Daytonian in Manhattan

The Improbable Little Survivor at No. 488 Greenwich Street

2012-02-14T02:59:00.000-08:00

Although both Federal homes are rare survivors, No. 488 (right) is less seriously-altered.

In the early decades of the 19^th century, on the west side of Manhattan between the established city and Greenwich Village, the Lispenard family owned a large swath of land referred to as Lispenard’s Meadows. The meadows were, in fact, marshy and of little value until the area just to the south was developed by Trinity Church as St. John’s Park – the most exclusive residential district in New York.

By the 1820s, Greenwich Street was the main route from New York to Greenwich Village, cutting through Lispenard’s Meadows. When Canal Street was laid out, stretching east to west between the rivers, it included a sewer—resulting in effective drainage of the marshland. What had been essentially worthless property was suddenly attractive real estate.

John George Rohr was a merchant tailor; a German immigrant who saw greater profits in real estate speculation than in the clothing business. Around 1820 he began construction of small brick rowhouses along Greenwich Street on the Lispenard property. A relative, also named John Rohr, was a mason and building and he was most likely responsible for their construction.

In 1820 the Rohrs built three houses on the west side of Greenwich Street, northward from the corner of Canal Street. Two more were added in 1821 and two years later the Rohrs leased six more lots to the north.

By 1826 their string of similar Federal-style, working class homes included five to the south of Canal Street and eleven to the north. John Rohr (the builder) took ownership of the northern-most six homes in 1825 and lived in No. 498 Greenwich after 1827. In the meantime, John G. Rohr continued with his tailoring business, joined eventually by his son, George.

Among the functional little buildings was No. 488 Greenwich Street. Like its neighbors, it was a two and a half story house, clad in brick with a central dormer on the pitched roof. It would appear that the house was always intended to have a business on the ground floor, and a side entrance to the upstairs living quarters.

The house most likely always had a shop entrance (left) and a private entrance to the upstairs living quarters.

John and Martha Rohr retained possession of the house (originally numbered No. 490) until 1837, renting it as additional income. The early tenants came and went with surprising quickness.

James Wood, a tin and hardware dealer was here for one year, between 1824 and 1825. He was followed by John Hannah, a copper smith, who also stayed only a year. Grocer Anthony J. Werneken was here from 1834 to 1835.

In 1837 John and Martha transferred the property to their tailor relative, John G. and Rebecca Rohr, who conveyed it seven years later to their son, George. George kept the property for only two years, until 1846, when it was foreclosed upon and purchased by Charles Hummel, the baker who lived next door. Hummel had been living above his bakery in what is now No. 486 since 1831.

Hummel continued to lease his newly-acquired property to John McDermott who had been the tenant of No. 488 since 1838. Somewhat a jack of all trades, McDermott listed himself in directories variously as a grocer, carman and smith. By 1851 the little building was operated as a boarding house. The proprietor managed to squeeze five working-class men into the upstairs quarters.

By now the area was bustling with small businesses serving the busy Canal Street commercial district. Hardware dealer Robert Shiells purchased the house in 1852. Shiells ran his hardware business until retiring in 1855 and, after his death in 1862, his two children, George and Elizabeth Shiells, held on to the property until 1870.

When the house was placed at auction in 1899, the shoreline of the Hudson River, originally only about a block to the rear of the property, had been filled in and West Street and its many piers had been constructed. Much of the Greenwich Street area surrounding the little house at No. 488 now boasted large warehouses and factories.

Ambrose K. Ely placed the winning bid on the house, spending $6,500 for it. Ely owned the large storage warehouses next door to the north. The land-rich Ely family would retain the property until 1944. How the little building and its matching neighbor next door managed to survive is inexplicable; however in 1908 two businesses were sharing No 488. A. Allan & Son was here, advertising itself as “inventors and sole manufacturers of The Allan Metal,” an anti-friction metal. Sharing the building was Max Schnall “rag and paper stock dealer.”

By World War I the Ohio Foundry & Manufacturing Co. of Stuebenville, Ohio had its New York office here. A 1917 advertisement touted, “Coal and gas burning grates for fireplaces, andirons of iron and brass, baskets, screens, dampers, gas logs, etc., for fireplaces.” The firm also operated as “jobbers of spark guards and gas fittings.”

Throughout the first half of the 20^th century the house experienced a vast array of tenants. Vito Cuoco ran a junk shop here in the 1920s, Alphonso Ruocco operated his fruit dealership from here around 1934, and a string of trucking-related firms followed—Express Carriers Corp around 1935, Tony Lupardi’s trucking company Baron’s Express Co., and V. Linetzky “truck covers” around 1939 to 1940.

After George Drakoudes purchased the house from the Ely Estate in 1944, it was home to Metal Converters & Expeditors before becoming Eddie’s Locker Room Luncheonette around 1959. In 1965, the year that Eddie’s moved out, the façade of No. 488 was seriously bulging out.

Normally, a pronounced bulge in the brickwork of a building is associated with a lack of ties between the walls parallel to the joists and the joists behind. When John Rohr constructed the little house in the 1820s iron ties were unheard of. Yet at some point in the 19^th century the flaw apparently became apparent, because long tie rods had been retrofitted with large cast iron stars lining up on the brickwork below the second floor.

The Department of Buildings ordered that the dangerous problem be corrected. The entire brick façade was removed and, amazingly, refaced using the original historic bricks--most likely an economic rather than preservationist decision. A year later the owner of the house next door, James Johnston, Sr., purchased No. 488. Johnston had run his business, A. Johnston & Son Iron Works, from No. 486 since 1953.

In 1966 the brick was stripped off and the bulging facade corrected. The late 19th-century star-shaped masonry supports can be seen below the second floor -- photo Historic Building Construction

The amazing little survivor at No. 488 was purchased in 1975 by John and Joanne Hendricks, along with No. 486. The Hendricks restored the facades and returned the upstairs of No. 488 to residential use for the first time in over a century. Today the delightful and surprising little building is home to the Hendricks while the first floor functions as Joanne Hendrick’s bookstore selling rare cookbooks.

Although its near-match next door at No. 486 also survives, it has been more seriously altered.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The Lost 1853 St. Nicholas Hotel -- Broadway between Broome and Spring

2012-02-13T03:13:00.000-08:00

print from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Monthly

In 1853 New York City announced its position as a major world-class city with the opening of its World Exposition in the remarkable Crystal Palace. Wealthy citizens lived in refined luxury and the downtown area boasted commercial buildings that rivaled Paris and London.

Until now the Astor House, built by John Jacob Astor, was the premier hotel in the city. That all changed on January 6, 1853 when the new St. Nicholas Hotel opened its doors. It was like nothing the city—or perhaps the world—had seen before.

The St. Nicholas set a new standard for luxury, expense and lavish appointments. It was the first New York City building to cost $1 million in construction—approximately $29 million by today’s standards. The New York Times reported on the “pure white marble” structure, “in the Italian style of architecture." The newspaper said “This magnificent establishment, which in extent of accommodation, completeness of arrangement, costliness and chaste elegance of decoration, and combination of all modern improvements, takes place as the Hotel par excellence of our day.”

On opening day it stretched 100 feet up Broadway from Broome Street. An extension, already in work, would extend the gleaming white marble hotel the full length of the block within the year. It rose six stories and was entered between four fluted white marble columns.

Inside, above a marble lobby floor was a frescoed ceiling supported by pilasters with gilded capitals. “To the left of the hall,” said The Times, “is the gentlemen’s drawing-room, also paved with marble, and decorated in the most elegant style. Here and in the reading room, connected with it by folding-doors, are two costly bronze chandeliers.”

The reading room was illuminated by an ornate, gilded and domed skylight , as was the lavish barber shop which catered to as many as a dozen guests at a time.

The barber shop with its ornate domed skylight, was run by Edward Phelon and was considered one of the hotel's great features -- print from Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, 1853

On the first landing of the grand white oak staircase was a painting of St. Nicholas “depositing in the expectant stocking gifts from the ample stock he carries.” Hanging overhead was a $1,100 chandelier; one of the many expensive and impressive lighting fixtures throughout the hotel.

The main dining room was on the second floor, capable of accommodating 400 guests. Each chandelier that hung from the painted ceiling here contained twenty gas lights. Adjoining the dining room was the tea-room which The Times reported was “furnished in the most costly and elegant manner.”

A stereoscope view of the dining room -- NYPL Collection

Throughout the rooms owner D. M. Haight, with the input and supervision of his partner and veteran hotelier Mr. Treadwell, spared no expense. The custom carpeting throughout was woven in a single piece, the furniture was of carved rosewood with satin damask upholstery that corresponded to the carpet colors. The furniture alone cost the hoteliers $125,000.

One of the main attractions of the second floor was the exquisite rosewood Aeolion piano made by T. Gilbert & Co. of Boston. The case was deeply carved with wreaths of flowers and the keys were of pearl rather than ivory.

The third and fourth floors contained suites of rooms for families; some with a parlor and a single bedroom, others with a parlor and two bedrooms. The servants’ dining room was on the third floor, directly above the main dining room (to make efficient use of the dumb waiter to the kitchens).

The entire fifth floor housed rooms for the guests' servants.

An early view before the extension was added to the right -- from Miller's New York As It Is

The St. Nicholas was a marvel of modern technology. Every room was supplied with hot and cold water and gas. Astonishingly, as The Times reported, the suites included “a bath-room and water-closet.”

Although there were marble mantles and fireplaces in the principal rooms, the hotel had central heating. In the basement three 19-foot iron boilers provided steam throughout the building. The steam plant also powered a six-horse power washing and drying machine, “an ingenious piece of mechanism.” The washer-drier was capable of rinsing, washing and drying 5,000 pieces of laundry per day with only one operator – this at a time when most women were still using a scrub board at home.

In the attic, an immense reservoir of several thousand gallons of water was poised for the threat of fire. The management boasted that the building could be completely deluged by this means within five minutes.

The modern kitchen housed ranges, ovens and roasting furnaces “on the most approved and compact principle." A steam table heated the dinnerware, ensuring that meals arrived hot from the dumb waiter.

The break between the original hotel and the 1854 addition (foreground) is evident in this later stereoscope view -- NYPL Collection

An ingenious call system connected the office to the rooms. “Wires from an enunciator, extend through the house, so that by pressing a small projecting knob, the magnetic current is connected with the office, the bell rings, and the number is disclosed on the indicator,” reported The Times.

In addition, the St. Nicholas had its own gas works, located to the rear of the hotel on Mercer Street. Inside the hotel were approximately 3,000 gas burners in constant use every evening. The apparatus converted petroleum tar into combustible gas, making the hotel independent of outside gas suppliers. The gas works would prove to be as dangerous as it was economical; over the years no fewer than three small fires or explosions would start here.

Another innovation was the “bridal chamber,” located next to the state suite. The St. Nicholas was the first hotel to lure newlyweds as a honeymoon destination. From the center of an elaborate gilded plasterwork ceiling, a white satin canopy draped down over the bridal bed, spilling onto the floor at the corners in heavy folds. “Four chandeliers, sparkling with crystals, shed light through this fairy-like apartment,” said The Times. The bed, upholstered in white satin, was surrounded by a continuous satin ottoman. Even the walls were covered in white satin—the fabric for the walls costing $500. The bride would feel especially pampered on a canary-colored satin bedspread covered in lace.

The hotel employed 130 waiters, chambermaids and other servants at the time of the opening. There were 350 rooms, 200 of which were bedrooms. The glittering silverware and Sheffield plate cost around $27,000, “the cheapest dish being $32.50.” By next year the completed extension would more than double the number of rooms, now capable of accommodating 1,000 guests.

The New-York Daily Tribune announced on September 26, 1854, “It is said to be the largest and most elegant hotel in the world…with the handsomest marble front in New-York. There are somewhere near nine hundred rooms, all telegraphing to one center.”

The newspaper praised the hotel, but offered a caveat: “You need not be at all afraid to go there; the charges are moderate, and most of the guests plain, honest country folk. The whole house is elegant and has but one fault—one common to nearly all the best hotels in the world—it has a bar-room.”

Haight’s and Treadwell’s venture showed quick returns. The first year of operation yielded over $50,000 in profits. Twice a week during winter months balls were held and the public rooms were the premier spot to be seen in the city.

Although the St. Nicholas enjoyed world-wide acclaim, there were expected detractors. In April 1855 The New-York Quarterly questioned what it considered an over-elaborate façade. “We desire not to scrape off the carvings of the St. Nicholas to reduce it to the simplicity of the Astor, but we wish to weed it from a little, so as to give some plain space of wall on which the eye can repose, introduce a few string courses to preserve that horizontality so necessary to the unity of a large structure, and make either massive piers or rusticated quoins at its extremities to strengthen and consolidated the whole.” The magazine was kinder to the interior appointments. “The decorator, the painter, the upholsterer have done more…than the architect.”

High class patrons of the bar room were indignant when Captain J. J. Wright and his partner in the steamship, the Jewess, R. S. Dean engaged in a noisy argument in September 1855. Suddenly Captain Wright pulled a cowhide strap from his pocket and struck his partner across the face.

Apparently the pair were accustomed to carrying weapons, for The New York Daily Tribune reported that “Instantly the latter drew from a sheath which he carried under his vest a large bowie knife, the blade of which he plunged almost to the hilt in the side of his antagonist.”

As Wright attempted to get away, Dean attacked again, mortally wounding him in the abdomen. Newspapers followed the story for days, bringing unwanted publicity to the St. Nicholas.

More welcomed coverage occurred in 1861 when a grand ball was given by the hotel to celebrate Jackson’s victory in the Battle of New Orleans. The ballroom, which was festooned with American flags, was filled with the most prestigious names of the military and New York society: Major-General Sanford, Colonels Bostick, Pickney and Butterfield, Commodore Garrison, along with August Belmont and Augustus Schell.

Unfortunately, in preparation for the brilliant event, the ballroom floor was waxed and “had an adhesiveness which interfered somewhat with many soles,” grieved The Times. “It was the only drawback of the evening’s festivities, and was a very slight one.” Dodworth’s Band played and “The ladies, who, at 10 o’clock, when they began to thread the mazes, were not unduly numerous, an hour later with difficulty navigated--there were so many of them,” said the paper.

The St. Nicholas played home to the celebrities of the day, including Lavinia Warren the year before she married General Tom Thumb in Grace Church. The New York Tribune noted that “She is receiving in her private parlor, visits from some of the most prominent families in this city.”

The hotel played an involuntary part in one of the most terrifying schemes of the Civil War in 1864. A group of Confederate conspirators devised the plan to burn New York City. Members took rooms in hotels across the city, including the St. Nicholas, and committed synchronized arson.

At 8:43 on the evening of November 25, fire was discovered in the St. James Hotel. Within minutes Barnum’s Museum was in flames. Quickly, fire alarms were sounded from the St. Nicholas Hotel, the Lafarge House, the United States Hotel, the Metropolitan, Lovejoy’s and the New England Hotels.

The plotters assumed that the many large fires would be too much for the fire fighters to handle. Before morning more hotels – the Belmont, Fifth Avenue, Hanford, Astor House and Howard—were blazing, and Tammany Hall and lumber yards were torched.

Hotel staff and patrons all fought furiously through the night to control the spread of the flames. Amazingly, all the fires were extinguished before the planned devastation was realized. In the St. Nicholas, as with the other hotels, bags of black canvas were discovered. Each held paper, about a pound of flammable resin, a bottle of turpentine and bottles of phosphorus in water. The fires were started by piling bedding in the middle of the room, saturating it with turpentine, igniting it and locking the door.

The years following the Civil War were profitable for the St. Nicholas, which still held its reputation and prestige. In 1878 it was updated under the new manager, Uriah Welch, who proudly advertised that “The improvements and repairs of this popular and well-known hotel are now completed. Having more conveniences than ever for the comfort of its patrons, it offers superior advantages for transient and permanent guests.”

The New York Express agreed. “In healthfulness and convenience of location, spacious and elegantly-furnished apartments, broad and cheerful corridors, and its incomparable system of ventilation, drainage, security and precaution against fire, this celebrated hotel is not surpassed by any house on the ‘American plan’ in New-York or elsewhere, and its table and attendance throughout are acknowledged as the very best.”

“The new café dining-room,” said the Express, “recently fitted up, is a model of elegance and good taste. Here meals are served a la carte in the best style at very moderate prices, and from 5 to 7 P.M. a capital dinner, table d’hote, with wine, can be obtained for $1, a convenience which seem to be fully appreciated by the business men of that part of the City.”

The St. Nicholas, however, was fighting a battle that could not be won. While it remained popular with groups like the New York Press Club which held its annual banquet here in 1881; most tourists desired to be near the entertainment district which was gradually moving northward.

On March 4, 1884, The New York Times noted that “Of late years, however, the city has grown away from it, and it has been much less profitable.” Because of that, the newspaper said, “The last day of April will probably end the existence of the St. Nicholas Hotel, and one of the oldest hostelries in New-York will pass into history.”

The writer for The Times bemoaned the hotel’s fate. “The St. Nicholas started on a scale of magnificence never before approached in hotel-keeping in New-York and perhaps not in the world. Its rooms were luxuriously furnished, its table a revelation to travelers, and its appointments such as to induce many wealthy people to give up for the first time their homes and avail themselves of the comforts and conveniences of hotel life.”

On March 31 the grand hotel suffered its last indignation when the furnishings were auctioned off. “The articles went at a remarkably low figure, and many people were able to congratulate themselves on having made bargains,” reported The Times.

The six gilt framed mirrors from the dining room – each 9 feet tall—brought $39 each; the three huge 300-pound brass chandeliers sold for $40 each. Uriah Welch complained “If they had been cut up and sold for old brass they would have fetched more.” One hundred and fifty upholstered plush chairs, which The Times noted “have been used by Jenny Lind, President Buchanan, President Johnson, President Fillmore, General Grant, and General Scott,” were sold for $1.50 apiece.

The sale took two weeks to completed.

By May 1 the demolition of the white marble St. Nicholas Hotel had started. Before long, what had once been one of the most celebrated hotels in the world was gone.

Almost.

Two slivers of the St. Nicholas somehow survive today; now separate buildings.

Unbelievably, a sliver of the old hotel remains today. Nos. 521 and 523 Broadway, barely recognizable even with old photographs, are the last remnants of the St. Nicholas. Cast iron storefronts replace the street level and repellent fire escapes zig-zag down the marble façade; yet through some minor miracle of architectural preservation, a slice of the St. Nicholas Hotel survives.

Hideous fire escapes zig-zag down the once-proud facade of No. 521; the marble that once gleamed white is now painted a pink-brown. But the original carved window detailing still remains.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The 1904 Charles Dana Gibson House -- No. 127 East 73rd Street

2012-02-11T03:03:00.000-08:00

photo by Alice Lum

On November 7, 1895 when illustrator Charles Dana Gibson escorted his bride, Irene Langhorne, down the sweeping staircase of the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia, he was already socially-connected with the architect Stanford White. But on that day Gibson was not thinking of White nor of architecture.

Irene Langhorne Gibson -- photo Library of Congress

He had first seen his new wife across the room at Delmonico’s while he was dining with friends. She was one of the five Langhorne Sisters from Richmond, known for their remarkable beauty even in New York City. A meeting was arranged for tea the next day. Not only would the meeting result in a successful marriage, but the beautiful Irene would be the prototype of many of the illustrator’s already-popular Gibson Girls.

Mrs. Gibson would be the model for some of the Gibson Girls -- sketch Library of Congress

By the time the pair married, C. Dana Gibson had risen to the top of his field. After attending the Art Students League, with classmates like Frederic Remington, he sold his first drawing to the humor magazine Life (not to be confused with the later photographic news publication of the same name) for $4. His insightful wit and ability to capture emotions, comedy and pathos of everyday moments made him instantly popular. By 1887 he was on staff at Life and by the turn of the century was earning $500 for each illustration.

In his "Waiting at the Ferry" Gibson exhibited his ability to capture a spectrum of people in everyday moments -- Library of Congress

Seven years after the wedding, in 1902, Gibson commissioned Stanford White to design a home at 127 East 73^rd Street. The block was filled with traditional, respectable brownstone houses constructed just after the Civil War. But as the neighborhood became more fashionable, one by one, these were replaced by more modern and elegant structures.

A nationwide interest in things colonial was sweeping the nation and that fervor was reflected in domestic architecture in the city. White was currently working on a house for Thomas B. Clarke in the neo-Georgian style; Andrew Carnegie’s immense brick and stone Georgian mansion was rising across from Central Park as was Paul Tuckerman’s colonial-inspired residence four blocks south of Gibson’s plot.

photo by Alice Lum

White created a five-story residence, completed in 1904, that was both dignified and home-like. The red brick façade was trimmed in contrasting white limestone, drawing on both the English and American 18^th century precedents. A stone portico supported by Doric columns was surmounted by an iron balcony, accessed by arched French doors on the second floor. Above it all, a stately mansard roof sat behind a stone and brick balustrade. The completed structure cost just under $50,000.

As the home was being completed, Who’s Who in New York City and State said of Gibson, “he is noted for his simple and telling style of drawing, bringing out with a few bold strokes the beautiful, strong types known as the ‘Gibson Women,’ and the fine athletic ‘Gibson Men.’”

C. Dana Gibson's snapshots of life would pave the way for future artists like J. C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell -- Library of Congress

But for all the money the Gibson Girl brought him, the illustrator found the public’s obsession with her “slightly annoying.” Gibson was much more than that. His wit and satire were sublime and he was something more as well—he was an artist.

Gibson could capture humor and pathos. Here a lonely dowager waits in her grand ballroom for guests who will never come. -- Library of Congress

In 1905, with the 73^rd Street house completed and a summer estate being built on Seven Hundred Acres Island in Penobscot Bay, Maine, he left for Europe to study painting. The Gibsons were gone two years whe the Financial Panic of 1907 drew them back to the States.

