The 1898 Swannanoa - 105-107 East 15th Street

On July 15, 1897, David Greene sold the "three story brick store" at 105 East 15th Street and the "three-story frame dwelling" next door at No. 107 for $19,684, a considerable $768,000 in 2025 terms.  The following year, developer Paul B. Pugh hired architect Gilbert A. Schellinger to design a 10-story residential hotel on the site--The Swannanoa.

Schellinger's Renaissance Revival-style structure featured a two-story stone base dominated by a double-height portico upheld by slender, polished granite Corinthian columns.  Two-story Doric piers separated the openings at this level.  Two rounded bays rose from the third to ninth floors.  Each story was separated by a richly carved spandrel panel.  A full-width stone balcony fronted the tenth floor, and a balustrade ran along the roof line.

The World's New York Apartment House Album, 1906 (copyright expired)

Paul B. Pugh marketed the building as having "every known modern improvement."  Apartments ranged from five to ten rooms and a bath.  An advertisement in the New-York Tribune on February 22, 1900 boasted that The Swannanoa was "finished and decorated in superior style, hardwood trim throughout, electric light, elevator, long distance telephone in each apartment" and "all night service."  Rents ranged from $55 to $160 (equal to $2,120 to $6,170 per month today).

This floorplan depicts four apartments, two each front and back.  New-York Tribune, February 22, 1900 (copyright expired)

The World's New York Apartment House Album described the parlors as being trimmed with "red birch, curly panels, handsome mantels with mirrors, gas grates, parquet floors."  The dining rooms and bedrooms were trimmed in quartered white oak.  The publication said that the kitchens contained, "wash trays and sinks of porcelain; gas ranges" and "refrigerators of [the] latest improved patterns and glass lined."

Among the respectable and well-to-do initial residents was a couple who were decidedly neither--Maudie Belle Marou and Charles H. Moore, alias Moran, alias Marou.  In 1900, Samuel H. Conn inherited $12,000 from his grandfather's estate.  He was introduced to Charles Moran by a friend.  

"I was taken to an elegantly furnished flat at the apartment house at 105 East Fifteenth street, and there met Miss Maudie Belle Marou, a very pretty girl.  I was told that Moran's real name was Marou, and that Maudie was his sister," he later told a reporter.  After visiting the apartment a few times, Morau told Conn "that he had the greatest chance in the world to make money."  He posed as a telegraph operator who "had made thousands by getting information from the race tracks before it reached the pool rooms [i.e., betting offices]."  Conn explained, "He said that friends of his who were operators would delay the reports of the St. Louis races twenty minutes, and give him a 'tip' on the winner by telephone."

On July 24, 1900, Conn gave Morau $2,500 to bet.  He lost and was told that the money was accidentally placed on the wrong horse.  A day or two later, he bet $3,500, and another time $600.  In each case the money was lost through an "error."  When Conn refused to continue to bet, Morau borrowed money to pay the rent on the flat.  On August 15, Conn told a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer, "He induced me to go to Saratoga on Tuesday, and when I returned to this city all the furniture had been taken out of the flat and stored, and Miss Marou and the gang had disappeared."  The newspaper said, "'Chappie' Moran is well known among the police, and his picture is at the rogues' gallery at police headquarters."

More typical of the residents were actors Kate Claxton and Charles A. Stevenson.  Kate was born in 1848 and first appeared on stage in Chicago in 1870.  Charles Stevenson was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1851.  The two married on March 3, 1878, and had one son, Harold.

The couple appeared together in In the Sea of Ice in 1883.  from the Jay T. Last Collection.

In 1900, Stevenson traveled to London with the cast of Zaza, which starred the world famous Mrs. Leslie Carter, known as the "American Sarah Bernhardt."  The run closed on July 28 and four days later the Morning Telegraph titled an article, "Kate Claxton is Miffed," and reported, "Charles A. Stevenson contemplates going to Switzerland with Mrs. Carter and her party, instead of returning to New York with the other members of the company."  The article added, "The growing fondness of Mrs. Carter and Mr. Stevenson for each other's society has excited a great deal of comment for several weeks."

The article continued, "It has even been whispered that Mr. Stevenson's wife, who is known to the stage as Kate Claxton, wrote to him some time ago to give up his engagement in the 'Zaza' company and return to their home."  Stevenson, however, "told some of his fellow players that he would not be dictated to."

Kate's concern had started on the opening night of Zaza in New York.  "It is said she almost fainted in the theatre...when at one period Mrs. Carter threw herself into Mr. Stevenson's arms and kissed and caressed and pawed over him in a way that would have brought response from a marble statue," said the Morning Telegraph.  Kate was not in town to comment on the rumors.  "She is visiting her son, Harold Stevenson, who is spending the Summer at Port Washington, to be near his yacht," said the article.

The Stevensons received horrifying news three years later.  On April 22, 1904, The Boston Globe reported that Harold Stevenson, "shot and killed himself this afternoon in his bachelor apartments at 225 4th av."  The 21-year-old left a note that said, "Dear Mother--I can't make any friends.  We all have to go some time, and I may as well go now before I suffer any more.  Harold"

New-York Tribune, September 9, 1906 (copyright expired)

Other residents at the time were William S. Brockway, secretary of the Oil Fields of Mexico Company; John K. Erskine, Jr., a member of the law firm of Evarts, Van Cott & Erskine, and his wife, Marie; Leslie P. Farmer, chairman and commissioner of the Passenger Department of the Trunk Line Association; and children's author John Howard Jewett.

