Emery Roth's 1931 Southgate - 400 East 52nd Street

 

In 1920, a stalwart group of wealthy Manhattanites embarked on a risky and somewhat shocking real estate endeavor--transforming a block of decrepit brownstones along the East River into a fashionable enclave.  Originally called Sutton Square, its high-tone tenor spread outward, creating Sutton Place and Beekman Place, two of the most enviable residential districts in the city.

Real estate developer Bing & Bing would continue the transformation.  The firm frequently worked with renowned architect Emery Roth, producing numerous Manhattan apartment buildings.  In 1928, Bing & Bing hired him for what would be their most ambitious project--five apartment buildings that would be called Southgate.  One would face East 51st Street and the others, separated by a verdant garden, lined east 52nd Street.

The massive enterprise would take three years to construct.  On April 12, 1931, The New York Times noted that the completed project would have "a total of nearly 500 housekeeping apartments ranging from one to six rooms."  The article explained that all five buildings, "similar in design," would be "identified with the name Southgate."

Each of the buildings was slightly different.  400 East 52nd Street is as the far right.  image by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

No. 400 East 52nd Street opened in October 1931.  Faced in brown brick above a stone base, its entrance sat within a dramatic, three-story frame of Art Deco stylized fountains.  The relatively unadorned midsection rose to two sleek, tiled-faced balconies.  Above the 14th floor, Roth ignored the setbacks at the ends and center of the building with single-bay-wide sections that rose two more floors.  Another ocean liner-ready balcony clung to the 15th floor.  An advertisement offered, "Two to five rooms, some with river view," and boasted, "dropped living rooms, log burning fireplaces.  Dining galleries or alcoves, casement windows, tile bath with every chamber, full size kitchens."

Among the early, professional residents of 400 East 52nd Street were John Anderson, drama critic for The New York  Evening Journal and former assistant critic of the New York Evening Post; and Arthur Samuels, editor of Harper's Bazaar.  In 1932, the year he moved in, he became associate editor of Arts Weekly and an instructor of drama at New York University.

Perhaps an unexpected tenant was 26-year-old aspiring actress Elizabeth Bates Volck, who moved into a ninth-floor apartment on November 7, 1931.  Born in England, she was the granddaughter of Domício da Gama, the former Brazilian ambassador to the United States.  Her engagement to Prince Johannes of Liechtenstein was announced in 1926, but the marriage never came to pass.

Just before moving into 400 East 52nd Street, Elizabeth suffered another failed romance.  According to her best friend, Diana Durant, Elizabeth had been experiencing "emotional strain" since "the disruption of her love affair with Gerald D. Tiffany."  The day after moving in, Elizabeth telephoned Durant "and said she had been thinking of taking her life," according to the North Shore Daily Journal.

Several hours later, at about 15 minutes after midnight, Frank McLoughlin, who lived nearby, heard an explosion.  The New York Times reported, "Looking up, he beheld a flash of fire and smoke bursting through the shattered windows of the ninth-floor apartment."  Elizabeth's apartment had been devastated by the violent gas explosion.  The Times said it "shattered walls and furniture on three floors and aroused residents within several blocks."

Elizabeth Volck's body was found in the apartment.  She had left a note saying: "I leave all my furniture to Diana Durant to keep or sell according to what she sees fit."  She then opened the gas jets of the stove.  Presumably, she knew that the explosion set off by the pilot light would kill her in case her suicide attempt was unsuccessful.  (Diana Durant would not receive any of the apartment's furniture, all of which was wrecked by the blast.)

A similar tragedy occurred the following year.  Edward R. Seen was a successful architect.  Born in Basel, Switzerland, he had been associated with Delano & Aldrich for more than two decades.  He and his second wife were married in November 1932.

Less than a month later, on December 11, Seen left the office, saying he would have lunch at home.  He telephoned later saying he had been detained by business.  Instead, he drove to Patchogue, Long Island.  At 11:00 p.m., he registered at Roe's Hotel there.  The next morning a maid found his body "with a bullet hole in his right temple," as reported by The New York Times.

More uplifting press coverage was routinely found in the society columns.  On September 1, 1932, for instance, The New York Times reported, "Mrs. James E. Hollingsworth of 400 East Fifty-second Street left yesterday for a visit with Mrs. Herbert Hoover at the White House.  Mrs. Hollingsworth will go later to California, where she will be joined by her husband."

Other initial residents were Henry R. Duflon, John P. Hogan, and John Perry Mitchell, Jr. and his wife, the former Lucy G. Clark.  Born in 1890, Duflon was superintendent of agencies for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in Illinois and Indiana.  He had an office here and in Chicago.  John P. Hogan was vice chairman of the Construction Code Authority and general chairman of the Construction League of the United States, which sponsored the codes for the construction industry.

