The Lost Washington Life Building - Broadway and Liberty Streets

 

The impressive building was worthy of its own turn-of-the-century postcard.

On February 15, 1896 the Real Estate Record & Guide reported that the Washington Life Insurance Co. had paid $1.28 million for the southwest corner of Broadway and Liberty Street.   It added, "the sale must rank as the most important that has been made in the down-town business section since the purchase by the Singer Manufacturing Co. of the northwest corner of the same thoroughfare."  The cost of the land would be equivalent to just under $36 million today.

The firm hired architect Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz to design its new 19-story skyscraper.   Iron frame construction coupled with innovations like electricity and elevators had recently made tall buildings possible.  As excavation for the foundation was underway in July 1897 The New York Times explained the deep "hole" was "of the utmost importance" to support the 280-foot tall structure.  "This vast weight will be supported by seventeen caisson piers," said the article, upon bedrock 75 feet below the street.

Construction was not without its problems.  On November 25, 1897 The World reported, "A steel girder weighing 3,000 pounds fell fifteen stories yesterday from the Washington Life Building...It struck the pavement in Liberty street about twenty yards back from Broadway, grinding the paving-stones into small fragments and tearing up the earth for a depth of nearly thirty inches.  The shock of the impact was sufficient to manifest itself to pedestrians within a radius of a block."  Thankfully none of those pedestrians was near the impact site.

Four months later progress was ground to a halt by competing labor unions.  The Sun explained on March 25, 1898 "The grievance was that housesmiths were doing the work of metal lathers."  The latter, members of the Metal Lathers' Union, walked off the job, insisting that the workers of the Housesmiths and Bridgemen's Union got back to their own business.  The general contractor, Otto M. Eidlitz (Cyrus Eidlitz's uncle), assisted in negotiating a return to work.

Real Estate Record & Guide, April 30, 1898 (copyright expired)

Construction was completed in the spring of 1898.  The Record & Guide commented that "one has to give up as irredeemably ugly" some of the recent skyscrapers.  However, it went on, the "Washington Life is one of the few that are positively attractive, and in which allowances do not have to be made."

Eidlitz had turned to the German Renaissance for inspiration in his design.  Above the three-story base faced in pink granite, the main shaft was clad in limestone.  It was the topmost section that set the building apart.  The Record & Guide called the roof "the architectural fortune of the building," adding that with out it, "it would be a sky-scraper rather better than the average.  With it, it becomes a distinguished and brilliant performance."  The steeply pitched bronze tiled roof detonated with spikey German Renaissance dormers.

The Washington Life Insurance Co. leased space to a variety of tenants.  Among the first was the real estate firm of E. A. Cruikshank & Co., which took a suite of ten rooms before construction was completed.   Another of the initial tenants was the American Commercial Corporation which sought to revolutionize the way trading was done on Wall Street.

On May 25, 1899 The Buffalo Review reported on the firm's "machine invented to solve the secrets of Wall Street," calling it an "extraordinary device."  The company had impressive credentials.  Its president was Deputy Assistant Treasurer of the United States, the treasurer was former Treasure of the United States under President Benjamin Harrison, and its secretary was Francis H. Baldwin who had recently graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School.

The article said, "The officers of the company whose machine is to turn paupers into millionaires are so confident that they have great fortunes in their grasp that they are sending circulars to all parts of the United States from their handsomely appointed offices in the Washington Life Building."  The gizmo was not taken seriously by brokerage firms.  "Wall Street was inclined to laugh," said the article.  "Hundreds of systems are tried in the stock market every year and never has one failed to work ruin to its promoters and those who had faith in it."

Several attorneys moved into the building, including Job E. Hedges.  He had previously been secretary to Mayor William L. Strong and was then appointed a judge in the City Court.  He resigned that position "because of the meagreness [sic] of the income," according to The Morning Telegraph, and returned to his private law practice.  "That, too, proved somewhat dull in the matter of income, and he whiled away the time by writing law books to sell to the young and aspiring," said the newspaper.

Hedges finished his Text Book on Taxation in October 1900 and sent it off to the printer.  After a few days the proofs arrived.  Hedges carefully marked his corrections and sent them back.  "Then came the trouble," said The Morning Telegraph.

Between Hedges' office and the printer the manuscript was lost.  And in the days before reproduction machines made multiple copies common, it was a calamity.  "Sounds of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth emanated from over the transom of room 716 of the Washington Life Building," said the article, "and the sometime secretary of Col. Strong was heard to indulge freely in the same language that was used by the 'Teapot Mayor' when visited by an extra vigorous twinge of the gout."

