The 1831 New York City Marble Cemetery

photo by Demadeo

By the 1830's the residential neighborhood known as the Bond Street Area featured handsome Federal-style mansions and merchant-class homes filled with furniture by Duncan Phyfe and Joseph Meeks. On Second Avenue, hidden behind houses with only a narrow passage marked by a wrought-iron gate, the New York Marble Cemetery was established in 1830.

A severely conservative space, it was surrounded by a rubble stone wall in which three tiers of marble plaques documented the names of the interred. No monuments or headstones were allowed, leaving the burial ground to appear as a grassy lawn.

A year later, around the corner on East 2nd Street between First and Second Avenues a second cemetery was begun on property possessed by Samuel Cowdrey (who already owned a vault in the Second Avenue graveyard).  Organized by a group of well-to-do businessmen including Thomas Addis Emmet, Garret Storm, Henry Booraem, Samel Whittemore and Evert Bancker, it had the confusingly similar name of The New York City Marble Cemetery.  It would be the second non-sectarian cemetery in the city.

According to historical commentator Helen Henderson in her 1917 book A Loiterer in New York, it “was started as a rather potent rival…In this cemetery tombstones and monuments were allowed, and the vault owners seem to have been at some pains to show how really lovely such memorials could be made, and how worthy of a place in the city beautiful.”

By 1835, additional lots of land had been added to accommodate 25 vaults. A high brick wall ran around three sides while the 2nd Street side was guarded by an elegant cast iron fence and gate. Long walks separated the lines of vaults and the New York City Marble Cemetery became a fashionable burial site for New York’s wealthy families.

As the century progressed beautiful marble monuments were erected to mark the graves of notable New Yorkers – New York City Mayor and New York State Governor Stephen Allen, James Lenox, Revolutionary War hero Marinus Willet, Samuel Kip (remembered in the name of Kip’s Bay) and all of his family, six Roosevelts, and Mayor Isaac Varian.

The “Ministers’ Vault” held the remains of the Dutch settlers disinterred from their original resting place far downtown. “One of the most graceful monuments,” according to Henderson, “is to the memory of Preserved Fish, a shipping merchant.”

Other notable persons buried here were John Lloyd Stephens, the archaeologist who pioneered exploration of Mayan Mexico, John Ericsson who invented the Civil War ironclad Monitor (his body was later removed to Sweden), Stephen Decatur, James Watson Webb, Jonathan Ogden and Moses Taylor.

One of the first persons buried in the cemetery was former President James Monroe who died in New York of tuberculosis and heart failure on July 4, 1831; the same year the burial ground was opened. Thirty-three pall bearers accompanied his coffin, followed by an impressive stream of veterans, dignitaries, and family.  Thousands crammed the streets to view the procession up Broadway to Monroe’s son-in-law’s crypt.  Church bells tolled throughout the city and cannons from the Battery were fired.

The State of Virginia, 27 years later, petitioned for reburial of the president in his home state.  On July 2, 1858, the body was exhumed and the following day loaded on the ship Jamestown for its journey home.

In the decades after the Civil War the Bond Street area lost favor as prosperous families moved further uptown. Beginning in the 1870's some relatives removed the remains of their families to cemeteries in more fashionable districts.

With the neighborhood changing, concerned lot owners formed a group of Trustees to ensure the care and maintenance of the cemetery and subscriptions were sold for its upkeep.  Rumors in 1890 that the valuable real estate would be sold for development were quickly dispelled by Erasmus Sterling, secretary of the Trustees. “The lot owners have inherent rights,” he said, “which cannot be abrogated. We have the financial means to keep the cemetery in permanent good order and the grounds will be cared for by a competent Superintendent.”

At the time there was a comfortable $17,000 in the permanent fund, greatly assisted by a bequest of $5,000 from William C. Treadwell’s estate.

By 1897 the cemetery, while carefully maintained, was little used and was being hemmed in by tenement buildings.  The elegant brick homes with marble trim were mostly a memory. That year, when the body of millionaire Reuben B. Withers was returned from Paris for burial here, the ceremony -- now no longer routine -- caused a stir.  The New York Times commented that a “burial, a rare occurrence in these days for the place, occurred yesterday in the quaint old New York City Marble Cemetery in Second Street, Between First and Second Avenues.

“Women and children thronged the windows and fire escapes of the tenements which look down upon the cemetery, and street urchins crowded about the iron fence to see the burial,” the newspaper said.

Tenements press in along the walls of the New York City Marble Cemetery in the early 20th Century - photo by Victor Volnar -- from the collection of the New York Public Library 

The trustees of the cemetery held annual meetings and refused to allow the New York City Marble Cemetery to fall into neglect, as had the nearby New York Marble Cemetery.  On March 19, 1905 The Times reported that the older cemetery was in derelict condition.  “Some of the vaults have fallen in,” it said, “and in the course of time others may do so; the wall surrounding the cemetery has commenced to fall and there are no funds for repairs.”

The newspaper went on to contrast the two burial grounds, saying of the New York City Marble Cemetery, “Unlike the other cemetery, this place is a veritable beauty spot in Summer, splendidly laid out with flower beds, with a great abundance of creeping ivy, shrubs, and vines, several lindens, a few monuments – a well-kept place.”

Helen Henderson, in writing about the cemetery in 1917, agreed, saying, “The walls too are covered with vines and most appropriate shrubs and trees, in the weeping willow style, and have been well cared for during eighty-odd years.”

The quiet and picturesque little cemetery, which was given landmark status in 1969, was jolted into public awareness in 2010 when a maintenance worker discovered a garbage bag containing what the New York City Police Department Bomb Squad identified as C-4 military-grad explosive bricks.  The plastic explosives, more powerful than TNT, were removed without incident.

