The Edward S. Harkness Mansion - 1 East 75th Street

photograph by the author

On June 1, 1906 Edward Stephen Harkness purchased the 35 by 115 foot vacant lot at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 75th Street from John R. Ford.   Lavish mansions had been filling the immediate neighborhood throughout past ten years, and Harkness would soon add one more.

The empty lot, surrounded by wooden fencing and billboards in this shot around 1895, sat next to the massive Temple Beth El.  photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library.

Harkness was born in Cleveland, Ohio on January 22, 1874 to Stephen Vanderburgh Harkness and the former Anna M. Richardson (his second wife).  Stephen Harkness had first become wealthy providing crude oil to refineries just after the Civil War.  Later he organized the Euclid Avenue National Bank.  But it was his investment with his stepbrother, Henry Flagler, and John D. Rockfeller in Rockefeller, Andrews & Flager that would make Harkness a vast fortune.  That firm later became Standard Oil.

Edward Harkness's purchase of the vacant plot had much to do with his recent marriage.  In 1904, at the late age of 30, he married Mary Emma Stillman (who was about six months younger than he).  The daughter of attorney Thomas Edgar and Charlott Elizabeth Stillman, she, too, had grown up amidst luxurious surroundings.

On June 22, 1907, The New York Times announced that “Plans have been filed for the new five-story residence to be built by Edward S. Harkness at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Seventy-fifth Street…The house will cost $250,000 according to the estimate of Architects Hale and Rogers.”  (The cost would be more in the neighborhood of $6.73 million today).   

The lot bore an impressive Fifth Avenue address.  But Rogers designed the Italian Renaissance palazzo to face 75th Street.  By turning the structure to the side, he precluded the problem of a long, dark and narrow house.  But it caused a different problem for Harkness.

Edward Stephen Harkness - from the collection of the Thmas J. Watson Library Catalogue

Three years earlier Stuart Duncan had erected his own handsome mansion next door--at No. 1 East 75th Street.  His architect, C. P. H. Gilbert, incorporated the address in the keystone above the door.  But now Edward Harkness wanted that address.  It may have been his reserved personality that resisted the ostentatious Fifth Avenue number; or it may have been that he struggled with the logic of what was truly a 75th Street house bearing an avenue address.  Whatever the case, he demanded the address of No. 1 and got it.  Duncan had to have the bronze lettering "No 3" affixed to his keystone.  

It is commonly repeated that Stephen's mother, Anna, paid for the residence as a wedding present.  The timing, three years after the ceremony, brings that into question.  It is feasible that the house was merely a gift.

Temple Beth El can be glimpsed to the left.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The serene Renaissance palace was faced in Tennessee marble.  Pretending to contain four stories, there were actually seven--two below ground and another hidden behind the stone balustrade above the cornice.   A light moat was protected by a magnificent cast and wrought iron fence, modeled after the Scalegari tombs of Verona.

The Architectural Record was impressed.  Calling it “free from excess and exaggeration,” it added “if there is any façade on upper Fifth Avenue which gives an effect of quiet elegance by worthier architectural means it has not been our good fortune to come across it.”

Socially reserved, the Harknesses disdained ostentation and the waste of money (Edward often said "A dollar misspent is a dollar lost.")  The couple would prefer to give money to deserving causes than to spend it on pretentious entertainments.  There was, for example, no ballroom in the new mansion.  And Rogers ensured their privacy  by raising the street floor openings just above eye level.  

On one of the subterranean floors he design an innovative refrigerated room.  When temperatures outside fell an exterior door could be opened and the electricity to the room turned off, allowing nature to cool the space--another means of preventing "misspend" dollars.

None of this meant that the Harknesses would live like monks.  The sumptuous interiors drew from several styles.  The Louis XVI reception room had a frescoed ceiling, intricately carved walnut woodwork and crystal chandeliers.  

The tiger skin rug was, perhaps, unexpected in the Marie Antoinette ready reception room.  The New York Architect, March 1911 (copyright expired)

It is used as a meeting room today.  photograph by the author

The Italian Renaissance dining room, at the opposite end of the ground floor, featured a stenciled, beamed ceiling with gilt plaster of paris ornaments that imitated metal.  Two windows on the east wall would look out onto the side wall of the Duncan house.  So artisan Kenyon Cox fashioned them of opaque glass which allowed light into the room but masked the unsightly view.  

