In 1830, Thomas E. Davis began erecting what would be fashionable homes on both sides of Bleecker Street between Thompson and Laurens Street (later West Broadway and then LaGuardia Place). As they neared completion in 1831, he began a similar project, lining both sides of East 8th Street between Second and Third Avenues with upscale residences. A consummate marketer, he lobbied the city to rename the two blocks, hoping to enhance their sense of exclusivity. In 1833 his Bleecker Street block was renamed Carroll Place, and in 1835 the East 8th Street block became St. Mark's Place.
Each of the Carroll Place homes was 25-feet wide and three-and-a-half stories tall. In February 1833, just before 146 Bleecker Street was renumbered 7 Carroll Place, an advertisement in The Evening Post offered the house for rent:
The house was erected in 1830, in the most elegant and substantial manner, and is three stories high, of brick and slated roof. There is a building in the rear containing a tea room and library, and a well and cistern in the yard. The house is every way calculated for a large and fashionable private family.
That house saw a relatively rapid turnover in well-to-do tenants until it was sold for $10,000 to Dr. William R. Power in January 1845. The price, equal to about $430,000 in 2026, reflected the exclusivity of the block.
Power was born in Ireland in 1798 and was described as a "distinguished practitioner." His wife, the former Mercy Hepburn, died in 1817 and his purchasing of 7 Carroll Place might have had much do to with his marital plans. He married Aliana Diane Worthington in 1846.
Although William had no children with either of his wives, in 1857 lawyer John T. Power was listed at the address. He was presumably a relative.
William R. Power died "after a short but severe illness," according to the New-York Daily Tribune, on September 14, 1858. His funeral was held in the parlor on the 16th.
Aliana Power left Carroll Place shortly afterward. An auction of the furnishings held on March 8, 1859, hinted at the high-end lifestyles of the Carroll Place residents. Included were "rosewood parlor suits, covered in rich silk brocatel and plush...Chinese china vases, chandeliers, sideboard, morocco arm chairs," and such.
In the meantime, the house next door at 5 Carroll Street was originally home to the Henry Floyd Tallmage family. Born in Connecticut on June 11, 1787, he and his wife, Maria Canfield Adams, had five children. The family sold the house to Dr. John Augustine Smith on April 15, 1841.
Born in 1782, Smith had served as president of the College of William & Mary from 1814 to 1826. (He resigned when his proposal to move the college from Richmond to Williamsburg was refused.) Now back in New York City, he became president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1831.
Dr. John Augustine Smith, from the collection of the New York Society Library
Smith married Lettice Lee in 1809 and they had five children, at least one of whom, Richard Augustine (who went by his middle name), lived with his parents. Augustine was in the paper business on Nassau Street.
In addition to his practice and his lecturing on anatomy at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Smith edited the Medical and Physiological Journal. Among his works were the 1840 Select Discourse on the Functions of the Nervous System, his 1846 The Mutations of the Earth, and Moral and Physical Science, published in 1853. Notably, he was an outspoken supporter of scientific racism, that used phrenology (the "science" of reading bumps on one's skull) to rationalize white supremacy. He was a vocal exponent of repatriating Blacks to Africa.
By the outbreak of the Civil War, things had changed in the neighborhood. No longer ultra-fashionable, affluent residents left Carroll Place and in 1860 the block reverted to Bleecker Street (although both addresses would be used for some time). In 1861, rented rooms were being offered in both 144 and 146 Bleecker Street.
In 1870, Thomas N. and William B. Doutney established an "eatinghouse," The St. Lawrence, in the basement of 144 Bleecker Street. Unfortunately, as Thomas recalls in his 1893 autobiography Thomas N. Doutney: His Life-Struggle and Triumphs:
I listened to the bad advice of a dissolute companion, and introduced liquor on my premises, first secretly, then openly, as an article of traffic. In short, my restaurant became, what too many restaurants already are, a drinking-saloon, a cursed rum-shop.
Thomas and his "dear, good brother William," lost the business. The saloon was taken over by Korne & Bere.
In the meantime, the conditions within the rented rooms of the once-luxurious mansions were ghastly. An article in the New York Herald on February 7, 1871 described the plight of a "woman and five little children at No. 144 Bleecker street." The journalist said, "No food or fuel has been seen in the little room which these miserable ones occupy for several days, and yesterday the mother, rendered desperate, attempted suicide."
On July 20, 1896, the New York Journal reported, "Women, some of them wives and mothers, who had been caught in the raid on the pool room [an illegal race betting den] at No. 146 Bleecker street, Saturday night, were prisoners in the Jefferson Market Court yesterday." Prior to the time of the article, the parlor windows of the house had been replaced by bay windows, as noted in a sketch in the article.
In 1896, an illegal betting den occupied the basement of 146 Bleecker. The elegant Federal doorway was intact, and bay windows had been added, most likely prior to 1861. New York Journal, July 20, 1896 (copyright expired)
In 1884, a year after arriving in New York City from Florence, Italy, Placido Mori opened his "eating place" in the former Korne & Bere saloon space in 144 Bleecker Street. The Journal described Mori & Lorenzi's cafe in 1896 as "a cheap restaurant and drinking place much frequented by the Italians of the district."
It became a meeting place for labor and political groups. On November 24, 1891, for instance, The Evening World remarked, "The Columbus Labor Club, cloak makers...has its headquarters at present at 144 Bleecker street." On October 27, 1898, the Third Assembly District Republicans held an "Italian parade through the Italian colony and a meeting at 144 Bleecker street," as reported by The Sun.
