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| photo by Alice Lum |
With the return of
New York’s laborers at the end of the Civil War and the official completion of
Central Park in 1873, the blocks just east of Fifth Avenue above 54th
Street experienced a building boom. In
1877 Ira E. Doying built a string of ten rowhouses on East 66th
Street, stretching from No. 46 to No. 64.
Designed by J. H. Valentine, the comfortable brownstone residences were
intended for the merchant class. The
mansions of New York’s wealthiest citizens were still 20 blocks to the south.
But by the turn of the century things had changed. Hotels and retail shops were overtaking the
Fifth Avenue mansions of the Astors, Vanderbilts and Goelets, and “Millionaires’
Row” had moved northward along the Park.
One by one the brownstone homes of a generation earlier were being
replaced or altered.
In 1903 the brownstone house at No. 58 East 66th Street was
owned by Samuel Adams, a 67-year old married man who had an eye for the younger
ladies. On July 14, of that year it
landed him in the Yorkville Court.
The New York Times explained that Adams “has clung to the
flirting habit, although the hair on the top of his head has long since let go.” The proximity of his home to Central Park
made his “flirting habit” easy. “Naturally
poetic and aesthetic, Adams has also the correlative—a fine discrimination of
the value of the glint and sheen of sun and moon on leaves and foliage—and so
has made the Ramble in the Park the scene of his attacks upon many hearts,”
said the newspaper
The man with the wandering eye had finally been caught in
his “heart-breaking campaign extending over a period of four years” when Annie
Stein charged him with promising to marry her.
Having told the woman that he was 49-years old, he led her to believe he
was rich; saying that he owned a brownstone worth $25,000.
When Annie Stein found out he was married, the jig was
up. Her lawyer told the judge, “He is
not fair. He flirts with girls so young
that he might be their father’s father; and he makes promises which he cannot
keep. Just in this instance—to Miss
Stein—he promised her a brownstone house.
He’s married too!”
Adams protested that it was all just a joke. Explaining that his wife was at home, sick,
he said “I did it merely for a little fun.
Just went into the park to have a little…”
The Magistrate finished the sentence for him. “Flirtation.”
The judge then turned to the complainant and asked why Miss
Stein “had not repulsed this aged wooer.”
She could not answer, so her attorney replied for her.
“You see this woman is single and thought the man a catch.”
The judge considered the case and ruled in Adams’
favor. “The Magistrate decided that Miss
Stein had met Adams freely of her own volition after he had first cast his
magnetic glance upon her and discharged him,” said The Times.
Samuel Adams would have to find a new spot for flirting
before long. Five years later the house
was purchased by financier Arthur Sachs.
A member of the firm Goldman, Sachs, Co., he had married the former
Alice Goldschmidt two years earlier. Now
with their first child, James Henry Sachs, a year old it was time for a new
home.
On December 23, 1908 The Times reported that plans had been
filed for a five-story dwelling on the site of Adam’s brownstone. Sachs commissioned
the firm of Buchman & Fox to design his mansion. The eight year old partnership had already
produced apartment buildings in Manhattan and sprawling country homes. The architects told the newspapers that “It
is to be of limestone in the design of the French Renaissance, with a balcony
with large casement windows over the central entrance.”
The mansion was completed within the year at a cost of around
$25,000—about $750,000 today. As was
common, the deed was put in Alice’s name, assuring her financial stability. As promised, the limestone house smacked of
France. Formal and grand, it sat on a
rusticated base where the centered, recessed entrance was framed in leafy
carving. A dramatic arched lintel over
the French doors and flanking windows of the second floor was echoed in an
elaborate arched pediment at the fourth story that burst through the cornice
into the mansard roof.
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| The second story windows are boarded closed in 2013 as renovations are done -- photo by Alice Lum |
The Sachs family would stay on at No. 58 until 1919. That year Sachs purchased two brownstone homes on East 69th Street and built a mansion over twice the width
of the 20-foot wide 66th Street house.
The earlier mansion was purchased by Yale-educated banker Lewis Brown Gawtry and his wife, the former Olive Van Rensselaer. The socially-prominent couple moved in with their two daughters, Olive and Beatrice. Gawtry was a significant figure in the power companies of New York. He was Vice President of Consolidated Gas Co. of New York; secretary and director of New York Edison Company; and sat on the boards of the United Electric Light and Power Co., the Brush Electric Illuminating Company, Consolidated Telegraph and Electric Subway Company, National Code and Coal Company, Mutual Gas Light, Company, and several others.
