The Lost Wm. V. Lawrence Mansion -- No. 969 Fifth Avenue

The entrance to the Lawrence mansion was on 78th Street above the stone stoop.  To the right is the elegant Jacob H. Schiff residence.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

William Van Duzer Lawrence had an impressive list of ancestors.  Sir Robert Lawrence had accompanied Richard the Lion-Hearted on the Crusades; William Lawrence was a friend of John Milton, and his three sons traveled to America in the 17^th century, helping to found Flushing, New York, in 1645; Lt. Nathaniel Lawrence distinguished himself in the Revolution; and Captain James Lawrence commanded the Chesapeake in the War of 1812.  William Van Duzer Lawrence’s accolades would come not from battles but from medicine and real estate.

Although born in Elmira, New York on February 12, 1842, his parents had a pioneering spirit and went West to Michigan where he grew up.  But at the age of 19 he returned to New York City, where he worked in a drug store for five years. Having saved money, he traveled to Canada and became involved with a wholesale drug company, Perry Davis & Son, best known for its blatantly-named Pain-Killer.  (Incidentally, Pain-Killer played a noticeable part in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer when Tom feeds a spoonful to his cat which then spreads “chaos and destruction in his path.”)

In 1888, now a partner in the renamed Davis & Lawrence Company, Lawrence returned with his family to New York City.   He set out to ensconce the Lawrence family in the expected trappings of Manhattan society.  Millionaires were already constructing lavish mansions 30 blocks north of the venerable Vanderbilt Row on Fifth Avenue in the 50s.   Lawrence acquired the building plot on the southeast corner of 78^th Street and Fifth Avenue and commissioned esteemed architect Richard Morris Hunt to design his home.

Hunt was a favorite among Chicago and Manhattan millionaires.  He had designed the mansions of Marshall Field and William Borden in Chicago, the Fifth Avenue residences of Ogden Mills and William K. Vanderbilt, and had just finished plans for the Newport palaces Marble House, for William Kissam Vanderbilt, and Ochre Court for Ogden Goelet.

For Lawrence he produced a French Renaissance fantasy of beige brick with brownstone trim rising five stories above Fifth Avenue like a gingerbread confection.  Hunt took advantage of the corner location by anchoring the mansion with a massive tower which exploded in ornamented dormers.  The conical cap was topped with a story-high decorative finial.  Although the entrance, accessed by a formidable stone dog-legged stoop, was squarely on 78^th Street, the mansion took the more impressive address of No. 969 Fifth Avenue.

William Van Duzer Lawrence -- photo by Wm. Notman & Son, The Successful American, January 1903 (copyright expired)

Lawrence and his wife, the former Sarah Bates, had four children—Louise, Hanna, Dudley and Arthur.  The family settled into the lives of wealthy New Yorkers.  Daughter Louise soon went off to Vassar and the family spent their summers in their country estate, Kelp Rock, in Newcastle, New Hampshire—formerly the home of poet Edmund Clarence Stedman. The Successful American described it in florid Victorian prose as “on a point of land with serrated outline into the sea, and in the surroundings of which all Summer life is present: the sea, the upland clothed with clover bloom, the fragrant pines, enchanting scenery; in short, all of out-of-door possibilities and indoor privileges linked in unusual combination.”

Back in New York, Sarah became highly involved in the New York Exchange for Woman’s Work.  It was a charitable institution which provided a retail outlet for the handiwork of indigent women.  The New York Tribune called it “one of the most practically helpful institutions in the city.”

Two years after erecting his Fifth Avenue mansion, Lawrence purchased the 86-acre Prescott Farm in what would become Bronxville, New York.  His idea was to create a totally new village of charming homes; and he commissioned architect William A. Bates to design several speculative cottages.  Completed in 1891, the first of these were mixture of quaint styles—Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival and Queen Anne Shingle-style, for example.

Once the first homes were sold, Lawrence had Bates renovate the original mansion on the property to an inn, Manor House.  The community, named Lawrence Park, developed quickly and by 1896 had become known as “an exclusive literary and artistic development” as artists like William Henry Howe and Herman T. Schladermundt relocated here.

