The Charles M. Schwab House (also called Riverside) was a 75-room

mansion A mansion is a large dwelling house. The word itself derives through Old French from the Latin word ''mansio'' "dwelling", an abstract noun derived from the verb ''manere'' "to dwell". The English word ''manse'' originally defined a property l ...

on Riverside Drive, between 73rd and 74th Streets, on the

Upper West Side The Upper West Side (UWS) is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Central Park on the east, the Hudson River on the west, West 59th Street to the south, and West 110th Street to the north. The Upper We ...

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. It was constructed for steel magnate

Charles M. Schwab Charles Michael Schwab (February 18, 1862 – September 18, 1939) was an American steel magnate. Under his leadership, Bethlehem Steel became the second-largest steel maker in the United States, and one of the most important heavy manufacturer ...

. The home was considered to be the classic example of a "

white elephant A white elephant is a possession that its owner cannot dispose of without extreme difficulty, and whose cost, particularly that of maintenance, is out of proportion to its usefulness. In modern usage, it is a metaphor used to describe an object, ...

", as it was built on the "wrong" side of

Central Park Central Park is an urban park between the Upper West Side and Upper East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, and the first landscaped park in the United States. It is the List of parks in New York City, sixth-largest park in the ...

away from the more fashionable

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the boroughs of New York City, borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded approximately by 96th Street (Manhattan), 96th Street to the north, the East River to the e ...

History

Schwab was a

self-made man A self-made man is a person whose success is of their own making. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, has been described as the greatest exemplar of the self-made man. Inspired by Franklin's autobiography, Fr ...

who became president of

U.S. Steel The United States Steel Corporation is an American steel company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It maintains production facilities at several additional locations in the U.S. and Central Europe. The company produces and sells steel products, ...

and later founded

Bethlehem Steel Company The Bethlehem Steel Corporation was an American steelmaking company headquartered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Until its closure in 2003, it was one of the world's largest steel-producing and shipbuilding companies. At the height of its success ...

. Schwab built "Riverside" after leaving

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Bethlehem is a city in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Northampton and Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Lehigh counties in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, Bethle ...

for New York. The large property, an entire city block, was available because it formed half the site of the former New York Colored Orphan Asylum, one of several charitable institutions in the

Bloomingdale District Manhattan Valley (also known as Bloomingdale) is a neighborhood in the northern part of the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by West 110th Street to the north, Central Park West to the east, West 96th Street to the ...

that gave way to large projects in

Morningside Heights Morningside Heights is a neighborhood on the West Side of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Morningside Drive to the east, 125th Street to the north, 110th Street to the south, and Riverside Drive to the west. Morningsi ...

, such as the

Cathedral of St. John the Divine The Cathedral of St. John the Divine (sometimes referred to as St. John's and also nicknamed St. John the Unfinished) is the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. It is at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue in the Morningside Heights neighborhoo ...

and

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

's campus. The Ansonia Hotel now occupies the orphans'

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street ** Broadway Theatre (53rd Stre ...

frontage. The financier

Jacob Schiff Jacob Henry Schiff (born Jakob Heinrich Schiff; January 10, 1847 – September 25, 1920) was a German-born American banker, businessman, and philanthropist. He helped finance the expansion of American railroads and the Japanese military efforts a ...

had bought the parcel, but—ominously for the social future of the Upper West Side—Mrs. Schiff refused to move to the "wrong" side of Central Park. The home was designed by an

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

with only a modest reputation, Maurice Hébert,Maurice Hébert (1861-1933)
Biographies of Architects, Designers, and Builders, historicfresno.org as an eclectic Beaux-Arts mixture of pink

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

features. It combined details from three French

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

château A château (, ; plural: châteaux) is a manor house, or palace, or residence of the lord of the manor, or a fine country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally, and still most frequently, in French-speaking re ...

x: Chenonceau, the exterior staircase from

Blois Blois ( ; ) is a commune and the capital city of Loir-et-Cher Departments of France, department, in Centre-Val de Loire, France, on the banks of the lower Loire river between Orléans and Tours. With 45,898 inhabitants by 2019, Blois is the mos ...

, and Azay-le-Rideau. It took four years to build the home (1902–1906) at a cost of six million dollars. The house enclosed in 75 rooms, including a bowling alley, pool, and three elevators. Schwab's former employer and mentor

Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie ( , ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the History of the iron and steel industry in the United States, American steel industry in the late ...

, whose own mansion on upper Fifth Avenue later became the

Cooper-Hewitt Museum Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum at the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New York City, along the Upper East Side's Museum Mile. It is one of 19 Smithsonian Institution museums and one of three Smithsonian facili ...

, once remarked, "Have you seen that place of Charlie's? It makes mine look like a shack." Schwab was a risk-taker and later went bankrupt in the Wall Street crash of 1929. Although it was reported that he planned to sell the property to developers in 1930, that year's census recorded that he still lived at the house with his wife and twenty mostly English-born servants. He eventually became "anxious to sell" the property, offering the house as the city's official mayoral residence in 1935. Then-mayor

Fiorello La Guardia Fiorello Henry La Guardia (born Fiorello Raffaele Enrico La Guardia; December 11, 1882September 20, 1947) was an American attorney and politician who represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives and served as the 99th mayor of New Yo ...

turned it down, saying "What, ''me'' in ''that''?" After his wife died in January 1939, he moved out of the house and into a hotel, bequeathing "Riverside" to the city government. He would die six months later, his fortune significantly reduced from its peak. Schwab House W74 jeh

La Guardia's rejection of the mansion sealed its fate, and during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, it was subdivided into apartments, a

Victory garden Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit, and herb gardens planted at private residences and public parks in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Germany during World War I a ...

in its once-landscaped grounds. Eventually the many dwellings around the home became overcrowded and Riverside Drive lost whatever affluence and wealth that had existed. By 1947 the house was empty and in 1948 it was replaced by a large, red-brick apartment complex, called the "Schwab House."

History

References

Further reading