Showing posts with label Fifth Avenue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fifth Avenue. Show all posts

Monday, April 6, 2026

The Lost Rebecca Mason Jones Mansion - 705 Fifth Avenue

 

from the collection of the New York Public Library

John Mason began his career as a dry goods merchant and branched into banking and railroads.  (He was the second president of the Chemical Bank and a founder of New York City's first railroad, the New York & Harlem.)  In 1825, he purchased several acres of rocky terrain north of the city in what would become Midtown Manhattan.  Three of Mason's daughters married into the socially prominent Jones family.  Mary, the eldest, married Isaac Jones; Rebecca married his cousin, Isaac Colford Jones; and Serena married George Jones.

Mason died in 1839 but his will was tied up in court for 15 years.  Heirs, including Mary Mason Jones, charged that as he was dying, unscrupulous relatives (including Rebecca and her husband) propped him into a sitting position, tied him between a chair in the back and a board in front to keep him from slumping over and forced his signature.  Finally, in 1854, the case was settled and the midtown property divvied up.  Mary Mason Jones received the vacant land between Fifth to Park Avenue and 57th to 58th Streets.  Rebecca inherited a like amount--Fifth to Park Avenue between 55th and 56th Streets.

Both women were widows.  In 1867, Mary Mason Jones commissioned Robert Mook to design a striking row of marble-faced mansions on Fifth Avenue between 57th and 58th Streets, anchored by her own home at 1 East 57th Street.  Rebecca Jones followed suit, hiring architect Detlef Lienau in 1869 to fill the blockfront from 55th to 56th Streets with resplendent Second Empire-style mansions. 

Lienau had come to New York from Paris in 1848.  Called by the Columbia Spectator decades later in 1936 as "the first architect with Paris training to practice in the United States after Colonial times" and a "leading architect of the period," he was instrumental in introducing the Second Empire style to America.  By now, he had designed the mansions of millionaires like Hart M. Shiff at 32 Fifth Avenue, William C. Schermerhorn at 49 West 23rd Street, and John Jacob Astor III at 338 Fifth Avenue.
 
Lienau designed the eight, five-story mansions in an A-B-A-B-B-A-B-A configuration, the mansards of the A models rising slightly higher than those of the others.  Unlike Mary Mason Jones's marble row, Lienau faced these with "Ohio stone," a type of sandstone.  The 1881 New York Illustrated said that, rather than the ubiquitous brownstone in New York City, this gave the homes "the happy union of lightness with the ideal of mass and dignity."  It said the mansions had a "genial, homelike aspect."

(Interestingly, Rebecca's niece, author Edith Jones Wharton, did not agree.  In an article in Harper's Weekly in 1938, she called the row, "a block of pale greenish limestone houses (almost uglier than the brownstone ones)."


Rebecca Colford Jones initially lived in 705 Fifth Avenue, at the far right.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

Like her sister had done, Rebecca retained the southernmost mansion, 705 Fifth Avenue, for herself.  Her country homes were in Saratoga, New York and Newport, Rhode Island.  Rebecca retained possession of the entire row, reserving two of the homes for the use of her children, Helen and Lewis Colford.  Helen and her husband, Woodbury Langdon, moved into the mansion at the far end of the block; and Lewis and his wife Catharine, moved into No. 707. 

Rebecca's townhouse was the scene of the dowager socialite's polite entertainments.  In 1873, for instance, The Daily Graphic reported on her "rose-bud party."  (The term "rose-bud" referred to debutantes.)  The young women would meet "a select company of gentlemen," and each would receive a bunch of rosebuds.

In 1880, The New York Sun described the entertainments within Rebecca's home, saying that "many luxuries and delicacies, as well as many European forms of entertainment, were introduced which had been unknown to the thrift and simplicity of our grandfathers."

Rebecca Mason Jones died in 1879.  On February 15, the New-York Tribune reported that she left Helen Langdon "the east side of Fifth-ave., from Fifth-fifth to Fifth-sixth-sts."  Rebecca had been concerned that her heirs would break up the handsome row.  She wrote in her will:

It has long been a favorite idea with me that this property should be kept together, both because it was so derived by me from my father, and because it is my judgment that is can be more advantageously improved for future uses if held entire than if I were to divide it by my will.

Sydney Colford Jones was Rebecca's grandson, the only son of Lewis Colford Jones and Catherine Berryman.  Soon after his grandmother's death, the 26-year-old applied to the courts to change his name to Sydney Jones Colford.  On May 27, 1879, the New-York Tribune explained, "the reasons for the change assigned by the applicant...were that the surname Jones was too common to properly distinguish any one hearing it."


These interior shots do not identify the particular mansion within the row.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

While his widowed mother remained at 707 Fifth Avenue, Sidney and his wife, the former Laura Chartrand, moved into No. 705.  In the spring of 1881, The New York Times reported the heart-wrenching story of "Madani, the poor Arab in the New-York Hospital."  The article initiated donations from New Yorkers.  On May 11, the newspaper reported that a donor who signed his name "a New-Yorker" had sent in $2, and "Lately, a lady, who had also read in The Times about the poor refugee, left him $15."  The article continued, "Mr. Sidney [sic] C. Colford, of No. 705 Fifth-avenue, told the hospital authorities that if there was not a sufficient amount of money contributed for paying Madani's passage home he would make up the balance out of his own pocket."

