The 1897 Donac - 402 West 20th Street

photo courtesy of Brown Harris Stevens

Angelica Barraclough Faber was one of 13 children of Don Alonzo and Mathilda Charity Smith Cushman.  Cushman, a close friend of Clement Clarke Moore, began developing plots on the former's country estate, Chelsea, in the early 1830s.  Upon Cushman's death in 1875, he left significant real estate to his children in equal shares.

Angelica's husband, Gustavus William Faber, died in 1895.  Like her father, she turned to real estate and in February 1897, bought out her siblings to acquire full ownership of the vacant lot at 402 West 20th Street, just west of Ninth Avenue.  She hired esteemed architect C. P. H. Gilbert (who had designed several Cushman buildings) to design a flat building on the site.  His plans, filed on April 2, projected the construction cost at $15,000, or about $585,000 in 2026 terms.

To the east of the plot sat 169 Ninth Avenue, which Don Alonzo Cushman erected in 1845 and which hugged the 20th Street property line.  To the west was the 1830 house at 404 West 20th Street, which sat back to allow for its stoop.  Gilbert cleverly transitioned the two by concaving the western corner of his building, creating an elegant architectural link.  

C. P. H. Gilbert's design gracefully transitions from property line to set-back.  photo courtesy of Brown Harris Stevens

Faced in beige brick, Gilbert's tripartite neo-Colonial design included splayed lintels and paneled quoins.  Above the entrance, a stone entablature announced the building's name, Donac, a nod to Angelica's father (Don A. C.).  A three-story faceted bay filled the mid-section of the concave section.  It provided a small stone balcony to the fifth floor apartment.

Perhaps because the Donac faced the General Theological Seminary, several of the tenants were involved with the Episcopalian church.  Among the initial residents was Adelaide Oliver, who had lived across the street at 4 Chelsea Square with her husband, the Rev. Dr. Andrew Oliver.  On October 19, 1897, as construction of the Donac neared completion, Rev. Oliver died.  Adelaide could see the seminary and her former home from the window of her new apartment.

Adelaide Inlay Oliver was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1832.  She died in her Donac apartment on November 17, 1898 and her funeral was held in Trinity Chapel on November 21.

As early as 1908, John Wilson Wood and his wife, the former Harriet Roe Drom, lived here.  Born in New York City in 1866, he was the executive secretary of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States.  He was in charge of domestic missionary work in North America.

The Woods would remain in the Donac for decades. The 1929 American Biography noted, "Mr. Wood makes his home at No. 402 West Twentieth Street, in that charming part of New York City known locally as Chelsea."

Harriet died in the apartment in 1931, and eight years later John Wilson Wood married Regina Lustgarten, who had been a missionary in China for years.  John and Regina Wood still lived here on August 7, 1947, when he died at the age of 81.

In the meantime, author Edward Sim Van Zile and his family occupied an apartment as early as 1913.  Born on May 2, 1863, Van Zile married Mary Morgan Bulkeley in 1886 and they had five children.  An article about Van Zile in Book News Biographies in 1904 said, "for the past ten years, Mr. Van Zile has been known to the reading public through many short stories, novelettes and a few novels."

Edward Sims Van Zile ca. 1917, from the collection of the Library of Congress

Among the books written by him at the time of that article were the the 1890 A Magnetic Man and Other Stories; Don Miguel, and Other Stories, released in 1891; and the 1903 A Duke and His Double.

The Van Ziles' parlor was the scene of daughter Sally's marriage to Dr. Walter F. Scott on June 3, 1913.  The home wedding was, apparently a compromise.  The New York Times reported, "As Miss Van Zile is a Protestant and Dr. Scott a Catholic, the wedding ceremony will be performed by Mgr. [Michael J.] Lavelle of St. Patrick's Cathedral."  (The family moved next door to 404 West 20th Street, leasing it from the Cushman family, soon after.)

The staid atmosphere of the Donac was rocked in 1958.  Poet Hettie Cohen worked as a subscription manager at the Record Changer when author and poet LeRoi Jones applied for a job.  The two bonded, were married the following, and leased an apartment in the Donac.  Hettie, in her How I Became Hettie Jones, recalls the Friday night, "just after we moved to Chelsea," that the couple attended a poetry reading by Jack Kerouac.  She writes:

Our new house was a straight mile downtown, just off Ninth Avenue, and we had nothing but party space to offer, so after the reading we just brought the audience home, to 402 West Twentieth Street, a once elegant six-room parlor facing the weatherbeaten brick of the Episcopal Seminary.

Hettie Jones writes that that Friday night never ended.  "Soon we had a studio couch and a folding cot, one or two weekly boarders, twenty or more weekend regulars, occasional bases for hundreds."  The Jones apartment fostered what became known as the "Twentieth Street poets," a group of Beat Generation poets, including figures like Jack Kerouac, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso.

LeRoi and Hettie Jones with Jones's parents in 1963.  Kas Heppner/Metropolitan Photo Service

In 1957, the couple founded the literary magazine Yugen and established the publishing firm Totem Press.  Not surprisingly, they published works by their friends--like Ginsberg, Kerouac and Frank O'Hara.  In 1962, they left the Donac to move into an apartment at 27 Cooper Square.

photo courtesy of Brown Harris Stevens

The building was purchased in 1981 by Marion Buhagiar, who initiated a facade cleaning and restoration.  Essentially unchanged externally, it was recently offered for sale, the realtor telling me it " can now be offered as a single-family home if desired. "