The 1931 Wildenstein & Co. Building - 19-21 East 64th Street

 

photo via zillow.com

Nathan Wildenstein was a tailor in Paris when his career took a surprising turn.  He promised a well-heeled client that he could sell an Old Master painting for her although (most likely unknown to her) he knew little about fine art.  After spending hours in the Louvre Museum to educate himself, he sold the painting and used his commission to begin an art gallery.

Wildenstein became an authority of 18th century French art and his firm, Wildenstein et Cie, was among the foremost dealers in Europe.  In 1903 he opened a Manhattan branch, headed by his son George after 1912.  (Interestingly, Nathan would never cross the ocean to visit the United States.)

George slightly changed the face of Wildenstein & Co.  While he was as impassioned about the Old Masters which made his father's gallery famous, he embraced modern movements as well--such as Impressionism and Realism.  American tycoons routinely acquired works of arts from the gallery.  The New York Sun later commented that it "added extensively to the Altman, Henry Clay Frick, E. J. Berwind, Jules S. Bache and William Randolph Hearst collections.

Benjamin Altman, for example, had purchased Velasquez's The Christ and the Disciples from Wildenstein & Co., Henry Frick acquired Jean-Baptise-Simeon Chardin's La Serinette and the Portrait of Madame d'Haussonville by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

Portrait of Madame d'Haussonville by Ingres.  Frick Collection

Felix Wildenstein had been associated with the family business since 1902.  In 1925 he was named president of the New York branch.  (George had moved on to spearhead the international business.)  The firm had been renting space its gallery space for years, the lease set to expire in 1932.  Wilderstein would not renew it.

On May 12, 1931 The New York Times reported, "An important upper east side real estate transaction that foreshadows the erection of a fine building designed especially to exhibit objects of art was disclosed yesterday through the purchase of 19 and 21 East Sixty-fourth Street by Wildenstein & Co., Inc., art dealers, now at 645 Fifth Avenue."  The two old buildings sat within a block from Central Park amid the mansions of Manhattan's social elite.  Wildenstein & Co. paid about $800,000 for properties, about $13.4 million today.  (A significant outlay in the Depression years.)  

Wildenstein & Co. handled the delicate issue of inserting a commercial structure into an exclusive residential block by hiring society architect Horace Trumbauer to design the building.  Based in Philadelphia, he was responsible for some of Manhattan's most lavish mansions, including the James Speyer residence and the James B. Duke mansion.

Completed the following year, the Wildenstein & Co. gallery building gave no hint that it was anything but a private mansion.  At a time when other architects were working in the jazzy Art Deco style, Trumbauer turned the clock back, designing a neo-French Classic structure that appeared to have been on the site for three decades.  The stone-faced structure rose five stories including a mansard level.  Three arched openings pierced the base, each of which was adorned with a Versailles-worthy portrait keystone.  Two-story pilasters separated the windows of the mid-section.  The fourth floor and mansard sat behind a stone baluster atop the cornice.

The sedate French façade was not the only deception.  Trumbauer's plans and subsequent Department of Buildings documents described an art gallery on the first floor and "showrooms" throughout the rest of the building, with no residential space.  That was a notable stretch of the truth.  In fact, the upper floors (which like the exterior were lavishly decorated in turn-of-the-century French style) included space intended as the home of the Wildenstein family.

photo via zillow.com

The galleries were routinely the venue for charity events, among the earliest being the exhibition of paintings by Giovanni Boldini for the benefit of the Child Welfare Committee of Belleville Hospital in March 1933.   Works were loaned by socialites and organizations like Mrs. Charles T. Barney, Virginia Fair Vanderbilt, Baron Maurice de Rothschild, the Brooklyn Museum and the Paris headquarters of Wildenstein & Co.

The Great Depression did not necessarily affect large sales for the firm.  On December 6, 1934, for instance, The New York Sun reported that the Metropolitan Museum of Art had purchased Antoine Watteau's Le Mezzettino which had been purchased by Catherine the Great in 1767.  The museum disclosed only that it had paid "less than $250,000" for the masterpiece (about $4.77 million today).

Le Mezzetino, collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Among the other important events held in the galleries was the exhibition of Eduard Manet in February through April 1937.  The New York Sun noted "This is the first large and important Manet exhibition ever held in this country."

