Wm. E. Waring's 1873 304 West 10th Street

Now an apartment, the ground floor space facing Weehawken Street was originally a store--most likely always a saloon.  To the far right, a single cast iron pier survives from the storefront.

When the four-story house at the corner of Weehawken Street and Amos Street (later renamed West 10th) and the two-story house directly behind it were erected, the riverfront a block away was developing.  By 1832 three commercial docks were already in place.  And by 1872 the neighborhood was bustling with saloons, ship chandlers, crockery stores and other businesses catering to the shipping business.

That year brick manufacturer Charles Shultz purchased the old houses and commissioned architect William E. Waring to design a tenement and store for the site.  Completed in 1873 Waring's five-story Italianate-style structure was, not surprisingly, faced in brick.  Attractive cast iron sills and lintels chosen from a foundry catalog provided the bulk of the decoration.  The segmental arched lintels echoed the Italianate style; while their incised decorations and the geometrically designed sills drew from the recent Eastlake style.  The entrance featured a robust cast iron arched pediment.  The pressed metal cornice was no doubt also from a foundry catalog.  When used for commercial structures its the half-round pediments would most often have announced the name of the owner or date of construction.

The storefront was, as would be expected, composed of cast iron.  The store used the address of No. 1 Weehawken Street.  It is unclear what businesses were originally housed here; but by 1896 it had become home to The Plug Hat saloon.  Its patrons were seafarers, longshoremen and women of less-than-savory reputation.  Two years earlier, before moving to Weehawken Street from West 13th Street, The Sun reported "police say [it] is the most disreputable five-cent saloon in the city."

Among the saloon's regulars in 1896 was sailor James Joyce who, according to the New-York Tribune, "when not at sea works along the North River front as a longshoreman."  The article said "Regularly every day when ashore, it is Joyce's custom to go to a saloon at No. 1 Weehawken-st., near the White Star pier, known as the Plug Hat."  The newspaper explained that the saloon "gets its name from the schooners of beer set up there, which hold nearly as much as could be put in a plug hat."

On the afternoon of September 11, 1896 Joyce walked into the saloon like any other day.  But it would not end like any other day.  Another regular, known as Jim, was there.  He did odd jobs along the docks.  He called Joyce into a rear room and offered him a drink from a flask.  Joyce naturally assumed it was whisky and took a swig.  He was immediately seized with severe pain.

Jim said coolly, "You have drunk carbolic acid, my friend," and, according to the Tribune, "walked out of the place before Joyce would comprehend what had occurred."  He was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital.

The New-York Tribune reported that the police "are now looking for 'Jim.'"  But, it warned, "If Joyce's fellow longshoremen get hold of him first, however, he will be sorry.  They were angry enough when they heard of the alleged joke to lynch him if they had him in their grasp."

The apartments above the saloon were large--just two per floor.  But understandably the tenants were working class.  Life in the riverfront neighborhood tenements was difficult.

One resident, Ann  Murray, navigated the snowy and icy sidewalks of West 10th Street on the night of January 25, 1899.  It is unknown whether she had been drinking, or if it was simply the slippery conditions that caused her to fall into the cellar areaway of No. 296 West 10th Street; but whatever the reason the 57-year old woman died shortly afterward.

A terrifying incident occurred at No. 304 later that year.  Sarah Kinzi lived on the fourth floor and that summer had house guests from Albany, her aunt Mary Shea and her toddler son, Tommy.  August 3 was a blisteringly hot day.  Sarah left the apartment to do shopping and Mary remained back to do chores.

The New York Times said Mary had placed her son on the fire escape, "vainly trying to keep cool."  While the 45-year old woman washed dishes, she noticed the smell of smoke, and followed it to a bedroom which she found in flames.  She rushed into the room and pulled down the draperies to try to smother the fire.  But then disaster happened.

"While in this perilous work a draught suddenly slammed the door shut.  It had a spring lock, and when Mrs. Shea groped her way to it trying to get out, she found herself locked in a veritable furnace," said the article.  The smoke was so thick that she could not find the lock and her panic increased.

The flames licked around her, twice setting her hair on fire.  She managed both times to put them out with her hands, burning them badly.  Luckily for Mary, the upper section of the window was open and the escaping smoke and her screams attracted the attention of a passerby.  "He ran up the stairs and after locating the woman, with much difficulty smashed in the door," reported The Times.

Mary staggered out of the bedroom and fell, unconscious, to the floor.  Her rescuer carried her to safety and called for an ambulance.  In the meantime, all the tenants who were at home "made a rush for the open air."  Tommy, who was still playing innocently on the fire escape, was grabbed up and taken to the street.

Mary Shea survived, but was seriously burned.  The fire was mostly confined to the bedroom, which was destroyed.

The saloon continued to cater to hard-edged patrons--both male and female--as the new century dawned.  Among them was Mary Stinson, a "repeat offender," according to police.  Something happened in the bar on Tuesday afternoon, December 5, 1911--possibly her ejection--which angered her enough to hurl an iron pot through the window.  The act landed her in jail.

