Category: Site updates

Version 6.2 of the list (pdf) includes several new attributions, including a tentative identification of the Thomas House at 72 Union Avenue in Saratoga Springs. It appears to have been built for George West, Jr. in 1903 and was used for a number of years as the Skidmore College administration building:

72 Union Avenue

The house was put up for sale in 2009, and there is a video showing a few interiors:

72 Union Avenue

The house was apparently owned for some time by Mary Harrison McKee, daughter of former president Benjamin Harrison.

Other new identifications will be posted this week. Updates on the Butler Manor situation will be posted as information comes in.

The list (pdf) is up to about 685 projects, including those of related firms.

The firm’s records describe one 1897 project simply as “Brighton Pier.” This is now being interpreted to refer not to a pier in Brighton but to a project for the Brighton Pier & Navigation Co., the ferry operator and builder of the 1880s New Iron Pier at Coney Island.

It is speculated that George Tangeman’s 1900 commission likely refers to the completion or modification of Dr. Cornelius N. Hoagland’s house on Fresh Pond Avenue, Glen Cove (1896, C.P.H. Gilbert).

Information is being sought regarding Brooklyn sugar baron William Dick and his 1880s house at Islip, “Allen Winden.”

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

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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.]