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| photo NYPL Collection |
In the early years of the 1880s 5th Avenue was
changing. Looking north from 33rd
Street where the two brownstone mansions of the Astors confidently filled the
block, followed by A. T. Stewart’s white marble Second Empire palace across 34th
Street, a visitor might assume this wealthy residential neighborhood would last
forever.
But if he turned and walked a few blocks south, he would see
the approaching tide of change.
On 5th Avenue below 14th Street, by
now, nearly all the homes of New York’s wealthiest citizens had been razed or
altered for commercial purposes. Between 14th and 23rd
Streets residents were one-by-one abandoning their private homes.
But another trend had taken hold as well—apartment living. The concept of luxurious flats where
well-to-do residents could forego the expense and bother of maintaining a
private home and the required full staff appealed to many. The stretch of 5th Avenue between
23rd Street and 33rd Street, where the elegant Fifth Avenue Hotel and exclusive
Delmonico’s Restaurant stood, was perfect for such an enterprise.
On the corner of 5th Avenue and 28th
Street sat the imposing mansion of William B. Duncan. A decade earlier Duncan had moved out,
selling the building to the newly-formed Knickerbocker Club. The club had been formed by old guard
members of the exclusive Union Club including August Belmont, John Jacob Astor
and Alexander Hamilton, Jr. They had become disgruntled with the admission of young, nouveau riche members
who not only smoked pipes within the clubhouse, but gambled.
Only a decade later, however, the club decided to take over
another mansion four blocks to the north.
In 1882 a group of investors, with a reverent nod to the staid clubhouse
it was about to demolish, styled themselves as the Knickerbocker Apartment
Company and purchased the property. Fifth Avenue would soon see yet another change with the construction of The
Knickerbocker Apartments.
Calling the new venture “apartments” was a daring move. At the time most upper-class apartment
buildings were deemed “French Flats,” to distinguish them from tenements. Even that term was not convincing enough for many wealthy renters who avoided the stigma of apartment living by moving into residential hotels, instead.
But the Knickerbocker Apartments would be designed more like
private houses than "flats"—thereby side-stepping what Mrs. Caroline Astor disdainfully referred
to as “living on a shelf.”
The architectural firm of Hubert, Pirrson & Co. was give
the commission to design the hulking structure. Partner Philip K. Hubert took over the
project keeping in mind that the residents who moved in would be wealthy enough
to afford a 5th Avenue address just five blocks south of the
Astors. And while he sketched out the
massive 11-story structure, he turned over the design of the interiors to a
fledgling architect still in training—Ernest Flagg.
The Architectural Review was impressed with the ingenious
layouts. “The apartments were planned in
two stories. Each apartment is arranged
like a two-story house. On the lower
floors are the living-rooms, the kitchen, pantry, etc., and on the second
floor, the bed-rooms, bath-rooms and servants’ rooms. Each house, or apartment, has its own private
hall and staircase from the first to the second floors. The building its eleven stories high, and
eight of the floors are arranged in this way, that is to say, as four series of
two-story houses.”
Architectural Forum explained the term “living-rooms” as
used in the Architectural Review’s article.
“The living rooms, that is, the parlor, library, dining room, kitchen
and pantries, were grouped on one floor, and high ceilings used; on the floor
above the chambers and bathrooms were arranged with lower ceilings.”
The venture was a complete success and the building filled
with wealthy residents. During the
summer months, like the vast mansions to the north, the Knickerbocker
Apartments sat almost entirely unused as its moneyed tenants spent the season
in Newport or other fashionable resorts.
The James H. Wickes family, for instance, “live during the
Winter months in apartments in the Knickerbocker apartment-house, 247 Fifth
avenue, and in the Summer go to Brant Lake in the Adirondacks, where they have
a fine house,” said The Evening World.
Wickes was the head of the Wickes Refrigerator Company, manufacturers of
refrigerated railway cars.
And so it was that on September 11, 1887 as the season drew
to a close, the building was essentially empty.
Although the entire building was leased, there were only two
men in the building other than employees.
High above the street on the 10th floor were the apartments
of banker Thomas Maitland. About 1:00
in the morning an employee smelled smoke and when the bachelor’s rooms were
entered, fire was discovered in the bedroom.