This picturesque page from New York's genteel past is still lovingly maintained yet widely unknown.

non-credited photographs were taken by the author

No. 375 Broome Street -- A Tenement with Dignity

photo by Alice Lum

When Peter Herter came to New York from Germany in 1884 he was, according to The New York Times “the richest builder on the banks of the Rhine.” Herter and his brother Francis established an architectural firm, Herter Brothers (not to be confused with the interior decorating firm of the same name), and set about constructing dignified tenement buildings for immigrants in the Lower East Side.

The Herters approached tenement housing differently that most builders and architects of the time. Peter defended the oft-maligned structures saying “flats, apartments, everything of that kind…from the humblest to the grandest, are, legally speaking, tenement houses.” The more acceptable French flats and apartment buildings rented for $20 or more per month; tenements were less expensive, the humble homes of the working class.

Unlike most other tenement buildings, those designed by the Herters were embellished with ambitious ornamentation, their rooms were generally larger and they offered a bit more self-esteem to the lowly renters.

Such a building was 375 Broome Street, erected around 1890. Using red brick, limestone and terra cotta the brothers produced a visually entertaining façade. Four bays wide, each of the six floors is separated by a stone course and the windows treated differently on each story. Rich terra cotta shells within arches cap the third floor windows, pronounced triangular pediments sit above the two outside windows of the fourth floor while shells without the arches ornament those in the center, and most strikingly large Magen David –or stars of David – set in ornate plaques set off the fifth floor.

photo by Alice Lum

The center two bays are recessed slightly for visual appeal. Two slim free standing Corinthian columns stand on carved stone brackets in the shape of classical heads, supporting a robust, deep pressed metal cornice. Within the cornice a large bust of, presumably, Moses looks out onto the passersby.

The Herters designed two other remarkably similar tenement houses around the same time. Historian and author Oscar Israelowitz explains that the Jewish motifs reflected the purpose of housing Jewish immigrants. The AIA Guide to New York City is less sure, offering Jupiter, Michelangelo, Mazzini and Garibaldi as possible alternative identities of the bust and saying that the stars of David are “commonly found in turn-of-the-century architectural ornament with no Jewish connection.”

photo by Alice Lum


The Jewish connection can be argued when one considers that Peter and Francis designed the elaborate Eldridge Street Synagogue around the same time. However the names of the residents reflect a mixture of backgrounds.

In 1896, Elizabeth Orth was living here when, while talking with a neighbor Rocco Bruno, she was insulted by “a tramp” which resulted in a “rough-and-tumble fight on the sidewalk,” according to the press. By 1910 an Italian restaurant occupied the first floor, run by F. Pigniolo, and among the tenants were Mrs. Amelia Morrita with her son Giuseppe and daughter Antonina, and neighbor Angelina Fenadi.

On November 7 of that year Salvatore Ricco was painting the rear of the restaurant when a gas jet ignited his paintbrush, which he dropped into the paint pot causing a conflagration.  The flames swept up the air shaft to the roof and while a passerby ran to nearby Engine Company 55, a policeman worked to evacuate the residents.

The New York Times reported on the problem of getting Angelina Fenadi to safety. She “was so fat that when she tried to get through the fire escape opening on the fifth floor she stuck fast,” said the newspaper. “Policeman Donohue tried to shove her through but the harder he tried the tighter she stuck. He had to remove several of her garments before he could get her through. A fireman took her to the street on an extension ladder.”

The fire damaged the second and third floors, causing an estimated $10,000 worth of damage.

Throughout the 20th century 375 Broome Street carried on the tradition for which it was built – relatively inexpensive apartments for working class renters. Today the ground floor is home to Quan Sushi and Oro Bakery and Bar and while the multi-cultural neighborhood is much changed since the 1890s, the Herter Brothers richly-decorated tenement building remains nearly unaltered.

The White Horse Tavern - 567 Hudson Street

Welsh poet Dylan Thomas came to New York to narrate his play Under Milk Wood in 1953.  Before long he was romantically involved with the play’s assistant director, Liz Reitell.  The two shared an apartment in the legendary Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street.

It was during that same year that Scottish poet Ruthven Todd changed the life of Dylan Thomas by bringing him to a blue collar bar in Greenwich Village – The White Horse Tavern.  Located on corner of Hudson and West 11th Streets, the tavern had opened in 1880 a few blocks from the Hudson River piers.  Generations of dock workers and laborers finished their day at its commodious bar crafted from a solid piece of mahogany under the pressed tin ceiling.  It immediately became Thomas’s drinking spot of choice.

His last visit to “The Horse,” as he called it, was on November 5, 1953.  Drinking whiskey with a gusto unusual even for him, he became ill and returned to Chelsea Hotel where he fell into a coma.  Four days later–just six days after his 40th birthday–Thomas died of chronic alcohol poisoning at St. Vincent’s Hospital.

The popular version of the story recounts his last words being, “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies, I believe that is a record.”  The recollection of the bartender puts the number significantly lower and the authenticity of the quotation is doubtful.  Nevertheless, Thomas’s passing started a pilgrimage of poets and artists to the White Horse.

The stools where longshoremen drank ale and beer were suddenly taken over by the likes of Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Jack Kerouac, Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison.  In the 1960s, Beat Generation poet Alan Ginsberg drank here, along with Frank O’Hara.

Later, artist Andy Warhol could be found here, as well as Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes.  On the night that John Belushi died, Dan Akroyd came in around closing time and bought drinks for the house.

With the celebrities came the celebrity watchers and The White Horse became a tourist destination.  The famous are protected here, though.  In 2004 owner Eddie Brennan told The Villager that the staff members “take care of them, don’t make a fuss and don’t let anyone bother them.”

Photo by Dunmore Throop

Through it all the White Horse has remained remarkably unchanged.  Any vintage photograph of the tavern looks nearly identical to one shot today.  The three-story Victorian vernacular style building is as unpretentious on the exterior as it is inside.  In a surprising reversal of convention its front facade on Hudson Street--normally the side meant to impress--is clapboard while the 11th Street side façade is brick.

