The Norman - 37-43 West 93rd Street

 

Cast iron lamps with milk glass globes once flanked the one-stepped stoop.  image via cityrealty.com

A Polish immigrant, Julius Tishman founded his real estate development company, Julius Tishman & Sons, in 1898.  Less than a decade later, the company was erecting substantial buildings, like The Norman, completed in 1909 at 37 to 43 West 93rd Street.  Designed by Charles B. Meyers, the structure had cost the Tishmans $225,000 to construct--a considerable $8 million in 2025 terms.

The Norman's two-story rusticated base was faced in limestone, its six upper floors in gray brick.  Meyers successfully married Beaux Arts and Renaissance Revival styles in the design--with the French slightly trumping the Italian.  The impressive entrance was framed with foliate carvings and flanked by pilasters carved with heavy bellflowers.  Scrolled brackets upheld a triangular pediment filled with a massive cartouche surrounded with ferns and flowers.  It announced the building's name.

photograph by Anthony Bellov

The openings of the second floor were fronted with lacy French balconettes.  Faux, stone balustraded balconies appeared at the third floor, and two iron-railed balconies clung to the fourth.  Frothy cartouches adorned the windows of the top floor, and elongated brackets hung with wreaths supported the cornice.

Advertisements for The Norman offered apartments of "6, 7 and 8 Rooms and 2 Baths" with "3 lavatories [and] large closet room."  Rents ranged from $1,000 to $1,500 per year (about $3,000 a month for the most expensive in today's terms).

Among the early tenants was Alice Minnie Herts.  A graduate of Normal College and the Sorbonne, Herts got involved in social work before founding the Children's Educational Theatre in 1903.  Its purpose, she wrote in 1911, was:

...to make our thousands of immigrant children better citizens; to educate them; to develop their sympathies and their characters; to give them the possible sort of a good time, and to counteract the evil and sordid influences of tenement and factory.

The stalwart educator enlisted Samuel Clemens to serve as the board's president.  He was quoted in Good Housekeeping in November 1913 saying, "I consider [the Children's Educational Theatre] the greatest citizen-making force of the century."

Alice Minnie Herts, The Children's Educational Theatre, 1911 (copyright expired)

Whether Alice initially shared an apartment with her brother, Isaac H. Herts, and his wife, is unclear.  They too, lived in the building.  He and Benjamin H. Herts, his and Alice's brother, had founded the interior decorating and furniture design firm Herts Brothers in 1876.  The influential concern furnished the New York Produce Exchange, the Knickerbocker and the St. Regis hotels, and William Backhouse Astor, Jr.'s steam yacht, the Nourmahal.  The firm closed in 1908.

Alice Herts was a close friend of portrait painter Elsie Dodge Pattee.  The daughter of a wealthy dry goods merchant, she had lived in France before returning to New York in 1912.  Alice took charge of re-introducing Pattee to Manhattan society.

On January 5, 1913, The New York Times reported, "Miss A. Minnie Herts has sent out cards for two receptions to introduce Miss [sic] Elsie Dodge Pattee...They will take place in Miss Herts's home, 37 West Ninety-third Street."  And on January 19, the newspaper announced, "Miss A. M. Herts...will be home this afternoon for Mrs. Elsie Dodge Pattee."

The social spotlight would focus more directly onto Herts two months later.  On March 12, The New York Times reported that she and Jacob Heniger had been married the previous day in Alice Minnie Herts's apartment.  The article mentioned, "Mr. Heniger is also interested in educational work," and closed, "After a short trip through the South Mr. and Mrs. Heniger will live in this city."

Indeed they did.  They retained Alice's apartment in The Norman.  And while Jacob Heniger was "interested in educational work," it was not his profession.  He held the position of Inspector of Tenements, earning $1,500 per year (about $44,200 in today's money).

In the meantime, the couple's neighbors in the building were white collar merchants, lawyers and doctors.  Among them were Charles F. Hofferberth, president of the Hofferberth Troy Company, a lumber concern; and lace salesman Walter E. Bennett.  Bennett began working for Goldenberg Bros. & Co. in 1888 at the age of 15.  Now he traveled throughout the South for the firm.

