The "Metaphysical University" - No. 51 Bond Street

By 1830, when the marble-trimmed house at No. 51 Bond Street was completed, Bond Street was emerging as perhaps the most enviable address in Manhattan.  Its costly residences, a few entirely faced in marble, were home to some of the city’s wealthiest citizens.

No. 51 was one of a several Bond Street homes built simultaneously by speculative builder Timothy Woodruff.  The three-and-a-half story house sat above an English basement and was faced in Flemish bond red brick.  Handsome molded lintels and pedimented dormers of the Federal Style blended with elements of the emerging Greek Revival Style: the understated cornice and what The Sun later described as “a big marble stoop and fluted marble pillars at the entrance,” similar to surviving examples on Washington Square.

The completed residence became home to Wall Street broker William Osborn in 1831.  He would be the first in a rapid-fire string of occupants.  Osborn moved to No. 45 Bond Street in 1834.  Interestingly, Lieutenant Graham of the United States Navy, the next occupant, left in 1837, and also later moved to No. 45.

In 1844 Dr. Alfred L. Seton lived at No. 51; but it quickly became a high-end boarding house.  According to Valentine’s Manual of Old New-York decades later “Among the lodgers were Charles Wilkens, music teacher, and his sister, Harriett, dancing teacher; and Thomas Pyne, a dealer in hides and furs at 164 Water street, the second door above the famous moss-covered paint store of 'Old Billy Post.'"

No. 51 was once again a single-family home when Robert H. Bowne moved in in 1849.  The Bowne family had been in New York since John Bowne arrived from England in 1649.  Robert H. Bowne was the principal in Bowne & Co., founded in 1775 by Quaker merchant Robert Bowne.  (Robert Bowne was also a founder of the Bank of New York, the Bank of America, and was highly involved in the planning of the Erie Canal.)  Located at No. 149 Pearl Street, Bowne & Co. “stationers and printers” focused mainly on financial printing for banks and insurance companies.

Robert’s wife, Elizabeth, was highly involved in the Colored Orphan Asylum, founded in 1836.  In 1855 she was a manager of the Asylum, which sent the children at the age of 12 to be “place in the country” as indentured workers.

The  Bownes owned the house until 1860, when the wealthy couple moved to No. 46 West 11^th Street.  It was purchased by Martha G. Billsland who had operated an upscale “china, glass and earthenware” shop at No. 701 Broadway in the 1840s and ‘50s.  With the widow in No. 51 Bond Street was her daughter, Elizabeth Billsland.

Martha seems to have retired from business by the time she purchased No. 51.  Elizabeth, on the other hand, was just getting started.  On May 26, 1865 an advertisement appeared in the New-York Tribune that read:

Mrs. M. G. Brown, metaphysical physician, from Philadelphia, discoverer and proprietor of the celebrated “Metaphysical Discovery” for deafness and every disease which flesh is heir to, is now at her office, No. 51 Bond-st., and would be glad to see all who are using her Metaphysical Discovery; also those afflicted in any way.  She positively assures the world that there is no other antidote that will reach the cause of disease.  Her discovery treats the cause, and not the effect.”

Mrs. M. G. Brown was, in fact, Elizabeth Billsland, who was 27 years old at the time.  While she reinvented herself as a spiritual healer with metaphysical understanding and powers, her mother rented rooms for additional income.  In 1866 she advertised “To let, without board, the Second Floor, elegantly furnished, singly or together.”

By 1869 in addition to her Metaphysical Discovery, Elizabeth was manufacturing two other patent medicines “by the barrel” in her basement: the “celebrated” Poor Richard’s Eye Water, and her Scalp Renovator.  The Metaphysical Discovery sold for $3 “per package;” Poor Richard’s Eye Water could be had for 75 or 25 cents, depending on the size; and Scalp Renovator sold for $1 or 50 cents.  The cures were rather costly—the Metaphysical Discovery costing about $53 in today’s dollars.

That year she also wrote a 52-page book, the Metaphysical Pamphlet, under the name of Mrs. M. G. Brown.  She advertised “Let all suffering from deafness, blindness baldness, catarrh, noises in the head, discharges from the ear, consumption, weakness, tightness of the chest, cough, stuffing or accumulation of phlegm or any disease flesh is heir to, to enclose 10 cents to No. 51 Bond street.”  Elizabeth insisted the dime book was “worth hundreds of dollars to the sick and also to inquiring minds.”

