The Berkshire Apartments - 500 Madison Avenue

 

  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In 1880, Edward Cabot Clark embarked on a risky endeavor--the erection of the first-class apartment house on Central Park West that he would call The Dakota.  His challenge was convincing potential residents that a multi-family building--considered at the time middle-class at best--could be appropriate to wealthy families.  His solution was to provide apartments that were equal to upscale private homes.

The following year, eight millionaires formed the Berkshire Apartment Association to erect another high-end apartment building, The Berkshire.  Among the shareholders were Alexander Guild; Fletcher Harper, of publishing firm Harper Brothers; and Edward M. Shepard, of the furniture company Stickney & Shepard.  Carpentry and Building explained in September 1881, that it would be a co-operative and said, "It is expected that each of these shareholders will occupy one of the apartments in the Berkshire when the building is completed, and this apartment will be his property permanently."  The other apartments, said the article, "are to be rented out."

The syndicate hired German-born architect Carl Pfeiffer to design the building.  The nine-story structure was completed in 1883.  Pfeiffer's tripartite, Queen Anne-style design sat upon a two-story granite base.  The midsection was faced in "Croton pressed brick, with stone, terra cotta, and molded brick ornamentation," according to Carpentry and Building.  It featured picturesque, paneled bays with curved sides.  The top section harkened to 17th century England or Germany with half-timbering, gables and prominent chimneys.  The flat roof was paved with tiles and "hanging gardens of flowers in ornamented boxes" lined the edges.  Carpentry and Building said that from this "lofty promenade," residents could enjoy views of "Long Island, Long Island Sound, and the Palisades of the Hudson."

American Architect & Building News, August 3, 1883 (copyright expired)

The main entrance on Madison Avenue was accessed above a short, doglegged stoop.  Servants and tradespeople used an entrance in the courtyard at the rear.  

Complex Queen Anne-style upper panes included stained glass inserts.  American Architect & Building News, December 22, 1888 (copyright expired)

The Berkshire held 17 apartments, two each per floor through the seventh, and three on the eighth.  Each resident also had a second servant's room and a trunk room on the ninth floor.  Carpentry and Building explained, "Each of these apartments will consist of a library, a dining room, a parlor, a kitchen, a bath-room, a laundry, a servants' room, abundance of closet room, and four bedrooms."

In the lobby was a marble staircase with "railings of colored marble," according to The American Architect and Building News on August 4, 1883, and two elevators--one for the residents and the other for servants.  The gas fixtures in the apartments were designed to be easily converted to electricity in the future.  The article said, "Every convenience known to modern improvement will be introduced in the house, which is intended to rival the Paris palais in elegance and comfort."

The basement level was outfitted for the janitor's apartment and rental offices for physicians.  The owners of the Berkshire assured that there would be no offensive trashcans and odors.  In the cellar was "an apparatus for cremating the refuse of the kitchen," said Carpentry and Building, which added, "No slop-barrels are to disfigure the sidewalk in front of the Berkshire.  The refuse will all be dried by steam and then burned."

A typical floorplan, with two apartments per floor--left and right.  The American Architect and Building News, January 17, 1891 (copyright expired)

Elevators in the 1880s, of course, did not have the safety measures we take for granted today.  Many of them resembled ornate birdcages, their openwork structures presenting dangers to passengers wearing Victorian garments.  On November 18, 1887, Winifred Egan visited a friend at the Berkshire.  She never made it to the apartment.  The Sun reported that she died from injuries resulting, "by having her dress caught in passing one of the floors while in the elevator."  On January 20, 1888, a coroner's jury, "censured the proprietors of the house for employing an incompetent elevator boy."

Carl Pfeiffer's Queen Anne design carried into the interior, as well.  American Architect & Building News, August 4, 1883 (copyright expired)

An early resident of the Berkshire was millionaire William Marsh Rice and his wife, the former Julia Elizabeth Baldwin, who went by her middle name.  Elizabeth was Rice's second wife, the first having died.  (Interestingly, Elizabeth's sister was the wife of William's brother, Frederick Rice.)

