The Lost Anton Schwartz House - 127 West 108th Street

 

Assuredly a centered staircase originally rose to the shared porch.  photo by Charles Von Urban from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1857, Swiss-German immigrants Emanuel Bernheimer and August Schmid organized the Lion Brewery.  Its sprawling complex on Tenth Avenue stretched from 107th to 109th Street.  Following the Civil War, Lion Park, a "pleasure garden"--the Victorian equivalent of today's recreation park--was added to the property to the north.

Around 1870 two abutting Second Empire-style mansions were erected on the Lion Brewery property.  Located on West 108th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, the frame structures were nearly mirror images.  (The avenues would be renamed Columbus and Amsterdam, respectively, in 1890, around the time the houses would be given the official street addresses of 127 and 129 West 108th Street.)  The residences shared a porch and, almost certainly, a centered staircase.  The eastern house, No. 127, sat slightly forward.  Its asymmetrical configuration of the second floor openings included a squared headed window and a Palladian-inspired grouping.  Lacy cast-iron cresting decorated the slate-shingled mansard.

The residences were built for Lion Brewery executives.  Around 1890, 127 West 108th Street became home to Anton Schwartz, a partner in the brewery.  He and his wife, Emma, had one son, Adolph.

On the morning of June 19, 1894, Anton took a drive in Central Park.  Presumably, Emma was with him in the family's "dogcart"--a open carriage popular for leisurely rides.  

A dogcart could have two or four wheels, and was pulled by one or two horses.  Across England in a Dog-Cart, 1891 (copyright expired)

The pleasant morning drive became a horrific incident.  Also driving in the park that morning were J. W. Platt, his wife and their baby.  At around 92nd Street, the Platts' horse bolted.  It upset the carriage and threw its occupants to the roadway.  The commotion upset the horse pulling the wagon of John H. Coleman and his wife, "causing it to run away," as reported by The New York World.  Like the Platts, they were thrown out of the vehicle.

The article said, "For an eighth of a mile the race was a mad one, the runaway galloping furiously."  At around 94th Street, the panicked horse "crashed into a dog-cart driven by Anton Schwartz, of No. 127 West One-Hundred and Eighth street," said the article.  Happily for Schwartz, he was uninjured and "a broken shaft and lamp was the only damage" to his vehicle.

Schwartz was best known for his thoroughbreds and his racing.  He routinely competed at the Harlem River Speedway, which ran from West 155th Street to Dyckman Avenue.  (The venue was established in 1893 and its scenic grounds were designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, of Central Park fame.)

On May 29, 1899, for instance, The Sun reported, "Anton Schwartz's stately black trotter Wyoming scored quite a victory by defeating the fast black pacer Dick Vail."  Schwartz and his trotters would be regulars at the Speedway for years.

August Schmid died in 1889.  His widow, Josephine, stepped into his position at the Lion Brewery.  A difficult and headstrong woman, at the turn of the century her relationship with the other partners had become so argumentative and unworkable that she bought them out for $1.4 million.  The transaction not only left Anton Schwartz and his former partners, Max E and Simon Bernheimer, without a brewery, it necessitated the Schwartz family to leave the brewery property.  

Schwartz and the Bernheimers established the Bernheimer & Schwartz Brewery at Amsterdam Avenue and 128th Street.  Anton moved his family to a commodious third-floor apartment in the Central Park View on West 86th Street.  Despite their significant wealth, the family faced unspeakable tragedy.  In September 1910, Adolph Schwartz died from spinal meningitis and six weeks later, Anton committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in the West 86th Street apartment.

Expectedly, 127 West 108th Street became home to a Lion Brewery employee.  Cornelius C. Link listed his profession as "foreman."  Born in Germany in 1848, he and his wife, the former Anna Abel, had three sons and two daughters.

From this angle, the slight projection of the Schwartz house can be seen.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The Links apparently took in a boarder and living here in 1911 was James Osborne.  On the night of May 6 that year, George W. Parkhurst and his wife returned to their apartment on West 100th Street to find the door locked and chained from inside.  With the aid of the janitor, they broke into their own apartment and found the place ransacked.  Hearing noises, they ran to the kitchen and "found the dumbwaiter rapidly descending," reported The New York Times.  Parkhurst called the West 100th Street police station.  When Detective Farrell arrived, he saw a man rushing away and grabbed at him.  The article said, "The man leaped aside and started to run."  Farrell pursued him, firing his gun three times and missing.

The fugitive was James Osborn.  At Riverside Drive, he climbed the retaining wall and leaped over.  The article said, "It was a 60-foot drop."  Detective Farrell found Osborn, "bruised and crushed against a great boulder, and barely conscious."  Doctors at the J. Hood Wright Hospital said he "will probably die."

