The 1892 American Fine Arts Society Building -- The Art Students League

In 1889 the Art Students League joined forces with the Society of American Artists, the Society of Painters in Pastel, the New York Art Guild and the Architectural League to form the American Fine Arts Society. The concept of common interests among architects and artists was somewhat novel. “The societies that have now combined,” applauded The New York Times, “contain most of the younger and more energetic artists in architecture, painting and sculpture.”


Almost immediately the group began its search for a building for art education and annual exhibitions. Not wanting to step on any well-established toes, the group stressed that “it is not a rival of the Academy of Design;” yet The New York Times reported that “certain active spirits among the artists of New York have been hard at work on the promotion of a scheme which may bear important results to the fine arts in America. This is the establishment of a body to be called The Fine Arts Society, in a new building devoted to art purposes only.”

Wealthy benefactors like John Jacob Astor, Cornelius and George Vanderbilt, Edwin Booth, Levi Morton and Pierre Lorillard quickly purchased life memberships, creating a financial foundation. On October 3 the trustees met – including esteemed names such as Henry Hardenbergh, Louis Tiffany and Daniel French --to discuss interest in a site on 43rd Street for their new building, which they anticipated would cost about $210,000 including the land.

The plans for the 43rd Street site fell through, but by December of 1890 the Society had purchased for $154,000 the plot of land on 57th Street, running through to 58th Street, next to the new Osborne Apartments and diagonally across from Carnegie Hall, still being constructed. A competition among 38 architects resulted in the commission going to the Society’s Secretary, Henry Hardenberg and his partners, William C. Hunting and John C. Jacobsen.

The building was completed in 1892. Hardenbergh adapted its design from the 16th Century hunting lodge of King Francis I in the forest of Fontainebleau. The architect gave the impression of the 3-story structure by lighting the fourth floor with skylights and no windows. White marble, ornate terra cotta and buff brick combined to produce a rich and stately façade.

The Art Students League Buildling 1929

The interior was divided among exhibition spaces, administrative rooms and teaching space. The Art Students League alone was allocated about 10,000 square feet of floor space including the entire fourth floor which was devoted to “the chase-painting class, the still-life class, the woman’s life class, the men’s life class, and the antique contours class.”

The main hall was said to be the largest of its kind in the country, modeled after the salon of George Petit in Paris. A “supper room” was installed in the basement along with studios for the Department of Sculpture. To the rear, on 58th Street, was the large Vanderbilt Gallery, an exhibition gallery with a glass roof

The New York Times called it “an elaborate structure.”

On December 30th at the Architectural League’s dinner, George W. Vanderbilt presented the Society with a gift of $100,000 to pay off the outstanding debt on the building.

The concept of exhibition space solely for sculpture and not as “a tag-on” for paintings so impressed the art critic for The New York Times that he belittled European venues in comparison. “The great sculpture halls of the Louvre, the Vatican and the Munich Glyptothek, even the delightful little sculpture entrance to the Luxembourg, are not they cold, hard, severe, suggesting with their rows of chiseled marble the show rooms of the stone cutter at the cemetery’s entrance?”

On May 3, 1901, fire erupted on the fourth floor just as men and women in evening wear alighted from their carriages to attend the fancy dress ball of the Society of American Fakirs. Paints, oils, turpentine and students’ tools had all been heaped together in a corner, according to fire fighters. The conflagration bent iron beams and small explosions caused one wall to collapse.

In the meantime, those who arrived for the society ball were disappointed. They walked to the clubhouse of the American Society of Civil Engineers, hoping to be allowed to have their dance. “The superintendant politely told them they would have to go elsewhere for their dance,” reported The Times. “The young women importuned him to no purpose, and at last they all started for their various homes.”

When word of the fire reached the Salmagundi Club, panic set in. Many of the artists had valuable works of art on exhibition. Rumors raged that everything inside the building had been destroyed and club members rushed to the scene. In the Vanderbilt Gallery alone, paintings on exhibition were valued at $400,000.

Amazingly, the fire was extinguished and no artworks were damaged either by fire or water.

Over time the building became the sole property of The Art Students League. What had started out as a small group intent on teaching art was now one of the foremost fine art schools in the world. Early instructors included William Merritt Chase, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Daniel Chester French, Thomas Eakins, and Childe Hassam. Norman Rockwell fondly recalled his days as a student here in his autobiography.

Later in the century ground-breaking artists such as Louis Nevelson, Roy Lichtenstein and Mark Rothko either taught or lectured here.

The AIA Guide to New York City calls The Art Students League “A stately French Renaissance pile, grand without being grandiloquent…Now a venerable art school, it has the air of the old Parisian Ecole des Beaux Arts, but the spirit of New York now.”

Within the historic building, which was designated a New York City landmark in 1968 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, the League is run by artists for artists. The League offers no degrees nor diplomas. According to its official website, “One comes purely for the pursuit of art.”

