A. E. Badt's 1903 623 East 6th Street

 

Architect A. E. Badt and real estate developer Samuel Rosenberg specialized in designing and erecting tenement buildings at the turn of the last century.  The two came together in 1903 for a substantial project.  On July 25, the Record & Guide recorded that Badt was designing a row of "flats," or apartment buildings, along the north side of East 6th Street.  (Simultaneously, Abraham Rosenberg, presumably a relative of Samuel, commissioned Badt to design a store-and-flat building at the  northwest corner of East 6th Street and Avenue C, at the end of the row.)

Construction was completed within the end of the year.  Badt's handsome buildings, including 623 East 6th Street, were inspired by styles of a few generations earlier.  The rusticated base with its fully-arched openings would have been seen in Anglo-Italianate rowhouses of the late 1860's or 1870s.  The brick-faced upper portion reflected elements of the neo-Grec style, popular in the 1870s and '80s.  But Badt gave the buildings a unique touch in the cast metal sills and lintels.

The geometric lines of the sills and the incised vine decoration of the lintels were neo-Grec, but the graceful curved crowns, like embracing arms, were anything but.

To erect the row of buildings, Rosenberg had to demolish the humble structures that occupied the site, like the home of police officer William Baer and his wife, Mary Naudin.  The couple was married in 1900.  Just after their first anniversary, Mary became ill and died a week later, on August 9, 1901, at the age of 37.  It appears that Rosenberg negotiated a deal with Baer.  When 623 East 6th Street was completed, Baer was among the first occupants of the building's ten apartments.

Among Baer's neighbors in the building was Harry J. Traubig.  He and hundreds of other Manhattanites traveled to Coney Island for the Fourth of July celebrations in 1904.  What he and many others were not expecting was that the Brooklyn Rapid Transit would double the fare for the weekend--from five cents to ten.  Many refused to pay the double fare.

On July 4, The Sun reported, "Probably it is a conservative estimate to say that between 10 o'clock yesterday morning to midnight last night anywhere from 800 to 1,000 persons either got off cars under orders or were thrown off by main force."  Harry J. Traubig was on "car 1020 of the Fifteenth street line," according to The Sun.  He was one of the hundreds of passengers who felt "that the companies are not within such rights" of gouging the public on the holiday weekend.  Some passengers who were "bounced" immediately reboarded the cars, resulting in violence.  The Sun said that in one instance, "The several inches of fine dust in the roadway was kicked up into a thick cloud that reached as high as the top of the car and through it could only be dimly seen now and then a confused glimpse of swaying bodies and waving and brandishing legs and arms."

Harry J. Traubig was "bounced" from the car and he promptly jumped back on.  "Every time a car stopped the mounted police rode close up beside it at the heels of the boarding bouncers," said The Sun.  Mounted Policeman No. 182 had lost his patience.  The article said he "became so excited [with] a passenger named Harry J. Traubig...that he then and there extended to Mr. Traubig a heated invitation to adjourn to a vacant lot and settle things in a fist encounter, and commenced peeling off his coat by way of guarantee of good faith."  Harry weighed his options and, said the article, "Mr. Traubig declined the hospitality."

William Baer retired from the Police Department around 1913 and took a job with a bank.  His position would be described as a security guard today.  Widowed and with no children, he carefully planned his own funeral in advance.  His will directed that his body should be placed "in a metallic casket to cost $1,500, which casket shall be placed in an outside copper case to cost $300, both of which and their design I have already selected."  He also set aside $300 for his funeral.

The former policeman's detailed planning was put in effect after his death on December 21, 1916.  He left an estate of $22,770, about $671,000 in 2026 terms.  (The relatively large estate for a civil servant suggests that Baer had received a financial settlement as well as the apartment from Samuel Rosenberg.)

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Sydney Seltzer lived here in 1921.  Like Harry J. Traubig had done, he went to Coney Island on July 4th that year.  He and his friend, Max Skulnick rented a bungalow for the weekend.  And then--shockingly for 1921 propriety--they took along their girlfriends, Freda Simon and Annie Schulman.  The couples had "been keeping company for more than a year," according to the Brooklyn Standard Union.

The scandalous situation caught the attention of officials.  At 4 a.m. on July 4 the bungalow was raided and the two women were arrested "for vagrancy, growing out of a visit of two young men."  The two women "stoutly maintained" that nothing untoward had happened "and their two companions corroborated them," said the Brooklyn Standard Union.

Freda and Annie spent the rest of the night in jail.  Magistrate Walsh announced on July 6 that he would give his decision on July 21.  When they appeared in the courtroom that morning, their attorney told Magistrate Dodd:

I have a rather important announcement to make.  The defendants in this case and the two men named in it were married in the City Clerk's office in Manhattan this afternoon.

Magistrate Dodd had his own announcement to make.  "Magistrate Walsh requested me to announce that he had found the defendants not guilty."  As the newlyweds celebrated the news, Dodd asked, "Where is the rice?"

On July 16, 1964, a white police officer shot and killed 15-year-old James Powell, an African American who was engaged in a confrontation with a building superintendent who ordered him and his friends to get off his stoop.  The incident sparked six days of rioting in the Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods.

Michael Brown, who lived at 623 East 6th Street at the time, was already politically active.  The 23-year-old was the New York chairman of the May Second Movement which opposed American troops in South Vietnam.  In March 1965, he was summonsed to appear before a grand jury's investigation in the 1964 riots along with six others.  The Nassau, New York newspaper Newsday explained that the grand jury was delving into "whether there was a conspiracy at work in bringing about the riots."

Although they had been granted immunity from prosecution, all seven witnesses refused to answer any questions.  Newsday said they, "cited the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution and contended that questions put to them were 'irrelevant.'"  They were arrested and charged with contempt of court.

Little has altered outwardly to A. E. Badt's dignified flat building after 122 years.

photographs by the author