As early as 1887, Margaret A. Oliver was operating 705 Fifth Avenue as an exclusive boarding house.  Also living in the mansion were her son, William B. Oliver, Jr. and his wife, the youngest daughter of multi-millionaire John W. Masury.  The upscale operation was reflected in her testimony in 1889 when she said:

About the 1st of May 1 [1888] I let [rooms] to Prof. Rees...In the family of Prof. Rees were a gentleman, wife, two children, and maid, five persons.  Prof. Rees paid $45 a week for the whole family.

The weekly board would equal $1,530 in 2026. When asked how she would describe her board (i.e, the food she supplied her guests) she replied, "First class.  Better than a hotel, there is nothing better than I would buy.  Yes, it was as good as a first class hotel board, yes."

Among Mrs. Oliver's boarders in 1887 was Rev. Sullivan H. Weston.  The unmarried cleric was born in Bristol, Maine on October 7, 1816 and had been assistant rector of St. John's Chapel since 1852.  In 1886 he developed a tumor, but only his physician was aware of it.  On the morning of October 3, 1887, "he arose before breakfast, left the house at 705 Fifth-avenue, where he was boarding," reported The New York Times, "and went to a private hospital."  That afternoon, he underwent an operation.  The surgery seemed to have been successful and The Sun reported, "He sent word daily to his boarding house at 705 Fifth avenue of his progress toward recovery."

But then, on October 15, the newspaper reported, "Last Tuesday, however, lockjaw set in, with fatal results."  The Sun commented that his friends "were shocked by the news of his death."  Extensive obituaries of the esteemed cleric were published in numerous newspapers.

Helen Jones Langdon died in 1895 and the Fifth Avenue block was inherited by her son, Woodbury Gersdorf Langdon.  On November 24, 1896, The New York Times reported that he was doing $4,000 worth of "alterations" to 705 Fifth Avenue.  He leased his grandmother's former mansion to railroad mogul Edward H. Harriman and his family.  Born in 1848, Harriman married Mary Williamson Averell in 1879 and they had six children (including William Averell Harriman who would become Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman, Governor of New York, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union and to Britain.)  The family's country estate, Arden, was near Tuxedo, New York.

On March 19, 1910, The New York Times reported a shocking development.  "The Woodbury G. Langdon house, No. 705 Fifth avenue, was leased...to Eugene Glaenzer & Co., art dealers.  That was the first business invasion of this part of Fifth avenue."  
 
The Evening Post, November 29, 1910 (copyright expired)

In remodeling the mansion for commercial purposes, Langdon created a charming outdoor area with a fountain in his grandmother's rear yard for Glaenzer & Co.

The Air-Scout, January 1911 (copyright expired)

Langdon continued to garner upscale tenants for the property.  In 1912, Bagues Freres Co., a decorative ironwork designer and manufacturer, moved in.

Architecture & Building, November 1912, (copyright expired)

In what most likely would have troubled Rebecca Jones, on December 5, 1912, The New York Times reported that Woodbury G. Langdon had recently erected an apartment house "on the Fifth-sixth Street portion of the block."  Now, said the article, he had sold the entire blockfront to the Number 705 Fifth Avenue Corporation.  (What it did not mention was that Langdon was its president.)

This photograph around 1912 shows Langdon's new buildings on the northern part of the block.  Only a sign for Eugene Glaezner & Co. discreetly placed on the 55th Street side of the Jones house hints that it is no longer a private mansion.  photograph by George P. Hall, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

The Rebecca Mason Jones mansion remained, relatively intact, until it and the houses at 707 through 711 Fifth Avenue were demolished for the National Broadcasting Company Building, which survives.

photograph by the author
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Wednesday, March 18, 2026

The 1927 National Broadcasting Co Bldg - 711 Fifth Avenue

 


In 1918, architect Floyd Brown branched into real estate development, founding the Bethlehem Engineering Company.  In 1925 he acquired the five five-story mansions at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street as a site for a 15-story commercial building.

When this photograph was taken in June 1925, the end of the line for these handsome mansions was near.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Construction began in 1926 and as the structure rose on December 8, 1926, The New York Times reported that it "will be known as the National Broadcasting Company Building, as a result of negotiations recently completed."  Saying it would "house the greatest broadcasting plant in the United States," the article explained that the National Broadcasting Company would occupy the 14th and 15th floors.

Construction was completed on October 1, 1927.  Faced in limestone, the tripartite Renaissance Revival design included classical elements, like the two Fifth Avenue entrances below triangular pediments carved with wriggling serpents, and double-height engaged Corinthian columns and pilasters at the second and third floors that separated imposing arched openings.

The entrances within classical Roman-style enframements announce "National Broadcasting Bldg" under the fearsome looking serpents within the pediment.  1928 image by Wurts Bros., from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The ground and second floors held stores and a bank.  The Chatham-Phenix Bank engulfed most of the second floor (which had a ceiling height of  22 feet); the Knox Hat Co. leased the store between the two Fifth Avenue entrances "and half of the second floor," according to Men's Wear on May 11, 1927; a Samuel Rugof drugstore moved into the 3,000-square-foot corner space; and the hosiery firm Peck & Peck leased the northern store.  (The wife of Mayor James J. Walker officially opened the Peck & Peck store on November 14, 1927.)

The National Broadcasting Company hired architect Raymond Hood to design their studios and offices.  In April 1927, The New York Times reported that he was designing studios in themes--one based on a Gothic church, another on the Roman Forum, a Louis XIV space, and one studio devoted to jazz.  The article called the latter, "wildly futuristic, with plenty of color in bizarre designs."  Buildings and Building Management said that Hood, "set out to give the rooms an atmosphere in keeping with the spirit of radio...The decorations are simple rather than ornate, and not at all fantastic.  The note of modernity was achieved mainly by the effective use of color."


