Queen Anne Meets Colonial -- The Lancaster, Nos. 39-41 East 10th St.

In January 1877 Dr. George Thompson held the position of Surgeon of the Ninth Regiment and, according to a newspaper “He was in prosperous circumstances, and his domestic relations were eminently happy.”  Thompson and his wife apparently leased their comfortable home at No. 41 East 10^th Street from the Renwick family.  The Renwicks, relatives of the great land-owning Brevoort family, held title to the property.

Dr. Thompson’s life would end somewhat mysteriously and with great agony on Monday January 15, 1877.  Although his family pressured officials for a “secret” investigation, The New York Times gleaned “through trustworthy sources” information that was “reluctantly corroborated…by Dr. Miller.”

The Coroner deduced that five days earlier Thompson “while suffering from a nervous attack” removed a bottle from his medicine cabinet which he supposed to be diluted hydrochloric acid.  Instead it was acid nitrate of mercury, “a powerful drug.”  He swallowed some of the contents and immediately collapsed in agony.

“He lingered, however, until Monday, when, surrounded by his grief stricken friends, he succumbed to the deleterious effects of the drug.”  Despite the family’s unusual secrecy, the Coroner insisted that there was nothing to suggest “that Dr. Thompson meditated self destruction.”

Ten years later, the East 10^th Street block between University Place and Broadway was still upscale.  The Renwick family decided to update its income-producing properties by demolishing the former Thompson house and its next door neighbor at No. 39 and, in their places, erecting an apartment building.  The concept of apartment living for the well-to-do was relatively new and The Lancaster would be among the first in the area.

The choice of architects was not surprising.  On May 28, 1887 the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide reported that Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell had “drawn up sketches for a five-story first-class apartment home…with all modern improvements at Nos. 39 and 41 East 10^th street to be built of croton brick and terra cotta with stone trimmings, for E. S. Renwick.”  James Renwick, Jr., although never formally trained, was by now one of the nation’s leading architects—responsible for such iconic structures as St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Grace Church in Manhattan, and the Smithsonian building in Washington.  William Hamilton Russell was a relative as well, the grand nephew of James Renwick.

The firm married two arising stars in residential architecture—Queen Anne and Colonial Revival.  The architects modernized traditional Federal elements—like splayed lintels—with a Queen Anne interpretation of the design.  The Federal-style doorway received an overblown fanlight and a decorative terra cotta frame.  A striking terra cotta shell burst from each tympanum above the fifth floor windows.   The numbers 39 and 41 were crisply incised into the brick on either side of the entrance, as was The Lancaster overhead.  While other architects would produce near reproduction 18^th century homes within the next decade, Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell created a unique modern take on the period.

There were just two apartments per floor and the moneyed residents tended to list their addresses accordingly—either No. 39 or 41—depending on which side of the hallway they lived.   As was often the case with high-end apartments at the time, the original tenants had their input in the design. 

Apparently Stanley B. Tyler did.  On April 5, 1891, in an article about the new trend of stained glass in homes, The New York Times mentioned “Two of the latest and most striking designs in the city are in the house of Stanley B. Tyler, at 39 East Tenth Street.  They are companion windows for the dining room, each 2 feet by 3, and show female heads typifying Spring and Autumn.  The heads are executed in subdued tints, and the general tone is soft and harmonious.”

Among Tyler’s neighbors was attorney Girard Irving Whitehead whose offices were in the Evening Post Building at No. 206 Broadway.   Whitehead was drawn into unwanted publicity in 1893.  His sister was married to inventor and civil engineer Francis J. Palmer and the couple had a daughter.  But the marriage had fallen apart and by now they had been separated for several years.

On September 8, 1893 Whitehead was called to Smith & McNell’s Hotel at No. 199 Washington Street where Palmer had committed suicide.  Palmer, who went to elaborate lengths to ensure that his death by inhaling lighting gas did not fail, left two sealed letters for his brother-in-law. Whitehead refused to reveal the contents; but said only that “rapid-transit schemes had ruined him financially and had turned his brain.”

By 1901 wealthy collector John Karst lived in the building.  The collection in his apartment was described in the Anglo-American Pottery’s “Directory of Collectors” as “mainly English and American china and glassware, including 3000 plates, 250 teapots, etc.”

Other residents included mining engineer Daniel W. Langton, Ph.D.; Captain Tom Miller; and Archibald Pell.   A retired Navy Captain, Miller was described by The Times as a “club man, epicure, and a widely known character in New York.”   The newspaper said that he had “a wide personal acquaintance with men in the higher walks of life than any one being in New York.”

The Manhattan Club was Miller’s favorite and he was noted for his whist and domino playing there.  But all agreed that it was his epicurean side that defined him.  “The Captain was most noted for his knowledge of the fine art of good living.  He was regarded as an authority on what to eat and how to cook, and what to drink with meals and at other times.”

