Daytonian in Manhattan

The James Condie Drugstore Building - 166 Eighth Avenue

2026-08-15T04:00:00.000-04:00

Around 1844, a brick-faced house and store was erected at 166 Eighth Avenue between 18th and 19th Streets. Three stories tall, its Greek Revival design included a single-doored residential entrance flanked by pilasters and four-paned sidelights. A commodious transom allowed natural light into the foyer. The building's six-over-six-paned windows sat upon plain brownstone sills and wore understated stone lintels.

Archibald Donnelly operated a tavern here in 1845, but his venture was short lived. As early as 1848 James Condie and his family lived in the upper floors. He was a partner in the Gabaudan & Condie apothecary that now occupied the store.

The drugstore was a vehicle for an enterprising chemist in September 1848. His ads appeared throughout the Northeast saying:

Messrs. Gabaudan & Condie, Druggists, No. 166 Eighth Avenue, state that this past summer they sold Mr. Lawrence, a Police Officer, six bottles of Dr. Roger's Liverwort and Tar. His wife afterwards called upon them, and said that her husband had been, for some time time, lying very low with Consumption, and that the Physician and their friends had despaired of his recovery; but by the use of the above six bottles, he was restored to perfect health. She says she has no doubt but that it was the above Medicine alone which cured him.

James Condie was born in Perthshire, Scotland. Both he and his wife, the former Sarah Ellen Harrison, were born in 1820. In addition to running the drugstore, he volunteered as a "laddie" at Laurel Hose Company, No. 30 on West 27th Street. Five children would be born in the Eighth Avenue house--Sarah Ellen in 1849, Mary Catherine in 1854, Ellen Condie two years later, Samuel Harrison in 1859, and Ella Grace in 1862.

As was common, the Condies rented a room in their home. In 1851 Jane E. Percy lived here. She was a teacher in Colored Primary School No. 3 on West 15th Street. The following year Underwood Montgomery rented the room. He was a mechanist and a sexton of the West Twenty-Third Street Presbyterian Church. Montgomery would remain with the Condies at least through 1856.

James and Sarah Ellen would suffer grief while living here. On December 7, 1857, little Ellen died 21 days after her first birthday. And Samuel Harrison Condie died at the age of one year and 11 months on February 2, 1861. The miniature caskets of both children sat in the parlor until their funerals.

In 1866, Condie sold the building and the business to Robert Blackburn. He commuted from his home in New Jersey while James Whittet, who apparently worked for Blackburn, occupied the upper portion of 166 Eighth Avenue. Born in 1833, Whittet and his wife, Catherine Loehmert, had four children. The Whittets' residency would be rather short-lived and by 1864 David J. Hughes, a policeman, lived here. He was followed by Thomas Ormiston, a native of Skirling, Peebleshire, Scotland, who died in the house at the age of 57 on August 27, 1866.

Beginning about 1873, the Webster family lived above the drugstore. William Webster was a carpenter and Charles ran a liquor store or saloon next door at 168 Eighth Avenue. William changed profession and in 1876 was listed as a policeman.

That year Robert Blackburn and two other druggists fell victim to con artist James Nagle. On April 21, 1876, the New York Herald said, "His trick is an old one." Nagle would ask for five cents worth of salts and give the druggist a five dollar bill. "When the change was given he claimed that it was $1 short and demanded $1 extra," explained the article. Police caught up with Nagle and charged him "of swindling."

Like the Condies had done, the Websters took in a roomer. Mary Scott House moved in with the family in November 1877. Described by the New York Evening Express as belonging "to one of the best families in the State," Mary House was in desperate straits. A few weeks earlier, on October 23, she had married Elijah S. House ("a member of an aristocratic family in Troy," according to the New York Evening Express). The newlyweds checked into the New York Hotel. The newspaper reported that House, "left the hotel on November 1st, saying he was going to get some money, and did not return. Four or five days after she received a letter from him telling her to go back among her friends, and she then found he had abandoned her."

The Websters may have given Mary House a room out of sympathy. The New York Evening Express said, "All the money [House] gave her since her marriage was fifty cents." She complained to the police, who finally found and arrested Elijah S. House, who was living with Emma Scott at 186 Thompson Street.

House defended his actions saying, in part, that Mary had told him "she was worth money in her own right," but after their marriage he discovered she was "deeply in debt and wanted him to pay her debts." Additionally, "her temper became so irritable that he could not live with her." Surprisingly, Justice Bixby discharged House because he had lost his job and could not support his wife. He told Mary, "that she could have her husband rearrested whenever she was able to prove he was earning any money."

