The Max and Julia G. Wolff House - 26 West 87th Street

 

In May 1891, real estate developer James A. Frame purchased five lots on the south side of West 87th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.  The upscale rowhouses that Frame erected on the site were designed by the architectural firm of Thom & Wilson.  Like the others, the easternmost house, 26 West 87th Street, was four stories tall and faced in brownstone.  A doglegged box stoop led to the rusticated parlor level, above which a rounded bay dominated the second floor.  The stacked openings of the third and fourth floors were separated by a molded cornice and spandrel panels decorated with carved swags.  Fluted pilasters framed the third floor openings, and graceful swan's neck pediments with swags capped those of the fourth.

The residence became home to Max and Julia G. Wolff.  Born in Aldorf, Germany in April 1852, Wolff founded the Palace Ribbon Manufacturing Company in 1889.  His wife, the former Julie Stern Gutman, was born in Brooklyn in September 1870.  Three children would be born in the house: Irving Gutman, in 1894; Helen Rose in 1896; and Lawrence (known as Pete), in 1902.

Max and Julia Wolff later in life (original sources unknown)

The offices of the Palace Ribbon Manufacturing Company were located at 62 Greene Street, while the mills were in South Allentown, Pennsylvania.  On January 18, 1899, Wolff traveled to the mills, where the foreman, Maurice Zinderstein, had recently been fired.  At the end of the day, around 5:30, Wolff left the office to take a cab to the train station.  As he descended the stairs, he confronted Zinderstein who was brandishing a revolver.

Wolff rushed back up the stairs, but the office door had locked behind him.  As he struggled with the knob, Zinderstein fired.  The Paterson Evening News reported, "Those in the office, hearing the shots, ran out and picked up Wolff and carried him into the building."  The article said that the 61-year-old Zinderstein, "is said to have been drunk at the time."  One of the bullets had missed, but two struck Wolff, one in the back and the other in the thigh.  He was taken by train to St. Luke's Hospital in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  "It was believed there that he had a chance of recovery," said the article.

Back home on West 87th Street, Julia received the terrifying news.  The New-York Tribune reported, "his wife hurried out to South Bethlehem."  Saying that Max Wolff "is well known in the drygoods world here," the article described his injuries as "dangerous, if not fatal."  (Zinderstein, in the meantime, was arrested for attempted murder.)

Max Wolff recovered from the assassination attempt.  In 1915, the family took in a boarder, Dr. George Birmingham McAuliffe and his children.  Born in 1865, McAuliffe's wife, Margaret Gervais, had died the previous year.  He had four children, Felix Vincent, who was 22; George G., who was 21; 19-year-old Gervais Ward; and Aubrey, who was 15.

With tensions worsening in Europe, in 1916 Irving Wolff joined the Army and was sent to the Plattsburg Military Training Camp. 

The house was the scene of Helen Rose Wolff's marriage to Leo Samuel Frenkel on November 24, 1920.  The New-York Tribune reported that the newlyweds would live in the city after "a short honeymoon in the South."

Six months later, on May 22, 1921, the New-York Tribune reported that the Wolffs had sold 26 West 87th Street "to a physician."  That physician was their long-term boarder, Dr. George Birmingham McAuliffe.  He was a clinical instructor of otology at the Cornell University Medical School.  The family's summer home was in Sag Harbor, Long Island.

On November 6, 1922, the New York Herald reported on the engagement of McAuliffe to Marguerite Laux.  The couple would have two children together, Marguerite Georgette, born in 1924, and George Jr., born on March 30, 1926.

Like their neighbors along the block, the McAuliffes maintained a domestic staff, as well as George McAuliffe's trained nurse, Helen Martin (known to her friends as Blossom).  Although she was engaged to be married, Helen caught the eye of the family's butler, Philippine-born Eulogia Lazado, who was hired in 1922.  His romantic advances were not welcomed.

At one point, Helen's rebuffing of his attentions infuriated Eulogia.  Helen's close friend, Mary Harrington, later recounted, "the ringing of a telephone bell probably saved the life of the nurse" when Lazado choked her.  Helen told the incident to Dr. McAuliffe and said she was going to resign.  "She stayed, however, on being assured the butler would not molest her again," reported the Times Union.

On June 8, 1923, Lazado told Helen that he had purchased a $300 diamond ring for her.  According to Lazado later, Helen replied, "Well, I have another man who is worth a lot more than you and will shoot you if you bother me any more."

In a rage, the butler strangled Helen to death.  He pulled down a drapery from the window in his room and--with her knees pulled up to her torso--wrapped her body first in the drapery and then in brown paper and tied the bundle with cord.

Lazado managed to get the package to the Staten Island Ferry with the intention of dumping it into the harbor.  The New York Times reported that he "did not do so because passengers were watching."  On the Staten Island side, he took a taxicab to the Elizabethport Ferry.  The cabbie, Edward Mareuer, helped him carry the bundle to the boat.  Mareurer (not surprisingly) became suspicious and notified Police Sergeant John Miller on the pier just as the ferry began to pull out.

Miller shouted to passengers to stop Lazado from trying to throw the bundle off the boat.  Two deckhands and a passenger seized him and the ferry reversed course back to the slip.  The New York Times reported, "Lazardo, meanwhile, had put up a spirited fight and nearly managed to throw the bundle overboard before he was felled by the fist of one of the ferry's crew."

Sergeant Miller took Lazado and the bundle into the ferry house where Miller began to inspect the package.  "The first thing he uncovered after tearing through a wrapping of heavy manila paper tied with clothesline was the head of a young woman," said the article.  Later, Lazado confessed "that he had strangled the girl in a quarrel over his intended gift of a diamond ring," reported The New York Times.

