Henry Seligman Residence

History and architecture

No. 30 West 56th Street, designed by C.P.H. Gilbert for prominent investment banker Henry Seligman and his wife Adelaide, stands as a particularly grand and well-preserved example of the fashionable townhouses that once lined the 50s side streets off Fifth Avenue. Constructed between 1899 and 1901, the residence was one of several townhouses on the block built for bankers at the turn of the twentieth century, and the street became known as “Bankers’ Row.”

Gilbert, who also designed Seligman’s summer house in Elberon, New Jersey, had received many commissions from New York’s leading families at that time and was familiar with designing townhouses in a variety of architectural styles. For 30 West 56th Street, Gilbert employed the restrained neo-French Renaissance style on a limestone façade spanning two lots that gave the townhouse an imposing presence on a street where narrow rowhouses prevailed. Above the rusticated ground floor are original second-story wood windows and an intricately- carved stone balcony supported by brackets.

Adorning the second, third and fourth floors are stone quoins and window surrounds with broken lintels over the central windows on the third and fourth floors. A fourth-story balcony and a large ornate cornice resting on paired consoles further enhance the look of the elegant façade. A mansard roof with elaborate segmental-arched dormers projects over the rooflines of the adjoining buildings.

Seligman was a senior partner in the prestigious investment banking firm of J. & W. Seligman & Company, founded in 1864 by his uncles and his father, Jesse. The Seligmans established themselves as one of the pre-eminent German-Jewish families in the United States and became known as “the American Rothschilds.” Henry Seligman was also influential in financing railroad construction in the American West as well as serving as a director for several major industrial and artistic organizations across the United States.

He and his wife resided at 30 West 56th Street until their deaths in 1933 and 1934, respectively. Although it remained in use as a single-family residence somewhat longer than other houses on the block, 30 West 56th Street was converted into apartments in 1941. At mid-century, the block gradually became known as “Restaurant Row” for the large number of eating establishments that occupied the ground floors of the townhouses; 30 West 56th Street was for over twenty years the location of the popular Romeo Salta restaurant.