The 1894 The Northrup - 74-76 West 103rd Street

 

image via LandmarkWest!

In 1894, developer Charles Buek commissioned George Keister to design two similar apartment buildings on the western blockfront of Manhattan Avenue between 102^nd and 103^rd Streets.  Like its near twin, the northern building was faced in beige brick above an undressed brownstone base.  The rusticated first floor was clad in variegated Roman brick and the entrance was protected by a handsome stone portico.  Keister added touches of Queen Anne to his otherwise Romanesque Revival-style design.  Completed within the year, the Northport cost Buek $52,000 to construct, or about $1.9 million in 2025.
 
The six- and seven-room apartments were described in an advertisement as being “very choice.”  Tenants enjoyed “perfect appointments and hall service,” said an ad, and “extra store rooms.”  (Hall service meant that uniformed “hall boys” were on hand to help with packages, mail, and other errands.) The $50 rent would translate to about $1,890 per month today.
 
The residents were comfortably middle- and upper-middle class.  One, however, found himself in trouble shortly after moving in.  William P. Robinson worked as a collector for Tillotson & Sons, book sellers.  (The term meant that he would collect outstanding amounts from retail customers.)  The 49-year-old was arrested on May 22, 1895.  The Yonkers, New York Statesman explained, “He is charged with having embezzled $10,000” and said, “The defalcation extends over a year.”  The police nabbed him just as he was preparing to leave for Chicago.
 
The Rev. James D. Steele lived here as early as 1900 through 1906.  A Presbyterian minister, while living here he was secretary of the Joint Committee on a Uniform Version of the Metrical Psalms.  The erudite clergyman also held a Ph.D. and made extra money teaching on the side.  In January 1900, he advertised, “Rev. J. D. Steele, PH. D., private tutor at pupils’ homes or at 74 West 103d St.”
 
Although Prohibition had ended in 1933, on March 28, 1938, the Yonkers, New York Statesman reported that resident Aldo Cipallini had been arrested “on a charge of possession of an illegal still.”  The 20-year-old was caught in a raid of a house in Tuckahoe, New York in which a 2,000-gallon still was found in operation.  Cipallini “insisted he was only a watchman.”  He was fined $200.
 

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

By 1950, novelist Gordon Friesen and his wife Agnes Sis Cunningham lived here.  The couple had founded Broadside, a political song magazine and during the 1940s were members of the Almanac Singers, a folk singing group based in Greenwich Village.  Friesen’s novel Flamethrowers recalled his childhood in a Russian Mennonite family in Oklahoma.
 
The McCarthy Era was difficult for Gordon and Sis Cunningham.  They were blacklisted and while living here subsisted on welfare.  In the "Afterward" to the couple’s joint autobiography Red Dust and Broadsides, Ronald D. Cohen noted, “The FBI visited Gordon in 1954, who was then living at 74 West 103^rd Street, but he ‘stated he had nothing to say to the interviewing agents.’  Nonetheless, the local agent recommended to J. Edgar Hoover that a Security Index Card be prepared for Gordon, in addition to the ongoing file.”
 
In 1950, emerging artist Andy Warhol moved into a two-bedroom basement apartment with 17 “artists, writers, dancers,” according to Anthony Grudin in his Like a Little Dog.  Warhol’s biographer, Victor Bockris, writes, “It was a transition period, introducing him into the bohemian world of dance and theatre people.  He felt more affinity with them than with intellectuals…and for the first time Andy began, tentatively, exploring the homosexual underground.”  Bockris quotes a visitor who said, “All I remember is Andy sitting there drawing, surrounded by this complete chaos and people doing things that would seem to be disruptive of any concentration.  The food was mixed in with the clothes.”
 
Shortly afterward, the Northrup and its fraternal twin to the south were incorporated into the Douglass Houses.  They were not demolished because, according to a 1959 report by the New York State Division of Housing and Urban Renewal, “They were the best constructed of the older buildings and required the least in major structural repairs.”
 
Living here in 1989 was 29-year-old Marcus Bezear.  That spring he raped two women in the Penta Hotel.  A similar looking man was mistakenly arrested for the crime, but when Bezear raped another woman in the same hotel in August, he confessed to all three crimes.  He was  arrested on October 15 and charged with robbery and sexual abuse and held on $100,000 bail.
 
