The Lost 1910 53 East 61st Street

 

Architecture magazine, February 1910 (copyright expired)

Effingham Maynard, Jr. was a member of the publishing firm of Maynard, Merrill & Co.  He purchased the four-story, high-stooped brownstone house at 53 East 61st Street on November 10, 1905.  Three years later, the affluent, 28-year-old bachelor hired the architectural firm of Walker & Gillette to give it a comprehensive remodeling.  The plans called for enlarging the house to the rear, reconfiguring the interior, removing the stoop and replacing the Victorian facade with a modern front.  The extensive renovations cost Maynard $20,000--about $683,000 in 2024 terms.

Construction was completed in 1910.  Walker & Gillette had created an anomaly among Manhattan residences.  Above the rusticated, red brick base, they faced the building in concrete.  Architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler, writing in The Architectural Record said,

The material is a novelty in a city house front, common as it is in suburban work.  Possibly gray brick might have been as effective as the actual cement, in contrast with the red of the brickwork, but it could not have been more so.

from the collection of the New York Public Library.

The architects' potpourri of styles--a Palladian grouping at the second floor, romantic Italian faux balconies at the second, and colorful Arts and Crafts tilework around the arched second floor window and below the cornice--prompted Schuyler to say, "This front is of no style.  It is merely the putting together of the materials in the most straightforward manner.  He opined, "nothing could be prettier or more seemly and domestic," and that the house, "though of no style, very distinctly has style and is clearly one of the best of the recent things."

Maynard never moved into his renovated house, choosing instead to lease it.  His first tenants were the widowed Mrs. William M. Postlethwaite and her son, John Ellis Postlethwaite, a 1901 Harvard graduate.  Rev. William M. Postlethwaite had been chaplain and professor of Ethics, History and Geography at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  He died on January 10, 1896.

The first and second floor plans.  Architecture, 1911 (copyright expired)

In 1914, Effingham Maynard, Jr. rethought his investment.  He hired architect Simeon B. Eisendrath to convert the mansion into bachelor apartments.  (The term meant the apartment had no kitchens.)  An advertisement in The New York Times in August 1915 described the apartments as "one room and bath," or what we would today call studio apartments.  They were available furnished or unfurnished with, "Meals, telephone, and valet service optional."  Rents started at $480 a year, or about $1,250 per month today.

Effingham Maynard died on August 12, 1918 at the age of 42.  Still unmarried, his death sparked a contentious legal battle among family members over his property, including 51 East 61st Street, that lasted well into the following year.

In the meantime, despite their small size, the apartments filled with affluent tenants.  Among those living here in 1918 were Chester B. Coubleday, Harry Burnham Disston and Gerald Hull Gray.  With World War I ongoing, Coubleday was promoted to first lieutenant in the Aviation Section of the Officers' Reserve Corps. that year.  Disston was a second lieutenant in the Infantry Section of the U.S. Army.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Henrietta Upson, the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. George Dwight Upson, was married to Henry Pitt Warren, Jr. in a socially notable ceremony in Cleveland, Ohio on October 8, 1921.  Warren had graduated from Yale in 1913 and his bride from the Spence School.  The Yale Alumni Weekly announced, "They will be at home, after November 1, at 53 East 61st Street, New York City."

Dr. Jacob Schmeicher lived and practiced here in 1925.  On April 4, the New York Evening Post said, "He is said to have maintained a seven-room office on the street floor at 53 East Sixty-first street."  Things were going well for the doctor until he applied for an x-ray license early in 1925, listing his degree from the Albany Medical College.  It led to an investigation that revealed no such student had attended the school.  The New York Evening Post reported, "Isabel E. Pries, a detective, had him arrested last night, after he treated her for stomach trouble."

Stock broker Herbert McKenzie and his wife, Louise, lived here in 1928.  A dealer in unlisted securities, McKenzie maintained offices on the 14th floor of 50 Broad Street.  On the afternoon of October 25, his 18-year-old secretary, Virginia Green, overheard him talking to his wife on the phone.  She later said she heard him, "threatening to 'end it all,' but finally promising to see Mrs. McKenzie at the office or call her on the telephone again."

