In the early decades of the 19th century, the neighborhood around West Broadway and Murray Street was home to affluent families. An advertisement in 1833 gave a telling description of 65 Murray Street, on the northwest corner of West Broadway. The three-story-and-attic house had "folding doors between front and back parlors" (what today we would call pocket doors), "handsome marble mantle pieces, grates in first and second stories, four finished bed-rooms in the garret." The garret, or attic, bedrooms would have been reserved for four live-in servants. The ad called 65 Murray Street a "desirable residence for genteel families."
But as the end of the century neared, little hint of the Federal style homes survived as loft and store buildings increasingly replaced them. On February 2, 1895, the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported, "At No. 65 Murray street a new seven-story stone and iron fire-proof store and loft building, 25x125, is to be erected." Horace S. Ely & Co. had hired architect William E. Bloodgood to design the structure.
Bloodgood had been active in the district for two decades, often working in partnership with Freeman Bloodgood as Bloodgood & Bloodgood. Among his handsome designs in the area was 510 Broadway, completed in 1879.
His design for the Gibbes Building would be markedly modern and different, one of the first New York City structures to draw on the Commercial Style, which was still developing in Chicago. Clad in Roman brick above a two-story cast iron base, its verticality was underscored with five four-story elliptical arches on West Broadway, each separated by Ionic piers. The deeply overhanging cornice and the exposed rivet heads of the second story lintel were typical of the Commercial Style. Bloodgood was not willing to completely forego tried-and-true styles, adorning the two-story limestone entrance frame with Beaux Arts decoration, and giving the cast iron piers expected 19th century ornamentation.
The Record & Guide noted the up-to-date amenities. "The structure will contain elevators, steam-heating equipment, electric wiring and fixtures, structural, architectural and galvanized ironwork, iron shutters, and sanitary plumbing."
The Gibbes Building filled, mostly, with publishing firms. A notable exception was William Somerville's Sons, which signed a lease in 1895. "The Messrs. Sommerville have become very extensive dealers in scrap rubber," said The India Rubber World.
More typical tenants were the Industrial Press, publishers of the monthly periodical Machinery; William E. Wilkins, publisher of the Merchants' Review; and Ashbel R. Elliott, head of A. R. Elliott Advertising and A. R. Elliott Publishing Co., which published medical books. Also associated with the latter firm were Daniel M. and John M. Elliott.
At around noon on October 29, 1900, John M. Elliott took a lunch break on the roof of the Gibbes Building. Twenty-five minutes later a massive explosion occurred in the Tarrant Building at Greenwich and Warren Streets, about a block and a half away. Elliot watched in astonishment, later describing the event to a reporter from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle who reported:
He says the force of the first explosion was directly upward for a matter of thirty feet. Then the column of debris spread and fell. The roof of the building went up with the rest and he could hear the cries and screams of injured people. The third explosion shook the building where he was and debris fell all about him.
Thomas McFarland, a clerk, had also left his desk in the Gibbes Building around noon. He was standing in front of the Home Made Restaurant when the first blast occurred. He told a reporter from the New-York Tribune, "I was hurled against a truck and lay there for some time without knowing what had happened. I was badly bruised, but was not other wise hurt."
Another passerby to be blown off his feet was Harry Rose. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, "When he picked himself up he said he saw bodies flying through the air and landing in the flames." The horror of the event sent working girls rushing for safety. "At the building at 66 West Broadway," said The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, "a large number of girls employed in buildings nearer the explosion took refuge."
Edward F. Sweet was a private insurance broker. His one-man business did not necessitate an office and around the time of the explosion he was renting desk space from A. R. Elliott. An advertisement in The Evening Post on January 31, 1902 read in part, "If applied for promptly, I can supply a limited amount of absolutely safe life annuities on exceptionally favorable terms."
It was common for well-to-do businessmen to move into their clubs or to a high-end boarding house during the summer months when their families went off to resorts. The practice defrayed the expense and bother of keeping their homes open and full staff of servants employed. Sweet's wife sailed to Europe in the summer of 1902, and he took rooms in a boarding house on Fifth Avenue at 99th Street.
The 50-year-old Sweet was an avid bicyclist, or "wheelman." The Evening World said his bicycle was "his almost constant companion." On September 12, the newspaper reported, "Edward F. Sweet, an insurance broker at No. 66 West Broadway, was found dead to-day on the beach at Fort Hamilton. His body, naked except for a pair of swimming trunks, was discovered by a policeman." The New York Times presumed he was the victim of "a fatal swim," saying "Not far away on the beach lay his bicycle and a bicycle suit."
By 1911 the publishers in the Gibbes Building were being supplanted by crockery and glass firms. Among the tenants that year were the New York offices of Fostoria Glass Company, the French China Company, Central Glass Works, and the Consolidated Lamp & Glass Company.
The Gibbes Building in 1914 looked little different than it does today. from the collection of the New York Public Library.
Not every publisher had left the building, though. As late as 1922 the A. R. Elliott Publishing Co. was still here, publishing the American Druggist, the New York Medical Journal, and the Spanish language Revista Americana, De Farmacia, Medicina y Hospitales.
At some point St. Luke's Hospital acquired the property. It sold the Gibbes Building in March 1920 to the 416 West 215th Street Corporation. The transaction prompted the New-York Tribune to mention, "It is occupied by many crockery firms," and The New York Times to call it "by far the finest office building in the neighborhood" and to point out its "graceful lines with perfect light arrangement."
Among the tenants at the time along with A. R. Elliott and the Consolidated Lamp & Glass Co. were the drug firm Meteor Products Co., Inc., the M. C. Liebert Manufacturing Co., the National Rattan & Cane Co., and the exporting firm Pass & Seymour, Inc. Sharing a floor with Pass & Seymour were the Eagle Safety Razor Company and the Marcelle Hair Net Company. On the second floor was Stewart's Chrystal & China Shop.
Like scores of companies owned by German Americans, the National Rattan & Cane Co. had been seized by the Government during World War I under the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act. It was still being operated by a Government administrator in 1920 when the Gibbes Building changed hands.
On the night of May 11, 1921, burglars broke into the Gibbes Building. The safe crackers systematically went from one office to another, eventually hitting eleven companies and breaking into seven safes. Their hard and long work went unrewarded, however. The following day the New York Herald reported that after forcing open the safes "with bars and chisels" the would-be thieves "were disappointed in their search for loot." The article said, 'no money or securities were stolen from any of the offices." The Evening World explained, "downtown business men keep no money in the safes these days."
Gutsy robbers were more successful on August 24, 1934. Just after George Ferris opened his jewelry shop two men walked in
and overpowered him. They placed Ferris in handcuffs, then made off with 36 bar pins valued at $300. The Sun reported, "Ferris was taken to Police Headquarters where the handcuffs were sawed from his wrists."
An unexpected tenant by the mid-1930s was the Aquarium Stock Company of New York. Founded in 1910, it was the country's largest supplier of aquarium products. When the Sportsmen's Show opened in the Grand Central Palace in 1938, the company presented a stunning display. The New York Sun reported on February 19, "Twenty-one stainless steel domestic aquaria, comprising fifty species of tropical fish, are among the features to be seen." The journalist was especially taken with "a ghost fish from the Amazon, called aternarchus albifrons."
Among the tenants in the 1940s was Harry Ross, who bought and sold "microscopes, telescopes, binoculars; all scientific, chemical laboratory apparatus," according to an ad in Popular Science in 1944.
Little changed today, the Gibbes Building remains, as judged by The New York Times a century ago, one of the finest buildings in the area.
photographs by the author
many thanks to historian Anthony Bellov for suggesting this post
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