The Lost John Innes Kane Mansion - 1 West 49th Street

 

image from "Charles Follen McKim, A Study of his Life and Work, 1913 (copyright expired)

Born on July 29, 1850, John Innes Kane was the great-grandson of John Jacob Astor I.  His maternal grandmother was Dorothea Astor.  Kane married Annie Cottenet Schermerhorn on December 12, 1878, her wedding gown designed personally by Parisian couturier Charles Frederick Worth.  Kane was among the social class known as "gentlemen," meaning he lived on inherited wealth.  Rather than work, he was interested, according to The New York Times, "in scientific matters, especially those dealing with discovery and exploration."

In the spring of 1904, Kane purchased "the old Matthiessen residence," as described by The Sun, at the northwest corner of 49th Street and Fifth Avenue.  Weeks later, on April 9, the Real Estate Record & Guide reported he had purchased the abutting four-story houses at 612 and 614 Fifth Avenue.  The article said, "It is understood that Mr. Kane...will erect for his own occupancy a large modern dwelling on the site."

Four months later, on August 6, the journal reported, "McKim, Mead & White...have completed plans for a residence for John Innes Kane."  Saying the four-story mansion would be clad in limestone, the article noted, "It is estimated to cost $200,000."  The figure would translate to about $7 million in 2024.

According to his biographer, Charles McKim, who was a personal friend of Kane, took the reins in designing the residence.  In his 1913 Charles Follen McKim, A Study of His Life and Work, Alfred Hoyt Granger mentioned, "He builded for his friends many beautiful houses, of which the most beautiful in my judgment is the Kane house on the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street."  The Sun, however, attributed the design to Stanford White, saying "Mr. White saw that the Italian renaissance was the style best suited to her [i.e. Annie Kane's] ideas."

At a time when many Manhattan millionaires were erecting frothy Beaux Arts confections, the Kane mansion's Italian Renaissance design was subtle.  On June 2, 1907, The Sun explained, "When Mr. and Mrs. Kane gave the order for the house they made but one condition with the architects.  They wanted the house to be the plainest in New York."  The journalist presumed, "This desire was probably inspired by the house they had lived in for many years previously."  (That was Annie's parents' mansion at 49 West 23rd Street.)  

The entrance of the mansion opened onto West 49th Street.  The Architectural Review, 1907

The Sun said, "It is considered a rarely pure specimen of Italian renaissance, even to the hatchment that hangs over the entrance."  While the exterior was Italian, the Kanes "decided that [the interiors] should be English."  Mrs. Frank Millet was commissioned to scour Europe for the appropriate furnishings.  "The furniture selected by Mrs. Millet was exclusively English of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries," said the article.

Two views of the entrance hall.  The Architectural Review, January 1919 (copyright expired)

The ground floor held the "dining rooms and the library," while two large drawing rooms were on the second.  The bedrooms were located on the third floor.

In 1904, the same year ground was broken for their townhouse, the Kanes' cottage, Breakwater, in Bar Harbor, Maine was completed.  It was designed by Fred L. Savage in the Tudor Revival style.  The couple also maintained a residence in Lenox, Massachusetts that Annie inherited from her father.

The Kane cottage in Bar Harbor.  image via maineencyclopedia.com

Because Kane had no business responsibilities, he and Annie had unlimited leisure time and the ability to travel extensively.  On October 15, 1911, The New York Times reported, "Mr. and Mrs. John Innes Kane will be leaving shortly for Europe, and will later proceed to Egypt, where they will be joined by a party of eleven of their friends, who will be their guests on a long trip up the historic river."  Seven months later, on June 9, 1912, The Sun announced, "Mr. and Mrs. John Innes Kane, who passed part of the winter in Egypt, returned from Europe recently.  They will go to Bar Harbor for the summer."

A sitting room (above) and a breakfast room had seemingly identical ceilings.  from the collection of the Columbia University Libraries.

