The 1889 Wm. Henry Putnam House - 39 West 95th Street

 

Architect Walden Pell Anderson normally acted as his own real estate developer, designing and erecting rows of homes, often on the Upper West Side.  In at least one instance, however, he worked with a partner.  On December 22, 1888 the Real Estate Record & Guide noted that he was "preparing plans for four first-class three-story...private dwellings."  The journal said the fronts of the 16-foot-wide homes "will be of Lake Superior red sandstone and Ohio greystone, carved, with Philadelphia brick."  It noted, "They will be built by Henry J. Anderson."  The developer was, perhaps, a relative.

The houses were completed by the fall of 1889, each costing the equivalent of $305,000 today.  Anderson designed them in a quirky mix of Renaissance Revival and Queen Anne styles.  Like its neighbors, 39 West 95th Street featured elliptically arched openings.  The band of rough-cut stone below the second floor contrasted sharply with the formal, neo-classical swags of the cornice and with the tiled mansard attic.

39 West 95th Street is at the left end of the row.

The house was sold in October 1889 to stock broker William Henry Putnam and his wife, the former Elizabeth Ann Green.  Moving in with them was Katherine Sheridan Putnam, the young widow of their son, Dudley Herbert, and their seven-year-old granddaughter, Elizabeth.  

The Putnams and their neighbors had small domestic staffs.  Having a grade-school-aged child required a nurse and on April 20, 1893 the Putnams placed an advertisement in the New York Herald:  "A neat young girl as nurse and chambermaid; one who is willing to go to the seashore for the summer."  That servant would be accompanying the family to their summer residence in Woodland Beach, Staten Island.  

In the winter of 1895, Katherine caught a bad cold, which progressed to pneumonia.  She died at the age of 38 on January 28.  Her funeral was held in the parlor on the West 95th Street house the following evening.  Now orphaned, 14-year-old Elizabeth lived on in the house with her grandparents.

William H. Putnam's name was in the newspapers for a rather undignified reason as the summer season drew to a close in 1900.  The Woodland Beach community abutted Midland Beach.  The New-York Tribune explained that the Midland Beach wharf "is the dividing line between the two properties."

On September 3 the managers of Midland Beach began construction of a lattice fence that cut off access between the two communities.  The newspaper noted that Putnam "represents the owners of the property at Woodland Beach."  He stressed that "the Midland Beach people have no right to build a fence there."

Putnam and other Woodland Beach residents had the six workers arrested for working on Sunday.  "Then about fifteen of the Woodland Beach people, led by W. C. Wilson, C. A. Hoffmeister and W. H. Putnam, and armed with axes and heavy poles, made a sudden descent upon the fence and cut and battered it down."

A counterattack was launched by the Midland Beach forces.  "The warring parties were immediately surrounded by an immense throng of people, who cheered on the belligerents," said the article.  The conflict was not without bloodshed.  "The axes in the hands of the Woodland Beach forces were caught by the Midland Beach men, and in the struggle for their possession the hands of several were slightly cut, and blood was sprinkled about the battleground and upon the clothing of the contestants."

The battle lasted most of the day, with the fence being hastily put up two more times and just as quickly torn down.  The well-to-do brokers and businessmen were finally stopped by police, "who warned the belligerents that any breach of the peace would be followed by immediate arrest."

William died that year at the age of 81.  Two years later, on December 1, 1902, Elizabeth was married to Charles Addison O'Rourke.  

In March 1909 Elizabeth A. Putnam, now 81 years old, sold her home of two decades to real estate operator Emily L. Landon, who quickly resold it to Canadian-born mechanical engineer Richard Henry Thomas and his wife, the former Martha Richter.  The couple had a two-year-old son, Richard, Jr.

Thomas would not enjoy his new home for long.  He died from pneumonia on January 24, 1911 at the age of 43.  In reporting his death, the New-York Tribune called him "a prominent Mason," adding, "In 1902 he was district deputy grand master, and for the last two years had been a trustee of the Masonic Hall and Asylum fund."

