The Lost Edison Building -- Nos. 42-44 Broad Street

photograph King's Photographic View of New York, 1895 (copyright expired)

If Thomas Alva Edison had done nothing else in his career, his work with electricity would have earned him fame and considerable fortune.  By 1890 electricity was rapidly changing how Americans lived and that year work began on the New York City headquarters for the Edison General Electric Company.

In 1825 H. Casimir de Rham had purchased the plot at Nos. 42-44 Broad Street which stretched through the block to Nos. 38 and 40 New Street.  Here he established his business office.  Now the Edison Company leased the land and commissioned the firm of Carrere & Hastings to design an up-to-date structure.  The architects lavished the Broad Street façade with Gilded Age ornamentation; while leaving the New Street elevation rather utilitarian-looking.

On January 24, 1891 the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported on the design.  “It is eight stories high on the Broad street front and ten stories high on the New street side.  The first two stories on the former street are of stone, while the front above is mainly of brick, the massive columns on the third and fourth floors being of that material.  The front on this side is as pretentious and striking as the front on New street is plain and unadorned.”

But as the Guide published its description, work had ground to a halt at the site.  On January 8 The Evening World had reported that “Two hundred union carpenter, painters, steamfitters, housesmiths and ironworkers, employed on the new Edison Building on Broad street, went on strike yesterday.”

The problem centered around contractor F. Kilpatrick’s hiring of Volkenning & Co. to install the marble.  According to The Evening World, Volkenning & Co. “do not employ union hands and…is opposed generally to the unions.”  Over two weeks later nothing had improved.  On January 24 the newspaper reported “A walking delegate said that the framers would quit work for good to-day.”

Work, of course, eventually resumed and the building was completed by the summer of 1891.  On September 21 Architecture and Building described the $250,000 structure as “strictly fire-proof.”  The Broad Street façade was constructed of “marble, brick and terra cotta, and the interior trimming of cabinet finish hardwood..  The offices, both on the streets and on the inner court, are unusually well lighted and ventilated, and each floor provided with water-closets and urinals.”

The Edison Company and the architects showcased the firm’s success stability by cladding the lower two stories in rusticated white marble.  The upper floors were of light-colored brick trimmed with exuberant terra cotta decoration.  The two-story mansard featured ebullient circular dormers evocative of Belle Epoque Paris.

Importantly, the building was a showcase of electric lighting.  A generator in the basement provided energy for the “Edison incandescent system.”  The building boasted 500 incandescent lamps throughout.  Two high-speed hydraulic elevators served the new tenants.

Among those new tenants were brokers, lawyers, railway offices, and several architectural firms—including Carrere & Hastings themselves.  With them in the new building were architects William Strom and A. De Saldern.

The Sun published a sketch of the new building on April 19, 1891 (copyright expired)

No sooner had the legal firm of Eaton & Lewis moved in than the building's first instance of mystery and scandal occurred.  Alfred Watson was employed as a clerk and at 9:00 on the morning of July 20 he left the office “saying that he was going to attend to some private business,” according to The New York Times.  On September 20 he had still not returned.

It is unclear why his wife, Cassie Watson, waited two months to report him missing; but she nevertheless provided a detailed description on September 20.  The Times reported that he was “thirty-nine, 5 feet 5 inches, stout, florid, fair-haired, gray eyes, sandy mustache mixed with gray, very bald, black alpaca coat, light waistcoat, black trousers, white straw hat with a black band, gray flannel underwear and elastic gaiters.” 

Whether the stout, bald and florid man was ever located is unclear.

The following year the Edison General Electric Company combined with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form the General Electric Company.  The new firm would do $10 million in gross sales that year.  Sales would increase 25 years later to more than $167 million.

On Tuesday, June 21, 1892 at around 3:30 in the morning a mysterious fire was discovered in the 8^th floor office of the Edison General Electric Light Company’s chief engineer.  The fire was quickly extinguished by fire fighters; “but everything in the engineer’s room was destroyed and many papers, plans, specifications, and documents of the company were either ruined by fire or water,” reported The New York Times.  The invaluable specifications and plans of works being constructed nationwide were destroyed and G.E. smelled corporate intrigue.  “The officers of the company are inclined to think that the fire was of incendiary original.  They can account for it on no other hypothesis.”

