The Lost Marianna Ogden Mansion - 266 Madison Avenue

The Architectural Record, July 1896 (copyright expired)

Born in Walton, New York on June 15, 1805, William Butler Ogden would have a varied and impressive life.  Upon his father's death he took over the running of the family real estate business while still a teenager.  At the age of 30 he was elected to the New York State Assembly; but following his one-year term went west to Chicago.  In 1838 he became that frontier town's first mayor.

Ogden was highly instrumental in connecting Chicago to the East, promoting and investing in the Illinois and Michigan Canal; then founding the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad.  He later become president of the Union Pacific Railroad which linked Chicago to the West coast.

Following the Civil War Ogden purchased an estate in New York as a second home.  Ogden family historian Laura Wheeler explained in 1907 "Mr. Ogden's business interests causing him to spend so much time in New York, he determined upon possessing an eastern residence.  This was consummated in the spring of 1866 when he purchased of J. Kennedy Smyth a handsome Gothic villa called 'Boscobel' at Fordham Heights, Westchester Co., N.Y. and adjoining High Bridge."  The High Bridge, a graceful Roman style aqueduct designed by James Renwick, Jr. and completed in 1848, was a popular destination for weekend promenades with its stunning river views and natural landscape.

Ogden added to the property, extending it to ten acres, landscaped it and added a conservatory, stables and greenhouses.  The fruit orchards and flowerbeds at his Chicago estate, Ogden Grove, were duplicated.  Laura Wheeler wrote "The many gabled house is of blue-stone, with Ohio freestone trimmings, and surrounded by broad verandas, from which well-shaven lawns slope down the hill."

Frequent guests at both Villa Boscobel and Ogden Grove were Ogden's close friend, John Arnot, his wife Harriet, and their grown children John, Jr. and Marianna.   Ogden was a life-long bachelor and when there, Marianna often acted as hostess to his other guests (like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Samuel J. Tilden).

Not long after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Ogden became "weary of business," according to Wheeler, and "retired to 'Boscobel' to spend the remaining years of his life, and enjoy a well-earned repose."  Now in his early 70's, the bachelor finally turned his focus from business to romance.

On February 9, 1875 he married Marianna Tuttle Arnot.  The 50-year-old bride was 20 years younger than the groom.  Theirs would be a short marriage.  At 2:00 on the morning of August 3, 1877, William Butler Ogden died at Villa Boscobel.  The Chicago Inter Ocean reported "His physicians informed him his death was at hand--not more than a few hours.  The dying man received the last sacrament of the Church, and quietly awaited his end."

Marianna lived on in Villa Boscobel.  In 1888 she erected the Arnot-Ogden Memorial Hospital in Elmira, New York, where she was born, as a memorial to her father and her late husband.  

The wealthy dowager was not sequestered from society in her suburban estate.  She annually leased a cottage in Newport, for instance.  

But then in 1893 she stepped into the Manhattan limelight.  Marianna purchased the vintage home of Dr. Cornelius R. Agnew at the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and 39th Street and hired the Boston firm of Peabody & Stearns to design an up-to-date replacement.

Completed in 1894, its entrance was on 39th Street above a sideways stoop.  A deep light moat which provided light to the basement was protected by a solid stone wall.  The rusticated limestone base was sparsely decorated, with only a few carvings on the understated entrance.  The second and third floors were clad in brick and trimmed in stone.  A Palladian window on the Madison Avenue side boasted Renaissance carvings and a deeply-recessed shell within the arch.  In stark contrast to the 18th century inspired lower floors, the top floor behind a handsome stone balustrade took the form of a French mansard.

The firm of Davis, Reid & Alexander had handled the interior decorations.  The Real Estate Record & Guide reported on November 24 "One of the details especially noticeable is the introduction of Venetian glass mosaic for mantle facings."

The Architectural Record called the house "most original" and "certainly quite typical of the good modern house of our Eastern cities."

Marianna's decision to built in the city was most likely prompted by the erection of the Washington Bridge.  Opened on December 1, 1888 it connected Manhattan and The Bronx at 181st Street.  Suddenly Villa Boscobel was less tranquil and bucolic.

