The 1892 Double-Flat at 507 East 87th Street

 

Real estate developer George Schreiner was active in the Yorkville district in the 1880s and 1890s, working most often with architect Ed. Wenz.  In 1892 he completed construction of a five-story double-flat (the term referred to the two apartments on each floor) at 507 East 87th Street, between York and East End Avenues.

The brownstone-clad, Renaissance Revival style structure sat above a short, five-step stoop.  At a time when tenement buildings intended for less affluent residents were often embellished with over-the-top decoration, 507 East 87th Street oozed dignity.  Its ornamentation relied almost exclusively on the sophisticated carvings that framed each of the openings.  The swirling leaf detailing around the the entrance, for instance, was further surrounded by a unique frame of overlapping leaves.  The intricately carved window architraves differed by floor--strings of daisy-like flowers, sinuous vines, and trailing oak leaves, for instance.  The bracketed, terminal cornice included an ornate, dentiled frieze.

The residents of 507 East 87th Street were middle-class.  Living here in 1895, for instance, was Patrick R. McCollom, an engineer on the steamer of Engine Company No. 39.  He earned $1,600 per year, or about $57,500 in 2024.  Another resident at the time was J. J. Karpf.  He was affluent enough to afford a bicycle (or "wheel"), a luxury limited only to  the financially comfortable.  In August 1895 he joined scores of other uptowners in petitioning the Board of Aldermen to consider "the necessity for the bicycle path between the upper and lower parts of the city."

In 1903 Jakob Weis purchased the building, taking one of the apartments for his family.  Many German-born New Yorkers populated Yorkville at the time.  It appears that the Weis family had moved north from the Lower East Side where they attended St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church on East 6th Street.

On June 15, 1904, Jakob's young adult daughter, Florence, traveled downtown to take part in the church's 17th annual summer outing.  Accompanying her was her married sister.  For $350, the members had chartered the 235-foot steam sidewheeler The General Slocum for a day trip up the East River and across the Long Island Sound to a picnic grove on Long Island. 

The S.S. General Slocum, from the collection of The National Archives General Slocum Disaster.

The pleasure trip turned into the most disastrous loss of life in New York City history prior to the attack on the World Trade Center.  Because it was a Wednesday morning and because children rode for free, the boat was filled mostly with women and children.  Over 1,300 passengers boarded the steamer which carried a crew of 35.  The church party was unaware of The General Slocum's recent history of problems--running aground several times and, at least twice, colliding with another ship.  Worse yet, Captain William Van Shaick had not practiced fire drills with his crew, as required by law, in years.  Life preservers and fire hoses had not been inspected since the craft was constructed 13 years earlier.

Around 10:00, as the vessel entered the treacherous Hell Gate section of the East River, fire broke out below deck, quickly reaching a locker filled with gasoline and other flammable liquids.  Panic ensued as the flames broke through the deck.  The life boats were stuck to the side, having been painted in place.  Pandemonium broke out as children jumped or were tossed into the river, some sucked under in the turbulent Hells Gate eddies, others pulled into the side wheels and beaten to death.  Women who leapt overboard in their woolen Edwardian garments were quickly weighed down and drowned. 

Within 15 minutes the General Slocum was burned to the waterline.  Of the 1,300 people on board, only 321 survived.  Among them, almost miraculously, were Florence and her sister.  The New York Evening Post reported, "Among those saved were Miss Florence Weis of No. 507 East Eighty-seventh Street, and her sister, Mrs. Nicholas Schumacher of No. 529 East Eighty-second Street."  Florence told the reporter:

We were on the stern of the boat, and the first we knew of the fire, we saw passengers in the water.  They had jumped from the forward part of the boat.  It seemed only half a minute later that the fire was sweeping over the upper part of the vessel, and we found ourselves in danger of being burned. 

 

There was a constant stream of passengers jumping from the boat from the time it caught fire until it was beached.  Hundreds of them went over the side and must have been swept away before assistance arrived.  Pretty soon a boat came alongside and my sister and I were thrown into it, I don't know how.  After we had got into the rescue boat some one jumped on top of me and injured my head.

Florence and her sister said the boat burned "like a paper box."  (With every German family in the Lower East Side affected by the tragedy, the community soon migrated north to Yorkville.)

Living in the building at the time of the disaster was the family of William Stephenson.  Mrs. Stephenson died in October 1904, leaving her 52-year-old husband disconsolate.  On December 12, the Daily Eagle titled an article, "Died Of A Broken Heart," and reported that the conclusion of Dr. Brown of the Presbyterian Hospital "coincided with the statement of the dead man's son, that the father had died of a broken heart."  (The newspaper was, perhaps, being a bit dramatic and romantic in its interpretation of Brown's diagnosis of "valvular disease of the heart.")

