Kurtzer & Rohl's Soon-To-Go 1889 306 East 86th Street

In July 1886 Aaron Guedalia hired builder Arthur Gorsch to construct a one-and-a-half story "brick cigar factory and drying room" in the rear of No. 306 East 86th Street.  Guedalia's plan would have added one more to the host of cigar-making firms in the Yorkville area.  But it never came to pass.

It seems that Gorsch saw greater potential in the property.  He and his wife, Sophia, purchased No. 306 East 86th Street with Catherine Bode.  (The nature of their relationship is unclear.)  The title was placed in the women's names.

On September 6, 1889 the architectural firm of Kurtzer & Rohl filed plans for a "five-story flat, with store on the first floor."  The cost was projected at $17,000--about $467,000 today.   It would be an up-to-date structure, evidenced a month later when the City approved Kurtzer & Rohl's "plumbing and draining" plans.

Completed in 1890, the building was faced in yellow brick and trimmed in cast iron, brownstone and terra cotta.  The eclectic design was, for the most part, Queen Anne in style.  Elements from a mixed bag of styles, however, joined in making a visually-entertaining facade.  Carved portrait keystones represented stoic females and formidable vikings.  A cast metal cornice above the fourth floor (and almost doubtlessly a near match to the now-missing terminal cornice above the fifth floor) contrasted undulating vines between hefty demonic faces.  Three terra cotta panels filled the triangular pediment, the central section announcing the construction date.

Brawny demon dogs flank the fourth floor cornice.  A brown scar is evidence of its lost counterpart.

The building was an investment only and in May 1890 Catherine Bode and Sophia Gorsch sold it to Martha L. Andrews.  Her building filled with tenants reflective of Yorkville's highly German population.

Among them was the Koelbe family--Henry, his wife Fanny, and their teen-aged son and daughter.  In July 1893 19-year-old Lucy met a tailor, William Strohoefer, in Brooklyn.  After knowing one another a month, they married.  There were two apartments per floor in No. 306 West 86th Street and Lucy and her new husband moved into the vacant one on the same floor with her family.

But things quickly went downhill in the romance.  It is unclear what made Lucy desperate to get out of the marriage, but four months later, on Saturday afternoon, December 9, she told her husband she was going to visit her parents.  She never returned.  When Strohoefer went to retrieve her, he was barred from the apartment.

When the 30-year-old was unable to convince his in-laws to return his wife, he went to the courts claiming that Lucy was being restrained against her will.  The Koelbes received a writ of habeas corpus the following Tuesday, ordering them to produce Lucy in court the next day.

Court reporters jumped on the delicious story.  The World's headline read "Fought For His Wife," The New York Times's was "Tried To Seize His Wife," the article in The New York Press was entitled "His Wife Rejects Him," and The Evening World exclaimed "His Wife Kept From Him."

The entire Koelbe family appeared with Lucy, whom The Evening World described as "very pretty, with dark, brown hair and eyes, and of the tall, willowy figure."  Strohoefer claimed that he had tried, once again, that morning to see his wife, but "her mother locked her in a room and told him to leave the house."  

When the Koelbes' attorney offered the family's testimonies, Justice Ingraham dismissed him.  "No, I don't want to hear any witnesses."  He turned to Lucy and instructed her "You are old enough to decide for yourself whether you will elect to live with your husband or your father and mother."

To ensure she was not coerced in her decision, he ordered everyone in the courtroom to remain while Lucy left.  After giving her time enough to head to whichever place she chose, he cleared the room.  But Lucy had lingered in the hallway.

Her husband "bolted from the courtroom and threw his arms around his wife's neck," reported The Evening World.  The article in The New York Press continued the melodrama, "'Oh, Lucy! Lucy!' he exclaimed, as he seized her in his arms and tried to draw her away...The husband clung to his wife and attempted to drag her along the corridor."

"The young woman gave a shriek," reported The Times, "and her sixteen-year-old brother came running up at full speed."  While Lucy struggled to free herself her brother pummeled Strohoefer.  "It finally required the efforts of three policemen to release the young woman from the embrace of her husband," said The Evening World.  

It all played out like a scene on a Bowery theater stage.  Lucy screamed, "Oh, take me away from him," and promised "He shan't come near me!  He'll never see me again!"   Strohoefer left the courthouse declaring he would sue Henry Koelbe.

He did not follow-up on the threat, but he was nevertheless not finished with Lucy and her family.  Still living next door in the 86th Street building, he began harassing Lucy remotely.   In March 1894 he was arrested "for sending indecent letters and postal-cards through the mails, addressed to his wife, from whom he had separated," as reported by The Evening World.

