950 Fifth Avenue at 72nd Street New York, NY 10021 C. (Christian) Bai Lihme was born in 1866 in Aalborg, Denmark. After graduating, in 1888, from the University of Copenhagen, where he specialized in chemistry, he came to the United States and became the chief chemist of the Pennsylvania Lead Company of Pittsburgh, a position he held until 1893. Mr. Lihme then moved to Germany where he studied at the University of Heidelberg. He then returned to the U.S. to be superintendent of the Illinois Zinc Company at Peru, Ill., from 1895-1910, after which he formed the Matthiessen & Hegeler Zinc Company of La Salle, Ill., and served successively as secretary, vice president and president. He was a director of several banks and mining corporations, and was a member of the Metropolitan, RIver and Union League Clubs of New York. In 1901, Mr. Lihme married the former Olga Hegeler, daughter of Edward C. Hegeler, a pioneer zinc smelter. The couple had four children: two daughters and two sons. Celebrity came to their daughter, Anita, when she became a princess after marrying Prince Edward Joseph Lobkowicz of Vienna in 1925. Lobkowicz' father was Prince August Lobkowicz, the Privy Counselor and Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Franz Josef, and his mother, the former Countess Palermy of Bohemia, was a lady-in-waiting to the Austrian Court. The Lobkowicz family had an important library and art collection. The other daughter, Olga, married into the Griscom family of Philadelphia. The Lihmes lived in Chicago before moving to New York where they had an apartment at 280 Park Avenue, at the corner of 48th Street. Around 1927, the family moved into an opulent triplex apartment at 950 Fifth Avenue, on the northeast corner of 76th Street, that overlooked the green dome of Temple Beth-El directly across the street and Central Park. Designed by James E. R. Carpenter, who was arguably the foremost architect of luxury residential buildings in New York City at the time, the narrow Italian-Renaissance palazzo-style building was erected in 1926 and completed in January 1927. The finely detailed fourteen-story building originally had two full-floor simplexes, five two-floor duplexes, and servants' rooms at the penthouse. Today, the seven units are owned by some of the city's most notorious billionaire bachelors. The Lihme familiy also maintained a summer home, "Norman Hall," in Watch Hill, R.I., and a winter home in Palm Beach, Fla. Following his retirement in 1921, Mr. Lihme began to buy fine paintings by such artists as Rubens, Corot, Rembrandt and others. An important acquisition was "Portrait of the Marchesa Lomellini," one of the seven famous van Dyck paintings that had hung for centuries in the Cattaneo Palace in Genoa, for which Lihme was reported to have paid $200,000. He also collected Flemish tapestries, costly porcelains and glassware. On the evening of June 26, 1927, the Lihme residence at 950 Fifth Avenue was vandalized by a doorman, a nightman and an elevator man who were resentful for not receiving a promised bonus from the building, of which Mr. Lihme was part owner. After drinking whiskey for two hours, the three Irishmen let themselves in to the Lihmes' apartment, which was vacant for the summer, where they found and consumed cakes and a baked ham, and bottles marked "Frontenac Export Ale." The ham was eaten without the aid of cutlery, and when they had finished eating it one of them flung the bone through the glass panel of the pantry door. Over the next few hours the inebriated trio damaged objects worth $300,000 in the salon and dining room, including chandeliers, mirrors, lamps, vases, paintings, and the Welte-Mignon pipe organ. Several days later, an interior decorator from P. W. French & Co., who had been commissioned to remove some 16th century Flemish tapestries which Mr. Lihme was lending for an exhibition, discovered the damage and had the elevator man alert the police. After questioning, the stalwart doorman confessed to the crime and was ultimately sentenced to a prison term of one and one-half to three years. Although the irreparable damage was estimated to be between $30,00 and $50,000, "Mr. Lhime had insurance against theft, fire, weather, et al.,—but not against drunken lackeys." C. Bai Lihme died on October 15, 1946, at his home at 950 Fifth Avenue after a long illness. He was 80 years old. Mrs. Olga Lihme died on November 9, 1956, of a heart attack at her home in Palm Beach, Fla., at the age of 79. |
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