Aschenbroedel Verein -- No. 74 East 4th Street

photo by Alice Lum

By 1855 New York City had the third largest German population in the world—outranked only by Vienna and Berlin.  The New York Times, forty years later, would explain “The revolution of 1848-1849 in Germany caused many a brave German to leave his beloved Fatherland and seek refuge within the borders of the United States.  These refugees brought with them the habits and customs of the land of their birth, and shortly after their arrival on American soil they banded themselves together in organizations similar to those they so dearly loved in the Old World.”

By midcentury German bier gartens, music halls, and social halls provided the residents entertainment and diversion. In 1860 the Aschenbroedel Verein, or Cinderella Club, was founded by professional orchestral musicians in a “little public house at Broome and Mott streets,” as described by The Sun later.  It was not only a social and musical club, but was involved in philanthropic works as well.  Along with the Arion Society and the Liederkranz Club, it would grow to become one of the leading German musical-based institutions of New York.

Six years later the club was large (and financially stable) enough to purchase the property at No. 74 East 4^th Street in the heart of Little Germany.  The group initially used the existing structure and in 1870 was successful in petitioning the city for improvements.  The minutes of the Common Council on Monday, September 12, 1870 noted “Resolved, That two street-lamps be placed and lighted in front of No. 74 East Fourth street.”

But before long the building was demolished and German-born architect August H. Blankenstein was hired to design a permanent clubhouse.  The four-story brick-clad building was completed by the fall of 1873, and on November 7 The New York Times reported “The Aschenbroedel Verein, an association of musicians organized for social and benevolent purposes, inaugurated its new club-house at No. 74 East Fourth street last night, by an entertainment of music and social festivities.”

Among the members were several highly-esteemed musicians, including Theodore Thomas (who headed the highly-popular Theodore Thomas Orchestra), Carl Bergmann, and Walter Damrosch. 

Damrosch was born into a musical family.  His mother was the opera singer Helene von Heimburg; and his father the conductor Leopold Damrosch.   Walter Damrosch studied at the Dresden Conservatory before arriving in New York with his parents in 1871. 

Damrosch’s father would found the New York Symphony Society in 1878, a fierce competitor to the older New York Philharmonic Society of New York, organized in 1842.  Despite the Damrosch ties, it was the Philharmonic Society that shared space in the clubhouse.  In 1880 A Dictionary of Music and Musicians noted that the headquarters of the Philharmonic Society of New York “are at Aschenbroedel’s Club-house, No. 74 East 4^th Street.  Its large and comprehensive library is kept at No. 333 Eat 18^th st.”

By 1888 there were 600 members of the Aschenbroedel Verein.  The organization gave concerts to raise money for its charitable causes .  One such event was held on September 21 to aid sick or invalid members or their families.  “Seven thousand people fond of music and sure of hearing the best were packed and jammed into Washington Park, Sixty-ninth street and Eastern Boulevard, last evening at the great concert given by the Aschenbroedel Society in aid of its relief fund,” reported The Sun the following day.

Three hundred members comprised the orchestra and the newspaper reported that “The announcement that Theodore Thomas was to be the conductor, that Miss Emma Juch and Messrs, Theo. Toedt, Geo. Prehn, and Rafael Joseffy were to contribute their services, together with the moderate entrance fees of 50 cents and $1. brought an immense crowd.”  Following the concert around midnight, the Jones Wood Coliseum next door was opened for dancing.  The society netted $3,000 for its relief fund—an significant $71,000 by today’s measure.

Within three years the four-story clubhouse had become too small for the still-growing association, now numbering 700.  The Sun reported “Some time ago, however, the members concluded that they needed a bigger house, and that it would be pleasanter to have it up town.  Very soon thereafter steps were taken to secure such a house.”  On May 16, 1891 an advertisement appeared in the Record & Guide offering “A very fine piece of property, known as Aschenbrodel Club House, 74 East 4^th st.”  The property was offered at $56,000.

On April 27, 1892 the members “and several thousand friends” were on hand for the laying of the club’s new headquarters on 86^th Street near Lexington Avenue.  The Sun somewhat sarcastically called the planned clubhouse “Cinderella’s Palace.”

A month later the sale of the 4^th Street property to the Schillerbund Gesangverein  was completed.  One of the city’s oldest German singing societies, it had been meeting nearby at No. 62 East 4^th Street.  Now it commissioned German-born architects Kurtzer & Rohl to revamp the building as its own.  Frederick William Kurtzer and Richard O. L. Rohl transformed the exterior with ambitious cast iron ornamentation pretending to be stone.  Combing neo-Grec and German Renaissance Revival elements, they ran quoins up the sides, crowned the windows in Renaissance-inspired pediments, and placed the busts of three composers over the second floor openings.

Cast iron mimicked stone against the brick facade and a dramatic broken pediment above sat like a tiara -- photo by Alice Lum

Six months later the renovations were complete and on November 15, 1892 the club formally opened its new $45,000 home.  Unfortunately, a bad rain storm put the damper on many of the planned festivities.  “It had been intended to have a procession from the old building to the new, but the rain stopped that and also the fireworks,” reported The New York Times the following morning.  The newspaper noted that the Schillerbund had had the clubhouse “almost entirely rebuilt and refitted.”

The musicians' busts steal attention from the intricate cast iron designs -- photo by Alice Lum

“The new home is a well-fitted and handsome four-story structure.  On the ground floor are fine blowing alleys, the kitchen and restaurant.  The second floor is used for assembly and meeting rooms, the third for lodge rooms, and the top of the house is occupied by the tenant.”

The Schillerbund had been founded on January 3, 1850 when a group of men assembled “at Louis Rippel’s Hall, 47 Rose Street, for the purpose of forming a singing society,” according to The Times on July 14, 1895.  “So heartily did the German element of this city respond, that before the close of January a permanent organization was formed.”

By now the membership was about 400.  The Times ranked the remodeled clubhouse as “one of the best Maennerchor clubhouses in that section of the city.”  But within only a few years the choral group moved on.  By the turn of the century the building was briefly used as a Polish social club, called Krywaczy’s Hall.

