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John Henry Hammond House
Historic house in Manhattan, New York From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The John Henry Hammond House is a mansion at 9 East 91st Street in the Carnegie Hill section of the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by architects Carrère and Hastings in the Italian Renaissance style, it was completed by 1906 as the residence of lawyer John Henry Hammond and his wife Emily Vanderbilt Sloane Hammond. The Russian Federation owns the house and has used it as the Consulate General of Russia to New York City since 1994. The mansion is a New York City designated landmark.
The Hammond House is five stories high, with its fifth story set back from the facade. The mansion's limestone facade is rusticated on its lowest two stories, and each corner of the building has vertical stone quoins. The second story of the facade is designed like a piano nobile, while the upper stories have progressively smaller windows. The rooms were designed in the Louis XVI style, with features such as elevators and a squash court. When the house was built, the ground (or first) floor had a "T"-shaped entrance hall, a billiards room, a dining room, and a breakfast rooms. The reception rooms on the second floor—which included a ballroom, library, and music room—could accommodate hundreds of guests. The third and fourth floors were used as bedrooms.
Andrew Carnegie purchased the site in 1898 to protect the value of his nearby mansion. William D. Sloane, of the W. & J. Sloane furniture family, acquired the site from Carnegie in 1901 and commissioned the Hammond House and the adjacent James A. Burden House as wedding presents for his daughters. The house served as the Hammond family's home from 1905 to 1946. The eye surgeon Ramón Castroviejo bought the house in 1946 and slightly modified the interior, using the house as his office and residence while operating an eye hospital on the top floors. The Soviet government bought the house in 1975 and renovated it, but the consulate's opening was delayed due to an agreement with the U.S. After the U.S. expelled Soviet diplomats in 1980, the house was abandoned and fell into disrepair. After the building was renovated from 1992 to 1994, it served as the Russian consulate to New York City.
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Site
The John Henry Hammond House is at 9 East 91st Street[2][3] in the Carnegie Hill section of the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City.[4] It stands on the north side of 91st Street, just east of Fifth Avenue.[4] The site has a frontage of 57.17 feet (17.43 m) wide on 91st Street and extends 100 feet (30 m) northward.[4] On the same city block to the west are the Otto H. Kahn House and the James A. Burden House, while directly to the east is the John and Caroline Trevor House.[3][5] The Felix M. Warburg House, containing the Jewish Museum, is on the block to the north.[6] Just south of the John Henry Hammond House is the Andrew Carnegie Mansion at 2 East 90th Street, housing the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.[7] The townhouses on 11, 15, and 17 East 90th Street and the Spence School are located on the same block as the Carnegie Mansion, southeast of the Hammond House.[8]
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Architecture
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Perspective
The mansion was designed by Carrère and Hastings,[9][10] who were also responsible for the design of the New York Public Library Main Branch.[11] It is designed in a High Renaissance style with elements influenced by 16th-century Italian buildings.[12] Facing the Burden House to the west is a courtyard,[5][13] which was originally enclosed behind heavy doors.[14] The courtyard occupies the 35-foot (11 m) gap between the Hammond and Burden houses.[15] Ever since the government of the Soviet Union took over the Hammond House in the 1970s, the courtyard has served as a parking lot, which is closed off by a rolldown gate.[5]
Facade
The Hammond House is five stories high, with its fifth story set back from the facade.[16] In general, the window openings contain casement windows with wooden frames, which date back to the house's construction in 1903.[17] The first story's facade is made of rusticated blocks of limestone.[18][1] At the center of the facade's southern elevation is a round arch with a pair of wrought-iron entrance doors. On either side of the entrance are large console brackets, which contain leaf and fruit motifs. The brackets support a balcony on the second story, thus giving the balcony the appearance of a deep cornice.[1] There are round-arched window openings on either side of the entrance.[18][1]
On the second through fourth stories, there are quoins at each corner of the building.[16] The second story of the facade is designed like a piano nobile, with three high French windows, each flanked by columns in the Ionic order.[16][18] Above each pair of columns are entablatures, which support segmentally arched pediments; the columns and pediments give the windows the appearance of aediculae, or Roman temples. Both of the outer second-story windows are recessed from the facade, and there were formerly wrought-iron window guards in front of each of these windows, with leaf and fruit motifs.[1] By the 1990s, the window guards in front of the outer windows had been removed.[16] There is also a balcony in front of the central window, with wrought-iron balustrade.[1]
