The Paul P. Rao House - 210 East 61st Street

 

On May 7, 1871, the New York Herald ran a succinct, two-line article that read, "Augustus S. Bogert was yesterday morning found in death throes at No. 210 East Sixty-first street, and soon after died.  Coroner Keenan will hold an inquest."  The Bogert house was one of three recently erected homes at 206 through 210 East 61st Street.

The identical, 17-foot-wide homes rose four stories above high English basements.  Faced in brownstone, their designs stood out among the scores of other Italianate high-stooped residences being erected throughout the city.  The rusticated parlor floors were dignified by arched entrances, which were flanked by engaged Doric columns that upheld a dentiled pediment.  Each pair of arched parlor windows was separated by a paneled pilaster.  The residences were crowned with complex cornices that included paneled friezes, paired and individual brackets, and dentils.

No. 210 was rented to a succession of occupants until 1891, when Gustav Gomprecht, head of the Gomprecht Manufacturing Company, purchased it.  He and his wife, Rosa, had at least one son, Harry, who was studying at the Free Academy of the City of New York in 1895.  The family remained in the house until April 1906, when Gomprecht sold it to Ellen and Patrick J. McCue.  

Patrick was a partner with his brother in McCue Brothers, a men's hat firm.  While he and his wife now lived in a fine home uptown, he did not relinquish his Irish roots, and remained highly involved in the charitable work of St. Brigid's Church on the Lower East Side.

Boarding with the family from 1916 to 1920 was another Irish-born New Yorker, Thomas F. Maguire.  He had been a clerk for the County of New York since January 1, 1898.  When he left 210 East 61st Street in 1920, he was earning $2,400 per year (about $32,500 in 2023).

Around 1923 Paul Peter Rao and his wife, the former Grace S. Malatino, purchased the property.  The couple had two daughters, Nina and Grayce, and a son, Paul Jr.

Born in Prizzi, Sicily on June 15, 1899, Rao was brought to the United States by his parents when he was five.  He left school in 1917 to enlist in the navy and saw active service in the Mediterranean.  He graduated from Fordham Law School in 1923.

The respected attorney suffered embarrassment on Sunday morning, June 11, 1930.  He was most likely taking his family on a summer outing, and was driving along the Boston Post Road (today's Route 1) in Larchmont, New York when he became a victim of apparent distracted driving.  The Larchmont Times reported, "the cars stopped for a traffic signal and the Rao car, at the rear, crashed into the machine ahead and drove it into the first car in line."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Rao's career quickly rose.  From 1925 to 1927 he was Assistant District Attorney of New York County, and in 1941 was appointed an assistant United States attorney by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  In 1948 President Harry S. Truman appointed him a judge of the United States Customs Court.  It was a lifetime position.

The population of 210 East 61st Street increased by one after Nina's marriage to John Denham Cameron on January 9, 1950.  The New Castle Tribune reported, "Following a wedding trip to Nassau and Florida, the couple will reside at 210 East 61st Street."

Judge Paul P. Rao in 1967.  (original source unknown).

Paul Rao was named Chief Judge of the Customs Court by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965.  (The name of the court was changed in 1980 to the United States Court of International Trade.)  Rao could have retired at the age of 70 in 1968, however he chose to remain on the bench.  The following year he gave up his position as Chief Judge, but remained on as associate judge, "carrying a full calendar and going to his office at Foley Square each day from his home on 61st Street," said The New York Times.

Paul Peter Rao died of a heart attack on November 30, 1988 at the age of 89, having lived at 210 East 61st Street for over 50 years.  The house remained in the family, occupied by Paul Rao Jr., also a lawyer, for decades.  It was sold in January 2022 for $7.58 million.  Nearly a century of its being in the same family resulted in its remarkable preservation.

photographs by the author

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

The Alexander Keller House - 209 East 61st Street

 

In 1873 builders Breen & Nason commenced construction on a row of three high-stooped brownstone houses at 205 through 209 East 61st Street.  Acting as their own architects, they designed the identical homes in the Italianate style, with classical pediments over the parlor floor openings and prominent cornices atop the upper floor windows.  Completed in 1874, each of the 20-foot-wide houses cost the developers $14,000 to erect, or about $327,000 in 2023.

The eastern-most of the row, 209 East 61st Street, became home to the Alexander Keller family.  Keller and his wife had three children, David, Sidney and Martha.  The family took in one or two boarders and their succinct advertisements over the years were always similarly worded.  A typical ad on January 31, 1883 read, "First Class Rooms and Board, in Jewish family, 209 East 61st st."  The clear mention of the family's religion was almost assuredly intended to stave off potential anti-Semitic problems.