Once home to affluent, white-collar residents, the Northrup had sorely declined in 2014.  On October 5, television station PIX II reported, “When it rains, it really pours inside an Upper West Side apartment building.  The building, 74-76 West 103^rd Street, is nicknamed the ‘forgotten house,’ part of the Frederick Douglass Houses, operated by the New York City Housing Authority.”
 
Since Hurricane Sandy, the tenants told the reporter, streams of water poured into their apartments every time it rained.  Connie Taylor had lived in the building for half a century.  The reporter said, “The 61-year-old suffers from arthritis and scoliosis and has trouble walking, let along rearranging the buckets to catch all the rain water dripping through her leaky ceilings.”
 
Despite the drastic changes inside, the exterior of the Northrup is relatively unchanged since its completion in 1894.

The 1890 Eckstein Bldg -- No. 62 East 4th Street

photo by Alice Lum

By 1889 the neighborhood of East 4^th Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue was squarely in the midst of Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany.  The area, a few blocks south of Astor Place, had been an elegant residential enclave through the Civil War years.  Now it bustled with German-speaking immigrants who lived mostly in tenement buildings and converted homes.

On May 29, 1880 Jacobina Hinckel leased the house at No. 64 East 4^th Street to Victor Eckstein.  The five-year contract called for $3,000 a year rent—around $5,500 per month today.  Eckstein established his restaurant in the converted house and nine years later he was ready to expand.  He purchased the old building next door at No. 62 and on March 1, 1889 architect Max Schroff filed plans for a new structure.

The following day the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide described the proposed building as “five-story brick and iron restaurant, lodge room and dwelling” with a tin roof.  Eckstein’s structure would cost him about $35,000.

Somewhat grand and certainly unusual, it was completed early in 1890.  Brick pilasters framed the entrance of the first floor where Eckstein’s Restaurant operated (it extended into the basement as well).  The second and third floors—large assembly halls that were rented for various gatherings like political meetings and social functions—were distinguished by two sets of French windows on the second floor and oversized arched openings at the third.  A rather peculiar arrangement of stone-framed windows shouldering an open, classical loggia formed the third story.  Above a stone cornice the Ecksteins’ living quarters featured a row of Romanesque arched openings.

photo by Alice Lum

Because the Ecksteins--a family of eight--lived on the uppermost floor, Schroff was tasked by law with providing a fire escape.  His problem was how to incorporate the escape without ruining the design of the façade.  His solution was a spiraling cast iron staircase which he disguised behind an unusual basketweave cylinder of iron.  Wrapping the top of the mesh tube was a galvanized iron band announcing BUILT MS 1889.  Rather than incorporating Victor Eckstein's monogram into the design, Schroff memorialized his own.

The architect included his own initials in the frieze of the fire escape -- photo by Alice Lum

The meeting halls—known as Eckstein’s Metropolitan Assembly Rooms-- were soon booked.  The German Photographic Society of New York, organized in 1868, held regular meetings here on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month at 8:15 p.m.  And here Leo Zitsmann and his wife celebrated their silver wedding anniversary on Wednesday night, July 11, 1894.  But the hall would be used more by trade unions than for club meetings and wedding receptions. 

Labor unions had been gaining a toehold in America since the end of the Civil War, following the lead of the English movement.  By now unions were firmly established and fought to obtain humane working conditions and a reasonable wage for their members.   In 1893 New York’s waiters were demanding increased wages.  On May 6 The New York Times announced “the International Hotel Employes’ Alliance held a mass meeting yesterday afternoon at 62 East Fourth Street to organize down-town restaurant and hotel waiters.”

Meanwhile, Jacob Becker was a regular at the restaurant.  The Evening World said, on May 12, 1893, “Becker spent much of his time at Victor Eckstein’s restaurant, 62 East fourth street, where he is well known.  He is married, and lives in Fourth street, near First avenue.”  He had been a professional cornet player until a few years earlier; then a scuffle put an end to his career and his mental stability.

“Becker was formerly a good musician.  Several years ago he got into a fight with another musician, who struck him with a bottle, knocking one of his eyes out.  He now wears a glass eye,” explained the newspaper.  “The blow he received affected his mind, and he has since been insane at intervals.”

Becker now made a living selling musical instruments.  His bouts of instability were well known in the neighborhood.  “In one of his crazy spells, some time ago, he startled the neighborhood by hanging a lot of instruments out on a wash line,” said The Evening World.  “One of Becker’s peculiarities was to stand in the street and make faces and gestures at the moon.”

