Michael Bernstein's 1900 330 East 4th Street

photograph by Carole Teller

The neighborhood of East 4th Street between Avenues C and D in the first half of the 19th century earned the name the Dry Dock District for the shipbuilding industry centered along the East River from about Grand Street to East 12th Street.  In the late 1830s, the 4th Street block was lined with handsome Greek Revival homes.

As the century drew to a close, however, those once private residences were being converted to rooming houses or razed to be replaced with tenements.  The 22-foot-wide house at 330 East 4th Street was purchased by developer John Katzman in 1899.  He hired architect Michael Bernstein to design a tenement building on the site.  Completed the following year, the structure cost Katzman $20,000 to erect, or about $771,000 in 2026 terms.

Michael Bernstein was well-known to developers for his tenement designs--often blending incongruous historical styles with conspicuous results.  (Tenement buildings designs, in general, were often over the top, their facades splashed with extravagant ornamentation that disguised the bare bones accommodations inside.)  

The five-story structure was faced in yellow brick and trimmed in stone.  Whimsical wrought iron railings that protected the areaway and and stoop led to the tall entrance.  The doorway frame and the arched first-floor window lintels were intricately carved with Renaissance Revival-style designs.

The first floor openings were originally adorned with Renaissance inspired carvings (painted in 1940).  Light-hearted hand-wrought ironwork ran along the stoop and areaway.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Bernstein blended several styles for the upper floors--triangular Renaissance pediments, Queen Anne-style spandrels of dog-tooth brickwork, and neo-Classical swags along the fascia below the cornice.

No. 330 East 4th Street was a double-flat, meaning there were two apartments per floor.  The ten original tenants were middle class, like the Weiner family, whose young adult son was looking for work in 1901.  His advertisement in the New-York Tribune on April 4 read:  "Young Man, 22, of neat appearance, with 3 years' experience as office salesman, where there is chance of advancement.  J. Weiner, 330 East 4th-st."

The unmarried Susie Hachfelder exemplified the progressive young females of the early 20th century.  Even though women did not yet have the right to vote, Hachfelder was highly involved in politics.  She was a member of the Progressive Party and on September 3, 1912, The New York Times reported that she would be attending the Progressive Party Convention in Syracuse.

Gynecologist Dr. Herman Lorber's apartment and medical office was in the building as early as 1913.  Born in Austria in 1880, he was educated at the Gymnasium in Austria and at City College.  He graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in 1903 and did graduate work in Vienna and Berlin.  (Lillian Wald, of the Henry Street Settlement house, "loaned him money to get to Vienna for medical study," recalled The New York Times decades later.  "He repaid her by accepting some of her poverty-stricken protégés without fee.")

Since 1906, Lorber had been on the visiting staff of Beth Israel Hospital.  He treated East Village residents from his office here for years.  But he would not remain.  When he died on January 30, 1958, he was living at 77 Park Avenue.  He did not survive to see the release of Adam Barnett's book, Doctor Harry: The Story of Dr. Herman Lorber four months later.  In reviewing the book, Meyer Berger began, "This little volume tells the story of Herman Lorber, an immigrant boy who rose out of East Side poverty to wide practice in surgery.  It follows his steady climb from an East Fourth Street tenement to the quiet dignity of Gramercy Park."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

As Susie Hachfelder had been, resident Isidor Wagner was driven and dynamic.  In July 1914, the private bank of Adolph Mandel was closed by the State Superintendent of Banks.  The depositors, many of the German immigrants, lost their savings.  On August 25, The Evening World reported that protestors marched from the shuttered bank to the Criminal Courts Building.  "A majority of the marchers were woman carrying or leading babies and children."  In front of the group was Isidor Wagner holding a banner that read:

We, the depositors of Mandel's bank, are marching to District-Attorney Whitman.  He should help us obtain our money.

At the Criminal Courts Building, five protestors, led by Wagner and Sarah Kritz, a widow, were admitted inside.  They were taken by a policeman to the District Attorney's office.  The Evening World reported, "After hearing that most of the depositors were in actual need of their money," District Attorney Groehl telephoned to the State Superintendent "who said that arrangements are being made by which the partial payments to depositors will be made next Monday."  The article said that the news placated the committee "and the parade moved back to the east side and disbanded."

