Henry Anderson's 1902 247 West 137th Street

 

On May 3, 1902, the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported that Geraldine Broadbelt had purchased a 275-foot long parcel along the northern side of 137th Street, east of Eighth Avenue (today's Frederick Douglass Boulevard).  The article noted, "Fifteen 5-story American basement dwellings will be erected on the plot."  The Harlem neighborhood had begun developing from farmland and summer estates into a high-end suburb a decade earlier.

Broadbelt hired architect Henry Andersen to design the ambitious row.  In a separate article, the Record & Guide said, "The specifications call for hot air heating, open plumbing, electric lighting, tile roofing, hardwood cabinet work, etc."  Andersen's regimented line of Renaissance Revival  style homes was configured in a repeating A-B-C-D pattern, giving the impression of the English "terrace."  Designed as mirror-image pairs, the slight differences were the treatments of the doorways and the tympani of the second floor windows--the A and C models receiving base relief portrait rondels, the Bs and Ds given carved ribbon-swagged wreaths.

Among the C models was 247 West 137th Street.  It's low, five-step stoop rose to a rusticated stone base.  The framed, double-doored entrance was crowned by an entablature decorated with a carved wreath and a prominent lintel supported on high scrolled brackets.  Stone bandcourses at the second floor provided a striped effect against the background of red brick.  The fifth floor was sandwiched between two modillioned cornices.

The two cornices were intact when this photo was taken in 1941.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Gloria Broadbelt sold 247 West 137th Street in April 1903 to Charlotte J. Hurley for $15,000 (approximately $477,000 in 2023 dollars).  It was the beginning of a dizzyingly rapid series of turnovers in ownership.

The house would be sold two more times before Alice G. Opper purchased it in September 1906.  She leased it to a proprietor for use as a high-end boarding house.

Among the residents in 1908 were Samuel and Hattie H. Brownold.   That October, just as the weather was becoming cool enough to need a warm coat, Hattie advertised her Persian lamb coat for sale.  It was possibly a subtle hint of domestic troubles.

The landlord did not renew his lease the following September, and Alice Opper advertised 247 West 137th Street for a new tenant:

Beautiful private street and rear; convenient subway, elevated; 17 rooms; tiled baths; water all bedrooms; open plumbing; hardwood; completely redecorated; immediate possession; board, rooming; $1,600

The asking monthly rent would translate to about $4,100 today.  Elias Isaacs answered the ad, taking on the existing boarders, including the Brownolds.  Moving in at the same time was Douglass Isaacs, possibly Elias's son, who operated a billiard room on West 59th Street at Columbus Circle.

Samuel and Hattie H. Brownold had been married since February 22, 1897.  They had a son, Melvin, who was 12-years old when Isaacs took over as landlord.  Samuel Brownold's temper and controlling personality made even dinner gatherings in the boardinghouse uncomfortable for the residents. 

Court papers would later reveal that Brownold had an "entirely ungovernable temper," and would repeatedly berate his wife and son in public, using "vile and abusive language."  At dinner, Brownold's abuse of his son could even become physical.  

In one instance, Brownold threw open the windows of their rooms and hollered out, "I want the neighbors to know what kind of a wife I have.  I want the neighbors to know how my wife treats me."  Hattie would later complain in court that she was "scandalized among fellow boarders and neighbors and suffered humiliation in their presence."

As things worsened, in September 1910 Brownold wrote a letter to Hattie's parents telling them to take her in, as "she was not wanted."  Simultaneously, he told Melvin to go with his mother and "get out of the house."

Hattie endured the derision.  Brownold's continual loud, verbal abuse prompted Elias Isaacs to intervene, warning Brownold to be quiet.  A textbook case of an abusive spouse, his increasing control over Hattie included his refusing to allow her to communicate with her parents, and disallowing her to use the telephone unless he were present.  On November 16, 1910, he found her on the phone and "tore the receiver from her hands and refused to permit her to speak."

Finally, with herself and her son on the verge of breakdowns, Hattie filed for divorce in December 1910.  Among those testifying at the hearing was Elias Isaacs who said Brownold "always acted in a very dictatorial and domineering fashion towards his family, and seemed to regard his wife more like a child than as a wife."  He recounted, "Hardly a meal passed without a quarrel of some kind."  When Hattie would ask him not to should at Melvin during dinner, "he would then turn on her often causing her such humiliation that it was necessary for her to leave the dining room."

The anonymous bas-relief profiles with early 20th century hairstyles may have represented friends or relatives of of the stone carver.

With the uncomfortable drama ended, the house returned to peace.  There were two artistic residents in the subsequent years.  One advertised on April 6, 1915 saying, "Experienced tenor seeks position, church, chorus or quartet."  And another, Harry P. Kuhn who lived here in 1917, was a member of the Society of Independent Artists.

