Real Estate Record & Guide, June 25, 1898 (copyright expired)
In 1850, architect and engineer Robert G. Hatfield was commissioned to design the Sun Building in Baltimore. To cast its iron facade, he turned to New York City inventor and architect James Bogardus, who patented his process that same year.
Hatfield's engineering expertise would be seen in his structural design of the Grand Central Depot trail shed. While he was working on that project, Robert Hatfield was hired to design a headquarters for the Seamen's Bank for Savings at 74 and 76 Wall Street. On June 24, 1870 he filed plans for a "five-story and basement cast-iron front bank building."
The next day, The New York Times reported, "The structure will be of brick with iron fronts...The main, or banking-room, will be 58 feet by 40, and 30 feet in height." The article explained that the upper floors would be leased as offices.
The Seamen's Bank for Savings was completed in December 1871 at a cost of $350,000 (about $9 million in 2024), according to the Record & Guide. Hatfield's Second Empire design included squat, free-standing Corinthian columns at the basement (or street) level. Steps led to the main entrance within a Corinthian portico on top of which were sculptured figures of a Native American and a sailor holding a shield with the bank's logo. The fifth floor took the form of a steep mansard pierced by elaborate dormers.
The Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide called it, "the most striking and imposing object in that immediate neighborhood." Inside, the double-height banking room had a "wide gallery running round the upper part," according to the Guide, under a vast glass dome. The critic said the "solidity of construction" was to be expected of Hatfield, who was "universally recognized as among the foremost of our scientific and constructive architects."
"We wish we could speak as favorably of the exterior," said the article. Hatfield's cast iron facade closely mimicked granite--too closely in the Record & Guide's opinion.
Indeed, so far in this case has the effort to imitate stone been carried, that in the seemingly large blocks of granite in the basement piers...they have actually imitated in iron the rusticated chisel-marks that are to be found on granite blocks! This looks to us very much like caricaturing art.
The critic said the building's main fault was "of not boldly erecting an iron building as iron."
Seamen's Bank for Savings was founded on May 11, 1829 by a group of philanthropic New Yorkers with the purpose "to encourage thrift among sailors, stevedores, naval officers and officers of merchant ships," according to The New York Times. Now, nearly half a century later, the superstitions of the seafaring depositors affected the building's address. The New York Times explained decades later, on May 12, 1929:
When the present building was completed, the officers selected 76 Wall Street as the address of the new home for the bank. Upon receipt of a letter from an "old salt" that 7 and 6 made 13, the officers changed the proposed address to 74 Wall Street.
Among the bank's long-term tenants were the offices of the American Seamen's Friend Society, which would remain for decades. Other offices were leased mostly by attorneys and brokerage firms.
Broker Edward F. Hall's office was here in the summer of 1886 when he traveled to West Point to visit his nephew at the Military Academy. Accompanying him was a friend, Mrs. Skerritt, and they took rooms at Craney's West Point Hotel. On the night of July 13, 1886, Hall told Mrs. Skeritt that he would go swimming early in the morning and would meet her on the hotel piazza at 8:00 for breakfast.
When he did not show up, Mrs. Skeritt began asking around. The head waiter remembered seeing him at around 6:30 that morning "as though going to the cadet bathing house," as reported by The Sun. A search was made, but no trace of Hall could be found. The quartermaster was notified and cadets and enlisted men were sent along the entire shore. In the meantime, Hall's room was searched. His valuables--wallet, watch and chain, and diamond pin--were there. His clothes for the day were laid out on the bed.
Eventually, it was concluded that Hall had drowned, or "climbed up the mountain side to explore Crows' Nest or Storm King, and, meeting with a fall, had been so disabled as to be unable to move or shout for assistance." As hope faded and a more intense search was being organized, Hall "made his appearance, walking southward, with a bath towel in his hand," oblivious to the turmoil he had caused.
The offices of W. Ropes & Co., commercial merchants, were here by 1889. William Hall Ropes had been United States Consul at St. Petersburg, Russia, from 1850 to 1854. Now W. Ropes & Co. was a major importer and exporter between the United States and Russia, as well as England. Its St. Petersburg branch was "extensively engaged in the manufacture of products of Russian petroleum and also in the exportation of Russia Crash," according to New York 1894: Illustrated. (Russia Crash was a handmade textile "made by peasants, in their homes.")
Mahlon B. Smith was a clerk with Seamen's Bank for Savings. He was described by The Sun as "a highly respected citizen of Hackensack" and "an elderly man with a short cropped gray beard." His daughter, Aimee, was the organist and Sunday school teacher at the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church there.
On the morning of March 8, 1897, Aimee Smith took the ferry to New York City with the wife of the church's pastor. They parted ways in the city, with Aimee intending to take a train to Morristown for a week. She was to open a millinery store there with a Miss McVey. It was the last anyone saw of Aimee Smith.
Later that morning, a Mr. and Mrs. Everett checked into the Hotel Victor on Third Avenue near 24th Street. Shortly afterward, Everett went to the office of Dr. N. H. Lewis on West 23rd Street, imploring him to see his sick wife. The Sun reported, "He learned that the young woman was not 'Everett's' wife and said he did not care to attend such a case." Everett, however, "pleaded with him so hard" that the doctor relented. He found the woman "in a very weak state," said her trouble was "due to excitement and worry," and told the proprietor to call an ambulance. "Then it was that 'Everett' disappeared," reported The Sun. The young woman died in Bellevue Hospital.
At 8:00 the following morning, Mahlon B. Smith appeared at the morgue. The Sun said, "He was in great distress of mind, for he had little doubt of the result of his errand. When the body was uncovered he said huskily, 'It is my daughter Aimee.'"
Despite acquaintances in Hackensack saying that Aimee Smith was "an innocent little thing, morbidly conscientious and exact in her devotions and church duties," it seems that she was the victim of a botched abortion.
As the Seamen's Bank for Savings approached its centennial in 1925, plans were laid for replacing its building. Robert G. Hatfield's cast iron structure was demolished to make way for the Benjamin Wistar Morris-designed skyscraper, which survives.
Stone magazine, January 1927 (copyright expired)
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