The Phillip Green Gossler House - 14 East 65th Street

In January 1904 The Canadian Electrical News reported that Philip Green Gossler had resigned as general superintendent of the Montreal Light, Heat & Power Company to accept the position of general manager of J. G. White & Company, electrical engineers in New York City.  The article noted that Gossler "is one of the youngest of the many young men filing positions of great responsibility in the electrical field."

Philip G. Gossler as he appeared when he moved to NYC.  The Canadian Electrical News, January 1904 (copyright expired)

Indeed, the 34-year old electrical and mechanical engineer was a rising star in his field.  When he was just 22-years old he had "conducted a series of most complete tests of incandescent lamps," according to the article.

Gossler and his wife, the former Mary Claflin, had married in November 1895.  Mary came from a wealthy Brooklyn family, her grandfather being the millionaire dry goods merchant Henry A. Claflin.  In reporting on the couple's engagement, Brooklyn Life magazine took a passing shot at Philip, saying that his "pluck and intelligence compensate for a slight deficiency in physical stature."

Philip and Mary had three children, Katherine, Philip, Jr. and Mary Claflin Gossler.  But domestic troubles loomed and around 1918 Mary filed for divorce.  Philip's romantic eye had wandered to Alice Muller Choate, the wife of Joseph K. Choate.   Alice, too, obtained a divorce in 1919 and she and Philip were almost immediately married.

When The New York Times reported on Mary Claflin Gossler's society wedding on May 2, 1920, it essentially ignored her father, calling her simply "a daughter of Mrs. M. Claflin Gossler."

At the time of the wedding Mrs. F. B. Keech owned the four-story brownstone at No. 14 East 65th Street, built in 1879.  For years it had been operated as a boarding house by "Mrs. Thompson."  On January 9, 1923 The Times reported that the house had been sold to "a well-known New Yorker who will rebuild the house for his own occupancy."  The newspaper predicted the total investment would be "approximately $200,000," or nearly $3 million today.

The "well-known New Yorker" was Philip Green Gossler.  He hired architect William Welles Bosworth to design a modern residence in keeping with his wealth and social standing.  Although the original plans were apparently to "rebuild" the old house, as was common practice, it was demolished.  Bosworth replaced it with a five-story neo-Classical limestone-faced residence strikingly reserved in decoration.

The lack of ornamentation was both refined and stark.  photo by Wurts Bros., from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The centered entrance sat within a vine-carved frame with a lion's head above the door.  At the second floor, or piano nobile, a tall arched opening held two French windows (which seem to cry out for a balconette).  A Juliette balcony graced the French doors at the third floor; while the tiled-roofed fifth floor sat demurely back behind a substantial cornice.  A discreet "penthouse terrace" was to the rear.

The somewhat severe facade in no way reflected the glittering entertainments that went on inside.  On November 12, 1928, for instance, the Gosslers held a dinner dance for newlyweds Edward Barford and the former Grace Stanley, daughter of Lord and Lady Ashfield of London.  Among those on the impressive guest list were Prince Orsini, Duke di Bianconcini, Lewis Gouveneur Morris and his wife, and the Howard C. Brokaws.

The Gosslers were well-known in the fashionable summer resorts; and in 1929 they completed a winter home, as well.  On March 24 The New York Times reported that they "gave a housewarming in their newly completed Winter home on Hog Island, Nassau, the Bahamas, last week.  The extensive grounds were illuminated with hundreds of orange and buff lanterns and with electric lights placed in the palms and shrubs leading from the wharf to the house."  Throughout the evening two orchestras took turns playing.   The article noted that "a supper was served early in the evening and breakfast after midnight."  Mingling with the moneyed guests from stateside were Sir Charles William Orr, Governor of the Bahamas, and his wife Lady Orr, and Captain E. V. Manners-Smith, the governor's aide-de-camp.

By now Philip was president of the Columbia Gas and Electric Corporation.  In 1930 he was deemed by James W. Gerard, Ambassador to Germany, as "one of fifty-nine men who rule America."  He was a member of "several well known social clubs," according to one newspaper and a governor of the Automobile Club of America.