Elizabeth Billsland went even a step further that year.  On September 4, 1869 an advertisement in The New York Herald proclaimed “A Happy Day for the Suffering” and announced “Mrs. M. G. Brown, Metaphysical Physician, will receive patients for treatment on and after September 6, at the Metaphysical University, 51 Bond street, New York.”  She promised that her metaphysical treatment “has been tested for eight years, and never failed in a single case.”

As the years passed, Elizabeth expanded her claims for her patent medicines.  In January 1871 an advertisement urged “Test the Wonders of Mrs. M. G. Brown’s Scalp Renovator on the scalp and on the feet.”  And in December 1872 an ad promised “Mrs. M. G. Brown’s Metaphysical Discovery is a sure preventive and cure for Pneumonia.”

It appears Elizabeth Billsland was ever seeking ways to expand her questionable business.  A Special Notice appeared in The New York Herald on November 20, 1873 announcing “A Free Dispensary and Lecture Room for the poor will be opened in the basement of the Metaphysical University…on Mondays and Thursdays, from 10 to 2, beginning October 23.”

Close inspection of the announcement made Elizabeth’s motives clear.   She seemed altruistic at first glance, saying “There are an unlimited number in the city unable through disease to earn their daily bread.  Some, in their distress, become frightened and resort to suicide.  Now a general invitation is given to the poor of all nationalities and creeds to come and get cured, be made strong and well, receive new constitutions and be ready to go forth and earn an independent living.”

But she added “Let the poor who come to the Dispensary bring three bottles with them.”  The bottles, of course, were to be filled with Metaphysical Discovery.  And, signing the ad Mrs. M. G. Brown, she noted “Consultation fee, $5.”  (A charge of about $102 in 2016.)

Elizabeth made good use of the new Lecture Room.  On January 20, three months after its opening, she offered “Free lectures daily this week at Two o’clock” in the “Hall of the University.”  Mrs. M. G. Brown, President of the Metaphysical University would be speaking “on Paralysis and Heart Disease.”

The resourcefulness (and debatable ethics) of Elizabeth Billsland seemed to have no end.  She came up with an ingenious, if rather heartless, plan to distribute her patent medicines later that year.  On November 19, 1874 a want ad appeared in The New York Herald:  “Wanted—Fifty intelligent women who have diseases which they cannot get cured.”

She offered the desperate women free bottles of Metaphysical Discovery, guaranteed to cure them, in exchange for work as traveling saleswomen.   Elizabeth would supply the medicine “gratuitously to those who are suitable to send out as agents into the country towns to make known to the masses the wonder-working power of the Metaphysical Discovery over disease of every kind.  Many such are in the field now doing wonders among the people.”

 

Martha G. Billsland died at No. 51 Bond Street on July 23, 1881 at the age of 72.  Her funeral was held in the house four days later.  The ample finances of the mother and daughter were evidenced by the notice that “Remains will be taken to Woodlawn by special car.”

Before long Elizabeth reinvented her deceased mother, as well.  A reporter from The Sun wrote a few years later “She is Miss Elizabeth Billsland, but for business purposes she styles herself Mrs. M. G. Brown.  Her mother, she says, was an English woman, to whom great spiritual revelations were made.  These revelations Miss Billsland relates were imparted to her.”

The article went on “One of the revelations is to be accomplished not by putting medicines into the mouth, but by applying them to the scalp, the ears, and the eyes.”

In her pamphlet The Metaphysician, Elizabeth explained:

The hair is a field of grass; the eyes are plants; the sight of the eye is a metaphysical plant, a messenger to the mind.  The tongue is a plant of no ordinary character.  The teeth are shrubs, with roots far down in the earth, which demand moisture—as a necessity—passed into the system through the eyes, ears, and scalp—watering pots devised by God for the use of the people in watering the plants of their bodies.”

Elizabeth’s Metaphysical University drew the attention—and then the obsession—of a 19-year old girl, Julia Cargile, in 1888.  She lived with her mother, Mrs. Agnes L. Rhodes, in the attic room of a lodging house on East Washington Place.  The Sun described her as “rather slight in stature, and modest in dress and demeanor.  She was of the Southern type of beauty, dark eyed, and rich in complexion, but her face wore almost constantly look of worry and sorry.”

Her mother said on June 17, “Lately she had been devoting her mind a good deal to the alleged discoveries of the ‘Metaphysical University’ in Bond street which had, I believe, a powerful effect upon her.”

