The 1816 Van Rensselaer House -- No. 149 Mulberry Street

photo by Alice Lum

When Stephen Van Rensselaer built his modest two-story house at No. 153 Mulberry Street in 1816, he was already 52 years old and had an impressive political (if not military) resume.  Born into a highly prestigious and wealthy family—his father was Stephen van Rensselaer II, the 9^th patron of Rensselaerswyck, and his mother was Catharina Livingston, daughter of Philip Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence—he had studied at Princeton and Harvard University. 

In 1783 at the age of 19 he married Margarita Schuyler who, too, came from an old and highly respected family.  Her father, Philip Schuyler was renowned as a Revolutionary War general.  One year after Margarita’s death in 1801, Stephen married Cornelia Paterson, the daughter of former New Governor William Paterson, Cornelia.

By now Stephen had sat in the New York State Assembly, the New York State Senate and had run for the office of New York State Governor.  His decided defeat as major-general leading troops in the Battle of Queenston heights during the War of 1812 had led to the end of the military career.

In 1816, the same year that the house was completed, Van Rensselaer was appointed to the Erie Canal Commission—a position he would hold for 23 years.  He would go on to serve as a member of the New York State Constitutional Convention in 1821; be elected to the House of Representatives a year later; and was a regent of the University of the State of New York.

Van Rensselaer was among the richest men in America with a fortune of about $10 million, equal to about $68 billion today.  The family lived in on the sprawling 1,200 square mile Van Rensselaer estate which Stephen inherited from his father when he turned 21.  But he owned an enormous portion of Manhattan real estate and the new house on Mulberry Street was part of it.

The house was one of many Van Rensselaer erected in the area.  There was nothing especially glamorous about the Federal-style residence; yet it was relatively spacious and acceptable for a fairly well-to-do merchant class family.  Upon its completion it was assessed by the City for $3,750—about $60,000 today.

photo by Alice Lum

Faced on three sides with wooded clapboards, the street façade was clad in Flemish bond brick.  A tall stone stoop rose above the brownstone English basement to the entrance where Federal-style pilasters framed the paneled door.  Side lights and an overlight allowed sunlight to illuminate the entrance hall inside.

A Dutch-style gambrel roof was punctured by two tall dormers with broken pediments.  The house stepped away from the commonplace with the wonderfully decorative paneled stone lintels. 

Especially handsome paneled lintels graced the openings -- photo by Alice Lum

At least by 1837 the house was home to Noah Jarvis whom historian Charles Alexander Nelson described in 1911 as “a man of fine literary attainments and cultivated taste and enjoyed the society of men and culture and refinement.”  Jarvis very well may have been the original owner.  He was a trusted friend of Van Rennselaer and “managed his large estate scattered throughout the different wards of the city,” according to Nelson.

Jarvis and his wife, the former Elizabeth White, had eight children.  While living here Jarvis was also a principal of the American Gas Light Company and President of the Mechanic’s Fire Insurance Company at No. 2 Franklin Square.

For inexplicable reasons, one year before Noah Jarvis’s death on August 11, 1842, the house was moved from the corner of Mulberry and Grand Street to No. 149 Mulberry—two lots away.  As the decade drew to a close it was home to I. E. Hyde, then in the 1850s to the George Kellock family.

Kellock ran the harness business of George Kellock & Son.  Another son, James K. Kellock, ran his “telegraph” business from the house; while a third son George Kellock, Jr., was well known as the Superintendent of Outdoor Poor—essentially the 19^th century equivalent of today’s Department of Homeless Services.

By the 1880s the neighborhood around No. 149 Mulberry Street, once an enclave of middle and upper middle class families, was crowded with immigrants and low-paid laborers as Federal style homes were demolished to make way for tenement buildings. 

As the neighborhood changed, so did the neighbors.  Mrs. Lizzie Allen was living in No. 149 in February 1880 when she let her guard down and Mary Donovan picked her pocket.  On February 28 Mary was arrested.  The New York Times said “The prisoner is well known to the Police under the aliases of Roache and Pursell.  In March 1870, she was sent to State Prison for two years and a half for picking pockets during a funeral at a church, and in 1875 was arrested and sentenced for six months for stealing lace from a Grand-street store.”

Six months later the tenement next door at Nos. 145-149 Mulberry Street caught fire. “The burning building looked like a towering mass of fire,” reported The Sun on August 27, 1880, “and the tenements that clustered around it were in danger of destruction.”  The residents of the burning building were all evacuated; but buildings to the rear and sides were also endangered.

“The rear buildings at 153 Baxter street sheltered eight families of colored people, numbering twenty-six persons.  There were ten families, thirty-six persons, in the front building at 141 Mulberry street.  The rear building, a very old structure, sheltered fifteen persons.”   

Firemen realized that containing the fire was “hopeless,” but poured water on the adjoining buildings, including No. 149 Mulberry.  Despite their efforts, the house caught fire.

“The only other building injured is a two-story and attic dwelling at 149 Mulberry street, with a brick front and wooden rear, and the blaze in this dwelling was soon extinguished.”  No one was hurt, but the damage to the house was estimated to be around $400 or about $9,000 today.

A variety of boarders lived in the house within the next few years while an Italian cheese factory operated in the basement.  Lazarus Cohen, a tailor, was here in 1890 when he was caught registering to vote in two separate election districts.  When he attempted to vote that November he was arrested at the polls. 

Anna Mertens lived here around the same time.  On January 19, 1894 she petitioned $25 a week alimony from her husband, Herman, whom she said had deserted her.

Within months all the boarders would have to find new homes, however.  The neighborhood was by now known as Little Italy as the tenements filled with Italian immigrants.  The extremely wealthy socialite and philanthropist Mrs. Anson Phelps Stokes purchased the house and converted it to The Free Italian Library and Reading-Rooms. 