But once again his marriage suffered turmoil.  On December 19, 1931 Alice was granted a Reno divorce on the grounds of cruelty.   The acrimony of the split was such that Alice took back her first husband's surname, Choate.

Philip leased No. 14 to Charles Woodruff Rogers, an esteemed organist and operatic coach.  Rogers was the organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and during World War I had composed several patriotic war songs, including "You Are the U in the U.S.A." and "Wait Till My Ship Comes In."  The 64-year old bachelor died on January 25, 1938.

Two months after Rogers's death Philip G. Gossler, (who had risen to chairman of the board of the Columbia Gas and Electric Corporation) married Georgia Saffold Oates, the widow of Captain William C. Oates.  He moved his new bride and her daughter, Marion, into the 65th Street house.  It came just in time for Marion's introduction to society.

On November 17 a debutante reception was held in the house, followed by a dinner dance at the St. Regis Hotel on December 19.  Marion, who was born in the plantation-like mansion, Belvoir, in Montgomery, Alabama came from a well-established Southern family.   Her grandfather was General William Calvin Oates of the Confederate Army, who had served as Governor of Alabama for several years, then as a senator for 18 years.  Her great-great-grandfather was Chief Justice Reuben R. Saffold; and her grandmother was well-known poet and writer Mildred Reynolds (Mrs. William A. Saffold).

For the November reception, Marion wore the gown which her grandmother had worn at the first inauguration in 1893 of her grandfather as governor.  The Times reported on the floral decorations of the house, saying "Cybotium ferns in the entrance hall formed the background for a string quartet, and roses and delphiniums were used to decorate the drawing room.  Tea was served in the dining room, where yellow roses provided the floral motif."   Philip, Georgia and Marion received "in the music room before a screen of ferns and pink chrysanthemums."

photo by The New York Times Studio, 1941

Philip retired in 1940 when he was nominated as the Presidential candidate of the Republican Party.

In addition to the Hog Island estate, the Gosslers wintered at Belvoir in Alabama.  On June 3, 1942 The New York Times reported that Philip and Georgia "have arrived from their home in Montgomery, Ala., and Mrs. Gossler's daughter, Miss Marion Saffold Oates, who has come from Washington, are at the Gotham."  (Wealthy families most often spent several days in upscale hotels while their homes were being prepared after long absences.)

Marion's engagement had been announced only days earlier.  Her marriage to Thomas Leiter took place in June that year.

Philip Green Gossler died at the age of 74 on May 18, 1945 following a brief illness.  Within four months the estate sold No. 14 to Jean Murdock.  The New York Times said she was "a Californian who intends to alter the house extensively and occupy part of it."  Her renovations, completed in 1946, included a doctor's apartment and office on the former basement, one apartment on the ground floor, two "furnished rooms" on the second, one apartment on the third floor, and a duplex above.

Murdock sold the house in August 1952 to inventor Cesare Barbieri.  Born in Bologna, Italy, he had come to America in 1905, becoming a citizen in 1929.  He held multiple patents, including a invention for a paper-cup-making machine, and one for the manufacture of anti-freeze.  His residency would be somewhat short-lived.  He died at the age of 78 on May 25, 1956.

In October 1967 Alvin Gallant purchased No. 14 for a reported $250,000 (more in the neighborhood of $1.8 million today).   The Times reported that he "plans extensive alterations and will occupy the entire house with his family."  That did not happen.

Instead he sold it to Gordon Gray, Jr. in 1971, who in turn sold it to the People's Republic of the Congo on February 26, 1975 for "in excess of $400,000," according to court documents later.   The Congo Government remodeled the house for use as the Congolese Mission to the United Nations.  It was not long before Gray regretted the sale.

The Mission was responsible for making payments on a $400,000 mortgage which was passed on to Gray when he originally bought the property.  In 1976 the Mission stopped making the payments.  Gray was forced to take out a loan to pay off the full mortgage--making him once again the owner.

