Fake Fruit and Nazi Sympathizers -- No. 1495 3rd Avenue

In the first years of the 20^th century the Yorkville neighborhood was second only to the Lower East Side as a German enclave.  Max J. Roth, who was born in Bavaria, ran his highly-successful printing and stationery business at No. 1496 Third Avenue.  But unlike his patrons, he did not live in Yorkville.  His home was on Crotona Avenue in the Bronx.

The affluence Roth had attained was evidenced on the night of August 20, 1905 when he closed his store a few minutes before midnight and headed home on the elevated train.  He left the 174^th Street Station at about 1 a.m. and headed through Crotona Park, as he did every night.  But on this night two thugs approached from behind and hit Roth over the head with a blackjack.

Although knocked to the ground and stunned, Roth was able to shout “Murder!” before one of the men “chocked him into insensibility,” according to The New York Times the following day.  Neighbors came to his aid and a doctor was called.  He diagnosed Roth with a fractured skull.  The thieves had gotten away with his wallet containing $300 (more than $8,000 in 2016 dollars).  They fled before taking Roth’s $600 watch and his diamond stud.

At the time of the robbery Max J. Roth was already contemplating a business move.  Just over three months later, on December 2 the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide noted that architect Charles Stegmayer was taking bids for construction of a “four-story mercantile building” for the printer.  The site was at No. 1495 Third Avenue, directly across the street from Roth’s current location.

Builders Geo. Vassar’s Son & Co. won the contract and Roth’s new building was completed in 1906.  Stegmayer had designed an eye-catching, if unusual, stone, brick and cast iron façade dominated by a yawning arch at eye level with the passing Third Avenue El.  It hogged the attention from other elements like the Corinthian pilasters, leafy swags and the fourth floor arcade.  Above it all a steep mansard attic level leaned back from the cornice.

Roth advertised his business as “wholesale and retail stationery” and operated for years with William P. Havens as his buyer.  Nevertheless, he also advertised a variety of retail items available in the store, including “sporting goods, Kodaks, toys, Victrolas, records.”

In 1917 he leased space to C. Jaeger, who had recently patented a novel product.  Jaeger had recognized the problem faced by restaurants, bakeries and other food purveyors in displaying their goods.  The food quickly spoiled, wilted or otherwise looked unappetizing.

On March 3, 1917 Scientific American reported that Jaeger was manufacturing imitation food.  “This invention relates to the art of reproducing and imitating natural objects such as fruits, vegetables, meats or the like, or manufactured food products, such as pastry, confects, and other articles of manufacture.”

The novelty display firm advertised artificial desserts in this in this 1918 ad.  The Ice Cream Trade Journal (copyright expired)

Jaeger’s artificial display products were a success.  By 1918 the company was incorporated as the Plastic Art Novelty & Specialty Co. and Max J. Roth was a one-third partner.  On November 23 that year Scientific American reported that the firm had introduced a new product: artificial cigars.  “Cigars when placed on exhibition, subjected to light and heat of the sun soon deteriorate in value,” explained the article.  The artificial display cigars faithfully reproduced “the form, size, color, manner of assembling or bunching, labeling and any other characteristic of the make.”

In April 1922 Max J. Roth reorganized his firm as M. J. Roth, Inc.  The American Stationer reported “Mr. Roth has given the concern’s department heads and employees the opportunity to acquire a permanent interest in the affairs and profits which has been enthusiastically welcomed by them.” Among those who enthusiastically welcomed the opportunity was Wm. P. Havens, who now stepped into the position of vice president.

The move may have been a way for the aging Roth to begin stepping down.  And by the first years of the Great Depression the business was closed.  Furniture dealers Willy Bolle and Emil Detzel, operating as Bolle Detzel, Inc., leased the building beginning in 1933, the same year that Adolph Hitzler became Chancellor of their native Germany.  

Detzel had immigrated to New York in 1923.  If he had an American dream, it would be a difficult one to obtain.  With World War I still fresh on the minds of authorities, his first application for American citizenship was denied “because of the frequency of his trips to Germany and doubt over the validity of a Mexican divorce from his first wife.”

As early as 1931 Bolle & Detzel had aired a small German-language radio program.  They moved the apparatus into the Third Avenue building and continued to do so, featuring “German entertainers.”  In August 1936 an advertisement announced “Bolle & Detzel Furniture House renewal of German musical program, half-hour daily except Saturday.”

The first that many New Yorkers learned of Willie Bolle’s political leanings came on July 27, 1937 when Representative Samuel Dickstein listed the names of six persons whom he described as “expert spies and agitators.”  Third on the list was Willie Bolle, “owner of furniture store at 1,495 Third Avenue, New York City and a notorious Nazi sympathizer,”

Despite growing political heat, in February 1941 Bolle Detzel, Inc. purchased the building it had been leasing for eight years.  By now it seems their half-hour radio program offered more than German music.  The change in programming did not go unnoticed by Federal agents. 

On July 30, 1942 both Willy Bolle and Emil Detzel were taken into custody by the FBI.  A statement had been received by the Bureau from the Loyal Americans of German Descent, which accused the broadcasts of “giving direct aid to the Nazis.”  The New York Times reported “They will receive a hearing before the Enemy Alien Control Board.

At mid-century the building was home to Brothers Radio Corp., a retailer of television sets and electrical supplies.  When the property was sold in 1958 it was listed as “store, loft and four apartments.”  In 1998 the building was home to the Sevilla Art Studio, then to S. Cavallo Mirror Fair, an antiques and reproductions store run by the building’s owners.