As the demographics of Harlem changed, by the end of World War I all of the boarders in 247 West 137th Street were Black.  Among them was the family of W. H. Matthews.  On October 28, 1920 Mrs. Matthews gave a Halloween party in their rooms for her Sunday school class of the Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

Anna Warner hoped to find domestic work in June 1923.  Indicative of the times, she noted her race when placing her advertisement:  "Houseworker--Light colored; city or country."

Things became too much for 32-year-old resident Jane Allen to bear on June 22, 1925.  The New York Age reported that early that morning she "was treated by Dr. Goldberg for swallowing iodine.  The cause of her act was unknown at the time the ambulance took her away."  Jane's attempt at suicide was unsuccessful.

Isabelle Younge's life seems to have been more pleasant.  She was secretary of the Mystery Girls, a female social group, in 1934.  On December 1 that year The New York Age reported, "The Tea sponsored by the...group, November 4th, proved to be so enjoyable that the girls have been deluged with requests to repeat it."  The article gave the details of the upcoming encore, advising that any questions to be sent to Isabelle Younge.

By the early 1940s 247 West 137th Street became the Monarch Lodge Home.  The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks was Harlem's largest fraternal order.  On September 9, 1944, The New York Age reported, "The Manhattan School of Lecture No. 1, held its meeting recently at the Monarch Lodge Home, 247 West 137th street."

The Monarch Lodge counted among its members Casper Holstein, who was born in the Virgin Island.  Generous with his significant wealth, he was a supporter of Marcus Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association and a patron of the Harlem Renaissance.  Poet Langston Hughes said that Holstein was "a great help to poor poets."  Holstein, as well, loaned money to start-up Harlem businesses.  His wealth, however, came from a dubious source.

Considered by some to have invented the illegal gambling game known as numbers, he amassed a fortune.  He owned Harlem apartment buildings, a country home on Long Island, and land in his native Virgin Islands.  He was an influential member of the Monarch Lodge, running at one point for the position of national head.

It is unclear how long the lodge remained in the house.  At some point the cornices were removed, and the building converted to apartments.  There are ten apartments in the house today.

photographs by the author

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Henry Anderson's 1896 316 West 82nd Street

 

Frederick Haas was busy constructing apartment, or flat, buildings in the 1880's, many of them on the Upper West Side.  In 1895 he hired architect Henry Anderson to design another, on the south side of West 82nd Street, between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive.  It was a neighborhood quickly filling with private homes of the well-to-do.

Completed the following year, 316 West 82 Street was five stories tall and accommodated six families.  Anderson designed the 25-foot-wide structure in the Renaissance Revival style.  The entrance, above a short stoop, was set to the side, under a portico with Scamozzi columns.  The upper floors were clad in yellow Roman brick and trimmed in limestone.  The  paneled piers that flanked the second floor windows and the long frieze at this level were intricately carved.  The top floor strayed from the theme below.  Its windows were fully arched with prominent scrolled keystones, and decorative carved rosettes and plaques decorated the brickwork.

An advertisement for an apartment described, "eight rooms and bath, all large, light and handsomely decorated; everything modern and attractive."  They filled with affluent residents, including its owner, Frederick Haas, and his wife.

Among the initial tenants were George Alden Sanford, a lay assistant with the West End College Church; piano manufacturer Charles Alonzo Wessell and his wife; and Hutchins Hapgood, who worked for the Commercial Advertiser.

Perhaps the most celebrated tenant at the time was George William Warren.  Born in 1826, he was an organist and world-renowned hymnist.  In 1870, after working for several prestigious congregations, he was made organist for St. Thomas's Church on Fifth Avenue.  When he retired in 1900, he was made organist emeritus.

Musical Courier noted, "Mr. Warren came from Pilgrim stock, his ancestor, Richard Warren, having come over on the Mayflower.  Another ancestor, William Warren, was wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill."  Among the well-known hymns he composed were the National Hymn, or God of Our Fathers; and Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me.

Warren suffered a stroke in March 1902.  It was followed by another a few days later, and he died in his apartment on March 16.  The New York Times commented, "It is said of Dr. Warren that no one on the United States' list of organists and church music composers was better known than he both here and broad."

Also living here were the family of Congressman John Henry Ketcham.  He and his wife, Augusta, had two grown sons, Henry B. and Charles B., and a daughter, Ethel B. Ketcham.  Henry was an attorney and Charles was a broker.  Although Henry was married and lived with his wife and children on East 58th Street, during the summer when they were away, he would stay here when in town.

Like all upscale apartment buildings, 316 West 82nd Street had hallboys--young uniformed men who were on hand to run errands, bring mail, deliver messages, and such.  On September 30, 1903 a new hallboy, 18-year-old Harry Smith (or Miller--he used two surnames) was hired.  What Frederick Haas may not have known in hiring him, was that he had just spent several years in the House of Refuge, sent there by his mother for stealing from her.

