Emile L. Capel's 1915 129 East 69th Street

 

image via cityrealty.com

On December 6, 1913, the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported on the death of one of America's foremost architects, George B. Post.  The lengthy obituary mentioned, "His town house was at 129 East 69th street."  Developers Brixton Building Corporation wasted little time in acquiring the mansion from the Post estate, along with five other residences that faced Lexington Avenue.  In November 1915, architect Emile L. Capel filed plans for an 11-story apartment building on the site.  They estimated the construction costs at $450,000--about $14.5 million in 2026 terms.

The building's design is the first on record (at least in New York City) of the recondite architect.  Capel filed plans for only one more building and two renovations before 1920, when he sat on the board of directors of the newly formed New York Architectural Club, Inc.  He falls into obscurity after that.

Emile L. Capel produced a neo-Georgian-style structure faced in red Flemish bond brick and trimmed with creamy terra cotta.  The dignified arched entrance sat between double-height, paired and fluted pilasters with palm leaf capitals.  The large terra cotta spandrels of the two-story base on the 69th Street side were decorated classical urns.

An intermediate cornice introduced the midsection, its frieze ornamented with alternating urns and anthemions.  The urn motif reappeared in the stepped lintels of the third floor and in the spandrels between the 10th- and 11th-floor openings.

In 1917, Lexington Avenue was paved in brick and a streetcar track ran down its center. image via urbanarchive.org.

Among the initial residents was Major Frank C. Grugan.  Born in 1842, he was educated in France and upon returning home in 1861 enlisted in the Union Army.  The New York Herald reported, "He fought in twelve important battles, including Gettysburg."  A life-long military man, he would see combat "against the Indians in the West," as worded by the New York Herald, and in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.  When he moved into 129 East 69th Street, he was a widower.

In July 1918, Harold Garrison Villard and his wife, the former Mariquita Serrano, took a duplex apartment here.  The son of millionaire journalist and financier Henry Villard, he and Mariquita were married in 1897.  They had three children, Henry Serrano, Vincent Serrano and Mariquita Serrano.  The children were 18, 17, and 13 years old respectively when the family moved in.

Henry Villard was overseas at the time.  He had left Harvard to volunteer as a driver in the Italian Ambulance Service.  At the war's end, he returned and graduated in 1921.  

Harold Garrison Villard in 1915.  Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report, Harvard University Class of 1890 (copyright expired)

Harold Villard's mother, Fanny Garrison Villard, died on July 5, 1928.  The bulk of her estate, "estimated to be worth more than $10,000,000," according to The New York Times, was divided between Harold and his brother, Oswald.  (The figure would translate to about $183 million today.)  Additionally, she left $50,000 to Mariquita and $10,000 each to her grandchildren.  Mariquita's inheritance would equal about $185,000 today.

Vincent Serrano Villard was married to Katharine A. Tomkins on August 2, 1928.  The New York Times remarked, "Owing to the recent death of Mrs. Henry Villard, only members of the families and a few intimate friends were present at the  ceremony."

In the meantime, a 10th-floor corner apartment of "8 large rooms and foyer" with three baths was advertised in January 1920 at $5,600 per year, about $7,300 per month in today's terms.

A current view of a duplex apartment hints of the scope of the spaces.  via cityrealty.com

Among the tenants at the time were Impressionist artist Francis Sterling Dixon and his wife, Rosalie Turner Hooker.  The couple was married on August 10, 1915 "a short time after she had obtained a divorce in Idaho from Professor William Welling of Trinity College," according to The New York Times.  

Francis and Rosalie Dixon on their wedding day in 1915.  from the collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France

Dixon was born in September 1879 and studied at the Art Students League.  With deep American roots, he was a member of the Society of Colonial Wars and the Sons of the Revolution.  His artistic proclivity earned him memberships to the Allied Artists of America, the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, the Salmagundi Club, and the Players.

A typical Francis S. Dixon landscape.

The Dixons had a son, Francis Jr.  Unfortunately for the marriage, as had happened in 1915, Rosalie had a wandering eye.  She traveled to Paris in 1925, obtained a divorce, and announced her engagement to British Captain Rowland W. Cash.  Then, on January 26, 1926, The New York Times reported that the engagement had been broken.  Instead, in April she married Prince Levan Melikov de Somhetie, described by the New York Evening Post, as the "claimant to the non-existent throne of Georgia."

Domestic problems were plaguing another socially prominent couple in the building at the time.  Born in 1894 to millionaire Oliver Harriman Jr., Oliver Carley Harriman was described by the Syracuse, New York Journal in 1926 as "the son of Mrs. Oliver Harriman, one of the most admired and popular women in New York society," adding, "His father, Oliver Harriman, and his grandfather, also named Oliver Harriman, were powers in Wall Street." 

