Published: May 5, 2010
THIRTY-ODD years ago, when I was a young architectural historian moving into the Cornwall, at Broadway and 90th Street, I began wondering who had first slept in my apartment. Four years later, I had emptied my bag of tricks in researching the building.
A 1980s renovation at the Cornwall, shown in 1910, unearthed paper clues that led to a phone call that identified Dorothy Spencer, shown in a Smith College yearbook photo in 1914.
I had pretty much given up when two faded baby-blue tickets to the Smith College graduation of June 15, 1914, fluttered down from behind the old oak kitchen cabinets and landed at my feet.
Two baby-blue tickets to the Smith College graduation of June 15, 1914 were a clue to the apartment’s former occupant.
My wife, Erin, and I had been living as rental tenants in the Cornwall since 1978. As earnest young gentrifiers, we helped take the 1910 building co-op in 1981. That was also the year we moved from 3A to 11A, a four-bedroom apartment with a paneled dining room, an onyx fireplace, stained glass, a wall safe, figured tile in a bathroom — all the accouterments of top-of-the-middle-line apartment living of 1910.
The Cornwall, shown in 1910.
In the four years we lived in 3A, I had combed the earth looking for the original tenants.
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