The 1891 Rhinelander Industrial School - 350 East 88th Street

 

photo by Beyond My Ken

The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Charles Loring Brace, along with a few other concerned men, in 1853.  Brace had been, according to King’s Handbook of New York City, “engaged in teaching some of the little arabs of the streets.”  The Society was incorporated in 1856 “for the education of the poor by gathering children who attend no schools into its industrial schools, caring and providing for children in lodging houses, and procuring houses for them in the rural districts and in the West.”

In 1880 the Children's Aid Society began a major expansion project, erecting lodging houses and industrial schools throughout the depressed areas of the city.  

Wealthy, unmarried sisters Julia and Serena Rhinelander, who lived in the family mansion at 14 Washington Square North, devoted their lives to philanthropy.  In 1890 they donated the funds to erect a new Children's Aid Society building in Yorkville.  It was completed the following year, designed by the architectural firm of Vaux & Radford.  Calvert Vaux, best known for his work in designing Central Park, had partnered with George Kent Radford in 1872.  

Like most of the firm's Children's Aid Society structures, the Rhinelander Industrial School was designed in the Flemish Renaissance Revival style.  According to architectural historian Dennis Francis, it was Charles Loring Brace who insisted on the step-gabled style, having been impressed by a 16th century structure he had seen in Nuremberg.

from Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York, 1903 (copyright expired)

The Children's Aid Society recognized the importance of providing tenement children with a means of earning a living later in life.  While the Rhinelander Industrial School taught children (up to 12 years of age) the same fundamentals learned in a public primary school, it also provided training in practical areas--carpentry for boys and sewing for girls, for example.

On February 24, 1893 the school staged an exhibition of the work done by the students.  The New York Times reported, "All the visitors at the schoolhouse in East Eighty-eighth Street--and not alone the parents--have been delighted with what they have seen."  In the carpentry shop were displayed items like a picture frame and a footstool.  "Work in parquetry was also shown," said the article, "including much that had been well-done after original designs."

In the cooking class were laid out "wholesome bread, a roast of lamb, pie, carrots, potatoes, and other substantials that go to make up a hearty dinner."  The principal, Margaret Pickering Pascal, showed the needlework done by girl students.  She "explained the stitching, felling, overhanding and buttonhole work of these girls, and it was a neatly done as the best dressmaker could wish."

At the time of the exhibition, there were 325 pupils in the day school, and about 36 in the evening classes.  (The evening classes were for those students who had gone on to public schools, but wished to continue their classes here.)

Margaret P. Pascal organized the school.  The Phrenological Journal and Phrenological magazine, June 1897 (copyright expired)

Many, if not most, of the students came from immigrant families, mostly Irish and German.  The "Americanization movement" swept the country in the 1890's, which sought to meld the individual cultures into a single American ideal.  In 1893 Margaret P. Pascal (herself an immigrant, brought to America at the age of 5) climbed on that bandwagon.

On April 23, 1894 The New York Times reported, "'Uncle Sam' will visit the scholars of the Rhinelander School, 350 East Eighty-eighth Street, to-morrow morning, and learn what they have gained from the patriotic teaching received during the school year."  Miss Pascal had sent out invitations "that have on their cover a portrait of George Washington, and the patriotic dictums: 'One Country, one language, one flag,' for patriotic education is a feature of the regular instruction of the school."

The Phrenological Magazine reported in June 1897, "One of the means of instructing children in patriotic work at the Rhinelander School is in making flags and giving the same to patriotic societies and people of prominence with whom they have been brought in touch."  The girls' sewing classes made the silk flags and the boys carpentry shop crafted the staffs.

The second grade class poses in front of one of the silk flags.  The Phrenological Journal and Phrenological magazine, June 1897 (copyright expired)

And, indeed, the flags went to prominent figures.  Among the recipients were Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President William McKinley, former President Grover Cleveland, Mayor William Strong, and former Mayor Abram S. Hewitt.  The workmanship of the flags was so impressive that an example was displayed at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, earning a medal in June 1896.

The school expanded in 1900 by opening a class for disabled children.  In October that year The American Journal of Nursing explained, "This is exclusively a class for cripples, and to keep them busy and happy, to teach them something useful, and to lead them in such exercises and games as may not overtax the weak little bodies is the work of the ever-watchful teacher and nurse."  The article noted:

The Children's Aid Society is the pioneer in this much-needed educational work among cripples who are not physically fitted to take their place among the robust children of the public schools, and has provided not only a teacher, but a nurse trained in orthopaedic work, who understands the children and their limitations, and who is fitted to give the daily attention which is absolutely necessary in many cases.

Disabled children, sadly, were often not receiving that "absolutely necessary" attention at home.  A report to the New York State Assembly in 1900 noted, "Many of the parents of these crippled children have no thought, nor do they care for the future of these helpless beings; the fact that they will always be dependent on their family is in itself, in many cases, enough to cause indifference as to whether they live or die."  For that reason, teaching the disabled a trade, like dressmaking or woodworking, was essential.

