The Mori Restaurant Building - 144-146 Bleecker Street

 

In 1830, Thomas E. Davis began erecting what would be fashionable homes on both sides of Bleecker Street between Thompson and Laurens Street (later West Broadway and then LaGuardia Place).  As they neared completion in 1831, he began a similar project, lining both sides of East 8th Street between Second and Third Avenues with upscale residences.  A consummate marketer, he lobbied the city to rename the two blocks, hoping to enhance their sense of exclusivity.  In 1833 his Bleecker Street block was renamed Carroll Place, and in 1835 the East 8th Street block became St. Mark's Place.

Each of the Carroll Place homes was 25-feet wide and three-and-a-half stories tall.  In February 1833, just before 146 Bleecker Street was renumbered 7 Carroll Place, an advertisement in The Evening Post offered the house for rent:

The house was erected in 1830, in the most elegant and substantial manner, and is three stories high, of brick and slated roof.  There is a building in the rear containing a tea room and library, and a well and cistern in the yard.  The house is every way calculated for a large and fashionable private family.

That house saw a relatively rapid turnover in well-to-do tenants until it was sold for $10,000 to Dr. William R. Power in January 1845.  The price, equal to about $430,000 in 2026, reflected the exclusivity of the block.

Power was born in Ireland in 1798 and was described as a "distinguished practitioner."  His wife, the former Mercy Hepburn, had recently died and his purchasing of 7 Carroll Place might have had much do to with his marital plans.  He married Aliana Diane Worthington in 1846.

Although William had no children with either of his wives, in 1857 lawyer John T. Power was listed at the address.  He was presumably a relative.

William R. Power died "after a short but severe illness," according to the New-York Daily Tribune, on September 14, 1858.  His funeral was held in the parlor on the 16th.

Aliana Power left Carroll Place shortly afterward.  An auction of the furnishings held on March 8, 1859, hinted at the high-end lifestyles of the Carroll Place residents.  Included were "rosewood parlor suits, covered in rich silk brocatel and plush...Chinese china vases, chandeliers, sideboard, morocco arm chairs," and such.

In the meantime, the house next door at 5 Carroll Street was originally home to the Henry Floyd Tallmage family.  Born in Connecticut on June 11, 1787, he and his wife, Maria Canfield Adams, had five children.   The family sold the house to Dr. John Augustine Smith on April 15, 1841.

Born in 1782, Smith had served as president of the College of William & Mary from 1814 to 1826.  (He resigned when his proposal to move the college from Richmond to Williamsburg was refused.)  Now back in New York City, he became president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1831.

Dr. John Augustine Smith, from the collection of the New York Society Library

Smith married Lettice Lee in 1809 and they had five children, at least one of whom, Richard Augustine (who went by his middle name), lived with his parents.  Augustine was in the paper business on Nassau Street.

In addition to his practice and his lecturing on anatomy at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Smith edited the Medical and Physiological Journal.  Among his works were the 1840 Select Discourse on the Functions of the Nervous System, his 1846 The Mutations of the Earth, and Moral and Physical Science, published in 1853.  Notably, he was an outspoken supporter of scientific racism, that used phrenology (the "science" of reading bumps on one's skull) to rationalize white supremacy.  He was a vocal exponent of repatriating Blacks to Africa. 

By the outbreak of the Civil War, things had changed in the neighborhood.  No longer ultra-fashionable, affluent residents left Carroll Place and in 1860 the block reverted to Bleecker Street (although both addresses would be used for some time).  In 1861, rented rooms were being offered in both 144 and 146 Bleecker Street.

In 1870, Thomas N. and William B. Doutney established an "eatinghouse," The St. Lawrence, in the basement of 144 Bleecker Street.   Unfortunately, as Thomas recalls in his 1893 autobiography Thomas N. Doutney: His Life-Struggle and Triumphs:

I listened to the bad advice of a dissolute companion, and introduced liquor on my premises, first secretly, then openly, as an article of traffic.  In short, my restaurant became, what too many restaurants already are, a drinking-saloon, a cursed rum-shop.

Thomas and his "dear, good brother William," lost the business.  The saloon was taken over by Korne & Bere.  

In the meantime, the conditions within the rented rooms of the once-luxurious mansions were ghastly.  An article in the New York Herald on February 7, 1871 described the plight of a "woman and five little children at No. 144 Bleecker street."  The journalist said, "No food or fuel has been seen in the little room which these miserable ones occupy for several days, and yesterday the mother, rendered desperate, attempted suicide."

