Where Hats were Made -- Brunner & Tryon's 1892 No. 661 Broadway

photo by Beyond My Ken

When Moses Sachlein acquired 661 Broadway around 1890, a five-story masonry building had stood on the site for half a century. Here for decades George P. Putnam ran his publishing business until his death in 1872.

Sachlein razed the old structure in 1891 and in its place he commissioned architects Brunner & Tryon to design an 8-story store and loft building. Arnold Brunner and Thomas Tyron had only recently established the firm and had completed the headquarters of Downtown Hebrew Institute just two years earlier.

The building was completed in 1892, a handsome French Renaissance Revival structure with angles, textures and a mixture of materials similar to the highly-popular Queen Anne and Eastlake styles of the day. The architects placed the building on a solid two-story base of cast iron and rusticated granite piers. The third through sixth floors were of buff-colored brick with cast iron window frames and terra cotta detailing. The top two floors burst forth with terra cotta embellishment of palm fronds, swags, wreaths, Corinthian capitals and an elaborate pediment over the eighth floor dormer.

Terra cotta, cast iron and brick combine below a slate-covered roof -- photo by Alice Lum

The property stretched back through the entire block where the less elaborate façade had the address of No. 228 Mercer Street.

The building filled with a variety of tenants, one of the earliest being George W. Nathan. In February 1894 Mr. Nathan took Thomas Hays to court, charging him with stealing a diamond pin at his offices here, valued at $30.  The case took an embarrassing turn when on February 11 The World reported that Hays was let go “because Nathan was not sure but he might have lost the pin. He got it back again.”

At the turn of the century the majority of tenants were millinery and haberdashery manufacturers. In 1906 Alland Brothers & Co. operated here, importers and wholesalers of ladies’ and misses’ “headwear in every branch of the trade.” The Washington Post said of them, “This firm is famed all over the country for the beauty and exclusiveness of its trimmed hats. Their creations are accepted as the standard of correctness. French conceptions fresh from the Paris style-creators, and their own adaptations of foreign and American ideas are represented”

In 1910 the ground floor store was the home of M. Kalischer, Flowers and Feathers while upstairs were the Florence Hat Company, Samuel D. Lasdon, manufacturers of ladies hats and novelties, Samuel Blum and the Gingold Brothers, clothiers, among others.

It was a time when no woman or man would be seen in public without a hat. Men wore different hats for business, boating, picnics, leisure and evening wear.  And for every hat a gentleman owned a lady would have two. Through World War I the building was home to The Western Hat Company, The Practical Clothing Company and Linder & Berger, wholesale dealers in women’s and misses’ hats.

Here, in 1925, the Needlebook Specialty Company had its headquarters  In its nationwide ads it promised “$20 profit daily selling needlebooks.” The ambitious entrepreneur would buy the books for three to five cents each and sell them for a quarter, emphasizing to the customer that their value was fifty cents.

The building, as well as the adjoining 663-665 Broadway, was purchased in April 1941 by the Adam Hat Stores – a chain of stores that had formed an affiliate called Adam 665 Broadway Corporation.  The combined buildings, acquired from the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, formed a Broadway frontage of 120 feet. Rental income from the combined structures was estimated at $50,000 per year.

In 1954 Adam Hats sold the buildings to realty operator Jack Braus but remained on, immediately signing a ten-year lease for the 50,000 square feet they occupied.  Brause announced his intentions to modernize the old buildings.

No. 661 Broadway continued to be popular with garment firms and a year later Irving Raincoat Company was doing business from here.

Styles change and, for better or worse, by the 1960s hats for men were out of fashion. In 1962 A. Rosen & Sons who had manufactured men’s hats and hatters supplies from the building declared bankruptcy. The golden years of haberdashers was over.

photo by Alice Lum

Brunner & Tryon’s handsome design has sustained some modernization, especially at street level; but overall the façade is relatively untouched. It is a delightful stand-out among the many and varied architectural treasures along this stretch of Broadway.

A Bicycle Academy, Silversmiths, and Electric Guitars -- The 1896 No. 144 West 14th Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1894 William J. Cabury, rector of the Church of the Annunciation on West 14^th Street between 6^th and 7^th Avenues, joined with scores of businessmen in protest against the proposed 14^th Street elevated train.   The structure would block out the sunlight to the street and the ruckus created by the passing trains would be intolerable.

