as a womanizer.  Even the Omaha Bee printed stories of his philandering.  On October 1, 1911 it wrote “There have been many widows in Mr. Van Alen’s life.  Of all kinds, there have been a baker’s dozen.  All have been pretty.

“Mr. Van Alen, son-in-law of the late Mrs. Astor and oldest brother-in-law of Colonel Jack Astor, is a most desirable parti.  He has houses and lands, stocks and bonds.  He owns a gray stone mansion in Newport, a palace in New York and a castle in England.  He is so rich—he can wear a monocle and an old Panama hat!  He keeps a flock of sheep to crop his Newport lawns, and he could pave his driveway with diamonds if he wanted to.

“The widows who have interested him have known all this.  It looked good to them.”

Embarrassment for the Astors because of the Van Alen connection did not come solely from James.  On September 24, 1913 daughter May married Griswold A. Thompson, a stock and bond broker and vice president of the Commonwealth Water Company of New York in London.  A month later she would provide one more reason for the Astors to shrink from the Van Alens.

As May Van Alen Thompson arrived in Boston on October 18, customs officials found that she was trying to smuggle in a pearl necklace “valued at thousands of dollars,” according to the New-York Tribune.  May had concealed the necklace in a small chamois bag “concealed in her bosom.”

The search of May’s bosom was inspired when her maid, named Connors, was found to have thousands of dollars in diamonds and other precious gems in her stockings.  May insisted that she was a British subject, and was not compelled to be searched.  The inspectors insisted she was an American and forced her to declare her baggage.  The newspapers made clear note of the fact that she was the granddaughter of Mrs. Astor and a cousin of Jack Astor.

Perhaps to escape continued American newspaper publicity or, as The Washington Times reported, to recuperate “from the fatigues of his past social successes and preparing for new ones,” Van Alen traveled to the soothing waters of Baden Baden, Germany in 1914.  It was a poor choice.

He was caught in Germany as World War I erupted.  “For several weeks his relatives and business representatives were unable to communicate with him and felt exceedingly worried about his fate,” reported The Washington Times.  “Finally Mr. Van Alen escaped from the maelstrom of war and hastened straight back to America.”

Unable to travel abroad, Van Alen set about constructing a new Manhattan mansion.  On April 26, 1916The New York Times reported that he had purchased the four-story residence at 15 East Sixty-fifth Street.”  It was the very same house from which Miss E. T. Chisholm had fumed about Jack Astor’s stables.  James Van Alen had somewhat ironically purchased property right in the very nest of Astors.  John Jacob Astor’s double mansion was just around the corner on Fifth Avenue and his sister, Caroline Astor Wilson’s home was a block away at No. 3 East 64^th Street.

Van Alen had the outdated house demolished and commissioned Harry Allan Jacobs to design his new mansion.  Jacobs was well known for his fashionable homes designed in historic styles; but for this house he was given clear direction.  It was to be a near-copy of a Regency-period mansion on St. James Square in London.

The mansion in 1925.  One old brownstone still hangs on, to the right.  --photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Completed in 1917, it was London on the Upper East Side.  The three-story limestone house oozed British respectability.  Three identical arched openings pierced the rusticated base—the double-doored entrance, a grilled window and the access to the American basement below sidewalk level.

The second story grabbed the spotlight.  A Palladian window was framed by Corinthian pilasters and columns supporting a distinguished pediment.  Recessed, carved plaques ornamented the spaces above the flanking windows.  Despite the Van Alen reputation of philandering and even jewel smuggling, the house spoke refinement.

Van Alen had barely moved into the new mansion when rumors of Prohibition buzzed through the paneled rooms of Manhattan’s exclusive mens’ clubs.  James Van Alen was willing to abide the chiding of the American press; but he was unwilling to live in a country without liquor.

Congress passed the Volstead Act on October 28, 1919 enforcing the prohibition of the “manufacture, sale or transportation” of liquor.  Van Alen responded by selling his house and moving to England.

On December 13, 1919 The New York Times reported that “Carrying out his determination to dispose of his New York home if prohibition went into effect, J. J. Van Alen of New York and Newport has sold his four-story house at 15 East Sixty-fifth Street, to Rufus L. Patterson, Vice President of the American Tobacco Company.”

Patterson paid Van Alen $275,000 for the mansion—nearly $3 million today. 

“I know of lots of people that will leave the United States and make their home in countries where the laws are not so strict,” Van Alen told reporters.  He apparently had a well-stocked cellar in Newport, however; for The Times noted “It is said that he will make his home hereafter in England, but will return to summer at Newport.”

The Pattersons divided their time between the 65^thStreet home and their summer estate in Southampton, “Lenoir.”   Mrs. Patterson, the former Margaret Morehead, entertained often in the mansion throughout their more than two decades here.

Rufus L. Patterson died in April 1943.  Two years later Margaret put the mansion on the market.  The Kusciuczko Foundation had been founded in 1925 to promote closer ties between the United States and Poland through scientific, cultural and educational exchanges.   The organization dearly wanted the mansion as its headquarters, but did not have the funds. 

Margaret Patterson lowered her asking price of $250,000 to $85,000 for the foundation.  The Kosciuszko Foundation purchased the house in 1945 and over the next few years Margaret donated another $16,000 to help the organization pay off the mortgage.

In 1945 when the Foundation moved in, the old brownstone next door had most definitely disappeared.  Little else had changed -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The dignified mansion of a man who bucked the New York and Newport social system for decades is virtually unchanged since its completion nearly a century ago.  It is a remarkable structure built by an equally remarkable character in New York social history.