The country's entry into World War I was felt deeply by two families of The Norman.  In 1916, Theodore Rousseau enrolled in the U.S. Army.  The following year, on December 13, 1917, David Maurice Wolff, who had been working in the stock brokerage firm of H. P. Goodschmidt, enlisted with the 213th Aero Squadron.  The Evening World remarked that the 22-year-old Wolff, "became interested in aeronautics soon after war was declared."  Rousseau trained in Plattsburg, New York and Wolff at Mineola, Long Island.

Wolff's mother, Grace, was now alone.  David M. Wolff, Sr. had died in their apartment on September 6, 1913.  The younger Wolff boarded the converted ocean liner S. S. Tuscania on January 27, 1918, one of 2,000 American troops on the ship.  One can imagine the terror Grace Wolff felt when she read the headlines on February 7.  The banner of The Buffalo Commercial read, "Transport Carrying Yankee Soldiers Victim Of U-Boat."  A torpedo from a German submarine had struck the troop carrier.

On February 8, The Evening World remarked, "Wolff is the only son of his widowed mother, Mrs. Grace K. Wolff, with whom he lived at No. 37 West Ninety-third Street."  Happily, the following day The New York Times reported that David "cabled his mother, Mrs. Grace Wolff, at her home...yesterday that he had arrived safely."  

Isaac H. Herts, "a pioneer in the furniture business in New York city, and founder and president of the firm of Herts Brothers Company," as described by the New York Herald, died "after a prolonged illness" in his apartment on January 11, 1918 at the age of 70.

Retired insurance man James H. Crawford lived here at the time.  A widower, he hosted a benefit concert in his apartment on March 15, 1920 for Lille University in France.  After receiving his guests, he excused himself and went into a bedroom.  The New-York Tribune said, "His body was found in his room a few minutes" later.  The 70-year-old had apparently suffered a heart attack.

Other residents around the same time were P. J. O'Leary, head of the O'Leary Lumber Co.; and Dr. Michael Mislig.  By the Depression years, Justice John J. Freschi and his wife, Mary; and wholesale lumber merchant Cornelius E. Kennedy were occupants.

P. J. O'Leary  American Lumberman, December 16, 1922 (copyright expired)

Born in 1876 in Greenwich Village, John J. Freschi graduated from New York University and New York University Law School.  He was appointed to Special Sessions by Mayor John Purroy Mitchel.  Freschi headed the Italian-American committee for the re-election of Mayor James Walker in 1925.  Walker re-appointed him to Special Sessions in 1931.  

On April 25, 1931, The New York Times reported that Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt had appointed Freschi to the Court of General Sessions.  In that capacity, The Times would remark years later, he "presided at many sensational criminal trials."

Cornelius E. Kennedy was a life-long bachelor.  Born in Burlington, Vermont in 1870, he founded C. E. Kennedy, Inc. in 1906.  His firm dealt in both American and Canadian lumber.

On the evening of December 30, 1938, Kennedy was struck by an automobile at the corner of 93rd Street and Central Park West.  The 69-year-old died in Harlem Hospital four days later.

The cornice survived as late as 1941.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Calling him, "a leader among Americans of Italian descent in this city for many years," on July 30, 1944 The New York Times reported on the death of Judge John J. Freschi.  The article said, "The jurist was stricken in his chambers in the Criminal Courts Building on July 20."  He had suffered a ruptured appendix.

In recalling Freschi's career that had included "sixty notable trials," the newspaper said:

He sat in the kidnaping trial of Galla and Sacoda in 1938, the first kidnaping case tried in New York that resulted in a death verdict under the Lindbergh law.  He also presided over the trail of Louis (Lepke) Buchalter for extortion in 1940 when the latter received a sentence of 30 years to life imprisonment before his execution on a murder conviction.

John J. Freschi's funeral was held in St. Patrick's Cathedral on August 1.  The New York Times estimated that 1,000 persons attended the mass of requiem.  Among his honorary pallbearers were Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and U.S. Senator Robert F. Wagner.

image via cityrealty.com

The Norman was converted to a cooperative in the third quarter of the 20th century.  In doing so, none of the apartments were reduced in size.  At some point, the cornice, which was showing damage at early as 1941, was removed.  

In September 1999, a four-bedroom, two-bath co-op sold for $599,000.  Within a decade, property values had risen.  In February 2007, a three-bedroom, two-bath apartment sold for $1.6 million.  

many thanks to historian Anthony Bellov for suggesting this post.