Later Virginia noticed McKenzie's office was empty and the window was open.  Fearing the worst and without checking

further, she telephoned police.  The Brooklyn Standard Union reported, "A few minutes later reserves were called out to control a crowd that had gathered."  The 53-year-old had jumped to his death.  Louise was brought to the scene, where she said she was "not surprised," and that her husband had been "melancholy" over recent financial reversals.

The Architectural Review, March 1910 (copyright expired)

Walker & Gillette's unique townhouse survived until 1963, when it and its neighbors were razed for a modern apartment building.

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The 1869 Oswin O'Brien House - 128 East 37th Street

 

Prolific architect John G. Prague, who would design hundreds of Manhattan rowhouses before the 1890s, was hired in 1868 by speculative developer and carpenter John Coar to design four upscale homes at 124 to 130 East 37th Street.  Faced in brownstone, they rose four stories above English basements.  Prague's Second Empire design included slate-shingled mansards, nearly obligatory to the style.

The row was completed in 1869.  Oswin J. and Elizabeth G. O'Brien purchased 128 East 37th Street.  The couple had a son, Oswin Jr.  Born in 1826, Oswin Sr. was a stockbroker and member of the New York Stock Exchange.  Additionally, around 1864 he opened "The Palace" department store at the corner of 14th Street and Sixth Avenue.  Elizabeth was the eldest daughter of General Frederick Ellsworth Mather and a descendant of Rev. Richard Mather, who arrived in Boston in 1635.  Elizabeth was also related to Founding Father Oliver Ellsworth, third Chief Justice of the United States.

Elizabeth G. O'Brien.  photograph courtesy of Michael O'Brien Weber

The O'Brien family sold 128 East 37th Street in 1873 to William Adams Walker Stewart and his wife, the former Frances Loring Gray.  Stewart was a wealthy lawyer.  He would be lost at sea when his yacht, Cythera, disappeared during a  voyage to the West Indies in March 1888.  Eight years before that tragedy, he and Frances sold 128 East 37th Street to his massively wealthy father, John Aikman Stewart, for $17,000 (about $523,000 in 2024).

Born on Fulton Street on August 26, 1822, John A. Stewart was married to Sarah Youle Johnson.  He had served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Civil War.  Now he was president of the United States Trust Company and a director in several banks and insurance companies.  He and Sarah, who lived almost directly across the street at 125 East 37th Street, apparently purchased the house for their daughter, Emily, and son-in-law, Robert Waller, Jr.

In June 1882, John Aikman Stewart hired architect James Brown Lord to enlarge the Waller's house by adding a two-story extension to the rear.  It is unclear exactly how long Emily and Robert Waller remained here, but the house was occupied by the aristocratic Van Vleck family by 1889.

Walter Van Vleck was described by the New York Herald as "the dashing sergeant major of the Ninth regiment."  At the Regiment Ball in 1889, 17-year-old Minnie Ahearn caught Van Vleck's eye.  The New York Herald described her as being,

...tall for one of her years, with a fine, well developed figure and might easily pass for a maiden of twenty-five.  Her dark, heavy eyebrows and rich brown hair could attract attention anywhere, while her beautiful eyes and well rounded face have caused many a gallant masculine heart to flutter on the West side since she has been living on Twenty-sixty street with her aunt and guardian, Mrs. Margaret Higgins.

Margaret Higgins kept a close rein on her ward.  But the 40-year-old bachelor and his new sweetheart managed to communicate by love letters sneaked back-and-forth via a young girl.  The romance came to a climax on January 13, 1890, when Minnie Ahearn and Walter Van Vleck both disappeared.  

