The James Watson Webb House -- No. 145 Bleecker St.

By 1830 Greenwich Village was profoundly experiencing a population and building boom.  Two years earlier the former potters’ field at the south end of the still-unpaved and vacant Fifth Avenue had been landscaped and converted to Washington Square.  When bachelor George P. Rogers erected his grand Federal-style mansion on the north side of the Square in 1828, he set the wheels in motion for a developing high-end residential area.

Developer Thomas E. Davis recognized the potential of the area, especially the 60-foot wide Bleecker Street two blocks south of the Square.  Around 1831 he began an ambitious construction project that would result in 15 rowhouses on both sides of Bleecker between Thompson and Laurens (renamed LaGuardia Place in the 20^th century) Streets.

A common real estate marketing gimmick at the time, especially in Greenwich Village, was the renaming of single blocks to add high-toned character to the homes.  The clever, if confusing, practice resulted in Varick Place on Sullivan Street, St. Clements Place on MacDougal, and LeRoy Place on Bleecker between Mercer and Greene Streets, to name a few.  Davis joined the trend and convinced the city to rename his block Carroll Place, in honor of the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll.  

Historians generally agree that architect Samuel Dunbar was responsible for the design of the homes.  When the rows were completed, there were seven on the north side of the street and eight on the south.  The discrepancy was caused by the generous width of the homes on the north—at 29 feet they were nearly four feet wider than their counterparts.

The architect melded the Federal style with the up-and-coming Greek Revival.  The red brick was laid in Flemish bond and accented by contrasting white limestone lintels and sills.  Handsome Greek Revival entrances featured fluted columns and carved wreath decoration.  The parlor floor windows were graced with iron balconies.

Among the first residents of Carroll Place were author James Fennimore Cooper and his family.  The Coopers had recently returned from Europe and Mrs. Cooper famously said the new house was “too magnificent for our simple French tastes.”  Most accounts place the Cooper family in No. 6 Carroll place; although at least one letter from Mrs. Cooper notes the address at No. 4

If indeed the Coopers lived at No. 6, they were gone by 1832 when it was home to James Watson Webb and his family.  Webb had been a Lieutenant in the Third U.S. Infantry and was editor of the Courier and Enquirer.  The Annual Report of the United States Military Academy decades later, in 1908, would remember him as “a man of striking and handsome appearance.”  Webb’s father, Samuel Blatchley Webb had been an Aide-de-Campe on the staff of General George Washington.

On July 1, 1823 had married Helen Lispenard Stewart.   Helen was the daughter of Alexander L. Stewart and the granddaughter of Anthony Lispenard.  Six children had been born to James and Helen Webb by the time they moved into the Carroll Street house—Robert Stewart, Lispenard Stewart, Helen Matilda, Amelia Barclay, Catherine Louisa and James Watson.  But infant survival was precarious at best at the time.  Baby James Watson Webb would die in the new house on September 20, 1832 at the age of seven months, only a few months after the family’s arrival.   His little brother Lispenard Stewart and sister Amelia Barclay had preceded him in death.

A year later another baby boy arrived.  Watson Webb was born in the house on November 10, 1833, followed by Alexander Stewart Webb on February 15, 1835.  Alexander would go on to an illustrious career—graduating from West Point and rising to the rank of General, then serving as the second President of the College of the City of New York.

The Webb family spent the summers at their country estate, Pokahoe on the Hudson.  But they would not keep No. 6 Carroll Place as their city residence for long.

In 1835 the prosperous and respected merchant Richard Suydam of Suydam, Jackson & Co., moved in to No. 6 from his home further downtown.  In his 1885 The Old Merchants of New York City, Joseph Alfred Scoville wrote “Richard…was a down town man, living at No. 6 Stone street, until 1820, and after that at 65 Pearl street, ‘close by the store,’ and in the good, old fashioned style of our ancestors, until 1835, when he, too moved up town to No. 6 Carrol [sic] Place, not near so cosy and so nice as it was at No. 6 Stone street, with the young Pennsylvanian wife in 1811.”

