New York Evening Post • Saturday, May 23, 1925
Fate Decreed That the Young Physician Cure Housing Ills Instead of Human Ailments in the Working Out of His Destiny
Dr. Charles V. Paterno, creator of the remarkable Hudson View Gardens apartment group on Washington Heights, builder of the $10,000,000 multi-family structure at 270 Park Avenue and the man who was responsible for the production of dozens of the finest residential properties in New York, must by now be a fatalist because he was not intended for the building business at all. For years he strove to enter his chosen field of endeavor, medicine; but an inexorable fate barred him from the path and pointed the way for his construction activities.
Now, recognized as one of America foremost builders he is resigned to his task of curing housing ailments instead of prescribing for the physical woes of his fellow beings.
A Real M.D.
For those who have wondered why the “Dr.” has always been associated with Charles V. Paterno, let it be known that he ws graduated from the Cornell School of Medicine in 1899. That year his father, John Paterno, the builder, who was engaged in the erection of an apartment house on 112th Street near the Cathedral died and Charles V. and his brother, Joseph, were obliged to assume the responsibility of finishing the job as wage earners for the family and their widowed mother.
Charles V. just filled in on this operation. His objective was still medicine and he expected to practice his profession when the building was completed.
Their Second Operation
But fate intervened once more in the sale of the completed structure and the acquisition of an adjoining unimproved parcel in part payment. So it became incumbent on the two boys to undertake another apartment operation on the newly acquired site. With a working capital of about $3,000 they went ahead, completed the building and made a $3,000 profit, quite an achievement for two beginners.
The lure of further profits from this lucrative business spurred the young medico to engage in one more undertaking and Paterno Brothers started a seven-story elevator building on West 105th Street, near the West End Presbyterian Church. They made $40,000 on the sale of this structure and the young doctor bowed once again before the fate which was decreeing his separation from medicine.
A Larger Project
The next operation was still larger. It was on 103rd street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, a building known as El Casco Court. Then he built a still larger house, Putnam Court, on 104th Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, selling all of these as he went along with his brother Joseph.
Beginning of work on the new buildings of Columbia University attracted Paterno Brothers to this neighborhood and they built a number of houses on the farm lands fronting on Morningside Avenue West.
Their next field of operation was in the vicinity of Riverside Drive and 116th Street, where they began the construction movement which has since revolutionized the entire character of this noted highway. Their initial operation was the first twelve-story multi-family building in the district at 440 Riverside Drive, which they later sold to Benjamin N. Duke, the tobacco magnate. It houses 150 families and is still owned by Mr. Duke.
Dr. Paterno recalls that during the days of construction on this building, he pastured his horse on the site of this present tall apartment house known as the Coliseum at 435 Riverside Drive.
Weathered the 1907 Panic
The panic of 1907 was weathered with some difficulty and they tided over until 1909, when Charles V. decided to go back to his first love, medicine. He stepped out of the Paterno Brothers organization, they divided the assets and Joseph has continued, to this day, in the business under the Paterno Brothers corporate name.
But Charles V. was not destined for anything but the building business. No sooner had he resolved to abandon it than he was offered a splendid site comprising the entire block front on West Eighty-fourth Street between Broadway and West End Avenue. He seized the opportunity and built a $2,500,000 twelve-story structure on the entire frontage. His next venture was the splendid structure at the southwest corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifty-eighth street, also purchase by Benjamin N. Duke.
This was followed by the big building at West End Avenue and Eighty-eighth Street and a number of smaller projects on the West Side.
His $10,000,000 Project
In the early part of 1914 Dr. Paterno conceived the idea for a great $10,000,000 apartment house on the New York Central Railroad block bounded by Madison and Park Avenues, Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth Streets. There was then no indication of the impending World War. It was but shortly after that the European conflict started, but the doctor was already committed to the project and saw it through all the trying days of labor and material difficulties and Government embargoes with a patience and persistence that baffled comprehension at the time.