William Marsh Rice, from the collection of Rice University

Born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1816, Rice's Horatio Alger-type story began as a grocery store clerk.  By 1860 he was reportedly the wealthiest man in Houston, Texas, the owner or part-owner of real estate holdings, lumber firms, railroads, and cotton concerns.  He and Elizabeth moved to New York in 1882.  Their 160-acre country estate was in Dunellen, New Jersey.

According to historian J. T. McCants in his 1955 article, "85 Years of Capitalism: The Story of William M. Rice," the Rices' marriage "was stormy" by the 1890s.  According to McCants, around 1892, Elizabeth "consulted an attorney, A. G. Allen, about a divorce."  She would never obtain that divorce.  A common method of removing a bothersome family member at the time was to have them committed.   McCants said Elizabeth, "died in Waukesha, Wisconsin on 24 July 1896 hopelessly insane."

At the time of Elizabeth's death, Rice's estate was estimated at "about four million dollars," according to McCants.  (The figure would translate to about $150 million in 2025.)  His will, executed in 1891, directed that his massive fortune should be used to found the William M. Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Science and Art in Houston, Texas.  

Rice's valet, Charles F. Jones, had been with him since his Texas years.  The cherished servant discovered the multimillionaire dead in his bed on September 23, 1900.  The death certificate declared his demise the result of "old age and extreme nervousness."  But three days later, The New York Times revealed the first hint that officials were suspicious in reporting, "His body was to have been cremated yesterday morning, but instead after funeral services had been held at the house...it was taken to the Morgue and an autopsy was performed."

American Architect & Building News published this depiction of a Berkshire parlor in August 4, 1833 (copyright expired)

The autopsy revealed that Rice "died of arsenical and mercurial poisoning," reported The Evening World on October 27.  The case had proceeded rapidly and the article disclosed that Charles F. Jones, the trusted valet, and Albert T. Patrick, Elizabeth Rice's former lawyer, had been arrested for murder.

The trial, which became one of the most sensational for decades, revealed that Patrick had forged a new will that left a large portion to himself, and had persuaded Jones to assist in the murder.  On June 9, 1905, The Evening World ran a banner, all-caps headline, "PATRICK TO DIE IN THE CHAIR."  (Instead, however, in 1906 his sentence was commuted by Governor Frank Higgins and in 1912 he received a full pardon from Governor John A. Dix.  Charles F. Jones was not charged.)

William Marsh Rice's fortune, as he intended, was used to found the William Marsh Rice Institute, known today as Rice University.

A ground-floor apartment was advertised for rent in October 1904.  The advertisement described, "parlor, library, dining room, 3 family bedrooms, 3 servants' bedrooms, kitchen, etc.,"  The rent was $4,500 per year--a significant $13,250 per month in 2025 terms.

Among the well-heeled residents of the Berkshire at the time was stockbroker Franklin William Gilley.  Born in 1840, he was elected to the Stock Exchange in 1864.  Gilley was a member of F. W. Gilley, Jr. & Co. and had been treasurer of the New York Stock Exchange since 1895.

By the second decade of the 20th century, many of the mansions in the Madison Avenue neighborhood had been razed for commercial buildings.  The Berkshire was now an architectural anachronism.  On August 17, 1913, The Sun mentioned that "the apartment house known as the Berkshire, at 500 Madison avenue...is now being altered and modernized."  And, indeed, it was.  The renovations stripped the Berkshire of its charming Queen Anne personality.  Without the oriels, gables and half-timbering, it looked as it had been erected a year earlier.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

For about a decade, however, the building continued to be home to wealthy families.  Their names routinely appeared in the society pages that reported on their travels, debutante entertainments, dinner parties and weddings.  Then in 1925 the Berkshire was converted to an upscale residential hotel.

An advertisement in Town & Country on November 1, 1926 said, "to each and every heckled, non-plussed householder--The Berkshire will prove a revelation."  The ad continued, 

Never, does the cook "take a day off"...Never, does Basil, the butler, decide to locate in Chicago to be near his aunt...Never is it necessary to dismiss Marie for impertinence...Never, in fact, do any of those things that heckle and non-plus householders occur...An Arcadian town-house--The Berkshire.