Five months later, after a sensational trial, on November 19, 1923 The New York Times reported that Lazado was sentenced "to die in the electric chair at Sing Sing."

The carved swags of the top floor pediments were intact in 1941.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Marguerite's engagement to John Egan O'Reilly was announced on April 1, 1946.  Her brother, George, Jr., was with the U.S. Army in Japan at the time, rebuilding the country under General Douglas MacArthur.  

Dr. George Birmingham McAuliffe died on October 1, 1954 at the age of 90.  Marguerite sold the house to Leon Tshernoff, who converted it to apartments, two per floor.

Among the earliest tenants was Eleanora Fagan, who moved in on June 21, 1958.  According to Paul Alexander in his Bitter Crop, "it was only after the landlord, Dr. Leon Tshernoff, a physician originally from Palestine, agreed to grant her a three-year lease at a rent of $135 a month that he learned his tenant was Billie Holiday."  Alexander writes that she shared apartment 1B "with her constant companion, a Chihuahua she adored named Pepe."  Although Holiday's husband, Louis McKay, was listed on the lease, he had moved to California.

Billie Holiday, from the collection of the New York Public Library

On July 18, 1959, The New York Times reported, "Billie Holiday, famed jazz singer, died yesterday in Metropolitan Hospital...Miss Holiday had lived at 26 West Eighty-seventh Street.  She had been under arrest in her hospital bed since June 12 for illegal possession of narcotics."  It was the ignominious end to a brilliant career that greatly changed the course of jazz music.

The upper portion of the house returned to a single family home in 2015, with an apartment in the basement.  It was listed for sale that year as $12.95 million.

photographs by the author

The Lost Washington Institute - 13th Street and Third Avenue

 

The district around the facility was decidedly rural.  In the background is the city's new reservoir.  Views in New-York and its Environs, 1831 (copyright expired)

Twenty-one-year-old George Washington Hall graduated from Yale College in 1803.  In 1815, he began teaching in Georgia, then in Boston, and, then in 1818 opened the Mount Vernon School for boys in Harlem.  Hall's health was frail, and after operating the facility for two years he had to go South for a year.  Upon returning, in 1821 he founded a collegiate boarding school "for the instruction of young gentlemen," as worded by Theodore S. Fay in his 1831 Views in New-York and Its Environs.

Hall acquired 16 building lots that spanned the Third Avenue blockfront from 12th to 13th Streets.  He erected a three-story-and-attic, Federal style edifice flanked by walled gardens and playgrounds.  The commodious attic level under a peaked roof featured four dormers each on the front and back, and arched and quarter-round windows on the sides.  

In his The Cyclopedia of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, W. R. Murray called the school (which sat upon "a moderate eminence") as "an ornament and an honor to the 'Empire' city."  He said:

Though within the city, as surveyed and laid out, it is just out of the present compact and populous part of it; and thus combines the advantages of a vicinity to the city with a pure air and a fine prospect of the surrounding country.  From the piazza of the building, there is a good view of both the Hudson, on the west, and of the East river (so called) in the opposite direction.

Decades later, on March 4, 1868, The College Courant would say that Hall "opened a school on Thirteenth street, which he named the Washington Institute."  Almost every other reference, however, insists that Marquis de Lafayette named it in 1824, three years after its opening.  In his 1908 biography of John Watts de Peyster, Frank Allaben wrote, "It is said that Lafayette paid it a visit, and, on being requested to name it, gave it this title, which it always afterwards bore."

The school differed from the other preparatory institutions.  The 1833 Treasury of Knowledge and Library of Reference said that Hall, "successfully introduced the celebrated Pestalozzi's system of teaching into this country."  Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi stressed the development of the "whole" child, intellectually, morally and physically.  An advertisement in 1842 read in part, "health and vigor of constitution, refinement of manners, the cultivation of the intellect, and amendment of the heart, are the objects to which the conductors of the Institute devote their unremitting attention."

The Cyclopedia of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, 1853 (copyright expired)

W. R. Murray explained, "It was proposed to furnish a Seminary and teachers, where the classics were not so much taught as is necessary to prepare for College...but where they might obtain a complete knowledge of English Grammar, modern languages, geography, book-keeping, mathematics, &c."  In short, the school readied its students for professions as clerks, accountants, and such.

In 1876, General John Watts de Peyster dictated his "personal reminiscences."  A full chapter was devoted to "A New York Boarding-School."  De Peyster was sent to the Washington Institute in 1829 where, he recalled, "we were all compelled to wear the uniform which, it is said, Lafayette selected when he gave it its title."  Among his numerous recollections were the punishments meted out to students who violated the rules.

The great punishment of this school was the "bread-and-water table."  At this the delinquent fasted on bread and water, while the rest feasted at the long tables, on three sides.  It was a humiliation worse, to a spirited boy, than a really painful punishment.

De Peyster would have boarded with students from far-flung lands.  Theodore S. Fay noted that in addition to American pupils, "A large number of young men also from the West Indies, Mexico, Guatemala, Columbia, and other divisions of Spanish America, have here received their education."

An example of that was Francisco Zerega, Jr., who arrived from Venezuela in 1825.  Two years later, his father stopped payments.  Court papers in 1833 said, "The boy remained at school until July, 1830, at which time [his] bill amounted to $1000 and upwards."  (The unpaid tuition and board would translate to $38,500 in 2025.)  The boy's father said he would pay half that amount.  If not, he would not take his son back.

Emily Johnston De Forest, in her 1914 A Walloon Family in America, recalled the time Lockwood de Forest and his brothers spent here from 1832 to 1834.