Although she was no stranger to the court, The Evening World felt "Mary would have got off with a sentence of possibly three months...if it had not been for the loose tongue in her head."  Potentially unruly prisoners were held in an iron-barred cell in the courtroom and Mary took offense to it.

She shouted out "Woof, woof, woof!  I'm a bear.  Let me out of this and I'll eat you up."

When Justice McInerny ordered her to be brought before the justices, it took two court officers to drag her from the cell and place her before the bench.  Then she assailed the judges.

"It's bad enough for a respectable lady to be brought into court, but the idea of being placed in a cage like a wild animal is an insult to the human intelligence.  Sure, what do you think I am, a she-bear, a wild tiger, or a British lion with its tail twisted?  I'd have you know I'm a respectable American woman."

When told by Justice McInerny to "take it easy," she erupted "I take nothing easy.  It's the likes of you that have things easy.  You, with your women's dresses on, a fine lot of ninnies you are."

Calling a judge a "ninny" and referring to judicial gowns as female attire was not a good idea.  McInerny sentenced her to six months in the penitentiary.  But the hot-tempered Mary was slow to learn a lesson.

"I'd rather spend six months in jail than five minutes in yonder cage," she said, as reported by The Evening World.  "You're a fine lot of animal keepers, you are."

The trio of judges said "in chorus," according to the newspaper "We will make your sentence one year.  Perhaps you'll keep quiet then."  Her silence would have to come later.  As she was taken out of the courtroom she shouted "It's an insult to decent American women to put them in a cage like wild beasts."

The Skelly Family had purchased No. 304 in 1898 and would retain possession for half a century.  Among their tenants in the early post World War I years was trucker Thomas Mulligan, who came up with an ingenious idea in 1920.  Motorcars were now everywhere in Manhattan and their owners struggled to find parking spaces.  The New York Herald explained "He conceived the idea of watching these cars for the owners for whatever gratuity the owner might wish to give."  In short, he invented the parking lot.

Quickly he was doing so much business that he brought in his brother, George.  The New York Herald said they "found their business so lucrative that they abandoned a trucking enterprise."  The Mulligan brothers ran four parking lot by the 1922; but greed seems to have gotten the best of them.  On April 18, 1922 The New York Herald reported that Special Deputy Police Commissioner John A. Harris had launched an investigation into what he called an "autocratic ring."  Pointing out that they Mulligans had no overhead, he said drivers found it "virtually impossible" to find parking elsewhere, prompting the brothers to price gouge.

George Mulligan countered, telling a New York Herald reporter "They just give what they feel like giving, some a quarter and a few a half dollar."  Nevertheless, Harris began looking into licensing parking lots and offering the concessions first to wounded ex-servicemen.

Also living at No. 304 at the time was the Myers family.  They would remain in their apartment at least through 1933.  Florence Myers attended Public School No. 3 at Grove and Hudson Streets, where she participated in the 7-D Shop Class, a girl's industrial workshop where students learned needlework and crafts.

Every year the items made by the girls were sold and the proceeds funded an outing just before school's end.  For their June 27 outing in 1923 the girls voted to go to Sheepshead Bay.  The New York Times reported the following day, "Most of them were on hand at the school in their best dresses yesterday morning long before Miss [Viola] Helff and her friend, Mrs Marion Trato...arrived to chaperone them on the trip."   But the day would not end joyfully.

"The clamorous happiness of twenty-four tenement children on a school outing, all girls between the ages of 10 and 13 years, turned with the tide at Webster's Beach, Sheepshead Bay, into tragedy yesterday," reported the newspaper.   The chaperones were unaware that the section of beach they had chosen was rarely used "because of dangerous sand and mud conditions."

The girls and their chaperones got into their bathing suits and played in the water for hours, until at around 2:40 two men down the beach heard cried for help.  The tide was coming in and the girls were in trouble.  The men rushed into the water fully clothed and began desperately trying to rescue them.  In the end three of the little girls were drowned, their teacher Viola Helff was in serious condition, and four other girls, including Florence Myers, were hospitalized.

Prohibition had caused the saloon in the building to close; but in 1935 it was reincarnated as the Weehawken Street Bar & Grill.  The neighborhood was still heavily industrial, the businesses greatly reflecting its riverfront location.  The patrons of the bar, as was the case half a century earlier, were mostly dockworkers, blue collar locals, and sailors.

When Rose Rivers purchased No. 304 in 1948 she announced intentions to "remodel the building into modern apartments."  She hired architect Joseph Lau to make the renovations.  Rivers lost the property to the Skelly Family in foreclosure in 1956.  They sold it the following year.  At the time the upper floors were vacant and "closed."

