The Skinny John M. Ruck House - 420 West 58th Street

In October 1881 developer John M. Ruck purchased a long parcel of property along West 58th Street from Effingham H. Nichols.  Included were vacant lots, a wooden stable, and one 25-foot wide "shanty," as described by The Real Estate Record.

Three months later, on January 14, 1882 the journal reported that Ruck's architects, Thom & Wilson, had filed plans for six buildings on the site.  Interestingly, four of them were five-story brick flats, typical of Ruck's projects; but two were private houses.  Those would share a 25-foot wide plot, giving each an astonishingly narrow 12.5 foot frontage.

The architects disguised the slender proportions by designing mirror image brownstone-faced residences that appeared nearly as one.  Paired stoops rose to side-by-side entrances flanked by full-height rounded bays.  Architrave frames surrounded the openings and leafy terra cotta panels and tiles provided interest.

The western house, No. 420, was initially operated as a boarding house.  Among the tenants in 1885 was Cuban born music teacher, Ramon S. Aquabella.  The 31-year old was hiding out from his wife and her family.

Aquabella had been renting a room in a house on West 29th Street where young Helen C. Walsh, the landlady's daughter, caught his attention.  An "acquaintanceship," as worded by The New York Times, developed.  But when it went beyond mere flirtation Helen's brother stepped in and "threatened to kill him unless he married her."

The couple was married on June 1, 1885.  Immediately afterward Aquabella disappeared.  The Walshes' attorneys found him in September living at No. 420 West 58th Street where he was arrested and charged with abandoning his wife and failing to contribute to her support.

In court Aquabella told of being forced into the marriage, said that "he had not intended to live with her," and accused the family of "coercion and fraud."  The fiery Cuban made a scene of sorts in the courtroom.  "The manner of the music teacher was very violent during the examination, and he called the counsel for the prosecution 'a liar' several times," reported The Times.

Also renting rooms in the house that year were two "Firemen First Grade."  John Schwab worked at Hook and Ladder Company No. 20, and Henry T. McBride was with Engine Company No. 54.

At sometime before 1895 John M. Ruck moved his family into the house.  He and his wife, Clara had two daughters, Cornelia (known as Nellie) and Marie.

He had given up real estate development around the same time to form the law office of Kohn, Ruck and Lippman.  The firm specialized in real estate law.  

In 1908 Nellie married Philip Ackerman, and coincidentally or not, November 11, 1914 Marie married Harvard graduate Stephen Hulburt Ackerman.

It was around this time that the name of the firm was changed to Jay-Em-Arr Realty Co., with Clara as president and Marie as a director.  That Nellie was not involved was, perhaps, a hint at troubles within the family.

Clara Ruck died in the 58th Street house on April 22, 1921.  Although her death notice in The New York Herald called her the "beloved mother of Nellie Ackerman and Marie Ackerman," at least one other obituary ignored Cornelia altogether.

The rift between Nellie and the family became obvious to everyone in 1926 when she sued her sister over the estate of a relative, Marie T. Becker.   John M. Rucker represented Marie as her attorney.

No. 420 seems to have been damaged when construction began on the apartment building next door, at Nos. 410-418 East 58th Street in 1928.  It was deemed an "unsafe building" by the Department of Buildings.  A construction permit was issued and reparations completed before the year's end.

The Ruck family retained ownership of the skinny house until 1940 when the Jay-Em-Arr Realty Corporation sold it to an unnamed buyer "who plans to remodel the building for his own occupancy," according to The New York Sun on August 19.

Those renovations included a puzzling a two-story extension--a sort of masonry screen--which brought the entrance to sidewalk level.  The original doorway was preserved, serving as an entrance to a sort of sun room at the former parlor level.

The house was photographed shortly after the renovations were completed.  photo via the NYC Department of Records & Information Services

Simultaneously the matching house at No. 422 was demolished in 1940 and replaced with an "office and storage" building.  While Thom & Wilson had worked hard to hide the narrow proportions of the house, the taller buildings that closed in on either side now exaggerated them.  The result is that the Ruck house is one of those quirky architectural oddities that dot the city.

