Sold

Flip Tax: None

Exposure: East

Bldg Amenities: Garage

Lower Level: Entrance foyer, Kitchen, Dining Area, Living Room, Powder Room

Upper Level: Entrance foyer, Master bedroom, Den, Bathroom

In size Beekmnan Place is small, just a few tree-lined blocks from 49th to 51st Street on a hill overlooking the East River. Since 1763, however, when James Beekman built a summer home near the present 51st St. and First Ave., Beekman Place has played a big role in shaping the history of New York.

A descendant of Willem Beekman, one of the original Dutch settlers in America, James Beekman called his estate Mount Pleasant, an ironic twist since many of the best-remembered incidents that occurred there in the last 200 years were anything but pleasant.

Almost fromn the start, on Sept. 21, 1776, when Nathan Hale, a young captain in Washington's Army, was arrested as a spy, there has been a darker side in the history of Beekman Place. Without the benefit of a trial, Hale was sentenced to death in the Beekman house by Gen. William Howe, the British commander who confiscated Mount Pleasant for his headquarters during the Revolutionary War.

Hale was hanged the next morning in the artillery park believed to be at 66th St. and Third Avenue — where the old Dove Tavern once stood. But, not before he got off the immortal line, "I regret that I have but only one life to lose for my country."

Maj. John Andre, a British spy who consorted with Benedict Arnold in the betrayal of West Point, stayed in the mansion the night before he departed on his infamous mission. For his efforts, Andre also was hanged.

After the war, Beekman reclaimed his mansion and George Washington often was a guest. The Beekmans continued to live in Mount Pleasant in bucolic tranquility until the mid-1850's when a cholera epidemic forced them to leave.

By then New York was beginning to move north. The Beekmans divided the farm into lots and sold them to prospective new homeowners. The mansion was torn down in 1874 and part of it has been restored by the New York Historical Society.

In the late 1800's the new wave immigrants began decending on New York, and it was into areas such as Beekman Place where they found homes. Buildings were converted into tenements to provide homes for laborers in the breweries, meat packing and coal yards that developed along the East River.

Cattle often could be seen being driven down First Avenue to the slaugterhouses.

By the early 1920's, the striking views of the East River that Beekman Place afforded, once again attracted the well-to-do to the area.

Mrs. William K, Vanderbilt, Anne Morgn and Elizabeth Marbuary were credited with returning Beekman Place to polite society. However, it was Emily Eaton Hepburn who was considered the grand Old Lady of Beekman Hill.

A New Englander by birth, she was the wife of banker Barton Hepburn, and when John D. Rockefeller built One Beekman Place in the late 1920's she built Number Two across the street.

She also built Beekman Towers Hotel in 1928 as a home and social center for sorority women. It was called the Pan Hellenic Hotel. With the Depression of 1929, the idea was scrapped and the hotel began accepting men and women as the Beekman Towers.

While grandiose in her ideas Hepburn was frugal in her personal life. She seldom took a taxi and prevailed on Mayor Jimmy Walker to put the crosstown bus line on 49th and 50th St.

She maintained a penthouse at 2 Beekman Place and, so the story goes, would wait in the lobby of the building to share an elevator ride, which she had computed at a cost of eight cents a trip.

Some of the most illustrious people in society and show business at one time or another lived in Beekman Place — John D. Rockefeller 3d, Billy Rose, Irving Berlin, James Forrestal, Katherine Cornell, David Lillienthal, Huntington Hartford, Henry Luce, to name just a few …