Strohoeffer was released on bond to his father; but several weeks later his father returned him to jail.  The unrequited love had caused the young man, he felt, to lose his mind.  The Evening World's headline on April 27 read "Surrendered His Son / Strohoeffer's Father Will Not Remain on His Bond" and explained "Strohoeffer is said to be insane and not responsible for his actions."  Indeed, William Stroheofer was examined, deemed insane, and sent to a public institution in Washington.

Mrs. Minnie Ames had significant drama in her life, as well.  At the time of William Strohoeffer's problems she was living No. 91 East Third Street.  She became friendly with another tenant, described by The New York Press as "variety actress Dora Lennon...or Mrs. James F. Stillman, as she prefers to call herself."  In fact, Dora was the head of a coin counterfeiting gang.

When Minnie noticed plaster of paris dies in Dora's apartment in April 1896, her neighbor was unexpectedly candid.  Dora explained that they were used to make 50 cent pieces, and then suggested that Minnie join the gang "and travel around the country."  She promised that the men would make the coins and she and Minnie would have no problem passing them.

But, according to The New York Press, she "did not consent and left the Third street house."  After taking an apartment at No. 306 East 86th Street she went to the authorities.  The following month she testified at the trial of what The New York Press nicknamed the "song and dance counterfeiters."  Secret Service Agent Bagg called Minnie "an important witness."

In the meantime the ground floor space held the funeral parlor of Philip Boelzer.  While the funerals of more affluent citizens were most often held in their homes, that was not feasible for tenement dwellers.  So the East 86th Street location was ideal for Boelzer's operation.

News among Manhattan's German population seems to have spread quickly.  Early on the morning of September 16, 1899 a horrific tragedy occurred in the Lower East Side, known as Little Germany.  Alexander Weiser, "a German of whom little is known," according to The Sun, murdered Laura Aster, "a widow to whom he has been devoted for more than a year."  He then committed suicide in the same room.

Before the bodies had been removed Philip Boelzer was on site.  The Sun reported "The zeal which characterizes certain branches of the undertaking trade caused the arrest at Mrs. Aster's house yesterday morning of Philip Boelzer of 306 East Eighty-sixth street who, learning of the tragedy, went there to do a stroke of business."

But another undertaker had beaten him there and had already received a permit from the coroner to remove the bodies.  "Boelzer made so much fuss that Policeman Kealey, of the Fifth street station, who was on guard, ordered him away, whereupon he abused the policeman and threatened to have him 'broke.'"  Boelzer's tantrum finally broke the officer's patience.  "Kealey stood it for a while and then locked him up on a charge of disorderly conduct."

photo by James Steeber

The tenants above the funeral home were respectable and hard working.  Bernard Kempner and his wife and family, for example, lived here at the turn of the century.  He was often away from the apartment for his job as a traveling hops salesman.  In 1904 William A. Kraus attempted to land a civil service job, applying for the position of Inspector of Licenses.  His petition was denied.  Another German-born tenant, A. R. Marshall, was secretary of the Gesang Verein Oesterreich, or Austrian Singing Club, in 1912.  

By 1918 the former Boelzer funeral home had become the funeral parlor of C. Herrlich & Brother.   In 1922 Catherine Herrlich, presumably a relative, purchased the building.  

The firm's name had been changed to Herrlich Brothers' Funeral Chapel by February 1933 when the funeral of Theodore Coutant Paton was held here.  He was a well-known cartoonist and animator for Fable Pictures, Inc.  He had animated screen cartoons like Aesop's Fables, Cubby the Bear and Tom and Jerry.

Around 2014 most of the 19th century fabric of the block survived.  But in the background development was already taking over the immediate neighborhood.  photo by James Steeber 

Even as the ethnic population drifted away from Yorkville in the second half of the 20th century, the former funeral home space held on to the neighborhood's traditions.  In 1995 it became home to Rush'n Express, described by New York Magazine as a "new Formica fast-foot joint" which it deemed "a good stop for cut-rate, hearty autumnal snacks like piroshki, kasha, and stuffed cabbage."  The quick-stop restaurant remained for several years.  And then in 200o the 86th Street Wine & Liquor store moved in, becoming a neighborhood standby for a decade.

In 2019 the storefront is boarded up and the neighboring buildings to the east have been demolished.

