George F. Pelham's 1900 325 Central Park West

 

image via landmarkwest.org

Born in 1867 in Ottawa, Ontario, George Frederick Pelham was the son of architect George Brown Pelham.  He was brought to New York City at the age of eight, when his father opened his architectural office here.  The younger Pelham eventually entered his father's firm as a draftsman, then opened his own office in 1890 specializing in row houses, apartment buildings and hotels.

Unlike the mansion-lined Riverside Drive on the opposite side of the Upper West Side, Central Park West developed almost exclusively as a thoroughfare of upscale residential hotels.  In 1899, developer Samuel Quincey hired Pelham to design the Rudolph, a seven-story residential hotel at 325 Central Park West between 92nd and 93rd Streets.

Completed in 1900, Pelham's dignified tripartite Renaissance Revival design included a two-story rusticated stone base.  The entrance featured an off-set doorway and window flanked by engaged Ionic pilasters.  The openings within the base were crowned with dramatic, sunburst-like lintels.

The four-story midsection, clad in red brick, was trimmed in limestone.  Pelham drew from the Italian Renaissance with stately Juliette balconies with fluted columns.  Those at the fifth floor upheld broken pediments filled with ornate carvings.  The arched openings of the top floor sat against a background of red brick alternating with carved stone bandcourses.

The apartments held seven "large rooms" and a bathroom.  An advertisement for The Rudolph on September 14, 1902 offered:

Separate servants' toilets.  Shower bath fixtures.  Elevator service.  Handsome entrance hall.  Everything new and up-to-date.  $1,000 to $1,100 a Year.

The rent would translate to $3,133 to $3,450 per month in 2025.  The Rudolph's affluent families moved within polite society, and in 1908 nine of them were listed in Dau's New York Blue Book of Society.

Among the early tenants were three physicians: doctors Fielding T. Robeson and Dr. Maier Berliner, and dentist Cornelius. H. Allen.  

Dr. Allen was described by The New York Evening Telegram in 1901, saying he, "occupies expensive apartments on the first floor of the Rudolph, at No. 325 Central Park West.  His patients are said to be wealthy." The article added, "He is said to be a bachelor and looks about thirty-five years old.  He is a small, refined looking man, who dresses expensively."

The newspaper's interest in Dr. Allen had to do with his unrequited love interest--the famous stage actress and singer Lillian Russell.  Allen began his infatuation with the star by attending her performances and sending love letters and presents.  The New York Evening Telegram reported on April 10, 1901, "More than once the actress' sitting room has been lavishly adorned with flowers sent by her ardent wooer."

Eventually, Dr. Allen progressed to stalking.  "Several times, it is alleged, a 'Mr. Allen' has called at Miss Russell's apartment, at the Ariston, Broadway and Fifty-fifth street, but each time her maid has made the emphatic announcement 'Not at Home'," said the newspaper.  "The ardent 'Romeo' was not to be daunted, however, and the frequent rebuffs only served to increase his attachment apparently."

Finally, Lillian Russell had enough.  On April 9, 1901, she received a telegram from Allen that read:

Miss Lillian Russell--(I love you!!!)  (Will you marry me?)  With lots of love, 

            Cornelius H. Allen, 325 Central Park West

The New York Telegram reported, "The persistency of her admirer at last irritated Miss Russell, and she resolved to put an end to his attentions by making the matter public."  A male friend who was present, telephoned Allen, but the dentist refused to talk to him.  Russell then released the telegram to the press.

A reporter visited his apartment here that evening.  While he admitted that he "is a victim of a tender passion for Miss Russell," when he was shown a copy of the telegram, he denied he had sent it and "betrayed symptoms of extreme nervousness," said the article.  It recounted, "Dr. Allen covered his face with his hands for a few moments, and then, jumping up, began to pace excitedly back and forth across the room.  Finally, in a low voice, he said: 'You can say that I deny this.  I have nothing further to say.'"

How Dr. Allen's impetuous indiscretions affected his practice is unknown, but he is not listed at the address going forward.

Other early residents were James P. McQuaide, his wife, the former Sarah Sidebotham, and three children.  McQuaide was "prominent in the affairs of the national Conduit and Cable Company," according to the New York Evening World, and "well known in Pittsburg steel circles," as described by the New York Herald.  The couple maintained a "fine country home," as described by the New York Herald, in Nyack, New York.  Early in 1906, Sarah left James, citing cruelty.

McQuaide denied being cruel, saying instead, "Too much money was the root of all evil in my domestic relations."  He said, "my wife was the daughter of a boarding-house keeper in Philadelphia," and, "If I had been a poor man I believe we would be living together happily."  He told the court that their comfortable lifestyle created "her extravagant ideas of living, which led them to spend $50,000 to $60,000 a year," as reported by the New York Herald on March 9, 1906.

Sarah and the children moved into the fashionable Warrington Hotel on Madison Avenue.  On March 8, the day of the couple's hearing, McQuaide told the court, "She's in Atlantic City now, with two maids to wait on her and an income of $533 a month, yet she sues me for alimony."  (Sarah's monthly allowance would equal about $19,200 today.)  Judge Garretson ruled that the $533 allowance would serve as alimony.

