Fellheimer & Wagner's Corn Exchange Bank - 267 Broadway

 

The expansive Wallach Brothers clothing store occupied 265-267 Broadway in the post-World War I years.  The building was owned by the Orphan Asylum Society of the City of New York.  On September 20, 1937, Wallach's moved into the Paragon Building at Broadway and Murray Street.  The move was necessary because the Corn Exchange Bank had taken over the lease for 265-267 Broadway as a branch office and was remodeling it.  Founded in 1853, The Corn Exchange Bank now had multiple branches throughout the city.  

The architectural firm of Fellheimer & Wagner was commissioned to remodel the architecturally outdated structure.  The architects' streamlined Art Moderne design included glass blocks over the entrances and in the vast second floor openings.  They were flanked by deep-set piercings, stacked in a diamond pattern.  Stylized Chicago-style windows gave interest to the upper three floors.  A striking Art Moderne-style flagpole base drew the eye upward and balanced what would otherwise have been a bottom-heavy design.

This photograph was taken by Wurts Bros. in 1937, shortly after the bank opened here.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

On October 24, 1937, The New York Times tepidly remarked on the renovations, saying only that "a glass front on the five-story building housing the Corn Exchange Bank at 265 Broadway" had been installed.

In 1954 the bank merged with Chemical Bank, becoming the Chemical Corn Bank.  Interior renovations were done in 1957.  The bank was renamed again in 1959, now the Chemical Bank Trust Company.

That year the TelePrompTer Corporation opened an account.  The firm was responsible for broadcasting the Ingemar Johansson-Floyd Patterson heavyweight title prize fight in June.  Two months later, Johansson's promoter, Bill Rosensohn, questioned the firm's accounting.  On August 8, 1959, attorney Edwin Schweig announced, "all the accounting records were in order, and that there was about $460,000 now in an account at the Chemical Corn Exchange Bank at 265 Broadway--money from the sale of radio, motion picture and theatre-TV rights to the June fight."  The balance would translate to about $5 million in 2026.

The Orphan Asylum Society of the City of New York finally sold the property to Chemical Bank in 1976.

A rash of bank robberies ushered in the new year of 1980.  There were 17 robberies the first week, including four on January 7.  The following day Newsday said, "Three banks in Manhattan were robbed of several thousand dollars within 34 minutes yesterday morning, and a pair of armed robbers held up a fourth bank in the Bronx, police said."  Among them was the Chemical Bank at 267 Broadway.  Newsday reported that it "was held up at 11:02 AM by an armed man who got 'a few thousand dollars,' police said."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Two years later, on February 7, 1982, The New York Times began an article saying, "To the New York City detectives who concentrate on trying to catch bank robbers, they have become known simply as 'the Women.'"  Since December 28, a three-member female gang had knocked off 11 banks in Manhattan and Brooklyn.  The article said, "In their most recent robbery, last Thursday, two of the women held up a Chemical Bank branch at 265 Broadway, near Chambers Street, and got away with $1,500."  

At the time, bank tellers interacted with their depositors face-to-face.  NYPD Lieutenant Joseph R. Nekola urged banks to install "bandit barriers"--shields of bulletproof Plexiglas.  The shields became more and more familiar to the banking public until becoming ubiquitous.

At the turn of the century, an HSBC Bank occupied the building.  Despite updated precautions, the branch was targeted by an unarmed robber on April 22, 2003, who made away with $41,000 in cash.  It was one of 170 bank robberies that year so far.  The following day, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg "harshly criticized some banks for failing to provide better security," reported The New York Times.  He told reporters that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly "is meeting with them today to read the riot act.  It's unconscionable what's going on."  He added, "Word is also out that some banks don't care, that you pass a note to get the money and you can get away with it."

The suspect in the HSBC Bank robbery, 37-year-old Bryant Brown, was arrested.  He was suspected in "a series of bank robberies scattered across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx," reported The Times.  Police said, "his method was to pass a note to a teller in each of the banks demanding money."

In 2011, HSBC Bank announced it would sell 195 branches.  Among those was 265 Broadway.  In 2017 real estate developer Roe Corporation announced a 45-story, mixed-use structure on the site.  The project did not move forward and in the spring of 2026, The Rabsky Group purchased the building for $30 million.  On May 18, 2026, Tribeca Citizen reported that a "mixed-use condo using 51,730 square feet of zoning floor area," would replace the bank building.

