Saint-Gaudens' 1903 Gen'l Wm. Tecumseh Sherman Statue

Like the statue, the bronze laurel wreaths applied to the red granite base are gold-leafed.  photograph New York City Parks Department

In 1887 the 40-year old sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens completed his powerful bust of General William Tecumseh Sherman.  Although the artist would later complain that Sherman insisted on looking directly at him, making a good profile impossible; the several sittings resulted in a friendship.

Saint-Gaudens’s sitter was a complex character.  Still generally reviled in the South, Sherman was considered a hero in the North for bringing about the surrender of the Confederate armies.   His March to the Sea was considered needlessly heartless by many, and his refusal to embrace “Negro equality” bothered others.  But overall, at least in the North, he was a monumental figure.

Sherman died in New York City on February 14, 1891 and within two weeks plans were underway to honor him with a suitable monument.  On March 3, 1891 The New York Times reported on a meeting in the Chamber of Commerce building.  “President Smith of the Chamber presided, and Cornelius N. Bliss presented a resolution providing for the appointment of a committee of ten, to have full power to secure the erection of an equestrian statue of heroic size.”

Before the adjournment of the meeting the committee had grown to 12; including well-known names like Depew, Schiff, Sloane and Dodge.  The group proposed that the statue should be unveiled on the anniversary of the General’s death—11 months away.  John H. Starin estimated the cost would be about $35,000; however Abram S. Hewitt was more realistic.

“Mr. Hewitt believed that any leading artist would need three years for the work, and that $50,000 would be none too much.”  Before the men left the room they had pledged $5,750 among them, deemed by The Times “a substantial start.”

The Sherman Statue Committee adopted a resolution that any surplus funds would be donated to the Sherman family.  It was a kind hearted thought; but seems to have embarrassed and, perhaps, offended the family.  On March 11, 1891 newspapers published an open letter from P. T. Sherman that said in part, “This letter being in the nature of an appeal to the public in our behalf, we wish to have it understood that my father left us well provided for, and therefore we must beg of you to rescind your resolution of Friday, March 6, that ‘the committee shall announce to the public that any surplus subscription to the statue shall be given to the family of Gen. Sherman.’”

By the time P. T. Sherman wrote his polite letter of refusal the amount pledged to the monument fund had reached $25,235—more than half of the required amount in only a week.  The family did have one request, however.  General Sherman had been highly pleased with the bust executed by Saint-Gaudens.  According to American National Biography Online, “As a result the family specifically requested that Saint-Gaudens be chosen to execute the memorial, as that was the general’s wish.”

Augustus Saint-Gaudens received the commission in 1892.  It would result in a superb piece of artwork and an aggravatingly-long process.   The unveiling that John Starin thought would take place in a year, and Abram Hewitt gave three years would drag on past the turn of the century.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens poses with his work-in-process.  photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYW62VYO4&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

Saint-Gaudens had grander visions than an ordinary equestrian statue to a war hero.   Starting his work in Paris, he seemed never to be satisfied.  He worked, then reworked, then refined, then changed, then reworked his model.  Finally a plaster casting was completed.  It included an allegorical figure of the Angel of Victory.  By creating a grouping rather than a solitary statue Saint-Gaudens related a story rather than simply depicting another horse-riding hero.

In 1900, nine years after the project began, the plaster casting was exhibited at the Paris Exhibition, winning the Medal of Honor, its highest honor.  But still the artist was not content.  As art critic Helen Henderson related in her 1917 A Loiterer in New York, “Though he had exhibited it, Saint Gaudens did not consider it finished and revised it critically and changed it before it was shown again, for the first time in this country, at the Pan-American Exposition, of Buffalo.”

 

Saint-Gaudens (third from left) poses with his assistants before the completed plaster casting -- photograph reproduced by Life magazine March 15, 1948.

Now cast in bronze, the grouping received critical acclaim--not enough acclaim, however, to satisfy the artist.  He continued to obsess over details, changing and refining even as the Statue Committee and the city prepared for its placement.  The Outlook remarked “he designed, studied, modeled, altered, remodeled, and altered yet again, until it seemed to those who were waiting for the work to be finished that the sculptor would never be content.”

