Esther Crain's Blog, page 44

One of New York’s last 18th century farmhouses sits on an East River island

After the Revolutionary War, two financially strapped New York City brothers named James and Jacob Blackwell tried to find a buyer for the East River island they had inherited from their father.

A 1784 newspaper advertisement placed by James Blackwell described the island’s selling points.

The island, “was about four miles from the city,” the ad stated, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission report from 1976. Among the features were “’two small Dwelling Houses, a Barn, Bake, and Fowl House, a Cyder Mill,’ a large orchard, stone quarries and running springs.”

Despite the amenities, the island didn’t sell—or perhaps the Blackwells fortunes changed, and they decided to hang onto this two-mile long private strip between Manhattan and Queens.

Whatever the reason, From 1796 and 1804, James Blackwell built a spacious farmhouse that still stands on their former island, .

The clapboard Blackwell House, with typical late 18th-century touches like a wide porch, separate kitchen wing, gabled roof, root cellar, and dormer windows, is the only building that survives from the two centuries or so when Roosevelt Island was privately owned, states the LPC report.

It’s also the sixth oldest still-extant farmhouse in New York City, a charming relic still in its original spot facing the East River. It dates from the same era as the Dyckman Farmhouse in Northern Manhattan as well as Gracie Mansion across the East River.

A farmhouse isn’t what you’d expect to find on a spit of land better known as a notorious 19th century repository for Gotham’s poor, sick, and criminal. But before New York City purchased the island from the Blackwells in 1828 and built a penitentiary—then an almshouse, workhouse, and hospitals for people afflicted with smallpox, mental illness, and a variety of incurable diseases—the island was farmland.

The Blackwell farmhouse, about 1933, before a wing off the house was demolished

The first European settlers in the 17th century were Dutch, who called it Varckens Eylandt, or Hog Island in English, after the pigs raised there. “It was purchased from two [Native American] chiefs by Governor Wouter van Twiller in 1637 and was already being farmed by 1639 under land grants from the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company,” explains the LPC report.

The Blackwells become owners when Mary Manning Blackwell inherited it from her stepfather, Captain John Manning. Captain Manning got it through a land grant from Richard Nicholls, the first British colonial governor of New York and one of the commanders who seized New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664.

The house on what was then called Welfare Island, 1950

After the city took over Blackwell’s Island, the farmhouse was used to house administrators of the many institutions that didn’t begin to close until the end of the 19th century, as the terrible conditions inside them became known to an outraged public.

During the 20th century, the house fell into disrepair, like so many other buildings on what was renamed Welfare Island. Restored and rehabbed (minus an original wing) in the early 1970s—with the island renamed for FDR—it now houses artifacts and documents related to Roosevelt Island history and is open to the public.

Imagine the views the house had to the Manhattan country estates along the East River (the house would line up to about East 65th Street today, across from the circa-1799 Mount Vernon Hotel, a popular summer resort) and the sailing ships of New York’s busy harbor!

[Fourth photo: LOC/Historic American Buildings Survey; fifth photo: MCNY, X2010.11.10363]

The anonymity of a nighttime pushcart market under the elevated

WPA painter and onetime New York City resident Nathaniel C. Burwash didn’t want viewers to know the exact location of his nocturne of a pushcart market under the elevated.

The crudely painted street sign on the street lamp is unreadable; the signs under the “meat provisions” pushcart don’t add up to anything. Faces are amorphous or turned away, and the elevated train tracks over narrow streets could be in almost any downtown neighborhood during the Depression years.

Though we don’t know the precise address in “New York Pushcart Section No. 2,” Burwash’s mysterious name of the painting, we can easily recognize the New York-ness of the scene: the activity of an outdoor marketplace, the arrangement of the pushcarts, the interest (and disinterest) on the part of shoppers and pedestrians lost in their own interior worlds.

Illuminated by a street lamp and the inside lights of what looks like a passing train on the far side of the painting, it’s a scene that captures the everyday rhythm of an ordinary neighborhood from afar, with a deliberate degree of anonymity.

