The Lost 1907 Madison Square Presbyterian Church

A few brownstone residences still survived along Madison Avenue at the time of the church's completion -- photo Library of Congress

In 1904 the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company had a problem.  It had become one of the largest insurance companies in the nation and its ten-year-old headquarters building was already inadequate.  The firm desperately desired to enlarge the structure, filling the rest of the block along Madison Avenue between 23^rd and 24^th Streets.

But the impressive brownstone Gothic Revival Madison Square Presbyterian Church sat on the site.  The church’s congregation was composed not only of wealthy and influential New Yorkers, but it was headed by the highly-regarded and powerful Rev. Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst.  The church was, in fact, most commonly called “Dr. Parkhurst’s church.”  Obtaining the site would be a feat.

The Gothic brownstone church stood in the way of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's expansion -- photo NYPL Collection

Directly across 24^th Street from the church was the mansion of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, one of the surviving remnants of Madison Square’s residential glory days.  When the property became available, John R. Hegeman, president of Metropolitan Life, purchased it for $700,000 and offered to trade the site with the church—the properties being about the same in value.  To sweeten the pot, Hagemen threw in an additional $300,000 in cash.

The trustees of the church agreed and plans were begun for a new structure.  McKim, Mead & White received the commission with famed architect Stanford White taking the reins.  It was the beginning of a battle between two strong-willed and self-assured men.  White envisioned a Roman basilica, chaste and pure.  Dr. Parkhurst insisted on a traditional, Gothic Revival church with a high steeple.

Stanford White won.

When the architect’s plans were released in March 1904, Dr. Parkhurst begrudgingly explained to the press why he had conceded.  

Why is it to be a church without a steeple?  If anyone could know the awful struggle I had before I could consent to such a thing he would be sure that there was a good reason for it.

There is nothing like the Gothic for church architecture.  It is the accepted style in this country and elsewhere.  But the environment of the church in this city makes such a style absolutely impossible, unless its incongruity with its surroundings can be overlooked…a steeple couldn’t be built high enough to overtop the roofs of the buildings all around it, and the result would be a dwarfing of the structure.

The pastor sighed with resignation.  “It is a deplorable state of affairs, but it can’t be helped, and the only alternative is the one adopted by this church.”

“The only alternative,” according to White’s mind, was the Roman basilica and it would prove to be one of the architect’s greatest masterworks.

Ground was broken in April.  Before the church was completed in October 1906, Stanford White had been murdered by Harry Thaw in Madison Square Garden just two blocks away.  In his dedication sermon on October 14, Dr. Parkhurst admitted that White had created a thing of beauty.

Century Magazine published a watercolor rendering of the new edifice -- copyright expired

“With all the many responsible undertakings with which he was charged it was to this church that he seemed particularly to dedicate himself, and to make of it the idol of his thought and effort.”  The pastor added, “We have the right in a humble way to be proud of this splendidly architectural home in which we are to meet.”

Art critic Helen Henderson, not often one to lavish praise, said in her A Loiterer in New York, “White never stopped short of the best…The exterior is exceedingly beautiful, executed in grey brick, throughout which is repeated, in the manner of a diaper pattern, the Maltese Cross, giving variety and interest to the surface.  The porch is supported by exquisite pillars of polished granite.”

The granite pillars rose 30 feet to support a classical pediment.  The low saucer dome was surmounted by a gilded lantern.  To break the monotony of the grey façade, White splashed color in the form of polychromatic terra cotta elements, such as the massive Corinthian capitals.  Outwardly it was an uncorrupted architectural gem.  Inside, it was dazzling.

Louis Comfort Tiffany lavished the interior with iridescent glass and dazzling mosaics -- photo "A Loiterer in New York" 1914, copyright expired

Among the congregants of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church was the Louis Comfort Tiffany family.  White worked closely with Tiffany, giving the artisan unusual freedom.  Henderson noted, “the interior is, perhaps, most notably a monumental example of the Tiffany favrile glass, in whose happy use the building has no rival.”

The cavernous sanctuary could accommodate 1,300 worshipers.  Along the chancel wall, a continuous band of the ten commandments was spelled out in favrile glass on a white mosaic background, suggestive of mother-of-pearl.  F. Hopkinson Smith, in his Charcoals of New York, called the church a “mosaic of light and shade.”  Tiffany windows illuminated the space and, due to the shadows cast by the tall office buildings, hidden “electroliers” assured that the iridescent windows were always flooded with light.

Metropolitan Life Insurance got its new tower and Madison Square Presbyterian got a new church -- NYPL Collection

Unknown to most, the completed structure was not complete.   Stanford White intended that the pediment be ornamented with an immense, colored terra cotta sculpture.  Not until 1910 would his vision be executed.  On May 29 of that year, The New York Tribune noted, “When Mr. White made his first designs for the church and thought of this decoration he called to his aid Mr. H. Siddons Mowbray, the accomplished painter.”

White and Mowbray worked out the basis for a design but with White’s death, the project temporarily stopped.  It was further delayed when the young sculptor Antonin Skodick who was commissioned by Mowbray to prepare a sketch model of the pediment died.

Finally Adolph A. Weinman executed the sketch model along the lines of White’s vision, although as The Tribune pointed out, “he was given entire freedom as to the composition of the figures, and the relief is essentially the product of his art.”

The completed white-and-blue terra cotta pediment sculpture was finally installed in 1910 -- photo the New York Tribune May 29, 1910 (copyright expired)

The completed pediment, cast at the Atlantic Terra Cotta Works in Perth Amboy, was titled, The Adoration of the Shrine of Truth.  The pristinely white figures of angels, cherubs, a knight and a shepherd contrasted with the vivid blue background.  The New-York Tribune called it, “a production of rare significance in the history of American architecture.”

