The Wolcott G. Lane House - 15 East 74th Street

photograph by the author

Developer Robert H. Coburn's string of five four-story brownstone homes on East 74th Street near Central Park were completed around 1869.   No. 15 became home to General James Grant Wilson and his new wife, the former Jane Emily Searle Cogswell.   The newlyweds had married on November 3, 1869.

Wilson's rank was conferred on him after the war.  Having served as a colonel, he was appointed a brevet brigadier general in 1867.  But his national prominence came not from his military service, but his literary work.  He had founded the Chicago Record in 1857, the first literary journal in the Midwest.  Now, in New York, he focused on writing and speaking.  In 1868 he had edited Fitz-Greene Halleck's Poems and in 1869 completed his own biography.

Wilson was highly involved in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society and the Society of American Authors.  He would eventually become president of both organizations.  Those associations created close friendships with eminent literary figures; and the 20-foot wide Wilson house would see distinguished guests.

James Grant Wilson was among the dignitaries in Central Park for the unveiling of the bust of Giuseppe Mazzini on Wednesday morning, May 29, 1878.  He had brought along his six-year-old daughter, Mary Margaret.  The day was insufferably hot and he and close friend William Cullen Bryant found shade under a group of trees before the ceremonies.  A friend remarked later that Wilson, concerned that his friend seemed affected by the heat, held an umbrella over Bryant's head.

While Bryant, the preeminent American poet at the time, gave his speech he appeared weak.  When the ceremonies were finally completed around 4:00, Wilson insisted that Bryant accompany him and Jane to the 74th Street house for refreshments and rest.

Once there, Wilson headed up the stoop to open the door.  A few steps behind him Bryant suddenly collapsed, hitting his head on the stone stoop.  A passerby rushed to help while servants came out of the house to bring the poet inside.   There Emily applied ice water to his brow and offered him a glass of iced sherry.  According to biographer Gilbert H. Muller in his William Cullen Bryant: Author of America, Bryant "then groaned, 'My head! My poor head! I don't feel well.'  Resisting entreaties from Wilson and his wife to rest in an upstairs bedroom, Bryant insisted on being taken home."

Wilson accompanied Bryant to his West 16th Street house.  The poet and journalist never recovered.  He died on June 12.

The Wilsons spent part of the summer of 1883 in Europe, returning in November.  After dinner on November 28 Wilson went into the parlor to read and Mary Margaret, now 12, headed upstairs to her third floor bedroom.  On the second floor she happened to noticed that her mother's bedroom door was open. 

The New York Times reported "this being unusual she went in and saw that the drawers of a bureau were open and that empty jewel cases, some of which had been broken, littered the floor and the dressing-table.  She ran down the stairs, crying out 'Papa! papa! there are thieves in the house.'"

Mary Margaret was right.  Had she continued to her own bedroom she would have run into the crook face-to-face.  As it was, her cries alarmed him and he bolted down the stairs almost directly behind the girl.  Just as Wilson reached the parlor door, the burglar appeared at the head of the staircase.  "He had a pistol in his hand and, seeing Gen. Wilson, he leveled it at him and as he ran swiftly down the stairs kept his eye on him and faced him while he undid the fastenings of the front doors."

Unarmed and with a firearm pointed at him, Wilson could do nothing.  The crook opened the door and rushed down the stoop.  Wilson followed in time to see the man and a look-out disappeared onto Fifth Avenue.

Police surmised that the brazen burglar had shimmed up a column of the entrance to gain entrance to Jane's second floor bedroom.  He had managed to make off with about $1,000 in diamonds, watches and other jewelry from her room, and $300 in"necklaces, breast-pins, a watch, and bracelets," from Mary Margaret's.   The girl's cries prevented him from taking some of her father's expensive clothing.  "The thief had prepared the General's best overcoat and some clothing for removal," said The Times.

General James Grant Wilson - from the collection of the Library of Congress

In 1887 Wilson invited another famous writer to be a house guest.  On April 8 he sent a letter to Walt Whitman which said in part:

My dear Mr. Whitman:

Am glad to see by a morning journal that you are well enough to undertake a visit to New York, and the delivery of your address on Lincoln.  If you have no better place to go, I shall be happy to give you shelter under my roof No. 15 East Seventy-fourth St, where I think you spent an hour some years ago.