Back home in Manhattan, the Lawrence children one-by-one left the Fifth Avenue chateau.  On June 29, 1902 the engagement of Arthur to L. Virginia Heppe of Philadelphia was announced; and on June 1, 1905 Dudley Bates Lawrence was married to Katherine Clitherall Birch in Birmingham, Alabama.  In the meantime, Sarah and William went on about their socially-visible routines.

In 1908 they accompanied Mrs. George B. Custer (widow of the General of Little Big Horn fame) on a three-month automobile trip through France, Italy, Germany and Austria.  Upon their return on August 19 on the steamship Oceanic, The Evening World mentioned that Mrs. Custer had accepted William C. Potters design for a statue of the General, to be erected in Monroe, Michigan.

In 1911 William Lawrence improved the Fifth Avenue mansion by commissioning artist Lawrence Park resident Will H. Lowe to decorate the dining room ceiling.  His circular "Golden Autumn" painting was documented nation-wide in art journals.

By now the Lawrences had given up their New Hampshire estate and summered in Bronxville; staying in the lavish Hotel Gramatan William Lawrence had built there.  The first hint that the couple would abandon Fifth Avenue for good appeared in The Sun on August 20, 1916.    

“Work is under way on one of the most pretentious residences at Bronxville, which, when completed, will be occupied by William V. Lawrence of the Lawrence Park Realty Company,” reported the newspaper.  It described the $80,000 Tudor-style mansion, designed by Bates & How, as having “five main rooms on the first floor as well as the service wing, kitchen and service dining room.  A large loggia will front to the north on the first floor and a plaza on the west end.  One the second floor will be four guests’ rooms and baths, three masters’ rooms and baths and five servants’ bedrooms.  On the third floor will be four guests’ rooms and baths.”

Bates & How released a sketch of the mansion to newspapers.  The Sun, August 20, 1916 (copyright expired

The eight-acres of landscaped grounds included a stone gardener’s house, a “large garage,” and a greenhouse.  According to a family member years later, Lawrence was prompted to move out of No. 969 Fifth Avenue because of the property taxes which had grown to $36,000 a year.

The Bronxville mansion, Westlands, was completed in 1918.  Lawrence sold No. 969 Fifth Avenue in December that year in a deal which The Sun said involved $1.5 million.  Plans were quickly laid to demolish it.  On May 4, 1919 The Sun reported “The apartment hotel which is shortly to be erected at No. 969 Fifth Avenue…in the sacred precincts of Millionaires Row, is to be one of the most luxurious structures of its kind ever built in this or any other city.”

Deemed "the apogee of luxury," Blum & Blum's apartment building would never be built.  The Sun, May 4, 1919 (copyright expired)

Luxurious or not, the proposed building, designed by George and Edward Blum, faced vehement opposition.  The Sun noted various organizations claimed “that the invasion of upper Fifth avenue by apartment houses will destroy the beauty of the one remaining section which has not been marred by tall buildings.  They assert that Fifth avenue is a source of national price and that its appearance should be a matter of interest to every New Yorker.”

The organizations, the most active of which was the Fifth Avenue Association, temporarily got their way and the project never went forward.  The Lawrence mansion, however, was not destined to be a private home ever again.  It went through a series of owners in rapid-fire succession (including William Van Duzen Lawrence who bought it back in foreclosure for $200,000 in 1921); before David Tischman purchased it for a mere $210,000 in January 1923.

Then in 1937, the Kensington Estates, Inc. demolished the venerable mansion and hired architect Irving Margon to design a sliver-like apartment building on the site, which survives.

photo Douglas Elliman Real Estate

As an interesting side note, Sarah Lawrence died on May 9, 1926 and in her memory William formed the Sarah Lawrence College on his Bronxville estate.

The Prescott Memorial Bldg -- No. 247 East 53rd Street

Although the Turtle Bay neighborhood near the East River filled with slaughterhouses, cigar factories and breweries following the Civil War; the block of 53^rd Street between Second and Third Avenues boasted handsome brownstone-faced dwellings.  The three story home at No. 247 East 53^rd Street was purchased by Frank Schaeffler in 1881.  He paid Jette and Baruch Strauss $12,500 for the 25-foot wide building—nearly $300,000 in today’s dollars.