They were at a boarding school, at the "Washington Institute," which was far away from the town in the open country at Thirteenth Street near Third Avenue.  They had already been there for a couple of years and had acquired a first-rate grounding in English, though they received very slight instruction in Latin and none in Greek.

George Washington Hall's health continued to be poor and in 1829 he partnered with Dr. Joseph Dresser Wickham in running the school.  In 1834, the men turned over the operation to Wickham's brothers-in-law, Timothy Dwight Porter and Theodore Woolsey Porter.  Both had been instructors here, and both were graduates of Yale.  (The New York Teacher would explain later that George Washington Hall's health "so completely failed as to render him unfair for any continuous employment."  He died on February 24, 1868 at the age of 86.)

By 1841, the city, with its temptations and bad influences, was approaching the once remote grounds of the Washington Institute.  On February 10, an announcement of upcoming property auctions in The Evening Post included, "Two marble houses and 16 lots of land, known as the Washington Institute, situate [sic] on 12th and 13th streets."

The school continued in the complex, apparently renting, through the 1845 session.  An advertisement in The Evening Post on April 26 somewhat smugly said, "Of the general character of the institution it is deemed unnecessary here to speak."

When the school year opened on September 1 that year, it had moved to Murray Hill, on Lexington Avenue and 36th Street.  An advertisement said, "In situation if affords full country privileges, while retaining the advantages that belong to the town."  

Before long, the bucolic grounds of the Washington Institute were developed with store-and-flat buildings.

The Nehemiah Cohn House - 250 East 33rd Street

 

photo by Anthony Bellov

Around 1855, a long row of brick-faced homes was erected on the south side of East 33rd Street between Second and Third Avenues.  Three stories tall above brownstone English basements, they exhibited elements of the waning Greek Revival style--particularly in the stone entrance frame, with its paneled stone pilasters and corniced entablature.  But even here, a decorative carved rosette above the doorway strayed from the expected sternness of Greek Revival.  Handsome Italianate-style cast ironwork originally protected the areaway and stoop, and individual cast cornices with foliate brackets, also Italianate in style, finished the design.

The cornice brackets are purely Italianate in style.  photo by Anthony Bellov

The presence of Irish immigrants in the Kips Bay district was reflected in the early inhabitants of 156 East 33rd Street (renumbered 250 in 1865).  In 1855, Michael Burke lived here.  He was a member of the Thomas Francis Meagher Club, which supported the Irish nationalist and leader in the Rebellion of 1848.  The Burkes were followed by Mary A. Rice, the widow of Henry Rice, and in 1864 by Daniel and Eliza Fitzgerald.  

The parlor was the scene of a somber funeral on November 23, 1864.  Jessie Fitzgerald, Daniel and Eliza's only son, had died two days earlier at the age of four-and-a-half.

The Fitzgeralds remained until 1865 when Nehemiah Cohn and his wife, the former Caroline Metzger, purchased the house.  Born in Germany in 1825, Cohn was in the tobacco and cigar business Nehemiah Cohn & Co. with his brother, Jacob.  They had two locations, one on Fulton Street and the other on South Street.  Nehemiah was a Master in the Darcy Lodge of the Freemasons.

The population within the house quickly grew.  Cecilia Cohn was born in 1866 and her sister, Josie, arrived the following year.  A third daughter, Flora, would follow.  

In 1868, brothers Marx M. and Aaron Myres were also listed at the address, presumably boarders.  They, with their brother Daniel M., comprised the Myres Brothers drygoods business on Third Avenue.

Nehemiah and Jacob Cohn found themselves facing a judge in the United States Commissioners' Court on July 21, 1869.  The previous year, the Internal Revenue Service had passed a law requiring that tobacco offered for sale be stamped as evidence that the necessary taxes had been paid.  The Cohn brothers were charged "with fraudulently evading certain provisions of the Internal Revenue laws."  Four days later, the commissioner dismissed the charges, saying the Cohns "proved by their clerk that he never knew of any sale of tobacco that was unstamped."

Among Cohn's suppliers was tobacconist John R. Sutton & Brothers.  On September 5, 1871, Sutton & Brothers fired Charles Kohler, a young man who had worked there for some time.  Kohler walked directly to Nehemiah Cohn & Co. at 12 Fulton Street and said he had been sent to collect a bill of $95 for a recent purchase.  On April 18, 1872, the New York Herald reported, "Mr. Cohn, supposing Kohler was still in Sutton & Brothers' employ, paid the amount demanded, and did not find that he had been swindled until several weeks later."

In the meantime, Kohler had fled town and got a job with the Erie Railroad.  Unfortunately for him, the train on which he was working pulled into New York City on April 17, 1872.  He "was at once arrested and taken before Judge Dowling at the Tombs Police Court," said the New York Herald.  (Nehemiah Cohn's $95, which would translate to around $2,500 in 2025 terms, was gone.)

Caroline Metzger Cohn died on June 14, 1874.  Her funeral was held in the parlor of 250 East 33rd Street three days later.  

In the summer of 1879, Cohn was called as a potential juror in a sensational murder case.  Mrs. Jane DeForrest Hull, wife of Dr. Alonso J. Hull, was found dead in their mansion at 4 West 42nd Street on the morning of June 11, 1879.  She was blindfolded, gagged, and her feet and wrists were tied with strips of bedsheets.  Jane Hull came from the DeForrest family, who was described by the Colorado newspaper The Rocky Mountain News as "wealthy and aristocratic" and who had "left her a fortune."  Suspicion quickly focused on "a negro named Chastine Cox," according to the Rocky Mountain News, who had previously been the family's private waiter.  When Chastine Cox was arrested weeks after the murder, Mrs. Hull's watch was found on him.

