The Ira A. Place House - 268 West 77th Street

 

Real estate developer Dore Lyon hired Edward Angell to design four high-stooped rowhouses on the south side of West 77th Street between Broadway and West End Avenue in 1889.  The 18-feet-wide residences would rise four stories above high English basements.  Angell created them as two Romanesque Revival-style models in a balanced A-B-B-A configuration.

At the western end of the row was 268 West 77th Street, an "A" model.  A solid wing wall of undressed stone flanked the stoop, beside which was a rounded, two-story bay.  Colorful stained glass filled the transoms of the parlor windows, and the panel above the arched entrance was intricately carved with delicate vines.

The center stained glass transom has been lost, most likely to a one-time window air conditioner.  The arched opening above the door was originally stained glass, as well.

The third and fourth floors were clad in beige brick and trimmed in brownstone.  Below the peaked gable was a decorative, blind arcade.

Construction was completed in 1890.  Dore Lyon did not sell 268 West 77th Street, however, until March of 1895, when the "four-story and basement brown-stone and buff-brick" dwelling was offered at auction.   It may have been the ongoing Financial Panic of 1893 that lessened bidders' enthusiasm.  The single bid of $25,000 (about $935,000 in 2025) was refused.

Finally, six years after construction was completed, on September 23, 1896, The New York Times reported that Dore and Anna E. Lyon had sold 268 West 77th Street.  The buyers were Ira Adelbert Place and his wife, the former Katharine B. Gauntlett.

Ira Place was born in New York City on May 8, 1854.  He graduated from Cornell University in 1881 and was admitted to the bar in 1883.  He and Katharine were married in 1893 and had three children, three-year-old Katharine, two-year-old Hermann Gauntlett, and newborn Willard Fiske Place.  When the family moved into 268 West 77th Street, Place was assistant to the general counsel of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company, as well as a director in four other railroads.

Ira Adelbert Place in his later years, from the collection of the Eastman Museum.

Place's position and influence within New York Central increased.  In April 1905, he was appointed the general counsel and a vice president of the railroad.  Apparently well satisfied with the Upper West Side, he was admitted to membership in the West End Association on February 4, 1907.  Founded by millionaire W. E. D. Stokes in 1884 as the Citizens' West Side Improvement Association, it was the Upper West Side's watchdog agency, lobbying for improvements and against incursions, like garbage dumps.

Place's membership in the West End Association and his firm's interests would come into direct conflict in October 1911.  As the railroad laid plans to provide passenger service along the Hudson River, a critic warned the press, "An open railway terminal in full view of the costly Riverside Drive and Parkway...would be an eyesore to Washington Heights and an eyesore to New York in general."

A reporter from The New York Times went to the Place house to obtain a response on October 11, 1911.  His timing was less than considerate--he arrived at approximately midnight.  The interview came to an abrupt conclusion:

Mr. Place listened from the second-story window.  Then he asked who gave him the information.  He was told that his caller was a Times reporter.  Mr. Place closed the window.  He did not reappear.

In 1912, Katharine enrolled in Vassar College.  Three years later, in June 1915, her engagement to James Fairchild Adams, who had just graduated from Princeton, was announced.  The wedding would wait until Katharine's graduation.  

The couple was married in the Church of the Messiah at 34th Street and Park Avenue on November 9, 1916.  "After their honeymoon trip," reported The New York Times, "Mr. and Mrs. Adams will live in New Kensington, near Pittsburgh, Penn., where Mr. Adams is in business."

Like their father, Hermann and Willard attended Cornell.  Hermann graduated in 1917 and immediately went off to war, serving with the U.S. Army.  Upon his return, he went into banking with the Mercantile Trust Company.

On March 6, 1921 the New York Herald reported on Hermann's engagement to Angela Turner Moore.  As his sister had done, Hermann was marrying into a socially prestigious family.  The Cornell Alumni News mentioned that Angela was "a member of the Colonial Dames and of the Junior League."

On January 24, 1928, according to The New York Times, Ira A. Place "announced at a meeting of the Board of Estimate...that the New York Central was ready to cooperate with the city in the vast west side improvement."  The article said he, "seemed to take pleasure in the graceful speech he made," during which he asserted that while the railroad, "hoped for more room for expansion of its yards on the west side, it still wished to cooperate with the city and was ready to make concessions."

The following day, Place prepared to go to Albany for a conference of the New York Central executives.  Before he could leave the house, as reported by The Times, the 73-year-old died "of thrombosis following a stroke of apoplexy."  In reporting his death, the newspaper said, "Mr. Place's name will be linked with some of the most important improvements in New York City in the present generation."

The funeral was held in the Community Church on Park Avenue at 34th Street (previously the Church of the Messiah).  The New York Times reported, "Railroad men of every rank, jurists, educators and civic officials made up a large part of a gathering of more than 700 at the funeral services for Ira A. Place."  The article included an exhaustive list of esteemed mourners at the service.

