The Smith Newell Penfield House - 329 West 112th Street

 

In June 1886 Edward Roemer purchased five building plots on the east side of Manhattan Avenue, beginning at the northeast corner of West 112th Street.  A month later architect Charles T. Mott had submitted plans for a row of three-story and basement "brick and stone residences."  What had started out as a smooth process of erecting the homes would turn into a tumultuous journey.

By December Roemer was in financial trouble.  He first offered the unfinished structures for sale, then turned to architect and developer William J. Merritt for financial help.  Merritt and Roemer "met at the offices of The Title Guarantee and Trust Company," according to the Record & Guide, "where Roemer declared in writing that there was no judgment on record against him."  Merritt gave Roemer an $80,000 loan (about $2.35 million in 2023).

Shortly after the loan was made, Roemer lost the properties to creditors.  Merritt first paid off the judgment, making him now the owner of the five unfinished houses, and then on August 12, 1887 had Roemer arrested on a charge of grand larceny.  Merritt found a purchaser in William B. Pettit, the contractor, and his wife Mary.  They assumed the mortgages and completed the row, possibly bringing in architect to Joseph H. Taft at this time.

Mott's red brick, Queen Anne style homes were typical of his style, with bowed bays and dormers.  It was the corner house that grabbed attention from its architectural siblings.  Mott gave it a rounded corner tower with a "witches cap" roof.  A quilt-like brick frieze ran below the cornice.  The entrance was located above a doglegged stoop, the door balanced by a matching, abutting window.  An entablature above the entrance featured the bas relief portrait of a young girl, possible a silent memorial.

Fanciful faces peer out from the capitals of the pilasters, while a haunting portrait adorns the otherwise stark entablature.

In July 1890 the Pettits sold the completed row to Smith Newell Penfield and his wife, the former Sarah Elizabeth Hoyt.  The couple moved into 329 West 112th Street and rented the Manhattan Avenue houses for years.

Penfield was born in Oberlin, Ohio on April 4, 1837.  He and Sarah had met while students at Oberlin College and were married in March 1860.  The couple had one daughter, Georgia May.  Two other daughters, Clara Josephine and Mary, had died in infancy.

Penfield's interest in real estate was, perhaps, surprising.  The son of talented violinist Anson Penfield, he was a musical prodigy and first played the pipe organ in public at the age of seven.  As a boy he was the organist and choirmaster of an Oberlin, Ohio church with a choir of more than 100 voices.  Following his graduation from Oberlin College, he studied music in Leipzig and Paris, "under the great masters Moscheles, Papperitz, Reinecke, Richter, Hauptmann and Delioux," according to the 1904 book The World's Best Music.

Smith Newell Penfield, The World's Best Music, 1904 (copyright expired)

In New York he became the organist of the Broadway Tabernacle, and then the Second Presbyterian Church.  In 1885 he became president of the Music Teachers National Association.  Calling Penfield "a prominent figure in musical New York," The World's Best Music said, "His compositions consist of organ and piano music, songs, anthems, glee, a string quintette, an overture for the orchestra, a cantata with orchestral score, etc."  Penfield taught from the 112th Street house.  Identifying himself as having a "musical doctorate" in his advertisement in the New-York Daily Tribune in November 1903, he offered training in "piano, organ, harmony."

Sarah descended from an old Southern family, her first American ancestor, Simon Hoyt, having arrived in Charlestown in 1628.  She, too, was involved in music.  The 1915 Woman's Who's Who of America noted that she was the composer of "'Columbia,' written for the words of 'My Country, 'tis of Thee.'"   

Sarah was, as well, highly involved in social and civic work.  She was a member of the New York City Indian Association, the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, and the College Women's Club.

In February 1895, Sarah and Georgia May hosted a Valentine-themed tea.  The New York Times reported, "One of the delightful features of last week was the pink tea given by Mrs. S. N. Penfield of 329 West One Hundred and Twelfth Street."  She and Georgia May were assisted in receiving by six unmarried socialites.

One of the most interesting entertainments Sarah gave was the "Colonial tea" for the College Woman's Club in December 1902.  The New York Times reported, "The decorations are to be the Continental Army colors and the rooms are to be lighted by old-fashioned tallow dips.  The hostess and the women assisting her will be in Colonial dress, and the refreshments are to be those of the Colonial period."

In December 1917 Smith N. Penfield was involved in a horrific fall.  Almost two years later, in its July 1919 issue, The American Organist said he had "received severe injuries...which made him a cripple for the rest of his life."  Later that year, in December, Penfield fell seriously ill.  He died in the 112th Street house on January 7, 1920 at the age of 83.  The New-York Tribune called him, "one of the foremost church and concert organists" of the city and a "widely known composer."

Sarah Hoyt Penfield would live to be 95 years old.  In 1932 she laid plans to attend Oberlin College's centennial commencement.  The Mansfield [Ohio] News-Journal wrote, "She wanted to celebrate the 75th anniversary of her own graduating class," even though she was the only surviving member of that class.  On June 22, 1933 the newspaper reported, "And so she came from her New York City home by automobile...The long trip from New York took too much for Mrs. Penfield's frail body."

Sarah was unable to attend the ceremonies.  She remained in the home of two nieces and, instead, sent a letter.  Not long after it was read to the assemblage, Sarah Hoyt Penfield died.  The Mansfield News-Journal wrote, "Throngs of Oberlin college alumni departed for their homes last night and as they left, the school's oldest woman graduate died peacefully almost within earshot of their cheerful farewells."

The West 112th Street house was, by now, being operated as a rooming house, the tenants of which were not all law-abiding.  Among the residents in 1921, for instance, was 19-year-old Arthur Ricarder, who was arrested that year for car theft.