The Sun reported “Julia was particularly sensitive about their poverty.  Casting about for something to do she heard in some way of the ‘Metaphysical University,’ at 51 Bond street, and being led to believe she could get employment there she wrote even while she was in the South about the matter.  The ‘Metaphysical University’ is a queer shop that has been on Bond street, near Third avenue, for twenty years.  It occupies an old-fashioned dwelling on the south side of the street, a broad brick building of three stories and an attic, with a big marble stoop and fluted marble pillars at the entrance.”

The newspaper remarked “Miss Billsland has just the motherly, sympathetic manner which might attract an untutored young girl in trouble, and it does not appear strange to those who knew Miss Cargile slightly that she should have imagined, in her supposed financial distress, that she could do some work in the ‘Metaphysical University,’ and make some money to meet her needs.”

The girl wrote to Elizabeth in March, explaining that she was “poor” and would be glad to work in return for a room for her mother and her.  Elizabeth declined the offer.  After trying to find work for three months, Julia wrote to Elizabeth with another offer:

If you will pay me $3 a week, I will make it my business to observe persons and hand them a little slip of paper, reading “Poor Richard’s Eye Water, 51 Bond street, might help you.” And to others I think proper I could give another slip written by me, saying “The Metaphysical Discovery, 51 Bond street, would benefit you.”  The latter slips would not be so many in number, but as there are many people here wearing glasses and many with cataracts in their eyes, the little papers relating to their eyes might bring you in a great many customers, so many, in fact, that you might be able to issue the pamphlet soon.  If you wish to employ me in any way, please inform me.  Julia Cargile.

Elizabeth Billsland did not respond initially; but after a few days sent a note saying she could not hire the girl.   Julia and her mother went to bed that Saturday night, and about 4:00 in the morning Mrs. Rhodes was awakened by her daughter’s moving around the room. 

“She saw her take a pitcher and go out as if for water,” reported The Sun the following day.  “Presently she heard footsteps on the stairway to the roof, then she heard a little noise on the roof, and then at once, before she could do anything, she saw a white object fall in front of her window.  She looked out, and on the pavement four stories below was her daughter lying in a heap, motionless.”

The newspaper added “A caller at the ‘university’ yesterday did not tell Miss Billsland that Miss Cargile was dead, but said she had a bad fall.  Miss Billsland said she was sure the scalp water would cure her, and said she would send some to the girl.”

The Sun took the opportunity to paint a detailed description of Elizabeth Billsland.  “The ‘President of the university’ is a weak, voluble little woman of 45 years, more or less, with not an extra ounce of flesh, a big nose, a very black hair, parted scrupulously in the middle, plastered down on each side over her ears, and done up in a severely plain knot behind.  She talks at a rate of 190 words a minute in a subdued voice, and almost every third sentence is a quotation from Holy Writ.”

Elizabeth died in the Bond Street house on November 20, 1903 at the age of 65.  Four decades of selling patent medicines had been good to her.  The following year, on June 22, The New York Times wrote “it is believed that [she] left more than $3,000,000.”  The value of the Bond Street has was estimated to be about $10,000.

Bond Street, once the residential epicenter of Manhattan’s wealth and culture, was how lined with cheap millinery factories and loft buildings.  No. 51 was sold at auction on July 2, 1905 and within a month the buyer leased the “entire building” to The Vienna Window Cleaning Company.

For a few years the former house retained, essentially, its former appearance.  Seiler & Co. shared the building with the window washers.  The firm manufactured “silk and straw pompons.” 

A variety of businesses would call No. 51 home over the next few decades.  By 1910 the Standard Utility Company was here; and in 1912 Morris Palester, “dealer in millinery supplies,” was in the building.  In 1915 The African Feather Novelty Co. manufactured “flower and feathers” here, while Feintuch Bros. constructed hats.  Their millinery shop was down the block at No. 24 Bond Street.

No. 51 was the headquarters of the Window Cleanrs Union in October 1917 when it served notice that its 1,200 members would go on strike “unless they get a substantial wage increase.”  The Sun ran a headline on October 15 “Window Cleaners Revolt.”  The article explained the workers demanded their $18 a week salaries be increased to $24 a week.

Rookie police officer Frank Franzone was on Bond Street at about 10:00 on the night of December 16, 1919 when he noticed a man come out of No. 51 and throw a long sack into the back of a truck.  He waited in the shadows as another man appeared and tossed another sack into the truck.  The Evening World reported “About that time the driver saw him and started his machine, but Franzone held his revolver against the windshield until he stopped.”

The robbers disappeared into the building and hid, soon to be apprehended.  The seven sacks of silk from Max Steinberg’s loft were valued at $8,000.