Stanford White’s masterful Madison Square Presbyterian Church was now complete.

By 1912 the brownstones of the congregants had all been replaced by soaring office buildings -- photo Library of Congress

Eight years later, on May 26, 1918, Charles H. Parkhurst preached his last sermon after 38 years at Madison Square Presbyterian.  With the church’s wealthy congregants moving further north, it merged with First Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue.  The trustees saw no value in keeping the church open.

In his sermon, Dr. Parkhurst made his opinion on the closing of the church apparent.  “The general disposition of Presbyterians has been to retreat from the lower sections of the city and to drift northward on the current of culture and wealth,” he said.  The pastor admonished, “the successful promotion of civilization is not to be secured by special efforts at Christianizing the refined and affluent classes.  Christ’s efforts were given to the people, the common people, for they are the basis of society.”

Parkhurst’s rebuke changed nothing.

“The Madison Square Church closed its doors yesterday for good,” reported The Sun on May 27.  “It is understood that the property is for sale and unless disposed of for church purposes the building, one of the last creations of the late Stanford White and one of the finest church edifices in the city, will be torn down.”

Only twelve years after its construction, demolition began in October 1918.  “It is a striking comment on the rapidity of changes in New York City,” said The New York Times.  “Within twelve years from its opening the usefulness of the church, in view of the commercial invasion, has gone, and its ultimate destruction will make New York so much the poorer architecturally.”

The New-York Tribune was more pointed.  Comparing the destruction to “any French cathedral within range of German guns,” it said on May 8, 1919, “There is a shocking waste taking place in New York to-day that illustrates the strange destructiveness of our age that we like to praise for its swift and tremendous creations.”

“But the church is vanishing,” the article went on, “and with it more beauty than our jungle of horror and glory can spare.”

In an astonishingly early example of architectural salvaging, many of the exquisite elements were rescued.  The New York Times reported, “The fine pipe organ, the pews, and wainscoting and even flooring are being utilized in various buildings belonging to the First Presbyterian Church.”  Stanford White’s son requested certain architectural pieces and the Columbia University School of Architecture received fragments of the cornices, friezes and balustrades.  

Robert W. DeForest was not only a director of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, but president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  He had the priceless pediment sculpture removed and put in storage for future exhibition in the museum.

And then, as summer 1919 approached, the Madison Square Presbyterian Church was no more.  The New York Tribune mourned, “We wonder if a country can be the home of great creative beauty while the juggernaut of progress is joy-riding over the land.  The fate of the Stanford White church is certainly not easy to explain.”

Remnants of the church still survive.  An ornate doorway was found in storage in the Brooklyn Museum.  In Riverside, California a wedding chapel is beautified by some of the Tiffany windows and the massive granite columns from the portico are now part of an office building in Hartford, Connecticut.

The magnificent Tiffany windows were purchased by Frank Miller in 1923.  Miller built the Saint Francis Chapel specifically to accommodate the windows.  -- photo from the collections of the Mission Inn Hotel and Spa, Riverside CA.  Image courtesy of the Mission Inn Foundation.

At Ohio State University, one of the massive terra-cotta capitals—somewhat worse for wear—is displayed at the School of Architecture.

As for the matchless terra cotta pediment, The Adoration of the Shrine of Truth, things did not go so well.  The 44-foot-wide sculpture was exhibited on an exterior wall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  When the Met expanded the building in 1960, neither the museum nor any donors was willing to pay for its removal.  The irreplaceable artwork once described as “a production of rare significance” was destroyed.

The 1922 Thomas W. Lamont House -- 107 East 70th Street

Looking as much like a school as a mansion, the Lamont House had the luxury of a walled garden with a cloister -- photo NYPL Collection

By 1920, Thomas William Lamont had not only amassed a personal fortune as a partner of J. P. Morgan & Co., he was a highly-visible diplomatic figure for the government.  The previous year he had represented the United States Department of the Treasury at the Paris negotiations that resulted in the Treaty of Versailles.  He was already a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and in 1920 visited Japan in an effort to protect American financial interests in Asia.

While all of this was happening in Lamont’s life changes had been taking place on the East 70^th Street block between Park and Lexington Avenues.   With the soot-belching trains of Park Avenue sent underground around the turn of the century, the upper-middle class Victorian rowhouses of the block were being replaced by handsome mansions of the wealthy.

In 1929 Thomas William Lamont made the cover of Time (copyright expired)

In 1916 Lamont and his wife, the former Florence Haskell Corliss, were living with their children in the rented Franklin D. Roosevelt house on East 65^th Street.  It was time for the multimillionaire to have a home of his own.  That year he purchased Nos. 105 and 107 East 70^th Street from James A. Frame and in November added a third, adjoining, property, No. 109.  He now had a 63-foot wide site for a new house.

With the outbreak of war, plans were stalled.   In 1918 James Frame was still living in No. 105 and William Frame was in No. 107.  But on March 10, 1920 the plans were filed.  The no-nonsense description that listed that architects as Walker & Gillette noted the residence would be five-stories in height and would cost approximately $250,000.

It would be much more than that.

The house was completed two years later.  Variously described as neo-Tudor, Jacobean, and English Gothic, it was a careful study, if not a reproduction, of a 16^th century country house.   Sitting back from the sidewalk (an 1859 regulation required all homes on the block to be set back 10 feet), its brick-and-stone dignity defied the ostentatious mansions of a generation earlier.  The exceptionally-wide plot allowed the architects to extend a wing along the back, into a walled garden with a medieval-type cloister.

