Monumental Mysteries

Over thirty-five years ago when I moved to Manhattan, I was overwhelmed by the wealth of history and architecture the city offered.  Yet I was also taken with the busy New Yorkers who rushed past buildings and monuments, never looking up, never wondering why or how that statue or building or memorial came to be.

When I started my blog I hoped to share the human stories behind those structures—the joy and pathos, the happiness and tragedy of the people who lived among us.  As important as the lives and deeds of statesmen and generals are; even more fascinating (at least to me) are the human stories of the people who resided and worked in our buildings, who planted our parks and who died in our disasters.

The study of history, we are often told, is necessary to avoid repeating mistakes.  Baloney.   History tells us where we came from, who we are, and possibly where we are going.   And as important as dates and events are the regular human lives involved.

It is important not to confine ourselves by living solely in the Now.

Some time ago I discovered Don Wildman’s addicting Travel Channel series “Mysteries at the Museum.”  Don shares my interest in the back stories of history.  In that series he investigates the coincidences of fate that enable an otherwise mundane object to change or make history.

Recently I was alerted to an upcoming series by Wildman, “Monumental Mysteries” and was given the opportunity to ask him a few questions about it (check it out below).  The concept of a television show that explores the stories of American monuments is, of course, right up my historical alley.  I love telling the story of the Thomkins Square memorial to the children lost in the General Slocum side-wheeler disaster, the greatest loss of human live in New York until 9/11; or the background of the Roscoe Conkling statue in Union Square—a monument to a philandering politician who got lost in a blizzard and subsequently died; or the story of the Tomb of an Amiable Child, a once-rural grave marker in the shadow of Grant’s Tomb now engulfed by the city.

Don Wildman was informative and patient (I was told I had eight minutes to fire questions at him; so when ten minutes elapsed, I was out of questions!).  I am excited about the series “Monumental Mysteries;” which is why I interrupted my normal blog flow and issued an unexpected, editorial Sunday post to mention it.

But just because you tune into the series doesn’t mean you can stop reading Daytonian in Manhattan.

The Hawes Building - No. 872 Broadway

Things changed quickly along Broadway just north of Union Square in the decades prior to the Civil War.  In 1847 the Manhattan Bank Company began construction of a block-long row of brick-faced houses that stretched from 17^th to 18^th Street on the east side of Broadway.

Completed a year later, the commodious homes were four stories tall and three bays wide—except for No. 872.  The house at the corner of 18^th Street was a bit grander and wider with an additional bay—a full 34 feet.  In 1849, a year after the row’s completion, O. Cammann purchased Nos. 872 and 868.  The enterprising Cammann would soon convert the dwellings to income-producing properties.

Among the first commercial tenants was George C. Anton’s “Classical French and English School.”  An advertisement in the New-York Tribune on November 26, 1857 boasted of six assistant teachers and a “teacher of Gymnastics.”  In addition to the regular classes, there was a Primary Department for boys from 6 to 8 years of age.  The ad promised “lessons as far as possible taught in School.”

Downstairs at street level was R. H. Timpson & Brother’s grocery store.

By the time of the Civil War Samuel P. White had established his doctor’s office here.  The physician kept an enviable schedule of office hours, 8:00 to 9:00 am, and 2:00 to 6:00 pm.  It would appear that at the same time at least one set of rooms was let out for residential use.

In 1865 a scandalous affair made the news involving a couple living here, apparently out of wedlock.   Around 1850, the “petted son of a millionaire,” as arcanely described by The New York Times in 1865, “wooed and won the beautiful and accomplished niece of an Ex-President of the United States.”  The couple lived happily for ten years, then the wife learned that her husband was having an affair with an opera singer.

Despite her pleadings to her father-in-law, who eventually disinherited his lothario son, The Times unsympathetically reported that the cad continued to pursue “the siren of the sock and buskin,” and left his wife.

When that affair fizzled, he “engaged several young women in correspondence,” finally settling on a married woman, Mrs. Emily Florence Elliott.  On August 14, 1865 the couple was living at 872 Broadway when the wronged wife discovered their whereabouts.

When all three appeared in court a dramatic scene unfolded worthy of any Victorian novel.  “The real wife, pale and haggard, suffering under that intense grief which refuses to yield a tear of relief, measured her words, but put them firmly, demanding of her husband whether she were his wife; whether she had been ever faithful and kind, and whether she had given him cause to abandon her; and the penitent sinner confessed in presence of his enciente victim, whose indignation knew no bounds.”

The husband was fined $500 for abandonment and the newspaper felt he would be released “with his wife and henceforward conduct himself as a faithful husband.”

