The St. John Baptist House -- Nos. 231-233 East 17th Street

photo by Alice Lum

By 1875 the lower east side teemed with tenements crowded with impoverished immigrants, mostly German.  A quarter of a century earlier, in Clewer, England, the Sisterhood of Saint John Baptist had been formed to alleviate the suffering of the poor.  Now, in May 1876, a New York branch was established to further the work.

The sisterhood was part of the Protestant Episcopal Church and fell under the direct charge of the influential Bishop Henry C. Potter and the Reverend G. H. Houghton.  In 1877 Helen Folsom purchased two plots of land at Nos. 233 and 235 East 17^thStreet in the fashionable Stuyvesant Square neighborhood for the Sisterhood.

Helen came from the well-known Winthrop family of Massachusetts.  She purchased the land from Rutherford Stuyvesant, a family relative by marriage, and conveyed it to the Saint John the Baptist Foundation for $10.  Her magnanimous gesture was possibly prompted by a family interest—it is thought that Sister Helen Margaret was her niece.

Architect E. T. Littell set to work designing the “Mother House and Novitiate” that would house up to 40 sisters.   The building, most often referred to as the St. John Baptist House, was completed within the year.  Littell produced an asymmetrical Victorian Gothic pile in keeping with the religious organization it housed.  Between the pointed arches of paired Gothic windows within single brownstone arches were carved quatrefoils.  The offset doorway was approached by a steep, wide brownstone stoop and bandcourses of the same stone ran between each floor, doubling as sills.   Especially picturesque was the jerkin-headed gable that interrupted the steep slate-tiled roof.

The sisters quickly took up their vocations of tending to the poor and sick.   Headed by Sister Frances Constance, the Lady Superior, they visited and ministered to the residents of the tenements.  The New York Times noted “Their dress is very similar to that of Roman Catholic nuns, and when walking the streets they are easily mistaken for nuns.”

They established a “work-room for ecclesiastical embroidery” in the house, where women learned needlework and a means of income.  The Times said “They act as teachers to the pupils, and also devote themselves to general missionary work for the Church.”

Among the missionary sisters was Sister Gertrude Verena; one of the original group.  By 1880 the Holy Cross Mission had been established by the sisterhood a few blocks away on East 17^thStreet and Avenue C.   Early on the morning of November 7 Sister Gertrude Verena went to the mission, as she always did; then headed back sometime after 10:00.

A tall, thin stranger had been noticed in the neighborhood during the past few days loitering around Stuyvesant Square and sometimes blankly staring at the St. John the Baptist House.  Thomas Stanton lived in a rented room in the basement of No. 43 Grand Street and, according to The Sun on November 9, “For the last week he had been out of work, and to pass the time he strolled up to the park in Stuyvesant square, and sat on the benches.  He saw Sister Gertrude pass in and out of the house several times.”

Stanton was a Roman Catholic and assumed that the woman in the black habit was a Catholic nun.  That morning, as she approached the stairs of the St. John Baptist House, Stanton was abruptly standing there on the sidewalk.  The Times reported “When Sister Verena had approached to within 10 feet of the strange man, he suddenly drew from his pocket a six-shooter, and taking deliberate aim, without saying a word, began firing at her.  Two shots were discharged and entered the woman’s left thigh.”

Sister Gertrude Verena, despite her wounds, ran up the brownstone stoop.  Stanton pursued her, firing his weapon over and over until the rounds were spent.  One entered the sister’s right ankle, another went through her left thumb and the other two struck the stone steps.

At the time the other sisters were in the chapel at the rear of the house; but the gunfire was audible, followed by the frantic ringing of the doorbell by the wounded woman.  The sisters rushed to her aid, helping her into the hallway where she fell unconscious.

The National Police Gazette provided its vision of the attack on November 20, 1880 (copyright expired)

In the meantime, Stanton casually walked along East 17^thStreet toward Third Avenue audaciously carrying the spent weapon in his hand.  The two men who had witnessed the shooting from across the street disappeared before they could be questioned.  It was a stalwart newsboy who seized Stanton and held him until Police Officer William B. Deems arrived to arrest him.

The National Police Gazette, under the headline “The Very Stones Cry Shame—A Little Sister of the Poor Shot While Returning From an Errand of Mercy,” opined “It was clear that he was insane, and he was locked up to await an examination.”

Indeed, Stanton appeared to be disturbed.  He told investigators he had been bewitched by the sister, who harbored a demon who spoke to him.  “I didn’t want to hurt her.  I only wanted to scare her and make the witch leave her,” The Sun quoted him as saying on November 9, 1880.  The witch, he said, was “always around me and talking to me.  No; I can’t see her, and never did see her.  I can’t repeat anything that she says, but I always hear her talking, day and night.”

For some reason the innocent Sister Gertrude Verena drew his attention.  “He saw Sister Gertrude pass in and out of the house several times, and on Sunday he made up his mind that she was the cause of all his trouble.”

Meanwhile, the sister was cared for by Dr. Stuyvesant F. Morris, the physician of the House, who pronounced the wounds “very serious, but not necessarily fatal,” according to The New York Times.  It was believed that the heavy fabric of her habit had helped break the force of the bullets.

Within two days The Sun reported that she was “in a fair way to recover” and Dr. Morris believed he would be able to extract “the bullet imbedded in the muscular tissues of her back” that day.

The wounded Sister Gertrude Verena desperately climbed the brownstone stoop seeking help.  At the time the school addition, at left, had not been constructed. -- photo by Alice Lum

The sisters’ work continued and in 1883 the plot at No. 331 abutting the House to the west was acquired for a school.   Architect Charles C. Haight received the commission to design the structure which sympathetically expanded on Littell’s original plan.   The St. John Baptist School doubled as a boarding and day school, and was described by “The Centennial History of the Protestant Episcopal Church” the following year “a new school-house for young ladies” which would accommodate about 30 pupils.  Haight’s building projected beyond the St. John the Baptist House nearly to the property line.  The addition resulted in the entrance of House becoming visually centered.

By 1892, in addition to the embroidery school in the House and the St. John Baptist School next door, the sisters had undertaken a staggering amount of work.  They were in charge of St. Hilda’s School, a boarding school “for young ladies,” in Morristown, New Jersey; the St. Andrew’s Hospital for Convalescent Women at 213 East 17^th Street; the Mission of the Holy Cross and a Girls Day School in connection with it; St. Anne’s Cottage, a summer home for the women and children of the Mission; the Midnight Mission on Greene Street in the desolate area of brothels and vice where the sisters created “a refuge for fallen women;” St. Michael’s Home on Long Island which Living Church Quarterly described as “an offshoot of the Midnight Mission, chiefly for young and hopeful cases, and partly prevential;” and the Christ Church Home, an institution for children in South Amboy, New Jersey.  In addition to this all, Living Church Quarterly reminded readers that the sisters carried on “mission work among the German population of the East Side of New York.”

