The 1911 Ransom Hooker Mansion -- No. 173-175 E. 71st Street

In the first years following the end of the Civil War the Upper East Side saw rapid development.  What had been open farmland and country estates was quickly crisscrossed with streets and avenues.  In 1869 James Fee built the two speculative houses at Nos. 173 and 175 East 71^stStreet, acting as his own architect.  At just 14.8 feet wide, they were unusually narrow.  No. 175 was later described in The New York Times as a “three-story French roof brown stone dwelling.”

By the turn of the century the neighborhood had noticeably changed.  As millionaires raised elaborate mansions along Central Park, the neighboring blocks took on the upscale tone.  Wealthy citizens purchased the Victorian rowhouses and either razed or remodeled them.  In place of the outdated residences modern high-end homes appeared.

On August 7, 1907 the engagement of Dr. Ransom Spafard Hooker to the daughter of one of New York’s wealthiest families was leaked.  The New York Times reported “The engagement of Miss Mildred E. P. Stokes, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Anson Phelps Stokes, to Dr. Ransom S. Hooker of this city has become public, although it has not been formally announced.”

Hooker lived and ran his practice at No. 26 East 48^thStreet.  The Times noted that Mildred “made her debut several years ago, and, like several other members of her family, she is much interested in work in the slums and the tenement-house districts, and recently fitted up several cottages as vacation homes for poor boys.” 

Mildred and Ransom Hooker -- Stokes Records, Volume 3

Owing, no doubt, to the Stokes family’s social prominence, the newspaper essentially overlooked Hooker’s pedigree.  It was, however, notable.  Ransom Hooker was descended from a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Lyman Hall; and among his ancestors were the owners of Britain’s Spafarth Castle during the Saxon period.

Following the wedding the couple continued their varied interests.  Dr. Hooker, while serving as a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, was especially interested in anthropology and exploration.  He joined an archaeological expedition to Arabia sponsored by Princeton University and only illness in the family prevented him from joining Admiral Robert E. Peary to the North Pole in 1909.  Mildred remained active in social reform.

In 1910 Hooker purchased the two narrow houses on east 71^stStreet with the intention of demolishing them and constructing an imposing mansion.  As plans were underway, the Hookers leased No. 173 for the winter season to W. Schuyler Smith.

Architect S. E. Gage was commissioned to design the new structure.  Completed in 1911, it was a somewhat somber neo-Gothic fantasy of pointed openings and clustered multi-paned windows held together with long, carved drip moldings.  Gage took advantage of the now-generous 29-foot plot by setting the bulk of the mansion at the property line, then placing a narrow section back—producing not only visual dimension, but added light to the interiors.

The house as it appeared just after completion.  The large garage opening was later reduced.  photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWT6G71G&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915&PN=2#/SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWT6G71G&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915&PN=1

An unheard of innovation was the inclusion of space for the Hooker automobile at ground level.  The inconvenience of housing one's car offsite--as had always been the case with carriages--was eliminated.

Life in the new home would be upset by the United States’ entrance into World War I in 1917.  Dr. Hooker sailed overseas with the troops, serving as a major in the Army Medical Corps.  He commanded the 308^thSanitary Train of the 83^rd Division and later organized a 3,000-bed Army Hospital in Le Mans, France.

It appears that in his absence Mildred moved back in with her family.  In September 1917 the 71^stStreet mansion was leased to George L. Whitney for the season.  The following May Mrs. Grant B. Schley, Jr. took it for the summer; and in October 1918 Irving Cox leased the fully-furnished home.  But things returned to normal as the war ended and Hooker, decorated by the French Government, arrived home.

The Hookers would have two children, each named after a parent: Ransom S. Hooker, Jr. and Mildred Phelps Stokes Hooker.  The privileged young lady would go on to be schooled at the private Brearley School and later Foxcroft School in Virginia; while her brother would eventually enroll at Yale University.