And the precise location may have been prompted by its proximity to the home of her sister, Fannie, who was married to millionaire George G. Haven.  The Haven family lived at Nos. 24-26 East 39th Street, essentially across the avenue from Marianna's new home.

The Madison Avenue mansion, like Villa Boscobel had been, was closed late every spring as Marianna traveled to her homes at Newport and Lenox.  She was at Newport on September 16, 1900 when the New-York Tribune reported "Mr. and Mrs. George Griswold Haven have deferred their departure for Lenox owing to the illness of Mrs. Haven's sister, Mrs. William B. Ogden, who is seriously sick at her cottage."

About three weeks later, on October 7, the newspaper reported "Mrs. William B. Ogden, who has been quite ill here for some weeks, was able to return to her New-York residence this week, travelling in a special car."

Marianna arrived in Lenox from Newport around September 14, 1904.  After taking a short drive on the 27th, she complained of trouble breathing.  The New-York Tribune wrote "A physician was summoned and her sister, Mrs. George Griswold Haven, was called."  The following morning she seemed to have rallied.  But then, "as Mrs. Ogden was about to take some nourishment, she suddenly expired."  The 84-year-old had suffered a heart attack.

In reporting her death The New York Times mentioned "After Washington Bridge was opened Mrs. Ogden lived but little at Boscobel, preferring her residence at 266 Madison Avenue."  

The bulk of her estimated $20 million estate was left to Fannie.  But, possibly because she anticipated that her favorite niece, Marion Haven, would soon marry, she left the Madison Avenue mansion to her.   On November 2 the New-York Tribune reported "Mr. and Mrs. George G. Haven and Miss Marion Haven arrived in town from Lenox yesterday, and are at Mrs. William B. Ogden's house."

Marion Arnot Haven's engagement to Forsyth Wickes was announced not long after, on January 21, 1905.  The ceremony in St. Bartholomew's Church took place on April 27.  It was a social event.  The New York Times reported "The wedding was one of the most largely attended of the year, over 1,000 invitations having been issued for the church ceremony."  The Sun rather coarsely added that Marian "was the richest bride of the season."

The newlyweds spent two months at Tuxedo, New York, then sailed for Europe for the summer.  The New York Times advised "next Winter they will occupy the house at 266 Madison Avenue, inherited by Mrs. Wickes from her aunt, Mrs. W. B. Ogden."

The long honeymoon was advantageous, since the New-York Tribune advised on March 16 that the mansion "will be entirely refurnished and redecorated and will probably not be ready for the young people until the autumn."

Forsyth Wickes had spent much of his youth in France.  He had graduated from Yale in 1898 and Columbia Law School two years later.  He would become senior partner in the legal firm of Wickes, Riddell, Bloomer, Jacobi and Mcguire.

When the newlyweds moved in, as seen in this 1905 photograph, nothing about the mansion had changed outside.  The American Architect and Building News, April 22, 1905 (copyright expired)

The Wickes' social rounds in Lenox, Newport and Manhattan were brought to a halt by World War I.  Forsyth enlisted in the U. S. Army in the summer of 1917 and became a captain in the Infantry later that year.  Before the end of the year he was deployed to France.  Following the Armistice he was sent home in December 1918 and returned to civilian life the following month.   He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the French Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre.

A cultured and avid collector of 18th century French paintings and porcelain, he filled the Madison Avenue house with treasures.  Decades later his collection was listed among the 26 "most outstanding" in the world.

But by the time Forsyth returned from the war, the Madison Avenue neighborhood was noticeably changing from an upscale residential enclave to a commercial thoroughfare.  On November 15, 1919 the Record & Guide reported "The Forsyth Wickes residence a four story building at 266 Madison av...with a two-story stable in the rear has been leased for twenty-one years for business purposes."  The lease came with a $13,000 per year rent--just under $190,000 today.  The deal was possible only because, as pointed out by the New-York Tribune, "The house is outside the Murray Hill restricted zone."

Amazingly, however, nothing was changed to the exterior of the mansion.  It retained the appearance of a private residence while firms like Roberts & Thompson, silk merchants, and the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce operated from within.

In 1923 there was little hint that the former mansion was anything but a residence.  On 39th Street is Marianna Ogden's former stable.  photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

Despite the 21-year lease, the once-elegant home was doomed.  It was demolished in 1923 to be replaced by the 19-story 266-272 Madison Avenue.

