Sylvan Bien's 1939 150 West 21st Street

 

Born in Austria, architect Sylvan Bien emigrated to San Francisco to work on the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.  He relocated to New York City in 1919.  By the 1930s he was designing mostly apartment buildings and hotels.  As the Great Depression wound down, in 1938 Bien was hired by East Lane Inc. to design an apartment building at 150 through 158 West 21st Street, just east of Seventh Avenue.

Construction was completed the following year at a cost of $140,000 (about $3 million in 2026).  Bien executed his Art Moderne design almost entirely through contrasting brick and cast stone.  The centered entrance below a bronze grill was recessed within a dramatic polished black stone frame.  Matching bronze grills covered the windows on either side of the entrance.  Cast stone piers with reeded bands rose to create a frieze atop a reeded bandcourse.

The brickwork of the first floor was laid in a basketweave pattern.  Geometric bands of salmon-colored brick contrasted to a cream-colored brick background.  Multi-paned casement windows contributed to the Art Moderne geometry.  

Bien divided the upper five floors into three vertical sections by decorating the four-bay-wide central section with rows of salmon brick that vertically connected the windows with those above and below.  A parapet took the place of a cornice.  Two rows of brick bosses decorated the central section and Art Moderne railings provided interest above each of the two end bays.

Bronze grills at the entrance, multi-paned casements, and a bold parapet contributed to Bien's design.  from the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

An advertisement in The New York Sun on June 10, 1939 touted, "Just Completed -- Latest home comforts."  Prospective tenants could choose apartments that ranged from one-and-a-half to three rooms.

Catherine Donohue was among the initial residents.  The 35-year-old was a close friend of the Croke family that included 35-year-old Catholic priest Rev. John Croke.  He lived at 201 West 95th Street and was attached to the Rosary Hill House in Hawthorne, New York.

Shortly after she moved into 150 West 21st Street, on October 3, 1939 Catherine was riding in Rev. Croke's automobile in New Jersey.  Croke was driving south along Route 9 West in Englewood when they were hit head-on by a car driven by 19-year-old Frank Grande.  The teen's 14-year-old brother, Joseph, was in that car.  It was a horrific crash.  Rev. Croke died in Englewood Hospital the following morning.  The New York Times reported that Catherine was "in the hospital with critical injuries."

Frank Grande, tragically, should not have been on the road at all.  He held a conditional driver's permit, which prohibited him to operate a vehicle without a licensed driver in the car.  He and his brother were only slightly injured.

Four days later, The New York Times updated readers, reporting that Catherine Donahue had succumbed to her injuries.  Frank Grande's joy riding with his brother resulted in his being arrested "on two charges of causing death by automobile and on a charge of driving without a license," said the article.

Bien used creative brickwork and color as part of his design.

Another initial tenant was Daniel B. Stampler.  The building was extremely convenient, since he was manager of the Empire Bar & Grill down the block at Sixth Avenue and 21st Street.  At the time, employees were paid in cash.  In most cases they received their pay envelopes on Friday evening or on Saturday.  Crooks, who were sharply aware of the practice, would stake out businesses and learn the schedules of bookkeepers or managers tasked with transporting the cash.

On the morning of July 5, 1940, Stampler drove to the National Safety Bank & Trust Company at 27th Street and Seventh Avenue and withdrew $5,206 in cash (about $116,000 today).  As he got back into his automobile, another pulled up beside it.  The New York Times reported, "At the point of pistols the thugs forced him to drive to Twenty-eighth Street and the North [i.e., Hudson] River.  Putting Mr. Stampler out of the car, the bandits drove off."  It is unclear whether the robbers were captured or if Stampler's automobile was recovered.

Vitter Cucio and his wife were also initial residents.  In the winter of 1939, they were the target of what The New York Times described as "two of the city's boldest robbers."  Salvatore Oddo, who was 33 years old, and his partner 25-year-old Dominick Mundo, were not only bold, they were dangerous.

The Cucio apartment was one of several the pair burglarized.  Fortunately for the couple, they were not at home at the time.  Mundo and Oddo made away with $500 in cash and jewels.  (The cash would translate to about $11,000 today.)  The criminals were captured and sentenced "to long prison terms," according to The New York Times on June 13, 1942.  Among Mundo's charges was the "shooting [of] a police lieutenant last February, after his arrest in the hold-up of a garage," said the article.