Hedges placed notices in various newspapers, offering a reward.  Seemingly against all odds, on October 23 a "long haired and whiskered" man appeared with a roll of manuscript tied with a blue ribbon.  The clerk in Hedges' office immediately recognized the bowknot "as a Hedges tie."  Hedges was overjoyed to see the rolled manuscript and shook the man's hand, slipping a silver dollar into it.  The bewhiskered man left as Hedges opened the package.  To his dismay, inside was a copy of the book The Single Tax by Henry George, along with a scrawled message, "This beats your rot all to death."

The Morning Telegraph called the scam "a cruel canard," and said "Job E. Hedges is slowly recovering from the greatest shock his literary aspirations ever received.  His shattered nerves are slowly assuming their normal form, and his physicians hope for his recovery."

King's New York City Handbook, 1903 (copyright expired)

Benedict Brothers leased one of the ground floor store spaces in December 1902.  The venerable jewelry firm had been established in 1819 by Samuel W. Benedict, the current owners' father.  The New York Press said, "For valuable and artistic jewelry no more extensive display can be found than in the large, new and beautiful store of Benedict Brothers...It is well worth a visit to see the store alone."

Among the employees of Washington Life Insurance was Robert Endicott.  His close friend, George H. Griffiths had been in the insurance business, too, but lost his job with the Greenwich Life Insurance Company in 1903.   Still unable to find new employment a year later, Griffiths' "health began to fail on account of a nervous affection," according to The Evening World.  "Latterly he suffered from nervous prostration and imagined that paresis was overtaking him."

In an effort to cheer his friend up, Endicott took him to lunch on May 27, 1904.  Afterward they returned to Endicott's office where they "had a long, animated conversation in which Mr. Endicott tried to lighten the spirits of Mr. Griffiths."  The ploy did not work.  Griffiths went to an adjoining room where, half an hour later, the janitor found his body.  He had swallowed carbolic acid.

The advent of skyscrapers brought a new terror--high rise fires.  On January 28, 1907 the New-York Tribune reported, "Flames burst out of the windows of the fifth floor of the Broadway side of the nineteen story Washington Life Building...shortly after 5 o'clock yesterday morning."

The fire had broken out in the law offices of Lee & Fleischman.  The New York Times said, "It was a blaze of dangerous possibilities until the four engine companies mastered it by quick action."  Fire fighters had to haul the heavy hoses up the four flights of stairs to battle the blaze from inside.  They were able to confine the fire to the Lee & Flesichman offices, which were "practically gutted."  

At the time, Andrew W. Smith worked as a "confidential man" for the Warren Chemical Company here.  The position gave him access to the firm's proprietary information, and to its funds.  He was fired in January 1909 when he was suspected of embezzlement.  Five days later detectives appeared at his home on West 112th Street with a warrant for his arrest.

Mrs. Smith told the detectives that her husband was out of town on business.  Armed with a warrant, they searched the apartment.  The New York Times reported, "They were just giving up, when one of the detectives noticed the mattress of the bed rising and falling as though imbued with life.  He looked beneath it and saw the figure of a man lying on his back, his bare toes and fingers twisted in the bed springs."

With Smith's digits firmly entwined in the springs, the officers could not extract him.  Then one of them grabbed a whisk broom and began tickling the captive.  He "brushed it delicately along the soles of the man's feet.  They writhed for a minute or two, then came to the floor with a bang."

But the struggle was not yet over.  "The detectives rolled the bed all over the room, but Smith kept close to its centre with his wriggling.  Finally, the sleuths stripped from the bed pillows, sheets, mattress, and springs; then they tumbled over on top of the man in pink pajamas."

Smith admitted to his identity.  He was asked why he was hiding under the bed.  "Well, I didn't go there to pay golf," he replied.  He was arrested and appeared before a judge charged with embezzling upwards of $25,000 over the course of nine years--around three quarters of a million in today's dollars.

In January 1915 the newly-formed Russian Chamber of Commerce moved its offices into the building.  The organization was not endorsed by the Russian Imperial Consulate General.  He placed a notice in The New York Times on May 7 that announced its managing director, Ivan Narodny, "is not registered as a Russian citizen and, moreover, has absolutely no connection with any departments of the Imperial Government."

Narodny had been in the United States for seven years.  According to him he was a political refugee, "but hoped some day to go back."  He told a reporter from The New York Times, "Our desire is to foster trade between Russia and the United States...The Consulate refused its support when we declined to bar Jews."