John Kane did not enjoy his limestone palazzo for especially long.  Early in the summer of 1912, he fell ill while at Bar Harbor.  His condition worsened over the months.  Finally, on February 2, 1913, The New York Times wrote, "John Innes Kane, a member of one of New York's oldest families and a great-grandson of John Jacob Astor, died yesterday at his residence, 1 West Forty-ninth Street, from pneumonia."  Kane was 62 years old.  In reporting his death, the newspaper added, "His forty-ninth Street residence attracted immediate attention, when completed in 1909 [sic], because of its attractive simplicity."

from the collection of the Columbia University Libraries.

Following her period of mourning, Annie Kane resumed her seasonal routine.  On October 10, 1915, for instance, The Sun reported, "Mrs. John Innes Kane has arrived at Lenox from Bar Harbor, where she has been passing the summer.  She will return to 1 West Forty-ninth street about the middle of next month."

Annie's significant fortune was increased upon the death of her sister, Fannie Schermerhorn Bridgham in 1919.  On November 10, 1920, The New York Times reported that Annie had inherited $590,538--just over $9 million in today's money.

Disaster struck while Annie was at Bar Harbor in August 1921.  A crew of workmen were in the 49th Street townhouse, one of whom was on the second floor on August 23 when he heard something fall in the library.  He opened the door to discover, as worded by The New York Times, "the library was a furnace."  His opening of the door caused a backdraft, which "spurted out so quickly that the workman was hardly able to close the door without catching fire himself."

Crowds crammed Fifth Avenue as flames burst through the windows of the mansion.  Although the fire spread to the dining room, McKim, Mead & White was credited for saving the residence.  "The rooms were fireproofed so perfectly that the firemen were able to confine the flames, and, although everything in the library was burned, some of the furniture in the dining room was saved," said The New York Times.  The solid construction was also reflected in the fact that there was relatively little water damage.  "Another remarkable feature of the fire was that the thousands of gallons of water pumped into the burning rooms did not seep through to the ceilings of the floors below, but cascaded down a marble stairway," said the article.

Tragically, "priceless portraits and heirlooms of the Schermerhorn and Kane families" were destroyed.  The Evening World reported, "The fire was extinguished in a quarter of an hour, but in that time the two rooms had been gutted, the great carved ceilings reduced almost to charcoal, family portraits, marbles, tapestries and bric-a-brac burned to a cinder or blackened beyond repair."

The twin beds in this bedroom cleverly shared a single canopy.  from the collection of the Columbia University Libraries.

Annie Cottenet Kane died at the age of 69 "after a long illness," according to The New York Times, on July 24, 1926.  Her will divided her extensive estate among "worthy charities and other organizations."  The New York Orthopaedic Dispensary and Hospital received $1 million to found the Annie C. Kane Fellowships to provide fellowships to young surgeons, for instance, and Columbia University received two $500,000 bequests, one in memory of Annie's father William C. Schermerhorn.

The Kane mansion would not survive much longer.  Two years after Annie's death, John D. Rockefeller Jr. set in motion the ambitious 22-acre Rockefeller Center project.  In 1933, Raymond Hood's La Maison Francaise was completed on the site of the mansion.

photograph by Epicogenius

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The 1934 Prometheus Sculpture - Rockefeller Center

 

photo by David Shankbone

In 1918 Paul Howard Manship completed a bronze bust of  John D. Rockefeller, Sr.  The sculptor had been recommended to the millionaire by portrait artist John Singer Sargent.  Unfortunately, Rockefeller hated the finished piece and refused to have it displayed.  John D. Rockefeller, Jr. later explained, "Father feels so strongly that the bust gives an impression of weakness."  The younger Rockefeller, however, disagreed, saying, "If I were contemplating having a bust made myself, I should be inclined to select Mr. Manship."

