The Altered James Cumings House - 126 East 35th Street

 

Irish-born real estate developer and architect Thomas Kilpatrick erected a trio of houses at 72 to 76 East 35th Street (renumbered 126 through 130 in 1868) in 1854-55.  The high-stooped, brownstone fronted homes were designed in the popular Italianate style.  Three stories tall above English basements, their elliptically arched entrances sat within square-headed frames.  Like the floor-to-ceiling parlor windows, the architrave openings of the upper floors sat on diminutive sills and wore molded cornices.

Kilpatrick sold 72 East 35th Street to James and Laura Melissa Shaw Cumings.  The couple had five children, James Maurice, Joseph, Mary Ida, Laura and Ira T.  

Cumings was the owner of the Columbian Foundry and president of the Morris & Cumings Dredging Company.  The New York Herald called him, "well known to all old New Yorkers and his active life is contemporaneous with the rapid development of the city."  Born in 1803, he entered the iron business as an apprentice to Robert McQueen in his Columbian Foundry.  In 1832, McQueen turned the business over to Cumings and his partner Peter Morris.

The Cumings family remained here through 1864, when they moved across the street to 81 East 35th Street.  William Speiden, a broker, next occupied 72 East 35th Street; and in 1872, Professor William G. Peck moved in.

Born in 1832, the erudite Peck was on the faculty of Columbia College.  He held the positions of Professor of Mathematics, of Astronomy and of Mechanics in the School of Mines.  He was the author of numerous educational books.

On December 27, 1874, Peck "rushed into the Twenty-first Precinct station house...and said that he wanted to see Capt. McElwaine immediately, as the had just been robbed of $40,000," reported The New York Times, which added, "Prof. Peck was very much agitated."

Peck's agitation was understandable.  He said two young men had carried a chest out of his house, in which were the family silver and securities equal in value to just over $1 million today.  Captain McElwaine's investigation suggested a surprising in-house conspirator.  He interviewed a servant who had been looking out the kitchen window when Peck's 19-year-old son, Henry, arrived with two teenaged friends.  The rest of the family was at church.  Instead of using the basement entrance, as family members most often did, they climbed the stoop and entered the front hall.

"She heard them walking overhead in the parlor, and then heard them apparently go upstairs to young Peck's room," said the article.  The inquisitive servant heard the front door open and watched the two young men carry the chest down the stoop.  "She went out, saw that they turned down Madison avenue to Thirty-fourth street, and on looking up saw young Peck watching them from the window of his room."

When the servant ran into Henry Peck in the hallway later and asked him what his friends had taken, "he told her to mind her-----business and he would mind his," reported The New York Times.  Doubly, suspicious now, the servant watched Peck leave and follow the same path as his comrades.

She notified another servant and they did a search of the house, quickly discovering the silver chest was missing from the dining room.  The two rushed to the church and pulled Professor Peck and his father-in-law, Professor Davis, from the service.  

Captain McElwain's probing revealed that young Henry "was keeping company with a dressmaker."  More importantly, he had accumulated significant gambling debts to the likes of James Oxley, "Seddons Mouse," "Owney" Geoghegan, "Paddy the Smasher," and "other sporting and notorious persons."  When confronted with the evidence, Henry Peck claimed he knew nothing about the robbery and his father refused to press charges.

The Peck family left 126 East 35th Street the following year.  The family of William W. Thompson occupied the house through the mid-1880s.  Like their predecessors, the Thompsons had a domestic staff and on October 28, 1879 advertised for two chambermaids.  Their wages were listed at $10 per month, about $315 today.

By 1894, the Gordon Wendell family owned 126 East 35th Street.  Born in 1859, Wendell married Frances Cadwalader Elwyn on April 20, 1887.  They had one child, Frances Gordon.  