Gibson had invested in real estate and suffered financial losses. In 1908 the house at No. 127 East 73^rd Street was leased and Gibson returned to illustration. His work was as popular as ever and he began rebuilding his fortune. Before long the Gibsons were back in the house.

Prim dormers stand at attention against the mansard roof -- photo by Alice Lum

Tragedy struck the home on April 10, 1914. Irene Gibson’s sister, Elizabeth, was on a short visit while in mourning for her husband, Thomas Moncure Perkins, who had died just two weeks earlier. The women were still known in the press as “the Famous Langhorne Sisters,” all of whom had advantageously married, including Nancy who had become Lady Astor after marrying Waldorf Astor.

Four days into her visit, at around 5:00 in the evening before she was to return to Virginia, Irene was stricken with apoplexy. Less than three hours later she was dead.

After World War I Gibson’s financial condition rebounded to the point that he purchased controlling interest in Life magazine, after the death of its managing editor, John A. Mitchell. Within a decade, however, he would dispose of his holdings as the popularity of the magazine waned with the changing social environment.

Journalists and celebrity gawkers would jam East 73^rd Street throughout the year 1922. In April Lady Astor arrived in New York to tremendous fanfare. While in New York she stayed at the Gibson house. When, on April 20, the sisters returned from a luncheon given by Mrs. Henry Rogers Winthrop, The Times reported that “the table in the entrance hall at the Gibson home was piled with cards which were left by friends who called during the afternoon in a continuous procession.”

Later, in November, the former Prime Minister of France, George Benjamin Clemenceau, arrived in New York to begin a lecture tour. Le Tigre, as he had become known because of his harsh line against the defeated Germans, was a guest of the Gibsons during his stay in New York.

The Associated Press described the former Prime Minister’s objective as “unofficially to present the case of France to the American people, and this he will do in the languages of the masses, for not only does he speak English, but he speaks real American English—flawlessly and without effort. He is a master of our idiom and has kept up with American slang for more than five decades.”

In the 1920s that may or may not have been a good thing.

The Great Depression brought renewed financial problems and the Gibsons closed the 73^rd Street house and moved into the Maine home. Here Gibson worked on his painting and in 1934 the American Academy of Arts and Letters staged a one-man show of 100 paintings. The New York Times’ art critic Edward Alden Jewell was impressed with the 67-year old artist’s work.

“Make no mistake about it, Charles Dana Gibson is a painter. He proves it again and again in a way the visitor is not likely soon to forget,” he wrote.

The Gibsons enjoyed their life in Maine, far from the rush of New York City, and the house on East 73^rd Street remained shuttered. The aging couple was termed by Life magazine “America’s most romantic couple” in 1942, the same year they decided to give up their Manhattan residence.

An aging Charles Dana Gibson relaxes in his Maine retreat -- Conde Nast Archives

The house, however, did not immediately sell. Then, in early September 1944 the 77-year old Gibson suffered heart problems. A United States Navy plane transported him to Doctors Hospital in New York; but he was soon removed to the house on East 73^rd Street. While Irene Gibson sat beside his bed, the famous illustrator died of myocarditis on December 23, 1944.

A private funeral was held in the house on the day after Christmas.

Irene Gibson sold No. 127 West 73^rd Street the following year. Before long it became home to the American-Scandinavian Foundation which, over the decades it was here, was less than loving in its interior preservation.

Several rooms were modernized by stripping away the architectural details, creating sleek barren walls appropriate to 1950s and 1960s décor. In one area, Stanford White’s tile-and-marble floors were removed as were other significant architectural elements.

photo by Alice Lum

The house was returned to a private home in 1999 when architect Thomas Vail was hired by the new owners to renovate the building. Using period photographs, Vail restored the lost floors, and installed copies of trashed interior columns and detailing. The exterior was restored, including replacement of the copper mansard roof.

Robert Couturier would later execute another renovation, which House and Garden magazine termed “a perfect recipe for timeless chic.” The face-lift supported a selling price tag of $38 million in 2008.

The refined home at No. 127 East 73^rd Street is remarkable not only for its Stanford White design; but for the incredible and rich history of personalities connected with it.

Many thanks to Dan Boyar for pointing out this amazing block.

The 1907 Charles Guggenheimer House - No. 129 E 73rd Street

2012-02-10T03:19:00.000-08:00

photo by Alice Lum

On October 4, 1906 W. H. Woodin sold the plot of land at 129 East 73^rd Street to “a client, who will erect thereon a five-story American basement dwelling,” as reported in The New York Times. The article added that the “property adjoins the house built by Charles Dana Gibson.”

When the hugely successful illustrator commissioned Stanford White to design his neo-Georgian townhouse two years earlier, the block between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue gained prestige. Soon other handsome residences would begin rising, including the sumptuous house next door at No. 129.

Charles S. Guggenheimer was “the client” who purchased the lot. A wealthy attorney, he commissioned architect Henry Allan Jacobs to design his new home. Jacobs was born and educated in New York City and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Returning to New York, he made his mark designing both residences and hotels, including the notable Seville Hotel at Madison Avenue and 29^th Street that was completed the same year as Gibson’s house.

In stark contrast to Stanford White’s brick-and-limestone Colonial structure, Jacobs produced a lavish neo-Italian Renaissance townhouse clad in limestone. Completed in 1907, it rose five stories, including the mansard roof, above an American basement. Above the restrained, rusticated base with a centered entranceway a graceful loggia served as the focal point of the design. Its triple arches framed three sets of French doors.

photo by Alice Lum

At the third floor a single carved limestone balcony connected the three windows and at the fourth floor the windows were flanked by two massive and elaborate carved panels.

Carved panels of graceful figures, twining flowers and urns sit above a delicate wave-crest course -- photo by Alice Lum

The Guggenheimers were still newly-weds when they moved in. Charles and his wife, Minnie, had been married in 1903. With them on moving day was baby daughter, Elizabeth, born a year earlier in 1906. Minnie was well-known in music circles, an active supporter of the New Symphony Orchestra and the Music League of the People’s Institute.

The Guggenheimers were struck a tragic blow six years later when little Elizabeth, now 7 years old, was hospitalized at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary in 1913. On April 28, the little girl succumbed. Her funeral was held in the parlor of No. 129 East 73^rd at 9:30 am on April 30.

The heart-broken Guggenheimers sold the house almost immediately. E. Mortimer Ward purchased it just in time for the coming-out entertainments for his step-daughter, Dorothy Clapp. On December 23, 1914, Mrs. Ward hosted a tea, followed by dinner at the Plaza Hotel. Afterwards 200 guests were invited to the dance that would introduce young Dorothy.

Three years later Dorothy would be the maid of honor at her sister’s wedding on March 28, 1917. The wedding day was originally planned for June 6; but World War I suddenly changed all that. “Another of the many weddings hastened by the prospects of war was that yesterday of Bradish Johnson Carroll, Jr., a member of the Seventh Regiment, N.Y.N.G., who has been at the Mexican border, and Miss Mary Eunice Clapp,” said The Times.

Following the society wedding at St. James Protestant Episcopal Church on Madison Avenue, the reception was held at the 73^rd Street house “which was gay with pink roses and Easter lilies.”

The entrance features an elaborately-carved marble frame -- photo by Alice Lum

By 1921 E. Mortimer Ward had died and Mrs. Ward left East 73^rd Street for an apartment at 830 Park Avenue. William Medlicott Fleitmann purchased No. 129. The 61-year old Fleitmann was a partner in Fleitmann and Company which was founded by his father. The firm was one of the largest mercantile banking and commission houses in the country. Quite the clubman, he was a member of the New York Athletic Club, New York Yacht Club, Deutscher Verein, Merchants Club, Riding Club, Piping Rock Club, Suburban Riding and Driving Club and Columbia Yacht Clubs.

The Fleitmann’s daughter, however, was the star of the family. Lida Louise Fleitmann was 27 years old when the family bought the house. Still unmarried, she was well noted as a horsewoman both in America and Europe and was the author of “Comments on Hacks and Hunters,” published by Scribner’s.

The New York Times commented that “Miss Fleitmann is one of the best known riders in the Long Island hunting set. She has a string of hunters and has won many blue ribbons and silver trophies in the annual horse shows in this city and elsewhere…Her silver trophies include salvers and candelabra, the later including the Berlin Cooks Memorial plate, which she won as the best cross-country rider to the Meadow Brook Hounds in 1916.”

The 1916 trophy came just a year after her horse, Cygnet, crushed her right leg in a jumping contest, fracturing it in two places. The Times said, somewhat apologetically, “She is a member of the Junior League, but her interest in outdoor sports and her horses have kept her from active participation in the indoors entertainments of that organization.”

Lida eventually found a man who could compete with the horses for her affection and on February 1, 1922 her engagement to clubman John Van Schaick Bloodgood was announced.

With Lida successfully married, William Medlicott Fleitmann and his wife, the former Lida M. Heinze of Brooklyn, retired to Paris where he died in 1929.

The house on East 73^rd Street became home to Dr. and Mrs. Harry E. Isaacs and their son, Frederick Lampke Isaacs. Isaacs was Chief of Surgical Services at Beth Israel Hospital. The family remained in the house until 1942 when it was leased to Henry W. Jarrett.

photo by Alice Lum

Following World War II the house became the Leo Baeck Institute. Founded in 1955, its library and archives seek to preserve all records of the German-speaking Jewish culture that was annihilated during the war. By the 1970s the library had amassed over 50,000 volumes, mostly in German, as well as unpublished memoirs, and newspapers and periodicals.

Henry Allan Jacobs’ sophisticated façade remains unchanged since the Guggenheimer family first walked in the door in 1907—a remarkable building on an equally-remarkable block of Manhattan.

The Beaux Arts 1905 Flats at Nos. 14-16 Bedford Street

2012-02-09T03:20:00.000-08:00

photo Laub Realty

In the last half of the 19^th century poor immigrants crowded into unsanitary tenement buildings, giving multifamily buildings a decidedly poor reputation. To counter this, developers used creative language. Fashionable “resident hotels” and “French flats” were designed for respectable families who wished to avoid the cost or inconvenience of maintaining a private home.

But by the turn of the century apartment living had, for the most part, lost the stigma of “living on a shelf,” as Caroline Astor referred to it. Architects were designing what were unapologetically termed “apartment buildings” as more and more residents demanded the economically-sensible alternative to private homes.

On February 6, 1903 William and Julius Bachrach purchased the two small buildings at Nos. 14 and 16 Bedford Street. The brothers were partners in the real estate development firm W & J Bachrach at 35 Nassau Street. On sleepy Bedford Street in Greenwich Village they intended to erect an up-to-date, attractive apartment building unlike anything nearby.

By the end of the year architects Bernstein & Bernstein, whose offices were at 72 Trinity Place, filed plans for a “six-story brick flat.” Their commission came at a time when reformers sought to improve apartment living conditions by urging architects to turn their attention to increased sunlight, better ventilation and fire safety.

The resulting apartment building proved that families living side-by-side could retain their dignity and style. The entrance was centered between two retail spaces within the cast iron base; an innovation that provided extra income to the owners and, theoretically, helped reduce rents. Inside, the foyer was paneled in white marble--a reminder to visitors that this was no tenement.

Carved window frames and lintels and a robust cornice added class to the apartment building.

Above, five stories of red brick and limestone trim drew inspiration from the wildly popular Beaux Arts style that was washing over the city. The brick was highlighted by contrasting courses of stone and elaborately-carved keystones capped the windows. Above it all was a handsome pressed metal cornice with wreathed, scrolled brackets.

Although the Bachrach brothers leased the completed building on November 8, 1905 for a term of five years; they quickly turned it over within eight months, selling it to Antonio Bagorazy. The new owner opted for a quick profit, as well, reselling it on December 28, 1906.

Greenwich Village in the early 1900s was a rich mixture of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Nos. 14 and 16 Bedford Street provided a microcosm of the neighborhood, its apartments filling with German, Italian and Irish names.

Sixteen year old Anthony Fusch was living here in July 1911 when he went swimming in the Harlem River with Robert Antenucci and several other boys. When Fusch was seized with cramps and went under, Antenucci valiantly tried to save him, diving under the water repeatedly until he, himself, was exhausted.

The other boys returned with help from a nearby boathouse just in time to save Antenucci but it was too late for Anthony Fusch who died during attempts to resuscitate him.

Tragedy would return as World War I raged throughout Europe. The family of John Figoli lived here and son Florian Figoli enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight for his country. Private Figoli became a member of the U.S. Expeditionary Forces and then, on October 8, 1918, The Sun listed the soldier missing in action.

Six months later the New York Tribune reported that Private Florian Figoli had been declared killed in action.

Throughout the 20^th century Nos. 14-16 Bedford Street remained relatively unchanged. In July 1960 the Kempner Corporation sold the 22-unit building to H. J. Gucker who resold it the following month. On the whole its residents came and went with little fanfare or notoriety.

The original paneled oak double entrance doors survive.

One exception was 19-year old Carlos Boutureira who, in 1976, joined ten other gang members in attacking blacks and Hispanics in Washington Square Park with clubs, bats, pipes and chains. Fourteen people were injured, four of them hospitalized and one died four days later. Because the case was mishandled by the District Attorney’s office, State Supreme Court Justice Robert M. Haft “regrettably” later dismissed the charges.

Bulbous-shaped fire escapes make them visually less offensive.

The strikingly handsome façade of Nos. 14-16 Bedford Street is often overlooked by busy pedestrians who rarely look above street level. But the building represents a wonderful example of the transition of multifamily residences at the turn of the last century; a time when apartment dwellers were gaining dignity and when architects began infusing improved living conditions into their designs.

Many thanks to reader Keith Taillon for requesting this post. Non-credited photographs taken by the author.

The Henry Harper Benedict Carriage House - No. 165 East 73rd Street

2012-02-08T03:28:00.000-08:00

photo by Alice Lum

Most Victorian New Yorkers who could afford their own carriages and horses nonetheless relied on public boarding stables. But the wealthiest citizens, who would need more than one type of vehicle and several horses, built expensive and well-designed private carriage houses.

As a rule the carriage houses were built on side streets, not so far from the fashionable residences that the owners would have excessively long waits for their rides; but not so close that the odors and noises of the stables would be intrusive. These utilitarian buildings were nearly as much a reflection of the owners' wealth as were their mansions; and by the turn of the century some lucky horses found themselves living in French Beaux Arts mini-palaces and Italianate palazzos.

Henry Harper Benedict had risen steadily within the firm of E. Remington & Sons, manufacturers of guns and rifles in Ilion, New York. Before long he was appointed treasurer of a subsidiary company, The Remington Sewing Machine Co. Then in 1882 he branched off, leaving the company to help it sell a new invention: the typewriter.

Benedict moved to New York City as a member of the firm Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict whose sole purpose was the sale of Remington typewriters. Four years later the company purchased the entire business—including the factory and all rights and franchises. By 1895 he had amassed a fortune and was noted for his extensive art collection.

That year the editor of the New York Tribune, Henry Hall, published “America’s Successful Men,” in which he said of Benedict, “A man of refined tastes, he has made a collection of engravings and etchings by the great masters, which is of the highest quality, perhaps unsurpassed by any other of its size anywhere. He also possesses a good library and a collection of oil paintings, mostly by American artists, which, like his prints, represent the several artists at their best.”

Benedict’s refined home with the good library and art collection Hall praised was at 5 East 75^th Street, just steps from Fifth Avenue. In 1903 construction began on his two matching carriage houses at Nos. 165 and 167 East 73^rd Street; on a block lined with similar private stables.

Benedict had hired George L. Amoroux to design the buildings. They would be the single two buildings for which the little-known architect would be remembered. For the two-story stables, which were completed in 1904, he used yellow Roman brick and limestone. A large, central arched carriage entrance was capped by an exuberantly-carved Beaux Arts keystone supporting a bowed stone windowsill.

photo by Alice Lum

Amoroux succeeded in creating two especially handsome carriage houses not by the use of excessive decoration; but by the skillful handling of the mass of the buildings. The well-proportioned entrance arches, the sturdy unadorned limestone bases and the solid no-nonsense cornices exude confidence and strength.

In 1909 Benedict sold No. 167 while holding on to No. 165. Four years later, while he retained possession, it was being used by the Veltin School for Girls which was located at Nos. 160 and 162 West 74^th Street. The school offered college preparatory and general courses to well-heeled young ladies and, according to an advertisement in 1913, “connecting with and including 165 West 73^rd Street.”

Henry Harper Benedict died in 1929 and the title to the carriage house was transferred to his wife, Katherine Geddes Benedict. Around this time the building was converted to a residence and became the scene of a sticky scandal.

On March 20, 1931 Katherine Boyle was living here when Mrs. Louise Roche Burkbank sued her for the alienation of her husband's affections. The slighted woman was married to stockbroker Walter Channing Burbank in 1890; however according to her Ms. Boyle had begun an affair as early as 1922. She sought $250,000 damages.

Two years before Katherine Benedict sold No. 165, in 1941, it was home to her niece, Mary Graham, who lived here with her husband Robert Lincoln Graham. The Grahams had a baby girl while living in the converted carriage house.

Benedict's matching carriage house at No. 167 is a little less grimy than its twin -- photo by Alice Lum

Externally, the dignified carriage house survived throughout the 20^th century virtually intact. It was recently renovated into a two-family residence by the owner and a second street-level entrance door replaced the original window to the right side.

With little imagination, one can envision trim carriages and sleek horses being led from the East 73rd Street carriage houses-- photo by Alice Lum

In designating No. 165 East 73^rd Street a New York City landmark, the Landmarks Preservation Commission called it “a reminder of an elegant lifestyle that has passed.”

The 1864 White Marble Palazzo at Nos 325-333 Broadway

2012-02-07T02:55:00.000-08:00

photo by Alice Lum

With the outbreak of the Civil War the textile industry in New York, centered in the Broadway and Worth Street area, flourished with the increased demand for uniforms, blankets and other such military supplies, coupled with the wartime tariffs on foreign-made apparel.

Henry Barclay had inherited his father’s substantial real estate holdings in Manhattan and Queens. In the 1840s the younger Barclay had constructed three five-story buildings at the southwest corner of Broadway at Worth Street. Now the potential profits to be made during this prosperous period prompted him to raze the relatively new buildings and replace them with grander structures which would command higher income.

At the time cast iron facades were becoming more and more popular with builders. They were relatively inexpensive, eliminated the need for stone carvers, and imitated the look of neighboring masonry buildings. Henry Barclay was not interested in “inexpensive” or “imitation.”

Begun in 1863 and completed a year later, the three five-story buildings were clad in gleaming white marble. Designed to appear as a single structure, they offered retail space on street level with manufacturing lofts and office space above. The Renaissance-inspired buildings stretched from No. 325 to No. 333 Broadway and Barclay’s conservative approach to architecture—expressed in his rebuff of cast iron—reflected itself in the overall, reserved design.

The resulting structures were restrained, dignified and quietly elegant.

The three white marble buildings extending along Broadway pretended, successfully, to be a single structure -- photo by Alice Lum

Among the first tenants was the firm of Elliot C. Cowdin & Co., importers and dealers of “French fancy goods.” The company leased the entire fifth floor of No. 327. With most of the men away at war, young girls like Angelina Portlippi and Josephine Thompson filled the workspaces of shops. They pair made artificial flowers for Cowdin. On April 16, 1863 tragedy would visit the new building.

In order to easily move goods vertically through the building, a shaft was constructed with sliding hatch covers on each floor. Goods in the basement or delivered to the ground floor could be hoisted up to the upper floors rather than being lugged up stairs.

The teen-aged girls (Angelina was 18 and Josephine a year older) were horse-playing as they prepared to leave work at 5:30 that afternoon. Somehow the hatchway slid open and the girls plummeted to the cellar five floors below to their deaths. In reporting the heartbreaking story, The New York Times noted that “Both of them are said to have been girls of industrious and steady habits, and of respectable parentage.”

By the 1880s textile companies were giving way to stationery-related firms. In 1888 Pace Dennis & Co. was here, sellers of Howe Scales. The would remain through the turn of the century.

Bullock’s Brothers was headquarters at No. 325 at the time, manufacturing the “Perfection” Elastic Blotter. At a time when ballpoint pens were unheard of, blotters were a necessary desk accessory. Bullock’s promised that the elastic blotter required “No rocking or rolling. Simple pressure operates. No stationer’s stock complete without.”

Also here in 1889 was Sillcock’s Brothers, manufacturers and sellers of “specialty celluloid goods.”

photo by Alice Lum

Office work was being revolutionized around this time by the introduction of the typewriter. (Interestingly, the operators of the machines, later called secretaries, were also referred to as typewriters.) In 1899 Blickensderfer Manufacturing Company took over the entire building at No. 325. The company announced its move in The School Journal and noted that as well as selling its Blickensderfer typewriter, it was the sold agents for the Tucker Card Index System, Tucker Suspension Letter and Document Files, and the Wells Letter and Catalogue Files.

Regarding its own typewriter, Blickensderfer noted that “The schools are using them. They are light, neat, clean and have a never-wear-out quality. Do as good work as the high-priced machines, and are easier to handle.”

In 1900 a Blickensderfer machine was pricey -- about $1000 today.

While Blickensderfer was promoting its new typewriters, Wickoff, Seamans & Benedict had been next door at No. 327 since around 1888 selling the highly-touted Remington typewriter. In 1892 King’s Handbook of New York spoke of the firm’s “executive offices and main selling headquarters” in the “plain and unpretentious, though substantial marble structure” at No. 327 Broadway.

