249 Central Park West

This historic rowhouse on the south side of the intersection of Central Park West and W. 85th Street is one of eight that were built along by a developer in 1887 for real estate investor William Bable. Very few residential structures of this type have survived along Central Park West owing to the influx of high-rise apartment buildings in the 1900s to 1930s. The next-door neighboring rowhouses at 247 and 248 Central Park West also were spared demolition; all three are part of the Central Park West National Register Historic District, listed in 1982. The rowhouse was divided into three apartments in the 1950s but restored to a single-family home in the 2000s.

The rowhouse at 249 Central Park West stands on land that used to belong to William A. Davis around the middle of the nineteenth century (the lot is marked on a map figure below). The north end of the lot abutted a former road named Stillwell's Lane that ran down the center of the block about 140 feet north of where 249 Central Park North now stands.

The architect for all three adjacent rowhouses still standing at 247-248-249 Central Park West was Edward Angell. Angell was not shy about using a mixture of currently popular architectural elements in the Queen Anne style rowhouses between W. 84th and W. 85th Streets: stained glass windows, turrets, gargoyles, balconies, and stoops. The houses were aimed at wealthy residents and were expensive to build. Each was about 100 feet deep by 25 feet wide. The end units were the most sought-after (241 and 249) because of their extra side of windows facing the side streets. The three end units at each end of the block were mirror images of each other.

The 249 Central Park West rowhouse is composed of brownstone and brick. The corner turret with a window facing east toward the Mariner's Gate at Central Park is decorated with pseudo balconies and a top cap. The rowhouse was first sold to Frederick Beck, the head of Frederick Beck & Company. Beck was a member of the Board of the National Wall Paper Company, founded in 1894. In 1890, the rowhouse was the scene of the wedding of Beck's daughter, Frederica, to Rudolph J. Schaefer, staged under a bower of roses. Beck's wallpaper company had a factory in Hoboken, New Jersey my 1913.

By 1914, the 249 rowhouse was owned by a clergyman named Luther Allen Swope and his wife, Rebecca Wendel. Mr. Swope was a graduate of Harvard (1868 and Master's 1871). Mrs. Swope was an heiress to the multi-million dollar estate of her family's real estate business; the couple had no children. Mr. Swope passed away in 1924 and Mrs. Swope died in 1930. Mrs. Swope bequeathed most of her fortune to her surviving sister, who still lived in the Wendel family's long-time mansion at Fifth Avenue and 39th Street; she left the 249 rowhouse to her nephew, George Stanley Shirk. Mr. Shirk lived in Dobbs Ferry, New York, and never lived in the rowhouse. The 249 rowhouse was unoccupied for many years, and was boarded up by the early 1940s. The rest of the block's rowhouses, east of 247, were demolished around 1929 to build the high-rise Art Deco apartment building at 241 Central Park West (also a Clio entry).

In 1957, the rowhouse was converted into three apartments. To attempt to make the building look more modern, some of the fancy decorative elements were removed and the whole structure was painted white (see the 1975 photo below). A tenant named John Herget purchased the building in 1974. After a part of the facade fell off the building to the sidewalk in 1989, Herget stripped off the paint during restoration. The brownstone is once again brown, and the bricks are red. The house was remodeled in the 2000s to return it to a single-family home. The restored oak-paneled dining room is especially ornate (see a photo in the blog linked below). The building has a total of 11 bedrooms and 11 baths and covers about 10,000 square feet.

Herringshaw, Gregory. Wallpaper industry. Encyclopedia of New Jersey. Brunswick, NJ. Rutgers University Press. January 1st 2004. 845 - 845.

Howard, Alexandra Cushing. Building-Structure Inventory Form for 247-249 Central Park West, N.Y.. Albany, NY. Division of Historic Preservation, New York State Parks and Recreation, 1975.

Miller, Tom. The 1889 Beck House - No. 249 Central Park West, Daytonian in Manhattan. Blog.. September 26th 2013. Accessed September 14th 2021. http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-1889-beck-house-no-249-central-park.html.