The 1883 236 East Sixth Street

photograph by Carole Teller

On January 5, 1882, Joseph Schwarzschild and Ferdinand Sulzberger sold the four "five-story stone front tenements" at 230 to 236 East Sixth Street to architects and builders William P. and Ambrose M. Parsons for $48,500 (about $1.48 million in 2026 terms).  The brothers replaced the buildings with four identical structures.  Completed within the year, they were faced in brownstone.  Their neo-Grec design included centered entrances above short stoops.  The windows sat within prominent architraves upheld by scrolled brackets and their molded cornices sat upon corbeled piers.  Cast metal cornices, more in keeping with the earlier Italianate style, crowned the buildings.  The Parsons brothers sold the completed row on November 29, 1882.

Like the others in the row, 236 East Sixth Street was a "double flat," meaning there were two apartments per floor--one each on either side of the centered hallway.  They became home to a variety of tenants.  Living here in 1895 was William Bader, who worked for the city as "assistant to deputy sheriff."  He earned $1,000 a year, or about $40,000 today.  And Dr. Leopold Hibbe and his wife, Anna, and their child lived here as early as 1897.  Sharing the apartment was Leopold's brother, Dr. Henry Hibbe, and their widowed mother.

Leopold Hibbe was born in 1866 and graduated from the Medical Department of the University of the City of New York (where he had been an athlete) in 1891.  On the morning of March 2, 1897, he sat at his desk writing.  The New York Journal reported that he "struck a match to light his pipe."  It broke and the burning portion fell into a waste basket filled with papers.  Hibbe panicked and, rather than rushing the flaming basket into the street, he ran outside to get help.  The New York Journal said that in doing so, he forgot that his little child was asleep on the sofa in the room.  The article continued, "When he remembered it he could not get back."  Happily, Patrolman Wichman courageously rushed into the flaming room and rescued the child.

Dr. Hibbe had his wits together seven months later.  On October 25, 1897, The New York Times reported that the Hibbe apartment "served as the theatre for a scene in which a night marauder and a physician were the chief actors, and which had a ludicrous as well as a dangerous side."  In the middle of the night, Hibbe awakened to footsteps in the hall.  He discovered an intruder shoving "a few odds and ends into his trousers pockets."  The article said that Dr. Hibbe "caught the man he had been following unceremoniously by the throat and threw him to the floor."  The "rough-and-tumble scuffle" aroused Henry Hibbe who entered the affray.  Finally two policemen arrived and took into custody the "submissive and badly battered prisoner."

Within five years, the extended Hibbe family had moved to 23 Stuyvesant Street.  (There the two physicians were arrested, charged with performing an abortion.)  Another doctor, Albert S. Gombar moved into 236 East Sixth Street in 1909.

In the meantime, John Graham and his wife occupied an apartment at the turn of the century.  The 25-year-old was waiting for an elevated train at Second Avenue and 23rd Street on the afternoon of February 11, 1900 when he tumbled down the two-story tall staircase to the pavement below.  A witness said, "He was a laboring man, evidently, as he wore overalls and jumper, and his hands were soiled and calloused."

A doctor was summoned.  Before he arrived, two priests happened by and noticed the growing crowed.  One of them noticed "a little brown ribbon which came just over the edge of the injured man's shirt," reported The New York Times.  "He's a Catholic, Father," said the priest to his companion.  "See, he wears a scapular."  The priests knelt beside Graham, who was unconscious.  "The crowd fell back reverently, the Catholic ones uncovering and joining silently in prayer," said the article.

Dr. Graham Roberts transported John Graham to a hospital.  He told reporters that the young man's skull was fractured.  Tragically, he was given little hope of surviving.  Graham, who had just a nickel in his pocket, had not been drinking.  Doctors opined "that when near the top of the stairs he was attacked by heart disease and fell."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Minnie Wagner lived here in 1911.  She worked as a sewing machine operator on the eighth floor in the Triangle Waist Company at 23-29 Washington Place.  On Saturday morning, March 11, that year, she went to work as always.  The day would end tragically, however.  At around 4:45, just 15 minutes before the workday ended, fire broke out.  Minnie testified later:

[I] was near my machine when I heard the cry of "Fire!"  I rushed to the Washington Place door, and there saw Eva Harris...and she rushed by me and shouted to me, "My, God, the door is locked!"  After that I saw Louis Brown, who was wiping his hand, drop the towel and come to where we were standing, and, he said, "Wait a minute, girls, and don't get excited.  I will open the door for you."  He reached in his pocket and took out a key and turned the lock.  The door would not open, and he smashed another lock.  It then opened and we went out.