On July 23, 1894 The Sun reported that “The free Italian library and reading rooms, provided chiefly by Mrs. Anson Phelps Stokes, and situated in a house formerly used by Italians as a cheese factory at 149 Mulberry street, was open for inspection yesterday.”

The newspaper described the layout.  “The institution is confined to two floors, the first and second.  One the first floor is the library and reading room.  The room was decorated with American and Italian flags.  The library has more than 200 volumes and will soon be enlarged.  There are, besides, Italian and American newspapers.”

The Free Library was also intended as a means to keep the impoverished children off the streets and out of trouble.  On the second floor were two rooms—one for girls and the other for boys.   The Sun said “In the rear is the room where girls may cluster about a big table and sew or play games or talk.”  Reverend Antonio Arrighi, the pastor of an Italian church nearby, watched over the boys’ room from a desk there.  Here the boys could play dominoes, checkers or parches.

“An organ in the boys’ room and a piano on the library floor will give the Italian boys and girls a chance to sing and play on proper occasion,” noted the newspaper.

The Free Italian Library and Reading Room would remain in the house for over a decade.  In 1904 the New-York Tribune detailed the work of the institution.  “With the help of Mr. and Mrs. Arrighi and their son, Mrs. Stokes carries on a quiet work here which is doing a vast amount of good in the neighborhood.  An average of two hundred and fifty men use the reading rooms every day, and upstairs there are rooms for young people and children’s clubs.”

By now there was a staff of 14 teachers for the children and in the basement was a clinic with several nurses “to care for childish ailments and instruct the mothers in the proper dressing of burns and treatment of sore throat,” said the newspaper.

On January 2, 1904, Mrs. Anson Phelps Stokes personally oversaw a belated Christmas celebration for the immigrant children.  Two hundred Italian girls who attended the sewing school connected with the library were each given a box of candy, an orange and a doll.  The New-York Tribune remarked that “The children, though coming from homes of poverty, looked remarkable neat and clean.”

During the early years of the 20^th century New York was plagued with Mafia-like and anarchist groups like the Black Hand.  The organizations routinely terrorized citizens with bombings and murders and threats.

By 1911 the Italian Free Library was gone and No. 149 Mulberry Street was home to Caputo’s Restaurant.  On November 29, 1911 detectives were congratulating themselves with the arrest of Giovannia Rizzo, “the milkman bomb thrower.”  One detective said “Looks as though there wouldn’t be any more bomb explosions around here.”

The detective spoke too soon.  As they were marching Rizzo into the station house, a bomb detonated at No. 149 Mulberry Street.  The New York Times said that when the detectives arrived, “The broken windows and a crowd of frightened men issuing from the two-story frame building at 149 Mulberry Street located this as the scene of the explosion.”

The newspaper said that the explosion “shook the building to it foundations and poured plaster from the ceiling on the heads of the diners in Vergilio Caputo’s restaurant on the stoop floor.”  One patron, Brian G. Hughes, ran out and kept going until he reached a barber shop down the street.  “Bits of spaghetti with its tomato sauce and wet blotches of Chianti adorned Mr. Hughes’s clothing, for his dinner had been upset into his lap,” said The Times.

Fifteen diners had been in Caputo’s and upstairs, in the Humbert Association’s rooms, were about 30 men.  Vincent Selorani was one of the Humbert Association’s members there that night.  He had been playing cards and was about to leave for home.  As he went into the washroom to wash his hands, someone rushed by him on his way out.  An instant later the bathroom exploded.

“Selorani was blown out on the stairs, and fell to the first, floor,” said The Times. “He did not stop to investigate, but the police, who came after things had quieted down, found that the bomb had been set in the bathtub, which it had blown into a small roll of twisted tin.”

Police surmised that the bomb was detonated by someone holding a grudge against the Humbert Association or one of its members, or perhaps by someone who had applied for membership but was denied.

The restaurant’s owner, Virgilio Caputo was no choir boy, either.  A year later, on October 17, 1912, he was held on $1,000 bail on the charge of intimidating a witness.  Frank Demaro, who lived at No. 153 Mulberry Street, had charged Paul Degario of swindling him out of $54.  On the day of the trial, Demaro was met on the steps of the Criminal Courts Building by Virgilio Caputo who “offered him $40 to leave town, with the alternative of a bullet,” reported The Evening World.

A regular at Caputo’s restaurant was 25-year old Jerry Maida, a police informer.  Siding with law enforcement in crime-ridden Little Italy was a dangerous game.  On April 29, 1913 as he walked along West 41^st Street he was gunned down.  “Five revolver shots stretched Maida lifeless on the pavement,” said The New York Times.

Police arrested the 19-year old shooter, James Jesto, along with  cohorts Sante Barbara, Frank Tedesco, and Joseph Viscerta.

In 1932 the facade of No. 149 is painted white.  The gambrel roof and clapboard siding are visible in this shot.  The original Federal doorway still survives.  Next door a billboard in Italian advertises a "stable bank."  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Throughout the 20^th century the parlor floor of No. 149 Mulberry Street would house an Italian Restaurant.  In the 1930s it was home to Villa Nova Restaurant and for decades in the second half of the century it was Paolucci’s Restaurant.

After two centuries of use, the architectural elements are miraculously intact.  photo by Alice Lum

In 2009 the former house was converted to commercial purposes.  A restoration of sorts cleaned and pointed the brickwork and replaced the decaying sections of the dormers.  Although the entranceway has been totally redone, and replacement windows installed, the 1816 house is remarkably intact.

