Horace Ginsbern's 1941 66 West 88th Street

 

photo by Lowell Cochrane

On May 13, 1940, seven months before the attack on Pearl Harbor would pull America into World War II, The New York Times reported that the Cedot Realty Corporation had purchased "the five parcels at 62 to 70 West Eighty-eighth Street," saying that the plot "has been assembled for an apartment house."

The firm hired Horace Ginsbern to design the structure.  Born in 1902, he was the principal in the architectural firm of Horace Ginsbern & Associates and president of the Horace Realty Company, Inc.  He began designing and building apartment buildings when he was 29 years old, beginning with the Park Plaza Apartments--the first of the Art Deco apartment buildings in the Bronx.

Ginsbern's design for 66 West 88th Street would gravitate more to the "modernistic."  He forwent stepped Art Deco parapets and polychromed doors for a nearly utilitarian plan that anticipated mid-century modern architecture.  A light court separated the building into two masses, its sparse decoration limited to fenestration and the granite-paneled entrance.

Construction was completed in the fall of 1941 and the building filled with professional tenants, like Dr. Manfred Hess, who had received his medical degree in Milan in 1934; and Samuel L. Greitzer, his wife Ethel, and their son Gerald.

Born in Russia on August 10, 1905, Greitzer was brought to America at the age of one.  He graduated from City College of New York in 1927 and later earned his Ph.D. from Yeshiva University.  Greitzer's occupation in 1955 was listed as "mathematics teacher, Yeshiva University and Bronx High School of Science," but that greatly understated his stature in the mathematical community.

Samuel L. Greitzer, from the collection of Rutgers University

Samuel L. Grietzer would go on to teach at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, Columbia University and Rutgers University.  Among the books he wrote or co-authored was Geometry Revisited.  He led the U.S. team at the first International Mathematical Olympiads in 1959, and would continued in that role for a decade.  Grietzer was internationally recognized within the mathematics community.

Sisters Hulda Ernestine Macarthy and Osceola Marie Adams shared an apartment by the early 1970s.  Both had fascinating careers and lives.  Natives of Albany, Georgia, Hulda was born on October 7, 1888, and Osceola was born on June 13, 1890.

The girls' father, Charles Hannibal Macarthy, was a trustee of the Colored Academy in Albany, where they received their early education.  In 1903, Hulda entered the Albany Normal School, graduating in 1907.  An accomplished pianist, she was accepted at Fisk University where she majored in music.  After graduation she studied piano at Oberlin College.

For some reason, the musician turned to nursing.  In 1923 she entered nurses' training at St. Louis City Hospital.  She would spend 35 years with the Homer G. Phillips Hospital, rising to Assistant Superintendent of Nurses, notably becoming its first Black nursing instructor.  Osceola attended her Appreciation Banquet on March 17, 1962.

At the time, Hulda's eyesight was failing.  It would worsen to the point of near blindness.  She moved to New York and Osceola's apartment at 66 West 88th Street.  Her condition continued to worsen and she suffered hearing loss and confusion (most likely early dementia), necessitating Osceola's handling of her affairs.  Hulda died in November 1976 at the age of 88.

Like her sister, Osceola attended Fisk University and then Howard University.  While there, she was among 22 founding members of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, which would grow to be the largest Black women's organization in the world.  She married the head of Howard University's Chemistry department, Numa Adams, in 1915.

While her husband pursued a career in medicine, Osceola worked as a newspaper columnist, a substitute probation officer and fashion designer for a department store--all the while doing graduate work at the University of Chicago.

In 1929, Numa Adams was appointed the dean of the Howard University Medical School, the first Black dean of any American medical school.  He died on August 29, 1940.  By then, it appears that he and Osceola had separated.  She was living in New York City, having earned her Master's degree in drama in 1936, taking the stage name of Osceola Archer.  

She debuted in Between Two Worlds at the Belasco Theatre in October 1934 playing Rose Henneford, a maid.  Darlene Clark Hine wrote in the 1994 Black Women in America, "Henneford trained as a librarian, was married to a doctor whose career was hurt by discrimination.  The role was not terribly far from Archer's own life."

In 1934, Osceola Archer played in Archibald MacLeish's Panic with Orson Wells and Rose McClendon.  It was choreographed by Martha Graham to music by Virgil Thomson.  She was on tour with The Emperor Jones when her husband died.  

Osceola Adams (original source unknown)

In 1940 Osceola became acting coach and director of the American Negro Theater in Harlem.  Among her students were unknown young actors Ossie Davis, Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier.  In his autobiography My Song: A Memoir, Belafonte recalls that after Poitier's initial three month trial period...

the ANT's director, Osceola Archer, was disinclined to give him another trial period.  Sidney told me he felt Osceola was racist.  She was very Indian-looking, with long, black thick hair and rather light skin.  Sidney felt strongly that she liked me more than him because my skin was quite a bit lighter than his.  I never saw any evidence of this, and thought Sidney was just oversensitive and vulnerable.

In 1946, Osceola was made resident director of the Putnam County Playhouse, a post she would retain for a decade.  She continued to work in the theater, radio, commercials and television dramas.  A member of the Actor's Equity Committee on Minority Affairs, she fought racial discrimination for decades.  She received an award from the U.S.O. for distinguished service during World War II, and from the mayor of Detroit, Coleman Young, in 1974 for her contributions to American theater.  

On November 24, 1983, The New York Times announced, "Osceola Adams, an actress and teacher of dramatic arts...who also was a founder of the nation's largest black fraternal organization, died in her Upper West Side home Sunday.  She was 93 years old."

photo by Lowell Cochrane

Surprisingly, Horace Ginsbern's casement windows survive.  Resultantly, his 83-year-old building looks almost exactly as it did when the first tenants moved in in September 1941.

many thanks to reader Lowell Cochrane for requesting this post

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