G. Fred. Pelham's 1891 110 Eighth Avenue

Real estate developers Weil & Mayer embarked on an astonishingly ambitious project in 1891, demolishing all the vintage structures on the east side of Eighth Avenue between 15th and 16th Street and hiring architect G. Fred. Pelham to design a sprawling complex of store-and-flat buildings on the site.  Pelham designed the structures, eight on the avenue and one each on the side streets, in the Romanesque Revival style.  Above the storefronts, the openings altered from arched to square-headed floor-by-floor.  Faced in light-colored brick and trimmed in terra cotta and brownstone, their design strayed from pure Romanesque with Renaissance Revival terra cotta plaques on the side streets and occasional Queen Anne sunburst parapets atop the Eighth Avenue cornices.  Most strikingly, perhaps, (and a commission that kept stone carvers busy for months), were the portrait keystones above the arched openings--exactly 100 of them.  Each one carved with its own personality, some grimacing, some smiling, others seemingly crying out.

Painted today, these three keystone exemplify the stone carvers' craft and the variety of their work.

Typical of the buildings was 110 Eighth Avenue, one of the two middle structures.  It, like the others, filled with working class families.  

Among its early tenants was Joseph Garity, born in Ireland in 1858.  On May 21, 1893, he went to Isaac Frankel's second-hand clothing store on Seventh Avenue to buy a coat.  He attempted to haggle with Dora Frankel, who was tending the store, about the price of a coat.  The New York Herald recounted their discussion:

"That's $9," said Mrs. Frankel.

"I'll give you six.  It's only worth five," said Garity.

"It's worth fifteen, but you can have it for nine," returned the proprietress.

Garity put his hand in his pocket and produced $6.50 and a razor.  He opened the razor.

"Now, will you take $6.50, or won't you?" he demanded.

"Get out of my place," ordered Mrs. Frankel.

The Evening World reported that he "slashed at Mrs. Frankel."  Dora Frankel jumped back, and screamed, and ran behind the counter.  Her scream caught the attention of a policeman who was passing by.  The New York Herald said said he, "ran in to find Mrs. Frankel and Garity doing a turn around the counter, the woman being well in the lead."  Rather than buying a coat, Garity ended his day in jail.  The New York Herald commented, "He is a tough character and has done time."

The stupefying row as it appears today.  No. 110 Eighth Avenue is behind the black car.

A tenant named Livingston and his wife, Alice, lived at 110 Eighth Avenue in the mid-1890s.  Livingston was a traveling salesman and the couple took in a boarder, Edith Reed.  Livingston was on the road in upstate New York in June 1896.  

Early on the morning of June 13, Policemen Lane and Culhane were walking their rounds when Alice and Edith hollered at them from the apartment window.  The policemen arrived to find the two women holding a pair of young men hostage.  The incredible story they recounted was a bit hard to believe.

According to Alice Livingston, at 2:30 a.m. she and Edith were "startled by a knock on the door."  Alice opened it and two men, Martin Maroney and David Rosenheim, 27 and 28 years old respectively, pushed their way in.  Alice said she had never seen them before and ordered them out, but they laughed at her.  Rosenheim went into Alice's bedroom.  The New York Times reported, "She followed to eject him, but Maroney, without any warning, threw her down and held her, and with the help of Rosenheim took $50 in five-dollar bills from her clothing."  The men attempted to flee, but Edith locked the door, trapping them inside.  The women then screamed for help from the window.  (Ten five-dollar bills were found in Rosenheim's pocket.)

In the Jefferson Market the next day, Maroney and Rosenheim told a much different story.  They told the magistrate that they frequently called on the women when Livingston was away on business.  The New York Times reported that they testified, "on this occasion earlier in the evening they had displayed the money, and the women had fixed up this story so as to get possession of it."  The men were held in $1,000 bail each awaiting trial.

At the time of the incident, the store in 110 Eighth Avenue was home to William Baum's grocery.

Like the buildings' keystones, the carved faces above the entrance to 110 Eighth Avenue were different.  Their distinctly disparate styles suggest they were carved by different artisans.

A horrific tragedy occurred here on June 4, 1899.  The New York Journal and Advertiser reported, "Kizia Chapman, one year old, fell to the sidewalk from a window on the second floor of No. 110 Eighth avenue, yesterday afternoon, while playing there with her mother."  The little girl's skull was fractured and she died in the New York Hospital shortly afterward.