Harriman married socialite Loise Roberts Bisbee on June 7, 1915 and they had two daughters.  According to the Journal, "at the time of his marriage, he was the youngest member of the New York Stock Exchange, and said to be earning a large income from various sources."  The young broker was also a "prominent figure at the horse shows and polo matches at Westchester, Long Island and Newport," said the newspaper.

Like Rosalie Dixon, the handsome Oliver Carley Harriman had a wandering eye.  U.S. Passport photograph

Oliver Carley Harriman was career driven and according to the Journal, his "intense ambition" caused him to "frequent rather mixed company in the evening."  In fact, the "company" that kept him away from the couple's apartment on many of those nights was not always a business associate.  On July 28, 1923, Loise read a news article about a trolley car accident.  Among the witnesses was "Mrs. Harriman."  A puzzled Loise dug into her husband's nocturnal nightlife.

Fashion model Harriet Hewitt lived in an apartment at 206 East 61st Street, the rent of which was paid by Harriman.  The residents of the building knew Helen as "Mrs. Harriman."  An indignant and angry Loise left 129 East 69th Street and filed for divorce in December 1923.  Even before the divorce was granted, rumors within high society said that Oliver Carley Harriman intended to marry Helen Hewitt.  And he did.

A disturbing and bizarre incident happened here in the fall of 1928.  Antiques dealer William F. Cooper and his wife, Martha, had previously lived in an apartment on East 66th Street.  In 1923, Martha suffered a stroke but recovered.  Then in 1927 William was hospitalized for three months after an operation, during which Martha "fretted herself into a nervous breakdown," according to The New York Times.  Both she and her husband recovered.

In September 1928, they moved into a seventh-story apartment in 129 East 69th Street.  Unlike the quiet block of 66th Street, "all day long the clang of the surface cars floated in through the apartment windows," said The New York Times.  

On September 22--the Coopers' first Saturday night in the apartment--they had friends over.  After their guests left, William went to bed.  Martha wrote a note to her husband, sealed it and left it on the dining room table.  She then took a photograph of William from its frame and "carefully cut out the likeness of his face."  Clutching it, she then leaped to her death from the apartment window.  Her note explained, "she could not stand the eternal sound of the street cars."

The Robert Ackermans' apartment had been given an Art Deco make-over before this photograph was taken in 1935.  photo by Samuel H. Gottscho from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

Lloyd Paul Stryker, his wife, the former Katherine Traux, and their daughter occupied an apartment here as early as 1929.  Born in Chicago in 1885, Stryker graduated from New York Law School in 1909.  The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law said he "became famous as a flamboyant criminal lawyer."  In March 1929, he was nominated by President Calvin Coolidge as a Federal judge for the Southern District of New York.  

Stryker came into the national spotlight in 1948 when he was the lead defense counsel in the two criminal cases against Alger Hiss.  Life magazine published an article on Stryker in 1947 titled: "Trial Lawyer: Lloyd Paul Stryker is Archetype of Vanishing Courtroom Virtuoso."

image by Wurts Bros from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Another prominent attorney in the building at midcentury was Frank Lyon Polk.  He and his wife, the former Katherine Hoppin Salvage, whom he married in 1934, had three sons: Frank Jr., Samuel S. and William M.  Polk's father was Under-Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson and he headed the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference after World War I.  Frank was also the great-nephew of President James Knox Polk.  The family's summer home was at Fishers Island, New York.

Polk became ill in 1952 and was hospitalized in Doctors Hospital.  Calling him "a member of a socially prominent family," on September 20 The New York Times reported that he had died there at the age of 40.

Katherine Polk and her sons remained in the apartment.  In December 1959, she announced Frank Jr.'s engagement to Nancy Holliday Wear.  In reporting on the event, The New York Times commented on Frank's maternal pedigree.  "He is a grandson of Lady Salvage of Glen Head, L. I., [and] the late Sir Samuel Agar Salvage.

Three years later, it was Katherine Polk's turn to wed.  Her marriage to John Currie Wilmerding, the former husband of Lila Vanderbilt Webb, was celebrated in Old Westbury on April 28, 1962.

Photographed in 1943, this top floor duplex enjoyed a lush roof garden.  photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Never married, Florence Wardell also lived here at midcentury.  Born in Brooklyn and having graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1898, she had been active in Republican women's activities for decades.  She was vice chairman of the Republican Women's State Executive Committee in 1922, was a delegate to the National Republican Convention in 1928, and worked on Herbert Hoover's Presidential campaign.

Following World War I, Hoover requested her to go to Washington to help him provide relief for the Belgians.  She was later decorated by the Belgium Government for her service.  She fell ill in 1959 and died in her apartment at the age of 82 on February 12.

Investment broker Francis F. Randolph and his wife, Mary Hill Hadley, who lived here by the 1960s, filled their apartment with a remarkable art collection.  Although he sat on the boards of several corporations and was a trustee of institutions, he and Mary were best known for their involvement in the arts.  Francis was chairman of the finance committee of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Pierpont Morgan Library.  The New York Times mentioned that they "gave a number of works of art and incunabula to Vassar College."

image via 6sqft.com

The building, designed by a nearly unknown architect, survives almost entirely intact.

