The 1913 Marquand - 11 East 68th Street

 

On March 23, 1912, The New York Times reported that "the handsome Marquand house" on the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and 68th Street had been "sold to a syndicate for improvement with an eleven-story apartment house."  The 1884 Henry Marquand mansion was "one of the finest residences in the city," said the article."  Its interiors were decorated by Louis Comfort Tiffany, John La Farge, Frederick Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

The syndicate mentioned by The Times included former senator George B. Agnew and architect Herbert Lucas.  The group had paid "somewhat under $500,000" for the mansion, or about $16.3 million in 2025 terms.  Expectedly, Herbert Lucas was the architect of the "high-class semi-co-operative apartment."  His plans, filed in December, projected the construction cost at $500,000.

In a nod to the site's history, the building was called The Marquand.  Completed in the fall of 1913, it was faced in limestone, buff colored brick and trimmed in terra cotta.  The World's New York Apartment House Album called it, "an architectural ornament to this high-class residential neighborhood and also noteworthy among fine apartments in the city."

Lucas designed the neo-Renaissance-style structure as a U, assuring natural light and ventilation to almost every room.  There were two entrances--one on Madison Avenue under a metal-and-glass marquee, and the other tucked into the 68th Street light court.  Above a rusticated, two-story base were nine stories of brick.  The full-height rounded bays on 68th Street were echoed in the bracketed cornice.  Intermediate cornices of terra cotta relieved the verticality of the design.

A 1913 rendering shows the original Madison Avenue entrance.  The World's New York Apartment House Album (copyright expired)

The apartments ranged from seven to 13 rooms "and a few are arranged on the duplex plan," said The World's New York Apartment House Album.  An advertisement in November 1913 touted, "very large rooms, ample closet space and exceptional servants' quarters," adding that the suites were, "especially designed for discriminating tenants."  Rents began at $2,000 per year, or about $5,450 a month today.

There were typically four apartments per floor.   The World's New York Apartment House Album (copyright expired)

In its July 1914 issue, The Real Estate Magazine noted, "in such an apartment house at No. 11 East sixty-eighth street, one can entertain on the same scale as they could in a country house with half the number of servants required in the latter."  That was because the building's staff was on hand for large entertainments.  In a recent event, for instance, the superintendent "acted as major domo" and other six other employees "were his assistants," greeting the guests "to give them the same service that would have been afforded had the dance been held in the ballroom of a hotel."

The article said that the floor space within the larger apartments equaled that of a four-story private house, and the six-room apartments were "equivalent to that of the average three-storied residence."  The living rooms of the large apartments measured 31.6 feet in length and the dining rooms measured 22-by-14 feet.

Among the initial residents were W. Albert Pease, Jr. and his wife, the former Martha C. Rodgers.  Born in 1872, Pease had been the partner of Lawrence B. Elliman in the real estate company of Pease & Elliman.  (He would retire from that firm in 1917 to operate as an independent broker.)

On April 19, 1914, The New York Times reported that Martha had, "sent out invitations for two fancy dress dances" in the apartment--one for that evening and the other to be held three days later.  The article said, "While the invitations read 'Bal Poudre,' fancy dress is not obligatory."  A bal poudré had been a popular theme for balls in the last part of the 19th century.  

After Martha Pease's second affair, The New York Times said, "there were about a hundred guests, and the majority of them appeared in fancy costume with powdered hair and colored wigs.  As the entertainment was in the nature of a bal poudre, the men came in satin knickerbockers, with stocks [i.e., stiffened neckwear], frilled shirt fronts, and powdered hair."

Living here at the time were Morris Roderick Volck and his wife, the former Lillian Marian Holmes.  The couple had two children, four-year-old son, Morris Jr., and a two-year-old girl, Elsie.  Volck was born in 1886, the son of wealthy dry goods merchant George Andreas Volck, and graduated from Yale in 1910.  Following his father's death, his mother married Domicio da Gama, the Brazilian Ambassador to the United States.  

The other residents of the Marquand were assuredly unaware that Lillian Volck was being imprisoned in their apartment.  Suspecting that she was considering divorce, at around 3:00 on June 9, 1915, the 26-year-old Volck (whom Lillian thought had sailed for Germany) appeared at the apartment and announced that she was a "prisoner."  He forbade her to communicate with her family, her lawyer "or anyone else," according to The New York Times.  He then instructed the superintendent "not to allow anybody to come to or go from the apartment without his permission."

The minute he left the apartment, Lillian, who was 24, telephoned her lawyer, Edmund L. Mooney of Blandy, Mooney & Shipman.  The following afternoon, Mooney called the apartment and asked Volck what right he had to imprison her wife.  Mooney later testified, "He replied that his house was his castle and that he guessed he knew his business."  Mooney continued:

I got a little hot under the collar and replied: "You thick-headed mutt, don't you know that kind of business doesn't go in this country.  You needn't think this war has thrown us back to mediaeval times.  What you are trying to do may be all right in Germany, but it does not go in America.  I'll have you down to court before night on a writ of habeas corpus.

