The Oswald Garrison Villard House - 179 East 71st Street

 

In April 1909 the two three-story, wooden houses of Mrs. Gertrude B. Miller and Richard M. Hoe at 177 and 179 East 71st Street respectively were sold.  The real estate firm of Pease & Elliman handled both transactions.   A principal in that firm, Douglas Elliman, and his wife Theodora purchased 177, while developer David Goodrich acquired the other.  The new owners worked closely together on the plans for the properties.

They commissioned architect S. Edson Gage to design two mirror image, upscale homes on the site.  Completed in 1910, the five-story residences were entered just above street level.  Gage designed them in the neo-Federal style, cladding them in Flemish bond brick and adding period appropriate elements like narrow entrance door sidelights, and splayed lintels and keystones.  Three sets of French windows at the second floor opened onto a full-width balcony with Federal style iron railings.  The fifth floor was set back and hidden behind a stone railing.

A street sweeper works on a treeless East 71st Street in 1941.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

David Goodrich sold 179 East 71st Street in 1911 to Oswald Garrison Villard and his wife, the former Julia B. Sanford.  The couple was married in 1903 and had three children, Henry Hilgard, Oswald Jr., and Dorothy.

Born in 1872 to journalist Henry Villard and Fanny Garrison, Oswald was an 1893 graduate of Harvard University.  He followed in his father's professional footsteps and when he and Julia moved into 179 East 71st Street he was president and editor of the New York Evening Post.  

He also closely followed his mother's example.  Fannie Garrison Oswald was a pacifist and civil rights activist.  She and Oswald help found the NAACP in 1909.  Villard served as the organization's disbursing treasurer for years.  When Woodrow Wilson initiated segregation within the Federal offices in Washington, Garrison fired off a letter of protest to the President in July 1913.

Osward Garrison Villard, from the collection of the University of Massachusetts Amherst

A vocal pacifist like his mother, Garrison's stance came into question when the United States entered World War I in April 1917.  In May, the Midday Recruiting Committee wrote to him, asking him "to write and tell it whether the statement reported to have been made by him represents his views now."  His staunchly pacifist statement had been made on February 18, two months before the country entered the conflict.  The New York Herald reported, "Mr. Villard was quoted as having said that he would not resist an invasion of this country by a foreign foe and as having refused to reply to a hypothetical question concerning the invasion of American homes."

S. Edson Gage designed 177 and 179 (right) as mirror images of one another.

In 1918 Garrison became editor of The Nation.  He used the editorial page to espouse his views on civil liberties, civil rights, and foreign policy.  The same year he resigned his position as president of the Philharmonic Society.  A reporter from the New-York Tribune went to 179 East 71st Street on the evening of January 4 to confirm the rumor.  Villard told him that he felt "he had accomplished for the Philharmonic all that was in his power."  But there seemed to have been more to the break than that.  "Mr. Villard refused to comment on the report that his attitude toward the war had played a part in his resignation," said the article.

On October 31, 1925, the Record & Guide reported that Julia Villard had sold 179 East 71st Street to Mrs. Vanderbilt Webb.  Aileen Clinton Hoadley Osborn Webb was the wife of Vanderbilt Webb, son of Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt and Dr. William Seward Webb, and a grandson of William Henry Vanderbilt.  Married in 1921, the couple had four children, Derick V., W. Osborn, Richard, and Barbara.

Aileen was the daughter of William Church Osborn, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Alice Clinton Hoadley Dodge.  Through her mother, she was the granddaughter of millionaire William Earl Dodge Jr.  

Vanderbilt Webb had attended the prestigious Groton School, graduated from Yale University in 1913, and studied at Oxford University in England before earning his law degree from Harvard University in 1916.  He was a member of the law firm Patterson, Belknap & Webb.  His broad interests were reflected in his being a trustee in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the American University of Beirut, Lebanon; the Groton School; and Colonial Williamsburg, Inc.

Vanderbilt Webb (original source unknown)

With the onslaught of the Depression, Aileen turned her attention to the conditions of the impoverished.  She encouraged the making of handmade goods which women could sell to improve their families' situations.  In 1940 she founded America House to help craftsmen sell their products.

Aileen Osborn Webb, The Craftsman's World, 1959

In the meantime, Barbara Webb was introduced to society in the winter season of 1934.  She had attended the exclusive Chapin School and the Brownmoor School in New Mexico before attending Bennington College.  

In April 1939, a year after graduating, Barbara's engagement to Henry Benson Rockwell was announced.  It gave society columnists an opportunity to recount the couples' social pedigrees.  The New York Times noted the Barbara "is a great-granddaughter of General James Watson Webb, noted journalist, diplomat and soldier, and a great-great-granddaughter of Jacob L. Cram, a leading New York merchant before the Civil War.  Through her father also, Miss Webb is a descendant of Commodore Vanderbilt, and a great-granddaughter of the late William H. Vanderbilt."

