St. Andrew's Methodist Church (West Side Institutional Synagogue) 120 W 76th St

Following a catastrophic fire, only vestiges of the structure's former appearance remain.

With the Upper West Side's population exploding in 1879 and without a Methodist church to serve it, the Rev. W. S. Blake told a meeting of the New-York City Church Extension and Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church that "his people relied upon two things--Providence and the elevated railroads."  Providence came in the form of the stone St. Andrew's Chapel at Nos. 123 and 125 West 71st Street in 1882.  Within three years the congregation gained independence as St. Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church.

In the winter of 1888-89 a committee was formed to purchase real estate for a new, more substantial church.  On March 2, 1889 the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported that St. Andrew's had purchased "a plot 130 x 102.2, on the south side of 76th street, between 9th and 10th avenues, for about $15,000 per lot."  The total cost for the seven 18.5-foot plots would equal $2.96 million today.

On May 27, 1890 the New-York Tribune reported that the pastor had commissioned J. C. Cady & Co., “the well-known architects of No. 111 Broadway,” to design a new church on the south side of West 76^th Street.  The newspaper promised “The church architecture of this city will be enriched in the course of the present year by an example of great beauty.”  In fact the firm had been at work on the designs for a full year, and offered water color renderings to the press in late 1889.

The rectory sat above a box stoop at the far left.  The dome contained 36 stained glass windows.  The American Architect and Building News - December 28, 1889 (copyright expired)

J. C. Cady & Co. worked in the Romanesque Revival style, making full use of contrasting materials, colors and textures.   Rather than the visually-ponderous granite or brownstone expected in Romanesque Revival churches, the architects used limestone.  The darker stone was used only for the trim, creating a much lighter appearance.

On April 20, 1889 the Record & Guide described the complex, saying the church proper would seat "about 800 people, exclusive of the galleries, which will not be built until they are required, probably a few years hence."  Congregants in the main auditorium sat below a 50-foot-wide dome perforated by stained glass windows.  

The entrance doors sat within a large, medieval-style arch and stained glass transom.  They opened into a 20-foot-wide vestibule "fitted up in oak, with a handsome ceiling and fire-place."  It separated the church from the 33-by-99 foot chapel, which would accommodate another 450 worshipers.  Above the chapel, within the imposing bell tower, were the Sunday school rooms. 

Dr. J. M. King, the pastor, would live in a handsome 18-foot-wide rectory, four stories tall, which carried on the Romanesque motif.  The Record & Guide noted "All the buildings will be finished in massive oak and have steam heat and other improvements."

The complex was completed in 1890 and fund raising to pay off the debt became a major focus.  Nearly a decade later it was still going on.  On December 6, 1899 the New-York Tribune reported "Edgar W. Williams will deliver a lecture on 'My Experiences in Porto Rico,' illustrated with stereopticon views, in St. Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church on Friday evening.  The proceeds will be applied toward liquidating the church debt.  Eighteen months ago $105,000 was raised for this purpose."

In November 1901 the convention of the Woman's Home Missionary Society was held here.  Women came from around the country to discuss the conditions and progress of missions, schools and orphans' homes.  On November 9, for example, the New-York Tribune reported that "Four little girls from the De Peyster Home, at Tivoli, sang a hymn.  The home is maintained by the society for orphan girls, and now has sixty-nine in its family."  That morning "There were several appeals for money for schools and homes for negroes, and these seemed to meet with peculiarly hearty and generous response."

But the women who had no agenda more controversial than feeding and housing orphans got a surprise guest.  Four days later the New-York Tribune reported that the Rev. Dr. James M. Buckley, editor of The Christian Advocate, "called during the morning session."  He challenged the group to consider two "crying evils"--"the growing disregard of the Sabbath and the enormous increase in the liquor traffic."  Buckley was on his way to Pittsburgh to meet with the missionary committee of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  His arm-twisting was not subtle.  "I feel that I shall be able to present these subjects more forcibly to my audience on Thursday evening if I am armed with a set of resolutions embodying the sentiments of this organization."

