The 1926 Central Park View Apartments - 415 Central Park West

 

photo courtesy Landmark West!

On October 31, 1925, the Record & Guide pointed out, "Central Park West is now attracting the attention of apartment house builders and operators."  It went on to say that the latest project was a $1,325,000 building being erected by the 415 Central Park West Corporation.  "It will contain about 112 apartments," said the article, noting that "a library is included in the seven-room suites."

The Central Park View Apartments, on the northwest corner of Central Park West and 101st Street, opened in 1926.  Designed by Deutsch & Schneider in the neo-Regency style, the 16-floor and penthouse structure was formally symmetrical.  The three-story base was anchored by limestone corners, its double-height entrance supporting two pairs of neo-Classical urns.  The ten-story mid-section was faced in red Flemish-bond brick.  At the 14th and 15th floors, faux balconies sprouted 2-story stone surrounds and pilasters.

Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide, October 31, 1925

The Central Park View Apartments offered suites of four rooms and two baths, and six- or seven-rooms apartments with three baths.  A 1926 brochure said, "The two 6 room apartments are ideal, each being in effect a Private Home, extending through the full length of the building from east to west with no long halls; the maid's quarters, including the kitchen, occupying the entire rear, and the kitchens of both apartments connected with a service elevator and service stairway."

The up-to-the-minute amenities included lighted closets (the smallest apartments had five closets while the largest had ten, including a cedar closet).  The brochure noted, "The floors are of hardwood, in herringbone design; solid brass and bronze hardware has been used throughout...In keeping with all else, every apartment has up-to-date electric refrigeration--individual equipment in every kitchen."

The two penthouse apartments were marketed as "roof garden apartments," and called "a feature of this building."  One had six rooms, the other seven rooms.  The 1926 brochure said, "The roof is entirely of red tile, and a liberal landscaping effect is provided around these apartments.  Elevator service, of course."

photo courtesy Landmark West!

Among the initial residents of one of the penthouse apartments was the musical comedy lyricist Lorenz Hart.  He moved in with his parents, Max and Frieda Hart.  According to Gary Marmorstein, in his A Ship Without a Sail--The Life of Lorenz Hart, the family moved here from their 119th Street house to be on one floor.  Max Hart "was having an increasingly painful time negotiating a flight of stairs."

Max's deteriorating condition did not improve.  According to Marmorstein, on the night of October 8, 1928, with Lorenz and his brother Theodore at his bedside, Max said, "I'm going to die tonight.  Don't wake your mother, though.  Let her sleep."  He was 68 years old.

Lorenz Hart (right) with Richard Rodgers.  from the collection of the Library of Congress

Early in the summer of 1929, Lorenz Hart and his partner, Richard Rodgers, received an offer from producer Laurence Schwab to contribute songs for the movie version of the Broadway musical Follow Thru.  To celebrate, Hart hosted an open house.  Variety reported, "Larry Hart threw an endurance party at his place the other a.m.  Broke all pent-house records."

Lorenz and Frieda Hart remained in the Central Park View Apartments until August 1939 when they moved about nine blocks south to the Ardsley, at 320 Central Park West.

Illustrator Peter Arno and his wife, Lois Long, were also initial residents.  Born Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr., Arno was perhaps best known for his covers for The New Yorker.  He began contributing cover designs in 1925, the year of the magazine's founding.  He branched into the theater, producing, designing and writing four Broadway shows, beginning with the 1931 Here Goes the Bride.

Peter and Lois most likely met through The New Yorker.  Lois had been a journalist for Vogue and Vanity Fair before being hired to write an anonymous nightlife column for The New Yorker.  Using the pseudonym "Lipstick," her witty chronicles of Manhattan nightclubs and society capers made her a celebrity--albeit an anonymous one.  She married Peter Arno in 1927.

