The 1851 Ann Gillett House - 314 East 19th Street

 

photograph by Carole Teller

In 1851, construction of a long row of brick-faced townhouses was completed on East 19th Street between First and Second Avenues.  Three stories tall above brownstone basements, the 20-foot-wide residences were designed as mirror-image pairs.  The earred, double entrance frames of each pair shared a molded cornice and their side-to-side stoops were separated by an Italianate-style railing.  The floor-to-ceiling parlor windows were most likely fronted by cast iron balconies.

Horatio Gillett was born in Connecticut around 1793.  By the time of his death on December 18, 1837, he had amassed a comfortable fortune.  He left several Manhattan properties to his widow, the former Ann Dominick (born in 1794).  Ann purchased one of the new houses--168 East 19th Street--and moved into it.  (The address would be renumbered 314 in 1865.)  

Sharing the house as early as 1859 were Ann's nephew, Francis Jacob Dominick, and his wife, the former Almira Hoffman Vosburgh.  The couple were married in 1856 and had a daughter, Edith Lorensberg, who was two years old in 1859.

The properties that Ann inherited provided her with rental income.  She was highly involved in charitable causes.  She was, for instance, a member of the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females and sat on the Board of Managers of the Magdalen Benevolent Society.  The latter organization, according to New York and Its Institutions, promoted "moral purity, by affording an asylum to erring females."  Ann attended its 20th anniversary ceremony on May 6, 1853, after which the New-York Tribune reminded readers of the facility's outreach.  "Many of the inmates of that institution were abandoned females, and had been arrested as vagrants or disturbers of the peace."

In 1860, Ann took in two boarders, Jabez Burns and his wife.  Burns was one of the organizers of The Rail Splitters' Glee Club that year.  Born in Scotland, he started out selling coffee door-to-door.  His familiarity with coffee would spark his success soon after boarding with Ann.  He invented a coffee roaster--the drum-shaped concept still used today.  In 1864 he was granted a patent and Scientific American wrote a glowing article about the invention.  He founded Jabez Burns & Sons that year.

The couple would be Ann's only boarders.  That may have been because of increasing population among the Dominicks.  In 1866, Mary Alice Dominick was born, followed by Henry Blanchard Dominick in 1869.  (Sadly, Henry would contract diphtheria and succumb on March 19, 1874 at the age of five.)

Ann Dominick Gillett died in the house on March 20, 1878 at the age of 84.  Her funeral was held in the parlor on the 22nd.  Just two months later, on May 27, The New York Times reported that Francis J. Dominick, as Ann's executor, had sold 314 East 19th Street to Bridget C. Duffy for $10,000 (about $325,000 in 2026).

Bridget was the widow of Felix Duffy.  She owned at least one other house in the area, that one located on the corner of Second Avenue and 19th Street, and used the properties as rental income.

By the last quarter of the century, several families lived in 314 East 19th Street.  Among the occupants in 1898 was 21-year-old George Ross.  On July 26 that year, he and 17-year-old James Manning were arrested for pickpocketing.  The New York Press described Manning as "a boy pickpocket with the daring of a hardened criminal."  As the two were being interrogated at Police Headquarters, they made a run for the doors.  Ross was captured before he could escape the building, but Manning dashed onto Mott Street and into a building fronting Crosby Street.  Henry Baumann, an employee of the cigarette factory there, locked the door, trapping him.  The New York Press reported that Baumann, "rushed into a room where eighty women were stripping tobacco.  Baumann caught Manning and held him until the police came."

The East 19th Street house was about to become home to a much more respectable family.  On July 9, 1901, Daniel F. Martin notified the City Clerk, "I have appointed Mr. James Foley, of No. 314 East Nineteenth street...as Assistant Clerk of the Municipal Court."

James Foley was already a well-known figure within Tammany Hall politics and since 1879 had been chairman of the General Committee of the Twelfth Assembly District.  He and his wife, the former Anne Moran, had eleven children. 

Son James A. Foley, born on June 21, 1882, was enrolled in the City University of New York when the family moved in.  He, too, would be involved in politics.  In 1908, he was elected to the New York State Assembly and in 1913 would be elected to the New York State Senate.  In the meantime, his brother Frank was a broker with C. I. Hudson & Co. and held the rank of major in the Twelfth Regiment of Infantry.  

The Foleys remained here until 1910 when they moved exactly one block away.  On February 25 that year, the New-York Tribune reported, "Otto Maier sold to a Mr. Foley for occupancy No. 316 East 18th Street." 

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

No. 314 East 19th Street returned to a multi-family dwelling.  Living here in 1915 and '16 was James P. Moffitt, a process server.  Also rooming here in 1916 were Nicholai Turziki, former Russian cow herder, and Joseph Korpuzlenski.  On March 16 that year, they and a friend, Ignatz Jaroszek, invited Louis Markowicz to Turkziki's room.  (Markowicz and Turziki had known one another before leaving Russia.)  The trio offered Markowisc a share in "a wonder machine" they had invented.  The Sun reported:

They showed him a machine that buzzed mysteriously.  When a button was touched, out came a two dollar bill.  Markowicz worked it himself and was so impressed he offered his $800 for an interest in the contraption.  But to make sure, he took one of the bills to a store downstairs to be changed, leaving his wealth behind.

