The Lost Clement C. Moore "Chelsea House"

Valentine's Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York, 1856 (copyright expired)

Retired British Army Captain Thomas Clarke was 53 when he married Mary Stillwell in 1745.  His bride, who came from an aristocratic family, was reportedly not especially pleased when her husband decided to take her and their young daughter, Charity, to America.

The upper regions of Manhattan were dotted with country estates--many owned by British officers, others by wealthy merchants.  In 1750 Clarke purchased nearly 94 acres from Jacob Somerindyck.  The deed was quoted in The New York Times later as "all that farm or plantation in the Bassau Bowery on the West side of Manhattan Island, bounded on the west by the Hudson River, on the east by land of John Horn, on the north by the land of Widow Cowenhoven and Brandt Schuyer, on the south by land of Sir Peter Warren and Yellis Mandeville."

In terms more relatable to 21st century minds, the estate stretched from approximately what is today Eighth Avenue to the Hudson River, and from 21st Street to 24th.  Clarke moved his wife and daughter into the existing wooden dwelling, which he had updated, improved and christened Chelsea House.  In 1856 Valentine's Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York explained, "It may be well to mention why the place was called Chelsea.  Thomas Clarke had been an officer in a provincial corps.  He bought the farm in 1750, and called it Chelsea, being the retreat of an old soldier."  (Chelsea Hospital, in London, took care of injured and aged soldiers.)

The bucolic residence, like all Manhattan's elegant country estates, was surrounded by orchards and gardens.  Its location atop a hill provided relief from summer heat.  Mary, who was known as Molly, was known as a gracious hostess and entertained often.  Among the frequent guests would be Rev. Benjamin Moore, who was assigned to Trinity Church and its chapels around 1772.

By 1774 Thomas and Mary Clarke had five children.   In February that year tragedy struck when Chelsea House caught fire.  The family escaped, but Clarke was severely burned.  He was taken to a neighboring farm where he survived.  He died about 1777.

By then he and Mary had rebuilt Chelsea House, this time using brick and stone rather than wood.  Two stories tall, it was an elegant Georgian style structure with a central, angled bay and flanking wings.

Valentine's Manual depicted Chelsea House as it appeared in 1816.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

As war swept over the island, Mary remained in Chelsea House.  According to historian Alexander Scala, of her four children still living--Charity, Mary, Maria Teresa and Clement--only the last two still lived in the house in 1776. 

Soldiers were billeted there; apparently much to the discomfort of the two women.   According to D. T. Valentine decades later, it "caused them so much distress that one of the officers represented their situation to General Washington, who thereupon rode to the house, upon his white charger, and gave orders by which the family were relieved."

Valentine's account included an anecdote which shed light on Mary's refined upbringing.  "While the American troops were there, a British vessel, sailing in the Hudson, fired a ball, which lodged in the house, but hurt no one.  It left a mark, which remained for years, in one of the partitions.  Mrs. Clarke was, at the time, from home.  As she was returning, in her chaise, a Yankee soldier met her and said, 'Mrs. Clarke, the British have fired a shot into your house.'  'Thank you for that,' she said."

When the British occupied the island, Hessian soldiers were stationed in the house and on the grounds.  Valentine noted that their commanding officer "proved to be so gentlemanly and polite that he became a favorite with the family."  He told them that he had heard of their dread of him and that he was determined to prove "the injustice of their apprehensions.'"

On April 30, 1778 Charity and Rev. Benjamin Moore were married in Trinity Church.  The newlyweds moved into the Chelsea house with Charity's mother and sister.  The following year, on July 15, the couple had a son.  He was christened Clement Clarke Moore on August 11.

The Clarkes and Moores had always owned slaves. as was customary among wealthy Manhattan estate owners.  In 1799 New York State passed an abolition law; but enforcement was gradual.  (It would not be until 1827, and despite Clement Clarke Moore's vocal opposition, that all New York slaves were liberated.)

Mary Stillwell Clarke died in 1802 and Chelsea passed to her son-in-law.  Moore expanded the estate, purchasing land south to 19th Street.  Following his appointment to Bishop of New York in 1813, he and Charity deeded the property to Clement, although they remained there until their deaths.

