5 Gramercy Park West
John Hone’s scrapbooks, a lost porch and its return to the western row.
Gramercy Park West · Between East 20th and East 21st Streets
The story of 5 Gramercy Park West begins at the front door. Along this stretch of the Park, brick houses rise above delicate ironwork, and a few steps carry a visitor from the public sidewalk toward a private world. At No. 5, that approach disappeared for much of the twentieth century. Its recovery would become a neighborhood cause.
Behind the façade lived John Hone, a stockbroker whose surviving scrapbooks preserve the invitations, journeys, and enthusiasms of a New York life. A century later, Alexander S. C. Rower, Alexander Calder’s grandson, helped bring a Calder to the Park.
At home beside the Park
A place in the west-side row
The rhythm of the houses
No. 5 belongs to the early brick row on Gramercy Park’s western edge. The Landmarks Preservation Commission dates the house to 1844–1850 and identifies its architecture as Greek Revival. Three windows across, with restrained moldings and a pronounced cornice, it takes much of its effect from proportion. Seen beside Nos. 3 and 4, the house participates in a repeated pattern of windows, rooflines, and narrow fronts.
That collective character mattered to the Commission when it designated the Gramercy Park Historic District in 1966. Its report praised the harmony of the west-side buildings.
Between house and garden
Look at Alex Nguyen’s photograph published by GPBA in 2013. No. 5 is the house at the left; the elaborate porches of Nos. 4 and 3 extend to the right. Their ironwork softens the boundary between brick wall and street. At No. 5, the missing porch leaves the entrance visibly detached from that sequence. The photograph makes the later restoration argument legible before a word of testimony is read.
John Hone’s New York
From Broadway to Gramercy
John Hone was born on Broadway in 1844, into a family with connections reaching through finance, diplomacy, and the armed services. A contemporary genealogy records his residence at 5 Gramercy Park and his firm, John Hone & Co., at 62 New Street. He had served as a governor of the New York Stock Exchange and twice as its vice president.
His commitments also extended beyond Manhattan. The same account describes several terms on New Jersey’s Democratic State Committee and his service as a delegate to the 1892 Democratic National Convention.
A life saved on paper
The most revealing trace of Hone may be the material he chose to keep. New York Historical holds his scrapbooks, dating roughly from 1887 to 1911. The finding aid describes invitations, handwritten menus, theater and opera programs, photographs, and travel souvenirs. These are the things that usually disappear after an evening out or a journey home. Together, they preserve the texture of a busy life.
Travel carried Hone through Europe, Asia and South America. His albums also contain records of a dispute over Gramercy Park’s taxes. He died at his Gramercy home in 1915.
The Park beyond the gate
What was a private park worth?
In February 1906, the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide reported a consequential victory for Gramercy Park’s trustees. The city had assessed the Park at $500,000 in 1903 and 1904, then $750,000 in 1905. Hone was among the trustees challenging those assessments, alongside Stuyvesant Fish, James Henry Lane, James W. Pinchot, and Henry W. Poor.
The report explained that Justice Dowling’s decision turned on the restrictions and easements governing the land. Those obligations prevented it from being treated as an ordinary parcel available for sale. The dispute concerned the Park itself, rather than an exemption for the surrounding houses.
A house that kept changing
A much smaller notice in the same journal catches the house adapting to another need. In November 1914, an alteration filing listed a fireproof elevator shaft, a hand-hoist elevator, and a galvanized-iron skylight at 5 Gramercy Park West. The estimated cost was $800. John Hone was named as owner; Walter G. Jones, with an office at 165 Broadway, was the architect.
The porch disappears
An altered approach
GPBA’s 2013 restoration testimony dates the removal of No. 5’s porch to the 1920s, when the house was divided into apartments. The change broke the continuity of the neighboring entrances. The brick house remained, but an important part of the experience of arriving at it had gone.