Following their father's death in 1896, the heirs leased the house to Rosa and Bernard Metz.  Living with the couple were their adult children Paul, Edwin, Joseph and Hattie, along with Hattie's husband George Gattel.  The family was upper-middle class--Edwin was a knit goods salesman, Bernhard a commission merchant, Joseph worked in the drygoods business, and George Gattel was a partner with Samuel Benjinsohn in the firm of Gattel & Benjinsohn, makers of collars and cuffs, on Canal Street.  

Paul Metz was a piano tuner with the Weber-Wheelock Piano Company.  Seemingly the black sheep of the family, he found himself behind bars on September 29 that year.  He had gone to Scotch Plains, New Jersey with another Weber-Wheelock employee to deliver a piano to Brenner's Hotel.  While there, a livery stable owner, Frank Allen, recognized him as the man who had tuned a piano for Mr. and Mrs. William Stanberry in the same town a week earlier.  On that day Mrs. Stanberry had discovered jewelry missing from her home.

Allen notified the Stanberrys, who came to the hotel, identified Metz as the man who had been in their home, and had him arrested.  The Sun reported, "Metz protested and asserted his innocence."  Unfortunately, his troubles had only begun.  The newspaper said, "Metz was then brought to Plainfield to answer to a charge preferred by Mrs. N. Pendleton Rogers, who identified him as the person who had entered her house on Sept. 1 and stolen silverware."  (According to a descendent, Amy B. Cohen, Paul Metz "abandoned the family and disappeared in 1900.")

Despite the embarrassment, Hattie Gattel was involved in polite society.  On November 4, 1900, for instance, the New York Herald announced, "The Thursday Afternoon Whist Club will inaugurate its season on Thursday afternoon.  The first meeting will be held at the residence of Mrs. George Gattel, No. 209 East Sixty-first street."  The article mentioned, "the prizes, it is said, will be unusually handsome."

In 1905 Joseph G. Metz purchased the house.  By now he was secretary and director of A. Richter & Co.  Only two years later, however, the property was sold again, and again in 1913--this time to Henry Louis Walther and his wife Susanna.  The couple had two school-aged boys.

On the night of July 9, 1914 the boys were awakened by the sound of someone trying to break in through the skylight.  They "raised an alarm" by yelling out a window for a policeman.  Chaos followed.  The Evening World reported, "Then some one in a house in Sixty-second street had fired several revolver shots out of the window."  The gunshots "brought half a dozen policemen to Third avenue and Sixty-first street," said the article, who caught two men running out of the apartment building at 1035 Third Avenue.

Police identified William Brady and Timothy Gaynor as "members of the Pansies, a gang which loiters in the neighborhood of Eightieth street and Second avenue."  Both had previously been arrested for minor crimes.  Investigators found a rope ladder hanging from the apartment building to the roofs of the row of houses.  "Apparently the youths had crossed the roofs to the Walter [sic] home under the supposition that the Walters [sic] were away."  The Walther boys had prevented what would have been a much worse situation.

The Walther's residency would be short.  Later that year they sold 209 East 61st Street to Dr. Martin Rehling.  A graduate of New York University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College, he was an associate professor of Surgery at the New York Post-Graduate Medical School, and an adjunct surgeon at the German Hospital and Dispensary.  He would remain in the house until the early 1940s.

Dr. Rehling lived in the house when this photo was taken in 1941.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Change came when a renovation, completed in 1945, resulted in two duplex apartments.  The upper apartment was leased by 31-year-old actor Montgomery Clift in 1951.  He was already a star and heartthrob, and that year A Place In The Sun premiered, co-starring Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters.  

While living here he spent much of the time away in filming.  In 1953 he starred in Terminal Station and From Here to Eternity, in 1957 Raintree County was released, and 1958 saw the premiers of The Young Lions and Lonelyhearts.  That year he began the filming of Suddenly, Last Summer.

Montgomery Clift, from the collection of the Library of Congress

Clift carefully guarded his privacy and did his best to hide his homosexuality from the public.  But it was hard to conceal after fire broke out in the building on the morning of September 25, 1959 at around 10:30.  Clift and a man were in bed, passed out after taking drugs or alcohol.  Firefighters had to break into the apartment and rescue the pair.  The Schenectady Gazette reported, "Firemen said Clift and an unidentified friend were escorted from the top floor of the three story brownstone building to the roof and then to an adjoining roof to safety.  Clift occupies the upper two floors of the building."

