One Lexington Avenue
From the Field houses to a pioneering cooperative
123–125 East 21st Street · Completed September 1911
One Lexington Avenue was completed in September 1911: twelve stories of brick and limestone by Herbert Lucas, who organized the cooperative as well as designing it. Its large apartments brought the scale of a private house above the trees of Gramercy Park.
Cyrus W. Field built his house here around 1852, with a matching home next door for his brother David Dudley Field. Cyrus hosted the March 1854 dining-room meetings that launched the transatlantic cable enterprise; David, principal author of the Field Code of civil procedure, had already begun to change how courts worked in New York and beyond.
Cyrus’s daughter, Isabella Field Judson, remembered forty years of family life at the corner, first numbered 84 and later 123 East 21st Street. In 1899, financier and railroad publisher Henry William Poor acquired both Field houses. Stanford White united them into a mansion at One Lexington Avenue, with Renaissance-inspired interiors and a glass conservatory facing the Park.
Poor’s banking firm failed in 1908, in the aftermath of the Panic of 1907. His books and furnishings went to auction; the property was sold in 1910 and cleared for Lucas’s cooperative. The apartment house occupies the ground of two adjoining family homes and a mansion that lasted barely a decade.
Three buildings on one corner
An ocean crossed, from a home on Gramercy Park
Two brothers, two kinds of reform
Cyrus had made his fortune in the paper trade. His house stood at No. 123 East 21st Street, earlier No. 84; David occupied the adjoining eastern house, No. 125, earlier No. 86. They lived side by side and were in daily contact.
David was the principal author of the Field Code of civil procedure, adopted in New York in 1848. It simplified pleading and brought actions at law and in equity into a common procedure. Other American states adopted versions of it, and English reformers studied the New York experiment. The eastern house belongs to the history of legal reform as surely as Cyrus’s dining room belongs to the cable story.
Four evenings at Field’s dining table
The first proposal was more modest. In 1854, the telegraph entrepreneur Frederick Gisborne approached Field about a connection between Newfoundland and the North American mainland. In his daughter’s account, Field sat in the library of his Gramercy Park home studying a globe and wondered why the line could not continue across the ocean to Ireland. He wrote to Samuel Morse about the electrical questions and to Matthew Fontaine Maury about the ocean.
Field then invited Peter Cooper, Moses Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts and Chandler White into his dining room. For four evenings, the five men sat around the table examining the earlier company’s records, studying maps and working through estimates. The agreement to take over Gisborne’s undertaking was signed on March 10, 1854.
Cooper had only a short walk from his own house at 9 Lexington Avenue, on the site of today’s No. 7. His grandson Edward Ringwood Hewitt would later live immediately east of the Field site, at 48 Gramercy Park North, or 127 East 21st Street. The cable’s backers and the Hewitt family belonged to the same few blocks.
Field’s globe survives. Made by Newton & Son in 1852, it is now in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
Dawn at David Dudley Field’s
The next founding meeting took place next door. On May 8, 1854, the associates gathered at David Dudley Field’s house at six in the morning. One of them had to leave town that day, so the business began before breakfast.
They formally organized the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company, chose Cooper as president and subscribed $1.5 million in capital. Henry M. Field’s account places the meeting in the first morning light: the plans discussed in one brother’s dining room had become a company in the other’s house.
The cable reaches across the Atlantic
The distance between those evenings on Gramercy Park and a working cable proved enormous. Field spent years raising money, negotiating with governments and bringing together the scientists, engineers and manufacturers the venture required. He crossed the Atlantic repeatedly, returning to the effort after each failure.
In August 1858, messages finally passed between Europe and North America. Queen Victoria and President James Buchanan exchanged congratulations; New York celebrated, and Tiffany sold souvenir sections of cable.
Within weeks, the signal failed. It took further setbacks and eight more years before the steamship Great Eastern laid a cable that established lasting service in July 1866. That September, the expedition recovered and completed the cable lost the previous year. Messages could now cross between continents without waiting for a ship.