On March 18, 1902 the New-York Tribune reported that the site had been chosen.  “The statue will be put at the southeast entrance to Central Park, in the circle north of Fifty-ninth-st.  The exact spot is that occupied by the tulip bed.”

Park Commissioner Wilcox told reporters “It’s the very best site in all the city and right at the beginning of the park system, just as the Grant monument is at the other end.  There was a good deal of opposition to placing the statue away up on [Riverside Drive].”

The commissioner answered a question “as to whether there was likely to be any further delay.”  He suggested that the statue would be in place in May.”  The commissioner was being optimistic.

In announcing the chosen site, the newspaper mentioned that “The pedestal will be furnished by McKim, Mead & White.”  Like the public and the committee, Charles McKim, who was a friend of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, would suffer frustration.

Glenn Brown, writing in the Architectural Record, would later recall having lunch with McKim at the Cosmos Club.  “He opened the conversation by saying, ‘I am thankful Saint Gaudens and I have settled on the design of the base for the Sherman Statue.  My first idea was a high base something on the order of Colleoni, while Saint Gaudens wanted the figure only a few feet from the ground.  We have compromised, making it higher than he first wanted it and lower than my first idea.  I have made about fifteen hundred studies for this base and I am thankful that it has been settled.”

Brown said that the two had been at the table only about 30 minutes when McKim received a telegram.  “A curious expression crept over his face as he read the telegram to me: ‘Charles, that base is all wrong, Gus.’”

Nearly to the last minute Saint-Gaudens fretted over the details of his monument.  According to Glenn Brown, he joined the sculptor and Charles McKim “just before the Sherman Statue was unveiled,” spending three hours while the architect and artist “were discussing pro and con the minor details of the tone for bronze in the ornaments on the base to make it harmonize with the gilded statue and red granite base, and the question of leaving the sculptured earth on which the figures stood, as it was cut of red granite, or gilding it to go with the statue.”

Finally, as Memorial Day 1903 approached, plans for the unveiling were begun.   But even this caused controversy.  An expansive wooden grandstand was to be erected for dignitaries and others attending the unveiling.  In order to make room for the stands, two trees had to be removed.  Reaction from some was swift and harsh. 

An editorial in The New York Times on May 30, 1903 complained “Yesterday morning those who chanced to be in the neighborhood of the Plaza at the southeast corner of Central Park might have witnessed a very sad sight.   Because they were in the way of the hideous pine grand stand in front of the Sherman Statue, and lest they might detract from the assertiveness of that piece of sculpture, the Municipal Art Commission ordered two beautiful and vigorous young elms cut down, and cut down there were.”

A reader wrote a letter to The Times editor that opened “I hope to heaven that there will never be another memento or statue erected in New York if it involves the destruction of trees…It is a crying disgrace that such things can be.”

The grandstands for the unveiling wrapped around three sides of the monument.  In the background is the old Plaza Hotel.  photograph The Mail and Express Illustrated Saturday Magazine, June 6, 1903 (copyright expired)

The unveiling ceremony was appropriately lavish.  A parade of troops filed up Fifth Avenue from Washington Square to the plaza where a band greeted them with “The Star Spangled Banner.”  Among the dignitaries present were Governor Odell, Secretary of War Elihu Root, Archbishop Farley, and Mayor Seth Low.

The New-York Tribune reported “Just before the head of the column arrived at the statue the monument was unveiled, the flags which formed the drapery being removed by Master William T. Sherman Thackara, a grandson of the general.”

Kenyon Cox summed up the completed work succinctly:  “Saint Gaudens is one of those artists for whom it is worth while to wait.”

Indeed, the never-contented Saint-Gaudens had produced a distinctive and powerful sculptural group.  He gave Sherman an aura of nobility astride his steed, his cape lightly blowing behind him.  Just ahead of him strode Victory with an outstretched arm.  In her other hand she carried a palm frond.  The entire statue was brilliantly gilded. 

Henry James praised the statue despite the "vulgarity of its environment."  photograph by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYW62VYO4&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

Perhaps only one among the crowd of applauding onlookers was unmoved.  A Southerner took in the statue and then sniffed, “Just like a Yankee, letting the lady walk.”