On September 6, 1901 anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot and fatally wounded President William McKinley.  The members of Krywaczy’s Hall were quick to react.  On September 12 The New York Times reported “Czolgosz will be denounced and a message of sympathy sent to President McKinley by the Poles of this city.  They are to have a mass meeting at 8 o’clock tomorrow night in Krywaczy’s Hall, 74 East fourth Street, and sixty different Polish societies will be represented by delegates.”

Denunciation of the assassin was not enough, apparently.  Krywaczy’s Hall was given the new name of McKinley Hall.

The Hall was sold in 1904 and became a popular venue for political and labor meetings.  “There was the liveliest sort of a row last night at a McKinley Hall…by the residents of the lower East Side who have been trying to perfect an organization to fight the landlords’ raise in their rents,” reported The Times on April 11 that year.

In reporting on the same meeting, the New-York Tribune made clear its support of the New-York Rent Protective Association.  “A meeting to protest against the rent raising of the East Side landlords and consider ways and means further to outwit them in their extortions will be held at McKinley Hall, No. 74 East Fourth-st., to-night.”

A year later Minster Realty Company purchased the building and before long it was leased to a most unexpected tenant.  On December 2, 1905 The Sun reported “A scheme known as the Newsboys’ Athletic Club is just getting into working order in Fourth street near the Bowery.  The scheme involves a gymnasium, a reading room and a club with newsboy membership.  If the story told is straight—and it sounds straight as a die—the scheme has very unusual backing.  Jack Sullivan, a newsboy, is practically alone as founder, manager and backer.”

Jack Sullivan was known across the city as the “King of the Newsboys.”  He had organized the rag-tag group of boys and they successfully carried out a strike for better wages.  The enterprising young man studied the workings of men's social clubs and had envisioned a refuge for the newsboys.  Starting with his own money, he was able to get financial support from businessmen and reform workers.

By December 1905 about $5,000 in renovations had been done.  Sullivan showed a reporter from The Sun the layout on December 1.  The former dance hall on the first floor was now the gymnasium, outfitted with rings, bars, trapezes, two punching bags, horses and a basketball hoop.   “It is a first class outfit and a full one,” said the newspaper.  The second floor had Jack’s office and a reading room, decorated with photographs of “poets and Presidents.”  There were also showers, lockers and a dormitory on the top floor with cots where “over seventy-five homeless waifs may find shelter during the Winter,” according to The Times.

Sullivan’s endeavor was not just to create a club for the boys—he intended to improve them.  For ten cents a week the newsboys, ranging in age from seven to 20 years, could use Newsboys’ Hall; but in order to make use of the gymnasium, for instance, they were required to study.  “Spelling, reading, writing, and geography being the curriculum that Sullivan deems of sufficient importance just at present,” said The Times.

Jack Sullivan’s unique project caught the eye of the nation.  On the day of the opening there were letters of congratulations from President Theodore Roosevelt, Helen Gould and millionaire H. McKay Twombly.  Instead of cake and speeches, the opening of the club was an unscripted free-for-all in the gym.  The New York Times said the gymnasium “was alive with bag punchers, impromptu wrestlers, and basket ball enthusiasts.”

The club was a success and benefits were held throughout the years to keep it going.  On March 3, 1907 a vaudeville entertainment was staged at the Academy of Music, netting the club $5,000.  Sullivan’s determination that the boys would better themselves was reflected in lectures and courses presented in the hall, like the six-part Course on First Aid to the Injured in 1909.

A group of newsboys pose near the Brooklyn Bridge in 1908 -- photograph Library of Congress

Work with Boys magazine reported in January 1912 that “In May 1911, the lease on the 4^th Street property expired.  As the Club had outgrown the capacity of the building, it was decided to secure a larger place.”  That turned out to be the former New York Historical Society at Second Avenue and 11^th Street.

photo by Alice Lum

Newsboys’ Hall returned to its life as a political and labor hall; now called Floral Garden.  On the first floor was a restaurant run by Nathan Hirsch.  By now the world was terrorized by anarchist groups like the Black Hand and the Industrial Workers of the World.  Problems came for Hirsch when he accepted a $3 deposit for the dining room of Floral Hall from Vincenzo Fabbrocino in May 1914.  Fabbrocino was a printer and he told the proprietor that he needed the hall for a meeting of the typographical union.

Before the day of the meeting a week later, Hirsch discovered that instead, the meeting was of IWW officers.   The New York Times reported that according to circulars “the meeting in Floral Garden was to have been ‘an international mass meeting in the matter of Augusto Masetti, the Italian Anti-Militarist who shot his Colonel when he was ordered to shoot his fellow-workers.'”

On May 24, when the members began arriving, Nathan Hirsch blocked their entrance.  “More agitators arrived and demanded admittance.  Hirsch was obdurate, and by 2:30 o’clock, the time for which the meeting was scheduled, a large crowd was before the hall, asserting that it would break its way in, and threatening violent.”

The Evening World reported “A riot followed, in which the police were forced to fight back the I. W. W. crowd, which began a bombardment of paving stones.”  As the melee played out on in the street, a wedding was scheduled to take place on the second floor of the hall.  The bride and the flower girls “arrived just in time to follow the police in through the crowds outside,” said The Times.  “They were alarmed at the loud noise and fled up the steps.”

In 1916 part of the upper portion of the building was being used by messenger boys as their headquarters.  Taking their lead from Jack Sullivan’s successful newsboy strike several years earlier, they went on strike against the Western Union and Postal Telegraph Companies, who employed 2,500 messenger boys.

In the days before the internet, faxes and widespread telephone service, message boys scurried up and down New York City’s streets carrying hand-written messages.  The boys knew that if they stopped working, there would be a disastrous effect on business.  On November 2, 1916 The Evening World said “The boys appear to be taking things easy with the assurance that they will win in the end.  They know of the scarcity of boys in the city and feel confident their places cannot be filled.  They content themselves with hanging around headquarters at No. 74 East Fourth Street, shooting craps and smoking cigarettes, after returning from selling newspapers.”

The boys had three demands:  “For nightly workers, a wage of $12 a week, with a seventy-hour week and a day off every other week; for day workers a wage of $1.50 a day, ten hour day and a day off every two weeks, and a half-hour for lunch; and for boys who worked on commission, a flat rate of 3 cents for delivery a telegram.”