Then, three days later, just after midnight on June 24, another “mysterious fire” broke out on another floor doing $500 in damages.  John I. Beggs, manager of the central district of the Edison Company and the Fire Marshall instigated separate investigations.

The Evening World placed the blame on a less nefarious cause.  It said the second fire was “caused by an electric wire setting fire to the woodwork” and added that the earlier blaze was “presumably from the same cause.”

The North American Phonograph Co. was headquartered here.  It was established by Jesse H. Lippincott in 1888 as the sole marketer of the Graphophone and the Edison phonograph products.  Now, in 1892, the firm highlighted the phonograph cylinders for home use as well as in amusement houses.  Its challenge was to find residential customers willing to pay the extravagant $150 price for a phonograph—near $4,000 today.

The Edison Building would continue to be plagued with bad press, scandal and mystery surrounding its tenants.  On November 10, 1893 Grenville W. Nichols was arrested here.  A bookkeeper for John H. Jacquelin & Co., he had been with the firm for 13 years.  In June an accidental discovery of irregularities in the books revealed that Nichols had embezzled no less than $11,000.

Among the wealthiest and most respected members of the Stock Exchange in 1897 was William G. Read, Jr.  At 40 years old, he had a wife and three children and a summer home in Mamaroneck, Long Island.  Two years earlier he was diagnosed with typhoid fever which, according to The Times, “left him weakened, nervous, and generally unfit for business.”  He went abroad “in search of health;” but when he returned his condition was compounded by malaria.

Although he maintained a cheerful demeanor on the Stock Exchange floor, his medical condition was apparently too much for him to bear.  On August 10, 1897 around 11:35, he left his Edison Building office and went to the second floor men’s room.  At “about 11:40 o’clock the muffled report of a pistol echoed through the building,” said The Times.  Read had shot himself in the temple in the bathroom.

The first of the Edison Building’s string of disgraced brokers was Walter D. Valentine, of the Stearnes Commission Company with offices in the basement.  He was expelled from the Exchange in December 1894 charged as a “blind pool” operator and with running a “clock quotation scheme” here.

As the reliability of electricity improved, the Edison Building increased its electric-to-gas lighting ratio.  From its original 500 bulbs, the Edison Bulletin reported in June 1902 that its lighting system consisted “of about 2,000 incandescent lamps.”

That same year New Yorkers were shocked at disturbing news emanating from The French Telegraphic Cables Company offices here.  On Sunday, May 4 the last cabled message from the island of Martinique was received.  After that, as reported in The New York Times, “Cable communication with Martinique is absolutely cut off.”

Six days later the newspaper said “At the office of the French Telegraphic Cable Company, 44 Broad Street, the opinion was expressed by the officers yesterday that the entire island of Martinique had disappeared.”  The firm apparently believed that the vanishing of an island was more plausible than a failure in the cable system.

Four days later the French Telegraphic Cable Company was forced to admit it had spoken too soon.  A break in the cable near Madeira had been repaired and communication was restored.

In 1903 the General Electric Company introduced an innovation that would become an American tradition.  On December 22 The Times announced that the company was selling “Christmas tree and house decorations made easy, where current is available, by electric lighting outfit with colored lamps.”

Six months later, on May 21, 1904, the building was back in the news for all the wrong reasons.  Police Commission McAdoo launched a series of raids on “pool rooms”—illegal gambling establishments which took bets on race results.  “A mammoth exchange on the roof of the building at 44 Broad Street, which is said to serve the entire Wall Street district, yielded rich tribute in the shape of telegraph and telephone instruments,” reported The Times.  Thirteen men were arrested and arraigned on May 24 in the Tombs court.

One of the crooks was determined not to go to jail.  “One of the men tried to escape,” reported the New-York Tribune, “and ran through the building, followed by the county detectives.  He succeeded in hiding himself in a closet in a room on the upper floor, from which he was dragged out later.”

The raid was the last straw for the managing agent of the Edison Building.  On May 21 it sent a letter to the tenants requiring them to describe their business.  “It has even gone further, and has employed a firm of private detectives…to find out just what business is being conducted by the many people to whom they rent offices,” said the New-York Tribune the next day.