The Fields celebrate fifty years
On December 2, 1890, guests gathered again at Field’s house. This time the occasion was his golden wedding anniversary with Mary Bryan Stone Field. What had begun as a gathering for close relatives grew into a large reception, and Cyrus’s brother, the Rev. Henry M. Field, conducted a renewal of their vows.
Greetings came from both sides of the Atlantic. An American commemorative certificate, now at the Smithsonian, carries more than two hundred signatures. William Ewart Gladstone, Oscar Wilde and Constance Wilde were among the signers of the separate British tribute.
After the Fields
Cyrus died in 1892; David Dudley Field died in his Gramercy Park house in April 1894. By the end of the decade, both houses had become boarding houses. Their large rooms had been subdivided, and much of what had filled them was gone.
Henry Poor’s house at One Lexington Avenue
A collector moves to the corner
The Field houses remained on Gramercy Park after the brothers’ deaths. In 1899, according to the building’s centennial history, Henry William Poor acquired them and joined them into a single residence at One Lexington Avenue. Poor was a banker and publisher of Poor’s Manual of Railroads, part of the business family whose name would become Standard & Poor’s. His passion for books, pictures and architectural objects would transform the familiar corner.
Between 1899 and 1901, Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White joined the two brownstones and remade their interiors. The architect had also made elaborate interiors for his own house across Lexington Avenue, on the site of the later Gramercy Park Hotel. His work at The Players, 16 Gramercy Park South, stood directly across the Park.
White made Poor’s home a setting for carved wood, marble, tapestries, paintings and antique furniture. A grand staircase rose through the main hall. Renaissance ceilings and woodwork enclosed a library of rare books and illuminated manuscripts; the collection was one of the house’s reasons for being.
Contemporary newspaper accounts, gathered by historian Tom Miller, put the April 1899 purchase at $200,000. Poor initially intended to demolish the houses. Instead, White’s remodeling removed the Park-facing stoops, added the Park-facing glass conservatory visible in the 1907 photograph and moved the entrance to Lexington Avenue. The old pair of addresses became One Lexington Avenue.
A ballroom on the Park
Once the remodeling was complete, the house filled with music. The Poors gave their first large entertainment there in December 1901. The following March, about 300 guests heard a sixty-piece orchestra conducted by Emil Paur, followed by supper and dancing.
Edith Poor’s wedding reception in January 1904 took place in the red-and-gold drawing room. These were rooms arranged for company as well as collecting: a private house capable of accommodating an orchestra and its audience.
Stately Homes in America, published in 1903, preserved seven views of the residence, including its conservatory, halls, dining room and drawing room.
An auction inside One Lexington
H. W. Poor & Co. failed in December 1908, in the aftermath of the Panic of 1907. From April 21 to 24, 1909, the American Art Association held an auction inside his house. The catalogue photographed the rooms and listed what buyers could take away.
The books had already begun to leave. Anderson Auction Company dispersed Poor’s library in five sales between November 1908 and April 1909. The furnishings sale followed the last of them.
Even the ceilings were for sale.
The catalogue described the main hall’s coffered ceiling as coming from an Umbrian palace, its painted panels filled with the gods of Olympus. In the drawing room, another ceiling told the story of Cupid and Psyche. Both ceilings were offered as numbered auction lots.
Doorways, mantels and light fixtures were offered too, with buyers responsible for taking down and removing the architectural fittings at their own risk and expense.
What the auction scattered
American Art News reported that the four-day sale brought $171,445. Mrs. Samuel Untermyer bought both of the painted ceilings: $2,000 for the main hall’s and $4,100 for the drawing room’s.
The Metropolitan Museum paid $7,100 for an Italian marble altar canopy, or ciborium, made around 1150 by Nicolaus Ranucius and his sons. The catalogue called it the Tabernacle of San Stefano in Fiano. It survives in the Met’s collection as object 09.92.3.
Architect Charles A. Platt bought tables, a fountain, a marble bench and four marble columns. Room by room, the fittings White had assembled passed into other hands.
The real estate followed the contents. Charles Buek bought the corner property from Mrs. Poor in January 1910; that spring it passed to the cooperative company Lucas organized. Poor’s stable on East 22nd Street also changed hands: the Record and Guide reported that Henry Sleeper Harper bought it from the Poor estate in 1911.
