The Lost St. Luke's Hospital -- W. 54th Street and Fifth Avenue

Architects' and Builders' Guide published a rendering of the building in 1868 (copyright expired)

On March 16, 1853 The New York Times reported that the Board of Aldermen had received a request from the managers of St. Luke’s Hospital, “asking permission to sell the lots conveyed to them by the Corporation two years since” and using the proceeds to purchase a larger lot uptown. 

The plot in which the hospital was interested, indeed, further uptown.

St. Luke’s Hospital had been founded seven years later, in 1846, by the pastor of the Church of the Holy Communion, Rev. William Augustus Muhlenberg.  It was operated by the church's Sisterhood, established in 1845, and was described in The Charities of New-York, Brooklyn and Staten Island by Henry J. Cammann and Hugh N. Camp:  “It is simply a body of Protestant Christian women, drawn together by a common motive, and bound together by a common aim.  No vows of any kind bind the Sisters to their work or to each other, but after a trial of six months they engage for a term of three years, which they may renew or not at pleasure.”

The hospital was incorporated on April 25, 1850, and now planned its modern, expansive facility.   It purchased the entire block of West 54^th Street from Fifth to Sixth Avenues.  The location was chosen not only for the inexpensive real estate, but because the remote, high location provided an abundance of sunshine and fresh air.

The area was almost entirely undeveloped.  Three blocks to the south was the large Catholic Orphan Asylum and at 44^th Street was the Colored Orphan Asylum.  Otherwise, the rutty dirt road known as Fifth Avenue was essentially barren above the Croton Reservoir at 42^nd Street.

The cornerstone of what The New York Times anticipated would be “a splendid and spacious edifice” was laid on Saturday, May 6, 1854.  A crowd of around 300 had traveled to the site on an unusually cold spring day.  The officials of the hospital assured the assemblage that funds would not be wasted on frivolities.

“The managers have gone to no outlay in mere architectural ornament—relying for any beauty of structure on symmetry and proportion—which they are sure will be such that the hospital will present no unsightly object among the buildings likely to grace this part of the City.”  The Times gave a near-apology for the materials.  “The material will be of brick, but will be so treated by the architect as to ensure a good effect.”

That architect was Jonathan (known as John) W. Ritch, of the firm Ritch & Griffiths.   His three-story Italianate design smacked of the institutional buildings being designed by James Renwick, Jr. for the city on Blackwell’s Island.  The central section was dominated by the chapel, which was flanked by two four-story towers.  Expansive wards branched off to either side—the western ward for men, the eastern for women.

Floorplans from An Account of St. Luke's Hospital, 1860 (copyright expired)

At the time of the cornerstone laying the cost of the completed structure, including furnishings, was estimated to be $150,000—about $4.4 million in 2015.  Because only half of that amount had been raised, the hospital would be constructed in sections.  “They will therefore proceed with the erection of two-thirds of the building as planned, in the confidence that when that much is done they will have the means of completed the whole,” said The Times.

Rev. Muhlenberg took the opportunity to chide New Yorkers for not having yet contributed.  “Perhaps they are waiting until they are assured we are in earnest, and this day’s demonstration may be all that is wanting to bring their names to the subscription list.” 

By the time half of the building was completed and the chapel opened on June 22, 1857, the cost had risen to $200,000.  Half of that amount had been raised.   Less than a year after the chapel opened, the hospital was completed and on May 13, 1858 it opened its doors to patients.

Although St. Luke’s was affiliated with the Episcopal Church, its 200 beds were available to all creeds.  Its charitable approach to medical care was evidenced by the cost of a private room.  Patients who preferred not to stay in a common ward paid $3.05 per week; yet the cost to the institution was $4.65.

An 1863 stereopticon slide reveals the undeveloped Fifth Avenue neighborhood -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

The hospital filled not only with the sick, but with victims of a variety of sometimes bizarre accidents.  Lyke Flynn was a laborer, working in the creation of Central Park, when he was struck “by a large stone which fell upon him from a derrick,” reported The New York Times on October 22, 1858.  He did not survive.

Another laborer, 60-year old William Simmons, “was precipitated from a scaffold at a house in Fifty-fifth-street” where he was working on February 7, 1860.  He, too, died of his injuries.  And Mary Brown, a servant of a family on East 83^rd Street, was standing in the yard of that house in October that year as construction workers blasted for the foundation of a building across the street.  A stone flew into the air, crashing down on Mary’s head.

The Times reported “As soon as the contractor having charge of the work heard of the injury which had resulted from his carelessness he fled to escape arrest.”  Mary was taken to St. Luke’s where “the physician in whose care she has been placed considers her recovery impossible.  Her skull is fractured.”

The Civil War changed day-to-day operations in St. Luke’s as half of its 200 beds were devoted to wounded soldiers.  On July 9, 1862 The Times noted that hundreds of “poor fellows, who, a few short months, or it may be weeks ago, left their homes, sound and stalwart, hopeful and reliant, to do battle for the flag under which they were born, or to which they owned allegiance.  They come back to us diseased, mutilated, overwrought in mind, and body, demanding from all in whose power it may be to aid them every attention that time, thought and money can bestow.”

