Samuel Henry Rokenbaugh was a merchant at 45 Wall Street and the president of the Hanover Fire Insurance Company. Around 1855, he moved his family into the house at 25 West 24th Street--one of a row of identical upscale residences. The 25-foot-wide, brownstone-fronted townhouse rose four stories above a high English basement. Its Italianate style originally included an arched entrance under a shallow arched pediment, molded architrave window frames, and a bracketed cornice. Just half a block west from Madison Square and Fifth Avenue, the Rokenbaugh house sat within a highly fashionable neighborhood.
Born in 1812, Rokenbaugh was married to the former Cornelia Elizabeth Scott. The couple had a son, Henry Scott, born on February 16, 1852.
On September 22, 1864, Cornelia died in the 24th Street house at the age of 36. Her funeral was held in the Church of Annunciation on West 14th Street.
In 1869, Rokenbaugh was leasing 25 West 24th Street to Dr. Jacob Hermann Knapp (who professionally went by his middle name). The eye and ear specialist had arrived in New York City from Germany the previous year. Born in Prussia in 1832, he had been Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Heidelberg.
Knapp quickly made his mark within the New York medical community. In 1869, he established the Archives of Ophthalmology, published in English and German; and founded the Ophthalmic and Aural Institute on East 12th Street.
Jacob Hermann Knapp (original source unknown)
Knapp and his wife, the former Adolfine Becker, had a three-year-old daughter, Ida Caroline, when they moved into 25 West 24th Street. Arnold Herman was born in 1869, and a third child, Cornelia, was born in the house in 1870.
Dr. Hermann Knapp quickly became one of the most esteemed specialists in the country. On February 27, 1870, The New York Times reported on his lecture at the Cooper Union the previous evening, "Light and Vision, or, especially, How Light is Converted into Thought." The article called it "a masterpiece of learning."
The Physician and Pharmaceutist, February 1870 (copyright expired)
On the evening of March 14, 1872, Adolfine Knapp was in a carriage on 56th Street near Fourth Avenue (today's Park Avenue) when, according to The New York Times, "the horse became frightened at a train passing along the avenue, and ran off." Adolfine was thrown from the vehicle and fatally injured. Her funeral was held in the parlor on March 16.
Two weeks after Adolfine's death, on April 2, 1872, Samuel Rokenbaugh sold 25 West 24th Street to Dr. Herman Knapp for $40,000 (about $1 million in 2025 terms).
Knapp was consulted regarding especially perplexing cases, or those involving high profile patients. None, perhaps, was more well-known to Americans than Mary Todd Lincoln, the widow of the assassinated President. Lincoln, who was 64, was a neighbor of Knapp, living in 1882 at 39 West 26th Street. Her physical condition was alarming. In January 1, 1882, he and a team of specialists including Louis A. Boyd, Meredith Clymer, and W. H. Pancoast made an exhausting examination of Mary Lincoln. Their findings were discouraging at best.
The Daily Press and Dakotaian published their report on January 18, 1882. It said in part that Lincoln, "is suffering from chronic inflammation of the spinal cord, chronic disease of the kidneys, and commencing cataract of both eyes." The physicians said she could not walk without assistance and her condition "will end in paralysis of the lower extremities." Knapp opined that Mary Lincoln's eyesight, "would gradually grow worse." Six months later, Mary Todd Lincoln died.
By the 1890s, commerce had invaded the Madison Square district. Dr. Knapp left 25 West 24th Street by 1896 and leased it to a proprietor as a boarding house. Part of the residence (most likely the basement level) was rented to the Automatic Photograph Co., a photographic studio.
Boarding here in 1897 was Joseph B. Falk and his daughter, Sarah H. and his son Benjamin J. Falk. An insurance agent, Falk was born in Wurzburg, Bavaria in 1807 and came to America in 1848. Described by The New York Times as, "possessed of ample means," he was highly involved in Jewish charities and was a charter member of the Mendelssohn Benevolent Society, a trustee of Mount Sinai Hospital, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, and of the United Hebrew Charities.
Sarah H. Falk died here on December 6, 1897. The high-end status of the boarding house was reflected in her funeral being held in the parlor two days later. Her father, Joseph B. Falk, died on October 14, 1901. In reporting his death, The New York Times described him as, "one of the oldest insurance agents in this city." Benjamin J. Falk would remain in the boarding house at least another three years.
The residents of 25 West 24th Street enjoyed amenities like a bellboy and maid service. At the time of Joseph B. Falk's death, Ralph Rotch worked here as the bellboy. That year the teen was given a rare opportunity to go to Europe as the valet of one of the boarders. But an unexpected incident just two days before the voyage derailed the plans.