The Webbs were still living at 179 East 71st Street in January 1944 when Derick V. Webb became engaged to Elizabeth B. Canfield.  A graduate of Yale, Webb had entered the Army in October 1942 and was on leave.  In reporting on the engagement on January 7, The Putnam County Republican mentioned that his brother, "Pfc. Richard H. Webb [was] recently wounded in Italy."

When Vanderbilt Webb died on June 17, 1956 at the age of 65, he and Aileen were living at 66 East 79th Street.  No. 179 East 71st Street was now home to New Yorker illustrator Saul Steinberg and his artist wife Hedda Sterne.

Born in Romania in 1914, Steinberg was educated at the University of Bucharest and the Polytechnic University of Milan where he studied architecture.  The Fascist anti-Semitic laws forced him to leave Italy in 1938, and he arrived in New York in 1942.  He and Hedda, also born in Romania, were married in 1944.

Although he was best known for his New Yorker drawings, and for others in publications like Fortune, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Mademoiselle, his artworks were routinely exhibited in galleries and museums.  He would eventually have more than 80 one-man artist shows throughout the United States, South America and Europe.

Like her husband, Hedda Sterne had attended the University of Bucharest.  During World War II she and her family suffered under the Bucharest pogrom before she was finally able to sail for New York on October 17, 1941, where she quickly achieved success with her art.  She became friends with Peggy Guggenheim and became reconnected with painters she had known in Europe, including Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and André Breton.  By 1943 her artworks were being shown regularly in New York galleries, particularly Peggy Guggenheim's.

Hedda Sterne and Poussin in the rear yard of 179 East 71st Street.  Artful Cats, 2019

According to the Mary Savig's Artful Cats: Discoveries from the Archives of American Art, while living at 179 East 71st Street Steinberg painted a portrait of Hedda's cat Poussin "inside the cabinet under their kitchen sink; the idea was to keep away mice."

The couple separated in 1960, although they remained married until Steinberg's death in 1999.  Hedda died on April 8, 2011 at the age of 100.  

No. 179 East 71st Street, having had only a handful of owners, has seen almost no outward change since its completion in 1910.

photographs by the author

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The Hanford Twitchell House - 166 East 71st Street

 

166 East 71st Street (left) is one of a mirror image pair.

Born in London in 1844, Thomas Graham was the son of a builder.  He set out on a career in architecture, studying in the office of Jardine & Thompson, but left at the outbreak of the Civil War to serve with the First New York Engineers.  Upon his return to New York, he learned the cabinet making and stair building trade.  He switched careers again in 1870 when he again took up architecture and building.  Graham's projects were often a family affair.  His wife Jennie was sometimes the owner of record, while he did the designing and contracting.  And in 1898 the couple's son, William Van Wyck Graham would join his father's business.

In 1894 Jennie Graham purchased and demolished the 25-foot-wide wooden building at 164-166 East 71st Street.  Robert Graham designed two mirror-image brick-and-stone dwellings on the site.  Completed the following year, they were a handsome blend of Romanesque and Renaissance Revival styles.  The basement and parlor levels were faced in rough cut stone, while the three upper floors were clad in beige Roman brick and trimmed in limestone.  Graham gave the openings of each level successively less ornamentation.  The second floor windows sat on molded sills and their shared lintel was supported by foliate brackets.  The sills of the third floor were plain, and the single lintel had no brackets.  Finally, the windows of the top story were given understated sills and lintels.  Complex, ornate cornices crowned the structures.

No. 166 was originally home to the Decker family, who left in 1905.  It was next purchased as an investment by Charles H. Strong.  He leased it in 1907 to Francis Gordon Brown and his wife, the former Caroline Lawrence Bogert.  A banker with J. P. Morgan & Co., Brown had attended the exclusive Groton School and graduated from Yale University.  The couple was married in 1905 and had a one-year-old son, Francis Jr.  

Reeve Schley, the next to rent the house, was here by 1912.  An attorney with Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, he graduated from Yale University in 1903, and from Columbia in 1906.  He and Kate de Forest Prentice were married in 1907, and had two children, Reeve Jr., born on September 7, 1908, and Eleanor Prentice, born on July 17, 1911.

The Schleys' affluence was evidenced when Kate lost a piece of jewelry in the spring of 1916. Her notice in The Evening Telegram read:

Lost--Diamond and platinum horseshoe pin, on April 12, probably in front of Castles in the Air, West Forty-fourth Street. Return to Mrs. Reeve Schley, 166 East 71st St. Reward, $100.

The ample reward would translate to about $2,750 in 2023.

Two months later, on June 28, the New York Herald reported that the Schleys "have closed their home at No. 166 East Seventy-first street, and are at the Plaza for a short stay before going to their summer place, Meadowcroft, at Monmouth Beach, N.J." The family would not return to East 71st Street. Charles H. Strong leased the house that year to Marvyn Scudder and his wife.