Richard Suydam and his “young Pennsylvanian wife” had five daughters—Mary, Caroline, Adeline, Jane and Louisa.  The wealthy merchant and his feminine household stayed here until 1858.  By now the wealthy residents south of Washington Square were moving further north, up Fifth Avenue.  Their grand houses were converted to rooming houses as immigrants poured into the neighborhood.

When exactly that fate befell No. 6 Carroll Place is unclear; but on August 21, 1863—the day that resident William J. Irving was drafted into the Civil War—it most likely had several tenants.  By now, too, the once-grand address had fallen away and the house was known as No. 145 Bleecker Street.

According to Dr. Emelise Aleadri in her 2002 Little Italy, the lower portions of the house were converted to business purposes in 1870 when Louis V. Fugazy founded his Banca L. V. Fugazy here “including public notary and travel agency;” and the J. G. Marsicano wholesale cheese company was here.  Upstairs, however, boarders continued to live; many of them Italian immigrants who were changing the face of section of Greenwich Village. 

Life in the squalid rooms of No. 145 Bleecker was radically different from luxury experienced when the wealthy Webb and Suydam families lived here.  Tragedy spurred by jealousy visited the apartment of John Wilson and his wife in November 1874.  The Nashville Union and American reported on November 25 that Wilson “was devotedly attached [to his wife] and who loved her so ardently as to be consumed by a chronic jealousy of her, returned home one night, and, producing a revolver, told her he had made up his mind to shoot her.”

Mrs. Wilson realized there was no chance of escape and tightly closed her eyes and waited for the end.  “I was certain I as going to be killed, and, oh, how I dreaded the shot,” she later recounted.

Indeed, the shot rang out, then another, then another.  A total of five shots were fired before Mrs. Wilson opened her eyes.

“She did not know but that the first had killed her and the other four were perforating her inanimate corpse,” said the newspaper.  “Everything being quiet after a little, she opened her eyes to find herself still living, and her stupid husband with a bullet in each hand, and another in his stomach, while two others had lodged in the wall.”

John Wilson, moved by his wife’s resignation to death without pleading or struggling, had decided instead to kill himself rather than her.  The newspaper reported that “He was conveyed to a hospital, and will probably recover, to respect for life the silent courage which saved him from a murder most foul and most unnatural.”

The residents held blue-collar jobs; like Joseph Metzler, a tailor who lived here in 1875 and John Losin, described by The New York Times on July 8, 1883 as “an Italian bricklayer.” 

At the turn of the century the commercial space was home to B. Schapiro, an “ostrich feather manufacturer,” and J. Emorozi whose company made coats.  Upstairs, in 1902, lived an Italian immigrant Mrs. Margarita Mulatza and her 11-year old daughter, Marie.

Mrs. Mulatza arrived from Sicily that year and moved into a furnished room at No. 222 Thompson Street.  An expert seamstress, she began earning money.  In the meantime another Italian named Alfredo “began to show her marked attention,” according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Having settled in, Mrs. Mulatza sent for Marie.  The Eagle noted that “though but 11 years old, Marie is well developed, and like her mother, a handsome Sicilian.”  Marie’s physical charms were not lost on Alfredo.  He immediately transferred his attentions to the girl and told her mother that some day he would like to marry her.

Before long Mrs. Mulatza and her daughter moved to No. 145 Bleecker Street in an effort to evade Alfredo, who had become a nuisance.  But the determined lothario finally found them.  “Mrs. Mulatrza ordered him away, and he went, but later returned with two pies, of apparently ordinary American manufacture,” said The Eagle.

Alfredo presented the pies to Marie as a token of his love with a gallant bow, clasping his hands over his heart.  Marie accepted the pastries; but having never seen an American apple pie before, she took only a small taste.

Her mother, on the other hand, was more than willing to eat both pies.  As it turned out the rejected Alfredo had poisoned the pies and Mrs. Mulatza spent a day in St. Vincent’s Hospital seriously ill.

Much more positive press would come when resident Valentino Casazza came up with a clever invention in the summer of 1913.  The Times Dispatch of Richmond, Virginia, was impressed. 

