The 1833 Day, Newell & Day Bldg - 589 Broadway

In 1832 Judah Hammond began construction on brick faced house and store at No. 589 Broadway.    At three-and-a-half stories tall and a 26-feet wide, it provided ample residential space above the large street level shop.  Completed in 1833 it most likely had two dormers and a peaked roof.

The building was an investment project for Hammond, who was well-known in New York political circles as a Locofoco member.   (The Locofoco party was a radical faction of the Democratic party.)  Early 19th century newspapers had no problem peppering the news with their own opinions, and the New York Herald was no exception.  Hammond was included in its summary of a Locofocos meeting in Tammany Hall on September 26, 1837 which the newspaper described as "riots, rows and other humbug."   The Herald reported in part:

At this moment the complexion of the meeting was tame and insipid.  Judah Hammond was appointed President, and half a dozen others, Vice-presidents, and secretaries.  A little news boy, who sells the Herald for specie [coins], stuck himself up in the window behind, resting his chin on his hands, looking as if he spoke thus: 'What a hell of a fuss about nothing!'"

In the meantime, Robert Newell and his family lived above the store on Broadway.  Downstairs he and his partners, brothers Samuel and Jacob Godfrey Day, operated the locksmith shop of Day, Newell & Day.  By 1836 another Day brother, William, was working in the shop.

Newell and Jacob Day invented the high-quality locks which were manufactured in the shop.   Their innovative locks were marketed as being burglar proof.   Day, Newell & Day exhibited several locks in the Exhibition and Fair of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association in Faneuil and Quincy Halls in Boston on September 18, 1837, with amazing success.

The firm received a Gold Medal for a group of 18 locks, invented especially for bank use.  The judges were impressed not only with the heavy security they offered, but with their superb workmanship.  They noted the locks had "a contrivance, which at the same moment, shoots a bolt at the bottom and top of the door, which cannot be moved unless the door be first unlocked--thus affording additional security and strengthening their claim to superiority."  As for workmanship, the committee noted some locks were "also very valuable, and of beautiful finish, fitted up with plated, ivory, ebony, mahogany and brass knobs--a part of them with night keys."

Day, Newell & Day manufactured a wide array of locking mechanisms.  The Exhibition's catalogue listed "Door locks of various kinds; bolts; door knobs, of wood, brass and plated; Door plates, ventilator; wardrobe lock; bank locks."  It deemed the company's Combination Bank Lock "impenetrable."

Things seems to have run smoothly until April 2, 1841.  On that morning Jacob instructed the shop foreman to begin work on an order.  William stepped in and "countermanded," as described by the New-York Tribune.  Each of the brothers flexed his authority while, apparently, the bewildered foreman was unsure which job to do.

"Some words passed between them; [Jacob Day] lifted his loaded cane perpendicularly from the floor, but did not attempt to strike when William Day seized him by the coat, put his fist against his breasts, and pushed him back against the wall, and then threw some water at him."  Jacob had his brother arrested for assault and battery, saying it was not the first time he had been threatened.

A jury found William not guilty on June 9; but tensions between the brothers had apparently become untenable.  Within the year Jacob started his own business at No. 315 Bowery.  In his place Samuel and John Day appeared in the directories that year with Day, Newell & Day.  The fraternal animosity must not have been too serious, however, for John was Jacob's son.

Among Newell's clever inventions was his patented Permutation Bank Lock.  Should a key be misplaced or stolen, the lock could be quickly reset, making the original key useless.  An advertisement in The New York Herald on April 24, 1842 promised "Any person may have the key for a whole day to make a fac simile [sic] by, without the slightest chance of opening it, after a change has been made in setting it."

By 1845 the firm name was changed to Day & Newell, although there were still two Days--John and William--in partnership with Robert Newell.   That year they came up with a brilliant marketing scheme that grabbed international attention.  Touting Newell's Parautoptic Bank Lock in Sheldon & Co.'s Business or Advertising Directory as "invulnerable," they offered a $500 challenge to any other lockmaker.  They guaranteed that a Day & Newell employee could pick that firm's lock, while an agent from the other firm would be "totally foiled in all attempts upon our own."

Another Day, Thomas, had joined the firm by 1850.  That year he was awarded a $5 prize for his "French window bolt" that he exhibited in the American Institute of the City of New York.

In the meantime, the $500 challenge stood, accepted by the Bramah & Chubb lock company of London in 1851.  Day & Newell sent W. Fisher Hobbs to England.   The London Builder reported "Thirty days were given Mr. Hobbs for his attack on the Bramah lock, and to make his instruments he was allowed to take impressions of the key and the tops of the wards.  Day after day he was shut up alone with the lock, none being permitted to enter the room while he was at work; and, with the aid of 'thieves' wax,' a hinged mirror in the key-hold, a strong light, all sorts of odd instruments, and his own great cleverness, he has succeeded in the task."

Now it was England's turn.  Bramah & Chubb sent "Garbute, the most skillful lock-pick in Great Britain" on the task, according to Charles Edwards Lester, writing in Glances at the Metropolis later in 1859.   After 30 days Garbute was confounded.  "When asked by Hobbs if he wanted further time, he said: 'Thirty days or years are alike--the lock is invulnerable.'"

The well-publicized challenge and its results did not escape the notice of the Bank of England.  They sent for Hobbs and commissioned him to install Day &  Newell locks to protect the Crown Jewels and Day & Newell became "special patrons and protectors...to her Majesty Victoria Regina I."

In the meantime, Jacob G. Day was inventing his own locks in his shop and was no mean lock picker himself.  Decades later, in 1913, grandson, Charles H. Day, related an amazing story to The Numismatist.  He said Jacob began to lose his mind obsessing over a lock he was trying to perfect until "finally he got so bad they had to take him to an insane asylum."

"His son, John Day, took him to the sanitarium, and saw him well placed in a room and the door securely locked as supposed, but when he got home he found the old gentleman sitting contentedly in his accustomed chair."

While Day & Newell remained in the building, the upper floors were enlarged for commerce around 1852.  The Flemish-bond brickwork turned to running bond in the new full-height fourth floor, topped by a simple dentiled cornice.

A coat of paint disguises the change in brickwork between the third and fourth floors.

Business directories show that the locksmiths were sharing the address in 1853 with Rufus Anson, listed as "daguerreotype likenesses."  His advertisement in The New York Herald in September that year offered "Anson's Daguerreotypes, large size, for 50 cent.  These are colored, and in a nice morocco case, lined with velvet, and twice the size of any in the city of 50 cents, and warranted equal in quality to those that are sold for $2 and $3."

