The 1893 Jacob and Emma Wertheim House - 19 West 76th Street

 

Born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1858, Jacob Wertheim came to New York City with his parents as a boy.  He started working at the age of 14 and by 1893 had founded and owned several cigar making companies.  That year, he and his wife, the former Emma Stern, purchased the newly built residence at 19 West 76th Street.

Real estate developer Cornelius W. Luyster had broken ground for this and two other upscale homes a year earlier.  Designed in the Renaissance Revival style by esteemed architect John H. Duncan, 19 West 76th Street was 25-feet-wide and rose four stories above a high English basement.  A handsome dog-legged box stoop, decorated with swirling volutes and rosettes, fronted the brownstone-fronted parlor level where shallow pilasters were carved with anthemions.  The upper three floors were faced in tan Roman brick.  A three-sided brownstone oriel dominated the second floor.  The third-floor openings sat within molded architraves, and the fourth-floor windows were framed in terra cotta, their cornices crowned with urn-topped pediments.  A deeply overhanging cornice with a terra cotta frieze crowned the design.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Jacob and Emma had five children: three daughters and two sons.  The boy who left school to find work had come a long way.  The Brooklyn Eagle said, "he engaged in the cigar business and made rapid progress, organizing one company after another."  Eventually he consolidated them into the United Cigar Manufacturers, one of the largest independent cigar making firms of its kind.  

The Wertheims were generous with their wealth.  Calling Jacob "one of the most prominent Jews in this city," The Brooklyn Eagle noted that he was highly involved in the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies and the Joint Distributing Committee.

The family's residency was relatively short-lived.  On September 13, 1899, the New-York Tribune reported that Wertheim had sold 19 West 76th Street to "a Mr. Ullman."  The buyer was Jacob Uhlman and his ownership, as well, would be short.  He resold the residence in March 1902 to Henry A. Caesar and his wife, the former Laura F. Unger.  The New York Times mentioned that they "will occupy the house after making extensive alterations."  Those alterations most likely had much to do with modernizations like the installing of updated plumbing and electricity.

Henry A. Caesar was born in Brooklyn on May 15, 1856.  Educated in Europe, he established the banking firm of H. A. Caesar & Company in 1886.  He was, as well, a director of the Germania Life Insurance Company and of the Chemical Bank and Trust Company.  Laura was his second wife.  His first was Mathilde M. Muller, with whom he had two sons, Paul N. and Harry I.  He married Laura in 1894 and they had a son, Charles U., born in 1897.

The Caesars' country 39-acre estate, Lauriston (named for Laura), was in Rumson, New Jersey.  The mansion on the property was designed by Leon Cubberly in 1870.

The Colonial Revival mansion at Lauriston.  image via Preservation New Jersey

Form was a weekly magazine that kept affluent American families abreast of incidents in society.  Its masthead explained that it covered "the interests of American Society at Home and Abroad."  On December 27, 1913, the periodical reported that Henry I. Caesar and Dora Porter would be married that day.  The ceremony took place in St. Thomas's Chapel.  The high-society surnames of bridal party reflected the families' status.  Among them were Townsend, Hoagland, Slocum and Symington.

Henry and Laura Caesar sold 19 West 76th Street to Solomon Marcuse Stroock in April 1917 for $70,000.  (The figure would translate to about $1.7 million in 2026.)  

The son of German immigrants, Solomon Stroock as born in New York City on September 22, 1873.  He graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1891, received his Masters degree from Columbia University in 1892, and his law degree from  Columbia Law School in 1894.  In 1907, he was appointed a Justice on the New York Supreme Court.  He was also a partner with his brother Moses in the law firm Stroock & Stroock.

Solomon Marcuse Stroock, The Jewish Tribune, November 25, 1927

Stroock married Hilda Weil in 1904 and the couple had three children.  Like the Caesars, they spent the summer months away from the city.  On May 20, 1921, for instance, The American Hebrew noted, "Mr. and Mrs. Sol. M. Stroock of 19 West Seventy-sixth street will spend the summer at Ossining, N. Y."

As had been the case in the two previous owners, the Stroocks would not remain here especially long.  On September 17, 1924, The New York Times reported that they had sold 19 West 76th Street "to a buyer for occupancy."  That was only partially accurate.  The house became The Liberta School, a private co-educational progressive school.

The Christian Science Monitor, February 12, 1925 (copyright expired)

Among the students here was nine-year-old Mary Elizabeth Steele, who lived with her mother at 66 West 77th Street.  The prodigy was an accomplished pianist--so accomplished, in fact, that she was invited to give a private concert for President Calvin Coolidge and the First Lady in the White House.  Mary Elizabeth and her mother, Mrs. C. O. Steele, left their apartment on March 17, 1925.  They left Mary Elizabeth's dog, Frisky, with the building's superintendent.  The New York Times remarked that the wire-haired terrier "had been Mary's companion almost since his birth, frequently sitting beside her as her nimble fingers played compositions of Bach, Chopin and other masters."

Mary Elizabeth played the concert on the evening of March 21 and the following day she and her mother were invited to  meet the President at the White House.  On March 27, The New York Times began an article saying, "Her joy at being received by President Coolidge in the White House several days ago was dispelled upon her return to New York, Wednesday night."  The superintendent had lost Frisky.  It is unclear whether Mary Elizabeth's precious pet was recovered.

