The 8th Ward Mission House - 49 MacDougal Street

In 1788 the Bayard family hired Theodore Goerck to map out streets and building plots on their land.  The western boundary between their estate and Richmond Hill (the house on which would become the vice-presidential mansion the following year) was called MacDougal Street.

It was named for patriot Alexander MacDougal (who at some point dropped the second L from his family's surname, MacDougall).  Fervently anti-British, he was a founder of the Sons of Liberty, along with activists like Samuel Adams, Benedict Arnold, Patrick Henry and Paul Revere.  During the war he rose to the rank of major general and succeeded Benedict Arnold in commanding West Point.

By the 1820s Georck's streets and building lots had moved from paper to reality.  The plot at 49 MacDougal would not be developed until the early 1840s when a row of brick-fronted homes were erected.   The 21-foot-wide houses, built as speculative investment, were intended for well-to-do families.

Unlike the Federal style houses erected nearby a generation earlier, the attics of which featured peaked roofs with dormers, these Greek Revival homes had full-height third floors (albeit slightly shallower than the lower levels).  The steep brownstone stoops, tall parlor windows, and severe stone pilasters and entablatures of the entrances were expected in the style.

The upscale tone of 49 MacDougal Street was reflected in what may have been its first tenant, the celebrated actor Edwin Forrest, who moved in in 1843.

By now the Shakespearean actor, whose career started in Philadelphia at the age of 11, had also made his mark in Europe and London.  While touring in England in 1837 he married Catherine Norton Sinclair.  Trouble soon followed.

Famed photographer Matthew Brady made this portrait of Edwin Forrest.  from the collection of the Library of Congress.

Soon after returning to New York, Forrest embarked on a road trip.  When he returned he found his home filled with in-laws and his housekeeper complained that "the place had been filled with scenes of revelry and disorder during his absence."

To distance himself from his overbearing relatives, Forrest leased and bought a succession of residences--sometimes, but not always, living with Catherine.   When he testified in their widely-publicized and scandalous divorce case (Catherine was accused of numerous extra-marital affairs) in 1850, he recounted his string of homes.

Among the addresses, he said that after residing two years on Broome Street, "in 1843 I resided [at] No. 49 MacDougal street; after that I resided [at] No. 284 Bleecker street."   His stay in the MacDougal Street house was at least two years, and he later produced a lease dated February 1844.

The house was sold at auction on April 6, 1869 with John Cohen placing the winning bid of $12,600.  The price would be equivalent to about $226,000 today.  Cohen apparently overspent, and four days later an advertisement appeared in The New York Herald announcing that 49 MacDougal would be re-auctioned.  "The above sale will be made for the account of N. Cowen [sic], a former purchaser, he having failed to comply with the terms of sale."

The house became home to the John Dunn family.  Dunn's wife, Eliza, was a dressmaker and his daughter, also named Eliza, was a teacher in the Primary Department of Grammar School No. 30 on Baxter Street near Grand Street.

It appears that Dunn died around 1873.  That year on April 19 Eliza placed an ad in The New York Herald:  "A Dressmaker wishes a few more engagements by the day or week; best references."

The following year, on June 25, Eliza died in the MacDougal Street house.  Eliza E. Dunn remained here, unmarried.  But her school teacher salary was, it would seem, not enough to maintain the property and she came up with a creative solution.

Following the Civil War the neighborhood had seen drastic change as freed blacks and waves of low-income immigrants moved in.  Missions cropped up in an effort to help the impoverished new residents.  One of these was the Eighth Ward Mission, founded by Mrs. Mary Laidlaw in 1877.

Her focus was on orphan boys too old to be accepted into orphanages but unable to support themselves.  While Eliza Dunn still lived in her house, Mary Laidlaw opened her Eighth Ward Mission House here, accepting up to 14 teen-aged boys at a time.

A reporter from the New-York Tribune explained, "At that age, she says, boys are more in need of a guiding hand than when younger, as they are then ambitious to be manlike and they imitate alike the good and the bad.  She found that boys of fourteen who were at work seldom received more than two or three dollars a week which was barely sufficient to rent a small, ill-ventilated room, to say nothing of their board."

Mary Laidlaw's venture was highly successful and soon the MacDougal Street house was being used only as the Mission's offices.  A new mission house and school were erected on Houston Street.

On July 22 1883, the New-York Tribune noted, "Ten boys live in the mission house and a class of seventy, composed of bootblacks, newsboys and street boys, meets there for study and instruction.  In addition to this work there is a sewing-class for women, meeting once a week and numbering forty, while a similar class for girls has sixty members."

