In December 1883, developer William Henderson hired architect John C. Burne to design two identical flat buildings at 107 and 109 East 89th Street just east of Fourth Avenue (renamed Park Avenue in 1888). Completed in August 1884, each had cost Henderson $21,000 to construct (about $659,000 in 2024 terms).
Burne faced the neo-Grec style buildings in red brick above a stone base. The lintels of the second, fourth and fifth floors held hands by a continuous stone bandcourse. The earred lintels of the third floor were decorated with incised vines and rosettes, typical of the style. Burne added interest with dog-tooth brick panels between the fourth and fifth floor windows. The handsome neo-Grec cornices included raised fascia panels. (Interestingly, the Italianate style cast iron balcony-fire escapes are a stark contrast to the geometric, neo-Grec architecture.)
With years to go before the Carnegie Hill district would become fashionable, the buildings were home to working class families. Among the earliest in 107 East 89th Street was the Murphy family. They panicked when their small son, John, showed symptoms of smallpox.
The highly contagious disease was battled by the city with an aggressive vaccination campaign. When a case was discovered, the house or apartment was disinfected and the family members quarantined. Many immigrant families, ill-educated on the reasons behind the procedures and their effects, attempted to hide the illness. Fearful, the Murphys fled with their boy. The New York Times reported on January 26, 1887, "The child, John Murphy, who was spirited away from No. 107 East Eighty-ninth-street, was taken to Anthony Dunn's, on the King's Bridge road."
The little boy died of the disease in the friends' Bronx home. The New York Times said, "His father reported the case yesterday, and the necessary scarifying [i.e., vaccination] was performed on him and members of the Dunn family, and the body was treated with corrosive sublimate and put into a hermetically sealed coffin."
Among the Murphys' neighbors were John O. Lind, his wife Hilda, and their two-year-old daughter Ida. A son, Charlie, was born in May 1888. The Linds had immigrated from Sweden in 1884. In August 1888, Hilda took her two children aboard the Danish liner Geiser headed to Sweden. The New York Times explained, "She was on the way to Carlshamn, Sweden, to visit her mother, whom she had not seen since she left home." It would also be the first meeting of the Lind children and their grandmother. What was to be a joyful reunion turned into terror and grief.
At 4:00 on the morning of August 9, the Geiser collided with another Danish steamship, the Thingvalla. The New York Times reported that Hilda, who was 28 years old, and the children were "all sound asleep when the crash came, little Ida in an upper berth and the mother and her babe just below." Hilda peered into the corridor, asking the panicked passengers what had happened. "One of the stewards told her to fly for the deck, that the ship was sinking," said the article.
Hilda asked him to carry one of the children to the deck, but he did not answer and moved on. The New York Times said, "Several other men were in the passage, and to them she also appealed for help, but they paid no attention to her, all hurrying past to the companion way, up which they disappeared." Hilda picked up her three-month-0ld son, took Ida by the hand, and headed out. A man rushing past knocked Ida to the floor, ignoring Hilda's pleas for him to help. Carrying the baby in one arm and Ida by the waist in the other, Hilda attempted to climb up to the deck.
The ship was quickly filling with water. "At the companionway a steward appeared," recounted the article, "and the almost frantic woman asked him to carry the little girl up stairs. He did not heed her, but scrambled up stairs." Somehow, Hilda managed to reach the deck with her children. All around was chaos with women screaming and some passengers jumping from the ship's railings. A week later, The New York Times would report the ship "went down in a few minutes with 105 persons, 72 being passengers, including several children."
Hilda's brother-in-law, Olaf Lind, told reporters that Hilda, "had been on deck but a few moments when the water swept over it, and she remembers no more until she was picked up and taken on board the Thingvalla. She thought at first that the children were also saved, but soon afterward learned they were lost."
Living next door were the well-known newspaper man John Edward Parker Doyle (known by his first initials, "Jep") and his wife. Born in Williamsville, New York in 1837, he started his journalistic career at the age of 13. During the Civil War he had the dangerous job of war correspondent. According to the New York Herald, "In the campaign against [Joseph] Shelby and [John T.] Coffee, who, in 1863, invaded Mississippi, he was wounded by the guerillas and was captured by them."
His "narrative of Sherman's March to the Sea," according to the New York Herald, "occupied nearly two pages of that newspaper on December 22, 1865. He worked for the newspaper until his retirement in 1885. On February 5, 1888, The New York Times reported that the venerable reporter had died of gastritis in his apartment here.
John and Martha Dittmeyer were married in 1897 and lived at 109 East 89th Street. John was a wagon driver and he and Martha had a baby boy in September 1899. Dittmeyer's sister lived directly across the hall from the couple.
