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 Lost Ann Warner House - 27 East 4th Street

 

27 East 4th Street is at far left, next to the Seabury Tredwell mansion.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

By the mid-1820's, streets were laid out on the former Herring Farm.  Within the eastern section, later known as the Bond Street District, opulent residences soon began rising as the city's wealthy homeowners were continually pushed further north by the incursion of commerce.  No doubt seeing the investment potential in the area, in 1825 George Warner purchased the entire blockfront of East 4th Street between Lafayette Place and the Bowery, just east of the Herring Farm property.  Unfortunately, any plans Warner might have had for developing the property ended when he died later that year.

His wife, Ann, inherited three plots on East 4th Street (her children received the other parcels).  In 1831 she built the first house on the block at 359 Fourth Street (later renumbered 373 Fourth Street, and then 27 East 4th Street).  Ann Warner's brick-faced, Federal style house vied with other elegant residences in the Bond Street neighborhood.   Its aristocratic tenor was reflected in the double-doored entrance above  the stone (possibly marble) stoop.  Its Gibbs surround and the stepped lintels of the openings were nearly identical to the George Rogers mansion on Washington Square, erected in 1828.  Like that house, it originally rose three full stories to a dormered, peaked roof.

The architectural details of the doorway and windows of the George Rogers mansion were nearly identical to the Ann Warren house.

Ann's married daughter and her family lived with her.  Son-in-law William R. Cook was born in 1795 and worked in the U.S. Customs House.  The Cooks had five children, John H., William Jr., Catherine, Kelly and Anna.  In 1853 the youngest, Anna, was 21 years old and John was working as a clerk.

Despite the family's size (plus four live-in servants), the Cooks took in boarders--a common practice even within well-to-do families.  An advertisement in the New York Herald on February 6, 1852 offered:  "Genteel Board Up Town--A few gentlemen and ladies can be accommodated with rooms and genteel board, at No. 373 Fourth street, near Lafayette place."

Ann Warner died on November 24, 1856 at the age of 81.  Her funeral was held in the parlor two days later, and she was buried in Trinity Cemetery.  At the time of her death, the house was assessed by the insurance company at $12,000--about $367,000 in today's money.

In the 1860's the Cooks sold the house to plasterer Andrew Garvey.   He was closely allied with Tammany Hall and while living here was given the commission to decorate the new Tweed Courthouse, for which he received $133,187--half of the original budget for the entire structure.  A satirical poem from 1871, "The House That Tweed Built," even mentions Garvey:

Who made it his little game

To lay on the plaster, and lay it on thick,

On the roof and the walls

And the wood and the brick

...until it was only the plaster that was holding up the courthouse.

Decades later, in 1906, The New York Times remarked, "Garvey's house at 27 East fourth Street still contains the Tweed chandeliers, which were adorned with Indian heads and other Tammany emblems."

Around 1870 Garvey sold 27 East 4th Street to John Lynch and his wife Theresa.  Born in 1820 in England, Lynch was a jeweler and diamond merchant at 723 Broadway.  He also owned a livery stable at 222 Mercer Street.  

The couple had seven children and seven servants, including a butler.  It was no doubt the dense population of the house that prompted Lynch to increase its square footage by raising the attic to a full floor.  At the same time the Federal-style stoop ironwork was replaced with cast iron Italianate versions and a geometric lintel that closely matched those of the windows was placed above the arched entrance.

In the 1870's the wives of wealthy merchants were not expected to have careers.  And so it is somewhat surprising that directories listed Theresa Lynch as a jeweler at the Broadway shop with her husband.

Years later The New York Times later remarked that like the other neighbors, "Mrs. Lynch, the diamond dealer...was unable to get acquainted with the maiden sisters who occupied the house next door."  Those women were the daughters of Seabury Tredwell, whose house sat on property originally sold by Ann Warner to Joseph Brewster in 1831.  (The last of the  Tredwell sisters, Gertrude, would die in that house in 1933, nearly a century after its construction.)

By 1876 the Lynch family had moved to 37 East 12th Street.  They retained possession of the East 4th Street house, however, leasing it to wealthy beer importer Frederick Hollender and his family.  Somewhat ironically, living with them in 1876 was Rev. John S. Hanna.