Not long after the scandalous affair, No. 872 was physically connected with No. 28 East 18^th Street to the rear as the building filled with photography studios and related businesses.  In 1870 J. N. Gimbrede, “card engraver, stationer and importer of fancy goods,” was here.  That year Gimbrede published a small booklet on Card Etiquette that prompted The Southern Review to note “This little book contains the whole code of card etiquette, as well as the finest specimens of all the different kinds of cards,--business cards, visiting cards, wedding cards, menu cards, cards of announcements, cards fo balls, cards in memoriam—in short, all sorts and descriptions of cards, except inelegant ones.” 

The booklet was, according to the magazine, “a safe guide to all who would shun errors of taste, breaches of card etiquette, and, above all, the awful ban of the reigning fashion!”

As for Gimbrede, he was said to be “well known to the polite world, for his exquisite taste and skill as an engraver.”

While J. N. Gimbrede was providing the carriage trade with calling cards and stationery, W. Kurtz established his photography studio here.   In 1871 the American Institute of the City of New York awarded him “First Premium” for “the best plain photograph; for the best photograph finished in India ink; for the best photograph on porcelain.”

Other photography studios here at the time were those of J. Gurney & Son and Abraham Bogardus.

Bogardus was especially prominent in the field and while here he would photograph Presidents James A. Garfield, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes and Chester Arthur.  Governors, writers and other prominent citizens sat before his camera—among them William Cullen Bryant, Jay Gould, Henry Ward Beecher, and, amazingly, the camera-shy William H. Vanderbilt. (New York’s Great Industries remarked “Mr. Bogardus took the only picture that Mr. Vanderbilt has ever allowed to be sold.”)

By 1884 the reputation of Bogardus was well established.  New York’s Great Industries called him “the leading photographer of our presidents, senators, congressmen, clergymen and men of note in the various walks of commercial and social life.  The best pictures of Arthur, Blaine and the late President Garfield ever taken, are those of Mr. Bogardus.”

U. S. Grant posed in Bogardus's studio.  Currier & Ives produced the above egraving based on the photograph.  The reverse read "Portrait by permission of A. Bogardus & Co., 872 Broadway, N. Y., from their splendid photograph, the last and best taken of General Grant" -- from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Working with Bogardus for a period was O. W. Heffer.  The British native whom Illustrated New York called “of pleasing manners and strict probity” came to New York around 1878.  In 1887 he decided to strike out on his own.  Heffer opened a large photography studio and gallery in the same building as his former employer.

Illustrated New York: The Metropolis of To-Day wrote of his large office and staff here in 1888.  “The premises occupied, including office, reception parlors, gallery, and operating-rooms, are spacious and commodious, and are handsomely appointed and completely equipped with the latest improved apparatus, devices, and general appurtenances, while from six to ten competent and courteous assistants are in regular attendance.  Photography in all its branches is executed in the highest style of the art, crayon, pastel, India ink, oil, and kindred artistic work being done in the most superior and expeditious manner, while popular prices prevail, fine portraits being the specialty, and altogether a very extensive and influential patronage is received.”

The publication made note of his Broadway studio and gallery, saying there were “elegantly and artistically fitted up and furnished, possessing the finest possible facilities for the practice of his art.”

By now Dorcas—A Magazine of Woman’s Handiwork had been published from No. 872 for nearly a decade.     The equivalent of a crafts magazine today, it offered readers patterns for knitting and crocheting lace, infant’s skirts, tidies and shawls among other things. 

In 1883 Good Health recommended the February edition of Dorcas for its “excellent article on Home Decoration.”  The editor added “we wish to commend these articles, as they will enable one with a small amount of material and moderate skill to make a handsome house at little cost.”

A year later Dorcas introduced a companion magazine dealing solely with knitting.   The Continent felt it was a wonderful idea, especially for the infirm.  “For an invalid it is always a resource, and a ‘new stitch’ is almost as important a matter as a new remedy, and if fascinating enough, may even do away with the necessity for the remedy,” it said.



Dewey advertised in "Souvenir Album: Some Prominent New York Clergymen" in 1894 (copyright expired)

The street level retail space was home to Edward J. Dewey Lamps by 1894, renamed as Dewey & Johnson Lamps three years later.  As the turn of the century approached the apparel and millinery district inched up Broadway.    Perhaps the first indication here was The Cosmopolitan Shirt Store in 1899.  Upstairs the same year was Westlotorn’s Detective Agency.

After more than half a century of family ownership, Oswald Cammann sold the building to James W. Ketcham.  

No. 872 (white building at center) before its transformation -- The Evening Mail, 1899 (copyright expired)

The Whitcomb Metallic Bed Company was here on November 17, 1900 when an earth-rattling manhole explosion occurred outside.  A cable car had just passed over the manhole cover and the passengers “many of them women, rushed for the street.  The conductor quieted them, however, and no one was injured,” reported The New York Times.

Exploding sewer gas sent the manhole cover several feet in the air and the blast shattered the large plate glass window of Whitcomb’s.  “Many hundred dollars’ worth of plate glass was broken,” said The Times.

