Tuesday, April 13, 2021 – THE MAN WHO “BROKE THE BANK AT MONTE CARLO” AND ENDED UP BROKE
TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 2021
The
335th Edition
From Our Archives
THE LONG-GONE
SCHWAB
MANSION
FROM A DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
Charles M. Schwab’s Riverside House was, according to The New York Times “The most pretentious house” in New York — photo The Library of Congress
When the doors of the gargantuan Charles M. Schwab mansion named Riverside House were opened in 1947 for the sale of the interior fittings, among the 100 viewers was S. Archer Gibson. The elderly man was not there to buy bronze hardware or stained glass windows. He was reminiscing. In the soaring two-story chapel area of the French Renaissance chateau Gibson touched the cabinet of the grand pipe organ he once played as Charles Schwab’s private organist. The impressive instrument had been enlarged by the millionaire at Gibson’s request in 1904 at a cost of $21,500 and again in 1911 for $23,457.50 more.
The days when the fabulously wealthy installed pipe organs into their homes and hired private organists – Gibson earned $10,000 per year – were over. And the days of Schwab’s extraordinary mansion were over as well.
Steel tycoon Charles M. Schwab had no intentions to built just any house in 1901. His would be the largest and most expensive. And he intended that it would vastly outshine the mansions rising on Fifth Avenue along Central Park.
Schwab had started out in the steel business as a teenage laborer in a Carnegie steel mill and was by now one of the wealthiest men in the country; the head of United States Steel.
Among the Fifth Avenue houses, only Andrew Carnegie’s mansion rising at 91st Street and 5th Avenue had a vast garden and fenced yard. The free-standing home was unique in its luxurious setting. Along Riverside Drive, however, millionaires were opting for free-standing residences surrounded by lawns. This is what Schwab had in mind when he spent $865,000 for the full block on Riverside Drive in 1901, extending to West End Avenue, between 73rd and 74th Street. It was the most ever spent on a building lot to date. The magnate commissioned architect Maurice Hebert to design a French Renaissance chateau that would impress. Hebert did exactly that. The 75-room limestone mansion was a marriage of elements from three French chateaux: Blois, Azay-le-Rideau and Chenonceau. Surrounded by lush lawns and formal gardens it diminished the homes of Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. Andrew Carnegie, in seeing the massive edifice rising is said to have commented, “Have you seen that place of Charlie’s? It makes mine look like a shack.” The tycoon spent $3 million on the structure and several million more for the furnishings and antiques. It was a four-story palace with a 166-foot tower that offered panoramic views.
To supply the vast amount of stone to build it, a quarry was opened in Peekskill, New York.
According to Robert Hessen in his “Steel Titan: The Life of Charles M. Schwab,” “Schwab had a passion for owning the biggest and the best – homes, or automobiles, or private railroad cars.” Riverside House would exemplify that passion.
The sheer size of the mansion staggered the editors of Harper’s Weekly who admitted that it “may strike the average observer as a burdensome possession, oppressive to maintain, and likely to be embarrassing to heirs, but if Mr. Schwab can stand it, we can.”
The New York Times, on the other hand, cooed. “In architectural design, richness of decoration, and completeness of details this structure is calculated to surpass in luxury and magnificence any city home in America, if not the entire world.”
More than 100 artists, designers, modelers, engineers and architects were engaged in the construction. Hebert personally supervised the work of artisans at the William Baumgarten & Co. creating reproduction tapestries for the house – several of which were exhibited at the St. Louis World’s Fair before being installed in the house. Ceilings and walls were decorated by artists like Albert Mantelet, Arthur Thomas and Jose Villegas.
Rooms were executed in various periods; the dining room in Louis XIV, the library in Henri II (a copy of the library in Fontainblue), the parlor in Louis XVI (copied from the Petite Trianon), the main hall in Francis I and so on.
“Nothing will enter into the construction of the new dwelling,” reported The Times, “that has not been made specially to order…So-called stock material, no matter how good it may be, will be ignored.”
Interior pillars were made of elaborately carved marble, paneling was South American mahogany, The chapel, where the custom-made organ was installed, doubled as a music room and was large enough to seat a full orchestra. A natatorium in the basement featured a glazed-brick pool 20 by 30 feet under an arched glass roof. There was a bowling alley and 50-foot gymnasium on this level as well.
The art gallery was filled with $1.5 million in artworks. There were six elevators, a self-contained power plant and, to Mr. Schwab’s great satisfaction, the 1906 version of air conditioning. Years later he would brag, “When I built it, it was the most modern house in the United States…this was thirty years ago, yet it had an air-cooling system in it.”
The master bedroom was 20 feet square and the adjoining bath had a five-foot square shower stall. There were a four-car garage, a receiving lodge for incoming goods, and a service tunnel beneath the sculptured gardens.
