The Holbein Studios -- No. 154 West 55th Street

Above the vandalized street level, the groom's quarters and studios survive -- photo by Alice Lum

By 1888, the Midtown area around 55^th Street was well developed as the mansions of New York’s wealthiest families moved up Fifth Avenue.    The residents of the neighborhood required carriage houses for their several vehicles and horses.  Specific blocks along the side streets that were not filled with upper class row houses were designated as stable blocks—like West 44^th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.  Here were both private carriage houses and livery stables.

Already financier Charles T. Barney had constructed a row of stables between 6^th and 7^th Avenues on 55^th Street, far enough away from Fifth Avenue that the noises and smells were unobtrusive; yet near enough to prevent a long wait for one’s carriage.   

The wealthy Barney was a collector of European art ranging from the 12^th through the 15^th centuries.  Like most Victorian millionaires, his attitude towards the works of the upstart American artists was unsympathetic at best.  Yet sculptor Jonathan Scott Hartley was able to sway him—not through Barney’s appreciation for American art, but through the added income the artists could provide.

Hartley was a member of the National Academy of Design and had already completed an important work, a statue of the Puritan Miles Morgan for the town of Springfield, Massachusetts.   Focusing mostly on portrait busts, he would go on to sculpt works for the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., and the Appellate Court House in Manhattan.   Despite Barney’s initial apprehensions, the artist convinced him to convert the unused upper levels of the stables into artist studios.

Before long painters who would become among the foremost names in American art were renting space from Barney—society portrait painter John Singer Sargent, landscape artist George Inness and impressionist Childe Hassam among them.   Buoyed by the financial success of the project, Barney constructed another stable on the opposite side of the street in 1888.  This one was designed specifically for artist space on the upper floor and would be known as the Holbein Studio.

Designed by Bassett Jones, the handsome, three-story Romanesque Revival style building at 154 West 55^th Street was clad in brick.  The asymmetrical design included grouped, arched windows at the second floor—one set of three and another of two—unified by a decorative band of terra cotta.  A long and narrow arched window to the side of the steep mansard spilled light into the stair hall.

Jones treated the first floor like the second in running the terra cotta molding along the arches of the double carriage doors and two flanking side entrances.  Oversized iron hinges and attractive, segmented fanlights decorated the wooden side doors—one of which led to the grooms quarters above the ground floor and the other to the studios.    Over the entrance to the studios an ornate terra cotta shield announced “Studio.”

In 1976 the side door to the studios survived with its marvelous over-sized hinges.  The terra cotta shield announcing "STUDIO" is snugly fitted into the brickwork.  None of it would last much longer.  -- photo by Roy Colmer for his "Doors NYC" project; NYPL Collection

Above it all, the artists’ studios on the top floor were flooded with natural light through large skylights.

The carriage house portion was apparently leased to banker William C. Whitney, Barney’s brother-in-law, who was just ending his term as Secretary of the Navy.    Upstairs, struggling and not-so-struggling artists rented the studios.

E. Leon Durand painted his The Little Missionary here.  It was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Spring Exhibition of Water Colors in 1892.  Painter Bruce Crane had his studio here at the turn of the century as his work was shown at the Exhibition of Fine Arts at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition in 1901.

J. Mortimer Lichtenhauer would stay on for years at 154 West 55th Street.  He painted a variety of subjects, but recognized that society portraits were a sure source of income.  In 1908 he was commissioned to paint Mrs. Walter Scheftel as well as “Master Joseph Rothschild.”  That year he had a one-man show of a dozen paintings at the prestigious Knoedler’s Gallery on Fifth Avenue.  The critic from The New York Times found that his “combination of portraiture with decoration is remarkably well managed,” but he cautioned that Lichtenauer’s sense of color “tends, perhaps, towards heaviness.”

Lichtenauer created the above panel in 1904 in his studio in the Holbein -- Yearbook of the Architectural League of New York (copyright expired)

At the time Edward Dufner was here, and that same year he was included in the Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at Washington D.C,’s Corcoran Gallery of Art.    He also exhibited at the New York Water Color Club in 1908, resulting in a tepid assessment by the critic of the New York Tribune.