The firms were major competitors. Directly next to a Blickensderfer advertisement in Education Magazine in 1900 was one for Wickoff, Seamans & Benedict. “Solid merit is the foundation on which is built the enduring fame of the Remington,” said the ad.

Wickoff, Seamans & Benedict would win out.

In 1905 the company changed its name to the Remington Typewriter Company and about five years later leased the entire block of buildings from No. 325 through No. 333. Internal renovations were made, creating a single building. While Remington took nearly the entire structure, it still rented space to firms like the Smith-Premier Typewriter Co. (which would later become Smith-Corona).

Smith-Premier was charged with producing orders for munitions of war for Germany in 1915 by George Sylvester Viereck, the editor of The Fatherland magazine. Mason Wheeler, the vice-president of Smith-Premier wrote a curt and succinct letter to the periodical on April 27:

“Replying to your favor of the 24th inst., we have refused to consider orders for arms and ammunition finding it to our best interests to confine our plants to the manufacture of typewriters and typewriter parts.”

By 1917 Remington Typewriter Company had grown out of the space. That year it moved further north to No. 374 Broadway. With Remington’s removal, the building once again became home to, mostly, textile and dry goods firms (although in 1919 Keene Co. was here, exporters and importers of “chemicals and drugs, citric acid, tartaric acid, cream of tartar, Prussian blue, creosote carbonate, quinine, morphine, codeine, etc.”).

Converse & Co., a dry goods commission agency moved in immediately and would stay for around two decades. M.C. D. Borden & Sons established its offices here, the selling agency for the American Printing Company—the largest cloth mill in the country.

In 1923 Borden & Sons purchased the building. Throughout the 20th century the building continued to see textile firms, including Iselin-Jefferson Co and Dan River Mills, come and go.

Despite decades of pollution and acid-rain, the carved marble detailing is remarkably crisp -- photo by Alice Lum

Ironically, considering the building’s history, throughout the 1960s the city’s Department of Labor leased rooms in No. 325 where unemployed minority workers could practice typing, thereby heightening their marketability.

The street level cast iron store fronts and marble piers survive after a century and a half -- photo by Alice Lum

Today a variety of gritty shops inhabit the retail spaces, decorating the street level with flashy signs. Yet the Civil War period marble palazzo is remarkably intact. The original cast iron storefronts, somewhat altered, are still there along with the marble rusticated piers. Above little has changed in the century and a half that Henry Barclay’s building has stood.

The Lost Abbey Hotel -- 101st Street and Broadway

2012-02-06T03:14:00.000-08:00

A pencil sketch was made of the mansion by Charles W. Staniford, Chief Engineer of the Dock Department -- illustration from "The New York of Yesteryear" (copyright expired).

By the middle of the 18^th century the upper reaches of Manhattan were peppered with farms and estates—the humble dwellings peacefully coexisting with the grand country seats. Among them was the home of Humphrey Jones.

Known originally as the Humphrey Jones Homestead, its name understated its grandeur. Sitting on 109 acres of grounds, the house was approached by a long, elevated drive called the Cherry Lane. The drive branched off of the Bloomingdale Road (later Broadway) approximately where 101^st Street is today.

Stone walls raised Cherry Lane above the ground, creating a dramatic approach to the mansion. It was lined with fruit trees which provided a beautiful setting in the Spring when they flowered, and “produced an abundant crop” later in the summer.

Humphrey’s home was just north of the Bloomingdale Village. The “mansion house,” as it was called, was built of stone, with a two-story portico supported by massive columns. The house sat on a raised platform, accessed by a broad set of stone steps. It looked out onto the river, catching the cool breezes in summer. The rear elevation which faced towards the Bloomingdale Road was a mirror-image of the front. Inside were thirty rooms.

A smaller house, known as “the cottage,” sat not far from the main house along with other outbuildings.

Humphrey Jones lived here throughout the Revolution. Fearful for his property, apparently, he wondered in a letter at one point why the army needed to push the enemy up the Bloomingdale Road. In 1786 the entire property was sold to John Jones, possibly a relative, for 2,300 pounds.

Robert T. Kemble paid $25,000 for the property in 1798 and 13 years later William Rogers bought it for $29,000.

The Rogers would have entertained their neighbors at dinners and dances. Estates relatively nearby were owned by John Jacob Astor, William Hayward, James De Peyster, Nicholas De Peyster, James Stryker, Thomas Buckley and Gordon S. Mumford. The parlors and dining rooms of the Bloomingdale area were essentially closed to outsiders and protocol was rigidly followed.

William Rogers died in 1818, leaving the mansion to his wife, Ann, in his will. By common usage it became known for years as the “Ann Rogers House.”

When Mrs. Rogers died in 1833, her executors, William Heywood and Francis B. Cutting, had the estate surveyed and divided into building plots. On November 1, 1835 it was sold at auction for a total cost of $716,000.

At the sale was “Frederick Weber, Gentleman,” who bid $27,520 for 64 lots. Weber’s sizable slice of the land included the “Mansion House,” and “other buildings on land bounded northwesterly by the Hudson River, northeasterly by 102d Street, as laid out by the Commissioners of Streets and Roads, southeasterly by the Eleventh Avenue, as so laid out, and southwesterly by 101^st Street.”

Weber lived in the mansion until 1843, when he rented the entire property to Killaen H. van Rensselaer. The van Rensselaers and the Webers were close friends, and in September of that year van Rensselaer and his wife, Matilda, “stood sponsors at the baptism of two of Weber’s children,” as recorded by historian Hopper Striker Mott in 1908.

Killaen van Rensselaer converted the mansion to a “driving resort,” called the “Abbey Hotel.” The inn was highly successful, but only two years later Abram W. Jackson took over the lease at $900 a year for a term of five years. Within a year both parties cancelled the lease and Weber took over operation of the hotel.

The lush grounds were an attraction not only for weary travelers along the Bloomingdale Road. In 1844 the Second Company of the Seventh Regiment of New York went on an excursion to the hotel for target practice.

The reputation of the Abbey Hotel is obvious in a passage from The Gazette of the Union written in 1849. “They were near the road that leads to the ‘Abbey Hotel.’ (Every one knows where the ‘Abbey’ is; or , if they do not, they ought to; and, that being the case, it is not our intention to enlighten such willful ignorance.)”

Weber and his wife, the former Caroline C. Fawsitt, (“a woman very much younger than himself,” according to Mott), moved into the main house with their English housekeeper, Mrs. Hayes, and a manservant who tended to the horses and drove Weber to the city. Two of the Weber children, Frederick and Matilda, were born in the house.

When Edward Jones signed the lease on the hotel, the Webers moved into the cottage on the grounds, and there two other children were born. Jones, however, did not have the friendly disposition to be an inn-keeper. Hopper Mott, with his unrivaled turn of a phrase, noted that “Jones is said to have been altogether too straight-laced a man for a successful boniface and was dispossessed.”

In relatively rapid succession, the hotel saw new proprietors: Captain Tilton, an officer on boat from Albany; the Ling and Jewell, “sporting men.”

On July 21, 1854 two pugilists, Tom Hyer and John Morrissey “became hot-blooded and considerably excited,” according to The New York Times. The boxers had a difference of opinion regarding stake money on a fight and when they came face-to-face in Mr. Platt’s Saloon, it was decided they would duel at the Abbey Hotel.

The duel was to take place at 5:30 the following morning. Word spread throughout the city and before daybreak the Bloomingdale Road was lined with “some fifteen coaches, filled with shoulder-hitters” headed for the hotel.

With seeming disappointment, The Times reported that “the contestants finally came face to face, but all that was done amounted to nothing more than a tongue-lashing on both sides…No blows whatever were exchanged, but we hear that they both used very high words, and showed revolvers. How the affair will end, time only will tell.”

The end came for the Abbey Hotel in 1859. Unlike so many of the grand country estates which would be demolished for their land value, the hotel was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. On December 20 the property was sold at auction for building sites.

A year later, in an attempt, perhaps, at nostalgic reminiscing, Valentine’s Manual of 1860 published a print of the Abbey Hotel “in 1847.” The problem was that the artist got it all wrong.

The Valentine's Manual of 1860 (reproduced here in 1864) got it all wrong -- print NYPL Collection

Surviving members of the Weber family “are satisfied that the place never looked like the representation in the Manual,” said Hopper Striker Mott. Ironically, the few sketches and watercolors that were executed were not well-done, or were damaged or lost.

The result is that the Valentine depiction of the Abbey Hotel, while painfully erroneous, is the sole portrayal of the grand house most people will ever see--making it even more lost.

The German Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Paul -- 315 West 22nd Street

2012-02-04T03:42:00.000-08:00

Although the great influx of German immigrants into New York City would not begin until the 1850s, there was a significant population as early as the 18^th century. On August 22, 1841 a group of German Lutherans were organized by the Rev. F. W. Geissenhainer as the “German United Evangelical Lutheran Church of the City of New York.”

While the bulk of German immigrants settled on the Lower East Side, in what would become known as Kleindeutchland, or Little Germany, this congregation established its church on the West Side, at the corner of 6^th Avenue and 15^th Street. The church was dedicated in 1842, only to be razed 18 years later. A new building was completed on the same site in 1861; but after 37 years of use it, too, would be demolished.

Under the leadership of the German-born Rev. Leo Koenig, the parish grew and prospered. Koenig spearheaded the relocation of the church slightly uptown to the Chelsea area, a neighborhood of mixed cultures and nationalities.

In 1897 the property was sold for $190,000 and on June 30 congregant Jacob Klingenstein purchased three old buildings at Nos. 313, 313-1/2, and 315 West 22^nd Street for the new building site. Klingenstein spent a total of $41,800 for the land.

On the afternoon of July 4, 1897 the cornerstone for the new building was laid, with Rev. Koenig personally placing the mortar below the stone. In the stone was placed a tin box containing coins, current newspapers and church documents.

The New York Times pronounced that the new structure would be “of Gothic architecture, and is to have two spires, one somewhat taller than the other. There will be placed over the entrance a large memorial window.”

German-born architect Francis A. Minuth designed the new church building. Minuth used Indiana limestone which gleamed like marble against the streetscape of brownstone rowhouses. Dedicated on February 13, 1898, the church, which could accommodate between 650 and 700 worshipers, cost a total of $150,000—leaving the treasury with an admirable endowment of $50,000 from the sale of the old property.

With the dedication, the church changed its name to the German Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Paul in the City of New York.

In reporting on the dedication, The Times noted that “both interior and exterior [are] in Ionic style.” The newspaper had gotten the architectural style right the first time. It was by all means Gothic Revival with a visually-appealing symmetrical façade, its balance broken only by the divergent heights of the two steeples. The taller spire towered 126 feet from the pavement.

Inside, five memorial windows ringed the apse, executed by Mayer & Co. of Munich. They were presented to the church as a memorial to the first pastor F. W. Geissenheiner, by his children and two parishioners, H. G. Mohlman and N. Betjeman. The brass altar lights and crucifix were also imported from Munich, a gift of Rev. Koenig.

Heavy, clustered columns pierced the galleries, rising to the groin-vaulted ceiling. Fronting the large rose window, the stenciled pipes of the Jardine & Son organ, which cost $3,140, formed a colorful screen.

The outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 marked especially troubling times for German congregations and neighborhoods throughout the city. Tensions increased as German-Americans were viewed with suspicion with the United States’ entry into the conflict in 1917.

It was during this disturbing time that Rev. Leo Koenig reclined on his sofa at 80 West 12^th Street to take a nap on the afternoon of October 13, 1919. The man who had led his congregation for four decades and spearheaded the to move to West 22^nd Street died quietly in his sleep.

As the war faded into memory and the Jazz Age transformed the globe, the unconventional Baron Ehrenfried Guenther Freiherr von Huenefeld – known as “The Crazy Baron”—took off from Ireland in a monoplane for New York City on April 12, 1928. With him was an Irish pilot, Major James C. Fitzmaurice, and an American, Floyd Bennet.

A day later the pair crash landed on a frozen lake on Greenly Island, Newfoundland; somewhat successfully completing the first East to West transatlantic flight. The weight of the airplane broke the ice and the craft with its damaged propeller partially sunk; but it was later recovered.

The pilots were eventually rescued and transported to New York City where cheering masses awaited. But before the triumphant reception and President Calvin Coolidge’s presentation of the Distinguished Flying Cross, which would be attended by over 2 million people on May 17, Baron von Huenefeld went to church.

On May 6 the baron attended the 10:30 service at St. Paul’s. It was an exciting day for the congregation. The President of the Lutheran Synod of New York and New England was in attendance to greet the aviator on behalf pf the New York Lutheran Ministers’ Association. The New York Times, the day before, promised that “The birdman will deliver a brief address in German to the congregation.”

The disturbing threat of war with Germany once again loomed as the Rev. Henry Paul Suhr was installed as pastor on the morning of June 23, 1940. In the German language service, vague references to the uncomfortable state of Anglo-German relations were made. The visiting Rev. Heinz. W. H. Kuegler spoke of the pastor’s responsibility to preserve the church as an institution of Christian truth “regardless of world events and circumstances.” And Rev. Thomas Honiger prayed that “God’s joy may still remain in human hearts even in the midst of darkness.”

The following year, after Germany declared war on the United States, the church was prohibited from publishing its newsletter in German. Following the war, St. Paul’s was deeply involved in relief efforts for the war victims in Germany. By the end of 1945 the congregation raised over $10,500 and gathered thousands of pounds of clothing.

As the 20^th century wore on, most ethnic communities diluted as immigrant cultures became absorbed. Yet unlike the other German churches of Manhattan, the congregation of St. Paul’s remained mainly German, and is the last remaining parish that offers an entirely German service. It is a welcome find for German tourists seeking worship services in their native language.

In 1994 the century-old organ was repaired and rebuilt and in 2005 the parish began a five-year, $1.6 million renovation and restoration of the structure. Included were steeple repair, structural steel work, and masonry restoration. At the same time, updating of electrical, lighting and heating and air conditioning systems were addressed.

The impressive white stone church stands as a living monument to an immigrant population that continues to thrive in its new home, despite occasional obstacles and hardships.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

"Crooked Work" and a Shoot-Out -- The Castree Building - 121 Hudson Street

2012-02-03T03:20:00.000-08:00

photo by Alice Lum

Three-year old John Castree was brought to New York by relatives from County Tyrone, Ireland in 1814. Castree’s mother intended to follow soon after, but died before the intended voyage. It would be twelve or fifteen years before the boy’s father arrived.

John was enrolled in the public schools, but left while still very young to work in the grocery store of his prosperous uncle, James Beatty. Before long he had his own business and at the age of 25 was wealthy enough to move into a fine home at No. 121 Hudson Street in 1836, near fashionable St. John’s Park.

By now John Castree was less involved in the grocery trade than in insurance, real estate and banking. He was not only a stockholder in some of the leading firms, but was a director in several of them. By the 1880s he was president of the Irving Savings Institution, a member of the Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, and of the Mercantile Exchange.

Other changes had come about by this time, as well. The once-elegant St. John’s Park neighborhood was now home to warehouses and freight yards. The blocks directly surrounding Castree’s former home had become, coincidentally, the center of the wholesale grocery trade. And yet Castree not only still owned No. 121 Hudson, but he had bought up significant property in the neighborhood.

In 1888 Castree hired esteemed architect Thomas R. Jackson to design a warehouse building across the street from his old home, at Nos. 117-119 Hudson Street.

John Castree died a year later, in 1889. His estate commissioned Jackson, again, to design a warehouse building to replace the three brick structures at the corner of Hudson and North Moore Streets, including No. 121 Hudson.

Jackson's earlier commission for Castree, directly across the street (above), was a near match -- photo by Alice Lum

Completed in 1891, the new building was a near-copy of the earlier structure. Inspired by the popular Romanesque Revival movement at the time, Jackson created a utilitarian warehouse with handsome elements: arched three-story arcades at the upper level; robust brick piers with ornate, garlanded capitals; and a cornice of brick corbels. Separating the third and fourth floors, a continuous granite frieze announces the name CASTREE BUILDING on both elevations.

Jackson used cast iron, manufactured by the J. B. & J. M. Cornell foundry, for the heavily-used street level with its loading bays. Despite the near-industrial use, the first floor boasted attractive proportions and handsome glass transoms.

Boldly carved lettering announced the name of the building -- photo by Alice Lum

The lease on the impressive new warehouse was signed immediately by the respected wholesale grocers, C. Burkhalter & Co. It would not be a long-term lease, as things turned out.

Shortly after moving in, the firm purchased an unusually large among of food products. Then, in October of 1892, it declared bankruptcy, listing $600,000 in liabilities; about $150,000 more than the company’s assets. Upon investigation, it was found that the large stock of products recently purchased had disappeared.

“Crooked work was charged,” said The New York Times, “and the creditors combined to find out the whereabouts of their property.”

C. Burkhalter & Co., was dissolved and its president, Charles Burkhalter, disgraced by the scandal.

Burkhalter & Co. was followed quickly at No. 121 Hudson Street by another wholesale grocer, Seeman Brothers. Run by brothers Joseph, Stanley and Sigel W. Seeman, the dealers were among the largest in the city.

Crates and boxes piled high on the sidewalks along the loading docks of the warehouses along Hudson and North Moore Streets. In 1901 Policeman Joseph E. Burke of the Leonard Street Station complained to the Seeman Brothers management that he had torn his jacket on one of their crates and demanded $22.50 to replace it. The brothers bulked at the extortion until Burke compromised at $10.

Word of the policeman’s actions reached the station house and Captain Stephen O’Brien accused him of taking an old, worn jacket to the grocers in order to pretend his jacket had been ripped. The Seeman warehouse was not even on the patrolman’s beat.

In the end the matter came before the deputy commissioner and Burke was fined a month’s pay for violating departmental regulations.

Seeman Brothers managed to run its business quietly, with little unwelcome press. One exception came on November 3, 1911 when the Department of Agriculture seized and condemned 734 cases of tomato pulp. The department contended that the product was adulterated, “for the reason that it consisted in whole or in part of a filthy and decomposed vegetable substance.”

The embarrassing situation would be a rare black mark on the record of the highly-respected food purveyor.

The firm made news again in 1920 when a blizzard struck New York City. When the Street Cleaning Department was slow to clear the streets in the warehouse district, Seeman Brothers joined other firms in putting 2,000 workers to work for eight hours shoveling. If the companies hoped to make a statement against the Street Cleaning Department’s lack of efficiency, it did not work.

Mayor Hylan, instead, complimented the merchants and urged people to form block parties to remove snow. “The people during the Summer time have block parties and enjoy themselves immensely,” he said. “Many people have snow parties and have a great deal of fun. If the people will get together in their blocks, have a snow party and open up a passage way through the street so that the fire apparatus can get through in case of fire, they will get a whole lot of fun out of it…I would also suggest that the gutters and sidewalks be cleaned.”

Three years later Seeman Brothers witnessed a scene that could have been taken from an Elliot Ness gangster story. On Friday, February 16, 1923, bank messenger William Buck prepared to carry the Seeman Brothers payroll across the street from the Pacific Bank at No. 122 Hudson. The armed security guard, Robert Johnson accompanied him. The pair made the trip across the street with more than $9000 in cash every week.

Around 2:00 Buck wrapped the money in plain brown paper and tucked it under his arm. The two men crossed Hudson Street and headed for the elevator. But they were being watched.

As cars and trucks bounced along the stone pavement, an idling automobile with its driver inside sat outside of No. 121 Hudson Street. Three young men in caps were casually chatting in front of the freight elevator. They watched as the driver in the car gave them the signal that the payroll was on its way.

As Buck and Johnson exited the passenger elevator into the hallway to the cashier’s office, the three men rushed from the freight elevator with revolvers exposed. When the bank employees put up a fight, the robbers shot.

As Seeman employees rushed into the hallway, a gunfight ensued between the robbers, who now had the cash, and the bank employees. The three men escaped down the freight elevator and into the waiting car.

Despite the crowds of pedestrians, workers and vehicles, the gunfire continued as the car drove away. “Both men sent a dozen shots at the automobile, and the escaping robbers responded with a volley,” reported The Times.

Sigel W. Seeman, director of the firm, died in 1931. Before the decade was over, none of the brothers remained in the company.

In 1942, when Silvan L. Stix was president, the company initiated an astoundingly early example of computer accounting. Seeman Brothers hired fifteen men to do a break-down analysis of items, quantities, price and class of trade. The statistics were tabulated through “electrical bookkeeping machines on 75,000 hole-punched cards.”

At a time when few companies used technology more advanced that hand-cranked adding machines, Seeman Brothers was at least a decade ahead of its time.

Seeman Brothers immense success in the whole grocery industry resulted in its filling nearly the entire length of North Moore Street from Hudson Street to Greenwich Street by mid-century. By the 1960s, however, the company was gone. Warren Fastenings Corporation would occupy the building for a time afterward.

And then towards the end of the 20^th century, Tribeca was discovered. Celebrities like Robert DeNiro moved in, restaurants replaced loading docks and wealthy New Yorkers transformed factory space into luxury residences. And so it would be for No. 121 Hudson Street.

In 1999 it became part of the $35 million renovation that would join the Castree Building with the three warehouse running down North Moore Street. The result would be a 125,000 square-foot condominium.

Real estate investment firm Greystone & Company hired New York firm Meltzer/Mandl Architects to design the renovation. Meltzer/Mandl calls the resultant project a “faithful restoration” of the buildings’ exteriors.

Indeed, the Castree Building, sitting squarely on the site of John Castree’s Federal residence, is pristine and attractive once again.

The 1889 2nd German Baptist Church -- 407 West 43rd Street

2012-02-02T03:08:00.000-08:00

photo by Alice Lum

In 1885 the Second German Baptist Church, established in 1855, worshiped in a humble building on West 45^th Street near 9^th Avenue. At the time of the congregation’s founding, the area was sparsely settled and semi-rural. By now it was far from that.

