The 1926 Barclay Hotel - 111 East 48th Street

 

photograph by Ajay Suresh

The renovation of Grand Central Depot to Grand Central Terminal sparked a burst of development in the neighborhood, known as Terminal City.  A second wave that erupted in the 1920s included a 14-story "stores and apartment hotel," as described in the plans.  Fred Bielsaski was president of the Barclay Park Corporation.  In 1925, the syndicate hired the architectural firm of Cross & Cross to design the $3 million project at the northwest corner of 48th Street and Lexington Avenue.  (Millionaire architect Eliot Cross not only designed the building, but he sat on the hotel's board of directors with highly-visible moguls like W. Seward Webb Jr., John R. Todd and James M. Todd, and Weld M. Stevens.)

The U-shaped, Renaissance Revival-style structure was completed the following year.  Its midsection atop a three-story stone base was clad in brown brick.  The single-story, stone-faced top section sat upon a molded cornice and was decorated with massive full-relief rosettes and Renaissance-inspired panels.

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

On April 10, 1926, The New York Times reported, "The new Barclay Hotel at 111 East Forty-eighth Street will be formally opened at a dinner and dance on Oct. 21."  But on the day of that article, the first residents were already moving in.  The Barclay Hotel was a residential hotel--meaning that residents had long-term leases, like apartment dwellers, but enjoyed the amenities of transient hotels, like maid service.

New York Evening Post, September 25, 1926 (copyright expired)

Among the initial residents were Morgan Belmont and his wife, the former Margaret Frances Andrews.  Belmont was born in 1892, the son of millionaire August Belmont Jr. and Bessie Hamilton Morgan.  The couple's daughter, Margaret Andrews Morgan Belmont, was born in 1917.  The family's country home was in Westbury, Long Island.

Morgan Belmont in his World War I Army uniform.  War Records of the Knickerbocker Club 1914-1918 (1922 - copyright expired)

Alice Wheelock and Erwin Hoy Watts moved in following their wedding on October 1, 1927.  Alice was the granddaughter of Dr. and Mrs. Morgan Dix on her maternal side and Dr. and Mrs. George G. Wheelock on her father's.  Born in 1903, the young groom was the son of cotton goods magnate Ridley Watts and was a member of the Chemical National Bank.

Radio stations were often installed in upscale hotels and on October 11, 1927, The New York Times reported, "An hour of luncheon music will be broadcast at 1 o'clock daily except Sunday over WABC direct from the Barclay Hotel."

Andrew H. Nutting, another initial resident, was the son of Andrew Jackson Nutting, founder of A. J. Nutting & Co.  The senior Nutting died on September 4, 1924 and his estate was divided equally among Andrew and his two sisters.  Like the Morgan Belmonts, residents of the Barclay Hotel spent their summers in their country homes or fashionable resorts.  On March 13, 1928, The New York Times reported that Andrew H. Nutting had purchased "the Hanna property at Boar's Head, Rye Beach, N. H., and will erect a residence there this Spring."

A postcard depicted the Nutting country home.

Resident Robert J. Upson graduated from Princeton University in 1921.  He joined the National Bank of Commerce in 1923 and became its assistant trust officer in 1927.  The unmarried 29-year-old went to Flushing, New York on March 29, 1928 to visit Charles G. Muller.  The next night at around 11:00, he left in a taxicab heading for the train station to return to Manhattan.

The following morning, his body was found on the elevated railroad crossing about 200 yards from the Flushing station.  Mysteriously, The New York Times reported, "he had been run over by a train at about 11:30 o'clock Thursday evening."

The Barclay Hotel reserved a number of suites for well-heeled transient guests.  Arthur Morgan Smith was described by The New York Times as a "Harvard graduate and wealthy Clevelander."  On April 10, 1929, he attended a bridge party held by socialite Florence Schuette in the Hotel Marguery.   Smith was smitten by another guest, Mrs. Robert L. Brown, who was staying in the Plaza Hotel.  The party broke up at just before 2:30 a.m.  A guest offered Smith a ride, "but he refused, saying it was just a short distance to his hotel, and he would walk," reported The New York Times.  In fact, Smith was intent on escorting Mrs. Brown to her hotel.

Equally intent on accompanying Mrs. Brown was another guest, Samuel E. Bell, a "well-to-do oil producer."  Bell won the argument, but not before shoving Smith to the pavement as he climbed into a taxi with Mrs. Brown.  Smith was arrested for intoxication a few minutes later on Park Avenue.  Later it became clear that he was not drunk--he had suffered a fractured skull in the fall to the curb.  He died the following afternoon.

Two views of the Art Deco cafe.  photographs by Samuel H. Gottscho, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The ballroom and meeting rooms could be rented by groups or, in some cases, individuals.  Such was the case in February 1937 when Amelia Earhart held a press conference to announce her intentions to fly a Lockheed Electra airplane around the world.  Fred Noonan, a Pan American Airways navigator, she said, would accompany her as navigator.

Ironically, following Earhart's disappearance in July her husband, George P. Putnam, moved into a suite in the Barclay Hotel where he followed the newspaper accounts of the search for his wife.  The New York Times said, "One, bearing the headline 'Sold Down the River,' essentially blamed Putnam for his wife's death, asserting that her failure to find Howland Island was because of inadequate equipment."  According to his assistant, Harold McCracken, "Then he took all the clippings and let them slip out of his hands into a wastepaper basket."

In October 1938, the Cornell Club of New York leased the 30,000-square-foot third floor.  It was accessed by a private entrance at 107 East 48th Street.  On October 17, The New York Times reported that Cross & Cross would remodel the floor "to provide a main dining room and three private rooms, grill, library and lounges, card and billiard rooms and a ladies' department."  There were, as well, 39 bedrooms and suites for resident members.

