D. & J. Jardine's 1869 108 East 10th Street

 

image via realtor.com

In 1867, just two years after John and David Jardine formed their architectural office of D. & J. Jardine, builder James Mulry hired them to design three four-story rowhouses at 106 to 110 East 10th Street just east of Third Avenue.  The resultant brick-faced residences were three bays wide.  Trimmed in brownstone, they sat upon rusticated stone English basements.  Their identical, Italianate-style design included prominent molded cornices with foliate brackets over the openings and cast metal cornices with paneled friezes and leafy scrolled brackets.

The middle house at 108 East 10th Street was operated as a boarding house from the beginning.  Living here in 1868 were the families of Asa S. Blake, who ran an express business; and physician William S. Townsend.  

An advertisement in January 1870 offered, "2 beautifully furnished rooms, with board; also back Parlor to gentleman and wife or single gentlemen.  Terms very moderate."

There were far more boarders in 1871, including the Austin family.  James and William K. Austin were partners in the gas firm James Austin & Co. at 7 Bowling Green and 311 Avenue A.  George and William Lewis were both clerks; as were Lawrence Stein and Walter Wilson.  Also boarding here that year were reporter Theodore Schenck and broker Henry M. Stanton.

Anna M. L. Baron ran the boarding house as early as 1876 and it appears she scaled back her tenant list.  Only Robert Ellis, a mirror dealer; and Dr. Galen W. Lovatt were listed at the address.

In 1881 two boarders arrived who would shine the spotlight onto 108 East 10th Street.  Actress Marie Prescott was born in Kentucky in 1850.  She first appeared on stage in Cincinnati as Lady Macbeth.  Although married with two children, she and delicatessen store owner, William Perzel, became romantically involved.  She hired him as her manager.

According to Kevin Lane Dearinger, in his Marie Prescott: A Star of Some Brilliancy, in the beginning of 1881, Perzel "rented five rooms at 108 East Tenth Street, in New York City, and as his two children were away at school, he had proposed that Prescott 'take half the flat.'"  By now, the actress had obtained a divorce.  Dearinger writes, "They were already engaged at the time...and 'shared the same table at meals,' even if they had not yet 'shared the expenses of living.'"

Marie Prescott moved in upon returning from appearing in the West.  She later explained that she "took one-half of Mr. Perzel's flat on the express condition that she should pay half the expenses.  Her French maid was with her and occupied the apartments with her."  Despite the respectable arrangement, it infuriated her press agent, Ernest Harvier, who had become infatuated with her.

Harvier created "a scene" at 108 East 10th Street, according to Prescott, when he arrived and pressed her to become her lover.  She said "She ordered him out of the house, whereupon he became angry and said, "I have spent three years to put you where you are and I will spend twenty-three years to pull you down."

Ernest Harvier told the American News Company that the star was cohabitating with Perzel and that she was pregnant with his baby.  The newspaper ran the story and in October 1882, Marie Prescott sued for $20,000 damages.  The New York Times reported that the courtroom on October 17 was filled with about 300 men who "stood before her and gazed down upon her in rude curiosity."

Marie Prescott, from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Testifying that day was her former landlord, Amelia C. Tate, who "testified that she knew of nothing against Miss Prescott's character," and Dr. Miles H. Nash, who swore that Marie was not pregnant and suffered only from "a not unusual female weakness."  On the stand, Marie was asked about Harvier's testimony.  Always the actress, The New York Times reported, "A convulsive shudder ran through Miss Prescott's slender fame.  She grasped the railing of the Judge's desk tightly, and in a voice broken with sobs she slowly said: 'It is an infamous lie from beginning to end.'"

Marie won her case and was awarded $12,500--about $396,000 in 2026 terms.

Thomas Jefferson Regan, an "inspector of electric lights and gas mains," boarded here in 1890 when he was the brunt of a political joke.  On August 7 that year, The Evening World began an article saying, "There is only one Thomas Jefferson Regan in this town and he is one of Tammany's shining lights in the Fourteenth Assembly District."  The article went on to say, "A great number of Mr. Regan's friends who saw the above advertisement this morning were very much worried about him."  The notice read:

$100 Reward for any information of Thomas Jefferson Regan; has not been seen since July 31, at Washington Park.  Arthur Donnelly, 110 Madison av.

On the afternoon of July 31, the employees of Percy Rockwell's bakery hosted a picnic in Washington Square and among the "honored guests" was Regan.  A friend explained to a reporter from The Evening World, "They opened 100 bottles of fizz in our honor, and the result was that we all got feeling pretty lively."  Nevertheless, he said, "The boys have been kidding Jeff again.  He hasn't been missing at all, and I was with him all last evening."

Regan did not necessarily think the prank was humorous.  The article said, "His friends think that he will try to find out who perpetrated the hoax upon him, and will make things warm for the practical joker if he discovers him."

By the turn of the century, the tenant list was peppered with a few less professional types.  Patrick Sarsfield worked as a laborer in 1899, when he was arrested for drunkenness.  On August 9, The Sun reported that he "died of acute alcoholism on Blackwell's Island on Sunday and his body was removed to the morgue on Monday."  His brother and sister viewed the body there the next day.  "The face was discolored and there was blood upon it," said the article.  The siblings accused guards on the island of beating their brother to death, as had recently been the case of inmate James McGuire.