One address, many households
One Lexington becomes a shared home
The developer Charles Buek bought the house from Mrs. Henry W. Poor in January 1910, with an apartment building in mind. His first scheme, the centennial history says, called for forty-four apartments, a restaurant and a roof garden. Herbert Lucas, the architect he hired, reduced the number to twenty-four, mostly duplexes. The scheme accommodated large single-level apartments as well as homes arranged on two floors.
In May, Pease & Elliman resold the property for Buek to the Number One Lexington Avenue Co., organized by Lucas himself and capitalized at $250,000. The Real Estate Record and Guide described the new corporation and later explained that owners could help determine their apartments’ decoration and, within limits, their arrangement.
The builder Edward Corning and the lawyer John Brooks Leavitt were among this group of future owners; Leavitt became One Lexington’s first board president. Lucas already knew how to fit an apartment house into the neighborhood, having designed 24 Gramercy Park.
The early backers also included Rodman Gilder, Juliet K. Lamont, Cornelia B. Earle and the editor John S. Phillips. In June 1910, the general construction contract went to the Edward Corning Company. The contemporary estimate for the land and building together was $600,000.
The plans offered duplex and studio apartments, balconies looking over Gramercy Park, electric passenger and freight elevators, and a roof garden. The shared building would retain some of the space and individuality that families associated with a house of their own. High ceilings, open wood-burning fireplaces and rooms overlooking the Park trees carried familiar townhouse comforts into the shared building. Lucas’s double role as architect and organizer mattered: prospective owners could shape their rooms before moving in. The offer was house-sized living without sole responsibility for an entire house.
Excavation exposed soft ground. The centennial history records the lender’s insistence on digging farther down to bedrock and says part of an earlier house’s foundation was incorporated beneath the Park-facing wall. The booklet dates completion to September 1911, when owners and renters began moving in.
The twelve-story building changed the scale of the north side in September 1911. Three months later, Henry Sleeper Harper, at 131 East 21st Street, bought No. 133 next door “in order to protect his residence.” The report specifically noted the new cooperative at the corner. The later history of 45 Gramercy Park North includes the purchase and its unexpected sequel: in 1926, Harper hired Lucas himself to design his new home on East 38th Street.
Immediately east of One Lexington, the narrow mid-nineteenth-century house at 48 Gramercy Park North survived. At 127 East 21st Street, its few floors and iron verandas still meet the cooperative’s twelve-story wall. The change in scale is visible at a single lot line.
“This will be a house owned by a club.”
Real Estate Record and Guide · May 21, 1910
The rent would pay the maintenance
One Lexington’s founders intended to sell some apartments and rent out the others. The rent would pay the owners’ maintenance. That, at least, was the plan.
In practice, rental income did not cover everything: the centennial account records annual maintenance charges for the first buyers.
The architect’s oasis
In a 1917 essay, Lucas described Gramercy Park as an “oasis” in the city. Apartment houses had altered the skyline and brought more people, he wrote, yet the neighborhood retained its character. He saw cooperative ownership as a way to give residents a say in their surroundings and a home arranged to suit them.
Inside an early duplex
An early apartment-house album preserved by the New York Public Library shows the two levels of Duplex Apartment B: principal living rooms downstairs, bedrooms above, and a private staircase connecting them.
The living room faces Gramercy Park, with two bedrooms occupying the same frontage upstairs. The dining room lies beside the living room; kitchens, pantries and service spaces sit farther back. The plan brings the rooms of a substantial private house together within two floors of a shared building.
The advertisement beneath the plans promises light on three sides, roomy apartments and open fireplaces. It also promises relief from a less glamorous problem: cooking odors. A special kitchen ventilation system was part of the offer.
Rooms for maids and a separate service elevator appear on the plan too. Live-in domestic staff were part of the household the designers had in mind. Prospective tenants could also request changes in decoration, within reasonable limits.
At home in early One Lexington
A photograph in the Museum of the City of New York’s collection takes us beyond the floor plans and into an apartment. Catalogued as Mr. Donald F. Crane. #1 Lexington Avenue and dated circa 1915–1930, it shows a hallway lined with bookcases, with a hanging lantern, patterned rugs and an arch framing the rooms beyond.
