M. Louis Ungrich's 1886 345 and 347 West 123rd Street

 
Developers Frank Tilford and F. Keller hired architect M. Louis Ungrich in the spring of 1885 to design a row of 10 "three-story basement brick and stone private dwellings" on West 123rd Street between Morningside and Manhattan Avenues.  Turning to the popular Queen Anne style, Ungrich designed the row as five alternating, mirror-image pairs--A-B, C-D, A-B, C-D, and A-B.

The easternmost homes, Nos. 345 and 347, were among the A and B models.  At just 16-feet wide, they were clad in red brick and trimmed in brownstone and terra cotta above the stone-faced basements.  The squiggly spindles of the iron stoop railings and areaway fencing were typical of the often light-hearted Queen Anne style.  The two homes shared a stone bandcourse above the parlor and a bracketed intermediate cornice above the second floor.  An elaborate terra cotta plaque of swirling vines behind a shell straddled the property line at the third floor.  Each gable was decorated with a terra cotta rondel with a full-relief flower erupting from a sunburst.

Terra cotta details enhance the building's charm.

Tilford & Keller initially leased the homes.  An advertisement in the New-York Daily Tribune on January 23, 1887 read, "For Rent--The new and elegant house, 345 West 123d-st.; has never been occupied; will be decorated to suit tenant and rented for half rate until May 1."

It appears that the first to occupy 345 West 123rd Street was the William Mahl family.  William was born in Germany in 1843 and his wife, the former Mary Ann Skidmore, was born in England in 1848.  Mahl was the controller of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, and he and Mary Ann had three children, Frederick William, John Thomas (known as Tom), and Edith Virginia. 

The family was still here in 1891 when Tom was studying at the Columbia University School of Mines.  The family moved away around 1892, three years before he graduated. 

(Tom's story would have a sad ending.  He married Ella Hutchins Botts in 1894 and upon graduation he was appointed the head of the Department of Maintenance and Ways of the Houston and Texas Central Railway.  The couple moved to Houston.  Ella died at the age of 29 on June 13, 1900 and, according to The New York Times, "Soon afterward his own health gave way and his physicians advised him to travel extensively.  He had consumption, they said."  In March 1901, the Mahls received word that "death was not far distant."  Mary Ann was with Tom in a private train car on March 31, 1901 when then 27-year-old died.)

The families along the row maintained a small domestic staff.  Mrs. Elizabeth Murphy, who followed the Mahls in 345 West 123rd Street, had at least one servant, Sadie Scott.  Around noon on June 1, 1894, Elizabeth returned from church and, according to The Evening World, "deposited in a closet a diamond ring valued at $100 and $125 in bills."  (Why Elizabeth would have taken the cash--equal to more than $4,800 in 2026--to church in the first place is puzzling.)  Later that afternoon, she noticed that the closet door was open and discovered the cash was missing.  The newspaper reported, "Sadie being the only one in the house suspicion fell on her."  Despite Sadie's strong denial of the crime, she was arrested and charged with grand larceny.

Tilford and Keller were looking for a new tenant for No. 347 in 1890.  Their ad on April 9 read: "Just Look--347 West 123d-st. to lease for only $1,000; three story, high-stoop house, with every improvement; decorated, chandeliers and sanitary plumbing."  The mention of chandeliers was significant.  New homeowners and renters most often had to supply their own lighting fixtures.  And "sanitary plumbing" reveals that the houses had indoor plumbing and toilets.  The rent was extremely reasonable, translating to about $3,000 per month today.

In 1896, Tilford & Keller sold the houses--345 West 123rd Street to Herbert M. Johnson and 347 to Charles D. Folsom.  

Herbert M. Johnson resold No. 345 in April 1897 to William M. Badger and his wife, Eliza.  William would not enjoy the house for long.  He died in 1899.  

Eliza sold the dwelling on May 3, 1902 to Daniel and Jane T. McGowan for $13,000 (about $500,000 today).  In an unsettling instance of déjà vu, Daniel McGowan died in the house less than a year later, on February 28, 1903.

In the meantime, Charles Folsom rented 347 West 123rd Street.  His tenants (who appear to be Harry Hull St. Clair Sr. and his wife, the former Mary Louise Harber) immediately took in a boarder.  In fact, they gave up half of the house in doing so.  An advertisement in the New-York Tribune on August 16, 1896 read: "347 West 123d-St--Strictly private family offer, with board, three large rooms; second and third floors."  ("Strictly private family" stressed that this was not a boarding house situation.)

Living here in 1896-97 was Arthur Moult Smyth, a civil engineer.  Born in 1868, he earned his Engineer of Mines degree from Lehigh University in 1890.

Harry and Mary St. Clair had a daughter, Helen, born on June 28, 1877.  On Christmas Day 1897, Mary Louse St. Clair died at the age of 44.  Newspapers noted that her funeral services would be "private."  

(Helen would go on to great success.  She would graduate from the Classical School for Girls, from Barnard College, and from Columbia University Phi Beta Kappa.  She would received her law degree from New York University Law School.)

In 1940, the original doors were intact and the masonry was not yet painted.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

In the early 1900s, William Henry Bolander and his wife, the former Jennie Damon, lived at 347 West 123rd Street.  Born on September 11, 1838, he was placed in charge of the New Haven Railroad's "Pier 6, East River" in 1878, according to The New York Times.  William still held that position when he died on October 28, 1913 at the age of 75.  His funeral was held in the parlor on the 31st.

The McGowan family retained possession of 345 West 123rd Street into the Depression years.  By the mid-1940s it was operated as a rooming house.  Among the tenants in 1947 was Lamar Harris who got into trouble in Ossining, New York on the afternoon of April 7 that year.  The Citizen-Register reported that he was arrested at the Ossining Railroad Station "on a charge of disorderly conduct" and fined $10.  The article did not go into details of what constituted his offense.

Next door, 347 West 123rd Street was home to the St. Joseph Council Service Station of the Knights of Columbus in the post-World War I years.  Never converted to apartments, it is a single-family home today.  Its architectural fraternal twin was less lucky.  There are eight residential units in 345 West 123rd Street.

photographs by the author