The 1925 Labor Temple - 223 Second Avenue

image via streeteasy.com

When the Fourteenth Street Church was erected at the southwest corner of Second Avenue and 14th Street in 1851, it sat "in the centre of wealth and fashion," as worded by The New York Times.  That was no longer the case in 1910 and on January 7, The Sun titled an article, "An East Side Church To Quit" and reported that the trustees would be selling the property. 

from the collection of the New-York Historical Society

With the vintage structure unoccupied, Rev. Charles Stelzle, who had once been a machinist, "opened a Sunday evening forum in the old church," reported The New York Times.  "The success of the innovation was immediate, and Labor Temple was organized, with Mr. Stelzle as its first director."  Labor Temple offered educational services for workers, clubs "of all sorts and purposes" were initiated, and an employment bureau was opened.  "Labor Temple became the centre of the life of the neighborhood," said The New York Times.

The former church was regularly the venue for lectures and discussions on political, labor and civic issues.  On February 29, 1912, for instance, Arthur J. Howard lectured on "Political and Industrial Australia."  It was, nevertheless, still operated by the Presbyterian Church, with Sunday services "applied to the daily life of its congregation."  Sermon topics included "Religion and Labor," "The Strength of Capitalism," and "The Ethics of Propaganda."  The services were conducted in several languages to cater to the area's diverse demographics.

In 1924, Rev. Thomas Guthrie Speers, chairman of the Labor Temple Committee, determined that the corner property was valuable.  He proposed a business building with "ample quarters for Labor Temple" on the site.  A committee composed of businessmen was formed and the well-known architect Emery Roth was given the task of creating a multi-use structure on the site.

Roth's expertise was apartment buildings.  Dan Everett Waid, who used his first initial professionally, was known for office buildings.  (He had recently designed the annex to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company building on Madison Square, and was, as well, the president of the American Institute of Architects.)  Roth and Waid had no professional connection, but it is clear that Roth consulted Waid on this project.  Although the latter's name does not appear in any documentation, Roth included Waid's name in the base of a 14th Street pilaster.

image courtesy Robyn Roth-Moise

The cornerstone was laid on April 4, 1925 "above the clang of surface cars and the thunder of elevated trains to a crowd of 300 passers-by, unemployed and supporters of the Labor Temple," as reported by The New York Times.  In his address, Rev. Edmund B. Chaffee stressed, "there would be no change in the policy of the temple."

Completed in November 1925 at a cost of $750,000 (about $13.4 million in 2026), Roth's Italian Renaissance Revival design included a two-story limestone base with full-height elliptical arches.  Stores along the sidewalk and professional offices on the second floor provided retail income.  They prompted The New York Times to comment that the Labor Temple would get "its new and enlarged quarters rent free."  

Faux balconies above the third floor and Florentine-inspired arches at the seventh enhanced the Renaissance motif.  An arched corbel table ran below the minimal cornice.

Inside, on the ground floor was a large auditorium, a meeting room and office "for the use of labor organizations."  In the basement was a gymnasium.  On the second floor was a chapel that could accommodate 150 persons, and a music room.  The third and fourth floors contained clubrooms and classrooms, the employment bureau, the director's office, and the "living and dining room for the staff of Labor Temple," according to The Times.  Living quarters for the resident workers occupied the sixth floor and the director's apartment was in the penthouse, along with a "sunny playroom" for neighborhood children.  It opened onto a roof playground.

On November 9, 1925.  The New York Times reported, "Labor and the Church joined hands last night in the dedication of the new six-story Labor Temple Building at Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue, where educational classes, community activities and religious worship will be conducted."  

For Edward Hale Everett, the oldest employee of the Labor Temple, the opening of the structure would come just in time.  Since its inception, Everett had played Santa Claus for the organization's Christmas Eve children's party.  When he was not wearing his false beard and red suit, he taught neighborhood children carpentering.

On October 27, 1925, two weeks before the dedication, he was operating the elevator for the workmen who were bringing furniture up the elevator and placing it into various spaces.  Suddenly, he stopped answering the elevator bell.  Alarmed, Rev. Chaffee went to the basement and opened the elevator door.  "Eddie had dropped dead with his hand still clutching the control level," said The New York Times.

"Eddie" Everett's funeral was held in the chapel on October 30.  The New York Times said, "Out on the street the boys that Eddie had taught carpentering and the little girls to whom he had given dolls lined up to wait.  And when the body was borne out, they waved their hands and called out: 'Good-bye, Eddie!  Good-bye, Santa Clause!'"

Interestingly, Emery Roth was called back twice to make renovations--in 1927 and in 1930.  What changes were made is unclear, but it was most likely during one of those remodelings that the rather incongruous, projecting Second Avenue entrance was installed.  

image via streeteasy.com

The auditorium immediately became a favorite space for political and labor gatherings.  The night after the dedication, defeated Socialist candidate for mayor, Norman Thomas, spoke here.  He blamed his loss to James J. Walker on "indifferent and unintelligent voting."  

In addition to Sunday services, like any other church, the chapel was used for funerals and weddings.  In October 1926, Eugene V. Debs, who had run for President five times under the Socialist Party ticket, died in Chicago.  His body was brought by train to New York City and on October 22, The New York Times reported, "The body will lie in state at the Labor Temple...from 2 P.M. until 9 P.M. tomorrow."

In November 1927, Rev. Edmund B. Chaffee lobbied for $3,000 city funding to renovate the rooftop playground.  Included in the plans was a "steel protective covering."  He insisted, "While this will not solve the city's playground problem, it will at least do something to save the children of this section from the trucks and street cars."

As seen here in 1940, Chaffee was successful in getting his steel rooftop enclosure.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The conviction of Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti for murder on July 14, 1921 immediately caused an uproar amid the labor and immigrant communities around the country.  Their arrest and conviction were viewed by many to be the result of bias against immigrants and radicals.  Sacco's and Vanzetti's innocence was widely touted in periodicals and throngs across the country pleaded for a pardon or new trial. 

