The Robert P. Breese House - 249 East 61st Street

 

The Jacobs family lived in the recently completed brownstone house at 249 East 61st Street, just west of Second Avenue, in 1872.  The Italianate style home was one of three identical houses, each just 16-feet-wide and three stories tall.  Abraham and Francis Jacobs had the heart wrenching duty of holding the funeral of their son, Isaac Leon, in the parlor here on January 26, 1873.

The family may have rented the house from a man named Davis.  For some reason he was very eager to divest himself of its furnishings the following year.  And his terms, laid out in an advertisement on April 23, 1875, were decidedly unusual:

The First Class Furniture, mirrors carpets, pianos, &c. of a private family--about $4,000 worth--will be exchanged for Bourbon Whiskey, on a cash basis, and $1,000 cash will be added.  Address Davis, 249 East Sixty-first street, for three days.

With the house now empty, it was advertised for rent in September:  "To Let--Unfurnished, from October 1, the nice little brown stone House, No. 249 East Sixty-first street, in splendid order.  Go see it."

The residence became home to the Hermann Neubert family.  Neubert died at the age of 46 in March 1881, and in April 1886 John Millemann and his wife, the former Annie F. Frey, purchased it for $13,500--just over $400,000 by 2023 terms.

Millemann was a partner with his brother David in the provisions firm of John F. Millemann & Co. on Washington Street.  At some point Annie's widowed mother, Ellen Frey, moved into the house with them.  Ellen died on May 21, 1912 at the age of 87.  Her funeral was held in the house two days later.  

Annie, now widowed, sold the house in July 1919 to Robert Potter Breese.  He and his wife, the former Beatrice Claflin, hired the architectural firm of Sterner & Wolfe to update the vintage brownstone.   Frederick Junius Sterner was well known for his transformations of Victorian rowhouses into Edwardian fantasies.

The renovations cost the Breeses the equivalent of $125,000 in 2023.  The architect removed the stoop and lowered the entrance below grade.  In signature Sterner fashion, the brownstone was stuccoed, romantic pseudo-balconies were installed, and decorative terra cotta plaques applied to the facade. 

A 1941 tax photograph of 249 (behind the sign) and its neighbor provides a before-and-after view of the renovations.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Born in 1886, Robert Breese was a descendant of Samuel B. Morse.  After attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he designed, constructed and raced sports cars in America and France.  Among the racecars he designed and raced were the Breese-Paris and the Breese Midget.

Beatrice was the daughter of millionaire Arthur B. Claflin.  They couple was married in Southampton, Long Island on October 9, 1915.  The New York Times noted, "Mrs. Breese is heir to more than $250,000 under the will of her grandmother, Mrs. Agnes Claflin."  (The amount would be closer to $4 million in 2023.)  The following year a daughter, Beatrice Lawrence, was born.

Fanciful plaques, a trademark of Sterner design, decorate the facade.

The renovations were completed in 1920, but the Breese family would never move in.  While Sterner & Wolfe was transforming their new home, domestic complications involving "a tall, slender woman" had developed.

That year Robert Breese leased the house furnished to Ronald Tree and his bride, the former Mrs. Henry Field.  The couple was followed by series of renters until 1924, the year the Breeses divorced and Robert Breese sold 249 East 61st Street to Richard Washburn Child, the former Ambassador to Rome.  Despite Beatrice Breese's significant personal wealth, the court ordered Robert to pay her $4,500 annual alimony and $20,000 from the sale of the house.

Richard Washburn Child had a change of mind regarding the East 61st Street house.  The following year, in October, he sold it to banker Stephen Galatti.  The New York Times remarked that Child was giving up his New York home because he "intends to live elsewhere."

Born in New Jersey on August 6, 1888, Gallati was a Harvard graduate, and had joined the American Field Service in 1915.  Stephen Galatti had married the recently divorced Grace Sands Coffin on September 25, 1925, a month before purchasing 249 East 61st Street.  Grace had an impressive social pedigree, related to the Schuyler, Sands, Bowne, Livingston and Chew families.