According to Charles Casillo in his 2021 book Elizabeth and Monty - The Untold Story of Their Intimate Friendship: 

Whatever the reason for the fire, the surrounding news did Monty no good, adding to his already badly tarnished image.  He was already widely-considered a high-risk actor, and the story simply proved his recklessness.  The surrounding gossip only confirmed his homosexuality in executives' eyes and underlined his dangerous substance abuse.

Montgomery Clift moved down the block to 217 East 61st Street, where he died on July 23, 1966.

The 2021 renovation included a whimsical and delightful stoop railing.

The fire damage was repaired and the configuration of duplexes remained until 2021 when a renovation returned 209 East 61st Street to a single family home.  It is the last of the 1874 row to retain its stoop and period architectural details.

photographs by the author

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

The Frederick Zittel House - 222 East 62nd Street

When Adam Tredwell (sometimes spelled Treadwell) died in 1852 his estate was valued at more than $400,000--about $12.8 million today.  Among his real estate holdings were about 24 acres of former farmland on the still undeveloped Upper East Side.  His heirs wasted no time in dividing the land into building plots and by 1854 were selling off the lots.

Construction and development ground to a near halt in New York City during the Civil War; but almost immediately afterward developers bought up tracts within the "Treadwell Farm."   In order to protect the value of their projected properties, 20 real estate operators came together and agreed on protective covenants.   They included standards for construction quality, height and width requirements, and the prohibition of undesirable businesses like saloons or factories.

Among the developers were brothers John and George Ruddell.  Between 1868 and 1870 they constructed 19 rowhouses on the south side of 62nd Street, between Second and Third Avenue.  Rather surprisingly, they used two architects--F. S. Barns designing nine of them, and James W. Pirrson responsible for two groups of five.

One of the Pirrson groups included Nos. 222 through 230.   The stone-faced Italianate houses were three stories high above an English basement.  The handsome arched entrances were capped with pediments supported by foliate brackets.  The architrave moldings of the windows were distinguished with prominent lintels, and cast modillioned cornices completed their dignified appearance.  At a cost to construct of $16,000 each--nearly $280,000 today--they were intended for upper middle class owners.

No. 222 was purchased by real estate broker Frederick Zittel.  With his partner, Walter B. Waldron, he did business from No. 1026 Third Avenue.   Zittel was married to the former Hattie J. Bodge.  Her widowed mother, Mary, moved in with the couple.

But the family had barely settled in before misfortune occurred.  Mary Bodge died on October 23, 1869 at the age of 77.  Her funeral was held in the house two days later.

On October 19, 1872 Zittel and Waldron dissolved their partnership.  A notice in The New York Herald assured clients "The real estate business heretofore existing under the name of Waldron & Zittel will be continued by Frederick Zittel, at the old stand."

The East 62nd Street house was the victim of a mysterious sneak thief in November 1874.   Zittel placed a notice in The New York Herald that offered "$20 reward and no questions asked--For return of Overcoat and Memorandum Book taken from 222 East Sixty-second street.  By returning the above to the house or to 1,026 Third avenue the above reward will be paid."

As was customary, the title to No. 222 was in Hattie's name.  After more than a decade in the house the Zittels sold it to Andrew B. Yetter on June 29, 1880 for $14,000.   Yetter and his wife, the former Elizabeth Wack, had two children, 12-year old Charles and his 17-year old sister, Nellie.

Andrew Yetter's businesses were diverse.  He was the president of the Atlas Storage Co., of the Globe Storage & Carpet Cleaning Co., and ran one of the several companies that did the city's street sprinkling.

Exactly why 14-year old Charles was out past midnight on May 21, 1882 is unclear.  But he was headed home on the Second Avenue streetcar with two friends that night.  Around 12:30 his friends said good night and disembarked at 59th Street.  Charles fell asleep, waking up suddenly just as the car passed 63rd Street.

When he realized he had just missed his stop, the teen jumped up and sprang from the moving streetcar.  The New York Times reported "He struck head foremost against one of the pillars of the elevated railroad and was thrown to the ground under the car, the wheels of which passed over his legs, severing them from his body."  The boy died in the Presbyterian Hospital later that morning.

The extent of Yetter's businesses was reflected in his constructing a six-story factory on East 61st Street in 1884, and a six-story storage warehouse in 1888.

After Nellie married James L. Hiller the newlyweds moved into the house with her parents.  And Andrew Yetter got a new business partner.  Hiller became an officer in the Globe Storage & Carpet Cleaning Co.