An anticipated annual event here was the Hallmark Art Award exhibition.  Sponsored by the greeting card company, it offered cash prizes to artists, but more importantly provided funds for various charities.  In 1949 the proceeds went to the New York Chapter of the American Red Cross.  That year the firm offered $28,000 in awards for Christmas-themed paintings with the first prize being $3,500.  

photo via zillow.com

The competition drew major names in the art field.  In 1957 artists like Andrew Wyeth, Loren MacIver and John Wilde submitted works.  The first prize that year went to Edward Hopper.

As the Wildenstein & Co. galleries exhibited and sold high-end art for decades, the family continued to live in the upper floors.  At one point there were 11 members in the house, prompting art dealer Harry Brooks to quip in New York Magazine in 1997 that it was "the most expensive tenement in Manhattan."

In 2013 the David Wildenstein entered into negotiations with the Government of Qatar to purchase the property, but the talks ended with no deal.  It sold in 2017 for $79.5 million to the Chinese conglomerate HNA, which intended to convert it to offices.  Then the firm changed its mind.  Less than a year later, on February 15, 2018, Curbed New York reported that it had sold again, this time to billionaire Len Blavatnik who paid $90 million.

photo by Jim Henderson

In January 2019 another art gallery, Skarstedt, moved into former Waldenstein & Co. space.  Founded in 1994, the gallery features contemporary European and American artists.

The Lost James Speyer Mansion - 1058 Fifth Avenue

photo by Wurts Bros from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Philip Speyer was a descendant of a distinguished German banking family.  He immigrated to the United States from Frankfurt in 1837 and founded the banking firm of Philip Speyer & Co. in 1845.  Upon his death in 1876 the firm's name was changed to Speyer & Co., and in 1899 Philip's nephew, 38-year old James Speyer, became its senior partner.

James was born in America in 1861.  The 1896 marriage of the Jewish millionaire to Ellin Prince Lowery was a bit surprising since the bride was a Christian.  The religious differences caused a few social problems since, for instance, there were many fashionable places where Ellen was welcome but her husband was not.  Nevertheless, the marriage was a successful and loving one.

James Speyer - Men Who Are Making America, 1917 (copyright expired)

The couple was living at No. 207 Madison Avenue in the upscale Murray Hill neighborhood in 1911.  But the increasing commercialization of the avenue may have prompted them to relocate.  On May 13 that year the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported "James Speyer, the banker...has commissioned Architect Horace Trumbauer of Philadelphia, to design plans for a new residence...at the southeast corner of 5th av and 87th st."

The Speyers' choice of Trumbauer may have been prompted by his James B. Duke mansion rising on the opposite corner of Fifth Avenue and 78th Street.  Its stately mid-18th century French Classical architecture bespoke wealth and dignity.

Oddly enough, Speyer seems to have been in no rush to get construction started.  On December 2 the general contracts had still not been awarded, although the Record & Guide reported "It was stated on Friday that the contract had practically been signed."

Although Trumbauer was credited with designing the Speyer house, according to Dreck Spurlock Winson in his Julian Abele: Architect and the Beaux Arts, it was actually Trumbauer's senior designer, Julian Abele who designed the mansion.  He was among the most formally educated architects in America in the Beaux Arts and Louis XIV styles.  But because he was Black he would not begin to receive the credit he deserved for masterpieces like the Speyer and Duke houses until decades later.

Abele created a Louis XIV-style palace 75-feet wide on Fifth Avenue that stretched 110 feet down the side street.  The deep light moat which provided light and ventilation to the basement level was protected by a substantial stone wall.  The rusticated first floor was pierced by a regimented row of arched openings.  The second floor was fronted by a full-width balcony on the Fifth Avenue front, and another at the slightly protruding three-bay mid-section on 78th Street.  Two-story pilasters united the second and third floors.  Atop the stone cornice a stone balustrade hid the fourth floor, a proportion-preserving deception also used in the Duke mansion.

The 78th Street elevation was no less impressive than the front.  The fourth floor can be clearly seen in this view.  photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Architect and society interior decorator Ogden Codman, Jr. was commissioned to create the interiors.  At a time when millionaires were creating a collection of historic vignettes within their mansions--a Gothic room, a Japanese room, an Adam room, for instance--Codman for the most part stayed true to the Louis XIV period.  The rooms' enameled paneling touched with gold, wall and ceiling frescoes, and tapestried insets created a perfectly French ambiance.