With no protection from the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the fate of one of downtown Manhattan's most eye-catching Art Moderne structures seems sealed.

photographs by the author

The 1931 Rothman's Pawn Shop Building - 149 Eighth Avenue

 

Born in the Chelsea area of New York City on March 6, 1833, Rev. Stephen Merritt Jr. joined his father's undertaking business in the converted house at 149 Eighth Avenue in 1851.  The Federal-style residence was erected around 1828 and would have been a close match to the abutting houses at 145 and 147 Eighth Avenue.  Following his father's death in 1874, Merritt moved the operation to 219 Eighth Avenue.  

At the turn of the century, Samuel Epstein's glass and mirror business occupied the ground floor of the vintage building.  But the post-World War I years saw it sorely neglected.  The city deemed the structure "unsafe" in 1927, 1929 and 1930.

Apparently that third violation was the last straw for city inspectors.  The building was demolished and the 149 Eighth Avenue Corp. hired architect H. Hurwit to replace it with a one-story store.  Hurwit's Art Moderne design included sharply-angled arcade windows that provided ample display space for window-shopping pedestrians.  Above, a high, scalloped parapet gave the diminutive building a false sense of height.

Hurwit's stylish design was visible for only a short time.  The building was leased to Rothman's Pawn Shop.  Its aggressive signage left only the show windows visible.

Steel supports reinforce the abutting buildings in 1940.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The intentional chaos of Rothman's Pawn Shop caught the eye of photographer Berenice Abbott on May 18, 1938.  She snapped photographs of the building as part of her Changing New York, a collection of images funded by the Federal Art Project. 

This image by Berenice Abbott clearly shows the arcade windows sitting on sleek, two-toned Art Moderne bases.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

The Eighth Avenue neighborhood underwent a renaissance in the third quarter of the century.  After having been home to Rothman's for half a century (during which the billboard-sized sign prevented masonry repairs), in 1983 149 Eighth Avenue was converted to an "eating and drinking establishment," as worded by the Department of Buildings.  H. Hurwit's Art Moderne arcade windows were replaced with a flat facade.  The alterations anticipated the August 5th opening of Pat Rogers's and Bob Barbero's restaurant, Rogers and Barbero. 

Two months later, on October 3, The New York Times restaurant critic Suzanne Daley recalled, "Opening night was a blur of handshakes and congratulations."  The owners, she wrote, "had transformed what used to be a pawn shop into a restaurant, covering the crumbling black-brick facade with pale beige stucco, rebuilding the floors and the walls, spending nearly $350,000."

The partners had signed a 15-year lease on the building.  Their goal, they said, was to establish a neighborhood restaurant serving regional dishes and "some of what the American chefs are coming up with."

There was another change taking place in the Chelsea neighborhood.  By the 1990s, the gay community had greatly moved northward from Greenwich Village and at least two gay bars opened along Eighth Avenue.  In 1993, Pat Rogers and Bob Barbero renovated their restaurant and renamed it Food Bar.  The changes were intended to attract a gay clientele.

On November 10, 1993, Newsday titled an article "Gays and the Restaurant Scene."  Bob Barbero told the journalist, "A lot of people who come in here now know each other and go from table to table during the course of the night.  It is much more of a social scene, more outrageous than our old restaurant."

The popular Food Bar was both "outrageous" and highly successful.  photograph by Gigi Cohen, Newsday, November 10, 1993.

The importance of Food Bar in the Chelsea gay community was reflected in a benefit held here in June 1999.  The New York Times said, "Kathleen Turner, Martha Plimpton and Joan Osborne will speak at a benefit for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood of New York City."  Following the speeches, said the article, would be "a performance of Part 1 of 'The Cider House Rules.'"

A renovation completed in 2010 included a new storefront and a coat of charcoal-colored paint.  Today a Mexican restaurant occupies the space.

photographs by the author

Sylvan Bien's 1939 150 West 21st Street

 

Born in Austria, architect Sylvan Bien emigrated to San Francisco to work on the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.  He relocated to New York City in 1919.  By the 1930s he was designing mostly apartment buildings and hotels.  As the Great Depression wound down, in 1938 Bien was hired by East Lane Inc. to design an apartment building at 150 through 158 West 21st Street, just east of Seventh Avenue.

Construction was completed the following year at a cost of $140,000 (about $3 million in 2026).  Bien executed his Art Moderne design almost entirely through contrasting brick and cast stone.  The centered entrance below a bronze grill was recessed within a dramatic polished black stone frame.  Matching bronze grills covered the windows on either side of the entrance.  Cast stone piers with reeded bands rose to create a frieze atop a reeded bandcourse.

The brickwork of the first floor was laid in a basketweave pattern.  Geometric bands of salmon-colored brick contrasted to a cream-colored brick background.  Multi-paned casement windows contributed to the Art Moderne geometry.  

