Emery Roth's 1929 110 West 86th Street

 

image via cocoran.com

On March 18, 1928, The New York Times reported that builder David Zimmerman "purchased from Benjamin Benenson the four altered dwellings at 104 to 110 West Eighty-sixth Street."  The $485,000 price tag would translate to a stunning $8.8 million in 2025.  The article mentioned, "Mr. Zimmerman is constructing a fifteen-story apartment house at the southeast corner of Park Avenue and Ninety-sixth Street and will erect a similar structure on the West Eighty-sixth Street site."

Zimmerman formed the 110 West 86th Street Corp. to erect the building and hired architect Emery Roth to design it.  His plans, filed in May, projected a 16-story and penthouse apartment building that would bring Zimmerman's total outlay to $22.6 million in today's money.  Six months later, on December 8, The New York Sun described, "The building will contain suites of from two to five rooms, with one and two baths, and will have mechanical refrigeration."  (Modern refrigerators, which were replacing messy ice boxes, were an alluring amenity.)

Completed in the summer of 1929, 110 West 86th Street sat upon a rusticated limestone base with stores.  Faced in beige brick, the upper floors of Roth's neo-Renaissance design relied on a few well-placed elements as decoration.  Three Renaissance-style pediments appeared atop four windows of the second floor, easily noticed by passersby.  The otherwise unadorned third through fifteenth floors were enlivened by three exuberant double-height, terra cotta faux balconies at the 12th and 13th floors.  Two bays wide, the elaborate Renaissance-inspired frames included blind balustrades and intricate Renaissance-inspired ornaments that terminated in molded cornices with heraldic shields.  The shields returned at the 16th floor as spandrel ornaments.  Roth completed the design with a modest corbel table and stone urns upon pedestals along the roofline.

Among the initial commercial tenants was the florist shop of Alexander Sekelos, who experienced a frightening incident on December 30, 1931.  That afternoon a "boy," as described by The New York Sun, entered and pointed a gun at Sekelos and demanded money.  The florist handed over $43 in cash and a $4 check.  The teen did not get far.  According to The Sun, "he was captured after a three-block chase by Patrolman William Sweeney."  John Duff originally gave his name as O'Neill and denied he had robbed the store, "although Sekelos's $4 check was found in his pocket."

The building filled with well-to-do white collar residents.  Among the first were David Dworsky and his wife, the former Carrie Autler.  Born in 1882, he sat on the board of governors of Associated Millinery Men, Inc. and was a leader in the millinery industry, according to The New York Times.

The Louis Greenfields and Benjamin Ogushes were also early residents.  Like Dworsky, Greenfield was involved in the apparel trade and was treasurer of the Admiration Dress Co., Inc.  Benjamin Ogush, whose wife was the former Martha Nestint, was a partner in the jewelry firm of Katz & Ogush, Inc.

Monroe C. Alesker and his wife, the former Mareaner Simms, were also early residents.  Alesker graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1926 and from New York University Law School.  Active in politics and community affairs, the young attorney was chairman of the legislation committee of the Park West Neighborhood Association.  He became ill in June 1937 and died in New York Hospital at the age of 32 on August 18.

Nathan and Anne Schultz moved into the building around the mid-1940s with their son, Irving.  Schultz was a retired cigar manufacturer.  By 1949, his declining health had made him "despondent," according to his wife.  Around 6:15 on the evening of March 25 that year, Irving discovered his father "hanging by a bedsheet from a hook in a bedroom closet."

Also living here at the time of the tragedy were Dr. J. Wilner Sundelson and his wife, the former Janet Racolin.  Sundelson, who received his Ph.D. in public finance at Columbia University, was an executive with Ford International.  He had earlier been associated with the United States Treasury Department, the Port of New York Authority, and the National Planning Board.

His impressive resume was equaled by his wife's.  With an M.A. degree from Columbia University, Janet Sundelson had been an economist with the Treasury Department (almost assuredly where she met her husband), a member of the United States technical delegation to the Bretton Woods Conference, state chairman of the public finance committee of the League of Women Voters, and an instructor at Queens College.  She was, by the late 1940s, an instructor in the Department of Economics at Barnard College.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Quiz shows were popular fare of 1950s television and in 1958 resident John Burns was chosen to appear as a contestant in  the show Who Do You Trust?.  Burns's few minutes of fame turned into a debacle.  On September 10, The New York Times reported, "a contestant on 'Who Do You Trust?' was trapped in an isolation booth for about twelve minutes during yesterday's show."  The article said that American Broadcasting Company's studio carpenters "had to remove hinges on the bulky door in order to extricate John Burns."  (It is unclear if he won any prize money, despite the on-air fiasco.)

A celebrated resident in the 1970s was stage, film and television actress Margaret Linn.  Born in Richmond, Indiana on August 21, 1934, she studied at Northwestern University.  She worked with Uta Hagen several times in the Shakespeare Festival productions.  Her many television appearances included the 1957 The DuPont Show of the Month, an episode of New York Television Theatre in 1965, and in Great Performances in 1971.  She appeared on Broadway in Halfway Up the Tree and How's the World Treating You? and several Off Broadway productions.

In 1973, she traveled to Los Angeles to appear in the Mark Taper Forum production of Hot L Baltimore.  She was there on September 12 when she suffered a brain hemorrhage and died at the age of 39.

Another resident involved in entertainment at the time was Jay Eisenstat.  The bachelor graduated from the New York University School of Arts and Sciences.  He founded and was the first president of the Association of Independent Commercial Producers, and was executive vice president of Myers & Eisenstat Films.  He served on the Mayor's Advisory Council on Motion Pictures and Television, and in 1973 was awarded by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences "for his work in training minorities in the field," as reported by The New York Times.  The prodigious television and film producer died of cancer on December 9, 1975 at the age of 33.

Writer and playwright Corinne Jacker lived here as early as 1980.  Born in Chicago in 1933, she majored in theater at Northwestern University, where she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees.  She relocated to New York City in 1958.  Her 1975 Off-Broadway play Bits & Pieces and her 1976 Harry Outside earned her Obie Awards.  Among the cast of her play My Life in 1976 was Christopher Reeves, who landed the title  role of the motion picture Superman that year.

Corinne Jacker, photograph by Ken Howard, via New York Times January 25, 2013.

Jacker wrote occasional television scripts, and, according to the 1979-80 Writer's Directory, was a "writer of biology, cybernetics, and politics; also writer of non-fiction for children."  Corinne Jacker died at the age of 79 on January 11, 2013.  

Designed by one of America's foremost 20th century apartment architects, 110 West 86th Street survives nearly unchanged--including the ground floor, most often the first to be ravaged.  

many thanks to reader Elizabeth Smith for requesting this post