By midcentury, the Barclay Hotel was increasingly hosting transient guests.  The wealthy visitors, in some instances, became attractive targets for robbers.  On October 11, 1951, The New York Times reported that $10,400 worth of jewelry had "disappeared" from a suite.  Henry Rand, vice president of the International Shoe Company in St. Louis, and his wife and daughter had stepped out.  When they returned around midnight, they discovered the theft. 

Six months later, on April 29, 1952, the newspaper reported, "Jewelry valued at $2,700 was stolen last night from Sheik Asad Al Facih, Saudi-Arabian Ambassador to the United States."  Included in the heist were "an Indian necklace set with rubies and pearls and valued at $2,000, and a man's gold-and-ruby ring valued at $650 and a man's wedding ring valued at $50," said that article.  The total value would translate to about $32,700 today.

At the time of the article, the management offered a unique service to its transient guests.  On November 9, 1955, The New York Times noted, "The Barclay Hotel cares for transient's canaries; boards them in the lobby cage with its own yellow birds and finches."  That cage had become an attraction.  Decades later, architectural critic David W. Dunlap would recall his visit to New York City with his mother at the age of nine in 1962.  They stayed at the Barclay Hotel and Dunlap wrote in his diary, "In the middle of the lobby there is a cage of 9 song birds."

The Barclay Hotel continued to be the permanent home to well-heeled residents over the subsequent decades, among them actress Amy Busby who debuted on the stage in 1889; Municipal Court Justice George L. Genung; and author Norman Beasley.

The Cornell Club moved out in the mid-1960s and the third floor space was next occupied by the Manhattan Club, who moved from its clubhouse, the former Jerome Mansion, on Madison Avenue in November 1966.  

In July 1978, InterContinental Hotels purchased the Barclay Hotel.  The following year, $37 million in financing was acquired "in connection with the purchase and planned renovation," reported The New York Times.  Saying the renovations would be completed in 1981, the article noted, "the company planned to make the Barclay the flagship of its worldwide chain of 80 hotels."

The hotel was renovated again, re-opening in April 2016.  In reporting on the renovations in The New York Times on February 28, David W. Dunlap remembered the cage of canaries and finches, saying, "the song birds are long gone."  The InterContinental designers, however, gave a nod to the beloved fixture.  The new revolving door mimicked the cage with swirling birds.

photo by Pablo Enriquez for The New York Times, April 28, 2016

Two new ballrooms on the second floor necessitated the removal of the lobby's dome.  The exterior of the hotel, "as confident and debonair as Gene Kelly on a dance floor," as described by journalist Christopher Gray, was not touched.

photograph by Jim Henderson

many thanks to reader Kevin Cross for suggesting this post.

The 1912 Passavant Building - 440 Park Avenue South

 

Once lined with aristocratic mansions, by the first years of the 20th century, Park Avenue was bustling with commerce and traffic.  In 1911, the estate of Willard Parker sold the 90 x 100 foot property at the southwest corner of Fourth Avenue (renamed Park Avenue South in 1959) and East 30th Street.  The newly-formed No. 440 Fourth Avenue Company hired the architectural firm of Cross & Cross to design a 16-story commercial structure on the site.

The building went up with lightning speed.  The architects filed plans on February 16, 1912, and the construction was completed on December 1.   Costing $500,000 to erect (about $16.7 million in 2026), Cross & Cross designed the structure in the Academic Classicism (sometimes called Academic Classical) style.  

The stately four-story base was distinguished by monumental, three-story fluted Corinthian pilasters.  Renaissance-inspired terra cotta panels of torches and shields separated the openings of the fourth floors.  The brick-faced midsection, or shaft, was unadorned; while a triple-height Corinthian colonnade at the top section echoed ancient Greek prototypes.

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

Before the first shovel broke ground for the building, the owners had signed a lease for its major tenant.  On March 23, 1912, in reporting that construction contracts had been signed, the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide noted, "It will be known as the Passavant Building."  

Passavant & Co. would occupy the basement and first through sixth floors.  In its December 1912 issue, The American Silk Journal commented, "The new building is a fitting monument to the great success which Passavant & Co. have obtained in the various mercantile fields which they are engaged in through their importing and commission business."  The article noted, "the builders have produced a magnificent structure which stands for the very latest word in modern office and loft building."

Founded on June 1, 1853 by Gebrüder Passavant on Broad Street, the commission firm dealt in "silks, ribbons, velvets, dress goods and other branches of foreign and domestic dry goods," according to The American Silk Journal.  The article mentioned, "The ten upper floors of the building are being rented to firms in the silk trade for lofts, offices and showrooms."

Among the other initial tenants were James H. Moffett & Co., importers of knit goods; the importing and commission house of Boessneck, Broesel & Co.; linen merchant Henry W. A. Page; and importer Remy, Schmidt & Pleissner.  The latter firm leased additional space in the building in March 1913, just a year after moving in.

Henry W. A. Page was described by The Evening World as a "wealthy, eccentric linen merchant."  When he relocated his business into the Passavant Building in January 1913, he was already in trouble with the Government.  His problems started in 1907 when his wife sued him for divorce.  When she was successful, Page railed that the courts were corrupt and pushed the United States Congress to investigate the New York judiciary.  When his appeals were ignored, he "made a bitter attack by letter on Chairman [Henry De Lamar] Clayton and other members of the Judiciary Committee," according to The New York Times.  He called Clayton and the House Committee "crooks."