In March 1926, just one year after moving into 19 West 76th Street, The Liberta School sold the house to Carl and Hulda Steen.  Their son, Jens H., born in 1914, was a scholar.  After graduating from George Washington High School, he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Cooper Union in 1934.  He continued studying at New York University and on July 9, 1936, Louise Whitfield Carnegie, the widow of Andrew Carnegie, awarded him a scholarship for foreign study.  The New York Sun reported, "He will sail abroad...for Sweden, where he will spend [a] year at the University of Lund, majoring in Economics."

The Steens leased 19 West 76th Street in 1939, and sold it in 1942.  The house avoided being converting to apartments until 1974, when it was renovated into a total of 14 units.  The exterior, however, is nearly unchanged after nearly 135 years.

photographs by the author

The Michael and Rosa Wineburgh House - 25 West 76th Street

 

On February 9, 1895, the Real Estate Record & Guide described Cornelius W. Luyster as one of the few developers who built residences "for only the wealthiest and best classes of buyers."  The article went on to describe his three newly completed homes at 21 through 25 West 76th Street, designed by John H. Duncan.  Four stories tall, their basement through second floors were clad in Indiana limestone and the upper floors in buff-colored brick.  Duncan's chaste Renaissance Revival designs were described by the journal as "quiet, though handsome and dignified."

No. 25 is at the left.  The Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide, February 9, 1895 (copyright expired)

The western-most of the trio, 25 West 76th Street, was 25-feet-wide and cost Luyster $42,500 to construct--about $1.7 million in 2026.  Duncan's decorations were reserved and unobtrusive.  The doorway was framed in delicately carved foliate sheaves and the paired parlor windows wore a guilloche of intricate rosettes.

A band in a complex Greek key motif ran along the top of the second floor, where between the windows of the bowed bay a lion's head held a ribbon laden with groups of fruit.  The upper floor windows sat within molded architraves under molded cornices.  The copper terminal cornice wore a row of anthemions and lion masks, drawn from ancient Roman motifs.

Luyster had not scrimped on the interior details.  The Record & Guide described, "immense French plate glass mirrors in his hallways, where moderate and inferior ones would be found in other houses, and exquisite colored onyx tops on wash-bowls, where marble might have been used without prejudice."  The dining room was paneled in white mahogany "relieved with gold," and the fireplaces were "fronted with delicately-colored marble or onyx trimmed with silver or gold metal strips."  The article noted, "arrangements are made to cut off the servants from the rest of the family as much as possible."

Cornelius Luyster sold 25 West 76th Street to Michael Wineburgh on December 17, 1895.  He and his wife, Rosa, had one child, Dorothy.  

Wineburgh (whose surname would be confusingly spelled alternatively as Wineberg and Winburn) was an advertising executive.  He was out of town on business in March 1896, a few weeks after the house next door had been burglarized.  That crime had prompted Rosa to have many of the valuable items, like the sterling silverware, moved into an upper floor room.  But on the evening of March 15, Rosa hosted a reception "and a quantity of the silver was taken down to the first floor," explained the New-York Tribune.  "This was left on the sideboard over night."

The next morning Rosa went shopping.  While she was gone a policeman stopped by and the cook gave him a cup of coffee.  In the meantime, a crook was watching the house.  The New-York Tribune said, "The burglar doubtless waited for his opportunity, and, it is believed, that after the officer had drunk his coffee...the thief sneaked into the house and upstairs to the dining room."

Rosa returned home at noon and rang the bell.  She was surprised and terrified when a strange man opened the door.  He told her he was a police officer "and had come to investigate some trouble," reported the New-York Tribune.  Rosa tried to stop him, but he brushed by her and ran down the street towards Central Park.  The article said, "He was followed by two servant girls, screaming at the top of their voices."  One of the servants, Freda Lindaur, chased him all the way to the Central Park wall, then lost him.

The "audacious" burglar, as described by the newspaper, must have been quite an athlete.  As he raced away he was carrying a significant burden.  The article said that among the articles he stole were:

...a dozen oyster forks, with the initials "M. W." on the handles; a dozen coffee spoons, a pair of salad tongs, an almond tray and spoon, a soup ladle, five dinner forks, twelve pearl-handled knives and a varied collection of napkin rings, teaspoons and nut picks.

The crook had taken his time in choosing the loot.  Using acid, he tested the silverware and took only sterling pieces.

Four years after moving into 25 West 76th Street, Wineburgh added to his resume by incorporating the Omega Chemical Company with partner Bert M. Jones in January 1899.  The firm produced Omega Oil, a liniment.  An 1899 advertisement promised it "takes out soreness caused by hard work or hard exercise or hard pleasure."

Rather than spending the summer of 1901 in their Lakewood, New Jersey country home, Michael and Rosa sailed to Europe that year.  When they arrived back in New York on the White Star liner Majestic on September 4, 1901 they were stopped by a customs agent who noticed Rosa's necklace.  The New York Herald described the item as having "fifty or sixty pearls and valued at something like $4,000."  (The value would translate to about $156,000 today.)  The couple insisted that they had not purchased it abroad and was, in fact, a wedding present from Michael to Rosa on their wedding day 15 years ago.  The New York Herald noted, "She was wearing the necklace when she left the boat and made no attempt to conceal it."  