Miller once said “Anybody can give a pretentious breakfast, luncheon, or dinner.  That’s only a question of the fatness of one’s purse. But to be dainty in the ensemble and exact as to detail is the fine art.”  The Times noted “It is said that he never gave a dinner at which some dish was not served the like of which nobody at the table eve before tasted.  When asked what it was the host would remark, ‘Oh, that’s just a new invention of mine.  Now that you have reminded me of it, I must give it a name.”

Captain Miller was 91 years old in February 1903 when he headed home to The Lancaster from the Manhattan Club at 3:00 in the morning.  He wore no gloves. By the time he made it to East 10^th Street, the frigid temperature had taken its toll.  The aged man was found on the shallow stone stoop, his hands frozen.  He died in St. Vincent’s Hospital six weeks later.

Like Captain Tom Miller, H. Archibald Pell traveled among high society.  The Evening World, on February 16, 1903, described “Archie” Pell as a “real estate broker and gay society man; lives at No. 39 East Tenth street; one of New York’s best-known gentlemen about town; young, rich, and handsome.”  Being young, rich and handsome did not keep Pell and several other Manhattan millionaires out of the newspapers for scandalous behavior.

Richard Canfield and David Bucklin were indicted by a Grand Jury on January 24, 1903 for “keeping and maintaining a gambling house at 5 East Forty-fourth Street.”  The exclusive address was appropriate for its clientele—including the likes of Reginald C. Vanderbilt, architect Clarence Luce, millionaire ink manufacturer William A. H. Staffford and Archie Pell.

Despite the operation’s elegant décor, the indictment called it “a public nuisance, where certain idle and evil persons congregated and were allowed to play certain games known as faro and roulette for excessive sums, to the discomfort and danger and annoyance of the citizens of the City.”  The millionaire patrons, including Pell, were not charged; but were subpoenaed as witnesses.  The scurrilous publicity would be damaging to the men’s social reputations and several of them fled.

Luce boarded a steamer for Europe; Vanderbilt headed off for Newport where newspapers said “he is out of harm’s way;” and the other three, including Pell, could not be found.  District Attorney Jerome was incensed, telling reporters on February 15 that if they did not appear in the courtroom the following day there would be “no mercy shown them.”

While Archie Pell worked through his legal and social embarrassment, his neighbors in the building included A. Irving Biggs, secretary of the American Stove Board Company, and William B. Anderson a civil engineer.   When Mr. and Mrs. Lippincott moved in around this time with their five children and baby grandchild, the Port Chester Journal described The Lancaster as “a staid and conservative apartment house at 39 East Tenth street, owned by the Renwick estate.”

The newspaper said “All of the members of the family are long on refinements.  In fact, old fashioned respectability is their chief stock in trade.  It was that which caught he agent of the Renwick estate, and the ‘Lippincotts,’ as they were known there, were the only ones who ever got into the house without a string of recommendations a yard long.”

The newspaper added quotation marks around the Lippincott name because it was merely their latest alias.  They lived in high style in the new apartment.  “The best meat that the Sayles-Zahn Company could furnish was delivered at the house—ordered over the telephone—and the grocer and the baker and other tradesmen were liberally patronized.  There had to be flowers—flowers made a home so much more attractive, Mrs. ‘Lippincott’ said—and then the baby had to be taken out for an airing every day, and that required at least a hansom cab.”

The truth was that the Lippincotts made a practice of establishing themselves in high-end apartment houses and hotels, then skipping out without paying either the rent or the other bills.  Before coming to The Lancaster, the Journal said, “They hung up the landlord, the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker, to say nothing of the florist and the liveryman, the milkman and the iceman.” 

It all came crashing down, however, when Mr. Brown of the Protective Association “happened in on the ‘Lippincotts’ one fine morning, recognized them as the ‘Hills’ of West Thirty-ninth street, the ‘Harrisons’ of East Thirty-first street, the ‘Runyons’ of West Washington Place, the ‘Somebody-elses’ of West Eighth street, and the McVeys of Philadelphia.”  They were arrested on Wednesday April 27, 1904.

Later that year, in September, the Renwick Estate sold the building to Jacob Stein, whose office was directly across the street at No. 44 East 10^th Street.

The numbers 39 and 41, as well as the building's name, are precisely cut into the brickwork.  The delightfully-squiggly fence pickets are pure Queen Anne.

More respectable tenants included the widow Mrs. Arthur W. Plimpton and her daughter Melinda.  The young woman was married in a fashionable Church of the Incarnation wedding in October 1906 to James Ditmars Remsen.  After the ceremony, guests assembled in Mrs. Plimpton’s apartments for the reception.

