Tiffany & Co.'s 1853 Atlas Clock



Charles Tiffany, during the midst of America’s first great depression, opened his first small store across from City Hall in 1837. His business thrived and ten years later he moved across the street to 271 Broadway.   By 1853 Tiffany & Co. had established itself as a leader in the quality jewelry trade and Tiffany built an impressive new building at 550 Broadway. Feeling that the façade was “monotonous,” he commissioned his good friend Henry Frederick Metzler to carve a 9-foot tall figure of Atlas to be situated over the entrace, holding a clock, four feet in diameter.

Metzler was a carver of ships' figureheads, or “bow portraits.” The bearded, lanky figure was a distinct departure from the hulking, muscular Atlases produced by most contemporary artists. Naked except for a crossed leather strap, Metzler’s Atlas does not bend under his burden, but stands upright and dignified. The left foot is poised to take a step off the statue’s base.

The Atlas Clock over the entrance to Tiffany & Co. 550 Broadway in the 1850s (photo from flickr.com/photos/curbed/4030180010)

The carver did not attempt to present an heroic figure and instead created a realistic, natural human form; a masterpiece of woodcarving and design. When completed, the wooden Atlas, carved of fir, was painted to mimic the patina of weathered bronze.

Seventeen years later, in 1870, Tiffany & Co. followed the uptown movement of the retail establishments and opened a grand new store on Union Square. With the move came the clock, which was installed directly over the main entrance in a window opening.

Atlas Clock over the doorway of the Union Square Tiffany & Co. store - NYPL Collection

For 35 years the Atlas clock served shoppers and businessmen rushing along busy Union Square until Tiffany & Co. moved once again – this time to the imposing white marble palazzo designed by Stanford White on Fifth Avenue between 36th and 37th Streets. By now the Atlas clock was as much a symbol of Tiffany as was the robin’s egg blue box. With the clock on the façade, there was no need for advertising.

The Tiffany & Co. clock on the third floor of Stanford White's momumental marble Italian Renaissance store 401 5th Ave. - NYPL Collection

“Tiffany & Co. have decided to let the building remain practically unmarked,” reported The New York Times on September 6, 1905. “The only mark of Tiffany about the new building is the great clock outside of the third story on the shoulders of a giant Atlas. This ornament was taken from the Union Square store.”

The uptown odyssey was not yet over for Atlas. On September 7, 1940 a The New York Times headline read “Tiffany’s Atlas Moved; Clock Mounted on Wood Figure is Place on New Home.” Tiffany & Co. had built its next flagship store, a sleek modern structure at 727 Fifth Avenue at the corner of 57th Street. According to Tiffany & Co., “The limestone, granite and marble façade is free of ornamentation, except for the famous Atlas clock.”

The Atlas Clock in its present location at Tiffany & Co.'s 5th Avenue and 57th Street building, ca 1940 - NYPL Collection

In 1980 Tiffany & Co. introduced the Atlas wristwatch, based on the design of the iconic clock outside. Atlas was removed in 1990 for restoration and again in 2006.

After more than a century and a half, Henry Frederick Metzler’s functional sculpture remains a fixture on Fifth Avenue and a priceless symbol of a firm. Amazingly, the mid-Victorian design is comfortably compatible with the streamlined façade on which it rests.

The 1887 19th Precinct Station House -- 153 East 67th Street

In the early 1880s, the 28th Precinct faced a problem. When the station house on 59th Street was constructed in 1851 the precinct, covering 58th Street to 79th Street and Fifth Avenue east to the river, was sparsely populated. There was little need for a major police presence.

Now, however, the area was developed and the station house, which The New York Times called “a little ramshackle structure,” was not large enough to accommodate the number of officers necessary to patrol the area. The precinct included a diverse population, from the 12,000 cigar makers who lived in the new tall tenements houses to “homes as happy as comfort and culture can make them,” on the west side, according to The Times. “But,” the newspaper said, “nevertheless, the streets in the eastern part of the precinct area infested with gangs of the worst ruffians in the city. They live in shanties built on the rocks and make themselves a terror to the neighborhood. They figure in the police courts as sneak thieves, pickpockets and vagrants.”

Residents petitioned the Commissioner for a new, larger station house with additional officers and when General Grant joined in, officials took notice. The city reserved a lot of land on East 67th Street where a new fire headquarters was planned, and the Board of Apportionment appropriated $70,000 for the structure.