The Weehawken Street Bar & Grill was still here in 1960; but would have to move when the new owners, Modres Co., began renovations that year.  The storefront was bricked closed and the ground floor converted to two apartments and a laundry room.  The alterations were completed in 1961, resulting in three apartments per floor above the first.  The exterior renovations included a new doorway under the strangely hoovering 1873 cast iron pediment.

Tucked away on a remote corner of Greenwich Village, the 135-year old structure is rarely noticed.  But its handsome (if rusting) iron window treatments and the ambitious cornice deserve pause.

photographs by the author

Tragedy and Horror -- No. 126 East 93rd Street

John H. Browning’s idea for building an apartment house on East 93rd Street in 1875 could have been considered far-thinking, risky, or simply foolish.   While development was taking place on the until recently rural Upper East Side in the 90s, it would be a few years before elevated trains would extend this far north, making the area more accessible.

Nevertheless, in September 1875 his architect, John McIntyre, filed plans for a three-story brick apartment building at No. 126 East 93^rd Street, between Lexington and Park Avenues.  The structure was completed in 1876 at a cost of $12,000—in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars in 2015.

McIntyre had produced an architecturally up-to-date apartment building that successfully pretended to be a private home.  Faced in orange-red brick with contrasting stone trim, it was decorated with incised carvings reflective of the newly-popular Eastlake Movement.  Charles Eastlake’s influential book Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and other Details had been in print in the United States for only three years.  McIntyre’s embrace of the British architect’s ideas of clean, geometric designs put No. 126 East 93^rd Street on the cutting edge.

Respectable families moved into the apartments—just one per floor.  Samuel L. Douglas and his family were among the first residents.  Douglas attended the 86^th Street Methodist Episcopal Church and was Financial Agent for the House of Rest for Consumptives in Mount Hope, in Westchester County New York.  The Douglas family would remain in the building for several years.

In the summer of 1883 Edward E. Rogers and his wife moved into the third floor apartment.  A carpenter, he was the superintendent of the carpenter shops on Ward’s Island.  Despite his substantial job, their lives were filled with pain. 

Before moving to East 93^rd Street the Rogers family, including sons Henry and Nelson, and daughter Charlotte, lived on Ward’s Island.  Charlotte was mentally challenged, The New York Times later describing her as “15 years old, but a child in character,” although “a remarkably pleasant, docile child, with a disposition to be religious.”

In the spring of 1883, all three of the children contracted typhoid-pneumonia.  Tragically, both sons died and Charlotte, who was very close to Henry, was devastated to the point that The Times said “her reason was wrecked.”

Her parents placed Charlotte in a private asylum in Brooklyn where her mental condition seemed to improve, although it was reported “she had to be closely watched, as she appeared to have a mania for jumping out of windows, and was frustrated in several attempts.”

By August Rogers and his wife had moved into No. 126 East 93^rd Street.  Intending to place Charlotte in the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, they brought the girl to the apartment on Friday, August 17.  It proved to be an unwise move.

On August 19, 1883 The New York Times reported “When she reached home her mania increased, and she spoke of having wings and being able to leap from a window with impunity.”  Each time she attempted to get near the window that night her parents managed to stop her.  Finally, late in the evening she seemed to have settled down.  Her parents believed “the evil spell had passed for a time.”  Charlotte was allowed to sit in a chair by the window.

Before her mother could react, Charlotte, “under the control of an insane fit,” according to The Times the next morning, leaped out the third floor window.  The girl suffered broken bones and other injuries, but was remarkably serene as the ambulance surgeon readied her for removal to Presbyterian Hospital.

“She told him with a calmness that was startling that the Saviour had given her wings which bore her safely during part of her fall, but they failed her when half way down.”

John Browning’s heirs sold the building on August 20, 1890 to Margaret Rohan.  She paid $18,750 for the building that continued to house stable, respectable families.  That would change when an elderly German immigrant, Wilhelmina Eckhardt moved in.

 

Wilhelmina’s astoundingly cold-hearted career had begun back in Germany.  One of her two daughters, Marie, would later reveal that when she was three days old her mother wrapped her “in a bundle of rags and cast her into the street.”  Marie’s grandmother rescued the infant and reared her.

When Marie reached adulthood she immigrated to New York City where “she found her mother conducting a disorderly house,” as later reported in The Topeka Daily Capital.  Her shock at finding her mother running a brothel was doubled when she tried to persuade Marie to work there.  She refused.

By 1906 when Wilhemina Eckhardt was living at No. 126 East 93^rd Street, her two daughters had married.  Marie, now Mrs. Schoch, lived in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Her sister, Wilhelmina Ihrig, arrived from Regensburg, Germany in August that year.  Until she found her own apartment on East 99^th Street, she briefly lived with her mother who, despite her advanced age, had adopted a young boy.

Wilhemina Eckhardt advertised herself as a midwife and conducted her business from the 93^rd Street apartment.  But Wilhemina Eckhardt’s practice was not what it seemed.  Not only did she perform abortions here, she murdered and disposed of unwanted newborns.  

