The 1891 Rhinelander Industrial School - 350 East 88th Street

 

photo by Beyond My Ken

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

photo via realtor.com

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

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The Children's Aid Society School - 219 Sullivan Street

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

photographs by the author

"The Dairy" - Central Park

photo by Brian Clark ("sooner") via Centralpark.com

In 1853, the same year that the New York State Legislature set aside more than 750 acres to create The Central Park, authorities noticed a suspicious rise in the amount of cow's milk being brought from outlying farms into Manhattan.  Previously about 90,000 quarts arrived in the city each day; now the number rose inexplicably to 120,000.  An investigation was launched.

The findings were chilling.  Investigators found that some dairymen were diluting the milk with water, then adding flour to restore its consistency.  But worse, unscrupulous dairy farmers, many in Brooklyn, were feeding their cows the alcoholic mash left over from the whiskey distillery process.

These cows were stricken with disease and deformities – losing their tails and hooves and developing open sores. The resulting milk, called “swill milk” by the press, was a thin, bluish liquid. To disguise it, the dairymen added plaster of paris, starch and eggs.  Molasses gave it the proper coloring of wholesome milk.  Harper’s Weekly, the newspaper that lead the charge against swill milk, reported that up to 8,000 children in New York died every year.

In the meantime, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won the 1858 design competition for Central Park.  Their vision would create open space for all New Yorkers, including the poor and underprivileged.  The green spaces, terraces, ponds and roadways were designed not only for their beauty, but to contribute to public health.  As the Park developed, it would play a substantial role in the milk crisis.

But for now the unspeakable corruption and tragedy continued.   When, in 1862, a Brooklyn “distillery dairy” caught fire, The New York Times described the deplorable condition of the milk cows that were released into the streets:

Many of the cows were in such a weak condition that they were thrown down and trampled upon by the more recent additions to the stock, and several will have to be braced up before they can undergo the process of milking again…One cow in particular, owing to her deformed feet, being unable to stand, attracted considerable attention, and yet the lookers-on were assured that she gave the best milk of any animal in the whole country.  [The cows had] long tails, short tails, stub tails, and some with no tails at all.  Their appendages were in every conceivable condition, from a sound stump down to stumps in every degree of decomposition… It was a most pitiable and disgusting spectacle.

At the southern point of Central Park--the spot where families would first enter--was to be a Children's Area.  Although not originally part of Olmstead and Vaux's design, plans were laid for a dairy here in 1869.  Its purpose would be to provide children with wholesome milk and pastries with no fear of contamination.

On February 18, 1870 The New York Times happily anticipated the new project. “The Commissioners of the Central Park have determined to erect and open next Spring a dairy for the supply of pure, wholesome, and unadulterated milk for the special use of invalid and delicate ladies and their infant children visiting the Park…There is a cottage being erected, with a handsome steeple and ornamental turrets, for the accommodation of ladies and infants.  There will be female attendants there, and all the regular conveniences.  In the basement cows will be kept in readiness to supply the demand made of them. Around this cottage a fine area of land is set apart for a playground, exclusively for the very young children, being distinct and separate from the present boys’ and girls’ playground…The milk will be supplied at cost price.”

Calvert Vaux designed the dairy, a whimsical fantasy of Victorian Gothic, multi-colored gingerbread right off the pages of Hansel and Gretel. The polychrome wooden loggia was intended to shelter the children from the elements and catch cool breezes in the summer. The stone block dairy, a combination of Manhattan schist and sandstone, took its inspiration from picturesque country German church architecture.

Victorian children gather on the grass outside the Dairy not long after its completion.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Despite the promise that the milk would be supplied "at cost" and the refreshments would be affordable, one Southern family visiting the park in 1874 was thunderstruck at their bill.  After visiting the menagerie on October and seeing among the exhibits the laughing jack-ass, they "discovered they were hungry."

According to the letter to the editor of The New York Herald written by a New York friend, they entered the Dairy and ordered two cups of coffee, one glass of milk and three sandwiches.  When they were finished, the father asked how much he owed.  When the waiter told him $2.50, he hesitated.  John Bangles, who write the letter, said "Our friend does not roll in wealth...he demurred and the waiter, with a glance of pity and a smile, said, 'Well, $2.25.'"  The reduced bill would be equal to about $50 today.

"My friends then departed, the little boy asked what was the mater, the father muttered something about seeing another laughing jackass."

One can almost hear the cacophony within the Dairy in this etching by J. N. Hyde that appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper in 1872 (copyright expired)

It seems that the Southern family were victims of an unscrupulous waiter.  In his 1882 New York by Gaslight, James D. McCabe, Jr. described the Dairy as "a tasteful gothic structure of brick and stone.  Here pure milk and refreshments may be had at moderate prices.  Residents of the city can always purchase fresh milk or cream here, for sick children, and a great quantity is sold daily for this purpose."

