The 1904 Swiss House -- No. 35 West 67th Street

In 1851 a group of well-to-do Swiss immigrants responded to the needs of their compatriots who were not faring as well.  The Swiss Benevolent Society was incorporated that year.  The group not only relied on the support of its members, but in its annual meeting at Delmonico’s the following year, it was noted that the Swiss Federal Government had donated $283 and $381 more came from 16 of the Cantonal Governments.

By 1883 there were between 12,000 and 15,000 Swiss-born residents in New York City.   On April 3 that year the New-York Tribune reported “to meet the increasing demands upon the society, it has been decided to construct a building for its purposes, to be called The Swiss Home.”

The Society purchased a home at No. 108 Second Avenue which was, according to The New York Times on December 28, 1883 “remodeled and refitted to suit the purposes of the Society.”  The total cost for the house and its remodeling was $28,089.63; about $685,000 in 2015 dollars.  In addition, over the past year the Society had spent $12,029.22 in “relieving the wants of needy Swiss and for medical attendance.”  Clearly the worthy project was not an inexpensive one.

The Swiss Home for Indigent Men and Women was opened “for the inspection of its ‘benefactors’” on the afternoon of December 27, 1883.  The interior of was decorated with flags and flowers for the event; and guests toured “the different departments, the dormitories, the bath-rooms for men and women, the sitting-rooms, and parlors.”

To help finance the Swiss Home, occasional fairs were staged, like the one that opened on November 15, 1886 at Irving Hall.  The New-York Tribune reported “Among the special attractions will be a shooting gallery in charge of the Helvetia Rifle Club with prizes for the best marksmen, Swiss pottery and specialties, thoroughbred Swiss St. Bernard dogs, music by Conterne, and singing.”  The newspaper noted “many of the young ladies will wear the pretty costumes of the different cantons of Switzerland.”

By 1903 the Society looked for a site for a new building.  The search may have been partly prompted by health concerns.  That year alone, more than 10,000 people died in New York City from tuberculosis—a disease commonly linked to crowded conditions and the lack of fresh air and sunlight.  In reporting on the purchase of Nos. 35 and 37 West 67^th Street in 1904 the Annual Report noted “the site is an exceptionally good one and the proximity to central Park, with its green lawns, its rocks and lakes, will remind the future inmates of their mother country.”  But a year later the Report added that the site was “located in the most salubrious,” or health-giving, part of New York City.

The Society announced its intentions to build a five-story home (the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide termed it an “asylum”) in February, 1904.  Within four months an architect had been chosen, Swiss-born John E. Scharsmith, and the projected cost of the new building was set at $55,000.

No longer a household word; Scharsmith’s name was well known at the time.  He not only designed structures, but actively traded in real estate.  On the Upper West Side alone he had been responsible for The Chatworth Apartments and the The Hohenzollern within the past two years, and soon would start work on the eight-story 425 West End Avenue apartment building.

The Swiss Home was completed in December 1905.  Although it was popularly reported that Scharsmith based his design on the Town Hall in Basel, the two structures have basically nothing in common.  The architect produced an attractive Collegiate Gothic building of red brick and limestone that appeared more school than residence.  Neo-Gothic elements like the pointed-arched first floor openings and doorway, the drip moldings within the fourth floor gables and the finishing touch—the decorative finial on the center gable—added to the romantic charm.  Almost hidden from view and nestled within the cornice brackets, were the heraldic shields of the 22 cantons of Switzerland.

Around the time of the building's completion, "studio buildings" were filling the block -- photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYWK31G76&SMLS=1&RW=1097&RH=534

The Swiss Home was dedicated on December 16, 1905.  Among the dignitaries present were the Swiss Consul, J. Bertschmann and the Swiss Minister, Dr. Leo Vogel, who had traveled from Washington DC for the occasion.

Guests toured the facility, finding in the basement a “waiting room, smoking room, repair shop, dining room for transients, kitchen, laundry, storeroom, fumigator, bath and toilet rooms,” according to The Times.  The first floor held semi-public rooms like the inmates’ dining room, a meeting room and small waiting room.  The women’s accommodations were on the second floor—10 bedrooms, a bathroom and sitting room.  Men were housed on the third floor where there were 11 bedrooms.  The top floor had another eight bedrooms “for transients” and a cedar closet.

Tucked beneath the cornice are the carved shields of the Swiss cantons.