Sadly, Sylvan Bien's Art Moderne grills were removed in the late 20th century.

Residents of 150 West 21st Street continued to be victimized.  Dorothy Shugard was an athlete, described by The New York Times as "formerly a sprinter."  On Sunday night December 21, 1947, she was walking along Broadway near the Broadway Central Hotel when 27-year-old Arthur W. Seymour, who worked as a seaman, "seized her handbag, containing $50 in cash and a bracelet," according to The New York Times, and knocked her to the sidewalk.  Dorothy screamed out, "Stop, thief!"  (The article said she, "was hampered in the chase by her high heels.")

Happily for her, walking along the block was 27-year-old Emanuel Hauser and his bride.  Hauser, an Air Force veteran, had been sworn in as a police officer two days earlier and married the next day.  Hauser's wife exhorted, "Go get him, Mannie!"

The young police officer, who had not yet served a single day in uniform, chased Seymour, capturing him at Broadway and Waverly Place.  Dorothy Shugard was right behind.  At Police Headquarters, Seymour admitted stealing the handbag and told Officer Hauser, "Once more around the block and she'd have caught me."

At the time of the incident, America was seeing the rise of what would be called the Red Scare, or McCarthyism.  The Cold War prompted fears of Communism and they ballooned into hysteria.  It all resulted in Government investigations, blacklisting, and accusations.  

Minna Finkelstein lived here at midcentury.  The teacher had been with the New York Public Schools since 1932 and taught at Public School 11 in the Bronx.  In 1951, Superintendent of Schools Dr. William Jansen initiated a personal "investigation into Communist influence in the city school system," as reported by The New York Times, and Jansen told the newspaper, "quite a bit of work" had to be done "before the school system was completely free of possible subversive influence."

By October 1952, when Minna Finkelstein was summoned to be interrogated, 15 teachers had already been fired.  She and two other educators "balked at questions" put to them.  Three months later, on January 31, 1953, The Times reported that the three instructors had been suspected and "charged with insubordination and conduct unbecoming teachers."  The school system's assistant corporation counsel, Saul Moskoff, explained that Minna had "refused to answer all questions about alleged past or present party membership."  

In the second half of the 20th century, the building underwent an unfortunate modernization.  The bronze grills were removed from the entrance, the casement windows replaced, and the parapet stripped of its Art Moderne personality.

photographs by the author

Sylvan Bien's 1938 4 East 70th Street

 

image via cityrealty.com

Following her high-profile divorce from millionaire Marshall Field, in 1937 Evelyn Field sold their massive mansion at 4-8 East 70th Street, running through the block to east 69th Street.  The original plans to convert it to a club never materialized, and Watford Estates, Inc. demolished the magnificent home as the site of two apartment buildings--at 4 East 70th and 3 East 69th Street.

Both buildings were designed by Sylvan Bien.  The New York Sun explained they were "similar in construction and are separated at the back by a garden...Each building is topped with a penthouse apartment occupying the entire roof space.  There are also terrace duplex apartments and a number of two-room, three-room and six-room duplexes, as well as three-room simplexes."

Bien's design for 4 East 70th Street was an Art Deco take on neo-Classical architecture. The entrance was flanked by black composite tiles under a jazzy gold-tone Art Deco cornice.  The central portion of the eight-story midsection featured full-height, fluted pilasters.

image via cityrealty.com

On July 16, 1938, The New York Sun reported that the two buildings "are practically completed, almost fully rented, and will be ready for occupancy in exactly a month."  Sylvan Bien told the journalist, "Every apartment will be an ideal little house.  What the decorators often strive to do afterwards we've done before."  The article said,

And he mentioned winding stairways, round foyers, rotundas with niches, fireplaces, oversized dressing rooms off baths, powder rooms, high clothes poles in fitted closets from which to hang evening gowns without dragging, highly styled kitchens designed for more or less servantless housekeeping.

At the time of the article, the low relief lobby murals by Pierre Bourdell were on exhibition at the Jacques Seligmann galleries.  The five murals paid homage to Manhattan life:  Fulton Fish Market, Circus on Broadway, Central Park Zoo, Library Steps, and Chinatown Festival.

The kitchens and kitchenettes included "enormous iceboxes."  The article noted, "Most of the gas ranges have two ovens, two broilers, six burners with a covering plate for every two."