Finding an unbiased jury would prove problematic.  Not only had Mrs. Hull been socially esteemed, the defense attorneys would be facing rampant racism.  On July 16, 1879, the New-York Tribune reported that the process had taken two days.  Among those selected was Nehemiah Cohn.  Describing him as "a dealer in cigars," the New-York Tribune said, "he had no opinion on the case that he could not lay aside on entering the jury box," adding, "He was regarded as a competent juryman, and took the last chair."

(On July 24, 1880, Chastine Cox was hanged in the courtyard of The Tombs, downtown.)

The molded window cornices, seen in the neighboring houses, had been shaved flat by 1941.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Among the 237 young women who graduated in the commencement exercises of The Normal College on June 26, 1884 was Cecilia Cohn.  She found a position teaching in the primary department of Grammar School No. 14 on East 27th Street, where she would remain for years.

Among the death notices in the New York Herald on May 17, 1890, was the astonishingly succinct announcement, "Cohn--On Thursday morning, Nehemiah Cohn."  The 65-year-old was buried next to Caroline in Machpelah Cemetery in Ridgewood, Queens.

Flora Cohn's engagement to Julius Starfield was announced on November 18, 1894.  The New York Herald noted that the intended couple would be "At home Sunday, November 25, 250 East 33d St." to receive congratulations.

Neither Josie nor Cecilia married.  Josie died on April 16, 1907 at the age of 40.  Vaudevillians Tom Noland and Cora White boarded with Cecilia, remaining here until Cecilia's death at the age of 42 on December 16, 1908.

Nolan & White listed their address within the Cohn house in 1908.  Variety, May 2, 1908 (copyright expired)

In the early 1940s, Edwin Schriver and his wife, the former Ruth Hafferkamp, lived here.  Their son, Gary Edwin, was born in the Woman's Hospital in November 1946.

Bishop Sears Harrold occupied the house at mid-century.  Born in 1888 and a 1913 graduate of Harvard, he was a stockbroker and a member of Filor, Bullard & Smith.  Never married, his country home was in Darien, Connecticut.  His deep American roots entitled his memberships in the Society of Mayflower Descendants and the Sons of the Revolution.  Harrold died while living here on December 30, 1954 at the age of 66.

Although the Italianate ironwork has been replaced, the unusual stone entrance framework and paneled doors survive.  photograph by Anthony Bellov

Six years later, the house was renovated.  There were now an office in the basement, one apartment on the parlor level, and a duplex apartment in the second and third floors.  Then, a subsequent remodeling returned 250 East 33rd Street to a single-family home.  Completed in 2007, the renovations included the addition of a fourth floor.

many thanks to historian Anthony Bellov for suggesting this post

The Edward T. and Viola B. Cockcroft House - 59 East 77th Street

 

When John McNerney commissioned architect Thomas S. Godwin to design eight rowhouses on the north side of East 77th Street between Madison and Park Avenues, their resulting brownstone faced, high-stooped design was all the rage.  Nathan and Sophia Meyer occupied 59 East 77th Street in the 1890s.  The couple held "one of the large entertainments of the week," as described by the New York Herald, to celebrate their anniversary on December 30, 1899.

In 1907 Nathan Meyer sold 59 East 77th Street to Edward T. and Viola B. Cockcroft.  Before the new owners moved in, the Meyers arranged an auction of the home's "rich household furnishings."  Among the items were a "gold drawing room suit in Belleville tapestry, gold Vernis-Martin and mahogany specimen cabinets," and a "rosewood and bronze mounted Chickering upright piano."

The English basement--or high-stooped--design had fallen from fashion by now.  The Cockcrofts hired the architectural firm of Albro & Lindeberg (which had designed their country home on Long Island, "Little Burlees," in 1905) to bring their townhouse into the Edwardian era.  Plans were filed on May 25 and the following day the New-York Tribune reported, "It will be made over into a five story building with a facade of the early English style of the Tudor period, with a tall ornamental bay with a balcony."

The Cockcrofts moved temporarily into the Hotel Leonari while the $20,000 project progressed.  (The figure would translate to about $689,000 in 2025.)  The transformation was staggering.  Albro & Lindeberg removed the stoop and replaced the brownstone with variegated Flemish bond brick.  The tripartite design included a stone-framed centered entrance, above which was a dramatic two-story metal infill of multi-paned windows fronted by a faux balcony with a filigree railing.  A touch of Arts & Crafts was introduced at the fourth floor with inset diamond patterns and a projecting cornice with elongated brackets.  The architects recessed the fifth floor behind a brick parapet, thereby providing a terrace.

The American Architect, October 16, 1908 (copyright expired)

Architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler, writing in The American Architect, addressed Albro & Lindeberg's motive in melding the second and third floors "into a single feature."

This composition assumes that the two selected stories are of equal importance and equally worthy of signalization, which is often true in case, for example, one contains the drawing-room and the other the library.

The second, or piano nobile, of the Cockcroft house was considered the first floor at the time.  It held the drawing room and dining room, separated by a generous stair hall.  On the third floor were the main bedroom and library, while the fourth contained bedrooms.

The American Architect, October 16, 1908 (copyright expired)

Edward T. Cockcroft was an antiques dealer and decorator.  If he and Viola intended to live in their remodeled home, they changed their minds.  On October 25, 1908, The New York Times reported that they had leased the house to newlyweds Michael Dreicer and his wife, the former Maisie Saville Shainwald.  The article noted that the couple had just "returned from Europe, where they have been motoring for several months."  (The trip was, in fact, their honeymoon.)

