The John C. Hashegan House - 186 Prince Street

In 1826 the newly-formed real estate development firm of Mills & Ryerson purchased the land at the corner of Prince and Sullivan Streets.  They erected four houses--two facing Prince and two on Sullivan Street--but oddly enough left the corner plot empty.

It was not until around 1830 that Henry Hopper began construction of a Federal-style house on the lot.  Two-and-a-half stories tall, it was faced in red Flemish bond brick and trimmed in brownstone.  The attic floor would have had tall dormers and a short stone stoop would have risen to the entrance.

If Henry Hopper, who made his living as a cartman, ever lived in the house it is unclear how long.  But by the first years of the 1840s it was home to the Hallenbeck family.

Hallenbeck was involved in a disturbing incident on June 26, 1841.  The New-York Tribune reported three days later "As Mr. Hallenbeck, who resides at 129 Sullivan street, was returning to the city on Saturday evening last, on the Bloomingdale road [known as Broadway today], about 5 miles from the city, he accidentally run over a child, which was lying in the road."

Hallenbeck stopped and "paid every attention to the little sufferer."   The little girl, Mary McGillen, belong to a local Irish immigrant family.  Rather surprisingly to modern readers, although Hallenbck supposed that the child "could not survive long," he left after deciding she was being well taken care of.

On Monday morning he went to the Coroner's office and told his story.  He was surprised to hear that the accident had not been reported to the Coroner, since he was certain the girl had to be dead by now.  An investigation showed that Alderman Bradhurst had already held an inquest, without the Coroner's presence.  The conclusion was that "The jury found that she came to her death by being run over by a carriage, unknown to this jury."

The reporter for the New-York Tribune was irate--apparently to the point of destroying his grammar skills.  "Had Ald. Bradhurst taken the trouble to make the necessary inquires who the gentleman was that run over the child, or had he even sent for the Coroner himself, the public would have had before them the whole of the particular in relation to this affair, as the Coroner or his deputy was at his office, and could have been found at any moment."

Before 1850 John Christopher Hashagen and his family moved into the house.  He transformed the parlor floor for his grocery store and extended the building to the rear.

Hashagen was born in Hanover, Germany on August 31, 1814 and was married to the former Friederike Charlotte Meredith.  The couple had five children, including Caroline who was born in the house in 1850.  The family lived above the store.

The extension was apparently used for the meetings of Hashagen's club.  On July 15, 1851 The New York Herald announced "The Old Tops of the Eighth ward will go on their next annual chowder excursion, to Sheep's Head Bay, on next Wednesday, the 16th of July.  They will start at 4  o'clock, A. M., from their headquarters, John C. Hashagen's, corner of Prince and Sullivan streets, with Kipp & Brown's splendid six horse stage."

The use of the stage made the chowder excursion doubly pleasurable for the men.  Coaching in the mid-19th century was a fashionable pastime for upscale groups.  The Herald added that "N. B. Reuben drives."

It would appear that a relative or friend of the Hashagen family from their homeland was staying here in the spring of 1854.  An advertisement in The New York Herald on March 10 read "A respectable young girl, lately arrived from Germany, wishes to obtain a situation in a genteel American or German family.  She would like to go as chambermaid of seamstress.  Has a good knowledge of the French language.  Satisfactory references as to respectability."

A similar advertisement appeared 11 years later.  On November 14, 1865 the same newspaper ran the ad "Wanted--By a respectable German girl, a situation as waitress or chambermaid in a private family."  The girl used the address of the side entrance leading upstairs, No. 186 Prince Street.


The following year Hashagen raised the attic level to a full third floor; and in 1869 added a fourth floor and an up-to-date Italianate cornice.  Interestingly, in both renovations the Federal-style paneled lentils were reproduced, providing an architectural cohesiveness.

In 1870 Caroline, who was known as Carrie, married John A. Meredith.   Carried was 19 years old and her groom was 28.  Tragedy visited the young couple on July, 18, 1873 when their one-year old son, Walter Hashagen Meredith, died "of cholera infantum."  The now-rare disease attacked young children, most often in congested neighborhoods and during periods of high heat and humidity.

