Thom & Wilson's 1884 142 East 79th Street

 

James A. Frame was a prolific real estate developer in the later decades of the 19th century.  On December 1, 1883, the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported that he would be erecting 18 houses on East 79th Street, 13 at the southeast corner of Fourth Avenue (today's Park Avenue) and five at the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue.  The architectural firm of Thom & Wilson would be designing the two projects.

Completed in 1884, the eastern-most structure, 142 East 79th Street, was clad in brownstone.  Its stone stoop was offset to the west.  Thom & Wilson's neo-Grec design included ornate window frames on the 79th Street side.  They sat on bracketed sills and wore molded cornices supported by corbeled piers.  Below the pressed metal terminal cornice was a frieze of rosette-decorated panels.

An advertisement described:

Southwest Corner of Lexington Ave.; handsome four story high-stoop, brown-stone dwelling, two-story extension, beautifully decorated, hard-wood trimmed; all improvements; on cable road, street 100 feet wide, size of lot 20x102.

James A. Frame sold 142 East 79th Street to John W. Haaren in April 1885 for $35,000 (about $1.2 million in 2026).  Haaren was a partner in the importing firm of Haaren & Meinken, founded in 1865 with Henry Meinken.  Both men dealt in real estate, as well.  Haaren and his wife, Marie, had four children, John William, Henry F., Mamy M., and Lena W.  

On the afternoon of March 11, 1891, John and Marie went for a drive.  The New York Herald reported, "He drove a spirited team hitched to a light side-bar buggy."  At around 6:30, they stopped at the house of a friend on 57th Street near Ninth Avenue.  John ran in "to speak to his friend," while Marie waited in the buggy.  Just as he was leaving, a Ninth Avenue elevated train passed.  The New York Herald reported, "The noise of the train frightened the horses, and they started on the run through Fifty-seventh street."  John ran after them, but fell.  Getting to his feet, he continued the chase.

The panicked horses crashed into a truck at 57th Street and Third avenue.  Two policeman caught the horses and calmed them.  Inside the buggy, Marie Haaren was unconscious.  By the time John arrived (no doubt breathless from his marathon), a neighborhood doctor had diagnosed Marie with "nervous shock."  Based on that, when the ambulance arrived John asked them to take her to their home, rather than a hospital.

It was an understandable decision, but a fatal one.  Marie regained consciousness on the way home, but fainted again.  The New York Herald reported, "On reaching her home she was taken to her room, and almost immediately died."  The 56-year-old had a history of heart problems and, according to the newspaper, "it is thought the fright caused by the runaway brought on an attack of the disease."

Marie's funeral was held in the parlor of 142 East 79th Street on March 15, followed by a service at Immanuel Lutheran Church on Lexington Avenue and 88th Street.

John Haaren sold 142 East 79th Street in 1896.  John L. Jordan converted the basement to a commercial space and the upper floors into three sprawling apartments, including one duplex.  

The store, with the address of 1140 Lexington Avenue, became home to S. Blumberg's drug store while the apartments were rented to well-to-do tenants.  A mysterious woman who moved into the building in June 1903 was Jane Leroy.  The "jewel-bedecked woman" was arrested for shoplifting in a Broadway department store on August 27, caught "stealing doilies worth $23.10," as reported by The Evening Post.  (The value of the lacy heist would translate to about $868 today.)

As it turned out, Jane Leroy was, in fact, the wife of jeweler Henry R. Levi.  They originally lived in Washington D.C., but according to The Evening World, now lived in a luxurious home at 315 East 46th Street.  The couple, it appears, were having domestic problems.  Levi arrived at the stationhouse that evening and furnished his wife's staggering $19,000 bail.

The next day, a lawyer's clerk told the magistrate that "the woman was too ill to appear."  Magistrate Ommen would not have it.  "That's no good.  I'll give you until 11 o'clock to produce the defendant, otherwise her bond will be forfeited," he demanded.  The New York Herald reported, "A little later Mrs. Levi came to court in a carriage.  She persisted in saying she was Jane Leroy, a housekeeper living at 142 East Seventy-ninth."  

As early as 1913, the store space was home to Frederick Bahr's grocery store.  It would become the Planodome Market within a decade.

"St. Peter's" magazine, September 1913 (copyright expired)

In the meantime, William J. Baird occupied an apartment here as early as 1919.  The bachelor was an "athletic instructor," according to the New-York Tribune.  On March 20, he took his  fiancé, Alice Whitman of Brooklyn, to the Palace Theatre.  The night ended badly.  William briefly excused himself during intermission.  When he returned to his seat, Alice told him that Dr. Albert L. Roth, who sat nearby, "had annoyed her during his absence."  The New-York Tribune reported that Baird left his seat "and punched the face of Dr. Albert L. Roth."  He and Alice then started out of the theater.  