The Stokes family was an interesting one and Mildred’s “work in the slums” was not nearly so newsworthy as the activities of some of her siblings.  Her brother James Graham Phelps Stokes drew attention because of his radical political leanings.  He and another sister, Helen Olivia Phelps Stokes, lived next door to one another in Greenwich Village.  Graham’s wife Rosa consistently shocked society with activities like distributing birth control pamphlets.  She was convicted of “seditious utterances” and was arrested in November 1918 at their No. 88 Grove Street house for “illegal registration” to vote.”  Another brother, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, garnered less controversial notice as an architect and historian.

Graham Stokes’s marriage to Rosa came to a well-publicized end in 1925 when he discovered her “misconduct” with a hotel owner.  The trial lasted 30 minutes.  One year later he married again, this time in the grand rooms of his sister Mildred’s home.

On Friday March 12, 1926 The Times reported “J. G. Phelps Stokes, millionaire Socialist, who divorced Mrs. Rosa Pastor Stokes, storm centre of many Socialist and Communist troubles, is to be married tomorrow to Miss Lettice Lee Sands at the home of his sister, Mrs. Ransom Spafard Hooker, 173 East Seventy-first street.”

By now Hooker, in addition to his surgical practice, was teaching at the Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons as associate professor of surgery.  Still active in reform issues, Mildred was highly involved with the Association to Promote Proper Housing for Girls.  The family summered at their home in Charleston, South Carolina and at the Hooker camp on Birch Island on Upper St. Regis Lake.

In 1927 Maude Robinson, who was director of the pottery department of Greenwich House, was given part of the basement to operate a pottery studio.  On May 18 that year The New York Times reported on an exhibition which “disclosed the fact that many women of social prominence do expert work in pottery.”  Among Maude’s students were wealthy socialites like Mrs. George Nichols (a daughter of J. P. Morgan), Princess Dorothy Caracciolo, Mrs. Thomas Cunningham, and Mrs. George Naumburg.  Maude Robinson would continue her pottery studio here for 15 years.

Entertainments in the Hooker mansion reached a climax in 1929 when daughter Mildred was introduced to society.  Joy would turn to mourning only months later when tragedy devastated the Hooker household.  On February 16, 1930 a special to The New York Times reported “Ransom S. Hooker, Jr., 19 years old…a sophomore at Yale University, was instantly killed and three of his companions were seriously injured just before dusk tonight when an automobile in which they were driving at a high rate of speed through Simsbury skidded of the icy road, overturned and crashed into a large elm tree.”

The four boys were returning from a weekend visit to Northfield, Massachusetts where they had attended a student conference.  Ransom Hooker was driving and when the car fishtailed, he “tried to control it, but because of the icy condition of the road it was unmanageable.”  The boy’s neck was broken and he was killed instantly.

Entertainments eventually returned to the house, mostly as luncheons and meetings to benefit the reform organizations.  During the annual meeting of the Association to Promote Proper Housing for Girls in the house on January 16, 1934, Mildred (who was now president of the group) proudly announced that the association had interviewed more than 4,000 young women during the prior year and helped many to find jobs.  She pointed out the organization’s multiracial outreach, saying that of the 450 girls it had housed, 200 of them were black.

Although they retained ownership of the house, the Hookers left in 1938 and converted the mansion into apartments.  The renovation, completed in June 1939, resulted in four lavish apartments.  

Two years later the Hookers sold the 71^st Street house.  Among the tenants at the time was Elaine Heineberg Luria who married author James Ramsey Ullman on January 26, 1946.  Actor Dennis Hoey, best known as the character Inspector Lestrade in six of the Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone, lived here; and in 1953 it was home to Mrs. Francis Boardman and her son, also named Francis.  The Hooker name briefly returned to No. 173 East 71^st Street when, somewhat ironically, Francis Boardman became engaged to Anne Dwight Hooker in 1953.

On December 14, 1960, after three decades here, the 81-year old Maude Robinson died in her studio-apartment.  The respected artist had been technical consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York in addition to her decades of teaching. 

