The Meyer and Emilie Hoffman House - 122 East 57th Street

 

photograph by Ted Leather

In March 1876, real estate operator Andres Dold purchased a 204-foot long parcel on East 57th Street between Lexington and Park Avenues from Frederick Zittel.  The following year he completed a row of two- and three-bay wide houses on the site. 

Among the narrower examples was 122 East 57th Street.  Just 16-feet-wide, it rose four stories above a high English basement.  Faced in brownstone, its neo-Grec design included stone architraves with molded cornices and bracketed sills.

The houses along the block became home to well-heeled residents.  The Betts family first occupied 122 East 57th Street and, like their neighbors, their movements were closely followed by the society pages.  On September 6, 1883, for instance,  The Evening Telegram reported, "Mrs. H. W. Betts and family, of 122 East Fifty-seventh street, have left the Mansion Home, Monticello, N. Y., and are now at Saratoga."

Before long, Meyer and Emilie Hoffman purchased the house.  Living with them were their adult children, Clara, Maurice J. (known as Morris), and Julia May and her family.  Julia and her husband, Charles Brownold, had two children, Claudia and Irma.

Clara's wedding to Nathaniel Henry Wolfstein was held in the ballroom of Mazzetti's at 59th Street and Sixth Avenue on January 16, 1890.  The New York Times described the venue as being "prettily decorated with palms and clematis, and the bridal party stood under a canopy of white roses and lilacs."  Maurice Hoffman was Wolfstein's best man and Charles Brownold was one of the ushers.  The socially visible event drew guests from as far as Cincinnati and Philadelphia.

Maurice J. Hoffman died unmarried on January 21, 1892 at the age of 31.  His funeral was held in the parlor of 122 East 57th Street three days later.

It would not be the family's last funeral to be held here.  On November 28, 1904, Meyer Hoffman died at the age of 74 and his funeral was held on the 30th; and Charles Brownold died on June 24, 1913.  (While The New York Times noted that his funeral would be held in the house, it said it would be "strictly private.")

By the time of Emilie's death around 1916, the neighborhood around 122 East 57th Street had become decidedly commercial.  On May 1, 1917, The New York Times reported: 

The rapid transformation of East Fifty-seventh Street from residential to business purposes is further illustrated by a lease of the four-story dwelling, 122 East Fifty-seventh Street...for the estate of Emilie Hoffman to Harry Turner...The building will be altered by the installation of stores on the lower floors and apartments above.

Architect Herbert J. Krapp made $6,000 in renovations (about $151,000 in 2026 terms).  While the stoop remained, the basement and parlor levels were converted to shops.  They were quickly leased.  On August 5, 1917, The New York Times reported that Georges Chevrier, "cleaning and dyeing" had rented the ground floor store and milliner Frances B. Lankland had signed a lease on the "parlor floor."

Each of the upper three floors held two apartments.  An advertisement in July 1918 described one of them as having "Two very large rooms, kitchenette and bath."

In 1919, the Paris-based boutique Jeannetton, Inc. occupied one of the store spaces.  Its manager was looking for help in October 1920, advertising, "Girl for errands and shopping, white; experience required; $20 weekly."  (How much experience a young woman would need to run errands is unclear.)  The weekly pay would translate to about $320 today.

Victory magazine, September, 1919 (copyright expired)

Charles Finkelstein assembled a syndicate, the 122 East Fifty-seventh Street, Inc., in 1935 to purchase the building.  In reporting on the transaction on April 11, The New York Times noted, "The new owner will alter the building."

Before the end of the year, the stoop had been removed and a new two-story storefront installed.  The apartments, still two per floor, got a renovation at the time.

The 1935 renovations did not affect the 1877 neo-Grec window details.  via the NYC Dept. of Records & Information Services.