One of those soldiers in 1862 was Corporal James Marchall, the color bearer of the 2^nd New Jersey Regiment who was injured in the battle of Gaines’ Mill.  Refusing to allow the flag to be taken by the enemy, he buried it where he knew he could go back and retrieve it.  He was taken prisoner shortly afterward, with his thumb shot off.  After being imprisoned in Richmond for some time he was released and ended up in St. Luke’s.

A different type of war victim would be brought here the following year when the bloody Draft Riots erupted on the streets of New York.  Eighteen-year old Francis McCade did not survive the gunshot he received on the corner of 36^th Street and Ninth Avenue on July 14, 1863, for instance. 

One policeman after another was brought in after being assaulted by the mob.  Officer Bennett was knocked down three times before he stopped fighting.  Unconscious, he was robbed of everything “save his drawers” according to newspapers.  The mob left him for dead and he was taken to the Dead House.  When his wife visited his body several hours later, she realized he had a heartbeat.  He was brought to St. Luke’s.

Office Travis was pursued by the rabble, one of which had a pistol.  Travis turned on him, knocked him down and secured the weapon; but the crowd was on him before he could use it.  “He fell beneath a score of clubs, was stamped, jumped upon, and otherwise terribly assailed; his jaw was broken, his teeth knocked out, his head terribly cut, and he left for dead, after being stripped of every article of clothing, even to shirt and stockings.”

A score of other police officers were brought in; including Officer Didway who was beaten so badly that his eye was forced out of the socket.

The Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg was not only an accomplished orator and minister; he was a poet and hymn writer.  In reaction to the horrors of the war, he wrote “The President’s Hymn” as Thanksgiving approached in 1863.  The hymn sought the quick restoration of “Liberty and Peace.”  The editor of The New York Times sent a copy to Abraham Lincoln, asking his permission on behalf of Dr. Muhlenberg to use the title.  He received a telegram from the Secretary of State a few hours later which said the President had replied “Let it be so called.”

Around 1865 one house, owned by wealthy merchant William P. Williams, had been constructed on West 54th Street.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Things returned to normal after the end of the war and physicians at St. Luke’s Hospital returned to treating ill and injured citizens.  On the afternoon of September 9, 1867 Robert Goliver attempted to jump off the front platform of a moving Sixth Avenue street car.  He fell under the car and a wheel passed over his foot, cutting it badly.  Two weeks later John McDonough fell from the third floor of a newly-constructed building at 54^th Street and Third Avenue.  He fractured his skull and sustained other injuries.

The hospital served 1,027 patients in 1868, 172 of which were children.  Patients who could afford to paid $7 a week while here, including all necessary medication and treatment (an enviable fee of about $120 in 2015 dollars).  Children paid $4.

Muhlenberg’s assistant pastor at the time was a Southerner, Fleming James.  He was in Baltimore in 1869 visiting a clergyman when, according to James, “he was suddenly called upon to read the burial service” of John Wilkes Booth.  For the past four years the assassin’s body had been moved from place to place for various identifications; and finally had been released to his family for burial.

James explained in July “As he was just going out of town, he requested me to do it for him.  I consented, having but a few moments for reflection, and seeing no good reason for refusing.”  Fleming James officiated at the burial of America’s most hated citizen.  Reaction from the press and the community in general was scathing.

On June 30, 1869 Fleming James resigned his position with St. Luke’s Hospital over the uproar.  His letter of explanation insisted that his “Southern feelings had nothing to do with the matter.  I acted wholly from a sense of duty at the time.  I need scarcely say that I have no sympathy with the assassination of which the deceased was guilty.”

Dr. Muhlenberg was especially aware of the children in the hospital at Christmas time.  On Christmas Eve 1870 he reminded those assembled in the chapel that Christmas was a “peculiarly the children’s day.”  Following the service, visitors went to the children’s ward where The Times said “most of the children are cripples.”

The room was unlit except for the 100 candles on the Christmas tree.  “The kind visitors passed from couch to couch, speaking words of comfort to the little sufferers, and wishing them a merry Christmas.”  The group sang a few hymns.

“When these were concluded, the tree was stripped of its rich treasures, and each child was presented with several nice presents,” said the newspaper.

On the night of April 8, 1877 Dr. William Augustus Muhlenberg died at the age of 80.  The Times said “Now that he is gone, people will begin to realize the gap which his absence makes in a large community busy with its own affairs.”    His funeral was held in the chapel of St. Luke’s Hospital on the afternoon of April 11.

An omnibus pauses by the impressive 54th Street gate posts.  photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The extraordinary ability of St. Luke’s Hospital’s physicians and surgeons was exhibited in the case of Lucy Osborn.  In 1874 the 19-year old was working in a button factory in New Medford, Connecticut.  Her hair was “arranged in long, luxuriant curls” and as she bent over the revolving shaft of the button machine on September 23, her hair became caught.  The New York Times later reported “Her face was wrenched down close to the shaft, the hair refused to give way, and the entire scalp was taken clean off.”