Major demolition in the immediate neighborhood began around 2017 as 19th century buildings made way for modern apartment houses.  In 2018 a petition for a demolition permit on No. 306 was filed, signalling the impending end to a quirky piece of architecture and a fascinating page of Yorkville history.

photographs by the author

Aschenbroedel Verein -- 74 East 4th Street

photo by Alice Lum

By 1855 New York City had the third largest German population in the world—outranked only by Vienna and Berlin.  The New York Times, forty years later, would explain:

The revolution of 1848-1849 in Germany caused many a brave German to leave his beloved Fatherland and seek refuge within the borders of the United States.  These refugees brought with them the habits and customs of the land of their birth, and shortly after their arrival on American soil they banded themselves together in organizations similar to those they so dearly loved in the Old World.

By midcentury German biergartens, music halls, and social halls provided the residents entertainment and diversion.  In 1860, the Aschenbroedel Verein, or Cinderella Club, was founded by professional orchestral musicians in a “little public house at Broome and Mott streets,” as described by The Sun later.  It was not only a social and musical club, but its members were involved in philanthropic works as well.  Along with the Arion Society and the Liederkranz Club, it would grow to become one of the leading German musical-based institutions of New York.

Six years later the club had grown and was financially stable enough to purchase the property at 74 East 4^th Street in the heart of Little Germany.  The group initially used the existing structure, and in 1870 was successful in petitioning the city for improvements.  The minutes of the Common Council on Monday, September 12, 1870 noted, “Resolved, That two street-lamps be placed and lighted in front of No. 74 East Fourth street.”

But before long, that building was demolished and German-born architect August H. Blankenstein was hired to design a permanent clubhouse.  The four-story, brick-clad building was completed by the fall of 1873 and on November 7 The New York Times reported, “The Aschenbroedel Verein, an association of musicians organized for social and benevolent purposes, inaugurated its new club-house at No. 74 East Fourth street last night, by an entertainment of music and social festivities.”

Among the members were several highly-esteemed musicians, including Theodore Thomas (who headed the highly-popular Theodore Thomas Orchestra), Carl Bergmann, and Walter Damrosch. 

Damrosch was born into a musical family.  His mother was the opera singer Helene von Heimburg; and his father the conductor Leopold Damrosch.   Walter Damrosch studied at the Dresden Conservatory before arriving in New York with his parents in 1871. 

Damrosch’s father would found the New York Symphony Society in 1878, a fierce competitor to the older New York Philharmonic Society of New York, organized in 1842.  Despite the Damrosch ties, it was the Philharmonic Society that shared space in the clubhouse.  In 1880 A Dictionary of Music and Musicians noted that the headquarters of the Philharmonic Society of New York “are at Aschenbroedel’s Club-house, No. 74 East 4^th Street.  Its large and comprehensive library is kept at No. 333 Eat 18^th st.”

By 1888 there were 600 members of the Aschenbroedel Verein.  The organization gave concerts to raise money for its charitable causes .  One such event was held on September 21 to aid sick or invalid members or their families.  “Seven thousand people fond of music and sure of hearing the best were packed and jammed into Washington Park, Sixty-ninth street and Eastern Boulevard, last evening at the great concert given by the Aschenbroedel Society in aid of its relief fund,” reported The Sun the following day.

Three hundred members comprised the orchestra and the newspaper reported that “The announcement that Theodore Thomas was to be the conductor, that Miss Emma Juch and Messrs, Theo. Toedt, Geo. Prehn, and Rafael Joseffy were to contribute their services, together with the moderate entrance fees of 50 cents and $1. brought an immense crowd.”  Following the concert around midnight, the Jones Wood Coliseum next door was opened for dancing.  The society netted $3,000 for its relief fund—an significant $71,000 by today’s measure.

Within three years the four-story clubhouse had become too small for the still-growing association, now numbering 700.  The Sun reported, “Some time ago, however, the members concluded that they needed a bigger house, and that it would be pleasanter to have it up town.  Very soon thereafter steps were taken to secure such a house.”  On May 16, 1891 an advertisement appeared in the Record & Guide offering “A very fine piece of property, known as Aschenbrodel Club House, 74 East 4^th st.”  The property was offered at $56,000.

On April 27, 1892 the members “and several thousand friends” were on hand for the cornerstone laying of the club’s new headquarters on 86^th Street near Lexington Avenue.  The Sun somewhat sarcastically called the planned clubhouse “Cinderella’s Palace.”

A month later the sale of the 4^th Street property to the Schillerbund Gesangverein  was completed.  One of the city’s oldest German singing societies, it had been meeting nearby at No. 62 East 4^th Street.  Now it commissioned German-born architects Kurtzer & Rohl to revamp the building as its own.  Frederick William Kurtzer and Richard O. L. Rohl transformed the exterior with ambitious cast iron ornamentation pretending to be stone.  Combing neo-Grec and German Renaissance Revival elements, they ran quoins up the sides, crowned the windows in Renaissance-inspired pediments, and placed the busts of three German composers--Mendehlson, Mozart and Beethoven--over the second floor openings.