In 1915 the church sold the East 17^th Street buildings to Evodkim Mescherky for $70,000—about $1 million today—who quickly established the Russian National St. Vladimir’s Home.    The buildings were little changed and Russian immigrants, some having fled the recent turmoil at home, were housed here. 

On March 24, 1918, with Russia caught up in World War I and revolution, Colonel Nicolay Nicolaywich Koch was living here.  Formerly a Colonel in the Russian Army, he issued a passionate plea to his countrymen to help fight Germany.

He said in part, “The world calls us an ignorant, unfortunate and poverty stricken people.  But this is only half of a misfortune.  It is not our fault; but, the most terrible thing of all, we are accused of treachery before our faithful allies in the fight for the world’s freedom.”  He said that because many called the Russians “contemptible,” that “many of us, because of lack of courage, begin to consider concealing our Russian nationality.”

His emotional plea continued “To you, sons of our downtrodden, beloved, and only recently great, free Russia, I appeal in this terrible hour of unheard-of trials and beg you from the depth of my tortured heart to firmly decide to stand up and defend our native land, threatened with long slavery and innumerable sufferings, to free her from the iron grasp of the tyrants.”

Among the Colonel’s co-residents here were some who openly supported the Bolshevik party.  When two of them joined like-minded protestors in a demonstration in Washington Square in October 1919, they found themselves behind bars.

The New-York Tribune reported on October 12 that “Six men and a woman who were arrested Wednesday, when several hundred aliens professing Bolshevik convictions tried to parade from Washington Square without a permit, were sentenced to six months in the workhouse yesterday.”   Among those arrested for disorderly conduct were 28-year old Karl Schula and 25-year old David Klipper of St. Vladimir’s Home.   

The judge was particularly mindful of the group’s banners; one in particular which read “Deport Us to Russia—We’ll Be Free There.”  The New-York Tribune noted “He agreed heartily with the suggestion of some one in the packed courtroom that Henry Ford or some other wealthy man would earn national gratitude by chartering a ship and giving free passage to those who approved of Lenine and Trotzky.”

On July 18, 1920 Eastern Orthodox history was made in the chapel of St. Vladimir’s Home.   The former chapel of the Sisterhood of St. John Baptist was now the Catholic Church of the Transfiguration, a branch of the Holy Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Nicholas.    The Times reported that “For the first time in the 1,894 years of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Litany of St. Chrysostom will be said tomorrow morning in the English language.”

It was an extraordinary break in tradition, possibly prompted by financial problems.  The Times noted that “As the Russian Church in America has been embarrassed financially ever since the revolution in Russia, the English branch will be maintained by voluntary contributions.  All pecuniary aid from Russia stopped after the Bolsheviki took $200,000,000 from the churches there.”

The Church of the Transfiguration would not be here long, however.  A month later the building was sold in a foreclosure sale and was acquired by the Russian Church Relief Corporation for $64,000.  Just four months later, on December 10, newspapers reported that the buildings had been sold.

Controversy in the brick and brownstone buildings came to an end as the newly-formed Smith College Club converted them to club rooms, dining rooms and twelve sleeping rooms per floor above the first floor.  Here alumnae of the prestigious women’s college found temporary housing; and fund raising and educational events were held.  For eight years the society pages would publicize the glamorous affairs.  One of the first was the benefit dance “and bridge” at the Plaza Hotel on the day after Easter that year, a month after the club moved into their new clubhouse.

Then, in June 1929, the Smith College Club sold the building to the Friendly League for Christian Service; an organization for business woman.  The Times reported that it “will be opened as a home for business woman on July 1.”

A month later the newspaper would write about some of the organization's unusual features.  “The new Friendly Centre which has been opened by the Friendly League for Christian Service…has removed any age limit on employed women, and it is for business women that the residence will be operated.  Most homes of this kind do not permit women to stay after they are 35 years of age.  Nor will the centre refuse admission to a business woman who receives a generous salary.”

The article did point out that the cheapest rooms would be held for financially struggling girls.  “The reasonable rooms, however, will be reserved for employed girls and women with small incomes.”  The women living here enjoyed a library, lounge and auditorium.

The Friendly Centre would stay on in the building for decades; finally selling it in 1996 to the Salvation Army.   A minor conversion updated the facility, with laundries and offices on each of the floors, along with the bedrooms, and a chapel on the first floor.

The 2080 square foot apartment above was listed in 2013 for $2.3 million http://www.corcoran.com/nyc/Listings/Display/2578861 

Then in 2008 the venerable structure was converted to luxury condominiums.    No trace of the interiors remains where sisters in black habits once shuffled dutifully about.  But while the windows have been replaced; the exteriors are remarkable intact and still delightfully picturesque.

photo by Alice Lum

The 1857 John Foster House -- No. 218 East 18th Street

photo by Alice Lum

By 1856 the land that had once made up the Stuyvesant Square section of what had been Peter Stuyvesant’s expansive farm—the Bouwerie—saw rapid development.  Streets and avenues had been laid out, soon to be lined with brick and brownstone rowhouses that established the area as an elegant residential neighborhood.

That year builder John Foster began work on his own residence at No. 218 East 18^th Street on land leased from the Stuyvesant Family.  Unlike the dour Greek Revival homes built a decade earlier that abutted his property stretching westward, Foster’s Italianate mansion would be a bit cheerier, a bit showier, and a bit more dramatic.

Completed a year after ground was broken, Foster’s home was the showplace of the block.    High above the rusticated English basement the carved brownstone entrance was lavish.  The heavily ornamented enframement enclosed a deeply-recessed double doorway.  Two richly carved and paneled doors protected the inner double-doors and provided extra security at night and in inclement weather.  The reserved lintels of the neighboring houses contrasted with the graceful triple-molded arched (shouldered) lintels of the Foster house.  The high ceilings inside and the additional story resulted in the house looming above its neighbors.  A decade later when architect Julius Boeckell designed four somewhat subdued Italianate residences on the empty lot to the east, he included near-copies of the Foster entrance.

Photo by Alice Lum

John Foster and his wife Anne moved into the elegant new home with their children.  The Fosters had lived relatively nearby, at the northeast corner of 11^th Street and Third Avenue.  The children, whose ages ranged from 11 to 21 at the time, received the education of privileged youngsters.  Son William had attended public schools before being sent to a boarding school in 1849 in Jonesville, 16 miles north of Troy, New York.  The following year he attended the Fergusonville Academy, in Delhi, New York, then finished his studies at Jonesville.



An elaborate plaster ceiling medalion can be glimpsed through the doorway -- photo by Alice Lum

Of the Foster children, it would be William who brought grief and unwanted notoriety to the East 18^th Street home.   The same year that the family moved into the new mansion, William married Jane Norton on September 17.  Three months later they sailed for Australia where they lived for three years.    The same month that Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated and one month before the attack on Fort Sumter William and Jane returned to New York.  He was almost immediately appointed Inspector of Sewers by Thomas Stepheus, President of the Croton Board.