Bien divided the upper five floors into three vertical sections by decorating the four-bay-wide central section with rows of salmon brick that vertically connected the windows with those above and below.  A parapet took the place of a cornice.  Two rows of brick bosses decorated the central section and Art Moderne railings provided interest above each of the two end bays.

Bronze grills at the entrance, multi-paned casements, and a bold parapet contributed to Bien's design.  from the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

An advertisement in The New York Sun on June 10, 1939 touted, "Just Completed -- Latest home comforts."  Prospective tenants could choose apartments that ranged from one-and-a-half to three rooms.

Catherine Donohue was among the initial residents.  The 35-year-old was a close friend of the Croke family that included 35-year-old Catholic priest Rev. John Croke.  He lived at 201 West 95th Street and was attached to the Rosary Hill House in Hawthorne, New York.

Shortly after she moved into 150 West 21st Street, on October 3, 1939 Catherine was riding in Rev. Croke's automobile in New Jersey.  Croke was driving south along Route 9 West in Englewood when they were hit head-on by a car driven by 19-year-old Frank Grande.  The teen's 14-year-old brother, Joseph, was in that car.  It was a horrific crash.  Rev. Croke died in Englewood Hospital the following morning.  The New York Times reported that Catherine was "in the hospital with critical injuries."

Frank Grande, tragically, should not have been on the road at all.  He held a conditional driver's permit, which prohibited him to operate a vehicle without a licensed driver in the car.  He and his brother were only slightly injured.

Four days later, The New York Times updated readers, reporting that Catherine Donahue had succumbed to her injuries.  Frank Grande's joy riding with his brother resulted in his being arrested "on two charges of causing death by automobile and on a charge of driving without a license," said the article.

Bien used creative brickwork and color as part of his design.

Another initial tenant was Daniel B. Stampler.  The building was extremely convenient, since he was manager of the Empire Bar & Grill down the block at Sixth Avenue and 21st Street.  At the time, employees were paid in cash.  In most cases they received their pay envelopes on Friday evening or on Saturday.  Crooks, who were sharply aware of the practice, would stake out businesses and learn the schedules of bookkeepers or managers tasked with transporting the cash.

On the morning of July 5, 1940, Stampler drove to the National Safety Bank & Trust Company at 27th Street and Seventh Avenue and withdrew $5,206 in cash (about $116,000 today).  As he got back into his automobile, another pulled up beside it.  The New York Times reported, "At the point of pistols the thugs forced him to drive to Twenty-eighth Street and the North [i.e., Hudson] River.  Putting Mr. Stampler out of the car, the bandits drove off."  It is unclear whether the robbers were captured or if Stampler's automobile was recovered.

Vitter Cucio and his wife were also initial residents.  In the winter of 1939, they were the target of what The New York Times described as "two of the city's boldest robbers."  Salvatore Oddo, who was 33 years old, and his partner 25-year-old Dominick Mundo, were not only bold, they were dangerous.

The Cucio apartment was one of several the pair burglarized.  Fortunately for the couple, they were not at home at the time.  Mundo and Oddo made away with $500 in cash and jewels.  (The cash would translate to about $11,000 today.)  The criminals were captured and sentenced "to long prison terms," according to The New York Times on June 13, 1942.  Among Mundo's charges was the "shooting [of] a police lieutenant last February, after his arrest in the hold-up of a garage," said the article.

Sadly, Sylvan Bien's Art Moderne grills were removed in the late 20th century.

Residents of 150 West 21st Street continued to be victimized.  Dorothy Shugard was an athlete, described by The New York Times as "formerly a sprinter."  On Sunday night December 21, 1947, she was walking along Broadway near the Broadway Central Hotel when 27-year-old Arthur W. Seymour, who worked as a seaman, "seized her handbag, containing $50 in cash and a bracelet," according to The New York Times, and knocked her to the sidewalk.  Dorothy screamed out, "Stop, thief!"  (The article said she, "was hampered in the chase by her high heels.")

Happily for her, walking along the block was 27-year-old Emanuel Hauser and his bride.  Hauser, an Air Force veteran, had been sworn in as a police officer two days earlier and married the next day.  Hauser's wife exhorted, "Go get him, Mannie!"

The young police officer, who had not yet served a single day in uniform, chased Seymour, capturing him at Broadway and Waverly Place.  Dorothy Shugard was right behind.  At Police Headquarters, Seymour admitted stealing the handbag and told Officer Hauser, "Once more around the block and she'd have caught me."

At the time of the incident, America was seeing the rise of what would be called the Red Scare, or McCarthyism.  The Cold War prompted fears of Communism and they ballooned into hysteria.  It all resulted in Government investigations, blacklisting, and accusations.  

