madisonavenue

Street sign in center indicates this as the intersection of Madison Avenue with E 50th Street. In the Historical American Buildings Survey, this is listed as Villard Houses, 451-457 Madison Avenue & 24 East Fifty-first Street, New York, New York County, NY. See memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/hh:@field(DOCID+@lit(NY....

Now part of the vulgar New York Palace Hotel.

Hi swang: thanks for pointing out the address in the Historical American Buildings Survey (HABS) record. It does look like the address in the HABS record is incorrect. It should say 451-457 Madison Avenue. Henry Villard erected these houses hence the name Villard Houses. Whitelaw Reid was one of its residents.

Hi, I'm an admin for a group called American /Italian Renaissance Architecture, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

It's hard to imagine Madison Avenue being this quiet during the day. Maybe then it was a posh residential district.

Looks like the date is with the title on the left, 10/9/14

I like the "drunk catcher" on the front.

Congratulations!
This is a wonderful shot!
You are invited to post it to:


artland

hi

snapshot

Note the correction by Caesar 1956 in a comment below. I'll leave my comment unchanged, for the record, but the house in this photo is not the former Phelps house. Also note that the photos BobMeade linked to below do depict the former Phelps house, not the house in this photo. Original comment: This Italianate brownstone house at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and 37th Street in Manhattan was built in 1853 for Isaac N. Phelps of Phelps, Dodge & Company. The house was purchased by financier J.P. Morgan in 1904, as a home for his son J.P. Jr., but the property passed out of the family's ownership in 1945. In 1988, the house was purchased by the adjacent Morgan Library & Museum, and it has since been incorporated into that institution's campus. The former dining room is now one of the institution's dining facilities, called appropriately enough the Morgan Dining Room. Two other restored rooms on the ground floor now house the Morgan Shop. The Morgan Library & Museum web site.

Also good views here: www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2909004621/ www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/3239313168/ In both cases it is described as the home of J. P. Morgan, Jr.

This is J. Pierpont Morgan's House on the northeast corner of 219 Madison Avenue and E. 36th St. It was the first private residence in the city to be lighted by electricity. See digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?712325F. The address here says Park Avenue and 36th which is incorrect. Morgan Sr. lived here from 1880 to 1913, it was torn down in 1928. The house that Phelps built (copper mining tycoon) was the southeast corner of 229-231 Madison Avenue and E. 37th St. (J.P'Jack' Morgan Jr.'s house) which had in 1904, 45 rooms, 22 fireplaces and 12 bathrooms. The two houses and the Morgan Library were connected by underground passageways.

Hei! I am so impressed with your pic ;) Have a nice day ^.^

Actually, I think you were both right. It's my understanding that all three freestanding brownstone houses on that side of Madison Avenue between 36th and 37th were built by the Phelps family, and at first they were identical to each other. All three were remodeled to varying degrees over the years, but they were clearly built using the same basic plans and materials The New York Times archives has photos of the deconstruction of the middle house - which at that time was generally known as the Dodge Mansion - and by viewing the three buildings together, their similarities become very obvious. The first thing Morgan Senior did after buying his own house was to move the entrance stoop. The front doors of all three homes were originally located on Madison Ave, but Morgan replaced his home's original stoop with the large rounded bay (that's seen in the above photo) and placed this new entrance on 36th St.. He also hired the Herter Brothers to remodel and redecorate the interiors. The Dodge Mansion, at the time of its demolition at least, had a central entrance with rounded bays on either side of it, and the various changes made to Jack Morgan's house on the corner of 37th St. are pretty easy to spot when comparing it to his father's original house. I assume they're probably calling this the "MRS. J.P. Morgan House" because the picture above was taken after Morgan's death in 1913 but while Fanny Morgan was still using the place as her city residence. She really preferred their country place, Cragston, but nobody in the Morgan's set would think of living in the country year-round, not in those days.