The Lillie Havemeyer House -- No. 16 Sutton Square

On December 21, 1896 The New York Times described the home of Aaron Goldsmith at No. 514 East 58^th Street.  The house was “of brownstone, three stories high, with a basement.  One side of the house faced directly on the East River.  In the front of the house was a bay window looking toward Riverview Terrace, which extends from Fifty-eighth Street to Sixty-second, along the river bank.”

The quiet neighborhood above the East River cliff was still an upper middle-class enclave when The Times wrote its description.  Goldsmith was a partner with Elias Hartman in a liquor business at No. 45 Warren Street.   On the night of December 20, 1896, however, the little dead-end block was anything but quiet.

Sometime after 7:00 that evening a servant girl, Mary Roska, took the Goldsmith’s two daughters, 10-year old Bertha and 8-year old Hattie, upstairs to bed.   In the parlor were Goldsmith, 45 years old, his 33-year old wife Clotilda, and their 6-year old son, Frank.   A piano lamp—the Victorian version of a pole lamp—stood in the bay window, illuminating that section of the room.  The large lamp held more than a gallon of oil.

The Goldsmiths’s peaceful evening was shattered when suddenly the lamp exploded, throwing flaming oil throughout the parlor.  The New York Times related the following morning “A neighbor acquainted with the interior of the house said the fire must have caught the portieres between the parlor and the hall, and from there spread up stairs.”

Mary Roska had just tucked the little girls into bed and started for the stairs to get little Frank.  She was stopped at the top of the staircase by a wall of flame.  She ran to a rear window and jumped out, landing two stories below in the rear yard.  Mary reentered the house and ran through the basement and out onto 58^th Street.

The fire fighters of Truck No. 2 were on the scene within ten minutes; but it was too late.   “Before the fire had been extinguished the interior of the house was burned away,” said The Times.  “Only the walls and the first floor remained.”

The three bodies on the first floor were burned beyond recognition.  “Mr. Goldsmith was recognized by a diamond pin that he had worn in his shirtfront and which was still on his body.”  The newspaper said “Up stairs on the next floor were found the bodies of the two little girls.  They had evidently been undressed and in bed.”

The middle-class character of the block was evidenced by the $5,000 damages to the Goldsmith home caused by the blaze—about $145,000 today.

But by the end of World War I much had changed.   A brewery operated nearby and the former private homes were operated as rooming houses.  The New York Times unapologetically called the district “a slum.”

It was exactly the type of neighborhood where one would not expect to find a millionaire.  But far from Fifth or Madison Avenue, it had potential only a few far-sighted pioneers could envision.  The river views and cooling breezes enjoyed by the Goldsmiths were still enticing—if only enough investors could be found to transform the area.

A group, Sutton Square, Inc., was formed to buy up the 18 houses that formed a horseshoe around a common garden.   The enclave would become Sutton Place; while the block long stretch of 58^th Street that ended with the Goldsmith house, would become Sutton Square.

Among the socially-important colonists were W. Seward Webb, Jr., architect Eliot Cross, Robert C. Knapp, Frederick Allen, conductor Walter Damrosch and Elisabeth Marbury.  Another was Rosecrans Baldwin.  On August 7, 1920 The New York Times noted that he had purchased No. 514 East 58^th from Sutton Square, Inc.

What was, in 1896, was a handsome private home was now described by the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide as a “3-story stone tenement.”  The day after the announcement in The Times, Rosecrans transferred the title to his wife, Helen; as was common.  The couple’s mortgage was $20,000.

The Rosecrans house would be transformed according to common restrictions.  “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 resultant home, designed by Mott Schmidt, could be diplomatically termed “understated” and, at worst, “uninteresting.”  Four stories of red brick were highlighted only by two thin stone bandcourses and a pedimented centered doorway.   While the neo-Georgian homes Schmidt designed for Anne Morgan and Anne Vanderbilt would soon steal the show on Sutton Place, the exterior of the Baldwin house drew little attention.