On July 20, 1896, the New York Journal reported, "Women, some of them wives and mothers, who had been caught in the raid on the pool room [an illegal race betting den] at No. 146 Bleecker street, Saturday night, were prisoners in the Jefferson Market Court yesterday."  Prior to the time of the article, the parlor windows of the house had been replaced by bay windows, as noted in a sketch in the article.

In 1896, an illegal betting den occupied the basement of 146 Bleecker.  The elegant Federal doorway was intact, and bay windows had been added, most likely prior to 1861.  New York Journal, July 20, 1896 (copyright expired)

In 1884, a year after arriving in New York City from Florence, Italy, Placido Mori opened his "eating place" in the former Korne & Bere saloon space in 144 Bleecker Street.  The Journal described Mori & Lorenzi's cafe in 1896 as "a cheap restaurant and drinking place much frequented by the Italians of the district."

It became a meeting place for labor and political groups.  On November 24, 1891, for instance, The Evening World remarked, "The Columbus Labor Club, cloak makers...has its headquarters at present at 144 Bleecker street."  On October 27, 1898, the Third Assembly District Republicans held an "Italian parade through the Italian colony and a meeting at 144 Bleecker street," as reported by The Sun.

In November 1900, authorities refused to allow the play Senza Patria (or Without a Country), written by anarchist Pietro Gori, to open.  Throngs of angry native Italians, many of them anarchists, rebelled.  The New York Times reported, "The Anarchists then held an impromptu indignation meeting on the sidewalk, and then several hundred went to Mori & Lorenzi's café, 144 Bleecker Street, which was by common consent designated as a meeting place."

No. 144 was sold several times before Mori purchased the building in 1910.  The Italian immigrant had done well for himself.  On April 23, 1920, the New York Herald reported, "Placido Mori is the buyer of the residence at 21 Washington Square North."  It was one of the most fashionable addresses in New York City.

Among Mori's regular patrons at the time was architect Raymond Hood.  Their close owner-patron relationship would soon become owner-client.  On December 12, 1920, The New York Times reported that Placido Mori "recently bought the adjoining parcel at 146 to add to his establishment.  The article mulled, "The supporters of prohibition may discern in this fact that the prevention of serving red wine, without which no Italian restaurant meal was supposed to be complete...has not yet driven the habitués of these eating places to other resorts."

Mori hired Raymond Hood to combine the houses and remodel the exterior.  He placed a row of Doric columns along the sidewalk level and added a setback penthouse.

Famed photographer Berenice Abbott took this photograph in November 1935.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The observation made by The New York Times that Prohibition had not affected the Italian restaurant was premature.  As it turned out, Mori went on dispensing alcoholic beverages.  On September 16, 1922, the newspaper reported that Prohibition Chief John D. Appleby "sent seven general dry agents yesterday afternoon to Mori's Restaurant."

In the room in the rear of the second floor the agents seized a large quantity of liquors, wines and beer.  The agents said they never saw a more sorrowful staff of waiters than they passed in the dining room as the seized goods were carried out.  The sight of good wines leaving the restaurant, famous in the days gone by for its wine, was more than some of the waiters could stand.

Only four months later, on January 15, 1923, The New York Times reported on another raid.  After seizing 58 bottles of wine and ten bottles of whisky, Placido Mori was arrested.  The article said that police "then went upstairs to the apartment of Louis Funai...from which they took away 18 bottles of champagne, 247 bottles of wine, 15 bottles of gin, 4 bottles of kimmel [sic] and one gallon of wine."

Placido Mori died on July 18, 1927.  In reporting his death, The New York Times remarked that his restaurant "had become noted as a picturesque resort."

Living upstairs at the time was sculptor Thomas Hudson Jones.  He and architect Lorimer Rich were cooperatively working on designs for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington.  Jones was still living here in December 1928 when Secretary of War Dwight F. Davis announced that their design had been accepted.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Albert Mori operated the restaurant until January 1938, when he filed for bankruptcy.  The New York Times remarked, "The restaurant started as a small bar and eating place.  It expanded until it finally occupied the entire building, a rambling, old-fashioned structure."

The space became Free World House as early as 1944, operated by the International Free World Association.  On June 4, 1944, the group announced that a program of "democratic principles for Europe" would be put into effect "as soon as the Allied armies invade the continent."  A less political event had taken place a month earlier when, on May 28, The New York Times reported, "The second open show of the Village Art Center is current[ly] at Free World House...with more than a hundred oils, water-colors and drawings, by almost as many artists."