“A window screen that not only keeps the flies and mosquitoes out of your house, but catches those flies in the hose that alight on it, and, reversed, catch those flies that try to get in at night, is a brand new invention that has every appearance of being the most valuable of all arrangements for fighting those dangerous pests, the house fly and mosquito.”

By 1946 the commercial space had become Salvatore’s Bar and Grill, owned by 26-year old Salvatore Spatola.  At 2:01 on the morning of October 21 that year the youthful bar owner attempted to repair a jammed cash register drawer.  He shoved his hand into a small metal door on the register’s side and, after feeling around for a few minutes, found his hand and wrist were stuck.

A patron came to his aid, then another, until finally ten bar customers were crowded around the barkeeper and the cash register.  Finally someone called the police.  Two patrolmen responded; but they, too, were unable to extricate Salvatore’s hand.

Police Emergency Square 1 was notified and Sgt. Harry McDonald and five patrolmen entered the bar.  Savatore Spatola now had 10 customers, seven policemen and a sergeant working to free him.  The New York Times reported that the policemen, “employing a hacksaw, screwdriver and pinch bar, worked for forty minutes before they were able to cut a section from the register.”

What was no doubt an embarrassing calamity to Spatola had a happy ending—other than his ruined cash register.  “The hand came out intact, except for minor bruises, which were treated at St. Vincent’s Hospital,” said The Times.

In 1952 the Green Room Studio opened in the building.  The off-Broadway playhouse presented Eugene O’Neill’s “Beyond the Horizon” in October 1954.  Then on August 1956 the Bleecker Street Theatre opened with Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

Louis Calta of The New York Times was, unfortunately, not impressed with the new theater’s production.  “During the last three decades, there have been as many efforts to dramatize effective for the stage Mr. Wilde’s tale of a decadent soul.  But all have failed dismally.

“The latest adaptation by Justin Foster is no more successful than the preceding ones.”

Despite the  initial production’s bad reviews The Bleecker Street Theatre lasted several years.  It was replaced by The Children’s Own Theatre in 1960 which staged live plays for the younger set.  In 1962 it became the Washington Square Theater.

In 1966 the already well-abused house was converted once again.  An “eating and drinking establishment” took up the basement and parlor floors; while each floor above now contained two apartments.  Opening in the newly created bar-restaurant was the Dugout Tavern which advertised itself as having “Bohemian atmosphere, Victorian décor” and “sawdust on the floor.”

The alterations included the removal of the old stoop and 135-year old iron railings, the loss of the wonderful Greek Revival entrance with its columns and enframement, and the removal of the dormer ornamentation.

Today a tavern operates in the basement level and an Asian restaurant is housed in what was the Webb family’s parlor.  But above, some of the carved lintels survive, as do the two rooftop dormers.  With just a little imagination the passerby can envision the house 180 years ago when one of New York’s wealthiest families lived within its walls.

photographs taken by the author

The Richard Hurd House -- No. 12 East 68th Street

photo by Alice Lum

As New York City recovered from the great financial depression known as the Panic of 1873, a boom in construction resulted.  In 1878 1,672 building were erected in Manhattan, followed by another 2,065 in 1879.  Among the developers taking advantage of the trend was Anthony Mowbray.

Mowbray had started building in New York in 1853 and, although he was a trained architect himself, by the 1870s more often relied on the talents of others.  The streets leading away from the completed Central Park presented alluring sites for rowhouses and in 1878 Mowbray began construction on a row of five brownstone-fronted homes from No. 12 to 20 East 68th Street.

Mowbray and his fellow developers were likely unaware that within a generation the East Side neighborhood they were creating would be overrun by the mansions of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens.  For now, they erected respectable upscale homes intended for the well-to-do merchant and upper-middle class.

Designed by architects Lamb & Wheeler, the homes were completed in 1879.  No. 12 became home to Oren Dennett and his wife.  Four stories tall over a high English basement, it boasted 12 rooms and two bathrooms.

Dennett was born in Maine in 1824 of what Refrigerating World called “sturdy New England stock.”  One of 13 children, he “surrendered the slow opportunities of farm life” at the age of 18.  Dennett traveled to New York where he took a job as a driver of an ice wagon for the Knickerbocker Ice Company.