It must be recalled that this project was the largest of its kind yet attempted in New York. In normal times it would have been a herculean task. In war times it seemed an impossibility. Dr. Paterno traveled all over the United States for building material. He dared not trust these commodities in shipment after they had been bought, so he posted guards on the freight trains. An idea of the immensity of the operation may be gleaned from the fact that 9,000* tons of steel were required.
The structure was not finished until 1918. Under ordinary conditions construction should have taken a year. But his troubles were not yet over. He could not find tenants. America was an active participant in the war, every one was thinking about the war and the renting situation was at a standstill.
“People were worrying about the wind-up of their affairs and the future of their families. Moving to a fashionable Park Avenue apartment was the last thing in their thoughts,” declares Dr. Paterno in describing those days.
Change in 1918
But the change occurred in the fall of 1918 and in 1919, when, with the war ended, the first effects of the cessation of apartment house construction during the previous years became noticeable. Rents began to rise and there were not enough apartments to go around. The Paterno achievement at 270 Park Avenue, which in 1919 was returning a gross rental of $300,000 was showing in 1923 an aggregate annual rental of $1,250,000!
The apparently indefatigable doctor-builder laid off construction after that an bought a 700-acre estate at North Castle, where, in his spare time, he is conducting a vigorous timber growing campaign.
It is his ambition to plant 2,000,000 young trees for resale as nursery stock and for use at Christmas time. Of this number 300,000 were planted in the spring of 1924.
Hudson View Gardens
Now we come to the great Hudson View Gardens project. In 1907, just before the panic broke, he had started the construction of the striking building on Northern Avenue knows as the Castle, which has long been a source of interest to onlookers from the Hudson River steamboats and to visitors on the Heights. It is an immense stone-turreted structure with both English and roman architectural features.
In order to protect this property Dr. Paterno had been steadily buying adjacent acreage until he owned a considerable tract surrounding the Castle. Some of it lay idle and the rest was used for the raising of garden truck.
The city was steadily growing to the north and very soon the development reached the vicinity of the Castle. Assessments for streets and sewers and other municipal improvements began to be levied on the Paterno acreage and the vegetable gardens, materially adding to the cost of maintenance.
As Dr. Paterno whimsically remarked the other day:
“Finally a point was reached where every tomato I grew in the garden cost me about five dollars!”
He decided to sell part of the land to builders for certain types of apartment house development, but the land was too rugged and no one cared to take a chance.
So Dr. Paterno conceived the idea of a modern co-operative apartment house community. Within a year and a half this rocky waste, the despair of apartment house builders, has been transformed into the greatest co-operative venture on Manhattan Island, Homes have been provided for 354 families, of whom more than 150 have already purchased apartments.
Hudson View Gardens occupy a large tract of about seven acres fronting on Northern and Pinehurst Avenues from 182nd to 186th Streets, directly behind and above the site of historic old Fort Washington, the highest elevation on Manhattan Island. The location commands a view of the river for miles and of the Palisades beyond, while to the east lie Long Island and the Sound.
Fourteen Houses in Group
Fourteen [correction: 15] separate apartment houses compose the colony. Eight [correction: 9] of these are six stories high and are served by elevators; the remaining six are four-story buildings. The arrangement of the buildings, because of the contour of the land, is such that those farthest from the river rise above the others, so that all share in the advantages of the western exposure toward the Hudson.
A number of unusual features have been introduced in the houses representing the most modern labor-saving devices and conveniences to relieve the housewife from her many duties besides effecting economies in household expenses and building management.
Here are some of them: A co-operative laundry, an ice-manufacturing plant, a children’s nursery, an outdoor playground, a staff of maids, off-burning furnaces, automatic elevators, wall beds, dish-washing machines, built-in cabinets, and most interesting of all, radio service in each apartment direct from a huge private receiving station on the roof.
Dr. Paterno is still a comparatively young man. Time alone will tell what other great construction enterprises will be born in the brain that conceived Hudson View Gardens and 270 Park Avenue.
J.P. LOHMAN