The George A. and Lillian S. Harris Mansion - 313 West 107th Street

 

Prolific Upper West Side real estate developers Perez M. Stewart and H. Ives Smith commissioned the equally prolific Upper West Side architect Clarence F. True in 1897 to design seven upscale residences at 305 through 317 West 107th Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue.  Among them was 313 West 107th Street.  Like its architectural siblings, it was 20-feet-wide and five stories tall.  Designed in the Renaissance Revival style with splashes of Beaux Arts, it was faced in gray brick and trimmed in limestone.  The arched centered entrance above a short stone stoop was flanked by engaged Scamozzi columns atop paneled pedestals.  Carved swags and ribbons decorated the spandrels.  

The lower three floors were bowed, providing a stone-railed balcony to the fourth floor.  Stone balustrades that fronted the second-floor windows suggested Juliette balconies.  The fifth floor took the form of a slate shingled mansard pierced with two arched-pedimented dormers.

The first owners of 313 West 107th Street were Henry and Mary A. Nichols.  On April 2, 1904, they advertised, "A North German or Protestant nurse wanted for two little boys; references required."

The Nichols placed the house for sale in November 1908.  Their realtor's ad described it as being "in fine condition, for sale at a reasonable figure."  It was sold twice before newlyweds George A. Harris and his wife, the former Lillian Dorothy Samuels, purchased the residence in 1912.

Born in Titusville, Pennsylvania on November 21, 1873, George A. Harris operated an apparel business with his brother Julian.  He and Lillian were married shortly before purchasing the house. 

The Harris family quickly grew to three.  Edward H. Harris was born in 1913.  Lillian placed an advertisement in The New York Times on February 11 seeking a "Nurse, thoroughly competent and experienced, for infant."  

In January 1914, George and Julian Harris took in a "special partner," Simon Ascher.  Asher contributed $150,000 to the company (more than $4.6 million in 2026 money).  While George remained as president, the name of the firm, which made and sold "knit goods and all other kinds of wearing apparel," as described in the partnership agreement, was renamed the Simon Ascher Company.

In September 1915, the Harrises hired architect John H. Corrigan to design a roof garden.  It included a "new enclosure" and cost the equivalent of $13,000 today.

George and Lillian Harris apparently determined early on that their son would be polished and erudite.  When they looked for a governess in 1918, they demanded that she be "experienced, speaking good French; boy five years."

Lillian's own cultivation was reflected in December 1928 when the Henry Street Settlement added a music school to its offerings with Lillian as its chairman.  The New York Times noted that the school would be under the leadership of Paulus Pilat, former teacher at the Königliche Kunstgewerbe Academy in Budapest.  The article said, "as they are sufficiently advanced, children will be taught ensemble work.  Chamber music is ultimately to be an important part of the program."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

While the Harrises maintained a country home in Scarsdale, New York, they were often seen at what society columns referred to as "fashionable watering-holes."  Such was the case in the summer of 1929, when they spent time in Saratoga Springs.  On August 30, The New York Times reported that they hosted a dinner party at the Lido Venice there.  Among the guests were Mrs. Graham Fair Vanderbilt, John Hay Whitney and Marquise Caigliano.

The family was absent from West 107th Street in 1930 and 1931, possibly in Europe.  It was leased to Walter and Helen T. Emerich.  Walter was the founder and head of Walter Emerich & Co., manufacturers of silk ribbons.  In reporting on the lease, The New York Times described the property as a "five-story residence with roof garden."

The house was sold in October 1938 to Kathryn A. Gorman.  The New York Times reported, she would occupy it "when alterations are completed."  Gorman lived quietly in the mansion, and the address fell from the society columns for decades.

A renovation completed in 1975 resulted in two apartments.

photograph by the author

many thanks to historian Anthony Bellov for prompting this post

The Lost Anton Schwartz House - 127 West 108th Street

 

Assuredly a centered staircase originally rose to the shared porch.  photo by Charles Von Urban from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1857, Swiss-German immigrants Emanuel Bernheimer and August Schmid organized the Lion Brewery.  Its sprawling complex on Tenth Avenue stretched from 107th to 109th Street.  Following the Civil War, Lion Park, a "pleasure garden"--the Victorian equivalent of today's recreation park--was added to the property to the north.

Around 1870 two abutting Second Empire-style mansions were erected on the Lion Brewery property.  Located on West 108th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, the frame structures were nearly mirror images.  (The avenues would be renamed Columbus and Amsterdam, respectively, in 1890, around the time the houses would be given the official street addresses of 127 and 129 West 108th Street.)  The residences shared a porch and, almost certainly, a centered staircase.  The eastern house, No. 127, sat slightly forward.  Its asymmetrical configuration of the second floor openings included a squared headed window and a Palladian-inspired grouping.  Lacy cast-iron cresting decorated the slate-shingled mansard.