Well-to-do Americans routinely traveled to Europe and Martha was no exception.  She and Richard Jr. left New York on June 9, 1914 for Germany, "to spend three months with relatives," according to the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News.  Like hundreds of other travelers, Martha did not anticipate war breaking out.  

A headline in the New York Herald on August 8 read, "Anxiety Grows for Refugees held Within the War Lines."  The article began, "Efforts of relatives and friends on this side to learn the whereabouts of persons abroad increase as time goes on."  In listing dozens of trapped persons, the article noted, "Friends in the Scotch Presbyterian Church are anxious for news of Mrs. Martha H. Thomas, of No. 39 West Ninety-fifth street, and her son, Richard H. Thomas Jr., who are supposed to be in Germany."

Perhaps the most worried was Rev. Dr. David G. Wylie, who had been pastor of the Scotch Presbyterian Church for 24 years.  The Poughkeepsie Eagle-News reported that Martha and her son were "in the Hartz Mountains when the war started and was aided in getting back to this country through Dr. Wylie's appeal to the President and to the newspapers on behalf of stranded Americas.  After several calls on Ambassador [James] Gerard, Mrs. Wylie was able to leave the Continent by way of Rotterdam."

The scare may have accelerated the couple's wedding plans.  They were married in the Hotel Savoy on October 1, 1914.  The Poughkeepsie Eagle-News reported the wedding was "the result, it is said, of a romance, brought about by Mrs. Thomas' little boy.  Young Richard attended the Scotch Church school and Dr. Wylie had occasion to call on Mrs. Thomas in the course of his pastoral duties."

Following their "10,000 mile" wedding trip (all of it domestic, of course), the newlyweds moved into 830 West End Avenue.  The West 95th Street house next became home to George L. Amouroux and his wife, the former Lillian E. Lent.

Amouroux was an architect, engineer and photographer.  What initially seems to be an incongruous combination was, in fact, quite helpful to developers and civic engineers.  When a building or other structure would fail, Amouroux was called in to make drawings and take photographs, which aided in the investigation of the cause of the accident.

In his leisure time George enjoyed rifle shooting.  He was a member of the 7th Regiment Rifle Club and participated in sharp-shooting tournaments.  George died on December 27, 1937.  It is unclear how long Lillian remained on West 95th Street.  She died at the age of 95 in 1960 in Beacon, New York.

That same year 39 West 95th Street was converted to apartments, one per floor.  A subsequent remodeling completed in 1998 returned it to a single family home above a basement apartment.

photographs by the author

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The 1892 Dr. Owen J. Ward House - 160 West 94th Street

 

In May 1891, the Real Estate Record & Guide reported that Walden P. Anderson was erecting a row of 13 three-story dwellings on  the south side of West 94th Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues.  The cost of constructing the row would cost the architect-developer $195,000--or about $5.65 million today.

Anderson created three different designs in an A-B-C pattern.   Each sat upon a brownstone English basement and rose three stories to a short attic level.  The "B" models, which included 160 West 94th Street, were clad in red brick above the parlor level and were distinguished by elaborately carved brownstone spandrel panels between the second and third floors--each one markedly different.  Above the pressed metal cornice, round copper clad dormers poked through the slate shingled mansard.

At 17-feet wide, three feet narrower that the average domestic building plot, the residences were intended for upper-middle class families.  Each contained ten rooms and two baths.  They were completed in 1892 and in April Anderson sold 160 West 94th Street to Dr. Owen J. Ward.  He would be the first in a string of physicians to occupy the house.

Born in 1840, Ward had graduated from the Medical Department of the University of the City of New York in 1865.   By the time he purchased the 94th Street house he was a busy man.  A bachelor, he was the house surgeon at St Vincent's Hospital, the visiting physician of the Tombs prison downtown, and when the Gouverneur Hospital opened in 1885, he became its visiting surgeon, as well.

His position with the Tombs resulted in Ward's often being called as a witness in criminal cases.  In December 1894, for instance, he testified in a highly publicized extortion case involving some of the highest ranking officials in the police department.

On March 4, 1898 Ward and the defense lawyer had a heated exchange in the courtroom as he testified for the prosecution in the murder case of William J. Koerner.  The defendant was charged with killing Rose Alice Redgate, and a letter signed by the victim was introduced as evidence.  