Rent for the six-room duplexes ranged from $2,900 to $3,800 a year, "depending on the height of the floor"--about $6,850 per month for the most expensive in 2024 terms.  The penthouses, of course, were pricier, renting for as much as $6,000 a year ($10,800 per month today).  The Sun noted that they came with "wood-burning fireplaces and surrounding terraces with splendid view."

Among those who had signed leases at the time of the article was Russell Herts, whose six-room duplex on the fourth and fifth floors had already been decorated.  The Sun described it, saying:

Done in shades of green, turquoise, burgundy, yellow, with touches of silver, it accents the combination of painted walls and papered walls.  Living room and dining room are large and feature eighteenth century English furnishings.  The bedrooms above, are eighteenth century French.

Other tenants who had signed leases during construction were George R. Kantzler, Charles C. Wright and his wife Elizabeth, and Margaret Olcott.  Kantzler was a partner in the banking and brokerage firm J. E. Swan & Co.  

Margaret O'Donovan Olcott was the widow of actor, singer and songwriter Chauncey Olcott (the composer of, among other popular songs, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling and My Wild Irish Rose).  Described by the Troy Record as "wealthy in her own right," she would be moving here from 17 Sutton Place.  Her summer estate was Inniscarra in Saratoga Springs, New York.  On September 7, 1938, a society journalist with The Saratogian reported, "Mrs. Chauncey Olcott has returned from a visit in New York city, where, I understand, she inspected the penthouse she has leased at 4 East 70th St...Mrs. Olcott, I hear, is much pleased with her new apartment which is in a beautiful location.  She plans to pass September in Inniscarra."

Two postcards from the 1920s illustrated the Olcott summer home.

Margaret Olcott (known as Rita to her friends) was an author and playwright.  Among her plays were Lussmore and Ragged Robin.  In 1939, a few months after moving into 4 East 70th Street, she published a biography of her late husband, A Song in His Heart.  

Before then, however, she married Ralph Stuyvesant-Brown, "a descendant of Peter Stuyvesant," according to The New York Times, on December 23, 1938 in St. Vincent Ferrer's Church on Lexington Avenue.   The newspaper said that after the ceremony, "the couple will visit Ireland, England and France.  They plan to return to Inniscarra, Mrs. Olcott's Saratoga home, in time for the racing season there."

David M. Fruedenthal, his wife, Dorothy Fuld, and their daughter Rhoda were early residents.  Fruedenthal had joined Bloomingdale's in 1927 as controller, and was named vice-president in 1939.  Rhoda's engagement to Albert Carroll was announced on April 2, 1942.

In 1948, Fruedenthal resigned from Bloomingdales.  He and Dorothy moved to Rome where he served as deputy administrator of the Economic Cooperation Administration, the U.S. Government agency set up to administer the Marshall Plan.

Other well-heeled residents at the time included Howard Franklin Beebe, the former president of the American Investment Bankers Association, and his wife, the former Clara Belle Mitchell; and Nathan E. Handler and his wife, the former Gertrude Wolf.  Handler was a graduate of Columbia University and the founder of the Shepherd Knit-Wear Company.  The Handlers were lovers of music.  Their summer home in Lenox, Massachusetts was near Tanglewood and they counted among their friends, according to The New York Times, many musicians.

Chase H. and Charlotte R. Davis were married in Paris in 1921.  Charlotte had two children from her former marriage to the late Edward Mailer Radway--John Symonds and Frances Radway.  The family had two other residences, one in Cincinnati and a summer home in East Hampton.  John enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in 1942, and served with the Fourth Division in the Pacific theater.  The family was still here in 1946 when John became engaged to Judith Ann Lawson of Cincinnati.

Another resident to fight in World War II was William D. Lamborn, the son of Ody H. and Louise Davant Lamborn.  After attending Phillips Academy and Yale University, he fought with the Naval Air Arm.  He was discharged in 1946 with the rank of ensign, having been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with five clusters.

Ody H. Lamborn was the president of Lamborn & Co., sugar brokers.  He was described by The New York Times as "a longtime leader in the sugar industry."  Indeed, he had joined the family concern at the age of 15.  In 1943 he was a founder and the first executive director of the sugar Research Foundation.  The following year, he became president of the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange and was made the first president of the National Association of Commodity Exchanges and Allied Trades.