Mrs. Ihrig discovered the truth when her little step-brother casually mentioned that Wilhemina burned babies in the kitchen stove.   She confronted her mother who, now exposed, “proposed that they go into partnership.”

Astonishingly, Mrs. Ihrig pretended to agree; intending all along to gather evidence to take to authorities.  She contacted her sister who helped with the subterfuge.  In the meantime, the women informed the county medical society of what they were doing.

The horrors of the Eckhardt apartment were luridly exposed in a November 1906 hearing, and spread quickly across the country.  “Horrified by the alleged business of their mother, two daughters of Wilhelmena [sic] Eckhardt, of 126 East Ninety-third street, are said to have given to the police information which has landed her in the Tombs without bail and the authorities say she may have to face charges of murdering a dozen babies and destroying their bodies in her kitchen stove,” reported The Topeka Capital on November 21.

The Washington Times noted “Both Mrs. Ihrig and Mrs. Schoch asserted that they did not wish to be known as the daughters of Mrs. Eckhardt, who, they said, is not worthy to bear the name ‘mother.’  Both declared they had seen Mrs. Eckhardt kill hour-old infants and dispose of the bodies by burning them in her kitchen stove.”

The testimony of the two women against their mother was shocking and damning.  Wilhelmina Ihrig refused to assist in burning bodies, she said, raising the ire of her mother. 

Marie Schoch gave an even more chilling account.  The Capital reported “She declared that she saw her mother perform an operation on Anna Jackson, otherwise Sally Brown, a colored woman, to whom a child was born in the house and her mother told her how easy it was to kill a child and to dispose of it by burning the body in the stove.  She declared that ‘her mother actually did kill the baby by twisting its neck, and that afterward she burned it.”

On December 21, 1906, Wilhelmina Eckhardt was sentenced to two and a half years in the penitentiary for “mid-wifery, baby farming, the murder of infants by burning in a stove and several illegal operations.”  The Pensacola Journal deemed it a “light sentence” and noted “clemency was asked on account of old age.”

In the meantime, the other residents in No. 126 East 93^rd Street were upstanding and respected.  Real estate operator Moses Kinzler and his family were in the house at the time and would stay into the 1920s.  Kinzler and his wife announced the engagement of their son, Herman, to Clara Frankel on April 25, 1920.

The apartment building stood in stark contrast to the wooden house next door at No. 126, built just a decade earlier.

Frederick M. Scheider, Principal of Public School 74 was in the building at the time; and within a decade Thomas J. C. Martyn and his wife, Helen, the daughter of silk magnate Howell Cheney, lived here.  They welcomed a son, Howell, in February 1932.

Martyn was born in Britain and graduated from Oxford University.  He was hired by Henry Luce co-founder of Time magazine as a foreign news editor.  But in 1925 he resigned to work at The New York Times.  A year after his son was born, Thomas Martyn raised $2.25 million to start News-Week magazine.  The first edition was published on February 17, 1933.

Elizabeth M. Natter moved into the building with her two sons Frank and John around the late 1930s.  The boys’ father, Frank Michel, was killed in World War I.  As the United States entered a second world war, Elizabeth watched her sons leave to fight.  John Michel became a lieutenant in the Navy while Frank joined the Army.

In May 1942, during the first four months of the war, Elizabeth heard through a news broadcast that John’s ship had been torpedoed in the Java Sea.  On May 15 his name appeared on the Navy’s list of missing personnel.  Over a year later The New York Sun commented that “for almost fifteen months…Mrs. Elizabeth M. Natter prayed at her home, 126 East 93d street, and in St. Ignatius Loyola Church, Park avenue and 84^th street, that her son, Lieut. John Joseph Aloysius Michel, was alive.”

In June 1943 Elizabeth received a startling message from a friend in, of all places, Brazil.  The New York Sun reported on Friday, June 25, that the friend had “by chance picked up a Japanese short-wave broadcast in which her son said that he had been rescued by the Japanese after being in the water fifty-six hours and [said] that his mother should not worry about him."

In 1994 the three-family building was listed at $895,000.  It was converted to one apartment on the first floor with a duplex above.  Then, in 1998, plans were filed to convert it to a single-family house for the first time in its century and a half history.  John McIntyre's handsome flat building appears little changed, its quiet facade masking the astounding history that played out within its walls.

photographs by the author

The Soldiers and Sailors' Clubhouse -- Nos. 283-285 Lexington Avenue

In 1836 Samuel Ruggles's ambitious Gramery Square project sprouted a new road to the north—Lexington Avenue, named in honor of the Battle of Lexington 51 years earlier.  It would be a few decades before Lexington Avenue saw extensive development as it stretched northward into the Murray Hill neighborhood.

But by the last quarter of the century Lexington Avenue had become a vibrant residential area.  In 1882 Charles Buek & Co. added a row of six speculative, matching rowhouses at Nos. 279 through 289 Lexington Avenue.  The firm was active in the area at the time, most often acting as both the developer and architect.  Such was the case with the new row.