The women complied, skillfully wording a resolution on liquor to fit with their own program.  It said in part "that because the society has for its object the amelioration of the condition of destitute women and children...and because it believes that the liquor traffic is the greatest enemy to the home and to the upbuilding of Christ's kingdom, the society pledged itself to advance in every way in its power the cause of temperance." 

Dr. James Oliver Wilson had joined the staff of St. Andrew's in 1895.  A firebrand of sorts, his sermons sometimes raised eyebrows.  Such was the case on September 15, 1901 when, following the assassination of President William McKinley by Leon Czolgosz, his sermon dealt with the problem of American anarchists in general.  And his solution was straight-forward--kill them.

He said in part "If we have not a law that will hang the anarchist who attempts to kill his victim--and that without any lengthy formality--we ought to have such a law, and will."  He deemed Czolgosz worse than either John Wilkes Booth or Judas Iscariot.  "They were both hypocrites, but McKinley's murderer was the worse...Judas was sorry his treachery was responsible for Christ's crucifixion.  Czolgosz is glad his bullet proved fatal.  The Master once called Judas a devil.  What would he call this monster in human form?  May the law speedily put an end to him and all of his kind."

It may have been his politically- and socially-charged sermons, or simply his own ambition that prompted the board to "take steps to dissolve the pastoral relations with the Rev. Dr. Wilson," as worded by the New-York Tribune, the following June.  A "leading New-York Methodist," felt it was purely a personal choice by Wilson.  "He would like to be a great popular preacher.  That he could never become in St. Andrew's, which is distinctly a family church."

Whatever the cause, the split was not acrimonious.  On March 26, 1903 the members of the church presented Wilson with a good-bye purse of $2,600; a helpful $76,500 in today's dollars considering he had no job.

Wilson's replacement, the Rev. Andrew Gillies was chosen for his progressive ideas.  The committee had informed him what they were looking for.  "We want a family church, as broad a Christianity in its spirit, as aggressive as a modern business house in its methods, and as far reaching as human society in its ministry."

Rev. Andrew Gillies New-York Tribune, November 12, 1904 (copyright expired)

By the time he was hired the Upper West Side had noticeably changed from one almost exclusively of private homes to scores of apartment houses.  He told the New-York Tribune in November 1904 "It can honestly be said that the location of St. Andrew's is one of the very hardest for aggressive and progressive church work.  The middle West Side is filled with apartment houses.  In these are hundreds of families who seldom, if ever, attend church services."  He said that an "aggressive church worker" who tried to reach out to them would find "the apartment house rigidly closed against his unwelcome intrusion."

Nevertheless, the congregation was active in the community.  A group of 30 women did house visits, a deaconess and a "student deaconess" looked after the "the poor, the sick and the indifferent," according to the Tribune article.

Some of the progressive policies of St. Andrew's were already in place when Gillies took the pulpit.  Each summer middle and upper class residents abandoned the stifling city head for fashionable resorts or country estates.  And the businessmen who stayed behind joined their families on the weekends.  Therefore New York City churches routinely closed for at least three months during the summer.  But not St. Andrew's.

On June 5, 1904 The New York Press reported "St. Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church...this year will again follow its established custom of keeping open throughout the summer.  The Rev. Andrew Gillies, pastor, will fill the pulpit until the first Sunday in August  In his vacation it will be occupied by well known preachers of established reputation."

Gillies's popularity led to an increased membership and by 1906 the gallery that had been included in the 1889 but never constructed was necessary.  The architects, now named Cady & See, filed plans on April 20, with an projected cost that would equal $42,500 today.  The renovations included Formosa marble pilasters by P. M. & W. Schlichter.  On September 29 the Record & Guide pointed out that the pilasters "highly pleased the pastor and board of trustees of that church, as well as meeting with the approval of the architects, Messrs. Cady & See."

Gillies's progressive ideas were carried on when the Rev. Fred Winslow Adams took over the pastorate in 1915.