The Scudders remained through 1927, after which 166 East 71st Street became home to Anna Elizabeth Martin Dew. Born in Georgia in 1858, she was the widow of James Harvie Dew who had died in 1914.

In October 1928 Anna announced the engagement of her niece, Bessie Dew Martin to Frederic Bowne, Jr. Both of Bessie's parents were deceased. The couple's marriage in St. Thomas' Church on January 18, 1929 was a social affair. The groom was a descendant of John Bowne, a founder of Flushing, New York and the builder of the historic 1661 Bowne House. Brooklyn Life noted that the bride "is a lineal descendant of Martin de Tours of France, who went to England and was made the Earl of Pembroke. Chief Justice John Marshall of Virginia, is another ancestor."

Having owned the house for more than three decades, Charles H. Strong sold it in April 1931. The new owner resold it in 1933 to Hanford Mead Twitchell and his wife, the former Gertrude Virginia Sterry.

The couple was married on May 31, 1924. When they moved into the East 71st Street house, they had a five-year-old son, Hanford Jr., a two-year-old daughter, Virginia, and a one-year-old, Sterry. Two more children would follow. Cleveland arrived in 1938, and Joan in 1940. The family's summer home was in the Hamptons.

Hanford had graduated from Lawrenceville School in 1916, and from Princeton University in 1920. Since 1925 he had been a broker with the real estate firm of Albert B. Ashforth.

Both Hanford and Gertrude came from socially prominent families, as was evidenced when they hosted a tea and reception on December 12, 1936 for their debutante niece, Prudence Cleveland Smith of Providence. Introducing the Rhode Island girl to Manhattan society was important. The New York Times noted, "Miss Smith will make her debut at a dinner dance to be given by her parents on Dec. 29 in Providence. Her grandmother, Mrs. Frederic Sterry, will give a luncheon for the debutante early next month at the Plaza here."

Hanford was a vice president of Albert B. Ashforth, Inc. by 1951, when he resigned and formed a real estate appraising and consulting company, Hanford M. Twitchell. Among his clients were the U.S. Information Service of the United States Government, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and The Prudential Insurance Company of America.

The Twitchells remained at 166 East 71st Street through 1961, after which Hanford and Gertrude moved to Rio de Janeiro. Perhaps because of its narrow proportions, the house has never been converted to apartments. Other than a somewhat regrettable replacement door, it is little changed on the exterior since its completion in 1895.

photographs by the author

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The 1895 Henry Hesse House - 164 East 71st Street

 

The Hesse house (right) is a mirror-image of 166 East 71st Street

In March 1884 The Manufacturer and Builder reported that developer Moritz Bauer "intends to erect a first-class four-story and basement brown stone private dwelling" at 164 East 71st Street.  Bauer had already hired Hugo Kafka to design the upscale residence.

But something upset Bauer's plans.  A decade later two wooden dwellings still occupied the narrow plots at 164 and 166 East 71st Street.  That would change in 1894 when Thomas and Jennie Graham purchased the properties.  The couple were active in real estate within the neighborhood and made a successful team.  Jennie filled the position of developer and owner, while Thomas designed the structures.

They replaced the frame houses with two mirror-image, brick and stone rowhouses.  A handsome blend of Romanesque Revival and Renaissance Revival styles, their basement and parlor levels were faced in rough-cut stone.  Stone voussoirs took the place of decorative lintels at the parlor level.  A shared stone cornice with delicate dentils that capped the first floor terminated in foliate bosses.

Graham gave the second and third floor windows a common lintel--possibly to fool the eye and disguise the homes' narrow 12-foot-widths.  Complex pressed metal double cornices with elaborate friezes, dentils and foliate brackets completed the design.

In July 1895 Jennie Graham sold 164 East 71st Street to Henry Hesse, Jr.  A physician, he was 33 years old at the time, and his wife, the former Clara Lauterjung, was 22.  The population of the house was increased on September 21, 1896, when son Henry Rudolph was born, and again in 1898 with the birth of Margot Pauline.

Although he never served in a war--he was born the year the Civil War broke out--Henry was nonetheless highly patriotic and joined the volunteer 23rd Regiment as a teen.  When the Hesses moved from Brooklyn to the East 71st Street house he held the rank of second lieutenant and was Assistant Surgeon of Company B of that regiment.

Henry Rudolf was a bit slower to offer his services.  It is unclear how he managed to avoid his obligations during World War I, but it was not until 1919 (following the declaration of peace) that he registered for military service at the age of 23.

The Hesse family lived quietly in their narrow house, their names appearing in society pages only when the children married.  The East 71st Street house was the setting for Margot Pauline's wedding to Dr. Alfred G. Langmann on June 4, 1925.  In reporting on the ceremony, The New York Times mentioned, "The bride was graduated from Vassar in 1921."

