Emery Roth's 1930 300 West 23rd Street

 

In 1750, Captain Thomas Clarke and his wife Mary purchased 94 acres of land north of the city as the site of their country estate, Chelsea.  The property passed to the Clarkes' grandson, Clement Clarke Moore, who began selling and renting building plots around 1818.  In 1845, he rented the southwest corner of Eighth Avenue and 23rd Street for 21 years at a yearly rental of $560.  The 21-year leases continued and in 1908, the Moore Estate leased the corner at $9,350 per year.  When that term expired on April 30, 1929, it signaled the end of the decades-long tradition of leasing the corner.  The Moore Estate sold the property to the newly formed 8th Av. & 23d St. Corporation.

James P. Eadie, who negotiated the sale, told The New York Times that the buyers would erect "a twenty-story apartment house to cost about $1,250,000."  The syndicate hired one of the best-known apartment building architects of the time, Emery Roth.  Construction was completed in 1930.  Roth had designed a monolithic, Art Deco-style structure that dwarfed the buildings in the neighborhood.  Faced in beige brick, Roth accentuated the six-bay-wide central midsection by filling the spandrels on both elevations with projecting, vertically stacked brick.  The sections rose three stories above the setbacks of the upper portion and terminated in Art Deco-style brick ornaments.  An impressive water tower housing dominated the penthouse level and gave the upper section an Oz-like atmosphere.

P. L. Sperr captured this image on December 26, 1936.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

Apartments contained one to three rooms, "all of which are equipped for full housekeeping," according to the 1930 realtors' brochure.  "Full housekeeping" meant that each apartment had a kitchen.  The brochure boasted that they were "equipped with modern range, silent refrigerators and all-metal cupboards and ideally planned for quick and labor-saving cooking."  The building was outfitted with the last word in technology: a radio connection.  "In addition to the usual outlets for lamps, and other electric service, every apartment is provided with an outlet which connects directly with your aerial on the roof," boasted the brochure.

The 1930 brochure depicted the lobby saying, "The Main Entrance is a spacious hall, tastefully furnished.  Here, there is always a man in attendance to announce your visitors, to accept mail and packages for you and to help promote your comfort.  (copyright expired)

The apartments filled with middle-class professionals, like Dr. Edward Pravener, an initial tenant.  Prohibition and the Great Depression made the 1930s a period of gangsters, speakeasies, and crime.  Dr. Edward Pravener walked innocently into the nearby London Chemists drugstore just after midnight on February 7, 1932 and became an unwitting witness of a Hollywood-style rubout.

Gangster bootlegger and murderer Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll lived in The Broadmoor, across 23rd Street from No. 300.  He came into the pharmacy and entered a phonebooth.  The next morning,  The Bristol [Virginia] News Bulletin began an article saying, "Young Vincent Coll who was poison with a pistol and most feared of the Gotham 'guns,' got his load of lead in a telephone booth at 12:45 a.m. today.  A machine gunner chopped him down cooly [sic] and deliberately in a West 23rd Street drugstore."

Dr. Pravaner, the other two customers and the two clerks, were interrogated by detectives.  They all said, "that the slayer had carried out his deadly program as coolly and efficiently as if it had been carefully rehearsed," reported by The New York Times.  

The 1930 Real Estate Brochure depicted a typical floorplan.  (copyright expired)

Another initial resident was William Rhodes, a newspaper photographer.  In December 1934, he sublet his second-floor apartment to a young couple, Leslie Drew and his wife, the former Alice Potts.  Drew was a salesman for a publishing firm and he was suffering a serious condition that required surgery.  The couple, however, did not have the money to pay for the procedure.

At around noon on February 19, 1935, employees of the building smell gas and called the Consolidated Gas Company to find the leak.  The fumes were strongest on the lower floors, so the building's superintendent, Frank Masefield, took the two gas company men to the basement.  At 2:00, there was a massive explosion.  "As tenants ran out excitedly, the three went to the inner court," said The New York Times, "They saw that the windows of Apartment 2C had been blown out."

On the apartment door, Alice Drew had posted a note for her husband:

Do not enter alone, I beg of you, especially with a lighted cigarette.  I am more afraid of life than death.  You frightened me in the theatre last evening, you looked so sick.  If you did not have my responsibility you could afford to get well.  I am an expensive luxury.  Lovingly, Alice

The three men pushed their way into the apartment and found the 32-year-old Alice "dead in the middle of a fire which was burning her clothes and the furniture," said The New York Times.  "Six jets on the gas range were turned on."  (Hopefully William Rhodes had insisted on a security deposit.)

Among the other residents at the time of the tragedy were Joseph F. Faulhaber and his wife, the former Eva Sarfaty.  Born in Cleveland, Joseph studied at the Case School of Applied Science and from 1910 to 1917 was associated with the Commercial and Industrial Corporation of America, described as "business doctors."  He was now the president of the Finance and Development Corporation and of the Quick Alarm Fire Detector Corporation.