A heart rending story played out here in the summer of 1907.  Rolford Miller and Eva Fisk came to New York City from Washington D.C. in June and took a room here.  Miller had been employed as a private detective, but became "sickly and unable to work," according to Eva.  On July 8, Eva was arrested on Third Avenue as "a street walker."

Eva appeared in the Yorkville police court the following morning.  As her case was called, Rolford Miller entered the courtroom.  The Sun reported, "He appealed to Magistrate Wahle to discharge his wife, saying that he did not know that she spoke to men on the streets and promising that she would never do it again."  He explained that they had recently been married in Washington.

When Wahle pressed Eva, she admitted that the two were not married, that her parents lived in Plattsburg, New York, and "she was deeply in love with the young man and had been supporting him for some time" since he could no longer work.

Hearing that, Magistrate Wahle sentenced Miller to six months in the workhouse "as a vagrant," and said he would hold Eva in jail "until he could communicate with her parents."  Eva refused to disclose her parents' names and pleaded with Wahle, "Send me to jail too.  I want to go with Rolf."  She cried, "You can send me to prison, but I will not tell.  Do please let me go with him."  The article concluded, "The Magistrate turned the girl over to Matron Lynch of the court prison until to-morrow to see if she will give the address of her parents in the meantime."

Several of the tenants continued to be on the wrong side of law enforcement.  In 1909, John Mahoney was arrested for robbery, in March 1914, Meyer Lewis was convicted of pickpocketing, and three months later Joseph Gordon was arrested for armed robbery.

About 20 roomers lived at 108 East 10th Street in 1921, which was owned by Adolf Orgus and his wife.  The couple lived in the basement.  Among their roomers were 33-year-old Edith Medvin, who lived on the second floor; and 57-year-old Anna Hansel, who lived on the top floor.  Anna was "a crippled piano teacher," according to The New York Herald.

The building was quiet on Christmas night 1921.  The New-York Tribune said that only Edith Medvin and Anna Hansel "had no better place to spend Christmas than the rooms in which they lived."  At around 9:00, a passerby "noticed that a flickering glare framed the window shades on each floor and that smoke was seeping out of the door cracks," reported the New-York Tribune.  He turned in an alarm and when firefighters arrived, according to the New York Herald, "the hallway and stairs had become a furnace and it was half an hour before firemen were able to enter."

Someone in the crowd told Acting Battalion Chief Quinn that they had heard screaming coming from the blazing house before the engines arrived.  When firefighters finally could enter, they found Edith Medvin in her room, "burned about the head and upper part of her body," according to the New York Herald.  She was taken to Bellevue Hospital "so severely burned she probably will die," said the article.  

 

The New-York Tribune reported, "On the top floor in the hallway they found the body Mrs. Hansel."  Her clothing had been burned away.  Ironically, firefighters said that had she remained in her room, she probably would have survived, "as the house aside from the hallway was hardly touched by the fire."

The fire damage was repaired and 108 East 10th Street returned to a rooming house.  In 1922, Milton Pasky took a room here.  He lived in Baltimore where the 28-year-old worked as a baker's assistant.  He had arranged time off with his employer to come to New York City to find his missing sweetheart.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

A few months earlier, Milton's fiancée proposed that she would come to New York where she "could earn more money here as a stenographer" towards their wedding.  Once here, she wrote every day.  But little by little the letters came less frequently until they stopped and Milton's letters were returned stamped, "Not at this address."

The New York Herald reported on August 11, 1922 that Milton, "tucked his revolver into his hip pocket and came north to find the girl.  He and the revolver obtained a furnished room at 108 East Tenth street."  After a week of searching, on August 9, Milton ran into a female friend from Baltimore.  He asked about his missing girlfriend.

"Why, Milton," she replied, "didn't you hear?  Why, I thought everybody knew.  She's married.  The nicest fellow, too.  They got the prettiest flat.  I was up there last night.  Such a party, Milton.  Want her address?"

The crestfallen Milton did not want the address.  Now penniless and broken hearted, he walked into a pawnshop with the only thing he had of value, his revolver.

"Can you gimme enough on this to buy a ticket to Baltimore?" he asked the broker.

Unfortunately for Milton, Detective Casseti was in the shop at the time.  He arrested Milton Pasky as "a violator of the Sullivan Law."  (The 1911 Sullivan Law required a license to carry a concealed weapon.)  The "sad Baltimorean," as described by the New York Herald, was jailed in The Tombs downtown.

Sometimes tragic, sometimes criminal, and more often colorful roomers continued to live here.  Harry Bailey, who rented a room in 1931, was arrested for working in a speakeasy and selling drinks to a Prohibition agent.  Hyman Rosenberg was one of a dozen striking textile workers arrested on July 18, 1940 when a "mass picketing demonstration," as described by The New York Times, "culminated in a near-riot in front of City Hall."  And Aurelio Fazio was involved in a bizarre workplace incident on June 23, 1945.  Fazio worked in a barbershop at 671 Third Avenue.  For no apparent reason, while another barber was cutting a customer's hair that afternoon, Fazio went berserk and attacked his co-worker with his razor.  Leonardo Pascalicchio told investigators, "I was cutting hair this way for the customer, and the barber in the third chair, without warning, he tried to cut my head off."  Pascalicchio suffered a slash to his neck that ran nearly ear-to-ear.

A renovation completed in 1962 resulted in an apartment in the basement and a single-family home on the upper floors.