Delmonico's -- 56 Beaver Street

Photo museumplanet.com

When John and Peter Delmonico opened their first restaurant in New York City in 1827, they were knocking on a well-bolted door. In a time when wealthy Americans dined and entertained in the privacy of their own opulent dining rooms, public restaurants offered common fare to the working class.

The Delmonicos intended to change that.

Opening their café at 23 William Street, they served, instead of tavern food, the cakes, fine wines and ices that affluent New Yorkers had grown to expect in Paris and Vienna. Four years later the brothers expanded next door, opening a full restaurant serving fine French and Italian cuisine. Increasingly New York’s gentry patronized the restaurant.

When the building was destroyed in the infamous Fire of 1835 that ravaged most of the Wall Street area, the brothers purchased the odd triangular lot at the Beaver and South William Streets. Backed by eight years of success, they erected an stylish four-story structure. The name Delmonico’s became synonymous with upper class dining; it was the place for dignitaries – such as the visiting Prince Louis Napoleon -- and the wealthy to be seen. Four columns, reportedly from the doorway of a Pompeian villa, flanked the marble entrance portico.

The New York Sun wrote that Delmonico’s had provided “places not merely to dine at, but to talk about, to take foreigners to, places to be proud of, which make the city attractive the world over.” From its kitchens the renowned chef, Charles Ranhofer, created culinary delicacies such as Lobster Newberg, Delmonico Steak, Eggs Benedict and Baked Alaska. The menu offered 47 veal dishes, 12 types of boiled beef, and 50 fish dishes.

By 1890 Delmonico’s was the premier eatery in the nation and the Delmonico family had opened no fewer than six other Delmonico’s throughout the city; yet more space was necessary in the old Beaver Street location. Charles Delmonico, grand nephew of the founders, razed their building and commissioned James Brown Lord to design a new, more impressive structure.

Delmonico's in 1895 -- "King's Photographic Views of New York"

The New York Herald reported on the cornerstone laying, which Charles (known as “Charlie”) insisted on performing himself. “It was a copper box about ten inches square, and contained, among other records, a history of the Delmonico firms since 1835, some old copper cents found under the portico of the building which has been torn down, the silver and copper coins of 1890, a copy of the Herald of December 22, 1889, containing a description and an illustration of the new building…specimens of the ‘shin-plaster’ currency issued by the Delmonico house during the war, and a copy of the menu of the Beaver street house, February 24, 1890, the day the restaurant was closed to the public.”

The article explained that, while Charlie Delmonico wished to put the box in the corner stone at the South William Street side, the builder David King refused. “The coins found in Solomon’s temple were found under the northeast corner,” argued King. Not wanting to tempt fate nor bad luck, Delmonico placed the box in the northeast corner.

Lord, who had designed only residential buildings to date, produced an eight-story Renaissance Revival restaurant and office building that brought him immediate professional recognition. The New York Times described it as “admirable in its simplicity and elegance.”

Lord emphasized the dramatic rounded corner, making it the focal point of the structure. He fashioned a rich entrance from a salvaged cornice from the former building, as well as two of the Pompeian columns (touching the columns became a tradition of good luck for knowing patrons). Brick, stone, terra cotta panels and copper were combined to create a visually stunning edifice on an odd slice of land.

Following Charles Delmonico’s death in 1901 management of the restaurant changed hands within the family twice until, in the 1910s, family squabbles over expenses and profitability began straining relations. In 1917 family members agreed to sell the building. The American Merchant Marine Insurance Company purchased it for $500,000 and, shortly thereafter, the restaurant ceased operation.

The grand dining areas on the first and second floors, once the place of debutante dinners and society wedding breakfasts, was cut up into office space. Oaken desks and filing cabinets now sat where Andrew Carnegie and Diamond Jim Brady once dined on oysters and brokered deals. Delmonico’s became “The Merchant Marine House,” home to shipping businesses and related insurance companies. Three years later the building was sold again, for a profitable $1,250,000, to the Insurance Company of North America.

With the closing of Delmonico’s, downtown was without a fine restaurant for almost two decades. George S. Chappell grieved in his New York restaurant guide in 1925 that “the lower city knows no such excellence now except in some of its princely luncheon clubs.”

Oscar Tucci intended to change that. Taking advantage of the culinary void and the well-recognized and respected name, he opened Oscar’s Oldelmonico Restaurant in the lower and first floors. Tucci ran his restaurant as a reimbodiment of the former restaurant. It was a success.

In 1935 he expanded to the second floor and the first floor of 48-54 Beaver Street next door (both buildings being owned by the City Bank Farmers Trust Company by now). Later, the reincarnation was complete when Tucci changed the name to Delmonico’s Restaurant.

When in 1985, ten years before achieving landmark status, the combined buildings were sold to 56 Beaver-Wall Street Inc. the original windows were replaced and other slight modifications were made.

Time Equities, Inc. purchased in November 1995 at foreclosure and within a year had converted the upper floors into 40 residential units. Today, Delmonico’s is back in business on the lower floors as The Original Delmonico’s Steakhouse Restaurant, serving many of the dishes that made the restaurant famous.