Schmidt's design, seen here on March 6, 1933, was unpretentious.  photo by Samuel H. Gottscho from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/Collection/Mrs.%20Frederick%20Havemeyer%20[residence],%2016%20Sutton%20Square,%20NYC.%20Exterior.-2F3XC5UMCC_C.html

In March 1922 Helen Baldwin and the City of New York met in court to decide who owned the cliff face that cascaded down to the river.  The court’s decision that it was Baldwin property would be a fateful one for the house two decades later.

In 1931 Lillie H. Havemeyer, purchased what was now No. 16 Sutton Square.  Her choice made sense since her two sisters, Anne Vanderbilt (widow of William K. Vanderbilt) and Mrs. Stephen Olin already owned homes on Sutton Place.   Her mortgage of $51,000 reflected the increased property values.

Lillie Havemeyer filled the house with period antiques and works of art.  If the façade of the Havemeyer home was blasé, the interiors made up for it.  Dry Goods Economist said of her “Mrs. Havemeyer, who was Miss Lillie Harriman, is a sister of Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt.  She is almost as well known as a connoisseur and a woman of taste as she is a leader of fashion.”  

Lille Havemeyer decorated the house with a mix of antiques and periods.  photograph by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYWJV5IEY&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

Among Lillie’s close companions was S. Ogden Ludlow, known familiarly as “Luddy,” the estranged husband of Katherine Hepburn.  According to biographer William J. Mann in his Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, “Havemeyer, a well-traveled gadabout in her fifties, preferred cultured young homosexual men as her escorts and Luddy, [Michael] Pearlman said, ‘fit that bill quite well.’”

In 1939 construction began on the massive FDR Drive project below the cliffs of Sutton Place.  Actress Marion Hopkins, who lived at No. 13 Sutton Place, told a reporter on October 15, 1939 “There was a nefarious plan afoot to have the highway run parallel to our lawns.  But those of us who own houses in Sutton Place got together and paid to have the road covered over with grass.”

The revised plans preserved the exclusivity of the enclave and the river views; but required dynamiting the solid stone cliff.  Most of the homes sat far back from the cliff’s edge.   But that was not the case with No. 16 Sutton Square.

The Commissioner of Borough Works, Walter Binger, sat with Lillie Havemeyer and they came to an agreement.  The old house would be demolished and a new one constructed.    On May 21, 1940 it was announced that architect Dewitt C. Pond had filed plans for a four-story home costing $30,000; about half a million in today’s dollars.

Pond’s design blended with the neighboring neo-colonial facades.  A simple columned portico identified the main entrance and limestone quoins and lintels provided contrast with the red brick.  Across the street, at No. 7 Sutton Square, a son was born to Aristotle Onassis and his wife, the former Athina Livanos, on May 5, 1948.

By the time their second child, Christina, was born on December 12 two years later, the Onassis family was living in No. 16 Sutton Square.   The New York Times described it as “furnished in the Louis XVI period.” 

The shipping tycoon had amassed the largest private fleet in the world and his wealth was nearly unequaled.   His first years at No. 16 Sutton Place saw him entangled in court battles over his questionable whaling operations off the coast of Peru.

He was distracted from legal troubles in 1954 when his yacht, the Christina, was launched.   In 1948 he had purchased a Canadian naval frigate, the Stormont, for $34,000.  Now it emerged as the most lavish private yacht in the world—having cost Onasssis more than $4 million.  It was outfitted with a formal library, a staircase with a marble handrail and one fireplace faced in lapis lazuli.   The Onassis suite had four bedrooms and a bath of blue Sienna marble.  There were nine other suites for guests—people as dissimilar as Winston Churchilll, Greta Garbo, John Wayne, John Paul Getty, Jacqueline Kennedy and Richard Burton.  The floor of the mosaic-tiled swimming pool could be raised to deck level, creating a dance floor.

The yacht would eventually end the Onassis marriage.  It was on board the Christina that Onassis began his affair with opera star Maria Callas.   When Athinia (known as Tina) discovered the indiscretion in 1960, she sued for divorce.