In February 1878, Robert Blackburn had a more serious concern than swindling to worry about. His clerk, Edward Wall, filled a prescription for Sophia Brown. The 20-year-old was pregnant at the time. Dr. Bremen later said he prescribed ten pills that contained, in total, "one-fifth of a grain of Hyoscyamus." (Hyoscyamus is a toxic plant used in small doses to treat nervous disorders or problems with sleeping.) Instead, Wall put one-fifth of a grain of the poisonous ingredient into each pill--ten times the prescribed amount.

Sophia Brown took one of the pills at 7:00 on the evening of February 12 and died within an hour. Dr. Bremen went to the Blackburn drugstore and discovered Wall's mistake. Rather astonishingly, on February 19 a coroner's jury decided that Robert Blackburn and Edward Wall were innocent of malpractice. The New York Times reported that the jury felt that Sophia Brown died "from a miscarriage, and that they knew not whether it had been brought about in an artificial or natural manner."

John Alexander Whittet had lived above the store in 1866 as a five-year-old while his father, James Whittet, worked in the Blackburn pharmacy. In 1882, now a young man, he purchased the drugstore. He had inherited $10,000 from his father's estate the previous year. (The figure would translate to a considerable $325,000 in 2026.) Whittet was originally successful, but a failed romance led to his downfall.

Four years later, on December 15, 1886, The New York Times reported, "He was paying attentions to a young lady living in Carlton-avenue, Brooklyn, but their engagement was broken off." According to relatives, Whittet went on a drunken, year-long spree. The New York Times said, "He did a good business until he contracted habits of intemperance." Under pressure from relatives, he agreed to "become an inmate of the Christian Home for Intemperate men, but he withdrew his consent."

In order to "save him from complete destruction," as worded by the newspaper, "his relatives interposed." On December 14, 1886, police arrested John Alexander Whittet from behind the counter of his drugstore. His grandmother, Margaret Ormiston, had "charged him with being an habitual drunkard," said the article.

Daniel R. Woollett, a printer, obtained the property shortly afterward. Born in London in July 1838, he came to America in 1851. An employer of the printing firm Styles & Cash, Wollett was an active member of the Masonic Tabernacle Lodge No. 598. He and his family moved into the upper floors of 166 Eighth Avenue.

At the same time, the Van Valkenburgh & Rickey drugstore took over the ground floor space. That partnership dissolved in 1889 and August Weber took over the shop for his grocery business. He moved in with the Wollett family.

Weber was chosen as a jury member in 1899 in one of New York City's most famous murder cases. Roland Burnham Molineux attempted to eliminate a romantic rival, Harry Seymour Cornish, by poisoning a bottle of Emerson's Bromo-Seltzer with cyanide of mercury. Instead, Cornish's cousin, Katherine Adams, took the medicine for a headache. She died within a few minutes. (The court case resulted in a landmark ruling that restricted prosecutors from presenting evidence of previous crimes.)

August Weber's grocery store was pointed out by The Evening Post in July 1902 as one of the outlets within Manhattan deemed by Dr. R. A. Witthaus of Cornell University Medical College as having, "pure, wholesome, and reliable food products."

Daniel R. Woollett died on October 30, 1904 at the age of 66. His funeral was held in the parlor of 166 Eighth Avenue two days later.

The former Weber grocery store space was leased to Daniel Reeves, Inc. in April 1915. The name was familiar to New Yorkers and this store would be one of hundreds of Daniel Reeves groceries throughout the New York City area.

Renting a room here in 1917 was Irish-born Margaret T. J. Curley, who worked as a stenographer. The fiery-tempered woman attended what the New-York Tribune described as "a soapbox meeting of the Friends of Irish Freedom" at Broadway and 35th Street on August 29 that year. What started as a peaceful protest ended in anything but that. The New-York Tribune began an article saying, "Heads were broken, women trampled and eight persons arrested last night in two riots which followed the attempts of the police to disperse a crowd of three thousand persons."

Enraged after three orators were hauled off the platform by police only minutes after starting speaking, Margaret T. J. Curley jumped into action. The New-York Tribune reported, "A woman, madly shrieking that she was a suffragette, leaped to the platform, tore off her hat and began waving the [Irish] flag." The article said, "Miss Curley was arrested."

The Daniel Reeves grocery store was the scene of an armed robbery on March 26, 1927. The New York Times reported that two armed men, "forced the manager, John Cleary and a woman customer, to the rear, rifled the till of $300 and escaped in a waiting automobile."