Photo courtesy delmonicosny.com

The 1912 First Precinct Station House

Nathaniel Bush held the enviable position of official architect to the New York Police Department for over three decades. From 1862 to 1895 he produced numerous station houses throughout the city. Not only was Bush an architect, but he was an NYPD sergeant, as well.


Bush retired because, as The New York Times reported on April 24, 1895, “age has unfitted him to perform his duties properly.” Tammany Hall jumped at the chance to give its own favored architects, Horgan & Slattery, the position. Not unexpectedly, building costs began climbing.

With the consolidation of the five boroughs in 1898 the New York Police Department quickly grew. Within the next few years plans were underway for a surge of station house construction. Requests poured in to the City Controller’s office to investigate the fees paid to Horgan & Slattery. In 1901 Controller Grout reported that $193,661.34 had been paid to the firm in that year alone.

The New York Times complained “For many years the Police Department economized many thousands of dollars through Nathaniel D. Bush, a detailed policeman, who was a competent architect, and none of whose plans for station houses resulted in disaster or loss to the city.”

Horgan & Slattery quickly lost their commission.

As the building boom began, Hoppin & Koen were hired to design the magnificent Police Headquarters at 240 Centre Street, completed in 1909 – a domed Baroque palace. Three years later they were commissioned again to design the Fourth Precinct station house at 16 Ericsson Place.

The Fourth Precinct had been housed in an 1871 structure which was no longer adequate. Throughout the late 19th Century the precinct was home to numerous murders, assaults and other crimes. For its new station Hoppin & Koen designed an Italian Renaissance palace with a large stable on the southern end.

The AIA Guide to New York City called it “A limestone Renaissance Revival palazzetto whose public interior in no way reflects the opulence of the exterior – except for the stable on the Varick Street side. The paddocks and other equine accoutrements have a quality that exceeds that provided for the officers.”

The dignified formal precinct house features two two-story arched entrances, a modest bracketed cornice, and the Seal of the City of New York in relief below the stone third floor course.

When the First Precinct station house at 100 Old Slip was closed and subsequently reused as the Police Museum, the First and Fourth Precincts were combined. Although FOURTH PRECINCT is deeply incised into the limestone façade, the station house is now the First Precinct.

The exterior of the building is extraordinarily unchanged since 1912 and police horses still occupy the paddocks of the stables.

The 1893 Fulton Building -- No. 130 Fulton Street (87 Nassau)

A 2005 upper addition successfully ruined the proportions and appearance of the building -- photo by Alice Lum

In the last decades of the 19^thcentury the Nassau-Fulton Street area, the center of the Manhattan jewelry district, was undergoing extensive change.  Small commercial buildings were quickly giving way to impressive multistory structures as new construction technology allowed for taller buildings.  In 1888 the four-year old architectural firm of De Lemos & Cordes had designed the striking brick and terra cotta No. 90 Nassau Street at the corner of Fulton.   Three years later they would be back to design its neighbor across the street at No. 130 Fulton Street.

Theodore W. E. De Lemos and August W. Cordes had been busy in the interim, working on Nos. 27 and 29 Pine Street for Kuhn, Loeb & Company; the Eden Musee and Arion Hall.  Before long they would be well-known for their monumental department stores like Siegel-Cooper on 6^th Avenue’s Ladies’ Mile and Macy’s Herald Square.

Begun in 1891 and completed two years later, the Renaissance Revival-style Fulton Building gently wrapped the corner.  Four stories of rusticated limestone formed the substantial base.  Above, tan brick was richly decorated with terra cotta.  A balcony at the fourth floor followed the curved façade which required the added expense of custom-made bowed glass for the widows.

An ornate terra cotta cornice at the fourth floor provide the transition from limestone to brick -- photo by Alice Lum

The building filled quickly with a mix of legal offices and jewelry firms.  Among the first were lawyers Siefel & Lauer; Henry Muller, importer of diamonds; and attorney Julius Lipman.   Lipman’s office would be the scene of a near-riot in September 1893.

The attorney had been put in charge of an estate with property at Madison Avenue and 116^th Street and hired contractor Joseph Dunn to do some work.   When Dunn presented Lipman with a bill, the lawyer refused to pay the full amount, citing less-than-satisfactory work.  Without the full payment, Dunn was unable to pay his Italian workers.  When the immigrant laborers demanded their money, Dunn instructed them to take the matter up with Julius Lipman.

Around noon on September 13, 1893, scores of workers and their wives besieged the building.    In the pandemonium Lipman was able to convince a few of the crowd that he was not responsible for their wages; then he gave up.  “Then he became tired and left the task to the janitor,” reported The New York Times.  The newspaper said that “the janitor of the building had a hard task in convincing them,” but “he finally cleared the building.”