John Perry Mitchell, Jr. was born in Sterling, Massachusetts on March 30, 1899.  He received his B.A. degree at Dartmouth and his Masters from Harvard.  He remained at Harvard as a instructor of economics until 1924.  He and Lucy Clark were married in 1930.  On July 1, 1934, Mitchell became assistant director of education at the Rockefeller Foundation.  In September 1935, he and Lucy adopted an infant boy whom they named Jonathan.  Tragically, five months later, on February 24, 1936, John Mitchell, Jr. died at Roosevelt Hospital at the age of 36.

Living here that year were singer Paul Davin and his wife, Winifred.  Davin had appeared on Broadway in Sweethearts and Knights of Song.  Winifred was described by The New York Times as "a former countess."  

On May 8, 1936, Winifred hired a maid, 22-year-old Jennie Stanley.  Ten days later, Jennie disappeared along with $685 in cash (equal to about $15,500 in 2025), jewelry and a gold cigarette case.  

The savvy Winifred "suggested to the police that the servant probably would buy expensive clothes and display them among friends in Harlem," reported The Times.  And so, Winifred and two detectives staked out Seventh Avenue and 139th Street.  Sure enough, just after midnight, Jennie Stanley passed by "stylishly gowned."  The article said, "In her apartment, the police said, they recovered all the jewelry, except a gold cigarette case, and the money."

A charming garden separates the 51st and 52nd Street buildings.

Federal employee Ed Weltman occupied a ninth-floor apartment here as early as 1939.  On the afternoon of September 21 that year, his sister and her daughters, Jessie and Alice Wells, visited him.  The sisters, described by The Billboard in 1926 as "exceptionally pretty blondes," comprised the song-and-dance team of the Wells Sisters.  Starting out as teenagers in vaudeville theaters, the duo now sang on radio and had just returned from a road tour the previous week.

Jessie Wells said she did not feel well and asked her uncle if she could go into a bedroom to rest.  Later, her mother checked on her and found her missing.  "The bathroom window was flung up," reported The New York Times.  The 25-year-old had jumped to her death.

Two fascinating residents were Sara J. Woodward and her daughter, Mary Woodward Reinhardt.  Born in 1863 in Portadown, Ireland, Sara was the eleventh of the seventeen children of Alexander Johnson.  In 1880 she arrived in Chicago at the age of 17, eventually becoming a fashion expert for the department store Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co.  According to The New York Times later, she was the first to bring Paris creations to the Middle West and "staged what was said to have been Chicago's first fashion show."

Sara married Frank E. Woodward, the president of the Bank of Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1897.  The couple had two daughters, Alice and Mary.  Sara founded the Public Library of Watertown and during World War I was chairman of the city's American Red Cross unit.  She also organized a movement to establish two parks there.

In the meantime, Mary Woodward graduated from Milwaukee Downer Seminary, attended the University of Wisconsin and received her Bachelors degree from Radcliffe College in 1923.  After doing graduate work at Oxford University in England, she married Paul Reinhardt, owner of the Reinhardt Galleries in New York City in 1924.  Mary became associated with the gallery.  

Frank Woodward died in 1933 and the following year Mary and Paul Reinhardt divorced.  Sara Woodward relocated to New York and she and Mary moved into an apartment here.  

It may have been the urban Manhattan environment that prompted Sarah to become an early activist against second-hand smoke, campaigning for the reduction or elimination of "the smoke nuisance."  Related to that cause, she joined the board of directors of the Outdoor Cleanliness Association.

Now single, Mary Woodard Reinhardt reinvented herself.  She founded the Hollywood Patterns, a subsidiary of Condé Nast.  She was, as well, secretary of the Birth Control Federation of America.

In 1939, Sara Johnson Woodward's health began to fail.  She died in her apartment at the age of 77 on January 9, 1940.  Just five months later, on June 21, Mary Woodward Reinhardt married Albert D. Lasker, former chairman of the United States Shipping Board.

John Anderson and his wife, the former Margaret Breuning  (an art critic), were still living here at the time.  Now the drama critic of the New York Journal American, he was also an author and playwright, and president of the New York Drama Critics Circle.  Among his books were the 1929 Box Office, Book of the White Mountains, released in 1930, and the 1938 The American Theatre.   His plays included The Inspector General and The Fatal Alibi.

On February 9, 1942, The New York Times reported that Efrem Zimbalist Jr. had leased an apartment here.  The son of the famous violinist and symphony conductor and the operatic star Alma Gluck, he was born on November 30, 1918.  While his parents were major figures in classical music, Zimbalist Jr. was drawn to the theater.  He took a job as a page for NBC radio in 1936 where he got small roles on air.  Zimbalist would go on to a highly successful career in television and film.

Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (publicity photo for the U.S. Steel Hour, 1956)

Italian-born John Perona, who owned the El Morocco nightclub, had lived here as early as 1935.  That year, the 38-year-old bachelor had a live-in servant, 20-year-old Grey Clements, a Filipino immigrant.  Clements lived with and worked for him for at least five years.  By 1946, Perona had acquired a country home at Newton, New Jersey and now had two male servants in the East 52nd Street apartment.

John Perona (original source unknown)

Perona fired both servants in the fall of 1946.  Shortly afterward, on the evening of October 9, he returned to the city from Newton to find that "seven sets of cuff links and fifteen or sixteen cigarette lighters, gifts and valued by him at $20,000 were missing from his penthouse apartment at 400 East Fifty-second Street.," as reported by The New York Times.  The figure Perona gave to the police would translate to about $321,000 today.  It is unclear if he ever recovered his items.  Perona would remain here at least through the 1950s.

Among Perona's neighbors in the building was theater producer and director Cheryl Crawford.  Born in Akron, Ohio in 1902, she studied drama at Smith College and came to New York City in 1925.  In 1931 she, Harold Clurman, and Lee Strausberg formed The Group Theatre, a 12-week-long training and rehearsal course at Brookfield Center, Connecticut.  Among the fledgling actors whose careers were highly influenced by Crawford were Bojangles Robinson, Mary Martin, Helen Hayes, Ingrid Bergman, Ethel Barrymore, Tallulah Bankhead and Paul Robeson.  

Cheryl Crawford from the Class of 1925 Smith College yearbook.

She co-founded the Actors Studio in 1947.  There major stars like Marlon Brando, James Dean, Steve McQueen, Jack Nicholson and a nearly endless list of others began their careers.

Attorney Ethelbert Warfield and his wife, the former Alice Blum had moved in in 1936.  Born in 1898, he graduated from the Dickinson Law School and was now a member of Satterlee, Warfield & Stephens.  He and Alice maintained a summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island.  In 1955, the couple had two domestic servants here, a live-in maid and a "housemaid," Sigrid Tovia, who had worked every Thursday since 1948.  (Sigrid Tovia was the Anglicized version of her birth name, Sirri Toivanen.)

Sigrid was described by her co-worker as always wearing "inexpensive, old clothes and welcomed gifts of leftover bread and meats, which she carefully put away into her paper shopping bag."  The Warfields were out of town on March 22, 1955.  That evening Sigrid left the apartment and headed home.  At 6:00, while crossing East 60th Street near Second Avenue, the 80-year-old was struck and run over by a crosstown bus.  She died under the bus.  The New York Times reported, "The police at the scene paid scant notice at first to the brown bag in the victim's hands."  In it was $21,617 in cash (more than a quarter of a million dollars today).  She had also been carrying a straw-handled purse in which were two deposit books showing $14,575 in savings.

After owning 400 East 52nd Street for half a century, on June 30, 1985, The New York Times reported that Bing & Bing had sold 29 apartment buildings, including this one.  The newspaper commented, "The Bing & Bing buildings are regarded as among the city's finest prewar properties."  Two years later, the building was converted to a cooperative.

Other than the loss of the casement windows, Emery Roth's Depression Era structure and its architectural siblings are, happily, little changed.  

many thanks to Rene Tatnall for suggesting this post and for showing me around the building.

photographs by the author

Emery Roth & Sons's 1938 2 Sutton Place South

 

image via streeteasy.com

By the first years of the Great Depression, the Sutton Place neighborhood--described by The New York Times in 1920 as "a slum"--was rapidly transforming into one of Manhattan's most fashionable enclaves.  In 1937, the old houses at the southwest corner of Sutton Place South and 57th Street were demolished and Emery Roth & Sons was commissioned to replace them with a high-end apartment building.  

Notable for designing apartment buildings, Emery Roth & Sons drew from the Italian Renaissance for 2 Sutton Square South.  The two-story base was clad in mauve-veined stone, its entrance discreetly tucked within a recessed, corner porte-cochère behind a stone balustrade.  Here well-heeled residents could alight from their vehicles in privacy.  In contrast to the relatively unadorned upper floors, the porte-cochère featured double-height Corinthian pilasters and spandrels of carved Renaissance decorations.

The is entrance hidden within the porte-cochère .  image via streeteasy.com

The brick-faced upper floors were relatively unadorned, other than stone quoins and a course of inset geometric designs between the third and fourth floors.  The triptych windows were as much an architectural element as mere fenestration.

