The 1895 John Wolfe Stables - 247-259 West 16th Street

 

Following James McIntosh's death in 1871, his executor sold his four-story brick house at 247 West 16th Street.  It sat 226 feet east of Eighth Avenue, however a typo listed it at 266 feet from the avenue.  When the purchaser, B. Kennelly, discovered the error, he refused to take title.  The tangled affair was still being argued in court in the summer of 1889.  Six years later, in 1895, both that house and the one next door, at 249 West 16th Street, were sold to John Wolfe.

Wolfe demolished the buildings and erected a three-story brick boarding and livery stable on the site.  Typically, its wide carriage bay was centered within the base, flanked by a pedestrian entrance to the right.  The utilitarian design included stone lintels and slightly projecting bandcourses that defined each story.  Double doors on the top floor opened below a heavy protruding beam, allowing heavy bales of hay to be hoisted up.  An attractive paneled parapet sat atop the cornice.

The ground floor held stalls and storage for vehicles--buggies, coaches, wagons and carriages.   Because it was both a boarding and a livery stable, vehicles were available for rent, not dissimilar to a rental car business today.  No doubt much to the annoyance of the neighbors, in the rear yard was a manure pit, necessary for the daily cleaning of the stalls.   The second floor provided housing for stable employees, and the third was mostly for storage.

An employee named Smith lived here with his wife and teenaged son in 1897.  The boy, John, attempted to catch a streetcar on Broadway and West 75th Street on June 27 that year.  The New York Times reported that he "endeavored to board the car by the front platform while it was moving.  Just as he reached the car he tripped and fell beneath the car, the wheels passing over his right leg, which was crushed."

A policeman arrived at the stable building to notify the 16-year-old's parents that he was at Roosevelt Hospital.  "At the hospital, it is said that he will not recover," said the article.

Another employee, Frank Carroll, landed in jail the following year.  Although obviously highly familiar with horses, one got the better of him on May 9, 1898.  The Sun reported, "Carroll was driving a horse along Jackson avenue, Long Island City, on Monday evening.  It became unmanageable and ran away.  The horse knocked Miss Eva Beevers, 15 years old...off a bicycle she was riding up Jackson avenue.  Four other bicyclists were run down."

Eva Beevers, who was knocked unconscious, required stitches in her head and was too shaken up to leave her bed the following day, when Carroll appeared before a judge.  "Carroll said he could not manage the horse," said The Sun.  "He expressed a great deal of regret for the accident."  Magistrate Hoaley was not especially moved.  He held Carroll on $500 bond to await trial.  Carroll's problems increased six months later then Eva's father, John W. Beevers, sued him for $15,000 damages (about $483,000 today).

Living on the second floor in 1900 was Henry Francis Carley and his wife, Elizabeth McAdam Carley.  The couple was married in March 1891.  Elizabeth became suspicious when Henry began spending extended periods away from home.  An investigation proved her mistrust was well-founded.  On June 11, 1900 The New York Press reported, "Carley was arrested on Saturday morning.  He was found hidden under the bed in his home, where he has been living with his second wife, who was Mary Elizabeth King.  He married her on May 6, 1899, after telling her that his first wife was dead, she says."  Both Mrs. Carleys appeared in court to testify against Henry.

Customers who boarded their horses and vehicles in the stable most often used the address in advertising vehicles for sale.  On November 19, 1901, for instance, an advertisement in The New York Times read, "A landau, in first-class condition; rubber tires &c.; made by Brewster & Co.  Can be seen any day until 2 o'clock at private stable, 247 and 249 West 16th St."

On May 22, 1903 the Wolfe Estate sold the property to The Childs Unique Dairy Co. for $30,000--just over $900,000 in today's money.  Brothers Samuel S. and William Childs had incorporated the company in 1898 to "establish and operate restaurants in New York City and elsewhere."  The Childs Restaurants were among the first dining chains in the United States.

Managing the 16th Street operation was James J. O'Neill, who moved his family into one of the second floor spaces.  The O'Neills would live in the building more than a decade.  When the Childs firm purchased 251 West 16th Street in January 1913, The New York Press commented, "The Childs Company, restaurant keepers...owns the adjoining property, Nos. 247 and 249 West Sixteenth street."

By the early 1920's, horses had mostly been replaced by motorized vehicles in New York City.  In 1923 Childs altered the building to a garage on the ground floor, an office and shop on the second, and factory space on the third.  The ground floor was leased to D. Liben & Company.  Here motorists could not only have their cars serviced, but they could buy Firestone tires here.