In 1922 the Washington Life Building was purchased by the Metropolitan Life Company.  Its tenants continued to be attorneys, accounting firms, and brokerage companies.  Among them during the early World War II years was the Hansa Securities Corporation.  The Pennsylvania Securities Commission issued a cease and deist order against the firm in May 1941 for sending hundreds of circulars through the mail "urging German Americans in Pennsylvania to turn their savings into German bonds."  The brochures said in part that converting dollars into marks "has never been so justified in the last twenty-six years as just in this time, in which the victorious conclusion of the war is near for Germany."

It appeared that the end of the line for the Washington Life Building was near in February 1951 when developer Sylvan Lawrence purchased the entire blockfront.  The New York Times reported, "Mr. Lawrence said he planned to modernize and improve the buildings and hold them for improvement."

That "improvement" would come in 1967 when the magnificent Singer Building across Liberty Street was demolished for the United States Steel headquarters.  As part of the deal the firm negotiated with city officials to create Liberty Plaza Park (now Zuccotti Park) on the Lawrence-owned block.  In a single stroke, New York City lost two of its most striking early skyscrapers.

photo by MusikAnimal

many thanks to reader Mark Rice for requesting this post

no permission to reuse the content of this blog has been granted to LaptrinhX.com

The Erdmann Mansion (Friars Club) No. 57 East 55th Street

In December 1904 Minturn Post Collins, gave a lecture to the Real Estate Class of the Y.M.C.A on “Fifth Avenue Investments.”   He began saying “The first point noted on studying the map of the city is the central position of Fifth Avenue.”

The wealthy newly-wed with the impressive name knew what he was talking about.   Active in real estate, he was also President of the Bankers’ Investing Co. and he lived just a block from Fifth Avenue at No. 57 East 55^th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues.  Collins’ comfortable brownstone-fronted house sat among similar high-end residences built a generation earlier.  But the “central position” of Fifth Avenue created a dynamic that would change the neighborhood; even a block to the east.

A year earlier, in June 1903, Collins had wed Flora Isham, daughter of the wealthy William B. Isham, President of the Bond & Mortgage Guarantee Co.  The couple was married in the sumptuous Isham country estate north of the city.  They would not remain long on East 55^th Street.

The Fifth Avenue neighborhood of the turn of the century was a tense stand-off between advancing commerce and wealthy mansion owners.  Even as many millionaires fled northward along Central Park, others moved in.  Old brownstones, like that of Minturn Post Collins, were either radically renovated into lavish, modern mansions, or razed and replaced.

While the Collins were considering leaving the area, Martin Erdmann was preparing for his retirement.  In 1906, at the age of 42, the banker stepped down from his position as partner in Speyer & Co.  He was a member of the New York Stock Exchange and had served on its governing committee.  While he retained his directorship in the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad and was a trustee of the Montefiore Hospital, he now had extensive leisure time to devote to his passion: collecting mezzotints.

But first he would built himself a lavish new home.  The bachelor millionaire purchased and demolished the Collins house at No. 57 East 55^th Street.  He contracted the architectural firm of Taylor & Levi in 1908 to design a mansion in its place that reflected his social and financial statue

The commission was one of the firm’s first; Julian Levi and Alfredo S. G. Taylor having joined forces the year before.  Their design drew inspiration from the German Renaissance and the resulting mansion, completed in 1909, was a radical departure from its traditional high-stooped neighbors.

Architecture printed a photograph of the newly-completed house in October 1909.  It stood in start contrast to its brownstone neighbors.  (copyright expired)

Unlike its unassuming and unmarried owner, the house called attention to itself.  By doing away with the space-hogging stoop, the architects added precious interior feet by pulling the façade outward, almost to the property line.  They deftly balanced the somber Germanic tone of the architecture with a capricious storybook quality.   A grouped set of leaded windows in the gable (the height of which nearly equaled the width of the building), began a cascade of openings down the façade, increasing in height and width with each lower floor.

Carved stone railings, decorative strapwork and salt-turned chimneys combined in an imposing fantasy.  Perhaps to protect Erdmann’s highly valuable art collection, the architects claimed they had produced “the most fireproof residence in Manhattan.”

The highly unusual design caught the attention of architectural critics who were torn in their assessment.  Architecture commented that it was “conceived in so different a vein from most New York houses that its propriety can be questioned…but there is much in this house to awaken an intelligence lulled to sleep by monotonous repetition of classic forms.”