James Ketcham was unable to make payments on the property and in January 1901 it reverted to Cammann in foreclosure.    Cammann quickly turned the building over to B. F. Hawes.

Hawes started an extensive renovation project to bring the old converted house into the 20^th century.  He commissioned architect Frederick Jacobson to refurbish the structure into a modern commercial building.  The result was significant.

Jacobson stripped off the brick façade and replaced it with stone that framed two three-story tall bays.   Around corner the architect left the old brick, but repeated the stone-framed show windows for continuity.  Large, elegant open shells added flourish to the carved moldings.  Above it all, an overhanging cornice on the slightly heightened façade announced HAWES BUILDING.

The refurbished building had a variety of tenants.  In 1903 mining broker J. A. Fysh had his office here.   Plymouth Raincoat Company moved in and by 1917 Mort Peoples, an electrician, was doing business here.

from The Millinery Trade Review, 1921 (copyright expired)

Along with Plymouth Raincoat more and more apparel companies appeared.  In the 1920s Panama Neckwear, makers of men’s silk neckties and cravats, was here.  At the same time La Mode Hair Net Company was a tenant as well as the Highgrade hair Co., which also dealt in hair nets.  Hazelkorn Brothers, button wholesalers, was in the building in the 1930s.

The other four houses of the original row still retain much of their residential flavor.

Within the next few years the Garment Center would move northward and No. 872 Broadway would slowly become home to small companies, not all of them reputable.  In 1988 Customs agents seized a shipment of 500,000 crack stems imported by Freedom Imports.  The firm cleverly tried to avoid notice by invoicing the drug paraphernalia as “glass beverage stirrers.”

While the street level of the Hawes Building has been substantially altered, the upper floors are intact.  A glance at the four buildings to the south, survivors of the row of one-matching houses, provides an idea of the original appearance of No. 892 and of the residential character of the block in 1847.

 photographs taken by the author

The 1818 House at No. 83 Perry Street

No. 83 (right) was once a mirror-image of its neighbor at No. 85 -- photo by Alice Lum

Retired clothing merchant Aaron Henry dived headfirst into real estate speculation in 1817.  That year he began construction on nine brick houses in Greenwich Village, among them the quaint pair of mirror image homes at Nos. 83 and 85 Perry Street.

The little two-and-a-half story houses were clad in Flemish bond brickwork and completed in 1818. Their recessed doorways were accessed by brownstone slab porches that spanned the entrance to the low English basement below.  The modest residences featured few extra details—like the carved rope molding around the entrance.   But the builder sensitively placed the doors on the opposite ends of the houses, creating a pleasing balance.

Henry’s ambitious plan was perhaps a little too aggressive; in 1821 he lost the two houses.  They were sold to satisfy his creditors at public auction at the Tontine Coffee House, far to the south at Wall and Water Streets.  Ironically, a year later the devastating yellow fever epidemic that swept New York City forced throngs of New Yorkers north to Greenwich Village.  Had Aaron Henry been able to hold onto his property for one more year, the calamity would probably have been his financial salvation.

Prior to 1865 the homes and businesses of New York’s residents were protected by a loosely-organized group of volunteer fire companies.  Henry Springstein, who listed his vocation as “carpenter,” was living in No. 83 in 1855 and volunteering with the Guardian Engine Company No. 29.   Carpentry was, perhaps, not Springstein’s forte.  Four years later he listed his occupation as “fruit dealer.”

Sometime between Henry Springstein’s residency and that of James Kerrigan in 1898 the top floor (and that of No. 85) was raised to a full third story.    The 28-year old Kerrigan had been a candy maker in Brooklyn where he lived with his wife and three children for 10 years.  Trouble came in 1893 when the Kerrigans hired Jessie Shaw was hired as a domestic.

The young woman caught the eye of her employer and the following year the pair ran away.  The resolute Mrs. Kerrigan was as much bloodhound as wife and traced them through Montreal to Detroit “and then lost the trail and returned to Brooklyn and involuntary widowhood,” reported The New York Times.

Single motherhood in 1890s New York was not an easy role.  The wronged woman obtained a job and placed her two oldest children, 12-year old Joyce and 10-year old Jerome, in the St. John’s Home on Willoughby Avenue in Brooklyn.  She kept her 5-year old son Aubrey with her.

Suddenly, in late October or early November 1898 Kerrigan and Jessie Shaw began living at No. 83 Perry Street.   Kerrigan went to the St. John’s Home, posed as Jerome’s uncle and was allowed to take him away.

The boy’s mother was not about to have her son stolen away by her cheating husband.  “Mrs. Kerrigan, who has a sort of amateur detective genius,” reported The Times, “traced the youngster to the Perry Street house, and haunted the neighborhood for some days with determination and a cab.

