Carrère & Hastings' 1906 Hudson Park Library - 68 Leroy Street

 

photo by Beyond My Ken

As a boy in Scotland, Andrew Carnegie found it difficult to find books to read.  In 1902 John Shaw Billings, the Director of the New York Public Library, recalled that the future millionaire had made a vow, “no, perhaps not a vow; it seems unnatural to accuse a Scotchman of a vow—but a promise—that if he ever obtained the means he would establish a public library.”  

On March 12, 1901, Carnegie offered the City of New York a gift of $5.2 million to build free circulating libraries. The condition was that the City would provide the land and maintain the libraries. An agreement was reached and the plans for fifty libraries—thirty of them in Manhattan—were began.

In the summer of 1904 the firm of Carrère & Hastings began work on plans for a two-story brick Carnegie library at 68 Leroy Street.  (The firm was responsible for the masterful marble New York Public Library still rising on Fifth Avenue.)  Construction began in October, the cost of which would be $75,000--or about $2.2 million in today's money.  The site cost the city $44,000--another $1 million today.

image from "Real Estate Owned By The City of New York Used For Public Libraries," 1908 (copyright expired)

The site was adjacent to Hudson Park, a recreational playground opened in 1903 which, ironically, replaced the elegant St. James' Park designed by Carrère & Hastings in 1896.   The library would be known as the Hudson Park Branch.

The formal opening took place on January 24, 1906.  The Sun reported that it "includes an auditorium besides well lighted reading rooms for children and their elders."  Neighbors had been filing in for a week to get their library cards to access the 10,000 volumes on the shelves.

The library was festooned with bunting and flags for the opening.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Libraries served the local communities for a variety of purposes, including lecture spaces.  In November 1907 Kellogg Durland spoke about his recent "experiences and observations" while traveling throughout Russia.  It was a time of upheaval in what the New-York Tribune called "the disturbed country," with revolutionaries determined to overthrow the tsar.   A Settlement worker, Durland's disposition was clearly on the side of the proletariat.  Predicting "the final success of the revolutionary movement," he condemned Nicholas II for having "no intention of giving the people a constitutional government."

The Greenwich Village neighborhood was home to a significant immigrant population and the library was an important resource.  In its 1911 annual report the New York Public Library reported that local boys had formed the Greenwich Village Literary Club here.   "This is a self-governing club.  The boys arrange their own programmes and usually invite the club adviser to contribute a story."

That year an exhibit of a "collection of books covering the school problems of the neighborhood, questions of congestion, foreign population, and sanitary conditions in the homes and in the schools," was staged.

The building also served as the meeting place of the Societa di Mutuo Beneficio fra le Donne Italiane" (the Mutual Benefit Society of Italian Women).  According to the Library report, the group's February 3, 1911 meeting "was for social purposes, and the program for the evening provided recitations in Italian, music, and dancing."

In 1914 the report noted, "That the Library is becoming a social center for the mothers also is shown by at least two gatherings that occurred during [February]."  Dr. Isabelle Barbour had given an illustrated talk on Europe to the Mothers' Club, and on February 27 35 mothers of kindergarten children were entertained.  "Italian songs were sung by one of the kindergarten teachers and an Italian story told by Miss Blumer of the probation class."

The popularity of the branch necessitated its being enlarged in 1920.  The building was extended to the east, with a second entrance on Seventh Avenue South.  

photograph by the author

Among the staff was Marianne Craig Moore, who started as a library assistant in 1921.  Her first book of poetry (published without her permission) was released that year.  Moore lived in the neighborhood, which was not only one of immigrants, but of artists, musicians and writers like herself.  She worked here until 1925, going on to become one of America's most esteemed poets.

Branches like this one were as much as neighborhood social and educational center as a repository for books.  At various times during 1924, for instance, it was the venue for exhibitions of "paintings by A. C. Wagler, drawings and water colors by Edward Hodges, needlework by Italian women of the neighborhood, and puppets and material on puppets, and miniature stages of many countries."

The passage of decades did not dilute the branch's outreach.  In January 1964 a series of five exhibits entitled "Photography Sampler 1964" opened, and on November 5 that year The New York Times reported, "A free puppet show, 'Dragon John,' will be given tomorrow at 4 P. M. at the New York Public Library's Hudson Park Branch."

By 1983 the New York Public Library Early Childhood Resource and Information Center was housed in the building.  On November 4 that year the Daily News explained, "The center is designed to serve the needs of children and parents as well as those who work or study in the fields of child development.  Through workshops, book and the family room, the center provides a natural learning environment that fosters the basic education concept of the parent as the children's first teacher."

Carrère & Hastings' handsome brick library continues to serve its immediate community with exhibitions, events, and, of course, books.  