One of the pair of Kenyon Cox's windows.  The glass, called "antique" he described as "imperfect, bubbly, slightly greenish."  The Architectural Record, December 1909 (copyright expired)

He told the Architectural Record in 1909 "while I have spoken of leaded glass, the windows are actually put together with copper...and by backing the whole with plate glass, it was found possible to make them perfectly rigid without recourse to supporting bars."  They depicted the allegories of "Abundantia Maris" and "Abundantia Terrae"--the abundance of sea and of land.

The polished limestone walls of the dining room were hung with rich red antique fabrics.  The New York Architect, March 1911 (copyright expired)

Used as the Commonwealth Fund's Board Room today, the walls of the dining room are no longer covered.  Cox's magnificent leaded windows flank the fireplace.  photograph by the author

Rogers had originally designed a grand entrance hall, so arriving visitors would be met with a view of the bronze-railed staircase and polished limestone walls that resembled marble.  The Harknesses balked at the perceived pretentiousness and Rogers reworked the plans, resulting in an unusual configuration.  The entrance doors opened into a small vestibule.  Here visitors would turn left into an entrance room.  The staircase was essentially hidden behind the vestibule and only when guests moved from the reception room to the dining room would it become visible.  The ceiling of the staircase hall was a false skylight of trellises and vines, lit from behind.

For a reason unknown, the glass ceiling of the staircase hall was covered over sometime after the 1920's.  photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The second floor contained just three rooms--rarely seen by visitors.  Off the central "gallery" were the library, which double as Harkness's office, and the music room.  

The second story, or piano nobile, held just three large rooms.  The New York Architect, March 1911 (copyright expired)

The Architectural Record called the gallery "perhaps the most beautiful room in the house."  A Carrara marble fountain with a bronze figure of Pan sat below a vaulted ceiling of Greek and Pompeiian motifs and gilded bronze chandeliers.

The New York Architect, March 1911 (copyright expired)

The gallery is no less grand today.  photograph by the author

The library was paneled in richly veined Brazilian rosewood.  Rogers bathed the room in gentle light by installing dozens of electric sockets in the beams of the Italian Renaissance ceiling to accommodate small light bulbs.

A constellation of small electric bulbs dotted the Renaissance style ceiling.  The New York Architect, March 1911 (copyright expired)

Edward Harkness's library serves as the impressive office of the Commonwealth Fund's president today.  photograph by the author

At the other end of the gallery, the Venetian music room was sumptuous, with a carved ceiling that included painted canvas insets.

For an unknown reason, the music room was renovated in 1920.  Much architectural detail was eliminated, including the painted inserts on the elaborate ceiling.  

The third floor contained Mary's and Stephen's private rooms.  Mary's pretty boudoir was decorated in the French style.  Their bedroom faced 75th Street (although in a few years Stephen had remodeling done to create his own bedroom on the eastern end of the floor).

Mary's boudoir was decidedly feminine in style.  The New York Architect, March 1911 (copyright expired)

There were five guest bedrooms on the fourth floor, along with a room for a valet.  The main staircase ended at this level and access to the top floor was by a service staircase.  Here were rooms for eight female servants (the original census lists them as all Swedish) and the laundry.

Although Harkness briefly served as a director for the Southern Pacific Railroad, he soon turned his attention to full-time philanthropy.  And he was well-equipped to do so.  He already had a massive fortune when, on May 9, 1916, The New York Times reported that he had inherited "all of the stock in the Standard Oil Company" held by his brother, Charles W. Harkness, who died on May 1 that year.  This, said the newspaper, made him "the third largest holder of Standard Oil stock in the world."  The bequest was worth about $60 million at the time.  Within two years Forbes magazine deemed him the sixth-wealthiest person in the United States.

The marble fountain in the gallery survives. photograph by the author 

Harkness, who felt it was "imperative for the wealthy to give back to society through generous benefactions," was no doubt significantly influenced by his mother.  Anna Harkness was highly involved in numerous charities.   With an initial gift of $10 million she founded the Commonwealth Fund in 1918.  Its broad intention was to "enhance the common good."  Naming her son president, she stressed the importance of providing health care to low-income families, minority groups, children and the elderly.

Edward would devote much of his time, money and energy to the Commonwealth Fund.  But his and Mary's philanthropy seemed to know no bounds.  And their interest in Egyptian archaeology proved a boon to both explorers and museums.

On January 30, 1916 The Times reported that the 4,500-year-old "tomb of Perneb is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in this city, a magnificent addition to its Egyptian department.  It was presented to the museum by Edward S. Harkness."   

