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

The J. William Clark Mansion (Automation House) - 49 East 68th Street

 

image by Jim Henderson

Millionaire banker Frederick Dobbs Tappen died in his brownstone-fronted mansion at 49 East 68th Street on February 28, 1902.  Just over a decade later, on January 4, 1913, the Record & Guide reported that the house had been sold, noting it, "adjoins the residence of Percy R. Pyne, at the northwest corner of Park av."  (The Pyne mansion had been designed by McKim, Mead & White two years earlier.)

The buyers were John William Clark and his wife, Margaretta Brua Cameron.  Born in 1867, Clark was president of the Clark Thread Company and the Spool Cotton Company, founded by his grandfather in Paisley Scotland.  (Its O. N. T. brand, short for Our New Thread, was a staple in stores and homes throughout the nation.)  Margaretta was the daughter of former Senator J. Donald Cameron.  The couple had three sons, William, Jr., John Balfour, and James Cameron.  The family's summer estate, Peachcroft, was in Bernardsville, New Jersey.

Peachcroft, from the collection of the Bernardsville Public Library

The Clarks hired the architectural firm of Trowbridge & Livingston to design a replacement home on the site of the Tappen mansion.  On April 23, 1913, The New York Times reported, "Plans have been filed for a new five-story private residence for J. William Clark...The facade will be of brick and marble in the Colonial style of architecture."  The neo-Federal style was, almost assuredly, meant to blend harmoniously with the Pyne mansion next door.  The architects placed the cost of construction at $60,000 (about $1.9 million in 2024).

John William Clark, United States Passport Application, 1923

On October 4, 1913, the Record & Guide reported that excavation was underway for the Clark house.  Its completion would be too late for the Clarks' eldest son, William, to occupy it.  He was married to Marjory Bruce Blair at Blairsden, the country estate of the bride, a month before the article.

The family moved into 49 East 68th Street the following year.  The main and service entrances were recessed within a double-arched loggia.  The upper floors were faced in Flemish bond red brick.  French windows at the second floor opened onto a full-width iron balcony.  The metal-clad attic level was fronted by two elegant, Federal style dormers.

James Cameron was 22 at the time and John Balfour was 17.  The boys prepared at St. Mark's School and James was currently a junior at Harvard.  When America entered World War I in 1917, both young men entered the United States Army Air Service.  While John would serve in France, earning the rank of lieutenant, James was stationed in Texas for the war's duration.

The Clark house enjoyed an unexpected second wall of light and ventilation.  photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The global conflict was unable to hinder James's romance.  On December 6, 1917, the Air Service Journal reported on his engagement to Teresa Fabbri, the daughter of multimillionaire Ernesto Fabbri and the great-granddaughter of William Henry Vanderbilt.  He obtained a ten-day pass and the pair was married at Bar Harbor, Maine, on December 11.  Two days later, The New York Times reported, "Lieutenant James C. Clark and his bride, formerly Miss Teresa Fabbri...are on their way to San Antonio, Texas, where Lieutenant Clark is in the Signal Corps of the ground school for the Aviation Corps."

At the war's end, James was discharged on December 20, 1918 with the rank of first lieutenant.  He and John went into the family's business.  (John would eventually become its president, by then renamed Coats & Clark, Inc.)  William, in the meantime, had pursued law and eventually became a Federal judge. 

On January 16, 1924, The New York Times reported on John's engagement to Rhoda Cameron.  The couple was married later that spring.

John and Margaretta were at the Bernardsville estate on July 15, 1928 when John suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 60.  He left an estate of $12,957,775, according to The New York Times.  The figure would translate to $236 million today.

In May 1937, Margaretta leased 49 East 68th Street.  It was occupied by Walter Mack and his family when she died in March 1941 at the age of 71.  Two years later, her estate sold the mansion to Leroy Alton Lincoln.

Lincoln was chairman of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.  Born in 1880, his earliest American ancestor had arrived in Hingham, Massachusetts in 1635.  His wife, the former Hilda F. Deyoe, was his third, his two previous wives having died.

The Lincolns resided here for a decade, selling the house in November 1953 to the Soviet Government for $150,000 ($1.7 million today).   The New York Times explained it would be used "as a residence for Andrei Y. Vishinsky, the Soviet Union's permanent delegate to the United Nations," adding, "The property has twenty rooms, an elevator, and three floors below ground."

