The Walter E. Hope Mansion -- No. 43 East 70th Street

In 1928, Walter Ewing Hope and his wife, the former Florence Talcott, were planning a change.  They owned an impressive five-story home at 123 East 80^th Street, but were now ready to move on.  Within a year Hope’s life would take another course, as well.

The 49-year-old lawyer had already built a remarkable career.  The valedictorian of the 1901 Princeton University graduating class, he had left his legal practice to devote himself to war work in 1917.  He took the position of director of State organizations for the United States Fuel Administration, then in October 1918, appointed by President Wilson, he sailed to Europe as chairman of the special Government commission to investigate fuel conditions in Great Britain, France and Italy.

Now with the war nearly a decade in the past, Hope was a partner at Milbank, Tweed & Hope as well as a director in several corporations.  Wealthy, respected and a member of the exclusive Jekyll Island Club, he and Florence turned their focus on a new mansion.

Architect Mott B. Schmidt had recently made an impression on wealthy New Yorkers when he transformed outmoded Victorian rowhouses into Georgian-inspired mansions along Sutton Place.  Now the Hopes commissioned him to design their home at 43 East 70^th Street.

Construction began in 1928 and was completed the following year.  Mott produced an elegant Regency Revival mansion faced in limestone.  Its four stories of understated sophistication were capped by an attic floor with three tall dormers.  The rusticated first floor with its double entrance doors flanked by columns supporting a grand fanlight would not be out of place on London’s Mayfair district.

The Hope Mansion shortly after completion -- photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The Hope family would have little time to fully enjoy their new home.  On March 4, 1929 Hebert Hoover began his term as 31^st President of the United States.  He appointed Walter E. Hope as Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury.  Hope also accepted the chairmanship of the National Republican Finance Committee.

As Assistant Secretary, Hope was in charge of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Bureau of the Mint, and the Secret Service.

The two positions would require the Hopes to spend most of their time in Washington.  On September 15, 1930, The New York Times remarked, “Mr. and Mrs. Walter Hope and Miss Marian T. Hope will return from Europe Saturday and will be in their new home at 43 East Seventieth Street for part of the Winter.  Mr. Hope’s duties as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury will keep his family in Washington when not at their home here.”

Walter E. Hope - from the collection of the Library of Congress

The juggling of addresses may have been frustrating to Florence.  This was the year that daughter Helen was to make her debut.  On November 28, the Hopes hosted a tea dance at the Colony Club for Helen, and on January 2, 1931 the house was the scene of a glittering dinner party for her.

The final entertainment connected with Helen Talcott Hope’s debutante season was an afternoon reception in the 73^rd Street mansion on December 12.  Helen, like her mother had been, was a student at Vassar at the time.

In the meantime, on February 20, 1931 Herbert Hoover announced, “It is with extreme regret that I have to announce the resignation of Walter Ewing Hope as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, to become effective March 1, 1931.”

Walter E. Hope returned to private life, but public life had not abandoned him.  In 1932 Hope hosted a dinner in the house for William D. Mitchell, Attorney General of the United States.  A few months later, in March 1933, former President Hoover took a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria where he held meetings “clearing up personal matters,” according to The New York Times.  That involved meetings with Hope.

Shocking to 21^st century Americans, so accustomed to stringent security surrounding former Presidents, the newspaper reported on March 15 “Mr. Hoover continued his daily routine of early morning strolls.  With his son Allan and Mr. Richey he walked briskly up Park Avenue to the home of Walter Hope…where they had breakfast.”

While Walter continued his political advising and legal practice, Florence Hope was highly active in social and charitable events.  Her involvement with the People’s Chorus of New York meant working closely with equally wealthy socialites.  Other members of the committee for the Chorus’s Carnegie Hall Christmas festival that year were Mrs. John Henry Hammond, Mrs. Otto H. Kahn, William Jay Schieffelin, Mrs. Dunlevy Milbank and others at the topmost echelon of society.

Her entertainments often involved music and art.  That same year she gave a reception for “many of those interested in the performance of ‘La Traviata’ to be given for the benefit of Vassar College Fund at te Metrpolitan Opera.”  Another afternoon reception, in 1935, was for opera stars Elisabeth Rethberg, Lauritz Melchior, Lawrence Tibbett and Ludwig Hoffman of the Met.  The guests of honor, of course, did not get away without performing.