Born in Russia in 1867, Dreicer was a partner in the jewelry firm founded by his father, Jacob Dreicer.  During the couple's one-year residency, their names repeatedly appeared in the society columns.  On November 15, 1908, for instance, The New York Times reported, "Mr. and Mrs. Michael Dreicer will give an at home on Saturday at 59 East Seventy-seventh Street."  And on February 14, 1909, the newspaper announced, "Mr. and Mrs. Michael Dreicer...sailed a short time ago for a trip which will include London, Paris, Monte Carlo, and the Riviera."

Upon their return, the Dreicers purchased the mansion at 1046 Fifth Avenue.  On July 17, 1909, the Record & Guide reported that the Cockcrofts had sold 59 East 77th Street.  It was purchased by Samuel Owen Edmonds and his wife, the former Lillian Coles.  Born in 1869 and 1872 respectively, they had a daughter, Helene Ormonde.  Edmonds was a patent attorney and the counsel for the General Electric Company.

The Edmonds' family was increased in 1913 by a horrific tragedy.  Lillian's sister, Gertrude Schermerhorn Coles, was married to architect Robert A. Raetze.  The couple had two sons, one-year-old Stuart Coles, and two-year-old Griswold.  The family's country home was in Stamford, Connecticut.

On the afternoon of January 5, the Raetzes were entertaining Professor John Darnall.  The family's Christmas tree was still up, and, according to The Sun, "It was aglow with candles."  While the three were at tea, the nurse, Mary Gould, prepared the boys' bath.  Suddenly, Raetze ran upstairs, yelling to the nurse to get the children out, "The Christmas tree has set fire to the house!"  He was followed closely by his frantic wife.

Mary went to a rear window and screamed for help.  A maid from next door, Kate Kenny, ran out onto the roof of the extension of that house.  "She held out her hands and the Raetzes' nurse handed little [Stuart] to her," said The Sun.  "Then Miss Gould swung herself across and was safe."  In the meantime, Professor Darnall had found Griswold and carried him to the street.  Tragically, the bodies of Robert and Gertrude Raetze were found together on the third floor of the ruins.  

The article said, "The two children went to the home of their aunt, Mrs. Samuel Owen Edmunds [sic]."  Stuart and Griswold would remain with the Edmonds and were soon adopted by the couple.

Eleven years later came Helene's debut.  During Christmas week 1924, the Edmonds hosted a dance at Sherry's.  It was followed on New Year's Day by a reception, "where they will introduce to the older friends of the family, their daughter, Miss Helene Ormonde Edmonds," according to The New York Times on January 1, 1925.

Now introduced, Helene's name would be included in the society columns.  On May 1, 1925, The New York Times announced, "Mrs. Samuel Owen Edmonds and her daughter, Miss Helene Ormonde Edmonds, of 59 East Seventy-seventh Street have gone to their country place at Stamford, Conn."

That year, however, Stuart Coles Edmonds would steal Helene's social spotlight.  On February 14, 1925, his engagement to Audrey Barclay Ulman was announced.  The New York Times remarked, "The engagement is of wide interest in New York, with which city the ancestors of both young people have been identified for generations."  Stuart was by now associated with Standard Oil Company.  The article noted, "Mr. Edmonds is a grandnephew of the late Mrs. Elizabeth Coles, whose mansion was at 677 Fifth Avenue and among whose legacies was the gift of a set of tapestries now hanging in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine."

Stuart gave "his bachelor dinner" in the East 77th Street house four days before his wedding on April 21, 1925 in St. Bartholomew's Church.  The newlyweds moved into 65 East 96th Street where their first child, Audrey, was born on March 27, 1926.  The christening was held in the East 77th Street drawing room on New Year's Day 1927.

It was the last happy gathering that the Edmonds would host in the house.  Nineteen days later, on January 20, 1927, Samuel Owen Edmonds died at the age of 57.  His funeral was held in the drawing room two days later.

Soon afterward, Lillian sold the house to Walter Palmer Anderton and his wife, the former Ethel W. Kingsland.  The couple had two daughters, Audrey Kingsland and Helen Elizabeth, eleven and one year old respectively.  Anderton had been an Assistant Visiting Physician for the Presbyterian Hospital since 1918.  Ethel was a cousin of millionaire Newbold Morris and the granddaughter of Ambrose C. Kingsland, Mayor of New York from 1851 to 1853.  A year after moving into the 77th Street house, Walter Anderton was appointed chief of Vanderbilt Clinic.  

Shortly before noon on November 8, 1940, Audrey, who was now 24, went to 340 East 57th Street to visit her cousin, Countess Seherr-Thoss.  (The countess before her marriage was Marian Kingsland.)  The women planned to have luncheon at 1:15.  According to the countess, Audrey "was in good spirits and spoke with pleasure of the Bundles for Britain Ball that she had attended the night before at the Hotel Waldorf-Astoria," as reported in The New York Times.  At one point the countess and her maid walked to a different part of the apartment.  When they returned a few minutes later, Audrey was gone.

The women looked out the open window and saw Audrey's body on the pavement.  The New York Times reported, "As she fell to the courtyard, which was below street level, she screamed, attracting the attention of neighbors and passers-by."  Audrey was under the care of a nerve specialist and the police listed her death as "fell or jumped."

The Andertons sold 59 East 77th Street to W. Boulton Newbold & Associates in April 1956.  The New York Times reported they "plan to convert the structure into a five-unit cooperative apartment building."  The configuration lasted until a renovation completed in 2001 returned it to a single family home.