“Finally her vigilance was rewarded by seeing the boy on the street.  She promptly bundled him into the cab and drove triumphantly home with him.”

Afraid of losing her children to her kidnapping husband again, she quit her job and brought all three of them to No. 191 West 9^th Street in Brooklyn.  Her brother George Dennison helped support her.

But then she let her guard down.  On the evening of November 20, 1898 she allowed a friend, Nellie Crossen, to take the children to St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church.  When they emerged from the church after services, Kerrigan and Jessie Shaw were waiting in ambush on the other side of the street.

Kerrigan grabbed his daughter, but she struggled free and ran.  “Jerome, however, who had fallen into the woman’s clutches, was not so lucky,” said the newspaper.  “His father, aided by the woman, lifted the boy into a Court Street car and started toward Manhattan.  The youngster struggled and cried, but the passengers set him down for a refractory child and forbore to interfere.”

Kerrigan and his concubine disappeared into the night with the young boy.

The house soon became home to a much more respectable family—that of Richard A. Olmstead.  Olmstead was a retired corset manufacturer whose business had been at No. 781 Broadway from 1860 to 1880, opposite the A. T. Stewart emporium.

On June 17, 1890 his wife and daughter had helped form the Little Mothers’ Aid Association.   The object of the organization was “to provide summer day outings and winter industrial classes for those children of the tenements who are too young to be wage-earners, and upon whom household labor and care of the younger children fall, while parents are at work.”   After the death of her mother, Miss J. Olmstead was both the Secretary and Superintendent of the Little Mothers’ Aid Association for years.

On May 30, 1900 Richard Olmstead died in the little brick house on Perry Street.

In 1914 Edith Dupont was living here.   That summer she became acquainted with Frank Rowan who lived nearby at No. 369 West 11^th Street.  According to The Evening World the young man “paid her much attention.”

A friend of Rowan’s father, Joseph Fitzhenry, had taken an interest in him and had given him money to get on his feet.  It was a nice gesture, but Rowan felt he needed more cash.  On August 20, 1914 while his benefactor’s family was out, he was seen entering the Fitzhenry house by a fire escape.

Joseph Fitzhenry reported to police that when he returned home, jewelry and clothing worth $300 were missing.  Detectives put a tail on Edith Dupont.

On August 27 they “saw Rowan join her at Glen Island.  She was overcome with humiliation when the young man was arrested, and convinced the police she did not know he was not a proper person to have as a friend,” said The Evening World.

The house at No. 83 Perry Street seemed destined to receive bad press and it happened again on December 2, 1928.  James E. Sullivan was living here and acting as steward of the Beacon Elks Club in Beacon, New York.   Prohibition agents raided the lodge and found alcohol being served.  Sullivan’s name was plastered in The New York Times and the Elks Club was padlocked for a year.

The alterations to the windows of the two upper floor windows created an odd mish-mash of openings -- photo by Alice Lum

In 1931 the house underwent strange alterations.  The three second story windows were replaced by two oddly-chunky ones and the third floor windows were elongated.

After Allyn Richer Marsh, who had been with the Willcox Construction Company, died in February 1950 in the French Hospital in Chelsea, Ruth May took up residency.  Ruth was a literary agent whose most illustrious client was, perhaps, Irish writer Walter Macken. 

Because Macken was traveling from Ireland to Manhattan in November 1950, Lovat Dickson addressed a letter to the writer in care of Ruth May on Perry Street.  In it he broke the news that the Literary Guild had chosen “Rain on the Wind” for following publication the May.  “This means a fantastically large circulation, and a considerable sum of money for you, so that the cottage in Connemara should now be within reach,” said Dickson.

photo by Alice Lum

The house, today, is divided into two duplex condominium apartments, one of which was listed in 2012 for $2.5 million.  Little trace of the original interiors is to be found; yet the brick house with its quirky jumble of windows has a particular charm after nearly two centuries of fascinating stories.

The Wm. Vogt Stables -- No. 107 West 17th Street

Located in the high-end retail district, the commercial stable was especially handsome.

As the great retail emporiums lined New York’s Ladies’ Mile stretching from 14^th to 23^rd Streets along 6^th Avenue, the side streets filled with an assortment of structures.  Some of them, like warehouses, were connected with to the stores.  Others were only marginally associated with the retail industry.

Among the latter group was William Vogt’s stable at No. 107 West 17^th Street.  The three-story Italianate structure was a handsome take on the traditional stable design.  Constructed almost entirely of red brick, it boasted especially attractive architectural details.

The brickwork of the six piers at street level was laid to mimic rusticated stone.  They sat on carved stone bases and were capped with stone capitals that supported a wide stone entablature.   The keystones of the first and second floor were carved with simple foliate designs.  At the second and third floors, incised panels nestled between the centered, paired arched windows and the single openings on either end.   Here, at the second floor, painted signs advertised the vehicles and horses available to rent.