The original facade can be seen through the extension windows.

photographs by the author
many thanks to reader Peter Hirsch for suggesting this post

The Sevillia Apts -- No. 117 West 58th Street

Philip G. Hubert arrived in Cincinnati from his native France in 1849, at the age of 19.  His profession as a teacher of French—which included writing his own textbooks—hardly foreshadowed the important career he would begin in New York years later.

He moved to New York in 1865 and opened an architectural office, soon partnering with James W. Pirrson to form Hubert & Pirrson.  Forward-thinking, Hubert designed a group of eight 12-story apartment buildings on Seventh Avenue, between 58^th and 59^th Streets in 1882; at a time when the concept of apartment living was just taking hold.  The ambitious and somewhat risky project cost nearly $5 million.

Hubert continued to improve his designs for apartment houses.  In 1891 he began work on the Sevillia with financial backing from August O. Hoddick.  A residential hotel, it replaced the two old structures at Nos. 117 and 119 West 58^th Street.  It would be ground breaking in modern conveniences and in fire-proofing.

Following Hubert’s death on November 1911, The Architectural Record remembered that in the Sevillia “Mr. Hubert did away with wooden floors, using a cement composition throughout.”  His aim, the journal said, “was to devise an apartment house so nearly fire-proof that the entire contents of a single apartment might burn to ashes without endangering, or even disturbing the rest of the building.”

The Sevillia would be marketed as being “intended to meet the wants of people who desire to combine the freedom from care of a hotel life with the comforts and privacy of an individual home.”   To this end Hubert designed ground-breaking innovations.  “This was also the first hotel in which each apartment was provided with a refrigerator cooled from a central plant, and in which the tenants were provided with running water, cooled and filtered for drinking.”

Completed in 1892 at a cost of $76,763 (around $2 million in 2017), the Sevillia was refined, if a bit imperious.  The two-story stone base, the first of four sections, was dominated by a gaping arch over the entrance.  A balcony, four bays wide, introduced a handsome three-story brownstone insert that sat within the second section—four stories of brown brick framed with paneled quoins.  Here free-standing columns and matching pilasters below a deep cornice sat on three story-tall pedestals.  

A cast iron balcony stretching the width of the building defined the third section; and the fourth, a three-story mansard level with stacked French-style dormers, sat above a handsome cornice with wreathed brackets.

Incised lines in the brickwork create the illusion of fluted pilasters.

Among the first residents of the Sevillia were George B. Prescott and his wife (whose country place, Elmside, was in Lakeville, Connecticut); and newlyweds Fairman Warren and his bride, the former Clara Stratton.  Financially comfortable at 32 years old, Warren worked in his father’s wallpaper business, Warren, Fuller & Co. at No. 129 East 42^nd Street and was a member of the exclusive Union League Club.

Also moving into the new building was the architect himself.   On December 12, 1894, The Sun complimented Mrs. Hubert for her cleverness in creating invitations to a benefit for St. Mary’s School.  Instead of the expected form, she had composed a poem using quaint Shakespearean spelling.  “A touch of originality often makes a great success of an unassuming benefit sale,” said the newspaper.  “Mrs. Philip G. Hubert of the Sevillia, 117 West Fifty-eighth street realized this principal, and in sending out the following jingle Mrs. Hubert, her friends think, wins the palm for originality.”

In 1905 elaborate electric lamps flanked the entrance and canvas awnings protected the apartments from summer heat.  photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The Huberts had new neighbors at the time in the form of attorney W. Rodman Winslow and his wife.  The couple moved into a seventh floor apartment in the Sevillia in September 1894.  The New York Times described the Winslows as “well-to-do” and their apartment as a “snug and handsomely-appointed flat.”

The 46-year old Winslow had two offices downtown, one for his legal business and the other for the management of his Advance and Discount Company, which provided “loans on chattels.”  He also owned the Mohican House hotel on Lake George.

A month before Mrs. Hubert was composing her invitations, Rodman Winslow complained of being "run down and dyspeptic."  His doctor.  Dr. Alexander Strong prescribed a tonic; but a far more serious problem loomed.

On the morning of December 2 the Winslows were dressing in their bedroom “which was separated from an alcove sitting room by a portiere,” as described by The Times.  Because the steam heat of the Sevillia sometimes caused the apartments to get stuffy, the upper pane of the sitting room window was lowered a crack to let in cool air.  But that morning Winslow felt a draft.