Anson hand-colored certain images, like this one of "Two actors from the melodrama 'Robert Macaire'" taken in his 589 Broadway studio in the 1850s

Anson produced this hinged case holding four portraits of "a soldier's family."  above via mutualart.com

Anson remained in the Broadway building into the Civil War period.  His popular studio required a staff of 15 camera operators in 1860.

After about 1857 Day & Newell was no longer listed at the address.  The millinery and dry goods district had begun invading the neighborhood, and in 1856 shirtmaker Julius Neuville was operating in the building.

By now improvements on the domestic sewing machine meant women increasingly made clothing at home.  In 1863 Ebenezer Butterick created the first graded sewing patterns, and in 1866 his company was manufacturing women's dress patterns.  They were an enormous success; and the following year he published the first issue of Ladies Quarterly of Broadway Fashions.  By 1869 he was operating from No. 589 Broadway.

E. Butterick & Co. placed this 1869-70 fashion plate in Central Park, published from 589 Broadway.  from the collection of the Library of Congress.

 E. Butterick & Co. experienced phenomenal success an by 1876 had 100 branch offices in the United States and Canada.  They expanded into menswear and, surprisingly, uniforms.

Butterick offered patterns for New York City's Metropolitan Police uniforms in 1871.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1871 the ground floor store was taken by haberdasher Dunlap & Co., which operated another store at No. 174 Fifth Avenue.   An advertisement in The New York Herald on may 26 that year touted "Imported English hats, umbrellas, boys' and youths' straws and felts, by the best makers."

Hill & Curtis, here by 1876, were among the first of the millinery-related factories in the building.  Importers and manufacturers of artificial flowers and feathers, its products were intended solely for hat makers.

Millinery Trade Review May 1876 (copyright expired)

The Financial Panic of 1873, known as the Great Depression until the 1929 Stock Market crash, lasted for about six years and devastated the economy.  It may have been the general economic conditions that prompted Dunlap & Co. to reduce prices in March 1877.  in a "Special Notice" in The New York Times the firm announced the had lowered prices on "their Celebrated Silk Hats to $8, and Stiff Felt Hats to $5."   The products were nonetheless not cheap--the price of the silk hat equivalent to about $190 today.

In dropping the prices, the store insisted nothing had changed.  "Being manufacturers of the same as well as importers of the materials used, they are enable to keep the standard of quality an styles the same as here before."

In 1872 a shoe business was formed in Troy, New York by Franklin Converse.  When his son, Henry, joined the firm it was named F. Converse & Son.   In the middle of the 20th century the company would change the personality of athletic footwear world wide with its "gym shoes," or "sneakers."

By 1882 it had opened its showrooms at No. 589 Broadway.  Writing in the State of New York that year, Henry Kollock noted that the firm was "largely engaged at 589 Broadway in dealing at wholesale in boots and shoes for ladies, gentlemen, and children.  The store property is a large four-story brick building 30 by 60 feet in extent, which is filled to repletion with the above staples."  At the time Converse was doing $100,000 a year in business; nearly $2.5 million in shoe sales today.

In 1886 when William V. Leary sold No. 589 Broadway to Mary H. Ward, it was filled with millinery shops and furriers.  On September 1, 1888 The Fur Trade Review announced "Mr. S. Littenberg, 589 Broadway, invites attention to his new styles of sealskin hats, caps and gloves, which have been produced to meet the needs of first-class dealers."

The same issue featured fashion plates depicting the fur garments and accessories available from Maerlender Bros., also operating from the building.  The company marketed itself as "manufacturers of seal-skin goods of every description."

 

Maerlender Bros. offered fur accessories and trimmings like these in 1888.  Fur Trade Review, September 1, 1888 (copyright expired)

Another furrier in the building was S. F. Helstein & Co.   Its foreman, Henry Gebhart, had struggled in the fur business on his own before being hired by Helstein.  His expertise was such that, as explained by The New York Times, the firm "gave him complete control of their workshops and made him a sort of working partner."  Gebhardt brought his son, Henry Jr., in as a fur garment cutter.

In 1892 August Wanner was working as a "fur nailer."  He was described by The Evening World as being "considered a good workman at his trade.  He was somewhat peculiar and occasionally gave way to fits of temper, but there was no friction between him and the foreman."  He left the firm that year, but returned in May and was given his old job back.

But on May 11 Henry Gebhardt, Jr. did not like the way Wanner had handled a garment, and asked him to nail it differently.  "Wanner refused, saying that he knew his business, and when Gebhardt insisted he became violent and called the boy names," reported The World.

Then Gebhardt told his father about the incident, he and Wanner "had words."  Nevertheless, things seemed to have returned to normal until two days later, on a Saturday, when Wanner asked the senior Gebhardt for increased wages and a better position.  "He was told that there was nothing better for him to do and that his wages were high enough," said The World.

That precipitated another argument and Gebhardt reached the end of his patience.  When pay envelopes were passe out that afternoon, Wanner was let go.  Henry Gebhardt hired a new worker and forgot about the incident.  But August Wanner was not so quick to forget.

On the morning of May 14 Gebhardt had nearly reached the factory when Wanner stepped out from the doorway of Edward Simon & Bros. trunk store at No. 667 Broadway.  He tried to thrust a sheet of paper into Gebardt's hand, but Gebhardt pushed him away and kept walking.  Wanner pulled out a revolver, pressed it to the back of Gebhardt's neck and fired.

The New York Times reported on the deadly assault in florid prose.  "Gebhardt fell without a groan, and the horror-stricken pedestrians stopped and stared.  But the tragedy was not complete.  While Hebhardt's life blood was welling out, Wanner sent a bullet through his own brain.  He toppled over on the sidewalk, falling almost across the feet of his victim.

"Then women screamed and men shouted.  Hundreds gathered around the prostrate bodies and cars and trucks pulled up."

Policeman Murphy was on the scene in seconds.  He propped Gebhardt up against some trunks in front of the store.  "Gebhardt's lips moved, but no sound came," reported The Evening World.  "Then his head fell forward and he was dead."  Like The Times, The Evening World could not restrain itself from melodramatic reporting.  "A great red pool had formed on the sidewalk where Gebhardt lay, and Wanner's life-blood oozed from the wound in his head and trickled in a little rivulet down the stone steps and across the sidewalk."

The Evening World, May 15, 1893, (copyright expired)

Wanner was taken to a hospital, but died within the hour.  The sheet of paper he had tried to force on his victim read:

As I have been in the business thirty years, and no man was coward enough to discharge me; but you villain tried to get some one to turn on me, you shall pay for it with your life.

