It was 23 years after the end of the Revolutionary War. Before the launch of the Children’s Aid Society, before New York’s Gilded Age benevolent groups focused on the plight of vulnerable kids, before city welfare organizations, there was the New York Orphan Asylum Society.
Founded in 1806 by elite female citizens like Elizabeth Hamilton (below image), the recent widow of Alexander, and Isabella Graham (also a widow and founder of a number of charitable organizations), the Society sought to protect orphans from ending up in the public almshouse.
At the time, an orphan was a child who lost both parents—or who had one living parent unable to care for them. (Often, these kids were called “half-orphans.”) Adding to the city’s orphan population were immigrant children whose parents died on their journey to America.
Exactly how many orphans existed in New York at the dawn of the 19th century isn’t clear; the city population hovered under 100,000. But after the Civil War, with population at roughly one million, their numbers were estimated to be in the tens of thousands.
Whatever the number was, Hamilton, Graham (below image), and the rest of the women in the Society were deeply moved by their plight. That year, the organization rented a small house on West Fourth Street (after which became known as Asylum Street) in Greenwich Village. There, 16 orphans lived with and were looked after by an older couple, according to Village Preservation.
By 1807, the Society needed more space. “The second home of the Asylum was a 50 feet square brick building capable of housing 200 orphans” on land just north of the first building, states Village Preservation. Unlike the first orphan home, which was funded with private donations, the second one relied on a combination of private money, city and state funds, and bank loans.
“Although Greenwich Village was a good choice for the [Asylum’s] launch, environmental and health pressures soon forced yet another move,” stated Village Preservation. By 1839, the society relocated to a large facility in the Bloomingdale section of Manhattan at today’s 73rd Street, per Pam Tice in a piece in Bloomingdalehistory.com.
Why so far out of the city, which was about five miles south? Bloomingdale was a relatively remote area of small farms and a smattering of wealthy estate houses. Land was more abundant and less expensive than it was downtown.
The New York Orphan Asylum wasn’t the only facility that decided to make Bloomingdale home. Other orphanages included the Leake and Watts Orphan House (now the site of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine) and the Children’s Fold (100th Street and the Boulevard, aka Broadway), per Tice. These institutional settings were preceded by the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, where Columbia University stands today.
Spanning 73rd to 74th Streets, the new Asylum continued to serve the city’s orphans. A school was established, as was an infant nursery. According to the Society’s annual report from 1876, a total of 188 boys and girls were residents, down from 217 the year before. A $37K budget paid for clothing, bedding, fuel, laundry, furniture, books, medical needs, as well as the salaries of employees, including teachers and “matrons” who kept an eye on the children.
“From most of those who have left us to occupy various situations in life, letters are constantly received by those ladies who became their correspondents, telling of happy homes, good kind friends, and some speaking of growth in Christian grace and knowledge,” noted the Society’s secretary, M.L.R. Satterlee.
By the end of the 19th century, the Asylum’s future in Bloomingdale wasn’t looking bright. What was now known as the “West End” of Manhattan was undergoing rapid development into a high-class residential area of Beaux-Arts row houses and stand-alone mansions.
In 1900, the Asylum moved once again, this time to Westchester. In the coming decades, the New York Orphan Asylum Society became Graham Windham, a New York–based organization that helps children and families in crisis and still exists today.
And what about the facility and the land it sat on, which now had a Riverside Drive address? The Society sold them to Charles M. Schwab, a steel magnate. Schwab promptly tore down the orphanage and built himself an 86-room French chateau-style mansion.
Completed in 1906, Schwab’s mansion was one of the largest private homes ever built in New York City—a totem of Gilded Age excess lasting until the 1940s.
Find out more about the Schwab Mansion and the other palatial homes and townhouses of Gilded Age Riverside Drive by joining Ephemeral New York on a walking tour December 16! Click this link for more info.