The heart-breaking funeral of the toddler was held in the Hashagen's Prince Street house the following Sunday afternoon.

John Hashagen's business apparently flourished.  In 1876 he rented space in H. F. Kahrens's stable on No. 209 Sullivan Street for his horses.  The $1,019 lease would equate to more than $23,000 today.  The need for a team of horses, most likely for delivery purpose, might reflected Hashagen's change in businesses.   By 1882 he was listed as "furniture" rather than the grocery business.

On August 3, 1880 a society journalist for The New York Times gushed on about a new and fashionable resort, Richfield Springs, New York.  The writer insisted that there "shoddyism" was unknown.  "The 20 or more hotels and boarding-houses have accommodations for between 2,000 and 3,000 strangers, and they are all full to overflowing, mainly with New-Yorkers," she said.  "A striking feature of the attendance is the high social standing of the visitors."

John and Friederike Hashagen had come far from the day they stepped off the steamer from Germany.  Among the guests at the Park Place Hotel, where "the ladies dress richly but sensibly" were the Hashagens.

The couple's elevated status no doubt contributed to their leaving the Prince Street building they had called home for three decades.  In 1883 J. Kroeger paid $75 for his excise license, allowing him to transform John Hashagen's former grocery store into a saloon.

The building was owned by J. Rennan in 1886, when he constructed a "two-story brick storage" building a block away at the corner of Prince Street and South Fifth Avenue (later renamed West Broadway).

As the neighborhood filled with immigrants by the turn of the century, No. 186 Prince Street became a rooming house.  The tenant list was made up of mostly Italian surnames, like that of Paola Alfieri who died in her room on February 19, 1903 at the age of 64.

Unfortunately, while the majority of the new Italian-Americans were hard-working, blue collar citizens; their reputations were stained by the violence and criminal activities of others.  In the first years of the 20th century violent anarchist groups like La Mano Nera (or the Black Hand) and syndicates like the Mafia and Comorra wielded power and terror throughout most of the century.

On June 24, 1927 at around 4:00 in the afternoon, a five-alarm fire raged in the Bishop Warehouse Company Building on Greenwich Street.  The New York Times reported that it "tied up traffic and darkened the financial district with heavy clouds of black smoke, causing a million dollar loss."

Investigators soon determined that it was deliberately set "to conceal the theft of a huge quantities of drugs and liquors."  Federal agents tracked the gangsters to No. 186 Prince Street.  Twenty-eight year old Alexander Psaki and 30-year old John Courmalis were arrested and held on $50,000 bail each.

Assistant U. S. District Attorney Carl E. Newton maintained "the men had been members of a gang which had taken goods from the warehouse which would probably amount to a million dollars."  This, he said, was just the last in a long string of "systematic thefts."

The one constant in New York City neighborhoods is change.  In the second half of the century the Little Italy neighborhood took on the influence of the now-trendy Soho district.

Writing in The New York Times on February 11, 1965 Philip H. Dougherty reported on the city's discotheques, of which there were currently 15.  "A proper discotheque, as it was introduced in France," he explained, is a dark, intimate boite de nuit where the music is supplied by hi-fi stereophonic sound systems tended by a disk jockey.

And residents of No. 186 Prince Street had come up with a clever way to capitalize on the craze.  Dougherty described Killer Joe Piro as "by appointment, dancing master to the jet set."  He partnered with disk jockey, Slim Hyatt, "a tall, 35-year-old, thin-faced and soft-spoken Panamanian" and a group called the Porpoise--all living in the Prince Street building--to turn any "home club or hotel into a discotheque."

Dougherty referred to their partnership as "discotheque-to-take-out."  For $50 an hour they would supply the turntables, speakers, and records.  By the time of the article the Williams Club had used the group's services three times.  Its manager said "The people just didn't want to go home."

The Soho-like atmosphere seemed assured when the Prince Street Gallery opened in October 1974.  But it eventually moved on.  The ground floor space where John Hashagen sold groceries, J. Kroeger ran his saloon, and contemporary art was sold is now a corner newsstand where neighbor can purchase their Lotto tickets.