In 1929, an Art Deco storefront composed of Vitreous enamel panels was installed. By 1938, Freddy's Food Market had supplanted Daniel Reeves in the store. With Prohibition repealed, in 1938 the grocery obtained a license to sell beer and wine.

In 1941, the Greek Revival entrance, the six-over-six windows and the modest cornice were intact. via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The second half of the 20th century saw a decline in the Eighth Avenue neighborhood. But a renaissance at the turn of the century saw trendy shops and restaurants filling the storefronts. La Chinita Linda, a Cuban-Chinese restaurant, occupied the ground floor of 166 Eighth Avenue. Richard Laermer's 2002 Native's Guide to New York said it "has fab black beans."

Distressingly mutilated today, only the Flemish bond brickwork and now-painted brownstone lintels and sills of 166 Eighth Avenue survive to testify of the building's venerable history.

photographs by the author

Louis Entzer Jr.'s 1892 121 East 95th Street

2026-08-14T04:00:00.000-04:00

In two phases, real estate operator Francis Joseph Schnugg nearly filled the north blockfront of East 95th Street between Lexington and Park Avenues with 17 rowhouses. The second group, completed in 1892, was designed by Louis Entzer, Jr. (The first was the work of architect Fran Wennemer.) Included in Entzer's row were 119 and 121 West 95th Street, which he designed as a mirror-image pair.

Faced in brownstone, the three-story-and-basement homes were just 16-feet wide. A broad, shared stoop divided by an iron railing disguised their narrowness, as did the wide arched parlor windows. Entzer further united the pair by placing the round-arched doorways into a single frame. Pilasters with elaborately carved capitals flanked the entrances from which a molding rose to embrace a shared carved rondel.

Even more eye-catching were the sheet metal oriels at the second floor. They were decorated with fluted pilasters, neo-Classical swags, and a triangular pediment.

When three of the group--Nos. 113, 119 and 121--had not sold by October 25, 1892, Schnugg apparently dropped the price. He advertised:

Positively the Cheapest private houses in New-York, three-story and basement, brownstone; all private block; high ground...for only $17,000.

The price would translate to about $621,000 in 2026, and the reference to an "all private block" meant that there were deed restrictions that prohibited commerce on the block.

For some reason, 121 West 95th Street still did not sell. Schnugg leased the house and each time the lease expired, he advertised the 14-room house for sale again. In 1893, he upped the price to $17,250, stressing it was "worth $21,000" and he would include the gas fixtures. He tried again in April 1895, and finally found a buyer in the Pilgrim family.

The Pilgrims apparently purchased the house as an investment and, like Schnugg, continued to lease it. Living here in the post-World War I years was Julia Pabst Bader, the widow of Henry Bader, who died in 1922. Julia was the daughter of the German-born dry goods merchant Martin Pabst. She and Henry had one daughter, Laura. Julia Bader died here on December 5, 1929 at the age of 76.

When Linda Pilgrim sold the house in June 1945, The New York Times remarked that it "had been in the same family for more than fifty years."

Small panes, a touch of the Queen Anne style, still outlined the upper sashes of the oriel in 1940. via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

No. 121 East 95th Street became home to the Dr. Theodore Burg Russell family. Born in Queens, New York in 1903, Russell graduated from Princeton University in 1928 and Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1930. His wife, the former Rhoda Reddig, was a nurse and his second wife. He had three daughters, Mary, Katherine and Phoebe, from his first wife, Mary Learned Peltz (who was also a nurse).

Russell was apparently suffering from intense stress in the early months of 1951. At 4:45 on the afternoon of February 7, he boarded the Staten Island ferry President Roosevelt during a snowstorm. A few minutes before the vessel would have docked at St. George Terminal, Dr. Russell "walked out of the cabin and plunged over the port rail," reported The New York Times. The ferry was stopped and, as reported by The Staten Island Advance, "Three ferrymen had to put out in a lifeboat on choppy, rain-swept waters." The New York Times said, "When he was pulled from the water, he shouted, 'I want to die.'" As the lifeboat returned to the ferry, a deckhand had to restrain Russell from jumping back into the water.

Dr. Russell had chosen the most inconvenient time--rush hour--to attempt suicide. The Staten Island Advance reported, "The incident created a flurry of excitement in the harbor when three police boats, a Coast Guard cutter and a fireboat were rushed to the scene under the impression the ferry was in distress." And The New York Times added that the incident "delayed the craft more than a half-house and interrupted rush-hour ferry service from Manhattan and Staten Island."

