The 1894 Elmendorf Reformed Chruch - 171 East 121st Street

 

photo by Anthony Bellov

The Harlem Reformed Low Dutch Church was founded in 1660.  Its third house of worship was erected on the northwest corner of Boston Road (today's Third Avenue) and 121st Street in 1825.  Designed by Martin E. Thompson, it was described by the Reformed Church in America a century later as "a frame colonial church."   Its clapboard, neo-Georgian design was fronted by a dignified columned porch.

Martin E. Thompson's wooden church sat within a rural landscape.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1884 the once bucolic Harlem neighborhood was seeing rapid development.  In an astonishing and highly difficult move, the trustees of the Harlem Reformed Low Dutch Church turned its structure on its axis.  Its Greek-inspired portico now faced East 121st Street.  (The new configuration left the valuable corner property vacant and ripe for lucrative developing.)

Reverend Joachim Elmendorf took the pulpit in 1886, at a time when the district's burgeoning population necessitated an additional Dutch Reformed congregation.  A year earlier, construction had commenced of what would be called the Second Collegiate Church on West 123rd Street and Lenox Avenue.  The Harlem Reformed Low Dutch Church was renamed the First Collegiate Church.

The influential Rev. Joachim Elmendorf was born in 1827.  (original source unknown)

In 1893, the congregation commissioned architect John Ireland to design a multi-purpose parish house next door at 169-171 East 121st Street.  Completed the following year, the L-shaped structure was design in the neo-Classical style.  The western section hugged the property line, its second story taking the form of an imposing Greek temple.  Here shallow Doric pilasters separated the tall, fully-arched openings below a modillioned triangular pediment.  The building was accessed by an arched entrance flanked by paired Doric pilasters.  The second floor of this section was dominated by arched windows embraced by a large arch.

image via the New York Public Library

The stone facade disguised the fact that the parish house and Sunday School building was built mostly of wood.  The flammable material nearly caused its destruction at 6:05 on the evening of January 3, 1907.  The Annual Report of the Committee on Fire Underwriters described the blaze that broke out in the "two story frame building" as a "prominent fire."

The parish house snuggled up to the western edge of the 1825 church building, which now faced 121st Street.  New Harlem Past and Present, 1903 (copyright expired)

Reverend Joachim Elmendorf died on June 19, 1908 at the age of 81.  It is unclear if he lived to see the renovations that would transform the parish house and Sunday School building into the congregation's worship space.  The 1939 Reformed Church in America would recall that the "parish house...was rebuilt [in] 1907 and dedicated [in] 1908."  With the renovations completed, Martin E. Thompson's magnificent 1825 church next door was razed.

In 1940, a vacant lot marked the site of the original church.  The property remains a vacant lot today.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Henry P. Hammoxan attended services here on Sunday night, May 30, 1909.  But his presence was not prompted by religious piety, but by a drunken mistake.  The New-York Tribune explained that he "thought when he went into the church and began to climb the stairs to the gallery that he was in the Sylvan lodging house, which is next door, and where he intended to sleep off the result of a day's hard work picking the lemon peel out of high balls."

Suddenly the service was interrupted by a horrific crash that caused some worshippers to think, according to the New-York Tribune, "the gallery was falling down."  Just as Henry Hammoxan made his way to the top step, the organ bellowed the first notes of a hymn.  So startled was the inebriated Henry "that he just fell back and went downstairs end over end."  He suffered a broken ankle and was taken to Harlem Hospital.

On November 2, 1911, The New York Times reported that the Harlem Collegiate Reformed Church was "to change its corporate name to the Reformed Church of Harlem."  The Second Collegiate Church now took that name and the First Collegiate Church was renamed the Elmendorf Chapel.  The New-York Tribune explained, "it has been made a mission to the Lenox Avenue Collegiate Reformed Church, at 123d street."

The changing face of the Harlem neighborhood was reflected in a comment in the 1915 New York Charities Directory.  The listing said that Elmendorf Chapel "maintains a gymnasium and industrial classes."  Industrial classes provided instruction in skills that would provide young boys an income later in life--like woodworking and metal working, for instance.

Reverend Floyd Decker, who was installed in January 1912, was "active among the poor and sick of the upper East Side," according to the New-York Tribune.  Born in Sussex County, New Jersey in 1878, he graduated from the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in 1901.  Under his pastorship, the Elmendorf Chapel congregation provided aid to sick and indigent Harlemites.  On the day before Thanksgiving in 1920, for instance, "food was distributed by children of the Sunday school," reported The New York Times.

On March 5, 1934, the congregation celebrated its 40th anniversary in the renovated building.  In reporting on its rededication, The New York Times reminded readers that Elmendorf Chapel was "one of New York's oldest churches, tracing its origin back to 1665 [sic]."

At the time of the article, two congregants in particular had been long-time members.  John G. Williams took the job of the church's organist and choir master in 1888.  Never married, he was born around 1855 in New York City and "was a pupil of its leading piano and organ teachers of the time," according to The New York Times.  The newspaper said, "Several generations of choir boys, in whom he took not only a professional but a personal interest, came under his guidance during his long service."  In September 1941, Williams became ill and he died two weeks later after serving Elmendorf Chapel for 53 years.

Isaac D. Hammond became a sexton in 1890.  Like Williams had done, he remained in his position until his death in February 1947 after 57 years of service.