Nevertheless, The New York Times reported on September 7, "Collector Bidwell is holding a costly diamond [sic] necklace...pending an investigation of its history."  Michael Weinburgh was infuriated and Rosa humiliated.  Their attorney, Peter Zucker, told reporters, "Fortunately this is a case where we have ample proof, but it is too bad that a private citizen should be subjected to such publicity."  The New York Herald added, "The customs officers are inclined to think that the statement is correct and that the necklace will be released."

Like those of her neighbors, Rosa Weinburgh's entertainments were often elaborate.  On February 5, 1905, the New York Herald reported that she "recently entertained sixteen of her friends at luncheon.  The decorations for the day were orchids and white lilacs.  A string orchestra furnished music."

That luncheon was prepared by the Wineburghs' cook, Rosa Hahn, who was hired in 1896.  She was recognized by the German Housewives' Society at a luncheon on October 31, 1906 with a "golden bee," an emblem of industry.  Of the other 30 domestics awarded, she "headed the list with ten years' service in the home of Mrs. M. Weinberg," said the New-York Tribune.

Handan Welli would not be wearing a golden bee on her uniform.  The Turkish-born maid was hired by Rosa in Paris in July 1909.  Six months later, on the night of January 24, 1909, Handan returned home 45 minutes past her curfew.  Rosa Wineburgh fired her on the spot, but Handan refused to leave.

The New York Herald reported, "Policeman Loos induced the girl to go to the West Sixty-eighth street station without placing her under arrest."  Handan claimed that upon being hired, Rosa had agreed to pay her passage back to Paris.  "Mrs. Weinberg denied this assertion," said the article.  Handan Welli "finally went to the Leo Immigrants' Home, No. 6 State street, for the night."

Rosa was looking for a maid again in 1920.  Her advertisement in The New York Times on January 18 sought, "Lady's maid wanted; young woman between 25 and 30, Frenchwoman preferred, references required; good salary."

A succinct notice appeared in The New York Times on November 10, 1922:  "Winburn--Rosa, beloved wife of Michael Winburn and beloved mother of Dorothy, [died] in her 57th year, at her residence, 25 West 76th Street.  Funeral private."

A detail of the striking copper cornice.

Four months later, Michael Wineburgh sold 25 West 76th Street to James H. Cruikshank for $75,000 (about $1.4 million today).  In reporting the sale, The New York Times mentioned, "The seller has owned the above property since 1895."

The house was converted to upscale apartments.  Among the initial residents were the families of Dr. George Goodman and Henry Davidoff.

Charles Goodman received his medical degree from Western Reserve University School of Medicine in 1892.  The clinical professor of surgery at University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College, he and his wife had a daughter, Jane.  Like the Wineburghs before them, they spent time in the summer months away from the city.  On August 23, 1929, for instance, The New York Times announced, "Dr. and Mrs. Charles Goodman and Miss Jane Goodman have returned from the Adirondacks to their home, 25 West Seventy-sixth Street."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Henry Davidoff, a 1904 graduate of Columbia University, was a teacher in Stuyvesant High School.  He and his wife, Elizabeth (known as Bess), had a daughter Amy.  And like the Goodmans, they would remain at 25 West 76th Street well into the 1930s.

In 1925, the Davidoffs sailed to France.  Years later, The New York Evening Post would recall that the family met singer Paul Robeson there.  Amy was 11 years old at the time and, according to the newspaper, "Robeson felt an instant attraction for the little girl, and the little girl felt an immediate love for the singer.  Thus the two became inseparable companions during many months in Paris."

Music had been the catalyst for the strong platonic bond between the star and the girl.  Despite her youth, Amy had learned "at least a thousand songs in five languages and sang them beautifully," said The New York Evening Post.  She would sing German ballads, Yiddish folk songs and Gilbert and Sullivan songs to Robeson and he would sing spirituals and arias to her.  The newspaper said that Amy, "had the impudence to correct him in pronunciation and pitch."  Robeson called Amy his "songbird."

Back in America, Amy and her parents would attend Robeson's concerts and plays.  Eventually she attended the University of Wisconsin.  Then, in December 1935, she was stricken with an illness and was taken to a Madison, Wisconsin hospital.  Bess left 25 West 76th Street to be with her.  In the meantime, word was sent to Paul Robeson, who was in California.  He traveled the 2,000 miles, engaged a special nurse and a parlor car "on the fastest train" to New York, and hired specialists to attend to the young woman.  He postponed a concert to be near her.

Amy improved.  Bess told a reporter, "Something of Paul Robeson's vitality and strength seemed to flow into her...So Robeson left, happily, on January 11 for London."  As soon as the celebrated singer left, Amy began failing.  She died on January 24 at the age of 22.  Writing in The New York Post on January 28, Ernest L. Meyer began his article saying, "Part of Paul Robeson, the singer, was buried in New York on Sunday."

When 25 West 76th Street was sold in 1951, it was described as a "six-family house."  The configuration lasted until 2016 when a renovation returned it to a single-family home.

photograph by the author

The 1893 Henry A. Caesar House - 19 West 76th Street

 

Developer Cornelius W. Luyster broke ground for five high-end townhouses on West 76th Street just west of Central Park West in 1892.  Completed the following year and designed by John H. Duncan in the Renaissance Revival style, they were four-stories tall above English basements.