Throughout the rest of the 20^th century, until 1967, the building saw a variety of uses.  There were apartments upstairs in the 1920s; and the lower levels housed a meatpacking plant and a laundry at different times. 

In 1961 Ellen Stewart rented a theater in the basement of nearby No. 321 East 9^th Street and established Café La MaMa.  After moving three times, she found No. 74 East 4^th Street.  In 1967 she received grants from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, enabling her to renovate the building.  Since that time La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club has been a vibrant venue for live theater in the Lower East Side. 

Only the decorated cast iron supports of the ground floor remain.  It appears that architectural attractiveness was not on the list of renovation requirements.  photo by Alice Lum

Although the ground floor has been sadly obliterated, the upper floors of this historic structure are mostly intact since Kurtzer & Rohl’s 1892 renovations—a handsome reminder of a time when German, not English, was the predominant language of the neighborhood.

The Ludwig Dreyfuss House -- No. 52 East 68th Street

photo by Alice Lum

Brothers David and John Jardine were highly active in the development of the Upper East Side where they erected rows of speculative rowhouses following the end of the Civil War .  The developers acted as their own architects and in 1879 completed a row of five brownstone clad homes at Nos. 52 through 60 East 68^th Street, just two blocks from Fifth Avenue.  Four stories tall over high English basements, they featured dignified neo-Grec elements.

The houses at No. 52 and 54 were purchased by millionaire Anderson Fowler as investment properties.  Fowler had made his fortune in the West in the packing business and upon his retirement he invested heavily in mining and other industrial enterprises.  For his own family (which included nine children) Fowler chose another Jardine house, completed the same year, across the street at No. 41 East 68^th.

On April 14, 1888 the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that “Ludwig Dreyfuss has purchased the four-story stone front dwelling No. 52 East 68^th street.”  Dreyfuss had married one of the daughters of Marcus Goldman.  Goldman made his fortune providing diamond merchants and hide and leather dealers with ready cash in exchange for a note promising repayment plus interest.  The dealers in such promissory notes were known as “note shavers.”  Goldman was trading in as much as $5 million a year.

By 1885 Marcus Goldman had already taken Sam Sachs as a partner (Sam had married Goldman’s daughter, Louisa).  Now he also took his son, Henry, and Ludwig Dreyfuss into the firm, changing the name to Goldman Sachs & Co.

While Ludwig worked at the banking firm, his wife busied herself in worthy causes.  One of these was the Children’s Charitable Union, of which she was Treasurer.  The organization was founded in 1876 “to provide kindergarten instruction and classes in sewing for children of the poorer classes, without means to pay for tuition, giving them a warm noon meal.”

As the turn of the century arrived the brownstone house and its neighbors had become architecturally passé.  Dreyfuss commissioned architect John H. Duncan to modernize the home in 1900.  Duncan had designed impressive mansions, like the Philip Lehman house at No. 7 West 54^th Street; but he was best known for his imposing Grant’s Tomb and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza.

Unlike some of the other radical make-overs on the block, Duncan’s renovations would leave no question that this was Victorian brownstone wearing new clothes.   The brownstone stoop remained, but was given new iron railings with a swirling French design.  Duncan carried out the Beaux Arts motif on the first and second floors.  The parlor received a vast arched French-styled window behind an ornamental grill.  At the second floor the original trio of openings was replaced by a curved oriel window.

A swirling grill protects the interesting French-inspired window at the parlor level -- photo by Alice Lum

There is little doubt that Dreyfuss instructed his architect to take the renovations no further.  The upper two floors retained their neo-Grec windows and the original bracketed cornice.  The result is a residence straddling two architectural eras; looking much like an unfinished project.

The Dreyfuss family lived on in the house for another decade.  Then on March 25, 1911 the Record & Guide announced that Ludwig had sold the house.   “The buyer will occupy,” reported the newspaper.

“The buyer” was Albert B. Ashforth, President of the Real Estate Board, President and Director of the Albert B. Ashford real estate company, and a director and trustee in other firms and banks.  Ashforth was not merely wealthy, he was descended from what The New York Times would deem a “distinguished old New York” family.  He was a relative of historian and intellectual Henry Adams, and he held memberships in several clubs, including the Union League, Bankers, and Automobile Club.  His love for golf was reflected in his memberships in the Greenwich Country Club, the Garden City Golf Club and the Blin Brook Club.

On January 3, 1925 the Ashforths' son, Henry, married Elizabeth Milbank Anderson in a fashionable ceremony in the Park Avenue Baptist Church.  A reception at the Colony Club followed.  The New York Times remarked that “The bride’s grandmother, Mrs. Milbank Anderson, was noted for her benefactions, having made large gifts to Columbia University.”

Three years later Albert B. Ashforth sold the house to his neighbor Margaretta C. Clark.  She lived across the street in No. 49 and bought Ashforth’s property “to prevent the erection of a high building which would seriously affect the light and air of her residence,” explained The Times on April 20, 1928.  The $125,000 she spent on the house would amount to about $1.6 million today.

A year later, on October 30, 1930, Silas M. Newton married journalist Nan O’Reilly.  O’Reilly’s astonishing career began at the age of 14 when she submitted a real estate article to the New-York Tribune.  For the next five years she was on the Tribune staff; then moved on to The Evening Post.  While there she wrote her first column on golf and forever after she would be associated with that game.  A year before her marriage to Newton she was made golf editor of The Evening Journal.  The newspaper introduced her to its readers as “The only female in captivity who has conducted a daily golf column.”

Silas Newton was an oil company official and a high ranking amateur golfer—the latter having resulted in the pair’s meeting and romance.  The Newtons moved into No. 52 East 68^th Street.  As what was apparently a wedding present of sorts, Newton purchased jewelry for his new wife at the auction of the estate of Rita De Acosta Lydig.

Above the updated lower floors, the Victorian house remained unchanged.  photo by Alice Lum

Then, on Tuesday evening, February 10, Nan removed her jewelry and placed it in a case on her dressing table in the second floor bedroom.  The next night, while dressing for dinner, she attempted to open the case but found one of the catches stuck.  “One of her maids assisted her,” reported The New York Times.  “When it was opened Mrs. Newton found ten of the most valuable pieces of jewelry were missing.”

