Villard Houses
The Villard Houses are a set of former residences on Madison Avenue, between 50th and 51st streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, United States. Designed by the architect Joseph Morrill Wells of McKim, Mead & White in the Renaissance Revival style, the residences were erected in 1884 for Henry Villard, the president of the Northern Pacific Railway. Since 1980, the houses have been part of the Lotte New York Palace Hotel, the main tower of which is to the east.
The building comprises six residences in a U-shaped plan, located at 50th Street, 24–26 East 51st Street, and 451–457 Madison Avenue. Wings to the north, east, and south surround a courtyard facing the avenue. The facade is made of brownstone, and each house consists of a raised basement, three stories, and an attic. Among the artists who worked on the interiors were art-glass manufacturer John La Farge, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and painter Maitland Armstrong. Some of the more elaborate spaces, such as the Gold Room, the dining room, and the reception area in the south wing of the complex, still exist.
Villard bought the land in 1881 and commissioned the houses shortly before he went bankrupt. The residences were resold multiple times through the mid-20th century; the Fahnestock and Reid families owned five of the houses by the 1920s. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York acquired much of the complex in the late 1940s, and it bought the northernmost residence at 457 Madison Avenue from Random House in 1971. The houses were restored when the Helmsley Palace Hotel was built from 1978 to 1980. The north wing was converted into an office for the Municipal Art Society, a preservation group, which occupied that space until 2010. Other parts of the interior were converted into event spaces for the hotel.
When the houses were completed, wealthy New Yorkers considered the buildings' design to be restrained compared with other mansions. The houses continued to receive architectural commentary through the 20th century, with observers such as Ada Louise Huxtable praising their design. The residences are New York City designated landmarks and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Site
The Villard Houses are in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, United States, located on a site bounded by Madison Avenue to the west, 51st Street to the north, and 50th Street to the south. The residences are spread across two land lots. The rectangular land lot under the northern residence, at 457 Madison Avenue, has a frontage of on Madison Avenue and on 51st Street, and it covers about. The rest of the residences occupy part of a second land lot, which is shared with the Lotte New York Palace Hotel immediately to the east. The L-shaped lot has a frontage of on Madison Avenue and on 50th Street, and it covers. Nearby buildings include Olympic Tower, 11 East 51st Street, and 488 Madison Avenue to the northwest; St. Patrick's Cathedral to the west; and 18 East 50th Street and the Swiss Bank Tower to the southwest.History
Development
Planning
The houses were commissioned by Henry Villard, the president of the Northern Pacific Railway. After immigrating to the U.S. as a young man, Villard worked as a journalist and later took over several railroad companies in the 1870s. Villard wanted a building that resembled palaces in his native Bavaria. In April 1881, Villard bought a plot on the east side of Madison Avenue between 50th and 51st streets from the trustees of St. Patrick's Cathedral. The site was wide and either or deep. The Park Avenue railroad line ran directly east of the site, and there was also an orphanage to the north, St. Patrick's Cathedral to the west, and the Columbia College campus to the south. The land itself was occupied by the Church of St. John the Evangelist, which had been abandoned in 1879 and subsequently sold to a colonel named J. Augustus Page. Villard paid $260,000 for the land after St. Patrick's trustees declined a higher offer from another potential buyer who wanted to build an entertainment venue there.Charles Follen McKim was hired to design a group of houses for Villard, arranged around a courtyard with a fountain and garden. Villard had previously hired the firm to design other buildings; in addition, McKim was one of Villard's family friends, and Villard's brother-in-law was married to McKim's sister. The Real Estate Record and Guide speculated that the mansions were arranged to "secure privacy and get rid of tramps, and to live in a quiet and secluded way", similar to dwellings in the suburbs of London and Paris. Villard also wanted a landscaped garden east of the houses, but this was never added to the official plans. He planned to move into one of the houses and rent the remaining residences to his friends. The writer Elizabeth Hawes wrote that, by doing so, Villard wanted to create "a pleasant neighborhood unit" that positively impacted future urban developments. A later New York Times article said that Villard had planned the entire complex as his own residence, but he was obligated to split it into multiple smaller units when his wealth declined.