The basement and parlor levels of the westernmost house, 19 West 76th Street, were faced in planar brownstone.  A dog-legged stoop decorated with swirling volutes and rondel-filled panels rose to the double-doored entrance.  It and the parlor windows were flanked by shallow pilasters decorated with carved anthemions.  The upper portion was clad in variegated beige brick.  The second floor was dominated by a three-sided oriel that provided a balcony to the third.  Windows at that level sat within molded brownstone architraves, while those at the fourth were surrounded by elaborate terra cotta frames, their cornices topped with swan's head pediments crowned with urns.  Above a terra cotta frieze, the cornice was supported by foliate brackets of the same material.

Duncan changed from brownstone trim to terra cotta at the top floor with satisfying results.

John H. Uhlman was the original owner of the 25-foot-wide residence.  He sold it to Henry A. Caesar and his wife, the former Laura F. Unger, in March 1902.

Born in Brooklyn on May 15, 1856, Caesar was educated abroad and founded H. A. Caesar & Company, factors and commercial bankers, in 1886.  He was also a director of the Germania Life Insurance Company and the Chemical Bank and Trust Company.  He and Laura had three sons, Paul N., born in 1889; Harry I., born in 1891; and Charles U., who arrived in 1897.  The 1908 Men of America mentioned, "His favorite recreation is big game hunting."

The Caesars' 39-acre summer estate, Lauriston (named for Laura) was in Rumson Borough, New Jersey.  The mansion on the property was designed by Leon Cubberly in 1870.

The mansion at Lauriston today.  image via Preservation New Jersey

Harry I. Caesar was married to Doris Porter in St. Thomas's Chapel on December 27, 1913.  The bridal party included socially elite surnames like Slocum, Townsend, Symington, and Hoagland.

The family remained at 19 West 76th Street until April 1917 when they sold the house to Solomon Marcuse Stroock and his wife, Hilda Weil.  The couple were married in 1904 and had three children, Minette, Robert Louis, and Alan Maxwell.  

Stroock was born on September 22, 1873 of German immigrants.  He graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1891, received his Masters degree from Columbia University in 1892, and his law degree from Columbia Law School in 1894.  After being in partnership with attorney M. Warley Platzek since 1896, in 1907 Stroock established a law office, Stroock & Stroock, with his brother, Moses.

Solomon Marcuse Stroock, The Jewish Tribune, November 25, 1927 (copyright expired)

Stroock was highly involved in Jewish affairs.  He was chairman of the board of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and a member of the American Jewish Historical Society.  In 1903, he contributed to the latter's American Jewish History, an academic journal that focused on the history of Jews in the United States.

Like the Caesars, the Stroocks left the city during the summer social season.  On May 20, 1921, for instance, The American Hebrew reported, "Mr. and Mrs. Sol. M. Stroock of 19 West Seventy-sixth street will spend the summer at Ossining, N. Y."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

On August 30, 1939, The New York Times titled an article, "19 West 76th St. Leased."  The article said the "lessee will occupy the house after improvements are made."  That was stretching the truth.  The unnamed tenant converted the residence to unofficial apartments.

Solomon Marcuse Stroock suffered a fatal heart attack while he and Hilda were at the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia on September 11, 1941.  The West 76th Street house was sold to James H. Cruikshank, who resold it in November 1942 to George Lawall.  In reporting on the latest sale, The New York Times mentioned, "The building contains nineteen rooms and eight baths."

A renovation completed in 1974 resulted in 14 apartments.  None of the alterations, happily, affected the exterior.

photographs by the author

The 1899 Henry Schwarzwalder House - 24 West 76th Street

 

Real estate developer James Carlew erected five sumptuous, 25-foot-wide townhouses on West 76th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue in 1898-99.  Designed by Cleverdon & Putzel, each of the residences cost Carlew $40,000 each to construct, or about $1.6 million in 2026 terms.  

Faced in limestone, 24 West 76th Street was, like the others, four stories tall above an English basement.  Cleverdon & Putzel splashed its Renaissance Revival design with Beaux Arts details, like frothy cartouches above the parlor floors.  A dog-legged box stoop rose to a columned portico.  The bowed second floor oriel was fronted by a stone balcony and crowned by a tiara of balustrades.  The fully arched windows of the third floor sat within square-headed architraves, and the piers that flanked the fourth floor openings were intricately carved with Renaissance inspired decorations.

James Carlew sold the house to Henry Schwarzwalder and his wife, the former Louisa Finck.  Louisa was Henry's second wife.  He married Alice Finck (Louisa's sister) in 1877.  She died shortly after the birth of their daughter, Amelia, and Henry then married Louisa.  They had a daughter, also named Louisa.

Born on May 26, 1853, Henry took over the operation of J. Schwarzwalder & Sons following his father's death.  (His business partner, August Finck, was the brother of his wives.)  By the time he purchased 24 West 76th Street, the firm was the largest maker of beer kegs in the United States.  It operated two factories--in Hoboken, New Jersey and Louisville, Kentucky.  Schwarzwalder personally held several patents for improved kegs and heavily invested in Manhattan real estate, much of it on the Upper West Side.

Louisa died at the age of 48 on October 18, 1909.  Oddly enough, neither daughter was mentioned in her obituary.  Louisa's funeral was held in the drawing room on the 20th.

In January 1914, Henry Schwarzwalder began construction of a country home at Shippan Point near Stamford, Connecticut.  The two-story mansion cost the equivalent of $1.6 million today to construct.  It is possible that Schwarzwalder never enjoyed his new summer home.  He died in the West 76th Street mansion on May 10, 1915 at the age of 62.