In October Elias Shuter drove his wife to the Astoria Theater in Queens.  When they came out, their automobile was gone.  Police found Ricarder driving it and he was arrested.  The Daily Star reported that Ricarder "said he had bought the car from a man named MacArthur, but had been unable to locate MacArthur."  He was formally charged with larceny on February 27, 1922.

George Milliadis, who worked as a "counter man" in a cafeteria on Ninth Avenue, lived in a room here in 1933.  On September 22 that year, 38-year-old Frank O'Boyle came into the cafeteria and "became disorderly," according to Milliadis later.  In attempting to remove the unruly customer, Milliadis brought out a wooden club and struck him on the arm.  O'Boyle fell backwards, striking his head.  He died in Bellevue Hospital later that night.

Milliadis was charged with homicide.  The 32-year-old was being held on the second floor of the West 47th Street police station early the next morning when he suddenly leapt from his chair and out the window.  Twenty feet below the window was a fence rimmed with sharp iron spikes.  The New York Evening Post reported, "Detectives, who had been booking him on a homicide charge, ran out and found him hanging, impaled on the fence."  Before he died at Bellevue Hospital, he told the police, "I want to die.  All my life I've had nothing but trouble."

In 1954 329 West 112th Street was converted to apartments and furnished rooms.  The once-proud residence suffered neglect over the next few decades.  When it was sold in 1998, it was described by a realtor as "a run-down brownstone."  Nevertheless, the changes in the neighborhood and resultant soaring Harlem property values were reflected in the sale price of $500,000 (closer to $830,000 in 2023).   

In 2006 a renovation brought the Penfield house back to a single family home, with an apartment in the basement level.

photographs by the author

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The John Schmieg House - 313 West 88th Street

 

Millionaire William E. D. Stokes turned to real estate development in the late 1880's, focusing on the Upper West Side.  For three years, from 1887 through 1890, his rows of homes were designed by architect Joseph H. Taft.  In 1889 Taft designed a row of four brown-fronted residences on the fashionable block of West 88th Street, between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue.  As he often did, the sometimes eccentric Stokes listed the owner of record not as himself, but as W. Gunn and A. Grant.

The sole survivor of the row, completed in 1890, is 313 West 88th Street (the others were demolished in 1927).  The 19-foot wide house rose four stories above an English basement, its stoop rising to an entrance tucked within a cantilevered portico upheld by a single corner column.  The three-sided bay of the second and third floors provided a balcony to the fourth.  Flemish stepped gables at the front and eastern side gave the house a Dutch feeling.  Inside were 14 rooms and three baths.

By the turn of the century 313 West 88th Street was owned by Lloyd Williams.  Boarding with the family in 1904 was 20-year-old Frank Bry, who described himself to police as a "professional bicycle rider."  He was arrested as a suspicious person on August 5 that year when, according to The Evening Telegram, he and two other men and a woman "were seen in Central Park spreading a quantity of silk handkerchiefs and watch fobs and guards on the grass."

Williams sold the house in March 1905 to John Schmieg and his wife, the former Minnie Lenora Hoffman.  The couple had a 17-year-old daughter, Florence Bell.

Born in 1863, Schmieg was a partner in the "gentlemen tailors" firm James W. Bell Son & Co.  (His close personal relationship with its principal may have accounted for his daughter's middle name.)  The shop catered to an upper-class clientele like Nikola Tesla, known for his sense of style, who reportedly had nearly all his suits made by James W. Bell & Co.

John Schmieg, The American Tailor & Cutter, January 1892, (copyright expired)

Like their well-to-do neighbors, the Schmiegs had a country home.  Theirs was at Larchmont Manor on Long Island.  The Schmiegs' social status resulted in their being invited to the inauguration of President William H. Taft in March 1909 by Almet Reed Latson, president of the exclusive Union League Club.  The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that the Schmiegs "brought their charming daughter, Florence Bell, along."

Latson had invited another couple, John William Tumbridge and his wife, as well.  Florence Bell and Mary Grace Tumbridge immediately formed a friendship, and Mrs. Tumbridge escorted her to the Inauguration Ball. 

The Tumbridges lived in the elegant Hotel St. George in Brooklyn Heights.  John William Tumbridge's father, William, was its proprietor and one of its managers was John's younger brother, Stanley Spartan Tumbridge.  When the families returned to New York, Mary invited Florence to her home.  

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle explained that Stanley "was duly presented to Miss Schmieg by his sister-in-law."  Young Tumbridge had graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1900 with a degree in civil engineering and a year later earned his degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University.  The Brooklyn Daily Eagle said the couple's introduction led to "a brief and ardent courtship."

Indeed, the chance meeting at the Presidential Inauguration had resulted in romance and only nine months later, invitations had been sent out for the Stanley's and Florence Bell's marriage.  On December 31, 1909, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that the prospective groom "is also an enthusiastic autoist and it is said that he 'popped' the question to Miss Schmieg while she was autoing with him one day last summer to Garden City."  The article described Florence as "beautiful and accomplished," saying, "She is an expert musician and has achieved fame among her friends for her dexterity in ceramics."

The wedding took place in All Angels' Protestant Episcopal Church on January 18, 1910.  The New York Times reported that following the ceremony, a reception was held in the West 88th Street house.

The Schmiegs stayed in the West 88th Street house for another decade, selling it to S. L. Pakas, a real estate dealer, in June 1920.  Pakas paid $38,000 for the property, or about $514,000 in 2022 terms.  It is unclear whether Pakas lived in the house or leased it.  The affluent lifestyle of its occupants, nevertheless, was evidenced by an ad placed by a servant looking for new position in August 1922, "Japanese, experienced, wishes position; cook, useful butler, general housework, and can drive car.  S. Nako."  (In the 1920's it was quite fashionable to have a Japanese butler.)