Details of the design were revised through late 1881, when McKim temporarily left New York City to work on a railroad terminal for Villard in Portland, Oregon. The job was reassigned to Stanford White, who, after a short time, left the city to visit his brother in New Mexico. White reassigned his projects to various junior architects in his office, and Joseph Morrill Wells agreed to take over the design of the Villard Houses from the firm's remaining partner, William Rutherford Mead. According to the historian Leland M. Roth, one account had it that McKim and White had "immediately advocates of Renaissance classicism" upon returning and seeing the updated plans. Roth wrote that McKim and White were probably responsible for the general style of the facade, although Wells was definitely responsible for the architectural details. Villard wanted to use brownstone rather than another material such as limestone. White's original architectural drawings for the project no longer exist.
Early construction
Workers were excavating the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and 50th Street by November 1881. The contractors drilled down until they had exposed the underlying layer of bedrock, since Villard did not want to damage Columbia College's buildings nearby. In May 1882, McKim, Mead & White submitted plans to the Bureau of Buildings for a four-story residence at 451 Madison Avenue, measuring. This was to be the first of a series of six residences surrounding a courtyard. Work on 451 Madison Avenue began on May 4 of that year.By late 1882, the houses' exteriors had been completed, and parts of the interiors were being furnished. One residence on the north wing, the unit with a doorway facing the courtyard, was to have been occupied by Villard's adviser, Horace White, but this did not happen. Villard obtained a mortgage loan for the property from the Manhattan Savings Institution in late 1882. One of the three wings had been built by mid-1883, and Villard's legal adviser Artemas H. Holmes indicated in an April 1883 letter that the foundations for 453 and 455 Madison Avenue were being built.
McKim, Mead & White designed the interiors of all of the residences as well. At the time, most residences were laid out by interior designers and decorators rather than architecture firms. The interiors of each residence were designed to fit the tastes of the respective tenants. The Villard Houses cost $1 million without furnishings, and the decoration cost another $250,000. Stanford White was proud of the project, recalling in 1896 that it was "the beginning of any good work that we may have done". The residences were New York City's first houses designed in the Roman High Renaissance style.
Villard bankruptcy
The construction of the houses coincided with a decline in Villard's personal finances, which in turn was caused by his excessive investments in railroads. Villard moved into his mansion on December 17, 1883, on the same day that he resigned from the Oregon and Transcontinental Company. He was bankrupt by that time and could not formally sell the houses due to liens placed on his property. That month, Villard transferred two of the other lots next to his residence to his legal advisers, Edward D. Adams and Artemas H. Holmes. Villard mandated that Holmes and Adams complete the remaining residences in a similar style to his own residence. In January 1884, trustees William Crowninshield Endicott and Horace White took over Villard's residence to satisfy a $300,000 debt.Amid the bankruptcy proceedings, a crowd protested in the courtyard in early 1884, believing all the houses around the yard belonged to Villard. The Villard family moved out of the residence that May, relocating to Dobbs Ferry, New York, permanently. Villard later recalled that his occupancy of the Madison Avenue house "was always a nightmare". Villard's bankruptcy prompted the railroad magnate Thomas Fletcher Oakes to renege on a promise to buy 455 Madison Avenue. Adams moved into Number 455, while Holmes occupied Number 453. In addition, Adams bought 24 East 51st Street and partnered with the investment banker Harris C. Fahnestock to acquire 22 East 51st Street. The trustees oversaw the completion of the remaining houses around the courtyard. A June 1884 letter from Holmes indicates that workers had not started constructing the courtyard yet. In 1885, Adams filed plans for an extra staircase, bathrooms, and a dressing room at 455 Madison Avenue.
Work on the houses continued until 1885, and Villard's finances had recovered by January 1886, when William Endicott and Horace White were listed as having substantially completed the Villard Houses. That month, Villard's wife Fannie Garrison Villard repurchased the properties for a nominal sum. The residence at 457 Madison Avenue was then sold to Fahnestock. He had waited several months to obtain Number 457, but the trustees refused to sell the property until the other houses, save for Number 451, had been rented. Fahnestock also bought Adams's ownership stake in 22 East 51st Street, and his son William moved there. Fahnestock had planned to combine 457 Madison Avenue and 22 East 51st Street as early as 1886, but this did not happen at the time. Meanwhile, Villard ended up selling his own residence, Number 451, to Darius Ogden Mills; that house became the residence of Mills's daughter Elisabeth Mills Reid, who was married to New-York Tribune editor Whitelaw Reid. The Reid family is variously cited as having paid $350,000 or $400,000.