The Mercantile Bldg--Nos. 31-33 West 31st Street

Just before the turn of the last century the 31^st Street block between Fifth avenue and Broadway still clung, at least in part, to its residential character.  In 1895 No. 31 was the home of Mrs. Fay Pierce, and next door at No. 33 lived Dr. Russell Bellamy.  The two four-story brownstone houses would survive only a few more years.

Already the homes in the area were being razed or renovated for commercial purposes, and three blocks south West 28^th Street was popularly known as Tin Pan Alley because of the many songwriters and publishers who populated the old buildings.  The trend seeped onto West 31^st Street and on April 23, 1895 The Evening World reported on “a meeting of the ladies interested in securing cheap popular music for the people of the city…at the residence of Mrs. Fay Pierce.”

Within two years music publishers were operating out of Mrs. Pierce’s former home; the most famous being Milwaukee-based Charles K. Harris who opened his New York office here in 1897.  The composer, lyricist and arranger had scored tremendous success with hits like “After the Ball.”  Among his first publications from No. 31 was “The Organ Grinder’s Serenade” sung to popular acclaim by Charles E. Witt.

The sheet music for "The Organ Grinder's Serenade" still placed Harris in Milwaukee, with the "Home Office" at 31 West 31st.  (copyright expired)

On February 16, 1900 No. 31 West 31^st Street was lost in foreclosure and sold at auction.  Elizabeth A. Wilcox acquired the old house, along with No. 33.  It did not take the enterprising woman long to “improve” the property.  In June 1901 Stone, An Illustrated Magazine reported that Elizabeth Wilcox “will erect a ten-story mercantile building” on the site.

She commissioned the architectural firm of Israels & Harder to design the building.  Charles H. Israels and J. F. Harder were well known for their apartment and tenement building designs, and they had submitted entries into competitions for more lofty structures as well—like the U.S. Custom House and the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Riverside Drive.

Working with a rather narrow plot, the architects produced a pleasing store and loft building of modern design.  A two-story cast iron base framed the retail space.  More glass than metal, the store levels allowed sunlight into the showroom areas.  The squat-looking third floor was faced in pinkish terra cotta and its cornice upheld two five-story arches outlined in textured terra cotta enframements.  The spandrels between floors featured deep panels and elaborate rosettes.  The motif was carried on to the top two floors where the terra cotta frames of the three sets of openings at the 9^th and 10^th floors fooled the eye into seeing three two-story arches.

Construction was competed at a dizzying speed and on November 30, 1901 the finished building was sold.  Elizabeth A. Wilcox sold the new structure for $275,000 to Salina A Gilson.  The price would be a substantial $7.7 million in today’s dollars.

Known sometimes as The Mercantile Building, No. 31-33 filled with a variety of tenants, not the least of which spilled over from Tin Pan Alley.  In 1903 Charles Harris was back, having moved permanently to New York City and establishing his office here.  Others were The Boyle Agency ("International, Vaudeville and Dramatic"), W. L. Lykens’s Vaudeville Agency and B. A. Myers and E. S. Keller, General Vaudeville Agents.  Among Myers & Keller’s prominent clients was actress and singer Edith Helena (Mrs. Edith Seymour Jennings) who was famous world-wide for her more than three-octave range.

Brickwork laid in three dimensions harmonized with the intricate terra cotta.

Shortly after opening his office here, Charles P. Harris hired Abraham Gapner, a young orphan, as an office boy.  On April 28, 1903 the boy walked into the National Park Bank and presented a check for $26.34 endorsed by Harris.  The cashier was not convinced everything was on the up-and-up and refused to cash the check.  So Gapner said he would return to the office and have things straightened out by telephone.

A few minutes later the bank’s telephone rang.  “This is Mr. Harris.  Pay the check to Abraham Gapner, my boy,” said a youngish voice.  The bank official was not fooled.