The upper floors contains masonry panels and are intended to complement the elaborate entablature, frieze, and heavily-projecting cornice immediately above.[1] The windows of the third floor are smaller than those on the second floor, and the windows on the fourth floor are even smaller than those below.[16] Atop the third-floor windows are brackets which support cornice shelves. There are panels with egg-and-dart moldings between the fourth-floor windows.[1] An ornate frieze and cornice run above the fourth floor,[16] blocking views of the fifth floor from the street.[18] There is a plain cornice above the set-back fifth floor.[16] The western elevation, facing the private courtyard, is made of limestone. The southernmost two bays of the western elevation are similar to those on the southern elevation, except that the windows on the second floor do not have arched pediments. The rest of the western elevation is made of plain limestone. There is a horizontal string course, a frieze with fleurs-de-lis, and a protruding cornice with lions' heads above the western elevation.[19]
Features
The building was originally described as having a ballroom and 16 bathrooms.[20] Interior photos from the early 20th century display a "rich series of Louis XVI-style rooms with elaborate marbles, carving, tapestries and furnishings."[9] There were also two elevators.[20][21]
First floor
When the house was built, the "T"-shaped entrance hall had white walls with marble pillars, as well as busts and pedestals made of Caen stone.[14] On the right (east) side of the hall, a grand marble staircase ascends to the second floor.[14][22] Doors on the left (west) side led to the courtyard that was shared with the Burden House. A reception room was located just north of the western end of the entrance hall and was designed in the Louis XVI style. The reception room had gilded furniture and brocades made of satin. The walls had green-and-white panels with carved-stone frames, above which was a gilded screen with painted panels; there was also a fireplace mantel topped by watercolor paintings.[14] The reception room is complemented by a similarly-sized billiards room north of the entrance hall's eastern end, which was decorated with dark wood panels and green velours.[14]
A hallway with a carved mantelpiece, a marble bust, and draperies continues north from the reception room toward the dining room.[14] The rooms in the northern portion of the first, or ground, floor were originally used as dining and breakfast rooms.[14][22] The dining room originally had French walnut furniture, including a table running for its entire length, and the white-painted French-walnut woodwork was covered with Louis XVI-style red tapestries. There were carved stone decorations throughout the dining room as well. Attached to the former dining room is the breakfast room, a circular space. The breakfast room originally had green furniture and a green carpet; the walls were initially covered by stone latticework, and the room was topped by a domed skylight.[14]
Second story
The second floor has the most elaborately decorated spaces in the house, with a ballroom that could fit 250 people and a music room that could fit 100 people.[22] These spaces had ceilings measuring 18 feet (5.5 m) high.[22][23] The ballroom and music room took up much of the second floor, with the remainder of the space being occupied by a library.[14][24] The ballroom occupies the entire southern frontage of the house, the music room occupies the entire northern frontage, and the library occupies the western frontage between the ballroom and music room. All these spaces are accessed by a reception hall, an elevator, a grand staircase on the east.[24] The second-floor reception hall was simple in design, with Spanish tapestries.[14]
The ballroom is variously cited as measuring 28 by 50 feet (8.5 by 15.2 m)[25] or 33 by 64 feet (10 by 20 m).[26] It was originally designed in the Louis XVI style,[23] but in the 1990s, the ballroom was redecorated with daisy-and-rose motifs.[25] When built, the ballroom had a white-and-gold color scheme; satin brocades and window draperies; and two crystal chandeliers.[14] The music room, meanwhile, is decorated with an arabesque motif.[25] The music room originally had gilded furniture, cabinets with old hand fans, pale-gray wall panels with gilded reliefs, and satin brocades were hung next to the windows.[14] There were paneled doors in the music room, which led directly to the ballroom and could be opened during private events.[22] The second-floor library's decorative features include an elaborate fireplace mantel[22] and a barrel vaulted ceiling with strapwork motifs.[25] The library was decorated in an old English style, with walnut paneling and green-velour tapestries; it was accessed from both the ballroom and the music room.[14]
Other stories
