The Row Houses of New York's West Side

Author(s): Sarah Bradford Landau

Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Mar., 1975), pp.
19-36
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural
Historians
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The Row Houses of New York's West Side

SARAH BRADFORD LANDAU [Institute of Fine Arts, New York University]

some colonial mansions, squatters' shacks, occasional rows

THE H I ST RIC Anglo-Saxon row house achieved new
of houses, and the core building of the Museum of Natural
heights of architectural sophistication on New York's West
Side-after the better-known brownstone era of the midHistory, whose setting, Manhattan Square, was one of the

nineteenth century was over. Although there were signs

focal points of West Side improvement. Development of the

from the onset of West Side improvement that more row

West Side had been delayed mainly for financial and bureau-

houses would not solve the city's housing problem, the

cratic reasons. Only after I879 when the Ninth Avenue ele-

confluence of abundant capital, ambitious developers, and

vated railroad opened did the builders begin, cautiously at

rapid growth produced a fine residential section consisting

first, to develop in earnest.2

Built on speculation, most West Side houses were dethe development of Boston's Back Bay, especially in the signed for people of the "prosperous" category-those in
largely of row houses. Similar circumstances had affected
I86os. But the Back Bay, as well as old Philadelphia, Balti-

businesses or professions making about $z5,ooo to $Ioo,ooo

more, and the New York of the brownstones, illustrates

a year. The section bounded by 7znd and 8znd Streets be-

earlier chapters in the story of the American row house. The came the fashionable district.3 Apparently the intention at

West Side, because of its late and concentrated development

first had been to build for the not so prosperous, those who

from roughly 1885 to I900, saw the swan song of the upper- had already started moving to the suburbs after finding city

middle-class, urban row house.l There speculator-builders,

rents prohibitive. Just before the 1873 financial panic a few

out to entice prosperous dwellers to the new section, erected rows of houses had been erected-mostly small houses of

row after row of houses displaying every variety of late

three stories and a basement (or ground story) with brick

nineteenth-century architectural style. Many rows were de-

fronts.4 But after I885, four-story-and-basement houses

signed by talented and even innovative architects, and, ad-

were generally built even though the demand and need for

mittedly, a good many more by ordinary builders. As a smaller houses was great.5 The size of the standard New
whole, however, the area had the aspect of a planned exten-

York lot, 25' x ioo', was directly responsible for the build-

sion of the city. In actuality there was no master plan, just

ing of larger houses as real-estate values increased in the

the belated but still viable image of New York as a city of

private houses. Fortunately for the purposes of this study,
much of the row house stratum of the West Side is still

z. For a full account of the speculative activities on the West Side see A
History of Real Estate, Building and Architecture in New York (New York,
I898; Arno Press Inc. reprint, 1967), esp. pp. 58-io6. For a general account

extant.

of New York row houses, focussing on the period before 1873, see Charles

During the fifteen years before the turn of the

century
Lockwood,
Bricks and Brownstone (New York, 1972).
most of the West Side-here defined as the area west of

3. E. Idell Zeisloft, ed., The New Metropolis (New York, I899), pp. Z72273, 279.

Central Park to the Hudson River and extending from 59th

4. Most of my information concerning dates, architects, owners, etc.,

to i Ioth Street-was built up largely with single-family row

comes from records held by the New York City Department of Buildings,
houses. Before then, the section had been virtually openMunicipal Building, New York. Atlases and landbooks were also a primary
source.

countryside with such exceptions as a few frame farmhouses,

Among the earliest modern mansions on the West Sid

Morgan's house of I87I-I 87 by George B. Post, once locat

I. Elsewhere, notably in Philadelphia, speculator-built row houses conand Central Park West. Confusingly, it is listed in city re
tinued to rise. But after about g90o most were built for middle- to lowrow houses but represented as a single building in the at
record book (New-York Historical Society) indicates onl
income families, were of fewer stories, plainer, and mass-produced in con5. "West Side Number," Real Estate Record and Builde
trast to the elegant town house row houses of the West Side.
I am very grateful to Henry-Russell Hitchcock for his advice and encoursupplement (zo December 1890), i6. See also Russell Stu
agement during the preparation of this paper. My thanks also go to Karen
House in the East and South," in Homes in City and Cou
Graham Wade of the Landmarks Preservation Commission and to Neville
1893, reprinted from Scribner's Monthly, vii [1890], 69
my fn. 5z.
Thompson of Avery Library for their valuable assistance.

i9

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20

later nineteenth century. Edward T. Potter, deeply interested

in effecting tenement reforms, observed in 1878 that New

York was fast becoming a city of the very rich and the very

poor because of the long-established city lot system, in par-

ticular the fixed ioo' depth. The developer was forced to

build either very large houses or the worst sort of tenements,

overbuilding on the lot.6 Ironically, because of the deep lots

a great many West Side row houses have survived to this

day. Their generous dimensions have permitted conversion
into multiple dwellings.