Charles B. Meyers's 1901 256 East 10th Street

 

The development firm of Gordon, Levy & Co. was busy erecting tenement buildings in the late 19th century.  On March 6, 1900, architect Charles B. Meyers filed plans for another--a six-story "brick flat" at 256-258 East 10th Street.  Completed the following year, it cost Gordon, Levy & Co. $50,000 to erect--about $1.85 million in 2024 terms.

Meyers clad the neo-Renaissance style structure in red brick above a rusticated brownstone base.  Unusual for the normally symmetrical style, the entrance was placed off center.  Renaissance style carvings decorated the three pilasters that framed the doorway and the flanking window.  An elaborate blind cartouche decorated the entablature.  

The openings of the second and sixth floors sat within molded architrave frames, while those on the floors in between wore prominent cornices.  The pairs of windows on either end of the third and fourth floors wore stepped voussoirs, and those on the fifth floor were joined by arched pediments.  A pressed metal cornice completed the design.

An advertisement in The New York World boasted, "New House--Newly decorated, light and large rooms in suites of 3, 4, 5; all improvements; $14, $20."  Rent for the most expensive apartments would translate to $740 per month in 2024.

Among the first tenants were the Offerman family.  The young couple had a eight-month-old son, Frederick.  On the night of January 25, 1901, Josephine Offerman was preparing dinner.  Because the tenement did not have electricity, she worked by the light of gas fixtures, augmented by a glass oil lamp.  The New York Times reported, "Her son was sitting at a table in a high chair.  The lamp was on the table when it exploded.  The burning oil ignited the child's clothing."

Josephine tried valiantly to smother the flames, burning herself severely "about the breast, face, and hands" in doing so.  Hearing her screams, neighbors summoned an ambulance and Josephine and Frederick were taken to Bellevue Hospital.  The little boy died a few hours later.

House painters Daniel Greenberg and Charles Rosenblum both lived here in 1903.  On July 12 that year were sent to paint a schoolhouse on Union Street in Brooklyn near the riverfront.  It was a dangerous neighborhood.  Within the span of few hours, according to Brooklyn Times-Union, "An Italian was shot and dangerously wounded early in the morning.  A young Italian woman shot and wounded a man whom she claims jilted her," and "three Italians set upon an Irishman, killing him."

Greenberg and Rosenblum were witnesses to the third incident.  They were passing Paul Pensabene's grocery at 28 Union Street when he got into "a row," as worded by the newspaper, with John Bolden, who was making a delivery on the block.  Bolden had asked Pensabene to move his ice cream stand from the curb to prevent his cart from damaging it.  Pensabene refused.

"Bolden backed his horses up to the curb.  The tail end of his truck came in contact with the stand, pushing it inward."  Pensabene flew into a rage and he and two other men grabbed the reins of Bolden's horses, attempting to turn the team around.  The Times-Union said, "Bolden jumped from his seat and that cost him his life."  He was stabbed in the heart by one of the men.  Expectedly, Greenberg and Rosenblum were requested to make statements.

The Italian community was plagued by a terroristic group called La Mano Nera, or the Black Hand, at the time.  The Italian-American group used violence, including assassinations and bombings, to extort money from well-to-do Italians.

Michael Abagnale, a barber, lived at 256 East 10th Street in 1908.  He ran his barbershop in the basement of 210 East 14th Street with Gaetano Bove.  Most likely few, if any, of their patrons realized that the two barbers were members of the Black Hand.

In January 1908, Francesco Spinella, described by The New York Times as "a wealthy Italian," began receiving threatening letters.  Over the course of a few weeks they demanded sums ranging from $500 to $2,000.  Instead of complying, Spinella turned the letters over to detectives.

An especially threatening letter arrived in May.  When Spinella did not respond, a bomb blew out the front of a house he owned on East 11th Street, injuring several people.  Later, a letter arrived that told Spinella that he now had "a taste" of the Black Hand's vengeance.  It told him to leave $500 with "Mike, the barber, at 210 East Fourteenth Street."  

An Italian-born detective named Caponi dressed as a laborer and went to Michael Abagnale's barbershop on June 12 for a shave.  Shortly afterward, Francesco Spinella came in.  He carried an envelope with paper cut to the size of bills.  On either side were $6 in marked bills.

"I've got the money," Spinella told Abagnale.  "I don't want no more bother."

"You won't be bothered no more," Abagnale answered, as he slipped the envelope into the cash drawer.