The Architectural Record was awed, saying “The Lamont house holds, perhaps, a very special significance—a meaning which may become more fully understood a few years from now.  Turning points are very seldom recognized as such until some time after the turn has been made.  In 1940, perhaps, some critic may say ‘A new kind of sanity appeared in city house architecture about 1922.’”

The Record said “Besides being an unusually fine rendering of the style, it is an unusually fine expression of a dwelling.”   Along with the many-paned windows, the tall clustered chimneys and robustly-carved entrance; the architects lavished historic attention on the interiors.

Over the flagstone entrance hall was a beamed ceiling.  The carved wood of the staircase was crafted to appear hundreds of years old -- photo Architectural Record, 1922, (copyright expired)

Antique mantels and paneling were imported and accurate architectural details were fabricated.  When a wall of antique paneling was found in England that perfectly fit, new woodwork was carefully produced that blended with it.   Tool marks were left in the wood and stone to convey the charm and look of the five-hundred year old originals.

The carved stone mantel of the library was authentic; imported from England -- photo the Architectural Record, 1922 (copyright expired)

Only one room departed from the Jacobean period.  The dining room was done in the Queen Anne style, with a brass chandelier, authentic mantel and carved, paneled woodwork. 

Aside from the conservatory, only the dining room departed from the Jacobean period -- photo Architectural Record, 1922 (copyright expired)

Using the living room as an example, The Architectural Record compared the dignity of the space with the ostentatious pre-war mansions.  “In comparison with the ornate, over-decorated and over-furnished ‘drawing rooms’ of many earlier city houses,, this great quiet interior seems to suggest a distinctly new way of doing things in large houses.  The architects believe—very rightly—that fine furniture and tapestries look better against a simple architectural background.”

The interests of the Lamonts ranged from politics to the arts.  Rather than hosting obligatory teas, dances and dinner parties sodden with forgettable conversations, they filled the house with stimulating guests—among them H. G. Wells, elder British statesman Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, Robert Frost, Walter de la Mare, and poet John Masefeld. 

An English rose and Scottish thistle are carved into the exquisite entrance -- photo by Alice Lum

Reflecting his interest in literature and awareness, Lamont financed The Saturday Review for many years.  The Smith College-educated Florence was a member of the Association for Symbolic Logic, was an active supporter of the League of Nations and unionization of labor.  Because all of this took up much of her time, a staff of 15 took care of things in the 70^th Street house.

Across the river on the palisades overlooking the great Hudson River the Lamonts had a “weekend” house named Torrey Cliff, with a staff of four.

The house was the scene of a dinner party for daughter Eleanor Allen Lamont’s coming out in 1928 and four years later saw her wedding reception.  Eleanor’s was a society match.  She married Charles Crehore Cunningham whom The New York Times noted “prepared at Milton Academy for Harvard, where he is a member of the junior class.”

photo by Alice Lum

In 1933 the Marquess of Lothian was a guest at the Lamont house while he visited New York; but on the whole it was the more political and artistic visitors who were most noted in the press.  Five years later The Times reported that Viscount Cecil…proponent of the League of Nations, sat before a wood fire in the library of Thomas W. Lamont’s home at 107 East Seventieth Street yesterday and gave warning that only the maintenance of world organization for peace stands between the nations and a repetition of the great war.”

Florence Lamont shared the Englishman’s fear.  In November of that same year she wrote to a friend in Britain, “I was so frightened by the crisis, I thought, ‘there is going to be war, and I shall never see my lovely English friends again.’”  She interspersed her letter with political observations—her opinions of Chamberlain’s performance, the New Deal (“three cheers for the death of the New Deal”), and Adolph Hitler.

“And now this last horror of the Jewish terrorism,” she wrote.  “It is unbelievable.  Would it have happened if England had been firmer?  I said to a young foreign correspondent, who had been in the Sudeten areas when the Germans came in, ‘But I can’t believe what you tell me you saw.  Human beings could not act like that!’ He said, ‘They are not human beings, they are rat.’ He meant the present ruling party.”

Florence Lamont’s fears of a second great war came true.  Following the war, in addition to his generous donations to Harvard University, Lamont made a sizeable contribution towards the restoration of the war-damaged Canterbury Cathedral.

In 1948, while in Boca Grande, Florida, Thomas Lamont died.   Shortly afterwards, Florence donated Torrey Cliff along with 150 acres of land to Columbia University to establish a center for geological study and research.

photo by Alice Lum

Early on the morning of December 29, 1952, Florence Lamont died in the house on East 70^th Street.  The New York Times listed her amazing involvements.  “She was an active member of the board of the League of Nations Association, enthusiastically supporting the league during its existence.  Later she became a member of the executive committee of the American Association for the United Nations, continuing in that capacity until her death.  Mrs. Lamong also served on various committees of the Foreign Policy Association and was interested in the New York Women’s Trade Union League and the Journal of Philosophy."

Florence’s will left large amounts of money to women’s college:  Wellesley, Vassar, Radcliffe, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, and Smith.  As for the mansion on East 70^th Street, she donated it to the Visiting Nurse Association, Inc.

The Association moved into the house in 1954, after doing some renovations that included replacing period chandeliers with “fluorescent lighting.”  Fifty-five years later the institution began a renovation of the interiors, executed by architects Beyer Blinder Belle; and a restoration of the façade.

In 1922 the Architectural Record said “let us hope that it will not take us a generation to see the permanent and intrinsic worth of such an architectural expression as this fine, tall-gabled house in New York.”  

The Record got its wish.