The stoop was intact in 1941, and the parlor windows were still full-height.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

It appears that the house was lost in foreclosure during the Great Depression.  Fannie Schreier purchased it from the Bowery Savings Bank in August 1931 for $25,000.  A widow, her husband John had died in 1920.  The motorcycle cop had been struck by a taxicab in 1916 and, after two operations, died of his injuries four years later.

Fannie Schreier most likely took in roomers, but, surprisingly, 313 West 88th Street remained a single-family home until 1972 when it was converted to two apartments per floor.   The stoop was then removed and the entrance lowered to the basement level.  The brownstone was given a coat of white paint, most likely in an effort to give it a more modern look.  At some point around the turn of the century, the paint was happily removed.

photographs by the author

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The Lost Cassius M. Wicker House - 599 West End Avenue

The For Sale signs in the windows date this photo to 1923.  Brilliant stained glass transoms can be seen at the second and third stories.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

On October 1, 1887 the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide pointed out that architect J. H. Taft was "working on plans for ten first-class brown stone and brick residences, to be built by Squier & Whipple."  Joseph H. Taft was highly busy at the time on the Upper West Side; and this project may have actually been for one of his major clients, William Earl Dodge Stokes, who sometimes disguised his involvement by using the names of other builders' or developers' on the building applications.

Whoever was behind the project; it would result in Taft's producing ten upscale homes that wrapped the southwest corner of West End Avenue and 89th Street.  The Record & Guide projected that "these dwellings will exhibit some of the most satisfactory architectural work on the west side."

Squier & Whipple added to the confusion by listing itself as "architects and builders" of the house in an advertisement for the row in the West End Avenue Association's 1888 brochure "West End Avenue."  It described the design of "dwelling houses" as "Old English, enriched with sculptured panels and carved stone around doors and windows."  Upscale details inside included "Cabinet trim of Mahogany, Oak and Ash on each and every story.  Hard wood floors.  Perfect sanitary plumbing, all first-class"

Although the advertisement described the style as "Old English;" the houses were in fact a mixture of styles that included a melding of Queen Anne and Flemish Renaissance Revival, with Dutch stepped gables and dormers, turrets and stained glass.  Each cost an average of $20,000 to build--about $563,000 in 2019 dollars.

All ten homes were sold in 1888, before the last going for just over $1 million in today's dollars.  The showpiece of the row was the 80-foot wide corner house, No. 599 West End Avenue.  Its impressive entrance portico above a dog-legged stoop faced West 89th Street.  The undressed brownstone of the first floor provided a contrast to the red brick facade above.

The purchaser of No. 599 seems to have overextended himself and the house was quickly lost to the New York Life Insurance Co. in foreclosure.  On May 12, 1890 Cassius Milton Wicker bought it for $41,500 (just under $1.2 million today).

Wicker moved into the house with three children, Henry Halladay, Lucy Southworth, and Cyrus French.  Wicker's wife, the former Augusta Carroll French had died a year earlier.  Also living in the West End Avenue house was Wicker's widowed mother, the former Maria Delight Halladay.

Cassius Milton Wicker, Prominent and Progressive Americans, 1902 (copyright expired)

Wicker's career was wide-flung.  The 1903 Geneological and Family History of the State of Vermont called him a "railroad president and manager, financier and investigator."  Born in in Vermont on August 25, 1846, three of his ancestors had arrived on the Mayflower--Mary Chilton, Elder Brewster and William Latham.  He had gone west at the age of 21, settling in St. Louis where he became involved in the Star Union Railroad Line.  By the time he moved to New York City in 1887, he was vice president of the Colorado Eastern Railroad.  Now he was an executive in several railroad and surface car lines, a partner in Wicker Brothers, bankers and brokers, a vice-president of the Washington Savings Bank of New York, chairman of the board of the Bank of Discount, and a director in several other banks and corporations.

The Wickers' summer estate was The Locusts near North Ferrisburgh, Vermont.  The Successful American said "The old New England homestead has been enlarged and added to by its present occupant, as only a dweller of a city can appreciate and adapt the suggestions of Nature to a country habitation."

Henry Wicker was 14-years old when the family moved into No. 599.   Before many years he would be dipping his toe into social affairs.  On January 1, 1893 The New York Times reported on the New Year's Eve party of the young Brock sisters.  "A gay company of young people clad in fantastic costumes was the old year out last night at 265 West Seventy-third Street as the guests of Miss Edna Brock and Miss Georgie Brock.  There were about seventy-five masqueraders present."  Among the youthful heirs with prestigious names like Stokes, Seward, and de Peyster was Henry Wicker.

Henry studied at the preparatory Berkeley School where he was well-known for his athletic prowess both as a football and baseball player.  The Sun described the boy as "a tall, manly fellow, handsome and muscular."

The year after the Brock sisters' party, Henry graduated from the Berkeley School and was accepted at Yale for the following fall.   The family did not go to The Locusts that summer, but leased a cottage at Swampscott, Massachusetts, on the ocean.  The Sun described the area saying "The beach at Swampscott stretches out to meet Massachusetts Bay, and every cottager there possesses on or more boats."

Henry wanted a boat, too.  According to The Sun, "He had long known how to swim, he pulled a strong oar, and was a fairly good sailor, so his father bought for him a large dory, rigged with a leg-o'-mutton sail."  Nearly every day that summer Henry spent hours on the water and became a familiar sight to the local fishermen.

The family had a house guest as the summer drew to a close.  On Tuesday morning, September 11, Henry invited his cousin, "Miss Halladay," to sail with him to Marblehead.  The family was seriously concerned when they had not returned by dinner time; but just as they were about to start a search the two walked in.  As it turned out the water became so rough that Henry wisely pulled the boat into a fishing settlement and they walked home.

