The 1911 Zinn Building - 210 Eleventh Avenue

 

photograph by Jim Henderson

Around 1847 when he was 16 years old, Simon Zinn left his native Bavaria.  Upon arriving in New York City, he found employment in a metal goods firm.  By the late 1880s, he was a partner in Zinn & Messer, which manufactured a vast variety of small metal goods like frames and clasps.  The firm's name had became Simon Zinn & Co. before Simon's death in May 1897.

Simon Zinn's widow, Mary, and her sons, Arthur and Martin, took over the firm.  The following year, they established an ancillary company, The Gem Cutlery Company to manufacture safety razors.  By 1907, the two businesses required a large facility.

On November 1 that year, The New York Times reported that the Zinns had purchased the two buildings at 210 to 216 Eleventh Avenue, on the southeast corner of 25th Street.  They were one- and three-stories tall, respectively.  The family did not move quickly to replace the structures, but a disaster three years later forced their hands.

On October 4, 1910, The New York Times reported on "One of the most spectacular fires New York has seen in years."  The blaze began in the lumberyards "on the North River water front" between 23rd and 26th Street.  The city's entire fleet of fireboats helped firefighters on the ground.   In the end, $1.5 million worth of property was destroyed and the riverfront from Tenth to Eleventh Avenue, from 24th Street to the north side of 26th Street was leveled.

Ten days later, the architectural firm of Shire & Kaufman filed plans for an 11-story "brick factory" for the Zinns.  The plans projected the construction cost at $300,000, or about $10.2 million in 2026.  Completed in 1911, the steel-frame Zinn Building was designed in an Arts & Crafts take on Gothic.  The three-story base included double-height segmental arches within banded piers.  The seven-story mid-section was faced in beige brick, its vast windows stacked within full-height arches.  The supports of the tenth floor piers took the form of medieval grotesques, and the building's corner sections rose above the roofline.  The northwestern corner sprouted a clock tower.

By 1940 only a stump of the clock tower survived.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The Gem Cutlery Co. was as successful (if not more so) as Simon Zinn & Co.  An article in the October 1913 issue of Exporters' Review said, "The 'Gem' safety razors are among the best known safety razors in the United States, the Gem Cutlery Co. having been pioneers in the manufacture of these indispensable toilet requisites."

The Popular Magazine, November 1913 (copyright expired)

Emanuel Grammici was hired in April 1915 as a press operator for Simon Zinn & Co.  The 25-year-old earned $1.18 per day, or about $38 in 2026 terms.  In operating the power press, he created metal inlays.  Less than a month after starting his new job, on May 6, he suffered a horrific accident.  According to legal papers, "in placing the inlay in the die, he accidentally released the power, catching his fingers between the die and punch."  In an instant, all of Grammaci's fingers on his right hand were severed.

Mary Zinn died in May 1919.  She had been highly involved in the operation of the two companies since her husband's death.  Just four months later, in September, Arthur and Martin sold the Gem Cutlery Company for $4 million, a staggering $72.5 million today.

The void in the Zinn Building was filled by the newly-formed Automatic Straight Air Brake Co.  The Wall Street Journal announced on May 14, 1920, "The company has obtained a desirable location for manufacturing purpose, at 210 Eleventh avenue."  And on November 9, the periodical reported, "The Automatic Straight Air Brake Co. is already in production at its plant at 210 Eleventh Avenue."

Arthur and Martin Zinn now focused on the Simon Zinn Inc.'s metal novelty goods.  In 1920, they added their patented vanity cases to the line.

An advertisement for the Zinns' patented vanity case featured a photo of the Zinn Building with the clock tower atop the corner.  The American Perfumer and Essential Oil Review, May 1923 (copyright expired)

In 1924, the Zinns moved their operation to Bristol, Connecticut.  The building was sold to the newly-formed 210 Eleventh Avenue Corporation.  The syndicate was composed of Paul Baron and his sons, Louis J., Abner, Samuel T., Harry and Morton Harold.

Paul Baron was born in Russia and entered the paper manufacturing business in 1882.  He and his sons founded the Royal Card & Paper Corporation in 1913.  The firm produced a variety of papers and card stock and was the first producer of gift-wrapping paper in the United States.

Giftwares magazine, May, 1929

In an early example of environmental regulation, the Royal Paper Company was fined $100 by Magistrate Edward Thompson on September 24, 1951 for air pollution.  Murray Berger, an inspector of the Bureau of Smoke Control, "had witnessed on several inspections," according to The New York Times, of the firm's permitting "dense smoke from the smokestack."

When Morton Harold Baron died in 1986, all his brothers had predeceased him.  Shortly afterward, the Royal Paper Company closed.

At the time of Baron's death, the Chelsea neighborhood was seeing a transformation from industry to art as lofts were converted to gallery spaces.  In 1999, the Robert Mann and the Pardo-Sheehan galleries were in the Zinn Building, joined the following year by the Edward Thorp and the Urban Architecture galleries.  

photograph by the author

Today 210 Eleventh Avenue is known as The Chelsea Arts Centre, its realtor boasting it is "the home to cutting edge creative and high-fashion tenants."  Astoundingly, the lower floors have never been brutalized and Shire & Kaufman's 1911 design is greatly intact.