Untreated, Jacob Becker’s spells were sometimes dangerous.  At one point he threatened his wife with a knife; but was disarmed before he could harm her.  “He also wanted to throw her out of the window,” mentioned the World.

The end of his public displays came in May 1893 when he conked a passing woman on the head with a cornet.  Her screams attracted a policeman who, in turn, was knocked on the head with the instrument.  When the policeman tried to arrest Becker, the 37-year old became so violent that a second officer, Policeman Schroeder, had to help.   They finally handcuffed him, but “He broke the nippers which Policeman Schroeder had on him and kicked the officer a fearful blow in the chest.”

It took three officers had to control Becker at the police station until an ambulance from Bellevue Hospital arrived and he was put in a strait jacket.  “He was placed in the insane pavilion at Bellevue this forenoon,” advised The Evening World.

The 54th Regiment Veteran’s Organization used the assembly hall as its headquarters.  The group was formed at the outbreak of the Civil War by German immigrants and was known popularly as Die Schwarzen Jaeger.  The New York Times later said the regiment “served with distinction throughout the campaign.”  When Captain Carl Gerhard Friedrich Wahle died on April 21, 1899, a military funeral was held in the assembly rooms in Eckstein’s building.

On June 15, 1903 Victor Eckstein sold his building to George Ehret.  The real estate operator soon commissioned architects Horenburger & Straub to make alterations; updating the 13-year old structure.

The spiral fire escape was veiled in a basket weave tube -- photo by Alice Lum

Under its new owner the building continued to attract labor unions and political groups.  On April 10, 1904 the newly-organized New York Rent Protective Association went “seeking a hall for their meeting, and finally found one at 62 East Fourth Street,” reported The Times.   In 1912 when 7,000 furrier workers went on strike, they reported here—the meeting rooms now known as Astoria Hall.

It was around this time that the United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers of North America took permanent space in the building.  Organized in 1901, the union would operate its general offices here for years.

By 1914 Astoria Hall had been converted to a theater and music hall.  When a 19-year old actor with one leg was arrested on May 13 for soliciting alms on 14^th Street, he grumbled at being detained.  Jesse Skinner was well-dressed and wore a “ring in which three diamonds sparkled...Skinner said he was very much annoyed by his arrest,” reported The Sun, “declaring he was due at Astoria Hall to rehearse his act, which he said was called ‘The Floppers.’”

Still, stage sketches and music would often stand aside for more serious events at Astoria Hall.  In September of 1915 8,000 ladies’ tailors went on strike, crippling not only the dress factories in the garment area; but “all the expensive tailor shops and dressmaking establishments adjacent to Fifth Avenue,” according to The Evening World on September 22.  The newspaper said that all strikers below 14^th Street were meeting at Astoria Hall.

On January 9, 1917 the Umbrella Workers’ Union protested to President Wilson against the importation of Japanese umbrellas.  “The union also intends to begin a fight for the eight-hour work day,” advised The Evening World a week earlier.  Union organizer Meyer Abrahamson told reporters “a call has gone out to 25,000 members, mostly girls, for a meeting at Astoria Hall.’

When George Ehret hired architect L. F. J. Welher to do $8,500 worth of alterations to the building in 1918, there was still a restaurant on the first floor.  And for the next few years labor unions would continue to use the upstairs rooms.   In 1918 30,000 workers of the American Men’s and Boys’ Clothing Manufacturers Association were locked out by their employers.  The group held conferences in Astoria Hall on November 12.  The following year it was the International Federation of Lunchroom and Restaurant Employees which held its “mass meeting” here.  (The union complained its members’ 84-hour work weeks earned them $16.)

Among Ehret’s alterations was the conversion of Victor Eckstein’s living space on the fifth floor to additional meeting rooms.  But in 1921 the meetings there were of the shady variety.

“Chicago” was the password that admitted patrons to the illegal gaming hall.  Gamblers staked as much as $300 on a single throw at the craps tables and undercover detectives said they lost $51 within 20 minutes of play—about $625 today.

The patrons’ luck ran out on February 3 when the rooms were raiding and 23 men were arrested.  The New-York Tribune reported “Eighteen of the men were fined $2 each.  Five, charged with being common gamblers, will be arraigned in the Tombs Court to-day.”

In 1956 No. 62 East Fourth Street became the 125-seat Royal Playhouse where live theater and dance was staged for nearly a decade.  Matinees were for children who were treated to live stage performances like “Cinderella.”