In 1967, the mansion was purchased by Theodore Kheel for his American Federation on Automation and Employment.  Now called Automation House, its lavish 1914 interiors were gutted.  The renovations resulted in a "private museum" on the first and second floors, and office and exhibition space on the upper floors.

On March 2, 1970, New York Magazine announced, "Automation House...opens this week.  It is a kind of electrical service station for artists to plug in to.  Its first show will be The Magic theatre, an exhibition of electrical environments by eight artists."

Automation House was more than that.  Theodore W. Kheel was described by the Staten Island Advance in November 1970 as "the famous lawyer-mediator."  The venue for years was the scene of tense labor negotiations and was the headquarters of the Board of Mediation for Community Disputes, founded here in January 1969.

Automation House was outfitted with "telephones and electrowriters, as well as telex, Xerox and Magnavox facsimile machines," according to Catherine Spencer in her Beyond the Happening, Performance Art and the Politics of Communication.  Here, she writes, "Groups of children were invited to inhabit them simultaneously and use the technology to send each other text and picture messages."

The house served as meeting space, as well.  On January 27, 1970, for instance, British Prime Minister Wilson addressed a gathering of management and labor leaders here.  And later that year, on July 1, Samuel R. Pierce was sworn in here as general counsel to the Treasury Department by Secretary David M. Kennedy.  (Pierce was the first black to receive an appointment to a sub-Cabinet post in the Treasury Department, according to the Associated Press.)

A riotous situation occurred on July 13, 1976 when Rolling Stone Magazine, "long a fount of anti-establishment culture," as described by The New York Times, hosted a "big party for the new Jimmy Carter establishment."  The organizers miscalculated the response and at 11:00 p.m. the Automation House executives ordered the doors barred.  The New York Times reported, 

Left out on the sidewalk were the likes of: Warren Beatty, the actor, and Representative Bella S. Abzug, who later sauntered off as a twosome; Jane Fonda, the actress; Katharine Graham, publisher; and Benjamin Bradlee, editor of The Washington Post; William vanden Heuvel, Carter campaign manager here; Theodore H. White, the chronicler of presidential campaigns, and for a while, Lauren Bacall.

A few of the celebrities who had made it inside before the doors were locked were Paul Newman, Shirley MacLaine, and Walter Cronkite.  Apparently Bella Abzug was not overly-bruised by not gaining admittance and the following year, on December 19, 1977, she used Automation House to announce her candidacy for Congress.

Richard Feigen purchased 49 East 68th Street in 1991.  He told James McElhinney in an interview for the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution in 2009, "All the detail was gone from the inside...And it appealed to me because you had brick walls; you could hang early paintings and contemporary art and everything in there.  And I've always enjoyed mixing these things up."

On September 23, 1991, New York Magazine reported, "Richard L. Feigen settles into his new location with paintings and drawings by the Italianate Dutch landscape painter Bartholomeus Breenbergh."  It was the first of a long string of  important exhibitions that would last through 1999 when  composer Mitch Leigh and his artist wife Abby Leigh purchased the property for $1.1 million.

photo by Jim Henderson

The couple hired Wendy Evans Joseph to reconvert the building into a single family home.  Mitch Leigh, who won a Tony Award for composing the music to Man of La Mancha, died in 2014.  Two years later, Abbie Leigh, whose works hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim and the Whitney, sold the house for $20.4 million.

The Ernest G. Stillman Mansion - 45 East 75th Street

 

photo by Ajay Suresh

Dr. Ernest Goodrich Stillman was born in Newport, Rhode Island on July 14, 1894, the son of multi-millionaire banker James J. Stillman and his wife, Sarah Elizabeth Rumrill.  Upon his father's death in 1918, Ernest and his two brothers, Charles and James, each inherited $9,694,561.  Ernest's windfall would be the equivalent of about $196 million in 2024.

Dr. Stillman graduated from Harvard in 1908 and earned his medical degree from Columbia University in 1913.  He was a research staff member at the Rockefeller Institute Hospital (not especially surprising considering that two of his sisters, Sarah and Isabel, had married Rockefellers).  Stillman and his wife, the former Mildred Marguerite Whitney, had three daughters, Jane, Dora Whitney and Penelope; and three sons, John Sterling, Calvin Whitney and Timothy Goodrich.  