The newlyweds' honeymoon trip had a colorful start.  They arrived at the pier at 10:30 on the morning of September 26.  But they had the departure time wrong.  When they alit from their automobile, the Paris was steaming away toward the Battery with the Galatti luggage aboard.  The New York Times reported, "After a brief consultation the couple decided to sail next Wednesday on the Aquitania, and a radio message was sent to the purser of the Paris asking him to have the baggage held for them in Paris."

A honeymoon in Paris made perfect sense, since Galatti owned a home there.  The couple would, in fact, spend much more time there than in the East 61st Street house.

On November 15, 1927 the New York Evening Post reported that Galatti had leased the house furnished to Paul L. Reinhardt, and his wife.  Mrs. Reinhardt, it appears, did not find the Galatti furnishings to her taste.

In the June 15, 1927 issue of Town & Country, Augusta Owen Patterson reported on her redecorations of two rooms in "her temporary home at 249 East Sixty-first Street."  She said, "Much of Mrs. Reinhardt's furniture has been especially designed, that being one of the privileges possible to Paris."  In Paris, said the article, she "goes hunting--for modern art and modern furniture."  Within the Reinhardt art collection were "the most famous Cézannes, Utrillos, Derains, Braques and Matisse's," said Patterson.

Two view of of the boudoir as redecorated by Mrs. Reinhardt.  Town & Country said, "The furniture is silvered."  photos by Mattie Edwards Hewitt, Town & Country magazine, June 15, 1927.

The article pointed out that the costly redecorating was short-term.   "It must be remembered that these two rooms existed in a house which has been quite casually rented."

On September 25, 1930 a son, Stephen Galatti Jr., was born in the East 61st Street house.  The New York Times mentioned, "Mr. and Galatti are here from their home in Paris for a brief stay."

Four years later, on June 19, 1934, Grace Sands Montgomery Galatti died of heart disease at the age of 35.  Stephen and his son remained in the East 61st Street and Paris homes.

The following year Stephen was appointed Director General of the American Field Service.  The AFS played an important role in World War II, supplying the front lines with corps of volunteer ambulance drivers.  According to Galatti, the service had "carried more than half a million wounded, saved thousands of lives and formed friendships with all races and all nationalities in the United Nations."  The AFS was commended by President Franklin Roosevelt, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery.  

Following the war, Stephen Galatti founded the AFS Scholarship Program in 1946 and changed its focus from a ambulance corps to an international educational exchange service.  He would serve at its helm throughout the rest of his life.

In 1963 Galatti sold 249 East 61st Street to singer and actor Frank Sinatra.  Galatti died the following year on July 13 at 216 East 39th Street.

During his time here, Sinatra was a familiar face in restaurants like the Colony at 30 East 61st Street.  His residency at 249 East 61st Street would be relatively short-lived.  In 1969, three years after his marriage to actress Mia Farrow, he sold the house to Dr. David Y. Solomon and his wife, Yris Rabenou Solomon. 

The couple was married in 1966 and had a son, Darius, born in 1968.  In 1972 a second son, Teimour, was born.  The boys’ parents had riveting backgrounds.  

David Y. Solomon had grown up in Iraq and was the first Jew to be admitted to the Royal College of Medicine in Baghdad.  He fled Jewish persecution, going first to Iran.  There practiced medicine before accepting a fellowship at the Alfred Einstein School of Medicine, part of Montefiore Hospital, in 1961. 

Sterner's plank door (with a clever peephole) features forged strap hinges and a door knocker in the form of a stylized animal.

Yris Rabenou Solomon had grown up in Paris, the daughter of a Persian and a German.  When the Nazi’s took over the city, Yris’s mother fled with her and her two siblings.  Then, in 1948 the family came to the United States.  Yris was a musician and singer, recording mostly French folk music for Columbia Records.  Upon her father’s death, she entered the family’s business with her mother, dealing in ancient Persian and Middle Eastern art. 