The Dr. Rev. Walter Rauschenbusch arrived to lead the congregation in 1885. Not only did he find a church building that was in serious disrepair; the Second German Baptist Church was barely functioning, and the neighborhood was crime-infested and dangerous.

In the nearby neighborhood of West 38^th and 39^th Street, near 10^th Avenue was a string of dilapidated frame buildings which the police had given names such as “House of Blazes,” “the Barracks,” and “Hell’s Kitchen.” The area was described by The New York Times in September 1881 as “one of the most miserable and crime-polluted neighborhoods in this City.” The newspaper said in an article a week later, “there is more disease, crime, squalor, and vice to the square inch in this part of New-York.”

Rauschenbusch was shocked by the vile and dangerous conditions in which his parish lived. Within three weeks between August 14 and September 21 of that year, a police officer, Andrew Smith of the 20^th Precinct, was overpowered and beaten, the son of a detective was shot, and a small girl received a fatal bullet wound.

The Times said September 22, “the entire locality is probably the lowest and filthiest in the City, a locality where law and order are openly deified, where might makes right, and depravity revels riotously in squalor and reeking filth. The whole neighborhood is an eyesore to the respectable people who live or are compelled to do business in the vicinity, a source of terror to the honest poor, and an unmitigated nuisance to the Police of the Twentieth Precinct, whose record-books are filled to overflowing with the names of the residents of these tenement houses.”

By the time Rauschenbusch arrived, the name of one squalid building was being used to define the entire area: “the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.”

The minister had already begun forming ideas a bit more liberal than was expected among Baptist preachers; but his exposure to the squalor and suffering of the residents here would change his entire outlook. His 125 congregants were mostly factory workers who had immigrated from Germany. Their lives were joyless and difficult.

Rauschenbusch would later explain his initial confusion. He had no concept of using the church as a social reform tool. “My idea then was to save souls, in the ordinarily accepted religious sense,” he said.

But gradually he set off to change things. His energetic, caring and compassionate sermons gave hope to a long-suffering congregation. He befriended John D. Rockefeller who had taken an interest in the minister’s bright and promising son. Rockefeller donated $8,000 to a building fund for a desperately-needed new church.

Soon two plots of land—Nos. 407 and 409 West 43^rd Street—were purchased from Honora O’Meara and Bridget Kelly in June 1889. Architect Henry F. Kilburn designed the new church in the highly popular Romanesque Revival style. The cornerstone was laid later that year with the inscription Christus der Eckstein – Christ is the Cornerstone. Dedicated in March 1890, the building reflected the strict, no-nonsense Germanic temperament of its congregation.

The handsomely-carved cornerstone read "Christ is the Cornerstone" -- photo by Alice Lum

A sturdy base of rough-cut stone contained two arched openings on either end, with diminutive medieval pillars. Above, two stories of red brick were complemented with brownstone trim. Brick corbels on either side of the central mass added to the small amount of architectural embellishment.
It was not overly-impressive, nor meant to be, and The New York Times would later politely call it “an attractive edifice.”

Despite its nearly Spartan appearance, Rauschenbusch openly worried that the new building could be too grand for the spiritual health of his flock. But in the meantime, he continued to see the misery around him and to change his religious outlook.

Writing to his cousin, Maria Doring, he said “the world is hard and without feeling. Here I see so much of this that my heart bleeds for the victims.”

Yet his more traditional colleagues urged him to forget social reform and get back to saving souls. The minister could not. The children of his congregation, packed into drafty, filthy tenement rooms, were malnourished and easily succumbed to disease. He regularly conducted funerals for the small German children.

“Oh, the children’s funerals,” he wrote later. “They gripped my heart—that was one of the things I always went away thinking about0—why did the children have to die?”

Walter Rauschenbusch would become a leading force in social reform, socialism and women’s suffrage. Although, eleven years later, he would leave the Second German Baptist Church to accept the position of Chairman of New Testament Interpretation and Pastoral Theology in the Rochester Theological Seminary, he had made a tremendous impact on the German population of Hell’s Kitchen and social reform in New York City.

The Second German Baptist Church struggled on. In April 1933, with a mortgage of $16,000 still on the property, the church was conveyed to the General Missionary Society of the German Baptist Churches of North America. Despite the diligent reform work of its leaders, the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood surrounding the church was little improved throughout the 20^th century. Eventually, the congregation was no more.

Despite the poverty of the neighborhood, it is clean and swept in 1927 -- photo NYPL Collection

In what The New York Times would call “a painful period of transition,” Arnie Lord converted the church building into a nightclub called “Church” in the 1960s. Peter Shapiro, in his “Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco,” called it “perhaps the most over-the-top of all of the hippie sensoriums.”

The ironically-named Lord installed an enormous mural of Satan opposite the altar. Crowding around the demon were nude “angels” engaged in sexual acts. Pews were arranged around the perimeter of the sanctuary as banquettes and the DJ was stationed at the marble communion table, backed by a screen of organ pipes.

The sacrilege of Church was so offensive that the Roman Catholic Diocese, normally unaffected by Protestant affairs, pressed the courts to close the club down. What should have seemed to end the humiliation of the church structure in truth only worsened it.

The building was taken over by another club, and it was now called Sanctuary. The patrons were mostly young gay men and in the pre-AIDS days of rampant sex, the club became a bacchanal. Shapiro noted “The sex wasn’t confined to the dance floor, nor was it confined to simulation. There were constant orgies in the toilets, and the club would be eventually closed down in 1972 because its patrons regularly used the hallways of neighboring buildings for impromptu ‘bump’ sessions.”

Dignity would return to the abused church building when it was converted to an off-Broadway theater in 1976. Home to the Chelsea Theatre Center and the West Side Arts Theatre, it premiered plays such as Vanities and What the Butler Saw.

In 1991 the theater was renovated, including the opening of a central entrance. It is now the Westside Theatre, a respected off-Broadway venue with two auditoriums, the Upstairs theater, capable of seating 299, and the slightly smaller Downstairs theater.

The Hell’s Kitchen area that Warren Rauschenbusch tried so valiantly to reform is now an upscale residential neighborhood with trendy restaurants, apartment buildings and one off-Broadway theater with a great deal of history.

Carerre & Hastings' 1895 Life Building - 19 West 31st Street

2012-02-01T02:49:00.000-08:00

Sculptor Philip Martiny's exuberant "Winged Life" survives beautifully intact above the entrance.

In 1883 a group of Harvard graduates put together a humor magazine inspired by the Harvard Lampoon. The young men hoped to become an American version of the British Punch and the recently successful Judge. The Lampoon, in truth, was itself a close imitation to Punch.

Life would be different, however. While the popular American Judge and Puck magazines were filled with strident humor; Life would be more subtle. The editors ran only black-and-white cartoons and illustrations and kept its joking above reproach – it was literary humor for the refined and proper reader. Half a century later it would be the model for another high-toned magazine, The New Yorker.

The magazine’s success would be amplified four years later when 19-year old illustrator Charles Dana Gibson began contributing drawings. The young man’s ability to transform witty observations of life into illustration form made him almost an instant favorite among readers. His familiar depictions of beautiful Victorian women in shirtwaist blouses with leg-of-mutton sleeves became known as the “Gibson Girls.”

Life magazine was so successful by 1893 its offices at 25 West 23^rd street were no longer adequate. At No. 19 West 31^st Street stood the brownstone mansion of philanthropist and social reformer Louisa Lee Schuyler. The area by now, however, was no longer the exclusive residential neighborhood it had been, and the house, along with its neighbor at No. 21, were sold to the magazine as its building site.

On June 2, 1893 the Buildings Department reported “filing by the managers of Life Publishing Company” for an eight-story “brick store and offices” to cost $160,000. The magazine contracted architectural firm Carrere & Hastings to design the structure. The respected firm would become well-known for its work in the Beaux Arts style just becoming popular; culminating in its masterful New York Public Library four years later.

For the Life Building the architects produced a striking Beaux Arts structure of limestone and red brick. Two enormous arched openings flanked the central entrance in the rusticated limestone base. Above, the brick façade was embellished with carved garlands, scrolled brackets, classical pediments over the third story windows and ornamented balconies. The magazine’s name was worked into the decorative cast iron window guards.

The focal point of the design was the elaborate sculpture above the doorway carved by esteemed artist Philip Martiny. The magazine’s symbol “Winged Life” (very similar to the Puck Magazine emblem), sits within the scrolled, broken pediment. The cherub writes on a pad, surrounded by symbols of the various arts.

The magazine's title was worked into the ironwork, along with double L's in the cartouches.

The new headquarters, completed in 1895, was an innovative combination of functions. Not only did it house the editorial offices of Life Publishing but space was rented out to other publishing firms – both The Area and Alliance Publishing would rent space here. More interesting, however, were the apartments on the upper floors.

Two-room apartments were available for upscale, unmarried men. In 1898 author Charles Brodie Patterson lived here when he published his “Beyond the Clouds,” a collection of lectures “on the spiritual science.” The Life Building was home to Benjamin Barker, an attorney and member of the firm Smith & Barker at 120 Broadway. In 1903 Edward Coster Wilmerding, a bond salesman with Kinnicutt & Potter and a graduate of the prestigious Groton School lived here; as did Robert Elmer Booraem, in 1907, who traced his family to New Netherlands in 1636.

Several of Life’s staff lived here as well, no doubt finding the arrangement more than convenient. Among these was F T. Richards who had studied under Thomas Eakins and Edmund B. Bensell.

In the meantime, Dana Gibson’s popularity and success soared and Life Publishing signed an exclusive contract with him.

In 1898 the magazine announced that “After January 1^st Mr. Gibson will draw only for Life and his work can be seen in no other publication.” The magazine offered original proofs of his work for $2.00. “These proofs are hand-printed, on Japan paper, mounted ready for framing. They are attractive and artistic decorations for any house and are as suitable presents—holiday, wedding, birthday, or for any occasion—as one can give.

Gibson had the uncanny ability to capture everyday incidents and ranges of emotion in one frame, as in "The Crush" in 1901. The object of the boy's affection is the epitome of the illustrator's famed "Gibson Girl." (copyright expired)

Gibson, who could afford a fashionable home on East 73^rd Street with his wife, Irene, maintained his studio in the Life Building. From here he became the magazine’s most valued employee. Who’s Who in New York City and State remarked in 1904, “he is noted for his simple and telling style of drawing, bringing out with a few bold strokes the beautiful, strong types known as the ‘Gibson Women,’ and the fine athletic ‘Gibson Men.’”

A LIFE cover from 1911 hints at the humorous material inside. (copyright expired)

The Great Depression struck what would become a fatal blow and the magazine left the Life Building for rented offices. Before long the new Time publishing firm, wanting to offer a magazine that showcased America to the world, purchased the name Life and the humor magazine merged with Judge. It was the end of the line for the upscale, sophisticated periodical.

The Life Building, in the meantime, was converted to an “apartment hotel” with retail space for four stores on the sidewalk level. In 1936 the sale of the building by the Central Savings Bank to the 19 West Thirty-first Street Corporation was announced. The new owners began a modernization of the forty two-room apartments and penthouse.

By the 1960s the neighborhood had become somewhat sketchy. The two-room apartments in what was now called the Clinton Hotel had become 91 single hotel rooms. In one of them lived 19-year old Murray King.

On August 22, 1966 the boy and two older men attacked 24-year old Brian Jenkins and his father as they walked along 34^th Street between 7^th and 8^th Avenue. What the thugs did not know was that Jenkins was a First Lieutenant with the Green Berets, on leave from Fort Bragg, and his 48-year old father was a wrestler and swimmer. It was an uneven match.

When King and his co-defendants appeared before Judge Manuel Gomez in Criminal Court, they asked to swear out complaints against the lieutenant and his father; “their faces puffed, elbows bruised and eyes swollen,” as reported in The New York Times.

The Clinton Hotel was sold in January 1970 at a time when things were slowly improving for the area once again. By 1988 a restoration was underway, headed by manager Abraham Puchall, and in 1991 the hotel reopened as the Herald Square Hotel.

The reborn hotel gives a deliberate nod at the history of the building. Some rooms are furnished in reproduction turn-of-the-century furniture, framed copies of Life covers line the walls and a cast of Martiny’s “Winged Life” is prominently displayed in the lobby.

The façade of Carrere & Hastings’ Beaux Arts Life Building is remarkably unchanged and Philip Martiny’s wonderful sculpture happily remains above the doorway.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

Muslin Drawers and Compassion -- Nos. 45-51 West 21st Street

2012-01-31T03:16:00.000-08:00

Until 1901 the Evangelical Lutheran Church stood on the north side of West 21^st Street between 5^th and 6^th Avenues. Smart brownstone residences lined the street, the last remnants of the block’s genteel history that was quickly coming to an end.

By now Fifth Avenue in the area was commercial and many of the 21^st Street homes had been converted for business purposes. Where the Lutheran Church had been were now two industrial loft buildings stretching from No. 45 to 51.

Meanwhile, further downtown on at Nos. 105-113 Wooster Street was the office and factory building of D. E. Sicher & Co. The firm had begun in 1872 with three sewing machine operators and grew to be the largest women’s underwear manufacturers in the world. By now it employed 3,000 workers who turned out “muslin drawers” and other feminine under garments.

When one of the loft buildings on West 21^st Street was heavily damaged by fire in 1908, Dudley D. Sicher, president of D. E. Sicher, jumped on the opportunity. On September 13 the New York Tribune reported that the company purchased both buildings.

Three days later The New York Times added its take. “The removal of this concern…from Wooster Street to Twenty-first Street is a striking illustration of the northward migration from the older mercantile district,” it said, “and will probably be not without influence in bringing about other removals.” The article projected that Sicher would spent about $100,000 to renovate the building and install its new factory.

The firm hired architects Goldwin, Starrett & Van Vleck to re-do the damaged building. Completed in February 1909, it was an exceptionally handsome industrial structure. Composed of red brick with limestone trim, it rose six floors from the pavement. Two heavy stone entrances flanked the long salesroom space at street level. The upper floors were dedicated to office and factory space. Expansive windows on the second and third floors allowed sunlight to flood into the work areas. Contrasting with the red brick were carved limestone pediments and window framing, and quoins.

The New York Times printed a rendering of the building a year before its completion (copyright expired)

Dudley Sicher would earn a reputation through his concern of workers’ safety and conditions. His input was evident here. “In these workrooms many new devices will be employed both for disposing of waste materials and adding to the building’s sanitary and fireproof qualities,” reported The Times.

The new building also boasted its own “light, power, and ventilating plants.”

The workers who filled the upper floors of the Sicher Building were mostly untrained, uneducated immigrants; many of them girls in their late teens. Working conditions for sewing girls at the beginning of the century were often brutal. As labor unions rose up against harsh owners and managers, strikes crippled production. The result was often vicious retaliation by management.

Unusual for factory buildings of the time, large windows on the second and third floor gave sewing girls exceptional sunlight.

Sicher, on the other hand, was compassionate. In 1912 he pleaded with other factory owners to participate in collective bargaining and to recognize the union. His own workers, accustomed to wages above scale, ultimately refused to join the labor organizations and Sicher’s factory paradoxically became a union shop in principle and an open shop in practice. He introduced the idea of a company cafeteria and a “clubroom” in which workers had “community sings” to alleviate the monotony of their work day.

In the spring of 1913 the garment industry was hit with a general strike. Rather than bristle at the workers’ insolence, Dudley Sicher was moved. Years later he would recall that one of his earliest memories was of his father lugging a bucket of coal up five flights of stairs to keep his six or seven employees warm in the winter. It was a legacy he would carry with him throughout his life.

On March 26, at a dinner of the Cotton Garment Manufacturers of New York, he read aloud a poem he had composed during the strike. His hope was to inspire the other members “to recognize their obligations and responsibilities toward their employees.”

Sicher’s poem was entitled “The Dawn of a Better Day” and included lines such as:

Let us wipe the slate of the bitter score,

Let us turn the blotted page,

And grant that we owe our workers more

Than the dole of a “living wage.”

They give us more than their time and skill

In the health and strength they spend,

And earn the right to the kindly will

And helpful hand of a friend.

We must give them more than the coin we pay

Ere we hail the Dawn of a Better Day.

That same year Sicher was overtaken with an innovative and unheard of idea. Strikes could be avoided, he decided, if the workers were educated. Paid schooling for the immigrant girls was his solution.

“The idea came to me when the strike was on,” he told a reporter for The Evening World. He explained that the Irish-American, German-American and “plain American” workers who had at least an elementary education “stuck by us—even sent a committee to assure the firm they had no complaint.”

“But the other girls, who came mostly from the pasture lands of Russia and Siberia, marched out the minute the strike was declared…I found out that the girls who walked out did so because they were undeveloped mentally and took their ideas from the mouth of some fiery agitator.”

Sicher convinced the Board of Education to conduct a test program with sixteen girls. The first group of eight would attend classes in English, arithmetic, and “mental, moral and physical hygiene” for a week, earning their regular pay. The two groups would alternate in work and school every week thereafter throughout the test period.

“The idea of the experiment is to help employees to help themselves. We want to assist them in making their pay envelopes go further. We desire to help the girls by training them for economic advancement.”

A year later, after the program had become fully-established, Lizzie E. Rector, principal of Public School 4 where the girls were taught, told The Sun ”If the employers of New York city would show the interest in this matter that D. E. Sicher has it wouldn’t require fire years to wipe out the illiteracy in this city.”

On June 4, 1914 Dudley Sicher hosted the first graduation exercises for the factory girls who wore white dresses and, according to a Times editorial, “were as proud as the graduating class at any commencement in the country.” The excusably-proud Sicher commented, “this is the first attempt of the kind in New York City, possibly in the world and is the beginning of a great movement to hasten assimilation necessary to national unit; to promote industrial betterment by reducing friction caused by failure to comprehend directions and to decrease the waste and loss of wage incidental to the illiterate worker.”

The concept, in 1914, of paying workers to sit in school rooms rather than to sit at sewing machines was revolutionary, in the very least. But it would not be the end of Dudley Sicher’s forward-thinking ideas regarding his workers.

In April 1917, just days before the United States entered World War I, the American Red Cross spoke to 500 of D. E. Sicher’s employees during the lunch hour. The girls were invited to enroll in evening classes in hygiene and caring for the sick.

The New York Tribune reported that “Most of the girls, who are nearly all foreign born, accepted the offer enthusiastically. If this experiment is productive of results, other factories in the city will be called upon.”

Fredericka Farley of the Red Cross told the girls that in “case of hostilities” their services could be invaluable. “Should war be declared, the workers of factories and, in fact, all groups of trained workers, would be most useful to the government. For example, this factory might be set to work of supplying the government with hospital garments.”

Dudley Sicher announced that since the course took one and a half hours, he would allow the girls to leave work forty-five minutes early with full pay. As the country was pulled into the war, the girls received the rank of “nurse’s helper” and were eligible to help in government service for cooking, serving food or aiding the sick and wounded.

By 1918 Sicher had established a school on the factory premises for all employees, male and female. Every morning for forty-five minutes employees who wished to participate received instruction in speaking and writing English, composing letters, fundamentals of arithmetic, history and civic government, good citizenship, use of the telephone and the telephone book, and finding one’s way around the city streets, among other useful information. A teacher was provided by the Board of Education and the workers received their full pay for the time.

The New York Tribune praised the in-house school. “[The worker] learns thrift, and subsequently orderliness. Gradually he feels the thrill of power that comes through knowledge. He hears the foreman talking to the boss and understands what is being planned for his welfare and the success of his business. For the first time he appreciates the fact that he is a necessary part of an organization, and natural pride manifests itself in quicker movements and an eager alertness to get the most out of his particular job.”

War brought with it harder times and in 1919 Sicher predicted “that both merchandise and labor are going to continue to become scarcer for many months to come, and that pre-war prices in almost all liens of merchandise and commodities are not to be looked for for many years to come.”

Hard times did not cause the progressive manufacturer to waiver in his programs. He continued with his aspiration of educating not only his staff, but the 20,000 immigrant garment workers in the city.

In 1927 D. E. Sicher & Co., the largest ladies’ lingerie manufacturer in the country, was also turning out “wool shawls, such as are now in vogue in this country, ladies’ hand bags, and men’s athletic underwear, both two-piece and union suits.” That year Dudley Sicher decided to close his factory so he could devote his full energies to charitable causes.

The factory doors would not be closed for another year, however. “Not until the last of the 500 employees had been placed with other concerns did Mr. Sicher close the factory,” reported The Times.

Dudley David Sicher died at his home at 15 East 80^th Street on December 29, 1939. He had spent the remainder of his life in philanthropic endeavors, donating his full-time positions with several organizations. The mark left on the garment industry by the caring and compassionate Sicher was immeasurable.

The dignified factory building of D. E. Sicher & Co. filled with a variety of tenants as West 21^st Street became decidedly industrial. Towards the end of the century the ground floor became home to an enormous night club. Today 20,000 square foot of the building is home to Duvet, a venue space and club.

In April 2011, as the Chelsea neighborhood continued its trendy metamorphosis, the architectural firm of Insite 123 Development signed a five-year least for nearly 3,000 square feet on the fourth floor.

The cast iron ground floor remains unchanged in 2011.

In the meantime, the handsome exterior of the D. E. Sicher & Co. building – where muslin drawers were sewn and immigrant girls learned English—is essentially unchanged.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The Lost 1807 St. John's Chapel -- Varick near Hudson Streets

2012-01-30T03:01:00.000-08:00

photo Library of Congress

In the first years of the 19^th century, Trinity Episcopal Church owned vast amounts of land north of the city, granted by the British Crown in 1705. The Board of Trinity moved to begin development of this unused land, known as the Church Farm, and on September 13, 1802 resolved to erect a chapel of convenience.