In 1941 the beam, once used for hoisting hay bales, was still in place.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

The building continued to be operated as a garage until around 1960, when the Hercules Flooring Company moved in.  Related firms like the Thruway Building Service, Inc. and Wearever Floors, Inc. shared the address until the late 1970's when the New Space Stage, an off-off Broadway theater opened.

More recently, the second and third floors have been converted to residential use, one apartment per floor.  No Particular Hours, a "vintage and consignment" shop occupies the former garage level.

photographs by the author

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The Childs Restaurant Building -- 377 Fifth Avenue

The upper floor appear to have lost their ornamentation while, in fact, they are intact as designed.

In 1898 Prominent Families of New York commented on New York’s “many famous merchants in the closing years of the last and the first half of the present century.”  The tome opined, “it is not too much to say that foremost among the most energetic and enterprising of them were those who were of the intelligent and thrifty Scottish race.”

Among those Scottish-born businessmen was Adam Norrie who arrived in New York in 1820.  Norrie joined the already successful firm of Boorman & Johnston and amassed a substantial fortune.  He was known not only for his brilliance in business; but for his generous philanthropies. 

In 1853, Norrie’s only son, Gordon, constructed a stately brownstone mansion at 377 Fifth Avenue.  The exclusive tone of the block was evidenced by his next-door neighbor at No. 379—Cornelius Vanderbilt.  Gordon and his wife, the former “Miss Lanfear of New Orleans,” had three daughters and two sons.   In the 1880s, sons A. Lanfear Norrie and Adam Gordon Norrie were both attending Columbia College.  One by one the children would marry—each wedding a socially prominent event—leaving their parents alone in the Fifth Avenue mansion with their servants.

The first decade of the 20^th century saw the Norries' neighborhood drastically changed.  Two blocks to the south the Astor mansions had been replaced with the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.  Just steps away from the Norrie mansion the massive B. Altman & Co. department store stood at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 35^th Street.

But unlike most of his neighbors, Gordon Norrie stayed in his vintage brownstone.   Then, on the afternoon of November 8, 1909, he died at the family’s summer home in New London, Connecticut.  Ten days later it was announced that he had left “the jewelry, paintings, statuary, books and other contents of his town house at 337 Fifth avenue to his wife, as well as the country home and its contents at New London.”

In 1908 the Norrie house (third from the corner) was still a private home, despite the changing neighborhood.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Before long Norrie’s widow left the house and it was gently converted for business purposes.  When the shop of Crocker, “Mourning Specialty House,” next door at No. 375 was damaged by fire in 1917, the firm moved into No. 377.  The specialized store sold mourning apparel and related accessories—so important in the Edwardian era.

Throughout the next two years the “basement store” and the upper floors would be leased to various small businesses, including the Duryea War Relief office in 1919.  That year, on August 19, Nina Larrey Duryea wrote to the editor of The New York Times pleading that thousands of children in Lille, France, “are in a grave physical condition.”  Calling them, “maimed and depleted,” she explained that the Duryea group sought to send them to the country, “where they could live in tents set up in the big open fields and receive medicinal treatment.”  The letter urged readers to send cash to the 377 Fifth Avenue office so “these innocent little ones, who suffered for four years in a way that no American child has ever suffered, may be saved for the future of France.”

Before long the Duryea War Relief office would have to find other accommodations.   Two months earlier, on June 25, 1919, gossip circulated that Emily L. Norrie had sold the former family home.  “According to one rumor a large retail concern has bought the building and intends to alter the structure for its exclusive occupancy,” reported The Sun.

Finally the hearsay was put to rest when on October 19, 1919 The New York Times reported, “The old Norrie residence at 377 Fifth Avenue, one of the landmarks of the section, was sold yesterday.”  The Childs Restaurant Company had paid $450,000 for the property as a site of another restaurant in its extensive chain.  On the same day The Sun reported, “The Childs company will erect a modern business building for its exclusive use on the plot.  The building is expected to be six of seven stories high.”

Rather than erect a new building, the firm commissioned the architectural firm of Severance & Van Alen to convert the brownstone mansion into a modern commercial building.  Completed within ten months, the limestone-faced restaurant and office building revealed no hint of its former life.

