The 1887 Cedarhurst Stables - 147-151 West 83rd Street

 

The building boom on the Upper West Side in the last decades of the 19th century created an urgent need for churches, schools and boarding stables.  There were more than 170,000 horses in New York City as the turn of the century approached and now a significant number of them were being brought to the developing district.

Edward W. Bedell recognized the niche.  On October 15, 1887 he purchased a 75-foot-wide plot on West 83rd Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues (soon to become Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues) from Patrick O'Thayne for $28,000--or about $823,000 in 2022.  He soon began construction of a five-story brick boarding stables on the site.

Almost assuredly, Bedell's architect was Frank A. Rooke.  (Five years later he would design Bedell's Claremont Stable nearby on West 89th Street.)  Completed in 1889, the Romanesque Revival style structure was broken into five vertical sections, those at the ends and center slightly projecting so as to break up the visual mass.  Stone bandcourses defined each floor.  The architect gave the utilitarian structure handsome touches, like intricate terra cotta panels and stone voussoirs.  At the ground floor the building's purpose was reflected in cast iron horseshoe ornaments and a carved horse's head about the carriage bay.  An elaborate terra cotta panel within the brick parapet announced the stable's name: Cedarhurst.

The details of these horseshoe ornaments have been obscured by decades of paint.

Inside, a system of ramps enabled horses and vehicles to be moved from floor to floor.  There were 135 stalls for horses.  A sizeable elevator transported larger carriages to the upper areas.  In the rear would have been a large manure pit.

Bedell leased the Cedarhurst Stable to brothers Lee and Darius Tallman.  On March 12, 1890, he sold the property to millionaire Charles F. Havemeyer for $90,000 (a significant $2.7 million today), who quickly transferred title to his brother Theodore.  The Tallman brothers retained their lease until Bedell completed the Claremont Stables in 1892, at which time they leased that building.

Havemeyer now rented the Cedarhurst to Smith & Hempstead.  The partners operated it both as a livery and boarding stables.  Customers who needed a vehicle for the day could choose from a variety of carriages--similar to today's rental car businesses.  And those who owned their own horses and vehicles paid to house them here--like today's parking garages.  Included in the boarding tenants' rates was the care and feeding of their animals and the maintenance of their vehicles.  

Painted today, the carved horse's head above the carriage bay survives after more than 130 years.

Operating a substantial stable like the Cedarhurst required a sizable staff, including grooms, stable boys (who changed hay, shoveled manure and such), polishers who kept the brasses and carriage lanterns shined, and others.  In 1895 the Cedarhurst employed 23 stablemen and grooms.  Among the grooms working here in 1892 was Richard Dore, who was hired in September 1891.

The big man (he was around six-feet tall) and his wife had three children and lived in an apartment on West 66th Street.  He had a history of somnambulism from childhood.  On June 27, 1892, The Evening World reported that on the evening before, Dore had come home from work and gone to bed.  

"At about midnight Mrs. Dore, who had been trying to get her baby to sleep and had fallen into a doze, heard a short outcry," said the article.  "She sprang to her feet in time to see her husband disappearing through the window.  Her screams soon awakened the neighbors, one of whom notified police of what had happened."  The sleep-walking groom had stepped out of their second floor window, striking his head and dying instantly.  The article noted, "Mrs. Dore's grief is appalling.  She is a refined-looking woman of about thirty.  She goes about wringing her hands, but utters no cries...Now and then she says, in a scarcely audible voice, 'What will become of the children!'"

At the Cedarhurst Stable, one of the proprietors, Mr. Hempstead, told a reporter, "Dore was an exceptionally good man.  His work was perfect.  In the nine months that he was with us, we grew very much attached to him."  The groom's popularity among his co-workers was exemplified by one of the groom's sobbing at the news of his death.  Hempstead said he would try to assist the widow to "afford her relief."

Smith & Hempstead occasionally sold horses and vehicles.  On June 20, 1893 The Sun reported, "Bargains in stylish and differently gaited horses can be seen at the Cedarhurst stables of Smith & Hempstead.  They have a select number of roadsters fresh from the country."