In 1924, Stillman purchased the three high-stooped brownstones at 45 to 49 West 75th Street and hired the architectural firm of Cross & Cross to design a replacement mansion on the site.  Completed the following year, its architect of record was H. W. Andrews.  He designed the 51-foot-wide, four-story mansion in the neo-Federal style, giving East 75th Street a splash of 18th century America.

A graceful fanlight crowned above the main entrance.  Sitting above a stone bandcourse, four large, multi-paned windows at the second floor were fronted by iron balconies.  The slate-shingled mansard was punctured by five alternating pedimented and flat-headed dormers.  A Chippendale railing crowned the roof.

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

Stillman's mother was taken to her country home at Cornwall-on-Hudson in 1925, the year the family moved into 45 East 75th Street.  Her health was fragile and Middletown [New York] Daily Herald said, "it was said she could not live out the year."  On October 18, Sarah Stillman was brought from Cornwall-on-Hudson to 45 East 75th Street in a private ambulance.  Ernest G. Stillman soft-peddled her condition, telling reporters, "she made the trip by motor to avoid the fatigue of transferring from train to ferry."  Sarah Elizabeth Rumrill eventually returned to her home at 102 East 35th Street, where she died a little over a month later, on November 30, at the age of 73.

Stillman filled the 75th Street mansion with a magnificent collection of Japanese art and literature.  It was later divided between the Widener Library and the Peabody Museum.  The family maintained two summer homes, the Cornwall-on-Hudson residence and another in Northeast Harbor, Maine.

Jane, born in 1913, was the eldest of the Stillman children.  On October 26, 1931, the New York Evening Post reported, "Dr. and Mrs. Ernest G. Stillman will present their daughter, Miss Jane Stillman, to society at an old fashioned afternoon reception, at their home, 45 East Seventy-fifth Street. This has been arranged primarily for old friends of the family, and there will not be dancing."

Debutante entertainments continued throughout the winter social season, and on December 23 the newspaper announced that Ernest and Mildred, "are giving a dinner-dance this evening at the Ritz-Carlton for their daughter, Miss Jane Stillman.  The debutante made her format debut at a tea at the Stillman home on December 6, and tonight's party has been arranged for her friends in the younger set."

Mildred's entertainments in the 75th Street mansion often centered around charities.  On November 15, 1942, for instance, The New York Times reported that she would be hosting a tea "for members of the debutante committee aiding in the plans for the annual card party in behalf of the New York Child's Foster Home Service."  She and Ernest jointly provided funds for the construction of the Cornwall Hospital, and she was a director and chairman of the foster home committee of the New York Nursery and Childs Hospital, to which she contributed generously.

She was, as well, an author, editor and poet, best known for her children's books.  She was already a successful author when she and Ernest were married in 1911.  Among her children's books were The Mermaid and the Little Fish, A Present for Santa Claus, and A Boy of Galilee.  Additionally, The New York Times said, "she was widely recognized as a translator of writings by the French religious philosopher, Francois Fenelton."

Philanthropy was as much a part of Ernest Stillman's life as was medicine.  He funded the building of Shaler Hall and the Fisher Museum at Harvard University, donated a horticultural research unit in Petersham, Massachusetts to the university, and financially supported the Cornwall Hospital in upstate New York.  Ardently interested in forestry and silvicultural research, he donated the 3,800-acre Black Rock Forest along the Hudson River in Orange County, New York to Harvard along with a large endowment.

Dr. Ernest Goodrich Stillman died in the mansion on December 16, 1949 at the age of 65.  His love of trees and forestry was reflected in his will, which directed his executors "to have my remains cremated and the ashes scattered in Black Rock Forest."

Eight months later, on August 22, 1950, Mildred Marguerite Whitney Stillman suffered a fatal heart attack in the house at the age of 60.  The New York Times mentioned that, in addition to her many philanthropies, "She was a founder and former secretary of the New York Junior League."

The mansion was purchased by Miss Hewitt's Classes, a private girls' school founded in 1920.  A renovation completed in 1951 resulted in classrooms and offices on each floor. 

Three years later, the school purchased the vintage house across the street at 44 East 75th Street for dormitory purposes.  It continued to expand its holdings in April 1964, when it purchased the adjoining house at 46 East 75th Street.

photo by Jim Henderson

By then, name of Miss Hewitt's Classes had been changed to The Hewitt School.  It remains a private girl's school for grades kindergarten through 12.  The exterior of the Stillman mansion has been respectfully preserved.

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The Henry P. Davison Mansion - 690 Park Avenue

 

The Davison garage is discreetly tucked into the facade at left.