Dr. Theodore Burg Russell and Rhoda Reddig Russell relocated to Ann Arbor, Michigan by the early 1960s. Rhoda became dean of the School of Nursing at the University of Michigan there. Surprisingly, 121 East 95th Street became home to Russell's previous wife, Mary Learned Peltz, and their two unmarried daughters, Katherine and Phoebe.

On June 19, 1963, The New York Times reported on Katherine Eveleen Russell's marriage to Benno Charles Schmidt Jr. in the Brick Presbyterian Church. Her sisters, Mary White and Phoebe, were matron and maid of honor, respectively. The article mentioned that Katherine had graduated from the Nightingale-Bamford School and Bennett College.

Two years later, nearly to the day, The New York Times reported on Mary Peltz Russell's marriage to Lewis Perry Jr. The erudite groom was headmaster of the Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs, and had attended Milton Academy, Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College and Oxford University.

Still a single-family home, 121 East 95th Street has undergone few exterior renovations and remains an integral part of the charming streetscape along this block.

photographs by the author

The John Schermerhorn Bussing House - 4 East 12th Street

2026-08-13T04:00:00.000-04:00

The son of Abraham and Hester Kingsland Bussing, John Schermerhorn Bussing was born on Cortlandt Street on October 15, 1802. His two maternal aunts had married into the prominent Schermerhorn family, prompting his middle name. Bussing formed a dry goods business, E. & J. Bussing, with his brother, Edmund. Following Edmund's death 26 years later, John changed course, founding the iron and nail firm, John S. Bussing & Company. He married Agnes Ann Speir in 1825 and the couple had a son, Robert Speir, who was born in 1826. Agnes died in 1831.

Two years later, John married Ann Van Nest in her parent's home. The couple, with young Robert, moved into the Van Nest home, once the summer mansion of Sir Peter Warren. A son, Abraham VanNest Bussing was born in 1834 and John Stuyvesant Bussing arrived on September 21, 1838. Sadly, Abraham died at the age of five in 1838.

Around 1845 John S. Bussing and Peter R. Bonnet, most likely close acquaintances, began construction of matching brownstone-faced residence at 154 and 156 Twelfth Street, respectively. (The addresses would be altered to 4 and 6 East 12th Street in 1855.) Twenty-five-feet wide and four stories tall above English basements, they held their own with the mansions rising on Fifth Avenue just steps away. Next to the floor-to-ceiling parlor windows, the entrance sat within a striking portico, its fluted columns capped with complex palm leaf capitals.

John Schermerhorn Bussing, Genealogies of the State of New York, 1915 (copyright expired)

In 1848, not long after moving into their mansion, the Bussings' only daughter, Mary, was born.

John Bussing was active in the public schools. As early as 1850, he held the position of Chairman of Section No. 1 in the public and primary school system.

John Schermerhorn Bussing died in the East 12th Street house on June 9, 1864 at the age of 62. His funeral was held in the parlor two days later.

Robert Speir Bussing had joined his father's business as a young man. He married Mary Kingsland on January 8, 1850 and at the time of his father's death the couple was living in Brooklyn.

John Stuyvesant Bussing had served in the Civil War. By now he was a partner in the banking and brokerage firm Gelston & Bussing and still lived with his mother and sister at 4 East 12th Street.

John Stuyvesant Bussing, Genealogies of the State of New York, 1915 (copyright expired)

John married Kate Breath in 1873. In what must have been unspeakable emotional anguish for John, Kate died in childbirth the following year, as did the couple's twin daughters, Kate and Anne. He married Emily Morton Jenkins on October 31, 1882. The couple lived with Ann and Mary at 4 East 12th Street.

It was acceptable for even well-to-do and socially prominent families to take in a boarder and in 1873 Henry C. Overin, the proprietor of the Phoenix Stables on West 46th Street, lived with the family. He was separated from his wife, Mary, whom he married in 1865. The New York Times explained that for a few years, "they lived unhappily." Overin lived here through 1880, and it would not be until his death in 1898 that his name appeared in newspapers. When both Mrs. Mary E. Overin and a decidedly younger Mrs. Caroline Overin laid claim to Henry's estate and business, the wealthy stable owner's duel life came to light.

In the meantime, John Bussing was highly involved with church and civic activities. For decades he was a member of the consistory of the College Reformed Church. He would, additionally, become one of the board of managers of the Young Men's Christian Association and of the Young Women's Christian Association. In 1877, he was among a group of gentlemen who hoped to reform alcoholics. On May 27, The New York Times reported that the men "have issued an appeal for assistance to enable them to establish a home for the reformation of drunkards."