Mr. GEBHARDT

Convicted

AUGUST WANNER

The Executioner

Henry Jr. was "prostrated when he heard of his father's terrible death," said The World, but "He rallied enough to go to the police station and identify his father's body, and then went to bring his mother, who had not yet learned the awful news."  Why he felt his mother should view the bloody corpse in a public setting is unclear, but the newspaper noted "The scene in the station when the wife was shown her husband's body was heartrending" and The Times said "Her grief was pitiful."

Interestingly, the following year saw a complete turnover in tenants.  The ground floor where Dunlap & Co. had sold hats and umbrellas was now Julius Kemsler's cafe; the second floor was home to William Ullner's flowers and feathers business, and S. Strouse & Co., coat manufacturers, was on the third.  The fourth floor was unoccupied.

When Mary Ward's estate sold the building November 1908 to Louis Ettinger, the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide got the history of ownership inexcusably wrong.  "The property has been in the Ward family for nearly a century," it reported, overstating the length by more than 80 years.

Somehow the 1833 house escaped demolition while all around it modern commercial structures rose.  It continued to house millinery and apparel firms, including Fox Manufacturing Co., makers of men's and children's clothing; Blasbalg & Grunfeld, "suits and cloaks;" Feldesman Bros., suspender makers; and Maurice Seckendorff's millinery factory, all here before World War I.

Small manufacturers would come and go throughout the century, like Champion Belt, H. Wolff & Co., and the Metropolitan Thread Co. which remained for many years.  The ground floor would continued to house a restaurant for decades.

A far different manufacturer moved into No. 589 Broadway in 1975.  Gunmakers Griffin & Howe, founded in 1927, had been taken over by Ambercrombie & Fitch; but was now independent again.  It not only manufactured, but sold guns from its fourth floor space.  But it arrived at the wrong time, when Soho was experiencing its resurgence and rents were increasingly rising.  In 1986, "when Manhattan rents were sky high," as explained by Claudia H. Deutsch in The New York Times on September 17, 1995, the company was forced to move to New Jersey.

In 1997 the Mary Anthony Galleries was in the building; and the following year the ground floor restaurant was converted for bank use.   Unlike many Soho lofts, it was never converted to residential space.  Today small factories still operate from the upper floors.

589 Broadway is dwarfed by the 1897 Astor Building next door.

The last holdout from the residential era along the block, it takes a little imagination to envision the building as it was when Day, Newell & Day sold their locks, and Rufus Anson shot daguerreotypes of Union soldiers.

photographs by the author

The "Hildegarde Withers Home" - 32 West 74th Street

In 1885 construction was completed on a long row of towhouses along West 73rd Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.  They were designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh and commissioned by sewing machine mogul Edward Clark, who had put the young architect to work on the lavish Dakota Apartments at the corner of the block five years earlier.  Clark's optimism in the growth and development of the neighborhood was obvious.  There were only few other buildings in the immediate neighborhood.

But in 1902 things had changed and the Upper West Side was now a vibrant new suburb.  Clark, who had died in 1882 before completion of the 73rd Street project, left a long row of building plots directly behind (from No. 18 through 52 West 74th Street) to his one-year old grandson Frederick Ambrose Clark, known to the family as "Brose."  Now, at the age of 21, Frederick commissioned architect Percy Griffin to design a dignified row of homes on the 74th Street site.

Griffin, who is not well known today, worked almost exclusively in the stately neo-Georgian style,  Concurrently, for example, he was working on the plans for a Georgian-style rowhouse for John Stevens Melcher on East 51st Street, just off Vanderbilt Row.  The 18 homes on West 74th Street, known as the Clark Estate Houses, would be an architectural tour de force.

Completed in 1904, their courtly designs would have been at home in London's upscale Mayfair District.  The Architectural Record, in November 1906, said the block "presents the appearance of a composite whole well studied in its entirety for silhouette fenestration and general composition."  The article added that Griffin "has varied the individual facade treatments to give to each house a distinctive character, yet to preserve in its composition certain lines, which allow it to properly take its place in the block."

Although the writer said that the Clark Estate Houses were intended for families of "moderate income;" their size and amenities argued the point.  The 25-foot homes were five-stories tall with a three-story extension to the rear and contained up to 20 rooms.  And Frederick Clark would have disagreed, as well.  An advertisement insisted "NO residences have ever been offered for rental in New York City comparing with these in construction, equipment, appointments and detail.  They have been designed and built with the careful attention to details of construction given only to the highest class houses built for private ownership."

The Architectural Record, November 1906 (copyright expired)

And The Architectural Record seems to have contradicted itself when it conceded that "Each house...has its own steam-heating plant, and a dynamo of sufficient power to run an electric elevator (with automatic control), a convenience that should count with people who have lived in elevator apartments and would object to climbing the stairs."  Each contained four or five bathrooms.  According to The New York Times, construction of each cost "about $110,000," or about $3 million today.

Clark had no intention of selling the new residences; his grand project was an investment.  By November 1904 the entire row was occupied except Nos. 42 and 32.  An advertisement for the "New American Basement Dwellings" in The Sun on October 30 depicted well-dressed gentlemen strolling before the homes, suggesting their upscale tone.

The Sun, October 30, 1904 (copyright expired)

Like its neighbors, the upper floors of No. 32 were faced in Flemish bond brick with charred headers to suggest age.  Its top story with its copper-clad dormers was nestled behind a continuous balustrade with the other homes.  A columned portico supporting a stone balcony dignified the limestone base.

The house became home to the George E. Armstrong family.  Armstrong was secretary of massive wholesale drygoods firm, The H. B. Claflin Company.  Living in the house with his parents was George, Jr. who had graduated from Yale in 1901.

A nattily-dressed George Armstrong turned out in his tweeds and tam at the Fox Hills Golf Club.  The New-York Tribune, November 24, 1901 (copyright expired)

While many other successful businessmen sailed yachts and raced horses, Armstrong was interested in a more recently popular sport, golf.  His name routinely appeared on the sports pages and he was described by the New-York Tribune as a "prominent player of the Fox Hills Golf Club."

Mrs. Armstrong placed manicured shrubs on the balcony.  The Architectural Record, November 1906 (copyright expired)

Around 1912 the Armstrongs moved to West 82nd Street, and No. 32 was rented by a far more controversial and well-known figure, Herman Ridder.   Born on Greenwich Street to German parents, he had worked himself up from an errand boy to establishing the German language newspaper the Katholisches Volksblatt in 1878.  By now he was the publisher and editor of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung and was highly involved in political and civic affairs.