In the second half of the century, the Elmendorf congregation became an independent church.  Its name was again changed, now known as the Elmendorf Reformed Church.

Around 1668, the Low Dutch Reformed Church of Harlem established what a 1910 sketch described as "a negro burying ground" at around today's First Avenue between 126th and 127th Streets.  As Harlem developed, the location was forgotten and in the 20th century a New York City Transit bus depot was erected on top of it.  Then, early in the 21st century, interest was renewed.  On January 19, 2009, The New York Times reported that the African burial ground was "awaiting discovery," saying, "There will be no way to know for certain until the soil is dug up, but the prospect of such a discovery is being greeted both anxiously and eagerly by a couple of stewards of Harlem history."

Among those speaking out was Reverend Patricia A. Singletary, pastor of the Elmendorf Reformed Church, who insisted that the site should be protected and commemorated should the cemetery be confirmed.  She told The New York Times, "Remember, this site represents the beginning of Harlem's existence."

An archeological survey, indeed, confirmed that the former bus terminal sat upon the Low Dutch Reformed Church of Harlem's "negro burying ground."  The Elmendorf Reformed Church joined with other groups to form the Harlem African Burial Ground Task Force to protect the site.

photograph by Beyond My Ken

The Elmendorf Reformed Church continues its work in the former 1894 parish house.  Displayed in the sanctuary is a bell, cast in the Netherlands in the 17th century.  

many thanks to Anthony Bellov for suggesting this post

The Henry and Felicia Ressmeyer House - 348 West 122nd Street

 

J. A. Webster designed eleven brownstone-fronted rowhouses along the north side of West 122nd Street between Morningside and Manhattan Avenues for developers Joseph W. and A. Alonzo Teets in 1888.  Upon their completion in 1889, the brothers brought Webster back to design ten houses on the opposite side of the street.  This time E. H. Hammond was listed as working with Webster on the designs.  

Filed in May 1889, the plans listed the construction cost of the three-story, 16-foot wide homes at $11,000 each, or about $397,000 in 2026.  The neo-Grec design of 348 West 122nd Street included beefy cast iron stoop newels and balustraded railings.  Echoing the entrance enframement, the windows sat within architraves decorated with incised "fluting" on the lower portion and stylized flowers above.  The brackets of the parlor window cornice mimicked those of the entranceway.

The Teets originally rented the house, with the leases of some occupants being cut short by their demise.  Barbara Rimick was one of 75 New Yorkers who succumbed to a brutal late season heat wave on November 24, 1891.  She was 73 years old. On August 18, 1899, resident Margaret Johnson died in the house at the age of 43.  

Shortly afterward, the house was purchased by Fannie Mayer, the widow of Robert Mayer.  Living here with her and her unmarried daughters, Fanny, Annie, and Caroline, was at least one maid.  Tragically, Fannie would live here only a matter of weeks.  She died "after a lingering illness," as reported by the New York Herald, on April 11, 1900.  She was 61 years old.

The sisters experienced a shocking and distressing incident two years later.  The Brooklyn Standard Union ran a one-line article on June 3, 1902 that read: "Annie Dahn, employed by Miss Annie Meyer [sic], of 348 West 122d street, Manhattan, took her life this morning by swallowing carbolic acid."

After Annie's marriage to Joseph A. Kapp, Caroline and Fanny continued to live at 348 West 122nd Street.  Then, on July 29, 1908, Fanny died "after long suffering," according the notice in The New York Times.  Her funeral was held in the parlor on the 31st.

Caroline Mayer sold 348 West 122nd Street in August 1910 to Henry Frederick Ressmeyer and his wife, the former Felicitas Stang.  (Felicitas was known familiarly as Felicia.)  Born in Germany in January 1854, Henry was the president of the Lutheran Education Society.  He and Felicia were married in 1888 and they had three children, Felicia C., Rudolph S., and Gertrude Henrietta.  

Rudolph, who was a Lutheran minister, lived elsewhere.  But moving into the house with the family was Felicia's widowed mother, Anna C. Stang.

Both Gertrude and Felicia attended Barnard College.  (Felicia would eventually move to Maryland where she was associated with the Society for Preservation of Maryland Antiquities at midcentury.)

Henry F. Ressmeyer died in the house on September 19, 1921.  Most likely because of his involvement with the Lutheran Church, the parlor would not accommodate the anticipated mourners at his funeral.  It was held two days later at St. Matthews Lutheran Church on 145th Street and Convent Avenue. 

As late as 1940, there was not a single tree on the block.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Another funeral would be held in the parlor four years later.  Anna C. Stang died at the age of 79 on May 29, 1925.  Her funeral was held here on the 31st.  The following month, The New York Times reported that her estate would be distributed among her "children and grandchildren."

At the time of Anna Stang's death, the Harlem neighborhood was changing.  Private homes were being converted to rooming houses.  Felicia sold 348 West 122nd Street to Jeanette Glassman in February 1928 for $20,000 (about $321,000 today).  In reporting the sale, The New York Times inaccurately commented, "This is the first sale of the property in twenty-five years."

Jeanette Glassman resold the house to Louise Chaudruc three months later.  He rented rooms to respectable tenants, among the first of whom was Robert W. Frary.  On August 30, 1928, the Alfred, New York newspaper The Alfred reported that Frary, "who has been doing graduate work at Columbia and Texas," had been named to fill the temporary professorship of Columbia Professor Joseph Sidlin.