“Rodman, if you are chilly, close the sitting-room window,” his wife offhandedly commented.  They were the last words she would utter to her husband.

A few minutes later she called, “Rodman, have you closed that window?”

The Times reported “No response came, and she followed her husband, calling his name.  In the sitting room she halted, and a great dread came to her.”   Winslow was not in the sitting room and the window which had been closed at the bottom the night before was open.

“Half divining the awful truth, the wife nerved herself to peer into the court.  A moment later there was a piercing cry of horror and moans of anguish, and neighbors came, to find the wife fainting and the husband dead and frightfully mangled on the flags of the court.”

Apparently, in trying to close the top pane, Winslow had opened the bottom and reached out to push up the upper portion.  In doing so he fell out.  “Residents of the fourth and fifth floors of the apartment house, who were in rooms over the court, heart a frightful cry and a crash when Mr. Winslow fell, and saw him dead in the court.”

Fairman and Clara Warren were still in the building.  About three weeks after the Winslow tragedy Fairman, whose left leg had been slightly crippled his entire life, slipped and broke his right leg.  Now a near-invalid, he stopped going to his 42^nd Street office.  As a matter of fact, he rarely left the Sevillia at all. 

Clara was pregnant with their first child, and Warren fell into what The New York Times deemed “melancholia” over his disability.  Every morning a masseur would arrive to rub his legs; and each evening around 10:00 he would go down to the building’s office to talk to the watchman for about an hour.  Normally, according to building employees, it was Warren who did most of the talking, grumbling about other tenants.

The baby, James Stratton Warren, arrived in April 1895.  Clara had difficulty recuperating, The Sun reporting that “Since the birth of their child, Mrs. Warren’s health has been very delicate."  Because of his wife's health, Warren temporarily took a room on the floor below their apartment.  "He was most solicitous about his wife’s health, and spent most of his time with her,” said the newspaper.

Despite the happy occasion of a newborn son, Fairman Warren's depression over his physical condition did not improve.  He offhandedly spoke of suicide a few times, but no one took him seriously.  The Sun said “There was no reason, so far as can be learned, why he should have done so.  His domestic life was happy.”

Warren’s crankiness worsened as well--to the point of making frightening threats.  When he made his usual visit to the watchman on the night of June 10, he spent most of the time “complaining of the noise the late stayers among the tenants made when they came in.  He told the watchman that the noise which these persons made disturbed his sleep, and that if they were not more quiet in future some of them might get the contents of a big revolver which, he said, he had in his room.”

As it turned out, it was not the late stayers who got the contents of his big gun.  The following morning Warren’s masseur arrived at his room and found him dead on the bed, with a bullet wound in his right temple.  A note stated that he believed he was becoming paralyzed and, “dreading the consequences,” decided to kill himself.  Clara inherited the estate, valued at over half a million in 2017 dollars.

The Sevillia only a week earlier, had been the subject of yet another piece of disturbing press.  On Saturday night, June 2, Dr. J. Alexander Tonner met James A. Anderson in Bryant Park.  After treating Anderson to several beers, the 51-year old physician invited him to what The Evening World called his “high-class apartment-house” at 117 West Fifty-eighth street.”  Once in the apartment, Dr. Tonner showed Anderson ten photographs “of a very obscene nature.”

If Tonner thought his new friend would be titillated by the photos, he was sorely disappointed.  Anderson went to Anthony Comstock of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.  The following day Officer O’Connor arrived at the Sevillia armed with a warrant for Tonner’s arrest.  When he was arrested “another batch of the photographs was found in his possession,” reported The Evening World.

Tonner was held on $2,000 bail and charged with possessing and exhibiting obscene pictures.  In court he pleaded guilty; but in doing so he was unaware that the charges had been upgraded to “immoral practices.”

In sentencing Tonner, Judge Cowing accused him of being mentally ill.  “While there can be no palliation for the crime, it seems to me that some of your medical friends should have interested themselves in your behalf, for I think that you are not of sound mind.”  The judge felt he was being lenient in giving Dr. Tonner two years and six months in the penitentiary, saying the maximum penalty was 20 years.

