The Frederic Taylor House - 47 West 73rd Street

Determined to see the still mostly rocky and undeveloped Upper West Side transform into a suburb for upper and upper-middle class families, Edward C. Clark, president of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, began aggressively buying up land in the mid 1870s.  In 1877 he purchased 30 building lots on Eighth Avenue (later named Central Park West) between 72nd and 73rd Streets; and kept adding to his holdings until by 1881 he owned nearly the entire block between Eighth and Ninth (later Columbus) Avenues and 73rd to 74th Streets.

Clark had a close relationship with architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh.   Two years after construction began on the high-end Dakota Apartment, the two set to work on another aggressive project nearby.  Hardenbergh designed 28 townhouses stretching from No. 15 to 67 West 73rd Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.   Construction was done in two phases, with the eastern group of homes completed in 1884, and Nos. 29 through 67 a year later.

Although at a glance the two sections appear the same, the first homes section were slightly wider and more costly.  Nevertheless, they flowed together as a picturesque grouping, harmonizing their architecture with that of the Dakota.

No. 47 sits directly behind the tree in this photograph. 

Clark retained ownership of all the houses, leasing them to well-heeled families.  No. 47 became home to Frederick Taylor and his wife, the former Louisa Josephine Walker (known as Lillie).  The couple were married in 1863.

Born in New York City on September 27, 1837, Taylor had been well educated.  He attended a private school in Flushing; then went on to Yale University.  Although te received a degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, he never practiced.  Instead he went into business with the importing firm of Butterfield & Co. before entering the banking business with the Continental Bank.

Striking details are the carved oak leaves framing the arched doorway, and the highly unusual palm fronds below the second story bay.

That relationship came to an abrupt end on June 17, 1885 when he resigned after incurring the wrath of a bank director, General Horace Porter.  Taylor did not agree with some of Porter's dealings involving the West Shore Railroad.  The New York Times reported "Mr. Taylor has written a number of caustic articles exposing some of the questionable features of West Shore transactions, and thus rendered himself obnoxious to Gen. Porter."  Taylor went into business for himself, founding the banking and brokerage firm of Frederic Taylor & Co.

Interestingly, it was Taylor's adept oratory skills for which he was best known and he was highly sought after as an speaker.  The New York Times later said of him "Mr. Taylor was a frequent traveler through the West and South, keenly interested in this country's progress, and closely observant of its development, and, though a man of business, he was perhaps most widely known as a brilliant orator, of ready wit and happy humor."

That "ready wit" was best remembered following an after-dinner speech he made in Chattanooga, Tennessee on March 12, 1891.  The room was filled with important political and business figures from both the North and South; but tensions were high after an earlier speech in New York by Henry W. Grady insulted nearly "the entire Southern country," as The Times put it.

Taylor's words pacified the audience.  He said in part "there is no single fact which so fills the heart of the North with gladness as that the South has recovered from its so long prostration."  Years later The Times recalled "The speech...completely established his reputation as an after-dinner speaker."

Taylor was also, by now, the president of the Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Northern Railroad.  His memberships in the exclusive Union League and Metropolitan Clubs spoke of his wealth and social standing.

Not long after moving into the 73rd Street house, Taylor became the guardian of his orphaned niece, Caroline Taylor Jewell.  The girl had earlier been educated by her grandmother who, although an Episcopalian like the Taylors, had sent her to a Roman Catholic convent in Brooklyn for several years.  Upon her grandmother's death, she moved in with the Taylors, who had no children of their own.

The same year that Taylor made his Chattanooga speech, Caroline, now 20 years old, made a shocking revelation to her aunt and uncle.  She had decided to convert to Catholicism.   And, what's more, she announced she wanted to become a nun.

In 1882, according to The Times, "notwithstanding the efforts of her uncle and aunt and other friends to dissuade her, she entered the Convent of the Sacred Heart."   And Frederic Taylor made a trip to his lawyer's office.