Leaving Lillian locked in the apartment, Volck went to the "villa" of his mother, Madame Da Gama, in Long Branch, New Jersey ("famous for its sunken gardens," according to The New York Times).  The newspaper tracked him down there.  In a telephone interview, Volck said, "Now it is all over and it is all right.  I believe that my wife and I will be living together in a day or two."

The couple was not living together in a day or two.  On June 15, 1915, The New York Times reported that Lillian had filed for divorce, charging her husband "with cruelty, desertion, and non-support."

Shields emblazoned with the Marquand's initial decorate the facade.

Other initial residents were William Hurlbut Force and his wife, the former Katherine Arvilla Talmage.  They had two daughters: Kathryn, born in 1891, and Madeleine, born two years later.  Force was the head of William H. Force & Co., commission merchants.  Still unmarried, Kathryn lived with her parents.  

Madeleine Force had married John Jacob Astor IV on September 9, 1911, against her parents' wishes.  Not only was Madeleine 18 years old and Jack Astor 47, but Astor was divorced.  The Episcopal church refused to marry the couple because of Astor's divorce.  (They finally were married by a Congregationalist minister.)  After an extended honeymoon, the couple booked passage back to New York on the new luxury liner RMS Titanic.  Astor was lost in the sinking, but Madeleine and her unborn baby, John Jacob Astor VI, were saved.

William H. Force died in the apartment on May 19, 1917.  He left his entire estate, about $12.2 million in today's money, to Katherine Arvilla.  In reporting his death, The New York Times remarked, "Miss Katherine E. Force...is engaged to Henri C. Harnickell, a broker."  That marriage would not come to pass.  

Five years later, on December 5, 1922, The New York Times reported, "Although the engagement of Miss Katherine E. Force...to Major Lorillard Spencer has never been formally announced, it has been rumored for some time, and their wedding will take place tomorrow at the home of Mrs. William K. Dick.  (Madeleine Force Astor had married William Karl Dick in June 1916.)

James Walter Thompson and his wife, the former Margaret Riggs Bogle, lived here by the early 1920s.  Margaret was the daughter of portrait painter James Bogle.  James Thompson was born in 1847 to Alonzo D. Thompson and Cornelia Roosevelt.  He came to New York City from Ohio in 1864 and found a job in an advertising agency.  He purchased the business in 1878, renaming it J. Walter Thompson Company.  Called the father of modern magazine advertising, Thompson was, according to The New York Times, "the first man to recognize the importance of the back pages and covers of magazines for advertising purposes."  He retired in 1916 and sold his firm.

Katherine Arvilla Talmage Force was at the Newport home of Katherine and Lorillard Spencer, Chastellux, in the summer of 1939.  She died there on August 14 at the age of 76.  In reporting her death, The New York Times commented, "Among her grandsons is John Jacob Astor."

An interesting resident at the time was Vladimir N. Smolianinoff, who lived here with his wife Olga.  The son of "wealthy Russian landlords," as described by The New York Times, he was was born in 1861.  Following his graduation from the University of Moscow in 1882, he oversaw the educational system in the Grandy Duchy of Finland and later the educational facilities in the south of Russia.  Czar Nicholas II appointed him Grand Master of the Imperial Court of St. Petersburg.  He fled Russia during the Revolution and came to the United States in 1938 to join his family.  He died in the apartment on August 8, 1942.

Another fascinating immigrant resident was Ernest Brummer, who lived here as early as the 1950s.  A native of Hungary, he studied at the Louvre School of Archeology in Pars and at the Sorbonne.  Prior to World War I, he went on expeditions to the Middle East and Egypt, where he uncovered "a collection of art works, including jewelry, sculpture and vases in marble, bronze and other metals," according to The New York Times.

Brummer immigrated to New York in the mid-1920s and opened the Brummer Gallery with his brother Joseph.  It handled classical art objects and among its clients were the Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre.

In 2012, the HFZ Capital Group and Vornado Realty Trust initiated a conversion to condominiums.  Three years later, The New York Times reported that the Marquand's 41 apartments were being remodeled into 25 condominiums.

That year, in May 2015, HFA Capital Group sold a five-bedroom apartment for $21 million, and on August 2, 2019, The New York Times reported that a triplex apartment sold for $34.2 million.

photographs by the author

The 1890 The Lincoln - 84 Madison Street

 

Alexandre I. Finkle was born in New Orleans, the son of Polish immigrants.  He studied painting and architecture in Paris at the National and Imperial Academy of Fine Arts.  His background in architecture and art was reflected in the many Lower East Side tenement buildings he designed.  His dramatic style incorporated effusive decorations. 

Real estate developer Albert Stake, who lived on Staten Island, was also busy in the tenement district.  On November 20, 1889, he purchased the two 25-foot-wide buildings at 84 and 86 Madison Street from Samuel Weil.  The Real Estate Record & Guide remarked, "new tenements projected."

Stake commissioned Finkle to design the replacement buildings.  The plans described two "five-story and basement brick and stone flats," each to cost $19,000 (about $650,000 in 2025).  Finkle's design for 84 Madison Street, called the Lincoln, was a splashy blend of Queen Anne and Renaissance Revival styles.