Mary, who would never marry, was the victim of a pickpocket on March 2, 1882. The New York Times reported that as she "was looking at the window of a Broadway store," James Harvey "rifled the sack pocket" of Mary Bussing. The article said, "The only plunder he secured, was a card-case containing some cards and a few postage stamps."

Both Mary and Anne were active in philanthropic and charitable causes. Anne's father, Abraham Van Nest, had been a trustee of Rutgers College and Van Nest Hall there was named in his honor. In 1898, Anne "built a stone porch to Van Nest Hall and also refitted the eastern portion of the second story into a handsome hall for the use of the students in elocution," reported the New-York Tribune. She was a generous benefactor of the Theological Seminary in New Brunswick and established the Bussing Prize there.

Mary Bussing was a founder of the Christmas Letter Mission. The group endeavored to brighten the holidays of orphans, the indigent, prisoners, and hospitalized patients. She explained in a letter to the editor of the New-York Tribune on December 15, 1887, "these beautiful letters, with a bright card inclosed [sic], are sent as a surprise on Christmas morning to the suffering ones." She noted, "Twenty-five cents will send six of these sunbeams into lonely hearts."

John and Kate Bussing moved to 26 East 10th Street in 1886. Now only Ann and Mary remained in the East 12th Street house with their staff of servants. After a "severe attack of pneumonia," as reported by the New-York Tribune, Ann Van Nest Bussing died in the mansion at the age of 93 on January 8, 1905.

In 1918, Mary Bussing sold the house that her parents had built seven decades earlier and the only home she had ever known. On February 23, the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported, "Samuel Marcus...contemplates altering the 4-story brick and stone dwelling at 4 East 12th st., into studios and apartments." The cost of the renovations, said the article, would be $15,000, or about $312,000 in 2026. Plans filed by architects Jonathan B. Snook Sons included "remove stoop and [install] plumbing."

The renovations, completed in 1920, resulted in bachelor apartments. The term did not mean that tenants were not restricted to men, but that the apartments did not have kitchens.

Among the initial residents were Joseph P. Dugan, an engineer, and English-born D. Frank Gordon. On October 25, 1920, the two men went uptown to join a rally by gubernatorial candidate Dudley Field Malone. Professor Walter Edgerton Holloway first addressed the crowd and things began getting tense when, as described by The New York Times, the speaker "harangued a crowd of 5,000 Irish sympathizers near the Maine Monument." Joseph Dugan remarked to Gordon, "Edgerton is a poor speaker, I wish Malone would hurry up and talk."

The New York Times said that the "casual remark to a friend was misinterpreted." The Evening World reported that an Irishman in the crowd instead heard, "to the devil with Lord Mayor MacSwiney." (MacSwiney was the former Lord Mayor of Cork.) The article said, "An Irishman punched Gordon and a yell went up, 'He cursed MacSwiney!'" The New York Times reported that Dugan and Gordon were beaten and Dugan "nearly lost his life at the hands of a mob." Happily, police officers were on hand to rescue them.

In 1927, the newly-formed Institute of World Unity moved into the building, presumably in the basement level. An educational and cultural organization, its goal was to promote racial tolerance and international peace. By 1930, it also published World Unity Magazine from the address.

The institute was followed by The Meeting Place, Inc. around 1931. A renovation by architects Beineix & Snyder in 1934 better accommodated the organization. The Meeting Place now occupied the basement and first floors, and the upper floors held apartments.

The stoop and portico of 6 East 12th Street was originally a match to the one removed from No. 4 in 1918. via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Among the first tenants in the renovated apartments was artist Reginald Marsh, who was recently divorced. He moved into the building in February 1933. Born in Paris in 1898, Marsh would become noted for his depictions of New York City life, like unemployed men on the Bowery and lively Coney Island boardwalk scenes.

In January 1934, Marsh married painter Felicia Meyer and, according to Ellen Wiley Todd in her New Woman Revised, the couple left 4 East 12th Street that month. Apparently Marsh retained his studio here, however, because when he won a cash prize in the 122th annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design in 1937, his address was still listed at 4 East 12th Street.

Another renovation, completed in 1952, resulted in a "business office" in the basement and apartments on the upper floors. Among those living and working here in the 1960s were composer, librettist and lyricist Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, and painter and printmaker Betty Waldo Parish. Later television and documentary producer David E. J. Berger and his collaborator and wife Holly Maxson lived and worked here.

Despite the loss of the stoop and parlor entry, 4 East 12th Street survives remarkably intact above the basement level. Today, the building, with its remarkable history, holds eight apartments.

photographs by the author