On Thursday evening, February 4, 1897 Lillie and Frederic had dinner as always.  When Frederic got up from the table, he was afflicted with a severe back pain.  When it only grew worse, Lillie called a doctor.   She sent messages to close friends who hurried to the house.  The Times reported "Everything possible was done to relieve the suffering man, but without success, and he died a few minutes before 10 o'clock, within an hour of the time of his seizure."

The funeral was held in the house four days later.  The New-York Tribune reported "Floral remembrances were sent by friends in various parts of the country."  Among the mourners that afternoon were former Mayor Abram S. Hewitt, former Congressman John Henry Ketcham, two colonels, and millionaires like Francis E.Trowbridge, Henry Clews and William Earl Dodge Stokes and his wife.

Taylor's estate was worth about $7.5 million today.  His will left generous bequests to charitable organizations like the Five points House of Industry, the Working Girls' Vacation Society and the New York Ladies' Home Missionary Society, among others.   About $100,000 was to be divided among his two brothers, two nieces and two nephews.

But Caroline's $25,000 share posed a problem.

The will stated that he "has no desire to disinherit her on account of her connection with her adopted faith, but that he does not desire to leave her any money which might, on account of her connection with sacred orders, eventually revert to the Roman Catholic Church."  The solution was simple.  The money would be paid to her "under the condition that she should not become a nun, and that she sever her connection with all Roman Catholic institutions."

Caroline's response was definitive.  The Connecticut newspaper the Waterbury Evening Democrat reported on December 29, 1899, "She is a Sister of Charity in the convent of the Sacred Heart in New York, and does not intent to renounce her faith."

Interestingly, the solid wing walls of the stoop do not meet the treads, but sit on little feet--certainly a help during snow removal.

Lillie Taylor was gone by 1906 when the Clark estate completed a long row of upscale residences directly behind her former home.  In advertising that they were available to rent, the estate noted that the caretaker of the houses could be seen at No. 47 West 73rd Street.

That arrangement was, of course, temporary, and the former Taylor residence became home to banker William Wood Struthers and his wife, Mary.  The couple was married on March 7, 1918 and nine months later, on December 28, their daughter, Mary was born.  They would eventually have three other children, Nina, Sara and William Jr.

The son of architect Robert Struthers, William had three brothers, Robert Jr., Duncan and J. Walter Wood Struthers.  Moving into the 73rd Street house with the newlyweds was  J. Walter, who was attending the U.S. Army's aviation school for civilians on Governor' Island.

Although slightly damaged, the stained glass transom of the parlor opening survives.  Below, a striking Renaissance Revival panel includes a whimsical face and beautifully-carved flowers.

Although J. Walter was a broker like his brother, with the world at war he wanted to qualify for his "military expert" license.  By now he had been making solo flights and in May started taking passengers.  On the morning of September 8, 1916 he and another student, Charles Deere Wiman, took off in a Curtis biplane with Struthers at the wheel.

About 15 minutes into their flight, at an altitude of approximately 80 feet, something went terribly wrong.  The Evening World reported "a sharp crack, as though an explosion, caused persons on the island and on Staten Island and South Brooklyn ferryboats to look up at them.

"The aeroplane, which was moving very slowly, wavered, one side drooped and then it darted to the ground in a narrow spiral, constantly gaining momentum.  Struthers could be seen yanking violently at his controls as it shot down, but he was unable to break the course of the spiral."

The biplane crashed nose-first into the ground.  "It tore a hole in the earth fifteen feet and then the whole structure, wires, frame and canvas, collapsed upon the aviators."

It took a quarter of an hour to extricate the fliers from the wreckage.  Both men were seriously hurt.  Struthers suffered two broken legs and his face was badly cut.  Wiman's wounds seemed more serious.  Along with a broken hip, he had critical internal injuries, and doctors cautioned that he "may die."