A National Broadcasting Co. reception room (above) and a studio. Proceedings of The Institute of Radio Engineers, May 1929 (copyright expired)

The Fifth Avenue Association annually honored "the best new and altered buildings constructed during the past year," as described by The New York Times on February 12, 1928.  Bethlehem Engineering Corporation was awarded second prize "for new buildings" as builder and architect.  The committee noted, "The design shows originality in composition, but the details and architectural treatments throughout are copies of pure classical examples, together with a small amount of the Pompeian in the bronze storefront."

Banners in 1928 announce that the Chatham-Phenix National Bank would be occupying the ground floor.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The National Broadcasting Company aired two stations from the building, WEAF and WJZ.  By the time it moved in, the firm was leasing four floors.  Buildings and Building Management explained on April 9, 1928 that the 13th and 14th floors held the eight studios, while offices occupied the 11th and 12th.

The building's other tenants were almost entirely millinery firms, according to The New York Times on August 22, 1928.

The listeners of National Broadcasting Company shows who gathered around their living room radios could only imagine the scenes in the studios.  The live audiences saw "announcers in dinner jackets and prima donnas in red velvet gowns," as described by The New York Times on November 3, 1928.  

At least two exceptions to that type of entertainment occurred that fall.  On October 4, 1928 the National Broadcasting Company aired the first game of the World Series.  The New York Times reported, "Faraway localities heard the account of the game as a result of a hook-up of more than fifty stations which extended from Maine to California and Georgia to Washington."  And the following month, on November 3, a studio was converted to a newsroom as the results of the Presidential election came in by wire and were updated to listeners around the country.

The following year, the National Broadcasting Company landed three important contracts.  Singer Rudy Vallee and his band, the Connecticut Yankees, signed an agreement; on May 6, John Philip Sousa, "band leader and composer, who has refused until now to appear before a microphone," according to The New York Times, began a series of weekly concerts; and in December, the Metropolitan Opera Company signed an agreement to present the first ever grand opera broadcast, Aida.

On April 18, 1939, the Associated American Artists opened their "sumptuous galleries," as described by The New York Times, with an exhibition of Thomas Hart Benton.  Three months later, the women's accessory store Lederer de Paris, Inc. opened in one of the retail spaces.

Views of the elegant American Artists galleries in 1939.  Photograph by F. S. Lincoln, from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1941, Le Pavillon opened, with its entrance at 5 East 55th Street.  The exclusive restaurant was the target of a frightening and well planned robbery six years later on March 15, 1947.  At 7:00 that night, a man entered the building on Fifth Avenue.  He stepped into an elevator and told the 19-year-old operator, Arthur Carter, to obey his commands.  He was acutely aware of details about the building and even Carter.  "Remember, you have a wife and baby," he said, brandishing the firearm.  

The gunman apparently knew that the restaurant's cashier would soon be taking the afternoon's receipts to the office.  When Marie Jacqueline Casanova entered the elevator, the thug ordered Carter to ascend to the deserted seventh floor.  Here he took the restaurant's $1,500 receipts and Marie Casanova's handbag.  "Then he walked downstairs and disappeared," reported The New York Times.

While Le Pavillon hosted celebrated and wealthy patrons over the years, one party stood out in 1953.  On November 12, The New York Times reported that President Harry Truman, the First Lady, and their daughter, Margaret (with her escort, Robert Diendorfer), dined here before attending The Tea House of the August Moon at the Martin Beck Theatre.

In March, 1955, the Columbia Pictures Corporation acquired 711 Fifth Avenue "for its own use and occupancy," according to The Times.  The article said that as tenants' leases expired, Columbia would take over those spaces.  The firm's planned $3 million renovations would entail, "new elevators, air conditioning, recessed lighting from soundproofed ceilings, and modern plumbing, lavatory and electrical installations," said the article.

In October 1958, Henri Soulé took over the Le Pavillon space for his La Côte Basque.  The redecorating included murals by Bernard Lamotte.  Like Le Pavillon, it became a center of high-society luncheons and dinners.

Included in Columbia Pictures Corporation spaces was a screening room--in effect a small motion picture theater.  Films were screened here to invited audiences prior to their releases.  On December 13, 1967, for instance, The New York Times reported, "Truman Capote invited about 85 of his friends to a private viewing of 'In Cold Blood' last night in a screening room at the Fifth Avenue offices of Columbia Pictures."  Private screening or not, it was a glamorous affair.  "Women in short dresses, many of them wearing mink coats, and men in dark suits emerged regally from limousines and taxis," said the article.  Among them were Princess Lee Radziwill, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, Leonard Bernstein, Bennett Cerf, the William S. Paleys and Katherine Graham.

The building was sold in 1978, and in 1983 the Coca-Cola Company purchased the leasehold.  The New York Times explained on July 27, "Columbia Pictures, a major tenant in the midtown Manhattan building, is a subsidiary of the Coca-Cola Company."  The Coca-Cola Company installed its New York headquarters in the building.

The once-staid Fifth Avenue neighborhood became less so when Coca-Cola Fifth Avenue, a retail merchandise store, opened in November 1991.  The 500 different items ranged in price from 75 cents to $6,000 for a neon sign.  And then, three years later in December 1994, the Walt Disney Company rented 30,000 square feet for its Disney Store, displacing the elegant La Côte Basque restaurant in doing so.