In 1895 Hempstead and E. C. Smith parted ways.  Smith went into partnership with Peter T. Radiker as Smith & Radiker.  New York, 1895: Illustrated called them "both natives of this city, and young men of excellent business ability."  Saying that the Cedarhurst was "one of the foremost establishments engaged in this industry," it noted the amenities customers enjoyed:

The establishment is heated by steam, has a steam power elevator, all modern sanitary improvements, a handsome ladies' reception-room, harness-room, and all conveniences.  

The ladies' reception room was obligatory.  Here genteel women could wait in a nicely furnished space away from the noises and smells of the stable proper.  The article noted that Smith & Radiker owned " forty fine road and saddle horses, [and] fifty carriages and wagons" available to lease.  It added, "A general livery and boarding business is carried on, and satisfactory service and the most courteous treatment is assured all patrons."

Smith & Radicker dissolved in 1897, replaced by the Cedarhurst Stable Company with Radicker as its principal.  The troubles between the two men had most likely been financial.  On February 10, 1897 The Sun reported that Theodore A. Havemeyer had won a judgment for $12,605 in back rent.  It was a sizeable amount, equal to about $425,000 in 2022.  

Finances continued to be tight for Radiker, and in May 1901 he declared personal bankruptcy.  The New York Times reported, "He has 147 shares of stock of the Cedarhurst Stable Company.  He was formerly of Smith & Radicker, who were in the stable business for several years."

Nevertheless, Radicker somehow held onto the business.  He sold a part of the livery operation in 1906.  By then Seaman's Stables was operating from the Claremont Stables building and that year it announced that it had "recently purchased the Carriage Service interests of the Cedarhurst Stables in 83d Street," promising "their customers will receive special and careful attention."

At the time, motorcars were rapidly replacing horses on the streets of New York.  In 1908 Peter Radicker organized the Cedarhurst Motor Livery Company.  The Horseless Age explained it was incorporated in part "to operate a taxicab service with Frayer-Miller cabs.  This service will be of a private nature, no business being done from stands."  The company started off with five cabs and promised there would be 20 more by September.  It also operated a service garage in the building.

The New York Times, November 6, 1908 (copyright expired)

The Cedarhurst Motor Livery Co. remained in the building through 1921.  Its management often helped customers sell their automobiles, offering a venue in which to inspect the cars.  

In 1922 Francis J. Sheridan leased the property "for a long term," as worded by the New-York Tribune.  The article said, "The lessee will make extensive alterations."  It may have been at this time that the two additional vehicle entrances were carved into the facade.

Appropriately, the building functions today as it did in 1889.  Owners store their vehicles here on a monthly basis, while others can rent one temporarily.  

photographs by the author

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Edward Bedell's 1892 Carriage Houses at Nos. 167-171 W. 89th Street

In 1892 developer Edward Bedell addressed an important need of the settlers in the developing Upper West Side—transportation.  Citizens wealthy enough to afford the grand mansions dotting the neighborhood maintained their own vehicles and teams of horses; while many of those living in the vast new apartment buildings often hired horses and carriages. 

Bedell acquired several vacant plots on West 89^th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue and commissioned Frank A. Rooke to design four structures—three connected private carriage houses at Nos. 167-171 and a five-story boarding stable at No. 175.   The 30-year old architect had only recently dissolved his partnership with Paul F. Riggs.   And while the 89^th Street stables were not his first—he had designed a multi-use apartment-stable-shop structure in 1887—they would set a course.  He is best remembered today for his several stables and related buildings.

Along with the three private stables Rooke simultaneously designed a five-story livery stable( left).

The three two-story carriage houses at Nos. 167-171 were clad in sandy-colored brick.  Rooke saved on costs by using brick rather than stone or even terra cotta as his primary design material.  It appears in the creative honey-combed corbelled cornices, the delicate detailing of the second floor cornice, and the vast vaulting eyebrows over the gaping carriage bays.

Bedell sold No. 171 to “E. Hurd” in March 1893 for $22,000—nearly $600,000 today.  No. 167 was purchased by George Legg whose family lived just off Central Park at No. 25 West 81^st Street. 