The centered stoop separated two stores at the basement level.  The entrance sat within a portico upheld by polished granite columns.  Finke decorated the top half of the first floor with a checkerboard of Queen Anne tiles above a foliate terra cotta band.  The upper four floors, overall Renaissance Revival in style, were clad in red brick and trimmed in limestone and pressed metal.  

Embossed metal panels filled the tympana of the arched openings of the second floor.  They were separated by paired Corinthian pilasters supported by rather clumsily carved winged heads.  Terra cotta tiles reappeared at this level.

Three-story piers at the third through fifth floors sat upon intricately carved bases and terminated in Corinthian capitals.  Foliate, pressed metal spandrel panels eliminated the cost of carved stone.  Finke's vigorous cornice incorporated a swan's neck pediment and a banner announcing the building's name under a crest of stars and stripes.

The building was completed in 1890 and Albert Stake was obviously pleased with the results.  He immediately hired Finke to reproduce the design at the Garfield at 104 Forsyth Street, merely replacing the name of one assassinated President with another.

Among the initial residents was Dr. A. T. Joyce, who described the neighborhood in dark terms in The World on August 21, 1890.  In urging for a playground, he said in part,

In treating children in this locality, the first thing that I am compelled to do is send them away from the fearful atmosphere.  Those who are unable to go often die in consequence.

Children in the crowded neighborhood were threatened not only by the unhealthful conditions that concerned Dr. Joyce, but by violence and crime.  On May 13, 1895, The Press reported on four 17-year-old boys that were caught in the act of burglarizing 202 South Street.  As two teens were ransacking inside, William Coleman, who lived here, and another boy stood as lookouts.  They called out when police neared.  All four perpetrators were arrested.

Coleman would be arrested again just eight months later.  On January 24, 1896, The World titled an article, "Police At Fever Heat" and reported about a crackdown on gang activities.  Among the targets was the Pelican Club, "a political and social organization of great importance," said the article.  The club was, more accurately, a criminal gang.  A search of the clubrooms found stolen items.  Among those arrested, in addition to Coleman, was James Murphy, who also lived in the Lincoln.  

Tenement residents lived dismal existences and many found respite in the Lower East Side opium dens.  One nearly took the life of 32-year-old Mary Bergen on November 26, 1896.  The Sun said she was removed from 25 Hamilton Street shortly before midnight, "suffering from poisoning caused by smoking opium."

John Nolan, a laborer, lived in the Lincoln at the time.  On the night of July 18, 1897, Officer Keefe witnessed him kick a stray cat at Catherine and South Streets.  He appeared before a judge on August 19 and declared, "the animal was mad and had attacked him, and that he kicked it in self-defense," according to The Sun.  Keefe, on the other hand, said Nolan "was drunk and had kicked the cat in a spirit of wantonness."  The judge found the officer's story more believable.  Nolan was fined, but The New York Herald reported that he "could not pay a $25 fine and will spend ten days in the Tombs."

Like William Coleman, Morris Pope was involved in criminal activities at an early age.  On the night of August 20, 1897, the 16-year-old entered the vacant house at 521 Pearl Street.  It had been condemned by the city to make way for the widening of Elm Street (which subsequently became Lafayette Street).  Pope stole "all the lead pipe on three floors," reported The Sun.  The water had not been turned off in the building, and "the house was flooded."  As Pope lugged the heavy piping out of the building, he was arrested.

Louis Glassen and his parents appeared in the Essex Market Court on February 26, 1898 to answer for the 12-year-old's charge of disorderly conduct.  The previous afternoon, Policeman Lues was on the block when a group of boys got into a fight, throwing stones at one another.  Glassen approached the cop and said, "Officer, go over there and stop those boys."

Lues told him, "I'm watching them."

The feisty and, perhaps, impertinent boy replied, "Say, you big stuff, is that what you are paid for?"  When he called Lues a name, the policeman arrested him.

It may have been Louis Glassen's tears in the courtroom that softened Magistrate Meade's heart.  The Sun reported that the judge declared, "Little boy, you must not bother the police force.  You are too young yet, beside you might get hurt.  I will discharge you this time."

Not all residents, of course, appeared in newsprint because of  their crimes.  Frank Thomas was hard working and respectable.  The 32-year-old worked for the Brooklyn Warehouse and Transfer Company.  On November 29, 1898, he and five co-workers were struggling to replace a derailed freight car onto the tracks.  Tragically, the jack they were using suddenly slipped, crashing the car onto Thomas and fatally crushing him.

As late as the 1940s, the portico and original stoop ironwork survived.  via the NYC Dept. of Records & Information Services.

Kate Mellen went to Coney Island on the hot afternoon of July 24, 1910.  The 28-year-old was frolicking in the ocean when about 5:30 she was "carried out by the undertow," according to The New York Times.  David Stark heard her cries.  The firefighter was on his day off and had gone to Coney Island with friends "for a dip in the surf."  

Stark looked around for a lifeguard, but there was none in sight.  He plunged into the water and towards the arm he had seen flailing above the surface.  About 100 yards from the shore, he dived, but did not find her.  He gasped a breath and went down again.  This time he felt Mellen's unconscious body and pulled her to the surface by her hair.  The firefighter struggled with "a dead weight" towards the shore.  The article said, "Battling against the tide, the fireman finally reached the beach with his burden, where he collapsed from exhaustion."

