Laura Wright 
Haunted Houses of Yesteryear
ABC’s supernatural series 666 Park Avenue revolved around a luxurious apartment building owned and ruled by a devilish man. But fictional New York was hardly the first place where a fashionable address became associated with something sinister.
During the early 1900s, one of New York City’s grandest mansions stood at 871 Fifth Avenue.
Unlike the television series, there was supposedly no evil mastermind controlling what happened inside.
Instead, the mansion acquired a reputation for something far more mysterious.
Owner after owner suffered tragedy, scandal, financial ruin, illness, and death. Eventually, the magnificent residence became known as a house of sorrow, a place whose beauty seemed unable to protect the people who lived there.
But even the beginning of the story is uncertain.
The Mysterious Origins of 871 Fifth Avenue
Despite the mansion’s fame, accounts disagree about who originally built the house and how its supposed curse began.
The original residence was considerably smaller than the magnificent mansion that eventually occupied the property.
According to the first version of the story, the house was built by Howard G. Seward.
Trouble began almost immediately.
While workers were constructing the foundation, a falling timber killed one of them.
The dead man’s wife was believed to be partly gypsy or Sicilian. Grief-stricken, she supposedly pronounced a curse upon Seward and his unfinished home.
She predicted that Seward would never live there.
It would become a house of sorrow.
According to the story, her prediction came true.
The First Death
Six months later, Seward hanged himself from one of the rafters of the house.
The building remained empty for months afterward.
Neighbors began talking.
Although no one was supposedly living inside, people reported strange lights and unexplained sounds coming from the vacant residence.
If this version is true, the reputation of 871 Fifth Avenue began before the mansion had even acquired the grandeur for which it would later become famous.
But there is another account of its origins.
Was Robert L. Stuart the Original Owner?
A second version identifies sugar magnate Robert L. Stuart as the man who built the residence.
Stuart died shortly after its construction.
He suffered from septicemia for three weeks before finally succumbing to the illness.
There is, however, a problem with this version of the story.
Stuart’s obituary listed his residence as 154 Fifth Avenue, not 871 Fifth Avenue.
Whether this discrepancy resulted from an older system of street numbering or whether the story simply attached Stuart to the wrong house remains uncertain.
Whatever its true beginnings, the property eventually passed from the widow of its late owner to the Barber family.
And the stories of misfortune continued.
Amzi Barber and the House of Sorrow
Amzi Barber was a wealthy asphalt magnate.
He fell in love with the location of the original house but wanted something considerably grander for his family.
Barber transformed the property by constructing an ostentatious mansion over the original residence.
For a time, his fortunes appeared extraordinary.
His career soared.
Then the family moved into the mansion.
Suddenly, Barber’s luck seemed to change.
Scandal and Financial Ruin
Barber became entangled in one scandal after another.
Charges of corruption and dishonesty damaged his reputation and cost him much of his fortune. One woman even sued him on mysterious grounds that were never fully explained to the press.
Eventually, the pressure became too much.
Barber developed problems with alcohol and fled New York.
The family relinquished the mansion.
Leaving 871 Fifth Avenue, however, apparently did not leave the family’s misfortune behind.
Tragedy Follows the Barber Family
The family’s bad luck continued.
Barber’s only son, L. D. Langdon Barber, died abruptly within a few years.
Three years later, Amzi Barber himself died.
Then his son’s widow threw herself from the window of their mansion in Washington, D.C.
Three weeks later, Mrs. Barber suddenly died aboard a train in 1912.
It seemed a dark conclusion to a troubled period for the New England family.
By then, however, 871 Fifth Avenue had passed into the hands of another wealthy and prominent man.
His name was William C. Whitney.
William C. Whitney Transforms the Mansion
William Collins Whitney had served as Secretary of the Navy under President Grover Cleveland.
His first wife had died years earlier, but Whitney eventually emerged from his grief and found love again.
He became engaged to the widow Mrs. Randolph.
Whitney decided to transform 871 Fifth Avenue into an extraordinary wedding gift for his bride.
He reportedly spent an astonishing $6 million remodeling the mansion.
And what a house he created.
A Palace on Fifth Avenue
The completed mansion was featured in architectural and interior decorating catalogs and magazines.
Rather than filling the house with ordinary modern furnishings, Whitney surrounded himself with magnificent European antiquities.
Chimneypieces came from old Italian palaces.
Rare and enormously expensive paintings were purchased in Europe.
One silver hanging lamp dated to fifteenth-century Italy.
The ballroom contained panels taken from the château of Phoebus d’Albert in Bordeaux, France.
There were Chinese carpets, bronze fireplace fixtures, and countless other luxurious furnishings.
Stanford White, one of New York City’s most celebrated architects, was credited with working miracles inside the mansion.
But considering the building’s later reputation, an intriguing question emerged.
Could a house filled with objects taken from old palaces and estates have brought their own histories with them?
Perhaps it was the perfect storm of dubious antiquities, a grand hall filled with objects carrying memories of their own.
Whatever the case, tragedy soon returned to 871 Fifth Avenue.