The formidable wing walls of the stoop survived in 1941.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Place's estate was appraised at $484,954, or about $8.63 million in 2025 terms.  The bulk of the estate went to Katherine.  Each of the children, including Willard, who was unmarried and still lived at 268 West 77th Street, received $1,000.

Katharine Place sold 268 West 77th Street shortly afterward.  It was divided into unofficial apartments.  Among the tenants in 1933 was Abram A. Preciado, who ran "a clearing house for bringing travel car owners together with passengers," as he described it in court that year.  If a vehicle owner were driving to Chicago, for instance, Preciado would match him with individuals going there.  The owner's costs would then be offset and the passengers' fees would be cheaper than riding by train.

Nathan Cahan lived here in 1947.  He was listed within the directory of Local No. 802 Associated Musicians of Greater New York.

An official conversion was completed in 1968.  It resulted in two apartments per floor.  The stoop was removed and the entrance lowered to below grade.  It may have been at this time that most of the stained glass transoms throughout the house were removed.

photographs by the author

The 1891 Granville Moss White House - 272 West 77th Street

 

Working for developer Francis M. Jenks, in 1891 architect Clarence Fagan True designed a group of seven upscale homes that wrapped the southeast corner of West End Avenue and West 77th Street.  Comfortable with combining two or three historic styles to create residences that were at once fanciful and elegant, True designed this project in three groups, culminating in a striking, unified pair at 270 and 272 West 77th Street.

Looking at a glance like a single mansion, the houses were significantly different in size.  At 28 feet wide, 272 West 77th Street was 11 feet wider than its counterpart at 270.  The arched entrances sat within a Romanesque Revival base of undressed stone above short stoops.  Medieval turned to Elizabethan in the intricately carved stone railing of the full-width second floor balcony.  The smooth-faced limestone upper floors of 272 West 77th Street were divided into two sections--one bowed, the other flat-faced.  They rose to a dormered mansard.

The two houses were meant to appear as one.

No. 272 West 77th Street became home to Dr. Granville Moss White, his wife, the former Laura Dunham Tweedy, and their two sons, six-year-old Theodore Tweedy and two-year-old Nelson Lloyd.  

Born in Danbury, Connecticut on May 21, 1855, Granville M. White graduated from Yale Law School in 1877, then changed course.  He received his medical degree from Columbia University Medical School in 1884.  When he moved his family into the West 77th Street house, he was one of three examining physicians for the Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York.  (He would later become a vice-president of the firm.)

This photo of a confident-looking Granville Moss White was taken during his senior year at Yale Law School, in 1877.  (copyright expired)

Early in the morning of December 20, 1898, the White family were roused from their sleep.  The family of Charles H. Raymond lived at 260 West 73rd Street and Raymond's sister-in-law, Julia Underwood, was visiting for the holidays from Washington, D.C.  Fire was discovered by a maid and the cook around 6:30.  As the cook, Harriet Fee, rushed upstairs to awaken the residents, "there came a great volcanic burst of flame," as worded by The Sun.  In the end Harriet, Julia Underwood, and Mrs. Raymond were killed, and six people injured.

Charles Raymond had been rescued by firefighters just after his wife jumped to her death.  When he reached street level, he saw the body of his sister-in-law on the ground.  The Sun reported, "He covered his eyes with his arms, and would have fallen had not one of the firemen caught him.  He was taken to the house of a friend, Dr. G. W. [sic] White of 272 West Seventy-seventh street."

Like their neighbors, the Whites had a domestic staff.  Among them in 1894 was a "German nursery governess."  The family would have also employed a cook, and at least one chambermaid, a butler, and possibly a laundress.  On April 13, 1900, a new cook started work and it was not long before trouble ensued.

Two nights later, Dr. White was reading in his study when he heard someone "fumbling cautiously at the knob of the front door," as reported by the New York Sun.  He listened and the noise began again.  "Then he tiptoed to the front door and opened it suddenly," said the article.  A man entered the hall and White "pounced upon him and dragged him into the study, where there was a light on, and demanded to know what the fellow was doing at the front door."

"I am a cousin of your new cook and I have called to see her."

The cook was summoned to the study and she confirmed that the man was her cousin.  She explained that he probably did not know better than to try to enter the house uninvited.  Dr. White was unconvinced and took Samuel Farcusin, who was a Hungarian-born tailor, to the West 68th Street police station and had him arrested as a "suspicious person."  The Sun said, "He could speak little English and seemed badly frightened."

