The Squadron A Club -- 1321 Madison Avenue

 

photo via nyc-architecture.com

In the late 1880's the tide of fashion was moving ever northward, past the millionaires' Midtown mansions.  In the neighborhood that would later be known as Carnegie Hill stalwart developers were replacing small farms and wooden houses with upscale dwellings.

In February 1890 developer James v. S. Woolley purchased the large plot at the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and 93rd Street from Seth M. Milliken.  The $40,000 price for the vacant parcel reflected the soaring property values in the neighborhood.  It would equal $1.16 million today.

James E. Ware designed a row of five brick and stone houses in the popular Queen Anne style for the site.  The corner house was the most impressive.  Three stories tall above an English basement, its avenue façade was faced in brownstone.  A dramatic story-high dormer broke through the cornice of the pyramidal attic floor.  

Ware placed the entrance on 93rd Street where a sideways stoop rose to the entrance.  Here the architect departed from Queen Anne, embellishing the doorway with carved Renaissance Revival pilasters and an ornate hood.  The motif was echoed in the arched window to the side.  The entranceway was crowned by a stone balustrade that matched the stoop railings.

The fact that Woolley did not sell No. 1321 Madison Avenue until November 1892 may have been a reflection of the commercialization of the thoroughfare.  The problem that had plagued Fifth Avenue millionaires stopped at Central Park, where the now one-sided avenue did not lend itself to stores, restaurants and hotels.  But the wide avenues to the east were fertile ground.

Martin Frank first purchased the house, and it changed hands several more times until 1911 when the newly-organized Squadron A Club acquired the property.  On September 14 that year the club was incorporated "to conduct a clubhouse for Squadron A and Troop A of New York City."

The mansion was conveniently close to the Squadron A Armory on Park Avenue and 94th Street.  The group had unlikely origins.  In 1884 some of the wealthiest and most prominent of New York's gentlemen banded together in their love of horsemanship.  They created a private unit—originally a social club—called the First New York Hussars or First Dragoons.  The men drilled at Dickel’s Riding Academy where they had use of an assembly room and lockers.  They created their own dress uniforms based on London’s 10^th Hussars.   

At the same time the National Guard had a problem.  Since 1877 it had had no mounted unit.  Whenever an escort was required for visiting Presidents or other dignitaries, the infantry or artillery made do.  More importantly, military leaders became concerned about the lack of a cavalry in the major urban area.   

And so in 1889 the 53-man unit became Troop “A,” an official part of the New York National Guard.   The Troop was put under the command of West Point trained Major Charles F. Roe, a veteran of the Civil War and former Indian fighter.  

The elite members, accustomed to smoking rooms and evening clothes, found themselves quickly in less than elegant conditions.  In August 1892 the Troop was sent to Buffalo, New York to quell the riots that erupted during the railroad strike there. 

Even before the Squadron A Club was formed, the Squadron and Troop A acted the part of a gentlemen's club within its armory when their services were not needed.  “The organization resembles a club in other social customs,” remarked The Times on January 23, 1898.  “’Smokers’ and entertainments for various purposes are held from time to time in its assembly room and outside of their homes.  The reading hall is always free to members of the organization."

Now ensconced in the Madison Avenue mansion, the Squadron A Club had the well-appointed spaces its wealthy members were accustomed to--dining rooms, billiard and card rooms, a reading room and such.  It was the scene of receptions and dinners, and offered members sleeping rooms on the upper floors.  (When well-to-do families closed their homes for the summer months, men who came back to town to conduct business would most often stay at their clubs.)

Reflecting its beginnings, the club was best known for its polo playing.  On June 25, 1916 The Sun wrote, "Squadron A. has kept up the game [at Van Cortlandt Park] for fifteen years and several very fine players and teams have been graduated from the regimental field to win cups at the club  tournaments."  The club held an annual open tournament in September.

The size of the club's stable was evidenced in 1916 when the National Guard seized horses for military use.  "A present day instance of the adaption of polo mounts is that the call for the mobilization of the militia transferred automatically the fifty-two nags in the polo barn of the Squadron A Club at Van Cortlandt Park into active service," reported The Sun on June 25.

On February 20, 1920 The Sun reminisced about the 
accomplished players that had filled its rolls.  "Undoubtedly the strongest player developed by the Squadron A club is J. Cheever Cowdin, who in polo circles at present is regarded as a contender for a place on the next American international polo team," it said.  "Others of note were Leavitt J. Hunt, Joseph Hunt and Alexander D. B. Pratt."

But that had ended.  The Squadron's polo club, "which for nearly twenty years furnished New York with the only polo matches that were open to the public gaze, has disbanded," reported The Sun.   Simultaneously the Squadron A Club left its Madison Avenue clubhouse, moving to rented rooms in the Biltmore Hotel.

By the time Daniel Casey, Jr. purchased the building from Mildred S. Wells in February 1923 it had been converted to "two-room and bath apartments," according to The New York Times.

The march of commerce finally caught up with No. 1321 Madison Avenue in 1930 when a renovation resulted in a projecting two-story commercial extension at the front, a single apartment on the third floor and a duplex on the fourth and attic level. 

photo via NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

At mid-century the Caligor Physicians' Supply Co. was in the ground floor.  Beginning in 1959 the upper floors were home to members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Mission staff.  

A renovation completed in 2017 resulted in a single family residence above the ground floor store.  Soviet Mission staff member Nikolai Aleksandrovich Sakharov resided there at the time.