Shortly after the renovations were completed, 122 East 57th Street was the scene of a dramatic rescue.  On November 13, 1935, The New York Times reported that an "exploring expedition undertaken by a white Persian cat" had thrown the block into upheaval.  The feline was valued by its owner, Louise Kersch of 110 East 57th Street, at the equivalent of $7,000 today.  It had crawled from the window of the Kersch apartment and jumped sill-to-sill until stopping in front of an apartment at 122 East 57th Street.

The New York Times reported that its rescue entailed, "the calling of a police emergency squad."  The residents of the apartment were not at home, so police "rigged a life net of tarpaulin below the window in fear that the cat, some sixty feet above the sidewalk, might fall."  Traffic on the block was stopped and crowds gathered to watch the drama unfold.  Finally, police "forced a door" into the apartment and rescued the cat from the window.

At the time of that drama, the store spaces were occupied by two high-end antiques dealers.  Henry V. Weil occupied the parlor floor and Alfred Rich & Sons was in the shop at street level.  Weil advertised "genuine American antiques" in 1937, and that year The New York Sun remarked, "The firm of Alfred Rich & Sons...has made a specialty of cameo glass."

The constant search for rare glassware and china caused Alfred Rich & Sons to become a victim of a prolific crook in 1945.  Harry Francis Burke, who lived in a furnished room on East 50th Street, was "a collector of rare china," as reported by The New York Sun on June 22.  He had been arrested the previous day and police said his room was packed with valuable stolen glassware and china, including "an 1850 dessert dish from the J. P. Morgan collection."  The article noted, "The police said he also had stored several barrels of the merchandise in warehouses."  

Burke confessed that he had sold several items to Alfred Rich.  The New York Sun said that Rich "was unaware that they were stolen," but he was given a summons "for failing to keep proper books."

At the time of the embarrassing incident, the second floor space had been home to the East India Curry Shop for four years, having opened in May 1941.  Writing in The New York Times on April 3, 1944, Jane Holt reported that in addition to the many varieties of curry offered at the East India Curry Shop, "the establishment sells a concentrated curry sauce, which it blends itself."

Living here around midcentury was pioneer aviator David Hugh McCulloch.  Born on April 23, 1890, he was a pilot for the Curtis Airplane Company in 1910, and trained flyers for the U.S. Navy during World War I.  He served as co-pilot during the U.S. Navy's attempt in 1919 to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air, and continued to train pilots at Floyd Bennett Field until his retirement in 1946.  McCulloch was still living here on September 21, 1955 when he died following what The New York Times described as "a long illness."  

In the meantime, the ground floor continued to house upscale antiques dealers.  In 1949, Martin J. Ullmanns expanded its offerings by "making a specialty of designing mounts and shades" for antique vases and figurines to be converted into table lamps.  

From the mid-1960s until 1983, Philip Colleck of London occupied space here.  On November 25, 1965, The New York Times reported, "A sizable section of newly acquired pine paneling, once in a chateau in the environs of Paris, has been installed in the shop of Philip Colleck of London."  The article said the Louis XV paneling turned the shop "into an atmospheric stage for handsome furniture."

photograph by Ted Leather

In 1994, the lower two floors were combined as a restaurant and the upper floors converted to office space.  It was possibly at this time that the window details were shaved off.  Today the brownstone is painted and only the 1877 cornice survives to remind us of a time when the building was home to a wealthy family.

many thanks to reader Ted Leather for suggesting this post

The 1925 The Brook Club - 111 East 54th Street

photograph by Transpoman

On April 2, 1903, The New York Times reported, "Some of the most prominent clubmen in this city have launched a new club, like no other in New York."  Each of the founders, said the article, belonged to the Union, Knickerbocker, Metropolitan, "or other well-known clubs," but they intended to enjoy amenities in their new club "that can be had nowhere else."