The following year, in August 1901, White hired architect Charles A. Rich (of the recently dissolved firm of Lamb & Rich) to make $500 in improvements to the house, including "new steel beams and girders."  The renovations seem to have been in anticipation of the White family's leaving West 77th Street and leasing the dwelling.  They moved to Morristown, New Jersey where, in 1910, they would acquire the striking Colonial Revival style mansion, Oak Dell.

In 1902, 272 West 77th Street was rented by William Alexander Burrows and his wife, the former Virginia Prickett.  The New York Times described Burrows as "a well-known broker in foreign exchange" who came from "an old English family."  William Burrows died "suddenly" in the house on June 4, 1903 (the term most often suggested a heart attack or stroke).  Virginia Burrows continued to lease the house for several years.

Frances S. Barnes occupied 272 West 77th Street by 1909.  Described by The New York Sun as "a wealthy young woman and an exhibitor at horse shows," she was the unmarried daughter of Thomas R. Barnes and the granddaughter of millionaire publisher Alfred Smith Barnes.  Her affluence was reflected in an article in the New York Herald on July 23, 1909, which reported that she was offering a $200 reward for the return of a three-stone, diamond Tiffany ring which she lost while getting in or out of a taxicab at Broadway and 42nd Street.  The reward would equal nearly $7,000 in 2024.

Frances's luck with jewelry worsened three years later when, on December 27, 1912, The Sun reported she offered a $1,000 reward for "the return of more than $10,000 worth of jewelry" stolen from her.

The White family continued to lease 272 West 77th Street to well-heeled families--James K. Mason in 1913, Anatole Levy in 1915, and Axel Raun in 1919, for instance--until Granville Moss White's death in 1931.

The house was purchased by the Nordacs Club, a Jewish men's social and charitable club established in February 1919.  The club's name was the backwards spelling of its founder's surname--attorney Louis Scadron.  It had been operating from 220 Lenox Avenue.  The club published its monthly magazine The Nordacs News from here.  Among its charitable works was the distribution of baskets of food and toys to the poor during the Christmas and Passover holidays.

The Nordacs Club regularly hosted charity events that were supported by big names in entertainment and sports circles.  On December 18, 1935, for instance, it staged a charity boxing event to benefit the poor.  Guest referees included Jack Dempsey and Irving Jaffee and, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the event included a "comedy bout between A. Schact, the baseball clown and Milton Berle."  (It would be one of several appearances Berle made for Nordacs Club benefits.)

In his July 3, 1936 "Broadway" column in the Daily News, three years after the Nazi party came to power in Germany, Ed Sullivan wrote about "an outfit that is circularizing clubs and organizations, offering Aryan orchestras, entertainers and serenaders."  Saying that one of the first letters went to "the Nordacs Club, composed of Jewish members," Sullivan said flatly, "New York has no place for these cheap, poisonous Old World hatreds."

In 1941 a Nordacs Club banner hung from the second story balcony.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

It may have been that disturbing trend, both abroad and in America, that prompted a change within the Nordacs Club.  In his 1935 The Political Clubs of New York City, Roy V. Peel noted,

The Nordacs Club of 272 West 77th Street, heretofore known as strictly a social club, is now bent on taking an active part in politics.  The club has an active membership of more than 750 members [and] owns its own four-story building in West 77th Street, between West End avenue and Broadway, and is considered one of the best financed social clubs in the city.

Peel said, "Just what the politic of the club will be has not been revealed," but he had been told that "the club shall use its membership, consisting of young men over the age of 21 years, to good advantage and for the mutual benefit of the club and its members."

In 1940, the Nordacs Club shared its clubhouse with the Knickerbocker Post No. 111 of Jewish Veterans.

The club left 272 West 77th Street in the late 1950s.  A renovation completed in 1962 resulted in twelve apartments.  From the outside, the residence is little changed since its completion more than 130 years ago.

photographs by the author

many thanks to Ralph Stone for prompting this post and for his valuable input.

The 1891 Frederick W. Lewis House - 270 West 77th Street

 

In 1891 architect Clarence Fagan True designed a group of seven homes for developer Francis M. Jenks that wrapped the southeast corner of West End Avenue and West 77th Street.  True drew heavily from historical styles; but he preferred to adulterate them with his own liberal interpretation.  Often melding two or three styles into an attractive and sometimes playful concoction, he produced mansions and townhouses that managed to be at once elegant and fanciful.

He designed this group in three parts--four high-stooped homes on the avenue, a massive corner mansion, and two low-stooped, or American basement, houses on West 77th Street.  The eastern-most house, 270 West 77th Street, was the little brother of 272.  True designed the residences as a unified pair, but 270, at 17-feet-wide, was 11 feet narrower than its fraternal twin.  

