By the time of the Civil War the once-respectable
residential neighborhood around Broadway and 28th Street had
degraded. Saloons and gambling parlors
defined the area which would in later years be known as the Tenderloin. Thomas Thornton ran a saloon at No. 1178
Broadway in the first floor of an old brick-faced house. When the infamous Draft Riots broke out in
July 1863 in response to the unfair military draft lottery Thornton’s saloon
would become a target.
For three days terror reigned in New York City with carnage
and destruction unlike anything seen in the country before. Innocent people were murdered, and draft
offices, newspaper buildings and the homes and neighborhoods of the black
population were burned. When the mob
moved up Broadway to 28th Street, the grocer across the street from
Thorton, Richard Murphy, passed out free whiskey to appease them—a full 19
gallons in all. But, according to Adrian
Cook in his The Armies of the Streets:
The New York City Draft Riots of 1863, Thomas Thornton was less lucky.
“The mob broke in, drank al the liquor in the bar, carried
off the kegs and demijohns full of alcohol, and robbed him of $200.” Thornton’s loss in cash alone would be about
$4000 today.
Efforts of reformers and politicians like Police
Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt made a change in the Tenderloin in the last
decade of the century. In 1891 H.
Phillips, listed as an “importer and tailor,” ran his business from No.
1178. History and Commerce of New York, 1891 said “Mr. H. Phillips is a
gentleman of German birth, and for a number of years a resident of this city.” Meanwhile, the Gaelic Society and the
Municipal Council of the Irish National League leased rooms upstairs for their
headquarters.
Broadway by now boasted numerous handsome hotels and respectable
businesses were moving in to the area.
On July 13, 1901 the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide reported
that change was about to come to the corner of Broadway and 28th Street as well. Elias J. Herrick had commissioned architects
Clinton & Russell to design a five story brick and stone “lofts and stores”
building costing $80,000.
Herrick’s family had been in American since before 1653 when
Sir William Herrick was first mentioned at Beverly, Massachusetts. William
Herrick’s son, Joseph, settled around New Amsterdam, where he married Margaret
Hicks of Long Island.
Two and a half centuries later Elias J. Herrick had garnered
a fortune as one of the leading producers of flour in the United States. Heavily involved with charities and
philanthropies, he now turned his attention to real estate development.
He demolished the two brick houses at Nos. 1178 Broadway and
17 West 28th Street for his new commercial building. His architects were busy men at the
time. Concurrently they were working on
the Graham Court Apartments, the Broad Exchange Building downtown, the American
Exchange National Bank Building, the 18-story Atlantic Building and the Astor
Apartment building.
For Herrick they designed a five-story Beaux Arts structure that used a mix of materials—terra cotta, brick, limestone and cast iron. The banded limestone piers of the two-story base continued up the Broadway elevation and at the eastern end of the 28th Street façade. Above the second story cornice on 28th Street the central section was faced with beige brick—a significant cost savings to Herrick. Only in this section were the openings not framed in cast iron, with ornate spandrels, engaged columns and, at the second story, angled bays. Festooned cartouches crowned each pier above the second floor where a delicate wave crest design finished off the cornice. Above it all a fanciful parapet with festooned oculi, urn-topped pedestals and a shallow arcade along 28th Street sat like a diadem.
The family tie to Margaret Hicks was never lost among the
Herricks. Elias’s son bore the name Edward
Hicks Herrick. The new building,
completed in 1902, was christened The Hicks Building. Herrick’s first tenant was perhaps his most
important. The Evening Post Record of Real
Estate Sales reported in February 1902 that the Corn Exchange Bank had taken “the
ground floor of the new Hicks Building, at the northeast corner of Broadway and
Twenty-eighth Street.”
J. F. Reinhardt was among the earliest tenants in the upper
floors. Turn of the century wardrobes
involved traveling clothes, visiting clothes, business attire, evening wear,
sports outfits, and a host of other categories.
The closets of even the wealthiest were taxed with the amount of
clothing. Reinhardt offered a solution
by storing and maintaining seasonal apparel.
An advertisement in June 1903 in the New-York
Tribune offered “gentlemen’s clothing taken care of and stored for the
season.”
In the days before electric refrigeration hotels,
restaurants and homes were faced with another necessity—ice. The American Ice Company moved into No. 1178
Broadway. Run by Wesley M. Oler, the
successful firm was targeted by Attorney General Julius M. Mayer for running an
“Ice Trust” and price fixing. On
December 21, 1906 the New-York Tribune explained that through its
manipulations, the firm increased the price of ice from rivers and ponds from $1.20 a ton to
ten times that much. “It is said that by
the time the ice reached the poor customers of these pushcart dealers it cost
them at the rate of from $10 to $14 a ton.”
