52 East 64Th Street an Architectural History
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
52 East 64th Street An Architectural History Written by Francis Morrone American Architectural Historian & Acclaimed Author of "The Architectural Guidebook to New York City" Presented by the Deanna Kory Team Corcoran Group Real Estate he house at 52 East 64th Street was originally a four-story, brownstone-fronted house built in or before 1878. The earliest recorded use of the house is as Miss Edwards' School in 1878. It Tis possible that the house is slightly older than this. (See New York Evening Post, September 5, 1878.) The house was remodeled and dramatically transformed in 1916-17. The last owner of the house before its transformation into what we see today was the German-born psychiatrist and neurologist Dr. William Hirsch (1858-1937), one of the "alienists" consulted in the murder case against Harry Thaw, the shooter of the architect Stanford White, in 1906. Dr. Hirsch hired the prominent architect Harry Allan Jacobs to design a rear addition to the house in 1901. The house was sold by Dr. Hirsch to the lawyer Foster Crampton of 935 Park Avenue in 1916. Crampton (d. 1926) was a noted sportsman, commodore of the Westhampton Yacht Club, president of the Westhampton Country Club, and life member of the Crescent Athletic Club. (His obituary appeared in the Times on April 23, 1926.) A January 4, 1916, item in the New York Times places Mr. and Mrs. Foster Crampton at the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. That would have been only a few weeks before Foster Crampton purchased 52 East 64th Street and hired the Greenbrier's architect, Frederick Sterner, to remodel the house. The Greenbrier Hotel Crampton, however, never lived in the house. He bought it and renovated it as an investment property, and rented it out, furnished, to a succession of well-heeled tenants. On September 29, 1917, Real Estate Record reported "Douglas L. Elliman & Co. leased, furnished, for Foster Crampton, the 5-sty American basement house at 52 East 64th St....which he recently purchased and remodeled, to Mrs. Russell G. Colt." 52 East 64th: An Architectural History Mrs. Russell Griswold Colt was better known as Ethel Barrymore, at the time the most famous actress in America. Ethel Barrymore was born on August 16, 1879, into theatrical royalty in Philadelphia. Her father was a well-known actor, the English-born Maurice Barrymore, and her mother a well- Ethel Barrymore - 1896 known actress, Georgiana Drew. Ethel's brothers, Lionel and John, became world-famous actors. Ethel was very close to her maternal grandmother, Louisa Lane Drew, one of the most famous actresses in 19th-century America. Ethel began acting professionally, in Philadelphia, at the age of thirteen. Her big break came when she was fifteen and had been introduced to the producer Charles Frohman by her maternal uncle John Drew, one of the leading stars of the day. After understudying on Broadway for Elsie de Wolfe (the actress who would later go on to a hugely successful career as an interior decorator), Ethel was chosen by Frohman for the role in the touring company. She first appeared on the stage in London in 1897, to immense acclaim. Something about Ethel struck a chord in the English, and she would thereafter enjoy tremendous popularity there. In England she dated the young Winston Churchill, who unsuccessfully sought her hand in marriage. (Ethel and Winston remained lifelong friends.) By 1900 she was as great a star as there was on the New York stage, and she enjoyed a spectacular run working for Charles Frohman until his death in 1915. In 1909 she married Russell G. Colt, a New York socialite, and the couple produced three children. It was not a great marriage (there was speculation that Colt was an abusive husband), and would end in divorce in 1923. By the time Mrs. Colt moved into 52 East 64th Street, she and her husband were not living together. (She had filed divorce papers as early as 1911.) She resided in the house with her three children. (It was Ethel Barrymore's only marriage.) During the time she lived at 52 East 64th Street, Ethel Barrymore appeared in three plays at the Empire Theatre on West 42nd Street: "The Lady of the Camellias" by Alexandre Dumas fils, "The Off Chance" by R.C. Carton, and "Belinda" by A.A. Milne. She would enjoy her greatest successes in 1919, in "Déclassé" by Zoë Akins, and in 1924 in "The Constant Wife" by W. Somerset Maugham. In 1928 the Shubert brothers built her own 1,000-seat theater, named the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, still going strong at 243 West 47th Street. She had made