It was possibly during the occupancy of the anti-Fascist International Free World Association that five murals by Louis Quintanilla were installed.  Quintanilla arrived in New York in 1938 to create his grouping, called Love Peace Hate War.  (Somewhat ironically, he was the house guest of war correspondent Jay Allen in Placido Mori's former home on Washington Square.)  The paintings were commissioned by the Spanish Government for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1939 World's Fair.  The individual panels were Flight, Pain, Hunger, Soldiers and Destruction.

But the artwork would never be exhibited at the fair.  The Spanish Republic fell and the Fascist Francisco Franco regime demanded that the paintings be returned to Spain.  Reportedly, Quintanilla told officials that a flood in his studio had destroyed the panels.  It appears that he sold or donated the works to the Free World House.

Quintanilla's Hunger (top) and Soldiers, were two of the panels installed at Free World House.  images from The Art and World of Louis Quintanilla

The Free World House remained here until 1956, when the building was converted to the Renata Theatre in the lower two floors and apartments and offices on the top two.  As construction neared completion on November 14, 1956, The New York Times explained that the venue would present "contemporary European plays."  The auditorium would hold an audience of 250.

Among the last performances in the Renata Theatre was a one-person production, An Evening With Ethel Waters, described by The New York Times on April 9, 1959 as a "musical memory."

from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Within a year, the space had been converted to a movie theater, the Bleecker Street Cinema.  It was a neighborhood fixture for decades, finally closing in August 1989.  On November 4 the following year, The New York Times columnist Christopher Gray mentioned, "It is now a gay porno house."

It was during that rather seedy period that the Quintanilla murals were "rediscovered."  On one of the panels, a black arrow reading "Exit" had been scrawled.  According to the artist's son, Paul, "In the early nineties an attempt was made to retrieve them, but the amount of money offered didn't satisfy the owner of the pornographic movie house."  The paintings, therefore, remained in abused condition until February 2, 2007 when the University of Cantabria in Santander, Spain purchased them.  They were restored and now hang at the university. 

The ground floor space became the Elbow Room around 1997.  Offering live music, it remained into the 2000s.  A renovation to the storied building in 2011 resulted in retail space on the ground floor and apartments above.

photographs by the author

The Arthur W. Popper House - 48 East 66th Street

Real Estate operator Ira E. Doying erected ten matching four-story brownstones on East 66th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues, between 1877 and '78.  Designed in the neo-Grec style by J. H. Valentine, the 20-foot wide homes were intended for well-to-do owners.

No. 48 was purchased by Floyd Clarkson, whose ancestor, Matthew Clarkson, was appointed Secretary of the Province of New York in 1658 by William and Mary, and whose grandfather, William Clarkson, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  His impressive lineage included Verplancks, Van Courtlandts, Barclays and Schuylers.  

Born in New York City in 1831 and educated in private schools, Clarkson married Harriet A. Van Boskerck in March 1857.  He closed his hardware business to fight in the Civil War, later returning to New York with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.  He and Harriet had ten children, five sons and two daughters of which grew to maturity.  Clarkson's significant fortune was garnered through his real estate business, Floyd Clarkson & Son, and as president of the Riverside Bank.

Col. Floyd Clarkson - Buffalo Evening News, February 27, 1890 (copyright expired

The 66th Street house was the scene of an impressive military funeral on February 4, 1883.  Clarkson's brother, Lieutenant Samuel Floyd Clarkson of the United States Navy, died of typhoid fever in Nice, France on January 8.  The Sun reported "He was on board the United States man-of-war Galena during the bombardment of Alexandria, where it is supposed he contracted the disease of which he died."

On January 2, 1894 Clarkson was not feeling well and left his office at his office No. 39 Broadway early.  The New York Times reported "He had not gone far when he became very weak, and was obliged to call a cab and drive to the residence of his family physician, Dr. Wilcox."  The doctor accompanied him home and sent for another physician for a consultation, but before that doctor arrived the 63-year old Clarkson had died.  

Harriet was visiting their son, George T. Clarkson, in Pittsburgh at the time but was due to return the following day.  The news of her husband's death was kept secret until she arrived home.

Harriet remained in the 66th Street house through 1902.  In January 1903 she sold it to Lyman G. Bloomingdale, the proprietor of Bloomingdale's Department Store.  He and his family lived in an elegant mansion nearby at No. 21 East 63rd Street.  The Clarkson house was to be a wedding present for Bloomingdale's daughter, Carinne, and her fiancé Arthur W. Popper.