A century before the realty television show Storage Wars Globe Storage & Carpet Cleaning held auctions for abandoned goods.  One, for instance, held on August 28, 1922 included suites of furniture, pianos, Victrolas, phonographs, sewing machines, china, glassware and a profusion of other items.

Andrew Yetter died on February 18, 1925 at the age of 87.  Elizabeth died 10 months later, on December 20, at 81.  Both funerals were held in the 62nd Street house.

In what The New York Times deemed "its first change of ownership in sixty years," the Hillers sold the house in 1944.  The new owner was Major General Anson Conger Goodyear.  Despite his many accomplishments--he was a manufacturer, author, entrepreneur and philanthropist--he was best known as a founder and the first president of the Museum of Modern Art, and for his impressive collection of 20th century American and European art.

Its comparatively stuffy Victorian style made the house a surprising choice for Goodyear.  It stood in stark contrast to his sleek, modern summer estate in Old Westbury, Long Island--emblematic of his taste in art and architecture.  In 1938 Goodyear had commissioned Edward Durell Stone to design the International Style residence.   The completed structure, designed in part to exhibit Goodyear's art, was later described by The New Yorker architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, as "one of the most important houses built in the United States between the two world wars."

The Goodyear house in Old Westbury.  The Journal of the American Institute of Architects.

It was in the Old Westbury home that Goodyear was married to Zaidee C. Bliss in November 1950.  Goodyear was divorced from his first wife, Mary Martha Forman, and Zaidee's husband Cornelius N. Bliss, had died in 1949.  In reporting on the marriage, The New York Times announced "They are making their home here and at 222 East Sixty-second Street."

But the elderly couple (the groom was 73 years old) would spend little time in the city house.  Within the year No. 222 was home to Austrian-born artist Rudolf Anton Bernatschke and his wife, Wynne.   Best known for his portraits of politicians, celebrities and statesmen, including General Douglas MacArthur, and Senators Robert Taft and Joseph McCarty.  His diverse sitters ranged from Gypsy Rose Lee to Cardinal Spellman and Gary Cooper.

Bernatschke died on August 22, 2010.  No. 222 East 62nd Street was almost immediately offered for sale.  By now it was the last of Pirrson's 1868 row that had not been substantially altered; other than new iron railings and and a coat of gray-white paint.

Real estate offering photos in 2010 showed many of the 19th century interior details intact.  The artist's works still adorn the walls.  photos via Curbed New York

It was purchased by the Republic of France as the home of Francois Delattre, the French Ambassador to the United Nations.   In reporting on the $13.9 million sale, The Observer mentioned the house "has five bedrooms and seven and a half bathrooms plus staff quarters" and "an elevator from the basement to the penthouse."

The handful of owners of No. 222 resulted in its escaping modernization; giving us a clear image of what the block looked like in the first years after the Civil War.

photographs by the author

The 1887 Church of the Redeemer - 239-241 E 62nd Street

In 1850 German immigrants were settling in two distinct areas of Manhattan--the crowded Lower East Side and the developing Yorkville neighborhood to the north.   Slightly to the south of Yorkville was the estate of Adam Tredwell (sometimes spelled Treadwell).

Tredwell died in 1852 and his "farm" was soon divided into lots.  An 1868 agreement among property owners set standards for construction and disallowed undesirable businesses (like slaughterhouses and breweries).  The area also attracted German-speaking citizens; but these were not the working class settlers filling jobs in Yorkville's cigar factories and such.

The Presbytery of New York recognized the need for a new church to serve the growing population.  In 1886 construction started on the modest brick and stone Church of the Redeemer.  The Presbytery had commissioned architect Samuel A. Warner, who had just completed work on its tiny Victorian Gothic mission house at No. 420 West 57th Street.  The Church of the Redeemer would share many of its architectural elements, on a larger scale.

Completed at a cost of $20,000--about $521,000 today--the 50-foot wide structure was designed with rigid symmetry.  The central portion projected slightly and rose to a peaked gable a story higher than the flanking sections.  The simple but handsome entrance portico was supported by buttresses; its sharply angled gable pierced with an eye-catching oriel.  An especially attractive rose window dominated the upper section.

The German-language congregation worshiped here until the turn of the century.  Typical of Presbyterian groups at the time, the Church of the Redeemer was active in outreach to the poor.  As late as 1900 The New York Charities Directory noted its "mission and relief work, among tenement houses."

But by the time of that listing the Church of the Redeemer was leasing the main building to another German congregation, the Bethlehem Lutheran Church.  Finally, on May 22, 1901 The New York Times reported "The Presbytery of New York has sold the church property 241 East Sixty-second Street to the present tenants, the Lutheran Church Society."