As with all public artwork, the draping had barely touched the ground before the critics made themselves known.   Outlook said it was “to be ranked among the half-dozen great equestrian statues of the world.”   The New York Times opined “Approached from any direction the monument catches the eye and stamps itself as a work of art out of the common” and agreed with Cox, saying “The delay in the erection of the statue caused by these later years of study has been vindicated.”

Helen Henderson judged it in 1917 saying that “In the Sherman equestrian group…St. Gaudens reached the high-water mark of his genius” and Henry James called it “splendid in its golden elegance.”

What Henderson appreciated in the art, she deprecated in its original setting, saying it stood “on the outskirts of the rather paradoxical, conglomerate apology for a square.”   But by the time she wrote the words, the “apology for a square” was a non-issue.

The will of millionaire publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who died in 1911, provided $50,000 for the erection of a fountain, a gift to the city “in a suitable place in Central Park, preferably near the Plaza entrance, the fountain to be as far as practicable like those in the Place de la Concorde in Paris.”  In 1913 plans were underway for the fountain and a remodeled square.

The firm of Carrere & Hastings was given the task of creating a European-style plaza that would encompass the Pulitzer Fountain to the south and the General Sherman Statue to the north.  To accomplish the formal alignment, the Sherman Statue was moved 16 feet to the west.  The completed plaza included stone balustrades, garden plots and “Oriental plane trees.”

 

Two vintage postcards show the statue in the Carrere & Hastings plaza.  The Cornelius Vanderbilt Mansion is beyond the Pulitzer Fountain in the lower image.

A year after General Sherman was moved, it was time to move him again.   The proposed extension of the Broadway-Seventh Avenue subway line, which curved eastward toward the Queensboro Bridge, ran directly under the monument and Carrere & Hastings’s magnificent new plaza.  On June 28, 1914 The Sun reported “Saint Gaudens’s statue of Gen. Sherman at the Fifth avenue plaza entrance to Central Park probably will be missing from that spot for more than two years while the crosstown section of the Broadway-Seventh avenue subway is being constructed.”

“Probably” became “actually” and a year later large construction sheds sat on the site of the Sherman statue.   Although the contractor was given 29 months to finish the work, it would be years before the statue was reinstalled—the delays possibly caused by World War I.  When it did return, the beautiful plaza was wrecked and the statue was in less-than-pristine shape.

A letter to the editor of The New York Times from E. Andrews Lloyd on July 1, 1920 complained “All during the war this statue was hidden, and now that the temporary buildings around it have been removed it is still left with a broken down iron rail fence and the plot strewn with old cinders.

“This really magnificent statue is so grimed with smoke and dirt as to be almost recognizable, and its prominent location at the gateway of Central Park on Fifth Avenue makes it all the more conspicuous as a disgraceful exhibition of New York’s administration neglect.”

Within a year of Lloyd’s letter the area around the statue was re-landscaped, and then in 1923 the National Bulb Grower’s Association donated 40,000 flower bulbs for the Plaza Park.   It would be another 43 years, however, before the statue itself was given attention. 

In 1966 the figures and base were restored; and in 1989 the statue was regilded.   The latter process enraged art lovers and Central Park Conservancy members when the gilding was so flashy it prompted the publisher of Lear’s magazine to call it a “horror.”  When the glitzy brightness had not dimmed by 1996, a lightly-colored layer of wax was applied to soften it.  But by the 21st century pigeon droppings and weathering had seriously eroded the gold leaf. 

The statues were in deplorable shape before the 2011 restoration.  photo twccenter.net

In 2011 a restoration of the monument and the plaza was initiated.    The multi-year project included new pavement, benches, lighting and replacement of trees.   Art lovers held their breaths as the scaffolding came down from around the regilded Sherman Statue.

But the Central Park Conservancy had learned its lesson.   The Gilders’ Studio of Olney, Maryland used 23.75-karat gold leaf tinted with burnt umber and lampblack.  Repeated testing brought the tone as close as possible to that which Augustus Saint-Gaudens originally applied.  The entire project, completed in 2013, cost $2 million.

