Working for developer Francis M. Jenks, in 1891 architect Clarence Fagan True designed a group of seven upscale homes that wrapped the southeast corner of West End Avenue and West 77th Street. Comfortable with combining two or three historic styles to create residences that were at once fanciful and elegant, True designed this project in three groups, culminating in a striking, unified pair at 270 and 272 West 77th Street.
Looking at a glance like a single mansion, the houses were significantly different in size. At 28 feet wide, 272 West 77th Street was 11 feet wider than its counterpart at 270. The arched entrances sat within a Romanesque Revival base of undressed stone above short stoops. Medieval turned to Elizabethan in the intricately carved stone railing of the full-width second floor balcony. The smooth-faced limestone upper floors of 272 West 77th Street were divided into two sections--one bowed, the other flat-faced. They rose to a dormered mansard.
The two houses were meant to appear as one.
No. 272 West 77th Street became home to Dr. Granville Moss White, his wife, the former Laura Dunham Tweedy, and their two sons, six-year-old Theodore Tweedy and two-year-old Nelson Lloyd.
Born in Danbury, Connecticut on May 21, 1855, Granville M. White graduated from Yale Law School in 1877, then changed course. He received his medical degree from Columbia University Medical School in 1884. When he moved his family into the West 77th Street house, he was one of three examining physicians for the Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York. (He would later become a vice-president of the firm.)
This photo of a confident-looking Granville Moss White was taken during his senior year at Yale Law School, in 1877. (copyright expired)
Early in the morning of December 20, 1898, the White family and the other occupants of the block were roused from their sleep. The family of Charles H. Raymond lived at 260 West 77th Street and Raymond's sister-in-law, Julia Underwood, was visiting for the holidays from Washington, D.C. Fire was discovered by a maid and the cook around 6:30. As the cook, Harriet Fee, rushed upstairs to awaken the residents, "there came a great volcanic burst of flame," as worded by The Sun. In the end Harriet, Julia Underwood, and Mrs. Raymond were killed, and six people injured.
Charles Raymond had been rescued by firefighters just after his wife jumped to her death. When he reached street level, he saw the body of his sister-in-law on the ground. The Sun reported, "He covered his eyes with his arms, and would have fallen had not one of the firemen caught him. He was taken to the house of a friend, Dr. G. W. [sic] White of 272 West Seventy-seventh street."
Like their neighbors, the Whites had a domestic staff. Among them in 1894 was a "German nursery governess." The family would have also employed a cook, and at least one chambermaid, a butler, and possibly a laundress. On April 13, 1900, a new cook started work and it was not long before trouble ensued.
Two nights later, Dr. White was reading in his study when he heard someone "fumbling cautiously at the knob of the front door," as reported by the New York Sun. He listened and the noise began again. "Then he tiptoed to the front door and opened it suddenly," said the article. A man entered the hall and White "pounced upon him and dragged him into the study, where there was a light on, and demanded to know what the fellow was doing at the front door."
"I am a cousin of your new cook and I have called to see her."
The cook was summoned to the study and she confirmed that the man was her cousin. She explained that he probably did not know better than to try to enter the house uninvited. Dr. White was unconvinced and took Samuel Farcusin, who was a Hungarian-born tailor, to the West 68th Street police station and had him arrested as a "suspicious person." The Sun said, "He could speak little English and seemed badly frightened."
The following year, in August 1901, White hired architect Charles A. Rich (of the recently dissolved firm of Lamb & Rich) to make $500 in improvements to the house, including "new steel beams and girders." The renovations seem to have been in anticipation of the White family's leaving West 77th Street and leasing the dwelling. They moved to Morristown, New Jersey where, in 1910, they would acquire the striking Colonial Revival style mansion, Oak Dell.
In 1902, 272 West 77th Street was rented by William Alexander Burrows and his wife, the former Virginia Prickett. The New York Times described Burrows as "a well-known broker in foreign exchange" who came from "an old English family." William Burrows died "suddenly" in the house on June 4, 1903 (the term most often suggested a heart attack or stroke). Virginia Burrows continued to lease the house for several years.
Frances S. Barnes occupied 272 West 77th Street by 1909. Described by The New York Sun as "a wealthy young woman and an exhibitor at horse shows," she was the unmarried daughter of Thomas R. Barnes and the granddaughter of millionaire publisher Alfred Smith Barnes. Her affluence was reflected in an article in the New York Herald on July 23, 1909, which reported that she was offering a $200 reward for the return of a three-stone, diamond Tiffany ring which she lost while getting in or out of a taxicab at Broadway and 42nd Street. The reward would equal nearly $7,000 in 2024.
Frances's luck with jewelry worsened three years later when, on December 27, 1912, The Sun reported she offered a $1,000 reward for "the return of more than $10,000 worth of jewelry" stolen from her.
The White family continued to lease 272 West 77th Street to well-heeled families--James K. Mason in 1913, Anatole Levy in 1915, and Axel Raun in 1919, for instance--until Granville Moss White's death in 1931.
The house was purchased by the Nordacs Club, a Jewish men's social and charitable club established in February 1919. The club's name was the backwards spelling of its founder's surname--attorney Louis Scadron. It had been operating from 220 Lenox Avenue. The club published its monthly magazine The Nordacs News from here. Among its charitable works was the distribution of baskets of food and toys to the poor during the Christmas and Passover holidays.
The Nordacs Club regularly hosted charity events that were supported by big names in entertainment and sports circles. On December 18, 1935, for instance, it staged a charity boxing event to benefit the poor. Guest referees included Jack Dempsey and Irving Jaffee and, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the event included a "comedy bout between A. Schact, the baseball clown and Milton Berle." (It would be one of several appearances Berle made for Nordacs Club benefits.)
In his July 3, 1936 "Broadway" column in the Daily News, three years after the Nazi party came to power in Germany, Ed Sullivan wrote about "an outfit that is circularizing clubs and organizations, offering Aryan orchestras, entertainers and serenaders." Saying that one of the first letters went to "the Nordacs Club, composed of Jewish members," Sullivan said flatly, "New York has no place for these cheap, poisonous Old World hatreds."
In 1941 a Nordacs Club banner hung from the second story balcony. image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
It may have been that disturbing trend, both abroad and in America, that prompted a change within the Nordacs Club. In his 1935 The Political Clubs of New York City, Roy V. Peel noted,
The Nordacs Club of 272 West 77th Street, heretofore known as strictly a social club, is now bent on taking an active part in politics. The club has an active membership of more than 750 members [and] owns its own four-story building in West 77th Street, between West End avenue and Broadway, and is considered one of the best financed social clubs in the city.
Peel said, "Just what the politic of the club will be has not been revealed," but he had been told that "the club shall use its membership, consisting of young men over the age of 21 years, to good advantage and for the mutual benefit of the club and its members."
In 1940, the Nordacs Club shared its clubhouse with the Knickerbocker Post No. 111 of Jewish Veterans.
The club left 272 West 77th Street in the late 1950s. A renovation completed in 1962 resulted in twelve apartments. From the outside, the residence is little changed since its completion more than 130 years ago.
photographs by the author
many thanks to Ralph Stone for prompting this post and for his valuable input.
No comments:
Post a Comment