“On the way to the penitentiary Dr. Tonner told Prison Guard Kelly that he thought he had pleaded guilty only to the charge of having obscene pictures in his possession.”

Most of the upscale residents appeared in the newspapers for much more respectable reasons.  On January 29, 1896 The New York Times advised society that Mrs. C. Vanderbilt De Forrest would be receiving “informally on Sunday afternoons after 3 o’clock for the rest of the season,” for instance.

The wedding of John Alden Philbrick and Elizabeth Van Valzah Wilson (“an unusually handsome girl,” according to The Times) on January 20, 1898 was a “notable” affair.   The newspaper was especially interested in the fact that a photographer had been hired for the reception.  A headline the following day read “Bridal Party Photographed” and the lengthy article said in part “There was a wedding reception at the home of the bride’s mother, 348 West Fifty-seventh Street, at which the bridal party, which formed a brilliant group, was photographed by flashlight, much to the interest of the guests.”

The newspaper noted that Philbrick “and his bride will live at the Sevilla [sic], 117 West Fifty-eighth Street.”

The newlyweds would have as neighbors an elderly couple, Augustus and Martha Gaylord.  On October 8, 1900 they celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary here.  Gaylord had come to New York from Connecticut in 1847, when he was 21 years old.  Because of ill health, he moved to Wisconsin in 1856 and during the Civil War was Adjutant General of the State of Wisconsin.  Following the war, in 1872, he returned to New York and started business. 

The same year that the Philbricks married, Augustus Gaylord finally retired at the age of 72, stepping down from his post as Commissioner of the Ammunition Manufacturers’ Association.  On March 30, 1901 he died in his apartments in the Sevillia at the age of 75.

Another well-known resident was Col. Sanders Dewees Bruce, a direct descendant of Robert Bruce, King of Scotland.  He had earned his rank during the Civil War, during which he commanded the 22^nd Brigade in the Battle of Shiloh.  Both General Sherman and General Grant recommended him for Brigadier General, but he resigned because of heart disease in 1864 and came to New York.

Bruce was an authority on pedigree horses and established the American Stud Book (the rights to which he sold to the Jockey Club for $35,000); and wrote The Horse Breeders’ Guide and Handbook and The Thoroughbred Horse.  His interests were reflected also in his memberships in the American Geographical Society and the American Museum of Natural History.

Like Bruce, Major Charles F. Ulrich had distinguished himself in the war.  The New York Times noted “He was brevetted Major for gallant and meritorious conduct in connection with the explosion of the mines at Petersburg, Va.”  Following the war he returned to New York and entered the insurance business.  The Times said “Major Ulrich was wealthy and unmarried.”  He would remain in the Sevillia until his death in his apartment on September 25, 1902.

That year the Sevillia described itself as "absolutely fireproof" when it advertised “one sunny apartment of two large rooms and bath, $1,000 a year, unfurnished; or $100 a month furnished.  Another of four rooms and bath, $800 a year, unfurnished; or $100 a month, furnished.  Restaurant.”  The “restaurant” was a necessity for residents in the apartments without kitchens.  The $100 monthly rent would be equivalent to about $2,850 today.

Upscale New Yorkers abandoned the city for the summer months, traveling to resorts like Newport and Tuxedo Park.  On June 20, 1904 an advertisement in the New-York Tribune offered “Three furnished apartments to sublet for the summer at low rents.”  It noted the conveniences of “restaurant, electric light, telephone.”

In 1908 the widowed Mrs. Frank W. Sanger lived in the Sevillia with her 23-year old son, Louis.  Frank Sanger had been the manager of Madison Square Garden and among the properties he left his wife was the Empire Theatre. 

Louis, who had graduated college the year before, left the apartment early in the evening of December 21, 1908.  Scandal would follow.

Three days earlier Mrs. Florence L. Greaves had been granted a divorce from William Homer Greaves, “well known in racing circles,” according to The Times.  The couple had been married for seven years and Florence charged her husband “with misconduct at Saratoga on August 15, 1908.”