The disabled children were originally brought to and from class in a  wagon, but by 1910 the school had been supplied with a modern horse-drawn omnibus.  On the afternoon of November 17 that year the children's teacher, May Daly, was chaperoning them home when disaster occurred.  While traveling east on 96th Street, the bus was slammed by a northbound Third Avenue trolley car.

The New York Times reported, "Every window in the 'bus was shattered, and while two of the six crippled children managed to cling to the side seats, the rest, together with the teacher, were thrown out into the street."  The traces, or poles that connected the horses to the vehicle, broke and the driver, George Wilson, was pulled from his seat and dragged several yards by the panicked horses.  The injured were treated on site by an ambulance team from Harlem Hospital, then sent home in a second bus.

A "jewelry trade class" for the handicapped boys was initiated in September 1908.  The Brooklyn Daily Eagle explained, "The work does not require physical strength and most of it can be done seated.  Only the hands are essential, and most cripples are disabled in other ways."   

Eight years later the city was swept by a polio epidemic that took the lives of at least 6,000 and left 21,000 with physical disabilities.  Terrence S. Sullivan wrote to The Brooklyn Daily Eagle on September 28, 1916, praising the jewelry trade class.  His letter said in part:

An opportunity to become self-supporting is offered to boys over 14 years of age, who have become crippled in the recent epidemic.  The jewelry trade is taught in a trade class, held in the Rhinelander School...Seven pupils have recently been placed with manufactories, which leaves vacancies.  We feel that the class after eight years, has proven that this is one way of solving the problem of the support of the handicapped.

The Rhinelander School continued to adapt to the changing needs and times.  The Home Thrift Association opened a space in the building in 1937.  At a meeting of the executive board on November 8, its president, Mrs. John Henry Hammond, told a reporter from The New York Times that it was continuing "its work of rehabilitating families in the neighborhood, that last year half of the $8,000 budget had been contributed by the people of the vicinity."  The group provided clothing, food and shelter for familied unable to pay for it.

In 1954 the building was renovated, creating offices, a clinic and daycare on the ground floor, playrooms on the second and third, and a superintendent's apartment and lunchroom on the fourth.  Mid-century architectural sensitivities were not kind to Victorian taste, however.  In 1989, The New York Times columnist Christopher Gray described the renovation as "more like a tale of child abuse."  Tragically, the one-story eastern extension with its stepped gable and large memorial plaque, was removed.

A layer of stucco was applied to the brick facade--a less expensive route than repointing the joints.  The Rhinelander School continued to operate from the building.  Then, in 1989 a restoration/renovation to convert it to the Rhinelander Children's Center sought to restore the facade.  But, according to the project's architect, Anthony Caine, the stucco was impossible to remove.  Instead, the material was scored and tinted to resemble brownstone blocks.

The Rhinelander Children's Center now offered early-childhood classes in clay modeling and cooking, afternoon programs in arts and music, and in the evening, parent-child courses in tap-dancing and pottery.

photo via realtor.com

By the 21st century the Yorkville neighborhood was no longer one of tenements and indigent immigrants.  On January 1, 2014 Curbed New York reported that the Children's Aid Society had put the building on the market at $20 million.  Hypothetical floorplans of the building as a single-family mansion were drawn up "so potential buyers can see just how much potential" the building had.  Described by realtors as an "extremely rare, 50'-wide, 4-story mansion," The building was sold for a discounted $15 million.  In 2018 plans were filed for conversion to office use.

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The Children's Aid Society School - 219 Sullivan Street

In the last decades of the 19th century the impoverished district just south of elegant Washington Square was dangerous and nearly lawless.  Seedy saloons which reformer Jacob Riis called "vile rookeries," brothels and crowded tenements made the neighborhoods one of Manhattan's most notorious.

The brick-faced, Federal style house at No. 219 Sullivan Street had been an upscale residence in the 1830s; but by 1887 its rooms were home to a number of blue-collar tenants.  Among them was tinsmith John Murray who was sitting on the stoop at 8:30 on the night of May 6 that year.  But just sitting outside could be a risk.

According to The New York Times the following day John Hays, "a young negro, living at 11 Carmine-street, came along."  He stopped in front of Murray, pulled out a revolver, and shot him apparently without any provocation or reason.  The bullet struck Murray in right eye, blinding him.

At St. Vincent Hospital Murray said he had never seen Hays before and had no idea why he shot him.  The New York Times had its own idea.  "He appeared stupid from liquor."

Reformers descended on the rough neighborhoods, opening missions where they sought to rehabilitate the drunkards and "debased women."   But one Protestant minister, Charles Loring Brace, was more concerned with educating the waifs and orphans.   He recognized early on a strong connection between illiteracy and crime.

The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Brace along with a few other concerned men in 1853.  Brace had been, according to King’s Handbook of New York City, “engaged in teaching some of the little arabs of the streets.”  The Society was incorporated in 1856 “for the education of the poor by gathering children who attend no schools into its industrial schools, caring and providing for children in lodging houses, and procuring houses for them in the rural districts and in the West.”