The building received a "multiple dwelling violation" in 1938, most likely for the lack of sprinklers.  Their installation was completed in 1940.

Although never officially converted to apartments, there are eight rental units in the former Ressmeyer house.  From the outside, it survives remarkably intact.

photographs by the author

The 1883 Frank B. Houghton House - 30 West 130th Street

image via zillow.com

In 1844, when Harlem was still dotted with farms and country estates, John Jacob Astor I acquired a portion of two farms for $10,000 (about $445,000 in 2026).  Upon his death in 1848, the blockfront that would become West 130th Street between Fifth and Lenox Avenues was inherited by his son, William Backhouse Astor.  It passed to William Backhouse Astor, Jr. in 1875.  

The blockfront would become lined with 28 private homes, erected in three groups.  Architect Charles Buek designed the first--8 through 22 West 130th Street--in 1880.  They were completed in 1881 and the following year ground was broken for the second group, 24 through 38.  (The final section, 40 through 62, would be completed in 1883.)  No doubt to reduce costs, it appears that the builder simply followed Charles Buek's original designs in erecting 22 through 62 West 130th Street, since there is no architect of record.  The resultant row was called "the Block Beautiful" in Claude McKay's 1928 novel Home to Harlem.

30 West 130th Street is the second from left.  image via streeteasy.com

Designed as mirror-image pairs separated by a carriage drive that accessed the rear yards, the homes were three stories tall above short basements.  Their neo-Grec-style facades were clad in brick and trimmed in brownstone.  Generous gardens fronted delightful wooden porches.  Dentiled brick cornices sat above brick friezes decorated with recessed quatrefoil designs.

Astor retained possession of the houses, leasing them as rental income.  His first tenant of 30 West 130th Street was Frank R. Houghton, a real estate agent, and his widowed step-mother, Virginia Patten Houghton.  Frank was born in Halifax, Vermont in 1825 to Royall and Sarah Farrell.  Sarah died in 1851 and Royall married Virginia Patten in May that same year.

In the spring of 1886, Virginia Patten Houghton was in Pass, Mississippi where she died "suddenly," according to the New-York Tribune, on April 3.  Her funeral was held in the 130th Street house on April 10.

There would be another funeral in the parlor before long.  Frank Houghton moved away soon after his step-mother's death and the next tenant, Peter Asten, died in the house at the age of 84 on January 16, 1887.  His funeral was held two days later.

The house next became home to Thomas C. and William McAlpine Wiswall, partners in the Pennsylvania-based Wiswall Paint Co., and their families.  Thomas C. Wiswall was the company's president and a sergeant in the Seventh Regiment of the New York National Guard.  He and his wife, the former Mary Brown, had no children.

Thomas C. Wiswall, Seventh Regiment Gazette, October 1923, (copyright expired)

William McAlpine Wiswall was born 1841 in Troy, New York but was educated in Port Austin, Michigan.  The New York Times would recall that one of his teachers was James A. Garfield.  William's wife was Louisa Bishop Chatterton, and also living here were Louise's parents, Thomas and Adeline M. Bishop Chatterton.  

Thomas Chatterton was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1818 and started out as a merchant tailor there.  The New Haven Morning & Courier would recall, "he rapidly won favor, patronage and success, but his energetic spirit craving a larger field, he removed to New York."  Chatterton engaged in the wholesale, ready-made clothing business.  He retired in the 1880s.  Each year, Thomas Chatterton would return to New Haven to spend his summers at the Branford Point House.

Louisa Bishop Wiswall died in the house on September 26, 1895 at the age of 51.  Interestingly, her funeral was not held in the parlor, but at the Church of the Puritans on 130th Street at Fifth Avenue.

In 1897 Thomas Chatterton was the treasurer of the first panel of the Sheriff's Jury, a non-judicial group that assisted the Sheriff's Department in administrative work.  In January 1898, the 80-year-old attended the group's annual dinner at Delmonico's and during the evening he became ill.  He died in the 130th Street house two weeks later, on February 6.  His funeral was held in the parlor on the 9th.

Adeline Bishop Chatterton survived her husband by four years.  She died at the age of 79 on February 7, 1902.  Her funeral, too, was held in the house.

William Astor bequeathed the 130th Street row to his grandchildren, Mary, James and Sarah Van Alen.  In 1902, they sold 30 West 130th Street to Fannie and Ferdinand Braun, who operated it as a boarding house.

Among their early residents were William P. Kelly and his family, who would remain at least through 1909.  The parlor of 30 West 130th Street, which had frequently been used for funerals, was the setting of Emma Foord Kelly's marriage to Samuel Pierre Hull on October 24, 1906.

A less respectable boarder was Louisa Marcarious, who was arrested in her rooms on April 20, 1907.  Born in New Orleans in 1883, she was described by The New York Times as being "well dressed and is apparently an educated woman."  She was charged with "receiving stolen goods" from her accomplices, described by the newspaper as "two negroes" who "seemed uncouth companions for the refined-looking white woman."

The complainant against Louisa Marcarious and her cohorts was Margaret Melbourne, who said, "her home had been robbed of silverware and other property on June 4, 1906."  Some of her stolen silverware was discovered in "the rooms of the Marcarious woman and her companions."  The article said that another burglary victim had been asked to inspect "the loot recovered" in hopes they could identify "plunder stolen from his house."

