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The Gramercy Park Historic District, roughly East 18th to East 21st Streets between Park Avenue South and Third Avenue is an easy stroll. The park itself is the centerpiece of the district of tree-shaded streets lined with a variety of 19th century residences, from 1840s rowhouses and brownstones to Victorian Era Queen Annes and neo-Gothics. Irving Place, which bisects the district offers small shops, a few galleries, and restaurants.
From 1831, when Sam Ruggles bought the property, through 1845, this exquisite piece of Manhattan real estate was a swamp the Dutch called Crommashie. Ruggles drained the swamp and planted willow, elm and chestnut trees, roses and lilacs, and herbaceous borders. Gradually Sam Ruggles's vacant lot grew so beautiful it became a popular pleasure spot to which Knickerbocker New York strolled of an evening.
Not many New Yorkers wanted to live this far uptown, and by 1845, there were only two houses on the square. But Sam Ruggles had a vision and he just went along blithely planting. Just as Sam knew they would, the city folk wanted, no, needed, a park, but not all of the city folk.
The 42 lots he set aside for Gramercy Park, to ensure "the free circulation of air," were developed specifically for those who bought the surrounding building lots in his planned residential square. His deed of December 17, 1831 established this and it holds true to today, although residents of surrounding blocks may now buy visiting privileges. The park, with a tax exemption arranged by Samuel Ruggles, is still owned by the residents of the surrounding square.
Sam Ruggles laid out Irving Place, naming it for his friend Washington Irving. He also laid out Lexington Avenue, running it south to north, in the face of the prevailing wisdom that a maritime city's main thoroughfares should run east and west between the rivers. Sam knew the city would grow north and the people would come. When they did come, the residents received golden keys with which to unlock the gate to the park.
In time, leading New Yorkers, like his own son-in-law, George Templeton Strong, the social lion Stuyvesant Fishes, inventor (and founder of Cooper Union) Peter Cooper, architect Stanford White, future governor Samuel Tilden, book publisher and Mayor of New York James Harper, sister poets Phoebe and Alice Cary, concert singer Emma Thursby, novelist and critic Carl Van Vechten, Paul Rosenfeld, music editor of "The Dial," Wall Street broker, critic and poet Edmund Clarence Stedman, (who refused to attend a Gramercy Park dinner in honor of Oscar Wilde), Herman Melville, John Barrymore -- all came to live on the square or in neighboring streets surrounding Sam Ruggles's park. President John F. Kennedy even lived here as a boy before his father was appointed ambassador to England. President Theodore Roosevelt was born a half block away on East 20th Street and a reconstruction of his family home is a museum today.
New Yorkers love Gramercy Park, a green oasis in Midtown, between East 20th and East 21st Streets. They stroll past eyes wide open to its beauty and elegance of design. Eyes open wider to include the grandeur of the park's surrounding architecture, the coherence of its physical and ambient character. Finally the eyes open the heart and New Yorkers are grateful that a place like Gramercy Park has been preserved for its peace, its grace, and for the unique opportunity it gives to look into a great city's past.
Grateful, even if most New Yorkers will never get inside the gates.
A short walking tour:
Gramercy Park West
No. 4, the home of James Harper, has out front two mounted iron lamps, following the custom of New York mayors to announce their domiciles to the public. James Harper was the founder of Harper Brothers publishers, later Harper & Row.
Gramercy Park South (East 20th Street)
No. 15 was the home of Samuel Tilden, Governor of New York. The windows have original sliding steel panels and the house a secret passageway to 19th Street, through which Tilden might avoid political enemies and escape, if necessary, New York City's
roving riots. It was designed by Calvert Vaux in Gothic Revival brownstone with black granite trim. It is now the National Arts Club.
No. 16, the Players' Club, was the home of Edwardian actor Edwin Booth, brother of Abraham Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth. The club has a portrait of Edwin Booth by Sargent hanging over the main fireplace. There is a bronze statue of Booth in his role as Hamlet inside the park. No. 16 is a truly exquisite brownstone with a two story Tuscan porch and iron lanterns.
No. 19 was the Hamilton Fish house in the 1890s, later occupied by publicist Ben Sonnenberg, and actor John Barrymore. It has undergone a recent restoration.
No. 23, now the Brotherhood Synagogue, was the Friends Meeting House, a lovely building, austere enough for Quakers, built in 1859 and set in a patio type yard.
North (East 21st Street)
Dominated by the current Gramercy Park Hotel on what was the site of the Stanford White home. The house had been occupied more by White's wife than by Stanford White, who had a bachelor apartment on top of the old Madison Square Garden. He was shot to death in the Roof Garden there on June 25, 1906 by the husband of his lover, Evelyn Nesbit, a Floradora Girl.
East 19th Street (Between Irving Place and Third Avenue)
Known as "The Block Beautiful" - this is a row of mainly stuccoed buildings that were remodeled early in the 20th century by Frederick J. Sterner. The block was an informal colony for artists and writers in the 1920s and 1930s, such as author Ida Tarbell, painter Cecilia Beaux, and the sculptor Zolnay. Music critic and novelist Carl Van Vechten, lived at 151 East 19th Street and with his neighbors, painters George Bellows and Robert Chanler, threw wild parties, about which Ethyl Barrymore commented, "I went there in the evening a young girl and came away in the morning an old woman."
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