In 1871 William Foster tried a new profession—that of streetcar conductor.  On April 26 tragedy would change the lives of a number of people, including the Foster family.   William ran one trip on Car No. 73, then approached the starter and asked to be excused.  He later explained, “because I was unfit for duty; I was drunk…Drink had crazed my brain, and to the cursed demon, which steals into society of all kinds, and works its damning deeds, may I render thanks for the position I now occupy.”

At the time of his explanation, William Foster was sitting in a cell in the Tombs awaiting his execution for murder.

When Foster was excused from duty, he got on a streetcar at 16^th Street heading to 22^nd Street and rode in the conductor compartment.  There were only three passengers in the car:  Avery D. Putnam, Jennie Duval and her daughter Virginia.  Putnam had encountered the women outside their home at No. 762 Broadway.   They were on the way to the Church of the Advent on 46^th Street where another daughter, Anna Lillie, was singing.   Putnam had graciously offered to escort the women to the church.

A lurid pamphlet published under the title “The Car-Hook Tragedy--Life, Trial and Execution of Wm. Foster,” recounted that Foster “pressing his face against the glass in proximity to Miss Jennie, who had just sat down, smirked in an insulting manner.  This brute, one William Foster, an ex-conductor of the line, seemingly not satisfied, opened the door and peered in, still grinning diabolically toward the ladies.”

Each time that Jennie Duval would close the door to the conductor’s compartment, Foster would slide it open again.  “Mr. Putnam now, becoming indignant, rose from his seat and passed out to the front platform of the car, closing the door after him.  Here Mr. Putnam remonstrated with Foster for his conduct, and begged him, as Madame Duval was suffering from nervous prostration, not to annoy her.”

Rather than resolving the situation, it worsened it.   Foster entered the car and sat next to young Virginia.  Her mother grabbed the girl and moved her away from him.

“What is it your business?” he demanded of her.

“She is my daughter, sir.”

The drunken Foster then turned his attention to Putnam and tried to provoke him by asking how far the three were traveling.  Receiving no response at all, he threatened Putnam saying “Well, I’m going as far as you, and before you get out I’ll give you hell.”

When the car reached 46^th Street—more than 20 blocks farther than Foster originally intended to ride—Jennie and her daughter stepped off the car.   As Putnam started out, Foster struck him in the head with an iron bar called a car-hook.   The injured man fell to the curb and Jennie Duval screamed for help.

Foster clanged the car bell, signaling the conductor to leave.  The horses pulled the streetcar northward while Foster threw the murder weapon into the path of the car and disappeared into the darkness.   With no one around to help Putnam, the women pulled his lifeless body to the sidewalk.

By 3:00 in the morning, having been identified by the conductor, Foster was arrested at his home.   A sensational murder trial followed that was closely followed by the public.  The case became fodder for Sunday sermons throughout the city. 

Following his conviction and sentencing to death, the Governor received a letter from Putnam’s widow asking for Foster’s reprieve.  Rumors were published in the newspapers that John Foster had offered her $15,000 (about $65,000 by today’s standards) to issue the letter. 

John Foster wrote his own letter to Governor Dix on March 12, 1873 denying that he had bribed Mrs. Putnam.  Written from the house on 18^thStreet, in it he stressed “I am not aware that I ever saw Mrs. Putnam; but I deny most positively that I have offered or paid her any sum whatever, and I do not know that any of my friends have offered or paid her anything for her letter.  I believe the letter was prompted by the great kindness of her heart.”

In the end, and possibly because of the scandal of the purported bribe, Governor Dix refused to change the verdict to life imprisonment.   It was a politically- and socially-applauded decision.  One citizen wrote “Truly, the maxim, ‘Let justice be done though the heavens fall,’ no longer obsolete, has been electrified into new life; and let all the people good and true rejoice thereat.  In consideration, therefore, of his incalculable services to the nation in times of peace and war, and with all the proper humility of a private citizen, I nominate General John A. Dix for President of the United States.”

William Foste receives word that the Governor had not issued a repeal -- The Car-Hook Tragedy, 1873 (copyright expired)

At 8:30 in the morning of Friday, March 21, 1873, the day Foster was to be hanged, Flora Foster, a matron of the prison, entered Foster’s cell with a cup of warm coffee.  The prisoner was lying on his cot, unresponsive.  After shaking him repeatedly and realizing something was gravely wrong, she said “Oh, you wretched man, what have you been doing?  What have you taken?”

William Foster had taken poison in an attempt to end his life before being taken to the gallows.  The matron forced the coffee down his throat, which caused him to vomit.  She immediately called for more hot coffee in order to induce more vomiting.  The prison physician, Dr. Nealis, and keepers poured cold water over his head and walked him up and down the corridor.

Sheriff Brennan arrived, asking Dr. Nealis if Foster as in any condition to go into the yard for his execution.  “He is if he is carried out right way,” replied the doctor.

Foster was carried to the gallows for his scheduled 10:00 execution.  As the religious exercises were being conducted, Dr. Nealis carefully watched the prisoner.  The physician warned the Sheriff that if Dr. Tyng, the minister, did not speed things up, Foster would die from the poison before he could be executed.

As described in "The Car-Hook Tragedy," “For five minutes the reading continued, and Foster’s weakness had so increased that Sheriff Brennan whispered sharply to Dr. Tyng, ‘It’s too long.’  The reverend gentleman indeed brought the service to a sudden close, and, turning quickly to Foster, grasped his right hand and hurried away, overcome with emotion, followed by his assistants,” described."

William Foster, whose drunken action ended an innocent man’s life, was hanged at 9:18 and was pronounced dead at 9:33 a.m.

A year later, on Saturday February 7, 1874 John and Anne Foster’s youngest daughter, Emeline, died in the house at the age of 29.  On Tuesday morning, February 10, her funeral was held in the parlor before her burial in Greenwood Cemetery.

photo by Alice Lum

Following John Foster’s death the mansion was leased by John R. G. Hassard.  The respected writer had been editor of the Catholic World, but was most widely known as the musical critic and literary editor of the New-York Tribune.  He published several books, including “Life of Archbishop Hughes” in 1866; a textbook, the “History of the United States” in 1878; and “A Pickwickian Pilgrimage” in 1881.

The New York Times commended his diplomatic critiques.  “When he condemned a book it was always done in a singularly gentle manner, which never bore a spiteful or savage stamp.  The same can also be said of his musical criticisms.”

Hasssard’s health began failing in 1879 but he worked on for nearly nine years.  Finally on April 18, 1888 he died in the house on 18^th Street from “pulmonary consumption.”  The highly-regarded journalist received wide-spread posthumous praise in the newspapers; his obituary in the New-York Tribuneconsuming nearly half a page.  His neighbor and good friend, William Winter wrote “Among the old-fashioned phrases of eulogy there is one that long usage has rendered conventional; but it is very expressive:  He was a gentleman and a scholar.”