Prior to the trial the Assistant District Attorney had handed the letter to Ward and asked him to get Koerner to confirm it was written by Rose Redgate.  The defense attorney was brutal in his cross-examination:

You showed that unfortunate prisoner the letter, and used your influence as Tombs physician and prison attendant to get him unwittingly to identify the letter?

I did as I was instructed to do.

Having thrown off your respectability as a physician, tell us what you did as an individual?

I asked him to read the letter.  I asked Koerner who wrote it.  He said Rose Redgate wrote it.  I said, "Is it true that Rose Redgate wrote the letter?  And is it true what she has written in the letter?"  Koerner answered, "Rose could write nothing but what is true."

That may have been Ward's last appearance in criminal court.  Five months later, on August 17, he died in the 94th Street house at the age of 58.  His estate sold the property in February 1902 to Dr. H. Rickaby.

Within only a few years Dr. George Koegler and his family were living here.   A successful dentist, he and his wife had four sons.   On the night of December 3, 1907, the Koeglers had dinner guests, H. Strasbourger and his wife.   Mrs. Strasbourger arrived dressed in a fur coat and muff.  The two couples must have been very close, for they had dinner in the informal family dining room in the basement level.  When the Strasbourgers prepared to leave, her furs were gone.

The New York Times reported, "While everybody was in the basement at dinner the thief, who had evidently been watching the actions of the household, came down through the skylight and took all the belongings."  Along with Mrs. Strasbourger's things, he gathered up "a gold watch, stickpins, and other jewelry owned by the Koegler family," said the article.  He made his escape out the parlor floor and down the stoop.  The fur coat alone was valued at $1,000--more 28 times that much today.

Still living here with his parents in the post-World War I years was John Charles Koegler.  A bachelor, he was a provision merchant.  He was forced to retire at an early age in 1920 due to medical problems.  The 48-year-old died in the house a year later on April 5, 1921.

Dr. Koegler soon converted space in the house for his office (most likely the former family dining room in the basement).   In 1923 he advertised for a "girl to assist in dentist office," and again on March 23, 1925 he sought a "Young lady to assist in dentist's office; experience unnecessary."

When the Koeglers sold 160 West 94th Street to M. C. Berg, Inc. in 1929, The Sun noted, "Extensive alterations will be made."  Although not officially renovated to apartments, it was now operated as a rooming house.

Among the initial residents were newlyweds Donald Patten, a switchman and track-walker for the New York Central Railroad, and his bride, the former Yolanda Bartolotti.  On June 21, 1930, just 24 days after the wedding, the couple quarreled.  Yolanda stormed out and headed straight for the passenger piers, where she sneaked above the Ile de France which was about to sail for Europe.

When the ship had passed Sandy Hook, Yolanda appeared in the purser's office.  She had some difficulty convincing Henri Villar that she was, indeed, a stowaway.  She was given a job in the ship's hospital as an assistant to a nurse and when the vessel arrived at France, she was taken "to one of the best Havre jails," according to The New York Times.  The article said, "She had been incarcerated four days before her husband's frantic cablegrams and the solicitations of the American Consul could open the jail doors."

The newspaper wrote on July 18, "When she returned on the liner Paris yesterday she was glad it was all over and hoped she could settle down and 'give married life a fair trial.'"  But it was not entirely over.  The reunited couple's embrace was interrupted by immigration officials who took her to Ellis Island "for an examination of her status."  Yolanda explained that she was an alien, having come from Italy as a child, but that her husband was an American citizen.  Things eventually seem to have worked out for the couple.

Fire broke out in the house on July 8, 1938.  Two firefighters, Harry Christman and George S. Magnuson were deemed heroes.  They received medals on May 8 "for the rescue of a man from the third floor window at 160 West Ninety-fourth street," reported The New York Sun.