The inconspicuous tavern gained celebrity the night a renowned poet drank his last whiskey here.  But the real success of the White Horse Tavern lays in its atmosphere and its philosophy.  As Brennan put it, “We’ve got drinkers and we take care of them.”

historic photographs from the NYPL Collection

Murder, Degraded Women, and a Grocery -- 279 Water Street

Photo by official-ly cool

Comfortable brick homes lined Water Street in the last years of the 18th Century.  Ships’ captains and importers built their residences here, conveniently near their private piers and commercial wharfs.  In 1794 Newell Narin leased from James Kip a wood frame Georgian-style building at 279 Water Street on the corner of Dover Street.  The two-and-a-half story building housed his “grocery and wine and porter bottler” business on the ground floor while he most likely lived above.

Before landfill would later move the riverfront two blocks away, the East River’s bank was just half a block to the east where Lawrence’s Wharf stood.

Two years later Narine was sent to debtor's prison, after which Kip leased the property to retired ship captain Peter Laing who continued running the grocery with his wife, Janet.  Later Laing purchased the building in what would be the first of a great many title changes.  Things apparently went smoothly for two decades, then the Laing’s sold the business in 1826 to attorney Charles G. Ferris.

Ferris leased the building and after his death it was managed by his estate.  As the Civil War approached, the climate of Water Street declined. Once-elegant captains’ homes were being converted to brothels, gambling houses and saloons.

The proprietors of 279 Water changed rapidly.  In 1847 Henry Williams opened his porter house selling malt liquor here. In 1858 John Henry Stelling and William Brosnan ran their saloon for one year before Thomas Norton took over the lease.

The neighborhood continued to get seedier.  In 1862 Catharine Curran was lured into the bar and murdered. According to the press, the 28-year old Curran had been “living a dissolute course of life with a man named James Winthrop.”  When Winthrop left her for another woman, Honora Morrissey, Catherine became jealous and stalked him for several weeks, begging that he come back to her.

After about a week, Winthrop decided that the only way to free himself was to murder her.  The New York Times reported that he “…in company with Honora, formed the diabolical plan of destroying her life by making her drink a mixture, composed of equal parts of burning fluid and alcohol; and incredible as it appear, witnesses testified upon the inquest that the deceased was compelled to drink three decanters full of this fiery fluid, each decanter containing a quart, in one hour.  The result was death in a short time thereafter.”

In 1867 Samuel Norton was arrested, bail being set at $100, for having “disposed of strong and spirituous liquors, wines, ales and beer on Sundays.”

Around this time, at 273 Water Street just down the block, Kit Burns was running his infamous rat pit in his Sportsmen’s Hall where bets were placed on how many wharf rats a terrier could kill in an hour and where “Jack the Rat” would bite off the heads of live mice and rats.

The depravity of the area caused reformers like Jerry Macauley to attempt to introduce religion.  From his Water Street Mission Macauley railed against the saloons and brothels.  On March 30, 1878 he was responsible for a raid that included 279 Water Street.  Nearly two dozen prostitutes ended up in court.

“Twenty-two of the most repulsive types of degraded womanhood stood huddled together at the prisoners’ bar in the Tombs Police Court yesterday,” reported The New York Times. Mary Reilley, “the proprietress of the premises,” was held on $1000 bail to appear for trial.  In April of the next year the District Attorney brought an indictment against the business as “a disorderly house,” or brothel.

In 1888 the pitched roof was removed and a third floor added.  The overall appearance was Victorianized with Eastlake-style window lintels, a modestly-ornate cornice and a late-Victorian saloon entrance with a corner cast iron pillar.

In 1891 Jeremiah J. Cronin and John Murphy ran a bar here until 1902 when Peter J. Boyle took over until Prohibition.  John Pikel leased "the store and basement” from Margaret C. Hyland on September 27, 1921, the year following the enactment of Prohibition.  While he ran the place ostensibly as a restaurant, patrons came for the “cider” and for the home-made beer that was imported from Brooklyn by bootlegger, Charlie Brennan.

As the 20th Century progressed, the Water Street neighborhood improved.  With the development of the South Street Seaport area starting in 1967, tourists and New Yorkers alike began discovering what had been a somewhat isolated area.

279 Water Street was renamed “The Bridge Café” in 1979 when the new owners of the building upgraded the restaurant and bar.  Today, inside or out, it is difficult to remember that the neat, red wooden building at 279 Water Street was the haunt of murderers, prostitutes and thugs during the last half of the 19th Century.

The John Purroy Mitchel Monument

Among the long list of monuments in Manhattan dedicated to persons no one has ever heard of, the John Purroy Mitchel Monument must rank near the top.  The monument is part of the Engineers' Gate to Central Park, a striking neo-classical stone wall and sweeping staircase that leads to the Reservoir above.  Central to the wall, designed by Thomas Hastings and Don Barber, is the memorial featuring a gilded bust of Mitchel.  It is one of the most unusual and impressive of the Central Park memorials.

Mitchel remains the youngest elected mayor of New York City, coming to office at the age of 35 in 1913.  He was graduated from New York Law School in 1901 and immediately started making a name for himself.  Determined to break up the Tammany Hall corruption, his investigations ended the careers of John F. Ahern, Manhattan Borough President, and Louis Haffren, Bronx Borough President, in 1906.

Recognized nation-wide as a reformer, he was elected Mayor in 1913.  With his appointment of Police Commissioner Arthur Wood, Mitchel took steps to clean up the corrupt New York Police Department, longtime time bedfellows with the Tammany gang.  Tammany Hall wouldn't go down without a fight, though.

John Mitchel strongly believed in vocational schools for the underprivileged to help them become employable.  Tammany used his intended educational reforms in a wide-spread smear campaign; insisting that Mitchel was making it impossible for poor children to receive a free, liberal arts education.