Henry Bacon's 1907 Union Square Savings Bank

photo by Alice Lum

In 1905 wealthy lumber dealer David J. Dannat was among the last residential holdouts on Union Square.  The 55-year old lived at No. 20 Union Square East and was deemed by The New York Times to be “one of the most widely known lumber dealers in New York.”

Once lined with elegant brick or brownstone homes, the park had seen the incursion of commerce in the years since the end of the Civil War, and the arrival of large business buildings in the past decade.  Now Dannat’s brownstone home was among the last relics of a more tranquil time on the Square.

Next door, at No. 22, was the old Greek Revival row house which had been taken over in 1867 by the Institution for the Savings of Merchants’ Clerks.  After nearly four decades in the old mansion, in 1904 the bank changed its name to the Union Square Savings Bank. 

In May 1905 David J. Dannat died in his old Union Square mansion.  It would be only a matter of months before the house came down.  On December 9, 1905 The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported the Union Square Savings Bank planned a brick and stone “bank and apartments” on the site of Nos. 20 and 22 Union Square East.  The $275,000 building would be designed by architect Henry Bacon.  The day before the Record & Guide made the announcement, the New-York Tribune described the plans filed by Bacon.

“It is to front 52 feet in Union Square and 125 feet in the street, with a façade of Troy white granite in the classic Greek style, adorned with an ornamental portico with four Corinthian columns.”  The main bank building was to be a single, grand story tall; while the rear would be four stories.  The bank would use this section in part for an ingenious and innovative purpose.  The Tribune pointed out that it would be “furnished as a dwelling for employes of the bank.”

Following the Financial Panic of 1893 architects strove to give bank structures the appearance of stability—as though they had existed for centuries.  The Architecture Record emphasized “The effect of the structure must be one of great importance and simplicity.  It must make on the depositors the impression of being a perfectly safe place to leave their money and valuables.”  In addition, the 1893 World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago had popularized grandeur in architecture as a means to enforce “order, clarity and sobriety”—hallmarks of the City Beautiful Movement.

Greek and Roman temple architecture fit snugly into the mold and by the time Bacon sat down at his drafting table there were numerous temple-inspired banking buildings in Manhattan.  But the Union Square Savings Bank would stand apart.  The architect, who dealt mostly with public commissions (he would design some 50 monuments during his career) would bring that sense of monumental grandeur to Union Square.

 

The 1910 book How to Know Architecture cleverly removed the surrounding buildings in this photograph (copyright expired)

The granite-faced building, completed in 1907, was distinguished by four soaring fluted Corinthian columns that upheld the entablature and parapet.  Along 15^th Street they were mimicked by matching pilasters.  Inside, Bacon’s “absolutely fire-proof” building featured a cavernous banking room outfitted in marble and bronze and lit by stained glass skylights 60 feet above.  Bacon floored the banking room with black-and-white mosaic tiles—an expected feature of Edwardian business space.  It was the composition of the tiles that was out of the ordinary.  The interlocking tiles, manufactured by the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., were made of rubber.  The company boasted that its flooring tiles were “among the materials used to make this building superior and modern in every respect.” 

A Goodyear advertisement in a 1908 issue of Architecture depicted the banking room interior.  The ad called the rubber tiles "resilient, non-slippery, noiseless, long-wearing, and superior."  The pilasters reflect the classical facade outside.  (copyright expired)

A decade after the building opened its doors, in April 1917, the United States was drawn into World War I.  The Union Square Savings Bank joined nearly all other Manhattan banks in selling Liberty Bonds to aid in the war effort.  But one clerk in the bank, Halliday S. Smith wanted to do more.

The Union Square Savings Bank was listed among the institutions where Liberty Bonds could be purchased -- The Evening World, October 17, 1918 (copyright expired)

Smith tried to enlist, but was, according to the New-York Tribune, “disqualified for military service on account of a dislocation of the shoulder.”  Undeterred, the enthusiastically patriotic young man enlisted as a Y. M. C. A. hut secretary in November 1917.  Smith was sent to France where he was working among the wounded in the trenches during a heavy bombardment on May 25, 1918.  The Germans initiated a gas attack on the troops but Smith remained at his post “regardless of personal peril.” 

On Sunday June 2, 1918 word arrived in New York that the Union Square Savings Bank clerk had died in the trenches, overcome by the lethal fumes.

 

The patriotic and idealistic bank clerk Halliday Smith, became a victim of war -- The New York Tribune, June 2, 1918 (copyright expired)

By now work was well underway in Washington D.C. on Henry Bacon’s most well-known structure—the Lincoln Memorial.  Because of the massive classical columns of both buildings, it is tempting to compare the Parthenon-inspired memorial to the architect’s Union Square Savings Bank.  The similarities, however, essentially end there.

Just months before the Stock Market Crash, prosperous New Yorkers bustle around the Union Square Savings Bank in 1929 photograph by Irving Underhill from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York, http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWQOKD2P&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

Although the Union Square Savings Bank extended its presence across the city with branch banks beginning in 1923; it retained No. 20 Union Square East as its headquarters.  Twice, in 1937 and in 1961, the interiors were updated and during the last renovation a new entrance designed by B. L. Smith was installed.  In 1968 the bank became the United Mutual Savings Bank after a merger with the Kings County Savings Bank; and in 1982 it was acquired by the American Savings Bank.  The end of the line was near for the Roman temple as a financial institution, however.  In 1992 the New York State banking regulators closed the bank after a series of bad real estate loans.

Carved within the wreaths are beehives--the symbol of thrift.  Behind the banner announcing the current play the bank's name can be seen.  photo by Alice Lum

The building sat empty and neglected for a year until on August 2, 1993 the House of Blues from Cambridge, Massachusetts, purchased it for $2.06 million.  The New York Times announced that the new owner “plans to convert the building into one in a national chain of restaurants a blues bars.”