The New York Times reported, "Then Caponi jumped from the shaving chair and with the help of two other detectives who entered the shop arrested both men."  Michael Abagnale was charged with extortion and Bove with "acting in concert with him."

Resident Hyman Driezan worked as a suitcase maker, as did his brother, Oscar, who lived on Monroe Street.  Oscar was a union member and Hyman was not, but the difference did not cause problems until a strike was called early in the spring of 1910.  After it had dragged on for ten weeks, Hyman received an anonymous letter warning him that unless he joined the strike, he would be killed.  To protect himself, he began carrying a "pocket club" and a revolver to work.

On the morning of July 6, Hyman was intercepted by his brother at Chambers Street and West Broadway.  Oscar tried unsuccessfully to persuade him not to go to work while the strike was on.  The two got into a heated argument.  As it turned out, Oscar, too, was armed with a club and gun.  After hitting his brother several times over the head with his club, Oscar shot him twice.  The New York Times reported, "Had his aim been true, Oscar Driezan...would have killed his brother, Hyman."  Oscar was arrested and charged with felonious assault and carrying concealed weapons.

On May 18, 1917, Congress enacted the Selective Service Act, which enabled the Government to expand the military through conscription.  Although the war had been over for several years, the avoidance of the draft was a problem in 1921.  On May 15, the military authorities at Governor's Island began publishing a weekly "slacker" list in the local newspapers.  On the first list was Joseph Shermann of 256 East 10th Street.

The Communist Party was popular among the working class residents of the Lower East Side and the East Village in the first half of the 20th century.  In 1936, six residents of 256 East 10th Street were on the Government's list of registered Communist Party members.

At some point in the second half of the century, 256 East 10th Street lost its cornice, the brownstone was painted red, and details picked out in white.  Charles B. Meyers's somewhat eccentric neo-Renaissance facade disguises the colorful history that played out inside.

many thanks to historian Anthony Bellov for suggesting this post

photographs by the author

no permission to reuse the content of this blog has been granted to LaptrinhX.com

Troubling History - Charles B. Meyers's 1907 686-688 Third Avenue

 

In 1895 architect James Stroud designed two one-story buildings with cast iron storefronts for Charles W. Doherty at Nos. 686 and 688 Third Avenue.  Located just north of East 43rd Street, their small proportions suggest they were intended as "tax payers"--relatively temporary structures that brought in enough income to cover the real estate taxes.   Doherty died in 1906 and his extensive holdings, including the two 25-foot wide stores, were sold at auction in March 1907.

Isaac Cohen purchased the properties and immediately laid plans to replace them with a more profitable structure.  He hired architect Charles B. Meyers to design a "six-story tenement" on the site at a cost of $40,000--just over $1 million today.

Faced in beige brick, the building expectedly included stores at sidewalk level.  The upper floors, divided vertically into three sections, were decorated with stone and terra cotta.  The two-bay wide central section stole the limelight with carved, draped garlands over blind panels at the second floor, and Renaissance-inspired pediments over the paired windows of the four upper floors.

By 1920 the ground floor space was home to the Modern Dairy Lunch restaurant.  The three-room apartments upstairs were intended for working- and middle-class tenants.   Typical were 75-year-old John Keating, a retired trunk manufacturer, who shared an apartment with his unmarried daughter, Margaret, by the post World War I years.

Dementia was little understood at the time, but from a 21st century perspective it is apparent that John was suffering symptoms by 1922.  He disappeared on June 25 that year after withdrawing $200 from the Franklin Savings Bank on 42nd Street near Eighth Avenue.  It was a significant sum, more than $3,000 by today's standard.  He was found a few days later in the Municipal Lodging House with his money, watch and other possessions stolen.

He wandered off again on September 7, and, according to The Morning Telegraph, "when found later in Bellevue Hospital it developed that he had been robbed and thieves substituted old clothes for the good apparel he had been wearing." 

It happened again three weeks later.  Keating left the apartment on September 29 "wearing a new gray striped suit, a new dark overcoat and a new derby hat and with about $200 in his pocket," according to The Morning Telegraph.  On October 15 he was still missing and Margaret was frantic, worrying that he had again been robbed or worse.  Frustratingly, newspapers did not follow up on the story; although that fact alone suggests he was found safe.

