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Child prodigy, first conductor of philharmonic children's concerts, and famous pianist Ernest Schelling was born in this house on July 26, 1876. The house features an ornate front porch with scalloped supports and intricate scroll work.

Schelling was born of an English mother, Rose White Wilkes of Cambridge, and Felix Emmanuel Schelling, a physician and philosopher of Swiss origin. The Romantic age of music was just ending.

Schelling's first teacher was his father. At age 4, Schelling made his debut at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By age 7, Schelling had traveled to Europe to study and was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire, working with many great masters such as Goetschius, Huber, Barth, Moszkowski and Leschetizky.

At the age of 20 in 1896, he became the only American pupil with Ignace Paderewski. He toured Europe and North and South America, gaining a reputation as a remarkable pianist.

Schelling was the first conductor of the Young People's Concerts of the New York Philharmonic in March 1924. The concerts were designed to encourage the love of music in children by combining the orchestra's performance with a lecture featuring various aspects of the orchestra or the music with pictures or demonstrations, so children received a variety of stimuli. He illustrated the concerts with large-format glass lantern slides projected onto a screen, achieving a kind of Pied Piper status with his innovative methods.

He married his first wife Lucie Howe Draper in 1905 in New York City. She died in 1938 at their summer home in Lausanne, Switzerland. His second wife, Helen Huntington "Peggy" Marshall, was the stepdaughter of the philanthropist Brooke Astor, and a niece of Vincent Astor. She was 21 and he was 63.

He died of a cerebral embolism at his home in Manhattan on December 8, 1939. His bride of four months was at his side. He was to have conducted a children's philharmonic that very day.

A commemorative bust of Ernest Schelling now stands in Carnegie Hall, placed in gratitude for his work with young musicians.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Schelling and https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/c.asp?c=C531. Accessed August 29, 2020.