The Joseph I. Lubin House of Syracuse
University, located in New York’s
Landmark District at 11 and 15 East
61st Street, is marked by the bright
orange Syracuse University flag over
the doorway, the donor Joseph I.
Lubin’s name, and a discreet door in its
handsome brick façade. Open that door
and you are transported to Syracuse’s
New York City headquarters. Across from
the entry is a portrait of Joseph I. Lubin,
the enlightened philanthropist and
lifetime Trustee of Syracuse University.
®
The 50 th Anniversary
of
Syracuse University’s
Joseph I. Lubin House
The Joseph I. Lubin House today. The Palitz Gallery
(top) during the Michelangelo exhibition and The
Library (bottom).
Joseph I. Lubin House
11 East 61st Street
New York, NY 10065
Joseph I. Lubin circa 1940 (left). Joe, the youngest child, pictured
with his sister, Francis and brother, Morris (right).
Lubin when he was Chairman of Pepsi-Cola Company (left).
Syracuse University Chancellor William P. Tolley (right).
Lubin House circa 1966 (left). Ann Goldstein, née Lubin, (right).
Ann Lubin (top row, center) from the 1946 Syracuse University
Yearbook, The Onondagan.
In 1965, Joseph I. Lubin, a sagacious man, realized that
Syracuse University had no central presence in this renowned
city. Interviews and dinners were conducted in rooms at the
Biltmore Hotel, which he then owned. There were no central
offices, community life, art, lectures, guidance counseling or
other amenities that would entice students. Most of all, there
was no place for alumni activities. In that same year, Joe
Lubin (as he was called) purchased 11 East 61st Street and
subsequently donated it to Syracuse University. The following
year, adding to his spectacular contribution, he purchased
and donated an adjoining building, 15 East 61st Street, and
in 1981, made yet another sizable donation to renovate and
integrate the buildings so that the two now appear as one. The
house was named in his honor.
Joe Lubin believed passionately in education as a way up
and out of a menial life. He himself was an example of this: A
street kid from the Lower East Side, he worked a day job while
attending night school for a total of thirteen years, earning
a Pace University degree in accounting and then a New York
University law degree. With a friend he founded the prestigious
accounting firm of Eisner & Lubin, which still exists today,
became a tax expert, purchased real estate, guided corporate
boards, and for many years served as Chairman of the Board
of the Pepsi-Cola company. Joe Lubin would comment on the
irony that at fourteen he had worked as a page-boy (summoning
guests when they were called on one of the few telephones) at
the Astor Hotel, so that a hungry boy could help himself to food
from their open bar and, half a century later, owned that same
hotel.
Syracuse University’s Joseph I. Lubin House is inextricably
intertwined with the social and political history of New York
and of the nation. The house was built only eleven years after
the greatest conflagration Americans had ever known, the Civil
War, which ended in 1865. From then on, the nation began the
shift from an agrarian to an industrial society. The succeeding
years saw the emergence of a whole new breed of men who,
from humble beginnings, amassed wealth in such industries as
railroads, steel, oil, mining, and real estate. This was a time of
Wall Street speculations in gold and other precious metals and
the names Cornelius Vanderbilt, William C. Whitney, the ruthless
James Fisk and Jay Gould floated to the top to make vast fortunes.
America’s slogan “Manifest Destiny” created tycoons who
invested in railroads that pushed far westward and criss-crossed
the face of the nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific. By 1869,
the Transcontinental Railroad had 8,748 freight cars carrying grain,
household supplies, oil, steel, dry goods, and machinery from
East to West. Fisk and Gould were granted forty miles on each
side of their railroad tracks in what was referred to as the “great
land grab.” An elated Fisk wrote Gould that this was the best
thing that could ever happen and their only problem was how to
deal with the Indians, who occupied these lands. And deal they
did, decimating the Indian population. A thousand tribes from
California to New York gradually and frighteningly disappeared to
death by disease, starvation, war, and forced integration.