Born in Troy, Pennsylvania on June 12, 1867, Henry Pomeroy Davison came to New York City to join the Astor Place Bank in 1891.  Two years later he married Mary Kate Trubee.  The couple would have four children, Frederick Trubee, Henry Pomeroy Jr., Alice Trubee, and Frances Pomeroy.  In 1903, just over a decade after arriving in New York, Davison was made a senior partner in JP Morgan & Company.

In 1916 Davison acquired the southwest corner of Park Avenue and 69th Street and hired the architectural firm of Walker & Gillette to design the family's town home.  Completed in 1917, the New-York Tribune placed the cost of its construction at $200,000--just over $4.5 million in 2024.

Faced in red Flemish bond brick above a limestone base, the mansion rose five stories--its top floor masked by a balustraded stone parapet.  The neo-Federal design was splashed with Georgian elements--most notably the impressive entrance reminiscent of Sir Christopher Wren.  A delightful Georgian detail appears at the second floor in the form of bronze sphinxes flanking a classical urn atop the cornice of two of the Park Avenue windows and one on the side street. 

While an attached garage might be expected in the rear of the house, Walker & Gillette placed the Davison garage on Park Avenue, with the living quarters extending above it.  The logistics of getting one's vehicle back out of the garage were solved by an inventive turntable.  

According to The New York Times, the mansion included "ten master's bedrooms, fourteen servants' rooms and two elevators."  

The garage consumed a large portion of the ground floor square footage.  Architecture, June 1919 (copyright expired)

The Davisons' summer home, Peacock Point, was in Locust Valley, Long Island.  Also neo-Federal in design, the mansion on the estate had been designed by Walker & Gillette in 1914.

The family had barely moved into the Park Avenue residence when the country entered World War I and Davison was recruited by President Woodrow Wilson as chairman of the War Council of the American Red Cross.  The position required his visiting the American, French and Italian battle fronts early in 1918 and nearly cost him his life.  On May 17, the day after Davison returned home, The Sun reported, "a few weeks ago in the ancient French town of Chalons a Boche aviator dropped a bomb so close to Mr. Davison that he was temporarily stunned by the shock of the explosion."

Davison updated reporters on the work of the Red Cross overseas.  The Sun recounted in part:

Mr. Davison pointed out that in almost every village and town of Italy and France Red Cross workers are not merely succoring war sufferers.  They are as well strengthening the spirit and determination and bulwarking the confidence of peoples that the Germans are trying to frighten into submission.

Following the war, Davison recommended the formation of the League of Red Cross Societies, combining the British, French, Japanese, Italian and American Red Cross societies.  It was founded on May 15, 1919 with Davison as its chairman.  That year he published The American Red Cross in the Great War.

Henry Pomeroy Davison and Mary Trubee Davison.  from the collection of the Library of Congress.

Frederick Trubee Davison (who went by his first initial), graduated from Groton School in 1913.  He entered Yale, but left school in 1916 "to organize the first naval aviation unit before the United States entered the war," according to the New-York Tribune.  (He named it the First Yale Unit.)  On July 28, 1917, Davison was making a practice flight over Long Island when "his machine collapsed and he was severely injured."  Indeed, his back was broken and his spinal cord damaged.  He spent six weeks in St. Luke's Hospital.

The second floor rooms extend over the garage area.  Architecture, June 1919 (copyright expired)

His sister Alice was also involved in the war effort.  The New York Times said she "was one of the first debutantes to take up serious work.  She qualified as a wireless operator and in the Spring of 1918 organized a women's unit of wireless operators."

With the war over, 690 Park Avenue could finally become a social center.  In reporting on the Midwinter Ball in the Ritz-Carlton on January 31, 1920, for instance, the New-York Tribune commented, "Many dinners preceded the entertainment, one of the largest being given by Mrs. Henry P. Davison, the chairman of the ball, at her home."

Frederick Trubee Davison was married in April 1920 to Dorothy Peabody in Groton, Massachusetts.  Her father, Rev. Endicott Peabody, had been Davison's headmaster at the Groton School.  (Davison would go on to become the first personnel director of  the CIA in 1951.)

A Stuart portrait of George Washington hung over the mantel in the Davisons' library.  Architecture, June 1919 (copyright expired)

On January 31, 1921, The New York Times denied rumors that Henry P. Davison was seriously ill at Thomasville, Georgia.  At the Park Avenue mansion, said the newspaper, "It was said that Mr. Davison had merely gone South for a rest."  In fact, Davison was suffering from increasingly severe headaches, a symptom of a serious condition of which no one, including the family, was aware at the time.