Paul Manship, from the collection of the Library of Congress

As Rockefeller formulated plans for his 22-acre Rockefeller Center, the sculptor came to mind.  According to Daniel Okrent, in his 2002 book Great Fortune, The Epic of Rockefeller Center:

Given Junior's regard for him...it's little wonder that Manship was granted the most prominent outdoor spot for his piece, a fountain to be placed at the western end of a sunken plaza, down the long axis of the Channel Gardens where the eye stops before racing up the facade of the RCA Building.  His subject was Prometheus, the god who gave fire to mankind.

With little fanfare, on January 19, 1934 The New York Times reported, "The giant central figure of Prometheus was set in place yesterday in the fountain group which constitutes the chief decorative feature of the sunken plaza of Rockefeller Center."  Manship's 18-foot tall, eight-ton Prometheus could be seen from Fifth Avenue.  The god is captured plummeting to earth through a ring inscribed with the signs of the zodiac that depicts the heavens.  Below him are mountain peaks and the fountain pool, representing the sea.  Held in his upraised hand is the gift of flame.

Prometheus was originally not alone.  The New York Times added, "Two smaller bronze figures, completing the fountain group, recently were set in ledges on each side of the upper basin."  Along the granite wall behind the grouping, a quotation from Aeschylus reads: "Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved to mortals a means to mighty ends."

Manship's two gilded figures, Youth and Maiden, representing mankind receiving the fire, originally flanked Prometheus.  photo by Carl Van Vechten, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

About a year after the grouping was set in place, Manship had misgivings.  In 1935 he told Rockefeller Center Weekly that he felt he had been "hurried" by the one-year schedule he was given, and said, "I'd naturally welcome the opportunity of doing the whole fountain group over again."  Around the same time, Youth and Maiden were removed.  The New York Times reported later, "Manship had second thoughts about their placement and felt that they detracted from Prometheus."  Their gilt finishes were covered with a bronze patina and they were placed in the Palazzo d'Italia garden above the International Building.

Manship was not the only person who questioned Prometheus.  Although some critics, like Edward Alden Jewel of The New York Times, praised it (he called it "a genuine masterpiece, beautiful in its rhythm"), others like Frank Craven deemed the sculpture "a boudoir knickknack."  It was generally the subject of derision.  

Daniel Okrent wrote, "From the day of its unveiling [Prometheus] was considered more of an amusement than a work of art."  He explained, "A critic said Prometheus 'look[s] like he [has] just sprung from a bowl of hot soup,'" and said the sculpture "quickly acquired a variety of nicknames and variety of bemused characterizations: he was 'Leapin' Louie,' who looked like the Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze," or maybe a "young man escaping from his marriage ties."  In his August 14, 1942 syndicated column, Walter Winchell mentioned the statue "which a wag once labeled 'Sliding into Second.'"

On April 17, 1940, workmen prepared to turn the fountain on again after being shut down for the winter.  They were surprised to discover that two pair of birds had beaten them to the site.  The workers found two nests with eggs nestled in crannies of the Prometheus statue.  New Yorkers and tourists would have to wait weeks to enjoy the running waters.  The Times Record of Troy, New York reported, "Nelson Rockefeller, president of the center, ordered that they were not to be disturbed until the eggs hatched, which will be some time in May."

An interesting and short-lived scheme was introduced in the summer of 1941.  The Little Falls Herald reported, "The baby sea lions that have been placed in the Prometheus Fountain at Rockefeller Center for the amusement of diners at the adjoining Promenade Outdoor Cafe has [sic] impressed."

The Prometheus fountain was the victim of a college-type prank in 1956.  On July 9, The Times Record reported, "Prometheus, the god of fire, took a bubble bath yesterday, when someone poured a liquid cleanser in the fountain at the base of his gilded statue in Rockefeller Center."

In 1958, The New York Times explained that the statue "receives an annual cleaning before Good Friday."  Its tissue-thin coating of 24-karat gold required frequent maintenance.  The laborious process of regilding was first done in 1947, then again in 1958, 1974, and 1983.

