The Strafford - 777 West End Avenue

 

photo by Deansfa

In the first years of the 20th century, aristocratic West End Avenue morphed from a street of brick and brownstone mansions to one of apartment buildings.  In 1910, the Salisbury Realty Co. demolished the high-stooped residences at the southwest corner of West End Avenue and 98th Street and commissioned the architectural firm of Schwartz & Gross to design a high-end apartment building.

Twelve stories tall, The Strafford was completed in 1911.  Above the spartan, two-story stone base, it was clad in red brick and trimmed in limestone and terra cotta.  Swartz & Gross reserved the decorative drama for the two-story top section where their Renaissance Revival design melded ever so slightly with Beaux Arts (seen in the swagged brackets upholding the intermediate and terminal cornices).  An exuberant frieze of fans, cartouches and other Renaissance motifs created the focal point of the design.

There were two spacious apartments per floor--one of eight rooms and the other of ten--each with three baths.  Rents ranged from $2,500 to $3,000, or about $8,000 per month for the most expensive suites.

Among the initial residents were Emil and Tillie Taussig and their 18-year-old daughter Ruth.  Born in Eisenbrod, Bohemia on June 20, 1857, Emil and his family moved to Manhattan in 1866.  He and Tillie were married on January 18, 1883.  Tillie was the daughter of Hermann Mandelbaum, a tobacco merchant.  When the Taussigs moved into The Strafford, Emil was the president of the West Disinfecting Company.

The family had barely settled in before they sailed to Europe.  One account says Emil was setting up a branch of his company in Vienna, others say it was a pleasure trip.  In either case, in April 1912 the Taussigs prepared to return home, traveling to Southampton, England to board the RMS Titanic as first class passengers.

In his testimony later, on the night of the sinking German steward Alfred Theissinger recalled telling Emil and Tillie, "You better put on your lifebelts and rush out on deck."  Emil asked, "It is as serious as all that?"  "Yes, hurry," was the reply.

In the midst of the chaos on deck, Tillie and Ruth boarded lifeboat number 8.  When the Carpathia docked in New York with the survivors, Tillie and Ruth did not immediately return to their Stafford apartment, but went to the Mandelbaum home at Park Avenue and 96th Street.  A reporter from The New York Times visited, and on April 20, 1912 reported, "Both were ill from exposure and grief caused by the death of Mr. Taussig.  The article said in part,

They said that he and Henry B. Harris who with his wife rushed with them to the deck on hearing the collision with the iceberg, were threatened with revolvers when they attempted to get into a lifeboat, although there was plenty of room for them.  Mrs. Taussig said that the boat into which she stepped with her daughter Ruth and Mrs. Harris pulled away from the Titanic with several seat spaces empty.  She is indignant and horrified to think that her husband and the theatrical man were sacrificed needlessly.

Tillie recalled "that there were three distinct explosions, one following close upon another.  Also there was a medley of pistol shots, breaking out every few minutes, but what the firing meant, the women were unable to learn."

Tillie and Ruth returned to their apartment here, and on November 14, 1915, The Sun announced, "The wedding of Miss Ruth Taussig, daughter of Mrs. Emil Taussig of 777 West End Avenue, to Julius B. Lichtenstein, will take place on December 1 at the Ritz-Carlton."  Following the wedding, the newspaper noted, "Mr. and Mrs. Lichtenstein will live at 777 West End Avenue."

In the meantime, The Strafford had filled with other well-to-do professionals, like William H. Fletcher and his wife.  Born in 1857, Fletcher was a self-made man.  The New-York Tribune said, "After a common school education he became an engineer when only nineteen years old."  In 1913 he was vice-president of the steamboat and steam yacht building firm W. & A. Fletcher Company, president of the Consolidated Iron World, and vice-president of the Webb Academy and Home for Shipbuilders.

Along with vessels in the New England steamship line and others that serviced the Hudson River, Fletcher's company had built impressive yachts for millionaires--like J. P. Morgan's 1899 Corsair, the Intrepid for Lloyd Phoenix, and the Sovereign for industrialist M. C. D. Borden.

Moses H. and Fanet O. Wallach were married in February 1916 and moved into an apartment here.  Wallach was secretary of the J. and J. G. Wallach Company, a chain of laundries.  According to Wallach later, his 19-year-old bride "promised to start housekeeping on a modest scale."  The two had different definitions for the term "modest."

