Frederick Godwin's upper floor design was created, mostly, by strategically placed small, medium and large-sized windows.
The Great Depression was one year away in 1928. Raymond B. Fenner was the president of the newly formed 240 East 79th Street Corporation and that year the syndicate hired Godwin, Thompson & Patterson to design a 16-story-and-penthouse apartment building on the south side of East 79th Street between Second and Third Avenues. Reportedly Frederick Godwin was the lead architect on the project. The plans, filed on December 10, 1928, projected the costs at $300,000, or about $5.6 million in 2026 terms.
For the most part, Godwin's Art Deco design was unexciting. Faced in rough-faced variegated brown brick, its scheme relied greatly on the placement of fenestration and thin vertical lines of darker brick. But the single-story base was another story altogether.
Godwin faced it with orange-hued tiles set off with vibrant mossy-green terra cotta. At the corners were fluted pilasters topped with curved volutes that suggest that another half is hidden in the adjoining wall. Similar pilasters flank two narrow windows, their caps fully formed and embracing an octagonal plaque of veined gray stone. The tour-de-force is the entranceway. Reeded gray stone pilasters on either side are topped with Empire State Building-like silhouettes. Above the entrance, the address is announced in Art Deco lettering. A sinuous hood, like a cresting wave or calla lily petal, sits above a large octagonal gray stone plaque.
On August 25, 1929 The New York Times reported that artist Ruth Carroll had been hired "to paint murals for the entrance hall of the new sixteen-story apartment house." The article said, "Her paintings will depict the skyline, bridges and vistas of modern New York." Two weeks earlier, the newspaper had reported that 240 East 79th Street "is rapidly nearing completion and is nearly 50 per cent leased."
An advertisement in Town & Country on September 15, 1929 offered three- or four-room apartments with one or two baths and "large living rooms, outside dining rooms." Rents started at $1,350 a year, or about $2,100 a month in today's terms. There were two "sky maisonettes" on the penthouse level. An advertisement in The New Yorker noted that they included, "real kitchens."
Among those who signed leases during construction were Percy O'Gorman, advertising manager of Durham Duplex Razor Company; Dr. Claude E. Heaton; Dr. Anthony Fugassi; and Charles E. Gautier, secretary of J. H. Gautier Company, a crucibles firm.
Taking one of the penthouses was 25-year-old Lord Charles Cavendish. Upon his moving in, The New York Sun remarked on June 17, 1930, "Lord Charles, who is the second son of the Duke of Devonshire, is engaged in the banking business in New York." Cavendish worked for J. P. Morgan & Co. and was romantically involved with Adele Astaire, the sister of Fred Astaire and his dancing partner. The two had met in London in 1927. Cavendish's residency here would be relatively short. On October 23, 1931, Reuters reported that Adele "confirmed her engagement to Lord Charles Cavendish." The couple was married in Chatsworth House, Cavendish's ancestral home near Chesterfield, England, in 1932 and they remained there.
Newlyweds Gardner Hale and Dorothy A. Donovan were also initial residents. Hale was born in Chicago in 1894 and educated at Yale. He studied art in Rome and Paris and at the Art Students League in New York. Hale was well-known as a muralist and, according to The New York Sun, was "generally credited with the revival in this country of fresco painting." Gardner and Dorothy were married in 1929. She was his second wife. His first wife was author Marie Louise Gibson, who used the pseudonym Maryse Rutledge. They were divorced in 1926.
In November 1931, Gardner and Dorothy Hale went to Long Beach, California for a six-month stay. On December 28, Hale headed for San Francisco alone. The next day, The New York Sun reported, "The body of Gardner Hale, young painter of murals and frescoes, was found yesterday at the bottom of a 500-foot precipice, forty miles from Santa Maris, where his automobile had plunged from a highway." Hale was 37 years old.
Azel Farnsworth Hatch and Dorothy Doane were married in August 1932 and moved into one of the penthouses. Hatch, who had served in World War I and decorated with the Croix de Guerre, was president of A. F. Hatch & Co., bankers.
Four months later, on December 10, the Times Union reported that Dorothy "was found in their penthouse apartment...early today with a bullet wound over her heart. The shot was fired from a Luger pistol, war souvenir of her husband."
Police found Dorothy in a negligee on the living room floor. According to the Times Union, Dorothy muttered, "I did it myself," then lapsed into a coma. Hatch told the police that Dorothy had discovered the firearm while "cleaning out a closet." She "asked her husband what she was to do with it," recounted The New York Times. "It was discharged and a bullet entered her chest." The incident was deemed an accident, however Hatch was charged with a violation of the Sullivan Law, an early gun control statute.
The boyish-looking Azel F. Hatch earned $100,000 a year, according to his wife (a comfortable $2.3 million today). The Daily News, December 19, 1936.
The Hatches' marriage did not last and when Dorothy filed for separation on December 18, 1936, she told the court the truth of the incident four years earlier. The Daily News reported, "It was attempted murder, and not an accident, she told the Manhattan Supreme Court." The New York Post said in part:
Telling the Supreme Court about it, she said she was sitting on her husband's lap, weeping and pleading with him about something or other on the night of December 9, 1932. Without warning, she said, her husband picked up a German Luger pistol, a little trinket he had taken from some German prisoner, and shot her.
