A Gothic Gilded Age asylum built for “respectable, aged, and indigent” women
Gothic-inspired architecture from the 19th century abounds in Manhattan. But the red-brick harmony of gables, dormers, and turrets in this block-long building on Amsterdam Avenue between 103rd and 104th Streets is a stunning sight to behold.
Who built it, and for what purpose? What was once New York City’s most spectacular old-age home got its start more than 200 years ago thanks to some charity-minded women, funds raised from deep-pocketed Gotham residents, an architect of mansions for the elite, and the benevolence culture that blossomed during the Gilded Age.
The story of this very 19th century “asylum,” as old age homes, hospitals, and similar institutions were called, begins in 1813. That’s when a group of socially prominent wives and daughters set up a charity they named the Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females.
One of the first charities to be established in the city, this dramatically named organization aided once-wealthy widows who lost their husbands—and their financial status, which could leave them candidates for the city almshouse at today’s City Hall Park—during the Revolutionary War or the War of 1812.
“The aid initially took the form of money, food, and clothing ‘to relieve and to comfort those aged females, who once enjoyed a good degree of affluence, but now reduced to poverty by the vicissitudes of Providence,'” according to the Association’s annual report from 1815, via the 1983 Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) report on the building.
Early on, the widows were provided for in their own homes. But in 1833, the decision was made to construct a facility that would house most of the widows in one place.
With donations from wealthy New Yorkers like John Jacob Astor and descendants of Peter Stuyvesant, a handsome residence opened in 1837 at 226 East 20th Street (above), not far from the new Gramercy Park. “The asylum was intended as an alternative to ‘the common almshouse, filled as it usually is with the dregs of society, [which] is not a place of comfort to persons of refined sensibilities,'” per the LPC report.
A decade later, however, the residence on East 20th Street was deemed too small. By the 1860s, the Association made their plight known in The New York Times, stating: “the asylum is always full, there being now 93 pensioners beneath its roof. Vacancies made by death are at once filled from the list of candidates for admission.”
Plans were made to erect a new building on Fourth Avenue (today’s Park Avenue) and 78th Street, miles away from the city center—then abandoned when upper Fourth Avenue became the site of “the invasion of three lines of public steam travel.”
The Association looked for a site farther uptown, buying 20 lots on Amsterdam Avenue in 1881. The new planned facility would join several other charity homes on Amsterdam Avenue and other streets in today’s Upper West Side, which were still relatively undeveloped with large parcels of available land.
The Home for the Relief of the Destitute Blind on Amsterdam and 104th Street, the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum on Amsterdam and 112th Street, and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum farther up on Amsterdam and 138th Street are examples of the benevolent facilities that tried to fill the needs of the Gilded Age city—which was grappling with social issues brought on by a ballooning population and the deep chasm between the rich and the poor.
Architect Richard Morris Hunt was a curious choice for the new residence. In the 1870s, this French-trained architect designed one of New York City’s first apartment houses; he also became the go-to designer of several Vanderbilt mansions and summer homes in Newport.
In the 1890s, he was commissioned to design the double mansion on Fifth Avenue and 65th Street for Caroline Astor and her son, John Jacob Astor IV, cementing his legacy as the architect for the Gilded Age elite—yet one who also had time to lend his genius to charities.
In December 1883, the asylum officially began accepting “inmates.” Per the LPC report: “The residence was open to any respectable non-Roman Catholic gentlewoman over 60 of age, on payment of $150 and the surrender of any property she possessed.”
The first floor held a “bright, airy chapel,” as the New York Times described it; there was also a “committee room, a large, cheerful dining room, and several of the old ladies’ rooms.” More residents’ rooms were found on the second and third floor, while the top floor was home to an infirmary. A female matron kept watch over the women, who no longer had to be widows to move in.
The “degree of comfort, almost amounting to luxury, which is manifest in every detail of the establishment, elicited from many visitors yesterday the remark that they would ‘like to be old women,” the Times continued. The newspaper also noted that the oldest resident, “Auntie Osborn,” was 98 and “attired in a smart, brand-new cap elaborately trimmed with gay ribbons…every faculty is keenly alive.”
King’s Handbook of 1892 had some interesting words to describe the feel of the place: “decayed gentlewomen find a pleasant and congenial home, as their faces turn toward the setting sun.”
Following an expansion of the building in 1908—which added Tiffany stained glass windows—the residence continued to house roughly 150 elderly women in a rapidly changing Upper West Side. A 1925 New York Times story stated, “The home still stands there, quaint and quiet and remote, though buildings pack closely around it and automobiles honk and backfire on nearby streets.”
In 1968, the home lost its early 19th century name and became The Association Residence Nursing Home. Six years later, the remaining residents were moved to another facility while the building was to undergo much-needed repairs. A fire that destroyed the roof put those plans on hold, according to a 1990 New York Daily News piece.
By the late 1970s, the city took over the home. Abandoned and turned into a “burned out cavern used by drug dealers and derelicts,” per a 1988 New York Times article, this once-elegant, even luxurious residence found a new purpose as a youth hostel.
Restored to its Gilded Age loveliness on the outside, the home continues to function as a hostel. But just imagine the ladies who lived there in the late 19th century and the stories the narrow wooden corridors leading from room to room could tell!
[Third and fourth images: NYPL Digital Collections; fifth photo: NYC Department of Records & Information Services]