Hollender and his wife had five children.  In 1883 they purchased the house from the John Lynch, and would remain until 1890.  Hollender and his wife, too, apparently found their next door neighbors somewhat standoffish.  As had been the case for Teresa Lynch, according to The New York Times later, "he and his family never became acquainted with the occupants of No. 29."

By the time Frederick Hollender sold 27 East 4th Street the neighborhood was no longer refined.  Wealthy homeowners continued to migrate northward and their once-opulent homes were being operated as boarding or rooming houses.  Before long only the Tredwell house next door would remain a single-family home.  At the turn of the century three families and one "lodger" lived in the former Warren residence.

By 1907 the basement level was converted for business, home to Adolph Wolf's men's clothing shop.  Two years later it housed another clothing shop, Charney & Newson.  Partner Nathan Newson was charged with violating child labor laws in 1909 for "employing child under 16 years of age without Board of Health certificate."

Around 1918 the parlor level became home to the headquarters of the International Workers of the World.  A Socialist-based group, it published a pamphlet that year titled "The Truth About the I.W.W" that touted members' contributions to the war efforts.  It said in part, "Many I. W. W. unions have been loyally serving the country during the war, particularly in loading ammunition and war supplies on the docks."  The group was notorious for its use of violence in labor disputes, however the pamphlet asserted, "Violence has been much more commonly used against the I. W. W. than by it."

On May 25, 1919, the New-York Tribune reported on "one of New York's revolutionary 'newspapers," The Rebel Worker.  The article said, "It appears twice a month, chiefly in the alien quarters of the city.  It is published at 27 East Fourth street...and finds its principal source of news in press dispatches concerning the activities of the Bolsheviki abroad and at home, all sorts of revolt propaganda and the activities of the Industrial Workers of the World."  The writer noted, "'The Rebel Worker' espouses the cause of outlawism and disorder."

The Socialist newspaper was published at 27 East 4th Street. The Rebel Worker April 15, 1919 (copyright expired)

In 1919 the New York State Legislature formed the Lusk Committee to investigate individuals and organizations suspected of sedition.  With rumors of a Bolshevik uprising circulating, the committee acted.  According to Robert Dunn in his 1948 The Palmer Raids, on June 13, 1919, "at 3 P.M., Lusk's agents simultaneously invaded the Rand School of Social Science at 7 East 15th Street, the headquarters of the Socialist Party 'left wing' at 43 West 20th Street, and the I.W.W. at 27 East 4th Street."

The New-York Tribune reported, "The raiding party ended its day's work at the I. W. W. headquarters, on the first floor of a much decayed brownstone building at 27 East Fourth street."  Inside were 15 men and a woman.  "Quantities of I.W.W. literature and records of the branches that meet at headquarters were wrapped in bundles and sent out to be started to the Lusk committee's headquarters in the Prince George Hotel."  

Among the materials were books like Manifesto and Programme of the Left Wing Section; Socialist Party Local, Greater New York; and The New Social System, or the Correct Basis of Economics and Ethics.  A passage from the latter book was typical of the evidence the committee found: "Do we hold that the revolution must come by violence?...The Left Wing hopes that the proletariat will conquer its enemy, the capitalistic class, with as little bloodshed as possible."

On July 6, the New-York Tribune commented, "Before the recent raid the I. W. W. headquarters at 27 East Fourth Street had very much the appearance of a boys' club.  The chief dispensers of literature and loungers about the rather bare and dreary rooms were young men, some of them so young that they were still of school age.  Even those who were not seemed young enough, or perhaps too young, to know better."  The article said that the chief duty of the boys "was keeping the place in a receptive situation for police raids which occurred with considerable regularity."

Many of the teens had already served jail terms.  The article said they "all dressed with studious disregard for collars and conventions, probably dreading to be confused with the bourgeoisie."  The converted parlor and dining room, once richly carpeted and filled with oil paintings and mahogany or rosewood furniture, showed little trace of their patrician beginnings.  "The furniture was old and dusty," said the New-York Tribune.