On April 8, 1984, The New York Times reported that Youth and Maiden "are being cleansed of a half-century of weather-encrusted grit and will be restored to their places beside the 18-foot figure of Prometheus this week."  The move coincided with a major renovation of the plaza to accommodate three new restaurants.  The six-foot sculptures did not stay, however.  In 2001 they were moved to the top of the staircase to the plaza, at the western end of the Channel Gardens.

Maiden originally gilded, sat at the right of Prometheus in 1934.  photograph by Elisa.rolle

Once derided as a joke, Paul Manship's Prometheus is today beloved.  According to Daniel Okrent, "Prometheus became arguably the fourth most famous piece of sculpture in America, trailing only...the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, and Daniel Chester French's seated Lincoln in Washington."

photo by Rob Young

Nevertheless, one critic who never warmed up to the artwork was its creator.  When asked what he thought of it in 1959, Paul Manship said, "I don't like it too well, no.  I don't think too well of it."

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Rockefeller Center's David vs. Goliath -- 1240 Sixth Avenue

The 4-story Victorian building went up against one of the most powerful titans of American finance and industry--and won. photo by Alice Lum

Unlike its haughty neighbor, Fifth Avenue to the east, Sixth Avenue in the late 19^th century was decidedly blue collar.   The 6^th Avenue elevated tracks blocked sunlight and the passing trains spewed cinders and smoke.   Between 43^rd and 44rd Streets sat the 6^th Avenue car stables, and at the northeast corner of 49^th Street was a saloon owned by three Irishmen.

Patrick “Paddy” Daly, Daniel Hurley and his brother Connie took a long-term lease on the four-story, red brick building in 1892.  They established a partnership and opened a saloon called Hurley Brothers and Daly.   The block was lined with similar Victorian structures, terminating on the opposite end of the block with a three-story brick building owned by the Boronowsky family.

Things went well for the partners who reportedly shared the heavy-drinking habits of their clientele at the 54-foot long mahogany bar with bronze fittings.  But 27 years later, as with every other saloon in the city, the foundations of Hurley Brothers and Daly would be rocked by Prohibition.   Prompted by well-intentioned reformers who believed that the elimination of alcohol would result in reduced crime, increased morality, improved public health and financial stability, Prohibition had other effects.   Thousands of New Yorkers were suddenly unemployed—bartenders, tavern owners, brewery workers and waitresses.  Hotels and restaurants, unable to survive were forced to close.

But the headstrong Irishmen who ran what was known as Hurley’s would not let a simple Federal law get in their way.   Within five years after the enactment of the Volstead Act there were an estimated 100,000 speakeasies in New York City.  Hurley’s was one of them.

The saloon was moved to the back of the building with an unmarked entrance on 49^th Street.  The front section was rented to Greek florists.   For additional income and camouflage, the upstairs was leased to Mrs. Shea who rented out furnished rooms; and a barber shop, fruit stand and luggage store shared ground floor space with the hidden saloon.

Although heavily altered now, the speakeasy's entrance was on the side -- photo by Alice Lum

But there was an even bigger problem looming for the Hurley brothers.   John D. Rockefeller, Jr. had begun aggressively buying up a staggering twenty-two acres of midtown property, right in the middle of Fifth Avenue’s most exclusive district, for a seemingly implausible project:  Rockefeller Center.  One by one he purchased buildings from Fifth to Sixth Avenue between 48^th and 51^st Streets.    In the stranglehold of the Great Depression, none but the city’s wealthiest property owners could resist the offer to convert real estate to cash.

None except John F. Maxwell, grandson of John F. Boronowsky, who owned the three story building at the opposite end of the block from Hurley’s and, of course, the feisty Irishmen themselves.   In June 1931 Maxwell sent word to Rockefeller that he would not sell “at any price.” 