The hard-working boy advanced (it was noted that he had “scarcely known a sick day”), becoming the foreman in charge of the company’s eight ice wagons located at the foot of Duane Street in 1850.  By the time he purchased the 68^th Street house he was a director of the company.

In days before electric refrigeration, the ice business was a grave necessity to homes and businesses alike.  In 1884 Dennett secured a large commission by landing the Department of Charities and Corrections account.

photo Refrigerating World, December 1908 (copyright expired)

While Dennett was busy in the ice trade, his wife upheld the image expected of a moneyed housewife.  While she did not sip tea with the Astors or Vanderbilts, she immersed herself in the appropriate charities and clubs.  She served as Vice-President of the Euterpe Club, a group that described itself as “mainly musical in its aims and work.”  In addition to luncheons and card parties for its members, the club organized “concerts and musical mornings which are given during the season at the Waldorf-Astoria.”  Club Women of New York said these “are social events and are participated in by artists of high standing in the musical world.”

The no-nonsense New England upbringing of Dennett may have been responsible for his using public transportation.  On January 24, 1896 The Sun reported that the 72-year old “was severely bruised and shaken last evening by falling as he attempted to board a Fourth avenue car at Forty-third street and Vanderbilt avenue.  He was taken home after an ambulance surgeon had attended to his injuries.”

Later that year the Knickerbocker Ice Company was absorbed by the American Ice Securities Company, of which he was made a director.  Dennett was already highly invested in the New Jersey Ice Company and he turned much of his focus to that company, serving as President.

In 1908 the American Ice Company—which had been formed by the consolidation of several local ice firms—was under investigation and charged with price fixing.  Correspondence from executives of the American Ice Company revealed disdain for Oren Dennett, whose above-board business practices were deemed “inactive.”  A letter written earlier by president John D. Schoonmaker said in part:

“We will have to shake up old man Dennett.  We can’t stand any more nonsense from the Mountain Ice crowd.  Dennett will sit up, and it will tear the old man up pretty well if we start in there; but that don’t mean anything in dollars and cents to this company.  We will get ten to one when the time comes to throw up hands.”

The harassment may, in fact, have torn “the old man up pretty well,” and he died in the house on 68^th Street on October 30, 1908 at the age of 84.  Cold Storage and Ice Trade Journal called him “one of the best known ice men on the Hudson River” and with a possibly intended pun, Refrigerating World said “Mr. Dennett had many warm friends in the ice business.”  The trade paper added “He was a man of strong character, with a genial yet forceful disposition; was able to select men adapted to their respective avocations, was assiduous in attention to his duties, and exacted the same honest consideration from those in his charge.”

On Wednesday, November 30, 1910 the house was sold at auction.  The buyer held the house for three years, then it was again sold at auction on February 4, 1913.  By now the 34-year old brownstones were not merely out-of-style, they were decidedly unfashionable.  Old rowhouses were being razed or drastically remodeled as an even wealthier class of residents moved into the neighborhood.

The house at No. 12 East 68^th Street was purchased by 46-year old Richard M. Hurd; but the family would not move in before substantial changes were made.  Hurd commissioned architect Andrew Jackson Thomas to completely renovate the Victorian residence.  A year later the transformation was complete—the brownstone duckling had become a neo-Federal swan.

photo by Alice Lum

Thomas removed the brownstone stoop and lowered the entrance to street level—creating the trendier “American basement plan.”  With the stoop gone, he was able to extend the façade several feet forward to the property line.  A dignified rusticated stone base featured the centered entrance flanked by fluted, engaged Doric columns that supported a prim iron-railed balcony.  At the second floor three sets of French doors were surmounted by inset, arched marble panels.

The openwork borders of the doors mimic the Greek key design of the frieze above -- photo by Alice Lum

The architect suggested antiquity by using burned headers in the Flemish bond brickwork.  A charming marble Juliette balcony graced the third floor and above it all was a dormered mansard which provided an additional floor.

Richard Hurd was a man of many interests and vocations and in addition to being Chairman of the Board of the Lawyers Mortgage Company; he served as a State Prison Commissioner, wrote “Principles of City Land Values,” and was a member of the American Rights League. 

