Robert W. Chanler's "House of Fantasy" - 147-149 East 19th Street

 

In 1843 a row of Greek Revival homes was completed along the northern side of East 19th Street between Irving Place and Third Avenue.  Three stories tall above English basements, they were faced in red brick and trimmed in brownstone.  Among them were 106 and 108 East 19th Street (renumbered 147 and 149 in 1867), both of which were operated as rooming houses by the 1890s.  

On September 19, 1910, Antoinette and George Finch purchased the two houses, which were described by the Record & Guide as "brick tenements."  Seven months later, on April 5, 1911, The Sun reported, 

George Finch is having plans prepared for turning the two four story buildings at 147 and 149 East Nineteenth street into a studio building.  The improvement is an interesting one, as it is likely to have a decided influence on the future character of this neighborhood, which at present is a tenement district.  The alteration, which will cost about $10,000, is not a speculative improvement, as the property has been leased for five years to a party whose name Mr. Finch said he could not divulge at this time.  

The mystery of the renter's identity was soon cleared up.  On April 30, 1911, a headline in The New York Times read, “'Sheriff Bob' Chanler Will Join the Colony at Gramercy Park” and the sub-headline added, “With Mrs. William Astor Chanler He Will Move to the Nineteenth Street Section, Which Has Been Charmingly Reconstructed.”

Born on February 22, 1872, Chanler had an impressive pedigree.  He was the great-great grandson of Peter Stuyvesant and the grandnephew of Julia Ward Howe, John Jacob Astor III and William Backhouse Astor, Jr.  Chanler, who had just stepped down from his position as Sheriff of Duchess County, was also a newlywed.  He married Natalina (known as Lina) Cavalieri on June 18, 1910.  She was his second wife.  His marriage to Julia Remington Chamberlain had ended in divorce in August 1907.

It was Chanler who had chosen architect Frederick Junius Sterner to combine and remodel the two houses into a residence-studio.  In 1906, the British-born architect had arrived in New York from Colorado, purchased a high-stooped brownstone on the East 19th Street block, and transformed it into a Mediterranean-style villa with a stuccoed facade and red tiled roof.  One by one, he remodeled houses Pygmalion-like to fantastic, romantic structures, resulting in what Harriett Gillespie, writing in American Homes and Gardens in 1914, would call, "the Block Beautiful."

After removing the stoops, as he did with most of his transformations, Sterner covered the facade with stucco.  Wrought iron faux balconies appeared at the second and fourth floors.  A sloped, tile roof was flanked by stepped Flemish gables.  The wooden doors with iron strap hinges that sat within brick surrounds were surmounted by tympana filled with polychrome scenes of giraffes executed by Chanler's close friend, Charles Cary Rumsey.  They were, most likely, a nod to one of Chanler's most successful paintings to date, Giraffes, which was exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1905.

from the Rokeby Collection, Barrytown, New York

While 147 and 149 East 19th Street were being joined and remodeled, Chanler temporarily moved his studio into the converted carriage house down the block at 124 East 19th Street.  At the time, Current Opinion magazine called Chanler, “America’s most imaginative decorator.”  The artist’s murals decorated residences like that of William K. Vanderbilt, but they were in no way traditional.  The catalog for a later exhibition would explain, “Chanler’s career represents a series of reactions against conventions social and aesthetic.”  It said, “Surmounting in turn the inherited handicaps of family tradition and material affluence, he has won his way to a virile autonomy of thought and action which is to-day his most cherished possession.”

Lina Chanler would never move into the completed house.  The couple separated after their honeymoon and divorced in June 1912.  (Charles Green Shaw would later say, "He has been married twice and considers matrimony the greatest joke in the world.")

In the meantime, Chanler decorated what he called his House of Fantasy.  Years later, the Buffalo Evening News would comment, "His famous House of Fantasy, at 147 East 19th street, New York, is a demonstration of his eccentric nature.  The place has been rendered colorful and exotic by furnishings and decorations created by the artist to accord with his own desires rather than the routine of the conventions."

Although none of the interiors survive, contemporary accounts describe vibrant murals.  In an essay for the Vizcaya Museum and Garden's Robert Winthop Chanler, Lauren Drapala noted, "The building housed the largest collection of Chanler's work, an extensive study collection of live animals for modeling in his artwork, a vast library of rare books, and an assortment of houseguests, both friends as well as artisans in his workshop."

Robert Winthrop Chanler's 1905 painting Giraffes is presumed to be the inspiration for the tympana over the doors at 147-149 East 19th Street.  The International Studio, 1922 (copyright expired)

Members of Chanler's in-house menagerie--birds, fish, snakes and such--which he kept as models for his paintings, as well as his house pets sometimes took it on the lam.  On July 24, 1913, an ad offered a $50 reward for the return of a French bulldog.  Three years later, on July 15, 1916, the New York Herald reported, "Somewhere on Manhattan Island the small French bulldog belonging to Robert W. Chanler is making a frantic search for him."  In 1918, an ad in the Evening Telegram read, "Lost--A pink head parrot with gray body; good reward," and the following year, on March 10, an advertisement said, "Lost--A Parrot--green and yellow Macaw parrot, in neighborhood of 147 East 19th St.; generous reward."  The advertisements would continue for years.

Meanwhile, the House of Fantasy was known as much for its owner's parties as for his artwork.  Known as "Papa" to his friends ("pronounced in the French fashion," according to Charles G. Shaw's 1918 The Low-Down), Chanler threw a New Year's Eve party in 1917.  The following day, the New York Herald wrote, "A sequal to Nero's fiddle solo as Rome burned was enacted last night in a studio at No. 147 East Nineteenth street."  The New-York Tribune explained that the guests, "danced the old year out...while fire that started in a defective flue at 145 East Nineteenth Street ate its way under the floor toward them.  Some one discovered the blaze and the firemen put it out in jig time."

Interestingly, while Chanler's parties were infamous, Charles Green Shaw wrote in 1928, "In the midst of one of his parties he will sometimes sneak upstairs to his workshop and, all by himself, commence a new painting."

After renting 147-149 East 19th Street for nearly a decade, Chanler purchased the property in July 1919 for $57,000 (about $1 million in 2024).  In reporting the sale, the New York Herald remarked, "These houses were altered into what is the largest private studio in the city for Mr. Chanler about eight years ago by the sellers."

While in Europe in 1928, Chanler suffered a heart attack.  On July 29, 1929, the Buffalo [New York] Evening News reported that he had been admitted to a hospital in Kingston, New York, saying, "This is the third heart seizure within a little more than a year...His present illness has given [his friends] intense concern."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Chanler recovered, but the scare may have caused him to consider the viability of living alone in the East 19th Street house.  On June 23, 1930, the New York Sun reported that he had returned to the city from Woodstock, New York, but had gone to the apartment of Howland Spencer at 377 Park Avenue.  "Mr. Chanler closed his house at 147 East Nineteenth street last May.  An apartment house will be built on the site," said the article.

The renowned artist never had the chance to carry out that project.  He died four months later, on October 24, 1930.  

The Chanler estate sold the house in May 1945 to Nathan and Blossom Dolinsky.  The couple converted it to five apartments, many of them duplexes.  The configuration survives.  It was most likely the Dolinskys who drilled a hole through one of Charles Cary Rumsey's giraffe panels to accommodate a lamp and removed Sterner's picturesque wooden doors.  Overall, however, the 1911 appearance is intact.

many thanks to Carole Teller for prompting this post

photographs by the author

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