The residences were built for Lion Brewery executives.  Around 1890, 127 West 108th Street became home to Anton Schwartz, a partner in the brewery.  He and his wife, Emma, had one son, Adolph.

On the morning of June 19, 1894, Anton took a drive in Central Park.  Presumably, Emma was with him in the family's "dogcart"--a open carriage popular for leisurely rides.  

A dogcart could have two or four wheels, and was pulled by one or two horses.  Across England in a Dog-Cart, 1891 (copyright expired)

The pleasant morning drive became a horrific incident.  Also driving in the park that morning were J. W. Platt, his wife and their baby.  At around 92nd Street, the Platts' horse bolted.  It upset the carriage and threw its occupants to the roadway.  The commotion upset the horse pulling the wagon of John H. Coleman and his wife, "causing it to run away," as reported by The New York World.  Like the Platts, they were thrown out of the vehicle.

The article said, "For an eighth of a mile the race was a mad one, the runaway galloping furiously."  At around 94th Street, the panicked horse "crashed into a dog-cart driven by Anton Schwartz, of No. 127 West One-Hundred and Eighth street," said the article.  Happily for Schwartz, he was uninjured and "a broken shaft and lamp was the only damage" to his vehicle.

Schwartz was best known for his thoroughbreds and his racing.  He routinely competed at the Harlem River Speedway, which ran from West 155th Street to Dyckman Avenue.  (The venue was established in 1893 and its scenic grounds were designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, of Central Park fame.)

On May 29, 1899, for instance, The Sun reported, "Anton Schwartz's stately black trotter Wyoming scored quite a victory by defeating the fast black pacer Dick Vail."  Schwartz and his trotters would be regulars at the Speedway for years.

August Schmid died in 1889.  His widow, Josephine, stepped into his position at the Lion Brewery.  A difficult and headstrong woman, at the turn of the century her relationship with the other partners had become so argumentative and unworkable that she bought them out for $1.4 million.  The transaction not only left Anton Schwartz and his former partners, Max E and Simon Bernheimer, without a brewery, it necessitated the Schwartz family to leave the brewery property.  

Schwartz and the Bernheimers established the Bernheimer & Schwartz Brewery at Amsterdam Avenue and 128th Street.  Anton moved his family to a commodious third-floor apartment in the Central Park View on West 86th Street.  Despite their significant wealth, the family faced unspeakable tragedy.  In September 1910, Adolph Schwartz died from spinal meningitis and six weeks later, Anton committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in the West 86th Street apartment.

Expectedly, 127 West 108th Street became home to a Lion Brewery employee.  Cornelius C. Link listed his profession as "foreman."  Born in Germany in 1848, he and his wife, the former Anna Abel, had three sons and two daughters.

From this angle, the slight projection of the Schwartz house can be seen.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The Links apparently took in a boarder and living here in 1911 was James Osborne.  On the night of May 6 that year, George W. Parkhurst and his wife returned to their apartment on West 100th Street to find the door locked and chained from inside.  With the aid of the janitor, they broke into their own apartment and found the place ransacked.  Hearing noises, they ran to the kitchen and "found the dumbwaiter rapidly descending," reported The New York Times.  Parkhurst called the West 100th Street police station.  When Detective Farrell arrived, he saw a man rushing away and grabbed at him.  The article said, "The man leaped aside and started to run."  Farrell pursued him, firing his gun three times and missing.

The fugitive was James Osborn.  At Riverside Drive, he climbed the retaining wall and leaped over.  The article said, "It was a 60-foot drop."  Detective Farrell found Osborn, "bruised and crushed against a great boulder, and barely conscious."  Doctors at the J. Hood Wright Hospital said he "will probably die."

Around 1913, Link began investing in real estate.  He would buy and sell properties in the Harlem and Bronx areas for years.  

The enaction of Prohibition in 1920 changed the lives of brewery employees.  The Links moved to the Lexington Hotel in Mount Kisco where Anna died on February 14, 1922.  The Daily Item reported, "No estimate of the value of the estate is given, but she gives it all to her husband, Cornelius Link."  

The following month, The Brooklyn Citizen reported on an arson fire "in the Lexington Hotel...which was occupied by Cornelius Link, his son and daughter."  Although Link and his family members survived, Cornelius died later that year.

The handsome houses on the former brewery property were replaced by a one-story garage within the decade.  

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

An apartment building was erected on the site in 1951.

The 1925 Labor Temple - 223 Second Avenue

image via streeteasy.com

When the Fourteenth Street Church was erected at the southwest corner of Second Avenue and 14th Street in 1851, it sat "in the centre of wealth and fashion," as worded by The New York Times.  That was no longer the case in 1910 and on January 7, The Sun titled an article, "An East Side Church To Quit" and reported that the trustees would be selling the property. 

from the collection of the New-York Historical Society

With the vintage structure unoccupied, Rev. Charles Stelzle, who had once been a machinist, "opened a Sunday evening forum in the old church," reported The New York Times.  "The success of the innovation was immediate, and Labor Temple was organized, with Mr. Stelzle as its first director."  Labor Temple offered educational services for workers, clubs "of all sorts and purposes" were initiated, and an employment bureau was opened.  "Labor Temple became the centre of the life of the neighborhood," said The New York Times.