Harry Smith, who lived here in the early 1920s, worked as a truck driver for the trucking firm of Jacob Lipschitz.  On June 7, 1922, the 21-year-old picked up a shipment of army trousers at a Hudson River pier consigned to the Triad Corporation on Lafayette Street.  The New York Herald reported, "After the goods had been loaded on the truck both Smith and the truck disappeared."  The trousers were valued at $10,000, or about $182,000 today.  The empty truck was later found abandoned in Jersey City.  On June 30, detectives from the West 13th Street station recognized Smith on the street and arrested him.

A bizarre and horrifying accident befell resident Jean Manghise on July 14, 1946.  The 28-year-old was riding in the car of Joseph Casaro on Hylan Boulevard in Staten Island that night.  Her two-year-old son, Andrew, was in the rear seat.  The Staten Island Advance reported that around 8:00, "in some undetermined manner, the rear door suddenly opened."  In a instance, Jean's maternal reflex vaulted her over the seat to save her son.  She and Andrew flew out of the moving automobile.  The toddler landed on his mother's body, saving him from injury.  Jean, however, was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital with "what might be a fractured skull," said the article.

The basement and first floor of the 135-year-old building have been abused.  The portico was removed and the 1890 ironwork replaced.  A covering of gray paint obscures the brownstone and the polychromed tiles, and a jail-worthy security gate replaces the door.  Above, however, Alexandre I. Finkle's showstopping design remains intact.

photographs by the author

The Alexander and Elisabeth Lewyt House - 431 East 52nd Street

 

image via sothebysrealty.com

An advertisement for the rural Mount Vernon Hotel around 1800 boasted its soup "made from the fine green turtles fattening in a crawl made for that purpose in the East River."  The abundance of the turtles gave the East River neighborhood the name Turtle Bay.  The district that had seen gracious summer estates in the 18th century developed with tenements and industrial buildings in the post-Civil War years. 

In 1879, Mitchel Valentine erected two four-story "flat," or apartment, buildings at 431 and 433 East 52nd Street.  Most likely identical, the Italianate-style structures each held one apartment per floor.  Valentine sold 431 East 52nd Street to George and Barbara Baumann on December 1, 1882 for $8,200 (about $260,000 in 2025).

The New York Sun, September 24, 1934

The Baumanns moved into one of the apartments.  The couple had at least two children, George William and Pauline.  Despite the somewhat gritty neighborhood, the Baumanns' tenants were professional and middle-class, like the Glasher family whose son, Herman, who was enrolled in City College in 1879.

Pauline Baumann died "after a short illness" on December 16, 1898.  Her funeral was held in the apartment two days later.

George Baumann was one of a long list of residents and businessmen who petitioned Jacob A. Cantor, Borough President, on April 22, 1902.  They requested that, "Fifty-second street, between First avenue and [the] river, be repaved with sheet asphalt on present foundation."

George William Baumann graduated from Stevens Institute in 1921.  Following his marriage, he brought his bride, Pauline, back to 431 East 52nd Street to live.  

After owning the vintage building for half a century, on April 9, 1934, The New York Sun reported that the Baumanns had sold 431 East 52nd Street to real estate operator Frederick Brown.  The article reflected the changing tenor of the once sketchy neighborhood, noting that the 20-foot-wide building sat "directly adjoining and facing the garden entrance of River House, one of the city's outstanding apartment buildings."

Brown almost immediately resold the property to the newly organized Four Thirty-one East Fifty-second Corporation.  Despite the ongoing Great Depression, the firm embarked on what many must have seen as a risky proposition.  On March 21, 1935, The New York Sun titled an article, "Changing a Tenement Into New Town House."  The owners had hired architects Samuel A. Hertz and Robert C. E. F. de Veyrae to remodel 431 East 52nd Street into a luxurious townhouse.  The article said, "The plans are especially interesting in view of the fact that the usual alteration has been from private dwelling to apartments."

The architects projected the construction cost at $42,000, about $960,000 today.  On June 26, 1935, The New York Sun reported,

Servants' rooms and kitchen will be on the basement floor; dining room on the first floor; a living room on second floor; chambers [i.e., bedrooms] on third floor, and playroom and chamber on top floor.

Hertz and De Veyrae transformed the Victorian apartment building to an understated Art Moderne-style townhouse.  The entrance sat within a tall, shallow frame.  The deep-set French windows within subtle frames were fronted by sleek railings.  A geometric cornice above the third floor provided a balcony of sorts to the fourth.  

A canvas canopy shields the "roof terrace."  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

On December 5, 1940, The New York Sun reported that Alexander M. and Elisabeth Lewyt had purchased the residence.  

Born in 1908 in Washington Heights, Lewyt was the son of an Austrian immigrant.  As a teenager, he worked in his father's shop that manufactured metal items like coat hangers.  He quickly displayed his inventive bent.  The New York Times would later recall,

When he heard an undertaker's supplier complain that it was hard to fasten neckties around corpses, Alex, who was not yet 16, devised a new kind of bow tie that would clip on.  He sold 50,000 of them, but it is unclear whether he ever patented the concept.