Little about No. 16 Sutton Square has changed.  In 1989 it sold for $8.325 million.   It continues to demand little outward attention, preferring as always to reserve its true character to the inside.

uncredited photographs taken by the author

The Henry H. Sprague House - No. 4 Sutton Square

The side garden allows for an unexpected wall of additional windows.

Early in 1920 a group of intrepid—and wealthy—urban pioneers turned their backs on Madison and Fifth Avenues and struck out on a social experiment many thought preposterous.  The distasteful neighborhood in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge was filled with near derelict brownstones of the 1870s; it included a brewery and tenement buildings.  But the mansion district in the center of the Manhattan could not compete with its river views and refreshing breezes.

Millionaires including W. Seward Webb, Jr. (whose mother was Lila Osgood Vanderbilt) and architect Eliot Cross formed Sutton Square, Inc. and, for $100,000, purchased the 18 homes enbracing a common garden—the east side of Sutton Place from 57^th to 58^th Street, and the southern side of 58^th Street from Sutton Place to the river.

While most moneyed New Yorkers thought the idea absurd and The New York Times deemed the neighborhood “a slum,” Sutton Square, Inc. included buyers like Anne Vanderbilt, widow of William K. Vanderbilt; Anne Morgan, daughter, of J. P. Morgan; and conductor Walter Damrosch.  The group intended the enclave to be called Sutton Square, as it was for a short time.  Eventually only the one-block section of 58^th Street would retain the name.

The property owners were given strict restraints in remodeling the Victorian buildings.  “The group is not to be razed, but entirely rebuilt,” reported the New-York-Tribune on December 26, 1920.  “The brownstone stoops, the window ledges and other protrusions are to be cleaved off, leaving a straight front to the outside world.”

Anne Morgan’s architect, Mott Schmidt, hired general contractor Carl A. Vollmer, Inc. to handle the reconstruction of her mansion that encompassed Nos. 3 and 5 Sutton Place.   Within the year The American Architect announced “The building at 502 East 58^th St. will be turned into a 4-story dwelling for H. H. Sprague.”  The publication listed as the architect Carl A. Vollmer, Inc.

If, indeed, the general contracting firm acted as architect, it would be surprising.  However the listing appeared in other announcements as well.  The cost of transforming Sprague’s acquisition into an up-to-date residence would be about $20,000—in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars today.

The 63-year old Henry H. Sprague was the inventor of the Sprague gas meter and President of the Sprague Meter Co.   The device had garnered him a fortune.   His remodeled house, renumbered No. 4 Sutton Square, drew on early American architecture—as did nearly all of the Sutton Place mansions.

The colonial design of the unassuming red brick façade featured a six-paneled entrance door topped by a broken pediment.  The service entrance, on the opposite of the center window, was unadorned (so as not to confuse guests).  Directly above, a modified Palladian-style window was accentuated by a graceful and unique leaded overlight.  Stone urns perched above the brick posts outside the shallow areaway.

As was most often the case with high-end dwellings, the title was put in the name of Sprague’s wife, Rose.  She would not enjoy her fashionable new home very long.  She died on July 30, 1929, leaving Henry a life interest in the residence.

The elderly Henry Sprague wasted no time in moving on.  On May 18, 1930, less than a year after Rose’s death, the 72-year old millionaire married his nurse-companion, 33-year old Hattie Magness.

While society whispered of the goings on in Sprague’s life; upheaval was taking place in the home of Henry Huttleston Rogers, Jr.  The millionaire son of the Standard Oil founder mogul, was married to Mary Benjamin.  She was the daughter of New York journalist and poet Park Benjamin, and was a close friend of Samuel Clemens.

An affair on Henry’s part resulted in their 1929 divorce.  Mary restyled her name to avoid confusion with Henry’s intended second wife and found a new home.  On February 8, 1930 The New York Times reported “Mrs. M. Benjamin Rogers has left the Ritz Towers for her new home at 4 Sutton Square.” 