The former church was regularly the venue for lectures and discussions on political, labor and civic issues.  On February 29, 1912, for instance, Arthur J. Howard lectured on "Political and Industrial Australia."  It was, nevertheless, still operated by the Presbyterian Church, with Sunday services "applied to the daily life of its congregation."  Sermon topics included "Religion and Labor," "The Strength of Capitalism," and "The Ethics of Propaganda."  The services were conducted in several languages to cater to the area's diverse demographics.

In 1924, Rev. Thomas Guthrie Speers, chairman of the Labor Temple Committee, determined that the corner property was valuable.  He proposed a business building with "ample quarters for Labor Temple" on the site.  A committee composed of businessmen was formed and the well-known architect Emery Roth was given the task of creating a multi-use structure on the site.

Roth's expertise was apartment buildings.  Dan Everett Waid, who used his first initial professionally, was known for office buildings.  (He had recently designed the annex to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company building on Madison Square, and was, as well, the president of the American Institute of Architects.)  Roth and Waid had no professional connection, but it is clear that Roth consulted Waid on this project.  Although the latter's name does not appear in any documentation, Roth included Waid's name in the base of a 14th Street pilaster.

image courtesy Robyn Roth-Moise

The cornerstone was laid on April 4, 1925 "above the clang of surface cars and the thunder of elevated trains to a crowd of 300 passers-by, unemployed and supporters of the Labor Temple," as reported by The New York Times.  In his address, Rev. Edmund B. Chaffee stressed, "there would be no change in the policy of the temple."

Completed in November 1925 at a cost of $750,000 (about $13.4 million in 2026), Roth's Italian Renaissance Revival design included a two-story limestone base with full-height elliptical arches.  Stores along the sidewalk and professional offices on the second floor provided retail income.  They prompted The New York Times to comment that the Labor Temple would get "its new and enlarged quarters rent free."  

Faux balconies above the third floor and Florentine-inspired arches at the seventh enhanced the Renaissance motif.  An arched corbel table ran below the minimal cornice.

Inside, on the ground floor was a large auditorium, a meeting room and office "for the use of labor organizations."  In the basement was a gymnasium.  On the second floor was a chapel that could accommodate 150 persons, and a music room.  The third and fourth floors contained clubrooms and classrooms, the employment bureau, the director's office, and the "living and dining room for the staff of Labor Temple," according to The Times.  Living quarters for the resident workers occupied the sixth floor and the director's apartment was in the penthouse, along with a "sunny playroom" for neighborhood children.  It opened onto a roof playground.

On November 9, 1925.  The New York Times reported, "Labor and the Church joined hands last night in the dedication of the new six-story Labor Temple Building at Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue, where educational classes, community activities and religious worship will be conducted."  

For Edward Hale Everett, the oldest employee of the Labor Temple, the opening of the structure would come just in time.  Since its inception, Everett had played Santa Claus for the organization's Christmas Eve children's party.  When he was not wearing his false beard and red suit, he taught neighborhood children carpentering.

On October 27, 1925, two weeks before the dedication, he was operating the elevator for the workmen who were bringing furniture up the elevator and placing it into various spaces.  Suddenly, he stopped answering the elevator bell.  Alarmed, Rev. Chaffee went to the basement and opened the elevator door.  "Eddie had dropped dead with his hand still clutching the control level," said The New York Times.

"Eddie" Everett's funeral was held in the chapel on October 30.  The New York Times said, "Out on the street the boys that Eddie had taught carpentering and the little girls to whom he had given dolls lined up to wait.  And when the body was borne out, they waved their hands and called out: 'Good-bye, Eddie!  Good-bye, Santa Clause!'"

Interestingly, Emery Roth was called back twice to make renovations--in 1927 and in 1930.  What changes were made is unclear, but it was most likely during one of those remodelings that the rather incongruous, projecting Second Avenue entrance was installed.  

image via streeteasy.com

The auditorium immediately became a favorite space for political and labor gatherings.  The night after the dedication, defeated Socialist candidate for mayor, Norman Thomas, spoke here.  He blamed his loss to James J. Walker on "indifferent and unintelligent voting."  

In addition to Sunday services, like any other church, the chapel was used for funerals and weddings.  In October 1926, Eugene V. Debs, who had run for President five times under the Socialist Party ticket, died in Chicago.  His body was brought by train to New York City and on October 22, The New York Times reported, "The body will lie in state at the Labor Temple...from 2 P.M. until 9 P.M. tomorrow."

