Mills & Bottomley's 1920 1049 Park Avenue

 

photograph by Deansfa

J. Lang Mills and W. L. Bottomley worked as Mills & Bottomley in 1919 when they received the commission to design a 13-story apartment building on Park Avenue near the southeast corner of 87th Street from Katharine Abbot, head of the Abbotsford Realty Corporation.  Faced in brown brick and trimmed in stone and terra cotta, 1049 Park Avenue was completed in 1921 at a cost of $350,000 (about $6.5 million in 2026).

The tripartite, neo-Renaissance design included a three-story base, the lower two floors of which were enhanced with decorated quoins.  The centered entrance was flanked by double-height fluted Corinthian pilasters.  Above the doorway was an entablature with intricate Renaissance decorations and a window fronted by a faux balcony.  The pilasters rose to a broken pediment from which emerged a window topped with yet another broken pediment.  Portrait keystones enhanced each of the third floor openings.

While the architects left the seven-story midsection essentially unadorned, they gave the top section exuberant decoration.  Between the openings of the 11th and 12th floors were double-height, terra cotta cartouches filled with dangling garlands.  Smaller examples decorated the top floor above a terra cotta intermediate cornice.  A decorative parapet above the cornice was interrupted by paneled blocks that sprouted towering finials.

In 1922, a private house survived on the south side of 1049 Park Avenue.  photograph by John Wallace Gillier, from the collection of the New York Public Library.

The American Institute of Architects presented Katharine H. Abbot the gold medal for apartment house buildings completed in 1921.  It praised Mills and Bottomley "for the originality of its design, the pleasing proportions, the clever use of materials, and the domestic feeling of the building."

There were three apartments per floor--four, six or seven rooms each with two or three baths.  The penthouse apartment had nine rooms.  Rents ranged from $3,000 to $6,000 per year, or about $9,500 per month for the most expensive.

On Christmas night 1921, the Robert L. Huntzinger family was away from the city.  Their servants, according to the New York Herald, were "at a party."  With the apartment temporarily unguarded, burglars moved in.  The New York Herald reported, "Several thousand dollars' worth of silver and jewelry was reported taken."  Police surmised that the thief was "some one familiar with the premises and habits of the tenants."

Among the Huntzingers' neighbors in the building was the socially prestigious Caroline Suydam Whitney Fellowes, the widow of Colonel Cornelius Fellows.  As the daughter of Henry Whitney, the New York Herald remarked that she "was a member of one of the oldest New York and New England families" and was related to the Livingstons and Kernochans.  Caroline Fellowes's health began to decline in 1922 and she died on September 22, "in her seventieth year of infirmities from which she had suffered for months," as reported by the New York Herald.  

A young Caroline Suydam Whitney Fellowes, from a family album.

Canada-born siblings Florence Mary Lynch and W. F. Lynch were initial residents.  Florence was educated in Ottawa and at the Villa Marie Convent in Montreal.  W. F. Lynch was with the Cuba Railway Company and "was for some years secretary to Sir William Van Horne, predecessor of Baron Shaughnessy as president of the Canadian Pacific Railway," according to the New York Herald.

It was possibly through her brother's involvement in the railroads that Florence met D. C. Coleman, who lived in Winnipeg.  The 43-year-old was vice-president of the Canadian Pacific Railway's western lines.  The couple was married in St. Ignatius Loyola Church on October 28, 1922.  The New York Herald reported, "A small reception will follow at the home of Miss Lynch and her brother."

On April 9, 1924, the New York Evening Post reported that Barry Doyle, "the illustrious cousin and adopted brother of the originator of the famous Sherlock Holmes, was the guest of honor at a reception "at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Pullman West."  The article said the reception was being held "in the interest of the fund being raised for the relief of the starving children of the Near East."

Born in Providence, Rhode Island on December 18, 1876.  Stuart Pullman West was the nephew of George M. Pullman, the founder of the Pullman Company.  He graduated from Harvard in 1897 and was was the financial editor of The Evening World and contributor to the Wall Street Journal.  He and Eliza Von Bretton Di Zerega were married in January 1902 and they had one son and one daughter.  The couple's movements were followed by the society columns and on June 12, 1924, the Chicago Daily Tribune remarked, "Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Pullman West of 1049 Park avenue will pass the early summer at Whiteface Inn, Lake Placid."

Eliza West died on December 11, 1925 at the age of 46.  Before long, Stuart began a romantic relationship with Loren Oldham Crenshaw, described by The Yonkers Statesman as "a prominent society woman."  But tragedy interrupted their courtship.  Stuart Pullman West was diagnosed with tuberculosis early in 1927.  The Arrow of Pi Beta Phi explained that his illness was not discovered before it "was critical."   

photograph by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the New York Public Library

On February 19, 1927, The Yonkers Statesman reported, "Romance dared to defy death two weeks ago."  The article said that Loren Crenshaw went to Stuart's bedside where they were married by a municipal court justice.  It continued, "Yesterday death won, when West's game fight against the ravages of tuberculosis proved unavailing."

