The Painting Industry Building - 45 West 14th Street

 

Although West 14th Street would not be lined with handsome brick and brownstone mansions until the 1840s, at least one business catered to the pioneering homeowners in the district by 1830.  Florist William Wilson & Brother, which operated at 45 West 14th Street, earned two awards in the American Institute of the City of New-York's Third Annual Fair that year--first place in the Table Bouquet category, and second place in Floral Design.

A half a century later, Wilson's florist shop sat within a bustling commercial thoroughfare.  The private homes had been converted to business purposes or were being used as boarding houses.  In the mid-1880s, the furniture store of Bruner & Moore Co. operated next door at 41 and 43 West 14th Street.

Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, May 25, 1878 (copyright expired)

In 1886, Bruner & Moore Co. acquired 45 West 14th Street and replaced their three vintage buildings with matching, five-story, brownstone-fronted neo-Grec-style structures.  Each of the identical buildings was three bays wide and shared a continuous cornice.  They were completed in 1887.

In an advertisement in The Sun on October 9, 1887, Bruner & Moore Co. boasted, "Having enlarged our warerooms we are now able to exhibit the largest and handsomest assortment ever offered in all the choice designs and novelties of the season."

Bruner & Moore Co. left West 14th Street early in 1893.  On February 15, The Carpet and Upholstery Trade Review noted that carpet and furniture dealer Julius Lewin had taken over two of the buildings--43 and 45.  J. Lewin & Co. advertised its opening on March 21, 1893 with "this unequalled bargain."  Lewin offered a "6-feet oak extension table, with 3 extra leaves, and 6 oak dining chairs" for $6.50.  (The sale price would translate to about $234 in 2025.)

A bachelor, Julius Lewin found romance four years after opening his store here.  On October 7, 1897, Furniture World reported that he would marry Bertha Heineman in Webster Hall on October 29.  "A large number of the groom's friends in the trade are recipients of an invitation," said the article, "and will tender their congratulations on the evening in question."

A fire on the top floor of 45 West 14th Street on June 25, 1900 resulted in the equivalent of $193,000 in damages today.  The Furniture Trade Review noted, however, that J. Lewin & Co. was fully insured.

The three neo-Grec buildings were essentially unchanged in 1941.  No. 45 West 14th Street is marked by the Menter sign over the storefront.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Apparel firms occupied the upper floors of 45 West 14th Street in the post-World War I years.  Among them were S. & B. Summer Clothing and the Admiral Shirt Company.  But the tenant list would greatly change by the outbreak of World War II as offices replaced factories.

The first appears to have been the ungainly-named New York State Board of the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic.  On January 18, 1941, The Advocate reported that association "held its first meeting for the new year at its headquarters, 45 West 14th st."  It was joined in 1955 by the newly organized Painting Industry Insurance Fund.  By 1958, 6,000 union members and 4,000 spouses made use of its Dental Center here.  The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare's Digest of Prepaid Dental Care Plans in 1958 explained, "employer contributions to the Insurance Fund finance the dental program."

On August 19, 1959, The New York Times reported that the Painting Industry Building Corporation had purchased 45 West 14th Street "for cash."  A separate article noted that the building "will be altered for occupancy by a single tenant."

Those alterations included a remodeling of the facade.  William J. Conklin of the architectural firm of Mayer, Whittlesey & Glass removed the brownstone and replaced it with glass fronted with a screen of projecting arcades of steel and bronze.  The 1967 AIA Guide to New York commented, "Hopefully, this witty and elegant refacing of a tired facade will inspire its neighbors to follow."

In 1971 the building housed offices like the Painting Industry Pension Fund, the Painting Industry Annuity Fund and the Painting Industry Insurance Fund.  

The painters' unions were investigated by Federal and state law enforcement agencies beginning in the late 1980s.  On June 22, 1990, The New York Times reported that 12 men, "including eight top painters' union leaders," had been indicted and "accused of participating in a Mafia-led conspiracy."  The article continued,

The indictments portrayed the Lucchese organized crime family as the secret power in the city's multimillion-dollar painting industry for more than a decade...The Mafia imposed a hidden 10 percent tax on municipal contracts for painting subways, bridges, schools and highways and on bills paid by private developers who built skyscrapers and apartment buildings.

Among those indicted were "two suspected chiefs in the Lucchese family--Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso and Peter (Big Pete) Chiodo--as well as two painting company executives and eight top officials in the city's painters' union, the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 9."

Until June 1989, James D. Bishop served as secretary-treasurer of the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades District Council No. 9.  The New York Times said he "was influential in the city's construction trades from 1973 to 1989."  Starting as a bridge painter after leaving the Marine Corps, he became active in Local 806 and in 1973 was elected secretary-treasurer of District Council 9.