Rev. Fred Winslow Adams - The Sun, May 2, 1915

He sent his thoughts on women's rights to vote in a letter to the Empire State Campaign Committee that May.  It said in part:

I am most heartily in sympathy with the movement for equal suffrage in this State and in the nation.  Equal suffrage means not merely the right of women to vote, but the larger freedom of the State...Count upon me as ready at all times to do what I can to promote this agency.

Winslow came up with an clever means of finding fodder for a sermon in November 1916.  He asked some of Manhattan's leading citizens what they deemed "the most dangerous temptations that beset young men and young women in New York."  The results were, in some cases, surprising.

President Butler of Columbia University felt it was "the impulse to spend in excess of income."  (He felt this impulse applied only to men.)  Reformer and criminologist Katharine B. Davis said the danger to young women was "The desire for pleasure of the kind that is typified in the glamour and glare of Broadway, of the theatres and cabarets."  And Mabel Cratty" of the Young Women's Christian Association "boils her knowledge down to one word: 'Clothes,'" said The Sun on November 21.

Interestingly, not one of those polled pointed to drugs, gambling or liquor as a dangerous temptation.  Millionaire banker Jacob H. Schiff also had a one-word answer:  women.  The Sun commented on that, saying "Mr. Schiff has stirred up a hornet's nest for himself.  Woman never tempts.  She is invariably tempted."

Nearly half a century after its construction the congregation sold its building.  On June 29, 1937 the New York Evening Post reported "Led by Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, several upper West Side residents have purchased St. Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church at 120 West Seventy-sixth Street for $200,000 and will convert it into a synagogue in September."

Rabbi Goldstein had organized the Institutional Synagogue in 1917.  By now it was known as the West Side Institutional Synagogue.   Like the pastors of St. Andrew's, he was a progressive and his goal was to cater to young, American Jews who could not connect with the old European style synagogues.

His innovations--which later became commonplace in Modern Orthodox synagogues--included English language sermons and cultural programs, some of which might shock traditional congregants, like dances.

The dedication took place on April 30, 1938.  The New York Post reported "West End Institutional Synagogue today takes over [the] building at 120 West Seventy-sixth Street, which has been called 'the handsomest and most imposing church structure erected by Methodists in New York.'"  Along with Rabbi Goldstein, the speakers included lawyer and politician Charles H. Tuttle, Congressman Bruce Fairchild Barton, and entertainer Eddie Cantor.  A dinner-dance followed at the Waldorf-Astoria.

The congregation took over the building at a time of international upheaval and danger.  Rabbi Goldstein's first Rosh Hashanah sermon here addressed the imminent threat of war.  "We are facing war because we have warred against God's law," he declared.

The coming war had, of course, much to do with the rise of Adolph Hitler, whose racist agenda struck terror in the hearts of Jews world-wide.  On March 26, 1938 The New York Sun reported "At the West Side Institutional Synagogue, 120 West Seventy-sixth street, Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein likened he leaders of Germany to 'some maddened beast which seeks to plunge the world again into the hell from which it has so recently and so tortuously emerged.'  He declared that the United States, in inviting persecuted peoples to come to this country, has assumed the moral leadership of all nations."

The synagogue was on the front lines of relief as war raged throughout Europe.  On December 19, 1944 The New York Sun reported "Congratulatory messages were read last night from Gov. Thomas E. Dewey and Mayor F. H. LaGuardia at a meeting in the West Side Institutional Synagogue...at which the first unit of a national plan to aid war veterans through synagogues was launched."  The plan, outlined at that meeting, offered veterans "membership in the synagogue club rooms, economic aid through placement and employment assistance panels, assistance to their wives and children and vocational and family aid in neighborhoods on a non-sectarian basis."  The Governor praised the plan as being "devoid of any humiliating suggestion of charity to our demobilized fighting men."

The synagogue attracted youth though activities like this Chanukah Dance.  New York Post, December 5, 1947

Following the war young dances were a popular activity in the 76th Street space.  They were most often coupled with a more edifying component.  In November 1948, for instance, a newspaper announcement was entitled "FREE--DANCE--FORUM"  Young people coming to dance that night would also hear author and Zionist Beinush Epstein speak on the "Fiasco of Partition."