On the evening of March 28, 1907 64-year old Francis Theodore Patton died in his apartment here.  He had been employed by The Sun for 35 years, 26 of them as news editor—this after raising cotton on a 2,400-acre Louisiana plantation until 1872 following the end of the Civil War.  The New York Times outlined his literary successes in its obituary.  The Evening World, however, focused on his high ideals.

“The subject of this notice was not one of New York’s rich men.  He was not one of New York’s powerful men.  He was not famous.  He was not in politics or on the stage or before the public view in any capacity.  The usual claims to post-mortem notice would not in any way include him.”

Instead, said the newspaper, he honed young reporters.  “He told them how to do their work.  Their standards of newspaper honor were of his moulding.”  Called “Father Patton” by the cub reporters, The Evening World said that he “believed that to print and publish the truth was the noblest work man could engage in.  No truth to him was trivial.  The universe was truth from the highest to the lowest happening within human ken.  Humble as was his position, he knew of no millionaire, no lawyer, no railroad magnate, no stock broker, no man with whom he would exchange.”

Living in the building in 1913 were Harry Friedman, a “keeper” in the Blackwell Island Penitentiary, and his wife, Antonia.  The Philadelphia-born woman was the daughter of Dr. Victor Lesser of the German Hospital there.  While other wives in The Lancaster busied themselves with teas and charity events; Antonia held the highly unusual position of Probation Officer in the Children’s Court.  Sharing the apartment with the Friedmans was another social worker, “Mother” Krause.

Antonia’s job would lead to a frightening event in the apartment building hallway.

In July 1913 she recomended that Violet Cooper of No. 69 Gansevoort Street be removed to the care of the Children’s Society.  The girl was first put in a home in New Jersey; but when it was discovered that she was in need of medical attention, she was brought back to Manhattan and admitted to Bellevue Hospital.

Threats immediately began coming from the Cooper family.  On Sunday, August 3, about two weeks after Violet was removed, a note was found pinned to the Friedman’s apartment door.  It said that if Violet was not returned home, Antonia Freidman “would be killed.”

Four days later there came a knock on the door.  When Antonia answered it she “was met by a swarthy, stocky man who seized her by the throat, dragged her into the hallway, and struck her over the head with a blackjack,” as reported by The New York Times the following day.

The noise of the struggle alerted Mother Krause who rushed into the hallway, causing the attacker to flee.  The newspaper reported “Mrs. Friedman is suffering acutely from shock and a slight brain concussion.”

Antonia may have felt a change of jobs would be advisable.  She became superintendent of the Magdalene Home for women early in 1915.  Run by the Episcopal Church, the home was first opened in 1838 to reform prostitutes.  By now the focus was on helping wayward girls.

But that position did not work out well either.  Six weeks after she took the job, she resigned.  She found the discipline at the Home to be excessive.  “These punishments,” she said, “consist of being deprived of many little liberties, going to bed supperless, and being put into cells.”  The New York Times reported “Mrs. Friedman contended that she ruled with love and kindness and that at no time while she was serving as superintendent did she have occasion to make use of the cells.”

Antonia’s “resignation” came after Mrs. H. Scheftel, the second Vice President, “told her to leave the place on Thursday, without giving her time to pack her belongings.”  The ouster enraged the girls at the Home and it “occasioned a mutiny among some of the inmates.”

The girls were taken to the Women’s Night Court.  When a reporter arrived at the Friedman apartment, Antonia stated that she hoped they would be “dealt with considerately…for they made the demonstration as a protest to a return of what they say will be old customs of being punished severely for minor infractions.”  One can assume that the Edwardian teens who committed “mutiny” were not dealt with “considerately.”

The 1920s saw change in the neighborhood.  Private homes were operated as rooming houses or were replaced by tall commercial buildings.  The political and social climate was changing as well. 

The tension between capitalists and socialists was evident when 25-year old Lancaster resident William P. Sim was arrested in 1921.  Sim had misrepresented himself as being connected with Bellevue and Roosevelt Hospitals and was accused of charging Mrs. Anna Waschenko $60 per visit for treating her child.  The excessive fee would translate to about $785 today.

On November 25 he was sentenced to serve 13 months to five years in Elmira Reformatory by Judge Ernest I. Edgcomb.  According to the Federation Bulletin, “Judge Edgcomb denounced him as ‘a maker of anarchists and bolshevists.’”

On September 26, 1925 The Lancaster received a surprising new tenant—the Beta Chapter of New York University’s Delta Phi Epsilon fraternity.  The organization paid $110 per month (in the neighborhood of $1500 today).  Member George Stretch wrote “The boys have a new house.  I think the move a good one…Now we have a real apartment with real sleeping rooms, which afford more private for living and study…We have several fireplaces, and several rooms, open together, are large enough for meetings. Ordinarily such a place would be out of the question at the money.  The only reason for it is that the house is an old one and in a thoroughly business section, one might call it a manufacturing section.  But we cannot have our cake and eat it too, so we have to overlook the surroundings.”