Dr. Roth called out to a sailor nearby to stop him.  The sailor held Baird until a policeman responded and arrested him.  In night court, Baird explained his actions, saying, "I lost my temper, but I am willing to apologize."  The New-York Tribune reported, "Dr. Roth, who had lost a tooth, would have none of his apology, and Baird was fined $10, which he paid."

In 1929, architect Lafayette A. Goldstone was hired to renovate the building.  The stoop was removed and a triangular pediment placed over the new, sidewalk-level residential entrance.  There were now offices on the second floor, one apartment each on the third and fourth floors, and two "non-housekeeping" apartments on the fifth.  (The term meant that they had no kitchens.)

The ground-floor entrance to the apartments can be seen in this 1940 tax photo.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The tenants continued to be well-to-do.  The widow of Dwight Morgan Platt and her daughter, Miriam Dwight, lived here in 1929 when Miriam was married to John Merrill Congdon in Sherry's on October 21 that year.  The engagement and the wedding were heavily covered in society pages for weeks.

Wealthy widow Eila Haggin McKee, daughter of millionaire James B. Haggin, moved into an apartment building next door in 1928.  The structures were owned by the same firm.  The New York Times reported, "she missed the flowers that were her hobby on her Summer estate, Blue Blinds, at Smithtown Branch, L. I., so she rented the roof space on the adjoining building at 142 East Seventy-ninth...at a cost of $800 annually."  The article said, "The roof was only a step down from her apartment next door, and she sealed the stairway in the apartment at No. 142 which led to the roof."

The last remnant of James A. Frame's ambitious row, 142 East 79th Street is dwarfed by its neighbors today.

Problems came in 1936 when Eila McKee died.  The New York Times explained that the executors canceled the lease on the apartment, "presuming that the cancellation agreement also covered the garden space."  It did not.  By then, the buildings were separately owned.  The estate was in court for at least three years trying to untangle the complicated issue, which not only dealt with the rent, but the restoration of the internal staircase and access to the roof in 142 East 79th Street.

As early as 1940, Ruth Forster's florist shop occupied the ground floor.  In 1955, it was known as Betty Forster, Inc., the name presumably that of Ruth's daughter.  In the late 1980s, a florist shop, now the Strakes Florists, still occupied the space.

During a renovation in 1974, the residential entrance was moved to the Lexington Avenue side (although retaining the East 79th Street address).  The 79th Street entrance now accessed the store.  The remodeling resulted in offices on the second floor and one apartment each on the upper stories.

photographs by the author

The 1893 Harlem Courthouse - 170 East 121st Street

 

The spiraling windows of the corner tower conform to the marble and iron staircase inside.  photograph by Americasroof

On December 13, 1890, Commissioner of Public Works Thomas Francis Gilroy "presented the plans for the new Harlem Court House at 121st street and Sylvan place," as reported by The Sun.  Those plans were still being drawn up by Thom & Wilson, which projected the cost at $200,000 (about $7.3 million in 2026).  The article noted that the structure would "have accommodations for the district, police, and civil courts.  There will be forty-eight cells in the prison."

Gilroy, who had just stepped into his role a year earlier, most likely wanted this project to be scandal free.  The construction of the previous Harlem Courthouse just two decades earlier was one of most egregious and publicized examples of graft and corruption within William "Boss" Tweed's Tammany Hall administration.  

Ground was broken in 1891 and construction continued for two years.  If Gilroy had hoped that everything would proceed smoothly, he was disappointed.  On July 7, 1892, The Evening World reported that work had completely stopped.  When the marble cutters went on strike because contractor Maxwell & Dempsey was using non-union men, "all the other trades went out in support of the strikers."

Two months later, on September 4, 1892, the New-York Tribune reported that the Plasterers' Association had accused H. Sinclair's Sons (the contractor for doing the plaster work) of "not only employing non-union men, mostly cheap Italian laborers...but they are not complying with the specification."  The union charged "that instead of papier mache mouldings and ornaments which are called for in the contract, only common plaster is supplied."  And the problems continued.  The following month The Evening World reported that the carpenters' union "is having trouble with Contractor Lantry" for employing non-union men.

Finally, just as 1892 drew to a close, the Harlem Courthouse was completed.  Thom & Wilson had blended its Romanesque Revival design with Victorian Gothic detailing, most evident in the octagonal clock tower and the gothic crockets that sprouted along the roofline.  Above a rusticated granite base, the courthouse was clad in red brick and trimmed in bluestone and terra cotta.  The 121st Street and Sylvan Place elevations were mirror images of one another, both containing asymmetrical large and small gables, the larger of which embraced dramatic double-height, arched triptych openings.