Six years later, as their execution date was nearing, New York labor organizations mobilized.  On August 15, 1927, The Daily Worker reported, "The Sacco-Vanzetti Emergency Committee will hold its fourth conference tonight, at 8 o'clock, at Labor Temple."

The nation-wide efforts to save Sacco and Vanzetti were unsuccessful and the two were electrocuted on August 23, 1927.  Although Police Commissioner Joseph A. Warren banned public mourning, the Socialist Labor Party held a memorial service in Labor Temple on August 26.  The New York Times reported that it "was quiet and orderly."  The meeting ended with the singing of the "International."

The diversity of the neighborhood was reflected in one of the ground floor tenants, The Russian Kretchma ("Russian Tavern") here as early as 1927.  Patrons were entertained by Nastia Poliakova, a "Russian gypsy singer" who was born in Moscow," the "daughter of a gypsy 'king,'" according to The New York Times.  She had sung before Czar Nicholas II and after fleeing to Turkey during the Russian Revolution had sung in a Parisian nightclub, and in Berlin and Belgrade.

Barnard Bulletin, January 6, 1928 (copyright expired)

Several medical tenants occupied the second floor spaces.  Among them in the 1920s and 1930s were Dr. S. A. Chernoff, a "specialist in acute and chronic diseases of men and women, skin and blood;" chiropodist Aaron Shapiro; and surgical dentist Dr. A. Brown.  

According to the Daily Worker on January 19, 1941, the Labor Temple was "home of 43 unions," like the Cleaners, Dyers and Pressers Union.

Living in the building as early as 1945 was journalist and playwright Gershom Bader and his wife, Jennie.  Born in Krakówm Galicia on August 21, 1868, he came to America in 1912.  By the time the couple lived in Labor Temple, Bader had written several volumes on Jewish life and religion.  Among his Yiddish-language plays were Der Rebe in Feyer, The Rabbi's Melody, and Di Goldene Royze.  He was the honorary vice-president of the Federation of Polish Jews in America.

Gershom Bader, from The Schwadron Collection of the National Library of Israel.

Also living here at the time was Joseph Chaikin, an editor of the Jewish newspaper The Day.  Born in Russia in 1885, he came to New York City in 1901 "and soon was active as an editor in the Jewish labor movement," according to The New York Times.   In 1946 his Yiddish-language book Jewish Newspapers in America was published.  He was a founder of the National Jewish Workers Alliance and a member of the Yiddish Writers Union.  

Reverend John F. Duffy headed the Labor Temple by the mid-1940s.  He gave a speech at Barnard Day Chapel in October 1946 to explain the Labor Temple's work.  He told the audience that its original purpose "was to give the labor unions a place to hold their meetings and give the laborers, who up until then were not accepted in the churches of the lower east side, an opportunity to join a church."  In addition to that original goal, he said, the Labor Temple hoped to demolish "the middle walls of partition which keep people from one another."

The Russian Kretchma was still going strong at the time of that speech.  As Russian Orthodox Sunday approached in 1947, The New York Times noted that pascha, an Russian Easter cake,  and kulich, an Easter bread with sugar icing, would be served there, as it was every year.

A renovation in 1952 created additional apartments within the building--12 each on the third through sixth floors.  

Gershom and Jennie Bader still occupied their apartment here on November 12, 1953 when the playwright and journalist died at the age of 85.

A renovation completed in 1963 resulted in a restaurant and cabaret on the ground floor.  The auditorium was converted to a gymnasium, but the chapel and its accessory spaces were kept intact.  But then, in 1996, Stellar Management Company acquired the property and began a $500,000 renovation into residential use with retail stores.

photograph by streeteasy.com

The first floor of Emory Roth's handsome Florentine-inspired structure has been horribly vandalized.  The upper floors, however, are happily intact.  The former Labor Temple building survives as an important example of the architect's work and a significant page of New York City's labor history.

many thanks to reader Robyn Roth-Moise for prompting this post

Emery Roth's 1909 The Whitestone - 45 Tiemann Place

 

photograph by Anthony Bellov

Following the death of former Mayor Daniel F. Tiemann in 1899, his widow, the former Martha Clowes, continued to live in their free-standing home at 607 West 127th Street.  Martha was born in 1807 and The New York Times said that she "retained her faculties in spite of her age."  She died in the house at the age of 97 on October 2, 1904.

Five years later, the newly organized Charter Construction Co. purchased the Tiemann property and hired Emery Roth to design an apartment building on the site.  The 34-year-old, Hungarian-born architect produced a show-stopper.  Completed at a cost of $185,000 (just over $6.5 million in 2026), its style has been called "Classical Revival."  In fact, Roth started with a blank Renaissance Revival canvas and adorned it with liberal splashes of Arts & Crafts and Vienna Secession.  

Roth anchored his tripartite design by cladding the one-story base in beige brick and the upper sections in brownish red brick.  A stylized Greek key band of terra cotta framed the entrance and ran below the second floor.  Green tiles of magnolia leaves--their branches alternating left and right--filled the spaces.  A Vienna Secession panel above the doorway announced the address.  

photograph by Anthony Bellov

The windows of the second floor were connected by a colorful terra cotta belt course with diamond panels, and they wore striking terra cotta lintels and cornices.  The diamond motif was repeated under the intermediate cornice above the fifth floor and again above the sixth-floor windows.  A deeply overhanging copper cornice with Vienna Secession arches and rondels completed the design.

photograph by Anthony Bellov

Offering apartments of two or three rooms, the Whitestone filled with professional and erudite tenants.  Among the earliest were Betty McDonald Bigelow, a 1909 graduate of Vassar, and Claude Stuart Hammond, a part owner of Teachers Magazine.

In 1920, the two-block long West 127th Street was renamed Tiemann Place, in honor of its esteemed former resident.  The Whitestone received the new address of 45 Tiemann Place.

Living here at the time was the enterprising W. H. Katz.  On July 25, 1921, he incorporated the Sound Tire Service, Inc. 

