After the establishment of Gramercy Park in 1845, brick and brownstone houses went up on this 19th Street block in the 1840's and 1850's. Half a century later, what were originally conceived as upper class housing became aging accomodations.
It took Frederick Sterener to reverse this trend. Born in London in the 1860's, Sterner emigrated to the United States in 1882 and practiced architecture in Colorado before coming to New York in 1906. He took an office on Fifth Avenue near 19th Street and rented space in an old house at 23 West 20th Street. Looking for a place to call his own, he bought an old brick house at 139 East 19th street and gave it a makeover--a coat of tinted stucco, shutters, decorative ironwork and a projecting tile roof.
Sterner's lead attracted others, among them Joseph B. Thomas, a banker and polo player, who hired an architect to revamp 135 East 19th Street into a Gothic house. Sterner bought up more houses on the and spread his signature style across the block.
The block earned the moniker "Block Beautiful" at the pen of Harriet Gillespse, in American Homes and Gardens in 1914, and it has stuck ever since.
Working for Thomas, Sterner designed the dramatic half-timbered apartment house at No. 132. Completed in 1911, it was soon home to the muckraking author Ida Tarbell, the society painter Cecilia Beaux and the stockbroker Chester Dale. The architect's brother, the painter Albert Sterner, also lived at No. 132. Arist George Bellows took over an old house at No. 146, adding an attic studio, and the painter-muralist Robert Winthrop Chanler had a studio at No. 147.
Many minor changes have been made to the houses, both before and after landmark designation. The Thomas residence, now owned by Oleg Cassini, is unchanged, but the stucco-front Sterner houses have lost many of their distinctive elements -- in some cases shutters have been removed, in others the pastel colors have been toned down. Some previous owner destroyed Sterner's distinctive tile and brick entryway at No. 145, and in 1992 Lee Ann Jaffee, working with the architect Richard Ayotte, decided to substitute a nominally Greek revival doorway. At No. 147, someone has chopped away at the two giraffes to put in an electrical conduit. At No. 143, Lynn Wagenknecht has one of the few intact midcentury houses, and her architect, Thomas Tsue, has been restoring that building to its original character. In 1924 the architect Frank Forster stripped the mid-19th-century brownstone at No. 142 and gave it a Dutch door and intelligent ironwork. No. 128 added trim Art Moderne ironwork. And No. 132, now a co-op, replacing the four stone spheres on the pillars in front in the midst of a restoration of Sterner's original designs.
Gramercy Park Historic District National Register #80002691
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