Henry and Mary announced Alice's engagement to Artemus L. Gates on August 9, 1921.  (The future groom was a Yale classmate of Henry Davison, Jr.)  Two days later, the New-York Tribune reported that her father, "is to undergo an operation for an affection of his right ear."  Davison's doctors told reporters he

...had been suffering with his ear for several months.  It had not been considered of a serious nature, but because of the inconvenience it caused him and because the operation involved was said to be of a comparatively simply nature, it had been decided to submit to immediate surgical treatment.

It appears that the Davison family now recognized the true severity of Henry's condition.  Despite the impending winter social season and Alice's imminent wedding, the townhouse was leased to Marshall Field and his wife, while the Davisons remained at Peacock Point.

The Fields quickly received an esteemed house guest in Lord David Richard Beatty, the British Admiral of the Fleet.  A contingent of mounted police flanked the entrance to the mansion upon his arrive.  On October 22, 1921, The New York Times said, "When he alighted at the Marshall Field home at 690 Park Avenue the escort under command of Lieutenant Harry Eason was drawn up at salute, and Lord Beatty returned the salute and extended his congratulations on the appearance of the mounted men."

The Davisons' dining and living rooms.  Architecture, June 1919 (copyright expired)

A second operation was performed on Henry P. Davison at Peacock Point on May 6, 1922.  The Times Union said, "The surgeons found not the simple external tumor of the brain they hoped to be able to excise, but an infiltrating growth they were unable to entirely remove."  Davison died during the operation at the age of 55.  The newspaper said, "The unhappy termination of Mr. Davison's illness removes from the financial world one of its masters."

Davison had executed his will nine days before his death.  Nearly the entire estate went to Mary.  He bequeathed $20,000 to his secretary, William C. Heinkel, and $10,000 to Mary's secretary, Levina E. Oliphant--a generous $350,000 and $175,000 respectively in today's money.

Mary Trubee Davison would never return to 690 Park Avenue.  On July 27, 1922, the New York Herald reported, "Mrs. Henry P. Davison, who has been passing the summer at Peacock Point...will spend the winter at 845 Fifth avenue, where an apartment is being made ready for her occupancy by October 1.  The Davison home at 690 Park avenue was leased last autumn for a long term to Mr. Marshall Field."

The Fields were still leasing the mansion when Mary sold it to Allene and Anson Wood Burchard in July 1925.  In reporting the sale, The New York Times commented, "It is generally considered to be one of the finest houses in the city."

Burchard was vice chairman of the General Electric Company and chairman of the board of the International General Electric Company.  Born in 1865 in Hoosick Falls, New York, he married Allene Tew Hostetter in London in 1912.  He was her third husband.  Her first, Theodore Rickey Hostetter, died in 1902.  She divorced her second husband, Morton Colton Nichols in 1905 (retaking the Hostetter surname).  The Burchards maintained a home in Paris at 4 Rue d'Aguesseau.

Anson Wood Burchard and Allene Tew Hostetter Burchard.  (Original sources unknown)

On January 22, 1927, two years after moving into the Park Avenue mansion, Anson Burchard arrived at the home of Mortimer L. Schiff for a luncheon meeting.  During lunch, the 62-year-old suffered what the Chicago Tribune described as "acute indigestion" and died.

Allene lived opulently following her husband's death.  In 1928 she purchased a new house in Paris, and in January 1929 she chartered a luxury houseboat, the Indiana, for a cruise up the Nile.  Among her guests were Prince Heinrich XXXIII Reuss of Köstritz.  Allene and the Prince were married on April 10, 1929.  (That marriage would end in divorce in 1935 and the following year Allene would marry Captain Count Pavel de Kotzebue.)

On March 28, 1931, the Buffalo Evening News reported, "The Princess of Reuss recently sold her home at 690 Park avenue in New York city for a reported sum of $700,000.  She had not occupied the house since her marriage to the prince.  The dwelling is located in the center of one of the more exclusive residential sections of the world."

The mansion became home to Harry Payne Bingham and his third wife, Melissa Williams Yuille.  Born in 1887, Bingham graduated from Yale University in 1910.  A former broker, he had sold his seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1924.  In 1937 he became a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Bingham died in Palm Beach, Florida on March 25, 1955 at the age of 67.