An artist from the New-York Tribune sketched the parlor of 27 East 4th Street in June 1919.  (copyright expired)

The group was still in the building as late as February 1931, when it joined a protest against unemployment.  The Daily Worker, a Socialist newspaper, reported on February 25, that the Down Town Council of the Unemployed would meet at its Leonard Street offices at 11 a.m.  "From this point the jobless will march to 27 East Forth Street, and then to Cooper Square, where they will be joined by the members of the Marine Workers Industrial Union and jobless marine workers, and will march on to Union Square to take part in the demonstration."

In the early 1930's, a lunchroom occupied the former basement level.  The I. W. W. was still renting the parlor floor.  original source unknown

In 1945 the beleaguered century-old house was demolished, to be replaced by a one-story garage and repair shop owned by the Paramount Filling Stations, Inc.   Designed by Herman Kron, it survives.

The garage was photographed shortly after its completion, sitting next to the pristine Tredwell house.  Scars of the Warren residence, including a fireplace, mark the western wall.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

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many thanks to historian Anthony Bellov for requesting this post.

The 1925 Lemberger Shul - 256 East 4th Street

On April 4, 1859, August and Elizabeth Janson transferred the 24-foot-wide lot which would become 256 East 4th Street to Freiderick Bender.  The deed noted that the property "is part of the estate of Petrus Stuyvesant, deceased."  Sixty years later, in 1919, the Bender family sold the property, which now held "a four story front and rear building."  Both the structures were described as "tenements."

The neighborhood had greatly changed in those six decades.  It was now crowded with immigrant families from Hungary, Poland, Ukraine and Germany.  In 1925, the Lemberger Congregation purchased the buildings and hired architect James J. Millman to design a shul, or synagogue, on the site.  The congregation took its name from its native city, Lemberg, at the time the center of the Lwów Voivodeship of Poland.  The city is known today as Lviv, Ukraine. 

The new building was faced in red brick and trimmed in stone.  Millman's understated design relied mostly on Gothic arches over the openings.  Projecting brickwork between the second and third floors, and on either side of the central rondel above the entrance provided interest.  There were two entrances, one above a short, centered stoop, and another to the right for the women worshipers.

It is unclear whether the rondel was always bricked in, or if it originally contained a rose window.  In either case, it almost certainly displayed a Magen David, or Star of David.  Set within the parapet is a stone Decalogue, representing the tablets of Moses.

A force behind the erection of the new synagogue was the congregation's president, Leon Stand.  A Tammany assemblyman, he had been involved in Democratic politics for years.   Two of his five children were also politicians--Murray W. Stand was an alderman, and Bert Stand was secretary of the New York State Athletic Commission.  

In the fall of 1926, the Lemberger Congregation gave a Leon Stand a dinner "in appreciation of his work for the building of the new synagogue," as reported in The New York Times.  The 58-year-old fell ill soon afterward and died on October 28.  Ironically, he was never truly able to appreciate the synagogue which he was so instrumental in making a reality.

On the top floor of the building was a hall, used by the Lemberg Sech Benevolent Society.  On the evening of January 28, 1939 there were about 60 members conducting a meeting there, while on the first floor another 250 persons were witnessing the wedding of Ylonda Reiz and Moses Schwartz.  Suddenly four gunmen broke into the fourth floor meeting. The New York Times reported that they "escaped with about $300 in dues and an estimated $200 in cash and jewelry taken from men and women at the meeting."

Among those robbed was Max Rothman, who lost a watch and chain valued at about $838 by today's standards.  Two days later, he spotted two of the youths, 19 year old Matthew (known as Max) Uchansky and 20 year old Edward Usakowski, standing on the corner of Third Avenue and 13th Street.  Rothman found a policeman and had them arrested.  On March 24, 1939 the two were sentenced to serve from 10 to 30 years in prison at Dannemora, New York.

A third robber, 22 year old Benny Amatsky, was also caught and sent to Dannemora.  Oddly enough, while he pleaded guilty, The New York Times reported that he "insisted that Uchansky was not an accomplice."  When questioned by the judge, however, he refused to identify the supposed other offender.

