The Archer Milton Huntington House -- 1083 Fifth Avenue

photo by Alice Lum

While railroad mogul Collis P. Huntington was in Richmond, Virginia during Reconstruction, he noticed the 19-year-old daughter of a boarding house operator, Arabella Yarrington.  Encouraged by her mother, the two began a steamy affair.  When Huntington’s business in the South was completed in 1869, he returned to New York City.  Not far behind was Arabella and her mother, along with John Worsham who posed as Arabella’s husband.

The following year Arabella bore a son, Archer,—the paternity of whom was never quite decided—and not long afterward she was tragically widowed.  (In actuality, John Worsham had returned home to his real wife in Richmond; but the story of his death was sufficient for newspaper accounts.)

Huntington's wife, Elizabeth, died in 1883, and on July 8, 1884 the millionaire and his mistress were married.  Archer was now 12 years old.  It is unclear whether his step-father ever officially adopted the boy, but Archer Worsham became Archer Milton Huntington.

At his impressionable age, the young boy entered a life surrounded by art and culture. The Huntington mansion at 2 East 57th Street was “a monument to American architecture and art,” as Archer would later describe it. In addition to Huntington’s private art collection, the rooms in which the boy lived “were all highly decorated by artists whose reputations were great,” as he described them decades later.

While Collis P. Huntington ran railroads from his offices in the Mills Building on Broad Street, Arabella took young Archer on tours of Europe where he marveled at the great museums. The seed was planted that would grow into a life-long mission of creating and funding art collections and museums.

On August 13, 1900, Huntington and Arabella were spending time at the luxurious Pine Knot Camp in the Adirondacks.  Just after 11:00 p.m. the millionaire was fatally stricken with cerebral apoplexy.  The now 28-year-old Archer Milton Huntington was suddenly a multimillionaire.

In May of 1902, The New York Times reported that Huntington purchased from developer George Edgar the adjoining mansions at 1082 and 1083 Fifth Avenue between 89th and 90th Streets.  In order to protect the light and air behind the properties, he purchased the land directly to the rear as well, for $150,000 more.  Huntington would sell 1082 Fifth Avenue to Charles S. Phillips of C. D. Barney & Co. in 1908.

Huntington and his wife Helen, moved into 1083 and leased the other properties.  Catered to by the 14 live-in servants, Huntington had time to devote to his passion: art. He donated the land for the group of museums to be called Audubon Terrace, at Broadway and 155th Street in 1904.  It would be just the beginning. That same year he founded the Hispanic Society of American to advance “the study of the Spanish and Portuguese languages, literature, and history, and advancement of the study of the countries wherein Spanish and Portuguese are…spoken.”

While Huntington was busy establishing and donating museums he also set to work remodeling his home. The decorator Ogden Codman, Jr. was extremely popular among the moneyed set and Huntington commissioned him to renovate 1083.  Although Codman had been born in Boston, he grew up in Paris and his love for all things French was deep-rooted.

Codman transformed the mansion into a Parisian row house - photo by Alice Lum

In 1913 he began transforming the façade into a limestone-clad 18th century French townhouse. A four-story bowed front with a rusticated base culminated in a deep balcony behind a stone balustrade at the fifth floor. A stately mansard roof with copper trim composed the sixth floor. Tall French doors above the entrance were finished with a segmental arched pediment.

Codman made use of Huntington’s vacant plot behind the property to enlarge the house with an addition creating an L-shape that extended to East 89th Street. The second floor was dedicated solely to entertaining. The Huntingtons’ living quarters were on the third floor and the top two floors were outfitted as servants’ rooms – enough to accommodate 25 servants.

In time Archer Huntington’s involvement with the arts turned into an involvement with an artist; the sculptress Anna Hyatt whose powerful bronze statue of Joan of Arc in Central Park had been dedicated in 1915. In 1923 the Huntingtons divorced and Archer married Anna Hyatt. Part of the fifth floor was outfitted with a large skylight and remodeled as a studio for the artist and a five-room suite was arranged for her on the fourth floor.

Huntington was busy building museums, editing and writing books such as his “Note Book in Northern Spain,” and was a member of no fewer than eight societies such as the American Geographical Society, American Numismatic Society and the New York Zoological Society; and more than seven social clubs.

By 1940 Archer Milton Huntington had built or helped establish the Museum of the American Indian, The Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina, The Hispanic Museum, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, and an art museum in Austin, Texas among others. On June 12 of that year he announced that he was donating his home to the National Academy of Design, of which his wife was a member, for its new headquarters. The Academy was founded in 1825 and was one of the oldest organizations of artists in the United States.  The Academy offered free instruction in painting, sculpture, drawing and other artistic areas to students between 15 and 30 years of age.

The Huntingtons moved to their 27.5-acre country estate,” Pleasance,” in what is now Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. After Archer Huntington died in 1955 Anna Hyatt Huntington kept a small apartment and studio in the Academy until her death at the age of 97 on October 4, 1973.

In 1997 the organization changed its name to the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts; a title more descriptive of its functions. Fully 8,000 works of art are displayed in the permanent collection.

A year later the architectural firm Buttrick White & Burtis initiated restoration and renovation of the mansion, including a new roof, masonry repairs and updating of the heating and air conditioning systems.

The Museum's alterations sensitively melt into the architecture -- photo by Alice Lum

The outward appearance of Archer Milton Huntington’s stately mansion is essentially unchanged since Ogden Codman, Jr. revamped it in 1914. While the three other homes purchased by Huntington in 1902 have been demolished and replaced with a sterile white brick apartment building, 1083 Fifth Avenue elegantly survives.