Mitchel lost his re-election bid in 1917 and immediately joined the Air Service to fight in World War I.  He never got that chance, however.  On July 6, 1918 while flying a training flight in his single-seater scout airplane at Gerstner Field in Louisiana he fell 500 feet to his death.

John Purroy Mitchel had failed to fasten his safety belt.

The New York Times reported the following day "One of the mechanicians had said a few days ago: 'It makes my hair stand on end to see Major Mitchel fly.  He takes risks and seems to think nothing of it.'"

Mitchel's wife accompanied his body, alone, back to New York for his funeral and burial.  Mitchel Field in Long Island was named after him, now the site of Hofstra University and the Nassau Coliseum.

The Mitchel Memorial Committee retained Hastings and Barber to design the gate and commissioned sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman to execute Mitchel's bust.  It was unveiled in 1926.

Today the memorial to the great reformer who forgot to fasten his seat belt creates an impressive entry to the park.  And nobody knows who he was.

The Little Red Lighthouse

The great grey George Washington Bridge spans the mighty Hudson River at a point where trecherous currents are caused by the jutting point of land called Jeffrey's Hook.  Barely noticeable there at the river's edge, a little red 19th Century lighthouse stands.

In 1889, long before the bridge or the lighthouse, a 20-foot high post outfitted with two red lanterns was erected on the site to warn ships and barges of the outcropping and shoals.  The lanterns were replaced with brighter lights six years later.

Meanwhile, in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, a 55-foot high bright red lighthouse had been erected in 1880.  The little lighthouse warned ship captains until 1917 when it was dismantled and put into storage at Stapleton, Staten Island.

By 1921 the traffic on the Hudson required an upgrading of the Jeffrey's Hook warning lights.  The little lighthouse from Sandy Hook was taken out of storage and reassembled by the Coast Guard.  The lower 15 feet of the structure were discarded and the little lighthouse got littler -- down to 40 feet.  The beacon, now known as The Jeffrey's Hook Lighthouse, was outfitted with a new lamp that rotated every 3 seconds and a bell and fog signal.

Exactly a decade later the massive new bridge was opened overhead and, because of the navigation lights on its towers, the little lighthouse was suddenly obsolete.  It sat, now useless, in the shadow of the huge bridge.

Inspired by the diminuative tower, Hildegarde H. Swift and Lynd Ward wrote a children's book in 1942, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge."  It told the story of the dejected little lighthouse that seemed to have no purpose anymore.  Then on one particularly foggy night the lights of the bridge were shrouded and only the bell and light of the little lighthouse saved the boats.  Even little things, the story taught, can be important.

In 1947 the Coast Guard decommissioned the lighthouse and put it up for sale as scrap.  Word spread across the country and school children everywhere banded together.  Letters and milk money poured into the Coast Guard from cities and farmtowns as children who knew the lighthouse from the book pled to save the it.

The Coast Guard relented.  The lighthouse could stay.  In 1951 ownership was transferred to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.  In 1986 it received a $209,000 restoration and, in 2000, a new coat of red paint true to its historical color.  It was landmarked on May 14, 1991.

Every year in September the Little Red Lighthouse Festival is held and, during the festivities, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge is read to the children.  Among the famous who have read it include James Earl Jones, Isabella Rosselini and Dee Dee Conn.

Thanks to thousands of school children the Little Red Lighthouse stands on Jeffrey's Hook today, still shining -- the last lighthouse in Manhattan.  They proved, as did the lighthouse in the book, that you don't have to be big to make a difference.

Bow Bridge - Central Park

As Central Park was being planned in the 1850s, the list of items to be designed by Calvert Vaux and his assistant Jacob Wrey Mould grew longer and longer.  On that list was a bridge across the lake to connect the Ramble with Cherry Hill.  The commissioners envisioned a suspension bridge; a minor craze for these having swept the country starting a decade earlier.

Instead, a compromise was reached with a low-rising cast iron bridge the graceful arch of which resembled an archer's bow, hence the name.

Problems had to be overcome from the start.  For one thing, the northern bank is much lower than the southern side.  Therefore the north abutment is necessarily higher.

A much repeated story was that because the cast iron would need to expand and contract with changes in temperature, cannon balls were integrated into the abutments to act as giant ball bearings.  Indeed, the expansion differential is as much as 2 inches between high summer and mid-winter. The roadway was constructed of South American hardwood which successfully allowed for expansion and contraction.

Rising nine and a half feet above the lake, Vaux and Mould's graceful sweeping bridge would be a masterpiece of Victorian design.  Intricate, interlaced pierced ornamentation leads the eye across the span.  Vaux contracted Janes, Kirtland & Co. to manufacture the ironwork.  These were good days for the firm.  While they were casting the span they won the contract for the Capitol dome in Washington, DC.

The bulk of construction was completed between 1859 and 1860; the last details being finished in 1862.

Bow Bridge was immediately a romantic destination for lovers and a favorite site for proposals.  It quickly became one of the most photographed spots in the Park, with hundreds of stereopticon card depictions being published.  It has been the constant subject of paintings for more than a century.

Sometime in the 1920s the large, ornamental Victorian urns at the four corners of the bridge were removed.

The bridge, undisputedly one of the most picturesque sites in New York, became the setting of countless movie scenes as the 20th Century wore on.  Movies like Highlander, Great Expectations, Spiderman 3, Autumn in New York, Keeping the Faith, Uptown Girls and You've Got Mail constitute just a fraction of the list.

Photograph Andrew C. Mace

In the 1970s, with New York City on the brink of financial collapse and no funds available for the upkeep of the Park, Bow Bridge, along with so many other Central Park features, fell on hard times.  The graceful iron arch was seriously rusting and the stonework was in disrepair.  A $368,000 restoration, made possible by private donations, was done in 1974 by P.A. Fiebiger, Inc.  During the restoration, no cannonballs were found--causing much surprise and disappointment. 

Then, in 2008, working off period photographs, artisans funded by the Central Park Conservancy created cast iron copies of the 3.5 foot high ornamental urns.  When they were installed, Bow Bridge looked as it did at its unveiling in 1862.