A Contemporary Speakeasy in the Village - 22 Seventh Avenue South

 

In 1889 William J. Rauch paid $26,500, or about $760,000 in today's money, for the five-story brick apartment house at No. 58 Leroy Street.  There was a store on the ground floor for additional income.  At the time the building sat in the middle of the long block between Bedford and Hudson Streets (Leroy Street changed names at the bend, just west of Rauch's building, to St. Luke's Place.)

But major change would arrive in the neighborhood prior to World War I.  Around 1904 real estate agent Charles C. Hickok began lobbying to have Seventh Avenue, which began at 11th Street, extended south to Varick Street.  Years of pressure paid off an in 1913 the extension began in concert with the construction of the Seventh Avenue subway.  Scores of buildings, including the historic 1840 Bedford Street Methodist Church, were demolished.  

When the project was completed in 1917 a series of triangular plots were left at the intersections of the new avenue and the old, diagonally-running Greenwich Village streets.  A solution was found with the rapidly growing trend to replace horses with automobiles.  A number of gasoline stations were erected on the otherwise nearly unusable sites.

On what was left of the site of Rauch's brick apartment building a tiny gasoline station was erected.  Below the modest building was a large masonry vault to accommodate the gas tanks.

The construction project focused more on the heavy vaults below ground than the shanty-like gas station itself. via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

In 1964 the service station was removed to be replaced by a nondescript white brick building three stories tall.  There was one apartment each on the second and third floors.  The plans called for an "eating and drinking establishment" in the cellar and first floor. The architects did not aspire to greatness in the design and saved their client's money by foregoing custom bricks to create clean corners for the angled footprint.  The result was a zipper-like appearance.  The problem of the sharp corner was resolved by a one-story extension that provides outdoor space to the second floor apartment.  Numbered 22 Seventh Avenue South, it also provided entrance to the downstairs club.

It is unclear how much of the old masonry vault was preserved and what was rebuilt; but the subterranean atmosphere was perfect for an intimate, arcane club.  

In 1974 Roswell Rudd opened a "jazz room," with the unexpected name of the St. James Infirmary.  The New York Times columnist John S. Wilson described it on December 4 that year as a "small, low-ceiling, informal basement room" and a "permanent, nightly home for the fascinating mixture of growls, shouts, mutterings and explosions that make up [Rudd's] highly expressive style."

Despite its favorable reviews, the club was gone within a year.  On November 26, 1975 Michael Gross, writing in The New York Times, mentioned the Milk Bar, "the town's most-whispered-about new watering hole."  In his 2016 book New York Rock, Steven Blush recalled that in the 1980's Milk Bar "hosted great late-night depravity."

It survived until 1993, replaced by Le Vingt-Deux, the club that would give the below-ground space its mystery.   In its June 28, 1993 issue, New York magazine wrote, "A beefy bouncer, eyebrows arched, peers through a porthole and selects the clientele.  The worthy proceed down dimly lighted stairs, then onto the main floor.  A brass bar dominates it, and the whole place shimmers with candlelight."  The speak-easy atmosphere was embraced by patrons.  There was no sign on the door, only brass street numbers.

The bouncer sized up prospective patrons through the peephole.  photo by Andy Levin, New York magazine June 28, 1993

Like St. James Infirmary, Le Vigne-Deux would be short-lived.  It was replaced within the year by the Tribal Lounge, which was replaced as quickly by the Nowbar, opened by former child actor Mason Reese.  His doorman named Keith told New York magazine in September 1995, "It's like, you gotta be ready to drink, ready to take stuff off, and able to look good doing it."  The magazine described the space as "a subterranean heaven for budding playboys and super-vixens."

Reese, who lived nearby, got into a bit of trouble in 1996.  On April 10 The New York Times journalist Alex Witchel explained, "Inviting Joey Buttafuoco to Nowbar has resulted in Mr. Reese's being summoned to appear before the State Liquor Authority because Mr. Buttafuoco, an ex-convict, was photographed mixing drinks.  (Ex-convicts are not legally allowed to serve liquor.)"  It was merely a publicity stunt and Buttafuoco never served any drinks, but that would have to be straightened out with authorities.

Sasha Petreaske opened Little Branch in the space in 2005.  He continued the Prohibition Era style allure of the below ground space.  Seth Kugel of The New York Times called it on April 13, 2008 "a faux speakeasy that in this case is identified with nothing more than a subtle plaque affixed to the door."

Once partially filled with gas tanks, the space is a below ground refuge today.  photo by Erinn Springer, New York magazine 

New York magazine more recently wrote, "The bartenders wear suspenders and many of the old speakeasy rules still apply (no talking loudly or misbehaving) at this kind gentle permutation of a speakeasy from the late hallowed drinkslinger Sasha Petraske."

Little Branch preserves the Prohibition Era speakeasy tradition created by Le Vingt-Deux.  There is no signage, a doorman still evaluates the potential patrons, a heavy curtain obscures the staircase leading downward, and the garter-sleeved bartenders are straight from the 1920's.

photographs by the author

many thanks to reader Lynn Ireland for suggesting this post