Artist Walter Farndon moved into 507 East 87th Street around 1905, when his paintings Chelsea Docks and The Tow were exhibited in the Annual American Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago.  He shared his apartment with his brother and sister.

Farndon was born in Coventry, England in 1876 and began studying art as a child.  His family moved to New York in 1887.  By the time he moved into the building he was a recognized artist, his paintings regularly being exhibited not only at the Art Institute of Chicago, but at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the National Academy of Design.

Charles Shepard Chapman painted this portrait of Walter Farndon in 1928.  from the collection of the National Academy of Design

In 1910, Farndon's brother, Joseph briefly found himself in serious trouble.  In the pre-World War I years, New York was terrorized by the Black Hand, an Italian-American extortion group also known as La Mano Nera.  Their threats often resulted in murder.

Walter Farndon's subjects often involved piers and boats, like his Destroyed Dock.

On March 17, 1910, The New York Times reported that Hugo Frohmann had received a letter signed "Black Hand" in which he "was ordered, under penalty of death, to hand over $100 in an envelope to a man on the corner of East End Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street on the night of March 16."    Frohmann went there with a dummy envelope, while undercover detectives watched from the shadows.  

Meanwhile, each night after dinner, according to Joseph Farndon, he took a walk along the East River Park (today's Carl Schurz Park).  That Thursday night he had walked about a block when he passed Frohmann.  Presuming he was the extortionist, the detectives pounced.  The New York Times reported, "Before the stranger could take the decoy  the two detectives rush upon and arrested him for attempted extortion," said the article.

Fardon later told a reporter from The Evening Telegram that a detective had asked "if I was looking for Frohmann," and identified himself as a detective."  Fardon said, "I told him that didn't concern me, as I was a law abiding citizen and had committed no crime."  As he started to walk away, three other detectives rush in.  "The four knocked me down.  I am still black and blue from their beating," he said.  When he put his hand in his pocket to get a handkerchief, "the four drew guns and stuck them in my face, threatening to kill me if I moved."

Fardon was jailed and was not allowed to contact friends or family until Saturday morning.  The incident was brought to the attention of Mayor Jay Gaynor by the Rev. James B. Chalmers, vicar of Holy Trinity Church.  Gaynor was publicly shocked.  On March 21, The Evening Telegram reported, "He declared it was incredible that such things could exist in a free country, saying they would hardly be possible in Russia, the country where persecution is believed to be more rampant than anywhere else."

In June 1916, the New York City Health Department officially announced an epidemic of polio.  The disease was poorly understood and there was no vaccine at the time.  The scourge swept the city, affecting thousands of children, eventually killing more than 2,000.   Each day the New-York Tribune published the numbers of new cases and fatalities by borough.  On August 21, 1916, 18 children died in Manhattan, one of whom lived at 507 East 87th Street.

Mrs. Elizabeth Murray lived here with her eight children at the time.  When America entered World War I, her teenage son Martin Murray left to fight.  He served in France with the 130th Infantry Regiment of the 33rd Division and returned home safely following the war.  While he found work as a salesman, he devised other ways to make money.  On October 11, 1919, The New York Times reported that the 19-year-old was one of three men arrested for burglarizing the home of the widow of former Mayor Seth Low.

Three years later, at around 3:00 on the morning of Sunday August 20, 1922, Murray was standing on the corner of 86th Street and Third Avenue talking to friends when two men approached and shot him dead.  A journalist visited Elizabeth Murray in her apartment here.  Dismissing his past actions, she said she was incredulous as to why anyone would target her son.  "He never mixed in gangs or their troubles," she said, "and was just a big, good natured boy.  He had no enemies that we know of and certainly had done nothing to make anyone want to kill him."

Henry T. Holt, his wife, and daughter Antoinette lived here in the Depression years.  Born in 1879, Holt had served in the Spanish-American War.  He had a most interesting profession.  Since 1927 he was Inspector of Electric Signs for the City Clerk's office.

After more than 130 years, there are still just ten apartments in the building.  Its dignified brownstone facade is almost perfectly intact.

photographs by the author

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Misery and Tragedy -- No. 227 East 21st Street

In 1811 Commissioners’ Plan laid out on paper the streets and avenues that would criss-cross Manhattan above 14^th Street.  Country estates and farms, including the vast Stuyvesant holdings on the east side would one-by-one disappear as homes and businesses moved ever northward.

By the 1840's  a three-story brick house appeared on the former Stuyvesant land at what would be numbered 227 East 21^st Street.  At 23-feet-wide, it was most likely the house of a merchant class family.

But the neighborhood would quickly change.  By the early 1850's the 21st Street house and at least three other nearby homes were owned by Bernard Earle, who operated them as immigrant rooming houses.   His name would appear in court documents for decades for the unsafe and unsanitary conditions of his properties.

