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SUTTON PLACE: ANNE
MORGAN'S TOWN HOUSE Rejecting the brash opulence of the Vanderbilt mansions on Fifth Avenue, the second Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan's daughter Anne Morgan in 1921 commissioned relatively modest neo-Georgian homes along the East River at 57th Street. With the Peter Doelger brewery and surrounding tenements as neighbors, the women transformed the haunts of the "Dead End Kids" into fashionable Sutton Place. By the end of the decade, stately town houses filled the block, and elegant apartment houses rose on adjacent streets. Designed by society architect Mott Schmidt, the two adjoining houses--with Mrs. Vanderbilt's entrance on 57th Street and Miss Morgan's on Sutton Place--shared a common garden. To simulate age, Schmidt reused bricks from the tenements torn down on the site. Hidden within were the latest amenities, including elevators, incinerators, refrigerators, and gas heat. The East River Drive cut through the backyards of these houses by 1940, but the block otherwise remains unchanged. Abbott knew Anne Morgan, whom she had photographed in Paris. In 1931, Morgan offered to subsidize Abbott's photography of New York with $2,500, if Abbott could find another donor to match; she failed to find one. Return to the Middle East Side |