The 1889 Wickliffe - 226 West 78th Street

 

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In 1899, builder W. G. Horgan acquired the two rowhouses at 226 and 228 West 78th Street.  He hired architect George F. Pelham to design a six-story apartment building on the site.  Pelham had learned his trade in the architectural office of his father, George Brown Pelham.  He opened his own office in 1890 and would focus on apartment buildings, hotels and commercial structures, drawing from a variety of historic styles.

For the six-story Wickliffe apartments, completed the following year, Pelham drew on Renaissance prototypes while giving it a decidedly 19th century flair.  He created three vertical parts by rounding and projecting the two-bay-wide end sections.  Verticality was softened by intermediate cornices at the second, third and sixth floors, and by decorating the turret-like bays with intricately carved bands at the fourth and fifth.  Classical Renaissance-style pediments crowned the center windows at the third and fourth floors.  The building wore an ornate bracketed cornice crowned with alternating stylized anthemions and fleurs-de-lis.  

photograph by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

An advertisement in The New York Times touted, "Elegant light, large 8-room apartments, all improvements, near Subway and all cars.  Rents $1,200 to $1,350."  The monthly rents would translate to $3,500 to $4,000 in 2026.

The tenants were, expectedly, professional.  Among the initial residents were Dr. James J. Phillips, a graduate of North Carolina University; and Prince and Princess Auersperg.  The Austrian Prince had recently relocated to New York City.  His wife was what newspapers called at the time, "a penny princess."

Earlier, The New York Times reported, "Miss Florence E. Hazard...created a sensation by her marriage on June 14, 1899, to Prince Francis Joseph von Auersperg," and the Morning Call said that when the engagement was announced, "much surprise was manifested on account of her youth.  She was then but sixteen years old."  Florence's father, Edward C. Hazard, was described by The New York Times as "the wealthy wholesale grocer."  

Florence Ellsworth Hazard was young, beautiful and wealthy when she met the prince.  from the collection of the Library of Congress

Prince Francis Joseph von Auersperg was 30 years old when he married Florence.  (original source unknown)

Prince Auersperg desperately needed a wealthy wife.  His title "dates back to Charlemagne," said the Paterson, New Jersey newspaper The Morning Call.  But, said the article, "Adventures in Vienna and in other European cities took much of the prince's money."  The New York Evening News was more direct saying, "the Prince came to America in 1896 having exhausted his patrimony and run half a million dollars in debt."  He entered the Long Island College Hospital to study medicine and it shortly after that he met his future wife.

At the time of their marriage, the groom's older brother sent Florence "several rings, and a valuable diamond necklace," said The Morning Call, and her "father settled a fortune upon her."  But the titled newlyweds would not be living in the prince's homeland.  The newspaper explained, "in spite of her immense dowry, the princess would not be received by the Austrian nobility."  And so, they secured an apartment in the Wickliffe and, like Dr. Phillips, the prince opened a medical office.

The road for the titled couple was rocky nearly from the start.  On April 18, 1900, The New York Times reported that Princess Auersperg, "was robbed of jewels to the value of nearly $10,000 yesterday by an unknown man."  Those jewels included the wedding gifts from Florence's brother-in-law.  A workman was in the apartment because "all the electric bells in the house were out of order."  When Florence was called to the telephone, the workman grabbed her "heart-shaped silver box on the bureau" and left.

Less than a month later, on May 9, 1901, The New York Times reported that Prince Francis Auersperg had declared bankruptcy.  The article explained that his problems arose "out of a real estate transaction which took place in Austria, in which the Prince obtained possession and ownership of an old ancestral estate belonging to [Count Ernest and Countess Gabrielle Coreth] and never paid them for it."  The couple sued him for $40,000 (about $1.5 million today).  The New York Times said, "His visible assets he enumerated as twelve pairs of silk stockings."  Luckily, Edward Hazard had wisely put his wedding present into Florence's sole control.

Then, on March 30, 1903, The World titled an article, "Doctor Of Royal Birth Is Sued."  Prince Auersperg had borrowed $1,000 from Theodore Marburg in 1901 and failed to repay it.

The couple's relationship finally faltered following the death of Florence's father in 1905.  He left her a large inheritance and her husband insisted that she transfer it into his name.  Well aware of his financial history, Florence refused.  It resulted in her leaving him and moving into her mother's home in  Seabright, New Jersey.  She obtained a divorce in 1915 and married businessman John J. Murphy on May 1 that year.

In the meantime, The Wickliffe attracted several artistic residents.  Living here in 1903 was photographer Julius Ludovici.  He catered to well-heeled patrons and produced informal portraits with hand-colored tints.  He had a "photographic and crayon studio" on Fifth Avenue and, during the summer social season, a studio in Newport.