In October 1860 No. 227 was inspected by Department of Buildings officials.  Their report showed “no ladders, or stairways leading to the scuttles.”  (Scuttles were the roof top hatches which provided both ventilation and escape.)   Two years later the situation was unchanged, a condition which the Department blamed on Earle’s “refusal or neglect to comply.”  The city initiated a suit against Earle and according to the Semi-Annual Report of the Department of Buildings on December 31, 1862, he "immediately complied with the requirements of the law,” .

The year that Earle finally complied with the fire laws, 227 East 21st Street was filled with Irish working-class immigrants.  In 1862 Trow’s New York City Directory listed the inhabitants as Patrick Quinn, a laborer; John Sweeney, a mason; John Denny, “moulder;” John Fitzpatrick, another mason; Margaret Fraley, “widow of Patrick,” who made candies; and Julia Kurley, widow of Andrew, who made her living doing washing.

The Draft Lottery was instituted in 1863 to increase the Union troops who were fighting in the South.  Corrupt handling of the procedure resulted in upper class families buying immunity for their sons.  The result was that the draft was bottom-heavy with indigent immigrants.  Among them was J. Gordon who was living in 227 when his name was called on August 26, 1863.

Although the tenants continued to be overwhelmingly Irish throughout the war years, by 1867 the first German name appeared.  John H. Hanekamp moved in and immediately took advantage of the opportunities in his new land.  

The New-York Free Academy had opened on January 15, 1849 with the purpose of providing an education to young men who were financially unable to attend college.  It was now known as the College of the City of New York, and John H. Hanekamp enrolled, no doubt with the hopes to improve his life.  His dreams seemed to have come true.  He was still living here in 1871 (and still the only German among a tenant list of Irish) when he was now listed as "grocer."

On March 11, 1878 a baby boy was born to Philip and Mary Dunn.  Like Hanekamp, Joseph James Dunn (he later added an “e” to the family name, making it "Dunne") would elevate his station through education.  He attended the public school nearby on 23^rd Street and would eventually study in the offices of McKim, Mead & White before launching his own architectural career.

The lower floor of the house was converted for business around 1882 when P. Vorrath opened his “bar fixtures, horse, wagon, etc.” business here.  A large bay door was installed for Vorrath’s wide-spread business.

Vorrach did not last long and soon the shop was taken over by the G. H. Witte & Brother grocery store.  George H. Witte lived  upstairs with his wife, Meta.  Their presence reflected the increasing German population of the area.

On January 14, 1888 The Evening World commented on the new store.  “G. H. Witte & Bro., grocers, of 227 East Twenty-first street, have their store packed as full of nicely selected goods as it will hold, and report that business is good, although it is quiet since New Year’s.”  The newspaper diplomatically described the store’s low-income patrons.  “Their customers are the families of men on salary, and who buy, not sparingly, but with a sensible view to economy.”

It would not be merely the wives of neighborhood laborers shopping here.  Bonfort’s Wine and Spirit Circular noted on February 10, 1888 that Witte had a license to sell alcohol—no doubt a lucrative sideline for the grocer.  His business was such that in January 1892 he hired architects Kroenke & Bindervald to install a new show window at a cost of more than $6,500 in today's dollars.

George Witte's landlords were Henry and Meta C. Plump.  They may very well have also been his in-laws; for in January 1897 they sold one half interest in the property to Meta Witte for $8,000.

The Germans heavily outnumbered the Irish in the area by now and it was reflected in the names of the tenants at 227.  Two of them, Henry Pfeiffer and John Schlemeyer, paid for their recklessness on July 5, 1891.  According to The New York Times the following day, the men “amused themselves by cleaning an unloaded pistol” in the house.  The problem for Pfeiffer and Schlemeyer was that the pistol was not unloaded.  The handgun went off, “and Pfeiffer received a severe wound in the breast.”  He was taken to Bellevue Hospital and Schlemeyer was arrested.

The residents of 277 East 21^st Street were panicked on December 22, 1902 when fire broke out in the tenements directly behind at 226 and 228 East 22^nd Street.  Although the residents of 227 East 21st Street seem to have been mostly German, The New York Times described the house as being “occupied principally by Italians.”

Along with the neighboring structures, the building was evacuated in fear that the tenement fire would spread.  The thought of losing what little possession they had was terrifying for the immigrant families.  The Times reported “The police early went through these houses and drove all the tenants out into the street.  There was a scene of wild excitement, many of the Italians insisting on going back to their flats and carrying out their most precious belongings.”

George H. Witte’s grocery business continued to succeed and in 1903 he picked up additional income “for furnishing supplies for schools,” as recorded in Department of Education records that year. 