The 1903 Art Nouveau Hotel Belleclaire -- Broadway at 77th Street

Recessed, Art Nouveau windows and a sinuous metal railing graced the street level in 1903

In turn-of-the-century New York City the shops of silversmiths like Gorham and decorators like Louis Comfort Tiffany glistened with Art Nouveau accessories for the home.  Sinuous vines and spilling wisteria blossoms formed vases and tableware and stained glass lamps.  The fashionable home without an Art Nouveau hand mirror or hairbrush was rare. 

But the style never really caught on in New York architecture.  For their staid American clients, architects tended to rely on the safer Beaux Arts or neo-Georgian styles, for instance.  But Emery Roth was apparently unafraid.  In 1902 his exuberant little two-story Art Nouveau hotel at 557 8^th Avenue was completed.  And then, a year later, came the grand Hotel Belleclaire—something like New York had never quite seen. 

Located at Broadway and 77^th Street, it was a residence hotel; designed for upper class families who preferred to avoid the bother of maintaining a private house.  By 1903 the Upper West Side was nearly fully-developed with eccentric turreted and gargoyled mansions lining the avenues and streets.  Already the elaborate Ansonia residence hotel had risen on Broadway (then called The Boulevard) between 73^rd and 74^th Streets.  The Belleclaire would provide one more reason for moneyed New Yorkers to move west. 

Construction had begun on the hotel in 1901.  Owner Albert Saxe was familiar with Roth’s work, having hired him to design the Saxony Apartments a few years earlier.  The commission for the Belleclaire was the architect’s first really substantial project and would be career-changing one. 

Although he splashed the building with some Beaux Arts details, Roth heavily relied on Art Nouveau and the related Viennese Succession styles.   The windows of the first floor were recessed, with curved and flowing Art Nouveau mullions and twisting metal railings along the sidewalk that might have been more at home in Paris.  

Although Roth admitted some Beaux Arts details into his design, such as the carved faces and leafy garlands; curving Art Nouveau mullions, part of which survive here, formed the windows. -- photo by Alice Lum

Long Viennese Succession pendants, three stories tall, dangled from the 8^th floor cornice.  Here Roth incorporated an American motif – an Indian head – along with the very European detail.  Stone arches, a corner tower and a deep courtyard on 77^th Street added to the visual appeal. 



Close inspection reveals the large carved Indian heads above the Viennese Seccession pendants -- photo by Alice Lum

Saxe intended to offer his tenants the latest in conveniences.  On April 25, 1903 The Electrical World and Engineer noted that “contracts have been taken covering a complete long-distance telephone service for every room and working department in the hotel.” 

Earlier, in January, Architect’s and Builder’s Magazine listed the amenities available to the Belleclaire’s residents.  “The ground floor is devoted entirely to the hotel business, and has large and commodious offices, and a beautiful promenade hall extending the entire length, off from which you may enter the Louis XV ladies' dining room, the Italian Renaissance palm room, the Flemish café, the Mission library and the Moorish private dining room. 

“Other space is devoted to flowers, cigars, news, telephone and telegraph offices, etc., two passenger elevators, freight elevator for baggage and servants, mail chutes , and in fact every modern up-to-date convenience.” 

Although mainly a resident hotel, the Belleclaire also accepted some transient guests.  Manager Milton Roblee, in an inventive marketing scheme, published a sleek magazine Hotel Belleclaire World for which Broadcast Weekly said he was “entitled to considerable credit for the attractive appearance of the publication.”  Roblee gave no regular schedule for publication, explaining that “The Belleclaire World…will be issued just as often as the activities of civilization demand.” 

The New-York Tribune recommended the hotel, calling it in 1905, “one of the finest hotels in the city, offering exceptional advantages and comforts.  The roof garden is one of its most attractive features during the warm summer evenings.” 

Indeed, Roblee hoped that very feature would deter his transient guests as well as residents from abandoning the hotel during the hot New York summers when the upper class traditionally fled to fashionable resorts.  In a 1905 he argued, “Why go to the country, put up with small narrow rooms, flies, mosquitoes, and a thousand and one little annoyances, when you can enjoy a metropolitan vacation at The Belleclaire and avoid them all…Many of the families now living in the hotel have signified their intention to remain, and a number of people from the South have apartments arranged for.  

“The Belleclaire will be no ‘Lonesomehurst’ during the heated term.  Lieut. Kessler and his exquisite orchestra will be retained.  The roof garden will be so arranged that you may enjoy the cool breezes and delightful view, together with other forms of refreshment.” 

photo by Alice Lum

That same year noted artists were living here like the opera soprano Bessie Abott and well-known actor E. J. Morgan.   The English-born Morgan was most known for his work in epic Biblical plays such as Ben-Hur, The Christian, Quo Vadis, and “The Eternal City.  When his wife found his body in their apartment on March 10, 1906 his death was assumed to be a result of his bad heart. 

It was, rather, a freak accident no one could have imagined.  Two days later The New York Times reported that “in the opinion of Coroner Shraby and Coroner’s Physician Weston, his death was caused by asphyxiation following a fall which pinioned his head between a steam radiator and the carpet.” 

A month later, an incident would focus international attention on the Hotel Belleclaire.  When Russian author and Socialist activist Maxim Gorky arrived in Hoboken on the ship Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse on April 10, he was received with overwhelming warmth.  The New York Times reported that “the reception given to Gorky rivaled with that of Kossuth and Garibaldi.” 

Gorky related that now his long-cherished dream to visit the free land of America had come true.  It was a love affair that would be short-lived. 

Wealthy tenant H. Gaylord Wilshire had arranged rooms for Gorky and Madame Gorky in the Belleclaire.  On April 13 more than a hundred reporters and members of various organizations attended a reception his Gorky’s suite where the stylish Madame Gorky was also present. 