Two days later Augusta was alone in the apartment.  Her husband had taken Ethel to Nantucket, Henry had left that morning to be with his family in Massachusetts, and Charles, too, was in the country.  She started out to do shopping at around 10:30.  As she left the building, she told the hallboy that she expected her sister and she would be home by 11:00.  Harry Smith saw an opportunity.

But Augusta was not gone an hour.  She returned half an hour later.  The Poughkeepsie newspaper, The Evening Enterprise, said, "When she opened the door she saw that the furniture had been moved about and that the drawers of a bureau were pulled out.  As she walked toward a closet, looking about her all the time for an explanation of what she saw, the new hallboy spring from the closet and made straight for her.  He held a piece of lead pipe in his uplifted right hand."

Harry Smith hit the 60-year-old woman over the head, then hit her again on the shoulder, breaking her collarbone.  Augusta later said she pleaded, "Don't kill me, Harry.  I can't do anything to hurt you."

Instead, Harry grabbed her by the throat and strangled her.  When she lost consciousness he removed her collarette (a sort of necktie), tied it tightly around her throat, "and left Mrs. Ketcham for dead," said the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.  Harry made off with $5 in cash and Augusta's $50 gold watch.  He left the apartment door slightly open in his escape.  It caught the attention of a neighbor later, who discovered Augusta unconscious on the floor.

A devout Christian Scientist, Augusta "forbade those people in the house either to send for a physician or to notify her family, every member of which was out of town at the time," said The Evening Enterprise.  She walked, unaided to the Christian Science Church.  When she returned, despite having a broken collarbone and bruised face, "she assured everybody that she was in excellent condition."

A general alarm was sent out to find her assailant.  But finding him would not end in his imprisonment.  The Evening Enterprise noted, "Mrs. Ketcham, it is said, told the police that even if the hallboy was arrested, she would refuse to make any complaint against him."

In 1911 William Stephen Devery had already had a remarkable career.  In 1878 he was appointed to the police force.  A favorite of Tammany Hall, especially of leader Richard Cocker, Devery rose in the ranks quickly.  Although convicted of bribery and extortion in February 1897, he was promoted to inspector the following year, to Deputy Chief on February 14, 1898, and to Chief of Police on June 30, 1898.  Known best as "Big Bill," he was forced out by Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt's reforms.  He sold his opulent West End Avenue mansion and left town--for a while.

William "Big Bill" Devery.  (original source unknown)

On August 11, 1911 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, "'Big Bill' Devery found that he could not resist the call of the city," and had "reconsidered his decision."  The article said "He has bought the five-story apartment house at 316 West Eighty-second street.  It is said that he will occupy one of the suites himself, and that another will be the home of his daughter, Mrs. Fink."  (Devery's 19-year-old daughter, Anna, had eloped with Edward Fink in 1903.)

In the summer of 1919 teenaged sisters Kay and Joan Boyle, who lived in Cincinnati, moved temporarily into the apartment of their aunt, Madge Boyle, here.  Kay took a summer course in architectural drawing, and then in September enrolled in the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (later Parsons School of Fine and Applied Arts).  Meanwhile, Joan was studying fashion design.  Kay Boyle would go on to become a novelist, short story writer, political activist and winner of the O. Henry Award.

The residents of 316 West 82nd Street were gradually becoming less affluent.  Madge Boyle, for instance, worked in a department store.  Meta Schumann's apartment doubled as her studio in 1923.  The pianist accompanied professional vocalists and taught piano from her apartment.

True change would come after the building was sold to Lily Weiner in 1938.  She converted the building, where entertainments like debutante teas had been held a few decades earlier, to an SRO with 40 rooms.

That configuration lasted until a renovation completed in 1970 resulted in two apartments per floor.  They were remodeled again in 1986 by architect and developer Joseph H. Gardner.

And while the facade could stand a gentle cleaning, other than replacement windows little has outwardly changed since it opened in 1896.

photographs by the author

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The John Prentice Kellogg House - 9 East 82nd Street

 

photo via streeteasy.com

In 1894 architect Henry Anderson designed a row of four dignified rowhouses on East 82nd Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, for developer Daniel Hennessy.  Completed the following year, their entrances sat within a rusticated limestone base above a two-step porch.  The Greek motif of rosettes and triglyphs in the entrance entablature reappeared in the second floor frieze, as well as the frieze below the copper cornice.  The three uppermost floors were faced in yellow brick and trimmed in elaborate terra cotta.

According to the New York Herald on November 24, 1897, Ellen Prentice Kellogg purchased 9 East 82nd Street "for about $74,000."  (The purchase price would equal about $2.4 million today.)  Ellen was the widow of stockbroker Charles Kellogg, who had died in 1892.  She lived in the house next door, at 11 East 82nd Street, which she bought in 1895.  