Then, on January 21, 1962, The New York Times reported “the other day there was J. I. Rodale announcing that he had purchased the three-story building at 62 East Fourth Street and would turn it into an intimate playhouse, a workshop, and an acting school.”  The Rodale Theater, like the Royal, survived just short of ten years.

While Rodale still owned the venue, beginning in July 1966 through the early 70s, it was concurrently used by the Channel One Video Theater for its “Channel One Underground Television.”  As part of the show, the audience watched black and white television sets that hung from the ceiling.  Called “The Groove Tube” show, it would form the basis for the 1974 movie of the same name.

Biographer Rena Fruchter, in her I’m Chevy Chase…and You’re Not, writes “It was here that Chevy laid the groundwork that took him eventually to Saturday Night Live.”  She quotes an article from the Village Voice “The studio is on the second floor of the building, in what must have been an elegant ballroom.  It is a huge room with grimy gilt trim, dirty crystal chandeliers and faded wall panel paintings.”

It was not only the interiors that had become grimy.  The neglected façade peeled paint and numerous windows were boarded closed.

In the late '70s the deterioration of the building had only just begun -- photograph by Edmund V. Gillon, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWQ2RW5Q&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

Much is currently made of Andy Warhol’s Fortune Theater which briefly made use of the space in 1971.  Widely touted as the artist’s foray into male porn; there is little evidence that no more than a single male “blue film”, entitled Male Magazine, was ever screened here.

The building was home to the New York Theater Ensemble from the early 1970s through 1984, when it became the New Theater from 1985 to 1989.  In 1990 the DUO Theater, a group specializing in Latino music was here and by 2000 it shared the building with the Rod Rodgers Dance Company Studios, which leased the basement and first floor.

In 2000 a massive half-million dollar project was undertaken to restore the building and rebuild the interiors.  The result, completed in 2012, earned the Duo Multicultural Arts Center the Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award, issued by the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

 

The "faded wall paintings" and surviving architectural details were carefully restored -- photo http://www.nyc-arts.org/organizations/60082/duo-multicultural-arts-center

The building houses space for dance, visual art, theater, film and music.  Nearly derelict in the 1990s, the quirky structure with its disguised spiral fire escape (no longer usable by law) has reemerged as an unexpected architectural gem.

photo by Alice Lum

The J. A. Murray House -- No. 57 E. 66th Street

photo by Alice Lum

Among the row of comfortable brownstone residences built in the decade after the end of the Civil War along East 66^th Street near Central Park was No. 57.  Designed by J. H. Valentine and completed in 1877, it was originally the home of Ira E. Doying.   Henry V. D. Black and his wife, Jennie Prince Black, moved into the house in 1890.  It was Mrs. Black who was most well-known.  A composer and musician, she penned nearly 100 compositions.

The block was populated by upper class citizens and one can imagine an Irish-born servant girl pushing open the pocket doors to the Black’s parlor and arranging the silver card tray on the entrance hall table in preparation for Jennie Black’s afternoon teas.  The New York Times made note on January 25, 1893 that “Mrs. Black will receive on Fridays in January and February.”

But by the turn of the century, things were changing in the neighborhood.  On December 22, 1900 The New York Times reported on movements in the Fifth Avenue district.  William Sloane, it said, had bought four lots from Andrew Carnegie on 91^st Street and hinted that “he has bought the lots as the site for two fine residences which he will build for members of his family.”  The article gave an update on the Carnegie mansion “now in course of construction,” and a purchase by John Jacob Astor.

Along with other transactions, the newspaper reported that Mrs. Jennie P. Black had sold “the four-story brownstone-front dwelling, 57 East Sixty-sixth Street.”

The rising neo-Georgian Carnegie mansion would be among the first of the grand homes that departed from the lush Italian or French palaces with limestone or marble facades.   Its red brick with contrasting white stone trim would set a trend of dignity and reserve.

The same materials would be used in the new house John Archibald Murray would erect on the site of the Black residence.   Murray commissioned architect Augustus N. Allen to design the mansion.  Construction on the four-story home began in 1901.  Allen’s design melded neo-French Classic with English Georgian styling to produce a distinguished result.  The rusticated base with its columned portico would be at home in the Mayfair section of London; while the limestone frames of the second story windows dripped with carved swags.

Construction was completed in 1902.  Before long Murray and his wife, the former Alice Rathbone of Albany, had two daughters, Leslie and Barbara.   The socially-prominent Murrays would entertain some of New York’s most elite families in the house; including the debutante receptions and teas for both girls.