The New York Times reported “In the meanwhile, however, Detective Bernard of the department store whence the check was sent to Mr. Harris, appeared on the scene, and when the boy returned to the bank he was arrested.  According to the detective, Abraham confessed that he found the check in Mr. Harris’s mail, indorsed it with Mr. Harris’s name, and finally used the telephone to instruct the bank officials to pay the amount to himself.”

When asked why he had committed the crime against his employer, Abraham explained he wanted “Spring clothes because everybody else was wearing them.”

Salina A. Gibson did not retain possession of the building long.  In March 1905 she sold it to Robert S. Minturn for “about” $285,000, garnering a $10,000 profit over two years.

Among the tenants Minturn received in the deal was Conrad Schickerling who, The Times said in 1906, “calls himself a manufacturing jeweler.”  Schickerling rang the Shickerling Manufacturing Company here.  But the 38-year old would find himself behind bars in June that year.

Deputy Assistant District Attorney Vandiver told a judge on June 15 that Schickerling was “a member of a gang which had swindled Maiden Lane jewelers out of diamonds worth $200,000.”  In one instance, Schickerling visited Edelhoff Brothers & Co., at No. 574 Fifth Avenue on January 24.  He told Gustave A. Edelhoff he needed “a lot of diamonds to complete a lorgnette chain” ordered by the President of the State Bank, Oscar L. Richard.  Edelhoff handed over a bag of diamonds “on memorandum,” the I.O.U among jewelers at the time.

After several days without hearing from Schickerling, Edelhoff went to his office in the Mercantile Building.  After several such visits, Schickerling finally admitted he had pawned the diamonds for $6,000.

Edlehoff’s lawyer told the court that he had “received intimations that several other firms had been swindled in a similar manner by a gang of clever thieves.”  The New York Times wrote “The lawyer said the full details of the swindles would be brought to light in the examination of Schickerling.”

Along with Tin Pan Alley offices and a crooked jeweler, architects took space in the building.  Israels & Harder liked their own design enough that they immediately moved in; and on May 3, 1902 the firm of Little & O’Connor moved from No. 15 West 34^th Street into the building.

Mary F. Howleson worked here in 1906 as a milliner.  The unmarried women traveled to England that summer.  On July 1 her steamship the New York arrived in Southampton and she boarded the ill-fated London & Southwest steamer express to London.  She never made it there.

Traveling at 70 miles per hour, the train derailed at a sharp curve.  Twenty-seven passengers lost their lives, including Mary Howleson, in what was called “one of the worst railroad disasters that has ever occurred in Great Britain.”  The Chicago Livestock World reported “Reckless speed caused by rivalry of two competing lines is said to have caused the disaster.”

B. Butler Boyle was inspired later that year to write to Samuel L. Clemens.  Mark Twain was immensely popular and Boyle knew he would be a huge box office draw.  As the author recalled in his Autobiography of Mark Twain, on August 24, 1906 Boyle wrote him, “I should like to suggest to you a tour in vaudeville.  I shall be able to arrange a tour in which we could give you three consecutive weeks and one week of rest.”  The agent proposed “We would simply want a sixteen to twenty minute monologue or lecture as you might choose to call it, and twice a day.”  In his attempt to lure the writer he added “I am very sure that I can secure for you a very tidy sum per week.”

Hand-in-hand with the publishers and agents was The Hawn School of the Speech Arts which offered instruction in “oral English from conversation through the drama.”  Henry Gaines Hawn also instructed “special courses for preachers and platform artists.”  At the same time the Stanhope-Wheatcroft Dramatic School was in the building.  The school garnered extra income through the sale of its textbook, Diction for Singers at $1.50 per copy.  Adeline S. Wheatcroft’s acting classes lasted a full six months.

The wonderful two-story cast iron storefront survives intact.

By 1909 women were flexing their independence and seeking voting rights and better workplace conditions.  The Committee on Amusements and Vacation Resources of Working Girls in New York established an office at No. 31 West 31^st Street.  The group complained “Of the 300,000 working girls in New York, only 6,784 obtain vacation outings through the churches, settlements and societies devoted to this end.”  The committee was determined to improve the situation.