(Incidentally, the block-long Sylvan Place was the last surviving remnant of the Eastern Post Road which, as The New York Times recalled in April 1920, "was the main route out of the city to Boston.")

The Harlem Courthouse was opened on New Year's Day 1893.  There was no fanfare as the judges walked in at 9:30 a.m. and went to business.  There were, nevertheless, some welcoming gestures.  The World reported, "Across the large window, back of the Judge's desk, stretched the letters which formed the word 'Welcome.'  They were formed of white immortelles."  The article somewhat snidely remarked, "It is not known whether the floral salutation was addressed to the Judge, the New Year, or the twenty prisoners who lined up before the desk."  Police Justice Welde's court attachés presented him with a floral horseshoe that read "Happy New Year, C. W."

The Evening World opined, "The Ninth [District Court] has the most gorgeous apartments in the new Harlem Court-House.  There is not a better equipped civil court in New York than this, from point of location and convenience."

That first day's docket was mundane.  The first case heard in the new courthouse was that of saloon owner W. F. Aiken.  The World said, "He was arrested for disorderly conduct, but was discharged."  Then came Michael Dwyer, who drove a grocery wagon.  He was charged with colliding with a cable car on Amsterdam Avenue and Manhattan Street.  "The wagon was upset and Dwyer went out on his head.  The gripman had a hand crushed and one finger broken," reported the article.  And 17-year-old Peter Hickey faced the charge of stealing a pair of shoes from Meyer Mouser's store.

The World published a woefully inaccurate sketch of the new building on January 2, 1893. (copyright expired)

Other cases, of course, were less routine.  On August 5, 1899, for instance, Mrs. Margaret Shakett was arrested for abandoning her three-week-old child.  A pedestrian saw her get off a trolly car "at a lonely place and leave the baby on a stone wall on the Simpson estate," reported the New-York Tribune.  While admitting to the crime, Margaret Shakett emotionally described her situation to the judge.  Her husband had abandoned her several months earlier and she had lived since then by selling her furniture piece-by-piece.  She had been unable to find work until she had no money to support her or her baby.  The New-York Tribune recounted, "she decided to leave the infant at a place where she thought it would be quickly found by persons in good circumstances."

Thom & Wilson provided a more accurate rendering in 1891.  The History of the Portland Cement Industry in the United States 1900 (copyright expired)

After hearing her heart-wrenching tale, the judge dismissed Margaret Shakett.  Later that day, however, a representative of the National Home for Children on 51st Street appeared to say that Mrs. Shakett "was the woman who had abandoned many babies in different parts of the city."

Kingdon Gould was the privileged son of George Jay Gould and Edith Kingdon Gould.  Apparently feeling that his family's wealth and stature made him immune to everyday rules, as a freshman at Columbia University, he refused to wear a freshman's cap, infuriating members of the sophomore class.  When they attempted to force him to wear it, he pulled out a revolver and fired over their heads, sending them running.

Gould's cavalier attitude about rules and laws was reflected again in 1908 when he was arrested on May 17 for "speeding an automobile."  He posted $100 bond to appear in the Harlem Courthouse to stand trial.  The 21-year-old did not appear.  Rather than forfeit his bond, the court gave him a second chance, postponing the case for a week.  On June 1, The Sun reported that the judge "directed that Gould plead yesterday, which he did not do."  Instead, said the article, "It is said that Kingdon Gould has gone to Europe for the summer."  The judge issued a bench warrant for the insolent young man's arrest.

A disturbing case came before the Police Court on January 10, 1912.  Walter Freeman, a black man who worked as a sleeping car porter, and an unnamed white man rented a small office on West 133rd Street.  Freeman then sent for another Pullman porter, Frank Foster, and told him that he needed to find employees for a "palatial" hotel that was about to open in Cuba.  The Evening World reported, "He instructed Foster to hustle out and get hold of from eighty to a hundred young, alert negroes for good jobs in Havana."

Foster rounded up hallboys, bellmen, porters and elevator operators.  Freeman "hired" them, but only after they paid $3 or $5 in advance for their uniforms.  The men quit their jobs, and some "pawned their overcoats" to get enough money for the uniform advances.  On January 11, The Evening World added, "And one negro pawned his shoes yesterday to make up $5 to give Freeman, figuring that he was going to a warm climate and wouldn't need shoes until he got to work, when he could probably borrow a pair."