The sales pitch was made to the prosperous potential

dweller. Just prior to the opening of the Ninth Avenue elevated, Egbert Viele, who had been chief engineer of Central

Park, published a prospectus of the West Side. In his text,

accompanied by a fold-out map of the area indicating the
elevated railroad stations, Viele likened the West Side to the

western sections of London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin in

respect to desirability and healthful living. He compared
Central Park to the Vienna Prater and the grand Boulevard
("Broadway" after I898) to the avenues of Paris. He implied

that among others his "Hebrew Fellow Citizens" in the

Lenox Hill center of the East Side might eventually find it

advisable to move westward, since movement northward

was cut off by the Harlem Lowland. He also lamented the
speculator-built, narrow-front brownstone boxes on the
East Side, foresaw the opportunity to change the style in
West Side houses, and expressed his belief that
varied
Fig.the
I. Henry
J. Hardenbergh, 4I-49 W. 73rd St., i88z-1885
(photo: author). Numbers
topography of the new section precluded "interminable

read right to left.

vistas of brownstones."7
The first areas to attract the builders were, logically,
pected tothose
become a shopping street,8 started to acquire

around the elevated stations at 7znd, 8ist, 93rd,

Io4th
someand
of the
most imaginatively designed houses of the peri-

Streets. The side streets below the 70s blocks were

od. eventually
Riverside Drive, where property was considered choice
filled in with more tenements and other typesand
of was
buildings
therefore high-priced, was not improved until the
than row houses and those above the 8os with occasional

I89os (also the case with Central Park West); most of its

lower-class dwellings located west of Columbus (Ninth)mansion-sized row houses were located on the lower part of
Avenue and some apartment houses along with row after the Drive.9
row of large houses. The 70s and 8os side streets were im- The area north of 7znd Street was the earliest to be develproved almost exclusively with large houses and some apartoped. Edward S. Clark, president of the Singer Sewing Mament buildings. Of the avenues only West End Avenue andchine Company and an enterprising real-estate operator,
Riverside Drive received many row houses. Beginning aboutwas responsible for the largest of the early improvements.

I885, West End Avenue, which early developers had exStarting in 1879 he built two long rows of houses on the

north side of West 73rd Street, just a block from the elevated
6. "Urban Housing in New York-I," The American Architect andrailroad station. The rows terminated at either side of Ninth
Building News, in (1878), 91. William Alex kindly brought to my attentionAvenue

a relevant article by Frederick Law Olmsted (New-York Daily Tribune, z8

December 1879, p. 5) in which Olmsted deplored the prohibitive cost and

in flats buildings, styled similarly to their adjoining

houses. Because of the undesirable aspect of the elevated rail-

narrow dimensions of brownstones and endorsed Potter's proposal for a

new lotting system that would permit smaller dwellings. Since the late I86os

8. But by x888 the street was slated for houses "within the means of

persons who are less than millionaires, yet want their privileges" (West End
Olmsted had tried unsuccessfully to prevent the laying out of new areas of
the city on the old grid pattern. See Laura Wood Roper, FLO: A BiographyAvenue Association, West End Avenue-Riverside Park in the City of New

of Frederick Iaw Olmsted (Baltimore and London, 1973), pp. 353-356. York [New York, I888], p. 14, coll. Avery Library).
7. Egbert L. Viele, The West End Plateau of the City of New York (New 9. For descriptions of West Side streets in the late i89os, see Zeisloft, The
New Metropolis, pp. 616-618, 633-635.

York, 1879), pp. I5, zo-zz, and passim.

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21

these houses can perhaps be classified as "stripped-down

chateauesque" (Fig. i). The row set several precedents for
later West Side builders. The houses are four stories, have
the traditional high stoops (some are missing-a common
condition which unfortunately accompanies interior alterations) of the New York row house, and are faced with ma-

terials contrasting in color and texture-olive sandstone at

the basement and parlor stories and buff-colored or red
brick above. The monotony of East Side brownstone rows
was avoided, and the builder had the advantages of brick, a
more durable and often cheaper material than brownstone.
The treatment of the second stories in particular forecast the

look of the West Side: projections and recessions, achieved

through the irregular alternation of corbelled oriel, twostory bay, projecting window, or recessed arch with balcony, providing a ripple of light and shadow in the row.
Third stories are alike for the sake of unity; top stories vary

with gables and hipped roofs, etc.1l Clark's houses are

a fairly generous zo to zz' wide. Builders often whittled
down widths, as a rule to about i6 or I7', at the same time
increasing the depths of the houses, as a means of getting
more out of combined lots. Clark's houses were built for

rental, as many were on the West Side; the row running

west of Ninth Avenue was put on the market at high rentals

early in i880.12

Another reputable architect to work early on the West

Fig. 2. Detlef Lienau, 48-54 W. 8znd St., I886-I887. First-floor plan

Side was Detlef Lienau, in whose office Hardenbergh had
(Lienau Coll., Avery Library).

trained. Lienau designed three rows of houses on 8znd and

83rd Streets near Central Park, built 1883 to 1887; the only
road, Ninth Avenue received tenements or small apartment

surviving group is the four numbered 48-54 West 8znd

buildings like Clark's. Corner lots provided ideal sites for the
Street of I886-I887 built for Lienau himself and members of
better class of such structures. The later of Clark's two rows

the family of Mrs. Mary M. Williams, who financed the

rose contemporaneously with his famous Dakota Apartother two rows.13 More or less Queen Anne in style and even
ments (I880o-884), from i88z to I885. Its twenty-seven

plainer on the outside than Hardenbergh's houses, these

are faced with similar materials. Like several in HardenDakota, which was built on Central Park West. The materibergh's row, Lienau's avoided the older house plan of narals of this group were obviously chosen to match the Darow straight staircase located to one side of a narrow enkota's by young Henry J. Hardenbergh, who was architect
trance hallway (cf. Fig. o0). Instead they had more elaborate
of all these Clark-financed developments. It is in part due to
staircases at the rear of wider and deeper entrance halls and
the occurrence of such large-scale developments, designed
large squarish halls at the center of the parlor floor (Fig. z).
by a single architect, that the West Side appeared so harmoIn the narrow center houses, less than I7'wide, the center
niously "planned." Much of the row of houses as well as the
hall was actually larger than the front parlor. More sucterminating flats building in the vicinity of the Dakota sur-

houses were located east of Ninth Avenue and near the

vives.10

ii. For an excellent description of the row, see Montgomery Schuyler,

In view of the style of the Dakota, which they resemble,

"Henry Janeway Hardenbergh," The Architectural Record, vl (1897), 355-

Io. Of the 1879 row only the flats building and one adjoining house,

within the row was a peculiarity not repeated by later builders.