East 55th Street in 1908 was quietly residential. -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

Ermann moved in with his extensive art collection and his staff—a footman, parlor maid, cook, housekeeper, chamber maid, head maid, butler, and “horseman.”  Contemporary photographs of the interiors show carved paneling, intricate stairways, long groin-arched halls and heavily-worked ceilings.  A mixture of furniture styles coexisted with one another.  In one room a Hepplewhite side chair, a Dutch dowry chest and a Chippendale side table shared space. 

In almost every room could be seen mezzotints—some frame against frame—hanging on the walls.  Mezzotint printmaking started in Germany around 1642.  The process was used mainly to create portraits and starting around 1760 British collecting of mezzotints was a fashion among the wealthy.  Ermann’s collection was apparently among the largest in the United States.

While most of New York society swirled within the dizzying eddy of balls, receptions and dinners, Martin Erdmann seems to have kept to himself.  While he kept a solitary box at the Metropolitan Opera, his name rarely appeared in the society pages as he quietly busied himself with collecting.

In the meantime the Friars Club, a social club for men in the theatrical industry—actors, impresarios, playwrights, and others--had been established in 1904.  As a fund-raising activity, the group initiated its annual Friars Frolics in 1911.  Among those working on the entertainment were Will Rogers, Victor Herbert, and George M. Cohan.  For his part Irving Berlin wrote “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” for the event.  The funds raised went towards a permanent clubhouse, “the monastery,” which opened in 1916 on West 48^th Street.

After nearly three decades of living alone in his grand East 55^th Street mansion, the 73-year old Martin Erdman died of a heart attack in the house on the afternoon of January 27, 1937.  His $5 million estate was divided, mostly, among his three sisters.  The collection of mezzotints that he had lovingly labored over for decades was carefully packed and shipped to Christie’s Auction House in London.

A two-day sale in December of that year drew collectors and museums from around the globe.  The British Museum acquired 19 “fine English mezzotints” according to a telegram to The New York Times from England.  “Especially notable among the lot that the museum has obtained, according to experts, is an anonymous plate after Sir Joshua Reynolds showing a young girl holding a rough-haired dog in her arms,” it said.

Erdmann’s mezzotints, which a London reporter said had “aroused considerable interest here”  brought what he deemed “fairly high” prices.  A print of Lady Hamilton as “A Bacchante,” after Joshua Reynolds was purchased by the London dealer, Colnaghi, for 430 pounds—about $42,000 in today’s dollars.

By now the Midtown neighborhood around Erdmann’s mansion was nearly devoid of homes as business buildings sprouted up around it.  The house was purchased by real estate broker Frederick Brown who stayed here for five years.  Then in 1943 he sold it to the American Institute of Physics.

The Institute published technical journals, like the Journal of Applied Physics, and was involved in experiments and research.  On October 29, 1945 the Association of Manhattan District Scientists (which took its name from the code name of the Manhattan Project—responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb) issued a searing statement here calling for international control of the atomic bomb.  By November 1956 the American Institute of Physics was looking for a new, more modern facility and announced a campaign for $500,000 to finance a new building.

Meanwhile, the Friars Club had struggled through the Great Depression, finally being evicted from their clubhouse for failure to pay a grocer’s bill of just over $1,000.  By now, however, the club was back on firm financial footing and acquired the Ermann mansion in 1957.  The new "monastery" formally opened in November.

On that night Joe E. Lewis, then Abbot of the club, led a procession from their former clubhouse to the new one.  Street performances were carried on outside the house and then, in a gesture symbolizing that the doors to the clubhouse would always being opened, Lewis threw the keys into the street.

Taylor & Levi’s still-surviving baronial interiors were ideal for the Friars and little was changed.  Here the club’s famous celebrity roasts took place.  Among the first people roasted in the new clubhouse were Joe E. Lewis, Red Buttons, and Jack E. Leonard. 

Some of the rooms took on the names of notable club members.  The Round the World Bar was named for former Abbot Mike Todd’s 1956 movie, Around the World in Eighty Days.  On the second floor are the Joe E. Lewis Bar and the Milton Berle Room; a floor above are the Frank Sinatra Television Viewing Room and the Ed Sullivan Reading Room.

Like most of the exclusive social clubs at the time, the Friars had a male-only membership.  In 1983 the first woman to attend a roast came about when Phyllis Diller disguised herself as a man and crashed the event.  The end of the male-only status came in 1988 when Liza Minnelli became the first female invited for membership.

In 2004 the City of New York renamed the 55th Street block “Friars Way.”