Upon receiving word, William and his father rushed to the Governor's Island hospital, taking along their own physicians and nurses to attend the men.   Ironically, it was not Wiman who perished, but Struthers.  The following month Aerial Age magazine called him "a martyr in the cause of preparedness" and commended his bravery in trying to contribute to the country's readiness for war.

When their lease was up in 1921 the Struthers family moved to Rye, New York.   The Clark estate put the house on the market, selling it in February.  The New-York Tribune reported "The buyer will occupy after making extensive alterations."

Those alterations did not extend to the facade, which was not modernized; but no doubt included arranging an office space for Dr. Elliot W. Lawrence.   A 1903 graduate of Cornell University, Lawrence was married to the former Mary Frain.   Following the death of her 59-year old mother, Margaret McDonough Frain on December 22, 1930, the funeral was held in the 73rd Street house.

The Lawrences offered their home up for the funeral of another relative, Dr. George Thomson Elliot, the following September.  He was the 76-year old uncle of Lawrence, the sister of his mother.

In 1940 the Lawrences divide their home into apartments.  The basement and parlor level now contained the doctor's office and an apartment; the second floor had one apartment, and there were two each on the upper floors.   The couple was still in the house when Dr. Lawrence died on December 29, 1963.

A renovation completed in 2000 resulted in a single apartment each on the lower floors, and a duplex within the fourth and newly-created penthouse, invisible from the street.

photographs by the author

H. J. Hardenbergh's 280-284 Columbus Avenue

Although it was inventor and actor Isaac Merritt Singer who founded the Singer Sewing Machine Company; it was Edward C. Clark who made it a success.  The sewing machine was not a new idea when Singer began tinkering with the contraption around 1850; several variations had already been patented.  But his improvements in 1851 resulted in the first practical machine.

Clark had been Singer's attorney since 1848 and the two became business partners.  A marketing genius, Clark's innovative ideas--like accepting trad-ins for newer models--made the Singer Company an enormous success and the partners millionaires.

Edward Clark diversified into real estate development.  In the 1870’s he teamed with fledgling architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh and erected rental cottages for summer visitors to Lake Otsego near Cooperstown, New York.  It would be the beginning of a long and mutually-prosperous relationship, and one which would help set Hardenbergh on the road to becoming a leading architect.

Very quickly Clark turned his attention to the rocky, mostly undeveloped Upper West Side. 
He was outspoken in his intentions to make the West Side as affluent as the East.  He encouraged landowners to work together, mutually investing in property, and issuing restrictive covenants on construction. 

In 1879 Clark began construction on an extensive project--25 rowhouses on West 73rd Street anchored by a matching four-story apartment and store building at the corner, at Nos. 280-284 Columbus Avenue.

Clark's speculation was both aggressive and risky. Years later The New York Times would remind its readers the area "was in the heart of a squatter's shanty district, where goats and pigs were more frequently encountered than carriages in the muddy streets."

Hardenbergh deftly morphed the residential row into his apartment (or "flat") building on the corner.  The brick-faced Renaissance Revival style structure was touched with modern neo-Grec elements, notably the architrave upper window enframements, and Queen Anne details like the terra cotta rosettes within the cornice frieze and the nearly whimsical rooftop pediments.  And, as if that mixture was not enough, he added delicate French balconies here and there.

The entrance to the apartments, at No. 101 West 73rd Street, mimicked the private houses along the row.  The commercial tenants used the Columbus Avenue address.

Two years after the building (middle right) was completed, the Ninth Avenue elevated was extended as far as 81st Street.  The block between 72nd and 73rd, behind Clark and Hardenbergh's Dakota Flats, was being excavated when this shot was taken.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Interestingly, the ground floor commercial spaces were leased mostly by firms involved in the real estate and development industry.   Among the first were Slawson & Hobbs, real estate agents, here in 1890; builder G. J. Harlow, and prolific developers W. W. & T. M. Hall.  By 1893 builders Egan & Hallecy was here as well and would remain for years.

By 1896 those firms were joined by builder William E. Diller; Frederick H. Birch, real estate; Thomas J. Brady's commercial plumbing business; and Moquin & Offerman, coal dealers.