The architect added unnecessary but wonderfully decorative elements--brick voussoirs, carved keystones, deftly-carved capitals and small touches like the recessed niche.

Four blocks to the south, at Sixth Avenue and 13^th Street, was the home furnishings store of Sheppard Knapp--best known for its wide array of carpeting.  Because Victorian ladies of the 1890s expected their purchases to be delivered, high-end stores kept drays and horses.  Sheppard Knapp leased space in Vogt’s stable for its teams.

At the busiest time of the afternoon on June 21, 1893, just before 5:00, flames erupted from the bookbindery of George W. Alexander at No. 108 West 18^th Street.  The New York Times reported that “When the greatest crowds were surging along Sixth Avenue, between Fourteenth and Twenty-third Streets, yesterday afternoon the fire engines dashed up to the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighteenth Street.”

Crowds of onlookers watched in shocked suspense as flames licked out of all six stories of the structure.  “It was known that this building was a very bee-hive of industry and teemed with men, women, and girls,” said the newspaper.

As firemen on ladders rescued workers from the 18^th Street side, terrified females panicked at the back of the building.  Although the entire rear façade had a fire escape, “yet four women took flying leaps from the fourth story, expecting to reach the main roof of Sheppard Knapp’s stable at 109 West Seventeenth Street,” reported The Times.  “They all missed their calculations and were seriously injured.”

Young Annie Timmins landed flat on her back on the extension shed behind the stable, “rolled off the shed and struck a dog kennel, afterward falling to the ground.”  Her spine was fractured and she died. 

At the same time Mary Fitzpatrick jumped, landing in the rear yard of Vogt’s stable.  She sustained severe internal injuries and was taken to the New-York Hospital.  The other two jumpers, 48-year old Mrs. Hannah Van Orden and Mary McNamara were also injured.  Like Annie Timmins, she landed on the shed, wounding herself.  The McNamara girl broke her leg when she landed in the stable yard.

Vogt also ran an express office from the stable, receiving luggage and packages from steamers then either storing or delivering them.   His service became entangled in a missing person mystery the year shortly after the bindery fire. 

On September 14, 1893 20-year old Freida Kleinsteuber arrive in Hoboken on the Dania.  She had five heavy pieces of baggage which, peculiarly, were sent to different express companies in different areas of the city.  One trunk was consigned to Vogt’s operation on West 17^th Street.

The girl was on her way to visit Mrs. Mary Ernst in Chicago.  But she never arrived there.  When the girl’s brother wrote Mrs. Ernst in December to inquire why his sister had not yet written, the woman panicked.  She cabled back explaining that she was unaware that Freida had arrived in the country.

By March 1894 there was still no word of Freida’s whereabouts.  A friend told The Evening World “we are afraid that she has met with foul play or that she may have been made the victim of some evil woman.  She can speak English and French, and willingly, we are sure, she would not adopt a wicked life.”

William Vogt told investigators that the one trunk “remained here for a month until one day a pretty blonde little woman called for it, and, showing the proper checks, asked that it be sent to some house uptown.” 

Vogt no doubt frustrated detectives when he was pressed to show the date or delivery address.  He “found he found he had omitted to make an entry of the date of the transaction or the house to which the baggage had been sent,” reported The Evening World.

Stables, with their ample quantity of hay and other flammable articles, were often the scenes of fire and Vogt’s was no exception.  On February 6, 1885 three horses were burned to death in a fire in the rear of the building.

As the era of the horse and carriage passed, the many stables in New York were used as garages for motorcars, altered for business purposes, or simply razed.  In January 1941 Benjamin Schachter, a furniture manufacturer, leased the building from the Gazba Realty Corporation for its operation.

The grand emporiums of the Ladies’ Mile, in the 1960s, were dusty, vacant fossils and the glory days of Sixth Avenue were a faded memory.   The old stable building on West 17^th Street was home to Norman Lerner’s photographic studio.   He gave classes here in “photographic esthetics.”

During the 1970s the Asian decorative arts store, Miya Shoji, took the first floor.  Exotic screens and decorative household goods were sold in the space once occupied by coupes and horses.

Then, as the 21^st century neared, the Ladies’ Mile experienced a renaissance.  The expansive department stores were rehabilitated into new uses as residences and retail outlets.  No. 107 West 17^th experienced its own renovation that included a harsh façade cleaning that wiped away the century-old advertisements.

In the 1990s the Tuscan restaurant Ristorante da Umberto was here; an upscale eatery that catered to the trendy new crowd that roamed the reborn Chelsea neighborhood.

Then, with the new century, a remarkable thing happened at the second floor of William Vogt’s stables.  The stubborn painted Victorian signs leached out of the brick façade.  Considered lost, they once again announce to the passerby that victorias, coupes and horses are available inside.