The couple's professional interaction seems to have been more successful than their domestic situation.  Their arguments turned violent, and on January 20, 1930, the Daily News headlined an article, "Peter Arno, Cartoonist, Hides From Wife to Nurse His Scars / Split With Lois Long, Says It's Friendly."  The final altercation was apparently heard by neighbors, Time magazine reporting that the couple "quarreled bitterly in the middle of the night."  Arno left the Central Park View Apartments and he and Lois divorced the following year.

Another tenant associated with The New Yorker was writer and critic Alfred Kazin and his wife, the former Natasha Dohn.  The couple moved in on November 18, 1948.  Kazin's reviews appeared in The New Yorker as well as the New York Herald-Tribune, The New York Times, and The New Republic.  His 1951 memoir, A Walker in the City was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction, as were its sequels, the 1965 Starting Out in the Thirties and New York Jew, published in 1978.

Novelist Padraic Colum and his wife, Mary (known as Molly) Maguire, moved in around 1933 after spending three years living in France.  A major figure in the Irish Literary Revival movement, Colum covered all the literary bases--novelist, dramatist, children's author, playwright, poet and biographer.  

Padraic Colum, from the collection of the Library of Congress

Mollie Colum died in 1957 while co-writing Our Friend James Joyce with Padraic.  He finished the book about their close relationship with the Irish novelist and poet, which was published in 1958.

Jazz vocalist and civil rights activist Abbey Lincoln was another celebrated resident.  In her 2017 Dizzy Duke, Brother Ray and Friends--On and Off the Record With Jazz Greats, Lilian Terry recalls, "it became customary that I accept [Abbey's] hospitality at her New York apartment at 415 Central Park West."

Abbey Lincoln was one of the long list of impressive musicians who lived in the Central Park View Apartments that included drummers Art Blakey, Max Roach and Elvin Jones; jazz pianists Teddy Wilson and Dwike Mitchell; lyricist Yip Harburg; and cellist Marion Cumbo.  Singer, songwriter, composer and civil rights activist Nina Simone moved into the building in 1960, following her divorce from Donald Ross.

By 1970, science fiction and fantasy author Robert E. Margroff lived here.  His first story, "Monster Tracks," was published in 1964, after which he mostly co-authored novels with Piers Anthony.  They included the five-book series Kelvin of Rud.

A fascinating tenant was artist Bradford Boobis, who lived here with his wife Shawn.  Starting out as a Hollywood composer, he turned to painting.  The self-taught artist was highlighted in a 1969 edition of American Artist, which said, "His work indicates that he has thoroughly mastered oil technique, draughtsmanship and craftsmanship."  A year later three of Boobis's works were chosen to be displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Library of President Papers.  American Artist pointed out that he was the only living artist represented in the exhibition.

Boobis suffered a heart attack on January 16, 1972 and died on his way to the hospital at the age of 43.  Writing in The New York Times half a century later on April 3, 2023, Joshua Needelman recalled that on the night of his death, "fearing that his widow might sell them," four of his "most dedicated devotees" entered the Boobis apartment and "surreptitiously removed roughly a dozen of his paintings, which depicted naked figures amid distorted surroundings." 

Bradford Boobis's The Cocktail Party was one of the paintings shipped to London.  via Louis K. Meisel Gallery.

The paintings were shipped to London to Robert Anthony Rayne, a member of the British peerage.  In June 2022 they were briefly returned to New York City for a showing at the Meisel Gallery.  Louis K. Meisel told Needelman that two of the paintings were "as great as anything I'd ever seen in realism and surrealism or anything representational."

Stage, television and motion picture actor Edward Emerson and his wife, the former Edith Broder, lived here at the time of Boobis's death.  Born in 1903, Emerson appeared on Broadway in shows like Hilda Cassidy; Heigh-ho, Everybody; and Crime Marches On.  His film career included roles in the 1936 Cover Chinatown, Behind the Criminal the following year, and There Goes Kelly in 1945.

photo courtesy Landmark West!

