The 1860 Joseph Murray House - 175 East 73rd Street

 

image via douglaselliman.com

In 1860, E. H. Robbins completed construction of six 20-foot-wide rowhouses on East 73rd Street between Lexington and Third Avenues.  Three stories tall above English basements, they were clad in red brick and trimmed in brownstone.  Although they were intended for middle-class families, Robbins splurged by giving the homes elaborate cast iron porches.  The parlor level featured floor-to-ceiling parlor windows and the scalloped fascia of the cornice echoed the segmentally arched windows of the third floor.

In 1862, Joseph Murray, who listed his profession as "machinery" at 126 Broadway, purchased 22 East 73rd Street (renumbered 175 in 1867).  The Murray family took in at least one boarder during their residency.  John Callaghan, possibly a relative, lived here in 1868.

On February 15, 1873, the New-York Tribune reported that Joseph Murray had sold 175 East 73rd Street for $15,500.  The price would translate to about $430,000 in 2026.  The buyers were Dr. Charles Smith Robert and his wife, the former Adelina Trudeau.  The couple was married on January 29, 1867 and had four children: Mary, who was six; five-year-old Lelia Adelina; Francis Berger, who was three; and Caroline Elizabeth, who was one year old.

Robert was born in Mastic, Long Island on March 5, 1839.  He entered Yale College in 1858, but left during his junior year to pursue medicine.  He graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1864, just in time to serve in the Union Army as an assistant surgeon.  The New York Herald would later remark, "Mrs. Roberts [sic] is an unusually refined and accomplished woman of French extraction."

Like their neighbors, the Robert family maintained a domestic staff.  In 1875, they employed a laundress, a cook and a nurse.  The staff undoubtedly also included at least one maid, and likely two.  The Robert family's country home was in Westport, Connecticut.  

In April 1875, Robert listed the Westport estate for rent.  Simultaneously, three domestics advertised for new positions.  The moves suggested that the Robert family would be spending an extended period away, possibly in Europe.  (Families who were away for extended periods often dismissed their domestic staffs, other than the lady's maid and valet, to be replaced upon their return.)

A spectacular cast iron porch, like the surviving example at 171 East 73rd Street, once fronted the parlor of No. 175.  photograph by the author

While the Roberts were away, 175 East 73rd Street was occupied by the John S. Patterson family.  Patterson was a lawyer and he and his wife, Emily, would be here through 1877.  During their residency, they experienced a tragedy.  On May 4, 1876, their son William Fisher died at the age of 27.  His funeral was held in the parlor on May 6.

The Roberts continued to lease 175 East 73rd Street.  Following the Pattersons, Baptiste E. Wehner, who ran a storage warehouse on West 33rd Street, occupied the house.  And in May 1880, Charles Robert leased it to Jacob Thalman.  By the time the Robert family returned to 175 East 73rd Street in the mid-1880s, Robert had retired.  

On October 9, 1889, Leila Adelina was married to Charles H. Hallock.  The newlyweds moved to Moriches, Long Island, where they had a daughter. 

Leila's marriage would not survive.  According to Hallock in September 1893, "We were very happy until last January, although we had occasional 'spats.'  About the middle of that month I noticed that she had changed in her manner toward me."  Leila began spending time away from their home, traveling to Manhattan to visit her parents or to Brooklyn to see other relatives.  Hallock became suspicious that her frequent trips were not innocent when she talked in her sleep about "Bert."

The relationship continued to devolve.  Hallock said later, "She finally locked me out of our house on one occasion.  Then she blackened my eyes, and once said she wished our three-year-old child was dead."  Leila perceived an escape from her situation in the summer of 1893 when she received $1,800 from the estate of an aunt.  She told Charles that she was going to the Chicago World's Fair, packed her suitcases, and on September 2 he drove her to the train station.

Leila joined Berthold Popper, an usher in the Academy of Music, and the two went on to Chicago.  Leila's relationship with Popper was even shorter than that with her husband.  Once there, Popper abandoned her.  On September 6, 1893, just days after arriving in Chicago, Leila Robert Hallock "blew her brains out," as worded by the New York Press.  

Charles Hallock begrudgingly told the New York Herald, "She has dishonored my name, but I shall probably have her body brought here and buried in the graveyard at Center Moriches, where her father has a plot."  (Berthold Popper was convicted  of "illegally marrying Mrs. Leila Hallock" on March 22, 1894.)

Shortly after the tragedy, the Roberts sold 175 East 73rd Street to Daniel Healey.  Their decision was, no doubt, influenced by the many stables that were replacing the private homes along the block.  Healey was a blacksmith and on July 22, 1896, The New York Times reported that he was making $700 in alterations to the house.  The basement was now converted to a blacksmith shop, a convenience for the nearby carriage houses and stables.

Living above a commercial space did not deter Tracy and Frances Lyon.  Born in 1865 and 1866 respectively, the couple had four adult children.  The affluence and social standing of the family was evidenced in daughter Frances Tracy Lyon's wedding to Sidney E. Brewster on October 17, 1923.  The New York Times said the newlyweds were "socially prominent," noting that Frances was a member of the Junior League and Brewster was a descendant of Elder William Brewster of the Mayflower.