Once erased by a well-intentioned cleaning, the Victorian painted signs have re-emerged.

photographs taken by the author

"Mansion House" -- No. 337 Riverside Drive

photo by Alice Lum

By the turn of the last century Riverside Drive was firmly established as the West Side’s counterpart to Fifth and Madison Avenues.  Lavish mansions and rowhouses rose along the thoroughfare, housing some of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens.

While the Upper East Side tended to shun the newly rich who made their fortunes in the theater or in other socially unacceptable ventures; they found open arms on the West Side.

In 1900 developers Perez M. Stewart and H. Ives Smith commissioned esteemed architect Robert D. Kohn to design two harmonious mansions at the corner of Riverside Drive and 106^th Street.   Kohn’s resulting houses would be similar but undeniable individual—one clad in buff colored brick, the other in deep red.

The two mansions were designed to compliment one another -- photo by Alice Lum

It was the red brick house on the corner that would steal the spotlight.  It stretched 100 feet along 106^th Street—the width of four commodious lots.  Although the entrance was squarely on 106^th Street, the mansion took the more impressive address of No. 337 Riverside Drive.

Completed two years later, in 1902, the mansion was stately in its bearing.  Kohn used deep red brick, laid in Flemish bond, with charred ends to provide contrast and an appearance of age.  Heavy limestone enframements and quoins rose two stories, engulfing second and third story openings and providing rich contrast to the brick as well as dimensional relief.

Intricately carved and banded limestone columns upheld the entrance portico at street level and a handsome cast iron fence ran around the property.

On September 16, 1903 The Sun reported that H. Ives Smith had sold the “new five-story American basement stone dwelling” at No. 337 Riverside Drive and three days later announced the name of the buyer: actress Julia Marlowe.

Julia Marlowe poses in a scene from The Cavalier -- photograph from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The 38-year old Miss Marlowe had recently (in 1900) divorced her husband, actor Robert Taber.   Her tremendous success on the Broadway stage gave her the financial independence to purchase the $60,000 house—a price tag that would translate to about $1.2 million today.

While Julia Marlowe’s staff was moving her into the new mansion, she was appearing in Ingomar.  The New York Sun praised her performance saying “There is not a woman player in America or in England that is—attractively considered—fit to unlace her shoe.”

In 1904, a year after Julia Marlowe moved into No. 337 Riverside Drive, poster hangers are busy advertising her play -- photograph from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Although the actress played a variety of roles—like the lead in Jeanne d’Arc and Salome in John the Baptist--she became best known for her interpretations of Shakespeare.   Adoring fans were concerned when, in May 1906, she was forced to leave Ottawa and come home to her Riverside Drive home due to illness.  The Sun, on May 16, assured readers that she “is now at her home, 337 Riverside Drive, under the care of her physician, Dr. J. E. Stillwell and will resume playing on Monday next at the Broadway Theatre, Brooklyn, where she and E. H. Sothern will open in ‘Romeo and Juliet.’”

In reporting on her illness, The Times mentioned that “Following the engagement in Brooklyn, Mr. Sothern and Miss Marlowe will begin a Shakespearean season at the Academy of Music…which will continue for four weeks.”

By the end of the 1909 season, Marlowe and Sothern were more than merely acting partners and in 1911 they would be married.  The actress was also gone from the house on Riverside Drive.

The house was now home to Lothar W. Faber and his family.  Faber was President of the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company and Director of the Barnston Tea Company.   He and his wife, the former Anna Prieth, had three children—Theodora, Margaret and Lothar.

photo by Alice Lum

The Fabers would stay in the house only about two years and in 1911 it became home to the John Wallace McKinnon family.   The Scottish-born investor was self-made.  Educated in public schools in Scotland and Boston he formed a Chicago partnership with Ira M. Cobe in 1891 to handle investments.   Only eight years later, with capitalization of $10 million, the partners organized Assets Realization Co. which specialized in reorganization and consolidation of corporations and their securities.

The year before buying No. 337 Riverside Drive, the firm opened a New York office and McKinnon moved his family to Manhattan.  By now he had amassed a personal fortune and along with his partnerships was President of the Hudson Navigation Co., the Wall Street Exchange Building Association, the Knickerbocker Ice Co., and director of the North America Safe Deposit Company.

McKinnon and his wife, Lillian, had four children—John Wallace, Jr., Lillian, Madeleine and Dorothy.  In 1914 the couple simultaneously announced the engagements of Lillian and Madeleine, whom the National Courier described as “charming”  girls.  Lillian Clare McKinnon was to marry Maltby Lockwood Jelliffe of Jersey City, New Jersey; while her sister found romance around the corner.  Madeline Agnes McKinnon’s finance was Kenneth Tackabury Marwin who lived nearby at No. 340 Riverside Drive.