“Mr. Edward Dufner in his 'Springtime, Taormina,' does not seem quite to have achieved the effect sought, but it is interesting to observe the direction he is taking.  The figure pieces are of slight import, but one or two of them are at least clever.”

A year later, The Sun would be kinder.  “His suave touch, harmonious tonalities and graceful composition are soothing to the eye.”

Dufner had studied under Jean Paul Laurens and James McNeill Whistler.  His awards included First Wanamaker Prize at the Paris-American Art Association show in 1899, a bronze medal at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, and a silver medal at the St Louis Universal Exposition of 1904.  Dufner would stay on at No. 154 through, at least, 1914.

By the middle of the 1920's, carriages and horses were  essentially a thing of the past.  So too were the grand homes in the neighborhood.  In 1927 (or 1928, depending on the source) the carriage house was converted to a movie theater.  The owner went right to the top in deciding on his architect.

In May 1923, the 26 year old Maurice Fatio had been voted the most popular architect in New York.   He joined in partnership with William A. Treanor and designed lavish homes in New York and Palm Beach.  Fatio’s Mediterranean-style mansions in Florida were already iconic.

Treanor & Fatio paused to convert the stable to a theater.   The 55^th Street Playhouse was, for years, an art theater.  The first European film with subtitles screened in the United States was shown here.    As the 1930's dawned, there were only three other art theaters in Manhattan—the Fifth Avenue Playhouse, the Little Carnegie Playhouse and the Plaza.  The theater gained a reputation as a venue for top-shelf, art films.  Here were the premiers of important films like Orson Welles’s The Spanish Earth, narrated by Ernest Hemingway; Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus and Abel Gance’s Napoleon.

But avant garde films, as the managers of the 55^th Street Playhouse discovered, could also be trouble.   In June 1970 the theater began screening the new film Censorship in Denmark: A New Approach.  The motion picture was ostensibly a documentary study of pornography.  Assistant District Attorney Richard Beckler, however, did not agree with that description.

On September 30 theater manager Chung Louis was arrested on the charge of promoting and distributing obscene material.  The film was ordered seized by Criminal Court Judge Jack Rosenberg.  The judge ruled “This court finds for the purposes of issuance of a warrant of seizer that ‘Censorship in Denmark,’ taken as a whole, has as its dominant theme appeals to a prurient interest in sex.”  He added “It is patently offensive to most Americans because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description or representation of sexual matters.”

In 1976 the exterior was a bit worse for the wear.  Clapboards, added to modernize the facade, are peeling off and the terra cotta molding is broken -- photo by Roy Colmer for his "Doors NYC" project; NYPL Collection

In the meantime, office and apartment buildings were quickly replacing the older structures on the block.   Residential renters now lived in the upper floors of the Holbein Studios.  In 1979 the Landmarks Preservation Commission included 154 West 55^th Street on its list of structures for possible consideration.    It had not gotten around to that consideration in 1987 when William Zeckendorf began construction of the London NYC Hotel on 54^th Street, directly behind the old studios.  The developer announced that, while he would not raze the carriage house, it would be converted to a freight entrance for the 58-story hotel.

One tenant, Gerald Intrator, rebuffed the new owner’s attempts to remove him.   Although offers were made, reportedly, of half a million dollars to leave; Intrator stayed.  He implored the Landmarks Preservation Commission to move on designating the structure.

Despite the tenant’s valiant efforts, the hotel owner got his way.  The Holbein Studios was not designated and the handsome ground floor of the structure was obliterated for a truck entrance.  But above the desecration of the street level, the façade survives; including the broad expanse of skylight that once shed sunlight onto the creations of early 20^th Century American artists.

UPDATE:  The structure was demolished in 2019.

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Queen Anne Survivors on Park Avenue -- Nos. 709 and 711



Nos. 709 and 711 Park Avenue in 1912 -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

Before 1875, Cornelius Vanderbilt’s soot-coughing trains chugged down the center of Fourth Avenue towards Grand Central Terminal.  The area north of the train station along the thoroughfare (which would be renamed Park Avenue in 1888) was considered uninhabitable by New York’s well-to-do.

Once the tracks were relocated below ground, however, residential development crept in from Fifth and Madison Avenues.  It would be more than a decade, however, before Park Avenue was accepted as a truly correct address among the upper classes.