This charming portrait of a child--so unlike the stiff, posed images of most photographers--was typical of Ludovici's work.  from the Getty Museum Collection.

Also living here at the time were H. R. Humphries and Henry A. Ferguson.  Humphries advertised in the New-York Tribune on November 24, 1907 that he, "teaches singing, from rudiments of voice placing to artistic finishing for concerts, oratorio and church work, at his studio, No. 226 West 78th street."

Landscape artist Henry Augustus Ferguson, who lived here with his wife, Eleanor, and daughter, was born in Glen Falls, New York around 1842.  (The New York Times said, "his exact age was not known, as he never confided it even to his most intimate associates.)  He started painting in his teens and, according to The Times, "first gained recognition following a world tour in which he painted many pictures in Mexico, Italy, and Egypt."

This portrait of Henry August Ferguson may have been posed in his Wickliffe apartment.  via Seraphin Gallery.

In January 1911, he gave a private exhibition of American landscapes at the Century Association.  Two months later, on March 20, he became ill.  Pneumonia developed and he died in his apartment two days later.

A prominent resident at the time was author, artist and explorer Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh.  Born in McConnelsville, Ohio on September 13, 1853, he began exploring as a youth and was part of the expedition that found the Escalante River, the last unknown river in the United States, and discovered the Henry Mountains.

Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh, Touring Topics, November 1929 

In 1904 Dellenbaugh co-founded the Explorers Club.  While living here, in 1909 he was appointed librarian of the American Geographical Society.  Among his books are Breaking the Wilderness, published in 1905; the 1908 In the Amazon Jungle; and Fremont and '49, first published in 1913.

Dellenbaugh joined another expedition in 1923.  On November 11, The New York Times poetically reported, "The roaring, rapid-strewn reaches of the Colorado River, plunging down to the Gulf of California between the towering cliffs of the Grand Canyon, once more have been conquered."  Dellenbaugh was a member of the Geological Survey expedition headed by Colonel C. H. Birdseye.

Another writer living here by 1914 was journalist and author John Walker Harrington.  Born on July 8, 1868 in Plattsburgh, Missouri, he was on the staff of the New York Herald.  Among his works was the 1900 children's book The Jumping Kangaroo and the Apple Butter Cat. 

Illustrator Paul Goold returned to 226 West 78th Street and to his wife, the former Edith Chapman, after serving on the front in World War I.  He served as a captain with the First National Army and was celebrated with his comrades on October 16, 1918 as the members of the "Lost Battalion" of the Battle of Argonne.  Born in 1875, Goold began his career as an illustrator on the Portland [Maine] Sunday Press and Sunday Times after high school.  In 1899 he joined the art staff of The New York Times, leaving four years later to work as a magazine illustrator.  

Now back home, he opened a studio in Carnegie Hall.  He and Edith were still living in The Wickliffe on December 7, 1925 when he "jumped or fell from his studio on the twelfth floor of Carnegie Hall through a skylight into a hallway four floors below," as reported by The New York Times.  The article said, "The crash of the body plunging through the skylight aroused artists and musicians in near-by studios."  Goold had left a letter for Edith in the studio.  He was taken to Roosevelt Hospital with a fractured skull and died a few hours later.  Goold's private funeral was held in the apartment on December 10.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The press coverage of residents became less positive in the Depression years.  On November 28, 1931, for instance, Stephen A. Tillinghast and Joseph D. Kogan, presumably roommates, were arrested with 15 others as "a group of alleged racketeers who are said to have smuggled aliens into the United States," according to The New York Times.

Five years later, on May 14, 1936, 26-year-old dancer Margaret Rand was arrested for operating a "questionable 'studio'," as described by The New York Times.  Rand hired young women to provide "private dancing instructions."  Police highly suspected that dancing was not the only activity being practiced there.

In 1961, the once-proud apartment building was converted to a single-room-occupancy hotel.  Expectedly, not all of the residents were upstanding.  At 5:30 on the morning of October 5, 1968, two patrolmen saw smoke billowing out of an apartment window.  They rushed in and broke down the door of Antonio Cartagena who was semiconscious on the burning bed.  They extinguished the fire themselves, then discovered "three pistols, .22- and .25-caliber automatics and a .33-caliber revolver, on a night table next to the bed," reported The New York Times.  Cartagena was treated for smoke inhalation and then taken into custody.

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A renovation completed in 1973 returned 226 West 78th Street to apartments, seven per floor.  Although nothing survives of George F. Pelham's 1899 interiors, the exterior survives remarkable intact.