Florence immediately took back her maiden name of Burns.  The Sun noted that she lived in the Rossleigh apartments at No. 1 West 85^th Street “with a maid.”  It soon became apparently that the misconduct in the marriage was not confined to William Greaves.

Mrs. Sanger had no inkling that when Louis left the Sevillia that evening he was on the way to the Rossleigh.  The Sun reported on December 22 “Miss Burns…left her apartments early in the evening, accompanied by Mr. Sanger.  They went in a taxicab and Mr. Sanger told the driver to go to Tiffany’s, which was open last night.”

The newspaper also revealed that the couple had obtained a marriage license at City Hall earlier that day.  Reporters rushed to the Sevillia to get more information on the socially-shocking story.

The Sun wrote “Mr. Sanger’s mother…said last night she didn’t know her son intended to marry Miss Burns, although she had heard that he was acquainted with her.”  The social embarrassment was no doubt devastating for the wealthy widow.

Dr. Stanley O. Sabel’s medical office was in the building at the time.  He had graduated from Columbia Medical School in 1898.  In astounding coincidence, he had been treating a 20-year old patient whose name was also Florence Burns the year before.

On January 9, 1908 Florence appeared before Justice Davis in the Supreme Court asking that her father, Samuel G. Burns, be appointed as her guardian for litigation purposes.  The reason for her request, she said, was “that she is about to sue Dr. Stanley O. Sabel…for $10,000 damages for an alleged vicious assault upon her while he was attending her professionally.”

The date of the alleged assault, she said, was on December 4, 1907.  Her shocking claims and the massive compensation she requested apparently fell flat.  On October 23 that year Sabel was still in the Sevillia and, in fact, took former classmate Dr. D. G. Reese Satterlee into his practice.

Despite its brushes with scandal, the Sevillia continued to house wealthy and well-respected New Yorkers.   Among these was Oliver C. Gayley, Vice President of the Pressed Steel Car Company and brother of James Gayley, first Vice President of the United States Steel Corporation.  Somewhat coincidentally, Oliver’s former sister-in-law, Julia Gardiner Gayley (daughter of Curtis Crane Gardiner of Gardiner’s Island) married a Sevillia resident, Gano Dunn, on August 26, 1920. 

In 1919 the Sevillia was electrified, including conversion of its two old hydraulic elevators.  The New York Edison Company announced “This eleven-story apartment building has an electrical installation of 900 lamps” and added “Forethought has kept the Sevillia modern for twenty-five years.”

Unlike many late Victorian apartment houses, the Sevillia maintained its status throughout the first half of the century.  Among the residents in the 1930s was W. D. Harper, grandson of one of the four Harper brothers who founded the noted publishing firm.

But by mid-century the aging building was in decline.  Now called the Park Wald Hotel, it caused a near international incident in 1959 when the Dominican Liberation Movement, an exile group, established its headquarters in the building.  The organization was formed in opposition to the regime of Generalissimo Rafael Leonides Trujillo Molina.

In response, the Dominican Republic Government accused the United States Government of harboring conspirators.  In a formal declaration on November 3, 1959 it said “that the United States should halt what it said were plots being carried on in the United States against the regime.”

Attorney General Luis E. Suero was quick to name Alfonso Canto, of the 58^th Street group, as a “chief conspirator” against the Dominican regime.  And he praised the Dominican Republic as “a decidedly anti-Communist country and loyal collaborator of the United Sates and the cause of the free world.”

After decades of decline, the former Sevillia apartment house was renovated in 2010 to become the Central Park Mews.  A facade restoration was completed six years later.  Now containing 99 rental units, the tradition of the building that broke new ground in apartment living nearly 125 years ago goes on.

photographs by the author
many thanks to Michael McShea for suggesting this post

The 1902 Coronet Apts -- No. 57 West 58th Street

On February 18, 1901 John W. Condit and his wife, Caroline, sold the 100-foot square property at the northeast corner of Sixth Avenue and 58^th Street to the Mela Realty Company.  It sat directly behind the hulking New York Athletic Club on 59^th Street (on the stretch later known as Central Park West) and a block west of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s massive chateau on Fifth Avenue.

Mela Realty purchased the corner with the intention of erecting a high-class, modern apartment building.  To back the aggressive project, it took a $300,000 from William H. Burgess on the same day the title was transferred.