Hassard’s widow lived on in the house.  When Monsignor  Thomas S. Preson, Vicar-General of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York and pastor of St. Ann’s Church on East 12^thStreet became seriously ill, he was brought to the Hassard house.  John Hassard, a devout Catholic, had written several Catholic historical works and had become close friends with the priest.   The Sun explained on October 27, 1891 that “Mgr. Preston was at the home of the widow of John R. G. Hassard, at 218 East Eighteenth street…which is in his parish, in order to be free from the bustle which the knowledge of his illness at the rectory would occasion there.”  As the monsignor’s health deteriorated, he was removed from the Hassard house in mid-October.

By 1893 the house was home to the 30-year old Dr. Simeon B. Minden.  The doctor, whom The Evening World deemed “a reputable physician” on July 21, 1893, would fall from grace decades later.   On March 29, 1921 Minden, now practicing from No. 230 East 69^th Street, performed an abortion on Mrs. Catherine Riga.  Three days later the 32 year old woman died.  Although Minden declared his innocence, he was later convicted of manslaughter.

At the turn of the century the land was owned by Stuyvesant Fish; but the house was still in the possession of the John Foster estate.   On November 27, 1907 The Times noted that Fish had mortgage the property to Oliver G. Barton for $12,000 for five years.  

On January 31, 1914 the New York Herald reported that the Estate of John Foster had leased the house.  But at the end of that year the tangled ownerships were straightened out when on December 5 The New York Times wrote that “Stuyvesant Fish, Jr., has transferred to his wife, Mildred Dick Fish, as a gift No. 218 East Eighteenth Street.”  The gift included both the land and the house.

Within only a few years the neighborhood would no longer be one of upscale private homes and the former mansion became a rooming house.   Along with the change came a different type of resident.  Eighteen year old Joseph Moore was among them.  Moore and three other young men were arrested on Broadway late one Saturday night in November, 1921, charged with felonious assault.  The New York Times noted “Each defendant was fined $3, except Moore, who was fined $25.”

On April 23, 1930 20-year old Joseph Brustein was living here when he was arrested and fined $2 along with two friends.  The fine was “for haranguing a crowd and distributing circulars for a May Day demonstration of workers, sailors, soldiers and marines,” said The New York Times. “The three Communists were charged with disorderly conduct.”

The following year Paul Leibscher and Bertha Baretz bought the house.   John Moore was still living here and he was still getting into trouble.  Although he said he made his living as a clerk he was, more accurately, a pickpocket.  On March 7, 1938 he found himself under arrest for the 41^st time since 1914 and on his way to a 100-day sentence in the workhouse.

After owning the property for nearly two decades, Liebscher sold the house in September 1959 to The American Friends Service Committee.   Within the year it had been converted to offices.  The group, a Quaker organization, had been founded during World War I with the goal of addressing the root causes of war and violence.  In 1947 it was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1964 the house was also home to the New York Peace Information Center, which offered publications like “The Poor Man’s Guide to War/Peace Literature.”  By the mid-1970s the Center for Global Perspectives was here.  Financed by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, it concentrated on the primary and second grades; introducing children to “interdependence, change and communication” in regard to peace studies.

The trend continued as the 20^th century drew to a close.  In 1994 the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation found its home here.  The organization says of itself that “It has a long-standing commitment to efforts which foster and protect social, economic, and political rights and which promote the development of democratic institutions.”

As it was in 1857 the John Foster house is the star of the block.  Its brick and brownstone façade is impeccably maintained; a reminder of the time when the street was a gracious residential neighborhood.

photo by Alice Lum

The 1883 Sidney Webster House -- No. 245 East 17th Street

photo by Alice Lum

When the young and optimistic Sidney Webster left Gilmanton, New Hampshire to attend Yale University, he could have had no idea of the remarkable career that was ahead of him.  Webster was graduated in 1848 and from Harvard Law School two years later.  The young attorney’s “capacity for statesmanship and the management of men,” as later noted by The New York Times, caught the attention of newly-elected President Franklin Pierce.

The President took the 24-year old to Washington with him to serve as his private secretary.  Throughout the Pierce Administration Webster became closely acquainted with the nation’s leaders, among them United States Senator Hamilton Fish of New York.

With the end of Pierce’s term of office in 1857, Webster returned to New York and on June 7, 1860 married Sarah Morris Fish, the eldest daughter of Hamilton Fish.   The couple moved into a wide rowhouse at No. 245 East 17^th Street in the fashionable Stuyvesant Square neighborhood.

While Sidney Webster practiced law in New York, his father-in-law was appointed to President Grant’s Cabinet as Secretary of State in 1869.  He routinely consulted Webster on matters of constitutional law—an area in which Webster was regarded as an authority.

By 1883 Sidney Webster had accumulated a substantial fortune.

That year Stuyvesant Fish, Webster’s brother-in-law, persuaded him to become a Director of the Illinois Central Railroad.   At the same time Edward H. Harriman also joined the railroad as director.  Not only did the two strike up an intimate friendship that would last for decades, but Harriman relied on Webster’s deep experience in public life, his astute judgment and his detailed understanding of the law in many of his most critical business decisions.

In the meantime, the house in which the Websters lived had become decidedly passé.   Esteemed architect Richard Morris Hunt was commissioned to design a new residence for the site.  The same year that Webster entered the Illinois Central Railroad the new house was completed.

Hunt produced an asymmetrical, modified French Renaissance home like nothing in the neighborhood—or in the city.  The high brownstone first floor created a base for the three stories of orange brick above.  Ornamentation was reserved, for the most part, for the top-most floor above a brownstone cornice where four joined dormers framed the steep roof behind. 

Wonderful metal ornamentation drips onto the slate shingles of the roof -- photo by Alice Lum

In keeping with their wealth and social status, the Websters were expected to maintain a country retreat.  In April 1899 the attorney purchased the George F. Jones estate in Newport, Pen Craig and Pen Craig Cottage.

The Times reported on the purchase.  “There is a handsome villa on it, as well as greenhouses, a gardener’s cottage, and a landing pier.  Pen Craig Cottage, situated on the other side of Harrison Avenue, together with the adjoining lot [is] also included in Mr. Webster’s purchase."

All the while Webster divided his free time among his various gentlemen’s clubs: the Knickerbocker, the Manhattan, Metropolitan and the exclusive Union Clubs.

Among the sparse decoration was this beautifully-carved panel between the first floor openings-- photo by Alice Lum

All the while that Webster practiced law and kept his affairs above board, his close friend Edward Harriman was deeply involved in the back rooms of politics.  In 1904 Theodore Roosevelt approached him, asking him to raise $200,000 for the New York State campaign.  In exchange Roosevelt promised to remove Chauncey M. Depew from the Senate and send him off to Paris as U.S. Ambassador.

Harriman raised the money, the Republicans won the election and the President backed away from his promise.  Harriman was surprised and outraged.

In January 1906 he wrote a lengthy letter to Sidney Webster, addressed to his home on East 17^th Street.  In it he detailed the agreement with the President  and how he had been double-crossed.    In a mysterious manner never quite explained, the letter was leaked to The New York World, which published it in April 1907.

