Daytonian in Manhattan

The 1925 Labor Temple - 223 Second Avenue

2026-05-16T04:00:00.001-04:00

image via streeteasy.com

When the Fourteenth Street Church was erected at the southwest corner of Second Avenue and 14th Street in 1851, it sat "in the centre of wealth and fashion," as worded by The New York Times. That was no longer the case in 1910 and on January 7, The Sun titled an article, "An East Side Church To Quit" and reported that the trustees would be selling the property.

from the collection of the New-York Historical Society

With the vintage structure unoccupied, Rev. Charles Stelzle, who had once been a machinist, "opened a Sunday evening forum in the old church," reported The New York Times. "The success of the innovation was immediate, and Labor Temple was organized, with Mr. Stelzle as its first director." Labor Temple offered educational services for workers, clubs "of all sorts and purposes" were initiated, and an employment bureau was opened. "Labor Temple became the centre of the life of the neighborhood," said The New York Times.

The former church was regularly the venue for lectures and discussions on political, labor and civic issues. On February 29, 1912, for instance, Arthur J. Howard lectured on "Political and Industrial Australia." It was, nevertheless, still operated by the Presbyterian Church, with Sunday services "applied to the daily life of its congregation." Sermon topics included "Religion and Labor," "The Strength of Capitalism," and "The Ethics of Propaganda." The services were conducted in several languages to cater to the area's diverse demographics.

In 1924, Rev. Thomas Guthrie Speers, chairman of the Labor Temple Committee, determined that the corner property was valuable. He proposed a business building with "ample quarters for Labor Temple" on the site. A committee composed of businessmen was formed and the well-known architect Emery Roth was given the task of creating a multi-use

structure on the site.

Roth's expertise was apartment buildings. Dan Everett Waid, who used his first initial professionally, was known for office buildings. (He had recently designed the annex to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company building on Madison Square, and was, as well, the president of the American Institute of Architects.) Roth and Waid had no professional connection, but it is clear that Roth consulted Waid on this project. Although the latter's name does not appear in any documentation, Roth included Waid's name in the base of a 14th Street pilaster.

image courtesy Robyn Roth-Moise

The cornerstone was laid on April 4, 1925 "above the clang of surface cars and the thunder of elevated trains to a crowd of 300 passers-by, unemployed and supporters of the Labor Temple," as reported by The New York Times. In his address, Rev. Edmund B. Chaffee stressed, "there would be no change in the policy of the temple."

Completed in November 1925 at a cost of $750,000 (about $13.4 million in 2026), Roth's Italian Renaissance Revival design included a two-story limestone base with full-height elliptical arches. Stores along the sidewalk and professional offices on the second floor provided retail income. They prompted The New York Times to comment that the Labor Temple would get "its new and enlarged quarters rent free."

Faux balconies above the third floor and Florentine-inspired arches at the seventh enhanced the Renaissance motif. An arched corbel table ran below the minimal cornice.

Inside, on the ground floor was a large auditorium, a meeting room and office "for the use of labor organizations." In the basement was a gymnasium. On the second floor was a chapel that could accommodate 150 persons, and a music room. The third and fourth floors contained clubrooms and classrooms, the employment bureau, the director's office, and the "living and dining room for the staff of Labor Temple," according to The Times. Living quarters for the resident workers occupied the sixth floor and the director's apartment was in the penthouse, along with a "sunny playroom" for neighborhood children. It opened onto a roof playground.

On November 9, 1925. The New York Times reported, "Labor and the Church joined hands last night in the dedication of the new six-story Labor Temple Building at Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue, where educational classes, community activities and religious worship will be conducted."

For Edward Hale Everett, the oldest employee of the Labor Temple, the opening of the structure would come just in time. Since the its inception, Everett had played Santa Claus for the organization's Christmas Eve children's party. When he was not wearing his false beard and red suit, he taught neighborhood children carpentering.

On October 27, 1925, two weeks before the dedication, he was operating the elevator for the workmen who were bringing furniture up the elevator and placing it into various spaces. Suddenly, he stopped answering the elevator bell. Alarmed, Rev. Chaffee went to the basement and opened the elevator door. "Eddie had dropped dead with his hand still clutching the control level," said The New York Times.

"Eddie" Everett's funeral was held in the chapel on October 30. The New York Times said, "Out on the street the boys that Eddie had taught carpentering and the little girls to whom he had given dolls lined up to wait. And when the body was borne out, they waved their hands and called out: 'Good-bye, Eddie! Good-bye, Santa Clause!'"