Hashagen's 1850s storefront was long ago obliterated; but the upper floors are little changed since his last alteration in 1869.

photographs by the author

The Lost Federal Relic at No. 85 Mott Street

By March 13, 1939, when this photo was taken, the roof had been raised and Morris Slavin's clothing store occupied the ground floor.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

As early as 1776, Mott Street appeared on maps meandering northward from Worth Street.  Named for the prominent Mott family, comfortable brick-fronted homes began appearing along it shortly afterward.  One of these, No. 85 Mott Street, sat on the southwest corner of Canal Street.

The commodious house represented the newer Federal architecture while holding on to some of the traditional Georgian elements.  Two and a half stories tall, its openings featured splayed stone lintels with prominent keystones.  Tidy dormers poked through the peaked roof.  Between the paired chimneys of the Canal Street side, a handsome arched window was flanked by two quarter-round openings.  The corner location meant that the interiors of the upscale home were flooded with extra sunlight.

The Federal-style house next door survived in 1922 as well.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

But the quiet tone of the neighborhood did not last long.  By the 1820s the private residences were being converted to taverns, shops and boarding houses.  By the time that the Bull family purchased No. 85 and its two neighboring houses in 1836 it was already home to at least three families.  In 1837 city directories listed Charles Smith, a seafarer, living here along with Rosanna Gannon, “widow of Denis,” and dressmaker Eliza Marks.

Five years later John H. Burns had moved in.  A blacksmith and “gas engineer,” his skills would have been in high demand as the technology of street lamps illuminated by gas spread from England to New York.  Burns, whose business was located at No. 38 S. William Street, would remain in the house at least until 1847. 

Along with John Burns, A. D. Cohen, a printer’s apprentice, was living here in 1842.  High-quality early Victorian books regularly included inside cover pages decorated with faux marble or swirling colored patterns.  Cohen received recognition that year for “a good specimen of graining.”

The blue-collar professions of the residents were evident in the tenant list in 1845.  Among those living here were Patrick Farmer, a carpenter who, like Burns, would stay until 1847; grocer James Reagen whose store was at No. 133 Walker Street; and Eliza A. Scudder.  She owned a “thread and needles” shop at No. 333 Grand Street.

Boarders came and went rapidly.  In 1852 there was an entirely new list of residents:  Mary Lyseght, seamstress; Denis Santry, “polisher;” tailor Samuel Bloominghal; and Wolfe Latts, an upholsterer.

Unlike wealthy New Yorkers who left the stifling city for summer resorts and estates; the boarders in No. 85 Mott Street suffered through the heat.  The mid-Victorian clothing, both male and female, only added to the discomfort.   James O’Brien lived here in 1863.  He nearly made it home on the scorching afternoon of August 22 before succumbing to the heat.  Two days later The New York Times reported “James O’Brien, aged 50 years, fell dead at the corner of Canal and Mott streets, on Saturday afternoon.”

By the early 1870s the ground floor of the house was converted for commercial purposes.  A cast iron store front wrapped around along the Canal Street side.  It was divided into two spaces; a shop on Mott Street and a tavern around the corner at No. 184 Canal Street.

The “lager beer saloon,” as described by The New York Times, was run by Moses Sands, known familiarly as “Mose” to his patrons.   In September 1874 John Griffin broke into the saloon “for felonious purposes.”  He was caught and, held on $2,000 bail, had to answer to Justice Flammer on the morning of September 20.  It did not go well for Griffin.

Like many saloon keepers at the time, Moses Sands was somewhat shady himself.  On August 4, 1879 The Times mentioned “Moses Sands…keeps a liquor store, and was arrested some time ago, charged with having stolen property in his possession.”

In the meantime the Mott Street shop was doing a more respectable business.  Abram and Herman Spektorsky operated A. Spektorsky & Son here.  Feather dealers, they manufactured a variety of items like their popular feather duster, a household necessity.