Within three months another fraternity moved it. The Upsilon Chapter of Theta Chi announced on December 5, 1925 in The Rattle of Theta Chi “We are moving into an apartment at 39 East Tenth Street this month and we shall be ‘at home’ after January 1, 1926.”  The Theta Chi boys were here only temporarily while working on their permanent chapter house.

The Lancaster saw a quick turnover in owners in 1927.  That year Samuel H. Potter purchased it as part of a syndicate, the 39 East Tenth Street Realty Corporation.  A year later, on March 39, 1928 the New York Evening Post ran the headline “The Lancaster on East 10^th St. Sold.”

Despite the commercialization of the area, the apartment building still retained respectable residents.  One was lyric poet Barbara Young.  In May 1928 she and poetry patron Frances Randolph announced their plans to found the Poetry House in the old Ogden Mills residence at No. 12 East 10^th Street.  They told reporters they intended it to become an American institution with a large audience room, music room, and a book room “where guests may sit down in quiet and comfort, in a homelike atmosphere and browse over whatever poetry they will, and on stated occasions listen to poets’ readings.”

Speaking in her apartment in The Lancaster, Barbara Young told reporters “At the present time there isn’t any home for poetry in all of New York.  In spite of the poets and nearpoets and would-b-poets, all around us, we have treated the great art very much like a step-child and it hasn’t a hearth nor roof-tree to call its own”

Tragedy visited The Lancaster in 1936.   Two young women, Phylis Telfort and Ruth Kaman, shared an apartment here.  Phylis was a 27-year old librarian.  She arrived in New York from Rochester, New York in September 1935 and rented a furnished room in Ruth’s apartment on the fourth floor.  The Great Depression years were no time for jobless librarians to try to find work in Manhattan.  But as the holidays neared, she landed a job in a toy store.

But when the Christmas selling season ended, so did Phylis’s employment.  With no job and little money, on January 4, 1936 she plunged to her death from the fourth floor living room window.

The Lancaster survived the Great Depression without its spacious apartments being dissected.  When it sold in 1937 it was still described as a ten-family apartment house.  Nine years later when Henry Payson purchased the building, it was described as “re-modeled;” yet the original ten apartments were still intact.

Nearly unheard of to New York apartment dwellers; The Lancaster’s floor plan was never altered.  In 1981 when it was converted to cooperative apartments, there were still merely two residences to a floor.   Today the 1887 survivor is nearly untouched on the outside  Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell’s delightful Queen Anne take on Colonial architecture is a wonderful surprise and treasure.

photographs by the author

The Lost Henry Houghton House -- No. 3 East 83rd Street

The house as it appeared in 1932 -- photograph by Charles Von Urban, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYWJ95BQR&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

In 1858 Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux began construction on the ambitious Central Park project.  Along the eastern side of the grounds ran the still-unpaved Fifth Avenue.  And branching away from the avenue, far to the north of Manhattan’s fashionable residential district, the side streets saw spotty development.

Throughout the next decade quaint wooden cottages appeared.  All similar, they sported front porches where the residents no doubt took advantage of the summer breezes each evening.  One of these was No. 3 East 83^rd Street, a two-story clapboard house with an English basement.  The roof of the deep porch was balustraded and most likely doubled as a “sleeping porch” during the summer heat.

Henry C. Houghton had spent the Civil War years in the South.  Born in Boston on January 22, 1837, one of 14 children, he had been teaching physical culture and natural sciences in the North Yarmouth Academy “fitting school” for Bowdoin College, in Yarmouth, Maine, when the war broke out.

In March 1863 he volunteered for service in the United States Christian Commission and was sent to Fredericksburg.  Following the Battle of Stone River he was detailed to Nashville and put in charge of the Commission’s post there.  The American University Magazine later recalled “The strain of the duties in these positions was tremendous, and although of indomitable perseverance and endurance, he broke down with typho-malarial fever at Nashville, and, after a brief rest, was stationed at the Depot Field Hospital, at City Point.”   After the fall of Richmond, Houghton went there “while it was still burning” and helped transfer prisoners to the transports.

Following the end of the war Houghton returned to New York City in 1865.  In 1867 he was graduated from New York University and the following year he married Mary Ella Pratt whom he knew from Yarmouth, Maine.  The couple moved into the little wooden house at No. 3 East 83^rd Street.