Books, framed pictures and small pieces of furniture make this passage part of the home’s living space. The view offers a glimpse of the individual interiors behind the apartment house’s shared façade.
A painter’s skylight and a writer’s papers
Henry Salem Hubbell, a painter trained in Chicago and Paris who had worked among the American artists at Giverny, needed a studio in his apartment.
The centennial booklet records Hubbell’s request to Lucas for a skylight and for the roof over his studio to be raised. The board’s answer will sound familiar: he could have the skylight, provided he paid for it.
He also obtained separate apartments on the two floors he owned so that one could be rented. Hubbell later painted presidents, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover.
Another early resident, Carolyn Frevert, came from the National Arts Club, where she had lived with her brother, the novelist and journalist David Graham Phillips. After his death in 1911, she managed his literary estate and the sale and publication of his writing.
The architect D. Everett Waid also lived here. His later work with Harvey Wiley Corbett included the Metropolitan Life North Building at 11 Madison Avenue, the massive structure north of the familiar clock tower. He later became president of the American Institute of Architects.
An editor’s daily walk
By 1923, John Huston Finley and his wife, Martha, had made their home at One Lexington: that year’s Knox College directory lists Martha Boyden Finley at the address. A former president of City College and New York State commissioner of education, Finley had joined The New York Times. His life here also included a quieter routine: a daily turn through Gramercy Park.
A TIME profile of May 3, 1937 describes another neighborhood undertaking. On behalf of neighborhood parents, Finley presented the Park’s gardener, Hannan, with a bronze medal and $1,000.
Laundry days and the question of awnings
The basement laundry ran on a timetable: the centennial history records allotted days for each family and a place for its ironing board. The cooperative idea reached all the way down to washday.
Before air-conditioning, residents asked permission to put up window awnings. The board allowed them on the north and east sides while keeping the Gramercy Park and Lexington Avenue fronts uncovered. The centennial booklet found no evidence that any were installed.
The entrance canopy was another addition to be agreed upon, receiving approval in December 1912. Upstairs, the kitchens were equipped with iceboxes before electric refrigerators became familiar. The building had been equipped for both gas and electricity.
Editors and a publisher
John S. Phillips was more than an early investor. Knox College’s 1923 directory lists the editor at One Lexington. A co-founder of McClure’s Magazine and later editor of The American Magazine, he belonged to the generation of editors who made investigative reporting a national force.
Mark Sullivan, then editing Collier’s, gave One Lexington as his home address in Harvard’s 1915 class report. A later generation of publishing is represented by William Warder Norton, co-founder of W. W. Norton & Company: the Century Association’s 1945 yearbook lists him here.
A studio and a short walk
Painter and illustrator Albert Sterner moved his studio from the National Arts Club to One Lexington. Ralph Flint’s 1927 biography found him still here, attached to Gramercy Park and unwilling to exchange it for the attractions of a European capital.
Architect Arnold W. Brunner had an equally local routine. A memorial published in 1926 recalls his daily appearance at The Players at five-thirty, just across the Park from his apartment. The neighborhood offered both a place to work and familiar company a short walk away.
The Rev. William Pierson Merrill, the longtime minister of Brick Presbyterian Church, is another resident recorded in the Century Association’s 1945 yearbook.
One Lexington in a winter scene
In February 1950, One Lexington appeared above a much busier foreground: children crossing the snowy paths, adults on the benches and the statue of Edwin Booth at the center of the Park. John Falter’s cover for The Saturday Evening Post sets the building at the upper right, its pale base and rows of windows rising behind the fence.
The bare branches open a view that summer foliage conceals. The familiar apartment house becomes part of a neighborhood scene, with most of the activity taking place below it.
The rental bargain wears thin
Empty apartments still needed care, repairs cost money, and rents did not reliably meet the building’s expenses. The centennial history follows the owners’ difficulties in keeping that original bargain going.
In 1954, according to the booklet, One Lexington began a reorganization away from corporation-owned rental apartments. Some rental arrangements continued afterward, so the transition was gradual.
