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In his syndicated column of 7 November 1890, some seven months after the death of Jane Louise Melville at the Florence Apartments, the Dutch- born journalist and future 30-year editor of Ladies' Home Journal, Edward William Bok (1863-1930)1, wrote of his having seen Herman Melville rou- tinely walking East 18th Street at 9 a.m., as he did any morning (NN Corres 531). Bok does not say when or even where on East 18th he encountered Mel- ville, although he believed that Melville was still working at the Custom House (from which Melville had retired in December 1885). Perhaps Melville had "tripped the light fantastic" as did James W. Blake in 1894, who as lyricist characterized its residents in "The Sidewalks of New York." Less plebian than Blake's residents were the Golden Age denizens of the Florence and their nota- ble effects upon the creativity of Herman Melville.
At the northeast corner of East 18th Street and Fourth Avenue or East Union Place (today Park Avenue South) in New York City in the late nine- teenth century, the Florence Apartment House or the Florence Apartments or simply the Florence became successively the home of the widows of both Allan and Herman Melville (Fig. 1). Scheduled to open in November 1878, the Flor- ence at 105 East 18th Street was built for Virginia Leedy Matthews, née Brander, for some $500,000, of which $400,000 was a balloon mortgage from the Bank for Savings. Virginia was the wife of Edward Matthews, a real estate entrepre- neur who at one time controlled more property from Wall Street south than anyone else. Allan Melville and Jane Louise, his second wife, knew Edward Matthews from as early as 1 October 1863 when Allan sold his own building at 19 Wall Street to Matthews for $61,5002 (New York City Register 498-501). Edward and Virginia Matthews were the parents of James Brander Matthews, familiarly known as Brander Matthews (1852-1929), who would become the- atre critic, playwright, and author and who at this time was living nearby at 330 East 17th Street with his English wife, Ada Harland, a dancer and actress from a burlesque show.
In the Gramercy Park environs and designed by a Belgian emigrant, Emile Gruwé, the Florence was built by White...