Henry Rudolph would take his time in finding a wife.  When he married Hilda Poel on April 18, 1927, he was 31 years old.  Now empty-nesters, his parents sold their home of more than three decades to Dr. S. H. Shindell in August 1928.  The New York Evening Post remarked, "The purchaser will occupy the house as a residence and office."

Dr. Shindell's practice was quite different from that of his predecessor--he was a veterinarian.  He was called to assist in a birth at 62 Washington Square South in 1935 when H. E. Van Herwarth's cat went into labor.  Normally, cats give birth unattended, but Sakura Jane was a "world-famous prize seal-point Siamese," according to The New York Post on October 22.  Shindell was stunned when the kittens kept coming--finally numbering ten in all.  He told reporters it was "the largest litter of kittens of which he has ever heard."

Nature had not intended for Sakura Jane to give birth to ten offspring.  The New York Post explained, "With so many babies to feed, Sakura Jane has not enough milk to go around."  Shindell told Van Herwarth he would had to find a wet nurse cat--a daunting challenge.  The surrogate mother did not have to be a Siamese, but "she must have given birth within the last forty-eight hours."  (It is unclear if Van Herwarth ever found a feline wet nurse.)

By 1940 the Thomas Bandes family lived at 164 East 71st Street.  He and his wife Mary had two sons, Gerald and Selwyn, who were 18 and 11 years old respectively at the time.  Living with them was a 28-year-old servant, Mercelina Gordeurn.

In the last quarter of the 20th century, 164 East 71st Street was home to the resourceful Carole Eppley.  She ran a "kitchen-bakeshop," as described by The New York Times on March 19, 1978, from the house.  The article said in part, "There may be nothing new about the Easter rabbits in general, but there is news in their delectably sweet and sprightly reincarnations as original and charming cookies."  The rabbit cookies were just part of Carole Eppley's Easter confections.  The article said she was "baking fluffy, coconut-furred lamb cakes ($10 each), egg-shaped petits fours decorated in pastels ($2 each), a dozen different barnyard animals $9 a dozen) and bird's nest cookies, which are really brown sugar cookies filled with green grass frosting and a rainbow assortment of jelly beans."

A charming built-in bench on a staircase hall landing survives, as do the intricately inlaid flooring.  image via compass.com

The former Hesse house was remodeled in 2013.  While much of the 1896 detailing was removed, some--like the main staircase and some mantels--survive.  The exterior is well preserved.

photographs by the author

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The 1881 Frank C. Markham House - 155 East 71st Street

 

James R. Breen and Alfred G. Nason started their partnership as "carpenters."  By the early 1870s they had become full-fledged contractors.  Both men became wealthy and influential (Nason was a friend of Presidents Ulysses Grant and Theodore Roosevelt).  Among the structures built by Breen & Nason would be Grant's Tomb.

There were rare instances when the partners acted as their own developers and architects.  They started one such project on April 1, 1881 when they purchased the old 40-foot-wide wooden house at 155-157 East 71st Street from Thomas D. Stetson for $15,500 (around $425,000 in 2023).  The price reflected the increasing development in the Lenox Hill district.

Before the end of the year Breen & Nason had completed two upscale, mirror-image houses.  An advertisement on Christmas Day 1881 read:

An elegant new four-story and basement house, No. 155 East 71st-st., just completed by Breen & Nason, No,. 341 East 59th-st.; cabinet finish, mirrors &c.; house open daily.

The 20-foot-wide residence was designed in the neo-Grec style.  At four stories tall, the high-stooped house and its fraternal twin towered over their neighbors.  Breen & Nason's use of spandrel panels below and above each window emphasized the geometry of the neo-Grec style.

Frank Chauncey Markham purchased 155 East 71st Street in April 1882, paying the equivalent of $807,000 today.  A stockbroker, he and his wife, the former Louisa Hill, had two daughters, Mary Louise and Helen Taylor.

The family moved into the new house just in time for Mary Louise's introduction to society.  As was often the case, a wedding quickly followed.  On June 15, 1884 the Buffalo Courier reported on her marriage to Charles Townsend in St. James Church.  A reception followed in the Markham house.  "The bridal party received before a large mirror, which was festooned with bands of  roses of all colors," said the article.  "The floral decoration in all the reception rooms and halls were noticeably effective.  The newel-post in the main hallway supported a huge vase of regal flowers."  The article said that after the last of the guests left, the bride and groom "disappeared for parts unmentioned."

The Markhams left the East 71st Street house not long afterward.  It became home to Herrman and Eveline Schiffer.   Eveline was the daughter of Minna and Samuel Schiffer, and whether she and Herrman were related before marriage is unclear.

On June 1, 1888, Herrman and Alfred Schiffer became partners with Isaias Meyer in the silk manufacturing firm Pelgram & Meyer.  They filled the position of Meyer's deceased partner, Charles R. Pelgram.

Eveline Schiffer fell ill early in 1889 and died in the house on March 19.  Her funeral was held in the drawing room on March 22.