 

photo www.centralparknyc.org

Today General Sherman has regained his 1903 nobility and, just like a Yankee, still makes the lady walk

Mckim, Mead & Bigelow's Nos. 62-64 E. 34th Street

photo by Alice Lum

Edward Nicoll Dickerson, by 1877, had created a name for himself and amassed a sizable fortune while doing so.   After being admitted to the bar in 1845, he practiced law in New Jersey and New York and became a household name after representing Samuel Colt and Charles Goodyear in two highly publicized cases.  All the while, he was a mechanical engineer and inventor, wrote several books, and his engineering expertise led to consulting work for the Suckasunny Mining Company and the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures.

Dickerson, his wife and their daughter, Louise, and son, also named Edward Nicoll Dickerson, had lived at No. 62 East 34^th Street for over two decades.  The house sat on the broad thoroughfare, just off Madison Avenue.  Around the corner to the north were the mansions of John Jay Phelps, Isaac N. Phelps and William E. Dodge (the John Phelps home would be purchased by J. P. Morgan in 1882); and a block away on Fifth Avenue were the twin mansions of John Jacob and William Astor.

The homes along Dickerson’s block were staid, brownstone residences, near carbon copies of one another.  While perfectly respectable, they  were slightly out of fashion in 1877.   Dickerson approached the fledgling architectural firm of McKim, Mean & Bigelow to design an updated residence.

Just a year old, the firm had been established when Charles McKim, who was already partnered with William Rutherford Mead, brought his brother-in-law, William Bigelow, into the practice.  It was given the task of designing a new home at No. 64, next door to the Dickerson mansion, and redoing the existing house.  And if Edward N. Dickerson wanted up-to-date, he definitely got it.

The architects turned to the newly popular Queen Anne style, recently introduced in England and embracing many of the Eastlake and Esthetic Movement traits.   Dickerson’s houses would practically introduce Queen Anne to New York, being edged out as the first by Sidney V. Stratton’s New York House and School of Industry by a year.

No. 64 burst forth with a showy gable.  No other wealthy New Yorker had a mansion in the innovative style.  photo by Alice Lum

The five-story brownstone-clad houses were completed in 1879 and the Dickersons moved into the slightly larger and wider No. 64.   Quite accurately, the New-York Tribune called the house “spacious and unlike any other in the city.”  Fantasies in stone, the two structures were embellished with arcades, gables, pediments and carved panels.    The bold step away from convention was too much for the often-acerbic architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler who likened the homes to “a monumental sideboard.”

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine begged to disagree.  In November 1882 it touted the Dickerson house as “one of the triumphs of both a new and admirable system of ventilation, and of internal decoration of a high order.”  The magazine praised the broad open staircases of unvarnished mahogany “with paneling of the same at the side” as a superb feature of the house.

With Queen Anne and the Eastlake Movement came stained glass and the Dickerson houses made full use of the colorful material.  “Mr. Dickerson has much beautiful stained glass; his drawing-room windows are made to repeat the delicate scarlet and dove-color of the paper and window curtains, while in a bedroom swallows fly through apple-blossoms, and are in more imperishable form represented in the glass window.”

McKim, Mead & Bigelow emphasized No. 64 by with more elaborate embellishment -- photo by Alice Lum

The interiors were decorated by the currently well-known designer Remigio Loforte, who would work with the architects for years as they became McKim, Mead & White.   The dining room walls were covered in stamped leather and the carved buffets had inset painted leather panels, imitating tiles.  The focal point of the dining room was a large stained glass window framed in Japanese carving.  “This piece has given the key-note to the room,” said Harper’s, “which has also a ceiling of painted plaques, very harmonious, curious, and ornamental.”

The Aesthetics Movement influence was evident in a bedroom paneled in ebonized cherry, “with tile fire-place, the tiles painted with bright flowers, and much ornamental brass-work about, is extremely pretty, as is the whole of this artistic dwelling.”

Two years after they moved in, the Dickersons gave perhaps their grandest entertainment in the house on January 20, 1881.  Louise was married to Charles W. Gould in Trinity Chapel in what the New-York Tribune called “one of the most brilliant weddings of the season.”  Afterward a reception was held in the 34^th Street house.  Of the 2,100 persons who received invitations, about 1,500 were present, according to the press.