The letter, which became popularly known as the “Where do I stand?” letter, caused a political scandal.   Roosevelt’s response was denial.  “Mr. Harriman was duly branded as a liar by the President,” said The New York Times.

Through it all Webster remained unscathed; his sterling reputation untarnished.

On May 30, 1910, Webster died at Pen Craig in Newport.  Sarah remained in the house thirteen more years.  Then, on February 16, 1923, she died in her “cottage” in Newport, as her husband had.

Two months later the Websters’ only son, Hamilton Fish Webster, sold the family home.

Charles Tatham purchased the house.   A partner in Tatham and Brothers, makers of lead shot and tin-lined iron pipe, he was an accomplished fencer and for years was treasurer of the Fencers’ Club of New York.  The family was still living here in 1932 when the engagement of daughter Anne Sands Tatham to Lawrence Jacob Abbot was announced.

The marriage would bring together two literary families—Anne’s grandfather was Edward Payson Roe, a well-known novelist and author of “Barriers Burned Away;” while Abbot’s parents were both editors and writers.

Following the Tathams, No. 245 became home to Dr. Benjamin Stich and his wife Mollie.  Stich was a diagnostician with the New York Post-Graduate Hospital.  On August 11, 1942, on his 50^thbirthday, Dr. Stich suffered a heart attack in the house and died.

In the early 1960s pianist Hazel Scott lived here following her divorce from Democratic Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.  She was publicly embarrassed in 1962 when an income-tax lien was filed against her for $44,198.18 in unpaid Federal income taxes.

Then, through the 1980s and 1990s the house was used by the Beth Israel Medical Center as a psychiatric clinic.  In 1995 it also housed the hospital’s Nutrition Center.  Here participants were educated in, among other things, which foods caused weight gain, how to read food labels, how to modify recipes and how to make sensible food selections in restaurants.

Sadly, the clinical use decimated the interiors.  By 2004 when the home was taken over by the East End Temple, little was left to salvage.   BKSK Architects was commissioned to renovate the house into a synagogue and the interiors were essentially gutted.

Architectural purists no doubt shudder at the replacement doors -- photo by Alice Lum

Although most of the architectural detailing is gone, replaced by sleek modern designs, the library retains its 1883 oak mantle and paneling.  And outside, Hunt’s dramatic French Renaissance design survives.

Part of Hunt's 1883 oak woodwork was salvageable -- photo http://www.interiordesign.net/article/476749-Silence_is_Golden.php

Rainsford House -- Nos. 208-210 East 16th Street

photo by Alice Lum

The Reverend Francis James Lundy was educated at Oxford and, after living with his wife Louisa and daughter in Canada for years, they moved to Newburgh, New York.   On Sunday, April 7, 1868 the pastor was celebrating mass at St. Paul’s Church.  As he placed the collection on the communion table, he collapsed.

Within 36 hours the preacher whom The American Quarterly Church Review deemed “of more than ordinary ability,” was dead.

Louisa and her daughter moved to New York City within the year, eventually purchasing a four-story brick and brownstone house at No. 208 East 16^th Street in the stylish Stuyvesant Park neighborhood.  The women earned extra money by renting the bedrooms they did not use.

The house was conveniently near St. George’s Episcopal Church where the Lundy women dutifully worshiped.   Then, on October 5, 1899, the 90-year old Louisa Lundy died in the house from an apparent massive stroke.

All the while the Lundy women were living in No. 208 a group of women connected with St. George’s Church, the deaconesses, were administering to the sick and poor.   The women were both “trained and consecrated,” as Henry Anstice’s “History of St. George’s Church in the City of New York” pointed out.  There were not only essentially nurses, but “junior clergy.”

The eminent pastor of St. George’s, Dr. William S. Rainsford called their work in the tenement houses “the very stay and backbone of all that we do.”  But Rainsford was dissatisfied that the deaconesses were forced to live in the rented building on East 16^thStreet where they had been since 1892.   Using, in part, a $3,000 from an anonymous donor, the determined pastor obtained the Lundy house and the matching home next door at No. 210 in 1901 to be converted into the new Deaconess Home.

The church commissioned architect George Wood to redesign and combine the two structures.  Completed a year later, the transformation was remarkable.  Wood created a near-whimsical and definitely romantic concoction of styles with joyful abandon of strict historical discipline. 

The first floor, clad in brownstone, leaped from the pages of a romantic Tudor legend.  Deep many-paned bay windows flanked the arched entrance, forming balconies at the second floor.   The building rose in brick with brownstone trim until it reached the roof line where it decided it was tired of being Tudor and would rather be Flemish.  Three picturesque Dutch gables hide the pitched roof, flanked by heavy carved brownstone ornaments.   Lancet windows, useful for archers in earlier centuries, pierced the end gables—perhaps in case of attack.

The brownstone-clad ground floor was Tudor in style -- photo by Alice Lum

 In February 1902 the senior warden presented the deed to the two lots to the vestry.  Rainsford called the structure “the most beautiful deaconess house in the United States, adequate in every way, charming and comfortable.”  The residents of the neighborhood staged a show and fair that netted $600 towards the new house and the ladies of the church donated $5,000 “for the proper furnishing.”

Lancet openings that pierce the Flemish gables add a picturesque, romantic touch -- photo by Alice Lum

The bishop conducted the dedication service on April 10 after which the deaconesses moved into their new home.   While Wood had been lighthearted in his exterior design, he was serious on providing the necessary internal features.  On the fourth floor was the infirmary where patients who had been released from the hospitals yet were not strong enough to fare for themselves were given better nourishment and a happier environment than they would receive in the tenement houses.

Girls and women, worked to the point of exhaustion and near sickness, were welcome to stay until they were feeling stable again.

The greatest health threat to the poor of New York City at the time was tuberculosis.    When the Deaconess Home opened, 100,000 people were dying of the disease every year.   On January 8, 1903 Virginia Young, one of the deaconesses, expressed to a New York Tribune writer “Tuberculosis is the Juggernaut of the tenements.  Fully seven-eighths of the deaths on our list are from tuberculosis.”

photo by Alice Lum

Contemporary treatment of tuberculosis entailed providing fresh air and sunlight.   These were luxuries unavailable to the poor of the city.   Doctors recommended erecting tents in backyards for patients; but there were no backyards in New York.  Dr. N. Gilbert Seymour noted in The Medical Record,  “Back yards large enough to serve this purpose are beautifully lacking in most of our New York tenements, and, when present, are  preempted by everything from stray cats to the week’s wash.  It is often only by moving an entire family into light and sunny quarters, and providing a window tent for the patient, that we have been able to solve the problem for some of our class patients at St. George’s.”

The “light and sunny quarters” at St. George’s to which the Medical Record referred was the ingenious idea of a “roof camp.”  In February 1909 the top floor and the roof were converted to include a “bedroom” (used as a dressing room, since no patients were permitted to sleep indoors), a bathroom, private hall, dining room, and diet kitchen.  The roof was partly covered in glass and open on the south end.  Dr. Seymour stressed that “The bright colored awnings and window boxes gay with flowers make a cheerful picture on sunny springs days; but, summer or winter, rain or shine our patients are required to be out.”