For several decades No. 51 would continue to be home to millinery and related operations.  The same year that the burglary of Max Steinberg’s shop was thwarted, Susman & Shapiro were manufacturing millinery here.  By 1923 Steinberger Brothers, Inc. was in the building, “converters of artificial silk, twists, and yarns in all sizes.”

At some point the marble stoop and elegant entrance way were removed.  A business front replaced the English basement, a long group of windows was gouged into the parlor floor, and the red brick was painted.  In 2002 a scrap metal processing business was operating from the former basement, where Elizabeth Billsland had her Metaphysical University’s Lecture Room.  The firm used the second floor as storage.

That year the upper floors were converted to joint living-working quarters for artists—just one per floor.  Today the molded lintels of the upper stories and the arched dormers survive, albeit timeworn.   With a little imagination the passerby can imagine a marble-trimmed mansion on an exclusive residential block; and perhaps envision a time when Elizabeth Billsland ran her questionable Metaphysical University here.

photographs by the author

The Duane Everson House - No. 131 West 71st Street

Developers John T. and James A. Farley were highly active on the Upper West Side in the 1880s and ’90, often utilizing the architectural firm of Thom & Wilson.   Interestingly, the brothers used both the professional names of “J.T. & J. A. Farley” and “Terence Farley’s Sons.”

As an example, two announcements appeared on March 29, 1890 in the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide.  One noted “Terence Farley’s Sons will erect four four-story private dwellings on the plot on 71^st street, between 9^th and 10^th avenues, adjoining St. Andrew’s Church…architects, Thom & Wilson.”  The other announced “Thom & Wilson are the architects for the seventy-story flat, to be built by J. T. & J. A. Farley, on the block bounded by the Boulevard, 10^th avenue, 69^th and 70^th streets.”

The four houses would be built on vacant land stretching from No. 131 through 137 West 71^st Street recently purchased by the brothers from St. Andrew’s Church.  The projected cost for each was $22,000 (about $590,000 in 2016).  At a time when the exterior decoration of many homes could be deemed excessive; Thom & Wilson produced four refined and restrained Renaissance Revival residences.

The eastern-most, No. 131, was separated from the church by a service walkway.  Like its neighbors, it was four stories tall above an English basement.  The brownstone of the rusticated basement continued to the parlor level.  The brownstone stoop forewent the more expected iron for solid stone railings and newels.  Three stories of red brick were trimmed in brownstone.  The architrave openings were delicately decorated with carved chains and beadwork; and between the parlor and second floor an exquisite carved frieze displayed open-hulled nuts, a pineapple and even a bursting ear of corn.

No. 131 became home to the family of well-known educator Duane Shuler Everson following his marriage to Marie Louise Fergusson in 1895.   He started his career at Columbia College in the 1860s where he was Secretary to the President, as well as a tutor in Latin and Greek Language and Literature.  In 1883 he established the Duane S. Everson’s College School for Boys, which prepared well-heeled young men for higher education.  Everson’s financial and social status was evidenced in 1892 when he was accepted into the Union League Club. 

Everson and Marie Louise would have two children, Helen and Duane R. Everson.  As he grew, young Duane seems to have coveted his father’s issue of the New-York Tribune for its weekly “For Little Men and Little Women” section.  In it puzzles and challenges were posed to the young readers who could win prizes such as a dollar or a sterling pin.

On May 29, 1904 his name was published as one of seven children who solved a puzzle.  Three years later, in May 1907 when he was 12 years old, he wrote to the newspaper:

“Dear Editor:  I received my fountain pen this morning for which I thank you very much.  I am sure I shall enjoy it, because I have always wanted one.  Thanking you again, I remain, your faithful reader, Duane R. Everson.  PS—I am writing this letter with the pen.  No. 131 West 71^st street, New York City.”  

Duane was not finished with his diligent puzzle-solving and in October that year he won a “boy’s Tribune watch.” 

A foliate panel, flanked by blank open book-like cartouches, includes a snarling lion.

Among Duane S. Everson’s students at Columbia had been William H. Sage, who graduated in 1871.  His class members had included esteemed New Yorkers Stuyvesant Fish, R. Fulton Cutting. Oscar S. Straus and George B. De Forest.  Sage spoke at the 1921 graduation exercises, the 50^th anniversary of his own.

The New York Times reported on his remarks on May 29, saying in part “The only known to be living who gave instruction to the class, Mr. Sage said, is Duane S. Everson, tutor in Greek, who is regularly at the meetings of the Union League Club, of which he is an enthusiastic member.”