The bill was genuine.  But when Markowicz returned to Turziki's room, his $800 and his "friends" were gone.  Several months later, Markowicz received a letter from Turziki, who was in Philadelphia, "inviting him to become a partner in a second money making machine."  Markowicz would not be duped twice.  He wrote back, telling the three to meet him in Turziki's old rooms at 314 East 19th Street.  When they arrived on September 21, Detectives Franklin and Pflaster were waiting there with Markowicz.  

In 1958, a group of men classified by the Selective Service as 1-W, or conscientious objectors, converted 314 East 19th Street to a voluntary service center.  The renovations resulted in 15 furnished rooms.

photograph by Carole Teller

Eighteen years later, the house was leased by the Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship as a Mennonite student center.  Called Menno House, it was purchased by the group in 1997.  According to its website, it "has served many live-in residents and greeted many hundreds of temporary guests."

many thanks to artist Carole Teller for suggesting this post

The Henry Clews, Jr. House - 145 East 19th Street

 

In 1849, Edwin Forrest was the reigning American tragedian, the position held in England by Irish-born William Macready.  A fierce rivalry existed between the two actors and local loyalty to Forrest was intense.  On May 10, Macbeth opened at the Astor Place Opera House with Macready in the title role.  Thousands crowded into the streets of the fashionable neighborhood to voice their dissatisfaction.  The protests turned to violent rioting.  On May 13, the Sunday Dispatch listed the names of the 25 killed and 120 injured during the melee.  The "long and melancholy list" included among the fatalities, "Kelly, 104 East Nineteenth street."

Kelly's brick-faced house was one of a row erected in 1843.  Three stories tall, its Greek Revival design was typical of hundreds of homes, with a high stoop that led to the entrance within a sturdy brownstone enframement, and simple sills and lintels.

By 1851, Edward Chester, an educator, and his family lived at 104 East 19th Street (renumbered 145 in 1867).  The Chesters maintained a small domestic staff.  Like many families, when they left for the country in the summer they let unnecessary staff go.  On June 27, 1855, an advertisement in New York Daily Herald read:

Plain Cook and Washer--A gentleman leaving the city, wishes to procure a situation as above for a person now in his family, and whom he can highly recommend.

When the family returned five months later, they began restaffing.  An ad on November 30 read, "A seamstress and a plain cook wanted--who thoroughly understand their business, in a small family.  Apply personally at No. 104 East 19th-st., after 12 o'clock.  None but Protestants need apply."

The Chesters remained through 1857, after which the house was operated as a boarding house.  Among those living here in 1858 were Professor Candido Berti and artist Nestor Corradi.

In 1881, Maud Parish and her husband moved here from the boarding house at 208 East 14th Street.  Parish was a frescoer with the firm Pottier & Stymus.  The New York Evening Post said he, "earned a good salary, and had provided well for her support."  The couple had been forced to move following scandal.  Four other boarders in the 14th Street house had discovered missing clothing and jewelry.  A search uncovered the stolen items in Maud Parish's rooms.  The items--worth $500, or about $15,400 in 2024--were returned and Parish convinced the victims not to press charges.

Now at 145 East 19th Street, Maud made friends with Josephine G. Gabadau and her invalid mother.  In May 1882, Josephine "missed some jewelry and $30 in gold from her trunk," which was stored in a room on the third floor, according to The New York Evening Post.  The Sun reported, "Shortly after, she saw one of the ornaments on the person of Mrs. Maud L. Parish, a fellow boarder."  Maud told Josephine she had bought it, and since it was not an unusual piece, the subject was dropped.

Then, on June 14 a fire was discovered in the storeroom.  When it was extinguished, the contents of Josephine Gabadau's trunks were missing.  She went to Police Inspector Byrnes and told him of her suspicions.  After an investigation, Maud confessed, admitting to setting the fire to hide the theft.  She was arrested on July 24.  Tragically, according to The New York Evening Post, "Mrs. Gabadau was made so ill by fright that she died."

In 1908, George and Antoinette Finck and his wife purchased 145 East 19th Street.  They leased it to Henry R. Jaeckel for three years.  When his lease expired in 1911, they rented the house to recently divorced millionaire Henry Clews, Jr.

Clews hired architect Frederick Junius Sterner to remodel the outdated residence.  Sterner had been transforming the block since 1906 when he purchased his own home at 139 East 19th Street.  He removed the stoop, gave the new entrance at the basement level a brick surround and a colorful tile plaque above the doorway, covered the brick facade in stucco and decorated it with three cast-stone plaques.  A sloping tile roof completed the slightly Mediterranean feel.

145 East 19th Street was originally a match to the house to the left.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Born in 1876, Clews had struggled to find his identity.  His family was among the wealthiest and most prominent in New York and in Newport.  Before he was 21 years old, he had been expelled from Amherst College, dropped out of Columbia University, and was ousted from Leibniz University Hannover.  His father brought him into the family banking firm, but his passion was art.  Clews studied sculpture under Auguste Rodin and by the time he moved into 145 East 19th Street had had two exhibitions in New York.  