The industrial schools not only taught the children their A-B-C's, but skills they would need to survive as adults.  Boys learned woodworking and shoemaking, for instance; while girls learned to sew and cook--abilities they would need not only as homemakers, but as servants.

Most often the school buildings were donated by philanthropists or their wives who were involved in some way with the Children's Aid Society.  In 1891 Mrs. Joseph M. White and Matilda W. Bruce provided $90,000 (just under $2.5 million today) to erect a new building on the site of the old house where John Murray had been shot.
 
For nearly all its buildings the Society turned to the architectural firm of Vaux & Radford, which would eventually design 12 Children’s Aid Society projects.  Calvert Vaux, best remembered for his work in designing Central Park, had partnered with George Kent Radford in 1872.  The Sullivan Street School building would follow the same lines as their other Children’s Aid Society buildings—a blend of Victorian Gothic and Flemish Revival styles.

The newly-completed building replaced a Federal-style house, much like the one surviving at the far right, next to the entrance to the playground.  from the collection of the Children's Aid Society

The Sullivan Street School was completed in September 1892 and formally opened on December 21.  The delay may have been due to drilling the 420 children between 5 and 13 years of age for their parts in the event.  They were "marshaled" into the audience room dressed in new suits of clothing provided by Matilda Bruce--no doubt the first new clothes they had received in a very long time, if ever.

The Times reported "The programme by the children was opened by the 'salute to the flag,' with piano accompaniment, and was performed with admirable spirit and effect."  The older pupils then gave recitations and the entire group sang Christmas carols for the audience.

The room was decorated, Victorian-style, with bunting and flags.  A large Christmas tree was in a corner of the room, "which contained a gift for every member of the school."

One year later the Society's Annual Report made note of the new school's progress.  "This school was placed in one of the most depraved localities of the city and already an improvement in the neighborhood is visible.  The street is more respectable; the children of the quarter have better manners and are more neatly dressed, and through them the parents have been influenced to a more decent manner of life."

Boys learning woodworking in the Sullivan Street School.  Annual Report of the Children's Aid Society, November 1893 (copyright expired)

During the first year of its existence the Sullivan Street School had an enrollment of 449, with a daily average attendance of 365.  That year 50,293 meals were supplied.  The items made by the girls in the sewing classes were sold and the money given to their families.  Between November 1892 and November 1893 the total was $140 (about $3,850 today).  The seemingly modest amount, said principal Caroline A. Forman in her report, "has helped feed, clothe, pay rent and buy coal for a number of families during this severest of winters."

The items turned out by the boys were helpful at home as well.  On July 26, 1893 The Evening World pointed out "In [the] Sullivan street school, where manual training is taught on a small scale, the boys make kitchen and toilet brushes for use in their own homes.  One of the first pieces of work turned out of the class carpenter shop was a pair of crutches for a crippled child."

The Children's Aid Society had, by now, embarked on a program of sending orphaned boys to Midwestern farms.  Their work as unpaid, indentured farmhands was intended to provide them with a wholesome environment, clean air and a bright future.  The cruel fact was that, at least in some cases, it proved to be nothing more than veiled slave labor.

But one nine-year old boy named Jimmie was willing to take his chances in 1893.  Although he was not an orphan, he was deemed by Principal Forman "worse than motherless."  On a bitterly cold morning he came to her and pleaded, "Won't you send me away.  My mother sends me for whiskey all the time."  At this point he showered her a dime and pulled a bottle from his coat.  "She makes me go beg for the money and then buy whiskey."

The involvement of Mrs. White and Matilda Bruce did not stop with their funding the building.  They both were instructors in the kitchen-garden and cooking classes and Matilda paid for the manual training classes and the hot meals.  Mrs. White paid for two "visitors" who checked on students and families at home.  The visitors made 1,473 calls on the sick and poor in the 1897-98 school year.

An example of the piteous home conditions was evidenced when one of those visitors checked on why three children had been absent from classes for several days in 1898.  The family, consisting of the parents, a grandmother, and the three children, lived in two rooms.  The father, it was discovered, had been taken to a hospital.  Two of the children were bedridden on a cot in a near-staving state.

The visitor reported "There were a few cinders in the stove which the mother had taken from ash cans during the day.  Mother and children when able made flowers through the day and part of the night to help with the rent."  The school sent food to the family until the children were strong enough to return to class.

That year the school announced it had added "Venetian ironwork" to its manual training classes, noting the boys were "greatly interested" in learning the craft.   Other classes offered were "kitchen-gardening, cooking, darning, buttonholes, dressmaking and all kinds of plain sewing to the girls, and printing, modeling in clay, woodwork" to the boys.