In 1870 he was appointed Professor of Physiology in the New York Homoeopathic Medical College and Hospital; and professor of Physiology in the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women.  Both he and Mary Ella participated actively in charitable causes.  From 1867 to 1869 Dr. Houghton was connected with the Five Points House of Industry, in Manhattan’s most infamous slum; and Mary Ella would become President of the Home for the Friendless.

Dr. Henry C. Houghton -- The American University Magazine November 1894

Within the next few decades the once-rural area around the Houghton house would drastically change.  On March 30, 1880 the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its new facility on the Park side of Fifth Avenue, visible from the East 83^rd Street porch.   Further south, grand mansions of New York’s wealthiest citizens had already begun inching up the avenue.

Records of the residents of No. 3 East 83^rd Street are sketchy at best throughout the last quarter of the 19^th century.  Like the Houghtons, however, they were financially comfortable enough to afford domestic help.  On May 16, 1891 an advertisement appeared in The Sun:  “Young Girl for light housework.”

By 1939 the house was dwarfed by apartment buildings--yet the lot next door would remain vacant for years.   photograph by Charles Von Urban, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYWJ95BQR&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

In 1902, when the Metropolitan Museum’s monumental new Beaux Arts edifice was completed, the family of Frank O. Roe was living in No. 3.   Roe was a banker with the Leather Manufacturers’ National Bank.   Son Irving L. Roe had graduated from Princeton in 1897 and the family routinely summered at the fashionable Lakewood, New Jersey.

The house was the scene of the marriage of Mrs. Roe’s cousin, Marion Bache to Brooklynite Hampton Howell on March 21, 1907.  Because Marion’s father was deceased, Frank Roe gave her away.  The New York Times remarked “The house was decorated with Spring flowers, including tulips, roses, ferns, and palms.”

The Roes retained possession of the house at least until 1917.  It appears they leased it briefly to actress and theater owner Maxine Elliott.  The stage star came and went from New York to Europe routinely.  In 1914 playwright Catherine Chisholm Cushing told a reporter from Theatre Magazine “It was Maxine Elliott who gave me the first actual encouragement I ever received as a dramatist.”

Cushing related her disappointment at being rebuffed by agents and producers.  Then “I wrote a play about a woman who had married and borne children and ‘let herself go.’  She allowed her talents to become dim. All her accomplishments lapsed.  She seemed to care not at all for how she looked.  I called it ‘The Peacock and the Goose.”

She sent it to Maxine Elliott, who owned the Maxine Elliott Theatre at No. 109 West 39^th Street and preferred to stage works by women.   Four days later Cushing received a letter from Maxine, who was playing in Chicago.

“I love your play.  The freshness and brightness of it have charmed me.  I want to see you and talk about it as soon as I come to New York.  I shall be at my town house, No. 3 East Eighty-third Street on Sunday, and will hope to see you.”

Catherine Chisholm Cushing saw Maxine in the library of the little house.  She described it saying “You’ve seen it, the lovely open fireplace and the room that, like the house, looks so much like her?”

The interiors were photographed around 1922 --photographs form the collection of the Museum of the City of New York  http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYWJ95BQR&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

By the time Catherine Chisholm Cushing talked business with Maxine Elliott, the neighborhood was filled with opulent mansions.  But the architectural version of the country mouse somehow had survived.   Following the Roe family, the house would have a relatively rapid succession of residents.

photographs form the collection of the Museum of the City of New York  http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYWJ95BQR&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

Until 1927 Melissa Salisbury lived in the house, followed by Katherine E. Day.  Katherine would never marry; instead she devoted her life to teaching.  She was quickly followed by J. P. Taylor Armstrong and his family who moved in by 1932.  The Armstrongs had a summer house in New London, Connecticut.  An avid golfer, Armstrong was President of the Shenecossett Club.

During the Depression years the Federal Writers’ Project published a series of travel guides, including the 1939 New York City Guide.  In writing about the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it told readers “and just across the avenue, at 3 East Eighty-third Street, amid a row of mansions, is an incongruous, two-story frame house with a horseshoe nailed above its door.”

Unfortunately for the clapboard house, by mid century its real estate value along with that of the two matching brownstone mansions at Nos. 7 and 9 and the vacant lot at No. 5 far outweighed charm and history.  In 1953 the family of Leonard E. Bruce was living in the white-painted house with its shady porch and little front yard.

 

When this father showed the quaint little house to his son its time was nearly at an end -- photograph by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the New York Public Library

On March 19 that year The New York Times wrote “The buds on the shrubbery outside the old frame house at 3 East Eighty-third Street, just off Fifth Avenue, are sprouting hard.  And well they may, for next year they and the house itself will be gone.  The City’s growth, which has struck all around them, is about to replace them and neighborhood structures with a twelve-story apartment building, with penthouse.”