But Fifth Avenue was not totally ready to accept change.  On October 6, 1996, The New York Times Anthony Ramirez reported, 

On Fifth Avenue, you can have 28 American flags snapping smartly over the front of Saks Fifth Avenue.  Or you can have four elegant white awnings shading Cartier.  Or you can have Atlas holding up a giant clock over the entrance to Tiffany's.  But you can't have man-size brass moldings of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Pluto the dog jutting out a good six feet over the front door of the Disney Store.

Brendan Sexton, president of the Municipal Art Society, commented, "I love 42nd Street, but it shouldn't be on Fifth Avenue."


In September 2019, SHVO acquired 711 Fifth Avenue and commissioned architect Peter Marino to remodel the interiors.  The exterior, which does not have landmark protection, was preserved intact, and is essentially unchanged since the building opened in 1927.

photographs by the author
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Wednesday, November 26, 2025

Emery Roth & Sons' 1940 875 Fifth Avenue

 


In 1939, a syndicate called the 877 Fifth Avenue Corporation was formed for the purpose of erecting a modern apartment house at the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 69th Street.  In April, it acquired the corner mansion at 877 Fifth Avenue (home to the Ogden L. Mills family for years) and the adjacent residence at 2-4 East 69th Street.  In August 8, The New York Times reported that the group had taken title to 875 Fifth Avenue, "a six-story private dwelling," and within days 876 Fifth Avenue was acquired, completing the parcel.

On July 10, 1939, the Mills mansion was being prepared for demolition.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

On August 28, 1939, Emery Roth & Sons filed plans for "an eighteen-story and penthouse apartment building costing about $800,000," as reported by The New York Times.  The construction cost would translate to just over $18 million in 2025.   

The architects' stark Art Moderne design featured a three-story stone base and 15 stories of beige brick.  Bold, double-height reeding flanked the recessed entrance.  Windows wrapped the corners of the projecting eastern section and those of the corner terraces.  Terrace-creating setbacks began at the 15th floor.

The architects' rendering was released in 1939.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York 

Construction had barely begun when the first apartment was leased.  On November 5, 1939, The New York Times reported that architect Philip L. Goodwin had leased a nine-room penthouse "with terraces on two levels fronting the Fifth Avenue side of the building."  Goodwin had good reason to move quickly.  "He is having the apartment constructed from his own plans," said the article.  Following Goodwin's lead was builder and real estate operator Louis Adler.  On December 2, The New York Sun reported that he had leased "a large terrace apartment," adding, "The apartment leased has been especially planned to meet Mr. Adler's needs."


When the building opened on August 15, 1940, more than 70 apartments had been rented, according to The New York Sun.  Among the initial tenants were Louis Jaramillo Serra, "operator of sugar plantations in Colombia," according to The New York Times; Henry J. Lesser, president of the International Trading Corporation; Benjamin H. Roth, head of the brokerage firm of B. H. Roth & Co.; and Joseph H. Tooker, president of the Tooker Lithograph Company, and his wife, the former Dora Mather.

The Tookers' brought deep American pedigrees to the building.  Dora was a descendant of Cotton Mather and Increase Mather, and Joseph's ancestors arrived from England in 1707.  A member of the Sons of the American Revolution, among Joseph's ancestors was John Baily, a friend of George Washington.

A colorful resident was singer and motion picture actress Arline Judge.  Born in Connecticut in 1912, she started out in Broadway musicals before meeting film director Wesley Ruggles on a train.  The change meeting resulted in Arline's quickly appearing in six films in 1931.  Ruggles not only set her on a career path in movies, he became the first of her seven husbands.  She divorced him in 1937 and married sportsman and advertising executive Dan Topping that year.  

This 1941 publicity photo was taken while Arline Judge lived at 875 Fifth Avenue.

The couple's marriage was brief.  They divorced in 1940 and Arline moved into 875 Fifth Avenue.  (She would marry Henry J. Topping, Dan's brother, in 1947, two husbands later.)  Arline married James Ramage Addams in 1942 and a two-day auction of her furnishings was held in August.  The New York Times reported:

Some of the furnishings of one of Miss Judge's bedrooms, which brought $289, included two early American style four-post beds, a highboy in the same style, a dressing table and a chaise lounge.  Furnishings of other bedrooms, living room, dining room and other rooms also were sold.

Equally fascinating was model Puk Paaris Gevaert, estranged wife of multi-millionaire Dr. Joseph Cornelis Maria Gevaert, described by The New York Times as "a Belgian capitalist."  Born in 1901, he was president of the Gevaert Company of America, Inc. and from 1939 to 1940 was Belgian Commissioner General to the New York World's Fair.

Born in 1919, Puk Paaris was a former Miss Denmark.  The domestic relationship between her and Gevaert was decidedly rocky.  Sixteen days after the couple met in April 1941, they were married.  Six months later, Puk divorced him.  The New York Sun reported, "she settled for $60,000 plus alimony of $500 a month for two years."  Three weeks later, on November 3, 1941, they remarried.  (Puk later admitted she did not offer to repay the $60,000 settlement.  "She spent it, she said," reported The Sun.)

Puk Paaris and Joseph C. M. Gevaert during an apparently rare non-confrontational moment.  (original source unknown)

The split and reconciliation set a pattern.  On January 26, 1945, The New York Times reported, "Mrs. Gevaert...has been separated from her husband twenty-nine times, six of them legal."  Three days before that article, Puk had appeared in State Supreme Court to ask for $50,000 a year alimony and $25,000 counsel fees.  (The annual alimony would equal $871,000 today.)  The New York Sun reported, "They lived on a scale of from $5,000 to $6,000 a month, [and] she testified in support of her claim that it would be unthinkable for her to exist on less than $50,000 a year alimony."