Then, three months after being incarcerated, Amatsky wrote to District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey offering to name all parties involved in order "to have Uchansky freed."  He wrote a similar letter to Uchansky's sister, Lucy.  Assistant District Attorney Whitman Knapp went to the prison, and got the names of two accomplices--Joseph Gordon (who had been shot dead two weeks after the synagogue robbery), and Sigmund Wisnowsky, aka "Mal."  Wisnowsky was found in prison on an unrelated burglary charge.

On July 31, 1940, The New York Times reported that Wisnosky, "on the witness stand yesterday admitted he had taken part in the holdup and swore that Uchansky had not."  The misidentification of Uchansky by the witnesses, said Judge George L. Donnellan, was "an honest mistake because of Uchansky's strong resemblance to Sigmund Wisnowsky."  Now, Donnellan, the same judge who had sentenced Uchansky, set his conviction aside and freed him.

It was not the only surprising twist to the case.  On August 22, 1940, Judge Jonah J. Goldstein freed two of the convicts on suspended sentences "because they had aided in bringing about the exoneration and discharge of the wrongly accused man."  The sentences were held "in abeyance, contingent on their future good behavior," said the judge.

While the neighborhood continued to be the center of New York City's Ukrainian population, by the late 1960's it was also highly Hispanic.  Around 1970 the former synagogue building became home to the Spanish language Iglesia Bautista Emmanuel, or Emmanuel Spanish Baptist Church.

In August 1976, the church was broken into and desecrated.  The New York Times reported, "The organ was set on fire, windows broken, obscenities were spread on the walls, and the washroom was vandalized."  It was the first of a string of arsons and vandalism in neighborhood churches.

In October, the Damascus Christian Church at 289 East 4th Street was destroyed by fire, and a week later the pastor of the Eglesia El Divino Maestro, at 250 East 3rd Street, received a telephone call saying, "Your church will be next."  All three of the churches were evangelical Protestant, Hispanic congregations.  A spokesman for the Accion Civica Evangelica, a civic and social-action group, explained, "Hispanic churches are most vulnerable because they are new to the neighborhood and not fully accepted."   It is unclear if the perpetrators were caught.

Iglesia Bautista Emmanuel remains in the converted synagogue--the Christian cross in the rondel happily coexisting with the Jewish Decalogue above it.

photographs by the author

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The Church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (Russian Church of the Holy Trinity) - 345 E. 4th Street

 

On December 8, 1891 the Church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary took title to the three-story brick tenement on the north side of East 4th Street, between Avenues C and D.  The fledgling congregation paid $7,500 for the property--about $220,000 today.  Only three months earlier, Archbishop Michael Corrigan had sent to Neutra, Hungary for a priest to "take charge of the spiritual welfare of his fellow-countrymen, who, ignorant of any other language than their own, found no congenial place of worship."

The parish boundaries of the new Church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary stretched from East 6th Street at the north to East Houston Street, and from Avenue A on the west to the East River.  The World remarked, "It is situated in the heart of the Hungarian district."

At the time of the purchase, the recently arrived Fr. Francis Januschek was holding services in the basement of St. Brigid's Church, near Tompkins Square.  German-born architect Edward Wenz was hired to design the new structure.  It would cost the congregation another $16,200 to construct, bringing the total outlay to just under $700,000 by today's standards.

It would seem, perhaps, that the former brick-faced house-turned-tenement was not demolished, but massively renovated.  Wenz retained the English basement and high, stone stoop, and the overall domestic configuration of the openings.  The windows were given Victorian Gothic arches.  Those on the top floor were blind--the windows of that level (where the priest would reside) were actually rectangular.  Behind the peaked gable of the flat roof rose a charming cupola that served as a steeple.

from the collection of the New York Public Library

The church was consecrated on November 1, 1892.  The World said, "This church was made necessary by the increasing number of the Roman Catholic population speaking the Slavonian language here, and is the first of its kind in the city."  Apparently not overwhelmed by Wenz's architectural efforts, the journalist said, "It is an unpretentious structure of red brick, but is well adapted to its purposes."