On March 18, 1938 the house was the scene of Helen’s wedding reception.  She married David Edward Austen in the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church that day in a headline-worthy society wedding.  The New York Times mentioned that Helen “numbers among her ancestors two early Governors of Connecticut, John Talcott and Thomas Hooker.”

Six years later, on April 14, 1944, Helen’s sister, Marian was married in the 70^th Street mansion.  Following the ceremony the guests left the house for a reception at the Colony Club.

Following Walter E. Hope’s death in 1948, Florence moved to an apartment at No. 765 Park Avenue where she lived until her death in 1956.   She sold the 70^th Street house to the 62-year old banker, publisher, and philanthropist Maurice Wertheim.

The avid art collector and his wife, Cecile Berlage Wertheim, were also active supporters of the performing arts.  Wertheim founded the New York Theatre Guild and was a director; and he and Cecile were patrons of exhibitions of the Sculptors Guild.  Maurice sat on the advisory committee of the New York University Institute of Fine Arts.  The couple filled the mansion with a notable collection of modern French paintings.

Werteim had been publisher of The Nation, deemed by The New York Times as a “liberal weekly,” and founded the investment banking firm of Wertheim & Co. at 120 Broadway.  Although he was, as well, a director of several industrial firms, he preferred to be considered a sportsman.

The New York Times later said, “He was a trustee of the American Wildlife Foundation, a noted fisherman and a tournament chess player.”   The year before the Wertheims purchased the Hope mansion, Walter donated 1,800 acres of land in Suffolk County as a wild life refuge.

Only two years after moving into the 70^th Street house, Maurice Wertheim died of a heart attack at the family’s country estate in Cos Cob, Connecticut on May 27, 1950.  His funeral was held in the New York mansion two days later.

Cecile Wertheim stayed on in East 70th Street.  She hosted quiet entertainments for years, often on behalf of causes like the Women’s Division of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York and the Girls Scouts of America.  A more elaborate event took place in the house on November 27, 1960 when her stepdaughter, Anna (Walter's daughter from an earlier marriage to Alma Morgenthau), was married to Robert Edward Simon, Jr.

On December 5, 1974, the 73-year old Cecile Berlage Wertheim died in the mansion.   The magnificent art collection was bequeathed to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Maurice Wertheim’s alma mater.

Today the refined townhouse is owned by Qatar’s permanent representative to the United Nations.  Mott B. Schmidt’s gem is beautifully preserved; a splendid example good taste in early 20^th century domestic architecture.

photographs by the author

The 1920 Harold I. Pratt Mansion -- Park Avenue at 68th Street

photo by Alice Lum

In April of 1919 Park Avenue was no longer the marginal residential area it had been a generation earlier.  As quickly as the New York Central Railroads train tracks that ran down the center of the Avenue were submerged and covered, Percy Rivington Pyne erected his massive neo-Georgian style mansion at the corner of East 68^th Street.  He was but one of the New York millionaires to direct their attention from Fifth Avenue to Park.

The Pyne house was completed in 1911 and eight years later The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide commented on the neighborhood.  On April 26, 1919 it wrote “Adjoining Mr. Pyne’s residence is William Sloane’s new residence, and beyond those are the homes of Henry P. Davison, of J. P. Morgan & Co., Arthur Curtiss James and George Blumenthal.”  The article also noted that Percy R. Pyne had disposed of another Park Avenue property – the four-story house directly opposite at the southwest corner of 68^th Street; “one of the choicest spots on Park avenue.”  Pyne, according to The Sun, had purchased that house “to protect his home against the possible intrusion of an apartment house.”

The buyer was Harold Irving Pratt, the youngest of oil mogul Charles Pratt’s eight children.  The elder Pratt’s fortune had been greatly enhanced when his Pratt Astral Oil company merged with Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of New Jersey.  Now Harold I. Pratt served as Managing Director of Charles Pratt & Co. and, like his siblings, had a large fortune of his own.

Pratt simultaneously purchased the home of Mrs. Anderson Fowler at No. 678 Park Avenue, adjoining the property acquired from Pyne.  The combined package gave him a plot 100 feet wide on Park Avenue, extending 40 feet west on 68^th Street.  The Record & Guide said “A new residence will soon be started on the combined plot which will be in keeping with the improvements to the north.”  The Sun agreed, saying “the new owner, who is a prominent New York man, will erect a handsome residence in keeping with the character of the section.”