Bishop, it seems, was not ready to resign.  Law enforcement officials "said he had been forced out by leaders in the Lucchese crime family," said The Times.  Bishop's abrupt removal, apparently, was prompted by the mob's suspicion that Bishop was cooperating with investigators.  And, indeed, on May 18, 1990, The New York Times described him as "an important witness in a major labor-racketeering investigation."

The 60-year-old would not have a chance to testify.  On May 17, 1990, he backed his Lincoln sedan out of a parking space at an apartment building in Whitestone, Queens.  A man walked up to the closed drivers' side window and fired eight shots through the glass.  Bishop was hit "at least three times in the head and chest," according to The New York Times.  He put his automobile in forward gear and drove about 150 feet before striking a wooden fence.  His body was found slumped over the wheel.  Prosecutor Michael G. Cherkasky declared, "It was absolutely a mob hit--no doubt about it."

Bishop's death ultimately did not derail the Government's case.  Eleven of the 12 defendants pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison, including Paul Kamen, who replaced Bishop as secretary-treasurer of District Council 9.

William J. Conklin's Modernist facade stands out along West 14th Street.  In 2010 the AIA Guide to New York City, which hoped in 1967 that "it will inspire its neighbors to follow," said, "They didn't."

photographs by the author

The Lost East Side Airline Terminal - First Avenue and 37th Street

 

The Manhattan Post Card Publishing Co. produced this image of the newly-completed terminal in 1953.

At mid-century, the Airlines Terminal Building in Midtown, across from Grand Central Terminal, was obsolete.  Designed by John B. Peterkin in 1939, it had solved the problem of airports being remotely located from urban passengers.  Buses ferried fliers from the terminal to the New York Municipal Airport (later renamed LaGuardia Airport).  By now, however, the terminal building was overcrowded and the tangle of buses along with their suffocating exhaust had become intolerable.

The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority brought Peterkin back in 1951 to design a larger facility blocks away near the East River.  The site that engulfed the block between 37th and 38th Streets on First Avenue was out of the way of Midtown businesses, yet still convenient for passengers. 

Ground was broken on July 25, 1951 and construction was completed two years later at a cost of $684,100 (around $74.8 million in 2023).  Peterkin's Modernist design smacked of the sleek ocean liners of the period--its long, low profile punctuated by regimented rows of windows.  The architect's minimalist treatment of the exterior relied on clean lines rather than the Art Deco ornamentation of his earlier building.  With its rounded corners and unbroken band of openings at the second floor, the East Side Airline Terminal was as much sculpture as architecture.

Refrigerating Engineering, March 1955

As the building neared completion on November 8, 1953, The New York Times promised, "passengers will find the last word in conveniences while the city will be relieved of bus traffic congestion."  The article said the new building would "accommodate about 7,000 passengers a day."

The building was leased to the Airlines' Terminal Corporation, a consortium of ten domestic airlines that held space inside.  It was dedicated at 6:00 on November 30, 1953.  The speakers were Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri; Mayor-elect Robert F. Wagner Jr.; the chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, Robert Moses; and president of the Airlines' Terminal Corporation, Paul H. Brattain.

from the collection of the University of Wisconsin

As with the former terminal, here customers could buy their tickets, check their luggage, and board one of the 100 buses which made a total of 550 trips to the airport each day.  The bus garage was below ground, while on the roof was parking for 300 automobiles.  Inside, according to The New York Times, "The main portion of the building is the second-floor rotunda, a vast and pleasantly colored hall (bluish green and tomato red) filled with hard wooden waiting-room benches and lined by the check-in and ticket counters of the ten United States lines."

John B. Peterkin's interiors were as sleek and clean as his facade.  The columns were colored a deep "tomato red."  photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

The newspaper mentioned that the new location would shave minutes off passengers' trips.  The ride to LaGuardia was 25 minutes, down from half-an-hour; and the trip to Idlewild (today's JFK.) was 37 minutes, a savings of five minutes.

The estimate that the East Side Airline Terminal would serve 7,000 passengers daily fell far short.  Eight months after its opening, on July 18, 1954, The New York Times reported, "Nearly 10,000 travelers a day are processed by the airline offices in the First Avenue air depot."  The article said that the results of the first half year of operation "are gratifying to nearly everyone concerned."  It explained in part:

Instead of wandering the sidewalks around the old terminal building in search of the right bus for the right flight, passengers now are led by unerring loudspeakers to a specified slot on a sheltered ramp to board their buses.  The new building is spacious, air-conditioned, well-equipped with food and drink and a 300-car parking lot on the roof.  All this pleases the airline passengers.

 

The article concluded saying, "Over on Tenth Avenue at Forty-first Street, excavation has been completed for the West Side Airlines Terminal, which is scheduled to handle all departures and arrivals for Newark by September of 1955."  That terminal would substantially reduce the number of passengers utilizing the East Side Airlines Terminal.

Exactly two decades after the terminal opened, on May 8, 1973 The New York Times reported, "The consortium of 10 domestic airlines managing and operating the East Side Airlines Terminal has refused to renew its lease, raising the possibility that the facility will close when the contract expires next Oct. 31."  A spokesperson for the group said there had been "an annual operating deficit of $750,000 to $1-million for the last eight years."