Henry's eldest daughter, Alice, who was married to Conrad Stein by then, inherited the townhouse and the Connecticut property.  The couple occupied 24 West 76th Street for two years.  Then, on December 15, 1917, The New York Sun reported that Conrad purchased "the tall apartment house at 311 to 317 West Eighty-ninth street."  As part payment, said the article, he gave the George Backer Construction Company the Shippan Point estate and "his dwelling at 24 West Seventy-sixth street...one of the fine dwellings remaining on the West Side."

In marketing 24 West 76th Street, the new owners described the former Schwarzwalder house as "a residence superb."  The George Backer Construction Company initially used it as an investment property.  In March 1918, for instance, Paul Schwartz leased the house.

Then, in April 1919, the firm sold it "to a buyer for occupancy," according to The Record & Guide.  The purchasers were Reid Langdon Carr and his wife, the former Eleonora Fredericksen.  The couple had been married three years earlier.

Born on October 20, 1880 in Cornwall, Vermont, Carr graduated from Middlebury College in 1901 and earned his law degree from New York Law School in 1903.  He taught law in his alma mater until 1916 before entering the firm of Morgan & Seabury.  Apparently indefatigable, he was president and a director of the Columbian Carbon Company, and a director of the Irving Trust Company, the Frederick H. Levey Company, the Appleton Century Company, the Interstate Natural Gas Company and the Mississippi River Fuel Company.  

The Carrs' country estate was at Huntington, Long Island.  They owned 24 West 76th Street until 1926 when they purchased 925 Fifth Avenue.  Reid Langdon Carr would die in that mansion on October 7, 1948.

The new owners were Alexander Hayes Kridel and his wife, the former Irma L. Hernsheim.  The couple were married on January 11, 1906 and had two children, Elinor and James Alexander. 

Kridel was born in 1877 and studied at the College of the City of New York and abroad.  He was a partner in J. Kridel, Sons & Co., commission merchants, founded by his father in the 1870s.  The Kridels maintained two country homes, one in Scarsdale, New York and another in Deal, New Jersey.

Elinor Kridel graduated from Vassar College in 1928.  Shortly afterward, her parents announced her engagement to Leonard Henry Bernheim.  

By the mid-1930s, the Isaac H. Levy family occupied 24 West 76th Street.  But the end of the line for the mansion as a private home was near.

via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

The early World War II years saw 24 West 76th Street operated as rented rooms.  Evelyn Clayton Lewis rather scandalously shared a room here with Frederick "Fritz" Joubert Duquesne in 1941.  (Frederick was known to other residents by the surname Dunn.)  Evelyn, who was 24 years old, was an "artist, sculptress and playwright," according to The New York Sun.  

Frederick, who was 64, listed his occupation as "writer and lecturer."  Born in Cape Colony, South Africa, Duquesne was a naturalized citizen.  But, according to J. Edgar Hoover, he had "served as a spy in the Boer War and in addition was active in behalf of the German interests" in World War I.  During the latter conflict, Duquesne was arrested for insurance fraud and murder in the connection of the sinking of the British ship Tennyson.  While confined in a cell at Bellevue Hospital in 1918, he escaped.  Several years later, the charges were dropped.

As it turned out, Evelyn and Frederick's living arrangements had nothing to do with romance.  On June 28, 1941, FBI agents stormed into their rooms here and arrested the pair for espionage.  Two days later, The New York Times reported that their arrest--along with 25 other men and two women--had broken a German spy ring.  The article said, "The most important of the prisoners was described by Mr. Hoover as Frederick Joubert Duquesne."  

Frederick Joubert Duquesne's FBI mug shot.  

Frederick Duquesne would serve 12 years in prison and Evelyn was sentenced to 18 months in Atlanta "for acting as a foreign agent."

Other residents of 24 West 76th Street were, expectedly, less notorious.  Living here as early as 1947 was Chester Phillips, a World War II veteran and former Boy Scout.  On February 3, 1948, The New York Times reported that he and six other veterans and former Boy Scouts had established a 13-1/2 acre Boy Scout camp upstate and provided a fund "to send needy youths" to the camp.

Retired customs attorney Hartford Beaumont and his wife, Alice, lived here by the late 1950s.  Around 1911, he began working on The American Tariff System, a compilation and index of legal cases.  After working on the manuscript for half a century, on Beaumont's 90th birthday, August 18, 1961, he and his wife presented his 2,000-page volume to the United States Custom Service.  Five months later, on January 23, 1962, The New York Times reported on Beaumont's death here.

British-born writer Nik Cohn lived here in the early 1980s.  A magazine article he wrote in 1976 inspired the movie Saturday Night Fever.  He earned less positive press on May 19, 1983 when a raid on his apartment resulted in his arrest along with 18 others for operating a "drug ring that operated out of Mr. Cohn's Manhattan town house," according to The New York Times.

Although never officially converted to apartments, there are ten rental units in the building today.  From the sidewalk, the former mansion looks much as it did in 1899 when the Schwarzwalder family moved in.

photographs by the author

The William C. and Emma Orr House - 50 West 76th Street

 

Real estate developer Leonard Beeckman embarked on an ambitious project in 1887 by breaking ground for nine, 19-feet-wide rowhouses on West 76th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues (renamed Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, respectively, in 1890).  Designed by George M. Walgrove, the homes were completed in 1889.  

