The August O. Hoddick's 1908 27-29 East 30th Street

 

photograph by Carole Teller

Nearly all the well-to-do residents of Rose Hill had moved northward by the turn of the last century, and office buildings and hotels replaced their elegant private homes.  On May 4, 1907, architect August O. Hoddick filed plans for a seven-story "brick and stone apartment hotel" to be erected at 27 and 29 East 30th Street.  The building would cost developer J. C. Howard $60,000 to erect, or about $2 million in 2026 terms.  On June 1, the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide commented, "Two buildings will be demolished."

Completed the following year, Hoddick's design was a marriage of styles.  A blend of Renaissance Revival and Beaux Arts, it was splashed with French classic elements.  The ground floor, with its two yawning arches and heavy, undressed stone, was drawn from the waning Romanesque Revival style.  Above it were five stories faced in red brick and terra cotta.  Atop a prominent cornice, two French classic dormers pierced the slate shingled mansard.  

J. C. Howard owned the abutting Queen Anne-style hotel at the corner of Madison Avenue, which opened in 1881.  Hoddick visually connected the buildings by extending bandcourses at the first and second floors (including a elaborate terra cotta Queen Anne-style course), and borrowing the design of the brick-stepped intermediate cornice of 121 Madison Avenue for the spandrel below the fourth floor windows.

Erected two decades apart, the two buildings shared elements.  photograph by Carole Teller

The building apparently served as an annex to 121 Madison Avenue for two decades.  Then, on August 28, 1920, the New York Herald reported that both structures "will be extensively altered into stores, offices and lofts."  The renovations were completed in August 1921.  The former lobby now held two stores and the upper floors held showrooms and offices.

The building filled mostly with garment firms.  Among the first were P. Zeller, which leased the fifth floor; dressmakers Swaybill & Miller; the Spiegel Dress Company; and dress manufacturer Maurice Klapper.  The stores were leased to Abrahamowitz & Jacoby and Irving Friedman.

An unexpected tenant arrived the following year.  On November 30, 1922, the New-York Tribune reported that "Miss Louella Wright...will conduct a luncheon club for the National Association of Book Publishers."

Louella Wright's luncheon club would be an anomaly within the tenant list.  Other firms to move in over the next few years were the Noble Dress Company and Morris Goodman, which dealt in fabrics.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

The conversion to offices and showrooms, however, failed.  In 1928, George and Edward Blum renovated the building, returning it to an apartment hotel.  Above the ground floor stores were "non-housekeeping apartments."  (The term meant that the suites did not include kitchens.)

An advertisement in The New York Sun described the two- and three-room suites in the "Just Completed Apartment Hotel" as having "very large rooms, fireplace, tiled baths, high ceilings, etc."

One of the commercial spaces became home to Calvin H. Goddard's fledgling Bureau of Forensic Ballistics.  An expert in firearms, he was a pioneer in the microscopic comparison of fired bullets and cartridge cases.  His services had been used in the Sacco and Vanzetti case in 1927.

On June 14, 1929, The New York Times reported that Goddard, "probably will be invited to head a criminal detection laboratory affiliated with Northwestern University."  The article said, "At his office at 27 East Thirtieth Street Major Goddard yesterday was reported out of town.  He recently has been in Chicago working on some of the gang murders."  Those "gang murders" are known today as the Valentine's Day Massacre.

Once shingled in slate, the mansard is sheathed with metal today.  photograph by Carole Teller.

In the meantime, the apartments were home to financially comfortable professionals.  On April 8, 1937, for instance, The New York Sun reported, "Tomorrow is to bring a Sunday cocktail party by Mr. and Mrs. Pierson Mapes at their residence, 27 East Thirtieth street, in honor of Mrs. Mape's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Cortlandt Godwin."  Mapes was president of the National Broadcasting Company and his wife, was the former Priscilla Godwin. 

On February 6, 1953, The New York Times reported that 112 Madison Avenue and 27-29 East 30th Street had been purchased by real estate operators Myron and Ira Hechler.  The article noted, "The structures, formerly a hotel, were renovated in 1940 by the Seamen's Bank for Savings."

The building continued to attract middle-class residents.  Living here by the early 1960s was psychologist and graphologist Clara Goldzieher Roman.  Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1882, she came to the United States in 1947, two years after her husband, businessman Aurel Roman, was murdered by the Nazis.

From 1932 until her leaving Hungary, Roman served as a handwriting expert within the Hungarian Criminal Courts.  The author of Handwriting, A Key to Personality, she joined the faculty of the New School in 1948.  Starting in 1951, she served as a research consultant to the Treatment Clinic of the Manhattan Children's Court.  Clara Goldzieher Roman traveled to Austria in 1962.  She died there on September 7 at the age of 80.

In 2003, Torino, an Italian restaurant opened in the ground floor.  It was followed by The Crooked Knife in 2007.

photograph by Carole Teller

At some point the ground floor stonework was painted black, and the red brick given a coat of putty-colored paint.  Otherwise, little has has changed externally to August O. Hoddick's 1908 design.

many thanks to artist Carole Teller for suggesting this post