Clement Clarke Moore had been tutored by his father, who instilled in him a love of literature.  He graduated from Columbia College in 1798 and was a scholar in Greek and Hebrew.

On November 20, 1813 Moore married Catherine Elizabeth Taylor.  Prior to the Bishop Moore's death in 1816, the family house was enlarged, Valentine noting "the old house had a third story added to it, cellars built under the old foundation, and the whole square was walled around."  The result was an impressive mansion with a hip roof and high porch.  But the end of the era of luxurious country houses in Manhattan was quickly drawing to a close.

Clement Clarke Moore's daughter, Mary, created this sketch of the family house in 1855, which clearly shows its Georgian bones, including the faceted bay.

Two years after his father's death, the city was inching towards Chelsea.  According to The New York Times on April 17, 1904, "Presently [after the bishop's death] the good Clement C. was much annoyed by boys and adolescent hoodlums, who came out from 'the city' to depredate [sic] his vines and fig trees.  The annoyance became intolerable insomuch that he started one day into 'town' determined to rid himself of the annoyance by dispossessing himself of the estate."

Intending to sell the entire estate for $40,000 (about $780,000 today), his plans were upset when he ran into builder James N. Wells, according to the article.  "On his way to consummate this suicidal transaction the good, unworldly man met an acquaintance of his, a carpenter named Wells, and confided to him his intention.  Nay, said the well-counseled Wells.  Do not part with the farm.  Lay it out in streets and city lots corresponding to the 'system' (the Street Commissioners of 1807 had already got in their deadly work) and invite settlers."

It was the beginning of a long-lasting business relationship between the two men and the end of Chelsea as a private estate.  In 1825 he donated his apple orchard (66 tracts of land) to the Episcopal Church as the location for its General Theological Seminary.  He was appointed professor of Bible learning in the new institution.

As the flurry of development took hold on his land, Moore moved his family to Elmhurst, Queens.  But the move did not happen before he wrote his now-famous poem, "The Visit of St. Nicolas."

A century later, on December 19, 1926, Eunice Fuller Barnard wrote in The New York Times, "This verse he is said to have composed in 1822, at his father's imposing tree-shaded country house in old Chelsea Village, at the corner of what is now Twenty-third Street and Ninth Avenue.  He did it, he told an interviewer from the New York Historical Society forty years later, simply as a Christmas present for his two daughters, making St. Nicholas the hero at the suggestion of 'a portly, rubicund Dutchman living in the neighborhood.'"

Artist unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Moore's relocation did not mean he disappeared from Chelsea.  He closely worked with Wells, maintained his post in the General Theological Seminary until 1850, and was highly involved in St. Peter's Episcopal Church on West 20th Street.

The end of the Chelsea House came when the city graded the area hills, including the one under the mansion, in the early 1850s.  D. T. Valentine explained "So the place remained until the Corporation of the city ordered a bulkhead to be built along the river front.  It was thought advisable, if not absolutely necessary, to dig down the whole place, and throw it into the river; when, of course, the old house was destroyed."

The London Terrace apartments sit approximately on the site of the Moore estate. Google street views

The Skinny 1854 Twins at Nos. 451 and 453 W 22nd

 

When Clement Clarke Moore first plotted his family estate, Chelsea, into building lots, he wrote restrictive covenants into the residential deeds to ensure a higher class of homes.  Therefore first houses that began appearing in the 1830s were on unusually wide plots; like the 37.5 foot-wide Joseph Tucker house at No. 337 West 22^nd Street built in 1836.

But Moore eventually relaxed his restrictions, allowing developers to build more easily-marketable homes.  One such real estate operator was Philo Y. Beebe.  The builder-developer was already highly-established in the first years of the 1850s when he turned his sights to the Chelsea neighborhood.  In 1849 he began construction on a row of 12 handsome homes on West 24^th Street between 9^th and 10^th Avenues.  Now, on November 23, 1853, he paid Moore $3,000 for the lots at Nos. 451 and 453 West 22^nd Street.  The price for the two plots would amount to about $87,300 today.

