19 East 70th Street House

History and architecture

This extremely elegant and architecturally distinguished residence was designed by Thornton Chard (1873-1951), a New York architect, in a simplified but sophisticated version of early Italian Renaissance style.

Chard had attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1901 and, upon his return from Europe, opened an architectural office in the city. His small but selective practice in this city and state spanned some three decades. His client, for whom the house was built in 1909-10, was Dave Hennen Morris and his wife Alice. Mr. Morris later served as United States Ambassador to Belgium during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term.

The properties on this block were held by the Estate of James Lenox until 1907, when they were transferred to the New York Public Library—Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. The Lenox Library building which stood on this block was completed in 1875; in 1911 the collections were removed from the location on Fifth Avenue and 70th Street, and the Lenox Library building was subsequently replaced by the Henry Clay Frick mansion.

However, the Foundations began selling the properties on the north side of East 70th Street in 1909, and this new residence was among the first to be built on the block. Fifth Avenue and its side streets above 59th Street had already been well developed in the 1880s and 1890s, so for this land to have remained open until 1909 was quite unusual. The wealthy New Yorkers who bought these lots commissioned houses for themselves, thus continuing a well-established residential trend in the development of this area.

No. 19, an imposing six-story house, now occupied by the Knoedler Gallery, is considerably wider than the adjoining town houses. It presents a smooth, well-finished limestone front to the street and a facade of refined simplicity; this effect is enhanced by a judicious use of well-chosen architectural ornament generally derived from 15th century Italian Renaissance sources.