On the third story were five bedrooms,[27] including the Hammond parents' bedrooms and the guest bedroom.[18] Emily Sloane Hammond had her own bedroom, which was larger than the house's master bedroom, while her husband John Henry Hammond had a second study room on the third floor.[28] The children's bedrooms and a family room were on the fourth story.[18][27] In addition to a set of rooms for John Henry Hammond Jr., their only son and youngest child,[20] there were a nurse's bedroom and two additional bedrooms on the fourth story.[27] The male servants slept in the basement, as far away as possible from the female servants' bedrooms on the fifth floor.[18][27] The female servants' quarters consisted of eight rooms.[27] Also on the fifth floor were an infirmary for the Hammond children,[18][27] in addition to a squash court, which was used for roller skating by two generations of Hammond children.[21]
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History
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Perspective
In December 1898, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie bought all of the lots on Fifth Avenue between 90th and 92nd streets, with the intent of building his mansion on some of these plots.[29] Carnegie ultimately decided to erect his mansion only on the plots between 90th and 91st streets.[30] He retained ownership of several nearby lots to protect his home's value,[31][32] selling them only to "congenial neighbors".[5][33] Carnegie sold four land lots on 91st Street to the businessman William Douglas Sloane in December 1900.[34][a] The assemblage is variously cited as measuring 135 feet (41 m)[35][36] or 136 feet (41 m) wide.[32] Sloane intended to build two houses on the site, one for each of his daughters: Florence Sloane Burden, who was married to iron entrepreneur James A. Burden Jr., and Emily Sloane Hammond, who was married to John Henry Hammond.[32][34] The Burden and Hammond residences were to be separated by a 35-foot-wide (11 m) courtyard.[15] Sloane acquired further land on 91st Street in November 1901 as part of a land swap with Carnegie.[37]
Use as residence
Development
At the time of the house's construction, John Henry Hammond was a lawyer who also led 10 companies[38] and was the chief of staff to U.S. Army general William Tecumseh Sherman.[35][39] Emily Hammond was an heiress to the furniture company W. & J. Sloane through her father and to the Vanderbilt family through her mother.[35][38] The Hammond initially lived on 72nd Street after their 1899 marriage.[39][40] After the Sloane family bought the 91st Street sites, they offered to build a house for the Hammonds there (adjoining the Burdens' house),[39][27] and Carrère and Hastings was hired to design the house.[10] Sloane was erecting both of his daughters' residences by the end of 1902.[15][41] The Building and Sanitary Inspection Company was hired as the drainage and plumbing contractor for both the Hammond and Burden houses,[42] while John W. Rapp was hired to construct the arches.[43]
John Henry Hammond Jr. later recalled that his father had protested strenuously against the house's construction and vowed to move there "over [his] dead body".[27] Hammond had specifically objected to the house's location, telling his wife that he was "going to be considered a kept man".[27][18] While the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and The New York Times cite the house as having been completed in 1903,[9][16] other authors cite the building as having been finished in 1906.[27][18] The Hammond family is recorded as having hosted an event in the house as early as March 1904.[44]
Hammond use
Emily and John Hammond lived in the house with their five children and 16 staff.[27][25] When Carnegie tried to split the nearby parcel at 91st Street and Fifth Avenue and sell part of it to Lloyd Bryce in 1906, Sloane and his daughters all opposed the sale.[45][46] Had Bryce's house been built, it would have abutted the Burden House's western wall,[47] violating a restriction that required that any building on that site be set back from the Burden House's western facade.[48][49] The Sloanes filed a lawsuit which prevented Carnegie from selling that plot to anyone; they dropped their suit against Carnegie in 1914, when the lot at the corner with Fifth Avenue was sold to Otto Hermann Kahn.[50] The land lot immediately to the east, which was still owned by Carnegie, was resold in 1909[51][52] and became the site of John B. Trevor Sr.'s mansion, which was completed in 1911.[53]
When the Hammonds lived in the building, it was decorated with "the undistinguished but expensive stock" of the W. & J. Sloane company, as Emily Hammond had wanted to avoid any ostentatious furniture.[22][23] After John Hammond Jr. was born in 1910, a painting of John Jr. holding a Pekingese was mounted onto the wall.[20] The 1910 United States census described the family as having employed numerous chauffeurs, maids. and governesses, in addition to a butler, kitchen staff, and a footman.[27] One daughter, Rachel Hammond Breck, noted that her mother's parties never went for long, mainly due to her not serving alcohol.[25] At dinnertime, it took a long time to transport food from the basement to the kitchen; according to one of the Hammond daughters, Adele Hammond Emery, her father joked that "he'd never had a hot meal".[54]