As early as 1924, attorney Nelson Jarvis Waterbury Jr. and his widowed sister, Elizabeth Jarvis Waterbury Streeter, occupied an apartment.  The siblings were the only occupants that year to appear in the Social Register of New York.  

Nelson and Elizabeth had grown up in a mansion at 13 West 56th Street in what was known as Millionaires' Row.  Their father, Nelson Jarvis Waterbury Sr., was County District Attorney from 1859 to 1861 and was Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall and Judge Advocate General of the State Militia.

Nelson Waterbury Jr. received his law degree from Columbia College in 1882.  Born in 1848, Elizabeth was the widow of William Henry Streeter, who died in 1902.  She died on January 28, 1925, her obituary noting, "Funeral private from her late residence, 'The Whitestone,' 45 Tiemann Place."

The building had attracted artistic figures by then.  Among the residents was composer and arranger Julius E. Andino.  Born in Puerto Rico, he came to the United States in 1894.  First working as a piano accompanist at the Grand Italian Conservatory of Music in Brooklyn, he eventually found his way to Tin Pan Alley, working anonymously for several leading songwriters.  In 1912 he founded the Musician's Music Publishing Co. and shortly afterward began writing scores for silent pictures.  His Schirmer's Photo-play Series was published in 1915.  While living here, he advertised his services under the nickname "Andy."

The Billboard, September 17, 1927 (copyright expired)

Andino was assuredly well-acquainted with a neighbor in the building, Laura Sedgwick Collins.  A musician, composer and actress, she was born in Poughkeepsie in 1859.  Among her compositions was a march, "The Two Republics," which was performed at the unveiling of The Statue of Liberty.

Laura Sedgwick Collins, A Woman of the Century, 1893 (copyright expired)

Also living here at the time were author and painter Harold Speakman and his wife, the former Russell Lindsay.  Born in Greenville, New Jersey on November 30, 1888, Speakman studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and in Paris and Munich.  

His far-flung resume was staggering.  He served on the front in Italy in World War I, and made a "thousand-mile journey on foot around Ireland" in 1924, according to Who's Who in America, which added that he "descended the Mississippi River from headwaters to Gulf by canoe and houseboat" in 1926-1927.  Among his books were Songs of Home and The Youngest Shepherd, both published in 1917; the 1919 From a Soldier's Heart; Beyond Shanghai, published in 1922; and Hilltops in Galilee, This Above All, and Here's Ireland, published in 1922, 1923, and 1925 respectively.

Russell Speakman was an artist as well.  She often collaborated with her husband in illustrating his articles and accompanied him on his adventures.  In 1928, for instance, they journeyed to India.

Upon their return, in August 1928, Harold Speakman was "operated on in Milwaukee for an internal trouble," according to The New York Times.  Six weeks later, at around 5:30 on the afternoon on September 24, he entered a cab and told the driver to take him to Bellevue Hospital.  Frank McGlynn would later recall that Speakman told him he was going to meet "a man riding a white horse."

At the hospital, Speakman paid McGlynn his 70 cent fare, walked a few paces toward the entrance, "drew a pistol and fired once."  The 39-year-old had shot himself in the temple.  The New York Times reported, "He died without regaining consciousness."  In his coat pocket was a grim note addressed "To Whom It May Concern."  

Get the police, ambulance and take me to where bodies belong.  You will receive further instructions later as to what to do with me.

photograph by Anthony Bellov

Dr. Walter Charles and Ruth Crucet Strodt were occupants of The Whitestone at the time of the tragedy.  The couple were members of the American Mathematical Society, and Dr. Strodt was an instructor of math at Columbia University.  He would write technical books like Principal Solutions of Ordinary Differential Equations in the Complex Domain.  

Born in Norfolk, Virginia on March 2, 1917, Ruth was a 1937 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Barnard College and had been an assistant professor of mathematics at St. Lawrence University. 

Among their neighbors in the building was Helena M. Dickinson, who also had a mathematical bent.  She was a member of the American Statistical Association as early as 1928.

Other residents in the late 1920s and early 1930s were Dr. Edward Oliver Salant and Priscilla M. Rhodehamel.  Dr. Salant earned his Ph.D. in London and was a National Research fellow in physics at New York University.  Rhodehamel graduated from the Syracuse School of Library Science in 1931.  She started work in the Administration Office of the New York Public Library in 1936.

With war ranging in Europe, Roswell D. McClelland and his wife, the former Marjorie Miles, left the comforts of The Whitestone.  The couple were married in 1938.  McClelland (known to his friends as Ross) had degrees from Duke and Columbia Universities; and Marjorie graduated from Stanford and did graduate work in child psychology at the University of Cincinnati and Yale.  

On August 1, 1940, The New York Times reported that they had boarded the Pan American Airways Yankee Clipper from "the marine base at La Guardia Field" the previous day.  The article said the couple "will take charge of the Rome office of the American Friends Service Committee."  It added, "The McClellands said they hoped to study conditions in refugee camps in Spain and Southern France."  

This photo of the McClellands was taken in 1940, the year they left The Whitestone.  from the collection of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The McClellands would not return to The Whitestone.  The American Friends Service Committee ceased operation in 1941 when the United States closed its borders to refugees.  The couple was disconsolate.  They wrote home in July that year:

We comfort ourselves by thinking of the 108 people that we have helped to emigrate since we set up shop in October, but we wish that the number could have been larger.

Rather than return home, the McClellands relocated to Marseilles where Ross worked to rescue prisoners in internment camps and Marjorie helped to get children from the camps and from Jewish  homes for a 1942 rescue transport to the United States.

They then moved to Geneva, and when President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board in 1944, he placed Ross as his Presidential Representative.  Marjorie ran the AFSC office there.  After the war (during which the McClellands' two sons were born), Ross was made a U.S. Foreign Service officer and later the United States ambassador to Niger.

Living in a fifth-floor apartment at 45 Tiemann Place in 1983 were 20-year-old Robert McKnight, who was unemployed, and his mother.  In November that year, Robert was arrested in the subway "on charges of possessing cocaine and brass knuckles," according to the Staten Island Advance.