Like Leila Robert Hallock, Frances and her husband moved to Long Island.  And like Leila, Frances's marriage would end tragically.  At around 7:00 on the evening of June 22, 1926, Frances telephoned her parents.  The New York Times reported, "She told her mother that her husband had beaten her and that she was going to come home."  The servants told investigators later that "a quarrel had been going on all day."  Then, shortly after Frances called her parents, the servants heard shots.  They rushed to Frances's bedroom to find both of their employers dead.  Brewster had shot his wife in the chest then turned the gun onto himself.

In June 1928, architect Francis Livingston Pell purchased 174 East 73rd Street.  The Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide noted, "After extensive alterations the purchaser will use the property for his own occupancy."  That was partially true.  Pell's alterations resulting in a "store" in the basement level, one apartment each at the parlor and second floor, and a "non-housekeeping apartment" on the third.  (The term meant there was no kitchen.) 

The cast iron porch was removed in the renovations.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The Pells moved into one of the apartments.  Born on September 23, 1873, Pell was a descendant of founding father James Duane.  He studied architecture in Rome and Paris after receiving his Ph.B. in architecture from the Columbia University School of Mines in 1895.  He married Ellen Van Buren Morris on October 9, 1899.  Her pedigree matched that of her husband.  The daughter of Stuyvesant Fish Morris and Ellen James Van Buren, she descended from the Fish, Morris and Stuyvesant families and was the great-granddaughter of President Martin Van Buren.  They had three sons, Francis Jr., Stuyvesant Morris, and Walden.  Their country home was in Lenox, Massachusetts.

The occupants of the "non-housekeeping" apartment were equally prominent.  Anna Giralt Farrar Goldsborough was born in New Orleans in 1882.  She married Richard Francis Goldsborough in 1904 and had four children.  She and her unmarried daughters, Lucinda Davis and Ellen Roy, moved into the top floor apartment following Richard Goldsborough death in 1929.  

When Anna Goldsborough announced Lucinda's engagement to William Fitz-Randolph Ballard on December 14, 1929, The New York Times remarked that Lucinda was a great-grandniece of Jefferson Davis and was "a direct descendant of Nicholas Goldsborough, who settled [in] Maryland in the middle of the seventeenth century" and of Colonel Tench Tilghman, "aide-de-camp to George Washington."

Five years later, on March 8, 1934, Anna Goldsborough announced Ellen Roy's engagement to Talbot Otis Freeman.  Almost simultaneously, the Pells announced Stuyvesant Morris Pell's engagement to Katherine Louise Weston.  As Stuyvesant's marriage in Dalton, Massachusetts neared on December 19, 1935, The New York Evening Post said, "there is much interest in the event among local fashionables and members of the exclusive little coterie that make up the Berkshires colony."

The Pell and Weston families were apparently already close.  Two years after the wedding, the bride's mother was a long-term houseguest here.  On October 29, 1936, The New York Sun reported that Clarissa Wardwell Hewlett "is now residing with Mr. and Mrs. F. Livingston Pell at 175 East Seventy-third street."

In 1940 Pell converted the basement into half of a duplex apartment with the parlor level.  At the same time, the third floor apartment received a kitchen.  The Pells remained here until April 1944, when they sold the property to Wooster Properties, Inc.  The firm resold it in May the following year to a investor.

The house was sold in 1978 for $170,000, according to Observer.  A renovation completed the following year resulted in four cooperative duplexes.  During the remodeling, the parlor and second-floor windows were shortened.  

An out-of-focus 1980 tax photo reveals the shortened parlor windows.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

In July 2006, fashion designer Steve Madden and his wife, Wendy Ballew, purchased the the rear, lower duplex for $3.6 million.  Three years later, they bought an upper apartment for $2.2 million.  In 2010 they purchased another, and in February 2011 bought the last apartment, now owning the entire property.  The Maddens returned 175 East 73rd Street to a single-family home.  They remained here until 2019, selling it for $9.1 million according to The New York Post on January 23.

The Edwin I. Marks House - 128-130 East 73rd Street

In 1880 developer Daniel Hennessy completed a row of five high-stooped homes on East 73rd Street between Lexington and Park Avenues.  Designed by William McNamara, they were in the currently popular neo-Grec style; their predominant feature being the three-sided oriels at the second floor upheld by a single beefy bracket.

Nos. 134 and 136 retain their 1880 appearance, although one has lost its stoop.

Harriet B. Provost, the widow of David Provost, purchased No. 128 on November 22, 1880, paying Hennessy $15,000 (or around $387,000 today).  She died suddenly of pneumonia five years later and her funeral was held in the house on November 1, 1885.

No. 128 was next home to the family of M. L. Schwartz.  Another funeral was held here on July 6, 1896, this one for Schwartz's brother-in-law, Samuel L. Lipser.

Julius Schwartz was enrolled as a "sub-freshman" at the College of the City of New York in 1897.  The fifteen-year-old conspired with classmates to disrupt the freshman class dinner at the Marlborough Hotel on the night of December 11.  Although they numbered about 60, only three were captured and arrested--including Julius.  The New York Herald reported "Schwartz, to his supreme disgust, was sent to the rooms of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, where later his father furnished bail for him."