After closing the letter, Wilson added a post script:  "I can offer you a large chamber on the second floor, with a bathroom connected with it, for your exclusive use."

On May 12, 1894 Wilson officiated at the unveiling of Jeronimo Suñol's bronze statue of Christopher Columbus in Central Park.  Before the ceremony he and Jane gave a breakfast to an esteemed group, including Vice-President Adlai Stevenson and his wife, the Italian Ambassador and his wife, Baroness de Fava, and the Spanish Minister.

In 1896 Wilson and Mary Margaret now 25-years-old, had a disagreement.  The reason behind the father-daughter fight was rumored to be that Wilson refused to allow her to marry the man she loved.  Whatever the cause, it was significant enough that Mary Margaret moved out of the East 74th Street house--a startling and potentially scandalous decision for an unmarried woman in the 1890's.

Jane Wilson died in 1904.   Wilson stayed on in the 74th Street house, spending summers alone at his country place.  On March 31, 1905 he anticipated the summer season, advertising for "A single, Protestant, family gardener, understanding thoroughly vegetables, early and late, under glass and hardy frames."  The residence had at least one cow in the barn, the job description ending "must milk."

In 1907 Wilson married Mary H. Nicholson, the widow of his long-time friend, Admiral J. W. A. Nicholson.   If there were ever a hope that he and his daughter would reconcile, his marriage extinguished that.  Mary Margaret was incensed.

Four years later the 40-year-old spinster became engaged to the wealthy, 60-year-old retired Cleveland businessman Franklin Sylvester Henry.  Wilson was unmoved.

The Iowa newspaper The Daily Gate quoted him on June 20 saying "I do not know the man my daughter will marry.  I shall not attend the ceremony.  I have not been invited.  I will neither deny nor affirm that the original estrangement was the result of my refusal of permission for her to marry the man of her choice."

On February 22, 1913 the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported that the Wilsons had sold No. 15 to "a buyer for occupancy."  That buyer was attorney Wolcott Griswold Lane, and his wife Edith.

The Lanes continued to live at No. 353 West 84th Street while they made significant changes to the outdated brownstone.   The architectural firm of Hewitt & Bottomley was commissioned to remodel it into a modern, five-story residence.

Prior to the renovations No. 15 was identical to the houses on either side in this photograph. The Architectural Record 1916 (copyright expired) 

Faced in limestone the neo-Italian Renaissance home featured a tw0-story rusticated base where the centered entrance sat below a shelf-like lintel supported by exaggerated brackets.  Between the second and third floors an elaborate carved cartouche was draped in a sumptuous fruit-and-flower garland.  A charming Juliette balcony sprouted from the fifth floor below a stone cornice.

While the bronze entrance doors survive, the unusual areaway fencing is gone.  The Architectural Record 1916 (copyright expired) 

Born in Sandusky, Ohio, Lane graduated from Yale Law School and, by now, was well known for his work in probate law as well as welfare work.  Edith, the daughter of General Joseph G. Perkins, was heavily involved in charity work.  Their country estate was in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Six years after its completion, the Lanes sold the house.  On May 24, 1919 the Record & Guide reported that it was purchased by "Mrs. J. Pierson [sic] for occupancy."  

Mrs. Pearson was the widow of millionaire Frank Pearson.  She lived at No. 3 West 57th Street and the lavish home was not intended for her own use.  It was to  be a wedding present. 

Two weeks later, on June 8, The Sun reported "There is to be at least one wedding in Newport during August, that of Miss Lesley Fredericka Pearson, second daughter of Mrs. Frederick Pearson...to Henry B. H. Ripley, eldest son of the late Sidney Dillon Ripley."  The article noted "The wedding will take place in Trinity Church and will be followed by a reception at Anglesea, Mrs. Pearson's village at Ochre Point where she and her daughter have gone for the summer."