Bernard Ricchebuono and his wife Rosa Helen lived in a second floor apartment here during the early Depression years.  Bernard held down two jobs, working for the Thrift Foundation Plan during the day and selling insurance at night.

The city was plagued with a glut of corrupt vice squad officers at the time and in the summer of 1930 Rosa Helen became the target of one of them.  At around 8:00 on the night of July 29, Bernard left home to make insurance collections.  Rosa Helen later explained that as she always did, she "leaned out of the window and waved good-bye to him, and he walked down the street."  Plainclothes officer Walter B. Ambraz saw this and knew Rose Helen was alone.  

The New York Sun later recounted, "It was a stifling hot night, and she had taken a cool bath and washed out some clothes.  She had washed her hair and to get a current of air for drying it had opened the hall door of her apartment, as all her neighbors did when they wanted the air to circulate."

The rear courtyard of the building was crisscrossed with clotheslines on pulleys.  Rosa Helen was in the kitchen, hanging laundry out the window when she heard someone enter the apartment and close the door.  Assuming it was Bernard, she went ahead with her task.  But when he did not say anything, she turned to face a strange man.

"What do you want?" she shouted twice.

Walter Ambraz accused her of beaconing him in from the window and, as Rosa Helen screamed for him to "Get out!" he attacked.  The New York Sun reported that later in court she said "the man had struggled with her, tried to throw her on a bed, put his hand over her mouth to stifle her shouts for help, and finally had held her against the wall and told her to shut up, that she was under arrest."

Hearing the ruckus, neighbors rushed to the doorway.  Despite their protests that Rosa Helen was a "good woman," Ambraz arrested her for prostitution.  She spent two nights in jail.

Ambraz and six other officers were suspended from the police force the following spring as accusations of similar actions piled up against them.  Both Rosa Helen and Bernard testified in court during the more a week-long trial regarding her arrest.  Newspapers made much of the fact that Rosa's brother was a Roman Catholic priest and her uncle was a bishop in Canada.

Ambraz took the stand in his own defense, telling the jury not only that Rosa Helen had waved him into the apartment after her husband had gone, but "had made a previous appointment with him."  Despite the testimonies of the Ricchebuonos and their neighbors, the jury sided with Ambraz.  On May 29, 1931 The New York Times reported "Ambraz was the seventh former vice squad patrolman placed on trial...and the third to be acquitted, after separate trials."

In the 1930's a grocery operated at street level, replaced by the Merit Paint Supply store in the 1940's and '50's.  The Hyman Photo Supply store occupied the space in the 1960's.

One of the apartments was rented to an "arthritis treatment clinic" in the fall of 1974.  But the description on the lease was not what Playtime was all about.  Advertisements promised "beautiful girls to pamper you" and charged $30 for a 20-minute massage treatment.

Other residents were outraged.  Some of the female tenants were offered jobs as "live-in masseuses," according to the Elmira, New York newspaper the Star-Gazette.  One resident, Eric Eidus, said that "the all-night squeaking heard through the walls made him think the building had rats."  The cause was taken up by 74-year-old Jeanette Acton who led an effort to have the parlor evicted.

On May 12, 1975 the Star-Gazette reported, "there was pleasure aplenty Saturday night around the groaning board at a party in a Grand Central area apartment, but the enjoyment was that of tenants celebrating the eviction of a massage parlor from the building."  In an act of poetic justice, "the tenants spread a smorgasbord over the abandoned massage tables and held a happy but restrained party."  Resident Nash Basom beamed, "It's the first quiet night in months."

Ellen Jane Hover lived in one of the small apartments in 1977.  An aspiring orchestra conductor, the 23-year-old was a graduate of Beaver College where she majored in biology and minored in music.  The New York Times remarked that she had "a reputation for being cautious and responsible."

And so when she disappeared after leaving home for a dinner and theater date on July 15, worried friends notified her mother in Yorktown Heights, New York.  Police were notified, but two weeks later no trace had been found.  Unwilling to wait, Ellen's mother and step-father, Yvonne and Rubin Schwartz, hired private investigator Nat Laurendi, a retired New York City detective.

In her apartment he found the name of the man she was to meet on July 15--John Berger.  He questioned neighbors who recalled that a "tall, shabbily dressed young man with a long pony tail" had knocked on her apartment door that evening.  A friend said Ellen had mentioned a man who matched that description, a photographer, whom she met at an unemployment office.