Attorney Thomas F. Noonan, who lived here as early as 1936, was a widower.  Born in 1877, he was a life-long Chelsea resident. He graduated from St. Francis Xavier College in 1897 and received his M. A. degree from the same institution the next year.  He received his law degree from Columbia Law School in 1900, and was elected a justice of the Municipal Court in 1909.

On the afternoon of December 20, 1936, Noonan was presiding at a trial when a court officer whispered to him that Governor Herbert H. Lehman was on the telephone.  Noonan went to his chambers "and Governor Lehman informed him by telephone that he had been appointed a Supreme Court Justice," reported The New York Times.

In stark contrast to the respected jurist was Allan Coulter.  The 20-year-old moved in following his discharge from the U.S. Navy in December 1945.  He had been a radio technician on the aircraft carrier Lexington, during which time he acquired technical skills.  He used them to form a teenaged safe-cracking gang.  Two of his cohorts were 16 years old and the other was 17.  

Coulter's scheme utilized two-way radios that warned those on the inside of a building of approaching police.  Within three months, the youthful gang committed "seventy-five burglaries, including forty-two safe 'jobs,'" reported The New York Times on May 8, 1946.  It was the group's lavish spending that tipped off detectives.  The article said they squandered  the "$15,000 look on girls, night clubs and parties on a grand scale."

They were arrested in February 1946.  Investigators searched Coulter's apartment here and found the walkie-talkie sets that he had "improved," and burglar tools.  "There was also a device on which the 'master mind' was at work: an infra-red ray gadget that would have furnished the gang 'invisible' light for their burglaries."  Coulter was convicted on a lesser charge of "having burglar's tools in his possession."

Somewhat surprisingly, Allan Coulter was "put on probation until 1957," reported The New York Times.  Three years later, in May 1949, he and four other men were arrested "with a 'walkie-talkie' device, after an alleged attempt to break into the safes of the New York Giants Baseball Club and the Personal Finance Company," reported The New York Times.  On May 6, a "laboratory of crime" was discovered in Coulter's apartment.  The Safe and Loft Squad discovered "between $35,000 and $40,000 worth of electrical equipment, radar devices, chemicals and books."  District Attorney Paul F. Reilly described Coulter as "the brains of the outfit," saying he had a "scientific mind" and was "a radar expert."  Coulter was convicted and sentenced to seven-to-fourteen years in prison.

A rendering of the building appeared on the cover of the 1930 realtor brochure. (copyright expired)

Gangster Joseph "Socks" Lanza lived here starting in 1953.  He was described by The New York Times as the "racketeer-czar of the Fulton Fish Market."  Born in 1900, he founded the Fulton Market Watchmen and Patrol Association at the age of 20.  His thugs charged fishermen, ship owners, peddlers and trucking companies "union license fees" and "protection" money.  In the 1920s, Lanza's organization was taking in the equivalent of $900,000 in 2026.

Lanza was sentenced to prison for labor extortion in 1943.  When he was released on parole in 1953, he moved into 300 West 23rd Street.  At 10:30 on the evening of February 5, 1957, Lanza was arrested in his apartment.  He was charged with violating his parole "by allegedly associating with gamblers and a woman believed to have been involved in the narcotics traffic and spending much more than he earned as a clerk in a hardware store," explained The New York Times.  The well-connected mobster, however, was soon back home.

Commissioner James R. Stone resigned under fire in April 1957 after he dismissed the parole violations against Lanza.  Governor W. Averell Harriman demanded an investigation to find out "why Lanza, a convicted extortionist and formerly a power in Tammany politics on the Lower East Side," had been released.  Joseph Lanza was returned to prison until 1960.  He died from cancer on October 10, 1968.

Among Lanza's neighbors in the building were Charles H. Farrell, his wife Mary, and son John H.  Charles Farrell was born in 1894 and served in the U.S. Army in World War I.  He became a court clerk assigned to the Chief Magistrate's Office in 1925, and was the Democratic leader of the Third Assembly District South.  John H. Farrell followed his father's political bent.  On February 14, 1957 he was elected to the State Senate.

Unmarried Elizabeth Thomson moved into 300 West 23rd Street in 1944.  The 96-year-old was still living here in December 1983 when she fell ill and temporarily moved in with her niece, Elizabeth DeKovessey in Englewood, New Jersey.  While she was gone, the building began the conversion to cooperatives.  Although she had continued to pay her rent, in July 1984, Elizabeth Thomson received an eviction notice.

A spokesman for the property owner told The New York Times, "We don't want to play the part of the heavy here, but no one bothered to contact us that Miss Thomson would be returning."  Elizabeth DeKovessey refuted that assertion, saying they had told the landlord she would return, "but chose to press the eviction since reissue of the apartment as a cooperative would command a higher price."  It appears that the negative publicity caused the management to change its mind and Elizabeth Thomson's eviction was rescinded.

Emery Roth's hulking Art Deco structure remains a prominent landmark on the intersection of Eighth Avenue and 23rd Street.

photographs by the author