Bethlehem Lutheran Church quickly turned the building over to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Matthew.  But they, too, would not stay long.

When this photograph was taken in 1905, the German Lutheran Bethlehem Church worshiped here.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

In the years just prior to the outbreak of World War I the neighborhood saw a new wave of immigrants, the Hungarians.  In February 1913 the Church of St. Matthew sold the building to the Home of Christian Hungarian Sick Benevolent Society.  The Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide noted "The buyer will remodel the present building and use it for its own purposes."

Those purposes were a bit more secular.  The church was remodeled into was described as a "meeting room."  The activities here were now starkly different.  On January 14, 1914, for instance, The Times reported "The Hungarian-American A. C. will hold its second annual wrestling tournament on Jan 23 and 24 at the clubhouse, 239 East Sixty-second Street."

Immigrant communities formed sports groups aimed to keep boys off the streets and out of pool rooms and saloons.  The Times noted "Among the clubs entered are the Boys' Club, Bronx Church House, Scandinavian-American Athletic League, Greek-America, German-American, and several branches of the W M. C. A."

Later that year, in April, the Christian Hungarian Society hired architect I. Leitersdorfer to fire-proof the "one-story brick meeting room."  The cost of the project was $400, nearly $10,000 by today's standards.

But like its predecessors, the Hungarians would soon leave.  On January 23, 1919 the New-York Tribune announced that the Christian Hungarian Sick Benevolent Societies of New York had sold the property to Philip Leone for $40,000; only slightly more in relative terms than the original construction cost.

Just a year earlier the Rev. Philip Leone had founded the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Peace.  Born in Italy, he was ordained there in 1903 and came to the United States shortly afterward.  Interestingly, he founded the Church of Our Lady of Peace before becoming officially affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York in 1919, according to The New York Times later.

Rev. Leone also organized the first branch of the Italian Holy Name Society and the first Italian chapter of the Catholic Daughters of America.

Now that his Italian-speaking congregation had a building, it immediately laid plans to restore the sanctuary to a house of worship.  Architect Thomas J. Duff completed plans "for alterations and extensions" late in 1920.  Construction, costing $30,000, began early in 1921.

 The result was a jewel-box interior of white plastered walls decorated with delicate gold stenciling and frescoes. 

photographed by Steven Thomas Moy on June 14, 2013, via oldchurchnyc.typepad.com

Rev. Leone served as pastor of the Italian congregation until his death in 1945.  The Church of Our Lady of Peace continued to serve its parishioners as generations were baptized, married and their funerals held in the familiar sanctuary.

Then, on July 31, 2015 ABC News reported "A nearly century old Catholic church on the Upper East Side held its final mass Friday afternoon."  Congregants had been caught off guard by the New York Archdiocese's decision to close 112 churches in a cost-cutting consolidation.

Even as Father Bartholomew Daly offered Communion for the last time, parishioners were hopeful.  An appeal had already been sent directly to the Vatican, pleading for papal intervention.   Five volumes of documents outlined the congregation's history, its mission and its importance to the community.

The church was locked and the congregation officially merged with St. John the Evangelist on East 55th Street.  But many recalcitrant parishioners refused to give up the fight.  Mass was held outside Our Lady of Peace and every day for two years they gathered on the steps, despite rain or snow, to light candles and pray.  Petitions, letters, and fundraisers sought to pressure Catholic officials to reopen their church.  A group called the Friends of Our Lady of Peace hired attorneys and appealed the closing.

Finally, two years after sending their appeal to the Vatican, the congregation got a response.  Despite gathering 4,000 signatures of support and $500,000 to prove that the church was financially self-sufficient, the Vatican's Congregation of the Clergy ruled in favor of the New York Archdiocese.

In January 2017 representatives of the congregation announce plans to appeal.  But it was all too late.  Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan had been working on his own plans.  Under his direction the Archdiocese leased the building to the Coptic Orthodox Church, an ancient Egyptian-based Christian denomination.

The New York Times reported on March 5, "The lease is the first stage of a plan to transform the church into the Coptic Church's New York cathedral, an idea that both Cardinal Dolan and Coptic leaders say Pope Francis has blessed."

And so the little brick church, having served German Presbyterians, German Lutherans, Hungarian Christians, and Italian Catholics, enters its newest chapter.  In the meantime, other than a paint job, little has changed outwardly to the Samuel A. Warner's charming structure.

photographs by the author