When local doctors could not help her, she was brought to St. Luke’s on December 1, 1874.  It was the beginning of a complicated procedure of skin grafts to replace her scalp.  Dr. Weir applied ointments designed to aid production of new tissue for 27 days.  Then “little pieces of thin skin, not larger than a millet-seed, were carefully taken from the arm of a healthy man, and 25 of these were grafted on the head of Lucy.”   Some of the tiny grafts grew; most were rejected.  But the doctor persistently pushed on. 

As the news of Lucy’s case was publicized, donors came forth.  The New York Times reported “Several prominent clergymen of the City contributed grafts, and portions of the skin of many fashionable ladies furnished a nucleus for the scalp which Lucy Osborn now wears.”

On July 17, 1880, more than six years after the procedure was started, The New York Times reported “The new scalp which has been built up for Lucy Osborn is hard, white, and glossy.  There are no pores in the tissue, and it can never bear hair.”  But, the newspaper said, “Lucy is in the best of health and spirits, and expects to have a completely reconstructed scalp soon.”

By now the neighborhood around St. Luke’s Hospital had filled with the mansions of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens.  The real estate value of the block had soared.  On October 24, 1891 The Real Estate Record &  Builders’ Guide reported “It has been definitely settled upon that St. Luke’s Hospital is to move.”

George Maccullough Miller, President of the hospital, told a Guide reporter “We are now placing our property on the market for sale.  Our price is $2,500,000.  We prefer to sell it as a whole.  There are thirty-two lots.”

A few days later the Record & Guide opined “Real estate on that avenue sells for very high prices, not because it is suited to be the site for hospitals, but because custom has made it desirable for the residences of the rich…Quite a fashion has set in of late for millionaires to build very expensive residences on upper 5^th avenue; and there must be enough of them left to absorb this last remaining and very desirable property.”

There was interest in the property, but no one seemed willing to purchase the entire plot.  The exclusive Union Club negotiated for the Fifth Avenue corner and it seemed for awhile that the hospital officials would sell that plot. 

Then on June 3, 1893 The Record & Guide reported that Charles A. Seymour & Co had purchased the entire property for $2.4 million.  The firm had already negotiated the sale of certain parcels. 

When Robert L. Bracklow took this photograph around 1890, the hospital building's days were numbered.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

 St. Luke’s Hospital relocated to 113^th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive in 1896.  The old structure was demolished and one by one lavish homes rose on the block, anchored by McKim, Mead & White’s grand University Club on the Fifth Avenue corner, completed in 1899.

The University Club sits at the corner of Fifth Avenue, while down the block newly constructed mansions can be seen.  from the collection of the Library of Congress.

The 1899 Moses Allen Starr Mansion -- No. 5 West 54th Street

photo by Alice Lum

Until 1896 the block facing John D. Rockefeller’s West 54^th Street mansion off Fifth Avenue was dominated by St. Luke’s Hospital.  Since 1858 the massive edifice had faced the avenue, built at a time when only a few structures—including the mansion that would become Rockefeller’s—stood this far north.

St. Luke's Hospital spanned the Fifth Avenue block from 54th to 55th Street -- NYPL Collection

Now, as the facility laid plans to move to Amsterdam Avenue, its old building sat amidst the most exclusive residential neighborhood in Manhattan.   Demolition of St. Luke’s made available the choicest building plots in the city.

That same year, as the hospital building was being demolished, Dr. Moses Allen Starr was elected President of the American Neurological Association.  Already Professor of Neurology at Columbia University and President of the New York Neurological Society, he had been educated at Princeton University, Columbia University, and in Heidelberg and Vienna.

By now Starr was recognized as an authority on the brain and nervous diseases.  He had written medical texts such as “Brain Surgery,” “Familiar Forms of Nervous Disease,” and “Brain Surgery with Illustrations.”   The doctor was living at No. 22 West 48^th Street; but with his marriage to Alice Dunning planned for June 7, 1898 he made plans for a new home.

Starr purchased the plot at No. 5 West 54^th Street and commissioned Robert Henderson Robertson to design the new mansion.   Robertson was at the pinnacle of his career having designed the Union Theological Seminary, the masterful St. Paul’s Methodist Church on West End Avenue and the McIntyre Building on Broadway among many other Manhattan structures.  It was perhaps the architect’s work on the Academy of Medicine, completed in 1890, that earned him this commission.

For the Starr residence Robertson married reserved neo-Renaissance with the widely-popular Beaux Arts style to create a dignified and restrained home.   Reflecting the doctor’s serious profession and reputation, the mansion lacked the festoons and garlands of other neighborhood homes.  Instead the buff-brick and limestone residence spoke quiet elegance.

photo by Alice Lum

The Starrs were married in the Brick Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue at 37^th Street in a sociably-notable ceremony.  The New York Times remarked that “the church was crowded with guests and profusely decorated with palms and roses.”  Afterward more than 200 guests filed into the bride’s parents’ home at No. 37 West 38^th Street for the wedding breakfast and reception.

The following year the mansion was completed and the newlyweds moved in.    By 1907 the north side of the block where the hospital had stood would be lined with mansions of millionaires like that of Dr. Allan M. Thomas at No. 35, Dr. W. B. James at No. 17, Senator Chauncey M. Depew, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and General Anson G. McCook.  The houses were filled with valuable artwork, silver and jewelry—tempting loot for sneak thieves. 

