Among the several husband-and-wife teams in the real estate business at the turn of the last century were Charles and Wilhelmina Bohland. Charles was a builder and Wilhelmina seems to have handled the administrative end of the business. In 1903, they purchased the former refined residences at 210 and 212 East 17th Street, a block west of elegant Stuyvesant Square. Architect George F. Pelham was hired to design a modern apartment building on the site.
Completed in 1904, the Mon Bijou ("My Jewel") was a blend of Renaissance Revival and Beaux Arts styles. Sitting behind tall, iron fencing, the building's entrance sat within a portico with polished granite Ionic columns. The rustication of the limestone base emanated like sunrays from the oval windows on either side of the entrance. Pelham divided the upper portion, clad in beige Roman brick, into three vertical sections by slightly recessing the central, two-bay portion. The windows of the end bays were paired by limestone frames, the center of which were carved with Renaissance carvings. Their ornate, foliate keystones were flanked by swirling volutes. Terra cotta bandcourses relieved the verticality of the building, which terminated with a prominent, bracketed cornice.
The tenants of the Mon Bijou were professionals. Among the first was journalist Arthur S. Hoffman, an 1897 graduate of Ohio State University. In 1903, he started at The Smart Set as an assistant editor. Just before moving into the Mon Bijou, he was hired at Tom Watson's magazine as assistant editor.
Also initial residents were Congressman William Bourke Cockran and Magistrate Joseph Edward Corrigan, who shared an apartment. The Tammany Times later said, "they lived [here] for a year and a half until both married."
William Bourke Cockran, from the collection of the Library of Congress.
The colorful Congressman Cockran was a close friend to the Churchill family in England, and was reportedly a one-time lover of Jennie Churchill. When Jennie's 29-year-0ld son, Winston Churchill, first visited America, it was Cockran who introduced him to Manhattan society. He gave up his roommate status with Magistrate Corrigan when he married Anne Ide in 1906. His two previous wives had both died.
Other initial residents were G. H. Bernstein and his wife (who was corresponding secretary of The New York Equal Suffrage League); and Francis Le Roy Satterlee, Jr.
Satterley was the son of Dr. Francis Le Roy Satterlee, a well-respected physician and professor, and the former Laura Suydam. A 1903 graduate of Columbia University, the younger Satterlee worked as a radiologist.
Francis Le Roy Satterlee, Jr. from The Odontologist, February 1909 (copyright expired)
By 1909, Satterlee had an impressive resume. In introducing himself in his article "What Radiology Means to You" in the February issue of The Odontologist that year, he listed: "Assistant to the Professor of Physics, Chemistry and Metallurgy; Lecturer on Physics and Radiology; Director of practical physics laboratory; Director of X-Ray laboratory."
Born in 1843 in Currituck County, North Carolina, Jerome Baxter had operated a tobacco business in Norfolk, Virginia until retiring in 1897. Upon the death of his wife, Mary Ellen Hill, in 1906, he and his 26-year-old daughter, Florence, moved to New York City and into the Mon Bijou. Florence taught mathematics in Washington Irving High School.
On October 6, 1912, Florence Baxter returned after an evening with friends to find her father was not home. She inquired about him among the neighbors, who said he was seen leaving the building around 3:00 that afternoon. When Jerome had not returned by 11:30 the next night, Florence "drove down in a taxicab to Police Headquarters," reported The New York Times, to report him missing. According to the article, he "was given to long walks, and his daughter fears that he met with an accident." Florence gave the police an astoundingly detailed description. The Evening World said he was "five feet five inches tall, weight 125 pounds, brown left eye and blind right eye, with gray hair, beard and mustache. He wore a gray suit, gray soft hat and tan shoes."
Somewhat surprisingly, newspapers did not follow up with Baxter's case. He was, however, found and was still living with Florence (who never married) when he died on August 9, 1920.
At the time of Baxter's disappearance, a four-room apartment rented for $408 per year, and a five-room unit for $480. The more expensive rent would translate to about $1,250 per month in 2025.
By 1917, artist John H. Alger lived and worked here. Born in Boston in 1879, he studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Dowell School of Design in Boston. He was a member of the Society of Independent Artists and had exhibited in the famous 1913 Armory Show. Alger would remain in the Mon Bijou at least through 1923.
In the meantime, Florence Baxter remained here following her father's death, and took in a roommate, Jeanette Allen. A spectacular drama that unfolded on November 23, 1921 began inside the women's apartment. A resident in the St. George Memorial House directly behind the Mon Bijou at 207 East 16th Street telephoned to the East 22nd Street Station that, "he could see two men robbing the apartment occupied by Jeanette Allen and Florence Baxter," as reported by The New York Times.
Six detectives sped to the building, four surrounding it and two, Detectives August Gilman and David Lambert, went to the roof through the adjoining building. "On the roof they discovered two men, one of them carrying a satchel," said The Times. The New-York Tribune reported that Herman Fishman and Jack Klein, "had in their possession clothing and valuables stolen from the apartment of Miss Florence Baxter."
A heart-pounding battle ensued, "witnessed by hundreds of tenants in the opposite apartment building...and an excited crowd congregated in the street," said the New-York Tribune. Fishman, described by the newspaper as "six feet tall and powerful," engaged with Lambert on the fire escape. The article said, "in their struggles they rolled down another flight. The combatants narrowly escaped plunging through a railing sixty feet to the ground."
In the meantime, Gilman engaged Klein on the roof. The New York Times said, "Gilman and Kline [sic] in wrestling about the roof at one time came perilously near the edge." The New-York Tribune added that Klein attempted to jump to the roof of an adjoining building, but was "at last brought to a halt by repeated shots." The article said, "Gilman handcuffed Klein and compelled him to descend the fire escape with the muzzle of a pistol pressed between his shoulder blades." The writer said the two burglars had been subdued "after fierce clubbing and the firing of several shots."
The sensational arrest rescued the women's valuable articles. The New York Times said that the bundle left on the roof by the burglars contained eight furs valued at $30,000--more than half a million dollars today.
Dr. Jacob Lanes occupied the medical office on the ground floor in 1925. That year, on September 1, three armed men barged into the office as Lanes was treating a patient. The New York Times reported, "They took $160, a watch and chain and a diamond ring, the physician said, and then bound and gagged him and took him into another room."
After hearing the gunmen leave, Lanes freed himself and unsuccessfully tried to chase them. Upon returning, he discovered a wounded patient, Benjamin Siciliano, lying on the floor of the waiting room. The 22-year-old was seriously injured, "a bullet having passed through the upper part of his chest," according to The New York Times. When police arrived, Siciliano told police that the doctor had shot him, and Dr. Lanes was arrested.
As it turned out, Siciliano was not one of Lanes's patients, but was part of what the newspapers called the "Cowboy Gang," and had been shot in the confusion. Happily for Lanes, the facts came to light, the doctor was freed, and on November 4, 1925, the entire gang was arrested.
Frederick Allen King lived here during the Depression years. Born in 1865, he earned his Bachelors and Masters degrees from Wesleyan University. Beginning in 1909, he was literary editor for the Literary Digest, a literary, humorous and cultural magazine. He retired in 1934 as head of the arts and letters department. King was still living in the Mon Bijou when he died of heart disease in 1939.
By the second half of the century, the Mon Bijou had declined to what the NY Amsterdam News described as a "24-family tenement." But a turn-around came in 1976 when the building was converted to 24 cooperative apartments. Prominently carved into its entablature, the portico still announces "Mon Bijou."
photographs by the author
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