Louisa Marcarious was an anomaly among the otherwise upstanding boarders, like the family of Thaddeus Moriarty, for instance, who occupied rooms in 1911.  Daughter Theresa S. Moriarty was president of the Ladies' Ursuline Provincial Auxiliary, a philanthropic and social group.  And on June 23, 1911, The New York Times reported, "Mrs. Thaddeus Moriarty and Miss Theresa S. Moriarty of 30 West 130th Street are at the North End Hotel, in Ocean Grove, N.J., until the end of August."

Susan L. Pierce purchased the house in March 1921.  She operated it as a rooming house, and among her first roomers was Elbert Butler.  He was arrested on February 1, 1923, for spitting in a subway station.  In imposing a $5 fine, the infuriated magistrate railed, "It is a disgrace the way every subway station is filled with men smoking and spitting on the platform and the track bed and nothing is done about it."

The wooden porch was painted in several colors in 1940.  via the NYC Dept of Reords & Information Services.

By the World War II era, the Harlem neighborhood was predominantly black and racial tensions were high throughout the city.  On March 19, 1943, The New York Times began an article saying, "While three Negro youths were being held in the stabbing early yesterday of a 17-year-old youth in a Harlem 'racial' fight, it was announced that 150 rookie policemen have been assigned to the Harlem area."

The incident began when, according to police, "a gang of twenty Negroes crowded around Nick Adams, 17, of 42 East 129th Street, as he was standing in front of his house."  One of the teens demanded, "Are you a white boy?"

Adams replied, "I'm a gypsy."

The gang attacked and Adams attempted to fight back until he was fatally stabbed in the back.  Police arrived in time to arrest three of the gang members, including 19-year-old James Green who lived at 30 West 130th Street.

In 1981, the house next door was vacant and boarded up, a fertile target for vandals.  photograph by Andrew Dolkart via the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

By the last quarter of the 20th century, the house next door was vacant and neglected.  Although the Landmarks Preservation Commission sued the owner in an effort to pressure him to repair the seriously dilapidated structure, it was demolished in 2021, leaving No. 30 isolated along what was now known as Astor Row.

image via streeteasy.com

Today there are 11 apartments in 30 West 130th Street.  More than a bit bedraggled, it nevertheless survives as part of a forward thinking community-planned project by one of Manhattan's wealthiest 19th century figures.

The 1893 Harlem Courthouse - 170 East 121st Street

 

The spiraling windows of the corner tower conform to the marble and iron staircase inside.  photograph by Americasroof

On December 13, 1890, Commissioner of Public Works Thomas Francis Gilroy "presented the plans for the new Harlem Court House at 121st street and Sylvan place," as reported by The Sun.  Those plans were still being drawn up by Thom & Wilson, which projected the cost at $200,000 (about $7.3 million in 2026).  The article noted that the structure would "have accommodations for the district, police, and civil courts.  There will be forty-eight cells in the prison."

Gilroy, who had just stepped into his role a year earlier, most likely wanted this project to be scandal free.  The construction of the previous Harlem Courthouse just two decades earlier was one of most egregious and publicized examples of graft and corruption within William "Boss" Tweed's Tammany Hall administration.  

Ground was broken in 1891 and construction continued for two years.  If Gilroy had hoped that everything would proceed smoothly, he was disappointed.  On July 7, 1892, The Evening World reported that work had completely stopped.  When the marble cutters went on strike because contractor Maxwell & Dempsey was using non-union men, "all the other trades went out in support of the strikers."

Two months later, on September 4, 1892, the New-York Tribune reported that the Plasterers' Association had accused H. Sinclair's Sons (the contractor for doing the plaster work) of "not only employing non-union men, mostly cheap Italian laborers...but they are not complying with the specification."  The union charged "that instead of papier mache mouldings and ornaments which are called for in the contract, only common plaster is supplied."  And the problems continued.  The following month The Evening World reported that the carpenters' union "is having trouble with Contractor Lantry" for employing non-union men.

Finally, just as 1892 drew to a close, the Harlem Courthouse was completed.  Thom & Wilson had blended its Romanesque Revival design with Victorian Gothic detailing, most evident in the octagonal clock tower and the gothic crockets that sprouted along the roofline.  Above a rusticated granite base, the courthouse was clad in red brick and trimmed in bluestone and terra cotta.  The 121st Street and Sylvan Place elevations were mirror images of one another, both containing asymmetrical large and small gables, the larger of which embraced dramatic double-height, arched triptych openings.

(Incidentally, the block-long Sylvan Place was the last surviving remnant of the Eastern Post Road which, as The New York Times recalled in April 1920, "was the main route out of the city to Boston.")

The Harlem Courthouse was opened on New Year's Day 1893.  There was no fanfare as the judges walked in at 9:30 a.m. and went to business.  There were, nevertheless, some welcoming gestures.  The World reported, "Across the large window, back of the Judge's desk, stretched the letters which formed the word 'Welcome.'  They were formed of white immortelles."  The article somewhat snidely remarked, "It is not known whether the floral salutation was addressed to the Judge, the New Year, or the twenty prisoners who lined up before the desk."  Police Justice Welde's court attachés presented him with a floral horseshoe that read "Happy New Year, C. W."