Five years earlier journalist Meyer Berger had written “The world’s most wealthy potters—men and women of distinguished New York families—labor in monastic quiet in a sub-basement in the former Ransom Hooker Mansion at 175 East Seventy-first Street…Miss Robinson permits no short cuts in her courses.  Each pupil, no matter how distinguished his or her ancestry, must learn every phase of pottery making—choosing and mixing the proper clays; working them by hand or throwing them on a wheel; firing them in the oven; making glaze from basic ingredients.”

In 1996 the house was renovated again—this time the conversion resulted in just two apartments.  A triplex engulfed the basement through second floor, and the top two floors made up a duplex.  In 2001 the owners of the two apartments would begin a series of back-and-forth lawsuits that would drag on for years.

Dr. Burton Sultan and his family owned the triplex.  Then actor Sir Sean Connery purchased the upper duplex and began renovations.  The upheaval prompted the eye doctor to sue Connery in 2001 saying the renovations and roof repairs had “damaged his home and injured family members,” according to People magazine.  The family complained of foul odors, water damage, cracked plaster and accused the actor of trying to drive them out of their home.

Connery and his wife, Micheline, counter-sued, saying that the Sultans were hindering necessary repairs.  By 2007 the Connerys had filed six lawsuits and the Sultans at least that many.  New York Supreme Court Justice Marcy Friedman finally put her foot down, barring any further litigation without court permission.

“Regrettably, both parties to this dispute have engaged in a slash-and-burn litigation strategy,” she wrote, “that has at times been duplicative and exceedingly burdensome to their adversaries and the courts.”

Despite the tempest inside, the Hooker mansion retains is sedate exterior appearance—an architecturally remarkable structure on an architecturally-charming block.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The 1902 McKeever House -- No. 120 East 65th Street

photo by Alice Lum

In the first years after the Civil War the Upper East Side saw rapid development.  In 1874 architect F. S. Barus designed a string of six brownstone-fronted homes, Nos. 120 through 130 East 65^th Street, for Robert and Margaret Morrison.  Barus had been busy for several years designing tenement buildings and what the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide termed “brown-stone second-class dwellings.”

Just a year earlier the 65th Street block on which the homes stood was considered by some to be on the “wrong” side of Fourth Avenue (later renamed Park Avenue).  The soot belching locomotives that ran down the center of the avenue made it less than desirable for respectable homes.  The thoroughfare was a delineation line, of sorts, between the fashionable blocks off Central Park and the more middle-class areas to the east.  But in 1875, the same year the houses were completed, Cornelius Vanderbilt and the City of New York buried the train tracks.

Real estate values on Park Avenue and the blocks to the east suddenly rose.  The Morrisons’ speculative homes were up-to-date and commodious.  At 20 feet wide and four stories tall above an English basement, they were intended for comfortable merchant class families.  No. 120 soon became home to D. L. Newborg, head of D. L. Newborg & Son, a men’s clothier.

The Newborg family moved out late in 1885.  The Real Estate Record & Guide noted on November 28 that year that Newborg “has sold the stone-front dwelling…on terms which have not transpired.”

It was most likely Harold Clay Werner who purchased the house from Newborg.  The educator had earned his PhD from Columbia College and went by the professional name H. C. Werner.  In 1870 he had married Susan Hallowell (and by 1900 had legally changed his name to Harold Hallowell Werner).  Werner sold the house on May 25, 1894 for $30,000—a tidy $785,000 in today’s dollars.

The proper Victorian rowhouse became the St. Joseph’s Home for Babies.  Operated by the Dominican Convent of Our Lady of the Rosary, the home was established on November 1, 1897.  Here the nuns fostered “children under 2 years of age who are orphans, half-orphans, or abandoned by their parents,” as described in the Annual Report of the State Board of Charities of the State of New York.

By now millionaires’ mansions were sprouting along Fifth Avenue opposite the Park and the fashionable tone of that neighborhood spilled as far east as the orphanage.  The Home would not be here long. 