Page was indicted and extradited to Washington to stand trial for criminal libel.  He was convicted and sentenced to five years imprisonment and a $1,000 fine.  But, reported The New York Times, "he was permitted to leave town on parole after promising to refrain from making attacks on public officers."

That promise turned out to be too difficult for Page to keep.  In May 1913, he sent a 113-page letter "by express" to President Woodrow Wilson, "asking for Executive assistance to right wrongs" which he had suffered by the New York State court and Government officials.  The Department of Justice responded by issuing a warrant for his arrest.

The wealthy businessman went on the lam.  On May 23, 1913, The Evening World reported that Secret Service men had gone to his office in the Passavant Building the previous night, saying, "employees of the building told them that Page had not been around for more than a week."  At the New York Athletic Club, where Page lived, they were told that he had left "early this week without giving any hint of his destination."  The Secret Service traced his baggage to Grand Central.  The Evening World said that the agents discovered that Page had gone either to Boston or Canada, "with the intention of sailing for England."  The New York Times noted, "the doors of his office were found locked, though it was said that employes [sic] had been carrying on the business in his absence."

It appeared that Page had successfully escaped capture.  But the firebrand could not contain his ire.  On March 1, 1914, The New York Times reported that members of the Diplomatic Corps had received letters "attacking President Wilson."  Sent from Seattle, they said in part that Wilson had "hired assassins to arrest him--presumably detectives obeying the order of the court."

In the meantime, a tenant definitely not part of the silk or textile industries at the time was the General Film Company.  The firm supplied silent movies to theaters.  In the spring of 1913, reels of film began disappearing and within 10 months, according to The New York Times, it "has lost films worth $150,000."  

A break in the mysterious case came early in January 1914 when a messenger boy told Harry Buxbaum, manager of General Film Company, that one of the company's movies was being shown in a theater on Second Avenue.  The Improved Film Company supplied that theater with films.  Detectives trailed a messenger boy from that firm to the Passavant Building.  They stopped George Brown as he left the building "with four films under his arms," reported The New York Times.  The well-planned scheme devised by Samuel Marcusson, the head of Improved Film Company, quickly unraveled.

Marcusson paid Brown and Martin Hilbert, an 18-year-old stock room boy, $2 and $3 each to purloin films.  Marcusson then presented himself as an agent of General Film Company to the various theaters' management.  At Marcusson's business, detectives discovered 47 General Film Company reels.  They were a fraction of the estimated 250 reels that had been stolen in the past year.  Marcusson pleaded guilty in court on March 16 and was sentenced to six months in prison.

Perhaps the first publishing firm to lease space in the building was Condé Nast & Co., publisher of Vogue magazine, which took the entire 10th floor in August 1915.  It was the scene of a bizarre accident a year later.  On October 31, 1916, the New-York Tribune reported that about six girls had worked overtime the previous evening.  "It was noticeably warm in the office.  One after another, and then in pairs, the girls tugged at the big window."  Unable to open it, they telephoned the building's office and Frank Mather, a porter, came up.

Mather tugged and tugged and finally the sash gave way.  But in doing so, the porter plunged out of the window.  A few seconds later, the automatic sprinklers in the Johnson, Cowdin & Co., ribbon manufacturers, triggered.  That initiated a response by the fire department.  

When firefighters arrived, they could find no blaze, although Johnson, Cowdin & Co. was being flooded.  The New-York Tribune wrote, "Some of the 'Vogue' girls, who had run screaming to the street, helped to solve the mystery."  They told the responders that Frank had fallen from the window.  "It must have killed him," they said.

The firefighters climbed to the roof of the single-story extension behind the building and discovered Mather unconscious, but not dead.  He had landed on the wire grating that protected the automatic sprinkler plug, "turning on water, fire alarm and burglar alarm," said the article.  Miraculously, the 47-year-old Mather survived the fall, although his condition was deemed serious.

Joining Condé Nast & Co. in the building were the publishing firms The Horseless Age and Hubbell-Leavens Company.  With America's entry into World War I, Hubbell-Leavens published Conspiracies In America in 1917.  Among the 17 chapter titles were "Germany Intermeddling with Mexican Affairs," "Germany's Spy System and Vandalism," and "America's Duty to Civilization."

Ironically, at the same time, Hans Jacobson was employed by the Audiger & Meyer Silk Company in the building.  The New-York Tribune explained on August 2, 1918, he had worked for the firm "since he came to this country from Germany, seven years ago."  The article said that Jacobson and a cohort had been arrested for conducting espionage for the Germany Government.  Both men confessed and revealed the complex details of their activities.

The building continued to house, mainly, publishing and silk firms.  Occupying space in the 1920s, for instance, were the Falcon Silk Company, the Roosevelt Silk Mills Corp., and silk merchants Ressell & Co.  Passavant & Co. remained here at least through 1929.

The 1930s saw more publishing companies in the Passavant Building: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; Howe Publishing; and C. S. Hammond & Co., publishers of maps.  William Ogden Wiley was president of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., founded by his great-grandfather, Charles Wiley, in 1807.  William had been with the firm since 1890 and would become president in 1941.  William Ogden Wiley retired in 1956, but remained the honorary chairman of the firm until his death at 95 on January 15, 1958.

Appleton-Century-Crofts Publishing moved into the building around 1970.  Specializing in educational books, among its releases that year were Victorian Poets and Prose Writers, The American Novel Through Henry James, and Romantic Poets and Prose Writers.  The firm was acquired by Prentice-Hall in 1973, but retained its name and was still in the building as late as 2013.