On August 21, 1902 Dr. Burton James Lee purchased No. 128 for $20,000.  The price tag, equal to about $613,000, reflected the rising property values in the neighborhood.  The purchase was no doubt in anticipation of the doctor's upcoming marriage to Mabel Kershaw.  The wedding took place in Trinity Church on October 14.

The young physician was already making a name for himself.  He was clinical instructor in surgery at Cornell Medical School, assistant attending surgeon at Bellevue Hospital, and associate attending surgeon at the New York Hospital.

The Lees suffered grief when their infant daughter, Marion, died on January 16, 1906.  And then in March 1912 Marion Kershaw Lee caught pneumonia and died soon thereafter at the age of 35.  

With the outbreak of war, Dr. Lee joined the Army Medical Corps.  He was sent to France where he was surgeon in chief of the 2nd Division, eventually earning the rank of lieutenant colonel.  He earned a Distinguished Service Medal for his work, specifically at Soissons, "when in an emergency he organized, personally led, and directed surgical teams which cared for hundreds of wounded soldiers at a time when adequate hospitalization could not be established."

Dr. Burton James Lee original source unknown

Dr. Lee remarried on March 29, 1919.  His wedding to Louise Freeman took place in St. Bartholomew's Church.   Like Lee, Louise had been overseas in France during the war where she worked for the Red Cross.  The social status of the couple was evidenced by her bridal attendant, Helen C. Frick, "daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Clay Frick, at whose whom Miss Freeman has been stopping," according to The Sun.

A year later, on March 19, 1920, the couple welcomed a son. 

In 1920 the Lees purchased the house next door, at No. 130.  On July 31 the Record & Guide reported that they had hired architect A. L. Noel to make alterations.  The combined house was now a spacious 50-feet wide.

On April 21, 1928 Brooklyn Life reported on an "important post-Easter announcement."  The socially prominent Mr. and Mrs. Charles C. Auchincloss had announced the engagement of their daughter, Rosamond, to Burton J. Lee, Jr.  

Coincidentally or not, only a month later the New York Evening Post reported that the Lees had sold "the two old brownstone houses" to "a well-known New Yorker."  The selling price was $90,000, or about $1.34 million in today's money.  "The two houses are to be torn down and rebuilt into a modern type residence for the new owner," said the article.  "The rebuilding of the property has been placed in the hands of A. Wallace McCrea, architect."

The "well-known New Yorker" was Lois C. Levison who had McCrea transform the out-of-date Victorian houses into a modern neo-Georgian residence.  The stoops were removed and the facades replaced with three stories of Flemish bond red brick upon a limestone base.  Because the original floor levels were preserved, the entrance was necessarily a few steps below the sidewalk, where the former English basement entrance had been.

McCrea's handsome design included a paneled door within a protruding limestone vestibule under a broken pediment.  The architrave limestone frames of the second floor windows wore cornices, while the upper openings had splayed lintels and keystones.

The Evening Post noted "The dwelling is arranged with servants' quarters on the ground floor, leaving the upper floors for master's rooms and three entertaining rooms, each 23 x 30."

Levison sold the newly-completed home to Ronald P. O'Brien in 1929.  His residency was short-lived.  On July 7, 1931 the New York Evening Post reported that he had sold it to Edwin I. Marks, "an executive of R. H. Macy & Co."  The price of the residence had continued to rise.  It was sold for $550,000, or around $9.23 million today.

Marks, who was executive vice president of Macy's had married Lucie Renee Loeb in October the previous year.  (It was most likely no coincidence that she was the niece of Jesse I. Straus, president of R. H. Macy & Co.)  In 1933, as was common, Edwin Marks transferred the title to the property to his wife.  

Marks had joined R. H. Macy & Co. as a merchandise counselor in 1924 after coming to New York from Memphis, Tennessee.  A 1908 graduate of Harvard, he rose steadily in the store's management, achieving the position of executive vice president in 1926.

The couple had not been in the 73rd Street house long before Marks was forced to deal with political tensions in Europe.  On Friday, June 20, 1934 a "contingent of Minute Men, headed by Joseph Rosen, stood at strategic points nearby Macy's store, and distributed circulars," reported a newspaper.  The fliers read "Buy American, Boycott Nazi Goods."

The anti-Nazi group knew that R. H. Macy & Co. had received a shipment of goods on the S. S. Manhattan from Hamburg, Germany and assumed that the department store was selling German-made merchandise.  Edwin Marks was quick to fire back.  He provided newspapers with a copy of his letter to Rosen, in which he called the organization's actions "irresponsible."  It said in part:

It so happens that every dollar's worth of this shipment came from Czechoslovakia, Austria and Poland, a fact that we can easily prove and a fact that you could readily have verified at Macy's had you cared to.

In the meantime, Lucy busied herself with things social and was involved with the annual Garden Days events each May.  On April 24, 1937 the New York Sun noted "On May 19 Mrs. Edwin I. Marks will serve tea and show flower arrangements in her home setting at 128 East Seventy-third street."