(Walgrove, incidentally, would be appointed a Parks Commissioner in January 1906, only to be forced to resign that November for using his post "for political purposes," according to Mayor George B. McClellan.)

Among the most striking of the homes was 50 West 76th Street.  Above the doglegged box stoop, Walgrove striated the parlor floor by alternating wide dressed stone with narrow rough cut strips.  Elegant Renaissance-style pediments crowned the center windows of the second and third floors.  The other openings sat within multi-layered, stepped architraves topped with molded cornices.

The house was briefly owned by Reverend Dr. Edmund Guilbert.  Born in 1837, he was rector of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit on Madison Avenue.

Rev. Dr. Edmund Guilbert, Annals of an Old Parish Historical Sketches of Trinity Church Southport Connecticut 1725 to 1898 by Rev. Edmund Gilbert D. D.(copyright expired)

Rev. Guilbert was the victim of two "rogues," as described by the New York Herald in the summer of 1891.  On July 1, the Waterbury, Connecticut Evening Democrat explained that one "well dressed young man" would board a boat heading from New York to summer communities.  He would find an unaccompanied valise on the deck and, just before the gangplank was raised, his accomplice on the pier would wave frantically as if there were an emergency.  The first man would grab the valise and rush off the boat.  The Evening Democrat said, "So frequent had these thefts become, that...policemen were detailed to watch."  

Like most wealthy Manhattan churches, the Church of the Holy Spirit closed during the hot summer months while their congregants abandoned the city for their summer estates or fashionable resorts.  On July 22, Rev. Guilbert boarded the Monmouth to Sandy Hook.  The Evening World reported that just as the ship's whistle blew, a "well dressed young man" hurried to the pier with a valise.  Police caught Henry Hamilton, whose story "was all knocked in the head when the rightful owner of the valise, Rev. Dr. Edmund Guilbert...appeared on the scene and told how he had left the valise for a moment in the saloon."  The Evening Democrat said that among the contents were stocks, the value of which "has been placed at thousands of dollars."

At the time of the incident, Rev. Guilbert had already tendered his resignation from the Church of the Holy Spirit.  In 1890 he accepted the position of rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Southport, Connecticut.  On November 7, 1891, the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported that Edmund Guilbert had sold 50 West 76th Street to William C. Orr and his wife, the former Emma Philbin.

Born in Brooklyn, Orr graduated from St. Francis Xavier College in 1868 and received his M. A. degree the following year.  A specialist in real estate law, he was counsel for the Fifth Avenue Bank, the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, and the Home for the Aged of the Little Sisters of Poor.

William and Emma had three sons--Philbin, Sherwood and William Jr.--and three daughters--Constance Philbin, Jeannette, and Florence.

The Orrs apparently took in a boarder and in 1896 a "Mrs. Nickerson" listed her address here.  She was a daughter of John Forman of Asbury Park, New Jersey and a sister of Laura Forman.  In May 1896, the women's widowed father remarried and Laura, who was unmarried, "became restive under the changed conditions," according to him.  To complicate the situation, George H. Lefferson began "paying attention" to Laura.  The New York Sun commented that John Forman "was not well disposed toward the young man."

In July 1896, Laura came to New York to visit her sister.  Suddenly, on July 16, a carriage stopped in front of 50 West 76th Street and several men got out.  They forcibly put Laura into the vehicle, and took her to the House of Mercy in Inwood.  Her father had arranged to have her incarcerated there.  The New York Sun reported, "Her father paid her board there, although most of the inmates are supported by the institution."

Constance Philbin Orr died "after a short illness," according to The New York Times, on July 9, 1910.  Somewhat surprisingly, her funeral was not held in the house, but at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament on Broadway and 71st Street.

Within three years, the Orrs left 50 West 76th Street and they leased the the home to the Daniel O'Connell family.  Like his landlord, O'Connell was an attorney.  Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, he graduated from De La Salle College in Toronto and earned his law degree from the New York Law School.  He and his wife, the former Marcella Harlin, had two sons and three daughters.  

President Grover Cleveland appointed O'Connell an Assistant United States District Attorney.  He was, as well, president of the McNab & Harlin Manufacturing Company.

On the afternoon of March 14, 1916, Daniel and Marcella O'Connell took in the matinee at the New York Theatre on Broadway and 44th Street.  At 4:30, Daniel O'Connell, as reported by the New-York Tribune, he fell "unconscious while in the theatre."  The 61-year-old had suffered "an attack of apoplexy," as reported by The New York Times.  (The term most often refers to a stroke today.)  He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Daniel O'Connell's funeral was held in the parlor of 50 West 76th Street on March 17, followed by a mass at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle on Columbus Avenue and 59th Street.  

The Orrs continued to lease the house to well-to-do tenants until William C. Orr's death in 1926.  It was purchased by Hannah Marshall who operated it as unofficial apartments.

In 1940, 50 West 76th Street looked no different than it does today.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Living here in 1932 were Henry Ritter and his wife, Anna.  Born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1874, Henry was an inventor.  For several years he had been paralyzed from the waist down.  On May 23, Anna went out after getting Henry settled into a chair.  He was reading his newspaper and smoking a cigar when the newspaper caught fire.  Unable to get up, the fire spread to his clothing.  Another resident, Joseph Babalco, smelled smoke and entered the apartment.  The New York Times reported that he "found Mr. Ritter's clothing still burning."  He beat out the fire and called for an ambulance, but Ritter was dead by the time it arrived.