Photograph Astrakey

In February of 2010 New Yorkers, responding to a Department of Parks poll "Central to Your Heart," voted Bow Bridge the most romantic spot in Central Park.  The second oldest cast iron bridge in America, Bow Bridge is mid-park off 74th Street, west of Bethesda Terrace.

The House that a Necklace Bought -- The Morton Plant Mansion

At the turn of the last century Fifth Avenue in midtown was known as "Millionaires' Row."  Block after block of mansions, each attempting to outdo the other, lined the avenue from the 30's north to Cornelius Vanderbilt's massive chateau at 57th Street.  In 1902, following the demolition of the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, William K. Vanderbilt offered the corner lot at 52nd Street and 5th Avenue for sale. 

Morton F. Plant, the son of railroad tycoon Henry B. Plant, purchased the land, agreeing to Vanderbilt's stipulation that it could not be used for commercial purposes for 25 years.

Plant commissioned English-born architect Robert W. Gibson to design his residence.  Construction would take three years to complete; but the results were dazzling.  Gibson produced a marble and granite Italian Renaissance mansion; one of the most tasteful and elegant on the avenue.

photo by Wurts Bros., from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

With its entrance on 52nd Street, Plant's house turned its shoulder to the many Vanderbilt family houses that clustered around it.  Over the doorway a stone balcony projected under a classic pediment.  A substantial stone balustrade surmounted the cornice, under which an ornate frieze was pierced by four-paned windows.  The Plants established themselves as major players in the Fifth Avenue neighborhood.

In the meantime, things were changing downtown.  The brownstone mansions of John Jacob and William Astor at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street had been replaced by the combined Waldorf and Astoria hotels.  Commerce was creeping up the avenue.  By the time Morton and Nellie Plant moved into their new home, wealthy residents in the 30's were already beginning to abandon their homes and flee northward.

Morton was a yachtsman and owner of baseball teams in his spare time.  He and his wife hosted elegant dinner parties and social events in the mansion until 1913.  On August 8 of that year Nellie Plant, Morton's wife of 26 years, died.  Shortly thereafter the 61-year old Plant met the 31-year old Mae Caldwell Manwaring -- wife of Selden B. Manwaring.

In May of 1914, not ten months after the death of his wife, Plant announced his engagement to Mae who had obtained a divorce the previous month.  A month later the couple was married at Plant's immense Groton, Connecticut estate.  Mae was, reportedly, pleased with her wedding gift of $8 million.

By 1916, with the country having entered World War I, Morton and Mae (she preferred to be called Maisie) became concerned about the stores and hotels that were inching closer and closer.  Despite the restrictions in his contract with Vanderbilt, Plant began construction on a Italian Renaissance palace at Fifth Avenue and 86th Street, designed by Guy Lowell. 

In the meantime Maisie Plant was window shopping.  Pierre Cartier had opened a New York branch of his Paris jewelry store, and there she fell in love with a double-stranded Oriental pearl necklace with a $1 million price tag (equal to about $16 million today).

Before the advent of cultured pearls, flawless pearls were more valuable than diamonds.  In Edwardian society a woman's social status was often measured by the length of her pearl ropes.  Plant called on the jeweler and, in agreement with Vanderbilt, sold his Italian palazzo to Cartier for $100 and the necklace.

The New York Times reported "Morton F. Plant, who is building his new city residence on upper Fifth Avenue...has sold his former home.  It is one of the finest and newest of the expensive residences in what was, up to a few years ago, the choice Fifth Avenue residential locality, being opposite the Vanderbilt twin houses...Mr. Plant purchased his uptown plot at Eighty-sixth Street last year, as he felt that the business invasion had made too great an inroad in the old district below Fifth-ninth Street..."

Cartier contracted William Welles Bosworth to convert the mansion as his new store.  Bosworth's sympathetic transformation created a Fifth Avenue entrance, and show windows were seamlessly integrated into the facade.  Much of the interior detailing and paneling, including the entire second floor music room with its magnificent coffered ceiling were preserved.

Boswell's alterations can be seen in this Wurtz Bros. photograph.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

A year later, Morton Plant died.  In 1919 Maisie married Colonel William Hayward.  She married again in 1954, this time to the wealthy John E. Rovensky.  Mae Caldwell Manwaring Plant Hayward Rovensky died in 1956 in the 86th Street mansion Morton Plant had built for her.  Her double strand of Cartier pearls, once valued at over $1 million, was auctioned off for $150,000.

In 1970 the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Plant Mansion a landmark.

135 Watts Street - The Fleming Smith Warehouse

Were it not for his eye-catching warehouse on the corner of Watts and Washington Streets, Fleming Smith's name would have disappeared with time.  Little of his life is documented and what remains revolves around his warehouse.

The neighborhood around Watts and Washington had been, in the first half of the 19th Century,a refined residential enclave anchored by St. John's Church and the fashionable St. John's Park.  Two years after the end of the Civil War, however, Cornelius Vanderbilt purchased the park from Trinity Church and built a railroad station on the site.  And there went the neighborhood.

Fine Federal residences were razed for warehouses and factories and the area soon became entirely commercial.  It was here that Fleming Smith chose to erect a warehouse of his own in 1891.  Smith did not want any run of the mill warehouse and contracted the respected architect Stephen Decatur Hatch to design it.

Hatch, who would go on to design important structures like the Princeton Club and New York Life Building, produced anything but "run of the mill."   Instead his neo-Flemish building looks much more like a decorative 1890s school building than a commercial warehouse.  Using granite, sandstone and brick with copper ornamentation, Hatch created a near-whimsical facade.  His grouped windows and large Romanesque arches allowed light to pour into the building.

In the last decade of the century, Flemish Revival was sweeping the city as builders gave a nod to Manhattan's Dutch roots.  Substantial buildings designing in the style, like the West End Collegiate Church, as well lesser town houses and stables dotted the city.

