The 1897 William Stubner House - 311 West 91st Street

 

Clarence F. True was among the most prolific architects working on the Upper West in the late 19th century.  He was hired by developers Smith & Stewart in 1896 to design a row of seven upscale houses along the northern side of West 91st Street between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive.  The neighborhood was already filling with substantial homes and True's Renaissance Revival residences would follow suit.

Completed in 1897, the 25-foot wide homes were four-and-a-half stories high and faced in limestone.  No. 311 featured a bowed front faced in rough-cut stone above the planar base.  The columned portico provided a stone railed balcony to the second floor.  Handsome carved shells filled the tympana above the second floor openings.  The dormers of the mansard level were capped with graceful swan's neck pediments.  Inside were eleven main rooms, three tiled bathrooms, and three servants' rooms.  

In June 1897, Smith & Stewart sold 311 West 91st Street to William F. Stubner.  He and his wife, the former Elizabeth Jane Ringland (known as Liza), had one son, Christian James.   

Stubner was an early enthusiast of motorized transportation and owned both an automobile and a motorcycle.  He entered his cycle in the five-mile national championship race on November 3, 1908 at Morris Park in the Bronx, coming in third.

In February 1911, William joined with Harold F. Bidwell and Kennedy Conklin to form the Bidwell-Conklin Corp., described by Motor Age magazine as a "motor car business."  But his passion got him and his next door neighbor, John W. Brewer, in trouble later that year, on September 22.  The Daily Star reported that the pair "were each fined $3 for speeding on their motor cycles."  The fine would equal just under $85 today.

The nation closely followed the progress of the Transcontinental Motorcycle Relay Dispatch in 1915.  With World War I raging in Europe, the Government hoped the potential importance of the motorcycle in wartime would be proven by a relay from Washington D.C. to San Francisco.  President Woodrow Wilson provided one team with a message and the Department of War gave another to the second team.  

Three of the drivers in the 1915 relay.  National Photo Company Collection

Stubner not only participated in the event, but stood out.  His team carried the message from the President.  On July 21, 1915, the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News reported on its progress from Washington to Albany.  After describing the problems of a severe thunderstorm the team had overcome, the article noted, "Their going, however, was not marked by the variety of speed that William F. Stubner, the Gotham lad, showed when he came through Market Street Monday evening at the rate of seventy-five miles an hour."

In the meantime, Christian was looking for work in 1914.  He advertised in the New York Herald in December seeking a position as a stenographer or "correspondent."  The ad read, "clean cut young man, thoroughly experienced in office detail, has decided to improve position and desires to connect with reliable concern."

The Stubners sold 311 West 91st Street  to Dr. William A. Heckard and his wife, Emilie, in November 1921.  A dentist, Heckert had graduated from the Philadelphia Dental College in 1889.  

In 1897, Heckard patented a remarkable device that kept track of incoming phone calls.  He explained to The Indianapolis News on March 4 the following year:

The idea of my device is this: You are a physician, or lawyer, or business man.  You go away from your office or business place, and to make sure of telephone calls that may come in your absence, you turn a button.  My device is attached, and when you return you will find the number of your telephone caller, or callers, duly registered on a strip of paper attached to an apparatus like a "ticker."

Emilie was William's second wife.  Katherine R. Heckard had sued for divorce in May 1915 claiming "abandonment and nonsupport."  The "wealthy dentist" as he was described by The Cincinnati Enquirer, had moved to New York ten years earlier, leaving his wife and child in Indiana.  Katherine was granted $12,000 alimony (about $375,000 in 2024 terms) and, not surprisingly, custody of their 16-year-old daughter.

During the war Heckard had been commissioned a lieutenant in the Army and was the camp dental surgeon at Chillicothe, Ohio.  He never gave up his military affiliation and while living in the 91st Street house held the rank of colonel.  He served as the dental surgeon at the Medical Headquarters of the 12th Corps. in New York.

Following Heckard's retirement, he and Emilie moved to East Quogue, New York.  On April 14, 1934, The New York Sun reported that Heckard had leased the 91st Street house to Richard Shill.  The article noted "The house is to be occupied for club purposes."  If, indeed, the property was used as a clubhouse, it did not last long.  In 1935, the title was surrendered to the Bowery Savings Bank.  In January 1937, the bank sold it to Armand Gardos.

Gardos operated it as a rooming house.  Most of the elegant rooms in which the Stubners had entertained became bedrooms.  A tenant, Lynn Burgess, who had lived here as a child in the 1960's later described the former dining room, calling it a "great room."

The great room had very high ceilings, I think the first and second [floors] did have extremely high ceilings.  The great room, one side of the wall had an enormous mirror, covering almost the entire wall on the right-hand side.  It was laid into a very thick dark wood frame.  It was enormous.  To the right of that room was a bedroom.

 The bedroom she mentioned was the Stubner's former parlor.

A renovation completed in 1968 essentially gutted the Clarence True interiors.  It resulted in one apartment each on the three lower floors and a duplex above.

photographs by the author

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