Only a few months later, on Saturday, December 17, Duane Shuler Everson died in the 71^st Street house.  His funeral was held there the following Monday morning at 10:00.

Neither Duane nor Helen married and remained at No. 131 West 71^st Street with their mother.  Nearly three decades after her husband’s death, Marie Louise Everson died in the house on Sunday, February 5, 1950.  Her funeral was held in the parlor the following Tuesday afternoon. 

Unlike so many of the 19^th century homes in the neighborhood, No. 131 remained a single-family residence; the Emerson family retaining ownership until 1980.  In the meantime, the other three houses in the original Thom & Wilson row had been demolished for a rather unexciting apartment building.

Subsequent expected modernization mostly preserved the original interior details.  The house was placed on the market around 2015 for just under $10 million.  The rather lonely survivor of a more elegant period joins forces with the former St. Andrews Church to create a charming anachronism which interrupts a string of mostly mundane apartment buildings.

photographs by the author

The Lost Patrick King House -- No. 107 East 77th Street

The remarkable survivor sat amid a bustling urban landscape in 1932.  photograph by Charles Von Urban, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

By the time Patrick King moved into the wooden, two-story house at No. 107 East 77^th Street, it was already sorely out of place and time.  The clapboard structure had, apparently, always housed a shop on the ground floor.  The residential space under the peaked roof was accessed through an exaggeratedly-tall four-panel door to the side.  No doubt the work of a local carpenter-builder, its six-over-six windows on the second floor and overall frontier-type appearance spoke of an Upper East Side of two generations earlier.  The property extended through the block to 78^th Street, where a modest stable stood. 

The King family was living here by, at least, the mid-1880s. Patrick was, interestingly, a real estate operator who owned several properties, most of which were uptown.  Why he chose and continued to live in the humble house is a mystery.   With him here were his wife, Elizabeth, sons Owen, Patrick and Joseph, and daughter Elen.  Patrick King died sometime before 1898; however the family stayed on.  Owen continued his father’s real estate business.

In 1893 the family seems to have had one horse too many in the backyard stable.  An advertisement in The Evening World offered “A light, serviceable horse for sale; reasonable price.”

Elizabeth King was born in Sheetrim, County Monaghan, Ireland in 1834.  She died in the house on October 23, 1902, at the age of 68.  Within a few years the King brothers were selling off the properties their father had accumulated two decades earlier.

Seen here in 1927, ramshackle shutters still cling to the upper windows. To the left is the original Eighth Church of Christ, Scientists.   from the collection of the New York Public Library

By 1920 the once-rural block between Lexington and Park Avenues, just two and a half blocks from Central Park and Fifth Avenue, was a fashionable address.  The quaint wooden relic was, to some, charming; but to most an eyesore.  That year the Eighth Church of Christ, Scientists erected a church and reading room next door at Nos. 103-105 East 77^th Street.

 

In 1936 the once-straight lines of the clapboards were sagging and the door noticeably off-skew.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Quite remarkably, the venerable clapboard structure survived until around 1940.  When the church purchased the “plot” in 1945, it seems that the old King home had been quietly demolished.  Its site was used as a garden of sorts until 1952 when a new church building was constructed on the three plots.

The mid-century structure, designed by C. Dale Badgeley and seen here in 1952, stood in stark contrast to the rustic house it replaced.  photo from the collection of the Library of Congress

The Altered 1746 Ye Olde Coffee House -- No. 105 Broad Street

In 1746 a three-story brick building was erected at No. 105 Broad Street, on a plot owned by Philip Van Cortlandt.  An inn and meeting place called Ye Olde Coffee House, it replaced the Exchange Coffee House, or New Coffee House, that had stood on the northeast corner of Water Street since at least 1709.

On the opposite end of the narrow block, at the corner of Pearl Street, was the elegant home of James DeLancy which would be purchased by Samuel Fraunces in 1762 and converted to the Queens Head Tavern.  It was renamed Frances Tavern during the Revolution.

Both structures would be important in the conflict with the British.  According to the New-York Tribune a century and a half later, “The Sons of Liberty, who later became bolder and changed their name to the Liberty Boys, organized and held meetings at ‘Ye Olde Coffee House’ in 1765.” 

A large iron bell hung outside a neighboring building, according to the New York Herald on September 2, 1920, “in the early days of New Amsterdam, when the clangor of its iron tongue rang out joyful news on special occasions or announced the safe arrival of merchant vessels from the Fatherland.  Later, when Ye Olde Coffee House had become the meeting place of the Sons of Liberty, so tradition hath it, this time-pocked old relic summoned them to assembly, and in 1776 it rang for them the call to arms against the mother country.”

