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| By the end of the Civil War the street level had been converted for business purposes. |
When James Wallace purchased the property at No. 73 Eighth
Avenue from the Genet family in 1833, what had recently been farmland was
quickly being developed. Greenwich
Village had experienced a construction explosion beginning in 1822 when the
devastating yellow fever epidemic in lower Manhattan resulted in hundreds of
new Village residents. The growing
population meant new homes, and new homes required lumber.
James Wallace owned a lumber yard on 13th Street,
not far from his new plot. The
neighborhood would soon fill with lumber businesses like Wallace’s. He completed
his handsome Greek Revival home in 1834.
Its red brick, laid in Flemish bond, was trimmed in brownstone. The new architectural style did away with
the peaked roof and dormers of the Federal period. Instead, attic windows punched through the
wide fascia board.
Wallace apparently branched into selling coal as well. He had retired by 1852, but in 1859 at least
one city directory listed him as a “late coal” merchant. The Wallace family remained in the house
until around the time of the Civil War; but by 1876 it was owned by Margaret Le
Comte.
She had converted the ground floor for the E. D. Carpenter
& Co. grocery store. Elias D.
Carpenter apparently did not live upstairs; but was tight-lipped about his home address. When the New York City Directory listed him
that year, it noted “home refused.”
Margaret Le Comte leased the rooms above over the Carpenter
grocery store for both residential and business purposes. Benjamin Princellis operated his “segar”
making shop here; and editor Juan Ignacio de Armas, whose offices were at No.
21 Park Row lived in the spacious second floor. Living in the attic floor was Caspar Castillo.
He was a “cigar-stripper” employed by Princellis and made extra money as
a watchman for the property at night.
By 1878 the grocery store space was shared by the tea store
of P. J. McDonnell. De Armas had moved
on and McDonnell and his cousin, P. E. Nagel, the Secretary of the New-York
Press Club, lived on the second floor. McDonnell had a bedroom just off the parlor
and his cousin slept in a bedroom facing Eighth Avenue.
On July 8, 1878 McDonnell seriously injured his wrist. The pain was such that he had trouble
sleeping—a condition that saved his live two nights later. Around 3:00 a.m. he was awakened by heat in
the room and the smell of smoke which was wafting in through the doorway
cracks. The New York Times reported “He
sprang from his bed in affright, and rushing back into the dining-room opened
the door leading to the hallway. He was
driven back by the flames and smoke that enveloped the doorway, and slamming
the door, he ran to his cousin’s bedroom.”
Nagle was deeply sleeping, partly overtaken by the growing heat
and smoke. McDonnell dragged him from the
bed and managed to rouse him. When he
turned up the gas jet, he saw that the heat of the fire was peeling the paint off
the door.
The men threw clothing and valuables out the parlor window
onto the sidewalk. Then they stood in
the window in their night clothes deciding what to do. A row of sharp meat hooks hung below the awning of
the grocery store. The Times explained
that “To jump from the window was to run the dangerous risk of becoming
impaled.”
Nagle had shouted “Fire!” to a passing policeman. He threw the door keys to Officer Todd; but in his excitement the officer got the wrong key wedged into the keyhole. The street door was now impassable.
Nagle had shouted “Fire!” to a passing policeman. He threw the door keys to Officer Todd; but in his excitement the officer got the wrong key wedged into the keyhole. The street door was now impassable.
Finally, the worsening smoke forced them out. They dropped onto the awning and clung to it
until it began to collapse. Carefully
they edged away from the meat hooks and dropped to the sidewalk.
Fire engines arrived just after 3:20 and the front door was
broken down. Nagle suddenly remembered
he had left his treasured gold watch under his pillow. He ran up the fire ladder, but was too afraid
to re-enter the burning rooms. A fireman
came down with a bundled sheet, in which was Nagle’s watch.
The flames were, by now, spreading up the staircase. Chief of Battalion Glaquel asked if anyone
else was in the house. In the excitement and panic, the cousins
forgot about “the Cuban on the top floor.”
When firefighters broke open the skylight to release smoke, they looked
in to see Castillo kneeling on the floor by the bed with his face buried in his
hands. “It appeared that he had rolled
out of bed, but had fallen insensible from the heat while endeavoring to reach
the window,” advised The Times.
Castillo was carried to the street where doctors tried to
resuscitate him, with no success. The
following morning the New York Clipper flatly reported that “a Cuban
cigar-maker suffocated to death.” Fire
investigators suspected arson, advising that the fire was most likely “the work
of an incendiary.” The blaze had damaged
the building and its contents to about $2,000—in the neighborhood of $50,000
today.
Margaret Le Comte died later that year; however the family
retained possession of the repaired building for a few more years. In the meantime, George Hayes moved his
Metallic Skylight business into No. 73 and into No. 71, as well. In 1882 he won an infringement suit against
Erickson & Gibson; deemed by Hayes as “a very severe and well-contested
trial.”
