In 1935, William M. Dowling designed a 15-story-and-penthouse apartment building for Nathaniel Wallenstein on the northeast corner of 88th Street and Madison Avenue. His bold, late Art Deco design included triple-height fluted pilasters on either side of the entrance that terminated in stylized scallop designs. The address was announced in jazzy Art Deco figures within the spandrel between the second and third floors, directly above the doorway. By contrasting light and dark brick, Dowling created vertical central sections on both elevations.
The street address, in a jazzy Art Deco font, is integrated into the spandrel above the second floor.
Architects had been wrapping casement windows around the corners of buildings for several years. But Dowling took his design a step further by chamfering them within the sharply angled corners. The streamlined terrace and balcony railings have been compared by architectural historians to ocean liner designs.
No. 19 East 88th Street was completed in 1937. An advertisement called it "this ultra-modern new building" and a "town residence for a selected tenancy." The apartments, ranging from three to five rooms, were described as, "individually planned--No two alike!" An ad touted,
Most modern appointments. All electric kitchens! Dropped living rooms; spacious foyers' dressing rooms with triple mirrors; glass-enclosed showers; recessed radiation. Central Park--in all its beauty--just beyond your w-i-d-e casement corner windows.
Among the initial residents was investment adviser Russell Field Prudden. Born in Lockport, New York in 1894, he had been senior bank examiner of the State Banking Department from 1930 to 1933. Prudden was the founder and publisher of Prudden's Digest of Investment and Banking Opinions and the author of The Bank Credit Investigator.
The New York Times described Prudden as being "active socially here and in Palm Beach, Fla., and Southampton, L.I.," where he maintained homes. His entertaining in town was typified in The New York Times reporting on December 3, 1937, "Russell F. Prudden of 19 East Eighty-eighth Street entertained with a dinner last night at his home for Mr. and Mrs. Knox B. Phagan of Bronxville, later taking his guests to a theatrical performance."
Another early resident was Allen Boretz, who signed a lease in December 1937. The songwriter and playwright had scored a Broadway hit seven months earlier when Room Service (co-written with John Murray) opened at the Cort Theatre. It would run for 500 performances, closing on July 16, 1938.
The Federal Theatre Project produced Room Service in San Francisco in 1938.
In 1939, his play Off to Buffalo opened, while Room Service resulted in offers from Hollywood. Boretz would write or co-write screenplays into the 1940s. Among his credits were the 1943 It Ain't Hay and the 1946 Ziegfield Follies.
Typical of the early tenants were Bert Kulick, vice president of the Syndicate Exchanges, Inc., proprietors of motion picture theaters; Daniel I. Crowley, president of the Crowley Tar Products Company of New York and Chicago; and Hugo F. Jaburg, president of R. C. Williams & Jaburg Bros., a food products firm.
image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
Dr. N. Philip Norman and his wife lived here by 1944. The Consultant Nutritionist for the New York City Department of Heath and Hospitals, he was described by Dr. Francis M. Pottenger, Jr., president of the American Academy of Applied Nutrition in 1947 as "one of the well known nutritionists in the east, and...the author of many excellent articles and books along these lines." Recognized as a pioneer nutritionist, in 1948 he co-authored Tomorrow's Food with James Rorty.
Norman's leisure time was devoted to an expertise far afield of his professional bailiwick. In 1944, the New York Sun described him as "for many years a maker of river steamboat models." His hobby made him a leading authority on steamboats and their architecture and history.
Architect Daniel Paul Higgins and his wife Anna lived here by 1944. A partner in Eggers & Higgins, The New York Times said he was...
prominently or exclusively responsible for a long list of architectural successes, including Constitution Hall for the Daughters of the American Revolution, the National Gallery of Art, the American Red Cross Building and the great-columned Pantheonistic Jefferson Memorials--all in Washington; interior designs for the S. S. America and four Grace Line ships and innumerable libraries and office buildings (example--the Aetna Life Insurance Company headquarters in New York and the Senate Office Building in Washington).
The Higgins's apartment was furnished with 18th and early 19th century American furniture. images from the collection of the Library of Congress.
In addition to his busy architectural career, Higgins was a member of the Board of Education and "served on the board of so many youth movements that he could not remember all the names," according to The New York Times. Among them were the Boys Clubs of America, the Police Athletic League, the Boy Scouts of America and the Catholic Youth Organization.
from the collection of the Library of Congress
Daniel and Anna Higgins had two adult children. They maintained a country home in Carmel, New York, and a Colonial period house in Truro, Massachusetts.
The Higgins's country house in Massachusetts. from the collection of the Library of Congress.
On December 18, 1953, the Kingston, New York newspaper The Daily Freeman reported, "Daniel P. Higgins, 67, widely known architect...is seriously ill in New York Hospital." He died the following week, on December 26. His lengthy obituary in The New York Times mentioned, "he left the ranks of fledgling draftsmen to create his own blueprints and culminate his career as partner in one of the country's foremost architectural firms, Eggers & Higgins."
Influential in his own sphere was Russian immigrant Jacob Potofsky, who lived here with his wife Blanche Lydia Zetland by the 1960s. The couple was married in 1951. (Potofsky's first wife, Callie Taylor, had died five years earlier.)
Potofsky started his career at the age of 14 as a "floor boy" in a Hart, Schaffner & Marx garment factory. He rose through the ranks of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America until, in 1946, he became its president. The New York Times would call him "a man renowned for his skills as a conciliator within the union movement." Potofsky died at the age of 84 on August 5, 1979.
A maid in a duplex apartment was the victim of a terrifying incident on May 14, 2004. After hearing a noise in the upstairs bedroom, The New York Times reported she "encountered the burglar, who...said he would not hurt her. The burglar restrained her and robbed the apartment of jewelry and other items."
In an article in The New York Times on March 12, 2006, Christopher Gray mentioned, "most of the casement windows are intact. Julian Berkeley, the managing agent, said that although the co-op has suggested replacements, 'people just love those windows' and most have kept them." The old casements have since been replaced with windows that admirably attempt to reflect William M. Dowling's 1936 design.
photographs by the author
many thanks to reader Lowell Cochrane for suggesting this post
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