Later that year the newspaper updated its readers on the changes in the Social Register.  “The first Mrs. H. H. Rogers is listed as Mrs. Benjamin Rogers, with residence at 4 Sutton Square.  The address of Mr. Rogers who was married to Mrs. Basil Miles shortly after his divorce, is still given as ‘Port of Missing Men,’ Southampton, L.I.”

Mary’s entertainments in the house included a society wedding on January 10, 1931.  Frances Seymour married George Tuttle Brokaw that afternoon, surprising wealthy socialites who read about the ceremony the following day.

“The marriage will come as a surprise to society, as there had been no announcement of the engagement,” noted The New York Times.  In reporting on the wedding, the newspaper noted the pedigrees of the bride and groom.  Frances was related to “many old families of this city, including the Pells, Howlands, Stoutenburghs, Stuyvesants, Anthons, Fishes, and Costers; also the Biddles of Philadelphia.”  George Brokaw, “a son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Vail Brokaw, is a member of an old Hugenot family, being a descendant of Bourgon Broucard, who settled in this city in 1673.”  Both families were counted among the wealthiest in the city.

In May 1936 Mary Benjamin Rogers leased her house, furnished, to theatrical producer Eric Charell.  She would not return.  The following year it was owned by cosmetics mogul Florence M. Lewis, who was known professionally as Elizabeth Arden.   She apparently purchased the mansion for investment purposes, for she immediately leased it to Pierpont M. Hamilton, grandson of J. P. Morgan.

Hamilton had married Marie Louise Blair, daughter of C. Ledyard Blair, on September 11, 1919 following his return Europe where he was an aviator during World War I.  The couple divorced and he married Rebecca Stickney on January 3, 1930.

Rebecca Hamilton threw herself headlong into upscale entertainments in the Sutton Square home—often making full use of the shared garden.  On June 11, 1940, for instance, she gave a “garden party and tea” for Dr. and Mrs. Arthur Rodzinski.  Rodzinski was the musical director of the Cleveland Orchestra.  The New York Times mentioned “The guests yesterday included persons prominent in society and musical circles.”

That garden party would be among the last events Rebecca Hamilton hosted on Sutton Square.  On August 9, 1940 The Times reported that Florence M. Lewis had leased the house “for a long term with purchase option” to Mrs. Aquila Giles.   Exactly two weeks later the newspaper noted “Mr. and Mrs. Pierpont M. Hamilton will leave their home at 4 Sutton Square in the Autumn and will be at Carlton House.”

Elizabeth Arden retained ownership of the house for several more years, eventually selling to Charles E. Gilbert around 1949.  He quickly resold the house to a “well-known New Yorker” for occupancy.  The well-known New Yorker was Ward Cheney and his wife.

Cheney was prominent in the silk business and his wife, Frances, was the daughter of banker Henry P. Davison.   In addition to the Sutton Square mansion, they maintained a magnificent estate, Peacock Point, on the shore of Locust Valley, Long Island.

The house later became home to Robert I Goldman, chief executive officer of the Congress Financial Corporation, and his wife, the former Vira Hladun.   The New York Times writer Robin Finn would later describe No. 4 as “museum quality.”  Finn wrote in 2003 that Mrs. Goldmann’s “Queen Anne-style dining room replicates Winterthur’s.  Her dressing room copies Colonial Williamsburg’s.  She can afford to be a purist.” 

After more than three decades together, the Goldmans divorced in 1998 and Vira (in her words) “kicked her husband out.”  The court gave her half of his $84 million fortune and she continued to live at No. 4 Sutton Square (and an 18^th century London townhouse) until 2003.  That year the 63-year old, who had added an “n” and hyphenated her last name to Hladun-Goldmann, put the Sutton Square house on the market for $16 million.  Robin Finn explained “She is selling this place not just to downsize to a Park Avenue pied-a-terra, but to build an estate in Virginia for her ‘last hurrah.’”

A scar in the brickwork testifies to the loss of the exquisite fanlight that once adorned the Palladian window. 

