Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo Mansion

History and architecture

At the turn of the century the streets of the upper East Side near Central Park were lined with elegant townhouses and great mansions. 'Chateaux' like the Waldo house were numerous, but today only a very few survive. This elaborate neo-French Renaissance residence, built in 1895-1898, was designed by architects Kimball & Thompson for Mrs. Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo. Located at the corner of Madison Avenue and Seventy-Second Street, it is an ex-ceptionally large and imposing structure, its opulence a reminder of the lavish scale on which many rich and fashionable New Yorkers lived in the late 19th century.

Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo was a member of one of New York's old and established families. She was a descendant of Bernard Rhinelander who in the 1840s was described as "among the richest of the rich" in the city, At the age of thirty-four, Gertrude married Francis William Waldo. The couple had one son, Rhinelander Waldo, who served in the Philippine campaign of the Spanish American War, and was later a controversial figure in New York City government--first as Fire Commissioner and then as Police Commissioner under Tammany administrations.

Mrs. Waldo, a leading society matron, may very well have also been a leading society eccentric. She once sued for reimbursement for seventy-seven yards of yellow satin brocade which the A.T. Stewart Department Store had promised to sell for her--twenty years earlier. She was awarded $893.25, a substantial enough sum, but nothing to compare with the cost of the great mansion she built--and never occupied. Upon completion of the house and throughout the following Years, it stood vacant, while the widowed Mrs.

Waldo lived directly across the street with her sister, Miss Laura Rhinelander, at No. 31 East Seventy-Second Street. Precisely why the house was left unoccupied remains a mystery. A legend exists that Mx. Waldo died while the house was under construction, leaving a grief stricken widow for whom living in the new house would have been an unbearable reminder of her loss. In fact, the lamented Francis died in 1876, Mrs. Waldo purchased the property at the corner of Seventy-Second Street in the 1880s and built this house as well as the adjoining townhouse, No.

28 East Seventy-Second Street, in the 1890s. Whatever the reason, for well over a decade, Mrs. Waldo owned a beautiful "white elephant", one which she could admire daily from her windows at No. 31.