Despite the 1920's renovations, the charm of James Ware’s corner house remains evident today.  With only a little imagination one can envision an 1890's mother hurrying her children up the outside stairs, finally home again.

non-credited photos by the author

The Lillian S. Thomas Dodge House - 6 East 67th Street

In 1880 the prolific architect James E. Ware designed three matching rowhouses for real estate developer Ira E. Doying at what was then numbered 4 through 8 East 67th Street.  Completed the following year, the brick-faced homes rose four stories above high English basements.  Designed in the Queen Anne style, they featured a two-story angled bay and grouped openings at the fourth floor which morphed into a pointed gable.  At 27-feet wide, the homes were intended for well-to-do owners.  In September 1882 Doying sold No. 4 to Victory Henry Rothschild for $90,000--more than $2.3 million today.  

The Rothschild house can be glimpsed at the far right side of this photo.   Architectural Record 1904 (copyright expired)

Rothschild (who preferred to go by his first initial and second name) was born in 1835 in Germany, one of seven children.  He arrived in America in 1852 at the age of 17 and headed to Oakland, California.  The young man's business sense took him to the Midwest and the South until the Civil War prompted him to move to New York City.  His brother Marx came from Germany and the pair partnered in Rothschild Brothers, which manufactured "negligee shirts."  By now the firm was named V. Henry Rothschild & Co.

V. Henry and his wife, the former Josephine Wolf, had five children, Irene, Victor Sidney, Gertrude, Constance Lily and Clarence.  America's Successful Men of Affairs called the 67th Street house "handsomely appointed" and noted that Rothschild's "fine library, and collection of paintings bear witness to his artistic tastes."

V. Henry Rothschild, from America's Successful men of Affairs, 1896 (copyright expired)

It was not long after moving in that Rothschilds flexed those artistic tastes further by doing major redecorating.  On August 23, 1884 The Record & Guide reported "Mr. V. Henry Rothschild is about to have elaborate interior decorations made to the front parlor of his house, No. 4 East Sixty-seventh street, in the Louis XVI style, on which he will expend some $6,000."   The owners had hired well-known architect Alfred Zucker to make the renovations, which cost the equivalent of just over $160,000 today.

America's Successful Men of Affairs said "Mr. Rothschild is essentially a home man and has never been what is generally called a club man.  He has, however, long been a member of the Harmonie and Players' clubs and the Board of Trade & Transportation."  

The Harmonie Club was a social organization for wealthy Jewish men.  Because Jews were not accepted into the mainstream clubs, they formed their own.  Another such club was the Progress Club, of which Marx Rothschild was a member.

Marx was there on the evening of March 8, 1904 when he suffered a heart attack.  The New York Times reported "He lived with his daughter, Mrs. Mark J. Straus, at 77 East Eighty-ninth Street, but it was not deemed prudent to carry him so far after he was stricken."  He was brought, instead, to his brother's home.  He died there the following morning."

Jewish families--no matter how wealthy--were also not included among the "cottagers" of Newport and other fashionable summer resorts.  So, again, they established their own enclaves.  Among them was Long Branch, New Jersey where the Rothschilds were visible among summer society.  V. Henry, as well, erected what were called the "Rothschild Cottages" there.

On May 17, 1911 the Long Branch Daily Record reported that Rothschild had died in the 67th Street house.  It mentioned his treatment of his employees (of which there were now about 7,000) by erecting "communal settlements" for them near the two large factories in New Jersey and New York State.  The article added "In philanthropic work Mr. Rothschild took an active interest...He was one of the founders of the Mount Sinai Hospital and a director of the Montefiore Home."

Rothschild's estate was reported at nearly $3.25 million in today's money.  Josephine received about one-third of that amount, but was "requested to make gifts to Mount Sinai Hospital and the Montefiore Home in which her husband was interested," according to The Sun.

Josephine remained in the 67th Street house until her death on April 27, 1917.  The family retained possession for a few years.  Then a two-day public auction of the contents of the house was held on June 17 and 18, 1921.  The auction listing noted "Massive furnishings, cabinets, bronzes, complete massive cut-brass fenders and andirons, paintings by noted artists, draperies, rare works of art."

The house to the left retains its 1881 appearance.

The following year, on March 25, 1922, the Record & Guide reported that "Mrs. Lillian S. Thomas has purchased the house," noting that among her millionaire neighbors were Elbert H. Gary, chairman of the board of the United States Steel Corporation, and George J. Gould.

Born Lillian Sefton, Lillian had begun her career on the stage.  She married Vincent Thomas in 1905.  One of her friends, Margaret Ayer, was the daughter of Harriet Hubbard Ayer, the founder of a women's "toilet preparations" firm.  Harriet died in 1903 and Lillian now urged her new husband to purchase the rights to the the name.  The pair embarked on expanding the business and, following Thomas's death in 1918, Lillian managed to make it one of world's major cosmetic companies. 

Before moving into the 67th Street house she had the architectural firm of Clinton & Russell remodel it.  They removed the stoop, pulled the facade nearly to the property line, and produced a 1920's take on Beaux Arts--a style that had essentially fallen from favor a generation earlier.  But Clinton & Russell's treatment of the style was much more restrained than the fussy, garland-draped confections of the turn of the century.  

The ground floor was nearly unadorned.  Its centered entrance given a simple frame over which was a carved cartouche.  Pierced stonework below two of the second floor windows pretended to be balustrades.  Only at this level were there ornamental keystones.  The third and fourth floor openings wore iron railings and the fifth floor took the form of a copper mansard with three stone dormers.

By the time the renovations were completed in 1923 Lillian had remarried.  Her husband was Robert Leftwich Dodge, described by The New York Times as "a graduate of the Beaux Arts in Paris [who] spent most of his life abroad."  It added "His stained-glass paintings are to be found in the Library of Congress and many other public buildings, and at Vassar College."  Living with them was Lillian's daughter, Mary Sefton Thomas.