In May 1919, according to Fanet, Moses walked out, telling her "that married life no longer appealed to him, that he would go his way and she could go hers."  He supplied her with $30 a month for food (about $530 today), but "she spent it for pleasure," Moses claimed.  Fanet continued to live in the apartment and Moses paid the rent and other bills for two months.  Then he waited outside The Strafford one night in June until he saw Fanet take the dog out for a walk.

Moses went to the apartment, told the maid to leave, and had all the locks changed.  The New-York Tribune reported, "When his wife came home, without any hat on, she found she was locked out."  Fanet went to a hotel and Moses had the furniture removed and put into storage.

It ended up in court on July 31, 1920.  Fanet Wallach sued her husband for separation and her father-in-law, Joseph G. Wallach, for $25,000 damages.  (She alleged he persuaded Moses to leave her.)  Moses told the judge, "My wife is twenty-three and an only child, and is a spoiled child.  After the first glamour of marriage wore off she became discontented."  Saying, "This whole affair is regrettable," the judge awarded Fanet $40 a week alimony.

The names of residents of The Strafford almost always appeared in newspapers for purely social reasons.  But that was not the case on July 24, 1918 when The New York Times reported that Harry E. Lazarus, who was the head of the Lazarus Raincoat Company, had been arrested by agents of the Department of Justice.  With World War I raging in Europe, Lazarus had a massive contract with the Government to supply military raincoats.  The article said, "It was officially announced last night that as a result of the inspection of the Quartermaster's Depot...thousands of raincoats intended for soldiers in France were found to be defective."  A Department of Justice spokesperson said "the alleged raincoat frauds...are said to have cost the War Department millions of dollars."

Lazarus appears to have weathered the scandal relatively unscathed.  Eight years later, on July 9, 1926, The American Hebrew reported, "Mr. and Mrs. Harry E. Lazarus, their twin daughters, Ethel and Lucille, and their son, Joseph, have closed their winter home at West Palm Beach, Florida, and are living in their New York apartment at 777 West End Avenue."

Iancu Urn Liber was born in Eastern Romania where he suffered intense antisemitism.  Upon immigrating to America, he changed his name to Jack Lieber.  In the spring of 1920, Jack married Celia Solomon and they moved into The Strafford.  Two years later, on December 28, 1922, they welcomed their first son, Stanley Martin Lieber.  Like his father had done, Stanley would change his name, becoming Stan Lee--the creative leader of Marvel comic books.   

In 1939, towards the end of the Great Depression, the sprawling apartments were divided.  There were now five per floor.

Among the early tenants were Margit and Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises.  Mises was born in Austria in 1881.  In 1940, with Austria under Nazi control, he and Margit emigrated to New York.  According to Jörg Guido Hülsmann's 2007 Mises, The Last Knight of Liberalism, "In early October [1941], he and Margit moved into the apartment where they would remain for the rest of their lives...Margit had found the three-bedroom apartment at 777 West End Avenue in Manhattan."

Ludwig von Mises, from the collection of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Mises became a visiting professor at New York University in 1945.  He would hold that position until his retirement in 1969.  He wrote and lectured on sociological and economic issues, becoming well-known for his comparisons of communism and capitalism and their social effects.

Ludwig von Mises's died on October 10, 1973.  In reporting his death, The New York Times called him, "one of the foremost economists of this century."  

Margit Serény had been an actress prior to marrying Ludwig von Mises on July 6, 1938.  Three years after his death, she wrote My Years with Ludwig von Mises.  She survived him by two decades, dying in 1993 at the age of 103.

Attorney Ronald Crean lived here in by the late 1970s.  Among his clients was the Mental Retardation Institute of Valhalla, New York.  Sometime between July and November 1980, he received a check made out to that institution, which he deposited in his own account.  The Deputy New York State Attorney General told Newsday, "After depositing the check [of more than $33,000], he used the money for personal purchases."  Unfortunately for Crean, the defalcation was discovered.  He was disbarred in August 1982 and pleaded guilty to fraud on July 25, 1983.

photo by Deansfa

Although the residents of The Strafford no longer have at least two servants--a cook and a maid--as they did during the post-World War I years, Schwartz & Gross's handsome structure remains a dignified presence on the avenue.

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