The mansion that would soon begin rising would, indeed, “be in keeping” with the flurry of mansion-building in the Lenox Hill neighborhood.  In the meantime, the Pratts continued living in their full-floor apartment at the north corner of Fifth Avenue and 63^rd Street.  At the yearly rent of $25,000 a year, The Sun deemed it “the next most expensive apartment in the world.”  For their hefty rent the Pratts enjoyed 25 rooms and seven baths.

William Adams Delano of the architectural firm Delano & Aldrich received the commission to design the new Pratt mansion.  The firm, which was busy simultaneously designing the Knickerbocker and Colony Club buildings, had recently made alterations to the Pratts’ sumptuous Georgian Revival country house, Welwyn, in Glen Cove, New York. 

For the Pratt house Delano drew his inspiration from the English Regency, producing a four story limestone house with restrained ornamentation.  Somewhat unexpectedly, the entrance was placed on East 68^th Street; possibly because the of noticeable southern decline of Park Avenue.  Above the rusticated base, relieved by a regimented series of arched openings, was a delightful carved frieze of seashells.  The openings of the fifth floor were octagonal—a popular Regency motif.

The newly completed house.  photograph by Wurts Bros., from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWQ8HKZO&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

By February of 1920 the Pratts had moved into their new home.  Harriet Barnes Pratt wasted no time in opening the house for entertaining—often in conjunction with her active philanthropies and other interests. 

As the chairman of the Parents’ League she was instrumental in the founding of the Commonwealth School.  “At the Commonwealth School daughters of millionaires, multi and otherwise, learn of the economic and industrial problems which face the community in which they live—and the state,” explained the New-York Tribune on May 16, 1920.  “They learn of the responsibilities which they must face in the present day world as guardians of the world’s wealth.”

The Pratt children had a significant chunk of the world’s wealth to guard.  The financially and politically powerful circles in which the Pratts moved were evident on September 13, 1921 when President Harding paused to play a game of golf on Long Island.  The First Lady politely watched the first hole, then “retired to the clubhouse” where tea was served to socialites including Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt and Mrs. Harold Pratt.

photo by Alice Lum

Harriet’s entertainments could be instructional as well as social.  On November 28, 1922 she hosted a lecture musicale by Kurt Schindler and Paul Kochanski in the house.  The topic was “Ancient and Modern Violin Music.”

Far less didactic were the events surrounding Eleanor Pratt’s debut to society in 1927.  On Tuesday night, December 27 the ballroom was thrown open for a dance “to introduce their daughter.”

By now Harold had become a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  Founded in 1921, the group’s purpose was to “afford a continuous conference on international questions affecting the United States, by bringing together experts on statecraft, finance, industry, education and science.”  Members were chosen “for their knowledge of foreign affairs and their ability to contribute to discussions and debate.”

The year 1929 began a flurry of activity in the Pratt household.  On June 10, 1929 son Irving married Ellen Rice Hallowell in Milton, Massachusetts.  The following year, in September, Barbara was feted with a debutante ball at the Glen Cove mansion; and a few weeks later, on October 23, Eleanor’s engagement to James Ramsay Hunt, Jr. was announced.

Despite the Great Depression, life in the Park Avenue mansion was little changed for the Pratts.  On November 28, 1933 Barbara married David Richmond Wilmerding in the Church of the Heavenly Rest.  The New York Times called it “an elaborate ceremony.”  The newspaper made note of the “unusually large bridal party.”  After the ceremony a reception was held in the Pratt mansion.

In March 1937 the Pratts donated a 12-acre park to the city of Glen Cove.  Harriet “not only supervised the landscaping but planted many of the bulbs and shrubs herself,” said The Times.  Harriet was Chairperson of the City Planning Commission and the park was named in honor of her—the Harriet Barnes Pratt Park.  The couple’s gift was estimated to be worth about $250,000.

Two years later Harold Irving Pratt died of pneumonia at Glen Cove at the age of 62.  Following Harriet’s period of mourning, entertainments in the Park Avenue mansion would be understated.  On February 19, 1942 The New York Times mentioned a dinner party she hosted the night before for just three guests.

On September 25, 1944 the Council on Foreign Relations announced that Harriet Barnes Pratt had presented the group with the Park Avenue mansion “as a memorial to her husband…It will be called the Harold Pratt House.”