Life for impoverished families in the tenements and converted houses like No. 277 was grim.  In 1902 the building was deemed unsafe by Building Department inspectors.  And repairs could not fix the insufferable summer temperatures residents endured which caused misery and, often, death.  To provide temporary relief from the heat and misery of the tenements, churches annually hosted one-day picnic excursions.

In 1904 St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church announced that year's outing would take place on Wednesday, June 15. The side-wheeler The General Slocum had been hired for the 17^th annual event and participants could expect a trip up the East River to a picnic grove.

The unmarried 26-year-old Meta Seeman, who lived here, made plans to go.  And George Witte allowed his 11-year-old son, John, to miss school that day so he, too, could join in the fun.  It was a regrettable decision.

The happy excursion ended in New York City’s greatest loss of life until the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.  Fire broke out below decks and spread with vicious fury.   Within 15 minutes The General Slocum had burned to the water line.  Only 321 of the 1,300 mostly women and children on board survived.  The rest perished by fire or drowning.  Neither Meta Seeman nor John Witte would return to East 21st Street that day.

As the decades passed, the block changed.  Twentieth century apartment buildings replaced the old structures.  But the little brick house at 277 somehow clung on.  Its residents continued to be low-income and not always law abiding.  On April 9, 1932 The New York Times reported on the arrest of 19-year-old Edward Lyons.  Lyons was involved in the payroll robbery of the United Parcels Service Company.   Both he and his accomplice, 16-year-old Lawrence Wright, were held without bail.  Wright confessed to having taken part in 16 hold-ups within the past year.

Four years after Lyons was arrested the house was converted to apartments—two per floor.  At some point the structure was slathered in a stucco-type material and a parapet with inset brick diamond shapes installed.

In 1963 Lillian Roxon would sign a lease here, bringing a touch of quiet celebrity to the old building.   Born in Savona, Italy as Lillian Ropschitz, she arrived in New York City in 1962.  She wrote articles for several publications about the hippie movement, but more importantly about the rock music scene.  In 1968 she began writing what would be the first rock encyclopedia. The massive Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia was published in 1970.  The intense stress to make deadlines took a toll on Roxon.  She told an interviewer following the publication “It was a very high price to pay.  I lost my friends, my health, my looks.”

During the writing of the encyclopedia, Roxon developed asthma.  On the morning of August 10, 1973 friends entered her apartment at No. 277 East 21^st Street to find the 40-year-old dead from an asthma attack.

According to long time resident Pam Makie, other musicians who lived in the house in the 1990's were Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, and Paul Dugan, a founding member of Big Lazy.

The venerable house with its often miserable history is outwardly careworn.  Inside the squalor endured by 19^th century immigrant families has been replaced by modern appliances, drywall and varnished floors.  

photo http://www.townrealestate.com/rental/id-926583/227-East-21st-Street-2-Gramercy-Park

photographs by the author

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The Geo. C. F. Haas House -- No. 64 E 7th Street

The Bond Street area, in the 1830s, was one of the city’s two most exclusive residential neighborhoods.  The blocks branching off Lafayette Street, from Bond Street to Astor Place, boasted some of the wealthiest citizens in New York.   High-end homes were being constructed on the east side of the Bowery, as well; such as No. 64 East 7^th Street.

Construction began in 1839 and was completed the following year.   The wide red brick residence sat on a rusticated brownstone English basement.   A cast iron balcony stretched the width of the parlor floor, accessed by two floor-to-ceiling windows.

Upscale Greek Revival residences saved their ostentation for the interiors.  Here lavish parlors and dining rooms boasted exquisite mantels and plasterwork, and staircases spilled down to handsomely carved newels.   The self-effacing facades merely hinted at the wealth and station of the residents within.   But the architect of No. 64 gave a tantalizing clue to passersby in designing the entrance.  The paneled entablature sitting on the brownstone pilasters was decorated with lovely groups of nuts and berries.  The added touch signaled that the residents could afford the extra cost.

By the time the house was completed, the area was seeing an influx of German immigrants.  In 1846 the Corporation of the United German Lutheran Church purchased three lots on East 6^th Street where the Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Mark was soon built.   By the 1850s German was the most common language spoken in the Lower East Side, earning it the nickname Kleindeutchland, or Little Germany.

In 1880 the health of the church’s pastor, Rev. Hermann Raegener, began to fail.  The congregation hired 26-year old Rev. George C. F. Haas as assistant pastor.  The young minister boarded at Reverend Raegener’s home for two years until he was given the position of pastor of St. Mark’s.

It was either his promotion or his upcoming marriage to Dutch immigrant Anna Hansen that prompted him to find his own home..  For whichever reason in 1882 he moved into No. 64 East 7^th Street.  The ample size of the house proved necessary when not only did George’s sister Emma and Anna’s mother, Elizabeth Hansen, move in; but when their two children were born—George in 1888 and Gertrude in 1892.