After Leslie’s introduction to society in 1917, she busied herself as a nurse’s aide in various hospitals throughout the city during the war years.   A member of the Junior League, she caught the eye of the dashing and eligible Major Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler, Jr.—a descendant of John Jacob Astor.

On February 8, 1920 the New-York Tribune mentioned that “One of the interesting engagements announced during the week was that of Miss Leslie Murray, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. Archibald Murray, of 57 East Sixty-sixth Street, to Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler, Jr.”  Chanler, who was a member of exclusive Knickerbocker and Racquet Clubs, had served in the 321^st Field Artillery.

When the pair was married on April 17 of that year, the Tribune noted that the “wedding united two of New York’s oldest families.”  The social importance of the event was emphasized by the appearance of Flora Payne Whitney as a bridesmaid.  The reception was held in the 66^th Street house.

The following year, in December, the Murrays hosted a dinner party for debutante daughter Barbara.  It was followed by a dance at the John Henry Hammond mansion.

With both daughters gone in 1927 John and Alice Murray sold their house.   It became home to Francis D. Bartow, his wife and two sons.  Bartow was a Vice President of J. P. Morgan and would soon hold a directorship with the General Electric Company.

Two years after the Bartows moved in the Great Depression swept the country.   In stark contrast to the their stately brick and limestone home, shanties of the homeless began appearing in small groups under bridges and in parks.   As part of its “war-against depression campaign,” the American Federation of Labor initiated a “block aid” movement.   Pledges were sought from between 10 cents to $1 per week for twenty weeks “to assist those of the needy unemployed who have not been aided by public or private agencies.” 

The Times reported on April 1, 1932 “From ‘Tin Mountain City,’ comprising four acres of shacks and emergency shelters in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, to the towering apartments of Beekman Hill in Manhattan the work of recruiting block-aiders and of obtaining pledges went on at an accelerated pace.”  The article said that the first three days of the campaign had resulted in $2,214,395 in pledges.

“The first family to be placed officially on the honor list was that of F. B. Bartow, 57 East Sixty-sixth Street,” said The Times.  “Mr. and Mrs. Bartow, their two children and eight servants had subscribed.”

Change to Francis Bartow’s professional career came in 1941.  On June 28 it was announced that Charles D. Dickey, also a Vice President of J. P. Morgan & Co., had succeeded him as director of General Electric—a post Bartow had held since 1934.  Three days later Bartow resigned his vice presidency of J. P. Morgan; although he retained his directorship.

Francis Dwight Bartow’s retirement would be short-lived.  In 1945 he died at the family’s winter home, Brewton Plantation, near Charleston, South Carolina.    His widow lived on in the 66^th Street house with her two sons until Clarence Whittemore Bartow married Elizabeth Vaux Ingersoll Woolston in Tuxedo Park on November 12, 1949.  Clarence had served for four and a half years in the Pacific and Japan with the Army, earning the rank of captain.  By now was a partner in Drexel & Co. and a vice president of the Bond Club of New York.

Clarence’s brother, Francis D. Bartow, Jr., however, never married.  A partner in Bartow, Leeds & Co., dealers in Federal, state and municipal bonds, he remained in the house on 66^th Street with his mother.   He died in New York Hospital at the age of 54 on March, 17, 1962.

A starkly different chapter in the life of the venerable home at No. 57 East 66^th Street in 1974 when it was purchased by artist Andy Warhol for $310,000.  The mansion was found for him by Jed Johnson, a young man from Sacramento who had swept floors in Warhol’s “Factory” and eventually moved in with the artist and his mother on Lexington Avenue.  

He shared the 66^th Street house with Warhol, who gave him carte blanche to decorate it with antique furniture and vintage art objects.  Warhol did not hang any of his own artwork in his house.  (This was Jed Johnson’s first real attempt at decorating and it would lead to his working with first-ranked architects and clients like Mick Jagger, Richard Gere, and Barbra Streisand.)

Johnson, who would die in the crash of TWA Flight 800 over Long Island Sound in 1996, moved out after a few years.  Andy Warhol now lived here alone, making it his private, personal territory.  Few were invited into the house, including his most personal friends.  Warhol’s love of collecting soon overran Johnson’s stately interiors.  One friend, Ed Hayes, told New York Magazine in 1988 that “you had to climb over things” to move through the house.