Walter Freeman told the group that their passage to Havana had been paid.  On the freezing morning of January 11, the 81 men stood on the pier to board the liner Mexico.  "All of them carried grips or suitcases, but many had no overcoats and one was without shoes," said the article.  "No passage had been engaged for the fourscore negroes by Freeman or anybody else."

The duped men traveled back north to the Harlem Courthouse where they lodged their complaint against Walter Freeman.  The Evening World reported that a police officer who went to the West 133rd address was told that "Freeman disappeared last night."

photograph by Jerry Spearman, via the New York Landmarks Conservancy

In a case that recalled that of Margaret Shakett years earlier, on May 8, 1925 Mrs. Augusta Geisen-Volks appeared in court to answer charges of running an "infantorium" on East 86th Street where "twenty-two children had died there within a year."  The widow of a Prussian army officer, she took in unwanted infants, presumably for adoption.  

At the time of Augusta Geisen-Volks's disturbing trial, Victor Wahlberg had wound the clocks here every week since the building's opening.  He not only wound these clocks, but every clock in city-owned buildings throughout the city.  He came to America from Stockholm at the age of 17 in 1890.  Having been a watchmaker's apprentice at home, he got the clock-winding job in 1892.  The New York Times explained on January 10, 1933 that once a week since then, "Mr. Wahlberg had gone the rounds from City Hall to Harlem Courthouse, winding, oiling and repairing the municipal clocks."  

The reason for New York Times's article was that after 40 years and having served under 13 mayors, Victor Wahlberg had lost his job.  On New Year's Day 1933, Hyman Goldschmidt took over the position, having undercut Wahlberg's bid for the contract by $366.  In his "somber flat," Wahlberg told a New York Times reporter, "I'll will get by."  Victor Wahlberg died in a nursing home on April 18, 1949.

The Great Depression saw the Works Progress Administration arise from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs.  It created jobs for out-of-work Americans, including artists who suddenly found themselves decorating the walls and ceilings of municipal buildings.  In 1936, artist David Karfunkle was commissioned to adorn the third floor of the Harlem Courthouse.  His not-so-subtle message was depicted in his mural Exploitation of Labor and Hoarding of Wealth.

David Karfunkle at work on his powerful 1936 mural. from the Archives of American Art.

In 1953 the city established the Department of Air Pollution Control "to lead a scientific attack on air contamination," as explained by The New York Times.  On December 12, 1954, the newspaper reported that the Department's air pollution laboratory had lost its lease.  "With a limited choice of substitute quarters, the city must now decide whether to continue the infant laboratory or abandon it as too costly,"  said the article.  Under consideration, it said, "is the old Harlem Courthouse, a somewhat rundown structure at East 121st Street and Sylvan Place."

Two years later, on July 14, 1955, The New York Times reported, "The City's Air Pollution Control Laboratory moved yesterday to roomier quarters in the Harlem Courthouse."  The chemists now had "twice as much floor space," said the article, as its previous location.  

The building ceased to operate as a courthouse in 1961 and when it was considered for individual landmark designation in June 1966, the Air Pollution Control Laboratory was its only tenant.  But within two years, as the Harlem Community Justice Center, the structure began offering services to local residents.

The Frank and Elizabeth Larom House - 219 West 78th Street

 

The extended Hall family were builders and developers.  William Hall began the tradition that was continued by his sons William W. and Thomas M. Hall.  (They operated both as William Hall's Sons and W. W. & T. M. Hall).  Joining in the familial trend were Arlington C., and Harvey M. Hall, who worked together; and William H. Hall Jr. and T. R. A. Hall.

In 1890, the latter two purchased ten building lots on the northern side of West 78th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.  They hired the architectural firm of Thom & Wilson to design upscale, three-story and basement homes on the site.  Completed in 1891, they wore Romanesque Revival pants and Renaissance Revival shirts.

Among them was 219 West 78th Street.  Its basement and parlor levels were clad in chunky, undressed brownstone blocks, typical of the Romanesque Revival style.  Beefy carved stoop newels continued the motif.  Thom & Wilson introduced the Renaissance at the parlor floor with sumptuous fruit-and-flower carvings in the single lintel that connected the windows and above the doorway.  Formal fluted columns with complex capitals flanked the entranceway.

The second and third floors discarded any hints of Romanesque.  The windows within the planar brownstone surface were framed by shallow quoins and capped with lintels carved with intricate swags of fruits and flowers.  A pressed metal cornice with paired corbels completed the design.

On October 6, 1892, only two of the homes were still unsold, including No. 219.  An advertisement in The Evening Post for the "3-Story High-Class Houses" read:

For sale--206 and 219 West 78th St.; remainder of row of ten thoroughly seasoned; ready for decorating; restricted neighborhood front and rear.  Liberal mortgage.