A staunch Democrat, he was active in the Grover Cleveland campaigns and in 1908 was appointed Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee.  His high visibility and vocal stances had resulted in a well-publicized stand-off with Theodore Roosevelt.  The New York Times later remembered that after Roosevelt had visited William Jennings Bryan, "it was reported to Mr. Ridder that President Roosevelt had referred slightingly to him.  This was denied by Colonel Roosevelt, but not until there had been much comment about it in the public press."

By the fall of 1914 when Germany was seen by many Americans as an aggressive, invading force in Europe, Ridder tried to soothe anti-German sentiments.  He found a staunch adversary in The New York Times.  On September 24, 1914, for instance, the newspaper wrote "Herman Ridder taunts Great Britain and challenges her navy in an editorial in English in this morning's Staats-Zeitung."  And on January 23, 1915 it ran a long letter to the editor charging that Ridder's appeal to German Americans to further their native culture was "plain treason" and "would be juster to call it merely seditious."

In fact, Ridder was trying hard to foster camaraderie between German Americans and other citizens.  When he died on November 1, 1915 The Times took a more compassionate view of him, telling its readers that just before he died he uttered the words "May peace soon be with us."

The French windows of the second floor opened inward.  The Architectural Record, November 1906 (copyright expired)

By the end of the war the Clark estate was leasing No. 32 to Earle E. Carley, a member of the stock brokerage firm of Carley, Rosengarten & Carley.   Like all wives of moneyed businessmen, his spouse involved herself in charitable causes.  She was a member of Auxiliary A of the Park Hospital.  The New-York Tribune noted in December 1918 that "This hospital is giving up over 80 percent of its capacity for caring for sailors and marines injured or taken ill in the service."

On December 13, 1918 The Sun reported that the Auxiliary was hosting a dance at the Plaza Hotel the following week "for the purpose of contributing Christmas cheer and comforts to the soldier inmates."  The article noted "Tickets may be obtained of Mrs. E. E. Carley, 32 West Seventy-fourth street."

When shocking genocide unfolded in Armenia and Syria Americans responded with the Near East Campaign in hopes of raising $36 million in relief.   Helping in the door-to-door canvas in March 1919 was Mrs. E. E. Carley, whose name appeared on a list of other helpers, including the socially elite like Mrs. George Vanderbilt, Mrs. Ogden Reid and Mrs. George J. Gould.

But the Carleys would soon have to find a new place to live.  The Clark Estate began selling off the row later that year and the first to go was No. 32.   On December 17 The Sun reported "The buyer, a prominent merchant, will occupy after extensive alterations have been made."

Dr. George E. Paddleford was not, in fact, a merchant.  He had made his fortune in oil in California.  A year before purchasing the 74th Street house he had married Genevieve Teal, the divorced wife of stage manager Ben Teal.  Her daughter, 16-year Cynthia by that marriage lived with them.  But their occupancy and domestic bliss would be short-lived.

Genevieve had a colorful past.  In 1908 she was convicted of obtaining "perjured testimony" against Frank Jay Gould in his divorce suit and was sentenced to a year in prison.  Then in 1918 Ben Teal sued the headwaiter at the Hotel Astor for $50,000 damages for alienating her affections.  She quickly married Paddleford following the ensuing divorce.

Bad publicity continued to follow her.   On her honeymoon trip she was arrested in Vienna, charged with swindling Austrian and Swiss tradesmen.  The Times reported "In her trunk the police found two costly vases bearing the stamp of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, New York.  The Vienna police discovered that she had left a trail of debts in European cities totaling 500,000 francs."

Paddleford filled No. 32 West 74th Street with expensive furniture and artwork.  But it appears that his marriage was already falling apart.  On January 10, 1920, less than a month after he purchased the house, The Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported that he had leased it furnished to sugar refining magnate Henry O. Havemeyer.

By 1922 the Paddlefords were living apart.  Cynthia had embarked on a singing career and her mother continued her felonious ways.   In 1923 she was once again detained by police in Europe, only to reappear in print in 1926 when she and Cynthia were arrested in Innsbruck for purchasing $2,000 in gowns from a Berlin dressmaker and slipping out of the country without paying.

On May 29, 1926 The Times reported "When they were arrested at Innsbruck they were wearing the costumes acquired in Berlin.  According to the police here, they had come from Posen, where they had served a term for a similar offense."

By now Paddleford had sold No. 32 to William Andrew Saks.  The grandson of Andrew Saks, founder of the upscale Saks & Co. department store, he had married Dorothy Constance Plaut in October 1913.   The couple maintained a summer house in Deal Beach, New Jersey.

William's father, Isidore was president of Saks & Co. while William held the post of treasurer and his brother, Joseph, was secretary.  In 1920 the men embarked on a significant move, building a new store at Fifth Avenue and 50th Street.  Although the firm was always Saks & Co., the new location gave it the more popular tag Saks Fifth Avenue.

In April 1923 the firm merged with Gimbel Brothers.  On March 30, 1926 Gimbel Brothers announced that the Saks family was withdrawing from the store's management.  While their father said he would retire from business, William and Joseph told reporters "they had no plans for the immediate future," according to The Times.

The Saks family lived on quietly at No. 32 until William's death on October 24, 1931.  The 50-year old had been sick only a week.  He left an estate worth about $30 million today.  Along with the residuary estate in trust, Dorothy received "the life use of the residence" which was valued at $75,000, or about $1.4 million today.   The children, Andrew and Carol, each received half a million.

Dorothy Saks stayed on in the house until 1939, when she sold it in April to real estate operator M. C. Berg.  In reporting on the sale The Times mentioned it "contains twenty rooms, five baths and an automatic elevator."

It was the end of the line for the house as a private residence.  Berg immediately transformed it for commercial purposes.  Weeks later Camera: A Practical Magazine for Photographers noted "Plans are already on the drafting table of Architect A. L. Kocher, New York, for the complete alteration of a 5-story residential building at No. 32 West 74th Street, New York, into [the] 1940 quarters for the future new home of Clarence H. White School of Photography."

Clarence H. White had started his groundbreaking school in 1914.  It was the first in America to teach photography as art and include design as part of its curriculum.  Like schools of painting, it stressed composition and even brought abstract art into the field of photography.

The school was regularly the scene of student or staff exhibitions, such as the one in January 1941 when works by teachers were exhibited in the galleries.

In the meantime, the address was becoming well-known throughout the nation for a far difference reason.  Author Stuart Palmer began a series of detective novels beginning in 1931 surrounding a fictitious female sleuth named Hildegarde Withers.  In one book he succinctly summed up her background by quoting a census taker who listed her as "spinster, born Boston, age thirty-nine, occupation school teacher."  Her address was No. 32 West 74th Street, New York.

