Springsteen & Goldhammer's 1929 140 East 95th Street

 

In 1928, a year before the Stock Market Crash, the newly formed 1470 Lexington Avenue Corporation purchased the four-story apartment building at the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 95th Street.  The vintage structure was demolished to be replaced by a six-story apartment and store building.  Designed by Springsteen & Goldhammer, the romantic Mediterranean Revival-style structure was completed in 1929.

Storefronts lined the avenue and the residential entrance opened onto 95th Street.  The building's midsection was faced in beige textured brick and trimmed in cast stone.  Other than the corner, which rose to a charming tower, the top floor was clad in stucco.

Springsteen & Goldhammer's picturesque details included cast stone Renaissance-inspired frames at the second floor, with heraldic shields and pyramidal crockets.  

The upper portion was drawn from the historic buildings of Siena, with round-arched corbel tables, red tiled roofs, and romantic tower windows.

An advertisement offered apartments of two, three, or four rooms.  It described, "Charming rooms.  New electric refrigerators.  24-hour elevator service.  Well maintained building."  

The apartments filled with middle- and upper-middle class residents.  Among the first was Joseph W. Steinberg, a politically active Republican.  On April 18, 1931, The New York Times reported on the inaugural meeting of the Fifteenth Assembly District Republican Club.  The speeches lambasted the Democratic Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, one speaker saying that the city had suffered his "dodging and double-crossing tactics."  The newly-elected president, Walter S. Mack, Jr. accused Tammany Hall as having become a "racket."  Joseph W. Steinberg was elected a vice-president that night.

Another early resident was Geoffrey V. Thomas, who managed the properties owned by the Central Savings Bank.  His responsibilities ballooned in the 1930s, as the Depression forced the bank to foreclose on more and more real estate.

James D. Covington and his wife were initial tenants.  Covington's complaint in 1932 was, interestingly, not the economic conditions so much as the poor quail hunting in the Northeast.  On November 26, The New York Sun ran a lengthy article that called the tri-state hunting conditions "almost ideal."  Covington, a native of Georgia, refuted that and complained about quail hunting on Long Island.

"First off, the scarcity of game here makes it doubly hard to satisfy a Southern hunter," he told the reporter.  Back home, he said, "It was no trick to bag the limit of twenty-five birds per person per day." 

In the 19th century, beer breweries made fortunes for German immigrants like George Ehret, Peter Doelger and Jacob Ruppert.  Prohibition closed down those businesses and their sprawling brewery buildings sat shuttered.  But four years after 140 East 95th Street was opened, Prohibition was repealed and several of those facilities stirred back to life.

Among them was the Ruppert Brewery, the traffic and field manager of which was Charles Reichert, who lived here with his second wife, Delores.  In the spring of 1949, the delivery truck drivers walked off the job and the sidewalks outside the brewery at Third Avenue and 92nd Street became a sea of picketing strikers.

Late on the afternoon of May 13, Dolores went to the brewery and threaded her way through the 500 pickets and into the building.  At around 6:00 the couple left.  As they made their way through the mob, the drivers "exchanged words" with Reichert.  His replies were not well received by the out-of-work union members.  Two drivers "punched him in the face," as reported by The New York Times.  Reichert had Patrick Skully and Mortimer J. Monohan arrested for simple assault.

Living here in the 1950s was Nathan B. and Ethel Gurock.  Born in 1901, Nathan was a graduate of the New York University Law School.  He served as a secretary to State Supreme Court Justice Irving L. Levey for 14 years before becoming a general law assistant to the court justices.  In 1959 he was appointed a special referee of the State Supreme Court.

An interesting resident was Herman Davidowitz, who lived here with his wife, the former Rebecca Blank in the 1960s.  Born in Szeget, Hungary in 1897, Davidowitz arrived in America in 1921.  He founded Cravats by Dee, Ltd, a tie manufacturing firm.  He and Rebecca had two adult sons, Rabbi Moshe L. Davidowitz and psychologist Dr. Jacob Davidowitz.

Herman started collecting Judaica as a hobby.  The New York Times reported that it, "soon took him to many countries as he gathered menorahs of silver, bronze, brass, gold and clay; coins; embroideries; illustrated manuscripts; marriage contracts; scrolls; paintings, and other objects of Jewish religious and secular life."  

Rebecca died in 1964.  A few days later, when asked by The Jewish Press where he got the money to purchase his collection, Herman replied, "What others spent for pleasures, to go to the mountains or to Florida, my late wife and I invested in our collection."  In March 1967, he sold 190 items at the Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., realizing $60,840 (about $571,000 in 2026).

Shortly afterward, Davidowitz began plans to establish a tie business in Haifa, Israel and relocate there.  In January 1969, he embarked on a trip to Israel relating to those plans.  He made a stop-off in Florence, Italy on the way "looking for additions to his large collection of Judaica," according to The New York Times.  While there, on January 16, he suffered a fatal heart attack.  His funeral service and burial were held in Haifa.

Other than the remodeled avenue storefronts, Springsteen & Goldhammer's charismatic structure is little changed since it opened during the first year of the Great Depression.

photographs by the author