Daniel Hurley and Patrick Daly did not own their building, but still had a long-term lease.   They worded their refusal to budge as a veiled offer.   Rockefeller’s agents had managed to buy the building so the saloon-keepers, realizing that the repeal of Prohibition was only months away, requested a lease buyout from Rockefeller:  $250 million.

According to Liz Trotta in her book Fighting for Air: In the Trenches with Television News, Connie Hurley would later proclaim in his Irish brogue, “I’ve seen sonofabitchin’ Rockefellers come and sonofabitchin’ Rockefellers go and no sonofabitchin’ Rockefeller’s gonna tear down my bar.” 

And, indeed, no Rockefeller tore down Hurley’s bar.

Construction had already began on the gargantuan Art Deco complex of 19 buildings on May 17, 1930.   The block of 49^th to 50^th Streets, Sixth Avenue to Fifth Avenue was eventually demolished, leaving only the two brick Victorian buildings standing on opposite corners of a devastated landscape.

The RCA Building—70 stories tall—rose around Hurley’s, diminishing the bar building only in height.   A reader wrote to New York Magazine decades later calling Hurley’s “a four-story David thumbing its nose at the Goliath that was Rockefeller Center,” and Jack Kerouac deemed it “a real old building that nobody ever notices because it forms the pebble at the hem of the shoe of the immense tall man which is the RCA Building.”

And then a strange thing happened to the Irish saloon that had been the watering hole for blue collar workers and immigrants.  It became the watering hole for radio, television, newspaper and sports celebrities as well as tourists and midtown workers.  As the century progressed, the old-fashioned saloon and its crusty Irish owner (“Old Man Hurley” lived to an extremely ripe old age), as well as the convenient location in Rockefeller Center, made Hurley’s a favorite.  Liz Trotta noted “You never knew who would be standing next to your lifting elbow at Hurley’s.  Jason Robards, Johnathan Winters, jazz musicians from the local clubs and the ‘Tonight’ show, starlets, football players, the lot.”

Johnny Carson made the Hurley name nationally familiar while he did his show live from Rockefeller Center.  It was the bar in all of his Ed McMahon drinking jokes.   David Letterman did several on-air visits to the bar.  NBC technicians haunted the place so regularly that among themselves it was known as Studio 1-H.

Hurley’s was known as a place where status was left at the door.  Mayor John Lindsay stopped in once, only to be hissed by the patrons.  When Henry Kissinger and two bodyguards got noisy, they were ejected by the bartender “for rowdy behavior.”

But nothing in New York City is permanent and in 1979 Hurley's was sold.  Journalist William Safire spoke for New Yorkers in an article mourning the loss.  The mahogany bar was removed to a Third Avenue restaurant and, as Nancy Arum wrote in her letter to New York Magazine that year “a pretend old-fashioned bar now stands where the real old-fashioned bar once was.”

The pretend old-fashioned bar took the name Hurley’s and, most likely, tourists never noticed the change.  But proximity, tradition, or habit still brought the Rockefeller Center workers and celebrities into the bar until September 2, 1999.   That night owner Adrien Barbey served the last glass of beer in the bar that had stood at Sixth Avenue and 49^th Street for 102 years.

The 64-year-old bar owner, having undergone stomach and heart surgery, decided to retire.   On the final day of operation, the windowsills were crammed with floral arrangements sent by patrons.   As the last hours ticked away, loyal customers took away menus and matchbooks as mementoes.

No trace is left of the gritty and riveting history that played out behind the brick walls of Hurley's -- photo by Alice Lum

Today the red brick building is painted gray—a no-doubt purposeful near-match to the limestone façade of the RCA (now GE Building) that wraps it.   Where three Irishmen once served beer—legally and illegally—to tough, boisterous working men, a pristine bakery sells cupcakes.

The two little buildings on either side of the soaring 70-story RCA Building stand as monuments to independent businessmen who steadfastly refused to be bullied by a millionaire with limitless fortune and power.