A week later, with the couple still missing, The Press pointed out the social differences between them.  "Love laughs at locksmiths and scorns all the artificial distinctions of rank, wealth, birth and breeding.  It is, however a long time since Love, the leveler, has shown himself so thoroughly democratic as in the probable elopement of Walter Van Vleck of 128 East thirty-seventh street with Minnie Ahearn of 204 West Twenty-sixth street."  The New York Herald wrote, 

At the residence of the Van Vleck family all was excitement yesterday.  Walter had been telegraphing to his two sisters and mother nearly every day during the week to make excuses for various engagements to dinner parties, &c., for him.  Members of the family are greatly shocked over the affair, because the young lady in the case does not move in the same fashionable set nor in society at all for that matter.

It was later confirmed that the two unlikely lovers had married.

By 1900, John Aikman Stewart was leasing 128 East 37th Street to the John Jay White family.  White and his wife, the former Virginia Grace Hoffman, had a teenaged daughter, Louise Lawrence White.

Interestingly, when the house was leased for winter social season of 1900-1901, the New-York Tribune did not mention Louise's parents.  The article on December 9, 1900 read, "Mr. and Mrs. Lester del Garcia have taken No. 128 East Thirty-seventh-st. for the winter.  It is the home of Miss White."

On May 10, 1903, The New York Times reported on the engagement of Louise to Walter Lispenard Suydam, Jr., saying, "The extreme youth of the couple neither being over eighteen years of age, gives it a touch of the romantic."  The article noted, "The attendants selected are related to nearly all the old Knickerbocker representative branches, including the Suydams, the Lispenards, the Delafields, the Lydigs, the Mesiers, the Hoffmans, the Jays, and a score of others."

Walter Lispenard Suydam.  Portraits of the Presidents of the [Saint Nicholas] Society, 1835-1914 (copyright expired)

Indeed, the couple was so young that on January 28, 1904, in reporting that Louise "gave one of a series of days at home," The New York Times mentioned that she "was Miss White, and she and Mr. Suydam were married last Summer.  Mr. Suydam was then still at college, and his wife had not made her debut in society."

The Suydams appeared in the society columns repeatedly over the next few years.  The couple welcomed a baby girl, Louise Lispenard, in June 1905.  Tragically, she died on January 24, 1906, at the age of six months.

Two years later, Louise had a brush with death.  On February 15, 1907, The New York Times reported, "Mrs. Walter L. Suydam, Jr., who is in town for the Winter at her home, 128 East Thirty-seventh Street, is seriously ill with typhoid fever."

The Suydams remained here until 1909 when the 11-room, two-bath house was sold.  The couple's marriage would end tragically two years later.  In 1911, Louise left Walter for the 22-year-old son of a Brooklyn plumber, Frederick Noble.  They were married in January 1912.  A month later, on February 5, The New York Times ran the headline, "Dies With Youth She Eloped With / Suicide by Gas Ends Romance of Young Noble and the Former Mrs. Suydam."  The article said that their short marriage was troubled, and surmised that Louise discovered she was still in love with Walter.  The two committed suicide together.

In the meantime, the 37th Street house was purchased jointly by Alexander Stewart Walker and Leon Narcisse Gillette, partners in the architectural firm of Walker & Gillette.  They converted the upper floors to apartments and installed their offices in the lower floors.  An advertisement in The New York Times on April 23, 1911 offered, "Two Apartments, 128 East 37th Street, 3 and 4 rooms and bath."

Walker & Gillette was a highly respected firm which, at the time, was mostly responsible for lavish country homes and New York City townhouses.  Among the residences they designed from 128 East 37th Street were the 1914 Warren M. Salisbury estate in Pittsfield, Massachusetts; the 1917 Henry P. Davison mansion at 690 Park Avenue; and Coe Hall in Oyster Bay, Long Island, erected between 1918 and 1921. 

Walker & Gillette occupied 128 East 37th Street through 1926.  In the 1930s, the house was owned and occupied by well-known stage designer, Norman Bel Geddes and his partner, George Howe.  Bel Geddes was described by The New York Times as "a brilliant craftsman and draftsman, a master of style, the 20th century's Leonardo da Vinci."

