photo by the author
The son of builder Ralph Townsend, Ralph Samuel Townsend was born in New York in 1854. By the time he was in his late 20's, he was listed in city directories as an architect. In 1884, he was hired by real estate developer George Miller to design a row of homes along the south side of West 82nd Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. (The avenues would be renamed Columbus and Amsterdam, respectively, six years later.) Completed in 1885, the identical, four-story-and-basement residences were faced in brownstone.
Townsend designed them in the popular neo-Grec style, their upper windows fully framed in stone architraves with ample sill aprons and prominent molded cornices on carved brackets. Townsend softened the style's angular personality with Renaissance Revival-style panels below the parlor windows, an exuberantly foliate-carved panel above the entrance, and a carved stylized pot of flowers on either side of the doorway. The cast iron, balustraded stoop railings terminated in beefy newels.
Miller sold 138 West 82nd Street to former clergyman Samuel Colcord. Around 1883, Colcord "gave up the ministry and made a fortune in west side real estate," as explained by The New York Times in 1898. The newspaper said he "was called 'Lucky Sam' Colcord."
photo via sothebys.realty
His stepping down from the pulpit did not squelch Colcord's outspoken views. He wrote theological books like the 1897 The Veracity of the Hexateuch, voiced his opinions of government in letters to editors of newspapers, and, at least once, in December 1898, rented Chickering Hall to argue the theories of Robert G. Ingersoll, known as "the Great Agnostic."
Colcord's residency here was relatively short. By the time of his Chickering Hall lecture, he had moved on for a decade. On November 16, 1888, he advertised in The New-York Times:
A bargain--First-class new dwelling, 138 West 82d-st.; four-story, high-stoop, 17 x 56 feet and extension; cabinet finish; artistic decorations; $28,000. Apply on premises. Samuel Colcord, owner.
(Colcord's listed price would translate to about $953,000 in 2025.)
The house changed hands several times before Dr. Ralph Tousey moved in around 1903, after his marriage to Elena V. Martinze, the daughter of a Cuban Government official. Born on October 21, 1873, Tousey was a gynecologist. He graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1898.
photograph by the author
Unfortunately, his marriage would not last. In 1904, Elena traveled to South Dakota where she obtained a divorce "on the ground of desertion," according to The New York Sun. Shortly afterward, she married Harry W. Hazelton.
Five years later, in July 1909, Tousey sued Elena for divorce in Supreme Court, "alleging that the Dakota decree was not binding in this State," explained The Sun. The court ruled against him, deciding that the 1904 divorce was valid. Tousey's sudden interest in confirming that his divorce was legal was soon made clear.
On September 8, 1909, The Sun titled an article, "Ralph Tousey Weds Again," and reported that the previous evening he had married Clara S. Briner. The article mentioned that Tousey was "a grandson of the late Sinclair Tousey, founder of the American News Company."
Like many families at the time, the Touseys rented rooms. Their ad in The New York Times on October 7, 1910 read, "82d, 138 West--Exceptionally well furnished 2 rooms and bath suite in exclusive private family; breakfast if desired." The ad was answered by Theodore Martin, self-described as "the distinguished Scottish tenor." Martin sang at the St. Andrew's Banquet the next month. The New York Sun deemed his singing as "an exquisite bit of work," adding that he "received a Caruso ovation at the end of this glorious song."
The Touseys' house had been the scene of Keystone Kops-like chaos a month earlier. Two doors away, at 134 West 82nd Street, was the home of W. Dana Bigelow and his wife, Lyda. In July 1910, Lyda's sister, Mrs. George Bloodworth arrived with her four-year-old son, W. Dana Bloodsworth. She was fleeing from her husband in Maryland. Before her sister died in September that year, Lyda promised that she would rear the boy and "never surrender" him to his father.
On October 17, 1910, a cab pulled up to the Bigelows' house and George Bloodworth and three men got out. Bloodworth headed up the stoop while the others waited on the sidewalk. The maid told Bloodworth that Lyda had taken the boy for a walk, and asked him to wait in the parlor. While he sat there, Lyda quietly instructed the maid to sneak the boy out of the basement door and to the Tousey house.
Bloodworth's confederates, of course, saw the ruse and alerted him. "Mrs. Bigelow then ran through a rear door and by using a ladder clambered over two fences separating her home from the house where the boy had been taken," reported the New York Herald. Bloodworth and his three friends burst into the Tousey house just in time to see Lyda "carry the youngster through the rear door," according to the article, which said, "The woman ascended the ladder and was climbing the fence when her pursuers rushed through the door."
Realizing she did not have time to get back to her own house, Lyda took the boy into the basement of No. 136, then, "raced upstairs and over the roofs to her own home." With her pursuers close behind, "Mrs. Bigelow locked the roof door of her home and she then began piling furniture against the outer doors of her residence. This done and the boy secreted, she telephoned to her husband." When police arrived, summoned by the worried Touseys, Bloodworth and his accomplices vanished.
By 1912 the Touseys had left West 82nd Street. (Their marriage, incidentally, would end in annulment in 1924 when, after alleging that Clara was secretly insane at the time of their marriage, Ralph confined her in the Straighthill Sanitarium, as insane.) The house became home to the John B. Dauchy family.
In 1941 the muscular cast iron stoop railings and newels were intact. via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
Born in 1859, he married Phebe Denison Chesebrough on September 27, 1893. Their son, Bradley Lasher, was born two years later. John B. Dauchy was a dealer in paints, shellack, linseed oil and turpentine. Among his largest clients was the City's Department of Parks.
By 1925, Bradley was working as a clerk with the American Woolen Company. He and his parents remained at 138 West 82nd Street for one more year, after which it was home to the Max Bauman family.
The residence was operated as a rooming house by mid-century. Musician George A. Stubbs lived here in the early 1960s, and in the 1970s, photographer Guy Sussman occupied 138 West 82nd Street, holding photographic lessons in the house.
A
renovation completed in 1981 resulted in one apartment per floor. It was
most likely at this time that the 1884 stoop ironwork was replaced with anemic,
modern railings. Astoundingly, Ralph S.
Townsend’s interior detailing—carpenter’s lace, pocket doors, shutters and
such—were carefully removed and stored in the basement.
Seen here in 2009, the stoop railings and newels had been removed.
That foresight would be highly appreciated
when a years-long renovation-restoration began in 2004. The new owners resurrected the stored
elements, had them professionally restored and re-installed.
The new owners refabricated the lost railings and installed period appropriate newels. photograph by the author
Included in the all-encompassing restoration
was the refabrication of the stoop railings, based on surviving examples on the
row, and a period appropriate pair of newels.
The project returned 138 West 82nd Street
to a single family residence.
photographs by the author
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