Similar to her fictional counterpart Miss Marple, she was prim, unbendingly respectable and routinely had run-ins with NYPD homicide detective Inspector Oscar Piper.  For decades murder mystery fans would read about her comings and goings from the 74th Street house as she solved tricking crimes.

In 1944 the Clarence H. White School moved on and No. 32 was once again remodeled, this time for sleeping rooms and other facilities for the Vacation Camp and Dormitory for the Blind.   In 1945 there were 30 blind working men housed here.  The organization also maintained a summer camp which "gives vacations to 400 blind men and women at Rye, N.Y.," according to The New York Times in April that year.

One residence, Arthur L. Jackson, made history of a sort in 1952 when he was one of 47 persons to take the first Federal Civil Service examination solely for blind persons.  The participants were applying for Government jobs as "typists from dictation machines."

The Vacation Camp and Dormitory for the Blind was still in the building in September 1954 when a benefit performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream was held at the Metropolitan Opera House.  But that would be the last event for the facility at the 74th Street location.

Before the year was out the former home was converted to the Hayden Manor Nursing Home.  It accommodated 70 residents and had a staff of 24 (12 men and 12 women).  Among the many elderly occupants who passed through its doors over the years were former entertainers, businessmen and community leaders.

Among them was Clotilde Operti Gobbi, who was in the chorus on opening night of the new Metropolitan Opera House in 1883.  On July 22, 1956 her 100th birthday was celebrated in the nursing home, among red roses sent by the Metropolitan Opera Association and accompanied by a radiogram from manager Rudolf Bing, who was in Italy.  Photographers snapped pictures as she cut her birthday cake and residents sang "Happy Birthday."

"But the brightest moment came when Miss May Savage, a singer in the Metropolitan chorus, led to the wheeler chair her 91-year-old mother, Mrs. Maria Ghislaine Metten Savage, who retired from it only a decade ago.  The two old ladies chatted in French, then put their heads together and sang in soft but sprightly voices a few bars from the opening chorus of Gounod's 'Faust,'" reported The Times.

Clotilde was not going anywhere especially fast, either.  The following year her 101st birthday was celebrated here.

Charles B. Blum lived his final years in the home.  He started his toy and doll business in New York in 1888 and was credited with having imported the first harmonicas from Germany to America.  He was widely credited with popularizing the instrument in the States.   He died at the age of 82 in June 1957.

Another notable residence was English-born stage and television actor George Turner, whose legal name was George Thirlwell.  He had appeared in featured roles in Broadway plays like Epitaph for George Dillon, The Apple Cart and Lady Windermere's Fan.   Never really retiring, his last Broadway role was in Entertaining Mr. Sloane in 1966.  In the spring of 1968 he appeared on television's "Hallmark Hall of Fame" in Soldier in Love.  He died shortly filming that part, on July 30.

In 1978 No. 32 was, once again, remodeled.  This time it was converted to a total of 14 upscale apartments.    Where elderly residents had been pushed about in wheelchairs, buyers now paid high prices for refurbished spaces.

In 2012, for instance, the vice president of Mandarin Oriental, Jan Goessing and his wife Susanne paid $1.3 million for a two-bedroom, two bath apartment on the fifth floor.    They sold it in 2015 to actor Tony Goldwyn and his wife Jane Musky.  Goldwyn is well-known for his role opposite Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in the 1990s film Ghost and as President Fitzgerald Grant on ABC's Scandal.

The striking house with its varied and colorful past is little changed since its completion in 1904.  The entire block deservedly earned special landmark status in 1977.

photographs by the author

The Lost Marshall O. Roberts House - 107 Fifth Avenue

The Roberts house was wider and taller than its nearest neighbors--and definitely distinctive.  To the rear can be seen one of the art galleries.   photo by Rockwood & Co. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In 1833, at the age of 20, Marshall Owen Roberts started in business as a ship chandler at No. 36 West Street.   Decades later The New York Times would attribute his astounding success to qualities he received during his "common school education," saying "While a boy at school he was characterized by his strong common sense, his natural shrewdness, his pluck, and his boldness."

In truth, he was greatly aided by two wealthy brothers with whom he became fast friends.  Prosper M. and Robert C. Wetmore were prominent in political circles.  When President John Tyler took office in 1841, the brothers gave Roberts a contract for naval supplies for the Port of New York.

Roberts steadfastly increased his business, adding cargo ships to his fleet.  In 1850 the Government gave him the contract to supply mail service between New York and San Francisco.  With the Wetmore brothers and another investor, George Law, he established the United States Steam-ship Company specifically for that purpose.  In addition, new steamships transported mail to Havana, New Orleans and Aspinwall in Panama.

When Roberts heard of the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, he sent his steamer, the Star of the West, loaded with provisions to Major Robert Anderson and his Union soldiers.  He then put his entire fortune into United States bonds to sustain the Government's credit.  It was not totally altruistic or patriotic, however.  He charged the Government 90 percent interest.  The war also provided him with large supply naval supply contracts, and he leased steamers to the Union.  The New York Times later noted "During the war his fortune increased ten-fold."

Sporting a Lincoln-like stovepipe hat and beard, Roberts posed for this studio portrait around 1863.  from the collection of the Library of Congress

But before the first shot of the war was fired Roberts had amassed a fortune large enough to erect a princely home on Fifth Avenue at the southeast corner of 18th Street.   The family was listed at No. 107 Fifth Avenue by 1857.

The name of the architect is lost, but his design was unique.  His was a very personal take on the new French Second Empire style--notable in the enframements of the parlor-level windows, the ornate decorations of the entrance, and the full-floor attic level.  A nearly obligatory element of French Second Empire was a mansard roof and the architect seems to have attempted to mimic one here.  But the stiffly upright walls fell short of the expected angle of a true mansard.  The result was that the fourth floor appeared to be an elegant afterthought.

In 1847 Roberts had married Caroline D. Smith, daughter of and the Hartford merchant Normand Smith, Jr.  She was his second wife, and, according to The American Annual Cyclopedia, "was highly educated, and carried to her prominent and exalted position, as the wife of a great merchant, the graces of a well-cultivated and remarkable intellect."

Roberts had two children by his previous marriage, Isaac and Mary.  His marriage to Caroline produced aother daughter, also named Caroline.  While her husband engrossed himself in business, Caroline focused on social work.  Her passion for helping the underprivileged caused a newspaper later to say she had a "peculiar saintliness of character."