Five stories of yellow brick rise above the rusticated stone first floor, culminating in fanciful copper-lined stepped gables.  Between the great gables, ornamental copper dormers topped by weather vanes project from the facade.  On the west side enormous copper numerals in the gable proclaim the date, 1891, while Fleming Smith's monogram entwines above them.

photo by epicharmus

At the turn of the century Smith's building housed a shoe manufacturer and a wine storehouse.  Throughout the 20th Century it continued its intended purpose, surviving with no alterations being made to the exterior facade and none of the copper ornamentation being stripped off or lost.

In the late 1970s a complete facade restoration was performed by Scott Henson Architects, LLC. and subsequently 135 Watt Street became the first commercial Tribeca building to be converted to residential use.  Today a restaurant is housed in the space where horse-drawn drays once backed in to receive crates of wine.  A two-bedroom apartment on the floors above will cost you between $2.5 and $3.5 million.

392-393 West Street

The sagging little building at 392-393 West Street has one of the most deeply varied and checkered histories in New York.

In 1796 the Newgate State Prison opened along the river in the small, rural village of Greenwich.  It was a grand building, designed by Joseph-Francois Mangin, architect of New York City Hall.  During the day inmates in the great Georgian-style prison were taught to manufacture shoes, spinning wheels, nails and other household goods that could be sold for revenue.  At night they attended classes in Latin, mathmatics and reading.

By 1825, however, the prison was losing money and an inspector noted conditions filthier than any he had ever seen outside of the notorious Washington DC city jail.  A state legislature sent a commission who reported insolence and idleness among the inmates.  A new prison was authorized to be built in Ossining, New York and by 1829 the State abandoned Newgate.

from the collection of the New York Public Library

The City planned a market on the site.  Greenwich Market would cover the block created by West Street, Christopher Street, Amos Street (now called West 10th Street) and the new, block-long Weehawken Street.  The market was completed in 1834 and consisted of wooden, open shed constructions with deep overhanging eaves to shelter farm and fish wagons that would back up to the buildings.

Partly because of the more convenient Jefferson Market, the Greenwich Market was never successful.  In 1848 the City closed the market and authorized its demolition.  George Munson jumped at the opportunity and purchased two sections, Nos.392-393 West Street for $1,550.  A boatbuilder by trade, he enclosed the structure and renovated it as a business, adding a second floor with a rear outside staircase and entrance on Weehawken Street. 

Robert Little and his wife Rosanna leased the building from Munson, living on the second floor and running a tavern below that served "stout and malt liquors" to the sailors and working men along the riverfront.  It is the earliest documented saloon business in the area.  Conveniently for the Littles, Nash, Beadleston & Co. had started a brewery in part of the old prison in 1845.

Munson lost 392-393 West Street to foreclosure in 1864, and it was purchased by Edmund Terry, a Brooklyn lawyer.  Terry continued to lease it to the Littles for another three years.  In the years after the Civil War, additional taverns appeared along West Street.  James A. Mulqueen, who operated the tavern from 1883 to 1907 fought the competition by adding a pool table.

The riverfront neighborhood was, at best, seedy.  The New York Police Department described the area around Mulqueen's tavern in 1902.  "It has at night been the resort of outcasts, drunkards, dissolute people, and a dangerous class of depredators and petty highwaymen. ... Protection from these evildoers has been chiefly asked by seafaring people whose craft are moored to the docks along the North River front, and ... by the officers and men of the ships of the White Star, Cunard, Leyland, and Transatlantic Lines, and also by dock watchmen and patrons of the ferry lines."

William (Billy) F. Gillespie took over the lease for the saloon in 1909 until Prohibition closed him down in 1920.  Bouncing back, he opened Billie's Original Clam Broth House which remained highly popular until 1925.  During the same time, the West Village neighborhood changed from "the resort of outcasts, drunkards and depredators" to a highly desireable residential enclave.

from the collection of the New York Public Library

Yet the little, block-long Weehawken Street managed to retain its charm.  In 1934 The Villager called it "the almost forgotten thoroughfare" and "still picturesque."

The Terry family sold 392-393 West Street in 1943 to George Hunt, a retired mariner.  After a two-year renovation, Hunt moved in.  He told The Villager in 1945 that he "bought it cheap... but I fixed it all up inside, reinforced it and everything."  From here he sold items needed by the dockworkers and shipworkers such as canvas gloves, work clothes, and tobacco.  He owned the building only until 1946.

As the neighborhood continued to change and the waterfront traffic ceased, 392-393 West Street changed too.  From the 1970s through 1999 it housed gay bars and then a pornographic video store.  Then in 2006 it was purchased for $2.2 million by Jean-Louis Bourgeois, described by The New York Times as "an architectural historian, advocate for environmental rights and 21st-century hipster."

Bourgeois purchased the building with the intention of living upstairs and installing a "museum to water" in the old tavern.  That, to date, has not come to pass.  His building, though, is an rare and amazing surviving example of early 19th Century market shed construction.

It seems that almost daily another luxury high-rise glass-and-steel condominum rises on West Street where once tall masted schooners docked and horse-drawn drays crowded the road.  Yet by some miracle, 392-393 West Street, where Rosanna Little poured stout ale for 19th Century sailors, still stands.

photographs by the author

The Actor's Studio - 432 West 44th Street

While New York City was still far to the south in the early days of the 19th century, Robert B. Norton tended his farm on the west side of the island in the gently rolling hills would become midtown.  Following his death, in 1848 his children began dividing the property and selling lots.

By then, mansions and churches were being built on Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue as far north as the 30s and 40s.  To the west, however, the poorer working class families were establishing themselves in the less desirable areas--areas such as Norton's former farm.  Here, close to the river, slaughterhouses, breweries and stables cropped up.  Lower and middle class families moved into the brick tenements and rowhouses that soon lined the new streets.

