22 EAST 64TH STREET
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
THE 1920's RENAISSANCE
The brownstone era on East 64th Street was brief. By the close of the First World War, the domestic scale of the Victorian row gave way to the refined, disciplined ambition of the Italian Renaissance.
In November 1919, Florence Augusta Alker—daughter of the Ward Line maritime dynasty—took possession of the property and commissioned architect Harry Allan Jacobs to strip the facade down to its structural core. Jacobs dismantled the high exterior stoop, brought the masonry flush to the street line, and authored an Italian Renaissance palazzo faced entirely in chiseled French limestone. He organized the composition around a monumental second-floor piano nobile, puncturing the ashlar with three towering round arches framed by carved shell tympanums, profile masks, and wrought-iron balustrades.
Architectural blueprints preserved on site record every stroke of Jacobs’ working hand: the geometry of the rusticated ground level, the early electric passenger elevator, and the discreet setback penthouse added in 1923 for Sarah Emile Woodbury. For the next thirty-four years, the house remained in the custody of her son, E. Townsend Irvin of J.P. Morgan & Co., held in unbroken domestic stillness until his death in 1957.
THE 1920's RENAISSANCE
The brownstone era on East 64th Street was brief. By the close of the First World War, the domestic scale of the Victorian row gave way to the refined, disciplined ambition of the Italian Renaissance.
In November 1919, Florence Augusta Alker—daughter of the Ward Line maritime dynasty—took possession of the property and commissioned architect Harry Allan Jacobs to strip the facade down to its structural core. Jacobs dismantled the high exterior stoop, brought the masonry flush to the street line, and authored an Italian Renaissance palazzo faced entirely in chiseled French limestone. He organized the composition around a monumental second-floor piano nobile, puncturing the ashlar with three towering round arches framed by carved shell tympanums, profile masks, and wrought-iron balustrades.
Architectural blueprints preserved on site record every stroke of Jacobs’ working hand: the geometry of the rusticated ground level, the early electric passenger elevator, and the discreet setback penthouse added in 1923 for Sarah Emile Woodbury. For the next thirty-four years, the house remained in the custody of her son, E. Townsend Irvin of J.P. Morgan & Co., held in unbroken domestic stillness until his death in 1957.
THE 1920's RENAISSANCE
The brownstone era on East 64th Street was brief. By the close of the First World War, the domestic scale of the Victorian row gave way to the refined, disciplined ambition of the Italian Renaissance.
In November 1919, Florence Augusta Alker—daughter of the Ward Line maritime dynasty—took possession of the property and commissioned architect Harry Allan Jacobs to strip the facade down to its structural core. Jacobs dismantled the high exterior stoop, brought the masonry flush to the street line, and authored an Italian Renaissance palazzo faced entirely in chiseled French limestone. He organized the composition around a monumental second-floor piano nobile, puncturing the ashlar with three towering round arches framed by carved shell tympanums, profile masks, and wrought-iron balustrades.
Architectural blueprints preserved on site record every stroke of Jacobs’ working hand: the geometry of the rusticated ground level, the early electric passenger elevator, and the discreet setback penthouse added in 1923 for Sarah Emile Woodbury. For the next thirty-four years, the house remained in the custody of her son, E. Townsend Irvin of J.P. Morgan & Co., held in unbroken domestic stillness until his death in 1957.