Stuart Pullman West left an estate equal to $5.56 million today.  On March 1, 1927, The New York Times reported that his will "made no provision for his wife, Mrs. Loren Oldham Crenshaw West, whom he married a week before he died."  A reporter called on Loren West in her 1049 Park Avenue apartment.  She explained, "The will was made before I met Mr. West and I knew all about it.  Its provisions were not in any way a surprise."

In the meantime, H. Ivan Stengel and his wife, Marguerite, occupied a sixth-floor apartment.  Stengel was an engineer with the Cadillac Automotive Company.  He was, as well, the president of the Automobile Merchants' Association.  Their country home was in Larchmont, New York.

On the morning of April 8, 1924, the couple had a "shopping engagement."  Marguerite returned to 1049 Park Avenue around 11:00.  Hoping to summon a servant to help with her packages, she rang the apartment's bell from the lobby, but got no response.  The New York Times reported, "on alighting from the elevator again, [she] again rang to save herself the trouble of getting her keys from her bag."  Again she got no response.  Assuming that her maid, Louise, and her cook, Mary, were "in the rear of the deep apartment," she let herself in.

As she passed through the foyer, she could see a diagonal view into her bedroom through the half-opened door.  Marguerite later explained that she was frozen in fear seeing a man going through her dresser drawers.  "He had extracted a jewel case Mrs. Stengel kept there and before her eyes he proceeded to take from it two strands of pearls, one valued at $14,000 and the other at $10,000," said The New York Times. 

After approximately a minute, Marguerite uttered a sound and the burglar "glanced up sharply to catch her reflection in a mirror across the room."  He drew a revolver and Marguerite fled down the stairway all the way to the lobby.  The superintendent blew a police whistle and "mustering a posse of house attendants," headed upstairs.  The New York Times reported that they found "the servants, locked, terror-stricken, in a small room adjoining the bedroom."  The burglar had gotten away with jewelry valued at the equivalent of $940,000 today.

Marguerite described the thief as being "stumpy" and wearing a red wig.  The New York Times reported, "A red wig and a cap found on a rear fire escape marked his trail."

Four months later, on August 18, Louis Hernandez Campos (called the "red wig robber" by newspapers) was arrested in Washington D.C.  Campos had attempted to pawn one of the valuable pearl necklaces.  The New York Times reported, "In a canvas belt around his waist were jewels valued at $60,000."

The Stengels were at their Larchmont home at the time.  The following day, detectives arrived there and arrested their maid, Louise Provnka (who had been tied, gagged and imprisoned with the cook during the robbery).  In questioning Campos, they had discovered that Louise was his wife.  The New York Times reported, "the maid admitted she was the wife of Campos and had planned the robbery with him."

Helen Churchill Hungerford Candee lived here at the time.  Born in October 1858, she had divorced her abusive husband, Edward Candee in 1896.  An early feminist, her first book, How Women May Earn a Living, published in 1900 was a best-seller.  She went on to be a journalist, author, interior decorator, and geographer.  She was a close friend of Theodore and Edith Roosevelt.  Her personal account of surviving the RMS Titanic, Down To the Sea in Ships, would be published by her granddaughter years later.

Helen Churchill Candee, (original source unknown)

Helen eventually wrote eight books, traveled throughout the world, and even consulted with the Roosevelts in the remodeling of the White House's West Wing in 1909.  The remarkable author and lecturer died in York Harbor, Maine at the age of 90 on August 23, 1949.

The building continued to be home to well-heeled residents.  In August 1941, assistant publicity director of R. H. Macy & Co. John Goodwillie leased "a large penthouse apartment," as described by The New York Times.  Living here at the time was Oscar Gavrilovich, the Yugoslav Consul General.  His brother, Otto Gavrilovich, was Secretary of the Treasury of Yugoslavia.

In 1947 Josip Broz Tito created a new Yugoslavian Communist Government.  The Gavrilovich brothers found themselves in a difficult position.  On October 15, The New York Times reported that Oscar "is about to become a press agent" and that he would soon open a "diplomatic public relations office."  Otto, mentioned the article, "last month opened a retail women's apparel shop here."

Following World War II, Captain Stephen Booth McKinney and his wife, Sarah, moved into 1049 Park Avenue.  McKinney graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1903 and had been Chief of Staff of the Third Naval District during World War II.  He commanded the battleship Idaho from August 1939 to February 1941.  He was retired in 1946 "for medical reasons," according to The New York Times.  Now he was an executive in the law department of the National Association of Credit Men.

On October 9, 1953, McKinney was placed under the care of a heart specialist.  Three days later the 68-year-old plunged from the couple's apartment window.  The New York Times reported, "His pajama-clad body landed in a rear yard."