Another long-lasting tenant was Dramatist Play Service, Inc., which moved in around 1995.  Established in 1936, it handles acting editions and performance rights of plays and remains in the building.

Cross & Cross's Passavant Building has been hailed by architectural critics throughout the decades.  Happily, renovations to the entrance and storefronts have not greatly altered the structure's appearance, and the heroic fluted pilasters still stand untouched.

photographs by the author

The Ernest G. Stillman Mansion - 45 East 75th Street

 

photo by Ajay Suresh

Dr. Ernest Goodrich Stillman was born in Newport, Rhode Island on July 14, 1894, the son of multi-millionaire banker James J. Stillman and his wife, Sarah Elizabeth Rumrill.  Upon his father's death in 1918, Ernest and his two brothers, Charles and James, each inherited $9,694,561.  Ernest's windfall would be the equivalent of about $196 million in 2024.

Dr. Stillman graduated from Harvard in 1908 and earned his medical degree from Columbia University in 1913.  He was a research staff member at the Rockefeller Institute Hospital (not especially surprising considering that two of his sisters, Sarah and Isabel, had married Rockefellers).  Stillman and his wife, the former Mildred Marguerite Whitney, had three daughters, Jane, Dora Whitney and Penelope; and three sons, John Sterling, Calvin Whitney and Timothy Goodrich.  

In 1924, Stillman purchased the three high-stooped brownstones at 45 to 49 West 75th Street and hired the architectural firm of Cross & Cross to design a replacement mansion on the site.  Completed the following year, its architect of record was H. W. Andrews.  He designed the 51-foot-wide, four-story mansion in the neo-Federal style, giving East 75th Street a splash of 18th century America.

A graceful fanlight crowned above the main entrance.  Sitting above a stone bandcourse, four large, multi-paned windows at the second floor were fronted by iron balconies.  The slate-shingled mansard was punctured by five alternating pedimented and flat-headed dormers.  A Chippendale railing crowned the roof.

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

Stillman's mother was taken to her country home at Cornwall-on-Hudson in 1925, the year the family moved into 45 East 75th Street.  Her health was fragile and Middletown [New York] Daily Herald said, "it was said she could not live out the year."  On October 18, Sarah Stillman was brought from Cornwall-on-Hudson to 45 East 75th Street in a private ambulance.  Ernest G. Stillman soft-peddled her condition, telling reporters, "she made the trip by motor to avoid the fatigue of transferring from train to ferry."  Sarah Elizabeth Rumrill eventually returned to her home at 102 East 35th Street, where she died a little over a month later, on November 30, at the age of 73.

Stillman filled the 75th Street mansion with a magnificent collection of Japanese art and literature.  It was later divided between the Widener Library and the Peabody Museum.  The family maintained two summer homes, the Cornwall-on-Hudson residence and another in Northeast Harbor, Maine.

Jane, born in 1913, was the eldest of the Stillman children.  On October 26, 1931, the New York Evening Post reported, "Dr. and Mrs. Ernest G. Stillman will present their daughter, Miss Jane Stillman, to society at an old fashioned afternoon reception, at their home, 45 East Seventy-fifth Street. This has been arranged primarily for old friends of the family, and there will not be dancing."

Debutante entertainments continued throughout the winter social season, and on December 23 the newspaper announced that Ernest and Mildred, "are giving a dinner-dance this evening at the Ritz-Carlton for their daughter, Miss Jane Stillman.  The debutante made her format debut at a tea at the Stillman home on December 6, and tonight's party has been arranged for her friends in the younger set."

Mildred's entertainments in the 75th Street mansion often centered around charities.  On November 15, 1942, for instance, The New York Times reported that she would be hosting a tea "for members of the debutante committee aiding in the plans for the annual card party in behalf of the New York Child's Foster Home Service."  She and Ernest jointly provided funds for the construction of the Cornwall Hospital, and she was a director and chairman of the foster home committee of the New York Nursery and Childs Hospital, to which she contributed generously.

She was, as well, an author, editor and poet, best known for her children's books.  She was already a successful author when she and Ernest were married in 1911.  Among her children's books were The Mermaid and the Little Fish, A Present for Santa Claus, and A Boy of Galilee.  Additionally, The New York Times said, "she was widely recognized as a translator of writings by the French religious philosopher, Francois Fenelton."

Philanthropy was as much a part of Ernest Stillman's life as was medicine.  He funded the building of Shaler Hall and the Fisher Museum at Harvard University, donated a horticultural research unit in Petersham, Massachusetts to the university, and financially supported the Cornwall Hospital in upstate New York.  Ardently interested in forestry and silvicultural research, he donated the 3,800-acre Black Rock Forest along the Hudson River in Orange County, New York to Harvard along with a large endowment.

Dr. Ernest Goodrich Stillman died in the mansion on December 16, 1949 at the age of 65.  His love of trees and forestry was reflected in his will, which directed his executors "to have my remains cremated and the ashes scattered in Black Rock Forest."

Eight months later, on August 22, 1950, Mildred Marguerite Whitney Stillman suffered a fatal heart attack in the house at the age of 60.  The New York Times mentioned that, in addition to her many philanthropies, "She was a founder and former secretary of the New York Junior League."

The mansion was purchased by Miss Hewitt's Classes, a private girls' school founded in 1920.  A renovation completed in 1951 resulted in classrooms and offices on each floor. 

Three years later, the school purchased the vintage house across the street at 44 East 75th Street for dormitory purposes.  It continued to expand its holdings in April 1964, when it purchased the adjoining house at 46 East 75th Street.

photo by Jim Henderson

By then, name of Miss Hewitt's Classes had been changed to The Hewitt School.  It remains a private girl's school for grades kindergarten through 12.  The exterior of the Stillman mansion has been respectfully preserved.