 

http://www.dwellingsnyc.com/building/1025-fifth-avenue

The 16-story cooperative white-brick building designed by H. L. Feldman that replaced the old structures was completed in 1955 and survives today.  All memory of the little “incongruous” wooden house with the horseshoe above its door is long forgotten.

Hats, Cloaks, and Bootleg Alcohol--No. 714 Broadway

In 1893 Myer Finn’s old four-story brick building at No. 714 Broadway was flanked by modern loft-and-store buildings.  No. 712 was completed that year and doubled No. 714 in height.   On the northern side, No. 716 had been completed two years earlier—a fantastic six-story beauty designed by Alfred Zucker with terrifying gargoyles staring down at Broadway.

Finn (whose first name sometimes appeared as Meyer) took advantage of the commercial building boom along this section of Broadway and offered No. 714 for sale.  His buyers, however, would be surprising.  Trans-Atlantic negotiations were carried on via cable and on February 13, 1893 the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide reported that Finn had sold the old building “to C. Hermann, of Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany, and Dr. Heinemann for $125,000.”  The German investors paid the equivalent of about $3.4 million in today’s dollars.

Hermann and Heinemann would soon transfer title to German-born developers Emanuel Stern and David Schwartz.  In 1895 the pair commissioned the firm of Buchman & Deisler to design a skyscraper on the site.   The well-rounded architects were responsible for both residential and commercial architecture.  In 1893 they had completed a large addition to the Bloomingdale Department Store on 59^th Street; in 1896 they would finish the Alexander Building for shoe merchant Andrew Alexander along the Ladies’ Mile; and the following year they would start work on their masterful Art Nouveau New Era Building at No. 495 Broadway.

In January 1896 Buchman & Deisler filed plans for “an eleven-story brick and stone store.”  The cost to the owners was estimated at $140,000--$4 million for the building alone by today’s standards, not counting the cost of the real estate.

Completed in 1897, the neo-Classical structure rose head and shoulders above its two neighbors.  Clad in limestone, its dignified ornamentation was, for the most part, restrained.  Two building-width balconies, at the fourth and tenth floors, relieved the verticality of the design.  The cast iron shop window at street level projected slightly beyond the façade.  Expanses of glass on the upper floors were made possible by the steel and cast iron frame.

The building was open only a few months when it became part of a puzzling mystery.  On August 2, 1897 a man took the ferry to New Jersey and, at 3:00 in the afternoon, stood at the corner of Monroe Street in Passaic and shot himself with a 38-calibre revolver. The New York Times reported “The bullet entered over the heart.  The cause is said to have been despondency.  He came to Passaic on purpose to commit suicide.  He will die.”

The dead man was identified initially as “J. L. Jacobi of 351 West Fifty-eighth Street, New York, a dealer in cloaks at 714 Broadway.”   The 58^th Street address was the St. Albans residence hotel; but investigation showed that neither the New York City Directory nor the New York Business Directory listed anyone named Jacobi.  And inquiries at No. 714 Broadway revealed no one by that name doing business there.

The connection to the hotel was a possible lead.  A reported asked around and found that “a Mr. Jacobi has rooms for himself, wife and three children.  The family took possession of their rooms a week ago.  They came from the South.”  The clerk was unaware of Jacobi’s initials and refused to allow the reporter to give his card to the elevator man to take to Mrs. Jacobi.

Small manufacturers, mostly apparel firms, filled the building—like Gumbiner & Fox and Mark H. Cohen & Brother who were tenants in 1899.  In April that year it was nearly sold to a rather surprising buyer—Meyer Finn and his partner, M. Kahn.   According to the Register and Guide Finn regained his old property by paying a bargain-basement price of about $100,000—about 70 percent of the construction cost.

But he and Kahn rapidly resold to operators Stern & Schwartz.  It was no doubt a profitable transaction. When the new owners sold No. 714 in January 1901, the New-York Tribune reported the purchase price at “about $285,000” and was called “the largest real estate deal made in the Broadway wholesale district for some time.”

Mack, Latz & Co. was in the building that year.  The manufacturers of children's apparel loaded nine cases of clothing onto the wagon of expressman Herman W. Brand on Friday, March 22, 1901.  Brand made a subsequent  stop on West 3^rd Street to make another pick up and when he came out “his horse and wagon and goods had disappeared,” according to a police report.

The Mack, Latz & Co. goods were valued at about $1,200.  Within two hours police found the empty wagon and horse at South and Clinton Streets.   The heist was the work of what police termed “a bold gang of wagon thieves who have been operating with single success in the clothing district for several weeks.”

The crooks would not be free for long, however.  The following afternoon Detective Sergeants Foye, Clarke and Becker broke into the apartment of Jacob Kutner and his 24-year old wife, Mary at No. 411 Sixth Avenue.