 

Hardenbergh deftly transitioned from commercial to residential by matching the facade of the apartments with the private house next door, once the first in the long row of residences.

Slawson & Hobbs, run by partners Frederick G. Hobbs and George L. Slawson, was a highly-visible real estate firm on the Upper West Side.  They were highly responsible for filling the rising rowhouses and apartment buildings with tenants.  At the turn of the century, for instance, they were the sole agents for the sprawling Ansonia and Victoria apartment buildings.  In 1902 they published a booklet entitled "West Side Apartments."

That same year, on January 4, the Record & Guide commented on the firm's full-service business, calling their offices "a plant."  "Slawson & Hobbs have made up a very complete plant, embracing sales, mortgages, building plans and other items of interest that facilitates very much their extensive and constantly growing business.  The firm's offices, at No. 284 Columbus av., near 73d st., are thoroughly equipped for the quick and satisfactory dispatch of business."

Hardenbergh's eclectic mix of styles resulted in a stylish Victorian design.

Like many of the other commercial tenants, Thomas Brady's plumbing business remained in the building for years.   In 1903 The Plumbers Trade Journal gave a hint of the activity within his office.  "Still as busy as ever is the condition which Thos. Brady, of 284 Columbus avenue, Manhattan, is to be found.  His trade at this time of the year is first-class and calls for a good deal of his personal attention, besides keeping three or four men very much on the go."  

After being in the building for 20 years, Slawson & Hobbs moved to No. 162 West 72nd Street in September 1910.  Five months later the Clark estate hired architect George H. Griebel to design a new storefront.

By now Thomas Brady's plumbing business had been replaced by that of John Boyd.   Like Brady, he handled large projects, like the conversion of a five-story private residence on East 46th Street to a commercial building in July 1912.  Interestingly, when Frederick A. Clark did renovations to the apartment building directly across Columbus Avenue in 1914, John Boyd not only did the plumbing, but was the architect of record.

In the meantime, the upper floors had been initially leased to well-to-do families, followed by more middle class tenants.  When war broke out in Europe, young J. B. Johnstone sailed off to fight with Company F, 112th Infantry.

Although peace was declared in November 1918, the soldiers were still deployed for months.  In order to provide them with a touch of home for Christmas, The Sun initiated The Sun Tobacco Fund, which provided soldiers with 17 packs of cigarettes and 23 "sacks of tobacco" each.  Now a lieutenant, Johnstone sent his written thanks to the newspaper and gave a detailed account of his much improved conditions since peace was declared.  His letter, published on January 28, 1919, said in part::

We are in a captured salient which the Americans took from the Heinies, and living in their quarters on a beautifully wooded hill.  I with another 'shavetail' have a stone cottage, with real beds, a stove which the orderly lights before reveille, a desk, chairs, wardrobe and all the comforts of a human being's home.  The mess is wonderful; pancakes with syrup galore, steak, fritters and doughnuts.

It was most likely the advent of the Great Depression that dealt a severe blow to the apartments.  On September 10, 1934 The New York Times reported that the owners, Cappa Realty Company, had leased the three upper floors "to Bertha Stegun for a rooming house.  The floors contain thirty-three rooms."

The accommodations in the "rooming house" were basic at best.  It could more accurately have been termed a flophouse.  In 1943 there were five stores at ground level, with two SRO rooms on the second floor with on "community kitchen," and eleven SRO rooms on each of the two uppermost floors.

Overall the building in 1941 looked little different than today.  photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

Things seem to have improved somewhat by mid-century, however.  By 1950 Alice Margaret Chilton called the building home.  Formerly the wife of Boston architect Howland Jones, she was for many years a social worker for All Saints Protestant Episcopal Church on Henry Street.

The Columbus Avenue neighborhood experienced a renaissance in the last quarter of the 20th century as trendy restaurants and boutiques appeared.  In 1974 a renovation resulted in six apartments per floor above the storefronts.  Where builders and plumbers had once operated, The Cultured See opened its florist shop by 1976. 