In November 1927, Rev. Edmund B. Chaffee lobbied for $3,000 city funding to renovate the rooftop playground.  Included in the plans was a "steel protective covering."  He insisted, "While this will not solve the city's playground problem, it will at least do something to save the children of this section from the trucks and street cars."

As seen here in 1940, Chaffee was successful in getting his steel rooftop enclosure.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The conviction of Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti for murder on July 14, 1921 immediately caused an uproar amid the labor and immigrant communities around the country.  Their arrest and conviction were viewed by many to be the result of bias against immigrants and radicals.  Sacco's and Vanzetti's innocence was widely touted in periodicals and throngs across the country pleaded for a pardon or new trial. 

Six years later, as their execution date was nearing, New York labor organizations mobilized.  On August 15, 1927, The Daily Worker reported, "The Sacco-Vanzetti Emergency Committee will hold its fourth conference tonight, at 8 o'clock, at Labor Temple."

The nation-wide efforts to save Sacco and Vanzetti were unsuccessful and the two were electrocuted on August 23, 1927.  Although Police Commissioner Joseph A. Warren banned public mourning, the Socialist Labor Party held a memorial service in Labor Temple on August 26.  The New York Times reported that it "was quiet and orderly."  The meeting ended with the singing of the "International."

The diversity of the neighborhood was reflected in one of the ground floor tenants, The Russian Kretchma ("Russian Tavern") here as early as 1927.  Patrons were entertained by Nastia Poliakova, a "Russian gypsy singer" who was born in Moscow," the "daughter of a gypsy 'king,'" according to The New York Times.  She had sung before Czar Nicholas II and after fleeing to Turkey during the Russian Revolution had sung in a Parisian nightclub, and in Berlin and Belgrade.

Barnard Bulletin, January 6, 1928 (copyright expired)

Several medical tenants occupied the second floor spaces.  Among them in the 1920s and 1930s were Dr. S. A. Chernoff, a "specialist in acute and chronic diseases of men and women, skin and blood;" chiropodist Aaron Shapiro; and surgical dentist Dr. A. Brown.  

According to the Daily Worker on January 19, 1941, the Labor Temple was "home of 43 unions," like the Cleaners, Dyers and Pressers Union.

Living in the building as early as 1945 was journalist and playwright Gershom Bader and his wife, Jennie.  Born in Krakówm Galicia on August 21, 1868, he came to America in 1912.  By the time the couple lived in Labor Temple, Bader had written several volumes on Jewish life and religion.  Among his Yiddish-language plays were Der Rebe in Feyer, The Rabbi's Melody, and Di Goldene Royze.  He was the honorary vice-president of the Federation of Polish Jews in America.

Gershom Bader, from The Schwadron Collection of the National Library of Israel.

Also living here at the time was Joseph Chaikin, an editor of the Jewish newspaper The Day.  Born in Russia in 1885, he came to New York City in 1901 "and soon was active as an editor in the Jewish labor movement," according to The New York Times.   In 1946 his Yiddish-language book Jewish Newspapers in America was published.  He was a founder of the National Jewish Workers Alliance and a member of the Yiddish Writers Union.  

Reverend John F. Duffy headed the Labor Temple by the mid-1940s.  He gave a speech at Barnard Day Chapel in October 1946 to explain the Labor Temple's work.  He told the audience that its original purpose "was to give the labor unions a place to hold their meetings and give the laborers, who up until then were not accepted in the churches of the lower east side, an opportunity to join a church."  In addition to that original goal, he said, the Labor Temple hoped to demolish "the middle walls of partition which keep people from one another."

The Russian Kretchma was still going strong at the time of that speech.  As Russian Orthodox Sunday approached in 1947, The New York Times noted that pascha, an Russian Easter cake,  and kulich, an Easter bread with sugar icing, would be served there, as it was every year.

A renovation in 1952 created additional apartments within the building--12 each on the third through sixth floors.  

Gershom and Jennie Bader still occupied their apartment here on November 12, 1953 when the playwright and journalist died at the age of 85.

A renovation completed in 1963 resulted in a restaurant and cabaret on the ground floor.  The auditorium was converted to a gymnasium, but the chapel and its accessory spaces were kept intact.  But then, in 1996, Stellar Management Company acquired the property and began a $500,000 renovation into residential use with retail stores.

photograph by streeteasy.com

The first floor of Emory Roth's handsome Florentine-inspired structure has been horribly vandalized.  The upper floors, however, are happily intact.  The former Labor Temple building survives as an important example of the architect's work and a significant page of New York City's labor history.

many thanks to reader Robyn Roth-Moise for prompting this post

The 1909 Fourth Avenue Building - 381 Park Avenue So.

mage via loopnet.com

In 1909, architect Charles A. Valentine filed plans for a 16-story "brick and stone office building" at the southeast corner of Fourth Avenue and 27th Street.  Construction would cost developer A. Filmore Hyde $700,000, just under $25 million in 2026 terms.  Named the Fourth Avenue Building, its Renaissance Revival design included a three-story rusticated limestone base.  The 10-story midsection was faced in beige brick, its grouped openings stacked within full-height metal frames that included cartouche-decorated spandrels.

