Photo Exhibits
Exhibit 1 – Fifth Avenue Between 73rd and 74th Streets, Circa 1911 (The Block North Of Thorne And Sterling Residences)
Place photo here
New York Public Library Photo detailing the block of Fifth Avenue from 73rd Street north to 74th Street. Note the captions in the bottom border of the photograph notated in enlarged text for easy viewing. The border caption at the extreme far right of the photo indicates that the corner lot above the caption was the site of the Thorne Residence at 914 Fifth. Based upon the captioning convention of placing captions immediately under the actual location in the rest of the photo, this is conflicting information. Since the photo is dated circa 1911, 914 Fifth would not have been a vacant lot as shown. Note also the residence of Sterling’s friend, Nicholas Palmer (center). At the far left in the photograph stands the Old Pickhardt House at 929 Fifth, at the corner of Fifth and 74th. This building was to be torn down and replaced with an early high-rise apartment building in 1923. The address for the building was changed at the time of construction from 929 to 927 Fifth Avenue. The high-rise building still exists today.
This series of photographs were taken with a wide-angle camera in 1911 by little known photographer, Burton Wells. He supposedly photographed every building on Fifth Avenue from Washington Square to East 93rd. If so, what happened to the photograph of Sterling and Thorne's townhouses? It neither exists in the New York Public Library’s collection of these photographs, nor in the book that these photographs were originally intended to illustrate. Did someone remove it from the collection of photos on purpose or was it an oversight of Wells?
Exhibit 2 – Fifth Avenue Between 73rd And 74th Streets, As It Exists Today
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ßLeft, Fifth Avenue Between 73rd and 74th Streets as it exists today. At the left side of the photograph (yellow arrow) is 923 Fifth, which stands on the location of Nicholas Palmer’s townhouse, among others demolished. The building at 927 Fifth (white arrow) replaced the Old Pickhardt House from the previous photo. Research tells us the 927 Fifth, built circa 1992, was among the earliest high-rise apartment buildings in the neighborhood
â Below, the Simpson and Terrell townhouses, immediately south of 927 Fifth, the only remaining buildings in the block remarkably intact and identifiable from the time of the 1911 photo (Exhibit 1).
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Exhibit 3 – 912 Fifth Avenue As It Exists Today
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á Above, 912 Fifth Avenue as it exists today. There appears to be just three buildings on the block. The entrance to the building on the far left is on East 73rd and may or may not occupy part of the ground under what was the Thorne residence in the early 1900’s. The center building with green canopy is designated as 912 Fifth Avenue, but the footprint of the building is many times larger than Sterling's original 912 building would have occupied. It is thought that the right portion of 912 Fifth behind the tree above and the white brick building slightly visible to the extreme right, comprise the area that was Stillman’s vacant lots described in Sterling’s obituary.
Exhibit 4 – 1910 Census Showing Occupants Of 912 Fifth Avenue (Inset Is Actual Census Page)
Note: Common misspelling of John Sterling’s name as John “Sherling” might be error in reading original census page.
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(Courtesy Ancestry.com}
Exhibit 5 – 1907 New York City Directory Listings
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á At Bottom, Directory Listing for Sterling á At Bottom, Directory Listing for Thorne á Street Directory Listing for 5th Ave.
Exhibit 6 – “Life In The Country” – Country Homes Owned By Some Of The Principals In Rye, New York
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Exhibit 7 – Bloss’ Eventual Home And Death Scene: The Metropolitan Club, Then And Now:
insert two photos of Metropolitan club here. Below
insert photo of interior with dates our group joined
Exhibit 8 – $1,845,000 In Cash Bequests Of The Sterling Will Converted To Present-Day Dollars: $26,063,047
Note: Due to the vaguerities of the real estate and the bond markets, it would be difficult to estimate a value of the non-cash portion of bequests made in Sterling’s will. However here are the cash bequests with the current day values following in blue. Remember in the case of trust funds, it would be the interest that was payable to the recipient and not the total dollar amount. In most cases, a trust fund will either revert to the trust for some other purpose (for example, Ms. Adams' trust would revert to Yale upon her death) or be paid in full to the recipient, after a certain period of time.