Spotting a Bowery street sign carved into a Lower East Side building

If you often walk through New York City’s older neighborhoods—and you tend to look up at the buildings before you—then you’ve probably seen them: faded, weathered street names carved into the corners of tenements and walkups.

They’re charming finds when you come across them, these now-obsolete address markers. But they also served a function.

In an earlier city that didn’t have official street signage on every corner (especially in narrow, crowded neighborhoods downtown), these carvings let people know exactly where they were. I’ve also heard that because some could be seen from elevated trains, they informed riders of their location as the train lurched up or down to its destination.

Recently I chanced upon a pair of street addresses I’d never seen before. At the corner of Bowery and Madison Street, there they were: two street names on either side of a Flatiron-shaped building, faded from the elements but still visible.

More examples of these street name carvings can be found here as well as here.

The early 1880s apartment building you’ve probably never noticed on Seventh Avenue

Today, Seventh Avenue and 55th Street is surrounded by an unbeautiful streetscape of hotels, office lunch spots, touristy trinket shops, and random spillover from the Theater District of Times Square.

The Ontiora, 200 West 55th Street

But picture it in the 1880s, when it was fresh Manhattan real estate. Back then, this was a centrally located intersection just blocks from the calming landscapes of Central Park.

Edward Clark decided to take advantage of this premium location. of the Singer Sewing Machine Company and was now a developer, purchased land at three of the four corners here in the late 1870s.

Clark wasn’t planning to construct row houses or another kind of single-family home, the preferred type of domicile for the city’s Gilded Age rich. Instead, his goal was to bring luxury apartment houses to what would eventually become part of Midtown.

Clark and his architect, Henry Hardenburgh, worked fast. By 1879, they had completed the Van Corlear, an apartment building that spanned Seventh Avenue between 55th and 56th Streets, according to Christopher Gray in a 1997 New York Times piece.

The two also began work on the Wyoming, at the southeast corner of 55th and Seventh Avenue, as well as the Dakota, way up on Central Park West at 72nd Street. (“Clark’s folly,” it was called, because it was so far from the bulk of the city at the time.)

The final building Clark and Hardenburgh collaborated on is the mysteriously named Ontiora. Unfortunately, Clark never saw it rise: he died in 1882, when the building was in the planning stages.

But almost a century and a half after its 1883 opening, this early example of Queen Anne-style “French flats” still stands, a little rough around the edges, at the southwest corner of 55th Street and Seventh Avenue.

Only part of the Ontiora fronts Seventh Avenue. Turn the corner, however, and you can imagine the Gilded Age grandeur of living in this red-brick beauty, with its iron balconies, stained glass, and porthole window under the cornice.

Seventh Avenue and 55th Street outside the Ontiora, surrounded by a low fence

Apartments here were roomy, with just one per floor. “The Ontiora’s five families had 2,000-square-foot apartments, about two-thirds of the average Dakota apartment at the time,” wrote Gray. “From later plans of the building it appears that the kitchens and service areas were at the west end, with a parlor at the corner and other rooms in between.”

It didn’t take long for other apartment houses to pop up near the Ontiora. The Osborne, two blocks away at Seventh Avenue and 57th Street, was built between 1883-1885. The Navarro, or Spanish Flats, was a spectacular early co-op on Central Park South between Sixth and Seventh Avenues that opened in the mid-1880s.

The Ontoria in 1920, with a subway entrance and ground floor commercial space

Of course, the neighborhood’s fortunes changed as the 20th century went on. Clark’s Wyoming building was knocked down in 1906 and replaced with another of the same name. By the 1920s, the Navarro bit the dust. The Van Corlear met the bulldozer as well.

The Ontiora, anonymous and subdivided into smaller units, is still with us. A ground floor commercial space was added before 1920, based on the photo above. Gray’s article, from 1997, stated that the 45 apartments in the building now are rent-regulated, but that may not be the case in 2022.

Whatever is going on with the apartments inside, at least the exterior retains its Gilded Age bearings and stands as a reminder of New York City’s first luxury apartment house district.