The McQuaides' divorce was finalized in 1907, and James married Gertrude Reynolds, "a Weber & Field dancer."  In 1910, they left Central Park West for England.  When the couple returned in January 1912, the New York World described McQuaide as, "a well known member of the group of men whose wealth jumped overnight to six ciphers with the formation of the United Steel Corporation."  The article said the couple, "came to the Hotel Plaza last Wednesday from his home in England for his fist visit to New York in two years."

In the meantime, Sarah McQuaide apparently realized she had given up a golden goose in her former husband.  Almost immediately upon James's return, Sarah McQuaide had a summons served upon him.  She alleged that the divorce in Florida was "without her knowledge and granted on the ground of desertion, a ground not recognized in New York."  She sued for $500,000--about $16.7 million in 2025 terms.

Police Inspector Dominick Henry and his wife, the former Mary Gertrude Crittenden, lived here as early as 1918.  Mary was highly educated, having attended the College of New Rochelle and Columbia University.  

In March 1918, the Spanish flu was first reported.  The terrifying global pandemic would claim the lives of as many as 50 million persons worldwide within two years.  Mary Henry contracted the disease, but happily, on December 12, 1918, the New-York Tribune reported that after having been, "seriously ill with Spanish influenza at her home, 325 Central Park West, [she] is much improved."

Around this time, Henry was revamping traffic throughout city streets.  He instituted the one-way street system and in 1917 installed the city's first traffic lights.  On June 15, 1920, the San Francisco Call said, "he has spent thirty years without a complaint having been lodged against him."  Four days earlier, however, Dominick Henry had been sentenced to two-to-five years in state prison at hard labor.

During Assistant District Attorney James E. Smith's "vice crusade," an investigation of police corruption regarding brothels and gambling houses, Henry testified that Smith "had tried to enter a gambling partnership with him several years ago."  Although Henry staunchly defended his statement, he was convicted by a grand jury for perjury.  He was suspended from duty on May 28, 1920.  

In announcing his sentence on June 14, Supreme Court Justice Weeks said that he "did not want to add in the slightest degree to the misery and disgrace which had fallen upon the inspector with his conviction."  As it turned out, however, Dominick Henry never served a day.  The 1921 Annual Report of the Police Department recorded, "This indictment was dismissed and Inspector Henry was restored to duty on June 27, 1921."  He was paid $5,170.70 for his loss of wages in the interim.

On January 25, 1925, The New York Times reported that Dominick Henry would step down from the Police Department.  "I shall retire on January 31, and the next day I shall become head of the Checker Cab Service Company," he told the press.  Six years later, the Henrys moved slightly south, into the newly-built Arsdley at 320 Central Park West.  Mary and Dominick Henry died there in 1938 and 1942 respectively.

Composer Percy Goetschius lived in the Rudolph as early as 1915.  Born in Paterson, New Jersey on August 30, 1853, he studied at the Conservatory of Stuttgard and was an instructor there from 1876 through 1889.  He was awarded the title of Royal Professor from King Charles I of Wurtemberg in 1885.  In addition to piano, organ and voice compositions, he wrote several technical works like The Theory and Practice of Tone Relations, Models of the Principal Musical Forms, and Applied Counterpoint.

In 1941, both matching ground floor pilasters survived.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Esther Pua Kinamu Stephenson Shaw took an apartment here in 1925, the year after her husband, James E. Shaw died.  The couple was married in 1887 in Hawaii where Esther was born.  In 1905 they came to the States and established a Hawaiian-based vaudeville act, eventually included several of their eight children.  By the time Esther moved into the Rudolph at the age of 53, she was continuing to manage what was now a hula ensemble, Ionia's Hawaiians.

In 1963, the city condemned the Rudolph and "ordered its 20 families out," according to the Utica, New York Daily Press.  The article said the city was, "prepared to raze it under an urban renewal plan."  But the occupants of the Rudolph had other ideas.  After two years of negotiations (which reportedly included inviting members of the City Planning Commission to a dinner party), on September 16, 1965, the Daily Press reported, "The city took it all back yesterday."  

The tenants' plan for "self rehabilitation" was approved.  A cooperative plan was initiated and the new owners "will launch a $100,000 rehabilitation program," said the article.

Among the 21 owners in the new cooperative were writer James R. Larkin and his actress wife, Henrietta Moore.  Born in 1923 in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, Moore appeared in motion pictures like the 1949 Man Against Crime, the 1954 First Love, and The Day Mars Invaded Earth, released in 1962.  She worked in early television shows including The Big Story, Secret Storm and The Edge of Night.

image via landmarkwest.org

Interestingly, at some point the northern pilaster of the entranceway was replaced with a polished granite column.  The remarkable relic that survived the sweeping demolition and rebuilding of Central Park West beginning in the 1920s is delightfully intact--a reminder of a time when smart carriages dropped off affluent residents along the thoroughfare.