Interestingly, Emery Roth was called back twice to make renovations--in 1927 and in 1930. What changes were made is unclear, but it was most likely during one of those remodelings that the rather incongruous, projecting Second Avenue entrance was installed.

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The auditorium immediately became a favorite space for political and labor gatherings. The night after the dedication, defeated Socialist candidate for mayor, Norman Thomas, spoke here. He blamed his loss to James J. Walker on "indifferent and unintelligent voting."

In addition to Sunday services, like any other church, the chapel was used for funerals and weddings. In October 1926, Eugene V. Debs, who had run for President five times under the Socialist Party ticket, died in Chicago. His body was brought by train to New York City and on October 22, The New York Times reported, "The body will lie in state at the Labor Temple...from 2 P.M. until 9 P.M. tomorrow."

In November 1927, Rev. Edmund B. Chaffee lobbied for $3,000 city funding to renovate the rooftop playground. Included in the plans was a "steel protective covering." He insisted, "While this will not solve the city's playground problem, it will at least do something to save the children of this section from the trucks and street cars."

As seen here in 1940, Chaffee was successful in getting his steel rooftop enclosure. via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The conviction of Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti for murder on July 14, 1921 immediately caused an uproar amid the labor and immigrant communities around the country. Their arrest and conviction were viewed by many to be the result of bias against immigrants and radicals. Sacco's and Vanzetti's innocence was widely touted in periodicals and throngs across the country pleaded for a pardon or new trial.

Six years later, as their execution date was nearing, New York labor organizations mobilized. On August 15, 1927, The Daily Worker reported, "The Sacco-Vanzetti Emergency Committee will hold its fourth conference tonight, at 8 o'clock, at Labor Temple."

The nation-wide efforts to save Sacco and Vanzetti were unsuccessful and the two were electrocuted on August 23, 1927. Although Police Commissioner Joseph A. Warren banned public mourning, the Socialist Labor Party held a memorial service in Labor Temple on August 26. The New York Times reported that it "was quiet and orderly." The meeting ended with the singing of the "International."

The diversity of the neighborhood was reflected in one of the ground floor tenants, The Russian Kretchma ("Russian Tavern") here as early as 1927. Patrons were entertained by Nastia Poliakova, a "Russian gypsy singer" who was born in Moscow," the "daughter of a gypsy 'king,'" according to The New York Times. She had sung before Czar Nicholas II and after fleeing to Turkey during the Russian Revolution had sung in a Parisian nightclub, and in Berlin and Belgrade.

Barnard Bulletin, January 6, 1928 (copyright expired)

Several medical tenants occupied the second floor spaces. Among them in the 1920s and 1930s were Dr. S. A. Chernoff, a "specialist in acute and chronic diseases of men and women, skin and blood;" chiropodist Aaron Shapiro; and surgical dentist Dr. A. Brown.

According to the Daily Worker on January 19, 1941, the Labor Temple was "home of 43 unions," like the Cleaners, Dyers and Pressers Union.

Living in the building as early as 1945 was journalist and playwright Gershom Bader and his wife, Jennie. Born in Krakówm Galicia on August 21, 1868, he came to America in 1912. By the time the couple lived in Labor Temple, Bader had written several volumes on Jewish life and religion. Among his Yiddish-language plays were Der Rebe in Feyer, The Rabbi's Melody, and Di Goldene Royze. He was the honorary vice-president of the Federation of Polish Jews in America.

Gershom Bader, from The Schwadron Collection of the National Library of Israel.

Also living here at the time was Joseph Chaikin, an editor of the Jewish newspaper The Day. Born in Russia in 1885, he came to New York City in 1901 "and soon was active as an editor in the Jewish labor movement," according to The New York Times. In 1946 his Yiddish-language book Jewish Newspapers in America was published. He was a founder of the National Jewish Workers Alliance and a member of the Yiddish Writers Union.

Reverend John F. Duffy headed the Labor Temple by the mid-1940s. He gave a speech at Barnard Day Chapel in October 1946 to explain the Labor Temple's work. He told the audience that its original purpose "was to give the labor unions a place to hold their meetings and give the laborers, who up until then were not accepted in the churches of the lower east side, an opportunity to join a church." In addition to that original goal, he said, the Labor Temple hoped to demolish "the middle walls of partition which keep people from one another."

The Russian Kretchma was still going strong at the time of that speech. As Russian Orthodox Sunday approached in 1947, The New York Times noted that pascha, an Russian Easter cake, and kulich, an Easter bread with sugar icing, would be served there, as it was every year.