Around 1913, Link began investing in real estate.  He would buy and sell properties in the Harlem and Bronx areas for years.  

The enaction of Prohibition in 1920 changed the lives of brewery employees.  The Links moved to the Lexington Hotel in Mount Kisco where Anna died on February 14, 1922.  The Daily Item reported, "No estimate of the value of the estate is given, but she gives it all to her husband, Cornelius Link."  

The following month, The Brooklyn Citizen reported on an arson fire "in the Lexington Hotel...which was occupied by Cornelius Link, his son and daughter."  Although Link and his family members survived, Cornelius died later that year.

The handsome houses on the former brewery property were replaced by a one-story garage within the decade.  

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

An apartment building was erected on the site in 1951.

Ralph S. Townsend's 1887 200 West 102nd Street

 

photo by Anthony Bellov

Born in 1854, Ralph Samuel Townsend listed his profession as an architect by his late 20s.  His designs for houses and apartment buildings in the 1880s and '90s routinely reflected the highly-popular and often whimsical Queen Anne style.  In 1886, Townsend received a substantial commission from Charles G. Tomlinson to design a flat-and-store building on the southwest corner of Tenth Avenue and 102nd Street.  (The avenue would be renamed Amsterdam Avenue in 1890.)

Completed at a cost of $28,000 (about $963,000 in 2026), the building was faced in red brick and trimmed in stone and terra cotta.  Townsend centered the residential entrance on the 102nd Street elevation.  His neo-Grec design included stone bandcourses that connected the sills and lintels of the windows.  At the top floor, however, Townsend expressed his penchant for Queen Anne.  On the avenue side, a sunflower rondel sat within the faux gable that fronted the parapet and terminated in fanciful volutes.  Large square panels of sunbursts decorated the chimney backs on 102nd Street.  Smaller terra cotta tiles dotted the top floor facade.

Gracefully scalloped lintels, and tiles of sunflowers and sunbursts were typical of the Queen Anne style.  photograph by Anthony Bellov

Charles G. Tomlinson was not only the building's developer and owner, he and his family were original residents.  He and his wife, Harriet A., had at least five children:  Charles H., Florence J., Arthur R., Herbert and Hattie May.  

Herbert Tomlinson was 12 years old when his family moved into the newly completed building.  The following year, he wrote to The Evening World regarding the newspaper's contest.  His command of language and composition reflected his youthful education:

Being interested in your instructive paper, I thought I would take part in the word-building contest.  As we have no lessons to study in the month of June, I made up my mind to try for the prize.  Inclosed you will find the result of my efforts, which I hope will gain for me the prize.

(The spelling of "enclosed" with an "e" did not come along until the 20th century in America.)

The Tomlinson apartment was the scene of Florence's wedding to George T. Johnson on the afternoon of February 25, 1892.  The Sun remarked, "Miss Tomlinson's gown was of dove-colored silk, with opal trimmings, and she wore diamonds and pearls."

The building can be seen across the partially developed block between 103rd and 102nd Street.  In the foreground is the Boulevard Hotel, by then owned by Julia D. Downs, daughter of the original proprietor, Hiram B. Downs. (original source unknown)

The family suffered a horrific tragedy two years later.  On July 5, 1894, the New York Herald reported, "Hattie Tomlinson, six years old, of No. 200 West 102d street, was discharging fire crackers about half-past three o'clock yesterday afternoon when her dress took fire."  The New York Times added that her "arms and lower part of her body [were] severely burned" and that she "was taken home."

Hattie's injuries were, indeed, severe.  The following day, the New York Herald reported her death.  Her funeral was held in the apartment on July 7.

Terra cotta plaques on the brick brackets compliment the wonderful sunflower-filled rondel.  photograph by Anthony Bellov

In the meantime, the other residents of 200 West 102nd Street were professional.  Among the early tenants was John R. Onderdonk, Jr.  An 1889 graduate of the Stevens Institute of Technology, he was granted a patent in 1890 for "a freight-car coupler of very simple construction."

Also living here at the time were George F. Bender and his wife, the former Ada M. Crawford.  Born in 1881 in Hicksville, Long Island, his first job was a fireman on the Long Island Railroad.  He changed course, working in various undertaking establishments before opening his own business in 1890.  He was, as well, the sexton of  the nearby West End Presbyterian Church at 105th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

On October 21, 1895, The New York Evening Post reported that 20-year-old C. H. Tomlinson "was arrested yesterday for riding too rapidly on a bicycle around the circle at One Hundred and Sixth Street in Central Park."  He was fined $3 (about $115 today).