An exception was the Leap Year Dance on January 17, 1948.  But although the event was purely for dancing (with Sandy Block and his orchestra providing the music), the trade-off was a $1.25 admission.  

In 1958 architect David Moed was commissioned to renovate and remodel the former rectory building.  The plans, which called for removing the stoop, included an apartment on the first floor, classrooms on the second, a social hall, banquet hall, "bazaar" and kitchen on the third and classrooms and a "clubroom" on the upper floors.  With a late 1950's disregard for historic consideration or architectural conformity, he replaced Cady & Co.'s Romanesque Revival facade with institutional metal panels.

A fire cannot be blamed for what happened to the once marvelous Rectory.

Seven years later a devastating fire tore through the main church.  Architect Emory S. Tabor restored and preserved what he could; but the roof and dome had collapsed and the tall gable was now gone.  Tabor's renovations included a modern, rather severe, entrance which, like Moed's changes, were more in keeping with current architecture than an attempt to echo the overall design.

After more than eight decades in the former Methodist church, the West Side Institutional Synagogue continues to be a vibrant force in the Upper West Side's Jewish community.

photographs by the author

The John Chandler Moore Mansion -- No. 15 East 70th Street

On January 9, 1910 The New York Times advised “The finest residential block in Manhattan is now in process of development from Fifth to Madison Avenue, between Seventieth and Seventy-First Streets.  This is the Lenox Library block, which in less than three years has undergone a complete transformation.”   

The newspaper reported on the coming demolition of James Lenox’s magnificent library building and opined that if James Lenox were alive “he would see the great open field in the rear that has been a familiar sight for many years to every passenger traveling on the Madison Avenue cars being filled up with a number of the most elegant types of private dwellings to be found in this country.”

One of the “most elegant types of private dwellings” that was nearing completion was the home of John Chandler Moore at No. 15 East 70^th Street.   Moore and his wife, the former Corinne de Bebian, had commissioned Charles I. Berg of the architectural firm of Cady, Berg & See to design their new home.

Moore was President of Tiffany & Co. jewelers; a Moore-Tiffany relationship that stretched back to the first half of the 19^th century.  Moore’s grandfather, also named John Chandler Moore, established his silver making business in 1832.  His exquisite pieces were made for the top-end retailers most notably Marquand & Co. and their successors, Ball, Tompkins & Black.  But in 1851 he signed an exclusive agreement with Tiffany.

It was his son, Edwin C. Moore (the father of the present John Chandler Moore) whose creations became the face and personality of Tiffany & Co.  He was called “easily the foremost silversmith in the United States” by The Illustrated American. John Chandler Moore became associated with Tiffany & Co. in 1880 and became its President in 1907, two years before construction began on the 70^th Street mansion.  

Berg had produced a magnificent limestone-clad Beaux Arts-style home for the Moores.  Five stories high, its entrance was centered within the rusticated base, below a carved cartouche that announced the address.

While some French-inspired mansions along Fifth Avenue and its side streets dripped with garlands and other ornamentation; the Moore house was restrained in its decoration.  Even the ordered iron railing of the third floor balcony resisted the temptation of excess.

John and Corinne had one son, Louis de Bebian Moore.  The Moore family maintained a summer estate in Oyster Bay Cove, Long Island, “Moorelands.”  The mansion there was also designed by Charles Berg. 

The Moore's Long Island estate, Moorelands, was also designed by Charles Berg -- Architecture, 1918 (copyright expired)

A year after the family moved into the 70^th Street home, the engagement of Louis was announced on New Year’s Eve, 1911.  Louis had graduated from Harvard earlier that year.

Three weeks later, on January 24, Corinne hosted the first of the related entertainments.  The New-York Tribune reported on the luncheon she gave “for Miss Allison Pierce, whose engagement to Louis de Bebian Moore was recently announced.”

Allison Douglass Pierce was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Winslow Shelby Pierce and, like her fiance, moved in the best of circles.  A year earlier she had been a member of the wedding of Vivien Gould to Lord Decies.  Her own “country wedding” would take place at her parents' Long Island estate, “Dunstable,” in September 1912.