Lillian had expanded into a full line of women's cosmetics.  In 1922 she applied for the trademarks Odo-R-Off, a deodorant, and LaJoconde, the brand name of "toilet creams and toilet powders."

That same year she and Robert gave Clinton & Russell a second project--the design of their country home on a 86-acre estate to be called Sefton Manor on the North Shore of Long Island.

Sefton Manor (original source unknown)

In 1930 developer Michael E. Paterno demolished the Fifth Avenue mansions at the southeast corner of 67^th Street and erected an apartment building.  He placed the entrance on the side street rather than the avenue.  After a lengthy court case, he won the right to the address No. 2 East 67^th Street—which meant that the house at No. 2 became No. 4; and the change of addresses dominoed down the block.  The Dodges' stationery and cards now read No. 6 East 67^th Street.

That same year Lillian found herself in hot water with U. S. Customs.  She and Robert had sailed to Europe that January, returning on the Ile de France in April with 12 trunks and two crates.   They declared $17,000 value on the contents.  But agents opened each of the trunks and crates and disagreed on the valuation.

On April 18, 1930 The Brooklyn Daily Times ran a front-page headline: "Mrs. R. L. Dodge Faces Huge Fine In Customs Case."  The article said "Officials engaged in examining the seized property say the estimate placing the value at $200,000 'is conservative.'"  Lillian had not been shopping only for gowns.  The article said that "jewelry filled two large suitcases."  It included "a waist length diamond necklace with diamond tassels, many diamond and emerald watches, bracelets, rings, pendants and brooches."

Having her new things held up in Customs was a potential problem for Lillian.  "Mrs. Dodge is quoted by Customs officials as saying she was willing to pay the fine provided she could have the goods in time to use at parties during the Easter season."  The staggering fine was reported at between $160,000 to $200,000--upwards to more than $3 million today.

The Dodges also maintained a home in Paris.  All three residences were routinely the scenes of lavish entertainments.  But the Long Island mansion would be the setting of an especially important event in 1932.  On May 7 the New York Evening Post reported "Mr. and Mrs. Robert Leftwich Dodge of 6 East Sixty-seventh Street, Sefton Manor, Mill Neck, Long Island, and Paris, announce the engagement of Miss Mary Sefton Thomas to Mr. Frans Blom."  It added "The wedding will take place at the Mill Neck country home of Mr. and Mrs. Dodge about the middle of June."

The Dodges were at Sefton Manor on July 16, 1940 when Robert died at the age of 68 "after a long illness," as reported by a newspaper.  The New York Times noted "Mr. Dodge painted murals in the Library of Congress in Washington and in the administration building of the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago.  Examples of his work in stained glass are to be found in many churches and in the chapel of Vassar College."

Lillian sold No. 6 in 1945 and within four years it became the Czechoslovakian Mission to the United Nations.  In 1962 the house was shared as the Missions of Byelorussia and Ukraine, and two years later it was home to the Cuban Mission.

The strong resentment of Cuban ex-patriots and Communists resulted in sometimes violent protests outside the United Nations and in front of the Cuban Mission.  The arrival of  Major Ernesto Che Guevara at the U.N. on December 11, 1964 was met by an anti-Communist demonstration.  It was accompanied by a 3.5-inch bazooka shell from being fired at the United Nations Headquarters.

The New York Times reported "Later, eight demonstrators, who described themselves as Cuban exiles, showed up at the Cuba mission at 6 East Sixty-Seventh Street.  They carried signs protesting the appearance of Major Guevara at the United Nations."  Police barricaded both sides of 67th Street and part of Fifth Avenue.

The Dodge house today is home to the Permanent Representative of the Slovak Republic to the United Nations.  Other than replacement windows, it looks outwardly little different that it did immediately following its remarkable make-over in 1923.

photographs by the author
many thanks to Luci Murphy for suggesting this post

The Lost U. S. Grant House - 3 East 66th Street

When this photo was taken, only No. 3 survived of the original row.  It had lost its rooftop balustrade by now.  original source unknown

In 1881 developer C. W. Luyster completed a row of seven "magnificent brown stone residences," as described by the Real Estate Record & Guide, on the north side of 66th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues.  Designed by James E. Ware, each was an ample 34-feet wide and rose four stories above an English basement.  The architect dipped into several styles to produce the row--wide Italianate stoops led to the entrance porticoes and delicately-carved neo-Classical panels decorated the space between the second and third floor openings.  The angular personalities of the homes drew from Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec.  Ware alternated the full-height commodious bays from left to right down the row, creating a rhythmic undulation.

Luyster placed a $120,000 price tag on each of the houses, nearly $3 million today.  The last to be sold was No. 3, the nearest to Fifth Avenue and Central Park.  On August 6, 1881 the Record & Guide reported "Ex-President U. S. Grant has clearly made up his mind to become a resident of New York.  Within the last few days he has purchased a residence in the finest quarter of the city.  It is situated [at] No. 3 East Sixty-sixth street."  In a separate article the journal noted "General Grant carefully examined the property before purchasing."

Luyster was generous to the former President and Civil War hero.  The Record & Guide noted "The price paid (90,000) was considered very low."  In fact, the mansion cost Grant nothing.  He paid for it from the $250,000 "which has been raised by the admirers of General Grant to make him comfortable during the rest of his life," explained the publication.

There would be no professional involved in the decorating.  D. Appleton & Co.'s Artistic Houses called it "spacious and well-appointed" and said it "is furnished in a style that speaks of comfort rather than of ostentation.  There has been no lavish outlay of money to produce mere effects."  In what seemed almost an apology for that, the writer said "General Grant seems to have said to himself...Many of my friends, to be sure, would put themselves in the midst of a much more costly and luxurious environment.  This is not my taste."