Azel Hatch, not surprisingly, gave a different version of the incident (although this one, too, differed from the couple's original story). He said that Dorothy had "snatched up the gun and fired it herself." He added that he "didn't stop her when she grabbed the gun because he was amused. Besides, he was sure the gun wasn't loaded." Dorothy obtained her divorce and Azel was never charged with attempted murder.
Another titled resident, 34-year-old Josef Franz, Archduke of Austria and Prince of Hungary, and his wife, Princess Anna of Saxony, moved into 240 East 79th Street in 1937. The couple was married in October 1924 and had five children. (Three more would come later.) Archduke Josef Franz was born in 1895 to the last Palatine of Hungary.
Archduke Joseph Franz and Princess Anna Monika Pia. (original source unknown)
The Nazi annexation of Austria had made staying in Europe dangerous for the family. The members of the imperial family discovered that they would quickly need to adapt to American rules and customs. The same applied to the family's staff. On January 7, 1938, The New York Times reported, "Archduke Franz Josef of Austria was fined a dollar for overtime parking." The Archduke's chauffeur explained in traffic court, "the Archduke is unfamiliar with traffic regulations here," said the article.
America's entry to World War II resulted in several residents of 240 West 79th Street going off to the front. Dr. Emil E. Napp, who lived here with his wife, the former Ruth Marschalk, was on the staff of the Flower-Fifth Avenue Hospital. He became a commander with the Navy Medical Corps in the South Pacific. Napp received the Navy and Marine Corps medal for his work on Guadalcanal in 1942, and was awarded the Silver Star on May 19, 1944.
Another resident doctor was Gurney Taylor. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel with the American Seventh Army in France. He was attached to the Ninth Evacuation Hospital in the Vosges Forest, which was, somewhat astonishingly, "manned by the veteran Roosevelt Hospital Unit from New York," as reported by The New York Times on October 29, 1944.
240 East 79th Street soared above the neighboring buildings in 1940. via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
Two other residents returned from the war in 1945. One was Captain Carel Van Heukelom, and the other Barbara Murphy, one of 280 volunteer workers of the American Red Cross who served in the European theatre of operations. Barbara told a reporter that "she had drive a clubmobile during her eighteen months overseas," adding, "Oh, I made the Grand Tour."
A fascinating resident was Marjorie T. Bellows, here at midcentury. Born in 1906, she earned her masters degree in statics at the Columbia School of Public Heath. From 1928 to 1929 she was senior statistician at the New York State Health Department. She joined the American Heart Association in 1946 and became its senior staff member. While there she directed investigations into the statistical aspects of cardiovascular issues, like rheumatic fever. Bellows, who never married, developed the technique of "case registers," that analyzed the nature and uses of recording systems in public health administration.
Among Marjorie Bellows's neighbors in the building at the time was actress Lili Darvas. Born in Hungary in 1902, she made a name on the Budapest stage as a young woman, debuting in 1921 as the female lead in Romeo and Juliet. She married playwright Ferenc Molnar in 1926. Lili was appearing in Vienna in 1938 when the Nazi troops invaded. She said later that "she simply packed her things, walked onto a train to Switzerland and departed" with her Hungarian passport.
The couple arrived in New York and Lili Darvas first appeared on stage here in 1941 in The Criminals. Molnar died in 1952, and Lili continued acting, appearing in roles that most often portrayed characters fitting her European background. Such was the case when she played the domineering mother of Sigmund Freud in the Henry Denker drama A Far Country.
Lili Darvas and Billy Mumy in a 1961 Twilight Zone episode, "Long Distance Call." CBS Television publicity shot.
The indefatigable actress did not restrict herself to the stage, film or television. On June 13, 1963, The New York Times interviewed her regarding her upcoming catering stint. She had been asked by another actress to prepare an after-theater dinner party for 50 guests.
Lili Darvas died in her apartment here on August 22, 1974 at the age of 72.
In September 1984, The New York Times reported that 240 East 79th Street was undergoing a cooperative conversion. Among the new apartment owners in 1989 was bond trader Jeffrey M. Stambovsky, who placed a down payment on a country house that August. He got buyer's remorse when he picked up a 1977 Readers' Digest article titled, "Our Haunted House on the Hudson." In it, Helen V. Ackley, from whom he was buying the 18-room Victorian residence in Nyack, wrote about its ghosts. The New York Times reported on March 16, 1990, "She described one as a 'cheerful apple-cheeked man' who looked more like Santa Claus than Rex Harrison in 'The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.'"
Stambovsky sued to get his money back. He claimed in court that publicity of the ghost stories "threatened the house's property value" and that Mrs. Ackley "never told him about the ghosts." Unfortunately for Stambovsky, while the judge agreed that the stories might affect the property values, he said that Ackerly "was not required to tell Mr. Stambovsky of any ghosts."
Thankfully, little has changed outwardly to 290 East 79th Street in its nearly 100 years of existence. And, although Ruth Carroll's Art Deco lobby murals have been painted over, outside Godwin, Thompson and Patterson's bold and striking ground floor elements are showstoppers to this day.
photographs by the author
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