In a Country House on 105th & Broadway Lived Legendary Lovers Lost on the Titanic

By Sally Koslow

Time and Again by Jack Finney is a novel I reread…time and again. The book, which takes place on the Upper West Side, features time travel and has shaped the way I see our city. Passing a curious old edifice, I find it hard not to wonder what stories live within its walls. 924 West End Avenue, for instance.

Today you see a thirteen-story building with a carriage entrance under a porte-cochere on the northwest corner of Broadway and 105th Street, stretching across the entire block. But in 1866, when the neighborhood was still somewhat rural, you’d have found a vine-covered clapboard house and stable built in 1866 by Matthew Brennan, a Boss Tweed crony.

Eager to enjoy river views and breezes, health-conscious New Yorkers summered here. Among them were Isidor and Ida Straus, owners of Macy’s and the Abraham and Straus department store in Brooklyn. The couple purchased Brennan’s house in 1884.

If you were lucky enough to see the Tony award-winning play The Lehman Trilogy, Isidor’s background will sound familiar. He was born in Bavaria to a Jewish family who moved in 1851 to tiny Talbotton, Georgia, where his father, Lazarus, owned a dry goods store. When Union forces blocked Southern ports during the Civil War, Isidor moved to England and traded Confederate bonds. By the end of the war he was $10,000 richer, roughly $186,000 in today’s dollars. He used the money, in part, to move his parents to Manhattan and build a house on West 49th Street. Partnering with his brother Nathan, who lived near Central Park on West 72nd — the UWS’s poshest street — Isidor’s fortunes grew along with his family. He became a member of Congress and was devoted to his wife, Ida Blun, whom he married in 1871. Like Isidor, she was born on February 6th, with similar German-Jewish roots. The couple had seven children, including a son, Clarence, who died at two. They were considered to be particularly close, faithfully corresponding, for example, whenever Isidor traveled for business.

Typically, they vacationed in Southern California, visiting Isidor’s business partner, Abraham Abraham. His sudden death in 1912, however, led to a change of plans: a European vacation. The Straus’s were scheduled to return to New York with their newly-hired English maid, Ellen Bird, on a ship that ultimately couldn’t sail because of a coal strike. A last-minute switch found them on the new “unsinkable” luxury liner called Titanic.

When the ship hit an iceberg, Ida was offered a spot in Lifeboat 8, as was Isidor, on account of his age — 67 — and social position. He declined, pointing out that many women and children had yet to secure spots. Ida then relinquished her space and reportedly said to her husband of 40 years, “Where you go, I go.” Survivors observed that Ida insisted Ellen Bird take not only the space she gave up in the lifeboat, but her full-length mink coat, saying, “You will need this more than I do.”

The Straus’s were last seen holding hands before a wave swept them into the sea. Ida’s body was never found. Isidor’s was returned to New York, where more than 40,000 people attended his funeral at Carnegie Hall and a memorial at the Educational Alliance, originally a settlement house for Eastern European Jews immigrating to New York City that he helped to establish, along with Montefiore Hospital.

Ten days later, the Straus children sold the family home, one of the last to survive in an area rapidly filling with massive apartment buildings. (Ten days? Think about that. Sorry. I digress.) The developer, Harry Schiff, hired the architectural team of Schwartz and Gross to design the building now known as The Clebourne. In 1913 Schiff’s asbestos-enhanced, high-ceiling’d, mahogany-paneled “absolutely fireproof 6 to 10 room very modern apartments with a splendid roof garden” began to rent.

The Clebourne has remained the grand dame of the ‘hood ever since. Its 65 apartments have never been divided, with some living rooms spacious enough to accommodate two grand pianos. Historically, its residents have leaned toward the arts, media and politics, including author Madeleine L’Engle; composer Charlie Small; editors and writers Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter and their son, Commentary’s John Podhoretz; photographer Sheila Metzner, artist Robert Natkin and peace activists Philip and Daniel Berrigan along with plenty of professors, lawyers and shrinks.

The Clebourne has weathered neighborhood upheaval, heightened by the 1950’s stampede to the suburbs and a gradual increase in crime. “While no one in my family was ever a victim, we did not do a whole lot of walking on Amsterdam or Columbus,” recalls John Moscow, 74, who inherited his parents’ apartment and has lived in the building since he was less than a year old. In 1973, embracing gentrification, the Clebourne was converted to a co-op–with eat-your-heart-out prices. A classic 6 on the fifth floor sold for $6,329; a nine-room on the ninth floor for $21,472.

To honor Isidor and Ida Straus, in 1915 a pocket park was erected on 106th Street at the triangle of land where West End Avenue meets Broadway. Here you will find one of the city’s most charming sculptures, designed by Augustus Lukeman, of a reclining female figure contemplating a reflecting pool. Nearby is a Biblical inscription:

Lovely and pleasant were they in their lives.
And in their death, they were not divided.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Ida and Isidor. You were not divided–nor are you forgotten.

Sally Koslow is a novelist. Her most recent books are The Real Mrs. Tobias and Another Side of Paradise.