her first appearance in films in 1914, and appeared frequently in films in the 1930s. The 1932 "Rasputin and the Empress" marked the one and only time that Ethel, Lionel, and John Barrymore 52 East 64th: An Architectural History ever acted together professionally. In 1944 she won an Academy Award for best supporting actress for "None But the Lonely Heart." (She received further best supporting actress nominations for "The Spiral Staircase" in 1946, Alfred Hitchcock's "The Paradine Case" in 1947, and "Pinky" in 1949.) Although she had a successful career in Hollywood, most of her films were made after she turned fifty, and she was cast in supporting or "character" roles that left a generation of filmgoers unaware that she had been the leading lady of the New York stage and one of America's greatest and most emulated beauties when she was in her twenties and thirties. She died in Hollywood on June 18, 1959. (Her grand- Rasputin and the Empress movie poster - 1932 niece, Drew Barrymore, is a star of more recent years.) On June 14, 1919, Real Estate Record reported that Douglas L. Elliman & Co. had leased the house, furnished, to Oscar Cooper, president of the New York County National Bank. (That bank's headquarters was in the stately classical building still standing at 77 Eighth Avenue at 14th Street, built in 1906-07.) In 1936, an elevator was installed in the building, and a 1937 Certificate of Occupancy shows that the house had been divided into seven apartments: two in the basement, one each on floors one to three, and two on the fourth floor. In 1961, the two basement apartments were replaced by Dr. Lewis H. Berman's Park East Animal Hospital. Dr. Berman, according to a profile of him that appeared in the June 2012 issue of Town & Country, is veterinarian to the stars. Clients who have brought their pets to be examined by Dr. Berman at 52 East 64th Street include Jacqueline Onassis, Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Henry Fonda, Andy Warhol, Lauren Bacall, Tennessee Williams, John F. Kennedy Jr., and Ralph Lauren. The original house was likely not identical to No. 50 next door (built 1883-84), but no doubt bore enough similarities that we can get a sense of just what Sterner did to make the house new in 1916-17. For example, like No. 50, No. 52 would have been set well back from the lot line behind a high, wide stoop and a small front garden. Sterner greatly disliked traditional New York row house stoops. By removing the stoop of No. 52, he was able to extend the house front to the lot line, thus significantly 52 East 64th: An Architectural History increasing the square footage of the house's floor area (which had already been increased by Dr. Hirsch's 1901 rear addition). In place of the stoop, traditionally placed to the far left or far right side of the house front, Sterner created a "basement entrance," down a 52 East 64th Street facade couple of steps leading to the house's garden level (as opposed to the stoop entrance leading to the parlor floor). He placed the entrance dead center, between two piers with molded capitals. There are openings in the basement façade on the outer sides of the piers. Placed before these openings are stone planters holding topiary trees. We do not know if these were put there by Sterner, but they are very much the sort of thing he liked to do. Sterner replaced the brownstone front with one of a smooth white limestone. The windows retain a traditional feeling with their multi-pane sash, but all surrounding moldings have been removed, for a starker, more "modern" look. The house is topped off by a denticulated cornice and a balustrade. These are very similar to the ones on the house next door at No. 54, which was built in 1906-07 by the well- known architects Flagg & Chambers. It thus seems likely that Sterner sought to bring his house into harmony with that one, which is also built out to the lot line. Who was Frederick Sterner that he should take such liberties with a brownstone house? Not a lot is known of his early background. We know he was born in London in 1862, and at the age of 16 moved with his family to Chicago. There he went to work as an architect in the office of Frank E. Edbrooke. When Edbrooke left Chicago for the boom town of Denver, Colorado, Sterner went with him. Sterner was in the employ of Edbrooke when he designed the famous Brown Palace Hotel (1889- 92). After forming his own firm, Sterner designed some of the most notable buildings in Denver. These include the Denver Club (1889, demolished), the University Club (1895), the Denver Athletic Club (1899), and the Daniels and Fisher Tower (1910, once the tallest building in Denver).