In 1982 a unique clothing shop opened here, Vermont Classics.  Owners Pauls Neustate and Sheila Silverman offered "classic clothing handmade by people who live in villages and on farms throughout New England," as described in New York Magazine on September 20.  "There are hand-knitted sweaters, quilted pillows and bed coverings.  And there are raw-silk dresses made in small workshops, as well as factory-made classic New England clothing."

At the same time Robbyn Yoffee and Jane Bloom ran Tianguis Folk Art here.  No less unique, The New York Times on February 9, 1985 described its self-made summer line as "1950's inspired fashions for women who weren't yet born in the 50's."

The store spaces continued to house popular businesses like Exotiqa, which sold imported home furnishings and "trinkets" until 2000; and the seafood restaurant Ocean Grill.  Today fashion boutiques fill the Columbus Avenue storefronts.

In the meantime, the upper floors of Hardenbergh's stylish flat building have suffered little change.  It survives as a remarkable example of early multi-family housing in the then just-developing neighborhood.

photographs by the author

The 1882 Ontiora Apartments -- No. 200 W. 55th Street

Although it was inventor and actor Isaac Merritt Singer who founded the Singer Sewing Machine Company; it was Edward Clark who made it a success.  The sewing machine was not a new idea when Singer began tinkering with the contraption around 1850; several variations had already been patented.

Singer’s improvements, however, patented on August 12, 1851, resulted in the first practical machine.  His prototype could sew 900 stitches per minute—more than 40 professional seamstresses.   Clark had been Singer’s attorney since 1848 and the two became business partners.  

A marketing genius, Clark sold the domestic versions of the machine to wives of clergymen at a 50-percent discount.  When the preachers’ wives received their sewing machines, Clark knew that women in the congregations would follow suit.  He also came up with the idea of an installment plan, so a housewife could make small payments on the $10 machine until it was hers.  As improvements made the older machines obsolete, Clark accepted trade-ins—an unheard of concept that caused sales to skyrocket.

Edward Clark amassed a personal fortune and began looking towards real estate development.  In the 1870’s he teamed with architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh and erected rental cottages for summer visitors to Lake Otsego near Cooperstown, New York.  It would be the beginning of a long and mutually-prosperous relationship.

It would still be years before Hardenbergh’s name would be nationally recognized for buildings like the Waldorf and Astoria Hotels, the Western Union Building on 23^rd Street, and the Plaza Hotel.   Toward the end of 1877, Clark bought up several building plots on Seventh Avenue.   Outspoken in his elitist attitudes towards the impoverished; he intended to make the West Side as affluent as the East.  To do so he would simply push the poor out by constructing high-end apartment buildings and he urged other property owners to do the same.

He encouraged landowners to work together, mutually investing in property, and issuing restrictive covenants on construction.  He told a meeting of the West Side Association in 1879 that only their cooperation could establish the West Side’s “exclusive character” and lure well-to-do residents. 

According to the authors of “The Park and the People," he asserted “There is the highest authority for believing that the poor will always be with us; but it does not follow that the poor will necessarily occupy any part of the West Side plateau.  The poor would be sufficiently with us if they lived in New Jersey or Long Island.”

The previous year Clark had put his money where his mouth was.   He owned three of the corner lots at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and 55^th Street.  In 1878 he began erecting what today would be termed “luxury apartments.”  Henry J. Hardenbergh designed all three—the Wyoming, the Van Corlear, and the Ontiora.

The Ontiora was completed in 1882 at the southwest corner.    The red brick building with white stone trim stretched along West 55^th Street with its entrance centered at No. 200.   Unlike the Dakota Apartments he had designed for Clark two years earlier, there were no turrets or pyramids or balconies.  Instead Hardenbergh turned to the sharp angles and clean lines of the Queen Anne and Eastlake Movements currently taking hold.  The entrance portico morphed into the slightly-projecting wall of the central staircase hall within; which then edged back to the façade much like an exterior chimney wall.  Here the architect focused his embellishments—including stained glass windows with “jewels,” and the date of completion in a carved cartouche.