Two of the innovations were the absence of by-laws (a member told The Sun they need no laws to "see that we behave ourselves like gentlemen.  We think we can do that.") and its 24-hour service.  The front door would never be locked.  The New York Times explained, "Having in mind the lines from Tennyson--'Men may come and men may go, / But I go on forever,' the founders, men who stand foremost in New York society, have named their new organization the Brook Club."

Among the organizers were William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., Oliver H. P. Belmont, Louis Stuyvesant Chanler, Robert Livingston Beekman, Stanford White, Frederic Gebbard, and Thomas B. Clarke.  Not surprisingly, McKim, Mead and White was hired to renovate the four-story-and-basement brownstone at 7 East 40th Street for its clubhouse.  White took the reins in the remodeling.

Stanford White transformed an upscale rowhouse to an American basement clubhouse.  photo by McKim, Mead & White from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

Two decades later, on May 9, 1924, the New York Evening Post reported that the Brook Club, "has bought as the site for its new headquarters the two dwellings at 111-113 East Fifty-fourth street."  The following month, on June 6, the newspaper announced that Vincent Astor had purchased the East 40th Street clubhouse property for development.

Once again, the Brook turned to a member to design its new home.  William Adams Delano was a partner of Delano & Aldrich and, as the firm had done for its 1915 Knickerbocker Club building, he turned to the dignified neo-Federal style.   

Completed the following year, the Brook Club could easily have passed as a private mansion.  Delano centered the entrance within the rusticated base.  Engaged columns upheld the entablature and faux balcony at the second floor.  A subtle, vitruvian wave of dolphins ran along the top of the ground floor.   The upper three floors were faced in Flemish bond red brick.  Three carved reliefs decorated the two-floor midsection, and the brick parapet atop the cornice was relieved with sections of stone balusters.

from the collection of the Delano & Aldrich Collection of the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, the grandson and namesake of the renowned poet, was a member of England's championship cricket team.  He arrived in New York "for a brief visit," according to the New York Evening Post, on February 18, 1931.  He stopped by the Brook Club, the name of which (as had been pointed out by The New York Times nearly three decades earlier) came from his grandfather's poem, "The Brook."  The newspaper noted, "He recently presented the club with one of his grandfather's original manuscripts."

The club had another well-known guest later that year.  On November 17, the Standard Union reported that Dino Grandi, Foreign Minister of Italy, would arrive in New York three days later.  Grandi was one of the 35 Fascists who made up Benito Mussolini's Chamber of Deputies in 1921.

Mayor Jimmy Walker, "feeling certain that there will be no hostile demonstration to fear," according to the article, had planned welcoming ceremonies.  Listed on the Fascist's busy schedule was, "Wednesday, Nov. 25--Luncheon at the Brook Club, 111 East Fifty-fourth street."

Two weeks earlier, a tragedy had occurred here.  The upper floors held bedrooms for out-of-town members and local members whose townhouses were closed for the summer season.   Although Samuel Adams Clark lived in town, at 655 Park Avenue, he stayed here on the night of November 7, 1931 in preparation of a meeting the following day.

Clark was described by The New York Times as "an architect widely known outside his profession for his interest in sports, particularly racing."  A member of the architectural firm Warren & Clark, he was married to the former Gertrude Jerome Alexandre.

Wealthy gentlemen traveled with their valets and, in the case of Clark at least, even for a single night.  He and Harry Wishkin arrived at the club on Saturday afternoon.  Clark "conversed with his friends," while Wishkin unpacked and arranged Clark's things.  At 11:00 that night, Clark had a "light supper" in his fourth-floor room.

At around noon the following day, Wishkin entered Clark's room to find him dead on the floor.  The New York Times reported, "From the position of the body it was believed that Mr. Clark had entered the closet in search of a bathrobe or other article of clothing, and had suffered a stroke as he reached for it."

Shortly after 10:30 on the night of April 20, "Three gunmen in evening dress sauntered into the Brook Club," as reported by the Daily Star.  The New York Times recounted, "The robbers, all young and apparently quite at their ease, entered the club hallway, only two doors off Park Avenue, and displaying pistols rounded up Roy Wilson, the cashier; William Ingram, the telephone switchboard operator, and the club doorman."

