The 1905 Cross Chambers Building - 210 Fifth Avenue

In the first years following the end of the Civil War the family of S. V. Hoffman lived in the imposing residence at No. 210 Fifth Avenue, between 25th and 26th Streets.  Like his equally-wealthy neighbors, Hoffman lobbied against the concept of an "underground railway," or subway, that would rattle his quiet and refined neighborhood.  In 1870 he joined other millionaires like William B. Astor, A. T. Stewart and Peter Gilsey "against the scheme," as reported in The New York Herald.

The Hoffman mansion did get rattled some in 1876 when Delmonico's razed the two houses next door at Nos. 212 and 214 and erected its newest restaurant.  The arrival of the society restaurant and caterer did not affect the upscale tenor of the block, however. 

The handsome Hoffman residence sits next to Delmonico's in this undated photograph.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Nevertheless, the incursion of commerce into the refined neighborhood was close behind.  The Hoffman family threw in the towel in 1884.  Although they wisely retained possession of the valuable property, The Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported on June 7 "At No. 210 Fifth avenue, running through to 1130 Broadway, Mrs. G. R. Hoffman is to erect an eight-story store and flat costing $98,000."  The mention was rightfully listed under the heading "Costly Buildings Projected."   The price of construction would equal more than $2.5 million today.

The new structure contained apartments on the upper floors and a store at ground level.  The shop was home to Redfern dress makers, a favorite of actress Lillian Russell.

By the turn of the century the last of the wealthy homeowners had abandoned the immediate neighborhood.  Keeping up with the increasingly commercial transformation, the Hoffman family demolished its eight-story building in 1901 to replace it with a multi-use building.  They had already negotiated the details with the intended tenant.  On November 30, 1901 The Record & Guide reported that Dean Eugene A. Hoffman had leased "to the Mark W. Cross Co., for twenty years, a new 10-story building to be erected at No. 210 5th av. and extending to No. 1132 Broadway."

In April 1902 the site was cleared for construction.  The Delmonico building had recently been taken by the Cafe Martin.  That building would be demolished in 1912.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The architectural firm of John B. Snook & Sons was tasked with producing a four-story store for the London-based leather goods firm below seven floors of high-end apartments. 

 Construction had barely started when trouble ensued.  On April 2 The Morning Telegraph reported "The workman who are excavating for a new apartment house at 210 Fifth avenue adjoining the Cafe Martin, set fire to a lot of rubbish last night before going home.  The pile smoldered till half past seven when it broke out in a formidable  blaze."

Thick smoke wafted into the well-appointed dining rooms of the restaurant.  "The crowd of diners in Martin's took alarm from the smoke which drifted into the room, blackening the walls and half hiding the startled waiters.  Here was a fine beginning for panic."

But among the white-tied patrons was a police officer named Mulcahey.  The well-to-do cop, said the article, "always dresses for dinner, and always dines at the 'Del' corner."  He rose and cautioned the crowd "Peace, good people.  Keep your seats, I will protect you."  The Morning Telegraph continued "Before the majesty of a white shirted copper, alarm shrank away ashamed."  Murphy went onto Fifth Avenue where he went in an alarm.

The newspaper concluded, "Saved!"

Named the Cross Chambers building, No. 210 was completed before the end of the year.  The architects had turned to the popular Beaux Arts style, embellishing the marble facade with swirling French-style iron balconies, frothy cartouches and a two-story copper-clad dormer within the mansard.  The Fifth Avenue and Broadway facades were nearly identical.

The completed building soared above its neighbors.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Because Mark Cross held the lease for the entire building, it managed the upper floor apartments.  Below its advertisement in The Sunday Telegraph for pigskin handle umbrellas, ladies' kid gloves "of delicate texture," and stable furnishings (like a lash whip and hoof dressing) on November 1, 1903, the firm described the apartments:

There are at 210 Fifth Avenue, opposite Madison Square Park, apartments of 2, 4 and 6 rooms--of luxurious arrangements and unique design--where bachelors and private families can get all the comfort and privacy of a home--at a reasonable price.  French chef--meals served in rooms--maid service for ladies--excellent place for families living in other cities to locate, where rooms and property can be taken care of during absence.