When this shot was taken in 1920, Fruhauf Brothers was the only upper tenant.  Architectural Record January 1921 (copyright expired)

The Childs Restaurant chain was as well known for its architecture as for its food.  William Van Alen (best remembered for his designing of the Chrysler Building) designed at least two structures for Childs.  The completed 377  Fifth Avenue was so restrained in its ornamentation that it appeared nearly unfinished.  There was no cornice and the tall base was severely planar.  A sixth floor opening was ornamented with a broken pediment and urn (echoing the two classic urns perched on the spartan parapet) and a French-styled Juliet balcony.  Only the spandrels of the second floor, with delicate festoons, were ornamented.

The double-height base featured a broad show window with an handsome pseudo-fanlight.  Architectural Record January 1921 (copyright expired)

The first tenant of the upper floors was clothing manufacturer Fruhauf Brothers & Co., which took the fifth floor.  Henry Fruhauf was highly involved in local politics and interested in police work.  Later, in July 1925, he would be appointed “Special Deputy Commissioner” by Police Commissioner Enright.

The New York Times explained on July 19 that “He has been connected with the Police Department for the last three years as Honorary Captain and Honorary Inspector.  The position of Special Deputy Commissioner bestows most of the privileges of a Commissioner, but carries no salary.”

Fruhauf’s name would be in the newspapers for another reason that year when he organized the “Five Cent Fare Club.”   When Mayor John F. Hyland opposed a proposed hike in public transportation fares, the clothing merchant jumped into action.   His “club” was actually a petition.  He started with the names of his own employees, and by August 1925 had accumulated over 12,600 signatures.  He explained his motivation to reporters saying that “with the continuance of a five-cent fare, enabling his employes to get out of the congested sections of the city to where they could live comfortably, he would have no difficulty in getting labor.”

Childs remained in the first floor space for decades.  The country’s entry into World War II created changes in the lifestyles of Americans.  Commodities like sugar, silk and gasoline were no longer as easily available.    In 1942, the Government put a freeze on tin and, as a result, alloys became scarce in the private sector.

On April 1, 1942, The New York Times reported that “Silver is taking the place of white metal in costume jewelry, it became evident yesterday." The alloy consisted of 90 per cent tin.  The restriction caused the closing of tenant Leo Glass & Co.

The jewelry firm announced that it was shutting down for the duration of the war.  “We are retiring because we cannot get any of the types of metals which we are accustomed to sell, including brass and white meal, which form the foundation of our business,” said Leo Glass, president.  He added “it was patriotic not even to attempt to manufacture novelties and costume jewelry of raw materials which are essential to the manufacture of defense products.”

The Childs Company sold the building in 1945, moving its restaurant out after a quarter of a century.  Throughout the remainder of the century the building saw a wide variety of tenants, many from the novelty and accessory industries.  In the 1940s the Newark Glove Company, the showrooms of the Amber and Filflex Foundations, and the Valjean Pearl Corp showrooms were in the building.

The 1950s saw 377 Fifth Avenue home to Handbag Fashions, and to Majestic Specialties, Inc., manufacturers of “handbag frames, compacts and parts.”  And in 1966 Sportsmen’s Affiliates, Inc. offered life insurance for professional athletes in their 4^th floor offices.

The block of Fifth Avenue, once home to millionaires, still reflects the Edwardian changes.

Severance & Van Alen’s elegant street level façade has been replaced with an uninteresting modern storefront.  Where Fifth Avenue shoppers and businessmen stopped for lunch in the 1920s, tourists now pick through cheap t-shirts and souvenirs.  The upper floors, however, remain essentially intact since the brownstone façade of Gordon Norrie’s home was stripped off and replaced with limestone.

photographs by the author

The 1904 Facelift of No. 36 West 34th Street

"Alterations" to two back-to-back brownstone mansions resulting in a single Beaux Arts commercial building.

Although West 34^th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues was still fashionable in 1885—after all the brownstone mansions of the Astors still anchored the Fifth Avenue end of the block—No. 36 was no longer a private dwelling.  On May 9 of that year the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity was incorporated and established its clubhouse in the lower levels of the house.  The articles of incorporation declared the objects of the club to be “To promote social intercourse among the members thereof, and to provide for them a pleasant place of convenient resort for their entertainment and improvement.”

The new club of 250 members threw what the New-York Tribune called a “memorable house-warming.”  After “two years of prosperous life in that house,” the club outgrew the space.  By May 1, 1887 the membership numbered 360 and the space was no longer adequate.  Now called by the newspaper “The largest and one of the most successful Greek letter clubs in the city,” it moved to a larger residence at No. 435 Fifth Avenue.