While jewelry firms like Mabie, Todd and Bard, sellers of pen cases and pencil point protectors, moved in in 1897, another  group of merchants was establishing itself in the area—rare stamp traders.   One of these was Walter S. Scott who had already opened his shop in the building.    Scott’s father ran a similar stamp shop just around the corner.

Among Walter Scott’s steady customers that year were two young teenagers, Henry Cunningham and Harry Chase—neither yet 15 years old but both very knowledgeable in rare stamps.   What the dealer did not realize was that the boys—whom The Sun labeled “precocious youngsters”—had more than stamp collecting on their minds.  They were adept thieves.

Cunningham and Chase would innocently walk into the stamp shops and ask to look at particularly-valuable stamps which were customarily displayed in books.  When the proprietor turned away, they would carefully remove the stamp and replace it with an ordinary stamp to hide the theft.   For a few months during the winter of 1893 they had been successfully executing their ploy, netting themselves between $300 and $400—about $10,000 today.  Ironically, they often unwittingly took stamps stolen from Scott around the corner to sell to his father.

After losing several valuable stamps, Scott narrowed his list of suspected perpetrators to the guiltless-looking lads.   He kept a watchful eye on them and when, in mid-February, he caught them in the act of switching stamps, he had them arrested.    Both boys came from respectable families, yet each was deemed “incorrigible” by Agent King of the Gerry Society who told the magistrate that “they were both thoroughly bad youngsters and were so clever for their years that they ought to be placed in a reformatory.”

The Sun reported that while sitting in court “Neither boy was the least abashed by his position.”

In 1898 The Independent Magazineset up its offices in the building and would stay for two decades.  The popular periodical was founded in 1848 and provided political and social insights.

The unscrupulous actions of one tenant in the Fulton Building nearly ended in tragedy in the fall of 1900.  Attorney Bonford Boniface lived with his mother at No. 144 East 58^th Street when he met the beautiful Adelle Cram of Greenfield, Massachusetts in Central Park.   The young woman, whose parents had both died, came to New York in October of that year to find work.  Boniface swept the girl off her feet and soon promised to marry her.  He simply forgot to mention his real name.

Adelle returned to Massachusetts to visit her aunt, telling her about her intended husband.  “He is William Bennett, a young lawyer, very handsome…We’re to be married October 24.”

The attractive Adelle Cram nearly came to an unfortunate end -- The Evening World November 10, 1900, (copyright expired)

Now trapped in his own deceit, Boniface tried to squirm out of his own trap.  He sent a letter to Adelle saying that he was to undergo an operation; “and then a friend wrote that he had died,” reported The Evening World.  It was too much for Adelle to bear.

She told her aunt she had to go to the funeral in New York and left.  But when she searched for the house on 58^th Street where he said he lived, there was no such address.   Her aunt, Mrs. Fuchs, received a letter from Adelle that read “I am writing this letter to you, dear aunt, sitting on the bench in Central Park where I was so often with him.  He is gone now.  When you receive this I will be dead, for I want to be with him.”

On the same day that Mrs. Fuchs received the letter the girl was found in room 488 of the Grand Union Hotel, overcome by gas.   Doctors at Bellevue Hospital, however, managed to revive her.   In the hospital she discovered that her fiancé was a fraud.  “He had,” reported the Evening World, “for several reasons, concealed his own name.”

Boniface “repented of his action afterward,” said the newspaper and as Adelle was being released from the hospital a mutual friend, Joseph Joachimson, was making arrangements for their wedding.   Adelle was apparently forgiving for the Evening World said “Miss Cram left the hospital in charge of Policeman Joyce, of the East Thirty-fifth street station.  She was well dressed, having on a new bonnet, silk dress and white automobile coat.  She walked leisurely up to First avenue and boarded a horse car, on her way to Yorkville Court.”

Before any wedding would take place Adelle had to face charges of attempted suicide.

Jewelry firms continued to rent space in the building, but by now the tenant list was more mixed.  The Guarantee Investment Company was here as were the attorney offices of J. P. Solomon and Oscar Aronson.   Architect R. L. Daus operated from the building for at least a decade and in 1906 Morgon Manufacturing Company had its headquarters here.  The firm produced “water faucet motors,” a clever device that attached to any faucet, using the water flow to power a small machine for polishing, grinding or sharpening.

During the early years of the 20^thcentury New York was plagued with Mafia-like groups like The Black Hand that extorted money from the wealthy--mostly Italian-Americans--with threats of violence that were often realized.   On August 5, 1908 Italian detective Gerardo Luisi organized “a new Italian society” in his offices here “to help in checking Black Hand outrages in the United States.”

Called the National Secret Service Information Bureau, the organization insisted on working independently of organized law enforcement.  “The new organization will do its work all alone.  It will not seek the aid of Commissioner Bingham’s Italian detectives.  It will have its own private detective system when trailing Black Hand suspects,” reported The New York Tribune.

There continued to be several legal firms in the building at the time, including Frank W. Jackson; German-born Frank von Briesen, a well-known patent attorney; and Milton Frank.  It was perhaps a good thing for the jewelry tenants because they were consistently finding themselves in legal trouble.