The Lost Central Trust Company Building - 54 Wall Street

 

Record & Guide, June 25, 1898 (copyright expired)

On January 28, 1886, the Prime, Ward, Sands & King Company building, erected in 1845, was purchased at auction by the Central Trust Company.  The building sat on the site of Nathaniel and Cornelia Prime's residence, built in 1798.  On February 6, 1886, the Record & Guide predicted, "It is probable that the present structure will be pulled down to make way for a building with hydraulic elevators, steam heaters and electric lights."

A reporter from the Record & Guide visited Central Trust on February 12.  While an officer told him, "We have not yet definitely decided what we shall do with the building," he admitted, "Indeed, the probability is that we shall tear down the present structure on the site and erect in its place a new and handsome office building, to cost several hundred thousand dollars."

The firm's indecision was short-lived.  On May 8, 1886, the journal reported that construction of the Central Trust Company's new nine-story building "of stone, brick, terra cotta and iron," was under way.  The $200,000 structure (equal to about $6.68 million in 2025) was designed by Charles W. Clinton.

Construction was completed the following summer.  The Record & Guide's critic was not impressed, saying, "The new building of the Central Trust Company, in Wall street, below William, is no great things architecturally, being merely a decorous and well-behaved piece of Renaissance."  Clinton banded the piers of the two-story base and the third floor with undressed granite.  The double-height, arched entrance was flanked by pilasters, the upper two-thirds of which were fluted.  They were echoed in the four-story pilasters at the fourth through seventh floors.

The squat piers that flanked the paired openings of the eighth floor were carved with medallions.  Here, the critic found something to praise--albeit tepidly.  "The detail is very well judged in scale, and though none of it is either original or exquisite, it emphasizes the character of the building as business."  The deeply-overhanging cornice above the eight floor made all but the tops of the arcaded windows of the ninth floor invisible from street level.

The Central Trust Company occupied the lower two floors and rented office space above.  The law offices of Wallace, Butler & Brown and Joline, Larkin & Rathbone were here in the early years of the 20th century.  

Irving Underhill photographed the building in 1896.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

Wallace, Butler & Brown's offices were the scene of drama on May 24, 1908.  The Greek steamer Cyclades was shipwrecked off the Bahamas on May 13 and sank the following day.  All 21 crew members and four passengers (two men and two women) escaped in lifeboats and rowed to Nassau.  They all arrived in New York City on the Vigilancia on May 24.  Members of Wallace, Butler & Brown, who represented the Marine Underwriters (the insurance company for the steamer's owner), and a throng of policemen and guards were waiting at the pier.  Journalists and the curious were kept back, and all of those who had been aboard the Cyclades were detained.

The New York Times reported, "A shipwrecked skipper and his crew and passengers were rounded up by detectives on their arrival yesterday and taken from a Brooklyn pier to the office of a law firm, in Wall Street, where an inquiry was begun to confirm or set at rest a suspicion that their craft had been deliberately scuttled."  Although it was a Sunday afternoon, the questioning started immediately.  A guard was posted at the street entrance.  The Times said, "The whole afternoon was taken up in examining the two women.  One of the detectives said it was possible that some arrests might be made."

John Berry was an office boy with Joline, Larkin & Rathbone until being fired early in 1910.  On the night of April 8 that year, he and another teen, Lawrence Bonnie, "neither of them vicious in appearance," according to The New York Times, broke into the building and stole $332 from a safe in the seventh-floor offices of Joline, Larkin & Rathbone.  Lieutenant Joseph Brown later said the boys "managed the robbery with the skill of veteran cracksmen."

At 8:30, a night guard, Frank Carmand, entered Mr. Joline's office during his rounds.  He later said, "I thought I heard breathing, and turned on the lights, but there was nobody in sight."  In searching the office, he opened a coat closet and struck a match.  He pulled out a boy.

"What are you doing in here?" he demanded.

"I am the new office boy and I was locked in."

Then Carmand saw a second boy in the closet and pulled him out.  He recognized him as John Berry.  "What are you doing here?  You've no right here.  Mr. Joline discharged you weeks ago."  As he started to the door with his captives, Bonnie pulled out a blackjack and struck Carmand over the head.  Before he lost consciousness, Carmand shouted for the other guard, Sidney Jones.

Jones told policemen he found Carmand "covered with blood" and saw two figures running up the stairway to the roof.  They beat him to the roof by a few minutes.  The teens attempted to get to the roof of an adjoining building more than three floors below.  Bonnie started down a drain pipe, but lost his grip,  "landing on his head and crushing in his skull," said The New York Times.  

Berry was more fortunate, successfully sliding down the drain pipe.  He paused to take the roll of bills they had stolen from his dying comrade's pocket, then entered the building through a skylight and hid in a janitor's closet.  Police found him sometime later.

E. Francis Hyde was an officer of the Central Trust Company in 1917 when he came to the defense of Edwin Craigg, a Pullman porter.  On March 11, Sophie d'Amour, a dressmaker, left a handbag on the train to Boston containing $5,320 (a significant $126,000 today).  Craigg, who lived on West 147th Street, his wife, and their boarder, Mary Forman, were arrested for "unlawfully retaining" the cash.