In 1936, Bel Geddes designed the "Metropolis City of 1960."  It, perhaps, landed him the job that year of assisting production designer William Cameron Menzies in fabricating the sets for the H. G. Wells science fiction film, Things to Come.

Not everything was so positive for Bel Geddes in 1936.  That year on August 21, the Elmhurst, New York Daily Register reported that Edna Buckler had filed a $2 million lawsuit claiming that the play Dead End was "a plagiarism from her play entitled 'Money.'"  The article said she was suing the play's author, Sidney Kingsley; its producer, Norman Bel Geddes; Random House, which published the drama; and Samuel Goldwyn, who bought the film rights.

A scalloped, arched entranceway was created after the removal of the stoop.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

In 1940, following Bel Geddes's sale of the house, it was converted to apartments.  The stoop was removed and a rather dramatic entrance created at the former English basement level.  Otherwise, the exterior was little changed.

At some point the entrance framing was removed.  There are four apartments in the house today, including three duplexes (two of which share the third and fourth floors).

photograph by the author

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The 1918 Harvey D. Gibson House - 52 East 69th Street

 

In 1881 developer William a. Hawkinson completed a row of five high-stooped houses at 50 to 58 East 69th Street.  Each 18-feet wide, they were designed by Lamb & Wheeler.  The first resident of 52 East 69th Street was Anne White Schermerhorn Suydam, whose husband Charles Suydam died on December 31, 1882.

In the first years of the 20th century, the outdated brownstones in the neighborhood were being replaced by sumptuous, modern mansions.  Banker Henry P. Davison purchased the southwest corner of Park Avenue and 69th Street in 1916 as the site of his new home.  Included in the parcel were 50 and 52 East 69th Street--50 as part of his site and 52 to guarantee that no apartment building was erected next to his mansion.

Davison was well acquainted with another banker, Harvey Dow Gibson.  As his own residence was under construction, on December 27, 1916, The American Architect reported that Davison had sold "to Harvey Gibson, vice-president of the Liberty National Bank, the lot at 52 East Sixty-ninth Street.  Mr. Gibson will erect a dwelling for his own occupancy."

The close relationship between the two financiers was reflected in Gibson's choosing the same architectural firm that had designed the Davison mansion--Walker & Gillette.  Completed the following year, the architects' neo-Georgian design complimented the Davison house.  Both sat on a limestone base and were faced in the same Flemish bond red brick.  

The fluted columns that flanked the entrance of 52 East 69th Street supported an entablature decorated with rosettes and bellflowers.  Full-relief rams' heads upheld its cornice.  The paneled lintels of the second floor openings were carved with neo-classical urns and swags.  The fifth floor, behind a brick parapet, took the form of a steep, slate shingled mansard with two pronounced dormers.

Born in 1882 in New Hampshire, Harvey Dow Gibson graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine in 1902.  He started with American Express before moving to the Liberty National Bank where he quickly rose to vice-president.  He married Carrie Hastings Curtis on June 10, 1903.  

The couple's 32-acre summer estate, Land's End, was in Locust Valley, Long Island (where the Davisons' country home, Peacock Point, was also located).  The mansion there, built in the 1850s, was given a Georgian remodeling by Walker & Gillette.  The Gibsons also owned a home at 5 Rue Mesnil in Paris.

Henry Dow Gibson in 1917, the year he moved into 52 East 69th Street.  from the collection of the Library of Congress

America entered World War I in April 1917, just as the Gibsons were preparing to move into their town home.  Henry Davison was appointed chairman of the War Council of the American Red Cross and The New York Times reported that Davison "called upon" Gibson to become the Red Cross Commissioner in France.  Both he and Davison traveled to the war front throughout the remainder of the war.

The year 1917 was additionally eventful for Gibson when, in addition to his new house and Red Cross position, he was promoted to president of the Liberty National Bank, as reported in The American Elite and Sociologist Blue Book.  (Upon Liberty National Bank's merger with the New York Trust Company, Gibson became president of the latter organization.)

Gibson was, according to The New York Times, "a close friend of Helen Keller."  He would eventually be treasurer of the Helen Keller Foundation and a trustee of the American Foundation for the Blind.