The reserved ornamentation of the lower levels was merely an aperitif for the three-story top level.  Paired arches separated by engaged columns were embraced within elaborate pointed arches, possibly inspired by Milan's Ca Granda.  The spandrels were embellished with frothy shields.

The Architectural Record, December 1910 (copyright expired)

The Fourth Avenue Building filled with a diverse tenant list.  Among them was the New York office of the State Labor Department.  Its meeting rooms were normally the scenes of labor disputes and strike negotiations, but in June 1911, its staff was distracted with a much different issue.  

George E. Dayton had worked as a financial clerk "for many years," according to The New York Times.  "He was so methodical in his habits that his fellow-clerks said they could regulate their watches by him."  On Friday, June 2, Dayton, who was a widower, left for his "Summer camp" in New London, Connecticut.  He was scheduled to return on June 7, but did not, and, in fact, was never heard of again. 

The New York Department of Labor would remain for years, dealing with issues like the 1912 laundrymen strike, and holding public hearings on fire-prevention construction methods the same year.

Another initial tenant was the substantial contracting firm Caldwell-Wingate Company.  It not only erected structures, but demolished them.  In November 1912, for instance, it received the contract for demolishing the four buildings at 107-113 East 23rd Street; and on July 14, 1924, the New York Evening Post reported that it had received the $4,174,800 contract to erect the Brooklyn Municipal Building.

Coldwell-Wingate Company was headed by Roy Wilson Wingate.  He suffered a public scandal in December 1921 when George J. Ainslee sued him for $50,000 for having "won his wife's affections by taking her on automobile trips, to dances and other entertainments."  The Ainslees divorced and whether Wingate (who was married with two children) continued the affair is unclear.

What is clear is that three years later, on March 20, 1924, Roy W. Wingate and his wife hosted a dinner and bridge party.  The guests left at around 10:00.  Mrs. Wingate went to bed, but woke shortly afterward "in pain," according to The New York Times.  She "saw her husband standing by her with a revolver in his hand."  After shooting his wife, Wingate walked around the bed, got under the bedclothes, and shot himself through the heart.

The Wingates' 14-year-old daughter, Janet, rushed to the bedroom.  Her mother said, "Your father shot me and then shot himself.  Get a doctor, get Dr. Brown quickly."  While his wife' life was saved at a hospital, Wingate had died instantly.  In reporting on the tragedy, The New York Times remarked, "The firm has just about completed the new building of Saks & Co. in Fifth Avenue."

In the meantime, perhaps the first publishing firm to occupy offices in the Fourth Avenue Building was The Crowell Publishing Company.  It published popular periodicals like Farm & Fireside, Woman's Home Companion, The American Magazine, and Colliers, the National Weekly.

George Buckley was president of Crowell Publishing Company.  On May 21, 1918, a telegram from the War Department informed him that his brother, Joseph H. Buckley, had been wounded in France.  A few weeks later, Buckley received a surprising letter from his brother dated two days after that telegram.  Joseph Buckley had enclosed in the letter "a piece of the shrapnel" that was removed from his wounds, reported The New York Times on June 9.

Thomas Nelson & Sons occupied space by 1915.  It published the American Standard Bible and Nelson's Perpetual Loose-Leaf Encyclopaedia, which enabled subscribers to insert and remove new or outdated information.  Founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, the firm was headed by the founder's son, William Thomson, who took over in 1904.  Born in 1862, he started working in the company when he was 14 and came to the United States in 1893.

Sophie Kerr symbolized the modern, self-sufficient career woman of the early 20th century.  The unmarried young woman was an editor of the Woman's Home Companion.  She scoffed at debutantes whose entire focus was preparing to be the wife of an affluent man, telling Marguerite Mooers Marshall of The Evening World in March 1917, "No girl in America is so rich that she can afford not to know how to earn."

In 1919 the National Juvenile Motion Picture League established its headquarters here.  Its president, Adele F. Woodward explained its purpose on May 25, saying "it expresses the idea in the efforts of many people who are opposed to official censorship of motion pictures, yet believe that the moral and artistic influence of many films is bad."  To that end, the league published The Bulletin that reviewed motion pictures.  The standards were, apparently high.  On May 25, 1919, The New York Times reported that between January 1 and May 20 that year, it "reviewed about 400 feature pictures and comedies, of which about 70 had been approved."  (By the following year, the organization's name was changed to The National Motion Picture League.)

In October 1921, the Industrial Bank of New York leased the ground floor, and Princeton Silk Mills took space on an upper floor.

Additional publishing firms moved into the building.  In the 1920s, it was home to the International Publishers, the Macaulay Company, Engineering Magazine Company, and Experimental Publications.  The latter published Radio News, which it boasted in 1929 had a "circulation larger than that of any other radio publication."