Following the Revolution, the building became home to businesses related to the shipping industry.  By 1856 L. B. Crocker & Co., had its office here.  The firm, consisting of L. B. Crocker and George Jennison, operated a line of Erie Canal barges.  The extent of its business was reflected in the $2,000 note the Lake Erie, Wabash and St. Louis Railway Company sent to it in July that year.  The payment would amount to nearly $58,000 in 2016 dollars.

Ship chandler George W. Hadden had problems with theft that same month.  On Saturday, July 12 he appeared before Justice Davidson, charging that “William Thomson and John Johnson had stolen from him 350 lbs. of boat lines, hawsers and two hatch cloths, worth $40,” as reported by The New York Times.  “The accused were committed for trial.”

Also in the building was the lighterage firm of John S. Conklin.  His job, the moving of cargo from large ships to smaller vessels so they could be off-loaded in port, became dangerous in 1858 when New York City was terrorized by an outbreak of yellow fever.  The panic was so great that rumors spread that Castle Garden, the “Emigrant Depot,” would be burned.

The 43-year old Conklin joined with eight other “lightermen” and presented a list of increased charges for “lightering infected cargoes from Quarantine.” Among the group were well-known businessmen like John McCreery and Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Following the Civil War M. F. James & Co. operated from No. 105.  The agent handled a variety of merchandise and overstock cargo.   In June 1873 the firm offered “a valuable steam canal boat for sale—has powerful machinery and suitable for freight or towing; also several coarse and coal freight Canal Boats.”  A year later it offered “A Canal cargo of about 200 tons of American (sterling) cannel coal will be sold at a great sacrifice in quantities of 20 tons and upwards, or entire cargo.”

In 1882 little historic importance was placed on the 136-year old building.  Architect George F. Pelham was hired to modernize the outmoded structure by adding two stories and a Victorian barroom at the ground level.  The handsome cornice proudly announced the date of the renovations.  Marble quoins and lintels contrasted with the dark red brick.  The New-York Tribune noted that despite the changes, it “retained considerable of the older structure, built in 1746.”

The date 1882 was inscribed in a marble quoin block.  Close inspection shows the original date of construction, 1746, in the block two below.

The renovated structure became home to the New York offices of the Philadelphia-based A. E. Massman Bros.   Founded in 1868, Philadelphia’s Leading Industries described it in 1886 as “importers of wines, gins, brandies, etc., and dealer in fine whiskeys, sole proprietors of the Standard Silver Rum Copper Distilled Whiskey.”

In October 1885 A. E. Massman Bros. hired James H. Graham to run the New York office.  A nearly one-man show, he was “in charge of the New-York agency of the firm as salesman, collector, and bookkeeper.”  With no one from the home office to look over his shoulder, Graham helped himself to the receipts.

He was fired the following year, on August 1, 1886.  During this time his employers charged “he had collected $2,222.14 from customers of the firm for goods sold and had failed to account for the money.”  The amount Graham embezzled would amount to about $58,000 today.

Later that year, on November 9, 1886, Robert H. Noble dealt with a near riot at his office in the building.  Noble headed up the New York office of Fowler Brothers, the third largest meat packing concern in Chicago.   The firm employed about 1,800 butchers at its seven-acre facility there, and slaughtered more than 160,000 hogs every year.   But that year the company was shut down by a labor walk-out.

Unwilling to be controlled by the butchers’ union, Fowler Brothers placed an advertisement in New York newspapers promising “steady work and free transportation to Chicago” to as many as 1,000 “able-bodied workmen.”  They failed to advise Robert H. Noble of the action, however.

The New York Times reported that when he arrived at work, “He could not understand why the office door, the long iron stairway leading up to it, all the sidewalk, and part of the street, should be crowded with all sorts and conditions of men.”

About every ten minutes, with the help of a hulking butcher whom he quickly hired, the exasperated Noble cleared his office and the stairwell.  A New York Times reporter managed to thread his way through the mob “to secure a brief hearing from Mr. Noble.”  He was told:

“I don’t know how many hundred or thousand men we’ve had here to-day, but I do know that they are the sorriest lot of men that I have seen gathered together in my life.  Out of all the applicants I have been able to secure 25 who call themselves butchers…We have accepted about 200 men, and I expect that, with the afternoon rush, we shall be able to get the greater part of the required thousand and ship them to Chicago by the night train.”