Preservationists were not overly-excited by the purchase.  Henry Bacon’s temple to finance did not have landmark protection, which meant that just about any alterations could be made to the classical façade.  House of Blues founder Isaac Tigrett partially put the fears to rest.  “We don’t have any plans to change it at this time,” he told David W. Dunlap of The Times regarding the exterior.

As for interior renovations necessary to convert the banking floor to a dining room and performance space, he simply said “We’re going to surprise everybody.”

In fact, The House of Blues would not open.  The building continued to sit empty for three more years before being acquired in 1996 by producer Daryl Roth and converted to the Daryl Roth Theatre.  The live theater venue was home to the hit play De La Guarda which ran for seven years.

The same year that Roth purchased the property, it was designated a New York City landmark.  Henry Bacon’s monumental classical remains an important architectural presence not only on Union Square, but in Manhattan as a whole.

The Henry Block House -- No. 18 East 76th Street

In 1906 when Henry Block and his wife, Alice, laid plans to update their Victorian brownstone at No. 18 East 76^th Street, they were climbing on a renovation bandwagon that stretched from Murray Hill to the Upper East Side.  The streets of these upscale neighborhoods were lined with comfortable rowhouses mostly constructed during a building flurry following the Civil War.  Now wealthy homeowners hired the best architects to upgrade their homes into fashionable and modern Edwardian mansions.

The Blocks’ house had been designed by John G. Prague for speculative developer William Noble.  It was one of ten identical residences that stretched from No. 10 to 28.  Construction began in 1881 and was completed a year later.  No. 18 would sit unoccupied for a year and a half.  Then, on May 31, 1884 The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that William Noble had sold “the four-story and basement brown stone house, No. 18 East Seventy-sixth street…with a three-story extension, to George C. Clausen, the brewer, for $65,000 cash.”

George Caspar Clausen’s cash outlay would amount to about $1.5 million today.  As The Guide intimated, Clausen was indeed a brewer; a member of Henry Clausen & Sons.  George’s father, Henry, had arrived in New York from Bremen, Germany and, after trying his hand at the mercantile business, turned his focus to brewing beer.

New York State’s Prominent and Progressive Men said, in 1902, that “seeing the vast opportunities in the rapidly increasing popularity of beer as a beverage, he founded in New York city the great brewing establishment of Henry Clausen & Sons.”  When young George graduated from a military college in Maryland and then returned home from studying in Germany, he was taken into his father’s brewery as a partner.

George was more than a brewer, however.  He was head of the insurance firm Clausen, Bayley, & Kearney, and on January 4, 1893 was appointed by Mayor Gilroy a Commissioner of the Department of Taxes and Assessments.  By the turn of the century he would be President of the Park Board, and a Park Commissioner.

The family would grow within the house to include a son and daughter.  George’s wife went about the routine expected of the wife of a wealthy businessman (The New York Herald mentioned that “An afternoon tea will be given by Mrs. G. C. Clausen at No. 18 East Seventy-sixth street on February 1” 1887); while her husband busied himself with his clubs.  Clausen was not only President of the New York Riding Club; he held memberships in the Democratic, New York Athletic, the Larchmont Yacht clubs, as well as the Liederkranz and Arion societies.  New York State’s Prominent and Progressive Men added, “He is also a member of the New York Driving Club, and is one of the best-known horsemen on the pleasure drives of New York.”

By 1901 the Clausen’s daughter was reaching her coming-out age, and their son was off at Princeton.  That year they sold the 76^th Street house to the Henry and Alice Block.  It would appear, though, that the new owners had second thoughts.  On April 18, 1902 the New-York Tribune reported “Alice A. Bloch [sic] is reported to have sold No. 18 East Seventy-sixth-st., a four story and basement dwelling house.”

If they intended to sell, the deal fell through and instead the house was leased to Mrs. Douglas’s School.  The exclusive girls school had been instructing the daughters of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens for half a century.  Mrs. Douglas’s School accepted only 25 pupils at a time, charging their parents $1500.00 per year in 1905—just under $40,000 today.

But that same year the school moved to a new mansion at No. 42 Riverside Drive; leaving the Blocks with a decision to make.  They commissioned Herts Bros. to do over the outdated brownstone.  Renovations began in 1906 and would not be completed for a year. 

Somewhat surprisingly, and perhaps as a cost-saving move, the firm did not eliminate the stoop and move the entrance to street level.  At the time the “American basement” plan was all the rage and as one-by-one the rest of the brownstones on the block were revamped; only No. 18 would retain its stoop.  The result was that despite the limestone façade with its marriage of neo-Classic and Beaux Arts elements; the Block house still looked like a made-over Victorian.

Herts Bros. opted to retain the raised parlor, replacing the old brownstone stoop with a lavish one of limestone.

On April 22, 1908, a few months after the renovations were complete, The New York Times reported that Alice leased “for a long term to H. Carroll Brown, 18 East Seventy-sixth Street, a new five-story dwelling.”  At the time the Record & Guide called it “a new 5-sty low entrance modern residence.”

H. Carroll Brown was a member of the banking firm H. C. Brown & Co. at No. 49 Wall Street.  He had married Mary Daly, the daughter of Marcus Daly (called by The New York Times “the multi-millionaire Western copper king”) in 1901.  The couple had two children, Margaret and Frances.

The Browns’ country estate, Brookland Wood, in Maryland had been in the family for generations.  It had once been the home of Richard Caton, son-in-law of Charles Carroll, signor of the Declaration of Independence.  The Times would later remark “Both Mr. Brown, Sr., and H. Carroll Brown were hosts at many notable social events held there, one of the most important annual occurrences being the steeplechase known as the Brooklandtown handicap.”