The Lost Union League Clubhouse -- 5th Ave and 39th St

When this photograph was taken in 1898 traffic was non-existent on Fifth Avenue -- photograph by Arthur Vitols, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York 

In 1876, only a few blocks north of the Astor mansions, Dickel’s Riding Academy sat at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 39^th Street.  When James Gordon Bennett, Jr. returned from England that year he brought back a newly-found affection for polo.  He soon organized indoor polo games in the Academy.  But the riding academy would not last many years longer on the site.  

Over a decade earlier, the Union Club was the most exclusive men’s club in Manhattan, if not the nation.  But trouble arose over a single member, Judah P. Benjamin.  When the War of Rebellion broke out, Benjamin accepted the post of Confederate Attorney General, and later became Secretary of War of the Southern Confederacy.  The New-York Tribune later explained “He was in the Southern States with which we had no communication; to prevent his name from being stricken from the roll of members for non-payment of dues three members, Augustus Schell, Samuel Barlow and William Travers, paid the amount due the club and retained Benjamin’s name on the list of members in good standing.”

The newspaper said, “This act of friendship for a rebel in arms produced great indignation, and the contributors to the Benjamin dues fund were severely and unsparingly criticised.”  In fact, the heated differences between the pro- and anti-Benjamin factions were such that repeated threats of duels arose—although none came to pass.  The great irony, of course, was the name of the club itself—The Union.

The rift was resolved when 70 members resigned and formed a new club, The Union League Club.  “The only requisite for membership, besides unblemished reputation, should be an uncompromising and unconditional loyalty to Nation and a complete subordination thereto of all other political ideas,” said the New-York Tribune.

Perhaps to make its disdain of the Union Club clear, within 15 days of its organization on February 6 1863 the Union League Club raised a regiment of black troops.  “After the presentation of the colors the troops started for the wharf where they were to embark for Florida, and 350 members of the Union League marched at the head of the column,” reported the Tribune.

The club’s ardent patriotism would remain a vital element throughout the decades.  Starting out in rented rooms, it moved to the former Leonard Jerome mansion on Madison Square in 1868.  Within a decade the club was looking for a new headquarters.  It would be the end of the line for Dickel’s Riding Academy.

In 1879, the Union League Club held a competition for the design of a clubhouse appropriate for one of the wealthiest and most exclusive clubs in the city.  The commission went to Peabody & Stearns.  By February 1881, the building that replaced the old riding academy was nearly completed and no detail had been overlooked.  On February 3, the Gorham Manufacturing Company announced that the silver service for the club was on exhibition in its rooms.  A day later the New-York Tribune commented on it.

Nearly 700 pieces of silver plate have been completed recently by the Gorham Manufacturing Company for the new house of the Union League Club…The material is a heavy silver plating upon hard metal.  The same design, which is remarkable for its simplicity, is followed throughout.  

The newspaper noted that instead of the shiny, polished finish expected on most tables, the Union League Club silver had “what is called a satin finish, giving a richer appearance than the ordinary polished shining silverware.”  The article listed “soup tureen; large plates with covers, for fish, game and roasts; tea, coffee and chocolate pots, and receptacles for butter, sugar and condiments.”

The expected date for the clubhouse opening was February 22, but a day after that the New-York Tribune noted that work was not yet completed.  Although the construction was done, 

...the building is overrun with joiners, finishers and varnishers, who are putting on the last touches.  The furnishers and upholsterers are already in the building, and a large part of the furniture of the club has been placed in the rooms.  Yesterday the heavy curtains were being hung in the library.  The shelves were ready for the books, and much of the furniture was in the room.  The billiard tables were in the billiard room, but were unpacked.  

Most of the rooms were in the same condition—just needing unpacking and decorating.  “The stained glass has not yet been placed in the sashes of the window at the head of the first landing of the main stairway, but it is in readiness.”  The newspaper now said that “unless something unforeseen happens,” the clubhouse would be ready in a few days.

Harper's Weekly published sketches of the Library and Dining Room in February 1881 (copyright expired)

Finally, on March 5, 1881 the club opened its doors.  The New-York Tribune reported, “The general room and private rooms were taxed to their utmost capacity, and the servants were continually running to and fro to supply the wants of the guests.”

