Photos and all details below courtesy of Tom Miller, Daytonian in Manhattan
Note: I would like to recognize the late Paul Engel, formerly Curator and Director of Harkness House, who so graciously gave my wife and I a full tour of this beautiful home. We miss his heartfelt love of all things related to Harkness House.
On June 1, 1906, Edward Stephen Harkness purchased the 35 by 115-foot vacant lot at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 75th Street from John R. Ford. Lavish mansions had been filling the immediate neighborhood throughout the past ten years, and Harkness would soon add one more.
Edward Harkness's purchase of the vacant plot had much to do with his recent marriage. In 1904, at the late age of 30, he married Mary Emma Stillman (who was about six months younger than he). The daughter of attorney Thomas Edgar and Charlott Elizabeth Stillman, she, too, had grown up amidst luxurious surroundings.
His brother C.W. Harkness and Lamon V. Harkness owned lots across the street and just around the corner on 5th Avenue.
On June 22, 1907, The New York Times announced that “Plans have been filed for the new five-story residence to be built by Edward S. Harkness at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Seventy-fifth Street…The house will cost $250,000 according to the estimate of Architects Hale and Rogers.” (The cost would be more in the neighborhood of $6.73 million today).
The lot bore an impressive Fifth Avenue address. But Rogers designed the Italian Renaissance palazzo to face 75th Street. By turning the structure to the side, he precluded the problem of a long, dark and narrow house. But it caused a different problem for Harkness.
Three years earlier Stuart Duncan had erected his own handsome mansion next door--at No. 1 East 75th Street. His architect, C. P. H. Gilbert, incorporated the address in the keystone above the door. But now Edward Harkness wanted that address. It may have been his reserved personality that resisted the ostentatious Fifth Avenue number, or it may have been that he struggled with the logic of what was truly a 75th Street house bearing an avenue address. Whatever the case, he demanded the address of No. 1 and got it. Duncan had to have the bronze lettering "No 3" affixed to his keystone.
It is commonly repeated that Stephen's mother, Anna, paid for the residence as a wedding present. The timing, three years after the ceremony, brings that into question. It is feasible that the house was merely a gift.
The serene Renaissance palace was faced with Tennessee marble. Pretending to contain four stories, there were actually seven--two below ground and another hidden behind the stone balustrade above the cornice. A light moat was protected by a magnificent cast and wrought iron fence, modeled after the Scalegari tombs of Verona.
The Architectural Record was impressed. Calling it “free from excess and exaggeration,” it added, “if there is any façade on upper Fifth Avenue which gives an effect of quiet elegance by worthier architectural means it has not been our good fortune to come across it.”
Socially reserved, the Harknesses disdained ostentation and the waste of money (Edward often said "A dollar misspent is a dollar lost.") The couple would prefer to give money to deserving causes than to spend it on pretentious entertainments. There was, for example, no ballroom in the new mansion. And Rogers ensured their privacy by raising the street floor openings just above eye level.
On one of the subterranean floors, he design an innovative refrigerated room. When temperatures outside fell an exterior door could be opened and the electricity to the room turned off, allowing nature to cool the space--another means of preventing "misspend" dollars.
None of this meant that the Harknesses would live like monks. The sumptuous interiors drew from several styles. The Louis XVI reception room had a frescoed ceiling, intricately carved walnut woodwork and crystal chandeliers.
The Italian Renaissance dining room, at the opposite end of the ground floor, featured a stenciled, beamed ceiling with gilt plaster of paris ornaments that imitated metal. Two windows on the east wall would look out onto the side wall of the Duncan house. So artisan Kenyon Cox fashioned them of opaque glass which allowed light into the room but masked the unsightly view.
He told the Architectural Record in 1909 "While I have spoken of leaded glass, the windows are actually put together with copper...and by backing the whole with plate glass, it was found possible to make them perfectly rigid without recourse to supporting bars." They depicted the allegories of "Abundantia Maris" and "Abundantia Terrae"--the abundance of sea and of land.
Used as the Commonwealth Fund's Board Room today, the walls of the dining room are no longer covered. Cox's magnificent leaded windows flank the fireplace. photograph by the author
Rogers had originally designed a grand entrance hall, so arriving visitors would be met with a view of the bronze-railed staircase and polished limestone walls that resembled marble. The Harknesses balked at the perceived pretentiousness and Rogers reworked the plans, resulting in an unusual configuration. The entrance doors opened into a small vestibule. Here visitors would turn left into an entrance room. The staircase was essentially hidden behind the vestibule and only when guests moved from the reception room to the dining room would it become visible. The ceiling of the staircase hall was a false skylight of trellises and vines, lit from behind.
The second floor contained just three rooms--rarely seen by visitors. Off the central "gallery" were the library, which double as Harkness's office, and the music room.
The Architectural Record called the gallery "perhaps the most beautiful room in the house." A Carrara marble fountain with a bronze figure of Pan sat below a vaulted ceiling of Greek and Pompeiian motifs and gilded bronze chandeliers.
The library was paneled in richly veined Brazilian rosewood. Rogers bathed the room in gentle light by installing dozens of electric sockets in the beams of the Italian Renaissance ceiling to accommodate small light bulbs.
At the other end of the gallery, the Venetian music room was sumptuous, with a carved ceiling that included painted canvas insets.
For an unknown reason, the music room was renovated in 1920. Much architectural detail was eliminated, including the painted inserts on the elaborate ceiling.
The third floor contained Mary's and Stephen's private rooms. Mary's pretty boudoir was decorated in the French style. Their bedroom faced 75th Street (although in a few years Stephen had remodeling done to create his own bedroom on the eastern end of the floor).
There were five guest bedrooms on the fourth floor, along with a room for a valet. The main staircase ended at this level and access to the top floor was by a service staircase. There were rooms for eight female servants (the original census lists them as all Swedish) and, a laundry.
The Harkness name appeared in newspapers for their generous donations and funding--almost never for social activities. While they did host luncheons and dinners, the low-profile couple did not notify the press, as most socialites did. And when society columnists did get wind of an event, the coverage was minimal. A one-line report in The New-York Tribune on July 3, 1922, for instance, was frustratingly bare-bones for society watchers. "Mr. and Mrs. Edward S. Karness entertained at a luncheon at their summer home this afternoon."
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