The mansion was offered for sale in May 2011 at $18.7 million.  It was finally sold in April 2012 for the reduced price of $11 million.

photographs by the author

The 1854 55 Warren Street (aka 55 Murray)

 

photograph by Anthony Bellov

A French family resided in the vintage house at 55 Murray Street between West Broadway and Church Street in 1853.  On October 20 that year, an advertisement written in French sought, "We ask for a good Frenchwoman who knows how to sew well.  Contact 55 Murray Street between 12 and 2, after noon."

The family would soon have to move.  That year former district attorney James R. Whiting purchased the property and that directly behind it at 55 Warren Street.  He erected a five-story store and loft building on the site, completed in 1854.  Although Whiting (who would be elected to the bench of the New York Supreme Court the next year) was listed as both the builder and owner, he indubitably commissioned an adept architect to design his structure.

Faced in marble above cast iron storefronts, the Warren and Murray Street facades were identical.  Their striking Italianate elements were drawn from Renaissance palazzi--alternating triangular and arched pediments over the center openings, prominent molded cornices over the others, and delicately carved cresting over those of the second floor.  The marble cornice was supported by scrolled, foliate brackets.

The details were drawn from the Italian Renaissance.  photograph by Anthony Bellov

The initial tenants were importers Bradford, Heath & Clark, operated by George P. Bradford, Charles Heath and John Q. Clark; and boot manufacturer Howes, Hyatt & Co., owned by Rueben W. Howes and Stephan Hyatt.

Around 1859, some of the floors were divided, giving certain tenants the 55 Warren Street address only.  Among those was a shirt manufacturer, and one of his employees seems to have been embarking on a more artistic career: the formation of a band.  An advertisement on June 8, 1859 read:

Wanted--A violinist, a good player.  One willing to travel, and capable of leading at a performance; must be satisfied with a moderate salary.  Apply at 55 Murray street, up stairs, in the shirt store.

  

Alexander Platt worked in the building in 1865 when he found himself in a highly embarrassing situation on November 29.  Platt went to Greene Street, notorious for having no fewer that two dozen houses of prostitution.  The New York Times reported that he accompanied "Cecilia Austin, otherwise Flora Reed, a syren [sic] from Greene-street" to her house.  The next day he realized his valuable gold watch was gone.  Prostitutes most often got away with thievery since their clients avoided the humiliation and scandal that would accompany the reporting of the crime.  Such was not the case with Platt and Cecilia was arrested later that day.

By the last quarter of the century, the tenant list was predominately glass and hardware dealers.  In 1879 they included Williams, White & Churchill, hardware, and S. N. Wolff & Co., glass (listed at 55 Warren Street); and Vogel & Reynolds, "dealers in glassware" at the Murray Street address.

At the turn of the century, the hardware firm of Surpless, Dunne & Co. was on the first floor and the New York Bag Company occupied the entire second floor.  A. L. Tuska, Son & Co., importers of Japanese ware, also leased space in the building.

On the night of July 20, 1901, a passerby saw smoke pouring out of the windows of the Warren Street side.  A fire had started under the stairway on the second floor.  The New York Times reported, "the flames quickly spread to the thousands of tightly packed bags, causing thick volumes of smoke to fill the whole building."  The fire was contained to the New York Bag Company space, although the upper floors were slightly damaged by smoke and Surpless, Dunne & Co. suffered water damage.

Elegant carved marble cresting crowns two of the second floor windows.  photograph by Anthony Bellov

A much more serious fire broke out eight months later.  On Saturday night, March 15, 1902, the engineer of a Sixth Avenue elevated train noticed smoke coming from a fourth floor window.  He stopped his train midblock between Church Street and West Broadway directly in front of Fire Patrol No. 1 and blew his whistle several times.  He shouted that there was a fire at 55 Murray Street.

The blaze soon grew to a three-alarm fire.  The New York Times reported, "An exciting incident occurred soon after the second alarm had been sent in.  Four firemen of Engine Company No. 7 had climbed to the fourth story by the fire escape, and as they reached the cage a sheet of flame burst forth, completely enveloping them."  The water tower truck had just gotten into position.  The stream of water "struck the men with great force," but saved their lives.

The Annual Report of the Committee on Fire Patrol reported, "Fire originated on fourth floor of No. 55 Warren Street and extended to fifth floor, then through roof and fifth floor and roof of No. 55 Murray Street."  The blaze also damaged the abutting buildings at 53 Murray, 53 Warren and 57 Warren Street.

The Murray Street elevation is identical to that on Warren Street.  photograph by Anthony Bellov

The Motor Car Equipment Company leased three floors in the repaired building in 1905.  Established in 1902 by Emil Grossman, it handled automobile supplies like batteries and tires.  Automobile Topics said their new space contained "approximately 10,000 square feet."

A. L. Tuska, Son & Co. was still here.  On November 25, 1907, the American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record suggested, "In casting about for striking holiday goods the druggist could not do better than include the line of beautiful Japanese novelties which are imported into this country direct by A. L. Tuska, Son & Co. 55 Murray Street, New York."  

Also in the building that year was Plume & Atwood Mfg. Co., makers of "electric portables," such as "lamps, unmounted gongs for electric bells, etc."

In 1917, Columbia Graphophone Co., makers of the Dictaphone, leased the entire building.  An announcement in The New York Times on July 9, 1917 explained, "And here are the reasons for the move: The steadily increasing adoption of The Dictaphone System by business men generally in and around New York has made more room and better facilities a necessity."