The airy entrance hall rose two stories. 

 Flooded by light from above, the second floor hallway with its fountain and profusion of plants had a conservatory atmosphere.  photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

On the walls was "one of the largest and most valuable private art collections in any American home," according to the New York Herald.  The Speyers' paintings, it said "include many old masters, including several find specimens of Rembrandt.  The English and Barbizon schools also are largely represented, as are the best known of American paintings."  Among those were a three-quarters length portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart.  There were also ancient Grecian and Roman bronzes and modern works by sculptors like Rodin.

Ellin entertained in rooms like these.  Portraits on the walls are by artists like Sir Thomas Lawrence. photographer unknown from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York  

When the Speyers moved into their new mansion, they had both earned admiration for their philanthropies and social awareness.  James founded the Theodore Roosevelt professorship in the University of Berlin, which initiated the exchange of professors between the leading universities of the U.S. and Germany, helped found the Museum of the City of New York, and was a trustee of the United Hospital Fund of New York, Mount Sinai Hospital and a director of the Isabella Home.  He was also sat on the advisory board of the Salvation Army and was vice president of the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York.

Ellin was no less involved.  She was a founder of the United Hospital Fund, was one of three organizers of the first Working Girls' Club in the country, founded the Girl's Branch of the Public Schools Athletic League, and the New York Women's League for Animals.

The second floor hallway can be seen through the pocket doors of the ballroom. photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York 

Ellin worked tirelessly for animals.  The Women's League for Animals provided shelter and medical care to "animals in distress.  She had organized the first annual Work Horse Parade in 1910 to shed light on the plight of overworked horses.  On March 5, 1912 she took over the ballroom at Sherry's for a bridge party to benefit the Dogs' Brigade, a branch of the Women's League.  The New York Times reported "The prizes were numerous and costly, ranging from a Chow-chow puppy to a box at the Metropolitan Opera House."  

Ellin Speyer.  photograph courtesy of Kat Mills.

The Speyers had no children.  Their country estate, Waldheim, was located near Scarborough-on-Hudson.  Entertainments in the Fifth Avenue mansion were almost always related to charitable, social or political issues.  The New-York Tribune reported in 1916, for instance, "Mrs. James Speyer has given the use of her house, 1058 Fifth Avenue, on Thursday afternoon, March 23, for a recital by Fritz Kreisler for the benefit of the St. Mary's Free Hospital for Children."

The Speyers and guests post on the steps of the Waldheim mansion.  photo courtesy of Kat Mills.

When the United States entered World War I the Speyers turned their attention to relief work.  On March 23, 1918 the Record & Guide reported that James had purchased "the former Dun residence" at No. 261 Madison Avenue in Murray Hill.  Two weeks later the Guide explained that he had made the purchase to "place the house at the disposal of some organization engaged in war work."

Ellin was chairman of the Red Star Animal Relief which she had organized in New York with Mrs. Frederick W. Vanderbilt and Mrs. M. Orme Wilson.  The group funded the purchase of animals for the U.S. military in Europe.

Elllin pleaded for donations to supply the army with additional horses at the front on March 25.  "Few persons realize that 4,500,000 horses and mules are constantly bringing to the first line trenches all munitions and supplies used on the European battlefields...Motor trucks cannot be used as conveyances so near the firing line, and for this reason the Entente Allies have expended more than $400,000,000 in the United States alone since the war began."

The need for constantly replenishing the supply of horses was urgent.  The New-York Tribune reported "The average life of a horse at the front is estimated to be two weeks."

With the war over appeared that the Speyers were taking a break.  On January 26, 1919 the New-York Tribune reported that "Mrs. James Speyer, has returned home after a six month's stay in Atlantic City, where she had gone for a complete rest."  And on July 8, 1919 The New York Times announced that the Speyers "have left for a trip to the Pacific Coast.  They have been spending the early Summer at their country home at Scarborough-on-Hudson."  What the newspapers did not disclose was that, in fact, Ellin had suffered a nervous breakdown.