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Rosario Candela's 1929 720 Park Avenue

 

In the decade following World War I, the Presbyterian Hospital, greatly funded in 1868 by James Lenox, moved to Morningside Heights.  In 1925, architects Eliot Cross and J. E. R. Carpenter joined forces with real estate operators Robert E. Dowling and James T. Lee to purchase the site on the northwest corner of Park Avenue and 70th Street.  Something went awry with their plans, and in 1928 they sold the property to MonteLenox.  The firm hired Italian-born architect Rosario Candela to design an upscale apartment house on the site.  

The prolific architect was known for his apartment designs.  In 1927 and 1928 alone he designed 19 apartment buildings, including 720 Park Avenue.  Interestingly, working with him on this commission was Cross & Cross, of which Eliot Cross, one of the previous owners, was a partner.  

The collaboration resulted in a neo-Renaissance style, 17-floor-and-penthouse structure faced in brick above a three-story limestone base.  The spandrels above the first floor windows were decorated with exquisitely carved festoons of fruits and flowers.  The doric columns that flanked the main entrance supported a carved entablature topped by a large, broken pediment.

The top six floors broke free, rising asymmetrically as setbacks, terraces, and bays.  Here the architects introduced neo-Tudor elements, a decision that annoyed T-Square, the architectural critic of The New Yorker.  Calling it "a disturbing pile of architectural motives," he felt the lower portion was "in an orderly enough fashion," but lamented the "jumble of setbacks, stick-outs, bays, battlements and buttresses."

Less put off were the potential residents.  On September 1, 1929, the New York Evening Post reported, "Although not scheduled for completion for a full year, the $6,000,000 apartment house that is to occupy the northwest corner of Park Avenue and Seventieth Street and to be known as 720 Park Avenue, is already 50 percent sold from plans...The building is to be 100 per cent co-operative." 

The article described:

There will be no more than three apartments alike in the entire building.  The suites will range from eleven to twenty-seven rooms, with from five to ten baths, and extra lavatories.  Ceiling heights in the masters' rooms will range from 10 feet to 15 feet.  Ingenious mezzanine floors will contain parts of the service quarters.  Each apartment will have from three to seven log-burning fireplaces.  All apartments above the twelfth floor will have terraces. The plans indicate such luxuries as flower rooms, valeting rooms and breakfast porches.

The interiors of the sprawling apartments were designed by Candela to the owners' specifications.  According to Christopher Gray, writing in The New York Times on September 11, 1988, "Candela told his son Joseph that the commissions for customizing interiors at 720 Park Avenue alone were enough to pay his entire overhead."

Among the original owners were Jesse Isidor Straus, president of R. H. Macy & Co.; Frederick H. Frazier, chairman of the General Baking Company; Middleton Shoolbread Burrill and his wife Emilie; and William E. Iselin and his wife, the former Alice Rogers Jones.  The most colorful of the initial residents was broker Harold Russel Ryder.

Ryder's wife was Roma Woody, daughter of wealthy corporation lawyer Charles L. Woody, Sr.  Ryder's partner in the Wall Street firm Woody & Co. was his brother-in-law, Charles L. Woody, Jr.  The Boston Globe noted on June 30, 1930, "In 1928 [Ryder] bought a co-operative apartment at 720 Park av., which represented a total investment, with furniture and decorations, of around $500,000."  That figure would translate to about $8.9 million in 2024.

The newspaper said, "It has been a long while since Broadway has produced such a loose spender as Harold Russell [sic] Ryder, 'Little Boy Blew,' who says he regarded money as he would marbles and thought nothing at all of shooting $1500 on an evening's entertainment."  Ryder spent lavishly, his customary tip to a night club doorman being "a $100 bill," according to The Boston Globe.  But, as it turned out, his spending was a smoke screen.

While Ryder had made millions in the stock market, The Boston Globe explained, "the market crash of last November cost Ryder $3,000,000...But the young man kept up his 'front.'"  The ruse worked for a while, convincing investors to entrust their money to the broker, but eventually one, Frank Bailey, sued him to repay $2,025,000.

In court on June 29, 1930, an attorney for his creditors asked, "Do you realize that you were spending at the rate of $500,000 a year on pleasure?" 

Ryder replied, "Fifteen hundred dollars a night isn't too much to spend.  You have 10 or 15 people as your guests.  You have dinner, go to the theatre, and then to the night clubs.  Why, you are lucky if you get by on $1500." 

The Daily News said Roma Woody Ryder would possibly be called to testify about "the circumstances under which she assigned the luxurious Park ave. apartment [and] the circumstances under which Bailey demanded her jewels."  In the end, Ryder was sentenced to Sing Sing prison for three to ten years.  He was released in 1933, only to be sent back in 1937 after being convicted of defrauding two women of $19,000.

Harold Ryder was the anomaly among the well-heeled, respectable residents.  Despite the ongoing Depression, their names appeared in society pages for debutante entertainments, dinner parties and receptions.

Jesse Isidor Straus was the eldest son of Isidor and Ida Straus, who had perished on the RMS Titanic.  He and his wife, the former Irma Nathan, moved into a sumptuous 17-room duplex, which Candela had given an ultra modern Art Deco decor.  Highly involved in politics and a close ally of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Straus was appointed U.S. Ambassador to France in 1933.