Cast iron mimicked stone against the brick facade and a dramatic broken pediment above sat like a tiara -- photo by Alice Lum

Six months later, the renovations were complete and on November 15, 1892 the club formally opened its new $45,000 home.  Unfortunately, a bad rain storm put the damper on many of the planned festivities.  “It had been intended to have a procession from the old building to the new, but the rain stopped that and also the fireworks,” reported The New York Times the following morning.  The newspaper noted that the Schillerbund had had the clubhouse “almost entirely rebuilt and refitted.”

The musicians' busts steal attention from the intricate cast iron designs -- photo by Alice Lum

“The new home is a well-fitted and handsome four-story structure," said the article.  "On the ground floor are fine blowing alleys, the kitchen and restaurant.  The second floor is used for assembly and meeting rooms, the third for lodge rooms, and the top of the house is occupied by the tenant.”

The Schillerbund had been founded on January 3, 1850 when a group of men assembled “at Louis Rippel’s Hall, 47 Rose Street, for the purpose of forming a singing society,” according to The New York Times on July 14, 1895.  “So heartily did the German element of this city respond, that before the close of January a permanent organization was formed.”

By now the membership was about 400.  The New York Times ranked the remodeled clubhouse as “one of the best Maennerchor clubhouses in that section of the city.”  But within only a few years the choral group moved on.  By the turn of the century the building was briefly used as a Polish social club, called Krywaczy’s Hall.

On September 6, 1901, anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot and fatally wounded President William McKinley.  The members of Krywaczy’s Hall were quick to react.  On September 12, The New York Times reported, “Czolgosz will be denounced and a message of sympathy sent to President McKinley by the Poles of this city.  They are to have a mass meeting at 8 o’clock tomorrow night in Krywaczy’s Hall, 74 East fourth Street, and sixty different Polish societies will be represented by delegates.”

Denunciation of the assassin was not enough, apparently.  Krywaczy’s Hall was given the new name of McKinley Hall.

McKinley Hall was sold in 1904 and became a popular venue for political and labor meetings.  “There was the liveliest sort of a row last night at a McKinley Hall…by the residents of the lower East Side who have been trying to perfect an organization to fight the landlords’ raise in their rents,” reported The Times on April 11 that year.

In reporting on the same meeting, the New-York Tribune made clear its support of the New-York Rent Protective Association.  “A meeting to protest against the rent raising of the East Side landlords and consider ways and means further to outwit them in their extortions will be held at McKinley Hall, No. 74 East Fourth-st., to-night.”

A year later Minster Realty Company purchased the building and before long it was leased to a most unexpected tenant.  On December 2, 1905 The Sun reported, “A scheme known as the Newsboys’ Athletic Club is just getting into working order in Fourth street near the Bowery.  The scheme involves a gymnasium, a reading room and a club with newsboy membership.  If the story told is straight—and it sounds straight as a die—the scheme has very unusual backing.  Jack Sullivan, a newsboy, is practically alone as founder, manager and backer.”

Jack Sullivan was known across the city as the “King of the Newsboys.”  He had organized the rag-tag group of boys and they successfully carried out a strike for better wages.  The enterprising young man studied the workings of men's social clubs and had envisioned a refuge for the newsboys.  Starting with his own money, he was able to get financial support from businessmen and reform workers.

By December 1905, about $5,000 in renovations had been done.  Sullivan showed a reporter from The Sun the layout on December 1.  The former dance hall on the first floor was now the gymnasium, outfitted with rings, bars, trapezes, two punching bags, horses and a basketball hoop.   “It is a first class outfit and a full one,” said the newspaper.  The second floor had Jack’s office and a reading room, decorated with photographs of “poets and Presidents.”  There were also showers, lockers and a dormitory on the top floor with cots where “over seventy-five homeless waifs may find shelter during the Winter,” according to The New York Times.

Sullivan’s endeavor was not just to create a club for the boys—he intended to improve them.  For ten cents a week the newsboys, ranging in age from seven to 20 years, could use Newsboys’ Hall; but in order to make use of the gymnasium, for instance, they were required to study.  “Spelling, reading, writing, and geography being the curriculum that Sullivan deems of sufficient importance just at present,” said The New York Times.