[Fifth image: NYPL; sixth image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services]

The relaxing country drive that New Yorkers like George Washington enjoyed in 1790

As magical as New York City can be, sometimes you really need to hit the road for the day and take a long drive into the country.

Kingsbridge Road, part of the “14 miles round” pleasure drive

New Yorkers in 1790 could relate. Residents who were lucky enough to have leisure time as well as access to a carriage and driver could leave the city limits and venture along Manhattan Island’s few reliable north-south roads. One especially popular day-long drive was known as the “14 miles round.” (Or “14 mile round,” as some sources have it.)

The name appears to be derived from the seven miles it took to get to the countryside of Upper Manhattan, and then the seven miles back to the lower city—which barely existed beyond Canal Street at the time.

A closeup of the Bien and Johnson Map of Manhattan, showing the Bloomingdale Road and the Kingsbridge or Post Road, both part of the 14 mile round. McGowan’s Pass is on the far right.

“In 1790, the favorite drive of the New-Yorkers was the ’14 mile round,'” an 1880 New York Times article states, quoting an author of a biography of George Washington, who lived in New York City during 1789-1790, the first two years of his presidency.

“This route went over the old Boston road, on the line of Third Avenue, crossed Murray Hill nearly on a line with Lexington Avenue, and bearing westward to McGowan’s Pass, went then to the Bloomingdale region, and so down on the Hudson River side of the island.”

McGowan’s Pass is at about today’s 107th Street in Central Park. The Bloomingdale region was only accessible via laid out in 1707 from roughly today’s 23rd Street Street to 115th Street and Riverside Drive.

Indeed, Washington wrote in his now-published diary that he did the 14 miles round with his wife, Martha, and Martha’s two young grandchildren.

On December 12, 1789, a Saturday, President Washington made the drive: “Exercised in the coach with Mrs. Washington and the two children, (Master and Miss Custis), between breakfast and dinner—went the 14 miles round.”

On January 9, 1790, also a Saturday, Washington did it again: “Exercised with Mrs. Washington and the children in the coach the 14 miles round. In the afternoon, walked round the Battery.”

In a footnote, Washington’s Diary describes the 14-mile round a bit differently than the New York Times article, calling what became the Boston Road by its original name, Kingsbridge Road: “The route was by the old Kings-Bridge Road, which passed over Murray Hill, where Lexington Avenue now does, to McGowan’s Pass at about One Hundred and Eighth Street; then across on a line with the Harlem River to Bloomingdale, and so down on the westerly side of the island.”

Bloomingdale country lane

Kingsbridge Road, “was the main road through Manhattan during the 1700s and early 1800s, before the current street grid was implemented, and was key to transportation in the area,” stated the Central Park Conservatory. “The road originated in southern Manhattan at around today’s Madison Square and proceeded north to the King’s Bridge at the northern tip of Manhattan.”

Unfortunately, Washington’s diary doesn’t go into detail about what he saw during his forays on the 14 mile round. But if he went more than once, it’s fair to assume he enjoyed the beautiful sights of bucolic Manhattan: pretty countryside, large estates, small farms, and so many possibilities for the young nation.

Washington’s coach, but whether it’s the coach he took on the 14 miles round is unknown

Bloomingdale Road has a fascinating history and plays a major role in the development of the Upper West Side. Find out more on an Ephemeral New York walking tour that delves into the backstory of Riverside Drive! A few spots are still available for Sunday, August 21 and Sunday August 28. See you there!

[Top image: NYPL; second image: Wikipedia; third image: painting by Rembrandt Peale; fourth image: Eliza Greatorex, MCNY, 57.138.3]

The magnificent iron window railings on an 1850s Murray Hill mansion

There’s a lot to love about the aristocratic brownstone mansion at 231 Madison Avenue, at the southeast corner of 37th Street.

Built as one of three freestanding mansions between 1852-1853 by members of the copper-baron Phelps family just as Murray Hill was transitioning from countryside to a posh urban neighborhood, the house was enlarged in the 1880s—then purchased by J.P. Morgan in 1904 as a 45-room family home for his son and business partner, Jack.