She was instrumental in organizing the Wilson Industrial School for Girls on Avenue A in the 1850s.  An appeal in The New York Times on November 2, 1857 said that the directors hoped that "some, in the enjoyment of comfortable homes and firesides, will remember the little suffering creatures provided for by this Institution."

A member of the Ladies' Christian Union, during the Civil War years she helped found the Young Women's Home on nearby Washington Square; and joined in the efforts of the New-York Ladies Army Aid Association to outfit Union regiments with "havelocks, flannel shirts, jackets, drawers, and socks," as noted in The New York Herald on May 30, 1861.   Two weeks earlier, The Times had reported the women had "sent out fourteen boxes of well-prepared articles, both for field and hospital use."

Roberts's massive wealth was evidenced following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  The Times reported that he "sent his personal check for $10,000 to Mrs. Lincoln."

Marshall Roberts was an avid collector of art.  His personal art gallery to the rear of the mansion filled with costly works.  The New York Times said "This love of art became an absorbing passion.  He made no pretensions to connoisseurship, but was guided in his purchases simply by fancy, or with
a view to assisting some needy artist."

One such artist was sculptor Ames Van Wart who became smitten with Roberts's daughter.  In 1869 he married Caroline and the newlyweds moved into the Fifth Avenue mansion.   Caroline's sharing the same name with her mother caused confusion in later years, with several publications repeatedly and erroneously reporting that Marshall Robert's second wife (i.e., Caroline Smith Roberts), was "Mrs. Irving Van Wart."

Although Van Wart would later wonder if the massive fortune of his father-in-law stifled his commissions, he did not turn down one from Roberts.  It was a marble bust of Peter Cooper which Roberts donated to the Mercantile Library Association on November 21, 1870. 

The Van Warts moved to London in 1870 and rarely returned to New York.  It was there, on December 13, 1874 while visiting her daughter and son-in-law, that Caroline Roberts died.  Her obituaries overflowed with praise for her charitable works.  The New York Times said "She was constant in her visits to the homes of the poor, and often knelt by the bed of suffering in prayer for the sick and the dying while her liberal purse relieved their temporal wants;" and The American Annual Cyclopedia noted 'Mrs. Roberts was the acknowledged, though never the self-appointed, leader in many of the organizations for the aid of the suffering."

Mary Roberts had never married and still lived in the mansion with her father.  Before long she would have a new stepmother.  In 1875 Roberts married his third wife, Sarah Endicott "of the 'Mayflower" Endicott," according to The Times.  The couple had met aboard an ocean liner; and The Evening World rather frankly announced years later "She was a poor young woman when the old merchant...fell in love with her on a trip across the Atlantic."

Sarah entertained on a scale previously unknown in the house.  She threw a reception on December 16, 1879 which The Times called "brilliant."  Among the long list of millionaires and their wives present that evening were Vanderbilts, Beeckmans, Agnews, Astors, Townsends, Van Rensselaers and Pierreponts.  The article noted "The Fifth-avenue mansion was decorated with a profusion of flowers and exotics, and the spacious art galleries, containing some of the finest examples of Germone, Meissonier, Huntington, Church, Detaille, and the historical masterpiece of Paul Delacroix [sic], 'Napoleon at Fontainbleau,' were thrown open for the occasion, and thus furnished ample space for the large and fashionable assemblage.

"The hall was transformed, by means of Oriental palms and flowers, into a causeway of exotics.  In the vestibule of the art gallery, where the fine reclining statue of Salome is place beneath a brilliant, were two clumps of splendid camellias--the one white the other red."

While The Times article did not mention it, Emanuel Leutze's 1851 "Washington Crossing the Delaware" hung in Roberts's gallery.  collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The couple bore a son, Marshall; but Roberts would not live to see him grow past infancy.  On September 11, 1880 he died at the age of 67 in the United States Hotel, in Saratoga, from a stroke.

Sarah Endicott Roberts was married only a few years before becoming a very wealthy widow. The Sun, October 25, 1891 (copyright expired)

Calling him "one of the wealthiest and best known of the merchants of this City," The Times reported that by his deathbed were "his wife and her sister, Miss Endicott; his son, Isaac K. Roberts, and his daughters, Miss Mary Roberts and Mrs. Ames Van Wart."

Ames Van Wart completed this bust of his father-in-law in 1884, four years after his death.  collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Roberts's funeral was held in Calvary Church on Fourth Avenue and 21st Street on September 14, 1880 in, according to Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, " the presence of a large concourse, including women from the highest social circles, retired merchants, many of this city's most venerable and respected citizens, the foremost business and professional men, and a number of well-known citizens of other cities."  Roberts's social and business statuses were evidenced by his pallbearers: William M. Evarts, Hamilton Fish, Peter Cooper, Edwards Pierrepont, Henry G. Stebbins, Percy B. Pyne, Samuel Sloan and Edward N. Dickerson.

Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, October 2, 1880 (copyright expired)

In reporting on his death, The New York Times estimated Roberts's massive fortune at $10 million--nearly 25 times that much today.   The newspaper added that "his gallery in his house on Fifth-avenue is one of the finest ever established by a private collector.  It cost him over $600,000, and is estimated to be worth over $750,000.   Included in the collection were works by Rembrandt Peale, Daniel Huntington, Thomas Sully and Thomas Cole.  Sarah received use of the house, stables and furnishings, as well as a $40,000 year income (about $970,000 today).

Frederick E. Church's "Rainy Season in the Tropics" was among Roberts's acquisitions.

Following her period of mourning, Sarah opened the house to lavish entertainments once again.  On January 30, 1884 The Times reported on the ball she had given the previous night, "attended by the highest rank of society people in the city."  The article mentioned "The house is one of the few in the city in which a large ball can be given, and its decorations and furnishings are magnificent.  The reception-rooms are large, and back of them are two picture galleries, which are filled with works of the best artists.  Last evening one of these galleries was transformed into a ball-room."


Equally extravagant was the ball she gave on January 27, 1887, "one of the social successes of the season," according to The Times.  "The house itself was a maze of elegance and loveliness from the palm-lined hall to the domed art gallery, with its glistening floor for the dancers."  Although Sarah had sent out 500 invitations, the article insisted "the spaciousness of the double house prevented anything like a crowd."

Beginning in 1889 Sarah spent much of her time in London.  The Sun noted in 1891 "for one season she occupied Spencer House, the home of Earl Spencer.  Here she gave some magnificent entertainments, including a series of musicals and dinners, and a ball at which favors remarkable for their beauty and costliness were distributed.  The distribution of such magnificent and costly articles at a ball was a revelation to London society."

