The storybook-style Gramercy carriage house built in 1893 by a “bachelor maiden”
As readers of this site know, I have a soft spot for carriage houses—those fanciful remnants of Gotham’s horse and carriage era tucked on side streets throughout the city.
I’ve chronicled many of these survivors over the years, peering into their backstories and discovering how they function in contemporary New York. So when I came upon this blond brick holdout on East 22nd Street, I fell in love, then decided to look into its story.
As it turns out, this carriage house has something unusual in its history. It’s not the fairy-tale vibe stemming from the porthole windows and terra cotta decoration, though these features make it all the more delightful.
Nor is it the stepped gables on the roof. Designed in the Flemish Renaissance style, the roof harkens back to Manhattan’s earliest days of Dutch colonization, when so many 17th century buildings had this characteristic architecture (and were sadly lost through demolition and fire).
What makes 150 East 22nd Street different from the city’s other lovely carriage houses is that rather than being built for a wealthy man, it was commissioned by a woman—prominent society scion Eloise L. Breese.
Breese, a descendant of an old money New York family (perhaps the inspiration for the carriage house’s Dutch-style design?) lived in a townhouse at 35 East 22nd Street in the Madison Square neighborhood.
Like other society women of the Gilded Age, her comings and goings were written up in newspapers. She held receptions with music, for example, and showed her Brittany spaniel at the Westminster dog show. She also entertained at her country cottage in the Gilded Age hotspot of Tuxedo, New York—where her banker brother owned a home as well.
But Breese was determinedly different from other society ladies. For one thing, she was unmarried for most of her life, with newspapers calling her a “bachelorette” or “bachelor maiden.”
She was also independent. “She was the only female member of the New York Yacht Club,” according to one website that chronicles her life. “Her steam yacht, the Elsa, had a swan shaped prow, like the boat in Lohengrin, because Eloise was also a devotee of the opera.” She reportedly had her own box at the Metropolitan Opera Houae.
Breese sailed her yacht in the late 1890s, the decade when she decided to have a carriage house built. To design it she turned to Sidney V. Stratton, an architect who studied in Paris but practiced his craft mostly in New York City. The carriage house was completed in 1893, per the AIA Guide to New York City.
Like so many carriage houses of the era, the design was meant to be a stylish statement, a totem to the wealth and interests of its owner. I’m not sure what Breese wanted it to convey, and I also imagine she spent very little time there. A groom and driver would have managed the horses, and when she needed transportation, the carriage would be driven to the front of her home a few blocks west so she could step inside.
Breese died in 1921, which was 15 years after her “surprise” Tuxedo wedding to widower Adam Norrie. Of the marriage, a New York Times writer stated that the former Miss Breese “has for some years refused all importunities to change her name and state.”
By the time of her death, horse-powered New York had been replaced by automobiles. A century later, Breese’s carriage house serves as a garage for the occupants of the five-story, glass-walled townhouse built behind it.
It’s unique and unusual even today. Unlike so many other carriage houses, it wasn’t remade into an art studio or cute private home!
[Third image: Find a Grave; fourth image: Wikipedia]