And the following year the newspaper reported "A small blue hippopotamus, of Egyptian faiece, is the special treasure in the collection of recent accession of the Metropolitan Museum of Art...The little animal is a gift of Edward S. Harkness, one of the trustees of the museum, and dates back to 1950 B.C."  The relic, which earned the name William, has become an icon of the museum's Egyptian collection.

collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Edward and Mary helped finance Howard Carter's second excavation season of the tomb of Tutankhamen in the winter of 1923-24.  Among the privileged few who saw the dazzling pharaoh's tomb were the Harknesses.  Archaeologist Arthur Cutenden Mace kept a detailed journal which noted on December 12, "Harknesses arrived."  They visited the tomb the following day.  His entry on December 14 included "Mrs. Harkness, Mrs. Lythgoe & Miss Stilman [sic] over in Valley [of the Kings]."

A detail of the sumptuous bronze staircase railing. photograph by the author

The Harkness name appeared in newspapers for their generous donations and funding--almost never for social activities.  While they did host luncheons and dinners, the low-profile couple did not notify the press, as most socialites did.  And when society columnists did get wind of an event, the coverage was minimal.  A one-line report in The New-York Tribune on July 3, 1922, for instance, was frustratingly bare-bones for society watchers.  "Mr. and Mrs. Edward S. Karness entertained at a luncheon at their summer home this afternoon."

That residence was their 186-acre estate "Weekend" on Long Island, designed by John Gamble Rogers.  They also maintained a 230-acred estate, "Eolia," in Waterford, Connecticut overlooking the Long Island Sound; a home in North Carolina and a "camp" in the Adirondack Mountains.

Throughout the decades the Harkness philanthropy continued unbridled.  In 1928 Harkness paid $10 million for eight residential buildings for Harvard College, completed in 1931.  In 1930 he donated $11 million to Yale for nine residential colleges, with James Gamble Rogers as architect.  

Edward died on January 30, 1940 at the age of 66.  His body was placed in the Harkness Mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.  Designed, as expected, by James Gamble Rogers, it was completed in 1924.  Reflective of the Harknesses' disdain for self-promotion or ostentation, their names appear nowhere on the structure.

Edward's will directed that his estate would go to charitable and educational institutions upon the death of his wife.  Mary Harkness died on June 7, 1950 in the white marble palazzo that had been her home for 43 years.

Mary Stillman Harkness from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Harkness fortune of $60 million was distributed to charities. The collection of art masterpieces were bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including works such as a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral, and Hans Holbein the Younger’s Portrait of a Member of the Wedigh Family.

photograph by the author

The 75th Street mansion was donated to The Commonwealth Fund, which occupies it today. As few changes as possible have been made to the interiors to accommodate administrative offices.  Much of that preservation is credited by current director curator Paul Engel to former president John E. Craig, Jr. who was coincidentally born in a Harkness hospital.

non-credited photographs taken by the author
many thanks to Paul Engle for his time, help and expertise

"Boys in the Band" and Missing Chandeliers--136 East 65th Street

In 1871 developer brothers George and John Ruddell completed a row of seven brownstone-faced rowhouses on the south side of East 65th Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues.  Designed by Frederick S. Barus, the 20-foot wide homes stood out from their peers with their full-height angled bays, sheathed in copper.  Three stories tall above an English basement, they featured stone stoops and handsome metal cornices.

No. 136 was purchased by real estate operator Thomas Kilpatrick as an investment property.  In April 1872 he advertised it as "one of those handsome three story high stoop stone Dwellings on Sixty-fifth street, near Lexington avenue."  Kilpatrick pointed out it contained "every modern improvement" and offered it at $1,500 "to a good tenant."  The monthly rent would equal about $2,600 per month today.

It would not be until the train tracks of Park Avenue were lowered and covered over that the blocks to the east would begin becoming truly fashionable.   That may have been reflected in Kilpatrick's advertisement in September 1875.  "The handsome three story brown stone house 136 East Sixty-fifth street will be rented low to good tenant."

But by 1907 when the house was sold to Frederick S. Lee things had changed.  Lee was a well-known doctor and a professor in Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.  Like Kilpatrick, it does not appear that he and his wife ever lived in the house; but leased it.  In 1909 David S. Myers as living here when he was appointed a Commissioner of Deeds.

The Lees did, however, like the neighborhood; for in 1912 they began construction of a double-wide mansion nearby at Nos. 125 and 127 East 65th Street.