To get the many guests from Manhattan a special train was arranged.  The marriage of the two socially-visible young people prompted The Sun to call it “interesting” to society.

In 1930 the Moores could boast that their home, or rather their rear yard, was the center of Manhattan society.  For years the Social Register Association had analyzed the addresses of prominent families listed in the New York Social Register.  It then discerned the exact social center of Manhattan.  This year, according to the Association, “the precise point…was in the southeastern quarter of the rear yard of 15 East Seventieth Street.”

Sadly for John and Corinne Moore, they could not claim the distinction for long.  The continuous northward movement of society placed the social center a block away by 1932, between 71^st and 72^nd Street and Madison and Park Avenues.

Two years after John Chandler Moore became Chairman of the Board of Tiffany & Co., his wife died at the Oyster Bay estate on October 10, 1942.  Four years later Moore died in the 70^th Street mansion at the age of 82.

At the time of Moore’s death the Barmore School operated from No. 22 East 60^th Street.  The private women’s college offered courses in the liberal arts and “practical career preparation.”  In 1947 it acquired the Moore mansion, converting it to classrooms.

The school kept up with the changing times, introducing “an accelerated specialized training for college graduates” in 1951; and that same year, a course in wedding planning.

The Israeli Consulate was located in the adjoining house at No. 11 East 70^th Street.  By 1958 the Israeli Government had taken No. 15, as well, as its United Nations delegation building.  A fire that started in the “wood-paneled office” of counselor Arthur Liveran at around 10:15 a.m. on April 31 that year tied up traffic in the area for two hours and briefly trapped one worker, a secretary, on the fourth floor.  She was rescued by ladder by firemen.

In 1983 Nos. 15 and 11 had been internally connected and a conversion to condos by Raphael Cohen and Enrico Frigerio was underway.  In October that year The New York Times announced that one-, two- and three-bedrooms apartments would be available from $459,000 to $1 million.  John Chandler Moore’s former home lured celebrated house-hunters.

Spy magazine reported “it came as no surprise when, shortly after the Time’s announcement ran, [Richard M.] Nixon himself appeared on the stoop at No. 15 East 70^th Street, eager to buy.  The renovation had hardly begun, but Nixon wasn’t taking any chances; he put down a deposit on one of the apartments and signed an agreement to buy it.  Later the fashion designer Norma Kamali came, and she was so charmed that she wanted to buy two apartments.  Later still came another person well know to Manhattan real estate brokers—Madonna.”

Among later owners would be Jerry W. Levin, former chairman of the Sharper Image whose unit engulfed the entire third floor.  In December 2012 a sprawling apartment, deemed by Robin Finn of The New York Times to be “a ‘Petite’ Versailles,” was offered at $10.95 million.

No. 15 has been joined internally with No. 11 (right).

From the sidewalk view, little has changed to John Chandler Moore’s mansion.  It looks much as it did in 1910 when The Times deemed this “the finest residential block in Manhattan.”

photographs by the author

The 1894 House of Relief -- Nos. 67-69 Hudson St.

photo by Alice Lum

In 1771 the New York Hospital was established on Broadway opposite Pearl Street when the area was essentially still residential.  Nearly a century later, in 1869, it followed the northward tide of homes and relocated to West 15^th Street.   The move ensured that citizens in the Union Square and Bond Street areas would have a nearby medical facility; but it left the downtown area without one.  The Sun later reported that “there was much solicitude lest the lower part of the city should be left without hospital facilities.”

The Police Commissioners offered an old police station at 160 Chambers Street for the hospital to use as an emergency facility.  Called the House of Relief, or the Chambers Street Hospital, it opened in 1875 and offered free services in which was now a commercial and often gritty neighborhood.

On November 8, 1894, The New York Times recalled that “Few institutions of the kind in the country have become as famous as the old Chambers Street Hospital.  Cases by the thousand have been treated there.  Bridge jumpers, attempted suicides, victims of the Russell Sage bomb thrower, victims of would-be murders, accident cases, and thousands of patients whose cases have not called for newspaper attention have passed through its doors.  Columns have been written in a critical way about the alleged brutal conduct of the ambulance surgeons, and words of praise have been bestowed upon the physicians in charge.”