The reason behind Sarah's interest in London over Newport or other upscale resorts soon became evident.  On October 25 1891 The Sun reported "The news that Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts has decided to become the wife of Col. Ralph Vivian of England is by no means a surprise to some members of the fashionable world."

That winter season saw several entertainments for Vivian held in the Fifth Avenue mansion.  On December 23 The Sun reported that Sarah "gave last night the second of her series of large dinner parties in honor of her fiance, Col. Ralph Vivian, at her residence, 107 Fifth avenue.  As on Monday night the dinner was served in the picture gallery."  An orchestra played during the meal.

The wedding took place on January 7, 1892 in Calvary Church, where Marshall Roberts's funeral had been held 12 years earlier.  The Evening World wrote "Society circles are in a flutter to-day over the wedding of Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts, New York's richest widow, to Col. Ralph Vivian, an English army officer."  The Times reported "Over 2,000 invitations to the wedding had been issued, many having been sent abroad."  Following the ceremony a reception was held at No. 107 Fifth Avenue.  

The Evening World, January 7 1892 (copyright expired)

"No matrimonial alliance in recent years has attracted more widespread attention.  Mrs. Roberts has for the past twelve years been one of the most splendid entertainers in town.  She is personally a very charming woman."  While gushing on about Sarah's popularity and the colonel's dashing presence, the newspaper mentioned that should the bride die before the groom, Roberts's will made it clear that Vivian would "not get a penny of old Marshall O. Roberts's principal."

The newlyweds sailed off to London and Sarah leased the Fifth Avenue mansion to Cornelius and Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt.   The couple needed a place to live while the enlargement of their massive brick and stone chateau on upper Fifth Avenue took place.  On December 14, 1893 The New York Times updated its readers on their situation.  "Pending the completion of their house at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-eighth Street, Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt are at the Roberts House, 107 Fifth Avenue.  They will probably move into their new house in the early part of January."

After the Vanderbilts moved out, the house sat unoccupied for three years, fully furnished.  Roberts's valuable art collection hung unappreciated in the darkened galleries.  Finally Sarah applied to the courts to allow her to sell.  On February 2, 1896 The Sun reported "She says that she does not intend to return to reside in this country, and that in any event business has so encroached on the neighborhood of the property...that it is not suitable for a residence."  A trustee for the Roberts Estate added that "the property is kept at much expense to the estate."

A week-long auction was held in the mansion beginning January 18, 1897.  The Times lamented that the furniture--the original pieces purchased by Marshall and Caroline Roberts--was out of style.  It diplomatically said "it will be seen that their present display calls more for a kindly and retrospective glance than for any detailed criticism from our present viewpoint of art."   Aside from the paintings, the sale of which was eagerly awaited by museums and collectors, there were "a thousand different numbers in bronzes, art objects, and furnishings to be sold," reported the newspaper.

With the mansion cleared out, its destruction was only a matter of time.  On July 9, 1901, with neither melancholy nor nostalgia, The Times reported "Architect Robert Maynicke filed plans yesterday for the eleven-story building to be erected by Henry Corn on the Marshall O. Roberts property."

Robert Maynicke's building survives.  photo via http://landmarkbranding.com/105-fifth-avenue-folio-building/

The Estey Piano Building - 97 Fifth Avenue

Around May 1, 1893 Otto L. Braumuller, president of the Braumuller Piano Company, left the four-story house at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 17th Street for good.  His wife, Luetta E. Braumuller, whom he had married in August 1876, remained behind.

Perhaps even more well known than her husband, The Evening World called her "an artist of considerable reputation."  The editor of China Decorator, she had been awarded several medals at the Chicago World's Exposition where she also gave an address.  The newspaper described her as "about thirty-five years old, dresses stylishly and wears glasses.  She has sharp, clearly cut features."

Luetta held art classes in the Fifth Avenue house.  Trouble ensued after an 18-year old friend of her son, W. Earle Holcombe, signed up.  It would seem that art was not the only lessons the boy received.

Braumuller sued her for divorced, claiming she had become "too friendly" with the teen.  Proper Victorian women were no doubt shocked when they read account of the hearing in The Evening World on January 22, 1894.  Two of the witnesses were Braumiller servants, who testified "to having found Holcombe's nightclothes in Mrs. Braumuller's room."

At the time of the divorce proceedings the neighborhood around No. 97 Fifth Avenue had almost completely changed from one of private mansions to commercial buildings.  The Braumuller residence would soon become another victim.

Real estate operator Henry Corn was highly responsible for the transformation of lower Fifth Avenue.  Working most often with architect Robert Maynicke, he replaced one mansion after another with modern loft buildings.  They teamed up again for No. 97 Fifth Avenue.

Construction on the building began in 1897 and was completed the following year.   The eight-story neo-Renaissance structure was a typical Corn-Maynicke collaboration.   Clad in brick with terra cotta trim, it was stately and handsome, but not exceptional.  Decorative elements like the striking palm-backed cartouches that adorned the spandrels between each floor, were signature Maynicke touches.

The realistic palm frond decorations are typical of Robert Maynicke designs.

The neighborhood was home by now to several piano and organ firms--the Fischer Piano Company, Chickering Piano, and Decker Piano among them.  Sohmer Piano Company would soon occupy another Corn-Maynicke building at No. 170 Fifth Avenue which had risen simultaneously with No. 97.  Following the trend, the Estey & Saxe company, Vermont-based makers of pianos and organs, moved into the ground floor of No. 97 Fifth Avenue.

In May 1898, there were just two tenants.  Both Estey & Saxe and B. L. Solomon's Sons had signed 10-year leases.  B. L. Solomon's Sons dealt in "artistic furniture" and "antique coverings" (upholstery fabrics).   It offered, for instance, a "full line of railroad plushes" in its new "spacious and elegant salesrooms."

A vice-president of Estey was Levi Knight Fuller, a former governor of Vermont.  When he died not long after the firm moved into No. 97 Fifth Avenue, he left a unique collection to the firm.  On March 25, 1899 The New York Times reported "Collectors have all sorts of fads, but one of the queerest to the average man was that of the late Gov. Fuller of Vermont.  His hobby was tuning forks."

The 307-piece collection was put on exhibition in the Estey showrooms.  Included was an 18th century example by John Shore, who had invented the tuning fork in 1711; and one which had been owned by George Frideric Handel and reportedly used "when he conducted his oratorio, 'The Messiah,' in 1751."   There was also a "delicate little fork" used by opera star Adelina Patti during her 1882 American concert tour.  A standout was the two-foot long fork used to tuning the lowest notes of the keyboard.

