Real estate developer Dore Lyon hired Edward Angell to design four high-stooped rowhouses on the south side of West 77th Street between Broadway and West End Avenue in 1889. The 18-feet-wide residences would rise four stories above high English basements. Angell created them as two Romanesque Revival-style models in a balanced A-B-B-A configuration.
At the western end of the row was 268 West 77th Street, an "A" model. A solid wing wall of undressed stone flanked the stoop, beside which was a rounded, two-story bay. Colorful stained glass filled the transoms of the parlor windows, and the panel above the arched entrance was intricately carved with delicate vines.
The center stained glass transom has been lost, most likely to a one-time window air conditioner. The arched opening above the door was originally stained glass, as well.
The third and fourth floors were clad in beige brick and trimmed in brownstone. Below the peaked gable was a decorative, blind arcade.
Construction was completed in 1890. Dore Lyon did not sell 268 West 77th Street, however, until March of 1895, when the "four-story and basement brown-stone and buff-brick" dwelling was offered at auction. It may have been the ongoing Financial Panic of 1893 that lessened bidders' enthusiasm. The single bid of $25,000 (about $935,000 in 2025) was refused.
Finally, six years after construction was completed, on September 23, 1896, The New York Times reported that Dore and Anna E. Lyon had sold 268 West 77th Street. The buyers were Ira Adelbert Place and his wife, the former Katharine B. Gauntlett.
Ira Place was born in New York City on May 8, 1854. He graduated from Cornell University in 1881 and was admitted to the bar in 1883. He and Katharine were married in 1893 and had three children, three-year-old Katharine, two-year-old Hermann Gauntlett, and newborn Willard Fiske Place. When the family moved into 268 West 77th Street, Place was assistant to the general counsel of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company, as well as a director in four other railroads.
Ira Adelbert Place in his later years, from the collection of the Eastman Museum.
Place's position and influence within New York Central increased. In April 1905, he was appointed the general counsel and a vice president of the railroad. Apparently well satisfied with the Upper West Side, he was admitted to membership in the West End Association on February 4, 1907. Founded by millionaire W. E. D. Stokes in 1884 as the Citizens' West Side Improvement Association, it was the Upper West Side's watchdog agency, lobbying for improvements and against incursions, like garbage dumps.
Place's membership in the West End Association and his firm's interests would come into direct conflict in October 1911. As the railroad laid plans to provide passenger service along the Hudson River, a critic warned the press, "An open railway terminal in full view of the costly Riverside Drive and Parkway...would be an eyesore to Washington Heights and an eyesore to New York in general."
A reporter from The New York Times went to the Place house to obtain a response on October 11, 1911. His timing was less than considerate--he arrived at approximately midnight. The interview came to an abrupt conclusion:
Mr. Place listened from the second-story window. Then he asked who gave him the information. He was told that his caller was a Times reporter. Mr. Place closed the window. He did not reappear.
In 1912, Katharine enrolled in Vassar College. Three years later, in June 1915, her engagement to James Fairchild Adams, who had just graduated from Princeton, was announced. The wedding would wait until Katharine's graduation.
The couple was married in the Church of the Messiah at 34th Street and Park Avenue on November 9, 1916. "After their honeymoon trip," reported The New York Times, "Mr. and Mrs. Adams will live in New Kensington, near Pittsburgh, Penn., where Mr. Adams is in business."
Like their father, Hermann and Willard attended Cornell. Hermann graduated in 1917 and immediately went off to war, serving with the U.S. Army. Upon his return, he went into banking with the Mercantile Trust Company.
On March 6, 1921 the New York Herald reported on Hermann's engagement to Angela Turner Moore. As his sister had done, Hermann was marrying into a socially prestigious family. The Cornell Alumni News mentioned that Angela was "a member of the Colonial Dames and of the Junior League."
On January 24, 1928, according to The New York Times, Ira A. Place "announced at a meeting of the Board of Estimate...that the New York Central was ready to cooperate with the city in the vast west side improvement." The article said he, "seemed to take pleasure in the graceful speech he made," during which he asserted that while the railroad, "hoped for more room for expansion of its yards on the west side, it still wished to cooperate with the city and was ready to make concessions."
The following day, Place prepared to go to Albany for a conference of the New York Central executives. Before he could leave the house, as reported by The Times, the 73-year-old died "of thrombosis following a stroke of apoplexy." In reporting his death, the newspaper said, "Mr. Place's name will be linked with some of the most important improvements in New York City in the present generation."
The funeral was held in the Community Church on Park Avenue at 34th Street (previously the Church of the Messiah). The New York Times reported, "Railroad men of every rank, jurists, educators and civic officials made up a large part of a gathering of more than 700 at the funeral services for Ira A. Place." The article included an exhaustive list of esteemed mourners at the service.
The formidable wing walls of the stoop survived in 1941. image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
Place's estate was appraised at $484,954, or about $8.63 million in 2025 terms. The bulk of the estate went to Katherine. Each of the children, including Willard, who was unmarried and still lived at 268 West 77th Street, received $1,000.
Katharine Place sold 268 West 77th Street shortly afterward. It was divided into unofficial apartments. Among the tenants in 1933 was Abram A. Preciado, who ran "a clearing house for bringing travel car owners together with passengers," as he described it in court that year. If a vehicle owner were driving to Chicago, for instance, Preciado would match him with individuals going there. The owner's costs would then be offset and the passengers' fees would be cheaper than riding by train.
Nathan Cahan lived here in 1947. He was listed within the directory of Local No. 802 Associated Musicians of Greater New York.
An official conversion was completed in 1968. It resulted in two apartments per floor. The stoop was removed and the entrance lowered to below grade. It may have been at this time that most of the stained glass transoms throughout the house were removed.
photographs by the author
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