Among the early residents were newly-married William Saroyan and his bride Carol Grace, who leased one of the penthouses.  Still in the U.S. Army, the playwright and novelist was stationed in the Astoria Army Post in Queens, assigned to the Army's film unit.  According to Lawrence Lee and Barry Gifford in their 1951 Saroyan, A Biography, Saroyan was not cut out for military life.  "What is certain is that, by the late summer of 1943, Saroyan's obstinate attitude had gotten him into serious trouble with the Army."

William Saroyan in 1940.  from the collection of the Library of Congress.

One morning a slipped disc prevented the writer from commuting to the Queens post.   He called his sergeant and explained the situation.  The Army was not so understanding a few months later.  Saroyan wrote,

A month later, I couldn't get out of bed again, so again I phoned, and I believed the situation was the same as last time, but around eleven two military police, two medical corps sergeants, and  two privates all came up to the penthouse at 2 Sutton Place South.

He was taken to a military hospital for observation as to determine "whether he should be discharged as mentally unfit," according to his biographers.

Another playwright in the building was Rose Franken and her writer husband William Brown Meloney.  The couple married in 1937.  Among the works Franken completed while living here were the 1937 Of Great Riches; Strange Victory and Claudia: the Story of a Marriage, both published in 1939; and the 1940 When Doctors Disagree.

In 1946, producer Walter Wanger was searching for an apartment in the Sutton Place neighborhood as a setting for his film Smash-Up, starring Susan Hayward and Eddie Albert.  In his Keep 'Em in the East--Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Film Renaissance, Richard Koszarski writes, "Wanger was even 'stymied for a while by the reluctance of Sutton Place property owners to cooperate in the interests of cinematic art' until one friendly tenant, the playwright Rose Franken, allowed access to her apartment at 2 Sutton Place South."

The most celebrated tenant to date was actress Marilyn Monroe, who moved in following her divorce from baseball great Joe DiMaggio in 1955.  Barbara Leaming, in Marilyn Monroe: A Biography, writes, "On the morning of February 25, 1956, a limousine pulled away from 2 Sutton Place South.  Marilyn, a dark mink coat slung over her shoulders, was on her way to the airport."  Monroe was headed to the West to shoot Bus Stop.  Simultaneously, playwright Arthur Miller was flying to Nevada where he would establish a six-week residency in order to file for divorce from Mary Slattery Miller.

Marilyn Monroe gets into a waiting car at 2 Sutton Place South.  image via themarilynmonroecollection.com

Although several accounts have Monroe and Miller being married in her 2 Sutton Place South apartment, the couple was wed at the Westchester County Courthouse in White Plains, New York on June 29, 1956.  They took an apartment around the corner at 444 East 57th Street.

A much different sort of entertainer at 2 Sutton Place South was Mabel Garrison.  Described by the Daily News as "one of the leading American coloratura sopranos of her time," she had joined the Metropolitan Opera Company in 1914.

The affluence of the residents' was reflected in an incident involving Harry P. Barrand and his wife, the former Helen Stukenborg in 1961.  Barrand was vice president of Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company (where he first met Helen).  The couple was married in Grace Church on April 3, 1948.

Harry and Helen returned from Europe on September 8, 1961.  Cab driver Anthony Soldano picked them up at the pier.  When the Barrands unpacked, they realized that a bag containing $50,000 in jewelry (closer to $490,000 by 2024 conversion) was missing.  The 38-year-old cabbie was tracked down in Florida and arrested on October 21.

Living in a 10-room penthouse apartment in 1963 were Carl J. Schmid and his wife.  Schmid was the owner of Julius Schmid Inc., a pharmaceutical firm.  When the maid answered the door at 1:30 on the afternoon of May 2, 24-year-old David McNeil and 16-year-old Wendell Shanks asked to see Mrs. Schmid.  The Daily News reported, "Mrs. Schmid was at the luncheon table when they were ushered in.  She was immediately suspicious."

"Are you Mrs. Schmid?" asked McNeil (who had recently been released from federal prison after serving a term for impersonating an officer).

Mrs. Schmid replied, "I am, but I'm afraid I don't know you."

"Well, I know you.  This is a stickup," he answered.

Burglarizing the penthouse would be simple.  The Daily News reported, "The Schmids returned only on Wednesday from Europe.  Still in bags, unpacked and easy to cart off when the intruders showed up, were tens of thousands of dollars worth of furs and jewelry."

With unbelievable calm, Mrs. Schmid rose from the table and eased her way out of the room while the young men were distracted.  She later explained, "I nudged Doris.  We walked to the foyer and out the door.  They made no move to stop us.  We went down in the elevator to the ground floor, and the manager called police."

