Barnard Beginnings: An East Side Story
Barnard College, long a presence on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, first opened in 1889 on the East Side, in a four-story brownstone located at 343 Madison Avenue, between 44th and 45th St. The standard explanation for this locational decision was that it provided the needed proximity to Columbia College, which was expected to provide Barnard with its instructors, and since 1857 had been located four blocks to the north on Madison and 49th St. There’s more to the story.
[NYPL Map of Part of Ward 19, New York City]
By the 1880s the preferred neighborhoods of Manhattan’s wealthy and well-borne families were no longer located in the lower parts of the island. The Lower East Side had by then been ceded to recently arrived immigrants and the once residentail areas around Wall Street and th original site of King’s college/Columbia College had been given over to commerce and manufacturing. The resultant migration northward of residences for the City’s econimc and social elite was accompanied by the cultural institutions – schools, churches, clubs — that were sponsored by and served that same elite.
With the opening of Central Park in 1859, the western margins of the “East Side” was clearly demarcated. They ran along the eastern edge of the Park down Fifth Avenue from the 80s to the bottom of the part at 59th St, and then one block further westwrd to 6th Avenue and then down another 25 blocks to 30th Street. The eastern boundary was less clearly defined, but a residential address east of Lexington Avenue carried less social cachet than west of it.
One way to define The East Side’s north-south limits in the 1880s was by the locations of the residences of two of Gotham’s wealthiest men, each the leader of one of of the city’s social tribes. The blocks immediately around the home of J.P. Morgan, the merchant banker and leader of the City’s WASP elite, at Madison and 34th St., marked the southern limits; that of Jacob Schiff, the head of Kuhn-Loeb & Co. and leader of the City’s German-Jewish community, at Fifth Avenue and 81st St., marked the northern limits.
Dimensions of east Side as defined here:
n/s – 50 blocks or 2 1/2 square miles
western boundary
Below 59th St to 30th — 6th Avenue to Lexington — 5 blocks east /w – 5th Avenue from 1 block
Above 59th – 4 blocks – 5th/madison/Park/Lexington
1.5 square mile
Manhattan = 23 square miles – East Side à 1/15th of Manhattan
Social composition of turn-of-the-century East Side
Home to five of the City’s distinct social tribes:
1. Old New Yorkers – Knickerbockers – Pre-Revolutionary Dutch and English
Episcopalians and Presbyterians; some Dutch Reformed à St. Nicholas Society
2. Sephardic Jewish community – Pre-Revolutionary “Grandees”
The Nathans/Lazurese/Cardozos
3. Transplanted New England professionals
Puritan/Mayflower ancestries – The Choates/Plimptons/New England Society
4. German-Jewish community – From Germany/Austria in 1850s
“Our Crowd” – Schiff/Goldman/Altschuls –> Harmonie Club
5. Wealthy outlanders moving to Manhattan
Rockefeller/Carnegie/Frick/Milbank
Most of the original members of the Barnard Board of Trustees [17 of 22] lived on the east Side within walking distance of 343 Madison
NYers absent from East Side: Italians/Eastern European Jews/Blacks – Irish in neighborhood primarily as live-in servants
Lusk map of 1919 – upper East Side without designated “dangerous” immigrant groups
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1lJ4F7HPPXI/TVLhYUEawTI/AAAAAAAAD54/9gIIhxHZOQk/s1600/Trevor%2BEthnic%2BMap%2BOriginal.jpg
Original Barnard Board of Trustees
22 members – 17 (77%) lived on the East Side
2 | Arthur | Brooks | 1 | 209 Madison Ave./35th | East Side | |
4 | Silas Brown | Brownell | 1 | 139 W. 53rd St. | East Side | |
5 | Virginia | Brownell | 0 | 205 W. 56th St. | East Side | |
6 | Caroline D. | Sterling | Choate | 0 | 50 W.47th St | East Side |
7 | Frederick R. | Coudert | 1 | 13 E. 45th St. | East Side | |
8 | Noah H. | Davis | 1 | 46 W. 56th St. | East Side | |
9 | George | Hoadley | 1 | 33 E. 50th St. | East Side | |
11 | Annie | Nathan | Meyer | 0 | 749 Madison/65th | East Side |
13 | Laura | Spelman | Rockefeller | 0 | 4 W. 54th St. | East Side |
14 | Jacob H. | Schiff | 1 | 932 5th Ave/74th | East Side | |
15 | Francis Lynde | Stetson | 1 | 4 E. 74th St. | East Side | |
17 | Henrietta E. | Francis | Talcott | 0 | 7 W. 57th St. | East Side |
18 | Henry | Van Dyke | 1 | 37th & 5th | East Side | |
19 | Ella | Weed | 0 | 45 E. 60th St. | East Side | |
20 | Everett P. | Wheeler | 1 | 101 E.71st St. | East Side | |
21 | Alice | Williams | 0 | 106 E. 38th St. | East Side | |
22 | Frances | Fisher | Wood | 0 | 22 E. 41st St. | East Side |
Of the 31 trustees elected between 1890 and 1914, 26 (84%) lived on the East Side.
