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.