In July 1914 diamond dealers Herman J. Dietz and his son, Charles were indicted in a diamond smuggling plot which the Federal Grand Jury alleged involved bringing up to $1 million in gems across the Canadian border.  The pair reportedly traveled to Canada twice a month, rarely together, returning on night trains and secreting diamonds in their baggage.   The men also paid a Canadian named Wood $100 per trip to smuggle diamonds to their office.    By bypassing Customs the dealers saved 20 percent duty.

Another pair of diamond dealers in the building found themselves in hot water in 1918.  With World War I raging in Europe, brothers Paul, Max and Joseph Goldmuntz were indicted in February for conspiring to defraud the Government by smuggling diamonds into the country.   The brothers who had long been doing a successful business as Goldmunts Bros. were accused of having “secret agents who came from Antwerp, and from other territory held by the Germans.”

As if they were not in enough trouble, at the same time they also conspired with Oscar Kockeses, a jeweler on Maiden Lane who was on the road to bankruptcy.    When the brothers helped him to conceal assets from his creditors it landed them in the Atlanta Penitentiary in June of that year.

Abraham Stark did business from the 4th Floor when this photograph was taken in the 1920s -- NYPL Collection

Abraham Stark ran his jewelry shop on the fourth floor here in 1921 and he found an inexpensive way to get valuable jewelry.  He made a deal with Elwood Adams, a jewel thief.   Adams, also known as Cox, would be charged with jewel thefts totaling $50,000, at least $10,000 of which ended up in the showcases of Stark.

Some of the loot was snatched by Jean Cunningham, a maid in the home of Lawrence Craufourd at No. 125 East 56^thStreet.   The women managed to sneak out $5,000 in jewelry before being caught.   The maid talked, resulting in Adams’s arrest and his accompanying detectives to Stark’s shop in the Fulton Building where the stolen jewelry was found.

Among the jewelers who did not go to jail through the 1920s and ‘30s were diamond merchant Ely W. Harwood; H. M. Manheim & Co. who advertised a wide array of goods including “diamonds, watches, jewelry, silverware, ivory pyralin good, etc.;” Leopold Strasser and John Weiner.

In fact, Wiener, a diamond cutter, was the victim of theft when on May 15, 1920 a $5,000 necklace disappeared from his shop.  Two years later on June 3, 1922 a salesman from the firm of Barzilay & Der Linden appeared at Wiener’s door with jewelry offered for sale.  Among the items was Wiener’s own necklace.

Wiener seized the necklace, resulting in a larceny charge which he won in court.   Undaunted, Barzilay & Der Linden obtained another summons and Wiener was forced to re-appear in court.  He won that case too.

The Fulton Building continued to house stamp dealers, jewelry firms throughout the 20^th century.   Then, as the downtown area became as attractive for residential as for business purposes, the building was converted to coops under the direction of head architect Elliot Vilkas in 2005.  A nondescript four-story addition was plopped onto the roof that succeeded in destroying the proportions of the building and adding nothing other than 20 more income-producing apartments.

photo by Alice Lum

LeBrun's 1894 Engine Company No. 14

Just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Philadelphia architect Napoleon LeBrun moved his family to New York City. LeBrun won the enviable position as official architect of the New York City Fire Department in 1879. A year later when his son Pierre joined him in business, it became LeBrun & Son. In 1888 younger son Michel would also join the firm, subsequently renamed LeBrun & Sons.


Unlike the work of Nathaniel D. Bush, the architect for the New York Police Department during the same period, who created several carbon-copy station houses; LeBrun’s fire stations were unique. Each of the 42 LeBrun stations became progressively more ornate and in 1894, a year before designing their final firehouse, Engine Company 14 was erected at 14 East 18th Street.  The architect had gone all-out.

LeBrun produced what the AIA Guide to New York City called “A delicate Italian Renaissance town house for fire engines.” Corinithian columns on the third floor support decorative arches over the windows with deeply-recessed carved fans. Between the second and third floors, swirling ribbons flank large terra cotta medallions pronouncing the date of construction.

“High above,” said the AIA Guide, “the frieze and cornice are rich in far-out, far-east detail.”

On September 11 the next year, Mayor A . Krebs and the Fire Commissioner escorted Colonel Varigault, the head of the Paris Fire Department, on a tour of New York fire headquarters. The French fireman was visiting New York to learn up-to-date practices and technology. The party then boarded carriages and “inspected the quarters of Engine Company No. 14,” according to The New York Times.  The sparkling new station house was presented as the typical example of New York fire stations.

As evidenced by the 1896 station blotter, the Victorian fire fighters assigned to Engine Company 14 were not without a tender side. On July 22 of that year the blotter read “5:00 A.M. – Peter, cat, transferred to Bergh Society.” Peter had unfortunately eaten a poisoned rat.