In July 1955, the Consulate General of Italy in New York moved into 690 Park Avenue, and it remains there today.  In November 1970 the Davison mansion was designated a New York City individual landmark.

photographs by the author

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Charles E. Birge's 1912 11 East 47th Street

 

The wealth of attorney John Graham was evidenced in 1872 when he charged Edward H. Stokes a retainer of $10,000 (more than a quarter of a million in 2023 dollars) to defend him for the murder of James Fisk.  The famous lawyer lived for years in the four-story, high-stooped brownstone residence at 11 East 47th Street, just east of Fifth Avenue.

By the turn of the century the Midtown neighborhood changed, as commerce took over the former mansion district.  On July 15, 1911, the 25-foot-wide house was sold to Henry C. Trumbower, who lived in Philadelphia.  He demolished the venerable residence and hired architect Charles E. Birge to design a six-story loft and store building on the site.  

Completed the following year, Birge's prim tripartite, neo-Federal design included a stone base where engaged Doric columns flanked the entrance to the upper floors.  The four-story midsection was clad in brown Flemish bond brick and trimmed in white marble.  The molded cornice of the grouped windows of the second floor rose and fell to accommodate a handsomely-carved neo-classical panel.  The top section sat above a marble bandcourse, its openings separated by Scamozzi pilasters and fronted by iron balconies.  A marble cornice completed the design.

Among the initial tenants was Madame S. Schartz, who leased the second and third floors for her corset factory.  Called by The Corset and Underwear Review as the "well known corsetiere," she moved her business into the building on February 1, 1912.  She would remain here at least through 1915.

The ground floor space was home to the gentleman's tailoring shop of Herman Conley.  He had relocated his business from Boston to New York around 1899 and was a favorite of wealthy young men.  In 1913, The New York Times mentioned that Conley "is said to know more college men than any other tradesman in the country."

In the early years of the 20th century, the private lives of businessmen like Herman Conley who catered to the carriage trade were open to public scrutiny.  And so in the spring of 1913, when he separated from his wife of 14 years, newspapers took notice.  Things worsened in July when Herman filed for divorce. 

The New York Times had happier news to report on November 28, however.  An article noted, "Friends made repeated efforts to bring them together and finally a meeting was arranged yesterday."  The newspaper reported that Herman Conley and his wife "had their Thanksgiving dinner together."  Herman told the reporter, "Our troubles are at an end and I wish our friends would forget that there ever had been a case of Conley vs. Conley."

Herman Conley's gentlemen's tailoring business was replaced by the Green Shop Company in 1916, a ladies' tailoring business.  As Conley's had done, the shop catered to an elite clientele.  When management advertised for a dressmaker and a fitter on March 14, 1920, it stressed, "one accustomed to high class work only."

In the meantime, after Madame Schwartz left, the upper floors were leased as offices.  In 1915 the headquarters of the American Polish Relief Committee were here, and in 1920 the office of architect William Henry Deacy and the

"administrative offices and designing rooms" of the Presbrey-Leland Company leased the sixth floor.

William Deacy and the Presbrey-Leland Company were inextricably connected.  In addition to his private architectural practice, until 1920 he was architect in charge of the studio of the W. W. Leland Company, a leader in "cemetery art."  Upon its merger with the former competitor Presbrey-Coykendall Co., Deacy was appointed Director of Design "over a corps of creative artists and architectural draughtsmen," according to an announcement.

An advertisement in Park and Cemetery in September 1920 noted, "A paramount policy of the Presbrey-Leland Company is the awakening of a national interest in the Cemetery Beautiful."  

William Henry Deacy designed this monument at 11 East 47th Street in 1920.  from The Monument News, January 1921.

Society dressmaker Madame Lisbet Boses leased an upper floor space in August 1922, and by 1926 the ground floor store was home to The Arthur M. Rosenberg Co., gentlemen tailors.  As Herman Conley had done, the store catered to the younger set.  An advertisement in The Columbia Spectator on October 14, 1926 noted, "For thirty years Rosenberg tailoring has been considered the authoritative college style."  The tradition of high-end custom clothes continued in the shop when Olson & Daly tailors took the space around 1934.  An advertisement in February 1935 touted, "Clothes of distinctive yet conservative style--English and Scotch woollens used exclusively."