Tenant Madge Corcoran was 30-years-old and unmarried in 1904.  She was one of the party of five couples who went on what The New York Times termed an "automobile party" on the night of October 6 that year.  Albert Noyes drove the group in his "big Panhard touring automobile," reported The Evening World.

Another member of the party, Thomas Murphy, told investigators later, "We went to Mount Vernon and we stopped at every roadhouse on the way."  The party's revelry turned to tragedy in an instant just past midnight.  The Evening World reported that Noyes drove his car, "in which was a gay party of five women and four men," over the 30-foot embankment at Jerome Avenue and 161st Street.  The big automobile landed on the tracks of the New York Central Railroad.  The article said it, "was struck by a swiftly moving train and reduced to fragments in a twinkling."  Madge Corcoran was one of the passengers who were instantly killed.

William Baum still operated his grocery store on the ground floor on July 21, 1913 when a fire broke out in packing cases in the cellar early that morning.  It was discovered by Patrolman Thomas J. Eagan who, "ran through the house and warned the tenants," as reported by The Evening Post, which said he "led nearly one hundred and fifty tenants to the roof...while fire raged in the basement."  The article said:

Those rescued were Mrs. Bridget Flynn, eighty-six years old, an invalid, and Miss Rose Sazoretti, sixteen years old.  Mrs. Flynn was partly overcome by smoke, and was revived by the other tenants.  Miss Sazoretti, who was in her apartment on the fourth floor, was revived on reaching the roof.

The rescue of Bridget Flynn was more dramatic than the report initially made it sound.  Officer Egan discovered, after he thought everyone was safe, that James Bernie, his wife Edna, and Bridget Flynn (Edna Bernie's aunt) were missing.  He went back into the building to find Egan trying valiantly to carry Bridget Flynn up the stairs.  With the help of the Bernies, he carried the invalid woman to the roof.

William Baum's grocery store was taken over by Ginsberg Brothers, operated by I. Ginsberg, by 1918.  Ginsberg got into trouble with the Federal Government because of World War I price controls.  On January 26, 1918, The New York Times reported that the Federal Food Board heard a case "against a retail grocer who frankly admitted that he had overcharged for sugar."  The New-York Tribune said, "After five hours' examination Ginsberg admitted his offence and turned over to the board his $186.94 excess profit."  

Tenant John Garland, a truck driver, went to the Marlborough Grill on Broadway and 36th Street on Saturday night, October 7, 1922.  Prohibition had been in effect for two years and, unfortunately for him, a plain clothes detective was on duty there, too.  The 22-year-old was caught with a pint bottle of liquor and arrested.  

Garland worked for Denzer & Nathan, which dealt in silk.  Two years after his regrettable encounter with the agent, he was in the news again.  On the night of October 6, 1924, he got behind the wheel of a Denzer & Nathan truck, loaded with $25,000 worth of silk.  (The figure would translate to about $471,000 in 2026.)  His assistant, James McCarthy was in the passenger seat.  They made it as far as West 28th Street near Tenth Avenue when the truck was forced to the curb by six armed men.

Garland and McCarthy were loaded into the crooks' automobile and taken to First Avenue and 81st Street where they were released.  The following day, the New York Evening Post reported, "Police had to little to work on today in their hunt for six armed bandits who held up and escaped" with the trunk.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Andrew Ventroff lived in 110 Eighth Avenue in 1933.  A registered Communist, he was part of an enormous throng who assembled at a Brooklyn pier on May 25 that year to confront Hass Weidemann.  The New York Times explained that Weidemann was the "representative of Chancellor Hitler" at the Chicag0 Century of Progress Exposition.  German artist, Gotthold Schneider, accompanied him on the voyage.

When the more than 1,000 Communists, carrying placards and banners, mobbed the pier, the two Nazis were spirited away in a tugboat.  The New York Times said, "The disturbance began, when on learning that they had been balked of the object of their attack, the Communists started several fights with persons whose sympathies appeared to be on the side of Hitler."  A melee between 100 policemen and the mass of Communists erupted.  In the end, 43 of the protestors were arrested (including Andrew Ventroff), and four policemen and three Communists were injured.

The storefront was remodeled during the Depression years with a faux stone front.  In the 1970s, it was home to Gilbert's Army & Navy Store.  

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

The complex of buildings was intact in 1940 (above).  The misguided painting of the masonry and removal of the cornice in the late 20th century greatly impaired the buildings' architectural integrity.

By then, the cornice had been removed from all the buildings and the masonry painted.  Sadly, those modernizations significantly diluted G. Fred. Pelham's personable 1891 design.

photographs by the author 

The Unexpected Relic at 33 West 63rd Street

A sidewalk bridge obscures the ground floor as renovations continue in January 2018.