The following day, however, The World printed a photograph of the woman with the caption “[the] so-called Mme. Gorky who is not Mme. Gorky at all, but a Russian actress Andreeve, with whom he has been living since his separation from his wife a few years ago.” 

It was a scandal Milton Roblee was not willing to abide.  He forced the couple to leave The Belleclaire.   

“My hotel,” he told The New York Times, “is a family hotel, and in justice to my other guests I cannot possibly tolerate the presence of any persons whose characters are questioned in the slightest manner.” 

The newspaper added, “Mr. Wilshire then hastened to the hotel and pleaded with Mr. Roblee to relent, but to no purpose.  He told Mr. Wilshire that he had not been anxious to have the Russian author in his hotel in the first place, and certainly would never have admitted him had the slightest hint of the circumstances since printed reached him before they arrived.” 

Gorky and his mistress left, but he told reporters, “The publication of such a libel is a dishonor to the American press.  I am surprised that in a country framed for its love of fair play and reverence for women such a slander as this should have gained credence.” 

The incident did not deter upper-class New Yorkers from settling in the Hotel Belleclaire.  Dentist James Goodwillie, who had, according to The Dental Cosmos magazine, “an extensive and high-class clientele,” lived here until his death in 1907.  Goodwillie was responsible for the invention of “a number of useful improvements in dental appliances,” said the magazine. 

Tragedy struck the hotel that same year.  John Whitley was the senior member of J. Whitley & Co, a large steam fitting firm.   In 1900 Whitley’s wife died and the 53-year old shocked his children when he almost immediately married his beautiful and much younger nurse. 

The New York Times later reported “His young wife desired to live well, and he granted her everything she asked.  She had an abundance of jewels and dresses.”  That came to an end on Thanksgiving morning 1907 when Whitley got out of bed around 2:30 in the morning, placed a pistol to the head of his sleeping wife and fired twice.  The millionaire then flung himself from his ninth-floor apartment window to the sidewalk. 

In 1908 the hotel was the first in New York City to have its own fleet of taxicabs.  In the ensuing years it would be home to business executives like Stephan A. McMahon, an officer of The Stepucy Spare Wheel Agency that manufactured “motor wheels;” Alfred and Helen Bishop, owners of Bishops Manufacturing company; Dr. Frank L. Pia, and Louis Stern, president of the Broadway wholesale dry goods firm of Stern Trading Company. 

When Captain S. C. Fean resigned from active sea duty, The Oil Trade Journal remarked in 1918 that he “is luxuriating at the Belleclaire hotel in New York.” 

In 1920 the guests at the hotel were victims of an outlandish marketing scheme by press agent Harry Reichenbach.  In an bizarre attempt to promote the motion picture The Return of Tarzan, he secretly released a full-grown lion in the halls of the hotel and left, leaving the management to figure out how to capture the animal and dispose of it.   

Numa Pictures Corporation’s vice-president, Louis Weiss, released a press statement shortly afterwards, nonchalantly noting that “I wish to emphasize the fact that Jimmie, the principal lion in the S & E state rights offering, 'It Might Happen to You,' is the same lion who was recently registered at the Belleclaire Hotel in New York.” 

In 1925 architect Louis Allen Abramson was commissioned to do a $100,000 renovation of the ground floor.  Roth’s wonderful Art Nouveau windows and outside railing were removed, replaced with storefronts along Broadway.  The entrance to the hotel was moved to the 77^th Street courtyard.

That same year the hotel’s president Walter Guzzardi put his foot down.  He announced, said The New York Times on March 4 that “there would be no more high school fraternity dances at the hotel.  This decision had been reached, he said, because there had been more drinking than dancing at many of the student organization ‘hops.’” 

When management found 25 empty liquor bottles on the ballroom floor at the last party, police were called in to end it.  Then, “windows were opened to freeze out the celebrators when they refused to leave.” 

By the late 1940s, the corner dome was still intact; but shops replaced the original first floor windows and the entrance had been moved to the 77th Street courtyard.

By mid-century the hotel was in major decline.  It was around then that the dome to its corner tower was lost. 

As the 1980s arrived the grandeur and elegance of the early decades were gone.  In 1981 a rookie policeman and his partner entered the derelict hotel to find three people shot to death.  One was a twelve-year-old girl shot three times in the head.   Paul Stoller in his Money has No Smell described the hotel as it was in 1991.  “It has ten floors of gloomy hallways, all of which smell of mildew and stale sweat.” 

By the time struggling musician James Morrison lived here in 2000, it was a welfare hotel.  Guests were allowed to stay no more than one month at a time.  So Morrison and his musician would sleep in a movie theater for a night before re-registering. 

photo by Alice Lum

In his Blowing My Own Trumpet, Morrison wrote “On the second floor it looked like there was an informal brothel operating; on the third floor there were a few guys who looked like they were handling a major drug distribution centre or running guns (or both)."

Then, in 2008, the hotel was renovated and upgraded into an affordable neighborhood hotel.  The 240 rooms continued to be, one-by-one, refurbished in 2011 with modern amenities like WiFi, and an exercise room was installed. 

Despite half a century of misuse, Emery Roth’s turn-of-the-century hotel survives as one of the rare examples of Art Nouveau architecture in New York.

The 1902 Samuel Trowbridge House -- No. 123 East 70th Street

photo by Alice Lum

As construction began on the magnificent St. Regis Hotel on Fifth Avenue in 1901, its architect, Samuel Trowbridge, finished the designs for his own home at 123 East 70^th Street. 

