The Lost Polhemus Grocery Store - 361 Bowery

 

In 1932, the steps to a second floor entrance on East 4th Street had been removed, leaving the door hoovering above the sidewalk.  photo by Charles Von Urban from the collection of the New York Public Library.

The family of Peter Valentine lived in the Federal style house at the southeast corner of the Bowery and Fourth Street in 1827.  A butcher whose shop was on Fulton Street, Valentine's frame house was two-and-a-half stories tall with prominent dormers at the attic level.   It assuredly was built with a commercial space at ground level, and the Valentines entered their upstairs space at 396 Fourth Street (later renumbered 48 East 4th Street).

By 1833, the Crumbie family occupied the building.  James Crumbie ran a drugstore downstairs, while Robert Crumbie was a printer.  In 1834, the store space was divided.  James's pharmacy now shared it with Jesse Baldwin's grocery.  

The neighborhood was high-end, its side streets lined with brick and stone mansions.  When the Harleem Rail Road Company proposed to lay a second track up the Bowery in 1834, Jesse Baldwin, Jr. joined residents and merchants in protesting.  Their petition to the Common Council read in part, "Your Petitioners are convinced, that the present single track is a very serious injury to their property, and also a great nuisance to the public, particularly on the Sabbath."

Pharmacies like James Crumbie's sold "patent medicines"--over-the-counter remedies that often touted panacea-like results.  Among the items Crumbie sold in 1837 were Beckwith's Anti-Dyspeptic Pills, an advertisement for which promised to cure (in part):

...almost every variety of functional disorder of the Stomach, Bowels, Liver and Spleen; such as heartburn, acid eructations, nausea, headache, pain and distention of the stomach and bowels, incipient Diarrhea, Cholic, Jaundice, Flatulence, habitual Costiveness, loss of appetite, sick headache, sea-sickness, &c, &c.  They are a safe and comfortable Aperient for Females during pregnancy and subsequent confinement, relieving sickness at the stomach, headache, heartburn and many of the incidental nervous affections.

In 1840, Abraham Gerrits Polhemus opened his grocery in the store and moved his family into the upper floors.  Born in 1812 in Rockland County, New York, Polhemus came from an old Dutch family.  He and his wife Phoebe had three children, including an infant, Mary, when they moved in.  Six more would be born in the house, the last being Geneva Gerrits, born in 1865.

The typesetter for this 1840 ad grossly misspelled his surname.  A. B. Wright's Commercial Directory, 1840 (copyright expired)

The Polhemus family remained here through 1875.  By then, the Bowery neighborhood had greatly changed.  Following the Civil War, saloons and music halls invaded the district.  Polhemus's decision to leave may also have been prompted by the plans to erect the Third Avenue El over the Bowery.  The project, completed in 1878, threw the shops along the street into shadow.

Polhemus leased the building.  Its upper floors were operated as a boarding house in 1876, and Isidor Isaacs ran a clothing store in the former grocery.  In 1879, Thomas Madden leased the store and opened his "first class oyster and chop house" in the space.  He paid Abraham Polhemus $12 per month in 1882, an affordable $369 by 2024 conversion.

Thomas Madden's oyster and chop house did not last long.  In January 1882, he sold everything from furniture to crockery at auction, the announcement saying, "everything must be sold and removed immediately."

Madden initiated a makeover of the space.  He renewed his lease with Polhemus in 1883 and paid $75 for his excise--or liquor--license, and opened a saloon.

Thomas Madden (who lived on West 10th Street) operated his saloon until 1894, when Charles and Annie Bauer took over the business.  (Madden and his wife Mary continued to lease the building, however.)  The neighborhood had greatly degraded by now.  Only about a block away, at 392 Bowery, was Columbia Hall, better known as Paresis Hall (a term referring to syphilitic insanity), known for prostitution and cross-dressing patrons.

The storefront was updated around 1933.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

The Bauers' business had not been opened long before it was raided for operating on a Sunday.  In 1894, the future President Theodore Roosevelt was made a police commissioner and he initiated a string of reforms, including the raiding  of saloons.  August Albert (presumably the Bauers' bartender), was arrested on October 28, 1894.  It appears he was treated leniently by Justice Grady in the Essex Market Police Court.  The magistrate was visibly unhappy with Roosevelt's reforms.  He berated the arresting officer saying, "I want no reign of terror in Capt. Cortright's precinct because a Republican Police Commissioner is the leader of the district."

In January 1897, more than half a century after their family moved into 361 Bowery, Mary, Leonora and Ramona Polhemus sold the property to Thomas and Mary A. Madden.  They continued to rent the saloon space to the Bauers, who took over the upper floors as well around 1902, operating it as the Dewey House hotel.  (Annie Bauer was listed as the proprietor of the hotel, and the excise license was issued in her name.)

The Bauers did well financially.  In 1915, Charles was also a director in the Central Brewing Company and in the Central Cigar Manufacturing Co.  The couple's son, Ernest C. H. Bauer, helped run the business following World War I, and in 1918 held the excise license.

Prohibition brought an end to the Bauers' saloon.  The space became home to Louis Ruhe's extraordinarily unusual business around 1923.  Ruhe dealt in exotic animals, providing them to circuses and other entertainment venues.  While he operated the business end here, he obviously housed the larger animals elsewhere, as evidenced in a shipment he received in 1923.  On February 14, The New York Times reported on the unusual cargo on the Hamburg-American liner The Hansa, which arrived the previous day:

The Hansa brought a large collection of animals and birds consigned to Louis Ruhe of 361 Bowery.  The collection includes eight elephants, four camels, four zebras, four black bears, six polar bears, several llamas, 100 monkeys of various species, antelopes and 20,000 canaries.  The livestock all suffered from seasickness during the rough voyage, Captain Karl Graales, the master, said, the elephants being least affected by the rolling of the ship.

Later that year, on September 1, an advertisement in the New York Billboard read, "Male Chimpanzee.  Big Size.  Perfect Condition.  $800.00.  Louis Ruhe 361 Broadway, New York."  And the following year, an ad in the newspaper said simply, "Louis Ruhe--Animals and Snakes."

The Old Landmark tavern opened here in 1934.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

With the repeal of Prohibition, 361 Bowery once again housed a tavern, The Landmark.  When the management advertised in a pro-union newspaper, it caught the unwanted attention of Congress's Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States in 1939.

The venerable wooden building survived until 1948.  The one-story structure erected on the site as an extension of the abutting building at 359 Bowery survives.

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