Following his father's death, he renamed the business Lewyt Corporation.  Alexander M. Lewyt eventually held scores of patents, his most famous being the Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner.

An 1948 ad touted the various uses for the Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner.

The Lewyts also maintained homes in Sands Point, Long Island and Chartres, France.  A director of the Metropolitan Museum  of Art, he and Elisabeth were avid collectors of French art.  They filled the 52nd Street house with works "by Bonnard, Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, and Renoir," according to the Horatio Alger Association.

When America entered World War II, the Lewyt Corporation obtained military contracts to manufacturer radar antennas and similar components.  He was made a member of the French Legion of Honor for the company's work in making equipment for the Allies.

Elisabeth Lewyt was involved in philanthropy, the theater and animal welfare.  An "angel," or backer of the production of plays, she invested $3,000 in the play Moontide in 1952, for instance.

Alexander M. Lewyt, via horatioalger.org

Alexander Lewyt resigned in the late 1950s, selling his firm to the Budd Corporation.  He now devoted his time to the North Shore Animal League which he and Elisabeth had helped found.  The New York Times reported that he made the change because, "my wife adored animals, and I adored my wife."

In 1960, the Lewyts enlarged the house with a fifth floor, set back from the roofline and behind the terrace.  It was used as a guest suite.

Alexander M. Lewyt died in the Sands Point home on March 18, 1988.  In reporting his death, The New York Times remarked, "For the last 30 years, he was president of the North Shore Animal League on Long Island, and was credited with restoring it to solvency and turning it into one of the largest animal shelters in the country."

On December 12, 2012, the Florence Morning News of Florence, South Carolina reported, "The longtime chair of the North Shore Animal League who championed a no-kill rescue philosophy has died."  Elisabeth Lewyt had died at the Sands Point house at the age of 90 on December 9.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The Lewyts' art collection, valued at an estimated $65 million, was auctioned at Sotheby's in May 2013.  Five months later, on October 11, The New York Times reported that 431 East 52nd Street had sold for $8 million.

The 1894 The Northrup - 74-76 West 103rd Street

 

image via LandmarkWest!

In 1894, developer Charles Buek commissioned George Keister to design two similar apartment buildings on the western blockfront of Manhattan Avenue between 102^nd and 103^rd Streets.  Like its near twin, the northern building was faced in beige brick above an undressed brownstone base.  The rusticated first floor was clad in variegated Roman brick and the entrance was protected by a handsome stone portico.  Keister added touches of Queen Anne to his otherwise Romanesque Revival-style design.  Completed within the year, the Northport cost Buek $52,000 to construct, or about $1.9 million in 2025.
 
The six- and seven-room apartments were described in an advertisement as being “very choice.”  Tenants enjoyed “perfect appointments and hall service,” said an ad, and “extra store rooms.”  (Hall service meant that uniformed “hall boys” were on hand to help with packages, mail, and other errands.) The $50 rent would translate to about $1,890 per month today.
 
The residents were comfortably middle- and upper-middle class.  One, however, found himself in trouble shortly after moving in.  William P. Robinson worked as a collector for Tillotson & Sons, book sellers.  (The term meant that he would collect outstanding amounts from retail customers.)  The 49-year-old was arrested on May 22, 1895.  The Yonkers, New York Statesman explained, “He is charged with having embezzled $10,000” and said, “The defalcation extends over a year.”  The police nabbed him just as he was preparing to leave for Chicago.
 
The Rev. James D. Steele lived here as early as 1900 through 1906.  A Presbyterian minister, while living here he was secretary of the Joint Committee on a Uniform Version of the Metrical Psalms.  The erudite clergyman also held a Ph.D. and made extra money teaching on the side.  In January 1900, he advertised, “Rev. J. D. Steele, PH. D., private tutor at pupils’ homes or at 74 West 103d St.”
 
Although Prohibition had ended in 1933, on March 28, 1938, the Yonkers, New York Statesman reported that resident Aldo Cipallini had been arrested “on a charge of possession of an illegal still.”  The 20-year-old was caught in a raid of a house in Tuckahoe, New York in which a 2,000-gallon still was found in operation.  Cipallini “insisted he was only a watchman.”  He was fined $200.
 

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

By 1950, novelist Gordon Friesen and his wife Agnes Sis Cunningham lived here.  The couple had founded Broadside, a political song magazine and during the 1940s were members of the Almanac Singers, a folk singing group based in Greenwich Village.  Friesen’s novel Flamethrowers recalled his childhood in a Russian Mennonite family in Oklahoma.
 
The McCarthy Era was difficult for Gordon and Sis Cunningham.  They were blacklisted and while living here subsisted on welfare.  In the "Afterward" to the couple’s joint autobiography Red Dust and Broadsides, Ronald D. Cohen noted, “The FBI visited Gordon in 1954, who was then living at 74 West 103^rd Street, but he ‘stated he had nothing to say to the interviewing agents.’  Nonetheless, the local agent recommended to J. Edgar Hoover that a Security Index Card be prepared for Gordon, in addition to the ongoing file.”
 