Untypical of millionaires, Gibson was driving himself on the night of June 20, 1921.  As he entered the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, former tennis champion Beals Wright, who was drunk, smashed into Gibson's automobile.  According to the policeman who witnessed the collision, "As soon as he became disentangled from the Gibson car...Wright continued up the avenue."  The New-York Tribune reported "at Fifty-sixth Street, it is alleged, [Wright] struck and upset a horse-drawn carriage, driven by Denis Ryan."  The tennis star was arrested for intoxication and reckless driving.  Gibson was apparently unharmed.

Domestic clouds were forming over the East 69th Street house before long.  On July 1, 1925, The New York Times reported, "Mrs. Harvey Dow Gibson of New York, wife of the President of the New York Trust Company, has filed a petition for divorce in the Paris courts." 

The following year, on March 13, 1926, The New York Times reported that Gibson had married Helen Whitney Bourne in Berne, Switzerland.  The article said the marriage "is of wide interest in New York.  Mrs. Bourne obtained a divorce from George Galt Bourne in Reno in October, 1924, and Mr. Gibson and his first wife, the former Miss Carrie H. Curtis, were divorced in Paris last Summer."

On May 15, 1933, The New York Times reported that the 51-year-old banker "broke his collar-bone yesterday when he was thrown from his horse while hurdling a fence near his estate, Land's End, Locust Valley."  The millionaire spent the night in the North Country Community Hospital.

About two months later, the Land's End house was burglarized.  Then, on August 13, Gibson reported $200 in cash was missing from the residence.  The Gibsons may have had a light-fingered servant in their employ.  The New York Times recalled, "The theft follows another and larger loss in the same manner several weeks ago."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Interestingly, although Harvey and Helen Whitney Gibson continued to live in the East 69th Street house, Carrie Gibson had received it in the 1925 divorce.  It was not until February 2, 1935 that The Sun reported that Gibson "acquired the town house he occupies at 52 East Sixty-ninth street, at an indicated consideration of $90,000" from Carrie (who was now married to Griffith E. Thomas of the U.S. Navy).  The price would equal about $1.9 million in 2024.

Harvey Dow Gibson died "of a heart ailment," according to The New York Times on September 12, 1950.  In reporting his death, the newspaper called him a "banker of world-wide fame," and noted that he had served as a "Red Cross leader in both World Wars."

Helen Whitney Bourne Gibson's daughter, actress Whitney Bourne, who married Roy Atwood in 1956, inherited the East 69th Street house.  On December 24, 1964, The New York Times headlined an article, "Actress Buys East Side House" and reported that Whitney Bourne Atwood had sold 52 East 69th Street to Jayne Mansfield.  The article noted, "Miss Mansfield plans alterations to the residence."

Jayne Mansfield and husband Matt Cimber with their newborn son and her four other children.  Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1965.

Mansfield had married her third husband, Italian-born director Matt Cimber exactly three months earlier, on September 24, 1964.  The couple separated on July 11, 1965.

Two months before that, on May 10, 1965, the Long Island City newspaper Star Journal reported, "Actress Jayne Mansfield's East Side town house at 52 East 69th street, Manhattan, was burglarized yesterday of $51,000 in jewelry."  The amount of the heist would translate to about $473,000 today.

Mansfield was in Biloxi, Mississippi appearing at the Gus Stevens Supper Club in the early summer of 1967.  After midnight on June 28, a driver for the club chauffeured the actress and three of her children, her attorney, and her romantic partner Sam Brody on a trip to New Orleans where Mansfield was to appear on an afternoon television show.  The automobile slammed into the rear of a tractor-trailer, killing Mansfield and the two other front seat passengers.