The marriage of two prominent names in Manhattan and Newport society was a noteworthy affair.   A month later the social columns of all the newspapers reported on the couple's return to Manhattan.  The Sun noted on October 5, 1919 "Mr. and Mrs. Henry B. H. Ripley, who were married in Newport on August 30, have returned from their wedding trip and will be for a while at the St. Regis.  One of Mrs. Ripley's wedding gifts from her mother was a house in New York."  The newlyweds remained at the hotel "until their new home at 15 East Seventy-fourth street is ready."

Despite the Italian design of the exterior, the drawing room (above) and dining room were decidedly Colonial.  The Architectural Record 1916 (copyright expired) 

The Ripleys enjoyed the lives of the young and rich, their names appearing in newspapers less often for business dealings or charity events as for their movements among society.  On July 4, 1920, for instance, The New York Herald reported "Mrs. Henry B. H. Ripley arrived [at Newport] on Wednesday to pass a part of the summer with her mother, Mrs. Frederick Pearson, at Ochre point.  Mrs. Pearson gave a luncheon on Wednesday."

The wood-paneled library was surprisingly cozy.  The Architectural Record 1916 (copyright expired) 

The Ripleys second daughter was born in December 1921.  By the arrival of their son in 1927, they had moved to No. 18 East 80th Street, and the 74th Street residence had become home to Donald Durant.

A partner in the stock brokerage firm of Lee, Higginson & Co., Durant was a powerful figure downtown.  On May 2, 1929 The New York Times reported he had been elected "a director of the Swedish investment firm of Kreuger & Toll."  It was an important position, as the newspaper explained.  "This firm holds the controlling interest in the Swedish Match Company, which in turn controls as its American subsidiary the International Match Corporation."

That association led in 1931 to Lee, Higginson & Co.'s underwriting for Ivar Kreuger of $50,000 in German bonds held by the International Match Company in the United States.  But other brokerage houses became suspicious of Kreuger's integrity, most notably A. D. Birning of Ernst & Ernst.

When Birning asked about the whereabouts of the bonds, Kreuger told him they "had been transferred from the asset of the International Match Company to another of the Kreuger concerns abroad," reported The Times.  But as Birning pressured him for clarification, he was less than satisfied.  Birning later described Krueger's responses as "those of a sick man or a man not in his right mind, and concerned me a great deal."

In March 1932 a concerned Donald Durant accompanied Kreuger to Europe in an attempt to straighten things out.  The Times later reported "When Ivar Kreuger went to Europe in the first days of March, death was walking on his heels in the person of an American accountant who guessed that all was not well with the huge financial structure which Kreuger had erected on a shifty foundation of inflation and forgery."  

Once he and Durant arrived in Berlin, Kreuger was trapped.  There was no way he could explain away the missing $50,000 in bonds.  A few days later, in Paris, he shot himself.

In June 1934 Durant sold No. 15 to Marie de Neufville Iselin, the widow of financier Lewis Iselin who died in April 1928.   Marie's three children, Marie, Columbus O'Donnel, and Lewis, Jr. were all grown by now.

The house remained a single-family residence until 1949 when a doctor's office and apartment were installed in the basement, the first and second floors were converted to a duplex apartment, and one apartment on the third floor.  The fourth floor contained an apartment plus one "maid's room."

In 1974 it was reconverted, essentially, to a single family house.  There remains one apartment in the basement.

A "Fairy-Tale" Fantasy - 159 East 64th Street

By the mid 1870's the East 64th Street block between Third and Lexington Avenues was lined with nearly identical brownstone-fronted rowhouses.  No. 159, like its neighbors, sat above a rusticated English basement.   Its windows wore neo-Grec architrave surrounds with incised decorations.  Classic triangular pediments sat above the parlor openings, echoed in the overhanging hood above the entrance.  The windows of the upper floors were topped with molded cornices, and a substantial bracketed cornice completed the design.

The 20-foot wide house was owned by Theodore Russell in the 1880's.  Russell lived in Flatbush and apparently used it as a rental property.  Then, in April 1890 he sold it for $20,000--about $556,000 today--to Mitchell and Henrietta Herschfield.

A graduate of Columbia University, Herschfield was an attorney and a Commissioner of Deeds.  The couple had a daughter, Blanche, and lived quiet lives on East 64th Street, their names rarely appearing in print other than for charitable acts or similar reasons.  Henrietta, for instance, was listed as a "contributor of clothing" to the United Hebrew Charities in 1906.