A renovation in 1952 created additional apartments within the building--12 each on the third through sixth floors.

Gershom and Jennie Bader still occupied their apartment here on November 12, 1953 when the playwright and journalist died at the age of 85.

A renovation completed in 1963 resulted in a restaurant and cabaret on the ground floor. The auditorium was converted to a gymnasium, but the chapel and its accessory spaces were kept intact. But then, in 1996, Stellar Management Company acquired the property and began a $500,000 renovation into residential use with retail stores.

photograph by streeteasy.com

The first floor of Emory Roth's handsome Florentine-inspired structure has been horribly vandalized. The upper floors, however, are happily intact. The former Labor Temple building survives as an important example of the architect's work and a significant page of New York City's labor history.

many thanks to reader Robyn Roth-Moise for prompting this post

The 1909 Fourth Avenue Building - 381 Park Avenue So.

2026-05-15T04:00:00.001-04:00

mage via loopnet.com

In 1909, architect Charles A. Valentine filed plans for a 16-story "brick and stone office building" at the southeast corner of Fourth Avenue and 27th Street. Construction would cost developer A. Filmore Hyde $700,000, just under $25 million in 2026 terms. Named the Fourth Avenue Building, its Renaissance Revival design included a three-story rusticated limestone base. The 10-story midsection was faced in beige brick, its grouped openings stacked within full-height metal frames that included cartouche-decorated spandrels.

The reserved ornamentation of the lower levels was merely an aperitif for the three-story top level. Paired arches separated by engaged columns were embraced within elaborate pointed arches, possibly inspired by Milan's Ca Granda. The spandrels were embellished with frothy shields.

The Architectural Record, December 1910 (copyright expired)

The Fourth Avenue Building filled with a diverse tenant list. Among them was the New York office of the State Labor Department. Its meeting rooms were normally the scenes of labor disputes and strike negotiations, but in June 1911, its staff was distracted with a much different issue.

George E. Dayton had worked as a financial clerk "for many years," according to The New York Times. "He was so methodical in his habits that his fellow-clerks said they could regulate their watches by him." On Friday, June 2, Dayton, who was a widower, left for his "Summer camp" in New London, Connecticut. He was scheduled to return on June 7, but did not, and, in fact, was never heard of again.

The New York Department of Labor would remain for years, dealing with issues like the 1912 laundrymen strike, and holding public hearings on fire-prevention construction methods the same year.

Another initial tenant was the substantial contracting firm Caldwell-Wingate Company. It not only erected structures, but demolished them. In November 1912, for instance, it received the contract for demolishing the four buildings at 107-113 East 23rd Street; and on July 14, 1924, the New York Evening Post reported that it had received the $4,174,800 contract to erect the Brooklyn Municipal Building.

Coldwell-Wingate Company was headed by Roy Wilson Wingate. He suffered a public scandal in December 1921 when George J. Ainslee sued him for $50,000 for having "won his wife's affections by taking her on automobile trips, to dances and other entertainments." The Ainslees divorced and whether Wingate (who was married with two children) continued the affair is unclear.

What is clear is that three years later, on March 20, 1924, Roy W. Wingate and his wife hosted a dinner and bridge party. The guests left at around 10:00. Mrs. Wingate went to bed, but woke shortly afterward "in pain," according to The New York Times. She "saw her husband standing by her with a revolver in his hand." After shooting his wife, Wingate walked around the bed, got under the bedclothes, and shot himself through the heart.

The Wingates' 14-year-old daughter, Janet, rushed to the bedroom. Her mother said, "Your father shot me and then shot himself. Get a doctor, get Dr. Brown quickly." While his wife' life was saved at a hospital, Wingate had died instantly. In reporting on the tragedy, The New York Times remarked, "The firm has just about completed the new building of Saks & Co. in Fifth Avenue."

In the meantime, perhaps the first publishing firm to occupy offices in the Fourth Avenue Building was The Crowell Publishing Company. It published popular periodicals like Farm & Fireside, Woman's Home Companion, The American Magazine, and Colliers, the National Weekly.

George Buckley was president of Crowell Publishing Company. On May 21, 1918, a telegram from the War Department informed him that his brother, Joseph H. Buckley, had been wounded in France. A few weeks later, Buckley received a surprising letter from his brother dated two days after that telegram. Joseph Buckley had enclosed in the letter "a piece of the shrapnel" that was removed from his wounds, reported The New York Times on June 9.