The 1907 Charles Guggenheimer House - No. 129 E 73rd Street

photo by Alice Lum

On October 4, 1906 W. H. Woodin sold the plot of land at 129 East 73^rd Street to “a client, who will erect thereon a five-story American basement dwelling,” as reported in The New York Times.  The article added that the “property adjoins the house built by Charles Dana Gibson.”

When the hugely successful illustrator commissioned Stanford White to design his neo-Georgian townhouse two years earlier, the block between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue gained prestige.  Soon other handsome residences would begin rising, including the sumptuous house next door at No. 129.

Charles S. Guggenheimer was “the client” who purchased the lot.  A wealthy attorney, he commissioned architect Henry Allan Jacobs to design his new home.  Jacobs was born and educated in New York City and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.  Returning to New York, he made his mark designing both residences and hotels, including the notable Seville Hotel at Madison Avenue and 29^th Street that was completed the same year as Gibson’s house.

In stark contrast to Stanford White’s brick-and-limestone Colonial structure, Jacobs produced a lavish neo-Italian Renaissance townhouse clad in limestone.  Completed in 1907, it rose five stories, including the mansard roof, above an American basement.   Above the restrained, rusticated base with a centered entranceway a graceful loggia served as the focal point of the design.   Its triple arches framed three sets of French doors.

photo by Alice Lum

At the third floor a single carved limestone balcony connected the three windows and at the fourth floor the windows were flanked by two massive and elaborate carved panels.

Carved panels of graceful figures, twining flowers and urns sit above a delicate wave-crest course -- photo by Alice Lum

The Guggenheimers were still newly-weds when they moved in.  Charles and his wife, Minnie, had been married in 1903.  With them on moving day was baby daughter, Elizabeth, born a year earlier in 1906.  Minnie was well-known in music circles, an active supporter of the New Symphony Orchestra and the Music League of the People’s Institute.

The Guggenheimers were struck a tragic blow six years later when little Elizabeth, now 7 years old, was hospitalized at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary in 1913.  On April 28, the little girl succumbed.  Her funeral was held in the parlor of No. 129 East 73^rd at 9:30 am on April 30.

The heart-broken Guggenheimers sold the house almost immediately.  E. Mortimer Ward purchased it just in time for the coming-out entertainments for his step-daughter, Dorothy Clapp.   On December 23, 1914, Mrs. Ward hosted a tea, followed by dinner at the Plaza Hotel.  Afterwards 200 guests were invited to the dance that would introduce young Dorothy.

Three years later Dorothy would be the maid of honor at her sister’s wedding on March 28, 1917.   The wedding day was originally planned for June 6; but World War I suddenly changed all that.  “Another of the many weddings hastened by the prospects of war was that yesterday of Bradish Johnson Carroll, Jr., a member of the Seventh Regiment, N.Y.N.G., who has been at the Mexican border, and Miss Mary Eunice Clapp,” said The Times.

Following the society wedding at St. James Protestant Episcopal Church on Madison Avenue, the reception was held at the 73^rd Street house “which was gay with pink roses and Easter lilies.”

The entrance features an elaborately-carved marble frame -- photo by Alice Lum

By 1921 E. Mortimer Ward had died and Mrs. Ward left East 73^rd Street for an apartment at 830 Park Avenue.  William Medlicott Fleitmann purchased No. 129.  The 61-year old Fleitmann was a partner in Fleitmann and Company which was founded by his father.   The firm was one of the largest mercantile banking and commission houses in the country.  Quite the clubman, he was a member of the New York Athletic Club, New York Yacht Club, Deutscher Verein, Merchants Club, Riding Club, Piping Rock Club, Suburban Riding and Driving Club and Columbia Yacht Clubs.

The Fleitmann’s daughter, however, was the star of the family.   Lida Louise Fleitmann was 27 years old when the family bought the house.  Still unmarried, she was well noted as a horsewoman both in America and Europe and was the author of “Comments on Hacks and Hunters,” published by Scribner’s.

The New York Times commented that “Miss Fleitmann is one of the best known riders in the Long Island hunting set.  She has a string of hunters and has won many blue ribbons and silver trophies in the annual horse shows in this city and elsewhere…Her silver trophies include salvers and candelabra, the later including the Berlin Cooks Memorial plate, which she won as the best cross-country rider to the Meadow Brook Hounds in 1916.”

The 1916 trophy came just a year after her horse, Cygnet, crushed her right leg in a jumping contest, fracturing it in two places.  The Times said, somewhat apologetically, “She is a member of the Junior League, but her interest in outdoor sports and her horses have kept her from active participation in the indoors entertainments of that organization.”

Lida eventually found a man who could compete with the horses for her affection and on February 1, 1922 her engagement to clubman John Van Schaick Bloodgood was announced.

With Lida successfully married, William Medlicott Fleitmann and his wife, the former Lida M. Heinze of Brooklyn, retired to Paris where he died in 1929.

The house on East 73^rd Street became home to  Dr. and Mrs. Harry E. Isaacs and their son, Frederick Lampke Isaacs.  Isaacs was Chief of Surgical Services at Beth Israel Hospital.  The family remained in the house until 1942 when it was leased to Henry W. Jarrett.

photo by Alice Lum

Following World War II the house became the Leo Baeck Institute.  Founded in 1955, its library and archives seek to preserve all records of the German-speaking Jewish culture that was annihilated during the war.  By the 1970s the library had amassed over 50,000 volumes, mostly in German, as well as unpublished memoirs, and newspapers and periodicals.

Henry Allan Jacobs’ sophisticated façade remains unchanged since the Guggenheimer family first walked in the door in 1907—a remarkable building on an equally-remarkable block of Manhattan.