Douglas, Adelaide L. T., House

About this property

The Adelaide L. T. Douglas House is a historic building located at 57 Park Avenue between East 37th and 38th streets in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by architect Horace Trumbauer, the six-story building was constructed from 1909 to 1911 as a residence for Mrs. Adelaide Townsend Douglas. The house was later converted to offices and serves as the permanent mission of Guatemala to the United Nations. The Adelaide L. T. Douglas House is located at 57 Park Avenue, on the east side of the street, in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The land lot has an area of 2,000 square feet (190 m2), with a frontage of 25 feet (7.6 m) and a depth of 80 feet (24 m). Nearby buildings include Our Saviour Roman Catholic Church to the north, Scandinavia House – The Nordic Center in America to the west, and the Union League Club to the south. The site at 57 Park Avenue was previously occupied by a four-story residence owned by John J. Murphy, which was severely damaged on March 21, 1902, during a tunnel cave-in caused during construction of the first New York City Subway line. As part of a settlement to avoid a lengthy court case, Murphy's house, along with some of the other buildings that had been damaged on the east side of the block, were purchased by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) in April 1902 and then demolished. After the IRT tore down the houses at 53-57 Park Avenue, the sites remained "unimproved" for several years. Prominent New York socialite Mrs. Adelaide L. Douglas bought the site at 57 Park Avenue in 1909, intending to develop a new residence. Mrs. Douglas was married to William P. Douglas, a businessman who had inherited most of the land in the area that became Douglaston, Queens, and was known for being the owner of the yacht Sappho that was successful in defending the second America's Cup challenge in 1871, but she was having an affair with J. P. Morgan and her husband had separated and moved out. Morgan reportedly financed the new residence for Mrs. Douglas, and a plaque in the lobby listed him as the original owner of the building. Plans for the new building were filed in 1909, and the home was completed by March 1911, when Mrs. Douglas began hosting parties there. In its early years, the house hosted events such as a wedding reception for the Douglases' daughter Edith Sybil Douglas. After Mrs. Douglas died in 1935 at the age of 83, the house was leased to Arthur Charn in 1937. The townhouse was sold by the estate of Mrs. Douglas in 1942. The buyer, a client of lawyer Richard Gordon Babbage, paid $100,000 for the structure and lived there.

Location

Categories

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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