While other millionaires entered their mansions through expensive and impressive wooden double doors, Schwab went a step further. “Of particular note will be the massive bronze doors on the west side of the house at the main entrance,” said The Times. “While these doors will not be as large as those on the Capitol at Washington, each of them will weigh from a ton to a ton and a half. There will also be another set of bronze doors on the north side of the building leading to Seventy-fourth Street.
Schwab’s wife, Eurana, had protested against moving so far northward, fearing she would never see her Fifth Avenue friends again. After a period, despite her Fifth Avenue friends visiting regularly, Rana Schwab stopped accepting social invitations – even those to the White House – out of embarrassment of her physical condition. The food-loving Rana became severely overweight. She stayed in Riverside House, catered to by her 20 servants–chief among them George Stone the butler. Nevertheless, in 1917 as World War I raged in Europe, she dedicated two rooms of the first floor for the use of Red Cross volunteers who knitted sweaters, socks and bandages for soldiers in France.
In 1921 S. Archer Gibson was recorded playing the Schwab organ, creating what would be among the earliest organ recordings. Later, in 1932, Schwab agreed to allow the National Broadcasting Company to broadcast a series of Wednesday night organ concerts played by Gibson.
The couple lived in luxurious comfort in Riverside House until Schwab’s fortunes were wiped out by the Great Depression. The massive mansion changed almost overnight from a palace to a hulking white elephant. Unable to pay the taxes Schwab tried futilely to sell the property for $4 million. He moved into a small apartment on Park Avenue in 1939 where he died nearly penniless later that year.
The mansion sat ghostly and vacant for years. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia rejected the idea of using the house as the mayoral mansion, feeling it was far too grandiose. It was the last hope for the hulking and sumptuous Schwab house. After sitting empty for a decade, the land was purchased as the site of an apartment building. The sale of the interior fittings which organist S. Archer Gibson attended was the last time visitors would stare in awe at the painted ceilings, the carved grand staircase and the marble columns.
The wrecking company informed the press a few days later that the great pipe organ in the chapel was too large to remove. It would be smashed with the rest of the house. At the eleventh hour, however, Eric Sexton of New Canaan, Connecticut purchased the instrument, disassembled it and installed part of it in his home in Camden, Maine.
In place of Schwab’s French Renaissance chateau sits The Schwab House — photo cityrealty.com
In place of Charles M. Schwab’s magnificent French chateau now stands an uninspired red brick building with a name dripping with irony: “The Schwab House.”
To read more about Charles Schwab, his life and career check out Wikipedia;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_M._Schwab
RIHS AWARDED GRANTS FROM POMEROY FOUNDATION
Pomeroy Fund Awards $50,000 to 14 NYS History Organizations
to Support Capital Needs
TROY, N.Y. – The Pomeroy Fund for NYS History, a partnership between the William G. Pomeroy Foundation and Museum Association of New York (MANY), awarded an additional $50,000 to 14 history-related organizations to assist with urgent capital needs projects.
In this highly competitive fourth round of urgent funding, 167 museums and historical societies submitted applications to support projects such as window replacements, new HVAC systems, technology upgrades, roof repairs, and accessibility for people who use wheelchairs.
”This was an overwhelming response from history organizations, which underscores the incredible need that remains across New York State,” said Deryn Pomeroy, Director for Strategic Initiatives at the Pomeroy Foundation. “Capital improvements are essential to help these important organizations reopen and stay open.”
“This round helped us see the vast challenges New York’s museums face in the wake of deferred maintenance, limited municipal investment in cultural properties, and the deep financial setbacks incurred through pandemic related revenue reductions,” said Erika Sanger, MANY Executive Director.
Roosevelt Island Historical Society will purchase a printer, scanner, and computer to continue to reach and engage its audience with a daily publication, From the Archives, and virtual programs
UPCOMING NYPL AND RIHS ZOOM PROGRAMS
Tuesday, April 20
“Mansions and Munificence: the Gilded Age on Fifth Avenue” Guide, lecturer, author and teacher of art and architecture, Emma Guest-Consales leads a virtual tour of the great mansions of Fifth Avenue. Starting with the ex-home of Henry Clay Frick that now houses the Frick Collection, all the way up to the former home of Andrew Carnegie, now the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, she takes us through some of the most extravagant urban palaces the city has ever seen.
Tuesday, May 18
“Saving America’s Cities” Author and Harvard History Professor Lizabeth Cohen provides an eye-opening look at her award-winning book’s subtitle: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age. Tracing Logue’s career from the development of Roosevelt Island in the ‘70s, to the redevelopment of New Haven in the ‘50s, Boston in the’60s and the South Bronx from 1978–85, she focuses on Logue’s vision to revitalize post-war cities, the rise of the Urban Development Corporation, and the world of city planning
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ALL GOT IT RIGHT!
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
Sources
DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
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Roosevelt Island Historical Society
unless otherwise indicated
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