Nevertheless, ignoring all advice she did not slow down.  On February 15, 1921 she held the annual meeting of the Girls' Branch of the Public Schools Athletic League in the house.  Eight days later the New-York Tribune reported that Ellin "is seriously ill at her home, 1058 Fifth Avenue."  The article noted "Mrs. Speyer suffered a nervous break-down two years ago, from which she never fully recovered and upon her return from Europe last fall she took up her work where she had left off, though her health did not warrant her doing so."

On February 22 The Evening World reported "Doctors to-day said there was little hope for the recovery of Mrs. James Speyer, known all her life for her active interest in improving conditions among children and animals.  This morning she was still unconscious."  The New York Times remarked on a traffic policeman who was told that she was probably fatally ill.  His response was "Oh, if every man, woman and child Mrs. Speyer has helped in this city would send one big prayer together up to God, she would surely get well."

Ellin Speyer's bedroom.  photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Ellin died just after midnight on the morning of February 23.  Her husband was at her bedside with the doctor and nurses.  The Times said "The end came quietly.  Mrs. Speyer never having recovered consciousness."

Following the funeral, James went to Europe, possibly to grieve privately.  The other mansions in the neighborhood were also closed with their owners away at summer estates or resorts.  A skeleton staff or a single caretaker was left to watch over the residences.

On the afternoon of September 8 the caretaker of a 78th Street house noticed smoke coming from a window of the Speyer mansion.  He rushed to notify the Speyer caretaker, Martin Beuttner.  They searched the house and "found the dining room ablaze," according to The New York Herald.  Beuttner briefly considered trying to save the paintings; but decided that taking the time might allow the fire to spread.

By the time fire fighters arrived the room was nearly totally engulfed.  Part of the ceiling and one wall were destroyed, as well as irreplaceable artworks.  The New York Herald reported "Three paintings which were said by the caretaker to have been Rembrandt landscapes were destroyed...A fourth painting, also said to be a Rembrandt landscape, was badly damaged by smoke and water, but there is some hope that art experts may be able to restore it."

The dining room previous to the fire.  photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The New York Times placed the damage to the room at $50,000.  One painting alone was valued at $25,000.  The total loss would equal about $1.4 million today.

Possibly to provide emotion support, upon James's return to New York Ellin's nephew and his wife began visiting as somewhat regular house guests.  John Dyneley Prince was at the time the United States Minister to Denmark.  On February 5, 1923 the New York Evening Post reported that James was giving a dinner party for the couple.

The following year in November the newspaper noted that the Princes "have come into town and are the guests of Mr. James Speyer at his home, 1058 Fifth avenue, until they sail for Copenhagen the third of next month."  And in April 1931, after Prince had been appointed Minister to Japan, the couple was back and once again James gave them a dinner party.

In the meantime Speyer had turned his attention to his wife's former causes.  On April 17, 1939 the New York Post advised "James Speyer, whose late wife founded the New York Women's League for Animals, twenty-nine years ago, will open his house...for a concert which Laurent Melchior of the Metropolitan Opera Company and Ignace Strasfogel, pianist, will give for the benefit of the league."

On April 14, 1941 the house was again the scene of a musical benefit for the League.  This time Metropolitan Opera soprano Kirsten Flagstad gave a recital.  In reporting on the event The New York Times mentioned "For many years Mr. Speyer has given the use of his house to the league for concerts in aid of animals."  He also continued to host the annual meetings of the Public Schools Athletic League here.

July 22, 1941 was Speyer's 80th birthday.  And he celebrated it in true selfless Speyer fashion.  The Times reported he "will share his birthday cake and ice cream today with 250 city children at the [University Settlement Society's] vacation camp at Beacon, N.Y."  The campers and guests assembled in Speyer Hall (a gift of Ellin years earlier) that afternoon to sing "Happy Birthday to You" and 12-year old Barbara Tuschner presented Speyer with an album of camp photos.

Later that summer Speyer fell ill.  He died in the Fifth Avenue mansion on September 30.  Newspapers nationwide printed his accolades.  The funeral was held in the mansion on November 3.

Much of Speyer's massive estate went to charities and to the organizations he and Ellin had worked to create.  He left the Fifth Avenue residence to the Museum of the City of New York, no doubt envisioning it as a fitting setting for the museum.