On December 20 Wesley M. Oler was served in his office at
1178 Broadway with a copy of the charges.
Oler said the charges were baseless and had no statement for reporters “except
to say that Mr. Mayer probably thinks his explanation of his action from his point
of view is correct.”
 |
| A delicate wave pattern rolls above the exquisitely-carved festooned cartouches. |
At the time that Wesley Oler was planning his defense the
building was home to several travel-related agencies. Leon H. Cilley placed an alluring
advertisement in the June 1906 edition of The
Four-Track News-An Illustrated Magazine of Travel and Education. Representing
the Maplewood Hotel in Maplewood, New Hampshire, he marketed it as a “Social
and scenic center. High altitude. No hay fever.
Superior 18-hold golf course.”
S. E. Churchill offered competition and in June 1906 advertised
accommodations at several resorts, including the sprawling Hotel Hamilton. That same month The Mathewson resort hotel
published an advertisement in the New-York Tribune. Like Churchill and the Maplewood, the
Mathewson’s New York office was in the Hicks Building. The ad boasted modern improvements over the
past season.
 |
| Lavish turn-of-the-century resort hotels were enticing even to middle class Americans, The New York Observer June 1906 (copyright expired) |
“Improvements for 1906 include a large number of new
bathrooms, surf bathing, no annoyance from mosquitoes, excellent roads, good
fishing. Golf and tennis.” The ad also noted “pure water from Mathewson
spring.”
Spring waters at summer resorts was rapidly becoming a marketing
tool. Another agent in the building was
taking advantage of that draw as well.
Hiram Ricker & Sons were the agents for the Poland Spring hotel and
resort. Poland Spring would remain in
the building for years; by 1916 focusing more on its bottled water than the
resort business.
A related firm was The Travellers’ Company. It, too, would be here for several years,
offering travel tickets, hotel and resort and restaurant recommendations for
vacationers. And Mabie & Gillies,
who started out offering “private funds for private house mortgages and
centrally located business property loans,” would also stay on. By 1908 the firm, now known as Webster B. Mabie
& Co. was dealing in commercial real estate.
New York’s apparel and millinery business would, for the
most part, bypass No. 1178 Broadway. One
exception was the high-end men’s hat manufacturer Hawes von Gal. With factories in Danbury, Connecticut and
Niagara Falls, Canada, the firm boasted in 1912 “Best made and best known is a
strong combination.” Its popular bowler
in 1913 retailed for about $75.00 in today’s dollars.
 |
| The style of illustration for Hawes ads at the time was astonishingly similar to J. C, Leyendecker -- The World's Work October 1912, (copyright expired) |
In the building with Hawes at the time were the Amsterdam Advertising
Agency (which included Poland Water on its list of clients); A. H. Rice Co., “manufacturers
of sewing silks and braids at Pittsfield, Massachusetts;” the Arizona-based
Pioneer Mining & Smelting Co.; and real estate agents M. Rosenthal Co.
(which signed a lease in 1916) and M. L. Harris.
In October 1917 the estate of Elias Herrick commissioned
architect I. E. Denslow to do “alterations” on the building. Details of the $4,000 in improvements are
unclear; however they most likely focused on modernizations inside.
The smattering of apparel firms in the building by 1920
included the Imperial Cloak Company and A. Kandel’s silk manufacturing
operation. On Friday November 25, 1921
Kandel ran into trouble while heading home to Brooklyn.
He and his wife were to attend a social function so Mrs.
Kandel had asked him to remove certain articles of jewelry from a safe deposit
vault. He placed them in a small chamois
bag which he pushed into his coat pocket.
He then boarded the elevated train to Brooklyn. He later told police he “recalled being
jostled during the trip.”
When he arrived home he found that the bag and his cash were
gone. Included were a diamond ring valued at $2,800 and a pendent worth
$1,820. In all Mrs. Kandel lost about
$7,500 in jewelry (nearly $97,000 today) and her husband was out $53 in cash.
No. 1178 was still being referred to as The Hicks Building in
advertisements as late as 1922. By 1930
the former bank space was occupied by the United Cigar Stores. And things would not improve as the decades
passed.
The street level was obliterated in the second half of the
20th century and is now humiliated with garish vinyl awnings of
wholesale shops. Clinton & Russell’s
handsome entrance to the upper floors on the 28th Street, however, survives; as does almost all of
their design above the first floor.
photographs by the author
photographs by the author
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