Reverend Cabury had more to worry about than an elevated train.

Fourteenth Street had been for decades a fashionable residential neighborhood.  The extra width of the street caused it to be airy and sunlit.  Merchant Richard P. Dana had built his home at No. 146 in 1854 and next door at No. 144 was Jaques Arnold Bernheimier.  A decade later Calvin Cross was living in the Bernheimier house.

Reverend Cabury’s Gothic Revival church had been built in 1846.  By 1877 the church had acquired No. 144 as its rectory and Cabury was living here when he protested the train.   But there was a far more serious issue facing the church.  It was in deep financial trouble.

By the 1890s West 14^th Street was heavily commercial.   The 6^th Avenue elevated train, erected in 1880, gave birth to a shopping district along 14^th and the wide, brick or brownstone mansions were one-by-one razed or converted for commercial purposes.   As the residents moved away, the Church of the Annunciation lost its congregation.

On February 25, 1895 the church building and the four-story brownstone residence were lost in a foreclosure sale; sold for $50,000 to Joseph L. Buttenwieser.

Buttenwieser was an established wheeler-dealer in real estate and his interests, understandably, did not lie in the salvation of a church building only 50 years old with no supporting congregation.  Within the year the existing structures were gone and in their place was an attractive Renaissance Revival-style loft building.

Buttenwieser had commissioned the firm of Brunner & Tryon to design the building.   The seven-story loft was constructed of limestone and buff-colored brick with classical terra cotta detailing.    Costing around $250,000, it featured a row of eight soaring arches from the third to sixth floors, above which were sixteen one-story arches. 

Arnold W. Brunner had a background as a watercolorist and was a skilled draftsman.    The façade of No. 144 West 14^th Street reaped the rewards of his training with exquisite detailing.

Brunner added cartouches flanked by delicate palm fronds between each pilaster -- photo by Alice Lum

Two years after its completion, Buttenwieser sold the building to Frederick Hill Meserve, executive director of the Deering Milliken Company.  Meserve passed the deed on to his uncle, Seth M. Milliken in 1899 and the family would hold at least a partial interest in the property until the middle of the 20^th century.

No. 144 filled with a variety of tenants.   R. H. Macy & Company established a factory here in 1898 with two departments; one for manufacturing American flags and the other for “ladies silk waist and silk underwear.”   Silverman Brothers produced suspenders here and a variety of silver and jewelry concerns moved in as well.

Not intended to be a dreary factory building, it was covered by the architects with classical ornamentation -- photo by Alice Lum

Stern Brothers silver company (not to be confused with the Stern Brothers dry goods firm) moved in, and Graff, Washbourne & Dunn were silversmiths here for half a century before being bought out by Gorham Silver in 1961.  Lenox Silver Corporation and the electro-plating company of Cohen-Epner were tenants. 

But the building was not home merely to factories and jewelry makers.

The large, open floor plan made a perfect location for Karmel Brook’s bicycle academy.  As early as 1897 Brooks had opened his indoor academy here, and pupils were instructed on an oval track.  Bicycle racks lined the walls and all was going smoothly for Brook’s enterprise—until Mary L. Smith walked in the door.

The 45-year old Mrs. Smith felt it was high time to learn to ride a bike.   After her third lesson, on March 17, 1897, she felt she was proficient enough to negotiate the track unassisted.  After her second lap she veered into a bicycle rack and broke her right shoulder.  The doctor bill amounted to $138 and Mary Smith sued Brook for $7,500 insisting she would never use her arm again.

She told the judge that the bicycle racks were too close to the track, rendering the academy unsafe.   Brook, on the other hand, testified that Mrs. Smith “was entitled to only half an hour’s instruction, and she staid on her wheel in order to steal a ride after her time for instruction had expired.”

Feeling that the jury might be prejudiced by the fact that a middle-aged woman was bike riding at all, Justice Smyth instructed the jury to consider only whether the neglect was Mrs. Smith’s or Brook’s.  “This lady,” he said, “has long since reached the age of discretion, and if she desired to learn to ride a bicycle it was a matter for her own good taste, and she had the right to do so whether she was forty-five or one hundred and forty-five years old.  You have nothing to do with that.”