The date of construction is carved in a cartouche resembling a frightening, gap-mouthed creature.

Still hoping to push the poor to New Jersey, Clark’s Ontiora offered one enormous apartment per floor—about 2,000 square feet or the dimensions of a reasonably-sized private home.   The ceilings rose over 10 feet from the floor and the interior doors and cabinetry were of handsome woods.

Just as the first residents moved into the new Ontiora, Edward C. Clark died on October 14, 1882.   The new tenants were of the social class Clark had hoped for.  Lawrence Miller and his wife lived here by 1892.  She was a member of the Ladies’ Auxiliary Committee of the Post Graduate Hospital and a force behind the building fund for the new babies’ ward of that facility.

Mrs. Miller and the other committee members worked to raise $20,000 to build and equip the new Post Graduate Hospital wards.  The New York Times said “These wards not only serve to relieve the misery among the children of the destitute, who are treated free of charge and without distinction of race, color, or creed, but also serve as a school for the physicians from every part of the country who come to study the diseases of children.”

It was not all charity work for the socialite, however.  A year later, on January 26, 1893, the society gossip newspaper, Town Topics, noted that “Mrs. Lawrence Miller, of West Fifty-fifth street, who has been visiting her mother, Mrs. Joseph Sawyer, in Boston, the past fortnight, has had no end of agreeable attention offered her.”   No doubt other wealthy ladies poured over the list of affairs held for her.  “She had a dinner at the Somerset Club, among other smart entertainments, given by Mr. and Mrs. David Nevins.  Mrs. Miller gave a luncheon just before leaving for New York to a party of twelve of her old school friends at her mother’s house on Commonwealth avenue.”

White stone trim contrasts with the robust red brick.

In the Ontiora at the same time were Dr. Bernard E. Vaughan and his wife.  The medical prodigy had moved to New York two years after the apartment building was completed to study at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.  Following his graduation in 1887, he was accepted as a member of St. Luke’s Hospital, later to be made house physician.

The year after he left the hospital, in 1889, he married Maud Phillips Kniffen.  His career continued to skyrocket.  By 1895 he was the assistant attendant physician at the New York Cancer Hospital, physician at the New York Dispensary, instructor at the Post-Graduate Hospital (Mrs. Miller’s pet charity), and was on the medical staff of the New York Life Insurance Company.

On February 27, 1895 the 32-year old doctor was taken from his apartment to St. Luke’s Hospital.   He was operated upon for appendicitis the following day; and within a few days succumbed from “the effects of an operation,” according to The Sun on March 7. 

Rather oddly, the members of the Hospital Graduates’ Club felt it necessary to vote on delivering condolences to his young widow.  The club’s minutes of April 23, 1895 read “Resolved, That the sincere sympathy of the club be tendered to his bereaved family, and that this action be entered upon the club records and published in the professional journals of the city.”

The McLoughlin family was residing here at the time and little William McLoughlin proved that a privileged upbringing did not always dissuade mischief.  He found himself behind bars in November 1896.

According to The New York Times on November 4, “William McLoughlin, eight years old, of 200 West Fifty-fifth Street, was arrested last night for building a bonfire in Fifty-fifth Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues.”   Exacerbating the boy’s crime was his choice of fuel for the fire.  He was also charged with “tearing down fences built around a vacant house in the same block.”

Other residents were the well-to-do W. H. Shields and his wife.  Mrs. Shields was the sister of the Rev. John Spencer Turner, Jr.  On October 9, 1898 The Sun reminded readers that he was “the Episcopalian clergyman whose conversion to the Catholic church created considerable discussion last summer when the fact became known.”