Legg was a highly-successful millinery importer.  The family’s country home, Crestlawn, was in Tarrytown.  It was there on September 9, 1893, that daughter Annie M. Legg was married to Arthur Platt Howard.  Calling the wedding socially “interesting,” The New York Times reported “The wedding breakfast was served on the wide piazza of the house.”

A year later, in November 1894, Annie’s sister Clara was married to Henry W. J. Bucknall, “well-known as an enthusiastic yachtsman,” according to The Times.  The newspaper added that Clara was “an attractive blonde.”

With his daughters married, George Legg turned to more practical matters: feathers.  In May 1899 he joined several other wholesale millinery merchants to form the Millinery Merchants’ Protective Association.  The purpose of the national board of trade was to watch legislation.  “Particular attention will be directed to resisting efforts to pass laws forbidding the wearing of feathers on hats,” reported The Sun.  The newspaper’s headline read “The Birds On Her Hat.”

While George Legg concerned himself with feathers on ladies headwear; a significant change was taking over American transportation.  For two decades inventors had been tinkering with the automobile.  The first carriage-sized steam-powered car appeared in Wisconsin in 1871; and in 1886 Karl Benz had invented the gasoline-powered automobile.  The end of the line for horse-drawn vehicles was clearly on the horizon.

In 1907 E. Hurd sold No. 171 to George McKesson Brown, a 28-year old millionaire.  George was highly involved in horse, yacht and automobile racing.  

Having inherited his fortune from his father; it seems George was a handful in his teen-age years.  In February 1896 his step-mother Ruth A. Bruce-Brown threw her hands in the air and asked the courts to allow her to resign as guardian of George and his estate.  The exasperated woman told the judge that she and the 17-year old “cannot agree.”

That George McKesson Brown, now 30 years old, ever housed a horse at No. 171` West 89^th Street is doubtful at best.  His passion for motorcars and his financial ability to spend lavishly on them was evidenced a year earlier when he hired professional driver William Luttgen to race his newly-purchased 120-horse power Mercedes Benz in the Vanderbilt Cup course.

It was most likely George’s passion for yachting and racing that prompted him to leave Manhattan.  His magnificent 40-room French chateau, Coindre Hall, on Long Island’s Gold Coast was completed in 1912.  Nevertheless, he retained ownership of the 89^th Street stable for several years.  In September 1915 he leased it to Nathaniel Champion “for use as a garage.”  When Brown sold the property five years later, it was still listed as a “two story private garage.”

George McKesson Brown moved to Coindre Hall in 1912.  photo lessings.com

Throughout the century the little buildings endured several uses.  No. 167 was owned by the City by, at least, 1919 when the Board of Standards Appeals offices were there.  In 1961 No. 171 was home to the Hawkes Ambulance Service; and No. 167 was a field office for the City’s Housing and Redevelopment Board.  By 1970 it had taken over all three buildings, using No. 171 for its Welfare Relocation Office.

In 1976 the City agreed to charge the Ballet Hispanico School of Dance a nominal $375 rent for No. 167.  The school spent $20,000 on renovations which resulted in two dance studios.  By 1984 Mayor Ed Koch and his Cultural Affairs Commissioner, Bess Meyerson, helped the school obtain $359,000 of Federal community-development funds to purchase and rehabilitate both Nos. 167 and 169.  Eventually the organization took over all three buildings.  Nos. 167 and 169 were gutted and joined internally by the architectural firm of Buck & Cane.

The arched Romanesque entrance to No. 171 was replaced by a less-exciting rectangular opening, and it interiors were gutted to become a courtyard and service entrance.  The architects’ renovations sensitively preserved the integrity of Rooke’s designs and the buildings’ utilitarian origins, while bringing them squarely into the modern era.

photographs by the author

The Orchid -- No. 170 West 78th Street

In 1890 not only was the Upper West Side developing as sewers were laid and mass transit extended to the area; but apartment living was becoming more widely acceptable.  On the east side of Central Park apartment buildings would be known by their addresses; on the west side they more often took names, like The Dakota, The Wyoming and The Chatsworth.