The mention of "restricted neighborhood front and rear" meant that commerce (like stores) was prohibited on the 78th and 79th Street blocks.

The house underwent a quick succession of owners until about 1896 when glove importer Frank William Larom and his wife, the former Elizabeth Elmira Shute, moved in.  Born in 1862 and 1867 respectively, the couple was married on December 14, 1887.  They had two children, Irving Hastings and Edith Emerson.  

Elizabeth had deep American roots and was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the National Society of New England Women.  Her father, builder William Shute, had erected the Grand Opera House.  Like most wives of affluent businessmen, Elizabeth was involved in charitable work.  She annually donated items to the New York State Woman's Relief Corps Home for orphans and wives of veterans.  In 1896, for instance, she donated "1 blanket, 5 tidies, 13 books, dolls and toys."  ("Tidies" were embroidered pieces of cloth used to protect the backs of upholstered furniture.)  The 1914 Woman's Who's Who of America would mention that Elizabeth "interested in animal welfare."  (She was a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.)  It also noted that she was "against woman suffrage."

Edith Emerson Larom was 12 years old when she died on April 21, 1905.  The little girl's casket sat in the parlor until her funeral there on April 24.

The 1914 Social Register listed Irving Hastings Larom as living in the Cottage Club at Princeton University.  Known as Larry, upon his graduation the following year, he relocated to the Far West with Winthrop Brooks (of the Brooks Brothers family).  They established Valley Ranch near Cody, Wyoming.  A dude ranch, he advertised in part, "You'd enjoy wearing ranch clothes, the cowboys, the ranch work, the saddle-leather atmosphere of the place."

Now empty nesters, Frank and Elizabeth sold 219 West 78th Street in December 1918 to Dr. Ferdinand G. Kneer and his wife, the former Annie L. Thoe.  Kneer had been the pathologist at Harlem Hospital, and was now a surgeon at St. Katherine's Hospital.  Additionally, he was also president of the Kneer-Kuhl Co. and an amateur photographer and a pioneer in the creation of colored "optical lantern" slides.  He used those in illustrating his lectures.

Ferdinand G. Kneer died on June 17, 1927.  His funeral was held in the parlor three days later, followed by services in the Church of the Transfiguration on East 29th Street.  Annie did not remain in the house for long.  She sold it in February 1929 to the Monel Holding Corporation.  The New York Times remarked that the buyer "will remodel the premises into small suites."

Something went awry with the negotiation, however.  The Monel Holding Corporation was still leasing the property from Annie L. Kneer as late as 1934.  On November 13, 1938, The New York Times reported that Annie L. Kneer had leased the house to a new tenant for five years.  "The tenant will alter the building," said the article.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The residence was remodeled again after the Feingold Realty Corporation purchased it in September 1962.  "The buyer, an architect, plans to alter the building into small apartments, one of which he will occupy," reported The New York Times.  That architect was Alexander Feingold.  He reconfigured the interior to seven apartments while preserving the exterior appearance. 

At the time of Feingold's purchase, the neighborhood had severely declined from the era when Frank and Elizabeth Larom first stepped from their carriage in front of the stoop.  Thirty-five years later, Feingold still lived here.  He recalled his early years in the house to The New York Times journalist Christopher Gray in 1995, saying, "the block was plagued by prostitution and drugs."  Feingold and his neighbors turned things around.  Gray reported, "An early step forward, around 1966, was the planting of trees by the Department of Parks, followed by brick enclosures Mr. Feingold's firm designed for the tree pits a few years later."

There are still seven apartments in the building.  And Thom & Wilson's interesting hybrid design is amazingly intact.

photographs by the author

The Max and Julia G. Wolff House - 26 West 87th Street

 

In May 1891, real estate developer James A. Frame purchased five lots on the south side of West 87th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.  The upscale rowhouses that Frame erected on the site were designed by the architectural firm of Thom & Wilson.  Like the others, the easternmost house, 26 West 87th Street, was four stories tall and faced in brownstone.  A doglegged box stoop led to the rusticated parlor level, above which a rounded bay dominated the second floor.  The stacked openings of the third and fourth floors were separated by a molded cornice and spandrel panels decorated with carved swags.  Fluted pilasters framed the third floor openings, and graceful swan's neck pediments with swags capped those of the fourth.

The residence became home to Max and Julia G. Wolff.  Born in Aldorf, Germany in April 1852, Wolff founded the Palace Ribbon Manufacturing Company in 1889.  His wife, the former Julie Stern Gutman, was born in Brooklyn in September 1870.  Three children would be born in the house: Irving Gutman, in 1894; