The 1928 248 West 17th Street

 

The block of West 17th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues had become noticeably commercial by the post-World War I years.  Many of the houses and flat buildings had been replaced with warehouses and factories.  But in 1928, David M. Fink and his newly formed 350 West 17th Street Realty Corp. bucked the trend by demolishing the old building at 248-250 West 17th Street (formerly occupied by the West Side Trucking Company) and erecting a six-story apartment building.

The architects, Springsteen & Goldhammer, leaned into the nation's current love affair with Tudor architecture.  Around the country, suburban neighborhoods saw charming, fairytale-like cottages and regal mansions that echoed British country homes.  Urban architects, like Springsteen & Goldhammer, modified the style to adapt to city living.

The off-set arched entrance was framed in cast stone that crept east to partially embrace a charming arched window.  Faced in variegated Flemish bond brick, the building blended modern elements, like multi-paned casement windows, with picturesque historic details.  Above the second floor were two cornices atop attractive arched corbel tables.  A three-story projecting bay with a peaked gable and rusticated brickwork recalled 16th century sentry towers.  A cast stone ledge with corbels fronted a large, arched window at the sixth floor.  Above it was a prominent decorative pediment supported by sturdy brackets.  Springsteen & Goldhammer covered parts of the upper bays with white stucco.  The straight parapet along the roofline was interrupted at the east by a taller, peaked section.

In 1940, the casements, most of the stucco, the cast stone ornaments of the sixth floor, and the roofline were intact.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Interestingly, three of the original residents--Harry A. Dooley, Evilio Brito, and "a rather mysterious blond woman"--would be involved in mysterious deaths, and all of them unwittingly.

Although Prohibition was still in effect, on Saturday night August 31, 1931 Evilio Brito attended "a drinking party" at the apartment of Dr. William F. Hurst at 410 West 58th Street.  Along with Brito and Hurst, there were two other men.  The bootleg gin they were drinking was apparently strong.  At one point, according to Brito, Dr. Hurst attempted to "leave the apartment in his underwear," but the other men constrained him.

The next afternoon, detectives knocked on Brito's apartment door and questioned him about the puzzling death of his friend.  Just before noon, Hurst's neighbors complained that his radio had been playing loudly since the previous night.  When he did not answer his telephone, building employees entered the apartment.  The 30-year-old doctor's body was found "slumped upon a settee," according to The New York Times, with "both hands fastened behind his back by a knotted towel."

Brito said that when he and another of the guests, a soldier named Jack, left the party, Hurst was alive.  Police reported that there had been no attempt at robbery, since $126 in cash and Hurst's expensive watch and cufflinks were undisturbed.  A medical examiner ruled that the cause of death was a "cerebral hemorrhage."  That did not narrow down the mystery, however.  He said the hemorrhage could have "been induced by alcoholism, a fall, or a blow."  It did not explain Hurst's wrists being bound, either.  In the end, Evilio Brito was cleared of suspicion and the bizarre mystery was never solved.

The following year, Harry A. Dooley went to Niagara Falls over the Fourth of July holiday.  He was taking in the views above the Horseshoe Falls when a man removed his topcoat, laid it on the ground along with his walking stick and hat, and climbed the guardrail.  Dooley and a park ranger "called to him, but in vain," reported The New York Times, which added, "the body was quickly swept" away.

Documents in the man's coat identified him as Nikolai Semenoff, a dancer in the Russian Ballet under the Imperial Government.  Since the Russian Revolution, he had been a member of Sergei Diaghilev's troupe.  His friends told authorities the overwhelming obvious.  They "expressed the belief that he had gone to Niagara Falls to end his life," said that article.

In 1934, police were attempting to find the "mysterious blond woman" who often visited newlyweds Agnes Tulfverson and Ivan Poderjay at 235 East 22nd Street.  Authorities said that the woman, who lived here, "called herself Ponderjay's sister-in-law."  She was wanted for questioning in the supposed murder of Agnes Tulfverson Poderjay.  On December 20, 1933, three weeks after their wedding, the couple sailed to Europe on their honeymoon.  Agnes never made it there and her body was never discovered.  Also missing was the "mysterious blond woman."  The New York Sun reported on June 23, 1934 that detectives "found that she had moved from her last known address at 248 West Seventeenth street."

The anti-Communist paranoia in the 1940s and '50s was called the Red Scare.  It prompted the Congressional Special Committee on Un-American Activities to monitor and list Americans who registered as Communists or who voted for Communist Party candidates.  Every year from 1940 through 1944, residents Leo and Lillian Bergman, who lived here, appeared on that list.

Among the Bergmans' neighbors in the building was Leona Finestone.  The unmarried woman worked in an office conveniently just two blocks away at 205 West 19th Street.  She had just entered the lobby on the morning of May 13, 1943 when a "tall and heavily built" tough grabbed her handbag.  The 25-year-old screamed and her assailant "hurled the pocketbook at her head and, when it missed, began to beat her with his fists," reported The New York Times.

Undeterred, Leona Finestone followed him out of the building screaming.  John Bunch, who was 19 years old, pulled out a pocketknife and slashed her across the face.  Leona's screams attracted a group of men who captured Bunch after a block-long chase.  The bloodstained knife was in his pocket.

Leona faced her attacker during his sentencing before Judge James Garrott Wallace on November 5.  The jurist did not hold back in his disdain of Bunch, telling the teen, "In some parts of this country you would have been hung from a lamppost with several bullets in you for attacking a woman like that."  Bunch was sentenced to five to ten years in State Prison.

Another teen victimized two residents of 248 West 17th Street in 1966.  Mary Gartner, who had never married, was 71 years old and shared an apartment with her widowed sister, Amelia Fitzgibbon, who was 70.  Luckily, the women carefully put a chain on their door when they were at home.  At around 9:45 on the morning of July 21, someone tried to get in the door, but the chain held.  The voice from the hall threated to kill the women.  One of the sisters slammed the door and called the superintendent, who in turn called police.  

In the meantime, 18-year-0ld Gilbert Serrano went to the roof and down the fire escape.  He entered the sisters' apartment through the bathroom window.  Police arrived in time and Serrano was arrested, but not before he suffered a bullet wound in the leg.

A renovation begun in 2001 included the "rebuilding" of the parapet.  It was most likely at the same time that the casement windows were replaced, the remaining stucco removed, and the sixth floor ornaments taken down.  To the architect's credit, the remodeled parapet sympathetically adheres to Springsteen & Goldhammer's original theme, and even the brick color was carefully matched.

photographs by the author