Samuel Breck Parkman Trowbridge traced his impressive English lineage to the 16^th century Peter de Trowbridge.  Born in New York City, the architect had studied at Trinity College, Columbia University’s School of Architecture, the School of Classical Studies in Athens, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.  By now he was a well-respected architect and partner in the firm Trowbridge & Livingston. 

Although attractive Victorian homes still lined the block along East 70^th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues, few of them would survive much longer.  Society was pushing the middle- and upper-middle classes further east, away from Central Park, and by the turn of the century and grand mansions were replacing the earlier structures.  One of them would be Trowbridge’s new home. 

The architect purchased the charming rowhouse erected by brothers J. M. and E. A. Thorp in 1863 and in its place erected an impressive brick and limestone Beaux Arts mansion—appropriate for the man who would become president of the Society of Beaux Arts Architects within two years.  The five-story home sat on a stone base with double entrance doors. 

The Trowbridge house replaced a Victorian rowhouse exactly like the one to the right -- photo NYPL Collection

Unlike the homes of a generation earlier, there was no high stoop; just three shallow steps from the sidewalk in keeping with the current vogue.  The combined second and third story window openings quietly smacked of Art Nouveau; a style that had raged in Paris for a decade already but one which never quite caught on in New York.   

Trowbridge used elaborately-carved limestone trims, like the scrolled brackets and cartouche beneath the fourth floor balcony, with careful reserve; controlling the Beaux Arts embellishments to achieve vivid contrast between the brick and stone while maintaining dignity of design. 

Samuel Trowbridge and his wife, Sophia Pennington Tailer Trowbridge, were highly visible in society and the architect was a member of several elite clubs, including the Century, Metropolitan, Racquet and Tennis, Union, St. Anthony, and Ardsley Clubs.    In 1903, a year after the new house was completed, he was involved in a murder case resulting from a shooting near the Ardsley Club. 

On the night of May 24, shots rang out and club members rushed onto the street to find John Hefferman dying of pistol wounds.  The men, including Trowbridge, took charge of the scene, questioning Hefferman about his attacker and retrieving brandy and a mattress from the club.  Trowbridge assisted in carrying the dying man to the station house. 

In the inquest that followed on the following Friday, “a goodly number of millionaire members of the Ardsley Club appeared,” said The New York Times.   The tangled case pitted Hefferman’s household staff against moneyed friends of the dead millionaire as accusations flew across the courtroom. 

While other witnesses testified to Hefferman naming his assailant; Trowbridge said that he was with the deceased “from the minute when he was put on a shutter until he left in the club wagon,” and “did not hear him make any statement of any kind, except to ask for water and speak of his sufferings.” 

The Trowbridges' lives were normally less dramatic. 

Sophia was highly involved in social and charity events.  Preferring to list herself as “Mrs. Breck P. Trowbridge,” she was treasurer of The Three Arts Club that provided housing and a social club for young women studying music, drama and the fine arts.  The “handsome clubhouse” accommodated 87 resident members and included a money-making restaurant. 

The indefatigable architect joined the National Guard of New York in 1903, attaining rank of First Lieutenant.  He was named Chairman of the National Council of Fine Arts in 1908; Vice President of the American Academy in Rome; President of the Architectural League of New York; and President of the Society of American Philhellenes.  As the years passed he garnered foreign distinctions including being named Chevelier de la Legion d’ Honor by the President of France; Grand Commander of St. Sava, Serbia;  and receiving the Greek Order of the Redeemer; and Commander of the Order of the Crown, Romania. 

On January 24, 1925 Trowbridge suffered a cold.  Five days later he died in the house on East 70^th Street of pneumonia.  

Sophia Trowbridge remained on at No. 123 East 70^th Street until her death.  In August of 1951 her estate sold the house to Allan Roos.  As was the fate of many of the grand residences of Manhattan in the middle of the last century, within four years it was renovated to include a doctor’s office on the first floor and two luxurious duplex apartments on the second-to-third and fourth-to-fifth floors. 

Apartments on this block, of course, did not mean low-income tenants.   One of the original tenants in 1954 included the Charles Einfeld family.  Einfeld was Vice President of the 20^th Century Fox Film Corporation. 

The wedding of the Einfield’s daughter, Lise, was held in the house on June 12 that year.  Lise was a Smith College graduate who married Richard Malkin.  The groom had attended both Harvard and Yale.   

Three years later Lise’s sister Linda was married in the house as well.   Linda had studied at the Collegio Columbo in Viareggio, Italy, and was currently attending Vassar.  Like her sister’s husband, her fiancé was a graduate of both Yale and Harvard. 

In the meantime, The Heckscher Foundation for Children was evolving.  The institution was founded in 1921 by August Heckscher, Arthur Smadbeck and Ruth Smadbeck to help needy children by supporting charitable organizations and programs. 

In 2007 the much-expanded foundation renovated No. 123 East 70^th as its headquarters and offices.  From here the organization, with assets of over $300 million, provides grants and distributions to educational programs and organizations aimed at preparing students for success.

Outwardly, Samuel Trowbridge’s meticulously-maintained townhouse is virtually unchanged.  It is a highly-unusual and dignified residence, designed by one of New York’s most esteemed architects.

The 1900 Frederick Gebhard Mansion -- No. 6 East 79th Street

Nearly simultaneously in the spring of 1900, the side-by-side mansions of James E. Nichols and Frederick Gebhard were completed on East 79^th Street.   Sitting just east of the magnificent French chateau of Isaac D. Fletcher at the corner of Fifth Avenue, the two residences could not have been more different.

