Sketching Henderson Place: Upper East Side
Gracie Square and nearby Gracie Terrace and mayoral residence Gracie Mansion are named for Scottish shipping entrepreneur Archibald Gracie (1755-1829) who purchased land at what was called Horn’s Hook after the Revolutionary War and built Gracie Mansion there in 1799. He received guests such as President John Quincy Adams and French monarch Louis Philippe. Gracie sold his estate in 1823 and it was acquired by New York City in 1891; its 11 acres were incorporated into Carl Schurz Park. Fiorello LaGuardia was the first NYC mayor to use it as a residence when he and his family moved in in 1942.
Carl Schurz Park, between East End Ave., the FDR Dr. and E. 84th and 90th Sts., is named for a mid-19th century German immigrant (1829-1906) who became a U.S. Senator from Missouri (1869-1875), Rutherford Hayes’ Secretary of the Interior (1877-81), editor of the New York Tribune and Harper’s Weekly. A statue of Schurz can be found at Morningside Dr. and E. 116th St., and a lengthy avenue in Throgs Neck, Bronx, also commemorates him. Nearby Yorkville was heavily German in the past, and the park celebrates one of their own. His most famous quote was: “Our country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.”
Manhattan and much of Brooklyn, unlike other older east coast cities like Boston, Philadelphia and even Newark and Jersey City, don’t have much in the way of dead ends and alleys. Records and older maps show that downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn had had lots of them in the past, but real estate’s valuable in a concentrated area and many of these odd lanes have been de-mapped and then built over.
No such threat exists for Henderson Pl., on E. 86th St. between York and East End Aves. Henderson Pl. is its very own Landmark District. The alley, and parts of E. 86th and 87th Sts. and East End Ave., are home to 24 row houses of the eclectic Queen Anne style built in 1883 by the firm of Lamb & Rich (who also built Sagamore Hill, Teddy Roosevelt’s Oyster Bay home) for developer John Henderson that’re dwarfed by the high-rise apartment houses that are more typical of the area. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, the husband-and-wife acting couple, lived on Henderson Pl. for years. The houses rented for just $650 in 1883.
Henderson Pl. was built as a development for persons “of modest means” but has become much more expensive in subsequent decades. In the mid-2000s, a Henderson Pl. house would cost in the seven figures.
Only the east side of Henderson Pl. itself has retained the original brick dwellings; a high-rise apartment was built, replacing the homes on the west side, before the whole district could be landmarked.
From the Henderson Place Landmarks Designation Report: “The group of contiguous dwellings constituting the Henderson Place Historic District was designed with the characteristics of the Elizabethan manor house combined with Flemish and classic detail in a style developed in England between 1870 and 1910, principally by Norman Shaw. He was a scholarly architect who wanted to evolve a comfortable and romantic domestic style. For reasons that had little to do with the good queen, who reigned from 1702 to 1714, this late 19th Century style became popularly known as ‘Queen Anne.’”
Above is #8 Henderson Pl. at right. The LPC report believes it was altered from its original appearance. The buildings all have different window treatments, square and arched, different entrances and different dormer treatments. A different philosophy from today’s cookie-cutter methods.
In a part of town I explore sparingly it’s fun to find massive edifices with long histories of which I was previously unaware, such as the massive, French Gothic Church of the Holy Trinity, #136-332 East 88th, designed by Barney & Chapman and built as a complex with its parish house from 1896-1899. It’s hard to get a complete exterior photo since it is set back from the street and fronted by street trees. A plaque gives a succinct history: but the plot was previously in the Rhinelander family since 1798, hence that date on the cornerstone. Serena Rhinelander donated the land in honor of her father and grandfather, with the congregation moving from its original location here in 1899.
The church is Episcopalian (Anglican). I think that the most consistently gorgeous church buildings are created by the Episcopalians and Roman Catholics, though there are other great houses of worship in other Judeo-Christian and Muslim denominations. Read its detailed history on this page.
The joyously Beaux Arts #7 East 88th Street, partially covered by scaffolding, was built in 1902 as three separate residences. In 1905, #7 was purchased by distinguished attorney James C. Carter, who promptly fell ill and died nine months after moving in at 77. It was then purchased by Edward Charles Schaefer, president of the Germania Bank (a graffiti-scarred former Germania Bank branch at the Bowery and Bleecker St. was the home of photographer Albert Maysles and his family for years).
Next door, on 5th Ave., is the postmodern Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 5th Ave. and E. 88th St., but that’s a matter of preference. The spiral-shaped building is the only major building in Manhattan designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright’s other building in the five boroughs is Crimson Beech, a ranch house on Lighthouse Hill in Staten Island. Both buildings were completed in 1959 and Wright didn’t live to see the completion of either. Wright’s my favorite architect. More than a decade ago I visited the museum but made a mistake, seeing the exhibits from the bottom floor to the top. That’s all on an uphill ramp and by the time I got to the top floor my legs were tired!
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)