The 1907 Camera Building -- 122-124 East 25th Street

 

On April 27, 1907, the Brunswick Realty Co. acquired the two vintage, three-story houses at 122 and 124 East 25th Street and hired architect Frederick C. Zobel to design a loft-and-store building on the site.  Completed at a cost of $100,000 (the equivalent of $3.44 million in 2025), Zobel's seven-story design was highly influenced by the current Arts & Crafts movement.  Steel frame construction made possible vast show windows at the first and second floors.  Both levels were framed in white terra cotta architraves.  Metal infill with paneled spandrels created three stacks of paired windows in the four-story midsection.  Drip moldings at the sixth and seventh floors recalled the domestic architecture in the neighborhood half a century earlier.  The top floor sat upon a dentiled intermediate cornice and an understated terminal cornice capped the whole. 

Gothic Revival drip moldings like those on the vintage brownstone next door (right) inspired the top floors of the Camera Building.  photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

Despite being named the Camera Building, 122-124 East 25th Street attracted a variety of businesses.  Among the first tenants was the architectural firm of Pell & Corbett, whose School for Applied Design for Women on Lexington Avenue was just being completed.  The firm was composed of Francis Livingston Pell and Harvey Wiley Corbett. 

The New York Times, October 18, 1908 (copyright expired)

Other initial tenants were the Willow Brook Company, an art gallery; the Woodhull Press; the Magnesia-Asbestos Company; and the Arden Press.

The Willow Brook Company staged exhibitions in its space.  In December 1910, for instance, the New York Evening Post reported, "A collection of water colors by Mrs. W. J. Stillman, better known, perhaps, as Marie Stillman, who became a pre-Raphaelite under the guidance of Rosetti, is being exhibited at the rooms of the Willow Brook Company, Nos. 122-124 East Twenty-fifth Street."

An unusual tenant was the Waterman Institute, here as early as 1911.  The facility produced and prescribed medications that promised to cure a variety of disorders.  An article in the Atlanta, Georgia newspaper The Constitution said in part:

It is estimated that within a comparatively short time nearly three thousand persons addicted to the use of opium or morphine in some form, have taken advantage of the offer of the Waterman Institute, 124 East 25th street...to send a free trial supply of a truly remarkable home remedy.

And an article in The Springport Signal on April 6, 1911 said, "Advices from every direction fully confirm previous reports that the remarkable treatment for epilepsy being administered by the consulting physicians of the Dr. Waterman Institute is achieving wonderful results."

Perhaps the first dry goods businesses in the building came in 1915 when Silverberg, Kraft & Co., ribbon manufacturers; and Hawkeye Embroidery Company signed leases.  But the Camera Building continued to house a wide variety of tenants.  Others included the State Specialty Co., which marketed inexpensive novelties; the Foreign Tool & Machinery Company; and the Price Trade Publishing Company.

The Billboard, May 3, 1913 (copyright expired)

Government contracts during World War I were highly profitable.  Henry T. Price, head of the Price Trade Publishing Company, was also a member of the American Defense Society and in 1917 charged representatives of the Quartermaster Corps of the United States Army of graft.  He notified U.S. Senator James W. Wadsworth Jr. that companies were being forced to pay kickbacks before being awarded a contract.

On December 25, 1917, the New York Herald reported that Price produced a shoemaker, Peter Sebald, who was approached by a sergeant regarding repairing 700 pairs of Army footwear.  Sebald told him that he usually charged $1.50 per pair, but for that quantity he would lower the price to $1.00.

"You don't want to charge $1," the sergeant said, "You want to charge $1.25."  Sebald was told, "When you get your check, you give me $175."  

In 1919, the Big Sisters, Inc. leased space.  The group would remain for several years and on December 24, 1922, The New York Times reported, "The Protestant Big Sisters had a celebration for 200 children at 122 East Twenty-fifth Street yesterday, and forty baskets of food were distributed to families in need."

The offices of the National Association of Employing Lithographers were here as early as 1922.  It acted as an union employment agency.  An interesting tenant was James Chittick, who ran a textile school.  His 20-session courses cost $50--paid in advance.  (The tuition was a substantial $875 in today's money.)

New-York Tribune, September 20, 1921 (copyright expired)

The Vocational Service for Juniors moved in around 1923.  Founded in 1910, the organization awarded scholarships to needy high school students who otherwise would have to drop out of school to help support their families.  A letter to the editor of The New York Times on March 8, 1923 explained, "Five dollars keeps a child in school a week, $125 keeps a child in school a term, $250 keeps a child in school a session.  Even then, a child must often work after school and on Saturdays to make both ends meet."

A letter to the editor of the New York Evening Post from Mrs. Edward C. Henderson, president of the Board of Managers of the Vocational Service for Juniors, on January 26, 1927 followed up on some of its 700 scholarship graduates.  "Some are out in the world following trades and professions; some are working their way through college."

A less reputable tenant was the Knickerbocker Merchandising Company, Inc.  On October 6, 1925, The New York Times reported that the firm and its executives, Maurice Innerfield and Emanuel Seaman, had been indicted "with having used the mails to defraud retail grocers out of nearly $130,000."  The company's "high-powered" salesmen pressured more than 5,000 merchants to join the "Permanent Associate Buying Service Membership" to obtain groceries at low prices.  It was all a scam.

A renovation completed in 1939 resulted in offices and salesrooms throughout the building.  It was likely at this time that a zig-zagging iron fire escape was installed that necessitated the notching of the cornice.

The original second floor window configuration survived in 1941.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

A two-year renovation of the building was begun in 1969 for the Optometric Center of New York.  Founded in 1956, it provided an eye care clinic and continued optometric education following the closing of Columbia University's optometry program.  The center's research was reflected in 1969 when a survey of 500 patients discovered that "Nearly 18 per cent of Medicaid patients received 'unsatisfactory care' on eye problems," as reported by The New York Times on October 2.

On October 23, 1971, the N.Y. Amsterdam News reported, "The New York State Optometric Association has made funds available to the Optometric Center, earmarked for students for minority groups...The new college will be located at 122 East 25th Street, the present site of the Optometric Center, and will occupy about half of the center."  The college would eventually become the SUNY College of Optometry.

The Optometric Center remained until 1983 when the building was converted to offices.  Then, in 2003, the upper floors were renovated to residential use--one apartment each on the second through sixth floors, and a duplex on the seventh and penthouse levels (the later unseen from the street).  The renovation including restoring the notched cornice.

photographs by the author