Hurd was vocally opinionated—an attribute which repeatedly landed his quotations in the newspapers.  In a vociferous denouncement of a prison inspector and simultaneous defense of a prison warden, he told reporters on November 16, 1915: “Dr. Diedling, as a self-appointed investigator, and representing himself only, has the effrontery to recommend the removal of Warden Osborne and his indictment on various grounds.  In condensed form, Dr. Diedling charges that Warden Osborne’s methods have demoralized the discipline of the prison.  If by this it is meant that the old sternly repressive methods under which men were treated worse than beasts, and under which men went insane in large numbers, and suicides and attempted suicides were common occurrences, then the more such discipline is demoralized the better.”

When President Woodrow Wilson appointed a war cabinet in 1918, the outspoken Hurd was quick to react.  Writing to the President from his role as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the America Defense Society, he stressed:

“A Cabinet of well-meaning, mediocre gentlemen, who can handle the routine duties of peace times, cannot in all fairness be expected to administer the enlarged departments which have to be created to carry on the war with Germany.  Every warring nation in Europe has seen the necessity of strengthening its Cabinet, and America will be no exception.  The time to begin is now…Many of the mistakes and failures have been due to incompetence, if not disloyalty, below the Cabinet, but a stream cannot rise higher than its source, and the only effective way to get competent subordinates is to have competent heads.”

Later that year, when Supreme Court Justice John H. Clarke suggested that “the German people shall be invited to share in a just, even in a generous peace,” and supported the establishment of the League of Nations; Richard Hurd ignited. 

“Are there no moral distinctions between Germany, the red handed aggressor, and the nations who are giving up their young men to defend themselves?  Are the highwaymen, the murderers, the rapists and the torturers to be invited in as members in good standing to any league of nations devoted to such idealistic concepts as the substitution of ‘conference for strife of justice and peace for cruelty and war’?”

“Germany cannot be trusted,” he went on.  “The safety of the world does not lie in trying to coax Germany to be good, but in taking away her navy and her army and in imposing economic limitations that will keep her from the materials without which she cannot go to war.”

photo by Alice Lum

A year later the League of Nations not only came into being; but Hurd’s own American Rights League endorsed it.  It was all too much for the dogmatic Richard M. Hurd to handle.  On September 13, 1919 he resigned from the American Rights League.  In stepping down, he got in one last blow. 

“I fail to understand how a League formed to uphold American Rights can approve the surrender of American independence and sovereignty urged by Mr. Wilson.  I do not believe the world will be benefited or the reign of peace advance by the formation of a superstate to which the various nations will bear a relation similar to that borne by the States of the Union to our Federal Government, this superstate to control the world and to be conducted by small oligarchy of representatives at Geneva.”

With the war ended and his involvement in the various national committees over; Richard Hurd and his wife focused on their six growing children.  With four girls in the house, there would be debutante teas and receptions and, later, engagement events and weddings to plan.

On May 20, 1922 the Hurds announced the engagement of daughter Mary to George Francklyn Lawrence, Jr.  It was a socially-advantageous match; although the Lawrence name consistently outshone the Hurd name in the newspaper reports.  The wedding took place in fashionable St. George’s Church on Stuyvesant Square on November 25, 1922; followed by a reception in the 68^th Street house.

A year later in October it was Eleanor Hurd’s turn to be engaged and The New York Times noted that she had “made her debut in 1921 and is a member of the Junior League.”  Again it was not the Hurd name that drew the attention as the newspaper added “She is a sister of Mars George Francklyn Lawrence, Jr.”

In September 1934 the Hurds leased the house furnished to B. B. Howard.  They kept the house for two more years; leaving for good in 1936.  No. 12 became home to retired banker William Otis Gay and his family.  Like the Hurds, the Gay family was large—along with his wife, Annie M. Dumaresq Gay, there were seven grown children (William Gay was 70 at the time of the purchase).  Gay’s brother, Walter, was a noted artist living in France, whom The New York Times called the “dean of American artists in Paris.”