Mary's millionaire father, who died in 1900, had established his copper mines in Montana.  In early April 1911 Mary boarded a train to Anaconda, Montana with her mother and brother.  Once there, the high altitude affected Mary’s weak heart.  When her condition worsened, she was put on a special train to speed her back to New York and medical specialists.  On the train with her were her relatives, two physicians and several nurses.  “And the long race for sea level began,” reported The Sun on April 30.

H. Carroll Brown rushed in the opposite direction to intercept the special train, which he met and boarded in Chicago.  When the train arrived in New York, Mary was transported to her mother's mansion at No. 725 Fifth Avenue.  “On her arrival in town…the sick woman was taken in an automobile to her mother’s house,” said The Sun.  “Her heart was weak and toward midnight she had a relapse that resulted in her death.”

H. Carroll Brown would not stay on in the East 76^th Street house.  In 1912 he leased it to John D. Ryan, and on November 13 the following year newspapers reported that Emmet Queens had leased the house.  In reporting on the lease, The Record & Guide deemed it “a very handsome interior 5-sty stoop house.”

The Queen family had not been in the house long before they purchased a French Bulldog puppy for son Morley.  The new pet was named Grisette III.

The family was still in the house in 1915 when daughter Philippa’s engagement to Robert Clement was announced; however the following year Henry Block leased it to George W. Peters.  It would become home to at least one other family, William E. Chambers and his wife Hazelle and their child, before wealthy shipbuilder James E. Shewan purchased it in 1924.

The  head of James E. Shewan & Sons, Inc., Shewan died in 1925, just months after moving in.  His 75-year old widow, Ellen, now lived in the East 76^th Street house alone with only her servants.  The grown Shewan children--son, Edward, and three daughters –all lived elsewhere.

On the evening of April 16, 1925, the elderly woman sat in the library of the house when suddenly a man appeared in the doorway.  His face was partially hidden behind a handkerchief.  The burglar demanded the two rings she was wearing; but when he attempted to snatch her diamond bar pin, Ellen screamed.

Before servants could respond, the man had fled.

A little over four weeks later 25-year old William Homan was behind bars.  The convicted robber had been released from Sing Sing prison just 15 days before terrifying and robbing Ellen Shewan.  The New York Times, on June 23, reported “Homan was arrested in a furnished rooming house yesterday morning and the police say they found a loaded revolver and several pieces of jewelry in the room.”

Ellen Shewan continued to maintain her summer home in Cold Spring on the Hudson, New York, and to travel to Europe.  On April 16, 1935 she died in Mentone, France; leaving an estate of more than $1.3 million.

Ellen’s three daughters retained possession of the property until January 1952, when they sold it to Mrs. Susanna Mathieu “for occupancy” according to The New York Times.  If Mrs. Charles Mathieu indeed intended to occupy to mansion, she soon changed her mind.  Within a year the house was converted to doctor’s offices in the basement and first floor, a duplex apartment on the second and third, and a single apartment on the fourth.

In 1964 the house was being used as the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle and Paulist Fathers Instruction Center; and for several years in the late 1960s and early ‘70s housed Spencer A. Samuels and Co. Antiques.  In 1980 it was converted one more; this time to a single apartment per floor.

Despite its many owners and several uses over more than a century, Herts Bros. sweeping makeover of the Victorian brownstone is remarkably intact.

photographs by the author

The 1896 August Zinsser Mansion -- No. 12-14 W. 68th Street

The entrance was placed on the residence's side, through a gateway, rather than on 68th Street. -- photo by Alice Lum

In 1895 August Zinsser was a highly successful and creative chemist.  With his brother, William, he had patented an improved process of aerating beer in 1875.  By now he was the head of his own profitable chemical company, Zinsser & Co., Inc., of which his sons Fred and August, Jr., were partners; and lived in a mansion on Tenth Avenue at 58^th Street.

Developers Wagner & Wallace were busy at the same time.  As the Upper West Side rapidly expanded with comfortable homes and businesses, the partners erected rows of fashionable speculative homes.  In 1895 they purchased the nearly the entire southern side of West 68^th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.  Within a year at least six commodious townhouses designed by George F. Pelham, from No. 16 through No. 26, would be completed.

At the eastern end of the row another house quite unlike the others was rising that year.  No. 14 was designed by Louis Thouvard in the Queen Anne style.  Two stories of red brick sat on a base of rough-cut brownstone.  Terra cotta panels, haughty dormers and brick quoins on the upper floors distinguished the residence from its neighbors.  With its entrance on the side, the mansion turned its shoulder to the street not to be aloof; but to take advantage of the Central Park views across the vacant lot next door.  Inside, the house boasted the expected amenities of an upper-class home, including a “French Drawing Room, ” 10 bedrooms, and a “smoking room,” as mentioned in the New-York Tribune later.

photo by Alice Lum

Although most historians today credit August Zinsser with the purchase of the lots and construction of the house; The New York Times disagreed at the time.  On November 29, 1896 it reported on the week’s real estate sales, noting “Newly finished dwellings were not much in favor, only three being disposed of, inclusive of 10 and 14 West Sixty-eighth Street, by the builders, Wagner & Wallace, at about $30,000 each.”  The highly disparate styles used for No. 14 and the rest of the block cast doubt on The Times’ accuracy.  In either case, August Zinsser soon moved into the imposing Queen Anne residence. 