A problem was that families needed their boys to earn a living and, therefore, pulled them out of school after the age of about 11.  Some, however, realized that by suffering through a few years longer, the financial rewards would be far greater.  The 1898 report gave the example of one family of six "who are depending mostly on the support of one daughter, whose salary is only $12 per month," but refused to take the other daughter out of the school.

That girl, named Nettie, had graduated in June and was now attending the free Normal College to receive her teacher's certificate.  The base salary for New York City teachers was $600 per year at the time--$18,000 today--decidedly more than the family's current $144 income.

The work of the Sullivan Street School was ever-adapting.  Art classes and the "Christopher Columbus" history club (aimed, according to the New-York Tribune in September 1909 at the "Italian children attached to the industrial school") were examples of additional features aimed at attracting and enlightening neighborhood children.  Around the same time of the Tribune's comments a dental clinic was opened in the building.

In 1931 the Children's Aid Society gave up its role as educators, transferring its classes to the New York City Public School system.  The facilities now focused on recreation and health.  The Sullivan Street building was renamed the West Side Center.   Neighborhood boys during the Great Depression years signed up for the Center's Yankee Sandlot League.

In 1937 the team voted on its favorite member of their namesake team.  New York Yankee great Joe DiMaggio won the honor.  To the boys' surprise and glee, the star athlete visited the center on August 2.  Knowing that escaping from a score of hero-worshiping youths would be difficult, Joltin' Joe devised a clever scheme.  As the visit came to an end, he tossed out a dozen autographed baseballs and slipped out while the boys scrambled for them.

Eagerly anticipated events at the West Side Center beginning in the early 1940s were the annual Pet Show and the Pigtail Contest.  Although the families living in the neighborhood no longer suffered the brutal poverty of the 1890s, they were still low income.  So children competing in the pet contest had to be creative in finding pets.  In 1943 The New York Times noted that "Cats, insects and dogs of every description also competed."

That year a two-year old toddler, Alfred Pruzzin, was allowed to enter his turtle, Florence.  While 200 children watched, Florence was given her chance.  She pulled into her shell and refused to come out.  Alfred, said The Times, was "puzzled and unhappy."  The judges awarded Florence the award for "the most bashful turtle in the show."

A special attraction that year was the appearance of Saddler, a member of the War Dog Fund.  His purpose was to recruit "4-F" dogs for the Army and to raise money for military canine training.

The Pigtail Contest was an opportunity for little girls to show off their dexterity in braiding and in decorating their hair.  That event lasted until around 1960.

As the West Village changed, so did the West Side Center.  Still owned by the Children's Aid Society, it was home in part to the Visual Arts Center by 1972.  Alfred Alexander taught photography to small classes of students "all all levels of experience," according to New York Magazine on January 17 that year.  The article noted "The darkroom facilities are less than ideal, but Alexander hopes to expand them in future months."

The Center was the site of the New York International Children's Film Festival in December 1997.   No collection of cartoons and fairy tales, it was intended by Eric Beckman to "give kinds things to think about, and parents and children things to talk about."  To that end films like The Boy, the Slum and the Pan's Lid, about an impoverished Brazilian boy, and the Swedish film Lucky Girl, about a 7-year old Guatemalan girl who took care of her siblings while her mother gave birth, were screened.

In the fall of 2007 Notes in Motion, a dance troupe, established the Outreach Dance Theater in the building, now known as the Philip Coloff Center, where artists offered children workshops in writing, theater, visual arts, music and dance.  At the end of the courses, the original performances by the students were staged.

But the end of the line for the children's programs in the building was on the near horizon.  In December 2010, after more than 115 years serving the area, the Children's Aid Society announced it was selling the building.   The neighborhood, once described as among "the most depraved localities," was now middle class.  The Society pointed out that the median income was more than twice that of the Morissania section of the Bronx, where its help was more needed.

Preservationists and locals worried.  The building sat just outside of the Greenwich Village Historic District.  Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation pointed out that without that protection the building would likely be demolished.

The 1892 building is now part of the modern condo seen partially at the right.

Perhaps surprisingly, it was not destroyed.  Instead it was gutted and incorporated into the new residential building designed by Rawlings Architects, PC.  The facade has been a bit over-restored, muting the contrast of brick and stone into a nearly monochromatic palette.  Happily, nonetheless, the picturesque Flemish building where indigent children were offered hope survives.

photographs by the author

The Sixth Street School - No. 630-634 East 6th Street

The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Charles Loring Brace along with a few other concerned men in 1853.  Brace had been, according to King’s Handbook of New York City, “engaged in teaching some of the little arabs of the streets.”  The Society was incorporated in 1856 “for the education of the poor by gathering children who attend no schools into its industrial schools, caring and providing for children in lodging houses, and procuring houses for them in the rural districts and in the West.”

A year before the Society was organized, Emily Thorn Vanderbilt was born. The second daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt, she grew to a beautiful young woman who was as much interested in philanthropic causes as the social whirl into which she had been born.  In 1872 she married the wealthy William Douglas Sloane and her generous charitable patronage continued.

