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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (March 22, 1908)
THE SUNDAY OREGOXIAX, PORTLAND. MARCH 22,- .1908. w v Y0M 3 vn AS?3 HOW PieiLPON MORGAN ORG down a v.ii...iiiit'CTii''"'''yf:'ag,s OA " ' -V of Gotham and Jrinr;ru; i .iaun(jA. a oia nanan garden in the heart of New York City Is done. He tore down a $000, EHfO house to make room for it. His VjOO.OOO art gallery is ready for his priceless London collection of art . ob jects tobe housed in it. On its site stood two yisn.rtno city mansions only, a few months ago. Now Mr. if organ has his eye on more of the adjoining property; he lias set Ufa heart on having a private varlt lu the iPeT of the great city, where land Tor residence purposes is worth thousands oT dollars a front foot. New York Isn't at all surprised at these, ambitious plans ambitious even for this master of finance. The great block of high-priced land on Madison avenue be tween Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh streets, now' dominated by Mr. Morgan, Is only one of a dozen similar ones in New York. The average. New Yorker wouldn't turn his head at passing the block; it is an even chance that . he wouldn't know the . great house and its art gallery were Mr. Morgan's. He is used to these ways of millionaires. Dozens of them have done it before. Others are doing it today. More will do it tomorrow. New York is fast turning into a city of palaces and tenements. It is becoming a city rebuilt. It can't spread Man hattan Inland is already completely built up. Modest brown stone houses give way to palaces of stone and marble, and w hen a $100,000 house . goes down a $l,0").00o one goes up. . So when Mr. Pittsburg or Mr. Chicago wants his Murray Hill Mansion in New York, or Mr. Knickerbocker thinks his quarters are cramped, lie doesn't build on some new lot, he tears down a few houses to get room. Think of it, a city where, a man whose income is $T000 a year cannot live in a whole house! A city where even $10,000 men must dwell in flats with their wives and children! What becomes of them? gome journey to uttermost Harlem or darkest Brook lyn: but the great majority join the vast army of commuters, forced out of the city because the demand for land is so great that they cannot live in New York. It is only the very rich who can pay the price. A whole block of Fifth avenue front age, consisting of a half a dozen brown- tone homes, went to make the Cor nelius Vanderbllt. Sr.. home. The Astors took a half block just north of them: Andrew Carnegie has a block frontage higher up; C. M. Schwab took an entire block on Riverside Drive at Seventy-third street, and so it runs. George Gould has demolished his $:00.000 Gothic home at Fifth avenue and Sixty-seventh street to build a $1,000,000 one after the French style of architecture. William C. Whitney tore a $.'00.000 mansion Inside out to put in $;:. 000.000 worth of interior decoration, only to die soon after it was done. James Henry Smith, who inherited $50,000,000 from a rcciuse uncle, bought it for 9.000.000, to die in his turn. Senator Clark, of Montana has just completed his $5,000,000 palace at Fifth avenue and Seventy-sixth street, tearing down two flve-story houses. It is built with a separate entrance for the public, who Are to be admitted to the sumptious art galleries. And so it runs countless instances might be Riven of other New York pal ares where from two to. ten homes have been sacrificed to satisfy the re quirements of one millionaire. Ficrpont Morgan's Palace. Not many months ago three great brownatone mansions occupied the Madison-avenue block between Thirty sitli and Thirty-seventh streets. The northerly one was Anson Phelps Stoke's. the center one was the W. Karle Dodge home, and the southerly one was Mr. Morgan's. All three were of the old-fashioned brownstone type, with big windows and rather gloomy exteriors. Each had a tio-foot front age, and there was plenty of air space Itetween the three houses, all being de tached nd separated by gardens. But Mr. Morgan was making plans to extend. Back of him on Thirty ixth street was the five-story brown stone home of William Salmon. No. 35. Hiid adjoining it. at No. 37, the home of .iHines H. Dunham. Mr. Morgan bid $150,000 apiece for the houses, tore them down, and today on their site ntnd his $ri00.000 art gallery of pink ish gray Tennessee marble, with a frontage of 115 feet on Thirty-sixth a,1 ; It was ill this superb pile. Other "Astonishing Extravagances crowded with the treasures of Europe, that Mr. Morgan received the moneyed men of New York when the financial fabric was tottering only such a little while ago. But this regal addition to his man sion wasn't enough for Mr. Morgan. He bought the Dodge home, next door on Madison avenue. In due season he tore it down. Today on its site is a severely classic Italian garden, with