The suites, "as large or small as you wish," were available either unfurnished or furnished.  The furnished apartments had been decorated by B. Altman & Co.  The ad stressed, "And everything--maid and valet service; electric light and refrigeration; meal service in your own rooms, is included in your rental!"

The Berkshire was remodeled to a transient hotel in 1953, and today is known as the Omni Berkshire Hotel.

The Lost Church of the Messiah - Park Avenue and 34th Street

The church sat sideways on Park Avenue, opening on to 34th Street.  A trolley car emerges from the Park Avenue tunnel around 1890 below a neighborhood still lined with mansions.  photograph by Langill & Bodfish, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYW4KOQ2P&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=623

When a meeting of the vestrymen of the first Society of the Unitarian Church on March 19, 1825 resulted in a decision to build at new church, the $6,000 needed to buy three building lots was only one of the congregation’s problems.   Manhattan’s social and political leaders were mostly Episcopalian and their religious tolerance was slim.

Decades later, on March 15, 1875, The New York Times would remember “The disfavor in which Unitarianism was held at the commencement of the century, a disfavor which did not desert it until the last generation, and traces of which are not wanting even at the present day, was a heavy obstacle in the path of the early Unitarian societies.”

The Second Congregational Church in New York, which would become better known as the Church of the Messiah, endured; moving twice before finding a permanent home.  The first church, a Greek Revival structure at Mercer and Prince Streets, was completed in 1825 and burned a few years later.  The congregation moved to 728-730 Broadway in 1839; but as the neighborhood changed from an upscale residential area to one of entertainment and commerce, the church relocated once more.

In 1866 the trustees commissioned German-born architect Carl Pfeiffer to design a new structure on Park Avenue at the northwest corner of 34^th Street.  The 30-year old Pfeiffer had been in New York only two years, having lived in the West for several years.   His Church of the Messiah would draw attention.

On November 3, 1866 the cornerstone was laid “with appropriate ceremonies,” according to The New York Times.  Within the stone were a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, a piece of the Trans-Atlantic cable, coins, medals and photographs, copies of New York newspapers and a brass plate inscribed with a brief history of the church.

The Times announced that “The architecture will be of the style known as the German Round Gothic or Rhenish, which was much in vogue during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.”  The newspaper noted “The English Cathedrals of Peterboro, Norwich, Chichester and Durham assimilate to this style.”

The Times also commented on the site, disagreeing with some who considered it to be rather far uptown.  “The location for the new church is one of the finest in the City, and if the plans are fully carried out the edifice will be one of the ornaments of the metropolis.”

The Murray Hill area was seeing the continued construction of lavish mansions as the city’s wealthy inched uptown.  The building was completed in April 1868 at a cost of $100,000—in the neighborhood of $2.5 million in 2015.  As Pfeiffer had promised reporters, it was generally Romanesque with splashes of Gothic Revival in the buttresses and spiky finials, along with modern touches like mansard roofs.   The blend of styles prompt some modern historians to tag it Victorian Romanesque.

The sanctuary could seat 1,294 worshipers.  Three hundred, sixty-six of those were in the galleries which were supported on brackets which did away with sight-blocking columns.  The entrance, which faced 34^th Street, was entered through a complex stone porch, over which was a 14-foot rose window.

sketch from Munsey's Magazine, March 1893 (copyright expired)

In reporting on the consecration services, which took place during a rainstorm on April 2, The Times noted “The church, for the first time lighted up, was very imposing in appearance.  Long rows of gas jets extended underneath the arched roof the entire length of the church on either side, flooding the whole interior with light mellowed by its distance.”

Critics, at first, praised the brick and stone structure.  Appleton’s Hand-book of American Travel called it “a little gem as a piece of architecture,” and the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide deemed it a “handsome Byzantine edifice.”  As tastes and architectural fashions changed, so would opinions on Pfeiffer’s design.

But in the meantime the Rev. George H. Hepworth took the pulpit as permanent pastor on the first Sunday in October 1869.  The views of the Unitarian Church had caused unease among traditional New York worshipers for decades; and Hepworth would contribute with his unexpected opinions.