As the turn of the century approached, St. Mark’s was a vibrant congregation.  The attempt of the Germans to assimilate into the New York community at large was evidenced by its offering services in English on Sunday evenings starting in 1893.

George C. F. Haas was beloved as a pastor and leader of the German community.   Well aware that his congregation consisted not only of successful merchants and businessmen, but also impoverished immigrant families; he and the ladies of the church organized outings, bazaars and entertainments to uplift their blighted lives.

Summers in stifling tenements could be miserable.  In 1904 St. Mark’s Church chartered the side wheeler General Slocum for $350 for a day trip up the East River, across the Long Island Sound to a picnic grove on Long Island.  On June 15, more than 1,300 passengers boarded the steamer which carried a crew of 35.  Because it was a Wednesday morning and because children rode for free, the vessel was filled mostly with women and children.   Nearly the entire Haas household—George and Anna, 12-year old Gertrude, Emma Haas and Elizabeth Hanson—were on board.  Only 16-year old George stayed behind.

Unbeknownst to the party, Captain William Van Shaick had not practiced fire drills with his crew in years, as required by law.  Life preservers and fire hoses had not been inspected since the craft was constructed 13 years earlier.

The ship pushed off from the 3^rd Street Pier at 9:30 a.m.  A band on board played carefree tunes and children ran about on the upper decks.  By 10:00 it was entering the treacherous Hell Gate section of the river.  It was at this point that onlookers on shore, attracted by the music, noticed smoke billowing from below decks and began gesturing wildly to those on board.

Suddenly the fire below decks reached a paint locker filled with gasoline and other flammable liquids.  Pandemonium broke out as the flames erupted on the upper decks.  Panicked passengers rushed for life jackets, most of which fell apart in their hands, the canvas fabric having rotted after years of exposure to the elements.  The cork filling in the others had granulated over time, so when mothers laced their children into the vests and tossed them overboard, they watched in utter horror as the cork absorbed the water and pulled their children under.

George Haas later recounted “At that time most of the women and children were jammed in the rear of the boat, where the band was playing.  Why the captain did not point the boat for the meadows I do not understand.  He kept on, and the fresh wind from the Sound drove the fire back through the different decks with lightning rapidity.

“In three minutes from the time the fire started all the decks were ablaze…I was in the rear of the boat with my wife and daughter.  Women were shrieking and clasping their children in their arms.  Some mothers had as many as three or four with them.  Our case seemed hopeless.  Death from fire was to be escaped only to die in the water.”

Haas told how he became separated from his family.  “With my wife and daughter I had been swept over the rail.  The fire then looked as if it would devour us the next instant.  I got my wife and daughter out on the rail, and then we went overboard.  I was in such an excited state that I don’t remember whether we were pushed over or jumped.

“When I struck the water I sank, and when I rose there were scores about me fighting to keep afloat.  One by one I saw them sink around me.  But I was powerless to do anything.  I was holding my wife and daughter up in the water as best I could, almost under the side of the boat, when someone, jumping from the rail directly above me, landed on top of us.  My hold was broken, and we all went under together.  When I came up my wife and child were gone.”

Nearby vessels rushed to try to help.  Two fire boats, at least a dozen tugboats, ferries, a police boat—over 100 in all—hurried to the scene.  George Haas was pulled aboard a tugboat.  For most it was too late.  Within a span of 15 minutes the General Slocum had burned to the waterline.

Of the 1,300 people on board, only 321 emerged from the water alive.  It was the greatest loss of life in New York City until September 11, 2001.   Around 5:00 that night George and his sister Emma returned home without their family members.  The following morning the New-York Tribune said “The pastor was prostrated last night.  Much of the time he was unconscious…With the exception of Mr. Haas’s son George, who did not go on the excursion, these two are apparently the only ones left of a large family.”

Two weeks later the funeral of 46-year old Anna Haas was held in the East 7^th Street house.  The Evening World said “It was rendered doubly pathetic because the bodies of the pastor’s daughter, Gertrude, his mother-in-law, Mrs. Mary Hanson, his sister-in-law, Mrs. William Dietmore, and her son Herbert, have not been recovered.”  

“Because of the ghastly burns he received in the destruction of the Slocum, Dr. Haas sat behind a screen during the funeral services,” said the newspaper.

During the service, word came that the body of Anna’s sister, burned beyond recognition, had been identified by marks on the body.  Her coffin was hurried to the Haas house and the service became a double funeral.  Little Gertrude’s body was among the last to be identified.