270 West 77th Street is a fraction of the width of its commodious neighbor to the right.

The arched, double-doored entrance sat above a five-step stoop.  The Romanesque Revival base faced in chunky, undressed stone abruptly changed style with a richly carved Elizabethan frieze.  Above it, the smooth-faced limestone facade formed a three-faced bay with spiral moldings at the corners of each floor.  A stone balcony fronted the pointed gable at the mansard level.

Frederick W. Lewis and his wife Maggie purchased the house on January 5, 1893.  A diamond and pearl dealer, he was the head of Fred. W. Lewis & Co. at 1 Maiden Lane.  His business was not in finished jewelry, but in the importing, cutting and polishing of the gems.

Following Frederick Lewis's death in 1905, Maggie sold the house, and on May 10, 1906 liquidated the furnishings at auction.  It seems that her husband had left her in financial straits.  It was common in the 19th and early 20th centuries for well-do-to families who were relocating to sell off the furnishings and start over.  But Maggie also sold off what the auction notice called "the Family Jewels."  Considering that her husband had been a high-end dealer, Maggie's collection was enviable, appraised at "over $25,000," or more than $775,000 in 2022.  The listing said:

Every piece of the finest quality and in the latest settings.  A very valuable diamond Necklace, several beautiful Rings, diamond, sapphire and ruby; also Pins, Brooches, Lorgnette chains, Bracelets, &c. &c.

She sold the house to J. Louis Schaefer, president of the Grace National Bank and a vice president of the W. R. Grace Company.  As an interesting sidenote, when World War I broke out in Europe, trapping hundreds of traveling Americans, J. Louis Schaefer hired a steamship company to bring home Americans stranded in Italy.  Before then Schaefer had left 270 West 77th Street, selling it in September 1911 to the estate of James C. Miller.  

Mary Emma Miller was James's widow.  That her late husband's estate purchased the property was most likely the idea of her son, Adna H. Miller.  He had been a partner with his father in the real estate and developing firm J. C. Miller & Son.  Adna now ran the company on his own.

Adna and his brother James Calvin, Jr. moved into the house with their mother.  A mover and shaker within the real estate community, Adna was regularly involved in property deals.

Mary Emma died in the house on the evening of March 26, 1918.  Her funeral was held in the parlor four days later.

James Calvin Miller remained at 270 West 77th Street at least through the mid-1920's.  By 1937 Emery C. Cochran was living here.  A high school teacher, Cochran's quiet life gave little hint of his impressive past.  During World War I he had served as the  War Department's chief military censor.  Cochran remained in the house for a full decade.

At mid-century 207 West 77th Street was being operated as a rooming house.  Not all the tenants were especially upstanding.  Living in Apartment 2 was Doris Garcia.  She became a part of a Congressional Hearing on Juvenile Delinquency on July 14, 1955.

A New York detective testified about the arrest of William John O'Connell, a 29-year-old electrician charged with possessing pornographic films.  In his possession was "this little black book" in which investigators found "many names, addresses and telephone numbers of girls in New York City."  Among them was Doris Garcia.  Questioned, O'Connell "stated that this girl was a call girl; that he met her at the Hotel Peerless."

A renovation completed in 1980 resulted in a total of seven apartments.  Then, in 2000, the former Lewis house became the Country Inn Bed & Breakfast.  It operated until 2018, at which time 270 West 77th Street was returned to a single-family home.

photographs by the author

LaptrinhX.com has no authorization to reuse the content of this blog

The 1890 Frank C. Hollister House - 264 West 77th Street

 

Like its neighbor to the left, the parlor transoms of 264 West 77th Street were originally filled with stained glass.  Sadly, one became the victim of a window air conditioner and the others were removed.

Real estate developer Dore Lyon began construction of four high-stooped rowhouses on the south side of West 77th Street between Broadway and West End Avenue in 1889.  Architect Edward Angell had designed the 18-foot-wide Romanesque Revival homes in a balanced A-B-B-A configuration.  No. 264 was a "B" model.  Four stories tall above the high basement, it featured a three-sided bay at the basement and parlor levels that terminated in a balcony with a fanciful pierced stone railing.  The arched windows of the second floor sat within a wide stone frame below a continuous eyebrow.  That treatment was carried on in the three openings of the top floor,  A blind attic "window" sat within the gable.

Although the house was completed in 1890, Lyon did not sell it until May 1894, when Cornelius H. Hackett paid $26,000 for the property (about $845,000 in 2022).  Only two years later he resold it to real estate operator Emma Louise Pinkney.  She immediately leased it to Dr. Frank Canfield Hollister and his wife, the former Elaine Sidell Shirley.

264 West 77th Street, a B model, is second from left along the row.

The Hollisters opened the house with a splash.  On December 11, 1896 The New York Times reported that they "gave a large reception at their new home, 264 West Seventy-seventh Street, yesterday afternoon."  Six women assisted Elaine in receiving, a number that became understandable when the article mentioned, "Six hundred invitations were issued."  The society caterer Clark served the supper.

