Origin
The lot at 10 West 56th Street was purchased in 1899 by a prominent financier, Frederick C. Edey, for his wife Birdsall O. Edey. Mrs. Edey was a distinguished New York citizen in her own right; a leader in the  Women’s Suffrage Movement and the National President of Girl Scouts of  America from 1930 to 1935.

Design
In 1901, Frederick Edey hired the architectural firm of Warren & Wetmore to design the building, one of several townhouses known as “Bankers’ Row”. The elegant neo-French Renaissance Revival Style building is one of the few surviving townhouses designed by Warren & Wetmore.

Warren & Wetmore was a nationally significant architectural firm and this is a significant and early example of its more restrained use of the neo-French Renaissance Revival style that appears in later works, such as Steinway Hall (1924-25), and the Aeolian Building (1925-27) both designated New York City Landmarks. Many of the firm’s other New York City buildings are also individual landmarks, including; Grand Central Station (1903-13), and the New York  Yacht Club (1899-1900).

Building Details

The first floor retains its rusticated piers at either side, which serve as a base for this slender building’s supporting two giant half columns. A modillioned cornice frames a grand sculptural Palladian window; with an elegant cartouche and keystone at the centerpiece of the design at the second level. A smaller tripartite window at the third level is succeeded by an attic with a balustraded parapet, and a dormered copper mansard roof.

Most of the residences along West 56th Street have been demolished or severely altered; making the Edey residence a rare survivor of Midtown Manhattan’s residential past.