The Tilden Mansion

The presidency that never came

The election of 1876 left the country uncertain about its next president. Tilden led the national popular vote and held 184 undisputed electoral votes, one short of the majority then required. Rutherford B. Hayes had 165. Twenty electoral votes were contested. A specially created commission resolved the disputes in Hayes’s favor, producing a final count of 185 to 184.

For Tilden’s admirers, the outcome became a lasting grievance. For the country, its consequences reached much further. Negotiations surrounding the settlement helped bring an end to federal support for the remaining Republican state governments in the South, with grave consequences for Black political rights.

His Gramercy home remained a gathering place after the election. On October 27, 1877, supporters assembled outside for a serenade in Tilden’s honor. The illustration reproduced in Tom Miller’s Daytonian in Manhattan account shows people crowding the street and watching from windows and balconies. It also preserves a view of the house before Vaux’s elaborate facade: a private residence caught in the middle of a very public political life.

A revealing scene survives in John Bigelow’s published collection of Tilden’s letters and literary memorials. An account labeled “1878–9” describes a reporter for the New York World visiting Tilden in the library of his Gramercy mansion. The reporter wanted to know whether Tilden had considered taking the presidential oath despite the outcome.

Tilden said he would have done so had the House declared him elected. Once the electoral process had been completed, however, he had not contemplated swearing himself into office in New York, Washington or anywhere else. “It would have been ridiculous,” he said.

A facade that invited looking

The house makes its strongest impression through the combination of stone, sculpture and light. Broad horizontal bands run across the fronts. Projecting bays interrupt the plane of the wall. Pale and dark stone sharpen the outlines of windows and carved ornament. The two houses have been given a shared architectural vocabulary without becoming perfectly symmetrical.

Not everyone was charmed. In his 1892 book American Architecture, Montgomery Schuyler thought the facade too much like a screen, its shallow projections failing to convey the depth of a substantial building. Yet he admired the handling of color, particularly the placement of narrow bands of polished dark granite. He also praised the extraordinary precision of the carving and the architect’s judgment in placing it where it would contribute to the whole.

The carved portraits have their own authorship. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s research identifies Samuel J. Kitson with the heads of Tilden’s literary favorites, citing an 1882 newspaper account. The same study distinguishes him from the architectural carving firm Ellin and Kitson, associated with the interior woodwork.

Why the Arts Club came downtown

Founded in 1898, the National Arts Club sought to bring artists, patrons and audiences into contact across artistic disciplines. Its first headquarters were on West 34th Street. By 1905 the organization needed more space. Spencer Trask helped arrange the purchase of the Tilden property through the Arts Realty Company.

The Record and Guide reported the sale on March 25, 1905. It named Charles D. Sabin, husband of Tilden’s niece, as the seller and described a property extending through the block to East 19th Street. The Club had about 1,300 members, and its galleries, reading rooms and restaurant were crowded.

The report offered an unexpected explanation for the location: the subway. A club moving from 34th Street downtown to Gramercy struck the writer as unusual, and improved transportation had helped make that choice attractive.

There was also room to build. In April 1905, the same publication announced George B. Post as architect for a new studio building on the East 19th Street portion of the property and for alterations to the mansion. It reported the Club’s intention to preserve as much of the old house as possible because of its historical associations.

The proposed studios would take advantage of north light across the park-facing properties. Their arrangement combined tall working spaces with mezzanine levels. The plan made the site into a place where people could work and live as well as meet and exhibit.

That expansion came at the cost of the old garden. In A Loiterer in New York in 1917, Helen W. Henderson recalled its box-bordered walks, flower beds and large trees, then described the galleries that had replaced it.

The Club occupied its new home in 1906. Its archival exhibition chronology identifies an opening exhibition of American paintings beginning November 8.

Artists in residence

In 1909, collector William T. Evans proposed an artist life membership program: artists would contribute a representative work in exchange for life membership. The first group elected under the provision in 1910 included George Bellows, William Merritt Chase and Charles Hawthorne. Those contributions helped shape the Club’s permanent collection.

Art historian Carol Lowrey identifies Paul Manship and Ernest Lawson among the studio building’s early tenants.