Two months later, at around 7:30 on the night of January 27, 1984, Robert McKnight climbed to the roof of 45 Tiemann Place and waited in ambush.  When 34-year-old police officer Dennis Brennan came down the street in a three-wheeled scooter, McKnight fired.  The Staten Island Advance reported that the bullet, "crashed through the windshield and into his chest."  Brennan, amazingly, survived after an eight-hour long operation at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center. 

McKnight was taken from 45 Tiemann Place in handcuffs.  Associated Press Laserphoto, Staten Island Advance, January 30, 1984

Robert McKnight was arrested in the hallway of 45 Tiemann Place at 8:30 in the morning on January 29.  Police could not give a motive for the crime.  McKnight was charged with attempted murder of a police officer.

photograph by Anthony Bellov

An early example of Emery Roth's apartment building designs and one of its most striking, The Whitestone does not get the adulation it deserves.  While remarkably intact on the exterior, its lack of landmark designation makes it vulnerable to desecration.  

many thanks to historian Anthony Bellov for suggesting this post

Emery Roth's 1924 Hotel Whitby - 325 West 45th Street

image via caldwellbankerhomes.com

Developers and contractors Bing & Bing often worked with architect Emery Roth.  Separately and together, they were among the most influential apartment building developers and architects in New York City in early 20th century.  In 1923, Bing & Bing, in cooperation with Gresham Realty Company (of which Alexander Bing was head), acquired the old buildings at 325 through 329 West 45th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues.  The firm hired Emery Roth to design a ten-story residential hotel on the site.  (Although tenants of residential hotels had long leases, like apartment buildings, they enjoyed the amenities of transient hotels, like maid service.)  

Completed in 1924, the Hotel Whitby was faced in beige brick and trimmed in limestone.  Roth's U-shaped, tripartite Renaissance Revival-style design placed the entrance deeply and dramatically recessed between the main wings.  Double-height stone architraves with large, full-relief daisy-like rosettes in their spandrels lined up along the base and decorative piers with sweeping volutes flanked the entrance.

The spartan, six-story midsection was sandwiched between intermediate cornices.  The top section featured double-height, Renaissance-inspired arches that framed stacked pairs of openings, each separated by Scamozzi columns.

The Hotel Whitby attracted artistic residents early on.  Among the initial tenants was silent film critic for The New York Herald Tribune, Harriett Underhill.  Beginning her career shortly after her marriage at the age of 16, she played minor parts on the stage and in road shows.  She was a chorus girl in the original Floradora company.  She joined the The Herald Tribune in 1908.

Also living in the Hotel Whitby at the time were artist Carl Wuermer, singer Ivan Alexis, and writer Mary Margaret McBride.  Born in 1899, McBride contributed articles to periodicals like Liberty, Pictorial Review and Delineator, and was the author of Jazz and Charm.  She would become the host of a radio interview show that lasted more than four decades.

Ivan Alexis was, in fact, the stage name of Ivan Alexievitch Romanoff, a nephew of the late Grand Duke Nicholas and the son of Prince Nicholas Feodorovitch Romanoff, a former attaché of the late Tsar.  He came to New York City in 1921 for "training his voice for grand opera," according to The New York Times.  In January 1929 the 27-year-old basso was appearing in The Red Robe.  After the performance one night, he stopped into Joe Ward's Uptown Club on West 125th Street where Evelyn Nesbit was conducting a revue.

Nesbit had been a central figure in the murder of architect Stanford White by her husband, Harry Thaw, in 1906.  She was now married to Jack Clifford, her former dancing partner.  On February 6, 1929, three weeks after Alexis walked into the cafe, Evelyn Nesbit announced their engagement to reporters. 

"I am still the wife of Jack Clifford," she said, "but I expect to get my divorce in New Jersey very soon.  I vowed I would never marry again, but this is a real love affair, and when I get my divorce I shall become Princess Evelyn."

Alexis was no doubt well acquainted with another resident, William J. Guard, who had been the press agent for the Metropolitan Opera Company since 1910.  A widower, he was described by The New York Times as "one of the most colorful and familiar figures in musical circles."  Born in Ireland in 1862, he had been involved in the opera long before joining the Metropolitan Opera.  He downplayed his importance to those he represented.  "Hammerstein never needed a press agent, and Gatti-Casazza doesn't need one either," he once said.  Nevertheless, he made stars of rising singers.

On February 25, 1932, Guard suffered a heart attack.  A week later, on the night of March 3, he died in his apartment in the Hotel Whitby.  Within 30 minutes, the moving electric bulletin on Times Square notified crowds as they left the theaters.

Guard donated his body to a medical school for dissection.  He bequeathed his estate to a niece, Marguerite McAllister Taneyhill with one stipulation.  If his cousin Lorna Barrett Hall "learns shorthand and typewriting and can prove herself self-supporting," said his will, she would inherit one-third of the estate.

Former vaudeville entertainer Frank Wallace lived here as early as 1935.  In April that year, he wrote to Register of Deeds George A. Bowman saying:

Kindly advise me of proper steps necessary to obtain a photostatic copy of my marriage license to Mae West April 11, 1911.  Let me know what evidence or information you require.

Wallace told a reporter from the Associated Press that he had not publicized his marriage to the famous actress through the years "because I didn't want to pull Mae down."  But recently he read an article in which "Miss West told at length her reasons for remaining a spinster."  Wallace said that when he saw the article, "it was like a great light dawning and I saw no reason to deny it any longer."  The Racine Journal-Times quoted him on May 2 saying, "Everybody who knows me on Broadway believes I was Mae West's husband.  Why, Wall street is betting 4 to 1 on me."

Frank Wallace and Mae West in 1911.  (copyright expired)

More than two years later, on July 7, 1937, The New York Times reported, "Mae West, screen actress, admitted for the first time today that on April 11, 1911, she was married to Frank Wallace, former New York vaudeville performer."  The star was forced into the admission in order to fight Wallace's attempt "to establish a community property interest in Miss West's holdings."  West finally obtained a divorce on May 7, 1943.