Minna Finkelstein lived here at midcentury.  The teacher had been with the New York Public Schools since 1932 and taught at Public School 11 in the Bronx.  In 1951, Superintendent of Schools Dr. William Jansen initiated a personal "investigation into Communist influence in the city school system," as reported by The New York Times, and Jansen told the newspaper, "quite a bit of work" had to be done "before the school system was completely free of possible subversive influence."

By October 1952, when Minna Finkelstein was summoned to be interrogated, 15 teachers had already been fired.  She and two other educators "balked at questions" put to them.  Three months later, on January 31, 1953, The Times reported that the three instructors had been suspected and "charged with insubordination and conduct unbecoming teachers."  The school system's assistant corporation counsel, Saul Moskoff, explained that Minna had "refused to answer all questions about alleged past or present party membership."  

In the second half of the 20th century, the building underwent an unfortunate modernization.  The bronze grills were removed from the entrance, the casement windows replaced, and the parapet stripped of its Art Moderne personality.

photographs by the author

Emery Roth & Sons' 1940 875 Fifth Avenue

 

In 1939, a syndicate called the 877 Fifth Avenue Corporation was formed for the purpose of erecting a modern apartment house at the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 69th Street.  In April, it acquired the corner mansion at 877 Fifth Avenue (home to the Ogden L. Mills family for years) and the adjacent residence at 2-4 East 69th Street.  In August 8, The New York Times reported that the group had taken title to 875 Fifth Avenue, "a six-story private dwelling," and within days 876 Fifth Avenue was acquired, completing the parcel.

On July 10, 1939, the Mills mansion was being prepared for demolition.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

On August 28, 1939, Emery Roth & Sons filed plans for "an eighteen-story and penthouse apartment building costing about $800,000," as reported by The New York Times.  The construction cost would translate to just over $18 million in 2025.   

The architects' stark Art Moderne design featured a three-story stone base and 15 stories of beige brick.  Bold, double-height reeding flanked the recessed entrance.  Windows wrapped the corners of the projecting eastern section and those of the corner terraces.  Terrace-creating setbacks began at the 15th floor.

The architects' rendering was released in 1939.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York 

Construction had barely begun when the first apartment was leased.  On November 5, 1939, The New York Times reported that architect Philip L. Goodwin had leased a nine-room penthouse "with terraces on two levels fronting the Fifth Avenue side of the building."  Goodwin had good reason to move quickly.  "He is having the apartment constructed from his own plans," said the article.  Following Goodwin's lead was builder and real estate operator Louis Adler.  On December 2, The New York Sun reported that he had leased "a large terrace apartment," adding, "The apartment leased has been especially planned to meet Mr. Adler's needs."

When the building opened on August 15, 1940, more than 70 apartments had been rented, according to The New York Sun.  Among the initial tenants were Louis Jaramillo Serra, "operator of sugar plantations in Colombia," according to The New York Times; Henry J. Lesser, president of the International Trading Corporation; Benjamin H. Roth, head of the brokerage firm of B. H. Roth & Co.; and Joseph H. Tooker, president of the Tooker Lithograph Company, and his wife, the former Dora Mather.

The Tookers' brought deep American pedigrees to the building.  Dora was a descendant of Cotton Mather and Increase Mather, and Joseph's ancestors arrived from England in 1707.  A member of the Sons of the American Revolution, among Joseph's ancestors was John Baily, a friend of George Washington.

A colorful resident was singer and motion picture actress Arline Judge.  Born in Connecticut in 1912, she started out in Broadway musicals before meeting film director Wesley Ruggles on a train.  The change meeting resulted in Arline's quickly appearing in six films in 1931.  Ruggles not only set her on a career path in movies, he became the first of her seven husbands.  She divorced him in 1937 and married sportsman and advertising executive Dan Topping that year.  

This 1941 publicity photo was taken while Arline Judge lived at 875 Fifth Avenue.

The couple's marriage was brief.  They divorced in 1940 and Arline moved into 875 Fifth Avenue.  (She would marry Henry J. Topping, Dan's brother, in 1947, two husbands later.)  Arline married James Ramage Addams in 1942 and a two-day auction of her furnishings was held in August.  The New York Times reported:

Some of the furnishings of one of Miss Judge's bedrooms, which brought $289, included two early American style four-post beds, a highboy in the same style, a dressing table and a chaise lounge.  Furnishings of other bedrooms, living room, dining room and other rooms also were sold.

