552 East 87th Street (right) is a mirror image of its next door neighbor.
In 1880, the once bucolic district around the hamlet of Yorkville, about five miles north of the city, was seeing rapid development. John C. Henderson, a fur, hat, and strawgoods merchant, joined the trend in 1881 by acquiring the blockfront along East End Avenue, wrapping the corners of East 86th and East 87th Streets. He commissioned the architectural firm of Lamb & Rich to design 32 brick-faced houses. They would comprise the first of his residential enclaves "for persons of moderate means." The plans, filed in October 1881, placed the cost of each house at $6,500, or about $192,000 in 2024.
Lamb & Rich's Queen Anne group brought individual designs together into a charming streetscape of arches, towers and gables. Starting with a charming mews called Henderson Place that opened onto East 86th Street, the assemblage would be called "the new Henderson Place residence colony." It ended with 552 East 87th Street.
At just 17-feet-wide, it was a mirror image of 554 East 87th Street. The two houses shared a split brownstone stoop. A complex terra cotta plaque sat between the single-doored entrance and the vast, arched parlor window. A blind panel below the hall window at the second floor featured brick laid in a sideways herringbone pattern. The third floor took the form of a mansard with slate fish scale shingles. The symmetry of the two houses was enhanced by a shared dormer.
Henderson leased the houses. His tenants in 552 East 87th Street at the turn of the century were the family of Otto Hahn. Hahn and his wife, the former Eleonore Funk, had one daughter, E. Adelaide, born in 1893.
The erudite Eleonore was a graduate of Hunter College. She involved herself in various women's clubs, including the New York State Federation of Women's Clubs. She home-schooled her precocious daughter through her elementary years.
Interestingly, E. Adelaide always used her first initial, and it is uncertain whether it even stood for a name. In November 1907, St. Nicholas Magazine: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks launched a children's contest in categories ranging from verse and prose to drawing and photography. Thirteen-year-old E. Adelaide won the cash prize in "Puzzle-Making."
That was the same year she was enrolled in the Hunter Model School, the high school run by her mother's alma mater. E. Adelaide Hahn graduated from Hunter College in 1915 with majors in Latin and French and a minor in Greek. She earned her masters degree in 1917 from Columbia University, and in 1921 became a member of the classics faculty at Hunter College.
Eleonore continued her involvement in social issues. On July 8, 1937, The New York Times reported that she would address the Chautauqua Women's Club on children's rights. The article noted that she and her daughter had won the club's "first and second prizes, $10 and $5, respectively in the annual prize spelling match," adding, "Miss Hahn is head of the Latin and Greek Department at Hunter College."
E. Adelaide Hahn had earned her Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1929. She became chair of the classics department of Hunter College in 1936, remaining in that post until her retirement in 1963.
E. Adelaide Hahn, from the Database of Classical Scholars of Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences.
In the meantime, on December 18, 1921 (the year E. Adelaide Hahn joined the Hunter faculty), the New-York Tribune reported that the Henderson estate had sold "the three-story 17-foot dwelling at 552 East Eighty-seventh Street, in the new Henderson Place residence colony" to Dr. Thomas Kirby Davis.
A 1913 graduate of Johns Hopkins Medical School and a specialist in nervous and mental diseases, Davis was on the staff of Bellevue Hospital. Like her predecessor in the house, his wife, the former Rosa Vedder Mabon, was well-educated, a 1913 graduate of Bryn Mawr College. The couple had married in 1917 and had one son, William M. Davis, born in 1919.
Davis was Rosa's second husband. She was formerly married to William Mabon. Her American roots went deep and three of her ancestors had served in the American Revolution.
Shortly after moving into the East 87th Street house, Davis became director of neurology and psychiatry at the Lenox Hill Hospital, a post he would retain until 1952. William followed his father's professional footsteps. From 1944 to 1949 he was an intern and then a resident in medicine and pathology at St. Luke's Hospital, and in 1951 became Chief Resident at Bellevue Hospital.
The Davises receive a delivery from a rug cleaning firm in 1941. image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
The Davises moved to Danbury, Connecticut in 1961 following Dr. Davis's retirement. The East 87th Street house became home to Bertram Clarke and his wife, the former Muriel Barudin.
Born in 1911, Clarke was a member of the Grolier Club, formed in 1884 by lovers of books. He was described by The New York Times as "a prominent designer of art books and typography." After serving in the Coast Guard during World War II, Clarke came to New York City in 1946, designing at the Limited Editions Club. He did freelance work with David Jacques Way on the typography of the Frick Collection's 12-volume catalogue. In 1953 the two formed Clarke & Way, Inc.
Upon Clarke's death at the age of 83 on February 19, 1994, The New York Times remarked,
Mr. Clarke's talents were much in demand in the art world. He designed catalogues for David Rockefeller, Paul Mellon, Jayne Wrightsman and Laughlin Phillips. And he designed and printed the folio edition "Georgia O'Keefe" published by Viking. He also designed the catalogue of "Georgia O'Keeffe, Arts and Letters," for the National Gallery of Art.
It is unclear how long Muriel Clarke remained in the house. Always a single family home, little has changed outwardly after its more than 140 years existence.
photographs by the author
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