Grover Cleveland Alexander lived in the Hotel Whitby by 1941.  Born in 1887, he was known to baseball fans as "Old Pete" and "Alexander the Great."  The former pitcher was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938.   

Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1915 while playing with the Philadelphia Phillies (copyright expired)

Fame did not translate to fortune, however.  After he was found on the sidewalk on Sixth Avenue at 39th Street with a cut above his left eye on August 25, 1941, The New York Times remarked that he "has been appearing in a sideshow in a West Forty-second Street amusement hall.  A New York morning newspaper has been raising a fund for his benefit."  (Alexander would be played by future President Ronald Reagan in the 1952 film The Winning Team.)

Actor, director and producer Clarence Derwent, who was born in England, was president of the Actors Equity Association in 1949.  He left his apartment in the Hotel Whitby that year with 14 other actors to perform for United States troops in Germany.  Upon his return on August 17, he was detained by immigration officials at La Guardia Airport.  He was heatedly questioned about any affiliation with the Communist Party.  Back in his apartment, he told a reporter, "It was a surprising end to what has been a wonderful, exciting trip.  I repeatedly asked whether there was anything I was charged with or accused of and I got no answer of any kind."

Clarence Derwent, from the collection of the New York Public Library

Four years earlier Derwent had established the annual Clarence Derwent Awards "for the best performers in supporting roles."  He was the president of the Dramatic Workshop and Technical Institute and established a two-year scholarship to the facility in 1952.  He published his autobiography, The Derwent Story in 1954.

In the summer of 1959, Clarence Derwent was in rehearsals for the NBC television show The House on High Street.  When he did not show up at the studio on August 6 and friends could not reach him, the Hotel Whitby's manager used a pass key to enter the apartment and found him dead of natural causes.

Other thespian residents in the 1950s were singer and actress Lillian Boardman Smith, known on stage as Lillian Boardman; and her actor husband Howard Smith.   Lillian began her career in revues and in vaudeville.  Although she retired in 1930 after marrying Smith, he continued to act.  In 1953 he appeared in A Red Rainbow on Broadway.

Among the tenants in the building in the 1970s were actor and director Fred Stewart, a co-founder of the Actors Studio; character actor Joe E. Marks, best known perhaps for his portrayal of Pappy Yokum in the stage and screen versions of Li'l Abner; and dramatic actress Grania O'Malley, widow of William Dunham, her former vaudeville partner.  Also here in the 1970s were husband and wife actors Nina Olivette and Harry Stockwell.   (Stockwell was the father of actors Dean and Guy Stockwell.)

Joe E. Marks in his role as Pappy Yokum.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

In 1988, the owner of the Whitby began selling the 200 apartments as cooperatives.  Writing in The New York Times on January 4, 1988, Elizabeth Neuffer explained, "Should 15 percent of the apartments be sold by summer, the entire building would go co-op."  The residents were fearful, she said, that it would alter "its affordability and its bonhomie."

"The Whitby, its residents say, is not just any apartment building."  Neuffer wrote, "Since 1923 [sic] it has been home to generations of struggling chorus girls, traveling jazz musicians, theater stars and fresh-faced Broadway hopefuls.  Whitby lore has it that Doris Day lived there, as did Betty Grable, and even today, the Whitby's apartment directory--if it had one--would read like a Stagebill."  (Incidentally, there is no firm evidence that either Day or Grable lived here.)

The conversion from residential hotel to cooperative apartments was finalized that year.  Twenty-four years later, The New York Times journalist Matt A. V. Chaban returned to see what the change had made.  The title of his article said much:  "At 90, Still a Haven for Broadway Performers."

The result, Chaban found, was "rather than being a haven for struggling artists, the building is now much more a home for successful ones."  Still living here since 1983 was rehearsal pianist Paul Ford, "a frequent Stephen Sonheim collaborator," according to Chaban.  Other residents at the time were dancer Michael Apuzzo, who performed with the Paul Taylor Dance Company; and actor Austin Colyer, whose Broadway shows included Singin' In the Rain, I remember Mama and Pal Joey.  (Colyer would die in his apartment here on June 25, 2015 at the age of 84.)

photograph by Michael Bednarek

Well maintained, The Whitby survives not only as a handsome example of Emery Roth-designed works, but an important part of New York theatrical history.

many thanks to reader "Fat Al NYC" for suggesting this post

Emery Roth's 1929 110 West 86th Street

 

image via cocoran.com

On March 18, 1928, The New York Times reported that builder David Zimmerman "purchased from Benjamin Benenson the four altered dwellings at 104 to 110 West Eighty-sixth Street."  The $485,000 price tag would translate to a stunning $8.8 million in 2025.  The article mentioned, "Mr. Zimmerman is constructing a fifteen-story apartment house at the southeast corner of Park Avenue and Ninety-sixth Street and will erect a similar structure on the West Eighty-sixth Street site."

Zimmerman formed the 110 West 86th Street Corp. to erect the building and hired architect Emery Roth to design it.  His plans, filed in May, projected a 16-story and penthouse apartment building that would bring Zimmerman's total outlay to $22.6 million in today's money.  Six months later, on December 8, The New York Sun described, "The building will contain suites of from two to five rooms, with one and two baths, and will have mechanical refrigeration."  (Modern refrigerators, which were replacing messy ice boxes, were an alluring amenity.)

Completed in the summer of 1929, 110 West 86th Street sat upon a rusticated limestone base with stores.  Faced in beige brick, the upper floors of Roth's neo-Renaissance design relied on a few well-placed elements as decoration.  Three Renaissance-style pediments appeared atop four windows of the second floor, easily noticed by passersby.  The otherwise unadorned third through fifteenth floors were enlivened by three exuberant double-height, terra cotta faux balconies at the 12th and 13th floors.  Two bays wide, the elaborate Renaissance-inspired frames included blind balustrades and intricate Renaissance-inspired ornaments that terminated in molded cornices with heraldic shields.  The shields returned at the 16th floor as spandrel ornaments.  Roth completed the design with a modest corbel table and stone urns upon pedestals along the roofline.