This Mark Cross advertisement called the Cross Chambers building a monument.  The Sunday Telegraph, November 1, 1903 (copyright expired)

Among the early tenants of the upper floors was a Miss Clark, whose apartment doubled as her art studio.  On November 29, 1904 The Globe and Commercial Advertiser announced "Miss Clark will give an exhibition of ceramic art objects in her studio, in the Cross Chambers, 210 Fifth avenue, this week, the work having qualities of originality, and, at the same time, being unique and artistic."

If Miss Clark was still in residence two years later, much of her ceramic items might have been broken.  On December 5, 1906 The Evening Telegram ran the all caps headline "BROADWAY SKYSCRAPER SHAKEN BY EXPLOSION."  The Cross Chambers building was rocked by a "terrific explosion of gas" which blew out nearly all of the Broadway windows.

Few of the residential tenants were at home, although maids were temporarily trapped.  They managed to escape to the roof of Martin's Cafe.  The four floors occupied by Mark Cross, of course, were filled employees and patrons.  The article reported "A great burst of flame followed [the explosion] and a score of women and men on the shipping room floor became panic stricken.  Plastering and soot from the ceiling smothered them."  Fortunately, fire fighters were able to extinguish the blaze before too long and remarkably no one was seriously injured.

The Broadway facade is essentially identical to the Fifth Avenue design.

When Foster Milliken's wife, the former Louisa Ward, died in 1909, he moved into the Cross Chambers building.  He had been the president of the contracting firm Milliken Brothers; but retired from it that same year.  The firm's new president was Edward C. Wallace.

It seems that Milliken and Wallace shared more than a mutual title.  On March 28, 1911 Wallace's wife, Antoinette Knapp Wallace, divorced him in Philadelphia.  A month later, on April 22, she and Milliken were quietly married in City Hall in Jersey City.  To obtain their license the couple had had to answer questions on the application, one of which was how long they had contemplated marriage.  They filled in the blank "two weeks."

In the meantime Mark Cross catered to the carriage trade from the lower four floors.  In 1911 it offered its pigskin English Toilet Case for men.  It accommodated two "military brushes," a tooth powder box, a soap dish, a bone nail brush, and a toothbrush.  An advertisement touted it as being "very compact and complete, taking up very little room in a bag or trunk."  The $12.75 price tag would be about $350 today.

On February 21, 1914 The Record & Guide reported that Robert W. Goelet had selected Warren & Wetmore to design his ten-story store and office building on Fifth Avenue at 37th Street.  The article noted "The store and basement have already been leased to the Mark Cross Company."

The following year, in July, David A. Schulte, president of the Mutual-Profit Coupon Corporation, leased the Cross Chambers building.  The firm operated a chain of cigar stores.  Later that year, in August, Schulte sublet the residential floors.  The Record & Guide reported that the lessee "will alter the upper portion of the building, which is now composed of small apartments, into a loft building."

Puck, the humor magazine, took the sixth floor.  It was, perhaps, a hint of troubles.  In the 1890's the firm enjoyed a circulation of more than 90,000.  But it would not survive past World War I.

The editor's business card included the iconic Puck figure from its 1886 building at Lafayette and Houston Streets.

The chain of A. Schulte cigar stores was touted as the "largest independent retail cigar dealer in America."  It ran 34 shops in Manhattan alone.  But the ground floor store at No. 210 Fifth Avenue was higher-end.  It was deemed a "premium parlor."

The cigar store, however, was short-lived.  The first through sixth floors were leased for the Bundle Day Headquarters in 1915.  A year before, in July, a major financial crisis which began in London spread around the world.  Fearing a run on the banks, officials closed the New York Stock Exchange on July 31, 1914 and it would not open again until November 28.  The Financial Panic of 1914, nearly forgotten today, resulted in thousands of people out of work and desperate.