A real estate developer, Schaeffler remained in the house at least until 1888.  But by now the block had noticeably declined.  Tenements filled with immigrant families lured by the low-paying jobs in the factories and slaughterhouses. 

With poverty came crime and vice.  Since the mid-19^th century missions and reformers had been hot on the heels of decadence and wantonness.  On March 2, 1918 the Queen Mab Realty Co. announced it had hired architect Frederick P. Hill to remodel the old house at No. 247 “into a club house.”  And then two weeks later the Real Estate Record & Builder's Guide supplied more clues to what was to come.  The journal identified the lessee of the proposed building as the Prescott Memorial.

The Brevoort Mission was incorporated in 1869 by the First Universalist Mission Society of New York City.  When it moved into the completed Prescott Memorial Building in 1919 it changed its name to the Prescott Mission.

Hill had transformed the Italianate brownstone to a terra cotta-fronted institutional building.  Sparsely decorated, it gave tepid nods at neo-Gothic, with blind Gothic arches and crockets at the top floor and rooftop finials. 

The goals of the mission were to take the neighborhood boys off the streets where temptations were rampant, and to educate women in nutrition, economics and housekeeping.  In 1921 the Directory of Social and Health Agencies of New York City described the Prescott Memorial as providing “general club work, gymnasium, classes in household economics.”

By 1922 the mission had come under the auspices of the Church of the Divine Paternity on Central Park West at 76^th Street.  The 53^rd Street group was renamed the Divine Paternity Mission and its building the Divine Paternity House.  Religious services were also provided here for neighbors.  

In January 1922 eyebrows were raised across Manhattan when the Church of the Divine Paternity hired a new minister who would work at the 53^rd Street location.  The New York Herald pointed out that Helene Ulrich was “Manhattan’s only woman minister.”

And Helene brought progressive ideas to New York City.   A month and a half after she arrived a Herald reporter questioned her on current topics—and her responses bordered on shocking.   She felt ministers were short-sighted in their blanket denunciation of motion pictures and stage plays.  “I am certainly not in sympathy with attacks upon the stage and its people,” she said.  “I believe absolutely in the stage as one of the greatest possible mediums for widespread good, and I think the present condemnation of it is greatly overdone.”

Regarding flappers—those modern women who donned short dresses and bobbed hair—she brushed off the entire issue.  “As to ‘flappers,’ their virtues or deficiencies, the whole subject is a matter more of talk than of anything else.”

And her work in impoverished neighborhoods as well as her understanding of the plights of the poor was evidenced in her stance on birth control.  “I emphatically believe in it, and I approve of birth control propaganda….I feel this way about it: If there are people, a man and wife both, let us say, who do not want to have children, and do want to have dogs, by all means let them have dogs!”

Helene Ulrich encapsulated her goals at the mission as to bring about an “understanding in my own church between strongly contrasted classes of people, the rich and the poor, for instance, and between the educated and the uneducated.”

By 1927 the Divine Paternity House had instituted the Baby and Child Welfare Clinic in the building.  The work of the clinic was supported by the highest levels of society; and when a benefit bridge party was held in the Plaza Hotel on February 8, 1927 Mrs. Andrew Carnegie was among the wealthy patronesses.

In 1933 the neighborhood around the Prescott Memorial Bldg. remained marginal.  Before its 1918 alterations, the house was identical to the brownstones flanking it. from the collection of the New York Public Library

The announcement by the Universalist Church of the Divine Paternity in May 1946 that the 53^rd Street building had been sold to a furniture maker shocked and angered nearby residents.  Among its other functions, Prescott House ran a day care facility which allowed mothers to work.  Its loss would be devastating to the low-income neighborhood.

On May 11 The New York Times reported that “Thirty mothers and their children rode in relays in a horse-drawn wagon through midtown streets on the East Side yesterday urging neighbors to sign petitions protesting the proposed sale.”  A sign on the wagon read “Prescott House Must Not Be Sold” and advertised a protest meeting scheduled for the following Friday night.

Richard Wheelright had paid a $10,000 deposit on the $40,000 building on April 18.  But now the unfriendly hoop-la made him wish he hadn’t.  His attorney told reporters that he “wishes to withdraw from the sale and has asked for a refund of the deposit” and that “Mr. Wheelwright does not desire to put an end to the service of the neighborhood house.”