Minnie Wagner was one of the fortunate women in the building that day.  Trapped inside on two floors, 146 female workers perished, having either jumped to their deaths or burned. 

Emily Davisson was convalescing from an operation on April 26, 1915, and her 21-year-old son, Benjamin, was suffering from pneumonia.  They occupied a fifth-floor apartment.  Both were in their beds that day and were unaware of "the shout of fire which drove the other ten families from the building," according to the New-York Tribune.  Someone ran to a fire alarm box, but it was stuck.  The newspaper said that Ladder Company 3 was "late in responding to the blaze because the alarm box refused to open until after a five-minute struggle."

It was only when smoke and flames entered their apartment did Emily and Benjamin Davisson realize they were in danger.  Policeman Healy saw the panicked pair as they clung to their windowsill.  "They intended to jump," said the article, but Healy "warned them to stay where they were."  Minutes later, fire fighters arrived.  A ladder was raised and the Davissons were rescued.  The newspaper said that the damage to the building was estimated at about $331,000 in today's money.

At least two more physicians would live and work here.  Dr. Michael Shander was listed at the address in 1916, and Dr. William Steinhauser was here in 1927.  Among Dr. Steinhauser's neighbors in the building at the time was Rabbi Julius Boloker of the Congregation First Mihailener and the Independent Burdujener.

By the third quarter of the century, the East Village neighborhood had a more avant-garde demographic.  Head shops occupied former deli spaces and Mod Art posters hung in store windows.  In 1970, 22-year-old Bruce McKeithen, a Bernard B. Baruch College student, occupied an apartment here.

On May 21 that year, Narcotics Division detectives arrested a Barnard College co-ed, Andrea Rosenberg, in her West End Avenue apartment.  Police called her "a major supplier of drugs" at Columbia University.  They discovered $100,000 worth of illegal drugs in her apartment.  Unfortunately for Bruce McKeithen, he and two young Columbia students were in the apartment at the time of the raid.  They were arrested for drug possession.

photograph by Carole Teller

At some point, the brownstone was painted cream and white.  The original stoop ironwork and entrance doors survive.

many thanks to artist Carole Teller for suggesting this post

The Sixth Street School - No. 630-634 East 6th Street

The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Charles Loring Brace along with a few other concerned men in 1853.  Brace had been, according to King’s Handbook of New York City, “engaged in teaching some of the little arabs of the streets.”  The Society was incorporated in 1856 “for the education of the poor by gathering children who attend no schools into its industrial schools, caring and providing for children in lodging houses, and procuring houses for them in the rural districts and in the West.”

A year before the Society was organized, Emily Thorn Vanderbilt was born. The second daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt, she grew to a beautiful young woman who was as much interested in philanthropic causes as the social whirl into which she had been born.  In 1872 she married the wealthy William Douglas Sloane and her generous charitable patronage continued.

Emily Thorn Vanderbilt -- from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In 1886 she and her husband founded the Sloane Maternity Hospital; and in 1888 she personally financed the creation of the Sloane Hospital for Women with a gift of more than $1 million.  That same year she presented the Children’s Aid Society with a school building in the depressed tenement area of the Lower East Side.

For nearly all its buildings the Society turned to the architectural firm of Vaux & Radford, which would eventually design 12 Children’s Aid Society projects.  Calvert Vaux, best known for his work in designing Central Park, had partnered with George Kent Radford in 1872.  The Sixth Street School building would follow the same lines as their other Children’s Aid Society buildings—a blend of Victorian Gothic and Flemish Revival styles.