No. 144 continued to attract a diverse list of tenants.  In April 1935 Epiphone signed a lease that would extend nearly two decades.  The company designed and manufactured stringed musical instruments and was dubbed by The New York Times as “one of the world’s largest” of its kind.   The company’s success prompted it to double its space in the building only two years after moving in.  Here Epiphone produced the first “solid-body” electric guitar in 1941, designed by legendary jazz guitarist Les Paul.

photo by Alice Lum

The building was purchased by Pratt Institute in 1999.  The school immediately commissioned a renovation by architects Ehrenkrantz, Eckstut & Kuhn.  The rehabilitated structure has served as the Pratt Manhattan campus since 2001, encompassing instructional classrooms, labs, a library and offices as well as a respected public art gallery.

Although the doors could be more sympathetic to the structure, the entrance is intact -- photo by Alice Lum

While moderate changes to the façade occurred over the decades, the building has survived with no major damage to the original design.  Even the stately original main entrance at street level—traditionally one of the first elements to be removed or modernized—remains.    The building was designated a landmark in 2008.

Arnold Brunner's 1905 11th Street Public Baths -- 538 East 11th Street

Water-themed designs like porpoises surrounding the cartouches and Neptune's tridents decorate the facade -- photo by Alice Lum

As the 19^th century drew to a close and the city’s poor crowded into cramped tenements, the problem of bathing was increasingly serious.  In the Lower East Side in 1896 there was one bathtub for every 79 families.

Half a century earlier the public had demanded action by the city.  By the time of the Civil War middle- and upper-class families in New York had begun bathing regularly, as the Europeans did.  But the lower classes had no means to bathe.  By 1858 the Committee for Free Public Baths had been formed, but nothing would be done about the situation for decades.

Even after the New York Senate passed a law on April 21, 1895 requiring that all first and second class cities create free public bathing facilities, Manhattan’s first bath did not open until 1901; governmental red tape miring the process.

Following the opening of the Rivington Street baths on the Lower East Side in 1901, the project gained momentum.   In 1903 the City bought two lots at 538-540 East 11^th Street in the Tomkins Square neighborhood which was populated mainly by German immigrants.  Architect Arnold Brunner was commissioned to design a public baths.  Construction was completed in 1905.

The first years of the 20^th century were marked by the City Beautiful Movement.  The philosophy behind it was that imposing, monumental structures would inspire citizens to behave consistently with their surroundings.  Brunner’s baths would follow that viewpoint—a gleaming white Italian Renaissance structure with splashes of Beaux Arts ornamentation.  Situated among the dark brown brick tenement buildings, it shimmered like a pearl.  The building, constructed of Indiana limestone, cost the city $102,989.

The Bureau of City Betterment of the Citizens’ Union of the City of New York had laid out their instructions for proper public baths:

1  * People’s baths houses should look and be clean, feel warm, smell sweet and be quiet and orderly.

2. * Bathing is a means of safeguarding the public welfare by the prevention of disease and by the raising of the standard of personal cleanliness and morality.
*  By the maintenance of free public baths universal bathing is more nearly and most economically accomplished.

The 11^th Street Baths followed these principals.  There were two separate entrances; one for males and one for females.  No proper Victorian would have mixed the sexes even in the lobby.    There were 94 rain baths (today called “showers”), 67 for men and 27 for the women; and seven bathtubs, two for men and 5 for women.   Bathers would bring their own towels and soap.  Privacy was an important factor and each stall had its own changing room.  Each person was allowed 20 minutes to bathe.

Male and female patrons had totally separate facilities -- "Modern Baths and Bath Houses" 1908 (copyright expired)

William Paul Gerhard, in his 1908 book “Modern Baths and Bath Houses,” noted that the 11^th Street Bath was “the only bath in which the generally insufficient city water pressure on the second floor is taken into consideration, and in which provision is accordingly made for pressure and air tanks, supplied from steam pumps and air compressors.”

Privacy was assured by individual shower stalls, each with its own dressing area -- "Modern Baths and Bath Houses" 1908 (copyright expired)

The first summer after the baths opened was insufferably hot.   On the last day of June 1906 14 people died of the heat and The New York Times reported “it was the hottest June since 1901.”  The indigent poor in the Tompkins Square neighborhood suffered.  The newspaper noted “The east side, which has always been the worst sufferer in hot waves, again supplied the biggest number of heat cases yesterday.”   To escape the heat people sought the cooling waters of the Public Baths.