On December 19, 1914, Clews returned from Europe, but he did not go directly home.  Instead, he went to 8 Washington Square where he married Elsie Whelen Goelet, the former wife of Robert Goelet.  The New York Times said, "The marriage took place quietly at the home of the bride...a few hours after the license had been obtained, in the presence of the immediate families."

A year later, on October 30, 1915, The New York Times reported, "Following the wedding, the couple lived at Mr. Clews's studio at 145 East Nineteenth Street, and later sailed for Europe, where they have since resided in Paris."  The couple would not return to East 19th Street.

Leasing the combined houses next door at 147-149 East 19th Street (another Sterner transformation) since 1911 was artist Robert Winthrop Chanler.  They, too, were owned by George and Antoinette Finck.  In 1919, Chanler purchased his studio from the Fincks, as well as 145 East 19th Street.  The Record & Guide reported he paid $35,000 for the former Clews residence and studio.  The price would translate to $616,000 today.  On July 9, The Sun remarked, "The Clews and Chanler houses are among the most unique in the city, and their occupants have spent large sums of money in fitting them up."

William Astor Chanler, Prominent and Progressive Americans, 1904 (copyright expired)

Chanler's brother, William Astor Chanler, and his wife, the former Beatrice "Minnie" Ashley, moved into 145 East 19th Street.  Born in Newport in 1867, Chanler had served in the New York Assembly and the United States Congress.  After his Congressional term ended in 1901, he turned to traveling, writing and exploring.

Beatrice "Minnie" Ashley Chanler.  Arts & Decoration, March 1921 (copyright expired)

Minnie Chanler had been a stage actress, artist and author.  She made the house the scene of lavish entertaining.  On December 1, 1925, for instance, The New York Times reported that the French Ambassador to the United States, Emile Daeschner, had arrived from Washington "to attend the Lafayette fête tonight at the Astor."  The article noted, "Mr. Daeschner will be a guest at a dinner which Mrs. Chanler will give just before the fête at her home, 145 East Nineteenth Street."

It would be among the last entertainments for the Chanlers here.  The couple moved to Europe where William died in 1934.

In the meantime, 145 East 19th Street was the studio and residence of artist Albert Sterner in the mid-1930s.  Coincidentally or not, he was the brother of Frederick J. Sterner, who had remodeled the house two decades earlier.  Born in London in 1863, after moving to New York from Chicago in 1918 he taught at the Art Students League.

Alfred Sterner, from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

In 1947, the house was converted to apartments with a doctor's office in the lower level.  There were now a duplex on the former parlor and second floors, and one apartment on the third.  In the remodeling, Sterner's tile panel over the doorway was chopped out and the brick removed.

Nearly half a century later, in 1992, owner Lee Ann Jaffee began reconverting the house to a single-family home.  She hired architect Richard Ayotte to design what The New York Times journalist Christopher Gray described as "a nominally Greek Revival doorway," which, he said, "does not reverse the earlier dilution of the house's character."  Under Ayotte's renovation, said Gray, the house "is also to get back the window lintels it lost long ago, as well as deep parlor windows."

At some point, the doorway was remodeled again, this time in a valiant and overall successful attempt to reproduce the original Sterner appearance.

photographs by the author

Robert W. Chanler's "House of Fantasy" - 147-149 East 19th Street

 

In 1843 a row of Greek Revival homes was completed along the northern side of East 19th Street between Irving Place and Third Avenue.  Three stories tall above English basements, they were faced in red brick and trimmed in brownstone.  Among them were 106 and 108 East 19th Street (renumbered 147 and 149 in 1867), both of which were operated as rooming houses by the 1890s.  

On September 19, 1910, Antoinette and George Finch purchased the two houses, which were described by the Record & Guide as "brick tenements."  Seven months later, on April 5, 1911, The Sun reported, 

George Finch is having plans prepared for turning the two four story buildings at 147 and 149 East Nineteenth street into a studio building.  The improvement is an interesting one, as it is likely to have a decided influence on the future character of this neighborhood, which at present is a tenement district.  The alteration, which will cost about $10,000, is not a speculative improvement, as the property has been leased for five years to a party whose name Mr. Finch said he could not divulge at this time.  

The mystery of the renter's identity was soon cleared up.  On April 30, 1911, a headline in The New York Times read, “'Sheriff Bob' Chanler Will Join the Colony at Gramercy Park” and the sub-headline added, “With Mrs. William Astor Chanler He Will Move to the Nineteenth Street Section, Which Has Been Charmingly Reconstructed.”

Born on February 22, 1872, Chanler had an impressive pedigree.  He was the great-great grandson of Peter Stuyvesant and the grandnephew of Julia Ward Howe, John Jacob Astor III and William Backhouse Astor, Jr.  Chanler, who had just stepped down from his position as Sheriff of Duchess County, was also a newlywed.  He married Natalina (known as Lina) Cavalieri on June 18, 1910.  She was his second wife.  His marriage to Julia Remington Chamberlain had ended in divorce in August 1907.

