The Wm. Alciphon Boring House- No. 172 East 71st Street

In 1867 Dr. William S. Wood commissioned architect Frank S. Dwight to design three speculative rowhouses at Nos. 168 through 172 East 71^st Street.  The neighborhood, two blocks east of Fourth (later renamed Park) Avenue was developing as one of middle-class homes far north of the bustling commercial area.  That Wood intended the houses for middle-income families is reflected in their surprisingly-narrow width.  At just 16 feet they were four to six feet narrower than the normal residential building plot.

Nevertheless, the completed Italianate-style homes were stylish, up-to-date, and highly unusual.  Three stories high over a rusticated English basement, they stepped away from the cookie-cutter design reflected in the scores of other speculative brownstones being erected at the time.  Dwight outlined each home with quoins and floated carved lintels over the elliptical-arched openings of the second and third floors.  The skinny doorways were flanked by paneled pilasters and framed in
stone carved to resemble blocks.  Despite their foliate brackets, the highly-unusual entrances were much sterner and geometric than the more common doorways in the neighborhood.

The three homes were originally identical.

By the turn of the century, as the neighborhood was becoming decidedly more upper class, No. 172 was home to architect William Alciphon Boring and his family.  Boring had studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1889 through 1890.  He married Florence Kimball and in 1898 and the couple had one daughter, Louise.

Boring’s less-than-grand house did not necessarily reflect his professional acclaim.  In 1897 he and partner Lippincott Tilton (both had worked for McKim, Mead and White before striking out on their own) had won the competition to design the Ellis Island Immigrant Station.  The completed structure won them a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition.  Boring would become President of the Architectural League of New York and the Dean of the School of Architecture at Columbia University.

The house retains its interesting and unusual entrance doors.

The peaceful home life of No. 172 East 71^st Street was shattered on Wednesday night, October 16, 1907 when 9-year old Louise died.  The little girl’s funeral was held in the house two days later.  In reporting her death the New-York Tribune mentioned “Mr. Boring has designed and erected buildings in the principal cities of the United States and Cuba.”

Boring’s career continued to expand and in 1910 he was appointed a member of the Board of Examiners.  The Board was responsible for passing on all building plans that were rejected by the Buildings Superintendent.  For every meeting attended, the Board members received $10 compensation.

Later that year, on November 3, William A. Boring sold the 71^st Street house for $15,000—a little over $350,000 in today’s dollars.  It became home to 36-year old Dr. Thomas Wood Hastings and his wife, the former Athenia Belknap.  The couple was in their new home only a few weeks before a son was born on December 1.

Although he maintained a practice at No. 777 Madison Avenue, by now Wood was primarily an author and instructor.  A graduate of John Hopkins University, he had held the positions of house officer of Hopkins Hospital; surgeon of the Hospital Ship of Maine; instructor of clinical pathology in the Medical College of Cornell University; and since 1906 was a professor there.  Since 1908 he was the assistant visiting physician of Bellevue Hospital.  In addition, he was the author of Clinical Medicine, Feeding of Children, and other related works.

Athenia Wood and their young child would find themselves alone in the house when the United States entered World War I.  Dr. Hastings served abroad as a major in the U.S. Army medical corps.  Shortly after the war was ended the family left East 71^st Street.

For a while the house was owned by Henry Thacher and his wife; but by 1930 it was home to the family of Dr. James W. Babcock.  Mrs. Babcock’s father was Robert Ralston Jones, an eminent civil engineer and author of books on history and engineering.  The elderly man moved in with the Babcocks and it was here, on October 20, 1930 that the 81-year old suffered a fatal heart attack.

Despite the Great Depression, the Babcocks, like most of residents in the now-affluent neighborhood, went on with their upscale lifestyle.  1937 was the year of daughter Virginia Ivins Babcock’s debut and her schedule was a whirlwind of glittering events.  On September 14 a local newspaper announced that “Dr. and Mrs. James Bloods Babcock 2d and members of their family have returned to 172 E. Seventy-first Street from Nantucket.”  As the height of the winter season came, The New York Times reported on December 27 “Miss Virginia Ivins Babcock gave an eggnog party yesterday afternoon at their home.”  She was home from Goucher College at the time.