The appearance of the former brownstone mansion can be gleaned from the surviving, altered houses on either side of 11 East 47th Street in 1941.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

In the spring of 1945, John K. Dennis, Michael Lee, Peter Huppert and Otto Kapper, owners of Partners Jewelry, Inc., purchased 11 East 47th Street.  On March 28, The New York Times reported, "The buyers expect to occupy a part of the building for their own business."  

The store, expectedly, became home to Partners Jewelry which marketed "watches and jewelry of distinction."  It sold other high-end items, as well, like the sterling silver mint julep cup and ice tongs available in October 1946.  Together, the items were priced at $50, or $750 today.

The new owners leased the upper floor offices to tenants like Kenneth Ives & Co., real estate brokers, and the Bing Cronin Personnel Service.

The 1970s saw the travel agency Flight Management Ltd. in one of the offices.  The firm advertised flights to London for "less than $100 by jet" in New York magazine on December 20, 1971, noting, "No time limits on when you can travel.  No age limit.  No extra charges."  Also in the building at the time was the Geothermal Energy Institute, which sought to provide naturally produced, renewable energy worldwide.

As the 20th century drew to a close, the ground floor space where well-heeled New Yorkers once ordered custom-made apparel became the Katsu-Hama Restaurant.  The Japanese restaurant received a glowing review from The New York Times food critic Eric Asimov on February 24, 1999, although he bristled, "Katsu-Hama is not an easy restaurant to find, even though it is in the middle of a busy block in midtown Manhattan."

Asimov's frustration has been relieved and in 2023 Katsu-Hama has signage to alert patrons to its location.  While Charles E. Birge's 110-year-old building could use a gentle cleaning, its architectural integrity is nearly perfectly intact.

photographs by the author

no permission to reuse the content of this blog has been granted to LaptrinhX.com

The Oswald Garrison Villard House - 179 East 71st Street

 

In April 1909 the two three-story, wooden houses of Mrs. Gertrude B. Miller and Richard M. Hoe at 177 and 179 East 71st Street respectively were sold.  The real estate firm of Pease & Elliman handled both transactions.   A principal in that firm, Douglas Elliman, and his wife Theodora purchased 177, while developer David Goodrich acquired the other.  The new owners worked closely together on the plans for the properties.

They commissioned architect S. Edson Gage to design two mirror image, upscale homes on the site.  Completed in 1910, the five-story residences were entered just above street level.  Gage designed them in the neo-Federal style, cladding them in Flemish bond brick and adding period appropriate elements like narrow entrance door sidelights, and splayed lintels and keystones.  Three sets of French windows at the second floor opened onto a full-width balcony with Federal style iron railings.  The fifth floor was set back and hidden behind a stone railing.

A street sweeper works on a treeless East 71st Street in 1941.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

David Goodrich sold 179 East 71st Street in 1911 to Oswald Garrison Villard and his wife, the former Julia B. Sanford.  The couple was married in 1903 and had three children, Henry Hilgard, Oswald Jr., and Dorothy.

Born in 1872 to journalist Henry Villard and Fanny Garrison, Oswald was an 1893 graduate of Harvard University.  He followed in his father's professional footsteps and when he and Julia moved into 179 East 71st Street he was president and editor of the New York Evening Post.  

He also closely followed his mother's example.  Fannie Garrison Oswald was a pacifist and civil rights activist.  She and Oswald help found the NAACP in 1909.  Villard served as the organization's disbursing treasurer for years.  When Woodrow Wilson initiated segregation within the Federal offices in Washington, Garrison fired off a letter of protest to the President in July 1913.

Osward Garrison Villard, from the collection of the University of Massachusetts Amherst

A vocal pacifist like his mother, Garrison's stance came into question when the United States entered World War I in April 1917.  In May, the Midday Recruiting Committee wrote to him, asking him "to write and tell it whether the statement reported to have been made by him represents his views now."  His staunchly pacifist statement had been made on February 18, two months before the country entered the conflict.  The New York Herald reported, "Mr. Villard was quoted as having said that he would not resist an invasion of this country by a foreign foe and as having refused to reply to a hypothetical question concerning the invasion of American homes."

S. Edson Gage designed 177 and 179 (right) as mirror images of one another.

In 1918 Garrison became editor of The Nation.  He used the editorial page to espouse his views on civil liberties, civil rights, and foreign policy.  The same year he resigned his position as president of the Philharmonic Society.  A reporter from the New-York Tribune went to 179 East 71st Street on the evening of January 4 to confirm the rumor.  Villard told him that he felt "he had accomplished for the Philharmonic all that was in his power."  But there seemed to have been more to the break than that.  "Mr. Villard refused to comment on the report that his attitude toward the war had played a part in his resignation," said the article.