The directors stressed that in accepting the gift, they had “made permanent provision for the proper upkeep of the new house.”  John D. Rockefeller, Jr., although not a member of the Council, provided half of the $300,000 maintenance fund that had been raised.  “Although Mr. Rockefeller is not a member, three of his sons are, and he always has taken an interest in its work,” said the announcement.

The House was officially opened on April 6, 1945 with an impressive roster of speakers:  Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., John W. Davis, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, and R. C. Leffingwell.

Throughout the following decades the Harold Pratt House would see the comings and goings of heads of state and other political and economic leaders who spoke here.  Among them would be French Premier Pierre Mendes-France in 1954, Konrad Adenauer in 1953, Emperor Haile-Selassie in 1954 and Vietnam President Diem in 1957.

Many of the home's interior details have been preserved -- photos www.pratthouse.com

Nearly a century after the Pratts moved in, the exterior of their dignified mansion remains unchanged.  The house is still the New York City headquarters for the Council on Foreign Relations.

The J. J. Van Alen House -- No. 15 East 65th St.

photo by Alice Lum

It took spunk to stand up to William Backhouse Astor and even more nerve to defy his wife, the indomitable Caroline Schermerhorn Astor.  But their eldest daughter, Emily, would prove to have both.

Emily became enamored with the wealthy James J. Van Alen and the couple openly courted.  Her father was vehemently against it.  Reportedly he exclaimed “Damned if I want my family mixed in with the Van Alens.”

With a resolve unlikely in a wealthy 23-year old girl of the period, Emily Astor took things into her own hands and married Van Alen in 1876.  Quite expectedly, the relations between the two families were strained.

The only son of General James H. Van Alen, Emily’s new husband loved England as much, or more, than his native land.  He leased a 15^th century manor house, Rushton Hall, in England and the couple spent their time there as well as in New York and Newport.  But their lives together came to a tragic end in 1881 when Emily, just 28 years old, died in the birth of their third child.

James Van Alen turned the rearing and education of his children to tutors and relatives in England.  In 1883 he was taken by an Elizabethan manor house where he briefly stayed, Wakehurst Place in Sussex, and based his new Newport cottage on it.  Construction began on the Newport version of Wakehurst in 1894.  It would not be the only time that Van Alen would copy an English mansion on American soil.

The same year that construction began on Wakehurst, Van Alen's brother-in-law John Jacob Astor was planning an enormous private stable at the corner of 65^th Street and Madison Avenue.  The carriage house was to accomodate the monumental double mansion he was building for his mother and himself on Fifth Avenue at 65^th Street.  Among the wealthy residents of the area who were displeased was Miss E. T. Chisholm who lived at No. 15 East 65^th Street.  She ran Miss Chisholm’s School for exceptionally wealthy girls.

Miss Chisholm signed her name to a letter written during an “indignation meeting” in which area millionaires condemned Astor’s “great discourtesy” and accused him of “offending the sentiments of the community and injuring the neighbors and their property.”

By the early years of the 20^th century Van Alen’s children were grown and James Van Alen made a reputation for himself as a womanizer.  Even the Omaha Bee printed stories of his philandering.  On October 1, 1911 it wrote “There have been many widows in Mr. Van Alen’s life.  Of all kinds, there have been a baker’s dozen.  All have been pretty.

“Mr. Van Alen, son-in-law of the late Mrs. Astor and oldest brother-in-law of Colonel Jack Astor, is a most desirable parti.  He has houses and lands, stocks and bonds.  He owns a gray stone mansion in Newport, a palace in New York and a castle in England.  He is so rich—he can wear a monocle and an old Panama hat!  He keeps a flock of sheep to crop his Newport lawns, and he could pave his driveway with diamonds if he wanted to.

“The widows who have interested him have known all this.  It looked good to them.”

Embarrassment for the Astors because of the Van Alen connection did not come solely from James.  On September 24, 1913 daughter May married Griswold A. Thompson, a stock and bond broker and vice president of the Commonwealth Water Company of New York in London.  A month later she would provide one more reason for the Astors to shrink from the Van Alens.

As May Van Alen Thompson arrived in Boston on October 18, customs officials found that she was trying to smuggle in a pearl necklace “valued at thousands of dollars,” according to the New-York Tribune.  May had concealed the necklace in a small chamois bag “concealed in her bosom.”