The Bundle Day Committee was formed by wealthy socialites with names like Speyer, Astor and Vanderbilt.  Citizens were urged to bundle up their unused clothing to be distributed to the needy.  An advertisement on February 3, 1915 read "Don't delay another minute.  Pick out your unused clothing now.  Put it to work.  Put it on the backs of the unemployed.  They need it.  You do not.  They are cold.  You are not.  They haven't clothing decent enough to let them even apply for a job.  You have all the clothing you need--and to spare."

A truck filled with clothing bundles unloads at the curb.  The original Beaux Arts entrance to the residential floors can be seen to the right.  from the collection of the Library of Congress

On February 6, two days after the event, The Sun reported "A well dressed woman ran into the Bundle Day headquarters at 210 Fifth avenue yesterday afternoon and asked the information clerk where the bundles of shoes were kept."

She explained that she had accidentally included "one good shoe" in her bundle.  She was sent to the fourth floor, "a room filled mostly with shoes."  The newspaper said "Just how many shoes there were couldn't be guessed, but there were so many that the woman lost heart."

The point of the article was to illustrate that between 500,000 and 1 million persons had sent in bundles of clothing.

Not all of the topmost floors had been converted to loft spaces.  On November 19, 1916 The Sun ran an article on the "newest feature of New York life."  It explained that many city dwellers had taken to the roofs, planting gardens in outdoor spaces connected to their apartments.  Included in them was Mrs. Charles B. Patterson.  The article noted "Mrs. Patterson is now having made over for her residence and studio the deck house on the roof of the Cross Chambers at 210 Fifth avenue, an eleven story building facing Madison Square."

World War I brought the American Ambulance in Italy offices, those of the the American Allied Ambulance, and the Food Embargo Committee to the building.  The Food Embargo, proposed by Brooklyn Congressman John J. Fitzgerald early in 1917, deprived Germany of food staples, like potatoes, by stopping shipments at their source and by naval blockade in Europe.  On February 3, 1917 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted "A protest mass meeting was held in Carnegie Hall last night, under the auspices of the Food Embargo Committee of 210 Fifth avenue."

Other tenants in 1917 included W. T. Smith & Son, Inc., carpet dealers; the Niles Normalizing Machine Co.; and Bull Publishing Company.  Like other businesses owned by German-Americans, Bull Publishing ran afoul of the United States Government that year.

Bull magazine ran a poem in its August 1917 issue entitled "The River of Fears."  It included the lines:

And truly 'twas fitting that one should weep

When our noble "boys" were sent like sheep

To the shambles or like shackled slaves

In fetters whose links are forged by knaves,

Far over the sea to fight 'gainst those

Who were not and never have been our foes.

The Government quickly deemed the poem a violation of the Espionage Act and censored the magazine.  Its irate managing editor fired off a letter to the editor of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle just days later, on August 15.  It said in part:

"'Bull' has been debarred from the mails, in violation of the Constitution of the United States...The right to free press is not only the right to print but the right to read, and in debarring 'Bull' the Administration had interfered with the rights of thousands around the country."

A variety of tenants filled the building after the war.  Bull Publishing was still here in 1919, the year that the Rivoli Waist Co. took part of the sixth floor.  The French American Fashion Publishing Company was looking for a "first class fashion crayon artist" in May of that year.

The Personal Phonograph Record Co. leased space around the same time.  On December 16, 1921 it announced a new feature, saying "A Phonograph Recording Laboratory has added a new department to their activities and can offer to musical artists a personal phonograph record of their own work for a nominal charge.  "$35 will cover recording and one dozen records."  That price would be about $491 today.

The building was renovated in 1954, adding a penthouse level, unseen from street level, and reintroducing apartments into the building--two each on the third and fourth floors, and mingled in with offices in the upper levels.  Those offices would be home, for the most part, to a few questionable businesses for several decades.

In 1963 the International Employments operated here, offering "guaranteed work" to unemployed persons nationwide for only a $10 fee mailed into the office.  And in July 1972 New York Magazine warned its readers about "Ritzy Rifters" in its Consumer Beware column.  Included in the list was Claudie Enterprises, Ltd, a mail-order company here.  

