The Catherine (Dwight School)

291 Central Park West | also 1 West 89th Street | Upper West Side | built 1900

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Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1900

    Clarence True completes The Catherine, a seven-story Jacobean apartment house at the corner of 89th Street

    Developers Eppenstein & Mathews hire Clarence True in 1899 to design an upscale apartment house where Central Park West meets 89th Street, on the northwest corner. Finished the next year, it rises seven stories in red brick with limestone trim, and bands of stone and brick at the corners give it a striped look. The main entrance, framed in sandstone, faces quieter 89th Street, and terra-cotta Corinthian pilasters mark the sixth and seventh floors.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1906

    October 22

    A former servant sues Dr. Schuyler Jacques of the Catherine for back pay, then has him arrested

    After leaving the household of Dr. Schuyler Jacques, a Metropolitan Hospital physician living at the Catherine, Caroline Morris sues him for $150 in 1906. She claims she was his secretary and had once modeled for a sculptor. On October 22 she tells a policeman the doctor is stalking her, and both end up in Jefferson Market police court. Jacques says she was only a domestic and he never saw her in a hospital, and the judge dismisses the case.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1909

    August

    Dr. Jacques sues to annul his marriage but keeps living with his wife in the same apartment

    In 1907 Dr. Jacques's brother learns from an English officer on a train that Alice's first husband, Joseph Clemmons, is still alive, though she had believed him dead. In August 1909 the doctor files for an annulment, yet he and Alice remain in the same apartment at the Catherine. Alice then sues for alimony, but the court rules that a wife living under her husband's roof cannot collect it.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1918

    Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan's family moves into the Catherine four years before he founds a new congregation

    The family of Mordecai M. Kaplan moves into the building in 1918. Kaplan has taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary since 1909 and is little known outside its community. In 1922 he founds the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, which treats Judaism as a civilization rather than only a religion, and the New York Times later calls him a towering figure in recent Jewish history.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1919

    May

    Helen W. Watts, head of the American Female Guardian Society for 56 years, dies in her apartment here

    Helen W. Watts, widow of George B. Watts and mother of seven grown children, has lived in the building for years when she dies in her apartment in May 1919, aged 76. Since 1863 she had led the American Female Guardian Society, founded in 1834 to aid single mothers and prostitutes at a time when unmarried mothers were shunned as fallen women.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1988

    An entrance is cut into the Central Park West front and the ground floor becomes a school

    In 1988 a new entrance is carved into the Central Park West side of the old apartment house and the first floor is converted into a school for the private academy once headed by Otto Koenig, by then called the Dwight School. A further alteration in 2002 extends the school into the second floor. The apartments above were never broken up, and the tenant list stayed upscale.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  7. 1993

    Dwight School merges with the Franklin School and settles at 291 Central Park West

    Dwight School merges with the Franklin School in 1993 and leaves 402 East 67th Street for 291 Central Park West. Franklin had adopted the International Baccalaureate program in 1980. In 1996 the combined school becomes the first in North America to offer the full IB program from preschool through grade 12.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 64 buildings with stories in Upper West Side