Richard Everett was a member of the real estate firm Everett & Murphy; but he and his wife, Margaret, sometimes struck out on their own.  Such was the case on May 16, 1890 when they purchased the three old frame buildings at Nos. 31 through 35 West 63rd Street from Eugene A. Philbin, paying $16,000, about $414,000 in today's dollars.

No 31 was 37.5 feet wide, twice the width of the other two buildings.  On September 11 that year Richard Everett sold the property to Robert Carey for a satisfying $19,500.  The Everetts and Carey now laid plans for matching apartment houses on the sites of the wooden structures.

George Fred Pelham had learned his trade in the architectural office of his father, George Brown Pelham.  He had just opened his own practice and the twin apartment houses for Carey and the Everetts was among his earliest, if not his first, commissions.

Decades later Pelham would become well-known for his neo-Tudor apartment buildings and homes.  But for now he was content to work in the same historic styles being used by any number of New York architects.  For the 63rd Street project he turned to Romanesque Revival.

His plans called for "two double five-story brown stone front flats."  The Record & Guide noted "They will have steam heat, cabinet trim servants' stairs, etc., and will cost about $75,000."  The inclusion of hardwoods, servants' stairs and the significant cost--nearly $2 million each today--are evidence that the apartments were intended for upper-middle-class families.

Indeed, the $2,200 invoice submitted for both buildings by the Hardwood Decorative Co. would equal about $30,000 each today.   Each of the apartments contained eight rooms, making them the size of a small private house, and included space for a live-in servant.

Completed in 1891, the matching buildings had centered entrances within a two-story brownstone base.  Chunky, rough-cut quoins flanked the second story and framed all the openings.   The upper three floors were clad in red brick, the brownstone trim here including swirling carved panels between the third and fourth floor windows.   A cast metal cornice originally ran above the arched openings of the top floor.

Among the earliest tenants of No. 33 was George S. Adams and his family.  A director and treasurer of the Bidwell-Tinkham Cycle Company on West 59th Street, he was called to jury duty in 1893 and was chosen to sit on a shocking murder case.

Dr. Robert W. Buchanan was charged with having killed his wife, Anne.   Buchanan had been served with divorce papers on June 14, 1890.   Anne had apparently discovered he was having an affair with his first wife.  Soon afterwards she became sick and suffered a prolonged death.  It was not long before Buchanan and his first wife remarried.

Suspicious, authorities had Anne's body disinterred.  The New York Times reported "and the discovery was made that she had died of an overdose of morphine."  The case made nationwide headlines, the North Dakota newspaper The Washburn Leader saying he was charged "with killing his second wife with slow poison in order to obtain her fortune."

Jury selection was a slow process, with many potential jurors admitting they had already decided on the doctor's guilt.  George S. Adams, however, was among the first accepted.  The trial lasted until August 25 and ended with a conviction.  The Washburn Leader reported "Dr. Robert W. Buchanan is sentenced in New York to die in the electric chair in the week beginning Oct. 2."

Another early tenant was William Scott, listed merely as "a clerk."  He and his wife, the former Emma Douglas, had a baby girl, Cora, the year the apartment building was completed.   He, too, would see jury duty; albeit his case was not a life-threatening as Adams's had been.

In April 1895 Scott was chosen to serve in the case of Police Inspector William W. McLaughlin, who had been arrested and charged with extortion.  He was accused of squeezing Francis J. Seagrist, Jr. for $50 years earlier while he was captain of the First Precinct.

McLaughlin walked free when the jurors could not arrive at a verdict.  Amazingly, The New York Times listed each juror by name, along with his address, and published his vote.  William Scott had considered McLaughlin guilty.

Ade Stephens appeared in a courtroom in 1901; but as a witness rather than a juror.   John H. Shults, Jr.'s German-born father was a millionaire whose Brooklyn bakery was one of the largest in the world.  He married Caroline C. "Daisy" Beard on December 3, 1890.  His bride, too, came from immense wealth.  Her father, William Beard, made his fortune in streetcar and railroad construction.

But Daisy reached the end of her patience only three years later when she left her philandering husband.  She and their two children moved into her parents' home.  Finally she filed for divorce in June 1901 charging that John was "guilty of misconduct with one Sylvia Thorne in the latter part of 1897 and the early part of 1898, and in November, 1900, with one Eva Richards, in an apartment house on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan."