After Warhol’s death in 1987 four curators spent months going through the items, cataloguing more than 6,000 pieces ranging from cookie jars to Salvador Dali and Norman Rockwell paintings.

The real estate listing in 1991 defended the $3 million price tag: four bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms, two kitchens, two parlors, library, entrance gallery, 11 fireplaces, two roof terraces and an elevator.

The price seemed reasonable to Spanish couple Adolfo Barnaton and Elena Benaroche who purchased the house that same year.  But they never moved in.  Two years later they sold it for $3.35 million, and in January 2000 it was sold again, this time to Chairman of MTV Tom Freston, for $6.5 million.

A plaque commemorated 13 of the 121-years of history in the house in 1998.

On August 6, 1998 to mark Andy Warhol’s 70^th birthday a plaque was affixed to the façade to remember his residency here.   The snub to the Murray and Bartow families is, perhaps, expected.

The "Chelsea Firehouse" -- No. 323 West 21st Street

photo by Beyond My Ken

Before 1865 New York City’s fire fighting depended on an disorganized collection of volunteer companies.  When a fire broke out, young men in the neighborhood called “laddies” would scramble to the fire house.  Nearby fire houses would vie with one another to arrive at the fire first, or to become more skilled at extinguishing it.  The volunteer groups gained a reputation as rowdy, boisterous gangs whose fire houses were essentially social clubs.

The devastating fire that destroyed Barnum’s Museum in 1865 along with pressure on the State Assembly by reformers resulted in the Act of 1865 that coupled Brooklyn and New York with a paid, united “Metropolitan District” fire department.

It was about this time that a new fire house was constructed at No. 323 West 21^st Street in the burgeoning neighborhood that only thirty years earlier had still been part of Clement Moore’s family estate, Chelsea.   The red brick, four-story building pretended to be nothing more than it was:  a firehouse.  Trimmed in brownstone, the central opening was wide enough to accommodate a new horse-drawn steam pumper engine.

It would seem that by 1875 the fire house had already been given over to other uses.  William Livingston was a carriage driver who was living here on May 16 of that year.  Livingston was arrested after the horse and carriage he was driving ran over and killed 9-year old Jacob Levi.

Emma K. Beam became owner of the building in 1908 and continued leasing out the upstairs rooms.  The American Art Directory listed John Yeats as living here in 1918.  Yeats was perhaps the first tenant in the building with an artistic bent; he would certainly not be the last.

Anna Gerard sought refuge here in 1921 to escape her husband, William, who still lived in their furnished room down the block.  The pregnant woman had filed for divorce charging cruel and inhuman treatment.

In court she complained, “Each morning before leaving home [Gerard] would give me $1 with instructions that that was to provide for the house that day.  On his return he would require an accounting of the money given.  When told that the dollar had been spent for food for the house he told me I lied and that I had spent it on other men.”

Gerard, who was a worker at the Art Printing Company in Manhattan, accused her of abandonment and added that he never struck his wife.

It would seem Gerard had some control issues.

In 1929 Emma Beam sold the building to “an investor who plans to alter the structure,” according to The New York Times.    Those alterations did not happen until 6 years later, according to Building Department records, when the firehouse was converted to a “garage for more than five autos” with offices on the second floor; and one apartment each on the upper floors.

It was most likely at this time that the architectural detailing of the brownstone lintels and main entrance surround were shaved flat—a common practice in an age that viewed Victorian ornamentation as grossly passé.

Although the building plans called for offices on the second floor, they never materialized.  In 1933 dancer Franziska Marie Boas had established her studio and “Boas School” here on the second floor and stayed on for nearly two decades.

Boas lived here with her friend, Jan Gray, and a big, shaggy sheepdog, “Name.”   The edgy artist staged avante garde performances like the “by invitation only” program of dances and percussion music listed in The New York Times on June 8, 1941.  Noted as “assisting artists” were dancer Valerie Bettis, and “director of Chinese music,” Danny Seid.

Franziska Boas confronted racism in the arts with multiracial dance groups and by opening her classes to all races.   She constructed a proscenium arch in the West 21^st Street space for her shows and would sometimes invite artists to sketch the improvisational dancers.  The room was decorated with ethnic instruments from around the world collected by her anthropologist father, Franz Boas.

In the meantime, struggling artists Andy Warhol and Philip Pearlstein were sharing a subleased, vermin-infested apartment at Avenue A and St. Mark’s Place in the East Village.  When the lease was up, they searched the New York Times classifieds and found someone who wanted to share her space.

