image via realestate.union-investment.com
Reinhold Van Der Emde was born in Germany on March 17, 1842. After studying the pharmaceutical trade in Switzerland, he arrived in New York City in 1869. The New York Times later said he, "got a position in Dietel's drug store. He was thrifty, and soon started a business of his own on the Bowery."
Van Der Emde's drugstore thrived. In 1893, he and Richard H. Adams founded the Yorkville Bank, erecting a building on the northeast corner of Third Avenue and 85th Street within the neighborhood that was greatly populated by German and Hungarian immigrants. Reinhold Van Der Emde became the bank's president. The New York Times recalled in 1909, "The institution was successful from the first."
So successful was the Yorkville Bank, in fact, that on July 30, 1904, the Record & Guide reported, "Robert Maynicke...is preparing plans for the new building to be erected by the Yorkville Bank." (Van Der Emde's choice of the architect may have been slightly influenced by the fact that Maynicke was also German-born.) He filed plans on January 7, 1905 for the $125,000 structure (about $4.47 million in 2024).
The project moved fast. On the same day of the Record & Guide's article, The Evening Post reported, "On Monday next the bank will be moved temporarily to Eighty-third Street and Third Avenue," and a month later, on February 4, the Record & Guide announced, "The old buildings are now being demolished and excavating will begin next week."
The new Yorkville Bank building was completed within ten months and its doors were opened on December 18, 1905. Maynicke had produced a handsome Italian Renaissance banking palazzo of four floors. A graceful arcade ran along the sidewalk, its tall arched openings separated by full-height pilasters. A prominent intermediate cornice introduced the upper floors. Maynicke carried on the Renaissance motif by treating the openings with terra cotta pediments, classical metopes between the third- and fourth-floor windows, and dentils below the stone cornice.
It appears that Van Der Emde gave Maynicke input. On June 10, 1909, The Pharmaceutical Era wrote, "The bank's new building at Third avenue and 85th street, which is generally looked upon as a model for banking houses, was designed under the direction of Mr. van der Ende."
The upper floor offices were leased, mostly, to real estate and legal firms. Among the first were realtors Nathan H. Weil, Arthur G. Muhlker, here in 1906, and the F. Dornberger Realty Co., which moved in in August 1909.
The F. Dornberger Realty Co. was headed by Frederick Dornberger. Between 1:30 and 2:00 on the morning of October 11, 1910, he exited the subway at Eighth Avenue and 110th Street. Dornberger witnessed a woman going through the pockets of an elderly, intoxicated man within the hansom cab sitting at the curb. He demanded she stop. Dornberger told a judge a few hours later, "She told me to 'beat it while my shoes were good and mind my own business.'"
When the realtor continued to interfere with her larceny, she stabbed him with her hatpin, which pierced his cheek and tongue. She then told the cabbie to drive as fast as he could. Undeterred, Dornberger jumped into another cab, told the driver to follow her, all the while yelling, "Stop, thief!"
The commotion caught the attention of Patrolman Boylan who stopped the vehicles and took everyone in. The next morning Lillian Harrison, described by The Sun as, "a handsomely gowned, golden-haired woman," and Dornberger faced off in the Harlem Court. (The Sun noted, "the old man had promised to appear, but he failed to do so.) Although Lillian denied the charges and the would-be victim was not in court, The Sun reported, "Magistrate Breen, however, was impressed so by Dornberger's story that he held her in $1,600 bail."
Reinhold Van Der Emde died in 1909. August Zinsser, Jr. replaced him as president and continued the bank's policy of serving the mostly German neighborhood. On February 27, 1910, for instance, The New York Times reported that the bank had partnered with Public School 77 in an innovative program. The school formed a bank run by schoolboys. Pupils made deposits and withdrawals "and even promissory notes are dealt with," said the article. Zinsser was "a prime factor in establishing the right principles," said the article. And when a student's bank account reached $5, it was transferred to the Yorkville Bank where it began receiving interest.
On September 22, 1922, The New York Times reported that the bank had purchased the 25-foot-wide, three-story building at 1515 Third Avenue. Architect P. Gregory Stadler was hired to extend the bank building to the north and east. His alterations, completed in 1924, honored Maynicke's design, resulting in nearly seamless additions.
An announcement of the merger of the Manufacturers Trust Company with three other banks, including the Yorkville Bank was published in the New York Evening Post on June 2, 1925. It described the Yorkville Bank, "For many years the financial center of the great Yorkville District of Upper Manhattan."
At the time of the merger, Ernest Wolkwitz had been an employee of the Yorkville Bank since 1892, when he was hired as a clerk. By now he had risen to vice-president. He retained his title and was given charge of the branch here. The new responsibilities may have been too much for him, and on July 1, 1927, he retired "on account of ill health," according to The New York Times. At the time, he was being treated "for a nervous affliction."
Wolkwitz and his wife, Minna, lived in a ninth-floor apartment at 115 East 90th Street. On the afternoon of November 21, 1927, Minna went shopping. When she returned, she found Wolkwitz's body hanging "from a pipe in the bathroom of his apartment," according to The Times.
image from the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
Twenty-two year old Patricia Ann Ryan was a teller in the Manufacturers Trust Co. branch in 1956 when she faced a terrifying incident. On August 15, a man walked up to her counter and handed her a note that said in part that he had "nitro enough on me to blow all us up." It seems, however, that this was the skittish bank robber's first heist. The Citizen Register of Ossining, New York reported, "Before Miss Ryan had time to hand him any money, the man panicked, turned and ran."
Among the upstairs tenants in the late 1950s were the offices of the New York National Enquirer. In 1974, a medical laboratory took over the entire third floor. The bank left the ground floor in 1991. A renovation in 2018 resulted in a retail store on the first floor and a health club on the upper floors. Happily, Maynicke's striking 1906 design remains almost totally intact, including the graceful arcade of the first floor.
image via NYC.gov
I walked by that building hundreds of times in the 1960s, when I had a Post Office Box at the Post Office on East 85th Street, midway down the block. Nice to have the history behind it. There is also (or used be, anyway) one of those pedestal mounted street clocks about half a block south, on the east side of Third Avenue.
ReplyDelete