357. Schuyler points out (p. 357) that the periodic change in brick colors

numbers ioI and 103, survive. The real-estate prospectus for this group,
Block of Houses on West Side Plateau, is in the Chandler Coll., Avery

iz. "West Side Number," p. 4. Hardenbergh designed other rows on the

West Side, including another early one of i88Io-88 on the south of 73rd

Library. An apartment house now interrupts the Dakota row leaving houses

Street east of Amsterdam (Tenth) Avenue for D. and E. Herbert. Only 156

numbered I5A-19 and 41-65, a total of seventeen, extant. On Clark's

W. 73rd Street survives from the original group of eight.

transactions see A History of Real Estate, Building and Architecture, pp.

87, 90, and 96, and "West Side Number," p. 4.

13. Ellen Kramer, "The Domestic Architecture of Detlef Lienau, A Conservative Victorian" (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1957), pp. 242z-48.

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22

cessful in houses of generous widths, this layoutatwas

the eviage of twenty-four in I886,16 only a short time

dently designed to make an impressive display ofthe

staircase
houses were finished. He had opened his New
and hall space; but the result was the subtraction office
of actual
in 1883 following his graduation from Princeton

living space from the rooms themselves.14 Largethese

houses,
houses are his only recorded New York City build

like 54 West 8znd Street, were sometimes four rooms

They deep,
were among the earliest erected on West End Av

having a dining room at the rear of the parlor floor.

Space
and are
distinguished architecturally by their asymme

for a family dining room was normally provided

at the not usual in row houses, and by their broad,
design,

front of the basement story, with kitchen and arches

laundry
spanning pairs of recessed entranceways. The pa

rooms behind. However, it was commonplace by reminiscent

this time
of English "Pont Street Dutch" houses.17
materials
of
brick
with terra-cotta used for ornament
for the back parlor to be used as a dining room. As in

became
so characteristic of West End Avenue houses as
previous years, "extensions" of several stories were
built

make two;
of them a veritable showcase for those materials
at the rear of many houses, as on Lienau's center
these were used as butler's pantries, back stairhalls, or
bathrooms. On the second floor, and the thirdi6.as
well
Street numbers of White's houses are 301-307 W. 78th Street an

in a four-story house, two large bedrooms were 389

usually
West End Avenue. The obituary notices for White rated him h
The
separated by dressing chambers or bathrooms; and
inAmerican
many Architect, xlx (i886), 289, and Building, iv (i886), z

had already designed over zoo buildings and had 50 in construction

houses spaces at the ends of the hall were made into small

time of his death, mostly seaside cottages and country houses.

rooms to be used as sitting or sewing rooms or, the back

one,
17. Discussed
by Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture: Nineteent
Twentieth or
Centuries
as a bathroom. The top story contained the servants'

(Harmondsworth, I971), p. 301. From Leland R

learned that McKim, Mead, and White designed in 1885 another early

smaller family bedrooms. No major change occurred in this

of West End Avenue houses, formerly located at the southwest cor

basic layout until the mid-I89os, although innumerable

vari-and West End Avenue (reproduced in The Brickbuilde
83rd Street
[I898],
65). These are illustrated and described by Montgomery Schu
ations of plan were possible,15 as seen in the Lienau
houses.

"The Small City House," The Architectural Record, vlIi (I899), 38

Still another early West Side group of architect-designed

who does not name the architects, as recalling by their crow-stepped

houses is a particularly striking row of eight brick-fronted,

the style of the

Dutch houses of New Amsterdam. Possibly this grou

three-story houses turning the northwest corner of

West since
End there were numerous "Dutch"-styled houses built after
fashion
West End
Avenue at 78th Street (Fig. 3), built for Henry H. on
Hewitt
inAvenue

as well as the impressive complex of the Dutch Re

West End Collegiate Church and School of I89I-I892 by R. W. Gib

1885-1886. The architect was Frederick B. White, who died

77th Street. Gibson chose the style for obvious reasons, but in respect

houses there was probably some sense of identity between the newly se
Side and
and New Amsterdam.
14. See Sturgis, "The City House in the East and South," pp.West
24-z6,

Kramer, "Detlef Lienau," p. 248, on these points. Sturgis indicated this type

of planning was recent (as of I890) and went with the more expensive row

houses, those in the $zo,ooo to $35,000 bracket.

I5. E.g., the plan comparisons of William B. Tuthill, The City Residence
(New York, I890), pp. io-I9 (first published in The American Architect, nIl

[I885], 88 and Ioo).

Fig. 3. Frederick B. White, Houses at the northwest corner

of4.West
Fig.
Rafael Guastavino, z12-131 W. 78th St., I885-I886
End Ave. and 78th St., i885-i886 (photo: author).
(photo: author). Numbers read right to left.

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24

Fig. 7. Edward L. Angell, 241-z49 Central Park West, I887-I888

(after The Architectural Review, vii [I9oo], z6). Partly demolished.

done in the Spanish Moresque style.19 Although Moorish

was then in vogue as a novel style of interior decoration,
its use for exteriors was most often reserved for synagogues.

Henry Fernbach, noted for his Moorish-style synagogues as

well as other buildings designed for the German Jewish

community, acted as expert advisor to the competition
committee which selected the designs for the Progress Club.

He recommended Guastavino's design and afterwards acted

Fig. 6. Rafael Guastavino, ii8-iz6 W. 78th St., i886. Detail of cellar
plan (photo: Jay Cantor; Avery Library).

as consulting architect.20 Guastavino, then, began his Amer-

ican career as a specialist in Moorish in the employ of Jews.