In 1902 it was a private home again, owned by Isaac Chauncey McKeever and his wife Julia.  For blocks around, old brownstones were being razed and replaced by modern mansions; or remodeled as updated, stylish homes.  The McKeevers commissioned S. E. Gage to renovate No. 120.

An architect and engineer, Gage had already transformed several high-stooped houses to prim neo-Federal homes and he would do the same for the McKeevers.  Completed in 1902, Gage somewhat surprisingly kept the parlor above sidewalk level, retaining the English basement.   He turned the stoop to the side, giving it an interesting dogleg configuration and embellished it with especially handsome open newels and simple railings.

Somewhat surprisingly for the East Side, Gage used a dog-leg stoop.  The ironwork is especially handsome.  photo by Alice Lum

Burned headers in the Flemish bond brickwork created the suggestion of antiquity.  Splayed stone lintels at the third floor, multi-paned arched openings at the second with attractive fanlights, and an interesting parlor floor window with a Gibbs surround combined to form a formal Colonial look.

As it does today, the remodeled house snuggled up against Victorian brownstones in 1911 -- photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

The wealthy McKeevers and their three daughters rubbed shoulders with Manhattan’s socially elite.  During the summer season of 1917 Julia and daughters, Marianne and Frances, stayed at the exclusive Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.  Like most other monied husbands, Isaac stayed home, traveling to the resort on weekends or when time permitted.

The Sun noted that on September 29 that year, “Isaac Chauncey McKeever joined Mrs. McKeever and the Misses Marianne and Frances McKeever.”  Among others summering there who made the newspaper that day were Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mr and Mrs. Harry Sachs, and Mr. and Mrs. J. C. Bull.

The United States entered World War I that year; and the carefree circuit of social seasons, dinners and dances became a bit more somber.  And many social functions, like weddings--normally planned out for months and executed in elaborate ceremonies--were thrown into upheaval.

And so it was for the McKeever family.  On the afternoon of September 23, 1918 Edith McKeever married Ensign Boughten Cobb of the United States Navy in the chantry of St. Thomas’s Church on Fifth Avenue.  “The wedding was arranged hurriedly, as Ensign Cobb, who has been stationed for some months at a foreign port, obtained a two weeks’ leave here to wed,” reported the New-York Tribune the following day.

The McKeever family was followed briefly in the house by Edward Purcell Mellon and his wife, the former Ethel Churchill Humphrey.  The immensely wealthy Mellons summered in their country estate Villa Maria at Southampton, Long Island.  It was here in August 1919 that a burglar made off with $3,000 worth of Ethel’s diamonds and some cash (close to $40,000 in today's dollars).  In reporting the theft, The Sun noted that “Mrs. Mellon’s city residence is at 120 East Sixty-fifth street.”

It is possible that the Mellons merely leased the home that year; for on March 26, 1920 it was sold, along with No. 118 next door, to the Guaranty Trust Company.  The sale did not bode well for the survival of the two homes, since the institution purchased the adjoining lots to the rear at No. 121 and 123 East 66^th Street.

The following day Charles H. Sabin, president of the Guarantee Trust Company, announced he would “give up his new home, which he bought shortly after its completion…at 12 East Sixty-second street, for a larger house which he will build at 118 and 120 East Sixty-fifth street, through to 121 and 123 East Sixty-sixth street.”

On January 20, 1920, two months prior to the announcement, George B. Hedges had married Marjorie Burnes.  Called by the English artist Philip Burne-Jones, “the most beautiful woman in America,” Marjorie was divorced from Sidney C. Love and had, since then, gone by her maiden name.  She entered the marriage with her own substantial fortune, including “much real estate in Chicago,” according to the Evening Public Ledger.

For some reason, Charles Sabin’s grand plans for a block-through mansion never materialized.  No. 120 became home to George and Marjorie; who also maintained their country estate in Westbury, Long Island, with the double-entendre name, “The Hedges.”

photo by Alice Lum

The Hedges were in the house at least through 1928; but by 1930 it was home to Andrew Shiland and his wife, the former Harriette Louise McAlpin.  That year, on September 4, a daughter was born to the couple at their summer home in East Hampton.  The Shilands were already parents of daughter Leonore, who would be educated at Miss Porter’s School at Farmington, Connecticut and later at the Chateau Brillantmont in Lausanne, Switzerland; and then in Paris.