While other priests and ministers railed against the theater, card playing, and non-industrious frivolity; Hepworth preached about “Amusements” in his sermon on March 19, 1871.  Citing Proverbs, he started out “A merry heart doeth good as a medicine.”  Before getting into the subject, however, he cautioned his congregation that “he might say some things which would not entirely accord with the preconceived notions of many, or the teachings of the pulpit during the twenty years.”

The pastor lamented the American devotion to work.  “The life of a merchant is as near like a horse in a treadmill as can be, and the result is that he is prematurely old…Americans are the most serious-looking and serious-acting people in the world…What Americans need is more amusement, innocent, healthful amusement.”

While Hepworth condemned some pursuits—like billiard parlors and gambling—he scoffed at other clergy’s obsession with harmless fun.  Regarding the theater, he said he “would say if their consciences told them it did them harm, then let none go, but if they felt otherwise, let them enjoy it, and seek to elevate its tone.”  He said he would never prevent his own children from playing a game of cards at home, or from dancing.  “To do either with respectable people could not injure them.”

Hepworth suggested that if he could convince some of the old men in the congregation to play a game of baseball with him, “he would add ten years to their life.”

The Rev. George H. Hepworth’s unorthodox and somewhat shocking views would set the standard for preachers at the Church of the Messiah for decades to come.  But they would also result in his removal from the church.

Hepworth eventually came to the realization that his personal views on religion did not align well with the concepts of the Unitarian Church.  On Friday, December 29, 1871 he sent a letter of resignation to John Babcock, President of the Trustees, explaining that he had become “irreconciled to many of the methods and tenets of Unitarianism.”

Instead of an acceptance of his resignation, Hepworth received a letter the following day telling him he was summarily fired.  Babcock added that since a replacement preacher could not be found in one day, that he would appreciate Hepworth's officiating at services for which he would be paid for his trouble.

The New York Times reported “This letter Mr. Hepworth declined undignified, and considered himself aggrieved at the treatment he received.”

A maelstrom of gossip, scandal and upheaval swept through the congregation and on Sunday the church was packed with members who expected a scene.  And they got what they came for.  The Times summed it up saying “A scene of an unusual character was expected, and the anticipation was fully realized.”

As women wept in their pews, Rev. Hepworth did not deliver a sermon as such, but told the congregation why he had decided to resign and about the letter from Babcock.  When he got to the part about being paid for his services that day, the members were shocked.  It “was censured as an unmerited insult,” said the newspaper.

At one point John Babcock rose from his seat and declared his personal friendship for Hepworth.  “He had loved and visited and served him, and did all in his power to gain his sympathy, love and affection,” the newspaper related.  He suggested that the minister “wanted possession of the church for the purpose of introducing orthodoxies into it.”  The congregation replied with loud hisses.

It would be seven years before the church had another long-term pastor in the form of Rev. Robert Collyer.  The minister was located in Chicago, where he had rebuilt his Unity Church after it burned in the 1871 Chicago Fire.  Rumors in June 1879 hinted that he may consider coming to New York despite his ties to Chicago, due of his wife’s delicate health.

The personable minster was familiarly called the Blacksmith Preacher.  Munsey’s Magazine, in March 1893, explained.  “Mr. Collyer’s career has been as striking as is his personality.  He was the son of a country blacksmith in the north of England, whose death forced him to go to work for a living when he was only eight years old.  First six years he toiled in a Yorkshire linen mill; then he was apprenticed at his father’s trade, and grew to manhood as a journeyman blacksmith.”

He came to the United States at the age of 27, working as a blacksmith at Shoemakerstown, near Philadelphia.  But the call to the ministry led him to preach as the local Methodist minister.  Munsey’s wrote “Then in 1859 he was charged with heresy, and the Conference refused to renew his license.  He had abandoned the doctrine of the Trinity.”  Perhaps even without knowing it, he had embraced Unitarianism, which holds that God exists in one person and not three.

The joy of the congregation of the Church of the Messiah over Collyer’s acceptance of the position was doubled by its emergence from debt that same year.  Donations finally erased the $125,000 the church had owed since the building’s completion more than ten years earlier. 

Rev. Robert Collyer -- Munsey's Magazine, March 1893 (copyright expired)

Somewhat surprisingly, when Robert Collyer preached his first sermon in October 1879 a writer from the Record and Guide was in the congregation.  He approved of the sermon and of the minister; but panned the structure.