The Evening World opined, "The Ninth [District Court] has the most gorgeous apartments in the new Harlem Court-House.  There is not a better equipped civil court in New York than this, from point of location and convenience."

That first day's docket was mundane.  The first case heard in the new courthouse was that of saloon owner W. F. Aiken.  The World said, "He was arrested for disorderly conduct, but was discharged."  Then came Michael Dwyer, who drove a grocery wagon.  He was charged with colliding with a cable car on Amsterdam Avenue and Manhattan Street.  "The wagon was upset and Dwyer went out on his head.  The gripman had a hand crushed and one finger broken," reported the article.  And 17-year-old Peter Hickey faced the charge of stealing a pair of shoes from Meyer Mouser's store.

The World published a woefully inaccurate sketch of the new building on January 2, 1893. (copyright expired)

Other cases, of course, were less routine.  On August 5, 1899, for instance, Mrs. Margaret Shakett was arrested for abandoning her three-week-old child.  A pedestrian saw her get off a trolly car "at a lonely place and leave the baby on a stone wall on the Simpson estate," reported the New-York Tribune.  While admitting to the crime, Margaret Shakett emotionally described her situation to the judge.  Her husband had abandoned her several months earlier and she had lived since then by selling her furniture piece-by-piece.  She had been unable to find work until she had no money to support her or her baby.  The New-York Tribune recounted, "she decided to leave the infant at a place where she thought it would be quickly found by persons in good circumstances."

Thom & Wilson provided a more accurate rendering in 1891.  The History of the Portland Cement Industry in the United States 1900 (copyright expired)

After hearing her heart-wrenching tale, the judge dismissed Margaret Shakett.  Later that day, however, a representative of the National Home for Children on 51st Street appeared to say that Mrs. Shakett "was the woman who had abandoned many babies in different parts of the city."

Kingdon Gould was the privileged son of George Jay Gould and Edith Kingdon Gould.  Apparently feeling that his family's wealth and stature made him immune to everyday rules, as a freshman at Columbia University, he refused to wear a freshman's cap, infuriating members of the sophomore class.  When they attempted to force him to wear it, he pulled out a revolver and fired over their heads, sending them running.

Gould's cavalier attitude about rules and laws was reflected again in 1908 when he was arrested on May 17 for "speeding an automobile."  He posted $100 bond to appear in the Harlem Courthouse to stand trial.  The 21-year-old did not appear.  Rather than forfeit his bond, the court gave him a second chance, postponing the case for a week.  On June 1, The Sun reported that the judge "directed that Gould plead yesterday, which he did not do."  Instead, said the article, "It is said that Kingdon Gould has gone to Europe for the summer."  The judge issued a bench warrant for the insolent young man's arrest.

A disturbing case came before the Police Court on January 10, 1912.  Walter Freeman, a black man who worked as a sleeping car porter, and an unnamed white man rented a small office on West 133rd Street.  Freeman then sent for another Pullman porter, Frank Foster, and told him that he needed to find employees for a "palatial" hotel that was about to open in Cuba.  The Evening World reported, "He instructed Foster to hustle out and get hold of from eighty to a hundred young, alert negroes for good jobs in Havana."

Foster rounded up hallboys, bellmen, porters and elevator operators.  Freeman "hired" them, but only after they paid $3 or $5 in advance for their uniforms.  The men quit their jobs, and some "pawned their overcoats" to get enough money for the uniform advances.  On January 11, The Evening World added, "And one negro pawned his shoes yesterday to make up $5 to give Freeman, figuring that he was going to a warm climate and wouldn't need shoes until he got to work, when he could probably borrow a pair."

Walter Freeman told the group that their passage to Havana had been paid.  On the freezing morning of January 11, the 81 men stood on the pier to board the liner Mexico.  "All of them carried grips or suitcases, but many had no overcoats and one was without shoes," said the article.  "No passage had been engaged for the fourscore negroes by Freeman or anybody else."

The duped men traveled back north to the Harlem Courthouse where they lodged their complaint against Walter Freeman.  The Evening World reported that a police officer who went to the West 133rd address was told that "Freeman disappeared last night."

photograph by Jerry Spearman, via the New York Landmarks Conservancy

In a case that recalled that of Margaret Shakett years earlier, on May 8, 1925 Mrs. Augusta Geisen-Volks appeared in court to answer charges of running an "infantorium" on East 86th Street where "twenty-two children had died there within a year."  The widow of a Prussian army officer, she took in unwanted infants, presumably for adoption.  

At the time of Augusta Geisen-Volks's disturbing trial, Victor Wahlberg had wound the clocks here every week since the building's opening.  He not only wound these clocks, but every clock in city-owned buildings throughout the city.  He came to America from Stockholm at the age of 17 in 1890.  Having been a watchmaker's apprentice at home, he got the clock-winding job in 1892.  The New York Times explained on January 10, 1933 that once a week since then, "Mr. Wahlberg had gone the rounds from City Hall to Harlem Courthouse, winding, oiling and repairing the municipal clocks."  

The reason for New York Times's article was that after 40 years and having served under 13 mayors, Victor Wahlberg had lost his job.  On New Year's Day 1933, Hyman Goldschmidt took over the position, having undercut Wahlberg's bid for the contract by $366.  In his "somber flat," Wahlberg told a New York Times reporter, "I'll will get by."  Victor Wahlberg died in a nursing home on April 18, 1949.