On March 27, 1917, The Evening World reported that Policeman Barry was the beat officer in their neighborhood.  The article said, "his curiosity was aroused by their lavish entertainment of the neighbors and the gay raiment in which they blossomed forth."  At their arraignment on March 26, E. Francis Hyde attempted to get Craigg's $5,000 bail reduced.  He told the magistrate that, "Craigg had been a porter on his private car on a trip of 17,000 miles throughout the United States and had not been dishonest to the extent of a penny though he had countless temptations."  His attempts were fruitless.

The following year, the Central Trust Company merged with the Union Trust Company.  In April 1918, the combined firms purchased 23-25 Beaver Street, described by the Record & Guide as "a modern, twelve-story office building."  No. 54 Wall Street was purchased by J. & W. Seligman, which moved into the building on May 1.

An interesting tenant in 1922 was attorney Clara M. Salem who, reported the New-York Tribune on September 25, "is really the founder of the Lonesome Club."  What can be seen as a 1920s precursor of Tinder, Salem explained, "One of the ideals of the club is to bring both sexes together.  Our object is not necessarily matrimony.  The club is for social purposes now.  Of course, if a romance should develop, it will be all right."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

As skyscrapers rose throughout the district, the Central Trust Company building managed to survive until a demolition permit was issued in 1974.  

George F. Pelham's 1931 121 East 31st Street

 

After learning his trade in the architectural office of his father, George Brown Pelham, George Fred Pelham opened his own office in 1890.  Having earned a solid reputation as a designer of apartment buildings and hotels, in 1930 developers Psaty & Fuhrman commissioned him to design an apartment building at 119 through 125 East 31st Street.

Pelham routinely drew from historic styles and for 121 East 31st Street he turned to the English Regency period.  Completed in 1931, the 12-story-and-penthouse structure was faced in red brick, its setbacks starting at the tenth floor perfectly symmetrical.  Pelham was perhaps inspired by the elegant 18th century designs of Robert Adam in the tracery above the doorway, the double-height fluted pilasters with lotus capitals that flanked it, and the delicate swagged frieze above the second floor.

George Fred Pelham released this rendering in 1930.  The New York Sun, May 3, 1930.

Among the initial residents were Dr. Harrison I. Cook, who leased the penthouse on March 22, 1931, and Marcus Meltzer.  Cook graduated from Bellevue Medical College in 1911 and Meltzer was the chief statistician of the National Bureau of Casualty and Surety Underwriters.

Born in 1883, Meltzer was born in Russia and was brought to America by his parents at the age of eight.  The New York Times said, "He was widely known for his work, not only in his field but among societies and associations, and was a writer and lecturer on his subject."  Meltzer's passion for statistical work spilled into his private life.  While other male residents in the building may have been members of social, political or athletic organizations, he belonged to the American Statistical Association, the Casualty Actuarial Society and the Association of Casualty and Surety Accountants and Statisticians.  He was one of the founders and the secretary of the latter society.

Meltzer was a bachelor and apparently shared his apartment with a roommate.  His enjoyment of his new home would be extremely brief.  He left his office on March 17, 1931 at around 8:00 "in apparently good health," according to The New York Times.  A doctor was called to the apartment around 2 a.m., presumably by Meltzer's roommate, who found the 48-year-old dead.  He had suffered a fatal heart attack.

photograph by Lowell Cochrane

Crawford Blagden and his wife, the former Mary Hopkins, were also initial residents.  The couple was married on October 7, 1911 and had one son, Crawford, Jr., who was born in 1912.  For some reason, the younger Blagden went to live with his father's brother, Francis Meredith Blagden, and his wife, the former Lydia Lawrence Mason Jones, at Sloatsburg, New York shortly after the family moved into 121 East 31st Street.

Francis and Lydia were married on August 22, 1917.  Lydia was previously married to Francis's and Crawford's older brother, Albert Campbell Blagden, who died in 1915.  Crawford Jr. was living with them when his engagement to Mary Kernochan, daughter of Chief Justice Frederic Kernochan was announced on April 18, 1933.

Benjamin S. and Carolyn Pulitzer moved into the building that year.  Pulitzer was president of Mayfair Cravats, Inc. a men's neckwear company.  Apparently the couple over-indulged on the night of April 28 that year.  At 8:30 the following evening, she went to the office of Dr. Frank H. Russell, her regular physician, "suffering from the after-effects of intoxication," according to The New York Times.  

Russell administered what the newspaper described as "an overdose of morphine."  Carolyn Pulitzer fell unconscious and the next morning, at 4:30, Dr. Russell took her home in a cab.  Carolyn later testified that "a hallboy in the apartment house had helped the doctor get her to her apartment."  She said Russell tipped the hallboy from change from her purse.  That was not the only thing the doctor slipped from her bag.  

When Carolyn awoke later, she discovered $12,000 worth of Mayfair Cravats, Inc. stock was missing.  In court, Russell admitted he took the stock, "but was holding it until she completed payment for treatments."  Carolyn Pulitzer, "said she thought she owed about $40 or $50, but that he maintained the bill was $200."  (None of those amounts would necessitate a $12,000 guarantee.)  The startling case was dismissed when Carolyn, somewhat surprisingly, agreed to drop charges if Russell returned the stocks upon her paying his bill.