The New York Times, July 9, 1917 (copyright expired)

Another advertisement stressed that the country's entry into World War I would make the Dictaphone crucial to the workings of an office.  "You are going to lose some of your workers through conscription--possibly many--and you must be prepared for the loss."

The Columbia Graphophone Company's residency would be short.  In 1920 it completed construction of its own building at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street.  In March that year, the I. Blyn Shoe Company purchased the property.  Founded in 1874 and incorporated in 1923, it operated Red Cross Shoe and Rambler Shoe stores.  The firm moved its main office into the building and continued to rent unneeded space.

The company was the victim of audacious thieves in 1924.  On April 27, The New York Times reported, "Burglars broke open two safes and stole $5,000 in the offices of the I. Blyn Shoe Company, 55 Warren Street, yesterday morning or Friday night.  The police think the burglars hid in the building before it was closed Friday night.  They entered the offices by boring a hole through a wall."

I. Blyn Shoe Company operated numerous stores across the country.  But the Great Depression dealt a fatal blow to the firm and it declared bankruptcy in July 1931.  Jacob Blyn, a widower, moved into his sister's apartment on Riverside Drive.  On July 27, 1936, The New York Times reported, "Jacob Blyn, 67 years old, ended his life early yesterday by opening four jets on a gas range in the kitchen of the apartment of his sister, Mrs. Hannah Stoff."

photograph by Anthony Bellov

A renaissance in the Tribeca neighborhood began in the last quarter of the century as industrial lofts were converted to artists' working and living spaces.  In 2013, 55 Warren Street was converted to residential use above the ground floor.  The renovation resulted in one apartment per floor.

many thanks to historian Anthony Bellov for suggesting this post

Arthur Paul Hess's 1930 200 East 16th Street

 

Arthur Paul Hess was a busy man during the late 1920s.  He was not only an architect, but a builder and developer, president of the Middleton Estates, Inc.  As the decade waned, the firm acquired the properties at 200 through 204 East 16th Street, and 157 through 165 Third Avenue.  On April 27, 1929 (just six months before the Wall Street Crash), the Evening Post announced, "The Stuyvesant Park section is to have a new apartment house." The article said the building, "with terraced roof apartments...is to go up at 200 East Sixteenth Street, overlooking St. George's Church."  It ended saying, "Middleton Estates, Inc. are the owners and Arthur Paul Hess is the architect."

The 19-story and penthouse building was completed the following year at a cost of $850,000--about $16 million in 2025 terms.  Faced in reddish-brown brick, Hess's Art Deco design featured bold, contrasting brick bands above the first through third floors, and at the 16th floor, where setbacks began.  Above the entrance, which was framed in cast stone, were two striking terra cotta faux balconies with banded, curved telescoping edges.  The front sections of the balconies were decorated with bold sangria and white panels of stylized fountains or cornstalks.

The brick bands are laid with projecting corners, creating an angular, three-dimensional effect.

Prospective tenants could choose from one- through four-room apartments.  There were also five "studio garden apartments" in the penthouse level.  The units filled with a wide variety of residents.

Among the first was Philip A. Parke, a salesman.  The 45-year-old added his name to the growing list of Depression suicides on February 11, 1932.  The New York Times said he killed himself "by jumping to the elevated tracks at Forty-seventh Street, before a Third Avenue local."

Police Detective Charles F. Kane and his family lived here at the time.  In January 1933, he read a heart wrenching story in the newspapers about the death of Anna Mortimer.  The woman's husband, John, was 60 years old and had been out of work since the previous summer.  On the night of January 18, he telephoned the Polyclinic Hospital saying that he feared Anna was having a heart attack.  According to The New York Times, the clerk "refused to send a physician out to see her."  John and Anna tried to make it on foot, but she died on the sidewalk outside the hospital.

On January 21, The New York Times reported, "Saved from a pauper's grave by the generosity of Detective Charles F. Kane, Mrs. Anna Mortimer will be buried today in Calvary Cemetery.  The funeral expenses will be paid by the detective."  Kane told reporters he did not know the couple, but was moved by the story he read in the newspapers.

Among the Kanes' neighbors in the building were journalist Dudley Siddall and his wife, Dr. Dorothy Bocker.  The couple was married in 1926.  Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1891, Siddall was on the staff of The Sun.  In addition to his journalist abilities (he had worked for newspapers in Michigan, Ohio and New York), he was educated at the Cleveland School of Art.  He was editor of The Sun's Saturday "fishing pages," and wrote the newspaper's boating guides for 1931 through 1933.

The couple was invited for Thanksgiving at the home of S. G. Stern in Grantwood, New Jersey in 1934.  What had started as a warm gathering turned tragic when Dudley Siddall suffered a fatal heart attack at the Sterns' home.

A colorful resident was 31-year-old Natalie Colby, who had a clever, if illicit, means of augmenting her income during the Depression years.  Colby (also known as Natalie Chadwick, Natalie Cohen, and Natalie Rosenbaum) was a former Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl and lived in what The Sun described as "an attractive three-room apartment."  She moved into that apartment in 1932.  Her neighbors and landlord, most likely, did not realize that she had just been released from Auburn Prison after a two year stint for burglary.

Colby would go to the race tracks and strike up conversations with well-to-do persons, "learn the addresses of these acquaintances and then rob their houses," explained The New York Sun on June 25, 1935.  Among her victims was Mrs. Simone Brooks of 400 East 57th Street.  She burglarized that apartment on March 30 and again three weeks later, making off with a total of $4,400 in "furs, jewelry and other personal property," according to The New York Times.  She was careless during the second heist and left a fingerprint on a mirror.