Harriette involved herself in charities, which frequently involved entertainments in the house.  On January 5, 1935 she hosted a reception and tea for the benefit of the children’s surgical and orthopedic wards of the New York Post-Graduate Hospital.

As the summer season of 1938 came to a close, the Shiland household was a flurry of activity as Leonore’s debut neared.  The festivities began on December 5 at the Bachelors Cotillion in Baltimore; and ended on December 20 with a reception in the 65^th Street house followed by a dinner at the Pierre.

photo by Alice Lum

After nearly two decades in the house, the Shilands moved on and in 1946 the house was converted to a two-family residence.  Today little has changed to the exterior since its radical make-over in 1902.  S. E. Gage’s somewhat liberal interpretation of its 18^th century prototype blends nicely into the handsome blend of styles along the block.

Reborn -- No. 16 East 64th Street

In 1878, as the East Side blocks branching away from the new Central Park were being developed, Edward Kilpatrick set to work on four brownstone-clad houses at Nos. 8, 10, 12 and 16 East 64^thStreet.  He commissioned brothers John and David Jardine to design the residences—two architects who were busy creating rows of such houses in the area for speculative developers.

Four stories tall over a English basements, the dwellings were completed in 1879.  They were typical of D. & J. Jardine’s work with high stone stoops, regimented openings, and commodious interiors.

By the early years of the 1890s No. 16 East 64^thStreet was home to lawyer Austin Abbott and his wife.  The pair were interested in the conditions of Native Americans.  The 1894 Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners noted that they were members of the Mohonk Conference; a group organized to work “for Indian Reform.”

Within four years the No. 16 was home to German-born author Carl Schurz.   Highly involved in American politics, Schurz’s first speech delivered in English was during the 1858 Douglas-Lincoln race for the United States Senate.  On January 29, 1898 a reporter from The New York Times described Schurz’s home on East 64^th:

“A visitor to Mr. Schurz’s literary workshop, at 16 East Sixty-fourth Street, finds nothing there that suggests Germany—except the distinctively German face of its master artisan and the Teutonic form of the dachshund that is always curled in a ball on the lounge within easy reach of caresses and kind words.”  The journalist noted that the library shelves were laden with books in a variety of languages; and said that the entrance hall “is a veritable portrait gallery of immortals.  No one enters this select company without having done something for the world.  Warriors, statesmen, musicians, artists, and authors are al represented, but a certain spirit of selection, you can see at once, has directed the formation of the gallery.  Men of thought rule here and not ‘men of destiny’ or of empire.”

Schurz's impressive career included positions of Secretary of the Interior, Missouri Senator, and US Ambassador to Spain -- photograph Library of Congress

The portrait gallery continued up the stairs into the sitting room, two flights up.  Paintings of Voltaire, Napoleon, and Frederick the Great shared wall space with Abraham Lincoln.  Like all upscale late Victorian homes, Schurz’s rooms were crowded with bric-a-brac and mementos.   “There is also the inevitable collection of curiosities, knives and swords from the Malay Archipelago and articles of virtu picked up in all parts of the world.  Among the more precious things of the collection are the cuff buttons work by John Quincy Adams when he fell in the Senate Chamber in 1848.”

Of course No. 16 was occupied only during the winter season.  Like all wealthy New Yorkers, Schurz closed the house during the warm months to escape to his summer place.  His was in Lake George, New York.

The author sold No. 16 in 1900 to William R. H. Martin, the head on one of Manhattan’s most recognized men’s shops, Rogers, Peet & Co.  The haberdasher paid about $65,000 for the house—about $1.86 million in today’s dollars.