In 1960, 1049 Park Avenue underwent a cooperative conversion.  Among the residents at the time included Claudius D. Duncan, vice president of the Chemical Bank New York Trust Company and his wife, the former Mary Martin.  Claudius died of a heart ailment on September 1, 1961.  Three years later, on November 29, 1964, Mary announced the engagement of their daughter, Mary Martin Duncan, to Charles Francis Clement 3d.  In reporting the announcement, The New York Times remarked that Mary graduated from the Chapin School and was presented to society at the Grosvenor Ball in 1961.

The entrance of 1049 Park Avenue became familiar to television viewers nationwide starting in 1970.  The opening scene of every episode of The Odd Couple depicted Oscar (Jack Klugman) and Felix (Tony Randall) emerging from the building--Oscar throwing his cigar butt to the sidewalk and Felix picking it up with the point of his umbrella.

image via cityrealty.com

At some point the crowning parapet and its remarkable finials were removed from the building.  And unsympathetic masonry repairs have resulted in a patchwork of brick colors.  But, overall, 1049 Park Avenue survives highly intact.

The Dr. Herman B. Sheffield House - 127 West 87th Street

In 1881, developer John W. Stevens acquired a 50-foot-wide parcel on West 87th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.  (The avenues would be renamed Columbus and Amsterdam, respectively, in 1890.)  Rather than erect two commodious townhouses, Stevens directed his architect, William Howe, to squeeze three onto the plot.  In January 1882, Howe filed plans for three "three-story brick and brown stone dwellings."  Each would be just over 16-feet-wide and would cost $8,000, or about $260,000 in 2026.

Like its identical siblings, the easternmost house at 127 West 87th Street was faced in brownstone and designed in the neo-Grec style.  Howe compensated for the home's lack of width with exuberant decoration.  The windows were flanked by paneled piers upon bracketed sills.  Mimicking the doorway, their earred lintels were profusely decorated with incised, foliate designs.  A complex pressed metal cornice of corbels, brackets and a paneled fascia completed the design.

The house was initially owned by Albert M. Crouter and his family.  They sold it at auction on September 29, 1891.  The following day, the New-York Tribune reported, "The bidding rose from $12,000 up to $16,900."  Norman and Sarah E. Macdonald placed the winning bid, but they quickly suffered buyers' remorse.

Court papers explained that on October 29, 1891, the Macdonalds "rejected the title and refused to complete [the purchase], claiming that the title was defective."  Albert M. Courter sued and the Macdonalds, apparently begrudgingly, moved in.

The couple welcomed a son, John, in October 1893.  Sadly, he died at just 18 months on March 20, 1895.

Norman Macdonald was one of hundreds of New Yorkers who were frustrated with the city's lack of street signs.  Some residents or businessmen erected their own signs, and stone blocks on the second floor of some corner buildings were carved with the avenue and street names.  But there was no standardized, city-authorized signage.  In January 1901, Macdonald signed a petition that began:

It is within the knowledge of every citizen who walks the streets of this great metropolis that it is next to impossible for a stranger to find the names of many of the streets of the city, unless he is fortunate enough to encounter a Policeman or make inquiry of some one he meets acquainted with the locality.

The petition that Macdonald signed was successful.  Later that year, the Guggenheim Ordinance was enacted.  It instituted a system of standardized street signs. 

The Macdonalds sold 127 West 87th Street to Clarence W. Eckhardt in April 1905.  He sold it to Emily L. Landon in June 1908 and she resold it the following year, in March 1909, to Dr. Herman B. Sheffield.

Born in 1871, Sheffield graduated from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1895.  A pediatrician, when he purchased the West 87th Street house he had been associated with the Yorkville Dispensary and Hospital for Women and Children for 11 years; and in 1905 he was appointed Instructor in Diseases of Children at the New York Post Graduate Hospital.  (The Yorkville Dispensary and Hospital was renamed Beth David in 1910.)

Dr. Sheffield was a prolific author and routinely contributed medical articles to journals.  His expertise was often sought by attorneys in cases involving medical issues.  Such was the case in March 1913, when he was called to testify in the lunacy hearing of 22-year-old Walter Lathrop Hanson.  

Hanson's mother, Mrs. Aimes Hanson, had homes in Brooklyn and Saratoga Springs and was the niece of Leland Stanford, the founder of Leland Stanford University.  Hanson's father died in January 1912, and Walter began receiving payments from a $50,000 trust, administered by his mother.  The New York Times reported that on November 5, 1912, Walter married Henriette Keutti "without his mother's consent."  She now cut him off from his "allowance" and sought to have him committed as a lunatic.

In the courtroom on March 5, 1913, Dr. Herman B. Sheffield "pronounced him mentally competent," reported The New York Times.  The article added, "On the side of young Hanson sat his young bride, who returned stare for stare of her mother-in-law."

