Real estate developer James N. Wells was a good friend of Clement Clark Moore, best known known for his poem A Visit From Saint Nicholas. As Moore’s family estate, Chelsea, was divided into building plots in the first decades of the 19th century, Wells was almost single-handedly responsible for its development.
In 1835 Wells erected a brick-faced mansion for himself at
No. 414 West 22nd Street—about twice the width of an average
building plot. The house was
conveniently around the corner from his office at No. 183 Ninth Avenue. Two decades later he laid plans to fill the
vacant lot between his home and the avenue with a row of handsome matching
homes, Nos. 400 through 412 West 22nd Street.
In stark contrast to his own double-width mansion, these
houses were only a few inches over 14 feet wide. Working in the now-popular Italianate style,
the architect used linear elements to give the illusion that the houses were
wider than they in fact were. The
doorways were recessed into the rusticated brownstone base—the straight lines
of which drew the eye vertically along the row.
Shallow stoops and understated
entrances drew little attention; unlike high brownstone stoops which would have
blatantly advertised their proximity to one another.
The houses were additionally unified by a long cast iron
balcony at parlor level, above the first floor cornice. Dormers perched along the roofline where the
shallow hipped roofs rose from the heavy bracketed cornice.
No. 400 sat on the corner lot—normally the most desirable
location because of the opportunity for additional windows along the side. For some reason, however, the house received
only three openings on Ninth Avenue, one per floor.
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| No. 400, like its neighbors, is just two bays wide. |
At the time of the Civil War the owner of No. 400 preferred
to remain anonymous when, in 1865 a donation of a “bundle of clothing” was sent
to the St. Barnabas House of the New York Protestant Episcopal Mission
Society. It benefactor may have been Dr.
H. L. Coit, who lived here by 1870. He
would become Secretary of the College of Pharmacy within a few years; and was the first of a long string of physicians in the house.
Dr. Coit was in the house at least into 1871; followed by
the ambitious and strong-willed Dr. Caroline J. Yeomans. She advertised
her office hours in the house as “9-12” daily.
Dr. Yeomans was 39 years old and
still living and practicing at No. 400 West 22nd Street on Saturday,
March 6, 1875 when Lavinia C. B. Keep died of heart disease in Brooklyn.
Lavinia was the wife of the esteemed Brooklyn physician
Lester Keep. The couple’s son S. Hopkins
Keep, had followed his father’s profession and operated his medical office from
the family home at the corner of Vanderbilt and Gates Avenue.
The medical community was most likely shocked when the
following year Dr. Keep “a physician of extensive practice in Brooklyn, and now
over 84 years old, having buried his first wife in March, 1876 [sic], married
Caroline J. Yoemans, an M. D., aged about 40 years,” as reported in The New
York Times.
Caroline left West 22nd Street and moved to
Brooklyn with her new husband. But the
strong-willed female doctor had no intention of sharing a practice with her
step-son. The Times reported “Shortly
after the arrival of Mrs. Keep, M. D., the step-son had to take down his sign
and vacate the premises. Whereupon Mrs.
Keep put up her tablet as a practicing physician.”
The younger Dr. Keep immediately filed two law suits—one for
the money advanced for the erection of a memorial to his mother who was buried
in Fair Haven, Connecticut; “and the other against the father and step-mother
to decide the amount of his interest in the house…from which he was ejected,”
reported The Times.
The issue stemmed from an agreement between Dr. Lester Keep
and his son in 1872 that “if the son would assist in defraying the household
expenses the house should revert to him on the death of the father and his then
wife. After the death of the first Mrs.
Keep, a further agreement of the same tenor was entered into between the father
and son.”
In May 1875, following Lavinia Keep’s death, Lester Keep
revised his will, bequeathing the house to his son. But when he married Caroline Yeomans, he
deeded the property to her and destroyed his will. Caroline then “demanded that her step-son
should pay rent for his apartments or clear out,” said The New York Times on
June 29, 1878. The judge was unsympathetic
with Caroline Yeoman Keep’s treatment of her step-son. He found her guilty of “fraud” and directed
her to pay S. Hopkins Keep $5,478.22—about $135,000 today.
In the meantime, the house on 22nd Street had
become home to yet another physician, Raul S. Gage (whose name was sometimes
spelled “Ruel”). By 1883 he had moved
to nearby No. 369 West 23rd Street and Dr. William Henry Weston
moved in.
Weston, who was born on a Hancock, New Hampshire farm on
August 8, 1849. He had married Frances Pope. In 1889 William Willis
Hayward described his modest background. “In his youth Doctor Weston attended the district school a few
weeks each year, and worked on the farm the rest of the time. In 1866 he attended the high school in
Peterboro one term, and the next year assumed the charge of the farm, and from
that time until he was 21 years of age he remained at home, attending school
during the winter terms.”
For the next few years Weston bounced around, taking jobs in
a grocery store in Omaha; teaching in Marlow, New Hampshire; and serving as a waiter at a resort
hotel. He continued to work the family
farm while he studied medicine in Manchester, finally entering the College of
Physicians and Surgeons in Brooklyn. By
the time he moved into the house at No. 400 West 22nd Street, he was
recognized as a specialist in spinal diseases.
On April 15, 1889 Weston was called from the house to that
of Dr. George R. Gyles, who lived a block away at No. 417 West 23rd
Street. Gyles was well known, having
practiced medicine in the city for nearly four decades. But the death of his daughter a year earlier,
coupled with a malpractice suit that cost him $1,500 shortly afterward, had
affected him deeply.