Levy, a ranking member of New York Jewish society,21

next called on Guastavino to design his 78th Street houses;
large-size corner house with side entrance, as seen in White's

and the style, surely no coincidence, is again Moorish with

group, would also become a standard feature of the Avenue.

details recalling the Progress Club.

After i885 many builders moved operations from the East

Levy first built the north side row in I885-I886, numbers

Side to the West Side where opportunities for speculation

121-131. These are a unique group of four i6'- and two

were boundless and the cost of land comparatively low. One

(outside ones) i8 '-wide houses faced with brownstone at the

of these was an especially astute developer, Bernard S. Levy,

ground story and brick trimmed with brownstone and terra-

responsible for many houses in the fashionable 7os and 8os

cotta relief ornament above (Fig. 4). The carefully executed

blocks. Levy, who had been in the building and real-estate

Mudejaresque details (Fig. 5) are today made even more

broker businesses since the mid-i86os, hired architect Rafael

outstanding by red and white paint. One may surmise from

Guastavino in i885 to design the first of two rows of houses

on 78th Street in the prime block just west of Manhattan

sold readily to Jewish buyers; Levy himself lived in number

an examination of the conveyance records that the houses

Square. Guastavino, who had emigrated from Catalonia in

izi for many years.22 In i886 Levy also built nine houses

i88i, was later to become famous for his remarkable tile

across the street, numbers 118-134, again to Guastavino's

arch vaulting or "fireproof construction."18 Since his arrival

in New York he had designed a German Jewish social club,

the Progress Club at i io East 59th Street, and B'nai Jeshurun

Synagogue on Madison Avenue near 65th Street. Both were

19. Peter B. Wight, "The Life and Works of Rafael Guastavino," The

Brickbuilder, x (I901), IoI-Ioz, I84-I85. City records date the Progress

Club as 1883-I884 and the synagogue as 1884-1885. Neither survives.
zo. Wight, "Guastavino," pp. i84-i85. The club is described as a Jewish
organization in numerous publications of the period.

z2. Mr. and Mrs. Bernard S. Levy are listed in the New York Hebrew
Select Directory and Visiting List (New York, I896).
18. On this subject see George R. Collins, "The Transfer of Thin Masonry

Vaulting from Spain to America," JSAH, xxvni (I968), I76-ZOI.

zz. City directories listed Levy as living at izi W. 78th Street until I904
when he moved north to W. 88th Street.

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25

Fig. 8. Numbers z47-z49

Central Park West (photo:
author).

designs. These are more conservative outside, having the

his unique vaulting system, a technique that would later be

older style all-brownstone fronts and less conspicuous

grandly displayed in such major buildings as the Boston

Moorish features. But the plans are marked to show that

the third house over from the beginning of the row, number

Public Library and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.24

Guastavino did two other rows of houses on the West

izz, was all fireproof, and this house was vaulted through-

Side, one for Levy, before leaving the architectural profes-

out (Fig. 6). It can now be identified as the one in which

sion for that of building contractor.25 Levy continued to

Levy allowed Guastavino "to introduce his system of cohesive construction, and in this house, the first in America,
he used his timbrel arches from basement to roof, and built

the stairway with tiles and cement."23 Levy was therefore

instrumental in helping Guastavino to establish in America

z4. Numbers 1zo and Iz2 W. 78th Street have been rebuilt as one apartment house, but Guastavino's cellar and roof vaults remain visible. Accord-

ing to Collins ("The Transfer of Thin Masonry Vaulting," p. I93), Levy

helped Guastavino patent his processes.
z5. The Levy row (1887-I888) was on 77th Street south of Manhattan
Square and the other row (I886-I887) on the south side of 8znd Street west

and their location prompted investigation which led to the identification of

of Columbus Avenue. For photographs see "West Side Number," pp. I9

and 51. The 8znd Street row had a few Moorish details. In 1887-I888

this group. The plans were found by the author among discarded materials

vaulted fireproof tenements of Guastavino's design were built at 99th and

and deposited in Avery Library.

Iooth Streets and Columbus Avenue. These are gone.

23. Wight, "Guastavino," p. I85. The Moorish features of these houses

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z6

operate on the West Side; in I889 a row of seven houses he

was erecting collapsed while under construction on 8oth
Street, and he was forced to issue a circular letter inviting
inspection of materials and construction in order to protect
his reputation.26

The Dakota predetermined the future development of

Central Park West as an avenue of luxury apartment houses.

One of the few row house groups erected on the avenue was

the block of nine houses between 84th and 85th Streets de-

signed by Edward L. Angell27 and built for William Noble

in 1887-1888 (Figs. 7, 8). Judging from an old photograph
and the three extant houses at the 85th Street end, numbers

247-249, the group presented an impressive chateauesque

facade, perhaps intended to emulate the Dakota, with richly

carved Renaissance details of considerably more elaboration than was usual for side street houses. These were tall

four-story houses varying in width from zo to 25' and

Fig. 9. Gilbert A. Schellenger, 35I-355 Central Park West,

I892-I893 (photo: author).

fronted with brownstone and limestone and buff-colored

brick. They had French roofs, gables alternating with pairs
of dormers, and a variety of bay window treatments regularly alternated. The two end houses framed the group with

their cone-shaped roofs above bowed corners. These were,

typically, the finest and costliest of the group. Corner houses

were especially desirable because they could receive light

from three sides, admitted of greater flexibility in planning,

and were ordinarily larger than interior houses. (Hence

most corner houses have been replaced by apartment buildings.) "Box stoops" with two flights of stairs at right angles

and separated by a landing, as distinguished from the older

single flights, provided a chance to pause on the way up and
some degree of privacy from the avenue sidewalk traffic. By

the I88os this type of stoop was increasingly in evidence.