There was no formal reception, but the open house lasted well into the night.  The young bachelor members found the view onto Fifth Avenue stimulating—due to the parade of feminine beauty.  “The windows fronting Fifth-ave. were occupied during the afternoon by the younger members, who received many bows and smiles of recognition from ladies on the sidewalks.”

Guests assemble in the lavish entrance hall during the reception for the Pan-American Delegates in 1889 -- Harper's Weekly, December 1889 (copyright expired)

The newspaper commented on the interior spaces, designed by Louis Tiffany, John LaFarge and Franklin Smith.  “The interior presented a gorgeous spectacle in the evening.  All the lights were burning.  The library, billiard hall and numerous reading and sitting-rooms were much admired and closely inspected.”  On the walls hung about 100 portraits of “men of eminence” painted by well-known artists.  The art collection included bronze and marble busts and statues, engravings and oil paintings. 

Peabody & Stearns had created a $400,000 hulking pile of brick and brownstone born of the unexpected marriage of Italian Renaissance and Queen Anne.  Variously shaped gables and chimneys poked through the high hipped roof, while balconies, pilasters, columns and carved panels created a visual overload.

Newspapers called the new building “impressive” and “greatly admired.”  The Sun said, “The building itself is  in every way worthy of so costly a site.  There are few more luxurious clubhouses in the world.”  Century Magazine was a bit slower to applaud.  In March 1882 it wrote, “The Union League Club House (Fifth Avenue, New York) has, it is hardly fanciful to say, the qualities of its defects.  The latter have been frequently pointed out in detail since the completion of the building, but so far as they strike the ordinary eye, they may be pretty sufficiently summed up in saying that the edifice seems an architectural negation of repose.”

A turn-of-the-century postcard provides a glimpse at the contrast in materials.

The magazine stressed that “repose” was an important quality of monumental architecture.  And despite that fact that the critic felt that the Union League Club had an “absence of architectural dignity as a prominent element;” it found Peabody & Stearns’ fanciful approach a bit refreshing.  He admitted that there was “a certain animation and sprightliness, which in themselves are by no means displeasing.”

Nevertheless, he summed up his evaluation sarcastically.  Any one “who has reached it after a walk of five miles up Broadway from the Battery… may be able cordially to admire only its large red mass and the unusual circumstance that it has a visible, instead of merely an inferable, roof.”

Not forgetting its roots, on April 17, 1890 the Union League Club gave a glittering reception for General William Tecumseh Sherman.  The Union general had just turned 70 years old.

Fifth Avenue Events, published in 1916, remembered the event.  

The club-house was beautifully decorated.  American flags bedecked the entrance lobby and main stairway; everywhere were streamers, banners and festoons of bunting; before the library windows were banks of flowers, and ferns and geraniums covered the mantel.  Red, white, and blue flowers were banked before the stage, which was draped with the Stars and Stripes.  A portrait of General Sherman in uniform, painted by Daniel Huntington in 1875, occupied a place of honor, draped with flags and a victor’s wreath.

The importance of the event was evidenced by some of the guests: Secretary of the Interior John W. Nobel, Vice President Levi P. Morton, senators, generals and foreign diplomats from Russia, Chili, Brazil and Peru.

The Sherman reception was but one of many held for men of importance.  On February 10, 1913, The Sun said, “Its receptions and banquets have been famous for half a century, and among its guests of honor have been some of the most prominent men in the history of their day.  Beginning with the name of Abraham Lincoln, the list embraces hundreds.”  The newspaper listed names like General U. S. Grant, Major-General Philip H. Sheridan, Edward M. Stanton, Rutherford B. Hayes, James G. Blaine, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Prince Henry of Prussia and many others.

On June 21, 1900, Governor Theodore Roosevelt arrived in New York City from Philadelphia where his name was presented as running mate for William McKinley.  Reporters thronged around him as he stepped off the train.

“Please don’t ask me any questions.  I have nothing to say, absolutely nothing upon any subject,” he announced.  When asked about his plans, he replied “My plans as yet are not fixed very far ahead.  Tonight I shall stay at the Union League Club and tomorrow I intend to go to Oyster Bay, where I will rest for a few days.”