Thomas Nelson & Sons occupied space by 1915. It published the American Standard Bible and Nelson's Perpetual Loose-Leaf Encyclopaedia, which enabled subscribers to insert and remove new or outdated information. Founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, the firm was headed by the founder's son, William Thomson, who took over in 1904. Born in 1862, he started working in the company when he was 14 and came to the United States in 1893.

Sophie Kerr symbolized the modern, self-sufficient career woman of the early 20th century. The unmarried young woman was an editor of the Woman's Home Companion. She scoffed at debutantes whose entire focus was preparing to be the wife of an affluent man, telling Marguerite Mooers Marshall of The Evening World in March 1917, "No girl in America is so rich that she can afford not to know how to earn."

In 1919 the National Juvenile Motion Picture League established its headquarters here. Its president, Adele F. Woodward explained its purpose on May 25, saying "it expresses the idea in the efforts of many people who are opposed to official censorship of motion pictures, yet believe that the moral and artistic influence of many films is bad." To that end, the league published The Bulletin that reviewed motion pictures. The standards were, apparently high. On May 25, 1919, The New York Times reported that between January 1 and May 20 that year, it "reviewed about 400 feature pictures and comedies, of which about 70 had been approved." (By the following year, the organization's name was changed to The National Motion Picture League.)

In October 1921, the Industrial Bank of New York leased the ground floor, and Princeton Silk Mills took space on an upper floor.

Additional publishing firms moved into the building. In the 1920s, it was home to the International Publishers, the Macaulay Company, Engineering Magazine Company, and Experimental Publications. The latter published Radio News, which it boasted in 1929 had a "circulation larger than that of any other radio publication."

International Publishers had a decidedly socialist bent. On September 15, 1925, The New York Times reported that it had released Leon Trotsky's Whither England? that day. In it Trotsky predicted:

The inevitable hour will strike for American capital also: the American oil and steel magnates, trust and export leaders, the multimillionaires of New York, Chicago and San Francisco are performing--thought unconsciously--their predestined revolutionary function. And the American proletariat will ultimately discharge theirs.

Two years later, on October 5, 1927, The Daily Worker reported that International Publishers, "cooperating with the Lenin Institute in Moscow," was publishing "the complete and definitive edition of Lenin's speeches and writings." And three months later, in January 1928, the firm published Scott Nearing's Whither China?. Nearing was a leading intellectual within the Socialist Party of America.

A much less controversial publishing firm, which moved into the building in June 1929, was Popular Science Publishing Company, publishers of Popular Science Magazine. It signed a lease "for a long term of years" for the seventh floor, reported The New York Times.

The early 1930s saw new tenants, including The Modern Institute, which offered slimming techniques by mail order; the Boys Clubs of America headquarters; and the offices of the Social Register Association, which annually published the directory of America's socially elite.

The Modern Institute's advertisements, like this one from 1932, guaranteed results in the privacy of one's home.

Having the New York State Department of Labor within the building might have been convenient for the Macaulay Company in 1934. On September 19, The Daily Worker reported that a breach of contract "caused the calling yesterday of the second strike in three months, by the Office Workers Union. During the first strike, in May, 18 picketers were arrested, including several respected authors.

Now, the union charged that Macaulay Company had fired three workers "without consulting the shop committee." The dispute triggered a strike of the employees of eight other publishing houses. Strikers lined the sidewalks outside the Fourth Avenue Building while Lee S. Furman, president of the firm, called them "malcontents" and "agitators."

Other politically-motivated tenants moved into the building in the 1930s, including the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy and the offices of the American Peace Mobilization.

A seemingly non-political tenant was the G. S. Blakeslee Company, distributors of dishwashing machines. One employee, however, did have a political agenda. On January 15, 1940, The New York Times reported on the FBI's indictments against 18 co-conspirators who were intent to overthrow the Government of the United States. Among them was 32-year-old Blakeslee employee Macklin Boettger. He and the other members of the Christian Front were or had been members of various branches of the American military and had stolen weapons from National Guard armories.

Increasingly, organizations established their headquarters in 381 Fourth Avenue. On February 2, 1940, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited the offices of the National Youth Administration here. The group placed "orphaned boys and girls in employment," explained The New York Times. Mrs. Roosevelt commended the work and suggested it could be extended throughout the country, but cautioned, "against the possibility of the plan's falling into the hands of unscrupulous people who might use it to get cheap labor and to exploit youth."