That morning, around 8:30, Dr. Gyles entered his wife’s room
with a goblet of white liquid. The
New-York Tribune reported that “after chatting with her for awhile on
commonplace subjects, he asked her to take a drink from the glass which he held
in his hand. Mrs. Gyles thought that the
mixture was magnesia, which the doctor had been in the habit of taking
frequently, and refused to touch it.”
The doctor gently pressured her, saying he thought it would
be beneficial to her. She refused again
and he “said something in an undertone in a petulant manner and went to his room.”
A maid was passing by the doctor’s door about a half an hour
later, when she heard groans. Opening
the door she found him lying on the bed only semi-conscious. When she shook him and asked what was the
matter, he opened his eyes and said “I am dying.”
When Dr. Weston arrived, Gyles’s son was in the
bedroom. “The son raised his father’s
head from the bed to give him relief and he died in his son’s arms,” recounted
the newspaper. There was nothing that
Dr. Weston could have done to save the physician. The powder he had dissolved in the goblet was
strychnine. “It was evidently Dr.
Gyles’s intention to have his wife die with him,” said the Tribune, adding
“Mrs. Gyles is deeply affected and is suffering from nervous prostration, which
is aggravated by the narrow escape which she had from death.”
The call to Dr. Gyles’s home was not out of the
ordinary. On October 22, 1896 Dr. Weston
was called to the boarding house at No. 361 West 21st Street. A servant girl, Mary O’Brien, had smelled
lighting gas in the hallway and traced the odor to the door of 29-year old
broker Gerald Griffin on the third floor.
When the door was opened, he was found unconscious on his bed, having
attempted suicide.
Dr. Weston and another physician, Dr. Rice of No. 213 West
23rd Street, worked on the man until about 9:00 that evening, when
he was taken to New-York Hospital in critical condition. Newspapers explained “It was said that he had
been drinking heavily of late, and had become despondent on account of business
troubles.”
In another instance, Weston was called to the house of
Albert Emery at No. 339 West 20th Street. On the morning of December 9, 1898, Emery’s
68-year old brother-in-law, Washington Freeman, and his wife arrived from
Portsmouth, New Hampshire for a visit.
Freeman was President of the Mechanics and Traders’ Bank in Portsmouth;
as well as the former owner of the Portsmouth Chronicle and Gazette.
That morning Freeman complained of chest pains, which
increased after lunch at a restaurant on Broadway near 22nd
Street. The pains were such upon
leaving the restaurant that Freeman asked his wife to call a carriage. On the way to the Emery house, the man lost
consciousness.
“On reaching the house he was assisted to a lounge in the
parlor and a doctor was sent for. Dr. W.
H. Weston of 400 West Twenty-second street was the first to arrive, but Mr.
Freeman was dead when he got there,” reported The Sun the following day.
The 64-year old William Henry Weston was still practicing
medicine here in 1913. The Physician’s Who’s Who, New York State
recorded his daily office hours as from 8 to 10:00 in the morning, 1 to 2:00 in
the afternoon, and 5:30 to 7:30 every evening.
Upon his retirement he moved to the home of his daughter, Zady P.
Weston, at No. 249 West 11th Street where he died at the age of 87
in 1937.
By the time the house at No. 400 West 22nd Street
was sold to Julia R. Donnelly in September, 1918, stores had already been
carved into the Ninth Avenue base.
She leased it to the family of Thomas F. Burchill, an auctioneer and New
York State Assemblyman. Burchill and
his wife had five children. But Donnelly
apparently changed her mind about renting rather quickly.
On October 15, 1920 The New York Times reported that she “is
seeking to regain possession of her property, 400 West 22d Street, under the
provisions of one of the new rent laws which says that an owner may recover
possession for the personal occupancy of himself and his family.” The Assemblyman was apparently able to hold
out for another year—directories still listed him in the house in 1921.
In 1941 the house was converted to apartments, two per
floor. Later that year Japan bombed the United States
air base at Pearl Harbor; pulling the U.S. into the World War. Within months Helen Richey was on her way to
England where she became a member of the Aviation Transport Auxiliary, a group
of American women who supplemented the British Women’s Ferry Command. One of Richey’s assignments was to fly loads
of bombs from munitions factories to air bases.
Before the war Helen Richey was already well-known as the
only female passenger airline pilot and the only woman to fly the United States
mails. She was briefly a co-pilot for
Central Airlines, beginning in December 1934; but resigned after an ugly
controversy over the physical capability of a woman to fly an airliner. She
was co-pilot with Amelia Earhart in the Bendix Trophy race of 1936—the same
year she took the record for the world’s altitude record for light planes. In 1940 she received the first instructor’s
license ever awarded a woman by the Civil Aeronautics Authority.
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| Helen Richey as she appeared in 1929 --San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive |
Following the war Helen Richey returned to the States and
took an apartment in No. 400 West 22nd Street. On Saturday evening, January 4, 1947 she gave
a party in the apartment for a few friends.
The following morning one of the guests called and spoke to her. It was the last time anyone would hear her
voice.
When the same friend, Mary Parker, could not get in touch
with her after more than a day, she contacted neighbor Robert Wright who lived
across the street at No. 405 West 22nd Street. He used a passkey to enter Richey’s
apartment, where he found the 37-year old aviator dead in her bed. Her death was ruled a suicide by overdose.
The handsome house underwent interior renovations in 1982,
resulting in a total of five apartments in the building including two
duplexes.
photographs by the author
photographs by the author
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