Construction began that year on one more:  The Orchid.  Owner-developer Lorton Horton was busy in the area, having erected a multi-use structure containing a store, apartments and stables two years earlier at No. 371 Amsterdam Avenue.  He chose architect Frank A. Rooke for the project.

Now Horton sought the architect’s talents again.  He owned the adjoining property encompassing Nos. 373 and 375 Amsterdam Avenue and rounding the corner to No. 170 West 78^th Street.  For this site Higgs & Rooke would produce a massive Romanesque Revival block of tan brick, stone and pressed metal.  Stores lined the street level along Amsterdam Avenue and a grand entrance for the “French flats” faced 78^th Street.

New York architects, especially on the Upper West Side, were taking note of the city’s Dutch roots at the time.  Flemish Revival churches, schools and houses cropped up as quaint reminders of Manhattan’s beginnings.  Higgs & Rooke gave their nod to the movement with centered Dutch stepped gables on both elevations. 

A monumental arch sitting on clustered columns provided the 78th street entrance.  Exquisite carvings filled the spandrels and the address was handsomely carved into the stone.

The pressed metal bay windows, too, strayed from the Romanesque with swags and other floral motifs and unusual hefty beaded engaged columns at the third floor.  But the residential entranceway within the rough-cut stone base, was purely medieval.  The deep-set, sturdy stone arch sat on clustered columns.  Exquisite snarled carving filled the spandrels and the street number was beautifully incised into the keystone.

Beaded, thin columns, festoons and ribbons made up the pressed metal decorations.

The Orchid filled with respectable middle and upper-middle class families, like the widowed Mrs. George Wesley Spencer and her daughter, Evelyn Grace; Edwin H. Hammer who was the New York agent for Keasbey & Mattison, makers of Bromo-Caffeine; and Dr. Robert W. Eastman; all of whom were among the initial residents.

On October 27, 1891 Mrs. Spencer’s apartment was the scene of Evelyn’s wedding reception.  Earlier that day she had married William Henry Blaine, a relative of the Secretary of State, James G. Blaine.  The Sun noted that “Miss Spencer wore at her throat a blazing diamond pendant, a present from the bridegroom.”

As privileged children of society neared their teen years they would need to learn to dance.  Debutante balls and cotillions were in their futures; and every well-heeled member of society would be expected to perform adequately at society’s many dinner dances each season.  On November 26, 1893 The New York Times mentioned “As the season lengthens the dancing classes increase in number, much to the satisfaction of the juvenile members of society.”  The newspaper noted that “Miss Lillian Barry of 170 West Seventy-eighth Street has arranged to give a series of dances in Hodgson’s Assembly Rooms” on Fifth Avenue to groom youngsters in dancing.

Dutch gables coexist with Romanesque elements in the hefty design.

Along with Dr. Eastman, several other physicians made The Orchid their home, such as Dr. Charles Good, and Dr. Philip R. Moale who was in the building by 1895. 

Dr. Good was still in the building at the turn of the century and after midnight on May 20, 1900 he received a frantic knock on his door.  Mrs. Ellen Wessels lived nearby at No. 2183 Broadway and pleaded for his help.  Her brother-in-law, Dr. Charles Smith Collins, who also lived at the Broadway address, was in trouble.

The Times explained “Dr. Collins had been ill for several weeks and had been in the habit of taking drugs to ease his pain and induce sleep.”  Around 10:30 that evening he had taken “a quantity of chloral.”  Mrs. Collins awoke to find her husband struggling to breathe and in distress.  The New-York Tribune reported “Dr. Good made every effort to counteract the effect of the poison, but failed to do so, and Dr. Collins died at 3:20 o’clock.”

Another doctor, named Swift, lived in The Orchid in 1903.  It was in his apartment on Friday November 27 that year that The Pathological Society held its meeting, according to The National Journal of Homoeopathic Medicine.

The attraction of the building to physicians was pointed out in its advertisements.  Most apartments contained seven rooms “all light” and rented in 1905 from $720 to $840 a year—approximately $1500 to $1800 a month in today’s dollars.  But the first floor apartments were larger, having two additional rooms.  An advertisement in The Sun on September 22, 1905 noted that these apartments were “extra large, suitable for dentist or doctor; rent $1,000.”