Upon purchasing 249 East 61^st Street, the Solomons made gentle renovations, including replacing the garden wall with an expanse of windows and French doors.  The house became museum-like, not only with Middle Eastern art and artifacts, but with Dr. Solomon’s collection of West African art.  He acquired the pieces over a period of half a century. 

According to Teimour Solomon, in the late 1970s the house was a haven for refugees from the Islamic Revolution in Iran.  It had already been an important gathering spot for years.  “Our home was a central point in the lives of a vast number of people from extremely different circles, in the arts, sciences, and politics over a period of fifty years,” he said recently.  

In the 1960s Dr. Solomon was the physician for the Senegalese Ambassador to the United Nations.  Through the ambassador’s recommendations, other high-ranking Senegalese, like the Maribout of Senegal, sought Solomon's services.  He became both physician and trusted friend.  The Solomon house hosted a myriad of high-ranking officials and personalities over the years. 

Following their parents’ deaths, Darius and Teimour Solomon placed their remarkable childhood home on the market with George Vanderploeg of Douglas Elliman in 2023.

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

The 1919 William Ziegler, Jr. Mansion - 2 East 63rd Street

 

William Conrad Brandt was born in Muscatine, Iowa in 1891.  His father, George Washington Brandt, was a half brother of William Ziegler, described by the courts as being "childless, and a man of large estate."  On January 30, 1896, Ziegler adopted William and his sister, Florence.  It was a move that would drastically change the course of the five-year-old boy's life.

William Ziegler, by now, had amassed a fortune in the baking powder business.  He legally changed his adopted son's name to William Ziegler, Jr. 

The younger William attended Columbia University and Harvard.  Like his father he became a yachtsman, and was equally passionate about horses and pedigree dogs.  A superb athlete, he participated in the 1912 Summer Olympics in the hammer throw and the shot put.

When William Ziegler, Sr. died in 1905, William received half of his father's $30 million (nearly $900 million today) estate.  He was by then president of the Royal Baking Powder Company and sat on the boards of several corporations.  He heavily invested in New York real estate, as well.

William Ziegler, Jr. from the collection of the Library of Congress

On December 11, 1912 William married Gladys Virginia Watson.  The couple had two daughters, Elizabeth Virginia and Barbara, and lived in a lavish apartment in one of William's Park Avenue apartment buildings.  But then on September 10, 1919 the New-York Tribune entitled an article, "Ziegler Tires of Flat Life, Will Erect Private Home."  He had purchased the three high-stooped brownstone houses at Nos. 2 through 6 East 63rd Street.   

The Sun reported that for several years Zeigler "has cherished the ambition to own a palatial private residence in the vicinity of 'Millionaires row.'"  The New-York Tribune explained that his delay in building a private home was his desire "to see the [Henry] Frick house completed and to study its lines before undertaking the building of his own home." 

Ziegler hired the architectural firm of Sterner & Wolfe to design a replacement mansion on the site.  There is almost no question that the design was handled solely by Frederick J. Sterner.   Plans, filed in November 1919, estimated the cost of construction at $200,000, or about $3 million today.

Completed the following year, Sterner had created a neo-Italian Renaissance palazzo--in some ways a larger version of the Cyril Hatch mansion he had designed a few years earlier at 153 East 63rd Street.  Like that house, it was low and understated, just three floors high at the front (a fourth floor to the rear is invisible from the street).  And like the Hatch residence, its architectural statement was the entrance and second floor window--a marriage of Italian Renaissance and Spanish Colonial.

The American Architect, January 3, 1923 (copyright expired)

Sterner made interesting use of the plot, extending the structure to the back of the property line.  Instead of providing a small rear yard, he designed the house around a central courtyard, providing air, light and privacy.

Architecture, December 1921 (copyright expired)

The first floor contained the living room, library and dining room.  The entire second floor was dedicated to the Zieglers' bedrooms suites.  The New York Times reported that some of the architectural elements were imported from vintage European homes--the library walls came from a 16th century English house, one Renaissance period mantel came from Florence, and a marble floor was brought from Tuscany.