No reporters would get through the Union League Club doors to accost the esteemed politician.

Ever-patriotic, the Union League Club is decked out for McKinley and Hobard in 1896 photograph by Robt. L. Bracklow from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York 

The tradition of supporting black soldiers continued into the 20^th century.  When the United States entered World War I, the Buffaloes—a regiment composed entirely of black soldiers—prepared to fight.  On March 24, 1918, the New-York Tribune reported that the regiment, “marched up Fifth Avenue yesterday afternoon to the stirring strains of ‘Dixie’ and received its colors, the gift of the Union League Club, from the hand of Governor Whitman.  Since ‘Dixie’ first was a tune to live or die by the Union League Club has presented the stands of colors to negro regiments, and in times less stressful than these those regiments have made enviable records.”

A decade later, as the Great Depression cast a pall over the country, the Fifth Avenue neighborhood around the Union League Club had been engulfed by business buildings.  On August 28, 1929 the club announced its plans to erect a $1 million clubhouse on Park Avenue at 37^th Street.

Two years later, on January 24, 1931, the clubhouse closed its doors.  The New York Times remarked the following day on the changes along the avenue.  

The empty windows now look down on an avenue completely changed during the fifty years the club has maintained its position as one of the city’s landmarks.  Quiet homes and the horse-drawn, rubber-tired traffic are gone…Traffic snarls stayed downtown on Fulton and neighboring streets.  Shrill whistles of the ‘police control’ did not pierce the ears of club members.  Bearded young men with stove pipe hats and congress gaiters escorted young ladies with enormous bustles and trailing skirts on strolls down Fifth Avenue.  That era of club life and observation has become history.

In 1931 the club was vacant.  Traffic has increased.  photograph by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York 

Plans were filed soon after for the erection of a 47-story office building on the site.  The grand clubhouse sat empty and silent for a year—until 1:00 in the morning on January 26, 1932.  Somehow a fire started in the basement.  Within an hour and a half, “the entire structure was a raging furnace that seemingly defied the efforts of a small army of firemen to put it out,” reported The New York Times.

The newspaper said, “Among the 300 spectators who gathered to watch the destruction of the historic old Fifth Avenue building were a handful of elderly gentlemen who are members of the club that was founded Feb 6, 1863.”

By morning the Union League Clubhouse was a gutted shell.  On its site today stands a soaring black glass office tower.  That the monumental and quirky clubhouse stood here for half a century is generally forgotten.

photograph by the author

The 1893 Chas. L. Colby House -- No. 8 East 69th Street

photo by Alice Lum

In the spring of 1890 Charles L. Colby was one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in New York City.   A close friend of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., he oversaw his family’s extensive railroad interests and sat on the board of directors of the Northern Pacific Railroad among others.

Colby set out that year to erect a new, impressive mansion—a reflection of his status in the social and industrial world.  On May 24, 1890 the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide announced that “Mrs. Robert L. Stuart has sold to Charles L. Colby the lot… on the south side of 69^th Street, 175 feet east of 5^th Avenue, for $40,000.  Mr. Colby has also purchased from Waldemar Caspary the lot, 30x100, adjoining the above, on private terms.  Mr. Colby will erect a 55-foot front house on these lots.”

To design his exceptionally wide residence Colby commissioned the Boston architectural firm of Peabody & Stearns.    Completed in 1893 the limestone-clad mansion relied on restrained decoration—quoins, a rusticated parlor floor, subtle carvings around windows and band courses, and a handsome carved balustrade protecting the English basement—to produce a dignified presence.

It is unclear whether the adjoining lot purchased by Colby was to the rear or to the side; however on May 13, 1894 John J. Emery acquired the two lots directly behind the Colby house.  Peabody & Stearns designed a nearly mirror image mansion for the real estate tycoon—a social and architectural surprise in the gilded age when competition ran high.

Photo by Alice Lum

In 1895, two years after the Colbys moved into their new home, James Ambercrombie Burden, Jr. married Florence Adele Sloane in one of the most important social weddings of the year.  Florence was the daughter of carpet manufacturer William D. Sloane and the great-granddaughter of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.   Burden’s family fortune was made in the iron industry, and at the time of the wedding his income was over $1 million a year.