A group of five houses of I892-I893, numbers 35I-355

Central Park West at 95th Street (Fig. 9) offers a telling com-

parison to the Noble-Angell group. The owner was the prolific developer Edward Kilpatrick, and the designer Gilbert
A. Schellenger, architect of many types of buildings in New

York City. These houses are of a plainer Renaissance style,

evidence both of their later date and of the less fashionable

and still somewhat less developed character of the section.

They are smaller and more on the order of side street houses.

A bay window of academic design was added to the side of

the corner house in I906, the first of many alterations in-

cluding stoop removals these have since undergone. The

first-story plans (Fig. io) show the interior houses to have

been old-fashioned, but the corner house was more up to

Fig. I0. Numbers 351-355 Central Park West. First-floor plan

(New York City Department of Buildings).

date. The unusual street level location of its side entrance

was evidently dictated by the sloping ground support. The

corner house plan provided for a large entranceway leading
to a rear stairhall and opening directly into two large rooms,

one at either side. Russell Sturgis criticized this type of lay-

out on the grounds that it was too decidedly separated in its

main parts and the entranceway too easily susceptible to

"invasion" from the street.28

Lamb and Rich, Clarence F. True, and Charles P. H. Gilbert designed many of the large houses in the choice region

of the 70s and 8os blocks near and on West End Avenue and

Riverside Drive. True alone is supposed to have designed

about 400 city houses, most on the West Side, but for sheer

excitement and aesthetic qualities of design Lamb and Rich

easily surpassed him and even Gilbert. The firm was early in

the area, from 1885 through the I89os. Many of their row
z6. Real Estate Record and Builders Guide, XLIV (I889), 1567-I568.

house designs were published. Montgomery Schuyler dis-

27. Angell also designed apartment houses on the West Side, e.g., the first

San Remo apartments of 189o0-891 and the Endicott Hotel of about I889.
He was, incidentally, the architect of Levy's collapsed houses.

z8. Sturgis, "The City House in the East and South," p. z9.

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27

cussed the group of I889-1890 once located at the southwest corner of 7znd Street and West End Avenue (Fig. II).
Noting the importance of Romanesque to the prevailing
architectural character of the West Side, he singled out the

Lamb and Rich houses as examples, pointing to their Pro-

venSal and Richardsonian details and particularly to the

color treatment of olive sandstone in combination with reddish sandstone as the most successful element of the en-

semble.29 Richardsonian Romanesque was especially important as a catalyst in making row house designs more
various in the i88os.

Lamb and Rich were by no means addicted to Romanesque, although several sets of their houses were in that
style.30 Their group of four erected for Charles and George

Lowther in I888-I889, one of the first rows built on River-

side Drive, was of a hybrid Romanesque-Renaissance style

(Figs. iz, 13). Two of the group, 35 and 36 Riverside Drive,

survive, although number 36 has been much altered. The

houses were fronted with rock-faced granite and limestone

Fig. 1. Lamb and Rich, Corner of 72nd St. and West End Ave., I889I890 (after The Architectural Record, i [I89I], z3). Demolished.

trimmed and provided with bow-bays, the end ones treated

as "round towers" having cone-shaped roofs above fourth-

story loggias. Included to accommodate the river view,

loggias, bow-bays, and swell-fronts were to be featured by

Drive row houses from now on. Large, although not very
wide-the center pair were five stories but only 18' across-

the Lowther houses contained such luxuries as skylighted

z9. Montgomery Schuyler, "The Romanesque Revival in New York,"
The Architectural Record, I (I89I), 17 and 36. These houses are also reproduced with interiors in "West Side Number," pp. 8-9.

3o. E.g., see Building, v (i886), pls. ii and iz.

conservatories and trunk elevators in full-height extensions.

Yet these houses were modest and unpretentiously well designed by comparison to many that would later be built on

,-..*-

Fig. iz. Lamb and Rich, 35-38 Riverside Drive, I888-I889 (after The
American Architect and Building News, xxxi [I89I], pl. 790). Numbers 37 and 38 demolished. Numbers read right to left.

---"""'

-'

.A

.S

Fig.
13.
Numbers
City
Department
o

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We'.ti

4,

':

Vkl,t I ,J A- b-, 76,, S,

Fig. I5. Lamb and Rich, 301-305 W. 76th St., I89I (after The American Architect and Building News, xxxiv [1891], pl. 8z5). Numbers

Fig. 14. Lamb and Rich, Houses on W. 76th St. and West End Ave.,

I89I (photo: author).

read right to left.

section of the Drive to be developed. In I899 he published a

short history of the Drive, actually a real-estate prospectus,

the Drive. North Italian motifs, as for example the shell-

with an essay by "Clarence Herbert New" and numerous

headed niches corbelled out over the doorways of the center

photographs of his own houses. New, or True, recounted

houses, were particularly favored by the firm in these years.

that initially the stretch from 79th to 86th Streets was slated

unrestrained rows anywhere, a personalized miniature of

for flats but that he was impressed with the potential of the
riverfront as a residential district and "secured all the avail-