Two views of the living room, with windows onto the courtyard.  Architecture, December 1921 (copyright expired)

The Zieglers seem to have spent as much time away from their 63rd Street palace as they did in it.  Their summer estate, Great Island, was a 63-acre private island in Darien, Connecticut.  And the couple traveled extensively.  On January 23, 1921, for instance, the New-York Tribune called the Zieglers "newcomers" to Palm Beach, Florida, where they had just "leased the great house of the Hon. Mrs. Frederick Guest, of London, for the season."

The main house on Great Island.  (original source unknown)

Perhaps shocking some people in society, on July 16, 1925, just five years after the Zieglers moved into No. 2 East 63rd Street, The New York Times reported, "The William Ziegler Jr. house at 2 East Sixty-third Street, one of the show places of upper Fifth Avenue, is about to be converted into a hospital for the exclusive use of actors and actresses."  Corporation papers had been filed the previous day for a $2 million "theatrical hospital" to be conducted by Dr. Max Rohde.  The Times Union added, "It is expected the hospital will be in operation in six months."

Gladys Ziegler's bedroom (top) and the Spanish-style family dining room.  Architecture, December 1921 (copyright expired)

The stunning announcement most likely had much to do with domestic tensions between William and Gladys.  Although the hospital plans never came to pass, almost a year to the day later The New York Times reported that Gladys had filed for divorce in Paris.  "Friends of the family said last night that incompatibility was the reason for Mrs. Ziegler's action," said the article. 

"Incompatibility" was apparently a polite term for "another woman."  Within a few months of the divorce Ziegler married Helen Martin Murphy.  They moved into a house on East 55th Street where a baby, William Ziegler III, was born in June 1928. 

Architecture, December 1921 (copyright expired)

The 63rd Street house had sat shuttered in the meantime.  Then, the same month his son was born, Zeigler gave the mansion as part payment for the Hotel Belmont.  In reporting on the transaction, The Yonkers Herald noted that it was "said to have been built and decorated at a cost of $1,250,000."

Later that year the mansion was resold to Norman Bailey Woolworth and his wife, the former Pauline Elizabeth Stanbury.  Bailey was the son of Fred Moore Woolworth and Velma Bailey Woolworth.  Fred had been the head of the Great Britain branch of the Woolworth stores.  His cousin, F. W. Woolworth, headed the American end of the business.

The Woolworth country estate was Birchwood, a 28-acre property in Locust Valley, Long Island.  The main house was originally designed for Anson Wood Burchard by architect Howard Greenley.  According to The New York Times, the estate included "a twenty-eight-room and ten-bath house, garage, stable, kennels, greenhouse, dairy, poultry houses and cottages."

The main house at Birchwood.  photo from the brochure "Locust Valley Long Island," 1931.

The Woolworths entertained lavishly, Pauline's dinner parties and receptions routinely appearing in the society columns.  She was perhaps better known, however, for her work with the blind.  On October 23, 1946, for instance, The New York Sun reported, "The Seeing Eye organization launched its annual drive today for 1,000 new members with a meeting of 200 volunteer worker at the home of Mrs. Norman B. Woolworth, 2 East 63d street."

In 1949 Woolworth donated the mansion to the New York Academy of Sciences for use as its headquarters.  The New York Times commented, "Its rooms faced a central garden court and it had floors of black and gold marble."

A renovation completed the following year resulted in a "council chamber" and offices throughout the building.  And then, after operating from the former mansion for half a century, the academy placed the house for sale in 2005.  It was purchased by billionaire financier Leonard Blavatnik for $31.25 million.  According to a spokesman, he bought it not as a residence, but as an investment.  

It was not until 2010 that plans were filed to return the mansion to a private residence.  Those plans have never been completed and the opulent mansion, once the scene of glittery parties, is apparently unoccupied.  A doormat at the servants' entrance (tagged by the Academy of Sciences, "Main Entrance") is still emblazoned with the letters NYAS.

photographs by the author