In 1950, emerging artist Andy Warhol moved into a two-bedroom basement apartment with 17 “artists, writers, dancers,” according to Anthony Grudin in his Like a Little Dog.  Warhol’s biographer, Victor Bockris, writes, “It was a transition period, introducing him into the bohemian world of dance and theatre people.  He felt more affinity with them than with intellectuals…and for the first time Andy began, tentatively, exploring the homosexual underground.”  Bockris quotes a visitor who said, “All I remember is Andy sitting there drawing, surrounded by this complete chaos and people doing things that would seem to be disruptive of any concentration.  The food was mixed in with the clothes.”
 
Shortly afterward, the Northrup and its fraternal twin to the south were incorporated into the Douglass Houses.  They were not demolished because, according to a 1959 report by the New York State Division of Housing and Urban Renewal, “They were the best constructed of the older buildings and required the least in major structural repairs.”
 
Living here in 1989 was 29-year-old Marcus Bezear.  That spring he raped two women in the Penta Hotel.  A similar looking man was mistakenly arrested for the crime, but when Bezear raped another woman in the same hotel in August, he confessed to all three crimes.  He was  arrested on October 15 and charged with robbery and sexual abuse and held on $100,000 bail.
 
Once home to affluent, white-collar residents, the Northrup had sorely declined in 2014.  On October 5, television station PIX II reported, “When it rains, it really pours inside an Upper West Side apartment building.  The building, 74-76 West 103^rd Street, is nicknamed the ‘forgotten house,’ part of the Frederick Douglass Houses, operated by the New York City Housing Authority.”
 
Since Hurricane Sandy, the tenants told the reporter, streams of water poured into their apartments every time it rained.  Connie Taylor had lived in the building for half a century.  The reporter said, “The 61-year-old suffers from arthritis and scoliosis and has trouble walking, let along rearranging the buckets to catch all the rain water dripping through her leaky ceilings.”
 
Despite the drastic changes inside, the exterior of the Northrup is relatively unchanged since its completion in 1894.

The Lost Marion P. Brookman Mansion - 5 East 70th Street

 

By the time of this photograph, the upper two floors had been remodeled.  from the collection of the Library of Congress

In 1900, ground was broken for the New York Public Library building on Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets.  It would make the Lenox Library, on Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71st Streets, obsolete.  As early as 1907 plots on what was called "the Lenox Block" were being purchased.

On March 10, 1910, The New York Times reported that Cornelius Luyster, Jr. had sold "the new six-story fireproof residence now nearing completion at 7 East Seventieth Street."  (The confusing numbering on the block, including some skipped numbers, was soon corrected and this mansion became 5 East 70th Street.)  Marion Prentice Brookman purchased the house for $275,000, or about $9.37 million in 2025.

Designed by Warren & Wetmore in the neo-Louis XV style, the mansion was faced in limestone.  Above the rusticated base, sturdy stone balconies fronted the tall French windows of the second floor, or piano nobile.  The top two floors took the form of a high, slate-shingled mansard with two arched dormers.

Marion Prentice Brookman was the widow of Henry D. Brookman, who died on February 19, 1895.  Born in New Hampshire in 1836, she was the daughter of John Hill Prentice and the former Sara Nichols Davis.  She and Henry had three children, Henry Prentice, Marion, and Sarah.

Moving into the mansion with Marion were daughter Marion and her husband, Armory Sibley Carhart, their 13-year-old son Armory Jr. and their 10-year-old daughter, Marion Renée.  Carhart was a director of the Union Trust Company of New York and the People's Trust Company of Brooklyn.  

The original appearance of the upper floors can be seen in this 1915 photograph.  Record & Guide, May 8, 1915 (copyright expired)

In 1912, Marion's six-year-old grandson, John Vanneck moved in.  John was the son of Sarah Brookman and John Torrance Vanneck.  Sarah died in Cannes, France in 1908 and John Torrance Vanneck died there on February 22, 1912.  Marion Prentice Brookman was made guardian of the little boy.

On May 12, 1912, The Sun reported that John Vanneck had inherited a $1 million trust fund from his father's estate.  He would receive one-fifth of the funds when he reached the age of 25, and would receive the income from the rest throughout his life.

Just a month after John Torrance Vanneck's death, on March 18, 1912 Armory Sibley Carhart died in the mansion at the age of 60.  In reporting his death, The New York Times remarked, "He was commander of the Military Order of Foreign Wars of the United States and a member of the Society of Mayflower Descendants.  He was also Lieutenant Governor of the Society of Colonial Wars."

Marion P. Brookman found herself the guardian of three youngsters in 1917.  Marion Brookman Carhart died here at the age of 52 on October 1, 1917.  Armory Carhart, Jr. and Marion Renée, along with John Venneck, were all now under her direct care.  

In May 1918, Marion hired architects Lord & Hewlett to make alterations to the mansion.  They remodeled the sloping, two-story mansard into two distinct levels--a vertical-faced fifth floor and a less dramatic mansard with dormers.

Armory S. Carhart, Jr. was married to Isadora Bliss on June 15, 1918.  The 21-year-old groom brought his bride back to 5 East 70th Street to live.

