During the latter part of the 19th Century, as New York City expanded northward, the wealthy class of Manhattan started to fill Fifth Avenue with their homes and businesses. The land on 54th and 55th Streets between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue was occupied by St Luke's Hospital. When the hospital moved its facilities to Amsterdam Ave. in 1896, the old building was demolished and those lots became prime available real estate. There are six extant houses on West 54th St. - numbers 5 through 15 - built between 1896 and 1900, that are the remains of this "Millionaire's Row." Across the street from them stood the brownstone mansion of John D. Rockefeller Sr., founder of the Standard Oil Company. The MoMA sculpture garden now occupies that spot. On the corner of Sixth Ave. stands the exclusive
University Club.
I've been working at MoMA since last year, right across the street from these houses, so I've become very familiar with them. These drawings were done last month, during lunch breaks and downtime, before everything was locked down due to the Coronavirus Pandemic and I was sent home. As I finished them up and scanned them, I hesitated to post them. Posting drawings of luxury mansions at this moment seemed a bit frivolous, as the rate of infection increases, the death toll rises, the economy collapses, and the Federal government continually fails in ways that would be laughable if it weren't so horrifying. But as I did my research on these buildings, my mind changed.
These mansions were built just a decade or two before the 1918-19 Spanish Flu pandemic. 33,000 died in New York City alone; 500 million were infected worldwide, with at least 50 million dying from it. There was quarantine and closures and mass suffering, all with far less scientific knowledge and technology than we have today. The inhabitants of these houses lived through that, and maybe some of them
didn't live through it. But the city survived. I came to see these buildings as a symbol of survival, a physical reminder that some day - despite the death and suffering we're seeing now - life will go on. The city will continue. Stores and restaurants and theaters and museums will re-open. People will be able to gather, and hug, and eat meals together, and cram into subways, and walk within six feet of strangers without fear. And hopefully we will not see this again in out lifetime, and if we do, we will know better how to survive it.
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The house at No. 7 was commissioned by financier Philip Lehman, whose father had co-founded Lehman Brothers. It was designed by architect John H. Duncan, who was also the designer of Grant's Tomb and the Soldiers and Sailors' Memorial Arch in Grand Army Plaza. Completed in 1900, it was built in the Beaux Arts style. It is notable for its distinctive slate-covered mansard roof and the trio of round windows called oculi.
The house remained in the Lehman family until the 1970's. Philip's son Robert amassed a collection of over 3000 works of art, and the home became his private gallery. Upon his death in 1969, the collection was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and several rooms were dismantled and installed as part of the Robert Lehman Wing. Lehman had wanted the whole house moved to the museum, but apparently that wasn't practical. The building went through series of owners until it was purchased by a hedge fund firm in 2006, which hired Belmont Freeman Architects to restore the house as much as possible to its original appearance, including returning some artifacts (stained-glass windows, fireplace surrounds, doors, etc) from the Met and replicating details of other elements from casts.
These twin residences at Nos. 13 and 15 were built in 1896-97 by businessman William Murray. Murray never resided there; it was just a real estate investment for him. The architect was Henry J. Hardenberg, who also designed the Waldorf, the Astoria, the Plaza Hotel and the Dakota. The matching homes are in Renaissance style. No. 13 is actually slightly larger. In 1906, No. 13 was purchased by John D Rockefeller Sr., who then resold to his son. The property remained in the Rockefeller Family until the 1980's. It currently houses offices and a restaurant on the lower floor.
Fun Fact: It was here, in 1979, that Nelson Rockefeller, son of JD Rockefeller Jr, former Vice President and governor of NY, died of a heart attack in the middle of sex with his secretary!
Finally, this grotesque head that I did during last year's Inktober challenge. You can see them poking out below the rounded facade at the bottom of the building.
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