The patients were required to take certain responsibilities for their own improvement.  They took and recorded their own temperatures and weights.   Hot meals were provided from the house kitchen, after which all utensils and dishes were sterilized by boiling.

It was an ambitious and commendable venture; but the size of the roof limited the project.  “As the roof space is limited,” wrote Seymour, “not more than twelve patients by day and five at night can be accommodated, and only women and children are thus provided for at present.”

The cost of running the roof camp was about $18 a week in 1910—or about 28 cents per patient per day.

One of the staff, Deaconess Young, decided that year to donate a tree to the church that would be planted along the street in memory of her father.  It seemed like a nice idea.  And the rest of the parish thought so too.

Deaconess Young’s idea of a single memorial tree spread throughout the congregants.  Before long the Sunday School,  choir, the Mothers’ Club, the boys of the Trades School, the Girls’ Friendly Society and other groups decided to gather up $20 to purchase a tree as well. 

On April 23, 1910, St. George Day, a massive festival and ceremony took place as 20 Norway maple trees were planted along East 16^th Street.   St. George was there along with a scary dragon whose slaying was reenacted to the terror of some of the little children.

“The dragon had the real great success of the day,” reported The New York Times, “for he was so realistic that the little children were terribly frightened at first and there were unexpected April showers before they could be reassured and know that the dragon had really been killed.”

The work of the deaconesses in improving the health and lifestyles of the tenement residents was increased when nutrition classes were instituted in February 1919.    Two of the large sunlit rooms of the first floor were used—one as an “assembly room” for children and the other for examinations and treatment.  The assembly room had desks, scales, filing cabinets and a height gauge.   The other room was outfitted as a clinic with a screened bed for examinations, a desk, and emergency medical and surgical supplies.

Ivy, as romantic-looking as the architecture, clings to colorful brickwork and deep stone carving -- photo by Alice Lum

To make the atmosphere more appealing, the deaconesses attempted to avoid a doctor’s office environment.  Hospital Social Servicenoted “The plain human interest of the volunteers, combined with the fact that the rooms are sunny and usually full of flowers, has made the class really a ‘health class’ rather than a necessary and frankly disagreeable place associated with sickness.”

The problem for the deaconesses was how to lure the children to nutrition and health classes.  Their solution was ingenious.   They approached the mothers and quietly let them know that only a select few, favored children were being invited to be examined and attend classes.

Human nature did the rest.

Not only did the invited children show up, but some uninvited came as well.  Over 200 children enrolled in the classes which met three times a week from 3:00 until 6:00.   “The unsuspecting little tots don’t realize that their pet pastimes are being used against them,” said the Hospital Social Service, “and they listen with the greatest interest to stories depicting the dark deeds of the Coffee Witch or the adventure of Prince Lolly Pop never knowing that they are being painlessly taught all sorts of disagreeable data about Nutrition.”

In 1938 the church decided on another use for the Deaconess House.    It was renovated and dedicated on October 31 by Reverend Elmore McNeill McKee as “Rainsford House,” named in honor of the former rector.   The building would be used as a residence for young single business men who were required to devote part of their time in community service in the neighborhood.

The Times reported that “Fourteen recent college graduates representing various professions will live there with the Rev. Brank Fulton as senior president.”  The men agreed to work at least one night every week at the Henry Street Settlement, the Flanagan Youth Center, Greenwich House or another similar institution helping the poor.

photo by Alice Lum

Rainsford House continued to house single, professional men for decades.  In 1950 when the male members of St. George’s Church vied one another for a bake-off for charity, the men of Rainsford House joined in.  The Times reported on their utter failure.  “Judged the worst cake from every angle and awarded the ‘Also Ran’ prize was the product concocted jointly by the young men of Rainsford House.  Anticipating the award, its bakers attached to the cake an inscription that read: ‘Why woman’s place is in the home.’”

In the 1960s Rainsford House enjoyed social gatherings twice a month with the Henry Hill Pierce House, St. George’s women’s residence across the street at No. 209 East 16^thStreet.  The church openly admitted that “romance is officially encouraged” and the gatherings resulted in an average of two weddings a year.

photo by Alice Lum

The building was used for a time in the 1970s by Odyssey House—a facility offering treatment to drug and alcohol abusers and the mentally ill.  Today it is Olmstead Hall where St. George’s soup kitchen serves a free hot meal to around 140 people each week, continuing the work the deaconesses began over a century ago.

The 1883 St. George Residence -- Nos. 223-225 East 17th Street

photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

In 1882 the notion of high-toned families living in an apartment building rather than private homes was still too radical for most society people to handle.  It was Caroline Astor who reportedly once scoffed at those who “live on shelves.”

Developers who took the risk in erecting upscale apartment houses not only laid out the floorplans to resemble private homes; with costly mantels, floorings and woodwork; they did careful marketing.  Because apartments were associated with the dingy tenement buildings crowded with impoverished immigrants, innovative terms like “French flats” made the distinction. 

Thomas Osborne purchased and demolished two residences at Nos. 223 and 225 East 17^th Street for his project.  His risk was lessened by the location, in the fashionable Stuyvesant Square neighborhood.  Sitting at the edge of the square was St. George’s Episcopal Church where J. P. Morgan was senior warden.  Osborne would piggy-back on the church’s high-end reputation, calling his proposed building the St. George Residences.

The widely-talented Osborne not only served as developer, builder, and architect; he owned the stoneworks company that would supply the material for the decorative elements.  On November 11, 1882 The Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide announced “Thomas Osborne will soon commence the erection of an eight-story and basement apartment house…The front will be of English red stone elaborately carved and trimmed, while the interior will be fitted with the latest modern conveniences.”  Osborne projected that the cost, including the lots, would be “at least $165,000.”

Plans were officially submitted with the Inspector of Buildings on December 20, 1882 and construction began soon afterward.  By now the estimated cost had risen to $195,000—over $4 million today.  Ten months later the handsome structure was completed.  Osborne treated it almost as two buildings.  On either side of the central hall with its passenger elevator was one spacious apartment.  To the rear of the building, where it rose to eight stories as opposed to the seven floors at the front, were two freight elevators (called at the time “dumbwaiters”)—one for each side. 

The New York Times described the “handsome structure” as “of blue stone, with Nova Scotia stone trimmings and terra cotta ornamental panels” and made special note of the “pair of polished marble columns” that ornamented the front entrance.  Osborne’s French Renaissance design was encrusted with carved panels of flowers, faces, animals and shells and the modified Corinthian capitals of the entrance columns featured an unexpected coexistence of beasts and cherubs.

Close inspection reveals cherubs, winged beasts, and tridents -- photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

According to The Times, residents would enjoy steam heat throughout and was “furnished with electric bells, speaking-tubes, &c.”  There were eight rooms to each apartment and rents ranged from $1,300 to $1,800 a year; about $3,300 per month today.