As the turn of the century neared, the shop became home to Isaac Werkman’s coat factory.  He employed eight workers, seven males and 1 female; several of which were minors.  A State inspection in 1894 noted that Werkman gave his under-age workers Saturdays off; but that they worked 11 hours every Sunday and 66 hours during the week.

By now the area was part of what newspapers termed the “Italian district.”   The upper floors of No. 85 filled with Italian immigrants.  In 1893 one newcomer to America used the address to get his citizenship papers on October 28—but it turned out he was a fraud.

Michael Marrone “could not be found at that address,” reported the Evening World on March 27, 1894.  The newspaper was doing an investigation into a rash of “bogus papers” during the flood of immigrants.  Its reporter checked in with Isaac Werkman, who said he “has been in business on the first floor for years” and “he had never heard of a man by that name, although he mentioned several Italians who had names somewhat similar.”  The newspaper added, “In the corner saloon, Marrone never was heard of.”

Among those who actually did live in the house in 1899 were Dominic Visconti and Peter Addeo, both laborers, and Addeo’s two sons John, 17-years old, and 23-year old Salvator.  Both sons were barbers.  Another resident Joe Bonavanduro was married in the house on November 26, 1899 to Patsy Andego.

What should have been a joyous event turned horribly violent and tragic.

The Sun reported “There was a large gathering in the house to see the wedding, and the festivities went along merrily till Visconti found fault with the music.”  The music—played on two mandolins and a guitar--was provided by the Addeo brothers and another barber, Salvator Scalponi, who lived at No. 40 Mulberry Street.  Peter Addeo resented Visconti’s imputation that his sons were not accomplished players “and hot words passed.”

Women in the room jumped between the two fuming Italians and temporarily calmed the situation.  The wedding went on and the couple was married.  While the guests pressed around them to give their well wishes, the simmering tempers of the two men flared again “because Addeo and Visconti each wanted to be the first in congratulating the bride.”

The newspaper reported “They shoved each other and at that the Addeo boys put up their instruments in readiness for trouble, as did Scalponi, whom honor bound to see his friends on top in the scrap that was coming.”

The “scrap” would prove deadly.  As Addeo and Visconti came to blows, the boys joined in, beating Visconti first with sticks, then attacking with knives. 

On the street Detectives Finley, Touwsma and Milhouse were on the way to the Hudson Street Hospital with the victim of a different stabbing and a prisoner when they heard the screams and shouts from upstairs.  They rushed into the room to find Dominic Visconti dying, stabbed five times in the chest.

He lived long enough to tell the police “that all of the three Addeos and Scalponi had used knives on him.”

At some point the dormers were removed and the roof raised to a full floor.  In the early decades of the 20^th century the former saloon became a tailor shop and the Mott Street shop became home to G.Slavin’s Canal Clothing Exchange.

By 1937 the store was operated by Morris Slavin who resolutely butted heads with other clothiers in the neighborhood that year.  For over a century clothing retailers used the “puller-in” to garner business.  The employee would stand on the sidewalk and persuade passersby to enter the store.

The handsome splayed lintels are evident in this photograph.  When it was taken the increasing Chinese population in the area is evident in the dual language Neon Sign single sign.  from the collection of the http://collections.mcny.org/Collection/[Corner%20of%20Mott%20and%20Canal%20Streets.]-2F3XC5IXJ4C7.html

But modern shopkeepers now denounced the practice as tawdry and “a detriment to trade.”  When representatives from 28 other clothiers in the neighborhood pleaded with Slavin to do away with his puller-in, he refused.  So the East Side Merchants Association pressured him by hiring 21-year old Edward Kritzer to picket the Canal Clothing Exchange.

Behind Slavin's store, in the former saloon section, was the tailor shop of S. Kaplan.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The Times reported that Kritzer carried “a sign appealing to passersby not to patronize Slavin’s store because Slavin was ‘unfair to the retail clothing business in the vicinity.’”  Unwilling to bend, Slavin filed a formal complain against Kritzer for disorderly conduct and interfering with his business.

Perhaps because of the ugly publicity (and the picket sign) Morris Slavin declared bankruptcy a few months later, in 1938. 