William Russell and Walter Kaufman shared an apartment here in the summer of 1937.  They, along with Augusta Merten, took the train to Silver Point at East Rockaway on July 28 to enjoy the beach.  They had dinner later, then "decided to go bathing again," reported The Rockaway News.  Augusta was a few yards ahead of Russell and Kaufman in the water when she was swept up by the undertow and carried out.  As Russell and Kaufman swam to rescue her, an off-duty patrolman Joseph Lynch, "who was bathing nearby," joined the effort.

Lynch and Kaufman were able to pull the woman to the beach, but quickly realized that Russell was missing.  The Rockaway News reported, "Life Guard Roy Bower of Woodmere found Russell's body floating in the water a few hundred feet from where he had gone down."  Surprisingly, the 48-year-old had not drowned--an autopsy showed no water in his lungs.  The doctor deemed his death, "from a heart attack resulting from the excitement of attempting to rescue Mrs. Merten."

Dr. Harrison I. Cook was still living here on November 6, 1941 when he hosted a glittering dinner party in the Trianon Room of the Ambassador Hotel in honor of the engagement of Mildred L. Martens and Lt. George De Metropolis of the U.S. Navy.  Among the 40 guests listed in The New York Times, understandably, were several military officers and their wives.

Living here at the time were Lewis E. and Florence G. Birdseye, born in 1873 and 1874 respectively.  Until 1931, when Lewis was appointed the general agent for the St. John's Guild, a charitable institution established in the 1890s, he was superintendent of the Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn.  Lewis was at his desk in his office at 1 East 42nd Street on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 1942, when he collapsed with a fatal heart attack.

A month later, another resident, Marc MacCollum, laid plans to find a weekend retreat.  His ad in The Rhinebeck Gazette on January 28, 1943, read: "Wanted--I would like to hear from someone who would like to have a paying guest over weekends.  I have simple but clean tastes and like to saw wood."

Ray W. Thompson and his wife did not need to rely on someone else's country home for respite.  On October 5, at the end of the summer social season of 1950, The East Hampton Star announced, "Mr. and Mrs. Ray W. Thompson have left Amagansett for their New York home, 121 East 31st Street."

An interesting resident was Dr. Tibor Eckhardt.  His wife, the former Judy Dwyer, died in 1966.  Born in Makó, Hungary in 1888, he studied at the Universities of Budapest, Paris and Berlin, earning a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree.  He served in the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior, the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in 1920 served in the Premier's office.  He was elected to the Hungarian Parliament in 1922.

Dr. Tibor Eckhardt in 1931.  (original source unknown)

At the time, Hungary was experiencing what was known as the "White Terror"--a period when leftist intellectuals, especially Jews, were being purged.  In 1923, Eckhart joined the Smallholders Party, the leading faction of the Hungarian Opposition. He became its president in 1934 and was Hungary's chief delegate to the League of Nations in 1935.  

That year he joined the Democratic Opposition, which was fighting against the growing Nazi movement.  When Hungary sided with Germany during the war, Eckhardt escaped to the United States in 1941.

Here he initiated a movement for the restoration of Hungarian independence that would spread world-wide.  He helped organize the Hungarian National Council in 1948 and was a member of its executive committee.  He sat on the Assembly of Captive European Nations in 1954.  While living here in 1972, he published, From Yalta to Potsdam.

In 1975 the residents of 121 East 31st Street lost what some might have seen as a nostalgic reminder of the 1931 era--the elevator operator.  On March 30, The New York Times reported that the new owners, Teitelbaum Holdings, "plans to automate the elevators in the 96-unit apartment house, but not to make other major changes."

photograph by Lowell Cochrane

Outwardly, George Fred Pelham's dignified design survives essentially intact.

many thanks to reader Lowell Cochrane for suggesting this post

The 1854 Seba Smith House - 46 Stuyvesant Street

On April 1, 1854, builder John L. Smith sold the newly-erected house at 46 Stuyvesant Street to optometrist Samuel Elliott for $10,700 (about $401,000 in 2025 terms).  Smith had acquired the oddly-shaped lot a year earlier.  His handsome Anglo-Italianate facade successfully disguised the triangular-shaped interior layout.

The entrance, above a short stoop, was centered within a rusticated brownstone base.  The openings of the red brick-faced upper levels wore simple stone lintels.  A bracketed Italianate cornice finished the design.

If Samuel Elliott ever lived in the house, his residency was short-lived.  In May 1855, he moved to Staten Island and sold 46 Stuyvesant Street to Seba Smith for $17,000, making a tidy profit.  

Seba Smith was a humorist and author, and his wife was author and poet Elizabeth Oakes Smith (who went professionally by her first initial).  Also living with them was their adult son, Appleton Oaksmith and his wife, Isofta.  (All six of the Smiths' sons were given the merged surnames of their mother and father.)  Mary Alice Wyman, in her 1927 Two American Pioneers--Seba Smith and Elizabeth Oakes Smith, writes, "The sons, now grown to manhood, were at home intermittently when not occupied in business elsewhere."  The second eldest son, Sidney Oaksmith, was consul to Haiti at the time.