Some of the items were those Silas had purchased at the Lydig auction.  The Times said the total value of the ten missing pieces was about $15,000—about $215,000 today and quite a haul in the Great Depression years.  “The ten missing pieces included a pearl necklace, two bracelets and rings,” said the newspaper.

More trouble would come to the Newton household five months later.  On July 8 Silas was arrested “on a charge of conspiring with two others to defraud a 74-year-old man of his life savings, amounting to $25,000,” according to The New York Times on the following day.  Newton dismissed the incident to reporters, insisting it was all a misunderstanding.

“He took his arrest lightly and said the entire matter would be cleared up.  He denied any wrongdoing, and told the detectives that if the complainant thought there was anything wrong, he should have called at his office,” said The Times.

Silas Newton most likely began taking the affair less lightly when the state of New Jersey began extradition proceedings two days later.  In addition to the fraud charges, he was being charged with being a fugitive from justice in New Jersey.

The scandal was no doubt an embarrassment to Nan O’Reilly who, according to The Times in 1937, “contributed to, or otherwise worked for, every newspaper published in New York in the last twenty-five years.”  The couple’s marriage did not survive significantly longer.  Divorced, Nan died in 1937 at the age of just 41.

By 1943 No. 52 was the home of Dr. Francis D. Gulliver and his family.  Gulliver was a specialist in diseases of the eye and was the author of articles such as his 1942 “Particles of Steel Within the Globe of the Eye” published in a medical journal. 

The year 1943 was especially noteworthy for the family.  On September 5 daughter Ruth Ann was married to Charles Daniel Sullivan; and a few months later the engagement of Frances was announced. 

A year earlier President Franklin D. Roosevelt had created the SPARS—the United States Coast Guard Women’s Reserve.  Among the first enlistees was Frances Gulliver and by the time her engagement was announced she had risen to the rank of Lieutenant.  Interestingly, Frances outranked her husband-to-be.  Richard O. Jordan was an ensign in the United States Coast Guard Reserve.

photo by Alice Lum

In 1952 the house was purchased by the Marquise Margaret de Cuevas and in 1984 it was converted to offices.  Today the house with the architectural split personality is owned by the Center for Inter-American Relations.

An Unadorned Beauty -- No. 135 Hudson Street

Severely utilitarian in its design, Montgomery Schuyler called it "no style which yet has style."  photo by Alice Lum

In 1882 few of the once-grand houses that had graced the former St. John’s Park neighborhood still stood.  The elegant park had been replaced in the 1860s by the Hudson River Railroad Company’s freight terminal.  Wealthy homeowners abandoned their Federal-style brick mansions, which in turn were rapidly converted for business or razed for hulking warehouse buildings.

No. 135 Hudson Street was an exception.  Sitting on land the Cary family had owned since 1829, the old residence was now a boarding house.  And despite the freight wagons that bumped along the stone-paved street outside, the manager of the house touted its respectable operation.  On May 17, 1882 an advertisement appeared in The Sun under the category “Board and Rooms.”  It announced “Gentlemen, ladies, and married couples accommodated with board; none equal down town.”

But Edward M. Cary, who owned the property, recognized greater potential.  Four years later he commissioned the architectural firm of Kimball & Ihnen to design a warehouse on the site of the house, stretching down Beach Street to engulf the lots at Nos. 43 through 47.  Construction was begun in 1886 and completed a year later.

Cary was one of the principals of Cary Brothers, a storage firm whose business was scattered among three warehouses on Washington, Watts and Greenwich Streets.  At the time architects were producing massive loft buildings in the neighborhood ornamented with terra cotta and carved stone.  Kimball & Ihnen were not interested in display.  In a surprisingly early example of “form follows function,” they produced a no-nonsense utilitarian structure that pretended to be nothing other than a warehouse.

photo by Alice Lum

Basically Romanesque Revival, the severe composition smacked of a medieval fortress—or prison.  Gaping arches—one on the narrow Hudson Street façade and seven along Beach Street—were separated by rounded brick piers.  The architects used the rounded shape not so much to add visual interest; but to eliminate the sharp corners which would be easily broken off by the in-and-out traffic of freight wagons.  Iron tie rods, which elsewhere in the city added ornament by being cast as stars, starfish, or curlicues, here had the straightforward appearance of giant screw heads.  These, like the iron anchor plates which were purposely left exposed, stressed the structural integrity of the building.

Kimball & Ihnen allowed for one astounding piece of architectural embellishment.  At the corner of the building they installed a street sign composed of heavy terra cotta blocks.  Nearly unique among Manhattan architectural signage, it announces the street names within cast leaves, plants and a remarkable face with flowing hair.

Out of character with the rest of the structure, the fabulous terra cotta street sign is nearly unique -- photo by Alice Lum

The often acerbic architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler praised the architects’ “abstinence.”  Unable to pinpoint the architectural style, he said their unwillingness to over-ornament resulted in a building of “no style which yet has style.”

If the Cary Brothers had originally intended to consolidate their storage business into this one structure; the idea did not last long.  A variety of merchants took space in the building.  In 1890 Charles H. O’Neill & Company held the entire building.  The firm imported millwork from the lumber mills of the vast Midwest logging areas.  Unneeded lofts were leased to other firms.  In May 1895 the company advertised “To Let—Lofts, 28x132, power, elevator, office rooms.”  Among the companies that shared the building with C. H. O’Neill was World Paper Co., which, despite the misleading name, manufactured shirts. 

At the turn of the century No. 135 Hudson underwent a quick series of owners.  In 1899 H. &. H. Sonn purchased it, but the liquor dealer sold the building the following year to Mariette Wilsey.  She immediately leased it to Cornell & Underhill, suppliers of machinery and pipe.  The structure was sold again in 1909 when real estate developer Augustus Bechstein, acquired it. 

Kimball & Ihnen left structure elements exposed--like the iron plates at the base of the pier and the iron supports of the arches.  The original wooden doors and transoms survive.  photo by Alice Lum

On April 21, 1910 it was announced that Bechstein had given at 10-year lease on the building to Crandall-Pettee Co., “a corporation.”  The lease, active on May 1, had an initial rent of $7,000 (about $166,000 today) and increased to $7,500. 