And yet infamous activities continued.  The French Cable Company was still in the building in September 1906 when it was discovered “that its wires running out of the branch office at 44 Broad Street have been used for the transmission of racing information,” wrote The New York Times on September 6.  The wires involve were leased by a Boston firm and the French Cable Company declared its ignorance of the crime.

In December 1906 Electrical Engineering reported that the Edison Building had been sold to the City Investing Company.  The journal announced that the General Electric Company had leased 19,000 square feet in the new City Investing Company’s building being constructed at Cortlandt Street and Broadway.

General Electric moved out of the old Edison Building in May, 1908.  Then, in January 1909, City Investing Company sold it to August Oppenheimer of the Engadine Company in a deal amounting to about $700,000.  The new owners would not hold the property for long.  In April it was sold again, this time to Shapiro, Portman & Renry who renamed it the Cable Building.

Among the brokers in the building at the time was Scheftels & Co., a somewhat shady “curb broker.”  The Times described the brokers on November 10, 1909 saying “The firm makes it easy for clients to pyramid accounts, thus tempting the piling up of paper profits.”  The “paper profits” encouraged investors to continue trusting Scheftels until, on November 9, the bottom dropped out.

“Yesterday,” said The New York Times, “B. H. Scheftels & Co. were putting a brave face on the slump in their widely-tipped stock and laying the collapse to newspaper attacks ‘instigated by powerful Wall Street interests.’”

The former Edison Building was sold yet again—in two sections—in 1910.  The Wall Street Journal purchased the northern half of the building in foreclosure in January for $394,300.  Then in March the newspaper, owned by Dow Jones, purchased the remainder of the building and the land for $550,000.  It ended the De Rham family’s near century-long ownership. 

At the time B. F. Scheftels & Co. was still in the building.  On September 29, 1910 the offices of the much maligned brokers were raided by Federal authorities who charged the firm with using the Unites States mails “with intent to defraud.”  Scheftels & Co. declared bankruptcy in April 1911 prompting a New York Times headline “Scheftels Creditors Lose.”

By now, the old Edison Building was surrounded by skyscrapers.  The abundance of office space in the modern structures caused problems for the aging 44 Broad Street.  On April 27, 1913 The New York Times noted “The building, although one of the older ones, is still an up-to-date structure, and many improvements have lately been installed.”  Nevertheless, “Since the General Electric Company moved out of the three upper floors some time ago they have never been filled.” 

The Wall Street Journal’s solution was to modernize.  In September 1915 it commissioned Frederick Putnam Platt to design “a new exterior and a much altered interior,” according to The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide.  The major renovation required a near-gut of the building and the Guide estimated completion “by the first of the year and ready for new tenants.”

The Journal remained in the building for over a decade while tenants like the L. Darnell Co. operated on the upper floors.  William L. Darnell was described by The New York Times as “one of Wall Street’s most picturesque characters.”  Having grown up in Colorado, he was easily recognizable on Manhattan streets with his broad-brimmed cowboy hat.  More than for trading stocks, the Darnell firm was best known for acting as betting commissioners.  It legally took bets on political elections and sporting events.  In 1923 The Times said “The firm has handled something like $10,000,000 in wagers in the last five years, most of which were handled by Mr. Darnell personally.”

L. Darnell Co. was still in the building on August 5, 1931 when Dow, Jones & Co., publishers of The Wall Street Journal announced it had leased space at No. 130 Cedar Street and at No. 89 Broad Street in “anticipation of the early demolition of their eight-story building at 42-44 Broad Street and erection there of a larger structure.”  Within months, Carrere & Hastings’s Edison Building, so reflective of the flamboyant 1890s, was gone.

The architectural firm of Lockwood, Green & Co. prepared the plans for the new seven-story brick and steel replacement building.  Costing $400,000 it was completed in 1932 and survived until 1980 when it was replaced by a glass and steel skyscraper.

Philipsborn & Co's No. 1 West 22nd Street

West 22^nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in 1870 was somewhat surprising.  High end residences of the well-to-do graced the block; such as that of inventor Samuel F. B. Morse as No. 5.  And yet just two lots away, at No. 1, and directly behind the Fifth Avenue mansions of some of the city’s wealthiest citizens, was the private carriage house of Benjamin Nathan.   