Sheffield occasionally took in a boarder.  At the time of his testimony, Rev. Charles Winfred Douglas was renting a room for the winter season.  Born in Oswego, New York in 1867, Douglas was educated at Syracuse University and at St. Andrews Divinity School, also in Syracuse.  He was a leader in Episcopalian liturgy.  

In her Ladies of the Canyons, Lesley Poling-Kempes writes that in the spring of 1913, Douglas was in poor health, "overwhelmed by the weekly commute between his home in Peekskill and his apartment in 127 West 87th Street in New York."  She notes:

By March, the canon was looking ahead to the summer break and the Douglas family's annual return to their palatial, two-story, seventeen-room log home at Camp Neosho...near Evergreen, Colorado.

In 1915, Sheffield published The Backward Baby, a book on "Idiocy and the allied metal deficiencies in infancy and early childhood."  It was one of several books and texts he would write.

Like pediatricians nationwide, in 1916 Sheffield was investigating the cause of poliomyelitis.  He was carefully following a number of cases, hoping to discover how the affliction was acquired and how it could be treated.

Among Dr. Sheffield's patients were Joseph Truitt Talbert and his wife, the former Almira Root Trevis.  Talbert was a vice president of the National City Bank and "one of the better known financiers of New York," according to The New York Times.  The banker suffered a fatal stroke on May 8, 1920 and five months later, his widow's 18-year-old sister, Betsy Tevis, moved from Richmond, Kentucky to live with her.

The situation was intended to be a solace to Almira.  But it only added to her grief.  On December 2, Betsy met a boy and became "infatuated," according to The New York Times.  They had a "social engagement" ten days later, but the young man telephoned at night and cancelled.  Betsy Trevis went to her bedroom, closed the door, and shot herself in the head.

A physician arrived and declared Betsy deceased.  The New York Times reported, "Mrs. Talbert, not satisfied that her sister was dead, telephoned for the family physician, Dr. Herman F. Sheffield."  He, of course, could only confirm the previous statement.  The shock was too much for Almira.  The following day, the New York Herald reported, "She is under the care of Dr. William B. Sheffield, of 127 West Eighty-seventh street."

In 1930, Sheffield retired, "because of failing vision," according to the Bulletin of the University of Maryland School of Medicine.  He continued his writing, however, and in addition to his five books on diseases of children, he wrote poetry.  On November 10, 1940, for instance, The New York Times reported on the release of Lights and Shadows, Supplement III, "the final ten poems in a series of seventy-five."

via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Dr. Herman B. Sheffield died at the age of 79 on March 17, 1950 "of arterio-schlerosis," as reported by the Bulletin of the University of Maryland School of Medicine the following year.

In 1951, the basement level was converted to an apartment.  Living here in the mid-1950s was H. Greenough Jr., an instructor at Julliard.

Monroe Schall and his wife, Doris, lived here by the early 1960s.  Around 7:30 on the night of October 31, 1964, they were parked in front of the apartment house at 123 West 93rd Street.  In the car was June Baron and the three were waiting for June's husband, Leon, to come down.  Suddenly, an armed man forced his way into the car and ordered Schall to drive.  Within a few blocks, he ordered him to stop, took June's purse, pushed her out of the car, then told Schall to drive to 84th Street and Riverside Drive.  There he took Schall's wallet, forced the couple out and drove off with their car.

Speeding through the Upper West Side, the crook sideswiped a taxi at the intersection of 82nd Street and Broadway.  He lost control and crashed into the window of a store.  In doing so, he hit Christine Zam.  She died on the scene.

The injured culprit ran from the scene, and then tried to hijack another motorist who grappled with the gun.  Before David Barnes was able to wrest control of the weapon away it went off once, missing both men.  The New York Times reported "the thug then leaped out of the car and fled east down 79th Street."

No. 127 West 87th Street survives remarkably intact after more than 140 years.  Even the interior shutters survive on the upper floors.  

photographs by the author

The Lost Richards and Rathbone Mansions - 8 and 10 LeRoy Place

 

etching by Alexander Jackson Davis, from Views of New York, 1831 (copyright expired)

Isaac G. Pearson filled both sides of Bleecker Street between Greene and Mercer Streets with elegant mansions designed by Alexander Jackson Davis around 1828.  Presumably, the north and south blockfronts mirrored one another.  On the south side, six Federal-style residences were entered at ground level.  Above their rusticated bases, full-width cast iron balconies fronted the second floors.  Centered between these homes were two even grander, mirror-image mansions.  Nos. 92 and 94 Bleecker straddled the Georgian and Federal styles.  Flanking their high stone stoops were elaborately wrought-iron basket newels.  The floor-to-ceiling parlor windows opened onto cast-iron balconies.  Commodious fanlights above the single paneled entrance doors spilled light into the vestibules.  The doorways were flanked by columns and sidelights.  The mansions were unified at the attic level by a balustrade and carved parapet.  A centered, square cupola crowned each of the residences.