Jewett was born in Hadley, Massachusetts in 1843 and fought in the Civil War with the 10th Massachusetts Infantry.  For years he was editor and business manager of The Holyoke Transcript and then, starting in 1873, published The Worcester Gazette.  By the end of the 19th century, he devoted himself to writing children's books.  His first, The Bunny Stories: For Young People, was published in 1900, followed by the five-volume Christmas Stocking Stories, a ten-volume series of Little Mother Stories, and a four-volume set of Grandmother Goose Stories.

George J. Kraus was described by The New York Times in 1914 as an "amusement man" and had been the partner of "Big Tim" Sullivan in the firm of Sullivan & Kraus.  (Sullivan was a prominent leader in Tammany Hall and served in the United States Congress from 1903 to 1906.)  On June 3, 1914, a year after Sullivan's death, The New York Times said Kraus "was 'the man behind the gun' in the many theatrical ventures of the late leader of the Sullivan clan."  Sullivan & Kraus owned the Dewey Theatre on East 14th Street, which reportedly averaged a daily attendance of 9,000.  

George J. Krause was a part-owner of the Dewey Theatre, above.  from the collection of the New-York Historical Society.

Diamond dealer Antonio Stephen lived in The Swannanoa in the post World War I years.  At around 4:45 on the afternoon of June 5, 1919, he was enjoying a cup of coffee in Abraham Numair's coffee house at 95 Washington Street when six gunmen stormed in.  "We're going to frisk you," they announced.

The New-York Tribune said, "the customers thought the intruders were detectives."  The thugs had done their homework before crashing in.  They "marshalled" customers into a group and then one of them demanded, "Where's Stephen?"  They took his satchel, which contained $6,000 worth of diamonds, and $110 in cash from him.  Then, one-by-one, they fleeced the other two dozen or more patrons.  "In taking the scarfpins, the robbers cut their victims' neckties to obviate the difficulties offered by the safety clasps of the pins," said the article.

Suddenly, a customer entered the restaurant.  Abraham Numair shouted, "We are being held up!"  Before the gunman at the door could stop him, the customer ran into the street yelling for a policeman.  The Sun reported, "the gang on a signal from the leader backed out of the restaurant and scattered in the crowded street."  The man who had stood watch at the doorway was captured by Numair after a violent struggle.  Unfortunately for Antonio Stephen, the other robbers escaped with his diamonds and cash.

A fascinating resident, here as early as 1921, was Dr. Annie Sturgis Daniel, president of the Woman's Prison Association and Isaac H. Hopper Home.  She graduated from the Women's Medical College of New York in 1879 and joined the staff of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children at 321 East 15th Street two years later.  Known by New Yorkers as "The Angel of the East Side," she visited the tenement buildings in the Lower East Side and publicized the conditions.  Decades later, The New York Times would say, "she is known as the woman who first showed the need of tenement house, sweatshop and prison reforms."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

On the evening of November 22, 1941, Dr. Daniel was the guest of honor at the annual dinner of the alumnae of the Women's Medical College in the Hotel St. Moritz.  In reporting the event, The New York Times mentioned, "Dr. Daniel is celebrating her sixtieth year as a member of the staff of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children."  Three years later, on August 11, 1944, The New York Times reported that Dr. Annie S. Daniel, "sometimes called 'The Angel of the East Side,'" had died in her apartment here at the age of 85.

In the meantime, Georgie Vere Tyler, the widow of Dr. Lachlan Tyler (son of President John Tyler), lived here as early as 1922.  Born in Richmond, Virginia, the outspoken author and speaker addressed social and political issues.  Among her works were The Daughter of a Rebel and A Huntress of Men.  When her Children of Transgression was published in 1922, she was interviewed by Marguerite Mooers Marshall for The Evening World.  Marshall described the book as "a strong and unusual plea for a new kind of sex equality, for 'equal rights' not merely in politics or business but in love and happiness."

Georgia Vere Tyler, The Evening World, May 6, 1922 (copyright expired)

Tyler pointed out during the interview that for generations, men "told women--all women--that woman is never, never so happy as in her own home."  The modern woman, she said, was rebelling against that restriction.

By mid-century, sculptor Breading B. Furst lived here.  Born in Yonkers, New York in 1907, he was best known for his portrayals of children and abstract studies.  He died in his Swannanoa apartment on December 19, 1950.

Former light heavyweight boxing champion Paul Berlenbach and his wife, the former Elizabeth Merck, lived here by the mid-1960s.  Born on February 18, 1901, Berlenbach was known in the ring as the Astoria Assassin and held the world light heavyweight title in 1925 and 1926.  Now retired from sports, he ran Paul Berlenbach's Ringside Restaurant in Sound Beach, New York.

In 1986, the apartments were divided, resulting in seven and eight suites per floor.  It was possibly at this time that the tenth-floor balcony was removed.  Still known as The Swannanoa, a current advertisement boasts that it offers "contemporary urban living while preserving its historical charm."

photographs by the author