But first the outdated brownstone would need a massive make-over.  Architect George A. Schellinger was hired to renovate it into a modern residence appropriate for the young and wealthy couple.

The year-long project resulted in a striking Beaux Arts mansion clad in limestone.  Schellinger had removed the brownstone facade and stoop, and pulled the front forward to the property line.  Five stories tall, its entrance (almost assuredly centered), sat above a short stoop of about three steps.  The second floor, or piano nobile, featured a Corinthian columned loggia.  The third and fourth floors were slightly bowed.  The fifth floor, which took the form of a slate shingled mansard with two prominent dormers, sat above a bracketed stone cornice.  

As the alterations were being made, Arthur W. Popper was given a major promotion in anticipation of his wedding.  He was already working as a stock broker in the firm of his father, Popper & Stern.  Now on January 1, 1903, almost simultaneously with his future father-in-law's purchase of No. 48 East 66th Street, the firm announced:

We Beg To Announce That We Have this day admitted Mr. Arthur W. Popper, son of our Mr. E. Popper, and Mr. Simon Hahn, to partnership in our firm.

Four months later, to the day, the firm announced that "George W. Stern retires from active business to take a long needed rest."  Popper & Stern was dissolved and reorganized as Popper & Sternback.  "It is composed of Edward Popper, Sydney M. Sternbach, and Arthur W. Popper, who are all members of the Stock Exchange," reported the New-York Tribune.

Lyman Bloomingdale transferred title to the completed house to his daughter on August 31, 1904.   The newlyweds moved in just in time.  On November 12 the New York Herald announced "To Mr. and Mrs. Arthur W. Popper a son was born last Thursday night, at their residence No. 48 East Sixty-sixth street.  Mrs. Popper was Miss Corinne Bloomingdale, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lyman G. Bloomingdale."  The infant was named Edward.  His brother, Robert Lyman Popper, would be born four years later, on October 21, 1908.

The New York townhouse was, of course, used only during the winter season.  Philadelphia millionaire J. Wesley Durham maintained a summer estate in the Adirondacks on Lake Placid with the tongue-in-cheek name Wate-A-Minit.  In 1909 he began construction of an even more secluded "camp" on Buck Island there.  In 1910 the Poppers purchased Wate-A-Minit "with all buildings and extensive grounds," as worded by the New-York Tribune.  On August 25 the newspaper said "Mr. Popper recently purchased this place and has made extensive alterations, including installation of electric light and steam heat."  The Popper yacht was moored at the private pier.

The Poppers remained in the 66th Street house until July 1921 when Corinne sold it to Eleanor Anderson
Campbell for $100,000--or about $1.43 million in today's money.  She hired architect Raymond Hood to reconfigure the first floor, changing the entrance and refacing the stonework.  The renovations may have been done to provide office space for Campbell, who had received her medical degree at the University of Boston Medical School.

The same year she purchased No. 48 Dr. Campbell borrowed $5,000 to set up a clinic in the basement of the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square.  Its pastor, Reverend A. Ray Petty, had "told her he was tired of seeing children with rickety, crooked legs," said The New York Times.  Dr. Campbell would devote the rest of her professional career to the Judson Health Center.

Her attention was diverted in 1924, however.  On September 14 The New York Times reported "Mrs. Anderson Campbell, of 48 East Sixty-sixth Street and Greenwich, Conn., has announced the engagement of her daughter, Miss Elizabeth Milbank Anderson, to Henry Adams Ashford...The announcement was made at a dinner given last night by Mrs. Campbell at her country home, Milbank, in Greenwich."  The wedding took place on January 3, 1925, The Times noting "Both the young people come from distinguished old New York families.  The bride's grandmother, Mrs. Milbank Anderson, was noted for her benefactions, having made large gifts to Columbia University.  Mr. Ashford is a direct descendant of Henry Adams."

Eleanor Campbell's entertainments were often connected with the Judson Health Center.  She hosted a luncheon for Mrs. James J. Walker--the Mayor's wife--in the house on February 9, 1926, for instance.  It highlighted the fact that Mrs. Walker had become a new member of the Judson Health Center's auxiliary.

Eleanor Campbell sold No. 48 in November 1930 to Arthur Coppell.  The New York Evening Post remarked she "has taken a penthouse apartment at 320 East Seventy-second Street."  Now retired, Coppell had had a wide-flung career as a banker, broker, railroad executive and director in several corporations.