The Turbin family lived here in 1931 when law school graduate Joseph G. Turbin applied for admission to the bar.  His extended family would be in the sights of the Federal Government within a few years.  In 1941, the Special Committee on Un-American Activities compiled a list of voters who registered as Communists.  Among them were Marion, Molly, Pauline and Sam Turbin, all living at 330 East 4th Street.  Two years later, Pauline Turbin's name was filed with the office of the Board of Elections as a nominee for the position as County Committeeman.

In November 1952, the Children's Aid Society's Sloane Center on East 6th Street held a contest for neighborhood children.  In connection with Cat Week, prizes were awarded in seven categories: longest tail, loudest meow, best trained, cleanest, most unusual, sleepiest looking, and the longest whiskers.  Eight-year-old resident Gloria Zaretz took away the prize for cleanest cat "for her short-haired brown tabby named 'Rory,'" reported The New York Times.

Living and working here at early as 1961 were artist and sculptor Claes Oldenburg and his artist wife Coosje van Bruggen.  Born in Sweden in 1929, Oldenburg was known for his public art installations of oversized common objects.  He married Coosje in 1977.  The two often collaborated on works.

Claes Oldenburg working in his 330 East 4th Street studio in 1961.  photograph by Robert R. McElroy, from the collection of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Northeast Neighborhood Association had its offices here.  The Staten Island Advance explained on November 29, 1971 that the organization was "one of the first health projects in the United States," saying it "provides health services on the lower East Side, and is owned and operated by the community which it serves."

 

A renovation completed in 1993 resulted in a single-room-occupancy residence for the aged.  There are about seven rooms per floor in the facility.  It was likely during that remodeling that the stoop was removed and the entrance lowered to sidewalk level.  The Renaissance Revival carvings of the first floor were shaved off and the cornice replaced with a brick parapet wall.

many thanks to artist Carole Teller for suggesting this post.

The Abused 1841 Cornelius Read House - 328 East 4th Street

 

photograph by Carole Teller

New York City's shipbuilding industry along the East River in the early 19th century stretched from about Grand Street to East 12th and earned the district the nickname Dry Dock.  It attracted thousands of workers in the related businesses that arose in the surrounding blocks, all of whom needed housing.  In 1837, construction began on a row of seven brick-faced houses along East Fourth Street between Avenues C and D.

Completed in 1841, the identical, 22-foot-wide Greek Revival-style homes were three stories tall above brownstone English basements.  Sturdy Doric stone pilasters flanked the doorway and upheld paneled entablatures.  The molded lintels and bracketed sills of the openings reflected the rising Italianate style.  The sumptuous wrought iron stoop railings that terminated in drum-based newels testified that they were not intended for working-class occupants.

The sinuous hand-wrought railings swept down to wrap the newels.

Merchant Cornelius Read and his family moved into 557 Fourth Street (renumbered 328 East 4th Street in 1863).  His lumber business at 42 Mangin Street was typical of the Dry Dock district firms.  Cornelius was born in 1798, and he and his wife, Eunice, had three adult children: Mary Elizabeth, Catharine, and Junius (known as John).  John was involved in his father's company.  All of the siblings were married by 1847.

When Catharine married Joseph Bishop, they moved into the house next door at 555.  Like his father-in-law, Bishop was affluent and involved in the Dry Dock industry.  He operated a shipyard at 193 Lewis Street, just a block away from Read's business.

Cornelius Read died at the age of 51 on Monday evening, April 30, 1849, "after a short illness," according to The Evening Post.  His funeral was held in the parlor on May 2.

Eunice left the East 4th Street house the following year.  Interestingly, city directories now listed her as operating the Mangin Street lumberyard.  She moved into the home of Junius Read at 267 Fifth Street.  

Her move necessitated a scramble to find new employment on the part of her servants.  An advertisement in the New-York Tribune on October 10, 1850 read:

Wanted--Situations by two respectable Protestant women--one as good cook, washer and ironer, (none for entire housework need apply); the other as chambermaid and seamstress or to do the fine washing and ironing--is willing to make herself generally useful in a good family.

Eunice's leaving initiated a stark change in the formerly refined household.  Briefly operated as a rooming house, in 1851 its tenant list included four tailors, a bootmaker, two laborers and a locksmith.