If the size of Moore’s original plots were unusually wide; these two were surprisingly narrow.  Beebe set to work erecting two matching houses just 12 feet, 8 inches wide—nearly 8 feet narrower than the standard residential lot.  The twin homes were completed a year later, and what they lacked in width they made up for in eye-catching design.

Each just one bay wide, the two residences were designed to appear as one.

Beebe combined two currently-popular styles, Italianate and Greek Revival, to produce the highly unusual facades.  Four floors of red brick sat on a rusticated stone base.  He disguised the narrowness of each home by designing them as a visual unit; and used just one slightly oversized window per floor.  The architectural piece de resistance, however, came in the form of elaborate cast iron lintels that set the twin homes apart from anything else in the area.

By the 1880s No. 451 was home to William F. Fogg and his family.  A puzzling turn of events occurred in November 1888 when Charles White knocked on the door.  White had been a servant in the Fogg house until the morning of October 29 when he disappeared before the family arose.  Now, standing on the single brownstone step at the entrance, he asked Mrs. Fogg if she had missed any property.  She said she had not and returned to her household routine.

“That evening she received a postal card from Westchester telling that property of hers would be found in a certain pawnshop.  She then discovered that a lot of clothing had been stolen,” reported The Evening World on November 10, 1888.  Mrs. Fogg alerted Detective Carey of the 16^th Precinct, who hunted down the servant-turned-thief.  White’s apparent guilty conscience resulted in his arrest on the charge of stealing $100 worth of clothing.

The Foggs were soon gone from No. 451.  Dentist C. L. Dunbar was here in the 1890s.  In the meantime, the house next door saw a succession of homeowners.  In the 1840s No. 453 was home to Lucretia Felter, a teacher in the Girls Department of Public School No. 19 on 14^th Street between 1^st and 2^nd Avenues.  The dedicated educator would teach in the New York Public Schools for decades.

But by the time that New York’s young men marched off to war in the South, she had moved on.  In 1864 the the Harmon Eldridge family was living in No. 453.  Eldridge had held the position of Superintendent of the Workhouse on Blackwell’s Island.  Eldrige’s 39-year old son, an employee of Abbott & Rathbun, died in the house on Wednesday morning, June 8 that year.  His funeral was held in the parlor two days later.

Within three years the Galahan family was in the house.  Like Lucretia Felter, Irene M. Gahagan was a teacher.  She worked six blocks away in the Primary Department of Public School No. 33 on West 28^th Street between 9^th and 10^th Avenues.

Marked change to the Chelsea neighborhood occurred by the turn of the century.  Many of the private homes were operated as boarding houses as moneyed families moved further north.  A young Cuban immigrant and his wife were living in No. 453 on Thursday, January 9, 1902 when Detective Sergeant Burns appeared at the front door. 

Three weeks earlier Schenectady police asked New York police Captain Titus to search for Emanuel Fontebilla on what The Morning Telegraph deemed “a mysterious charge of grand larceny.”  Schenectady officials traced his mail, discovering that it was being forwarded to Cuba, then on to the New York address.

“Fontebilla refused to talk when arrested,” reported The Morning Telegraph.  “His young wife became hysterical when her pleas failed to secure his release.  She declared him innocent.”

The entrances, most likely, were once crowned by elaborate cast iron lintels like those of the upper stories.  Note the handsome Italianate window guards.

In 1957 both No. 451 and 453 were converted to apartments—one on ground level and two per floor above.  It is probable that the entrances were once adorned by cast iron lintels; removed in a misguided attempt at modernization.  But otherwise, despite new doors and replacement windows, the wonderfully charming and unique twin houses remain mostly intact.

photographs by the author

Clement Moore's 1836 No. 444 West 22nd Street

In 1811 the forward-thinking Commissioners’ Plan, which dissected rural Manhattan above Greenwich Village into streets and avenues, was made public.  On paper the country estates of the city’s wealthy were suddenly criss-crossed with thoroughfares and building plots.  Among them was Chelsea, the family “farm” of Clement Clarke Moore.