Mrs. Shields and her brother were born in Brooklyn and he was ordained an Episcopalian priest in 1894.  When he converted to Catholicism, things got messy.  “He was rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rochester, N. Y., when he incurred the displeasure of the late Bishop Cox by reason of his ritualistic practices,” said The Sun.  “The Bishop forbade him to preach in his diocese, and in token of this inhibition Mr. Turner caused a black flag to be displayed from his residence.”

The hoop-la seemed to have died down a bit by the following year.  The European comings and goings of Mrs. Shields and her husband were commonly noted in the society pages.  But in October 1898 social eyebrows would be raised after their steamship docked in Manhattan.

The Sun ran the shocking headline that announced “Mrs. Shields Turns Catholic” and reported “Mrs. W. H. Shields of 200 West Fifty-fifth street, this city, has lately returned from Paris, where she was converted to the Roman Catholic faith.”

In 1915 sewer workers toil on 55th Street.  The deep light well with its iron railing is still evident and the commercial space on the ground floor is still years away -- photo from the collection of the New York Public Library

When Helen Guard lived here in 1915, the ground floor of the Ontiora was still girded by a deep light well and the apartments were still rambling, upscale flats.   That year Italy put aside its policy of neutrality and in May entered World War I on the side of the Allies.  Helen Guard was a friend of Madame Daballa, the wife of the Italian General in Turin.  Through her Helen learned of the sufferings of the Italian troops in the frigid mountains 8,000 to 10,0000 feet up.

She wrote to the Editor of The New York Times on October 8, 1915 offering to collect warm clothing for the soldiers.  Telling readers that the Italian Government had let its female citizens know that 18 million pairs of woolen socks and several million woolen mittens and sweaters were needed, she wrote “Italy has made no appeal of any kind for aid to others than her citizens.  I am quite sure, however, that there are thousands of American women who feel themselves in debt to her, and if any one of them would like to send one pair, a dozen pairs, or a hundred pairs of woolen socks for the Italian soldiers’ use, I shall be happy to forward them.”

Helen closed her letter saying “They should be of large size.”

Throughout the following decade the apartment house retained its respectable tone, although by 1922 a commercial space had been gouged out of the Seventh Avenue facade.  Thomas D. Green and his wife lived here in the 1920’s while daughter, Julie Gibbs Green, attended the Veltin School and the Mount Vernon Seminary in Washington, D. C.  In August 1923 Julie was married in a fashionable ceremony to Princeton graduate and former Navy Junior Lieutenant Perry McKay Sturges.

In 1922 when the Greens were living here a storefront had been installed on the 7th Avenue side.  photograph by Irving Underhill, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWRMYLJ0&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915&PN=18#/SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWRMYLJ0&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915&PN=18

As the 1940’s approached change was coming to Seventh Avenue.  In 1938 the light well was covered over and each of the gargantuan apartments were divided into three—all except the third floor which remained a single apartment.  That holdout resident remained until 1956 when the third floor apartment, too, became three.

Through the first decade of the 21st century the building was slathered in gray paint -- photo http://www.startsandfits.com/hardenbergh/ontiora.html

Sometime after the mid-20^th century Hardenbergh’s robust Ontiora was covered over in a monochromatic coating of gray paint.  The all-important contrast of brick and stone was disguised and the building became supremely overlookable.  Inside things were not faring too well for the once-elegant apartment building either.  In 1997 The Times opined “the Ontiora is now far from what Edward Clark envisioned: dirty and bedraggled, swamped by traffic and noise, the ground floor now turned over to commerce.  The halls have open trash cans—Clark would have had staff whisk any garbage away by dumbwater—and the walls are grimy with age.”

Although the street level, including the wonderful entrance portico, has been obliterated, most of Hardenbergh's hefty design survives.

A restoration of the façade sometime after 2006 resulted in the re-emergence of the wonderful details.  The stained glass panels still survive in the stairwell hall and the three apartments per floor—still roomy by Manhattan standards—with their 10-1/2 foot ceilings still exist.

non-credited photographs taken by the author