Emery Roth & Sons' 1940 875 Fifth Avenue

 

In 1939, a syndicate called the 877 Fifth Avenue Corporation was formed for the purpose of erecting a modern apartment house at the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 69th Street.  In April, it acquired the corner mansion at 877 Fifth Avenue (home to the Ogden L. Mills family for years) and the adjacent residence at 2-4 East 69th Street.  In August 8, The New York Times reported that the group had taken title to 875 Fifth Avenue, "a six-story private dwelling," and within days 876 Fifth Avenue was acquired, completing the parcel.

On July 10, 1939, the Mills mansion was being prepared for demolition.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

On August 28, 1939, Emery Roth & Sons filed plans for "an eighteen-story and penthouse apartment building costing about $800,000," as reported by The New York Times.  The construction cost would translate to just over $18 million in 2025.   

The architects' stark Art Moderne design featured a three-story stone base and 15 stories of beige brick.  Bold, double-height reeding flanked the recessed entrance.  Windows wrapped the corners of the projecting eastern section and those of the corner terraces.  Terrace-creating setbacks began at the 15th floor.

The architects' rendering was released in 1939.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York 

Construction had barely begun when the first apartment was leased.  On November 5, 1939, The New York Times reported that architect Philip L. Goodwin had leased a nine-room penthouse "with terraces on two levels fronting the Fifth Avenue side of the building."  Goodwin had good reason to move quickly.  "He is having the apartment constructed from his own plans," said the article.  Following Goodwin's lead was builder and real estate operator Louis Adler.  On December 2, The New York Sun reported that he had leased "a large terrace apartment," adding, "The apartment leased has been especially planned to meet Mr. Adler's needs."

When the building opened on August 15, 1940, more than 70 apartments had been rented, according to The New York Sun.  Among the initial tenants were Louis Jaramillo Serra, "operator of sugar plantations in Colombia," according to The New York Times; Henry J. Lesser, president of the International Trading Corporation; Benjamin H. Roth, head of the brokerage firm of B. H. Roth & Co.; and Joseph H. Tooker, president of the Tooker Lithograph Company, and his wife, the former Dora Mather.

The Tookers' brought deep American pedigrees to the building.  Dora was a descendant of Cotton Mather and Increase Mather, and Joseph's ancestors arrived from England in 1707.  A member of the Sons of the American Revolution, among Joseph's ancestors was John Baily, a friend of George Washington.

A colorful resident was singer and motion picture actress Arline Judge.  Born in Connecticut in 1912, she started out in Broadway musicals before meeting film director Wesley Ruggles on a train.  The change meeting resulted in Arline's quickly appearing in six films in 1931.  Ruggles not only set her on a career path in movies, he became the first of her seven husbands.  She divorced him in 1937 and married sportsman and advertising executive Dan Topping that year.  

This 1941 publicity photo was taken while Arline Judge lived at 875 Fifth Avenue.

The couple's marriage was brief.  They divorced in 1940 and Arline moved into 875 Fifth Avenue.  (She would marry Henry J. Topping, Dan's brother, in 1947, two husbands later.)  Arline married James Ramage Addams in 1942 and a two-day auction of her furnishings was held in August.  The New York Times reported:

Some of the furnishings of one of Miss Judge's bedrooms, which brought $289, included two early American style four-post beds, a highboy in the same style, a dressing table and a chaise lounge.  Furnishings of other bedrooms, living room, dining room and other rooms also were sold.

Equally fascinating was model Puk Paaris Gevaert, estranged wife of multi-millionaire Dr. Joseph Cornelis Maria Gevaert, described by The New York Times as "a Belgian capitalist."  Born in 1901, he was president of the Gevaert Company of America, Inc. and from 1939 to 1940 was Belgian Commissioner General to the New York World's Fair.

Born in 1919, Puk Paaris was a former Miss Denmark.  The domestic relationship between her and Gevaert was decidedly rocky.  Sixteen days after the couple met in April 1941, they were married.  Six months later, Puk divorced him.  The New York Sun reported, "she settled for $60,000 plus alimony of $500 a month for two years."  Three weeks later, on November 3, 1941, they remarried.  (Puk later admitted she did not offer to repay the $60,000 settlement.  "She spent it, she said," reported The Sun.)