Police sergeant Nathaniel Bush, who was responsible for designing the force’s new station houses from 1862 to 1895, laid out the plans and specifications. What he put on paper was much grander than what the Board of Apportionment had envisioned. The Times said “He put on paper a station house…much superior to anything of the kind now in the city.”

With accommodations for 150 policemen, it was a four-story Italian edifice of red brick with bluestone copings and terra cotta trimmings. Bush combined styles, drawing upon Second Empire, Romanesque Revival (specifically the German Rudbogenstil substyle), Neo-Grec and Renaissance Revival. The AIA Guide to New York City would later tall it a “Victorian palazzo…borrowing heavily from the Florentine Renaissance.”

The first floor would house the Sergeants’ desk and waiting room, and the Captain’s room. The second and third floor were reserved for dormitories for the officers and sleeping rooms for four sergeants. “The upper floor will be devoted to a gymnasium for the patrolmen, modeled on the one that the Seventh Regiment boys develop their limbs and strengthen their muscles with in the big armory,” said the newspaper.

Bush included up-to-the-minute innovations such as electric signals connecting the station house to all the schools, hospitals and other institutions to ensure prompt response and a prison connected to the building rather than adjoining it and lined with sheet iron “in order that the howlings of noisy drunken people locked in the cells shall not be heard in the school close by, or by people passing in the street.”

The ambitious building was estimated at $110,000; significantly higher than the appropriation.

Rather than compromise the precinct’s needs, the Commissioners decided to hold off on construction until the additional funds could be found.

Finally, on June 21, 1886 plans were filed with the Department of Buildings and construction began in December. Less than a year later it was completed and the officers moved in on November 30, 1887 – now called the 25th Precinct Station House after the department’s renumbering of the precincts in January 1887.

In April of the next year, Joseph Gilmartin (who sometimes went by the last name Murray) was arrested for horse stealing. None of Nathaniel Bush’s modern innovations mattered in the face of human complacence, however, and Gilmartin walked out of his cell to freedom without being noticed. “The turnkeys of the station will probably be obliged to stand trial,” said The Times.

The station house in 1920, showing the original entrance and the Fire Headquarters next door.  NYPL Collection

Throughout the 20th Century the station house served the community, although, as with most civic buildings, problems arose. In August 1926 the state prison commissioner condemned the conditions for prisoners, saying the cells were “insanitary.”

By the 1970s the station house, now the 19th Precinct (it was renumbered the 31st in 1908, changed to 10A in 1924 and finally the 19th in 1929) had become dowdy and obsolete. Concurrently Hunter College planned an expansion, eyeing the site of the station house and the old fire headquarters building next door. The city began plans for new facilities at other locations and in 1974 the old prison building behind the station house was demolished.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission stepped in, designating and protecting four 19th Century structures including the station house, as landmarks. When the fire and police departments protested, the Board of Estimate overturned the designation in June 1980 to enable the demolition of the buildings.

The several agencies involved met, however, and Hunter College architects Ulrich Franzen & Associates proposed a solution. The rear of the vintage structures would be razed, the facades would be restored and a new structure erected behind them. The approved project under the guidance of the Department of General Services resulted in joining of the police station and the firehouse by a five-story granite structure 30 feet back from the sidewalk.. The station house now uses the upper stories of the old fire headquarters. The Hunter College portion, separate from the two civic buildings, was completed in 1986.

Carl Stein of Stein Partnership, along with structural engineer Robert Silman, spearheaded the renovation of the fire and police stations. The 19th Precinct House was cleaned, a new porch with handicapped access was installed, and the original metal cornice, too damaged for restoration, was replaced by a fiberglass copy. The renovations were completed in 1992 and the station house was re-designated a landmark in 1998.

Other than the new porch, the façade of Nathaniel Bush’s grand police station is essentially unchanged.

Park East Synagogue -"Zichron Ephraim" 163 East 67th STreet

Rabbi Bernard Drachman was a man of religious convictions. While he recognized that the old Orthodox ways necessarily had to be adapted to the new American lifestyle; he stood solidly against the disposal of crucial religious traditions.

In the second half of the 19th Century, established Jews began leaving the Lower East Side, moving their congregations uptown to the Yorkville neighborhood. One such congregation, Beth Israel Bikkur Cholem which was founded by Polish Jews in 1847, build a new synagogue on Lexington Avenue at 72nd Street. Drachman was elected rabbi in 1887.

It was not a good match.