Equally fascinating was model Puk Paaris Gevaert, estranged wife of multi-millionaire Dr. Joseph Cornelis Maria Gevaert, described by The New York Times as "a Belgian capitalist."  Born in 1901, he was president of the Gevaert Company of America, Inc. and from 1939 to 1940 was Belgian Commissioner General to the New York World's Fair.

Born in 1919, Puk Paaris was a former Miss Denmark.  The domestic relationship between her and Gevaert was decidedly rocky.  Sixteen days after the couple met in April 1941, they were married.  Six months later, Puk divorced him.  The New York Sun reported, "she settled for $60,000 plus alimony of $500 a month for two years."  Three weeks later, on November 3, 1941, they remarried.  (Puk later admitted she did not offer to repay the $60,000 settlement.  "She spent it, she said," reported The Sun.)

Puk Paaris and Joseph C. M. Gevaert during an apparently rare non-confrontational moment.  (original source unknown)

The split and reconciliation set a pattern.  On January 26, 1945, The New York Times reported, "Mrs. Gevaert...has been separated from her husband twenty-nine times, six of them legal."  Three days before that article, Puk had appeared in State Supreme Court to ask for $50,000 a year alimony and $25,000 counsel fees.  (The annual alimony would equal $871,000 today.)  The New York Sun reported, "They lived on a scale of from $5,000 to $6,000 a month, [and] she testified in support of her claim that it would be unthinkable for her to exist on less than $50,000 a year alimony."

The New York Times reported on January 26, 1945 that Puk Paaris Gevaert won "her suit for separation against her wealthy husband."  Although the terms were not released, Puk said she was "very happy, very happy," asserting that she was now "completely vindicated," and that, "The public now knows what there was to the malicious charges made against me."

Like Arline Judge, Puk Paaris Geraert sold the "modernistic furniture and decorations" of her 875 Fifth Avenue apartment at auction.  Included, reported The New York Times on September 7, 1945, was a "specially built upholstered circular bed."

Less controversial but equally celebrated was stage and screen actor Victor Fred Moore, who moved into an apartment with his second wife, the former Shirley Paige, after their marriage in 1942.  (Moore's first wife, Emma Littlefield, died in 1934.)   Born in 1876, he first appeared on Broadway in 1896.  By now, he was well known for his character roles in motion pictures.

On May 14, 1946, The New York Sun began an article saying, "Victor Moore, famous for his stage portrayals of amiably bewildered men facing baffling situations, appeared in the Mid-Manhattan Court today with his diminutive Pomeranian, Bambi, in a real-life skit."  The actor had been given a summons by a policeman who "said Moore let Bambi frisk about on the East Drive of Central Park near 71st street without a muzzle."

Outside the courtroom, Moore quipped to reporters that the situation reminded him of a sketch he "reenacted in a Ziegfeld Follies movie, called 'Pay the $2.'"  After hearing the case, Magistrate Harry G. Andrews declared, "Two dollars."

"'Pay the $2,' Moore murmured as if deep puzzling memories of the past while he peeled off two $1 bills," recounted The Sun.

Victor Moore, from the collection of the New York Public Library

The following month, Victor Moore's name was in the news for a more serious reason.  On June 3, he and his son, Robert Emmett Moore (who, incidentally, survived several months in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II), set off on a fishing trip on the Long Island Sound on Moore's cabin cruiser.  Fumes that had built up below deck suddenly exploded.  "Most of the boat's deck house was demolished in the blast," reported The New York Times.

Both men suffered second degree burns and cuts, but were released after an hour at the Eastern Long Island Hospital.  Moore told reporters, "There is a possibility the boat can be repaired, but I am not going to do it.  For the last thirty years I have had a fishing cruiser, but I don't think I will ever have another."

Also living here at the time was painter and architectural sculptor Edith Marion Day Magonigle, the widow of architect, author and artist Harold Van Bueren Magonigle, who died in 1935.  (Among Magonigle's designs were the United States Embassy and Consulate in Toyko, the Soldiers' Memorial in Naugatuck, Connecticut, and the Arsenal Technical School in Indianapolis).  Born in 1911, Edith had often decorated the interiors of her husband's buildings with murals.  Among those collaborations were her murals for his Kansas City Liberty Memorial, described by The New York Times as containing, "one of the largest friezes ever undertaken by a woman."

In cooperation with groups like the Salmagundi Club during World War I, she chaired a committee of artists who painted "designation targets" as instructional tools for Army recruits.  "The 'targets' were of particular value in training city men to fix objectives with respect to their surroundings, so they could orient themselves if lost," explained the newspaper.

Edith Day Magonigle at work on a "destination target" mural, Asia.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1920 through 1922, Edith was president of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.  Edith Day Magonigle died at the age of 72 in her apartment here on August 8, 1949.

