The Lost Ottendorfer "Pagoda" - Riverside Park and 136th Street

 

image via jstor.org

Born in Trillick, County Tyrone, Ireland in 1806, Eugene Kelly arrived in New York City at the age of 20 with, according to The Evening World decades later, "only $3 in his pocket."  After garnering a fortune in the California Gold Rush, he returned to New York City and established the banking house of Eugene Kelly & Co.  

The family's 42-foot wide townhouse was on West 51st Street and their summer estate in the rural West Harlem district stretched from the Bloomingdale Road (today's Broadway) to the Hudson River, and approximately from today's 132nd to 137th Streets.  The Kelly family erected a two-story Tuscan-style villa on the estate, its three-story tower topped with an enclosed widow's watch.

The Kelly's summer mansion would become home to the Ottendorfers.  The New York Times April 24, 1904 (copyright expired)

The Kelly family purchased a 17-acre summer estate, Dunning Place, near Scarsdale, New York and sold the Harlem property to the Van Schaick family, which resold it to Oswald and Anna Ottendorfer.  

Born on February 26, 1826, at some point Valentin Oswald Ottendorfer stopped using his first name.  Educated in Vienna and Prague, when he arrived to New York City in 1849, he was fluent in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and some Slavic languages, but knew no English.  He found a job in the accounting department of the German-language newspaper Staats-Zeitung, headed by Jacob Uhl.  Upon Uhl's death in April 1852, his wife, Anna, took over the newspaper's management.  The employer-employee relationship between her and Ottendorfer turned to romance and in 1859 the couple was married.  Oswald Ottendorfer took the reins of editor and publisher of Staats-Zeitung, and Anna remained its business manager.

In 1879, the Ottendorfers began construction of an entertainment pavilion on the summer property, about 50 feet from the mansion.  Although the name of the architect is lost, some hints point to Jacob Wrey Mould, who had just returned to New York City from Lima, Peru where he designed a public park.  In describing "Mr. Oswald Ottendorfer's Pavilion" in its 1882 Artistic Houses, D. Appleton & Company refers to Owen Jones's influence on the Moorish-style structure.  Mould had studied under the influential architect, known for his theories on ornament, color and patterning.  The two spent two years studying the Alhambra in Spain, a period that fostered Mould's appreciation for Moorish style architecture and vivid colors.  It resulted in his co-designing the Turkish Chamber in Buckingham Palace.

Mould was known for using vivid, primary colors, The Crayon calling his interior color scheme for a Fifth Avenue mansion as "bold as a lion."  Artistic Houses said the interior palette of the Ottendorfer Pavilion was limited "to the primary colors, blue, red, and yellow, whenever stucco-work was to be decorated."  The exterior striped effect of red and beige brick was a hallmark of Mould's designs.  So, while there seems to be no way to be certain, Jacob Wrey Mould is a strong candidate for the pavilion's architect.

Artistic Houses described, 

No pleasanter suburban retreat in summer is easily conceivable than Mr. Ottendorfer's Pavilion, with its strictly Moresque mural decoration, and its handsome hangings, divans, and other fixtures, all in consonance with the central artistic idea of the structure.  From the spacious piazza, or through the lofty windows, the eye reaches northward along the glorious Hudson a distance of at least twenty miles, southward as far as the mouth of the river, and westward directly across the shining surface to the Palisades.

The two-story Pavilion (often called the Ottendorfer Pagoda)  was capped with a "gilded cupola."  The New-York Tribune said it, "could be seen, reflected in the sun, for miles up and down the river."  The newspaper said, "the pagoda, built of light and red brick, was terraced on all sides by well kept lawns."

Inside the "costly structure," as described by Artistic Houses, Ottendorf had a German poem inscribed along the ceiling.  Translated it read, 

God is great; beautiful is the world.

He who honors Him and values it will, through the enjoyment of the second, glide into the lap of the first.

He who judges himself only by himself reaches false conclusions; you can as little know yourself as you can kiss yourself.

The pavilion was used as a supplement to the mansion for entertaining.  Reginald Pelham Bolton in his Washington Heights Manhattan, Its Eventful Past writes, "the Ottendorfers entertained their guests in a sumptuous banquet hall and billiard room, while the upper chambers afforded the magnificent view of the Hudson."  Artistic Houses remarked, "Mr. Ottendorfer's European guests invariably tell him that no such glad view as that from his Moorish Pavilion ever greeted their eyes before."

The New-York Tribune decades later would recall that the pavilion... 

was used by Mr. Ottendorfer as a billiard and banquet hall, and many a night in the last generation the banks of the North River [i.e., Hudson River] re-echoed the sounds of the entertainment that was being held in the pagoda...After dinner, Mr. Ottendorfer usually led his guests to the garden seats in the front of the pagoda, facing the river, where they would watch the sunset on the Palisades, across the river, and the changing colors of the river below.

The Ottendorf Pavilion was a point of interest for tour boats on the river.  The 1880 Hudson River by Daylight noted, "Mr. Ottendorfer's Pavilion, on the bluff, just built, in the moorish [sic] style of architecture, [is] one of the notable landmarks on the eastern bank."

But glittering dinners in the banquet hall and entertainments in the garden came to a crashing end when Anna Sartorius Ottendorfer died on April 1, 1884.  (Her estate was valued by The Sun at $3 million, just under $100 million in 2025 terms.)  The New-York Tribune reported, "the mansion was closed, and the pagoda locked and barred.  Mr. Ottendorfer was seen no more about the place."

Four years later, on August 13, 1888, the Convent of the Sacred Heart, the grounds of which extended from West 125th to West 137th Street and between St. Nicholas and Tenth Avenues (today's Amsterdam Avenue), burned to the ground.  The New-York Tribune said that 250 pupils and an equal number of nuns lived there.

The New-York Tribune reported, "Mr. Ottendorfer threw open his old home and every building, including the pagoda, was placed at the service of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart."   The following year, on September 29, 1889, the newspaper reported that the new Convent of the Sacred Heart "is so nearly completed that it will be dedicated this morning."  With the convent in its new home, the Ottendorfer estate was again shuttered.

Oswald Ottendorfer died on December 15, 1900, never having returned to his beloved summer estate since his wife's death nearly two decades earlier.  Padlocked and neglected, on December 14, 1902, The New York Times described the "Moorish pagoda" as "now all but despoiled."  

Two months later, the New-York Tribune reported that the pagoda had fallen "rapidly into decay, and became the haunt of tramps."  The squatters who lit fires for warmth nearly destroyed it.  On February 5, 1903, The New York Times reported, "In the old Ottendorfer Pagoda, on the bluff overlooking the North River, at One Hundred and Thirty-sixth Street, fire was discovered at about 3:30 o'clock yesterday afternoon...The building may have to be razed on account of the damage."  In reporting the fire, the New-York Tribune remarked that it "was one of the landmarks on the Manhattan shore" and said, "The pagoda became known in the neighborhood as the 'Million Dollar House.'"

When Randall Comfort photographed the pavilion in 1902, it was boarded up, "despoiled," and crumbling.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

At the time of the fire, Riverside Park and Riverside Drive were being extended northward.  The city had taken possession of the Ottendorf estate by eminent domain.  The end of the line for the Ottendorfer mansion and the once magnificent pavilion came the following year.  On April 24, 1904, The New York Times said, "The old Ottendorfer house will probably be one of the first to go," wistfully recalling, "the ruined Moorish pagoda on the bluff in front of the house is a reminder of the old-time elegance."