Among the tenants not involved in the medical field was stock broker Thomas M. Daly whose offices were at No. 32 Pine Street.  In 1903 the couple engaged the services of two servant girls, Annie Williams and her sister Frances.  The girls worked for a while, then gave their notice.  Shortly after they left, Mrs. Daly noticed things missing—specifically $2,000 worth of jewelry.

She notified police and detectives and Inspector McClusky began an investigation.  Before long he discovered that other women in the neighborhood had been robbed.  Based on the description of the two sisters “it was easy to trace the women to their home,” said The New York Times on December 27.

The police raided the Williams girls’ apartment at No. 201 East 97^th Street.  “Two trunks full of silverware, bric-a-brac, and costly furs, worth, in all, according to the police, over $10,000, were taken from the rooms occupied by the prisoners and sent to Police headquarters to await identification.”

Around the same time Dr. Daniel T. Millspaugh moved in.  He would stay in The Orchid into the 1920s.  The doctor ran his medical practice from here and operated the Riverlawn Sanitarium in Paterson, New Jersey.  Millspaugh’s advertisements for the facility promised “care and treatment of all Forms of Nervous and mild Mental Cases.  Alcoholic and Drug Addiction—selected Cases Only.”  Riverlawn offered “All Approved Forms of Treatment Used.  Baths, Massage, Electricity.”

The Orchid continued to attract white-collar occupants as World War I approached.  G. W. Sterling was Freight Traffic Manager of Pier 19 on the North River; Albert J. McCullagh was an “investigator,” and Thomas F. Dooley was a civil servant, earning $1,800 a year as an “attendant” in Supreme Court, 1^st District.  (Dooley’s salary in 1918 would equate to about $26,000 today.)

Although they were not considered wealthy, the residents were well-off enough that, like the Dalys, most had domestic help.  Carrie Strauss was working as a servant in one of the apartments in 1918 when, it appears, the family was preparing to leave for the summer.  She placed an advertisement in Gleanings in Bee Culture in April that year seeking “a position for the summer with a bee-keeper by a farmer’s daughter.”

Scandal visited  The Orchid in 1921 when Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Macgowan sued her husband, Claude, for failing to pay her $25 a week alimony.  Claude H. Macgowan had been manager of the Universal Film Manufacturing Company.  Their troubles started when he began seeing Elizabeth Stephens.

Mary Macgowan told Justice Delehanty on April 21, 1921 that her husband left her “more than two years ago, and was at one time living with Elizabeth Stevens [sic]” at No. 170 West 78^th Street.  “A boy, David, was with the couple, Mrs. Macgowan,” reported The Times.  “Mrs. Macgowan says her husband lived at that address until Dec. 23, last.”

As if Claude Macgowan’s cohabitating with Elizabeth Stephens was not shocking enough, he kidnapped his children and brought them to The Orchid.  “Mrs. Macgowan further alleges that her husband spirited her two children, Claudia and Ursala, from a convent on Staten Island and took them to the apartment occupied by the other woman.”

Despite Macgowan’s affair with “the other woman,” residents of The Orchid were mostly highly respectable.  In 1922 Margaret Baker Morison, who was a 1907 graduate of Bryn Mawr College, was teaching English at Miss Chapin’s School.  That same year resident Mary G. Earl was working as a psychologist with the Department of Hygiene.

In 1968 a renovation resulted in two apartments on the first floor and three each on the upper stories.  The building, which had long ago lost its charismatic name, appeared in the 1977 film The Goodbye Girl.  Richard Dryfuss, as Elliot, and Marsha Mason, playing the part of Paula, shared an apartment here in the Neil Simon hit.

