Castles, Skyscrapers, and the Charles V. Paterno Library

Columbia I: Castles, Skyscrapers, and the Charles V. Paterno Library (source) by Paul Cohen
Italian Americana Vol. 8, No. 1 (FALL/WINTER 1986), pp. 9-14 (6 pages)

The massive retaining walls of Dr. Charles V. Paterno’s fortress-like residence can still be seen on Riverside Drive between 181st and 186th Streets. There on the bluffs above the Hudson River, the Paterno family lived from 1907 to 1938 like feudal lords with Washington Heights below as though it were their fief. Seeing the turrets and tower in the distance, one might have thought the home, which rose from masonry walls 25 feet thick at the base, resembled a medieval castle on the Rhine. The white marble interior included an enormous swimming pool surrounded by bird cages, as well as an organ with 3,097 pipes (intended to be played by three people and valued during the depression at $60,000).

This singular structure was actually one of the more modest buildings erected by Charles Paterno who as a boy dreamed of dwelling in a castle along the Hudson. Soon after completing “The Castle” in 1907, he went on to build New York’s first elevator apartment. Then, in 1914, he began work on the largest apartment building in the world. “The Marguery” at Park Avenue and 47th Street, which he could not finish until 1919 because of shortages during the war. Paterno astonished New Yorkers in 1927 by proclaiming that he would next construct the tallest building in the world. The plan, which eventually had to be abandoned, called for a 90-story apartment tower in Bergen, New Jersey: it would have been 100 feet higher than the Eiffel Tower, then the world’s tallest structure.

Dr. Paterno, a small, dapper man who wore a precise, narrow goatee and a daintily curled mustache, was call the “Napoleon of the Manhattan Skyscraper Builder” by the newspapermen who delighted in his grandiose announcements. The son of a builder, Paterno was born in Castelmezzano, Italy in 1878. He came to New York in 1883 after an earthquake collapsed a block of houses his father had just completed in Naples, ruining the family financially. [CARLA’S CORRECTION: Father Giovanni “John” Paterno departed Castelmezzano alone in 1880 for New York City. His wife and first four children followed in 1885.] Charles’ first ambition was to become a doctor; he was graduated from Cornell Medical School in 1899 and was on the verge of beginning a medical practice that year when his father suddenly died. At the time of the death, John Paterno had been engaged in constructing an apartment building on 112th Street near the Cathedral, and Charles and his elder brother Joseph [CORRECTION: Charles is older and was born in 1878. Joseph was born in 1881.] were obligated to finish their father’s half-built apartments.

Paterno Brothers, the name of the firm they later formed, soon found itself constructing larger and larger apartments throughout the Morningside Heights area, and many of the most distinctive apartment buildings along Morningside Park and especially Riverside Drive were built by them. Columbia University, then in the midst of building its new campus, was creating lucrative opportunities for ambitious builders like Charles Paterno. As a result of his success, he was soon making too much money to return to medicine.

The Paterno family’s participating in the development of the University community led to their involvement in the establishment of Casa Italiana. In 1925, when serious planning of this Italo-American project began, Charles’ brother Joseph became one of the chief fund raisers. And when Paterno Brothers began construction of the McKim, Mead & White building in 1926, Joseph Paterno personally oversaw the work from start to finish.

Joseph Paterno interrupted his supervision at least once, however, when he accompanied President [of Columbia University] Nicholas Murray Butler to Italy in 1927 where they were lavishly entertained by Benito Mussolini. The Italian premier expressed great enthusiasm for the Casa Italiana and gave his visitors a magnificent party at the Villa d’Este outside of Rome. He opened the gates of the Villa for the first time in forty years and had its hundred of fountains turned on to honor his guests from Columbia University. Joseph Paterno and Nicholas Murray Butler each triumphantly returned to New York with inscribed photographs of Il Duce; the photograph to Joseph read: “A Guiseppe Paterno, della buona razza Italian” (To Joseph Paterno, of the best Italian stock), quite a prize for an immigrant Italian who had been selling newspapers on the streets of New York not too many years before.