Mordecai Marks and his family occupied 92 Bleecker Street in 1830.  They were supplanted by Guy Richards and his wife as early as 1833.  By then, Isaac G. Pearson had successfully lobbied the Board of Aldermen to rename the block LeRoy Place.  (The practice was intended to increase the exclusivity of certain blocks and resulted in other sections of Bleecker Street becoming DePau Row and Carroll Place.)

An enlarged view of 8 and 10 LeRoy Place reveals details of the elegant doorways and wrought iron newels.  etching by Alexander Jackson Davis, from Views of New York, 1831 (copyright expired)

The Richards house was now 8 LeRoy Place.  (The address would be variously spelled Leroy and Le-Roy Place.)  Born on January 8, 1788, Richards was an 1807 graduate of Yale College.  When he purchased 8 LeRoy Place, he owned a distillery on Perry Street.  

As early as 1840, John Rathbone and his family occupied the mansion next door at 10 LeRoy Place.  The head of John Rathbone & Son and a founder and director of the Bank of Commerce, John Rathbone was born in Canterbury, Connecticut on October 20, 1751.  He and his first wife, Eunice Wells, had 11 children.  She died in 1810 and in 1813 he married Mary Sheffield.

John Rathbone, Genealogy of the Descendants of William Chesebrough, 1903 (copyright expired)

Rathbone's immense wealth was reflected in his subscribing to $20,000 in war loans during the War of 1812, and in his financial backing of the Erie Canal.  The 1898 Rathbone Genealogy records:

In connection with Eleazer Lord of New York he took the entire amount of the first Ohio Canal loan, in 1825, of $400,000, and subsequently made a loan in connection with John Jacob Astor for same amount to the same State.

Mary Sheffield Rathbone died in January 1840 at the age of 78.  There would be two more funerals in the drawing room in quick succession.  John Jr. died at the age of 66 on July 30, 1842, and John Rathbone Sr. died in the mansion on March 13, 1843 at the age of 92.  

A notice in the New-York Tribune on March 15, 1843 said, "His friends and those of his sons-in-law, Robert Chesebrough and Samuel B. Ruggles, are requested to attend his funeral from his late residence, No. 10 Leroy place, this afternoon at half-past 4 o'clock."  (Samuel Ruggles is best remembered today for developing Union Square and Gramercy Park, and Robert Chesebrough for discovering petroleum jelly, which he marketed as Vaseline.)

An auction of the Rathbone furnishings (what today would be called an estate sale) was held later that year.  The Guy Richards family would now get new neighbors in the Benjamin Lincoln Swan Jr. family.

Born in 1818, Benjamin owned a ship chandlery at 1 Hanover Square.  He had left his parents' the magnificent mansion at 416 Lafayette Street upon his marriage to Caroline Post.  (Incidentally, Benjamin's brother, Edward, married Caroline's sister, Julia Post.)  The couple would establish a country estate, Woodside Farm, in Oyster Bay, Long Island.

The Swanns' country estate included an Italianate villa.  from the collection of the Library of Congress

Caroline Post Swan's father, Allison Post, died in 1848.  Her mother, Elizabeth Floyd Post, moved into the LeRoy Place mansion and by 1850, Dr. Jotham Post shared the house.  (It is unclear how Dr. Post was related to the family.)

It is possible that Guy Richards had a son from a previous marriage.  An arcane position-wanted advertisement appeared in The New York Times on May 29, 1856:

Employment Wanted--For a young man of Christian character and principles, who is slightly disabled in the left hand, but active, prompt and energetic.  He is competent to teach, but an affection of eyes prevents this means of living.  Any confidential post, as travelling agent, or companion, would be acceptable.  Any gentleman needing such a companion, will find him intelligent and well bred, being the son of a gentleman.  Address X.Q.P. No. 8 Leroy-place, Bleecker-st., New-York.

In 1861, Benjamin and Caroline Swan moved uptown to 5 West 20th Street.  Edward Henry and Julia Post Swan moved into the LeRoy Place mansion.  Elizabeth Floyd Post remained here and Mary Post (Caroline's and Julia's paternal aunt) moved in at the same time.  Mary died in the house on January 8, 1864 at the age of 82.  Her funeral was held in the mansion two days later.

Sharing 8 LeRoy Place by 1871 was a distant relative, Dr. Wolcott Richards.  Born on June 15, 1803, he graduated from Yale Medical School in 1825.  His first marriage to Indiana Cordelia Twiggs ended in divorce.  He married Susan Mansfield Strong in 1841.

By the time Guy Richards death at the age of 85 on March 26, 1873, the name of the block had reverted to Bleecker Street.  Interestingly, his funeral was not held in the mansion, but at the Brick Church on Fifth Avenue and 37th Street.  