Armory Sibley Carhart, Jr. (original source unknown)

At the time, Marion Renée was 18.  She went out on the evening of March 11, 1918 wearing a pearl necklace valued at $5,000 (about $104,000 today).  A week later, she intended to wear it again, but found it missing.  The mystery seems to have never been solved.  The Sun reported, "In the Brookman home there are eight servants, but none of these is suspected, as all have been with the family for a number of years."

During the following winter season, Marion Brookman introduced her granddaughter to society.  The entertainments began with a reception in the mansion on December 9, 1919.  The New-York Tribune noted, "Since the death of her mother, Mrs. Amory S. Carhart, Miss Carhart and her brother and sister-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Amory Sibley Carhart, have made their home with Mrs. Brookman."  

Now officially an adult, Marion Renée embarked on an extensive trip to Europe.  On April 15, 1921, the New-York Tribune reported, "Mrs. Henry D. Brookman gave a luncheon and reception yesterday afternoon at her home, 5 East Seventieth Street, for her granddaughter, Miss Marion R. Carhart, who returned recently from Europe.  The guests included the debutantes of last winter and the usual dancing men."

Marion Prentice Brookman was 83 years old at the time, and among her domestic staff was Marie Gruner, her companion.  On July 18, 1921, Marie sued Adolph Levi for $25,000 for breach of promise.  She had waited two years for her intended husband to set a date and finally lost patience.

The Brookman mansion is on the left.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

On October 25, 1923, Marion announced Marion Renée's engagement to George S. Amory.  The 28-year-old groom-to-be graduated from Cornell in 1916 and served in the army during World War I.  The wedding took place in the East 70th Street mansion on January 12, 1924.  The New York Times reported, "After the wedding Mr. Amory and his bride will sail on Jan. 16 on the Paris to make their home in Copenhagen, Denmark."

Marion Prentice Brookman died in the mansion on June 20, 1925.  She left an estate of $5.4 million, or about $94 million today.  The New York Times reported, "Her house, valued at $261,700, including the furnishings, and a life estate of $2,119,020, were left to John Vanneck."  The 19-year-old had also inherited an annual income of $42,000 from the estate of his uncle, John U. Brookman in addition to the trust fund left to him by his parents.  The Times said he had "an income of more than $200,000 yearly."  That figure would translate to $3.5 million today.

Despite the social protocol that demanded a year-long period of mourning for his grandmother, five months after Marion's death, on November 14, 1925, The New York Times reported, "John Vanneck gave a dinner party last night at his home, 5 East Seventieth Street, for Miss Marie Louise McClellan and Thomas F. Joyce, Jr., whose engagement was recently announced."

A year later, on October 1, 1926, The Times reported on Vanneck's engagement to Mary Atwell.  "The engagement is interesting as Mr. Venneck ranks as one of the wealthiest young bachelors in the United States," said the article.  The marriage would not come to be, however.  Two months later, Mary's father, George J. Atwell, announced that the engagement had been broken.  "Mr. Vanneck insisted upon an immediate marriage.  My daughter did not wish the wedding to take place until Mr. Vanneck becomes of age on January 15, and until her sister...who is now at the McLean School of Travel in Paris, and her brother, George J. Atwell Jr., a student at Oxford, could reach New York for the ceremony."  John Vanneck would not bend and the engagement was broken.

Eight months earlier, in April, John Vanneck sold 5 East 70th Street to George Dunton Widener, Jr. and his wife, the former Jessie Sloane Dodge.  Born in 1889, George came from the Widener family of Philadelphia, once ranked among the wealthiest families in America.  He and Jessie maintained a 450-acre summer estate, Erdenheim Farm, outside the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia.

George Widener was a director of the Electric Storage Battery Company and of the Provident National Bank in Philadelphia.  His passion, however, was horse racing.  He raised thoroughbreds at Erdenheim Farm.  His horses won 1,243 races throughout his lifetime, earning more than $9 million in winnings.  

Jessie was the daughter of Henry T. Sloane and Jessie Robbins.  George was her second husband.  She was formerly married to William Earl Dodge IV, whom she divorced.  She and George were married in 1917.

The Wideners entertained regularly in the mansion.  On February 10, 1929, for instance, The New York Times reported, "Mr. and Mrs. George D. Widener gave a small dinner followed by a dance, to which additional guests came, last night, at 5 East Seventieth Street, for Miss Elsie Wilmerding, debutante daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Elbert F. Wilmerding."

George and Jessie Widener.  image via encyclpedia-titanic.org

The Wideners traveled to Florida each winter for the Hialeah horse racing season.  They were there in January 1968 when Jessie was hospitalized at the Miami Heart Institute.  She died there two weeks later, on March 11, at the age of 84.

George Widener continued to occupy the East 70th Street mansion and Erdenheim Farm attended to by his domestic staff.  He died at Erdenheim Farm on December 8, 1971 at the age of 82.  In reporting his death, the Detroit Free Press called him, "one of the foremost breeders and racers of thoroughbreds in America."

The Frick Collection, housed in the former Henry Clay Frick mansion since January 1935, purchased 5 East 70th Street.  On June 15, 1973, Carter B. Horsley, architectural critic of The New York Times, reported on the Frick Collection's plans to create a garden and terrace.  "The site of the garden includes the former George D. Widener House...which the museum acquired last year and plans to demolish."