Ellen Kellogg leased 9 East 82nd Street to Albert Gould Jennings and his wife, the former Suzanne Beatrix Crimmins.  The young couple had been married in 1894.  The location of their rental home was perfectly situated for watching the on-going construction of their mansion across the street at 2 East 82nd Street.

The couple moved into the new residence in the first weeks of 1900.  On February 3, The New York Times reported, "Mrs. Albert G. Jennings will give a large reception in the afternoon at her residence, 2 East Eighty-second Street."  

Ellen Kellogg next leased 9 East 82nd Street to the family of Henry Francis and Lena Marianna Cook.  Then, in 1906, she sold it to her only son, John Prentice Kellogg and his wife, the former Ethel Thornell.  At the same time, Ellen sold her son the Kellogg family house in Newington, Connecticut.  The Georgian-Federal style structure had been built around 1808 for General Martin Kellogg.

John Prentice Kellogg purchased the ancestral Kellogg house from his mother in 1906.  photograph by Sage Ross

Born on January 27, 1878, John Prentice Kellogg had graduated from Princeton University in 1900.  The Princeton Alumni Weekly later said, "After traveling around the world he became associated in the banking business with the firm of Strong, Sturgis & Co., of New York City, and in 1902 became a member of the firm of Schmidt & Gallatin, bankers."  Kellogg rose to the top of his profession, becoming a governor of the New York Stock Exchange.  He and Ethel would have three children, Barbara, John, Jr., and Claire.

With America's entrance into World War I, Kellogg became focused on domestic security.  He organized a fleet of patrol boats to police New York Harbor, and became head of the Marine Section of Home Defense in New York City.  He then enlisted in the New York State National Guard, serving as captain of the Motor Transport Corps until the end of the war.

During the winter season of 1918-19, the Kelloggs leased their home furnished to newlyweds John Sloane and Elsie Nicoll Sloane, who had been married June 23, 1917. 

It may have been John Kellogg's health that prompted the couple's leaving New York City's cold.  He was suffering from pleurisy, an inflammation of the lungs resulting in severe chest pain.  He and Ethel Kellogg had barely settle back into their 82nd Street home when, on April 10, 1918, the 41-year-old suffered a fatal heart attack.

Ethel sold the mansion in April the following year to stockbroker John Hone Auerbach and his wife, the former Dorothy Pennington Toler.  Their residency was short-lived.  The sold the house in August 1921 to William Fitz Hugh Whitehouse for a reported $160,000, the equivalent of $2.3 million today.

Born in 1877, Whitehouse was married to Sybil Douglas.  The couple had two children, Adelaide Frances and William, Jr.   Whitehouse had been the roommate of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt at Yale University.  He was perhaps best known as an explorer of Africa.  According to the 1902 book, Through the Country of the King of Kings, he was the first white man in an unknown region "south of the chain lakes."

Whitehouse (left) and Alfred G. Vanderbilt relax in their comfortable dorm room in 1899.  from the collection of Historic New England.

Like their predecessors in 9 East 82nd Street, William and Sybil Whitehouse were prominent in high society.  There were listed as numbers 357 and 358 of "The 400" in the 1904 The Ultra-Fashionable Peerage of America.

William's mother had lived in Paris for a number of years.  Nearly every year the family traveled to France to visit.  On March 11, 1924, for instance, the New York Evening Post reported, "Mr. and Mrs. William Fitz Hugh Whitehouse, of 9 East Eighty-second street, will sail for Europe on April 2.  Their daughter, Miss Adelaide F. Whitehouse, and their son, Mr. William F. Whitehouse, jr., will accompany them.  They will go to Paris to visit Mrs. Whitehouse."  The article assured its readers, "Mr. and Mrs. Whitehouse and their family will spend the summer as usual in Newport."

It may have been William's election to the State Senate in 1926 that prompted the sale of 9 East 82nd Street in March 1928 to Dr. Allan S. Blumgarten and his wife, Stella.

An endocrinologist, Blumgarten had served in the Medical Corps during World War I and was the author of several medical books.  Stella was a young widow when the couple met while she was doing Red Cross work in the war.   Their son, James H., was three years old when they moved into the 82nd Street house.

Blumgarten's talents went beyond medicine and writing.  An amateur stained glass artist, he designed and installed a window in the rear of the house executed in pastel colors.  Along with medical and musical symbols, it contains the quotation, "The vintage of wisdom is to know that rest is rust and that real life is in love, laughter, and work."

The 1940 census shows four live-in servants in the Blumgarten household, all of them in their 50's other than 31-year-old Catherine O'Donnell.  Following the Blumgartens in the house was Bridget McGovern, who died in 1953.  

photograph by the author

The residence was converted to apartments in 1959 and by 1980 the ground floor became La Boetie Gallery, which remained until about 2014.  In 2015 the gallery Oliver Forge & Brendan Lynch was here.  A recent gut renovation returned 9 East 82nd Street to a single-family residence.