an antique fountain in its center. Some day he hopes to own the whole block frontage, but the Stokes family is very rich, too. and loves its old Madison avenue home too much to sell just yet. In some of the tenement districts 3000 souls hive on a plot of ground no larger than the one where Mr. Morgan dwells in solitary state. George Gould's Problem. George Gould found a different prob lem confronting him when his growing family of boys and girls needed more room than his great $500,000 double mansion could afford. His neighbors along that section of Fifth avenue which fronts Central Park, hadn't the slightest idea of giving way to Mr. Gould. If he wanted to get more room for his house he would have to build up in the air; he couldn't possibly spread out sideways. So Mr. Gould gave his orders to the architects. They have designed for the original site a seven-story palace of granite and Indiana limestone. The splendid house which bis father, the late Jay Gould, gave him, has been razed to the ground, and today the new house fast, going up. Nothing that taste can suggest or money buy has been omitted. There is a passenger elevator, a moving staircase, a freight lift, an electric laundry, a private ice plant, and a huge swimming pool, 35 by 60 feet. It will be completed in a year, at a cost of $1,000,000, which does not in clude the land or the furnishings. Two floors in this newest New York palace will be for entertaining. The main entrance on Sixty-seventh street leads into a great hall of majestic pro portions. Here will be a small reception room, library dining-room and foyer. The second floor is arranged to be thrown all together. Here is the large foyer hall, .ru feet long. 25 feet wide and 35 feet high. On the right is the ballroom; on the left the salon. The third floor is for Mr. and Mrs. Gould, and also has two guest chambers. The fourth floor is for the children and has three baths.. The fifth floor contains 11 rooms for servants. In the basement are the kitchen and laundries, pantries, storerooms and the like and in the cellar the winerooms, trunk rooms and the pool. The Vanderbilts' Homes. For three decades the great twin brown stone Vanderbilt mansions diagonally across . from Saint Patrick's Cathedral, taking up the entire Fifth avenue front age between Fifty-first street and Fifty second street, have been familiar land marks. Across Fifty-second street is the $1,000,000 city chateau of W. K. Vander bllt, Sr., a superb pile of white stone de signed by the late R. M. Hunt. Two brown stone houses to the north of it have gone down to make way for a sec ond mansion for the son, W. K. Vander bilt, Jr., of similar material and design. This one family, therefore, now has a block and a half frontage on Fifth ave nue, probably the most costly length of family homesites in the world, certainly in this country, as well as the longest. Today, however, Pittsburg has a foot htild there. Henry C. Frick has leased the southerly house. George W. Vanderbilt's, for $100,000 a year, for ten years a mil lion for a home, not In purchase price, but in rent alone! Farther up the avenue is another great mansion of red brick and light Bedford stone a whole block frontage. It Is one Vanderbilt home. Here dwells the widow of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Here, only a few weeks aso. Miss Gladys Van derbilt, the only unmarried child, became the Countess Szechenyi. It is modeled after the famous Chateau de Bois. near Paris. A towering iron fence shuts it in, and the garden where once stood three brown stone homes. It cost $2,500,000. The Twomblys and Webbs have a half block frontage between them, at , Fifty fourth street, and the F. W. Vander bilts another half block at Fortieth street three and a half blocks frontage for all this one family on the costliest street in the world. When Senator Clark allows the public to enter his towered new palace at Seventy-sixth street and Fifth avenue, V? I PfMMki -iff? f! !tlSl?l 1 M Z t'fl Mi feSti' The twin Astor mansions at Fifth "FTjEJi J IT rB -l j" p" ,. i g i "X" avenue and Sixty-fourth street have !it'i ' I 4 -riPlfi L C t?5? - 'JSL.- i'3 'Sf'l one remarkable peculiarity. There is f.. rS t f . ff A " -fl?' W it X i f "V f I JV no provision made for visitors afoot. if I I f": i , If' 11 - ; I I "1 -Siis.'i, The front door opelis on the carriage nil ll "J, - 14 J fL . fLA ! l ll 1 x, If ' y- L " ja jFt sL way, and unless you drive up you must As-i H ML ! - i - 7" -v I - 1 1 9 " - f 'J I'V" I'JV Pick your way in among the carriages i',ei ' -jffU -IsSgSL-.