H. I. Feldman's 1940 139 East 35th Street

 

photo by Lowell Cochrane

On December 19, 1939, The New York Sun titled an article, "Apartments for Church Plot."  The previous year, the Church of the Epiphany, erected in 1856, was demolished.  The article said that the newly formed 139 East Thirty-fifth Street, Inc. had purchased the former church property at the northeast corner of 35th Street and Lexington Avenue as the site of a 12-story apartment building.

Importantly, the Tishman Realty & Construction Company had been hired to erect the structure.  "This will be the first new apartment house operation with which the Tishmans have been identified since 1931," said The New York Sun.  The Tishman concern had been static since the beginnings of the Great Depression.  "It marks the active entry of this organization into the construction field as a building contractor."

The article noted, "H. I. Feldman, the architect, will design the building."  Hyman Isaac Feldman opened his architectural office in 1921.  He would soon become well-known for his Art Deco apartment houses along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx and similar buildings in Brooklyn.  Known professionally by his initials, before his death in 1981, Feldman would design more than 2,500 metropolitan area apartment buildings.

The New York Sun reported that the building would contain "156 two and three room suites and will present a number of ingenious features, such as in respect to dressing rooms and alcoves."  A roof garden was available "for the relaxation of the tenants," said the article.  Calling it a "sky garden," an advertisement described the space as being "swept by cool breezes."

Construction was completed in August 1940.  Typical of Feldman's designs, 139 East 35th Street had no setbacks and terminated in a drama-free parapet.  Windows wrapped the chamfered corners of the recessed central section.  Below them, the offset entrance was tucked into a reentrant corner.  Reeded brick piers thrust upward from the second to tenth floors, capped with striking stone palmettes.

photograph by Lowell Cochrane

Interestingly, among the initial tenants was Robert Valentine Tishman, of the Tishman Realty & Construction Company.  Born in 1916, he graduated from Cornell University in 1937 and entered his family's business.  It was established in 1898 by his grandfather, Julius Tishman.  On June 12, 1941, The New York Sun reported that he and Phyllis Gordon would be married in the Hotel Lombardy that afternoon.  "After a wedding trip to California, the couple will live at 139 East 35th Street," said the article.

Moving into an apartment in October 1941 were actor Frank O'Connor and his wife, author and screenwriter Ayn Rand.  The couple met on the set of Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings and were married on April 15, 1929.  Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1905, Ayn became an American citizen in 1931.

Ayn Rand in 1943.  from the dust jacket of The Fountainhead

Two months after moving in, Rand landed a contract to publish the novel she was working on, The Fountainhead.  It was published in May 1943.  Later that year, Rand returned home from a business lunch and, according to Anne Conover Heller in her Ayn Rand and the World She Made:

When she got back to the apartment, tired and downcast, her husband was waiting in the dimly lit living room, a peculiar look on his face.  "Well, darling," he said, after a dramatic pause, "while you were at lunch you earned fifty thousand dollars."

Frank O'Connor had received the phone call from Warner Bros. informing her they had purchased the screen rights to The Fountainhead.  The couple left 139 East 35th Street in December that year.

photograph by Lowell Cochrane

In the meantime, composer and songwriter Vernon Duke signed a lease on January 5, 1942.  Born into a noble Russian family in 1903 as Vladimir Doukelsky, he was the grandson of Princess Tumanishvili.  He entered the Kiev Conservatory at the age of 11, but his studies were interrupted by the Russian Revolution.  The family escaped, eventually landing in America in 1921.  He was befriended by George Gershwin who urged him to Americanize his name to Vernon Duke.

Vernon Duke, from the collection of the Library of Congress.

While living here, Duke served in the U.S. Coast Guard and toured for the Guard in a show, Tars & Spars.  Among his best known works are Taking a Chance on Love, April in Paris, and Autumn in New York.

Like Duke, other tenants saw military service during World War II.  Among them was Charles G. Moses, who had attended Washington High School and was in the real estate business before being drafted on October 11, 1941.  The 23-year-old's life suddenly and drastically changed.

On September 4, 1943, The New York Sun began an article saying, 

Corporal Charles G. Moses, listed as wounded in action, wrote his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Moses of 139 East 35th street, that in the African and Sicilian fighting he was bombed ninety-seven times.  "The ninety-eighth time," he added, "they got me."

Charles Moses was saved by a fellow New Yorker, Louis Bellows from the Bronx.  He applied tourniquets and sprinkled sulpha powder on his wounds.  Moses wrote, "In the hospital, they took shrapnel out of both arms and pieces of my watch out of my left wrist."  After nine days in the hospital, Moses returned to his unit.

Another tenant who gave up their workaday life to serve was Virginia Sanders, the daughter of Howard S. Sanders.  She had worked for Hardy & Company, but on November 2, 1944, The East Hampton Star reported that she, "has arrived in India to serve the armed forces as an American Red Cross hospital staff aide."

On the afternoon of September 6, 1965, 34-year-old resident Sanford Simon was driving back to Manhattan from Westhampton when he noticed a teenager hitchhiking.  Simon picked up 17-year-old Robert B. Rowa.  At around 4:45, when Simon pulled over at an exit to let Rowa out, the teen pulled out a knife and demanded, "Give me your money."  Simon told him there was $275 in the glove compartment, but pleaded to leave him some money for the tunnel toll.  The Long Island Advance reported, "the youth left him a quarter."  Rowa was arrested two days later and charged with first-degree robbery.

An interesting resident was Edith Ehrman.  Born in 1932, she was the daughter of Frederick L. Ehrman, chairman of the board of Lehman Brothers, Inc.  Never married, Edith was the manager of the foreign-areas materials center of the New York State Department of Education.  She was more known, however, as a collector of Japanese prints.  A founder of the Japan House Gallery, she was also a member of the visiting Committee of the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute and of the Association of Asian Studies.

Quintessentially H. I. Feldman, 139 East 35th Street survives essentially intact, other than replacement windows.

many thanks to reader Lowell Cochrane for suggesting this post