The apartments themselves were never entirely fixed. A duplex might become two homes; separate floors might later be joined again. The centennial account records alterations as early as 1916.
What remains on this corner of Gramercy Park
The columned entrance, arched windows and limestone base give way to brick above, with decorative iron balconies and a projecting cornice. The long Lexington Avenue frontage and shorter Gramercy Park side appear together in the early apartment-house album. Seen across the garden, with the Edwin Booth statue in the foreground, the building is partly screened by trees.
Buek’s first announcement had promised buff brick and Indiana limestone. The building that emerged used red brick above its stone base, giving the corner the warmer color it has today.
The centennial history says Lucas retained the iron fence from Poor’s house and echoed its entrance in his design. Envoie Projects, which managed roof and facade work in 2023, records stabilization and repairs to that fence and attributes it to Stanford White. The 1909 auction catalogue separately lists a pair of Italian wrought-iron entrance gates as lot 123; the gates should not be confused with the surviving fence.
The boundary across the street
The corner looks like an anchor of the historic streetscape, but its city designation is a different matter. One Lexington Avenue stands outside the Gramercy Park Historic District designated in 1966, as do its neighbors to the east at 48, 45 and 44 Gramercy Park North. The 1988 extension did not bring this block into the city district.
One Lexington does lie within the larger Gramercy Park district listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The two districts have different boundaries; a National Register listing should not be mistaken for inclusion in the city’s landmark district.
A tablet on the corner
A bronze tablet recalls the house that stood here before the cooperative. The Gramercy Park Association unveiled it on June 20, 1929, with members of the Field family present. The surviving inscription begins its account of the site with “Here for forty years was his home” and commemorates the planning of the first transatlantic cable.
The building at a glance
The building record
- Address
- One Lexington Avenue · 123–125 East 21st Street
- Earlier 84–86 East 21st Street · Northeast corner of Lexington Avenue and Gramercy Park North.
- Built
- 1910–11
- Completed September 1911, according to the centennial history.
- Architect
- Herbert Lucas
- Architect and organizer of the cooperative company.
- Earlier houses on site
- Cyrus W. & David Dudley Field Houses · c. 1852
- Remodeled and united by Stanford White for Henry W. Poor, 1899–1901.
- The original idea
- Cooperative living
- Private-house scale and individualized rooms within a shared apartment building.
- The builder
- Edward Corning Company
- General contract reported in June 1910; new-building plan 697 of 1910.
- The founding corporation
- Number One Lexington Avenue Co.
- Organized by Herbert Lucas in 1910; the original plan called for twenty-four apartments.
- The city record
- Manhattan · Block 877, Lot 22
- Also recorded as 123–125 East 21st Street. The apartment house has twelve stories.
- Historic districts
- City and National Register boundaries differ
- Outside the LPC’s Gramercy Park Historic District and its 1988 extension; within the larger National Register district, listed in 1980.
- The commemorative tablet
- Cyrus W. Field · 1929
- Unveiled on June 20 by the Gramercy Park Association.
Over time
Two brothers, neighboring houses
Cyrus Field builds his Gramercy Park home; David Dudley Field lives in the matching house next door.
A project takes shape at home
Four evenings in Cyrus Field’s dining room lead to the March 10 agreement; a 6:00 a.m. meeting at David Dudley Field’s house on May 8 formally organizes the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company.
Across the Atlantic
After the brief 1858 signal and years of setbacks, the Great Eastern establishes permanent transatlantic telegraph service. The lost 1865 cable is recovered and completed that September.
The Fields celebrate fifty years
Mary and Cyrus Field renew their vows in their Gramercy Park home, where the cable meetings had taken place, and receive greetings from both sides of the Atlantic.
Poor’s chapter begins
Poor buys the Field houses in April 1899. Stanford White’s remodeling joins them into a residence entered from Lexington Avenue.
The house’s contents are dispersed
The April furnishings sale realizes $171,445. Two painted ceilings go to Mrs. Samuel Untermyer; a medieval marble altar canopy goes to the Metropolitan Museum.