- f and horses there is no footpath to ; s. T frtcrt oZ3 ywbji f-l''g&aa2 , II the front door. But then anyone wiio l4,y!SiSrwnS' fTjTf --ige' may call on the Astors is supposed ko "lX!iTf l-2.3hF 3 have a carriage, and there Is an en- 'tjHi f f-:H" I trance for others at the back. JE5 -.'"i-a I g'V''4"'?,fc.w&'' """U'"rS Z!hzzz '"' 'lMai ' Further, though the houses look as W't f??f-" jr"'ilKi",.!!'' -rySfr lr ?Sn5Jjl&J on- th?y are absolutely separate es- fiJMJF """ySl tablishments. one occupied by Mrs. x tJ HSl T - - f g William Astor. social arbiter of New - -a:T' x,rk s,oc'e,ty rd ihf ?ther h76 k son- ' - . miiii tmiiSL-J wwa88'5SSssva ll Colonel John Jacob Astor, and hts beau- I . 1 , -I I tlful wife and two children. j ' '1smiygrltKI ' The sreat gallery in- the rear con- J&XATOA. TVZLLTAM-Ji.. CLARK'S 1 9j-occ. If G! ' X5 l It will be worth while to drop in, no mat ter who you are or what you have seen. It will be a revelation in luxury, a marvel of money's magic. It is not as large as the Vanderbilt bouses, nor the houses of the Astors. Mr. Schwab or Mr. Carnegie, but it cost more. Before Senator Clark sets foot in it he will have paid out $5,000,000. It isn't ready yet., though work lias been going on ten years. The hair of ' Washington Hull, the architect, wTas brown when -he started: it is gray now. so many perplex ities have confronted him. Beside the original Fifth avenue lot. Senator Clark bought four adjoining houses. Three in Seventy-seventh street and one on Fifth avenue, for a site. Then started the great pile. Kleven stories high, including basement and towers it looks more like an institution than a home. All sorts of difficulties beset the-work. Money set them aside. Rather than be bled by contractors; Senator Clark bought six different plants to supply material a granite quarry at North Jay, Me.; a stone finishing plant at Bangor. Me.; a marble factory at Ravens wood, L. I.; a woodworking factory at Ravenswood. and a bronze foundry in New York City. Bronze is everywhere in the "white granite structure. The roof and most of the tower is bronze; so is the plumb ing, the window casings and sashfngs. and the balcanies. Today the bronze factory pays a profit, for Senator Clark has un derbid the contractors who wanted to bleed him, and does outside work. Hie work Took the grand prize at St, Louis, where it was exhibited. The whole interior is a mass of sculp ture, modeled by Philip Martiny. the famous artist and carved by the most expert workmen obtainable. The enor mous entrance hall and winding staircase is of ivory-tinted marble, in pure classic carving. The ceilings are of quartered oak overlaid with gold leaf to show the grain. On the ground floor are reception rooms, offices. billiard and - smoking rooms,, all in mahogany, Caucassion wal nut or English oak. There are entrances to the ground floor the private-one to the main hall: one for carriages through a great gate in the arch under the oval conservatory, and one to the court through great bronz :l JVLLL -JiOQrl " it ' ' ' gates in the rear. A carriage on enter- tains the famous Astor collection of ing discharges its passengers in the J paintings and also serves as a ball middle of the house at the main hall i room. When either Mrs. Astor enter- door, goes on through the court past the marble fountains, and turning three sides of a square passes out into the street again by the big gate. A large auto mobile storage-room connects with this interior driveway. The faience gallery has an entrance from the court in the rear so that the public may enter with out disturbing the household. The second floor Is the glory of this new world palace. Ascending the marble staircase one reaches a long hall of Maryland marble, with panels of (splendid 1 in old tapestries under ceilings of white Caen stone. This leads to the grand saloon facing Fifth avenue in Louis XVI style. All - the woodwork- was stripped from an old French palace and brought here. The walls are grey and gold, with gilded pilasters and magnificently painted panels. Adjoining is an elliptical saloon taken bodily from the Hotel Soubise, In Paris. Behind this Is a beautifuL morning-room furnished with four superb tapestries by Benchor typifying Earth, Fire and Water. Under the tower is the circular sculp ture hall with a dometf ceilinjf. all in ivory marble, with supporting pillars. Next the conservatory in pink marble. The dining-room is of English oak with an elaborately-carved stone frieze repre senting hunting and sporting scenes. The ceiling is also of oak, gilded. The principal art gallery has a wain scot of Istrian marble with a carved oak ceiling supported by 12 pillars of polished Cipolino - marble. Upstairs are the living rooms, all wonders of luxury and magnificence. There is a secondary staircase, in Caen stone from top to bottom. Thirty bathrooms are part of the palace's equipment. And a great swimming jjool in . the basement lined with Carrara glass. The ceilings are of mosaic and the floor of marble. The main elevator is fitted up as a huge Sedan chair of the Louis XVI period. Besides, there is an elaborate system of dumb waiters connecting the kitchen and service-room with all the floors. There is an electric light plant with power for 8500 bulbs, big: and little; a laundry run by electricity, storage and packing-room for objects of art; refrig erating plant, wine cellars, safe-deposit vault, and two roof gardens. No Emperor - of bygone days ever dreamed of such luxury! 