J. M. Felson's 1929 218 West 10th Street

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Abraham Schwartz was a builder and real estate developer, head of the A. M. Schwartz Building & Construction Company.  On May 2, 1928, he purchased three three-story apartment buildings at 340 through 344 Bleecker Street and the abutting, five-story apartment house on the southwest corner of West 10th Street.  The next day, The New York Times announced that the old structures, "will be razed and replaced by a modern six-story elevator apartment building containing electric refrigeration and other modern improvements."

Schwartz commissioned the Russian-born architect Jacob M. Felson to design the building.  Completed the following year, the residential entrance was placed at the western end of the West 10th Street side.  The four stores along Bleecker Street were designed with deep arcade show windows that enabled the proprietors to create large displays.  (The corner store was double the size of the other three.)

Completed in 1929 at a cost of $238,700 (about $4.73 million in 2026), Felson's sleek, tripartite 1920s take on the Medieval Revival style included an arched corbel table below the fifth floor cornice, and stepped Tudor-inspired gables with blank shields atop the parapet.  Above the residential entrance Felson placed a carved Renaissance-inspired panel.

Abe Schwartz could not have predicted that the Stock Market would crash the year his building opened.  In August 1931, he lost the property in foreclosure.

A woman who lived here at the time (whose name was not disclosed in newspaper articles) was having an affair with a married Brooklyn man, Valentine C. Bauman.  In the meantime, Ruth C. Bauman was doing some private investigating on her own and tracked down her wandering husband to Manhattan and 218 West 10th Street.  On the evening of November 4, 1931, Ruth and "several of her friends," according to The Brooklyn Standard Union, barged into the apartment.  

Ruth told a judge on January 8, 1932, "There he was sitting on the side of the bed in two-piece underwear talking to a woman in [a] flesh-colored negligee."  According to Ruth Bauman, her husband remarked, "Here I am."  The article said that Ruth was "a free woman today."

The arcade storefronts survived as late as 1941.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Jane Carabine and Margaret Dusseau shared an apartment here as early as 1932.  Margaret came home early on the night of February 26, 1933, to discover her 30-year-old roommate dead.  The New York Times reported, "Gas was escaping from a jet of the kitchen range."  Police called Jane's death accidental.

As early as 1963, Aldo's Italian restaurant occupied the southern-most commercial space.  It was replaced by Boomer's soul food and jazz restaurant around 1972.  That year New York Magazine called it "a casual Village place where spareribs and black-eyed peas are served up with great sounds by the likes of Ray Bryant, Bobby Timmons and Cedar Watson."

The De Santis-Jensen "semi-antiques shop," as described by The New York Times on August 21, 1965, filled the corner space.  Owned by Stuart Jenson and Anthony de Santis, the shop appealed to "the special kind of person who appreciates kookiness as much as we do," according to Jensen.  He told The Times, "Barbra Streisand hasn't been in here, but Tony Perkins has, and so have Eli Wallach, Leonard Bernstein and Anne Bancroft."

photo by The New York Times photographer Bill Allen, August 21, 1965

Living here by 1987 was Glenn R. Purdy, an editor for Travel Agent magazine.  On July 23 that year, Purdy did not arrive at work.  When no one could reach him, senior editor Joe Murphy went to his apartment.  Getting no response from inside, Murphy walked over to the nearby Sixth Precinct station house.

Officers returned with Murphy and entered the apartment.  "They found Mr. Purdy's body on the living room couch," reported The New York Times.  According to one of the officers, the 57-year-old had been stabbed in the back and his pockets had been "ripped apart."  Because there was no sign of forced entry, officials thought Purdy knew his killer.  A bloody kitchen knife was recovered in the apartment.

The building's most celebrated tenant was playwright, librettist and screenwriter Terrence McNally, who lived here with his life partner (and, later, husband), Broadway producer and former civil rights attorney Tom Kirdahy.

Born on November 3, 1938, McNally graduated from Columbia University in 1960.  The next year, he was hired by novelist John Steinbeck and his wife to tutor their two teenaged sons while they traveled.  (McNally was already in a relationship with playwright Edward Albee.)

His first full-length play, This Side of the Door, was produced in 1962, and his Broadway debut came in 1965 when he was just 26 years old.  He would go on to write hits like Love! Valour! Compassion!, Master Class, and The Ritz.

Terrance McNally posed in front of the marquee of his first Broadway musical, The Rink, in 1984.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

In reviewing his Mothers and Sons in the Observer on March 26, 2014, Rex Reed called the play "a masterpiece," and McNally, "one of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theater world has yet produced."  He also wrote the books for the musicals Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime.  