Martin Erdmann’s architecturally remarkable mansion is little changed.  Built for a quiet, introverted man who shunned attention; it is now the home away from home for those who definitely do not.

photographs by the author

The 1902 Speyer School -- Nos. 512-516 W. 126th Street

James Joseph Speyer had worked in the Frankfort, Paris and London branches of his family's bank before returning to New York City in 1885 to join Speyer & Co.  Although he sat on the boards of several other banks and trust companies; his interests went far beyond banking. 

He was one of the founders of the Provident Loan Society following the Financial Panic of 1893.  The organization was established to aid the poor who were being taken advantage of by unscrupulous pawn dealers.  The same year that the Provident Loan Society was incorporated, in 1894, he was actively involved in the overthrow of Tammany Hall.

When Speyer married the young widow Ellin Lowery in 1897 he was already a trustee of the Teachers’ College of Columbia University.  At the time settlement houses were cropping up in impoverished neighborhoods, a result of the rampant social reform movement.  In these facilities struggling women learned skills like sewing and housekeeping; and children were provided with practical instruction as well as a clean, safe environment for play.

Speyer was not merely interested in the concept.  The New York Times noted in 1901 that “He is prominently connected with the University Settlement Society.”  On June 11 that year the newspaper announced that Ellin and James J. Speyer had donated $100,000 to Teachers’ College for “a building for an experimental school, equipped with the latest appliances.”  The significant donation, more than $2.5 million today, would be spent in the gritty neighborhood of Lawrence Street (later renamed 126^th Street) near Amsterdam Avenue.

The New-York Tribune reported on the same day, “The purpose of the givers is to provide a model public school.  The building will have five stories and a basement.  In the basement are to be a large gymnasium, baths, toilet rooms, janitors’ quarters and heating and ventilating plants.  The first story will contain an office for the principal of the school, a children’s reading room, a library a kindergarten room and classroom.  On the second and third floors are to be eight classrooms, each with desks for thirty children, and four recitation rooms.  The fourth floor will provide rooms for manual training, sewing and cooking, a dining room and two recitation rooms.”

The roof would provide outdoor space for a garden—not the expected roof garden of chairs and potted plants, though.  Instead it would be a true garden plot “in which children will be instructed in the care of plants and flowers.”

The fifth floor was reserved for staff “with a parlor, dining room, kitchen, six bedrooms and three private studies.”  Because the Speyer School would not be just for children, trained settlement house workers would live in the Speyer School.  That arrangement allowed the building to be open year round in the days and evenings for the use of the community.

Evening classes were provided for adults and the gymnasium and library were open to the public when not required for normal classes.  To assist the impoverished residents of the area to better themselves, “the facilities in manual training, domestic art and domestic science will be at the disposal of extra school classes when not otherwise in use,” reported the Tribune.  Because turn-of-the-century tenements had little or no bathing facilities, the baths were made available to the public as well when the children were not using them.

Boys and girls from the tenement districts had little hope for a bright future in 1901.  Social reformers aspired to change this.  “The Speyer School will be an experiment station,” said the New-York Tribune.  The newspaper explained that the school’s goal was to improve on the best that was offered by social settlements.

“A critical period in the life of most boys and girls is the years between fourteen and twenty.  It is the time when the support and guidance of the school are replaced by the necessity of earning a livelihood.”  The school, therefore, would focus on the occupations each child was interested in and provide addition studies on those fields.

On August 9, 1901, a month after the title to the plot of land at 94 Lawrence Street was obtained, architect Edgar A. Josselyn filed plans for the Speyer School.  The estimated cost of the structure was put at $70,000.

Josselyn would produce a five-story German Renaissance structure of buff brick and terra cotta.  Minimal ornamentation on the lower floors would be compensated for by a two-story stepped gable with swirling console brackets and exuberant carving.  A thin opening above the paired attic windows gave the impression of an additional floor.

Construction took over a year and the dedication exercises were held on April 23, 1903.  In his speech, Dean Russell stressed that the school was intended “to elevate the community in which it was planted.”  James Speyer spoke as well, diminishing his role in the process.  According to Manual Training Magazine, “The building, he said, is but a small thing.  It is the work of the teacher which tells.  Citizens must be intelligent as well as law-abiding.  In peace and in war, and in the solution of industrial questions, American schools will show their influence.”

The school shortly after completion -- http://www.tc.columbia.edu/news.htm?articleID=7495&pub=7&issue=256

The school was an immediate success, prompting the New-York Tribune to remark the following day “Already the building is taxed to its utmost capacity, and is the home of numerous boys’ and girls’ clubs.”