The house was purchased that year by Charles B. Barkley, but quickly sold in August 1915 to Perry J. Warren.  Six years later an investment group, 337 Riverside Drive, Inc., was formed to purchased the house.  Although Department of Buildings records would not reflect a change in its private dwelling status; it is probable that the group operated the mansion as a high-end rooming house.

It was probably around 1921 when the corporation purchased the house that River Mansion was carved over the doorway -- photo by Alice Lum

In 1923 the newly-married Count Carl M. Armfelt and his bride arrived in New York on the Scandinavian-American liner the Frederick VIII.   Times were apparently hard in Scandanavia because The New York Times reported that “There were 200 Swedes and Danes on the liner on their way out to the Northwest to take up farming.”

Count Armfelt was not on his way to the farmlands; but he and his new wife “will make their home at 337 Riverside Drive,” said The Times.  Nevertheless, the Swedish royal was here to make a living.

“I have a family tree which I can trace back for 500 years,” he told a reporter, “but I want to work, and that is the reason I have come to America.”

By the mid 1930s the once grand mansion was described as in city documents as “furnished rooms.”  Dr. and Mrs. Julian Spring were living here when their daughter was born in 1934, as was the artist Michael de Santis.

The Italian-born artist had studied for seven years at the Naples Institute of Fine Arts.  He came to New York in 1906 and in the early 1920s worked in commercial design and coloring, “a trade which seemed profitable,” noted The Times.

In 1928 he painted a posthumous portrait of Dr. Thomas B. Freas of Columbia University.  The Times said “Opinion among members of the faculty…ran thus: ‘A remarkably successful job both artistically and as a record of personality.’”  It would be the first of ten portraits of past and then-present Columbia professors.

By 1936, however, De Santis experienced a change of fortune.  The 43-year old artist died "destitute" in May of that year at Bellevue Hospital.  In his obituary The New York Times mentioned that “Up to the time of his last illness De Santis lived with a friend in an old rooming house at 337 Riverside Drive.”

On May 16 a sale of his works—over 100 oil paintings, water colors and pastels—was held in order to pay for his funeral.  “Among them will be an allegorical canvas painted originally as a gift for President Roosevelt,” said The Times.

photo by Alice Lum

The former mansion continued life as a rooming house and in 1952 it was operated by Louise Dickmann.  The feisty landlady would not be taken advantage of by unscrupulous State Rent Board investigators who tried to shake her down.

That year three investigators, Alfred Caputo, John L. Wilson and Morris Larkin, appeared to audit the rental records of the 22 furnished rooms.   The men told Louise Dickmann that she had been overcharging and was liable to a $10,000 fine and triple damages.  The men then let her know that the violations “could be quashed for $800.”

Rather than pay the extortion Louise Dickmann filed a complaint with the District Attorney’s office, triggering an investigation.    On December 3, 1952 The Times reported that the men were indicted on charges of having extorted $9,100 from rooming house operators.

“The prosecutor paid special tribute to Mrs. Louise Dickmann,” said the newspaper, for having the daring to blow the whistle on the corrupt investigators.

In 1971 the house was reconverted to a private dwelling; then more recently into a two-family home.  It is a grand reminder of a time when Riverside Drive and the Upper West Side invited celebrated thespians--unwelcome in other parts of the city--to settle in.

photo by Alice Lum

The 1898 Young Woman's Home -- No. 49 West 9th Street

Two years after the well-to-do merchant Henry Dexter built his wide brick home at No. 49 West 9^th Street in 1855, the Ladies’ Christian Union was organized.   Concerned with the plight of unmarried women who fended off the evils of the great city, wealthy women established a boarding house on fashionable Washington Square.

The Ladies’ Christian Union was the world's first such association, offering shelter to 85 self-supporting women at affordable rates.  All the receipts were put back into the operational expenses and any shortfalls were made up by the founders.  The concept of supplying aid to women who were not indigent but merely needed respectable housing was groundbreaking in 1857.

 Forty years later the initiative had firmly taken root and already there was a branch home at No. 308 2^nd Avenue.   Now the organization sought to expand again.  In 1897 Sarah F. Kraemer owned the 28-foot wide house at No. 49 West 9^th Street.  Four stories tall it had a tall brownstone stoop.  Its location and the general size were what the women were looking for.

In May 1897 The Sun reported that Judson S. Todd had purchased the Kraemer residence and immediately turned it over to the Ladies’ Christian Union.  The women wasted no time with their new property and three months later, on August 7, The New York Times reported on extensive alterations.  The Union spent $20,000 (donated by “interested friends,” according to The New York Times) to have architects Howard & Cauldwell strip off the front and rear facades and remake the house into their new Young Woman’s Home.