Mitchell Herschfield died on September 30, 1910 at the age of 58.   Although Henrietta soon moved out, she retained possession of No. 159.   She was living at No. 418 Central Park West in August 1914 when she announced Blanche's engagement to Daniel M. Ellenbogen.

In June 1916 she leased No. 159 furnished to well-to-do broker Eugene Jackson Koop and his wife, the former Marietta Barkley Ludington.   The family's comfortable existence was evidenced in a help wanted advertisement on October 11, 1920:

Cook--Good, plain cook wanted for small family, private house; two other maids; wages $65

The listed wages were probably monthly, equal to about $200 per week today.

On Tuesday June 27, 1922 an auction was held in the house.  The announcement listed "furniture, china, bric-a-brac, paintings, oriental rugs and carpets."  Clearing out the residence was necessary because three weeks earlier Henrietta Herschfield had sold No. 159 to Samuel and Amanda Liebmann Hoff.

At the time of the sale homeowners along the 64th Street block were furiously renovated their architecturally outdated homes.  A few months earlier, on December 11, 1921 New York Times journalist Helen Bullitt Lowry noted "On Sixty-fourth Street and Sixty-third Street, between Lexington Avenue and Third Avenue, fairy-book streets suddenly open to view just around the corner from weary miles of brownstone.  Here is the warm blush of pink stucco and gay red tiles.  Here are stern wrought-iron gates and romantically barred grilled windows."

H. R. Shurtleff sketched the block for The New York Times in December 1921.

Before moving into their new home, the Hoffs joined the trend.  They hired the esteemed architect William Lawrence Bottomley to transform their old brownstone to a Mediterranean fantasy in keeping with its neighbors.  The plans, filed on June 28, 1922, estimated the cost of the alterations at $20,000--more than a quarter of a million dollars today.

When the renovations were completed in 1923 little trace of the 1870's Victorian was left.  The stoop had been removed and the entrance moved to the street level.  A cheerful slathering of pale yellow stucco covered the facade.  A full-width cast iron balcony graced the second floor, accessed by fanlight-capped French doors within an arched opening.  A graceful cartouche perched upon its keystone.  Where the robust metal cornice had been, blind roundels provided understated decoration.

An attorney, Samuel Hoff had practiced law in New York since about 1889.  He was also a director of the Lincoln Safe Deposit Company and the Lincoln Warehouse Corporation.  He and Amanda had six children, by now all grown.

A few years after moving in, Samuel Hoff became ill.  He did not improve and died in the 64th Street house on November 21, 1929.

Two years later Amanda slightly renovated the house in order to rent furnished suites.  The changes, which included a two-story extension to the rear, may have had to do with her upcoming marriage to Dr. Leopold O. Stieglitz on July 27, 1932.

Amanda made more significant alterations in 1936 when she hired architect G. Kurth to convert the house to one apartment each on in the first and second floor, two one the third, and one on fourth.  Among her first tenants were Robert Hitchcock and Mary Topping Rubin.  The couple was married on March 4, 1936.  They would be here at least through 1940.

Amanda Hoff Stieglitz died on July 16, 1938.  No. 159 was purchased by Mrs. C. Buckminster Marcy.  When she sold it in 1950 to "an investor" the property was described as a "four-story apartment house."

The new owners altered the first and second floors in 1953 to "offices and studios."  The high-end architectural antiques store of Edwin Jackson, Inc. was here for several years.  Specializing in period mantels and fireplaces, it counted among its customers the White House and some of Manhattan's most prestigious decorators.

Among the tenants upstairs were Arthur William Brown and his wife, Grace Green Brown.   The couple had met as students at the Arts Students League.

Arthur was a nationally-known magazine illustrator.  He got his start illustrating magazine fiction by authors like Booth Tarkington, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ring Lardner, and Arthur Train.  Grace was a designer of women's handbags and apparel.   She had started out as a designer of stained glass windows for Louis Comfort Tiffany.

In 1964 William Brown was elected to the Society of Illustrators' Hall of  Fame.  Grace died in their apartment on May 6, 1965 and William died the following year, on October 24.