It was Chanler who had chosen architect Frederick Junius Sterner to combine and remodel the two houses into a residence-studio.  In 1906, the British-born architect had arrived in New York from Colorado, purchased a high-stooped brownstone on the East 19th Street block, and transformed it into a Mediterranean-style villa with a stuccoed facade and red tiled roof.  One by one, he remodeled houses Pygmalion-like to fantastic, romantic structures, resulting in what Harriett Gillespie, writing in American Homes and Gardens in 1914, would call, "the Block Beautiful."

After removing the stoops, as he did with most of his transformations, Sterner covered the facade with stucco.  Wrought iron faux balconies appeared at the second and fourth floors.  A sloped, tile roof was flanked by stepped Flemish gables.  The wooden doors with iron strap hinges that sat within brick surrounds were surmounted by tympana filled with polychrome scenes of giraffes executed by Chanler's close friend, Charles Cary Rumsey.  They were, most likely, a nod to one of Chanler's most successful paintings to date, Giraffes, which was exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1905.

from the Rokeby Collection, Barrytown, New York

While 147 and 149 East 19th Street were being joined and remodeled, Chanler temporarily moved his studio into the converted carriage house down the block at 124 East 19th Street.  At the time, Current Opinion magazine called Chanler, “America’s most imaginative decorator.”  The artist’s murals decorated residences like that of William K. Vanderbilt, but they were in no way traditional.  The catalog for a later exhibition would explain, “Chanler’s career represents a series of reactions against conventions social and aesthetic.”  It said, “Surmounting in turn the inherited handicaps of family tradition and material affluence, he has won his way to a virile autonomy of thought and action which is to-day his most cherished possession.”

Lina Chanler would never move into the completed house.  The couple separated after their honeymoon and divorced in June 1912.  (Charles Green Shaw would later say, "He has been married twice and considers matrimony the greatest joke in the world.")

In the meantime, Chanler decorated what he called his House of Fantasy.  Years later, the Buffalo Evening News would comment, "His famous House of Fantasy, at 147 East 19th street, New York, is a demonstration of his eccentric nature.  The place has been rendered colorful and exotic by furnishings and decorations created by the artist to accord with his own desires rather than the routine of the conventions."

Although none of the interiors survive, contemporary accounts describe vibrant murals.  In an essay for the Vizcaya Museum and Garden's Robert Winthop Chanler, Lauren Drapala noted, "The building housed the largest collection of Chanler's work, an extensive study collection of live animals for modeling in his artwork, a vast library of rare books, and an assortment of houseguests, both friends as well as artisans in his workshop."

Robert Winthrop Chanler's 1905 painting Giraffes is presumed to be the inspiration for the tympana over the doors at 147-149 East 19th Street.  The International Studio, 1922 (copyright expired)

Members of Chanler's in-house menagerie--birds, fish, snakes and such--which he kept as models for his paintings, as well as his house pets sometimes took it on the lam.  On July 24, 1913, an ad offered a $50 reward for the return of a French bulldog.  Three years later, on July 15, 1916, the New York Herald reported, "Somewhere on Manhattan Island the small French bulldog belonging to Robert W. Chanler is making a frantic search for him."  In 1918, an ad in the Evening Telegram read, "Lost--A pink head parrot with gray body; good reward," and the following year, on March 10, an advertisement said, "Lost--A Parrot--green and yellow Macaw parrot, in neighborhood of 147 East 19th St.; generous reward."  The advertisements would continue for years.

Meanwhile, the House of Fantasy was known as much for its owner's parties as for his artwork.  Known as "Papa" to his friends ("pronounced in the French fashion," according to Charles G. Shaw's 1918 The Low-Down), Chanler threw a New Year's Eve party in 1917.  The following day, the New York Herald wrote, "A sequal to Nero's fiddle solo as Rome burned was enacted last night in a studio at No. 147 East Nineteenth street."  The New-York Tribune explained that the guests, "danced the old year out...while fire that started in a defective flue at 145 East Nineteenth Street ate its way under the floor toward them.  Some one discovered the blaze and the firemen put it out in jig time."

Interestingly, while Chanler's parties were infamous, Charles Green Shaw wrote in 1928, "In the midst of one of his parties he will sometimes sneak upstairs to his workshop and, all by himself, commence a new painting."

After renting 147-149 East 19th Street for nearly a decade, Chanler purchased the property in July 1919 for $57,000 (about $1 million in 2024).  In reporting the sale, the New York Herald remarked, "These houses were altered into what is the largest private studio in the city for Mr. Chanler about eight years ago by the sellers."

While in Europe in 1928, Chanler suffered a heart attack.  On July 29, 1929, the Buffalo [New York] Evening News reported that he had been admitted to a hospital in Kingston, New York, saying, "This is the third heart seizure within a little more than a year...His present illness has given [his friends] intense concern."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Chanler recovered, but the scare may have caused him to consider the viability of living alone in the East 19th Street house.  On June 23, 1930, the New York Sun reported that he had returned to the city from Woodstock, New York, but had gone to the apartment of Howland Spencer at 377 Park Avenue.  "Mr. Chanler closed his house at 147 East Nineteenth street last May.  An apartment house will be built on the site," said the article.