[Top image: New-York Historical Society; second image: Wikipedia; third image: NYPL Digital Collection; fourth image: Wikipedia; fifth image: NYPL Digital Collection; sixth image: MCNY 93.1.1.241; seventh image: MCNY 93.1.1.244; eighth image: NYPL Digital Collection]
Tags: mansions of Riverside Drive, New York Orphan Society Asylum; New York Orphan Asylum Riverside Drive, Orphanages 19th Century New York City, Riverside Drive 19th Century, Riverside Drive Orphan Asylum, Riverside Drive Orphan Home Schwab Mansion, Schwab Mansion Riverside Drive
Ephemeral New York 
December 11, 2023 at 8:39 am |
Only half the Asylum’s land was taken by Schwab for his mansion. The eastern half of it fronting on the Bloomingdale Road (aka the Boulevard and also Broadway) was bought by W.E.D. Stokes, who was already an active real estate investor in the neighborhood. He used that land to build the Ansonia residential hotel that still exists on the site. The Schwab mansion was ignominiously destroyed after Mrs. Schwab died. The boringly banal brick box that houses expensive cooperative apartments but looks like a city housing project was its replacement.
December 11, 2023 at 2:09 pm |
Thanks Andrew, I didn’t realize this is also the land under the Ansonia. About the tearing down of this magnificent Gilded Age creation, they named the banal brick box “Schwab House.” A strange homage.
December 11, 2023 at 3:18 pm
The loss of the Schwab Mansion was all the fault of Mayor LaGuardia. It was offered to the city as a mayors’ house but LaGuardia turned it down. That was the absolute worst decision he ever made.
December 13, 2023 at 12:07 am
I wish the mansion had been saved. But I can’t fault LaGuardia for turning it down. It wouldn’t have been a good look for the mayor of NYC to move into that Gilded Age castle.
December 13, 2023 at 8:03 am
That mansion would have been a magnificent place for the city to accommodate distinguished visitors and to host receptions promoting the interests of the city. And in the greater world, to have such an executive mansion as representing the city would be definite plus. The mayor would have lived in only one relatively small suite of rooms on the top two floors under the roof. The rest would be public space and visitor accommodation.
December 12, 2023 at 11:39 am |
I find it amazing the generosity of people back then for orphans. I always read that most very wealthy people back then were considered Robber Barons. I never heard of these Orphan Asylums until reading ENY. Thank you for this story. Looking at those old photos, I think today’s progressives would find something wrong raising kids like that.
December 12, 2023 at 12:00 pm |
Maybe I don’t pay enough attention, but I can’t recall the last time I heard the word “orphan.” Could it be that there are fewer of them–or that the circumstances in which children become parent-less (Is that a word?) are different?
Paradoxically, it seems that while orphans were–as Tom B says–not treated in accordance with today’s accepted child-rearing practices, there wasn’t the same stigma attached to their status as there is to that of today’s kids who are raised by people who aren’t their biological parents. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that in those days, a child was more likely to be parent-less because of disease, war or, as you point out, the dangerous ocean crossing. On the other hand, when kids aren’t raised with their biological parents, it’s often assumed to be due to a poor choice or moral failing of the parents.
Enough of my two-bit sociology. It’s ironic that a Gilded Age mansion would go up in place of an orphanage–and a shame that said mansion would stand for only half a century or so.
December 12, 2023 at 12:47 pm |
Anyone interested in New York City orphans should take a look at the book ‘Habits of Compassion, Irish Catholic Nuns and the Origins of New York’s Welfare System, 1830-1920″ by Maureen Fitzgerald. Written by a well-regarded historian, it’s a revealing account of orphans in NYC and the various means of caring for them, including desperately needed orphanages.
It’s hard for us to imagine today the vast numbers of parentless children on the streets of 19c New York. The famous NY Foundling Home for babies and very small children and the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum across East 51st from St Patrick’s Cathedral were just two of the many facilities that cared for these children. The latter was boys only and there was a similar facility for girls nearby. Both cared for hundreds of children, as US censuses show. These three were founded by the Sisters of Charity of New York.
The children were fed, clothed and educated in these institutions, in addition to learning a trade to support themselves, boys and girls alike. An orphanage may horrify us but consider the alternative for these children.
January 15, 2024 at 4:34 am |
[…] arriving in New York, Schwab purchased the land in 1901, formerly the site of an orphanage. Five years and an estimated $10 million later, Schwab, his wife Eurana, and an army of servants […]