The Great Depression saw the Works Progress Administration arise from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs.  It created jobs for out-of-work Americans, including artists who suddenly found themselves decorating the walls and ceilings of municipal buildings.  In 1936, artist David Karfunkle was commissioned to adorn the third floor of the Harlem Courthouse.  His not-so-subtle message was depicted in his mural Exploitation of Labor and Hoarding of Wealth.

David Karfunkle at work on his powerful 1936 mural. from the Archives of American Art.

In 1953 the city established the Department of Air Pollution Control "to lead a scientific attack on air contamination," as explained by The New York Times.  On December 12, 1954, the newspaper reported that the Department's air pollution laboratory had lost its lease.  "With a limited choice of substitute quarters, the city must now decide whether to continue the infant laboratory or abandon it as too costly,"  said the article.  Under consideration, it said, "is the old Harlem Courthouse, a somewhat rundown structure at East 121st Street and Sylvan Place."

Two years later, on July 14, 1955, The New York Times reported, "The City's Air Pollution Control Laboratory moved yesterday to roomier quarters in the Harlem Courthouse."  The chemists now had "twice as much floor space," said the article, as its previous location.  

The building ceased to operate as a courthouse in 1961 and when it was considered for individual landmark designation in June 1966, the Air Pollution Control Laboratory was its only tenant.  But within two years, as the Harlem Community Justice Center, the structure began offering services to local residents.

Le Brun's 1889 Hook & Ladder Co. 14 - 120 East 125th Street

 

image via the Historic Districts Council

In 1865, "suburban" fire companies were established in the mostly rural Harlem district.  Less busy than their urban counterparts, the fire fighters were given less pay and no horse-drawn equipment.  Included in these companies was Suburban Ladder No. 14 at 120 East 125th Street.

As Harlem developed, Suburban Ladder No. 14 was replaced by Hook & Ladder Company 14 on January 1, 1868.  Still using the station house on December 18, 1881, the New York Dispatch described the company as "one of the best truck companies in the upper part of the city.  It has good officers and men, the latter being under excellent discipline."  But in 1888, the company was in serious need of modern accommodations.

A year earlier, on June 18, 1887, The Real Estate Record & Guide commented that fire stations were an exception to the very few "decent-looking" buildings erected by the city.  "The Fire Department...had the good sense to employ architects of repute to design their buildings, and selected Messrs. N. Le Brun & Son for that purpose."  Napoleon Le Brun had been appointed official architect for the department in 1879.  Before the turn of the century he and his son would be responsible for the design of 42 fire houses.  

Napoleon Le Brun & Son filed plans for a "four-story brick building" on April 27, 1888, projecting the cost at $16,500--or about $576,000 in 2026.  Using a variation of its typical Queen Anne design, the firm added touches of Romanesque Revival in the undressed brownstone base, the medieval decoration carved into the second floor lintel, the rounded stone piers at the sides that terminated in carved finials, and the creative wrought-iron jib, or bracket, in the form of a dragon.  (The jib was used to haul hay bales to the attic.)  Le Brun & Son stepped away from both styles in designing the attic as a slate-shingled mansard in the Second Empire style.

Perhaps the first tragedy for Hook & Ladder Company 14 came on June 9, 1895.  Patrick Conlin had been with the company since 1883 when he was 25.  He was headed to work at 2:15 that afternoon when an alarm of fire at 165 East 112th Street came in.  The truck raced down Lexington Avenue "at full speed," as reported by The New York Times.  The article said, "he saw the truck going by and made a run to jump on the long rail which extends along the side of the truck."  Conlin slipped and fell.  The rear wheels "passed over Conlin's body, leaving him mangled and unconscious."  The 37-year-old died later that afternoon.

Rescues from burning buildings in the 19th century sometimes required dangerous, nearly gymnastic, tactics.  On September 29, 1896, Hook & Ladder Company 14 responded to a fire at 2365 Third Avenue.  When they arrived, the fire had engulfed the first floor and spread to the second.  Frederick Thompson, who occupied rooms on the fourth floor, had been asleep and was the only tenant not to escape.  Two firefighters, Thomas Corrigan and John Lutz, "saw his predicament and hastened to the rescue."

They went to the top floor of the the three-story building next door.  The Sun reported,  "Corrigan stood with one foot on the cornice of the house and reached with the other foot to the lintel of the third story of the burning house, at the same time grasping the sill of Thompson's window."  When he was certain of "the firmness of his grasp on the window sill," Corrigan threw his other arm around Thompson's waist and drew him across the void.  

Corrigan straddled the cornice and lintel of two buildings to rescue the victim.  The Sun, September 30, 1896 (copyright expired)

The Sun said, "When Lutz had taken Thompson in his grasp and drew him over on the roof a cheer went up from the crowd below, and the cheer was repeated when Corrigan climbed to the roof from his perilous position, and all three were safe."

The company's truck was pulled by three horses, the oldest of which was Paddy, who was always in the center.  The company acquired him in 1871 when he was six years old.  At the time of Corrigan's and Lutz's remarkable rescue, Paddy was "if not the oldest horse in the department, he was one of the oldest," said the New York Herald two years later.