A study in harmony and symmetry, the mansion possesses the kind of elegant restraint of many Murray Hill townhouses. But one decorative element delights me every time I walk by: the wrought-iron balustrades on each of the full-length front windows flanking the entrance.

A collection of vines, florals, and curlicues, each balustrade adds a little Art Nouveau-inspired whimsy to the block, home to the Morgan Library & Museum. (J.P. Morgan’s own mansion was on the northeast corner, bulldozed in 1928. Today, number 231 is owned by the museum.)

Unsurprisingly, the balustrades were not part of the original antebellum mansion when early Phelps family members made it their home. They’re a product of either the 1888 renovation, or the “modest” exterior work Morgan commissioned shortly after buying the house, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s (LPC) 2002 historic designation report.

The LPC report notes that 231 Madison Avenue “was a house that harmonized with the home of the elder Morgans and evoked comfortable prosperity rather than wealthy ostentation.” The balustrades also match the wrought-iron fence, as seen below.

The window railings are as beautiful as the one on the front window of the William and Clara Baumgarten House, a Beaux-Arts row house on Riverside Drive and 101st Street. Berenice Abbott captured a 1937 image of the windows while photographing the stoop—as lovely now as they appear then!

The mystery of the shuttered Italian restaurant with a wonderful vintage store sign

Cicciaro’s Italian Restaurante (their spelling, not mine) looks like it’s been closed for ages, the steel grates over the small storefront locked shut and layered with graffiti.

I couldn’t find any clues about this literal hole in the wall at 47 Market Street, which still occupies the ground floor of a tenement built in 1886, and is next door to a former boarding stable for horses that operated in the 1890s.

But thanks to Ephemeral readers, I now know that this authentic-looking Italian spot and its spot-on 1970s-ish sign is actually a fake—it’s a creation for a TV crime drama film set.

City on Fire should be on Apple TV at some point in the near future. The production crew did a nice job, the old-school sign fooled me!

A shuttered Italian restaurant with a wonderful vintage store sign

Cicciaro’s Italian Restaurante (their spelling, not mine) looks like it’s been closed for ages, the steel grates over the small storefront locked shut and layered with graffiti.

I couldn’t find any clues about this literal hole in the wall at 47 Market Street, which still occupies the ground floor of a tenement built in 1886, and is next door to a former boarding stable for horses that operated in the 1890s.

But the old-school sign in green, white, and red with cursive letters—what a treat to come upon this remnant of another New York! 1980s? 1970s? I came up empty looking into this restaurant, perhaps the last remnant of an Italian community on this stretch of Lower East Side, to help date the signage.

The Fifth Avenue mansion of a millionaire who built houses for the poor

In 1905, former steel magnate Henry Phipps donated $1 million to construct cleaner, more spacious apartments—”model tenements” as they were known at the time—for poor and working-class New Yorkers.

Henry Phipps’ Fifth Avenue home

At about the same time, he had embarked on another ambitious house-building project: that of his own new Fifth Avenue mansion. It would be across the street from the five-story townhouse he moved into at 6 East 87th Street after relocating to New York City from Pittsburgh a few years earlier, according to Christopher Gray in the New York Times.

The mansion appears to have been completed first. Described by Gray as “a low, broad Renaissance design of marble with a wide garden and driveway,” the magnificent house at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 87th Street sat just four blocks from the colossal mansion of his former partner at Union Iron Mills, Andrew Carnegie.

Like Carnegie’s mansion, Phipps’ house resisted the hideous architectural flourishes of some of the other Gilded Age palaces on Fifth Avenue, such as the ghastly mansion built by mining millionaire and senator William A. Clark ten blocks south at 77th Street.

The mansion’s second floor hallway

Facing away from Fifth, the Phipps house was surrounded by a gated low brick fence, behind which was a circular driveway. The mansion conveyed a sense of elegance but also privacy—perfect for Phipps, a low-key philanthropist who began funding research on tuberculosis after earning a reported $40-$50 million from the 1901 sale of Union Iron Mills, which became U.S. Steel.

