7 West 54th Street House

History and architecture

This elegant residence was built in 1899-1900 for Philip Lehman, a prominent New York banker. Designed in the French Beaux-Arts style by architect John H. Duncan, it is a distinguished example of the fashionable town houses that once characterized the West Fifties between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and is one of an ensemble of five town houses on West 54th Street.

Midtown Manhattan remained open farmland until the first half of the 19th century when shanty towns, rubbish dumps, stockyards, and factories began to appear above West 40th Street. The landscaping of Central Park, commenced in 1857, helped spur the development of midtown, and during the building boom that followed the Civil War, the West Forties and Fifties became lined with brick and stone residences. These new houses ranged from lavish Fifth Avenue mansions commissioned by such individual clients as the Vanderbilts to middle-class dwellings erected on a speculative basis.

The house at 7 West 54th street occupies part of the original site of St. Luke's Hospital (1858) which fronted on West 55th Street at the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue.

The hospital dominated the east end of the block until new quarters were erected on Amsterdam Avenue at 113th Street in 1896. That same year, construction began on the University Club, designed by the firm of McKim, Mead 8 White and located on the northwest corner of West 54th Street and Fifth Avenue. During the next few years, several fashionable residences were constructed on the north side of West 54th Street. Together with the University Club, a designated New York City Landmark, they typify the fine turn-of-the-century residences and private clubs that transformed the Fifties near Fifth Avenue and Fifth Avenue itself into an exclusive neighborhood-- part of the continuing northward residential trend in Manhattan. Many of the buildings were designed by New York's leading architects for the city's most affluent and prominent citizens, such as Philip Lehman.