In April 1918 Lee hired architect E. C. Dean to do $6,000 in updating.  The improvements included modern bathrooms and a new pantry and dumbwaiter.  The updating paid off and later that year the house was leased to Austen Gray, executive with John Wanamaker's, and his wife.  The now high-tone character of the block was evidenced in the single line mention in The Sun on October 19, 1919:  "Mrs. Austen Gray has returned from Newport to 136 East Sixty-fifth street."

The Grays' residency would not be especially long.  On December 30, 1919 The Sun reported that the Lees had sold the house "for occupancy at the expiration of the present lease."  The buyer was Dr. James Alexander Miller, who was most likely professionally connected with Dr. Lee.

Miller had graduated from Princeton University in 1893, then from the Collage of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in 1899.   He was now Visiting Physician in charge of the Tuberculosis Service of Belleview Hospital.

Before moving his family into their new home, Miller engaged the esteemed architect James Gamble Rogers to make extensive renovations in 1922.  The stoop was removed and the entrance moved to the basement level, a few steps below the sidewalk, and the facade was veneered with red brick.  Why the brownstone was covered over is puzzling, since the modernization did not extend to the significantly Victorian copper bay.

Peggy Miller enjoyed the privileges available to the daughters of well-to-do families.  She attended the exclusive Brearley School and then went on to Bryn Mawr College for a year.  Her debutante entertainments were held in the winter of 1925-26.  Her parents announced her engagement to Daniel Allen Lindley on October 6, 1931.

In 1953 136 East 65th Street was converted to two duplex apartments--one in the basement and former parlor level, and one on the third and fourth floors.  It was not the end of socially prominent residents, however.

One of  the spaces became home to Gerald Merrick and his wife, and her two daughters from a former marriage.  As had been the case with Peggy Miller, Anne and Alice Talcott both were educated at the Brearley School.  Anne went on to Connecticut College and Alice to Smith College.  The family's country home was in Brewster, New York and it was there that the Talcott sisters were married--Anne in October 1956 and Alice in June 1958.

Somewhat surprisingly, the exterior of the house served as the outside of the apartment of Michael in the 1970 movie The Boys in the Band.

One of the party guests arrives in a scene from the 1970 film.  photo via otsoNY.com

It was not long afterward that Robert M. Pennoyer purchased the house.  A great-grandson of John Pierpont Morgan, he and his wife, Victoria Parsons Pennoyer,  had four children: Christy, Russell, Tracy and Peter.   Their country home was in Katonah, New York.

No. 136 was re-converted to a private home in 2013 by "taxi king" Evgeny (better known as Gene) Friedman and his wife, Sandra.   Friedman had amassed a fortune as the owner of the most taxi medallions in New York.   The couple decorated the 65th Street house with valuable furnishings and artwork.  But trouble was on the near horizon.

It started with domestic abuse.  In August 2015 Friedman pleaded guilty to reduced charges of harassment after allegedly "slamming Sandra into a wall," as reported in The New York Post.   Friedman was ordered to stay away from his wife, and he turned to his business partner, Michael Cohen, better known today as Donald Trump's attorney, for help.

Cohen arranged for Friedman and his dog, Harry, to move into an apartment owned by Jared and Ivanka Kushner in Trump Park Avenue, the same building where Cohen lived.

A few weeks after the incident Sandra filed for divorce.  Before leaving the 65th Street house she removed some mementos.  Friedman retaliated by filing suit.  According to journalist Rebecca Rosenberg, writing in The Post on November 2, he "says his estranged wife swiped two Baccarat crystal chandeliers worth hundreds of thousands of dollars when she moved out of the couple's $6.2 million marital home in October."

The two disputed chandeliers are visible in this photo.  photograph by Steven Hirsch, The New York Post, November 2, 2015.

With the drama past, 136 East 65th Street has returned to tranquility.  Whether the pricey chandeliers (which were in the house when the Friedman's purchased it) ever found their way home is unclear.

photographs by the author

The 1911 Jonathan Bulkley House -- No. 600 Park Avenue

photo by Alice Lum

In 1911 New York Times writer William A. Boring was excited about the high-end development of Park Avenue. The soot-belching trains into Grand Central Terminal had been converted to electricity and sent underground, creating a European-style boulevard rather than a train yard. “Park Avenue will be a residence street, and all the little markets, stores, etc., will be moved further eastward to cheaper property,” he predicted.

Boring noted that the moneyed New Yorkers were already beginning to build in the neighborhood. “The tide has already set in, and the increasing invasion of business in the Fifth Avenue district below Fifty-ninth Street is naturally driving the old-time residents there to the newer center…Park Avenue will eventually become the finest apartment thoroughfare in the city. In sharp contrast to the old time cheap flats that formerly monopolized the avenue everything of this nature now going up is of the best fireproof construction."