The house was officially renovated to apartments in 1968.  There are now six units in the building, including a triplex engulfing part of the basement through the second floor.

photographs by the author

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The 1889 Amzi L. Camp House - 37 West 95th Street

 

photograph by the author

On December 22, 1888 the Real Estate Record & Guide reported that W. P. Anderson was preparing plans for "four first-class three-story" private residences to be built on the north side of 95th Street, just west of Central Park West.  "The fronts will be of Lake Superior red sandstone and Ohio greystone, carved, with Philadelphia, brick."  Three years later Walden Pell Anderson would both design and construct a row of 13 similar houses at block away, on West 94th Street.  In this case, however, the name of Henry J. Anderson, possibly a relative, was listed as developer.

The 16- and 17-foot-wide dwellings were completed within a year.  Anderson designed them in a quirky mix of Renaissance Revival and Queen Anne styles.  On September 27, 1889 the New York Herald announced that Walden P. Anderson had sold 37 West 95th Street to Amzi L. Camp "on private terms."

The parlor level of the Camps' new house was faced in planar stone with slightly projecting bands.  A single elliptically arched window sat above two ornately carved Renaissance Revival panels.  The entrance was topped with a similarly-decorated triangular pediment which overlapped an unexpected frieze of undressed stone.  Beige Roman brick faced the upper floors and the attic level took the form of a clay-tiled mansard.

A winged beast appears in the entranceway pediment and another fearsome creature lurked below the parlor window.

Camp was a partner in the provisions firm of F. Bechstein & Camp on West Street.  He and his wife, Antoinette, had three children, Antoinette L., Frederick A. and Kate Christine.

The family would not stay especially long.  In 1893 Camp purchased the three-story brick house at 556 West End Avenue and in March sold the 95th Street residence to Sarah E. Weight.

Sarah had been widowed for decades.  Her husband, Peter Dwight Weight, had died in 1847 at the age of just 23.   Moving in with her were her adult children, Robert, Christopher, Mary, Catherine, and Elizabeth.

The Weights, who were all single, seem to have lived an unusually reclusive existence.  Only three years after they moved in the first funeral was held in the house.  Robert died in December 1896.   Oddly, the family did not announce his death until the day of his funeral, to which no one was invited.

Sarah died on February 6, 1900 and her funeral, too, was held in the parlor.  It would be only a matter of weeks before the family held another funeral.  

On March 18 Catherine was struck by an electric car.  The 60-year-old died in the J. Hood Wright Hospital the following day.  Astoundingly, The New York Press reported that "money and jewelry worth $15,000 were in a handbag" she carried.  That amount would equal about $471,000 in today's money.  A family member told a reporter, "she carried her money and jewelry with her for fear of thieves."

Following Elizabeth's death in August 1903, Christopher and Mary purchased the house from their mother's estate, splitting the $15,500 cost equally.  (Interestingly, the cost of the property was almost exactly what Catherine had carried in her handbag the night she was run over.)

After his last sibling's death Christopher sold 37 West 95th Street in 1908 to the A. B. C. Realty Company.  If the Weight family had been unusually private, the following occupants were no less so.  No weddings, funerals, engagements or dinner parties at the address appear in the newspapers throughout the subsequent decades.

The Travers family lived here in the World War II years.  They offered three furnished rooms to rent in December 1942, insisting that the tenants be a "Catholic family."  (The roomers were offered kitchen privileges.)

photograph via Landmarkwest.org

After more than 130 years the house is still a single-family home.

photographs by the author

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The 1892 Dr. Samuel Wood Dana House - 162 West 94th Street

 

In May 1891 the Record & Guide reported that Walden P. Anderson was erecting a row of 13 three-story dwellings on  the south side of West 94th Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues.  The cost of constructing the row would cost the architect-developer $195,000--or about $5.65 million today.

Anderson created three different designs which were mixed with no apparent pattern along the row.  The "C" design, of which No. 162 was an example, was a little less flamboyant that the others, yet managed to meld three architectural styles--Romanesque Revival, Renaissance Revival and Queen Anne.

The parlor floor sat above a high stone stoop.  Here the arched openings were decorated with carved keystones.  The keystone above the entrance depicted an owl.  A delicate double row of dentils ran below the second floor, where grouped windows sat above a base of Queen Anne style tiles.  Applied rosettes decorated the bracketed cornice and stepped gables--a nod to Flemish Renaissance Revival--separated the attic level from the adjoining houses.