The flat dignified limestone façade of Nichols’s house at No. 4 was nicely contrasted by Gebhard’s red brick and white stone, bowed home at No. 6, designed by the architectural firm of Barney & Chapman.  Entered at street level, Gebhard’s brick-faced mansion offered a delightful splash of color.    Hefty Doric columns supported a deep curving portico that introduced the bowed shape of the house above.  At the third floor, three arched windows behind an iron railing featured elegant fanlights and scrolled bracket keystones.  Above it all, a slate-tiled sloping mansard roof was punctured by three hooded dormers.

Unlike most of the millionaires in the homes around him, Fred Gephard did not work.  His fortune was not made in railroads or banking; it was inherited.  The only son of a fur and silk importer, he had inherited $5 million in the 1880s with an annual interest income of $80,000.  Strikingly handsome, he lounged through life yachting, breeding thoroughbred horses and studying architecture and wine.  A well-known clubman, he collected oriental carpets and rare books.

Frederick Gebhard in 1894, the year he married -- Library of Congress

His life changed when he became smitten with the married English actress Lillie Langtry.  He convinced the star to become a partner in his horse-breeding venture.   By 1888 the pair was scandalously connected and the press took delight in publicizing their affair.  Gephard’s fellow club members openly disapproved of his conduct as Mrs. Langtry sued her husband for divorce.

The beautiful Lillie Langtry could not obtain a divorce and the relationship came to an end -- photo NYPL Collection

Eventually, Frederick Gebhard realized that the obstinate Edward Langtry would not consent to divorce and the affair was fruitless.  In March 1894 he married Louise Hollingsworth Morris, daughter of a wealthy Maryland horse breeder and moved to New York.

The Gebhards would not stay long in the new house, however.   In September 1901 Fred leased the house to James Gayley who had just been named vice president of the newly-formed United States Steel Corporation.

Gayley stayed on for one year before moving to No. 8 East 69th Street.  Frederick Gebhard No. 6 East 79th Street to 59-year old broker William Frederick Stafford in March 1904.  The Staffords enjoyed an active social life.   On April 19, 1908 The New York Times noted that Stafford “came over from Paris on Sunday and Mr. Stafford left town today to join a fishing party in Scotland.”

After Stafford died on December 4, 1918, Mrs. Stafford left the mansion for an apartment.  The house was home to the William Carter Dickerman family through the 1930s.  The Dickermans summered in their East Hampton estate, Dune Dee; but it was the East 79^th Street house that provided Mrs. Dickerman a base of social operations.

In 1932 the house saw teas and dinners as daughter Honour Redington Dickerman was introduced to society.   As president of the New York Kindergarten Associate, Mrs. Dickerman regularly hosted charity teas and she was active in staging events at Bryn Mawr College where Honour studied.

Not long after Honour’s society wedding to attorney James Oliver Brown, the Dickermans left No. 6 East 79^th Street.

Great Manhattan houses suffered a change of opinion in the middle of the 20^th century, as wealthy New Yorkers preferred the convenience of luxurious apartments to the expense and upkeep of the aging mansions.  In 1945 the proud house at No. 6 was converted to nine apartments.

Upper class residents moved in, like British-born Captain Jefferson Davis Cohn, who had the remarkable distinction of being the godson of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America.  Cohn was a stockbroker and owned a racing stable in France.  He died in his apartment here at the age of 70 in 1951.

During the 1960s the upscale salons of d’Argout-Ferguson, Inc., interior decorators were here.

The building was renovated in 1980; with updates that included a “recreation room” in the basement.  But Frederick Gebhard’s handsome brick and limestone mansion at No. 6 East 79^th Street remains unchanged from the street.   It is a striking stand-out on a street of remarkable mansions from a glittering period in New York social history.

The Lost 1905 New York Hippodrome -- 6th Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets

photo Library of Congress

In April 1905 Harold Ackermann complained in Broadway Magazine that “Statistics prove that fully 85 percent of Manhattan’s three millions and more of inhabitants never enter a place of amusement.  The clientele of the Broadway theatre with its prohibitive prices and epicurean repertoire is necessarily limited to audiences that are bound to repeat themselves.”  The common New Yorker, he said, could not afford the luxury of the theater.

“But the great outstanding masses—that strenuous and well-do-class which flocks to Coney Island in the summer by the tens of thousands—that class which wants its money’s worth, has been, until the recent building and opening of the New York Hippodrome, completely ignored in its eager demand for amusement, and its possible resources as a financial speculation.”

Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy had no intention of ignoring the middle classes.  They had already created the popular Luna Park in Coney Island 1903.  And soon afterwards they turned their focus to Manhattan.

With backing by Harry S. Black, head of U. S. Realty and the Fuller Construction Company, the pair designed what would be called the largest theater in the world.  Construction began in June 1904 on the site of the 6^th Avenue car stables between 43^rd and 44^th Streets, on the perimeter of the Times Square theater district.   The site was a bit surprising considering the elite men’s clubs and bachelor hotels that had begun rising along 44^th Street between 5^th and 6^th Avenues; including the Royalton Hotel that would abut the new theater.  The Times reported the projected cost of the structure to be around $1 million.

The construction site of the block-long structure faced the 6th Avenue elevated train tracks -- photo Broadway Magazine 1905 (copyright expired)

The completed steel-framed building was clad in brick and marble and its exotic design demanded a list of superlatives.   The main auditorium could seat 5,300 patrons—the seats being four inches wider than the normal theater seats “vouchsafed to suffering humanity,” as Broadway Magazine put it. 