Shortly after the fraternity moved out, the mansion was the scene of the funeral of Henry Milford Smith, proprietor of the nearby Grand Hotel, located at Broadway and 31^st Street.  In 1884 “New York’s Great Industries” had called Smith “as widely known as he is warmly respected throughout all sections of the United States, and one who has manifested superior qualifications for the keeping of a first-class hotel.”

Smith’s respected status among his peers was evident on the afternoon of August 23.  In reporting on the funeral The New York Times said “There were a large number of hotel men present, including Hiram Hitchcock, of the Fifth-Avenue; A. L. Ashman, of the Sinclair; H. H. Brockway, of the Ashland; Mr. Hoyt, of the Victoria; Mr. Rogers, of the Coleman, and George T. Putney, of the Rossmore Hotel.”

Within a few years the house would be leased to the Fox family.  While the family lived upstairs, the parlor floor housed the high-end shop of dressmakers Miss Fox and Miss Boland.  The New York Times counted them on April 30, 1891 among “some of the most fashionable” dressmakers.  Both women were no doubt embarrassed when they were separately named in newspapers during a Customs scandal that year.

The big dry goods houses were puzzled when private high-end dressmakers were offering the latest in Parisian fashions at lower prices than they could offer.  Customs officials began an investigation.  Undercover agents found that Charles H. Lauer, who had offices in Paris, London and New York, was skirting the payment of duty on “silks, worsteds, woolens, crepes, etc., and made up in the highest style of Parisian art.”  The goods were then passed on to high-end dressmakers at the reduced cost.

Sorting out which dressmakers knew about the scam and which were innocent dupes was difficult.  But in the meantime The Evening World reported on April 30, 1891 “If you have ordered a gown from Paris through your dressmaker prepare for trouble in getting it.”

The Fox family received more favorable press when Theresa Fox was married to John J. Derry on July 9, 1894.  The wedding took place in the Church of the Paulist Fathers on Columbus Avenue and 59^th Street.  “The bride wore a traveling costume, and was attended by her sister Miss Amelia Fox,” reported The Times.  Following the ceremony, a breakfast was served in the house on 34^th Street.

Later that year, in October, The New York Times reported on the sale of the residence.  “The four-story brownstone dwelling 36 West Thirty-fourth Street has been sold by Mrs. Herzog at a little over $100,000.”  The sale price would translate to about $2 million today.

The staggering price reflected the exclusive district.  Although William Astor had demolished his house and erected the Waldorf Hotel, completed a year earlier; the exclusive hotel drew upscale visitors to the neighborhood.  It also drew commerce, and within the next few years the old brownstone residences of 34^th Street would be razed or unrecognizably altered for business purposes.

On September 19, 1902 the real estate community pondered George C. Boldt’s intentions on the block.  When Thomas H. Barber sold the two four-story houses at Nos. 32 and 34, The New York Times noted “George C. Boldt is the owner of 36 West Thirty-fourth Street, together with an abutting lot at 41 West Thirty-third Street—a circumstance which caused him to be mentioned as the probable buyer of the Barber parcels.”

If developers thought that Boldt was acquiring adjoining parcels of land to erect a large structure, they were wrong.  For a few years he simply rented out spaces in the back-to-back structures to a variety of tenants.  In 1903 artist Walter H. Robertson had his studio here.  He was scammed out of a $10 gold piece that year when two “well-dressed strangers” told him they would place his $10 horse race bet on “a sure thing.”

The Times reported that the scam artists pretended, at first, to be art patrons.  “In order to cultivate Robertson’s good-will they had pretended to select some handsome pictures, which they asked him to set aside for them in a corner of his studio.”  Having convinced him to place a bet with them, they “vanished with the coin,” explained the newspaper.  Robertson, seemingly, had more talent than common sense.

Earlier that year mining engineer John Armistead of Denver, Colorado was renting a room here while on business in New York.  In June he discovered that New York City policemen were unrelentingly determined.  When bicycle Policeman Greenison noticed the engineer “driving a 20-horsepower machine at a lively pace along the east drive” in Central Park, he took chase.  The New-York Tribune reported that “after a chase of sixteen city blocks through Central Park [the policeman] succeeded in overtaking Armistead.”