The Aesthetic Movement, with its importance on things Asian, was in full evidence in Julia Grant's decorating.  The book noted that the curtains in the parlor windows "are beautiful specimens of Japanese embroidery...and Mrs. Grant purchased in India the fine rug that adorns the floor."  An embroidered screen was a present from the citizens of Tokyo.  Two intricately carved teakwood cabinets, also from Japan, held the Grants' collection of porcelains collected during their travels through Asia.  Other gifts displayed in the parlor were a pair of carved elephant tusks from the Maharajah of Jehore and a silver cabinet in the form of a temple from the Maharajah of Decca.  Of that unique piece Artistic Houses said "Perhaps nothing like it has ever been displayed in a private house in this country."

The Grant parlor was filled with Asian artifacts.  To the left is a mother-of-pearl inlaid upright piano, the latest in fashion.  To the right can be seen Read's painting of Sheridan.  Artistic Houses, 1886 (copyright expired)

Two of the oil paintings in the parlor were of other Union generals.  Grant's favorite was Sheridan Twenty Miles Away, by Thomas Buchanan Read.  He liked it so much that he refused to give it to General Philip Sheridan, a good friend, when he asked for it.  The other was a full-length portrait of General Winfield Scott by George Fuller.  Also in the parlor was a family portrait by William Cogswell, painted around 1871 when the children were still young.  Also on the first floor were the drawing room and dining room.

The dining room was "simply and quite charmingly furnished in white-oak, with the general's monogram stamped on the backs of the chairs." 

Directly above the parlor was Grant's bedroom, connected to the library which overlooked 66th Street.  The library, of course, held Grant's substantial number of books, but valuable gifts presented to him over the years as well.  Of the large antique oak cabinet in the room Artistic Houses said "No piece of furniture in the United States of America contains a display of curiosities at once so flattering to the owner and so rich in historic interest."

There were more than a half-dozen gold-headed canes, one of which had been owned by the Marquis de Lafayette and had been presented by ladies of Baltimore.  There was also the handle of the cane Grant broke during the struggle "with a lunatic" in Washington.  Artistic Houses said "The general's use of that instrument as a weapon was exceedingly dexterous, and resulted in the speedy discomfiture of his assailant."

The City of London had given Grant a gold box decorated with a figure of Liberty, the United States coat-of-arms and the figure of Britannia.  One on side was the Capitol Building and on the other St. Jame's Palace.  A box from Dublin was fashioned from wood reputedly from a tree planted by Shakespeare; a silver casket was the gift of Edinburgh, and a silver repousse, gilded, was from the city of Glasgow.

There were also swords carried in battle during the Civil War and lavishly-decorated and jeweled presentation swords; and on one table stood a miniature gold reproduction of the table on which General Lee signed the articles of capitulation.

The library's fireplace, overmantel and bookcases were in the Eastlake style.  A dainty china spittoon sits next to the brass fender.  Artistic Houses, 1886 (copyright expired)

Having been a war hero and a United States President, Ulysses S. Grant now embarked on a new career.  He partnered with Ferdinand Ward to form the investment firm Grant & Ward.  In the meantime Julia slipped into the Manhattan social swirl.

On January 31, 1883 The New York Times reported that she had given "an afternoon tea" the day before.  While that may sound like an intimate gathering of half-a-dozen close women friends, there were, in fact, more than 30 guests.  Among those arriving at No. 3 East 66th Street that afternoon were Caroline Schermerhorn Astor and her daughter, Carrie; John Jacob Astor and his wife; Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt; Mrs. Paran Stevens; the William K. Vanderbilts; and Ward McAllister and his daughter.

But disaster was just around the corner.  Unknown to Grant, Ferdinand Ward was operating a pyramid scheme, earning him the modern sobriquet the "Bernie Madoff of the Gilded Age."  And as with all such cases, the house of cards came tumbling down.  On May 6, 1884 Grant left East 66th Street thinking himself a millionaire.  The New York Times remarked "When he arrived at his place of business in Wall Street, he found he was ruined.  As he entered the office he was met by his son, Ulysses Jr., who said: 'You had better go home, father, the bank has failed.'  A few minutes later the elder Grant got into his carriage and was driven home.  He never returned to Wall Street."

He and Julia counted their cash and discovered they had about $80.  The Grant sons, who also lived in the house, had already ordered a supply of cigars to last several months.  Those were immediately returned.  To make the situation worse, Grant had recently been diagnosed with throat cancer.

Newspapers were filled with the story of the firm's collapse and of the financial ruin of the former president.  Charles Wood, an upstate brush manufacturer read the accounts with concern.  And on May 10 sent a gift of $500 and a letter offering to loan him another $1,000.  Two days later Grant replied;

Dear Sir:  Your more than kind letter on Saturday, inclosing check for $500, and proposing to send the like amount on my note, payable in one year, without interest, is received.  The money at this time would be of exceeding use to me, having not enough to pay one months servant hire, or room, if I were to leave my house, and nothing coming in till the 1st of August.  I therefore accept the check just received, and this is my acknowledgment of a debt of one year from this date, on the terms of your letter.

The Grants' dire financial circumstances were again reflected in a letter to Wood after the $1,000 loan arrived.  Grant said in part:

You have conferred an obligation more than I can ever repay.  The money, of course, I do not doubt I can return.  But, being caught without $100 in my pocket, and nothing coming in until August, it became a serious question what to do.  You, in the generosity of your heart, have relieved that anxiety.

Julia owned property in Washington, including a house that sold for $6,500, giving them money to live on.  Samuel Clemens, a good friend, urged Grant to write his memoirs, which added to their income.