The Babcock family still owned the house in the 1950s but was by now leasing it to upscale residents.  In 1953 Marguerite Lee Waterhouse was living here.  During World War II she had served as assistant field director in the Red Cross both in the United States and in India.  Marguerite’s mother lived in Beaufort, South Carolina.  When Marguerite and Edward Gideon Herendeen, an assistant vice president of the Hanover Bank, were married in April 1953, the ceremony took place in Beaufort.

Three years later, on April 24, 1956, The New York Times reported that the house “formerly the home of Dr. James W. Babcock,” had been sold to Judith Clark.  She would not retain possession extremely long and by the early 1960s it was home to the William H. Button family.  Mrs. Button regularly opened the gardens for the City Gardens Club’s annual Manhattan garden tours.  In 1962 The Times made special note of “the glassed-in terrace of Dr. and Mrs. William H. Button.”

Flat carved lintels float above the elliptical arched windows.

Throughout its near 150-years existence the narrow brownstone house has never been converted to apartments.  Alterations include early replacement windows, the smoothing over of the rusticated basement and installation of a professional office, and the loss of the carved frame of the parlor window.  And yet those remarkable entry doors of the architecturally-unusual house survive.

photographs by the author

The Adrian Lambert House -- Nos. 168-170 E. 71st Street

Dr. William S. Wood got in on the building boom within the Upper East Side in the first years after the Civil War.  He purchased three narrow building plots on East 71^st Street—Nos. 168 through 172—between Lexington and Third Avenues and hired architect Frank S. Dwight to design respectable middle-class homes on the site.

Within the next decade, the surrounding streets would see scores of speculative Italianate brownstones erected--all essentially cut from the same cloth.  Dwight, however, stepped out of that box.  Starting with the overall Italianate model, he outlined each home with quoins and floated carved lintels over the elliptical-arched openings of the second and third floors.  The skinny doorways were framed by paneled pilasters and surrounded by stone carved to resemble blocks.  The highly-unusual entrances were much sterner and geometric, despite the foliate brackets, than the more common Italianate doorways in the neighborhood.

No,. 172 survives among the row with most of its original details.

The homes attracted financially-secure, respectable families.  As the turn of the century approached, the block was becoming noticeably higher-end as mansions arose along Fifth and Madison Avenues and the fashionable neighborhood spread eastward.  When Mary F. Goodwin sold 168 East 71st Street to “Mrs. Hawkins,” the wife of Eugene T. Hawkins, in 1897, former Park Commissioner Abraham B. Tappen was living at No. 170 and architect William Alciphon Boring and his family occupied No. 172.

A retired lawyer, Tappen and his family were humiliated on April 6, 1895 when he and seven other commissioners and former commissioners were arrested and charged with bribery and conspiracy.  To satisfy his $30,000 bond he gave his house as security.  The figure would amount to over $800,000 today.

The Tappen family took in roomers around the turn of the century.  On May 4, 1902, an advertisement in the New-York Tribune offered “handsomely furnished rooms, reasonable.”  At some point next door neighbor William Boring purchased their house, perhaps to protect his own property. 

In the meantime 168 East 71st Street had changed hands a few times.  Hawkins sold it in 1902 to P. J. Cuksley, who sold it to Charles S. Faulkner, who sold it in 1906 to Austin W. Lord.  But that series of turnovers was about to change.

On November 5, 1910 the New-York Tribune reported that William A. Boring sold the house 170 East 71^st Street.  The buyer was Dr. Adrian Van Sinderen Lambert who simultaneously purchased No. 168.  At the time, wealthy New Yorkers were buying up the old brownstones in the area and converting them to upscale mansions.  Lambert had the same idea.

A month before the sale of No. 170 was completed, the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide reported “La Farge & Morris, architects…are still taking bids for alterations to the residence of Dr. Adrian Van S. Lambert.”  Unlike other makeovers that resulted in neo-Federal or Georgian homes, Lambert’s would be less architecturally-dramatic.  He instructed the architects to simply combine the brownstones into a single, expansive mansion.

Dr. Lambert's completed mansion looked, frankly, like two separate, renovated brownstones.

Within the year the conversion was complete.  The stoops had been removed and the doorways—a main entrance and a service door—were moved to slightly below sidewalk level.  The original parlor floor doorways were altered as windows and framed in carved stone to match the existing openings.  Otherwise, the exterior retained its 1867 features.

Lambert was a highly-respected surgeon, having been educated at Yale and Columbia Universities.  He was, by now, Associate Professor of Surgery at Columbia and was Visiting Surgeon to the Presbyterian Hospital. 