The journalist said Collyer “is a man of fine presence, and has a charming manner, and will doubtless prove popular and useful in the sect to which he belongs.  As a trade journal, we have nothing to do with religion or sects, and only refer to the commencement of Mr. Collier’s [sic] ministry in this city, to point out some grave defects in our prevailing church architecture.”

The structure that the Record and Guide had earlier deemed “handsome” was now a “mistake.”  The anonymous writer used the Church of the Messiah as an example of American ecclesiastical architecture based on “religions conceptions which have come down to us from an idolatrous age.”

He said the spires were relics of “phallic worship” and that the configuration of churches were based on Greek antecedents—“not designed for speaking.  The great oblong temples were intended for sacrifice.”  His scathing critique continued saying that the Church of the Messiah “is a feeble imitation of an old heathen temple, and Mr. Collier’s [sic] genial, kindly, humbleness and pathetic utterances seems strangely out of place in a temple designed originally for the worship of Jupiter or Venus.”

The likable Rev. Collyer was still in the pulpit in 1893 when he celebrated his 70^th birthday.  Like his predecessor, he scoffed at the strait-laced and overly-serious Victorian clergy; one journalist noting that he, “enjoys a joke, even in the pulpit.”

When Robert Collyer had arrived at the Church of the Messiah, it contained some stunning stained glass windows.  One, by Tiffany, represented the Spirit of Light Descending on the World of Darkness.  He added to them by donating two windows, one costing $2,000 and the other $8,000.  Following his death, a memorial window to Collyer was installed, executed by Frederic S. Lamb and representing John Wesley preaching to the miners.

He would be followed by another free-thinking minister, the Harvard-educated John Haynes Holmes.  In 1909 Holmes was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and vigorously promoted social reform.  In 1912 he wrote The Revolutionary Function of the Modern Church.  His fervent interest in reform nearly caused a riot in the church when it hosted a meeting of unemployed workers in 1915.  A speech by a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, and rantings by an out-of-work man who declared unemployment caused him to “hate God, and hate you people and hate the churches and hate the Government” nearly ended in what The New York Times deemed “a row.”

In 1914, with the outbreak of war in Europe, Holmes made his opinions clear from the pulpit of the Church of the Messiah.  His sermons, starting in December that year, would have titles like “The Fallacies of Force,” “Is War Ever Justifiable,” and “Exemplars of Non-Resistance.”

On the Sunday before Christmas in 1914 he started his sermon by saying “Never before, perhaps, in the world’s history has humanity received so great a shock as that which came to it last summer on the sudden outbreak of the War of the Nations…Confident that he was at last civilized, man was all at once awakened to the discovery that he was still a barbarian.”

The minister’s pacifist ideology emanated from the pulpit as he decried military recruitment.  But his views eventually directly clashed with the rising patriotism after a German submarine sank the Cunard ocean liner RMS Lusitania, killing nearly 1,200 innocent civilians, including Americans.

In the spring of 1917 John Haynes Holmes was on the brink of dismissal from his position.  The United States was poised to enter the war and Holmes derided military service in his sermon on April 1.  His words touched off a firestorm of indignation and calls for his dismissal.

A special meeting of the board of trustees was held the following afternoon, during which he and the board came to an understanding.  The Sun reported “it was announced that while every member of the board differed with Dr. Holmes in the views he had expressed on Sunday, there is not the slightest intention of asking for his resignation.”

Holmes expressed a tempered viewpoint.  “If war comes no individual or group of individuals has the right to interfere with recruiting.  I withdrew from the anti-enlistment league after the sinking of the Lusitania and any one who goes to the front from my church will have my blessing.”

In 1918 the 34^th Street facade of the church received at $17,000 remodeling, including the removal of the porch.  photo from the collection of the New York Public Library

Holmes drastic changes were most noticeable when he changed the name of the church in April 1919 to the Community Church of New York.   He announced “The church will be open to men of any color, creed, race or religion.  The Socialist and the capitalist will be equally welcome; the Catholic and the Confucian, too.”

