New York City
- Featured Architecture:
- ABOUT MOTT SCHMIDT
- Introduction
- Beginnings and Sutton Place
- Townhouses and Apartments
- Country Houses
- Late Works
- Townhouses
- Sutton Place
- Anne Morgan Townhouse
- Mrs W.K. Vanderbilt Townhouse
- Guy Fairfax Cary Townhouse
- Miss Emily Trevor Townhouse
- Vincent Astor Townhouse
- Walter E. Hope Townhouse
- Apartment Houses
- 53 East 66th Street
- 1088 Park Avenue
- 19 East 72nd Street
- Country Houses
- Mr & Mrs Clarence Dillon Summer House
- Pook's Hill: Mr & Mrs Mott B. Schmidt Country House
- Marienruh: Mrs Serge Obolensky Country House
- Mr & Mrs Bernard Peyton Country House
- C. Douglas Dillon Country House
- Hudson Pines: Mrs David M. Milton Abby Rockefeller Country House
- Hillcrest: Mrs Martha Baird Rockefeller Country House
- Municipal Buildings
- Municipal Building and Post Office, Mount Kisco
- Susan B. Wagner Wing, Gracie Mansion
- Other Buildings
- French City Village Houses
- Selected Commissions for the Rockefeller Family
New York, New York
1937
Schmidt's final New York apartment house was designed in collaboration with Rosario Candela, for the developer and attorney John Thomas Smith (born in 1879). Built in 1937 at 19 East 72nd Street, at the prominent corner of Madison Avenue, the building replaced McKim, Mead & White's Charles L. Tiffany residence of 1882-85. It is one of the architect's few departures from the traditional classical or Georgian vocabulary, owing perhaps to the fact that Schmidt was acting as a design consultant to Candela (1890-1953), the architect of record and a prolific specialist in East Side apartment houses during the twenties and thirties. It is a quasi-Art Deco building of limestone, whose symmetrical massing on 72nd Street is countered by various minor as symmetries in window size and rhythm. The building is monochromatic, unifying the flamboyant base and solid, massive superstructure, with its pyramidal setbacks. The sculpture around the main entrance was designed and carved by C. P. Jennewien, featuring classical figures and animals. A characteristic Schmidt touch on the interior is the elegant curved stairway in the owner's apartment, with a sinuous, wrought iron balustrade.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
The City Review: 19 East 72nd Street
The New York Times / Streetscapes: A 30's Building where the Duplex Was King