“At the Eleventh Street baths people stood in lines four deep,” reported The Times.  “By and by the crush became so great that, despite the eighty-seven sprays and numerous tubs…the police reserves had to be called to preserve order.  The lines broke, and as each batch came out of the baths two or three hundred rushed to get in.  Order was finally evolved by the police and it was not necessary to make any arrests.”

The public school system used the baths, as well.  With no bathing facilities in students’ homes, shower baths were installed in public schools to promote personal cleanliness.  In 1917 the Board of Education’s Annual Report noted “The public bath is located in 11^th street near Avenue B.  This bath supplements nicely our school shower baths and enable us to reserve the latter for pupils of the intermediate or lower grades.”

In March of 1926 The Times remarked on the success of the city’s system of 15 public baths.  “Tenants in houses that were reared along about the time when the only tub in town was the celebrated marble affair in the late mansion of the Vanderbilts, are using the city-owned showers and pools three or four times a week instead of once or twice.” 

Despite the newspaper’s optimistic attitude, it was obvious to the city that the poor were using the public baths to keep cool rather than clean.  Patronage fell sharply off during the winter months.

Gradually, private bathrooms were installed even in the tenement houses and the need for the free public baths eroded.  By the middle of the century, only three public baths were in operation in the city, one of which was East 11^th Street.  Although in 1958 131,000 persons used the three baths, the city closed the 11^th Street and 109^th Street baths in money-saving move.

Brunner’s miniature limestone palazzo sat neglected for three years, then it was sold in 1961 and converted into a parking garage.  The steps into the arched men’s and women’s entrances were removed and ramps installed to enable cars to drive in.  As the neighborhood declined in the next decade, with Tompkins Square park becoming a notorious drug center, the baths building became a warehouse.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Eddie Adams and his wife Alyssa purchased the building in 1995.  It was converted into a photography studio, the grimy façade cleaned and replacement gates to the arched entrances installed.

Car ramps that replaced the entrance steps of the two outside arches are still evident -- photo by Alice Lum

Despite the abuse suffered by the 11^th Street Public Baths in the last half of the 20^th century, it emerged as “a highly intact example” of Arnold Brunner’s work, as described by the Landmark Preservation Commission.  It is an attractive reminder of a time in New York City when the simply task of taking a bath was difficult for many.

The 1897 Congregation Shearith Israel Synagogue - Central Park West

photograph Gryffindor

In 1654, with both the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions raging in Europe, a group of 23 Spanish and Portuguese Jews fled to America by way of Brazil, establishing themselves in lower Manhattan.  For nearly a century they worshipped in rented spaces until, in 1730, they converted an obsolete gristmill into a synagogue, creating the first American synagogue. 

As the congregation grew and the city expanded northward, so did Congregation Shearith Israel, moving three times to new houses of worship.  By the mid-1890s, the congregation had grown large and wealthy.  The members selected a site at the corner of Central Park West and 70th Street for their next shul--a developing neighborhood filling with impressive homes.  Congregation Shearith Israel purchased five lots for $140,000.

 

P. L. Sperr photographed the building on March 4, 1929 from the collection of the New York Public Library

Architects Arnold W. Brunner and Thomas Tryon were hired to design the new synagogue.  Although fashion in Jewish religious architecture had tended to reflect Near Eastern styles–with onion domes and Moorish arches, for instance–the architects took a different approach.

Archeological excavations in Israel near the Sea of Galilee at the time had uncovered classical ruins of a Greco-Roman period synagogue.  The discovery sparked interest in Jewish history predating the Moorish period.  Arnold Brunner referred to the concept as the “sanction of antiquity.”

The architects produced a dramatic Roman temple, completed in 1897, with four gigantic Corinthian columns supporting a cornice and ambitious pediment.  A grand flight of stone steps leads to the entrance.  Its new synagogue told the community that Congregation Shearith Israel had come a long way since 1654.

photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Tiffany Studios produced the soaring stained glass windows, and the interior walls were clad in various types of marble.  Two millstones from the colonial period gristmill synagogue on Mill Street were installed at the entrance and the reader’s desk from that same synagogue was brought in.

photos via shearithisrael.org

One room, called The Small Synagogue, is furnished in the Georgian style, including some of the furniture original the 1730 Mill Street building.

Over a century after the building's completion, Congregation Shearith Israel continues its venerable history in New York within its monumental classical synagogue.