In 1950, Alfred A. Scheffer designed the Lamborn's summer home in Beach Hampton--a Cape Cod style cottage with shingled and 18th century inspired windows.  Ody and Louse Lamborn were still living here when Ody died at the age of 74 on September 27, 1971.

The Lamborn's charming summer home in Beach Hampton.  image from Robert Hefner's "Alfred A. Scheffer's Beach Hampton Houses, 1941 to 1965."

By the late 1950s, Jacques Kaplan and his wife Claude Puiforcat lived here.  Born in Paris in 1924, Kaplan came from a family of furriers.  When the Nazis invaded France, the family fled to Antibes where Jacques joined the resistance.  The family relocated to New York City in 1942 and Jacque's father established a fur business on Fifth Avenue.  (Jacques immediately returned to Europe, fighting with the Fifth Armed Division in North Africa and earning the Croix de Guerre.)

Back in New York after the war, Jacques joined his father's firm, but brought his love of modern art to his fur fashions.  The New York Times later said, "Art and fur marched hand in hand...he experimented with novelties like shirred mink, from which he made raincoats.  Inspired by geometric art, he created a square mink coat."  But by the 1960s, he swore off the use of endangered species, like leopard and cheetah, earning praise from the World Wildlife Fund.

Jacques Kaplan, The David Gahr Archives

Jacques and Claude divorced in 1956, after which Jacques made his apartment a social and artistic center.  Francois Baschet writes in his The Sound Sculptures of Bernard and Francois Baschet, "Kaplan lived in a ground floor apartment at 4 East Seventieth Street that was as well-known as the Museum of Modern Art.  It was the gathering place of the movers and shakers of art and fashion of the 1960s."

Jacques Kaplan sold his fur business in 1969, and in the 1980s he and his second wife, Violaine Bachelier purchased a home in Kent, Connecticut, where Kaplan opened an art gallery.

Other than replacement windows, there are no substantial exterior changes to Sylvan Bien's 1938 design.

many thanks to reader Lowell Cochrane for suggesting this post

no permission to reuse the content of this blog has been granted to LaptrinhX.com

Sylvan Bien's 1940 737 Park Avenue

 

photo by Godsfriendchuck

Born in Austria, architect Sylvan Bien emigrated to San Francisco to work on the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.  He relocated to New York City in 1919.  By the 1930s he was designing mostly apartment buildings and hotels.

In 1939, the 737 Park Avenue Corp. demolished seven rowhouses at the northeast corner of Park Avenue and 71st Street.  Bien was commissioned to design an apartment building on the site.  He blended traditional French neo-Classical motifs into his Art Moderne design.  Completed in 1940, the building's five-story limestone base upheld 14 stories of red brick.  At the upper floors, Greek key bands and classical pediments harkened to French Empire prototypes.

This rendering graced the cover of the 1940 brochure which touted the "architectural standards of the general Empire style."  from the Avery Library collection of Columbia University

The lobby was designed to impress.  The real estate brochure said, "The floor is terrazzo with matched marble wainscot.  Several large wall paintings by a well known mural artist are used to bring warmth and interest to the entire entrance and elevator lobby."

Two views of the lobby in 1941.  from the collection of the Library of Congress.

Potential tenants could select apartments ranging from three to eight rooms.  "Some suites have terraces, and there are several 3 and 6 room duplex arrangements," said the brochure, which noted, "All have large galleries, with powder and dressing rooms in most, while many have maids' rooms.  Additional maids' rooms are available on the first floor."

The "special apartments" were on the 18th and 19th floors.  The "C" model included seven rooms, four baths, a dressing room, powder room, library and dining room, plus three terraces.  The brochure promised the apartments would "satisfy the most rigorous demands for prestige and distinction."

The three "special" apartments on the 18th and 19th floors all had terraces.  from the Avery Library collection of Columbia University

As the building neared completion in September 1940, S. R. Firestone, vice president of Pease & Elliman, told a reporter from The New York Times that 737 Park Avenue reflected a change in Manhattan lifestyle.  He said that builders were "providing discriminating Manhattan apartment residents with the same type of accommodations they enjoyed in earlier years but with fewer rooms and on a substantially lower rental basis."  He was quick to add, "There has been, however, no sacrifice of comfort or convenience."  The article continued, "Mr. Firestone states that many of these smaller suites in the 737 Park Avenue house have been taken by tenants who are vacating twelve-room suites."

photo by "Eden, Janine and Jim"

Among the first was Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews, who signed a lease on April 19, 1940, months before construction would be completed.  He would move in with his second wife, Wilhelmina Christmas.  Born in 1884, Andrews was described by The New York Times as "naturalist, explorer and director of the American Museum of Natural History."  He traveled the globe on various expeditions, cataloging wildlife and discovering fossils.  (The Andrewsarchus was named for him.)  When he and Wilhelmina moved into 737 Park Avenue he had written ten books, including the 1921 Across Mongolian Plains and the 1929 Ends of the Earth, and would go on to write 13 more.