Nathan was a wealthy stockbroker and his stable sat directly behind his mansion at No. 12 West 23^rd Street.  That year The New York Times described the house as “lavish to excess” and “one of the most elegant and spacious of the private residences of the City.”  It would become the scene of one of Manhattan’s most baffling and publicized murders.

On the stormy evening of July 28 the 56-year old retired for the night in a make-shift bedroom in the second reception room.  Renovations being done upstairs prevented his using his bedroom.   At 5:45 a.m. his son Frederick was awakened by his brother’s screams for help from the second floor.  He rushed to his father’s room and there on a blood-soaked carpet laid his father’s body, bludgeoned beyond recognition.  “When I stepped up to his body I felt my stocking grow cold as the blood came upon them,” he told investigators.

Despite heavy suspicion that Nathan’s son, Washington, was guilty of the crime, the murder would never be solved.  The Nathan family left No. 12 West 23^rd Street.  The mansion and carriage house sat vacant for years, unable to find a tenant because of what newspapers attributed to “unpleasant associations.”

As the turn of the century approached, the once-elegant residential tone of West 23^rd Street faded.  Venerable mansions were converted to commercial purposes or razed.  The Nathan mansion and its stable became the offices of Henry Plant’s Southern Express Company in the 1890s; then were taken over by the Adams Express Company.

The United States Trust Company, trustee of the Nathan Estate, announced its intentions to raze the two structures to erect “a modern building on the site.”  It changed its mind when real estate operator Solomon Tim agreed to a long-term lease amounting to over $1 million in December 1903.  On Saturday, December 5 the New-York Daily Tribune ran a headline that read “Million Dollar Lease Recalls the Nathan Murder.”

The Tribune noted “Mr. Tim will make extensive alterations to the property."  Even before he signed the lease Solomon had found a sub-tenant for the two buildings.   Nearby was the store of M. Philipsboro & Co., dealers in “ladies’ suits and kindred articles,” according to the newspaper.  The company also manufactured and imported women’s cloaks.   Tim’s “extensive alterations” would make both the mansion and the carriage house unrecognizable.

The 23^rd Street building was given a cast iron façade appropriate to the high-end emporium.   The carriage house behind it was razed and in July 1904 architects Schickel & Ditmars were hired to design its replacement.  The firm produced a charming 20-foot wide annex faced in iron, completed only four months later.  While other 23^rd Street retail stores used their back entrances for shipping and receiving; the little Philipsborn building created additional store space on the first floor and loft space above.

The charming fire escape landings of scrolled iron were installed later.

When the new building was completed in November 1904, M. Philipsborn & Co. signed a 15-year lease with Solomon Tim.  “The building is to be used in connection with No. 12 West Twenty-third-st.,” reported the New-York Tribune.  “The aggregate rental for the two buildings is $650,000.” 

The hefty rent payments were due in quarterly installments of $27,500—about $742,000 today.  Two weeks after the lease was signed, the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that a three-story extension would be built to connect the two structures.  “There will be steam heat, electric lights and plumbing.  Cost, about $5,000.”  Architect Simeon B. Eisendrath was responsible for the extension.

The architects' attention to detail is reflected in the foliate brackets and filigree sprandrels.

In May 1905 Solomon Tim transferred title to the two buildings to brothers Louis, Benjamin and Isaac Stern whose massive department store, Stern Brothers, was located just down the block from No. 12 West 23^rd.   Although it would seem that the competing Stern Brothers and M. Philipsborn & Co. concerns would make uneasy bedfellows, the landlord-leasee relationship lasted for years.

In March 1910 the new head of Philipsborn & Co. announced “a number of extensive alterations” to the store.  But, he promised readers of the New-York Tribune, “everything is expected to be in full swing by Easter.”  None of the updates seem to have affected the little building on West 22^nd Street, however.  “Among the changes contemplated are a number of additional fitting rooms, the enlarging of the alteration department and the installing of a new method for displaying garments which will do away with tedious delays.”  The store’s carriage trade clientele was reflected in its price tags.   A black satin or black peau de soie dress would cost the buyer $30—around $760 today.