Crandall-Pettee was a new corporation, dealing in “grocers’, confectioners’, and bakers’ fixtures, utensils, and supplies,” as well as “fruit juices.”  Originally the Crandall & Godley Company, founded in 1871, its building had burned to the ground on January 7, 1909.  The principals, William Pfeiffer and William C. Pettee, reorganized under the new name.  Pettee’s brother, Lyman, also joined the firm.

The business was highly successful and the partners made a comfortable living.  Lyman Pettee earned a salary of about $237,000 in 1910, according to The New York Supplement in March 1913.  The 10-year lease was renewed and Crandall-Pettee remained in the building into the 1920s.  On March 20, 1920 the firm advertised for a new secretary.  “Stenographer to operate Smith machine in wholesale house; good opportunity for ambitious girl, with advancement.”

 

photo by Alice Lum

On November 16 the following year, one of Crandall-Pettee Company’s truck drivers, Louis Coughlin, headed off to the Park Row Building to deliver a barrel of glucose.  Coughlin had higher aspirations than being a deliveryman.  He had applied to the New York City Fire Department and was on its eligible list.  He expected to be hired in January.

The Park Row Building, at No. 13 to 21 Park Row, was owned by the multimillionaire August Belmont.  As Coughlin rolled the heavy barrel onto the sidewalk elevator, the supporting chain snapped and the elevator fell into the subcellar below.  Over a month later the New-York Tribune wrote that “Coughlin, who suffered various injuries which he says will cripple him permanently, is still in the Volunteer Hospital.”

With his hopes of being a fireman dashed, Coughlin summoned an attorney.  He sued August Belmont personally for $100,000 damages; about a million and a quarter dollars today.

By the time this advertisement was published in 1922 Crandall-Pettee had moved across Hudson Street -- The National Provisioner, March 25, 1922 (copyright expired)

In 1922 Crandall-Pettee Company moved across the street to Nos. 144-150 Hudson Street.  The following year The New York Times reported that Augustus E. Bechstein had sold the six-story building to Ernst Bischoff for $135,000.  “The purchaser will use the building for his own business of wholesale chemicals,” the newspaper noted.

Ernst Bischoff Co., Inc. “manufacturers of technical and medicinal products,” would remain in the building for over two decades.  Bischoff sold the building in 1946 and it would change hands again in 1950 and 1954.

By the last decade of the 20^th century the Tribeca area was less about warehouses and delivery trucks than about trendy restaurants owned by celebrities and luxurious residential lofts.  In 1990 No. 135 Hudson Street was converted to twelve massive “joint living/working quarters for artists”—just two per floor.

In 2014 a two-bedroom apartment, with 11 windows, went on the market for $1.775 million.  As realty listings are wont to be, this one was historically misinformed.  Calling the building the “converted Elsas Paper Company” (the Elsas Paper Company building was at Nos. 61 to 63 Varick Street), the realtors missed the construction date by a decade.

Once filled with crates of restaurant equipment, the building now houses upscale apartments -- photo http://www.bhsusa.com/manhattan/downtown/135-hudson-street/coop/9947453#

Nevertheless, Kimball & Ihnen’s severe and unadorned beauty at No. 135 Hudson Street is barely changed since 1887; save for the missing parapet that Mongomery Schuyler deemed “a device to mitigate the baldness of a flat roof in the absence of a heavy protective cornice.”  

The Lost New Netherlands Hotel -- Fifth Avenue and 59th Street

The 17-story hotel sat diagonally across Fifth Avenue from the Plaza Hotel -- photo by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWQC1166&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

The battle for Fifth Avenue between millionaire homeowners and commercial enterprise was well underway by 1890.  Although jewelers, dressmakers and art dealers were making inroads among the brownstone mansions, it was the grand hotels that were the largest threat to the residential neighborhood.

As early as 1871, construction began on the block-wide Windsor Hotel between 46^th and 47^th Streets.  Now, in 1890, the doors opened to the new Plaza Hotel at the northern fringes of Millionaire’s Row, and William Waldorf Astor demolished his father’s mansion at the northwest corner of 33^rd Street and broke ground for the hulking Waldorf Hotel that same year.

As Astor’s massive hotel designed by Henry J. Hardenberg rose, the millionaire commissioned William Hume to work on another grand hotel, diagonally across from the Plaza at the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 59^th Street.  Hume presented Astor with designs for an imposing brick and stone structure with remarkable similarities to Hardenberg’s Waldorf.

A sketch of the coming structure was published in 1893 -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

The 17-story structure, like the Waldorf, featured Romanesque arches, turrets and a high mansard crowned with a balustrade.  To enable the structure to attain such heights, Hume used steel framing—one of the first examples of the structural process in the city.  The architect incorporated the latest technology of the day to ensure the hotel would be state of the art.  Elevators, plumbing and electricity would provide guests with the latest in convenience.  There would even be a telephone in every room—a feature that would prompt a newspaper to later comment, “so that the millionaire who is ill may transact his business in bed.”  As opening day approached, an advertisement boasted that the hotel had “Every scientific appliance in ventilating, heating, plumbing & Electric Lighting.”

An advertisement promised "The Furnishings of a palace.  The table of an Epicure."  Club Men of New York, January 1893 (copyright expired)

On August 3, 1892 Electricity: A Popular Electrical and Financial Journal  remarked that work on the hotel “is rapidly nearing completion.  The work of a structural nature is about completed, and the decorative, plumbing and electrical work is being pushed with all speed.  Wiring has commenced, and the work of placing the power plant is at present receiving attention.”

The hotel would have generate its own power.  “A noticeable feature of the electric installation lies in the fact that no belts are to be used in power transmission; imported cotton rope will connect the engines, jack-shafts, and dynamos.  When completed, this will be the largest rope-driven electric plant in this or any other country,” said Electricity.

As the hotel neared completion, Astor leased it to Ferdinand P. Earle who also ran the high-end Hotel Normandie on Broadway.  One of Earle’s first challenges concerned the waiter’s union.  To avoid the labor problems several other hotels were experiencing, he agreed to hire union waiters.  But he put his foot down when it came to facial hair.

