Brothers Louis and Samuel Sachs were highly successful fur
manufacturers and importers in the 1880s, doing business under the name L.
Sachs & Bro. Around 1890 they branched
out into real estate development. That
year alone they completed the six-story cast iron building at No. 112-114
Prince Street (which they occupied), the $40,000 loft building at No. 124
Greene Street, and the large factory structure at Nos. 21 to 29 West 4th
Street designed by Richard Berger.
Within the year the brothers would put the prolific
architect to work again. On January 31,
1891 the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide reported that “After May 1st
next L. Sachs & Brother will improve their property at Nos. 43, 45 and 47
East 10th street. Richard
Berger has plans on the boards for two six-story and basement brick, stone,
iron and terra cotta store buildings…These buildings will be finished in
hardwood throughout and complete in all appointments, elevators, steam head,
and electric lights and other improvements being provided.”
The Sachs brothers were invading a still-upscale residential
neighborhood. Next door at Nos. 39-41
was the The Lancaster apartment building where moneyed residents no doubt eyed
the demolition of the old buildings with suspicion. That, in part, may explain the $100,000 the
developers spent on the new building—in the neighborhood of $2.7 million today.
The impressive structure was completed within a year. The concept of two buildings was discarded
and, instead, there were two store spaces at sidewalk level and massive lofts
on the five floors above. Berger used
cast iron to frame the openings, making possible expanses of glass that poured
sunlight into the factory spaces.
An industrial take on Romanesque Revival, Berger’s design
used three five-story arches to lighten the visual bulk. The style, which was often ponderous, emerged
at Nos. 43-47 East 10th Street as light and airy. Berger adorned the façade with terra cotta
panels depicting bas relief portrait busts, embracing putti that morphed into
floral forms, and flowery garlands and ribbons.
The top floor featured a string of 12 arched openings that unified the
massive arches below.
The new building quickly filled with publishing firms, among
the first of which was Lovell, Coryell & Company. It was the first home of the firm which John Wurtele
Lovell and Vincent M. Coryell had recently founded . In March 1892 it signed a three-year lease
for the third and fifth floors at $4,500 for the first year and $5,000 each
year afterward.
The building as it appeared in 1904 -- One Hundred Years of Publishing 1804-1904 (copyright expired) |
Once in, the company wasted no time publishing its first
titles. In July that year it released J.
M. Barrie’s Auld Licht Idylls; Of the
World, Worldly by Mrs. Forrester, and J. H. Pearce’s Inconsequent Live. The
volumes retailed at about $1 for cloth-covered hardbacks, and 50 cents for
paperback.
By May the University Publishing Company had moved in. The firm printed textbooks and other educational
publications, such as “Maury’s Geographies; Holmes’, Davis’, and Lippincott’s
Reading Books; Venable’s and Sanford’s Mathematics; Clarendon Dictionary,
Gildersleeve’s Latin, and other standard and popular books.”
Joining the firms in the building was William Wood and
Company—the oldest publishing house in New York other than the Methodist Book
Concern. Samuel Wood founded the
business in 1804 at No. 362 Pearl Street; and it was now headed by his
grandson, William H. S. Wood and his three sons. The firm published medical journals and
magazines, including the American Journal
of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children; the American Druggist; New Remedies; and the Medical Journal.
William Wood & Company dealt in technical medical publications -- The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases 1895 (copyright expired) |
The academic works of William Wood and Company and the
University Publishing Company were a world apart from the light reading sold by
Lovell, Coryell & Co. In 1893 it
published Mrs. Oliphant’s The Marriage of
Elinor; Penance of Portia James
by Tasma; and F. W. Robinson’s The Wrong
That Was Done. Lovell, Coryell &
Co. was still publishing J. M. Barrie’s latest works, releasing A Tillyloss Scandal and Two of Them that year. Despite its three-year lease, Lovell,
Coryell & Company moved to East 16th Street later that year.
The personal advertisements in the back of William Wood and
Company’s Medical Record often
included positions-wanted ads from out-of-work doctors.
One, in December 1893 read “A regular physician of mature age desires a
position as Associate with, or Assistant to, some busy practitioner.”
Another publisher, Maynard, Merrill & Co. had also moved
in when the building opened. Like
William Wood and University Publishing, it produced academic works like An Essay on Addiction which it released
in 1892 and The School Journal. In the spring of 1893 the firm sent printed
pages and covers of Alonzo Reed’s “early study of the English language” to
George W. Alexander’s bookbindery at No. 108 West 18th Street. On
June 21 Alexander’s operation was destroyed by fire and the Reed material was
badly damaged, much of it falling through to the cellar.