Sloane promised the couple a new mansion, built on Carnegie land along East 91^st Street.  But in the meantime they needed an appropriate place to live.

By 1897 the Colbys had moved across the street to No. 3 East 69^th Street and the following year the Burdens were in No. 8.   Their residency would be a short one, and on November 15, 1901 The New York Times reported that “The residence of J. A. Burden, Jr., 8 East Sixty-ninth Street, a four-story stone-front dwelling , has been sold…The house is one of the finest in the upper Fifth Avenue section.”  The agent “would not make public yesterday the price paid for the property or the name of the buyer.”

The beans were soon spilled when The Lafayette Weekly reported that James A. Gayley “purchased for his family residence the handsome house occupied by J. A. Burden, Jr.”   Gayley had just been named vice-president of the United States Steel Corporation.

Gayley had started out in the iron industry as a chemical engineer and inventor.   When he joined the Carnegie Steel Company as a manager, he became known as one of “Carnegie’s boys.”  The fortunes of the members of that inner circle, according to The New York Times, “were multiplied manyfold when that company became the nucleus of the United States Steel Corporation.”

1907 would be a triumphant social year for the Gayley family—or at least it would seem so to New York society.   In February the house was the scene of a brilliant cotillion for debutante daughter Agnes Malcolm Gayley.  “The Gayley home, 8 East Sixty-ninth Street,” reported The Times, “is so arranged that the ground floor can be thrown practically into one room.  This was done last night.  After taking off their wraps, the guests descended the main stairway to the large foyer hall, where they were received by Mrs. Gayley and her daughter.”  The glittering party was attended by the society’s most elite, including names like Fish, Schuyler, Schiffelin, de Peyster, Fairfax and Roosevelt.

The same year, at noon on November 16, the house was the setting for the marriage of Agnes’s older sister, Mary,  to Count Giulio Senni, son of the Count and Countess Vincenzo Senni of Rome.  A breakfast and reception followed the ceremony.  It would seem that the Gayleys’ lives had reached perfection.

But behind the veil of cotillions and receptions things were not going smoothly in the Gayley household.   A year later, in November 1908, things came to a head.  Julia Gayley left the mansion on East 69^th Street and moved into the Colony Club where she was a member.  Soon afterwards she took a suite of rooms in an apartment house at No. 20 Fifth Avenue.  At the same time, James Gayley moved into the Hotel Savoy.  The cavernous residence that had been the scene, as The Times put it “on many occasions, of brilliant functions,” was now occupied only by servants.

In, perhaps, a move to avoid scandal, James Gayley announced his retirement from the United States Steel Corporation that same month.   President W. E. Corey explained that “the sole reason for the resignation was Mr. Gayley’s desire to retire from business.”

In January 19, 1909 The Sun reported that Patrick A. Valentine had purchased the Gayley house.   Seven months later, on August 10, Gayley remitted to the press that the separation “is likely to result in divorce proceedings.”

Patrick Valentine had been the long time partner and closest friend of Philip D. Armour, Jr. in the Chicago-based firm Armour & Company.   The fabulously wealthy Armour had married Mary Lester on November 7, 1889 and three years later he unexpectedly died.    Left alone with two young boys and $8 million, Mary turned to Patrick Valentine—now President of Armour & Co.--for financial advice.  A Chicago newspaper soon reported “Their business relations brought them frequently together and eventually she announced their engagement.”

The couple moved to New York, were married in the Hotel Netherland, and after a tour of Europe began life at No. 8 East 69^th Street.  The house cost Valentine $550,000; nearly $10 million today.

In addition to the city house the Valentines maintained two summer estates, a lodge in Oconomawoc, Wisconsin and a sprawling home in Southampton, Long Island.    Only seven years later, however, Patrick contracted Bright’s disease.  After an illness of five months, the 55-year old died on August 21, 1916.  Although his 13-year old son, Patrick Anderson Valentine, inherited two-thirds of the substantial estate, Mary had her own fortune to fall back on.

Mary Lester Armour Valentine remained in the 69^th Street mansion and was notable in social functions and charities.    In 1919 her youngest son, Lester, married Leola Stanton.   Philip was already living in Chicago, running the family business; so Mary lived on in the cavernous residence alone with her servants.