A month later an entry documented “Aug. 25, 11:25 A.M. – While responding to an alarm for Station 343, Chops, cat, jumped from seat of tender at Broadway and Eighteenth Street, and was killed by being run over and having neck broken.”

The New York Times reported the next day “There was a sort of a wake over Chops at quarters last night, and a debate about the funeral. Arrangements were not perfected, but the cat will not be sent to the Potter’s Field for its kind – Barren Island. Fireman 'Joe' DeSize and Engineer A. W. Melvin are to devise a plan of last honors.”

For over a century the firefighters of Engine Company 14 have served the city valiantly, sometimes at the price of life. In 1956 Company No. 14 fought the tremendous Wanamaker fire on Broadway and Astor Place for a full day before bringing it under control.

LeBrun’s Italian Renaissance structure is as delicate and beautiful today as it was in 1894, still serving the city as an active fire house.

The 1902 Lying-In Hospital -- 305 Second Avenue

photo by Alice Lum

James Wright Markoe earned his medical degree in 1885 at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.    The strapping young man was as physically-inclined as intellectually.  The New-York Tribune would later say of him “As a young man he was an athlete.  He spent much of his spare time in the gymnasium boxing, and was classed as one of the best amateur boxers at that time.”

Boxing would soon take a back-seat to a more humanitarian interest, however.  Following graduation he traveled to Munich where he spent a year advancing his medical studies.   While at The Frauenklinik of Von Winkel learning obstetrical procedures, he and fellow student Samuel W. Lambert recognized the need for a clinic in New York to help needy mothers-to-be.

Manhattan at the time was filling with immigrants who struggled to survive in grimy, crowded tenements.    Unsanitary conditions coupled with the inability to pay for medical help resulted in a catastrophic infant mortality rate within the tenement community.  Upon the doctors’ return to New York they established the Midwifery Dispensary in 1890.

The clinic opened in a house at No. 312 Broome Street and shortly thereafter was combined with the long-defunct Society of the Lying-In Hospital.   Expectant women flocked to the new facility, quickly resulting in the need for an expanded and improved space.

Dr. James Markoe not only practiced medicine among wealthy society, he was a member of it.  He held memberships in the exclusive Metropolitan, Century, Racquet and Tennis, and New York Yacht Clubs.    For years he was a vestryman in the highly-fashionable St. George’s Church on Stuyvesant Square.

Among James Markoe’s moneyed patients was millionaire J. Pierpont Morgan.  Markoe not only became his personal physician, but a close friend.    It was a friendship that would create financial advantages for Markoe’s pet project.

In 1894 the Hamilton Fish mansion at the corner of 17^thStreet and Second Avenue was purchased and converted for the hospital.  The New York Times said “In this fairly commodious house the work of the association has increased” and quickly the building was not sufficient to care for the stream of patients.  By 1895 the push was well underway to expand the Lying-In Hospital and build a new facility.  On March 14 of that year Mayor William Lafayette Strong introduced a bill appropriating $12,000 to the Society of the Lying-In Hospital—about a quarter of a million dollars in today’s money.

“The Mayor asked any one who had anything to say in opposition to the appropriation of $12,000 for the Lying-In Hospital to state their objections first,” reported The New York Times.  “No one responded, and the Mayor said that he was not surprised, as it would be a queer kind of man who would oppose such a charity.”

Private donations came in; but at a rather disappointing rate—at least to the mind of J. Pierpont Morgan.  In 1896 donors had given $53,738; not nearly enough to even consider a new structure.   On January 4, 1897 Morgan penned a letter to William A. Duer, the President of the Society of the Lying-In Hospital.

Dear Sir:  I have for some time thought it desirable that your society should erect upon the land recently purchased from the estate of Hamilton Fish a suitable building for the needs of the hospital.

Being of this opinion, I have had preliminary studies made by Mr. Robertson, as architect, which I think will be satisfactory to your Board of Governors; if not, they can easily be modified.

The architect, “Mr. Robertson,” was the esteemed Robert Henderson Robertson.  Morgan had taken it upon himself to choose the architect and lay out stipulations on the building’s construction.  His letter would go on to explain why he had every right to do so:

I assume that the cost of the building will be about $1,000,000, which sum I am prepared to donate for that purpose.  The only conditions that I make are:

First—That before the building is erected it shall be apparent that the income of the hospital, from endowment or other sources, render it in all human probability sufficient to meet expenses, after the new building shall be erected.

Second—That the plans and the carrying out of same, from a medical point of view, shall be satisfactory to Dr. James W. Markoe.  Yours very truly.  J. Pierpont Morgan.

Morgan had put Markoe fully in command of the design of the medical aspects of the structure.   The New York Times quickly published Robertson’s preliminary plans.

On January 15, 1897 the newspaper said “The proposed new hospital building will be a handsome and imposing structure of granite and pressed brick, thoroughly fireproof, ten stories in height…It will have every improvement and convenience known in modern architecture and applicable to hospital purposes.  It will have accommodations for 250 patients, and, as the patients are usually discharged in two weeks, the total capacity of the hospital will be about 6,500 a year, while the outdoor service is practically unlimited.”