An unusual view reveals the surprising scale of the building, including the cow barn section.  photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The dairy not only provided children wholesome refreshments in 1899, it was a source of amusement in the form of one draft horse.  On January 18 the Pennsylvania newspaper Republican, wrote about "'Dan Sorrel,' who draws the milk wagon that takes the milk to Central Park Dairy every morning.  His driver often amuses the children that gather about his pet by saying:

'Now, Dan, I believe you are a Democrat.'

'No,' shakes the head.

'What! a Republican?'

'Yes, yes, yes,!' and a stamping of both front feet, while the tail is slashed about like a banner to emphasize his sentiments."

In November 1911 New Yorkers may have been surprised and disappointed when they read that Park Commissioner Charles B. Stover planned to do away with the Dairy as a concession.  The New-York Tribune reported that Stover had announced "in the near future he would convert the Dairy, one of the oldest refreshment stands in the park, into playrooms, doing away with the privilege, which dates back to the early days of the park."

The playroom idea did not work out.   By the 1950s the building was essentially abandoned and dilapidated. Vaux’s once-colorful loggia, now rotted and sagging, was ripped down by the Parks Department and the Dairy suffered the humiliation of becoming a maintenance shed.

After being left forgotten for two decades, the Central Park Administration hired designer James Lamantia and Weisberg Castro Associates to restore the interior of the Dairy.  In 1979 it was opened as the Park’s first visitor center.

Two years later the new Central Park Conservancy took over the Dairy and restored its wonderful wooden loggia. Today a permanent exhibit of the history and design of Central Park is housed here.

The Lost Stuyvesant Apartments -- 142 East 18th Street

The building was little changed in 1938.  from the collection of the Library of Congress. 1936 Historic American Buildings Survey

Peter Gerard Stuyvesant and his wife, Hellen Rutherfurd Stuyvesant, were childless.  As Stuyvesant aged, he worried that the distinguished family name would die out.  His sister, Judith Stuyvesant Winthrop, had one great-grandson, Stuyvesant Rutherfurd.

In the boy, Stuyvesant–who was the great-great grandson of Petrus Stuyvesant, Director-General of the colony of New Netherland–recognized his last chance.  When he died in 1847, he left one-third of his significant estate to the then four-year-old boy--on the condition that his name be changed to Rutherfurd Stuyvesant.  And so it was.

The Sun later described Rutherfurd Stuyvesant as, “a member of one of New York’s old families and a man of considerable fortune.”  Stuyvesant spent considerable time abroad.  Around the time that the Civil War drew to a close at home, he was taken with a startling European concept—the apartment house.

The Sun explained, “The apartment or flat idea, which originated in Paris, had spread through every country of Europe but England, which would not tolerate this sort of dwelling.  Its popularity impressed Mr. Stuyvesant so much that he decided to build an apartment on his property when he returned home.”

Stuyvesant selected a broad parcel on East 18^th Street—112 feet wide on the south side of the block between Third Avenue and Irving Place—in 1869.  The Sun remarked, “it was not far from the centre of one of the best residential sections in the city.”  The upscale location was intended to attract moneyed tenants—but it also brought problems.

Well-heeled residents on the block protested vehemently.  The Sun recalled, “when he announced the use to which he was going to put the site there was much protest made against what Mr. Stuyvesant’s neighbors called a harmful invasion on their homes.  Mr. Stuyvesant could not be persuaded from his purpose by threat or otherwise, and the house was built.”

Considered the first apartment building in New York, “the house” was completed in 1870.  It was designed by Richard Morris Hunt who had produced the 10th Street Studios Building for James Boorman Johnston in 1857.  That project provided residential and studio spaces specifically for artists.  Rutherfurd Stuyvesant’s new Stuyvesant Apartments would follow that lead, providing four artists’ studios along with the 16 spacious apartments.

Hunt designed the five-story brick and stone structure in the Victorian Gothic style.  Despite curvaceous French balconies, contrasting brick-and-stone ornamentation, and a steep slate-tiled mansard punctured by great, elaborate dormers; the Stuyvesant Apartments presented a brooding presence.

Hunt included delightful details like the fanciful balconies and tiled faux hoods.  from the collection of the Library of Congress 1936 Historic American Buildings Survey

Nevertheless the building was fully rented before the doors opened in 1870.  To assure privacy, Stuyvesant and Hunt had designed the interior walls especially thick to ensure that the apartments were sound proof.  “But to make it so, much of the space that could go into the apartments had to be sacrificed,” noted The Sun.

