National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

exceeded his assets by more than $5,000. 1460 By 1889 he took two of his brothers as partners:
Eugene Glaenzer, who had a business as an art dealer, was the treasurer and Leon Glaenzer was
the vice-president. 1461 In 1890, Glaenzer moved his business from 33 East 20th Street to 41 East
20th Street. The following year he moved his home to 5 West 82nd Street, where he remained
for the rest of his life. In 1892 Glaenzer received his first Vanderbilt commission; he was hired
by George Vanderbilt to decorate the Vanderbilt Gallery at the rear of the Fine Arts Society
Building on 58th Street in New York. Glaenzer made the gallery into a facsimile of one of the
salons of the Musee de Cluny. It was said to be the largest of its kind in the United States.
The following year his wife Alice was included as a partner in the business, as well as an
architect, Joseph P. Taft. 1462 The partnership with Taft lasted from 1892 to 1897. During this
time Glaenzer and Taft exhibited prominently at the Architectural League of New York,
including the pivotal year of 1892. At the Eighth Annual Exhibition of 1892, Glaenzer and Taft
showed the designs for a variety of rooms: an Empire Library, a French Tapestry Hall, a First
Empire Library, four Louis XVI Parlors, and an Old Dutch Dining Room. Four of these
interiors were illustrated in The Decorator and Furnisher and were described as being in the
residence of Mrs. Charles Beatty Alexander. 1463 Mrs. Alexander's house was located just beside
Cornelius Vanderbilt II's house at 4 West 58th Street. 1464 George Glaenzer also decorated a
bedroom for George F. Baker in the mid 1890s. 1465 The only other known interiors were done
for John D. Archbold's country house near Tarrytown. 1466 His last documented interior work
was the vestibule of a building at Fifth Avenue and 86th Street in New York City. 1467 None of
these interiors survive.
1460
New York Times (April 17, 1888), 8. His liabilities are listed at $8,930, while his seminal assets are
listed as $3,410.97 and his actual assets as $3,683.54.
1461
New York City Co-Partnership Directory 1889.
1462
New York City Copartnership Directories 1893-1897.
1463
The Decorator and Furnisher 22 (1892): 12-13, 51, 91.
1464
Charles Beatty Alexander (1849-1927) was a lawyer, legal advisor to Equitable Life Assurance Co., and
also a director. He was a member of the New York Yacht Club. Mrs. Alexander died in Paris July 1937.
She was described in the New York Times (July 7, 1937) 19:4 as a prominent hostess: "her townhouse was
the center of many activities in the interest of hospitals and charities. Concerts and lectures were
frequently given there for benevolences in which she was interested." The house at 4 West 58th Street
was designed by George B. Post for W.J. Hutchinson in 1880-82. The Alexanders purchased the house in
1888. I thank Sarah Landau for sharing this information with me and Mosette Broderick for bringing the
architect of the house to my attention.
1465
George F. Baker (1840-1931), known as the "Dean of Wall Street," was the head of the First National
Bank of New York. He had a house at 258 Madison Avenue, built in 1880-81, architect unknown, and
published in Artistic House, two views - the Hall and Dining Room. Baker also had houses at Tuxedo Park
and Long Island. He moved to New York City in 1917 to Park Avenue and 93rd Street. The bedroom is
illustrated in a photograph at The New-York Historical Society in an album of photographs by Mead, unit
54, third shelf from the bottom. The photograph has Glaenzer's stamp affixed to it. The same interior
appears in engraved form in the Decorator and Furnisher 27:2 (November 1895), 43.
1466
The New York Times (April 21, 1915), 5.
1467
This was published as part of an advertisement for "C. Volney King's Improved Knickerbocker Caen
Stone Cement," in The Architectural League of New York Yearbook (1909), 271. I thank Stuart Drake for
bringing this to my attention.
313