As luck would have it, an elevator maintenance man was working in the building, and he shut off power to the elevators.  When police arrived, they merely waited at the staircase doors to make their arrests.  With the crooks in custody, the mystery remained, according to the Daily News, "how did McNeil know about the Schmids and where they lived?"

By far the most socially prominent resident of 2 Sutton Place at the time was Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, the former Duchess of Marlborough.  Her summer estate was in Southampton, Long Island.  The daughter of William Kissam and Alva Smith Vanderbilt, she was married to the ninth Duke of Marlborough in St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue on November 6, 1895.

Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, the former Duchess of Marlborough.  from the collection of the Library of Congress.

The Duke and Duchess divorced in 1921.  Later that year Consuelo married Lt. Colonel Louis Jacques Balsan of the French Air Army.  The couple built a villa at Èze on the French Riviera, and during World War II came to the United States where Consuelo Balsan regained her United States citizenship.  Balsan died in 1956 at the age of 88.

Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan lived here and in Southampton, supporting her many charities, until her death on December 6, 1964 at the age of 88.

Millionaire Michael Bloomberg was 34 years old before he turned his attention to romance.  He married Susan Elizabeth Barbara Brown on December 15, 1976.  His biographer, Joyce Purnick writes in Mike Bloomberg, Money, Power, Politics, "The newlyweds lived first at 2 Sutton Place South on the East Side, then moved to Armonk in suburban Westchester in the mid-1980s."

Emery Roth & Sons's dignified and discreet 2 Sutton Place South continues to house well-heeled New Yorkers, its outward appearance barely changed in nearly a century.

many thanks to reader Lowell Cochrane for suggesting this post.

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The Henry and Isabella Cammann House - 7 Sutton Place

 

In April 1837 George Sutton acquired property on the east side of Manhattan where only a few years earlier were summer estates of New York’s wealthy.  Not long after the end of the Civil War, development reached the area.  In 1875 Effingham Brown Sutton erected a group of brownstone residences along the eastern section of Avenue A from 57^th to 58^th Street.  The area was far from the fashionable neighborhoods to the west, yet it enjoyed the breezes from the East River directly behind the homes.  In 1883 the two-block stretch of Avenue A from 57th to 59th Streets was renamed Sutton Place.

By 1920 the neighborhood had noticeably declined.  A brewery, a steam plant, and coal yards surrounded Sutton's brownstone row.  Yet, that year a group of wealthy New Yorkers headed by architect Eliot Cross and W. Seward Webb, Jr. had a vision for the u-shaped group of houses.  They proposed remodeling them into upscale residences, and removing the backyard fences to create a common garden overlooking the river.  Their scheme was described by the Architectural Record in 1922 as "a more or less co-operative plan."

The group as it appeared when Cross and Webb first saw it.  from the collection of the Library of Congress.

The group agreed, for uniformity, that “The brownstone stoops, the window ledges and other protrusions are to be cleaved off, leaving a straight front to the outside world.  Architecturally the façade will be of the American basement style, which has been popular in the Fifth Avenue district for the last decade."  The 18 properties were snapped up at an amazing rate, given their location in what The New York Times unceremoniously deemed "a slum."

No. 7 Sutton Place was purchased by Henry Lorillard Cammann and his wife, the former Margaret Willard Miner.  They hired architect William F. Dominick to remake the vintage brownstone.  He removed the stoop and lowered the entrance to one step above the sidewalk.  The colonial-style door with a leaded transom sat below a fanlight that matched the arched openings of the first floor.  Dominic achieved a tripartite effect with a full-width balcony at the second floor and an intermediate cornice at the third.

Architectural Record, February 1922 (copyright expired)

The Architectural Record noted that in order to enjoy the garden and the view, "the more important rooms are placed at the back of the house, and on the first or entrance floor the dining room opens out through glazed doors upon a balcony, where a few curved steps lead down to the garden."  Dominick had replaced the straight, Victorian staircase with a dramatic winding stairway with an iron railing.

Architectural Record, February 1922 (copyright expired)

On the second floor was the dual purpose living room-library.  "The book-case is recessed in the wall, above two built-in cabinets, the doors of which are designed to frame some old carved Gothic panels," said the article.  Adding to the Gothic motif were an imported marble mantle of the period, and "two Italian Gothic lanterns, which have had electric lights ingeniously introduced," which hung from the ceiling.  Two bedrooms were at the front of the second floor.

Architectural Record, February 1922 (copyright expired)

Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1864, Cammann graduated from Harvard College in 1886, and was now a woolens importer with Henry W. T. Mali & Co.