The roof was soon used for far more than merely the instructional flower and vegetable garden.  On May 30, 1906 the New-York Tribune reported “On the roof of the school is the playground, in the corner of which a model bedroom, with plenty of light and air, has been built by the children in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades.”

To help pay for additional equipment the Speyer School staged a sale of the students’ manual work.  The students themselves were responsible for the operation of the sales.  In December 1907, for instance, the 8^th grade was in charge of finance and the 7^th grade was responsible for “management of sale.”  There were seven special committees like the “examining committee” (“if carelessly made or unsuitably constructed, the examiners will reject articles and return them to the grade which was responsible.").  The “committee on arrangements” found suitable rooms, ensured they were properly cleaned and heated and provided suitable furniture, cash boxes, etc.  Although girls in the sixth through eighth grades supplied some baked goods, there was a special committee on “Candy and Cake.”  Its job was to “endeavor to secure the co-operation of adult friends of Speyer School, who may be willing to make candies for our sale.”

The School Journal noted that the year before the proceeds from that sale went for gymnastic apparatus for the roof playground.  This year the fifth graders had made address booklets for sale.  Frances Van Camp described them.  “First we covered the outside with Japanese paper.  Then cut twenty-seven papers for the inside and marked them.  We printed addresses inside and tied a silk cord with a pencil on the end.”

The sixth grade made needle-books, lamp shapes, baskets and mounted pictures; the seventh and eighth grades fashioned sofa cushions, clipping cases, teapot stands, and decorated fans.

When the sale closed the children had netted $82.92 to be spend on school equipment.  But far more importantly they had learned practical lessons in organization, retail practices, marketing and other business principals.

The focus of the school began to change in 1915.  On February1 that year the New-York Tribune noted “A class for exceptional children will be opened at the Speyer School, a part of Teachers College, February 8.  The judgment of fond parents, however, will not be the sole qualification.  Dr. Louis E. Bisch, a specialist in the treatment of atypical children, and Dr. Naomi Norsworthy, associate professor of educational psychology, will examine and classify the children.”

By “exceptional” and “atypical” the school did not necessarily mean gifted.  Included were those “suffering all the disadvantages of the child mentally below normal,” as described by The Sun eight months later.  Dr. Bisch had implemented an experimental program to study and teach the learning challenged.  His students came not from the underprivileged neighborhood, but from the sitting rooms of Manhattan’s elite.

“In appearance most of the children are normal,” said The Sun on October 24.  “All of them are sons and daughters of well to do parents.  Some of them go to school in automobiles.  All of them have nurses or other attendants to look after them on their trips between home and classes.”  But, said the newspaper, “Each child is a special study in feeblemindedness.”

At the time slow learning and physically disabled children were essentially overlooked by the educational system.  The Speyer School was ground-breaking in this regard.

“All the children in the Speyer School are below normal.  One of them can read, one can write a little.  The senses of one little girl are acute, and she recognizes sounds or colors readily, though letters or numbers are too abstract for her grasp.  Another little girl easily catches the words of a song, but during singing becomes confused and forgets them.”

Not “all the children” in the school were challenged, as The Sun said.  The school looked to the other end of the intelligence spectrum as well.  In February 1916, 200 boys who had completed the 6^th grade were selected for another experimental program.  Based on their keen learning abilities, they were put into a “rapid advance” program.  “They are divided into groups, and shifted about on the basis of individual progress,” reported The Evening World on February 2.  “The boys with whom the experiment succeeds will be able, at the end of two years, to enter the second year of the city high schools, thus gaining one school year.”

At the same time the top floor had been converted for use as the Friendly Home for Girls.  The “home” trained 36 orphaned girls “in all branches of domestic science,” explained The New York Times on January 7, 1917.  The newspaper said that The Friendly Home “marks a departure in the treatment of orphans.”

Supervised by Mrs. Julius J. Frank, Chairman of the Ladies’ Serving Society of the orphan institution, the Home prepared young girls to obtain jobs.  “According to Mrs. Frank many girls already have been placed in households—not as servants, but as ‘mothers’ assistants.’”

As changes in theories of education continued, the Speyer School adapted.  In 1935 a new “experimental school” was established as a joint venture of Teachers College and the Board of Education.  On September 8, 1935 The New York Times described it as an “effort to discover and develop new methods for dealing with both the dull-normal and the bright pupil.”