The group blamed “the present high cost of living and the low wages and irregular employment of the average girl” on the lack of affordable down time.  It provided lists of reasonably-priced lodgings for working girls, and societies that provided for vacations at the shore or in the mountains at small costs.

The Charles K. Harris Music Company was still at No. 31 when, on January 30, 1910, The New York Times announced it had bought out the Shubert Music Company.  It was a noticeable move in the music industry.

That same year the two-story retail space was the home of Franz Hanfstaengl who dealt in reproduction artworks.  The price of Hafnstaengl's prints started at $1.50.  On March 14, 1910 the firm advertised “There is no more suitable or acceptable gift than a fine Carbon Reproduction or Photogravure of the old or modern masters, a fac-simile or a fine art book.”  The ad played on the shopper’s vanity.  “A selection of one of these also stamps the giver as a person of good taste.”  It would be the last year Hanfstaegnl offered its prints to the public from this address.

Five days after the advertisement appeared in the New-York Tribune the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that Richardson & Boyton Co. was moving its offices and showroom into the building.  The makers of plumbing parts and cast iron appliances had been in business at No. 232-4 Water Street for half a century.  The Guide called the move “a significant step” and added “The uptown movement is carrying pretty much everything with it.”  Richardson & Boyton Co. would remain in the building until 1921.

Richardson & Boynton advertised cast iron boilers, furnaces and "perfect" cooking ranges in 1916.  The Sun, May 21, 1916 (copyright expired)

As World War I raged in Europe, New York’s garment district was inching into the 31^st Street neighborhood.  In 1917 Levy & Frankel, Inc., manufacturers of dresses, moved in and the following year Pincus & Herschkowitz signed a lease.  In the 1920s they would be joined by Krentzman Knitting Mills, Inc., makers of “knit goods, sweaters scarves, etc.,” and Sherwin Taller, “boys’ shirts,” which took the entire ninth floor.

Richardson & Boyton Co. was replaced at street level by Bloch Publishing Co. in 1921.  The firm, founded in 1854, was reportedly the oldest Jewish publishing company in the English speaking world.  The bookstore and offices would remain at 31 West 31^st Street through the 1960s.  As well as providing a retail outlet for Jewish publications, it staged exhibitions, like the one in 1934 of old and rare Hebrew books.

Having worked in his father’s Cincinnati publishing firm since 1878, Charle E. Bloch opened the New York business in 1901.  The New York Times would later say that “in the years that followed [he] brought out hundreds of books of Jewish interest, including Bibles, prayer books and religious school textbooks.”

In 1937 the 75-year old issued a statement deploring the lack of interest in Jewish literature among Jews.  “No support is given to the Jewish publisher sufficient to warrant investment in many splendid books on Jewish literature.”  Following his death on September 2, 1940 his sons carried on the business.

It was perhaps the decades-long tenancy of Bloch Publishing that resulted in the survival of the lower façade of Nos. 31-33 West 31^st Street.  Although the street level is disgraced with gaudy advertising awnings and the original show windows and entrances have been replaced; the wonderful cast iron framing is intact, as are the many-paned transom above the side entrance.

There was little interior decoration to be lost in the utilitarian lofts.  photograph http://www.corcoran.com/nyc/Listings/Display/2534917

As is the case with so many former office and loft buildings, the upper floors have been converted to apartments.  One, on the ninth floor where Sherwin Taller constructed boys’ shirts in the 1920s, was recently sold for $2.2 million.  The handsome façade of the Tin Pan Alley relic survives as a example of the work of the often-overlooked Israels & Harder.

non-credited photos by the author

Reborn -- No. 16 East 64th Street

In 1878, as the East Side blocks branching away from the new Central Park were being developed, Edward Kilpatrick set to work on four brownstone-clad houses at Nos. 8, 10, 12 and 16 East 64^th Street.  He commissioned brothers John and David Jardine to design the residences—two architects who were busy creating rows of such houses in the area for speculative developers.