The following day Cassius and his mother had business to take care of, so it was arranged that all the young people would go to "The Willows," described by The Sun as "a sort of Coney Island on a small scale."  Henry told his sister and cousin that while they went to the train station to see their father and grandmother off, he would rush over to retrieve his dory.  He promised he would be back before they returned.

But he was never seen by the family again.

The girls went on to The Willows, leaving word with a servant to have Henry join them there.  When they returned at 3:00 he had not shown up.  At 5:00 the girls went to the fishing hamlet and inquired about him.  He had been seen sailing off toward Egg Rock, about five miles distant.  The fishermen were only a little concerned that there had been a "wind flaw," or sudden gust, that morning.  The Sun reported "If the flaw had struck the dory--well the old fishers gravely shook their heads."

Two days later, at 11:00 on Wednesday morning, the fishing schooner Acacia saw Henry's dory bottom-up.  Tugboats were chartered to patrol the waters and shores to no avail.  Four months later the family abandoned all hope.  On January 12, 1895 a brief noticed appeared in The New York Times:  

Lost at sea, off Marblehead, Tuesday, September 11, 1894, Henry Halladay Wicker, aged 18 years, 7 months, and 2 days, eldest son of Cassius M. Wicker, and of Augusta French Wicker, deceased.

Henry's body was never found and his name was carved into the granite monument in the family plot in the North Ferrisburg, Vermont cemetery, "Henry Halladay Wicker, lost at sea off Marblehead."

Maria Delight Wicker died in the West End Avenue house on April 9, 1903.  Her funeral was held in the drawing room the following afternoon.  She was buried in the North Ferrisburg cemetery, near Henry, on the next day.

At the time of his grandmother's death, Cyrus was 19-years old, attending Yale.  Like his brother, he proved himself athletically, earning attention for his abilities on the track and as an oarsman.  He gradated with honors in 1905 and went on earn his law degree from New York Law School in January 1907.  That same year he received a "special certificate" in International Law from Columbia University.  


On March 10, 1907 The New York Times reported that he was appointed a Rhodes scholar and "will enter Balliol College at Oxford."  The following year Cyrus updated his classmates, writing in the 1908 History of the Class of 1905:

I take tea regularly now at half after four, have a private 'scout' who brings in the morning tub and serves breakfast and lunch within my own rooms in Balliol College, and I go to lectures in great Gothic halls with Elizabethan ceilings and windows glowing with mediaeval blazonry.

I have grown almost used to my clothes, which are of genuine Harris tweed with five pockets on the outside and large leather buttons; have joined the Dramatic Society here, the American Club and the Oxford Union, and have tried 'soccer,' cricket, and lately and disastrously, punting on the Isis.

Cyrus focused on International Law at Oxford.   On January 17, 1909, The New York Times foreign correspondent in Berlin reported "Cyrus French Wicker, a graduate of Yale and a Rhodes Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, has come to Berlin to act as private secretary to Ambassador [David Jayne] Hill.  He expects to return to Oxford for the Spring semester."

In the meantime, Cassius Wicker's name appeared in print for a surprising incident.  In addition to his many positions in railways and banks, Wicker owned real estate.   Among his holdings was a building at No. 118 West 49th Street, where he rented rooms to Polish actress Madame Alexandra Viarda in October 1909 "so that her company might have a place to rehearse 'Die Braut von Messina,'" according to the New-York Tribune on December 25.

The actress did not prove to be an easy tenant, prompting the Tribune to say "What with bickerings between landlord and tenant and soliloquies of sweeping passion from morn until night, Vicker [sic] has lived under a constant strain for some time."   Wicker again confronted the actress on December 23 after she and her company took over a storeroom in the building not included in their lease.  

Witnessing the conflict was the actress's manager, 27-year old Baron Frederick Joseph von Schiller.  A native of Germany, Von Schiller had drawn attention to himself a few years earlier when he joined the Unites States Army, but, according to The Evening Telegram, "growing tired of barracks life, he deserted."  He was arrested and sentenced to three years in the military prison on Governor's Island.  Just eight months before the confrontation between Wicker and Viarda, he had been pardoned by President Taft after much lobbying from Madame Viarda.

While Wicker and Viarda argued heatedly, von Schiller lost his temper.  "During the argument Von Schiller rushed up and struck Wicker so the latter told the magistrate and threw him over a trunk," reported the New-York Tribune.  The article said "Cassius M. Wicker has no sympathy with the tragic muse when it comes to being thrown over a trunk by one of its devotees...Wicker promptly took his grievance to Magistrate Kernochan, in the West 54th street court, and had his alleged assailant arrested yesterday on a charge of assault."

Von Schiller was convicted and fined $10 (about $285 today).  But worse for him was the embarrassment caused when the publicity prompted a closer look at the baron.  A week later, on January 3, the New-York Tribune informed its readers that while von Schiller "declares himself to be a descendant of Germany's famous poet, and inasmuch as this assertion has received widespread publicity, it may be just as well to state in the most emphatic manner that his pretensions are entirely without foundation."  Not only was he not related to poet Friedrich Schiller, neither was he a baron.

With only he and Lucy still in the West End Avenue house, Wicker placed it on the market that November.  It was sold a month later to Ada B. Callender who almost immediately leased it to the Hamilton Institute for Boys.  An announcement in The New York Press on August 30, 1911 read "The 20th year of the Hamilton Institute for Boys will open in its New Home at 599 West End Av."  The academy offered college and commercial preparation courses.  Its founder and principal, N. Archibald Shaw, Jr. and his wife moved into the mansion.

Advertisements offered "Visual Instruction in History, Geography and Science.  Lessons prepared at school.  Gymnasium, Outing Classes, Athletic Field."  That curriculum broadened with the United States' entry into World War I.  An advertisement on October 6, 1918 noted "Special Military preparation for boys 15 to 19."