Through the sewing classes, women found a means to add to their struggling families' incomes, while girls were trained for a job.   The Directory of the Charitable, Eleemosynary, Correctional and Reformatory Institutions pointed out in 1892 that the "industrial school for poor girls from 8 to 15 years of age."  It was open on Saturdays had more than 75 students.  "The garments made by the children are distributed among them."

The directory added, "In addition, the poor families of the neighborhood are visited and assisted in cases of necessity."

Although the Eighth Ward Mission accepted private donations and city help (in December 1878 the Board of Apportionment granted $400 to its operation), the wealthy Mary Laidlaw paid almost all the operational expenses herself.

In November 1890, the Eighth Ward Mission received an unexpected and generous donation--a millionaire's summer estate near Ossining, New York.  "It consists of a comfortable and spacious home, which was recently the country house of a benevolent gentleman who came to the conclusion that the best he could do with it was to place it at the disposal of Mrs. Laidlaw in aid of her generous work," wrote The Sun on November 9.

Mary Laidlaw explained, "There will continue to be an office in New York city for the reception of such orphans or other boys as may be entrusted to the institution by their parents or guardians.  The effort will be to fit these boys for self-support, and to obtain for them permanent employment."

The New York City office of the Mission continued to operate from 49 MacDougal Street for several years.  When exactly Eliza Dunn left is unclear, however it was purchased in April 1892 by Francis H. Leggett, apparently as a gift to the Mission.  He spent $13,800 on the property, more than $370,000 in today's dollars.

The down-and-out condition of some of district's tenement dwellers was evidenced on January 18, 1894 when the Eighth Ward Mission distributed food as part of the New-York Tribune's Coal and Food Fund.  On that frigid winter morning, 20 families lined up to receive a package of hominy, a bag of beans, one package of codfish, a package of oatmeal, one of rice, one of tea, and two cans of condensed milk.

In some cases, the food was taken to the families.  The New-York Tribune described some of the heartrending cases.  In one basement apartment, "a family was found without food or fire.  The older children in this family have brought the younger children to school this winter barefooted.  When their mother took the groceries tears came to her eyes, and she kissed the hands of those who gave them out."

And, the article went on, "Perhaps the most pitiful case there was was that of a family whose mother died yesterday morning.  The father has been out of work for a long time, and none of the nine children can earn any money.  The oldest girl came to the school crying bitterly.  She said: 'My mother has died, but can I not get the food?  We need it so badly."

The Eighth Ward Mission offices left MacDougal Street around the turn of the century.  By 1902, it was being run as a rooming house.  William B. Stoops died there at the age of 50 on January 7 that year.  Later, in September, James Lynch was arrested for committing voter fraud by misrepresenting his address and, thereby, his election district.

At the time, the neighborhood was becoming known as Little Italy and the tenant list of 49 MacDougal Street filled with Italian surnames through most of the 20th century.  Perhaps the first glimmer of change came in 1952 when two young men moved into an apartment here together.

One of them, who went by the stage name Tish, soon became a Greenwich Village celebrity of sorts.  The female impersonator got his first job at the Moroccan Village.  Silvia Sanza of The WestView News interviewed Tish 60 years later.  "That's where he started wearing wigs and exquisite gowns," wrote Sanza on May 3, 2017.  "He sang French standards in the style of Edith Piaf and 'Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair' as Mary Martin from South Pacific."

Although the orange-red brick has been painted gray and the windows replaced; little else has outwardly changed to No. 49 MacDougal Street.  Its quiet presence successfully hides its remarkable history.

photographs by the author

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The 1835 Edwin Forrest Mansion -- No. 436 West 22nd St

On April 23, 1934 photographer E. P. MacFarland photographed the house which had little changed in a century -- photograph Library of Congress

By 1835 when James Coggill erected his impressive mansion—just one inch short of 33 feet wide--at No. 436 West 22^nd Street, Edwin Forrest had already established his reputation on the stage.  Two years earlier William Mooney, writing in Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania, called him “A star whose genius and patriotism will render his name a standard reference in the annals of the American drama.”  The paths of the actor and Coggill would cross at No. 436 West 22^nd Street.

Sitting on land purchased from Clement Clarke Moore on what had a generation earlier been the Moore country estate, Chelsea, Coggill’s residence pulled out all the stops in the newly-popular Greek Revival style.  Although the exterior was relatively restrained with an off-center entrance with a Doric portico and little other embellishment; the interior was extravagant and “pure Greek.”

