The 1878 82 through 88 Horatio Street

 

photograph by Frank Hosticka

Developer John H. Selzam hired architect Theophilus G. Smith in 1878 to design four flat buildings at 82 through 88 Horatio Street.  Just one-and-a-half blocks from the riverfront, they would be home to working-class families, many of them newly arrived in America.  But unlike tenement buildings that would be built throughout Greenwich Village and the East Side, Smith did not encrust these flats with grotesque masks and shields and other over-the-top ornament.  He created a dignified marriage of the Anglo-Italianate and Renaissance Revival styles.

The buildings were 25- and 18-feet-wide.  The wider buildings cost Selzam $9,000 to erect and the others $8,000--$292,000 and $260,000 respectively in 2026.

Rounded arched windows and elliptically arched entrances distinguished the first floor, which sat a few steps above the sidewalk.  Above a molded band course, the upper four floors were faced in orange-red brick and trimmed in brownstone.  The second floor windows sat atop molded sills supported by decorated brackets.  Above their paneled lintels were Renaissance-inspired pediments with similar carved brackets.  The openings of the top two floors were treated with identical elements, but without the pediments.  Elaborate, individual pressed metal cornices included paneled fascias and paired scrolled corbels and brackets.

photograph by Frank Hosticka

There were four apartments per floor.  An advertisement offered "choice apartments of two, three and four rooms."  The residents ranged from laborers to those who had at least high school educations, as was reflected in their various advertisements looking for work.  Nellie J. Duke, who lived in No. 86 in January 1891, wrote, "A young girl, experienced cashier and bookkeeper, wants employment." Another tenant in the same building placed an advertisement that same month.  "A respectable young girl as chambermaid and waitress in a private family or would do plain cooking; good references."  And another resident advertised in October 1894, "Waiter; good oyster opener; 10 years' experience; married.  Coombs, 86 Horatio Street."

Among the initial residents of No. 88 was the Scholl family.  Born in Germany, John Scholl had a wife and at least two grown daughters.  The New-York Tribune reported on February 16, 1880, "He had worked at several breweries in the Ninth Ward, but his habits of intoxication had alienated him from his wife and daughters."  They had expelled him from the apartment.

Early on the morning of February 15, Patrolman Walsh was passing some piles of lumber at West and Bethune Streets, "when he noticed the body of a man dangling by a rope between two of the piles," reported the New-York Tribune.  It was John Scholl.  The article said, "It was not known by the police where he lived recently."

Also living at No. 88 that year were Louis Gluck and his wife.  Louis and his brother, Gustavus, were carvers in the Weber piano factory.  Gustavus and his wife lived on Seventh Avenue.  On the evening of December 15, 1880, Gustavus opened a box that he kept in the bedroom and noticed that $25 was missing.  (It was a substantial amount, nearly $800 in today's terms.)  His wife told him that his step-father, Justus Schilling, had stolen it.

Gustavus informed his brother and the two of them headed to Schilling's apartment on Third Street and First Avenue.  They rousted Schilling from his bed and demanded the missing money.  Schilling called Gustavus's wife a liar.  The Sun reported that Louis, "struck him on the head with some hard instrument" and Gustavus drew a pistol.  He shot Shilling in the forehead and as the wounded man rushed from the apartment, shot him again in the back.  Gustavus fled to his brother-in-law's apartment, where he was later tracked down.  Louis was arrested in his Horatio Street apartment later that night.

Ellen Sullivan and her adult son, John, occupied an apartment in 84 Horatio Street as early as 1895.  On May 1 that year, the exasperated Ellen walked into the Charles Street station house with her son and announced, "I want to have my boy committed for a month.  He's been drinking steadily for two weeks now, and, if he is sent away for a time, he will straighten up and go to work again."

The Sun reported, "The man, who plainly showed that his mother's story was true, said he was willing to be put out of the reach of temptation."  A policeman escorted the two to the Jefferson Market Court.  As they waited to be called before Justice Taintor, Ellen wept.  Finally, Taintor called her forward and asked her to swear to the complaint.  Ellen broke down, crying, "Oh, I can't, I can't do it.  Oh, Johnny, Johnny, my boy, what made you drink?"

Suddenly, as reported by The Sun, "As she stopped speaking she clutched at her left side, staggered and fell into the arms of a court attendant."  She was carried into the hall where she died.  A court officer explained to the judge that Ellen had just died "of a broken heart."  The doctor who had been called in clarified that the cause was heart disease.

In the meantime, Ellen's body "lay in the court hall for several hours, with a red handkerchief thrown over the face," said the article.  Finally a wooden box was brought in.  The body was placed in it and the lid nailed shut.  The Sun reported that it was "removed to the dead woman's home."