There was room for 80 residents—30 permanent and 50 transient.  The Home assured “in case of great pressure accommodations to the extent of twenty additional beds could be procured.”

An example of such “great pressure” came about seven years later when, in April 1912, the RMS Carpathia steamed into New York Harbor carrying the survivors of the RMS Titanic.   Even before the ship arrived, Mrs. Nelson H. Henry was concerned about the impoverished passengers who would have no means to find shelter.

She formed a committee to ensure “that the steerage and second class passengers who need help when they reach New York by the Carpathia shall not be left in want,” reported The Sun on April 18.  Mrs. Henry told reporters “We will see to making definite arrangement for their care and we will try to give them the kind of welcome that they have reason to expect from hospitable America.”

The committee visited benevolent societies across the city.  The Sun reported that “The Swiss Benevolent Home, which has strict rules about taking only immigrants from Switzerland, agreed to take fourteen women and children, no matter what their nationality.”

The problem that the Swiss Benevolent Society soon realized was that the Swiss House was never more than half-filled.  The result was that the care of each person ran about $400 a year.   It was a concern that President Robert J. Schwarzenbach found untenable.  In addition, the Upper West Side location, once so salubrious, was now developed with theaters, apartment houses and saloons.  In 1923 a Mount Kisco, New York estate was purchased and the Swiss House residents transferred there.

The 67^th Street building was converted to the Swiss Home for Self-Supporting Women.  Such female-only hotels were highly popular.  They presented unmarried working women with a safe haven at modest costs.  Strict rules and oversight by female management kept the residents safe from Manhattan’s “wolves.”  Residents paid between $9 and $14 for rent and meals; and while many of the other working women’s hotels had age limits, the Swiss Home did not.

One of the residents in 1925 was Rose Jager, who fell victim to a con artist that year.  Rose was out of a job and she placed a newspaper advertisement for a governess position.  She was picked up at the Home in a high-end automobile and taken to a hotel where she was interviewed by 42-year old George Hamilton.  The potential employer, according to The New York Times on July 23, 1925, had an “impressive appearance, a suave manner and smooth talk.”

Rose was a bit too trusting and needed a job.  What she could not know was that police had been searching for Hamilton for weeks.  By the time he was arrested he had swindled at least 50 out-of-work women out of the little money they still had.

Detectives revealed his methods:  He would answer advertisements of women seeking governess jobs; and then “Hamilton would pose as a wealthy man intending to employ his victim.”  By his smooth talk he would find out how much money the applicant had.

The police explained he would “tell his prospective victim that he intended to deposit a sum of money to her account for expenses of the position, but that, to cover himself, since he had once been swindled by a governess, she would have to give him control of her savings account.”

Rose naively complied and Hamilton drained her account of $650.  The crook had defrauded jobless women of as little as $10 to large amounts like Rose’s.  His scheme was undone when he went to the Jeanne d’Arc Home on West 24^th Street and was recognized by a girl whom he had earlier tried to swindle.

Another resident, stenographer Else A. Sittle, was 25-years old in 1935.  That same year she left the Swiss Home on November 24 for a visit to France and Germany.  Else’s parents lived in Germany and she intended to spend the holidays with them. 

She had another reason for the trip, as well.  Born in Saarland, Germany, she was intent on making her voice heard regarding political changes in her homeland by voting in the plebiscite.  Else did not confine her opinion to the voting booth and her outspoken views on Adolph Hitler were, indeed, heard.

Else A. Sittel was arrested by the Nazis and confined to the prison in Waldmohr “on a charge of making derogatory remarks about Chancellor Hitler and his government.”   After serving her sentence she was released on January 3, 1935 and finally visited her parents before returning to the States on the SS President Roosevelt.  Upon disembarking on January 20 she told reporters “She said she did not think she would visit the Reich again for some time.”

In 1994 the Swiss Benevolent Society put the Swiss Home on the market for $2.95 million.  It was purchased by New York University for its Makor Center for Jewish Life.  The endeavor was short-lived and in 2001 the University donated the building to the 92^nd Street Y.  Six years later title was transferred again, this time to CUNY.  After a significant interior renovation the building became the Macaulty Honors College, complete with modern classrooms, a lecture hall, and performance space used by CUNY students city-wide.