Gordon Wendell was a wool commission merchant, a member of Jacob Wendell & Co.  (It was reorganized as Taylor, Wendell & Co. following the death of Wendell's father, Jacob, in 1898.)  Educated at Harvard, he was a member of the exclusive Union League, Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht, Merchants' and Harvard Clubs.  (Two of his sisters married titles.  Catherine Wendell married the Earl of Carnarvon, known for discovering and exploring the tomb of Tutankhamun.  Philippe Wendell married the Count of Galloway.)

Although Frances C. E. Wendell was a member of the Society of Colonial Dames and of the Colony Club, she was, perhaps, more active in political and civic issues than in society.  She was an early and ardent suffragist.  On April 19, 1894, The New York Times reported on "the political equality meeting" held in the parlor.  "A large number of guests were present, and both sides of the suffrage question were represented," said the article.  

Frances C. E. Wendell (original source unknown)

On April 25, 1895, The New York Times titled an article, "More Women as School Inspectors" and reported that Mayor William L. Strong had appointed Frances C. E. Wendell one of three new School Inspectors.  She was, as well, a trustee of the Babies' Day Nursery.  In reporting on her newest appointment, The Times noted that she "has long been identified with charitable and educational work."

In 1907, Gordon Wendell hired architect Richard Berger to make what the Record & Guide described as "extensive exterior and interior changes" to the house.  It appears from later photographs, that the alterations were mostly inside.

In the fall of 1908, Gordon Wendell was serving on the jury of the high profile trial of Charles W. Morse and Alfred H. Curtis "on the charge of having violated in several particulars the National banking laws," according to The New York Times on October 23.  Wendell brought the case to a temporary halt on the night of October 21.  The jury was sequestered at the Astor House hotel when Wendell became ill.  The New York Times said, he "had to be allowed to go to his home, 126 East Thirty-fifth Street, under guard of a Deputy United States Marshal."

Wendell's doctor sent a note to the judge the following morning, saying he was "suffering from an acute attack of indigestion and kidney trouble."  The judge told reporters, "I have no desire to kill a juror."  The doctor had assured him there was "plenty of room for the accommodation of a guard at Mr. Wendell's private residence."  Happily for the other jurors, Wendell was well enough to attend deliberations a day later.

On the night of January 31, 1910, Gordon Wendell died "suddenly" at his home.  The term most often referred to a stroke or heart attack.  His funeral was held in the parlor on February 3.

When this photograph was taken in 1941, the architectural personality of the house was about to be starkly changed.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Apparently boarding with the two Frances Wendells in 1914 was the young Rev. Francis James Meadows Cotter.  The 24-year-old cleric's engagement to socialite Ida Miller Taylor was announced on June 14 that year.  Interestingly, the couple would have two daughters, Jayne and Audrey Meadows, who would well-known actresses.

New York society may have assumed that Frances Gordon Wendell would never wed.  But on January 24, 1920, she and U.S. Navy Lt. John Gilbert Marshall Stone were married in the parlor of 126 East 35th Street.  The bride was 29 years old.

Frances Cadwalader Elwyn Wendell died on June 19, 1929 at the age of 64.  Frances and John G. M. Stone remained in the 35th Street house until the fall of 1937.  On November 1 that year, The New York Sun reported that the Engineering Women's Club had leased the house, adding, "Mrs. Herbert Hoover is a member of the club."

The Women's Engineering Club opened its new clubhouse on December 1.  The New York Times explained that the club had been formed in 1928 "with a group of women who worked together in the first Presidential campaign of Herbert Hoover."  The article said, "it has served as an international center for women engineers and wives of engineers from all parts of the country and abroad."

The Women's Engineering Club remained in the house until 1941, when the Midhattan Realty, Inc. hired architect Stephen L. Heinrich to remodel it to apartments.  He removed the stoop, moved the entrance to the basement level, and converted the top floor to a tile covered mansard with a shed dormer.  Unlike many awkward remodelings at the time, Heinrich's design has a charming, cottage-like feel.

A subsequent renovation, completed in 1989, resulted in a duplex apartment in the basement and former parlor floors, and a triplex on the upper floors.  Outwardly, the house is little changed since the 1941 make-over.

photographs by the author

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