He explained to the New-York Tribune a month later, “I have left Unitarianism—cut myself off from all denominational connection of every kind, that I may preach a universal humanistic religion which knows no bounds, not even Christianity.”

On the afternoon of September 11, 1919 the funeral of Horace Traubel, biographer of Walt Whitman, was scheduled to be held in the chapel.  About 50 mourners were assembled in the chapel, just behind the main church, at 3:30.  As pall bearers prepared to remove the body from the hearse, an usher shouted that the church was on fire.

Within minutes the blaze, which started in the organ loft, spread throughout the sanctuary.  A second, then a third, alarm was sent in.   The crowd gathering on Park Avenue was certain that the entire edifice would be destroyed.  A sexton, Charles Jackson, was able to rescue two oil paintings, records, books and Bibles.  John Haynes Holmes also tried to save valuable relics from the church, but the thick smoke and the danger of a roof collapse forced him back.

Firemen broke through the rose window to spray streams of water into the building.  Others smashed through the stained glass windows on the Park Avenue side.  The $20,000 organ crashed through the organ loft to the floor below.   Many of the stained glass windows were destroyed, including the Tiffany window and the two donated by Rev. Collyer.   Newspapers later reported that the ceiling and pews were totally destroyed.

Following the commotion, the funeral was moved to the Rand School of Social Science on East 15^th Street.

The Sun took advantage of the reporting of the fire to air its feelings about the Rev. John Haynes Holmes, saying he “is noted for his radical tendencies.  In January of this year he threatened to quit unless it ceased to continue along the conventional lines of a Unitarian parish church.  Shortly after that he changed the name of the church to that which it now bears, ‘Community Church,’ and made it a non-sectarian organization.  Before the war, too, Dr. Holmes was the subject of much comment because of his pacifist tendencies.”

Holmes would retain his position until 1949—seeing another World War and the Great Depression.  On December 28, 1930, with the nation reeling, he preached “Everybody will be glad to get rid of 1930—the most dreadful year we have known since the close of the great war.  The one thing perfectly manifest in this past year is collapse—the progressive collapse of our political systems, our economic methods or international endeavors after peace.”

Shortly after this shot was taken in 1931 the church would be demolished -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

Six months later it was announced that the Community Church had leased the site of its building to the Roed Holding Corporation “where a twenty-six-story combination community house, church and hotel is being erected.”  Carl Pfeiffer’s stately church was replaced by an Art Deco high rise designed by Helmle, Corbett & Harrison which survives.

photograph by Beyond My Ken

The 1870 Germania Life Insurance Bldg -- No. 357 Bowery

photo by Alice Lum

On the Fourth of July in 1870 The New York Times noted that the Germania Life Insurance Company proposed to build “one building for offices” at No. 357 Bowery.  The site was in the center of what was called Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany.  Here immigrants, mostly German, crowded into tenement buildings and the streets around the Bowery and Third Avenue teemed with German music and social halls, beer gardens and theaters.

The Germania Life Insurance Company was founded in 1859 by wealthy German-born New Yorkers.   Its new headquarters, completed within three months of The Times’ announcement, was designed by Carl Pfeiffer, himself a German immigrant.   The architect had recently designed the nearby Metropolitan Savings Bank on the Bowery and within a few years would be responsible for the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in the heart of the city’s mansion district.

The hefty red brick structure, costing $15,000, sat above a high basement.  Ornamentation was reserved and nearly somber, relying mostly on creative brickwork.  The building’s most eye-catching feature was its steep slate-shingled mansard with its angular triplex dormer.   Germania Life Insurance’s first floor office was flooded in natural light that entered through the cast iron store front.

Slate shingles originally covered the mansard roof -- photo by Alice Lum

Although The Times described the firm’s proposed headquarters as “for offices,” the upper floors would include small apartments for working class renters.   It is possible that Germania Life purposefully misrepresented the building to side-step tenement building laws—like the inclusion of fire escapes.

The apartments quickly filled.  Three months after the building’s completion there were nine tenants—among them butcher William Bennett; insurance agent William Clifton (possibly involved with Germania); actress Geneva Withers; and Fred Stevens, who manufactured whips.   Before the decade was up the increasingly mixed ethnic nature of the neighborhood was reflected in the tenant list:  Wah Hing and Chung Kong ran a laundry business; Frank Goebels was a Prussian-born photographer; barber Henry Schalaifer was a German immigrant who lived here with his wife; John and Margaret Brown were from Ireland.  A tailor named William was in the building in 1877.

