THE GOLDEN YEAR
How 1868 shaped New York real estate
A S the horrors of the Civil War faded from memory, New York — already the country’s largest port — began to solidify its status as the cultural, financial and industrial center of the country. By the end of the 19th century, Gilded Age mansions would line Fifth Avenue facing Central Park. But during the years immediately following the war, the center of the city was still much farther downtown; in fact, the stretch of Broadway from Houston to 34th streets was the Big Apple’s most important thoroughfare.
Throughout 1868, in particular, the city was consumed by construction, from the first elevated railroad to department stores, from lavish homes in the West Village to more modest ones in developing Brooklyn. These remarkable buildings from 150 years ago — including several currently up for sale, including the Glover family’s lovingly restored townhouse at 85 Charles St., asking $13.95 million — stand as reminders of old New York.
To set the scene: A brand-new clothing store called McCreery & Co. opened in 1868 at the corner of 11th Street and Broadway, anchoring a vibrant shopping district known as Ladies’ Mile. This intersection was also home to Grace Church — where fashionable New Yorkers went to see and be seen — and the trendy St. Denis Hotel, both of which were designed by James Renwick, architect of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Across the street stood one of the grandest department stores in the city, A.T. Stewart’s “Cast Iron Palace,” which had been built by architect John Kellum 10 years earlier.
McCreery & Co. — another one of Kellum’s cast-iron masterpieces, with splendid rows of metal columns molded to look like marble — was known for silks and lace. Some of the building was straightforward retail, while other floors were given over to in-house garment
manufacturing. Converted to a co-op in 1973 and dubbed the Cast Iron Building, today the apartments bask in sunlight that streams through the arched colonnades. Before electricity, such windows were necessary to showcase the store’s offerings in, quite literally, the best possible light.
When Kevin McLeish purchased his apartment there, at 67 E. 11th St., in 1989, he realized he’d found something special. “When I first walked into my apartment,” says McLeish, 63, a retired software development manager, “I knew this was a very ‘New York City’ type of building, with unique layouts and a very loft-like feel.” McLeish’s 725-square-foot one-bedroom, with views of Grace Church and the old St. Denis (now an office building), was on the market for $985,000 via Maura and Robert Geils at Corcoran. It went into contract earlier this month.
Also in 1868, architect Henry Engelbert built the appropriately named Grand Hotel (now a landmarked apartment building) on Broadway and 31st Street out of marble with a mansard roof. New York-based industries from shipping to manufacturing were key to the country’s recovery following the Civil War. As money flowed into the city, the post-war building boom kept Engelbert busy constructing everything from churches to commercial space to houses, including the West Village’s 85 Charles St. Also from 1868, it is currently on the market for $13.95 million with broker Cassie Glover at Brown Harris Stevens. Glover, 44, and her husband, Paul, a 50-year-old financier, are also the owners.
The townhouse was originally built for coal magnate Henry E.C. Kugeler, who commissioned Engelbert to build a trio of houses at the intersection of Charles and Bleecker streets. While much of the area had already been built up between 1830 and 1850, this block was a holdout of an earlier time when the Village was still an actual village, dotted with farms and estates.
When the Glovers bought 85 Charles St. in 2004 for $4.5 million, it had undergone numerous renovations, none of them sympathetic to the original. There was, Cassie Glover says, “lots of formica” and “what was considered ‘modern’ in 1981.” During a painstaking restoration of the nearly 5,000-square-foot, five-bedroom property, the Glovers found three of the home’s original fireplaces — which had been ripped out and stored in the basement — and reinstalled them. The original 1868 front doors, which feature beautiful architectural details such as hand-carved rosettes, were also rehabbed, along with the original hardwood floors on two levels. As Cassie Glover points out, because nearby Bleecker Street was a business district when the house was built, its deeply set windows and thick facade provide natural insulation and soundproofing.
The fact that coal magnate Kugeler was so eager to develop multiple homes in this area points to how important this neighborhood was in the years right after the Civil War. While the super wealthy were migrating north, toward 34th Street, most New Yorkers preferred to stay closer to the city’s shopping drags and cultural hubs.
Just three blocks away from 85 Charles St. is another townhouse on the market, 1869-built 250 W. 11th St., listed for $5.99 million from Kimberley Jay at Douglas Elliman. Its architectural details remain intact, from an ornate oculus around a skylight to the original hearth from the 19th-century kitchen (located in what is now the dining room).
Even grander is the townhouse at 17 St. Luke’s Place, which is asking $10.25 million via Elliman. When it was built in 1865, it faced the cemetery of St. Luke’s Church. Such open space was considered a real draw, guaranteeing no one would build across the street and block the natural light — important in days before at-home electricity. Today, a small park stands where the churchyard used to be, and the house at No. 17 features a stunning mix of period and modern details.
While the Village was clearly the epicenter of city life in 1868, there were signs that New York was beginning to expand. That summer, the first two stations of the West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway — the city’s first elevated train line — opened, connecting Dey Street in the Financial District to West 29th Street along Greenwich Street and Ninth Avenue. Deemed a success, the railroad was extended. Known as the Ninth Avenue “El,” it was the beginning of the city’s first effective public transit scheme.
Though Central Park officially opened in 1859, work by its architects, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, continued in fits and starts. By the late 1860s, landmarks such as Bethesda Terrace and Belvedere Castle were nearly finished. Even more important, Vaux and Olmsted’s Prospect Park had opened in Brooklyn in 1867. Many nearby parts of that borough — which would remain a separate city until 1898 — began to develop.
One Brooklyn gem from 1868 is 58 Greene Ave., asking $5.2 million via David Edwards at Rutenberg. Just a 20-minute walk from Prospect Park, this four-story brownstone and its landmarked neighbors provide a typical example of what an upper middle class neighborhood looked like a century and a half ago.
Yet for all this growth, New York still clung to vestiges of its smalltown past. For Manhattanites, most shopping, dining and entertaining was still within walking distance. But a generation later, those newfangled “El” trains — and then the subway — would push housing farther away, turning most workers from residents into commuters.
Today’s New Yorkers have plenty of new construction to choose from. But don’t forget the old-school charms and ornate details that characterized the built environment after the Civil War. The 1860s real estate boom laid the foundations for the city’s emergence as a world capital during the Gilded Age.