The American Architect published a photograph of the Starr residence along with the new Philip Lehman mansion next door in August 1901 --copyright expired

In April of that year the block was plagued with a rash of attempted break-ins.  Police reported six attempts on the block within only a few days.  On April 14 at around 2:00 in the morning two of Dr. Thomas’s maids down the street from the Starr residence were sleeping.  One of them, Christina Gustavson, was awakened by the sound of her window being opened.  “She saw a main swing himself in from a rope ladder hung from the roof,” reported The New York Times the following day.  “The man held a small electric lamp in his hand.  When he saw that she was awake, she said, he whispered to her: ‘If you make the slightest noise I’ll kill you.’”

When the burglar heard movement below the stairs, he went out the window and up the ladder.  The terrified maid shrieked for help.

“Detectives Beeron and Baer went to the doctor’s house,” said the newspaper.  “They found Dr. Thomas and his butler, both armed with revolvers, in a very angry state of mind.”

Dr. Starr and his wife had been less fortunate.  Residents, including Dr. Thomas, were on heightened alert already, due to the burglar’s more successful entry through the skylight into the Starr residence a few days earlier

“Several days ago a thief carried off $7,000 worth of jewelry from the bedroom of Prof. M. Allen Starr of Columbia University, at 5 West Fifty-fourth Street,” said The Times.  “The fellow left behind a casket containing $20,000 worth of Mrs. Starr’s jewelry.”   The jewelry that the burglar left behind would amount to more than $350,000 today.

photo by Alice Lum

That same year Dr. Starr and his wife traveled to Europe, returning on the steamship Kronprinzessin Cecilie.  When Customs Inspector Nimmo examined the Starr luggage the doctor was assessed $375 duty.  Later Starr remembered “I found I had only $350, and the Inspector kindly volunteered to lend me the needed $25.  He did not know me as an acquaintance, but he knew me as Dr. Starr, and I am well enough known in this city, I think, to be good for $25 anywhere.”

Starr was especially grateful because the Government did not take checks.  The following day the inspector arrived at the Starr mansion and the doctor paid him back.  It was an act of kindness that would end in Inspector Nimmo losing his job.

Two years later in September 1909 Dr. Starr, Alice and their daughter returned from Europe on the Adriatic from Southampton.  Coincidentally Nimmo was again their inspector; although none of the parties remembered one another.  The detailed inspection delayed the Starr family and annoyed the doctor.

A reporter later said “He went through every piece of the Starr baggage in the most thorough way.  Other officials gathered about and watched the proceedings, to the annoyance of Dr. Starr.  Even the empty milk bottles, which had contained the milk used on the voyage by the Starr children [sic], were inspected.”  The writer was quick to say “He had no feelings against Nimmo...for he had done this duty.  He was angry with the system which had made such a humiliating examination necessary.”

The influential Starr lodged a written complaint with James B. Reynolds, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.  Unexpectedly, the investigation turned away from the incident at hand and to the loan made two years before.   Investigators arrived at the Starr house to interrogate the doctor regarding the loan.   The New York Times reported that “He repeated that he had no complaint to make against the Inspector, but against the system.”

The investigators pressed on.

“The investigation, Dr. Starr said, was more an investigation of the Inspector than the complaint.  In the end the customs men found out about an act of kindness done by Nimmo two years before, and his dismissal followed.”

Collector Loeb issued a statement saying “Charles Nimmo, Customs Inspector, has been dismissed from the service by Collector Loeb for violation of the rules, particularly for visiting the house of a passenger whose baggage he had examined.”

Starr was indignant, calling the matter “a shame.”  He told reporters “It was a simple act of kindness on his part and helped me out of a difficulty…I did not give him a cent more than the sum he advanced me.”

Despite the doctor’s protests to Washington, Loeb stood by his decision saying “There is nothing to say regarding this case.  Inspector Nimmo broke the rules, and for this he was dismissed.  I am going to stop that sort of thing.”

The eminent Moses Allen Starr shocked the medical world when he questioned the theories of a perhaps more eminent doctor.  The Princeton Alumni Weekly reported “On April 4, 1912, at a crowded meeting of the neurological section of the Academy of Medicine, Dr. Starr caused a sensation by attacking the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud, with whom he worked as a student in a Vienna laboratory.” 

The “stir” passed and both doctors went about their work.

December 1921 was an important month in the Starr household.  It was time for young Katherine’s coming-out.  On December 3 Alice hosted a day-long event starting with a tea.  The girls-only entertainment was followed by a dinner attended by eligible young society men.  Afterward the group attended the theater; then moved on to the Saturday evening dance at the Plaza.

Dr. Starr followed in his father’s philanthropic footsteps.  Egbert Starr had donated the library to Middlebury College in Vermont.  In June 1926 Dr. Starr added a wing to the library and a year later gave Columbia University $2,500 to initiate the Starr Fund in the Department of Neurology.

By 1932 the aging professor was experiencing heart trouble and that year he traveled to the baths of Norheim, Germany to seek relief.  On September 4 he died in Marienbad at the age of 78.  Alice received the bulk of his nearly $1 million estate, staying on in the house he had built for her more than three decades earlier.