1 Charles M. Schwab has today the largest single, home site in New York City. He owns the entire block bound ed by West End avenue. Riverside Drive, Seventy-third and Seventy fourth streets, and on this great plot he has erected a. splendid $2,500,000 turreted chateau in the renaissance style, which looks out upon the lordly Hudson. There he dwells for ' brief periods of the year in lonesome isola tion, for the Schwabs have no children. It is understood that at their death the great place will be turned into an in stitution housing: some charity. Where the Astors Ijlve. tains the homes are thrown into one. This can be easily done, because both houses open into the great gallery. These dwellings typify quiet ele gance and the possession of wealth for generations. The main halls in stone are two stories high, surrounded with galleries. Heavy rugs and tapestries take away the chill of the stone. Lrawing rooms and dining car are rich, but in the perfect taste for which the Astors are noted. The great brownstone at- Fifth ave- nue and Sixtyeighth street, which now belongs to James henry Smith's widow, lias had many vicissitudes. It v. as originally built by llobcrt I... Stuart, but was sold by him to Amzi L. Kar ber in IS 95, before it was completed. Two years later William C. Whitney bought it for $650,000. . The late Stan ford White, for whose death Harry K. Thaw is now in Matteawan Asylum for the Criminal Insane, put his senilis i.ito the house and Mr.' Whitney ex pended $3,500,000. Kvery toom rvHs treated according: to a single idea. lOu rope was ransacked for its choicest treasures. Famous old churches, cas tles, pa'aces and monasteries contrib uted to the interior. Art lovers say the main entrance hall is the noblest picture in New York. Kn t ranee is through great iron and bronze gates from the Doria Palace in llaly Another old stone gateway comes from Florence. At the head of the hall is a heavily carved mantel from a Florentine palace and in front of, it stands a huge black oak table, which for centuries stood in an Italian monastery. The mas sive marble staircase came bodily from a. Venetian palace; the entire carved wooden ceiling from a Genoese palace, where it had been placed centuries be fore. . t As one stands in the hall and looks back on the entrance, staircase and balustrade, he faces a colonnade of Ievantine marble, tho Italian . marbln doorways and a beautiful arrangement of stained glass which forms the front of the room. This was once a part of a chapel in the palace of the "Viscount Sauze In the South of France. At the .head of the massive staircase is the grand hall 36 by 35 feet, the floor of mosaic made of marble brought from Greece, Italy and Africa. Some 10,ion pieces of brass were used in laying this floor alone. The walls are of Istrian marble; the ceiling of carved Florentine woodwork. From the grand hall a corridor leads to a great music room.. 60 feet long and 30 feet high. Once it was a room in the, castle of Phoehus d'Albert. Baron " or Tours, a chevalier in the time of Louis XIV. From the castle the room was transported bodily to Paris in the time of Iouis Philippe: Then Mr. Whitney bought it and again it was removed. The room is of richly carved panels of oak gilt; thetceillng is decorated with a huge painting and splendid tapestries hang the waMs. Library, salon and diningroom are similarly treated, all fitted with dec orations which once were in houses abroad. Ir. Whitney died soon after his home was finished and Mr. Smith bought it, only to die while in Japan on his honey moon, fiow it . is said that Harry Payne Wrhitney wants to buy back the home hia father loved so well. Carnegie's Homelike Home. Three-quarters of a mile up Fifth ave nue past the more modest marble or stone homes of men who can only reckon their millions in one figure, one pauses with a start at the block between Nine tieth and Ninety-first streets, guarded fence of Iron palings and brick columns, surmounted with great stone urns. Set in gardens decked with flowers, lawns, terraces, shrubbery and trees it is a country estate on a city street the hum of Andrew Carnegie, and a wondrous place it is. It is in the Isth century English style, built of red brick and In dian limestone. It is stc 'es high, 70 feet wide and ISO feet deep. It is the most "homey" looking millionaires house in all New York. And what is quite re markable, it hasn't any ballroom! "This will be a home, not a show place." were Mr. Carnegie's orders to his archi tects, so there isn't any ballroom ur private theater or any other apartments for social functions and the drawing- (Concluded on Pag, 11.)