One gunman guarded the trio and another stood watch by the door.  The third emptied the cash drawer and the safe, the door of which was open.  Wall Street broker William Walter Phelps arrived in a cab in the meantime, unaware of what was taking place.  Because he had only two $100 bills in his wallet, he approached the desk for change.  He was ordered behind the counter with the other prisoners and relieved of his cash.  The New York Times reported, "One of the hold-up men obligingly stepped outside and paid the taxicab driver, presumably to prevent the latter from becoming suspicious."

The crooks then herded their prisoners into the elevator, sent it upward, and fled.  They made off with $1,500 of the club's money and Phelps's $200 (about $37,900 in total in 2025).

As it turned out, the mastermind of the heist was a former doorman, Frank Mackey.  He had worked in the club for several years, but was fired in 1927 for insubordination.  On January 20, 1933, another robbery took place here.  The New York Times reported, "three Negroes forced their way past the doorman, bound other employes [sic] and got $375."  

Mackey was planning a third and bigger caper five months later.  The scheme "to strip valuable oil paintings and framed signatures of the Presidents of the United States from the walls of the Brook Club," as described by The Times, was foiled when an apparently homeless man, "accidentally overheard some men discussing previous robberies of the club."  The clever eavesdropper, "said to be in need," according to The New York Times, pretended to want to get in on the robbery.  After getting details, he went to the club and warned the secretary.  Mackey and his cronies were rounded up and the nameless informant, "got a job and some new clothes as reward."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

The building was updated in 1963.  Little changed with the  functioning of the layout.  The cellar now holds locker rooms, a billiard room and a dining room, the ground floor has the visitors' room and coat room, and the second floor holds a dining room, lounge and sitting room.  On the third floor are the card room, bar and another dining room.  The upper floors, as before, hold bedrooms and valets' rooms.

Michael R. Bloomberg was a member until 2001, when he embarked on his candidacy for mayor.  Unlike almost all other male-only social clubs, like the Union League Club, which were pressured to admit women in the 1980s, the Brook stood steadfast.  Bloomberg resigned from this and three others.  He told a reporter, "Those clubs have a right to do what they want, but if I can't change them, and I choose to resign, then I have chosen to go elsewheres [sic]."

Normally avoiding publicity, the exclusive club was recently thrust into the news when a 32-year-old worker who was working in the dumbwaiter shaft was crushed on March 25, 2025.   The Daily News reported that the dumbwaiter had fallen three floors onto the workman.  A number of firefighters had to secure the device while others broke into the wall to free him.  The injured man was taken to a hospital for treatment.

Among the celebrated members of the Brook Club over the years include Henry Kissinger, President John F. Kennedy, explorer and Congressman William A. Chanler, and Admiral James L. Holloway.

many thanks to reader Felix Bronstein for suggesting this post

Mann & MacNeille's 1925 424 East 57th Street

 

The transformation of Sutton Place in 1920-21 from a dingy block to one occupied by some of New York's wealthiest citizens quickly affected the surrounding blocks.  Coal yards and a brewery were eliminated to make room for upscale apartment houses.  In 1925 Horace Borchsenius Mann got in on the trend.

Mann was a partner with Perry R. MacNeille in the architectural firm of Mann & MacNeille.  They were best known for large urban planning projects such as Bristol, Pennsylvania, described by the American Architect in 1918 as "America's greatest single industrial housing development."  This project would be considerably smaller.