Gershon Legman rented an apartment here in 1937.  According to Mikita Brottman in her 2004 Funny Peculiar, Gershon Legman and the Psychopathology of Humor, "Legman's main personal interest at this time, and his first publication, was Oragenitalism, a small volume of 'Oral Techniques in Genital Excitation for Gentlemen."  

Gershon Legman, from the collection of Judith Legman

Born on November 2, 1917, Legman was educated at the University of Michigan.  He would become the editor of the magazine Neurotica in the 1940s and a folklorist and critic.  His The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography and The Rationale of the Dirty Joke would be published in 1964 and 1968 respectively.

In 1967, 50 West 76th Street was converted to apartments.  Then, a renovation completed in 2013 returned it to a single-family home.  

photographs by the author

The 1890 Sylvia Apartments - 59 West 76th Street

 

In 1889 developer Frank L. Fisher commissioned architect Edward L. Angell to design a "flat and store" building at the northeast corner of 76th Street and Columbus Avenue.  Called The Sylvia, Angell's tripartite Renaissance Revival structure was completed the following year.   The residential entrance was on West 76th Street.  It sat above a stone stoop and was flanked by polished columns that upheld an elaborately carved entablature.  Affixed to the façade, a few feet from the corner, a decorative stone plaque announced the building's name amid a profusion of Renaissance inspired carvings.

Angell treated the mid-section in alternating beige-gray brick and white stone, resulting in a striped effect.  The three-story upper level sat upon a slightly projecting intermediate cornice.
  

There were 15 apartments in The Sylvia--ranging from six to eight rooms and a bath each.  The ground floor along Columbus Avenue housed commercial spaces.  The initial commercial tenants were Milton Schnaier's plumbing business at 347-359 Columbus Avenue, and a paint store in 345.  An advertisement in The World on March 21, 1895 sought "Boy Wanted, 15, to learn paint business.  Apply 8 A.M. 345 Columbus ave."

The location was exceedingly convenient for Milton Schnaier, who lived upstairs.  In 1894 he hired a bookkeeper, Jacob Recht.  The young man seemed to work out--at least for four years.  Then, on December 9, 1898, the Brooklyn newspaper the Times Union, reported that Recht had appeared in the Tombs Police Court "charged with embezzling $2,100 from his employer, Milton Schnaier, a plumbing contractor at 347 Columbus ave."  It had been discovered that for the entire period of his employment he had been "systematically falsifying his accounts."  The total of Recht's pilfering would amount to about $66,800 today.

Schnaier's neighbors in The Sylvia were for the most part respectable professionals, like Deputy Assistant District Attorney Charles E. F. McCann, and Professor L. A. Baralt, a member of the psychological section of the Medico-Legal Society.  

Press coverage normally revolved around social issues.  On April 19, 1896, for instance, the New York Herald reported that Mr. and Mrs. Charles Anthony Geoghegan, who had been married in St. Lawrence's Church on Park Avenue and 84th Street a month earlier, "have sent out cards for Thursday afternoons and evenings during April and May."  ("Cards" announced when socialites could call.)  The article noted "Mr. and Mrs. Geoghegan are living at the Sylvia, No. 59 West Seventy-sixth street."

But the limelight became a bit more scurrilous after actor James E. B. Earll and his wife, the notorious actress Hope Booth, moved in following their marriage in 1895.   Hope, who claimed to be related to Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, was known more widely for wearing little or no clothes than for her acting abilities.  In 1896, at the age of 23, she appeared at the Casino Roof Gardens in an act entitled "Ten Minutes in the Latin Quartier; or A Study in the Nude."  She and the manager of the theater were promptly arrested.

Hope was performing at the Howard Athenaeum in February 1901.  A fight broke out in the lobby over a poster depicting Hope in her revealing costume, which several men attempted to steal.  The Morning Telegraph explained on February 28, 1901, "When Miss Booth learned of the episode, she felt that the admirers deserved to know her.  She, therefore, made an appointment with them.  The result was that she was introduced to other clubmen and a hastily arranged private dinner party was scheduled for Saturday night."

The gentlemen's dinner party was held in a private dining room in a hotel.  "She had just attired herself in a set of silk fleshings prepared to impersonate Venus, when a bellboy burst hastily into the room with the announcement that a rumor of the proceedings had reached the street, and that everyone had better leave at once," said the article.  Hope escaped in a bathrobe.  The Morning Telegraph reported "Miss Booth was seen at her apartments, 59 West Seventy-sixth street, yesterday, and admitted there was considerable foundation to the story," (except she insisted she had worn "silk fleshings" and was not nude as the rumors said).
 

Hope Booth - from the collection of the New York Public Library

Real trouble in the Earll-Booth household began two months later.  A telegraph boy named Julian Goldy was walking Earll's "big brindle bulldog" on April 29.  It got away from him and "twice sank his teeth in the calf" of Charles C. Reilly in the grassy grounds of the Museum of Natural History.  The New-York Tribune reported "At the hospital he was told that his wounds were exceedingly dangerous.  He was advised to go to the Pasteur Institute."  Reilly demanded that the bulldog be destroyed.