Today the care-worn structure appears vacant with a large For Sale sign plastered across the façade.  The future of the quirky building with the colorful past is unclear.

photographs by the author

The 1904 Holland Hotel -- 396-397 West Street

Years of paint are slowly peeling away, exposing the buff-colored brick -- photo by Alice Lum

In the early 1890s the Greenwich Village riverfront was lined with saloons, marine supply shops and cheap transient hotels.   At No. 373 West Street Albert A. and Rosa Goebel Adler ran a hotel that catered to the seamen who came and went.  It had the lofty-sounding name of the Hotel Transatlantic.

Three blocks north, at No. 397, Morris Stack operated a saloon.   Riverfront businesses and patrons alike often found laws inconvenient at best and on December 9, 1895 Stack’s bartender found himself behind bars for serving beer on Sunday.

At the turn of the century the area along the Hudson River from Houston Street to 14^th Street was known by law enforcement as “The Farm."  The term most likely was a holdover from Trinity Farm--the expansive tract of land bestowed on Trinity Church by Queen Anne in 1714.  On July 6, 1902 The New York Times described the neighborhood for its readers who were unlikely to visit.

‘”The Farm’ affords enough facilities for lounging, concealment and escape through parks, trucks, piles of lumber, stacked goods, and open sheds and shanties, and for years, especially in fine weather, it has at night been the resort of outcasts, drunkards, dissolute people, and a dangerous class of deprecators and petty highwaymen.  From the latter class many notorious footpads have been graduated.

“Protection from these evildoers has been chiefly asked by seafaring people whose craft are moored to the docks along the North [Hudson] River front…Complaints have also been made of the ‘growler gangs,’ who are part of the make-up of this undesirable community.”

As part of a clean-up of The Farm, police raided Stack’s saloon on July 5, 1902, and arrested 27-year old Albert McNeil, “a reputed cockfighter,” and 21-year old Michael Mulqueen of No. 34 Morton Street, whom The New York Times called a “lounger.”

A year later Albert and Rosa Adler would eliminate Morris Stack’s saloon.  They obtained No. 397 and the adjoining corner property at No. 396 from Catherine A. Q. Trowbridge in January 1903.  The existing structures were demolished and the couple commissioned architect Charles Stegmayer to design a hotel on the site.

The resulting three-story Holland Hotel, completed in 1904, was three stories tall and contained thirty-eight rooms.    Stegmayer’s Renaissance-inspired design took full advantage of the corner setting with a rounded turret-like oriel that ran the height of the structure.   It was supported by a slender cast iron column at the chamfered corner entrance.

Constructed of beige-colored brick with terra cotta accents, its regimented rows of arched openings separated by ambitious pilasters gave the $20,000 structure a look of respectability.  The appearance was deceptive.

Six years after its completion the building was lost in foreclosure.   The Crescent-Star Realty Co., associated with the Jacob Hoffman Brewery, took over the hotel’s operation.   The hotel was renamed the Clyde Hotel; but a new name and new owners did not improve the neighborhood nor the patronage.

The Sun noted on February 17, 1919 that “Just as New York is the lodestone that draws young men from other towns with its larger opportunities in legitimate business for piling up income taxes, so is it the Mecca nowadays for youthful desperadoes who aspire to a high life in their chosen profession, the stickup game.”

Almost surely a conical cap sat above the rounded corner -- photo by Alice Lum

The riverfront neighborhood around the Holland Hotel was still rough and crime ridden.  It drew local residents John Cronin and James Redden who had “picked up a couple of revolvers in a clothing store,” according to The Sun.

Loaded firearms and liquor in a seedy saloon made for a dangerous mix when around midnight the men “dropped into the café attached to a seamen’s hotel at 396 West street,” according to the newspaper.

George Roswell, a marine engineer staying at the hotel was in the bar talking to about a dozen other sailors.  Cronin and Redden decided he was staring at them.  When they asked “What are you lookin’ at?” and got the reply “Nothing,” they took offense.

“They decided to finish their argument with their revolvers,” reported The Sun.  “None of the bullets struck Roswell, but he concluded not to stay and strain his luck.”

During his retreat he was struck in the right leg.  Two detectives, a block away, heard the discharges and saw the stream of sailors rushing from the hotel bar.

“The detectives gathered the youths to their arms and relieved them of the revolvers, for which Cronin and Redden admitted quite simply they had no further use, as their programme for the day had been shot to pieces.”

Charles E. Bacon leased the hotel in 1926 and ran it for over two decades.  He announced intentions of “extensive alterations” and installed a barbershop and men’s clothing store on the ground floor.

In 1929 the ground floor was a mish-mash of small businesses -- NYPL Collection

In 1934 Crescent Star Realty regained the hotel in foreclosure.  When the firm sold the building in August 1949, The New York Times erroneously reported that “it was held in the Eighteen Nineties by the present sellers, who later sold it and then reacquired it.”

The building continued to be home to various businesses at street level throughout the 20^th century.   By 1970s the neighborhood was no longer maritime and Greenwich Village had become the center of New York’s gay culture.  In the early 1970s the old saloon became Peter Rabbits, a bar popular with a young, black gay clientele.  The bar remained in the space until around 1988.

The 21^st century saw a rebirth of the once-sordid riverfront and luxury condomiums and trendy restaurants replaced the former seedy bars and shops.   Around 2006 the first floor of the hotel became home to the upscale Italian restaurant Antica Venezia. The space where Village thugs once shot their revolvers in a crowded bar was now an Italian restaurant with a fireplace and, according to Crain’s New York Business that year, “an ebullient waitstaff.”

Terra cotta cartouches cap the second story windows and creative brickwork forms decorative panels -- photo by Alice Lum

The Italian restaurant was replaced by a French restaurant which, too, closed its doors.  In the meantime, the upper stories of the Holland Hotel building, despite severe alterations at street level, are amazingly intact.