Four stories tall over a English basements, the dwellings were completed in 1879.  They were typical of D. & J. Jardine’s work with high stone stoops, regimented openings, and commodious interiors.

By the early years of the 1890s No. 16 East 64^th Street was home to lawyer Austin Abbott and his wife.  The pair were interested in the conditions of Native Americans.  The 1894 Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners noted that they were members of the Mohonk Conference; a group organized to work “for Indian Reform.”

Within four years the No. 16 was home to German-born author Carl Schurz.   Highly involved in American politics, Schurz’s first speech delivered in English was during the 1858 Douglas-Lincoln race for the United States Senate.  On January 29, 1898 a reporter from The New York Times described Schurz’s home on East 64^th:

“A visitor to Mr. Schurz’s literary workshop, at 16 East Sixty-fourth Street, finds nothing there that suggests Germany—except the distinctively German face of its master artisan and the Teutonic form of the dachshund that is always curled in a ball on the lounge within easy reach of caresses and kind words.”  The journalist noted that the library shelves were laden with books in a variety of languages; and said that the entrance hall “is a veritable portrait gallery of immortals.  No one enters this select company without having done something for the world.  Warriors, statesmen, musicians, artists, and authors are al represented, but a certain spirit of selection, you can see at once, has directed the formation of the gallery.  Men of thought rule here and not ‘men of destiny’ or of empire.”

Schurz's impressive career included positions of Secretary of the Interior, Missouri Senator, and US Ambassador to Spain -- photograph Library of Congress

The portrait gallery continued up the stairs into the sitting room, two flights up.  Paintings of Voltaire, Napoleon, and Frederick the Great shared wall space with Abraham Lincoln.  Like all upscale late Victorian homes, Schurz’s rooms were crowded with bric-a-brac and mementos.   “There is also the inevitable collection of curiosities, knives and swords from the Malay Archipelago and articles of virtu picked up in all parts of the world.  Among the more precious things of the collection are the cuff buttons work by John Quincy Adams when he fell in the Senate Chamber in 1848.”

Of course No. 16 was occupied only during the winter season.  Like all wealthy New Yorkers, Schurz closed the house during the warm months to escape to his summer place.  His was in Lake George, New York.

The author sold No. 16 in 1900 to William R. H. Martin, the head on one of Manhattan’s most recognized men’s shops, Rogers, Peet & Co.  The haberdasher paid about $65,000 for the house—about $1.86 million in today’s dollars.

Martin and his family would stay in the Victorian house for just two years.  When Stephen Pell purchased it in March 1902, he had plans for the building that did not include his own occupancy.  Pell was one of the directors of the Real Estate Security Co. and he recognized that the location of the property was more valuable than the out-of-date house.  To maximize his investment, he needed to make the house marketable to the wealthy home buyers filling the neighborhood.

Pell commissioned architect S. E. Gage to update the structure.  The two-year make-over included removing the brownstone façade and redoing the interiors.  The result was an up-to-date Edwardian home in the recently-popular neo-Federal style.  The red brick was laid in Flemish bond and the headers burned to resemble aging.   Gage moved the entrance to sidewalk level, while  keeping the basement service entrance below ground.  A handsome columned portico served as a balcony to the second floor, where two sets of tall French windows were framed in limestone.  The third floor was a near-wall of small-paned openings, separated by engaged Doric columns and united by a stone entablature.  The Federal motif was emphasized at the fourth floor with dramatic splayed lintels; and the high mansard roof was accented by three hooded dormers and three copper oculi.

The house as it appeared in 1913 -- The Sun, March 23, 1913 (copyright expired)

On March 30, 1905 The New York Times reported that Stephen H. P. Pell had sold the renovated house to Dudley Olcott, Jr.   Olcott was a banker with the Central Trust Company of New York, and was recently married to Sarah C. Levick.  The couple had been living at No. 171 West 71^st Street and shortly after purchasing the house, The New York Times added that they “spend their Summers at Normandie Park, Morristown, N. J.”   Among the items to be brought into the 64^th Street house would be the newly-completed portrait of Mrs. Olcott by Maurice Fromkes.  