The house returned to a single-family home in 1853 when David L. Youngs and his family moved in.  Like Cornelius Read, he was involved in the Dry Dock industry and ran a ship joinery business on East 9th Street, Youngs, Cutter & Co.  (The firm constructed and installed the interior wooden components and furnishings in vessels.)  Additionally, Youngs owned a stagecoach business and was a director in The Pacific Bank.  Like many wealthy citizens, he was concerned about the less fortunate and was a member of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor.

David and his wife, Caroline A., had at least three sons, William F., Joshua and Roscius.  William and Joshua were married and lived elsewhere.  Both were ship joiners in their father's shop.  Roscius was just 16 years old when his parents moved in and was most likely still in school.  Tragically, Roscius died on September 29, 1860 at the age of 23.  His funeral was held in the parlor on October 2.

The following year, David and Caroline Youngs sold the house to Bernard Kelly.  A contractor and builder, he was also a candidate for Aldermen in 1861.  His campaign was unsuccessful.

Kelly was involved in an affray shortly after moving in.  On Saturday night, December 7, 1861, he and two friends went into the lager beer saloon of Valentin Schack at 186 East Second Street.  Apparently the trio had already been drinking elsewhere.  The New York Times reported, "They soon became very disorderly, and proceeded to break tumblers, chairs, tables, &c."  Schack, "thinking there was imminent danger of his establishment being destroyed," pulled out a pistol and told them to leave.

Kelly and his friends asked him to put the firearm down, which he did.  Then one of Kelly's drunken friends picked up the gun and accidentally fired it, hitting Kelly in the stomach.  Seriously wounded, he was brought back to 328 East 4th Street and "surgical aid procured," according to the article.  Happily, he survived the ordeal.

It appears that 328 East 4th Street was rented in the ensuing years.  Between 1867 and 1869, William W. Vanderbilt, a consulting engineer, lived here.  From 1870 through 1874, the families of Henry Blach and Edward Straus, both dry goods merchants, shared the house.

Physician Charles A. T. Krog lived here as early as 1879.  He was a graduate of the University Medical College of New York.  As was common at the time, Krog was sometimes called to the rooms of young women who were dying from botched abortions.  On February 9 and 10, 1879 he was called to the home of a Madame Berger to attend to Cora Sammis.  (He was told her name was Maggie Steele.)  The patient's attempt to hide her identity was typical.  Having an abortion was as illegal as performing one.  Krog was told that she was suffering with diarrhea.  She died the following day.

Around 1886, the Saulpaugh family moved into the house.  Moses James Saulpaugh ran a lumber business.  Born in 1835 in Kingston, New York, he started in the lumber industry "when but a boy of fourteen," according to The New York Times.  He married Maria Jane Love on August 27, 1856 and the couple had 12 children.  They maintained a country home  along the Hudson River in Kingston.

At least one son, James Montgomery (a twin of Egbert), lived with his parents and worked in his father's business.  He married Sarah Ann Whatley on October 13, 1880 and the couple moved into the East 4th Street house.

Moses Saulpaugh died of stomach cancer at the age of 54 on October 17, 1889.  In reporting his death, The New York Times called him, "a well-known lumber merchant" and "an old volunteer fireman."  Once again, a funeral was held in the parlor, this one on October 20.

At the time of Moses's death, James and Sarah had three children, William Pray, George J., and James Jr.  A fourth child, Sarah, would be born two months later.

The family suffered a severe scare on May 5, 1894.  Louis Eckhard was driving a soda-water wagon that afternoon when "he ran over seven-year-old James Saulpaugh," according to The Evening World.  The article said, "After the accident Eckhardt whipped up his horse and disappeared."  A witness, however, wrote down the number of the wagon and reported the incident to police.  The Evening World said, "Detective Farrell make Eckhardt a prisoner."  Charged with reckless driving, he insisted he did not know he had run over the boy.  The article said, "The little fellow is at home, suffering from bruises."

Within two years of the incident, the Fried family occupied 328 East 4th Street.  Eugene H Fried was a physician, and Samuel Fried was a real estate agent.  