By the mid 1970's R*E*A*L International had taken over the retail space.  The firm operated  residential resort properties in Marbella, Spain.  It was followed by caterer Donald Bruce White who ran his business at ground level and lived in the upper floors.

Following White's death, party designer and florist Renny Reynolds took over the building.  He closed his two East Side shops and moved his business in in November 1987 and, like White, occupied the entire upper portion of the house.  Reynolds had hired interior designers Jed Johnson and Alan Wanzenberg to redo both spaces.

Times journalist Elain Louie described the shop in December that year, saying in part "The floor is paved with both natural and glass bricks.  A garden under a skylight joins the house to the wing, with an iron fountain, which Mr. Reynolds bought in Capri, Italy, in the center."

The Renny Reynolds shop remained here through 1995.  In 1996 it became home to Chrome Hearts, owned by apparel designers Richard and Laurie Lynn Stark, described by The Real Deal writer Katherine Clarke as "best known for outfitting rock and roll greats such as the Rolling Stones, the Sex Pistols and the Scissor Sisters in leather jackets and diamond encrusted cuffs."

In 2005 they purchased the building from Renny Reynolds for $7.5 million.  Eight years later, after moving their store to Madison Avenue, the Starks listed the property for $14 million.

The store space became home to The Elder Statesman "Winter Shop" in December 2015.  Operated by Greg Chait, its flagship store was in Los Angeles.  It was a one-season venture, selling items like "10-pound cashmere blankets."

Now once again a private home, the former store space contains a "vast gallery," according to real estate listings, and the dining room.  In the meantime, William Bottomley's fanciful 1922 facade remains intact, an important piece in what Helen Bullitt Lowry deemed a "fairy-tale street."

photographs by the author

The Henry A. Wise House -- No. 18 E 73rd Street

Scaffolding obscures the ground floor (and tarps cover the top floor) as interior renovations continue in 2014.

In 1855 the 44-year old Raymond W. Townsend formed, with two other attorneys, the firm of Townsend, Dyett & Raymond.  Townsend’s close association with Anthony Rainetaux Dyette would last for nearly half a century until Dyette’s death in 1898.  While the third name in the firm’s title would change twice, the partnership of Townsend and Dyette remained fast.  A decade after the firm was established, the partners had made substantial fortunes. 

With the surrender of General Robert E. Lee on April 9, 1865, New York City workers who had been fighting for the Union began returning home.  Soon construction projects resumed and the streets branching off Central Park saw rampant development.  Manhattan’s millionaires were still firmly rooted on Fifth Avenue below the park; but the wealthy merchant class was lured to the Upper East Side’s tranquil streets.

Randolph Townsend and his wife, Jane, moved into a fine brownstone home at No. 18 East 73^rd Street in 1866.  Four stories tall above an English basement, the comfortable house was quite like the others that lined the block.

With the couple was Mary, Jane’s daughter from her previous marriage to Cephas H. Norton who had died in 1860.  Two years later a son was born, Randolph W. Townsend, Jr.  There would be two more children in the family—Harmon and Emma.  Randolph continued to prosper and sat on the boards of several corporations, including The Importers and Traders’ National Bank of New-York.

The family was grief-stricken when, on Friday morning, March 26, 1886, 18-year old Randolph Junior died in the house.  His funeral was held in the parlor at 4:00 the following Sunday.

Eventually the girls married, leaving their aging parents alone in the house with the servants.  Just before the turn of the century, Randolph suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed.  Until then he had been carrying on his legal practice at No. 247 Broadway as he had for 45 years.  For three years he would suffer from serious illness.

For the summer season of 1902 Randolph and Jane leased the cottage of Chancellor MacCracken of New York University.  On June 15 the 91-year old attorney died there.  The New-York Tribune attributed his death to “general weakness.”  For only the second time since 1866 the doorway to No. 18 East 73^rd Street was draped in crepe as guests filed into the house for Townsend’s funeral the following Wednesday, June 18 at 4:00.

In the summer of 1908 the Wilmerding family was leasing the Townsend house while Jane was traveling abroad.  On June 25 the residence was the scene of a society wedding as Caroline Murray Wilmerding was married to John B. Trevor.  The social importance of the match was reflected not only by the fact that Robert Walton Goelet the best man; but by the names on the guest list.  Among them were Mr. and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mr. and Mrs. Harrison McK. Twombly, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Frelinghuysen and Robert Bayard Cutting.