Natalie Colby's fingerprints were readily available.  The Sun said, "Mrs. Colby has a record of four arrests."  The newspaper reported, "From inquiries made in night clubs and among stage folk the police learned that Mrs. Colby was living at 200 East Sixteenth street."  When officers arrived at her apartment on the night of June 24, 1935, she "slammed the door in their faces."  She relented when they threatened to break down the door.

Describing Natalie Colby as "a comely young woman in a green dress," on June 26, The New York Times said that she "became the star of the daily police line-up yesterday."  Not only was Mrs. Simone Brooke there to pick her out, she identified some of the stolen property discovered in Colby's apartment.

Several of the residents of 200 East 16th Street were connected professionally with Tammany Hall.  Living here at the time of Colby's arrest were Joseph H. Morris and his wife, the former Helen McAuliff.  Since 1905 he had been a Democratic county committeeman and a member of the Tammany's Anawanda Club.  Among his close associates was Tammany Hall leader, Charles F. Murphy.  Another political ally was Joseph Hamerman, a lawyer.  He would be nominated as the Tammany candidate for Alderman from the Eighth District in October 1937.

A terrifying incident occurred here on November 28, 1935.  Abraham Simmers and his wife occupied a one-room apartment.  That afternoon Simmers's sister, Mayne Spilberg, was visiting.  As they chatted, Mrs. Simmers cleaned a dress with dry cleaning fluid.  Suddenly, at around 2:30, the fluid violently exploded.  The New York Times reported that it "forced forty other residents of the twenty-story building to the lobby.  Fire resulting from the explosion poured smoke through the building and wrecked the apartment where it started."

Firefighters quickly extinguished the fire, which was confined to the Simmers apartment.  Amazingly, while the apartment was devastated, all three of its occupants at the time survived.  They were taken to Columbus Hospital with "severe burns," according to the article.

The New York Sun journalist Gerry Fitch wrote a descriptive article about "A Polite Neighborhood" (Stuyvesant Square) on November 7, 1936.  After strolling through the "gentle English atmosphere of the place," he said, "I felt a bit of a shock upon noting the smart modernistic apartment building across the way at 200 East Sixteenth Street."  He described:

This terraced structure has chromium marquees under which stands a doorman as gorgeously uniformed as the King's guard.  With a white-gloved hand he imperiously disposed of me in the elevator that whisked me to the thirteenth floor on which was a three-room apartment available at $135 a month.  French doors open upon two terraces with east and south exposure.  An extra maid's bath and a little half-room off the kitchenette add to its individuality.

The monthly rent for the three-room apartment he described would translate to $3,000 today.

Born in 1882 and never married, Virginia Schwarte, who lived on the 13th floor, started teaching in New York City public schools in 1904.  In 1936, she taught far uptown in Public School 57 on East 115th Street.  In January 1937, she called in sick and was out that entire week.  Then she disappeared.  The New York Times said, "friends became alarmed and reported her missing to the police."  She re-emerged on March 19, saying she had gone to Boston, but offered no explanation of the trip.

Concerned about that Virginia was suffering a nervous breakdown, a friend, Dr. Agnes Smith, who lived in Newark, offered to stay with her for a few days.  Two days later, on March 21, Virginia "seemed in better spirits," said Dr. Smith.

But Virginia Schwarte was decidedly not in better spirits.  That morning Agnes Smith spoke to her from another room and got no reply.  She telephoned another teacher in the building, Mary Deming, who lived in the apartment directly below.  "Miss Deming looked out, and saw the body on an extension roof," reported The New York Times on March 22.  The 55-year-old teacher had jumped from the 13th floor window.

An interesting resident was Mrs. Elizabeth Beach, the mother of celebrated sculptor Chester Beach, and the widow of Chilion Beach, "who started the first book store in San Francisco," according to The New York Times on June 6, 1946.  Elizabeth shared the apartment with her unmarried daughter, Jean.  Elizabeth Beach's birthday celebration in their apartment the previous day had been a momentous one--her 100th.  Born in Bedford, New York in 1846, she "remembers rolling bandages at the age of 15 in New York for the Civil War fighters," said the article.  It added, "She wears no glasses and reads her newspaper without difficulty."

Another Tammany-related resident was former city official and newspaper writer William R. Peer, who lived here with his wife, Lucille and their two children, Roderick Johnson and Nancy.  Born in Brooklyn in 1906, he had been on the staff of The New York Post and the New York Daily Mirror.  On August 23, 1948, The New York Times reported that he had been named by Tammany leader Hugo E. Rogers as director of press and public relations for the New York County Democratic Committee.

In the summer of 1953, William and Lucille Peer allowed Roderick, who was 11, to go on vacation to Killawog, New York with family friends.  On July 9, Roderick and his friend, Wayne Davidson, who was also 11, went fishing off a train trestle of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad.  Suddenly, a northbound train appeared.  The boys raced to get off the bridge and the Davidson boy made it to safety.  Roderick Peer did not.  He was instantly killed when the locomotive struck him.

Three months later, on November 20, newly-elected Mayor Robert F. Wagner appointed William Peer his press secretary.  In reporting the appointment, The New York Times said, "Mr. Peer will bring to his new post long experience in political and general public relations."  

The building was converted to cooperatives in 1987.  Although the doorman no longer wears the white gloves that so impressed a journalist in 1936, the residents enjoy amenities those tenants could not have dreamed off--a "fitness room with Peloton bike" and a "recreation room with a massive TV," according to StreetEasy.

The windows have been replaced and some unsympathetic brick repairs to the upper floors done, but Arthur Paul Hess's unusual Art Deco design survives generally intact.

photographs by the author