Jack Sullivan’s unique project caught the eye of the nation.  On the day of the opening there were letters of congratulations from President Theodore Roosevelt, Helen Gould and millionaire H. McKay Twombly.  Instead of cake and speeches, the opening of the club was an unscripted free-for-all in the gym.  The New York Times said the gymnasium “was alive with bag punchers, impromptu wrestlers, and basket ball enthusiasts.”

The club was a success and benefits were held throughout the years to keep it going.  On March 3, 1907 a vaudeville entertainment was staged at the Academy of Music, netting the club $5,000.  Sullivan’s determination that the boys would better themselves was reflected in lectures and courses presented in the hall, like the six-part Course on First Aid to the Injured in 1909.

A group of newsboys pose near the Brooklyn Bridge in 1908 -- photograph Library of Congress

Work with Boys magazine reported in January 1912, “In May 1911, the lease on the 4^th Street property expired.  As the Club had outgrown the capacity of the building, it was decided to secure a larger place.”  That turned out to be the former New York Historical Society at Second Avenue and 11^th Street.

photo by Alice Lum

Newsboys’ Hall returned to its life as a political and labor hall; now called Floral Garden.  On the first floor was a restaurant run by Nathan Hirsch.  By now the world was terrorized by anarchist groups like the Black Hand and the Industrial Workers of the World.  Problems came for Hirsch when he accepted a $3 deposit for the dining room of Floral Hall from Vincenzo Fabbrocino in May 1914.  Fabbrocino was a printer and he told the proprietor that he needed the hall for a meeting of the typographical union.

Before the day of the meeting a week later, Hirsch discovered that instead, the meeting was of IWW officers.  The New York Times reported that according to circulars “the meeting in Floral Garden was to have been ‘an international mass meeting in the matter of Augusto Masetti, the Italian Anti-Militarist who shot his Colonel when he was ordered to shoot his fellow-workers.'”

On May 24, when the members began arriving, Nathan Hirsch blocked their entrance.  “More agitators arrived and demanded admittance.  Hirsch was obdurate, and by 2:30 o’clock, the time for which the meeting was scheduled, a large crowd was before the hall, asserting that it would break its way in, and threatening violent.”

The Evening World reported, “A riot followed, in which the police were forced to fight back the I. W. W. crowd, which began a bombardment of paving stones.”  As the melee played out on in the street, a wedding was scheduled to take place on the second floor of the hall.  The bride and the flower girls “arrived just in time to follow the police in through the crowds outside,” said The Times.  “They were alarmed at the loud noise and fled up the steps.”

In 1916 part of the upper portion of the building was being used by messenger boys as their headquarters.  Taking their lead from Jack Sullivan’s successful newsboy strike several years earlier, they went on strike against the Western Union and Postal Telegraph Companies, who employed 2,500 messenger boys.

In the days before the internet, faxes and widespread telephone service, message boys scurried up and down New York City’s streets carrying hand-written messages.  The boys knew that if they stopped working, there would be a disastrous effect on business.  On November 2, 1916, The Evening World said, “The boys appear to be taking things easy with the assurance that they will win in the end.  They know of the scarcity of boys in the city and feel confident their places cannot be filled.  They content themselves with hanging around headquarters at No. 74 East Fourth Street, shooting craps and smoking cigarettes, after returning from selling newspapers.”

The boys had three demands:  “For nightly workers, a wage of $12 a week, with a seventy-hour week and a day off every other week; for day workers a wage of $1.50 a day, ten hour day and a day off every two weeks, and a half-hour for lunch; and for boys who worked on commission, a flat rate of 3 cents for delivery a telegram.”

Throughout the rest of the 20^th century, until 1967, the building saw a variety of uses.  There were apartments upstairs in the 1920s; and the lower levels housed a meatpacking plant and a laundry at different times. 

In 1961 Ellen Stewart rented a theater in the basement of nearby No. 321 East 9^th Street and established Café La MaMa.  After moving three times, she found No. 74 East 4^th Street.  In 1967 she received grants from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, enabling her to renovate the building.  Since that time La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club has been a vibrant venue for live theater in the Lower East Side. 

Only the decorated cast iron supports of the ground floor remain.  It appears that architectural attractiveness was not on the list of renovation requirements.  photo by Alice Lum

Although the ground floor has been sadly obliterated, the upper floors of this historic structure are mostly intact since Kurtzer & Rohl’s 1892 renovations—a handsome reminder of a time when German, not English, was the predominant language of the neighborhood.

UPDATE:  A sympathetic restoration of the facade by Beyer Blinder Belle initiated in 2017, has undone much of the earlier, gruesome renovations.