The Mott and Canal Street neighborhood, once an respectable residential enclave, then an Italian tenement district, was now becoming New York City’s Chinatown.  On March 11, 1939 The New York Times announced that George Bull and Albert W. Maclay had sold No. 85 and the two old houses next door after ownership of more than a century.

The 1939 sale included the two houses above (photographed by P. L. Sperr on September 22, 1933) and the vacant lot behind No. 85.  photo from the collection of the New York Public Library

“Acquired by the sellers in 1836…the buildings, said to have been erected about 150 years ago, will be razed starting on Monday and a two-story store and office building erected on the site,” reported the article.

That small building survived until 1950 when it was replaced by No. 83-85 Mott Street, a pagoda-imitating structure which served as headquarters of the On Leong Tong, once one of Chinatown’s most notorious and violent gangs.  It now houses the Chinese Merchants Association.

The 1816 Van Rensselaer House -- No. 149 Mulberry Street

photo by Alice Lum

When Stephen Van Rensselaer built his modest two-story house at No. 153 Mulberry Street in 1816, he was already 52 years old and had an impressive political (if not military) resume.  Born into a highly prestigious and wealthy family—his father was Stephen van Rensselaer II, the 9^th patron of Rensselaerswyck, and his mother was Catharina Livingston, daughter of Philip Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence—he had studied at Princeton and Harvard University. 

In 1783 at the age of 19 he married Margarita Schuyler who, too, came from an old and highly respected family.  Her father, Philip Schuyler was renowned as a Revolutionary War general.  One year after Margarita’s death in 1801, Stephen married Cornelia Paterson, the daughter of former New Governor William Paterson, Cornelia.

By now Stephen had sat in the New York State Assembly, the New York State Senate and had run for the office of New York State Governor.  His decided defeat as major-general leading troops in the Battle of Queenston heights during the War of 1812 had led to the end of the military career.

In 1816, the same year that the house was completed, Van Rensselaer was appointed to the Erie Canal Commission—a position he would hold for 23 years.  He would go on to serve as a member of the New York State Constitutional Convention in 1821; be elected to the House of Representatives a year later; and was a regent of the University of the State of New York.

Van Rensselaer was among the richest men in America with a fortune of about $10 million, equal to about $68 billion today.  The family lived in on the sprawling 1,200 square mile Van Rensselaer estate which Stephen inherited from his father when he turned 21.  But he owned an enormous portion of Manhattan real estate and the new house on Mulberry Street was part of it.

The house was one of many Van Rensselaer erected in the area.  There was nothing especially glamorous about the Federal-style residence; yet it was relatively spacious and acceptable for a fairly well-to-do merchant class family.  Upon its completion it was assessed by the City for $3,750—about $60,000 today.

photo by Alice Lum

Faced on three sides with wooded clapboards, the street façade was clad in Flemish bond brick.  A tall stone stoop rose above the brownstone English basement to the entrance where Federal-style pilasters framed the paneled door.  Side lights and an overlight allowed sunlight to illuminate the entrance hall inside.

A Dutch-style gambrel roof was punctured by two tall dormers with broken pediments.  The house stepped away from the commonplace with the wonderfully decorative paneled stone lintels. 

Especially handsome paneled lintels graced the openings -- photo by Alice Lum

At least by 1837 the house was home to Noah Jarvis whom historian Charles Alexander Nelson described in 1911 as “a man of fine literary attainments and cultivated taste and enjoyed the society of men and culture and refinement.”  Jarvis very well may have been the original owner.  He was a trusted friend of Van Rennselaer and “managed his large estate scattered throughout the different wards of the city,” according to Nelson.

Jarvis and his wife, the former Elizabeth White, had eight children.  While living here Jarvis was also a principal of the American Gas Light Company and President of the Mechanic’s Fire Insurance Company at No. 2 Franklin Square.

For inexplicable reasons, one year before Noah Jarvis’s death on August 11, 1842, the house was moved from the corner of Mulberry and Grand Street to No. 149 Mulberry—two lots away.  As the decade drew to a close it was home to I. E. Hyde, then in the 1850s to the George Kellock family.