Testifying for Daisy was Ade Stephens and her maid, Fanny Fox.  The New York Times reported that they "gave confirmative evidence."  How exactly Mrs. Stephens and her maid knew that Daisy's husband was carrying on sexual affairs was not revealed.

By around now Emma Scott's father, Franklin Douglas, had moved in with the family.  He became ill in the spring of 1902 and died in the apartment on April 15 of pneumonia.  He was 75 years old.

Three years later the family would be devastated again, when Cora, now 14 years old, died on March 2, 1905 of spinal meningitis.  She had been sick only a short time.  Her funeral, like her grandfather's had been, was held at the Thirty-fourth Street Reformed Church just west of Eighth Avenue.

A terrifying tragedy occurred in the second floor apartment of Charles Baker on the night of June 16, 1907.  Living with Baker and his wife was his 76 year old mother-in-law, Mary J. Odell.  The Bakers left the apartment early that evening to visit friends.   Sunlight still lit the room where Mary sat knitting when they departed.  But as twilight fell, she struck a match to light a kerosene lamp for more light.

The Sun reported "The match fell from her hand and ignited the table cloth.  The fire spread to some lace curtains near by."  Mary's screams were heard by Mrs. Jacob Plass, who lived on the third floor.  She rushed to inform the janitor, Thomas Hannan.

Meanwhile, the situation in the Baker apartment worsened.  "The room had filled with smoke in the meantime and Mrs. Odell fell onto the table.  Her clothes caught fire."  Hannan tried to break in the locked door, but it was no use.  More time was lost as he ran to the third floor and lowered himself down to the Baker's window ledge.  He kicked in the window and stumbled over Mary Odell in the smoke.

"Hannan smothered the fire in the woman's clothes, which had burned her about the head and body," reported The Sun.  Residents lowered a pail of water from the upper floor which he used to put out the fire.   The elderly woman was taken to Roosevelt Hospital with severe burns where her condition was listed as critical.

Broker Arthur Edmund Kramer was living in the building in 1910.  The 22-year old was the son of Arthur Booth Chase, brother of Salmon P. Chase, former Supreme Court Chief Justice.  He had an impressive pedigree, earning him membership in the Sons of the Revolution, the Society of Colonial Wars, and the Sons of the American Revolution.  He was also a member of the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard, often referred to as the Silk Stocking Regiment or the "Dandy Seventh" because of its long tradition of being composed of sons of Manhattan's wealthiest families.

When he was still young, his father died and his mother remarried Edward G. Kramer, who adopted him.  Now, on December 15, 1910, he appeared in New York Supreme Court to get his birth name back.  He told Justice Seabury that he was the last surviving male descendant of his branch of the Chase family.  The Times added "He gave as his reason for making the application for the change of name his desire to perpetuate the honorable name of Chase."  The judge agreed and granted the application.

Margaret Everett still owned No. 33 at the time, extending her $35,000 mortgage until March 1915 that year.  (It was a significant mortgage, equal to about $875,000 today, especially considering that the Everetts had owned the parcel for two decades.)

At least through the World War I years the building continued to house financially comfortable residents, like Augustin B. Healy, who was here in 1911.  He was a director in the Central Leather Co.  But by 1925 the aging structure saw a less affluent population as modern apartment buildings lured away the moneyed tenants.

The widowed Hannah Forgeiase lived in a top floor apartment by 1925, sharing it with her two sons Alexander the Theodore.  Both men were steeplejacks and neither of the blue collar workers was about to allow anyone to threaten their mother.

Hannah was infuriated that the lock to one one of her windows had been removed by the building superintendent.   When Perry Frucht, a manager, knocked on her door on Saturday night, March 7 that year to collect the rent, she told him she was withholding the rent until the lock was reinstalled.

Frucht explained that the window opened onto a fire escape and that fire laws demanded there be no locks.  The discussion became heated, drawing the attention of Alexander and Theodore.  Frucht was punched in the face and sent back down the stairs.

Frucht went to the building's super, Percy Wilkins and asked for his help in collecting the rent.  The New York Times reported "Wilkins went up to the top floor and a short time later came down with a cut on his eye and no rent."

Now the battered pair enlisted the help of Policeman Zessna whom they found outside.  The officer had no sooner walked into the apartment than Theodore threw a heavy flat iron at him, hitting him on the ear.  The policeman responded by pulling out his pistol and firing.  The bullet lodged in the ceiling and he fired again.