The four-story brownstone residences were apparently designed in three sets of pairs—an A-B-A-B-A-B scheme.  The stoops and entrances of each pair were centered side-by-side, flanked by sharply-angled three-sided bays.  The result was an undulating, lively blockfront.  The windows of the bays, set at divergent angles, caught cooling breezes in the heat of summer.

The crisp angles of the bays were carried out in the decorative elements.  The popular Eastlake Style of decorative arts was reflected in the incised line carvings and rigid geometry of the entrances and openings.

Buek & Co.’s completed homes sold quickly to well-to-do professionals at a range of prices.  Marmaduke Tilden purchased No. 285, the least expensive in the middle of the block for $37,000; while Charles M. Fry, president of the Bank of New York, spent $50,500 for the more desirable corner house at No. 279.    The prices would be equivalent to about $885,000 and $1.2 million today.  Aside from the mere cost of the homes, the financial status of the new owners is evidenced in the “all cash” sale of No. 281 that year for $45,000.

Within the next decade subtle signs of change along the upscale block were being seen.  On October 29, 1891 an advertisement in The Sun showed that No. 283 was being operated as a boarding house.  “Nicely furnished bachelor apartments, with bath and attendance.”

In 1907 that situation would change, however, when the wealthy Dr. Royal Whitman purchased No. 283 in April.  Three months later architect S. S. Gage filed plays for “remodeling” the home for Dr. Whitman.

With the United States’ entry into World War I, the War Camp Community Service formed the Soldiers and Sailors’ Club House in the old Earlington Hotel on West 27^th Street.  Here enlisted men could relax and find accommodations while in the city. 

Although the New-York Tribune reported on June 2, 1918 that the club, “run exclusively for enlisted men,” allowed them to have “a quiet evening together;” neighbors on the block may have had a different view a week earlier.   The newspaper reported that “Eighteen buglers got together at the Soldiers and Sailor’s Club” to play."

The end of the war brought waves of returning military men home; many of them passing through New York City.  In 1919 Mrs. Cornelia Barnes Rogers, Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. and General John J. Pershing made the Club permanent.  The professed purpose was to “promote the general welfare of men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States and its Allies, and their families, by maintaining and offering club and lodging rooms.”

Presided over by Mrs. Rogers, the Club became established at No. 261 Madison Avenue.  Servicemen could find lodging and meals at a subsidized price, along with a place to relax with comrades.   One soldier penned a letter to the editor of the New-York Tribune on October 25 1922, expressing his appreciation for the club’s kindness.  It read in part:

For fully six hours I wandered along the ‘Main Streets’ of Gotham.  The only representative of Uncle Sam in uniform I saw were military recruiting officers.  This was my second time in the great city, and knowing full well how odd I looked in uniform (anyway, I felt quite odd), I decided to locate a soldiers and sailors’ club.

Well, here I am, the belief that money is one’s only friend in New York has been shattered, for right here, in the heart of the metropolis, the service man will find the same old sincere friendliness and patriotic desire to assist the man in uniform to the end.

But the Madison Avenue accommodations were already being taxed.  The public may have first heard of the problem on April 6, 1927 during a dinner at the Ritz-Carlton organized by the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Club of New York.   Speaking that night were Major General Douglas MacArthur, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore D, Robinson, and Mrs. Francis Rogers.

General MacArthur warned the audience of the threat of another major war and the need to prepare.  “With the Red menace in Russia, Poland in disorder, Rumania threatened with secession, France fighting in Morocco, Nicaragua in revolution, Mexico in confusion and civil war raging in China, it does not seem unlikely that our streets will again be filled with marching men and our country again have need of our services.”

Francis Rogers took the opportunity to speak of the Club’s need for larger quarters.  And a potential space had already been selected—the former Dr. Royal Whitman home at No. 283 Lexington Avenue.  A fund-raising campaign for $350,000 for the new clubhouse had already been kicked off.

Wealthy New Yorkers were attracted to the cause through benefit concerts and other events.  On Tuesday afternoon, August 2, 1927, for instance, Mr. and Mrs. John E. Berwind hosted a concert at their Long Island summer estate, Minden.

The Club prepared to move into the Lexington Avenue house in November; nevertheless the need for funds was on-going.    On November 13, 1927 The New York Times pointed out “The club is one-third self-sustaining, the other two-thirds being raised through contributions.”

The newspaper noted “During the last year more than 2,000 men who applied for night lodging were regretfully turned away because of lack of accommodations, but in the new and permanent building…better facilities will be provided.”  It urged “This club is the only one of its kind in the city.  It is an organization which welcomes men in every branch of the United States services.”