But something happened later that year.   By December 1910 the announcement had been made that Philipsborn & Co. was “retiring from business.”  The business was taken over by Rosenbaum & Co. which continued to offer top of the line garments to feminine customers.

The new store kicked off with a massive sale -- The Evening World, December 16, 1910 (copyright expired)

The sudden “retirement” of Philipsborn & Co. is possibly explained by the law suit initiated by the Stern brothers against Maximilian Philipsborn in 1914 “for $30,853.70 plus interest for past due rent.”

By June 1925 the little building was dwarfed by massive industrial structures.  One horse-drawn delivery wagon shares the street with motorized trucks.  Photo from the collection of the New York Public Library

No. 1 West 22^nd Street continued to be leased as a unit with No. 12 West 23^rd Street for decades.  In 1917 the Isaac Stern Estate leased the properties to Robins Bros. at $11,000 per year; and on January 15, 1932 Savoy Manufacturing Company took over both buildings, selling “toys, house furnishings and novelties.”

Eventually, after being subservient to the 23^rd Street property for nearly a century, the quaint turn-of-the-century building regained its independence.  The upper floors and the store space at street level have been home to a variety of small businesses.   Schickel & Ditmars’s pleasing design is little changed—a near miracle resulting from its small scale and its long-term connection to the commercial building behind it.

photographs by the author

John Prague's 1889 No. 70 West 87th Street

At a time when a frenzy of construction on the Upper West Side had developers keeping architects busy designing rows of townhouses, John G. Prague covered both bases.  Like a handful of other architects financially able to do so, he often acted as his own developer.  His designing of the structures while owning the property they stood on made for a hugely profitable arrangement.

Such was the case when Prague purchased the lot at No. 70 West 87^th Street, just off the corner of Columbus Avenue and a block from Central Park.  He chose the Queen Anne style for the high-end residence.  Unlike the formality preferred on the East Side, the style’s quirky elements and asymmetric lines made it more popular on the less stuffy West Side.  Interestingly, however, for this project Prague held the reins tightly, producing an unusually reserved version of the style.

Construction began in 1888 and was completed a year later.  The deep English basement and the parlor level were faced in brownstone, providing a sturdy base for three stories of red brick above.  Other architects would have, perhaps, splashed the façade with terra cotta panels, a variety of materials, and eccentric angles and shapes.  Instead Prague’s design was unexpectedly formal.  It culminated at the fourth floor where Ionic brownstone pilasters standing on tall blocks joined with  the pedimented parapet to create a shallow Greek temple front.  Each of the openings featured a stained glass transom.

The last decade of the 19^th century saw a rabid fad arrive in New York—bicycling.  The owner of No. 70 West 87^th Street, J. L. Stevens, got into the trend and on September 25, 1896 he took his bike for a scenic spin along Riverside Drive.  Although the Drive was still being constructed; it had already become a favorite spot for bicyclists.  Stevens could not have been aware that while he pedaled along with other bikers at 114^th Street trouble was brewing three blocks to the south.

Bicyclists crowd Riverside Drive in 1898 as onlookers watch -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

Daniel Horton was driving a light wagon pulled by what The New York Times called “a valuable trotter.”  Just as Horton reached the corner of Riverside Drive and 111^th Street, a steam roller started up.  The New York Times would report that “A steam roller puffing and blowing and crunching…was the primary cause of the trouble.”

Startled, the horse shied, throwing Horton to the ground.  The horse panicked.  “More and more alarmed, he started at a racing pace along the driveway, crowded just then with wheelmen and wheelwomen.”  The bicyclists could not react quickly enough to avoid being hit by the runaway horse and cart.  Among those “thrown from their wheels” was J. L. Stevens.

Eventually, the spooked horse crashed the cart, creating the opportunity for his capture.  It was caught “by a mounted Park policeman after he had smashed the light wagon to which he was attached against the protruding roots of a tree,” said The Times.

An ambulance from the Manhattan Hospital arrived to treat Stevens—who received “contusions of right leg and right arm—and two other bicyclists.  His bicycle fared less well.  “The wheels of those run down were badly damaged, and the owners are doubtful upon whom to call for satisfaction—the proprietor of the horse or the owner of the steam roller,” noted the newspaper.