Paddy had an unexpected best buddy, Chief, described by the newspaper as "a splendid greyhound."  In 1891, Chief was brought to the station house as a puppy.  The New York Herald said he "blundered" into Paddy's stall.  The firefighters were alarmed, expecting "to see him kicked or trampled."  Instead, "the big horse only put his head down inquiringly, and Chief licked his nose in token of good fellowship.  From that time the two were fast friends."  Every evening, Chief would bed down on the straw in a corner of Paddy's stall.  When an alarm would ring, Chief would bark, Paddy would whinny "with all the power of his throat" and the greyhound would race through the streets next to the galloping horses.

At 4:00 on the morning of August 19, 1897, Chief began wailing.  Some of the firefighters, said the New York Herald, "yelled at Chief and told him to be quiet, but he only clamored the louder."  Captain Terpeny send a man down to see what was wrong.  "That dog isn't carrying on that way for fun," he said.  And he was right.

The article said, "The big horse was very sick and his friend had been calling for help."  The FDNY's veterinarian diagnosed Paddy with cholic.  The New York Herald reported:

The horse became weaker and weaker, and finally fell down.  Chief stayed with him, licking his face and howling mournfully until the end, which was about 7 o'clock.  Then it was with great difficulty that the men got him out of the stall.

The newspaper concluded the article saying, "There is talk of giving the horse a ceremonial burial, with Chief as principal mourner."

via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

On February 1, 1907, the New-York Tribune reported that the station house of Hook & Ladder Company 14 would be receiving updates by architect Edward L. Middleton.  The renovations, costing the equivalent of more than $700,000 today, included "new concrete and iron floors...for the apparatus and the sliding pole floor opening enlarged."

The new floors had much to do with modern motorized equipment.  Hook & Ladder Company 14's speedy fire trucks greatly impressed Walter J. Albert in 1922.  On the night of May 1 that year he made "a little wager" with two friends, as described by the New-York Tribune.  He bet them that Engine 14 "could get from its house at 120 East 125th Street to the [alarm] box at 133d Street and Madison Avenue in three minutes."  The friends took the bet and Albert pulled the alarm.

The newspaper said, "When Albert was caught near the box at 133d Street the firemen were in a mood to cripple him.  It was the third time they had been called out on false alarms."  The article said that Patrolman Patrick Cushen, who caught Albert, "had to protect him from the irate fireman."

At the station house, Albert confessed that he was betting on the speed of the fire engine.

"Did you win?" asked one of the detectives.

"Naw, they were two minutes slow."

By the second half of the 20th century, the personality of the congested Harlem neighborhood around the firehouse had greatly changed.  City employees like policemen and firefighters were often viewed with suspicion and derision.  At around 2:00 on the morning of December 27, 1961, Hook & Ladder Company 14's truck was passing a crowd outside a bar at Park Avenue and 123rd Street.  Suddenly a bottle smashed against the side of the fire truck.  The New York Times reported that the truck stopped "and a fight ensued."

The article said, "The street fight was broken up by an unidentified railroad detective.  He drew his pistol and forced back the crowd as it pummeled the firemen."  In the end, four fire fighters and one civilian were injured.  

In 1975, Hook & Ladder Company 14 was relocated to 2282 Third Avenue.  Its former firehouse was officially decommissioned in 2003.  Napoleon Le Brun & Son's striking firehouse sat vacant and neglected for years.  Then, on August 31, 2014, The Real Deal reported, "An abandoned 19th-century firehouse in East Harlem is getting a new lease on life as a cultural center."

Six years earlier, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito had saved the structure from the auction block by promising that it would be repurposed as a cultural center.  The Real Deal reported, "Now the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute has been selected as the building's developer."  The Daily News reported that the organization would spent $5.5 million on restoration and renovations to the building.

photograph by Steven Bornholtz

Today, the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute's website explained that it "preserves and presents African Diaspora cultures, promoting arts and culture as tools for personal transformation, community-building, and social justice."

The Langston Hughes House - 20 East 127th Street

 

photograph by Americasroof

Four years after the end of the Civil War, pioneering developers were beginning to transform Harlem from country estates and farms to an attractive suburb.  Two of them, James Meagher and Thomas Hanson, erected two 20-foot-wide, three-story homes on East 127th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues in 1869.  Designed by Alexander Wilson, their Italianate design was handsome, but unexceptional.  Throughout the city, similar rows of nearly identical homes were being constructed, their monotonous appearance sometimes befuddling inebriated homeowners who could not find their own house.

Like its neighbor, 20 East 127th Street was clad in brownstone.  A high stone stoop rose to the double-doored entrance below an arched pediment supported by elaborately carved corbels.  The segmentally arched openings sat within molded architraves and a bracketed pressed metal cornice crowned the design.

The house became home to the Walter C. Palmer, Jr. family.  A printer, publisher, author and bookseller, he and his wife, Mary G., had at least one child, Mamie, born in 1867.

Palmer's business focused on religious topics.  Several of the works he published were related to the American Holiness Movement, co-founded by his mother, evangelist and author Phoebe Palmer.  (The movement stressed the doctrine of John Wesley, called "Christian perfection.")  He not only published Phoebe Palmer's works, but in 1869-70 he co-edited The Guide to Holiness Magazine with her.

In 1874, Mamie Palmer contracted scarlet fever.  The seven-year-old died on March 25 and her funeral was held in the parlor two days later.