In November 1900, authorities refused to allow the play Senza Patria (or Without a Country), written by anarchist Pietro Gori, to open. Throngs of angry native Italians, many of them anarchists, rebelled. The New York Times reported, "The Anarchists then held an impromptu indignation meeting on the sidewalk, and then several hundred went to Mori & Lorenzi's café, 144 Bleecker Street, which was by common consent designated as a meeting place."
No. 144 was sold several times before Mori purchased the building in 1910. The Italian immigrant had done well for himself. On April 23, 1920, the New York Herald reported, "Placido Mori is the buyer of the residence at 21 Washington Square North." It was one of the most fashionable addresses in New York City.
Among Mori's regular patrons at the time was architect Raymond Hood. Their close owner-patron relationship would soon become owner-client. On December 12, 1920, The New York Times reported that Placido Mori "recently bought the adjoining parcel at 146 to add to his establishment. The article mulled, "The supporters of prohibition may discern in this fact that the prevention of serving red wine, without which no Italian restaurant meal was supposed to be complete...has not yet driven the habitués of these eating places to other resorts."
Mori hired Raymond Hood to combine the houses and remodel the exterior. He placed a row of Doric columns along the sidewalk level and added a setback penthouse.
Famed photographer Berenice Abbott took this photograph in November 1935. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
The observation made by The New York Times that Prohibition had not affected the Italian restaurant was premature. As it turned out, Mori went on dispensing alcoholic beverages. On September 16, 1922, the newspaper reported that Prohibition Chief John D. Appleby "sent seven general dry agents yesterday afternoon to Mori's Restaurant."
In the room in the rear of the second floor the agents seized a large quantity of liquors, wines and beer. The agents said they never saw a more sorrowful staff of waiters than they passed in the dining room as the seized goods were carried out. The sight of good wines leaving the restaurant, famous in the days gone by for its wine, was more than some of the waiters could stand.
Only four months later, on January 15, 1923, The New York Times reported on another raid. After seizing 58 bottles of wine and ten bottles of whisky, Placido Mori was arrested. The article said that police "then went upstairs to the apartment of Louis Funai...from which they took away 18 bottles of champagne, 247 bottles of wine, 15 bottles of gin, 4 bottles of kimmel [sic] and one gallon of wine."
Placido Mori died on July 18, 1927. In reporting his death, The New York Times remarked that his restaurant "had become noted as a picturesque resort."
Living upstairs at the time was sculptor Thomas Hudson Jones. He and architect Lorimer Rich were cooperatively working on designs for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington. Jones was still living here in December 1928 when Secretary of War Dwight F. Davis announced that their design had been accepted.
image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
Albert Mori operated the restaurant until January 1938, when he filed for bankruptcy. The New York Times remarked, "The restaurant started as a small bar and eating place. It expanded until it finally occupied the entire building, a rambling, old-fashioned structure."
The space became Free World House as early as 1944, operated by the International Free World Association. On June 4, 1944, the group announced that a program of "democratic principles for Europe" would be put into effect "as soon as the Allied armies invade the continent." A less political event had taken place a month earlier when, on May 28, The New York Times reported, "The second open show of the Village Art Center is current[ly] at Free World House...with more than a hundred oils, water-colors and drawings, by almost as many artists."
It was possibly during the occupancy of the anti-Fascist International Free World Association that five murals by Louis Quintanilla were installed. Quintanilla arrived in New York in 1938 to create his grouping, called Love Peace Hate War. (Somewhat ironically, he was the house guest of war correspondent Jay Allen in Placido Mori's former home on Washington Square.) The paintings were commissioned by the Spanish Government for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1939 Worlds Fair. The individual panels were Flight, Pain, Hunger, Soldiers and Destruction.
But the artwork would never be exhibited at the fair. The Spanish Republic fell and the Fascist Francisco Franco regime demanded that the paintings be returned to Spain. Reportedly, Quintanilla told officials that a flood in his studio had destroyed the panels. It appears that he sold or donated the works to the Free World House.
Quintanilla's Hunger (top) and Soldiers, were two of the panels installed at Free World House. images from The Art and World of Louis Quintanilla
The Free World House remained here until 1956, when the building was converted to the Renata Theatre in the lower two floors and apartments and offices on the top two. As construction neared completion on November 14, 1956, The New York Times explained that the venue would present "contemporary European plays." The auditorium would hold an audience of 250.
Among the last performances in the Renata Theatre was a one-person production, An Evening With Ethel Waters, described by The New York Times on April 9, 1959 as a "musical memory."
from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
Within a year, the space had been converted to a movie theater, the Bleecker Street Cinema. It was a neighborhood fixture for decades, finally closing in August 1989. On November 4 the following year, The New York Times columnist Christopher Gray mentioned, "It is now a gay porno house."
It was during that rather seedy period that the Quintanilla murals were "rediscovered." On one of the panels, a black arrow reading "Exit" had been scrawled. According to the artist's son, Paul, "In the early nineties an attempt was made to retrieve them, but the amount of money offered didn't satisfy the owner of the pornographic movie house." The paintings, therefore, remained in abused condition until February 2, 2007 when the University of Cantabria in Santander, Spain purchased them. They were restored and now hang at the university.
photographs by the author
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