It was dancer Franziska Boas.

Warhol and Pearlstein moved in to No. 323 West 21^st Street in 1949.  Boas set the artists up on one side of the proscenium while she conducted her school and programs on the other.  Pearlstein later said that “we were able to write to our families in Pittsburgh and our friends in New York that we have moved from one roach-ridden apartment to another.”

Directly below the apartment, at ground level, was now a bus service garage and parts company.  The accommodations above were barely more tolerable.  According to Warhol’s biographer, Victor Bockris, “One of the biggest problems was the ongoing battle with the roaches, who went after the black paint they used for lettering.  Andy would leave his empty soda-pop bottle out after lunch every day and by the evening it would be full of them.”

Warhol and Pearlstein managed to pay their portion of the rent to Boas; however she was not passing it on to the landlord.  In March 1950 all four tenants and the big shaggy dog were evicted.

In 1955 the building saw its first change in ownership since 1929.  At the time of the sale The Times noted “a store” on the ground floor of the apartment building.

As the Chelsea neighborhood around it changed, the red brick firehouse did as well.  In 1998 it was converted to luxury housing with a single-car garage in the former steam engine bay, and three apartments.  The high-end conversion landed the interiors of the duplex apartment (extending from part of the ground floor through to the second) in a 1999 issue of Architectural Digest.

In the same apartment that Andy Warhol fought roaches and Franziska Boas staged dance performances, more successful tenants now live -- photo www.elliman.com

From firehouse to luxury apartments, with some cockroaches and bus parts thrown in between, the mid-Victorian building at No. 323 West 21^st Street has a rich and varied history.

The Lush 1893 Decker Building -- 33 Union Square West

Potted palms wave below the fanciful minaret in this 1893 print. -- author's collection

When the German-born John Jacob Decker left his job with the Bradbury piano manufacturing company in 1856, he and his brother invested their life savings of $4,000 to set up a new firm.  Before long Decker Brothers’ square pianos were ranked among the best in the industry.

By the end of the Civil War, the firm’s business was such that they required a building of their own and in 1869 commissioned Leopold Eidlitz to design an elaborate building on Union Square.  Here the fashionable residential area was just beginning to give way to commercial interests.

Sitting among the brownstone residences, Eidlitz’s four-story building stood in stark contrast.  Its multi-colored façade with Venetian arcades and fanciful Victorian Gothic detailing was, at the very least, nonconformist.

Pianos at the time were highly popular parlor fixtures. Well-bred young girls were necessarily schooled in piano and after-dinner recitals were de rigueur.  Every household that could afford a piano had one; and the absence of the instrument mutely spoke of the family’s financial condition.

Years later in 1919 Music Trades magazine would remember that Decker Brothers “was always included in the first five or six manufacturers of pianos of distinction.”  That reputation and success necessitated a larger building and in 1892 the brothers hired the architectural firm of Alfred Zucker to design a new headquarters.

Colorful and controversial John Edelmann was given the project.  Edelmann was an outspoken anarchist whose radical viewpoint resulted in his expulsion from the Socialist Labor Party.  He was not only a friend, but a mentor to the fledgling Chicago architect Louis Sullivan.

Working with a narrow plot–the 30-foot width of the brownstone house the Deckers razed for their first building–Edelmann’s design outdid the Venetian fantasy he replaced.  Completed in 1893, it was an amalgamation of Venetian and Moorish elements with balconies, exuberant terra cotta panels of Islamic motifs, cast iron filigree and, topping it all, a domed minaret.

A year after its completion J. S. Johnson captured the Decker Building, clearly dwarfing its neighbors, on film. -- nypl collection

Decker Brothers occupied the first two floors with their great expanses of glass for their “piano rooms.”  Alfred Zucker moved his offices into the top level and the intermediate floors were leased out.  The building rose 11 floors, making it the tallest building on the Square.

Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly was quick to review the new building.  “The most beautiful of recent high and narrow structures, and representing in its latest development terra-cotta walls and skeleton construction, is the Decker Building, on Union Square,” it said in its July 1893 issue.  “It has the advantage of facing a broad public square, which few of the high structures of Perpendicular New York have, and excites unusual attention because of its appearance and its height.”

