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<\/a><\/p>\nBy Rob Garber for the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group<\/p>\n
Welcome to another installment in the Rag\u2019s Historical Photo Challenge. The images above were taken somewhere on the Upper West Side, sometime in the past. Can you figure out where, when, and what they show? Look closely; this week\u2019s challenge photos, like the\u00a0others in the series<\/a>, include clues that will help you identify the scene, if you\u2019re a dedicated UWS history sleuth. And even if you don\u2019t recognize the pictures\u2014not to worry! Come back in two weeks and I\u2019ll decode them, show you the clues that help identify them, and\u2014best of all\u2014tell you a story the image unlocks, because this column isn\u2019t just a test of your neighborhood knowledge; it\u2019s also a rolling celebration of the people, buildings and events that wove the tapestry of the Upper West Side.<\/p>\n Ready? If you think you know where and when the photos were taken and what they show, post your answer as a comment on this column.<\/p>\n Solution to Historical Photo Challenge #15<\/p>\n Subject:\u00a0 Schwab Mansion and Ansonia Hotel The rest of the story: The Ansonia Hotel on Broadway between West 73rd and 74th Streets and the Schwab Mansion, 800 feet away facing Riverside Drive, were late Gilded Age symbols of wealth.\u00a0 Both were constructed between 1899 and 1906, just as the subway extended to the Upper West Side and changed its character forever.\u00a0 The architecture of the two fabulous piles has been well described elsewhere; what about the personalities behind them?\u00a0 The Ansonia, which has undergone many internal changes but whose exterior still reigns mostly unaltered in complacent stateliness over the heart of the Upper West Side, was the idea of William Earl Dodge Stokes, heir to a fortune in mining and banking who put his energy into real estate development.\u00a0 As it neared completion, Charles M. Schwab\u2014no relation to discount brokerage innovator Charles R. Schwab\u2014bought an entire block on Riverside Drive and proceeded to order up the largest mansion in America, modeled after a French chateau.\u00a0 As if to prove that money can\u2019t buy happiness, both Stokes and Schwab lived private lives that were less than admirable.\u00a0 Stokes twice married women less than half his age, was shot by one of his lovers, and was accused in a divorce suit of keeping dozens of chickens in his apartment.\u00a0 Schwab, in apparent contrast, was an outgoing, glad-handing American success story.\u00a0 Uneducated yet manically hard-working, he caught the eye of Andrew Carnegie and soared to wealth the old-fashioned way: on the backs of steelworkers. \u00a0 His hyper-ostentatious mansion on Riverside Drive left journalists gasping for adjectives, and its bedroom count (75? 90?) was even greater than that in Schwab\u2019s other mansion on his 1,000-acre estate in Pennsylvania.\u00a0 But look at the 1920 census record for 21 Riverside Drive:\u00a0 Charlie, his wife Eurana, and 20 servants.\u00a0 It reads like a scene out of \u201cCitizen Kane.\u201c<\/p>\n Charles Schwab gambled and yachted his way through the Roaring Twenties, but unlike the Ansonia, Schwab\u2019s mansion barely outlived Schwab.\u00a0 Hammered by the Depression, he lost his chateau and died bankrupt in a one-room apartment.\u00a0 The mansion was offered to and rejected by the city of New York for use as the mayor\u2019s home\u2014it was hardly Fiorello LaGuardia\u2019s style\u2014and razed in 1948.\u00a0 Today, 2,000 people live in the Schwab House apartment complex, on the site where once dwelt the Schwabs and their servants.\u00a0 Sic transit gloria mundi!<\/p>\n Shoutout to readers: Frances Bernstein shared a splendid memory of going into the Schwab mansion just before it was torn down!\u00a0 DonB accurately speculated, and Steve D agreed, that the photo was taken during the Hudson-Fulton Centennial Celebration and correctly based his guess on the large crowds gathered on the banks of the river.\u00a0 Mike UWS added some nice architectural observations.\u00a0 I can see I\u2019ve lulled you UWS historians into a sense of complacency with easy-to-recognize images like the Ansonia\/Schwab combo.\u00a0 Don\u2019t think they\u2019re all going to be this easy!<\/p>\n \u2026and that\u2019s the story behind the mystery image.\u00a0 Now scroll back to the top of the column and take on your next challenge, Sherlockians!\u00a0 If you\u2019ve missed any pictures in this series, here is the\u00a0complete collection<\/a>.<\/p>\n About the author:\u00a0\u00a0Rob Garber<\/a> has lived on the Upper West Side since the late 20th\u00a0century and\u00a0is a member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group.\u00a0\u00a0To learn more, visit their website at\u00a0upperwestsidehistory.org<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0All photos in Upper West Side Historical Photo Challenge are used by permission.<\/p>\n Subscribe to West Side Rag\u2019s FREE email newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>. And you can Support the Rag\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 By Rob Garber for the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group Welcome to another installment in the Rag\u2019s Historical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,881,9,24,63,129,131,130,17709],"class_list":["post-72327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-history","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-uws-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Location: West 73rd \u2013 74th Streets from Riverside Drive to Broadway
Year: September 1909
Source: Library of Congress LC-DIG-det-4a16123
Clues: Both of these extraordinary buildings are iconic and will be recognized by even casual UWS history buffs, but this view, superimposing Schwab in front of the Ansonia as seen from a vantage point in the Hudson River, is unusual.\u00a0 The crowds in Riverside Park and the signal flags on the ship\u2019s stays are clues that the photo was taken during the Hudson-Fulton Centennial Celebration in 1909, which included a naval ship parade. \u00a0Today, the Ansonia is hidden from the river by Schwab House, the 19-story red brick complex that was erected in the 1950s on the site of the former Schwab mansion.<\/p>\n<\/a>Top: The Ansonia looming behind the Schwab mansion, seen from the Hudson River in 1909.\u00a0 Bottom: the same view today.<\/p>\n<\/a>Left: Schwab household in 1920. Right: demolition of one of the Schwab mansion turrets in 1948.<\/p>\n<\/a>Left: 1927 aerial photo of the Schwab mansion. Right: Schwab Houses today<\/p>\n