The former Gibson house later became home to Peter M. Robbins.  It was sold in 2022 to historian, author, and collector of Old Master paintings Davide Stefanacci for $9.1 million.

photographs by the author

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The Henry P. Davison Mansion - 690 Park Avenue

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

photographs by the author

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The 1911 Charles Lane Poor Mansion - 35 East 69th Street

photograph by Gryffindor

Born in Hackensack, New Jersey in 1866, Charles Lane Poor formed a partnership with his brother, James Harper Poor in 1900 to form the J. Harper Poor & Co. dry goods commission firm.  It was an unlikely move for Charles, who had earned his Ph.D. in astronomy from Johns Hopkins University in 1892.  His appointment as a professor of astronomy at Columbia University in 1903, however, ended his involvement with the dry goods firm.

The split did not affect the close relationship between the brothers, however, and in 1910 they planned side-by-side mansions on East 69th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues.   In January that year the Union Theological Seminary sold its property which engulfed the the block front of Park Avenue from 69th Street to 70th Street.  It did not take long for millionaires to snatch up the four parcels.

On January 12 The Sun reported that "The fifty foot plot on Sixty-ninth street was sold to Prof. Charles Lane Poor."  The brothers split the lot into 25-foot building plots for their homes.  Their close relationship did not extend so far as choosing the same architects.  James Harper Poor hired Howells & Stokes, while Charles commissioned Walker & Gillette.

Walker & Gillette designed the four-story No. 35 East 69th Street in the sedate neo-French Renaissance style.  Faced in limestone, its rusticated base held arched openings, which continued around the eastern elevation, made possible by a service alley.   The bowed Juliette balconies which fronted the full-length, second floor French windows were cast in bronze, rather than the more expected cast iron.  A prominent stone cornice (which lined up perfectly with that of the James Poor mansion) was upheld by substantial modillions.  The cost of construction was $50,000, or around $1.36 million today.

Charles Lane Poor had married Anna Louise Easton on April 19, 1892 and the couple had three children, 14-year old Charles, Jr.; Alfred Easton, who was 12; and 7-year old Edmund Ward.  By the time the family moved into the East 69th Street house Lane was internationally known in the scientific community.  He was an associate fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow in the New York Academy of Sciences, a member of the Astronomische Gesellschaft in Leipzig, and a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in London.

His academic work did not interfere with his other passion--yachting.  The year his new home was completed he invested in another costly project.  The Sun reported on March 1, 1911 "Prof. Charles Lane Poor of Columbia, a prominent member of the New York and other yacht clubs, has ordered a 45 foot day cruiser to be built by the Holmes company from designs by William Gardner."

Charles Lane Poor (original source unknown)

The family's summer home, Eastward, was in Shelter Island on Long Island.  There Poor was highly involved in the yachting sport and was secretary of the Manhasset Country Club.  In the summer of 1912, for instance, ten yacht clubs, some as far away as Chicago and Maine, competed in what the New-York Tribune described as a "series of three races for the Manhasset Bay challenge cup."  A special committee was formed with a representative of each club and Charles Lane Poor was chosen from the American Yacht Club.

The Poors did not restrict themselves to Eastward.  On May 8, 1910 the New-York Tribune's Newport correspondent reported that "Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt is here inspecting The Breakers, and Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs arrived to-night to make an inspection of Rosecliff.  Both are at the Muenchinger King cottage.  Other guests at the same house are Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lane Poor."

When in town Anna was active in charitable causes.  She was a director of the St. Luke's Home for Aged Women and took an active role in fund-raising for New York School of Applied Art.  

The mansion was originally four stories tall, like the James Harper Poor home next door.  photograph via www.episcopalschool.org

World War I had its effects on the Poor household.  Charles was tasked with solving a problem of air navigation.  In July 1918 Aerial Age wrote "The most difficult problem that was considered as facing the pilot...was that of keeping posted on his latitude and longitude...The matter of keeping to a course has been almost entirely solved by the invention of a radio receiving instrument by which it is possible to tell the exact direction from which radio waves are given forth."  That invention was Poor's "position line indicator."

The conflict more directly affected Charles, Jr.  A student at Harvard, he left school in 1917 to join the Navy.  On April 28, 1918 The Sun announced his engagement to Janet Sheppard.  As well as saying that the bride-to-be had not yet been introduced to society, the article noted that Charles "is now an ensign in the United States Navy and is awaiting orders for foreign service."