It was about the same time that the Institute got a new landlord in Catherine F. Smith.  The school would have to find a new home after March 1922 when the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported that "Mrs. C. F. Smith leased to a tenant, for a term of 21 years, the 4-sty and basement stone dwelling 599 West End av."   

That tenant was the Columbia Preparatory School, which operated from one block away at the northwest corner of West End Avenue and 88th Street.  It was run by headmaster and owner, F. Arthur Clawson.   The New York Times reported "The building will be entirely remodeled and every modern convenience and equipment installed for classrooms, dormitories, gymnasium, swimming pool, dining quarters and outdoor kindergarten."  The article added that the school would retain possession of its other building, "as a girls dormitory."

The Columbia Preparatory School's 21-year lease was soon curtailed.  On July 18, 1923 The New York Times reported that Catherine Smith had sold the house to "an investor, who will improve the site with a ten-story apartment."  The selling price was $75,000, about $1.1 million today.

By then No. 599 was the last hold out along the West End Avenue block.  Demolition permits were issued in 1924 and architect brothers George and Edward Blum managed to designed the 12-story apartment which squeezed itself into the domestic footprint of the Wicker mansion.

photograph via www.apartments.com

The 1888 Henry E. Stevens House - 280 West 86th Street

No. 280 is the sole survivor of the six-house row.

In the summer of 1887 developer J. C. Caldwell announced he would be erecting six rowhouses on West 86th Street, stretching east towards Broadway from the corner of West End Avenue.  His architect, Joseph H. Taft, filed plans in August which estimated the construction cost of each at $20,000--just over half a million in today's dollars.

Late Victorian architects rightfully considered themselves the inheritors of all the architectural styles that had come before.  Their carefree blending of historical styles was, perhaps, seen nowhere in New York more markedly than on the Upper West Side.  Among Caldwell's row completed the following year, No. 280 West 86th Street was a marriage of three disparate styles.

Four stories tall above a high English basement, it was clad in brick and stone.  Touches of Romanesque Revival showed up in carvings of the dog-legged stoop and the chunky, undressed blocks of the basement.  Renaissance Revival panels appeared above the arched entrance and in the angled bay which rose from the basement through the third floor, where it provided a balcony to the fourth.  The house wore a curvaceous Flemish Renaissance Revival gable upon the understated stone cornice.  Its lack of decoration was more than made up for by its sweeping lines and prominent point.  

Taft sat the arched third floor opening next to the bay on a slightly projecting panel which sat on tightly-arranged brackets, giving the illusion of a Juliette balcony.  The windows of the fourth floor formed an arcade, each separated by an engaged column and crowned by prominent keystones.  

The house was purchased by Henry E. Stevens and his wife, the former Mary Jane Davison.  Both were born in Grafton, New York, and had married there in 1856.  Henry had graduated from Hamilton College and Mary Jane had received an education reserved for girls of well-to-do families.  After attending a local school, she was enrolled in "a select school in charge of the Rev. Mr. Shipley, Pastor of the Baptist Church of Grafton," and in 1853 went on to the Troy Seminary, according to the 1872 Fifty Years of Troy Female Seminary. 

Henry and Mary Jane summered in South Orange, New Jersey. The couple had had five children, but by 1895 only Harry E. and Dottie were still living. Henry and Harry were partners in H. E. Stevens & Son, a real estate firm.  Henry was additionally a director in the Washington Savings Bank and the Colonial Bank.

In October 1898 Stevens hired architect John Wilson to make alterations to the house.  His plans are frustratingly vague; but the work did not extend to the outward appearance of the residence.  Costing just under $11,000 today, the renovations were most likely updates to the plumbing and other modern conveniences, since no structural modifications like walls are included in the plans.

At around the turn of the century No. 280 became the home of the Austin Hall Watson family.  Watson and his wife, the former Julia Brainard Vail, had two children, Beatrice and E. Vail Watson. 

Watson had been employed by the Western Union Telegraph Company until 1879 when he married Julia.  (His bride was a direct descendant of William Brewster of the Mayflower.)  That year he resigned to become the junior partner in the dry goods firm Julia's father, James E. Vail, Jr. & Co.  (Interestingly, James E. Vail was not a "junior," but used the suffix to differentiate himself from his uncle.)  

Six years later Watson bought out Vail and by the time he purchased the 86th Street house he was senior partner in the importing and commission merchant firm of Watson, Porter, Giles & Co.  It operated from a spacious establishment at No. 61 Leonard Street and had a branch office in Chicago.  Like Stevens, he was also involved in banking.  He was a director in the Metropolitan Bank, the National Shoe and Leather Bank and the Mutual Alliance Trust company.

Austin H. Watson - New York, the Metropolis, 1902 (copyright expired)

Also moving in to the 86th Street house were Julia's parents, James Everett Vail and Redelia Brainard Vail.  Despite his successful career in the dry goods business James Everett Vail is remembered today for of his contributions to early baseball.  He was the secretary of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, and, interestingly, Redelia was the sister of the Cincinnati Red Stockings's 1869 pitcher, Asa Brainard.

The Leonard Street showroom of Watson, Porter, Giles & Co. - New York, the Metropolis, 1902 (copyright expired)

The Watsons' summer home, "Oakdale," was on the banks of the Rippowam River in Connecticut.  The Commemorative Biographical Record described it in 1899 as being "noted for its cordial hospitality so freely extended alike to stranger and to friend."  The family was there on July 5, 1904 when crooks broke into the 86th Street house.

Affluent families most often left at least one servant in their town houses to prevent just such occurrences.  But, instead, it seems that Watson had asked a business associate, Charles F.  Henry, to check on the residence periodically.  It was Henry to discovered the break-in.   When police arrived, they did a cursory inventory of the missing valuables.  Most evident was jewelry valued at around $1,500--more than $43,500 today.