Among those receiving invitations were President and Mrs. Hayes, all the members of the Cabinet, the judges of the Supreme Court of the Unites States, the German Ambassador, and European nobility.   Mrs. Dickerson worked with society’s favorite sources.  The florist was Kinnder who supplied what the Tribune called “a mass of rare flowers and plants.”   The caterers were the Pinard Brothers, who provided the mansions of Fifth Avenue and Newport with exquisite fare; and music was provided by Lauder.

Louise’s wedding gifts were on display:  a sterling tea service from her father, a full set of silverware from her brother—totaling 330 knives, forks, spoons, and other pieces—a diamond bracelet from Mrs. Gould.   There were “numerous candelabra,” a clock in the shape of “the Moscow bell,” bronze vases, mirrors and a rare cloisonné plaque.   The table was piled with a hammered silver pitcher and tray with repousse of oyster shells, an after-dinner coffee pot, a silver cream and sugar set, another silver cream pitcher, “a silver vase in the shape of a log of wood,” and a silver vase from Alexander Graham Bell (Dickerson was counsel for the American Bell Telephone Company).

Sadly, Louise lived only about three years after her wedding day.

Edward Nicoll Dickerson died on December 12, 1889.   Seven days later The New York Times reported his estate, saying “One of the shortest wills ever offered for probate is that of Edward N. Dickerson, the patent lawyer.”    Essentially one sentence long, he left “all of his estate to his wife, the principal at her death to revert to Edward N. Dickerson, their son.”

Dickerson and his mother lived on in No. 64 as he took up his father’s practice.  In the meantime, he ran the house next door as a sort of high-end boarding house.    In 1894 Captain Frank Roosevelt was living there.   The 32-year old was a member of Company E, Twelfth Regiment as was another resident, the architect S. Breck Parkman Trowbridge. 

The following winter Roosevelt was on duty with his regiment in Brooklyn.  Exposed to the frigid weather, he contracted pneumonia which led to his extremely untimely death.   A full military escort accompanied his casket from the house at No. 62 East 34^th Street to the Church of the Holy Communion on 6^th Avenue at 20^th Street.   The church was filled with important military figures including General Daniel Butterfield, Colonel Barber, Major Crocker and Colonel Dowd.

Architect Trowbridge moved out when he married in 1896.  At the turn of the century, Abel Mix Phelps, a physician and surgeon who lived across the street at No. 40, had his office in No. 62.

Before long No. 62 would become the headquarters and “exchange” for the New York State branch of the Shut-in Society.   The organization had begun in 1884 when two crippled girls wrote back and forth to brighten each other’s life.  By 1885 their two-person club had gained such popularity that it was incorporated.   As explained in The New York Times in 1911, it was an organization “of persons aiming to bring cheerfulness, contentment, and helpfulness into the lives of those who, because of sickness and injury, are unable to go outside of their own homes.” 

In its headquarters at No. 62, the Society maintained a circulating library, published a monthly magazine, The Open Window, and operated an exchange.   Invalids sent their homemade embroidery, lace, and “fancy things” for sale here.  As the First World War sent crippled soldiers back home, the Society’s outreach broadened.

In 1915 Mrs. Edward Nicoll Dickerson hosted one of the last social functions in the mansion next door.  When her sister, Josephine Ogden, married Pierpont Davis in a socially noticeable wedding, the reception was held here. 

But by now residential life on East 34^th Street had nearly come to an end.  As the mansions of Fifth Avenue were replaced by retail concerns and the city’s millionaires moved northward, the blocks immediately off the avenue followed suit.    The Shut-in Society moved further east to No. 123 East 34^th Street and the lower floors of Nos. 62 and 64 were converted to stores and the buildings combined by Abraham Reich and Adolph Fortgang.

The parlor and basement floors of the two mansions have been sadly obliterated -- photo by Alice Lum

Today the two lower floors are a mangled cacophony of signs and awnings that hawk pizza, skin care and pasta.   An incongruous penthouse has been plopped on the mansard roof of the Dickerson house.  Inside are thirteen apartments which, amazingly, according to a real estate listing “still maintain much of the original detail, especially in the upper floor apartments.”