Andrews made the cover of Time magazine on October 29, 1923.  (copyright expired)

Most residents of 737 Park Avenue had country homes, while a few kept apartments here as their city pied-à-terre.  That was the case with Irving and Renee Weisner.  The couple was married on June 3, 1958 and moved into a 27-room, 10-bath house in Woodmere, Long Island.  They rented an apartment here for those evenings when they came into the city.  Testimony in their divorce case said the apartment, "was used...only occasionally, not exceeding approximately 20 nights during the three years of their marriage, and was used by [Renee] mainly for the purpose of changing her clothes when the parties had a social engagement."

The apartment of S. Beutsch included this clever bar with acrylic feet and Erté type decorations.  It was photographed by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc. in a closed position...

...and opened position on March 21, 1941.  from the collection of the Library of Congress.

The family of William Olden lived here by the early 1960s.  Born in Berlin, Germany in 1909, Olden arrived in America in 1938.  He and his wife, the former Margot Cohnreich, had two children, Barbara Evelyn (known in society as Bambi), and Robert.  Olden started out with a small camera business, and by the time the family moved in to 737 Park Avenue it was "one of the most successful retail and mail-order camera concerns in the country," according to The New York Times. 

Like the daughters of other well-heeled families, Bambi Olden received an enviable education.  She attended the Calhoun School, the Russell Sage College, Le Grand Verger (a finishing school in Lausanne, Switzerland), and the Sarah Lawrence College summer session in Florence, Italy.  When her engagement to Roger H. Felberbaum was announced in April 1964, she was a senior at New York University.

A fascinating resident was Barbara Gabard, who moved in around 1968.  Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Poland in 1912, her first husband was Nathan Padowicz.  Following his suicide, she married Leon Waisbrem, an industrialist.  They lived in Warsaw where their son Julian was born in 1933.  At the outbreak of World War II, she and Julian escaped to Brazil, while Leon remained behind to fight in the Polish Army.

Her escape from Europe resulted in a book, Flight to Freedom, which was published in 1941.  Barbara's husband did not survive the war, and in 1945 she married Pierre Gabard in London.  He became Consul for France in Philadelphia where Barbara was a celebrated hostess and socialite.  Gabard died in 1967 and shortly afterward Barbara moved to New York City and 737 Park Avenue.

This portrait of Barbara Gabard was created by Francois Gilot in 1955.  private collection 

On December 9, 1973, the "Suzy Says" column of the Daily News said, 

Mrs. Pierre Gabard, author of "Flight to Freedom," and widow of the French resistance her0-diplomat, put a big dinner party together to honor Alain Chailloux, chief of press for the French Embassy.  About 60 crowded into Barbara Gabard's Auntie Mame-ish Park Ave. apartment where the Louis XV furniture, the Legers, Mary Cassatt, Pissaros and Picassos combine raffishly with the Alexander Libermans.  It's one way of doing it.

Despite the glittering parties, the antique French furniture and the museum-quality art collection, Barbara Gabard suffered from what was described as "a history of depression."  Two weeks after the party, on the night of December 30, a friend, Seward Kennedy, visited her.  Around 2:50 a.m., according to Kennedy, Barbara left the living room.  The New York Times reported, "When she didn't return, he said, he went to investigate and found she jumped from the 12th-floor window."  She was declared dead upon arrival at Metropolitan Hospital.

image via corcoran.com

In 2011 the CIM Group acquired 737 Park Avenue and began a conversion to condominiums.  The 104 rental apartments became 56 resident-owned units.  The full-floor penthouse sold in June 2015 for $32.6 million.  The New York Times noted, "The apartment was sold as a 'white box,' without interior walls or finishes, though it does include a wood-burning fireplace."

many thanks to reader Lowell Cochrane for suggesting this post

no permission to reuse the content of this blog has been granted to LaptrinhX.com