On July 25, 1901, the New York Morning Telegraph reported, "Ralph Rotch, the colored bellboy in the fashionable boarding house at 25 West Twenty-fourth street, was going to Europe to-day as a valet to one of the boarders, but he cannot go unless a certain express package is found before the steamship starts." Two days earlier, a messenger dropped off a package, and Rotch took it to one of the boarder's rooms. A short time later, a chambermaid took it back downstairs.
The next day, the messenger arrived, said he had delivered the package to the wrong address, and asked to have it back. "As the bellboy could not find it, he was arrested and locked up on a charge of grand larceny," said the article, "for he had signed for the package." Whether Ralph Rotch was exonerated is unclear.
Earlier that year, on April 8, Dr. Jacob Hermann Knapp died. The New York Times called him, "of international repute." (In 1913, the Ophthalmic and Aural Institute was renamed the Hermann Knapp Memorial Eye Hospital.)
In June 1904, the Knapp estate sold 25 West 24th Street to Belle A. Quay. The transaction began a new chapter in the former residence. Just days later, Quay hired architect Frederick C. Zobel to make renovations that would transform the house to a restaurant and hotel. In July, she signed a five-year lease with the Hotel Carlos Co. As it turned out, the Carlos Restaurant would be a destination spot for New Yorkers for much longer than that.
A humorous postcard showed New Jersey to the right and the Carlos Restaurant on the left, saying there are no mosquitos at Carlos. The original appearance of the Rokenbaugh house was little changed.
An advertisement for the six-course Christmas dinner in 1904 at "The Famous Carlos" included the menu. It started with mock turtle soup, followed by salmon croquettes. Then came tenderloin of beef a la Florentine, after which was spaghetti Neapolitan style. The next course was roast Vermont turkey, followed by "Salade en Season" and then "ice cream, cheese, and demi tasse." The cost was 60 cents--about $20 today.
from the collection of the Seymour B. Durst Old York Library of the Columbia University Libraries.
The Carlos Restaurant was a favorite spot for group dinners. On April 15, 1911, for instance, The Weekly Underwriter reported, "The fourth annual meeting and dinner of the Barebones Alumni Association will be held Tuesday evening, May 2, at 6:30 o'clock at the Carlos Restaurant, 25 West Twenty-fourth street." The article said the occasion would be "a time of jolly reunion of all who have taken the fire insurance course at New York University."
The restaurant was redecorated a decade after opening. On September 27, 1914, the New York Press noted, "Carlo's [sic] No. 25 West Twenty-fourth street, is enjoying continued popularity. The place has been remodeled and refitted in the old Roman style. The special features Monday and Thursday evenings are popular."
The Carlos Hotel and Restaurant closed in 1919 and the upper floors were converted to apartments. An advertisement in the New York Herald on October 17, 1920 (with a restriction unconceivable today) offered, "Two or three apartment[s] with use of regular kitchen, furnished or unfurnished; Christians only. Top floor, 25 West 24th st."
It was apparently at this point that the stoop was removed, the Victorian details shaved off, and the cornice replaced by a stepped Art Deco parapet.
Part of the former Carlos restaurant was now the home of Miss Smith's Agency. Her employment bureau filled domestic positions, listed in her February 3, 1920 ad as: "cooks, chambermaids, waitresses, nurses, houseworkers, kitchenmaids, couples."
The tenant list of 25 West 24th Street no longer included the refined, affluent types who lived here at the turn of the century. On August 6, 1927, the Daily Star reported that two tenants, Chester Yoblowsky and Stanley Zuke, both 25 years old, had been arrested in connection to two bombings in subway stations--"at the B.M.T. station at Broadway and Twenty-eighth street and the Twenty-eighth street station of the Fourth avenue line of the I.R.T. in Manhattan." The two explosions injured "more than a score of persons," said the article, one of them fatally.
On June 3, 1930, the Bayonne Evening News reported that 20-year-old Jesse C. Moore had been arrested for manslaughter in the hit-and-run death of Wesley Hundley. The article noted that the victim "was a father of twelve children."
In 1941, the ground floor was home to Ray's Luncheonette. via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
A photograph in the 1970s shows a stucco-like substance on the upper facade, and a windowless faux brick veneer on the ground floor. By the turn of the century, the building was the La Semana Hotel, its outside painted pink and its blade sign advertising "whirlpools."
In an article titled, "The Worst NYC Hotels According to TripAdvisor Reviews" in Curbed New York on June 27, 2013, journalist Jessica Dailey quoted guests saying, "Overall this room is great if you're drunk or lost and you need a place to stay only for one late night," and, "There was toilet paper hanging from the ceiling and bubblegum stuck over the peep hole on the door from the inside."
A renovation completed in 2018 resulted in a total of 43 hotel rooms. Called "The Flat," in 2022 the facade of the once refined mansion was painted black, making it the Goth kid on the block.
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