No. 155 East 71st Street next became home to Dr. Andrew J. McCosh, who purchased it on June 22, 1903.  Born in Belfast, Ireland in 1858, he was the son of Dr. James McCosh,  who had become president of Princeton University in the family's new homeland.  Not surprisingly, McCosh attended Princeton, before earning his medical degree from the Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1880.

By the time Dr. McCosh purchased 155 East 71st Street, he was considered to be one of the leading surgeons of the country, and was a professor of clinical surgery at Columbia University.  He was the author of several medical books, including Remarks on Spinal Surgery, Four Cases of Brain Surgery, and Surgical Intervention in Benign Gastric Lesions."

Andrew McCosh's residency would be short.  He sold the house in February 1905 to Francis G. Lloyd, the president of Brooks Brothers.  It does not appear that the Lloyds ever lived in the residence, but rented it.  Lloyd hired the architectural firm of Trowbridge & Livingston to make interior updates and install new windows in 1907.

Lloyd's tenants by 1910 were the family of merchant Gustavus Owen Winston.  The wealthy young man was just 27-years-old at the time.  His and his wife, the former Margaret Dey, had three sons, four-year-old John Lloyd; Owen Lloyd, who was 3; and little Francis Lloyd, just one year old.  Also living with the family was Gustavus's brother, 19-year-old Eric S. Winston.  Their father Gustavus S. Winston, had died in 1899 and their mother was now remarried.

The Winston family had five live-in servants: three Irish maids who ranged in age from 16 to 25, a French-born servant who was most likely Margaret's lady's maid or possibly the children's nursemaid, and 17-year-old William Zangl, who was born in Austria.

Eric S. Winston was attending Harvard at the time.  He graduated in 1912 and two years later his engagement to Maud Arden Kennedy was announced.

The well-dressed and well-to-do Eric and Maud Winston at the New York Horse Show not long after their marriage.  from the collection of the Library of Congress.

The Winstons left 155 East 71st Street in 1914.  Francis G. Lloyd leased the house next to Clendening J. Ryan, son of millionaire Thomas Fortune Ryan, and then to Thomas Frothingham.

In 1919 he sold the house to stockbroker Richard Lewis Morris and his wife, the former Caroline Whitney Fellowes.  Morris was the son of Stuyvesant Fish Morris and Ellen James Van Buren and was descended from Lewis Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  He and Caroline had two children, Cornelia Fellowes, born in 1909, and Richard Jr., born in 1917.  Their summer home, The Three Chimneys, was in Southampton.

In 1925 the Morrises hired architect Auguste Noel to modernize their brownstone house.  He removed the stoop and moved the entrance to the former English basement level, just below grade.  He enlarged the openings at what was now the third floor, connecting them with a single lintel.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Cornelia was introduced to society at a dinner dance at the Park Lane on December 1, 1928.  Saying she was "well known to the younger set of the Hamptons," the Standard Union noted that Cornelia "spent last year in France at L'Ermitage, Versailles."

Unlike many debutantes, Cornelia seems to have been in no hurry to marry.  It was not until April 28, 1933, that the New York Evening Post reported, "Descendants of families prominent in the early history of the United States are being married this afternoon when Miss Cornelia Fellowes Morris becomes the bride of Mr. Malcolm Graham Field."  Coincidentally, the wedding took place in St. James Church, where Mary Louise Markham had been married half a century earlier.  A reception following in the East 71st Street house.

As was the case with all wealthy families, the society pages followed the Morrises' movements.  On May 4, 1934, for instance, The New York Sun reported that Richard and Caroline "will be among the New Yorkers attending the Kentucky Derby on Saturday.  They are motoring to Louisville, stopping en route at Washington, Arlington, Charlottesville and White Sulphur Springs."

Richard Lewis Morris died at the age of 79 on July 4, 1954.  He and Caroline had been gone from 155 East 71st Street for several years at the time.  In 1953 the house was converted to a triplex apartment in the lower part, with one apartment each on the upper two stories.  

The configuration lasted until 1967 when the basement level was converted to an office, with a duplex on the first and second floors, and one apartment each on the third and fourth.  The top two floors were combined to a duplex apartment in 1988.

photographs by the author

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The Douglas Ludlow Elliman House - 177 East 71st Street

 

image via streeteasy.com

Born in Flushing, Queens on May 24, 1882, Douglas Ludlow Elliman's early education was at the exclusive Berkeley and Cutler private schools.  But the Financial Panic of 1893 seriously affected his stockbroker father's finances, and he forewent college to take a job as a runner on Wall Street.  Elliman was just 18 years old when he married Theodora Polhemus Trowbridge on October 20, 1900.  His bride was the daughter of well-known architect Samuel Breck Parkman Trowbridge.

Three years later he accepted a job with his older brother Lawrence in the real estate firm of Pease & Elliman.  It was a pivotal move.