Two years later Zinsser gave up his view of Central Park.  The New York Times reported on June 4, 1898 that he sold the plot in front of his home to the Second Church of Christ, Scientist.  The church had purchased the opposite corner on Central Park West and 68^th Street just two weeks earlier.  “It is announced that church edifices will be erected on both sites in the new future,” said the newspaper.

Indeed a daunting stone church was erected, reducing Zinsser’s front yard to a narrow pathway.  But perhaps through a pre-arrangement with the buyer the new church building did not elbow the property line.  Instead a wide, shady courtyard separated the structure from Zinsser’s fence, preventing what would have been a claustrophobic situation for the Zinsser mansion.

A stately brick and iron fence protected the yard -- Express Gazette Journal, January 1922 (copyright expired) 

Perhaps Zinsser’s sale of the Central Park-facing lot was motivated by his intentions to leave the city.  That same year he applied to the Secretary of State to move his firm to Hastings-on-the-Hudson in Westchester County.  A year later he sold the residence to the president of the Otis Elevator Company, William Delevan Baldwin.

Despite the loss of the Central Park-facing lot; an entrance courtyard remained. photo by Alice Lum

Before long the wealthy businessman and his family (there were eight of them in the house along with a staff of six servants) would receive a macabre scare.  On Sunday morning, August 25, 1901, Francois Gaubaubet, a French waiter employed in a downtown club, was found dead in his home at No. 40 West 65^th Street. 

The New York Times reported on the events that followed the discovery of a body nearby. “Just before he was found dead, a man, very much excited, rushed into the West Sixty-eighth Street Station and told Sergeant Burns that a man had died suddenly at 14 West Sixty-eighth Street.”  In his excited confusion, the man sent police to the Baldwin house where the family was apparently spending a quiet Sunday morning.

“Policeman Fitzgerald was sent to that house and startled the occupants of the house when he asked about a man who had died there.”

Interesting terra cotta patterns relieve the heavy stonework  photo by Alice Lum

In addition to his presidency of Otis Elevator, Baldwin was Vice-President of the Catskill & Tannersville Railroad Company, and a director of the National Surety Company and the New York & Long Island Railroad Company. 

In 1908 son Martin Sullivan Baldwin married Hazel Talmage Smith in what the New-York Tribune deemed “a noteworthy November wedding.”  It would seem that the Baldwins intended to dispose of the 68^th Street house that same year.  Earlier, on May 31, auctioneer J. Hatfield Morton advertised an auction of the “entire superb appointments” of the Baldwin house.  Saying that the sale was on account of the owner’s “departure for Paris,” he listed 80 oil paintings by prominent European and American artists, magnificent chandeliers, “fine Persian Rugs, Carpets and Draperies throughout,” and even “old wines.”

Apparently the Baldwins had to redecorate from scratch because when they returned from Europe in time for Martin’s wedding they remained in the 68^th Street house for another decade.  They maintained a 42-acre country estate in Greenwich, Connecticut as well.

When William Baldwin’s limousine needed repairs the first week of May 1916 it was taken to a repair shop in Long Island City.  A few days later one of the company’s drivers headed to Manhattan to deliver the automobile.  He brought along two friends for the ride—A. W. Wagner another employee, and Alva Jensen a carriage maker.  Just as the limo reached Columbus Circle a “low, gray racing car shot past, coming from the east,” according to The New York Times on May 10.

Showing off for his friends, Mura decided to overtake the speeding car.  It was a bad decision.  “The chase led up Broadway to Sixty-second Street and east to Central Park West,” reported the newspaper.  Just feet from the Baldwin residence disaster occurred.  “At Sixty-eighth Street the racer swung around the corner and started west, and the heavy limousine, trying to make a sharp turn and follow it, struck a fire hydrant and was overturned.”

Mura was thrown out of the vehicle; but his riders were trapped underneath.  Policemen and civilians lifted the car off the two men.  Tragically Jensen died later than night and Wagner remained unconscious with serious internal injuries and a broken arm.

The following year the United States entered World War I.  Roland D. Baldwin left West 68^th Street to join the Marine Corps.  By 1918 he had attained the rank of Sergeant and was serving in Europe on the front lines.  On June 20 he was one of 51 other sergeants reported wounded in action.

The mansion’s life as a single-family home would soon come to an end.  On March 1, 1919 the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that the Baldwins sold the house to Walter Russel.  The periodical noted that he was “a member of the syndicate which owns the Hotel des Artistes abutting in 67^th st.  The building will be altered into small suites, and will be connected with the larger structure.”

Following the conversion the house was acquired by the Jared Flagg Corp., presided over by I. C. Reina.  Jared Flagg was, incidentally, the father of architect Ernest Flagg.  On August 31, 1921 American Architect and Architecture reported that Ernest Flagg had designed a “four-story brick and concrete dwelling” on the property, costing $25,000.  Again, current historians disagree.  The Landmarks Preservation Commission lists the architect of the addition as Edwin C. Georgi.

The new brick addition at No. 12 made no attempt to architecturally meld with the original house -- photo by Alice Lum

Retired actor and singer Victor Maurel took an apartment in the building, and other spaces were leased as musical studios or small offices. 

Musical studios like this took space in the former mansion -- Pacific Coast Musical Review, October 1, 1921 (copyright expired) 

By 1953 when the combined buildings known as 12-14 West 68^th Street were sold to Saul Singer, they held 30 apartments.   It was purchased 12 years later by Thomas Haines for $140,000.  According to his second wife, Polly Cleveland, "The two buildings were a rent controlled slum, with apartments renting for as little as $15 a month."  Because Haines's wife at the time, Adrian Rappin, was an artist, the couple cut a skylight into the gable of Apartment 11 on the top floor, to convert to an artist studio.

photo by Alice Lum

 Adrian Rappin died in May 1985.  Polly Cleveland, whom Tom married in 1986, recalled that the apartments were often rented on a short-term basis to actors and actresses (like Michael Nouri, for instance).   