Inside were the Kutners, 23-year old Edward Raymond “who described himself as a ‘vocalist,’” and 41-year old peddler Louis Greenberg.  The New York Times reported “When the police broke in Greenberg was bargaining with the others for the plunder, which was scattered all over the place” and said “all found in the place were arrested.”

Edward Raymond was, in fact, not a vocalist, but a gangster with the alias of “Abe” Randsky.  When he felt he was being set up by his confederates to take the rap, he talked to the police regarding a plea deal.    The Times said “He did this despite the treat made to him by his associates that if he turned State’s evidence he would not live long after to gloat over the others’ discomfiture.”

On May 16 he testified before Judge Foster in General Sessions and explained that he “Blowed on me pals, who done me dirt.”  Raymond told the court that the gang had a large “fence” on the East Side who would take the loot.  “the goods were shipped immediately to other cities,” wrote The Times.

When the Monarch Suspender Company took four floors of the building in 1902, it agreed to a rental of $7,500 a year.   Hat makers were also leasing space here, like The Crescent, “makers of trimmed and ready-to-wear hats” and Lamer & Lewy, “manufacturers of bonnet and hat frames” which were here in 1904.  Suit and coat makers Per, Mamolen & Locks, Co. who leased the 5^th floor, had a close call that same year.

On November 21 Policeman Campbell was standing near No. 714 Broadway when a canvas-covered wagon drew up at the curb.  The driver noticed the officer and drove on.  According to The Sun the following day, “Campbell thought that was queer and shadowed the wagon.  It drove around a lot of corners, and finally to 714 Broadway again, where it backed up to the curb.”

As Officer Campbell watched from the shadows, two men came out of the building carrying armfuls of fabric.  He waited until 15 rolls had been loaded onto the wagon before descending on the driver and one of the thieves.  “The other got away.”

Police found the steel latticed door leading to the fifth floor broken open and the wooden door behind smashed.  “Piled up in the hallway were thirty-seven rolls of cloth, 150 overcoats and 100 suits of clothing,” reported The Sun.  “Desks and drawers in the place had been broken open and rifled.  The cloth found in the wagon was said to be worth $75 a roll.”

The crook caught removing the fabric from the building was identified as Henry Goldberg.  His interest in the caper was understandable   He was a tailor.

Surprisingly, along with the apparel firms (there were at least nine different garment companies in the building in 1914) real estate companies shared space here.  S. P. Prager; the Simon Berg Realty Co. and Leopold Sinsheimer (he owned the building) ran their real estate operations here in 1914.

As the garment district moved north of 34^th Street during the Depression years, No. 714 retained its hat and clothing tenants.  In 1936 and ’37 the list included the Everlast Underwear Co.; Stein Cap Co.; Edward Wechsler, “ladies’ blouses;” and the Kessler Clothing and Hat Co. along with about seven other garment firms. 

But not everyone in the building was busy making clothes.  In March 1939 the principals of Wald Merchandise Company, Inc. were arrested on suspicion of manufacturing denatured bootleg alcohol.

The 1940s saw the first real change in the type of businesses renting space here.  Although in 1941 firms like Morris Chesner, “ladies’ hats,” the G. S. Sportswear Co. and the Glasgow Hosiery Corp. were still in the building, they were the last holdouts of the former garment center.  In 1943 the street-level store where once ribbons and trimmings were sold was leased to Grand Union Equipment Co. which sold “general merchandise.”

In the mid-1940s the Carnival Novelty Co. sold the items young men won for their sweethearts at fairs and carnivals—“real fur Scottie dogs, Goo-goo eyed chenille dolls, plaster figure animals, fox fur tails” and “swagger canes.”

As the Noho and Soho neighborhoods were rediscovered by artists in the last quarter of the 20^th century, they were refurbished.  The spacious lofts where Edwardian women once toiled over sewing machines, with their vast windows, were perfect for artists living and working spaces.

In 1982 No. 714 was joined internally with No. 716 Broadway and the upper floors were renovated into “Joint living/work quarters for artists.”  That too would change.  Once the home of struggling artists, 3-bedroom apartments in the building now have a starting price of around $5 million.

photographs by the author

The Henry Dwight House -- No. 111 Waverly Place

When wealthy merchant Asaph Stone began construction on his lavish townhouse at No. 107 Waverley Place in 1839, he extended the project to include two nearly matching speculative homes at Nos. 109 and 111.   Completed in 1840 the three residences, just steps from Washington Square, were characterized by refined taste and upscale domestic design.

Stone gave his own home some added touches—like the extraordinary ironwork balcony and railings.  But he did not scrimp on the other houses.  No. 111, like its twin neighbor at 109, featured handsome iron railings and fences which carried on the Greek Revival motif, broad double entrance doors, and floor-to-ceiling windows at the parlor level.