The auction of the Speyer art collection and furnishings was conducted in two parts.  On April 10 and 11, 1942, the paintings, 18th century French furniture, and antique tapestries were sold.  The second auction of mostly furniture took place on April 14 and 15, in the mansion.

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

Despite Speyer's wishes, the Museum of the City of New York sold the mansion in January 1944.  One by one the development firm of Simon Brothers acquired the still-surviving mansions on the Fifth Avenue corner.  On December 22, 1946 The New York Times reported that the firm had accumulated the Speyer house, the H. H. Rogers mansion and the Benjamin residences.  "Simon Brothers intend to start building operations this spring."

photo via landmarkbranding.com

Designed by George F. Pelham, the 19-floor apartment building on the site was completed in 1951.  It survives.

The Lost Duveen Brothers Bldg -- No. 720 Fifth Avenue

At the time this photograph was taken, the Duveen Brothers building was already scheduled for demolition -- from the collection of the Library of Congress

In 1879 George Kemp had come a long way since he arrived in New York from Ireland with his family at the age of five.  Active in real estate development, The New York Times would later note “He erected many fine buildings upon the real estate that he owned.”  He was also the proprietor of the Buckingham Hotel; but his great fortune was made in Lanman & Kemp, a perfumery nationally-known for its Florida Water and Eau de Cologne.  Florida Water was so popular (today we would call it a “body splash”) that baseball teams used it as a refresher during hot games.

Kemp hired Tiffany & Wheeler to decorate his new five-story, 50-foot mansion at No. 720 Fifth Avenue, at the northwest corner of 56^th Street.  It was the firm's first residential commission and the scope of the project was such that work began in August 1879 and was not completed until April 1881.

On November 3, 1893 The Evening World reported that “The condition of millionaire George Kemp, who has been seriously ill at his home…was reported as more comfortable this morning.”  But three weeks later he was dead.   “He leaves a wife and four children to lament his loss,” wrote The New York Times.

Julia Kemp remained in the mansion.  As the wedding of her son, Arthur, to Belle Neilson neared in April, she became ill.  On May 2, 1897 The Times reported “At the time of the wedding Mrs. Kemp’s illness became alarming, and Mrs. Neilson suggested that the reception be postponed.  Mrs. Kemp was unwilling, however, that any alterations should mar the wedding ceremonies as first planned, and the reception was not changed.”  The stress of the social event was too much.  Hours after the reception at the Neilson mansion at No. 100 Fifth Avenue, Julie Kemp died.

The Kemp mansion was leased to the Edwin Gould family.  In 1899 the millionaire commissioned architect Robert T. Lyons to do $4,000 in “improvements” to the house, including “the construction of an elevator plant.”

The Goulds would stay at No. 720 at least through 1908; but by then the Avenue was changing.  High-end dressmakers and art dealers were among the businesses which were taking over what had been Manhattan’s most exclusive residential neighborhood.   Among the most respected of these was Duveen Brothers, which had earlier commissioned McKim, Mead & White to alter an impressive French Second Empire mansion at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 31^st Street.

Duveen Brothers' gallery at No. 302 Fifth Avenue (left) was in a brownstone renovated by McKim, Mead & White.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Dealers in fine art, Duveen Brothers was founded in London by Joel Joseph Duveen in the 1870s.  Around 1880 his brother, Henry J. Duveen, arrived in New York to open a small art shop on John Street where he sold “antique silverware, ivory carvings, rare porcelains, period furniture and Oriental rugs,” according to The New York Times.  Shortly afterwards the brothers opened a branch shop in Paris.

Duveen Brothers, now co-partnered by Henry and Joseph Duveen, followed the trend up Fifth Avenue.  On January 7, 1911 the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that the Kemp Estate had leased No. 720 Fifth Avenue to the art dealers “for a term of twenty years.”

Later that year, in September, Horace Trumbauer filed plans for the “five-story and basement brick and stone store” to replace the old Kemp house.    The Philadelphia architect, in fact, worked with Parisian architect Rene Sergent in designing the Duveen Brothers store and headquarters.  Sergent had designed the firm’s Parisian store in 1907 following the form of a Petit Trianon.

For the New York store, the architects took inspiration from Ange-Jacques Gabriel’s 1774 Hotel de la Marine on the Place de la Concorde in Paris.  The completed structure cost $400,000 (more than $10 million in 2016).  It was grand, indeed, and announced that while Fifth Avenue may be changing, it was no less exclusive.