In December 1979 Marvin Barnes was arrested on 188 counts of grand larceny, forgery, and other offenses.  The New York Times explained "Mr. Barnes allegedly used fraudulent Social Security numbers to go with fraudulent names and is accused of having reported falsified incomes...from nine different addresses."  Federal agents said "The address most often used was 210 Fifth Avenue."

Of course legitimate offices and businesses operated here at the time.  In 1973 the Top Tile Store was in the ground floor, and The New York Age, a magazine headed by Adam Clayton Powell 3d, took space in 1974.  On April 21 that year The Times reported "The New York Age, a firebrand fighter of racial injustice that died in the nineteen fifties, its zeal spent, was born again Thursday with its demeanor changed but its aim primarily the same."

Former Olympian Charlie Mays had his office here, where he worked full time on establishing a permanent Black Athletes Hall of Fame.  He had founded the institution in 1972 and it was temporarily housed here.  

In December 1973 an underground nightclub, The 210 Club aka Harold's Loft opened in the building.  It was described by Steven Blush in his 2016 New York Rock: From the Rise of The Velvet Underground to the Fall of CBGB as "an infamously decadent weekly after-hours joint."  It closed in March 1975.

The former Cross Chambers building would have to endure several more years of shady occupants.  In 1984 one business chose not to identify itself in its advertisements in magazines like Black Enterprise.  It simply lured readers with ads like "Sell Money. Become a Loan Broker!" (the mailing address was Financial Planning, Dept. BE-210) or "Earn Steady Income operating your own Collection Agency."  (The mailing address for that one was Credit Network, Dept BE-701.)

In 1986 the Better  Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York set up a department to monitor mail-order companies.  In the first six months of operations it received more than 4,000 complaints, and among the five top companies listed was Favorite Fragrances of No. 210 Fifth Avenue.  Customers complained that they either never received the goods ordered, or that they were defective.

But as the 21st century neared, a renaissance in the Nomad neighborhood changed all that.  In 1996 Dewey's Flatiron was opened in the former Mark Cross space.  The two-story bar and restaurant would remain for 18 years, closing in 2014.  It was followed by Wagamama, a British-based Japanese food chain, still in the space today.

Although the storefront and entrances have been lost on the Fifth Avenue side, the unique Cross Chambers building remains wonderfully intact--a Beaux Arts beauty which, in several respects, anticipated the Art Nouveau buildings to come.

photographs by the author

The Pastene & Co. Bldg -- Nos. 152-154 Franklin Street

In the 1870s and '80s the Tribeca neighborhood around Franklin Street was widely known as the “dry-goods district.”  But by June 1, 1890, when real estate operator John T. Williams purchased the two brick “store and tenement” buildings at Nos. 152 and 152 Franklin Street, the “produce district” was engulfing the area.

Williams paid the estate of Julia A. Apgar $60,000 for the 51-foot wide property.  The price would translate to about $1.6 million in 2016.   Six days later the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide noted “We understand that Nos. 152 and 154 Franklin street…will be improved by the erection of an iron and brick building.”  And so it would be.

Williams commissioned the prolific architectural firm of John B. Snook Sons to design the new building.  Completed in 1891, the seven-story loft structure was similar many other Romanesque Revival buildings rising throughout the district.  Two six-story arches which embraced cast iron framed openings dominated the façade.  A false loggia at the top floor, created by stubby brick pilasters with terra cotta capitals, was topped by a sheet metal cornice.

Now painted green, the elaborately carved capital above the ground floor is actually brownstone.

As the building was nearing completion Eisner & Mendelson was operating at No. 6 Barclay Street.  They soon took over the entire Franklin Street structure.  Moritz Eisner and Joseph Mendelson had begun their wholesale drug and importing business in 1882 in Philadelphia.  By now they had moved their entire business to New York. 

In 1894 Charles Morris noted in his Makers of New York that “The business of this firm has grown until it is now large and extensive, with important interests in Europe, the house having an office in Berlin, Germany.”

Eisner & Mendelson imported and sold patent medicines, including Johann Hoff’s Malt Extract.  An 1893 advertisement claimed “a dozen bottles of it are equal in nutriment and tonic qualities to a cask of ale.”  Potential customers were warned “Beware of imitation, the Genuine must have the signature of ‘Johann Hoff’ on the neck of every bottle.”  It was a admonition that would later prove ironic.