The couple welcomed a baby boy, Frank, Jr., on August 4 the following year.  His sister, Gloria Elaine, would arrive in 1900.  The Hollisters country home was in Suffern, New York.

Born in 1866, Frank Canfield Hollister had graduated from Bellevue Medical College in 1890.  He ran his private practice from the residence, while acting as a house physician with Bellevue Hospital.  A modern man, he embraced the new automotive technology, and on June 7, 1899 was one of 27 men who organized the Automobile Club of America.  The New York Times reported the members "are interested in the self-propelling carriage as a pleasurable means of locomotion."

Both of Elaine's parents were deceased, and so living with the family was her sister, Grace Isabel Shirley.  Grace was married to Lester G. Wilson in the fashionable St. Thomas's Church on Fifth Avenue on October 28, 1909.  Elaine was her sister's matron of honor.

In April 1913 Emma L. Pinkney transferred the title to 264 West 77th Street to her sons, Cornelius Sidell and Townsend Pinkney.  They continued to lease the house to the Hollister family.

Twenty-three years after he was born in the residence, Frank Canfield Hollister, Jr's. engagement to Muriel Adair Wilson was announced on December 26, 1920.

At the time of his engagement, Frank's father was spreading himself thin.  In addition to Dr. Hollister's work with Bellevue, he was a visiting physician with the St. Elizabeth's and Gouverneur Hospitals.

The Hollisters were at their Suffern home on November 30, 1929 when Frank Canfield Hollister suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 62.  The New York Times noted, "For more than thirty years, Dr. Hollister had been a practitioner of medicine in New York and, to a lesser extent, in Suffern."

Within a month, Elaine Hollister left the house she had called home for more than three decades.  In January 1930 Townsend Pinkney (Cornelius had died in 1921) leased the 264 West 77th Street to another physician, Dr. Victor Gross.

Gross remained in the house through 1935, after which it was unofficially altered to apartments.  A formal renovation completed in 1971 resulted in a total of eight apartments within the building.

The renovations were not kind to Edward Angell's 1889 design.  Stripped of its stained glass transoms and given unsympathetic replacement windows, the facade has been punctured to accommodate air conditioners.  It is, however, the only house of the row to retain its high stone stoop, a surprising and fortunate circumstance.

photographs by the author

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

The Lost Fernando Wood House - Broadway and 77th Street

 D. T. Valentine's Manual for 1857 (copyright expired)

Upon their marriage Teunis Somerindyck and Cornelia Dyckman received a large parcel of farmland from the bride's grandfather, Cornelius Dyckman, Jr.  It stretched approximately from what would become 73rd street to 77th Street, and Broadway to the Hudson River.  The Teunis Somerindyck home was built in 1745 and stood near the northwest corner of 75th Street and Broadway.  Before long another Somerindyck house, nearer the 77th Street corner was built.  In 1796 Teunis and Cornelia conveyed the property to Richard Somerindyck.

The Teunis Somerindyck residence had impressive house guests in the form of French King Louis Philippe, exiled in 1793, and his brothers, the Duc de Montpensier and the Comte de Beaujolais.  The three royals "taught school for the living," while living here, according to The Tourist's Hand-book of New York in 1906.  It would have been a brief vocation since the king's stay in America lasted only four years, during which time he also lived in Philadelphia and Boston.  The handbook added "The Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria's father, visited them here."

King Louis Philippe teaching in the Teunis Somerindyke House -- Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York, 1869 (copyright expired)

Large sections of the extended Somerindyke family properties were auctioned in 1847 and it was most likely at this time that Fernando Wood purchased what had originally been Teunis Somerindyke's farm.  The district was bucolic, peppered with summer homes of Manhattan's wealthy and working farms.

Wood named the estate Woodlawn and before he moved into the northern house with his second wife, the former Ann Dole Richardson, their children and his mother, he set about making alterations and enlargements.  The original 18th century portion was retained as a quaint extension to the new mansion.  He explained to Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper years later, in December 1879, "I have preserved the farmhouse intact solely from its historical interest."  

The publication waxed romantic in its description, saying the "cozy dwelling stands on the Boulevard [now Broadway] and Seventy-seventh Street, upon a grassy knoll overlooking the lordly Hudson and the rock-ribbed Palisades.  The northern wing is modern; the southern with its low stoop and gambreled roof, pure pre-revolutionary.  Ivy clings to the eaves, and trees that might have shed their infant foliage to the sound of English artillery bend protectingly over the velvet grass."

Wood was the son of Quaker parents, Benjamin and Rebecca Wood.  Born in 1812, he had left school at the age of 13 and failed at several businesses before becoming a member of the Tammany Society at the age of 24.   Tammany Hall nominated him as a candidate to U. S. Congress and he served as a Representative from 1841 through 1843.  