The renowned artist never had the chance to carry out that project.  He died four months later, on October 24, 1930.  

The Chanler estate sold the house in May 1945 to Nathan and Blossom Dolinsky.  The couple converted it to five apartments, many of them duplexes.  The configuration survives.  It was most likely the Dolinskys who drilled a hole through one of Charles Cary Rumsey's giraffe panels to accommodate a lamp and removed Sterner's picturesque wooden doors.  Overall, however, the 1911 appearance is intact.

many thanks to Carole Teller for prompting this post

photographs by the author

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The Remodeled Rev. Howard Crosby House - 116 East 19th Street

 

Around 1851 Lothrop L. Sturges moved his family into the recently completed house at 75 East 19th Street (renumbered 116 in 1865).  Like the other high-end homes along the block, it was four stories tall above an English basement.  A high, stone stoop led to the parlor floor.

Sturges was a partner in the shipping firm Sturges, Clearman & Co., and chairman of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company.  He and his wife, the former Jane Freeman, had six children, Charles Dimon, Catharine C., Theodore, Wallace N., Mary Jane, and Edwin Cady.

Charles Sturges was born on January 14, 1827.  Immediately after graduating from Yale College in 1848 he joined his father's firm.  His younger brothers would go on to other pursuits.  Edwin, for instance, was in the oil business by 1868.

The family's parlor was the scene of a somber event on October 5, 1860.  Around the time the Sturges family moved into the East 19th Street house, Mary Jane had married Jeremiah Manchester Wardwell.  The couple had six children.  Tragically, Mary Jane died on October 3 at the age of 39.  Her funeral was held here.

It would not be the last.  Two years later, on November 28, 1862, the funeral of Wallace N. Sturges took place here.  He was just 28 years old.  His older brother, Charles, died at the age of 41 on August 27, 1868; and Jane Freeman Sturges died on August 21, 1870.  She was 67.  

The last of the Sturges funerals to take place in the parlor was that of 80-year-old Lothrop.  Having buried nearly all of his family members, he died in the house on December 16, 1873.

The estate sold 116 East 19th Street to the Reverend Dr. Howard Crosby the following year.  He was pastor of the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, which was just two blocks away.  He and his wife Margaret Evertson Givan were married on March 17, 1847 and had nine children, the youngest of whom, Grace Ashton, was just three years old when the family moved in.

Crosby's ancestors included colonist Rip Van Dam; 17th century mayor of New York City Matthias Nicoll; and General William Floyd, a signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.  The erudite pastor was a chancellor of New York University (then known as the University of the City of New York), and president of the American Philological Association.  He would eventually write at least 16 books.

Like Lothrop L. Sturges, Howard Crosby had a significant personal fortune.  His had been inherited from his parents.  In 1899, The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record noted, "Mrs. [Harriet Ashton Clarkston] Crosby died on December 13, 1859, and her husband [William Bedlow Crosby] followed on March 18, 1865, leaving an estate valued at $1,000,000."  (That amount would translate to more than 18 times as much in 2023.)

Reverend Dr. Howard Crosby, from the archives of New York University.

The charitable nature of religious leaders made them targets of scam artists.  Reverend Crosby was not easily duped, however.  On November 24, 1877, The New York Times reported, "A respectable but rather shabbily-dressed man called at Rev. Dr. Howard Crosby's residence at No. 116 East Nineteenth-street, about a week ago, and rang the bell.  Being shown into the library, he told Dr. Crosby a pitiful story of deprivation and want."

He said he was a Christian man who merely wanted work, "no matter what kind or how hard," but, recounted the article, "at the same time, he could not, of course, refuse a small donation of ready cash to relieve his necessities."  He provided three letters from religious leaders that attested to his upstanding nature and urged the reader to provide employment if possible.  One of them was from Rev. Eldridge Mix, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Orange, New Jersey, a minister familiar to Crosby.

Crosby told the man he could not help him at the moment, but made an appointment for him to return a few days later.  He then wrote to Rev. Mix.  The reply "showed conclusively that the applicant was not only an unworthy man, but that he had recently carried on a swindle by forged letters, through which the clergymen of Northern New-Jersey were frequent and heavy losers," said The New York Times.

When Robert Bentley, alias John Brown, alias Jack Davis, returned at 6:00 on November 23, he told Rev. Crosby he "was more anxious than ever to get work of any kind to do."  The New York Times reported, "His fears for his immediate condition were soon relieved by the detectives, who arrested him and locked him up in the Eighteenth Precinct Station."

In 1877 Crosby founded the Society for the Prevention of Crime, "for putting down of illicit traffic in strong drink, the suppression of concert halls and low-grade theatres, the purification of criminal courts, and the betterment of legislation affecting city interests," according to The Sun.  For years its meetings were held in the 19th Street house. 