Gray now owned a mansion with a tenant who was not paying rent.  In 1978 he started eviction proceedings; but the Mission's attorney Mark J. O'Connor, claimed diplomatic immunity.  He told a reporter the issue was "not really whether money is owed," but that the 1976 Foreign Sovereignties Immunity Act protected the Mission from eviction.

Gray told a New York Times reporter in January 1978 that "This immunity thing is unbelievable," He called the entire situation a "horror show" and complained "They just don't have to pay anything."   He was no doubt even more incensed when on January 17 a judge dismissed the eviction attempt saying that "a summons to foreclose the mortgage had not been properly served."

It may have been the unflattering press that prompted the Mission a month later to tell Gray through its attorney that it was ready to reach "reasonable" settlement.  The results of that settlement were not published.

The Permanent Mission of the Peoples Republic of the Congo to the United Nations remained in the mansion until recently.  Despite the several internal renovations since Gossler's death, the exterior is unchanged since its completion in 1923.

photographs by the author

The Lost J. D. Rockefeller Jr. House -- 10 West 54th Street

image from the collection of the Rockefeller Archive Center.

While other millionaires were building ostentatious mansions that spread northward along Central Park, John D. Rockefeller preferred to purchase an aging brownstone at 4 West 54^th Street.  A devout Baptist, he eschewed display and raised his family in a comfortable yet restrained environment.

Son John Junior would not share his father’s disdain of flamboyance.

October 9, 1901 John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s wedding to Abby Green Aldrich on October 9, 1901, was a major social event.  The wedding took place in the Aldrich summer estate in Rhode Island.  Rockefeller arranged for the 500 guests to be transported there on two private steamers from Manhattan and 45 special train cars.

The newlyweds lived in the Rockefeller mansion for a few years before moving across the street to No. 31 West 54th Street in 1905.  Rockefeller was earning a salary of $10,000 (about $200,000 today), working as one of three advisors to his father.  But as Junior’s family increased, so did his fortune.

By 1912, John and Abby had five children who taxed the size of their home.  Rockefeller Sr. gave his son some Manhattan property and his entire holdings in the American Linseed Company.  It was time for a larger house.

John Junior purchased the former mansion of Colonel John J. McCook at 10 West 54^th Street, abutting the side garden of his childhood home.  He commissioned William Wells Bosworth to design a gargantuan replacement--eight stories tall--that would dwarf his father’s Civil War period home next door.



The rising house dwarfs the nearby brownstone rowhouses in 1912 -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

Within the entrance were a large vestibule and two reception rooms.  The first floor was devoted to utilitarian purposes rather than entertaining.  Rockefeller’s office, a breakfast room and the servants’ quarters were all on this floor.  Upstairs things were a bit more impressive.

The Sun, on October 27, 1912, described the house as it neared completion.  “The second floor is planned to be one of the most attractive suites in the city.  Here will be the dining room, the drawing room and the music room, all of large dimensions, with plenty of window space.”

The newspaper took a swipe at other Standard Oil transplants from Ohio.  “Specially designed furniture and hangings are being made by the best manufacturers for this apartment, which while not intended to be as lavish or ostentatious as those in the homes of some of the Western men of means who have built homes on or near Fifth avenue will be unusually attractive.”

The third and fourth floors above were devoted to the family.  The entire third floor was reserved for John and Abby, including a library.  The fourth housed the children’s bedrooms and rooms for nurses and personal attendants of the family.  The fifth floor was entirely devoted to guestrooms, as was part of the sixth.

The upper two floors were partly for recreation.  On the seventh floor was “as perfectly equipped a gymnasium as it is possible to have in a house of this kind,” said The Sun.  There were also a squash court and “baths of various kinds.”  The uppermost floor contained an open air playground for the children, a roof garden, and a huge open sun parlor with glass walls.  In the days before air conditioning, the family could retreat here at night to the open air sleeping pavilion.

The completed 102-foot tall house was the tallest private home ever built in New York.