On April 14, 1909, The New York Times reported the Pease & Elliman had sold the two wooden houses at 177 and 179 East 71st Street for Mrs. Gertrude B. Miller and Richard M. Hoe, respectively.  "On the entire plot the buyer will erect two five-story American basement houses, each 20 feet front," said the article.

By the time of the transaction, Elliman had done well for himself.  He and Theodora purchased 177 East 71st Street, and worked with Donald Goodrich, the buyer of 179, in developing the site.  They commissioned architect S. Edson Gage to design mirror-image, neo-Federal homes.

Completed in 1910, the American basement residences were faced in red brick and trimmed in stone.  Their first floor windows matched in proportion the Federal style doorways.  Above, a full-width iron-railed balcony fronted three sets of French windows.  The splayed window lintels carried on the Federal motif, and finely dentiled cornices crowned the homes.

Douglas and Theodora had three sons when they moved into 177 East 71st Street.  Douglas Trowbridge was 9 years old, George Trowbridge was 5, and Ludlow was only a few months old.  Also living with the family was Douglas's 20-year-old sister, Rosalie Southgate Elliman.

Douglas Ludlow Elliman (original source unknown)

The Ellimans were affluent enough to not only afford a fine town residence, but a country home.  Shore Acres was in Noroton, Connecticut.  The family was there on May 9, 1911, when, back in the city, a man notified a police officer that he "had seen men going into the basement of the house at 177 East Seventy-first street, which belongs to Douglas C. [sic] Elliman, a real estate man," reported The Sun.  The policeman called for back-up from the East 67th Street station house, and soon the house was surrounded.  One officer shimmied in through a window, then opened the door from inside.

The Sun said, "A search was made of all the twenty-five or thirty rooms of the house, but no one was found, nor had anything been taken.  In the cellar they found that a window had been forced."  While Lieutenant Gloster and Detective McGee hashed out the mystery, policeman Jerry McMahon idly "toyed with the open door of the heater."  He felt cloth, and in feeling closer, realized he was touching a human arm.

Officer McMahon stuck his head into the dark interior of the furnace and demanded, "Come out of that, now!"  His command was answered by a youthful voice that cried, "We can't.  He won't let us."

When McMahon ordered again, more sternly, "Come on now!" he was answered with, "Aw, shut up and come in an' get us!"  The savvy policeman set fire to a newspaper and threatened to light the furnace.  The Sun reported, '"We'll come out!" shrilled the voices, and a head was poked out the door."

The policemen pulled 13-year-old William Callahan out of the furnace.  The next sooty burglar to appear was 14-year-old George Volk.  The leader of the youthful gang, 16-year-old John Ranfino, was more difficult to extract.  "His head came all right," said The Sun, "but his shoulders were broad, and as the door is about a foot in circumference they stuck.  With persuasion and much twisting the shoulders were worried out, but a long tangle of legs followed."

Ranfino was locked up in the 67th Street station, charged with attempted burglary.  The younger boys were turned over to the Gerry Society.  There they explained that Ranfino had pushed them into the cellar window, and then they pulled him in.  They had been on the first floor of the house when they heard police sirens, and hid out in the furnace.  "The police can't yet see how they did it," reported The Sun, "and why they failed to suffocate."

The year of the near-burglary, Douglas Elliman struck out on his own professionally.  He formed Douglas L. Elliman & Co. and began to focus on apartment living.  Years later The New York Times would call him "a leader in arranging the gradual migration of the city's wealthiest residents from the private mansions that lined Fifth and Madison Avenues to the luxury apartment houses that sprang up on Park Avenue and points east, such as Sutton Place.

On June 3, 1913, The New York Press noted, "Mr. and Mrs. Douglas L. Elliman and Miss Rosalie Elliman have closed their house, No. 177 East Seventy-fist street, and have gone to Shore Acres, their summer home in Noroton, Conn."  It would be Rosalie's last season at Shore Acres.

An article in The Sun on March 6, 1914 reported that Douglas and Theodore "have announced the engagement of their sister, Miss Rosalie Southgate Elliman, to Radcliffe Romeyn...Miss Elliman was introduced to society a year ago."

Just two months later, the Ellimans leased 177 East 71st Street to William Chapman Potter.  Born in Chicago, Potter had graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1897 with a degree in engineering.  He would have a broadly varied career.  Aerial Age Weekly explained, "He started life as a mining engineer, and after many years in that work both in Mexico and this country, he became identified with the production of automobiles, vice-president of the Guaranty Trust Company and president of the Intercontinental Rubber Company."

William Chapman Potter, The Guaranty News, July, 1918 (copyright expired)

Potter had married Caroline Morton in 1902.  Three years after moving into the East 71st Street house, the couple suffered indescribable heartache.  On May 11, 1917, The Evening Post reported that their infant daughter had died.

With America involved in World War I, on June 7, 1918 President Woodrow Wilson nominated William Chapman Potter to be a member of the Aircraft Board.  Organized in 1917 and reporting to the Secretaries of War and the Navy, the board made recommendations regarding the development and procurement of military aircraft.