The Moore house sat between what would be 22nd and 23rd Streets -- The Mentor, January 1920 (copyright expired) 

The estate extended from what is now 19^th Street to 24^th Street, and from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson River.  On a hill, between today’s 22^nd and 23^rd Streets, sat the family mansion—a three-story, hipped roof residence above an deep English basement.  

As the city inched closer to Moore’s expansive property, he divided his land into building lots and in 1818 donated a large portion for the construction of the General Theological Seminary.  The manor house would survive a few more years—long enough for Clement Clarke Moore to write “The Night Before Christmas” there on December 23, 1822.

While Moore sold some lots himself, stipulating the type of residences he would allow to be built; he relied heavily on his friend James N. Wells.  A developer and builder, Wells, would nearly single-handedly transform Chelsea into what would briefly be called “Chelsea Village.”  It was possibly Wells who was responsible for the handsome Federal-style brick home built for Moore between 1835 and 1836 at No. 444 West 22^nd Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.

Like its neighbors it was two and a half stories tall over a rusticated, brownstone basement.  The deeply recessed entranceway featured a paneled door, narrow sidelights, and overlight.  Extra touches were the delicate ironwork railings and carved brownstone lintels. 

The door is set deeply within the paneled entranceway.

Instead of the dormers found in so many of the houses of the period, the builder choose to slope the roof toward the front and set small windows into a deep fascia board below the cornice.   The result was full-length windows in the rear and what contemporary New Englanders called “lie on your stomach” windows at the front.

By 1880 the house was home to Phillip V. Myers who bought and sold property, mostly north of the city.  On April 5, 1886 at 2:00 the parlor was the scene of the funeral of Myers’ granddaughter, Helen Oakley Rosenfeld.  She was the only child of Myers’ daughter, Amelia, and her husband Llewellyn E. Rosenfeld.

The house would become home to Dr. Brandreth Symonds and his wife, the former Florence B. Bacon.  Florence was the daughter of the former Congressman Henry Bacon.  The well-to-do doctor and his wife maintained a summer home at Goshen, New York.

The well-respected physician was also an author.  Since 1903 he had been the medical director of the Mutual Life Insurance Company; but he was best known for his books like the Manual of Chemistry and Life Insurance Examinations.  Educated at Hobart College in Ossining and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York City, he was a member of the University and Grolier Clubs.

Symond’s most influential work, published in 1908, was The Influence of Overweight and Underweight on Vitality.  He statistically demonstrated the relationship between weight and life span and was the first to recognize that overweight individuals were at a great risk than underweight.

The title to the house on West 22^nd Street was in Florence’s name and on October 14, 1916 she leased the house for four years and eleven months, starting on November 1, to William J. Hurlbut.  The 38-year old had been living at No. 4 Perry Street in Greenwich Village.

Since 1908 Hurlbut had been writing plays and by now was well-known and successful.  Perhaps the first play that he wrote from No. 444 West 22^nd Street was Saturday to Monday, which opened in May 1917.  The Washington Herald said it “should prove one of the stimulating novelties of the waning season.  This new comedy is from the pen of William J. Hurlbut, that witty and clever playwright, who has already given to the stage many noteworthy contributions.”

In signing the lease, the artsy and creative playwright agreed to make no alterations to the house.  But he apparently did not take the clause too seriously.  Hurlbut created two apartments upstairs and leased one to Albert M. Austin in 1916 and in 1918 rented to Enoch Rector and his family.  The Rectors would stay through 1921, paying $55 per month. 

 On April 13, 1919 The Sun wrote in detail about some of Hurlbut’s improvements.  “One of the most interesting houses belonging to the Clement C. Moore estate is now the home of William J. Hurlbut, the playwright, who was the pioneer in the little colony of artistic and literary folk who set the fashion for Chelsea as an old fashioned home centre,” said the newspaper.  It said of the house “A particular feature of which the house boasts is a typical Colonial doorway with old fashioned side and top lights.  It is such a hospitable looking door—a characteristic common to old Chelsea entrances—and the big brass knocker in the centre adds emphasis to the symbol. “

In 1919 the attic windows retained their original proportions -- The Sun April 13, 1919 (copyright expired)

The Sun described Hurlbut’s alterations to the interior.  “The most important change in the interior arrangement of the rooms was made on the third floor, where the old partitions were torn out and an entire new floor plan introduced to accommodate two studio suites which Mr. Hurlbut rents to friends.  From an architectural standpoint the rehabilitation of the drawing room presented the most interesting problem, and the delightful manner in which it has been solved will appeal to all who have any such project in view.