Strikingly similar to structures like their 14th Ward Industrial School, opened in 1888, and the Elizabeth Home for Girls, completed in 1892, the Sixth Street School building featured an asymmetrical design which included a three-story angled bay, prominent stepped gable, copper-clad dormer and terra cotta panels.

A decorative terra cotta panel integrates the monogram of the Children's Aid Society.

Not only did Emily Vanderbilt Sloane donate the building, she continued to pay for the costs of maintaining the facility.  It was, in effect, her school.

Unlike the academic classes stressed in public schools, the Children’s Aid Society schools within the tenement neighborhoods focused on industrial and domestic arts classes.   Poverty-stricken students needed desperately to learn a trade by which they could earn a living before going out in the world.   In addition to academic basics, boys were taught skills like woodworking, while girls received lessons in nutrition and sewing.  The Sixth Street School also provided its students what were often their only nourishing meals.

In November 1892 the report of the Society noted “The Sixth Street school, under the generous support of Mrs. William D. Sloane, continues its good work among the poor of the east side.  The primary and industrial classes are most successful.”

Each year Emily Sloane gave the Society her check for $3,000 to maintain the school—a little more than $80,000 in 2016.  By the turn of the century inflation had increased that amount to $3,450.  And every year she provided Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners to the youths; a cost of about $150 for each Thanksgiving and $300 for Christmas in the 1890s.  Without these events, the tenement-dwelling children would have no real holiday meals.

The importance of the holiday meals was evidenced on Christmas Eve 1897 when The New York Times reported “The little ones who attend the Sixth Street School, some 350 in number, had a rare treat on Wednesday afternoon.  Mrs. William Douglas Sloane, who has long been especially interested in the work of the school, gave them a Christmas dinner.”

In 1908 the Sixth Street School imitated a new class—one for aspiring office boys.  In the days before fax machines, email, or wide-spread telephone use, office boys were invaluable not only for mundane chores, but for running messages between businesses.  The New York Times described the class on November 8.  Saying that classes which met three times a week taught the trade “as a fine art,” the article explained “They diligently copy letters, striving not to leave out words or letters; they anxiously tie bundles in the most orthodox fashion.”

But special focus was given to the running of messages.  “More than this, they study New York City geography.  When this was mastered they were promised a telephone switchboard on which to achieve grace and dexterity in mixing the plugs.  Before this desirable advancement was reached each pupil had to show proficiency in New York City geography.”

More than simply knowing streets, alleys, and avenues; the boys were required to make on-their-feet decisions.  “It includes learning to judge when it is best to hurry and spend two fares, or walk and use one, all from the tone of voice of the given order.”  The boys were also trained in thinking out a problem if they realized they had been given a wrong address.

As part of their training, the students were sent out into the streets with assignments—some with purposely incorrect addresses, some with implied urgency of the task.  The instructor then waited, timing each boy’s performance.

William Douglas Sloane died in 1915.  Five years later Emily married Henry White, who had been a member of the American Peace Commission and signed the Treaty of Versailles.  White died at their massive Lenox, Massachusetts summer house, Elm Court, on July 15, 1927.

Emily Vanderbilt Sloane White continued to maintain the Sixth Avenue School.  On June 27, 1928 The Times reported on the 34 graduates of the Sixth Street School.  The article noted “During the year 18,002 nutrition lunches were provided and 31,832 bottles of milk consumed by the scholars, who were being trained in healthy dietetic habits.” 

The newspaper pointed out that the school’s outreach went out into the tenement neighborhood. “The school nurse made 431 visits to homes and 1,274 children were treated in the school dispensary.”  Yet despite even these efforts, the impoverished neighborhood children faced severe problems.  Three days before Christmas that same year The Times noted “About 260 children suffering from cardiac trouble and malnutrition, who are being treated at the Sixth Street School Health Centre of the Children’s Aid Society…were guests at a Christmas dinner given yesterday by Mrs. Henry White, the former Emily Vanderbilt…The children ranged in age from 4 to 10 years old.”