John Junior's soaring house rises above his father's Civil War period brownstone -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The John D. Rockefeller, Jr. family's mansion was completed in 1912—a year when unions and capitalists were butting heads, sometimes violently.  The Labor Defense Committee and the IWW staged protests that met with rough police reaction.  Labor versus management differences would be manifested on the threshold of the new house.

In May 1914, news reached New York about a tragic and violent end to a miners’ strike in Ludlow, Colorado.  In 1913, workers at a company owned by Rockefeller, Jr. had demanded that the company obey labor laws regarding safety and cash payment of wages.  An angry Rockefeller responded by having the workers—mostly immigrants—evicted from company-owned housing.

The homeless miners erected a tent city nearby where families suffered through a severe Colorado winter.  As the standoff continued, Rockefeller ordered the National Guard to attack the settlement with machine guns and rifles and set fire to the tents.

When the smoke cleared, 22 people were dead—workers, women and children—from beatings, bullet wounds and suffocation.

In response, activist and author Upton Sinclair organized a demonstration of peaceful resistance.  Rows of “silent mourners” paraded past the Standard Oil offices and, then, showed up at the 54^th Street house.

At 5:30 on the afternoon of May 2, five “mourners” appeared and walked back and forth before the mansion for four hours.  When it became obvious they were not going away, Detective Billy Ward “decided that the promenade was too short and compelled the walkers to lengthen the laps until they extended from Fifth avenue almost to Sixth avenue,” said The Sun the following day.  The detective’s ploy did not succeed, however, when one demonstrator attempted to make a speech from the mansion steps, “Ward made him scoot.”

Five days later the group of five silent mourners had grown to a crowd.  On May 7, traffic police were astonished to see “hundreds” coming up Fifth Avenue headed towards the Rockefeller mansion.  Leading them was a man in the black robe of Death.  The demonstrators marched from Sixth Avenue and 50^th Street.  The Sun reported, “By the time Fifth avenue was reached the crowd was so big that it cut off all traffic for between ten and twenty minutes.”

The man in the Death costume, Albert Turner, was arrested and the mob turned away before reaching the Rockefeller house.  Turner was sentenced to two months in the workhouse.

While the disturbances were taking place on West 54^th Street, Rockefeller and his family were entrenched in their heavily-guarded Pocantico Hills estate.

Priceless porcelains and French furniture decorated a sitting room -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Things eventually calmed down and life returned to normal in the house that looked rather like a hotel.  Despite his reaction to the Colorado miner strike, Rockefeller, like his father, was a devoted Baptist.  On April 19, 1917, his Bible class and others—nearly 300 persons in all—attended a service in the house by the Reverend Billy Sunday.  Referring to the lure of the lights and sins of Broadway, the preacher prayed “for those who tread the ‘Gay White Way,’ and said he hoped religion might touch their hearts and turn them to better things.”

The Rockefellers filled the mansion with an extensive art collection.  David Rockefeller would later remember that “Mother loved beauty wherever she found it, but Father’s taste was restricted to the more conventional and realistic art forms.”

Unbelievably, the massive house quickly became too small for the art collection.  The house next door was purchased and an entrance cut through on three floors.  The extension was used to display, among other valuable artworks, ten 18^th century Gobelin tapestries woven for Louis XIV, and the early 15^th century French Gothic tapestry set depicting the Hunt of the Unicorn.

John Rockefeller, Jr. discovered the following winter that even the Rockefeller name was not always enough to get him what he wanted.  The house was heated by a coal-powered heating plant that serviced several other homes in the neighborhood, as well.  When the plant ran out of coal in January 1918 and the temperature in his house plummeted, Rockefeller sent a requisition to the Standard Oil Company for 36 oil stoves.

The answer he received was not what he expected.  “Supply exhausted.  Can’t get them for you or anybody else.”

The manager of the distributing station was more pointed.  “Rockefeller looks like anybody else to me,” he told a reporter.  “If he walked in here with an oil can he wouldn’t get it filled any quicker than the dishwasher at that restaurant down the street.”