A police honor guard lines the steps of the Haas house on June 17, 1904.  Two hearses, one for Anna and one for her sister, await at the curb.  photo www.encyclopedia-titanica.org

Among the telegrams and letters George Haas received were one from President Theodore Roosevelt,

Accept my profound sympathy for yourself, your church and your congregation.

and from Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany,

Being most profoundly affected by the news of the indescribably horrible catastrophe which has overtaken the Lutheran congregation, I command you to express to it my innermost feelings of sorrow.

Little by little the decimated German community moved north to the Yorkville neighborhood, abandoning Kleindeutschland where memories and grief were unbearable.  On December 13, 1913 Morris Spielberg purchased No. 64 East 7^th Street.  George Haas would eventually move to Staten Island where he died on September 30, 1927.

In January 1916 Spielberg made renovations to the house.  He commissioned architects Gross & Kleinberger to remove walls and install new steel beams at a cost of about $500.  It was most likely at this time that the basement was converted to commercial purposes.

Socialism had already spread to the western world but the Russian Revolution of 1917 would be the introduction of Communism to many New Yorkers.   By 1919 the store in the basement of No. 64 East 7^th Street housed a stationery store.  Behind it was a small print shop where Alexander Brailovsky ran his print shop.

Brailovsky was a Russian-born communist and he published his Russian language weekly newspaper Russky Golos (The Russian Voice) here.  The paper was closely aligned with the Communist Party of the United States and printed pro-communist and anti-capitalist articles.

On September 16, 1920 stock brokers and bankers went about their daily routine along Wall Street when, exactly at noon, a horse-drawn cart packed with 1,000 pounds of dynamite and 500 pounds of metal, chucks of iron sash weights and other shrapnel, exploded outside of the J. P. Morgan & Co. building.  There were 30 immediate fatalities and hundreds of injured.  Six more would eventually die of wounds.

Witnesses told detectives that Brailovsky was seen laughing near Wall Street half an hour later.  Two days later police entered the print shop on 7^th Street and arrested Alexander Brailovsky.  He was never definitively tied to the bombing; however police deemed it the first arrest of a true radical.

The Russky Golos was eventually taken over by Theodore Bayer.  It would remain in the house, behind the retail space, until at least 1939.

By the 1960 the neighborhood was part of the trendy, beat generation area now known as the East Village.  That year John Bosson and Paul Seidenatein opened the Four Steps Coffee Gallery—a combination coffee house and art gallery—in the basement.  The short-lived business was taken over by Barron Bruchlos later that year as the Cart Wheel.  The 28-year old hippie Bruchlos not only sold coffee in his bohemian shop, he sold peyote.

The New York Times described Bruchlos as “the bearded and barefoot operator of a Greenwich Village coffee shop” and said he “has been selling the drug to beatniks and college students for 50 to 70 cents a capsule.  Some users get ‘highs’ lasting as long as thirty-six hours, he said.”

Bruchlos complained that he had been “pestered” by the Food and Drug people for about a year for selling the drug (in June that year they had seized 311 pounds and 145 capsules).  The newspaper described the drug, obtained from a cactus plant, as having “a mild intoxicating effect and sometimes produces hallucinations and visions of vivid colors.”

The beatnik’s ongoing battle with the FDA would not last much longer.  On December 6, 1960 he was found dead on the floor of the Cart Wheel.  Police thought his death was most likely of natural causes.”

Six months later Les Deux Megots opened in the space.  The Village Voice, in June 1961, announced “The Wednesday poetry readings at the 10^th Street Coffee House have been moved to the Deux Megots Coffee House…All poets welcome to come and read every Wednesday, 8:30 p.m.”  Named after the Café Des Deux-Magots in Paris, it was the iconic basement coffee house of the beat generation.  At the café’s open readings, poets like Allen Ginsberg, Paul Blackburn and Peter Orlovsky read their works.

Les Deux Megots closed in February 1963.  It reopened a year later as a restaurant.  The Paradox was dedicated to the philosophy of Georges Ohsawa and his macrobiotic diet.  The room was lit by candles, tea was free, and the food was inexpensive.  Eastern spiritualism was as much a part of the place as was the food.  It attracted New Age patrons like Yoko Ono, who also worked there for a time.  Nevertheless, despite The Paradox’s focus on healthful eating, it received 15 Health Department violations in 1971.

In 2009 No. 64 east purchased by Lisa J. Fox who commissioned architect William Peterson to add a fourth floor.   The remarkably sympathetic addition matched the openings, lintels and sills and added a reproduction cornice.

A bold, beautifully grained Greek Revival mantel survives in one room.  www.blocksy.com

Throughout its remarkable life the George C. F. Haas house somehow escaped modernization.  Within its walls three important stages of East Greenwich Village history have played out.