The stalwart banker had just retired the year before.  He had founded the firm of W. O. Gay & Co. in the 1890s and when the company dissolved in 1935 he was its senior partner.  An avid yachtsman, he served as vice commodore of the Eastern Yacht Club at Marblehead, Massachusetts and would become the first commodore of the Southampton Yacht Club upon its founding in 1937.

The Gay family summered at their estate on First Neck Lane in Southampton, Long Island; and it was here that William Otis Gay died at the age of 80 on June 13, 1946.

The handsome house became the Consul General of Lebanon.  It was the scene of high anxiety when a telephone call at 1:15 in the morning on July 13, 1948 warned of a bomb in the house.  The caller said he represented the Israeli fighting organization Haganah and said “Your house will be blown up in fifteen minutes.”

The threat, the fourth such call since November 1947, brought a crew of policemen who scoured the mansion.  “Finding nothing suspicious after a thorough search, the police departed but left a special detail to be on duty all night,” reported The New York Times.

Five years later on December 11, 1952, the Secretary to the Lebanese deligation to the United Nations was publically embarrassed when his 31-year old cousin, Akram Solh, was arrested at Idlewild Airport.  A Customs officer grew suspicious of the unusual depth of Solh’s suitcase and found a false compartment.  Inside were 35 packets of heroin, worth about $50,000 to $100,000 on the illegal market—more in the neighborhood of $850,000 today.

When his bail was set at $10,000, Sohl quickly mentioned that his cousin was the diplomat.  The Lebanese Secretary, Abdelrahman Sohl, was not so quick to claim close family ties.  “The secretary, who lives at 12 East Sixty-eighth Street…was not available for comment yesterday,” reported The New York Times.  “A representative of the Lebanese Delegation, admitted, however, that the men were distant relatives.”

A year later, in 1953, the Lebanese Government sold the house to Lester Woods who had been living at No. 130 East 65^th Street.  Woods announced “plans for extensive alternations, including installation of an elevator.”  As it happened, Woods’ extensive alterations went far beyond an elevator.

The penthouse that replaced the mansard roof could be kindly described as "unsympathetic."  Or more accurately as "offensive."  photo by Alice Lum

The mansard roof was removed and a “conservatory” penthouse was added—resulting in a six-story structure.  The house was converted to a two-family residence with a doctor’s office in the basement.

Although the rooftop addition is unattractive at best, the lower four floors are intact.  The Hurds' dramatic 1914 transformation of the Victorian brownstone into a handsome neo-Federal home is virtually unchanged below the cornice.

photo by Alice Lum

The 1897 Church of the Ascension -- 107th Street off Amsterdam

photo by Alice Lum

In 1885 The New York Times noted “The west side of the city presents just now a scene of building activity such as was never before witnessed in that section, and which gives promise of the speedy disappearance of all the shanties in the neighborhood and the rapid population of this long neglected part of  New York.”

The next decade would see the flurry of development in the Upper West Side continue.  By now passengers could ride public transportation north all the way to Harlem.  Architects played with a mixture of styles, creating eccentric rowhouses adorned with stained glass, carved gargoyles, turrets or balconies.  It seemed like the burgeoning neighborhood had everything—except a Catholic church.

In response Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan established the Roman Catholic Church of the Ascension on October 27, 1895, naming as pastor Rev. Nicholas M. Reinhart.  Plans for a new church structure moved swiftly.  A perfectly square plot of land, 100 by 100 feet, was purchased midblock on 107^th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and the Boulevard (later renamed Broadway).  On February 1, 1896 The Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide announced that the church intended to build a “one-story Romanesque granite church thereon, and reported that architects Schickel & Ditmars “have been retained to draw the plans, which also include a rectory.” 

Bavarian-born William Schickel and his partner Isaac E. Ditmars were already responsible for many of the buildings of the New York Roman Catholic Diocese, beginning in 1879 with the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer.  For the Church of the Ascension, they would turn to Sicilian Romanesque for inspiration; while peppering the design with complimentary elements from other styles.

Two months later, on April 28 construction was underway when the Record and Guide announced the cost of the project would be around $60,000; or about $1.6 million today. 