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

While most of the similar houses in the Dry Dock district were converted to boarding or rooming houses by the turn of the century, this one continued to be leased as a private home.  On August 21, 1904, The New York Times began an article saying, 

To most people, even to New Yorkers who know the region well, 'the east side' means a district of tenements, where bedclothes adorn the fire escapes and children vie with one another in annexing grime to their persons.  But scattered among the monotonous blocks of tenements are a few homes as comfortable and luxurious as money can make them.

The article mentioned, "Herman Stieffel, who used to be connected with the Corporation Counsel's office, has a big house at 328 East Fourth Street."

Stieffel was followed in the house by attorney Abraham Bimbaum.  Change came around 1928 when the house became a synagogue.  It remained until 1974 when 328 East 4th Street and the house next door at 326 were purchased by the Uranian Phalanstery.

The group was begun by artist Richard Ovlet Tyler in 1959 in the basement of the tenement house next door at 330 East 4th Street.  At the time of purchasing the house, he and Dorothea Baer Tyler incorporated the Uranian Phalanstery with 20 other artists to create "a shrine devoted to art," according to its website.

Despite the sympathetic treatment of the addition, the new entrance and lamps could only be described as grim.  photograph by Carole Teller

Faced with financial problems, in 2010 the Phalanstery sold both houses to a developer.  Its plans for enlarging the astonishingly intact 1841 properties was challenged by preservationists.  But, without landmark designation, the new owners had no legal opposition.  Two floors were added and the entrances gruesomely altered.  To the architect's credit, he copied the original openings in the addition and designed a sympathetic cornice.

many thanks to artist Carole Teller for suggesting this post

The 1843 Isaac F. Jones House - 262 East 7th Street

 

Around 1849 a row of 22-foot-wide, brick-faced homes was completed on East 7th Street, between Avenues C and D.  While overall Greek Revival in style--with simple dentiled cornices above broad fascia boards, for instance--they hinted at the rising Italianate style, with bracketed window sills and molded lintels.  That they were intended for financially-comfortable families was reflected in the elaborate ironwork of the stoops, which rolled at the top like a breaking wave.

The family of Isaac F. Jones moved into 262 Seventh Street (the "East" would come decades later).  A commission merchant at 52 Ann Street, he was politically active.  In 1845 he ran for assistant alderman on the Whig ticket, and the following year sat on the New-York Whig General Committee and attended the Congressional Convention.

The Joneses, like many families took in boarders.  The house sat within the Dry Dock District, so-named for the shipbuilding industry on the East River, a situation reflected over the years in the professions of a few of the boarders.  Shipjoiner Edmund Plass lived here in 1851-'52, for instance, and John Boole, a shipwright, boarded with the Joneses in 1853.

Around 1860 the William and Mary C. Brinckerhoff replaced the Joneses in the house.  The seemingly busy William E. Brinckerhoff was a coppersmith and engineer who worked on the steam works of the ships built nearby.  But in 1861 he also listed his professions as real estate agent and commissioner of deeds.  He was, as well, a member of Company A of the National Guard.

Brinckerhoff's expertise was called upon after a fatal accident on February 14, 1863.  With the Civil War raging, military boats were being constructed in the Dry Dock District.  The New York Times reported, "About 1-1/2 o'clock yesterday morning, a serious explosion occurred on board the Government iron-clad gunboat Keokuk, lying in the dock at the foot of Eleventh-street, East River.  The steam-pipe of the boat exploded, instantly scalding to death four of the men on board of her, and seriously injuring one other person."

The possibility that rushed work had resulted in the tragedy was considered.  The New York Times noted, "A short time since explicit orders came from the Navy Department at Washington, to have all the iron-clads now in course of construction in this city, ready for sea within a given time."  The men working on the Keokuk, said the article, had been working "night and day, Sundays as well as week days, with a view to complete her at the time required by the Department."

Coroner Ranney immediately pulled together a coroner's jury at the 11th Precinct Stationhouse, composed of shipbuilding engineers.  Although Brinckerhoff had not worked on that particular ship, he was sent to examine it and testify.  He and the other engineers were perplexed.  Among his comments during the testimony was, "I cannot account for this accident, nor can I see any cause for its bursting."

In the fall of 1863 Brinckerhoff's wife, Ann, fell ill.  She did not recover and died soon afterward, on October 30.  She was just 32 years old.  Her funeral was held in the parlor on November 1.