It would not be all apartment buildings though.

The “little markets, stores, etc.,” he spoke of had included Tscheppe & Schur’s pharmacy at the corner of Park Avenue and 64th Street, along with a small apartment building and a row house. By April 23, 1911 when Boring’s prophecy was read by New Yorkers, those buildings were gone.

“As one walks north from the lower Park Avenue apartment house section he enters the confines of the private house community at Sixty-fourth Street, where, on the northwest corner, a fine residence is nearly completed for Jonathan Bulkley.”

That same year other millionaires were building on Park Avenue, including Reginald DeKoven and Percy Rivington Pyne, indeed giving Boring something to be excited about.

Jonathan Bulkley was a busy man -- a principal of the paper manufacturing firm Bulkley, Dunton & Co.; Vice President of the Keith Paper Company; a trustee of the Washington Paper Power Company; and sat on the Board of Directors of the E. W. Bliss Company, the Home Life Insurance Company, the Ryegate Paper Company, the St. Regis Paper Company, the Massachusetts Corporation and the Turner Falls Electric Company.

To design their mansion at 600 Park Avenue, Bulkley and his wife, the former Sarah Tod of Cleveland, chose James Gamble Rogers. The 44-year old architect produced a dignified white limestone structure in what has been called the Modern Renaissance style. Four small balconies at the second floor level, three on Park Avenue and one centered on 64th Street added dimension and interest to the gleaming white façade. The sloping slate roof above the stone balustrade that hid the fourth floor terminated in graceful pierced cresting.

The Bulkleys, who also kept a country home in Ridgefield, Connecticut, moved in with their three children, Jonathan, Sarah and David. Their doors were immediately thrown open to society. In December that year they hosted a dinner and dance for the debutante Alice Bulkley Moss. The home was also the setting for charity teas and lunches – both Jonathan (who was president of the East Side House Settlement) and Sarah were highly involved in philanthropic and social endeavors. Sarah was for several years the Vice President of the New York Y. W. C. A. and the Garden Club of America.

The 64th Street facade -- photo by Alice Lum

On February 22, 1927 Sarah Bulkley left the house at 3:00 to attend a tea. Around her neck hung a pearl necklace valued at $50,000 and her fingers were weighed down with several expensive rings. It was a fortunate choice of accessories for Mrs. Bulkley.

When she returned at 6:30 she found her safe opened and empty. Gone was all of Sarah’s jewelry – diamond bracelets, diamond and emerald rings and a lorgnette chain with 97 diamonds valued at $20,000.

Bulkley and his sons, who were 29 and 27 years old at the time, had been home all afternoon; none of the servants knew the combination to the safe other than Sarah’s personal maid, Ida Kaemfer; and police called it an “inside job.” All circumstantial evidence pointed to Ida.

Mrs. Bulkley, however, insisted that the maid was “above suspicion.” The case was never solved.

A taxicab sits on Park Avenue in front of the Bulkley mansion in 1929 -- photo NYPL Collection

The 83-year old Bulkley died of pneumonia on October 16, 1939. Two and a half years later, on June 21, 1943, Sarah Tod Bulkley died. The Bulkley children were grown and had long ago left No. 600 Park Avenue. The house was shuttered. The beautiful rooms, once the scene of brilliant dinners and dances, sat dark and silent for three years.

In June, 1946 the Royal Swedish Government purchased the house as the permanent residence of its Consul General. Concurrently, it obtained the abutting five-story mansion at 63 East 64th Street and would eventually collect three others.

Bas relief carvings grace the facade.  The decorative ironwork was originally painted black to contract with the stone -- photo by Alice Lum

 In 1999 the new Consul General of Sweden, Olle Wastberg, and his wife took up residency at No. 600 Park Avenue. It was time, they felt, to spruce things up.

The Wastbergs worked with Swedish interior designers to re-do the interiors. The Bulkley house was transformed, according to the Scandinavian press site Nordic Way, “into a showplace for modern Swedish design.” But despite the introduction of Swedish furnishings and art, the architectural detailing, paneling, and mantles were carefully preserved.

In 2004 a façade restoration was undertaken by Gertler Wente Kerbeykian Architects.

photo by Alice Lum

Five years later, as a cost-saving measure, the Swedish Government elected to discontinue its New York Consulate.  The handsome mansion, valued at around $12.2 million, now serves as the residence of the Swedish Ambassador to the United Nations.