Missing notices with Ellen's picture were placed in the newspapers and a reward was offered, but the case seemed to go cold.  Then, three months later, on June 14, 1978, Ellen's skeletal remains were found in a Westchester County woodlands above the Hudson River, buried under heavy rocks.

That year Rodney Alcala was Bachelor No. 1 on an episode of the television game show "The Dating Game."  He was introduced to the audience as "a successful photographer."  As it turned out, Alcala's alias was John Berger and he was a serial killer.  In 2012 he was on California's Death Row for killing a 12-year-old girl and four women, including Ellen Jane Hover.  That June he was flown to New York City to face charges of two other murders.

The commercial tenant brought unwanted publicity to the building in 1994 when Federal authorities disclosed "that the Famous Original Ray's Pizza on Third Avenue near 43d Street was actually the headquarters for a major drug ring," as reported by The New York Times on September 15.  The article said, "the pizzeria gang didn't just import cocaine from Colombia to feed New York City's big appetite for drugs.  It also used New York as a transit point to deliver drugs to three longstanding organized crime groups in Italy."

The bust rocked the foundations of all the similarly-named pizzerias throughout Manhattan.  The owners of establishments like the One and Only Famous Ray's of Greenwich Village and the World Famous Ray's Pizza were bombarded with telephone calls.  Rosolino Mangano, who was the actual original and famous Ray, was devastated when he saw the televised news.  "Oh boy, I could not sleep all night," he told a reporter, "I think to myself, I know that's not really my store, but what are other people going to think.  Oh boy."

The handsome 1907 building with more than its share of troubling history is rather abused today.  At some point the cornice was removed, and while the Certificate of Occupancy still shows apartments on the upper four floors, the windows are boarded over.  

photographs by the author

many thanks to reader Matt Kay for prompting this post

An Elegant "Taxpayer"--142 East 74th Street

The paired central windows on the upper Lexington Avenue side were altered in 1935.

The Italianate-style house at the southwest corner of 74th Street and Lexington Avenue had stood since 1875 when the Berstrum Realty Corporation purchased it in 1923.  The firm no doubt hoped to acquire additional, abutting properties and erect a substantial structure.  So in the meantime architect Charles B. Meyers was commissioned to design a "taxpayer" on the site.

Taxpayers, as they still are today, were small structures erected simply to provide enough income to cover the annual real property taxes.  Often, because they were deemed temporary, they were built cheaply.  But that would not be the case with No. 142 East 74th Street.

Meyers designed a pretty, two-story Colonial Revival structure with three stores at street level and offices above.  Faced in white iron-flecked brick, it was handsomely decorated with terra cotta elements that hearkened to the country's architectural roots.  The entrance to the second floor, capped with an arched transom, was placed at the southern end of the Lexington Avenue side.

The large openings of the second floor were framed by terra cotta pilasters.  They upheld entablatures crowned by swan-necked pediments which enbraced engaged urns.  The simple cornice was interrupted by a parapet decorated with a blind balustrade, swags and cartouches.   Classical urns stood sentry along the roof line.

Not long after the building was completed, the owners apparently abandoned any plans for a larger structure.  On July 9, 1925 the New York Evening Post reported "The Schulte Cigar Stores Company has purchased from the Berstrum Realty Company 142 East Seventy-fourth street, southwest corner of Lexington avenue, a two-story taxpayer."

While a cigar store apparently moved into one of the storefronts, the upstairs became home to the Medico Distribution Co., drug and chemical wholesalers.  

In 1934 a renovation altered the center windows of the second floor on Lexington, and it was probably at this time that the original three stores were converted to four.

By 1944 Farber-Wittman, Inc. operated its construction firm here.   Not only did the firm erect apartment complexes, but often acted as the managing agent as well.  The firm was on the second floor at least through 1947.

At street level shops came and went.  Although the location never officially had a Lexington Avenue address, tenants routinely used the address of 1043-A Lexington.

One particularly interesting retail tenant was Edythe Meserand who had begun her radio career in the press department of the National Broadcasting Company in 1926.   By 1952 when she retired she had become a major force in radio and one of the first female news executives.

Retirement did not slow her down and Meserand founded an advertising agency and opened a unique shop in No. 142 East 74th Street.  In 1956 The New Yorker wrote "If you have a message that you'd like to get off your chest but are too shy to come right out with it, the Little Shop of Edythe Meserand, 1034-A Lexington Avenue, will bake it into a round enamel-on copper ashtray--and in your own handwriting."