Invigorated by the sudden windfall, the Governors of the Society set to work to raise additional funds.  Morgan’s stipulation was, after all, that the hospital be financially independent.  “But they seem nowise afraid of the future,” reported The New York Times.  “They expect to raise not less than $1,000,000 in a reasonable time, and are even hopeful that they may exceed that amount.”

Morgan’s patronage of the hospital was possibly a factor in its becoming a favorite money-raising event among New York’s wealthiest socialites.   On February 27, 1898 The Times wrote “One of the most important Lenten entertainments to which society people are now looking forward will take place on the afternoon and evening of Saturday, March 19 at the Waldorf-Astoria.  The Society of the Lying-In Hospital of the City of New York is to be beneficiary, and the fashionable set have come out in force to give it their patronage.”

The article listed the ladies who put their significant social heft behind the affair, including Caroline Astor, Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, Mrs. Ogden Mills, Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs, Mrs. Frederic W. Vanderbilt and other prominent names like Rhinelander, Sloane, Lorillard, Whitney, Stokes, Baylies, Dodge and Morton.

The old Fish mansion was demolished and erection of the hulking new hospital began.  Morgan’s initial $1 million donation proved insufficient.  The New-York Tribune noted that “Because of a rise in the price of structural materials, Mr. Morgan subsequently gave $500,000 additional.”



The building neared completion in August 1900 -- New-York Tribune, August 13, 1900 (copyright expired)

By August 13, 1900 the building was taking form and the New-York Tribune updated readers on the progress.  “The exterior of the main structure lacks only a few additions in the way of casements and doors to make it complete, and the gangs of men employed upon the central superstructure are busily at work on the iron frame.”

The newspaper was not especially impressed with Robertson’s design.  “The main building arrests the attention of the passer by not so much because of its architecture, which is markedly lacking in ornate features, but because it stands in such striking contrast with its immediate neighborhood.  It towers high above the adjacent dwelling houses, and its walls of gray Ohio limestone and bright red brick stand out sharply in comparison with their dingy brownstone.”

In explaining to its readers the purpose of the new building, the newspaper waded into what, by a 21^st century viewpoint, was a swamp of potentially-offensive verbiage.  “The erection of this great hospital is perhaps the logical outcome of the tremendous racial changes which have been going on in that district of the city during the last thirty or forty years.  The influx of a vast foreign element has altered what was once an exclusively residence part of the city to one occupied largely by tenement dwellers.  The increasing congestion of this kind of population naturally demanded hospitals, and the need of a great maternity hospital became most imperative.”

The hospital opened in January 1902; a stately Renaissance Revival structure surmounted by a Palladian pavilion.  Although the Tribune complained that it lacked ornamentation, Robertson creatively included sculptures of chubby babies within the spandrels, in medalions, and within the friezes.

Adorable bas reliefs of swaddled infants appear along the facade -- photo by Alice Lum

The first floor housed the offices of the doctors, the second and third floors were for “the clerical department” and accommodations for 52 nurses, while the fourth, fifth and sixth floors housed the wards.  The kitchen and laundry were on the top two floors and a solarium was on the roof.

Robertson brought the design to a dramatic climax with the Palladian pavilion -- photo by Alice Lum

The paint was barely dry before the expectant mothers filed in.  Eight months later there had been 1,278 applicants seeking ward treatment--an average of 160 per month.   In the meantime, doctors going into the field to treat the impoverished women in their homes found their jobs not always the easiest.

On August 2, 1902, just eight months after the new hospital opened, the husband of Jennie Davis rushed to get medical help as she went into labor in their apartment at No. 368 Cherry Street.    Two doctors of the Lying-In Hospital, Dr. Rose and Dr. Tailford, arrived with a visiting physician.  Word spread among the concerned neighbors that Rose and Tailford were students who were observing and helping a veteran doctor.

When the visiting physician left the woman in the care of Rose and Tailford, whom the neighbors supposed were merely students, a near riot broke out.   The New-York Tribune reported “After examining the woman, the one the neighbors thought was a physician went away on other business, leaving the supposed students in charge of the case.  Relatives and neighbors crowded in and objected to their way of treating the woman.”

Tragically, in the uproar that followed the doctors were interrupted in their treatment and Mrs. Davis died.  “The crowd grew excited and threatening, and in the excitement the woman died before the child was born,” said the newspaper.  The enraged group, now a rabble, seized the doctors and threw them down the tenement stairway.

The poorest of New York City's citizens passed through a magnificent entranceway -- photo by Alice Lum

James W. Markoe continued on as Medical Director and attending surgeon at the Lying-In Hospital.  In his will J. Pierpont Morgan bequeathed Markoe an annual income of $25,000 for life “because of his service at this hospital,” as reported in theNew-York Tribune.