By 1893 there was a desperate need for a new building downtown.  That year the ambulance department responded to 2,844 calls—twice as many as the New York Hospital proper.   The out-patient department treated 22,555 patients while 2,339 others were housed in the wards.   The Chambers Street building—never intended to be a hospital—was thirty years old and showing its age.

The Sun called the old building “homely” and “barrack-like” and The New York Times said it was “wholly unsuited to its purposes” and “dirty and cramped.”   The Governors of New York Hospital began construction on a new House of Relief, alternately called the Hudson Street Hospital, in 1893.

Situated at 67 to 69 Hudson Street at the corner of Jay Street, it was designed by Cady, Berg & See.   Costing $300,000 (about $7 million in 2013), the five story brick structure was not only a state of the art medical facility, it was an architectural beauty.  As it neared completion on July 29, 1894 The Sun remarked “Architecturally it is a pleasing contrast to the great brick mercantile structures of no particular beauty in that busy part of the city.  Its exterior presents a clean-cut appearance, relieved a bit by the arched windows of the basement floor, the neat balconies, one on each face, and the graceful main entrance with its Roman arch of red sandstone and supporting Greek pillars of the same material.”



The Sun published a sketch of the new structure on July 29, 1894 (copyright expired)

Adding drama to the design was a double entrance staircase leading to the centered entrance.  The New York Times deemed the structure “handsome and commodious” and “an ornament to the neighborhood.”

Outpatients entered the high-ceilinged main reception room faced with Tennessee marble and cherry woodwork.  “It is as light and clean as newly laundered linen,” reported The Sun.   Lighting was provided by both electricity and gas.

Citizens in layers of Victorian clothing suffered in the summer heat.  Among the innovative features of the new hospital was the sunstroke ward.  The Sun reported that when a patient was received, “he will be wheeled to the entrance of the ward.  There he will be transferred to a net swinging by four chains from an overhead railway attached to the ceiling.  Then, he will be railroaded to the cold bath or the cold spray.  If to the latter all clothing will be stripped from him and he will enjoy a cooling spray over the body.  After he has received due treatment in the ward he will be taken by the elevator to a roofed enclosure, open to the breezes on all four sides, on the top of the building.”

A patient is treated at the innovative Sunstroke Ward -- The New York Times April 25, 1895 (copyright expired)

The newspaper assumed that if the elaborate treatment failed, it was not the fault of the hospital.  “After all this luxurious treatment, if the patient doesn’t get well it may be supposed to be his own fault and not due to the inefficiency of science.”

Male and female wards were separated for decency’s sake.  On the third floor was a private ward “for distinguished patients.”  That floor also included the main operating room, etherizing room and a matron’s room.

Exceptionally handsome ironwork leads to the entrance -- photo by Alice Lum

Up-to-date technology ruled the fourth floor.  Here was the kitchen, the laundry, the refrigerating room and rooms for “the female help.”  According to The Sun “The laundry work will be done according to the most improved methods.  The washing machines will be turned by electricity, and the linen will all be ironed by flat-irons, which receive their motive power direct from an electric motor by means of wire attached to the handles.  Ironing here will assume some of the characteristics of a fine art, the attention of the operating being confined entirely to the skillful guiding and not the propelling of the iron.  The clothes will be dried in a special drying room.”

The hospital boasted central heating by means of registers in the ceilings and floors.  The New York Times said “The system to supply fresh air in the rooms at any temperature is admirable,” and The Sun wrote “So effective is the heating and ventilating apparatus that the entire supply of air in the rooms can be changed in from four to sixteen minutes.”  The Sun pronounced that “With these and other features the hospital authorities believe they have the finest hospital in the city.”

Lion heads decorate the metal cornice.  Note the added touch of the blind arch in the brickwork of the chimney.  photo by Alice Lum

At 10:00 on the night of Tuesday November 6, 1894 the old House of Relief on Chambers Street treated its last patient—James A. Leonard, a 33-year old barkeeper who arrived with a scalp wound.  The first case to walk in the door of the new hospital on Hudson Street was 9-year old Dominick Zizto, a newsboy who had fractured his wrist.

