The 1907 66th Street Studio Building - 131-135 East 66th Street

 

photograph by Gryffindor

The first studio building in America--a structure designed especially as working spaces and residences of artists--was the 1858 Tenth Street Studios in Greenwich Village.  The concept gained traction at the turn of the century, when upscale buildings were erected with soaring studio spaces flooded with natural light from vast windows.  In 1905, a syndicate including artist Walter Russell laid plans for a sumptuous studio building at the northeast corner of 66th Street and Lexington Avenue.

Interestingly, the group, called the East 66th Street Studio Building, hired the architectural firm of Pollard & Steinam and B. Hustace Simonson to prepare the plans.  But at some point, Charles A. Platt took over the project.  And he was much more than a hired architect; he was an investor.  Upon the building's completion, an announcement in The New York Times on December 5, 1907, noted that the corporate name of the East 66th Street Studio Building had been changed to Nos. 131-135 East 66th Street.  It was signed by "Charles A. Platt, President."

from Monograph of the Work of Charles A. Platt, 1913 (copyright expired)

The 11-story, Renaissance Revival style structure was faced in limestone.  An urban palazzo, it featured two bold and elegant entrances with imposing broken pediments atop double-height Scamozzi columns.  Divided into four horizonal sections by bandcourses and intermediate cornices, the building is crowned by a dentiled and modillioned cornice that the Landmarks Preservation Commission has called, "one of the finest in the city."

from Monograph of the Work of Charles A. Platt, 1913 (copyright expired)

An advertisement called the 10- and 12-room suites, "houses within [an] apartment house."  The ad described the "smaller 4 and 7 room suites" as being "quite as desirable in their own way."  The building had both cooperative apartments and rentals.  Among the initial residents of 131 East 66th Street were its designer, Charles A. Platt, and his second wife, Eleanor Hardy Bunker.  The couple's summer home was in Cornish, New Hampshire.

The soaring studios with their nearly double-height windows were on the north side of the building, unseen from the street.  They attracted artists like Elizabeth Gowdy Baker, who held an exhibition of "portraits in aquarelle," as described by The New York Times on April 1, 1914, in her studio through April 4 that year.  Resident Henriette A. Clark exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts the following year.

Two views of Charles A. Platt's studio.  from Monograph of the Work of Charles A. Platt, 1913 (copyright expired)

The bachelor artist William Howard Hart was an early resident.  The 50-year-old landscape artist hosted a "soiree Francaise" in his studio on the night of January 27, 1913.  The Sun reported that Le Peril Jaune "was acted by Mme. Henri Goiran, wife of the French Consul in New York; Mlle. de Sombreuil, Reginald Francklyn and Rene Wildenstein."  Additionally, "Mlle. Regnier and Gerald Onativia gave Louis XV dances in costume, and afterward there was general dancing."

Platt was not the only architect in 131 East 66th Street.  William Emerson was here by 1913 when he and the recently widowed Frances Hillard White Moffat surprised society by marrying.  George Barclay Moffat, who was a Harvard classmate of Emerson, died on December 4, 1911.  The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, on January 15, 1913, said that Frances "had been a widow only a little more than a year" and explained, "the marriage is the culmination of a friendship of more than ten years' standing."

William Emerson, from the Century Association Archives.

Pianist, conductor and composer Ernest Henry Schelling and his wife, Lucie Howe Draper, lived here at the time.  Born in New Jersey in 1876, Schelling was a child prodigy, making his debut at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia at the age of four.  In 1896, at the age of 20, he began studying with Ignace Paderewski.  The teacher-pupil relationship grew to a life-long friendship.

On April 29, 1915, The Sun reported, "Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Schelling gave a dinner and reception last evening at their home, 131 East Sixty-sixth street, for Ignace Paderewski, the pianist."  The guest list included not only figures from the musical world, but from Manhattan's social elite, including the Harry Harkness Flaglers, Mrs. Henry A. Alexander, and Alessandro Fabbri.

Artist and dealer Alice Creelman and her husband, journalist James Creelman, were also residents of 131 East 66th Street.  On the afternoon of December 14, 1916, Alice hosted a "private benefit entertainment" in her apartment at which Augusta C. Gaynor sang.  Her appearance was notable.  The previous day she had announced, according to The New York Times, that she, "is shortly to make her debut as a professional concert singer."  She was the widow of assassinated New York City Mayor William J. Gaynor, who had died three years earlier.

Interestingly, four years later Augusta Gaynor moved temporarily into the Creelman's 131 East 66th Street suite.  She announced the engagement of the youngest of her seven children, Ruth Merritt Gaynor, here on December 9, 1920.  

And the following month, on January 15, 1921, Brooklyn Life reported, "The marriage of Mrs. Helen Gaynor Bedford, daughter of Mrs. William J. Gaynor and the late Mayor Gaynor, and Mr. Whitney Kernochan, son of Mr. and Mrs. J. Frederick Kernochan...took place Friday afternoon, January seventh, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. James Creelman."