The Illustrated American would later comment “The builder may have been an Englishman, and perhaps he had a certain style of the London house, such as may be found in old Kensington, London, in mind when he planned it.”

Throughout the house fluted columns and pilasters, ceiling decorations and mantels carried on the Greek motif.  The expensive hardwoods, marble flooring in the 12-foot square entrance hall and gilded capitals would have been perhaps more expected in the exclusive Bond Street or St. John’s Park neighborhoods.

A century after construction the intricate Greek-inspired ceiling was astoundingly intact-- photograph by E. P. MacFarland, from the collection of the Library of Congress

On June 23, 1837 Edwin Forrest married Catharine N. Sinclair in London.  Forrest brought his bride to New York and soon thereafter he embarked on a road tour.  According to biographer Richard Mooney, when he returned he found his in-laws living in his house and his housekeeper complained that “the place had been filled with scenes of revelry and disorder during his absence.”

Catharine Sinclair Forrest’s later version of events is quite different; but both agree that in 1838 a friend named Lawson found and obtained the Coggill mansion for Forrest.  On August 31, 1839 the actor took title to the property as well as four others in the neighborhood.  The wealthy Forrest now owned property on 22^nd Street, 21^st Street, and “Fonthill,” his sprawling 74-acre estate in Yonkers.

Mooney declared that the 22^nd Street house was purchased so that Forrest could distance himself from his overbearing relatives.  Catharine came along; however the union was not a pleasant one.  When Catharine would visit her sister in the Reade Street house which her husband abandoned; he would accuse her of loving her sister more than him.  Violent arguments erupted in the Grecian halls, overheard by the servants.  Although Catharine was forbidden to enter the library; servants later reported that as soon as Forrest left the house she would spend hours pouring over his personal papers there.

Some Victorian periodicals and books would later gloss over the domestic disquiet in the mansion.  The Illustrated American on October 25, 1890 focused on happier events.  “Willis and his brother, the musician were frequent visitors at the house.  Bryant and others distinguished in literature and art were often there in the evening.”  The magazine did mention, however, that “The house, according to the testimony of the servants, finally became the theatre of domestic tragedy in which the master played a stormy role.”

In fact Catharine Forrest’s “musical parties” while her husband was traveling were later fodder for scandalous gossip and newspaper reports when the gatherings were rumored to involve more than music. 

In 1849 things came to a head when according to Catharine Forrest her husband “caused her to live separate and apart from him, and placed her in a dwelling [on 16^th Street]."  On September 11, 1850 she had Forrest arrested and held on $10,000 bail “to keep the peace so far as Mrs. F. is concerned, she being fearful of an assault from him,” reported the New-York Daily Tribune.

Caroline filed suit for divorce on the grounds that “Edwin Forrest has been guilty of infidelity, and conducted improperly” from 1837 to 1850.  She was granted an injunction to restrain Forrest from selling any of his property “and leave her without provision.”

The divorce was messy and public.  Newspapers carried day-by-day accounts of the testimonies of servants and friends and Victorian readers relished the scandalous details.  On December 22, 1851 Irish immigrant Anna Flower took the stand.  The chambermaid no doubt caused an audible gasp in the courtroom when she spoke of entering one of the front bedrooms in the middle of the night to investigate a noise.

“What did you see?” asked Forrest’s lawyer.

“I see Mrs. Forrest and Capt. Howard; they were in the same bed.”

The sordid case went back and forth.  Catharine’s witnesses told of Forrest’s violent and erratic behavior and his adultery with a list of women.  Forrest’s side told of debauchery and wickedness on the part of his wife and painted him as the blameless victim.

It was all over, finally, on February 8, 1852 when the couple received their divorce.  A lien was put on Forrest’s properties to ensure that he paid Catharine $3,000 a year for life (a comfortable $87,500 today).

Four years later, on March 1, 1856, Edwin Forrest left 22^nd Street for good; selling the house to Philippe Pistor.  The buyer’s father-in-law, Don Alonzo Cushman, was a leading force in the real estate development of the Chelsea area, the President of the Greenwich Savings Bank, and a leading member of the nearby St. Peter’s Church.

Pistor, his wife and their 10 children lived in the house for years; then in 1871 leased it to the principal of Herter Brothers interior decorating company.  Christian Herter had bought out his brother Gustav’s interest in the firm the year before.  His company not only decorated the nation’s mansions and hotels, it designed top quality furniture.  It was an enormous influence in American tastes in Eastlake designs.  Christian Herter was nearly synonymous with the best Japanese-inspired furnishings with ebonized cherry cases inset with exotic wildflowers, birds and insects.