Also, it was a time when dwellings past Commodore
Vanderbilt’s 42nd Street Terminal began to move uptown,
formerly a place no wealthy man wanted to live or saw as viable,
except for Commodore Vanderbilt. With unlimited vision, by
1868 his railroad tracks had ringed the city and, envisioning a
glittering city of the future (which he said he saw in a dream)
he buried the railroad tracks from his Terminal to 96th Street
and eventually extended them to Manhattan’s Mount Prospect
Tunnel, while buying large tracts of land for himself along Fifth
Avenue, Madison Avenue, and Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue).
The financial panic of 1873 no doubt made investors and
speculators a great deal more conservative, but from country
estates the newly rich began to move to the previously unwanted
territory above 42nd Street to mansions and pied-à-terres like
the typical brownstones of Syracuse University’s Joseph I. Lublin
House. Originally 11 East 61st Street was designed by the
architect and yacht designer John G. Prague and constructed in
1876. The hundred foot lot had been purchased for $26,000
and another $25,000 was added for construction.
Though extremely modest, compared to the Whitney
mansion or the forty-eight room Vanderbilt dwelling that would
emerge just three blocks away (it occupied an entire block),
11 East 61st Street was in what had become New York’s most
fashionable district. Central Park, the vital contribution of Calvert
Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead, newly finished after the Civil
War, created an oasis in the city.
Once completed, the house changed hands several times,
all to society and new elite owners. Most of the architects and
occupants were within a close knit group of friends, relatives,
and what were considered social equals in the WASP society
that then ruled America (Jews, Catholics, and people of color
were excluded).
In 1897, the house was sold to Sir Almeric Hugh Paget,
Baron of Queensborough, who had made a fortune in real estate
speculation. Paget had married Pauline Whitney, the eldest
daughter of the vastly rich William C. Whitney. Seeking more
grandeur they hired America’s most prestigious architectural firm
McKim, Mead & White to make the house more elaborate. The
firm extended the house and added exquisite interiors with rare
imported mantles and carvings from Europe.
In 1901, the house was once again sold when the Paget
family moved to London, this time to John Teele Pratt, the son of
an oil baron and partner of John D. Rockefeller. The Pratt family
added a sixth floor and installed a skylight over the stairwell. In
1917, the Pratts moved next door and then moved on to grander
quarters. By 1927, Charles Shipman Payson had purchased
this property but, as the Great Depression started in 1929, the
house was rented out for the first time. By 1947, after the end
of World War II, the house stood empty. It was then, for the first
time, sold not to a family but to an exclusive club and in 1964
put on the market once again.
One spring day in 1944, Joe Lubin brought his daughter
Ann Goldstein (née Lubin) for an admissions interview at
Syracuse University. It was a tumultuous time, the World War
II, GI Bill had kicked in and colleges began to fill up with
the promise of a free education and accelerated courses for
returning servicemen. On that first time visit, Joseph I. Lubin
embarked on a lifelong friendship with the then Chancellor,
William Pearson Tolley, and a relationship with Syracuse
University that endured the rest of their lives.
Bill Tolley and Joe Lubin were both fascinated by the work
of Joseph Conrad and over the years established the LubinTolley Book Fund for the purpose of purchasing rare books and
amassed the most complete collection of Conrad books extant.
His younger daughter remembers that dinner table conversation
was often a quiz: Who was Decoud and why was he, “Swallowed
up in the immense indifference of things?”
Joe Lubin continued contributing to Syracuse’s growth
with contributions to the Manley Field House, the renovation
of the Hendricks Chapel, and scholarship funds in perpetuity.
Eventually, four generations of his family have been associated
with this institution.
Lubin House of Syracuse University provides an ideal
area for alumni to gather, a library used for classes, seminars,
meetings and receptions, and an art gallery contributed by the
distinguished art patrons and collectors Bernard and Louise
Palitz, where artists ranging from Michelangelo, to Winslow
Homer, to Milton Avery have been displayed.
Syracuse’s newest acquisition, The Fisher Center, is named
for alumni Trustee Winston Fisher. This donation was inspired
by the immense generosity and vision of Joseph I. Lubin half a
century earlier. In 2015 we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of
his accomplishments.
by Barbara Goldsmith, author and Joseph I. Lubin’s daughter.