The Platts' library featured herringbone floors, an antique mantel and a stenciled, beamed ceiling.  from Monograph of the Work of Charles A. Platt, 1913 (copyright expired)

In the meantime, on February 24, 1918, the New York Herald reported, "Mr. and Mrs. Chandler P. Anderson have returned to 135 East Sixty-sixth street from a visit to the Spanish Ambassador and Mme. Riano in Washington, D.C."  Chandler Parsons Anderson was the first Counselor of the United States Department of State and his wife was the former Harriet S. Ward.  During World War I, he served as special counsel on international affairs within the War Industries Board.  The couple's summer home was in York Harbor, Maine. 

Chandler Parsons Anderson, from the collection of the Library of Congress

A prominent couple in 135 East 66th Street were historian Henry Osborn Taylor and his wife, the former Julia Isham.  Born in 1857, Taylor was an authority on ancient literature and culture.  He and Julia were married in 1905.  Their apartment included architectural pieces imported from Europe, including "a pair of old Italian doors of bronze and wood, and an old Italian stone mantelpiece," as later mentioned by The New York Times.

Henry Osborn Taylor, from the 1917 Harvard College Class of 1878 Secretary's Report (copyright expired)

When Julia's brother, artist and writer Samuel Isham, died in 1914, leaving an estate equal to more than $15.7 million in 2024, he bequeathed all his "paintings, family silver, plate and bric-a-brac to his sister," as reported by The Sun on June 21.  She also received "$250,000 outright."  That amount would translate to $7.86 million today.  Included in the artwork was a collection of Japanese prints that Julia donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  In appreciation, she was made a Fellow in Perpetuity.

And when she inherited what a century earlier had been the Isham family's country estate at 212th Street and Broadway, she donated it to the city.  It became Isham Park.

Julia Isham Taylor died in the apartment on March 6, 1939 at the age of 74.  Henry Osborn Taylor survived her by two years, dying here on April 11, 1941 at the age of 84.  He left the bulk of his estate to Harvard College "to help increase the salaries of the professors, teachers and instructors."

On September 8, 1939, The New York Times reported that T. G. MacKenzie and his wife, Ethel Maude, had taken "a nine-room duplex apartment."  The couple's quiet life here would be a welcomed change.  Thomas George MacKenzie was a mining engineer.  Born in Nova Scotia in 1882, his career had taken him from Cape Breton, Canada to Mexico in 1912.  In 1924, he was taken hostage by Hipolito Villa, brother of Pancho Villa.  He was held for three months before escaping.  Maude had worked tirelessly in the meantime to try to achieve his release.

In 1924, Charles A. Platt was selected to design the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.  It would be one of his last major commissions.  He died at the Cornish, New Hampshire estate on September 12, 1933 at the age of 71.  Eleanor Hardy Platt survived him by two decades, dying in Cornish on November 26, 1953 at the age of 84.

Hildreth Meière lived here at mid-century.  The most prominent muralist of her day, she was highly instrumental in introducing Art Deco to America.  She was responsible for, among other important works, the striking red mosaic walls at One Wall Street, the colorful figurative roundels of Radio City Music Hall, and The Pillars of Hercules, now in the Center of Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C.

A fascinating resident was Gretchen Green, whose 1936 autobiography The Whole World and Company chronicled her astounding career.  The daughter of an itinerant preacher, she studied at the College Settlement in Philadelphia and the New York School of Philanthropy.  Her varied positions included a police officer and welfare director in Boise, Idaho, and a worker at Ellis Island helping incoming immigrants.  She worked in Moracco, ran a women's clinic at Tagore University in India, and operated tea houses in Venice.

During World War II, Green ran a Camel Corps in Africa for General Archibald Wavell, and worked in Royal Air Force Clubs in Britain and in Bahrein.  In New York, she opened Miss Green's Canteen for servicemen and furnished the Lady Halifax Club at 587 Fifth Avenue, for British servicewomen stationed here.  Following the war, her work in helping Britain rebuild earned her membership into the Order of the British Empire.  She was, as well, a founder of the School for Seeing-Eye Dogs.  

At the beginning of the 21st century, Robert and Blaine Trump purchased and combined three units--a duplex and two one-bedroom apartments--into a 6,500-square-foot residence.  They hired designer Greg Jordan to plan the space.  In addition to the $8 million they spent on the apartments, by May 2006 they had spent an additional $1.5 million in design and construction costs.  Then, with the apartments gutted, they separated after two decades of marriage.  They put the "far-from-finished triplex," as described by William Neuman of The New York Times on May 14, 2006, on the market for $17 million.

image via compass.com

Henry Hope Reed of the Municipal Art Society testified during the Landmark Preservation Commission's hearings in 1970 regarding the designating of 131-135 East 66th Street as an individual landmark.  He described the structure as "one of the finest" of the New York apartment houses of "the American Renaissance."