Wealthy and modern-thinking, Olcott was an early automobile enthusiast.  In 1911 he would be selected for the position of Treasurer of the Automobile Club of America.   A year earlier, he discovered first-hand the potential dangers of the expensive pursuit.

On November 6, 1910 attorney John Ellis Roosevelt, cousin for the former President, was one of a group of Metropolitan Club members enjoying a three-day excursion in the country.  In his big car were seven other “prominent New Yorkers” and a second chauffeur.   Dudley Olcott, Jr. was among Roosevelt’s guests.  “It was their purpose to make a leisurely pace and enjoy the beauties of the Autumn landscape,” explained The New York Times.

At one point Roosevelt decided to take the wheel and his chauffeur, Alexander Ehbel, moved to the front passenger seat.   Passengers later said there was no speeding that Roosevelt was “going at not more than an ordinary country-road pace.”   But at a bend in the road, the wheels on the passenger side slipped off the road into soft ground and skidded.  The strain broke the axle and the car “turned turtle” as described by the newspaper.

Roosevelt’s chauffeur was instantly killed and several of the passengers were injured.  Olcott escaped without serious injuries.

Three years later, in January 1913 Olcott sold the house to  the Buek Construction Co.  The Real Estate Record and Guide noted that Olcott’s asking price was $150,000 and “one of the features of this house is a large laundry on the roof.”

A month later the firm advertised No. 16 for sale, calling it a “beautiful, five story, American basement private dwelling.”   The operators had apparently hoped for a quick turn-around, for a few weeks later, on Sunday, March 23, a different advertisement appeared in The Sun along with a photograph.   The caption read “Above house for sale--$30,000 cash will purchase.”

No. 16 became home to Dr. George Emerson Brewer.  Among the most esteemed surgeons in New York, he was Professor of Surgery in Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons; the Surgical Director at Presbyterian Hospital; and Consulting Surgeon to no fewer than six other hospitals and institutes.

Brewer’s high standing among the medical community was evidenced on the morning of November 15, 1915 when Mayor John Purroy Mitchel was stricken with appendicitis at his Riverside Drive home.  After making a preliminary diagnosis, the mayor’s physician summoned Dr. Brewer.  “They decided that an operation was necessary,” reported the New-York Tribune the following day. 

Brewer, who made time also to hold the rank of Colonel in the Medical Section of the US Army Reserve Corps, stayed on in the 64^th Street house until 1921.  On January 25 that year the New-York Tribune ran a headline reading “Dr. G. E. Brewer Sells House in East 64^th Street.  Parts with Costly Dwelling Between 5^th and Madison Aves.”

At the time architect Frederick Junius Sterner had made a name for himself in New York by transforming outdated brownstone rowhouses into unrecognizable neo-Tudor, Mediterranean or Gothic fantasies.  It was Sterner who now bought Brewer’s house for what the Tribune said was about $130,000.

Although the house was still perfectly in fashion; Sterner did what he was best known for: renovate.   He replaced the second floor French windows with four grouped, small paned openings.  The two in the center formed a fanlight within their rectangular frames.  The portico and balcony were removed and two columns, surmounted by lion figures, acted as an entrance.  Above it all, the dormers were replaced with a single, broad studio dormer, nearly the width of the structure, that flooded the interior in light.

Sterner replaced the second floor windows and removed the portico.  A single long dormer replaced the original three.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

Inside Sterner rearranged Gage’s first and second story floor plans, and installed new stairs.   The completed renovation resulted in a 22-room house with six baths and an elevator.   When Sterner offered it for sale in October 1922, the New-York Tribune deemed it a “fine house.”

Apparently Richard Delafield agreed.  The 69-year old banker purchased the house for $110,000.  He had just been elevated to the position of Chairman of the Board of the National Park Bank of New York.   In reporting the sale the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide noted “Mr. Delafield, whose country home is at Tuxedo, will occupy the residence.”