Anderson's three designs were mixed with no apparent pattern along the row.  No. 162 is behind the maroon automobile.

No. 162 briefly became home to the Harris family, whose son, Leo Pinner Harris, was attending the Free Academy of the City of New York in 1891.  The family lost the house in foreclosure and it was sold by the bank in January 1897 to Dr. Samuel Wood Dana and his wife, Helena R.  As was customary, the title to the property was put in Helena's name.

Dr. Dana was born in West Lebanon, New Hampshire in 1827.  He studied at Dartmouth Medical College and graduated from the College of Physicians in New York City in 1858.  He and Helena were married in 1865.  Their only son, Russell Raymond, had married Hattie Amanda Styles in 1892.  Both of their daughters, Helen Edith and Emma Lilian, were unmarried and also moved into the 94th Street house.

Emma (who went by E. Lilian) had graduated from Normal College in 1894.  She had been not only a remarkable student but an accomplished pianist.  On the same day, June 21, 1894, she had won the $20 gold prize for her essay on Patriotism and the esteemed Steinway Prize for piano.  She was now serving on the Normal College faculty as an instructor in the Training Department.

Dr. Samuel Wood Dana, Where Greek Meets Greek, 1907 (copyright expired)

The erudite Dr. Dana filled his library with classical literature.  In 1898 a former classmate, Rufus O. Mason, said of him, "now, more than forty years out of college, he reads with facility and enjoyment the Latin and Greek authors, and also the standard authors in German, French, Italian and Spanish."  In addition to his private practice he was connected with the New York Dispensary.

On June 2, 1905 Helena Dana died in the 94th Street house.  Her funeral was held in the parlor on June 5.  Dr. Dana retired three years later, and died on September 1, 1915.

On January 26, 1918 the Record & Guide reported that the Dana estate had sold No. 162 West 94th Street to William G. and Catharine L. Dunn.   The couple had one son, William Kipson Dunn.  

Dunn was a partner in the liquor and wine firm of Kerin & Dunn.  He was no doubt deeply concerned about the Temperance Movement which had been gaining strength across the nation.   And those concerns were well founded.  Exactly a year after moving into his new home Prohibition was ratified and a year later, on January 17, 1920, the Volstead Act went into effect. 

That year, on May 8, Catherine Dunn died.  Her funeral was held in the Holy Name Church at 96th Street and Amsterdam Avenue two days later.

It was possibly the financial effects of Prohibition which prompted William and his son to soon leave No. 162.   By 1923 it was home to Harold Jones and his wife, Dr. Mary Cover Jones.  Born in 1897, Mary had attended Vassar College where she studied psychology, and completed her graduate work at Columbia University in 1920.  She and Harold met at Columbia and were married in 1920.  They had two daughters, Barbara and Leslie.

The family moved to California in 1927 where Dr. Jones had accepted a position as research associate at the Institute for Child Welfare at Berkeley.  She would eventually be called "the mother of behavior therapy" for her pioneering work in behavioral therapy.

The West 94th Street house was purchased by Joseph and Alta Brady Armengol in July 1930 for $25,000 (about $383,000 in today's money).  The New York Sun noted, "The purchaser, a physician, will occupy the premises."

Born in Spain in 1896, Dr. Armengol's had anglicized his name from Jose Maria to Joseph M.  The couple had two children, Joseph, Jr. who was 5-years-old when the family moved into the 94th Street house, and Dian, who was 3.  Living with them were a housekeeper and an "attendant."  The family maintained a summer house in Long Branch, New Jersey.

In June 1936 Alta was looking for a new housekeeper.  Her ad read "Wanted--Girl for general housework and cooking.  Fair [wages] paid.  Mrs. A. Armengol, 162 West 94th St."

It is unclear how long the Armengol family remained in the house; although census records show them here as late as 1940.  Perhaps because of its narrow proportions--just 17-feet wide--the house has never been converted to apartments and remains a private home today.

photographs by the author