In 1882, speculative developers William H. Browning and Charles T. Barney commissioned architect Bassett Jones to design a dozen rowhouses along the avenue from 69th Street to 70th Street.  Designed in the up-to-the-minute Queen Anne style, they were targeted for the upper-middle class.  Sitting on solid bases of Manhattan brownstone, they formed an undulating line of red brick, angled bay windows and balconies.  Wide, high brownstone stoops led to the entrances where stained glass transoms streamed colored light onto the foyer floors.  Brownstone trim provided a warm contrast to the brick.  The wide, prominent dormers were topped by unusual and ornate cast iron caps that gave a Flemish flavor to the homes.

As construction started a year later in 1883, Browning abandoned his partner, running away from $60,000 in debts to his native England where he had once been a champion wrestler.  Two years later, Barney had pulled together the necessary $25,000 needed to finish the project.  That year he sold No. 709 to sisters Laura and Cornelia Manley.

Of the two, Cornelia was the more outgoing, spending summers in Stamford among socially-prominent friends and supporting causes such as the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor.

photo by Alice Lum

The outspoken Rev. Dr. Abbott E. Kittredge moved in next door at 711 Park Avenue.  The year he began renting the house, 1885, was an election year and he used the pulpit in the Madison Avenue Reformed Church to instruct his flock on “How Christians Should Vote.”  Railing against Tammany Hall, which he called “organized iniquity,” he said, “If the Republican Party had not the courage to place in its platform a word of commendation for those who have sought to restore to law its majesty in this community, you and I will not endorse such cowardice.”

The silver-tongued orator earned $10,000 a year as pastor.  At his installation the church, which had a membership at the time of 250, was packed with over 1,200 persons.

F. T. Swift was staying at No. 711 in 1903 when he had the misfortune of being a passenger in the automobile of Veryl Preston, a Director of the American Steel Hoop Company.  Preston was clocked by bicycle Policeman Whitman making the block in 10 seconds when it should have taken the car twice that long.  Swift was arrested along with Preston who “denied that he had exceeded the legal limit of speed, and with his friends held an impromptu indignation meeting in the station house,” according to The New York Times.

The Kittredge family had four servants living with them at the time--a staff which changed regularly, but remained mostly Irish.

The Kittredges left 711 Park Avenue in 1912 when the house was sold to Lincoln Cromwell, an affluent textile merchant.  The Cromwell children received the best schooling and privileges available to them.  Unspeakable tragedy struck the family early in the summer of 1925.  The Cromwell’s 21-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Mary, a recent debutante, left on the steamship Veendam with her cousin, Mrs. Stocks Miller of Chicago, for a summer in Europe.  The Junior League girl was drowned at sea on the crossing.

Five years later, Gustave Nassauer was living next door at 709 Park Avenue.  A real estate operator and art collector, he was well known nationally in both fields.

By 1935, when Mrs. Lincolm Cromwell hosted a tea in honor of Lady Grenfell, wife of Sir Wilfred Grenfell, only Nos. 709 and 711 of the row of 12 houses remained standing–modern apartment buildings having replaced their neighbors.  When Park Avenue was widened, the houses lost their brownstone stoops.

No. 709 was converted into apartments, however Mrs. Cromwell continued to live on in No. 711 until her death in May of 1963.  Shortly thereafter, the family sold the house to Texas philanthropist and art collector Robert Tobin, who moved in and purchased No. 709 as a guesthouse for visiting friends.

When Tobin died in 2000, Alfred Naman purchased No. 709, moving into one of the apartments while starting an exterior renovation that included removing layers of paint from the brick and brownstone.

Nos. 709 and 711 as they appear today -- photo by Alice Lum

Meanwhile, Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and his wife Robertina purchased the Cromwell residence next door.  The couple filed for an interior renovation designed by architect David Hotson in partnership with the owner, as well as an exterior restoration.

No. 711 still retains the original, robust carved brownstone trim over the doorway -- photo by Alice Lum

The two lonely survivors of the long row retain much of their 19th century integrity–despite having lost their stained glass, original windows and stoops.  They are a charming and delightful surprise along this section of Park Avenue.