In the meantime, Jane A. Townsend was spending time at Holbrook Grange, near Rugby, England.  It was here, on August 20, 1908, that she suddenly died.  Since Randolph’s death she had generously donated to charitable causes, many of them educational.  The reading of her will a month later would reveal substantial bequests of a similar nature.

The $50,000 endowment she left to Yale University would amount to about $1.25 million today.  “The bequest is to endow a professorship of history in memory of Randolph W. Townsend, Jr.,” explained The Sun.  The newspaper added that Jane had also left $10,000 to the rector of the Episcopal Church of all Angels, $15,000 to the Presbyterian Hospital to endow three free beds in perpetuity.  The Presbyterian Home for Aged Women received $34,500; and $10,000 each went to the Presbyterian Church on University Place and the New York Exchange for Women’s Work.

Of Jane’s five children, only the widowed Mary Perkins was still alive.  Following the distribution of her mother’s generous philanthropic bequests, she received the bulk of the estate; including the 73^rd Street house.

Mary kept the house, deciding to lease it to upscale tenants.  Although, by now, the block was undergoing tremendous transformation as the outdated brownstones were razed or remodeled, Mary kept the family home as-is.  It stood in stark contrast to the magnificent Joseph Pulitzer palace almost directly across the street and other lavish mansions on the block.

Passersby have to wonder what is going into the blue-tarped dumpster.

Following the Wilmerdings, the family of Edward R. Stettinius moved in.  Stettinius was known as a mover-and-shaker in corporate America, having already reorganized the Sterling Company and the Diamond Match Company.  In January 1916 he was admitted as a partner in J. P. Morgan & Co.; brought into the firm to organize its new purchasing department for the British Goernment.  Two months earlier, his wife had begun the string of entertainments in the house for their daughter Isabel’s debut.  When Isabel later married Major John B. Marsh on November 19, 1919 General John J. Pershing was in attendance.

The elderly Mary M. Perkins finally sold her family home in May of 1922.  Called by The New York Times a “four-story high-stoop dwelling,” it was an anachronism on East 73^rd Street.  Nevertheless, the selling price of $90,000 would translate to about $1.2 million today.  The Times said that the owner had purchased the home “to occupy.”

The mystery purchaser was eventually identified as Henry A. Wise, former United States District Attorney for the Southern District of New York under Presidents Taft and Roosevelt.  The modern-thinking Wise and his wife would not move in before changes had been made.

They commissioned architect William Lawrence Bottomley to completed redesign the dated brownstone.  A month after the purchase, plans were filed for extensive alterations.  The Record & Guide estimated the costs to be about $15,000 (around $200,000 today).  In September 1922 the newspaper was more detailed in the changes to be made.  The renovations would entail removing the façade and replacing it, removing interior walls, and installing new “laundry, partitions, stairs, dumbwaiter, fireplaces.”  By now the estimate of costs had risen to $22,000.

New-York Tribune, October 15, 1911 (copyright expired)

As construction on the house commenced, the outspoken Wise made his opinions known regarding politics.  When two politicians, Samuel S. Koenig and Charles F. Murphy, plotted to remove Surrogate John P. Colalan from the widows’ and orphans’ court, Wise was infuriated.  At a meeting on the night of October 27, 1922 he called the Murphy-Koenig deal “the rottenest piece of political scoundrelism” he had ever seen.  He added that it was “a couple of discredited, disreputable bunco steerers' attempt to put over, one to settle a grudge, the other to get his brother a job.”

Wise had an sufficiently-vast vocabulary with which to express his indignation.  “The question is whether we are to have decent, honorable men on the bench.  It is a question of decency against rotten skullduggery.”

The completed Wise house was unlike the limestone and marble-fronted confections around it.  These had been designed, for the most part, in the early years of the century when the Beaux Arts style was the rage in residential design.  Bottomley had produced a prim five-story neo-Georgian home of red brick with extremely restrained ornamentation.