At the turn of the century, Bernard and Madeline Nagel occupied an apartment on the top floor of 84 Horatio Street.  Nagel was a lithographer with the Federal Lithographing Company nearby at 91-97 Horatio Street.  Early in the morning of July 13, 1901, the couple got into a heated argument.

At around 3:00 a.m., Mary Doran, who lived below the Nagels, was awakened by Madeline's cries.  She ran upstairs to find the woman standing in the doorway, "bleeding so profusely that she was frightened and ran downstairs," as reported by The New York Times.  Madeline had been shot in the chest.

After a few minutes, Mary got the courage to return and "give her a glass of water."  Madeline needed more than a drink of water, however.  At St. Vincent's Hospital, Coroner Bausch, who did not expect her to survive, took the 44-year-old woman's ante-mortem statement.  The article said police were looking for Bernard Nagel.

82 and 84 Horatio Street in 1940.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Patrick O'Connor, who worked as a longshoreman, lived with his wife Mary and their nine-year-old son at 86 Horatio Street by 1904.  Among their neighbors was Mary Callahan and following her death in September that year they attended her funeral at Calvary Cemetery.  Like Bernard Nagel, it appears that Patrick O'Connor's differences with his wife could result in violence.

Another mourner, a young man, shared a cab back to Manhattan with them.  The New York Herald reported that O'Connor, "accused the young man of being too friendly with Mrs. O'Connor."  He ousted him from the cab "and turned on his wife," said the article.  The New York Times reported, "Then came the sounds of a struggle from the interior of the cab, interspersed with the shrieks of the woman and the frightened cries of the boy."  The cabbie, Patrick O'Brien, called a policeman to help.

The officer found Mary O'Connor, "thrown into a heap in the corner, while the son had hidden under a seat," according to The New York Times.  The New York Herald added, "Mrs. O'Connor had two puffy eyes and her gown had been almost entirely torn off.  The boy was lame and sore."

Expectedly, Patrick O'Connor was arrested.  "Mary was permitted to go home and promised to come back after her husband," said The New York Times.

In 1927, all four buildings were converted to apartments by architect Ferdinand Savignano.  It was most likely at this time that a coating of stucco was applied to the first floor facade.  Two years later, despite the ongoing Depression (or because of it), on October 31, 1929 The New York Times reported that the 70 apartments were "now 95 per cent rented."

Among the early residents of the remodeled No. 82 was fledgling playwright and actor Clifford Odets, who rented an apartment in 1933.  Born in Philadelphia in July 1906, he began as an apprentice actor with the Group Theatre led by Lee Strausberg, Cheryl Crawford and Harold Clurman.  Margaret Brenman-Gibson, in her Clifford Odets, American Playwright: The Years from 1906 to 1940, describes the Horatio Street space as "a tiny, airless apartment."

Odets's parents, L. J. and Pearl Odets, had differing opinions on the accommodations.  Brenman-Gibson writes:

The first piece of furniture he moved into the dark, divided living room and bedroom was a large phonograph.  Pearl...arrived from Philadelphia bringing staples, cookies, and a pair of pongee curtains she had made to spruce up the airshaft window.  L. J. Odets scathingly assured her they made no difference whatever in this "hole in the wall."

Clifford Odets, Stage magazine December 1938

While living here, Odets wrote the one-act play Waiting for Lefty and Awake and Sing!.  The successful productions of both resulted in his becoming Group Theatre's signature playwright.  He left Horatio Street in 1935.

Pleiades Fieldgrove moved into a rear fifth-floor apartment in 86 Horatio Street in July 1956.  The New York Times said that the 26-year-old had left Brooklyn "for the glamour of Greenwich Village."  One month later, on August 31, the building superintendent found her body in the courtyard behind the building.  The medical examiner said she died of a stab wound in the chest.  The Staten Island Advance added that her violent death came "apparently at the hands of a rapist."

While police questioned Edward Peter Lamp, the 72-year-old superintendent, they noticed an unusual item in his apartment--a woman's black hatbox.  Investigation revealed that Pleiades had borrowed the hat from a friend the evening before her body was discovered.  Lamp told detectives "conflicting stories about how he had come into the possession" of the box, reported The New York Times.  Lamp was arrested as a material witness.

photograph by Frank Hosticka

Other than the stucco at the first floor and the necessary fire escapes that detract from their design, 82 through 88 Horatio Street survive remarkably intact.  Theophilus G. Smith's handsome design is exceptionally refined for tenement buildings of the time.

many thanks to reader (and resident) Frank Hosticka for suggesting this post