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The Edward J. King, Jr. Mansion - 7 East 82nd Street

 

In 1895 real estate developer Daniel Hennessy completed an elegant row of four 25-foot-wide homes at 7 through 15 East 82nd Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues.  Designed by Henry Andersen, the easternmost mansion, No. 7, like its siblings, rises five stories, with three floors of yellow brick sitting atop a two-story limestone base.  An imposing five-foot-high iron fence and gate surrounds the areaway.  The entrance, above a three-step stoop, sits within fluted Greek Doric columns that support an entablature decorated with rosettes and triglyphs.

Those elements reappear at the second floor, where Doric pilasters flank the openings and uphold a frieze embellished, again, with rosettes and triglyphs.  Elaborate terra cotta frames surround the third floor openings.  Between the brackets of their prominent cornices flank the rosette motif is continued.  The triglyphs and rosettes would make yet one more appearance in the frieze of the copper cornice.

On November 5, 1897 The Jewish Messenger reported that Edward J. King, Jr. had married Jessie Rosette Ickelheimer two days earlier.  The groom was 43 years old and the bride was 26.

The following year, on August 11, 1898, The New York Times reported that Daniel Hennessy had sold 7 East 82nd Street to King.  The New York Herald placed the price "at about $85,000" (around $2.74 million today).

Edward was a partner with his brothers David and Bennett in the furrier firm of Edward J. King & Sons.  Jessie, whose parents had both died prior to the wedding, had grown up in affluence.  Her father, Isaac Ickelheimer, had been a member of the stock brokerage firm Heidelbach, Ickelheimer & Co. and a director in several banks.

The four neo-Classical style residences form an elegant, dignified row.  7 East 82nd east at the far left.

It appears that Edward's busy work schedule did not always suppress Jessie's travel plans.  On January 27, 1901, for instance, the New York Herald reported, "Mrs. Edward J. King, of No. 7 East Eighty-second street, will leave for California during February.  She will give her last at home for the season on Friday afternoon."  ("At homes" were the published days when other socialites were welcome to call.)

More often, of course, the couple traveled together.  On July 30, 1905 the New-York Tribune reported that among those "returning to the Mount Washington [Hotel]" in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in the White Mountains were the Kings.  Two summers later they used millionaire Levi P. Morton's Pine Brook Camp on Upper Saranac Lake for the season.

After being in the 82nd Street mansion over a decade, in 1911 King commissioned the well-known architect John H. Duncan to update the interiors.  The "general alterations" cost the equivalent of around $141,000 today.

The Kings leased the house for the winter season of 1914-15 to Elihu Root, Jr. and his wife, the former Alida Stryker.    They had barely settled in when the couple became a trio.  The Utica Sunday Tribune reported, "Tuesday, October 13, a son was born to Mr. and Mrs. Elihu Root, jr., of 7 East Eighty-second street, New York City.  This is their first son and has been named Elihu Root, 3d, being a grandson of United States Senator Elihu Root."

Incursion of commerce into exclusive residential neighborhoods had been the bane of millionaires for decades.  Although the property along the 82nd Street block was protected by restrictive covenants that prevented the homes being used for commercial purposes, that was not the case on Madison Avenue.  Early in 1928 Edward J. King alerted his neighbors that undertaker Frank E. Campbell had laid plans for an upscale funeral parlor at the corner of Madison Avenue and 82nd Street.

On January 14 The Evening Post reported that the "silk stocking residents" opposed the plan.  The article explained that "fear that scenes like those that accompanied the funeral of Rudolph Valentino may occur in the midst of their exclusive neighborhood have led prominent property owners of the section to protest."  A letter to the neighbors signed by Edward King warned that their property values would drop by 25 to 33 -1/3 percent.  It said, as well:

In addition, conveyances bearing corpses of the deceased would presumably drive up with their burdens at all hours of the day and night, since the business of the mortician is known as one where the telephone never sleeps.

Frank Campbell had already purchased the property, however, and the efforts of King and his well-to-do neighbors were fruitless.

Jennie Rosette King died on May 20, 1933 at the age of 62.  Edward survived her by two years, dying in the mansion on October 11, 1935 at the age of 81.

The following year The New York Times detailed the distribution of his estate, reported at $3,110,201--more than $58 million in today's money.  Because the Kings were childless, much of the fortune went to charities, including Lenox Hill Hospital, the Trudeau Sanitarium, the Henry Street Settlement and the New York Association for the Blind.  King was generous to his loyal servants, as well.  Two maids received the equivalent of $280,000 today; and three other live-in servants received the equivalent of $187,000.

In July 1939 the King estate leased the 82nd Street mansion to Dr. Harry Gold, with the option to buy.   The New York Sun noted a surprisingly early amenity, saying the house "contained an electric elevator and is air-conditioned."  The article said, "After alterations are completed, the house will be occupied as an office and home."