Richard Delafield two months after the purchase of No. 16 -- The Banker's Magazine, December 1922 (copyright expired)

Following Delafield, in 1925, Richard Croker, Jr. moved in.  Croker was the son of the notorious Tammany Hall leader who garnered millions; much of it through bribe money received from proprietors of saloons, brothels and gambling dens.  Upon his death in 1922, the senior Croker left his second wife his entire estate, totalling upwards of $5 million.  His children, including Richard Jr., received nothing.

Richard Croker, Jr. would stay in the house until 1934, during which time he was indicted for failing to pay $7,612 in 1925 New York State income taxes.   He sold it to Miguel J. Ossorio who had made his fortune in the Philippine and Puerto Rican sugar industry.

Like almost all of the owners of the mansion, Don Miguel Ossorio would not stay long.  When he sold the house six years later, The New York Times reported on July 23, 1941 that “the building has an electric elevator and many modern improvements, but the purchaser prior to making the place his town house, will make extensive alterations.”  The newspaper made note of the elite neighborhood.  “The homes of Mrs. J. Sargent Cram, Roy Howard, Mrs. Orme Wilson Jr. and Adolph Pavenstedt are near by.”

Although the alterations preserved the structure as a single family house; that status would last only eleven more years.  In 1952 the Smith College Club of New York commissioned architects Rosario Candela and Paul Resnick to convert the interiors as a social club.   The renovations, completed in December 1953, provided for a lounge and private dining room on both the first and second floors; a bedroom, card room and library on the third; three bedrooms on the fourth floor and offices on the fifth.

But it was not the Smith College Club which would occupy the new clubhouse.  In 1952 a letter went out to the members of the St. Anthony Club of New York which said, in part, "After considering 50 locations, a building at 16 East 64th Street has been found which meets ALL [the] requirements." 

The social club of the Delta Psi fraternity founded at Columbia University, it had moved several times in its more than 100 year existence.  The 16 East 64th Street Corporation was organized to purchase the $88,000 property, which in turn leased it to the St. Anthony Club.

The St. Anthony barroom was decidedly mid-century in decor.  photograph from "St. Anthony Club" brochure, courtesy Tad Tharp

With remarkable sensitivity, Candela and Resnick had preserved much of the interior detailing.  Even stained glass panels--the antithesis of 1950s design--survived.  Nevertheless, some areas like the barroom, were quintessentially mid-century.   A 1960s St. Anthony Club member brochure noted "It's a comfortable bar--casual and masculine in appearance, but often pleasantly sprinkled with ladies in the evening."

Other areas retained their early 20th century details.  photos courtesy Tad Tharp

The St. Anthony Club stayed on in the house until 1990 when it was sold to Linda and Stuart Schlesinger for $3 million.  The couple began a four-year restoration that that returned it to a single family home.   “Restoration” meant undoing Frederick Sterner’s 1921 remake of the second floor.  The two arched French windows reappeared, as if they were never gone.

By 2005 the arched openings of the second floor had reappeared; however the portico and service entrance remained changed.  photo New York Observer October 24, 2015.

The period touches that they did not bring back were the warm red brick (it was hidden beneath a slathering of white paint or stucco) and the below-sidewalk level service entrance (it had been moved up to what had previously been a ground floor window).  Their hard work resulted in a $21.5 million sale in 2005.

Only the studio dormer remains of Sterner's changes.  photo by the author

The new owners picked up where the Schlesinger’s left off.  The portico was closely restored, the façade cleaned, and the basement entrance lowered.  The result is as near a match to S. E. Gage’s 1904 remake of the old Victorian rowhouse as could ever be expected.  (The interiors--well, not so much.)

The Over-the-Top No. 228 West 4th Street

The entrance stretches nearly two stories tall.