Born in Maine in 1792, Seba Smith founded the Portland Courier in 1830.  His series of satirical books about the fictional character Major Jack Downing, the first of which was published in 1830, were highly popular.

Seba Smith, from the collection of Northeastern Illinois University

Elizabeth Oakes Prince was born in Portland, Maine in 1806 and married Seba Smith in 1823.  (She was 16 and Smith was 30.)  Her early poems like the 1841 "A Corpse Going to a Ball" and "The Sinless Child," published the following year, were widely read.  By the time the family moved into 46 Stuyvesant Street, she was writing essays on women's rights that urged for equality in political, educational and economic opportunities.

This portrait Elizabeth Oakes Prince Smith was painted by John Wesley Paradise around 1845, from the collection of the National Gallery of Art

 Wyman writes, 

In the Stuyvesant Street house...Mrs. Oakes Smith did much entertaining and included among her literary guests several other foreign patriots who had visited this country for help or who, because of political troubles in their own land, were living as exiles.

Indeed, in her autobiography, E. Oakes Smith writes, "Italians,  Spaniards, Cubans were amongst our guests, and in an unheroic period filled the imagination of my household with heroic ideas--with admiration for men and women who could turn their backs upon ease and frivolity, and give place to earnest, self-sacrificing endeavor."  The subjects discussed, she said, included women's suffrage, civil rights and slavery.

When the family moved into the Stuyvesant Street house, 27-year-old Appleton listed his profession as "merchant."  A year later he was described by the New-York Daily Tribune on October 14, 1856 as, "the Representative of Nicaragua in this country."  William Walker had established himself as president there and he made Appleton Oaksmith Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States.

A year later, the Oaksmiths suffered tragedy.  On September 6, 1857, Buchanan, the only child of Appleton and Isofta, died a month before his first birthday.  His funeral was held in the parlor on September 8.

In 1858, the Smiths hired 12-year-old Rosa Simpson as a servant girl.  They paid her $2 per month wages to her father, John Simpson.  Two years later, Rosa ran off.  In what today might be called "tough love," Seba Smith charged the teen with vagrancy and she was sent to the House of Refuge.  He said that "after a suitable time for her reformation," he "proposed to adopt her and take her from that Institution."

On January 31, 1860, John Simpson sued the Smiths, alleging they "forcibly detained [Rosa] at No. 46 Stuyvesant-street" and that "Mrs. Smith was an improper person to have the care of the child."  Rosa Simpson testified on the Smiths' defense.  Calling her, "an intelligent little girl," The New York Times reported that she stated, "that she would rather remain with Mr. Smith's people than return to her relatives; she was well treated and comfortable where she was, and her father had no means for her support."

The Smiths left 46 Stuyvesant Street in 1860 after purchasing a Colonial home in Patchogue, Long Island that year, which they named "The Willows."  A year later, in December 1861, Appleton Oaksmith was captured by Union forces on Fire Island for colluding with the Confederacy.  Somewhat astonishingly, given his mother's marked stance against slavery, he was accused of using former Nicaraguan ships for gun-running and transporting slaves.  The Smiths were outspoken regarding his innocence.

In the meantime, 46 Stuyvesant Street became home to the Charles L. Curtis family.  A hardware merchant, Curtis also volunteered with Hook and Ladder Company No. 4.  Soon after moving his family into the house, he traveled to Washington D.C. with two other firefighters in hopes that their newly-formed Second Regiment Fire Zouaves would be accepted by the Union.  Although firefighters were exempted from the draft, he and 700 others formed the regiment.  The volunteer soldiers served throughout the conflict.

The Curtis family remained at 46 Stuyvesant Street through 1864, when 15-year-old Charles Frederick Curtis was attending Public School 35.

Dr. Lansing P. Munson briefly followed the Curtises.  In 1865, he advertised his office hours as 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 to 7:00 p.m.  Later that year, however, on October 11, an advertisement in the New York Herald offered, "A fine office to let--suitable for a physician or dentist."

The house became home to State Assemblyman Thomas J. Creamer.  Born in Ireland in 1843, he came to America as a boy and attended public schools.  After working in a drygoods firm, he was elected to the State Assembly in 1865, the same year he moved into 46 Stuyvesant Street.

Thomas J. Creamer, The American Government: Biographies of Members of the House of Representatives of the Forty-Third Congress (1874) copyright expired

In 1867, the Creamers took in two veteran boarders--John G. Brosnahan, of the U.S. Navy; and A. H. Fisher, of the U.S. Army.

The following year, Creamer was elected to the New York State Senate and served to 1871.  He was elected to Congress in 1873.  At the end of his term on March 3, 1875, he returned to the Stuyvesant Street house.

Early in October 1878, an attempt to steal the body of millionaire Alexander Turney Stewart from its tomb was made.  The following month, on November 14, the crime was successful and Stewart's body was held for "a large ransom," as reported by The New York Times.

Now, Creamer connected two incidents outside his window to the crime.  On November 16, The New York Times reported, "Ex-Senator Thomas J. Creamer...told to a Times reporter yesterday two seemingly important stories...concerning the mysterious boarders of No. 44, next door, and their departure on Thursday morning with a black trunk, supposed to contain the remains of A. T. Stewart."  Creamer recalled that on the night of the first attempt, he had been reading on his sofa on the second floor at around 2 a.m. when a carriage pulled up to his front door.  "He saw three men get out of the carriage and talk to the driver."