Architect Harry S. Clawson received the commission to design what would be called The Coronet at No. 57 West 58^th Street.  The Beaux-Arts style structure was completed in 1902, a 10-story brick and stone confection gushing with lacy balconies, carved lions’ heads and heavy scrolled brackets.   Residents entered through a large two-story arched opening with free-standing columns and a cartouche with a carved coronet.  A stone parapet crowned the roofline.

A carved cartouche surrounded by wheat contains a coronet.  The balcony directly above once held an ornate iron railing.

Modern conveniences included five hydraulic elevators.  Extra income came from upscale shops along the sidewalk, and the New York Athletic Club which took two full floors as additional sleeping rooms for its members in October 1902.  The Club spent a staggering $10,012 to furnish and decorate the apartments—around $285,000 in 2015.  Five months earlier the Mela Realty Company announced that its offices would be moved into the new building.

Lace-like ironwork and robust pediments adorned the facade.

The Coronet filled with well-to-do residents, including several from the medical profession.  Nonetheless, the Mela Realty Company was unable to meet its mortgage payment.  On April 2, 1903, less than a year after the doors opened, William Burgess and his wife, Cora, sued and won the building in foreclosure.

Irving Underhill photographed the building in 1912.  From the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In 1905 two of the street level shops on the 58^th Street side were Thomas Young’s floral shop and Albert Papa’s fruit store.  Although the Coronet had its own “private electric plant" below ground, it also depended on gas for lighting when the electricity failed.  In the basement the gas lines traveled through two meters, just under the entrance stairs.  On October 13 something went terribly wrong.

That afternoon a tremendous explosion blew away the stone steps.  The force of the blast knocked Henry J. Morton, a private detective walking by, off his feet.  He jumped to his feet and ran to send in a fire alarm.

Tenants in the apartments above opened their windows and peered down to see what had happened.  At that point a second explosion occurred.  The New York Times reported they “were showered with fragments of fruit from Papa’s store and rose leaves from the florist’s.”

Rumors that the Coronet had been dynamited circulated through the streets.  When the fire engines arrived the crowd around the building was so great that police reserves were called into disperse it.  The Times said the two stores were “wrecked.”

Police discovered that the two gas meters under the stairway had exploded.  “Just why was not learned.”

While some apartments had up to 8 rooms, the floorplan of this level had much smaller apartments, including #4-F which would be termed a "studio apartment" today.  from the collection of Columbia University Libraries

A few months later dentist Morris I. Schamberg moved into the building from Philadelphia.  He specialized in “oral surgery, including X-ray work and extraction under anesthetics.”  Among other residents in the medical profession here were renowned surgeon Walter Arthur Bastedo, Dr. Frank C. Lewis (who was also managing editor of the International Journal of Surgery), and dentist Stephen O. Storck.

Beginning in 1906 the New York Athletic Club considered buying the Coronet as an annex to its Central Park South clubhouse.  On May 10 that year The Evening World reported that the club “now the largest of the kind in the world,” needed additional space and was eyeing the Coronet.  The building was valued at $1 million at the time.  The debate among members and even negotiations with William Burgess would go on for years.

Investigators were faced with a most puzzling mystery that began on April 12, 1909 when a 44-year old resident threw herself from her ninth floor apartment.  An original resident of the Coronet, the women’s wealth was reflected in her rent alone--$3,000 a year; or about $6,700 a month today.  The Times note that the apartment was “elaborately furnished, and that many of the articles of furniture had the monogram ‘H’ on them.”

Hearing the body fall to the pavement, the Coronet’s engineer, Charles Halloweg, and his assistant, George Walsh, rush to the scene; quickly joined by superintendent Julian J. Pettigrew.  A few seconds later, the dead woman’s nurse, Ann Driscol, arrived and identified her as Mrs. William H. Hamilton.

Things turned murky, however, when Coroner Harburger arrived at the apartment.  There he found Ann Driscol and Mrs. Ellen M. Von Gerichten, who identified herself as Anita Hamilton’s sister.  “The nurse told the Coroner that Mrs. Hamilton had had melancholia and had suffered from delusions,” reported The New York Times the following day.  “She said that she had constantly talked of the fate of a man who leaped, she thought, from the window of the adjoining New York Athletic Club some months ago.  This had preyed upon her mind, the nurse thought.”