Edwin Marks continued to rise within R. H. Macy & Co., until he eventually became chairman, a position he held until his retirement in 1949.  On November 23, 1970 the 82-year old Edwin I. Marks died in his East 73rd Street home of nearly 40 years.

In 1987 the Marks home was purchased by Bernard and Josephine Chaus, co-founders of women's sportswear firm Bernard Chaus, Inc.  The couple updated the house with remodeled kitchens and bathrooms, for instance, but preserved Wallace McCrea's architectural details.  Like Edwin and Lucie Marks, they would remain in the house for many years.  Bernard died in 1991, followed by Josephine on November 25, 2015.

photo via realtyhop.com

The following year her estate placed the house on the market for $42 million.  The asking price was optimistic at best.  It did not sell until October 2019 at the much reduced price of $14.99 million.

photographs by the author

From Apartments to Mega-Mansion, Wm. H. Bickmire's 1899 133 East 73rd Street

In the last week of April 1899 real estate operators Mandelbaum & Lewine purchased the two three-story houses at Nos. 133 and 135 East 73rd Street at auction.  Before the week was out they had resold them to Michael F. Cusack.  On May 2 the New York Journal and Advertiser announced that he "will build a six-story apartment house, with elevator and modern improvements there."

The newspaper either got the details slightly wrong, or Cusack altered his plans.  For when his architect, William H. Birkmire, filed plans in August they called for just five stories.  He estimated the construction costs of the structure at $30,000; or around $955,000 today.

Birkmire's design drew from several styles.  Beaux Arts appeared in the stoop and porch on East 73rd Street and in the terra cotta spandrel panels of ribboned wreaths above the third floor.  Overall his inspiration was from the currently-popular neo-Georgian style that had begun nudging out Beaux Arts a few years earlier.

Stealing the show, however, were the four Lexington Avenue storefronts.  Their ebullient ornamentation epitomized the Belle Epoch with dainty metal canopies over each entrance, pairs of lamps that hung from thin spikes sprouting from cast iron urns, and an elaborate oeil de boeuf window in the corner store that could have been plucked from the Champs-Élysées.

A decorative metal cornice decorated the entrance to each storefront.

Although badly battered, the fact that the unusual lamp posts survive along the Lexington Avenue storefront at all is miraculous.

The apartments of "seven large rooms and bath," as described in an ad, filled with financially-comfortable residents.  Among the initial tenants were Isaac Alkus and Maurice Mass, both of whom were Commissioners of Deeds, a position similar to a Notary Public today.  Mass's main position was as a clerk with a downtown bank.  His son, Leon, was a tailor.  

Even the corner lamppost survives.

Both Mary Russell and Mary Fraser received their certifications as registered nurses in 1904.  Among the more affluent residents, presumably, was Dr. Edgar Steiner Thomson who lived in the building at least in 1900 through 1901.  He served on the faculty of the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital.

Leon Mass found himself in serious trouble in 1902.  He was arrested in July for what today would be termed stalking.  The Brooklyn newspaper The Daily Standard Union explained that Mrs. Anna Wilkinson, who lived in the St. James Hotel, accused him "of having annoyed her for eight or ten days by following her whenever she went out."

The New York Herald described Wilkinson on July 14 as "a beautiful young woman, whose gowns were the most stylish that have been seen in the Yorkville Court during the time of the present attachés."  She did not accuse the young man of having improper sexual or romantic intentions; but of being a spy for her husband.  She told the court "I have been unable to appear on the street without being followed.  This has been going on for a long time, but for ten days it has been unbearable."

"Showing much irritation," Leon Mass addressed Mrs. Wilkinson directly, telling her "You made a mistake.  If you have been followed, it has been by some person other than me."  Mass's employer later supported his story that he was a tailor and not a private detective and the complaint was dismissed.

When the property was sold in April of 1906, the New-York Tribune described it as "a modern apartment house."  The storefronts housed a variety of businesses.  The corner shop was what might be called a women's boutique today, selling custom handbags; No. 1026 was the shop of furrier Philip Kesler; and No. 1028 was Anthony Gunther's undertaking establishment.

Reverse painted signage on glass has somehow endured for more than a century.

Sisters Margaret Schuyler Townsend and Janet King Townsend took an apartment together in October 1913.  The daughters of Stephen Van Renasselaer Townsend and Jacket Eckford Townsend, their impressive pedigrees were reflected in their names.  Only days after the lease was signed, The Sun noted "The Misses Janet King Townsend and Margaret Schuyler Townsend, after passing a year in Europe, will be at 133 East Seventy-third street for the winter."

John Duir Irving, a former professor of economic geology at Yale University, shared an apartment with the family of his brother, Dr. Peter Irving.  The men were direct descendants, according to the New-York Tribune, "of a brother of Washington Irving."

For the preservation of their reputations as well as for their safety, unmarried women did not often live alone.  The Townsend sisters side-stepped the problem by sharing an apartment.  One well-to-do woman not phased by the stigma was Charlotte C. Castner, who lived in the building by 1917.

Bickmire had to design the storefronts to accommodate the slope of Lexington Avenue.

