Herbert, I kahn't hear you....

In a message dated 10/1/2006 9:52:43 AM Eastern Standard Time, hjg1@  writes:

Dear Chris, when I first came to NY in the 60s, I knew another architect named Albert Kahn. The son of the one you wrote about. He was definitively not self educated.

Yes, they got even richer with some sort of concrete construction patent. 

Also, when we first moved to Riverside Dr. I was told that it was built in
the late 19th century for the rich Jews, Catholics and show biz folk who
werent allowed to live on Fifth or Park. If so, how come they let Moorish
synagogues go up?

Plenty of Jews lived on Fifth Avenue - hey, buddy, this is New Yawk!   But indeed there were, at least in the 1880s and 1890s, few Jews on Riverside Drive.  The 1890s landowners were - perhaps only by chance - the wasp aristocracy who did leave or planned to leave the more crowded confines of Fifth Avenue, where the mansions were cheek by jowl.   Thus even the Vanderbilts bought land on Riverside in the late 1880s and 1890s, to hedge their bets.  But fashion (Jewish or Christian) never jumped Central Park, and only a few built real mansions, although most of these were, indeed, wasps or at least protestants.  By the mid-1890s the potential rush to building mansions was pronounced moribund.

 

This real mansion building phase was followed, ca. 1899-ca. 1905 a rush of rowhouse building, not mansions, but those nice light stone buildings in the 70s - you know the ones.  They were developer-built (as opposed to owner-built mansions) but I have never examined closely the occupancy.  However, this makes an excellent question, and I hope I can treat it in a Q&A sometime next year.

 

With thanks for your faithful reading and correspondance,

 

Christopher

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I never knew about this buildings, thanks a lot!

Luke Hamilton