The women said that they had suggested to Mrs. Hamilton, around 2:35, that they take a walk in Central Park.  She reportedly replied “All right, I’ll be glad to go for a walk.  I’ll go and put on my hat and gloves.”

When she did not return, and did not answer their calls, the women went into the little room  off the library that she had entered.  They looked out the open window to see her body laying in the court “used as an entrance by the trades-people.”

But when the Coroner asked about the husband, he became suspicious when neither could give him any information.  He went to the building superintendent who said “he did not know the initials of the husband.  He was out of town.”

Coroner Harburger left the two women, telling them he would get the information on the husband if he had to subpoena everyone involved.  A reporter from The Times who arrived later asked Pettigrew about Mr. Hamilton and he, too, got vague answers.

The superintendent said he “is either a banker or a broker, or, rather he was, for he has been retired for a good many years.  He was an elderly man.  After his wife went away for her health he was ill and went away, too.  I do not know where.”

The New-York Tribune’s reporter was no more successful.  “The nurse and Mrs. Von Gerichten said they knew Mr. Hamilton was a banker, but did not know his place of business or his first name.  They said Mr. Hamilton had suffered a nervous breakdown from watching his wife and caring for her and that he had left the city two days ago for a rest, but they didn’t know where he had gone.”

Convinced that information was being withheld, Coroner Harburger refused to issue a permit for the burial of the body until all the facts were revealed.  It wasn’t long before Maurice Eller arrived at the undertaker’s establishment and identified his wife’s sister, Annette de la Barre.

The daughter of Joseph and Christine de la Barre, she “had money of her own,” according to Eller.  The Sun reported on April 14 “He said she had had delusions due to a nervous trouble and was unquestionably out of her mind when she took her life.”

Annette’s depression was apparently caused by a broken heart.  The coroner asked Eller about the photograph of a man on her dresser.  Harburger told reporters “Eller told me that he was John Bowers Lee, senior member of the banking firm of Lee, Kretchmar & Co…He said that Mr. Lee had charge of all his sister-in-law’s financial affairs and was an old friend.  Mr. Lee, he told me, was in Europe, having sailed several weeks ago.”  The coroner added that following Lee’s departure, “the woman had become despondent.”

The mystery surrounding Annette de la Barre deepened when Eller said he wished to avoid any publicity and “it was his desire to have Miss de la Barre buried under the name of Mrs. Hamilton.”  The Sun said “Beyond saying that Miss de la Barre had several brothers and sisters in this city, he declined to tell anything more about her.”

When millionaire John Philbrick Laflin died on February 24, 1903, his widow and daughter, both named Ellen, were staying at the Hotel Savoy.  The family’s summer estate “Bell Haven” was in Greenwich, Connecticut.  By the time of the younger Ellen’s introduction to society, they had moved into the Coronet.

On December 29, 1911 The New York Times reported on the dance Ellen Laflin gave at the St. Regis Hotel for her debutante daughter.  She was no doubt elated when her entertainment got first billing in the newspaper’s society headlines that morning.

Dr. Stephen Storck and his family were still in their eighth floor apartment in 1913.  At only 35 years old, Storck was highly successful.  He and his wife had two young sons.

Tragedy befell the couple in the early hours of June 5 that year.  The evening before they had entertained a married couple and the four played bridge until about midnight.  An hour and a half after their guests left, Mrs. Storck assumed her husband was asleep when she heard a terrifying shriek.

The Sun reported “His wife heard him scream as he went down, and looking out, saw his body on the pavement below.”  The dentist was instantly killed and his death could not be determined as to whether it was accidental or suicide.

Dr. Walter A. Bastedo was living here at the time.  A specialist in abdominal diseases, he was associated with St. Luke’s Hospital and taught pharmacology at Columbia Medical School.  When Booker T. Washington became seriously ill in 1915, Bastedo was consulted.   He diagnosed the educator with serious kidney trouble and blood pressure of 215.  On November 4, 1915 Dr. Bastedo personally brought Dr. Washington to St. Luke’s Hospital for treatment.  Unfortunately, it was too late.  Booker T. Washington died 10 days later.

