Streetscapes/Sutton Place, Sutton Place South and One Sutton Place North; A Prestigious Enclave With a Name in Question
It is known that Sutton ran a clipper ship line to the California coast in the 1850's that served Gold Rush hopefuls , and that he lived on West 29th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues (a block that was also called Lamartine Place and was set apart from the rest of the city's street grid because of separate numbering). In 1875 a consortium of developers that included James Stokes , William Dodge and D. Willis James began to acquire property on Avenue A in the East 50's, on what is now called Sutton Place . Deed patterns suggest that they were working with a builder, Andrew Kerwin, who in 1879 put up the original Sutton Place enclave , 24 single-family brownstones on the block bounded by 58th and 59th Streets and Avenue A and the East River. Half of them faced the avenue and half faced a new street along the river briefly named Riverview Terrace . A few of those houses survive in recognizable form, three stories high with a stoop. Someone renamed the Avenue A side ...