The 1928 Belvoir - 470 West End Avenue

 

Known for its lavish private homes in the late 19th century, West End Avenue would, instead, be lined by high-end apartment buildings before the 1930s.  In 1927, the newly formed 470 West End Avenue Corporation demolished the seven houses at the southeast corner of West End Avenue and West 83rd Street and hired architect George F. Pelham to design a 15-story apartment building on the site.

Construction, which was completed in 1928, cost the equivalent of $28.2 million in 2026.  Pelham faced his tripartite, Renaissance Revival design in sandy-colored brick.  Stone quoins and cast stone panels of swags and cartouches decorated the two-story base.  The entrance sat within a handsome, double-height frame that terminated in a broken pediment and urn.

Faux terra cotta Venetian-style balconies at the eighth and fourteenth floors relieved the otherwise unembellished mid- and top sections.  Rather than a parapet, Pelham capped the brick cornice with brick piers connected with iron railings.

The building filled with a variety of well-to-do residents.  Among the first were Louis W. Herman and his wife, Hortense; orchestra leader Eddie Elkins; and printing executive John L. Schoenfeld.

Born in 1897, violinist Eddie Elkins was the leader of the 10-piece Knickerbocker Grill Orchestra.  He and his jazz band made several dance records.  On December 10, 1929, they were at the Manhattan Studios on Park Avenue and 134th Street where they were to be part of a scene in the motion picture The Black and White Review.  A fire broke out and a disaster reminiscent of the Triangle Shirtwaist blaze followed.  A sub-headline in The Evening Post read, "Actors Killed In Jam At Exit...100 Caught in Flaming 2-Story Brick Building Used to Make Sound Pictures."

Violinist and orchestra leader Eddie Elkins (original source unknown)

A sub-headline in The Staten Island Advance read: "Girls in Blazing Ballet Dresses Leap to Death from Upper Windows." 

Eddie Elkins survived and was interviewed by The Evening Post in his apartment that evening.  He told the reporter that, "a slight crackling sound behind a pile of scenery first made him think something might be amiss.  When he stepped around the obstacle, a heavy drapery was blazing furiously and while he looked, the flames leaped to the rafters of the studio."

Elkins shouted an alarm toward the dressing rooms, but many of the performers thought he was calling them to the stage and finished their costuming.  Elkins ran up the stairs "for the $1,000 violin he had left in his quarters," recounted the article.  He grabbed it, leaving behind his bow, valued at $100.  In rescuing the instrument, he suffered "burns about the body."  In the end, 10 persons lost their lives and 20 were injured.

Louis W. Herman was a "registered stock specialist," as described by The New York Times.  He and Hortense escaped the Manhattan winter in 1930 by going to Palm Beach, Florida.  On February 26, thieves broke into their suite in the Ambassador Hotel.  Part of an underworld gang involved in burglaries, murder and counterfeiting, they escaped with $40,000 in Hortense's jewelry (about $771,000 today).  

Three months later, on May 28, The Sun ran the headline: "Gem Band Linked To Murder; Million In Bad Money Seized."  New York detectives had raided a hotel room, arrested the men, and seized "$300,000 in jewelry," according to the article.  Possible victims were contacted and The Sun reported, "Mrs. L. W. Herman of 470 West End avenue came in her limousine to Police Headquarters, where a dazzling array of jewels...is laid in a strong guarded room for inspection."  Hortense identified 11 of the 27 pieces.

Terra cotta frames pretend to be Venetian balconies.

The Hermans' wealth was reflected the following year when Louis protested his taxes.  On December 15, 1931, The New York Times reported, "An income tax refund of $42,500 for the year 1919 has been awarded to Louis W. Herman of New York as a result of a Federal court decision."  Herman's rebate would equal just under $900,000 today.

Other residents in the 1930s included Max Greenberg, president of the Paramount Hotel Corporation; Herman Kushner, president of the Luckey Style Dress Corp.; Frank Margulies; and Joseph and Bertha Bulova.  

Joseph Bulova was born in 1851 in a village near Prague, Czechoslovakia.  As a boy, he was apprenticed to a jeweler and in 1869, as an 18-year-old, he immigrated to New York City "with fifty cents," according to family lore.  He eventually established a jewelry store on Maiden Lane.  The shop developed into the massive Bulova Watch Company.  By the 1930s, the firm had factories in Queens, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Switzerland.

Joseph Bulova (original source unknown)

Bulova took an active part in the business until August 1935, when he fell ill.  He died in his apartment on November 18 at the age of 84.

Frank Margulies was born in 1898 and start out as a featherweight prize fighter under the name of Frankie Brown.  He fought in the ring until 1918.  By the time he moved into 470 West End Avenue, he was the "the shakedown man" for "an extortion ring run by Broadway racketeers," according to The New York Evening Post in 1931.  On November 24 that year, he was arrested and held "in $10,000 bail for a hearing December 1," as reported by The New York Evening Post.

Four victims of the mob had bravely agreed to testify against him.  At the time of the arrest, they were being guarded by detectives.  One of the victims, Alexander A. Rapport, reported that Margulies had come to his office to collect $2,000 in "protection."  Margulies told him, "Unless you kick in, your body will be found in the Hudson.  We've got the police on our pay roll."  Rapport told detectives that Margulies pulled out a knife and "remarked that he usually cut up persons who refused to contribute."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

John L. Schoenfeld and his family were still living in 470 West End Avenue in May 1934 when he was appointed a member of the State Commission of Corrections.  In reporting on the appointment, The New York Sun remarked that the 51-year-old "is a close friend of Warden Lewis E. Laws of Sing Sing and is a life member of the American prison Association and a member of the League to Abolish Capital Punishment."

In the early 1960s, the FBI began collection information on writer and activist James Baldwin.  The bureau was not concerned about his brilliant novels, of course, but with his activism within the civil rights movement.  He took part in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and in the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.  FBI agents tracked him down to 470 West End Avenue in 1963.  His extensive file at the Federal Bureau of Investigation included the notations:

On December 10, 1963, [redacted] Security Supervisor, New York Telephone Company, New York City, advised that JAMES BALDWIN resides in Apartment 6A, at 470 West End Avenue, New York City, and has unlisted telephone number TA 7-7773.

On December 10, 1963 [redacted] 470 West End Avenue, New York City, advised that the subject has resided in Apartment 6A at that address for the past three months.

In 1965, Baldwin's extended family purchased the house-turned-apartments at 137 West 71st Street.  He moved into an apartment in that building, where he died on December 1, 1987.

In 1970, the building, now known as The Belvoir, was converted into a cooperative.  Often misattributed as being the work of Emery Roth, the exterior of George F. Pelham's reserved Italian Renaissance Revival style building is nearly unchanged in nearly a century.  

photographs by the author