Christian Herter left the 22^nd Street residence in 1876 and three years later the Pistors sold it to James F. Drummond.   Born in Boston in 1824, Drummond had come to New York with his wife, the former Sarah Wyman, in 1856 and joined the firm of Raynolds, Devoe & Pratt.  By now he was one of the principals of the company that manufactured “paints, artists’ materials and varnishes.”  The Drummonds reared two sons and a daughter in the house.

The new owners recognized the architectural excellence of the house and filled it with important antiques—upholstered furniture from the castle of Fontainebleau, Louis XVI inlaid tables, and other French pieces.

On May 16, 1897 The New York Times published a lengthy article about the Drummond house, describing in detail many of the rooms.  “Nearly half a century has elapsed since Catharine Sinclair Forrest passed out through the portals of a wide-fronted brick mansion in West Twenty-second Street,” it said, “and the brief married life of one of the greatest actors to whom America has given birth was ended…In this mansion, where in fancy on may conjure up the shadows of men and women crowned with literary and artistic recognition fifty years ago, resides today Mr. James F. Drummond, a successful merchant, who possesses a collection of rare curios and art treasures that make his home one of the finest private museums in America.”

The entrance hall featured a cut-crystal chandelier and marble tiled floors -- photograph by E. P. MacFarland, from the collection of the Library of Congress

The journalist noted that after passing through the entry hall “to midway of the building, one enters the drawing room, which covers the entire width of the house and half its depth.  Three long French windows open upon a glass-inclosed piazza, forming a Winter garden.”

Drummond was, foremost, a collector of ivory and jade and The Times said “The large cabinets against the eastern wall contain beautiful, quaint, and grotesque creations of the carver’s art.”  Among the paintings in the double-width drawing room the newspaper pointed out two in particular.  “Two portraits in this room cannot fail to attract the visitor’s attention.  These, in oval frames, are photographs from daguerreotypes of Edwin Forrest and his wife, taken when this dwelling was their home.  The face of the great actor is lighted with a pleasant smile, and the countenance is amiable and genial, differing from the moody, somber look which appeared his normal expression in familiar likenesses.”

The Times took advantage of the opportunity to air its thoughts on the scandalous divorce trial.  “The portrait of Mrs. Forrest has an effect of austerity.  The type of face, the dressing of the hair, the Quakerlike simplicity of the garb, all unite in making it difficult to conceive the original capable of committing an indiscretion or yielding to a frivolous impulse.”

The portraits of Catharine and Edwin Forrest hung in the Drummond drawing room -- from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWDIHUS9&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

The dining room was to the right of the entrance hall where a stained glass window had been installed, possibly during Herter’s stay.  On special occasions the mahogany table was set with a Sevres dining service decorated with the royal crest of France once used, according to the family, “by Louis Philippe at the Tuilieries.”

The Drummond Dining Room -- photograph by Arnold Moses, from the collection of the Library of Congress

On the second floor were the library and family bedrooms.  “Throughout these apartments, as well as upon the staircase wall, ascending to the upper story, is the same profusion of tapestries, armor and paintings.”  On the third floor Drummond reserved a room in memory of Edwin Forrest which included even one of the actor’s costumes from Julius Caesar.  “Some old bronzes rest upon an inlaid cabinet, and a table is burdened with biographies of Edwin Forrest, old engravings, and volumes of favorite authors.

“As the visitor sits enchanted by the beauty and rarity of the treasures that are stored even here beneath the eaves, the owner draws aside an old tapestry that conceals a former clothespress, and takes down a dark velvet garment, with gold embroidery, resisting bravely the tarnishing effects of time.  This once enveloped in its ample folds the ‘noblest Roman of them all.’  Strange destiny that, ‘after life’s fitful fever,’ the mantle of Edwin Forrest, a gift of Daniel Doughterty, should come to hang again upon an accustomed peg.”

The graceful winding staircase featured an unusual iron handrail -- photograph by Arnold Moses, from the collection of the Library of Congress

While Drummond collected and added to his fortune, Sarah busied herself with philanthropies and worthy causes.  In 1892 she was vice-president of the Working Girls’ Vocation Society of New York City.  The group’s purpose was “To give vacations to such respectable working girls, as may need them for their health; for unmarried working women, recommended by some responsible person, and having a doctor’s certificate, who are worn out, sick or convalescent.”  In 1891 the organization had provided vacations for 864 young women.