The school was rechristened PO 500 and the program’s formal title was “The Public School Experiment with Mental Deviates.”  The “deviates” were selected by means of intelligence tests.  “Slow” learners were defined as children with IQ’s of 75 to 90; “rapid” learners had IQ’s of 130 to 200.

From its inception the experiment was to last only until each student’s thirteenth birthday or until February 1941.  After that, the school building was shuttered and, for the first time in four decades, sat unused.  On April 11, 1942 The New York Times reported that among the buildings a group looked at as a possible addition to the City College School of Business was “the abandoned Speyer School at Amsterdam Avenue and 126^th Street.”

Finally in May 1946 Columbia University announced that “Speyer School will be altered to allow quarters for 125 single students.”  It was part of the emergency housing project approved by Governor Dewey to provide housing for returning veterans attending college.  But later that year, in October, Teachers College donated the building to the two-year old Manhattanville Neighborhood Center.

A year and a half renovation costing $160,000 was completed in March 1948.  A dedication ceremony on March 21 drew 250 attendees.  The Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, in his comments, emphasized that the “center wants to go beyond the remedial needs of the neighborhood.”

From 1964 through 1977 the building was owned by the Episcopal Diocese of New York.  During the turbulent civil rights movement era it was the scene of several programs focused on civil rights.  Here one of the first Head Start programs was based and a week before his assassination Dr. Martin Luther King visited the building.

Finances were a problem and in 1977 the Diocese gave the building to the Paul Robeson Community Center; but that group, too, was unable to support it financially.

The former Speyer School, always a center of social outreach and neighborhood improvement, would continue its changing role in 1991.  Across the street sat St. Mary’s EpiscopalChurch which, throughout the 20^th century, had been active in social and community causes.  By now the Speyer School building had been abandoned and neglected for years and St. Mary’s purchased it in a joint venture with the Episcopal Mission Society.

After renovations, it opened as the St. Mary’s Center for persons with HIV/AIDS.  Today the facility continues to house and provide its clients with medical, social and psychosocial support. 

More than a century after its construction, the surprising German Renaissance structure continues its intended purpose of providing support and outreach to the Harlem community; just as James and Ellin Speyer intended.

photographs taken by the author

The 1892 G. Schirmer Publishing Bldg. -- No. 108 East 16th Street

Unfortunately, a modern black iron fire escape nearly veils the amazing facade -- photo by Alice Lum

Gustav Schirmer was born in Saxony in 1829, but at the age of eight, he settled with his family in what the University Musical Encyclopedia would call “the American metropolis”—New York City.   Life for immigrant boys in 1837 was not one of carefree play and school.  Schirmer was immediately put to work in the music house of Scharfenberg & Luis.

The boy learned the trade and in 1854 became manager of the Kerkeig & Breusing publishing house.   When the opportunity was presented to purchase the business in 1868, he joined with B. Beer and formed Beer & Schirmer.  After Beer’s death the name was changed again to G. Schirmer.

By 1891 Schirmer had positioned his company as one of the leading music publishers in the nation.  It was time for a new headquarters that would reflect the firm’s success.  The publisher contracted German architect William Kuhles to design the structure, and Kuhles did not disappoint.

The 33-foot-wide building stretched back 160 feet and rose six stories.  Kuhles created a mirror image façade separated down the middle by a slightly-projecting pier.  Melding the highly popular Romanesque Revival style with a touch of German Renaissance, the facade was composed of a variety of materials.  On December 19, 1891, American Architect and Architecture touched upon the matter saying, “First-story front piers are of polished and rough granite.  The upper part of front, buff bricks and Indiana limestone.”

Architecture and Building published a sketch of the new structure in 1891 -- (copyright expired)

The two-story arches that encompassed the first and second floor retail space were adorned with cast iron colonettes and cast garlands.  The chunky capitals of the first floor piers, upon close inspection, contain carved lyres that reflected the firm’s business.   The motif was repeated in the elaborately-carved spandrels of the arches where a virtual still-life of musical instruments appear.

An intensely-staring "green man" serves as a keystone, while musical instruments fill the flanking spandrels -- photo by Alice Lum

Kuhles kept the German stone cutters busy with a profusion of carved decorations from sidewalk to the eye-catching dormers—stone capitals, fluted piers and grotesque keystone faces.

It would be one of Kuhles’ last designs.  A year later he died, to be followed by Gustav Schirmer’s death the next year in 1893.

Schirmer’s sons, Rudolph E. and Gustave, took over the business.  The upper floors not used by the Schirmer firm were leased as loft space.   The most well-known tenant was another publishing company, Edgar S. Werner who would be here for many years. 