In 1951, Isaac Liberman, president of Arnold, Constable & Co., his wife, Bertha, and their daughter, Sally, moved into an 18th floor apartment in 875 Fifth Avenue.  Sally Liberman had graduated from Bennington College a year earlier.  Brooks Clark quotes Jonathan Low, Sally's cousin, in Sally's Genius as he recalled holiday dinners with the Libermans:

[They] were festive affairs, with lots of relatives we barely knew and everyone seated around a huge dining room table groaning with fruit, breads, pastries, centerpieces, silver, and crystal.  The walls were hung with expensive old brocades and tapestries.  Dinner was served by servants in formal uniforms overseen by Karl, the Swedish chauffeur-butler.  Their apartment at 875 Fifth Avenue overlooked Central Park and the view, high above the treetops, was always beautiful.

Sally Liberman, who would marry Robert Smith, would go on to be a leader in special education.  She would found the Lab School for children with learning difficulties in 1967 and a professor in the School of Education and Head of the Graduate Program in Special Education at the American University.

Among the Libermans' neighbors in the building were Robert and Zoe Armstrong, who had a five-room apartment on the 11th floor.  As Zoe hurried to dress for an occasion on the evening of August 3, 1953, she was unable to find certain pieces of jewelry.  Running late, she put off a thorough search until the next morning, when she discovered that 14 pieces, including, "diamonds, clips, earrings and watches," as described by The New York Times, were missing.  They were valued by her at $32,500--about $381,000 today.  "Other jewelry worth between $75,000 and $100,000 was found intact in its place," said the article.  Only the maid had been in the apartment that day and police said there were no marks of forced entry.

Two days later, the Armstrongs boarded the French liner Ile de France for Europe.  Zoe was relatively cavalier about the burglary.  "I guess we'll have to do without any baubles," she told a reporter.

On October 16, authorities announced that a "ring of jewel thieves that looted East Side apartments of more than $1,000,000 in jewels and furs" had been captured.  The group included four women who posed as domestics and obtained access to the apartments with keys entrusted to the "maids."  Of Zoe Armstrong's stolen items, one piece, a ruby and diamond platinum wrist watch, was discovered in a pawn shop.

Financier Archibald Moore Montgomery and his wife, the former Eleanor Scully were highly visible residents.  The couple was married on September 21, 1942.  The elegant and well-styled Eleanor was fashion editor of Vogue magazine.  The couple's country home was in Water Mill, Southampton, Long Island.

Archibald Montgomery died in 1965.  Eleanor remained in their apartment, never loosing her patrician bearing nor her independence as she aged.  Although she used a cane after recovering from a broken hip, on April 16, 1982, the "wealthy 73-year-old socialite," as described by the Daily News, left her apartment and took a cab to a garage on 71st Street and First Avenue where she kept her automobile.  "She drove out of the garage a few minutes later," reported the article.

Eleanor Scully Montgomery, Daily News, April 27, 1982

Eleanor was on the way to have dinner at the Meadow Club in Southampton with an old friend, Mrs. R. Townley Paton.  But she never showed up.  Mrs. Paton telephoned Eleanor's Southampton place, but the caretaker said she had not arrived.  What resulted was what The New York Times described as a "13-state missing-person alarm."  

More than a week later, the former Vogue editor was still unaccounted for.  Finally, nine days after her disappearance, an employee of Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn noticed the news coverage of the search.  He "called Mrs. Paton to report that Mrs. Montgomery had been in the hospital all along," reported The Times on April 27.  Eleanor had been involved in an accident.  According to her, she "had asked that Mrs. Paton be notified, but that this was apparently overlooked."  In reporting that she had been found, the Daily News noted that she, "is listed in 'The Blue Book of the Hamptons,' a Long Island social register," and said, "She had lived in Connecticut, Colorado, France and India and was the author of a privately published book about Indian mysticism, 'Tantra Today.'"

At the time of Eleanor Montgomery's mishap, the Libermans still occupied their 18th floor apartment.  Although Arnold, Constable & Co. closed its main location at Fifth Avenue and 40th Street in 1975, Isaac Liberman continued to be active.  He became president of the John Forsythe Company and the Liberman Brothers Holding Corporation, as well as president of the Bertha and Isaac Liberman Foundation.  Astoundingly, he was still working when he died in the apartment at the age of 97 on August 3, 1983.  Bertha Bayer Liberman survived him by six years, dying on October 20, 1989 at the age of 93.

More than eight decades after the first tenant moved in, 875 Fifth Avenue maintains its place as one of Manhattan's most prestigious addresses.  A three-bedroom apartment on the ninth floor was recently placed on the market at $66.7 million.

photographs by the author

The Lost Jane Engel Buildilng - 1025 Madison Avenue

 

photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the New York Public Library.