A bedroom (top) and a portion of the library in the Straus apartment.  photos by Samuel H. Gottscho, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

In 1936, The New York Times reported that Jesse Isidor Straus's "health had been slowly failing for many months."  He resigned his post as Ambassador to France in August.  The gravity of his condition was clear two months later when the family was called to his bedside.  On October 5, The New York Times reported that Irma and their three children, along with Jesse's only living brother, Percy S. Straus, were at his bedside when the 64-year-old died.

Candela's Georgian design for the Francis M. Weld apartment stood in start contrast to the Straus duplex.  photos by Samuel H. Gottscho, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

William E. Iselin was described by The New York Times as being "of the prominent New York family of bankers, merchants and yachtsmen."  His wife came with an equally impressive social pedigree.  She was the granddaughter of Mary Mason Jones, a grande dame of 19th century New York society whose white marble mansion sat opposite the Cornelius Vanderbilt chateau on Fifth Avenue.  The couple's summer home was in New Rochelle.

Alice Rogers Jones Iselin became ill in the fall of 1932 and died in the apartment at the age of 82 on October 22.  Her husband survived her by five years.  He died here on January 26, 1937, two weeks after his 89th birthday.

Occupying a 15-room apartment at 720 Park Avenue in the 1950s were Dr. James Craig Joyner and his wife, the former Lucie Burke Alcott.  Born in North Carolina, Joyner had served as a surgeon in the U.S. Navy during World War I.  The couple, who were married in 1948, maintained a summer home in East Hampton.

In March 1959, the Joyners went on a trip "of several days," according to The East Hampton Star.  In preparation for their return, a maid went to the apartment on the evening of March 21 and found a kitchen window open.  The newspaper said, "The window is twenty feet above a second-floor terrace in a wall so smooth as to make a foothold a practical impossibility, police said."  Nevertheless, a burglar had entered and made off with $100,000 worth of jewelry.  The heist would translate to just over $1 million today.

The various wall treatments in the Candela-designed Frederick H. Frazier apartment included full-height paneling in the living room and painted wallpaper in the dining room. photos by Samuel H. Gottscho, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

Living here at the time were William F. R. Hitt and his wife Eugenia.  A retired financier, Hitt was the son of former Assistant Secretary of State Robert R. Hitt.  William's first wife, Katherine Elkins, had been engaged to the Duke of Abruzzi before their marriage in 1913.  The couple divorced in 1921 and then remarried in 1923.  Four years after Katherine's death in September 1936, William married Eugenia Jemison Woodward Jelke.

The couple maintained a second home near Washington D.C.  A noted sportsman, Hitt owned race horses and was a member of the Jockey, the Racquet, and Tennis Clubs of New York; and the Chevy Chase, Alibi, and Metropolitan Clubs in Washington.

Hitt was Eugenia's second marriage, as well.  Her first, to wealthy Wall Street broker Ferdinand Frazier Jelke ended in divorce in 1933.  (During the hearings, Jelke flatly called Eugenia "a dirty little gold digger," according to the Milwaukee Journal on May 23 that year.)  In fact, she had little need for an affluent husband.  She was the daughter of the founder of the Woodward Steel Company of Birmingham, Alabama.  Having begun collecting as a young woman, Eugenia filled both homes with her notable collection of 18th century French furniture and decorative items.

William F. R. Hitt died in the Park Avenue apartment on April 23, 1961 at the age of 81.  Four years later, in June, Eugenie traveled to Baden-Baden, Germany.  The New York Times explained, "Mrs. Hitt visits Baden-Baden, noted for its thermal baths, almost every year."  On June 12, the newspaper said, "She arrived last month with a chauffeur."

On the evening of July 7, Eugenie left "the fashionable Brenners Park Hotel" and returned four hours later.  She noticed nothing wrong until the following afternoon.  The yellow leather case that contained her jewelry and $4,000 in cash was missing.  Eugenie placed the value of the stolen jewelry at $250,000--about $2.45 million today.  Police questioned each member of the staff, convinced it was an inside job.

Astoundingly, a month later, on August 7, The New York Times reported that police had recovered the jewels.  A 35-year-old telephone operator of the hotel, Elisabeth Krelemann, had stolen the case, then became panicked by the intense police search.  She left the case on a train luggage rack to be discovered by a railway official.

Upon Eugenie Woodward Hitt's death here in 1990, she bequeathed the bulk of her furniture and art (valued at over $50 million) to the Birmingham Museum of Art.  One item, a bronze wall clock, went to the Chateau de Versailles.

Marcia Brady Tucker had moved into 720 Park Avenue in 1969 after selling her magnificent townhouse across the avenue at 733 Park Avenue.   Her husband, Carll Tucker died at their country home, Penwood, in 1956.  The New York Times said, "when she had to vacate a previous Park Avenue residence, Mrs. Tucker donated her collection of 19th-century English children's portraits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to the Cincinnati Museum of Art."  Nonetheless, her apartment here was magnificently furnished.  She died in the apartment on December 21, 1976 at the age of 92.

On December 11, 2005, Josh Barbanel commented in a article in The New York Times, "If you can afford the many millions you need to live at 720 Park Avenue--and you squeak past the co-op board--you will find yourself in a building with all the advantages New York has to offer.  It is one of the great old Park Avenue luxury apartment buildings, with tasteful 12-room apartments and neighbors who grace the social pages, the business pages, and the lists of the world's richest people."

Among them were Mark and Nina Magowan, who had purchased their 7,000-square-foot, 14-room duplex apartment in 1986 from Caroline Lynch.  Magowan was president of Vendome Press.  

While the couple had renovations done, they retained the original Candela interiors--drawn from French 18th century precedents.  On March 20, 2016, The New York Times described the apartment's, "ornate and sometimes whimsical boiserie paneling...plaster cameo moldings, overdoor painted inserts and four marble wood-burning fireplaces."