Higgs & Rooke’s eccentric structure retains most of its architectural charm.  Garish store fronts replace the originals on the avenue and the façade is inexcusably grimy and the metal elements rusting.  Yet it survives as a wonderful relic of a time when the West Side was flexing its muscle as Manhattan’s newest neighborhood.

photographs by the author

The Claremont Riding Academy - 175 West 89th Street

By 1892 houses and apartment buildings were quickly rising on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Central Park, completed in 1873, lured developers who built rows of comfortable brownstone residences and luxurious apartments like The Dakota on Central Park West and 72nd Street. The newly established residents all needed adequate stable facilities for their horses and carriages.

On 89th Street, a block and a half from the Park, Edward Bedell erected a handsome brick and stone livery stable. Designed by Frank A. Rooke, whose reputation was made designing stables, the Claremont was five stories tall and boasted an ingenious system of ramps that connected the floors–allowing horses and vehicles to be housed in the basement and on the second floor.  Large elevators hoisted more carriages to the upper floors.  There were 135 stalls for boarding horses.

The unpretentious buff brick building used limestone trim to accent its restrained Romanesque Revival style.  A stepped stone arch with a carved horseshoe framed the main entrance. Inside Rooke provided a small riding ring which proved to be somewhat unrealistic.

When completed, Bedell sold the Claremont to millionaire Charles F. Havermeyer, who in turn leased it to the Tallman brothers, Lee and Darius. The brothers had operated another livery stables built by Bedell, the Cedarhurst.

Within a decade more automobiles and fewer horses populated New York’s streets.  One-by-one the boarding stables were either closed or converted into garages, as happened to the Cedarhurst in 1908.  The Claremont hung on, however.

On January 6, 1928, the then-current owner Emil Wellner made an eyebrow-raising announcement.  The Claremont was to become a riding academy.  Aspiring equestrians were given both private or group lessons in dressage and jumping by a staff of between 15 to 20 instructors.  Veteran riders could rent horses for an afternoon ride on Central Park’s bridle path after navigating Manhattan traffic from the academy to the park.

Despite the comfortable success of the Claremont Riding Academy, Wellner had bigger plans.  Nine years later, in 1937, he filed plans with the city to raze the building and erect a garage.  The plans were rejected because the proposed garage was too close to a public school. And so the Academy lived on.

Wellner sold the Academy to his bookkeeper, Irwin Novogard, in 1943.  The building was threatened again when, in 1956, the city proposed a major urban renewal project that would replace the existing buildings in the area with a large public housing project.  Within the decade, dozens of buildings had been acquired through condemnation, including the Claremont, and many razed.  The Academy clung on, existing on a by month-to-month lease.

The fiscal crisis of 1977 forced the city to abandon its public housing designs.  Novogard’s son Paul quickly sought landmark status from the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission in an effort to prevent any further threats to the building.

All the while young riders were still taking their lessons at the Academy and stalwart horsemen and women braved New York streets to ride in Central Park.

Landmark status came in 1990 and, finally, the city sold the building back to Novogard in 1998, 37 years after having condemned the structure.  A $2 million restoration followed which unfortunately resulted in heavy costs to the Academy in increased real estate taxes and property insurance.  And yet the Claremont Riding Academy, the oldest stables in Manhattan, plodded on.

The death blow came for the Academy unexpectedly--not from the threat of the wrecker’s ball but from the Commissioners of Central Park.  The deep cinder bridle paths had historically been maintained solely for the use of horses.  But shortly after 2000, the park allowed bicyclists, joggers and pedestrians on the paths and, worse yet, discontinued maintenance.  With the new congestion–what Paul Novogard termed “a fearful running of the gauntlet”--coupled with the lack of maintenance, riders could no longer canter along the trails. Patronage at the Claremont fell off.

On April 29, 2007, after operating for 115 years, the Claremont closed its doors forever.

The New York Times commented, “At the very least, the closing of the Claremont stables means that Manhattan is a less surprising place…And so we will never again walk along West 89th Street and be overcome by the deeply nostalgic smell of horses, and may never again have the surprising pleasure of coming upon a horse and rider in the park…New York is certainly a human city, filled as it is with humans. But the loss of this stable makes us wonder whether the city wasn’t more human still when we shared so much more of it with horses.”

After plans to convert the building to apartments fell through, it was purchased by the Stephen Gaynor School, a private school for children with learning difficulties.