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Photo Source: Both Sides of Fifth Ave.
J.F.L.Collins 1910
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This is
perhaps a bit silly but there is so little available on the life of Countess
Annie Leary of NYC that a bit of gossip in a tattle mag of the time says a
lot about interest in the rich and famous even back then.
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Broadcast Weekly 14 April 1904 |
The way this
is written I am not certain if Countess Annie was evicted from her long term
home at 3 Fifth avenue, which I cannot find a picture of yet – or she first
left that perhaps childhood home at 3 Fifth Avenue when a 99 year lease, made
by her father James Leary the Merchant/Hatter, on the land it was built on
expired in 1902. That the two year lease is perhaps another rental further up
Fifth Avenue and that too became unavailable as developers were tearing down these
old brick or brownstone mansions and building apartment buildings in the teens
and 1920s.
In any case,
Annie seems to have been "homeless" for a few short years while she finally moved
into digs at 1032 Fifth Avenue between 84th Street and 85th
Street and in sight of the Metropolitan Museum of Art across the road, located
within the boundaries of Central Park.
The house at
1032 Fifth Avenue was a fixer upper, a renovation and re-clad in white stone of
a bunch of spec townhouses built in the 1870s. In the image of 1032 above, the
building next door at 1033 is still a brownstone as of 1910, and 1034 was being
converted at the same time with Annie’s 1032 in 1905 with the “rebuilt front wall” and
getting in Annie’s case a three story extension in back where the stables used
to be.
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| April 1905 |
The building progress report lists Countess Leary’s no doubt temporary address as 16 E 75th
Street.
1033 btw is still standing with a white stone re-clad and squeezed between two tall apartment buildings.
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| 1033 Fifth Avenue NYC Google Maps |
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