Like thousands of workers in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, 22-year-old secretary Jane Engel lost her job.  The New York Times, one decade later, would write, "Fifteen-dollar-a-week jobs were offered, but scorned by the jobless Jane, who rates her own time as worth more than that."  Instead, she invested her life savings--$400--into renting a vacant store and opening a dress shop near Madison Avenue and 80th Street in the neighborhood in which she had grown up.

Engel recalled to The New York Times on November 19, 1939 that she comprised the entire original workforce.  She was "buyer, saleslady, stock girl, cashier and bundle wrapper."  One seamstress would come in to make alterations when needed.

The chance of success for a start-up dress shop in the first months of the Great Depression was nearly non-existent.  But Jane Engel would later realize that at the time, "She was too young to know she couldn't do the things she did."  Within the first month of her opening, she added three employees.  The following month she rented the vacant shop next door and broke through the wall to enlarge the space.

Jane Engel had an innate grasp of operating a retail dress business during hard economic times.  She said she would buy, "only a comparatively few styles, but in wide ranges of colors and sizes."  She said, "Of course, credit was far looser in 1929...But those who wouldn't give me credit soon found I paid promptly, and began to trust me gradually, as my business grew."

On May 5, 1933, The New York Times reported that Jane Engel had expanded upward, leasing the second floor of the building.  Before long, she moved the business into into a one-story building at 1025 Madison Avenue between 78th and 79th Streets.  Three years later, her landlord, Sagamore Land Corp., demolished that building and commissioned architect Roy C. Morris to design a two-and-a-half story building for Engel.  Completed within the year, the construction cost $80,000--or about $1.8 million today.

The Jane Engel Building included shops on the northern half of the ground floor, wrapping around the 79th Street side.  The Jane Engel store's vast show windows filled the southern half and around 78th Street.  In between was the centered, stepped entrance.  The second floor of Morris's Art Moderne design was more glass brick than masonry, filling the interior with soft, diffused light.  Streamlined banding ran below the roofline, interrupted by a centered third-floor section that fronted the penthouse offices.

This ad appeared shortly after the shop moved into the new building, teasing the 1937 spring line.  

Shortly after moving in, Jane Engel's window dressers received high honors.  On October 9, 1936, the New York Post reported that the judges of Madison Avenue Week had awarded Jane Engel, "the best window display along Madison Avenue."  The article said the windows, "illustrated the progress of the Avenue since horse car days, with figures garbed in the costumes of the periods represented."  The article also noted Jane Engel's phenomenal growth, saying that "today [she] has thirty establishments in different cities."

Jane Engel told Kathleen McLaughlin of The New York Times in 1939, "every salesgirl is taught to ask as few questions as possible and to show as many dresses as possible."  Among the young women so trained was Jessica Mitford, who would go on to become a noted author and activist. In her autobiography, Hons and Rebels, she writes that she was the first of her sisters to have a job.

Having shamelessly invented a long background in the fashion industry in London and Paris, I was hired as a salesgirl at Jane Engel's Dress Shop on Madison Avenue, at twenty dollars a week.

After her first day, she told her sisters:

You should have seen me, starting at the bottoms and working up.  Getting the customers' clothes on and off, I mean.  Really, it's frightfully difficult, I had no idea.  Either the dress gets caught halfway, and the poor thing stands there struggling and protesting with muffled screams, or else everything comes off and she's all bare and shivering.  I suppose I'll get on to it after a while.

In 1942, Jane Engel diversified, now offering more than dresses.  She expanded into the second floor, and on August 18 held a fashion show.  "Some of the suits, coats, furs and sportswear that will occupy the new quarters were included," said The New York Times.

The Jane Engel fashion shows would be an annual event, becoming too large for the Madison Avenue building.  On February 16, 1944, for instance, The New York Times reported, "A collection of spring fashions for all ages from babies to grandmothers was presented by Jane Engel during luncheon yesterday at the Ritz-Carlton." 

Life magazine captured a "normal day" in the Jane Engel bridal department.  June 22, 1942 (copyright expired)

In an announcement that must have shocked many readers, on June 24, 1955 the Daily News reported, "Jane Engel, 25-year-old women's and children's apparel shop at Madison Avenue and 79th Street, will close its doors today because 'we did not have enough capital.'"  The newspaper said, "Gimbel's New York has purchased the merchandise of the recently closed Jane Engel shop and plans a basement store promotion."