By now the neighborhood had greatly changed.   While many of the mansions on the block—including the houses of John D. Rockefeller and his son, John Junior—still stood as private homes, commerce had engulfed Fifth Avenue and most of the side streets.  Nonetheless, Alice stayed on.  She remained active in her charitable work and was on the board of managers of the West Side Day Nursery for more than forty years.

On December 18, 1942 the 72-year old dowager died in her country home in Mount Kisco.  The following year the house was purchased by Robert Lehman whose father owned the impressive mansion next door at No. 7.   With the country’s entry into World War II a year earlier, Lehman donated the mansion to the United States Government to be used as a rest home for returning veterans.

poster from the National Archives and Records Administration

Now called Freedom House, the mansion also served as headquarters for the Victory Clothing Collection.   The project gathered used clothes for war victims.  An advertisement in January 1946 boasted that about 25,000,000 people had received clothing from Americans the spring before.  In frank language the ad said “Your spare clothing will be distributed free, without discrimination, to victims of Nazi and Jap oppression in Europe, the Philippines, and the Far East.”

In 1948 the house was purchased by Faberge, Inc. and converted to offices on all floors.  The firm would remain in the house until 1970.  John S. Lastis, Inc. bought the property in 1974 and initiated a careful restoration of the interiors.  The mansion was renamed the Petrola House.

The magnificent bronze-grilled entrance doors survive -- photo by Alice Lum

Today the Starr mansion is incredibly intact in the bustling Midtown business neighborhood.  It is one of a string of remarkably-surviving mansions built by many of New York’s wealthiest bankers and physicians within only a few years of one another.

The 1905 Edward Holbrook House -- No. 4 East 52nd Street

In 1845 Archbishop John Hughes pleaded his case before the city fathers, seeking land on which to build an orphan asylum.  The Roman Catholic Benevolent Society’s facility at Prince and Mott Streets was overcrowded and inadequate as more and more Catholic foundlings were brought to the Sisters of Charity.  The nuns and the Archbishop knew only too well that if Roman Catholic waifs were admitted into a Protestant orphanage they would be lost to the faith.

The city offered the block of land far north of the developed city, on the still unpaved Fifth Avenue between 51^st and 52^nd Streets, stretching back to Madison Avenue.  The church would pay the city one dollar per year rent, with the caveat that the property would be used to house orphans.  The deed was signed on August 1, 1846 and the new asylum was completed in 1851.  At the time, aside from the block-wide property of St. Luke’s Hospital between 54^th and 55^th Streets, there were only one or two homes or shops in the neighborhood.

In 1853 Hughes would commission James Renwick, Jr. to work on his ambitious St. Patrick’s Cathedral project that filled the block across the street to the south.  By the time the cathedral was completed in 1879, the neighborhood had drastically changed.  The homes of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens were inching closer up the avenue

When St. Luke’s Hospital was razed in 1896, Fifth Avenue around the asylum was the most exclusive residential district in the city.  The value of the land had soared.  As was the case with the hospital, relocating the orphanage and selling the land made financial sense.  In 1897 the church began discussion of moving the orphanage and two years later construction of new buildings began in the Bronx.  In 1900 building lots on the old asylum land became available.

The lucrative possibilities of the choice real estate did not escape Edward Holbrook.  The president of the Gorham Manufacturing Company lived in Stamford, Connecticut.  He, therefore, perhaps underestimated the passion with which the millionaires in the surrounding mansions detested the threat of commercial intrusion.  He would soon be informed.

On June 5, 1900 The Evening Post Record of Real Estate Sales in Greater New York reported that “The two lots on Fifty-second Street of the Orphan Asylum property which were bought by Worthington Whitehouse for a client were sold by him to Edward Holbrook.”  The lots were Nos. 6 and 8, and Holbrook had big plans.

Within a few months he had commissioned renowned architect C. P. H. Gilbert to design an apartment house.  The Brickbuilder noted in 1901 “C. P. H. Gilbert is drawing plans for a fourteen-story bachelor apartment house to be erected on 52d Street near Fifth Avenue for Edward Holbrook.” 

Neighbors like the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers were already infuriated over John Jacob Astor’s St. Regis Hotel—construction of which had just begun on Fifth Avenue at 55^th Street.  Evidently someone had a talk with Holbrook, for a few months later he changed his mind.  The New York Times reported on May 28, 1901 “Plans were filed yesterday by Architect C. P. H. Gilbert for the two dwellings to be erected at 6 and 8 East Fifty-second Street…at a cost of $114,000.”  Rather than the 14-story apartment building, Gilbert would produce two limestone-clad six-story mansions.

The silver executive apparently was pleased with Gilbert’s designs, and in November 1903 he began work on his own mansion next door, at No. 4 East 52^nd.  Again he turned to C. P. H. Gilbert for the design and plans were filed for a six-story house.  The New York Times reported it would be “wholly of fireproof construction” and the New-York Tribune added “The front is to be of dark blue Indiana limestone…The building will cost about $95,000.”  The cost of construction in today’s dollars would be about $2 million.

Street construction is going on along 52nd Street in front of the newly-completed mansions.  The Holbrook mansion (left) is overshadowed by the mammoth Plant house on the corner.  To the right is the white marble home of Robert Goelet at No. 647 Fifth Avenue -- photo by Wurts Bros., from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York, http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWJU5AZ&SMLS=1&RW=1366&RH=605

Construction would take over two years to complete.  In 1905 the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide commented on the progress.  “Exterior complete.  Windows and doors in.  Interior work under way.”  As the Holbrook residence rose, it was overshadowed by the magnificent Morton Plant mansion nearing completion next door—a palatial Italian Renaissance palace that diminished Gilbert’s handsome design.

Holbrook moved into the new house with his wife, Frances, and daughter Lillian.  In turn-of-the-century New York there was no surer way to garner the envy of other socialites than to marry one’s daughter to European nobility.  Frances Holbrook’s social coup came soon after when Lillian married Count Guillame de Balincourt in the new mansion on January 3, 1906.

The New-York Tribune could not resist mentioning that “The count is a Catholic and the bride a Protestant.”  The new countess and her husband sailed off to France, to live in Paris.

Edward and Frances would not remain in the mansion long after the wedding.  In June 1907 he sold the 30-foot wide house and a month later curious neighbors would discover the identity of the buyer.  The Times reported “James B. Duke, President of the Tobacco Trust, was the purchaser of the new dwelling at 4 East Fifty-second Street, the sale of which was announced in The Times about a month ago.  At the time the name of the purchaser was not known, and since then there has been much speculation as to the future home of the tobacco magnate and his future bride.”

The newspaper went on saying “It has long been current gossip that the social ambitions of the President of the Tobacco Trust and his bride-elect, Mrs. William Inman of Atlanta, would lead them to settle in close proximity to Fifth Avenue.  A week ago it was reported that Mr. Duke would purchase the home of the late Henry H. Cook, at Seventy-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue, and that he would occupy it with his bride on their return in the Fall from the tour of Europe they expect to make on their honeymoon this Summer.”

 

James paid $300,000 for the mansion—fully three times what it cost Holbrook to build.  He and his bride, Nanaline, would not be in the house long, however.  As The Times predicted, Duke did buy the old Henry Cook house.  He had it demolished and in 1909, while his new mansion was being erected the newlyweds moved into his brother’s splendid home at No. 1009 Fifth Avenue.

No. 4 East 52^nd Street became home to Harry James Luce and his family.  Luce was the president of the Acker, Merrall & Condit Company of New York, one of the oldest grocery firms in the city.  He was also the president of the candy firm of Henry Maillard, Inc., and a director of Faber, Coe & Gregg, Inc.  The well-connected millionaire was a member of the best clubs—the Metropolitan, New York Yacht and Knollwood Country Clubs among them.

Like the Holbrooks, Harry and his wife, the former Katherine H. Moxley, had a daughter.  December 1914 was a busy time in the house as Margaret Payne Luce was introduced to society.  On December 6 The Times reported that “Mrs. Harry J. Luce of 4 East Fifty-second Street is to give the second dinner for her daughter, Miss Margaret J. Luce, on Thursday.”

Like many society girls, Margaret answered the call to help her country with the outbreak of World War I.  She joined the canteen service of the Y. M. C. A. and was sent to Nice, France in 1918.  War relief turned to romance when Margaret met the dashing (and wealthy) U. S. Navy Lieutenant-Commander Hamilton Vose Brian.  In March 1919 Harry and Katherine announced their daughter’s engagement.  With the armistice signed and the war over, they traveled to Paris in July 1919 for the wedding which took place in the Church of the Holy Trinity there.

It would be three years before the Luces would see their daughter again.  She and her husband arrived in New York on the Olympic for a visit on May 10, 1922 after being stationed in Constantinople and Tifilu.  Margaret would come home to a much-changed neighborhood.

The Morton Plant mansion next door was now the home of Cartier Jeweler.  The white marble mansion around the corner at No. 647 had been converted to the art dealership of Gimpel & Wildenstein.  Commerce was taking over the old residential district.

Five years later the Luce mansion would fall to the trend.  Cartier, Inc. purchased the house in 1927 and Harry and Katherine moved to the nearby Gotham Hotel.  Pierre Cartier converted the mansion to L’Alliance de Francaise de New York—a school offering classes in French and French literature.  Dr. Leon Vallas, a professor of the Sorbonne, was brought in to direct the school.  The school shared the mansion with the French Chamber of Commerce.  It was here, in 1935, that Pierre Cartier was elected its president.

The French Chamber of Commerce would remain in the house through the war years.  In 2000 Cartier did a renovation of both the Holbrook and the Plant mansions.  The two buildings were internally connected, making No. 4 an extension of the retail store.  While the first two floors of the Holbrook mansion have been extensively altered for commercial use, the upper floors retain the integrity of C. P. H. Gilbert’s handsome design.  And as it was in 1905, the mansion is still overpowered by Morton Plant’s monumental house next door.

photographs taken by the author

The 1882 Ontiora Apartments -- No. 200 W. 55th Street

Although it was inventor and actor Isaac Merritt Singer who founded the Singer Sewing Machine Company; it was Edward Clark who made it a success.  The sewing machine was not a new idea when Singer began tinkering with the contraption around 1850; several variations had already been patented.