In 1925 Horace B. Mann purchased and demolished the three old buildings at 422 through 426 East 57th Street, half a block west of Sutton Place.  Mann & MacNeille then designed a six-story apartment building on the site.  Completed within the year, it was faced in rough-faced brown brick.  Its somber design was inspired by medieval Italian architecture and featured an arched corbel table below the understated cornice and tiled roof.  The firm handled the regulated fire escapes--often visual obstructions--by placing them in front of vast sets of French doors and windows, giving them a balcony effect.  The second through fifth floor windows on either side sat within slight recesses that rose to dramatic full-relief terra cotta rosettes nestled within rounded corbels.

Among the initial residents were Philip S. Platt, his wife and daughter.  He had long been involved in public health and social welfare.  In 1914 as Superintendent of the Bureau of Public Health and Hygiene, he had lobbied for sanitary public drinking fountains, saying in part, "The miles which one may walk in New York without finding a place to quench one's thirst, unless it be a restaurant, saloon, or soda fountain, is a deplorable fact."  The family was still in the building in September 1944 when Philip S. Platt was appointed executive director of the New York Association for the Blind.

The building attracted a number of artistic residents.  Living here in 1926 were illustrator and painter Eliza Buffinton, landscape artist George M. Bruestle, illustrator Herman Pfeifer, and concert pianist Howard Brockway.

George M. Bruestle, 1931, © Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0119275

George Bruestle and his wife, the former Emma Thompson moved into 424 East 47th Street in 1925.  Born in 1872, he had studied at the Art Students League under H. Siddons Mowbray, and in Paris.  A member of the Lotus Club and the Salmagundi Club, by the time he and Emma moved into the building, his works were in the permanent collections of the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Reading Museum in Pennsylvania.  (Today his paintings hang in other prestigious institutions like the Smithsonian.)

Stewart Woodford Eames and his wife, the former Jessie D. MacNeal, were also initial residents.  Born in December 1866, Eames came from an old New York family and was a member of the Society of Colonial Wars.  He had recently retired from the H. B. Claflin Company, a drygoods concern, founded by his maternal grandfather Horace Bringham Claflin.

Not long after moving into 424 East 57th Street, Jessie Eames died.  In November 1930, Stewart leased a bedroom in their apartment to a 28-year-old architect, John A. Frank.  With the Depression slowing construction projects, Frank seems to have come to New York City from Pittsfield, Massachusetts in hopes of finding work.  His chances, however, were bleak.  A report issued by the American Institute of Architects on January 20, 1931 revealed that more than 500 architect were unemployed, and institute spokesperson Julian Clarence Levi, said some were "in desperate need."

Early on the morning of January 20, 1931, Stewart Woodford Eames attempted to enter the bathroom and found the door locked.  His knocking and calling brought no response, so he had the building superintendent open the door.  They walked into the bathroom to find a horrifying scene.  Frank was in the half-filled bathtub, having slit both wrists and ankles.  A note on a nearby chair said in part, "to live longer would only prolong the agony."

The following year, on February 9, 1932, the 66-year-old Eames was crossing Fifth Avenue at 57th Street when he was hit by an automobile.  He died at Flower Hospital several hours later.

Resident Luella A. Palmer had an impressive career at a time when women normally held more subservient roles in the workplace.  Never married, she began working as a kindergarten teacher in 1897.  On February 15, 1912 she was appointed assistant director of kindergartens and six years later was made director.  She still held that title when she died on January 13, 1934.  Her funeral was held in her apartment on January 16.

Newspapers printed the praises from colleagues like associate superintendent William E. Grady, who called her "a progressive school woman," and said "The kindergartens of our schools achieved, under her able direction, a place among those outstanding in this phase of the process of education."

Another outstanding educator living here at the time was Sarah M. Dean.  Also never married, she was an 1895 graduate of Radcliffe College.  After teaching high school in Newton Massachusetts, she became head of the history department of the Brearley School for girls, noted as one of the most esteemed private schools in New York.  She was later appointed its principal and held the position until her retirement in 1921.