Among the initial commercial tenants was the florist shop of Alexander Sekelos, who experienced a frightening incident on December 30, 1931.  That afternoon a "boy," as described by The New York Sun, entered and pointed a gun at Sekelos and demanded money.  The florist handed over $43 in cash and a $4 check.  The teen did not get far.  According to The Sun, "he was captured after a three-block chase by Patrolman William Sweeney."  John Duff originally gave his name as O'Neill and denied he had robbed the store, "although Sekelos's $4 check was found in his pocket."

The building filled with well-to-do white collar residents.  Among the first were David Dworsky and his wife, the former Carrie Autler.  Born in 1882, he sat on the board of governors of Associated Millinery Men, Inc. and was a leader in the millinery industry, according to The New York Times.

The Louis Greenfields and Benjamin Ogushes were also early residents.  Like Dworsky, Greenfield was involved in the apparel trade and was treasurer of the Admiration Dress Co., Inc.  Benjamin Ogush, whose wife was the former Martha Nestint, was a partner in the jewelry firm of Katz & Ogush, Inc.

Monroe C. Alesker and his wife, the former Mareaner Simms, were also early residents.  Alesker graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1926 and from New York University Law School.  Active in politics and community affairs, the young attorney was chairman of the legislation committee of the Park West Neighborhood Association.  He became ill in June 1937 and died in New York Hospital at the age of 32 on August 18.

Nathan and Anne Schultz moved into the building around the mid-1940s with their son, Irving.  Schultz was a retired cigar manufacturer.  By 1949, his declining health had made him "despondent," according to his wife.  Around 6:15 on the evening of March 25 that year, Irving discovered his father "hanging by a bedsheet from a hook in a bedroom closet."

Also living here at the time of the tragedy were Dr. J. Wilner Sundelson and his wife, the former Janet Racolin.  Sundelson, who received his Ph.D. in public finance at Columbia University, was an executive with Ford International.  He had earlier been associated with the United States Treasury Department, the Port of New York Authority, and the National Planning Board.

His impressive resume was equaled by his wife's.  With an M.A. degree from Columbia University, Janet Sundelson had been an economist with the Treasury Department (almost assuredly where she met her husband), a member of the United States technical delegation to the Bretton Woods Conference, state chairman of the public finance committee of the League of Women Voters, and an instructor at Queens College.  She was, by the late 1940s, an instructor in the Department of Economics at Barnard College.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Quiz shows were popular fare of 1950s television and in 1958 resident John Burns was chosen to appear as a contestant in  the show Who Do You Trust?.  Burns's few minutes of fame turned into a debacle.  On September 10, The New York Times reported, "a contestant on 'Who Do You Trust?' was trapped in an isolation booth for about twelve minutes during yesterday's show."  The article said that American Broadcasting Company's studio carpenters "had to remove hinges on the bulky door in order to extricate John Burns."  (It is unclear if he won any prize money, despite the on-air fiasco.)

A celebrated resident in the 1970s was stage, film and television actress Margaret Linn.  Born in Richmond, Indiana on August 21, 1934, she studied at Northwestern University.  She worked with Uta Hagen several times in the Shakespeare Festival productions.  Her many television appearances included the 1957 The DuPont Show of the Month, an episode of New York Television Theatre in 1965, and in Great Performances in 1971.  She appeared on Broadway in Halfway Up the Tree and How's the World Treating You? and several Off Broadway productions.

In 1973, she traveled to Los Angeles to appear in the Mark Taper Forum production of Hot L Baltimore.  She was there on September 12 when she suffered a brain hemorrhage and died at the age of 39.

Another resident involved in entertainment at the time was Jay Eisenstat.  The bachelor graduated from the New York University School of Arts and Sciences.  He founded and was the first president of the Association of Independent Commercial Producers, and was executive vice president of Myers & Eisenstat Films.  He served on the Mayor's Advisory Council on Motion Pictures and Television, and in 1973 was awarded by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences "for his work in training minorities in the field," as reported by The New York Times.  The prodigious television and film producer died of cancer on December 9, 1975 at the age of 33.

Writer and playwright Corinne Jacker lived here as early as 1980.  Born in Chicago in 1933, she majored in theater at Northwestern University, where she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees.  She relocated to New York City in 1958.  Her 1975 Off-Broadway play Bits & Pieces and her 1976 Harry Outside earned her Obie Awards.  Among the cast of her play My Life in 1976 was Christopher Reeves, who landed the title  role of the motion picture Superman that year.

Corinne Jacker, photograph by Ken Howard, via New York Times January 25, 2013.

Jacker wrote occasional television scripts, and, according to the 1979-80 Writer's Directory, was a "writer of biology, cybernetics, and politics; also writer of non-fiction for children."  Corinne Jacker died at the age of 79 on January 11, 2013.  

Designed by one of America's foremost 20th century apartment architects, 110 West 86th Street survives nearly unchanged--including the ground floor, most often the first to be ravaged.  

many thanks to reader Elizabeth Smith for requesting this post

Emery Roth's 1931 Southgate - 400 East 52nd Street

 

In 1920, a stalwart group of wealthy Manhattanites embarked on a risky and somewhat shocking real estate endeavor--transforming a block of decrepit brownstones along the East River into a fashionable enclave.  Originally called Sutton Square, its high-tone tenor spread outward, creating Sutton Place and Beekman Place, two of the most enviable residential districts in the city.

Real estate developer Bing & Bing would continue the transformation.  The firm frequently worked with renowned architect Emery Roth, producing numerous Manhattan apartment buildings.  In 1928, Bing & Bing hired him for what would be their most ambitious project--five apartment buildings that would be called Southgate.  One would face East 51st Street and the others, separated by a verdant garden, lined east 52nd Street.