“Mr. Hurlbut is an artist as well as a playwright, and he proved himself something of an architect as well, for by the exercise of his artistic taste and mechanical ingenuity he clothed the wall of the drawing room with lovely wood paneling resembling that of an old English manor house.”

Hurlbut drew  sketches of the paneling he envisioned for Florence Symond’s drawing room, then took them to a carpenter.  “The room was soon paneled from floor to ceiling in a series of geometrical designs, each piece of which was laboriously beveled by hand, then nailed into place.  The effect is entrancing,” opined Harriet Sisson Gillespie of The Sun.

The journalist noted that the 1836 detailing in the house was still intact.  “The woodwork in the dining room is simple, but in excellent taste.  Flat pilasters form an attractive decoration [on] either side of the double doors in the drawing room, and the same application is repeated on the dining room side.  The single doors are well proportioned and divided into three sets of two panels each.  Fluted pilasters ending with carved rosettes at the corners frame the openings.”

Hurlbut had filled the house with antiques, many of them heirlooms.  “Mr. Hurlbut is a collector of antiques in addition to having had many rare treasures bequeathed to him, all of which go to make his home very attractive.  He has some very old and handsome silver, which was left to him by his grandfather, William Hurlbut, for many years United States Minister to Peru…The result is that the visitor in leaving the street leaves the present behind, and the moment he enters is transported back to the days when New York was young and fashion centred in this section.”

Hurlbut’s other renovations included turning the pantry into a bathroom complete with bathtub, toilet and sink.  In the upstairs apartments he installed a sink and gas range, creating a kitchen.    Florence B. Symonds apparently did not subscribe to The Sun; for she had no idea what her tenant had done as his lease drew to a close in 1921.

The first clue came when Florence’s brokers tried to show the house to prospective buyers and Hurlbut refused to let them in.  When she finally saw the house after the lease ran out in October 1921, she did not share Harriet Sisson Gillespie's warm critique.  Although an irate Florence Symonds sold the property on May 23, 1922; she sued William Hurlbut for altering the premises and illegally subletting apartments.  The court battle would drag on until January 23, 1923.

The new buyer was the Alice Chapin, wife of Dr. Henry Dwight Chapin.  Over a decade earlier, in 1912, an abandoned infant girl was found in Central Park and taken to Dr. Chapin’s ward in the Post Graduate Hospital.  Alice Chapin took the orphan home and later found a permanent home for her.  It was the seed that would grow into the Alice Chapin Adoption Nursery in 1919, one of the city’s first private adoption agencies.

Now the house at No. 444 West 22^nd Street was about to become the new Alice Chapin Nursery.  A stream of fashionable benefits were launched to aid the renovation of the house.  On December 6, 1925 The New York Times reported on a special performance of Sunny at the New Amsterdam theatre.  “The proceeds will be used for completing the new home of the nursery at 444 West Twenty-second Street,” it said.

Architect Cornelius Callaghan converted the house to include nurseries in the basement and former parlor level, and bedrooms in the top two floors.  The roof was slightly raised and the attic windows enlarged at this time.

The Alice Chapin Adoption Nursery remained in the house for decades before eventually moving to No. 410 East 92^nd Street.  In 1953 it was converted to three “rooms” in the basement and one apartment each on the upper floors.  In 1986 the quaint house with a long history was converted once again—this time to a basement and first floor duplex and one room apartment on each top two floors.

Clement Clarke Moore’s speculative 1836 house is little changed after 178 years.  It survives as a charming reminder of a time when Manhattan’s sprawling country estates were becoming residential neighborhoods.

The elegant Federal style iron fencing and stoop railings, with their built-in boot scrapers on either side, survive intact after nearly two centuries.

photographs by the author