Above the desecrated parlor level of the two houses, McKim, Mead & Bigelow’s groundbreaking Queen Anne design--an early and important commission for the young firm- still survives.  Abeit somewhat careworn.   

photo by Alice Lum

The 1911 Percy Rivington Pyne House - No. 680 Park Avenue

Percy R. Pyne's magnificent home (left) harmonizes architecturally with its two neighbors -- photo by Alice Lum

In the opening years of the 20th century, the personality of Park Avenue was about to change as the New York Central Railroad planned to submerge the train tracks that ran down the middle of the avenue.  Within a few years, Park Avenue would vie with Fifth Avenue as opulent mansions rose on either side of the boulevard.

A recent interest in Colonial Revival prompted millionaires like Andrew Carnegie and Edward Berwind to build dignified brick-and-limestone homes in the neo-Georgian style.  When fabulously wealthy financier Percy Rivington Pyne and his wife, Maud, purchased the plot of land on the corner of Park Avenue and East 68th Street, they followed suit.

The couple commissioned, McKim, Mead & White, among the foremost architectural firms of the day, to design their home in 1906.  They then waited until the tracks in front of their lot were successfully covered over before construction began in 1909.

Completed two years later, 680 Park Avenue sat on a rusticated limestone base.  Charles F. McKim used red brick with white limestone trim to create a stately residence.  The tall windows at the second story, capped with keystoned limestone lintels, sit in slightly-recessed arched alcoves.  Above the cornice a stone balustrade fronted the copper-clad dormers protruding from the steep slate-covered roof.

photo by Alice Lum

By 1926, the rest of the block stretching to 69th Street was filled with architecturally cohesive mansions, creating what the AIA Guide to New York City would later call, “a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts.”

photo by Alice Lum

Inside, marble pillars, warm wooden paneling and frescoed ceilings spoke of the owners’ wealth and social position.

The Pynes rubbed shoulders with the cream of Manhattan society.  On February 5, 1917, the couple preceded Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt’s large dance at her home with a dinner at Sherry’s for all the guests.  Sherry's ballroom was transformed into a Parisian street with small cafes constructed along the “sidewalks.” Guests were served in the cafes while wandering musicians, hurdy-gurdies and street bands roamed among them.  Dining in the picturesque setting were socialites like Mr. and Mrs. August Belmont, the Vanderbilts, Theodore Roosevelt and his wife, and the Havemeyers.

That same year, Mary Pyne descended the grand staircase at 680 Park Avenue on her way to her wedding to Lt. Colonel Oliver Dwight Filley.  Later that day, the house was filled with relatives and close friends for the reception.

photo by Americas Society

Percy Pyne died in 1929 and while Maud Howland Pyne lived until 1952, the house was sold in 1947 to the Chinese Delegation to the United Nations.  The Delegation almost immediately resold the property to the Soviet Mission to the United States.

When the Soviets took over the mansion in 1948, the calm and cultured reserve that had been the hallmark of the Pyne house for so many decades came to an abrupt end.  The Mission was repeatedly the scene of protests on the street, often requiring for the intervention of police.

photo by Alice Lum

On July 11, 1951, the Soviet Union filed two “sharp official complaints” with the United States Government accusing Hungarian-American protestors of “hooligan acts” outside the Mission.  The police found no evidence of hooligan acts.

Two years later, the doors were thrown open to the public for “expressions of condolences” upon the death of Joseph Stalin.  United Nations delegates arrived to pay respects in a room filled with flowers and a single portrait of the deceased Premier.

Hungarian sympathizers were back in October 1956 as the anti-Communist rebellion raged in Hungary.  Hundreds of demonstrators clogged 68th Street and Park Avenue in front of the mansion.

But none of the demonstrations or other distractions could match the 25-day visit of Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1960.  Here the Premier met with Fidel Castro, throwing his arms around the “beaming” Cuban dictator on the entrance steps.  On September 21, Khrushchev appeared on the balcony over the entrance way to rant to the crowds assembled below.  Turning the balcony into what The New York Times called, “an impromptu Soviet forum,” the Premier hurled insults, sang a portion of the Internationale, and tackled issues from China to the arms race.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev made an impromptu press conference from this balcony in 1960 -- photo by Alice Lum

The Soviet Mission moved out in May of 1964 to larger headquarters.  The Pyne mansion, along with the two houses to the north, were sold to Sommer Brothers Realty and Construction Company, a concern intent on demolishing the historic structures for a 31-story apartment building.