When, in March 1803, the Board announced the intended site, an uproar ensued. Erecting a substantial church structure along Hudson Street to the north, it was widely felt, was foolish. The area was undeveloped and boggy, filled with reeds and overrun with mosquitoes and snakes. It was a rural area “where was skating in winter and hunting in summer.”

Trinity was undeterred. The chapel was intended to be the focal point of what would become an exclusive residential neighborhood, centered on a private park.

Architect John McComb had recently completed the design for New York City’s distinguished City Hall, with Joseph-Francois Magnin, which was currently being constructed. The church gave the commission for St. John’s Chapel to McComb.

Construction began later that year and as the church rose, the previously-worthless Hudson Square was converted to an elegant park. By the time the chapel was completed in 1807, St. John’s Park had become accepted as a fashionable area and elegant Federal mansions were being constructed.

The Chapel, the park and the surrounding residences created the most exclusive enclave in New York -- print The New York Mirror 1829 (copyright expired)

John McComb’s completed St. John’s Chapel was magnificent. A near-copy of London’s St. Martin-in-the-fields, it cost a staggering $172,833. The organ, ordered in Philadelphia, cost another $6,000. In 1908 the Architectural Record would call it “in the straitest sect of the British Georgian of its period.” A prominent double-height portico, supported by carved Corinthian sandstone columns sheltered the entrance. Above, a glorious 214-foot tower rose.

The church was among the finest examples of Georgian architecture in the United States -- photo NYPL Collection

“The interior of St. John’s, with its towering side columns and high, wide, sweeping arches, is in keeping with the imposing exterior,” the New-York Tribune commented a century after construction.

photo NYPL Collection

St. John’s Park, anchored by the chapel, became the most fashionable residential neighborhood of the city. Well-dressed ladies strolled its paths and elegant carriages discharged the most respected citizens at the doors of surrounding homes.

St. John's Chapel and the park in winter around 1865 -- print NYPL Collection

Trinity Church was not only in the business of saving souls, it was in the business of business. Two years after the end of the Civil War the church shocked New York City by selling St. John’s Park to the Hudson River Railroad Company. The company immediately began plans to replace the refined private green with a freight terminal.

A stereopticon slide captured the destruction of St. John's Park, to be replaced by a freight terminal, around 1868.

St. John’s Chapel, however, continued on even as its wealthy parishioners began moving away from the noise and dirt of the new rail yards. On December 25, 1869, the New-York Tribune reported on the chapel’s holiday decorations. “There are more than thirty trees in the church, which in some degree, wears the air of a little garden. A running vine festoons the arches on the west end, and the capitals of the pillars are festooned with laurels.” The article added that “There will be an interesting children’s festival in the church on Tuesday evening, 28^th inst., when presents will be liberally distributed, and there will be a grand Christmas tree.”

The following year a similar event was held when approximately 2,000 children crowded into the chapel. “Before the altar was a huge Christmas tree profusely decorated, and lighted by a calcium light,” reported the New-York Tribune on December 28, 1870. “The gifts for the children, chiefly books and toys, were spread on tables in front of the altar. The presents were valuable, liberal contributions, having been made by the vestry of Trinity parish, to which the chapel belongs, and by the congregants.”

One-by-one the grand brick homes were either razed or converted to warehouses and offices as their owners fled the neighborhood. In 1890 The Real Estate Record and Guide noted that fashionable citizens thought “it vulgar to live among the packing boxes, and to inhale the odor of fresh fish and tarpaulins.” John McComb’s refined Georgian edifice now sat among decidedly unfashionable structures.

In 1892 the vestry of Trinity announced its intentions to raze St. John’s chapel. The remaining congregants, as well as indignant citizens who simply admired the chapel’s architectural beauty, rebelled. An ongoing battle to save or destroy the church ensued that would last two decades. At the forefront was St. John’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Philip A. H. Brown who earned the sobriquet “The Fighting Vicar.”

On Sunday, May 2, 1896 Dr. Brown spoke of the church from its pulpit. “It stands today, with its weather-beaten, but still magnificent porch, its thick strong walls, built to last for centuries, one of the finest specimens of this kind of architecture to be found in the country. There are in this city many more costly church buildings, but I don’t know of any which so impresses me with the quiet dignity belonging to the House of God as does St. John’s.”

In 1908 Dr. Manning, Rector of Trinity Church, closed the chapel, saying it “was not good business or religion to continue services where the attendance was so small.”

With Dr. Brown’s death in 1909, the cause was taken up by other concerned citizens as Trinity moved closer to demolition. In April of that year John Burke “and others” filed an injunction against the “Rector, Churchwardens, and Vestrymen of Trinity church, and others,” to prevent the destruction of St. John’s Chapel.

Things worsened in 1912 when the Board of Estimate planned the widening of Varick Street – the portico of St. John’s Chapel sat squarely in the path of the road improvement.

Yet, Borough President George McAneny took up the church’s cause with a brilliant scheme. He proposed that the structure be preserved with the sidewalk simply running under the portico. The plan was based on the identical treatment of St. Michael’s and St. Philip’s churches in Charleston, South Carolina. The city was in agreement. All that was necessary was the consent of the corporation of Trinity Church.

But the Church was still in the business of business. The land on which the century-old structure sat—once virtually worthless—had become exceedingly valuable. Writing in The American Architect in 1912, Ransom W. Haddon recognized the looming danger.

“It is a fact, unfortunate as true, that most of the people here in America take little interest in the few remaining good examples of early Colonial architecture that have escaped destruction…A good example is offered by St. John’s, one of the chapels of Trinity Church, in this city, now menaced by the proposed widening of Varick Street…Unless some action is speedily taken, this venerable building will soon be razed.”

John A. Handforth pleaded in a letter to the editor of the New York Tribune, noting the priceless architectural integrity of the building. “Of the churches designed by Sir Christopher Wren now remaining in the City of London proper,” he wrote, “only two, St. Bride’s and St. Mary-Le-Bow, exceed it in beauty as to detail, and neither is so finely proportioned as is old St. John’s.”

The widening of Varick Street inches closer to St. John's Chapel (background) in 1918 --photo gbfans.com

Intent on realizing the property value under the church, Trinity announced it would donate the building to anyone buying the land. The chess game went on as the widening of Varick Street inched closer and closer to St. John’s Chapel.

And then time ran out.

On October 6, 1918, The New York Times mourned, “In the demolition of St. John’s Chapel New York has lost not only a revered landmark but one of the choicest specimens of Georgian church architecture in the United States…Architects have agreed that St. John’s had few if any superiors of its kind either in England or this country, and it has been said that neither the justly admired St. Michael’s Church in Charleston, Christ Church in Philadelphia, nor King’s Chapel in Boston surpassed it in simplicity of proportion or exquisite refinement of architectural detail.”

Within two years Trinity Church Corporation got its wish when it sold the land to Adolph Pricken of Coastwise Warehouses for a $2 million warehouse.

The AIA Guide to New York City perhaps best summarized the loss. Speaking of the concrete-covered, traffic jammed area still called St. John’s Park, it said “…try to superimpose this image: gents in top hats and elegant women in long skirts strolling in a gracefully quiet park lined with staid houses, the chapel bells tolling in the evening. All gone. Our ancestors preserved many a New York treasure, but blew it here.”

The 1886 Grammar School No. 8 -- 29 King Street

2012-01-28T03:44:00.000-08:00

photo by Alice Lum

David I. Stagg was a busy man in the 1880s. As Superintendent of School Buildings, he was also responsible for designing them and by now there was a flurry of construction as the public school system expanded. On December 14, 1884 alone he submitted plans for two new school buildings and an addition to an existing one.

A year later he would be working on another building – Grammar School No. 8 in Greenwich Village. Originally Public School No. 8, it was founded by the New York Public School Society and was turned over to the Board of Education in 1853. That school building stood on the north side of Grand Street for decades but, as the New York Tribune explained, “The uptown march of population, however, began to leave No. 8 far behind.”

As commercial interests replaced residential neighborhoods, enrollment dwindled. The population of Greenwich Village, on the other hand, was booming. A row of Federal-style brick houses on King Street were razed to make way for the school and Stagg turned to the trendy Queen Anne style for his dignified, if unexpected, design.

Construction began in 1886 and was completed in August of the next year. Three stories of brick sat on a substantial ground floor base of limestone. Stone quoins and window pediments provided contrast with the red brick. Numerous foliate-ornamented brackets upheld the cornice which was broken by a fanciful central parapet over a stone-framed bullseye window. The new school, which cost a total of $250,000, could accommodate 1,200 students.

By the time the school was completed, Stagg was no longer Superintendent of Buildings.

The school stood out for the academic achievement of its students. Of the fifteen who were presented diplomas in 1893, six of them were slated to enter the City College. The student body, composed entirely of boys, reflected the mixed population of Greenwich Village. On March 12, 1895 the New York Tribune noted “There are few schools in New-York where the intermingling of nationalities is so marked as in Grammar School No. 8, in King-st., between Macdougal and Varick sts. In this school the American, Italian, Irish, German and Polish Hebrew pupils are pretty evenly divided and form an interesting study to the teachers.

“Being on the west side of the city, these pupils are from a comparatively well-to-do class of citizens, and present their several races in a more favorable light than in some other quarters,” the writer said.

He then proceeded to do what, by a modern viewpoint, was a rather racist dissection of the student body. “The Italian pupils surpass their classmates in draughting and designing, but they are deficient in mathematics. On the other hand, they are easily kept in order and seem to have great respect for their teachers, while their parents manifest a most earnest desire to have them perfect themselves in the English language. The Irish are found to be quick in mathematics, while the Hebrews are proficient in general work.”

A limestone panel in the parapet announces the date of construction -- photo by Alice Lum

Although the building was only eight years old, its poor functional design was clearly evident. While Stagg had produced an attractive façade, the interior arrangements and sanitary conditions fell far short of acceptable. On January 5 of that same year The New York Times complained of the school’s outhouses, called “closets.”

“Grammer School No. 8…suffers from lack of room, and has wretched closets, which endanger the health of the pupils and teachers. There is not more than five feet of space between the rear of the school and a block of tenements…This space is utilized for the closets, which are of old construction and very bad. The odors from the closets permeate the entire school building and are frequently unbearable.”

The problem was not limited to the sanitary arrangements. The school was dark. The Tribune said “Unfortunately, it is situated in the centre of a block and on the west side of it a five-story flathouse has been built, which shuts out much light from the lower floors of the school building, so that on rainy days it is necessary to burn gas.”

Dr. Moreau Morris of the Health Department inspected the school in January 1895 and reported “Has the old school sink closets, very offensive. Should be changed for new automatic flush closets. Over 1,200 children in attendance.” Eventually modern plumbing would be installed in the school and the stench of 1,200 children using the outdoor privies alleviated.

Darkness and unpleasant odors aside, Principal Elias Whitehead was bullish on his boys. “I am very much interested in the spirit and ambition shown by the boys of No. 8,” he told reporters. “The boys of foreign parents seem to vie with each other in their efforts to become thoroughly American. When I read the roll of honor every Monday morning, I notice a very considerable percentage of Italian boys in the list. They are all enthusiastic in their Americanism and will make the right sort of citizens when they grow up to be voters.”

Female students were permitted into the building beginning in 1889 for free evening classes. The girls, who were required to be at least 16 years of age, could enroll in classes teaching “bookkeeping, penmanship, phonography, physiology, German, French or Spanish, arithmetic, freehand drawing, etc.”

By 1914 the demographics of Greenwich Village were no longer “comparatively well-to-do,” as they were in twenty years earlier. Sections of the area were among the most impoverished in the city and some boys arrived at school hungry. Social reformers targeted the Village with relief efforts such as Greenwich House where poor immigrant women were helped to better their living conditions.

Mrs. William B. Einstein who was President of the Widowed Mothers’ Fund Association started the Penny Lunch Program which included Grammar School No. 8. For one cent the students could purchase a hot lunch in the cafeteria. “For most of these children it is the only hot meal of the day,” she said.

Half a century later, in May 1958 the school became The Livingston School for Girls. Despite its high-tone sounding name, it was the last hope for hard-core juvenile delinquents that regular public schools could not handle.

The school was termed a “600” school, because its twelve teachers were paid $600 a year more than other teachers—a sort of hazardous duty pay. The Livingston School was the city’s only public school exclusively for delinquent girls.

The principal, Dr. Esther Rothman, read to a reporter a list of typical reasons the girls—from 13 to 18 years of age—were sent to Livingston. “Threatens classmates with bodily harm, punches boys, steals textbooks and property, shouts in class, throws temper tantrums, intercepts and destroys mail, uses vile language at teachers, smokes in school, wielded knife against teacher, chased girl with knife, struck boy over head with chair, pushed girl down stairs, throws furniture, rings fire alarm.”

To combat the psychological problems the girls faced, the staff attempted to give them a sense of self-worth. Every girl, for instance, who made the weekly honor roll—based on punctuality, good behavior and five straight days without truancy—was given a corsage. A local florist donated thirty-five of them every week.

Despite the unsightly window air conditioners, the Queen Anne building -- a relative rarity in New York-- is well preserved -- photo by Alice Lum

In 1981 Grammar School No. 8 was converted to 39 luxury apartments. Behind the restored façade, which the AIA Guide to New York City called “a lively Queen Anne,” million dollar condominiums replace the school rooms where immigrant boys learned mathematics and drafting.

The 1872 Remnants of No. 172 Duane Street

2012-01-27T03:10:00.000-08:00

photo by Alice Lum

A century before the area would be called Tribeca, architect, Jacob Weber designed a two-story loft and store building at No. 172 Duane Street. Accounts differ regarding the original purpose – most sources saying it was home to the World Cheese or Weber Cheese company; others putting an importer of rare lumber into the building. In any case, Weber outdid himself on the delightful design.

Construction was begun in 1871 and completed a year later. The cast iron façade did not apologize for its diminutive size. Three robust arches lined up on both floors with the square Corinthian columns of the street level boasting intricate fern-like capitals. Ornate spandrels, egg-and-dart decoration along the spans and a harmonious cornice of repeating arches set the little building apart from its neighbors.

The Duane Street neighborhood was decidedly industrial and by 1891 rag trader Berg & Myers was doing business here. Founded in 1886 by Isadore Berg and Edward N. Myers, the firm handled from 200 to 300 bales of woolen rags a week and by now was employing 25 to 30 full time workers. History and Commerce of New York, 1891, noted that “The premises the firm occupies are large and conveniently located, and afford ample storage capacity.”

Despite the fact that the periodical felt “Both gentlemen are favorably known in business circles, and noted for their upright, liberal and energetic business methods,” the Jewish businessmen ran into troubles.

Duane Street was lined with other Jewish-owned businesses, like Simon Rawitzer’s woolen rag company and Nathan Levy’s soda-water fountain. The men necessarily used the sidewalk to bring goods in and out of their establishments and in 1891 were the victims of extortion.

Three years later Isidor Berg testified before a State Senate Committee that he was frequently threatened with arrest.

“I got tired of being fined, so I spoke to a policeman on the beat about it, and asked him what I could do to avoid trouble. He told me he would send a man to see me.

“The man came around the next day, and said he thought he could arrange matters so I would not be annoyed. I asked him what it would cost, and he said $50 for the year.

“I told him that was too much, and offered $25, and the officer said he’d try it.”

Berg placed the $25 into an envelope as Officer Kelly instructed. “He was very careful to tell me it must be put in an envelope,” testified Berg.

A year later, Berg said, Officer Kelly returned. “He said he had ‘Come to renew the lease.’”

Berg & Myers soon moved on and in 1893 No. 172 Duane was home to Cordley & Hayes. The company would stay on for nearly two decades, selling goods made by Fibrotta Indurated Fiber Ware such as bottle coolers and ice cream freezers.

At the turn of the century it advertised its “Twentieth Century Ice Cream Freezers, which freeze cream without a dash or revolving can, together with Ice Water Receptacles, Rolling Stands for potted plants and many other articles in Fiber Ware.”

In 1907 Cordley & Hayes introduced an improved “XXth Century Bottle Cooler” which was “so shaped as to offer a larger surface to the action of the ice.” The cooler kept the ice from coming in contact with the drinking water and prevented “the evil of immersing ice in drinking water” and thereby contaminating it with “dirt and germs.” Cordley & Hayes assured that the new coolers were “recommended on the score of both health and economy.”

For a short time beginning around 1910 H. W. Covert Co. was here. The company sold fireplace throats and dampers, iron coal windows and other fireplace products.

Then in 1912 William O. Saxton purchased the building from the estate of Mary E. Brinckerhoff. Saxton was the founder and president of Saxton, Co., Inc., a commission merchant. Immediately Johnstone & Coughlan took the lease of No. 172 Duane Street. The company was a commission house which dealt in butter and eggs. In 1912 it boasted “You can’t help but look pleasant if you do business with us.”

The business was run by W. W. Johnstone and F. M. Coughlan and was pronounced by Milk Plan Monthly in 1915 as “one of the most progressive commission houses in the East.”

Although William O. Saxton died of a heart attack on December 14, 1935, Johnstone & Coughlan would remain at No. 172 Duane Street for most of the century.

By the 1990s Tribeca was no longer home to butter and egg dealers or rag traders. Although the second half of the century had been rough on the area – cast iron facades in the 1970s and 80s were rusted and brick buildings were grime-covered—by now trendy restaurants and high-priced residential lofts were replacing industrial space. The Landmarks Preservation Commission was considering the entire section as an historic district.

In 1989 No. 172 Duane Street was slathered in metal advertisements and the cast iron was abused and neglected. The new owner wanted a new, modern space and commissioned world-renowned architect Vincenzo Polsinelli to create it. At the time there were no landmark restrictions on the buildings and restoration or demolition was purely up to the discretion of the owners and designers.

Polsinelli later said that while the façade was in a “sinful state of preservation” he recognized its historic and architectural importance. The façade was dismantled and sent to Utah for restoration.

In the meantime, the 19th century loft was replaced by a sleek glass block-fronted building with no hint of history.

The cast iron facade was impeccably restored in 1991. When it returned, its building was gone. -- photo by Alice Lum

In 1991 the impeccably restored façade was set in place, six feet in front of the new building. Called by the Historic Districts Council “nicely designed and detailed to make a small building impressive,” it now served as a gateway. Polsinelli and the building’s owner received wide-spread congratulations for saving the cast iron front and incorporating it into the new design.

Yet preservationists held back a bit. Calling the practice “facadism,” – a term never meant to intimate applause—they mourned the loss of the original structure.

photo by Alice Lum

Alex Herrera of the New York Landmarks Conservancy said “An historic building is an entity. The idea of saving a façade and building an entirely different building behind it has been discredited.”

Hip hop impresario Damon Dash took a long-term lease on the building, labeling it DD172. Here he ran a video agency, web design firm, a magazine and an art gallery until June 2011.

The building’s owner now had new, more ambitious plans. He called back Vincenzo Polsinelli to create a four-story, 8,000-square foot single family residence behind the 140-year old façade. But by now the Tribeca West Historic District was firmly in place and changes required approval.

It was not forthcoming.

The architect is reworking his plans which, as originally designed, would “reduce the historic building to being a pretty little pendant on the large new structure,” as the Historic Districts Council put it.

In the meantime, the exquisite ruins of No. 172 Duane Street sit like a movie set in front of a building with which it has nothing in common.

R. H. Robertson's Masterful St. Paul's Methodist Church -- West End Ave. and 86th Street

2012-01-26T03:09:00.000-08:00

photo by Alice Lum

Many late Victorian architects rightly felt themselves the heirs to all that had passed before them. That philosophy led to the design of structures described as a “happy marriage of styles.” And so it was with R. H. Robertson’s St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church on West End Avenue at 86th Street.

In 1895 St. Paul’s parish was already sixty-one years old; founded in 1834 in the then-residential Mulberry Street area near Bleecker Street. Progressive from its beginnings, it was only the second “pewed” Methodist church in New York City. Half a century later a writer for The New York Times would recall that “As such it naturally gained a certain amount of notoriety, ‘pews’ being then considered by the great mass of the Methodists in the light of an innovation, and as such to be resisted to the last extremity.”

Thirty-six years after moving northward to Fourth Avenue and East 22nd Street in 1857, the congregation decided to move one last time—this time to the rapidly-developing Upper West Side.

St. Paul’s white marble church building was “known for many years…as the most expensive Methodist Church edifice in the city,” according to The New York Times. The congregation sold it in 1893 for $304,000 and held services for a time in the chapel of the Methodist Book Concern on Fifth Avenue at 20th Street, along what was called “Pater Noster Row,” while its next move was discussed.

On May 12, 1894 the purchase of seven lots on West End Avenue for $125,000 was announced, along with plans for a “new church, schoolroom, and parsonage.”

Robertson was commissioned to design the new church building. Stepping away from the Romanesque Revival style he had so successfully embraced in the 1880s, he dipped into an array of historic periods to create what was undeniably a “happy marriage of styles.”

Construction on the new church was begun in 1895 and the ambitious project was not completed until two years later. Inside the cornerstone, laid on June 27, 1895, were the old 1857 cornerstone, a piece of the marble from the old church and various contemporary documents.

Working in buff-colored brick and terra cotta, Robertson used the barn-like prototype of an early Christian basilica as his central structure. To it he added a soaring octagonal bell tower, inspired by German Romanesque churches, with Renaissance balconies at the belfry and deeply-framed roundel window.

photo by Alice Lum

At the opposite corner a shorter, square tower sat askew and in between an Italian Renaissance entrance porch with arched openings and magnificent Corinthian pilasters completed the design. (To add to the mix, The New York Times remarked that “The style is an outgrowth of a study in the Spanish Renaissance.”)