The renovations sympathetically preserved the exterior of Scarsmith’s dignified edifice.  It is unchanged (other than the sad loss of the wonderful decorative gable finial) after more than a century.

photographs by the author

The Lost 12th Regiment Armory -- Columbus Ave and 61st St.

Plans for James E. Ware's massive structure were published in Building on May 8, 1886 (copyright expired)

In the half-century before the Civil War the small militia force of State of New York protected the city again the threat of invasion, rioting, and other disorder.   When not seeing such action, the men of what would become the National Guard enjoyed their armories as more-or-less social clubs.

On June 21, 1847 the 11^th Regiment was formed—later to be renamed the 12^th.   While the 7^th Regiment had earned the nickname of The Silk Stocking Regiment because many of its members came from the city’s wealthiest families; the 11^th Regiment could boast blue blood as well.   Its first lieutenant colonel was John Jacob Astor.  He would proudly use his rank for the rest of his life.

Less than 24 hours after news of the bombardment of Fort Sumter reached New York in April 1861, the regiment “offered its services to President Lincoln," as reported in the New-York Daily Tribune later.  Under the command of then-Colonel Daniel Butterfield, the unit would see repeated action at the front lines; earning national commendation.

Just the regiment anticipated marching back to New York, after more than a year of action, General John E. Wool sent urgent word that “additional troops were needed, especially at Harper’s Ferry,” according to the Tribune.  The 12^th Regiment was at present at the momentous surrender on September 15, 1862.

But there would be not much time to rest in success.  The 12^th Regiment was brought back to New York to re-establish order when the bloody Draft Riots erupted in July 1863.  Following the war, the regiment saw duty in the Orange Riots in July 1871.  As the labor movement took form, strikes were often violent and bloody.  The 12^th would be called to squelch the Railroad Riots of 1877, the switchmen’s strike in Buffalo in 1892 and the Brooklyn motormen’s strike in 1895.  

The 12^th Regiment armory had been located on Longacre Square (later renamed Times Square), where Manhattan’s carriage-making industry was centered.  But by the early 1880s the rapidly-developing Upper West Side required an armory.   A plot encompassing 22 city lots on Ninth Avenue (now Columbus Avenue) from 61^st to 62^nd Streets was purchased and in April 1885 ground was broken.

City armories at the time were as much about architectural drama as they were military function.  Architect James E. Ware designed the rising structure as a medieval fortress replete with towers, loopholes, and a high tower “in which will be portholes commanding all the streets and avenues in the vicinity,” promised The New York Times.

Five months after construction began, the cornerstone was laid on September 19, 1885.  The Times reported “Military men in resplendent uniforms, gray-haired civilians, content with the badges worn in younger days; Freemasons behind their aprons, and Mr. Rollin M. Squire in a new silk hat and a pair of faultless trousers,” met at the site to participate in the ceremony.  The first speaker was, deservedly, Daniel Butterfield, now a General.

Ware’s plans included a 175 by 200 foot drill room with a glass and iron ceiling 45 feet above the floor.  There was a Board of Officers’ Room (called by the Tribune “one of the finest in the building), a meeting room, offices for the Colonel, Adjutant and Quartermaster, a “band room,” and 10 company “apartments.”  The single wood used throughout the interior would be ash.

Invading enemies would be well advised to steer clear of the 12^th Regiment Armory.  The Times reported “Along the edge of the roof of the drill room will run a parapet walk guarded by a stone wall nine feet high.  Seventy portholes are to be built in this wall…This will be the only armory in the United States that will be practicably defensible from the inside.  The building will be of granite and brick, the former to be used only on the first floor.”

photo by Geo. P. Hall & Son, from the collection of the New-York Historical Society.

The $750,000 structure was completed in April 1887.  Before the 12^th Regiment moved in, a glittering reception was held on April 21.   Unfortunately, the National Guard was better at fighting battles than at planning social events.  Invitations went out to far more people than could be accommodated. 

The following day the New-York Tribune was irate at the outrageous turn of events.  “The people who were asked to the 12^th Regiment’s reception last night came near being invited to a riot.  Thousands of invitations were sent out, it is said, but after about 3000 people were admitted to the armory, the rest were kept out at the point of the bayonet.”