The concept of urban airlines terminals was already outdated.  The West Side Airlines Terminal had closed a year before the article.  On October 17, 1973, the chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority announced that a three-month truce had been arranged with the tenants to keep the terminal open "while working on plans to continue its operation 'indefinitely.'"

A postcard ca 1955 depicted the new building with its rooftop parking lot relatively full.  

The terminal limped along.  The severe reduction in its use was evidenced in December 1977 when the parking lot on the roof was converted to tennis courts within pressurized air bubbles.  On January 16, 1978, The New York Times reported, "On the roof of the old East Side Airlines Terminal, near cabs and buses, this new facility is unquestionably the standard by which all other indoor tennis clubs in New York will now be judged."

Early in 1985, the inevitable finally came to pass.  The building was sold for $90.6 million on February 13 to developers "who plan to build a luxury apartment house on the site," reported the New York Times.  The price, equal to about $246 million in 2023, was believed to be the highest ever paid at auction for parcel of Manhattan real estate.  Peter L. Malkin, speaking for the joint venture buyer, said the terminal "would be torn down as early as next year and an apartment house of about 50 stories would be built."

Close inspection reveals portions of the terminal building in the base of the new apartment building.  photo by Rhododendrites.

In fact, architects Der Scutt and John Schimenti, incorporated much of the old structure into the 57-floor The Corinthian.  

LaptrinhX.com has no authorization to reuse the content of this blog

Paul Rudolph's Masterful No. 246 East 58th Street

photo courtesy PRF

The Upper East Side was slowly developing during the Civil War years.  East 58^th Street, between Second and Third Avenues saw the construction of modest row houses clad in brick or brownstone that coexisted with earlier more rural-type houses.

During the war the Wallack family lived at No. 246 East 58^th Street, described by The New York Times as “a three-story brick” house, 20 feet wide.  Young Joseph was attending New York City College in 1866.

The house, expectedly, would see the comings and goings of several owners.  In 1905 Simon A Nies transferred the title to Babbette Brody.  She paid $3,750 for the building.   Shortly thereafter the it would become home to the Cohn family for decades.  Michael and Amelia Cohn had four children in the house, Nathan, Rose, Bella and Isaac.  Members of the family would occupy the house until the late 1930s.  In 1941 it was divided into 15 furnished rented rooms.

By the late 1950s the vintage house sat empty and neglected.  In September 1960 The New York Times (which once deemed the building brick) reported the “vacant brownstone house” was sold for $65,000 in cash.  “The buyers plan to convert [it] to store and commercial space.”

The building would survive for nearly three more decades.  It was variously home to Ellsworth& Goldie Galleries, dealers in modern paintings, sculpture and prints; Fabrications, an interior decorating store; and Mira-X International Furnishings.

In the meantime, architect Paul Marvin Rudolph had established himself on the cutting edge of Modernist design.   In 1989 he and close friend Ernst Wagner purchased No. 246.  Rudolph envisioned a transformation that would result in rental apartments—unlike any seen in New York City.  In recent years Rudolph’s major commissions had been outside of the United States, primarily in Asia, due to consistent derision of his works by other American architects. The residential-retail structure at No. 246 East 58^th Street would be his last New York work.

Paul Rudolph's original concept called for a taller structure.  Subsequent zoning changes resulted in the reduced size.  courtesy PRF

The old house was dismantled and a new steel structure began rising.  Brilliant in comprehending the play of light, shadow and shape, Rudolph reportedly worked on scores of studies for the façade of the little building.   Interior as well as exterior details were honed to the smallest detail; resulting in a 14-year construction process.  

Six years into the project, in December 1995 while in Mexico City, Rudolph first evidenced troubling symptoms. Within two months he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer resultant from exposure to asbestos.    On August 8, 1997 Rudolph died before seeing the building completed.

Finally finished in 2003, the structure houses a two-story retail space below two duplex apartments.  Today the residential areas are home to Ernst Wagner.  The headquarters of the Paul Rudolph Foundation are housed in on a separate office level.

photo courtesy PRF

As dazzling as the façade is—an artwork of geometric boxes, shadows and angles—the interiors are fascinating.  Sean Khorsandi, Co-Director of the Foundation, eagerly showed off the space pointing out the genius in Rudolph’s design.    There are no dead ends—the eye follows lines that disappear around corners or into walls and floors.   The open staircases seamlessly evolve from the lines of bookcases in soaring spaces that are seemingly carved from light itself.

A ceiling beam disappears into a void rather than disrupt the visual motion of the space's lines --  photo courtesy PRF

Somewhat amazingly, the architectural gem—Paul Rudolph’s last Manhattan work—is little known by most New Yorkers.  Hidden on a side street far from Midtown the mostly overlooked building deserve a detour.