Puk Paaris and Joseph C. M. Gevaert during an apparently rare non-confrontational moment.  (original source unknown)

The split and reconciliation set a pattern.  On January 26, 1945, The New York Times reported, "Mrs. Gevaert...has been separated from her husband twenty-nine times, six of them legal."  Three days before that article, Puk had appeared in State Supreme Court to ask for $50,000 a year alimony and $25,000 counsel fees.  (The annual alimony would equal $871,000 today.)  The New York Sun reported, "They lived on a scale of from $5,000 to $6,000 a month, [and] she testified in support of her claim that it would be unthinkable for her to exist on less than $50,000 a year alimony."

The New York Times reported on January 26, 1945 that Puk Paaris Gevaert won "her suit for separation against her wealthy husband."  Although the terms were not released, Puk said she was "very happy, very happy," asserting that she was now "completely vindicated," and that, "The public now knows what there was to the malicious charges made against me."

Like Arline Judge, Puk Paaris Geraert sold the "modernistic furniture and decorations" of her 875 Fifth Avenue apartment at auction.  Included, reported The New York Times on September 7, 1945, was a "specially built upholstered circular bed."

Less controversial but equally celebrated was stage and screen actor Victor Fred Moore, who moved into an apartment with his second wife, the former Shirley Paige, after their marriage in 1942.  (Moore's first wife, Emma Littlefield, died in 1934.)   Born in 1876, he first appeared on Broadway in 1896.  By now, he was well known for his character roles in motion pictures.

On May 14, 1946, The New York Sun began an article saying, "Victor Moore, famous for his stage portrayals of amiably bewildered men facing baffling situations, appeared in the Mid-Manhattan Court today with his diminutive Pomeranian, Bambi, in a real-life skit."  The actor had been given a summons by a policeman who "said Moore let Bambi frisk about on the East Drive of Central Park near 71st street without a muzzle."

Outside the courtroom, Moore quipped to reporters that the situation reminded him of a sketch he "reenacted in a Ziegfeld Follies movie, called 'Pay the $2.'"  After hearing the case, Magistrate Harry G. Andrews declared, "Two dollars."

"'Pay the $2,' Moore murmured as if deep puzzling memories of the past while he peeled off two $1 bills," recounted The Sun.

Victor Moore, from the collection of the New York Public Library

The following month, Victor Moore's name was in the news for a more serious reason.  On June 3, he and his son, Robert Emmett Moore (who, incidentally, survived several months in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II), set off on a fishing trip on the Long Island Sound on Moore's cabin cruiser.  Fumes that had built up below deck suddenly exploded.  "Most of the boat's deck house was demolished in the blast," reported The New York Times.

Both men suffered second degree burns and cuts, but were released after an hour at the Eastern Long Island Hospital.  Moore told reporters, "There is a possibility the boat can be repaired, but I am not going to do it.  For the last thirty years I have had a fishing cruiser, but I don't think I will ever have another."

Also living here at the time was painter and architectural sculptor Edith Marion Day Magonigle, the widow of architect, author and artist Harold Van Bueren Magonigle, who died in 1935.  (Among Magonigle's designs were the United States Embassy and Consulate in Toyko, the Soldiers' Memorial in Naugatuck, Connecticut, and the Arsenal Technical School in Indianapolis).  Born in 1911, Edith had often decorated the interiors of her husband's buildings with murals.  Among those collaborations were her murals for his Kansas City Liberty Memorial, described by The New York Times as containing, "one of the largest friezes ever undertaken by a woman."

In cooperation with groups like the Salmagundi Club during World War I, she chaired a committee of artists who painted "designation targets" as instructional tools for Army recruits.  "The 'targets' were of particular value in training city men to fix objectives with respect to their surroundings, so they could orient themselves if lost," explained the newspaper.

Edith Day Magonigle at work on a "destination target" mural, Asia.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1920 through 1922, Edith was president of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.  Edith Day Magonigle died at the age of 72 in her apartment here on August 8, 1949.