At other floors the elaborate carving was less fanciful.  Here floral forms and shells embellish the facade -- photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

Thomas Osborne quickly turned over his nearly-completed St. George.  On October 6, 1883, barely before the paint was dry, he sold the building to real estate investor and wealthy clothing merchant William R. Martin for $200,000.  Before the end of the month Martin had resold it for $215,000 to John G. Taylor.

The new, luxurious apartments were marketed to moneyed families with a focus not just on the high-end amenities; but on its fire-proof qualities.  Fire was among the greatest fears of the period and Taylor touted the St. George as “absolutely fire-proof.”  The claim would be put to the test before very long.

By the spring of 1884 the entire building had been rented, except for the west apartment on the third floor.  The tenant list was varied with one common denominator—money.  On the first floor were Dr. J. R. Hobbie of the Health Department in the east apartment, and Dr. M. G. Raefle, former Deputy Coroner in the west.  S. H. Gray of Hecker Brothers, flour millers, was in the second floor east flat; and William M. McPherson was in the western apartment.  He was a salesman with H. B. Claflin & Co.

On the third floor was the organist of the Church of the Holy Trinity, A. R. Parsons.  Above him lived Edward Sandford, a laywer and son-in-law of former Governor John T. Hoffman.  He shared the fourth floor with Kate Forsythe, an actress.  Walton Burgess lived in the eastern apartment on the fifth floor and across the hall was United States Commissioner Timothy Griffiths.  Griffiths had been secretary to former Senator Roscoe Conkling.

On the top two floors lived Cornelius Dubois, an insurance man; H. W. Humphrey; John L. Lockwood, who dealt in mineral waters; and W. J. Simonton whose father had been an agent for the Associated Press.  The New York Times remarked on April 8, 1884 that “The occupants of the house are all well-to-do people” and that they filled their apartments “with costly furniture, valuable paintings, and drawings, and bric-a-brac.”  But they slept securely, with the knowledge that their new home was “absolutely fire-proof.”

The building’s maintenance man, Frederick Kimmelberg was not so sure.  He had noticed that the steam pipes which ran from the boiler in the basement to the top floor were not fully insulated.  According to him, they “were only encased in packing in the basement, and that all the way from the first floor they rested right against the plaster and flooring without any covering whatever.”

One cold night in January 1884, just a few months after the building opened, a nervous John L. Lockwood called Kimmelberg to his 7^thfloor apartment.  According to Kimmelberg the walls had become so hot that “In one place the lathing had begun to smolder.”  He rushed to the basement and turned off the steam, preventing any further damage or fire.

Three months later, on April 7, the building’s luck would run out.  Around 11:00 that morning the elevator boy, Louis Castaigan, took a potential tenant to the empty third floor suite.  As he returned to the elevator he noticed smoke wafting up the shaft.  He joked to the visitor that “the house must be on fire.”  But as the elevator descended, the smoke became denser with each floor.

The boy notified Kimmelberg and rushed onto the street to the nearest fire box at 17^th Street and 2^nd Avenue, then ran back.  Residents of the lower floors were already rushing out “although they were compelled to make their exit without putting on their outer clothing or wraps,” said The New York Times the following day.

Castaigan, worried that Mrs. Lockwood and her invalid son, Louis, and Jennie Wilson, a servant, were still on the seventh floor, took the elevator back up.  As it turned out, they had already made a dramatic escape.  “Adjoining the building on the east side is the mission house and school of the Protestant Sisterhood of St. John the Baptist, the roof of which is several stories lower than the flat-house,” reported The Times.  “The sisters ascended to the roof of their house.  They saw Mrs. Lockwood with her son, 9 years old, whom she had snatched from his bed, and her servant at one of the side windows.  The fire and smoke had full possession of the rear of their apartment, cutting them off from the fire-escape in the rear of the building.”

The sisters “bestirred themselves to procure help.”  They had their janitor bring a ladder to the roof and Mrs. Lockwood, the boy and the servant were able to climb down with the assistance of a fireman and policeman.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Timothy Griffiths, wife of the US Commissioner, had been entertaining a guest in her parlor.  When she heard the commotion and opened her door to the hallway, a thick cloud of smoke billowed in.  She and her friend were able to clamber down the fire escape into the back yard.  The ladies who were one-by-one assembling in the yard were helped over the fence when neighbors dropped a ladder over it.

The women in the other apartments, some quite elderly, were rescued by the fire fighters.  But the elevator boy, Louis Castaigan, who had gone to the top floor to rescue Mrs. Lockwood, was now trapped.  He tried to find an escape route through both apartments, but the thick smoke pushed him back.  “He retreated into the library of Mr. Lockwood’s apartments, shut the door behind him, and, thrusting his head out of the open window, called for help.  Smoke was belching forth from the windows on each side of him,” recounted The Times.

The crowd on the street below hollered at him to be calm.  The seven story St. George was too high for the fire department’s extension ladders so the new “scaling ladders” were brought out.  “It was the first opportunity of putting the life-saving ladders to a practical test,” said the newspaper.  The ingenious scaling ladder was hooked to the window sill of the second story.  Fireman John Binns climbed up, drew the ladder up behind him, then hooked it to the third floor.  The process was repeated until Binns reached Castaigan at the top floor. 

“Seeing help so near, Louis stepped out of the window and sat down on the sill.  When the top of the scaling ladder was within his reach he leaned over, caught it with one hand, and fastened it securely on the window-frame.  Binns then ascended, and, throwing one arm over the shoulders of the youth, spoke a few encouraging words.  Then he descended the scaling ladder with him and down the extension ladder to the ground.”

The crowd of spectators on the ground broke out into applause “and cheered lustily.”

Kimmelberg was found in the basement, nearly unconscious where he had been fighting the fire with a hose until the water gave out.  He was dragged out by fireman and taken to Bellevue Hospital.

When the blaze was finally extinguished, the St. George was a ruin.  The residents’ fine furniture, silver and artwork were gone.  “What was not destroyed by fire is ruined by water,” said The Times.  The newspaper was scathing in its criticism.

“The St. George, a pretentious apartment house at Nos. 223 and 225 East Seventeenth-street, which had been vaunted by the owner and agent as absolutely fire-proof, was nearly destroyed by fire yesterday morning…Those members of the families who were in when the fire broke out were in extreme peril, but all succeeded in making their escape.”

The foolish failure to insulate the steam pipes resulted in only the 17^th Street façade and parts of the side walls still remaining.  “It will cost $100,000 to rebuild it and place it in as good a condition as before the fire,” said The Times.  Tenants had lost a total of $61,000 worth of goods—about $1.5 million today.