At the time of Richard's death, the Swan mansion had been converted for business.  It was home to William H. Geib's piano showroom and factory.  In 1876 it was taken over by another piano maker, Lindeman & Sons.

In the mid-1880s, both residences had been renovated for commercial use.  Then, in the post-World War I years they were replaced by a commercial building.  That structure and the rest of the block were demolished in the 1960s as part of New York University's Silver Towers.

photograph by Kidfly182

The 1883 Frank B. Houghton House - 30 West 130th Street

image via zillow.com

In 1844, when Harlem was still dotted with farms and country estates, John Jacob Astor I acquired a portion of two farms for $10,000 (about $445,000 in 2026).  Upon his death in 1848, the blockfront that would become West 130th Street between Fifth and Lenox Avenues was inherited by his son, William Backhouse Astor.  It passed to William Backhouse Astor, Jr. in 1875.  

The blockfront would become lined with 28 private homes, erected in three groups.  Architect Charles Buek designed the first--8 through 22 West 130th Street--in 1880.  They were completed in 1881 and the following year ground was broken for the second group, 24 through 38.  (The final section, 40 through 62, would be completed in 1883.)  No doubt to reduce costs, it appears that the builder simply followed Charles Buek's original designs in erecting 22 through 62 West 130th Street, since there is no architect of record.  The resultant row was called "the Block Beautiful" in Claude McKay's 1928 novel Home to Harlem.

30 West 130th Street is the second from left.  image via streeteasy.com

Designed as mirror-image pairs separated by a carriage drive that accessed the rear yards, the homes were three stories tall above short basements.  Their neo-Grec-style facades were clad in brick and trimmed in brownstone.  Generous gardens fronted delightful wooden porches.  Dentiled brick cornices sat above brick friezes decorated with recessed quatrefoil designs.

Astor retained possession of the houses, leasing them as rental income.  His first tenant of 30 West 130th Street was Frank R. Houghton, a real estate agent, and his widowed step-mother, Virginia Patten Houghton.  Frank was born in Halifax, Vermont in 1825 to Royall and Sarah Farrell.  Sarah died in 1851 and Royall married Virginia Patten in May that same year.

In the spring of 1886, Virginia Patten Houghton was in Pass, Mississippi where she died "suddenly," according to the New-York Tribune, on April 3.  Her funeral was held in the 130th Street house on April 10.

There would be another funeral in the parlor before long.  Frank Houghton moved away soon after his step-mother's death and the next tenant, Peter Asten, died in the house at the age of 84 on January 16, 1887.  His funeral was held two days later.

The house next became home to Thomas C. and William McAlpine Wiswall, partners in the Pennsylvania-based Wiswall Paint Co., and their families.  Thomas C. Wiswall was the company's president and a sergeant in the Seventh Regiment of the New York National Guard.  He and his wife, the former Mary Brown, had no children.

Thomas C. Wiswall, Seventh Regiment Gazette, October 1923, (copyright expired)

William McAlpine Wiswall was born 1841 in Troy, New York but was educated in Port Austin, Michigan.  The New York Times would recall that one of his teachers was James A. Garfield.  William's wife was Louisa Bishop Chatterton, and also living here were Louise's parents, Thomas and Adeline M. Bishop Chatterton.  

Thomas Chatterton was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1818 and started out as a merchant tailor there.  The New Haven Morning & Courier would recall, "he rapidly won favor, patronage and success, but his energetic spirit craving a larger field, he removed to New York."  Chatterton engaged in the wholesale, ready-made clothing business.  He retired in the 1880s.  Each year, Thomas Chatterton would return to New Haven to spend his summers at the Branford Point House.

Louisa Bishop Wiswall died in the house on September 26, 1895 at the age of 51.  Interestingly, her funeral was not held in the parlor, but at the Church of the Puritans on 130th Street at Fifth Avenue.

In 1897 Thomas Chatterton was the treasurer of the first panel of the Sheriff's Jury, a non-judicial group that assisted the Sheriff's Department in administrative work.  In January 1898, the 80-year-old attended the group's annual dinner at Delmonico's and during the evening he became ill.  He died in the 130th Street house two weeks later, on February 6.  His funeral was held in the parlor on the 9th.

Adeline Bishop Chatterton survived her husband by four years.  She died at the age of 79 on February 7, 1902.  Her funeral, too, was held in the house.

William Astor bequeathed the 130th Street row to his grandchildren, Mary, James and Sarah Van Alen.  In 1902, they sold 30 West 130th Street to Fannie and Ferdinand Braun, who operated it as a boarding house.

Among their early residents were William P. Kelly and his family, who would remain at least through 1909.  The parlor of 30 West 130th Street, which had frequently been used for funerals, was the setting of Emma Foord Kelly's marriage to Samuel Pierre Hull on October 24, 1906.