The new clubhouse was formally opened on November 17, 1927.   Army and Navy officials spoke, stressing the need for “an environment which tended to uplift the service men and to keep them out of unwholesome temptations.”  The total cost of property and renovations amounted to $300,000.  Donors had provided fully-furnished bedrooms as memorials; one was dedicated to the memory of the Unknown Soldier.

Military visitors would enjoy “various rooms, including poolroom, canteen and bedrooms,” reported The New York Times.  Service men were charged five cents per night for their rooms, and meals could be had “at nominal prices.”  Colonel William M. Chadbourne spoke of the importance of the club in keeping the soldiers away from negative influences.  “Before these clubs came into existence, and before the Eighteenth Amendment, the men too often stopped at the first bar-room they encountered and remained there until they were broke.  The contrast now is that the men are more refined and more efficient because of the opportunities given them to meet under ideal surroundings.”

Included in the “ideal surroundings” was a dog which was routinely the object of lonely servicemen’s attentions.  “Chubby, the club’s mascot, who grew up from a pup at the old club, which was located at 261 Madison Avenue, was installed in his new home, and wore the army and navy colors,” commented The Times.

Not all the activities in the new Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Club would be pleasant ones.   One month to the day after the club’s opening, the United States Navy USS S-4 submarine was operating off Cape Cod near Provincetown, Massachusetts.  As the sub began to surface, it was accidentally rammed by the Coast Guard destroyer Paulding.

The crew of the Paulding lowered life boats; but there were only an oil slick and air bubbles as evidence of the accident.  A desperate rescue operation was started; but foul weather frustrated progress.  When the sunken submarine was located, rescuers banged on the side.  Six of the 40-man crew were trapped in the torpedo room.   The men communicated through Morse code.  Little by little the oxygen was running out.   The last message from the torpedo room was “Is…there…any…hope?”  All 40 aboard the S-4 perished.

On Christmas Eve a memorial service for the lost men was held in the Soldiers and Sailors’ Club.   Navy Chaplain Stanton W. Salisbury from the Brooklyn Navy Yard spoke of the “supreme sacrifice” the sailors had made “for by the catastrophe which befell them a lesson would be learned for the future avoidance of such disasters.”

Rev. H. Percy Silver, rector of the nearby Church of the Incarnation, was less military in his view of the disaster.  The New York Times reported “Dr. Silver pleaded for the abolition of submarines, and said that the United States should urge at ‘every council of the nations of the earth the destruction of such inhuman and cowardly instruments of war.’”

On April 21, 1928 the John Ericsson Society presented the club with a $450 radio set.  At the ceremony, in which General Peter E. Traub presented the set to Francis Rogers, a large detachment of wounded Marines from Nicaragua were present.  For years the servicemen at the club would broadcast radio programs from here, notably for events like Memorial Day.

Throughout the next decade fund-raising events continued to be held to offset the costs.   In addition, generous gifts from Manhattan’s millionaires were occasionally received.  On May 7, 1928 John D. Rockefeller and Edward S. Harkness both gave checks of $10,000.  Nevertheless, the popularity of the club soon added to its financial and spatial needs.

The club which had seen 2,000 servicemen in 1926 welcomed more than 83,000 in 1935.  During that year the Soldiers and Sailor’s Club reported “sleeping accommodations were furnished to more than 17,000 soldiers and sailors, and 54,000 were served in the club’s canteen.”  The price of the rooms by now had risen to 50 cents.

In 1940 Americans watched uneasily as the first full year of World War II unfolded abroad.  On September 16 that year the Selective Training and Service Act was passed, initiating the first peacetime military draft.  The swelled ranks quickly impacted the Soldiers and Sailors’ Club.

Shortly after dawn on October 7, 1940 a policeman on his rounds came across three U.S. soldiers sleeping in a doorway next to the clubhouse.  They had had to be turned away the night before.  The men were brought into the clubhouse for hot showers and coffee.

Harold E. Nicolai, who had been director of the Club for 19 years, explained that at its maximum, there were beds for only 75; but mattresses placed on the floor of a recreation room brought the guest list up to 105 that evening.  Despite that effort 275 men had to be turned away.

“We want desperately to provide decent accommodations and surroundings for every possible man, but the budget just won’t stretch that far,” he told reporters.

Francis Rogers told The Times, “Because of lack of the voluntary contributions that would make it possible, there is no immediate prospect of expanding the facilities of the club to meet the tremendously increased demands on its hospitality.”

But the impassioned Mrs. Rogers forged ahead.  During a luncheon on women’s roles in national defense at the Hotel Biltmore on March 15, 1941, Francis Rogers made herself an “unscheduled speaker.”  She told the assemblage that she had her eye on No. 285 Lexington Avenue, next door, which would double the club’s facilities.

A rush of fund raising events followed, including the Red, White and Blue Ball at the Ritz-Carlton the next month.  And on February 15, 1942 the Rosalind Russell Valentine Party was held at the clubhouse.  Noticeably absent was the actress, “due to her work in Hollywood,” but she provided the gifts and entertainment.  The orchestra from the Broadway show Let’s Face offered to play “for general dancing.”