Henry Phipps and his wife, Anna, 1910-1915

Not long after the mansion was done, the first of Phipps’ model tenements, 325-335 East 31st Street, was move-in ready. Roughly 800 residents occupying 150 new, airy apartments enjoyed steam heat, hot water, laundry facilities, tub baths, and rooms with windows that opened to the outside. The new flats even had a hedged roof garden, where kids could play.

“Henry Phipps, the millionaire philanthropist whose name has been so prominently associated with the war against tuberculosis, built the tenement as a place of comfortable living and of education,” wrote the New York Times in 1911.

Phipps Houses, East 31st Street, east of Second Avenue

In 1907, another Phipps model tenement went up on West 63rd Street (below), in the impoverished, mostly African-American neighborhood of San Juan Hill. In 1911, a third Phipps building was completed a block away on West 64th Street, according to Mike Wallace’s Greater Gotham: A History of New York City From 1898-1919.

Other Phipps model tenements were planned, but nothing was built until 1931, when the company “put up Phipps Garden Apartments in Sunnyside, Queens, an intelligent and idealistic complex,” wrote Gray. “Rather than trying to solve the housing problem of the inner city—which was the goal in 1905—the Sunnyside apartments sought to draw its residents to an entirely new environment.”

Phipps Model Tenements, 235-247 West 63rd Street

After that, Phipps’ model tenement movement unfortunately fizzled out. As other idealistic builders of model tenements discovered, it seems that middle class folks ended up moving in. Inevitably the rent on a flat would become out of reach for the poor, who are forced back into dank, dark tenements, a Times article from 1912 explains. The nonprofit Phipps Houses still exists, providing affordable housing and other services to low-income New Yorkers.

Phipps house in 1927, destined for the wrecking ball

Phipps’ Fifth Avenue mansion didn’t last very long either. In 1930, the highly respected philanthropist died at 91. His obituary says of his mansion, “it gave way to the apartment house builder four years ago.”

[First image: X2010.7.1.966; second image: MCNY, X2010.11.4949; third image, MCNY: X2010.7.1.969; fourth image: Bain Collection/LOC; fifth image: MCNY, X2010.7.1.417; sixth image, MCNY X2010.7.1.8533; seventh image: MCNY, X2010.11.4947]

Two views to New York from the countryside of Brooklyn Heights

Imagine Brooklyn Heights with a sandy beach, a smattering of spaced-apart houses, and rocky bluffs providing a peaceful, unobstructed view of the sailing ships and side-by-side buildings of booming Manhattan.

“New York From Brooklyn Heights,” by Thomas Kelah Wharton

You’d have to go all the way back to the early 19th century to experience these in Brooklyn Heights, which even then was becoming something of a suburb to New York: a residential district with laid-out streets and ferry service for commuters. Plenty of land also awaited wealthy Gothamites looking for a place to put up a summer estate.

The first painting, “New York From Brooklyn Heights,” is by English-born artist Thomas Kelah Wharton, according to Bruce Weber’s The Paintings of New York, 1800-1950. It’s not clear when Wharton completed his view from the Heights, but the engraving was done in 1834, per Weber.

“New York From Near the Heights of Brooklyn,” by William Guy Wall

“New York From Near the Heights of Brooklyn” was painted by William Guy Wall around 1820, estimates the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (It’s one of two watercolors Wall collaborated on with another painter, John Hill, with the other showing the view of the city from Weehawken.)

Wall, from Ireland, gives us “the eastern face of New York City from the former ‘Bergen’s Hill’ in what is now Brooklyn Heights, looking west-northwest across the East River,” according to the Met.

The population of Brooklyn came to about 11,000 in 1820—practically a country hamlet compared to New York City’s 123,000 residents. Who could have predicted at the time that Brooklyn would became a major city that rivaled New York, and that by the end of the century the two would join forces as part of one united metropolis?