A less respectable boarder was Louisa Marcarious, who was arrested in her rooms on April 20, 1907.  Born in New Orleans in 1883, she was described by The New York Times as being "well dressed and is apparently an educated woman."  She was charged with "receiving stolen goods" from her accomplices, described by the newspaper as "two negroes" who "seemed uncouth companions for the refined-looking white woman."

The complainant against Louisa Marcarious and her cohorts was Margaret Melbourne, who said, "her home had been robbed of silverware and other property on June 4, 1906."  Some of her stolen silverware was discovered in "the rooms of the Marcarious woman and her companions."  The article said that another burglary victim had been asked to inspect "the loot recovered" in hopes they could identify "plunder stolen from his house."

Louisa Marcarious was an anomaly among the otherwise upstanding boarders, like the family of Thaddeus Moriarty, for instance, who occupied rooms in 1911.  Daughter Theresa S. Moriarty was president of the Ladies' Ursuline Provincial Auxiliary, a philanthropic and social group.  And on June 23, 1911, The New York Times reported, "Mrs. Thaddeus Moriarty and Miss Theresa S. Moriarty of 30 West 130th Street are at the North End Hotel, in Ocean Grove, N.J., until the end of August."

Susan L. Pierce purchased the house in March 1921.  She operated it as a rooming house, and among her first roomers was Elbert Butler.  He was arrested on February 1, 1923, for spitting in a subway station.  In imposing a $5 fine, the infuriated magistrate railed, "It is a disgrace the way every subway station is filled with men smoking and spitting on the platform and the track bed and nothing is done about it."

The wooden porch was painted in several colors in 1940.  via the NYC Dept of Reords & Information Services.

By the World War II era, the Harlem neighborhood was predominantly black and racial tensions were high throughout the city.  On March 19, 1943, The New York Times began an article saying, "While three Negro youths were being held in the stabbing early yesterday of a 17-year-old youth in a Harlem 'racial' fight, it was announced that 150 rookie policemen have been assigned to the Harlem area."

The incident began when, according to police, "a gang of twenty Negroes crowded around Nick Adams, 17, of 42 East 129th Street, as he was standing in front of his house."  One of the teens demanded, "Are you a white boy?"

Adams replied, "I'm a gypsy."

The gang attacked and Adams attempted to fight back until he was fatally stabbed in the back.  Police arrived in time to arrest three of the gang members, including 19-year-old James Green who lived at 30 West 130th Street.

In 1981, the house next door was vacant and boarded up, a fertile target for vandals.  photograph by Andrew Dolkart via the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

By the last quarter of the 20th century, the house next door was vacant and neglected.  Although the Landmarks Preservation Commission sued the owner in an effort to pressure him to repair the seriously dilapidated structure, it was demolished in 2021, leaving No. 30 isolated along what was now known as Astor Row.

image via streeteasy.com

Today there are 11 apartments in 30 West 130th Street.  More than a bit bedraggled, it nevertheless survives as part of a forward thinking community-planned project by one of Manhattan's wealthiest 19th century figures.

The Hotel Albert - University Place and 11th Street

 

Midway between two elegant residential enclaves--Washington Square and Union Square--the block of East 11th Street between University Place and Broadway was lined with elegant Greek Revival and Italianate homes in the mid-1850s.  In 1875, businessman Albert S. Rosenbaum hired architect James Irving Howard to convert three of them--32 through 36 East 11th Street--into a hotel.  (The addresses would be renumbered 46 to 50 later.)  Containing 120 rooms, the Hotel St. Stephen was opened in 1876 under the proprietorship of hotelier William Ryder.

An advertisement on October 8, 1876 read:

11th St. West, Nos. 32, 34, 36--Elegant Rooms, newly furnished, stationary washstands, ample closets, all conveniences, with or without Board; terms very moderate; strictly first class.  Hotel St. Stephens [sic].

The History and Commerce of New York called the St. Stephen, "one of the best appointed hotels in a city noted for its superior hotel accommodations."  Rates "are $1.00 per day and upward," said the article.  The base figure would translate to about $35.50 in 2026.

Soon after opening, the hotel was nearly the victim of a sneak thief.  On November 28, 1876, Henry Bird checked in.  That evening, a clerk, De Witt Bogardus, walked through the halls "to see if everything was right," according to the New York Herald.  He saw Bird, "leave his room and stealthily secret something under the carpet of the main corridor."  Bogardus summoned Detective Slevin who discovered that Bird had hidden a pair of "nippers."  Slevin said they "are used by hotel thieves for opening room doors."  When Bird could not provide an explanation, he was arrested for carrying burglars' tools.