Henry Lorillard Cammann, 25th Anniversary Report of the Secretary of the Class of 1886 of Harvard College, 1911 (copyright expired)

He and Margaret married in Grace Church on December 4, 1917.  It was the second wedding for both.  Margaret was the widow of Worthington Miner.  Henry's first wife, Grace Huntington Churchill, had died in 1911, The New York Times saying at the time she left "a large fortune to her husband, including the Cammann home in Greenwich [Connecticut]."

The Architectural Record published two views of the living room-library in its February 1922 issue. (copyright expired)

The year they bought the Sutton Place house, the 19th Amendment was ratified, ending a long fight for Margaret.  She had been, as described by The New York Times, "a leader in the woman suffrage movement."  She was, as well, prominent in the Daughters of the American Revolution.

The Queensboro Bridge can be seen beyond the garden in the lower photograph.  Architectural Record, February 1922 (copyright expired)

Not very long after the couple moved in, on April 25, 1924, the house was the scene of the wedding reception of Margaret's niece, Mary Sargeant Spencer.  Her marriage in Grace Church to Kenneth Philips was described by The Buffalo Sunday Express as "a wedding of great interest."

Somewhat surprisingly, only six years after remodeling 7 Sutton Place, the Cammanns prepared to leave.  On November 17, 1926, The New York Times reported that the couple had purchased two adjoining apartments nearby at 430 East 57th Street.  Until the current leases were up and the apartments could be combined, said the article, the Cammanns would occupy a six-room apartment in the that building.  They leased 7 Sutton Place furnished to William V. Griffin and his wife.  

Three years after Henry Lorillard Cammann's death on March 1, 1930, Margaret sold 7 Sutton Place to Marshall Rutgers Kernochan and his wife, the former Caroline Rigney Hatch.  The couple had a 14-year-old son, John Marshall Kernochan.  Their country home was in Tuxedo Park.

Before moving in, the Kernochans hired the architectural firm of Polhemus & Coffin to give William F. Dominick's 1920 design a new look.  On January 4, 1934 The New York Sun reported, "The work will consist of erecting new brick walls, new interior partitions, heating, plumbing and elevator work."  

The renovations were significant, costing the Kernochans the equivalent of more than half a million in 2023 dollars.  The entrance was moved to the opposite side, where the Cammann's service entrance had been.  It featured a colonial-style stone surround capped by a broken pediment.  Dominick's balcony and fourth floor cornice were removed and the second floor windows given prominent cornices and the those on the third floor received pediments that matched the entranceway.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Kernochan was a musician, publisher and composer.  He had studied music in Frankfurt, Germany under Ivan Knorr and at the Institute of Musical Art (today's Julliard School).

On March 13, 1941, the Evening Star commented, "With the announcement of the engagement of Miss Adelaide Chatfield-Taylor, daughter of the Undersecretary of Commerce and Mrs. Chatfield-Taylor, to Mr. John Marshall Kernochan, son of Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Kernochan of New York, there is promise of additional entertaining for prominent young couples."  John gave his father the honor of being his best man at the wedding.

John would go on to become a law professor, a composer and publisher like his father.  He would found Columbia Law School's Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts.

By the time of John's wedding, Marshall Kernochan was the president of the Galaxy Music Corp., and he and Caroline had established their summer home in Edgartown, Massachusetts.  The couple was there on June 9, 1955, when the 74-year-old Marshall died.

The following year, in September 1956, Caroline sold 7 Sutton Place to the 33-year-old Robert G. Goelet.  The newspaper called the millionaire bachelor "the scion of a real estate dynasty."  The family's history in New York real estate closely paralleled that of the Astor family.  Goelet had service as a Navy flier in World War II and was president of the American Museum of Natural History, the New-York Historical Society, and the French Institute.

Robert G. Goelet, The East Hampton Star, October 17, 2019

Manhattan society may have surmised that Goelet would never marry.  He was 53 years old when, on September 11, 1976, The New York Times reported, "On Gardiner's Island, longtime barony of her mother's family, Alexandra Gardiner Creel was married quietly Thursday to Robert G. Goelet, heir to the real estate fortune of the Goelet family of Manhattan and Newport, R. I."  The newspaper would later add that their marriage "merged two families that date to the 17th-century New Amsterdam."

Upon the death of Alexandra's "idiosyncratic uncle Robert David Lion Gardiner," as worded by The New York Times, the Goelets took possession of the 3,300-acre Gardiner's Island, owned by Alexandra's family since 1639.  Calling it "a storied sanctuary off the tip of Long Island," The New York Times noted it had "27 miles of coastline, lush white pine and oak forests, colonial buildings, a 200-year-old windmill, a family cemetery and considerably more ospreys than people."  The couple maintained the island as a bird sanctuary, while restoring its colonial buildings and habitat.