Even though Germania Life Insurance built and owned its handsome building, it merely leased the land on which it stood from the Doughty family.  Ten years after construction was completed, the firm moved northward one block to No. 367 Bowery.   The offices at No. 357 were taken by a dentist, most likely Dr. Adolph Faber who was still here in 1890.  The doctor ran into trouble over a false tooth on May 29, 1886.

On Friday May 28 Mary Nelson dropped off her damaged tooth for repairs.  She came back the next day, accompanied by friends Annie Lawlor and John Hogan.  She was visibly upset when the dentist informed her the tooth was not quite ready.  The trio verbally assaulted the dentist and left, promising to return within the hour.

The threats were such that an policeman was called, who hid behind a screen in the doctor’s office.  Sure enough, Mary and her cohorts returned thirty minutes later.  The New York Times reported that “Mary Nelson then claimed that the tooth did not fit, and Hogan told the dentist in vigorous language that he had a mind to put a bullet in his head.  He relented of that purpose, however, as he had left his pistol at home, but tried to put the dentist through the window of the store.”

As Hogan struggled to toss the doctor through the window glass, the officer emerged from behind the screen and attempted to arrest Hogan who “assaulted him and tore the wreath from his hat.”  Hogan was nevertheless arrested and held at $500 for assaulting the policeman; the women were both fined $10 (about $225, today) by the judge.

The original double doors and the storefront through which Dr. Faber was nearly ejected still survive -- photo by Alice Lum

Two years after the ugly affair in the dentist’s office, the Bauer family lived upstairs.  Valentine Bauer was a dealer in “wines, liquors, and beer,” and his little daughter Julia repeatedly was listed as the head of her class in Primary School No. 6.  The Bauers would be in the building for at least a decade.

Along with the Bauers in the building was trussmaker John J. Nabra who suffered a paralytic stroke in 1896 that resulted in partial paralysis and blindness.  Miraculously, Nabra slowly regained his eyesight and, according to The Sun, “despite his right side being helpless, became able to attend to his business again.”

Two years later, however, tragedy struck.  The 54-year old experienced a violent headache late in February 1896.  As the pain increased, his eyesight began failing.  The thought of losing his sight again was apparently too much for the man to take.  “With his failing sight his mind had weakened,” the newspaper said.

The New York Times noted that the headache increased daily.  “It bothered him only slightly at first, but grew worse.  But he kept on attending to the store duties until Thursday [March 5].  Then he had to take to his bed.  The pain became agonizing and his eyes grew noticeably filmy.”

As his eyesight continued to fail, so did his mind.  He refused help and when medicines were offered, he hurled them away.   By Thursday night Nabra was once again completely blind.  “He talked to himself after a mumbling fashion,” said The Times, “but what he said could not be made out.”

On Mrs. Nabra’s request, two doctors from the German Hospital came to the apartment and examined him.  They declared him “not a fit subject for their treatment” and left.    The frantic woman then called for Dr. Charles Lellmann who advise the patient be sent to Bellevue Hospital.  “The ambulance surgeon said that the sick man was insane and took him to the insane pavilion at Bellevue,” reported The Times.

The Sun ran the headline on March 7, 1896 “Stricken Blind and Mad – Mr. Nabra Loses His Sight and His Senses on the Same Day.”

As the new century dawned, there were 22 tenants in the building.  German-born George Baumiller was a hat maker and lived here with his wife Catharine and their seven children. Another trussmaker, Gustav Barth had moved in with his Hungarian born wife, Catherine, and her brother and sister.  There were five Russians in the building at the time—a reflection of a new wave of immigration.

At the same time, commercial tenants were beginning to take space.  In 1903 the N.Y. Copying House moved in – makers of photographic enlargements.  The former insurance office-turned dentist office was now a saloon.  In February 1904 excise investigators swept the city for businesses selling liquor on Sunday.  Their notes reported that “Otto Schmidt’s place closed on Sunday,” as the law required.

