In 1871 brothers David and John Jardine worked both as real
estate developers and architects. Before
the century was up, they would line blocks of the newly-developing Upper East
Side with long rows of brownstone homes.
But this year they worked on a project as architects only; designing six
neo-Grec style homes for contractors William H. and Charles Gedney.
Like Charles T. Wills, W. H. Gedney & Son, would play a
major part in building and construction in the second half of the 19th
century. Their speculative homes at Nos.
11 through 21 East 62nd Street would be completed in 1872—handsome Victorian
residences with broad stoops and carved stone railings sure to lure merchant
class homeowners.
By at least 1891 respected dermatologist Dr. Sigmund Lustgarten
was living in No. 15. That year he had
written “The Primary Cause of Death Following Burns to the Skin, with
Therapeutic Observations” published in the Medical
Record. Born in Vienna, he came to
New York in 1889 and became the visiting dermatologist at Mount Sinai
Hospital. He instructed “many of the
leading dermatologists of this city,” said The New York Times later; and was a
consultant for the Montefiore Home and other institutions.
Dr. Lustgarten and his wife sold the 62nd Street
house in March 1899. Shortly thereafter
The New York Times revealed the buyer as Frank C. Hollins. But as was often the case, Hollins was apparently
acting as an agent to keep the actual purchaser’s name temporarily unknown.
A month later the same newspaper reported on the society
wedding of Alfred Rossin and Clara Lewisohn.
The couple was married in the “the newly completed residence of the
bride’s father, 9 West Fifty-seventh Street, one of the most beautiful of New
York’s newer houses.” Among the guests
that day were some of Manhattan’s wealthiest and best known Jewish citizens,
with names like Rothschild, Untermeyer, Stern and Guggenheimer.
The newlyweds would move into the former Lustgarten house—but
not before updating the old Victorian.
Rossin commissioned C. P. H. Gilbert, who had recently completed massive
mansions for Isaac D. Fletcher and Franklin Winfield Woolworth, to transform
the old brownstone into an up-to-date mansion.
Gilbert stripped off the drab stone façade and replaced it with
gleaming limestone. The resulting Beaux
Arts beauty bore no resemblance to its former self. A rusticated basement and parlor floor base
supported a bowed second story façade which, in turn, acted as a spacious
balcony at the third floor.
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| Prior to its remake, No. 15 matched its next door neighbor (right) -- 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=24UAYW1J2RFV&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915&PN=3#/SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYW1J2RFV&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915&PN=3 |
Rossin was President of the Public National Bank; and while
he busied himself with things financial, his wife was involved with the Hebrew
Technical School for Girls as its president.
Working along with her was her father, investment banker Adolph
Lewisohn, who served as vice-president.
The school came under fire in January 1917 when Felix Warburg laid plans
to update the curriculum.
Warburg was a banker and member of the conference board of
the Rockefeller Foundation, which planned to revise primary and secondary
education nationwide. Shocking (and
unacceptable) to traditional Edwardian minds was his announcement that Latin
and Greek would be replaced by French and German in the “modern school.” He fired back at criticism saying “It is
questionable whether a child can be taught what he ought to know under our
present system,” and Adolph Lewisohn back him up. According to the New-York Tribune on January
22, 1917, he “said the community needed more schools like the Hebrew Technical
School for Girls.”
Not far away, at No. 40 East 68th Street, was the
grand mansion of John Daniel Crimmins.
The wealthy contractor had created the lavish home by combining two
older row houses. On November 9, 1917 the
aging widower died with seven of his ten children at his bedside. Within three months of the funeral, the
Crimmins family moved out of the family home.
On March 16, 1918 The
Sun reported “The Crimmins family…will occupy the dwelling at 15 East
Sixty-second street, a small house, in the future.” Alfred and Clara Rossin used their house,
valued at $97,000, as partial payment for the Crimmins mansion, which they
purchased for $350,000.
Apparently the “small house” on 62nd Street was
not sufficient for the Crimmins siblings.
Just a year later, on May 5, 1919, The Sun reported that the house was
sold to Howard Elliott for $110,000. “The
new owner plans to occupy the house after making extensive alterations,” said
the newspaper.