Residence hotels specifically for young working girls was, by now, a near necessity.  The city teemed with businesses that hired unmarried girls—hat factories, artificial flower workrooms, garment factories, and department stores.  The girls made little money to spend on housing and--as important as finding a home--they needed to safeguard their reputations.

On April 29,1898 the grand opening was held.  Howard & Cauldwell had transformed the old brick house into a showplace.  Although the architecture is now termed Louis XIII French Classic, The New York Times dummied it down to “Colonial.”  While the residents within had little spare money, the exterior did its best to hide the fact.

The rusticated first floor burst forth with a dramatic yet dignified arched pediment over the entrance with a richly-carved panel of spilling cornucopias.   Above, three stories of variegated Flemish bond brick were contrasted with limestone trim.  Finally a slate-covered fifth story in the form of a high mansard roof provided an additional touch of elegance and class.

Inside the residents would find a homey atmosphere.  Mrs. Joseph Milbank furnished the parlor, located on the second floor.  Here too were the Superintendent’s room,  a large room used both as a library and sewing room, and a few sleeping rooms.  The first floor housed the dining room, kitchen, office, a reception room and a “room for transient guests.”

To live here the girls would spend $4, $5 or $6 a week, depending on their rooms (one, two or three beds per room), which would include meals and “everything save laundry,” according to The Times.  Transient guests paid $7.

The 48 residents slept on iron beds and each had her own washstand, rocking chair and private clothes closet which was locked.  There was a bathroom on every floor and Victorian modesty was a top concern.  “Screens are also provided to place around the beds and give absolute privacy,” assured The Times.

The newspaper applauded the decorative amenities.  “Hardwood floors are used throughout the house, with pretty rugs in all the rooms, sash curtains at the windows, and muslin splashers back of the washstands.”

The Times said that the opening was done with “appropriate exercises,” described addresses by the Rev. W. H. P. Faunce and the Rev. C. Cuthbert Hall and noted that “there was music, and tea was served.”

For generations the house saw the comings and goings of young girls struggling to make their way in the world.  In 1921 The Lyre of Alpha Chi Omega reported that Grace Griffith was living here while “completing a cooperative course in Salesmanship at New York University and has recently accepted a lucrative position as educational director at Saks & Company.”

By the time of the Great Depression the name of the building had been changed to Sage House, most likely in response to substantial support from the Russell Sage Foundation.  In 1932 the economic climate was being felt.  The Times reported that “the Ladies’ Christian Union turned to the opera for the first time to meet a financial need due to ‘overwhelming pressure of unemployment.’”

The Metropolitan Opera responded and on the afternoon of December 14 maestro Tullio Serafin directed “La Traviata” starring Rosa Ponselle, Lauri-Volpi and Tibbett.  The charitable event resulted in $4,000 for the Ladies’ Christian Union.

In 1942 the Union updated the aging structure, while keeping the prim façade untouched and in keeping with the still-upscale neighborhood.  The group’s decades of help to working women who needed a little support would not last forever on West 9^th Street, however.

In the summer of 1975 the Ladies’ Christian Union began plans to accept children who were abused by their parents.  Alan Pilikian, a member of the executive committee of the West 9^th Street Block Association told reporters that residents on the block were “outraged and frightened when they got wind of the organization’s plans.”

The Block Association asked the local community planning board for Greenwich Village to stop “institutional encroachments.”  It protested that often when similar institutions were introduced on residential blocks “resident neighbors are afflicted with unbearable noise, obscenities, shouted insults, loitering, harassment of passersby, litter, vandalism, destruction of public property.”

Pilikian said “We wanted to nip the plans in the bud.”  Some 9^th Street residents researched the names and addresses of the trustees of the Ladies’ Christian Union and wrote to them, “arguing that their block was not suitable for such a project,” said The Times.

The Ladies’ Christian Union responded to the residents.  The plans to take in abused children was abandoned, and after having operated its home for women here for 77 years it decided to close.  On September 21, 1975 The New York Times reported that “a spokesman for the Ladies’ Christian Union said that the disposition of the facility was now being reconsidered.”

The building was sold and within two years had been converted to seven expansive cooperative apartments.   The building where young shop girls spent $4 a week to sleep on an iron bed behind a privacy screen was now called home by millionaires and celebrities.

Melanie Lazenby, the daughter of James Bond actor George Lazenby, paid over $1.3 million for a four-and-a-half room apartment here in 2005.  The same year actress Keri Russell bought the two-story penthouse with two terraces.  And in 2006 actor Matt Dillon, using the name Kevin Dillon was in Unit 5-B.   When Keri Russell married in 2007, she sold her duplex for $1.5 million.

The dignified façade of the old Young Woman’s House is unchanged.  That the building’s tradition of serving those in need was cut short not by prudish Victorian neighbors, but by prudish 1970s neighbors, is at the very best remarkable.

photographs taken by the author