Concerned citizens cried out against the plan and the recently-founded Landmarks Preservation Commission deemed the homes “worthy of preservation.”  New York City’s proposed landmark preservation legislation, however, was still sitting on the desks of the City Council and the Commission had no legal authority to protect historic properties.

While preservationists watched helplessly, interior demolition began on Nos. 680 and 684 Park Avenue.

Then suddenly, on January 14, 1965, it was reported that an anonymous purchaser had bought up the grand residences and demanded a halt to the demolition.  Margaret Rockefeller Strong, the granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller and now the Marquesa de Cuevas, refused to stand by and watch the homes destroyed, even at her personal outlay of $2 million.

The Marquesa donated No. 680 to the Center for Inter-American Relations (now the Americas Society) and sold the other properties to sympathetic buyers.

In 1966 the architectural firm of Walker O. Cain & Associates was commissioned to oversee restoration of the damaged interiors.  The exterior had, thankfully, escaped the demolition unscathed.  Eighteen months later the ripped-out plank floors and exquisite marble mantles were traced down, reinstalled and the restoration was completed.

The restoration required the finding and re-installation of discarded floors and architectural details -- photo kseniaandbruno.com

When the house was dedicated in 1967, among the 500 guests was Mrs. C. Suydam Cutting, who fifty years earlier had walked down its staircase for the last time as Mary Pyne.

The Americas Society remains in 680 Park Avenue, maintaining it with the dignity and care it deserves.  It was designated a New York City Landmark in 1970.

The Ever-Growing Harvard Club - 27 West 44th Street

As the Civil War was coming to an end, four New York City alumni of Harvard University banded together to form a club. The golden age of men’s clubs was dawning, a time when no gentleman of the city would be without at least one exclusive club membership.

By the end of 1865 membership had increased to 16 and by 1886 it totaled 431. Meeting in rented dining rooms in tasteful restaurants was no longer feasible. In 1887, the same year that the Harvard Club incorporated, a four-story brownstone at 11 West 22nd Street was rented and converted to a 10-bedroom clubhouse complete with restaurant and comfortable clubrooms.

The Harvard Club continued to be a victim of its own success. Within a year membership had increased 25 percent. The new clubhouse was proving, already, to be insufficient. A plot of land at 27 West 44th Street was acquired in the fashionable neighborhood where other clubs were already establishing themselves. Club member Charles F. McKim, head architect of McKim, Mead and White, took on the project of designing the new structure.

At a dinner for 500 members and guests held at Delmonico’s, club president Edward King spoke of the anticipated clubhouse. The New York Times reported that King promised there “would be ample accommodations for the Harvard baseball nine, the boating crews, and the football team. This announcement brought the Harvard men to their feet, and three time three ‘rahs were given with a will. A score of pretty women in the gallery smiled their encouragement.”

Drawing inspiration from the early architecture of Harvard, McKim designed a neo-Georgian manor house of dark red “Harvard brick” and limestone. The dignified face featured splayed window lentils and inset plaques of bas-relief swags. The Harvard seal sits prominently above the second floor balcony. The symmetrical arrangement of small-paned windows, Doric columns and a central, arched window dominating the second floor bespoke of the taste and refinement of the members.

McKim’s interiors reflected the Colonial Revival style of the façade. Early-American turned banisters, broad brick fireplaces with white-painted mantels and paneled wainscoting reflected the 18th Century tone of many Harvard buildings.

Having learned from the rapid obsolescence of the last clubhouse, individual members purchased the lots at No. 31 and Nos. 26 through 36 in anticipation of necessary expansion. It was agreed that the land would be sold to the club at cost.

Indeed, in 1905 the first addition to Harvard House was constructed to accommodate the growing membership. Added to the rear, it included the magnificent, three-story Harvard Hall, a library, billiard room, grill room, a conference room and sleeping quarters.

The Harvard Hall

The club that could not stop growing was in need of additional space by 1915. McKim added a seven-story tower to the west end. The extension provided for a new formal dining room, banquet rooms, a swimming pool and squash courts, additional bedrooms and a bar; not to mention up-to-date amenities such as elevators and steam heating.