The Seventh Associate Presbyterian Church was founded this working class neighborhood in 1855.  In 1857 the congregation numbered fifty-five members, and that number jumped to eighty-nine by the end of the following year.  The congregation purchased two lots of Robert Norton's old farm on the south side of West 44th Street in January 1858 for their permanent building.

Although the fashion in ecclesiastic architecture was increasingly turning to Gothic Revival, the trustees opted for the more conservative and trusted Greek Revival style.  The church was most likely planned by a contractor who utilized design books of the day.  Its architectural style sometimes called "bricklayer Greek," is plain and unassuming.  Four shallow brick pilasters with brownstone capitals project slightly, evenly dividing the facade into three bays which are capped by a classic pediment.  The sanctuary with its double wooden doors sits above street level.

photo NYPL Collection

Although by 1900 membership had climbed to 225, as the 20th century progressed membership dwindled.  Finally, in 1944 the church was dissolved.  In the 86 years since its construction, little had changed to the structure (although the original enclosed portico that sheltered congregants from the elements had been, at some point, removed).

Immediately the building changed hands.  The bank foreclosed on the property and it was leased in 1945 to the American Theatre Wing, Inc. as an acting school under Antoinette Perry.  It was sold again in 1951 to the National Amputation Foundation, to be used as a trade school for the disabled.

Four years later, in 1955, the old church building began its most celebrated life as the home of the Actor's Studio.  It was here that artistic director Lee Strasberg guided students in the Method technique of acting.  They were taught to draw from their own personal experiences in order to realistically depict their characters.

The Studio had been founded by Elia Kazan not only to preserve this exciting new style of acting, but to provide a sanctuary where the professional actor could escape from outside pressures such as rehearsals and castings, and hone his talents.  To this end, membership was earned through auditioning--the criteria for acceptance were talent and the possibility of improvement.  To a selected number of theatre professionals, life memberships are offered with no tuition or other fees.

Through the white painted doors on West 44th Street have emerged American acting legends such as Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Marilyn Monroe, Shelly Winters and Montgomery Clift; to name only some.  Today the Studio is co-presided by Al Pacino, Ellen Burstyn and Harvey Keitel.

The Actor's Studio remains the preeminent American acting school and, with only minor exterior changes, the Seventh Associate Presbyterian Church still looks much as it did in 1858--an rare surviving example of the vernacular Greek Revival style in Manhattan.

7 State Street - The James B. Watson / Elizabeth Seton House

State Street, at the southern tip of Manhattan was lined with graceful Federal-style residences in the years following the American Revolution.  The cooling breezes off the harbor and the ability to watch ship traffic made the location ideal for the homes of the wealthy merchant class.  So it was here that James B. Watson commissioned John McComb Jr. to design his new home at 7 State Street in 1793.

McComb, who would become famous for designing landmarks like New York's City Hall and the Archibald Gracie Mansion, provided Watson with a superb merchant-class home worthy of his status.  Watson, a Yale graduate, was not only a successful importer and exporter, he was a New York State Senator, a Speaker of the New York State Assembly and a Federal Senator.

Neoclassical Adams-style detailing graced rooms where Alexander Hamilton and George Washington were entertained during grand balls. 

photos from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1806 Watson sold 7 State Street to Moses Rogers who joined it with the residence next door which sat significantly back due to the curve of the street.  In order to create a unified facade, a colonnaded portico was added using, reportedly, masts from his fleet of merchant ships which he was converting to steam power.

Later Richard Bayley moved his family into the mansion.  A reknowned physician and professor of anatomy at King's College, Bayley was socially important and a prominent member of nearby Trinity Church.  His daughter, Elizabeth, would grow up to marry William Mcgee Seton.  She was later canonized as the first saint of the Catholic Church in the United States.

By the middle of the century the affluent neighborhoods had migrated northward and commercial interests took over the once grand homes of State Street.  Beginning around the time of Civil War the Watson House served as government offices.

Photograph  from the collection of the New York Public Collection

As the neighborhood continued to change, the venerable homes of State Street were, one by one, razed for office buildings.  Fortunately, through the efforts of Charlotte Grace O'Brien the Catholic Church purchased 7 State Street from the government in 1870 for the total sum of $1.00.  O'Brien, an Irish immigrant herself, was concerned with the plight of poor Irish immigrant women.  While these women were leaving Ireland for a better life in America, white slave traders were waiting for them as they debarked.  Without help, the girls were at the mercy of ill-intentioned criminals.

The Mission of Our Lady was established in the house.  As the girls arrived, they were taken to the Mission where they were housed and efforts were made to contact relatives.  If none could be found, they were placed into respectable homes as domestic servants.  By 1912 the Mission had helped more than 65,000 girls.

In April 1912 the survivors of the RMS Titanic arrived in New York Harbor.  Those from first class were whisked off to The Waldorf Hotel.  Those from steerage were sent to The Mission of Our Lady.

Interestingly, today the Catholic Church supports the complex from income garnered through the sale of air rights above the house and the adjoining church -- a tidy $6 million.

In the spring of 2010 restoration began on the facade under the direction of Easton Architects, LLP.  Seventeen coats of paint were removed from wooden trims to determine original colors.  It is the last surviving residence of the Federal Period in the Financial District.  The facade restoration brought the appearance of the structure approximately back Moses Rogers's 1806 alteration.  

photograph by Martin Furtschegger

The Burying Ground Beneath the Ball Field -- James Walker Park

original source unknown

In 1803 Trinity Church built the elegant St. John's Chapel on Varick Street to serve the affluent parishioners settling in that area.  Nine years later the chapel established St. John's Cemetery, more commonly called St. John's Burying Ground, to the north in Greenwich Village.  Quaintly rustic, it was bordered by Hudson Street between Leroy and Clarkston Streets.  The cemetery immediately began receiving the deceased of Greenwich Village.

