Dahlgren, Lucy Drexel, House

About this property

The Lucy Drexel Dahlgren House is a historic home located at 15 East 96th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues in Manhattan, New York City. It is on the border between the Carnegie Hill, Upper East Side, and East Harlem neighborhoods on the Upper East Side, within the Upper East Side Historic District. A private house used at one time as a convent, it was built in 1915–16 for Lucy Wharton Drexel Dahlgren. It is a New York City Landmark and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Lucy Drexel Dahlgren House is at 15 East 96th Street in the Carnegie Hill and Upper East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, abutting East Harlem. It is on the northern side of 96th Street between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue. The rectangular land lot covers 3,784 ft2 (351.5 m2), with a frontage of 37.5 ft (11.4 m) on 96th Street and a depth of 100.92 ft (30.76 m). The Dahlgren House is one of three structures on the same city block designed by Ogden Codman Jr. The others include Codman's own residence at 7 East 96th Street, which he had built in 1912–13, as well as the Carnegie Hill School building at 12 East 96th Street. Codman also designed plans for houses at 9 and 11 East 96th Street, which were not constructed. The remaining buildings on the adjacent city block of 96th Street are mostly apartment buildings. Other nearby structures include the Mrs. Amory S. Carhart House and Ernesto and Edith Fabbri House to the south, as well as the St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral to the north. The house was designed by Ogden Codman Jr. in the French Renaissance Revival or Beaux Arts styles, emulating a 19th-century French townhouse. It has a rectangular massing and is 5+1⁄2 stories high. The AIA Guide to New York City describes it as "magisterial" and "disciplined", while the author Michael C. Kathrens describes the house as "suave and sophisticated, with details crisply expressed". The facade along 96th Street is 3+1⁄2 stories tall and is divided vertically into three bays. The facade is largely symmetrical and contains classical ornamentation. It is roughly divided horizontally into three parts: the ground story, the next two stories, and the attic. It is faced with rusticated limestone blocks decorated with bas-relief swags of vegetation. On the second and third stories, the rusticated blocks are interspersed with windows surrounded by recessed limestone panels, which give the appearance of pilasters rising to the attic. The lowest part of the facade includes a 2-foot-high (0.61 m) smooth-granite water table, with granite posts flanking each bay. At the first floor are three segmental arches; the central and eastern arches contain inset ashlar blocks surrounding a set of casement windows topped by transom panes. Both of these windows have wooden frames and wrought-iron grilles, in addition to protruding window sills made of limestone. The westernmost segmental arch contains a set of double wooden doors with moldings and panels. Among the motifs on the doors are swags and toruses with berries and bay leaves. On the main facade above the first floor is a band course with fascia, which protrudes slightly from the center bay.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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