The dignified house at No. 4 Sutton Square was purchased by Michael Jeffries, President of Abercrombie & Fitch.  At some point the marvelous overlight above the Palladian window was removed and bricked up.  Otherwise the distinguished home remains essentially unchanged since a group of fearless millionaires transformed a slum into one of Manhattan’s most enviable addresses.

photos by the author

The Foster Kennedy House -- No. 14 Sutton Square

On July 16, 1920 the New-York Tribune reported that Sutton Square, Inc. had sold the “three-story dwelling at 512 East Fifth-Eighth Street to Dr. Foster Kennedy.”  The news was somewhat unexpected.

A group of wealthy urban pioneers that year had struck out on a social experiment many thought preposterous.  The remote neighborhood in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge included a brewery, tenement buildings and neglected brownstones of the 1870s.  Now millionaires like W. Seward Webb, Jr. (whose mother was Lila Osgood Vanderbilt and who was married to the daughter of Mayor Gaynor) and Eliot Cross (of the architectural firm Cross & Cross) had formed Sutton Square, Inc. and, for $100,000, purchased the 18 homes enclosing a common garden—the east side of Sutton Place from 57^th to 58^th Street, and the southern block of 58^th Street from Sutton Place to the River.

The establishment of an exclusive residential “colony” in what The New York Times referred to as “a slum” was shocking to many.  But within months Dr. Robert Foster Kennedy (he rarely used his first name) would be joined by buyers like Anne Vanderbilt, widow of William K.  Vanderbilt; Anne Morgan, daughter of J. P. Morgan; and conductor Walter Damrosch.  As reflected in the corporation’s name, the group intended the enclave to be called Sutton Square, as it was for a short time.  Eventually only the one-block section of 58^th Street would keep the name.

The New-York Tribune published a sketch of the houses that wrapped around the common garden.  A steep embankment dropped to the East River in the foreground -- December 26, 1920 (copyright expired)

The restraints on remodeling the Victorian homes were made clear in the Sutton Square, Inc. deeds.  “The group is not to be razed, but entirely rebuilt.  Nothing will be left standing but the walls of the houses,” reported the New-York Tribune on December 26, 1920.  “The brownstone stoops, the window ledges and other protrusions are to be cleaved off, leaving a straight front to the outside world.”

The house Dr. Kennedy purchased had become operated as a boarding house.  In August 1900 Ashcan School artist Robert Henri moved in.  Bruce Weber, in his Paintings of New York 1800-1950, describes the Sutton Square neighborhood at the time.

“The artist’s flat overlooked the East River, was one block from coal-loading piers, and was not far from the riverfront’s many slaughterhouses as well as the city’s main garbage dump.”

When Dr. Kennedy purchased his brownstone, it retained its 58^th Street address; but that would change before his renovations were complete.  The doctor commissioned H. O. Milliken to transform the vintage structure.   The young architect had graduated from Princeton University in 1905, then immediately traveled to Paris to study.  He now, like most of the architects working on the Sutton Square houses, would turn to the American colonial period for inspiration.

Three months after the purchase, the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported on the scope of the renovations.  “Remove stoop, entrance, new plumbing, heating, electrical work, walls, vent shafts, flooring, fireplaces, window, steps, openings in 3-story brick dwelling.”  Milliken estimated the cost of the project at $15,000—around $175,000 today.

The transformation, as with all the Sutton Place homes, was remarkable.  Milliken moved the entrance to just below street level, originally the English basement.  As a result the three-story house became four.  Renumbered No. 14 Sutton Square, it was faced in variously-colored brick laid in Flemish bond.  Trimmed in white marble and limestone, the neo-Federal townhouse featured splayed keystones; a row of arched openings, each enclosing a blind tympanum, at the second floor; and a dormered mansard behind a stone parapet.