While the Little Shop produced novelty ashtrays, Marion Williams ran her upscale dress shop in one of the stores, and by January 1959 New Products was advertising "25 different salt and pepper sets."

It is unclear exactly when barber Paul Molé moved his operation, first opened in 1913, into the second floor, but he was here in 1964 when he received national attention.

On November 27 that year The New York Times reported "Parents who are wondering whether their youngsters should be wearing Beatle haircuts, crew-cuts or 'Oliver' bangs will receive advice this morning on the 'Today' show.  Paul Molé, a barber, raconteur and physician during World War II, will discuss these haircuts and the psychology for getting youngsters quietly into the barber's chair and out."

Fifty-five years later the Paul Molé barbershop still engulfs the second floor.  In the meantime, the ground floor shops continued to see a variety of tenants.  In 1972 two print shops, Hartwell Magicolor Printing and The Printers V Inc. had spaces and by 1974 A Touch of Whimsy offered original copper wire sculptures by Aryeh Stollman here.

The 1980's saw Pillowry renting space, a shop devoted to "pillows made of pure wool, kilims from Persia, Afghanistan, Turkey [and] textiles--needlepoint, old silk, damask and lace."  Another of the shops was home to Asena, an apparel boutique which carried items like Paris-based Japanese designer Kenzo's silk broadcloth jacket in 1989, priced at $335 (about double that amount today).

Harry Schule opened his antiques shop, Cedric & Company, here in 1991.  The Times wrote "Mr. Schule plans to change the contents of the shop periodically.  'Each change will be according to a theme,' he said.  'One time the shop will be Regency, another time Art Deco.  I am currently designing a line of mirrored Venetian furniture with an 18-century look that will also go here, too.'"

Che Che operated its handbag shop here by 2003.  Where to Wear New York Shopping Guide described it as a "brightly lit little glass box of a shop" and said "Che Che represents one Hong Kong family's full-on fascination with handbags.  From elegant evening clutches to fanciful sacs with hand-painted mermaids or zebras, every item is a beguiling mix of whimsy and function."

Today the four storefronts continue to house boutique-sized shops.  The Charles B. Meyers's little Colonial-style building, intended to be temporary, survives as a delightful presence on the busy avenue.

photographs by the author

The 1928 Yeshiva University Zysman Hall - 2540 Amsterdam Avenue

photo courtesy yu.edu

In the first decades of the 20th century, Dr. Bernard Revel of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary recognized the need for a college specifically for the Jewish community. He campaigned for a yeshiva which, while recognizing the changing culture of modern times, would also embrace the traditions and spirit of Jewish religious teachings.

In 1928, with an enrollment of 31 students, Yeshiva College was founded. Choosing its location uptown in Washington Heights – far from its Lower East Side roots – the college commissioned Charles B. Meyers Associates to design its Main Building.

From its Union Square offices, Meyers created a sumptuous pile. Drawing from 19th century Jewish architectural tradition, the architects worked multi-colored stone blocks, copper, brass and colored ceramic tiles into a Byzantine feast. The AIA Guide to New York City called it “One of the great romantic structures of its time. Domes, towers, and turrets can be seen from mile away…Middle Eastern eclectic architectural detail makes it a serious confection, this latter quality, perhaps promoting a lust for learning.”

Meyers adeptly blended Art Deco touches with Moorish Revival, resulting in a lush combination of pseudo-minarets, artful masonry textures, and Moorish arches and windows. The interiors boast inlaid stone floors and an auditorium with a plaster ceiling mimicking a Middle Eastern tent, enormous Art Deco chandeliers and stained glass windows. Here such illustrious figures as Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bernard Baruch, David Ben-Gurion, Earl Warren and Natan Sharansky have spoken.

Other, similar buildings were planned; however the Great Depression necessitated a halt to further construction for several decades.  Despite the Depression, enrollment in 1938 had burgeoned to 578 students.

In 1978, in appreciation of a $1 million donation, the Main Building was renamed in honor of Joseph and Faye Tanenbaum. The name reverted to the Main Building in 1994 and in 2001 became Zysman Hall in tribute to former Vice President of Development, David H. Zysman.

Zysman Hall is a unique and fascinating structure; a rare example of the architectural style on such a grand scale.