The New York Times reported on January 26, 1945 that Puk Paaris Gevaert won "her suit for separation against her wealthy husband."  Although the terms were not released, Puk said she was "very happy, very happy," asserting that she was now "completely vindicated," and that, "The public now knows what there was to the malicious charges made against me."

Like Arline Judge, Puk Paaris Geraert sold the "modernistic furniture and decorations" of her 875 Fifth Avenue apartment at auction.  Included, reported The New York Times on September 7, 1945, was a "specially built upholstered circular bed."

Less controversial but equally celebrated was stage and screen actor Victor Fred Moore, who moved into an apartment with his second wife, the former Shirley Paige, after their marriage in 1942.  (Moore's first wife, Emma Littlefield, died in 1934.)   Born in 1876, he first appeared on Broadway in 1896.  By now, he was well known for his character roles in motion pictures.

On May 14, 1946, The New York Sun began an article saying, "Victor Moore, famous for his stage portrayals of amiably bewildered men facing baffling situations, appeared in the Mid-Manhattan Court today with his diminutive Pomeranian, Bambi, in a real-life skit."  The actor had been given a summons by a policeman who "said Moore let Bambi frisk about on the East Drive of Central Park near 71st street without a muzzle."

Outside the courtroom, Moore quipped to reporters that the situation reminded him of a sketch he "reenacted in a Ziegfeld Follies movie, called 'Pay the $2.'"  After hearing the case, Magistrate Harry G. Andrews declared, "Two dollars."

"'Pay the $2,' Moore murmured as if deep puzzling memories of the past while he peeled off two $1 bills," recounted The Sun.

Victor Moore, from the collection of the New York Public Library

The following month, Victor Moore's name was in the news for a more serious reason.  On June 3, he and his son, Robert Emmett Moore (who, incidentally, survived several months in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II), set off on a fishing trip on the Long Island Sound on Moore's cabin cruiser.  Fumes that had built up below deck suddenly exploded.  "Most of the boat's deck house was demolished in the blast," reported The New York Times.

Both men suffered second degree burns and cuts, but were released after an hour at the Eastern Long Island Hospital.  Moore told reporters, "There is a possibility the boat can be repaired, but I am not going to do it.  For the last thirty years I have had a fishing cruiser, but I don't think I will ever have another."

Also living here at the time was painter and architectural sculptor Edith Marion Day Magonigle, the widow of architect, author and artist Harold Van Bueren Magonigle, who died in 1935.  (Among Magonigle's designs were the United States Embassy and Consulate in Toyko, the Soldiers' Memorial in Naugatuck, Connecticut, and the Arsenal Technical School in Indianapolis).  Born in 1911, Edith had often decorated the interiors of her husband's buildings with murals.  Among those collaborations were her murals for his Kansas City Liberty Memorial, described by The New York Times as containing, "one of the largest friezes ever undertaken by a woman."

In cooperation with groups like the Salmagundi Club during World War I, she chaired a committee of artists who painted "designation targets" as instructional tools for Army recruits.  "The 'targets' were of particular value in training city men to fix objectives with respect to their surroundings, so they could orient themselves if lost," explained the newspaper.

Edith Day Magonigle at work on a "destination target" mural, Asia.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1920 through 1922, Edith was president of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.  Edith Day Magonigle died at the age of 72 in her apartment here on August 8, 1949.

In 1951, Isaac Liberman, president of Arnold, Constable & Co., his wife, Bertha, and their daughter, Sally, moved into an 18th floor apartment in 875 Fifth Avenue.  Sally Liberman had graduated from Bennington College a year earlier.  Brooks Clark quotes Jonathan Low, Sally's cousin, in Sally's Genius as he recalled holiday dinners with the Libermans:

[They] were festive affairs, with lots of relatives we barely knew and everyone seated around a huge dining room table groaning with fruit, breads, pastries, centerpieces, silver, and crystal.  The walls were hung with expensive old brocades and tapestries.  Dinner was served by servants in formal uniforms overseen by Karl, the Swedish chauffeur-butler.  Their apartment at 875 Fifth Avenue overlooked Central Park and the view, high above the treetops, was always beautiful.

Sally Liberman, who would marry Robert Smith, would go on to be a leader in special education.  She would found the Lab School for children with learning difficulties in 1967 and a professor in the School of Education and Head of the Graduate Program in Special Education at the American University.

Among the Libermans' neighbors in the building were Robert and Zoe Armstrong, who had a five-room apartment on the 11th floor.  As Zoe hurried to dress for an occasion on the evening of August 3, 1953, she was unable to find certain pieces of jewelry.  Running late, she put off a thorough search until the next morning, when she discovered that 14 pieces, including, "diamonds, clips, earrings and watches," as described by The New York Times, were missing.  They were valued by her at $32,500--about $381,000 today.  "Other jewelry worth between $75,000 and $100,000 was found intact in its place," said the article.  Only the maid had been in the apartment that day and police said there were no marks of forced entry.

Two days later, the Armstrongs boarded the French liner Ile de France for Europe.  Zoe was relatively cavalier about the burglary.  "I guess we'll have to do without any baubles," she told a reporter.

On October 16, authorities announced that a "ring of jewel thieves that looted East Side apartments of more than $1,000,000 in jewels and furs" had been captured.  The group included four women who posed as domestics and obtained access to the apartments with keys entrusted to the "maids."  Of Zoe Armstrong's stolen items, one piece, a ruby and diamond platinum wrist watch, was discovered in a pawn shop.