The Irish-born doctor as he appeared around the time he purchased the home -- Leaders of the Twentieth Century, 1918 (copyright expired)

Dr. Foster Fletcher moved into his new home from No. 20 West 50^th Street with his wife, the former Katherine Caragol de la Terga and their daughter Hessie Juana.  The 35-year old neurologist was already internationally-known.  Chief of Neurological Services at Bellevue Hospital, he had recently worked with shell-shocked soldiers on the front of World War I.  During the conflict he served as physician-in-chief of a French military hospital and later as a Major of the Royal Army Medical Corps.

His 1918 study The Nature of Nervousness in Soldiers directly contradicted the theories Sigmund Freud.  While Freud felt that shell shock was psychosomatic; Kennedy called it a manifestation of hysteria—the internal conflict between instinct for self-preservation and his herd instinct.  He was a pioneer in the use of electroconvulsive therapy in cases of psychosis, a leader in the study of addictions, and lent his name to the Foster Kennedy Syndrome.

Foster and Katherine Kennedy would live in the Sutton Square residence for decades.  The doctor’s prominence led to his name being publicized for the most minor issues—like the newspaper article on March 17, 1937 that informed readers that Kennedy “was found not guilty yesterday at a hearing before Magistrate Thomas A. Aurelio in Traffic Court on a charge of having passed a red light on Jan. 18.”

The Kennedys were socially visible, rubbing shoulders with Manhattan’s elite at concerts, summer resorts and dances.  Katherine threw herself into war relief efforts as World War II erupted in Europe.  Violinist Efrem Zimbalist gave a Carnegie Hall recital in December 1940 for the cause; and on December 19 The Times noted “in the interest of the Zimbalist concert, Mrs. R. Foster Kennedy will give a tea Friday at her home.”  On the night of the recital, the Kennedys gave a dinner, “taking their guests later to the concert by Efrem Zimbalist, violinist, at Carnegie Hall.”

Katherine’s polite entertainments included participation in the East Side Garden Tours.  In 1942 she teamed up with next door neighbor Mrs. Kenneth Taylor, who lived at No. 12, to serve tea in the gardens for the ladies on the tour.

At the time, however, the Kennedy name carried with it a taint; at least for some.  Dr. Kennedy was President of the Euthanasia Society of America and his theories regarding mercy killings were considered radical and shocking to many Americans.  Especially after the revelation of the horrors of Nazi Germany, public favor for the practice had diminished.  Dr. Foster Kennedy was unmoved by the war atrocities, which he found unrelated.

He argued that the lives of persons “born defective” should be ended, saying this was the most humane treatment they could receive.  In 1942 he published an article in the journal of the American Psychiatric Association supporting the killing of retarded children over five years old.  He referred to them as “those hopeless ones who should never have been born—Nature’s mistakes.”

Nevertheless, Kennedy’s fame among the medical community and his expert speaking skills outweighed the his questionable stance on the issue.  The New York Times called him “a scholar and a wit, connoisseur and philosopher, an accomplished orator and raconteur.”  The newspaper said “The medical fraternity came to regard him as a modern version of a Delphic oracle who always could be counted upon to highlight the essence of a subject with a trenchant quotable phrase.”

On December 30, 1952 Kennedy “was stricken at his home, 14 Sutton Square,” according to The Times, and taken to Bellevue Hospital.   He died there on January 7, exactly one month before his 58^th birthday.  In October Katherine leased the furnished mansion to John R. Riley, Jr.

By 1956 it had become home to attorney Walter D. Fletcher.  His wife, Eleanor Langley Fletcher, was the former wife of James H. Van Alen—a well-known figure in Newport society.  As it had been when the Kennedys lived here, No. 14 was the scene of brilliant entertainments, often for the benefit of organizations like the United Fund Committee.

When No. was placed on the market in 1991 for just under $3 million, realtors listed five bedrooms, a wine cellar and library among its features.  A gem tucked away on a nearly unknown block, it recalls the description of Sutton Place anticipated by a New-York Tribune writer in 1920 “old-fashioned brick and other materials will make a picture such as artists paint of corners of ancient cities of the world.”

photographs by the author