Almost immediately members insisted on radical changes – such as the elimination of separate seating areas for men and women. Drachman stood firm, vowing to protect “the content of the Jewish heritage from the well-nigh overwhelming forces of disintegration with which it was surrounded.”

Despite the rabbi’s virulent stance, the congregation voted to adopt the change. Rabbi Drachman sadly walked away from his leadership of the synagogue.

The disheartened rabbi received a visit from his father-in-law, the wealthy real estate mogul Jonas Weil. The two were founding members of the Jewish Theological Seminary a year earlier. Weil encouraged Drachman to found his own congregation in which he could foster his own combination of Jewish Orthodoxy and Americanism. Weil offered the financial backing necessary and, after all, the Rabbi already had a pile of letters of support from Jews across the city who knew of the conflict that initiated his resignation.

By 1888 Drachman had organized the new congregation and a year later a constitution was written and adopted. Drachman was named rabbi for life.

On November 29, 1889 the cornerstone was laid the new synagogue. Because Weil and his brother Samuel paid for the new building and the land, the congregation took the name Zichron Ephraim, “Memorial to Ephraim” in memory of their father. German-born architects Ernst Schneider and Henry Herter were given the commission to design the structure – a significant departure from the tenement buildings they more commonly built. In addition to the 60 by 90 foot main structure, a religious school, prayer room for daily worship and a tabernacle were included in the plans.

As with many other synagogue of the last quarter of the 19th Century, a loose mixture of Byzantine and Moorish Revival style was used -- Gothic Revival smacked of Christian churches. A pronounced porch composed of horseshoe arches and pillars supports two impressive towers (even more impressive at the time when they were topped by onion domes). A large rose window dominates the central, angled gable and harmonious mixing of terra cotta and orange brick in exuberant details creates a visual delight.

photo by Emilio Guerra

A year later on September 7, just one week before Rosh Hashanah, the synagogue was dedicated. The building cost approximately $200,000 and at its opening the membership was comprised of about 100 families . There was seating for 1,000 worshippers – 550 men and 450 women.

Rabbi Drachman served as rabbi for more than half a century, dying in 1945. Throughout the decades the synagogue continues to be strong and positive force in Jewish education and religious life in New York. The synagogue has been a destination for leaders from across the globe. In 1957 the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Robert Briscoe, visited and prayed here. In 2008 Pope Benedict XVI made the first papal visit to an American synagogue (he left with a box of matzah) and in November of the following year the Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew paid a visit.

Greek Orthodox priests during Patriarch Bartholomew's visit in 2009 - photo Dimitrios Panagos

The beautiful synagogue which came to be because of one man’s religious convictions was designated a New York City landmark in 1980.

The Century Association - 7 West 43rd Street

The Century Association at the time of its completion in 1891 - photo NYPL Collection

Decades after he joined the Century Association in 1870, Henry Holt reminisced. "When I joined the Century it was unquestionably the most active center of culture in New York." At that time, he said, "there was in the city hardly a man of eminence in literature, art or science who did not belong to the Century."

Holt may sound a bit snobbish; however the membership of the association (which preferred not to call itself a “club”) reads like a virtual Who’s Who of the literary and artistic world – early members including Calvert Vaux, Asher Durand, Winslow Homer, Edwin Booth, Joseph W. Harper and Thomas Cole.

William Cullen Bryant most often gets credit for founding the group in 1847 “to promote the advancement of art and literature;” however there were several erudite gentlemen responsible including William Kemble, William H. Appleton and Asher B. Durand. The name of the club reflected the founders’ intentions to limit membership to no more than 100 – a carry-over from the earlier Sketch Club also founded by Bryant.

Membership was offered to “Artists, Literary Men, Scientists, Physicians, Officers of the Army and Navy, members of the Bench and Bar, Engineers, Clergymen, Representatives of the Press, Merchants and men of leisure.” In effect, anyone with wealth, breeding and education.

After the Civil War, the club established its first permanent headquarters on East 15th Street. As the century ground to an end, the members began talking of a new, roomier clubhouse uptown. On November 4, 1898 a committee was formed to locate and purchase a site “somewhere within the territory bounded by Fourth-avenue, Fiftieth-street, Sixth-avenue, and Twenty-third-street, for a sum not to exceed $200,000.”

A committee member noted that a prime lot on an avenue or corner was unnecessary as “we are not in any sense a ‘window club’…The main object we shall hold in view will be to obtain accommodations for a good and commodious picture gallery and a handsome library, besides, of course, the usual parlors and sleeping apartments.