While not as architecturally dazzling as some of the thoroughfare's well-known Art Deco structures, the Central Park View Apartments plays an important role in the Central Park West streetscape.

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The 1927 Park Avenue Synagogue - 50 East 87th Street

 

On June 5, 1926, The Reform Advocate began an article saying, "'There are considerably fewer Synagogues in New York today than there were forty years ago, although the number of Jews here has increased greatly,' Dr. Stephen S. Wise, rabbi of the Free Synagogue, said last Sunday at the laying of the cornerstone of the new Park Avenue Synagogue, 50 East Eighty-seventh Street."  Ground for the structure had been broken a year earlier and construction would be completed in 1927.

The congregation had its roots in the immediate neighborhood, having been founded in 1882 as Temple Gates of Hope, known familiarly as the Eighty-Sixth Street Temple.  In 1896 the congregation merged with Congregation Agudat Yesharim, and in 1920 joined with the Seventy-Second Street Temple.  The congregation's name became the Park Avenue Synagogue in 1923.

The architectural firm of Deutsch & Schneider received the commission, with Walter S. Schneider taking the lead.  Although the Gothic style had been avoided in Jewish ecclesiastical architecture for decades because it was so favored in Christian churches, Schneider gave subtle Gothic touches to his Moorish design--like the noticeably pointed main arch.

Faced in cast stone, the facade was dominated by that triple-height arch, within which three entrances stood above a broad stone staircase.  The upper hem of the arch was emblazoned with the inscription that translates to "I Love Your Temple Abode, The Dwelling-Place of Your Glory."  A handsome, blind arcade of engaged columns ran below the gabled roofline.  

photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The magnificent new shul had not come cheaply.  The New York Times reported on September 18, 1926, "The building is being erected at a cost of $280,000, while the land is worth $240,000."  The combined costs would equal about $8.6 million in 2023.   It opened in 1927 with an auditorium capable of accommodating 1,200 worshipers.

photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The seating capacity was insufficient for those wishing to attend the funeral of attorney Maurice Bloch on December 8, 1929.  One of the shul's most prominent members, he had been the Democratic minority leader in the State Assembly.  The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, "Before and during the services in the temple, a crowd of several thousand persons stood in the street outside, completely filling Eighty-seventh Street from Madison to Park Avenue.  A detail of 120 patrolmen, besides the regular motorcycle escort, was necessary to marshall [sic] the throng."

The Troy Times said, "Two thousand persons crowded into the Park Avenue Synagogue and thousands more, unable to gain entrance, stood reverently in the streets outside."  The New York Evening Post added, "Governor Roosevelt, former Governor Alfred E. Smith, Mayor Walker, Senator Robert F. Wagner and Acting Governor Herbert H. Lehman were among the honorary pallbearers at the funeral."  The eulogy was delivered by Rabbi Stephen Wise, who had also been a close friend of Bloch.

It was most likely after much discussion that the congregation changed from Reform Judaism to Conservative in the early Depression years.  It was a response to the shul's merger with other congregations composed of many Eastern European Jews.

photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

On May 27, 1934, Senator Royal S. Copeland addressed Jewish war veterans here.  The New York Sun said he, "appealed to them to enlist in the battle that the police are making to exterminate the 'traitors of the government which has given them the protection of its laws.'"  At the time, another threat was brewing across the ocean.

That threat had become exceedingly clear by November 19, 1937 when The New York Sun reported, "Dr. Joachim Prinz, former Berlin rabbi, who fled Germany last year, will be the guest speaker at the 8:15 o'clock service tonight at the Park Avenue Synagogue...The subject of his talk will be 'Why Hitler Is Not Overthrown.'"