The extremely sympathetic upper floor addition is evidenced by the subtle change in brick color.

photographs by the author

The 1847 St. Mark's Lutheran Church (6th St. Community Synagogue) 323 East 6th Street

The brownstone trim has been painted white and the brickwork red; but overall the building is astonishingly well-preserved -- photo gvshp.org

The Lower East Side in the final decades before the Civil War saw increasing numbers of German immigrants.  Before long the district would be known as Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany.

In 1846 three lots on East 6^th Street were purchased by the Corporation of the United German Lutheran Church for $6,600 from the Woodward and Gaines families.  Within a year construction of a new church, intended as a mission for the congregation of St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church at Broadway and Walker Street, was begun.

The unknown architect marched to his own tune in designing the building.  At a time when Gothic Revival was catching on and Green Revival temples were still the accepted form for church architecture, the architect chose to work in the Renaissance Revival style—much more expected for commercial and residential structures.

It would be a red brick edifice sitting on a base of brownstone and accessed by a broad set of brownstone steps.  Clustered pilasters flanked the handsome double-doored entrance and two blind windows with brownstone lentils and sills sat in recesses created by plain brick columns.  A classical pediment rose over the overhanging cornice. 

The interior was a no-nonsense space of worship.  Relatively unadorned, a balcony ran along three sides supported by slim wooden columns.

While the church was being built, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Mark was organized by a few former members of St. Matthews Church.  The congregation was formalized on December 12, 1847 and worshiped briefly in a rented hall. 

Construction on the East 6^th Street building was completed in 1848 and the dedication was held on June 4.  The new St. Mark’s church, financially unable to purchase the building, rented it from St. Matthews.  As the German population in the area grew, so did the congregation of St. Mark’s and in 1857 the church was finally able to purchase the building from St. Matthew’s for $8,000.

The congregants established themselves as merchants and skilled laborers, becoming an integral part of New York’s varied populace.  St. Mark’s Lutheran Church was central to the lives of many of the families.  In 1887 an addition was added to the back as a study or “director’s room,” and two years later the house behind the church at 64 East 7^th Street was purchased as a parsonage.  As the congregation prospered, renovations including stained glass windows and new altar furniture were installed around 1897.  That same year the church listed between 650 and 700 communicants and more than 700 children in the Sunday school.

The 1897 windows, while retaining the memorial panels of the German purchasers, were altered in 1940 with Stars of David -- sixthstreetsynagogue.org

Annual excursions were popular around the turn of the century, sponsored by churches and civic groups.  St. Mark’s held an annual boat trip to a picnic grounds each year that provided relief from household drudgery and the heat of summer for church members.

On the morning of Wednesday, June 15, 1904 hundreds of women and children lined up at the Third Street Pier to board the steam side side wheeler, The General Slocum.  It was to be the seventeenth such trip up the East River and a German band played lively tunes on deck.  The passengers would never make it to the picnic grounds.

Around 10:00 am a fire broke out below decks that rapidly intensified when it reached a locker of paint and flammable liquids.  Life vests and fire hoses had been allowed to dry rot and crewmen were never trained in fire fighting.  Within a span of only 15 minutes, the vessel had burned to the water line and over 1000 people were dead – the greatest loss of life in New York City until the attack on the World Trade Center.

Kleindeutschland was devastated.  Some men lost their entire families.  There was not a member of the church who had not lost someone.   

“More than one man lost his mind after witnessing the dreadful scenes that followed his holocaust,” reported The New York Times eight years later when John Schrank attempted to assassinate Theodore Roosevelt.”  Schrank, the newspaper recalled, “appeared wild-eyed at the Morgue, and there identified the charred remains of his sweetheart, who was one of the thousand who died on the burning steamer.”

The neighborhood would never recover.   Little by little, unable to cope with the memories, the German population moved north to the Upper East Side Yorkville neighborhood.

 

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church struggled on, however.  On its 90^th Anniversary, December 12, 1937, the Rev. William C. J. Weidt urged in his sermon that the “church should look ahead, although its membership had been reduced by the disaster but by the residence of fewer Lutherans in the ‘polyglot community’” where the church stood.  Criticizing other “downtown churches” whose membership was also declining but which did nothing to enroll new members he said “God help such congregations who have had an opportunity to spread the Gospel but who have folded their skirts.”

By Christmas Day 1940, however, the church was forced to “fold its skirts.”  With fewer than 50 congregants, St. Mark’s had been forced to abandon its venerable East 6^th Street home on July 28 of that year and worship as guests of St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Church at Lexington Avenue and 54^th Street.  Before long the congregation would merge with Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church on East 84^th Street.

Briefly the church was used by a “Russian Catholic group,” but on January 2, 1941 the Community Synagogue Center, Inc., took over the old church.   The synagogue had purchased the property the previous  September for $27,000.