Around the turn of the last century the Drummond family gathered for a charming photograph on the back porch of the house -- photographer unknown from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWDIHUS9&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

On Wednesday, June 6, Sarah Wyman Drummond died.  The funeral was held in the opulent drawing room the following Saturday at 11:00.  The shock was, perhaps, too much for James F. Drummond and a month later almost to the day, on July 7, he, too, died in the house.

The couple’s son, Isaac Wyman Drummond stayed on in the 22^nd Street mansion.  A chemist with his father’s company, he was unmarried and devoted his spare time to the development of young artists.  He was treasurer of the National Sculpture Society, edited the section of the Century Dictionary on colors and dyes, and would become vice president of the New York School of Applied Design for Women.

While the Drummond family lived here, the house was lovingly maintained --photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWDIHUS9&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

A member of the Century Club, he, like all wealthy New Yorkers, closed his city home and traveled to the fashionable resorts for the summer season.  In 1921 the shuttered house attracted the attention of two would-be burglars.  On August 20 Policeman Thomas Reidy was patrolling along West 22^nd Street when an excited woman rushed up saying she believed thieves were inside the Drummond house.

Reidy tested both the front and rear doors and windows and checked the back garden.  The New York Times reported “He found nothing wrong.  Mr. Drummond, away for the Summer, had closed and boarded up the house.  Apparently everything was in proper order.”

The policeman, however, was unsatisfied.  He walked to the fifth house down the block and asked to be allowed onto the roof.  He took off his shoes and crept along the rooftops until he came to the Drummond house where he found the ventilation scuttle opened.

With the shutters closed, the interior of the house was pitch dark yet Reidy crept down the stairs in his stocking feet.  Dresser drawers were rifled and items were strewn on the bedroom floor.  When he reached the first floor he heard noises and saw the glimmer of a small flashlight.

“Sidling up to the door,” reported The Times, “he peered into the room.  He saw two men.  They were kneeling before a chest of silver, working at it with jimmies.  On top of the chest lay an automatic pistol and an eight-inch stiletto.”

The policeman crept into the room, feeling for the light switch.  He fired a shot into the floor near the burglars and simultaneously flipped on the lights.  The panicked thieves jumped, fell over the silver chest, and sprawled on the floor with the muzzle of the cop’s gun pointed at them.

Drummond rushed back to New York with praise for the brave policeman.  The two 18-year old prisoners, Edward Shore and John Slattery, were both on parole for burglary.

The double drawing room was perhaps the most impressive room of the house.  Cabinets of carved jade and ivory line the walls -- photograph by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWDIHUS9&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

The following year, in 1922, Isaac Drummond rose to Chairman of the Board of Devoe & Raynolds Company; only to retire in 1928.  Drummond carried on his father’s passion for collecting ivory and jade.  In a letter to Dr. Berthold Laufer, the curator of Asian Anthropology of Chicago’s Field Museum, concerning a jade carving, he hinted at his declining health.  Dated February 20, 1930, it began “I send you my best regards and hope you are very well—I am sorry to say that my health this winter has not been very good.”

On April 15, 1933 Isaac Wyman Drummond died at the age of 77 in the house on West 22^nd Street among the priceless antiques and artworks.  The entire estate, including the mansion, was left to his sister, Katherine W. D. Herbert who lived next door at No. 434 West 22^nd Street.  Wyman’s will instructed her to donate the entire jade and ivory collection to the American Museum of Natural History.

Four decades earlier, on October 4, 1890, The Illustrated American had said of the house “It looks as though it might be destined for a much longer time.  But there can be no chance for the extended existence of a house in New York until localities have become finished and commerce has reached its boundaries of limitation.”  The magazine was sadly correct.

Recognizing the Drummond house as a rare and fragile treasure, The Historic American Buildings Survey photographed the house, with great attention to the interiors, in 1934 and again in 1936.  The grand spaces filled with elegant furnishings were captured on film, some of which are seen here.

And then it was all gone.  In 1946 the former mansion was converted to apartments, two per floor.  The handsome portico was ripped off and the entrance moved to the basement level.  Today a scar of mismatched brick surrounds the window that replaced the entrance.  Amazingly, the iron grills that protected the top floor windows survive.  Otherwise, there is no hint of the opulent mansion that housed one of America’s greatest actors.
 

Today the altered facade gives no hint of the mansion's former glory.  In what is almost a cruel joke, the entrance is framed in a mid-century version of the Greek style.  photo by the author