Continuing the tradition of remodeling that every owner of 7 Sutton Place had done since 1920, The Goelets combined their home with 9 Sutton Place.  In its October 18, 1976 issue, The New Yorker noted they live "in a double house, 40 feet wide, that looks out on the East River across a lawn and garden."  Interestingly, their architect made no attempt to meld the facades.

Nos. 7 and 9 Sutton Place outwardly give no hint that they have been combined as a single residence.

Alexandra died on December 19, 1990.  Robert G. Goelet survived her until his death at the age of 96 on October 9, 2019.  Their double house looks for all the world like two separate residences.

photographs by the author

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Mann & MacNeille's 1925 424 East 57th Street

 

The transformation of Sutton Place in 1920-21 from a dingy block to one occupied by some of New York's wealthiest citizens quickly affected the surrounding blocks.  Coal yards and a brewery were eliminated to make room for upscale apartment houses.  In 1925 Horace Borchsenius Mann got in on the trend.

Mann was a partner with Perry R. MacNeille in the architectural firm of Mann & MacNeille.  They were best known for large urban planning projects such as Bristol, Pennsylvania, described by the American Architect in 1918 as "America's greatest single industrial housing development."  This project would be considerably smaller.

In 1925 Horace B. Mann purchased and demolished the three old buildings at 422 through 426 East 57th Street, half a block west of Sutton Place.  Mann & MacNeille then designed a six-story apartment building on the site.  Completed within the year, it was faced in rough-faced brown brick.  Its somber design was inspired by medieval Italian architecture and featured an arched corbel table below the understated cornice and tiled roof.  The firm handled the regulated fire escapes--often visual obstructions--by placing them in front of vast sets of French doors and windows, giving them a balcony effect.  The second through fifth floor windows on either side sat within slight recesses that rose to dramatic full-relief terra cotta rosettes nestled within rounded corbels.

Among the initial residents were Philip S. Platt, his wife and daughter.  He had long been involved in public health and social welfare.  In 1914 as Superintendent of the Bureau of Public Health and Hygiene, he had lobbied for sanitary public drinking fountains, saying in part, "The miles which one may walk in New York without finding a place to quench one's thirst, unless it be a restaurant, saloon, or soda fountain, is a deplorable fact."  The family was still in the building in September 1944 when Philip S. Platt was appointed executive director of the New York Association for the Blind.

The building attracted a number of artistic residents.  Living here in 1926 were illustrator and painter Eliza Buffinton, landscape artist George M. Bruestle, illustrator Herman Pfeifer, and concert pianist Howard Brockway.

George M. Bruestle, 1931, © Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0119275

George Bruestle and his wife, the former Emma Thompson moved into 424 East 47th Street in 1925.  Born in 1872, he had studied at the Art Students League under H. Siddons Mowbray, and in Paris.  A member of the Lotus Club and the Salmagundi Club, by the time he and Emma moved into the building, his works were in the permanent collections of the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Reading Museum in Pennsylvania.  (Today his paintings hang in other prestigious institutions like the Smithsonian.)

Stewart Woodford Eames and his wife, the former Jessie D. MacNeal, were also initial residents.  Born in December 1866, Eames came from an old New York family and was a member of the Society of Colonial Wars.  He had recently retired from the H. B. Claflin Company, a drygoods concern, founded by his maternal grandfather Horace Bringham Claflin.

Not long after moving into 424 East 57th Street, Jessie Eames died.  In November 1930, Stewart leased a bedroom in their apartment to a 28-year-old architect, John A. Frank.  With the Depression slowing construction projects, Frank seems to have come to New York City from Pittsfield, Massachusetts in hopes of finding work.  His chances, however, were bleak.  A report issued by the American Institute of Architects on January 20, 1931 revealed that more than 500 architect were unemployed, and institute spokesperson Julian Clarence Levi, said some were "in desperate need."

Early on the morning of January 20, 1931, Stewart Woodford Eames attempted to enter the bathroom and found the door locked.  His knocking and calling brought no response, so he had the building superintendent open the door.  They walked into the bathroom to find a horrifying scene.  Frank was in the half-filled bathtub, having slit both wrists and ankles.  A note on a nearby chair said in part, "to live longer would only prolong the agony."

The following year, on February 9, 1932, the 66-year-old Eames was crossing Fifth Avenue at 57th Street when he was hit by an automobile.  He died at Flower Hospital several hours later.

Resident Luella A. Palmer had an impressive career at a time when women normally held more subservient roles in the workplace.  Never married, she began working as a kindergarten teacher in 1897.  On February 15, 1912 she was appointed assistant director of kindergartens and six years later was made director.  She still held that title when she died on January 13, 1934.  Her funeral was held in her apartment on January 16.