Within the week the humor and satire magazine, Life, caustically lampooned the “fire-proof” claims of the building’s owner.  On April 17 it wrote “There seems to have been something envious about the burning of the St. George Flats.  They were strictly fire-proof, being built after the approved principles upon which ninety-five percent of the other fireproof apartment houses in this city are constructed.  In these the walls are at least four inches thick and made of celluloid rendered incombustible by being dipped in kerosene; the partitions are of the most indestructible variety of tinder and matchwood, sheathed in punk and lined with shavings, asphalt, guncotton, nitro glycerine and turpentine; the chimneys are made of the most obstinate variety of pitch-pine well saturated with saltpeter, and to make the thing still better protected, a safety fuse radiates from the office to each rooms, so that in case of fire no one apartment can get in its fine work ahead of another.”

The magazine went on, criticizing the builders and the agents through sarcasm.  The article ended “Considering all these precautions are taken, it is somewhat surprising to hear that the St. George Flats not only burned up effectively and burned down with promptness, but that its meager populace barely escaped with its lives in broad daylight.  The populace, by the way, lost everything but its several salvations; but with those intact, it is to be supposed it is ready to remove into another fire-proof flat.”

The St. George was rebuilt with its fine façade intact.  Among the new tenants were General Charles H. Tompkins, President of the Diamond Rock Boring Company, and the elderly General Thomas Ewing.  Ewing had had an illustrious career.  The son of Ohio Senator Thomas Ewing who was Secretary of the Treasury under William Henry Harrison and Secretary of the Interior under President Tyler; the general had been active in admitting Kansas into the Union.  In 1861 he became the Chief Justice of that state.  His sister married his law partner, General William Tecumseh Sherman.

After Ewing served valiantly in the Civil War, he opened his law practice in New York City.  While living in the St. George in January 1896 the 67-year old was struck by a cable car nearby at Third Avenue and East 18^th Street.  Hurled nearly halfway across the street, he struck his head on the pavement.  Ewing was brought to his apartment but never regained consciousness.  Around 10:30 on the morning of January 21, he “died without recognizing the members of his family who were about him.”

Also in the building about that time was attorney Winslow E. Buzby.  A member of the Automobile Club, he drove “a handsome Victoria-phaeton which is driven by electricity,” as described by The New York Times on October 28, 1899.  Buzby was annoyed by the city’s prohibition of motorcars in Central Park; a law sparked by the fear that horses would be spooked and cause damage or injury to their owners or vehicles.

Buzby argued that cars were allowed in Prospect Park and Riverside Park, not to mention the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.  Comparing horses in Brooklyn with those in Manhattan he said “Besides, are horses in Manhattan more susceptible of taking fright than those in Brooklyn?  And, anyhow, a horse that is so wild that it will bolt at sight of an automobile ought not to be allowed on a public road.  It would just as easily be scared, and with equal danger to the public, by the sight of a piece of paper blown along by the wind or at a child’s sudden yell.”

Park Commissioners remained steadfast.  So to publicize his protest, Winslow Buzby audaciously drove his electric pleasure car into Central Park on October 27, 1899.  When a policeman tried to stop him, he continued on before being arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting the police.  He paid his $300 and left, explaining his case in length to reporters outside the station house.

In 1900 84-year old Celia Frances Dana lived here.  For four decades she was well known as a teacher of elocution and music and as a public reader.  Also in the building were sisters Anna H. Wilde and Ella P. Bigelow.  In November that year they had the unpleasant task of requesting a examination into the sanity of their brother, 35-year old John Wilde.

Wealthy like his sisters, Wilde had gone to China in 1893 as a missionary.  “While abroad he showed signs of insanity, and was sent home by an American consul,” reported the New-York Tribune.  He was institutionalized at the Rivercrest Sanitarium on Long Island where “he believed he was hypnotized and that his food contained poison.”  Wilde escape and eventually turned up in New York City.  The Tribune reported “It is said that he spends his time in studying the Chinese language.  His sanity will be determined by a sheriff’s jury.”

Among the more well-known residents at the time was Margaret Bottome.  A writer and author, she was also president of the International Order of the King’s Daughters and Sons.  She had written Crumbs from the King’s Table; A Sunshine Trip to the Orient; Death and Life; Seven Questions After Easter; and was on the editorial staff of The Ladies Home Journal.

Simultaneously society bandleader John M. Lander had an apartment in the building.  He died here on October 9, 1905.  “He was 65 years old,” said The New York Times, “and was perhaps known to more men and women of social prominence in and about New York than any other musical director since the days of Helmsmueller.”

Lander was a close friend of Ward McAllister and played the music at McAllister’s funeral.  “He supplied the music at the balls and parties of many of the members of the older families, including the Astors, Sloanes, and Vanderbilts.”

John Lander’s family continued on in the apartment.  Six years later his daughter Adelaide would bring attention to the St. George.  Archibald N. Campbell was infatuated with Adelaide and wrote her no fewer than 20 endearing letters.  Sadly for Campbell, Adelaide Lander’s feelings for him cooled.  With no happy ending in sight, Campbell wanted his love letters back.

On Wednesday October 4, 1911 the would-be suitor came to Adelaide’s flat and refused to leave.  She called for the police to have him “put out of the house,” said a newspaper.  “The policeman persuaded the man to leave.”

Adelaide quickly packed a bag and headed to her mother’s home in New London, Connecticut.  On the way out she handed Lottie Guyer, the janitress, a satchel to give to Campbell should he return.  Campbell indeed did come back, trying to gain entrance to the apartment through the dumbwaiter.  When that did not work, he went up the servants’ stairway and kicked in a door panel.

The police returned to the St. George to find Campbell still inside Adelaide Lander’s apartment.  Detective Taczkosi took 20 letters from his prisoner.  “The detective would not reveal the contents of the letters, but said all were of an endearing nature,” reported The New York Times.

A long-time resident in 1937 was Philip F. Donohue.  Since the turn of the century he had been a prominent figure within Tammany Hall.  In 1922 he had been appointed by Mayor John Francis Hylan as Commissioner of the Board of Water Supply, earning $12,000 a year—a considerable $156,000 today.  When the well-connected Donohue reached the mandatory retirement age of 74 in 1932, Mayor Jimmy Walker gave him an exemption from the rules.

Philip F. Donuhue died in his apartment in the St. George at the age of 79 on August 16, 1937.  Two days later Tammany Hall paid tribute by sending an official committee to the apartment and accompanying the body past Tammany Hall to St. Anne’s Roman Catholic Church on 12^th Street near Fourth Avenue.

Within the decade the neighborhood had declined from the fashionable residential area of the 1880s through the early 20^thcentury.  In 1947 the St. George was converted to a Single Room Occupancy hotel.  Where there were once only two sprawling apartments per floor, there were now 22 furnished rooms.  In 1951 stores were installed at the lower level.

Little-noticed from the street, the incredible volume of carving includes fantastic beasts, imaginary beings, and a water-spouting head -- photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

The St. George enjoyed its moment of cinematic fame when it appeared in Woody Allen’s 1993 film Manhattan Murder Mystery.  Today the former St. George Residence is the 17 Hotel.  Other than replacement windows and a few minor alterations, the exterior of Thomas Osborne’s French Renaissance-inspired experiment in housing is little changed.