Dr. Lambert’s expertise would be called upon on July 18, 1917.  Mrs. Arthur Woods was no ordinary patient.  She was not only the wife of a Police Commissioner (they had married just one year earlier); she was daughter of William Pierson Hamilton (great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton) and Juliet Pierpont Morgan (daughter of J. P. Morgan).  Earlier in the week she left her summer estate for a visit with at her parents’ home at 32 East 36^th Street.  Shortly before midnight on the 18^th she complained of feeling ill and Adrian Lambert was summoned.

Lambert recognized the problem—appendicitis—and, as reported in The Sun, “He advised an immediate operation.”  The doctor operated on the young socialite in the Hamilton mansion in the dead of the night.  In the morning, The Sun reported. “The operation was entirely successful and Mrs. Woods is reported to be recovering nicely.”  It was the sort of acclaim that provided Adrian Lambert with the means to afford a wide mansion in one of Manhattan’s most fashionable neighborhoods.

The Lamberts would stay on in the house for decades.  On November 29, 1938, it was the scene of an impressive wedding.  The Lamberts' niece, Elizabeth Miller Mitchell, was the widow of Brigadier General William L. “Billy” Mitchell, who earned the nickname “the father of the U. S. Air Force” and had died two years earlier.

The groom was Thomas Byrd of Winchester, Virginia, described as a descendant of one of the "First Families of Virginia."  His brothers, who served as his two best men, possibly stole the spotlight from the couple that day.  One was United States Senator Harry Flood Byrd, a powerful figure in Virginia politics, newspaper publisher and land owner.  The second was Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, Jr., who earned his fame less through his naval service than through his polar expeditions.

Within two years, Dr. and Mrs. Lambert moved on and No. 168 became home to famed conductor Walter Damrosch and his wife, Margaret.  Mrs. Damrosch was the daughter of James G. Blaine, Secretary of State under Presidents Garfield and Arthur.  It was, of course, Walter Damrosch who garnered the attention.  Called the “Dean of American Conductors,” he was a composer, conductor and pianist.  He began conducting at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1885 and later became conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra.  He formed the Damrosch Opera Company to stage Wagner compositions in 1895 and composed four operas.

But Damrosch is best remembered for bringing classical music to the common people.  In the infancy days of NCB Radio, he created the N.B.C. Music Appreciation Hour, and he later noted:

I do not have to tell you of the miracle that radio has worked in this country.  The results have been awe-inspiring.  Beethoven and Bach, as well as Wagner and Verdi have brought their magic into the humblest and remotest dwellings.

Walter Damrosch -- photo Library of Congress

Among the first entertainments in the house was a double ceremony on May 18, 1940 to celebrate Walter’s and Margaret’s 50^th anniversary and to introduce their granddaughter, Margot Damrosch Finletter to society.  The afternoon reception was a socially-important one and all four of the Damrosch daughters were there to help in the receiving line.  “The house was filled with a profusion of flowers for the occasion,” reported The New York Times, “yellow roses predominating to enhance the congratulatory spirit of the golden wedding celebration.”

A month after the anniversary party, on June 10, daughter Alice Damrosch Wolfe married Herman Kiaer in a civil service downtown.  The New York Times mentioned the following day that “Mr. Kiaer and his bride will make their home at 170 East Seventy-first Street.”

The aging Walter and Margaret Damrosch divided their time between East 71^st Street and their summer home in Bar Harbor, Maine.  On his 80^th birthday in 1942, the conductor was feted with a reception by the Directors of the Metropolitan Opera Guild and a dinner by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, of which he was President.

Margaret died in July 1949 and a year later, on December 22, Walter Damrosch suffered a fatal heart attack in the East 71st Street house.  On reporting his death The New York Times said, “Few men in musical life played so significant a role as Dr. Damrosch in reaching in to hamlet, town and city and creating a profound appreciation for good music.”

In his will he provided $5,000 to Felicia Geffen, the secretary to both him and Margaret; and $1,000 each to Mary O’Donnell, their waitress; Germaine Marie, the cook; and their maid Elisha Pinski.  The four daughters received the bulk of the estate.

Daughter Anita and her husband Robert Littell moved into 168 East 71^st Street and were still here when their third grandchild was born.   An additional floor was added before the end of the 20^th century and the brownstone façade has been painted; but otherwise the combined houses are little changed since the 1910 renovation.

photographs taken by the author