“The purchase of the new site will be made just as soon as possible, and a building then put up to suit the taste of our members.”

The plot of land chosen was at No. 7 West 43rd Street, midblock, and the building “to suit the taste of our members” would be sumptuous. Club member Stanford White was given the commission and he created a 4-story Italian Renaissance palazzo using granite, terra-cotta ornamentation and brick. Wreath-encircled round windows on the fourth floor tie elegantly with the rectangular windows below creating a single design element. A balconied Palladian window supported by strikingly-grained marble pillars and a classical balustrade above the cornice create an aura of stateliness. The building set the bar for future fashionable men’s clubs.

The Racquet Club (far distance), the Academy of Music and the Century Association in 1892 - photo NYPL Collection

Although there were ongoing obstacles with budgets, schedules and contractors, on January 10, 1891 the new “magnificent quarters,” as The New York Times called the clubhouse, was opened. Episcopal Bishop Potter presided at the business meeting, during which the cost of the building was reported as $227,673, of which the club owed only $7,327. The special exhibition of paintings in the new art gallery was to be on view to women “by card” three days later; however ladies could not expect admission as members, as with any of the exclusive men’s clubs.

Reading Room, 1896

Five years after opening, in 1896, the Century Association hired Elijah Hicks as “hallman.” The Harlem-born black man welcomed the esteemed members at the door with unwavering fidelity until his death in 1934. The death of Hicks, whom The Times said had a “grand seigneur manner” was deeply mourned. Poet Robert U. Johnson wrote a sonnet in his honor and a contingent of members attended his Harlem funeral. “Members of the Century Club…knew in a general way that Elijah Hicks was an old man, and that old men die,” said The Times, “But no one had seriously thought of a time when the aged man would not be there anymore. For even the youngest member, the idea of a Century Club without an Elijah Hicks was inconceivable.”

Tudor-inspired Dining Room, 1896

The following year, in the midst of the Great Depression, the club encountered the first of its legal battles. The club was taken to court in an attempt to make it pay taxes. The single-man jury, a Deputy United States Marshal, was given the task of deciding whether the library and art gallery were enough to describe its members as “followers of art and letters;” or whether the inordinate number of Federal Judges in the membership, the bar, card tables and billiard room instead made it a “convivial social group.”

With its annual art exhibitions, lectures and elite artistic and literary membership on its side, the association won the case.

In 1969 the Yale Club opened its membership to women, sending a shock wave through the men’s clubs of Manhattan. The esteemed University club finally voted for inclusion in 1987. The Century Association, however, stuck to its 140-year-old tradition. No women.

The stance would be short-lived, however, when finally in 1989 the club’s exhaustive legal battles failed and women were finally admitted.

The Century Association as it appeared on May 21, 1892 - photo NYPL Collection

Today the club that was intended for no more than 100 members – called Centurions – has over 2000 members. Stanford White’s grand palazzo, designated a landmark in 1967, is as stately and distinguished as it was in 1891.

It is, according to the Association website “an association of…artists, and amateurs of letters and the fine arts…Its main activity is conversation”

contemporary photographs taken by the author

The Benjamin Duke House - 1009 Fifth Avenue



 At the turn of the 20th Century, Manhattan’s wealthy were fleeing northward from “Millionaire’s Row” as retail concerns crept ever closer to their mansions along Fifth Avenue below 57th Street. Recognizing the potential, brothers William and Thomas Hall purchased property on 5th Avenue between 81st and 82nd Streets where they would build four adjoining mansions as a speculative investment.

Architect Alexander Welch of Welch, Smith and Provot was commissioned to design the grand residences which were completed in 1901. Northern-most of these was No. 1009, a dignified red-brick townhouse in the Beaux-Arts style. While the entrance was squarely on 82nd Street, the Fifth Avenue address added a note of affluence.

Sitting on a rusticated limestone base, the house rose six stories to an elegant mansard roof with copper cresting. Both the 82nd Street and Fifth Avenue facades bowed, adding visual interest to the house; added to by balustraded balconies, a petaled glass hood over the entrance and a handsome sidewalk moat. Despite its grand and imposing appearance, contemporary architecture critic Montgomery Schuyler, never one to rein in his negativity, deemed the house vulgar.

Benjamin N. Duke and his wife Sarah, who were living in the Hoffman House hotel, purchased the new 12-bedroom home. Inside, white-and-gold French paneling adorned the public rooms while elaborate carved fireplaces and a glass-covered grand staircase reminded visitors of the owners’ wealth. Duke had amassed a personal fortune of approximately $60 million with the founding of the American Tobacco Company with his brother.