Interestingly, although he fought for improved saloon laws, Crosby was adamantly opposed to the total abstinence promoted by the Temperance Movement.  He asserted that "for years the prohibitionists have obstructed the path of reform," insisting that making alcohol illegal would simply increase crime and, ironically, drinking.

He was less lenient to the evil of Sunday newspapers.  Not only did their printing and sale require some to work on the sabbath, he said in a letter to his congregants in November 1885 that the newspapers "furnish secular reading to divert the mind from the holy themes especially appropriate to the Sabbath."  He complained "Our young people, who would not otherwise think of spending the day in such reading, are readily led to consider it a safe and proper thing, when they see the paper brought into the family, and even purchased from the stand by members of the church."

The Crosbys' youngest son, Nicholas Evertson, graduated from Columbia College in 1882.  Like his father, he was a classical scholar, and in 1891 was appointed a professor of Greek and Latin at Princeton.  (He changed course to professor of Archaeology at the school in 1893.)  He wrote a tongue-in-cheek letter to the editor of The New York Evening Post in June 1886, that said in part, "Sir: Will it not surprise you and your readers to learn, as it did me to discover, that ancient Rome in the days of Terence had its 'dudes,' and called them even by the same name?"  Crosby referred to the ancient Roman comedian Terence's play Eunuchus in which he used the word dudum.  Crosby translated the line to read, "He seemed a dude, because he was decked out in parti-colored clothes."  He ended his letter saying, "Perhaps Juvenal himself was a dude; Rome was full of them then."

The Crosbys' daughter Agnes married Reverend Arthur Huntington Allen in 1889.  The couple moved to Rensselaer, New York.  Two years later the Crosbys received word that Agnes was seriously ill and Howard Crosby rushed there in the frigid winter weather.  Agnes died on March 18, 1891, at the 32.   

Crosby was unable to attend the funeral.  He had "caught a heavy cold," according to The Sun, and was transported back to New York City.  On March 26, Figaro reported, "The Reverend Doctor Crosby is dangerously ill at his home, No. 116 East Nineteenth Street, New York.  He fell a victim to the grip last Friday, and pneumonia is feared."  The article added that Agnes's death a week earlier "was a great shock to him."  It noted, "Professor Nicholas Crosby and Miss Grace Crosby are in constant attendance at their father's bedside."

At around 4:00 on March 29, Crosby asked for paper and a pen.  He wrote farewell letters to his family, especially to his son Ernest, who was a Judge of the International Court at Cairo, Egypt, and his daughter Edith who was visiting him there.  At 5:30 he died.  Crosby was 65 years old.

The Crosby family rented 116 East 19th Street for decades afterward.  An advertisement in April 1900 described it as a "twenty-five foot four-story high-stoop residence, eighteen rooms, 3-story extension; rent moderate."  

The Crosbys' tenant that year was poet, scientist and essayist Edmund Clarence Stedman and his wife, the former Laura Hyde Woolworth.  Stedman wrote to Shakespearean scholar Horace Howard Furness on Christmas Day 1900 from Bermuda, where he had gone after an illness.  In it he noted, "I shall be in New York again, D. V., by mid-January, at 116 East Nineteenth Street."  ("D. V.," was the abbreviation for deo volente, or God willing.)

Before long Colonel Peter French and his sister-in-law Julia Prentis French resided in the house.  French was an examiner in the Appraisers' Stores Branch of the Customs Service.  Julia was the widow of Stephen Bull French, who had shot himself in 1896.  The former President of the Police Board and "one of the best known of the old-time politicians of the city," according to The Sun, his suicide was attributed by the newspaper to his recent financial losses on Wall Street.  Peter French died in the East 19th Street house on October 19, 1912, and Julia died the following year on November 17.  

In January 1920, Fannie K. Schiefenlin Crosby sold 116 East 19th Street.  In reporting on the sale, the New-York Tribune reminded readers it was "the former residence of the late Rev. Dr. Howard Crosby," and noted, "The building will be extensively altered."  And indeed it was.

A renovation completed in 1921 resulted in offices in the basement through second floors and apartments on the third through fifth.  The stoop was removed, the facade pulled forward to the property line, and a new Arts and Crafts inspired brick front installed.  Two entrances--one to the offices and another to the residential floors--flanked a grouping of windows on the ground floor.  The second floor was more glass than masonry, its multi-paned casement windows flooding the interior with natural light.  A skylight within the slate shingled roof that caught the natural northern light made the top floor apartment perfect for an artist's studio.  Out of respect for the building's history and its esteemed former owner, a bronze plaque was affixed to the facade that reads: "The Home of Howard Crosby D. D.  1875 1891."

The house would have originally have been similar to the one next door at left.  image via the NYC Dept. of Records & Information Services.

Even before construction was completed, Reginald Pelham Bolton moved his businesses into the building, which was now known as the Bolton Building.  In its October 1910 issue, Steam magazine announced that Bolton had hired James A. McHollan "in the consulting engineering practice" of the R. P. Bolton Company.  "The company specializes in power plants, electrification of steam plants, etc.," noted the article.