McNally addressed gay sexuality and the AIDS crisis.  Writing in The New York Times on March 24, 2020, Jesse Green and Neil Genzlinger said, "His gay stories never came across as a narrowing of theater's human focus but as an expansion of it, and by inviting everyone into them he helped solidify the social change he was describing."

McNally and Kirdahy were still living at 218 West 10th Street when the four-time Tony Award-winning playwright died in Sarasota, Florida on March 24, 2020 at the age of 81.

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For decades the southern space on Bleecker Street was home to Manatus, a diner-type restaurant, while the Village Apothecary on the corner enjoyed equal longevity.  They were replaced by the Saint Theo's restaurant and a Pdpaola jewelry store, respectively.

Emery Roth's 1928 Manchester House - 141-145 West 79th Street

 

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On December 6, 1927, the New York Sun reported that Harry A. Hyman “took title yesterday to three four-story buildings 141 to 145 West Seventy-ninth street.”  Among those vintage houses was the home of Daniel Frohman, famous theater producer.  The Frohman family have lived there since 1884.  Hyman had recently formed the 145 West Seventy-Ninth Street Corporation, of which he was president.  The article noted, “The purchaser is to demolish the buildings at once and improve the property with a sixteen-story and penthouse apartment building.”

Hyman had already commissioned apartment house architect Emery Roth to design the building.  Roth’s romantic, 1920s blend of Renaissance and medieval architecture included pointed Gothic arches, heraldic carvings and a brown brick façade peppered with various-sized stone blocks to give the illusion of age.  In an early example of developers’ egoism that would climax with names like Helmsley and Trump being emblazoned on buildings throughout the city, Hyman had Roth include his monogram—H-A-H—on terra cotta shields at the third floor.  Completed in September 1928, the Manchester House had “suites of one, two, three and four rooms,” according to The Sun, which added, “the three and four rooms have dining alcoves.” 

Pianist Paolo Gallico was among the initial residents.  Described by The Musical Monitor as “an accomplished pianist and versatile composer,” his oratorio The Apocalypse had premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1922 to high acclaim.  His apartment doubled as his studio for teaching piano.  Gallico’s son, Paul, Jr. would go on to achieve fame as an author.

Paolo Gallico (original source unknown)

Other early residents were the Abraham Wolf family.  It appears that the Wolfs were opposed to a romance that formed between their daughter, Miriam, and Edwin Freed.  If so, their objections failed.  On May 7, 1930, The Talking Machine & Radio Weekly reported, “the secret marriage last December of Edwin Freed, younger brother of Joseph D. R., Leo and Arthur Freed, well known radio manufacturers, to Miss Miriam Wolf…was announced last week.” 

Living here at the time, were Clarence D. Costello, his wife, and his sister-in-law, Essie Kerns, who was a widow.  Essie, who was about 40 years old, was deeply tormented in the winter of 1930.  On the afternoon of December 1, 16-year-old Daniel Anderson was walking along the Coney Island boardwalk when he saw Essie wade into the icy surf.  The Standard Union reported, “Without taking time to divest himself of his clothing,” he plunged into the ocean after her.  “Screaming, ‘Let me die!’ she fought his efforts at rescue,” said the article.  The teen was able to overpower her, and as he was pulling her in, a deli operator waded in to help.  They carried her to a store in the Half Moon Hotel.  There, other than admitting her name, Essie refused to tell the police anything about herself or her reason for attempting suicide.  “She was taken to Kings County Hospital for observation,” concluded the article. 

An erudite resident was Walter Beardslee Wildman, who taught Latin at the private Trinity School.  An 1898 graduate of Trinity College, he and his wife, Bessie F. Wildman, had a teenaged son, Walter Jr., born in 1915.  Following Wildman’s death, Bessie and Walter remained in the Manchester House apartment.  Like his father, Walter Jr. attended Trinity College and then New York University’s College of Medicine.  The 35-year-old anesthesiologist was still living with his mother here when he became engaged to Patricia Ann Grayson in September 1950. 

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A top floor apartment became home to songwriter and singer Laura Nyro in the late 1960s.  While living here, she wrote hit songs like “Blowing Away,” “Wedding Bell Blues," “Stoned Soul Picnic,” and “Eli’s Coming.”  A consistent visitor to the apartment was her agent, David Geffen.  

Laura Nyro in a 1970s publicity shot.  (original source unknown)

In her 2002 Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro, author Michael Kort describes Nyro’s apartment saying, 

A step up in class from her Eighth Avenue place, the apartment was still quite small, essentially one room with a foldout bed, a tiny kitchen, and a piano facing a wall on which she’d placed a heart-shaped mirror.  However, it opened onto a huge terrace, with a large black water tower to one side.

After nearly a century, Emery Roth’s Manchester House is nearly unchanged.  Its picturesque lower façade still charms the passersby who pause to appreciate it.

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