Unfortunately, the brutal winter with its accompanying lack of coal and heaters resulted in the pipes bursting in the 54^th Street mansion.  “The Rockefeller pipes froze and burst just like ordinary pipes, and the result was precisely the same as elsewhere.  Icicles and miniature glaciers became prominent features of the interior decorations of the house,” reported the New-York Tribune on January 6.

The family retreated, again, to Pocantico Hills where coal was in ample supply.

Life for the Rockefeller family was apparently happy in the big house.  On New Year’s Eve 1920, Rockefeller wrote to his father, “We spent a very happy Christmas here in New York, with the tree up in the big nursery and great mounds of presents all about the room for the different members of the family.” 

John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s prized collection of porcelains spilled over into a family dining room -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Nevertheless, the children were raised with the typical Rockefeller discipline.  Nelson would recall that he was responsible for mending his own clothes, weeding the garden and keeping detailed accounts of his 30 cent allowance.

But by now, the neighborhood was not the residential enclave of millionaires it had been.  David Rockefeller wrote in his biography Memoirs, “

With the advent of Prohibition in the mid-1920s, nightclubs and speakeasies selling bootleg liquor also appeared, and there were rumors that a number of brothels had opened as well.  The neighborhood, once the exclusive preserve of the Vanderbilts and Astors, had become seedy and down-at-the-heels.

John D. Rockefeller, Sr. died on May 23, 1937 just weeks before his 100^th birthday.  The family homes would not survive much longer.  The following year, John Rockefeller, Jr. announced plans to raze the houses as Abby Rockefeller’s vision of the Museum of Modern Art took form.

Twenty-five years after it was constructed, the towering John D. Rockefeller, Jr. house was demolished to make way for the sculpture garden of the museum.

photo by Alice Lum

The 1924 neo-Federal Nos. 121-123 E. 65th Street

photo by Alice Lum

As the turn of the last century came and went, the brownstones built just after the Civil War that lined the blocks off Central Park were demolished or remodeled as wealthy New Yorkers updated and upgraded the neighborhood.   Two such prim rowhouses, Nos. 121 and 123, had been erected in 1869 as part of a string of thirteen matching residences.

Although the homes were clearly out of date, the block retained its exclusive character.  In 1918 The Sun mentioned that “Mr. and Mrs. Arthur W. Rossiter, who have been passing the summer in Glen Cove, L.I., will be for the Winter at 121 East Sixty-fifth street.”   The Rossiters leased the home from attorney David Funk.

Two years later, in March 1920, Charles H. Sabin purchased the house at No. 121 from Funk’s estate, completing his quiet accumulation of connected properties.  Sabin was the president of the Guaranty Trust Company and lived with his wife nearby at No. 14 East 62^nd Street.   His latest purchase now provided him with the two houses at Nos. 121 and 123 East 65^th Street, and two directly behind them at Nos. 118 and 120 East 66^th Street.   The New-York Tribune said Sabin “intends to erect a fine residence for himself;” plans that included a 40-foot wide residence on 65^th Street and “access to the garage, to be on the Sixty-sixth Street end of the plot.”  The wealthy banker paid cash for the four properties.

A month later the houses were being emptied.  The Tribune reported that “paintings, furniture, art objects, and Persian and Chinese rugs” from the house at No. 121 were being sold at auction.

Months passed, however, and the four old back-to-back brownstones remained. 

For unexplained reasons, Sabin and his wife changed their minds about an opulent block-through residence and on October 20, 1921 the New-York Tribune announced that Colonel William Barclay Parsons had purchased the two 65^th Street houses from the Sabins.  “The alterations Colonel Parsons plans practically mean the rebuilding of the houses,” said the newspaper.

The two 1869 brownstone residences as they looked when Parsons purchased them -- New-York Tribune, October 30, 1921 (copyright expired)

William Barclay Parsons had acquired his “Colonel” appellation during World War I when he commanded a regiment of engineers that saw action in France.  But his reputation came from his domestic engineering accomplishments.   A well-regarded railroad engineer, he was appointed by the New York City Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners in 1891 to help design an underground railway.  After several setbacks, he saw the completion of the first sections of the New York Subway system, before he retired from the post of Chief Engineer in 1904.   His accomplishment did not escape even himself.  He said years later “For a subway of this character and in the rock and fine sand, there were no precedents.”