Emily Thorn Vanderbilt -- from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In 1886 she and her husband founded the Sloane Maternity Hospital; and in 1888 she personally financed the creation of the Sloane Hospital for Women with a gift of more than $1 million.  That same year she presented the Children’s Aid Society with a school building in the depressed tenement area of the Lower East Side.

For nearly all its buildings the Society turned to the architectural firm of Vaux & Radford, which would eventually design 12 Children’s Aid Society projects.  Calvert Vaux, best known for his work in designing Central Park, had partnered with George Kent Radford in 1872.  The Sixth Street School building would follow the same lines as their other Children’s Aid Society buildings—a blend of Victorian Gothic and Flemish Revival styles.

Strikingly similar to structures like their 14th Ward Industrial School, opened in 1888, and the Elizabeth Home for Girls, completed in 1892, the Sixth Street School building featured an asymmetrical design which included a three-story angled bay, prominent stepped gable, copper-clad dormer and terra cotta panels.

A decorative terra cotta panel integrates the monogram of the Children's Aid Society.

Not only did Emily Vanderbilt Sloane donate the building, she continued to pay for the costs of maintaining the facility.  It was, in effect, her school.

Unlike the academic classes stressed in public schools, the Children’s Aid Society schools within the tenement neighborhoods focused on industrial and domestic arts classes.   Poverty-stricken students needed desperately to learn a trade by which they could earn a living before going out in the world.   In addition to academic basics, boys were taught skills like woodworking, while girls received lessons in nutrition and sewing.  The Sixth Street School also provided its students what were often their only nourishing meals.

In November 1892 the report of the Society noted “The Sixth Street school, under the generous support of Mrs. William D. Sloane, continues its good work among the poor of the east side.  The primary and industrial classes are most successful.”

Each year Emily Sloane gave the Society her check for $3,000 to maintain the school—a little more than $80,000 in 2016.  By the turn of the century inflation had increased that amount to $3,450.  And every year she provided Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners to the youths; a cost of about $150 for each Thanksgiving and $300 for Christmas in the 1890s.  Without these events, the tenement-dwelling children would have no real holiday meals.

The importance of the holiday meals was evidenced on Christmas Eve 1897 when The New York Times reported “The little ones who attend the Sixth Street School, some 350 in number, had a rare treat on Wednesday afternoon.  Mrs. William Douglas Sloane, who has long been especially interested in the work of the school, gave them a Christmas dinner.”

In 1908 the Sixth Street School imitated a new class—one for aspiring office boys.  In the days before fax machines, email, or wide-spread telephone use, office boys were invaluable not only for mundane chores, but for running messages between businesses.  The New York Times described the class on November 8.  Saying that classes which met three times a week taught the trade “as a fine art,” the article explained “They diligently copy letters, striving not to leave out words or letters; they anxiously tie bundles in the most orthodox fashion.”

But special focus was given to the running of messages.  “More than this, they study New York City geography.  When this was mastered they were promised a telephone switchboard on which to achieve grace and dexterity in mixing the plugs.  Before this desirable advancement was reached each pupil had to show proficiency in New York City geography.”

More than simply knowing streets, alleys, and avenues; the boys were required to make on-their-feet decisions.  “It includes learning to judge when it is best to hurry and spend two fares, or walk and use one, all from the tone of voice of the given order.”  The boys were also trained in thinking out a problem if they realized they had been given a wrong address.

As part of their training, the students were sent out into the streets with assignments—some with purposely incorrect addresses, some with implied urgency of the task.  The instructor then waited, timing each boy’s performance.

William Douglas Sloane died in 1915.  Five years later Emily married Henry White, who had been a member of the American Peace Commission and signed the Treaty of Versailles.  White died at their massive Lenox, Massachusetts summer house, Elm Court, on July 15, 1927.

Emily Vanderbilt Sloane White continued to maintain the Sixth Avenue School.  On June 27, 1928 The Times reported on the 34 graduates of the Sixth Street School.  The article noted “During the year 18,002 nutrition lunches were provided and 31,832 bottles of milk consumed by the scholars, who were being trained in healthy dietetic habits.” 

The newspaper pointed out that the school’s outreach went out into the tenement neighborhood. “The school nurse made 431 visits to homes and 1,274 children were treated in the school dispensary.”  Yet despite even these efforts, the impoverished neighborhood children faced severe problems.  Three days before Christmas that same year The Times noted “About 260 children suffering from cardiac trouble and malnutrition, who are being treated at the Sixth Street School Health Centre of the Children’s Aid Society…were guests at a Christmas dinner given yesterday by Mrs. Henry White, the former Emily Vanderbilt…The children ranged in age from 4 to 10 years old.”

With the advent of the Great Depression, Emily Sloane White’s school building would be needed for other purposes.  In 1932 it was converted by the Salvation Army and Y.M.C.A., which opened it on March 1, 1932 as “Cheer Lodge,” a men’s homeless shelter.  Here 50 to 100 homeless and out-of-work men were housed.  New Yorkers were asked to donate games, jig-saw puzzles and books to the ironically-named shelter.