In his 1896 Walks In Our Churchyards, John Flavel Mines wrote "The monuments are seldom elaborate, but sometimes the tombs bear the masonic device, or the old-time figures of a weeping woman, an urn and a willow."  The brown slabs often told of the instances of the death, or of the occupation of the deceased:  "George Shepley, who fell a victim to intermittent fever, 1803,"  "Frederick Gordon, calico engraver, 1812," "John Black, Bookseller, 1830, beloved by all who knew him," or "Mrs. Elizabeth Lawrence, wife of Mr. John Lawrence, merchant of New York, a pattern of exalted goodness."

from the collection of the New York Public Library

The most ambitious monument was that erected by Engine Company 13 in 1834 honoring Eugene Underhill and Frederick A Ward.  Placed in the near-center of the cemetery it was a large granite-based sculpted sarcophagus topped with a fireman's cap, torch and trumpet -- the tools of the volunteer firemen of the period.  Inscribed on one side is:

THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED

BY THE MEMBERS OF

EAGLE FIRE ENGINE COMPANY

NO. 13

IN CONNECTION WITH THE FRIENDS OF THE

DECEASED

TO COMMEMORATE THE SAD EVENT

CONNECTED WITH THEIR DEATH

AND THE LOSS

WHICH THEY DEPLORE

The opposite side reads:

HERE ARE INTERRED

THE BODIES OF

EUGENE UNDERHILL

AGED 20 YEARS 7 MONTHS AND 9 DAYS

AND FREDERICK A WARD

AGED 22 YEARS 1 MONTH AND 16 DAYS

WHO LOST THEIR LIVES BY THE FALLING OF A BUILDING

WHILE ENGAGED

IN THE DISCHARGE OF THEIR DUTY AS

FIRE MEN

ON THE FIRST DAY OF DUTY

MDCCCXXXIV

photo by Secret Egypt

Edgar Allan Poe reportedly would roam the burying grounds at night when he lived on nearby Carmine Street.

It was here, in 1836, that Helen Jewett was buried.  The murder of Helen Jewett was the scandal of the day and 19th Century New York's trial of the century.  A prostitute (we would call her a high-class call girl today), she was bludgeoned and axed, then set on fire.  Her murderer, Richard Robinson, was never convicted.

A few nights after her burial, medical students from the College of Physicians and Surgeons on Chapel Street, dug up her corpse.  According to The New York Herald they dissected her body then boiled the flesh from her bones, hanging "her elegant and classic skeleton" in a closet at the school.

By the end of the century well over 10,000 people were interred in St. John's Burying Ground; although fewer than a thousand were marked with tombstones or monuments.

Around the time of the Civil War Leroy Street became lined with elegant, wide Italianate homes.  Whether or not it was these wealthy residents, seeking a view more pleasant than a cemetery, who began the movement to replace it with a park is uncertain.  However by 1895 the push was on.

Although an adjoining, larger block was offered at "a reasonable figure" as the site for a park, it was turned down.    John Flavel Mines protested "...but the political children of Naboth are determined to have that particular spot, by force of law if necessary, even though its occupation by them shall tear the dead from their graves and compel the destruction of the trees that have twined their roots around the coffins and boxes of the buried thousands who sleep there."

Those whom Mines called "the political children of Naboth" won the fight.

Using Eminent Domain the City acquired the burial grounds in 1896.  While it was widely publicized that the graves were relocated uptown to 155th Street and Broadway, in fact only one or two hundred were moved.  The tombstones of the rest were uprooted and plowed under.  Around 10,000 bodies remained in place as the City planned its new park.

Carrere and Hastings, who would later design the great marble New York Public Library, were given the commission.  The result was spectacular.  An Italian pleasure park, it included manicured gardens, a cascading lagoon, gazebo and sunken garden.  A heavy cast iron fence with white stone piers encircled it.  Above the graves of the old burial ground, a stylish Victorian park, now named St. James Park, took shape.

The New-York Tribune, April 30, 1899 (copyright expired)

The sole reminder of the St. James Burying Ground was the firemen's monument.  It was moved to an unobtrusive site on the Leroy Street side and a brass plaque was inserted on the side (whether or not the two firemen's bodies were moved as well is unclear).  As reported by The New York Times, "In this amusement resort, which presents a scene of revelry and gaiety every afternoon, stands the only survivor of the days when the park was used as the cemetery for the doomed St. John's Chapel...The changed conditions of the place are well expressed by this inscription on a brass tablet placed there in 1898:  The City of New York devotes to the service and comfort of the living this ground formerly used by Trinity Parish as a burial place for the dead, whose names, although not inscribed, are hereby reverently commemorated."

photo by Secret Egypt

Whether the dead were "reverently" treated by the City is a matter of debate.

Carrere & Hastings created an Italian garden with terraces, marble balustrades and a lagoon.

Seven years after Carrere and Hastings' masterful park was completed it was gone.  In 1903 a new playground replaced it.  As years went by, fewer and fewer New Yorkers remembered that there had ever been a cemetery there at all.

Then in September of 1939 workmen doing renovations on the playground struck an underground vault.  A diminuative cast iron coffin surfaced.  The Egyptian Revival casket was designed to mimic a shrouded mummy.  On its face a silver plate identified the body as Mary Elizabeth Tisdall, 6 years and 8 months old.  She died on April 14, 1850.  According to The New York World-Telegram "The girl's cast iron casket...had a glass window in the top.  Her white silk dress still looked fresh and dainty.  After 89 years you could still see that she's been a pretty yellow haired child."

The playground has undergone many renovations.  It was renamed James Walker Park in honor of the mayor who resided at 110 Leroy Street, and in 1996 received $250,000 of updating including new play equipment, a spray shower and a ball field.  Except for one surviving section on the Leroy Street side, the elegant cast iron fence has been replaced by chain link fencing.

Today the park is visually unappealing but functional.  And under the feet of scores of children playing ball and frolicking in a water spray, approximately 10,000 bodies lie forgotten.