The Hotel de la Marine in Paris provided inspiration for the Duveen Building.  photo by Moonik

A rusticated limestone base supported an impressive Corinthian order punctuated by French windows, stone balconies and spandrel panels of carved swags.  The classical pediment was filled with a massive sculptural grouping.  The perfect proportions of the Hotel de la Marine stopped here.  The attic story and a rather ungainly mansard level gave the appearance of an afterthought.

In 1912 construction still continued.  The sculptural grouping has yet to be placed within the pediment and scaffolds hang from the rooftop.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The patrons who entered No. 720 Fifth Avenue were among the foremost art collectors in the world.  The Duveens sold masterpieces to Henry Frick, Henry E. Huntington, William C. Whitney, J. Pierrepont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Benjamin Altman, among others.  Not long after opening the new location, Joseph Duveen sold Van Dyck’s portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria to William Randolph Hearst for $375,000—nearly the cost of the Fifth Avenue building.

According to historian David F. Burg in his The Great Depression, “by 1914 [Joseph Duveen] held a virtual monopoly on the transatlantic trade in works by Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Thomas Gainsborough, Johannes Vermeer, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and other great masters.”

A tragic incident occurred that year when a large consignment of paintings for Duveen Brothers was loaded onto the steamship Mississippi in Le Havre.  Shortly after sailing, a fire was discovered in the hold.  The ship pulled into Brest where a careful inspection showed that the vessel had not been damaged; however the cargo was not so lucky.

The Evening World reported on December 4, “Included were both paintings and antique objects of art.  The cases containing them were badly charred and the paintings suffered when the hold was filled with salt water.”

Joseph Duveen was reticent to release details of the $800,000 loss.  “He intimated that among them were some famous paintings but refused to reveal their names or the identity of the artists.”  The Evening World reported that the artwork was insured by Lloyds of London “but this is regarded as secondary to the fact that the objects destroyed cannot be replaced.”

 

The extent of the Duveen Brothers’ financial resources was made clear the following year.  When J. P. Morgan died in 1913, his extensive and invaluable collection of Chinese porcelains and ceramics had been on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 20 years.  Called “the finest assemblage of Oriental porcelains the world had even seen,” the collection had become too large for the Morgan mansion.

The Museum was no doubt stunned and devastated when, in February 1915, J. P. Morgan, Jr. sold the entire collection to Duveen Brothers for $3.9 million.  “They propose to sell it in single pieces and small groups,” reported The Times.

Edward Robinson, Director of the Metropolitan Museum, lamented “The Museum and the public are losing something which can never be duplicated, for the Morgan collection is pre-eminent among the world’s great ones.”

Following Henry J. Duveen’s death at the age of 64 on January 15, 1919, Joseph continued the business.  In 1921 the gallery received international attention when it exhibited Thomas Gainsborough’s famous portrait known as The Blue Boy.

Joseph Duveen was internationally recognized as an authority on Old Masters.  In 1920 he made a comment about a portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli entitled, La Belle Ferroniere, by Leonard da Vinci.  The painting had been purchased by Mrs. Andree Hahn, a niece of the Marquis de Chambure and the wife of American aviator Capt. Harry J. Hahn who had been on General Pershing’s staff.

Duveen dismissed it as a forgery, calling it “a copy, hundreds of which have been made of this and other Leonardo subjects and offered in the market as genuine.  Leonardo never made a replica of his works.  His original La Belle Ferroniere is in the Louvre.”

Mrs. Hahn was enraged.  She sued Joseph Duveen in November 1921 for half a million dollars redress.   Duveen, however, was unconcerned.  He thanked the process server “most cordially when she thrust the documents in his hands,” according to The New York Herald on November 5.  The artwork was sent for forensic authentication based on fingerprints in the paint.

By 1922 all traces of the old mansion district were gone.  photo from the collection of the New York Public Library

Just weeks after the end of World War II Duveen Brothers staged a patriotic exhibition entitled “Soldiers and Sailors in American Wars” to benefit the Soldiers and Sailors Club.  The collection of military portraits on loan ranged from the 18^th century through the 20^th.   The New York Times described it on November 17, 1945 saying “The long span begins back in the days of the French and Indian Wars and includes, among the paintings of men identified with the recent World War, Kenneth Frazier’s portrait of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.”