On Sunday morning April 18, 1920 as services at St. George’s Protestant Episcopal Church drew to a close, Markoe was walking up the aisle with the collection plate.  Suddenly Thomas W. Simpkin, a stranger to the congregation, rose from his seat near the rear of the church and fired a bullet into the forehead of the doctor.  The shooter was described in The New York Times the following day as “a lunatic, recently escaped from an asylum.”

Within seconds the life of the celebrated surgeon, the victim of an irrational act, had been snuffed out.  His will instructed that had his wife and daughter not survived him, his entire estate was to be left to his beloved Lying-In Hospital.

Close inspection reveals infants popping up throughout the ornamentation -- photo by Alice Lum

As the years passed, John Pierpont Morgan, Jr. was concerned about the long-term stability of the hospital his father had so generously provided for.   He recruited John D. Rockefeller, Jr.; George F. Baker, Sr.; and George F. Baker, Jr. to join forces in establishing an association with New York Hospital.  Upon the subsequent opening of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in 1932, the Lying-In Hospital moved out of the Second Avenue building.  It became the more modern-sounding Obstetrics and Gynecology Department of New York Hospital.

In 1985 the architectural firm of Beyer Blinder Belle renovated the building—already added to the National Register of Historic Places—as offices and residential spaces.   Like the New-York Tribune in 1900, the “AIA Guide to New York City” was reserved in its assessment of the design, calling it “boring until the top.”

photo by Alice Lum

The “top,” however, makes up for the “boring” and the delightful limestone babies—reminders of the building’s original purpose—are guaranteed to bring a smile.

photo by Alice Lum

 thanks to reader Alan Engler for suggesting this post

The 1900 Stokes-Moore Mansion - 4 East 54th Street

As the construction of his extravagant Ansonia Hotel on upper Broadway was nearing completion, the somewhat eccentric millionaire William Earle Dodge Stokes paused before a photographer’s shop on Fifth Avenue. There in the window was a portrait of 19-year old Rita Hernandez de Alba Acosta.

Rita Acosta was a striking beauty. The New York Times would later report, “her beauty has made her famous in the social world...She is a tall brunette, with a perfect figure, high color, and large black eyes.” 

The 43-year old Stokes was immediately smitten.

On January 3, 1895 the couple was married in the bride’s parents’ mansion at 48 West 47th Street where Archbishop Corrigan performed the ceremony in front of 1000 guests. “No wedding this season in New-York has attracted more interest among society people” reported The New York Times.

Although those “society people” generally looked askance at Stokes – he preferred not to engage in social affairs and dressed “oddly” – he attempted to fit in for the sake of his bride. In 1897 he rented the Newport cottage of publisher James Gordon Bennett where Rita hosted an opening dinner party for 300.

A year later, on June 7, Stokes spent $140,000 on the two 4-story brownstones owned by Mrs. Caroline G. Reed at Nos. 4 and 6 East 54th Street. In their place he commissioned McKim, Mead and White to design a white marble mansion for his new bride. The firm produced an Italian Renaissance-style town house worthy of 5th Avenue, just around the corner. A carved marble balcony stretched the length of the second story above a rusticated ground floor protected by a marble and cast iron fence.

The home rose five floors to an elegant, classic marble balustrade on the roof.

However things were not going well in the Stokes household and, just as the house was nearing completion, Stokes sold it on December 14, 1899 for $325,000. Four months later Mrs. Stokes filed for divorce.

On April 5, 1900 The New York Times reported that “It has been known for some time that there was a rupture of the friendly relations existing between the couple, but the utmost secrecy is being observed as to the details of the case.”

Years later Rita’s sister, Mercedes de Acosta, would write “when Rita finally decided to marry Will Stokes it was, I believe, because she felt his wealth could open doors. . . . But she paid a high price for any material gain.”

The elegant marble mansion was purchased by Chicago lawyer and business mogul William H. Moore and his wife Ada. The fantastically wealthy Moore was the founder not only of U.S. Steel, but of American Can Company, Diamond Match Company, National Biscuit Company (later renamed Nabisco) and several railroads and banks.

Reporting on the sale, The Times said the house “may safely be classed as one of the finest private dwellings in the city.”

The Moores were important social figures, Mrs. Moore filling the house with Asian antiques and hosting numerous lavish parties for opera figures and New York’s elite.

William Moore died in 1923 and Ada remained in the house until her death in 1955. Subsequently the home was used by a succession of commercial and charitable tenants; yet none of them disturbed the original interiors.

When, in May of 1993, the Banco Di Napoli purchased the mansion from the government of Indonesia for $12.8 million, the original stained glass, the five-story winding marble staircase, the inlaid floors and the ceiling details were all intact.

The bank commissioned Americon, Inc. to restore and renovate the structure, adding two floors in the process, invisible from the street.

No. 4 East 54th Street looks today much as it did when William and Ada Moore first entered it in 1900; an elegant and beautiful survivor of 5th Avenue’s magnificent residential era.



 
 
 
 
Photo Wally Gobetz