Largely forgotten today, William Maxwell Evarts was born in Boston in 1818. He graduated from Yale University in 1837 and from Harvard Law School in 1839. In 1849 he became Assistant U. S. Attorney, and in 1868 became United States Attorney General. He would add U.S. Secretary of State and U.S. Senator from New York to his resume before retiring from public service. He and his wife lived in a refined brick and brownstone mansion at 231 Second Avenue at the northwest corner of East 14th Street.
The Second Empire style Evarts mansion was separated from a similar house facing Stuyvesant Square by a common garden. from the collection of the New-York Historical Society
On March 1, 1901, The New York Times began an extensive article by reporting, "William Maxwell Evarts, lawyer and statesman, died yesterday morning at his home 231 Second Avenue, corner of Fourteenth Street."
At the time of Evarts's death, his neighborhood was changing. Mansions on East 14th Street were being razed for commercial buildings, and those on the avenue were rapidly being replaced by apartment or institutional buildings. Real estate developers Feller & Sherafsky razed the Evarts mansion and hired the architectural firm of Sass & Smallheiser to replace it with two apartment buildings. As a nod to the esteemed statesman, they would be called the E. M. Evarts and the U.S. Senate.
The six-story, Beaux Arts style structures were completed in 1903 at a cost of $100,000, or about $3.57 million by 2024 terms. Sitting upon a rusticated limestone base were five floors of dark red brick. Two porticos with polished granite columns protected the entrances; their entablatures carved with each building's name. Interestingly, the W. M. Evarts portico had single columns, while the slightly larger U. S. Senate's had paired columns. The buildings' midsections were dominated by triple-height limestone arches, each crowned with shields and swags.
.jpg)
"W. M. Evarts" and "U.S. Senate" are engraved in the entablatures of the porticos. photos by Beyond My Ken.
Both buildings offered apartments of five or six rooms with a bath. An advertisement in The New York Times on July 26, 1904 boasted, "near Stuyvesant Park; most beautiful location down town; all modern improvements; hall attendants." (Uniformed hall boys were on duty to carry packages and help with minor errands.) Rents ranged from $38 to $65--about $2,290 per month for the more expensive apartments.
The W. M. Evarts and U. S. Senate filled with well-heeled, professional tenants. Among the earliest were Harvey W. Watterson and his wife, the former Alice Burrows. Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1878, Watterson was a graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University Law School. He was admitted to the bar in 1902 and in 1904 he and Alice were married. A junior member of the law firm of Wing, Russell & Watterson, his social and financial positions were reflected in his memberships to the Manhattan Club, the Southern Society and the Kentuckian Society.
Harvey W. Watterson. New-York Tribune, November 12, 1908 (copyright expired)
Around 5:30 on the afternoon of November 11, 1908, the Watterson maid answered their door. Harvey was expected home around this time, but it was, instead, the wife of a close friend. She had been telephoned by Thomas E. Wing, the senior member of the law firm, who asked her to break the news of Harvey Watterson's death to Alice as gently as possible.
At 4:45, Watterson was going over papers with a colleague when he looked at his watch and said, "Well, I must be going home." The 30-year-old rushed to his private office, put on his overcoat, then noticed an open window. The New-York Tribune reported, "It is believed Mr. Watterson reached up to pull down the window, tripped over the radiator in his hurry, and plunged headforemost to his death." His estate, valued at over $1 million in today's money, went to Alice "until she shall die or marry again," as reported by the New-York Tribune.
Anna Snider, a widow, lived in the W. M. Evarts with her teenaged daughter, Mabel in 1914. For several months, Joseph Zucker "wooed" Mabel, according to The Evening World. The newspaper described her as a "pretty sixteen-year-old." Her suitor was 24. The Evening World explained, "When Mabel took Zucker to her house, Mrs. Snider looked him over and decided right then and there he wasn't the man to marry her daughter."
Anna later told Magistrate Appleton in the Centre Street Court, "I didn't like his looks and told him to make himself scarce." Although Mabel cried, she promised her mother she would not see Zucker. Not surprisingly, Anna discovered the two were meeting secretly and went into private investigator mode. She went to Police Headquarters and discovered he had spent time in prison.
Anna told her daughter, who reacted by becoming angry and insisting the two were in love. On March 13, 1915, the couple sneaked off to City Hall and were married. But the tenacious and protective Anna Snider was undeterred. She had Zucker arrested for abduction, The Evening World explaining, "it being a felony in this State to marry a girl under the age of eighteen years without first obtaining the consent of her guardian."
In court on March 15, Zucker's prior convictions "as a disorderly person and pickpocket" were revealed. This new information was too much for Anna to endure. The Evening World said, "When Mrs. Snider heard of it she promptly fainted." Zucker was sent to the Tombs and, as reported by The Evening World, "Mabel cried a bit and then went home with her mother."
The 14th Street side of 231 Second Avenue was lined with stores, one of which was the Dreyfus Drugstore. On December 6, 1922, The Evening World reported, "Burglars have robbed Druggist Dreyfus of No. 231 Second Avenue twelve times." Rather sarcastically the article added, "Apparently it's a habit."
More than two decades after being repeatedly robbed, the Dreyfus Drugstore advertised in the Yiddish language The Day on February 11, 1945.
The U. S. Senate was the scene of a tragedy in the summer of 1926. On August 18, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, "In view of thousands of persons, Hyman Zuckerman, 30, a laundry owner, of 1381 Eastern Parkway, leaped from the roof of a six-story building at 235 2d ave., Manhattan, shortly after 10 o'clock this morning and was impaled on a six-foot picket fence." (The cast iron fence had to be cut with acetylene torches to extricate the body.)
The article continued, "A tragic scene was enacted a few minutes later when Mrs. Elsie Zuckerman, wife of the laundryman, with her 11-month-old daughter, Marion, drove up in a taxicab in search of her husband. The cab was forced to stop because of the crowd, and she saw her husband's body on the fence. She swooned." Why Zuckerman chose this building for his suicide is unknown.
A fascinating resident of 235 Second Avenue was Dr. Leon M. Pisculli. A gynecologist, he was the founder and director of the American Nurses' Aviation Service, Inc. In August 1932, the 53-year-old organized a 4,000 mile, non-stop flight from Floyd Bennett Field on Long Island to Rome, Italy. Pisculli recruited 31-year-old William Ulbrich, "a veteran barnstorming pilot," according to the New York Evening Post, and Edna Newcomer, a 28-year-old student nurse. She was one of two trained female nurses in the United States with a pilot's license.
Edna Newcomer and Dr. Pisculli in the monoplane The American Nurse prior to takeoff. from the collection of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
The Morning Call said they expected their trip in the monoplane to take 25 hours. It left Floyd Bennett Field shortly after 6 a.m. on September 13. At 5:50 p.m. it was sighted by the tanker Winnebago in the mid-Atlantic. That was the last anyone saw of The American Nurse and no trace of it or its crew was ever found.
Living here in the early 1980s were Andrea Rita Dworkin and John Stoltenberg. (The couple would marry in 1998 because of Dworkin's ill health, despite Stoltenberg's being gay.) Dworkin was a radical feminist writer and activist, and Stoltenberg was an editor, author, lecturer, playwright, theater critic. Over his career he would edit Essence, Lear's, Working Woman, and AARP: The Magazine.
Surprisingly, after more than 120 years the two porticoes have survived. The W. M. Evarts and the U.S. Senate are the sole reminders that a once-revered statesman once lived on this corner.
photographs by the author
no permission to reuse the content of this blog has been granted to LaptrinhX.com
No comments:
Post a Comment