The demolition was delayed by pleas from the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, which suggested that the Frick Collection repurpose the mansion as an extension of the museum.  Then, on July 9, Horsley reported that demolition was imminent.  On its site and the two adjacent lots, the Frick Collection's 100-square-foot garden was established.

The 1923 Public National Bank Bldg - 106 Avenue C

 

photograph by Beyond My Ken

At the turn of the last century, a branch of the Anguilar Free Public Library sat on the northeast corner of Avenue C and East 7th street.  On July 9, 1902, the New-York Tribune explained that the Anguilar Free Library Society's facilities, "are mostly situated in poor and densely populated sections of the city."

Five years after that article, the Public Bank was organized as a state bank, and in 1917 "it took out a charter as a national bank," according to the New-York Tribune, becoming the Public National Bank.  The institution's growth was prodigious.  In 1922 it had $78 million in deposits and seven branches in Manhattan.  And there was about to be one more.  In September that year, The New York Times reported that the bank had purchased the "three-story business building at the northeast corner of Avenue C and Seventh Street."  The article said it would "be altered early next Spring and used by the bank as a branch office."

The trustees quickly changed their minds, however.  Instead, the bank demolished the old building and hired Eugene Schoen to design a replacement structure on the site.  His plans, filed in May 1923, projected the construction cost at $50,000--just under $920,000 in 2025 terms.  Ground was broken in June and construction completed in December.

The multi-talented Eugene Schoen was well-respected as a furniture designer, interior decorator and architect at the time.  Born of Hungarian Jewish immigrants in 1880, his father was Rabbi Jacob Schoen.  He studied architecture at Columbia University before working in the office of McKim, Mead & White.  In 1913, Schoen spent five months in Europe, where he met artist Alphons Mucha, renowned for his Art Nouveau designs, and architect Josef Hoffman, a founder of the Viennese Succession movement.  Schoen's exposure to their ground-breaking designs would be reflected in his own work back in New York City, including the Public National Bank building.

Sitting upon a granite water table, the two-story structure was clad in granitex, a material similar to cast concrete, and trimmed in terra cotta.  Schoen chamfered the corner where he placed the projecting, rounded entrance.  It was flanked by engaged, fluted granite columns that upheld a symphony of colorful terra cotta (executed by the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co.) that terminated in a wreath of fruits and leaves that surrounded a clock.  

photograph by Anthony Bellov

Decorative rondels sat between the bases of full-height, fluted pilasters.  Like the entrance columns, they had no capitals.  They upheld a two-layered parapet above a band of decorative bosses.

Inside, the cavernous banking room rose to the equivalent of two stories.  The bank's offices occupied the second floor.

The clock and ground floor rondels can be seen in this 1941 photograph.  The bank's name is emblazoned on the parapet.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

In 1952, the Public National Bank & Trust Co. opened a new branch at Broadway and East 3rd Street.  Two years later, the bank sold 106 Avenue C to Stuymet Realty Corp., headed by Grand Rabbi Isak Leifer.  The purchasers hired architect Henry G. Harris to convert the bank building to a nursing home.  The double-height banking room was divided into two floors and an additional entrance was cut on the East 7th Street side.  The ground floor rondels were removed and first floor windows were filled in with glass block.

Called the Stuyvesant Nursing Home, it was acquired by Dr. Bernard Bergman, who would eventually own as many as 70 other similar facilities.  In the early 1970s, prompted by complaints of "no heat, vermin infestations, neglect, filth and odors, and physical abuse" at the Towers Nursing Home on the Upper West Side, state and federal authorities launched an investigation into Bergman's nursing homes.  The Stuyvesant Nursing Home was shut down in 1972.  Bergman was indicted in 1975 and subsequently convicted of Medicare fraud.

The property passed hands twice before being foreclosed by the City in 1977 for non-payment of taxes.  On July 13 that year, the city was plunged into blackness after lightning struck a Con Edison electrical substation at 8:34 p.m.  Almost unbelievably, a second lightning strike hit two transmission lines, followed by a third strike to the Sprain Brook substation in Yonkers.  By 9:37 p.m. the city was in total darkness.  

The building was sorely neglected in the early 1980s.  photograph by Albert J. Winn from the collection of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The blackout lasted until the following day.  Thousands of looters ran rampant throughout the city.  Hundreds of stores were broken into (including a Bronx car dealership that lost 50 new automobiles) and damage was considerable.  Mayor Abe Beame called it, "a night of terror," adding, "The costs when finally tallied will be enormous."

On July 25, 1977, The New York Times reported that the New York City Office of Economic Development was setting up "neighborhood business assistance teams" to "facilitate the reopening of businesses damaged during the blackout."  One of those new offices was located in the former Public National Bank building.

Artist and furniture designer Richard Artschwater and his wife, Catherina A. Kord, purchased the building in 1980.  They converted it into two residences--a duplex on the first and second floors, and one apartment on the third.

The former Public National Bank building was designated an individual New York City landmark in September 2008.  Jay Shockley described it in the LPC's designation report as, "a highly unusual American structure displaying the direct influence of the early-twentieth-century modernism of eminent Viennese architect/designer Josef Hoffman."

many thanks to historian Anthony Bellov for suggesting this post