The massive enterprise would take three years to construct.  On April 12, 1931, The New York Times noted that the completed project would have "a total of nearly 500 housekeeping apartments ranging from one to six rooms."  The article explained that all five buildings, "similar in design," would be "identified with the name Southgate."

Each of the buildings was slightly different.  400 East 52nd Street is as the far right.  image by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

No. 400 East 52nd Street opened in October 1931.  Faced in brown brick above a stone base, its entrance sat within a dramatic, three-story frame of Art Deco stylized fountains.  The relatively unadorned midsection rose to two sleek, tiled-faced balconies.  Above the 14th floor, Roth ignored the setbacks at the ends and center of the building with single-bay-wide sections that rose two more floors.  Another ocean liner-ready balcony clung to the 15th floor.  An advertisement offered, "Two to five rooms, some with river view," and boasted, "dropped living rooms, log burning fireplaces.  Dining galleries or alcoves, casement windows, tile bath with every chamber, full size kitchens."

Among the early, professional residents of 400 East 52nd Street were John Anderson, drama critic for The New York  Evening Journal and former assistant critic of the New York Evening Post; and Arthur Samuels, editor of Harper's Bazaar.  In 1932, the year he moved in, he became associate editor of Arts Weekly and an instructor of drama at New York University.

Perhaps an unexpected tenant was 26-year-old aspiring actress Elizabeth Bates Volck, who moved into a ninth-floor apartment on November 7, 1931.  Born in England, she was the granddaughter of Domício da Gama, the former Brazilian ambassador to the United States.  Her engagement to Prince Johannes of Liechtenstein was announced in 1926, but the marriage never came to pass.

Just before moving into 400 East 52nd Street, Elizabeth suffered another failed romance.  According to her best friend, Diana Durant, Elizabeth had been experiencing "emotional strain" since "the disruption of her love affair with Gerald D. Tiffany."  The day after moving in, Elizabeth telephoned Durant "and said she had been thinking of taking her life," according to the North Shore Daily Journal.

Several hours later, at about 15 minutes after midnight, Frank McLoughlin, who lived nearby, heard an explosion.  The New York Times reported, "Looking up, he beheld a flash of fire and smoke bursting through the shattered windows of the ninth-floor apartment."  Elizabeth's apartment had been devastated by the violent gas explosion.  The Times said it "shattered walls and furniture on three floors and aroused residents within several blocks."

Elizabeth Volck's body was found in the apartment.  She had left a note saying: "I leave all my furniture to Diana Durant to keep or sell according to what she sees fit."  She then opened the gas jets of the stove.  Presumably, she knew that the explosion set off by the pilot light would kill her in case her suicide attempt was unsuccessful.  (Diana Durant would not receive any of the apartment's furniture, all of which was wrecked by the blast.)

A similar tragedy occurred the following year.  Edward R. Seen was a successful architect.  Born in Basel, Switzerland, he had been associated with Delano & Aldrich for more than two decades.  He and his second wife were married in November 1932.

Less than a month later, on December 11, Seen left the office, saying he would have lunch at home.  He telephoned later saying he had been detained by business.  Instead, he drove to Patchogue, Long Island.  At 11:00 p.m., he registered at Roe's Hotel there.  The next morning a maid found his body "with a bullet hole in his right temple," as reported by The New York Times.

More uplifting press coverage was routinely found in the society columns.  On September 1, 1932, for instance, The New York Times reported, "Mrs. James E. Hollingsworth of 400 East Fifty-second Street left yesterday for a visit with Mrs. Herbert Hoover at the White House.  Mrs. Hollingsworth will go later to California, where she will be joined by her husband."

Other initial residents were Henry R. Duflon, John P. Hogan, and John Perry Mitchell, Jr. and his wife, the former Lucy G. Clark.  Born in 1890, Duflon was superintendent of agencies for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in Illinois and Indiana.  He had an office here and in Chicago.  John P. Hogan was vice chairman of the Construction Code Authority and general chairman of the Construction League of the United States, which sponsored the codes for the construction industry.

John Perry Mitchell, Jr. was born in Sterling, Massachusetts on March 30, 1899.  He received his B.A. degree at Dartmouth and his Masters from Harvard.  He remained at Harvard as a instructor of economics until 1924.  He and Lucy Clark were married in 1930.  On July 1, 1934, Mitchell became assistant director of education at the Rockefeller Foundation.  In September 1935, he and Lucy adopted an infant boy whom they named Jonathan.  Tragically, five months later, on February 24, 1936, John Mitchell, Jr. died at Roosevelt Hospital at the age of 36.

Living here that year were singer Paul Davin and his wife, Winifred.  Davin had appeared on Broadway in Sweethearts and Knights of Song.  Winifred was described by The New York Times as "a former countess."  

On May 8, 1936, Winifred hired a maid, 22-year-old Jennie Stanley.  Ten days later, Jennie disappeared along with $685 in cash (equal to about $15,500 in 2025), jewelry and a gold cigarette case.  

The savvy Winifred "suggested to the police that the servant probably would buy expensive clothes and display them among friends in Harlem," reported The Times.  And so, Winifred and two detectives staked out Seventh Avenue and 139th Street.  Sure enough, just after midnight, Jennie Stanley passed by "stylishly gowned."  The article said, "In her apartment, the police said, they recovered all the jewelry, except a gold cigarette case, and the money."

A charming garden separates the 51st and 52nd Street buildings.

Federal employee Ed Weltman occupied a ninth-floor apartment here as early as 1939.  On the afternoon of September 21 that year, his sister and her daughters, Jessie and Alice Wells, visited him.  The sisters, described by The Billboard in 1926 as "exceptionally pretty blondes," comprised the song-and-dance team of the Wells Sisters.  Starting out as teenagers in vaudeville theaters, the duo now sang on radio and had just returned from a road tour the previous week.

Jessie Wells said she did not feel well and asked her uncle if she could go into a bedroom to rest.  Later, her mother checked on her and found her missing.  "The bathroom window was flung up," reported The New York Times.  The 25-year-old had jumped to her death.