International Publishers had a decidedly socialist bent.  On September 15, 1925, The New York Times reported that it had released Leon Trotsky's Whither England? that day.  In it Trotsky predicted:

The inevitable hour will strike for American capital also: the American oil and steel magnates, trust and export leaders, the multimillionaires of New York, Chicago and San Francisco are performing--though unconsciously--their predestined revolutionary function.  And the American proletariat will ultimately discharge theirs.

Two years later, on October 5, 1927, The Daily Worker reported that International Publishers, "cooperating with the Lenin Institute in Moscow," was publishing "the complete and definitive edition of Lenin's speeches and writings."  And three months later, in January 1928, the firm published Scott Nearing's Whither China?.  Nearing was a leading intellectual within the Socialist Party of America.

A much less controversial publishing firm, which moved into the building in June 1929, was Popular Science Publishing Company, publishers of Popular Science Magazine.  It signed a lease "for a long term of years" for the seventh floor, reported The New York Times.

The early 1930s saw new tenants, including The Modern Institute, which offered slimming techniques by mail order; the Boys Clubs of America headquarters; and the offices of the Social Register Association, which annually published the directory of America's socially elite.

The Modern Institute's advertisements, like this one from 1932, guaranteed results in the privacy of one's home.

Having the New York State Department of Labor within the building might have been convenient for the Macaulay Company in 1934.  On September 19, The Daily Worker reported that a breach of contract "caused the calling yesterday of the second strike in three months, by the Office Workers Union.  During the first strike, in May, 18 picketers were arrested, including several respected authors.

Now, the union charged that Macaulay Company had fired three workers "without consulting the shop committee."  The dispute triggered a strike of the employees of eight other publishing houses.  Strikers lined the sidewalks outside the Fourth Avenue Building while Lee S. Furman, president of the firm, called them "malcontents" and "agitators."

Other politically-motivated tenants moved into the building in the 1930s, including the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy and the offices of the American Peace Mobilization. 

A seemingly non-political tenant was the G. S. Blakeslee Company, distributors of dishwashing machines.  One employee, however, did have a political agenda.  On January 15, 1940, The New York Times reported on the FBI's indictments against 18 co-conspirators who were intent to overthrow the Government of the United States.  Among them was 32-year-old Blakeslee employee Macklin Boettger.  He and the other members of the Christian Front were or had been members of various branches of the American military and had stolen weapons from National Guard armories.

Increasingly, organizations established their headquarters in 381 Fourth Avenue.  On February 2, 1940, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited the offices of the National Youth Administration here.  The group placed "orphaned boys and girls in employment," explained The New York Times.  Mrs. Roosevelt commended the work and suggested it could be extended throughout the country, but cautioned, "against the possibility of the plan's falling into the hands of unscrupulous people who might use it to get cheap labor and to exploit youth."

On September 22, 1942, following the United States entry into World War II, West Coast shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser opened a "recruiting office" here.  The New York Times said he intended "to recruit 20,000 shipyard workers for his plants."  By 4:00 the first day, 1,600 had applied.  The plan was successful.  Two weeks later, the newspaper reported that another "trainload of workers" was heading for the Kaiser shipbuilding yard in Portland, Oregon.

The U.S. Government followed suit and installed an Army recruiting office here.  A journalist who stopped by on April 26, 1942, counted "more than 400 men in line."

At midcentury, the International Publishers (which would remain into the 1970s) and its Socialist ideology drew the attention of Congress.  On June 20, 1951, at the height of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communism campaign, Russian-born Alexander Leo Trachtenberg, the head of the firm, was indicted on conspiracy charges.

Alexander Leo Trachtenberg, The New York Times, June 21, 1951

Trachtenberg went on trial on January 7, 1953.  His attorney called him the victim of "a frame-up and a fraud."  The publisher was convicted under the Smith Act (known today as the Alien Registration Act) but his conviction was overturned when a government witness recanted his testimony.

Still occupying space in the 1960s were the Boys Clubs of America and the Social Register.  A new tenant by 1963 was the New York Board of Regents.

In 1959, Fourth Avenue was renamed Park Avenue South.  Atco Properties and Management acquired 381 Park Avenue South in 1974.  The firm's senior vice president, Peter L. DiCapua, later explained that the property was its first "adaptive re-use of middle-aged buildings."  He told Richard D. Lyons of The New York Times in December 1989, "We put in a lot of dollars and re-created the original design, such as restoring the main lobby to its original form, while upgrading the mechanical systems."

image via marketplace.vts.com

Among Atco's initial tenants was Public Affairs Pamphlets, which published brochures like "Help for Your Troubled Child," "Helping Children Face Crisis," and "Your Child's Emotional Health" in 1977.  It was joined in the building with Inform, a non-profit environmental group that published reported issues about chemical hazard pollution, sustainable transportation and such.  As early as 2009, the National Center for Learning Disabilities operated from the building.

many thanks to reader Peter Alsen for prompting this post