The house was the scene of the marriage of Mary’s brother, Charles, on Valentine’s Day 1920.  The New-York Tribune noted that “A. P. D. De Coster played the organ which is built in the house.” 

Mary also hosted a series of talks on the theater here.  One, given by Emma Mills in January 1922, was on “Unusual Productions in the Theater” and included the Moscow Bat Theater and the Theater Guild production, “He the One Who Gets Slapped.”

The indomitable Mary Armour Valentine lived on until the age of 95, dying in 1965.  Her home for decades was purchased by the Swedish Government in 1954.  The New York Times announced plans on June 5 to alter the house “for a Swedish cultural center.”  A year later Swedish Ambassador to the United States, Erik Boheman officially opened “The Swedish Building.”

photo http://www.columbuscitizensfd.org/about-us/foundation-townhouse.html

In 1967 when the Swedish Consul General sought more modern facilities for the Consulate, the house was acquired by the Columbus Citizens Foundation to house its offices and functions.  The Foundation sponsors the annual Columbus Day Parade, exhibitions and other events to aid in the education of Italian-American students.

photo http://www.columbuscitizensfd.org/about-us/foundation-townhouse.html

Nearly 120 years after its completion, the mansion has managed to elude being divided into apartments or demolished.    Little has changed in the broad limestone house with its long list of stories.

The John J. Emery House -- No. 5 East 68th Street

photo by Alice Lum

John J. Emery was born in England—far from New York City—in 1838.   When he was still a boy, his parents immigrated to the developing Midwest, settling in Cincinnati, where opportunities were limitless.    They purchased property and began land development.

With his brother, Thomas, young John followed his parents' lead and entered the real estate field with vigor, establishing Thos. Emery's Sons, Inc.    The brothers enjoyed shared success and their fortunes soared.   By 1892 they had moved to New York City and, according to The New York Times, John himself owned 2,00 buildings in Cincinnati, a hotel and two theaters at the time. 


In 1892 John, aged 54, married the 18 year old Lela Alexander, the daughter of U.S. Army surgeon, Charles T. Alexander who would achieve the rank of Brigadier General.   The new Mrs. Emery had been born in a U.S. Army fort in the Indian Territories.   Theirs was a socially prominent wedding and the Emerys would produce three daughters and two sons.

John and Lela Emery would enter East Coast society by constructing two mansions—a Manhattan residence and the socially-required summer cottage.    Architect Bruce Price was commissioned in 1893 to design The Turrets—a massive granite summer house on Mount Desert Island in the exclusive Bar Harbor, Maine, community.  Costing $100,000—about $2 million today--it would take two years to complete and was among the grandest of the Bar Harbor retreats.

With that taken care of, John Emery turned his attention to Manhattan.  On May 13, 1894 the New York Tribune reported that he had purchased two lots from Dr. C. M. Bell on the north side of 62^nd Street, 200 feet east of 5^th Avenue, for $140,000.  “This is said to be the highest price paid for lots in this part of the city,” the newspaper said.

Emery had chosen well.  The neighborhood off Central Park had already begun filling with the marble and limestone mansions of New York’s wealthiest citizens as they moved north away from encroaching commerce.    The real estate titan chose Boston architects Peabody & Stearns to design the house.   The firm was responsible for a number of Newport estates, including Rough Point and Rockhurst.    The firm did not struggle with the design.  In 1893 it had completed the mansion of railroad tycoon Charles L. Colby directly behind the property at No. 8 East 69^th Street.  The back-to-back mansions would be near mirror images of one another—an architectural and social oddity at a time when one-upmanship was paramount.

Back-to-back with the Emery House was No. 8 East 69th Street--a near twin -- photo by Alice Lum

A year after The Turrets was completed, the family moved into No. 5 East 68^th Street.   The mansion announced to New York Society that Mr. and Mrs. John Emery had arrived.  The immense limestone home rose four stories above a deep English basement.    A deep light moat was surrounded by a solid stone wall that kept passersby at a comfortable distance.  The western three bays bowed out, somewhat crowding the Corinthian entrance portico.   The stocky proportions would cause the AIA Guide to New York City to call it, decades later, “bloated.”