The altar furnishings of 1897 remain intact -- sixthstreetsynagogue.org

Mrs. Abraham Meller, the first woman ever to head a Jewish congregation, told reporters the organization intended to “use the building for a modern Jewish temple and a social, athletic and cultural center for the Jewish youth of the neighborhood.”

The group, which had 200 members at the time, initiated a $25,000 renovation.

The pews date from approximately 1848 -- sixthstreetsynagogue.org

The rare pre-Civil War building is very much intact today.  The Sixth Street Community Synagogue remains here after more than half a century and is a vibrant part of the East Village community.  While the neighborhood and its ethnic make-up have drastically changed, the red brick church-now-synagogue persists.

The General Slocum Memorial Fountain - Tompkins Square Park

Gradually, whether good or bad, tragedy fades from our historic memory.  Little by little grievous disasters become, at best, stories protracted by bronze plaques or statues; at worst totally forgotten. 

Hundreds of people pass the beautifully-veined pink marble fountain in Tompkins Square every day.  Hardly anyone knows why it is there.

At the turn of the last century the Lower East Side housed an enclave of German immigrants; called "Kleindeutchland" or "Little Germany."   On the morning of Wednesday, June 15, 1904 the members of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church at 323 E. 6th Street near 2nd Avenue set off on their 17th annual summer outing.  For $350, they had chartered the 235-foot steam sidewheeler The General Slocum for a day trip up the East River, across the Long Island Sound to a picnic grove on Long Island. 

They never made it there.

Because it was a Wednesday morning and because children rode for free, the boat was filled mostly with women and children.  Over 1,300 passengers boarded the steamer which carried a crew of 35.  The church party was unaware of The General Slocum's recent history of problems -- running aground several times and, at least twice, colliding with another ship.  Worse yet, Captain William Van Shaick had never practiced fire drills with his crew, as required by law, in years.  Life preservers and fire hoses had not been inspected since the craft was constructed 13 years earlier.

The ship pushed off from the Third Street Pier at 9:30 am.  A band on board played carefree tunes and children ran about on the upper decks.  By 10:00 it was entering the trecherous Hell Gate section of the river.  It was a this point that onlookers on shore, hearing the music, noticed smoke billowing from below decks and began gesturing to those on board.

The fire below decks intensified when it reached a paint locker filled with gasoline and other flammable liquids.  Panicked passengers rushed for life jackets, most of which fell apart in their hands, the canvas fabric having rotted after years of exposure to the elements.  The cork filling in the rest of the vests had granulated over time so when mothers  laced their children into the vests and tossed them overboard, they watched in utter horror as the cork absorbed the water and pulled their children under.

Captain Van Schaick told The New York Times the following day that he looked out from his pilothouse and saw "a fierce blaze -- the wildest I have ever seen."

Crew members tried in vain to fight the conflagration with rotten fire hoses which burst under the water pressure.  Having been repeatedly painted in place, life boats were stuck to the ship's side.  Pandemonium reigned as children jumped into the river, some sucked under in the turbulant Hells Gate eddies, others pulled into the side wheels and beaten to death.  Women who jumped overboard in their woolen Edwardian garments were quickly weighed down and drowned. 

The captain steered the ship towards North Brother Island in the Bronx, into the wind, which fanned the flames and intensified the conflagration.  Suddenly the main deck collapsed dropping hundreds of women and children into the inferno below.

As with the Miracle on the Hudson -- the US Airways jetliner that landed in the river a century later -- New Yorkers rushed to the rescue.  Two fireboats, at least a dozen tugboats, ferries, a police boat -- over 100 vessels in all -- hurried to the scene.  For most it was too late.  Within a span of 15 minutes the General Slocum was burned to the waterline.

Only 321 of the 1,300 people on board survived, the rest perished either by fire or drowning.  It was the greatest loss of life in New York City until September 11, 2001.   The New York Times reported "The disaster stands unparalleled among those of its kind. Whole families have been wiped out. In many instances a father is left to grieve alone for wife and children, and there was hardly a home in the parish, whence but a few hours before a laughing happy crowd went on its holiday, that was not in deep mourning last night."

The entire nation was stunned.  Little Germany was decimated and never recovered.  Those who survived moved away.

The Sympathy Society of German Ladies commissioned sculptor Bruno Louis Zimm to design the memorial fountain.  Dedicated in 1906, his 9-foot high stele is sculpted of pink Tennessee marble.  On the front, above the carved lion's head spout and basin, a low-relief depicts two innocent children staring off towards the sea. 

The inscription reads "They were Earth's purest children, young and fair."

The Sympathy Society of German Ladies installed the fountain so that the unspeakable loss of lives on The General Slocum would never be forgotten.  We have, unfortunately, forgotten.