The Board of Officers' Room (above) and the room of Company B.  New-York Tribune December 29, 1901 (copyright expired)

While Victorian ladies and gentlemen in evening dress puzzled over their predicament, “Twice a corporal’s guard indicated a desire to charge on the eager guests, and would have done it, too, probably, if the guests had not had nerve enough to hold the dangerous playthings steady and harmless in the agitated militiamen’s hands.”  With thinly-veiled annoyance, the newspaper offered “Next time the regiment would do well to ask fewer people or such as are accustomed to being stuck with bayonets.”

The Regiment took the advice to heart and the following evening the armory was the scene of what the Tribune called “mild revelry."   This time only about 200 or 300 guests were present.  “The company first gave an exhibition of drill; then there was a dance, which was followed by a supper.  The regimental band gave a concert and played for the dancers.”

A week later, on April 29, 1887, the 12^th Regiment marched up Broadway from its old headquarters, and took official possession of the Columbus Avenue armory.   The New-York Tribune noted that the Board of Officers’ Room “contains a fine collection of portraits” and “a collection of heavy oaken chairs in which the names of the officers who occupy then are inscribed.”

When the 12^th Regiment was not engaged in putting down strikes or military campaigns—it would see action in Cuba during the Spanish-American War—the armory was the scene of sporting games and social activities.

On February 20, 1896 crowds watched the joint athletic games of the New West Side Athletic Club and Company F of the 12^th Regiment.  Among the contests were the two-mile bicycle race, the one-mile walk (no one could understand why W. F. McLaughlin who finished second was disqualified), and basketball.  The Tribune reported that “Master Le Roy See gave a clever exhibition of trick riding on a bicycle.  After the games dancing was indulged in.”

Recruits for the Spanish-American War are sworn in.  Officers have stabilized the table, on casters, with magazines. photograph by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYWO0UPGN

In February of 1902 Columbia University’s intercollegiate, interscholastic and open track events were held here.  The university’s newspaper announced that “five hundred entries have been received” on February 28.

By 1905 the 20-year old armory showed needed maintenance.  Immediately after the election of Mayor George B. McClellan that year he was invited to review the 12^th Regiment.  The Mayor arrived during a pouring rainstorm.  On February 5 the New-York Tribune reported “when the time came for the review the Mayor was led to a spot on the floor where the rain came through and sprinkled him.  He looked around to see if other people were in range of the shower, and saw that they were not.”

The following morning he understood the indignity.  “There came before him for signature a resolution of the Armory Board calling for an appropriation of about $40,000 for repairing the roof of the 12^th Regiment Armory.”

At the time of the Mayor’s soaking, another millionaire, Cornelius Vanderbilt, was a Lieutenant in the 12^th Regiment.   When Major General Charles F. Roe reviewed the unit in December 1905 Vanderbilt served as officer of the guard.  That same month the Tribune reported “Indoor baseball has become quite a pastime among the companies, and a competition is at present going on for the regimental championship.”

On March 27, 1909 the armory was visited by Baron Rosen, the Czar’s Ambassador to the United States.   With him were Colonel Baron Bode, the Military Attache to the Washington embassy, and Baron Schlippenbach, the Russian Consul General in New York.  The regimental band played the Russian National Anthem as the group arrived with Colonel Dyer.  After an exhibition of shooting and drill, the baron lavished the regiment with praise. 

The Russian baron reviewed the troops in the massive drill hall -- photo by Geo. P. Hall & Son, from the collection of the New-York Historical Society.

Russia was involved in violent revolution and political tensions throughout Europe were intensifying.  In response to his praise, someone remarked “But you are a man of peace.  As such, don’t you think this warlike display is to be deplored?”

The baron replied in part “I do not believe that my hope of peace is lessened in any way by reviewing the Twelfth Regiment.  More confident I am than ever of the fact that no nation will attempt to make war upon any other nation as well prepared as this would lead me to believe the United States is.” 

With an eerie sense of foreshadowing, in presenting the regiment an award, he said “Soldiers, you have shot well to earn this handsome trophy, and, although I am a man of peace, I hope that you will shoot as well in time of war as you have done in times of peace.”

As the United States paid careful attention to the developments overseas, the men of the 12^th Regiment prepared for any eventuality.  On April 16, 1910 the detachment left the armory at 6:15 p.m. in a drill march.  They marched to Philadelphia, following the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks.  With only brief rest periods, the regiment continued for two and a half days, marching in with full equipment and ending back at the armory at 8:55 on April 19.  In his report, Captain F. C. Harriman noted that the men “finished in better physical condition than when they started, and with the exception of a few blisters on the feet owing to the very hard roads that we had to come over they would have been able to start and do the march over again.”  As it turned out, the march was, indeed, repeated several times over the next few years. 