In 1882, Albert S. Rosenbaum increased his enterprise by erecting the Hotel Albert, an apartment hotel, abutting the St. Stephen at the corner.  Henry Janeway Hardenbergh (who was simultaneously working on the Western Union Telegraph Building and a long row of houses on West 73rd Street off Central Park West), was the architect.  As he had done in his Dakota Apartment two years earlier, he creatively blended styles--in this case French Renaissance and Queen Anne.  William D. Ryder now managed both properties for Rosenbaum.

An advertisement on November 5, 1883 called The Albert, "One of the finest furnished and safest apartment-houses in New-York City."  Almost as a post script, "Also, Hotel St. Stephen," was added at the bottom.

Stereopticon slide by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The two venues coexisted--the St. Stephen as a transient hotel and The Albert as an apartment house.  Perhaps the first artistic figure to patronize either of them was writer Robert Lewis Stevenson, who occupied rooms in the St. Stephen in 1888.  In January 1919, The New York Times recalled his posing for Auguste Saint-Gaudens for his "medallion portrait."  The article said, "His method of 'sitting for his portrait,' however, was to lie, always smoking his inevitable cigarettes, in his bed in the old Hotel St. Stephen."

Living in The Hotel Albert in 1890 were Charles and Anne G. Rhind and their 47-year-old daughter Frances.  They were members of "one of the oldest Southern families in the city," according to The Evening World, and "belong to an ultra-fashionable set."  

At around 1:00 on the morning of December 14, T. P. Sorrenson, who was staying in the St. Stephen and whose rooms looked into the courtyard, "saw a white object pass his window," as reported by the New-York Tribune.  The object, it turned out, was Frances Rhind in a suicidal plunge. 

Living in The Albert in the 1890s was author Kate Douglas Wiggins, best known for her novel and stage play Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.  

An seventh floor was added to the Hotel Albert in 1891 and by 1895 the two operations were merged as the Hotel Albert-St. Stephen.

An 1896 ad touts the combined hotels. (copyright expired)

The operation continued to expand.  In 1903 the architectural firm of Buchman & Fox was hired to design a 12-story addition at 67 University Place.  The architects' design made no attempt to meld into the earlier structure.  An advertisement in the September 1906 issue of American Education listed the room rates at "$1 per day up.  100 rooms with private bath $2 per day up."

The addition was depicted in an advertisement in American Education in September 1906 (copyright expired)

In 1918, the Knott Hotels took over the management of the complex.  It wasted little time to disassociate the vintage St. Stephen buildings from the hotel operation.  On May 19, 1920, the New-York Tribune reported that the A. S. Rosenbaum estate had leased the Hotel St. Stephen building, "a landmark of the University place section," to the Bonar Phelphs Company, "manufacturer of straw hats."  The article said the firm intended to "convert the hotel into a mercantile structure."

 from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

With the loss of significant income-producing square footage, the operation, like a kudzu vine, again expanded southward.  In 1922 The Caterer reported, "The Knott Hotels will add 150 rooms to the Hotel Albert...The annex will be ready for the fall."  The six-story building, at the northeast corner of University Place and 10th Street opened in 1924.  Designed by William L. Bottomley with Sugarman, Hess & Berger, it, too, did not attempt to meld into the earlier structures.

An announcement in The New York Evening Post informed the public, "We have opened [a] new addition of 119 rooms in Hotel Albert.  This addition faces Southwest at corner of University Place and 10th Street."  The "permanent occupancy" rooms and baths rented for $75 to $100 a month.  (The most expensive rent equal to $1,840 in 2026.)

By the 1960s, rooms in the Hotel Albert were rented by the week.  An advertisement in July 1970 listed the rents for a room with private bath starting at $40 a week, and for rooms with shared baths starting at $23.

An article in The Villager on August 28, 1969, recounted the hotel's celebrated guests over the decades.  "It is believed that Jennie Lind, Edwin Booth and Thomas Edison were patrons of the hotel," said the article.  At the time of that article, embedded letters spelling out "Hotel St. Stephen" were still visible in the stone sidewalk on East 11th Street.

The article missed a few names.  Decades later The New York Times columnist Christopher Gray would recall,

Hart Crane wrote part of his 1930 poem "The Bridge" while there, and Thomas Wolfe used it as inspiration for the Hotel Leopold in his 1935 novel "Of Time and the River...It became the crash pad for rock musicians, checking in [were] the Electric Flag, Canned Heat, Cream, Paul Butterfield and the Blues Project.

In 1975, the Rockrose Development Corporation acquired the complex.  It evicted the residents and on December 30, 1976, The Villager reported that the developer "is trying to recapture, if not its most glamorous past, at least a touch of the elegance that was associated with the Hotel Albert a half-century ago."  The now-vacant buildings, said the article, "are being renovated into luxury apartments for what the developers call 'brownstone-type' living with the advantages of doormen and elevators."

The architecturally dissimilar buildings that made up the Hotel Albert retained the historic name following the renovation.  Originally rental apartments, the Albert became a co-op in 1984.

photographs by the author