Ed Hochberg’s Story

I started with the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association, 54 years ago when I moved to 35th St. Then there was a Murray Hill Committee, which was comprised of 70 owners of property (owning property was a requirement to be a member). This committee was started when the city wanted to widen E. 37th St. for better flow of traffic from the tunnel. Elizabeth Clark French then a congresswoman who lived on 37th St. and others formed the committee to stop this widening. I was a young man and attended the meetings. Richard Lang a resident on E. 37th St., was the president and quickly asked me if I would like to be the president and so be it. I reorganized and opened membership to the residents and businesses in Murray Hill. I served as president for seven years during which time we increased membership to over a thousand members, started the first block party, planted over 400 trees and hoops, prevented a number of large buildings being built midblock and made them conform to existing codes, eliminated the many prostitutes who plied their trade in our area and prevented commercial occupants not complying with the code from occupying brownstones. Most importantly we created a small town community within the largest city in the world. People would now walk the streets and know their neighbors and get together. We also became a political force.

Home of Thayer and Edwin Hochberg since 1966

111 East 35th Street stands on the original site of the “ Murray Hill Farm”. This Italianate-style residence was constructed in 1853-54, as one in a row of four similar houses from 105 to 111 East 35th Street by Henry H. Butterworth, landowner, and Samuel W Cronk, builder. Cronk, purchased the properties from Butterworth after completion, and then sold each house individually. The initial purchaser of this house was Charles Benson. 

At the turn of the century, the house contained artists’ studios. Among its occupants was the noted illustrator Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944), who worked for Life magazine. In 1890, he developed the character known as the “Gibson Girl,” a chic young woman representing a late-nineteenth-century ideal of American womanhood.

This was among the first houses built in the historic district. It employed the English basement plan, a type of layout that was in vogue in New York in the late 1840s and 1850s. This type of plan, which featured a low stoop leading to a first floor containing various reception halls and a dining room, and a formal second-story parlor floor with high ceilings and tall windows, allowed builders to subdivide standard building lots into narrower plots on which they constructed smaller houses that could be marketed for less money. The rusticated first-story and upper-story window surrounds at No. 111 had been stripped by 1938. Surviving historic features include the gas lamp, the main doors and transom, leaded-glass sash and iron grille at the first-story window, the second-story iron balconettes, and the wooden roof cornice.

For several years, before The Hochberg purchase, The Celenese Corporation, a wholesale fabric house, rented this site for one of the first designer showrooms of its kind.

It has been a great joy in our lives to be privileged enough to live in this beautiful and historic hamlet in the middle of New York City.