Charlotte's social calendar was filled on April 15 that year.  She went to the Waldorf-Astoria for an early dinner, then to the opera.  When she returned home late that night "she found that her apartment had been ransacked," according to The New York Times.  "Among the missing articles were a necklace valued at $8,000, another necklace worth $3,000, and a brooch she valued at $3,500."  Also stolen were furs and silverware.  The total haul would be worth nearly $420,000 today.

Three months later, on July 20, The New York Times entitled an article "Gem Theft Puzzles Police."  The Philadelphia Enquirer picked up the story the following day, reporting that Charlotte had taken her frustration to the top of the Police Department.  The article said she "has made a personal appeal to Arthur Woods, Police Commissioner, to have a special effort made" to recover the goods.  Woods assigned "several special detectives to the case."

At the time Mary Leland Thorp Butler lived here with her daughters, Eleanor Grenville and Hope (both members of the Junior League).  The girls' father, author and journalist Robert Gordon Butler, had died in 1906.  The Butlers were among several residents who were personally affected by the war in Europe.  

Eleanor Butler joined the Y.M.C.A. canteen service and went to France.  Other residents of the building who shipped off to France were John Duir Irving, Franklin Cooper, who lived with his widowed mother Nora F. Cooper, and Charles B. Stuart.

Stuart was promoted to First Lieutenant on December 18, 1916, the same year that John Duir Irving was commissioned as a Captain of Engineers.  Irving served as an instructor at the Army engineering school in France.

Although Irving did not see battle, he was nevertheless a casualty of war.  On August 2, 1918 the New-York Tribune reported he had died from disease in France.   Three months later the Official U. S. Bulletin published the latest list of American soldiers killed in France.  Among them was Franklin Cooper.

At the end of the war Eleanor Butler rejoined her mother and sister in the 73rd Street apartment.  On April 7, 1923 she was riding in the car of Ethel Outerbridge.  (Ethel was the wife of Eugenius H. Outerbridge, first president of the New York and New Jersey Port Authority for whom the Outbridge Crossing is named.)  The chauffeur, Thomas Davies, turned from 72nd Street onto Lexington Avenue just as the Lexington Avenue street car approached the intersection.  "Motorman John Hennessy jammed on his brakes, but it was too late to avoid the collision, which threw the motor car against the curb," reported The New York Times.  "Mrs. Outerbridge was pitched against a seat and Miss Butler was thrown to the street."

Although slightly injured himself, Davies drove the women to the Presbyterian Hospital.  Ethel had two broken ribs and cuts, and Eleanor suffered "contusions of the scalp and right hand."

The sisters' names appeared in newspapers for much happier reasons two years later.  On February 15, 1925 The New York Times reported that Eleanor Grenville Butler had married Henri Louis Marindin "at noon yesterday at the home of the bride's uncle, Willard Parker Butler."  Hope was Eleanor's maid of honor.  The article noted that they were the great granddaughters of Benjamin Franklin Butler, Attorney General under President Van Buren.

Seven months later, on September 29, a wire from Paris to The New York Times announced "Friends here learned only today of the marriage of Huntington Wilson, former American Under-Secretary of State, to Miss Hope Butler, niece of Charles Butler of New York, which occurred at Zurich, Switzerland on September 1." 

Other residents over the years were Mrs. C. Barron Taylor and her daughter, Gertrude Bowdith Taylor (Gertrude's debutante entertainments were held during the 1930-31 season); Frederick Osborn and his wife, the former Margaret L. Scheffelin; and Miles Oakley Bidwell.  Bidwell, who was the head of M. Oakley Bidwell Associates, a publicity agency, was married to Frances Jones Mallory in his apartment here on October 27, 1933.  And for years U. S. Navy Commander Francis Bowie Stoddert and his wife and son lived in the building.

On June 25, 1940 Mrs. Lowry Gillett announced the engagement of her daughter, Enid, to Peter Irving, Jr.  Ironically, the prospective groom was the son of Dr. Peter Irving and nephew of Captain John Duir Irving.  He had spent his childhood in the building now home to his fiancée.  

Change came in 1961 when the building was connected internally with No. 137 East 73rd Street and converted to doctor's offices, known as the Lexington Professional Center.  Over the years it was home to groups like the Women's Medical Group, one of only two clinics in the city where abortions could be legally performed.  On October 25, 1970 The New York Times reported that it and the Women's Medical Center on Irving Place "could do perhaps 50,000 abortions a year at a cost ranging from nothing to $200 a procedure."

The two buildings were connected internally in 1961.

In 1972 the Acupuncture Center of New York faced legal battles when it was closed by court order for "practicing medicine illegally," as reported in The Times on November 12.  But the most celebrated tenant was sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer, whose office was in the building for years.

Not all the tenants were so upstanding.  Psychiatrist Aaron Friedberg's main office was on Park Avenue, but he kept an auxiliary office here.  In July 2003 he was arrested on charges of "selling prescription drugs," according to The New York Times.  Manhattan district attorney Robert M. Morgenthau charged that he "rented space that was used for the illegal drug sales at 133 East 73rd Street."