On February 23, 1900, Martha asked her sister-in-law to watch the baby, and went out. She was not home when John came home from work, and did not return until around midnight. John accused her of being unfaithful. He locked her out of the bedroom, "telling her to go where she came from," said the Times Union. "She pleaded for a look at the baby but Dittmeyer shut the door in her face." A few minutes later, Dittmeyer heard screams and found his 20-year-old wife on the kitchen floor. The Democrat & Chronicle reported, "Martha Dittmeyer took carbolic acid with suicidal intent at 2 o'clock this morning and died an hour later at the Presbyterian hospital."
Another tragic suicide occurred next door the following year. Sadie Goldstein had experienced more than her share of grief. At 48 years old, she was a widow and, according to the New York Sun, "her father was killed by robbers in Russia years ago." She lived here with her 12-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son. Sadie had been ill for some time and "the family depended entirely on the small earnings of the son," said the newspaper.
In the summer of 1901, Sadie told neighbors in the building "that her husband's spirit had appeared to her in dreams and told her that he was happy in the other world and desired her to join him." She told them, "she felt as if she might." On July 11, while her son was at work and her daughter was away, Sadie Goldstein committed suicide by inhaling gas in her apartment.
Thomas Ivory, who lived in 107 East 89th Street in 1905, was a street car conductor. On the afternoon of July 23 that year, he got into an altercation with another conductor, Matthew Lawlor. The New York Times reported, "They left the rear end of a Columbus Avenue car to settle a dispute with fists." Policeman White watched them for a few minutes, according to the article, "and then interfered." He quickly regretted it.
The two conductors forgot their differences and turned on the policeman, knocking him down and taking his club. Luckily for White, Captain Cooney happened upon the scene. With his help, the two conductors were overpowered and arrested. Nevertheless, White was the loser in the affray. The New York Times reported he "had to report sick after his wounds had been dressed at Roosevelt Hospital."
In 1911, apartments in 107 were being rented furnished by the week. An advertisement in the New York Evening Telegram listed the rent at "$6.50 weekly" with "gas, bedding." (The weekly rent would translate to about $215 today.)
While the majority of the tenants in both buildings were blue collar, that was not the case with Charles Pratt Huntington who lived at 109 West 89th Street by 1912. Born in Logansport, Indiana in 1871 and educated at Harvard and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, Huntington was an architect. His most notable work was the monumental Audubon Terrace complex, the first stage of which was designed in 1904.
While living here, Huntington was selected as a jury member on the sensational murder trial of "the four gunmen, 'Dago' Frank Cirofici, 'Lefty' Louie Rosenberg, 'Whitey' Lewis and 'Gyp' the Blood Horowitz," as reported by the New-York Tribune on November 12, 1912. Selecting a jury for the dangerous gangsters had not been easy. It required hours of interviewing 122 prospective jurors before 12 were chosen. "Dago" Frank Cirofici sniffed at the panel, saying "We'll all be eating Thanksgiving turkey at home."
Thirty-eight-year-old Joseph Golway, who lived in 107 East 89th Street in 1933, was a chauffeur. And he came to his current employer, Grace Wilson of 3 East 63rd Street, with a sterling resume. He had been chauffeur for Franklin D. Roosevelt when he was Governor of New York, for Governor Nathan Lewis Miller, and for millionaire J. P. Morgan.
But Golway and Grace Wilson had a serious disagreement on the evening of September 2, 1933. He was driving Wilson home from Katonah, New York that evening. He told the court, "I wanted something to eat. I was hungry." Grace Wilson wanted to proceed directly to Manhattan. Golway explained, "We had a dispute. I admit I had one drink."
According to Grace, Golway "used abusive language and threatened to strike her." She called a policeman, who confirmed that Golway called her a bum. In court, Golway argued, "There are several meanings for the word. What is yours, your honor?"
Magistrate Greenspan replied, "You'll find out where I'm going to send you."
image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services
Joseph Fearon was the superintendent of 109 East 89th Street in 1973 and lived in a first floor apartment. Born in Ireland, he was a semi-retired estate lawyer. Although he was 75 years old, Fearon was a formidable protector of the tenants. A tenant told The New York Times there had been "quite a few muggings right in this building," and the doorman next door said, "I once saw him throw some fellow out of his building because he was trouble and didn't belong there."
On December 15, 1973, Fearon left the building to buy groceries. Around 2:50, a tenant discovered his body in the lobby, his groceries spilled on the floor around him. He had been shot in the head. Police suspected he was the victim of an attempted mugging.
Surrounded by swanky 20th century apartment buildings, John C. Burne's Victorian flat buildings look a bit out of place--reminders of a time when the 89th Street block east of Park Avenue was home to working class families.
photographs by the author
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