On May 13, 1893, The New York Times reported, “The members of the International Hotel Employes’ Association were happy yesterday.  A report was brought down to their headquarters at the Chimney Corner that the manager of the New Netherlands Hotel, which is to be opened on Decoration Day, had decided to employ association waiters, but on the condition that the men should not insist on wearing mustaches.  The waiters will waive their claim to the right of wearing mustaches."

If Astor had paid a fortune for the construction of the hotel, Earle was not far behind in its furnishings.  All told, the project cost $3 million—in the neighborhood of $75 million today.  The interiors were decorated by James T. Hall & Co. of New York.

In a well-conceived publicity ploy, Earle invited three United States Senators to spend the night in the hotel one day before the opening.  Senators David B. Hill of New York, Charles J. Faulkner of West Virginia and Fred T. Dubois of Idaho had the cavernous hotel to themselves “in apartments equally as gorgeous and far more extensive than those which the Nation’s Spanish guests have been given,” said The New York Times on June 1, 1893.

“The parlors of the house, with their costly drapings and upholstery, the immense dining room finished in Mexican onyx, the spacious halls and corridors, approached by a staircase in carved Numidian marble, and even the bridal chambers were at their disposal, with none to molest or make them afraid,” reported the newspaper.

Among the works of art was an immense oil painting by Franklin Tuttle in the lobby depicting the purchase of Manhattan Island from the Native Americans.  The painting measured 25 by 12 feet and the figures were nearly life sized.  A clerk explained to Senator Dubois that the price paid for the land was $24.  “'There has been a noticeable increase in the value of that real estate,’ mused the Senator as he moved away to look at another painting, which represents the refusal of Peter Stuyvesant to cede Manhattan Island to the English,” said The Times reporter.

The following morning, the senators joined the Senate Committee on Immigration in the New Netherlands Room.  The New York Times said, “The room is a reproduction of the best finished and furnished of old Dutch rooms,” and The Decorator and Furnisher added, “This quaintly beautiful room is deeply imbued with the spirit of the German Renaissance.  The woodwork throughout is dark antique oak, and the tile decorations a brilliant Dutch blue, a combination rather strong and starling in its contrasts, but in a room of this character, perfectly allowable.”

Delft-style tiles covered the upper walls of the New Netherlands Room -- The Decorator and Furnisher, March 1897 (copyright expired)

But first, there was the matter of formally opening the hotel.  And it would be an astounding exhibition of electrical technology.  At 10:00, with the senators and newspaper men crowded around, Earle’s young son, Guyon Locke Crocheron Earle, pressed a button.  “This act will start the machinery plant of the house, unfurl a United States flag on the flagpole, seventeen stories higher, and discharge a cannon which has been fastened to the roof.  The house will then be declared open for guests,” said The New York Times.

The remarkable hotel made news far outside New York City.  Maine’s The Lewiston Evening Journal announced on June 1, 1893 “The New Netherland is a magnificent structure, 17 stories high, of dull, yellowish brick, with brownstone trimmings.  The entrance is imposing and broad, with massive carved stone pillars supporting the portico.  It is a palace for a king, magnificent in its appointments, solid and durable as the ages.”

Calling the hotel “elegant, “ the newspaper said, “But the parlors surpass in beauty and magnificence of furnishing everything in the hotel.  They open directly into the hall and connect with each other.  There is one that is especially unique and beautiful, and that is the empire room.  Their [sic] furniture is upholstered in the prevailing tints and the magnificent rugs harmonize with the whole.”

The Empire Parlor -- The Decorator and Furnisher, September 1896 (ciopyright expired)

The Evening Journal described the bridal suite in detail.  “The parlor is a symphony in cream, pale pink and Nile green.  The ceiling is a stucco work of garlands and roses, rosebuds and delicate leaves.  The walls are upholstered in Nile green tapestry, with pink and white rosebuds, and the gilt furniture is covered with satin brocade of the same color.”

The newspaper summed it up saying “There is no evidence in the hotel that money has been spared.”

In fact, no expense had been spared.  Earl purchased the carpeting, draperies, wall hangings and upholstery from W. & J. Sloane for $74,000.  The Phoenix Furniture Company had custom built the furniture for $180,000.  The silverware was provided by Gorham Manufacturing Company at a cost of $65,000.  The combined outlay to these three suppliers alone would amount to about $8 million today.

The Evening World chimed in, saying that the 370-room New Netherlands was even finer than the Waldorf.  “Of the series of Astor hotels which have so far been erected in New York the New Netherlands is, architecturally, the most magnificent.  It is, indeed, considered by many persons the most wonderful hotel structure in the world.”

The day following the opening, The New York Times commented on the technical advances, including the fire alarm.  “As a precaution against fire telemeters are connected with each room by which, whenever the temperature rises higher than 130 [degrees], the annunciator tells that fact to the office.”

The Times reported on the painted ceilings, the many oil paintings and tapestries, and the marble, onyx and hardwood trimmings.  “The general effect is of substantial elegance, and a degree of taste has been displayed which leaves no room for criticism as to over finish.”

The New Netherlands was a residential hotel, intended more for permanent residents than transient guests.  Among the first to move in were Thomas W. Strong and his wife Lena B. Graves Strong, according to the 1893 Social Register.  The New-York Daily Tribune noted on Sunday, November 26 that year, “Mrs. N. S. de L. Wyse will give an afternoon tea to-morrow in her apartments in the Hotel New Netherlands.”

Ten days earlier, the hotel had been the scene of a politically and socially-important function.  On Thursday November 16 St. Patrick’s Cathedral was “filled with distinguished people,” according to The Evening World, as Elizabeth Elkins married Edwin E. Bruner.  Not only did Archbishop Corrigan participate, but Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore had traveled to New York to officiate in the ceremony.

The bridal party, including the maid of honor, Grace Davis, who was the daughter of Senator Davis of West Virginia, and the Elkins family took rooms in the New Netherlands Hotel.  The bride’s father was Stephen Benton Elkins, the Secretary of State under President Harrison.

Following the ceremony, “The wedding party were driven directly to the New Netherlands Hotel, where there was a wedding breakfast in the banquet hall, on the parlor floor.  The breakfast was eaten standing.  The guests were 125 in number, and the breakfast was followed by a reception, the whole of the magnificently appointed parlor floor being given up to the reception,” said The Evening World. 