Peppermints, Leathermen and Art -- 545-547 West 20th Street (120 Eleventh Avenue)

 

Augustus Meyers ran a stone yard at the southwest corner of 21st street and Eleventh Avenue in 1910, specializing in bluestone.  In 1909 he commissioned architect Joseph Wolf to design two industrial and store buildings that would fill the rest of the Eleventh Avenue blockfront south to 20th Street.  Wolf's plans for the corner structure called for a "five-story brick and stone store, office, and loft."  His steel-frame construction included "fireproof blocks," terra cotta trim, and (not surprisingly) "bluestone coping."

The building, completed in December 1910, was faced in variegated tan brick.  No doubt as a cost savings, the capitals to the rusticated piers of the two-story base and the two intermediate cornices were executed in pink terra cotta.  The Arts & Crafts design featured a chamfered corner where the store entrance was framed in terra cotta tiles and highlighted by a prominent, slender keystone.  Perhaps as another budget savings, Wolf forewent a cornice in favor of a brick parapet.

The pink terra cotta of the entranceways has been given a coat of charcoal colored paint.

In December 1910 Meyers leased the lower three floors to the Drevet Manufacturing Co., "who are the sole proprietors of the famous Charles Marchand Medicinal Preparations," said the Record & Guide on December 24.  It added, "The unusual light, advertising, shipping and transportation facilities were the inducements which led this old established drug concern to leave the regular wholesale druggists' colony for the growing Chelsea district."

Two months later, in February 1911, The Pharmaceutical Era commented on Drevet Manufacturing Co.'s improved venue.  "Motor power is utilized instead of steam, as was formerly the case.  New tanks and other apparatus have been added and a better product is anticipated.  The new location, being right on the river and close to the ferries, has much better transportation facilities, and the employees enjoy better light and air."

The Therapeutic Gazette, June 1911 (copyright expired)

The other two floors were shared by the Dodge Scale Co., Paul E. Cabaret & Co., and another pharmaceutical company, the Neural Remedy Co. in April 1911.

The latter was the maker of EAZ-AKE.  An advertisement promised, "The proper waY to get rid of your headache or neuralgia is to use EAZ-AKE," and explained it "is the formula of a Japanese physician..It acts almost immediately and leaves no strain on the skin."

The firm left in 1913 and two years later, in March 1915, the Mint Products Company leased the second and third floors.  The company manufactured a peppermint candy known as Life Savers.  Originally called Pep-O-Mint and created in 1912, the formula had been purchased by Edward John Nobel in 1913, who changed the name to reflect the candy's shape.

But, like its predecessors in the building, the Mint Products Company's residency was short-lived.  On November 2, 1916, the Daily Star reported that the firm had "moved to Long Island City in August."

In the post-World War I years, Cushman & Dennison Mfg. Co. occupied space.  The maker of stationery goods dealt in items like "paper pins," binder clips, and package twine.  By the mid-1920s, the Graham & Norton Co., which manufactured hardware like the "Reliance ball-bearing hangers and Norton door closers," was here.  The firm advertised for employees help in October 1925.  "Factory Help wanted for light machine work; German or Swedish preferred; wages to start 40 cents per hour.  See Mr. Frey, Graham & Norton Co., 545 West 20th St."  (The hourly wages would translate to about $6.50 in 2023.)

The Depression years saw the River View Cafeteria in the ground floor, and in 1939 Jack's Billiard Academy operated from the building.  An advertisement that year boasted "10 tables" and "cigars and cigarettes."  The Sylver Company moved into an upper floor space in 1957.  Display World commented, "The firm specializes in displays and exhibits."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The most colorful chapter of the building came in September 1979 when Charles M. Thompson purchased the restaurant space from its proprietors, Railroad Spike, Inc.  Known to his patrons as C. T., Thompson transformed it into The Spike bar, a gay leather bar.

The Spike, with its pool table, dim lights, and live DJ, catered to a beer-drinking clientele in motorcycle jackets and tight t-shirts for years.  Unexpectedly, not long after the bar opened it was the venue for the debut for Doric Wilson's play The West Street Gang.  Calling it "A compelling play about homophobic violence as well as internalized homophobia," in his 2003 Contemporary Gay American Poets and Playwrights, Emmanuel S. Nelson notes:

Staging the play in a gay bar, and a notorious one at that, was a remarkable move.  A gay social/sexual space was transformed into a gay performance arena, melding "real" life and its imaginative reconstruction and collapsing the boundaries among the regular bar patrons, theatergoers, and actors.

Change came to the building when, in 2000, it was acquired by developers Robert Chandler and Gianfranco Chicco.  The ground floor was transformed into art galleries, including the aptly named Spike Gallery.  The upper floors were renovated to a seven-unit residential condominium, including a rooftop addition designed by architect Winka Dubbledam.  As a nod to one of the early tenants, the residences are dubbed the Lifesaver Lofts.

photographs by the author

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