John Langdon Erving was 38 years old when he was "very quietly" married to Alice H. Rutherford on November 4, 1904. The wedding had originally been planned to take place in Newport, The New York Times predicting that it would be "the leading social event of the season." But the death of Alice's mother, Emma Hanchett Rutherford Crocker, on July 26, 1904, changed things. The understated ceremony was held in the mansion of the bride's step-father at 1 East 64th Street.
Erving had an illustrious pedigree. On his father's side was John Erving, who was born in 1692, settled in Boston and made a fortune in that city. His mother, Cornelia Paterson Van Rensselaer, came from one of the oldest and most prestigious families in New York. A businessman, Erving was perhaps better known to New Yorkers for his connections to Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst's civic reforms.
A year after his marriage, on November 11, 1905, the Record & Guide reported that J. Langdon Erving had purchased the "4-story high stoop dwelling" at 62 East 80th Street for $50,000 (the price would translate to about $1.84 million in 2025). The article said, "Mr. Erving will alter the house this spring to a white stone American basement dwelling."
Built in 1883 by Terence Farley and designed by Thom & Wilson, the brownstone-fronted house was architecturally outdated. Erving hired the architectural firm of Albro & Lindeberg to bring it into the Edwardian Era. Their plans, filed in March 1906, would result in what was essentially a new, five-story residence. The "extensive alterations," as described in the plans, would cost the Ervings $16,000 (about $576,000 today).
Albro & Lindeberg removed the brownstone front and stoop, and pulled the facade forward to the property line. The Colonial Revival design was faced in rough (or "common"), variegated brick above a limestone base. French windows at the second floor, or piano nobile, sat below stone tympana inset with veined stone rondels. The openings of the third and fourth floors were grouped, and the fifth story took the form of a dormered mansard behind a stone balustrade.
American Architect and Building News, May 6, 1908 (copyright expired)
In an article titled "The Passing of the Brownstone Front" in the April 1910 issue of The International Studio mentioned,
One method of giving the servants direct access from the kitchen to the street by independent passage is to cut off part of the space from the entrance hall and provide a narrow corridor on the same level, as has been done in the case of the house for Mr. Erving.
Servants entered into a long passageway that circumvented the family area. The International Studio, April 1910 (copyright expired)
Albro & Lindeberg's Colonial motif was carried into the interiors. The Ervings enhanced the early American design with antiques and high-end reproductions.
The Ervings' entrance hall (above) and drawing room reflected the home's Colonial Revival architecture. The American Architect and Building News, May 6, 1908 (copyright expired)
Somewhat surprisingly, J. Langdon and Alice Erving did not enjoy their new home for especially long. In 1912, they relocated to Santa Barbara, California. Perhaps anticipating that they would eventually return, they retained possession of the East 80th Street house.
The couple leased it to Ethel Kingsland in March 1912. Born in 1886, Ethel was the great-niece of Caroline Schermerhorn Astor. The Kingsland family arrived in America in the 17th century. Ethel's father, railroad tycoon George Lovett Kingsland, died when she was six years old. Her mother, the former Helen Schermerhorn Welles, died in the family's mansion at 62 Fifth Avenue on February 14, 1911.
Propriety required that the 26-year-old unmarried woman did not live alone. Her bachelor brother, George L. Kingsland, Jr., initially moved into the house with her. The arrangement would change three years later.
On June 19, 1915, Ethel's sister, Helen Schermerhorn Kingsland Morris, announced Ethel's engagement to Dr. Walter P. Anderton. The prospective groom graduated from Harvard in 1908 and then from the College of Physicians and Surgeons. The wedding took place in the East 80th Street house just five days later. The Sun reported, "It was a simple wedding and there were present about twenty relatives and intimate friends." Saying that after the newlyweds' honeymoon "automobile trip of several weeks," they would live at 62 East 80th Street.
Presumably with the permission of their landlords, in April 1916, Ethel and Walter Anderton hired architect S. Edson Gage to make $15,000 worth of interior alterations to the house. But, then again, perhaps the Ervings had not permitted the alterations. Just three months later, on July 22, 1916, The New York Times reported, "Mrs. J. Langdon Erving [leased] the four-story [sic] dwelling at 62 East Eightieth Street to W. C. Breed."
William Constable Breed was born in 1870. A member of the law firm Breed, Abbott & Morgan, he married Eugenie Stiles in 1896. They had two sons, William, Jr., who was 12 when they moved in; and Alan Ryder, who was six. (Two other children had died in infancy.) The couple's summer home was in Brookhaven, Long Island.
William Constable Breed's portrait was painted by David Berney. (private collection)
While Eugenie busied herself with social activities (she was a member of the Daughters of Indiana, for instance), William was highly involved in civic affairs. When America entered World War I, he became chairman of the Greater New York's American Red Cross Second War Fund drive, and chairman of the Red Cross Disaster Relief Committee for Greater New York.
On July 13, 1921, the Long Island Daily Press reported, "A drive will be made at the anti-Hyland conferences...to name William Constable Breed, a Manhattan lawyer, for the Republican Mayoralty designation." The article noted that in addition to his various other positions, he was "president of the Merchants' Association of New York." (As it turned out, Breed was not nominated.)
After renting their home for a decade, the Ervings sold 62 East 80th Street in July 1922 to Joaquin Enrique Zanetti for $80,000 (about $1.5 million today). Born in the Dominican Republic on January 20, 1885, Zanetti graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude in 1906 and received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University in 1909.
During World War I, Zanetti served in the Chemical Warfare Service, attaining a rank of lieutenant colonel. Following the war, he served as a Chemical Officer in the army reserves and was a consulting expert on chemical warfare for the League of Nations.
Joaquin Enrique Zanetti, via home.army.mil
When the family moved in, Zanetti was an associate professor at Columbia University. (He would become a full professor in 1929.)
He and his wife had at least one son, Enrique Carlos. His engagement to George Pearson was announced on May 8, 1933. (The bride-to-be shared her unusual first name with her father.)
By the late 1930s, 62 East 80th Street was home to science writer Walter Seager Sullivan, Jr. and his wife, Mary. Sullivan was the science editor of The New York Times, which said:
His reports stretched the minds of newspaper readers, as he told of the marvels of the restless earth and violent universe and the audacity of the people trying to understand them.
The Sullivans were followed by the family of Walter Neale, here by the early 1950s. The residence was sold in 1954 to A. K. Rubin.
Still a single-family home, 62 East 80th Street externally is little changed since the newly wedded Ervings transformed the outdated brownstone.
photographs by the author
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