We just came across this remarkable etching of Mount St. Vincent’s Academy in an 1880s book on the school’s history (A Descriptive and Historical Sketch of the Academy of Mount St. Vincent… New York, Appleton & Co. 1884) . We are looking approximately due-east, from the current perspective of East Drive of Central Park near 105th Street.
It appears to show the Mount sometime between 1848, when the north and south wings had already been added to the original building (the 1790 version of the McGown house); and the early 1850s, when the grounds were expanded with a large frame structure on the right, and a large chapel in the back.
Some observations:
Mount St. Vincent's, late 1850s or early 1860s
[Postscript, July 17, 2011: Unless of course we are supposed to be looking from the back side, the Fifth Avenue side, of the old McGown property, which does indeed look like this in 1860s photos. The caption certainly suggests we are looking from Fifth Avenue. But if this vantage really is from the Fifth Avenue side, shouldn’t the buildings much higher up? Here they are practically level with the viewer.]
2) The steeple in the back is not from the chapel that was dedicated in 1855. Therefore there was some sort of provisional chapel built c. 1847, directly behind the old McGown house. This provisional chapel seems to be lost to history. We know that Archbishop John Hughes gave a dedication in 1847 in a makeshift chapel in the southwest room of the old McGown house; and we know that there was a grand chapel completed in 1855 (later used as a sculpture museum, until it was razed after the January 1881 fire at Mount St. Vincent’s Hotel). But we haven’t read anything about this in-between house of worship.
3) The location is said to be at 109th Street and Fifth Avenue. That address actually describes an entrance drive to the Mount, not the actual location of the convent school (around 104th Street, east of Fifth Avenue). But this geographical sloppiness points to what little regard people had for recent history in the late 19th century. This made it easy for fanciful myths to sprout about the former use of the McGown house and Mount St. Vincent’s. Even in the early 21st century you will read that the current Composting Site of the Central Park Conservancy is the site of the old McGowan’s Black Horse Tavern.