Those orders came more quickly than thought.  Two weeks later, on May 12, the New-York Tribune reported that the couple had been married "last evening in the chantry of St. Thomas's Church...Only relatives and a few intimate friends were present."  The article explained that the wedding "was hurriedly arranged on account of the bridegroom's war plans."

The unusual social conditions caused by war prompted a few allowances to social norms.  One of the first rites of passage for newly introduced young women was acceptance into the Junior League.  On December 14, 1918 that exclusive group made an exception to tradition.  In reporting on the new members, The New-York Tribune reported "Two recent brides, Mrs. Elliott D. Phillips and Mrs. Charles Lane Poor, who were married before making their formal debuts, were also elected to membership."

Charles Lane Poor was a recognized authority on matters celestial; so when in 1919 when Amherst College Professor David Todd announced he would attempt to communicate with Martians by using a wireless apparatus attached to a hot-air balloon, a reporter called on Poor for his thoughts.  And Poor was not reluctant to respond.  "I am not interested in such foolishness.  Any man who is has more imagination than science."

Poor's outspoken opinions became more notable--bordering on notorious--when he vocally attacked Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity as well as the theories of other well-established experts.  On November 28, 1922, for instance, the New-York Tribune reported "Charles Lane Poor, professor celestial mechanics at Columbia University, who has just completed a book in which he seeks to disprove the Einstein theory of relativity, interrupted his labors long enough yesterday to do the same thing with the conclusions of Professor Thomas Jefferson Jackson See, government astronomer at Mare Island, Calif., that he had discovered the secret of gravitation." 

Poor told the reporter "I know nothing whatever about the cause of gravitation nor, so far as I am aware, does anybody else."  He went on, "To prove his statement, Professor See would have to show either that all observations for the last thousand years are wrong, that the earth and moon are not what they seem, and have not been where they have always been seen, or else prove that the mathematics of...a whole line of eminent astronomers are faulty."

Alfred Easton Poor graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school in 1923.   He would go on to a celebrated career and in 1946 would establish a partnership with A. Stewart Walker, previously a partner in Walker & Gillette, which had designed the Poor mansion.  

Alfred was still living with his parents in 1927 when he receiving a traffic ticket in Lyndbrook, Long Island for "passing a red traffic signal."  He paid a $5 fine.

On October 20, 1927 Charles, Jr. died in Boston at the age of 30.  Two years later his widow, Janet, married her former brother-in-law, Alfred Poor, in the All Saints Church in Locust, New Jersey.

Charles and Anna continued on in the 69th Street house and at Shelter Island.   On April 19, 1942 they hosted a dinner party to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.  Included on the guest list, according to The New York Times, were "the original wedding party" from the 1892 ceremony.

Charles died in the residence on September 27, 1951 at the age of 85.  His obituary notice published by the Royal Astronomical Society did not overlook his passion for sailing.  Calling him "an ardent yachtsman," it noted "He wrote books on the measurement of yachts and several books on navigation."  

Anna died in No. 35 almost six years later, on May 8, 1957 at the age of 88.    The mansion shortly became home to the nonprofit Medical Passport Foundation, Inc.  Cruising World explained its services to travelers saying "For a small fee this organization will provide you with a passport-size packed for storing a succinct medical summery, including pertinent history, physical findings, and laboratory data."

The former Poor mansion was purchased by The Episcopal School in 1972.  After renovations it opened in September 1974.  Founded in 1961 by representatives of six Episcopal parishes, the goal was "to offer a developmentally appropriate early childhood program for children in the neighborhood," according to the school's website.

photo by Gryffindor

In 1986 the building was enlarged by adding two stories.  The period appropriate addition took the form of a fifth floor and mansard.  A stone balustrade was added to the cornice and the openings of the fifth floor were given arched pediments which tied them to the original architecture at the second floor.  The steep mansard, while admittedly a bit out of proportion, features French oeil-de-boeuf dormers.