By the end of June the basement had been completed and “the first tier of beams is laid,” said The Sun.  The elaborate cornerstone ceremonies were conducted on June 28 and The Sun reported the following day that “Five thousand people endured the rain yesterday to witness the laying of the corner stone of the Catholic Church of the Ascension.”  The New York Times noted that “The ceremony was performed with all the pomp that the ritual of the Catholic Church prescribes, but the occasion was rendered even more important by the presence of Archbishop M. A. Corrigan as the officiating clergyman.”

The ceremonies had begun at the Lion Park Hall, where the congregants were temporarily worshiping.  Then a march proceeded to the Home of the Little Sisters of the Poor on East 106^th Street where a service was held in the chapel.  Then the rain-drenched participants marched to the building site where a temporary floor had been laid and “a platform decorated with flags and flowers built,” said The Sun.  According to The New York Times “The houses in the vicinity of the church and along Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues were decorated in honor of the event, and on every side was to be seen the Papal colors—yellow and white—twined with the American flag.”

More than 50 priests from the surrounding area assisted the Archbishop, whom The Times described as being “robed in the rich vestments of his office, together with a magnificent cope and jeweled mitre.”  There were altar boys and acolytes “in their bright cassocks and lace surplices, and with burning tapers.”  Twenty-six church societies were among the crowd and a band played music “that helped make the occasion more enjoyable,” opined The Times.

Two sermons were given, one in English by the Rev. Thomas Campbell; the other in German by the Rev. Jerome Henkel.  Finally Archbishop Corrigan blessed the cornerstone and the copper box was sealed within it by Rev. Reinhart who used a silver trowel.

Inside the box were United States currency “of this year’s mint,” copies of New York daily newspapers, plans of the church with a sketch of the completed structure, and a parchment document with the names of the Archbishop and various dignitaries of the archdiocese.

At the end of the ceremonies, Rev. Reinhart envisioned “to have his church finished a year hence,” said The Times, which predicted “The church will be one of the most magnificent on the upper west side.”  The newspaper got the construction facts slightly wrong saying “It will be of Romanesque type of architecture, the front being of white marble and the interior of pressed brick over a skeleton of steel.”

By the middle of December construction had advanced to the roof.  To help pay for the expensive project, the women of the church held fairs in the basement—a common fund-raising tactic throughout the city.  On December 15 just before supper time, the afternoon fair was over and at 5:00 the roofers went home.  The men placed their “furnace” filled with hot coals into the stone cupola for safety where the coals would burn themselves out.  But an hour later high winds arose and showers of sparks from the furnace eddied out of the cupola against the darkening sky.

A passerby, seeing the red embers flying from the cupola, believed the building was on fire and sent out an alarm.  Firemen arrived and anxious neighbors rushed from their homes onto the sidewalk.  The firemen used an extinguisher on the little furnace and the temporary tumult was over.

The following day The Times reported “A fair is in progress in the basement of the church, but at the time the alarm was sent out the afternoon crowd had gone home, and there were not more than a dozen ladies and gentlemen in the building.  There was some excitement in the neighborhood, but none in the church, and the fair went on as usual last night.”

As the Rev. Reinhart had predicted, the church and its abutting parish house were completed in 1897.  The medieval, rigidly-symmetrical façade was faced in rough-cut gray granite   Three recessed entrances within connecting arches were accessed by a short flight of stone steps.  Above this base a simple bracketed cornice supported the upper portion, the focal point of which was a large rose window.  The window sat on a delicate blind arcade of stone columns.  A stone corbel table, twin cone-topped towers and decorative buttresses completed the church's Southern Italian complexion.

The parish house shared the 100-foot plot -- photo by Alice Lum

The interior featured a soaring barrel-vaulted ceiling and stencil-decorated arches supported by plaster columns expertly painted to resemble marble.  Above each arch a circular stained glass window streamed light into the space.

The early congregation was composed of a mixture of nationalities and social ranks.  But a large number of the parish were German and Irish immigrants who rubbed elbows in the pews with more upscale members.  One of these was Hugh McNulty, a wholesale butcher.