Newspapers printed the praises from colleagues like associate superintendent William E. Grady, who called her "a progressive school woman," and said "The kindergartens of our schools achieved, under her able direction, a place among those outstanding in this phase of the process of education."

Another outstanding educator living here at the time was Sarah M. Dean.  Also never married, she was an 1895 graduate of Radcliffe College.  After teaching high school in Newton Massachusetts, she became head of the history department of the Brearley School for girls, noted as one of the most esteemed private schools in New York.  She was later appointed its principal and held the position until her retirement in 1921.

In the spring of 1935, Vera Stretz rented a five-room apartment here, paying $100 a month rent (about $2,000 in 2023).  A graduate of New York University and former substitute school teacher, the 26-year-old had just taken a job as bookkeeper and secretary to Dr. Fritz Gebhardt.  A German native, the 43-year-old Gebhardt was a political scientist.

Vera Stretz's residency at 424 East 57th Street would last only six months.  A romantic affair developed between her and her employer, who lived at the Beekman Tower at 3 Mitchell Place.  Gebhardt convinced her to move there, in an apartment discreetly two floors below his.  Presumably he subsidized the higher rent, and he could certainly afford to.  His personal fortune was reported by The New York Sun to be approximately $5 million in today's money.

Gebhard proposed to Vera with a engagement ring containing "a large diamond circled by emeralds," according to The New York Sun.  But the love-struck young woman's world came crashing down when she discovered in November that her lover had a wife and family in Germany.  On the night of November 11, a Beekman Tower resident notified Leslie Taite, the assistant night manager, that he had heard gunshots.  Taite responded to the 21st floor.  The New York Sun reported, "Miss Stretz was sitting on a settee beside the elevator.  He nodded to her as he walked past, but she seemed lost in thought."

He found Gebhart's apartment door open, and inside was the scientist's body, dressed only in a nightshirt.  Patrolman Holden arrived shortly afterward.  Vera told him, "Yes, I did it.  I was on my way to the station house to give myself up."

Resident Clarence Burgher (here by 1939) graduated from Princeton University in 1885.  Rather than enter the family business (his grandfather had co-founded the sugar-refining firm of Burgher, Hurlburt & Livingston), he became an attorney and inventor.  An avid yachtsman, his pastime spilled over to his professional life.  He was retained by yacht clubs and steamship companies as counsel.  In 1899 he invented the subsurface torpedo and for a decade was president of the company that manufactured it.

Living with Burgher and his wife Edith was their son, Fairfax Carter Burgher, who had also attended Princeton, and a maid, Irenie Ingmire.  The family's country home was in Rye, New York.

When the United States entered World War I, Fairfax left school to become an army aviator.  Following the war Princeton awarded him an "honorary war diploma."  But Fairfax's chosen career following the war may have been a bit of a disappointment to his parents.  Going by the stage name "Fairfax," he was a professional magician.  On January 25, 1939 The New York Sun reported, "A crowd of old and young Princeton graduates is to gather in the Mary Murray Room of the White this afternoon at cocktail time for a special Princeton party honoring Fairfax, socially prominent magician and fellow alumnus who entertains there."

An aspiring actor, as well, Fairfax played the role of Bersonin in the 1922 silent film The Prisoner of Zenda, and had a small part in the short 1929 film A Princess of Destiny.  Although his career continued to be chiefly as a magician, he would appear in television shows in the 1950s such as I Spy and Pulitzer Prize Playhouse.

The 49-year-old Fairfax was still living with his parents here as late as 1946.

The Billboard, October 26, 1946

Living here in 1980 was Carol Louise Conrad.  When she had to leave town on business for an extended period, she sought permission from the landlord, Third Sutton, to sublet her apartment to Mary Lou McGlynn.  Third Sutton replied with a letter dated September 19, 1980 denying that permission, but giving no reason.  Instead, the firm offered to allow Conrad to break her lease without penalty.

Conrad sued and in October won her case.  The ruling was upheld on appeal, the five-judge panel saying that a landlord's refusal to allow a sublet had to come with a reason.  "If he does not give a reason, the landlord has, in effect, consented to the sublet," said the court.  David Saxe, counsel for the Center for Consumer Advocacy, Inc. called it an "impressive and forward-looking decision for tenant rights."

Mann & MacNeille's 424 East 57th Street--a somber departure from the other Jazz Age buildings that were going up in the neighborhood in 1925--is little changed since those early years when this section of Manhattan was changing from what The New York Times had called "a slum" to one of the city's most exclusive residential districts.

photographs by the author

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