The westerner was impressed with the bicycle cop’s tenacity and riding skill.  “Allow me to congratulate you on your ability to ride.  I always like to see a man who does his work well.  I was making very good speed, and you overtook me handily.  I congratulate you,” he said.

Armistead spent the night in jail and was held on $200 bail for trial for speeding.  Nevertheless, the newspaper said that he “did not seem to mind his predicament at all, and, besides making friends with the officer who arrested him, had a merry word for most of the other officers and court clerks.”

A year later Boldt executed what the Department of Buildings termed “altering” the abutting properties.  The completed conversion was significant in the very least.  Matching Beaux Arts facades of limestone and cast iron on 34^th and 33^rd Streets adorned what was now a single structure.  The top floor of the five-story structure was the focal point—behind an iron-railed balcony two prim copper-clad dormers supported decorative urns.

The 33rd Street side retains the decorative railing above the copper cornice.  The twin facades were originally virtually identical.

The upper floors were intended for small professional offices like that of the architectural firm Westervelt & Austin, of which John Corley Westervelt was a member.  Westervelt would be the architect of the Childs Restaurant chain for more than three decades by the time of his death in 1934, with his office was still in the building.

From the beginning the ground floor was home to a Childs Restaurant with entrances on both streets.  In 1908 the eatery fell victim to “Hunchie” Williams, a gang leader of “expert safe blowers and counterfeiters,” according to The New York Times.  Williams’ gang robbed Childs of $8,000 in what Inspector McCafferty called a “clean-cut job.”

The restaurant would get a boost when the soaring Art Deco Empire State Building replaced the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in 1931.  The skyscraper housed a workforce the size of a small town; yet it offered little in the way of eating for the workers.  There was a tearoom on the 86^th Floor, which cost a dollar admission; the Empire State Club, open only to members; or the Empire State Pharmacy’s lunch counter which offered only stools at a counter.  Six months after the Empire State Building opened the Childs Restaurant Company was calling its branch at No. 36 West 34^th Street the “Empire State Childs.”  Workers filled the tables here where lunch could be purchased for as little at 50 cents and dinner for 60 cents.

On February 23, 1932 two men finished their meals and walked up to the cashier, Joseph Ommer, presenting their checks.  Ommer took the bills and waited for the men’s payment. Instead, one of the men produced a revolver and demanded “Where’s our change?”

With a gun pointed at his chest, Ommer produced the men’s “change”--$140 in cash, the contents of both cash drawers.  The Times reported that “The men then hurried to the street and escaped.”

Among the tenants upstairs in 1935 was C. R. Acfield, Inc.  The firm received a complaint from the Federal Trade Commission on December 11 that year on charges of “unfair practice.”  The company sold the “Perfection Toe Splint” for bunions and the “Bentoe Splint” for hammer-toe.  “The complaint charges that the disputed medicines would not cure either ailment,” reported The New York Times on December 12.

On February 6, 1942 fire broke out in the basement of the restaurant around 6:48 in the morning.  The stubborn blaze disrupted traffic on 34^th Street for six hours as fire equipment blocked the street.  Fire Chief John J. McCarthy noticed that the tile flooring of the restaurant was sagging and ordered his men out of the building.  Five minutes later a 12-foot section collapsed into the cellar.  One fireman was slightly hurt and a dozen others were affected by smoke inhalation.   Despite the significant damage, the restaurant recovered.

Sadly abused, the building still shows evidence of its once-proud design.

When the building was sold for around half a million dollars in 1953, the Childs Restaurant was still going strong after nearly half a century.  Later that same year, the restaurant introduced a ground-breaking idea—take-out food.  On December 10 The New York Times reported that “A wide assortment of familiar food specialties of Childs restaurants are available in the recently opened Take-Home Food Department at the Childs restaurant at 36 West Thirty-fourth Street.

“Among the foods offered in the new department are several types of salad, beef pie, baked beans, chicken pot pie, beef stew, lamb stew, pastry, rolls, muffins, other baked goods and Savarin ice cream.”

The concept of take-home dining perhaps reflected the changing and increasing role of women in the workplace. 

Today both of the matching facades of the building are careworn.  The ground floor space where decades of Empire State Building workers grabbed lunch has been divided into separate stores with entrances on 33^rd and 34^th Street.  The street levels have been obliterated, covered over with modern store fronts.  The restrained and handsome upper floors are still intact, however, including those wonderful urns perched on the dormers.

The copper urns, like Aladdin's lamps, survive on both facades.

 photographs taken by the author

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