The 1915 Joan of Arc Memorial -- Riverside Drive and 93rd Street

photo dnainfo.com

In the first decade of the 20th century, Anna Vaughn Hyatt was struggling as an artist and sharing an apartment with figurative sculpture Abastenia St. Leger Eberle. The two would often work jointly on a single sculptural group – Hyatt, who was adept at animal sculptures, taking on those figures while St. Leger Eberle worked on the human forms.

In 1909 Hyatt began work on her most ambitious work yet – a life-size plaster statue of Joan of Arc astride a muscular steed. Inspired by a flurry of interest in the life of the saint as the 500th anniversary of Joan's birth drew near, the artist endeavored to depict “the spiritual rather than the warlike point of view.” She placed the figure standing in the stirrups, sword raised toward Heaven, praying for guidance.

Hyatt's plaster sculpture -- photo NYPL Collection

Anna Hyatt submitted the statue to celebrated Salon in Paris in 1910. The jury was so impressed with the quality of the work that it was quite certain that Hyatt had either had help or it was not her work at all – no woman could have executed such a skillful piece. She was, however, awarded an honorable mention.

Coincidentally, a committee of New Yorkers had been formed in 1909 to raise funds and erect a statue to Saint Joan and members traveled to Paris in search of a sculptor. Hyatt’s depiction, quite different than any others, attracted their attention.

Back home in New York they initiated a competition that resulted in world-wide submissions. Committee President Dr. George Frederick Kunz remarked “Our Committee has decided upon several things; one is that the statue must be artistic, and there will be no question as to whether the sculptor is American, Russian or Hottentot, nor does the committee care whether a man or a woman designs the statue. Upon one thing, however, we shall be insistent, that is, that the statue must be worthy of one of the greatest personalities that has ever lived, of one of the greatest of nations, France, to which it must also be a tribute, and to the coming greatest city in the world, New York.”

When some questioned the relevance of a statue to Saint Joan in New York, an art critic for Art and Archaeology magazine fired back “…wherever true valor is admired, wherever noble unselfish effort is respected, whenever loyalty and true courage and zeal and patriotism are esteemed, -- there ought to be a memorial to the Maid of Orleans.”

Committee member J. Sanford Saltus (who would eventually give $25,000 towards the statue and donate copies to Blois, France, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and the French cities of Domremy and Orleans), aggressively supported Hyatt’s design.

She won.

Huntington, a prominent art collector who been employed by Tiffany & Co., worked with Hyatt, refining and enlarging her prototype. The artist used her niece, Clara Hunter Hyatt, astride a barrel, as the model for Saint Joan and borrowed a horse from the nearby fire house.

To ensure authenticity, the Curator of Armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was consulted regarding the appropriate armor. Dr. George Frederick Kunz, President of the committee, subsequently remarked that “it is the belief of the committee who have the honor to erect the statue that it will be the first one ever created in which the armor worn by Joan of Arc is true to the period and therefore authentic, thus adding greatly to the interest and value of the figure.”

As remarkable as the 13-1/2 foot statue itself was the pedestal upon which it was placed. Designed by John Vredenburgh Van Pelt, the Gothic-styled base would be 6 feet high and 30 feet long. Constructed of Mohegan granite from quarries near Peeksill, New York, the panels within the Gothic arches were from the Chateau de Bouvreuil in Rouen where Joan of Arc was imprisoned. One cylindrical stone from the Cathedral of Rheims, acquired after a World War I bombardment in 1915, was inserted as part of the base after the statue’s dedication. (The Cathedral was the site of the coronation of Charles VII through the efforts of Joan of Arc.)

A small copper box was placed inside the base containing a letters from President Woodrow Wilson to George Kunz; a letter from the governor of New York, Charles Whitman; one from the vicar of Rheims Cathedral and from the Cardinal of New York; several French and American coins, bronze medals and plaques; and a “fairy stone” that symbolized the tears of Saint Joan.

The statue in 1929, before being surrounded by trees -- postcard from author's collection

The statue, erected at Riverside Drive and 93rd Street, was dedicated with great ceremony on December 6, 1915. With its unveiling by Mrs. Thomas Edison, the reputation of Anna Hyatt as a prominent artist was assured. The 1917 issue of Art and Archaeology magazine, published by The Archaeological Institute of America, gushed with accolades.

“Indeed too much can not be spoken in praise of it. In the opinion of many competent critics it is by far the finest equestrian statue in New York, unsurpassed by the Siegel of Bitter, the Grant of Partridge, the Slocum of MacMonnies, the Sherman of Saint Gaudens, by Shrady’s ‘Valley Forge’ horse in the Williamsburg Bridge Plaza, or even the Washington by Ward in Union Square.”

The magazine went on to say “France is thronged with statues of the Maid of Orleans, but none of them surpasses this splendid masterpiece of sculpture.”

Anna Hyatt was awarded the Rosette of Public Instruction by the French Ambassador and, in 1922, appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Throughout the 20th century the statue was the destination of every French dignitary that visited New York and the site of repeated memorials and celebrations.

In 1939 the monument received its first restoration. The sword was repaired, the bronze recoated and the stone staircase to restored. Another restoration occurred in the spring of 1987 when the Grand Marnier Foundation used a $34,500 grant to clean and repair the statue.

Although often overlooked, Anna Vaughn Hyatt’s heroic statue of Joan of Arc is one of the outstanding public sculptures in Manhattan.