Customers to the Estey showrooms browsed among pianos and reed organs--sometimes called "parlor organs."  About the size of an upright piano, the reed organs produced music when the operator pumped foot pedals which filled an internal bellows.   They were highly popular not only for domestic use, but for small churches.

This Estey reed organ was typical of the models displayed in the Fifth Avenue building.  copyright expired

At the turn of the century, however, the parlor organ's popularity began to wane.  So the firm turned to manufacturing pipe organs as well.  Well-known organ builder William E. Haskell was recruited from Philadelphia to head that operation.

An advertisement in The New Music Review in March 1905 touted the new instruments.  It promised that the "Estey Pipe Organ insures against cheap construction--inside and out, annoying breakdowns, continual repairs...old-fashioned ideas, slot, stiff or noisy action [and] untried experiments."

The New Music Review and Church Music Review, May 1905 (copyright expired)

By now another upholstery firm had moved into the Building.  Thomas F. Gurray was here by 1901.  When Estey moved its showrooms to No. 7 West 29th Street in 1907, the store became home to Flatau, Olesheimeer & Co., "dealers in laces and veilings."   Ramer & Lissauer, makers of "neckwear, silks, satins, linings, etc.," moved into the sixth floor around the same time.

The two firms would remain in the building for many years.  They were emblematic of the fabrics and apparel tenants that would continue to occupy it.   The other tenant in 1919, for instance, were Benedick & Bodner, makers of "reefers" (men's jackets); Liondale Shirt Company (which would be a major producer of U.S. Army uniforms shirts during World War II); and R. Goldstein & H. Israel.  One non-apparel firm at the time was Wolfson Brothers Umbrella Company, on the fourth floor.

A new tenant in 1922 was Brandon Magnus Company, makers of men's handkerchiefs.  Both Liondale Shirt Company and Ramer & Lissauer were still here.  In June 1922 Ramer & Lissauer touted its new ties, still termed "cravats" at the time.  The OxWear Cravats were "guaranteed to wear 3 months!" 

The following year the firm experienced a disturbing incident.  Public accountant Harry A. Cohen was hired to audit Ramer & Lissauer's books.  Rather astoundingly, on September 8, 1923 The New York Times reported he was "charged with the theft of $500 from Ramer & Lissauer, neckwear concern at 97 Fifth Avenue."  The amount, about $7,000 today, seems hardly worth the accountant's professional ruin.

Liondale introduced an innovation in men's shirts with its attached, matching collars.  The Washington D.C. Evening Star, March 25, 1927

In October 1943 real estate operator David W. Frankel purchased the building, assessed at the time at $95,000 (just over $1.3 million today).  In reporting on the sale The New York Times forgot about Henry Corn's 1897 purchase of the site, saying that the "Crosby and Delafield families...have owned the property for about 100 years."

Although the garment and textile districts had moved north of 34th Street by now, No. 97 continued to house related firms for years.  In 1961 two of them, Alscap, Inc. and Lopa of Italy, Ltd. were slapped with violations by the Federal Trade Commission.  Both firms represented their Italian-imported fabrics as "wool."  They were not.

The end of the line for commercial tenants came in 1977 when a conversion resulted in eight apartments on each of the upper floors.   Other than an inexplicable coat of paint that obliterates the contrast of materials, even at street level there are few noticeable alterations to Robert Maynicke's 1898 design.

photographs by the author

The Hugh O'Neill & Co. Stables - 124-128 West 20th Street

The wedge-shaped stones within the course above the first floor reveals the size and location of the original doors and bays.

Born in Belfast, Ireland in 1844, Hugh O'Neill was brought to New York as a child in 1844.  Following the Civil War he opened a dry goods store near Union Square, but quickly had bigger plans.  In 1870 he began purchasing property on the west side of Sixth Avenue, between 20th and 21st Street.  Little by little he acquired the entire block front, which he filled in 1887 by his monstrous cast iron emporium, designed by Mortimer C. Merritt.  The Hugh O'Neill & Co.'s commercial palace set the tone for what would become known as the Ladies' Mile.

Around the corner, the 16th Precinct station house at No. 126 West 20th Street would not survive much longer.  Retailers pampered their well-heeled feminine customers with amenities like liveried doormen and stylish lounges.  And they did not expect these women to wrestle with hat boxes and packages on their way home.

The blocks near Sixth Avenue filled with the stables and warehouses of the emporiums.  By 1891 Hugh O'Neill & Co. had demolished the structures at Nos. 124 through 128 West 20th Street and replaced them with a three-story stable.  The no-nonsense brick structure had three large truck bays where horse-drawn drays came and went non-stop throughout the day.  Rough-cut brownstone trim and a row a brick corbels below the cornice borrowed from Romanesque Revival gave the structure a medieval flavor.

By now the O'Neill department store employed a staggering staff of 2,500.  The employees working in the stables included drivers, stable boys, grooms, packers, warehousemen, and others.  On November 7, 1891 an advertisement in The Sun hinted at the specific jobs performed here.  "Experienced Drivers and Harness Cleaners Wanted.  Apply at O'Neill's Stables."

When Hugh O'Neill died in 1902 retailers were rapidly abandoning the Ladies' Mile and moving northward.   The O'Neill operation was absorbed by the Adams Dry Goods store immediately to the north; but by the outbreak of World War I the business was closed.

On December 13, 1919 The Sun reported that "The old O'Neill stable property...has been sold.  The purchaser is W. K. Rankin, in the trucking business."  Rankin paid $100,000 for the building, nearly $1.4 million today.  Interestingly, he put the title in the name of his wife, Anna.

The following year the Rankin Trucking Co. hired architect George M. McCabe to do $15,000 in renovations.  The modifications, including new beams, columns and ramps adapted the building from a stables to what the Record & Guide now termed a garage.

Only two years later more improvements were made.  In July 1922 architect Louis A. Sheinart made $10,000 in renovations (about $143,000 today), installing a new elevator and concrete flooring, and a "fire-retardant" ceiling.

It appears that the Great Depression took its toll on the Ranking Trucking Co. and it was lost to the Greenwich Savings Bank in the mid 1930s.  The bank sold it in 1937 to the newly-formed 124 West Twentieth Reality Company.

Garage owners of the 20th century were understandably more interested in the functionality of their buildings than in their architectural personalities.  The ground floor of the old O'Neill stables suffered brutal alterations over the next few decades.  Today only a close inspection of the stonework, obscured by a thick coat of white paint, identifies the openings from which wagons loaded with packages once headed off to the brownstone homes of their female shoppers.

photographs by the author