Kellock ran the harness business of George Kellock & Son.  Another son, James K. Kellock, ran his “telegraph” business from the house; while a third son George Kellock, Jr., was well known as the Superintendent of Outdoor Poor—essentially the 19^th century equivalent of today’s Department of Homeless Services.

By the 1880s the neighborhood around No. 149 Mulberry Street, once an enclave of middle and upper middle class families, was crowded with immigrants and low-paid laborers as Federal style homes were demolished to make way for tenement buildings. 

As the neighborhood changed, so did the neighbors.  Mrs. Lizzie Allen was living in No. 149 in February 1880 when she let her guard down and Mary Donovan picked her pocket.  On February 28 Mary was arrested.  The New York Times said “The prisoner is well known to the Police under the aliases of Roache and Pursell.  In March 1870, she was sent to State Prison for two years and a half for picking pockets during a funeral at a church, and in 1875 was arrested and sentenced for six months for stealing lace from a Grand-street store.”

Six months later the tenement next door at Nos. 145-149 Mulberry Street caught fire. “The burning building looked like a towering mass of fire,” reported The Sun on August 27, 1880, “and the tenements that clustered around it were in danger of destruction.”  The residents of the burning building were all evacuated; but buildings to the rear and sides were also endangered.

“The rear buildings at 153 Baxter street sheltered eight families of colored people, numbering twenty-six persons.  There were ten families, thirty-six persons, in the front building at 141 Mulberry street.  The rear building, a very old structure, sheltered fifteen persons.”   

Firemen realized that containing the fire was “hopeless,” but poured water on the adjoining buildings, including No. 149 Mulberry.  Despite their efforts, the house caught fire.

“The only other building injured is a two-story and attic dwelling at 149 Mulberry street, with a brick front and wooden rear, and the blaze in this dwelling was soon extinguished.”  No one was hurt, but the damage to the house was estimated to be around $400 or about $9,000 today.

A variety of boarders lived in the house within the next few years while an Italian cheese factory operated in the basement.  Lazarus Cohen, a tailor, was here in 1890 when he was caught registering to vote in two separate election districts.  When he attempted to vote that November he was arrested at the polls. 

Anna Mertens lived here around the same time.  On January 19, 1894 she petitioned $25 a week alimony from her husband, Herman, whom she said had deserted her.

Within months all the boarders would have to find new homes, however.  The neighborhood was by now known as Little Italy as the tenements filled with Italian immigrants.  The extremely wealthy socialite and philanthropist Mrs. Anson Phelps Stokes purchased the house and converted it to The Free Italian Library and Reading-Rooms. 

On July 23, 1894 The Sun reported that “The free Italian library and reading rooms, provided chiefly by Mrs. Anson Phelps Stokes, and situated in a house formerly used by Italians as a cheese factory at 149 Mulberry street, was open for inspection yesterday.”

The newspaper described the layout.  “The institution is confined to two floors, the first and second.  One the first floor is the library and reading room.  The room was decorated with American and Italian flags.  The library has more than 200 volumes and will soon be enlarged.  There are, besides, Italian and American newspapers.”

The Free Library was also intended as a means to keep the impoverished children off the streets and out of trouble.  On the second floor were two rooms—one for girls and the other for boys.   The Sun said “In the rear is the room where girls may cluster about a big table and sew or play games or talk.”  Reverend Antonio Arrighi, the pastor of an Italian church nearby, watched over the boys’ room from a desk there.  Here the boys could play dominoes, checkers or parches.

“An organ in the boys’ room and a piano on the library floor will give the Italian boys and girls a chance to sing and play on proper occasion,” noted the newspaper.

The Free Italian Library and Reading Room would remain in the house for over a decade.  In 1904 the New-York Tribune detailed the work of the institution.  “With the help of Mr. and Mrs. Arrighi and their son, Mrs. Stokes carries on a quiet work here which is doing a vast amount of good in the neighborhood.  An average of two hundred and fifty men use the reading rooms every day, and upstairs there are rooms for young people and children’s clubs.”