A Wedding Followed by Tragedy
Before the marriage, Whitney invited friends to admire the completed mansion.
His bride-to-be was spending time at Biltmore while Whitney made the final preparations.
After the couple married, they went riding the following morning.
What happened next differs depending upon the account.
According to one version, Mrs. Whitney’s horse suddenly became frightened and threw her.
She broke her neck in the fall.
Whitney cared for her for several months, but her injuries were ultimately fatal.
Another version gives a different account.
In that story, she attempted to ride beneath a bridge that was too low. Her head struck the structure, badly injuring her skull.
She later died.
Whatever the precise circumstances, Whitney’s magnificent wedding gift had become a monument to grief.
Whitney Abandons the House
After his wife’s death, Whitney could no longer bear to remain in the mansion.
He sealed the house and abandoned it.
After spending time mourning his loss, Whitney eventually returned with his stepdaughter, Adelaide Randolph.
He lavished affection and attention upon his stepchildren, reportedly causing resentment among his own children.
His daughter became so unhappy that she decided to marry partly to escape him.
She fell in love with a young Englishman named Almeric Paget.
Whitney opposed the marriage.
Then he became terribly ill.
The Mysterious Death of William C. Whitney
Whitney developed a severe abdominal illness.
No one seemed certain precisely what was wrong.
Some physicians believed he had suffered a ruptured appendix. Others attributed his condition to an abdominal infection known as peritonitis.
Rumors went further.
Some people even whispered about poisoning or murder.
Whatever the cause, William C. Whitney died in 1904.
The magnificent Fifth Avenue mansion passed to another owner.
And again, death followed.
“Silent Smith” Takes Possession
The mansion next passed to a family friend named James Henry Smith.
Friends knew him as “Silent Smith.”
Smith had recently married Mrs. Rhinelander Stewart, and the newlyweds traveled to Japan for their honeymoon.
Smith never returned to enjoy his new property.
He died during the honeymoon.
By then, tragedy seemed to surround not only the mansion’s owners but even some of the people responsible for creating its extraordinary interior.
The Death of Stanford White
Stanford White was one of the most celebrated architects serving wealthy New Yorkers.
His clients included members of families such as the Astors and Vanderbilts.
White had overseen the renovations at William C. Whitney’s mansion and located many of the European architectural pieces and antiquities used to transform the residence.
He had helped turn a house into a palace.
Then White himself became the victim of one of the most notorious murders of the era.
In 1906, millionaire Harry Thaw shot and killed Stanford White.
Thaw believed White had been having an affair with his wife.
Another prominent figure connected with 871 Fifth Avenue was dead.
Did the Curse Finally End?
The mansion eventually returned to the Whitney family.
Harry Payne Whitney, the eldest son of William C. Whitney, had married Gertrude Vanderbilt in 1896.
The couple took possession of the house.
And something changed.
For perhaps the first time in its long and troubled history, 871 Fifth Avenue no longer seemed to produce an endless succession of catastrophes.
The misfortune associated with earlier occupants apparently stopped.
If the house really had been cursed, perhaps the curse had finally exhausted itself.
Or perhaps the tragedies had always been coincidence.
The End of 871 Fifth Avenue
The William C. Whitney mansion survived until the 1940s.
Then the great house was demolished.
Its priceless antiquities were removed.
Its elaborate rooms disappeared.
The gilded halls that had once appeared in architectural and decorating publications were torn apart.
Eventually, even the mansion’s reputation faded.
Today, few people remember the extraordinary residence that once stood at 871 Fifth Avenue or the succession of scandals, deaths, illnesses, and tragedies associated with its occupants.
Was 871 Fifth Avenue Really Cursed?
The legend is complicated by the conflicting stories surrounding the mansion’s earliest history.
Was Howard G. Seward really its original builder?
Did a grieving widow curse the property after her husband was killed during construction?
Did Seward subsequently hang himself from the rafters?
Or did the story truly begin with sugar magnate Robert L. Stuart?
Those questions remain unresolved in the old accounts.
What followed is equally remarkable.
The Barber family experienced scandal, financial loss, alcoholism, and death.
William C. Whitney spent a fortune creating a magnificent home for his bride, only to lose her shortly after their marriage.
Whitney himself died after a mysterious abdominal illness.
James Henry “Silent” Smith inherited the mansion and died on his honeymoon.
Stanford White, the architect who transformed the house, was murdered.
Then Harry Payne Whitney and Gertrude Vanderbilt took possession.
And the supposed curse seemed to stop.
Perhaps 871 Fifth Avenue was simply an extraordinarily expensive house whose wealthy and prominent occupants experienced the same tragedies that eventually visit every family.
Perhaps decades of newspaper reporting gradually transformed unrelated events into the history of a cursed mansion.
Or perhaps there really was something unfortunate about that particular corner of Fifth Avenue.
Whatever the answer, the mansion is gone.
Unlike the fictional 666 Park Avenue, there is no sinister apartment building left for curious visitors to investigate.
There is only the story of a vanished New York palace once known for grandeur, tragedy, and a reputation as a house of sorrow.
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