On September 22, 1942, following the United States entry into World War II, West Coast shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser opened a "recruiting office" here. The New York Times said he intended "to recruit 20,000 shipyard workers for his plants." By 4:00 the first day, 1,600 had applied. The plan was successful. Two weeks later, the newspaper reported that another "trainload of workers" was heading for the Kaiser shipbuilding yard in Portland, Oregon.

The U.S. Government followed suit and installed an Army recruiting office here. A journalist who stopped by on April 26, 1942, counted "more than 400 men in line."

At midcentury, the International Publishers (which would remain into the 1970s) and its Socialist ideology drew the attention of Congress. On June 20, 1951, at the height of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communism campaign, Russian-born Alexander Leo Trachtenberg, the head of the firm, was indicted on conspiracy charges.

Alexander Leo Trachtenberg, The New York Times, June 21, 1951

Trachtenberg went on trial on January 7, 1953. His attorney called him the victim of "a frame-up and a fraud." The publisher was convicted under the Smith Act (known today as the Alien Registration Act) but his conviction was overturned when a government witness recanted his testimony.

Still occupying space in the 1960s were the Boys Clubs of America and the Social Register. A new tenant by 1963 was the New York Board of Regents.

In 1959, Fourth Avenue was renamed Park Avenue South. Atco Properties and Management acquired 631 Park Avenue South in 1974. The firm's senior vice president, Peter L. DiCapua, later explained that the property was its first "adaptive re-use of middle-aged buildings." He told Richard D. Lyons of The New York Times in December 1989, "We put in a lot of dollars and re-created the original design, such as restoring the main lobby to its original form, while upgrading the mechanical systems."

image via marketplace.vts.com

Among Atco's initial tenants was Public Affairs Pamphlets, which published brochures like "Help for Your Troubled Child," "Helping Children Face Crisis," and "Your Child's Emotional Health" in 1977. It was joined in the building with Inform, a non-profit environmental group that published reported issues about chemical hazard pollution, sustainable transportation such such. As early as 2009, the National Center for Learning Disabilities operated from the building.

many thanks to reader Peter Alsen for prompting this post

From Horses to Oysters to Art - 246 East 5th Street

2026-05-14T04:00:00.002-04:00

photograph by Anthony Bellov

Jacob Finck owned the two-story building--possibly a carriage house or small stable--at 246 East 5th Street when he died in 1881. It was most likely his widow and son, Andrew, who converted the building to a house-and-store around 1883.

The remodeling was a mélange of styles. The building's tall second-floor windows wore molded cornices, typical of the Italianate style. The pressed metal cornice, however, with its crisp, geometric corbels, was neo-Grec in style. A handsome, slightly-projecting storefront was supported by paneled, cast iron pilasters.

The storefront was intact when this photograph was taken in 1940. via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

It is unclear how long the Fricks retained possession of the property. By the turn of the century, it was owned by real estate operator Michael J. Adrian, who owned dozens of properties in the district. As early as 1904, the store was home to Oscar Horn's clothing and tailoring shop.

Adrian died in 1908 and on May 15 that year his estate transferred his holdings--valued at the equivalent of $62.7 million in 2026--to the newly formed Michael J. Adrian Corporation. Included in the transfer was 246 East 5th Street, the storefront of which now held the office of building contractors Golomb & Magid.

The corporation leased 246 East 5th Street in 1913 to real estate operator Norbert Landau. He advertised on February 8 that year, "Real Estate Wanted. $10,000 cash to invest for good paying houses; (no steam heat;) with only one mortgage. Robert Landau, 246 East 5th St., New York." His substantial offering would translate to about $325,000 today.

Little changed to the charming building over the subsequent decades. In the Depression years, a tailor shop occupied the store. And then, in the 1970s it was converted to a single-family home. The storefront was removed and replaced with a comically tiny window, and a slathering of stucco was applied to the facade.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Before 2000, the building was renovated again. A storefront was reintroduced, the second floor windows were shortened, and an awkward third floor added.

Jack's Luxury Oyster Bar opened in the storefront in September 2003. The New York Times food critic Florence Fabricant described it as "a small marble bar with chandeliers."

photograph by Anthony Bellov

The restaurant was short-lived. On May 9, 2025, Slip House opened in the space. The gallery was founded by Ingrid Lundgren and Marissa Dembkoski. At some point (the timeline is vague), the ground floor facade was encrusted with colorful mosaics and pennies by artist Jim Powers. And a striking ironwork archway was installed, created by Linus Coraggio.

photograph by Anthony Bellov

many thanks to historian Anthony Bellov for suggesting this post