Inside, “the audience room is of octagonal shape with unequal sides,” reported The Times. “There is a gallery on three sides, and the walls above the galleries are supported on a series of arches. The ceiling is an elliptical dome, with panel ornamentation.” The church, finished at a cost of $300,000, was designed to seat 1,200 worshipers.

Dedication services extended throughout the last week of September, 1897. The Times reported that at the October 3 service, “over 800 people sat, closely attentive throughout the long service, which was not concluded until 2 o’clock.”

The imposing church with its tall tower dominated the residential area, causing Bishop Foster to comment in World Wide Missions that it was “without a peer among the church edifices of Methodism.”

photo the New York Tribune, October 3, 1897 (copyright expired)

St. Paul’s was not the only Methodist church in the Upper West Side. Seven years earlier St. Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church had been completed, a hulking Romanesque Revival style building on West 75th Street and as St. Paul’s was being completed, Grace Methodist opened in 1896 on West 104th Street. But while row houses were being built at a phenomenal rate and development of the neighborhood seemed unstoppable, eventually it would become evident that there were not enough Methodists in the area to fill these grand buildings.

photo by Alice Lum

Not everything associated with St. Paul’s would be as progressive as the concept of pews. On April 3, 1927 the Rev. Dr. Clarence True Wilson of Washington D.C. “the leader of the Methodist dry forces,” addressed the congregation. Wilson, who carried the ponderous title of "General Secretary of the Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals of the Methodist Church," predicted the end of “liquor traffic.”

“There will never be a line dropped from the Eighteenth Amendment or the Volstead act as long as there is a United States of America,” said the reverend. “We have got only about six Senators down there in Washington who are wet. But they make noise enough for sixty…Of the last group of wet Senators that were down there, do you know what became of every one of them? Every one of them was defeated and left at home.”

The Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 5, 1933.

By 1937 the over-optimistic building of the Methodist churches on the Upper West Side was painfully evident and on November 7 Bishop Francis J. McConnell announced the merger of St. Andrew’s Methodist Episcopal Church with St. Paul’s – resulting in the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew. St. Andrew’s building was sold to the West Side Institutional Synagogue.

Graceful angels in bas relief frame the round windows above the entrance -- photo by Alice Lum

Robertson’s exceptional building survives essentially unchanged, what the AIA Guide to New York City calls “a startling work” and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission calls “masterful.”

In designating the structure a landmark in 1981, the Commission noted that “St. Paul’s is among Robertson’s finest buildings and one of the most powerful and original statements of its period.”

The 1849 Dr. Valentine Mott Mansion - No. 1 Gramercy Park

2012-01-25T03:10:00.000-08:00

By the time Samuel B. Ruggles' ambitious vision of Gramercy Park was becoming reality in the 1840s, Dr. Valentine Mott had created quite a reputation for himself.

Born in 1785 in Glen Cove, Long Island, Mott came from a Quaker medical family. After earning his medical degree at Columbia Medical College in 1806, he studied surgery in London under the renowned Sir Astley Cooper. Mott showed such potential that Astley appointed him assistant in surgery almost immediately. Three years later he returned to New York, recognized as a skilled surgeon at a time when operations were painful (anesthesia was uncommon at best) and often fatal.

The doctor was the first to successfully perform surgeries previously considered impossible. The fact that Mott was ambidextrous and could operate with either hand no doubt contributed to his success. He garnered international fame when he performed successful operations on arteries, including his 1818 surgery on a tiny vessel two inches from the patient’s heart. It was the first time ever the daring surgery had been attempted.

Two years later, with three other doctors, he founded the Rutgers Medical College. Beginning around 1830 he devoted his time mainly to lecturing, attaining professorships at Columbia, Rutgers Medical College of New Jersey, and City University of New York.

In 1844 Gramercy Park had been landscaped and gracious residences began rising around it. Ruggles intended his enclave to rival the elegant St. John’s Park where many of the city’s wealthiest citizens lived. And he succeeded.

In 1849, the same year that Valentine Mott was elected President of the New York Academy of Medicine, he moved into the new No. 1 Gramercy Park, a dignified four-story Italianate brownstone mansion. Mott and his wife, the former Louisa Dunmore Munn, reared nine children in the house.

Life changed for the family when civil war broke out in 1861. The carefree evenings of entertainments and medical discussions in the library drew to a close.

Dr. Valentine Mott poses in the studio of Civil War photographer Matthew Brady -- Library of Congress

On October 10 that year, Louisa Mott opened her parlor to a group of women to organize the Ladies’ Union Aid Association. Explaining the cause, she wrote “Owing to the melancholy circumstances which at this time overshadow the happiness and prosperity of our country, many families have been reduced to the extreme of poverty, who never knew the misery of want before. This revulsion in the state of public affairs, though it bears upon all, falls most heavily on the poor, especially upon those deprived of their natural protectors, by absence or death, and who either from sickness or inability to obtain work, have been reduced to a state of suffering beyond the power of moral or physical endurance.”

The ladies organized a bazaar in December “where clothing for the poor will be provided, and articles of taste and elegance, suitable for the holiday season, will be offered for sale.” Mrs. Mott hoped the money the bazaar made would “enable us to temper the storms of Winter to the afflicted, to give them the necessaries of life, and cheer their desolate homes with the genial light of sympathy.”

Perhaps the sole bright spot for the Mott household that year was a visit by the Prince de Joinville. Valentine Mott had been “intimately acquainted” with the prince’s father, Louis Philippe, according to The New York Times and in 1841 the prince had been entertained by Mott. Before leaving for Washington on September 17, 1861, “a visit was paid by the Prince and part of his suite to old Dr. Mott, in Gramercy-park,” reported The Times.

Mott’s son, Thaddeus, enlisted in the Union Army and was assigned as captain of artillery. He would subsequently earn fame for his valor and military expertise. For his part, the 75-year old Valentine Mott dedicated his full attention to the war effort, offering President Lincoln his services. As consultant to the War Department, he gave advice on the administering of anesthesia in battlefield hospitals.

Valentine Mott died in his bed at No. 1 Gramercy Park on April 25, 1865; a little over a week after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The story is often repeated that Mott died from the shock of the president’s death; a possibility given the doctor’s history of a nervous system disorder and his advanced age.

Harper's Weekly accompanied Mott's obituary with the above sketch.

Harper’s Weekly joined the major newspapers around the country in eulogizing Mott. “He was one of the most eminent among our citizens, and will be remembered not only as a very skillful surgeon but also as a kind and philanthropic man.” Sir Astley Cooper added “He has performed more of the great operations than any man living, or that ever did live.”

By 1882 the house that welcomed a prince had become a boarding house. The New York Tribune ran an ad for “No. 1 Gramercy Park—to rent, with board, the entire second floor and one room on third floor delightful city rooms for summer.”

Respectable boarders continued to rent rooms for several decades. A 1905 advertisement mentioned the “privilege of park,” referring to the gated and locked Gramercy Park and in 1909 the Tribune advertised “large corner rooms with or without private bath; table board optional.”

In 1907 the house still retained its brownstone stoop -- "Old Buildings of New York" (copyright expired)

Then, on November 4, 1917, The New York Times bemoaned the alteration of the house. “Gramercy Park has just witnessed another change in the row of old fashioned residences on the west side of the square…Number 1 Gramercy Park, on the corner of Twenty-first Street, and the adjoining house have been altered into studio apartments. The high stoops have been removed.”

In place of the brownstone stoop, a rather handsome portico was added. In the modernization the stone frames of the windows were shaved flat, as compared with the once-matching house next door.

Where the “high stoop” had been, the entrance was lowered to the English basement, below street level. An attractive brownstone portico was added and the original doorway became a window. The apartments became home to financially-comfortable tenants like William G. Sickel, vice-director of the Hamburg-American Steamship Line and artist W. T. Benda.

In 1925 the stoop had been removed, but the stone framing of the windows was still intact -- NYPL Collection

Beginning in 1939 the house underwent a rapid series of sales. That year the estate of Dr. George F. Cottle sold it to Federick H. Meeder of the Dion Realty Company. Two years later Harry Marks, president of the Delnor Realty Corporation purchased it for about $50,000. At the time of the sale The Times remarked that “The exterior of the brick building retains the characteristics of the early days, but the interior was rebuilt some time ago and provides accommodations for ten families in two-room and three-room suites, in addition to an artist’s studio on the top floor.”

Marks sold the property in July 1945. The buying syndicate purchasing the house “plans more extensive alterations in the near future,” reported The Times.

In 1959 the house still had ten apartments—two each on the first through third floors, three on the fourth and two (one including an artist studio) in the basement. Today luxury coops are home to residents such as Tatiana von Furstenberg, daughter of fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg and Prince Egon of Furstenberg; and interior designer Sara Story. Story purchased her 3,000 square foot, three bedroom apartment from children’s book author Sarah Kilborne for just under $1.5 million.

The exterior of the Mott house was used in the 1991 film “Delirious” as the home of actor John Candy’s character Jack Gable. While the wide stone stoop and window details were sadly removed; the mansion of the 19^th century’s most celebrated surgeon remains, externally, essentially preserved.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The 1886 Department of Docks' Headquarters - Pier A

2012-01-24T02:51:00.000-08:00

Pier A, seen here before the 1919 installation of the Memorial Clock, was used to greet visiting dignitaries -- photo Battery Park City Authority

In 1884 the New York Department of Docks was just 14 years old when it began plans for a headquarters building. Established by the State Legislature in 1870 the department was charged with the formidable task of developing the waterfront. This included building of piers, wharfs and seawalls; a complex project that was laid out by Chief Engineer and Civil War hero General George McClellan.

At the same time the Department of Docks was considering its new headquarters, the New York Police Department was in need of a station house to accommodate its one steamboat, the Patrol. An impressive building built on a pier was conceived – but there was a problem. The pier was not part of McClellan’s 1871 plan and, therefore, not part of the State’s approved apportionment.

The State Legislature amended the plan in 1884 to allow for the construction and on July 3 the Board of Commissioners approved the erection of the pier. The pier itself was an engineering feat that took a full year to complete. Not until September 1884 did the construction of the building begin.

Completed in 1886 it was an attractive, late Victorian delight of brick and terra cotta with iron trusses supporting the tin roof. A wood-frame tower over the river was used as a look-out by the police, who occupied the north section of the pier. The Docks Department occupied the rest of the building for its offices and storerooms of maps and records.

To protect the workers from the onslaughts of winter weather, the building was highly insulated. Two layers of tar paper, mineral wool between the studs and a layer of tongue-and-groove paneling prevented the worst of winds and cold to permeate the offices.

During the first winter, in 1886, a ferocious winter storm pummeled city. The offices of Pier A were unaffected. Chief Engineer Greene reported “It was found in the severe blizzard in the first few days in March that all the rooms could be kept at a temperature of 85 degrees, with a pressure of 60 pounds in the boiler, which is licensed to carry 100 pounds.”

He did not mention how the officer worker could bear to work in the extreme heat.

To accommodate the Department’s increasing need for space, in 1900 a three-story addition was built at the shore-end of the pier and in 1904 an additional story was added towards the shore end. The additions were frosted with Beaux Arts ornament—wrought iron lamps, scrolls and leafy decoration. The result, rather than an accumulation of mismatched architecture, was a charming structure that could have been plucked from a child’s electric train set. Painted in three colors, the sections blended harmoniously into a quaint Victorian whole.

Department of Docks employee Joseph J. Madden was working at his desk on September 21, 1917 when he heard cried from the waterfront. Below, a boy named William Murphy had fallen into the river and was being pulled out by the tide. Madden dived, fully dressed, into the water, swam 200 feet to the drowning boy and “brought him with great difficulty to a float, to which both were assisted,” according to the Report of the Secretary of the United States Treasury. The worker was awarded a Silver Congressional Medal for his bravery.

At the end of World War I, Daniel G. Reid presented the city with the country’s first memorial to the servicemen lost in combat. The memorial was in the form of a ship’s clock and bell, erected in the tower of Pier A. The Jewelers’ Circular noted “The clock itself is a very interesting mechanism and as far as known it is the only clock of its kind in this country.”

The bell weighted 1,000 pounds and struck ship’s time, “the only public clock in the world striking ship’s time” according to Greater New York magazine at the time. The clock was dedicated with great fanfare at noon on January 26, 1919 and was presented to Dock Commissioner Murray Hulbert for the city, and Mayor General David C. Shanks on behalf of the army, by Rear Admiral Josiah S. McKean.

The glass dials were illuminated at night, turned on by an automatic mechanism. According to The Jewelers’ Circular, “The clock is guaranteed by the makers to operate within a variation of 30 seconds per month.” To maintain the dignity of such a prestigious memorial, which the Annual Report of the Department of Docks and Ferries stressed was “the first memorial of the World War erected in the United States,” Pier A was given a $2,280 paint job.

Famed photograph Berenice Abbott capture Pier A in 1936 -- NYPL Collection

In 1959 the Department of Docks left Pier A, passing it on to the Department of Marine and Aviation for use as the headquarters of the FDNY fireboat fleet. Five years later Fire Commissioner Edward Thompson announced plans for “a face lifting.”

“Instead of an eyesore, it will be a fond sight for the people passing through the harbor,” he said. The New York Times reported that in the planned renovations, “the old building’s metal exterior would be removed and replaced with aluminum siding.”

And so it was. The Beaux Arts scrolls and pilasters were trashed in favor of aluminum siding; certain to be less of an “eyesore.” The tower clock, erected to the memory of military men who died in service to their country, no longer worked and its original purpose long forgotten.

The 1964 "face-lifting" removed the pilasters and other ornamentation -- photo Library of Congress

On Christmas Day, 1976, The New York Times reported on a $180,000 restoration plan with little enthusiasm. The city was in financial despair and the newspaper apparently felt the money could be better spent. “The plan to rehabilitate the pier is something of a financial anomaly, owing in significant measure to the city’s money problems.”

Tongue-and-groove wainscot and other interior details survived through the 1960s -- photo Library of Congress

As it was, the city’s financial problems were the sole reason that Pier A stood at all. Plans had been underway to demolish the pier make way for office towers and a new marine facility. But as the city’s fiscal crises worsened and with several million square feet of vacant office space in lower Manhattan, the plans to build office towers were abandoned.

photo Library of Congress

While the city vacillated in its development plans, historic preservationists were less hesitant. In 1975 they were successful in having Pier A listed on the National Register of Historic Places. With this designation the restoration costs would be shared, with matching grants from the Federal Government and the state. The Department of the Interior and the New York State Department of Parks and Recreation each contributed $90,000 earmarked for restoration of the clock tower, roof, underwater pilings, arched windows and upgrades to the electrical and mechanical systems.

Calling it an “elegantly ramshackle pier,” The Times noted it was the oldest functioning pier in the city. “Seen from a distance, the elongated green, gray and red structure that points to Ellis Island across the Upper Bay looks like a piece left out of an erector-set model next to the compact and towering skyline of lower Manhattan.”

Fire Commissioner John T. O’Hagan said somewhat poetically, “Aside from its strategic importance as a marine fire-fighting facility, it is a beautiful building which adds a touch of grace to New York’s skyline.”

Designed a New York City Landmark in 1977, Pier A sat quietly, but neglected, at the base of the island. In the 1980s it was closed off by a construction fence where, less than a decade after its restoration, it began to deteriorate.

In 2008 the Battery Park City Authority took over the structure. In 2010 a $30 million overhaul was planned, including a surrounding plaza; but immediately problems arose. There was no money set aside for the plaza, the general contractor and construction manager dropped the project and the budget was slashed.

During renovation, the pier was found to be seriously rotting -- photo by Julie Shapiro for DNAinfo.com

Finally in 2011 plans were revealed showing a proposed oyster bar and other food venues, including a “boutique” hot dog stand. The long-delayed project started up again; yet workers removed nearly all of the windows, leaving the interior open to wind and rain. George Calderaro, a member of the Historic Districts Council board said “This is a city, state and national landmark that is being egregiously mishandled.”

In 2012 restoration continues -- photo by Julie Shapiro for DNAinfo.com

By January 2012 the cost of restoration had risen to $36 million and the structure was found to be in drastic disrepair. “There was a significant amount of water damage, rot and structural deterioration,” said Gwen Dawson, Senior Vice President of Asset Management for the Authority at Community Board 1 meeting.

Restoration of the charming Victorian pier continues; but wanton neglect nearly took away an irreplaceable landmark.

The Lost Chapin Home for the Aged and Infirm - 66th Street and Lexington Ave.

2012-01-23T02:38:00.000-08:00

The Home in 1876 -- print from NYPL Collection

Edwin H. Chapin was the pastor of the Fifth Avenue Universalist Church when his wife and a group of twenty church ladies began their project of what today might be called a retirement home. On May 1, 1869 Mrs. Chapin applied for the Act of Incorporation for the Chapin Home for the Aged and Infirm.

In his 1882 biography of Chapin, Sumner Ellis noted that the act laid out the object of the business as providing “a home and support for aged and infirm persons.” But then, “to the conditions ‘aged and infirm,’ the constitution adds ‘worthy,” since it was the purpose to gather into the Home a group of the needy ones in the afternoon of life, who could spend their remaining time on earth happily together, amid scenes more suggestive of home and social intercourse than of charity.”

That goal of creating “home” as opposed to institution was foremost in the minds of the women. In 1871, having already collected over $75,000 in donations, they commissioned architect Stephen Decatur Hatch to design the Chapin Home. Hatch was directed to create a homey, distinguished mansion where the elderly could feel at home.

Hatch would be remembered for his French Second Empire buildings like the grand Gilsey House Hotel on Broadway that was currently under construction. His Chapin House would follow a similar design.

The land for the home had originally been part of the Alexander Hamilton estate, given to the city for a park. In 1870 The Annual Report of the State Board of Charities noted that “Twelve lots of ground on Sixty-sixth, and Sixty-seventh streets, between Third and Lexington avenues, New York, estimated to be worth $100,000, have been leased from the city for [the Home’s] purposes, and it is proposed to erect buildings thereon in the course of the coming year. The Report added that “its management is in the hands of energetic and active persons, and the buildings will doubtless be speedily completed.”

Nearly an hour north of the city, it would be surrounded by fresh air and countryside.

On October 24, 1871 the cornerstone was laid. The anticipated home, expected to cost $100,000, was described by The New York Times. “The building will be of a mixed order of architecture, with a preponderance of the French style. It will have a brown-stone base, with brown-stone trimmings, Philadelphia brick facings, with a French Mansard roof. It will have two stories in the roof, and the whole building, embracing the basement, will comprise seven stories.”

As the building rose, various fund raising events were held such as a fair in the armory of the 22^nd Regiment. The fair, which began on April 10, 1871 and lasted for several days, netted about $10,000. At the same time, over 50,000 subscriptions had been promised and the State Legislature gave a gift of $10,000.

The women’s dream became reality on March 3, 1973 when the mansion was finally completed and dedicated. Hatch’s impressive structure was the last word in residential vogue with a roof line of various heights, elaborate two-story mansard caps – one rigidly straight, the other gently bowed—and a deep, arched portico.

The brick-and-brownstone home, which The Universalist Register called “a commodious and attractive edifice,” had sixty-five rooms and was capable of accommodating over 100 residents. Sumner Ellis wrote “The rooms are all furnished handsomely, but not alike; the desire of the managers being to have them harmonious in color and comfort, but to avoid the painful uniformity that usually characterizes philanthropic institutions.”

On the third floor was the Sewing Room. It included a smaller table "used principally for diverting games." Whist was a favorite -- print from NYPL Collection

The Home boasted that it was “heated by steam and lighted by gas, each room having a heater and burner, and each floor hot and cold water.”

The writer went on to describe “The beautiful pictures on the walls have been mostly transferred from the parlors of the wealthy and benevolent. Into the ample library have been gathered not a few of the choicest of books, better even than area found in the average home.”

Services were held every Sunday by "ministers of the various Protestant denominations." -- print NYPL Collection

Dr. Howard Crosby would later say “The Chapin Home is not like most charitable institutions, which are little better than prisons, but a true home in the full sense of that sweet word.”

To be eligible for admission, applicants had to be at least 65 years old. An agreement was signed that transferred all their property to the institution and a down payment of $300 was made, along with a $50 burial fee, $5 physician fee, and vouchers of respectability.

Most of the residents were older than the minimum age. Ellis noted, somewhat morbidly, that “the larger portion of the venerable group must have moved on to the eightieth milestone on the journey of life, and are here waiting in comfort and peace, as on the highest height of time, for their departure to the heavenly city. Rescued from the cold and harsh waves which beat against the aged poor, here they find shelter and rest as in a sunny haven.”

In 1876 "inmates" gather for dinner and, apparently, some gossip -- print NYPL Collection

Residents were permitted to wear whatever they chose “to gratify their personal tastes, which gives a pleasing variety.” Guests were allowed in the public rooms and the lady managers mingled among the residents “like kindly neighbors and friends”

Not every resident survived the probationary period. In 1879 the widow Sophia A. Kingman was expelled. The 80-year old sued, demanding to be readmitted. Her lawyer, Edward Russell, complained to the court that her expulsion was “a gross outrage.”

The Home, however, saw things differently. Management declared that Mrs. Kingman told “untruthful tales" about the Home, saying, for instance that it was a “free love institution.” She had also, it said, misrepresented “the character of her property and her religious belief,” but worse yet, “by her conduct hastened the death of her room-mate.”

A similar case was heard a year later when Lucius W. Tilden sued to be let back into the Home. After living there a year with his wife, he found the home less than Currier & Ives perfect and spread accusations and rumors about the managers. Unfortunately for Tilden, the judge decided in favor of the Home and he was forced to find another place to fight the harsh waves beating against the aged poor.