Martin and his family would stay in the Victorian house for just two years.  When Stephen Pell purchased it in March 1902, he had plans for the building that did not include his own occupancy.  Pell was one of the directors of the Real Estate Security Co. and he recognized that the location of the property was more valuable than the out-of-date house.  To maximize his investment, he needed to make the house marketable to the wealthy home buyers filling the neighborhood.

Pell commissioned architect S. E. Gage to update the structure.  The two-year make-over included removing the brownstone façade and redoing the interiors.  The result was an up-to-date Edwardian home in the recently-popular neo-Federal style.  The red brick was laid in Flemish bond and the headers burned to resemble aging.   Gage moved the entrance to sidewalk level, while  keeping the basement service entrance below ground.  A handsome columned portico served as a balcony to the second floor, where two sets of tall French windows were framed in limestone.  The third floor was a near-wall of small-paned openings, separated by engaged Doric columns and united by a stone entablature.  The Federal motif was emphasized at the fourth floor with dramatic splayed lintels; and the high mansard roof was accented by three hooded dormers and three copper oculi.

The house as it appeared in 1913 -- The Sun, March 23, 1913 (copyright expired)

On March 30, 1905 The New York Times reported that Stephen H. P. Pell had sold the renovated house to Dudley Olcott, Jr.   Olcott was a banker with the Central Trust Company of New York, and was recently married to Sarah C. Levick.  The couple had been living at No. 171 West 71^st Street and shortly after purchasing the house, The New York Times added that they “spend their Summers at Normandie Park, Morristown, N. J.”   Among the items to be brought into the 64^th Street house would be the newly-completed portrait of Mrs. Olcott by Maurice Fromkes.  

Wealthy and modern-thinking, Olcott was an early automobile enthusiast.  In 1911 he would be selected for the position of Treasurer of the Automobile Club of America.   A year earlier, he discovered first-hand the potential dangers of the expensive pursuit.

On November 6, 1910 attorney John Ellis Roosevelt, cousin for the former President, was one of a group of Metropolitan Club members enjoying a three-day excursion in the country.  In his big car were seven other “prominent New Yorkers” and a second chauffeur.   Dudley Olcott, Jr. was among Roosevelt’s guests.  “It was their purpose to make a leisurely pace and enjoy the beauties of the Autumn landscape,” explained The New York Times.

At one point Roosevelt decided to take the wheel and his chauffeur, Alexander Ehbel, moved to the front passenger seat.   Passengers later said there was no speeding that Roosevelt was “going at not more than an ordinary country-road pace.”   But at a bend in the road, the wheels on the passenger side slipped off the road into soft ground and skidded.  The strain broke the axle and the car “turned turtle” as described by the newspaper.

Roosevelt’s chauffeur was instantly killed and several of the passengers were injured.  Olcott escaped without serious injuries.

Three years later, in January 1913 Olcott sold the house to  the Buek Construction Co.  The Real Estate Record and Guide noted that Olcott’s asking price was $150,000 and “one of the features of this house is a large laundry on the roof.”

A month later the firm advertised No. 16 for sale, calling it a “beautiful, five story, American basement private dwelling.”   The operators had apparently hoped for a quick turn-around, for a few weeks later, on Sunday, March 23, a different advertisement appeared in The Sun along with a photograph.   The caption read “Above house for sale--$30,000 cash will purchase.”

No. 16 became home to Dr. George Emerson Brewer.  Among the most esteemed surgeons in New York, he was Professor of Surgery in Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons; the Surgical Director at Presbyterian Hospital; and Consulting Surgeon to no fewer than six other hospitals and institutes.

Brewer’s high standing among the medical community was evidenced on the morning of November 15, 1915 when Mayor John Purroy Mitchel was stricken with appendicitis at his Riverside Drive home.  After making a preliminary diagnosis, the mayor’s physician summoned Dr. Brewer.  “They decided that an operation was necessary,” reported the New-York Tribune the following day. 

Brewer, who made time also to hold the rank of Colonel in the Medical Section of the US Army Reserve Corps, stayed on in the 64^thStreet house until 1921.  On January 25 that year the New-York Tribune ran a headline reading “Dr. G. E. Brewer Sells House in East 64^th Street.  Parts with Costly Dwelling Between 5^th and Madison Aves.”