Just as he pulled the trigger, Hanna ran into the hall.  The bullet hit her in the hand, resulting, naturally, in screams and more chaos.  "In the meantime," said the newspaper, "the neighborhood had become excited by the noise and rumors that a policeman had been killed."

Word soon reached the West 68th Street precinct house and No. 33 West 63rd Street was besieged by cops intent on aiding their fallen comrade.  The Forgeiase brothers were arrested for felonious assault and their mother was was treated by an ambulance doctor on the scene.

The Times ended its account of the affray saying "Frucht left without the rent."

The Depression was not kind to the old building,  It was lost in foreclosure to the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank early in 1938.  The bank resold it in October that year to 40-year old real estate operator Jehiel R. Elyachar.  He quickly hired architects Voorhis, Walker & Foley to make changes, among them was the installation of an elevator and reconfiguring the eight-room apartments to "suites of one and one-half, two and three rooms," as announced on October 20.

The alterations were completed the following year, resulting in five apartments per floor.  The architects explained in August 1939 that the "modernization consisted of simplifying the facade by removing the old cornices and substituting [a] decorative parapet flush with the front of the building, modernizing the entrance...providing fireproof stairways, new floors, plumbing, tile bathrooms and tile or terrazzo floors in the hallways, and rearranging the apartments to meet present-day demands."

As seen in 2010, the renovations stripped the ground floor and left a blank scar in place of the cast cornice.  photo by "Marjorie" via http://marjorie-digest.blogspot.com/2010/10/lonely-little-red-building.html

The modernization stripped the ground floor of nearly all its architectural details.  And while the architects boasted that the loss of the 1890 cornice resulted in a "decorative parapet," it looked more like an ugly scar where a handsome cornice once hung.

Jehiel R. Elyachar was a colorful character.  Born in Jerusalem, he had immigrated to the United States in 1928 and founded the Straight Construction Corporation.  Despite his age, he joined the Army at the outbreak of World War II.  He rose to the rank of colonel, in charge of military intelligence under General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Upon his return to Manhattan, he continued using his rank of colonel before his name.  He added about a dozen more rental properties to No 33 West 63rd Street by the mid 1950s when he stopped buying, "content to collect the rents and supervise the maintenance," as explained by Albert Scardino in The New York Times years later.  With holdings worth more than $100 million, he turned to philanthropy, giving generously to American and Israeli causes.

By then the neighborhood around No 33 was seedy at best.  Under the initiative of John D. Rockefeller III and civic leaders, an urban renewal project, the Lincoln Center Renewal Project, was initiated.  It was well under way when developer Paul Milstein got into the act in 1968 when he began planning his Lincoln Square steps away.

Elyachar was by now a founder and president of the American Society for Technion, which raised money for scholarships and financial support for the Israel's primary technical education institution, was influential in Sephardic studies at Yeshiva University, and owned the largest collection of Ladino and Sephardic literature in the Western Hemisphere.  He was 70 years old when Milstein approached him, wanting to buy No. 33 West 63rd Street.

But Elyachar did not need Milstein's money.

The developer was eyeing the 63rd Street property as part of the site for a 43-story mixed-use tower.  Every other owner, including the owners of the matching building next door at No. 31, agreed to sell.  But Elyachar seemed to enjoy taunting Milstein.  Repeatedly the two would agree on a price, then the old man would change his mind; at one time adding the condition that Milstein donate around $100,000 to one of his charities.

Finally, according to Milstein's son Howard, "My father said, 'You know what, you're going to keep your building.'"

The Milstein family forged ahead with the complex, named One Lincoln Plaza, working around the 1890 flat building.  Unexpected problems arose for Elyachar and his tenants when the abutting buildings were taken down.  On May 11, 1891 Richard and Margaret Everett and de facto partner, Robert Cary, had signed a "party wall agreement" for the two buildings.  That wall was never intended to be an exterior partition and, therefore, was not built to withstand weather.   Now with No, 31 gone, ice formed on living room walls of some tenants.

photo by "Marjorie" via http://marjorie-digest.blogspot.com/2010/10/lonely-little-red-building.html

The unconventional, generous and often feisty Jehiel R. Elyachar died in Bellevue Hospital Center following a heart attack on March 29, 1998.  He was 90 years old.

After a lifetime of amazing accomplishments, perhaps his most visible legacy is the out-of-place Victorian apartment building sitting awkwardly in the plaza of One Lincoln Plaza.

In 2001 an ongoing apartment-by-apartment renovation was begun.  Among the improvements was the welcomed installation of a reproduction cornice in keeping with the building's architecture.

photographs by the author