Streetscapes/Readers' Questions; Building's Name, Gallery's Photo, Complex's Origin

A Wall Street Skyscraper

Q I have been tracing my family ancestry and know that Helena Gillender Asinari built the Gillender building in memory of her father. But who was he? . . . Katey Gillinder, Cambridge, England.

A Her father was Eccles Gillender, born in New York in 1810, a millionaire tobacco merchant who made his fortune during the Civil War and died in Paris in 1877. Although his obituary spells the name Gillender, earlier directory and census records sometimes render it with the spelling you use in your signature. The 19-story Gillender Building, an unusually thin skyscraper designed by Berg & Clark, was built in 1896-1897 at the northwest corner of Wall and Nassau Streets. It was put up in a hurry to beat contemplated legislation to outlaw tall buildings, although serious regulation did not come until 1916. The $500,000 structure was demolished only 13 years after completion, replaced by the Bankers Trust Company skyscraper at 14 Wall Street.

Although no period sources definitely indicate how Helena Asinari named the structure, it does seem more likely that she would have named it for her father than her mother, Augusta Gillender. In 1884 Augusta Gillender had disinherited her daughter in favor of her Italian son-in-law, the Marquis of San Marzano, from whom Helena had separated in 1883. Helena Asinari had already inherited the land at Wall and Nassau.

Helena Asinari sold the Gillender skyscraper in 1909, and she was able to purchase the newly built Norman-style apartment house at the northwest corner of 82nd Street and West End Avenue. It was apparently she who gave it the name still in use -- the Umbria. She died there in 1932.

A Fifth Avenue Gallery

Q For a new edition of ''The Golden City,'' my book about classical versus modern architecture first published in 1959, can you locate an old photograph of the Duveen art gallery at the northwest corner of 56th Street and Fifth Avenue, designed in 1911 by Horace Trumbauer and Rene Sergent? . . . Henry Hope Reed, Manhattan.

A The oldest good photographs apparently available were made after World War II, long after the building was completed in 1913 and only a few years before its demolition in early 1953. Joseph Duveen was one of the top old-master dealers, closely associated with the collections of Henry Clay Frick, Paul Mellon and others.

The design for this richly sculptured structure was apparently not published in a contemporary architectural journal (such publications are frequently sources for photographs). At the time of construction, Duveen had just pleaded guilty in federal court to art smuggling. The federal prosecutor, Henry A. Wise, described Duveen's company in 1910 as ''low down swindlers.'' Duveen barely escaped prison, and the company paid more than $1 million in fines for evading customs duties by framing valuable paintings underneath lesser works and ''mistakenly'' shipping furniture to the United States with antique tapestries inside.

The Duveen building was the first of three powerful family-run art galleries to open near 57th Street and Fifth Avenue. They included Durand-Ruel's eight-story gallery and residence at 12 East 57th Street, in 1913, and the richly modeled Knoedler palazzo at 14 East 57th Street, in 1925. Both were designed by Carrere & Hastings, architects of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, and both have since been demolished.

The Duveen gallery is generally described as having been based on the Ministry of the Marine in Paris, but the building merited only minor notices in Architectural Forum and Architectural Record, both in the 1920's and long after completion. The 1924 Architectural Forum article noted that ''the style of Louis XVI has been so closely followed that one might almost imagine the address to be Rue de la Paix instead of Fifth Avenue.''

The successor building, an office structure completed in 1954, was designed by Emery Roth & Sons in the ''ribbon window'' style popular at the time.

The East River Homes

Q My daughter lives at 517 East 77th Street, a complex that appears at one time to have been a hospital. On every other landing there are built-in seats, presumably for patients to rest, since there are no elevators. Can you tell me the genesis of the buildings? . . . Bernice Foege, Newtown, Conn.

A The complex was not built as a hospital, but it was supposed to be healthful. The East River Homes -- four connected buildings covering the west side of Cherokee Place from 77th to 78th Streets -- were built in 1912 by Anna Harriman Vanderbilt, who sought to develop a more healthful kind of working-class housing. Mrs. Vanderbilt was following the advice of Dr. George Shively, who was researching the high rates of tuberculosis in crowded urban housing.

Near the East River and facing a public park, the tenements were laid out by the architect Henry Atterbury Smith with sitting areas exposed to sunlight and fresh air, including wide central courtyards, rooftops and the stair landings.

The open stairwells were a reaction against the dark, fetid hallways of traditional tenements. Apparently the lack of elevators was purely an economic issue. According to research by Virginia Kurshan at the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the apartment interiors were also designed with health in mind.

Radiators were mounted on the walls to prevent dust from collecting underneath; flooring material was curved up to the walls; and the unusual triple-sash windows, extending all the way to the floor and leading out to the extensive balcony system, provided more than the usual interior ventilation. The buildings are landmarks.

According to the 1915 census, residents' occupations included electrician, chauffeur, druggist, brakeman, cigar packer and telephone operator. Most apartments held two or three people.

When first rented, one quarter of the apartments were let to tuberculosis patients. In 1924 the buildings were sold to the City and Suburban Homes Company, which already operated the more extensive group of model tenements just to the north. The buildings are now co-ops.