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Audubon Park Historic District

The elegant lines and spacious proportions of the Berler duplex are a present-day reminder of the elegant villas that once inhabited Audubon Park.

The land was part of the Watkins - Maunsell farm, but was not part of the Audubon purchase in 1841. Instead it passed through the hands of Matthew Morgan and Dennis Harris before George Blake Grinnell purchased it in the 1870s, adding it to his extensive Audubon Park land holdings, building a stable there, pasturing his cows in the adjoining space where the Grinnell (800 Riverside Drive) now sits. Like many gentlemen of his day and other gentlemen in "the Park," Grinnell kept his own carriages and horses for his family's use, but also enjoyed harness racing with his own trotters. As a business associate of Horace F. Clark, son-in-law of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, Grinnell most likely belonged to the exclusive club of 400 that Vanderbilt formed for the purpose of racing on the upper west side, first on the Bloomingdale Road and later on the Boulevard, the name for the stretch of present day Broadway between 59th Street and 155th.

Apparently, the Grinnell family, acting as Lansing Investment Company, retained the irregular-shaped lot at the corner of Riverside Drive and 158th Street when sold most of its other Audubon Park holdings in 1910. The plot, bounded by the Riverside Drive retaining wall, gradually reached the grade of the intersection of the Drive with 158th Street, so part of the plot was as much as 20 feet below the Drive. In 1916, Lansing Investing Company constructed a 50x20 brick garage on the site, just one of many garages on the northern side of the Drive, so many in fact that a sign in a photograph of the area from the 1920s identifies the area as "Garage City." No doubt, residents of the Grinnell apartment building were happy when Nathan Berler and Charles Levy bought the property and constructed the double-house that survives today.

Nathan Berler

LIke many of the residents who occupied the apartment houses surrounding 809-811 Riverside Drive, the 37-year-old Nathan Berler was a first-generation American. He immigrated to the United States in 1885 and became a naturalized citizen in 1904. In 1920, as listed in the Federal Census, he and his 26-year-old wife Sadie rented an apartment on Fort Washington Avenue where they lived with their son Robert, 4, and their daughter Lucille, (an infant ). Berler, the proprietor of a clothing store, listed his country of birth as Austria and his native language as Yiddish, listing the same for his parents. Sadie was born in New York to parents born in Russia, whose native tongue was also Yiddish.

Under the heading "New Incorporations," the New York Times announced a new company on June 26, 1920: Nasarolu, a Manhattan realty and construction company incorporated with $10,000 by N. and S. Berler, and A. M. Hessinger. Nasarolu was an acronym created from the first two letters of the Berler family members' first names, Nathan, Sadie, Robert, and Lucille. Two years later, (February 12, 1922) the Times announced that Berler “believing that there was a good demand and a good market for the duplex or two-family dwelling of the better type, planned and built the structure at 809 Riverside Drive as a model" for other similar structures in Washington Heights. Though Berler apparently owned numerous parcels of land on the heights, this is the only duplex house he financed or built.

The Berlers were probably members of the Hebrew Tabernacle on 161st Street, as they announced in 1929 that their eldest son, Robert Myron would have be Bar Mitzvahed there on March 23rd. As listed in the Federal Census the next year, the family had grown: Nathan (46), Sonya (36), Robert M (14), Lucille M (10), Martin A (7), and Gloria J (1 year, 4 months), as well as a German servant Tony Lang (33), who had been in the country less than a year. In 1930, Berler still listed his profession as "Proprietor of Retail Clothing" and valued his half of the double house at $40,000. As often happened from one census to another, some details changed between 1920 and1930. In 1930, Berler listed the “language spoken in the home before coming to the US" as German and Sonja listed her parents as being from Romania.

Lawyer Charles S. Levy (50), a first-generation New Yorker, owned and occupied 811 Riverside Drive, the other half of the double house, which he valued at $50,000. Although Nathan Berler's name was associated with the houses in the media, Levy's name appeared on the Department of Buildings permit (#187) in 1920.

Levy's father was New York born; his mother, German. Levy's 45-year-old wife Bertha was also a first-generation New Yorker, born to a Russian father and Hungarian mother. They had three sons, Lawrence (21), Walter (17), and Howard (15).

In May 1930, even as they were supplying information for the Federal Census, the Berlers prepared to move from 809 Riverside Drive, though Berler continued to own the house and adjoining apartment building until 1951. The New York Times reported on May 27, 1930 that “the three-day dwelling at 809 Riverside Drive, fronting 48 feet and adjoining the south corner of 158th Street, has been leased by Louis Robison from Nasarolu, Inc., Nathan Berler president, through the Houghton Company, as brokers. The house, which was built only seven years ago, contains a $25,000 organ and a garage. It receives heat and hot water from 807 Riverside Drive, the adjoining apartment house, also owned by Mr. Berler." The organ, listed in The New York Organ Project as a Welte, Op. 121 (built in 1920), was probably an orchestrion, a home organ equivalent of a player piano, featuring organ pipes as well as percussion effects, and perhaps even a piano. (An owner in the 1960s removed it; its location is lost.) In 1934, Nasarolu, Inc. leased the house to Louis Berkowitz for three years, after which the house changed hands several times before the present owner Betty Bizzell purchased it in 1972 from an owner, Ivy Simpson.

Dr. Luigi Capobianco purchased 811 Riverside Drive along with the three-car garage in May 1942 and practiced medicine in one of the first floor rooms, housing his family in the remainder. After his death, the house remained in the Capobianco family until 1979, after which it passed through the McCloud family to Gerard Hicks, the present owner, who has lived there since 1997.