Gold was a 1919 graduate of Columbia University.  Born in Russia on December 25, 1899, he was brought to the United States as an infant.  He was now a heart specialist connected with the Cornell University Medical College.  His wife, Bertha, was a professor of physiology at Hunter College.  Of their four children, three--Stanley, Muriel and Naomi--would all pursue medical careers.

Dr. Gold took advantage of his option to buy in 1942.  Five years later he became a professor of clinical pharmacology at Cornell University Medical College and would become the consulting cardiologist at Beth Israel Hospital and at the Hospital for Joint Diseases.

By 1967 he had established the Harry Gold Research Fund for Human Pharmacology, Inc., with offices in the house.  A pioneer in developing modern potent forms of digitalis for heart disease, he was given the Award of Distinction of the Cornell Medical College Alumni Association in 1971, which cited him "as founder of clinical pharmacology, which concerns the effect of drugs on man rather than on other species, and provides basic principles for evaluating the efficacy, potency and toxicity of drugs."

On April 21, 1972 Dr. Gold suffered a fatal stroke in the 82nd Street house.  He was 72 years old.  Bertha Gold died on December 25, 1987 at the age of 91.

The mansion remains a single family home today.  Interior renovations were completed in 1992, but the exterior is essentially unchanged since Edward and Jessie King moved in nearly 125 years ago.

photographs by the author

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The Edward A. Kerbs Mansion - 19 East 82nd Street

 

In 1894 architect Henry Andersen designed a pair of opulent homes on the northern side of East 82nd Street, just west of Madison Avenue, for developer Daniel Hennessy.  Construction took two years to complete.  

The mirror-image, 25-foot-wide mansions were an especially dignified take on neo-Italian Renaissance architecture.  Short stoops introduced the recessed entrances, flanked by Ionic columns.  The service entrances sat below oculi framed in carved, spilling cornucopia. Like the first floor, the second was clad in rusticated limestone.  Its windows were fronted by stone balustrades and flanked by Ionic pilasters.  Delicately carved shells sat atop each opening.

The upper three floors, which were gracefully bowed, were faced in light orange brick and trimmed in terra cotta.  Andersen embellished the top floors with ornate, Renaissance inspired panels and entablatures.  An elaborate terra cotta frieze introduced the bracketed cornice.

Edward A. Kerbs and his wife, Alice, purchased 19 East 82nd Street late in 1899.  Kerbs was a partner in the cigar manufacturing firm of Kerbs, Wertheim & Schiffer.  The couple had a four year old daughter, Jeanne Edith.

The Kerbs wasted little time in opening the doors of their new home to guests.  On February 22, 1900 the New York Herald announced, "Mr. and Mrs. Edward Kerbs, of No. 19 East Eight-second street, will give a large reception to-day, which will be in a measure a house warming."

During the 1915-16 winter season entertainments in the house focused on Jeanne as she was introduced to society.  It began on December 24 when her parents hosted a dance at the Ritz-Carlton for her.

The 82nd Street house was the scene of Jeanne's marriage to William Kallman on February 25, 1919.  It would be the last large event for the family within the residence.

Less than three months later, on May 12, 1919, Edward A. Kerbs died in the house.   His philanthropic lifestyle extended past death.  His will left $15,000 (a quarter of a million in today's dollars) to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, of which he was a trustee, and $50,000 to the Trudeau Sanitarium in the Adirondacks.   He stipulated that the latter amount was intended "to erect pavilions for men and women tubercular patients."

The bulk of the estate went to Alice, with the direction that after her death it passed to Jeanne.  But should Jeanne die first, without children, "the estate is to be used to establish the Kerbs Hospital for Tubercular Diseases."

As a side note, in 1953 Jeanne honored her parents by funding the Kerbs Memorial Boathouse, designed by Aymar Embury II, in Central Park.

The Kerbs Memorial Boathouse in Central Park.  photo via the Central Park Conservancy

Almost immediately after her husband's death, Alice sold the mansion to millionaire Isaac N. Phelps.  If he intended to move in, he quickly changed his mind.  In October 1920 he sold it to John Sergeant Cram and his wife, the former Edith Claire Bryce.

Cram was president of the Dock Board and head of the New York Public Service Commission.  He was, as well, the treasurer of the Dayfield Realty Company of which Edith was a director.

Born in 1851, both the Sergeant and Webb families were socially prominent.  John's first cousin William Seward Webb was married to Eliza Vanderbilt, the daughter of William H. Vanderbilt. 

Edith was his second wife.  He had married the widow Georgiana Beatrice Budd in 1898 when he was 47 years old.  She died in 1903.  He and Edith were married in 1906 and would have three children, Henry Sergeant, Edith Bryce, and John Sergeant.  The family had a summer home in Newport and a winter house in Palm Springs, Florida.  