An apartment house replaces the mansion
Following Poor’s financial collapse in 1908 and the corner’s sale to Buek in January 1910, Lucas organizes the cooperative company. Edward Corning Company builds the twelve-story apartment house, completed in September 1911.
The architect looks back
Herbert Lucas describes Gramercy Park as an “oasis” and makes the case for cooperative living.
The Finleys are recorded here
Knox College’s directory lists Martha Boyden Finley at One Lexington, alongside other neighborhood residents in its alumni records.
A tablet remembers Cyrus Field
On June 20, a bronze tablet is unveiled at the corner where Field’s home had stood.
The rental model changes
The centennial account describes a reorganization away from corporation-owned rentals.
Residents preserve a century of history
A centennial booklet assembles the stories of the site, its architecture and its households.
Care for the building and its ironwork
The project manager’s account describes facade and roof work, including stabilization and repairs to the historic iron fence.
Sources cited
The 2011 centennial history supplies the detailed account of the building’s early households, board decisions and later changes. Contemporary publications independently document its cooperative origins and architectural plans; museum and library collections document the earlier houses and the cable enterprise.
- 2011On the Occasion of One Lexington Avenue’s CentennialBuilding history dated March 13, 2011, supplied to the Block Association. The source for the completion date, rental-income aspiration, Hubbell’s alterations, household routines and later reorganization. It also records soft ground during excavation, the lender’s requirement to reach bedrock and the incorporation of part of an earlier foundation beneath the Park-facing wall.
- 1896Isabella Field Judson, Cyrus W. Field: His Life and WorkFamily biography; Internet Archive. Describes Field building the house, its change of address from 84 to 123 East Twenty-first Street, the cable meetings and the 1890 anniversary. Its printed list of British tribute signers includes Oscar Wilde and Constance Wilde.
- 1907Old Buildings of New York City, pp. 104–105Contemporary photograph and account of the Field houses after Henry Poor had combined and reconstructed them.
- PBSAmerican Experience: “Cyrus Field (1819–1892)”Field’s paper business, work organizing the cable enterprise, repeated attempts and eventual success.
- SmithsonianNewton’s New and Improved Terrestrial GlobeSmithsonian exhibition record identifying the 1852 globe used by Cyrus Field, now in the National Museum of American History.
- SmithsonianGuide to the Cyrus W. Field PapersArchival guide to the correspondence, images and records of the transatlantic cable enterprise.
- PBSAmerican Experience: “The Great Transatlantic Cable” timelineChronology distinguishing the short-lived cable of 1858 from the lasting achievement of 1866.
- Frick Library“Henry Poor,” Gilding the Gilded AgeThe Frick Art Reference Library and William Randolph Hearst Archive exhibition identifies Poor’s residence as One Lexington Avenue, at the northeast corner of Lexington and 21st Street, and documents White’s interiors and the April 1909 auction.
- May 1910“Number One Lexington Avenue,” Record and Guide, May 21, 1910, p. 1085The contemporary announcement of the twelve-story club-owned apartment house, its architect, prospective owners and customizable apartments. Columbia University Libraries. The owners named include Edward Corning, John Brooks Leavitt, Juliet Lamont, Cornelia Earle and Carolyn Frevert.
- 1908Macon Daily Telegraph, December 27, 1908, p. 9A New York dispatch dated December 26 reports the failure of Poor’s firm and identifies his Gramercy residence. Digital Library of Georgia.
- May 1910“Co-Operative Apartment for Gramercy Park,” Record and Guide, May 14, 1910Record and Guide, May 14, 1910, p. 1045; Columbia University Libraries. Reports the January sale for Mrs. Henry W. Poor, the May resale to a corporation organized by Herbert Lucas, its $250,000 capitalization and the initial backers.
- NYPLNo. 1 Lexington Avenue. Gramercy Park.An exterior and duplex-plan plate from The World’s apartment-house album, catalogued by NYPL under 1910.
- CornellHenry Salem Hubbell: artist biography and portrait recordCornell University Library’s account of Hubbell’s artistic training and career.