On October 31, 1925, the Record & Guide reported that Julia Villard had sold 179 East 71st Street to Mrs. Vanderbilt Webb.  Aileen Clinton Hoadley Osborn Webb was the wife of Vanderbilt Webb, son of Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt and Dr. William Seward Webb, and a grandson of William Henry Vanderbilt.  Married in 1921, the couple had four children, Derick V., W. Osborn, Richard, and Barbara.

Aileen was the daughter of William Church Osborn, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Alice Clinton Hoadley Dodge.  Through her mother, she was the granddaughter of millionaire William Earl Dodge Jr.  

Vanderbilt Webb had attended the prestigious Groton School, graduated from Yale University in 1913, and studied at Oxford University in England before earning his law degree from Harvard University in 1916.  He was a member of the law firm Patterson, Belknap & Webb.  His broad interests were reflected in his being a trustee in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the American University of Beirut, Lebanon; the Groton School; and Colonial Williamsburg, Inc.

Vanderbilt Webb (original source unknown)

With the onslaught of the Depression, Aileen turned her attention to the conditions of the impoverished.  She encouraged the making of handmade goods which women could sell to improve their families' situations.  In 1940 she founded America House to help craftsmen sell their products.

Aileen Osborn Webb, The Craftsman's World, 1959

In the meantime, Barbara Webb was introduced to society in the winter season of 1934.  She had attended the exclusive Chapin School and the Brownmoor School in New Mexico before attending Bennington College.  

In April 1939, a year after graduating, Barbara's engagement to Henry Benson Rockwell was announced.  It gave society columnists an opportunity to recount the couples' social pedigrees.  The New York Times noted the Barbara "is a great-granddaughter of General James Watson Webb, noted journalist, diplomat and soldier, and a great-great-granddaughter of Jacob L. Cram, a leading New York merchant before the Civil War.  Through her father also, Miss Webb is a descendant of Commodore Vanderbilt, and a great-granddaughter of the late William H. Vanderbilt."

The Webbs were still living at 179 East 71st Street in January 1944 when Derick V. Webb became engaged to Elizabeth B. Canfield.  A graduate of Yale, Webb had entered the Army in October 1942 and was on leave.  In reporting on the engagement on January 7, The Putnam County Republican mentioned that his brother, "Pfc. Richard H. Webb [was] recently wounded in Italy."

When Vanderbilt Webb died on June 17, 1956 at the age of 65, he and Aileen were living at 66 East 79th Street.  No. 179 East 71st Street was now home to New Yorker illustrator Saul Steinberg and his artist wife Hedda Sterne.

Born in Romania in 1914, Steinberg was educated at the University of Bucharest and the Polytechnic University of Milan where he studied architecture.  The Fascist anti-Semitic laws forced him to leave Italy in 1938, and he arrived in New York in 1942.  He and Hedda, also born in Romania, were married in 1944.

Although he was best known for his New Yorker drawings, and for others in publications like Fortune, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Mademoiselle, his artworks were routinely exhibited in galleries and museums.  He would eventually have more than 80 one-man artist shows throughout the United States, South America and Europe.

Like her husband, Hedda Sterne had attended the University of Bucharest.  During World War II she and her family suffered under the Bucharest pogrom before she was finally able to sail for New York on October 17, 1941, where she quickly achieved success with her art.  She became friends with Peggy Guggenheim and became reconnected with painters she had known in Europe, including Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and André Breton.  By 1943 her artworks were being shown regularly in New York galleries, particularly Peggy Guggenheim's.

Hedda Sterne and Poussin in the rear yard of 179 East 71st Street.  Artful Cats, 2019

According to the Mary Savig's Artful Cats: Discoveries from the Archives of American Art, while living at 179 East 71st Street Steinberg painted a portrait of Hedda's cat Poussin "inside the cabinet under their kitchen sink; the idea was to keep away mice."

The couple separated in 1960, although they remained married until Steinberg's death in 1999.  Hedda died on April 8, 2011 at the age of 100.  

No. 179 East 71st Street, having had only a handful of owners, has seen almost no outward change since its completion in 1910.

photographs by the author

no permission to reuse the content of this blog has been granted to LaptrinhX.com