In the meantime, the armory continued to be used for various exhibitions and meetings.  In 1912 it hosted the Exhibition of Aristocratic Canines, and a year later the United Catholic Works staged an exhibition and sale that included Native American works like Navajo rugs and Sioux and Chippewa bead work.

Especially noteworthy was the 10-day New York Emancipation Exposition held that same year.  The event honored the 50^th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.  The first staging of W. E. B. Du Bois’ pageant play The Star of Ethiopia with a cast of over 1,000 actors took place during the event on October 22, 1913.’’

When the Exposition closed, The Crisis called it “perhaps the largest single celebration which colored people have had in the North.  The total attendance was over 30,000; the order was perfect; not a single arrest was made and there were no serious accidents.”

Peace ended on April 2, 1917.  Dancing, games and dog shows gave way to war.   In September the year before, Base Hospital No. 1 had been organized as a military surgical team.  Now its home was the 12^th Regiment armory.    As the Base Hospital temporarily remained, training for deployment, the 12^th Regiment headed off to war.

Thanksgiving was bleak for soldiers that year.  The 12^th Regiment armory became a gigantic dining room as it opened its doors to servicemen.  The New York Times called it “the largest dinner to be served in New York” and said those receiving Thanksgiving dinner here would be the enlisted men from Camp Mills on Long Island, consisting of “soldiers from Western and Pacific States.”  Those in charge of the dinner suggested that “former Westerners now living in New York to come to the dinner and join in the welcome extended to the men from the States from which the division now at Mineola has drawn its men.”

On February 26, 1918 Base Hospital No. 1 too left for war.  Upon arriving at Vichy it set up a hospital in nine hotels.  The first patients arrived on April 9—252 wounded Frenchmen.  Two days later 358 American soldiers arrived.

Among the medical team was Princeton graduate Frank L. Farrell.  Just prior to being shipped off to France, he wrote the Princeton Alumni Weekly, “I’m in a uniform.  It’s the somber, ill fitting uniform of a humble private, but still it’s Uncle Sam’s uniform.  It’s like this:  The Allies decided in view of the Italian and Russian situations that things were pretty serious.  So they decided to play their strongest card and I was mobilized at once…The thing I like most is rising at 6 a. m.”  He downplayed the danger of his deployment adding “Put my initials on one of the kegs you are sending to Berlin for our class reunion.”

Frank Farrell and the rest of Base Hospital No. 1 would remain in Vichy until March 5, 1919.  During that time it performed 8,142 surgeries and treated 7,481 other cases.  When the 12^th Regiment, Base Hospital No. 1, and the city’s other regiments returned to New York City, hundreds of thousands of cheering civilians cheered as they marched up Fifth Avenue.

With the end of war the use of the great drill hall returned to its on-and-off use as an exhibition space.  It was highly favored as the venue for motor vehicle shows.  In January 1921 the Motor Truck Association of America held its Highway Transportation Show here.  Motor Truck magazine said “Demonstration of the possibilities of highway haulage with power vehicles is the keynote” of the event.

The event was repeated the following year; and in 1922 the Exposition of the Automobile Body Builders Association was held here.  The car and truck makers would have to find a new space by 1937 when the massive drill hall had been converted to a bowling alley.

On May 19, 1947 a two-day celebration of the centennial of the 12^th Infantry Regiment was held.  The festivities ended “with a review and pageant in the regimental armory,” reported The New York Times on May 21.   The 350 people attending the dinner and dance at the Henry Hudson Hotel the first night could scarcely have imagined that within a decade later the massive stone and brick armory would be no more.

Robert Moses conceived of the “Lincoln Square Renewal Project”—a 16.3-acre urban renewal project that would stretch between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, from West 60^th to 66^th Streets.

On May 9, 1957 400 people attended a rally to protest the redevelopment project.  While the envisioned Lincoln Center would replace urban blight; it would also put more than 40,000 residents on the street.  The protesters, of course, failed and blocks of structures were razed—including the venerable 12^th Regiment Armory.  Rather interestingly, little if any protest was raised about the demolition of the unofficial landmark.  

The site of the armory is now a parking lot and entrance to the garage beneath the Fordham University School of Law.