- SmithsonianHenry Salem Hubbell, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1935National Portrait Gallery collection record for Hubbell’s 1935 portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
- NYC LandmarksD. Everett Waid: architects’ appendix, Riverside–West End Historic District Extension I, p. 247The Landmarks Preservation Commission’s professional biography identifies Waid’s work with Corbett on the Metropolitan Life North Building and his AIA presidency.
- ArchitectureCarter Horsley, “1 Lexington Avenue”Architectural description of the facade, with reference to Andrew Alpern’s Luxury Apartment Houses of Manhattan.
- 2023 projectEnvoie Projects, “One Lexington Avenue”The project manager’s firsthand account of building work undertaken in 2023, including conservation of the historic fence; Walter B. Melvin Architects is identified as architect.
- SmithsonianConnie Holland, “Cyrus W. Field renews his wedding vows and an international love for submarine telegraphy”National Museum of American History, December 8, 2014. The 1890 reception and the surviving American and British commemorative documents; also documented in Judson’s chapter XV and the Field Papers finding aid.
- 1909 catalogueIllustrated Catalogue of the Valuable Artistic Furnishings and Interior Decorations of the Residence of Henry W. Poor, Esq.American Art Association; Frick Art Reference Library copy. Special Notice on the removal of architectural fittings; lots 132 and 229 describe the distinct main-hall and drawing-room ceilings.
- PrincetonDavid Graham Phillips Manuscripts, C0124Princeton University Library finding aid, hosted by Philadelphia Area Archives. Frevert bequeathed her brother’s manuscripts to Robert W. Chambers, who gave them to Princeton in 1930.
- DartmouthDavid Graham Phillips papers, MS-343Dartmouth Libraries preserves Frevert’s correspondence and records of her work on the sale, publication and disposition of Phillips’s writing. The archive uses the spelling Caroline; the building’s contemporary announcement names Carolyn Frevert.
- 1930 directoryNew York Social Blue Book, 1930: F directoryTranscription of the contemporary directory listing Dr. and Mrs. John H. Finley at One Lexington Avenue.
- NYPLJohn H. Finley papersNew York Public Library biographical and archival record of Finley’s work in education, journalism and civic life. The collection includes editorials, speeches, correspondence and records of his civic work.
- May 3, 1937TIME, “Press: Walking Dean”Contemporary profile documenting Finley’s Park walks and the presentation to its gardener.
- 1898 editionHenry M. Field, The Story of the Atlantic TelegraphProject Gutenberg transcription of the 1898 edition, pp. 23–36. Names the five dining-room participants, dates the agreement to March 10, 1854, and describes the May 8 dawn organization in David Dudley Field’s house. The linked edition is later than the 1893 edition also cited in accounts of the enterprise.
- 1898Henry M. Field, The Life of David Dudley FieldInternet Archive. Family biography documenting David’s Gramercy Park home and his death there in April 1894.
- Cable historyBill Burns, “Cyrus W. Field”History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications. The paired houses dated 1852 and the June 20, 1929 plaque unveiling, including the contemporary newspaper account.
- 2013Tom Miller, “The Lost Cyrus W. Field Mansion — Gramercy Park”Daytonian in Manhattan, November 2013. Draws on dated Tribune and Times reports for the boarding-house period, Poor’s $200,000 purchase, remodeling, entertainments and Buek’s announced buff-brick design.
- 1903Harry W. Desmond and Herbert Croly, Stately Homes in AmericaD. Appleton & Company; Internet Archive. Seven plates of the Henry W. Poor residence, pp. 353–373, including the conservatory reproduced here. Public domain.
- 1909American Book-Prices CurrentDodd, Mead & Company; Internet Archive. Introduction and calendar of sales document the five Anderson auctions of Poor’s library, November 1908–April 1909.
- May 1, 1909American Art News, report of the Poor saleContemporary sale report, p. 7. Records the $171,445 total, Mrs. Samuel Untermyer’s purchases of the ceilings, the Metropolitan Museum’s $7,100 purchase and Charles A. Platt’s acquisitions.
- 1909 catalogueAmerican Art Association, Poor residence sale catalogue — annotated copyThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas J. Watson Library; Internet Archive. Room-by-room catalogue of the April 21–24 auction. Lot 123 lists a pair of Italian wrought-iron entrance gates separately from the fence.