Schmidt’s saloon included a pool table and, as turn of the century mothers and fathers were apt to warn their sons, such places were traps for naïve young men.  Max Jacoby, described by The Sun on December 19, 1904 as “a young German,” was scammed out of $102.50 here by “trick and device in a game of fifteen ball pool.”

Jacoby later told a judge that he had gotten into a conversation on the Bowery with a stranger who invited him to play pool at No. 357 Bowery.  “There he became acquainted with the ‘lemon gag,’” said the newspaper, “which has superseded three card monte on the Bowery and which is usually operated for the benefit of foreigners.”

As the men played pool, a stranger approached who bragged that he could beat anyone at the lemon game—a pool game by which the winner puts the yellow ball in the pocket.   Jacoby, who made his living as a clerk, was urged by his new-found friend to play the stranger “for $2.50 a side.”  He did.  And he lost.

Now the friend prompted Jacoby to double the bet and that he would help him win.  Jacoby left the bar and withdrew $100 from a bank.  When he returned the manager came to the table and offered to hold the stakes.  When Jacoby gave the manager his $100, the other player told his friend to go get his money for him.  After the game was played, all three men—the opponent, Jacoby’s new friend, and the manager—ran from the saloon.

Jacoby realized at that point that the “manager” was a fraud and that he had been taken.  He also learned a valuable life lesson.  After the men were apprehended and appeared in court with Jacoby and he testified, the judge asked him “If you had won, would you have made a complaint?”

“I didn’t win,” replied Jacoby.

“You must come to court with clean hands.  The prisoner is discharged,” announced the judge.

By now there were fewer residents and more commercial tenants in the building.  In 1906 the Globe Hat Frame Co. was here and only Gustav and Catherine Barth were still living upstairs.  In 1908 Adolph Wahrman got in trouble when investigators found he was employing a child under 16 years of age “without Board of Health certificate.”   That year Charles Barkhauser was operating the saloon in the building.

There was a brief resurgence of residential tenants by 1910—three families were living here including Alfred Sheppard, a cook, and five German immigrant boarders—two waiters, a cook, a horseshoer and a brushmaker—and the Russian-Jewish Harbeck family, Harry a clothing manufacturer, his wife Ida and their three children.  In 1918 James S. Hull was here.  He was the keeper of the Marble Cemetery on Second Avenue nearby.

The address can still be read in the ghost of a painted sign that probably stretched the width of the second floor -- photo by Alice Lum

But by 1920 there were no residents left and the building was entirely commercial.  Among the tenants were M. Perlman & Co.; L. Becker & Sons (Louis and his sons Jacob and Morris); and the National Crockery Company.

In 1926, the Doughty family sold the property and three years later it was resold to the Laraia and Pellettiere families.  They replaced the original rear extension with a full-height addition that extended to the property line and installed an Otis freight elevator.

The Lairas were manufacturers of beauty and barber equipment and in 1931 the building was mainly taken over by the Rocco Laraia & Company (briefly renamed Laraia & Pellettiere in mid-century).  Although it shared space with minor tenants throughout the decades—a mirror company, a wire products manufacturer, a roofer and an upholsterer—Rocco Laraia & Company would be the main occupant of No. 357 Bowery into the 1970s.  In 1964 a renovation was done inside the building resulting in the Department of Buildings describing it as “factory, storage and office space.”

As the Bowery neighborhood was rediscovered by artists and musicians in the 1970s, the former factory spaces were quietly used as residences once again.  One artist resident, Ingo Swann, partnered with Warren E. Spieker, Jr. in 1979 to purchase the building. 

Swann was more than a mere artist.  Also an author and psychic he became well known for co-creating Remote Viewing with Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff.   The process, which interested the Central Intelligence Agency, involves subjects mentally viewing a location with no more information than its geographical coordinates.

photo by Alice Lum

Today the landmarked building has returned to its original purpose—commercial space on the first floor and apartments above.   While a bit time-worn, it retains an astonishing amount of its original architectural elements—such as the original wood and glass entrance doors and the 1870 storefront.  It is a remarkable survivor of a time when German was the prevalent language on the surrounding streets.