Overlooked Art Deco -- No. 307 Fifth Avenue

In 1853, three years after he married Elizabeth, the daughter of wealthy merchant Henry Remsen, Joseph Grafton built his brownstone mansion at No. 307 Fifth Avenue, just two blocks south of the Astor mansions.  He traced his roots to the Grafton family of colonial Massachusetts, and was the brother-in-law of the socially visible Charles H. Minot of Boston.

The childless Graftons lived in their 28-foot wide mansion for decades, as the avenue gradually changed.  On March 5, 1900 81-year old Joseph died in the house.  In reporting on his death, The New York Times mentioned, “Possessed of a large estate, he had not engaged in business for many years.”

That “large estate” was later reported to be over $1 million.  Shortly after her husband’s death Elizabeth donated a valuable collection of art objects to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  She also seems to have been suffering from dementia; for on March 9, 1901 Amelia Stuyvesant presented a petition to the Supreme Court asking for a ruling regarding the Elizabeth’s sanity.  “It is claimed she is mentally unfit to take care of” her inheritance, explained The Times.

It little mattered.  A month later, on April 11, 1901 Elizabeth died in the mansion “of old age.”  Her obituary recalled that “she was prominent in the society and church life of a past generation.”

Fifth Avenue between 31^st and 32^nd Streets was no longer the exclusive residential address it had been in 1853.  The old Grafton mansion was surrounded by commercial concerns and in 1904 Joseph Grafton’s nephew, Joseph Grafton Minot of Boston, leased the house to Densmore & Compton.   The firm had already contracted to erect a new building on the site.

The subsequent five-story commercial structure was home to realty, architectural and apparel firms.  In 1917 one tenant, the Hamilton Garment Co., not only renewed its current space, but signed a lease on the entire building.  Three years later the aging Joseph Minot Grafton sold the property—the first transfer of title in 67 years.

Rapid commercial development of the neighborhood resulted in the looming Schwartz Building.  Next door the five-story structure at No. 307 can be seen.

Buildings come and buildings go in New York City and 14 years after the five-story building was constructed, plans were in the works to tear it down.  On June 21, 1928 owner William H. Jacobus announced he had signed a $1.5 million, 63-year lease on the property with Conrad Glaser, President of the 307 Fifth Avenue Corporation.

The following day The New York Times reported “Mr. Glaser is having plans prepared for improving the site with a seventeen-story mercantile building.  The façade of the proposed structure will be of terra cotta, limestone and marble.”

The neighborhood around No. 307 Fifth Avenue was vibrant.  It bustled with activity as new buildings rose, and within the year construction would begin on the nearby Empire State Building.  Before the ink on the lease was dry Glaser had already rented the ground floor, five of the upper floors, and said “negotiations were pending also with rug and carpet merchants for space.”

Conrad Glaser, who was not only a real estate operator but a builder, commissioned William I. Hohauser to design the new office and showroom building.  Best known for his theater designs, the architect would make Art Deco—the architectural style that defined Jazz Age Manhattan— unabashedly evident on Fifth Avenue.

The 1904 structure was demolished and construction on Glaser’s building began on November 1, 1928.  It continued at a dizzying speed, and No. 307 Fifth Avenue opened on February 1, 1928—exactly 90 days after ground was broken.  The New York Times described the building saying it “has six of the lower floors of the entire front erected of plate glass, marble and modernistic steel, with nine floors of the front all of terra cotta.  It contains three high-speed elevators.”

Bizarre faces within the end capitals join with the riotous blend of swirls, zig-zags and geometrics designs.

The newspaper did not mention the vibrant Art Deco decorations—a shallow cornice above the second floor composed of stylized floral baskets; alternating spandrel panels of swirls and geometrics; and fluted pilasters capped with complex capitals.  Hohauser’s elaborate terra cotta decoration was interrupted at the 7^th through 16^th floors where more tepid geometric designs in brick took over.  The wonderful terra cotta cladding resumed at the top two floors.

A midsection of more orderly brickwork gives way to another explosion of Art Deco ornament at the top most floors.

On the day of its opening the building was 70 percent leased to a variety of tenants including apparel firms, a real estate leasing company and the Garrison Fire Detection Company.  On May 8 a flurry of leasing took place.  The Reich-Ash Corporation, makers of cosmetics; the Silvercraft Specialty Company, and the Antique Novelty Box Company took space.   Management announced that now 16 floors of the building were rented.  The diverse tenant list included brokers, and even the Childhood League (the purpose of which was to “emphasize the importance of play in the formation of character”) and the Animal Protection League.