With the advent of the Great Depression, Emily Sloane White’s school building would be needed for other purposes.  In 1932 it was converted by the Salvation Army and Y.M.C.A., which opened it on March 1, 1932 as “Cheer Lodge,” a men’s homeless shelter.  Here 50 to 100 homeless and out-of-work men were housed.  New Yorkers were asked to donate games, jig-saw puzzles and books to the ironically-named shelter.

Elmer Galloway, executive secretary of the Bowery Y.M.C.A. spoke of the new shelter two weeks later, pointing out that “homeless and jobless young men, driven in from the cold streets, stood in line for lodgings and meals.”  He was proud that the Cheer Lodge offered these men a facility to wash and iron their clothes.

“This day laundry, where destitute men may tidy up and which is operated by the cooperation of civic and welfare organizations,” he said, included “twelve tubs in use all day, in which the men wash their clothing, dry them by gas heat, and then iron them with gas-heated flat-irons.”

On March 13, 1936 Cheer Lodge was transformed from a men’s shelter to one for women and children.  A disturbing incident occurred two years later in August after Margaret Daly, who came from Chicago, temporarily moved in with her three year old son, Robert. 

Margaret became friendly with an 18-year old resident, Vivian Platte.  What she could not have known was that Vivian also went by the alias Lauries March.  And the alias Helen Major. 

On Wednesday, August 30 a terrified Margaret Daly realized that Bobby was missing.  Officials soon noticed that Vivian Platte had also disappeared.  Police blanketed the city searching for the teen-aged kidnapper and the boy.

The search ended on September 2, 1938 when Vivian and Bobby were found in another settlement house, at No. 184 Eldridge Street.  Vivian explained herself matter-of-factly.  According to The Times, she “told police she took the child because she believed her chances of getting a position would be enhanced by its presence.”

Vivian was held without bail.  She insisted that she had been the ideal custodian of the boy.  “She said she spent $1.60, all the money she had, for milk for the child.”

Mary Nagel typified the heart-wrenching conditions of some of the women sheltered here.  The 32-year old was brought here on July 5, 1939 after neighbors living near a condemned building on East 37^th Street told authorities they suspected someone was living in the partly-demolished structure.  Police investigated and found Mary with her seven children, including a nine-month old, “in a room so bare of furnishings that they had to sit and sleep on the rubbish-filled floor,” according to a newspaper.

Mary explained that her husband had abandoned her about 10 days earlier.  Fearing her children would be taken from her, she sneaked them into the abandoned building.  When she went to work as a hospital janitress, her 10-year old daughter Rose watched over the other children.

As she feared, the children were taken to the Children’s Aid Society for care and the infant was sent to the Foundlings Home.  Mary Nagel was directed to stay at the Women’s Shelter on East 6^th Street “until adequate assistance could be provided for her.”

The increase of jobs for women brought on by World War II eliminated the need for the Women’s Shelter.  On June 8, 1943 it was closed and the few remaining residents were moved to the Municipal Lodging House on East 25^th Street.

The former Sixth Street School building became the new home for the Stuyvesant Town Development’s Children’s Center, which had outgrown its Avenue B facility.  The building was once again a Children's Aid Society facility--now appropriately called the Children’s Aid Society’s Sloane Center.  Here the Center offered space to the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Children’s Aid Society and once children were taught about nutrition and other relevant courses.

Throughout the decades the Sloane Center would host annual events like the “Anything on Wheels Derby” which pitted child against child in races like toddlers pushing baby doll carriages, and boys maneuvering their red wagons.  Children who took cooking classes—boys and girls alike—were eligible to participate in the Nourishing-Meals Contest.  And every year the children voted on Policeman of the Year, based on a local officer’s work with youngsters.

In 1975 the building was taken over by Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Church after its 1847 building was demolished.  The congregation remained here until the completion of its new church building on East 9^th Street in 1993.

The church’s former landlord at No. 630 East 6^th Street, the Lower East Side Service Center, operated a variety of social programs from the building, and then in August 1999 began an alteration into 40 apartments to house AIDS victims.  In converting the building, architectural firm Harden & Van Arnam restored the time-weary Vaux & Radford façade.

photographs by the author