Born in London, Bolton was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institution of Consulting Engineers, and the American Society of Consulting Engineers. He was president of the R. P. Bolton Company and the Bolton Electric Meter Corporation.  His passion for history equaled his expertise in engineering.  He was an honorary life member of the New York Historical Society and president of the American Science and Historic Preservation Society.  In 1925 he published Washington Heights, Manhattan--Its Eventful Past; a Contribution to the History of America.

A Consolidated Gas Company of New York advertisement in Gas Age Record on January 2, 1926 touted "Remarkable results from gas heating," and said, "You will find them at No. 116 East Nineteenth Street.  A remodeled dwelling, now a thriving business building and studio apartments."

In 1930 Congress was considering the purchase of the rare 15th century book collection of Otto Vollbehr that included a perfect Gutenberg Bible printed around 1456.  A communication from Reginald Pelham Bolton was read before the Congressional committee on May 16.  He said:

I desire to convey to you my appreciation of your interest in this matter and the hope that you will be successful in inducing Congress to secure these invaluable volumes for the Nation, which I have had the privilege of examining.

A renovation completed in 1946 resulted in the offices of the publisher Beechhurst Press in the basement and first floor, and apartments throughout the upper floors.  By 1953 the ground floor space was home to Spanish Books, Inc., a bookstore.

photograph by Beyond My Ken

Then, in 1965, the first floor became the private East Manhattan School.  It remained through 1971, opening its doors occasionally to the public, such as in March 1970 when it staged a "poetry reading, also Goya art slides, [with] comments by Bill Brady Italian Poetry Group," as announced in The Villager on March 19.  In 1977 a renovation resulted in apartments throughout the building.

non-credited photographs by the author

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Albert Huttira's 1892 131 East 19th Street

 

As early as 1852 a 25-foot-wide, three-story brick house stood at 131 East 19th Street, a block south of fashionable Gramercy Square.  Real estate operator Max Korn purchased and demolished it in 1890, but if he intended to build on the plot, he quickly changed his mind.  He sold the parcel to the Cavinato family--Natale, Luigi, Guiseppe, Agostino, Maria and Steffano.  

The new owners formed Cavinato Bros. and hired architect Albert Huttira to design an upscale apartment house on the site.  It would cost $20,000 to erect, or about $665,000 in 2023.  Completed early in 1892, the brick-and-stone clad structure rose five stories above a high basement.  Huttira had successfully married Beaux Arts with Romanesque Revival--the latter style evident in the intricate carvings and occasional rough-cut blocks.  Painted white today, the carved limestone and brownstone details would originally have stood out against the natural color of the brick.  The centered four-story, three-sided oriel would have caught breezes in warmer months.  Handsome carved fans at the third floor and another at the fifth--the latter adorned with a string of pennants--added interest.

No. 131 East 19th Street filled with well-to-do professionals, like Dr. William Harvey Allen and his wife the former Isabel Dangaix.  Born in 1874, Allen was a prolific author on urban and political issues.  Among his many books were Liberty: The Giant Killer, Stories of Americans in the World War, Why Tammanies Revive, and Woman's Part in Government: Whether She Votes or Not.  He would found the Institute for Public Service.

The significant affluence of the residents afforded them luxurious lifestyles.  In 1903, for instance, Mr. and Mrs. R. W. Welch closed their apartment and sailed to Europe.  On November 8, 1908, The New York Times mentioned that the couple, "have opened their home at 131 East Nineteenth Street after five years abroad."

Henry E. Meagher was a prominent Tammany Hall member.  While residents like William Harvey Allen may have disapproved of his political connections, the source of Meagher's wealth may have rankled others.  The Evening World described him as "a wealthy retired saloon-keeper."  Meagher sold his saloon at 67 Second Avenue and retired at the age of 39 in 1904.  Two years later, The Evening World said, "Since then he has amused himself in various ways, but has had no regular occupation."

On May 24, 1905, Meagher left his apartment, telling his wife  he was going to visit friends.  He never returned home.  Oddly enough, although he was missing for days, his wife did not notify police, explaining later "he frequently went away for days at a time."  Then, a week later on May 31, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that Meagher's body was discovered in the East River at 29th Street by a scow worker.  The Evening World said, "When his wife learned of his death to-day she collapsed and was unable to give the slightest explanation of how her husband came to his death."

The Evening World reported, "None of Meagher's friends believe that he committed suicide, and he certainly didn't meet foul play."  Indeed, according to the Daily Standard, "there was a quantity of valuable jewelry on the body.  This included a gold watch, chain and locket, valued by the policies at $300; a diamond and ruby ring, worth $450; a diamond stud worth $350; diamond cuff buttons worth $100; gold knife, and $58 in cash."  The value of the jewelry and cash would translate to nearly $43,000 today.

The literary couple Rossiter and Helen Kendrick Johnson lived here by 1910.  Married in 1869, Rossiter was an author and editor; and Helen was a writer and poet, the author of children's literature and travel articles.  

Rossiter Johnson, The Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1918 (copyright expired).