The firm’s advertisements were accompanied by sketches, usually or musclemen surrounded by bottles or cases of the tonic symbolizing the vigor and strength the user would enjoy.

The above advertisement, this one part of a series, was typical of the Eisner & Mendelson's campaign.  New-York Tribune, April 21, 1894 (copyright expired)

The ongoing development of the neighborhood was evidenced in The New York Time’s reporting of the sale of Nos. 152-154 Franklin Street on September 30, 1894.  “Mr. Catlin’s [sic] purchase of the business property at 152 and 154 Franklin Street also represents an investment.  The vendor, Mr. John T. Williams, made a profit of $25,000 or more in the transaction, but the purchaser has obtained a bargain which the future will make none the less valuable.”

In the meantime, Eisner & Mendelson continued selling tonics and elixirs.  In 1897, in addition to Hoff’s Malt Extract, they were advertising Carlsbad Sprudel Salt and were the sole United States agents for Celestins Vichy water.  A Carlsbad Sprudel Salt advertisement that year promised “Since five centuries it has been acknowledge by the medical faculty to be the best and most effective mineral salt for all ailments of the liver, catarrh affections of the stomach, bile, bile pigment, gallstones, temporary and habitual constipation, &c.”

But the reputation and success of Eisner & Mendelson was soon to be threatened.

In 1895 the firm was sued by wholesale drug company Tarrant, the U.S. representative of Hamburg, Germany manufacturer Leopold Hoff, for counterfeiting Hoff’s Malt Extract.  And on April 5, 1895 Tarrant issued a warning to its customers which said in part “Our claim that the substitute, Hoff’s malt extract, sold by the Eisner-Mendelson company, is a domestic article is now acknowledge by them in a postal card issued yesterday, stating that their so-called Hoff’s extract is manufactured in Newark, N. J.”

Then in 1900 the widow of Andreas Saxlehner, the Hungarian bottler of the mineral water Hunyadi Matyas, sued Eisner & Mendelson for the same crime.   The firm had imitated the authentic bottles and labels.  Part of Mrs. Saxlehner’s suit alleged “their general appearance is such as to deceive the casual purchaser, and that such bottles and labels were evidently designed for the purpose of imposing the defendant’s waters upon the public as those of the plaintiff.”  The wronged widow sued for $30,000 damages and six years later was awarded $31,030.36.

The bad press and the hefty fines were possibly the reason that Eisner & Mendelson left Franklin Street.  Shortly after the 1906 verdict, the Western Union Telegraph Company had taken over the building as a storage facility. 

Disaster occurred at 4:10 on the morning of December 8, 1908.  Fire broke out on the first floor and by the time it was discovered was a roaring inferno.  The watchman, Thomas Townsend, was aroused by “two muffled explosions,” although nothing explosive was stored in the building.

The city had recently installed its “high pressure service” to certain fire hydrants and the Franklin Street fire would be its first test.  The New-York Tribune reported “It was the biggest fire in the city since the installation of the high pressure service, and so successfully was the fire fought by this means that it will probably mark the passing of the fire engine within a few years.”

Fifteen lines of hose poured 9,000 gallons of water per minute onto the blaze.  Despite the highly-touted success of the new system; newspapers described the building as a total loss; The New York Times saying it was “practically destroyed.”  Damage estimates to the building reached $250,000.

Although the building was essentially a burned out shell, the heavy masonry walls survived and Caplan rebuilt the interior.  On May 9, 1914 he signed a long-term lease for the entire building with P. Pastene & Co.    Importers of Italian groceries, the firm had been founded in 1874 by Peter Pastene.  Following his death in 1901 the operation was taken over by his son, Charles A. Pastene.

Pastene & Co. was ousted after another produce merchant, Neuman & Schwiers Co., purchased the structure from the Caplan Estate in August 1927.  The New York Times described the new owners as “wholesale dealer in imported and fancy groceries, who for years have been located at 18 Worth Street.”  Pastene & Co. had to pack up quickly to its new space in No. 131 Hudson Street.  “The buyers will secure possession of the property and move in the course of a few weeks,” advised The Times on August 11. 