Stevens had sold No. 70 by 1903 to F. L. Gillette, director of the Gillette Clipping Machine Co. and his wife Lena.  The title to the house was, as was customary, put in her name.

The wealthy family would stay on in the residence until October 30, 1909 when the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that Lena had sold it to Emily M. Roemer.  Emily was not interested in the house as anything but an investment.  She was well-known among the real estate community for buying and selling properties; and within a few months she sold No. 70 to Alfred Roelker, Jr.   The New York Times, on February 10, 1910, noted “Mr. Roelker buys for occupancy.”

The 35-year old attorney had married Millicent Turle a few years earlier and the New-York Tribune noted that he was “a member of the Bar Association, as well as several of the New-York and suburban clubs.”  He had graduated from Columbia University Law School in 1898 and now practiced from No. 80 Broadway.  The couple’s new home was necessary for their growing family.  The had two daughters, Roberta, who was 4 years old, and Katrina, just a year old.  The girls would be joined by the arrival of Hildegarde in 1913.

The Turle family lived in Brooklyn, members of what was known as the Heights Society—referring to the mansion-filled Brooklyn Heights neighborhood.  Millicent had been educated in the exclusive Miss Bodman’s School there.  The 1914-1915 Woman’s Who’s Who of America would mention that she “Favors woman suffrage.”

Something happened in 1912 the prompted the family to leave West 87^th Street—possible the health of Millicent’s elderly mother.  On November 30 Brooklyn Life announced “Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Roelker, Jr., who have been residing in Manhattan at 70 West Eighty-seventh Street, will make their home with the latter’s mother, Mrs. Robert H. Turle, of 34 Monroe Place (Brooklyn).”

The unmarried Julia M. Hall leased the Roelker home for a few years; moving a block away to No. 138 West 87^th Street in 1915.  The house became home to Harold A. Gilbert until 1921 when the once-wealthy businessman had a change in fortune.  On September 15 that year the New-York Tribune reported on his bankruptcy, publicizing his embarrassing financial situation:  “liabilities $8,864, assets none.”

If the Roelkers had ever held out hope of returning to West 87^th Street, they now gave up.  With Gilbert gone, Alfred Roelker sold the house to the Broadedge Corporation.  Although it was still listed as a “private dwelling,” it is evident that the new owners leased rooms in the house.

Among the tenants was the widowed Johanna Kelly and her 15-year old daughter Alice.  Johanna had recently worked as the housekeeper of general contractor and builder Louis Fagnant.  The 39-year old man lived in an apartment at No. 144 West 105^th Street with his wife and two young daughters.

When Johanna accepted the position in 1921, about a year after her husband died, she and Alice moved into the apartment with the Fagnants.  After only three months, however, she resigned and moved to No. 70 West 87^th.  “She left, she said, because of the evident attachment between her fifteen-year-old daughter and her employer,” said the New-York Tribune on March 4, 1922.

Suspicious, Johanna had questioned Alice about her relationship with the married man.  The Tribune said she “was assured that, strange as it appeared, she was engaged to marry Fagnant.”  To prove her story, the girl showed her mother a diamond engagement ring, a wedding ring and a string of pearls the older man had given her.  She told Johanna that the wedding was to take place in January, “after which they would go to Canada.”

The shocked housekeeper returned the jewelry to Fagnant, resigned and left.  When the contractor answered a knock on his apartment door on March 3, 1922 he was confronted by agents of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and arrested.  He told detectives that Alice’s story was “absurd.”

Later that year Charles W. Wynne and Louis H. Low, real estate operators purchased No. 70.  It would be a short ownership.  Within weeks they resold it.  The New-York Tribune, on November 23, 1922, noted that the purchaser intended “extensive alterations.”

Barnet Bonderefsky owned the building for several years; and it never again would be a private home.  He leased it several times as “a rooming house.”

The interior was heavily altered in 1948 when the basement was converted to a launderette and the upper floors were rented out as furnished rooms.  The configuration lasted until 1995 when the commercial space was replaced by two apartments and the upper floors were divided into two apartments each.  A penthouse was added behind the parapet, creating a duplex on the top floor.