Financier Archibald Moore Montgomery and his wife, the former Eleanor Scully were highly visible residents.  The couple was married on September 21, 1942.  The elegant and well-styled Eleanor was fashion editor of Vogue magazine.  The couple's country home was in Water Mill, Southampton, Long Island.

Archibald Montgomery died in 1965.  Eleanor remained in their apartment, never loosing her patrician bearing nor her independence as she aged.  Although she used a cane after recovering from a broken hip, on April 16, 1982, the "wealthy 73-year-old socialite," as described by the Daily News, left her apartment and took a cab to a garage on 71st Street and First Avenue where she kept her automobile.  "She drove out of the garage a few minutes later," reported the article.

Eleanor Scully Montgomery, Daily News, April 27, 1982

Eleanor was on the way to have dinner at the Meadow Club in Southampton with an old friend, Mrs. R. Townley Paton.  But she never showed up.  Mrs. Paton telephoned Eleanor's Southampton place, but the caretaker said she had not arrived.  What resulted was what The New York Times described as a "13-state missing-person alarm."  

More than a week later, the former Vogue editor was still unaccounted for.  Finally, nine days after her disappearance, an employee of Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn noticed the news coverage of the search.  He "called Mrs. Paton to report that Mrs. Montgomery had been in the hospital all along," reported The Times on April 27.  Eleanor had been involved in an accident.  According to her, she "had asked that Mrs. Paton be notified, but that this was apparently overlooked."  In reporting that she had been found, the Daily News noted that she, "is listed in 'The Blue Book of the Hamptons,' a Long Island social register," and said, "She had lived in Connecticut, Colorado, France and India and was the author of a privately published book about Indian mysticism, 'Tantra Today.'"

At the time of Eleanor Montgomery's mishap, the Libermans still occupied their 18th floor apartment.  Although Arnold, Constable & Co. closed its main location at Fifth Avenue and 40th Street in 1975, Isaac Liberman continued to be active.  He became president of the John Forsythe Company and the Liberman Brothers Holding Corporation, as well as president of the Bertha and Isaac Liberman Foundation.  Astoundingly, he was still working when he died in the apartment at the age of 97 on August 3, 1983.  Bertha Bayer Liberman survived him by six years, dying on October 20, 1989 at the age of 93.


More than eight decades after the first tenant moved in, 875 Fifth Avenue maintains its place as one of Manhattan's most prestigious addresses.  A three-bedroom apartment on the ninth floor was recently placed on the market at $66.7 million.

photographs by the author
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Wednesday, October 15, 2025

"Horizonal Mansions" - the 1916 820 Fifth Avenue

 

photo by Buddy 212

When the Progress Club moved to the west side of Central Park in 1901, its clubhouse at 820 Fifth Avenue was purchased by millionaire James Haggin as the site of his new mansion.  Instead, the magnificent structure sat vacant until his death in 1914.  The following year, on December 11, the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported that his estate had sold the property "to a syndicate formed for the purpose of erecting an apartment house suitable in every way to the location where it is to be constructed."  That "location," at the northeast corner of 63rd Street, sat among the mansions of some of Manhattan's wealthiest citizens.

The firm of Starrett & Van Vleck was commissioned to design the 12-story building that would be inspired by Italian Renaissance palazzo prototypes.  There would be only one apartment per floor (others would be enlarged), and were marketed as "horizontal mansions."  The rents were expected to be about $18,000 to $25,000 per year—about $67,000 a month in today’s money for the more expensive apartments.

Each of the full-floor apartments had 11-foot ceilings, fireplaces in the principal rooms and typically five bedrooms and seven servants' rooms.  Three elevators opened directly into the apartments--one passenger; one "cargo," or service elevator that opened into the service hall; and a "party" elevator to accommodate larger groups.

A typical, floor-through apartment.  The New York Real Estate Brochure Collection of Columbia University Libraries.

Millionaires lined up to sign leases during construction.  On May 13, 1916, The New York Times reported that Robert Goelet had leased "an apartment of eighteen rooms and six baths."  The recently divorced real estate tycoon moved from his marble-fronted mansion at 647 Fifth Avenue.  


Two of the five woodburning fireplaces in the Goelet apartment.  Photos by Wurts Bros, from the collection of the Museum of the City f New York.

By the time Alfred Nathan, president of Nathan Manufacturing Company, moved into the "large duplex apartment, comprising the entire ninth floor and part of the tenth containing twenty-four rooms and nine baths," as described by The New York Times on November 7, 1916, the building was nearly full.  The article said, "Other tenants in this building are August Belmont, Robert Goelet, Alexander S. Cochran, Mrs. S. V. Harkness, C. G. K. Billings, and H. D. Whiton."  

George Arents, treasurer and co-organizer of the American Tobacco Company, and his wife, the former Annie Amelia Walter, were also initial residents.  He died of pneumonia in their apartment on February 22, 1918 at the age of 83, leaving an estate of $10,040,643--equal to $209 million in 2025.

Anna M. Harkness was the widow of Stephen V. Harkness, a co-founder of the Standard Oil Company.  On May 1, 1916, shortly before moving into 820 Fifth Avenue, her son and business advisor, Charles William Harkness, died.  His death prompted legal entanglements for her, since $25 million of her bank deposits and securities had been under his name.  Happily the confusion was settled in court in May 1917.

Robert Wilson Goelet was not the only unmarried man in 820 Fifth Avenue.  Although Alexander Smith Cochran had inherited the Alexander Smith & Sons Carpet mills, one of the largest carpet manufacturers in the world, he was better known among society as a yachtsman.  And he could afford to pursue a leisurely existence.  Upon the death of his uncle, Warren B. Smith, in 1902, Cochran inherited an estate of $40 million (about $1.5 billion in today's money).  His country estate, Brookholt, was on Long Island.