After being in the wholesale grocery business for half a century, James S. Neuman died at his home on September 12, 1936 at the age of 64,  The firm continued on in the Franklin Street building for another two decades.

Then, in 1936, P. Pastene & Co. came home again.  On August 4, 1956 The New York Times reported "Pastene & Co., one of the oldest Italian wholesale grocery and importing concerns in the city, has purchased for occupancy the seven-story loft building…at 152 Franklin Street.  The company was a tenant in the building thirty years ago.”

Around 1990 Edmund Vincent Gillon photographed the building, showing a much more industrial street level.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Pastene & Co.’s prominent lettering above the entrance earned the building the unofficial name of The Pastene Building.  The firm operated from the building for another four decades.   Then in 1994, as the Tribeca area changed from produce distributors and warehouses to galleries, restaurants and trendy shops, the Franklin Street building was converted to loft apartments with a roof garden.

The renovations resulted in a handsomely-restored façade and architecturally sympathetic storefront.

photographs by the author

The 1916 Adele Kneeland House -- No. 154 East 71st Street

In 1871 real estate men Andrew F. Barry and Ira G. Lane were confident in the development of the Upper East Side—so much so that the offices of Barry & Lane were at No. 1138 Third Avenue, between 66^th and 67^th Streets.  That year they embarked on an ambitious string of seven speculative rowhouses stretching from No. 150 to 162 East 71^st Street.

Barry & Lane commissioned architect W. O’Gorman to design the buildings.  He, too, was busy in the area; and was working simultaneously on four rowhouses on the same block for C. Smith, three more for him on East 73^rd Street, and a tenement building for Haree & Smith on East 74^th Street.

The houses were intended for middle-class to upper-middle class owners.  Clad in brownstone the Italianate-style homes rose three stories over an English basement and were handsome, if not remarkable.  Barry & Lane put the completed homes on the market in 1872 for $24,500 each—about $450,000 today.

At the time Adele Kneeland was 16 years old.  Born in Hartford, Connecticut to the fabulously wealthy Charles Kneeland, Jr. and his wife Louise Taintor Kneeland, she was educated in private schools both in America and Europe.  The family summered at their sprawling estate, Fairfax, in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Adele’s father, who joined the family firm, Bogert & Kneeland, died in 1866 at only 36 years old.  When her grandfather died in 1881 she inherited a “substantial fortune,” including the summer estate in Lenox.  Single and wealthy she divided her time between Manhattan and Massachusetts.

By the first years of the 20^th century the Upper East Side neighborhood around Barry & Lane’s 71^st Street row had changed considerably.  Wealthy citizens infiltrated the previously middle-class blocks,  demolishing the old brownstones or heavily altering them.  Where rows of chocolate-colored carbon-copy houses once stood, the streets were now lined with sumptuous Edwardian mansions.

In 1915 Adele Kneeland purchased one of the Barry & Lane houses—No. 154 East 71^st Street.  She set the architectural firm of John B. Snook Sons to work redoing it.  On June 5 that year the Architectural Record & Builders’ Guide laid out the work the architects had before them.  “Build new front, extend walls, new 3-story and basement extension (rear), 1-story addition, remove and rebuild interior partitions, etc.”  The proposed cost for the renovation was $12,000 (around $269,000 in today’s dollars).

The result was a dignified five-story mansion in the neo-Georgian style—all the rage for upscale homeowners at the time.  Two doorways—the main entrance and the service entrance—flanked a matching window within the rusticated stone base.  Above, red brick was contrasted by the white stone that outlined the openings.  At the second floor French windows topped with fanlights created the focal point of the design.  Behind them the drawing room and dining room had 13-foot ceilings.

Adele kept herself busy with charitable pursuits.  She was Treasurer of the Down Town Day Nursery for years.  Its purpose was “to care for children between three weeks and six years of age of working mothers, chiefly office-cleaners while they are at work.”  The nursery took care of an average of 39 toddlers a day.