There were already 500 members in the congregation and the church was designed to hold another 300.  The World reported, "All the services are to be conducted in the Slavonian language.  The singing will also be in Slavonian, under the direction of Ladislus Oncai, the organist of the church."  The article pointed out, "There are in this country only six Hungarian Catholic priests, including Father Januschek, three of whom have parishes in the Pennsylvania mining regions."

From the beginning, not all was not tranquil within the congregation.  Father Januschek was soon replaced, as was his successor, neither of which could satisfy both factions of the congregation--the Hungarians and the Slovaks.  In 1895 the third priest, Father John Polyakovits was removed by Archbishop Corrigan, sparking a schism.  On September 2, The World reported, "The row between the Hungarian and Slavonic factions of St. Elizabeth's Roman Catholic Church...has resulted in the withdrawal of the Slavonians from the congregation."

The New York Times attempted to explain, saying that "The Slovaks are a devout people...As many of the Slovaks come from Hungary, they established the Church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary in East Fourth Street.  They were joined by a large number of the Magyar Hungarians, who later became the majority in the church, and gradually assumed the control, and managed to have the Slovak priest removed and a German priest appointed in his stead."  The Slovak faction received the consent of the Archbishop to splinter off and build their own church.

The move did not settle all the problems between Slovakians and Hungarians, however.  In September 1896, the new rector, Rev. Francis Denes, sued Gustave Marschall, the editor of Slavak-Amerike, for libel.  Denes told the Essex Market Police Court, "This person and his friends, who are very adversarious, did call me an ox and an ass and a gypsy and a foolish man.  They defame me.  They would put me out from the church."

He accused the newspaper of attacking even his surname.  "The persons whom he calls 'adversarious' have expressed the opinion that 'Denes' is not a plain Slav name, as it should be, but that is is another name, 'Magyarized,'" said The World.   (The reporter did not seem especially sympathetic, saying, "The rev. Mr. Denes is short of breath and of a fat habit and of placid mentality.")  

Marschall defended himself, saying the comments were "merely humorous," however an associate who spoke to The World reporter hinted there was more to it.  "The trouble was, he said, that the Rev. Mr. Denes thought himself no longer a plain Slav, but imagined that he was high and mighty, which, said this genial spokesman for the agile editor, might be all very well in Hungary, but wouldn't do in Avenue C., 'not by a jugful.'"

In January 1905, Mgr. Count Vay de Vaya, the Hungarian Consul-General, arrived in New York "in the interests of Hungarians," according to The Sun.  He met with Rev. Denes with the idea of forming a Hungarian Catholic Club.  Two months later, it was in the planning stages, with the first official meeting being held in Rev. Denes's apartment on the top floor of the church.  Mgr. de Vaya explained to The Sun, "the club will have an information bureau and an employment agency which will see that Hungarian servant girls obtain employment in good families which will treat them honestly.  The club will furnish information pertaining to Government lands and grants to farmers."

The first decades of the 20th century saw the German, Polish and Hungarian population moving from the Lower East Side to the Yorkville area.  In June 1917, the congregation of St. Elizabeth of Hungary purchased the "old Yorkville landmark," as described by The New York Times--the German Evangelical Immanuel Church on East 83rd Street.

The following year in April the East 4th Street church was sold to the Russian Greek Orthodox National Association for the equivalent of $318,000 today.   It became home to the Russian Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity.  

The congregation's presence reflected the changing demographics of the area, as more and more Russians and Ukranians settled here.  The November 1921 issue of Foreign-Born, A Bulletin of International Service, noted, "A Russian school for Russian children has been opened at the Russian Greek Orthodox Church, 345 East Fourth Street, New York City...Russian language and music will be taught."

The Church of the Holy Trinity remained in the little building until it was sold by the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in 1975.  Once again, the sale reflected the changes in the neighborhood.  The building became home to San Isidoro y San Leandro Western Orthodox Catholic Church of the Hispanic Mozarabic Rite.