In 2008 plans were filed to alter the building "from offices to residential."  Owner Lloyd Goldman, through his broker Ivan Hakimian, marketed the property "as an opportunity for a single-family residential conversion" into "one of the nicest and most unique mansions Manhattan has ever seen," as reported in The Real Deal in May 2010.

Astonishingly, Avi Dishi, president of Elysee Investment, purchased the building for $32 million that September and obtained approval to convert the building "into what would technically be the largest single-family home in Manhattan," according to The Real Deal's Sarabeth Sanders on September 15, 2010.

Construction continues on the 24,207-square-foot residence.  In the meantime, the astonishingly surviving 19th century storefronts have emerged along Lexington Avenue.

photographs by the author
many thanks to reader Holly Tooker for prompting this post

The Julius Bowman House - 108 East 73rd Street

In December 1883 developer Daniel Hennessey began assembling plots along East 73rd Street at the corner of Fourth Avenue (later Park Avenue).  Five months later, on June 7, 1884, The Real Estate Record & Guide announced his plans "to erect ten four-story dwellings...to cost $20,000 each."  That cost would translate to about $528,000 each today.

Hennessey hired the architectural firm of Thom & Wilson to design his row.  The firm was busy at the time, much of their work being on the opposite side of Central Park.  Interestingly, they alternated divergent Queen Anne with Renaissance Revival styles along row in an A-B pattern.  And while the homes in either of the styles were similar, none was identical.

Among the five Queen Anne houses was No. 108.  Completed in 1885, its basement level and stoop were sandstone rather than the more expected brownstone.  The upper four stories were clad in red brick and trimmed in stone.  Carved panels playfully featured heads of lions, children and mythical characters.  A slightly projecting bay rose the full height, terminating in a pediment that interrupted the slate-shingled mansard.

A second glance reveals a lion's head and a female portrait within the swirling foliate carvings of these panels.

On March 5, 1886 Hennessey sold No. 108 to Julius Bowman for $27,500--about $757,000 today.  He and his wife, the former Caroline Bamberger (known as Carrie), had five children: Nathan, William, Harry, Leon, Eva and Sophia.

The Bowman children were approaching adulthood and in 1890 Leon was enrolled as a freshman in the "Scientific Course" at New York City College.  He would go on to a distinguished career as a physician.

The girls soon married.  Sophie's engagement to Moses Joseph Freund was announced on January 13, 1892.  The newlyweds moved into the 73rd Street house.

Julius Bowman, who dealt in real estate, devised a shady system to increase profits.  He brought a son, presumably Nathan, along to at least one auction of his properties on May 6, 1896.  The scheme was that the son would blend into the crowd and bid up his father's properties.

But after John McClenahan had successfully bid $27,000 for one house, he realized that he was bidding against Bowman's son and refused to complete the deal.  Bowman sued and the case ended up in court.  Julius Bowman no doubt regretted his action.  The judge decided that the "employment of a private puffer" rendered the sale void and that, in fact, Bowman had committed fraud.

A rather flat bas relief profile appears above the second floor windows.

The Bowman house was the scene of two funerals in relatively close succession.  Nathan died at the age of 33 on January 18 1900.  His funeral was held on the 21st.  Exactly one year later to the day, on January 18, 1901, Julius Bowman died.  That funeral was held in the drawing room on the 22nd.

The Bowman family remained in the house.  Leon, now a respected doctor, held interviews here on the night of August 16, 1905 to fill "vacancies in the various departments of the dispensary of the Washington Heights Hospital," as reported in the International Record of Medicine.  The population of the house increased again in 1915 following Leon's marriage to Lillian Freed.

Rather than the expected shell motif in the concave tympanum above the second story hall window, Thom & Wilson added foliate carvings with a hidden bird and two fearsome beasts.

Jacob J. Bowman died in the house in April 1919.  His was the last of the family funerals held here.  In June 1921 the Bowman family sold No. 108 to Mrs. A. W. Watson.

Apparently widowed, she hosted at least one notable event here.  On December 22, 1927 The Hempstead Sentinel reported "Miss Watson gave a reception at her home, 108 East 73rd street, on Tuesday afternoon to introduce her nieces, Miss Gladys Sutton Cowdrey of this place and Miss Virginia Wyckoff of 118 east 54th st. New York...Following the reception a dinner and theatre party were given for the debutantes."

By the following summer No. 108 was occupied by the Benjamin Clark family.  Clark was a partner in the banking and brokerage firm of White, Weld & Co.  He and his wife, the former Dorothy O. Pardee, had two daughters, Dorothy and Catherine, and a son, John.  

Having settled into the 73rd Street house, the family--all but John--boarded the steamship Aquitania for a vacation in Europe on July 8, 1928.  John went to the Clark's summer home in New Canaan, Connecticut.

The family narrowly escaped tragedy when they hired an automobile and took a drive into the French countryside on July 18.  Also in the car was "a young man friend of the family."  The automobile swerved off the road and into a tree.  Dorothy and the girls suffered serious head wounds and one of the girls received a broken arm.