Through it all Prague’s interesting 1889 façade remains essentially intact.  Sadly when the windows were replace the stained glass transoms were removed.  Nevertheless, Prague’s formal take on Queen Anne is a striking Victorian survivor.

photographs by the author

The Remains of the 1853 Murdock Mansion -- 313 5th Avenue

Surrounded by office buildings, the former brownstone mansion somehow survived.

Henry Brevoort changed the geographical history of residential New York when he erected the first mansion on Fifth Avenue in 1834.  Rapidly Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens followed suit, building large brownstone or brick residences along the still-unpaved blocks north of Washington Square.  But a few visionary urban pioneers jumped ahead of the tide--like Uriel Atwood Murdock.

Murdock was born in 1810 in the small town of Carver, Massachusetts, near Cape Cod.  His father was an ironware manufacturer who had gained both wealth and prominence in the community.  But when his business failed, things changed for the young Uriel.  Decades later The New York Times would say that because of his father’s bankruptcy, “the ordinary schools of that section became the sole educators of the boy.”

Uriel eventually joined his father.  He pioneered the making of pig iron by using anthracite coal, turning the company’s financial problems around.   Murdock moved to New York City and amassed his own fortune in the importing of iron rails, gleaning a 200 percent profit on the shipments.  Young and wealthy, in 1829 he married Maria Louisa Lewis, a descendant of Francis Lewis, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  The couple lived at No. 31 Clinton Place and would have two sons and two daughters: Francis, Alice, Lewis Champlin and Ada. 

In 1853 he spent $40,000 on a fine new home at No. 313 Fifth Avenue, near the southeast corner of 32^nd Street and just a block south of the Astor mansions.    The Times called it “then one of the furthest up-town residences on that avenue.”  The price of the house, documented by The Evening Post Record of Real Estate Sales in Greater New York years later, would amount to about $1.2 million today.

Although the attic was later raised to a full floor, its windows retain their original size.

The Murdock house was a commodious 28-feet wide.  Four stories high, it had the expected high stone stoop and, like other Greek Revival and Italianate rowhouses appearing across the city, forewent the dormers of the now-passe Federal style in favor of short attic windows.  Seven years after moving in to the brownstone home Uriel Murdock became President of the Continental National Bank.  He remained in that position for ten years, retiring in 1869 to what The New York Times deemed “private life.”

By now Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens flocked to fashionable summer resorts like Newport for the summer season.    Murdock chose breezy Southampton, Long Island, where other millionaires like Charles Atterbury and Louis Siebert had already begun a "colony."   In 1875 he paid $60 for five acres of land; adding more land to the estate in 1880.  The Murdock family would spend their summer seasons in the Southampton estate for decades.

If Uriel Atwood Murdock had been educated in “ordinary schools;” his sons would not be.  Lewis and his brother Francis, called Frank, attended Harvard.   The differences in their privileged upbringing as compared with their father’s was evidenced in their club memberships.  Uriel was content with a single social membership—in the New England Society.  Lewis enjoyed the clubbier scene, holding memberships in social clubs like the New York Athletic Club and the Meadow Club of Southampton.

On July 5, 1901 Uriel Murdock died in the Southampton house at the age of 91.  The New York Times reported that “His death was sudden and due to a general collapse, aggravated by the heat.”

By the time of Murdock’s death, the Fifth Avenue neighborhood had drastically changed.  The march of mansions had reached No. 313, engulfed it, and then moved on.  The looming Waldorf-Astoria Hotel sat on the site of the Astor mansions and Murdock’s moneyed neighbors had migrated north; leaving their once-fashionable homes to be converted to businesses if not entirely replaced.

Slightly splayed stone lintels with sharply-carved keystones survive under a coat of paint.

Within the year the Murdock family, too, abandoned the old family home.  In November 1902 The Evening Post Record of Real Estate Sales reported that they had leased the “four-story and basement brownstone-front dwelling” to Fishel, Adler & Schwartz at an annual rental of $12,500 net.”   The publication noted “It is understood that the lessees will spend about $20,000 in remodeling the premises for business purposes.”

The concerns leasing the old mansions were all high-end businesses—merchant tailors, dressmakers and art galleries, for instance.   Fishel, Adler & Schwartz was a highly-respected gallery known for exhibitions of modern American and European artists, like Claude Monet.