To ensure that she had control over who were her neighbors, Adele purchased the house next door at No. 156 when it became available.  And in May 1916 when Dr. Herbert B. Wilcox put his house on the market, directly behind Adele’s at No. 159 East 70^th Street, she bought that one too.  The New York Times remarked that she did so “to protect” her residence.

The Architectural League reported on Adele’s interiors in February 1918.  Saying hers was a “pleasing example of what the refined American desires in a breakfast room,” it added “Both the salon and living room are rich in color tones which harmonize perfectly, and the assemblage of well chosen furnishings is a good exponent of the ‘fitness of things.’”

Adele’s sister, Alice, had married Henry Whitney Munroe at the Lenox estate on October 1, 1885.  He was son of John Munroe, founder of the banking house of Munroe & Co.  The couple had three children, George, Louise and John and by the time the Architectural League complimented Adele’s interiors, the youngest, John, was 26 years old.  On December 5, 1920 Henry Whitney Munroe died on the day after his 61^st birthday.  And Adele’s solitary life on East 71^st Street would soon change.

Before then, however, Adele went off to Europe for the 1921-22 winter season and loaned her house to the elderly John Munroe and his wife; Alice’s parents-in-law.  But not long after her return Alice and her children would move in.  In 1927 Adele Kneeland brought John B. Snook Sons back to add a sixth story to the house—perhaps in reaction to what she perceived as overcrowding.

The New York financial circle was no doubt shocked when young Henry Munroe filed for bankruptcy in 1933.  Calling him a “member of old family of bankers,” The New York Times noted that John Munroe & Co. “was founded in 1837, and its Paris office had branches in Pau and in Cannes, having done business in France since 1851.”  Apparently embarrassed by the failure, Henry was less than forthright in the petition filed in the United States District Court.  “He described himself as a student living at 154 East Seventy-first Street,” said The Times. 

On April 18, 1934 niece Louise was married to author Philip Ainsworth Means in the Church of the Resurrection on East 74^th Street.  The New York Times reported “The ceremony was followed by a reception at the New York home of the bride’s mother, 154 East Seventy-first Street.”

By 1936 Adele seems to have been living alone in the house again.  That winter she leased the house to Elbridge Gerry Greene.  She would never pass another winter in the 71^st Street house.  The following year on the morning of September 16, 1937, the 81-year old died in her summer estate, Fairlawn. 

The family took little time in making over Adele Kneeland’s properties.  Within two years Fairfax was leveled.  Her formal gardens there had won national acclaim and The New York Times noted “Her terraced garden was the scene of many important society events.” 

Nos. 156 East 71^st Street and No. 159 East 70^th Street were “remodeled by her heirs and executors into apartments,” said The Times later; and on July 20, 1941 the newspaper reported on the conversion of Adele’s house into ten apartment suites as well.

“The apartments range in size from one room, bath and kitchenette to four rooms and two baths.  Most of them have wood-burning fireplaces.  The rear rooms overlook the garden.”  The report said that “The original architectural details of the house, most of which have been retained in the process of remodeling, show the French influence, particularly in the mantels and panel moulding.”

Interestingly, the architectural firm chosen for the conversion was Adele’s favorite—John B. Snook Sons.  It is perhaps this choice that resulted in the sympathetic interior alterations.  Subsequent conversions would occur—one in 1970 when the top two floors were merged into a single duplex; and, according to long-term resident Michael Carter, two doctors' offices were created on the first two floors around 1982.

"Not long after that the duplex on the top two floors was renovated and what was a rear outdoor terrace on the 5th floor became a two floor glass solarium," according to Carter.  That design was done by Jay Spectre in concert with Geoffrey Bradfield, he said.

Renovations continued when, a few years later, the third floor front studio was combined with the rear one-bedroom to form a single apartment.  It is currently home to Jack Kilgore & Co. (Kilgore Gallery) which deals in old master paintings.

The final renovation, 2009 resulted in a triplex on the top floors.  Today Adele Kneeland’s impressive make-over of an unremarkable 1871 brownstone still stands out on the East 71^st Street block as it did in 1916.

photographs taken by the author