Growing up in the house, John Jr. became familiar with jazz music by age eight, in part because he often heard it being played in servants' bedrooms.[55] The house routinely hosted concerts with three hundred guests at concerts, and jazz musicians frequented the house, including Benny Goodman, who later John Jr.'s sister Alice.[21][25] John Jr. and his sister Emily often gave concerts to guests.[23] Even after John Jr. had moved out of the house, he ate dinner with his family there every week.[56] The house also hosted events such as fundraising benefits,[57] receptions and meetings for various neighborhood groups,[58] and debutante balls.[59] In addition, the house hosted wedding receptions for Adele Hammond[60] and Alice Hammond in 1927.[61] Originally, the Hammond House and several other houses along the block were restricted to residential use because of a covenant placed by Andrew Carnegie.[62] When Kahn died in 1934, Kahn's estate sought to sell their house to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private girls' school,[62] and the restriction was lifted.[63]
Castroviejo use
The Hammonds sold the house in May 1946[64] to eye surgeon Ramón Castroviejo, who slightly modified the interior.[9] Castroviejo used the house as his office and residence.[65] He operated an eye hospital on the top two floors,[66] where he sometimes performed eye surgery on Cuban citizens who were otherwise not allowed to enter the United States.[67] Under Castroviejo's ownership, the house hosted lavish parties for celebrities including British actress Hermione Gingold and Spanish Catalan operatic soprano Victoria de los Ángeles.[66] In 1958, Castroviejo is recorded as having transferred ownership to Cynthia S. Castroviejo, a family member.[68] The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated the house as a landmark in 1974,[9] over Castroviejo's objections.[66] Castroviejo had left the house by April 1975.[66]
Soviet and Russian consulate
Purchase and initial renovation
After the restoration of diplomatic relations between the United States and Soviet Union in 1974, the government of the Soviet Union sought to open a consulate in New York City, in exchange for the U.S. being allowed to open a consulate in Kiev (now Kyiv).[69][70] The Soviet Union's previous consulate at 7 East 61st Street had been closed since 1948 following diplomatic disputes.[69] The Soviet government sought to acquire the Hammond House, which was reportedly valued at between $1.5 million and $1.7 million.[66] William Gleckman, who was responsible for the renovation of the building, noted that the Soviet Consul-designate admired the building as it reminded him of imperial architecture in Russia.[9] Before deciding on the Hammond House, the Soviet government had considered a hundred other buildings.[71]
The Convent of the Sacred Heart, which owned the Burden House, sold its portion of the courtyard east of the house to the Soviet government for $100,000.[72] In June 1975, representatives of the USSR asked the LPC for permission to add a ramp within the court between the Hammond and Burden houses.[66] The Soviet government delayed their acquisition of the house pending the LPC's approval of the proposal.[73] The LPC ultimately approved the construction of a fence outside the house;[69][71] a gate across the courtyard; and bars in front of the first- and second-story windows.[69] The Soviet Union closed off the courtyard and demolished the fountain inside.[74] One reporter wrote that "a veritable 'Berlin Wall' separates the mansions once owned by the Sloane sisters", the Burden and Hammond houses.[75] The government of the Soviet Union purchased the house from Castroviejo in August 1975 for US$1.6 million.[26][69] The New York City Police Department (NYPD) assigned officers to guard the street outside the house at all times;[76][77] passersby began frequenting 91st Street at night, as they felt that it was safer than parallel streets.[77]
The Soviet government began renovating the house immediately after acquiring it.[26] Gleckman installed new electrical wiring, a theater, air-conditioning,[9] and closed-circuit cameras on the facade.[71] In 1976, the Soviet government paid US$398,500 for the neighboring Trevor Mansion at 11 East 91st Street.[78] During the renovation, the house hosted events such as receptions,[79] and neighbors recalled that the consulate's 17 employees often sent them gifts and invited them to parties.[71] The Soviet Union had made significant progress on the Hammond House's renovation by the end of 1977, but the U.S. had not even finalized a contract for its consulate in Kiev at the time.[70] Due to a clause that required both consulates to open at the same time, the Soviet consulate in New York City could not formally open.[9][76] The consulate continued to "decorate" the house (with four or five workers on site at any given time), and it provided assistance to Soviet citizens.[76] The United States Department of State authorized the consulate to host "limited commercial and cultural activities" and plan new offices, but not to issue visas.[71]
Abandonment and restoration
Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the United States withdrew its consular staff from Kiev and ordered 17 Soviet diplomats at the New York City consulate to leave.[80] At the time of the expulsions, the Soviet government had spent US$500,000 to date on renovations.[71] The NYPD continued to guard the house at all times until October 1980, even though the house's only regular occupant was its caretaker, who sometimes hosted visitors.[77] The NYPD guard was reinstated that December after the nearby 23rd Precinct received a call claiming that an "Inspector Whitmore" had ordered the precinct to continue guarding the residence in response to the Polish crisis of 1980–1981. After a Soviet van was robbed nearby in May 1982, the NYPD discovered that it had been deceived into reinstating the guard outside the house, as there was no Inspector Whitmore working for the department.[77][81] The NYPD canceled the guard again and disassembled the police booth outside.[77][81]
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation and the U.S. decided in 1990 to open their respective consulates. At the time, Christopher Gray of The New York Times wrote that the house resembled "some grand, mothballed ocean liner" and had been boarded up.[9] When the Russian Consul-general to New York City, Ivan A. Kuznetsov, visited the house in 1992, he discovered that the house was in an advanced state of disrepair. At the time, the house had peeling paint, a leaky roof, collapsing plaster ceilings, and non-functioning mechanical systems.[25] Kuznetsov hired 16 artisans from Moscow to renovate the building. The publishing company Random House became involved after it contacted Kuznetsov and offered to help fund the renovation. In addition, Stanley Barrows, who had previously led the Fashion Institute of Technology's interior design department, oversaw the interior design work.[25]
Random House's publisher Harold Evans convinced numerous professionals to donate their time to renovate their house. Almost all of the contractors who worked on the house did so for free, except for the curtain supplier, the caterer, and the designers of the house's exhibitions.[25] A local studio created three designs of fabric, one each for the ballroom, library, and music room. According to a New York Times report, Barrows was especially focused on the details of the renovation; for example, the colors of the draperies were swapped out three times, and Barrows ordered workers to repaint the ballroom because he thought they were not using enough gold paint. One of Barrows's students recalled that it took him fifty hours just to look for specific decorations for three rooms. By the end of 1994, the house was nearly complete.[25]
Mid-1990s to present
The first official event to take place at the house after its renovation was on October 26, 1994, when the Russian Federation hosted an exhibit on a book titled The Russian Century.[82] Work on the house continued through 1995.[25] In addition to serving as Russia's New York City consulate, the house was used as a polling place for Russian nationals in the city who wanted to vote in parliamentary elections.[83] It was also sometimes used for events, such as opera performances[84] and speeches by visiting Russian politicians.[85] The Russian Consulate General to New York City continues to use the house in the 21st century.[21] Christopher Gray estimated in 2014 that the house was likely to be sold for more than $100 million if the Russian Consulate General moved out.[5]
During the 21st century, the house and consulate were sometimes the subject of protests in response to the Russian Federation's military actions. For example, there were protests outside the house after the Russo-Georgian War in 2008,[86] the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014,[87] and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.[88] In addition, the facade was vandalized in 2022 after Russian president Vladimir Putin announced Russia's annexation of the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts in Ukraine.[89]
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Impact
Summarize
Perspective
When the Burden, Hammond, and Carnegie houses were developed, a critic in the Real Estate Record wrote that "Their influence on the value of surrounding land is such that it is impossible to erect any but superior buildings in the neighborhood on account of the high price of land."[90] Architectural critic Henry Hope Reed Jr. wrote in 1961 that the Kahn, Burden, and Hammond houses were "the crown jewel of the block".[91] A New York Times article stated in 1975 that the building was "considered one of the finest Carrere and Hastings residences",[66] and the writer Francis Morrone praised the house's "fine Ionic colonnettes" in a 2009 guidebook.[92] Christopher Gray wrote in 2014 that the house helped form one of the "grandest blocks" in the city.[5]
The LPC first proposed the Carnegie Hill Historic District in 1966, which would have included the Hammond House.[93] The LPC designated the Hammond House an individual landmark in February 1974,[94][95] but the house was not initially part of the Carnegie Hill Historic District, which was designated the same year.[17] The designation came in spite of objections by Castroviejo, who at the time owned the house.[9] When the Carnegie Hill Historic District was expanded in 1993,[96] the Hammond House was included in the expanded district.[17]
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References
External links
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