When the building was put on the market in 2009 for $22 million there were just seven apartments, according to Cleveland.  It was sold that year for less than half the asking price, at $10.6 million.  Today a studio apartment in August Zinsser’s handsome Queen Anne mansion rents for over $2,000 per month.

The 1830s James Marsh House -- No. 97 East Broadway

When the Bowery Savings Bank opened on the Bowery in 1834, the nearby East Broadway neighborhood had recently filled with impressive Federal style homes.  Among them was the three story residence at No. 97.  Like its neighbors, the house sat above an English basement and, most likely, handsome pedimented dormers sat above the cornice.  Clad in Flemish bond brick, it boasted especially fine molded lintels with end blocks.  Inside there would be costly hardwoods and marble mantels and furniture from New York’s finest cabinetmakers.

The wide homes attracted well-to-do families like that of James Marsh who moved into No. 97.  Marsh was a Trustee of the Bowery Savings Bank and would remain in the house at least into the 1840s.  

But a quarter of a century later, by end of the Civil War, the Lower East Side had ceased to be fashionable.  Wealthy New Yorkers moved northward to the Washington Square, Fifth Avenue and Murray Hill neighborhoods.  The East Broadway area was now part of Kleindeutschland, or little Germany, as immigrants poured in and New York’s German population was outranked only by Berlin and Vienna worldwide.  Private homes, sumptuous only a generation earlier, became boarding houses or were razed for tenements.

Among the tenants living in No. 97 in 1869 was the Roth family.  Tragedy would strike on May 23 that year when 7-year old daughter Annie wandered off Pier No. 46 on the East River and drowned.  Making the catastrophe even more heart-wrenching for the family, The New York Times reported “The remains were not recovered.”

Many of the German and other Central European immigrants were Jewish; resulting naturally in the Lower East Side becoming the main enclave of that population as well.  Streets and tenement hallways rang not only with Polish and German languages, but Yiddish.  By 1878 No. 97 East Broadway was owned by Morris Alexander, a wealthy and influential force in the Jewish community.

Alexander was President of the Ohavay Sholom synagogue and an ambitious businessman.  While he and his wife, Deborah, lived in the house; they continued operating it as a boarding house and Morris ran a pawn shop from the lower level.  His considerable wealth was increased by the purchase of nearby real estate and the collecting of rents.

On March 24, 1878 Deborah Alexander opened the Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child’s Protectory.  “The object of the protectory is to receive every morning the children, from 2 to 6 years of age, of indigent parents, who have to work during the day, and feed them well while the parents are at work, returning them to their parents in the evening,” reported The New York Times.  The day care center opened with 59 children “received and well cared for.”

The Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child’s Protectory was a success.  The Alexanders’ concern for children in need seemed to reach into their personal lives as well when they adopted a girl, Esther, and a boy, Charles.  The seemingly selfless acts would eventually cause the couple trouble.

In 1884 Charles, who was now 15 years old, helped out in the pawnshop.  He had been living with the Alexanders for several years and that summer Morris realized that his adopted son was a thief.  The New York Times reported on June 23 that “during the last three weeks he has been taking the articles to other pawn shops and getting the money for them.  Alexander says that from $500 to $1,000 worth of goods are missing.” 

In light of the substantial loss—between $12,000 and $23,000 today—Morris’s nurturing attitude toward Charles came to a halt.  “The boy was remanded at the Essex Market Police Court yesterday until the detectives could look up the amount taken and, if possible, recover some of the property,” reported The Times.

It was around this time that Alexander raised the attic to a full fourth floor.  The decorative embellishments of the generally Romanesque Revival addition were executed in brick.  While the aim was no doubt to save money; the result was not unattractive, if architecturally incongruous.  A pressed metal cornice completed the renovation.  It was probably at this time that the cast iron entrance and expansive shop windows were installed.

Morris Alexander's top floor renovation expectedly had nothing in common with the original building.  It was, nonetheless, attractive.

In the meantime, the Ladies' Deborah Nursery and Child's Protectory had grown immensely.  By 1896 it sheltered 66 boys at its facility just down the block at No. 103 East Broadway; 106 boys at 141^st Street and Forest Avenue; and 222 girls on 161^st Street.  The list of trustees of the charitable organization read like the Alexander family tree.  The Sun noted on April 9 that year that “The active trustees of the institution within recent years were:  Mrs. Deborah H. Alexander and Morris Alexander, her husband; J. M. Alexander, their son, and his wife, Mrs. J. M. Alexander; Mrs. L. Burger, their daughter, and her husband, Mr. L. Burger.”  Esther had married and the newspaper included her on the list as “Mrs. E. Meyer, their adopted daughter.”

As it turned out, the charity was not as charitable as would seem.  The Sun wrote “A remarkable condition of affairs has been found to exist in the Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child’s Protectory of the City of New York.”  A committee of the State Board of Charities had investigated the institution and its findings were embarrassing to the Alexanders, at best.

Morris owned No. 103 East Broadway and charged the Nursery $150 a month in advance (about $4,000 today).  He also owned the building at No. 11 Market Street “which supplied groceries to the nursery.”  The State committee was especially interested in the financial outlays of the Deborah Nursery because it received almost all its funding from the City of New York—about $40,000 a year.

Because the extended Alexander family repeatedly voted itself into executive positions, there was little outside oversight.  To make matters worse, the report said that many “books of account, vouchers etc. are missing, and some of those produced show irregularities in the care and disposition of large funds.”