As the turn of the last century approached, Greenwich Village was no longer the sleepy hamlet it had been 75 years earlier.  The bustling riverfront and the many small industries of the Village’s western sections attracted working class families into the area.  In the last decades of the 19^th century many of the small brick homes were demolished to make way for tenement houses.

As West 4^th Street changed, Ephraim Howe remained in his handsome home at No. 228 West 4^th Street.  Howe was a direct descendant of John Howe who arrived in America on the Mayflower.  He had made a substantial fortune in the distillery business and was a prominent member of the Produce Exchange.  Resisting the changes in his neighborhood, he lived on in his refined home until April 8, 1896 when he died there at the age of 85.  Ephraim Howe’s considerable estate was reflected in his gift of $40,000 to Tufts College for the erection of a new building.  That single bequest would amount to about $1.14 million today.

Ephraim Howe died at No 228 W. 4th Street in 1886 -- New-York Tribune, April 18, 1896 (copyright expired)

On September 16, 1899 The Sun reported that the estate of Ephriam Howe had sold “the old building” at No. 228 West 4^th Street “to a builder.”  That builder was the Herter family, which not only operated the Herter Realty Company; but the architectural firm of P. Herter & Son as well.  Peter J. Herter designed a five-story brick and stone tenement to replace Howe’s venerable home.  In doing so, Herter produced his own take on the Romanesque Revival style.

Classical panels, intricate capitals, contrasting brick, and grinning keystones were some of the dizzying array of decorative elements fighting for attention.

The completed building sat high above a commercial basement.  Herter created a cacophonous façade that is nearly a style book of 1890s taste.  The shockingly steep stoop rose to a dramatic story-and-a-half tall entrance.  As if desperate to use every available decorative element, Herter inserted two classical bas relief panels on either side of the entrance, used alternating colors of brick over the openings, ran terra cotta bands across the face of the building, laid brick in a checkerboard pattern in upper spandrels, added a heavy wreath medallion between the Palladio-inspired second story openings and propped tiny balconies on carved, spread-winged eagles.

The carved birds which once supported miniature balconies now uphold a fire escape.

But most remarkable were the fanciful mascarons that Herter lavished on the façade.  The bearded faces appeared as laughing or grimacing keystones, as heavy supports to the triangular piers that extended upward along the sides, and as cartwheeling ornaments over the doorway.  P. J. Herter’s quirky design style may not have earned him any awards; but it was doubtlessly a successful marketing scheme.  The over-the-top, somewhat flashy ornamentation was just the thing to attract the blue collar type residents whom the builders targeted.

The building was completed late in 1900 and in January 1901 Peter J. Herter leased it to Anna Fahrenholz for two years at $4,000.  When the lease was up, the Herters sold the building.  It was purchased three years later, in April 1906, by well-known real estate operator Joseph L. Buttenwieser.

By the time Buttenwieser bought No. 228, Greenwich Village had become the center of Manhattan’s bohemian community.  Artists, musicians, poets and authors were lured to its winding, charismatic streets.  Among the creative residents of No. 228 in 1910 was Genevieve Almeda Cowles.   Born in 1871 she had an equally-artistic twin sister, Maude.  Genevieve was a well-rounded artist who specialized in mural decoration and stained glass windows.

The Cowles sisters worked together on illustrating The House of the Seven Gables in 1897 (copyright expired)

Although successful in her own right, Genevieve was best known for her cooperative work with her sister.  The women illustrated many books and stories, like the 1899 edition of The House of the Seven Gables, and designed the striking windows in the Honor Room of Grace Church on Broadway.

Genevieve Cowles created this illustration around the turn of the last century -- Scribner's Magazine, copyright expired

A resident with a no-so-artistic bent was George S. Vredenberg.  The fire adjuster’s clerk was living here on February 4, 1912 when he found himself in trouble.  A few hours after a blaze was extinguished in the millinery factory building at No. 636 Broadway, a second fire erupted.  Firemen rushed back to the location to put out this fire, which raised the suspicions of investigators.