John Sergeant Cram, New York State's Prominent and Progressive Men, 1902 (copyright expired)

Despite her husband's highly visible government positions, it was Edith whose name appeared in newspapers more often.  She was both an ardent pacifist and an activist for human rights.

On December 1, 1921, for instance, the New York Herald reported that she chaired a meeting of the World Peace Fellowship in Town Hall the evening before.  The article said it was "attended by more than 1,000 persons, at which most of the audience signed pledges they would never engage in a war, offensive or defensive, whether it be by bearing arms, making or handling munitions, voluntarily subscribing to war loans or laboring to set others free for war service."

During World War I, men were imprisoned for "political offenses."  In 1922 the wives and children of 37 of them set off on a protest from the West Coast to Washington D.C. seeking their release.  On April 26 they arrived in New York City and paraded up Madison Avenue carrying banners with mottos like "I Have Never Seen My Daddy" and "Is Opinion a Crime in the U.S.A.?"  The New York Herald reported, "In the afternoon they went to the circus as the guests of Mrs. J. Sergeant Cram."

Edith's agenda was not all political, of course.  She routinely entertained in the 82nd Street house.  On February 21, 1924 The Sun reported, "Mrs. J. Sergeant Cram gave one of a series of dinners last evening, at her home, 19 East Eighty-second street," and on February 1, the following year--presumably just before heading to Palm Beach--she gave another.

The family received a major scare in April 1926 when the 72 year old Cram fell down the staircase at 19 East 82nd Street.  Two months later, on June 24, the Oswego Palladium-Times reported he had "failed to rally," and "is seriously ill as the result of severe injuries to his head."

Nevertheless, Edith and her daughter went to Newport that season.  On September 10, The New York Sun announced that "Mrs. J. Sergeant Cram and Miss Edith B. Cram have returned from Newport."

Edith continued with her pacifist activities, which did not go unnoticed by right-wing Ralph Montgomery Easley, head of the National Civic Federation.  In a series of articles in the New Republic in 1924, Captain Sidney Howard placed Easley at the top of his list of "self-appointed, business-backed, hell-roaring flag wavers." On May 5, 1927 Robert Dunn, writing in The Daily Worker, listed "some of the persons this man Easley has gone out of his way to slander and malign."  Among them were H. G. Wells, Cardinal William O'Connell, and "Mrs. J. Sergeant Cram, noted peace advocate."

In 1931 J. Sergeant Cram was 80 years old.  It may have been his advancing age that prompted the Crams to lease their home to a William Randolph Hearst concern in August that year.  The firm may have eyed the property for development, since it already owned the entire Madison Avenue blockfront between 82nd and 83rd Streets, along with the twin house next door at 17 East 82nd.

Instead, the mansion was subleased.  It was home to the widowed Mrs. Carl Newkirk in 1939.  Her husband had been an attorney in Frankfort, Germany.  On February 4 that year her son,  Rudolph H. Newkirk, was married in St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue to Hope Emerson Lyons.

John Sergeant Cram died in 1936.  In July 1941 the 82nd Street house was sold to Louis Potter.  He converted it to apartments and furnished rooms.

The elegant mansion saw a variety of commercial tenants in the ground floor "apartment" over the next decades.  In the early 1970's it was home to the Coe Kerr art gallery, and in 1976 became the World of Leslie Blanchard, the society hairdressing salon of "world-famous authority on hair coloring, styling and conditioning," Leslie Blanchard as described by The Journal News on September 16, 1976.  By 2008 the property was owned by Warren Adelson and was home to the Adelson Galleries.

Then, in 2012 the mansion was purchased by the foundation organized in 2005 by impressionist artist Cy Twombly.  (He had died in Rome on July 5, 2011.)  It announced the house would be converted to an education center and Cy Twombly museum.  The Cy Twombly Foundation continues to stage exhibitions and display Twombly's works here.

photographs by the author

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The 1898 "Gabay Bldg." -- Nos. 143-147 Franklin Street

In 1897 those in the know in real estate circles recognized the opportunities still available in the district which would later be known as Tribeca.  Already the neighborhood had filled with looming commercial buildings spurred by the nearby Hudson River Railroad's freight terminal.

So that year when the widow Margetta K. Welsh offered for sale the three abutting two-story "brick and frame tenements and stores" at Nos. 143 through 147 Franklin Street, real estate operators jumped.  The titles would change hands about three times within days--the last being on June 19 when Henry G. Gabay paid Henry Walsh $105,000 for the properties (more than $3 million in 2017).

Gabay started out as a plumber employed by Butcher & Butler.  In 1877 he and a co-worker, Timothy McAuliffe, took over the firm, renaming it McAuliffe & Gabay.  McAuliffe died the year before Gabay purchased the Franklin Street properties.  Although they had continued their successful plumbing business, the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide noted "the firm has been more prominent of late years as builders whose operations were carried on in the uptown sections of the city east and west of Central Park."