The portico was lavished with intricate carving -- photo by Alice Lum

Like the homes of other millionaires of the period, rooms of the house were imported from historic European structures.   Among these was a handsome Louis XVI room removed from a 19^th century hotel on the Avenue de Trouville in Paris.

John and Lela Emery entered New York and Bar Harbor society at full swing.   Lela quickly became a consistant entry in the society pages, hosting dinners, dances and teas.   A decade of magnificent entertainments would end sadly in the summer of 1908.   The Bar Harbor season started out normally for the Emerys.  On July 12 the New-York Tribune reported that “The first reception of magnitude occurred Saturday at the Turrets, the cottage of Mr. and Mrs. John J. Emery of New York.  Mr. and Mrs. Emery received from 5 to 7, and the greater part of the summer colony here was present.”  Lela had a band set up on the lawn playing “patriotic airs and popular music.”

Six days later twenty privileged youngsters were entertained at a birthday party for one of the Emery children.   But soon afterwards, the 70-year old John became ill.    Pneumonia set in, and on August 22 the New-York Tribune reported that he was “seriously ill with pleurisy.”   He temporarily appeared that to improve; then on September 4 he relapsed.  Early in the morning of the following day he died in The Turrets.

John J. Emery left his wife a fortune of about $40 million.    His funeral was held in Cincinnati and, after the expected period of mourning, the family continued its social functions on East 68^th Street and Bar Harbor.  Then in 1911 New York society’s attention was captured when Lela Emery announced she would remarry.

photo by Alice Lum

On July 1, 1912 in St. Bartholomew’s Chapel on Madison Avenue her marriage to the Honorable Alfred Anson “took place very quietly,” said The New York Times.  Anson and his best man, Lord Dalhousie, had arrived a few days earlier on the same steamer.  Unlike Lela’s first wedding, the ceremony was unquestionably understated.  There was no wedding announcement and she wore a “simple traveling gown.”  There were no ushers, and only four guests.  Lela’s father, General Alexander, gave her away.

The newspapers (and Manhattan society) took careful note of Alfred Anson’s pedigree.  The New York Times remarked “Mr. Anson is a member of one of the most noted families of the British aristocracy.”  His brother was the Earl of Richfield; his mother was the former Lady Harriet Hampton, the daughter of the Duke of Abercorn.  He was the nephew of the Marchioness of Blandford, mother of the Duke of Marlborough, and his aunt was the Duchess of Buccleuch.   Lela Alexander had come a long way from an Indian Territory Army fort.

In the wedding notice The Times mentioned that she had “inherited many millions…She owns a splendid house at 5 East Sixty-eighth Street, and The Turrets at Bar Harbor.”    The two properties would remain her homes as she started a new marriage and the couple immediately headed off to summer at The Turrets.

In 1916 Anson left New York to join the British forces in Italy fighting the war.  Lela Emery Anson managed without him for the remainder of the war, moving from Manhattan to Bar Harbor with the three children who still remained at home. 

While Lela Emery’s 1912 wedding in St. Bartholomew’s was a simple, quiet affair, the wedding of her daughter Alexandra in the same church eight years later would be anything but.   On December 9, 1920 she married Benjamin Moore, son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Clement C. Moore.  The New-York Tribune called it “one of the most brilliant weddings of the fall” and the church filled with society’s most celebrated names.  Among the guests were five Vanderbilts, John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Henry Clews, Mrs. I. Townsend Burden, Jr. and her daughter, and Mrs. Belmont Tiffany.  Following the ceremony Lela Anson hosted a reception at the 68^th Street house.

photo by Alice Lum

In 1925 Thomas Emery was married in London and the following year Lela’s last two single children were married and left the house.    On August 31, 1926 John married the daughter of artist Charles Dana Gibson and two months later Audrey wed the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia.

The Honorable Alfred Anson died in 1944 and Lela Emery Anson lived on, now alone, with her staff of servants.  Despite her advancing age she continued the life to which she was so accustomed, dividing her time among her New York, Bar Harbor, Palm Beach and Biarritz, France homes.   On July 15, 1953 the daughter of an Army surgeon who rose to become an internationally prominent society figure died in her massive Bar Harbor cottage at the age of 88.

Twelve years later, in May 1965, the Emery mansion became home to the Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia.  The Consulate has lovingly maintained the house which looks nearly unchanged after 117 years.