In a sort of déjà vu of 1911, on August 21, 1951, The New York Times reported “One of the world’s most famous and influential art firms, Duveen Brothers, is moving its paintings by da Vinci, Rubens and other immortals into a celebrated town house at 18 East Seventy-ninth Street in the heart of the elite residential section.” 

Considering that the firm had infiltrated the elite Fifth Avenue residential neighborhood four decades earlier, a Duveen spokesman’s explanation for vacating No. 740 Fifth Avenue was ironic.  The neighborhood, he told reporters, “is growing too commercial.”

photo by Wurts Bros., from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In October 1952 Emery Roth & Sons designed the $1.25 million, 15-story replacement office building which survives today.

The Lost James B. Clews Mansion -- 1039 Fifth Avenue

The Real Estate Record & Guide, November 28, 1908 (copyright expired)

In 1886, just as the first of the great residences began elbowing their way north of the Fifth Avenue mansion district below 57^th Street, Robert McBride and his wife Josephine lived in the comfortable brownstone-fronted rowhouse at No. 1039 Fifth Avenue.  Sitting at the corner of 85^th Street, across from Central Park, it and its neighbors had been built with financially-comfortable homeowners in mind.  Within a generation the townhouses would be razed to be replaced by the lavish palaces of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens.

In 1908 the land on which the McBride home sat was owned by the New York and Harlem Railroad Company.   The railroad was liquidating its real estate in the area, including the large, now-vacant plot further down the block where the old Madison Avenue car stables had stood.  On April 23 that year The New York Times reported that “James B. Clews, nephew of Henry Clews” had purchased the corner lot at Fifth Avenue and 85^th Street.

Although James Blanchard Clews had millions of his own—serving as a director in several corporations and as the Chairman of the Board of the Standard Cordage Company--newspapers consistently followed his name with “nephew of Henry Clews.”  James had, by now, worked for several years in his uncle’s banking firm.

With the 44-year old bachelor’s wedding to Mrs. Meta Nicholas Livingston, the widow of Oscar Livingston, scheduled to take place on November 18, Clews set to work preparing a fitting home for his bride.  A month before the wedding, on October 18, 1908, The New York Times reported on the planned mansion.  Already the old McBride house had been demolished.

“What will undoubtedly be one of the handsomest of upper fifth Avenue’s many mansions is that to be built for James B. Clews…from plans by Horace Trumbauer of Philadelphia, who also designed the I. Townsend Burden residence at Fifth Avenue and Ninety-second Street and George Gould’s new house at Sixty-seventh Street.”

Clews had paid $100,000 for the land and Trumbauer projected the cost of the residence to be double that—an investment of over $7 million today.  The Real Estate Record and Guide noted one particularly interesting aspect of the design.

“In its planning, the edifice will show at least one departure from the ideas heretofore carried out in corner residences on upper 5^th av. in that it will have the entrance on the avenue front instead of on the street.”   Rather than center the entrance on the 100-foot long 85^th Street elevation; Trumbauer placed it in the 25-foot wide Fifth Avenue side.

The Record and Guide noted “The style of architecture will be the French Renaissance, with the exterior both on the avenue and street of Indiana limestone.”   The New-York Tribune disagreed on the architectural style.   “It will be of the modern Italian design, having a mansard and many windows, finished with decorative railings and large plaques, with a stone set below the sills.”

Trumbauer arranged the interiors to best make use of the long, deep floor plan.  “At each side of the main entrance on the first floor will be a small reception-room,” said the Real Estate Record and Guide.  A grand main hall stretched 34 feet from the foyer to the dining room at the rear.  “This hall will be of imposing proportions and will be elaborately finished in Caen stone and marble.”

The New York Times noted that the same materials “will be used lavishly throughout the interior of the house.”  A marble staircase in the center of the great hall rose to another spacious hall.  At the Fifth Avenue end of the second floor would be the Library and at the opposite end, “the salon.”

The third floor was reserved for the Clews living apartments; the fourth floor contained guest rooms (there were eight bedrooms in all within the house); and the entire fifth floor contained accommodations for the staff of 12.