The sanctuary, lined with icons, in 2021. photo by Andrew Kiracofe/Compass.com

In 2021 the building was placed on the market for $5 million.   The listing stressed that it would be "delivered vacant and [sits] outside a historic district."  Writing in TimeOut on March 30, 2021, Anna Rahmanan remarked, "Surprisingly, the space actually isn't landmarked although a local preservation group did submit a request for it back in 2017."  The realtor's listing suggested that the property "offers the opportunity to create a large community facility or a residential single family home."

In the meantime, concerned preservationists and locals wait to see the fate of the charming little structure.

photographs by the author

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The Seabury Tredwell House - 29 East 4th Street

photograph by "Tony" from the Wikipedia Takes Manhattan Project

East Fourth Street in 1832 saw the arrival of elegant red brick homes with marble trim as the street became part of the most fashionable residential section of the city, the Bond Street area.  That year Joseph Brewster built six upscale homes on the north side of East 4th Street, between Lafayette Place and Bowery.  He moved into one of them, at what was then No. 361.

Although the identify of the architect is unknown for certain, modern architectural historians recognize distinct similarities to the work of Minard Lafever.  While the exterior reflects the elements of the Federal style--the elegant, arched entrance with marble Gibbs surround, and the dormered attic floor, for instance), the interior transitioned to the newer Greek Revival style.  Here the costliest materials were used:  matching black-and-gold marble mantels in the parlor and dining rooms, exquisite plaster ceiling moldings, a richly carved entry hall newel post of acanthus leaves, and mahogany doors.  To maintain symmetry, so important in Greek Revival architecture, one such door in the parlor opened onto a brick wall, installed simply to balance a second door.

Mahogany pocket doors slide closed to separate the dining room and parlor.  Contemporary critics would have called the interior appointments "pure Greek."  photo via merchantshouse.org

The house was purchased for $18,000 (just over half a million dollars today) by Seabury Tredwell in 1835.  Comfortable after years of successful trade as a partner in Tredwell & Kissam, an importer of English marine hardware, he had retired that year at the age of 55 to live off his interest and investments.  

The Treadwell family was already large.  He and his wife, the former Eliza Parker (who was 17 years younger than he) had six children.  Moving in to help were four servants.  The same year the family moved in, another daughter, Sarah, was born.  Five years later, in 1840, the couples' eighth child, Gertrude was born in the second floor bedroom.

Like their wealthy neighbors, the, Tredwells filled the house with the best furnishings, patronizing the workshops of New York cabinetmakers such as Duncan Phyfe and Joseph Meeks.  Outside their windows the elite of New York society rode by in sleek carriages on their way to the theaters just a few blocks away on the Bowery.  A New York newspaper, in 1835, extolled "The elegance and beauty of this section cannot be surpassed in the country."

The heat of New York City summers also brought odors and, often, diseases.  Wealthy families escaped to summer residences and the Tredwells' was a sprawling 850-acre estate estate in Rumson, New Jersey.  

Seabury Tredwell was, reportedly, a stern, religious father, the namesake of his uncle, the first American Episcopal Bishop.  The children grew up in an environment of class and refinement.  A piano offered entertainment in the evenings.  

Elizabeth was the first of the children to leave the house.  She was married to Effingham Nichols in 1845.  Three years later Mary Adelaide married hardware merchant Charles Richard.  Samuel Lenox Tredwell would be the only other of the children to marry.

Seabury Tredwell died on the evening of March 7, 1865 at the age of 84.  His funeral was held in the parlor four days later, on Saturday afternoon.  

While interior design fashions had changed, they had not arrived at what was now No. 29 East 4th Street.  There were no alterations made to the East 4th Street house during his lifetime.  After his death, the family cautiously updated the parlor with the addition of a few up-to-date Victorian upholstered pieces.  Otherwise, as Gertrude would later repeat again and again, it was left "as papa wanted it."

The family added a modern parlor set sometime after 1865.  photo via merchantshouse.org

Eliza Tredwell died in 1882 and by the turn of the century only Gertrude and her sisters were left in the house.  It would appear that the Tredwell fortune was by this time drying up.  In an October 1906 letter to the The New York Times G. Ellsworth chided the editor for an apparent expose of the sisters' finances:  

As one of the oldest subscribers to your paper, I beg to insert this paragraph to contradict and absolutely deny the erroneous statements set forth in the columns of the daily Times of Saturday last respecting the surviving daughters of the late Seabury Tredwell.   Suffice it to say, despite the assertions made to the contrary, they are only in comfortable circumstances, and are practical, thoroughly good loyal citizens of the substantial old type of character handed down from generations back.