At the time architect Frederick Junius Sterner had made a name for himself in New York by transforming outdated brownstone rowhouses into unrecognizable neo-Tudor, Mediterranean or Gothic fantasies.  It was Sterner who now bought Brewer’s house for what the Tribune said was about $130,000.

Although the house was still perfectly in fashion; Sterner did what he was best known for: renovate.   He replaced the second floor French windows with four grouped, small paned openings.  The two in the center formed a fanlight within their rectangular frames.  The portico and balcony were removed and two columns, surmounted by lion figures, acted as an entrance.  Above it all, the dormers were replaced with a single, broad studio dormer, nearly the width of the structure, that flooded the interior in light.

Sterner replaced the second floor windows and removed the portico.  A single long dormer replaced the original three.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

Inside Sterner rearranged Gage’s first and second story floor plans, and installed new stairs.   The completed renovation resulted in a 22-room house with six baths and an elevator.   When Sterner offered it for sale in October 1922, the New-York Tribune deemed it a “fine house.”

Apparently Richard Delafield agreed.  The 69-year old banker purchased the house for $110,000.  He had just been elevated to the position of Chairman of the Board of the National Park Bank of New York.   In reporting the sale the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide noted “Mr. Delafield, whose country home is at Tuxedo, will occupy the residence.”

Richard Delafield two months after the purchase of No. 16 -- The Banker's Magazine, December 1922 (copyright expired)

Following Delafield, in 1925, Richard Croker, Jr. moved in.  Croker was the son of the notorious Tammany Hall leader who garnered millions; much of it through bribe money received from proprietors of saloons, brothels and gambling dens.  Upon his death in 1922, the senior Croker left his second wife his entire estate, totalling upwards of $5 million.  His children, including Richard Jr., received nothing.

Richard Croker, Jr. would stay in the house until 1934, during which time he was indicted for failing to pay $7,612 in 1925 New York State income taxes.   He sold it to Miguel J. Ossorio who had made his fortune in the Philippine and Puerto Rican sugar industry.

Like almost all of the owners of the mansion, Don Miguel Ossorio would not stay long.  When he sold the house six years later, The New York Times reported on July 23, 1941 that “the building has an electric elevator and many modern improvements, but the purchaser prior to making the place his town house, will make extensive alterations.”  The newspaper made note of the elite neighborhood.  “The homes of Mrs. J. Sargent Cram, Roy Howard, Mrs. Orme Wilson Jr. and Adolph Pavenstedt are near by.”

Although the alterations preserved the structure as a single family house; that status would last only eleven more years.  In 1952 the Smith College Club of New York commissioned architects Rosario Candela and Paul Resnick to convert the interiors as a social club.   The renovations, completed in December 1953, provided for a lounge and private dining room on both the first and second floors; a bedroom, card room and library on the third; three bedrooms on the fourth floor and offices on the fifth.

Then, in 1990 Linda and Stuart Schlesinger purchased No. 16 for $3 million and began a four year restoration that returned it to a single family home.   “Restoration” meant undoing Frederick Sterner’s 1921 remake of the second floor.  The two arched French windows reappeared, as if they were never gone.

By 2005 the arched openings of the second floor had reappeared; however the portico and service entrance remained changed.  photo New York Observer October 24, 2015.

The period touches that they did not bring back were the warm red brick (it was hidden beneath a slathering of white paint or stucco) and the below-sidewalk level service entrance (it had been moved up to what had previously been a ground floor window).  Their hard work resulted in a $21.5 million sale in 2005.

Only the studio dormer remains of Sterner's changes.  photo by the author

The new owners picked up where the Schlesinger’s left off.  The portico was closely restored, the façade cleaned, and the basement entrance lowered.  The result is as near a match to S. E. Gage’s 1904 remake of the old Victorian rowhouse as could ever be expected.  (The interiors--well, not so much.)