McNulty was 60 years old when he entered the church on Sunday morning October 4, 1903.  He had risen early that morning, left home to attend to some business and returned around 9:00 for breakfast.  In seemingly good health, according to his family, he went to church.

In the middle of the service “the congregation was startled by a sudden groan that sounded from a pew at the rear of the church,” said The Times the following day.  A nearby doctor was called as ushers pulled McNulty to the vestibule.  When Dr. James Duffy arrived, Hugh McNulty was dead of a heart attack.

photo by Alice Lum

A year after McNulty’s tragic death in the church, all of New York City was terrorized by an epidemic of meningitis.  In 1905 it continued and already by March 18, 1905, the Health Department reported that 386 persons had succumbed to the disease that year.  That same day the New-York Tribune wrote that “Meningitis is still on the increase.  Last week the records of the Health Department show that it caused 99 deaths.”

Alarmingly, the Tribune reported “The latest well known sufferer from meningitis is the Rev. Dr. Edwin M. Sweeny, pastor of the Roman Catholic Church of the Ascension, in 107^th-st.  He has been ill for three weeks, and although his life has at times been despaired of he now is believed to stand a fair chance of recovery.”

Two days later the newspaper updated its readers, saying “It was said at his home that he was ‘holding his own,’ and was, if anything, a little better.  He is being attended by Drs. McAneny, Janesway and Booth.”  Despite the panic caused by the uncertainty of the cause of the horrific disease, officials of the Catholic Church, Monsignor Edwards, Monsignor Mooney and Father Lavelle, risked their own health by visiting the ailing priest.

Within the next year the meningitis epidemic was over and Rev. Sweeny had fully recovered.  By 1908 he was fully able to participate in the extravagant celebrations surrounding the visits to New York of Cardinal Logue, Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh.  Three years later he oversaw the construction of the church’s four-story school on 108^th Street.

photo by Alice Lum

Of the many weddings and funerals held in the church at the time, perhaps none was more notable than that of Edward Harrigan, actor and impresario.  Born of Irish immigrant parents, he started his career as an Irish comic singer in a San Francisco saloon in 1867.  By the mid-1880s he was well known as half of the Harrigan & Hart vaudeville team.  Following their breakup, he continued on as an actor and theater owner.  In 1891 he opened his grand Harrigan’s Theatre at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 35^th Street, just off Herald Square.

Edward Harrigan took his last bow on stage on March 16, 1910.  Less than a year later, on June 9, 1911, his funeral was held at the Church of the Ascension.  The New York Times reported that over 1,000 mourners attended the solemn requiem high mass.  The church was filled with luminaries from the theatrical field, along with a Supreme Court Justice, former Borough President and former Police Captain and an Assemblyman.

Just before the services began, a blind man “about 70 years old and led by an aged woman” appeared at the door of the church.  The man asked permission to touch Harrigan’s coffin.  The Times recounted “He said that he had come from Yonkers, and that before he lost his sight he had seen the actor in every play he had produced.”

In a heart-warming gesture, as the pallbearers brought Harrigan’s casket up the aisle, they paused long enough for the blind man to put his hand on it.

In the first half of 1919 the country was torn by the debate over Prohibition.  Five months before enactment of the National Prohibition Act, known as the Volstead Act, Father William B. Farrell was making his stance undeniably clear.  Charles E. Hughes was a former Justice of the United States Supreme Court and had run for President in 1916.  He now had his own legal practice.  Father Farrell had no intention of someone with Hughes’ credentials swaying public opinion to the side of alcohol.

He made a formal statement to the press on Tuesday night, February 4, 1919 saying “he had been told on ‘excellent authority’ that Mr. Hughes, Elihu Root and Louise Marshall had been retained as counsel to oppose national prohibition.”

Hughes was quick to refute the priest’s charges.  “I ought to say that there is no truth in the statement that I have given an opinion to the effect that the prohibition amendment is unconstitutional.  I have given no opinion upon the subject.  There is also no trust in the report that I have been retained to assail the amendment.  I have no connection with the matter.”

photo by Alice Lum

Today the interior has been restored and, despite a few alterations like replacement entrance doors, the Church of the Ascension is little changed after over a century of serving the Upper West Side.