The Thomas Thompson Eckert Mansion - 38 West 86th Street

 

Real estate developer William H. Hall, Jr. sold the newly built mansion at 38 West 86th Street on February 25, 1908.  The New York Herald remarked, "The buyer is understood to be a resident of the Fifth avenue section, the in-roads of business having driven him to seek a home in the west side."  Hall's reluctant buyer was General Thomas Thompson Eckert, Sr.

As commerce invaded his formerly exclusive Fifth Avenue neighborhood, Eckert had resolutely refused to leave 545 Fifth Avenue, his home for decades.  But now the city was widening the thoroughfare and ordered that the front of the house had to be chopped off.  Eckert had no choice but to move.

No. 38 West 86th Street was one a row of eight 25-foot-wide homes designed by Welch, Smith & Provot.  Sitting upon a rusticated limestone base, its red brick midsection was trimmed in limestone, and its fifth floor took the form of a steep, slate shingled mansard with two brick dormers.  Eckert paid $80,000 for the residence, equal to nearly $2.75 million in 2024.

The general's sentimental ties to his former home resulted in his reworking Welch, Smith & Provot's interiors.  A massive redecorating took place to--as closely as possible--reproduce the interiors of the Fifth Avenue residence.  The New York Evening Telegram reported, 

Wall paper was imported from Europe to match the paper in the General's old library and bedroom.  Woodwork was repainted in exact imitation of that in the old home.  Shades, draperies and even pictures were duplicated or the originals placed in the new house and in the places where they had been.     

The interior decoration took over a year.  Eckert and his family moved into the house in November 1909.

General Thomas T. Eckert.  photograph by Mathew Brady, from the collection of the Library of Congress.

Born on April 23, 1825 in St. Clairesville, Ohio, Eckert became interested in the telegraph as a young man.  He came to New York in 1847 with the sole purpose of seeing the Morse telegraph in operation.  The trip resulted in his becoming an operator and returning to Ohio to work with the Wade Telegraph Company.

In 1861, Eckert was ordered to Washington D.C., assigned to General George B. McCellan's headquarters as aide-de-camp in charge of military telegraph operations.  He organized and oversaw the War Department's telegraph system.  Eckert was one of two confidential emissaries for Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

In 1866, Stanton appointed Eckert Assistant Secretary of War.  Through their close working relationship, Thomas Eckert became close friends with the President.  Edwin Stanton was protective of Lincoln, and when the President invited General Grant and his wife to attend Ford's Theatre with him and Mary Todd Lincoln, Stanton convinced Grant to decline, hoping to dissuade the President from a public appearance.  Lincoln then invited Eckert and his wife, Emeline.  Stanton forbade him from accepting.  The Secretary of War's fervent attempts were to no avail.  That night, Eckert rushed to the War Department and telegraphed General Ulysses S. Grant, "The President was assassinated at Ford's Theatre at 10:30 tonight & cannot live."

After the war, Eckert joined the Western Union Telegraph Company, eventually becoming president in 1893.  He retired in 1900, retaining his seat as chairman of the board of directors.

Eckert and his wife, the former Emeline Dore Whitney, who died on November 4, 1868, had two sons, Thomas, Jr. and James Clendenin.  Eckert's second wife, Joanna Rice, died in 1902.  Thomas Jr. lived in the West 86th Street house with his father.  (He took the position of president of the Western Union Telegraph Company following his father's retirement.)  The Eckert summer home, Heart's Content, was in West End, New Jersey.

In June 1910, six months after moving into the town house, the Eckerts went to Heart's Content.  They were still there on September 2 when, while preparing to go to bed, General Eckert, "in turning around suddenly fractured his right thigh," as reported by The New York Times.  He would never return to the Manhattan house he had so carefully and sentimentally decorated.  He died in the New Jersey house on October 20 at the age of 85.

Surprisingly, less than a month later, Thomas, Jr. announced his engagement.  Perhaps as shocking to society as the breach of mourning protocol was the bride-to-be.  Mary Eagan was hired as a maid in the Eckerts' Fifth Avenue home in 1901.  The Brooklyn Standard Union said, "Tom Eckert fell in love with her at once."  As it turned out, General Eckert was not only aware of the romance, but was involved in the wedding plans, theretofore unannounced.

"The secret was kept for several years," explained The Brooklyn Standard Union, "but Gen. Eckert learned of it.  He was greatly pleased and helped make plans for the wedding, which was to take place Oct. 13."  Now, the Irish-born servant girl known as Minnie, "will become the mistress of Heart's Content, the country place at West End, N. J., as well as the town house at 38 West Eighty-sixth street, Manhattan."

Thomas and Minnie Eckert would have a short time to enjoy their wedded bliss before problems arose for the family.  First, James Clendenin Eckert sued to have the will overturned.  Eckert had left Thomas the bulk of the estate, citing "my appreciation of his loving care and attention."  James (who was known by his middle name), on the other hand, had borrowed significant sums of money from his father over the years, and never repaid it.  Clendenin claimed "undue influence" on the part of his brother in the terms of the will.

As that drama played, out, on April 4, 1911, the Wisconsin newspaper The Kenosha Evening News reported, "A short, portly woman came into Surrogate Cohalan's office and announced that she was Mrs. E. L. Davis, the widow of Gen. Thomas T. Eckert, former head of the Western Union Telegraph company, whose two sons have been fighting for his millions since his death last October."  The woman claimed she was entitled to "at least one-third of the real estate of General Eckert as his widow."

Mrs. Davis, according to The Sun, was also known as Mrs. Dore.  She claimed that after taking a touring car with Eckert  to a minister's house in 1908 and being married, the general had given her the deed to 38 West 86th Street.  In court, Clendenin testified that his father refused to ride in motorcars.  "I have had cars since 1902.  He could never be induced to ride in any of them, nor would he ride in my brother's cars."

The woman was eventually identified as Louise Dore.  She was committed to the Middletown State Hospital as insane in October 1911, ending that portion of the estate litigation.

Two months later, on December 16, 1911, The New York Times ran the headline, "Eckert Will Upheld; Son Loses Suit / An Appeal Is Not Likely."  Indeed, an appeal was filed and the bitter fight between the brothers dragged on until December 1915.  On the 15th, The Sun titled an article, "Eckert Estate Row Ends" and reported that James Clendenin Eckert "won a court decision granting him a half interest in the many millions left by his father."  Included within the half of the estate that Thomas was granted was the 86th Street house, which he and Minnie had been occupying the entire time.

With the unpleasant litigation behind him, Thomas and Minnie purchased a summer home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1916.  He was still president of Western Union Telegraph Company when he died there on November 21, 1931 at the age of 76.  He was buried downtown in a vault at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral.

On June 4, 1958, The New York Times reported that the estate of Mary A. Eckert had sold 38 West 86th Street to the Cathedral College for $65,000 (about $685,000 in 2024).  The preparatory seminary of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York announced it would use the mansion, "as a residence hall for students of the college."  A renovation completed the following year resulted in a dining room and foyer on the first floor; the priests' dining room, chapel and parlor on the second; and bedrooms and dormitories on the upper floors.

Nearly half a century later, in 2000, the house was converted for use as the academic building and library of the Bard Graduate Center.  The institute offers two programs, one for Masters of Arts degree candidates, and the other for Ph.D. candidates.

photographs by the author