 

The socially-important bride would set up housekeeping in the hotel -- The Evening World, November 16, 1893 (copyright expired) 

The newspaper noted “Mr. and Mrs. Bruner will go on a two-weeks’ wedding journey, and when they return will take up their residence at the New Netherlands.”

Unfortunately for Ferdinand Earle, his extravagant outlays for silver, antiques, artwork and furnishings were more than the hotel could provide  for.   In March, less than a year after the opening, Earle was no longer able to pay the rent and, as The Evening World worded it on April 6, “he was evicted from the palatial New Netherlands Hotel.”

By the end of June, William Astor had found a new proprietor in Stafford & Whitaker.  The Evening World announced on June 29, 1894, “A lease for a period of ten years has been signed, and the work of refurnishing and refitting the big hotel will be begun very soon.”  In reporting on the change in managers, the newspaper added, “It is one of the most magnificently appointed houses in the world.”

Stafford told The New York Times, “There are a number of changes to be made inside.  The house is fully furnished, and if we can make a satisfactory arrangement with Gen. Earle’s creditors, we will purchase the furnishings, but if we cannot, we will refurnish it from cellar to roof.”  He added, “We shall continue to run it as a family hotel, and cater for regular boarders, although we will in no wise refuse transients.”

The magnificent appointments referred to by The Evening World would invite trouble later that year.  The hotel was decorated with costly objects and works of art—a fact that was a bit too tempting for some employees.  In September 1894, the manager noticed “that choice bric-a-brac, rare vases, silver and chinaware were mysteriously disappearing,” reported The New York Times.

The house detective was put on the case, who discovered within 30 days “several thousands of dollars’ worth of goods had been stolen,” and eight employees were under suspicion   Two police detectives were called in to help on the case.  “They found that the method was to throw the valuable booty into the ash carts, and afterward pawn it,” explained The New York Times on November 27.

Detectives arrested three employees, William Shannon, Allen J. Curry, and John Rooney, as well as Shannon’s wife, Mary.  They were charged with robbing the hotel of $5,000 worth of goods.  “The stolen property included almost every article of household furniture that could be used in furnishing a flat in complete style,” said The Times on November 28.  “Several truckloads of goods were removed [from the homes of the employees] and stored in a vacant room in the New Netherland, where they are practically under control of the Property Clerk of the Police Department.”

Twenty-nine year old Allen Curry was a watchman with a salary of $40 a month.  His participation in the ring enabled him to spend $45 a month on rent.  “When the premises were searched large quantities of the finest provisions that money could buy were found,” said The New York Times.

The New Netherlands was joined by the Hotel Savoy (right) -- photo by John S. Johnston, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWQC1166&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

As with any hotel, The New Netherlands had its share of customer peculiarities.  Near the top of the list of most unusual was Anna Held, a French-Polish singer.  The chanteuse arrived in New York in 1894 under contract with Florenz Ziegfeld.  It would be Held who suggested to the impresario that he stage an imitation of the lavish Parisian Follies. 

The beautiful singer checked into the New Netherlands in 1894 -- photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

But for now, the woman whom The Times called, “the much-advertised French singer” checked into The New Netherlands Hotel.  Among the diva’s demands was 40 gallons of milk every day “for bathing purposes.”  Ziegfeld contracted with the Long Island milk merchant H. R. Wallace to supply the milk at 20 cents a gallon.

“Miss Held had used 320 gallons, when she says she discovered that it was not fresh, and lacked the ‘creamy’ quality essential,” reported The New York Times on October 10, 1896.  Anna Held refused to pay for the milk, so Wallace sued her for the $64.

Victorian courtrooms were no place to air the subject of naked women in tubs of milk.  “Mr. Marks, Miss Held’s personal representative, said yesterday that the matter would be settled out of court, as milk baths were too peculiar to be discussed in public,” reported The Times.

Despite the publicity about milk baths and Anna’s questionable talents (The New York Times said “her abilities are of the most ordinary kind…her voice is not sweet or very strong and she uses it with no remarkable skill”), Ziegfeld was enamored with her.  In the spring of 1897 the couple signed a document in Anna’s suite in the New Netherlands proclaiming themselves married.

Although the “ceremony” had neither clergy nor public official, it was witnessed by “Diamond” Jim Brady and Lillian Russell, and Florenz and Anna lived together as husband and wife for nearly sixteen years.

 

By the 1920s The New Netherlands was an anachronism among its modern neighbors.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

As the 20^th century dawned, the hulking Victorian hotels of a generation earlier lost favor.  In 1905, the Plaza Hotel was demolished and in its place Hardenberg’s lavish new Plaza was erected.  The handsome French Renaissance palace stood in stark contrast to the dour brick-and-brownstone New Netherlands across the plaza.

A sketch was released in 1926 depicting the coming replacement for the old hotel -- The Architect, October 1926 (copyright expired)

In 1926, demolition of The New Netherlands began.  It was replaced by the 38-story Sherry-Netherland Hotel designed by Schultze & Weaver with Buchman & Kahn.  Now an apartment hotel, the Sherry-Netherland survives as a familiar landmark for New Yorkers, few of whom are aware of its magnificent namesake that stood here before it.

photo by Beyond My Ken

Janes & Leo's 1899 Row at Nos. 301-307 W 105th St.

Along with the commission to design The Alimar, an exuberant seven-story apartment house on West End Avenue, developer Hamilton M. Weed gave architects Janes & Leo the job of designing four abutting homes around the corner at Nos. 301 to 307 West 105^th Street.  By 1898 the Upper West Side vied with the most fashionable neighborhoods of Manhattan as upscale homes rose on its streets and massive mansions were built on its avenues.

As was The Alimar, the houses were completed in 1899.  The architects created an ensemble of high-end American basement homes which were unafraid to announce they were intended for the wealthy.  The stone bases of all four extended to the property line; but only No. 301 continued straight upward—possibly because of the party wall of the Alimar next door.  Nos. 303 to 307 stepped back, allowing for bay windows, balconies and a bowed front on No. 307.  Perhaps for visual balance, Janes & Leo perfectly matched the center homes while treating the end structures individually but harmoniously.

