A Short-Lived Mansion

The kind of construction-sequence photos that I showed a while back for 15 Broad Street exist for other buildings and, crucially, for other building types. The following photo sequence is an example for the George Blumenthal house at 50 East 70th Street. “House” is a bit understated: Blumenthal bought part of the former site of the Union Theological Seminary after that institution moved uptown to Morningside Heights. UTS had formerly been on the west side of Park Avenue between 69th and 70th Streets, in a building that extended back 125 feet west from the avenue. The Blumenthal lot was 125 feet deep, east-west, and 100 feet on the avenue, north-south, or exactly half of the old site. The house itself was about 110 feet by 75 feet in plan area, so I feel justified in using “mansion.” Here’s a view from the east on May 20, 1912. The heavy-timber sidewalk shed is in the process of being built, the foundations must be already complete because there’s a temporary deck at the ground floor…