Elmer Galloway, executive secretary of the Bowery Y.M.C.A. spoke of the new shelter two weeks later, pointing out that “homeless and jobless young men, driven in from the cold streets, stood in line for lodgings and meals.”  He was proud that the Cheer Lodge offered these men a facility to wash and iron their clothes.

“This day laundry, where destitute men may tidy up and which is operated by the cooperation of civic and welfare organizations,” he said, included “twelve tubs in use all day, in which the men wash their clothing, dry them by gas heat, and then iron them with gas-heated flat-irons.”

On March 13, 1936 Cheer Lodge was transformed from a men’s shelter to one for women and children.  A disturbing incident occurred two years later in August after Margaret Daly, who came from Chicago, temporarily moved in with her three year old son, Robert. 

Margaret became friendly with an 18-year old resident, Vivian Platte.  What she could not have known was that Vivian also went by the alias Lauries March.  And the alias Helen Major. 

On Wednesday, August 30 a terrified Margaret Daly realized that Bobby was missing.  Officials soon noticed that Vivian Platte had also disappeared.  Police blanketed the city searching for the teen-aged kidnapper and the boy.

The search ended on September 2, 1938 when Vivian and Bobby were found in another settlement house, at No. 184 Eldridge Street.  Vivian explained herself matter-of-factly.  According to The Times, she “told police she took the child because she believed her chances of getting a position would be enhanced by its presence.”

Vivian was held without bail.  She insisted that she had been the ideal custodian of the boy.  “She said she spent $1.60, all the money she had, for milk for the child.”

Mary Nagel typified the heart-wrenching conditions of some of the women sheltered here.  The 32-year old was brought here on July 5, 1939 after neighbors living near a condemned building on East 37^th Street told authorities they suspected someone was living in the partly-demolished structure.  Police investigated and found Mary with her seven children, including a nine-month old, “in a room so bare of furnishings that they had to sit and sleep on the rubbish-filled floor,” according to a newspaper.

Mary explained that her husband had abandoned her about 10 days earlier.  Fearing her children would be taken from her, she sneaked them into the abandoned building.  When she went to work as a hospital janitress, her 10-year old daughter Rose watched over the other children.

As she feared, the children were taken to the Children’s Aid Society for care and the infant was sent to the Foundlings Home.  Mary Nagel was directed to stay at the Women’s Shelter on East 6^th Street “until adequate assistance could be provided for her.”

The increase of jobs for women brought on by World War II eliminated the need for the Women’s Shelter.  On June 8, 1943 it was closed and the few remaining residents were moved to the Municipal Lodging House on East 25^th Street.

The former Sixth Street School building became the new home for the Stuyvesant Town Development’s Children’s Center, which had outgrown its Avenue B facility.  The building was once again a Children's Aid Society facility--now appropriately called the Children’s Aid Society’s Sloane Center.  Here the Center offered space to the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Children’s Aid Society and once children were taught about nutrition and other relevant courses.

Throughout the decades the Sloane Center would host annual events like the “Anything on Wheels Derby” which pitted child against child in races like toddlers pushing baby doll carriages, and boys maneuvering their red wagons.  Children who took cooking classes—boys and girls alike—were eligible to participate in the Nourishing-Meals Contest.  And every year the children voted on Policeman of the Year, based on a local officer’s work with youngsters.

In 1975 the building was taken over by Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Church after its 1847 building was demolished.  The congregation remained here until the completion of its new church building on East 9^th Street in 1993.

The church’s former landlord at No. 630 East 6^th Street, the Lower East Side Service Center, operated a variety of social programs from the building, and then in August 1999 began an alteration into 40 apartments to house AIDS victims.  In converting the building, architectural firm Harden & Van Arnam restored the time-weary Vaux & Radford façade.

photographs by the author

The Lost 1888 44th Street Lodging House

photo from the collection of the New York Public Library

In mid-19th century New York teemed with waifs known as “street arabs” – the orphaned or abandoned children of prostitutes, drug addicts and alcoholics -- who fended for themselves.     The dirty, neglected children slept in stairways and parks.  Some earned pennies selling newspapers or shining shoes; others turned to pocket picking or other crimes to survive.

In response, The Children’s Aid Society was formed in 1853 by Charles Loring Brace to “ensure the physical and emotional well being of children and families.”  The Society’s purpose was to serve the “large multitude of children who cannot be placed in asylums and yet who are uncared for and ignorant and vagrant.”

The Children’s Aid Society depended heavily on the donations of the wealthy in order to fund lodging houses, industrial schools, and reading rooms.  In 1887 John Jacob Astor funded the 14^th Ward Industrial School on Mott Street, while almost simultaneously banker and entrepreneur Morris K. Jesup provided the money for the lodging house and school at No. 247 44^th Street, at the corner of Second Avenue.