Satisfied that the missing items were documented, Charles Henry asked the officers if they would like some refreshments.  The Morning Telegraph reported on July 11 "When he went to the cellar he found that the extent of the robbery had been only half uncovered.  The wine bin had been opened by the burglars, the larder broken into, and the table spread with an elaborate meal.  Wine, preserves, cigars, the best that the house afforded, had been spread upon the table and, apparently, consumed with the utmost deliberation."

The newspaper was unsympathetic with the policemen, spoofing them with a parody of a nursery rhyme.  "When Henry got there the cupboard was bare, and so the poor coppers had none."

James Everett Vail died in the house on January 19, 1907 at the age of 72.  The funeral was held in the parlor two days later.  Redelia Vail continued to live on with the family (she would live until 1922, dying at the age of 88). 

Austin H. Watson retired on December 31, 1909.  The January 1910 issue of Fabrics, Fancy Goods and Notions reported "The old employees of the house gave him a dinner at the Arkwright Club on December 30...and at that time presented him with a book containing an engrossed set of resolutions signed by every employee of the firm.  Mr. Watson has been well and favorably known in the notion trade for many years, and will carry with him into his retirement the best wishes of a host of friends."

Watson did not intend to idle away his retirement years.  The journal explained "Mr. Watson has purchased a country residence near Fishkill Landing, N.Y., where he will have about one hundred and forty acres of farm land and a number of buildings.  He will devote himself very largely to farming on a scientific basis, and to raising blooded stock."

The Magnolias now replaced Oakdale as the Watson family's summer home.  It was the scene of Beatrice's wedding on September 7, 1910.   Her marriage ceremony to attorney Ferdinand A. Hoyt took place on the lawn.

Watson's focus on "scientific farming" proved successful.  In 1913 inspectors made a "tour of the dairies" in the district.  The Beacon Daily Herald made a special note that they found The Magnolias to be "in a first class condition.  The stables are all concreted, clean and sanitary.  Of this place the committee makes the most pleasing report."

The family's social involvement within their new upstate surrounds was evidenced later that year.  Both Austin and E. Vail were avid golfers and members of the Southern Duchess Country Club.  On November 22, 1913 E. Vail entered the field of 21 contestants in the Club's tournament and won it.  Winning the prize may have caused an awkward moment, however.   The Beacon Daily Herald reported "The tournament was for a silver cup offered by Austin H. Watson.  He is the father of the successful golfer."

Austin's love for the game resulted in a horrific accident in July the following year.  A hard-hit golf ball hit a stone wall and rebounded, striking him in the eye.  On August 23, 1914 the New York Tribune wrote "For six weeks he had been almost frantic with pain."  The agony only intensified.  "For three weeks Mr. Watson had been unable to sleep, so intense had been his sufferings."   At 2:30 on the morning of August 23 he got out of bed and entered the bathroom.  A gunshot awoke the butler.  Breaking in the locked door, he found Watson dead with a bullet wound to the head.

E. Vail Watson inherited The Magnolias.  His mother and grandmother lived on briefly in the 86th Street house.  Newspapers routinely reported that they "were guests" of E. Vail Watson at his Connecticut home.

By 1916 No. 280 was the home of Alfred W Mack and his wife.  They were members of the wealthy Temple Emanu-El congregation and summered at Long Branch, New Jersey, popular with moneyed Jewish families.   The 86th Street residence was perhaps too much house for the couple and by 1918 there were roomers listed here.  Thomas P. Ohlert, a junior auditor for the U. S. Shipping Board was listed here in 1918 and 1919.  Because of his job, he was exempt from military duty.  By 1920 Guyon L. C. Earle ran his real estate office from his room in the house.

Throughout the Depression years, the house continued to see roomers come and go.  Mrs. Bertha Bright Rainger, a member of the American Kennel Club, lived here in 1930.  She was a breeder of cairn terriers.  And the following year Charles E. Burch, a steel engineer, had a room in the house.

An official alteration to apartments, two per floor, was completed in 1969.  Another renovation, completed in 2001, included a penthouse, unseen from the street, which resulted in a duplex with the fourth floor apartment.

Regrettably, Joseph H. Taft's purposeful contrast of brick and stone has been obliterated under a coat of mouse gray paint.  The entrance has been narrowed to accommodate a single standard-sized door, air conditioners have been gouged into the stonework, and the profusion of stained glass that almost certainly filled the arched transoms of the upper windows has been removed.  Nevertheless, the last survivor of the row retains most of its 1888 appearance.

photographs by the author

The Richard Royce Conant House - No. 310 West 89th Street

No. 310 (right) originally had a brownstone stoop and a pierced balcony railing at the third floor identical to that next door.

On October 1, 1887 the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide pointed out that architect J. H. Taft was "working on plans for ten first-class brown stone and brick residences, to be built by Squier & Whipple."  Joseph H. Taft was highly busy at the time on the Upper West Side; and this project may have actually been for one of his major clients, William Earl Dodge Stokes, who sometimes disguised his involvement by using the names of other builders' or developers' on the building applications.

Whoever was behind the project; it would result in Taft's producing ten upscale homes that wrapped the southwest corner of West End Avenue and 89th Street.  The Record & Guide projected that "these dwellings will exhibit some of the most satisfactory architectural work on the west side."

Although The Record & Guide described the style as "English;" the houses were in fact a showy explosion of Flemish Renaissance Revival gables and dormers, turrets and stained glass.  Completed in 1889 they cost an average of $20,000 each to build--about $531,000 in 2017 dollars.