Singer’s improvements, however, patented on August 12, 1851, resulted in the first practical machine.  His prototype could sew 900 stitches per minute—more than 40 professional seamstresses.   Clark had been Singer’s attorney since 1848 and the two became business partners.  

A marketing genius, Clark sold the domestic versions of the machine to wives of clergymen at a 50-percent discount.  When the preachers’ wives received their sewing machines, Clark knew that women in the congregations would follow suit.  He also came up with the idea of an installment plan, so a housewife could make small payments on the $10 machine until it was hers.  As improvements made the older machines obsolete, Clark accepted trade-ins—an unheard of concept that caused sales to skyrocket.

Edward Clark amassed a personal fortune and began looking towards real estate development.  In the 1870’s he teamed with architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh and erected rental cottages for summer visitors to Lake Otsego near Cooperstown, New York.  It would be the beginning of a long and mutually-prosperous relationship.

It would still be years before Hardenbergh’s name would be nationally recognized for buildings like the Waldorf and Astoria Hotels, the Western Union Building on 23^rd Street, and the Plaza Hotel.   Toward the end of 1877, Clark bought up several building plots on Seventh Avenue.   Outspoken in his elitist attitudes towards the impoverished; he intended to make the West Side as affluent as the East.  To do so he would simply push the poor out by constructing high-end apartment buildings and he urged other property owners to do the same.

He encouraged landowners to work together, mutually investing in property, and issuing restrictive covenants on construction.  He told a meeting of the West Side Association in 1879 that only their cooperation could establish the West Side’s “exclusive character” and lure well-to-do residents. 

According to the authors of “The Park and the People," he asserted “There is the highest authority for believing that the poor will always be with us; but it does not follow that the poor will necessarily occupy any part of the West Side plateau.  The poor would be sufficiently with us if they lived in New Jersey or Long Island.”

The previous year Clark had put his money where his mouth was.   He owned three of the corner lots at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and 55^th Street.  In 1878 he began erecting what today would be termed “luxury apartments.”  Henry J. Hardenbergh designed all three—the Wyoming, the Van Corlear, and the Ontiora.

The Ontiora was completed in 1882 at the southwest corner.    The red brick building with white stone trim stretched along West 55^th Street with its entrance centered at No. 200.   Unlike the Dakota Apartments he had designed for Clark two years earlier, there were no turrets or pyramids or balconies.  Instead Hardenbergh turned to the sharp angles and clean lines of the Queen Anne and Eastlake Movements currently taking hold.  The entrance portico morphed into the slightly-projecting wall of the central staircase hall within; which then edged back to the façade much like an exterior chimney wall.  Here the architect focused his embellishments—including stained glass windows with “jewels,” and the date of completion in a carved cartouche.

The date of construction is carved in a cartouche resembling a frightening, gap-mouthed creature.

Still hoping to push the poor to New Jersey, Clark’s Ontiora offered one enormous apartment per floor—about 2,000 square feet or the dimensions of a reasonably-sized private home.   The ceilings rose over 10 feet from the floor and the interior doors and cabinetry were of handsome woods.

Just as the first residents moved into the new Ontiora, Edward C. Clark died on October 14, 1882.   The new tenants were of the social class Clark had hoped for.  Lawrence Miller and his wife lived here by 1892.  She was a member of the Ladies’ Auxiliary Committee of the Post Graduate Hospital and a force behind the building fund for the new babies’ ward of that facility.

Mrs. Miller and the other committee members worked to raise $20,000 to build and equip the new Post Graduate Hospital wards.  The New York Times said “These wards not only serve to relieve the misery among the children of the destitute, who are treated free of charge and without distinction of race, color, or creed, but also serve as a school for the physicians from every part of the country who come to study the diseases of children.”

It was not all charity work for the socialite, however.  A year later, on January 26, 1893, the society gossip newspaper, Town Topics, noted that “Mrs. Lawrence Miller, of West Fifty-fifth street, who has been visiting her mother, Mrs. Joseph Sawyer, in Boston, the past fortnight, has had no end of agreeable attention offered her.”   No doubt other wealthy ladies poured over the list of affairs held for her.  “She had a dinner at the Somerset Club, among other smart entertainments, given by Mr. and Mrs. David Nevins.  Mrs. Miller gave a luncheon just before leaving for New York to a party of twelve of her old school friends at her mother’s house on Commonwealth avenue.”

White stone trim contrasts with the robust red brick.

In the Ontiora at the same time were Dr. Bernard E. Vaughan and his wife.  The medical prodigy had moved to New York two years after the apartment building was completed to study at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.  Following his graduation in 1887, he was accepted as a member of St. Luke’s Hospital, later to be made house physician.

The year after he left the hospital, in 1889, he married Maud Phillips Kniffen.  His career continued to skyrocket.  By 1895 he was the assistant attendant physician at the New York Cancer Hospital, physician at the New York Dispensary, instructor at the Post-Graduate Hospital (Mrs. Miller’s pet charity), and was on the medical staff of the New York Life Insurance Company.

On February 27, 1895 the 32-year old doctor was taken from his apartment to St. Luke’s Hospital.   He was operated upon for appendicitis the following day; and within a few days succumbed from “the effects of an operation,” according to The Sun on March 7. 