The young man appears to have been attending pharmacy school at the time.   As early as spring 1896, the C. H. Tomlinson drugstore occupied the storefront here.  An advertisement in The World on July 11, 1896 sought, "Drug Clerk, junior, must be strictly honest and sober; references.  Tomlinson, 856 Amsterdam."  Three years later, on October 14, 1899, C. H. Tomlinson advertised, "Porter--Wanted, young man as porter for drug store, 856 Amsterdam Ave., 102d st."

It appears that the young druggist was married around that time.  His ad in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on January 23, 1900 sought, "Wanted--Flat--Small family want 5 or 6 room flat in Brooklyn."

David and Sarah Olive Cogswell Mitchell lived in the building at the time.  Married in 1867, the couple had seven children.  David Mitchell was born in Dumbarton, Scotland in 1846, and was brought to America at the age of three-and-a-half.  He graduated from Brown University and attended the University of Bonn.  Back home, he opened a law office with his brother, Peter.  David Mitchell would become Chief Assistant District Attorney in 1897.

The C. H Tomlinson drugstore was supplanted by a Larimer A. Cushman bakery as early as 1904.  It was one of five bakeries operated throughout the city by the firm.

Cascading fish scales decorate the elongated brackets that flank the entrance.  photograph by Anthony Bellov

The Alfred Nickel family occupied an apartment here in 1908 when their daughters, Vera and Bertha, underwent tonsillectomies at the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital on March 17.  The operations went horribly wrong.

The New York Times titled an article, "Girl's Death Remarkable," and reported, "The death of Bertha Nickel, four years old...is said by the physicians of the institution to be one of the most unusual in its history."  The surgeon, Dr. Frank Van Fleet, insisted, "It is one case in ten thousand.  Immediately after the tonsils had been cut there was a gush of blood and every effort to stop it was unsuccessful.  The little girl died in a few minutes."  Van Fleet noted, "The little girl went to the hospital with her older sister Vera, who went through a similar operation successfully."  The Evening World contradicted that report, saying on March 23, that Vera "was in a very critical condition in the hospital."

Former City Councilman Stewart M. Brice suffered a nervous breakdown in the summer of 1900.  On September 12, The Evening World reported that his wife said she would not commit him to an insane asylum, "notwithstanding the physicians had declared his mental breakdown incurable."  Brice's brother, W. Kilpatrick Brice, was a lawyer.  Mrs. Brice said that the two of them would manage her husband's financial affairs.  "He has no idea of the value of money, or the obligations connected with it," she said.  "Meanwhile, he will remain with me and my son, and I will take care of him."

Wilburt Weingarth and his bride, the former Florence Stewart, moved into the building shortly after their wedding on January 7, 1928.  On Friday night, March 29, 1929, police officers knocked on their door and arrested the 29-year-old Weingarth.  Another Mrs. Weingarth, this one with the first name of Mabel, accused him of bigamy.  She told the court on March 30 that she and Wilburt were married on April 18, 1922 "and he disappeared some time later."

The parapet detailing was intact in as late as 1940 when Moran's Restaurant occupied the store space.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The building underwent significant alterations in 1947 and it was possibly at this time that the chimney tops and peaks of the gables were shorn off.

A colorful tenant beginning in the early 1960s was artist Louis Abolafia.  In 1964, the 23-year-old smuggled one of his paintings into the Metropolitan Museum of Art and hung it on a wall.  The New York Times reported, "It was taken down almost immediately."  Abolafia told a reporter, "The Met told me my work is too modern for them."

On December 15, 1965, Abolafia began a hunger strike.  Five days into his protest, The New York Times explained that he, "believes that he is being discriminated against by museums because he is not internationally famous."  The abstract-expressionist painter told The Times reporter, "They keep telling me 'You don't have a name.'"  He called his hunger strike "a symbol of my attitude; I must call attention to it," adding, "speaking out does more for the cause of young artists than remaining silent."

Louis Abolafia was still living in 200 West 102nd Street in 1968 when he ran for President on the Love ticket.  Then, days after the election, on November 15, he and three young women were arrested at Chase Manhattan Plaza, "after one of the women had partially disrobed," explained The New York Times.

The female had dropped her fur coat to reveal her bare breasts.  The article said that police "suspected the other women were also about to go topless, which in Mr. Abolafia's lexicon is called a 'bust out.'"  The three women were charged with public lewdness and Abolafia with "prompting the exposure of a female."

Today there are nine apartments in the building.  Most of the red brick facade has been painted brick red, and the stone and terra cotta painted the color of bread mold.  But most of Ralph S. Townsend's 1887 design survives.

many thanks to historian Anthony Bellov for suggesting this post