Here, in December of 1906, the couple gave a reception at which Duke's recently-divorced brother, James,  met the Southern-born widow, Mrs. Nanaline Holt Inman.



No. 1009 Fifth Avenue with its neighboring mansions still standing - NYPL Collection

 Afterwards, according to The New York Times, Duke “paid her constant attention,” and eight months later the pair was married on July 23, 1907. The newspaper reported that Duke had purchased the former Henry H. Cook mansion at 5th Avenue and 78th Street for his bride, whom it deemed “a handsome brunette” and who “has always attracted a considerable amount of attention.”

James Duke set about demolishing the Cook house and having a new mansion built on the site. In the meantime, Benjamin Duke and his family left No. 1009 Fifth Avenue and moved to the Plaza Hotel in 1909.  While construction on their new residence dragged on, James, Nanaline and her son moved into No. 1009 5th Avenue, along with nine servants. The new house at No. 1 East 78th Street was completed in 1912 and, when the Dukes moved in, they rented No. 1009 to Moses Taylor of the banking firm Kean, Taylor & Co., for $30,000 a year.

By 1922 the house was again occupied by Dukes – this time Benjamin’s daughter Mary Biddle and her husband Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr. As the decades passed, Mary would have designer Karl Bock update non-public rooms, creating a royal-blue glass tiled bathroom and an oval black-marble and mirrored bath.

When Mary Biddle died in 1960, the 5th Avenue blocks facing Central Park were being built up with high-rise, sleek luxury apartment buildings and one-by-one the grand mansions were torn down. Concerned that the family mansion would suffer the same fate, Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans and her husband purchased the house from her mother’s estate.

“I had a very wonderful childhood there. We had wonderful Christmas trees. My mother was an opera singer. She had music going all the time. She had concerts in that middle hall,” she told Forbes Magazine in 1960. “We both decided we mustn’t let that go. We didn’t want the neighborhood to be destroyed, and we were sure that some high-rise would replace it.”

Although the family never again took up residence, she reserved several important floors including the parlor level for family stays; dividing the rest of the house into distinguished apartments and offices. In the 1970s, as she was approached by developers who eyed the site for an apartment house, Mary Semans and her husband worked to get the house recognized by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and, in 1974, it was given landmark protection. Subsequently No. 1009 stands alone, the last survivor of the row of four houses built by the Hall Brothers.

Ten years after landmark designation, architects Gerland Allen & Associates spearheaded an exterior restoration of the structure.

In 2006 the house was sold for $40 million to Tamir Sapir – a Russian immigrant who started life in New York as a taxi cab driver and became a billionaire investing in real estate. Sapir intended to use the house as a showplace for his collection of ivory, however when the government found he was illegally importing the ivory carvings and endangered species pelts into the country on his yacht, the plan died.

Benjamin Duke’s 20,000 square-foot mansion sold in July 2010 for $44 million -- $6 million less than Sapir was asking – to Carlos Slim, sometimes called the world’s richest man who made billions in the Mexican telecom industry. It is an architectural and historic treasure; a reminder of what life was like for the extremely wealthy on Fifth Avenue at the turn of the last century.

The 1901 Battle over 5th Avenue - the St. Regis Hotel

In 1901 John Jacob Astor, Jr. did what, to many socially prominent New Yorkers, was unforgivable.  While three previous Astors had demolished their grand homes to erect exclusive hotels, they did so when the upper-class neighborhoods where they stood were becoming less fashionable.

This time John Jacob Astor, Jr. went too far.  He purchased the mansions at the southeast corner of 5th Avenue and 55th Street, demolished them, and began construction of the 19-story St. Regis Hotel across the avenue from “Vanderbilt Row” – the blocks of Vanderbilt family palaces.  He betrayed his peers by contributing to the social crime of which New York’s elite bitterly complained: encroachment of commerce into the exclusive Fifth Avenue mansion district.

Astor intended his hotel to be “as convenient and as luxurious as the most expensive private house in the city.”  That did not, however, appease the neighboring mansion owners.

The firm of Trowbridge & Livingston was hired to design the structure. The relatively-young firm would go on to design important buildings such as the B. Altman Department Store on Fifth Avenue and J. P. Morgan’s Wall Street headquarters, however the St. Regis would be one of their most important early commissions. The architects opted for the then-fashionable Beaux-Arts style that was sweeping the city and country.

