The 1908 John J. and Helen Pulleyn House - 302 West 107th Street

 

In 1907 the architectural firm of Neville & Bagge designed four, 19-foot wide rowhouses at 302 through 308 West 107th Street for developer William J. Casey.  The architects arranged the row in a balanced A-B-B-A configuration.  Completed the following year, their neo-Georgian design exuded dignity and affluence.  

The end (or A model) residences, which included No. 302, sat upon limestone bases, their arched entrances nestled within fluted Scamozzi columned porticoes.  The upper floors were clad in red brick.  The second through fourth floors were bowed, the windows of each treated differently.  The fifth floor sat back and a paneled brick parapet sat atop the stone cornice.

Casey initially leased No. 302 to well-to-do tenants like the Elsasser family, who were here in 1910.  Then, in September 1916, he sold the property to John Joseph Pulleyn and his wife, the former Helen Blake.

Born in 1860, Pulleyn was the controller and a trustee of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank.  In 1914, he was made a member of the Committee for the Revision of the Bank Laws.  He and Helen had four children, John W., Robert, Claire and Virginia.  Moving into the house with the family was John's widowed father, Joseph J. Pulleyn.  He was was born in Yorkshire, England in 1829 and came to America in 1869.  

John Joseph Pulleyn, (original source unknown)

John and Helen announced Virginia's engagement to Walton Pearl Kingsley on December 1, 1916.  The family's drawing room was the scene of the wedding on May 23, 1917.

Joseph J. Pulleyn died at the age of 90 on January 7, 1919.  Interestingly, his funeral was not held in the house, but at the Church of the Ascension on West 107th Street.

John Jr. was the next of the Pulleyn siblings to wed.  His engagement to Alice Moffitt was announced on February 27, 1920.  By then, his father was president of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank and would become a commissioner of the Port of New York Authority in 1928.

Six years before that would happen, in May 1922, the Pulleyns sold 302 West 107th Street to Samuel and Gene Horwitz for $40,000 (about $748,000 in 2025).

Samuel A. Horwitz was a co-founder with Leo Lindeman with Lindy's Restaurant on Broadway.   He and Gene had two sons, Richard and Howard.  The couple hired architect Gail T. Brown to renovate the house into apartments.

Four weeks after work began, on October 13, 1922, the 12-man work crew's lunch break morphed into an impromptu dance fest.  Paul T. Nolan was not merely a construction worker.  The 27-year-old was also a budding artist, a pianist and a baker.  He told The Evening World that on that afternoon after they finished their lunch, one of the workers pulled out a mouth organ.  "Then one little old man (we call him 'Pop') jumped up and danced a jig.  In about ten minutes we discovered we had among us a really good quartet, two buck and wing dancers, one acrobat and a comedian.  Everybody let loose!"

Nolan said that the only thing missing was a keg of beer.  The improvised festivities were eventually ended by the supervisor.  "Hey!  What the wheresthis does this mean?  Do you guys know it is fifteen minutes past one?"  (Sadly extinct, the word "wheresthis" was used to replace more colorful phrases.)

With jigs and mouth organ music behind them, the workers completed construction by the fall.  An advertisement in the New York Herald on November 5, 1922, offered:

Apartment for rent, two rooms, kitchenette and bath, high class building, newly decorated, moderate rentals.

Samuel and Gene Horwitz moved their family into one of the apartments.  A third son, Robert H., would be born on May 30, 1926.

In the meantime, one of the initial tenants got into trouble on December 12, 1922.  On the surface, Renee Beauchamp had an impressive background.  A trained nurse, she spoke four languages, was "socially well connected," according to the New York Herald, and had served overseas in the war.  

But the 34-year-old was arrested that night for throwing a stuffed pepper at her waiter in a New Chambers Street restaurant, missing him and smashing a plate glass window.  Renee explained in night court that she had just gotten off a 48-hour stint, "without an opportunity to eat and that her nerves were unstrung."  After waiting for half an hour to receive her order, she became "incensed."  The New York Herald reported, "The pepper throwing she admitted, but said the window was broken accidentally."  But a search of her record revealed that she "had been convicted eighteen times for disorderly conduct and intoxication since August 1916."  She was sentenced to 30 days in the workhouse."

Another early tenant was Mrs. Grace Moore Shaw, the sister of well-known competitive swimmer Lottie Moore Schoemmell.  In 1926, Lottie set her sights on the Wrigley Marathon swim in the Santa Catalina Channel to be held on January 15, 1927.  The problem was financing.  Lottie convinced her sister to back her, and drew up a contract which said that if she won either the first or second prize--$25,000 or $15,000--she would repay Grace the expenses plus $1,500.  If she did not win anything, the expenses were to be paid back by January 1, 1928.

The Oakland Tribune, January 10, 1927 (copyright expired)

As it turned out, Lottie did not place in the marathon.  Six months after the loan's due date, on June 11, 1928, Grace Shaw sued her sister.  The New York Times reported, "Mrs. Shaw said it cost more than $2,500 to take her sister to Los Angeles and enter her in the contest."  Then she had to foot the bill for supplemental items like "'shark proof' grease at $2 a pound, cut flowers which Mrs. Schoemmell insisted be in her training quarters and training room at all times, telegrams which totaled as high as $20 a day, and especially prepared foods."

The animus that had festered between the sisters was evident in barbs Grace peppered into her interview with The Times.  She mentioned that Lottie "is 34 and not 28 as her publicity men insist," that her "food bill was enormous," and she said, "I spent considerable money when we were at Hermosa Beach for private photographers."

This was necessary as we were so far from Los Angeles that newspaper camera men came out rarely and I found it next to impossible to get my publicity-crazed sister into the water to train unless it was to the accompaniment of a camera shutter click.

Lottie's attorney, John Santora, told the press on June 12 that Grace's accusations were "very much exaggerated" and "the suit is the result of a family quarrel."

In the meantime, Samuel A. Horowitz became entangled with racketeer and crime boss Arnold Rothstein.  On April 2, 1928, Horowitz wrote a letter to the gangster in which he agreed to deliver 100 shares of Lindy stock "in two days."  Already, Rothstein, known on the street as "The Brain," had taken title to 302 West 107th Street.

Arnold Rothstein was shot in a gangland hit on November 4, 1928.  He died two days later.  Apparently for Samuel Horowitz, Rothstein's death presented an opportunity for him to regain control of Lindy's.  But an accounting of Rothstein's estate in December revealed that Horowitz had never turned over the Lindy stock.   Horowitz was summoned to court on December 17 to account for it.

On June 14, 1930, The New York Times reported that "the slain gambler's real estate holdings would be liquidated, including 302 West 107th Street.  Described as a "five-story remodeled apartment house," it was sold on June 30 for $49,600 (more than $930,000 today).

The fourth floor cornice was intact in 1941.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Still living here at the time was the former pepper-slinging Renee Beauchamp.  On the night of May 8, 1933, neighbors around Chelsea Park reported a "disturbance" in the park to police.  The New York Sun reported, "A man and a woman were found lying semiconscious on the sidewalk early today in front of 503 West Twenty-seventh street, across the street from Chelsea Park."  They were Renee Beauchamp and Timothy McNamara.  The article said, "Both were suffering from severe lacerations and possibly fractures of the skull."  It is unclear if their assailants were ever captured.

The once-proud Pulleyn residence continued to house small apartments until a renovation in 1989 returned it to a single family house, according to Department of Records filings.

photographs by the author