By now there was a staff of 14 teachers for the children and in the basement was a clinic with several nurses “to care for childish ailments and instruct the mothers in the proper dressing of burns and treatment of sore throat,” said the newspaper.

On January 2, 1904, Mrs. Anson Phelps Stokes personally oversaw a belated Christmas celebration for the immigrant children.  Two hundred Italian girls who attended the sewing school connected with the library were each given a box of candy, an orange and a doll.  The New-York Tribune remarked that “The children, though coming from homes of poverty, looked remarkable neat and clean.”

During the early years of the 20^th century New York was plagued with Mafia-like and anarchist groups like the Black Hand.  The organizations routinely terrorized citizens with bombings and murders and threats.

By 1911 the Italian Free Library was gone and No. 149 Mulberry Street was home to Caputo’s Restaurant.  On November 29, 1911 detectives were congratulating themselves with the arrest of Giovannia Rizzo, “the milkman bomb thrower.”  One detective said “Looks as though there wouldn’t be any more bomb explosions around here.”

The detective spoke too soon.  As they were marching Rizzo into the station house, a bomb detonated at No. 149 Mulberry Street.  The New York Times said that when the detectives arrived, “The broken windows and a crowd of frightened men issuing from the two-story frame building at 149 Mulberry Street located this as the scene of the explosion.”

The newspaper said that the explosion “shook the building to it foundations and poured plaster from the ceiling on the heads of the diners in Vergilio Caputo’s restaurant on the stoop floor.”  One patron, Brian G. Hughes, ran out and kept going until he reached a barber shop down the street.  “Bits of spaghetti with its tomato sauce and wet blotches of Chianti adorned Mr. Hughes’s clothing, for his dinner had been upset into his lap,” said The Times.

Fifteen diners had been in Caputo’s and upstairs, in the Humbert Association’s rooms, were about 30 men.  Vincent Selorani was one of the Humbert Association’s members there that night.  He had been playing cards and was about to leave for home.  As he went into the washroom to wash his hands, someone rushed by him on his way out.  An instant later the bathroom exploded.

“Selorani was blown out on the stairs, and fell to the first, floor,” said The Times. “He did not stop to investigate, but the police, who came after things had quieted down, found that the bomb had been set in the bathtub, which it had blown into a small roll of twisted tin.”

Police surmised that the bomb was detonated by someone holding a grudge against the Humbert Association or one of its members, or perhaps by someone who had applied for membership but was denied.

The restaurant’s owner, Virgilio Caputo was no choir boy, either.  A year later, on October 17, 1912, he was held on $1,000 bail on the charge of intimidating a witness.  Frank Demaro, who lived at No. 153 Mulberry Street, had charged Paul Degario of swindling him out of $54.  On the day of the trial, Demaro was met on the steps of the Criminal Courts Building by Virgilio Caputo who “offered him $40 to leave town, with the alternative of a bullet,” reported The Evening World.

A regular at Caputo’s restaurant was 25-year old Jerry Maida, a police informer.  Siding with law enforcement in crime-ridden Little Italy was a dangerous game.  On April 29, 1913 as he walked along West 41^st Street he was gunned down.  “Five revolver shots stretched Maida lifeless on the pavement,” said The New York Times.

Police arrested the 19-year old shooter, James Jesto, along with  cohorts Sante Barbara, Frank Tedesco, and Joseph Viscerta.

In 1932 the facade of No. 149 is painted white.  The gambrel roof and clapboard siding are visible in this shot.  The original Federal doorway still survives.  Next door a billboard in Italian advertises a "stable bank."  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Throughout the 20^th century the parlor floor of No. 149 Mulberry Street would house an Italian Restaurant.  In the 1930s it was home to Villa Nova Restaurant and for decades in the second half of the century it was Paolucci’s Restaurant.

After two centuries of use, the architectural elements are miraculously intact.  photo by Alice Lum

In 2009 the former house was converted to commercial purposes.  A restoration of sorts cleaned and pointed the brickwork and replaced the decaying sections of the dormers.  Although the entranceway has been totally redone, and replacement windows installed, the 1816 house is remarkably intact.