On March 3, 1893 the Chapin Home for the Aged and Infirm celebrated its 20^th Anniversary. The Home was opened for public inspection, including the rooms of the residents. “Every room was as neat as wax, and most of them were tastily decorated with fancy work,” reported The New York Times.

Well-dressed guests arrive for one of the open house celebrations -- print NYPL Collection

The oldest resident was Mrs. Ann Durand, 93 years old, who exhibited a “handsome patch-work quilt” she had made. Other handiwork by the residents was displayed in the reception parlor.

The open house was repeated the following year and Mrs. Durant had completed a new quilt—“a large red and white quilt, made of innumerable tiny squares of print, adorns her bed, and she has another of a different pattern well begun.”

One resident, Mrs. Russell, boasted of her independence to a newspaper reporter. “I was not sent here by my ungrateful children or grandchildren,” she said, “I paid my own way, and earned every cent of the money myself.”

The Times said “Each room has its little single bed, and is filled with the treasures and keepsakes of its tenant. In one room was a beautiful silk quilt, made by its owner, and on the bureau were silk covers made in the same log cabin pattern.”

A “comfortable and commodious” elevator was installed in the house in 1894, a gift by Mrs. Washington L. Cooper as a memorial to her father, George A. Dockstader. Mrs. Cooper’s donation was no doubt greatly appreciated by the elderly residents, some of whom were saved a five-story climb to their rooms.

Elderly residents tackle the stairs before the 1894 addition of an elevator -- NYPL Collection

The Home continued to survive on generous donations and bequeaths. In 1907 it purchased the land from the city for $5,000. It was a brilliant move.

Within three years a new, modern Chapin Home for the Aged and Infirm was being planned in Queens, New York; what The Times called “splendid new buildings to be erected on the heights.” By 1912 the great French Empire mansion sat empty.

On February 17 that year The Sun reported that “The Fire Department has obtained a year’s lease at a nominal sum of the old Chapin Home, opposite Fire Headquarters on East Sixty-seventh street.” The building would be used as offices for the Bureau of Fire Prevention “until the municipal building downtown is completed.”

The article noted that John Wilson, who had been janitor in the house since 1884, was suddenly “thrown out of a job.”

In the meantime, the Chapin Home put the property up for sale. The old mansion and the land which the Home had bought for $5,000 in 1907 was priced at $1 million.

On February 25, 1916 The Times reported on the sale of the old Chapin Home for the Aged and Infirm. “A new nine-story apartment house will soon be erected in that residential centre between Lexington and Third Avenues.”

The old Home was not only a splendid surviving example of Stephen D. Hatch’s elegant Second Empire designs; it was a groundbreaking concept in the dignified care of the elderly. The Chapin Home for the Elderly and Infirm, in striving to create “a home,” planted the seed of the progressive-thinking retirement homes of today.

Two Federal Gems -- Nos. 37 and 39 Charlton Street

2012-01-21T03:01:00.000-08:00

The third floor additions are evident in the change of brick color -- photo by Alice Lum

In 1820 just south of the tiny village of Greenwich and about a miles and a half north of the established city of New York lay the vast estate and mansion called Richmond Hill. Built in 1760 by British Major Abraham Mortimer on land granted to Trinity Church, the property had already played important roles in American history.

Headquarters of General George Washington in April, 1776, it was where early tactics of the Revolutionary War were laid out. Later the British would occupy the mansion again, only to become home to the new Vice President John Adams after the war.

Around 1797 Colonel Aaron Burr leased the home, entertaining in lavish fashion until public disfavor after his duel with Alexander Hamilton forced him to abandon the property. Fur trader John Jacob Astor seized the opportunity, taking over the long-term lease (Astor would be 103 years old when it expired) on the estate from Trinity Church for a nominal sum and laying out streets and housing plots.

It was a brilliant move by Astor. Not only was Greenwich Village expanding rapidly but the city itself was spreading northward. While the grand porticoed mansion would remain for nearly three decades more, the grounds and gardens around it quickly filled with handsome Federal-style residences.

Among the charming enclaves was Charlton Street, named after Dr. John Charlton the president of the New York Medical Society. Here two matching houses were built at Nos. 37 and 39 in 1827 by builder-carpenters; No. 37 assuredly constructed by John Gridley. And as the brickwork continues without a break between the two facades, he was most likely responsible for No. 39 as well.

Before long the block between Varick Street and Sixth Avenue would be lined with both Federal and early Greek Revival homes, creating a harmonious and dignified neighborhood. But the two structures at Nos. 37 and 39 would stand out from the beginning. One hundred and forty years after they were built, the Landmarks Preservation Commission would single them out, calling them “Perhaps the two most important houses [in the district] in age, richness of style, scale and perfection of preservation.”

The two-and-a-half story brick homes, three bays wide, boasted rooms with marble mantles of the latest fashion, exquisitely carved woodwork and elegant plaster detailing. Outside, Flemish bond brickwork, elegant wrought-iron basket newel posts and delicate leaded overlights above crisply-fluted Ionic doorway columns let passersby know that no corners had been cut.

Only two years after their completion, a fire raged through both homes. In 1829 they were rebuilt. Because the damage happened while the Federal style was still in vogue; there were no noticeable changes between the original and the renovated buildings.

The homes saw a variety of residents. In 1847 John Tappan, a successful grocer, was living in No. 37 surrounded by similar merchant-class neighbors.

Later in the century, however, the respectable neighborhood was threatened. In the 1870s trolley tracks were installed, bringing the clatter and dust of the cars and horses. Further west on Charlton, towards the docks, was home to Irish immigrants. An article in The New York Times in 1874 remarked that the Charlton Street gutters were filled with wastewater, “sending forth an offensive odor on a warm day.”

The foot of the street at the river became home to a highly-feared and well-known gang. Herbert Asbury in his “The Gangs of New York,” described them. “This was a choice collection of ruffians known as the Charlton Street Gang. They made their headquarters in a low gin-mill at the foot of Charlton street, and sallied forth each evening to steal whatever was loose upon the docks, and to rob and murder anyone who ventured into their territory.”

The respectable families around Nos. 37 and 39 Charlton Street moved on and for a number of years, the block was decidedly no longer middle class. When, in 1871, a third story was added to No. 39 Charlton, the Real Estate Record & Builder’s Guide referred to it as a “second-class dwelling.”

By the end of the 19th century No. 37 was the headquarters of the Third Assembly District Tammany Club. Here on November 3, 1897 a peculiar wedding occurred.

According to The Sun, “Maria Barberi, the Italian girl who murdered her lover, Domenico Cataldo, by cutting his throat with a razor and upon a second trial was acquitted on the ground that she was an epileptic, celebrated the election last night by getting married at a Tammany clubhouse…

“The marriage took place during the supper hour between 6 and 7 o’clock, when the members of the Third Assembly District Tammany Club stopped celebrating at the clubhouse at 37 Charlton Street long enough to go home for something to eat. When they returned to the clubhouse and learned that the marriage had occurred in their club rooms, they were very indignant.”

The Tammany group would remain here into the early 20th century, when it appears that both No. 37 and 39 had become boarding houses. At No. 37 Louis A. Valente, a lawyer, was living in 1910 as well as Dr. A. Maroni. At the same time next door were tenants like Joseph McArdle, secretary of the Amalgamated Glassworkers’ International Association of America; and Mary S. Snow, Ph.M, Lecturer on Women’s Work, who would remain for over a decade.

At the time a nation-wide interest in Early American architecture and history was taking hold – a fact that would prove fortunate for the two houses. Women’s magazines like Good Housekeeping ran articles on colonial houses with quaint photographs, prompting architectural awareness. In 1917 architects Henry W. Wilkinson and Max G. Heidelberg were commissioned by renovate No. 37 Charlton, adding a third story like its neighbor. The American Contractor referred to the building as a “Colonial Residence.”

The two houses were photographed by American Magazine of Art in 1919 (copyright expired)

In August 1919 Trinity Church sold both houses, along with No. 41, to William S. Coffin (along with 12 other “old dwellings”), as reported in the New York Tribune. That same year the American Magazine of Art wrote an extensive article about the vintage homes that still survived in the neighborhood. Speaking specifically of Charlton Street it said “Here can be found beautiful old doorways…and highly picturesque dormer windows. The roof-lines indeed of many of these venerable houses happily break the monotony of modern office buildings and ‘skyscrapers,’ and could ill be dispensed with.”

Elegantly-carved woodwork in the drawing room of No. 37 was photographed in 1937 -- photo Library of Congress

The article pleaded for the preservation of the houses, but with little hope. “All these, however, and other similar old houses, though at present standing under more or less favorable conditions, must ultimately cease to exist, as New York continues its development. It is to be hoped through that Time will long spare such historic landmarks.”

The magazine need not have been worried. Although a large swath of homes along the south side of Charlton Street were demolished for new development, the north side, including Nos. 37 and 39, remained almost entirely intact. In 1921, the year after writer Marianne Moore and her mother lived briefly in No. 39, architects Francis Y. Joannes and Maxwell Hyde carefully renovated the house for multifamily use. The Architectural Record applauded the sensitive handling, publishing a photograph of the exquisite and preserved Federal doorway.

The Federal entrance of No. 39 with its basket newels and deeply-paneled door in 1921 -- Architectural Record (copyright expired)

“All our cities,” said the magazine, “possess old sections crowded with houses of this type, in many cases dwellings of once proud dignity and beauty—and such structures can, by the exercise of some ingenuity and taste, be made over into most interesting dwellings or apartments, as has long been recognized and proved by our artists in Greenwich Village, around Washington Square, on Beacon Hill, or in the quaint little side streets…in Philadelphia and St. Louis.”

Ninety years later the doorway is unchanged.

In 1933 the National Park Service and the Library of Congress instituted the Historic American Buildings Survey to capture “America’s built environment.” Among the first structures to catch the eye of the Survey was No. 37 Charlton which was carefully preserved on film by photographer Arnold Moses in 1937.

No. 37 was photographed extensively by Arnold Moses in 1937 (No. 39 can be see at left) -- Library of Congress

By the second half of the 20th century the quaint Charlton Street block had also caught the attention of moneyed New Yorkers who began restoration. While No. 39 remained divided, with one apartment per floor, Wall Street mogul Richard Hampton Jenrette purchased No. 37 in 1978 for $250,000. Although it, too, had been used as a boarding house, unlike its next-door neighbor, it had never been divided.

Jenrette, in his “Adventures with Old Houses,” said “All the original black marble mantels, moldings, doors and windows were intact. Almost miraculously, the house had never been chopped up and subdivided into apartments, a common fate of early New York City town houses.”

Jenrette would also restore significantly historic properties such as the Charleston, South Carolina Robert William Roper House and Milford Plantation, also in South Carolina. Here he worked with Edward Jones in the restoration and decoration of No. 37. Original Duncan Phyfe furniture, made in New York at the time the house was constructed, filled the rooms along with Federal-style window treatments.

Nine years later Jenrette sold the house for $2 million.

No. 37 is now a rectory of Trinity Church. In November 2004 Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper and his wife, Tay, moved into the house which, ironically, was originally owned by Trinity. According to John Ambrosini, manager of Church and Program Properties, “This house was chosen for its elegance and charm, its historic significance.” He then added “and for its value as a real-estate investment.”

Nos. 37 and 39 in January 2012. The elegant basket newels and marble stoops remain. -- photo by Alice Lum

Today the two houses sit proudly among a long row of early 19th century residences, what the AIA Guide to New York City called “New York’s greatest display of Federal-style row houses.” The Guide points out that “The two best (and best preserved) examples are Nos. 37 and 39 Charlton whose exquisitely detailed entrances with original doors and leaded glass sidelights convey many of the style’s most distinctive qualities.”

No. 51 Barrow Street -- Home to a Hero, a Radical, and a Broken Heart

2012-01-20T03:32:00.000-08:00

Nearly two centuries of wear are evident in the brownstone threshold.

The sleepy village of Greenwich became a refuge when yellow fever raged throughout New York City to the south in 1822. Panicked citizens with money enough to do so fled to the open rural air, away from the threat of the disease.

The small streets of Greenwich Village quickly developed with Federal-style brick and frame homes. Many of the new residents would stay on after the health threat to the south had long passed. Along Barrow Street, a row of similar residences were constructed, among them No. 51. Built for working-class families, the homes were just two and a half stories high. Four brownstone steps led to entrances above shallow brick English basements.

The builder used Flemish bond brickwork and a few other added details to make the homes slightly more fashionable. In No. 51 these included a delicate leaded overlight above the entrance within an egg-and-dart-frame. Narrow wooden pilasters flanking the paneled door suggested the columns found in nearby, more expensive homes.

Above the simple bead board and cornice sat a single, centered dormer.

By the time George H. Moore lived here in 1864, many of the once-matching houses on the row had been improved with a full third story; more in keeping with the newer Greek Revival and Italianate styles. Moore was a teacher in the boys’ department of Public School No. 35 on 13th Street near 6th Avenue.

The little house became home to Dennis O’Hara and his family in the latter part of the century. O’Hara was a policeman assigned to the 2nd Precinct. Appointed to the force in April, 1880, his career would be a memorable one.

O'Hara was walking his beat downtown at 2:00 in the morning on December 2, 1885 when he heard the cries of a woman. Bridget Garrity had accidentally fallen off Pier 1 into the Hudson River (then known as the North River). The woman’s water-soaked woolen Victorian clothing quickly made her struggles difficult. Although she was able to grasp a rope, she was quickly becoming exhausted. While onlookers watched, O’Hara stripped out of his coat, vest and shoes and dived into the frigid water.

Fighting the strong tide, he was able to pull the woman to a moored boat where he held her until a ladder could be lowered from the pier. Bridget Garrity was taken to the Chambers Street Hospital and O’Hara subsequently was awarded a silver medal for heroism.

The Annual Report of the Operations of the United States Life-Saving Service recounted the story some years later with apparent disdain for the onlookers. “The others present showed no disposition to hazard their lives in behalf of the unfortunate woman, and had it not been for the patrolman‘s promptness, she would undoubtedly have perished.”

Later O'Hara received a gold medal from Congress for saving a woman and her child from the river at the foot of Vesey Street, and another silver medal for saving the life of a man at the Battery. Officer O’Hara nearly lost his own life with the last selfless act; both men were pulled from the river unconscious.

In July 1896 Dennis O’Hara became ill. Two weeks later he died in his bed at No. 51 Barrow Street. On August 2 the funeral for the hero policeman was held in the humble parlor.

The quiet house on the quiet street became less so when Luther S. Bedford moved in. Bedford was a printer who became interested in politics in 1898. Before long his interest turned to radicalism and he became well known to the police for his self-printed circulars and his loud disturbances at rallies and speeches.

On April 7, 1908 William M. Ivins, special counsel to the Public Service Commission addressed members of the People’s Institute at Cooper Union regarding the new rapid transit system. Bedford considered the speaker “the tool of traction thieves,” and not only distributed his inflammatory pamphlets outside, but caused chaos in the hall.

“Interruptions were frequent,” reported The New York Times, “and finally Luther S. Bedford, a compositor…who had been distributing pamphlets containing an attack on Mr. Ivins to all present, became so noisy that he was arrested.”

A year later he was at it again. As people filed into the Cooper Union to attend a Socialist meeting, Bedford distributed handbills titled “Minute Men, Arouse!!!” The fliers said that the “McAdoo tunnel people must be prevented from boring under Sixth avenue” and accused the project of being run by a syndicate.

When Police Sergeant O’Grady came along, he informed Bedford that he did not care what the bills said; but he did care that they were littering the pavement. The Sun reported that “The man divided his bills into handfuls and flipped them into the air over the heads of the Socialists.”

Luther S. Bedford was off to jail again.

At night court, Magistrate Kernochan informed Bedford that according to the Penal Code “to distribute circulars and advertisements on the highway” was a misdemeanor.

“But these were neither circulars nor advertisements,” replied Bedford, “They’re literature—just like the newspapers.”

The Magistrate fined him $1 which Bedford paid under protest.

The 6th Avenue subway would become the least of Luther S. Bedford’s worries. As the United States was drawn into World War I, Bedford joined with a few others firmly against the country’s participation in the war. In February 1917 The Fatherland, a weekly newspaper seeking “fair play for Germany and Austria-Hungary” reported on a gathering at Madison Square Garden attended by 20,000 citizens. It was called “a great meeting for peace” and among the speakers that night was Luther S. Bedford.

Bedford applied his printing capabilities and founded a magazine entitled Bull. It printed political cartoons and was filled with articles that pressed young men not to enlist in the military, or, if already in the service, to disobey orders and refuse to serve.

The magazine did not survive long before catching the eye of authorities. Luther S. Bedford was arrested and charged with sedition and treason under the Espionage Act.

By August 3, 1918 Assistant United States District Attorney Earle B. Barnes was poised to conduct the prosecution of Bedford and his co-defendants, charged with, according to Editor & Publisher newspaper “conspiring to obstruct the draft and to interfere with the recruiting in the army and navy of the United States.”

Before the trial commenced, in July 1919, Typographical Journal ran the sizable obituary of printer William F. Wetzel. At the bottom of the article was a single line noting that Luther S. Bedford was dead "as well."

Ironically, on October 5, 1922, The New York Times reported that all indictments against the Bull Publishing Company and Luther S. Bedford were dismissed. The feisty and political printer did not live long enough to learn that his name was cleared.

No. 51 Barrow Street subsequently became home to the elderly couple Raymond Rice Minor and his wife. Minor had retired from his salesman job in 1920 and the two lived quietly in the little house. Born in Virginia in 1848, Minor had served in the Confederate Army before moving north where he met and married the New York City-born Margaret Koehler.

On May 18, 1932 the 84-year old Minor died. His funeral was held in the quaint St. Luke’s Chapel not far away from the Barrow Street house.

Twelve days later, a heart-broken Margaret Minor “died suddenly” in the house the aged couple had shared.

To resolve a lien of $836 back taxes and $906 in other debts, No. 51 Barrow was sold at auction on February 5, 1935 to Gus J. Paul for $2,500--less than a month's rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village today.

Only the front was bricked. The frame side can be seen to the right.

The charming little house survives intact – the original wrought iron railings, the single dormer, the paneled front door are all there. Most likely because it was never enlarged like some of its neighbors, the house never suffered the humiliation of being broken up into apartments or used as a boarding house. Instead, it remains today a one-family home, albeit a little pricier than it was in the 1830s.

No. 51 Barrow Street exemplifies the charm and quaintness of Greenwich Village; a charismatic reminder of a rural hamlet of nearly two centuries ago.

uncredited photographs taken by the author

The Elaborate No. 574 Fifth Avenue

2012-01-19T03:13:00.000-08:00

photo by Alice Lum

A week before Christmas in 1879 the parlor of W. B. Shattuck at No. 574 Fifth Avenue was bedecked with flowers and other elaborate decorations for the wedding of his daughter. “A huge wedding-bell of white flowers was suspended above the heads of the bride and groom in the front parlor,” reported The New York Times.

“This was flanked on either hand by a bell of red roses suspended from the ceiling. Besides these unique floral pieces, the mantel was banked deep with flowers; wreaths and festoons of smilax and flowers wound themselves about the candelabra and columns, and wedding-bells in crimson and white roses swung above the entrances to the drawing-room and dining-room, in which latter a wedding breakfast was spread.”

The Fifth Avenue wedding “has been a topic in society for the last five or six weeks,” said the newspaper. Indeed, the parlors were filled with the best names of New York society: Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mr. and Mrs. William Astor, Mrs. William H. Vanderbilt, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Rhinelander and Mr. and Mrs. H. Mckay Twombley among them. European nobility had come—including the Baron and Baroness de Thomsen, the Baron and Baroness Blanc, and the Marquis de Talleyrand.

Among the wedding gifts in an upper room of the mansion were displayed a solid gold tea service, a George III silver gravy tureen, a 16th century Dutch floor clock, and a silver table service. The Times called the groom, Francis Burrall Hoffman, son of Colonel Wickham Hoffman who was Charge d’Affaires at St. Petersburg, “a young gentleman of fortune, whose figure is familiar in the circle constituted by old New-York families.”

It was the sort of affair that was not uncommon behind the doors of the grand brownstone mansions of Fifth Avenue in the decade after the Civil War. But it was all to change.

Although it would be a few years before hotels and retail establishments would encroach on the residential neighborhood, the exclusive men’s clubs were filtering in. By 1885 the American Yacht Club and Atalanta Boat Club had established their clubhouse in the five-story Shattuck house and would remain until Miss A. A. Chevalier made the mansion a private home again.

In 1890, the year that Miss Chevallier held a meeting of the New York Society for Parks and Playgrounds for Children (of which she was president) in her parlor, William Waldorf Astor demolished his brownstone residence at the corner of 33rd Street. The Waldorf Hotel that replaced it was the first domino to fall that would lead to the end of Fifth Avenue as a fashionable residential neighborhood.

Eventually Miss Chevallier moved on and the house became home, for a few years, to the Engineer’s Club at the turn of the century. Then in April 1903 Jesse C. Woodhull purchased the 25-foot wide house for $230,000, with plans to “extensively alter” it for business purposes.

Woodhull commissioned architect Augustus N. Allen to refurbish the structure. Two months later The American Architect and Building News reported that the renovated building would be a “six-story shop and studio building” with a limestone façade. The renovations cost Woodhull $50,000.

The upper stories exploded in exuberant ornamentation -- photo by Alice Lum

The completed building looked nothing like the Shattuck mansion hiding behind the limestone façade. The architect created a Northern Renaissance Revival style store and loft that was amazingly similar to that completed by the Parfitt Brothers three years earlier at 166 Fifth Avenue. Highly ornamented piers and pilasters separated the windows of the four middle floors. Above a deep cornice the sixth floor an elaborate gable erupted from a steep mansard roof, encrusted with urns, finials and a decorative hooded niche.