Fifth Avenue on the West Side. This row fills the entire block

able property south of 84th Street, and by covering it with

Lamb and Rich also designed one of the most colorful and

front between 76th and 77th Streets on the west side of West

beautiful dwellings insured a most promising future for the

End Avenue and extends back two and three houses re-

Drive."33 True's "Elizabethan" houses of I896-I898 at the

spectively on each of the side streets (Figs. 14, 15). The group northeast corner of 76th Street and the Drive and his group

was erected in I89I.31 The predominant mode is chateau- with crow-stepped gables at the southeast corner of Riveresque and includes lavish ornamentation such as copper-side and 77th of I891-I892 (Fig. 17) are large, broad houses
framed dormers alternating with terra-cotta crests over of 30 to 32' widths.34 Such mansions barely qualify as row
upper-story windows or bell-roofed dormers (Fig. i6). Buthouses, but they were built with party walls and on specunothing is pure; the houses on the side streets are plainer, lation.
and the ones on 76th Street again include Italianate door- True's houses are of the American basement type, a plan,
ways. Although the center houses of the West End Avenue according to Sturgis, first introduced in I88o, about nine

row are a pair and those on either side a match, the rich years before True opened his practice. There were earlier
contrast of facing materials, tawny and orange-coloredinstances. The entrance to the house, often centered, was
brick with stone of various types, contributes to the impres- either at ground level or a few steps above. An advantage of

sion of separately designed town houses rather than a co- the plan, aside from the reduction of steps to climb, was the
herent row. The uniformity of the brownstone era was a greater privacy afforded the parlor floor. The dining room,
formerly at the front of the basement story, was now offi-

thing of the past.

In his day, Clarence F. True was a well-known architect cially removed to the first floor, leaving a reception hall in its
of city houses. Trained in Richard Mitchell Upjohn's office place35 (Fig. i8: first-floor plans of a group of about I895
and in practice on his own from about I889, he was credited,offering a choice of high stoop or American basement

wrongly, with having originated the American basement

house. His favored house styles were said to be Gothic and 33. Clarence True, Riverside Drive (New York, I899), unpaged.
Elizabethan Renaissance.32 He was instrumental in improv-

34. The group of three at 76th Street are 337 W. 76th Street and 40-4I
Riverside Drive; the group of six at 77th Street, 44-46 Riverside Drive and

ing the lower part of Riverside Drive in the I89os, the first334-338 W. 77th Street.

35. Sturgis, A Dictionary of Architecture and Building, ni (New York and

31. It includes 301-305 W. 76th Street and 302-306 W. 77th Street as wellLondon, 1901), col. 434. Today the American basement house is usually
as 343--357 West End Avenue, a total of fourteen houses. For reproductionsmislabelled as "English" basement. In the latter the entrance is also at street

of exteriors and interiors, see The American Architect, xxxiv (1891), pls. level, but the dining room is on the ground story and the kitchen is in the

8z5 and 830; xxxvii (1892), pl. 869.

3z. A History of Real Estate, Building and Architecture, p. 233.

cellar below. According to Sturgis, the English basement plan was never
widely used.

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Fig. i6. Lamb and Rich, Dormers of 353 and 355 West End Ave., I891 (photo: author).

rA

Fig. 17. Clarence True, Houses at the corners of 76th St. and Riverside Drive, I896-I898 (right), and 77th St. and Riverside Drive, I89II891 (after True, Riverside Drive).

Fig. i8. Henry F. Cook, 30-318 W. 7znd St., ca. I895. First-floor
plan (after Cook, Five Elegant Residences on West Seventy-Second
Street [New York, I895], p. 4; Chandler Coll., Avery Library). Demolished.

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30

projected for the immediate future (it opened in I904); the

new Columbia University buildings and the Cathedral of

St. John the Divine were well underway. The section was on

the rise, and its new houses bedecked with facades in the
currently popular Beaux-Arts style were intended to attract

well-to-do buyers to the area. The unity and planned appearance of the district is the result of the concerted efforts

of four West Side firms who erected houses according to

"restrictive covenants" made with the developers. The ten
houses numbered 302-320 West Io5th Street (Fig. zo) were
designed by the firm of Janes and Leo for John C. Umber-

field, erected in I899-I900, and priced at $42,5oo to

$5o,ooo.38 Despite the subtle variations of their limestone
swell-fronts, the horizontals of moldings and iron balustrades and the sensitive pairing and repetition of motifs
within the row project a strong impression of coherence.
Now inspired by Paris and Beaux-Arts ideals, the concept
Fig. 19. Henry F. Cook, 5-15 W. 87th St., incorrectly identified on the
photograph as 7-I7, I894 (after Fisher, A Complete List of West Side

Dwellings [New York, I895 ?], opp. p. 37; Local History and Genealogy Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and
Tilden Foundations). Numbers read right to left.

of unity, but with no suggestion of monotony, had once

again become part of the row house formula. The buyers of

these houses were business and professional men,39 with

incomes in the upper range of the prosperous category.
Frederick Ambrose Clark was one of the last of the West
Side row house builders. He erected a row of eighteen houses,

houses). True must have popularized this plan, since it was

I8-52 West 74th Street, in 1902-I904 according to the plans

not commonly used before the mid-i89os and usually only

of architect Percy Griffin (Fig. zI). Clark's aim was said to be

for wide houses.

the provision of "moderate income" families with "a better

The actual number of row houses being built in New

abode than they could obtain for an equal rental in an

York had begun to decline slightly in I89I, and although

apartment hotel"-in retrospect a futile attempt to preserve

there was a rise in I895, the trend was generally downward

from then on.36 An attractive real-estate brochure issued by

the urban row house at a time when apartment houses were

Frank L. Fisher about 1894 lists no fewer than 57z unoccu-

seems questionable here (unless taken to mean "moderately

pied houses-some not yet completed-throughout the

wealthy") since these houses of mixed inspiration and Pari-

ascendant. The word "moderate," though always relative,

West Side from 68th through Io4th Streets. The listings are

sian regularity were z5' wide and 85' deep, contained seven-

supplemented by full descriptions, drawings, plans, and

teen to nineteen rooms, and were serviced by electric ele-

photographs (e.g., Fig. 19). Most of the houses advertised

vators. Each had four or five bathrooms, "a luxury that with

were built since I889.37 The depression following the finan-

apartment dwellers has now become almost a necessity."40

cial panic of 1893 was undoubtedly responsible for the

Seventy-sixth Street from Central Park West to Riverside

large number of Fisher's unsold offerings and for his ex-

Drive is still much as it was at the turn of the century. A

pensively produced booklet.