Dr. Charles Paterno, unlike his brother, did not take an active role in the construction of Casa Italiana, but in 1925 he made a pledge in an undetermined amount to purchase books for a library which would bear his name; it would occupy one floor of the new building and consist of about 10,000 volumes. With money promised, representatives of the Casa had gone to Italy in the summer of 1925 on their first book-buying mission. After a warm reception from Mussolini, they talked with Ciro Trabalza, the Director General of Italian Schools abroad, who offered to help them assemble a nucleus of Italian books for the library. Also that summer, Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, Minister of Finance, made a gift of some of the first books for the collection. Soon thereafter, Charles Paterno decided that his gift would be in the amount of $15,000 and the offer was quickly accepted.

Books started arriving from Italy even before the building was dedicated on Columbus Day, 1927, coming slowly at first but by 1928 some 3,000 had already arrived and about 3,000 more were on order. Many were coming as gifts but most had been ordered with Paterno’s money by Professor John Gerig of the Italian department. In 1930 the books were arriving at an alarming rate. According to Charles Paterno, “There are five or six thousand or more volumes that should be placed on the shelves which are now in boxes, unpacked and unbound and several thousand still to arrive and there is no place to put them.”

The shortage of space, always a problem at the Charles V. Paterno Library, became apparent during its first years of existences, and even Paterno complained to President Butler about that problem in 1930: “I have criticized those who are responsible [for he purchase of books] because I did not wish to have them order any more books than the number that would be required to fill the shelves available in the present Paterno Library.” As the donor of the library, he proposed adding another floor of the building to accomodate the swelling quantity of books he was paying for, but the new director of the Casa, Giuseppe Prezzolini, discouraged that plan, fearing that the library would soon swallow up the Casa if allowed to expand. He argued that the library should be “an implement of the Casa Italiana and not the Casa an implement of the Library.”

The director recommended another solution, one wich would reduce the number of incoming books and narrow the scope of acquisitions. He suggested that Dr. Paterno make his library “a center of information on contemporary Italy (1860 to the present day).” It would then become, in addition to its value for students of Italian literature and history, “a center which would also attract men of politics and business who wished to study and understand contemporary Italy.” Prezzolini’s motives in wanting the collection more political than literary and more contemporary than historical had to do with his own interests in politics which had won him the friendship of Benito Mussolini and led him to the conclusion that “Facism is the best [form of government] Italy could have under the circumstances.”

Prezzolini’s views were not generally shared by people outside of the Casa Italiana, and his political activities often got him into trouble. In the early 1930’s charges were made that the Casa had become a propaganda center, and after The Nation ran a series of articles on “Fascism at Columbia” in 1934, Prezzolini was picketed by Columbia students. “At Columbia University’s Casa Italiana,” one recent historian has written, “Fascism found a vertiable home in America.” Undoubetedly Prezzolini wanted to give the Paterno Library a direction which would serve, among others, those especially interested in learning a great deal about Mussolini.

In fact, Prezzolini had befriended Mussolini in 1905, written a book on him in 1924, and, while serving as Director of the Casa Italiana, kept Mussolini informed about the activities here. “I am following with interest the work done by the Casa Italiana of Columbia University,” Mussolini wrote to Prezzolini shortly after the Italian government had sent a sum of money to the Casa in 1934, “and I am pleased with what is being accomplished in favor of our culture.” Prezzolini forwarded this letter to Dr. Butler, along with a letter of his own, “I thank you cordially for your letter,” replied Butler, “with its charming message from Mussolini. It is pleasant indeed to know that he is following our work and appreciates it.” The Columbia President went on, perhaps recollecting Il Duce’s splendid party at the Villa d’Este, “I hope sometime to get back to Italy, in which case I should wish to of course to pay my respects to him at once.”