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The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree

Christmas Eve of 1931 was not an especially happy time in New York City. The Great Depression was at its height. Fully one-third of the manufacturing companies in the city had closed. Fortune Magazine estimated that 750,000 residents were unemployed, with “160,000 of them at the end of their tether.”

The legions of construction workers building Rockefeller Center were an exception.

As the twelve buildings that would comprise the Center slowly took shape, a scraggily balsam fir still managed to hold out, rooted in the rock at the eastern portion of the central lot near the booth where the men collected their paychecks. On December 24, workmen light-heartedly strung cranberries and paper garlands on the tree and hung a few tin cans from its branches.

Rockefeller Center had its first Christmas tree.

The Center was not without a tree after that. Merle Crowell, Rockefeller Center’s marketing manager, recognized the potential and, as the first years passed, created an icon. Organ music was piped into the plaza from Radio City Music Hall, and glee clubs and girl scouts, local choirs and female trumpeters were variously used to draw crowds. Crowell saw to it that the first formal lighting in 1933 was televised; a full two decades before televisions would become common in American households.

The tree quickly became an annual event, anticipated by everyone and heavily covered in the media. When the tree was chosen, the location, size and owners were immediately publicized. And the arrival of the tree, to this day, draws emotional attention. Tree have arrived by truck, have been floated down the Hudson River, and have inched their way through Manhattan streets and avenues before dawn.

For a period live reindeer in pens accompanied the tree.

To meet the Center’s specifications, the tree must be at least 675 feet tall and 35 feet wide. But in 1948 the Norway spruce soared to a whopping 90 feet.

The Rockefeller Christmas Tree in the 1950s

Not every idea was a good one. The next year The New York Times announced that “The seventeenth annual Rockefeller Center Christmas tree…will feature a new costume, the result of spraying its 75-foot height with 200 gallons of fireproof white camouflage paint.”

The idea of hanging aluminum icicles from the branches one year was another idea that sounded good. At least on paper. Unfortunately, when a wind storm arose, the long metal decorations were dislodged and “flew around the area like spears.”

In 1954 artist Valerie Clarebout created the white wire sculptures of the trumpeting herald angels that flank the Channel Gardens leading from Fifth Avenue to the plaza.  Although they were intended to be temporary, the public insisted they become a permanent part of the Christmas tree setting.

As the debilitating financial recession disheartened the country in 1973, the Center announced that the 65-foot tree would be “a little less bright this year.” The tree that year was turned off several hours earlier and 25 percent fewer lights were used.   A few years later, on December 9, 1980 only a few hours after the lighting of the tree, a 19-year old Bronx man climbed to the top. “But he soon came down into the arms of waiting police officers,” said The Times.

As a familiar symbol of the American holiday season the tree featured prominently in countless television shows and movies.  In 1969 television viewers watched Snoopy ice skate below the tree in the animated “Peanuts” special “A Boy Named Charlie Brown.”

Today the tree is topped with a Swarovski star, 10 feet in diameter and consisting of 25,000 crystals. Over five miles of 30,000 lights are used and, starting in 2010, those bulbs are energy efficient LEDs. The daily energy savings they create is equal to that used to power a 2,000 square foot home for a month.

After New Years, until 1972, the gigantic trees were “lopped into pieces at Rockefeller Center and carted away to the city dump,” as The Times reported. Environmentally-conscious citizens questioned the waste.

Creative recycling took over with the tree being reduced to, in one case, 3 tons of mulch donated to the Boy Scouts or donated to the U.S. Equestrian team in New Jersey, used as a cushioned obstacle jump. The 2010 tree will be used a lumber for Habitat for Humanity projects in New York, Indian, the Gulf Coast and Brazil.

The 2010 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree -- photo The Associated Press

From its modest Depression Era beginnings the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has risen to celebrity status. The lighting ceremony is now a 2-hour nationally televised event. Tens of thousands of tourists flock to the tree every day throughout the month of December and the majestic tree manages to relight the holiday spirit in nearly all of them.