Rossiter Johnson edited encyclopedias, reference books and dictionaries, and wrote historical non-fiction, novels and poetry.  Several of his works were aimed at youthful readers, like Pheaton Rogers, a Novel of Boy Life.  Some of his histories were also slanted to a young audience.  Among his works were A Short History of the War of Secession, The Hero of Manila, The Clash of Nations and Episodes of the Civil War.

His colorful wife was better known for her activism than for her literature and poetry.  She was editor of the American Woman's Journal and an ardent anti-suffragist.  She wrote Why Women Do Not Want the Ballot, and in 1897 published Woman and the Republic.  In 1910, she founded the  anti-suffragette Guidon Club.

Helen Kendrick Johnson (original source unknown)

On January 20, 1910, the Guidon Club met in the Johnson apartment.  Helen Kendrick Johnson read her latest paper, "The Historical Relation of Socialism to Suffrage," the conclusion of which, according to the New-York Tribune, was "that woman suffrage and socialism are one and inseparable and that they are standing together in the path of progress."  She summed up her address that day saying:

Socialism, communism and anarchy are words that can be used interchangeably.  They are all different methods of arriving at the same thing.  They all stand in the direct path of progress, and so does woman suffrage, which is inextricably bound up with them.

The marriage of Schuyler Adams Orvis to Ina H. Leland in Saratoga Springs on October 6, 1915, was a society affair.  The Troy Times called it "the most fashionable wedding which had taken place at Saratoga this season."  The 23-year-old groom was a broker in his father's banking and brokerage business, and Ina, who was 22, was a wealthy heiress and recent debutante.  The reception was held in Ina's summer home "at which 100 guests were present," according to The Saratogian.  The newspaper noted, "Photographers from Underwood and Underwood were present today at the ceremony and took pictures of the event for publication in various society magazines."

The New York Times reported that after their wedding trip, "the young couple will live at 131 East Nineteenth Street, New York, an apartment house owned by the bride."

The Orvis apartment would become the scene of social events immediately upon the couple's moving in.  On February 5, 1916, for instance, The New York Press reported, "Mrs. Schuyler Adams Orvis will give a dansant this afternoon at her home in No. 131 East Nineteenth."  (Because dansants took place in the afternoon, they were sometimes called tea dances.)

Six months later on March 30, 1916, Schuyler Orvis took the couple's dog Jerry for a walk.  They had only gone half a block when trouble ensued.  The Evening World reported, "When Teddy, an English bulldog met Jerry, a Boston terrier, at Third Avenue and Nineteenth Street last night formal declarations of war were overlooked in the rush to get at each other."  Teddy was being walked by actress Allay Rahe, who screamed at Orvis to call off his dog.  "But Jerry had a leg hold, and it was some time before it could be broken," said the article.

Allay Rahe was infuriated and had Orvis arrested.  In night court, he pleaded guilty to "having his dog unmuzzled" and was fined $1.  Now the actress was even more irate.  "It's an outrage," she told a reporter.  "I'm an actress, and Teddy plays in a sketch with me.  He's dressed up as Uncle Sam and fires a machine gun.  Just think of a Boston terrier biting Uncle Sam on the leg and getting away with a dollar fine!"

The Orvises' names appeared in newsprint seven months later for happier reasons.  The New-York Tribune reported on October 24, 1916 that the couple "are receiving congratulations on the birth of a son on Saturday."  The boy was named Schuyler, Jr.

In 1928, Ina and Schuyler Orvis divorced.  Soon afterward, on December 27, The Hempstead Sentinel reported that Mrs. Virginia S. Ruggles "will be married to Schuyler A. Orvis on January 9."

Not surprisingly, since she owned the building, it was Ina who remained at 131 East 19th Street.  With the Great Depression ravaging the country, she and another resident, Mrs. Maurie Carver, became active in the Women's Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee.  

The hard times did not extend into the Orvis household.  On September 17, 1931 the New York Evening Post noted, "Mrs. Leland Orvis and her son, Schuyler Adams Orvis Jr., have returned from Rhinebeck, N.Y., and are at 131 East Nineteenth Street."  And on February 15, 1932, the newspaper reported that Ina "is entertaining at dinner tomorrow evening at her home...and later will take her guests to the recital of Miss Dorothy Janice in Steinway Hall."

On July 31, 1932, Ina's apartment was the scene of her wedding to Thomas Andrew Smith.  They soon relocated to Rheinbeck, New York.

Living in 131 East 19th Street in the 1930's was Irish-born critic and writer Ernest Augustus Boyd.  He wrote reviews and articles for the New York Evening Post, the Saturday Review of Literature and the American Mercury.  His more than 20 books included biographies of H. L. Mencken and Guy de Maupassant, and the 1916 Ireland's Literary Renaissance.

The building continued to be home to well-heeled residents whose names appeared regularly in society columns.  It was  possibly during a renovation in 1971 that the regrettable coat of paint was applied, which obscures the architectural details.  The refurbishing did not change the configuration of one apartment per floor.

No. 131 East 19th Street appeared on screen twice.  It was the apartment of actress Ari Graynor's character Katie Steel in the 2012 film For a Good Time, Call..., and was the townhouse of character Guinevere Beck in season one of the Lifetime series You in 2018.

 photographs by the author

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