Within a year the upscale homes began to sell.  When Weed sold No. 301 on March 21, 1901, The New York Times mentioned “This is the second house sold out of a row of four recently completed.”  James R. Thomson was the buyer; but he resold it less than a year later, on January 17, 1902, to Thomas M. Turner.  Turner’s mortgage was $30,000—around $785,000 today.

No. 301 was the odd man out design-wise.

The following summer the Turners had a house guest, 23-year old Helen Blair of Kentucky.  Helen’s father was “very rich,” as reported in The Sun, and she was stopping on her way home from Paris.  One of the souvenirs the young woman had picked up in France was an automobile, “an electric phaeton.”  It arrived in New York on the ship with Helen.

What Helen Blair was unaware of was the newly enacted Bailey Law which required all private vehicles to exhibit “the proper tag for identification.”  And so on June 25, 1903 as she was care-freely motoring along 72^nd Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues, Mounted Policeman McKenna stopped and arrested her.

“The policeman insisted on getting into the machine with Mrs. [sic] Blair and leading his horse after it to the West Sixty-eighth Street Station,” reported The New York Times the following day.  She was the first woman arrested for violating the new law and newspapers eagerly reported the incident.

Helen’s automobile was impounded pending her getting license plates; but there was a problem.  None of the police officers at the station knew how to drive a car.  Sergeant Tierney asked if she would mind driving it to the police stables and she politely consented.  “The spectacle of a uniformed policeman sitting in an automobile with a woman driving aroused much interest,” reported The Times.

When Helen Blair appeared in the West Side Court the following day, she pleaded innocence of the law and told the judge she had already applied for a license.  Magistrate Zeller discharged her, prompting The Evening World to run the headline “Fair Chauffeuse Freed.”

No. 301 continued to experience rapid turnover in ownership.  In September 1904 Thomas Turner sold it to Moses Harlam, who resold it to Julius C. Landon in 1905.  In the meantime real estate operator Albert Brod bought up the remainder of the row in 1901.

Of them, only No. 305 would have a long-term owner thoughout their early years.  In May 1901 Brod sold No. 305 to Albert Goldman, the Director of the Mutual Chemical Company of Jersey City and a Director of the Tartar Chemical Co.  The Goldman family consisted of wife, Augusta, and three children, Harry, Sophie and Lillian.

The Goldmans lived at No. 305 for at least 14 years.

It was apparently a forward-thinking family, for nine years later daughter Lillian was attending the Woman’s Law Class at New York University.  In 1910 the very concept of a female lawyer was shocking to most.  Augusta Goldman died in the house on August 10, 1914 and the family would not remain here many years longer.

Wealthy families continued, for years, to inhabit the row.  Until 1913 Jose R. Barrios lived at No. 303.  He was a wealthy, retired exporter of coal to Cuba and a veteran of the Cuban army.  He died of a heart attack while riding the Third Avenue streetcar on September 27, that year.  And on May 10, 1920 the owners of No. 307 made preparations to close the house for the summer.  An advertisement in The New York Herald that day read “A lady closing her house in June would like to secure country position for her chambermaid—assist waiting—whom she can highly recommend.”

By now No. 303 was home to retired broker Edward B. Stearns and his wife.  Early in December 1921 the couple traveled to Stamford, Connecticut to spend the weekend.  Edward Stearns would not return home.

No. 303 was a match to the Goldman mansion next door.

The 44-year old left the Taylor home with another house guest, 30-year old James D. Robbins, “to make some purchases.”  As Stearns’ roadster was traveling along Cove Road, it came across a couple walking alongside the road.  Joseph H. Luboky and his 19-year old wife were returning home from a movie.

According to the New-York Tribune on December 5, Stearns was “traveling at high speed.”  When Luboky heard the roar of the motor coming from behind, he tried to pull his wife further away from the pavement.  But the automobile struck the woman, throwing her 20 feet, killing her.  Both Stearns and Robbins were thrown from the car.  Edward Stearns suffered a fatal skull fracture and Robbins’ neck was broken.

The Stearns mansion was purchased by cotton broker Layden Harriss.  He was a member of the Firm Harriss-Irby & Vose.  No. 303 West 105^th Street became the scene of a violent struggle on June 5, 1924 when around 1:00 in the morning Harris heard a noise and “trailed a burglar whose progress from room to room and floor to floor was indicated by occasional flashes of an electric torch,” reported The Times.

In the living room, the broker sprang upon the burglar in the dark.  He may have thought better of it after the battle was on, however.  John Bernauer had been out of Sing Sing prison for only three weeks and the newspaper said “Particular note was taken of his powerful hands and bulging shoulder muscles…Bernauer admitted, according to the detectives, that by working on the coal pile at Sing Sing and by constantly chinning himself and performing all the gymnastics that his small cell would permit, he had kept himself fit.”

Nevertheless Harriss held his own and the commotion of the fight “aroused the house and neighborhood and attracted many policemen.”  When Bernauer appeared in a line up regarding earlier burglaries, it was noted that his “right eye had been badly blacked in the fight with the cotton broker.”

Following Harriss’ death on Sunday, September 27 the following year, a requiem high mass was celebrated and his funeral held in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

The homes would not survive into the second half of the century as private mansions.  No. 301 was the first to be converted.  On July 25, 1935 The New York Times reported that Mrs. Grace E. Gumbiner had leased “for five years a former private house at 301 West 105^th Street, now being remodeled into one and two room apartments.”  The newspaper added “She has operated various furnished apartment houses.”

Five years later Nos. 305 and 307 were converted to apartments—two per floor.  And in 1946 No. 303 was given the same make-over.

Interior details have been gutted in No. 305 and the brick walls exposed--the antithesis of turn-of-the-century taste.  photo http://www.corcoran.com/nyc/Listings/Display/3113930

Outwardly little has changed to the especially handsome row of homes.  Inside, misguided modernization has brutalized some of the spaces.  But Janes & Leo’s wonderful group survives as a striking reminder of the fashionable lifestyles of the Upper West Side at the turn of the last century.

A quaint Juliette balcony distinguishes No. 307.

 photographs taken by the author