A small fire extinguisher was of no help and when firemen
arrived, they had to drag fifteen lengths of hose up the 10 flights of
stairs. By the time they made it to
Maitland’s apartment flames were shooting from the windows facing east.
“The flames were centred in the bedroom,” reported The Sun, “and
had spread from there back to the bath room and forward to the parlor…It was
easy to put the fire out, but not so easy to guess how it started.”
Although the only two residents in the building were also on
the 10th floor, they were on the opposite side of the building and
had slept through the commotion. The Sun
noted that “Mr. Maitland’s bedroom was gutted, but much of his parlor furniture
was saved.”
The excitement was barely over when another incident occurred. John H. Haslam, a stableman employed in the
nearby Mason’s livery stable, noticed a suspicious package. According to The Evening World on November
22, 1887, “The box was placed at dead of night on the sidewalk at Twenty-eighth
street and Fifth avenue, in front of the side entrance of the gorgeous
Knickerbocker flats.” It appeared to be
a bomb.
Protruding from the cardboard box were copper wire, a tin
tube and a cotton fuse. The stableman
took it to the 13th Street police station where Sergeant
Schmittberger dismantled it. He found “A
tin tube about 7 inches long, apparently part of a bettered fishhorn, plugged
at both ends with sealing wax and resin.
Protruding from the narrow end of the tube was a cotton fuse encased in
copper wire, the end of the wire being used to bind a parlor match at the end
of the fuse. A piece of twine was fastened
to the end of the fuse and was conducted out fo the box through a hole cut in
the side.”
The Sun reported that the perpetrator (whom the newspaper
named “the dynamite joker”) “ingeniously arranged the whole so as to present
the appearance of an infernal machine.”
In the meantime, the owner of the stables, Mr. Mason,
suspected Haslam as being involved. “His
fellow-workers in the stable say that he would not have been so ready to carry
the box to the station-house four blocks distant if he had not known its
contents were harmless,” noted The Sun.
Reverdy Johnson Travers, Jr. moved into the Knickerbocker
from his home at No. 3 West 38th Street. The wealthy widower owned at least one race
horse and came from a distinguished family that traced its roots to colonial
times. After Travers’ death in 1893 a
woman suddenly appeared who filed papers as Anna Frances Travers and sought “to
recover dower in his estate,” according to The Sun on April 8, 1893.
Travers’ brother, William R. Travers, was shocked and signed
an affidavit saying he had never heard of the woman, believed that his brother
had never married her, and knew that she had never lived at the
Knickerbocker. William A. Duer, a brother-in-law
of Travers told the court that he had known the plaintiff for two months after
Travers’ death and at the time she went by the name of Mrs. Arlington. “He says,” said the newspaper, “she admitted
that she was never married, and she did not then claim to be the widow of
Travers.”
Supreme Court Justice Barrett directed Anna Frances Travers
to advise the time and place of her alleged marriage and if it had been a
ceremonial one. Adding to the mystery
was a “secret letter” included with Travers’ will “providing for the
disposition of $20,000 to Gillott D. Deckert,” the woman’s attorney.
When the daughter of General and Mrs. Charles A. Whittier,
who lived here at the turn of the century, became engaged to the socially
prominent Ernest Iselin, among her attendants was May Goelet. The Goelet mansion a few blocks north was
among the showplaces of 5th Avenue and a center of society
functions. In October 1903 as the
important wedding day neared, Pauline (Polly) Whittier entertained her
bridesmaids at a luncheon at high society's favorite dining spot, Sherry’s.
The president of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad, Leanor
Fresnel Loree, and his wife the former Jessie Coles Taber, were living here in
1912. That year their son Robert Fresnel
Loree graduated from Yale to enter a career in banking.
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| A few months after this photograph was taken in 1925, the building would be gone -- photo NYPL Collection |
Although the resale did not happen for another five years,
Natanson turned the building over to a developer on May 6, 1925. Before the end of the year it was demolished
to make way for the 24-story office building designed by George F. Pelham.
Like the mansion that had stood here before it, the
remarkable Knickerbocker Apartments, designed with the feeling of two-story
houses, became a victim of the ever-changing 5th Avenue.
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| George F. Pelham's office building still stands on the site of the old Knickerbocker Apartments -- photo by Alice Lum |
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