Allen's renovation was a near-match to the Parfitt Brothers' earlier No. 166 Fifth Avenue (above) several blocks to the south --photo by Alice Lum

A year after its completion, Woodhull sold the building to investor Emma V. V. Rapallo for $350,000. Ladies’ apparel companies were filling No. 574 Fifth Avenue, like millinery importer Suchow and La Victoire Waist Lining Company. The eminent opera diva Madame Calve gushed on in a 1904 advertisement for La Victoire, saying “Your invention is a wonderful one and an invaluable improvement in grace and curves. It is in all points perfect, and saves the busy woman of to-day the time and fatigue of several fittings, which is not necessary with your lining. It enables any tasty trimmer to succeed in making a perfect fitting waist.”

Elaborately embellished pilasters and colunettes separated the upper story windows -- photo by Alice Lum

In keeping with the exclusive retail tone of Fifth Avenue, Edelhoff Brothers & Co. opened its store in the retail space here on November 1, 1905. The company dealt in “diamonds, jewelry and fancy goods.”

By January 1907 Emma Rapallo decided to cash in on her investment and sold the building to C. Grayson Martin for $410,000. Within three months Martin turned the property over for $425,000, satisfied with a quick $15,000 profit. Rudolph M. Haan, who ran the St. Regis Hotel, was the purchaser.

The blocks of brownstone mansions along this stretch of Fifth Avenue were no more. The New York Times’ Bryan L. Kennelly remarked on the transformation in 1910. “Fifth Avenue is no longer a social centre, at least that part of it between Twenty-sixth and Fiftieth Streets. The highest class of commercial life has forced itself into this section, so that to-day it is not only the shopping thoroughfare for the wealthy of all the cities of the United States. What wealthy Western family would be satisfied with any other than Fifth Avenue’s stamp on its purchases? And what wealthy New York family would think of purchasing elsewhere?”

The top two floors of No. 574 had been the studio of renowned female photographer Aime du Pont since 1904. Ms. Du Pont advertised herself as the “photographer for smart society,” and in December 1910 she put on an exhibition of photographs of “five hundred fair women.” The photographer opened the show with a private viewing on December 6 during which tea was served. The New York Times reported that “the collection of photographs includes many society women of New York and Newport and all of the grand opera stars.”

In the meantime, Edelhoff Brothers was replaced by jewelers and silversmiths Udall & Ballou Co. in the street-level store. The firm, which also had shops on Belleview Avenue in Newport and East Flagler Street in Miami, would be here into the 1920s.

New Yorkers were stunned, on June 28, 1913, when The Evening World reported that after a small but smoky fire in the basement of the building it was discovered that over $100,000 worth of mounted gems were missing from a safe in Udall & Ballou. The jewel theft made headlines for days as the slippery crook evaded the investigation of the Detective Bureau’s Inspector Paurot.

Everyone who had been in the building that day – policemen, firemen, watchmen and shop employees—were questioned. Then on June 30 William Heck, a 21-year old employee, was questioned at Police Headquarters by none other than Police Commissioner Doughtery. After an hour and a half of questions, Dougherty left the room to bring in Detective Casassa who, said The Times, “has a reputation for being able to draw out the truth where others fall.”

Heck tip-toed to an open window and jumped ten feet to the ground below, being careful to remember to take his straw hat with him first. The young man, whom the commissioner said looked like “a little well dressed jockey,” clambered under a passing truck, held onto the frame and escaped.

Beck was captured a day later and confessed not only to the major heist, but several smaller thefts from the store, as well. The young man explained that he was in debt and needed money. “My liking for silk shirts, fine underwear and good clothes couldn’t be satisfied on my salary of $14 a week,” he explained.

Unfortunately for Beck, he got none of those items in prison.

Throughout most of the 20th century Fifth Avenue was home to the most prestigious of stores. In 1921 The Architectural Record noted “Fifth Avenue is one of the half dozen streets of the world. A part of the world seems to stream through it, and worldliness, magnificence, luxury and fashion and city life are its very essence. The shops partake of this spirit, exist because of it, and contribute to it, and Fifth Avenue merchants compete successfully with thousands of shops in New York and in other cities.”

The dignified storefront in 1921 -- The Architectural Record (copyright expired)

Nevertheless, the upper floors of No. 574 were less exclusive. That same year the Welding Promotion Company established itself here. The firm printed promotional calendars exclusively for welding companies.

In 1922, the year that The Mirror signed a 25-year lease on the entire building from Haan, Charles Frey’s salon advertised “discolored or over-bleached hair corrected with Charles Frey Instant Hair Restorer.” Free demonstrations were offered by Madame Berthe, “specialist.”

In 1930 the top floor was still a photographer’s studio, but now occupied by Lumiere Studio, run by Samuel Lumiere. A burglar on September 12 ransacked the office making off with personal items and jewelry owned by the office manager Aurelia Dittmar. Ms. Dittmar estimated the loss at $4000. The police set the amount closer to $1000.

Even the mansard roof, nearly invisible from the street, had ornamented panels -- photo by Alice Lum

In 1937 Spencer Chemists, Inc. leased the jewelry store space and basement, becoming the first drugstore on Fifth Avenue above 34th Street. Throughout the next ten years the building would be sold three times.

Beginning in the 1960s the Israel Government ran its tourism offices from here for decades. Today an Italian fast food shop operates from the much-altered ground floor space. Where diamonds and emeralds once glittered, manicotti and pizza are now served to hungry tourists.

The fanciful building, once a grand brownstone mansion, is surprisingly unchanged above street level; a delightful discovery for passersby who care to look up.

New York and the Painfully-Correct Promenade

2012-01-18T02:50:00.000-08:00

By 1872 Fifth Avenue itself had become a promenade on Sundays -- "Lights & Shadows of New York" 1872 by James D. McCabe (copyright expired)

For well-heeled Victorian New Yorkers the promenade was of utmost importance. Whether the word was being used as a verb or a noun, the promenade was essential in polite society. It was where one was seen, where information was passed and where eligible young men and women were displayed.

In the first half of the century, elegant public parks such as St. John’s and Union Square provided impromptu promenades. Then when James Renwick designed the enormous Croton Reservoir on Fifth Avenue at 42^nd Street, opened in 1842, he included a promenade along its top rim. It immediately became a destination point for society strolls.

Currier & Ives captured strolling couples along the Croton Reservoir's promenade -- Library of Congress

But promenading was not a simple exercise. There were excruciatingly correct rules of conduct to be followed and proper ladies and gentlemen were expected to know them as if second nature, and to adhere to them as if instinctive.

In 1840 “Etiquette for Ladies; with Hints on the Preservation, Improvement, and Display of Female Beauty” instructed that young married women could permit the company of gentlemen “in promenades, without suffering the least injury to their reputation, provided it is always with men of good morals, and that they take care to avoid every appearance of coquetry. Young widows have equal liberty with married ladies.”

It warned unmarried women about the hazards to one’s reputation on the promenade. Single women who promenaded with a young man were expected to have a chaperone along. It looked better.

The book addressed the problem of unwanted attention. "She should not turn her head on one side and the other, especially in large towns, where this bad habit seems to be an invitation to the impertinent.”

The “impertinent” to which the author referred was any young man to whom the lady had not been formally introduced. “If such persons address her, she should take good care not to answer them a word. If they persist, she should tell them in a brief and firm, though polite tone, that she desires to be left to herself. If a man follow her in silence, she should pretend not to perceive him, and at the same time, hasten a little her step.”

Rules for gentlemen were clearly outlined in a small book with a very large title. “Beadle’s Dime Book of Practical Etiquette for Ladies and Gentlemen: Being a Guide to True Gentility and Good-Breeding, and a Complete Directory to the Usages and Observances of Society” was published in 1859. It noted that “Good behavior upon the street, or public promenade, marks the gentleman most effectually…We always know, in walking a square with a man, if he is a gentleman or not.”

Beadle’s Book gave a long list of violations that “real gentility never does" while promenading. Among them were the seemingly self-evident:

Never picks the teeth, nor scratches the head

Never swears or talks uproariously

Never smokes or spits upon the walk, to the exceeding annoyance of those who are always disgusted with tobacco in any shape

Never stares at any one, man or woman, in a marked manner

Never scans a lady’s dress impertinently, and makes no rude remarks about her

Never loses temper, nor attracts attention by excited conversation

Ladies, too, were to contain themselves. “She affects none of the ungraceful, idiotic gaits, such as some unknown authority occasionally pronounces ‘fashionable.’ She does not giggle, laugh nor speak loudly, nor rush frantically up to her friends and kiss them at meeting or parting. She remembers that the cold, critical world is looking on, and that which would be perfectly fitting in her own drawing-room or on a sequestered country road, is not proper on the pavements of a crowded city street,” warned Mrs. Rose Hartwick Thorpe in her “As Others See Us, or the Rules and Customs of Refined Homes and Polite Society.”

Because promenades were quite often circular paths, those strolling were likely to meet more than once. And so there were more rules.

“In meeting acquaintances several times during the same promenade, it is not necessary to salute them at every passing,” said Beadle’s. “The Hand-Book of Etiquette,” published the following year, agreed. “On meeting acquaintances repeatedly in the same promenade, etiquette only requires ladies or gentlemen to bow once.”

It was not all that simple, however.

The “privilege of the first recognition” rested with the lady. Should she pass the first time without bowing, “it is only with very great intimacy that can excuse your first accosting her,” instructed The Hand-Book. The guide warned of the penalties attached to an attempt for a gentleman to introduce himself to a lady.

“By so doing, they run the risk of seriously offending the lady they are most anxious to please, and of bringing down on themselves the just indignation of the lady’s male relatives.”

"Etiquette for All: or Rules of Conduct for Every Circumstance in Life,” published about the same time, offered the handy tip to “Avoid everything unusual in your mode of greeting it is sure to offend. For shaking hands, never offer two fingers, unless the others are maimed.”

While it was “extremely vulgar” for a lady to take the arms of two gentlemen, a man could get away with escorting two ladies. “Routledge’s Manual of Etiquette” noted ”Two ladies may without any impropriety take each one arm of a single cavalier; but one lady cannot, with either grace or the sanction of custom take the arms of two gentlemen at the same time.”

With the completion of Central Park, a new venue was available. Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted included a sumptuous promenade in their plan. It was cleverly designed so that promenaders did not have to retrace their steps (and suffer the uncomfortable problem of running into strollers they had already greeted…or not). Carriages dropped off passengers at the south end of the Promenade, drove around to the exquisite Bethesda Terrace to pick them up. The Carriage Drive also solved the potential problem of walking through the park to the Promenade through masses of less prosperous New Yorkers.

1894 promenaders in Central Park ended up at the stunning Bethesda Terrace -- Library of Congress

By the last quarter of the century, Fifth Avenue itself became a promenade following Sunday church services. The stream of well-dressed millionaires and socialites strutted the blocks along St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian and St. Thomas Church.

James D. McCabe wrote in 1882, "It is the custom for church goers on Sunday morning to promenade Fifth avenue after service. At such times the street is uncomfortably crowded, but the display of fashionable costumes is worth seeing. On Easter Sunday, if the weather be fine, the ladies are out in all the glory of new toilets, one of the most inexorable laws of fashion requiring such displays."

It planted the seed of the last surviving vestige of Manhattan promenading—the Easter Parade.

Well-heeled New Yorkers promenade on Easter Morning along 5th Avenue in 1893 -- illustration in Harper's Monthly by W. T. Smedley (Library of Congress)

After-church promenading was the one exception to the otherwise-regulated promenade costume. John H. Young’s 1883 book “Our Deportment or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society” clearly laid out the rules.

“The dress for the promenade should be in perfect harmony with itself. All the colors worn should harmonize if they are not strictly identical. The bonnet should not be of one color, and the parasol of another, the dress of a third and the gloves of a fourth. Nor should one article be new and another shabby. The collars and cuffs should be of lace; the kid gloves should be selected to harmonize with the color of the dress, a perfect fit. The jewelry worn should be bracelets, cuff-buttons, plain gold ear-rings, a watch chain and brooch.”

Afternoon promenade costumes were permitted (and expected) to be a bit more colorful than morning wear -- Peterson's Magazine 1889 (copyright expired)

Promenade dresses were expected to be less showy than evening wear. Maud C. Cooke’s “Social Etiquette” summed it all up neatly. “This should be plain—tailor-made is the best—walking length, and of good material. ‘Fussy’ styles should not be chosen for street wear, and the hat or bonnet should be rather plain and harmonize with the gown.”

With all this color-matching of outfits, a very wealthy father or husband was helpful.

With the loosening of social restrictions following World War I and new distractions like the telephone and motorcar, the ritual of the promenade gradually died away. Today New Yorkers walking along the Central Park Promenade wear shorts and t-shirts, the great Croton Reservoir was been long ago demolished, and Fifth Avenue is…well, not the Fifth Avenue of 1880.

Well-dressed Edwardians strolling Central Park's Promenade just prior to World War I had no idea theirs would be the last generation to do so -- vintage postcard view.

And it is all just as well. A society that cannot grasp the polite use of a cell phone in public would be hard pressed to absorb a set of rules that took volumes to contain.

The 1901 Beaux Arts Hotel Collingwood -- No. 43 West 35th Street

2012-01-17T02:58:00.000-08:00

In 1901 the blocks just west of Fifth Avenue around 34^th Street were gradually changing. The Astor mansions on Fifth Avenue between 33^rd and 34^th Streets had been replaced by the hulking and exclusive Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and high-class commercial interests were increasingly converting other brownstone residences.

One-by-one the wide homes of West 35^th Street were sold off and before 1910 the block would have no fewer than three high-end hotels. But none of them would equal the Collingwood’s impressive architecture or guest register.

Robert F. Spalding razed four elegant brownstone-clad homes—Nos. 43 through 49--to erect his new brick and limestone hotel. Construction of the 12-story structure was begun in 1900 and completed in December of the next year. The exuberant Beaux Arts façade, like buildings along the boulevards of Paris, was laden with heavy, carved ornamentation. While some other architects were frosting their Beaux Arts designs with ornate terra cotta decoration, the Collingwood went with carved limestone.

At the 11^th floor, four immense lounging allegorical sculptures represented the continents of Asia, North American, Europe and Africa.

The lobby areas were lavishly decorated with carved marble – or so it seemed. The Artificial Marble Co., Inc., of East 91^st Street, provided imitation stone essentially undetectable from the real thing. “By our process of manufacture, we can imitate perfectly any marble or stone in existence” the company boasted. The wealthy guests would never know the guise.

Sumptuous Beaux Arts brackets, vermiculated quoins around the windows and a limestone base hinted at exclusivity.

Six months before the hotel was completed, hotelier William F. Bang signed a 21-year lease at $50,000 a year. The projected value of the Collingwood at the time was a staggering $1 million. Final touches were completed in April 1902 and the doors opened for business on May 1. While upscale transient guests visiting New York were welcomed, the Collingwood was mainly an “apartment hotel;” one in which well-heeled residents lived and enjoyed the amenities of a staff without the inconvenience of running a private household.

An advertisement in The New York Tribune in August of that year described “an apartment hotel most centrally and desirably located, containing every modern device for comfort and convenience of guests.” The hotel was deemed “Positively Exclusive” and the “cuisine unexcelled. Service a La Carte.”

Sculpted allegories of four continents lounge against arches -- here Europe and North America.

The Architectural Review that year spoke of apartment living, which was becoming more accepted and popular. “Apartment houses of the better type may be divided into three main classes: first, those designed for housekeeping, second, those designed for restaurant service, and, third, those in which both are combined; all these may again be sub-divided into fireproof and non-fireproof.”

The Collingwood, said the article, was among the second class. “Here the conditions differ; electric light and steam heat are furnished; kitchen refrigerators, often of large size, are cooled, ice is made for table use, iced water is circulated through the small apartments, and is used to cool bottles, milk, etc., besides service for drinking purposes.”

Trouble came early for the Collingwood when, on the evening of March 6, 1903, Charles Dowdeswell and his wife left for dinner. Dowdeswell was an art dealer with a store on Fifth Avenue and, as was normal, they left their apartment key with the clerk.

Later a neighbor notified the captain of the bellboys, Charles Manly, that there was something wrong with the steam pipes in the Dowdeswell apartment. The 24-year old Manly entered with the key to check.

Upon their return from dinner, the couple discovered that $400 worth of Mrs. Dowdeswell’s jewelery consisting of pearl necklaces, gold chains and bracelets and such, and a pocketbook with $116 in cash were all missing.

Although none of the items were found on Manly, the 24-year old was arrested.

Later that year, only a eighteen months after opening, William Bang was broke. Although the Hotel Collingwood was successful, his combined business dealings forced him into bankruptcy in December 1903. The hotel was taken over by the Hotel Collingwood Company, owned by the brothers Joseph T. and Israel Cohen.

Couples who regularly appeared in the society pages of the newspapers filled the hotels—like Mr. and Mrs. Vance C. Cheney and Henry Roso and his wife, Julia. And then there were those whose inclusion in the newspapers was not so eagerly sought.

Among these were the wife and daughter of the famed singer David Bispham. The Bisphams had been separated for several years when his wife and daughter took up residence. The singer, who was living in the exclusive Royalton bachelor hotel on 44^th Street, regularly provided support until May 1907 when the payments abruptly stopped.

On August 6, F. V. Wishart, the proprietor, confronted Mrs. Bispham for her back rent of $400. The woman explained to Wishart, “I am in despair.”

Mr. Wishart was not moved.

Mrs. Bispham and her daughter were forced to leave and not allowed to take any possessions with them. The New York Times reported that on August 27 they were “at the Hotel Newport, Philadelphia, with only the clothes they wore when they left the Collingwood ten days ago.”

When the Cohens sold the Collingwood to Mrs. Eliza Guggenheimer, widow of Randolph Guggenheimer, in February 1909 the 35^th Street block was still upscale. Just days after the sale, $10,000 worth of jewels owned by Mrs. J. R. McComb disappeared from the hotel safe.

Mrs. McComb, leaving for a stay in Great Barrington, Vermont, left the jewels on January 25 for safe-keeping. A week earlier, 19-year old Allen Porter Crollus had been hired as night clerk. “It was the first job of any consequent he had had in a year,” reported the New York Tribune.

Two weeks after Mrs. McComb left, police Inspector McCafferty heard that a young man named Crollus was “spending money lavishly” on upper Broadway and put Detective Van Twistern to the task of following the boy. After seeing him enter several pawn shops, the policeman searched Crollus. On him were several pawn tickets, jewelry including a diamond and turquoise brooch valued at $2,500 and one-way tickets on the American Line steamship St. Paul to London leaving the following morning.

Allen Crollus explained to the police that he had been out of work for a year and needed money badly. The police were unimpressed with his explanation. He was locked up in the Tombs charged with grand larceny.

The high-styled banquet and ballrooms were popular as well. The New York Central Railroad chose the Collingwood as the venue for its 1910 convention. The Indicator Otis magazine noted that “The headquarters for all were at the Hotel Collingwood…and afforded convenient and comfortable quarters for the out of town representatives as well as for a general place of assembly.”

By now most of the mansions on Fifth Avenue around 35^th Street were gone. Commercial structures like the marble Tiffany & Co. building, the immense palazzo of B. Altman & Company and the building of Alvin Mfg., silversmiths, had replaced them. While wealthy residents like Mrs. William H. Moseley still lived here during the winters and summered in Litchfield, Connecticut; in 1913 the Hotel Collingwood’s advertisements now focused on being “half block from Herald Square, the center of New York” rather than its proximity to Fifth Avenue.

Seth H. Moseley, who had been manager of the hotel, purchased it from the Guggenheimer Estate in 1913 for about $1 million. Six years later room rates were advertised at:

Room with bath, 1 person: $2 to $2.50

Room with double bed without bath, 2 persons $3 to $3.50

More luxurious accommodations went for:

Room with bath 1 person $3, $3.50 and $4.00

Room with double bed and bath, 2 persons, $4.50

As late as the 1920s wealthy New Yorkers remained in the Collingwood. James E. Hewitt “turfman and owner of thoroughbreds,” as described by the New York Tribune, lived here. He owned the Hewitt racing stables. Among his neighbors was Joseph E. Schwab, president of the America Steel Foundries and brother of American Steel magnate Charles M. Schwab.

But by the 1930s West 35^th Street was highly commercial with factory loft spaces filling many of the properties. The Collingwood underwent a remodeling in 1934 and two years after it was sold to Nathan Wilson in 1949, it was modernized again. On July 15, 1951 The New York Times reported that “The 250 rooms in the Collingwood Hotel…have been redecorated an refurnished. Each room now has a private bath and some suites are air-conditioned. The hotel’s entrance has been modernized with marble facing and glass doors.”

The Collingwood was sold again in 1961. By now the once-fashionable neighborhood was no longer. In 1975 Claire Berman, writing in New York Magazine cautioned potential guests about the hotel despite its affordable rooms. “This neighborhood is, however, now dominated by many of the folks who once peopled Times Square and I would not find it a safe or pleasant place to stay.”

If anything can be said about Manhattan, however, it is that times and neighborhoods change. By 2000 the convenient location of the once-grimy 35^th Street was attracting out-of-towners. In 2008 a series of modern hotels with national names like Marriott and Hampton Inn began rising on the sites of old loft buildings. In the meantime, the Hotel Collingwood became the Metro Hotel, completely renovated and modernized to attract 21^st century guests.

A sleek and trendy lobby replaces the carved "artificial marble" of 1901 -- photo Metro Hotel

Today the former high-toned residential hotel that was home to socialites caters to families on vacation and executives on business trips. And the graceful sculptures of the four continents still lounge, unaffected by the changes to the street below.

non-credited photographs taken by the author