The article mentioned that the 29 apartments at 720 Park Avenue had "been home to various captains of industry and entrepreneurs, like Leonard Liggio, the founder of Barnes & Noble, and Randolph D. Lerner, the former owner of the Cleveland Browns."

photographs by the author

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Cross & Cross's Lost 1912 405 Park Avenue

 

Architectural Record, 1921 (copyright expired)

By the first decade of the 20th century, the stigma of living in apartment buildings had faded for affluent families--mostly because high-end buildings offered accommodations that equaled private homes.  In 1911 George R. Goughlan formed the Park Avenue and Fifty-Fourth Street Company to erect a posh structure at 401-405 Park Avenue on the northeast corner of 54th Street where a two-story commercial stable stood.

The firm hired the architectural firm of Cross & Cross to design the structure.  The plans, completed in December 1911, called for a 12-story edifice that would cost $400,000 to construct--around $12.7 million in 2023.  The tripartite, neo-Renaissance style structure was completed in 1912.  Its three-story, stone-faced base was dominated by an over-sized Renaissance entrance.  The mid-section was defined by rows of stone balconies that girded the fourth and ninth floors.  A stone balustrade crowned the cornice.  The handsome design earned Cross & Cross an honorable mention at the American Institute of Architects' annual banquet in February 1913.

Architectural Record, 1921 (copyright expired)

Typically, there were two apartments per floor, one with eleven rooms and three baths, and the other of thirteen rooms and four baths.  A brochure assured potential residents, "The plan has been so arranged that even larger rooms or duplex apartments can be obtained."  It stressed, "The living quarters are entirely separated from the chambers [i.e., bedrooms], while the servants' rooms and kitchen are entirely shut off from the balance of the apartment."  For those families with larger domestic staffs than the plans accommodated, there were additional servants' rooms and baths in the basement, which could be rented.

Elevators opened directly into the vestibules of each apartment, assuring privacy.  The brochure noted, "Each apartment has the exclusive use of a private laundry, fully equipped, in another part of the building.  Vacuum cleaners, refrigerating service, private storage rooms and interior telephone system are provided."  For decades, domestic fireplaces had burned coal.  Now in 405 Park Avenue the "large, open fireplaces have flues specially constructed to burn wood."

A typical floorplan showed the service rooms clustered together.  The World's New York Apartment House Album, 1913 (copyright expired)

Living here was expectedly pricey.  When a 12-room, five-bath corner apartment with eight fireplaces became available in October 1915, the rent was listed at $6,000 per year--about $15,000 per month today.

Among the initial residents were the Henry Hobart Porter, Jr. family.   Born in 1865, Porter had grown up in a mansion on Washington Square North.  He and his wife, the former Catherine Delano, had four children, Seton, Dorothy Dwight, Margaret Seton, and Kathrine Delano.  The family's country estate was in Hempstead, Long Island.

An engineer, Porter had co-founded the firm of Sanderson & Porter in 1894.  In 1914, a year after moving into 405 Park Avenue, he was elected president of the American Water Works and Electric Company.  

In the meantime, Catherine busied herself with social responsibilities.  On November 11, 1913, for instance, The Sun reported, "Mrs. H. Hobart Porter has sent out invitations for a reception on the afternoon of November 28 at 405 Park avenue, when she will introduce her second daughter, Miss Margaret Seton Porter, who was last summer in Southampton with her parents before going to the Adirondacks."

Another of the original families in the building were the William Mood Baldwins.  They were no doubt well acquainted with the Porters, since their summer home, too, was in Hempstead.  Baldwin and his wife, the former Lydia Perry, had two daughters, Ruth and Dorothy.

World War I upset the wedding plans of many families as prospective grooms were deployed to military camps or overseas.  Ruth Baldwin was engaged to Army Captain Roger G. Alexander in the fall of 1917, but things got moved up.  On May 22 they were married in the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, Long Island.  The reception was held in the Baldwin summer home.  The Hempstead Sentinel explained, "The wedding was originally planned for the Autumn, but the time was advanced owing the war.  Captain Alexander is...stationed with the Signal Corps at Albany."

Around the time of Ruth's wedding, Dorothy Dwight Porter left Junior League dances and benefits behind to sail to France to work in the American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly.  She later was stationed at a field hospital at Cugny "for which she had raised money to purchase and support a barracks kitchen," reported the New-York Tribune.  It was most likely during her time in France that she met Captain Harold E. B. Pardee of the Medical Reserves Corps.  On April 7, 1918, the New-York Tribune reported that the Porters had announced Dorothy's engagement to Captain Pardee.

The flurry of military romances continued the following month when the William Baldwins announced Alice's engagement to Ensign Francis W. Murray, Jr.  The New-York Tribune noted on March 24, "Miss Baldwin made her debut two winters ago, and is a member of the Junior League."

War did not greatly interfere with the social and charitable activities of most of the residents of 405 Park Avenue.  Georgine Iselin was the daughter of millionaire Adrian Georg Iselin.  On January 5, 1918, the New-York Tribune reported she had volunteered "to raise a fund of $50,000 for the purchase and distribution of coal to the poor of the city."  

On October 20 that year, The Sun announced that "Mr. and Mrs. Garrett B. Kip have left Massena, their summer home in Barrytown, N. Y., and are at 405 Park avenue."

The Porters' names would be in print in 1920 for the right and wrong reasons.  On March 13, The Evening World announced that Katherine was engaged to Robert Lyon Hamill.  The article noted, "Miss Porter is one of the debutantes of the winter, and was elected Chairman of the provisional members of the Junior League."