The Universalist Church of the Divine Paternity was, perhaps, less Christian in its response to the frantic mothers.  It refused to release Wheelwright from the signed contract.  But the women forged on and came to an agreement with the furniture maker directly.

Within a week of the protest and strategy meeting of Friday, May 17 around $7,400 had been raised to save Prescott House.   By January 7, 1947 there was enough money to repay Richard Wheelwright his original $10,000 down payment and he accepted long-term payments at low interest for the remaining $30,000.

The New York Times reported “Prescott Memorial Neighborhood House has been saved and now belongs to the community it serves...Under a new executive board it will continue operation of a day nursery attended by seventy children, besides it other work for older children and teen-agers.”

The new owners turned to motion picture and stage stars—the professions that Helene Ulrich had defended a quarter of a century earlier—for support.  Throughout the coming years box office receipts for certain opening night performances went to Prescott House.  Such was the case in 1955 when Katharine Cornell and Tyrone Power opened in The Dark Is Light Enough; and in April 1958 when Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne donated their opening proceeds of The Visit.

As the 20^th century drew to a close the Turtle Bay neighborhood had once again changed.  Upscale apartment buildings replaced old brownstones and tenements, and there was little need for the aging mission house.  In 1993 the building was renovated for Seicho-No-Ie, a spiritual group founded in Japan in 1930.  The name means “The Home of Infinite Life, Wisdom and Abundance.”

Although the street level was significantly altered; the bulk of the 1993 work was internal.  The upper floors of the former Prescott Memorial Building remain surprisingly intact; looking much as they did in 1919 when mission workers sought to help the neediest of New Yorkers.

photographs by the author

The 1817 Wm. Dawes House -- No. 129 Spring Street

The Flemish bond brick and the tidy dormers were typical of the Federal homes constructed on Spring Street at the time.

In 1817 William Dawes constructed a three-and-a-half story house at No. 129 Spring Street, just off the corner of Greene Street.  The rapid development of the area, only recently still farmland, was evidenced two years later.  In the single year of 1819 the entire south block front between West Broadway and Wooster Street, one block away, was filled with homes similar to Dawes’s.

Spring Street had originally been called Brannon Street, named for the landowner whose farm it ran through.  But it was renamed for the underground spring that now supplied fresh water to the growing population.  It was probably Dawes who constructed a deep brick cistern behind the house.

By the 1850s a shop had been installed in the first floor of the Federal style house.  Here Andre Sabatier sold his varnishes and polishes.  In July 1860 he advertised “Black French Varnish, suitable for varnishing all kinds of leather, such as boots, harness, metal; also, French Polish, for parlor and other furniture.”  Sabatier offered the varnishes “at the loss prices of 30 cents a bottle.”  

For those soldiers in New York’s volunteer regiments who preferred to avoid the labor-intensive job of rubbing the varnish into their leathers, Sabatier performed the service.  “Military accoutrements renewed at $1 a set.”

Two years after Sabatier’s advertisement, on May 2, 1862, Spring Street residents were no doubt thrilled when the Post Office opened a station at No. 129 Spring Street for “collection and distribution of letters.”  Postmaster Wakeman issued “instructions” that Station A was to open at 6:30 in the morning and would not close until 9:30 at night.

With the postal station in the former shop space, the second floor was converted to a leased meeting room.  It was the regular meeting place of the Society of Soldiers’ and Sailors’ following the Civil War.  It was here in 1871 that the group raised concerns over the revised Old Soldiers’ Bounty Land Bill. 

The original bill was passed on December 24, 1811 and was amended in 1855.  It granted 160 acres of land in the West—Arkansas, Illinois or Missouri—to men who had served at least 14 days in any war since 1775.  The bill generously noted “The provisions of the act extend to Indians.”

But in the spring of 1871 a vote was scheduled in Congress to amend the bill again; requiring those receiving the free land to settle on it.  The new provision would force New York veterans to move west.  On March 9, 1871 the Society of Soldiers’ and Sailors met on Spring Street, complaining that the modification “it little, if anything, more than the homestead law.”

