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. In 1901, Frederick Edey hired the  architectural firm of Warren & Wetmore to design 10 West 56th  Street, one of several townhouses known as “Bankers’ Row”. The elegant  neo-French Renaissance Revival Style building at 10 West 56th Street is  one of the few surviving townhouses designed by Warren & Wetmore.  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. 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). 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.

The Edith Andrews Logan residence was originally designed and  constructed in 1870 by the prolific architect-builder John G. Prague as  part of a row of four story-and-basement, single-family brownstone row  houses. Towards the end of the 19th century, the area around Fifth  Avenue below Central Park developed as Manhattan’s most prestigious  residential enclave, due in no small part to the Vanderbilt family’s  growing presence on the avenue. In 1903, the row house at 17 West 56th  Street was purchased by Edith Andrews Logan, a native of Youngstown,  Ohio, and the wealthy widow of horse breeder and military commander John  Alexander Logan, Jr. Mrs. Logan commissioned architect Augustus N.  Allen to transform her row house into an elegant neo-Federal style town  house. In renovating 17 West 56th Street, Allen moved the entrance to  the center of the ground story and converted the full fourth story into a  half-story peaked roof with dormers. The updated façade—and the  resulting changes to the interior layout—represented the new “American  Basement” type of row house design that was becoming popular among New  York City’s architects in the 1890s and early 1900s. The symmetrical  composition of the town house at 17 West 56th Street is enlivened by the  use of Flemish bond brickwork and a variety of classically inspired  motifs, including fluted columns at the ground story; iron balconnettes;  incised limestone lintel courses; splayed keystone lintels; and a  denticulated cornice beneath a row of pedimented dormers. The first two  stories of the building were converted to commercial use in the 1930s,  first housing the fashionable “Royal Box” restaurant and later an  exclusive beauty salon.

Remodeled in 1907-08 by the noted architect Harry Allan Jacobs for  investment banker Isaac Seligman and long occupied by banker E. Hayward  Ferry and his wife Amelia Parsons Ferry, this highly intact former  townhouse is an exceptionally fine example of the restrained Neo-French  Classic variant of the Beaux Arts style and forms part of “Bankers’  Row,” a group of five residences built for bankers on West 56th Street,  between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It was originally constructed in 1871  by the well-known New York architects D. & J. Jardine. Jacobs  extended the house at the front and rear and relocated the entrance to  the ground story. He created a new limestone façade and copper roof. The  building’s rusticated base focuses on a large central entry with an  elegantly carved lion’s head and garlands surmounting a pair of original  iron-and-glass doors. The windows at the center of the façade retain  their historic paired wood casements and transoms and are accented by a  stone balcony at the third story. A heavy cornice and balustrade caps  the third story. The mansard roofs enhance the French character of the  design. Jacobs, who trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, won  critical acclaim in the early decades of the twentieth century for his  restrained and elegant residences, of which this house is an outstanding  example.

 E. Hayward Ferry was a prominent businessman, who served as first vice  president of Hanover Bank from 1910 to 1929. He and his wife occupied  this house from 1908 to 1935.

No. 30 West 56th Street, designed by C.P.H. Gilbert for prominent  investment banker Henry Seligman and his wife Adelaide, is a  particularly grand and well-preserved example of the fashionable  townhouses on the block built for bankers at the turn of the twentieth  century when the street became known as “Bankers’ Row.” Constructed  between 1899 and 1901, Gilbert employed the restrained neo-French  Renaissance style on a limestone façade spanning two lots that gave the  townhouse an imposing presence. Above the rusticated ground floor are  original second-story wood windows and an intricately carved stone  balcony supported by brackets. Adorning the second, third and fourth  floors are stone quoins and window surrounds with broken lintels over  the central windows on the third and fourth floors. A fourth-story  balcony and a large ornate cornice resting on paired consoles further  enhance the look of the elegant façade. A mansard roof with elaborate  segmental-arched dormers projects over the roof lines of the adjoining  buildings.

 Seligman was a senior partner in the prestigious investment banking firm  of J. & W. Seligman & Company, founded in 1864 by his uncles  and his father, Jesse. Henry Seligman was also influential in financing  railroad construction in the American West as well as serving as a  director for several major industrial and artistic organizations across  the United States. He and his wife resided at 30 West 56th Street until  their deaths in 1933 and 1934, respectively. 30 West 56th Street was  converted into apartments in 1941.

The Joseph B. and Josephine H. Bissell House was originally constructed  as one of five Italianate style brownstone row houses designed by  architect Thomas Thomas and built in 1869 by owner and builder John W.  Stevens. When the Bissell House was initially constructed, many row  houses were being built on the side streets in the area below Central  Park while larger mansions were being constructed along Fifth Avenue. By  the early 20th century, this area was known as Vanderbilt’s Row because  of that family’s involvement in maintaining the elite character of the  neighborhood. The house was purchased by Josephine H. Bissell in 1903  and she hired prominent architect Edward L. Tilton to alter the house by  removing the traditional Italianate style brownstone facade and its  high stoop and replacing it with a more fashionable neo-Classical style  brick and limestone facade with an American basement plan. The Bissell  House facade is a rare example of a private residential commission by  Tilton, who is particularly associated with the design of libraries. The  facade features a bowed front, red and black brick laid in a Flemish  bond pattern and limestone details including two prominent cornices with  block modillions and scroll brackets. Mrs. Bissell lived in the house  with her husband, Dr. Joseph B. Bissell and sold it shortly after his  death. Dr. Bissell was a surgeon who did pioneering research in the  treatment of cancer with radium. Several prominent physicians lived in  the house in the first half of the 20th century. Gradually the house  went from residential to non-residential use and it is currently owned  by a clothing manufacturer based in Italy.