The limestone-clad hotel would be festooned with garlands, balconies, French windows and decorative wrought iron railings. An elegant mansard roof, monumental console brackets, and snaking copper cresting added to the Parisian air of the design of a building intended to hold court over “the Queen of Avenues.”

print from the NYPL Collection

While the wealthy neighbors huddled over the intrusive structure rising in their midst, the Bureau of Buildings halted construction a year after groundbreaking. The lush interiors of the hotel relied heavily on carved woodwork and expensive imported paneling. On May 14, 1902 Superintendent Stewart reported that wood had not been properly fireproofed. “The doors and such wood stuffs are supposed to be thoroughly fireproofed,” he said “but they have not been. ..I will not allow it, and will stop the work until they get the proper material, and replace what has already been put in.”

In 1903 blasting of the solid rock for the 40-foot deep foundation rattled the windowpanes of houses for blocks.  Millionaires filed an injunction based on the depth of excavations. They were subsequently disappointed when Justice Clarke ruled in the hotel’s favor.

By the spring of 1904, however, as construction was nearing completion, the neighbors devised another tactic. As The New York Times reported on May 13, “The new hotel is conceived and executed on a scale of sumptuousity quite without precedent. Naturally one of the first requisites of such a hotel is a license to sell liquor. It is evidently incapable of being sustained at that pitch of splendor upon a Crotonian basis.”

The New York State liquor law clearly stated that the consent of the owners of two-thirds of the private property within 200 hundred feet of the establishment was required. It also stipulated that no license could be awarded to a business within 200 feet of a house of worship – and the rising St. Regis sat directly across from Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.

The St. Regis, soaring above its brownstone neighbors, across from 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church - NYPL Collection

The Times said “It is hardly to be supposed that the owners of the property affected, whether ecclesiastical or domestic, will acquiesce in a measure intended to make profitable what they unanimously regard as a nuisance. They must look upon the enterprising owner as guilty of ‘incivism,’ and it is not to be expected that they will be willing to condone proceedings so offensive to them…Nobody can blame a householder whose residence is in what has heretofore been a fashionable residential district for objecting to an eighteen-story skyscraper across the way or around the corner. Such a structure necessarily injures the value of his property for the purposes for which he desires to maintain it.”

Measurements were taken.  The lawyers of the neighbors found that property-line-to-property-line the hotel fell within the 200 foot limit, constituting a violation of the State liquor law restrictions. The hotel, however, measured the distance from the main entrance of the hotel to the main entrance to the church, establishing a distance a few feet within the allowance. Judgment was in favor of the hotel and the license was awarded.

While the battle raged on, the hotel opened on September 4, 1904. The Times, intentionally or not, added fuel to the conflict saying “The patronage which the management expects to attract is indicated by the locality in which it stands, the most exclusive residential section of the city.”

The completed hotel cost an astonishing $5.5 million including furnishings. The Palm Room was illuminated by a skylight supported by marble arches and hung with antique tapestries. Seven crescent-shaped paintings were executed by artist Robert Van Vorst Sewell. Critic Helen Henderson split "decorative" and "illustrative" hairs.  She complained that while the paintings were “carefully finished” and “exquisitely drawn,” they “defeat the purpose of decoration. They ‘illustrate’ the story of Cupid and Psyche.”

A library contained 3,000 books.  Two reception rooms, one paneled in white mahogany and the other in Circassian oak, were decorated with rare European antiques collected by the manager, R. M. Haan. The air throughout the hotel was filtered to remove dust and an electric plant and ice plant were housed in the basement.

“An idea of the decorative scheme of the St. Regis may be had from a description of the banquet hall. Here the walls are of paneled marble of a dull white color. The doors are painted to harmonize with the general scheme, while the spaces between the doors and windows are covered with rich tapestries, the hangings being of yellow and white Venetian velvets,” wrote The Times.

Not one to accept defeat, William Rockefeller stood his ground by purchasing a new mansion nearby at 7 East 54th Street on October 17. “The purchase by Mr. Rockefeller is taken to mean that he and his neighbors have not given up their fight against the Hotel St. Regis liquor license, and it is intimated that effort may soon be made to have the license revoked on the ground that the necessary number of consents from adjoining property owners has not been obtained,” said The Times.

John Jacob Astor responded by purchasing the home of James Everard at 697 5th Avenue adjoining the hotel to the south for $300,000.