Perhaps because of its narrow proportions--just 17-feet wide--the house was never divided into apartments.  In the last quarter of the 20th century it became home to Guernsey's, the Auction House, founded in 1975 by advertising executives Arlan Ettinger and Barbara Mintz.  Through the decades it handled artifacts from the RMS Titanic, a Babe Ruth baseball that fetched $3 million, a necklace and matching earrings from the estate of Princess Diana, and the contents of the Tavern on the Green.

Today the house is once again a private home.  It is the best preserved of the 1885 row and an architectural charmer.

photographs by the author

The Ralph Pulitzer House - 17 East 73rd Street

Someone thought it would be a good idea to paint the limestone at the entrance level gray.  It wasn't.

Although only steps from Fifth Avenue and Central Park, the ten brownstone residences erected by developer James E. Coburn on the north side of East 73rd Street in 1871 were not mansions.  For the time being Manhattan's wealthiest citizens were content to live below 57th Street.  But they hinted at things to come.

At least one of them, No. 17, replaced an earlier, simpler home.  On April 24, 1869 an advertisement in the New York Herald had offered "To Let--A three story high stoop house."  Now, on September 6, 1875, an ad in the same newspaper touted:

For Sale--That New and Well Built House, No. 17 East Seventy-third street; hard wood finish; 22x60; four stories and basement.

Designed by J. W. Marshall, it and the rest of the row were aimed at more affluent owners--such as Ernst August Roesler, who would live here.  Born in Germany in 1844, he and his wife, the former Clara Mueller, had a daughter Ottilie.

Following Clara's death in 1883 Roesler married Augusta Koehler.  The couple had another daughter, Therese Auguste Louise.  But her half-sister would not see her grow up in the house.  On the afternoon of April 17, 1888 the 18-year-old Ottilie was married in the parlor.  It was a wedding that was covered by all the newspapers.

The bridegroom was George A. Steinway, eldest son of piano maker William Steinway.  The Evening World reported "Many telegrams of congratulations have been received not only from all parts of this country, but from friends of both families in Hamburg, London, [St.] Petersburg, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Paris and other cities of Europe."  The article concluded "The presents received by the bride were very beautiful and very numerous, coming from Germany and England as well as the United States."  Dinner and the reception were held at Delmonico's.

Roesler died on February 10, 1900.  By then merely well-to-do residents like the Roesler family were being nudged out by the fantastically wealthy.  The following year millionaire publisher Joseph Pulitzer demolished Nos. 7 through 15 Eat 73rd Street as the site of his magnificent mansion designed by Stanford White.

In June 1904, the year after the Pulitzer palazzo was completed, son Ralph bought the former Roesler house next door.  The timing of the purchase, a year before his marriage to one of society's most eligible debutantes, Frederica Vanderbilt Webb, was most likely not coincidental.

Frederica was the daughter of Dr. W. Seward Webb and Lila Osgood Vanderbilt.  Her grandfather was William H. Vanderbilt.   The wedding took place in Shelburne, Vermont, where her parents maintained their 3,000-acre country estate, Shelburne Farm.  Its Queen Anne-style mansion contained 60 rooms and Frederick Law Olmsted had designed the park-like grounds.

Webb, who had given up his medical practice to become involved with the railroads with his father-in-law, arranged a ten-car special train to transport guests from Manhattan.  On October 14, 1905, the day before the ceremony, The New York Times reported "At Shelburne House, the decorators were kept at work to-night.  They completed the decorations there yesterday, but the heat to-day withered them so it was necessary to do them all over again."  The newspaper later reported that the wedding "was attended by 600 guests."

A month later, on November 12, 1905 the New-York Tribune reported that the architectural firm of Foster, Gade & Graham had filed plans for remodeling No. 17 East 73rd Street.  "The facade is to be removed and a new front of decorated limestone erected.  New staircases are to be installed and the interior rearranged."  The firm estimated the cost at $20,000, or about $575,000 today.  The Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported on what might have been an embarrassing afterthought.  A separate set of plans were filed, this one specifically to "install toilets."

Foster, Gade & Graham worked around the old English basement plan by placing the new entrance a few steps below sidewalk level.  Clad in limestone, the neo-Renaissance residence was splashed with Beaux Arts embellishments.  The three story rounded bay was marked by three arched French windows, and a trio of rectangular openings separated by Corinthian pilasters, their sills dripping swags of carved roses.  Similar garlands draped over blank rosettes below the elaborately carved stone cornice which supported the mansard level.

The house was barely completed when Ralph and Frederica began construction of their summer home in July 1906.  The Colonial-style mansion would sit on their 200-acre estate near those of William K. Vanderbilt and Payne Whitney.

Back in Manhattan the newlyweds most likely never lived in the 73rd Street house.   Despite the efforts and cost his son had expended to renovate the house next door, Joseph Pulitzer's wedding present to Frederica was a house on Fifth Avenue.

In 1910 Ralph Pulitzer leased No. 17 to Josephine Livermore.   The widow of attorney John R. Livermore, who died on May 3, 1906, she was the former Josephine Whitney Brooks.  The couple had married in December 1898, The New York Times noting "The wedding was a social event.  H. O. Havemeyer was the bridegroom's best man."