The expansion, deemed financially unfeasible in December, was nearing completion six months later in May 1942.  The surprising accomplishment was made possible mostly by an $84,000 gift from the USO.

Other organizations donated full rooms.  The New York City Colony club gave two rooms, “in addition to maintaining the one which it donated to the original building,” reported The Times.  The Manhattan chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution furnished a bedroom, as did Sorosis, which had furnished a room in the original building.  The “Green Garden” in the rear of the combined houses was a contribution from the Garden Club of America and the Garden Club of Rye.  Potted plants and trees, Norway maples and dark green umbrellas offered a place for the military men to eat outside.

The expanded facility now afforded sleeping accommodations for 150 men; a number which could be doubled by putting up cots if necessary.  Three entire floors were dedicated to dormitory accommodations with “new gray marble shower baths on every floor.”

More than 1,200 people attended the opening on June 17, 1942.  The New York Times jibed “There were almost as many generals as enlisted men present.”

The club was praised six months later by high-ranking military officials during the 27^th annual Club luncheon at the Plaza Hotel on January 11, 1943.  Vice Admiral Adolphus Andrews called the club “as shipshape as any ship I have ever boarded;” and Major General Thomas A., Terry spoke of the increased discipline of the Army, declaring that the Soldiers and Sailor’s Club was “greatly responsible for this condition.”

Lt. General Hugh A. Drum found himself the target of some rather awkward questioning, however.  “The general refuted assertions of excessive drunkenness in the armed forces, and also reports of excessive sickness, particularly those attributed to venereal diseases,” reported The New York Times the following day.  He countered the questions saying “it was safe to assume that the service men today were better behaved and healthier than any American soldiers during the forty-five years he has been with the Army.”

The war years kept the Soldiers and Sailors’ Club busy.  In 1944 more than 1,000 servicemen were served Thanksgiving dinner and a formal New Year’s Eve dance was held that same year.  Throughout the war, dances were held every week.  For those young men who did not know how to dance, dancing classes were added in 1945.

Today the club has the all-encompassing name of the Soldiers’, Sailors’, Marines’, Coast Guard and Airmen’s Club.  It still operates from the combined Lexington Avenue rowhouses, offering lodging, meals and recreation to American servicemen at affordable rates.

The twin stoops, now lost, originally rose to doorways where the balcony now sits.

Although the widening of Lexington Avenue meant the loss of the brownstone stoops and the stone facades have been painted, the last surviving houses of Charles Buek & Co.’s 1882 row are otherwise little changed.

photographs by the author

The Lost Rhinelander Office Bldg -- No. 155 W. 14th Street

In the 1950s a soda shop and watch repair store share spaced in the old Rhinelander Estate office.  photo by C T. Brady, Jr., from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYW8TBMQE&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

In the second half of the 19^th century three families held the reins of Manhattan real estate—the Astor brothers, John Jacob and William; the Goelet brothers, Peter and Robert; and the Rhinelanders.  

In 1878 the Rhinelander family had been in New York nearly 200 years; having arrived in 1686.  By the time of the American Revolution William Rhinelander had amassed a fortune in the sugar business.   The family’s wealth would increase enormously as it moved from sugar into real estate in the early decades of the 19^th century.  Recognizing the potential of the rural land north of the city, William Rhinelander purchased vast tracts of real estate for development.   He died on September 9, 1825 leaving, according to The New York Supplement, “a very large amount of real estate, including a large farm in the upper part of this city.”

As the city inched northward, his son, William C. Rhinelander developed, in some cases, full blocks of structures.  In 1842, for instance, he erected 11 houses known as Cottage Row on Seventh Avenue between 12^th and 13^th Streets.  When he died on June 20, 1878 he left an estate of “50 millions” according to The New York Times five days later.   The newspaper added that he “inherited a strong bias toward the English method of keeping family estates together and regarding them as almost sacredly indivisible; and it is hence more than probable that he has expressed his wishes most decidedly upon the point, and that the integrity of the property will be practically preserved.”

Regarding the vast Rhinelander holdings, The Times said that there was no practical way of measuring its monetary worth.  “Of the value of the down-town property it is not possible to form any estimate.  It has increased tremendously in value since the erection of the immense warehouse and dry goods establishments on West Broadway, and is increasing even during the present depression.”

As The Times anticipated, the William Rhinelander's estate would operate as a real estate development business for decades.  Among the first items of business was the erection of a new office building and the family considered West 14th Street as its site.

Around 1840 West 14^th Street, much of it owned by Rhinelander, saw the rise of elegant brick-faced mansions.   At No. 155 stood the home of Alexander J. Norwood.  On the morning of Monday, July 19, 1852 Jacob Aufelter sneaked into the home of the wealthy merchant and helped himself to two gold watches and other property, valued at $400—about $12,400 by today’s standards.  “The rogue entered the premises with a skeleton key,” explained The New York Times, “and while he was coming down stairs, he was met by some of the family, whom he told he was looking for Dr. Smith.  The ruse did not answer, and he was locked up for trial.”