In the meantime a smear campaign was started against the hotel. A month after opening stories were sent to newspapers about a bomb exploding in the hotel’s dining room, that guests were required to pay “per foot for filtered air,” that a chocolate eclaire cost “$500 per half portion,” and “it is possible to live on oysters at $126 a day at the Hotel St. Regis.” R. M. Haan complained that “this sort of thing is a positive injury to my business.”

The bad press was reversed on December 1 when Prince Sananaru Fashimi, the head of one of four royal families of Japan, arrived at the St. Regis for a two-week stay. The press covered the prince’s every move and New York society, always impressed by titles, took notice. Four days after the prince’s departure a dinner dance at the hotel in honor of Miss Corinne Robinson was announced by her parents. The debutante was a niece of President Roosevelt and The Times society page remarked that “it will be the first large fashionable affair given at the new hotel which may now compete with the Waldorf-Astoria, Sherry’s and Delmonico’s for patronage of this kind. Miss Alice Roosevelt, who has been in town for a week, will be present.”

Within the month it was announced that “Mr. and Mrs. I. Townsend Burden and Miss Gwendolyn Burden, who returned from abroad recently, are at the St. Regis. Mr. and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., wll also make that hotel their Winter headquarters, and Mr. and Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont may be there also.”

The St. Regis had arrived.

In April of the next year William Rockefeller realized that while he had money, John Jacob Astor had friends. Senator Saxe, acting on behalf of Senator Elsberg, introduced a bill “for the protection of the respectable hotels.” The bill provided that the section of the liquor law restricting an establishment to be more than 200 feet from a house of worship and to require two-thirds assent of neighbors within the same area “shall not apply to hotels that have 200 rooms above the basement used for the accommodation of guests.” Lawmakers were blunt that the new law applied specifically to the St. Regis.

John Jacob Astor had won his war.

On April 15, 1912, Astor died aboard the Titanic and his son, Vincent Astor, took over ownership of the St. Regis and its sister hotel The Knickerbocker on 42nd Street. Eight years later Prohibition swept the country, dealing a serious blow to the hotel industry. Astor closed the King Cole Bar in the Knickerbocker, removing to storage the famous 30-foot long 1906 mural by Maxfield Parrish, “King Cole and his Fiddlers Three.”

As hard times continued, Astor sold the St. Regis to the Durham Realty Corporation in February of 1927. The company, owned by the Duke family, remodeled the rooms, had architects Sloan & Robertson create an addition on East 55th Street, and relied on the hotel’s reputation as a marketing tool calling it “fundamentally part of Fifth Avenue.” In 1935, after having been on loan to the New York Racquet Club on Park Avenue, the Maxfield Parrish mural was installed in the St. Regis. Helen Henderson again chimed in. “That quaintly humorous panel,” she instructed, “delightful as it is, is illustration rather than decoration.”

The now-famous 1906 Maxfield Parrish "King Cole and his Fiddlers Three" mural

The newly-renovated Art Deco dining room, called The King Cole Room, was one of New York’s most elite dining destinations for decades.

By the mid 1960s the hotel was in genuine danger of demolition. The owners leased it in February 1966 to the Sheraton Corporation of America, raising the eyebrows of New Yorkers who considered a chain managing the beloved hotel a sort of sacrilege.

Sheraton reacted with reassuring marketing release a year later. “While maintaining all the fine traditions for which The St. Regis has always been renowned, Sheraton has lavished a king’s ransom renewing its gilt-edged elegance. Expensive furnishings have been brought from France, in the fashion that found favor with two of France’s greatest monarchs. Rich carpets from the Middle East. Multi-faceted crystal chandeliers from Sweden. Ah, yes, the kings would be at home here. They would nod approval at the courtly service and the magician-like resourcefulness of the concierge. They would dine royally in a choice of restaurants respected for their grande cuisine and loved for their light-hearted sophistication.”



Diners in a Sheraton 1967 ad with Maxfield Parrish's 1896 "The Child Harvester" in the Old King Cole Room

Nevertheless, the striking King Cole Room was remodeled and the mural moved to a much smaller barroom renamed The King Cole Bar. In 2005 renovation began to covert 59 of the hotel rooms to 33 condominium apartments with prices ranging from $1.6 to $7.2 million.

Despite the changes to the grand hotel, it remains an important and cherished fixture on midtown 5th Avenue, what the New York City Landmarks Commission called “one of the most elegant and sophisticated Beaux-Arts style buildings in New York.”

Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church -- 5th Avenue and 55th Street

On December 19, 1808 a small congregation formed The Cedar Street Presbyterian Church on Cedar Street near William Street.  As the city grew northward the church moved to Duane Street in 1836 and, in 1852, again to Fifth Avenue and 19th Street.  Finally, in 1875 the church, now known as the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, moved for its final time to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street.

The land was purchased for $350,000 and, surrounded by brownstone mansions along “Millionaires Row,” the new church would cost an amazing $1 million.

While the new St. Patrick’s Cathedral four blocks to the south and St. Thomas Episcopal just two blocks away utilized the traditional Gothic cruciform layout; architect Carl Pfeiffer designed an interior revolutionary for its time.  There were no right angles, no soaring stone pillars.  Instead Pfeiffer produced a ship-like open space with a ribbed 60-foot ceiling and unobstructed views from every perspective. The carved woodwork was of polished ash. The New York Times called the interior, capable of seating 2,000 worshippers, “early English.”

photo museumplanet.com

The brownstone exterior was purely Gothic Revival.  The two main entrances, on Fifth Avenue and below the corner tower on 55th Street, mimicked the Gothic arches of the 49 traceried windows and belfry openings. The main steeple, also executed in brownstone, rose 300 feet above Fifth Avenue.  Copper-clad fleches to the north gave an exceptionally picturesque touch; however they were as much utilitarian than simply attractive.

photo nycago.org

In the third quarter of the 19th century, long before air conditioning or central heating, worshippers suffered intolerable heat in the summer and cold in the winter.  Pfeiffer solved the problem with an ingenious system of air movement.

In the basement he had installed 9,000 feet of steam pipes directly below the floor of the sanctuary. The two fleches acted as airshafts, outfitted with a iron fan seven feet in diameter which ran at 220 revolutions per minute. When the shafts sucked the air out of the sanctuary, the warmed air from the basement was pulled through the holes in the floorboard, heating the room (and, more importantly, the feet of the parishioners!).

Likewise, in the summer, the fan would pull 30,000 cubic feet of air out of the church every minute, completely renewing the air every fifteen minutes and providing a constant movement of otherwise stale, hot air.

Behind the sanctuary was a chapel, 75 feet by 45 feet, a lecture room, a large hall and rooms for the minister, trustees, sexton and classrooms and a roomy library.

The chapel of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian -- photo nycago.org

Through the immediate and aggressive sale of pews, the structure was paid for within only two years.  “The pews,” reported The New York Times on May 23, 1875, “were appraised in such a way as to provide for the extinction of the debt, and for the annual expenses of the church organization. These prices ranged from three hundred dollars each to six thousand dollars, according to location…”

While the purchaser received a perpetual title to his pew, he was then liable for an annual assessment of six per cent on the cost price.

The church realized almost immediately that, based on its popularity, it might have nearly doubled its physical size. Under the Reverend Dr. John Henry Jowett in the first quarter of the 20th century, upwards of 1,000 hopeful worshippers would have to be turned away on a Sunday morning.

The church's work was proactive and altruistic. In 1867 it established the first Bible class in the city for women, resulting in lines outside the church awaiting admittance. By 1907 it was supporting two missions, a large settlement house, numerous educational, charitable and relief agencies and employed 57 clergymen and paid workers globally to carry out its missionary and charity work. The church was instrumental in the establishment of the Princeton Theological Seminary and the New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Fifth Avenue Presbyterian in 1917, decorated to honor British, French, Italian, Japanese and Russian War Commissions

A riot was narrowly avoided when, in 1920, ministers from Belfast were invited to speak, representing the Protestant churches of Ireland. Sinn Feine members, the Irish Republicans, massed outside the church on Fifth Avenue hollering “Hurray for the Irish Republic!”

During 2000 and 2001, as an outward demonstration of its concern for the less fortunate, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian established a policy of allowing the homeless to sleep on the steps of the church. Although there is a shelter in the basement, it was limited to ten men. The pastor, one Sunday, remarked to the congregations that “these homeless friends are part of our ministry…Outside on our signboard there’s a sign that says ‘This is God’s House, All Are Welcome.’ All are welcome, and we mean it.”

When, in December 2001, the city evacuated the homeless from the steps, the church filed suit, charging that the city was in violation of the United States Constitution. The church won.

In the 1990's, after a five-year study, a major renovation project was undertaken that included the formation of a new Christian Education Center in the formerly unused space below the sanctuary, installation of air conditioning and fire proofing. Today Fifth Avenue Presbyterian remains essentially unchanged, down to the gas brackets and reflectors still in place.