- Museum recordNicolaus Ranucius and his sons, Ciborium, ca. 1150The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1909, accession 09.92.3. Object record and public-domain photograph of the marble altar canopy acquired at the Poor sale.
- June 25, 1910“Contract for No. 1 Lexington Ave.,” Record and Guide, p. 1361Columbia University Libraries. Names Edward Corning Company as general contractor, lists interested owners and estimates $600,000 for the project.
- Nov. 5, 1910Record and Guide, new-building plan 697, p. 741Columbia University Libraries. Twelve-story brick-and-stone apartment house at the northeast corner of Lexington Avenue and 21st Street; names the corporation, Lucas and Corning. The $300,000 construction estimate is distinct from the $600,000 land-and-building estimate.
- Feb. 3, 1917Herbert Lucas, “Famous Gramercy Park Section Still Retains Individuality”Record and Guide annual review, p. 73; Columbia University Libraries. The architect’s own account of Gramercy Park’s character and the cooperative idea.
- 1923Directory of Knox People, 1837–1923Knox College; Internet Archive. Lists John Sanburn Phillips, editor, at One Lexington Avenue and Martha Boyden Finley (John H. Finley) at the same address. Establishes the Finley household here by 1923, without claiming a move-in date.
- 1915Harvard College Class of 1900, Secretary’s Fourth ReportInternet Archive, pp. 409–410. Mark Sullivan’s own entry supplies his home address at One Lexington and his work as an editor and publisher.
- 1927Ralph Flint, Albert Sterner: His Life and His ArtInternet Archive, pp. 26–27. Describes the move of Sterner’s studio from the National Arts Club to One Lexington and his attachment to Gramercy Park.
- 1926Arnold W. Brunner and His WorkAmerican Institute of Architects; Internet Archive. Clayton Hamilton’s memorial essay, p. 13, identifies Brunner’s apartment and his five-thirty visits to The Players.
- 1945Century Association Year-BookInternet Archive. Alphabetical membership entries list William Warder Norton and William Pierson Merrill at One Lexington Avenue. Directory dates establish documented addresses, not the full duration of residence.
- Photographed 2016“Cyrus West Field,” Historical Marker Database, no. 98822Andrew Ruppenstein’s photographs record the corner plaque and its inscription. The photograph’s wording, rather than a conflicting secondary transcription, is used here.
- 1966NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, Gramercy Park Historic DistrictDesignation report LP-0251. Legal boundary and map; the apartment building at One Lexington lies outside the city district.
- 1988NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, Gramercy Park Historic District ExtensionDesignation report LP-1559. The extension adds 36 Gramercy Park East, not One Lexington Avenue.
- 1980National Park Service, Gramercy Park Historic DistrictNational Register entry 80002691, listed January 23, 1980. Describes the larger district as roughly bounded by Third and Park Avenues South and East 18th and 22nd Streets. This is a different designation from the city’s LPC district.
- Lilly LibraryPhillips manuscripts, 1886–1960Indiana University’s finding aid documents Phillips’s founding role at McClure’s Magazine and his editorship of The American Magazine.
- Publisher historyW. W. Norton & Company, “About”The publisher’s history identifies William Warder Norton and Mary Dows Herter Norton as the firm’s co-founders.
- Church historyBrick Church, “History & Archives”The church’s own history lists William P. Merrill as senior minister from 1911 to 1938.
- Field CodeKellen R. Funk, “The Union of Law and Equity: The United States, 1800–1938”Columbia Law School, 2019. Field’s role in procedural reform and the code’s adoption in other American states.
- English receptionKellen R. Funk, “The Fusion of Law and Equity in the Field Code of Civil Procedure”Yale legal-history research on the 1848 code and English reformers’ study of New York procedure.
- December 1911Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, December 9, 1911, p. 866Harper’s purchase of No. 133 to protect No. 131, the new cooperative at the corner and his earlier purchase of Poor’s stable.
- LPC boundaryGramercy Park Historic District · official boundary mapNYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, map prepared January 31, 2019. One Lexington is outside the city district.