Upon his return to New York he established a ship chandler business.  In 1848 his fortune was greatly increased by a lucrative real estate deal.   The Wood children were privately schooled and the family spent the first week of every August at Saratoga Springs.

Fernando Wood - from the collection of the Library of Congress

Although best known later for his political career, his shrewd real estate operations would continue to reap massive profits.  The extent of his realty business was evidenced in a single For Sale advertisement in The New York Herald on March 13, 1852.  In it he offered 12 brick houses, and 37 undeveloped plots of land around the city.

The maintenance of the grounds required professional attention and on the same day of the his real estate advertisement, Wood placed another: "A gardener wanted--A man who is capable of taking the entire charge of a vegetable and flower garden; none other need apply."  He may have proved to be a difficult employer; for nearly identical ads appeared again in 1853 and 1854.

In the meantime, Ann was looking for help as well.  Her ad in The New York Herald on February 15 1853 read "Wanted--In a small family, a woman who understands cooking, washing and ironing; she must be well recommended.  Also, a girl about fifteen years old, to wait and make herself useful in light work.  Apply to Mrs. Fernando Wood, corner Broadway and Seventy-seventh street."

Despite having been convicted of defrauding investors during the California Gold Rush, Wood was elected mayor of New York City in 1854.  As such he was entitled to perform marriages and he did so in the parlor of Woodlawn on June 12, 1855.  The New York Herald announced he had married "Francis M. Smith, Esq., to the amiable and accomplished Miss Dorah Beards."

The 18th century portion of the house is in the foreground.  Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, December 29, 1879 (copyright expired)

Wood was among the earliest supporters of presidential candidate James Buchanan.  In November 1855 State Senator Daniel Sickles informed Buchanan, "One of your best friends in New York is the Mayor--and he has made himself one of the strongest men in the State."  So when Buchanan arrived in New York in 1857, Fernando and Ann held a private six-hour reception at Woodlawn in his honor. 

Wood's support was, as always, more about self-interest than the candidate.  He hoped for a place in Buchanan's administration and, according to Jerome Mushkat in his Fernando Wood: A Political Biography, "By the eve of the July convention, Wood was certain that he had entered Buchanan's select inner circle."  But Sickle, who once promoted him, soon warned Buchanan, "There is a very strong desire among the bet men in our party to get rid of Wood."

The anti-Wood sentiments had much to do with his Tammany affiliations and widespread corruption.  In his American in 1857: A Nation on the Brink, Kenneth M. Stampp wrote "Hards and Softs were united temporarily in an effort to defeat a third political force: Mayor Fernando Wood and his disreputable bank of ward heelers, thugs, and corruptionists."  

The offensive worked--at least temporarily--and Wood was defeated in the 1857 election.  But he was back in office in 1860.  That year Woodlawn was the scene of its most illustrious gathering.  The top echelons of Manhattan politics and society turned out in their finery for the Woods' entertainment in honor of the Prince of Wales.  The Prince met a new Mrs. Wood that evening.  Ann Richardson Wood died in 1859 and within the year Ferdinand had married Alice Fenner Mills.

Wood was a vocal racist who staunchly opposed the abolitionist cause.  In January 1861 he proposed that New York secede, becoming a "free city" so it could continue doing business with the South.  The attack on Fort Sumter, however, galvanized New Yorkers against the Confederacy and Wood was defeated in the mayoral election that year.

Despite his racism, or perhaps because of it, Wood placed an advertisement in The New York Herald on December 13, 1862 which read "Waiter wanted--Wanted, a Colored Lad, who understands the duty of waiter, in a gentleman's house; one but a first class person need apply."

Although he carried the baggage of corruption and racism, Wood was re-elected to the House of Representatives, beginning his term in March 1863.  He fought against the 13th Amendment to the Constitution which abolished slavery, and attacked anti-slavery Democrats as having "a white man's face on the body of a negro."

Wood was re-elected in 1866 and split his time between Woodlawn and his Washington D.C. house.  In 1868 the city's process of physically laying out streets which had been only on paper for decades arrived at Woodlawn.  Property owners were paid for land taken by public domain and for the cost of relocating structures, if necessary.

Fernando Wood in the library at Woodlawn  Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, December 29, 1879 (copyright expired)

West 77th Street not only cut through the Woodlawn property, but through the mansion.  On March 14, 1868 the city awarded Fernando Wood $25,001.00--or just under half a million in today's dollars.

Wood accepted the money, but had no intention of moving his house nor having a public street cut through his property.   Instead he erected substantial fences that prevented "trespassing."  

In February 1869 he sold the portion of the estate that held the ancient Teunis Somerindyke house, described in the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide as simply a "frame building."  Frederick W. Coggill paid Wood $72,500 for the 170 by 158 foot plot, about $1.4 million today.