The new formal dining hall

Only a decade later the growing membership was taxing the capacity of the structure again. With no more land, the club initiated negotiations for No. 33 West 44th that dragged on for six years. Unfortunately, by the time the deal was finalized the Depression halted all plans for construction. As the Great Depression ended and World War II began, the swimming pool area was floored over to create more sleeping rooms.

The Harvard Club in 1930

After the war, the upper three stories of the house at No. 33 were demolished and the remaining two floors were renovated as an extension. An architect club member redesigned the façade to meld with the McKim exterior; with little critical acclaim.

The foundations of the staid club were shaken when, in January 1972, women were admitted to Harvard University for the first time. The question was obvious: if women were to become alumnae, would they therefore be eligible for membership?

A vote was taken on March 4, The Times reporting on the outcome the following morning. “The Harvard Club, the last of the city’s traditional all-male Ivy League university clubs, voted last night to stay just that way – a 107-year old monument to male exclusivity.”

That 107-year old monument was about to tumble, however. In January of the following year a second vote was taken with the overwhelming outcome of 2097 to 695 to accept women.

For over a half-century the Harvard Club has made no additions to its structure. The landmarked building that could not stop growing, just possibly has.

Columbia University's 1897 Low Library

In the spring of 1895, Columbia University’s new Morningside campus was an accumulation of small brick-and-stone buildings and houses. University President Seth Low envisioned a grand focal point for the campus in the form of a library.


The alumni were less than enthusiastic for the costly project so Low defiantly undertook it himself. On May 7 of that year The New York Times reported that “President Seth Low made a formal offer to assume personally the cost of erecting the new library at One Hundred and Sixteenth Street, on Morningside Heights, the site of the new Columbia College building. The building is to cost $1,000,000 and is to be a memorial to President Low’s father; the late Abiel Abbot Low, ‘a merchant who taught his sons to value the things for which Columbia stands.’”

According to The Times, the gift “produced a profound impression” on the Trustees who immediately accepted.

photo NYPL Collection

As Low had visualized, the library was to be built “in the centre of a terrace occupying the highest point of land of the new site for the college buildings.” He commissioned Charles McKim of the architectural firm McKim, Mead and White to design the structure. The Times hinted of what was to be expected. “The Library Building itself will be in the classic style, designed in the form of a Greek cross, and surmounted by a dome.”



Two years later, when the building was finished, a monumental Neo-Classical temple sat majestically above a grand cascade of wide stone stairs and terraces. McKim had drawn his inspiration for the main structure from the Pantheon and from the Baths of Diocletian for the immense arched windows. Ten granite ionic columns rose 35 feet forming the entrance portico. Above the central structure the largest freestanding granite dome in the country crowned it all.

photo NYPL Collection

Great bronze doors opened from the portico into a “lofty marble portal to the main vestibule, paved with marble slabs” and ornamented with marble pilasters. Here busts of Zeus, Appolo and Pallas Athena were displayed. Ahead of the vestibule was the rotunda – the main reading room. Illuminated by the huge windows, with the 70-foot diameter dome above, the rotunda was encircled by a 29-foot high colonnade of rich green Connemara marble from Ireland. The columns sat on black Belgian marble bases with cast-bronze capitals.

The rotunda rose to a height of 106 feet and from an upper gallery Roman and Greek philosophers or statesmen – Demosthenes, Sophocles, Augustus Caesar and Euripides – stared down upon the students reading below.

By 1934 the library had outgrown its home and the new Butler Library was constructed. Seth Low’s grand gift became the administrative center of the campus, housing the offices of the President and Provost among other administrative offices. The imposing rotunda became the site of exhibitions and ceremonial events.

photo NYPL Collection

McKim’s masterful design was designated a New York City Landmark in 1967. A year later The Low drew national attention when it was occupied by students protesting, among other things, the Vietnam War. The protestors barricaded themselves within the office of the president, rifling through files searching for incriminating documents. The university was forced to close for days and national news coverage followed “The Columbia Protests” until the police finally routed the students with tear gas several days later

On December 23, 1987 the Low was included on the National Register of Historic Places, the designation noting that “…this building is one of the most important Neo-Classical structures in America and is one of architect Charles Folen McKim's masterpieces…This campus design is today recognized as a classic of Beaux Arts planning principles.”