The New York Times reported that “large sums [were] paid for salaries, buildings, furniture, and improvements, and comparatively small sums for the care, clothing, education, and general treatment of the children.”  The newspaper added “Carelessness and ignorance are displayed in both the physical and mental treatment of the children.”

Chiming in, The Sun said “although the nursery was designed for the care of Hebrew children, it has not the respect of prominent Hebrew philanthropists of the city, is not in good repute with the officers of the United Hebrew Charities, and is not in favor with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”

The following year, in September 1897, Morris Alexander died.  Although his estate, which included several Manhattan properties, was estimated to be about half a million dollars, Morris had no will.  When the State asked Deborah for the division of the estate, she denied that Esther Mayer was her adopted daughter.  Enraged, Esther filed suit against the beneficiaries and, in doing so, exposed an even more shocking revelation.  On March 17, 1899 The New York Times disclosed that her suit alleged “that she was really the daughter of Alexander by a first wife, Hinda Schmikler, whom he married in Russia over forty years ago and from whom he had been divorced by the rabbinical law.”

The messy and highly publicized trial pitted Esther, fighting for a share in the estate, against Deborah, whose attorneys claimed “she is not the daughter of the decedent” but “she was a waif.”

Deborah Alexander, now aged and wealthy, soon turned her attention to love again.  Surprising the entire community, in November 1901 she suddenly married Rabbi Hyman Jacob Widrevitz, “a preacher of high standing in the community,” according to The Times.  The rabbi was somewhat younger than his 75-year old wife.

The honeymoon would not be over before Deborah Alexander Widrevitz was dead.  Six weeks after the wedding she died “very suddenly” in the house at No. 97 East Broadway.  On Thursday, December 26, Dr. Francis Huber was called to her bedside “about the time the woman was breathing her last,” said The Times.  He refused to sign a death certificate because he had not been in attendance for 24 hours prior to the death.

The funeral was delayed awaiting the Coroner’s physician, Dr. Weston.  He arrived on Friday evening and pronounced the cause of death “Bright’s disease coupled with heart failure.”  But wagging tongues in the neighborhood suspected foul play.

That night a “near relative” visited Dr. Weston and “with more hints than clear statements he managed to convey the idea to Dr. Weston that the latter might have been mistaken in his finding of the cause of death.”

Because Deborah’s funeral had been delayed and it was now Friday night, burial was impossible by Jewish law until Sunday.  That morning, at around 8:00, a crowd began forming in front of No. 97 East Broadway.  The taint of a nursery run for profit and a rejected adopted daughter were forgotten.  It was  foul play and suspected murder that gripped their minds.  

By 11:00 in the morning the crowd was estimated at about 2,000.  “It rained, and there was nothing unusual to be seen,” reported The Times, “nothing unusual to be heard.  Up on the third floor of the building lay the body of Mrs. Widrevitz, who died on Thursday last, and who was much better known by the name of Deborah Alexander, which she made beloved and honored on the east side because of numerous benevolent acts.  She is perhaps best remembered by the many as the founder of the Deborah Nursery, which was considered a blessing on the east side.”

The crowd stood in the rain anticipating the arrival of the funeral carriages; but more importantly they knew that the Coroner’s physician was coming to make one last examination of the body.  “If the crowd had a reason for standing there in the rain,” said The Times, “nobody would whisper it.  If honor to the dead was intended, the form in which it came to the husband and relatives of the dead woman was not appreciated.”

Just before 11:00 the funeral carriages began arriving.  Then Dr. Weston appeared.  “His arrival caused something like a flutter of excitement in the crowd.  A murmur of surprise or satisfaction, it was not easy to tell which, was audible, but nobody said anything which was clear and distinct.”

But when Dr. Weston announced he was there to perform an autopsy, “there was again a reversal of opinion.  It was decided that all suspicion concerning the woman’s death had vanished.”  Dr. Weston took formal statements of relatives and left.

A reporter milled about the crowd, asking who evoked so much suspicion.  One man answered “A few old women who saw Mrs. Widrevitz on the street on the afternoon of the day when she died, and seemed incapable of bringing themselves to believe that she could have expired so suddenly from natural causes.  That was all.”

The once-elegant townhouse featured especially-handsome lintels.

On Thursday, April 24, 1902 the estate of Deborah Alexander sold No. 97 East Broadway at auction.  The once-proud house, now described as a “four-story tenement,” was purchased by Salomon Hecht for $33,200—around $875,000 today.

Hecht continued renting rooms above the store level.  Here on August 11, 1906 80-year old Morris Donn, “fearing that he was incurably ill and was fated to die a lingering death,” committed suicide.  “The body was found by his son David, who had supported his father for fourteen years,” said a newspaper.  “The young man was so overcome with grief and shock that he collapsed.”

Hard working, poor Jewish families continued to rent in the building.  In 1911 sisters Gertrude and Mollie Fridlander lived here.  They both worked as milliners and that year they made room in their apartment for their sister, Rosa Goldberg and her husband Sol and their three children.  Sol was a “bottler.”

The Manhattan Bridge opened three years after the tragic suicide.  In 1912, as Carrere & Hastings planned the monumental approach to the bridge, the East Broadway neighborhood would be devastated.  A swatch of land 400 by 750 feet was leveled and over a thousand families lost their homes.  The block where No. 97 stands escaped obliteration by mere feet.

There is little evidence today of the refined 1830s neighborhood James Marsh enjoyed when he lived at No. 97 East Broadway.  No longer German nor Jewish, it has been engulfed by the expanding Chinatown neighborhood.  Yet despite the carnage done to the parlor and basement floors, and Morris Alexander’s late Victorian fourth floor addition; it is still easy to imagine the house in quieter, more refined days.

photographs by the author