In 1951, Isaac Liberman, president of Arnold, Constable & Co., his wife, Bertha, and their daughter, Sally, moved into an 18th floor apartment in 875 Fifth Avenue.  Sally Liberman had graduated from Bennington College a year earlier.  Brooks Clark quotes Jonathan Low, Sally's cousin, in Sally's Genius as he recalled holiday dinners with the Libermans:

[They] were festive affairs, with lots of relatives we barely knew and everyone seated around a huge dining room table groaning with fruit, breads, pastries, centerpieces, silver, and crystal.  The walls were hung with expensive old brocades and tapestries.  Dinner was served by servants in formal uniforms overseen by Karl, the Swedish chauffeur-butler.  Their apartment at 875 Fifth Avenue overlooked Central Park and the view, high above the treetops, was always beautiful.

Sally Liberman, who would marry Robert Smith, would go on to be a leader in special education.  She would found the Lab School for children with learning difficulties in 1967 and a professor in the School of Education and Head of the Graduate Program in Special Education at the American University.

Among the Libermans' neighbors in the building were Robert and Zoe Armstrong, who had a five-room apartment on the 11th floor.  As Zoe hurried to dress for an occasion on the evening of August 3, 1953, she was unable to find certain pieces of jewelry.  Running late, she put off a thorough search until the next morning, when she discovered that 14 pieces, including, "diamonds, clips, earrings and watches," as described by The New York Times, were missing.  They were valued by her at $32,500--about $381,000 today.  "Other jewelry worth between $75,000 and $100,000 was found intact in its place," said the article.  Only the maid had been in the apartment that day and police said there were no marks of forced entry.

Two days later, the Armstrongs boarded the French liner Ile de France for Europe.  Zoe was relatively cavalier about the burglary.  "I guess we'll have to do without any baubles," she told a reporter.

On October 16, authorities announced that a "ring of jewel thieves that looted East Side apartments of more than $1,000,000 in jewels and furs" had been captured.  The group included four women who posed as domestics and obtained access to the apartments with keys entrusted to the "maids."  Of Zoe Armstrong's stolen items, one piece, a ruby and diamond platinum wrist watch, was discovered in a pawn shop.

Financier Archibald Moore Montgomery and his wife, the former Eleanor Scully were highly visible residents.  The couple was married on September 21, 1942.  The elegant and well-styled Eleanor was fashion editor of Vogue magazine.  The couple's country home was in Water Mill, Southampton, Long Island.

Archibald Montgomery died in 1965.  Eleanor remained in their apartment, never loosing her patrician bearing nor her independence as she aged.  Although she used a cane after recovering from a broken hip, on April 16, 1982, the "wealthy 73-year-old socialite," as described by the Daily News, left her apartment and took a cab to a garage on 71st Street and First Avenue where she kept her automobile.  "She drove out of the garage a few minutes later," reported the article.

Eleanor Scully Montgomery, Daily News, April 27, 1982

Eleanor was on the way to have dinner at the Meadow Club in Southampton with an old friend, Mrs. R. Townley Paton.  But she never showed up.  Mrs. Paton telephoned Eleanor's Southampton place, but the caretaker said she had not arrived.  What resulted was what The New York Times described as a "13-state missing-person alarm."  

More than a week later, the former Vogue editor was still unaccounted for.  Finally, nine days after her disappearance, an employee of Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn noticed the news coverage of the search.  He "called Mrs. Paton to report that Mrs. Montgomery had been in the hospital all along," reported The Times on April 27.  Eleanor had been involved in an accident.  According to her, she "had asked that Mrs. Paton be notified, but that this was apparently overlooked."  In reporting that she had been found, the Daily News noted that she, "is listed in 'The Blue Book of the Hamptons,' a Long Island social register," and said, "She had lived in Connecticut, Colorado, France and India and was the author of a privately published book about Indian mysticism, 'Tantra Today.'"

At the time of Eleanor Montgomery's mishap, the Libermans still occupied their 18th floor apartment.  Although Arnold, Constable & Co. closed its main location at Fifth Avenue and 40th Street in 1975, Isaac Liberman continued to be active.  He became president of the John Forsythe Company and the Liberman Brothers Holding Corporation, as well as president of the Bertha and Isaac Liberman Foundation.  Astoundingly, he was still working when he died in the apartment at the age of 97 on August 3, 1983.  Bertha Bayer Liberman survived him by six years, dying on October 20, 1989 at the age of 93.

More than eight decades after the first tenant moved in, 875 Fifth Avenue maintains its place as one of Manhattan's most prestigious addresses.  A three-bedroom apartment on the ninth floor was recently placed on the market at $66.7 million.

photographs by the author