Rather oddly, the members of the Hospital Graduates’ Club felt it necessary to vote on delivering condolences to his young widow.  The club’s minutes of April 23, 1895 read “Resolved, That the sincere sympathy of the club be tendered to his bereaved family, and that this action be entered upon the club records and published in the professional journals of the city.”

The McLoughlin family was residing here at the time and little William McLoughlin proved that a privileged upbringing did not always dissuade mischief.  He found himself behind bars in November 1896.

According to The New York Times on November 4, “William McLoughlin, eight years old, of 200 West Fifty-fifth Street, was arrested last night for building a bonfire in Fifty-fifth Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues.”   Exacerbating the boy’s crime was his choice of fuel for the fire.  He was also charged with “tearing down fences built around a vacant house in the same block.”

Other residents were the well-to-do W. H. Shields and his wife.  Mrs. Shields was the sister of the Rev. John Spencer Turner, Jr.  On October 9, 1898 The Sun reminded readers that he was “the Episcopalian clergyman whose conversion to the Catholic church created considerable discussion last summer when the fact became known.”

Mrs. Shields and her brother were born in Brooklyn and he was ordained an Episcopalian priest in 1894.  When he converted to Catholicism, things got messy.  “He was rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rochester, N. Y., when he incurred the displeasure of the late Bishop Cox by reason of his ritualistic practices,” said The Sun.  “The Bishop forbade him to preach in his diocese, and in token of this inhibition Mr. Turner caused a black flag to be displayed from his residence.”

The hoop-la seemed to have died down a bit by the following year.  The European comings and goings of Mrs. Shields and her husband were commonly noted in the society pages.  But in October 1898 social eyebrows would be raised after their steamship docked in Manhattan.

The Sun ran the shocking headline that announced “Mrs. Shields Turns Catholic” and reported “Mrs. W. H. Shields of 200 West Fifty-fifth street, this city, has lately returned from Paris, where she was converted to the Roman Catholic faith.”

In 1915 sewer workers toil on 55th Street.  The deep light well with its iron railing is still evident and the commercial space on the ground floor is still years away -- photo from the collection of the New York Public Library

When Helen Guard lived here in 1915, the ground floor of the Ontiora was still girded by a deep light well and the apartments were still rambling, upscale flats.   That year Italy put aside its policy of neutrality and in May entered World War I on the side of the Allies.  Helen Guard was a friend of Madame Daballa, the wife of the Italian General in Turin.  Through her Helen learned of the sufferings of the Italian troops in the frigid mountains 8,000 to 10,0000 feet up.

She wrote to the Editor of The New York Times on October 8, 1915 offering to collect warm clothing for the soldiers.  Telling readers that the Italian Government had let its female citizens know that 18 million pairs of woolen socks and several million woolen mittens and sweaters were needed, she wrote “Italy has made no appeal of any kind for aid to others than her citizens.  I am quite sure, however, that there are thousands of American women who feel themselves in debt to her, and if any one of them would like to send one pair, a dozen pairs, or a hundred pairs of woolen socks for the Italian soldiers’ use, I shall be happy to forward them.”

Helen closed her letter saying “They should be of large size.”

Throughout the following decade the apartment house retained its respectable tone, although by 1922 a commercial space had been gouged out of the Seventh Avenue facade.  Thomas D. Green and his wife lived here in the 1920’s while daughter, Julie Gibbs Green, attended the Veltin School and the Mount Vernon Seminary in Washington, D. C.  In August 1923 Julie was married in a fashionable ceremony to Princeton graduate and former Navy Junior Lieutenant Perry McKay Sturges.

In 1922 when the Greens were living here a storefront had been installed on the 7th Avenue side.  photograph by Irving Underhill, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWRMYLJ0&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915&PN=18#/SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWRMYLJ0&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915&PN=18

As the 1940’s approached change was coming to Seventh Avenue.  In 1938 the light well was covered over and each of the gargantuan apartments were divided into three—all except the third floor which remained a single apartment.  That holdout resident remained until 1956 when the third floor apartment, too, became three.

Through the first decade of the 21st century the building was slathered in gray paint -- photo http://www.startsandfits.com/hardenbergh/ontiora.html

Sometime after the mid-20^th century Hardenbergh’s robust Ontiora was covered over in a monochromatic coating of gray paint.  The all-important contrast of brick and stone was disguised and the building became supremely overlookable.  Inside things were not faring too well for the once-elegant apartment building either.  In 1997 The Times opined “the Ontiora is now far from what Edward Clark envisioned: dirty and bedraggled, swamped by traffic and noise, the ground floor now turned over to commerce.  The halls have open trash cans—Clark would have had staff whisk any garbage away by dumbwater—and the walls are grimy with age.”

Although the street level, including the wonderful entrance portico, has been obliterated, most of Hardenbergh's hefty design survives.

A restoration of the façade sometime after 2006 resulted in the re-emergence of the wonderful details.  The stained glass panels still survive in the stairwell hall and the three apartments per floor—still roomy by Manhattan standards—with their 10-1/2 foot ceilings still exist.

non-credited photographs taken by the author