Two years later, on March 7, 1957, The New York Times reported that Fisher Brothers purchased the Jane Engel Building and two houses at 54 and 56 East 79th Street.  The developer announced that the three buildings, "will be demolished immediately."  After standing only 21 years, the Jane Engel Building was replaced with a 20-story apartment structure.

image via cityrealty.com

The 1948 Artistocrat Apartments - 45 West 54th Street

 

photograph by Lowell Cochrane

In 1948, the Kleban Construction Company contracted architects De Young, Moskowitz & Rosenberg to design a 13-story apartment building at 45 through 53 West 54th Street.  Completed the following year, the Aristocrat Apartments reflected the last gasps of Art Moderne architecture, teetering on the verge of Mid-Century Modern.

The entrance most vividly anticipated Mid-Century designs.  Its glass-and-brass doors were centered within a wide recess faced in polished marble.  Each row of the upper floor openings, modern versions of Chicago Style windows, were framed in a single, sleek frame.  Set-back corners provided terraces on the 11th floor.  The architects chamfered the corners of the 11th- and 12th-floors, giving those apartments spectacular views in three directions.  The penthouse level sat back, providing additional terrace space to its two apartments.

Potential residents could choose from "two, three-and-a-half, four-and-a-half, and five-room" apartments.

In 1955, six years after its opening, 45 West 54th Street was purchased by Henry Goelet and his associates.  Almost immediately, a plan was initiated to convert the building to a cooperative.

Harry P. Somerville and his wife, the former Mary Thorp, moved into the Aristocrat in 1957, after moving back to New York from Washington D.C.  Born in New York, Somerville began his career in real estate in 1919 after serving with the 69th Infantry of the New York National Guard in World War I.  In 1925 he became manager of the Hotel Bretton Hall. 

As Executive Secretary of the President's Cup Regatta in 1936, Harry P. Somerville (right) hands a clock topped with a model gold speedboat to John A. Remori.  Looking on is Admiral Harry G. Hamlet of the U.S. Coast Guard. from the collection of the Library of Congress.

The Somervilles relocated to Washington when he accepted the position of managing director of the well-known Willard Hotel.  He remained there until 1942 when he joined Broadcast Music, Inc.  He was honored with a testimonial dinner upon leaving the Willard.  Among the letters and telegrams that were read that night was one from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

Dear Harry:

What is this I hear about your leaving the Willard?  I am indeed sorry to see you go.  What will I do when I want terrapin?  It has been grand to have you in Washington and this note takes to you my very warm personal regards and every best wish for the future.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Harry Somerville retired as vice president of Broadcast Music, Inc. in 1957.  He and Mary returned to New York and into 45 West 54th Street.

Other early owners of the co-ops were Walter and Belle Lehman.  In 1959, Walter became president of the diamond firm Arnstein Brothers, Eichberg & Co., Inc.  His passion for his job was reflected in his memberships in the Jewelers' Trade Board, the Diamond Dealers' Club, the Diamond Trade Association and the 24 Carat Club.

photograph by Lowell Cochrane

The Dunaeff family lived here at the time.  Son Ray got an early start in modeling and acting under the stage name Ray Weston.  For years the boy landed roles on television shows like the Patty Duke Show, The Nurses, and For the People.  Tragically, he contracted cancer and died at the age of 15 on April 23, 1967.

Bertram H. Hegeman and Novella Wren Henderson Adoue were married in 1964 and moved into 45 West 54th Street along with Novella's daughters from a previous marriage, Pauline and Novella Adoue.  The family maintained a country home in Rye, New York and a winter home in North Palm Beach.  Hegeman was vice president/director of the rental division of Rockefeller Center.

The Hegeman family was visible in society in all three locations.  On December 28, 1967, The Rye Chronicle reported, "Miss Novella Adoue, debutante daughter of Mr. and Mrs. B. H. Hegeman, Westchester Country Club grounds and 45 West 54th Street, New York City, was honored December 21 at a small private dinner in the Rainbow Room followed by the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Show."  The following night, said the article, Novella was "formally presented at the Debutante Cotillion and Christmas Ball at the Waldorf Astoria."  

Debutante entertainments normally lasted for weeks if not months and the article noted, "Miss Adoue will also be presented June 26 at the Westchester Cotillion and another private party given by her parents at home will climax her debutante year."

Pauline (known as Polly) Adoue was married to Frank Scanlon in 1970.  She would go on to become president and CEO of American Health Care Resources.  Novella would remain single.

photograph by Lowell Cochrane

DeYoung, Moskowitz & Rosenberg's 1948 design survives as an important transitional example from Art Moderne to Mid-Century styles.

many thanks to reader Lowell Cochrane for suggesting this post