History and architecture
In 1902-03 the prominent architectural firm of Hoppin & Koen remodeled a c.1862 brownstone row house to create this impressive Beaux Arts style mansion for Middleton S. Burrill and his wife Emilie Neilson Burrill. Burrill, a socially prominent attorney and businessman who was the first mentor of the famed Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch, purchased the house in 1901 and hired Hoppin & Koen to alter the house by adding an elegant Beaux Arts style facade, which combines elements derived from French and English 17th and 18th century sources. Hoppin & Koen designed several significant public installations, but also were known for their design of elaborate country houses.
The Burrill house features a two-story limestone base with arched openings at the parlor level that is surmounted by a balustrade resting on massive console brackets. The Philadelphia brick and limestone-trimmed upper stories display ornate molded window enframements, with the second story having pedimented window frames enriched with console brackets, dentils, and guttae, and the third story having eared surrounds with prominent keystones and projecting sills. The richly embellished entablature above the third story combines limestone moldings and frieze panels with elaborate console brackets and a modillioned cornice that is capped by a copper balustrade. The mansard roof has elaborate copper dormers capped by round-arched pediments.
The Burrills left the house in 1929 after which it was used as a rooming house in until 1945, when the property was sold by the trustees of the Burrill estate and converted into apartments and a medical office. The Middleton S. and Emilie Neilson Burrill House remains an impressive example of a Beaux Arts style row house in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan.
Sources and further reading
This history comes from the Landmarks app’s historical catalog. Names and building uses may reflect the period described.