In 1885 John S. Conklin was still running his lighterage business here.  He left work on September 13 that year and took the ferry to Passaic, New Jersey where he lived.  Oddly enough, when his carriage met him at the station, he sent his driver home on foot and he continued on with his housekeeper at the reins.

The following day The Sun reported “At Franklin’s crossing they were warned of the approach of a train, but the housekeeper drove on.  Soon the headlight of the Shohola special train flashed upon them, and the horse stopped directly on the track, either because he was frightened or because he was pulled up.”

The carriage was “dashed to pieces” and the 70-year old Conklin died on site within a few minutes of the impact.

In 1895 Lamson Co., “registers” leased space in No. 105 Broad Street; and five years later the National Cash Register Company signed a lease.

In the meantime Bernheimer & Son had been running the corner saloon since the building was remodeled.  Around 1905 Fritz Lindlinger took over the saloon.  The former President of the Liquor Dealers’ Association, he gave a nod to the location’s history by naming it “Ye Olde Lindinger’s Tavern.”

The New York Herald later recalled “Fritz…had made it a downtown shrine for those who liked to mingle with their daily dram and luncheon just a dash of the musty flavor of things historically antique.”  He decorated the bar with German steins, old crockery ale bottles, Revolutionary era firearms, and Dutch relics like clay pipes.  Perhaps most interesting was the ancient iron bell, reportedly the same that summoned the Sons of the Revolution, which Lindinger hung over the corner entrance.

Fritz Lindinger would remain in the tavern for years; but his stay would be frequently bumpy.  On the afternoon of June 16, 1909 three undercover detectives entered the barroom, suspicious that Lindinger was running a poolroom—the term for an illegal horse betting den.  It resulted not only in the arrest of the tavern owner, but of the detectives.

The following week, on June 24, the officers appeared before a grand jury facing charges of assault in the third degree filed by Lindinger.  He complained they “started a disturbance, declaring that the café was a poolroom, and threatened to arrest the men in there at the time.”

The Times reported “One of the men, he said, tried to grab a $1 bill, with which a customer was paying for drinks, to use as evidence.  A fight started, in which the detectives were ejected from the place.  They returned later, however, with other men and arrested Lindinger on a charge of keeping a poolroom.”

After Lindinger’s case was dismissed for lack of evidence, he filed suit against the officers.

Interestingly enough, it was lack of evidence--not the facts--which got Lindinger off the hook.  Such would not be the case nine years later.  As he sat at a table in the tavern on May 4, 1918, three detectives rushed in and seized him.

The Times reported the following day “There was considerable of a wrestling match, and when it was over the detectives said Lindinger had shred various pieces of paper that were found on the floor.  Some of these, they added had such cryptic messages inscribed as ‘Blue Laddy,’ ‘Hourless,’ and other stars of the racetrack, followed by figures showing, the detectives said, the odds against each horse.”

There were also charts of the horses running and the races scheduled that day at the Lexington and Have de Grace race tracks.   Fritz Lindinger was in more hot water than he had been in 1909.  The Times sub-headline read “Restaurateur Must Explain His Knowledge of Betting Horses.”

As the United States was drawn into World War I, one of the upper floor spaces became the office of the U.S. Army’s Air Service Officer, Major J. McClintock.  On April 6, 1919 he encouraged Army veterans to re-enlist in a statement from No. 105 Broad Street.

In part it said “if flying is to continue in the American Army men now experienced in that branch of the service must re-enlist.”  He used the shaky labor market as an argument.  “For men who have had service in the army, it is believed that there is a decided advantage for the period of one year enlistment or until labor conditions have become more stable, at which time they can expect more positive market for their service in civilian life.”

It was not the war that bothered Fritz Lindinger so much as Prohibition.  On December 7, 1919 the New-York Tribune wrote “Fritz Lindinger, who now holds the title to what was the first coffee house in New York, ‘Ye Olde Coffee House,’ which was established under that name at 105 Broad Street, in New York, says it does not matter any longer whether people know where his tavern is or whether they ignore it.”

His cynical viewpoint was a result of Prohibition.  “Mr. Lindinger has used the old coffee house for many years as a tavern.  Since prohibition he declares that he cannot sell anything worth while.  Coffee does not interest him.  The house, as it stands on the northeast corner of Broad and Water streets, is the same building which was built in 1746, except that one story has been added and the outside wooden stairway, which was the only approach to the upper floors in Washington’s day, has been removed.”

On February 5, 1920 The Sun reported that the Hegeman family had sold the venerable building which it had owned “for 125 years.”    The Hegeman family traced its American roots to Joseph Hegeman, who arrived from Amsterdam in the 17^th century; and his wife Femmetji Remsen, who was born in New York in 1672.  A string of marriages linked their family to Thomas Gardner's (Gardner to Aycrigg to Hegeman).