Alexander Smith Cochran, via americanaristocracy.com

Goelet ended his bachelorship on October 22, 1919, when he married Fernanda Riabouchinsky in the American Church at Paris.  In January 1921, their son, Robert, Jr. was born in the apartment.

The couple hosted a "caudle party" on December 30, 1922, following the baptism of the infant of the William May Wrights.  Fernanda was the baby's godmother.  The impressive guest list included the Duke and Duchess de Richelieu, Prince and Princess Francesco Rospigliosi, the Middleton S. Burrills, the Efrem Zimbalists, and Whitney Warren, among others.

Robert Wilson Goelet (original source unknown)

Like Goelet's first marriage, this one would end in divorce.  On February 10, 1924, The New York Times reported that Fernanda had begun proceedings in Paris.  "Mr. Goelet could not be reached last night at his town apartment at 820 Fifth avenue or at his country place at Goshen, N. Y.," said the article.

Robert Goelet, it seems, did not intend his failed domestic relationship to upset his social schedule.  A month later, on March 26, he hosted "a supper with dancing," in the Fifth Avenue apartment.  "There were about 150 guests," reported The Times.  Among them were Prince and Princess Francesco Rospigliosi, Prince and Princess Matchabelli, Prince and Princess Pierre Troubetskoy, Mr. and Mrs. Jay Gould, the Otto Kahns, and society surnames like Drexel, Gerard, and Pell. 

In the meantime, Alexander Smith Cochran had found romance.  In 1920, he met Polish opera singer Ganna Walska aboard the Aquitania headed to Paris.  Only a few days later, he proposed and the couple was married on September 15.  The Evening World remarked that Walska, "became the bride of one of New York's richest bachelors."

Deemed by critics as a "mediocre" singer, Walska had been married twice before.  Her lack of success on the stage was countered by her success in marrying wealthy men and garnering large settlements.  The newlyweds moved into Walska's home at 101 East 94th Street, however The Evening World noted on December 20, 1920, "Mr. Cochran still retains his bachelor apartments at No. 820 Fifth Avenue."  It was fortunate that he did.  The couple was divorced in May 1922 and in August Ganna married Harold McCormick.  She received a $3 million settlement from Cochran--about $56 million today--and would marry two more times.  (Alexander S. Cochran died of pulmonary tuberculosis on June 19, 1929 at the age of 53.)

Banker David Crawford Clark and his wife, the former Zelina Elizabeth Keyser, sold their mansion at 991 Fifth Avenue and moved into No. 820 in 1918. The couple was married on April 23, 1889 and had two daughters, Zelina Theresa and Mary.

Only a few months after moving in, on April 19, 1919 David Clark died at the age of 55. Immediately after the funeral on April 21, Zelina, Mary and Harriet Clark (Zelina's sister-in-law and husband of George C. Clark) went to the Claridge Cottage in Southampton. Zelina's grief was too much for her to bear. Three days later, a carpenter, W. C. Schaeder, was working near Lake Agawam and saw Zelina Clark go into the water fully clothed. The New York Times reported, "when he went to her rescue, she tried to fight him off. He says he heard her tell her daughter, Miss Mary Clark, that she wanted to 'end it all.'" Happily, Zelina Elizabeth Clark survived the attempt and lived on until 1944.

In January 1919, Alfred Nathan leased his massive apartment to John North Willys "for a long term of years," as reported by The New York Times. Born in 1873, Willys was president of the Willys-Overland Company. His firm was the second largest automobile marker in the United States after Ford Motor Company. He and his wife, the firmer Irene Van Wie, had one daughter, Virginia Clayton. The family's country estate was Northcliffe, in Oyster Bay, Long Island.

John North Willys in 1917 from the collection of the Library of Congress.

After leasing the Nathan apartment for seven years, in April 1926 the family moved into another space within the building.  The New York Times reported their new "special duplex apartment" held "twenty-three rooms and eight baths."

On June 27, 1926, Virginia Pope wrote an article in the New York Times on "mansions in flats."  In it she described the Willys apartment, noting in part:

Canvases greet the eye as one enters this sumptuous home, whose living rooms extend the full length of the Fifth Avenue side of the building...The grilled iron doors and the heavily embossed ceiling of the long and broad entrance hall introduce an Italian note, putting one in humor to appreciate the two tendos [sic], one by Raffaelino del Garbo, the other by Lorenzo Credi, that hang at either side of the doorway leading into the living room.

The New York Times, June 27, 1926 (copyright expired)

The salon, she said, was "large enough to contain without crowding a Rembrandt, a Frans Hals, a Velasquez and other old masters."  Calling Irene's sitting room an "airy bower," she described the main rooms as being "grouped in a square about a Regency-style hall.

Virginia Willys's debutante season began with a "large ball" at the Park Lane on December 26, 1928, followed by a "large reception" in the apartment on December 29.  They were the first of a series of notable social events for the young woman within the next few months.  On January 25, 1929, her parents announced her engagement to Luis Marcelino de Aguirre "of Buenos Aires and Paris," as reported by The New York Times.  Nothing was more impressive, however, than her being presented to Queen Mary on May 9 that year.  

John and Isabel Willys divorced the following year.  Isabel remained in the 820 Fifth Avenue apartment and John quickly married Florence E. Dolan.  There was no divorce settlement.  John Willys told reporters four years later, on August 3, 1934, that he "had very amply provided for [Isabel] in the past years, the income from which will more than take care of her for the rest of her life."  Regarding Virginia, he said, "she is 23 years old and married.  I provided a trust fund for her some years ago, the income from which at this time gives her a good monthly allowance."

