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^st Street, 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  In place of the outdated residences modern high-end homes appeared.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^th Street.  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^st Street 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^th Sanitary 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^st Street 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