The horrors of the Nazis left little trace of what had been thriving Jewish communities.  Following World War II, British Jews discovered sacred relics in the ruins of synagogues--Torah scrolls, ceremonial objects, and prayer books, for example.  Edward F. Bergman, in his 2001 The Spiritual Traveler, writes:

At the front of the sanctuary of Park Avenue Synagogue, a case holds Torah scroll Number 375, written by a scribe at the end of the eighteenth century and treasured at the synagogue in Horazodvice, Czechoslovakia, until the synagogue was destroyed and its members killed in 1942.  A tablet beneath the scroll quotes Deuteronomy 25:17, "Remember what Amalek did unto thee..."  Amalek harried the Jews as they left Egypt under Moses, and he represents all evil men.

With the war's end, the congregation turned to happier things.  In 1942 Cantor David J. Putterman established an annual tradition of highlighting works by contemporary composers.  

On March 3, 1946, for instance, The New York Sun reported, "Cantor David J. Putterman will present a Service of Liturgical Music by Contemporary Composers at the Park Avenue Synagogue next Friday." 

The following year, on April 28, 1945, The New York Sun announced, "Cantor David J. Putterman will present new compositions by thirteen contemporary composers" on May 11; and on April 29, 1947, The New York Times reported, "Nine composers have written works especially for the fifth annual Sabbath eve service of liturgical music by contemporary composers that will be presented on Friday night by the Park Avenue Synagogue."  The article noted, "Cantor David J. Putterman will be in charge of the program, which will be performed by the synagogue choir and the Hebrew Art Singers."  Over the years composers like Leonard Bernstein, Morton Gould, Darius Milhaud and Lukas Foss wrote music for services here.

Dr. Milton Steinberg had been rabbi of the Park Avenue Synagogue since 1933.  The scholar was the author of A Partisan Guide to the Jewish Problem, As a Driven Leaf (a philosophical novel), The Making of a Modern Jew, and Basic Judaism.  He was, as well, a member of the editorial board of The Reconstructionist, and contributed articles on Jewish problems and issues to various periodicals.  He died on March 20, 1950 at the age of 46.

An addition to the synagogue was erected in Rabbi Steinberg's memory, known as the Milton Steinberg House.  Designed by Kelly & Gruzen, it featured an extraordinary stained glass wall designed by Adolph Gottlieb.  On August 30, 1954, syndicated columnist Meyer Berger wrote, "The report last week that artisans were putting up an all-stained-glass facade at the Steinberg house, 50 East Eighty-seventh Street, led some people to wonder where stained-glass workers were to be found in mid-twentieth-century New York."  The article said Otto W. Heinigke had been working with stained glass since 1890.  The building was opened on September 19, 1954, its completed facade consisting of 91 Gottlieb-designed panels.

Steinberg House.  from the collection of the Gottlieb Foundation

The 75th anniversary of the congregation was celebrated on March 31, 1957 in an striking display of religious unity.  The New York Times reported, "Protestants, Roman Catholics and Jews paid tribute yesterday to the Park Avenue synagogue, 50 East Eighty-seventh Street."  The article continued, "Delegations from neighboring Presbyterian, Baptist, Unitarian and Catholic churches were scattered through the congregation, as well as representatives from several New York synagogues."

On May 28, 1965, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower worshiped with the congregation on the 20th anniversary of the liberation of concentration camps by troops under his command.  

A moving address was made here on December 5, 1994 when the Rev. Jesse Jackson condemned what he termed the "repressive" California anti-immigrant initiative.  The state's Proposition 187 denied education to children of undocumented immigrants.  Newsday reported, "He told the crowd that if it was wrong for America to turn its back on a boatload of Jewish refugees in 1939, and to round up 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II, and to turn back Haitian boat people in 1991, 'then it is racist and wrong to deprive Latino children of an education and health service in 1994.'"

Regrettably, in 1980 the unique Milton Steinberg House was dismantled.  Some of the panels were preserved and reused as clerestory windows in the replacement structure.

According to Edward F. Bergman, the Park Avenue Synagogue "is New York's largest and one of its leading Conservative synagogues."  

photographs by the author

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