A stylized Greek key design runs along the lower portion of the railings and fencing.

No. 111 became home to Henry Dwight, Jr., a broker with an office at No. 61 Wall Street.  He was still here in 1848; but soon the house became home to James William S. Underhill.  The 38-year old died on Monday morning, June 11, 1855, and his funeral was held in the parlor two days later.

Following Underhill in the house was the Charles H. Raberg family.  A well-respected businessman, Raberg had been a member of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York since 1839, the same year Asaph Stone started construction of No. 111 Waverley Place.  In 1850 Raberg was elected a member of its Arbitration Committee.  His office was at No. 107 Cedar Street.

Tragically, Raberg’s youngest son, Edward Leon, died in the house on Tuesday afternoon, April, 8, 1862 of “disease of the heart.”  Edward would have been 16 years old in three weeks.  For the second time in just seven years, a funeral took place in No. 111 Waverley Place.

As friends and family filed into the Raberg house for Edward’s funeral, civil war was already raging in the South.  The conflict would touch the lives, somehow, of every family in the city.  Edward’s older brother, Charles H. Raberg, Jr., had answered the call by enlisting in the New York National Guard.

War took priority over romance for Charles; but on Thursday, September 21, 1865 just five months after the Confederate surrender, he was home to marry Sallie Duckwitz of Brooklyn.  Seven months later he was promoted to Second Lieutenant.

In the second half of the 19^th century millionaires slowly migrated northward in a constant attempt to stay ahead of the expanding commercial district.  The elegant Washington Square, ringed with staid brick residences of old New York families, was an exception.  As the turn of the century approached the residents of the Square tended to ignore the social changes and remain in their family mansions.

This was not the case with the blocks extending off the park.  By 1882 No. 111 Waverley Place was being operated as a high-end boarding house.  An advertisement on Sunday, July 9 in the New York Herald announced “Nicely furnished front room, on second floor with or without board; modern improvements.”

The boarding house was run by a Miss Cameron.   When T. Shimooka arrived in New York in 1884, he took a room here.  Looking for work, he placed an ad in The Photographic Times: “As Dark-room Operator or Printer—I have been employed in photo. business for many years in Japan.  Want a situation in a gallery as dark-room operator or printer—T. Shimooka, Japanese”

Among the most visible of the boarders in the 1890s was Leslie A. Toke.   In the heyday of the social reform movement, coupled with the rise of socialist ideals, Toke was a well-known activist.  In 1899 the Labour Annual: The Reformers’ Yearbook listed him at No. 111 Waverley under its “Directory of Useful Addresses.”

Toke would write stirring publications, many aimed directly at the Roman Catholic Church; including his The Catholic Church and the Sweating System; an expose of social conditions entitled The Housing Problem; The Rationalistic Propaganda; and Why the Pope has Condemned Communism.

As artists were drawn to Greenwich Village in the first years of the 20^th century, Charlotte Weber-Ditzler moved into No. 111 Waverley Place by 1908.  Born in Philadelphia, she studied in Munich. Now she busied herself illustrating books and magazine covers—competing with New York’s most illustrious illustrators.

Charlotte Weber-Ditzler was most likely still living at No. 111 Waverley when she produced this 1910 Saturday Evening Post cover -- (copyright expired)

The house became the property of The New York Bible Society and throughout the first half of the century respectable boarders came and went—like F. A. Schwalmayer, a partner in The Holland Nitro Lamp Co., Inc. who rented here in 1916.   When the Society sold the house in 1946, The New York Times described it as a “four-story remodeled apartment building.”  Despite the description, little had changed to the outward appearance of the 1840 residence.

The handsome ironwork survives beautifully intact.

Margaret M. Hanley took possession of the house, which was assessed that year at $33,000 (just under $400,000 today).  By now "Waverly" had lost its second “e.”

 

The house received its moment in the spotlight in 1967 when it was used as the exterior of the Bratters’ apartment building in the motion picture Barefoot in the Park.  Although it was supposedly on West 10^th Street, New York audiences were not fooled.

At the time the windows had been replaced and the brownstone lintels and sills showed the chips and wear of 130 years.  Utilitarian entrance doors with brass kick plates took the place of the elegant Greek Revival originals.  At some point within the next few years the brownstone enframement would be painted white.  One can only scratch his head and wonder why someone thought that was a good idea.

Prior to restoration, the house was in surprisingly good condition; but still needed some tender attention. photograph http://www.elliman.com/new-york-city/111-waverly-place-2front-manhattan-nczpvrg

Then in 2008 a careful restoration and renovation returned No. 111 Waverly Place to a single family home.  Having escaped modernization it looks very much as it did in its pre-Civil War glory days.

The entrance enframement and the lintels have been restored and period-appropriate windows installed.

non-credited photographs taken by the author