The high stoop was gone and the entrance was lowered to sidewalk level.  Splayed lentils of matching brick were nearly invisible; the only decoration of the lower floors being handsome keystones at the second story carved with Georgian-style urns in bas relief.  A limestone cornice supported a stone balustrade, behind which a slate-tiled mansard provided for three straight-forward dormers.

The Wise children received a privileged upbringing.  The family summered in their estate in Kiptopeke, near Cape Charles, Virginia.  Daughter Eva attended the private Brearley School in New York, then traveled to Florence, Italy to Miss Nixon’s School.  Upon her return she studied at Bryn Mawr College.  Her brother John graduated from the Virginia Military Institute before becoming a lawyer like his father.

The year 1932 would be momentous for the family.  On May 28 that year Eva’s engagement to Alfred Slade Mills was announced, and just four months later John’s engagement to Elizabeth Ridgely Thompson was made public.

With the house now empty of children, the Wises soon moved on.  It was owned by Marie A. Spear until April 1945 when she sold it to Lt. Colonel James E. Fitz-Gibbon.  In reporting on the sale, The Times noted the home’s impressive neighbors.  “Other residences in the same street and neighborhood are the former Pulitzer mansion, and the homes of Mrs. Edward Van Ingen, H. Lester Cuddihy and George Doubleday.”  Fitz-Gibbon was less impressed.  The newspaper said he “intends to remodel the building into small apartments and occupy a suite there.”  Before the end of the year the mansion had been divided into two apartments per floor. 

As the 20^th century drew to a close the former mansion was owned by George and Antonia Pavia.  The attorney was a partner in the Pavia & Harcourt law firm and it was he who hired Sonia Sotomayor when she left the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.  The couple would regret signing a lease with James Couri who later accused his landlords of neglecting problems and hiding the building’s rent stabilized status.

Couri’s more-than-odd behavior (in 2002 he wrote a letter to George Pavia which said in part “Your father was a fascist sympathizer and you were a member of the Mussolini-Fascist youth corps during pre-World War II) and litigious bent resulted in nearly 15 years of legal wrangling.

Eventually, even though Couri told The New York Times “Pavia has a much a chance of evicting me on a nuisance charge as I do of waking up in the morning as Prince Charles,” he was evicted and the Pavias put the house on the market.

In 2013 it was sold for $19.5 million.  Although much of Bottomley’s interior spaces had been preserved despite the apartment conversion, things did not look bright for their future.  While Antonia Pavia told the New York Observer “it has some beautiful mantels and paneling,” the broker added that the new owner was “going to gut renovate the entire house and he’s going to live there.”

When the house sold in 2013, much of Bottomley's Georgian-inspired interiors remained.  http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2013/02/22/inside_an_old_world_upper_east_side_townhouse_asking_228m.php#512783c9f92ea14c3c04662e

Because the house sits within the Upper East Side Historic District, no changes can be made to the exterior.  Hopefully the “gut renovation” of the interiors involves only the 1945 partitions; but that is most likely an optimistic hope.

non-credited photographs by the author

The J. P. Warburg House -- Nos. 34-36 E. 70th Street

photo by Alice Lum

Mrs. Arthur A. MacGregor received a startling telephone call on September 15, 1912.   Her 18-year old daughter, Grace, had phoned to let her mother know she had married Robert B. Dula.  The pair had met at a dance in Garden City, New Jersey, where the girl and her mother were spending the summer.  Despite Dula’s social position (his father was the former Vice President of the American Tobacco Company), Mrs. MacGregor was against the romance “because of her youth,” reported The New York Times.

If Mrs. MacGregor had once had plans for a society wedding breakfast or reception in her East 70^th Street home, they were dashed.

The MacGregor home at No. 34 East 70^th Street had been built three decades earlier by speculative developers Charles Graham & Sons.   One of a row of nearly identical homes, its brownstone façade and high stoop were decidedly out of date.   In 1924 James P. Warburg would do something about that.

The German-born banker was a member of the powerful Warburg family and son of Paul Warburg, known as the Father of the Federal Reserve System.   He served in World War I in the Navy Flying Corps.  On June 1, 1918, while still serving as an ensign in the aviation section of the Naval Reserve, he married the popular musician and composer Katherine Swift, who went by the name Kay.  The wedding took place in her mother’s home.