In quick succession the parlor saw the funerals of Gertrude's sisters:  Sarah died in 1906.  A year later Phebe fell down the staircase to her death, and in 1909 Gertrude's last sister Julia died leaving her alone in the last elegant home in the neighborhood.

The city outside the marble-arched entrance to Gertrude's home was no longer the enclave of the privileged.  Commerce had taken over.  The lower floors of once-proud residences not demolished were transformed into shops and warehouses.   Their marble stoops were removed, the interiors gutted.  Where hansoms and cabriolets once transported the wealthy, trucks now clattered.

Gertrude, however, remained isolated in her time capsule, keeping everything preserved.   Nothing was discarded.  Dresses and combs, books and letters, everything was kept intact and in place exactly as things were in 1835.  Despite her finances running low until she was nearly destitute towards the end of her life, Gertrude fought against the progress beyond her curtained windows.

 

In 1933, just short of a century after her father purchased the house, Gertrude Tredwell died upstairs in the same bed in which she was born in 1840.  She was 93 years old.

Gertrude died in this bed in 1933.  photo via merchantshouse.org

A cousin, George Chapman purchased the Tredwell house, recognizing its importance and the need to preserve it.  He opened it as a private house museum in 1936, supporting the cause with his own funds.   

Unfortunately house museums in the Depression were not greatly popular; and he did not have the resources to maintain the aging structure.  When he died in 1962 its condition was perilous.  Water had seeped into the brickwork causing the facade to buckle outward.  The chimney tilted dangerously to one side.  Inside the carpeting and fabrics were faded and worn.

That year The Decorators Club of New York City adopted the house as a pet project.  Scalamandre reproduced the draperies including painstakingly hand-making the heavy tassels.  The "Pompeiian" patterned carpeting was reproduced from a swatch cut from the parlor.  Yet the structural problems were more than the Decorators Club could tackle.

New York University architect Joseph Roberto was consulted and he took on the project in a nearly single-handed effort to save the building. 

One night during the restoration the house was broken into.  The thieves roamed throughout the building searching for valuables they could quickly resell.  They passed by the Tredwell silverware, the 19th century oil paintings and the mahogany knife boxes on the sideboard.  Luckily for posterity, in their ignorance they stole the workers hand tools--the only things of value they recognized.

Over nine years of structural restoration brought the house back.  Roberto's wife Carolyn, an interior designer, worked with the Decorators Club to restore the furniture and interior accessories.  As evidence of Gertrude Tredwell's careful preservation of her family's things, a volunteer one day was going through clothing in an upstairs bedroom.  Putting her hand into an evening cape, she pulled from the pocket the program from a play that had taken place in the late 1800s.   Like almost everything in the house it laid protected from time, never having been touched since that last Tredwell sister nestled it into her pocket after the theater nearly a century earlier.

In 1971 Joe Roberto received The Victorian Society of America's Preservation Award for his work on the Merchant's House.  He was consulted again in 1987 when the house was again threatened, this time by the intended razing of the three houses, long since seriously altered, at Nos. 31, 33 and 35.  Because the Tredwell House and No. 31 shared a party wall there was a genuine possibility of collapse.  Through Roberto's direction, enough of No. 31's interior wall was left to buttress No. 29  so that the old house came down without any damage to the Tredwell home.

It is often suggested that Henry James based his novel Washington Square on Gertrude Tredwell.  Whether or not that is true, when the 1949 film version, The Heiress, was in process the filmmakers toured the East 4th Street house extensively as research for the interior sets.

Today the Merchant House Museum is widely regarded as one of the finest surviving examples of early 19th century residences both inside and out.  From the grand wrought iron basket newels on the marble stoop to the gloves and parasols in the bedrooms upstairs, the Tredwell residence is a remarkable treasure.