But the stress and humiliation of the situation took their toll on the proud statesman and military leader.  By the spring of 1885 Grant's doctor was practically living in the house and he routinely sent "bulletins" to the press on his patient's condition.  Crowds formed outside No. 3, staring up at the second floor in hopes of a glimpse of the president.

A feeble Grant was helped into his carriage outside the 66th Street house in one of his last public outings. Harper's Weekly April 11, 1885 (copyright expired) 

On March 19, 1885 The Sun reported "It is several days since Gen. Grant has been down stairs.  He is confined to his library and bedroom except when he walks for exercise in the hall."  The throat cancer was interfering with his ability to speak and swallow.

Crowds assembled below Grant's windows.  The other houses in the row can be seen in this view.  Harper's Weekly April 11, 1885 (copyright expired) 

On July 24, 1885 The Sun reported "With one last weary opening and closing of the eyes and a little gasp so faint that it was but a gentle sigh, Gen. Grant expired this morning as peacefully and painlessly as a tired child might fall asleep.  Death could hardly come to any man freer from terror than it came to him."

Twelve years later, on February 12, 1893, The New York Times mentioned "Mrs. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant is an active lady of about seventy years.  At present Mrs. Grant is in California visiting her son, but the greater part of the Winter was spent in town at the house 3 East Sixty-sixth Street, which was presented to Gen. Grant."  In fact, she would not return to 66th Street.

Two weeks later The Record & Guide announced she had sold the house to her neighbor, Henry O. Havemeyer, for $130,000 (about $3.65 million today).

The Henry O. Havemeyer house sat at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 66th Street.  The Grant house was directly behind. photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Havemeyer's interest in the house was most likely merely to ensure his new neighbors would be acceptable to him.  He quickly sold it to Phillips Phoenix and his wife, Eleanor.  Phoenix owned much real estate, including their country home in Tuxedo, New York.  In 1879 he had erected the Madison Square Theatre on West 24th Street.  His 31-foot ice yacht "to be used this Winter on Tuxedo Lake," as reported in The Times, had caused much comment in December 1886.

Eleonor Phoenix died in the mansion on March 4, 1902.  Phillips remarried within the next few years.  Despite his somewhat flamboyant past, the middle-aged millionaire and his new wife, the former Lillie G. Lewis, lived rather quietly in the stately, if architecturally outdated home.

Phillips died at No. 3 on April 11, 1921.  He left approximately half of his $2.7 million estate to Lillie, including the house.  Her inheritance would be more in the neighborhood of $18 million today.  By the time of Lillie's death in the house on October 13, 1924 No. 3 was the last of the 1881 row left standing.

Four months after her death, in February 1925, the house was thrown open for a public auction of "paintings and sculpture, together with the French furniture and household embellishments" from Lillie's estate.  The several-day sale brought in $33,252.50, or nearly half a million today.

What followed was a dizzying change of ownership and repeated promises to build an apartment building on the site.  The house was sold in 1926 to "be demolished and replaced by a twelve-story apartment house," according to The Times on October 5.  Instead the house sat empty for two years, sold in foreclosure in June 1928.

In 1926 the stoop had been removed and a For Sale sign hangs across a parlor window.  from the collection of the New York Public Library 

It was purchased by former Ambassador James W. Gerard, who resold it in February 1929.  Then, on August 5, 1930 it was sold to builder Michael E. Paterno who promised he "would soon demolish the house and improve the site with an apartment house to accommodate five families."

That did not happen and the former Grant mansion sat neglected, now with its stoop removed, for another three years when Paterno lost it in foreclosure on January 20, 1933.  Four months later a "For Sale" sign hung on the facade.  On April 4, 1933 The New York Times write "The old home is in a condition strongly suggesting 'haunted.'"  Vandals had gained access through the rear windows and defaced the interiors of the historic home.

When the Trans-Boro Realty Corporation purchased it in August that year, saying it planned "to improve the site," New Yorkers may have been skeptical.  But a month later architects Boak & Paris filed plans for a nine-story apartment house to cost $100,000.  Before long the historic home was a mere memory.

Boak & Paris's Art Moderne building survives.

many thanks to reader Peter Alsen for requesting this post

The Edward Durell Stone House - 130 East 64th Street

The facade originally matched that of the house next door, to the right.

The first decade following the end of the Civil War saw rapid development of the Upper West Side.  In 1878 developer Richard Hennessey completed a row of five surprisingly narrow houses, each just 15 feet wide, on 64th Street between Lexington and Park Avenues.

Designed by architect James E. Ware, their identical neo-Grec facades were distinguished by a sharply angled second-floor oriel supported by a chunky bracket that grew out of a parlor floor pilaster.  The high stoops, architrave openings, and bracketed cornices were expected elements of the style.

By the mid-1890s No. 130 was home to bachelor Charles Auguste Valadier.   The young doctor had graduated from Columbia University in 1892.  His medical skills would far outshine (and apparently replace) his photographic skills.

The year before his graduation, in 1891, the had hobbyist submitted his work in the Photographic Exhibition at the American Institute Fair.  Photographic Times was brutally frank in its assessment of his candid shots.  "Chas. A. Valadier shows some 'Detective' snapshots.  They are mostly under-exposed and are badly printed and mounted."  The magazine did find redemption in one shot, though.  "No. 247 is an excellent enlargement of a dog, instantaneously taken."

Valadier turned his focus to his medical practice and the study of cancer.   His pioneering research drew national attention within the medical community.  On January 2, 1897 the Kansas Medical Journal reported on his demonstration at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.  The article said in part "Dr. Charles A. Valadier exhibited under the microscope a section from a giant cell sarcoma of the tibia...and was presented because it exhibited some interesting features of giant cells."