The search of May’s bosom was inspired when her maid, named Connors, was found to have thousands of dollars in diamonds and other precious gems in her stockings.  May insisted that she was a British subject, and was not compelled to be searched.  The inspectors insisted she was an American and forced her to declare her baggage.  The newspapers made clear note of the fact that she was the granddaughter of Mrs. Astor and a cousin of Jack Astor.

Perhaps to escape continued American newspaper publicity or, as The Washington Times reported, to recuperate “from the fatigues of his past social successes and preparing for new ones,” Van Alen traveled to the soothing waters of Baden Baden, Germany in 1914.  It was a poor choice.

He was caught in Germany as World War I erupted.  “For several weeks his relatives and business representatives were unable to communicate with him and felt exceedingly worried about his fate,” reported The Washington Times.  “Finally Mr. Van Alen escaped from the maelstrom of war and hastened straight back to America.”

Unable to travel abroad, Van Alen set about constructing a new Manhattan mansion.  On April 26, 1916 The New York Times reported that he had purchased the four-story residence at 15 East Sixty-fifth Street.”  It was the very same house from which Miss E. T. Chisholm had fumed about Jack Astor’s stables.  James Van Alen had somewhat ironically purchased property right in the very nest of Astors.  John Jacob Astor’s double mansion was just around the corner on Fifth Avenue and his sister, Caroline Astor Wilson’s home was a block away at No. 3 East 64^th Street.

Van Alen had the outdated house demolished and commissioned Harry Allan Jacobs to design his new mansion.  Jacobs was well known for his fashionable homes designed in historic styles; but for this house he was given clear direction.  It was to be a near-copy of a Regency-period mansion on St. James Square in London.

The mansion in 1925.  One old brownstone still hangs on, to the right.  --photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Completed in 1917, it was London on the Upper East Side.  The three-story limestone house oozed British respectability.  Three identical arched openings pierced the rusticated base—the double-doored entrance, a grilled window and the access to the American basement below sidewalk level.

The second story grabbed the spotlight.  A Palladian window was framed by Corinthian pilasters and columns supporting a distinguished pediment.  Recessed, carved plaques ornamented the spaces above the flanking windows.  Despite the Van Alen reputation of philandering and even jewel smuggling, the house spoke refinement.

Van Alen had barely moved into the new mansion when rumors of Prohibition buzzed through the paneled rooms of Manhattan’s exclusive mens’ clubs.  James Van Alen was willing to abide the chiding of the American press; but he was unwilling to live in a country without liquor.

Congress passed the Volstead Act on October 28, 1919 enforcing the prohibition of the “manufacture, sale or transportation” of liquor.  Van Alen responded by selling his house and moving to England.

On December 13, 1919 The New York Times reported that “Carrying out his determination to dispose of his New York home if prohibition went into effect, J. J. Van Alen of New York and Newport has sold his four-story house at 15 East Sixty-fifth Street, to Rufus L. Patterson, Vice President of the American Tobacco Company.”

Patterson paid Van Alen $275,000 for the mansion—nearly $3 million today. 

“I know of lots of people that will leave the United States and make their home in countries where the laws are not so strict,” Van Alen told reporters.  He apparently had a well-stocked cellar in Newport, however; for The Times noted “It is said that he will make his home hereafter in England, but will return to summer at Newport.”

The Pattersons divided their time between the 65^th Street home and their summer estate in Southampton, “Lenoir.”   Mrs. Patterson, the former Margaret Morehead, entertained often in the mansion throughout their more than two decades here.

Rufus L. Patterson died in April 1943.  Two years later Margaret put the mansion on the market.  The Kusciuczko Foundation had been founded in 1925 to promote closer ties between the United States and Poland through scientific, cultural and educational exchanges.   The organization dearly wanted the mansion as its headquarters, but did not have the funds. 

Margaret Patterson lowered her asking price of $250,000 to $85,000 for the foundation.  The Kosciuszko Foundation purchased the house in 1945 and over the next few years Margaret donated another $16,000 to help the organization pay off the mortgage.

In 1945 when the Foundation moved in, the old brownstone next door had most definitely disappeared.  Little else had changed -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The dignified mansion of a man who bucked the New York and Newport social system for decades is virtually unchanged since its completion nearly a century ago.  It is a remarkable structure built by an equally remarkable character in New York social history.