The 59-year old railroad executive and his wife had two married daughters and a son. He was President of
the New York, New Haven & Hartford and the Northern Pacific Railroads. He was, as well, a director of 17 other
railroads, director of the American Railway Association, and sat on the boards
of numerous other concerns.
Elliott came from a distinguished family. His father, Charles Wyllys Elliott was a
historian and author of several books.
The Elliott family traced its American roots to John Eliot who settled
in Natick, Massachusetts in 1631 and was known as “The Apostle to the Indians.” On his mother’s side was Samuel Howard, a
member of the Boston Tea Party of 1773.
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| The Elliotts moved into No. 15 in 1919 -- photographs from the Library of Congress |
Following his wife’s death in 1925, the semi-retired Elliott
lived on in the 62nd Street house with his son, Howard Elliott, Jr. Three years later he traveled to Cape Cod to
spend the summer in the home of his daughter, Mrs. Frederick Wilson. There, on July 8, 1928 he suffered a fatal
heart attack at the age of 67.
Elliott’s entire estate of about $2.25 million was divided
among his family. On October 29, 1929
the house was sold to real estate operator Charles Brown. He held the property for only 48 hours. The New York Times, on November 1, wrote “After
an ownership of two days, the five-story limestone residence at 15 East
Sixty-second Street was resold yesterday by Charles Brown.” The newspaper added that the buyer “plans to
rebuild the house and occupy it. The
alterations will include the installation of an electric elevator.”
Earlier that year Jennie, the wife of wealthy banker Henry
White Cannon, died. New Yorker
socialites were no doubt shocked a year later on September 18 when the 80-year
old married Miss Myrta L. Jones. The
Times reported that “After a wedding trip the couple will live at 15 East
Sixty-second Street.”
Cannon was a member of the board and a former president of
the Chase National Bank. His illustrious
financial career included having been appointed Controller of the Currency by
President Chester A. Arthur in 1884 and serving as a delegate to the
International Monetary Conference in Brussels in 1892.
Myrta’s family was well respected in Cleveland society; but
Henry’s pedigree was impeccable. On his
mother side was Peregrine White, born aboard the Mayflower on November 20, 1620
while the ship was moored in Cape Cod Harbor.
His grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War and died a prisoner of
the British in Manhattan.
The millionaire’s age did not prevent him from fathering a
son, Harry. Each winter the family would
travel to Daytona Beach where Cannon had owned a house on South Beach
Street. Henry Cannon’s health was been
failing for some time in 1934, and it was at the Florida home in April, that
he died.
Myrtle and little Harry accompanied the body back to New
York and Cannon’s funeral was held early in May in Delhi, New York, where he
was born.
No. 15 East 62nd Street became home to Dr. Johan
H. W. van Ophuijsen, an eminent psychiatrist and director of the Creedmoor
Institute for Psychobiologic Studies.
Born in Sumatra, he was associated early in his career with Dr. Sigmund
Freud and Dr. Ivan Pavov—pioneers of psychoanalysis.
He came to New York by invitation of the Psychanalytic
Institute to teach in 1935. He would
teach there from 1938 to 1948. He served
on the psychiatric staffs of Mount Sinai and Lenox Hill Hospitals, and
beginning in 1946 was attending psychiatrist at the Veterans Administration.
The New York Times would write of him, “Dr. van Ophuijsen
stressed the importance of the role of the father in the psychological rearing
of children, taking sharp issue with experts who had ‘told but half the story,’
he said, in blaming psychoneurotic symptoms—which in this country made many
young men unfit to bear arms during the recent war—on the mother.”
Ophuijsen renovated a lower floor in the house as an office
where he personally saw patients. As
well as living in here, he founded the Van Ophuijsen Center in the house. In May 1950 he was stricken with a heart
problem, “but flew to Detroit to read a paper before the American Psychiatric Association’s
annual meeting,” said The Times.
Four weeks later, on Wednesday May 31, the 68-year old
psychiatrist said good-night to his last patient of the day. A few minutes later he suffered a heart
attack and died in the house on East 62nd Street.
The Beaux Arts mansion continues to be home to the Center, a
philanthropic, non-profit institution that carries on its founder’s work. Outwardly, it remains relatively unchanged
since mansion architect C. P. H. Gilbert transformed an outdated Victorian to
an modern Edwardian for wealthy newlyweds.
non-credited photographs by the author
non-credited photographs by the author
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