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| The cornice of No. 71 still bears the name HAYES, a reminder of George Hayes's skylight business. |
He turned the decision into a marketing campaign; placing
long-running advertisements in The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide
that announced that a “complete and perfect Skylight” could be acquired only
through him.
In the 1870s Amos Byron Cross ran a saloon at No. 417
Bleecker Street. But by 1885 he had
moved it into No. 73 Eighth Avenue. But he
had bigger visions for the building. On
October 8, 1889 the Le Comte estate put the building up for auction. The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide
reported “There was some lively bidding for the four-story store No. 73 8th
avenue…Starting at $19,000, bids followed quickly until $36,300 was reached,
and the property sold to Amos B. Cross, the present occupant.” The Guide noted “The store is occupied as a
saloon, and the rental accounted was $3,000 per annum.”
While Amos Cross began conversion of the upper floors to
Cross’s Hotel, business went on as usual in the saloon. One patron was well-known in the area. James Rigney was about 65-years old in 1890
and for many years was the “door-keeper” at J. H. Haverly’s Fourteenth Street Theater, where he was known as “The Major.”
Early in the 1870s Rigney had gone to San Francisco seeking
his fortune. He was made night watchman
of Maguire’s Opera House and, according to the New York Clipper decades later, “While
in ‘Frisco he speculated in mining matters, sometimes successful, oftener
otherwise.”
When he returned to New York he took the job at Haverly’s,
and added to his income by working as a clerk in a butcher store on 15th
Street, directly behind the theater.
Despite his financial troubles, his warm personality made him a
well-liked and popular character. But
his finances worsened when Samuel Colville took over the 14th Street
theater.
Rigney lost his job soon afterward. Now out of work, he got another shock following the death of his wealthy sister. He learned that she had left her entire estate to a religious institution. "This preyed upon Mr. Rigney’s
mind, and he was never the same man afterward,” explained the New York Clipper
on February 8, 1890.
On the morning of January 28, 1890 James Rigney walked into Cross’s
saloon. He had $3.92 in his pocket and
inside his shirt he had pinned two $5 bills.
Also in his pocket was a card he had written out before leaving home:
1890 God bless
all. I forgive. Now I lay me down to
sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to keep and may He
have mercy on all, everybody. J Rigney
January 1890
As he stood in the barroom, Rigney pulled out a pistol and
placed it to his temple. The shot killed
him instantly. The New York Times
reported “It was supposed that he was despondent because of nervous troubles
and erysipelas.”
The area around Amos Cross’s hotel and saloon was panicked
by a small pox epidemic in 1893. Along
with other businessmen and neighbors, Cross was concerned when, on November 21
that year, Joachim Hein was diagnosed with the disease. Hein lived and ran his cigar store directly across the
avenue at No. 74. Two other families shared the three-story building.
Although Hein was removed to North Brother Island and the
house was fumigated and the bedding destroyed; his wife and children kept the
cigar store open. According to The
Evening World they “continued to peddle out cigars to all customers who
patronized the place. In fact, Hein and
his family are immensely industrious.
Two of his children, boys of twelve and ten years of age, respectively,
utilize their after school hours in adding to the family income by selling
papers.”
By December 9 The World reported that “In that part of
quaint old Greenwich Village which is bounded by Jackson Square, Eighth avenue
and Fourteenth street, the greatest consternation exists among the residents who
fear, and justifiably so…an epidemic of small-pox.”
“Already four cases of small-pox have been reported to the
Board of Health, three of which emanated from one house, 74 Eighth avenue and
the other and latest one from 76 Eighth avenue.” The newspaper was incredulous that the Hein
family was allowed to go on about their business. “The simple fact that their father had been
stricken with small-pox and had been taken away did not apparently disconcert
them to the extent that they refrained from mingling with the public, selling
their papers here, there and everywhere in the vicinity.”
Amos Cross watched as the small-pox ambulance arrived across
the street and took away 17-month old Gracie Weinhoff. Then, a few days later, it was there “with
its funereal trappings of black, backed up against the curbstone in front of 74
again, and in a few moments two attendants appeared with another victim on his
way to North Brother Island.” This was
Frank Welch who lived in the Hein house.
As with the other businesses along this stretch of Eighth
Avenue, Cross’s saloon and hotel business suffered as patrons, fearful
of the contagious disease, avoided the area. Amos Cross
joined his fellow businessmen in demanding that Hein’s cigar store and the
store in the neighboring house be closed “temporarily, at least” They told reporters that “mere perfunctory
measures, such as fumigation, could not counteract the effects liable to result”
if the public was allowed to come and go in those shops.
The Evening World ended its article with the sensational
question “Who knows where it will break out next?”