The Palmers left West 127th Street by 1876 and No. 20 became home to Alexander Gaw and his unmarried daughter, Louisa.  Gaw's wife, the former Elizabeth Campbell, had died at the age of 65 on November 9, 1874.  Alexander Gaw was in the paint business and was, additionally, a trustee of the West Side Savings Bank.  

The parlor was the scene of another funeral in 1880.  Louisa Gaw died on October 18 and her funeral held here on the 21st.

In May 1886, an advertisement offered 20 East 127th Street for rent.  It described it as a "Three story brown stone House, good order, to let; nine hundred dollars."  The figure would translate to about $31,800 per year today.

The house was leased by E. Jeanrenaud, who converted it to The Harlem Collegiate School.  The private boys' school accommodated 30 students including six "boarding pupils."

The Nation, September 1, 1887 (copyright expired)

The venture was short lived and on September 14, 1889, an advertisement in the New-York Tribune announced the opening of the Mount Morris School, headed by Frank Clifford Lyman and George B. Towle.  The ad said in part:

In the resolve to have a school of telling merit, the principals rely on the highest standards, enthusiastic interest, liberal recitation methods and advanced methods.  The start in Classics a specialty.

Frank Clifford Lyman and his family occupied space on the upper floors.  The ad said, "A school home of rare advantages is offered to a very few boys in the principals' household."  Only three boys were accepted as boarding students.

Frank Clifford Lyman would continue to operate The Mount Morris School in the house into the mid-1890s.  It became home to the Nussbaum family at the turn of the century, and to Dr. John Staunton Blackmar by 1906.

Born in Connecticut in 1874, Blackmar graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1898 and served in the Spanish-American War as a first lieutenant and Assistant Surgeon in the Third Connecticut Voluntary Infantry

Dr. John S. Blackmar in his military uniform.  (original source unknown)

He became associated with Harlem Hospital in June 1900 and by the time he moved into 20 East 127th Street was doing clinical work in the Harlem Hospital Dispensary.  It was likely his marriage to Mildred Martin in 1910 that ended his residency here.

Edward Goldschmidt, who owned 20 East 127th Street, continued to lease the house.  From 1910 to 1914 it was home to Reverend Edward H. Cleveland of the New York Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society.  The American Church Almanac and Year Book said he was "Missionary to Riverside Hospital, North Brother's Island, and Branch Workhouse, Riker's Island."

A major change came when Edward Goldschmidt leased the house to Henry Riddle in August 1914.  He rented rooms in the upper portion and installed "the Funeral Parlors of Henry Riddle" in the lower floors.  Riddle operated the funeral home and chapel through the spring of 1920, when the Goldschmidt estate sold the house.

No. 20 East 127th Street saw a flurry of residents over the subsequent two decades.  Then in 1947, musician William Emerson Harper, his wife, the former Ethel "Toy" Dudley Brown, and poet Langston Hughes co-purchased the house for $12,500 (about $180,000 today).

Trumpeter W. Emerson Harper was known as much for his labor activism as for his music.  He routinely contributed articles to periodicals regarding the financial struggles of musicians.  

He and Ethel, a costume designer and seamstress, had become close friends of Langston Hughes in the 1930s.  At the time, Hughes was emerging as a significant writer and poet.  His first novel, Not Without Laughter, published in 1930, earned him the Harmon Gold Medal for literature.  His close relationship with the Harpers was evidenced by his dedicating his 1940 autobiography, The Big Sea, to them.

Langston Hughes in 1942.  photograph by Cal Varn Vechten from the collection of the Yale University Library.

Hughes occupied the upper portion of the house.  Among the works he produced here were Shakespeare in Harlem in 1942; Montage of a Dream Deferred, published in 1951; a series of humorous books about character Jess B. Simple written from 1950 through 1965; and works about Black culture, like the 1952 The First Book of Negroes; the 1954 Famous American Negroes; and The Book of Negro Folklore, published in 1958.

Langston Hughes entered the Polyclinic Hospital for prostate surgery in the spring of 1967.  The operation was "apparently successful," according to the New York Amsterdam News, but complications developed.  He died on May 22 at the age of 66.  In reporting his death, newspapers nationwide lauded his work.  The San Francisco Chronicle, for instance, wrote:

A versatile and prolific writer, Hughes was equally fluent in the lyric voice of the poet, sharp-humored posturing and rhythms that echoed folk music and jazz, and the plaint of Simple, the Harlem philosopher who was his best known creation.

The Harpers remained in the house, transferring the title to their son, James Emerson Harper in 1980.  He sold it to Dr. Beverly Prince, an ear, nose and throat surgeon at Harlem Hospital, and her husband, Les Rolfe, five years later.

An automobile sits in front of the stoop of 20 East 127th Street in 1940.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

By the 2000s, the vintage brownstone house was showing significant deterioration.  In 2019, Brett Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund of the National Trust of Historic Preservation, first visited the house.  Seven years, later, on March 19, 2026, The New York Times reported that Dr. Beverly C. Price and the National Trust "are undertaking a meticulous restoration of its timeworn exterior."

(In the meantime, the I, Too Arts Collection had occupied the top three floors from 2016 to 2019.  The group offered to buy the house, but, "Dr. Prince did not want to sell," said The New York Times.)

The ivy that covered the facade in this photograph damaged the surface of the brownstone.  photograph via 6sqft.com

The Times article explained that the restoration is also addressing the cast iron fencing and stoop railings, the brownstone (damaged from decades of clinging ivy), and roof repairs.