By Anthony Paletta
There are plenty of skyscrapers in Manhattan, but just a handful of original modern town houses. These include three by William Lescaze, one by Philip Johnson and one by Morris B Sanders, a 1935 building given landmark status by the city of New York in 2007 and now on the market with Compass.
The house, at 219 East 49th Street, is a decidedly unusual street-level presence in Turtle Bay. The ground floor is made from marble and glass bricks, with an angled doorway and a curved planter filled with greenery. Rising five-and-a-half stories, the facade features glazed blue bricks, glass blocks and casement windows, while inside there’s an unusual balance of rooms — six bedrooms, five bathrooms and three floors of offices, a legacy of its original hybrid use as Sanders’ home and workplace. Two of the spaces open out into loggias.
Sanders, an Arkansas-born, Yale-educated architect, had a career that spanned the worlds of design, advertising and architecture. He was head of the art department at the now defunct company Schenley, one of the biggest sellers of alcohol in the US after the end of Prohibition.
He also designed modular furniture for the Mengel Company of Louisville, Kentucky, some of which is now at the Museum of Modern Art, and co-designed a pavilion for the Distilled Spirits Institute at the 1939 World’s Fair, collaborating with Miami modernist Morris Lapidus. Though Sanders died young at just 44, the house in New York stands as an impressive legacy on its own.
The Architectural League of New York City gave it a silver award for domestic architecture in 1935, praising its “fresh and modern use of glazed brick and glass brick and a harmonious color scheme”. Among its innovative touches was a very early use of air conditioning.
Frampton Tolbert, executive director of New York City’s Historic District Council described the building as “one of the earliest, if not the second, modern town house in New York based on Le Corbusier-style design principles. Most likely influenced by the Lescaze House, which was completed a year earlier one block south.”
The building was bought by art director Don Wise in 1980, who used three of the lower floors as office space. Trained as an architect, he was drawn to the unique modern space — his wife Taki recalled that it was “very special for him to set up his office in a building that had such integrity”.
The residential part at the top of the house, which spans two-and-a-half floors and includes a roof terrace, was rented to Wise’s daughter Anouche from 2014-2022, who says of the building: “We were very happy living there. It’s quite open. It’s unique with the glass blocks because we never had to turn on the lights — if you weren’t getting light on one side you were getting it on the other.”
Later renovations were made to the office floors but the residential area’s original details are all intact. Fans of modern architecture will find the original coco wood panelling remains in the living room and Amboyna Burl wood in the main bedroom. A number of built-in pieces of pine furniture are also still in place, along with the original limestone fireplaces.
Photography: Anton Brooks