The facade included theme-appropriate details like this elephant keystone -- American Architect and Architecture, 1905 (copyright expired)

Frederick Thompson, at only thirty years old, was a practical electrician and mechanic with a bent for ingenious inventions.  He designed the remarkable stage mechanisms.   The stage was operated by a complex system of hydraulics, counterweights and traps.  It could be raised, moved, flooded with 4,000 gallons of water a minute for water spectacles, or lowered. 

The stage could accommodate over 1,000 persons and was a dozen times larger than the average Broadway theater.  “On this are produced the water spectacles of whose novelty and beauty the American who has not been abroad has no conception, and it will be devoted, too, largely to the circus department of the enterprise,” said Theatre Magazine.  Over 22,000 electric lights lit the stage alone and it required a crew of 196 men to work on and under it during a performance.

Broadway Magazine was impressed by Thompson’s and Black’s attention to minute details behind the scenes.  “As a matter of detail,” it wrote, “it is said that the girls heat their curling irons by electricity, and that huge pots of ‘make up’ are combined in proper complexion tints by electrical apparatus.”

The dazzling effects of the completed building caused The New York Tribune to humorously write “Once there was a man who went to the Hippodrome.  And when he got there and saw all its marvels, he said: ‘It can’t be real—I must be hippodreaming.’”

Thompson and Dundy did not want a permanent indoor circus, along European lines; although circuses would definitely be part of the repertoire.   In anticipation of the wide variety of entertainments they envisioned, their certificate of incorporation included “music halls, circuses, hippodromes, and restaurants.”  Theatre Magazine said their enterprise would “blend the best acts of circus with spectacle, pantomime, vaudeville, musical comedy, drama, zoologic and aquatic performances.”

On April 8, 1905, an auction was held for the sale of boxes for the opening night performance.   A. Drake paid a staggering $575 for Proscenium Box L (approximately $11,000 today).  Although Harry Black helped finance the project and his firm built it, he paid $525 and $425 for his seats.  The total take for the boxes was nearly $10,000.

The dome over the "Roman style" auditorium encompassed one acre -- photo Broadway Magazine 1905 (copyright expired)

The public got its first glimpse of the interior at the auction.  The main auditorium was in the “Roman style,” decorated in Roman red with accents of gold, silver and ivory.  “The carpetings are of the same color, and the wall hangings, draperies and upholstery are executed in a Roman red velvet enriched with heavy gold and silver embroidery and tassels,” reported The Encyclopedia Americana.  The promenade and lobbies were finished in Caen stone and marble.  Off these were the smoking rooms, parlors, waiting rooms and cloak rooms.

The Hippodrome was a sensation.  The opening performance, “A Yankee Circus in Mars,” had a cast of 1,200 actors and dancers.  The first year 14,000 patrons a day flocked to the performances.   Channing Pollock raved in Ainslee’s Magazine in 1906, “The Hippodrome would have put the Roman Coliseum out of business and have caused the gladiatorial contests to be given to empty benches.”  That year The Evening World reported on “A Society Circus, with Court of the Golden Fountains…a magnificent spectacle, savage in its gorgeousness as well as refined in taste.  Everybody in America should go to the Hippodrome.”

photo Library of Congress

That same year Success Magazine said “it costs $30,000 a week to carry on the enterprise.  Every experienced showman and theatrical man knew from the first that the thing couldn’t be done for even in New York no such theater could possibly find a large enough year-round patronage to keep it going!  Yet the Hippodrome has been a brilliant success from the start.”

The Times wrote about the 1909 spectacle that took the viewer on a tour of the world.  “We are first taken to a steamship pier in Jersey City, and the end of the scene shows a vast ship steaming away with its three tiers full of people waving their farewells.  Then across the river, sparkling with ferryboats, lies New York, illuminated as everybody has seen it at night.”   The audience was then treated to scenes of “Tokio,” the Plaza of San Marco in Venice and finally a Maori village with waterfalls and a lake.

As the conclusion of that scene “Then the rocks behind the waterfalls disappear and tiers of lovely nymphs are lowered behind the colored waters.  It is all wonderful,” wrote The Times’ critic.

Dozens of girls perform in "The Dance of the Hours," part of the spectacle "A Yankee Circus on Mars" -- Harper's Weekly 1905 (copyright expired)

But by 1919 there were problems.  Labor demands, especially by the stagehands, prompted rumors that the enormous auditorium would become a movie or vaudeville theater.    Manager Charles B. Dillingham moved to dispel doubts about the venue’s future by announcing the 1919 season would be “open as usual” and “a substantial reduction in prices would be put into effect.”  The top price for evening performances was reduced to $1.50; a reduction in some prices of 50 percent.

In 1923 Keith-Abee took over management of the Hippodrome and remodeled it, then two years later purchased the building for about $5 million.

The Hippodrome struggled on for another decade, then on December 16, 1929 audiences were shocked when The New York Times announced that the building had been sold to the Fred F. French Operators, Inc. for $7.5 million.   The firm said “that they would erect an eighty-three story skyscraper on the property,” just two hundred feet shorter than the Empire State Building.

The Great Depression changed Fred French’s mind about constructing the skyscraper and in 1933 the Hippodrome was reopened as the New York Hippodrome Cinema.   While it continued primarily as a motion picture theater, live acts like Harry Houdini and his disappearing elephant were presented.  Billy Rose’s phenomenal Jumbo was staged in the Hippodrome in 1935.

Yet the gargantuan theater would not survive much longer.  In August 1939 the doors were closed for the last time.  Before the year ended the magnificent structure was gone and the barren lot sat empty, growing weeds and grass, until 1952.

Today a modern office building, called the Hippodrome, sits on the site -- photo NYCspaces.com

Today a sleek glass-and-steel office building sits on the site.  Over the entrance doors the name of the building is announced in large letters:  Hippodrome.