By now he was Vice President of the International Acceptance Bank.

Like many of the 19^th century residences in the area, the Warburgs had No. 34 updated—removing the stoop and stripping the Victorian trappings from the façade.  In the meantime, the high-end neighborhood continued to fill with wealthy residents.  Next door at No. 36 lived Dr. and Mrs. Henry James and their four small sons, Henry, Morgan, Beverly and Willis.

James Warburg’s far flung talents went far beyond banking and aviation.  In 1929 he wrote the lyrics to his wife’s hit song “Can’t We Be Friends?,” using the pseudonym Paul James.   It was sung in the “Little Show” by Libby Holman and was just one of the couple’s collaborations.   The following year they wrote the Broadway musical Fine and Dandy.  

In addition, Warburg wrote several books devoted to monetary matters.

The same year that Warburg and Kay wrote “Can’t We Be Friends?” he purchased the house next door at No. 36 from Francis R. Appleton.   Architect William Lawrence Bottomley redesigned the two houses as one.  In 1930 the Department of Buildings documented the completion of a “one-family house” with a two-car garage in the basement.

The Warburgs' houses once matched the last-surviving brownstone of the row, next door -- photo by Alice Lum

The reconfigured residence featured a rusticated limestone base and two balconies that stretched with width of the structure at the second and third floors.  Near-random limestone blocks punctuated the stuccoed facade, and a pleasing Florentine arcade distinguished the top story.

photo by Alice Lum

In 1931 there was a rash of burglary attempts in the neighborhood and at around 7:00 on the morning of June 18, 1931 a maid heard the sound of glass breaking on the second floor where Kay Warburg was asleep.  When she heard nothing further, she ignored it.   Later, when she was serving breakfast to Kay in her bedroom at around 8:45, she found broken glass on the floor by a balcony window.   The broken pane was nearest to the window latch.

Detectives were called and nothing was found missing.  The Times reported that “it was believed that the thieves had taken fright at something in the street and had fled.”  Kay immediately retained a special watchman.

The low stone base and stuccoed upper facade made the double-wide house unique among its neighbors -- photo by Alice Lum

Later that year, in August, the wedding of Lucy Faulkner, Kay’s cousin, took place in the house.  In 1933 anther small ceremony and a reception were held here when Ruth Dean Cowles and Franklin Field were married.  Field worked with James Warburg at the Bank of Manhattan Company as Assistant Secretary.

With the coming of the Great Depression, Warburg was appointed financial adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Under-Secretary of the Treasury.   In 1933 he attended the World Economic Conference in London as the monetary adviser to the American delegation.  He was now Vice Chairman of the Board at the Bank of the Manhattan Company.

photo by Alice Lum

The following year would be a dark one for James P. Warburg.  Opposing certain of Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, he left his post in 1934.  In the meantime, things were not going so well at home, either.

Warburg’s long absences from New York no doubt helped fuel a long-existing involvement between Kay and George Gershwin.  On November 6, 1934 The New York Times reported that “Mrs. James Paul Warburg has arrived in Reno to establish residence and sue for divorce, it became known here yesterday.”

A month later, on December 20, the divorce was granted.  The Times noted “The charge was cruelty.” 

The following year Warburg married Phyllis Baldwin.  Although the Warburg and his three daughters  continued to live on at No. 34 with the new Mrs. Warburg, the two houses were separated in 1935.  The Department of Buildings noted that in 1941 there were now one apartments, one per floor in both addresses.

photo by Alice Lum

On April 24, 1942 the Warburg house was the scene of yet another small wedding; this time that of daughter Andrea Swift Warburg to Justin N. Feldman.  The New York Times mentioned that “The bride and bridegroom dispensed with attendants” and made a special note that Andrew wore “beige crepe.”

The year after Warburg announced the engagement of his daughter, Kay, in 1947, he remarried yet again; this time to Joan Melber.  

In 1953 the two houses were joined again in a renovation that resulted in two apartments per floor.  Today the remarkable building survives with its back-and-forth history as two, then one, then two, then one structure.  A Warburg still resides in the upper apartments.  The eccentric façade contributes to the grab-bag of architecture along the block.