The doctor took time out for romance and on February 28, 1899 he married Regina Kartschmaroff.  The newlyweds would be looking for a new home before many years.  In 1905 he sold the 64th Street house to Isaiah Frank.

As the decades passed most of the houses along the block were altered or razed to conform with current architectural fashion.  But No. 130 retained its Victorian personality.  By the Great Depression years it was home to unmarried heiress Mary P. Jones.

Mary had four sisters and a brother.  When her mother, Annie C. Jones, died in 1919, she left extensive real estate holdings in Manhattan, Long Island, and upstate New York to her children.  Mary and her siblings, Loretta and William, were executors of the estate.  The arrangement did not end well.

In 1921 William felt it best to liquidate the real estate.  The properties were sold off one by one; but William soon felt he was not getting his fair share.   A contentious breach in relations between William and Loretta ended with his suing his sisters in an ugly court battle in 1938.

In the meantime, Mary lived quietly in the 64th Street house, involving herself with charities and philanthropies.   In March 1931, for instance, she was head of the benefit committee that staged a bridge party at Delmonico's for the Fresh Air and Convalescent Home of St. Vincent de Paul.  She was for years a director in the St. Rose's Settlement.  Located on East 71st Street, its goal was not only to conduct classes for the poor in sewing, cooking and singing, but to "give religious instruction to neglected and ignorant children and adults."

Mary's funeral was held in the house on March 1, 1951 followed by a solemn requiem mass at St. Vincent Ferrer Church a little more than a block away at Lexington Avenue and 65th Street.

Mary Jones's house (center of shot) as it appeared when Edward Durell Stone purchased it.  photo courtesy of Hicks Stone

Her house became home to architect Edward Durell Stone and his family.  As had been done elsewhere on the block three and four decades earlier, in 1956 Stone transformed the outdated house into an architecturally current structure.

On November 22, 1959 The New York Times commented that the use "of concrete filigrees and other meshed materials are coming into wide use for all types of interior areas--homes, offices and stores" and added "The use of filigreed masonry received its strongest impetus, perhaps, from the effective way it was applied a few years ago by Edward D. Stone, architect, on the exterior of the United States Embassy in New Delhi India, and subsequently the United States Pavilion at the Brussels World's Fair."  (The screen was, in fact, used on the detached theater building of the United States complex, not the Pavilion proper.)

Stone's masterful embassy building in Delhi was veiled in what became his signature filigree panels © Copyright 2017, Hicks Stone, All reproduction rights reserved.

For his own home, Stone removed the stoop and dropped the entrance to the basement level.  According to his youngest son, architect Benjamin Hicks Stone III, relocating the doorway "had the added effect of increasing the dramatic nature of the entry as the expansive first floor suddenly struck you as you emerged from the interior stairs."

As he had done in some of his major commissions, he distinguished the facade with a filigree screen; its material described by his son (known best his middle name Hicks) as "cast concrete block with embedded marble chips, much like terrazzo but with a coarser matrix."  The spellbinding geometric pattern variously became circles, squares or diamond shapes, depending on the viewer's immediate perspective.

Stone was early-on influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright.  The architects had meet at Wright's home and studio, Taliesin, in the summer of 1940.  The bold, clean facade provided privacy while admitting light.  And it announced in no mistakable terms that the mid-century had arrived on East 64th Street.

Stone extended the renovations to the interiors, removing walls and incorporating his filigree motif not only in partitions--actually sliding doors modeled on the shoji panels seen in Japanese residential architecture--but in one case as the framework below the luminous ceiling.  But unlike most architects at the time, Stone respected the history of his vintage home.  In one room James E. Ware's 1878 details--fireplaces and overmantels, and staircase railings, for example, now coexisted with starkly modern features.  According to Hicks Stone, "In fact he embellished Ware's original woodwork by adding wood paneling where there would have simply been plaster."

Edward D. Stone preserved many of the Victorian details.  Sadly a recent owner ripped out Ware's woodwork, creating a sterile white space.  .  photograph via agorafy

The Stones' living room as it appeared while they lived here.  photo by Alexandre Georges for Interiors magazine, courtesy Hicks Stone

Edward Durell Stone died in 1978.  Years of weather and the expansion and contraction of steel reinforcing bars supporting the screen threatened its stability; and in fact chunks of concrete were falling away.   Hicks Stone removed the grill, faithfully reproduced and replaced it.

No. 130 East 64th Street was briefly denuded.  photograph by Edmund Vincent Gillon from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

When Andrew Cogan and Lori Finkel purchased the house in 2004, they commissioned Hicks Stone to restore it and simultaneously update the kitchen, baths and mechanical systems.  The project was completed in 2005.   Fully aware of the architectural treasure with which they were entrusted, the owners donated an easement to the Trust for Architectural Easements; ensuring that Edward Stone's front and rear facades could never be altered.

The grill pattern was repeated on the luminous ceiling here (originally lined with rice paper), while providing an interesting architectural element.  photograph via agorafy

Stone's distinctive design, which remained controversial for decades, was perhaps best described on November 8, 2013 by The New York Times columnist Robin Finn who said it "stands out like a snowflake on its tree-lined block."


non-credited photographs by the author
many thanks to Benjamin Hicks Stone III for his invaluable input and information

The Alabama House -- Nos. 219-221 Bowery

By the end of the Civil War the Bowery had changed from an upscale street of brick-faced homes.  Businesses, music halls and biergartens replaced them one-by-one as the influx of immigrants changed the street's personality.