The newspaper said that Stuyvesant, “being a man of wealth…spared no expense in making the house the best that could be turned out at the time.”  The New York Times later reported, “His apartment house had five stories containing suites of four, seven and nine rooms, many being of large size.”  And according to The Sun, “The best apartment in the house could be had for less than $1,800 and the lowest priced suite was $1,200.”  The highest rent would equate to about $2,800 per month in 2015.

Among the original residents was Bayard Taylor.  Well known as a lecturer, novelist, poet, translator, war correspondent and essayist, Taylor moved here from his house on 8^th Street.  He was held in such esteem that upon his death in 1878 that he lay in state in New York’s City Hall.  The New York Times remarked on December 20, “In his sphere, Bayard Taylor will surely be a shining example to generations of Americans.”

Artists' studios in the high mansard received a flood of northern light through the fancifully-decorated dormers.  from the collection of the Library of Congress  1936 Historic American Buildings Survey

Taylor was, of course, not the only well-known resident.  Author, illustrator, cartoonist, comedian and poet Oliver Brooke Herford was here in the 1880s; as was landscape architect Calvert Vaux.  Vaux, of course, is best remembered for his designing of Central Park with Frederick Law Olmsted.  (Somewhat ironically, while the Stuyvesant Apartments earned the title of New York's first apartment building, Vaux had published a paper on “Parisian Flats” in 1857.)

Downing Vaux worked in his father’s office in 1883.  The 26-year-old lived nearby in a room at East 15^th Street and Irving Place, but he ate his meals with his parents in the Stuyvesant Apartments.  Downing was looking forward “to his marriage with a young lady to whom he was betrothed, and who is now traveling in Europe,” commented The New York Times on May 9, 1883.

On Monday morning, May 7, the family was having breakfast when a letter arrived for Downing.  The family later said the contents seemed to “distress him.”  The young man left the apartment for Vaux’s office, but he never arrived there.  At around 7:00, when he failed to arrive for dinner that evening, Calvert Vaux went to the house where he roomed.  The New York Times reported, “On visiting the room Mr. Vaux found that his son had left there his gold watch and chain and other articles of jewelry which he usually wore.  Mr. Vaux fears that his son’s mind has become unsettled and that he is either wandering aimlessly about the City or has committed suicide.”

A missing person search across the city was initiated.  Downing (named for Calvert Vaux’s first partner in the United States, Andrew J. Downing, with whom he designed the grounds around the Capitol Building and the Smithsonian Institution) was eventually found.  He went on to have a successful career as a landscape architect.  Calvert Vaux was still living in the Stuyvesant Apartments in 1889 when his Department of Public Works salary was $3,000 per year, or about $80,000 today.

In the meantime, the building filled with other socially visible residents.  Along with the Calvert Vauxes in the building in 1885, White, Stokes & Allen’s Guide included on its “select list of prominent people” Walter Satterlee and Miss M. W. Kemble.  Not only was the Rev. Edward O. Flagg highly esteemed in the Episcopalian church—he served both at fashionable St. Thomas’sChurch and Grace Church—he was widely known as a lecturer and poet.

In 1889, the four studios were inhabited by E. L. Henry, Mrs. Emily M. Scott, Julia Dillon and Frederick James.  All of them exhibited at the National Academy of Design that year.  Emily M. Scott would live in the building at least through 1908, and be joined throughout the years by artists like Domingo Mora, F. Louis Mora, Henry Rutgers Marshall, and Myra B. Spafard.

Hall J. How and his wife, Mary, were living here at the time.  How retired in 1895 after 37 years in the real estate business.  The New York Times called him, “one of the oldest and best-known real estate brokers in the city” and mentioned, “He confined his transactions entirely to Manhattan Island property, and would not touch property outside of its confines.”  The newspaper added, “He amassed a handsome fortune.”

On Sunday night, January 3, 1897, Hall How died at the age of 72 in his Stuyvesant apartment.  Doctors blamed his death on “paralysis.”  (The term often referred to a stroke.)  Mary How would not survive through the year.  On Friday, December 10, she, too, died in the apartment at the age of 72.

The names of the Stuyvesant Apartments residents continued to appear in society columns throughout the decades.  Reports of receptions, debut entertainments and engagements were followed by the upper class.  The family of James M. Montgomery was an example.  Their apartment was the scene of the wedding of daughter Cornelia P. Montgomery to Charles R. Runyon, Jr. at 4:15 on the afternoon of New Year’s Day 1913.  The New York Times reported, “After the wedding ceremony a small reception was held, and later Mr. Runyon and his bride left on his yacht for the South.”

Cornelia’s maid of honor was her sister, Kathryn Bayard Montgomery.  Like most society girls, she involved herself with charitable causes—her favorite being the Stony Wold Sanatorium.  Society pages routinely made note of her involvement with events for the facility.