Both structures--as indeed were all the Society's buildings--would be designed by the architectural firm of Vaux & Redford.  Calvert Vaux (who will be forever be most remembered for co-designing Central Park with Frederick Olmsted) and his partner G. K. Redford filed plans for the 44^th Street structure in September 1887.  In reporting on the filing, the Real Estate Record and Guide noted “The building, which is of brick and stone, four stories high, will be somewhat Flemish in appearance.”

Indeed the building, completed in 1888, was, like its fraternal twin on Mott Street, a Victorian Gothic pile of brick, terra cotta and brownstone, liberally splashed with Flemish Revival elements like the prominent stepped gables.  The delightfully irregular roof with its many dormers, chimneys, and projections, was crowned with a four-sided clock tower.

The Second Avenue El runs in front of the beleaguered structure in the 1920s.  photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

Initially, the $65,000 facility suffered an identity problem.  First called the Newsboys’ Lodging House, it was known briefly as the House for Homeless Boys.  But by 1889 the Children's’ Aid Society had decided on the "East Forty-Fourth Street Lodging House."  A year after its completion, the Society reported “This beautiful building, provided by the generosity of Mr. Jesup, has realized all our hopes and is crowded from top to bottom with poor children—in the day Industrial School., the work-shop, the Crippled Boys’ Brush-shop, the night school, and the Lodging-House.”

The report air-brushed the conditions of the indigent boys, saying “No House in the city presents a scene of busier activity or more cheerful industry.  It will be a lasting source of pleasure to the kind-hearted giver to see how much happiness and good he has scattered in that quarter of the city.”

Industrial schools city-wide offered training to orphaned or neglected boys; providing them with a trade when they entered society.  But the Crippled Boys’ Brush-Shop was unique.

The seeds for the Brush Shop were planted years before, in 1882, when a boy named Peter was run over by a freight train which severed both his legs.  The Evening World, on February 24, 1891, explained that for some years he “hid, slept and starved in wagons and areas, and finally was advised by a kindly disposed and sympathetic officer to try the Children’s Aid Society.”

William H. Matthews, Superintend of the 44^th Street Lodging House searched “far and wide and high and low for suitable employment for the boy, who was strong in his arms as a young lion and perfectly willing to work.  But nobody wanted him.  ‘Crippled, you see, and would only be in the way,’ they said.”

Matthews conceived of a classroom to teach otherwise unemployable crippled boys a trade that did not require extreme physicality.   Supplies were ordered from Philadelphia, a shop was constructed and a brush maker was brought in to teach Peter the craft.  The Evening World reported “Other boys, cruelly handicapped, entered the shop, and before the first month’s report was out there were thirty at the bench.”

Young Peter became the supervisor, refusing to use “his timbers;” instead moving around the shop using his arms and dragging the stumps of his legs.  He had a sizable crew under his guidance.  The Society’s 1889 report noted “The Crippled Boys’ Brush-shop has continued during the year with good results; an average of 14 cripples have been kept at work.  In addition to this, 264 boys were given temporary employment.”

Unfortunately, in Peter’s case his early success came to a crashing defeat.  Jacob Riis later explained that the homeless boys, despite the Society’s influences, were often still victims of the outside environment.  An article he wrote for The Century Magazine in 1912 included “There is evil enough abroad in the streets. Its touch, with all that is cheap and tawdry and vulgar, from the peren­nial cigarette to the vile bar-room and worse that open upon it, sharpens the lad's wits and too often tends to dull his mor­als.”

Regarding Peter, The Evening World said “Success of heredity, or both influences, turned his head.  He took to drink, became ungovernable and was suspended.  He retaliated by getting out in the street with a pocketful of stones and riddling the windows.

The other crippled boys continued on.  They began work at 7:00 in the morning and worked until 5:00.  They received one hour break as well as a free lunch.  The boys were compelled to attend one hour of night school following work from October through March.  If they went out at night, they were required to return by 10:30 during the weekdays and midnight on Saturday.

The brush makers paid five cents to live in the house and five cents for evening meals.  If they broke curfew, they were charged extra for their beds—between 7 and 11 cents.  Those trying to get back into the lodging house after midnight would find the doors locked.

The Crippled Boys’ Brush-Shop was a commendable endeavor; but it could go only so far.  The Evening World commented “These poor little fellows are not long-lived.  Many of them die of consumption, and pneumonia is both common and fatal among them.  The majority are Irish children, friendless, helpless and homeless.”

Between 1888 and 1889 the Lodging House furnished beds to 33,474 boys who came and went.  It supplied 53,107 meals, of which 45,524 boys were able to pay their nickel and 7,583 were supplied free.  During that 12-month period, 378 boys found homes and employment.

The Children’s’ Aid Society was a favorite cause of many of New York’s wealthiest citizens.  Thanksgiving and Christmas were, of course, times when benevolence shined brightest.  The boys at the 44^th Street Lodging House who routinely ate meagerly were treated to a bountiful Thanksgiving dinner, for instance, in 1894 when millionaire William Earle Dodge’s family not only paid for the feast, but joined the boys for dinner here.

Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas trees did not make routine life for the boys much improved, however.  John Widmore was 18-years old and living here in 1900 when he took the trolley to Jamaica, Queens, to visit his mother.  The boy had enough money to pay his fare to Queens, but was penniless when he tried to return.  The New York Times described him as “much emaciated, and his face was sallow, and his eyes sunken.”

When the conductor, 22-year old Thomas Chivers, realized Widmore had sneaked onto the trolley, he fought with the boy.  The motorman, 47-year old Henry Smith, joined in and they physically threw Widmore off the moving trolley.  The boy landed on a stump, causing internal injuries.  He died in Flower Hospital of peritonitis.

When a journalist from The Times questioned authorities at the 44^th Street Lodging House about Widmore, they “gave him a good reputation and said he was very steady.”

Tragedy touched the lives of other residents.  On August 11, 1907 19-year old John Kelly sought to escape the city heat by swimming in the Harlem River.  He did not know how to swim, and wore a pair of rubber water wings which were slightly too large for him.

He was swimming a few feet away from a moored barge loaded with bricks when someone dived from the vessel.  Startled by the splash, Kelly jerked and his water wings dislodged and floated away.

“The boy floundered about in the water and screamed for help,” reported The Times the following day.  “Men crowded to the edge of the bank and the rail of the barge and watched the boy, but they made no attempt to haul him from the water.”

Finally the panicked, flailing boy sank for the last time.

The taint of homelessness and poverty was more powerful than the glow of heroism in the case of James Coleman.  Frustrated in its failed attempts to nab the notorious burglar Eddie Fay, the City of New York offered a staggering $17,000 reward for his capture in 1910.

On Tuesday, March 29 Coleman, described by The New York Times as “a bright-faced newsboy of 19,” was selling his papers in front of Grand Central Station.   Police closed in on Eddie Fay on Vanderbilt Avenue and a commotion ensued.  James Coleman ran to towards the scene, only to see Fay “dashing away.”

James stuck out his foot and tripped the felon.  He then jumped on the crook and held him until police could apprehend him.  A witness, Frederick Keppel, offered to write a letter testifying that it was the newsboy who detained Fay.

On April 1 the boy walked into the Mayor’s office with Keppel’s letter.   Mayor Hugh J. Grant listened to Coleman’s story and read the detailed account provided by the well-respected Keppel, a picture frame dealer with the fashionable address of No. 4 East 39^th Street.

And then he sent the boy away.  “The Mayor told Coleman that the distribution of the $17,000 reward offered for Fay is not in his hands, and that he did not see how he could help him in any way.”

Two weeks later a little joy arrived at the Industrial School (which now accepted girls) in the form of 13 postcards sent from Egypt by one of the facility’s fondest supporters, Theodore Roosevelt.  The Times said on April 16, “The Roosevelts have been interested in the activities of the Children’s Aid Society for three generations.  When he was Vice President the Colonel delighted the boys of one of the lodging houses by passing ice cream and cake at one of its entertainments.”

As Roosevelt laid plans for his international trip in the fall of 1909, the class had sent birthday wishes to him that included good wishes for a “pleasant journey” and one boy added that he hoped “that you will come back and be our next President.”

The Times said the boys had followed Roosevelt’s movements through “dispatches in the local Italian newspapers.”   Now, with the arrival of the picture postcards and a sheet of Cairo Hotel stationery with the message “With all good wishes for my friends, both teachers and pupils,” the children were elated.

“The proudest children in New York today are the Italian boys and girls of Class 3A,” said The Times.  The article added “The postcard will be famed and hung in one of the places of honor in the east side school’s gallery.”

Some of the indigent boys saw the United States’ entry into World War I as one way to improve their lot.  Military service, of course, did not always end well.  On August 13, 1918 Joseph E. Becker, who could only list the Lodging House as his address, was included on the War Department’s Casualty List as “severely wounded.”

The trend continued even after the war.  In 1922, by which time the name of the facility had been changed to the Brace Memorial Newsboys’ House, 105 boys had enlisted in military service.  The number of boys sheltered and fed that year was 1,341.  That year President Warren G. Harding sent an autographed photograph inscribed “To the Brace Memorial Newsboys’ House, with cordial greetings from one who knows the sterling stuff from which real boys are made.”

In 1925 the Childrens’ Aid Society discontinued the Lodging House; converting the structure to the Kips Bay Boys’ Club in an effort to provide safe recreation space for boys living in the surrounding tenements.  The renovated structure provided “facilities for 1,500 boys, with a gymnasium, game rooms, library, showers and clubrooms.”

It would be a short-lived endeavor here, however.  Four years later the Society sold the building as a modern Kips Bay Boys’ Clubhouse was planned.   The venerable Vaux & Redford structure was demolished, replaced with a playground which in turn made way for the 1964 Olympia House apartment building.

photo http://streeteasy.com/building/olympia-house