Perhaps it was the pressures of the Great Depression that caused two of tenants to go astray of the law.  But on January 29, 1930 The Times reported that the office of broker Gerard Russell had been raided and searched by State Troopers.  Deputy Attorney General David Wohl said Russell “had induced his customers to turn in valuable securities and had returned to them securities of little value.”

Two weeks later another tenant was in legal trouble.  Joseph S. Ross, Albert A. Weiss, and Robert Victor Gaulett, co-partners in the brokerage firm of J. S. Ross & Co. were charged with “fraudulent sale of stock and misrepresentation of assets.” 

While the brokers dealt with their legal problems, Daisy Miller, President of the Animal Protective Union worked on a far different crisis.  Norwegian Christoffer Braathen had been a dog-sled driver with Admiral Byrd’s expedition in the Antarctic.  His lead dog, a Husky named Moose-Moss-Mouse “was ugly to most people, but to Chris he was gentle, a friend,” said The Times on September 18, 1930.

Other expedition members had poked fun at the dog, saying he looked “disreputable;” but Braathen was convinced he was the “best dog that ever was.”  He explained that the dog’s name came to be because “some members of the expedition thought he resembled a moose, others a mouse—he weighs eighty-five pounds—and others that he looked ‘mossy.’”

Braathen was so fond of the Husky that when the other sled dogs were shipped home on the whaler C. A. Larsen he smuggled him aboard the City of New York and brought him to Manhattan.  When the weather was bad he brought the dog into his cabin.

When the festivities surrounding the Byrd expedition were over, Braathen got a job as chief engineer on the yacht Carib, owned by Bostonian Thomas Johnson.  He left Moose-Moss-Mouse with George A. Thorne, Jr., who had been chief surveyor of the Byrd expedition.  Thorne’s home was in Glen Cove, Long Island.

Early in July the Husky went missing.  The Times opined “Perhaps it was the hot weather or perhaps it was just plain loneliness, or maybe he was kidnapped.”  Whatever the reason, Christoffer Braathen’s favorite sled dog was still missing in September.  So he enlisted the aid of Daisy Miller.  She turned to the airwaves on September 18, broadcasting “an appeal for aid in finding him over WAAT.”

More apparel firms moved into the building in the early 1930s.  Kastenbaum and Wollstein, “hosiery and underwear;” leather goods dealers Veramode Company, Inc. and Louise Merzbach and Arnold Diamond; garment maker David L. Rubel; and Alfred and Frank Ehrenreich, “fancy goods,” all moved in in 1931.

Other tenants included the newly-formed publishing firm Carlyle House which released its first book, Trial and Error—Writing and Selling, in 1933.  In it author Jack Woodford advised would-be free-lancers that fifty-thousand words too many for the equipment of a free lance writer” and admonished “one of your first jobs, as you write for money, will be to get rid of your vocabulary."

The Depression years brought about Governmental efforts to stabilize the economy.  Yet in doing so, the best interest of the citizenship as a whole sometimes flew in the face of the interests of the individual.  Gordon S. Harris, who operated his automobile business from No. 307 Fifth Avenue, found this out in February 1934 when he sold a car for $50 less than the list price of the Motor Vehicle Retail Code.

Unfortunately for Harris, his customer was a government agent.  Harris was found in violation of the New York Shackno Law.   When he was found guilty following his two-day trial, the defiant and angry dealer refused to pay the $500 fine.  To make his point he settled on three months in the workhouse.

The wide variety of tenants continued throughout the coming years.  The Pro-Palestine Federation of America was here by 1936 as was the Educators Association, Inc., publishers of encyclopedias.  That firm would remain in the building well into the 1950s.  In 1941 the Fifth Avenue Public Service Bureau was here, helping to direct funds to Hungary and Slovakia; and the Russian-American Committee to Aid the Fighting Forces of Soviet Russia opened its offices on October 18 that year.

In 1991 the existing storefront was replaced and in 2007 a year-long façade restoration was initiated.  At that time the two-story front was replaced again.  But, although overshadowed by the soaring Schwartz Building next door, William I. Hohauser’s wonderful Art Deco sliver survives above the second floor.

photographs by the author