Two fascinating residents were Sara J. Woodward and her daughter, Mary Woodward Reinhardt.  Born in 1863 in Portadown, Ireland, Sara was the eleventh of the seventeen children of Alexander Johnson.  In 1880 she arrived in Chicago at the age of 17, eventually becoming a fashion expert for the department store Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co.  According to The New York Times later, she was the first to bring Paris creations to the Middle West and "staged what was said to have been Chicago's first fashion show."

Sara married Frank E. Woodward, the president of the Bank of Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1897.  The couple had two daughters, Alice and Mary.  Sara founded the Public Library of Watertown and during World War I was chairman of the city's American Red Cross unit.  She also organized a movement to establish two parks there.

In the meantime, Mary Woodward graduated from Milwaukee Downer Seminary, attended the University of Wisconsin and received her Bachelors degree from Radcliffe College in 1923.  After doing graduate work at Oxford University in England, she married Paul Reinhardt, owner of the Reinhardt Galleries in New York City in 1924.  Mary became associated with the gallery.  

Frank Woodward died in 1933 and the following year Mary and Paul Reinhardt divorced.  Sara Woodward relocated to New York and she and Mary moved into an apartment here.  

It may have been the urban Manhattan environment that prompted Sarah to become an early activist against second-hand smoke, campaigning for the reduction or elimination of "the smoke nuisance."  Related to that cause, she joined the board of directors of the Outdoor Cleanliness Association.

Now single, Mary Woodard Reinhardt reinvented herself.  She founded the Hollywood Patterns, a subsidiary of Condé Nast.  She was, as well, secretary of the Birth Control Federation of America.

In 1939, Sara Johnson Woodward's health began to fail.  She died in her apartment at the age of 77 on January 9, 1940.  Just five months later, on June 21, Mary Woodward Reinhardt married Albert D. Lasker, former chairman of the United States Shipping Board.

John Anderson and his wife, the former Margaret Breuning  (an art critic), were still living here at the time.  Now the drama critic of the New York Journal American, he was also an author and playwright, and president of the New York Drama Critics Circle.  Among his books were the 1929 Box Office, Book of the White Mountains, released in 1930, and the 1938 The American Theatre.   His plays included The Inspector General and The Fatal Alibi.

On February 9, 1942, The New York Times reported that Efrem Zimbalist Jr. had leased an apartment here.  The son of the famous violinist and symphony conductor and the operatic star Alma Gluck, he was born on November 30, 1918.  While his parents were major figures in classical music, Zimbalist Jr. was drawn to the theater.  He took a job as a page for NBC radio in 1936 where he got small roles on air.  Zimbalist would go on to a highly successful career in television and film.

Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (publicity photo for the U.S. Steel Hour, 1956)

Italian-born John Perona, who owned the El Morocco nightclub, had lived here as early as 1935.  That year, the 38-year-old bachelor had a live-in servant, 20-year-old Grey Clements, a Filipino immigrant.  Clements lived with and worked for him for at least five years.  By 1946, Perona had acquired a country home at Newton, New Jersey and now had two male servants in the East 52nd Street apartment.

John Perona (original source unknown)

Perona fired both servants in the fall of 1946.  Shortly afterward, on the evening of October 9, he returned to the city from Newton to find that "seven sets of cuff links and fifteen or sixteen cigarette lighters, gifts and valued by him at $20,000 were missing from his penthouse apartment at 400 East Fifty-second Street.," as reported by The New York Times.  The figure Perona gave to the police would translate to about $321,000 today.  It is unclear if he ever recovered his items.  Perona would remain here at least through the 1950s.

Among Perona's neighbors in the building was theater producer and director Cheryl Crawford.  Born in Akron, Ohio in 1902, she studied drama at Smith College and came to New York City in 1925.  In 1931 she, Harold Clurman, and Lee Strausberg formed The Group Theatre, a 12-week-long training and rehearsal course at Brookfield Center, Connecticut.  Among the fledgling actors whose careers were highly influenced by Crawford were Bojangles Robinson, Mary Martin, Helen Hayes, Ingrid Bergman, Ethel Barrymore, Tallulah Bankhead and Paul Robeson.  

Cheryl Crawford from the Class of 1925 Smith College yearbook.

She co-founded the Actors Studio in 1947.  There major stars like Marlon Brando, James Dean, Steve McQueen, Jack Nicholson and a nearly endless list of others began their careers.

Attorney Ethelbert Warfield and his wife, the former Alice Blum had moved in in 1936.  Born in 1898, he graduated from the Dickinson Law School and was now a member of Satterlee, Warfield & Stephens.  He and Alice maintained a summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island.  In 1955, the couple had two domestic servants here, a live-in maid and a "housemaid," Sigrid Tovia, who had worked every Thursday since 1948.  (Sigrid Tovia was the Anglicized version of her birth name, Sirri Toivanen.)

Sigrid was described by her co-worker as always wearing "inexpensive, old clothes and welcomed gifts of leftover bread and meats, which she carefully put away into her paper shopping bag."  The Warfields were out of town on March 22, 1955.  That evening Sigrid left the apartment and headed home.  At 6:00, while crossing East 60th Street near Second Avenue, the 80-year-old was struck and run over by a crosstown bus.  She died under the bus.  The New York Times reported, "The police at the scene paid scant notice at first to the brown bag in the victim's hands."  In it was $21,617 in cash (more than a quarter of a million dollars today).  She had also been carrying a straw-handled purse in which were two deposit books showing $14,575 in savings.

After owning 400 East 52nd Street for half a century, on June 30, 1985, The New York Times reported that Bing & Bing had sold 29 apartment buildings, including this one.  The newspaper commented, "The Bing & Bing buildings are regarded as among the city's finest prewar properties."  Two years later, the building was converted to a cooperative.

Other than the loss of the casement windows, Emery Roth's Depression Era structure and its architectural siblings are, happily, little changed.  

many thanks to Rene Tatnall for suggesting this post and for showing me around the building.

photographs by the author