“Chief Kenlon had a suspicion that the second fire was caused by a cigarette or cigar dropped carelessly by some one of the people who trailed into a building in the wake of a fire,” reported The New York Times the following day.  The chief interrogated one man, whom he found standing around with a cigar in his mouth.  It was pointed out to the chief that the cigar was not lighted.

The Times said that the matter would have probably been dropped had not George S. Vredenberg walked in.  “According to Chief Kenlon, the young man had a cigar in his mouth, and it was lighted.  The Chief turned to Sergt. Pierce, who was standing near by, and ordered the arrest of Vredenberg.”

The fire adjuster’s clerk was charged “with carrying a lighted cigar into a building in which were both people and a vast amount of highly inflammable material.”

Some of the residents in the building were financially comfortable; as was Jesse G. Velie, a silk merchant who lived here in 1914.  Velie was the senior member of the firm Velie & Reiner and was also associated with the Anchor Mills of Paterson, New Jersey.  That year Jesse Velie found himself a member of the jury in the notorious Charles Becker murder trial.  Becker was a vice-detective who had arranged the murder of Herman Rosenthal, an underworld figure who got in the way of Becker’s system of receiving pay-offs.

In the first decades of the 20^th century Greenwich Village was famous for its tearooms—intimate, candle-lit spaces, often below ground, where artists and uptown “slummers” gathered.  Resident Herbert Lyson owned one such tearoom, located nearby at No. 163 West 4^th Street.  The problem for Lyson on New Year’s Eve 1922 was that he was not serving only tea.  He was serving alcohol.

Prohibition agents raided the tearoom that night, arresting four patrons and Herbert Lyson.  The men were held on $500 bail—nearly $7,000 in today’s dollars.

A few months after Lyson’s embarrassment, Joseph Buttenwieser sold the building for a handsome $80,000. 

In December 1933 Prohibition was repealed—a decade too late for Herbert Lyson.  The street level space at No. 228 West 4^th Street immediately became home to a bar.  Some policemen would have trouble adjusting to the change.

At 4:34 a.m. on July 13, 1934 plainclothes officer Richard Tilson walked into the bar.  He promptly arrested 39-year old bartender Joseph Spina for “having sold him two drinks” after hours.  The judge released Spina and chided the officer.

“Prohibition is over.  When you have a violation of the liquor laws you can’t just bring in any one who is working in the place.  You’ve got to bring in the proprietor.”

Prohibition was over but the days of Socialist and Communist radicalism were not.  The Government kept an eye on Rafael Reyes who lived in the building for about a decade, starting around 1936.  His name appeared regularly on the published list of “Names and Addresses of the Voters for the Communist Party.” 

As the West 4^th Street-Christopher Street area lured tourists and shoppers at mid-century, the former bar at No. 228 became a trendy shop.  In the 1950s it was home to Bon Bazar which sold contemporary home furnishings like fiberglass lampshades and mosaic-topped tables.

Through the 1960s and early ‘70s Amron Gallery operated in the store space.  The unusual gallery offered American Indian and Eskimo crafts.  In March 1969 the gallery offered an even more surprising item—Eskimo appetizers. 

On March 10, 1969 The New York Times reported on the introductory reception.  “Close to 300 people squeezed into the Amron Gallery…and around the 55-gallon tank of goldfish yesterday afternoon to preview a new collection of Eskimo sculpture, prints, toys and artifacts and to nibble on whale meat in Spanish sauce, Arctic char, and marinated muktuk in mustard sauce…Gallery guests ate whale meat in sea food sauce, too, as they browsed among Eskimo caribou antler carvings and soapstone sculptures.”

By the 1990s the gallery had given way to Jack the Ripper Pub, a horror-themed restaurant; and more recently a more traditional eatery, Wilfie & Nell took over.  In the meantime, Peter Herter’s fantastic tenement façade remains almost unchanged.   A discouraging but necessary fire escape veils the exaggerated detailing; but the whimsical façade is worth a pause in an attempt to absorb it all.

photos by the author