In 1867 the building at No. 221 was shared by a tobacco store and a “store and range warehouse.”  Already the neighborhood was the center of Manhattan’s German immigrant community.  James D. McCabe described it in 1883 as “the paradise of beer saloons, bar-rooms, concert and dance halls, cheap theatres, and low-class shows…The population of the street is largely German, and at night and on holiday occasions the Bowery constitutes the favorite resort of the pleasure-seekers of this nationality.”

By at least 1876 William H. Jackson owned both Nos. 219 and 220 Bowery.  In 1889 he demolished both and commissioned James E. Ware to design matching multi-purpose five story structures.  The 43-year old architect designed various buildings, but would become best remembered for his developing of the “dumbbell plan” of tenements.

The completed structures were essentially Renaissance Revival; but Ware liberally splashed them with Romanesque and Queen Anne elements.  Queen Anne made its appearance in the terra cotta frieze below the ambitious cornice and the two-story faceted bays above the cast iron storefronts.  Their angled windows now only provided dimension, but captured wisps of breezes in the summer months.  Romanesque Revival appeared in the top floor arcade, the rounded bullnosed brick corners of the upper floors, and the unique pilaster capitals—a marriage of Corinthian and medieval ornament.

The majority of the four upper floor space in both buildings (soon purchased by Nathaniel H. Lyons) were operated as the Alabama Hotel.  James McCabe had noted that “All along the street you her the sharp crack of the rifles in the shooting-galleries.”  One of these was the Zettler Rifle Club, which moved into the slightly wider, southern portion of Jackson’s new building.  The club installed a shooting range and club rooms in its space; while tenants of moderate income lived in the rest of the building.

Ware's pilaster capitals were unique.

Among them was Traugott Hampel who had come to New York from Manheim, Germany, at the age of 22--the same year the Alabama House was finished.  He found a job as a janitor in a school in Hoboken, where he met Sophie Klehrmunt.  After Sophie was hired as a servant in a Lexington Avenue house, she left Traugott.

Heartbroken, he moved to New York to be near her, working at a variety of jobs.  His worried family finally convinced him to return to Germany.  Once there, his father set him up in business and arranged a courtship with a young woman.  In 1891 a wedding day was set and a house for the soon-to-be newlyweds procured.  And then in February a letter from Sophie Klehrmunt arrived.  In it, according to The New York Times “she pretended that she had reconsidered her decision” and “Traugott hurried back to America.”

He got a job in a picture frame factory on Rivington Street, around the corner from the Alabama House.  But now that she had lured him back, the fickle Sophie changed her mind again.  After three months of what The Times called “tiffs,” the lovelorn Traugott could take no more.

The 25-year old put a pistol to his skull in his room at the Alabama House on May 9.  He left a slip of paper which read “Lived, loved, and suffered—God protect my loved ones.”

The Zettler Rifle Club held annual shooting contests in its indoor range.  No small events, they lasted for days.  On February 24, 1892 The Sun reported that they would begin “on Sunday, March 27, and continued for two days following.”  Cash prizes were awarded to the best shots and the contests were open “to all comers.”  The names of a few of the winners that year, such as Schmitt, Engle, Hecking, Tropp and Zettler, reflected the German make-up of the club and the neighborhood. 

The Rifle Club would remain at No 219 Bowery at least through 1894.  But by then the Bowery’s reputation was degrading from German music halls and bright lights to one of crime and vice.  Perhaps the first hint of the change came on October 22, 1893 when 22-year old resident Frank Smith was arrested for burglary.  His name would be among the first of a very long list of shady Alabama House residents to be arrested over the decades to come.

On the ground floor Michael Lyons ran his Lyon’s Restaurant at No. 221, while Julius Schulz opened a saloon in No. 219 in 1895.  When the Zettler Rifle Club moved out, the Alabama House used the combined address of 219-221 Bowery, as reflected in the 1899 voter census.  By now it was no longer described as a hotel, but a “lodging house.”  The distinction was important.  Unlike hotels or boarding houses, a lodging house supplied no amenities other than sleeping accommodations.

The crooked characters who stayed at the Alabama House were epitomized by 33-year old Max Goesche.  In September 1901 the nation went into mourning after the assassination of President William McKinley.  In New York City donation boxes appeared in saloons, grocery stores, schools and shops to collect money for a fitting memorial. 

Goesche had already served six and a half years in Sing Sing for robbing express wagons.  Now, on December 8, he was arrested for robbing a McKinley memorial money box in a saloon at Delancey Street and the Bowery.  Police had been searching for the thief after he had robbed “a number of the memorial boxes in different sections of the city,” reported The New York Times.

Fred Murray lived here in 1903.  The 34-year old swindler preyed on rubes visiting the city and on May 8 he found another one.  The Sun reported that Charles Hingston of Lynn, Massachusetts was sightseeing at the Aquarium and “fell in” with Murray.  Con artists like Murray often worked with an accomplice and his was waiting.

The Sun explained that “Murray induced him to go to a saloon at 300 Canal street, owned by Leon Chavaney.  There they played some game of chance and Hingston lost $110.”  The rigged game netted the crooks the equivalent of over $3,000 in 2016 dollars.

Another tenant, Max Semel, was arrested on October 14, 1905 for passing bad checks.  At the time blank “bank checks” were available in the lobbies of banks to be filled out and cashed against depositors’ accounts.  They were convenient for respectable account holders; but unfortunately they were equally convenient for crooks.

After Semel foolishly tried to cash a second phony check in Philip Kohn’s saloon on Ludlow Street he was nabbed.  He told the judge “I don’t know how many I have given.  It was so easy that I just couldn’t keep from it.”  He explained how the scheme came to him.

“I was sitting out in Tompkins Square one day this summer thinking how I could raise money enough to go to Coney Island when I happened to think of getting a check cashed.  I got hold of a blank, wrote a check for $4 and took it into a saloon.  They gave me the money right off the bat.  I thought that looked pretty good.”