Around the turn of the century Amos Byron Cross took on
Herman Kreyer as partner in the hotel and saloon. It was possibly this fact that prompted Cross
to transfer the title to No. 73 Eighth Avenue to Catherine M. Cross, his wife,
as “a gift” in 1900.
Cross’s Hotel was, perhaps, not always as upstanding as it
seemed. On November 20, 1903 The Sun ran
the headline “Nest of Con Men Turned Out” and reported on the raid of an illegal
horse betting den—known as a poolroom--above Cross’s saloon. Seven men, deemed by the police as “about as
fine a bunch of grafters and flim flammers as have been got together in some
time,” were arrested.
The detectives had been tipped off by a businessman who said
he had been swindled out of $400 in the place “by a gang of fakirs.” Detective Rochester went undercover, giving
the name of Al Richter and a Brooklyn address.
He made an appointment with “R. C. McDonald” and, according to The Sun, “dressing
up like a German farmer, he kept the engagement.”
“Rochester was taken to a small room over a saloon at 73
Eighth avenue, where there were five men counting money…The detective made a
bet of $50 on Golden Drop, and was about to cash his winnings when Capt.
Aloncle and the other detectives broke in.”
Every one of the hoodlums arrested (“after a lively fight”)
was in the Police Department’s Rogues’ Gallery.
Also arrested was Cross’s bartender on duty, George Cudaback. Police noticed that one of the men, who gave
the alias George Munroe, carried a wad of Confederate bills. When they asked him why, he responded “Oh,
there are a lot of suckers in this town who don’t know that the war is over.”
Herman Kreyer and Amos Cross were about to close the saloon
early on the morning of May 28, 1905 when a young man came in and asked for a
glass of beer. He placed a counterfeit quarter
on the bar; but Kreyer was on to him and refused it.
The man left the bar; but either outraged at being found out
or at not getting his beer, he returned.
Seeing Kreyer standing by the bar, he pulled out a long knife and
stabbed him. As the man escaped, Cross
ran onto the avenue and shouted for police.
The New York Times later reported that Kreyer “will probably die of his
wounds.”
In fact, Kreyer recovered and was back running the hotel a
year later when Princeton University instructor Joseph Greenwood checked in on
May 28, 1906. Greenwood, who had
graduated from the school a year earlier, routinely stayed the night when
visiting his brother, Isaac J. Greenwood, Jr., whose pencil factory was nearby
at 13th Street and Ninth Avenue.
The two brothers went bowling that afternoon, then Joseph
went to his third floor room in the Cross Hotel early in the evening. Two hours later he was found on the sidewalk with
“severe contusions and possible internal injuries,” according to the New-York
Tribune the following day.
The newspaper admitted that Greenwood “jumped or fell” but
had its own opinion. It ran the
sub-headline “Supposed Princeton Instructor Tries Suicide from Window.” The theory was bolstered by Policeman Spiess,
who charged him with attempted suicide (suicide was a crime at the time).
But Isaac Greenwood and Herman Kreyer both came to the
injured man’s defense, insisting the fall was accidental. On May 30 The Sun gave their
explanation. “Greenwood was not feeling
well when he went to his room. The
windows are of the old fashioned sort, extending down to within two feet of the
floor.” That newspaper’s headline read
simply “Walked Out of Window.”
On April 2, 1916 John Farley leased the “hotel and café.” Farley moved into the hotel which he
operated into the 1920s. He was the
brother of former Congressional Representative Michael F. Farley, who was the
victim of a bizarre death on October 8, 1921.
Michael Farley had purchased a new shaving brush and, after using it a
few times, noticed a rash had broken out on his face. A week later his face was swollen and he
could barely walk because of the pain.
The natural-hair brush, it turned out, was laden with anthrax
spores. When he cut himself shaving, he became infected. By the time he was taken
to Bellevue Hospital on October 8 it was too late. John Farley was at his brother’s bedside when
he died seven hours after being admitted.
The ground floor space where Amos Cross’s saloon had been
was the Half-Past Nine Greenwich Club in 1928.
Prohibition was a problem for night clubs, one which the proprietors of
the Half-Past Nine ignored. But on the
night of December 29, 1928 the speakeasy was raided. The New York Times reported that the club
faced “padlock actions” after being charged with Prohibition violations.
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| When this photograph was taken on April 17, 1937 the Half-Past Nine Greenwich Club had been replaced with what appeared to be a grocery store (under the awning at right). To the near left is the entrance to Jackson Square park. from the collection of the New York Public Library. |
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| In February 2016, little has changed. |
With only moderate remodeling of the storefront, the Cross
Hotel is remarkably intact above the first floor where it retains much of its
1834 appearance. Its sedate countenance
successfully masks the colorful history that has played out within its walls.
photographs by the author
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