Six months after Dominick’s broken wrist the hospital was buzzing with activity.  The New York Times wrote on April 25, 1895 “The Governors of the [New York Hospital Society] call especial attention to the fact that this institution is situated in the down-town section of the city, in the neighborhood of wharves, ferries, and crowded streets, and in the midst of traffic, where casualties are frequent.”  The New-York Tribune reported that month that the hospital’s ambulances had responded to 2,812 ambulance calls already.

Ambulances accessed the hospital through the elaborate iron gates to the side.  In 1907 the brick house, seen in the shadows behind the hospital, would be razed for a modern ambulance stables and laundry facility -- photo by Wurtz Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UP1G31WP45&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

The cases that walked or were wheeled through the doors of the House of Relief reflected the sometimes dangerous neighborhood.  Such was the case on November 27, 1897 when Henry Levy, a shoemaker at 49 Bayard Street, tried to break up a confrontation between two customers over a $2 debt one owed the other.

The two men turned their aggression on Levy.  One “whipped out a penknife and stabbed the little cobbler nine times in the face and head, while the other workmen stood by too transfixed with terror to help him,” reported The New York Times.  The newspaper said that the assault “resulted in his being taken to the House of Relief on Hudson Street, and being so swathed in bandages that his head looked like a snowball, animated by a pair of human eyes.”

The reporter assumed that the incident “will probably lead him to summon the police the next time a fight is started in a room he happens to be in.”

To accommodate the rather unsightly fire escape, the cast iron balcony on the Hudson Street facade was lost -- photo by Alice Lum

A peculiar case was that of Thomas Donohue who had crawled into a “sawdust box” on the Barclay Street freight pier the night of August 27, 1902.  He was noticed by Foreman Murphy sleeping on the pier around 1:00 the following day and ordered to move.  “Later Murphy again saw the man when his attention was called to his presence on the stringpiece by Gateman Whalen.  Whalen then summoned Policeman Foley and instructed him to remove the stranger,” reported The Evening World.

Officer Foley roused Donohue “who with great difficulty struggled to his feet and walked north about a hundred feet, when he sat down in a secluded spot.  No further attention was paid to him,” said the newspaper.  The Evening World openly wondered why the policeman did not seek medical attention for the man.

Late that night, Foreman Murphy heard groans and again found Donohue in the same sawdust box.  This time the man was taken to the House of Relief where he died of starvation at 3:15 on the morning of August 29.  The irony of how Donahue had come to the last stages of starvation in a busy metropolitan area was not lost on The Evening World.  “He starved in a district which supplies Greater New York with its food products and from which thousands of tons of good things to eat are shipped daily.”

In the years just prior to World War I New York was in the grip of terrorists—anarchists and other social and political radicals.  Some of the victims ended up at the Hudson Street House of Relief.

On April 8, 1911 The New York Times recapped some of the incidents during the past year.  “On Jan. 8 a bomb exploded outside the door of the place occupied by Francisco Scupelito, and on April 28 there was another explosion.  On July 12 there was an explosion in front of Joseph Saraguse’s dairy, and on July 24 a bomb was set off in one of his milk wagons in a ferry boat returning from Jersey City.

“A three-pound explosive projectile burst yesterday while Carlo Verstraelin, 13 years old…was playing with it in front of his home.  It tore his right forearm and hand and cut and bruised his body, and cut the right leg of Sadie Schneider, 22 months old…whose body was lacerated also.  Both were taken to the House of Relief.”

Three months after the wounded children were brought in, the House of Relief was busy treating victims of a heat wave.  On July 6, 1911, 72 persons had died from the heat in New York City within the past four days, and there were at least 300 “prostrations.”  Temperatures lingered at above 100 degrees.

The New York Times reported that on July 5, although the temperature had cooled to “a maximum of 92 degrees” the “suffering in the street level was more intense.  All day long and throughout the night the ambulances raced up and down, responding to twice as many calls as on any day previous.”