When arrested he had three check books, each originally containing 100 blanks.  There were only 25 left.  “Semel said he guessed he had got money on pretty nearly every check that had been torn out,” reported The Sun.

By now missions had cropped up all along the Bowery as reformers tried to rescue the down-and-out men and “degraded women” here.  In October 1906 The New York Times described the neighborhood around the Alabama House as “the red light district.”  The following month The Holy Name Mission used Lyon’s Restaurant to feed Thanksgiving dinner to 150 men.

Earlier that year an incident involving an unnamed house painter who was staying in the Alabama House was indicative of the dangerous and sordid environment of the Bowery.  Late on the night of October 7 he ran into Emma Wilson, a street walker well known to police.  According to her later, she “walked along the Bowery with him until they came to The Star,” a saloon at the corner of the Bowery and Hester Street.

About half an hour later her husband, William Wilson, known in the neighborhood as “Yaller,” walked in.  According to Emma, her companion “left her.”  Around 5:30 in the morning a policeman found Yaller’s lifeless body “propped against the door of ‘The Star,’” according to newspaper reports the following morning.  He had a mortal stab wound on his left side, near the heart.

Police deduced that Emma and her husband worked as a pair; and when Yaller tried to extort money from the man, he responded with a knife.  Despite Emma’s insistence that she knew nothing of the attack, she was arrested.

In March 1920 Michael F. Lyons sold the building to Joseph H. Schwartz.  The New York Times got the date slightly wrong when it reported “The building has not changed hands since 1888;” but noted that it housed the “famous Bowery restaurant…long known as Lyons’s restaurant.”

The restaurant became home to Alexander Wagner’s “coffee house.”  William O’Neill sat down on the morning of February 5, 1911 and ordered beef stew and a cup of coffee.  When the 82-year old got his bill of 13 cents, he refused to pay.  The stew had cost 10 cents, and the coffee three cents.

Wagner had the elderly man arrested.  He explained to the judge that he felt the meal was worth 12 cents, not 13.  The magistrate told him “You had better pay it.”

“Yer bet I won’t,” answered O’Neill.

“You won’t, eh?”

“Naw.”

And so the judge fined him three dollars.  Since he only had 60 cents in his pocket, he was sent to jail for three days.

Meanwhile, the tenants of the Alabama House continued to be hauled away for various crimes.  In 1912 Carl Williams was arrested for burglary, as was Alfred Fodel.  The following year Herman Kasman was captured for robbery and in 1914 David Weinberg was sentenced for burglary.

Interestingly, when Joseph A. Schwartz sold the building in May of 1916, the purchaser was William H. Lyons.  The Lyons family regained the property as part of its Lyons Hotel Company holdings.  Despite the respectable sounding name, the Alabama House only got worse.

With America’s workforce depleted by World War I, the Government took action to fill the estimated one million unskilled job openings at factories “engaged wholly or in part in war work.”  The Government opened agencies empowered to “conscript” unemployed men “for the army of toil” as described by The Sun on August 2, 1918.  One of these was established at No. 221 Bowery.

Alabama Hotel “guests” were on the target list for the agency.  On June 28 that year the New-York Tribune pointed out that “Loafers, ‘lounge lizards,’ dancing men and kindred Broadway and Bowery folk will be labeled as such.  There will be no false branding of industrial material on the part of the Federal and State employment bureaus.  An official of the former said yesterday that the Federal bureau would register the goats as well as the sheep, and would help the goats as much as they could.”

With the advent of Prohibition, at least one Alabama House inhabitant found a new source of income.  The Times reported on March 8, 1931 that 50 prohibition agents “descended upon the Bowery and lower east side yesterday shortly after 1 P. M., [and] raided twenty-two places where ‘smoke’ or colored alcohol was said to have been sold.”  Among the 26 bootleggers arrested was Fred Anderson, caught with two gallons of colored alcohol.

In 1948 the Alabama House was converted to “cubicles”--up to 67 per floor--where down-and-out “Bowery bums” could sleep.  Each contained a locker and a bed.  It now was what was commonly known as a flop-house, with its office on the second floor of No. 219.  The ground level spaces remained a store and a restaurant.

As it had done in 1906, the Holy Name Center again used the restaurant here to provide holiday meals for the homeless.  On Christmas Day 1948 it passed out 3,000 tickets for chicken dinners at the Fuerst Brothers Restaurant.

In 1967 the Lyons Houses owned about a dozen Bowery “lodging houses.”  The organization made a rather startling announcement that year.  The New York Times reported on August 6, “The Alabama Hotel in skid row area is being converted for use by artists.  The 80-by-20-foot studios, where derelicts used to sleep, will rent for about $175 a month.”  The newspaper noted that the Alabama had already been closed and the cubicles stripped out.  The conversion was completed in 1968, resulting in artists’ studios on the second and third floors, with two apartments “with artist in residence” on the fourth and fifth floors. 

Skid Row became better known as the Restaurant Supply District in the last quarter of the 20^th century.  Advance Kitchen, Inc. was in the building by 1984; followed by Chair-Up, Inc., suppler of restaurant seating.

As Chair-Up laid plans to relocate to Delancey Street in 2016, work began on cleaning out the ground floor and basement for a potential tenant.  A mystery arose in March when workers discovered a cache of weapons from the World War II era in the basement.  Included was a hand grenade which necessitated a response from the NYPD Bomb Squad.

James E. Ware’s structure has suffered significant abuse over more than a century and a quarter.  Channels have been cut through the assertive cornice for fire escape access, nothing survives of the storefronts, and the metal elements are rusting.  And yet the handsome design still commands well-deserved attention.

photographs by the author