The row, which wrapped the corner of 89th Street and West End Avenue, was a dizzying display of angles and shapes.  Nos. 308 and 310 are just out of the frame to the far right.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Nos. 308 and 310 West 89th Street, at the end of the row, were near mirror-images.  High brownstone stoops lead to the entrances, outlined in foliate carvings.  A rounded bay rose three stories above the basement, culminating in a heavy stone-railed balconies  The high mansard was covered in slate shingles.   Here broad floor-height dormers were capped by dramatic, decorated Flemish gables.  At the third floor slightly projecting bays elbowed one another for space above especially charming pseudo balconies.

No. 310 saw a relatively rapid turnover of owners.  Matilda Blinn sold it in 1894 to Augusta Trageser for $28,500--about $810,000 today.  Augusta was the widow of John Trageser and was now president of his former firm, the John Trageser Steam Copper Works.  She remained in the house until 1905 when she sold it to Dr. Lucius Pitkin.

Interestingly, Pitkin had recently purchased and then resold the house next door at No. 308.  He had formed the Pitkin Laboratory in 1885 and in 1901 purchased the five-story building at No. 47 Fulton Street.  After renovations it became known as the Pitkin Laboratory Building and housed Pitkin's chemistry and metallurgical labs.  He soon sold No. 310 West 89th to Osmyn Perkins Conant.

The well-to-do Conant was married to the former Mary Louise Royce.  Osmyn had been an educator for years, since his graduation from Dartmouth in 1879.  The Journal of Education, in 1910 said "He was a man of unusual scholarly habits and attainments."  He was fluent in German, French, Italian and Spanish and was a classical scholar.  In 1892 he left teaching to become a partner in Ginn & Co., a publisher of textbooks.

Mary, who was known by her middle name, Louise, was nine years younger than her husband.  Her father was Vermont State Supreme Court Justice H. Charles Royce. The couple had one son, named after Osmyn's brother, Richard Royce Conant.


In the spring of 1909 the older Richard Royce Conant married Helen Hemingway.  The Anchora of Delta Gamma, Helen's college sorority newsletter, mentioned the newlyweds would be "at home May 1, at #310 West 89th St."  The reason the couple moved in with Osmyn and Louise had nothing to do with finances--both families were well off.  The arrangement most likely was due to Osmyn's health problems.


Not long after Richard and Helen moved in, Osmyn and Louise went to Europe "in the hope of regaining his health," according to The New York Times.  Nine-year old Richard stayed home with his aunt and uncle.

Osmyn and Louise traveled to the spa town of Divonne-les-Bains, France.  Ironically, it was not his failing health, but an automobile accident that caused his death there on October 7, 1910.  The New York Times reported "Mr. Conant died instantly."

Louise made immediate arrangements to sail back to New York.  But soon after boarding the tender which was conveying passengers to the steamer Kronprinz Wilhelm, she was suddenly taken ill.  She was taken to the hospital in Cherbourg, where she died on October 12.

Osmyn's will had left everything to his wife.  Hers left everything to him.  The estate was straightened out a year later, after which The Times reported on August 26, 1911 "In a house at 310 West Eighty-ninth Street lives Richard Royce Conant.  He is a year old and heir to a quarter of a million, the fortune of his parents."

The newspaper got a few facts wrong.  Richard was, in fact, now 10 years old and the estate was more than $300,000.   That error made little difference.  Richard was now the beneficiary of more than $7.75 million in today's money.

For some reason Louise's bachelor brother, 25-year old Alexander Burgess Royce, was living in the Conant house by 1919.  He was a major in the Officers' Reserve Corps of the Army.  The following year young Richard graduated from Columbia College.

One year later the older Richard Royce Conant sold No. 310 West 89th Street to Catherine Worms, who had been living a few blocks to the south at No. 503 West End Avenue. 

Around the time of the Great Depression the house that had been home to a series of wealthy families was being rented as furnished rooms.  The tenant list left something to be desired, as well.

In October 1935 police broke up an "automobile stealing syndicate."  Among those arrested and charged with grand larceny was 24-year old Carl H. Oulton who lived here.  He pleaded guilty to six automobile thefts.  Investigators revealed that he had been on the run since escaping from a prison in Greenfield, Massachusetts in December 1934.

Two years later roomer Herman Rubin was arrested in July 1937.  He was involved in an enormous insurance fraud ring that collected as much as $12,000 a year for fake illnesses.  The scam included doctors who would coach the "patients" on the symptoms of heart disease.  Then, just before being examined by the insurance company physicians, the patient was injected with digitalis to mimic heart problems.

The case was not closed until July 1940.  Rubin's sentence of six months in the penitentiary paled when compared to those of the doctors.

In 1971 No. 310 was converted to apartments--two per floor.  That year the stoop was removed and the entrance removed to below sidewalk level.  Despite the abuse, the house and its fraternal twin neighbor still create a charming pair; the last remnants of Joseph H. Taft's elaborate row.

photographs by the author

The New York Institute of Music -- No. 560 West End Avenue

The turret window panes would have originally been curved to conform to the rounded shape.

William Earl Dodge Stokes was as colorful as he was wealthy.  For decades the multimillionaire would shake society with his marriages, divorces, law suits, an apparent illegitimate child and his being shot by a rebuffed actress.  But he is also best remembered for his tireless development of the Upper West Side.  Stokes envisioned Broadway (known as The Boulevard at the time) as rivaling the fashionable Champs Elysees in Paris and his residential structures in the neighborhood followed suit.

In 1889 Stokes’s architect of choice was Joseph H. Taft; and he was being kept busy.  That year, in March, Taft worked on designs for 20 upscale houses on the west side of West End Avenue, between 86^th and 88^th Street; and within a few months he designed five more on the opposite of the Avenue, Nos. 560 through 568, between 87^th and 88^th Street.

That last project, completed in 1890, was anchored by No. 560 on the northeast corner of West End Avenue and 87^th Street.   The brick and stone mansion rose four stories above a high basement and was decorated with deeply-carved panels, elaborate Flemish Renaissance dormers which nestled into the steep tiled roof and engaged towers which terminated in bell-shaped caps.  While the entrance was centered on the 100-foot long 87^th Street side; the residence took the more impressive West End Avenue address.