. Adams, Miss Helen C. Sterling’s Pvt. Secretary, Beneficiary of, $50,000 Trust Fund In today’s dollars: $706,316 Bridgeport Hospital Recipient, $7,500 Bequest In today’s dollars $105,947 Bunnell, Mrs. Rufus Sterling’s Sister, Recipient $250,000 & Real Estate, Co-Executor In today’s dollars: $3,531,578 Bunnell Children Recipients, $160,000 Sterling Bequest In today’s dollars: $2,260,210 Garver, John A $10,000 In today’s dollars: $141,263 There is no way to accurately value the worth of the “Good Name” of Shearman & Sterling or the value of the firm today. Suffice it to say, it has appreciated. Miriam A. Osborn Memorial Home Recipient, $1 Million Bequest In today’s dollars: $14,126,313 No way to accurately value the $500,000 worth of railroad bonds bequeathed, or the Unspecified cash gifts given by Sterling before his demise. Presbyterian Hospital of New York Recipient, $7,500 Bequest In today’s dollars: $105,947 Russell Trust (a.k.a. Yale “Skull and Bones Society”) Recipient, $10,000 Bequest In today’s dollars: $141,263 Stratford, Conn. Sterling Birthplace / Recipient $50,000 Gift In today’s dollars: $706,316 Sterling, Miss Cordelia Sterling’s Sister / Recipient $250,000 Bequest and In today’s dollars: $3,531,578 Trustee, $50,000 charitable Bequest In today’s dollars: $706,316
Exhibit 9 – The Easter Sunday Discovery: Thorne-Sterling’s 912 -914 Fifth Avenue. As one can imagine, during the course of researching this project, the researchers passed around literally hundreds of photographs by e-mail. Some of these photos had direct bearing on the search for Thorne's and Sterling’s 912-914 Fifth Avenue residences; others did not. Some photographs, while interesting, were relegated to the margins of the story. One such photo, the Lenox Library between 1900 and 1906 below, was presented by the researcher from Alabama in an e-mail on March 26, 2010.
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Though remarkable for its light and clarity, the photo went unremarked upon until the morning of Easter Sunday, nine days later. While reviewing e-mails for information and photos to be included in this timeline, the editor noted some familiar details in the background that matched known buildings in the blocks north and south of the Thorne-Sterling townhouses. By counting streets and identifying buildings, it became easy to isolate 912-914 Fifth as the building behind the equestrian following the coach.
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…And voila, the “prize” of our photo research. As far as we know, this view represents the best likeness of 912-914 known to exist. No other researchers into the life and times of Sterling and Bloss have been able to come up with a photo of the residences. While extremely happy with this find, there were, however, some negatives to be noted. First, while the original photo was miraculously clear for its age, repeated enlargement has left this first version (shown at right) at the edge of detail and clarity. We were extremely fortunate to find an ultra-high resolution copy of the photo in the Library of Congress collection which gave us the version shown in the section on 912 Fifth Ave. Still, the photo shows the townhouses at an oblique angle which, maddeningly, leaves much about the fronts of the townhouses to the imagination.
Insert photo to the right of the above paragraph
Examination of the roofline has led us to the conclusion that the Thorne and Sterling townhouses were not only designed by the same architect, but also designed to give the harmonious appearance of two units that beautifully complement each other, almost like a single home.
Obviously, looking at the brick firewall on the south side of the building and the construction fence in the area below the brick wall (right about at the level of the equestrian’s hip, on the left side in picture) we can see Stillman’s lots. We now know that the large lot to the north of the two townhomes was purchased by Jay Gould’s son Howard Gould. The north and south vacant lots remained empty into the 1920’s when they, along with the townhomes, succumbed to the apartment house boom that took place along “Millionaires’ Row” after the First World War. All variations of the Lenox Library photo shown above are courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.
Exhibit 10 – The Sterling Mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx, New York
photo here of Sterling Mausoleum
Exhibit 11 – The Bloss Family Tree
photo of diagram here
Exhibit 12 – The Sloane-Stillman Townhouse (9 E. 72nd Street)
photo here