Within two weeks they had accumulated around 500 names on a petition to Congress.  The group held a special meeting on March 21 to discuss sending the petition to Senator Fenton.  The New York Times remarked “The bill as passed by the House is unsatisfactory to a large majority of the soldiers and sailors in the Eastern and Middle States.”

Also using the meeting space that year was the Hackmen’s Association.  An early version of a labor union, the hired hansom cab drivers were well-organized.  They had a delegate to the Mayor’s office who demanded “that the members of the Association be protected in their rights as citizens of this City.”   Members wore metal badges which were recognized by out-of-towners disembarking from boats or trains.  The New York Times remarked on July 8, 1871 “These members are recognized at all the depots and boat landings, and their cabs immediately engaged by passengers.”

The following year was a Presidential Election year.  The George W. Francis Association, composed of African American Republicans, met at No. 129 Spring Street on August 16 to discuss its support of incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant.   A “Mr. Myars” spoke.  He stressed “the necessity his race had of standing up for the present Administration, and also conveyed some useful information on the subject of local politics,” reported The Times.

He was followed by George W. Francis, himself, who “expressed his sorrow in seeing a colored traitor at the Cooper Institute on Thursday night supporting the Greeleyite ticket.”

Equally concerned with a Grant victory was the ponderously-named Fifth Assembly District German Republican Grant and Wilson Campaign Club which met here that year.  And a week before Election Day the International Working Men’s Association held a meeting.  Following its report on the business transacted that night, The Times editorially added “A long, strong pull, and a pull all together on Tuesday, a legal holiday, will pull Greeleyism up by the roots.”

Among other political and labor groups renting the upstairs meeting rooms was the German Reformers of the Fifth Assembly District. 

While the groups discussed their issues upstairs, Post Office Station A continued serving the Spring Street community.  In 1891 a new clerk, 23-year old Richard Banse, was hired in the Money Order Department.  Banse made a modest salary of $600 a year—about $16,000 in 2016 terms.  But he found a way to augment his earnings.

On November 28, 1893 he was unceremoniously led out of the postal branch by police.  Banse had a stamp of Postmaster Dayton’s signature which made filling out money orders payable to himself simple.  The Evening World reported “There are charges against Banse of forgery and fraud and involving a multitude of offenses covering a period of several months.”

His ill-gotten money could not cover the $2,000 bail set by the Police Commissioner.

In 1954 the DaGrossa family purchased No. 129 Spring Street.  A hero sandwich store opened in the shop space where Andre Sabatier sold furniture varnish in 1860.  And the upper floor meeting rooms were again being used as a duplex living space.  The Soho neighborhood was being rediscovered by artists and in 1961 the two-story apartment was home to struggling artist Miles Forst, his wife and two children.

Soho had not yet achieved its peak as a trendy and expensive district.  Forst told a reporter his family lived here because, like some other artists, they “cannot afford to live in Greenwich Village.”  The Forsts paid $50 a month in the house.

Eventually, of course, Soho did become trendy and expensive.  The hero shop was converted to the Manhattan Bistro by the DaGrossa family; and in 2015 the entire building was converted to retail space for the women’s clothing store, COS.

In the 1970s a scandalous murder mystery from 1799 was recycled.  The unmarried Gulielma Elmore Sands, rumored to be pregnant, was murdered.  Her body was found in the well, recently dug by the Manhattan Company at 89 Greene Street.   It was a sensational story which left newspaper readers nationwide enrapt.

In 1974 a Greene Street shop owner declared that his building was haunted by the ghost of Guilielma Sands.  And when William Dawes’s cistern was unearthed under the Manhattan Bistro in 1980, the ghost story migrated south.  As a result No. 129 Spring Street was included in The Travel Channel’s list of the 10 Most Haunted Places in America.  Why the unfortunate Miss Sands would wait 181 years to appear; and why her spirit is more comfortable here than where the Manhattan Company well stood is unclear.  But ghost enthusiasts nationwide happily accept the discrepancies and repeat the story.

While No. 129 survived, it was hemmed in by taller commercial structures in the 19th century.

Even without a ghost story, William Dawes’s handsome Federal home retains its early 19^th century charm, despite the modern storefront.  And the stories that played out within its walls are nearly as interesting as the murder that occurred 18 years before it was built.

photographs by the author