brief survey of its length will serve to summarize the row

Just at the turn of the century, some of the most elegant

house development of the central West Side. The only major

houses on the West Side were built on Io5th and io6th

changes in the street occur at the corners where apartment

Streets between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive and

houses have often replaced the original flats buildings or

on the Drive itself between those streets. In I898 Riverside

row houses. William A. Potter's handsome Universalist

Park and Drive were completed; the Broadway subway was

38. Landmarks Preservation Commission, Riverside - West os5th Street
36. For a table of row house construction figures covering the years I889

to 1902, see Lockwood, Bricks and Brownstone, p. 254.

37. Frank L. Fisher, A Complete List of West Side Dwellings (New York,
1895 ?), coll. New York Public Library. Indications in the text are that the
booklet was compiled in mid-I894. The median offering price of the houses

Historic District Designation Report (City of New York, 1973), p. 5 and

passim.
39. Landmarks Preservation Commission, Riverside - West Iosth Street
Historic District Designation Report, p. 4.

40. "A Residence Block," Architectural Record, xx (I906), 405. The design for number I8 W. 74th Street was exhibited by the Architectural League

was about $35,000, and approximately one-fourth of the total number

(Catalogue of the Twenty-first Annual Exhibition of the Architectural

listed were three-story, the rest four.

League of New York, I906, p. 47).

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?(Joqine :oloqd) o006-668I ')$S qiOI A Ozi-zIi '031 pUu sauuf *oz *!I4
I-'Sm- - '.. mi 0 ~ IF~

I
I ,

OkI, Iii

ptt
wb: '
<, t

J
11- -

;s

040

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32

Fig. zi. Percy Griffin, zo-5z W. 74th St., 1902-I904 (photo: author).

1897-1898, in the academic Gothic style of the period, stand

"neo-grec" trim with rough-surfaced stone facing-a combination of the traditional flat front and the newer "Rich-

on the southwest corner at Central Park West opposite the

ardsonian" stone treatment.42

Church of the Divine Paternity and adjoining rectory of

classical re-revival New-York Historical Society on the

The block between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues

northwest corner-an impressive entrance to the first block.

The most recent houses, consequently the most sedate and

was developed earlier, before anyone knew the section

would become fashionable, with more modest houses.

the costliest,41 on the entire street are in this block. They

Eight survive out of the original sets of sixteen houses built

date from 1887 to I900, and were all architect-designed.

on the north side of the block before 1885. Numbers 15z-

Cornelius Luyster, one of the earliest developers in the

i60 of I886-I889 by Demeuron and Smith, though altered,

area, and architect John H. Duncan, the designer of Grant's

are the most picturesque group on the block (Fig. 24). The

Tomb (I896), were responsible for numbers 8-Io (Fig.

zz) and I5-z5. The former were built in I899-1900 in

arch at the second-floor level; the one surviving end house is

French early Baroque style and the latter in I892z-895 in

the Italian Renaissance mode. The oldest houses on the
block are numbers 27-37 and 40-56, designed by George M.

center house is distinguished by a horseshoe-shaped blind

entirely surfaced in rock-faced stone; and the first-story

4z. Schellenger and Angell also worked on this block. Schellenger's

are numbers z8-38 (I891) and 39-5I W. 76th Street (I891-I893),

Walgrove for Leonard Beeckman and built in I887-I889.houses

The first-mentioned group (Fig. 23) combines the old stylesimilar

to his 95th Street houses in design. Angell was responsible for num-

bers 53-57 W. 76th Street as well as the adjacent flats building on the north-

east corner of Columbus Avenue (all i889-I89o), all done in a nondescript

41. Fisher, A Complete List .. .,pp. 34-35, listed houses in this block at Renaissance manner. Most of this first block is part of a "historic district."
prices around $55,000 as compared to an average of $38,000 for some in theSee Landmarks Preservation Commission, Central Park West - 76th Street
blocks between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues.

Historic District Designation Report (City of New York, I973).

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33

Fig. zz. John H. Duncan, 8-10 W. 76th St., I899-1900. Fig. 23. George M. Walgrove, 29-31 W. 76th St., 1887-I889.

Doorways (photo: author). Doorways (photo: author). Numbers read right to left.

Fig. 24. Demeuron and Smith, I5z-158 W. 76th St., I886-I889

I
(photo: author).
Fig.

~.

..._._

z5.

(photo:

Edward
author).

L.

Num

windows have stone mullions and transoms-features

convenient
which betray a debt to Richardson. Immediately east and

west of the former St. Andrew's Methodist-Episcopal

ings,

and

on

Church43 are rows designed and built in the early I89osBroadway

by

the prolific firm of Thom and Wilson. These have Broadway

oldrow
fashioned brownstone fronts, obviously still a selling point
even this late.44

the

The central section of this part of the West Side provided

by
a

site

and

43. The church, built in 1889-I890 to the designs of J. C. Cady and built
Co.

We

on

th

operator

William

Angell

76th

confo

houses
big

fo

Boyla

block

five

Avenue.
(Cady, Berg, and See were the architects of the south wing of the Museum
of

on

large

Designed

Natural History, I889-9o00, and the west wing, I906-I908) in the RichardRomanesquoid

sonian Romanesque mode, became West Side Institutional Synagogue in the

fr

late I93os and has been modernized since a fire in I965.

44. These are numbers Io110-8 (I890-1891) and I40-I50 (I892-I893)

45.