Twenty-three days after he made those statements, John North Willys suffered a fatal stroke.  His will left the substantial estate to Florence Dolan Willys.  Virginia sued in court in October 1935 to overturn the will.  She asserted that Florence had purposely ruined her parents' marriage "by means of guile, deceit, fraud and stratagem and false protestations of affection" to acquire "the great wealth she knew him to possess."

Former Governor Alfred E. Smith moved into the seventh-floor apartment of 820 Fifth Avenue in the fall of 1934.  In reporting on the move, The New York Times parenthetically mentioned that the building had "apartments of fourteen, seventeen and eighteen rooms, each suite occupying an entire floor...Among the tenants are Alfred P. Sloane Jr., Mrs. Pierre Lorillard, Adrian Iselin, John F. Harris, Mrs. Murray Crane, and Mrs. George Arents."

Living with Smith and his wife, the former Catherine A. Dunn, was their 33-year-old unmarried son, attorney Alfred Jr.; their daughter Catherine and her husband Francis J. Quillinan; and Emily Smith Warner and her husband, John A. Warner.  (Quillinan was a member of Warner's law firm.)  The siblings' father had come a long way from his humble beginnings at 25 Oliver Street.  

Alfred Emanuel Smith, from the collection of the Library of Congress

Among the servants the Smiths hired upon moving in was Mrs. William Suphka.  On August 3, 1935, the maid's sister, Sophie Windstosser, who worked as a children's nurse for a wealthy family, visited her here.  Mrs. Suphka left her "alone resting in the maid's room," according to her.  The New York Times reported, "When she returned she found the window open and her sister gone."  Sophie Windstosser had jumped from the window to her death.

In the spring of 1933, Alfred E. Smith, Jr. was seduced by a young woman, Catherine Pavlick, to a hotel room.  Soon afterward, he was approached by a Brooklyn lawyer, A. Henry Ross, who demanded $25,000 or his client "would expose a visit they made to a hotel."  Between May and August that year, Smith paid $7,250.  But when the demands kept coming, in 1936 Smith went to the authorities.  Despite the public humiliation and embarrassment to his family, he testified in court against Ross and Pavlick.

Catherine A. Dunn Smith contracted pneumonia in April 1944 and died in St. Vincent's Hospital on May 4 at the age of 65.  Her funeral was held in St. Patrick's Cathedral.  The New York Times reported, "Deeply grieved and shocked by the unexpected death of his wife...Governor Smith retired to the seclusion of their home at 820 Fifth Avenue."

Five months later to the day, Alfred Emanuel Smith died on October 4, 1944 at the age of 70.  His funeral, too, was held in St. Patrick's Cathedral.  For the "millions of Americans" who were mourning his passing, the service was aired on radio nationwide.

photo by Wurts Bros., from the collection of the New York Public Library.

The building was converted to cooperatives in 1949.  In its May 20, 1968 issue, New York Magazine described 820 Fifth Avenue, saying in part:

Its social tenancy includes the William Paleys, [and] Mrs. Carter Burden Sr.  The Charles Wrightsmans, who just paid about $350,000 for a floor to use as supplementary gallery space, spend about $18,000 for its maintenance which is below average, since some go as high as $30,000 a year.

At the time of the article, typical apartments sold for $750,000 (about $6.7 million today).

Florence Vanderbilt Twombly Burden's husband, William A. M. Burden had died in 1909.  She had two sons, William and Shirley C.  Florence died in her apartment on November 18, 1969 at the age of 87.  The New York Times mentioned that William Burden was a "former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Air and former United States Ambassador to Belgium."

William Paley, who built Columbia Broadcasting System into one of the foremost radio and television networks in the U.S., married Barbara Cushing Mortimer in 1947.  The couple filled their apartment here with a dazzling collection of artworks by masters like Matisse, Picasso, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Rouault and Derain.  Among their collection, for instance, was Paul Cézanne's Milk Can and Apples and Paul Gauguin's Washerwomen.  The couple's country home, "Kiluna North" sat on Squam Lake in New Hampshire.

Paul Gauguin's 1888 Washerwomen hung in the Paley apartment.  from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Barbara, known as Babe, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1974.  On July 5, 1978, the day after her 63rd birthday, she died.  William survived her by 12 years, dying of kidney failure on October 26, 1990, one month after his 89th birthday.  On November 3, The New York Times reported, "The collection of 19th- and 20th-century art assembled by William S. Paley, valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, will go to the Museum of Modern Art."

Charles B. Wrightsman, an Oklahoma oil tycoon, and his wife, Jayne, moved into 820 Fifth Avenue in the 1950s.  The New York Times said that Jayne, "held court over the years with various socialites, aristocrats, politicians and museum curators who attended her elegant soirees."  Wrightsman died in 1986, and Jayne continued to live here.  

Jayne Wrightsman sits on a French settee in her sitting room under Renoir's The Green Jardiniere in 1966.  Cecil Beaton/Conde Nast

Described by The New York Times as a "society grande dame," she died in April 2019 at the age of 99.  The newspaper described her third-floor apartment as being "filled with priceless paintings and rare books and collectibles."  Her apartment was placed on the market in November that year for $50 million.

No. 820 Fifth Avenue is considered one of "the best" addresses in Manhattan.  Potential buyers are warned that sales must be "entirely in cash" and their liquid assets be ten times the price of the apartment.
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