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| No. 280 anchored the impressive row of limestone rowhouses. |
As the 19th century drew to a close Harlem had
developed from a rural area of small farms to a suburb of New York City whose streets
and avenues were lined with homes, churches and businesses. The extension of the elevated railroad in
1880 made the area accessible and developers responded to its potential with
blocks of brick and stone speculative rowhouses.
In 1899 architect Henri Fouchaux designed ten harmonious
limestone houses on Convent Avenue in the Morningside Heights section for
speculators Hyman and Henry Sonn. The
pair originally had approached F. C. Zobel to design the row. Zobel’s plans called for wider homes
(resulting in eight rather than ten).
The projected cost of construction was $15,000 each—about $407,000
today. That price was perhaps a bit too
rich for the Sonns’ taste and they called in Fouchaux.
His proposed row, filling the block from 141st to
142nd Street, would be high-end residences as well; yet would cost
nearly half as much at $8,000 apiece. Fouchaux
designed them as a mirror-image set. The
five homes from the 141st Street corner to the middle were each
different but complimentary. Then the
pattern reversed itself—the sixth residence matched the fifth next door, the
seventh matched the fourth, and so on until the two corner homes served as the
show-stopping bookends.
The row was officially completed on January 31, 1902. The two end homes turned their backs to the
row, opening on to the streets while retaining the Convent Avenue
addresses. No. 280, at the southern end
of the string, pretended to be nothing less than a mansion. It sat imperiously back from the sidewalk,
surrounded by an areaway protected by a stone and metal fence. The façade featured the scrolls and carvings
expected in a Beaux Arts structure; yet Fouchaux handled the ornamentation with
reserved dignity.
It appears that No. 280 was first owned by James J. Phelan. In 1901 he applied for a reduced assessment
because of the “paving with asphalt pavement” of Convent Avenue that ended at
141st Street.
In 1906 the City College of New York had completed its striking
Collegiate Gothic campus directly to the south of No. 280 Convent Avenue. A year later, on August 25, 1907 the Phelans
were apparently packing up and considering selling the mansion. An advertisement in the New-York Tribune that
day sought a caretaker “by married couple, one child; care of private house for
sale or during family’s absence; experience; with first class city reference
from present employer.” Applicants were
instructed to contact Mrs. Phelan at the service address, No. 451 West 141st
st.
The house was purchased by the City for $39,000 “For the use
of the College of the City of New York as an addition thereto.” By 1911 it was home to Herbert R. Moody and
his wife, the former Edna Wadsworth.
Moody was Professor of Chemistry at the college and had been director of
chemistry laboratories since 1905. Dr.
Moody would later serve as chief of the technical branch of the chemical
division of the War Industries Board during World War I.
But before that came to pass, the College spent $4,500 to renovate
the house in 1915 as the official residence of President Sidney Edward Mezes,
appointed the year before. Three years
later the Board of Estimate and Apportionment approved a budget of $2,600 for
painting buildings at the college, including the President’s house.
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| Sidney Edward Mezes -- photogrpah Library of Congress |
Like Dr. Moody, Sidney Mezes would be called upon with the
United States’ entry into the war. In
1917 he was appointed a member of “the Inquiry,” a committee set up by
President Woodrow Wilson to prepare peace negations following the expected
victory. (It was probably no coincidence
that the group’s director was Presidential adviser Edward House, the
brother-in-law of Mezes’s wife, Annie Olive Hunter.)
In June 1921 Mezes reached the top of his salary, $12,500
per year, as allowed by the City Charter.
City Comptroller Craig decided that the President’s rent-free status
equated to a higher salary than he was permitted. His solution was that Mezes should pay $6,000
a year rent going forward and reimburse the city $9,000. “The Comptroller described the house, which
is a four-story and basement dwelling, as a mansion,” reported The Evening World
on December 29, 1922, “and says he is advised that $6,000 a year is fair
rental.”
“In a description of the residence, the Comptroller calls
attention to two wine cellars…The house contains a large billiard room trimmed
with quartered oak, a large parlor trimmed with white mahogany, a foyer and
dining room trimmed with quartered oak, a smoking room fitted with red mahogany
paneling. A floor above the parlor is
finished in white and birdseye maple.
The third floor contains five rooms, three of which are for servants.”
Whether Mezes ever, indeed, was forced to pay rent is
unclear. Following his departure in 1927
No. 280 Convent Avenue became home to Frederick Robinson, the last of the City
College Presidents to live here. Robinson’s
presidency lasted from 1927 through 1938, after which the mansion’s glory days
came to an end.
For a while the house was used as a “student boarding house,”
then became the headquarters of the Alumni Association around 1945. Named The Alumni House, it suffered use as offices and sleeping rooms for more
than a decade. As the Alumni Association prepared to move to
the fifth floor of the Finley Student Center in 1957, an historic treasure was
uncovered in the attic.
Townsend Harris had founded City College in 1847 and is
credited as the diplomat who opened the Japanese Empire to foreign trade and
culture. In December 1857 he marched 100
miles from the port village of Shimoda to Yedo (now Tokyo) to negotiate the
first trade and amity treaty between the United States and the Japanese
Empire. A flag bearer headed the
procession carrying a 31-star American flag made of Japanese crepe.
Following the signing of the treaty Harris wrote “The
American flag was carried before me for more than 100 miles through this
country. I displayed it in the streets
of this great city, and it daily waves before my residence, so that we can say
that the first foreign flag ever hoisted in this city was the Stars and
Stripes.”
Townsend Harris brought the flag back with him to the United
States in 1862 when he retired as consul general. It was eventually framed and hung in the
Townsend Harris Hall High School, the preparatory school of City College. When the school was closed in 1942 the flag
disappeared and was assumed lost.
Then, on September 21, 1958, The New York Times reported “The
first foreign flag raised in the city of Tokyo after the opening of Japan has
been found in the attic of an old brownstone building at 280 Convent Avenue,
just north of the City College campus.” As
the Alumni Association emptied the attic, the framed flag was found hidden
behind some dusty cabinets.
The once-grand mansion now became something of a white
elephant for City College. For a period
it was used by the Hamilton Grange Conservation Office, and in 1968 became an incidental part
of the anti-Vietnam protests.
When potential employers arrived on campus in November that
year, students whom The New York Times deemed “radical” were offended by the presence
of representatives of General Dynamics, Hughes Aircraft, and other firms
manufacturing war-related products. The
protesters disrupted the scheduled interviews at the School of Engineering,
resulting in about 600 engineering students pushing back.
The engineering students marched to the Administration Building
carrying signs reading “We Want Action.”
The Times revealed its own political stance in reporting that they “denounced
the radical students and threatened to march on the South Campus, several
blocks away, which is the setting of most of the college’s hippie, yippie and
antiwar activities.”
Although the engineering students were unhappy with
compromise (“Why the hell should we give them this concession,” shouted one
student), the administration moved the interviews to No. 280 Convent Avenue,
off campus, “until the situation cools.”
The mansion sat empty and neglected for the next four
decades, suffering from fire and water damage.
Then in 2013 City College announced plans to build a sleek three story
addition as part of a conversion to the Colin Powell School for Civic and
Global Leadership. Neighbors and
preservationists were enraged. The
Historic Districts Council called the proposed addition “out of character” with
the district. Much to the community’s
dismay, the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the ultra modern glass
and metal addition.
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| City College provided a rendering of the proposed glass-and-steel addition http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20131206/hamilton-heights/opponents-hope-city-college-will-change-design-of-colin-powell-school |
photographs by the author
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