Not appearing to be nosey, he returned to his reading.  But when the carriage did not leave, he got up, opened the window and asked the driver what he wanted.  The driver drove off, but returned a few minutes later.  The three men returned, got into the carriage and left.  The Times said, "Mr. Creamer thinks that this was the occasion of the first attempt, and that the driver, seeing him watching so persistently, drove around as a signal of danger, which caused the robbers to desist."

On the night of the actual robbery, Creamer had a houseguest, "an old lady, of the highest respectability, whose name the ex-Senator would not mention."  Creamer was out of town and the guest arose early the following morning.  At 7:20, she heard a carriage pull up.  Thinking it might be Creamer, she looked out of the second floor window.  Two men came out of 44 Stuyvesant Street.  "They carried a black leather trunk, which they handled very carefully, yet appeared to be in a great hurry," recounted the article.  They loaded it into the carriage and the drove "rapidly off" towards Second Avenue.  The New York Times added to the story, saying, "a peculiar smell was discovered in the room vacated by the mysterious strangers, and they left their water running behind them as though to wash down all traces of some dirt which they had been cleaning into the basin."

William J. Morris purchased 46 Stuyvesant Street in November 1880 for $9,950 (about $306,000 today).  He leased it to a "Mrs. Feltheimer" who operated it as a boarding house.  

In 1890, Annie Steinhof arrived from Germany and was hired here as a servant.  Each month she deposited her wages into the Dry Dock Savings Bank, "trying to save money enough to send for her father and mother and sister, who are living in poverty in Germany," explained The New York Sun later.  Among the boarders the following year was Joseph J. Mulligan.  He was friendly to Annie and, despite being born in Ireland, "used to try to talk to her in German," said the newspaper.

She told him about her dream to bring her family to America, and on March 6, 1891, she told him she had saved up $100.55, enough to buy steamship tickets.  Mulligan baited the girl, musing that while he was "a first-class printer," he had no money, yet Annie, "who could not write her own name," had enough to start a small business.  Indignant, Annie wrote her name on a sheet of paper to prove she was not illiterate.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Shortly after the incident, Mulligan and his roommate left the boarding house.  On March 19, Annie went to the bank to deposit her $10 wages for February and discovered $60 had been withdrawn.  It was taken out on March 7.  Above Annie's signature on the blank page, Mulligan had written a letter, authorizing the holder to withdraw the funds.  Mulligan was arrested on March 24.  Annie's hard-earned funds were gone, but he "offered to repay the money by installments if spared prosecution."  

The Morris family retained possession of 46 Stuyvesant Street until 1921 when they sold it to Herman Groh.  It operated as a rooming house for decades.  

George Monisco roomed here in the fall of 1931 when he suffered a bizarre accident.  The 51-year-old could not sleep on the night of September 18.  At 4:30 a.m., he got up and took a walk to John J. Murphy Park along the East River.  The New York Sun reported, "he fell over an iron fence on the retaining wall and into the water."  Monisco flailed in the water as the current carried him about a block, to 16th Street.  His cries attracted three employees of the Willard Parker Memorial Hospital, who dived into the river and pulled him 40 feet back to shore.  He was taken into the hospital, "suffering from submersion," said the article.

A renovation completed in 1961 resulted in a duplex apartment in the cellar and first floor, and one apartment each in the upper floors.  The house, with its extraordinary history, survives virtually unchanged.

photographs by the author

The Greatly Altered Cephas G. Thompson House - 30 Lexington Avenue

 

photo by Allen Sheinman

John Watts, Sr. served as a member of the Colonial Assembly and the King's Council.  In 1747, he acquired the 130-acre country estate of his father-in-law James DeLancey.  He named the property Rose Hill after the Watts ancestorial home near Edinburgh, Scotland.  The sprawling property ran from the East River to about what today is Park Avenue South, and from 21st to 30th Streets.

A loyalist, Watts lost Rose Hill Farm to the Committee of Forfeiture after the Revolution.  John Watts, Jr., a patriot, was permitted to re-purchase much of the land.  By his death in 1836, he had begun parceling off portions as the expanding city slowly encroached into the district.  

In 1832, Lexington Avenue and Irving Place were opened.  Between them, Samuel Ruggles would create Gramercy Square, opened in 1849, a private, landscaped park surrounded with elegant mansions.

The residential tenor of Gramercy Park spread up Lexington Avenue.  Upscale, high-stooped brick and brownstone homes were erected before the outbreak of the Civil War, including that of Cephas Giovanni Thompson at 20 Lexington Avenue (renumbered 30 in 1867).  The three-story-and-basement Italianate home was faced in red brick and trimmed in brownstone.

Cephas Giovanni Thompson created unusual group portrait of his family around 1857.  from the collection of the Boston Athenaeum.