Despite the narrow West End Avenue width, Taft managed to squeeze in a second tower.

On August 18, 1892 Peter Gilsey, Jr. quietly married Caroline Dreyer in City Hall.  It was followed by a one-line announcement published by Gilsey’s wealthy and high profile family.  The Evening World, in response, wrote “The above was the dry announcement published this morning of a most romantic marriage.”

The newspaper recounted that six months earlier the 27-year old Gilsey had stopped into Hamper’s candy store at No. 9 Wooster Street.  “Caroline Dreyer dealt out the saccharine wares of the establishment.  Just turned nineteen, with snow-white complexion, chestnut hair and large brown eyes, tall, graceful, well-developed, moderately educated—such was Caroline Dreyer and Peter Gilsey, jr., fell in love with her.”

The socially-mismatched couple eventually won over the support of Peter’s uncle, John Gilsey; the first step in the family’s acceptance.  By 1901 Peter Gilsey was listing his home address as No. 560 West End Avenue.  The couple would stay in the mansion until 1905.

The array of sumptuous carvings culminated in the gable panel.

That year Bessie Clay took over the house as home to her West End Conservatory of Music.   The New-York Tribune reported “The first regular recital of Miss Clay’s conservatory will, it is announced, be given on Wednesday, November 23.”

Well-known and respected in the music world, Bessie Clay’s facility offered musical instruction by some of the nation’s preeminent instructors.  Students from out of town boarded in the house as well, the New-York Tribune noting on September 24, 1905 “The Institute also offers special home care and social privileges to resident students.”   By the time of its opening, the school’s name was changed to the New York Institute of Music. 

The Sun, October 22, 1905 (copyright expired)

The Musical Courier described it in 1907 saying it “is one of the most attractive schools of music in Greater New York, and in the country at large, for that matter.  Beautifully situated in the Riverside section, surrounded by churches and handsome residences, it appeals at once to persons of refined and artistic tastes.  As to the methods of Miss Clay and the faculty, including some of the world’s noted pedagogues, it is enough to say, that nothing is left undone to make students realize that thoroughness is the foundation of their musical equipment.”

Among the esteemed faculty was violin instructor Victor Kuzdo, who had trained internationally-known concert violinists like Efrem Zimbalist. Bessie Clay’s relationship with the violinist changed from professional to romantic and in 1910 she transferred title to the mansion to Kuzdo.

New-York Tribune, October 15, 1916 (copyright expired)

One of the students living here in 1911 was 19-year old Ada Forman.  She arrived from South Pasadena in September.  The Evening World said “She is said to be the daughter of a wealthy California man who died recently.”

In addition to her musical studies, Ada enrolled in the New York Normal School of Physical Education on West 59^th Street.  She was there on November 8.  While she was sitting on a fourth floor window sill, “chatting and laughing” with an instructor, Miss Carter, tragedy struck.  According to the teacher, “she suddenly toppled backward, clutched at the window frame, shrieked wildly and…disappeared through the opening.”

The Evening World reported “She turned completely over in the air and crashed through a skylight over the swimming pool in the basement.  The girl was found lying half in the water, on the edge of the pool.”  Doctors held out little hope of her survival.

Within two weeks, however, Bessie was restoring a sense of normalcy among the girls.  On November 26 The New York Times noted “Miss Bessie B. Clay of 560 West End Avenue gave a dance on Friday evening for a number of Southern girls who are spending the Winter with her.”

In the meantime, Victor Kuzdo was running the Institute.  Bessie’s name appeared second in importance in the advertisements; and Victor had other plans in mind.  A few days after the dance he purchased the four-story mansion at No. 145 Riverside Drive between 86^th and 87^th Streets, just a block away from the school.   The New York Times reported “Mr. Kuzdo conducts the New York Institute of Music, now at 560 West End Avenue, but it will soon be removed to the Riverside Drive house.”

It seems that Victor smelled profit in the West End Avenue mansion when the Wittnauer Realty Company began buying up the other residences on the block to build a 12-story apartment house.  But greed got in the way of his plans.  The New York Times explained that the “builders tried to buy the dwelling…to incorporate in the site, but they figured that the price was prohibitive.”  Kuzdo’s plans to move the school to Riverside Drive fell through.

The progression of Victor’s and Bessie’s relationship was complete by 1916.  Musical America mentioned on May 13 “Mrs. Victor Kuzdo, nee Bessie Clay, was hostess at a studio musicale at the New York Institute of Music, 560 West End Avenue on Friday Evening, May 5.

Victor Kuzdo sold No. 560 West End Avenue to Helen B. Warrington that year.  He had priced it at $75,000—in the neighborhood of $1.7 million in 2016.  In return he negotiated a four-year lease on the property for the school. 

At the termination of the lease, the New York Institute of Music vacated its home of nearly two decades.  The mansion was converted to 12 “high class” apartments.  An advertisement on September 19, 1920 offered “non-housekeeping 2 and 3 rooms, bath and foyer…brand new.”  Rents were placed at between $1,800 and $2,300 per year.  The description of “non-housekeeping” notified potential tenants that there were no kitchens.  It was a condition that prompted the owner to offer them as “bachelor apartments” by 1922.

New-York Tribune, December 10, 1922 (copyright expired)

Despite the building’s repeatedly being sold and resold—in 1922, 1929, 1939, 1945 and 1946, for instance, little was changed to the exterior other than the stoop being removed and the entrance lowered to street level.  The last remnant of W. E. D. Stokes’s grand block of homes happily survives because Victor Kuzdo's attempt to squeeze a developer backfired.

The stoop was removed during the 1919 renovation to apartments.

 photographs by the author