Berenice Abbott’s photograph of November 27, 1935 is catalogued as Gramercy Park, Nos. 3–5. Its attention falls chiefly on the neighboring porches at Nos. 3 and 4: patterned columns, curved brackets, railings, and flights of steps fill the frame. The image preserves the ornamental world to which No. 5 once belonged. GPBA’s later photograph provides the clearer view of No. 5’s missing porch.
Preserving the whole
The district designation of September 20, 1966 protected No. 5 as part of the western row. The relationship between its entrance and the neighboring porches would later be central to the case for restoration.
A Calder across the street
Another generation of looking outward
On October 5, 2011, Calder’s Janey Waney was installed in the Park’s southeast quadrant. The Trustees’ announcement thanked Rower for helping make the loan possible. The 1969 standing mobile brought a bright, poised arrangement of metal into a setting known for trees, paths, and nineteenth-century architecture.
A view through the fence
From the street, passersby could see the sculpture through the fence—a new encounter with art along a familiar walk.
Rower called it “a piece of the 20th century in the 19th century.”
The loan had its own travels and interruptions. The sculpture left for European exhibitions in 2014, appeared again in GPBA’s 2016 photographs, and was removed in August 2021. The sculpture’s time in the Park is now part of the neighborhood archive.
Bringing back the porch
The case for returning to the street
On July 16, 2013, Arlene Harrison appeared before the Landmarks Preservation Commission on behalf of GPBA and the Trustees of Gramercy Park. Her signed testimony supported rebuilding the cast-iron porch and stoop, restoring the entrance’s place in the western row.
Harrison read a statement from the Reverend Dr. Thomas F. Pike, who pointed to early photographs of the neighboring porches and their visual relationship to the Park’s fence. He described the proposed restoration as “a gift for all the public to enjoy.” The case rested on what anyone walking past the house would see: the return of ironwork that had once helped join these separate houses into a recognizable whole.
What the photographs let us see
The approvals establish the official sequence; the photographs show its consequence. In Billy Wilson’s September 2022 view, the rebuilt porch at No. 5 appears beyond the neighboring porch of No. 4, extending the line of ironwork along the block. Compare that image with Nguyen’s pre-restoration photograph: the gap in the sequence has closed.
The building at a glance
The building record
- Address
- 5 Gramercy Park West, Manhattan
- Construction
- 1844–1850, according to LPC; GPBA’s 2013 testimony gives 1843
- Architectural style
- Greek Revival
- Original architect
- Unknown
- Documented alteration architect
- Walter G. Jones, 1914 elevator filing
- Historic district
- Gramercy Park Historic District, designated September 20, 1966
- Restoration approvals
- August 13, 2013; façade amendment August 12, 2014
Over time
The early brick row
LPC dates the Greek Revival house to this period, among the early buildings on the Park’s west side.
Hone helps defend the Park
John Hone is among the trustees whose challenge to the Park’s tax assessments is reported as successful.
An elevator is proposed
An alteration filing names Hone as owner and Walter G. Jones as architect for an elevator shaft and related work.
A changed entrance
GPBA dates the porch’s removal to the 1920s apartment conversion; Abbott photographs the row in 1935.
A protected streetscape
No. 5 becomes part of the Gramercy Park Historic District, designated September 20.
Rower and a Calder loan
Alexander S. C. Rower helps bring Janey Waney to the Park in 2011.
Restoration wins approval
LPC approves the restoration in August 2013 and a front-façade amendment in August 2014.
Sources cited
- New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission · 1966.
- New York Historical · John Hone scrapbooks, MS 302.
- Contemporary biography · 1914.
- Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide · February 10, 1906.
- Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide · November 14, 1914.
- Berenice Abbott · The New York Public Library · 1935.
- Arlene Harrison · July 16, 2013.
- Gramercy Park Block Association · July 2013.
- Landmarks Preservation Commission · August 13, 2013.
- Landmarks Preservation Commission · August 12, 2014.
- Trustees of Gramercy Park · October 6, 2011.
- Observer · October 2011.
- GPBA · Calder archive.
- Billy Wilson · September 22, 2022.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission gives 1844–1850; the Block Association’s 2013 testimony gives 1843.