Four months after that article and three months before the wedding, her father was summoned to the office of Judge W. M. K. Olcott to be questioned by August Hasenflug, a Prohibition attorney.  On July 10, the New-York Tribune reported, "Porter admitted having purchased four cases of whisky from an employee of [Joseph Bowne] Elwell."  (Elwell was a known bootlegger and his mysterious murder was being investigated.)  The article said, "Immediately after the investigation, agents from the Prohibition Enforcement Office went to the home of Porter, 405 Park Avenue, and confiscated the liquor."

By now the Porters' summer home was in Lawrence, Long Island.  Katherine's wedding as held in Hewlett, Long Island, on October 9, 1920 and the reception held in the Porter house, named Lauderdale.

Another wedding to catch the attention of society was that of 35-year-old resident Cathleen Neilson Vanderbilt on January 26, 1921.  Cathleen had divorced Reginald C. Vanderbilt on April 9 the previous year and moved into 405 Park Avenue.  She had charged Vanderbilt with "willful desertion" and was given custody of their 17-year-old daughter, Cathleen. 

The same year that she obtained her divorce, Sydney Jones Colford, Jr., "prominent in New York, Newport and Philadelphia society," according to The Evening World, divorced his wife, the former Clara Knight.  

On the afternoon of January 26, Cathleen and Sydney obtained a license at the Municipal Building and were married in Cathleen's apartment at 5:30 that evening.  The Evening World reported that among the select persons present was "Miss Cathleen Vanderbilt, only daughter of the bride, and just approaching the debutante age, who was her mother's only attendant."  The Evening World added, "Immediately after the ceremony Mr. and Mrs. Colford left to spend their honeymoon at Sagamore Lodge in the Adirondacks."  The couple returned to 405 Park Avenue on February 11, 1921.

The lobby included a marble staircase, bronze sconces and a wood-burning fireplace.  Architectural Record, 1921 (copyright expired)

Taking what The Evening World described as "a luxurious apartment" here in July 1920 was Claire Louise Hyllsted Burton, who had just separated from her millionaire husband, Frank Vincent Burton.  The couple had been married in fashionable St. George's Church on Stuyvesant Square a few months earlier, on November 20, 1919.

Burton was a widower and Claire a divorcee, having divorced August Hyllsted in Chicago in July 1908.  Their period of domestic bliss came to an abrupt end in February 1920 when Claire had several trunks of clothing and personal items shipped from Paris to New York.  The Evening World reported that Burton had them "diverted to his office."  What he found inside was shocking.  Claire had kept more than 200 "amorous letters," as described by The Evening World, from wealthy men including Charles T. Yerkes.  They left no doubt that she had not only carried on intimate trysts with the moguls, but that she had extorted money from them.

One, a telegram dated October 18, 1913 and signed Fred, begged her not to divulge their indiscretions to his wife:

The scenes and insults have upset me so that I must ask you not to look upon me as a friend any more, and I fear your threat to inform my wife of what has happened would cause the unhappiness of an innocent and good person.  I therefore beg you to be generous and allow me to send you a remembrance of 2,500 francs and to send you a Christmas present of another 2,500 francs.  Why do you try to ruin my sense of duty?  How terrible is the remembrance of yesterday evening.  Please let us part in a friendly way.  Let me hear from you at the Hotel Kasten, Hanover.  God protect you.

Frank Vincent Burton walked out on Claire.  She moved into 405 Park Avenue and, unknown to her, he rewrote his will.  The Evening World reported that she "was cut off without a penny."  He informed his children of her scandalous past and directed "that if Mrs. Burton ever made an attempt to raid the estate they were to conceal nothing and take all the cards to court."

Burton's amended will left $1.3 million to his five children (more than 22 times that much in 2023 dollars).  He had changed it with little time to spare.  He died on March 11, 1922.  And, as he suspected, Claire immediately contested the will.  The children, as directed, hung out all the dirty laundry for the courts and the public to see.  In response to her suit, she was "charged with having been an international flirt and companion of rich men."

On April 18, 1922, a reporter from The Evening World visited Claire at her apartment.  "A monstrous fabrication!" she exclaimed when showed the charges.  She said she had never heard of any of the men and knew nothing about a trunk of letters.  The physical presence of the trunk and the letters in court, however, were powerful evidence.

When she was unable to overturn the will, Claire tried another tactic.  Burton had grown up in a mansion at Fifth Avenue and 38th Street.  When commerce invaded the neighborhood, the Burton family leased the land to the Lord & Taylor department store, upon which they erected their building.  On May 24, 1922, the relentless Claire sued the Burton children for a one-sixth interest in the property.

The Porters and Kips resided in the building into the 1930s.  On January 2, 1937, The New York Times reported that Carola de Peyster Kip was engaged to Benjamin R. Kittredge, Jr.  The article noted, "Miss Kip is a granddaughter of Mrs. Johnston Livingston de Peyster and is a descendant of Hendrik Kip, a member of Peter Stuyvesant's council.  The Kip family settled in Rhinebeck in 1686."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Portrait artist Dietz Edzard signed a lease "for a large apartment," according to The New York Times, in January 1938.  Born in Germany in 1893, he had just married artist Suzanne Eisendieck in Paris.

On June 28, 1954, The New York Times reported that the building was to be demolished, replaced by "an office and store building to cost $1,250,000."  

image via mrprealty.com

Designed by Herbert Tannenbaum, it survived until 2022, demolished for "a possible office skyscraper," according to New York YIMBY on March 13, 2023.

many thanks to reader Doug Wheeler for prompting this post

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