ID # | First Name | Maiden | Last | Gender | Mnhtn Address | Other Boro |
23 | Anne Wroe | Scollay | Low | 0 | 30 E. 64th St | East Side |
24 | Roderick | Terry | 1 | 169 Madison Ave. | East Side | |
25 | Lucretia | Perry | Osborn | 0 | 850 Madison Ave. | East Side |
26 | Elizabeth | Milbank | Anderson | 0 | 6 E.38th St. | East Side |
27 | Sarah | Kittredge | Canfield | 0 | 32 E. 33rd St. | East Side |
29 | Mrs. Henry | Sanders | 0 | 433 5th Ave. | East Side | |
30 | Edward W. | Sheldon | 1 | 46 Park Avenue | East Side | |
31 | Abram S. | Hewitt | 1 | 9 Lexington Ave. | East Side | |
32 | George W. | Smith | 1 | 39 W. 37th St. | East Side | |
33 | Florence | Colgate | Speranza | 0 | 50 E. 57th St. | East Side |
34 | William M. | Grosvenor | 1 | 209 Madison Ave. | East Side | |
35 | Franklin B. | Lord | 1 | 58 Park Ave | East Side | |
36 | Frederick S. | Jennings | 1 | 80 Park Avenue | East Side | |
37 | Mrs. Henry N. | Nunn | 0 | 281 lexington Ave. | East Side | |
39 | Horace W. | Carpentier | 1 | 108 East 37th St. | East Side | |
40 | Albert G. | Milbank | 1 | 42 E. 38th St. | East Side | |
41 | Eleanora | Kissel | Kinnicut | 0 | 39 E. 35th St. | East Side |
42 | Clara B. | Spence | 0 | 20 W. 55th St. | East Side | |
43 | Charles Stuart | Smith | 1 | 25 W.47th St | East Side | |
44 | Howard | Townsend | 1 | 29 W 39th St. | East Side | |
46 | Mary Stuart | Pullman | 0 | 1032 Park Ave. | East Side | |
47 | Janetta | McCook | Whitman | 0 | 115 E. 65th St. | East Side |
48 | George L. | Rives | 1 | 14 W. 38th St. | East Side | |
49 | Charlotte Sanford | Baker | 0 | 26 W. 55th St. | East Side | |
52 | Mary | Harriman | Rumsey | 0 | 1 East 65th St. | East Side |
53 | Helen Miles | Rogers | Reid | 0 | 7 West 51st St. | East Side |
East Side home to their houses of worship:
Several Episcopal churches
Church of the Incarnation – 209 Madison Avenue at 34th — 40°44′54″N 73°58′57″W
Church of the Heavenly Rest – 5th Avenue and 46th St since the 1860s
St. Thomas – 53rd St. and 5th Avenue
St. Bartholomew’s Church – west side of Madison and 44th St. (across the street and on the northern nw corner of 44th St.)
Brick Presbyterian — 37th and 5th Avenue
5th Avenue Presbyterian – 5th Avenue and 56th since 1876
All Souls’ Church – 6th and 34th Streeet
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, 50th and 5th Avenue,
Collegiate 5th and West 48th St
Local Schools –
Miss Anne Brown’s School for Girls, 711-717 5th Avenue, between 56th and 57th Sts.
Brearley School, East 45th St. from 1884 to early 1900s
Spence School
Sachs School – West 59th St. [Julius Sachs]
Local Clubs
Century Association – 7 West 43rd in 1891
Metropolitan Club – 1 East 60th Street (1891)
Colony Club – Madison and 30th (1903)
Harmonie Club – served the German-Jewish elite beginning in 1852
In 1880s and 90s at 45 West 42nsd Street; moved in 1905 to East 60th St.
Indicators of wealth
Live-in servants
40 of the 53 early trustee were located in Census searches –
Median # of live-in servants = 4
Mean # of live-in servants = 5
8 trustees of 40 identified trustees with 8 or more live-in servants (20%)
Reid (15); Schiff (10); Rockefeller (8); Munn (8); Lord (8); Stetson (8); Rumsey (8); Milbank (8)
10 trustees with 5 to 7 live-in servants (25%)
17 trustees with 3 or 4 live-in servants (43%)
Century Club Membership – 27 men served on early Barnard board — 23 were Centurions
26 women – 23 with spouses ( 18 married) – 10 with Centurion husbands
Inclusion in New York Social Register (1897/1901) — 39 of 53 listed in either or both (74%)
Of 14 not listed, 7 were unmarried women at publication dates; 1 had died before 1897;
2 were not living in NYC. Only 3 other men not included, including Jacob Schiff who
refused because Social Register included members of clubs that excluded Jews.