Meta Nicholas Livingston was the daughter of Washington Romaine Nicols and a great-granddaughter of General  Benjamin Romaine, second Controller of New York City.   Her husband, Oscar Livingston,  had been dead for only about four years and her mother was recently deceased.  The wedding, therefore was quiet and understated.

It took place on November 18 at Cozy Nook, the Bernardsville, New Jersey summer estate of Meta’s brother.  Four days later The Sun reported that “Mr. and Mrs. James B. Clews will pass their honeymoon in Cuba.  On their return they will reside in a house which Mr. Clews is building on the northeast corner of Fifth avenue and Eighty-fifth street.”

In actuality, it would be quite some time before the newlyweds would reside in the house.  Construction of the massive mansion would take years.  The couple moved into the Plaza Hotel and spent the summer seasons, expectedly, out of town.

Living in a suite of rooms at the Plaza did not stifle Meta Clews’ entertaining.  Despite being four months pregnant, on February 25 she gave a dinner for Miss Catherine Hamersley followed by a jaunt to the Herald Square Theatre to see “The Yankee Girl.”  Among the Clews’ socially-prominent guests that night were Vincent Astor and John Jacob Astor. 

On July 29, 1910 while spending the summer at the Elberon, New Jersey cottage of Meta’s sister, a baby daughter was born. 

The newly-completed house shared the Fifth Avenue block with still-surviving brownstone rowhouses of a generation earlier.  photo by from the collection of the New York Public Library

The house was completed the following year and James, Meta and Little Leta moved in.  The family continued to lease or borrow country estates—in 1913 they rented the summer home of W. Crittenden Adams and the following season occupied Ellencourt, the country home “in the Red Spring colony at Glen Cove, Long Island,” owned by Mrs. Spencer A. Jennings.

It was not a lack of money that prevented the Clews from purchasing their own country estate during those first few years.  Before long they would own what the New-York Tribune deemed an “English country estate at Brookville, Long Island,” which sprawled over 127 acres.  It included a “stone dwelling and numerous other buildings and cottages.”  The Tribune added “The residence consists of a collection of Eighteenth century English and Irish furniture.”

In the meantime, the Fifth Avenue mansion continued to be the scene of glittering entertainments; including the luncheon for Governor and Mrs. Whitman on the afternoon of January 14, 1917.  But Meta Clews’ days of staging social functions, dinners and receptions were coming to an end.

While the family was at the Long Island estate in August 1919, Meta Clews died.  James and his nine-year old daughter returned to the Fifth Avenue mansion alone.

In 1923 James Blanchard Clews succeeded his deceased uncle as head of the brokerage firm of Henry Clews & Co.  Three years later, on September 26, 1926, a headline in The New York Times announced “Betrothal of Mary Ann Payne to James B. Clews Is of Wide Interest.”   The newspaper said the engagement “is of interest to society in Europe as well as here.”

Mary Ann Payne came from what The Times called “distinguished ancestry.  Her family dates back several centuries to the noble houses of Pagnel and Hambie, whose members settled in Devonshire, England, at the time of William the Conqueror.”  The newspaper added, “Miss Payne is a direct descendant of Sir Robert Payne, one of the first settlers in Virginia.”  And, as always, it reminded its readers “Mr. Clews is a nephew of the late Henry Clews, of this city and Newport who founded the banking house of Henry Clews & Co.”

The nearly-private wedding was held in the White and Gold room of the Plaza Hotel the following month.  The New York Times reported that “After a motor trip, Mr. Clews and his bride will return to his home at 1,039 Fifth Avenue.” The bridegroom was now 62 years old.

The Clews would not stay much longer in the Fifth Avenue mansion, however.  In 1929 they moved to No. 1 East 62^nd Street.  By now the golden age of the grand private mansions was essentially over.  Wealthy New Yorkers now mostly preferred the convenience of lavish, modern apartment suites.

The James Blanchard Clews mansion was demolished; replaced in 1930 by the 17-story structure designed by eminent apartment building architect Rosario Candela.  The new building also took down the mansion of architect Whitney Warren.

Although Candela’s handsome apartment building is well regarded among architects today; the short-lived palace by Horace Trumbauer that it replaced is a significant loss.

http://www.cityrealty.com/nyc/carnegie-hill/1040-fifth-avenue/1412