When Leopold M. and Lina R. Whitehead moved into the high-stooped brownstone at 215 West 78th Street, their home was the height of domestic fashion. It was one of ten high-stooped brownstones designed by Thom & Wilson in 1890. By the post-World War I years, however, the vogue for apartment living had supplanted that of private homes. In 1926, the Brevoort Estates, Inc. demolished four of the vintage homes--211 through 217 West 78th Street, and hired the architectural firm of Schwartz & Gross to design a nine-story apartment building on the site.
Construction cost $300,000, or about $5.5 million in 2026 terms. The architects designed the building in a 1920s take on Renaissance Revival. A classic broken pediment with a cartouche and shield sat above the centered entrance within the rusticated limestone base. The upper eight floors were clad with red brick and trimmed in stone and terra cotta. Schwartz & Gross arranged them into two matching side-by-side sections--both flanked with four full-height rounded bays. Every other spandrel of the bays were ornamented with elaborate Renaissance-style decorations. The architects forewent a cornice in favor of a brick parapet.
Canvas awnings at every window shielded heat and damaging sunlight. The building replaced brownstones like those seen on either side. via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
Potential renters could choose apartments of either four or five rooms. An advertisement in The New York Times on November 14, 1926 was headlined "New Building" and touted, "Baths, glass enclosed showers, beautiful bay windows." It noted there was a "special doctor's or dentist apartment with A-C and D-C current" available.
Among the early residents was bachelor William McCabe, also known as "Tough Willie." He was described by The New York Evening Post as a "Broadway sport." McCabe owned a stable of race horses and financed prize fighters. Most importantly, however, he was a close associate of gangster Arnold Rothstein.
On November 1, 1928, Willie McCabe and Arnold Rothstein joined other underworld figures in a "high spade" poker game. Three days later, the game was still going on and Rothstein had lost $320,000. Claiming the game was fixed, Rothstein refused to pay and was gunned down. Willie McCabe suddenly disappeared.
The New York Evening Post reported on November 14, "McCabe has not been at his home, 215 West Seventy-eighth Street, since the shooting." The article said, "McCabe, now sought by [District Attorney Jaob H.] Banton, is in Savannah, Ga., promoting dog races."
But then, The New York Times reported that McCabe had "dropped out of sight...only to bob up a week or so later with what District Attorney Banton said was an iron-clad alibi."
Willie McCabe continued to skirt law enforcement, but his gangland career ended on August 26, 1931. The New York Times reported, "The underworld went about its robberies, its stabbings and its threats yesterday." The article said that while McCabe had managed for years to be "unmolested by the police, [he] got into trouble with his own kind." McCabe was fatally stabbed "in an early morning brawl in the 61 Club at 61 East Fifty-second Street."
Details inspired by the Italian Renaissance decorate the facade.
Willie McCabe was assuredly well-acquainted with another resident, Herman Handler and his wife, Thelma. Born in 1895, Handler was, like McCabe, a bookie. In April 1935, while he was in Hamburg, Germany, he met Margie Lee, a "member of a group of acrobatic dancers," as described by The New York Times, while her troupe was touring. Herman and the blonde dancer began an affair, although Margie would later insist she never knew he was married.
In July, Thelma found a photograph of Margie and the couple separated. Thelma "insisted, however, that she and her husband remained friendly and kept in touch with each other by telephone," said The New York Times. Herman moved into the Hotel Belvedere on West 48th Street. Like Willie McCabe, he would run afoul of "his own kind."
Two months after leaving 215 West 78th Street, on September 12, 1935, The New York Times reported, "Herman Handler, 40 years old, a bookmaker...was found shot dead at 7 o'clock yesterday morning in his roadster." Detectives said that evidence showed that Handler was shot in his car and "driven to the place as he was dying."
The family of David and Etta Simon, lived here in the early 1940s. Born in 1902, he was an insurance broker. The couple had two sons, Lewis and Robert, born in 1928 and 1932 respectively. On December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, America declared war on Japan. It would make a significant impact on the Simons.
On March 18, 1942, The New York Sun said that "everything was peaceful in the household of David Simon, 43...until a reporter arrived with the information that Simon's serial number was drawn fourth in the draft." The article said that Robert and Lewis "started jumping about the living room, shouting, 'Daddy's in the army, Daddy's going to war.'"
Simon told the reporter he was ready to fight. "I'd like to be with MacArthur." And Etta was equally enthusiastic. "They ought to take all the men," she said, adding, "I can go to work. I was a stenographer before I was married and I could go back to that."
Another family in the building directly affected by the war was that of Eugene and Florence B. Moses. The couple was married in 1914, and had two children, Eleanor, born in 1916, and Charles G., born in 1919. Like David Simon, Charles was inducted into the army. On September 2, 1943, the War Department issued the latest list of missing and wounded in action. Among those injured in the "North African Area including Sicily" was Charles G. Moses. (Happily, Charles returned to America safely, and on February 28, 1947, The New York Times reported that he and his wife, the former Peggy Levi, had welcomed a daughter.)
In 1957, singer Johnny Mathis released his second single to sell one million copies, "Chances Are," and later that year his "Wild is the Wind" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Riding high on his success, the following year he purchased 215 West 78th Street. It was, perhaps, his first real estate investment. He later would tell a British reporter, "I've bought apartments in New York, and a post office in the Midwest." Mathis owned 215 West 78th Street until April 1963.
Among the tenants at the time was Lucy Seckel Stark, the widow of surgeon and gynecologist Meyer M. Stark, and former wife of poet and novelist James Oppenheim. Lucy graduated from Hunter College and Teachers College. She began teaching English in 1925 and did not retire until 1955.
Freelance photojournalist Solomon Charles Tobach and his wife, Dr. Ethel Tobach, were residents by the 1960s. The couple was married in 1947.
Ethel was born on November 7, 1921 in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and was brought to America as an infant. She received her Ph.D. in comparative psychology from New York University in 1957. By the time she and Solomon moved into 215 West 78th Street, she was affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History. She co-founded the Animal Behavior Society in 1964 and in 1972 became vice president of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Solomon Tobach "specialized in taking pictures of news personalities," according to The New York Times. He worked for The Associated Press, the Agence France Press, United Press International and The Medical Tribune. Solomon suffered a fatal heart attack in their apartment at the age of 51 on February 19, 1969. Ethel would survive to the age of 93, dying on August 14, 2015.
The building became a co-op in the 1970s. It is essentially unchanged, sans the canvas awnings, since its opening in 1926.
photographs by the author
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