On May 24, 1870 Rebecca Wood died in the mansion at the age of 82.  Her funeral was held in the house three days later.  The New York Herald advised mourners that Fernando and his brothers, Henry and Benjamin, had arranged for carriages to be waiting from 2:00 to 2:45 at the 71st Street and Eighth Avenue streetcar stop.

The New York Times had a long anti-Tammany tradition and Fernando Wood's refusal to relinquish the property for which the city had paid him did not escape its notice.  On October 31, 1878 the newspaper ran the headline "A Democratic Squatter" and began the article saying:

As one drives of these pleasant Autumn afternoons, taking the Circle near the Central Park, and branching off on the Boulevard toward the North River...one is struck by the elegant and solid appearance of a well-constructed gate on the Boulevard, which leads up by a wide carriage road to a handsome wooden house.  This gate is certainly attractive...Proprietors of country-seats in this neighborhood have, of course, a perfect right to embellish their grounds as they please, and the passer-by, as he admires this really substantial gate, ought to feel obliged to Mr Fernando Wood for the aesthetic taste he has displayed.

But, the article went on, Wood had been paid "handsomely" for the laying out of 77th Street and "for the last 12 years has been living and enjoying three-quarters of a house, and using a road in a private way for which he has been fully paid."  And it listed the several petitions property owners had filed with the Board of Aldermen, complaining that they could not access their property because of Wood's fences.   But the Chairman of the Committee on Opening of Street was Alderman Bryan Reilly, described by The Times as "the sturdy henchman of Hon. Fernando Wood."

When one citizen applied directly to "Boss" William Tweed saying "Is there no way possible for me to get my right--to put my foot on my own land?  I can't climb Mr. Wood's fences!," Tweed reportedly answered "get into your land with a balloon."

In December that same year Michael Cashman took Wood to court over the matter.   The New York Herald reported on December 12 "Mr. Cashman complains that he cannot get access to his lots without climbing Mr. Wood's fences or opening the gate which Mr. Wood has put up in Seventy-seventh street and in Eleventh avenue."  The judge agreed that while 77th Street was public property, it was a street "in name only."  And because of the rocky terrain "it is impossible to pass over the same with vehicles."  Therefore, he ruled, "I have refrained from interfering with the fences and structures thereon."  Fernando Wood proved once again that he wielded immense and corrupt power.

When the Frank Leslie's journalist visited Woodlawn that month, he noted "In the wide and airy hall is a genuine Vandyke, representing 'Christ before the Doctors.'"  He described the library as having "two low windows giving upon the lawn.  Between them is a table desk.  The books--all bound in buff leather--are so uniform as to suggest dummies or secret panels.  It is a room wherein to peruse 'Sir Roger de Coverly' or the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' so quaint is it, and of an old fashion all so charming."  The mantelpiece, he wrote, was "of that monumental pattern so much in vogue when the redcoats mustered on Manhattan."

Fernando Wood traveled to Hot Springs, Arkansas in the winter of 1881 in hopes of recovering his health.  He died there on February 14.  Newspapers nationwide reported on his death, detailing his checkered, sometimes scandalous, career.  His body was taken to the Washington D.C. residence for the funeral, then brought to New York for burial.

It did not take his heirs (the virile politician had 16 children, 11 of whom were still alive) to begin selling off his immense real estate holdings.  Five days after his death the Record & Guide reported that Fernando Wood, Jr. had sold "Seventy-third street lots, between Ninth and Tenth avenues."  

On November 18 the following year the Guide reported the Wood estate sold to Joseph Stern and Jacob Metzger "the two entire blocks located between Seventy-sixth and Seventy eighth streets and the Boulevard and West End or Eleventh avenue.  The consideration being $303,000."  Included was the mansion, described in the deed as a "one and two-story frame dwelling."

Despite the rampant development going on in the Upper West Side, the operators did not immediately demolish Woodlawn.  On September 4, 1886 The Sun noted that in the house "are now three tenants--Mrs. McCaffrey, an Irish woman; Mrs. Parlavasino, a native of Italy, and Mr. Wagener, a German, with their respective families, goats and other live stock.  Mrs. McCaffrey lives in the centre of the house and was an old servant of the Wood family.  She pays no rent.  The others pay rent."  Because the house still stood, 77th Street "is not yet cut through."

Two years later The Epoch noted "New York has some notable historic places that are rapidly disappearing."  Among them was Woodlawn.  "Near Seventy-fifth [sic] street and the Boulevard stands the country seat of Fernando Wood, where the Prince of Wales was royally entertained in 1860.  My informant expressed considerable regret over the proposed demolition of all these places at a date not far distant."