Of

W. 76th Street. Fisher, A Complete List..., pp. 34-35, listed the latter group
remain

at $40,000 each.

covered

the
out

by

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Lyon-Boy
of

the

ori

numbers

34

Fig. z6. Babb, Cook, and Willard, Theodore L. DeVinne house,

I888-I889 (after Sturgis, Homes in City and Country, p. 3I). De-

molished.

Fig. z8. C. P. H. Gilbert, 330 W. 76th St., I894-I895 (after "Some

Designs of Charles P. H. Gilbert," The Architectural Record, ix
[1899], I70). See Fig. 27.

of them are missing their original high stoop entrances.46

On the southwest corner of West End Avenue was the

Theodore L. DeVinne house by Babb, Cook, and Willard of

I888-I889 (Fig. z6), since replaced twice by apartment

houses. The same prominent firm had built the functional,

round-arched DeVinne Press building three years earlier.

The red-brick- and light-stone-trimmed colonial-style house
46. Originally there was a long row of late i88os three-story houses on the

south side of the Broadway-West End Avenue block. Among these were
four of 1887-1888 designed by architect Charles T. Mott, very active in this

Fig. 27. Albert W. Harris (left), 3z8 W. 76th St., 1887-1888; and
C. P. H. Gilbert, 330 W. 76th St., 1894-1895 (photo: author).

section of the West Side, for the big West Side developer William E. D.
Stokes. (Stokes built the impressive Beaux-Arts-style Ansonia Hotel on
Broadway, I899-19o4.)

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35

Fig. 30. C. P. H. Gilbert, 307-309 W. 76th St., I891-1892

(photo: author). Numbers read right to left.

Fig. 29. Charles T. Mott, 3z3-331 W. 76th St., 1891-1892

(photo: author). Numbers read right to left.

exploit in stone on the East Side.48 Like this one, many of the

houses on this block were provided with loggias for the

had a bow front and bow-bay at the rear, a reminder of the

river view. Lamb and Rich designed the second oldest house

freedom possible in corner house planning. Sturgis praised

on the block, number 302, as a 25'-wide Renaissance

the treatment of all faces of the house as part of the same

palazzo with a central hallway rising the full height of the

design,47 something which cannot be said of the Lyon-

five stories. It was built in I889--890.49 Schuyler commend-

Angell corner house (Fig. z5) where the avenue front is stone

ed two rows on this block for successfully solving the prob-

and the side street face brick-a commonplace economy

lem of need for individuality without sacrifice of row uni-

measure of builders.

formity. One of these was 323-331 West 76th Street (Fig.

The block between West End Avenue and Riverside

29) designed by Charles T. Mott and built in 1891-1892 for

Jacob and Skinner. Although he criticized the juxtaposition

Drive contains the greatest mixture of styles on the entire
of the entirely red brick center house with its pairs of brown
street and a splendid array of individually built houses.

Roman brick neighbors on either side, Schuyler particuLamb and Rich and Charles P. H. Gilbert designed houses
larly admired the handsome and varied treatment of the
on this block. Number 328 West 76th Street, by ownerarchitect Albert W. Harris in I887-I888 (Fig. 27), was the

first house to go up. Its odd Gothic-styled brownstone

faqade makes a strange companion to the Gilbert house next
48. On Gilbert, see especially his obituary: New York Times, 27 October
1952, p. 27, col. 3; "Some
door (Figs. 27, z8) of 1894-I895. Gilbert's is a diminished
Record, ix (I899), i65-I73;
Roman brick version of the Francois I mode which he was to

Designs of Charles P. H. Gilbert," Architectural

and Landmarks Preservation Commission, Park

Slope Historic District Designation Report (City of New York, 1973).

Gilbert's career as a town house architect seems to have begun on the West

Side about I885. But the best examples of his late I88os houses are in the
Park Slope section of Brooklyn.
47. Sturgis, "The City House in the East and South," p. 30. For thewell-restored
plan
see p. 29.

49. The American Architect, xxiv (i888), 32 and pl. 656.

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36
loggias.50 Two other houses by Gilbert, numbers 307 and

development of the West Side, James Richardson had called

309 of 1891-1892, enrich the street front by their deep red

and brown brick colors and low relief treatment of aca-

for the building of flats in the city, observing that most peo-

ple were compelled to sublet parts of their overly large

demic motifs (Fig. 30). Number 307 is missing its cornice and houses in order to meet rental and servant costs and that it

stoop. The street concludes with True's mammoth houses

was not possible to find small houses in respectable neigh-

on the north corner of Riverside Drive (Fig. 17) and an borhoods.52 The apartment house was the more reasonable
apartment house of the I9zos on the south corner.

By the mid-g9oos, apartment house building was boom-

-and profitable-solution to housing needs and rising land

costs.

ing. Row houses were being demolished for apartments on

West End Avenue and even on the side streets, and apartment houses were rapidly going up on empty lots on the
upper reaches of the avenues.51 Several years prior to the

includes photographs and plans of scores of buildings recently

especially on the West Side.

52. James Richardson, "The New Homes of New York," Sc

Monthly, VIII (1874), 67-69. Seventeen years earlier Calvert Va

address before the AIA on 2 June 1857, had made these same poin

port of housing on the "continental plan" (published in The Cr

50. Schuyler, "The Small City House," pp. 377-378. He also praised [July 1857], z28, and Harper's Weekly, I [I9 December I857], 8
numbers 314-322 W. 76th Street, not extant, as exemplary small houses However, the first apartment house proper in New York City, R.
(pp. 385-386).
Stuyvesant Flats, did not go up until 1869, and nearly a decade

5I. See Apartment Houses of the Metropolis (New York, 1908) which before many more began to rise.

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