The Potters left 177 East 71st Street that year, and Theodora Elliman rented the house to newlyweds Merideth and Elizabeth Manning Sage Hare.  The couple had been married in Bermuda on March 2, 1916.

A younger Merideth Hare, Quarter-Century Record, Class of 1894 Yale College, 1922 (copyright expired)

An attorney, Merideth was 47 years old when the couple moved in.  A graduate of Yale and Columbia Universities, he had served in the U.S. Army during the Spanish American War.  Elizabeth was a member of The Society of Independent Artists.  Her family traced its American roots to David Sage, who arrived in Connecticut from Wales in 1652.

The Hares' lease was not renewed.  On February 7, 1920 the Record & Guide reported that the Ellimans had sold 177 East 71st Street, noting, "It will be occupied by the buyer at the expiration of the present lease."

That buyer was another Yale graduate, Dr. John Rogers, and his wife, the former Elizabeth Selden White.  Rogers earned his medical degree at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and was, according to Herringshaw's American Blue Book of Biography in 1926, a specialist "on diseases of thyroid gland."  When the couple moved into 177 East 71st Street, he was a consulting surgeon at several New York City hospitals.

The former Elliman house is to the left.  photograph by the author

The Rogers remained here until 1945, selling it in April that year.  In 1989 a "recreation room" penthouse was added.  Never converted to apartments, the eight-bedroom Elliman house was sold in 2014 for $14.8 million.  

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The Jennie Cunningham Croly House - 171 East 71st Street

 

photograph by the author

In 1866 real estate developer James O'Kane erected a row of six identical homes on the north side of East 71st, between Third and Lexington Avenues.  Designed by prolific architect John Sexton, each was just 15-feet-wide and rose three stories over a high basement level.  Their Italianate design featured double-doored, arched entrances below impressive pediments supported by foliate brackets.  The architrave-framed segmentally-arched windows sat upon molded sills.  Identical, individual cornices crowned the homes.

No. 171 East 71st Street became home to the family of Robert Ward, whose hosiery business was far downtown on White Street.   The Wards remained at least through 1873, after which James T. Shylock and his wife resided here briefly.

Shylock was described by the New York Herald as "a wealthy married man."  His carousing with a friend in the spring of 1876 landed him in jail and brought humiliating publicity.  In an article titled "Bad Shylock," the New York Herald recounted that he had approached Officer Cumming in the notorious Tenderloin District, "and demanded to know if certain houses were ones of ill-fame."  The New York Times reported that Cumming told Shylock, "he had better leave."
 

The newspaper continued, "He accosted the officer, and abused him with vile language.  The officer again met him talking to a prostitute on Twenty-sixth street."  The woman fled, but Shylock remained, daring Cumming to arrest him.  His "loud and abusive language" drew a crowd of about 50 onlookers.  When Cumming attempted to take Shylock into custody, "he struck the officer a terrible blow in the face and attempted to seize his club," said the New York Herald.  The article reported, "It was with a great deal of difficulty and not until he had been severely punished, that he was finally secured in a cell in the station house."

In court, Shylock showed no remorse, expressing "his intention to hammer out the brains of the officer."  The judge fined him $10 and fifteen days in the Tombs.

In 1877, 171 East 71st Street became home to Dr. Benjamin Morje, starting a long tradition of physicians at the address.  Morje's son Anthony worked as an office clerk.  The family lived here until 1880 when real estate operators Samuel H. Leszynsky and Charles A. Troup purchased the property.

They leased it to Dr. G. Arnold until 1882, when they sold 177 East 71st Street to David Goodman Croly and his wife, Jennie Cunningham Croly.  As was common, the title was placed in Jennie's name.  The couple had a son and a daughter.

Croly was a well-known journalist.  He was city editor of the New York Herald in 1856 when the couple married.  He later became managing editor of the newspaper, and then editor of the Daily Graphic.

Jennie Cunningham Croly, however, was better-known than her husband.  A pioneering female journalist, she had started her career with the New York Sunday Dispatch.  She was working at the New York Herald when she met Croly.  Over the years she was connected with several newspapers and magazines, wrote books under the pseudonym Jennie June, and co-founded Sorosis club for women writers and the New York Woman's Press Club.

In 1887 Jennie Croly purchased a half-interest in Godey's Lady's Book and served as its editor.  Her abilities and interests went far beyond journalism.  American Women reported, "She was chosen president of the Women's Endowment Cattle Company...That company, incorporated under the laws of New Jersey, had a capital stock of $1,500,000 and controlled 2,000,000 acres of grazing land in New Mexico, with thousands of head of cattle."

