photograph by Carole Teller
Carsten Gerken purchased the vintage building at 77 Sixth Avenue on the northwest corner of Waverley Place from George Hillen on April 14, 1873 for $38,000. (The address would be changed to 385 in 1925, and the second "e" in Waverley would be officially dropped around 1900.) Four years later he hired architects D. & J. Jardine to design a replacement store-and-flat building on the site.
Brothers John and David Jardine produced a four-story structure in the neo-Grec style. Above a rusticated stone base, the red brick facade was trimmed with brownstone. Banded stone piers that ran up the corners supported the largest of the corbels of the pressed metal cornice. The windows sat within prim stone architraves with prominent, bracketed cornices. The residential entrance was placed to the rear, at 135 Waverly Place. Facing the avenue was Carsten Gerken's saloon, and a second entrance on the side street accessed its back room.
Born in Germany in 1837, Gerken ran the saloon with his brother, Johannes (who Anglicized his name to John). They had a brother who as not involved with the business. (The Sun said, "The brothers were sedate, rather corpulent Germans and looked enough alike to be triplets.")
Carsten and his wife, Ella, lived upstairs with one Irish servant. Several of their initial tenants in the building were from the theater community. Among them in 1879 were actor William Gray; Anthony J. Cannon, whose stage name was Tony Hart; and John E. Cannon, treasurer of the Theatre Comique at 514 Broadway. (Tony Hart was half of the popular comedy team of Harrigan & Hart. Perhaps not coincidentally, at the time they were appearing at the Theatre Comique.)
Unlike other saloon owners throughout the city, the Gerken brothers ran their business with strict Victorian propriety and within the letter of the law. No females were permitted into the back room and, according to The Sun, a sign in the vestibule of the rear door admonished that "no goods were sold to women to be drunk on the premises." The newspaper added:
As a matter of fact only such women as were known to the Gerkens as respectable residents of the neighborhood could get their "growlers" filled while they waited in that little vestibule. The sending of a child or even of a full-grown girl of doubtful discretion to the side door on a growler-filling errand was greeted with a stern rebuke from one of the brothers, and an intimation that if the family could not send better messengers for its dinner supply of beer it had better seek some other source than Gerken's.
(A "growler" was a tin bucket or pitcher used to transport beer from a saloon to one's home or work site.)
According to the newspaper, Gerken's saloon was, as well, "something of an employment agency." If a neighbor needed help in moving a piece of heavy furniture or other such errand, he went to Gerken's. The bootblack would be sent to a lodging house or tenement to find someone down on his luck who needed the money. The Sun said, "That man could not get a drink in Gerken's, because they would not take the money of such a man across their bar, but they were always ready to show their good will by finding work for him."
Amazingly, the Gerken brothers would not serve alcoholics, or "drunkards," as they were called. Once a wife appeared "with tears in her eyes asking for him," a patron was cut off forever. "He might sit in the back room and read the newspapers or discuss affairs of State if he pleased, but if he asked for beer or whiskey he was treated as if he had put a deadly insult on the proprietors."
German saloon proprietors often operated a bier garten in the rear in the summer months. The Gerken brothers had no backyard, so they improvised. The Sun recalled later:
Then all the chairs in the backroom and pretty much all those in the apartments above were moved down to the sidewalk under the tree by the side door on Waverley place. From sundown until 1 o'clock the brothers sat out there with the substantial folk of the neighborhood sipping beer and Rhine wine at the rate of about one drink an hour and getting far more out of life than do the members of some of the finest clubs.
There was never scandal surrounding the Gersten saloon, no raids on Sundays (because it was never opened after midnight on Saturday), no gambling and no unescorted or questionable women.
By the turn of the century, according to The Evening World, "The Gerkins [sic] had amassed a fortune in the liquor business and had invested most of their profits in real estate."
February 1902 was a devastating time for the extended Gersten family. Around February 7, the third brother was committed to a sanitarium. The following week, on the morning of February 13, Carsten left home telling Ella he had to attend business downtown. She said later that he "seemed in a cheerful mood." That evening his body was found floating off Bedloe's Island. John Gerken identified his body at the morgue. While Ella said that his fall from the Staten Island Ferry had to have been an accident, the police called his death a suicide.
The very next day, John Gerken "fell dead on a Second avenue car," as reported by The Sun. The newspaper said that the shock of his brother's death "is believed to have indirectly led to John's death." On February 14, 1902, The Evening World reported, "The bodies of the brothers now lay side by side" in a Bleecker Street funeral home. Two days later, The Sun remarked that the third brother, "probably does not know to-day of the ends of the lives of John and Carsten."
Ella Gerken leased the saloon to Charles Neubaur. Its sterling reputation was quickly tarnished. On August 18, 1905, The New York Evening Post reported that a "crowd of roughs, supposed to be members of the notorious 'Paul Kelly Gang,'" had been ousted from the bar. They returned later that night and a "free-for-all fight followed." Policeman Francis J. Upton arrived just as the "roughs" were being put out again. One of the gang turned his fury to the officer. He struck Upton several times with a "brass knob." After what The New York Evening Post described as "a hard fight," Upton subdued the tough, "using his night stick freely in doing so."
Apparently Upton's free use of his baton was severe. The newspaper said, "The prisoner was not able to appear in court this morning." His confederates were not happy. Officer Upton showed Magistrate Whitman a letter he had received that morning from the Paul Kelly Gang that said, "We will lay for you."
In March 1908, Ella Gerken sold the building. The New-York Tribune remarked, "The corner store has been occupied as a saloon for the last thirty-five years."
In 1924, during the first years of Prohibition, the Ellen A. O'Reilly estate sold the property to Sadie Goldman. The former saloon space was transformed into a penny arcade.
On August 13, 1926, The New York Times began an article saying, "Death, injury, fire, flood and general transportation and radio paralysis were caused by a rapid succession of thunderstorms and rainstorms which swept over the metropolitan district yesterday afternoon." Among the many incidents, said the article, was a lighting bolt that "struck in a penny arcade at 385 Sixth Avenue and caused so much excitement that some one turned in a fire alarm. No damage was caused."
By 1935, the ground floor was home to a James Butler Grocery store. (The James Butler Grocery Company was the second-largest grocery chair in New York.) It was replaced by a restaurant as early as 1937.
In 1937, the facade was painted and a restaurant occupied the store space. The Sixth Avenue elevated was in the process of being demolished. from the collection of the New-York Historical Society.
Following the repeal of Prohibition, the space returned to selling alcohol as the Waverly Liquor Shoppe. On the evening of April 16, 1954, the eve of Passover, Sophie Brady dropped in "to buy some wine for the holidays." Her timing could not have been worse and she interrupted an armed robbery.
The gunman demanded Sophie's purse, but the feisty 60-year-old fought back. The New York Times reported, "She screamed and clung to her bag, and during the struggle the pistol was fired." Sophie Brady was hit in the arm and she suffered a head injury in the fight. In the meantime, the manager, Victor Cocozziello, had been forced onto the floor behind the counter. The gunman escaped with $15 from Cocozziello's wallet and $100 from the register. Sophie was treated to St. Vincent's Hospital. She had saved her purse, but never got her holiday wine.
The Waverly Liquor Shoppe remained at least through the late 1970s, replaced by the Waverly Restaurant, a fixture on the Greenwich Village corner for years.
many thanks to artist Carole Teller for suggesting this post
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