Upscale tenants like Margaret Auchmuty Mackay and Annie Emily Claiborne Pell were in the Coronet at the time.  Annie was the widow of the wealthy Clarence Pell and her cottage on Rhode Island Avenue was well known among the fashionable Newport set.  Her father, Colonel Claiborne, was a member of Congress and she was descended from William G. C. Claiborne, the first Secretary of the State of Virginia.

And the building continued to house an inordinate number of physicians.  In 1919 Dr. Edward Bronson Finch, Dr. James Herbert Lawson and Dr. Frank Waldo Hempstone all listed their addresses here.  Already in the building were Dr. James H. Kenyon, Dr. Herbert L. Wheeler and his Yale-educated son Dr. Clifford S. Wheeler.

During World War I the tailor in the building turned its focus to custom-fitting uniforms.  The Seventh Regiment Gazette, October 1918 (copyright expired)

On October 30, 1918 some New Yorkers may have been shocked when the New-York Tribune reported that the young Dr. Wheeler had left “for Vladivostok to join the Czecho-Slavak army.”  Wheeler had recently been inducted into the U.S. Army as a lieutenant, but was granted a furlough so he could “join the Czecho-Slovak forces operating in Siberia.”

Following the Armistice, now-Captain Wheeler testified to the peace conference in Paris as to conditions in Siberia.  He was home in time for the December 1, 1919 announcement of his engagement to Dorothy Jeannette Lewis at a dinner dance in her parents’ Springfield, Massachusetts home.

The Coronet had an artistic group of residents as well, including painter Charles Ebert, American impressionist Hassam Childe, and voice coach Mrs. Henry Smock Boice.  Mrs. Boice regularly gave musicales and recitals in what The Music Magazine described on February 17, 1916 as “her handsome studio.”

Fuzzy photographs captured the studio of Mrs. Henry Smock Boice in 1916 The Music Magazine, February 11, 1916 (copyright expired)

William Burgess sold the Coronet in November 1919 after still-ongoing negotiations with the New York Athletic Club broke down.  The new owners, brothers Everett and I. Randolph Jacobs, quickly resold the building a month later to a syndicate which announced that “the building will be altered into apartments of from two to five rooms.”

Alterations would have to wait until leases expired and in 1920 residents were still advertising to sublet their apartments as they left for Europe or summer resorts.  On April 25, 1920 an advertisement in the New-York Tribune offered “Seven rooms, 3 baths; beautifully furnished.”  And later that year an ad appeared for a “comfortably furnished housekeeping apartment” of “8 rooms, 3 baths, $600 monthly” for eight months.

The Coronet continued to house well-to-do and celebrated residents throughout the first half of the century.  In the fall of 1925 internationally-renowned flutist George Barrere moved in, possibly because of proximity to Carnegie Hall.

But the second half of the century was not so kind.  Modern apartment buildings lured affluent renters, and reduced income contributed to the building’s decline.  At some point the three upper cornices were sheared off, the parapet removed, and the balconies below the two-story engaged columns on both sides were lost.

Long, blank scars and ornate brackets with nothing to support testify to the missing balconies and cornices.

In 1976 the building was converted to an 85-apartment condominium.  The renovation included a distracting upper floor with a slanted skylight visible from the street.  Despite changes inside, the building retained its name, The Coronet.

In 1985 The Manhattan Ocean Club opened in the building, a result of the rebirth of the area now filling with trendy and upscale eateries.  The restaurant hired chef Steve Mellina, who studied at the Cordon Bleu in Paris.  Considered one of the best fish restaurants in Manhattan, patrons were prepared to spend a minimum of $125 in the room lined with Picasso reproductions.  The Manhattan Ocean Club was in the Coronet for two decades, closing in 2006.  It was replaced by Quality Meats Restaurant.

A mishmash of garish commercial awnings and an unsightly fire escape detract from what remains of the 1901 design.

Today the somewhat careworn Coronet apartment building is little noticed by passersby.  But a pause to look up reveals the remnants of Harry Clawson’s 1901 beauty.

photographs by the author