Decorative iron cresting lines the slate-tiled mansard.  Stone carvings appear at every turn, including the two S initials in each dormer, signifying the publisher's name -- photo by Alice Lum

Werner published, for the most part, books and pamphlets dealing with recitation and elocution, along with Werner’s Magazine—a Journal of Express—Vocal and Physical.  Among  the publications Werner printed and distributed from here were How to Read.  A Manual of Elocution and Vocal Culture; Guttmann’s Gymnastics of the Voice, and Cure of Stuttering and Stammering; and Recitations.

In 1895 Werner published Lillie Eginton Warren’s book Defective Speech and Deafness.  Popular Science reported that in it she addressed topics such as “Dull Pupils; Invented or ‘Pathological’ Language; Lisping; Careless Speech; Stuttering; Stammering; and Cleft Palates.”

The lofts were not taken solely by publishing houses.  Another of the original tenants was Andrews-Demarest Seating Co. which manufactured wood-and-cast-iron institutional folding chairs.

Andrews-Demarest provided churches and auditoriums with ready-made seating -- Pratt Institute Monthly 1896 (copyright expired)

In the meantime, Schirmer’s continued to grow as a leading music publisher, and the two-story retail space was a destination for musicians and music lovers.  There was also a musical circulating library—the largest in the country—that allowed musicians to borrow music rather than purchase it.

Unlike most other music publishers, G. Schirmer made a specialty of publishing the works of American composers.  On staff were two experts, Dr. P. Goetschius and Dr. Theodore Baker, who served as literary advisers.  By 1906 G. Schirmer was publishing 18,000 titles.

Celtic braid girds a pilaster capital below a stylized lyre -- photo by Alice Lum

The Schirmer brothers were, by now, very wealthy men.  Gustave and his wife owned a comfortable home at 117 East 35^th Street and a country estate in Princeton, New Jersey.   The well-rounded publisher was not only an accomplished violinist, he was an astronomer, a botanist and had acquired a national reputation as a patron of the arts.

In July 1907, Gustave prepared to join his wife who was traveling in Germany with their daughter and two sons when he was suddenly stricken with appendicitis.   He was taken to a private hospital where he was operated on and where he died shortly afterwards.

The control of G. Schirmer publishing was now in the hands of Rudolph.  Two years later, with the business having outgrown its headquarters, he sold the building on East 16^th Street to George Leerburger and Zade Metzler.

Later, in 1916, Rudolph Schirmer married the opera star Ann Swinburne, a particularly appropriate match.  On August 20, 1919, having suffered a prolonged illness, the publisher realized his death was imminent.  He requested that his wife and a friend, R. B. Gring, sing an air from Beethoven while he quietly died to the music.

The East 16th Street building continued house a variety of manufacturers.  During World War I and for several years afterward, the Clothing and Equipage Division of the Quartermaster Department of U.S. Army was here.  The Department supplied uniforms to the troops.

In 1920, the Individual Towel & Cabinet Service Co. was here, offering hospitals and other institutions the “Individual towel cabinet service [that] assures each person a clean towel every time at a cost much less even than that of paper towels—without the bad features.”

At the same time the Re-Be Soap Company was in the building, manufacturing liquid soap.

Boys at midcentury sent their allowances to Panther National, Ltd. with order forms clipped from Boys’ Life magazine.  The distributor offered everything from a set of 12 different “whittling and carving knives” for $2.00 to a balsa wood chest of 12 hand-tied fishing flies for $1.00.

It was about this time that the owners modernized the street level.  Unlike most “improvements” during this period, however, the façade was not demolished, but covered over with metal panels. 

In 1998, Alfredo De Vido architects was called in to reverse the 1950s updating.   The false façade was removed, the stonework restored and a new entrance installed.

The Schirmer Building's distracting neighbors, including a brutal parking garage, coupled with the fire escape, cause the structure to be often overlooked -- photo by Alice Lum

In 2001 the Talwar Gallery opened here, exhibiting the contemporary works of artists from the Indian subcontinent or of artists with Indian origins born outside of the country.  The retail space where G. Schirmer once sold sheet music and books is now home to Italian Wine Merchants.  Not your ordinary wine store, New York Magazine said of it, “this place feels more like a designer showroom than a wine shop.  Only one bottle of each wine is on display; the rest are stored in the cellar.”

Today, other than a distracting industrial fire escape that zig-zags down the façade, the G. Schirmer publishing building looks nearly exactly as it did when Gustav Schirmer’s first customer walked in the door in 1891.