Later that year, in June, Fritz Lindinger and his partner, William Hemme, were arrested “charged with maintaining a nuisance.”  The nuisance was the whisky their bartender served to two undercover revenue agents.  (They were charged 70 cents a glass.)  The bartender was hauled away with his employers.

It was the end of the line for Fritz Lindinger’s “Ye Olde Lindinger’s Tavern.”  On September 1, 1920 a public auction was held.  Fritz kept the bar open until 2:00 and “dispensed generously such innocuous beverages as the historic bar had to offer in these degenerate times,” said the New York Herald.  “But at 2 o’clock sharp the bar was closed forever.”

Lindinger did not stay to watch the auction.  “So help me God, I was crying like a baby,” he later told a reporter, “and I had to go upstairs to my rooms.  I couldn’t stay here and see all the old things auctioned off.”

The Sun reported “The mahogany bar, plate glass mirrors and like fixtures were being removed by the National Salvage Company, whose representative said: ‘For the last year we have been saloon undertakers; that has become one of our most extensive specialties.”

An antique clock, purchased for $16, was sawed out of the woodwork, leaving a jagged hole.  A reminder of the Revolution, two letters signed by George Washington were among the relics sold.  One brought $150.  The antique flintlocks, sabres and firearms brought from $1.50 to $8 for the best specimens.

The Herald listed among the auctioned items a Tammany cane, said to have been owned by Richard Crocker, “a collection of old German steins, a lot of copper fireplace kettles, wooden shoes from Holland, pipes and other curios [including] a pulley block reputed to have come from the rigging of the original Mayflower.”

The sole item Lidinger refused to sell was the ancient iron bell.  He told a reporter “But we didn’t sell the old liberty bell; that was reserved from the sale and I don’t know what we will do with it yet.”

The New York Herald announced that the barroom “is to be remodeled and opened by a firm to which it has been rented for use as a buffet lunch establishment.”  However, soon after its opening William Siebert’s “buffet lunch establishment” proved itself to be what Federal agents termed a “blind pig.”

On May 5, 1921 it was raided.  Seiberg and eight customers were arrested, charged “with having liquor before them in tea cups.”  They were held in $500 bond.   Three of the patrons arrested were described as sea captains.

Agents kept an eye on No. 105 Broad Street.  When the Annex Grill Restaurant was raided again on May 28, 1928 Federal Judge Thatcher had had enough.  He ordered the space padlocked for one year under the prohibition law.

After the Annex Grill was padlocked, the space became a less-controversial drugstore.  photo from the collection of the New York Public Library

Meanwhile, the upper floors continued to house nautical-related concerns.  In 1930 the Neptune Association had its headquarters here.  Composed of merchant mariners, the group distributed more than 3,000 ballots to members “scattered among the ports of the world and at sea” in 1930.  The vote of “masters and officers of the American merchant marine” showed they were strongly in favor of the repeal of Prohibition.

The Neptune Association was quick to issue a statement which explained that the vote “does not indicate that American masters and officers are drinkers, but that their means of employment has been threatened by prohibition and their safety at sea jeopardized by the removal of medicinal liquor.”

That same year the Association staged its fourth annual Labor Day “International Lifeboat Crew Race.”  The races were for steamship lines crewmen who rowed lifeboats up the Hudson River.  The winner received the William H. Todd Cup.

In the 1930s and 1940s the building would be home to the Scandinavian Seamen’s Club, the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333, and the Nordin Seamen’s Club, founded in 1937 by Danish seamen.

The historic importance of No. 105 Broad Street finally came to the notice of the Sons of the Revolution, owners of Fraunces Tavern, in 1956.  Their bid to take over the property was denied by the Slum Clearance Committee after owners Edward Kronish and A. L. Cohen promised “that it [would] be remodeled to conform to the architecture of the neighboring tavern.”

A project completed in 1962 resulted in a cleaned-up façade, offices and “light manufacturing” on the lower floors, and one apartment each on the fourth and fifth floors.  Other than its grossly inappropriate ground floor where Fritz Lidinger ran his tavern, the building is handsomely intact.

At the other end of the block (left) sits Fraunces Tavern.

And passersby, looking up at the 1883 inscribed in the cast metal cornice, are given no hint that it dates to 150 years earlier; nor that it played an important part in the birth of the Unites States.

 many thanks to Matt Kess for suggesting this post
photographs by the author