Born on April 10, 1872, he was the son of George and Helen H. Gillingham Coppell.  George Coppell was a railroad mogul, banker, and associate of Jay Gould.  Arthur graduated from Princeton in 1894.  He and his wife, the former Mary S. Bowers, had three daughters, Susan Twining, Helen, and Mary B.  The family's summer estate, Lakelands, was near Cooperstown, New York

Despite their wealth, the Coppells rarely appeared in the society columns.  The Otsego Farmer later commented that Arthur "shunned personal publicity" and "gave quietly many thousands of dollars to charitable organizations."  But when Mary's sister arrived for a visit in 1931, the newspapers took note.  The New York Sun reported on May 20 "Mrs. Martha Dandridge Bowers of Santa Barbara will arrive on June 1 to join her brother-in-law and sister, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Coppell, at 48 East Sixty-sixth street."

By 1934 Susan and Helen were married.  Mary was at camp in Portland, Maine that summer.  Her parents came to visit her in July, but the occasion took a tragic turn when Arthur suffered a fatal heart attack on July 20.  In reporting his death The New York Times noted "He was an opponent of prohibition and in 1919 was a director of the Association Opposed to National Prohibition."

Before long Mary left the 66th Street house, moving to No. 112 East 74th Street.  In 1941 she had renovations done to No. 48 East 66th Street which resulted in two apartments per floor.  She sold the converted mansion in 1946.

Although the upper floors are little changed since the newly-wed Poppers moved in in 1904, one cannot help but lament Dr. Campbell's renovation of the ground floor and, perhaps even more, its current gruesome door.

photographs by the author

Breaking Ground in Black and Gold -- American Radiator Building

In 1922, Raymond W. Hood at 41 years of age had not accomplished a great deal in his design career.  After studying architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and working for Cram, Goodhue Ferguson, he found himself designing radiator covers for the American Radiator Company.

That year, however, John Mead Howells entered a design competition for the anticipated Chicago Tribune building.  He urged Hood to join the competition, as well.  Inspired by the notable neo-Gothic structures by Cram, Goodhue Ferguson with which he was familiar, Hood submitted a spectacular neo-Gothic tower design that won the commission.

Suddenly Raymond Hood was known.

Within a year, rather than designing radiator covers for the American Radiator Company, he was designing their new New York headquarters on West 40th Street across from Bryant Park.  Working within New York City’s 1916 zoning law that required setbacks for tall buildings, Hood designed a striking 23-story skyscraper in black and gold. His neo-Gothic ornamentation coupled with the overall sleek geometric lines anticipated the Art Deco craze that would soon sweep Manhattan architecture.

To solidify the mass of the building, as well as to diminish the interruption caused by contrasting windows (Hood once said that the clash of dark windows against light-colored stonework made buildings look like “waffles stood on edge”), he broke architectural tradition by using black brick with gold accents.

The American Radiator Building was completed in 1924.  The ground floor is faced in polished black granite, while the framing of the show windows and arched entrance are in Gothic-inspired bronze.  As the tower rises to the 16th floor, gold detailing accentuates the first setback.  Each succeeding setback is treated with more and more gold accent, until the crown of the structure is more gold than black.  Two years after the building’s completion, architectural historian Talbot Hamlin praised it as “the most daring experiment in color in modern buildings yet made in America.”

Hood designed nighttime uplighting on the upper floors, making the American Radiator Building the first New York skyscraper with dramatic exterior lighting.  The visual impact of his night-lit masterpiece inspired Georgia O’Keefe to paint her 1927 Radiator Building at Night - New York.

In 1967 the American Radiator became the American Standard Company.  The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Radiator Building an individual New York City landmark in 1974.  American Standard sold their magnificent building in 1988 to a Clio Biz, a Japanese company who intended to convert the skyscraper into a hotel.  That didn’t happen.

Instead the splendid building sat empty for a decade until, in 1998, Philip Pilevsky purchased it for $15 million.  Doing what Clio Biz never got around to doing, Pilevsky started conversion into The Bryant Park Hotel.

Appropriately, he commissioned British designer and architect David Chipperfield, who had designed fixtures for American Standard, to design the hotel.  Chipperfield managed to bring the visitor from the 1920s outside to the 60s-inspired 21st century inside with brilliant colors and vibrant designs.  The lobby area, once decorated by Hood with black marble and mirrors, has burgundy leather walls.  Many of the high-end details and fixtures are custom-designed for the space and below the lobby level a magnificent vaulted-ceilinged cavern houses the Cellar Bar and a restaurant.