But the country’s entry into World War I changed life for all Americans, including the socially prominent.  Kathryn turned her focus to war efforts and her brother, George Peabody Montgomery, enlisted in the Army.   Not only did Kathryn become part of the ungainly-named American Committee of the British and Allies Comforts and Victims of War Fund, she established its New York office in the apartment.

Katharyn Bayard Montgomery was socially and politically active. The family was still in the Stuyvesant Apartments when she assisted the Girls' Service Club in 1921.  New-York Tribune, April 14, 1921 (copyright expired)

The war made its mark on romance, as well.  On March 6, 1918, The Sun reported that Lt. George Peabody Montgomery of the 305^th Field Artillery had become engaged to Katharine A. Crane.  It would necessarily be a short engagement.  Two days later the couple was married in Trinity Church.

Following the war, the Stuyvesant Apartments continued to be home to artists, writers and poets.  In 1920, artists Thomas Raymond Ball and Thomas Watson Ball were in the building; as was author and playwright George C. Hazelton.  Among the plays Hazelton had written were The Yellow Jacket (his most famous); Mistress Nell; and The Raven, based on the life of Edgar Allen Poe.

The decorations of the fireplace in this studio closely mimicked those of the facade.  from the collection of the Library of Congress, 1936 Historic American Buildings Survey

Another author and playwright, Rita Weiman, lived here at the same time.  She caused concern in June 1922 when she and her husband, Edgar S. Leo, sailed for Europe.  They entrusted their bulldog puppy to friends on Staten Island.  On July 5 the puppy was stolen.

The dog was found only through a bizarre set of circumstances.  Two policemen noticed smoke coming from the second story window above a Chinese restaurant on East 14^th Street.  Before long the building was engulfed in flames.  When the fire was under control, fire fighters checked the basement.  The New York Times reported, “Members of the fire patrol found the cellar filled with water and almost unbearable from the heat.  They heard splashing and a flashlight revealed a floating box in which was a bull pup which had kept itself alive by swimming.”

The playwright’s husband remarked flatly, “Miss Weiman will be glad to hear of the pup’s recover, for she is very fond of him.”

Another literary pair moved into the building in 1923.  William Rose Benét, the brother of Stephen Vincent Benét, was a poet who launched the Literary Review of the New York Evening Post with Henry Seidel Canby, Amy Loveman and Christopher Morley in 1920.  In 1924, he became poetry critic of the Saturday Review of Literature.  Benet’s wife, Elinor Wylie, was also a poet.

Tragedy visited the apartment of Metropolitan Opera bass singer William Gustafson on the evening of March 10, 1931.   The New York Times described the 42-year-old as, “an athlete and a 6-footer towering above most of his stage companions.”  That season he had performed in the Met’s productions of Boccaccio, Die Walküre , Madame Butterfly and as Fafner in Siegfried, among other roles.

Gustafson and his wife had two children.  That night the singer received a telephone call just after dinner.  According to reports, “it aroused Mrs. Gustafson’s jealousy.”  A quarrel broke out between the pair and according to police, “Mrs. Gustafson is said to have upbraided her husband and to have informed him that she would take their two children and leave at once for Boston” where her mother lived.

In her fit of jealousy, she telephoned Grand Central Terminal and reserved two berths.  While she was still on the phone, Gustafson removed a .32-calibre pistol from a table drawer.  Before his wife could stop him, he fired a bullet into his head.

Mrs. Gustafson ran screaming out of the apartment and the superintendent of the building, Fred Ackley, telephoned for an ambulance.  It was, of course, too late.  William Gustafson was dead on the floor with the medics arrived.

Renowned photographer Berenice Abbott took this shot in 1935 -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1935 Oliver Herford still occupied the apartment with his wife that they had taken in the 1880s.  It was there that he died on July 5, 1935 at the age of 72.  William Dean Howells called him, “the Charles Lamb of his day.”  In a situation reminiscent of Hall J. How and his wife, Mary; Margaret Regan Herford died on December 9 that same year.  She, too, was an author and playwright.

Other celebrated names in the Stuyvesant Apartments during the next two decades included Frederick Van Wyck, author and antiquarian.  He had lived in his apartment since, at least, 1932.  Playwright Clayton Hamilton, writer and editor Mrs. W. C. Roberts, and artist Louise Bourgeois all lived here during the 1940s.

from the collection of the Library of Congress 1936 Historic American Buildings Survey

By mid-century, the venerable Stuyvesant Apartments was eclipsed by modern apartment buildings with conveniences like elevators and modern décor.  On September 22, 1957, it was announced that the hulking structure was to be demolished.  The New York Times described it as, “A model of gracious living for 88 years.”

Demolition of Richard Morris Hunt’s sound-proof building was a challenge.  But by 1960 it had been replaced by a 14-story apartment house, designed by S. J. Kessler & Sons.

photo cityrealty.com