Livermore's death was, somewhat bizarrely, brought on by the trauma of the destruction of their country home in Westchester County about a month earlier.  The target of arsonists, the magnificence of the mansion and its furnishings was reflected in the silver alone--valued at around $990,000 in today's money.  "The fire was a great shock to Mr. Livermore," said a newspaper following his death, "who has been ailing ever since"

As the Pulitzers continued to lease the house (to Sidney C. Berg in 1913 and Mrs. Gardiner Sherman in 1915, for instance) their names continued to appear in newspapers.   In 1913 Ralph surprised most of the city when he sued the powerful Tammany-backed Mayor William Jay Gaynor for defaming his father.  A few months later, in January 1914, the building in which Pulitzer's $40,000 yacht, the Bullet, was store in dry dock burned, destroying it.

In August 1916 architect Louise J. Farmer did significant upgrades to the 73rd Street house for Pulitzer.  His plans called for "new stairs, partitions, plumbing, brick walls."  The renovations cost the publisher the equivalent $105,000 today.

Ralph and Frederica had two children, Ralph, Jr. and Seward.  In the autumn of 1921 a tutor was hired for Seward.  Cyril Jones had served as secretary to Colonel Edward M. House during the Paris Peace Conference and was in charge of communications between him and President Woodrow Wilson.  Following his discharge from the Navy, he took the job of tutoring Seward.

Before long, unknown to Ralph Pulitzer, a romance was developing between his wife and the tutor.  In the spring of 1922 Jones resigned to join the faculty of the Milton School near Boston.  Frederica promptly sailed to Paris to begin divorce proceedings.   On February 15, 1924 The New York Times reported on the pending divorce, the grounds of which were "constructive desertion."  Four months later the newspaper reported that Frederica Pulitzer would marry Cyril Jones at Shelburne House in August or September.

Interestingly enough, Pulitzer retained possession of No. 17.  In 1927 he leased it William D. Flanders who married author Margaret Leech the following year.  Upon returning from their honeymoon in England and France, they took up residence at No. 450 East 52nd Street.  A daughter was born in there March 1929.

Finally, after decades of leasing the home, Ralph sold it to Benjamin Joseph Buttenweiser in 1934.  Five years earlier the banker and philanthropist had married Helen Lehman, daughter of Arthur Lehman, senior partner in Lehman Brothers.  Son Lawrence Benjamin was born on January 11, 1932.  His parents were a fascinating pair.

Buttenweiser, the son of wealthy real estate operator Joseph L. Buttenwieser, was admitted to Columbia College at the age of 15, focusing on 19th century English poetry.  He graduated two years later.  Because Columbia University refused to accept him for its doctorate program (he was too young) he entered the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb.

And Helen was no insipid socialite.  A civic leader, she was one of the first women admitted to the City Bar Association.

Before moving in, the Buttenweisers got rid of the Edwardian interiors of Foster, Gade & Graham.  They hired the Modernist architect William Lescaze to completely redesign the interiors.  On December 12, 1936 The New Yorker wrote that Lescaze "in the last five or six years has taken the lead in Modernist architecture in this country" and said that the Benjamin Buttenwieser house was one of "the only three completely Modernist town houses in N.Y.C."

The result was a striking dichotomy of styles.  The inside was sleekly cutting edge, while the facade remained nearly unchanged.  Writing in Arts & Decoration in 1937, architecture critic Mary Fanton Roberts noted "The exterior Mr. Lescaze left pretty much as it used to be. He took a few ornaments off, substituted casement windows. All of which was probably a sound idea...although the result in no way reflects the Modern expected from Mr. Lescaze."

The Buttenwiesers would have two more sons.  Peter L. Buttenwieser was born in 1936 and Paul Arthur on April 15, 1938.  All three boys would go on to successful careers.  Lawrence established a thriving legal career; Peter would eventually become best known as a philanthropist (Mother Jones Magazine placed him at No. 2 on its 1998 list of Top Ten "power elite" with "bald ambition"); and Paul became a physician, child psychiatrist and author.

The family's country home was in Bedford Village, New York.  Benjamin and Helen were still living on 73rd Street when Lawrence married Ann Harriet Lubin on July 14, 1956 in Purchase, New York.  But within to years it was owned by the Republic of Guinea as its Permanent Mission to the United States.

The Mission remained in the house until 1969 when it was converted to a three-family residence with a doctor's office on the ground floor.  It was most likely at this time that the mansard was converted to a glass-walled penthouse.

From 1977 to the early 1980's the office was home to Maho Bay Camps, Inc., operators of the "camping resort" on St. John in the Virgin Islands.  The resort offered 70 three-room "canvas cottages" each 16 x 16 feet.  The rates in 1977 were $150 per week for couples and an additional $15 for each child.

The Pulitzer house has suffered some humiliation--the coat of graphite-colored paint over the limestone first floor, window air conditioners in the transoms of the fourth floor windows and, much worse, gouged into the fifth floor stonework.  (And, then, there's the matter of the mansard roof.)  But overall the elegance of the 1906 remodeling of the Victorian brownstone survives.

photographs by the author