The Morning Telegraph mused, "But for this animal, no skeleton would have been dragged from Miss Booth's closet and rattled yesterday in the halls of justice."  That was because James E. B. Earll had been summoned to court on July 15 to explain why he had ignored a previous summons, the consequences of which could now be $5,000.

Earll insisted he had never been served a summons.  But a process server took the stand and recounted how he had appeared at The Sylvia apartment, and when the man in the Booth apartment refused to accept the summons, he threw it at him and left.  Earll protested, saying "He never served me.  Who could it have been?"

And then the circumstances dawned on everyone in the courtroom.  The Morning Telegraph ran the headline, "Who Was The Man?"  It seems that in Earll's absence, Hope was entertaining someone else.

To deflect guilt, Hope sued her husband for divorce, claiming that he "registered in the Hotel Bartholdi on January 18 with a woman whose name is unknown to her."  She attested that "He enjoyed an income of $55,000 a year and often receives rich presents in money from his mother, who is worth from $700,000 to $1,000,000."  In reporting on the procedures, The Morning Telegraph said, "she believes she has been the most persecuted of all women."

But there was more woe in Hope Booth's future.  On June 16 The Morning Telegraph said "Miss Hope Booth, whose greatest delight in life is to poise coyly on the tip of a papier mâché moon, clad only in such raiment as the statues demand, arose from a long siege of illness yesterday to find she had sustained an awful loss."  Hope had been given an automobile by "a millionaire coal merchant."  Her monogram was inscribed in silver on both doors.  But that morning the car had been repossessed.

"The blow was too, too much for the embryonic star.  She took to her bed.  What with a divorce action pending against James E. B. Earll, her husband, and other domestic troubles, this last shock made the camel's burden many pounds overweight."

But Hope bounced back.  Following her divorce, she married drama critic Renold Wolf on February 4, 1903.  Her story ended sadly, however.  She was committed to a sanitarium in Italy in 1909 and could not return home until friends wired money.  She divorced Wolf the following year and died in a hotel on Third Avenue in 1933, not having left her room for years.

In the meantime, The Sylvia continued to be home to white-collar residents, many of them in the legal field, like George F. Lyon, a special deputy clerk in the court system, and city magistrate Nathan Klein, here for several years beginning around 1912.

In 1913 a six-room apartment with bath in The Sylvania rented for between $600 and $800, or about $1,775 per month in today's money.

Rudolph Diamant moved in in 1917.  The well-paid accountant was a member of the American Statistical Association.   He decorated his apartment with original art, and when the Society of Independent Artists staged its sixth annual exhibition in the Waldorf-Astoria in March 1922, he brought home two more paintings--Martin J. Jackson's Independence Day, and Racers by Margaret M. Law.

By then the stores at street level had, of course, changed hands.  Milton Schnaier & Co. was taken over in 1919 by Harry Vurman, 349 was home to the D. & W. Luggage Shop and 341 housed a delicatessen.  

On May 1, 1924 three gunmen, Arthur Cawley, Salvatore Orlando, and Gerald Pantusco went on an armed robbery spree, hitting the Columbus Avenue deli and a drug store a block away at Columbus and 74th Street in the process.  As they fled the pharmacy, they encountered three policemen and a gun battle erupted.  Two of the robbers were apprehended, but 21-year old Arthur Cawley was shot to death.

Resident Ruben Dorfman was involved in a bizarre and perhaps humiliating accident on the day after Christmas in 1932.   The 45-year-old had parked his sedan on the fourth floor of a garage on West 68th Street four weeks earlier.  Now, it refused to start.  The New York Times said, "He tinkered with the machine for half an hour, during which period the operator of the vehicle elevator came and went with other machines."

Dorfman's relief when the engine finally turned over was short-lived.  The car lurched backwards and plunged five stories down the elevator.  Dorfman was extricated from the wreckage by a police emergency squad and was taken to the hospital with multiple fractures and internal injuries.  The Daily News reported that he "is dying in Flower hospital as a result" of the accident.

Dorfman's car at the bottom of the elevator shaft.  Daily News, December 27, 1932.

The Excellent Food Shop occupied 347 Columbus Avenue in the mid-1940's.  In June 1947 an armed robber, James Ford, made off with $48 in an early morning holdup.  At the time there was one customer in the place, 60-year old Louis George.

In an amazing instance of déjà vu, a month later, on July 12, Louis George was again the only customer in the restaurant at 2:15 a.m. when Ford returned.  The gunman took the $12.25 that was in the register, then turned to George.  When he did not produce pocket money fast enough for the thief, "the thug kicked him," according to the Daily News.  "Reeling, George's hand fell on an icepick.  George grabbed it and stabbed his assailant in the side, chest and neck."

The wounded crook ran out the door but was knocked down by a passerby.  Arrested, James, was taken to the Bellevue Hospital prison ward and charged with assault and robbery.

The original 76th Street base and elaborate entranceway can be seen in this photo taken around 1941.  NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

A renovation to The Sylvia completed in 1976 resulted in six apartments per floor.  The project obliterated Edward L. Angell's striking 76th Street base, including the elaborate entrance.  The entire ground floor was refaced with artificial stone that unsuccessfully attempts to mimic the original.  Thankfully the marvelous carved plaque was preserved.

Dobson's restaurant moved into the ground floor and would remain until 1989 when The Gap took over the space.  It was later home to Putumayo, another clothing store, and in 2015 Peruvian Connection opened its boutique in No. 341 Columbus Avenue.

photographs by the author

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