Pitman’s Journal of Commercial Education, whose offices moved into the building shortly after its completion, chimed in.  “The Decker Building is furnished throughout with every modern invention for saving time and trouble.”  The article described the latest and best elevators, including a freight elevator “for raising supplies of every description” and a “mail shoot” that made possible dispatching letters without leaving one’s office.  The essence of modernity, “the building is lighted by the electric light.”

Union Square was the epicenter, by now, of fashionable commerce.  The year the Decker Building opened, a special correspondent from The Daily Chronicle compared it to London’s Trafalgar Square saying “Imagine a large square with buildings of all shape and sizes, from a squat three-story old-fashioned house to a slender pile which towers up thirteen stories into mid air–offices, shops, hotels, restaurants, theatre, all round; the whole having a much more continental than English aspect reminding you now of Brussels and then of Munich, with elements distinctively American.”

George W. Shiebler & Co., silversmiths took over the third floor, which The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review called “one of the most perfect business lofts to be found in that section of the metropolis.”  The sales room was fitted out in mahogany, in the rear were offices and counting rooms and a “hotel room” for visiting wholesale buyers. Behind these were the packing and polishing departments.

Not everyone was thrilled with Edelmann’s ebullient façade.  In the April 1894 issue of The Engineering Magazine, Barr Ferree called it “a building afflicted with the smallpox.”  The critic felt that eleven stories were quite enough, “a fact which must be obvious to everyone save the maker of the design, who has stretched it out at the top by means of an absurd tower that is rendered more absurd by the hipped roof pinned on on either side of it.”

Ferree went on to insult Edelmann personally, saying his design “succeeds only in telling how little the man who made it knew what he was about.  This is not unimportant in itself, but it is a pity the information had to be given in so permanent and visible a form”  He summed up his review saying, “The raising of the other buildings will not improve it, though it will lessen its aggressiveness. Fortunately the cable cars go pretty fast here.”

Ferree’s scathing opinion of the Decker Building was in the minority and Edelmann’s elaborate façade was highly praised; even the sometimes irascible Real Estate Record and Guide called it “highly artistic.”

Other early tenants included The Globe Review, a quarterly review of “literature, society, religion, art and politics”–in short everything.  In 1894 the National School of Electricity established its headquarters here and in 1897 theatrical manager Joseph Arthur had his offices in the building.

In 1902 the advertising agency George Ethridge Co. started business in one room on the 7th Floor.  Business boomed and two years later the firm took nearly the entire ninth floor.  The Women’s Municipal League set up its headquarters here in 1903 and architect Arnold W. Brunner moved in a year later.

A threat came to the Decker Building in 1902 when ground was broken for the foundation for architect Bruce Price’s Bank of the Metropolis.   The deep foundation necessary to uphold the new bank building meant that the Decker foundations would be undermined.  If remedial actions were not taken, the Decker Building could face collapse.

photo by Alice Lum

The entire south wall–weighing 76,000 pounds per foot–was lifted 1/8 of an inch and placed on double tiers of massive steel beams.  The shallow foundations were then blasted out and deeper ones were build on the bedrock.  It was, at the turn of the century, an engineering marvel.

Renowned artist Isabel Bishop had her studio on the fourth floor beginning in 1934.  She remained here until 1978, painting and drawing inspiration from the much-changed Union Square below.

More notable than Bishop, however, was Andy Warhol who moved his studio, called the “Factory,” to the sixth floor in 1968.  It was here on June 3 that same year that playwright Valerie Solanas waited patiently for Warhol and art critic Mario Amaya to return.  When they did, Solanas shot them both, hitting Warhol three times.

Solanas, who felt Warhol was attempting to wrest a screenplay from her, surrendered to police shortly after.  She was sentenced to three years in prison.  Warhol remained in the Decker Building until 1974.

By the time the Windsor Construction company purchased the building through foreclosure in 1994 it had been sorely abused.  The elaborate storefront had been obliterated, the fanciful minaret had long ago disappeared and the balconies had been stripped away.

Joseph Pell Lombardi's restoration replaced the missing balconies -- photo by Alice Lum

While they planned a conversion to residential use, the firm commissioned well-known preservation architect Joseph Pell Lombardi to restore the façade.  Lombardi replicated the first floor where Decker’s pianos were once proudly on display and reconstructed the missing balconies and other details.

photo by Alice Lum

Although it was part of restoration discussions, the minaret did not make the final plans.

The only Edelmannn structure to survive in New York City, the Decker Building now has commercial space on the first floor and 18 residential units above.  It stands as a remarkable example of fanciful Victorian architecture, a true gem on Union Square.