Charles Paterno does not seem to have gotten involved in this political fuss which centered on the Casa Italiana, but his brother Joseph once wrote to President Butler expressing his displeasure when he learned that Count Carlo Sforza, the famous anti-Fascist and exile, had been invited to speak at the Casa. During the years when the Casa Italiana was being attacked in the press, Paterno Library was actually singled out as an oasis in the Casa free of Fascist influence. Even though Prezzolini was the referring to the Paterno Library as “the heart of the Casa Italiana,” the authors of “An Academic Scandal at Columbia,” The Nation, 1934, forlornly pointed out that “all the splended resources” of the Casa Italiana have been, “with the exception of the Paterno Library which is part of the university library system, exclusively controlled by the fascist group.”

In the midst of the political scandal, Charles Paterno continued to give money to his library, even though the depression had stripped him of a dozen buildings and million of dollars; during the deepest years of the great depression, his contributions sometimes only amounted to a few hundred dollars to be used for binding. By 1936, however, the library had grown to the point where it was being called “The finest collection of Italian books outside of Italy,” and Charles Paterno was well on his way to recovering his real estate fortune. In 1937, he and his son Carlo established the endowment fund of $30,000 which has provided the source for purchasing books ever since.

And in the late 1930’s, Charles’ creative mind was once again coming up with sensational building projects. In 1938, he demolished his wonderful castle to make way for a spectacular group of five 14-story apartment towers, each one in cruciform shape. Called Castle Village, the 600-suite complex, which featured New York’s first ramp garage, was dedicated in 1939 by Mayor La Guardia who praised it builder for creating “this magnificent housing unit, which will afford the sunshine, scenery and comforts of a millionaire’s living quarters to those without a millionaire’s income.”

To replace “The Castle,” in 1938 Paterno built himself a 26 room Chateau on the highest point of land between New York and Boston. Considered one of the costliest residences ever constructed in Greenwich, Connecticut, “Chateau Lafayette” was a mixture of pre-Renaissance Anglican and French styles of architecture. Paterno divided his time between this new home and a 1,700 acre estate called Windmill Manor, located in North Castle, New York. He had purchased the estate in 1922 and that year had planted 1,500,000 pine and cedar trees on which he hoped to do grafting experiments with the aim of producing a perfect Christmas tree. Quantities of these trees were sold each year at enormous profits until they grew too large to be marketable. Because of Paterno’s love of Christmas, another one of this ambitions was to train four of the 25 deer which roamed about Windmill Manor so that one snowy Christmas Eve they might be hitched to a sleigh and, with Dr. Paterno at the helm, driven down 5th Avenue.

He died before the deer could be properly domesticated and without having improved the Christmas tree to perfection. On May 30, 1946, while playing golf with his brother-in-law [Anthony Campagna] at the Westchester Country Club, Paterno had a heart attack at the Xth [tenth] hole. He left two enormous unfinished projects. He had hoped to build “the finest cemetery east of Los Angeles” in Armonk, New York, a $4,000,000 memorial park which would employ 300 men and provide facilities for baptisms and marriages as well as burials. But the horrified residents of Armonk had been giving him as many zoning problems that Paterno had withdrawn his application shortly before his death. His other plan, the conversion of Windmill Manor into a sportsman’s paradise, was moving along more smoothly. Two-and-a-half golf courses had already been built; artificial lakes were being formed (one had been stocked with 50,000 brown and speckled trout); magnificent bridle paths had been created by rearranging the remaining pine and cedar trees; and runways had been laid. The special feature of this club was to be blimp taxi service to and from Manhattan with a ship departing from each end every fifteen minutes and a landing field somewhere near 50th Street.

Dr. Paterno’s endowment continues to serve the Paterno Library and almost all of the acquisitions for the Library to this day come from that fund. The Library, which now has about 20,000 volumes, still occupies its original cramped quarters on the fourth floor of the Casa Italiana. From time to time books have had to be transferred to Butler Library to make room for new acquisitions. In 1972, the largest of these moves occurred when all of the Italian history books (about 5,000 volumes) were removed from the Paterno shelves; the emphasis of the remaining collection is literature. Robert Connolly, who has been in charge there since 1962, thinks the Charles V. Paterno Library is still “one of the largest libraries of Italian books outside Italy.”