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W.L. Vandewirt of Oyster Bay

Before the house at Sagamore Hill, Lamb & Rich designed a frame house and stable in Oyster Bay for “Mr. W.L. Vandewirt.”[1] This name appears nowhere else and is very likely a misspelling, possibly an egregious one (the American Architect turned Talbot J. Taylor into “Albert J. Talbot”).

It seems possible that Roosevelt heard about the firm through a neighbor. One wonders whether there is a Long Island historian who knows Mr. Vandewirt’s true identity…

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[1] “Summary of the Week,” The American Architect and Building News 11:338 (17 June 1882), 289.

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Who was Lorenzo B. Wheeler?

What did he look like? What did the “B.” stand for?

The mystery man deserves his own book. He is probably more interesting to historians of modern architecture and Victorian America than either Hugh Lamb or Charles Rich.

Wheeler grew up in Danbury and moved to Newark in the 1870s. The best obituary claims that he studied under the great William Halsey Wood, which is possible, although the two were about the same age. Wheeler joined up with Lamb around 1877 and went solo in 1881. In 1883 he began a wide-spread series of mostly Flemo-Moorish buildings from offices (most successive, some concurrent) in New York; Atlanta; Decatur, Alabama; Memphis; allegedly Washington, D.C.; and St. Louis.

There is some confusion out there regarding Wheeler’s firms in St. Louis. He was the “Wheeler” in Wheeler & McClure of that city. Partner Craig McClure’s previous firm was Fuller & Wheeler of Albany, which was founded by William Arthur Wheeler and has no connection to the peripatetic Lorenzo.

Wheeler is credited with bringing the practice of interior design, if not Taste itself, to the city of Atlanta. He died at his brother’s house in Danbury in 1899.

[Update 01.09.2011: A good guess for Wheeler’s middle name would be Birdsall.]

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New version of catalog — Henderson Place updated

The list (pdf) now numbers the houses of Henderson Place correctly.



View Larger Map

Henderson Place


The big project for John C. Henderson is always confusing, partly because eight of its houses have been demolished and others have been combined. Still, it is not clear that the historic district nomination got it right when it said there were originally thirty-two houses. The three building permits are for twelve, twelve, and six houses, a total of thirty, and the Sanborn maps of a few years later show only thirty houses (although one of them is given two numbers: 1 Henderson Place and 543 East 86th). The division of Henderson’s property following his death sets out these same thirty houses. To make matters worse, Charles Rich said or wrote in at least two places that there were forty houses. There is a gap on 87th where Henderson might have wanted to put houses, but that site couldn’t have held more than six of them.

Other new information:

  • The First National Bank of Sheffield, Alabama and other Wheeler projects.
  • A 1921 addition to the New Woodruff Hotel in Watertown, N.Y.
  • Houses of 1890 and 1908 for Elmer T. Butler on Staten Island. Thanks to those working to preserve the surviving second house, now the Staten Island Montessori School, for generously sharing information about this historic mansion.
  • A grand 1893 mansion (summer cottage) for Harley T. Procter, of Procter & Gamble, in Williamstown, Mass. This one was solved thanks to the detective work of the readers of Ephblog.
  • George Koyl’s design for the Woman’s Club of Ridgewood.

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[Update 11.10.2012: Broken link to school fixed, broken link to Ephblog removed.]

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Researching the architectural history of New York

While the Office for Metropolitan History has — fabulously — made Manhattan new building application information available through a database covering the years from 1900 to 1986, the building permits of the nineteenth century represent a larger project that is yet to be undertaken.

It turns out that the Internet Archive is hosting scanned and searchable copies of the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide from 1879 to 1922, each reporting new buildings, alterations, purchases, mortgages, and other transactions in detail. Searching for this journal returns a list of volumes available in pdf and other formats. The one unnumbered volume is 73 (1904), and volumes 26, 28, 30, 38, and 46 appear to be unavailable. Of those, volume 28 (second half of 1881) is available from Google Books.

[Update 12.31.2009: This information reposted from Dartmo.com.]

[Update 05.31.2010: A favorite way to search for specific individual or address is by using Columbia’s copies of the Record & Guide. Type this into Google to learn about 101 West 97th: 

"97th st., no. 101" "real estate record" site:www.columbia.edu

The address takes some fiddling to account for boundary-based descriptions and OCR misspellings: 

97th st., s s

should narrow things down. Also try 

97th street, no. 101

and 

101 west 97th

Google ignores the punctuation and line breaks. Most programs’ “find” commands do not ignore these features, so searching the Record & Guide via Google will turn up information that would be missed in a search of only the text files or the pdf downloads.]

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[Update 11.10.2012: Broken link to search page below fixed.]
[Update 04.10.2011: This post notes that the Avery Library’s search page is now up.]

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Pseudonyms in William I. Russell’s autobiography

One of the main sources of information on the early days of the Romantic suburb of Short Hills, New Jersey is William Ingraham Russell’s gossipy book The Romance and Tragedy of a Widely Known Business Man of New York. It appears to have been self-published in at least three editions through 1913 as Russell added postscripts. No one yet seems to have tried to figure out the pseudonyms he used for his neighbors in the early 1880s:

  • “Frank Slater” is Franklin H. Tinker
  • “Charlie Wood” is Charles Towner Root
  • “George Lawton” is George M.S. Horton
  • “Charlie Fiske” is Charles Alonzo Rich
  • “Walter E. Stowe” is William Ingraham Russell
  • “Knollwood” is Short Hills
  • Ingraham’s trade paper is American Metal Market
  • “A. * * S. * * * & Co.” is Arthur Strauss & Co.
  • “Mr. Mallison” might be Mr. Allison, since it appears that way once
  • “A gentleman of wealth” is Stewart Hartshorn

House names (“Redstone,” “Sunnyside”) are unchanged, as are place names and addresses outside of Short Hills. “Edward ‘Ned’ Banford,” “William Curtice,” “George Todd,” “Albert Caine,” and “Mr. Viedler” will require more work. (Is “Mr. Viedler” George Vietor?) The Banfords rented 39 Knollwood Road and the Todds rented 1 Park Place around 1893, so it should be possible to identify them.

[Update 12.31.2009: This information reposted from Dartmo.com.]

[Update 08.27.2010: More pseudonyms puzzled out.]

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Building information added – Vietor in Rumson

New information has been added to the catalog for:

  • Remodeling of Olivia Young House, Bellport, L.I., N.Y.
  • George F. Vietor House, Rumson, N.J.

[Update 12.31.2009.  This information moved to this blog from static web page at http://www.dartmo.com/lambandrich/index.html.]