The Norwood family would stay on at No. 155 West 14^th Street until at least 1857.  By 1860 it was home to the Meader family.  In September that year Mrs. Maeder was walking on Sixth Avenue when “a German lad, named Jacob Calston, snatched her reticule, which contained $25, from her arm and ran away,” according to The New York Times on September 7.  People on the street yelled “stop thief!” and Officer Christopher captured the crook and Mrs. Maeder’s money.

As the 1870s approached, the northward movement of Manhattan’s well-do-to families left West 14^th Street behind.  Elegant homes were operated as boarding houses or taken over by charitable institutions for purposes such as homes for wayward girls.  On March 12, 1866 an advertisement in the New York Herald offered “Elegantly furnished room on second floor, to let, with board, at 155 West Fourteenth street.”  The boarding house required references from potential tenants.

Among the respectable boarders here was Miss C. A. Butler who acted as representative for St. John’s Church at the House of Mercy at the “foot of West 86^th Street, North River.”

But at the time of William C. Rhinelander’s death commerce was overtaking the last of the residential structures on West 14^th.  Now the family demolished the old mansion at No. 155 and replaced it with a handsome brick office building two stories tall.   Gone were the florid, scrolling lines of a generation earlier.  The Rhinelander office building was all about the sharp geometry popularized by the Victorian Gothic style.   Brick laid both diagonally and on end provided textured panels and bands.  The construction date was proudly announced in a central panel.   Projecting wavelike bands followed the shapes of the elliptically arched openings; the only curves in the design.  Above it all wonderfully intricate cast iron cresting completed it all.

From here the Rhinelander Estate continued to shape Upper Manhattan.   In 1880 an apartment building called The Manhattan was erected at the corner of 86^th Street and Second Avenue; and two years later eight four-story brick rowhouses were constructed on East 86^th Street from No. 309 to 323.  The land had been known, decades before, as the Rhinelander “farm.”

The quaint little building would be the scene of Rhinelander Estate operations until 1903 when Charles Duross moved in.  In reporting that he “has moved his real estate office to the office lately occupied by the Rhinelander Estate,” the New-York Tribune noted “he occupies the whole building.”

The highly successful Duross Company would stay on here for years.  As the United States entered World War I Duross was one of the real estate men who rallied for the sale of Liberty Bonds.  He endorsed an advertisement in The Sun on Sunday, April 23, 1918 that said in part “The Huns, the Hindenburgs and the Hohenzollerns Never shall exact tribute from the Metropolis of the World.”  The ad prompted real estate operators to buy the bonds “and buy them until your last dollar buys the last bullet to insure Freedom for all forever.”

A young girl passes the Duross offices around 1920.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The Duross Company sold property from No. 155 West 14^th Street into the 1920s.  On February 1, 1920 it prompted potential homeowners to consider, instead, an income-producing building.  “Purchase a homelike apartment house, 5 story, 6 rooms each.  Total income $6,000.  Price, $45,000.  Nicest lower west side block.”  New Yorkers today would probably jump at the price, even at its equivalent value of $523,000.

By 1926 the upper floor had been converted to living space.   Paul E. Hilton was living there that year, making a living as a low-end crook.  On the night of March 25 his petty-thievery would take a violent turn.   According to his confession on May 5, he entered a house in Queens “and started to look for valuables.”  When he heard noises outside, he unsuccessfully tried to get out a basement window then left through the kitchen door.

“I saw some one come around the corner with a flashlight and a gun and I started to go back to the kitchen and some one said: ‘Who’s that?’ and I started to run down the stoop with my gun in hand.”

A foot chase and gun battle followed, with Hilton jumping fences and running down alleys.  At one point a policeman closed in and, according to Hilton, “started to raise his gun when I fired one shot and heard his groan.  Then I hurdled two fences to the street and walked to the elevated station and took the elevated to Park Row and then to the Bowery.”

Hilton left the body of Patrolman Arthur Kenney lying in the dark alley.  He was charged with murder in the first degree.

The delightful little building , once the seat of the vast Rhineland real estate empire, housed mom-and-pop stores downstairs and residential renters upstairs until 1961.  That year developers Hyman and Irving Shapiro filed plans for a 21-story, $4.6 million apartment building to be called The Vermeer.

photo Cityrealty.com

The gargantuan 352-unit white brick structure (the brick color was changed in the early 1990s) wiped out the mish mash of 19^th and early 20^th century structures on the block, including the Rhinelander Estate office building.  What No. 155 West 14^th Street had in charm, the new building made up for in bland.  It was a circumstance perhaps explained by Hyman Shapiro himself when he told the New York Times in 1974 “Architectural amenities are sheer nonsense.”