While McAuliffe & Gabay had commissioned some of the best-known architects for earlier projects--Thom & Wilson and A. B. Ogden & Son, for instance--for Nos. 143-147 Franklin Street Henry Gabay turned to an architect more known for his residential designs.

Henry Anderson would design a striking 69-foot wide loft and store building six stories tall.  Faced in yellow Roman brick and trimmed in limestone and terra cotta, its Renaissance Revival design was splashed with Romanesque Revival touches.   As the building neared completion on January 15, 1898 The Record & Guide noted it "is of modern iron frame construction.  The lighting throughout is done by electricity, although the building is piped for gas, and there is an electric freight elevator."

The arched openings and terra cotta eyebrows borrow from Romanesque Revival; while the pained faces and elaborate keystones are Renaissance Revival.

Gabay recognized the demand of a structure suitable for industrial tenants with heavy machinery.  The Record & Guide said "it is especially adapted to the use of one tenant, and more particularly, one conducting a business which it is necessary to store heavy goods.  The new building is one of the strongest and most substantially-built in this locality."  The upper floors were able to carry 430 pounds per square foot.

Anderson's sketch of the Franklin Street elevation was published by the Record & Guide on January 15, 1898 (copyright expired)

Among Gabay's first tenants was the American Woolen Company which signed a $14,000 three-year lease.  Organized in the spring of 1899, it was capitalized with a staggering $65 million.  A consortium of East Coast mills, it caused many small firms to tremble.  On May 29 J. Clifford Woodhull attempted to calm outsiders, telling reporters "Those who have the impression that the object of the combination is to advance the prices of goods will be mistaken."  Nevertheless, he added "New acquisitions to the combination are being made from day to day, and success is assured."  Indeed, within days the new organization had gobbled up the Mascoma Flannel Company and the Riverside Woolen Company.

In March 1900 Gabay sold the building to J. W. Doane for $250,000.  His tenants would include two salvage companies--the Underwriters' Salvage Company and The Gans Salvage Co.

The Standard, March 23, 1907 (copyright expired)

The two firms routinely held auctions of items recovered from fires, ships, flooded buildings and other corporate casualties.  In March 1905, for instance, Gans Salvage Company auctioned "$75,000 worth of men's and boys' genuine Priestley cravenettes [water repellent coats], women's and misses' American Rubber Company cravenettes, men's Rover (double texture) rain coats, men's and boys' Cyclone coats, firemen's coats, and a complete variety of other rubber garment from stock of Merchants' Rubber Company, New York."

In 1909 John A. Lowell's Bank Note Company operated from the building.   A steel plate engraver and printer of stocks and bond certificates, bank checks, and related items; the structure was ideal for its heavy presses.

Leo Popper & Sons glass company had moved into No. 143-147 Franklin Street by 1911.  That year it employed four men, two women and two children between 14 and 16 years old who made "glass buttons and beads."  Other employees manufactured plate glass mirrors, mirror-backed signs, and a variety of other glass products.

Founded by Leo Popper, an Austrian immigrant, in 1879, by 1894 the firm was internationally-known for its art glass buttons.  According to New York, 1894: Illustrated, "They import immense quantities of glass from Germany, France, Belgium, England, Austria and other foreign countries, carrying one of the largest and finest assorted stocks of French plate glass, window, car and coach glass, enameled, colored, ground and cathedral glass to be found in the city."

Despite U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s policy of non-intervention in World War I, Germany continued to attack U.S. merchant ships and conducted sabotage.  On July 29, 1916, German agents set fire to a complex of warehouses and ships in the New York Harbor that held munitions, explosives and fuel intended for the Allies.  The resulting blast, known as the Black Tom Explosion, caused damage for several city blocks, sent debris raining down in Manhattan and New Jersey and damaged the Statue of Liberty.  The glass to repair the Statue's torch was supplied by Leo Popper & Sons.

The firm would remain in the building for decades; employing about 20 artisans at its peak.  It would provide the colored glass for the windows of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and the Washington National Cathedral.

Independent Starch Company was making its Fluffy Ruffles Starch here by 1947.  The Evening World, August 18, 1922 (copyright expired)

Throughout the rest of the century other industrial tenants would come and go, like Independent Starch Company, making its laundry starch here in the 1920s; the George E. Athans Co., makers of glass storage and canning jars at mid-century; and Lan Yik Foods, Inc., dealers in Asian foods.

Through it all the cast iron-faced ground floor survived surprisingly intact. While the cornices and parapets of the two end bays have been lost, Henry Anderson's impressive facade is otherwise little altered.   In 2016 Urban Archeology left the expansive retail space when plans to convert the structure into residences was announced.    
  photographs by the author