But it was his work with the Boy Scouts of America for which he would be remembered.
In 1910 when the Boy Scouts was founded child labor was
common. Most workers had only six years
of formal schooling and 1.7 million children between the ages of 10 and 15 were
full-time workers. Boy Scouts were
recruited in the schools, so working boys had little chance of joining the
organization.
In 1914 Gawtry was a member of the BSA’s National Council
and it occurred to him that a troop could be formed within his Consolidated Gas
Co. for its young workers. On May 1 that
year he founded the first of what would be known as the “industrial troops” for
office boys and clerks in three utility companies. Consolidated Gas Co. then paid for the
establishment of Camp Gawtry 40 miles north of the city.
Here struggling youths spent weekends in the country, both
summer and winter. Calling themselves the “gas
house gang,” they enjoyed a large building with a dormitory that housed thirty
scouts, assembly room with a stone fireplace, and kitchen. Most of the boys had never left the city and
suddenly they were learning nature skills, sledding and taking field trips to a
Pennsylvania mine to see where the gas for their company’s fuel came from.
Gawtry believed that the boys would be more efficient
workers because their health would be improved by the outdoor live. He further thought that the teamwork they
learned at camp would carry through to the workplace and life in general. His firm belief in the ideals of the scouting
program and his interest in the welfare of the boys resulted in his position as
National Treasurer of the Boy Scouts of America.
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| photo by Alice Lum |
In the meantime, the house on East 66th Street
continued to be the site of glittering entertainments, including the debutante
teas and receptions for Olive and Beatrice.
None of the events was more noteworthy than the wedding of Olive to
Robert Wallace Tilney in mansion on May 3, 1934.
With their daughters grown, the Gawtrys moved to a lavish
apartment at No. 610 Park Avenue in 1942.
The house was leased for a year by Cecil Rhodes; then purchased by the
Joseph L. Ennis & Co., operators. The
cash sale was one of six houses the firm bought simultaneously, possibly causing
speculation among real estate watchers.
But any thoughts that the mansion would be razed for an
apartment building were put to rest when Dr. Gerald O’Brien paid $57,000 in
cash for the house in February 1944. Before
the 45-year old O’Brien moved in with his wife, Felice, he had some alterations
done. The first floor was converted to
the doctor’s office, connected to the couple’s duplex apartment on the second
and third stories. The two floors above
each became a luxurious rental apartment.
One of the windows flanking the entrance became a door to access the
residences upstairs.
O’Brien was on the staff of St. Vincent’s Hospital and St.
Clare’s Hospital; but his income was
fattened through other enterprises.
O’Brien was the medical director of the International
Longshoremen’s Association—an organization notoriously connected at the time with gangland activities and corruption.
Unlike Lewis Gawtry’s ideals, the
doctor’s may not have fallen along the lines of the Boy Scouts of America.
Among the patients visiting No. 58 West 66th
Street was the infamous mobster Frank Costello.
The Italian-born gangster was known as “the Prime Minister” and had
risen to the top of America’s underworld.
His testimony during the 1951 Senate Kefauver hearings caused a sensation since, by now, he was considered the number one gangster in the
U.S. He caused problems for himself
when a committee member asked “What have you done for your country, Mr.
Costello?” The mobster spat back “Paid
my tax!” and walked out of the chamber.
His defiance cost him an 18-month jail sentence for
contempt, followed by a five-year sentence for tax evasion in 1954. Although free on $50,000 bail, the 63-year
old Costello was restricted from leaving the State of New York. He sought the help of Dr. O’Brien to lengthen
his leash.
On November 1, 1955 The New York Times reported that the
physician recommended a month in Hot Springs, Arkansas. His patient, he said, “was suffering from
laryngitis and a post-nasal drip.” The
judge apparently did not agree with the treatment and a month later the same
newspaper reported “Frank Costello will spend the winter in and around New York—by
court order.”
On September 19, 1959 Dr. Gerald F. O’Brien died at his
summer home in Croton Falls, New York.
The doctor was just 57-years old.
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| photo by Alice Lum |
Today the French-inspired mansion is little changed. Its reserved façade gives no hint at the
three remarkably different families who lived inside.
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