The debris in the basement was regarded as worthless and
Alexander traded it to the junkmen for clearing out the space. But not all of Maynard, Merrill & Co.’s
pages and covers made it to the junkyard.
Bookseller William Beverly
Harison of No. 59 Fifth Avenue collected what The New York Times called the “impaired
and soiled sheets.” By picking and
choosing the best elements, he bound them into volumes and put them in his
bookstore.
Unfortunately for Harison, the original publishers
discovered the sneaky deed. They took
him to court in January 1894, charging that he “has sold and exposed to sale a
number of copies of the book made up from damaged and soiled sheets, and in
violation of the original copyright.”
The Times deemed the case “a novel suit” and when one of its
reporters knocked on the door of Harison’s house at No. 102 West 93rd
Street on January 4, the embarrassed bookseller “refused to discuss his side of the case.”
As the century drew to an end, dry goods and garment firms
moved into the area. Among the first to
invade the publishing building on East 10th Street was Northrop
& Curry. The makers of boys’
clothing took the top floor around the beginning of 1897. The family-like interaction among its employees was reflected in an paragraph
that appeared in The Sun on April 28, 1897.
“Employees of Northrop & Curry have organized for the coming season,
and would like to hear from teams of dry goods and clothing houses for Saturday
afternoon [baseball] games during June, July and August.”
The following year, just before dawn on June 16, 1898, “the
neighborhood of Grace Church was shaken by a loud explosion,” according to The
Sun. The explosion had occurred in the
Northrop & Curry shop and immediately flames burst out through the arched
windows. The newspaper reported that “the
tenants in the Lancaster apartment house, next door, whom the explosion had
aroused from sleep, cried pitifully to be let out. They thought the house was on fire.”
The factory space, including the elevator shaft, was tightly closed. The circumstances led fire
investigators to believe that the gases and heat from the fire had built up
with no means of escape, until the pressure blew out the windows in the loud
explosion. “It is what the firemen call
the back draught,” reported The Sun. “About
$8,000 damage was done. The street was
littered with broken window glass.”
The New York Times added that the contents of other floors
were badly damaged by water and increased the estimate of damages to
$10,000. The other tenants in the
building at the time were William Wood & Co.; another publisher, Fords,
Howard & Hulbert; and S. & T. E. Harris, clothing manufacturers.
William Wood & Co. moved out the following year; but
Fords, Howard & Hulbert—the last of the publishing firms in the building—would
remain into the new century. John R. Howard was president of that
company. Wealthy and respected, he lived
in Montclair, New Jersey. The Times noted
“The family is very prominent in Monclair, Mr. Howard being Trustee of the
First Congregational Church.”
Howard’s son, Edward Fords Howard, was “very prominent among
the young people” and was enrolled at Yale in 1903. He was absent from campus for two days on
February 28; but his friends assumed he had gone home to visit. Then on the afternoon of February 28 two Yale
students were walking along the edge of a rocky cliff when they discovered the
young man’s body halfway down the rocky face.
Newspapers called it “a mysterious death” and The New York
Times reported “From the position of the body when found it was impossible to
decide whether or not it was a case of accidental death.” The mystery was, apparently, never solved.
In 1901 Charles E. Heymann, “importer of
raw ostrich feathers” moved in. He would
stay in the building for two decades.
Other garment-related firms to move in included that
operated by James Tobias. The furrier was 51 years old in 1906 and
suffered recurring headaches. On
September 2 that year he sent a servant to the drug store for headache
powders. He took the medications then “rolled
from his chair and died almost instantly,” according to The Times. His wife told investigators he had been
taking headache powders for about a year.
Heymann was apparently the victim of a massive stroke. “An investigation will be made,” said the newspaper.
Heymann was apparently the victim of a massive stroke. “An investigation will be made,” said the newspaper.
Other garment companies in the building included Silverman
Bros. which took the fifth floor in 1914; Blackfort-Mintz Co. on the second
floor the following year; and Bonar Phelps & Co., manufacturers of straw
hats.
No. 43-47 East 10th Street continued to house
apparel firms through the 1930s. When
the K. W. Improvement Company purchased the building in June 1939, it announced
plans for “extensive alterations.” It
was assessed at the time of the sale at $100,000.
The new owner’s alterations happily did not extend to the façade. Richard Berger’s handsome design survived
unchanged—right down to the storefronts—throughout the century. In 1973 the last industrial tenant moved out
as the building was converted to residential space. Today there are ten apartments per floors
above the ground level in the imposing brick loft building.
photographs by the author
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