Among Fishel, Adler & Schwartz’s renovations was the removal of the stoop and, inside, a “sky parlor,” where large exhibitions could be held.  A two-story extension, it was lit by a vast skylight.  It was here in January 1904 that portraits and small landscapes by Wilhelm Funk were hung.   The art critic of The New York Times commented on various portraits, including one of vaudeville artiste Fritzi Scheff, known to “the outside world” as Baroness von Bardeleben, and “the seated likeness of Mr. William C. Le Gendre of Brown Brothers.”  The journalist was taken with the portrait, but not necessarily with the choice of clothing for the poser.

“He is in walking dress, and on the table  by his side is that ugly adjunct of man’s city garb, the black top hat; yet so managed as not to be offensive in the picture.”

In December 1906 the gallery offered unusual subject matter—Native American portraits.  J. H. Sharp’s exhibition featured over 30 paintings “devoted to the delineation of Indian life.”  The Sun opined, on December 17, “The best realized of the series is No. 10, ‘Gray Day—The Visit.’  It is discreet and has an out of door atmosphere. The heads of the Indians are hard and not set forth in a particularly pleasing quality of paint.  Mr. Sharp has been a close student of his subject.”

Although Fishel, Adler & Schwartz had entered into a 21-year lease; the sudden death of Abraham I. Adler early in 1908 ended it.  On April 8 “in accordance with the wishes” of Adler, a two-day auction of the inventory was begun.  The first evening’s sales amounted to $10,434.30; including paintings by Dutch artist Bernard de Hoog, and landscape painter Mesle.

In October that year several publications announced that the piano and organ manufacturers Mason & Hamlin had purchased the renovated house.   Someone changed his mind, apparently; for instead the company signed a 21-year lease.  The Record and Guide, on October 31, noted that the firm “will use it for its own business.”

Mason & Hamlin’s move was part of a trend as piano and organ firms left Broadway and Union Square for Fifth Avenue.  Within a year the Sohmer Piano Co. would take the ground floor of the new 11-story structure next door at No. 315.

The firm was not ashamed to call its pianos "the most expensive" in the world.  New-York Tribune, March 8, 1916 (copyright expired)

Like other piano firms, Mason & Hamlin staged recitals to showcase its instruments.  While some, like Steinway & Sons, had actual concert halls; Mason & Hamlin made do with less imposing accommodations. 

When the United States entered World War I the piano company pitched in by selling Liberty Bonds.  On October 19, 1918 The Literary Digest noted “In the window of Mason & Hamlin, 313 Fifth Avenue, John Ward Dunsmore strikes a novel note with his picture of President Wilson alone in his study and its Liberty-bond message ‘Light His Worries.’”

Mason & Hamlin Co. staged recitals to showcase its pricey pianos. (copyright expired)

As Mason & Hamlin’s 21-year lease drew to a close in February 1929, the Murdock family finally decided to sell.   After more than three quarters of a century since Uriel A. Murdock bought the property, the family sold it to real estate operator Joseph F. A. O’Donnell for $350,000.   O’Donnell was prompted to buy the old building by the announcement of the coming Empire State Building a block away.   He told reporters that “he made the purchase in contemplation of higher values on lower Fifth Avenue which he said would result from the improvement of the Waldorf-Astoria site.”

O’Donnell was on target regarding the rising property values.  Two weeks later he resold No. 313 for what The New York Times called “a substantial profit.”  The buyer was perhaps more surprising to real estate dealers than the rapid resale—The Murdock Realty Company.

Once the center of expensive hand-made gowns and imported artwork; the neighborhood filled with textile firms in the 1930s.  In April 1936 the Carolina Manufacturing Company took the store and basement.  The company was a wholesale importer of two widely unrelated items—linens and carpets.  Three decades later its executive offices were still in the building.

Today former English basement and parlor level of the Murdock mansion give no hint of its residential past.  A bank operates out of the combined two-story tall space with its sleek glass and stainless steel façade.  But above, the lone survivor of the area’s glory days drops the disguise.  Even painted gray, the keystoned lintels, the sills and the original attic openings betray the building’s early history.

photographs by the author