Jacob Spiero, who listed his profession as "news agent," leased 262 East 7th Street by 1871.  Born in 1818, he and his wife, the former Babette Frankenbach, had five children, Amelia Clara, Isaac, Bertha, Esther, and Caesar.

The Spiero family had an interesting boarder in the late 1870's.  An advertisement in the New York Dispatch on March 3, 1878 read, "Electricity Scientifically Applied by Dr. Stites, No. 262 Seventh street.  Fee $1."  The exact purpose of having the doctor apply electricity to the patient is unclear, but the fee would equal about $25 today.

After Jacob Spiero's death, Babette continued to lease the house, living here with Isaac, his wife Betsy, and their two children Moses and Louisa.  In the mid-1880's Isaac was a partner in Spiero & Fleck, tax examiners, at 199 Centre Street.

It was around this time that three of the houses on the row, including 262, got a make-over.  Modern paneled double entrance doors with transoms were installed, and up-to-date neo-Grec style metal lintels and sills were placed over the brownstone originals.  For some reason, while its neighbor next door at 264 received an impressive cast metal cornice, 262 did not.  Its handsome iron stoop railings, too, were preserved.

By 1893 Kate M. Bowe, the widow of Thomas Bowe, lived here.  She had earlier broke into a male-dominated sphere by being appointed Inspector of Common Schools.  Upon her reappointment in 1895, the New York Herald called her "a pioneer in her district, the Fourth, being the first woman inspector appointed there."

Like her predecessors in the house, Kate took in a boarder.  In 1896 it was John Cusick.  On the afternoon September 29 that year he went to the matinee at the People's Theatre on the Bowery.  The World reported, "John Cusick, forty-five years old, of No. 262 Seventh street, fell dead from his chair during a performance at Milner's Bowery Theatre."  The article noted, "Death, it is supposed, was due to heart disease."

Kate Bowe remained here until at least 1910.  The house would see a string of physicians over the succeeding decades.  By 1918 it was home to Dr. William Grossman, a graduate of Cornell Medical College.  He was connected with the Post Graduate and Philanthropic Hospital.  He was followed in the house by Dr. Abram Schwager, an eye specialist educated at Bellevue Medical School, here in the 1920's.

Renting a room here in 1927 was Ellen Gilmour.  A trip to Atlantic City that fall resulted in the 20-year-old's becoming a hero.   She was swimming near the Garden Pier "when she heard cries for help from the breakers close to shore," according to The Newburgh News on October 22.  Two boys were struggling in what today we know as a rip tide.  The New York Sun reported that it "started to carry them out."  Ellen Gilmour swam to them.  "The lads were clinging to each other and were hard to handle, but she brought them in before life guards arrived."  Possibly embarrassed at being saved by a female, "the two who were rescued ran off without identifying themselves."

Another doctor, Benjamin Escoe, lived at 262 East 7th Street during the Depression years.  He died in the house on September 21, 1940.

In 2016, 262 and the four neighboring rowhouses were threatened.  The house next door, 264 East 7th Street, had been purchased for around $3.8 million and on September 1 the new owners applied for a demolition permit.  Only six days later preservationists sent a letter to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, pleading to have 264 considered for landmark designation, while also urging that a historic district be created for the five homes (thereby warding off future threats to those structures).

The Landmarks Preservation Commission responded saying that 264 East 7th Street "does not rise to the level of an individual landmark," and the row did "not rise to the level of a historic district."  Ironically, it was the 1880's updating that put off the LPC.  The New York Times noted on November 25, "The commission...found that alterations done to the facade of 264 East Seventh Street were too extensive for the building to warrant landmark designation."

Locals and preservationists took the cause into their own hands, gathering before the charming row with signs saying "Mayor De Blasio Where Are You?" and "Save Our Neighborhood."  And the protests worked.   The owner, Elaine Hsu, president of GlobalServ Property One, instead beautifully restored the facade of 264 East 7th Street, and thereby preserved the continuity of the circa 1843 row.

Although the blue-green paint on the Isaac Jones house is flaking off, and unsightly 20th century fire escapes mar the facade, it and its immediate neighbors are rare survivors of the early 19th century along the block.

photograph by the author

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