Born on August 3, 1809 in Middleborough, Massachusetts, Thompson was the son of American painter Cephas Thompson.  Cephas Giovanni and his wife, the former Mary Gouverneur Ogden, had three children.  He took his family to Italy in 1852 and lived and worked there for seven years.  While there, Thompson became close friends with expatriate American author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Upon relocating to New York City in 1859, the Thompsons moved into the newly-built Lexington Avenue house.  That year Thompson listed his profession in the city directories as "historical and portrait painter."  The Lexington Avenue house was hung with a striking art collection, described by The New York Times later as, "the fruit of many years of careful selection of Mr. C. G. Thompson...while residing in Rome, Florence, Naples, and other European cities, and contains examples of the production of the great masters in this particular branch of art from the fifteenth century down to the present day."

Cephas Giovanni Thompson, from Book of Artists, 1870 (copyright expired)

In March 1865, Thompson advertised the house for sale.  It was purchased by Thomas J. McCahill as an investment property.  That year, it was shared by the families of Edward J. Anglim, a drygoods merchant, and James H. Hollingshead, a partner in the electrotyping firm Gay & Hollingshead.

In 1867, Ann R. Rivers leased the residence.  The widow of William Rivers, she operated it as a boarding house.  Living with her were her adult children, Guy and Mary.  Four years later, on January 5, 1871, Thomas J. McCahill transferred the title of 30 Lexington Avenue to Ann Maria Palmer.  It would not be long afterward that she discovered that she had a problem tenant.

On June 9, 1872, the New York Dispatch reported the scandalous details of the divorce proceedings of William H. Kimball, "a wealthy dealer in refined oils," and his wife, Anna.  Among the scurrilous charges against Kimball was that:

...on the morning of the 10th day of January, in the year 1872, at a house of assignation and prostitution, situated at No. 30 Lexington avenue, in the city of New York, kept by a woman known as Mrs. Rivers, did commit adultery with a woman.

Not surprisingly, the shocking publicity ended Ann R. Rivers's enterprise.  Within a few months of the article, Maria Brown, another widow, was operating the boarding house.

Around 1896, the ground floor of 30 Lexington Avenue was converted for business purposes.  The stoop was removed and a cast iron storefront installed.  In 1898,  a stationery store occupied the front and the Sanblom bicycle store was in the rear.

The ground floor was remodeled to a saloon in the summer of 1901 by Edward Lowry and Joseph Regan.  The Evening World said on November 19, "The men are less than forty years old and have been friends for years.  A few weeks ago they opened the saloon in partnership and no one supposed that their relations were not amicable and pleasant."  The problem was, as the newspaper explained, "Lowry had no money and [Regan] put up the necessary cash."  The lopsided business relationship quickly degenerated into animosity.  Within weeks, Lowry started sending Regan threatening letters.  On November 10, Regan's wife discovered and read one of the opened letters.  "She became frightened," reported The Evening World.

The newspaper continued, "Last night, Regan says, he went to the saloon to tell Lowry to stop writing the letters, when the two got into an argument."  Lowry pulled out a revolver and fired at his partner, the bullet piercing Regan's coat collar.  The Evening World reported that the bullet, "inflicted only a trifling wound."  

According to the bartender, John Page, Regan took out his revolver and fired three shots at Lowry.  Despite Lowry's being hit in the arm, head and stomach, a physician at Bellevue Hospital stated that his condition "is not serious."   Regan was arrested and Patrolman Stephenson told the court, "he had found a dirk knife and a dagger on Regan, besides the revolver."

Not surprisingly, Regan's and Lowry's saloon was short-lived.  The space became home to the headquarters of The Armenian Union of America.

The estate of Ann Maria Palmer sold the property in 1908.  As early as 1913, the former Armenian Union of America space was occupied by the 12th-14th Assembly District Headquarters.  Not everything was politics within its confines.  On February 18, 1915, for instance, the New York Evening Call reported, "The monthly entertainment and dance of the 12th-14th A. D. will take place Sunday evening, February 21, at headquarters, 30 Lexington avenue."  The group shared the space with the Young People's Socialist League.

In March 1915, Catherine Sheridan leased the commercial space "for use as a physical culture restaurant," according to The Sun.  The physical culture trend at the time promoted healthful living and nutritional foods.  The increasingly Armenian population of the district was reflected in Pavillion d'Orient, an Armenian Restaurant, occupying the space in the post World War I years.

A renovation completed in 1937 created a store in the ground and former parlor floors.  While traces of the 1890s cast iron storefront remained, an arcade-style show window was installed at the sidewalk level.  The slightly-projecting store space was given a charming shingled roof that was copied in the replacement of the 1850s cornice.  The Department of Buildings demanded that the second and third floors remain "vacant."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

At mid-century, the store space was occupied by Parkside Cleaners.  Briefly, in the early 1970s, it was home to the New Moravian Church.  

Seen here in the mid-1980s, the building had little changed since the 1937 re-do.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The last relic of pre-Civil War life on the block, a significant renovation came to 30 Lexington Avenue in 1997.  Two stories with a peaked roof were added and a coat of stucco applied to the brick.  Traces of the 1890s iron storefront survive.  A renovation in 2013 resulted in one apartment each on the third through fifth floors.

many thanks to reader Allen Sheinman for suggesting this post