He would also be responsible for the Hudson River tubes, the Cape Cod Canal and was a member of the engineering team in charge of building the Panama Canal.  The New York Times would call him a “militant genius of the city age.”

Unlike the Sabins, Parsons wasted no time in setting to work on his new home.  The Tribune’s assessment that the renovation would mean practically rebuilding the houses was an understatement.  The engineer called upon architect William Welles Bosworth to transform the two old homes.   The architect had recently completed a major commission—the designing of the new campus for MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Unlike his campus buildings--classical, columned buildings appropriate to an academic environment--Bosworth would turn to neo-Federal architecture for the Parsons house.   The clean, formal lines of the period had been popular with Manhattan’s millionaires for over a decade; replacing the gushing, overly-ornamented styles of the Gilded Age.

Assisted in the project by architect E. E. Piderson, Bosworth sat three floors of Flemish-bond brick on a stone base.  Burned header bricks gave the appearance of age.  The entrance, at the left end of the structure, was framed by two Ionic columns and was balanced by a service entrance at the opposite end. 

The entrance was clearly distinguished from the service entrance on the opposite end of the residence by a restrained portico -- photo by Alice Lum

Openings on the upper three floors grew successively shorter, maintaining the visual proportions of the exceptionally wide house.  Paneled lintels, a stone course below the top floor, and a handsome stone balustrade along the roof line added to the dignity of the design.  Inside, at least one period pine-paneled room taken from a colonial home in Massachusetts was installed, carrying on the early American motif.

Apparently the Parsons moved into the house as construction continued.  On February 10, 1921, The New York Times reported that Parsons, “of 121 East Sixty-fifth Street has gone to Yucatan.”  The house was officially completed on February 21, 1924.

photo by Alice Lum

Parsons and his wife, the former Anna Reed, spent their summers in their New Jersey estate, Crossways, or traveled abroad.  For years when they returned to the city they would live at the Savoy-Plaza while they waited for the 65^th Street house to be reopened.

Parsons continued on with engineering projects.  He became one of the three advisers to the Royal Commission on London traffic, was appointed by President Roosevelt to the Isthmian Canal Commission and was chairman of the Chicago Transit Commission.  In the meantime, Anna Parsons worked for her favorite charities, serving as chairman of the Woman’s Auxiliary of the New York Lying-In Hospital, and establishing a visiting nurse service in the city.

William Barclay Parsons -- photo Library of Congress

Parsons died on May 9, 1932.  Among his many accomplishments, his obituary in The New York Times said “But he will be chiefly remembered as the valiant engineer—an underground builder of ‘towered cities,’ where civilization, as he once said, rests on engineering.”

Anna Reed Parsons retained possession of the house; but possibly she was emotionally unable to stay in the home she built with her husband.  In November she leased it to Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Auchincloss; The Times noting that “There is a garden in the rear of the house.”

An attorney, Auchincloss gained distinction through his marriage in 1912 to Janet House, the daughter of Colonel Edward Mandell House, a close friend and advisor of President Woodrow Wilson.   Through his father-in-law, House had been introduced to the President and other administration big-wigs.  House took him on as his secretary during the Armistice negotiations and the Paris Peace Conference.

Now back in New York, Auchincloss had resumed his law practice, but remained involved in Democratic Party politics.  The couple was highly visible in New York society.

Gordon Auchincloss died in 1943.  A year later Anna Parsons sold the 65^th Street house; assessed at the time at $100,000—just around $1 million today.

Over half a century later, the wide Federal-style home of William Barclay Parsons remains a private residence.   Little has changed in the dignified façade; a quiet reminder of the short, contented period between a World War and a Great Depression.

Thanks to reader zcapresso for requesting this post