In the spring of 1935, Vera Stretz rented a five-room apartment here, paying $100 a month rent (about $2,000 in 2023).  A graduate of New York University and former substitute school teacher, the 26-year-old had just taken a job as bookkeeper and secretary to Dr. Fritz Gebhardt.  A German native, the 43-year-old Gebhardt was a political scientist.

Vera Stretz's residency at 424 East 57th Street would last only six months.  A romantic affair developed between her and her employer, who lived at the Beekman Tower at 3 Mitchell Place.  Gebhardt convinced her to move there, in an apartment discreetly two floors below his.  Presumably he subsidized the higher rent, and he could certainly afford to.  His personal fortune was reported by The New York Sun to be approximately $5 million in today's money.

Gebhard proposed to Vera with a engagement ring containing "a large diamond circled by emeralds," according to The New York Sun.  But the love-struck young woman's world came crashing down when she discovered in November that her lover had a wife and family in Germany.  On the night of November 11, a Beekman Tower resident notified Leslie Taite, the assistant night manager, that he had heard gunshots.  Taite responded to the 21st floor.  The New York Sun reported, "Miss Stretz was sitting on a settee beside the elevator.  He nodded to her as he walked past, but she seemed lost in thought."

He found Gebhart's apartment door open, and inside was the scientist's body, dressed only in a nightshirt.  Patrolman Holden arrived shortly afterward.  Vera told him, "Yes, I did it.  I was on my way to the station house to give myself up."

Resident Clarence Burgher (here by 1939) graduated from Princeton University in 1885.  Rather than enter the family business (his grandfather had co-founded the sugar-refining firm of Burgher, Hurlburt & Livingston), he became an attorney and inventor.  An avid yachtsman, his pastime spilled over to his professional life.  He was retained by yacht clubs and steamship companies as counsel.  In 1899 he invented the subsurface torpedo and for a decade was president of the company that manufactured it.

Living with Burgher and his wife Edith was their son, Fairfax Carter Burgher, who had also attended Princeton, and a maid, Irenie Ingmire.  The family's country home was in Rye, New York.

When the United States entered World War I, Fairfax left school to become an army aviator.  Following the war Princeton awarded him an "honorary war diploma."  But Fairfax's chosen career following the war may have been a bit of a disappointment to his parents.  Going by the stage name "Fairfax," he was a professional magician.  On January 25, 1939 The New York Sun reported, "A crowd of old and young Princeton graduates is to gather in the Mary Murray Room of the White this afternoon at cocktail time for a special Princeton party honoring Fairfax, socially prominent magician and fellow alumnus who entertains there."

An aspiring actor, as well, Fairfax played the role of Bersonin in the 1922 silent film The Prisoner of Zenda, and had a small part in the short 1929 film A Princess of Destiny.  Although his career continued to be chiefly as a magician, he would appear in television shows in the 1950s such as I Spy and Pulitzer Prize Playhouse.

The 49-year-old Fairfax was still living with his parents here as late as 1946.

The Billboard, October 26, 1946

Living here in 1980 was Carol Louise Conrad.  When she had to leave town on business for an extended period, she sought permission from the landlord, Third Sutton, to sublet her apartment to Mary Lou McGlynn.  Third Sutton replied with a letter dated September 19, 1980 denying that permission, but giving no reason.  Instead, the firm offered to allow Conrad to break her lease without penalty.

Conrad sued and in October won her case.  The ruling was upheld on appeal, the five-judge panel saying that a landlord's refusal to allow a sublet had to come with a reason.  "If he does not give a reason, the landlord has, in effect, consented to the sublet," said the court.  David Saxe, counsel for the Center for Consumer Advocacy, Inc. called it an "impressive and forward-looking decision for tenant rights."

Mann & MacNeille's 424 East 57th Street--a somber departure from the other Jazz Age buildings that were going up in the neighborhood in 1925--is little changed since those early years when this section of Manhattan was changing from what The New York Times had called "a slum" to one of the city's most exclusive residential districts.

photographs by the author

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