Doctors and nurses at the Hudson Street Hospital attended to a steady stream of victims who collapsed in the street—among them laborer William Longe who had been working in an excavation at Canal Street and West Broadway; Norva Gray who dropped to the pavement at Broadway and Fulton Street; Joseph Buchanan, a 28-year-old chauffeur “overcome in front of 11 Pine Street;” and 45-year-old engineer William Brockway who fainted at 119 Nassau Street.

The horse-drawn ambulances that rushed to their aid were dispatched from the hospital’s annex built in 1907.  Located directly behind the hospital, at the corner of Jay and Staple Streets, the $40,000 building served not only as a stable and ambulance garage; but the laundry facilities were housed upstairs, connected to the main building by a street bridge across Staple Street.

One of the most colorful patients in the hospital was Charles “Chuck” Connors.  A well-known figure in the Chinatown and Bowery area, he was memorialized “in song and on the stage,” according to The New York Times in 1913.  Connors acted as a self-appointed tour guide through the seedy and mysterious neighborhoods for uptown residents and tourists.  The Times said “In his role as guide ‘Chuck’ put on his toughest manners and talked Bowery argot for the benefit of his out-of-town clients.  In private life he was just picturesquely illiterate.  He came to be known as the ‘Mayor of Chinatown,” and none knew the quarter as well as he.”

The Chinese residents, the police, and the missionaries of the slum neighborhoods knew and liked him.  The Chinese “profited with him in exploiting spurious opium dens and other haunts staged for the sole benefit of visitors.”  Connors was credited with inventing the slang associated with the Bowery area.

Connors’ first wife, Nellie, died in 1905 and when his second wife, Rosie, died around 1911 “Church withdrew to his humble home and infrequently returned to his old haunts,” said The New York Times on May 11, 1913.

His “humble home” was a three-room apartment on Doyer Street that had been furnished and maintained for him during his life by a provision by Richard K. Fox.  On May 10, 1913 he told the old black woman, Mrs. Chin, who took care of him “I’m not good for many more days.”  The woman called several of his friends who surrounded his bedside.

“If I’m going to cash in, let it be here in Chinatown,” he whispered.

Dr. Shields was summoned from the House of Relief.  Connors was suffering from pneumonia and was taken to the hospital; but he lingered only a few hours after arriving.  The New York Times reported that “Arrangements for an elaborate funeral are being made by the Chinese merchants of the quarter.”

With the United States' entrance into the war, the government took over the House of Relief in 1918.  On March 14 the New-York Tribune reported that “The United States government has taken over the Hudson Street Hospital for military patients…Announcement was made that ambulance service from the hospital would be discontinued to-day.  Patients now there will be transferred to Bellevue and Flower hospitals.”

Although painted green, the architectural elements executed in brick are still clearly evident -- photo by Alice Lum

The New York Times explained the new function of the hospital.  “The plan of both the army and navy, as it is understood here, is to bring men back to this country if they are injured or so ill that their recovery is a matter of a long time.  In this way the medical facilities abroad can be devoted to acute cases with prospects of rapid recovery, and men who either are to be under long care or who must be discharged from the service when convalescence is complete can be taken out of the way.”

In 1920, the Annual Report of the New York Board of Social Welfare noted that “On May 1, 1918, this branch hospital was closed to civilians; none but sailors admitted since.”

Many of the wounded were not bedridden and the Red Cross thought it would be nice for them to see a bit of Manhattan before being discharged and sent elsewhere.  On April 1, 1919 The Sun reported “An appeal to automobile owners to take wounded soldiers for outings each afternoon between 2 and 5 o’clock was issued yesterday…Many of the men are in town just a week before being sent to camps elsewhere, and only by such rides as requested can they see anything of New York.”

Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s the old House of Relief was called “The United States Marine Hospital.”  In 1975 it was renovated for private medical offices, and a decade later was converted to residential use.

The brick façade has been inexplicably painted green and an unfortunate fire escape mars the Hudson Street façade.  But the handsome former hospital is still a commanding corner presence in a much changed neighborhood.