By 1899 the house was gone and 77th Street was finally opened.  Only a portion of the stone wall remained, but even now The New York Times got its jabs at Fernando Wood in.  On April 9, 1899 an article made note that the stones were "precisely the same as is used in the walls around Central Park, and there is a verified tradition--if such a thing is possible--that he 'swiped' what was necessary to build his fence."

The "Central Park" stones of Wood's wall can be seen below the advertising posters in 1899.  from the collection of the New York Historical Society

The corner plot remained vacant until 1901.  On April 13 that year the New-York Tribune reported that Stein, Cohn & Roth had filed plans for the nine-story Belleclaire Apartment house, which survives.

The Albert Brod House - 168 West 77th Street

On April 1, 1893 The Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported that George F. Pelham "has the plans for the five three-and-a-half-story brown stone dwellings...which James Brown is to build on the south side of 77th street."  The price of each house would be in the neighborhood of $564,000 each today.  "The houses are to be trimmed in hardwood and to have every improvement."

Completed within the year, Pelham's Renaissance Revival houses were liberally splashed with Romanesque Revival elements--like the beefy stoop newels and unexpected use of rough-faced stone at the basement level.  The row was designed in a balanced A-B-C-B-A scheme; the projecting bays of the end houses created a book-end effect to the whole.  

No. 168, like its twin at 164, wore a graceful rounded bay at the second floor.  Romanesque Revival made another appearance in the eyebrows, terminating in Medieval crockets, above the delicately-carved tympani of the third floor openings.   Renaissance Revival panels separated the windows of the squat attic floor.

Three of the original row survive.  No. 168 is at the center.

No. 168 was purchased by Albert Brod whose disparate occupations included real estate operator and jeweler.   While he bought and sold properties, many in the Upper West Side, he was also a partner with Charles Marx in Marx & Brod, diamond dealers, at No. 37 Maiden Lane.  

The Brod's adult daughter, Emma, was working as a teacher by 1904.  

Albert's partnership with Charles Marx eventually ended and around 1913 he joined with brother Oscar J. Brod and Maurice J. Schless to form Schless, Brod & Co.  The trio patented a new knife design in 1916.  But the partnership was short-lived and by 1918 Herbert N. Brod had replaced Schless and the firm became Brod & Co.

Both Herbert and Albert doubled as traveling salesman.  On November 13, 1918 The Jewelers' Circular-Weekly announced "Albert Brod, of Brod & Co., manufacturing jewelers...is on a trip which will include visits to the trade in the far west and on the Pacific Coast."

By the time the brothers received a patent for a new jewelry setting in December 1919, they had moved their manufacturing shop to Newark, New Jersey.  It was around the same time that the Brod family left West 77th Street.  

No. 168 was now being operated as a high-end boarding house for unmarried men.  An advertisement in The New York Herald on October 21, 1921 offered the "Exceptionally large salon floor, bath, shower; excellent service; bachelors."

Among the occupants in 1922 was 32-year old Horace Drulacht, a "designer."    In September he received the emotionally devastating news that his mother had died.  It was too much for him to handle.

On September 11 he locked his door and swallowed bichloride of mercury mixed with liquor.  Before long another boarder heard moans coming from his room and rushed onto the street to find Patrolman William Fitzgerald.   

The officer broke into the room, then directed the landlady to mix milk and raw eggs.  Before the ambulance arrived, Fitzgerald forced Drulacht to swallow the concoction.  A doctor at the Knickerbocker Hospital credited the policeman with saving the man's life.

The upscale tenor of the boarding house was soon evidenced by the occupant of the parlor floor.  In 1930 Armand Hammer returned to the United States from a nine-year stay in the Soviet Union.  The U.S. Government had been skeptical about the true purposes of his trip and would keep a close eye on him for the rest of his life.  

Armand Hammer as he appeared around the time he lived at No. 168.  from the collection of the Library of Congress

In his autobiography Hammer he mentioned his arrangement with a "hardworking and hard-up student," saying "I hit on a plan to help us both.  I had rented an apartment on the ground floor of a brownstone house at 168 West Seventy-seventh Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam.  I offered my spare room to Dan, rent-free, if he would take down full notes of all the lectures and give them to me to study in the evenings."

As the century went on, the renters in No. 168 became less affluent than its most celebrated tenant.  Then in 1988 the Coalition for the Homeless purchased the house and the two brownstones on either side. 

The organization's website explains that it offers "private apartment living to homeless single men and women in three contiguous five-story brownstone buildings on a serene, tree-lined street on the Upper West Side."  The 38 residents pay rent based on their individual income, and have access "to onsite services that help them with socialization, household budgeting, and healthcare and family issues in a safe and stable environment."

There is no signage to suggest that the three 1893 rowhouses are anything but private homes.  Although a bit time battered, their facades survive essentially intact, hinting at the original appearance of all five.

photographs by the author