An ardent feminist, Jennie testified before the Senate Committee on Labor and Capital in 1883.  Her exhaustive testimony exposed the "peculiar hardships of women in this country."  Among her suggestions was the making of public education mandatory for girls.  Several of Croly's books were aimed at women, such as For Better or Worse, Jennie Juneiana: Talks on Women's Topics, and Thrown on her Own Resources.

Jennie Cunningham Croly, Progressive Era, copyright expired

American Women mentioned, "Her home has for years been a center of attraction for authors, artists, actors and cultured persons.

In April 1892 Dr. Oscar Peter Honegger and his wife Augusta Louise purchased 171 East 71st Street.  The couple paid $14,000 for the property, or about $430,000 in 2023 terms.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1855, Honegger received his medical degree in Heidelberg, Germany in 1879.  He also attended Pittsburgh University and the University of Zurich.  He and Augusta had one daughter.

A few months after moving into the 71st Street house, Honegger was called to a tragic case.  The parents of 23-year-old Isaac Henry called him to their home on the night of January 10, 1893.  The New York Sun reported, "Henry admitted to the Doctor that for the last five years he had been addicted to the use of opium."  His habit forced him to smoke "five and seven grains of opium a day."  This time the young man would not survive and died the following day.  "Dr. Honnegger [sic], in his death certificate, gave chronic opium poisoning as the cause of death," said the article.

In his free time, Oscar Honegger was an avid chess player.  He founded the Metropolitan Chess Club and served as its president until resigning on June 15, 1897.  The American Chess Magazine said, "much against the will of the members, he was allowed to step out of office."  Calling him "a player of no mean ability," the article added, "the most genial of men, Dr. Honegger was an ideal president, indeed.  He is a physician with a large practice."

The Honeggers had a large St. Bernard dog.  On the afternoon of May 6, 1900, it was hit by a Lexington Avenue cable car near 71st Street.  The World reported, "The dog got caught under the car and was fearfully mangled."  When it was finally extracted, the horrific condition of the animal became evident.  "One woman fainted and many screamed," said the article.

Back at 171 East 71st Street, the Honeggers' daughter had a playmate over.  Their carefree afternoon was about to turn horrific.  The World reported, "An excited young man recognized the dog as the property of Dr. Honegger...and dragged the still animate body into the doctor's house without giving the family any warning, causing two little girls, whose playfellow the dog had been, to go into hysterics."  The St. Bernard died within a few minutes of being brought to the house.

In December 1905 Dr. Honegger purchased a house on East 91st Street and sold 171 East 71st Street to brothers James Otis and William Stone Post.  They were the sons of eminent architect George Browne Post, and a year before purchasing the house had joined their father's practice, which became George B. Post and Sons.

The brothers shared the townhouse and, apparently, the Post summer estate, Claremont, in Bernardsville, New Jersey.  James and his wife were childless, while William and Lillian Marie had two daughters, Marian and Lillian.

In April 1914, the Posts sold 171 East 71st Street to Dr. Albert R. Lamb.  A 1907 graduate of Columbia University, Lamb married Helen Foster on January 4, 1910.  When they moved into their new home, their daughter Mary Nightingale was three years old.  Albert Jr. arrived later that year, on December 3, 1914, and daughter Priscilla was born on May 28, 1919.

Lamb was a pathologist at the Presbyterian Hospital.  When America entered World War I, he received a commission in the Medical Corps, and at the end of the conflict was a member of the American Commission in Paris to Negotiate Peace.

In July 1921 Dr. Lamb was appointed professor of clinical medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and attending physician at the Presbyterian Hospital.  

A year later Lamb sold 171 East 71st Street to another physician, Dr. Henry Alsop Riley, and his wife the former Margaret Hamilton.  Born in 1887, he graduated from Yale University in 1908 and received his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1912.  A specialist in nervous and mental diseases, in 1930 he was a professor of neurology at his alma mater.

Dr. Riley retired as attending neurologist of the Neurological Institute of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in 1962, and ended his private medical practice in 1964.

No. 171 East 71st Street became home to Geoffrey T. Hellman, described by The New York Times journalist Alden Whitman as "The New Yorker writer, humorist, bon vivant and clubman."  Hellman married his second wife, the former Katherine Henry, in 1960.  The couple had a daughter, Katharine.

Born on February 13, 1907, Hellman had been with The New Yorker since 1929.  The humorist was the author of two books, Mrs. de Peyster's Parties and Other Lively Stories From The New Yorker, and How to Disappear for an Hour.  Whitman said of him, "Mr. Hellman moved easily among the wealthy New Yorkers of the Upper East Side, for he himself was the great-grandson of Joseph Seligman, the international banker."

Hellman died of cancer in the 71st Street house on September 26, 1977.  His daughter by his first marriage, sitar player Daisy Paradis, still lives in the house.

An interesting side note is that because the address appears prominently in the background of several scenes in the 1961 motion picture Breakfast at Tiffany's, fans routinely mistake 171 East 71st Street as the house of the film's character Holly Golightly.  The actual location was next door, at 169 East 71st Street.

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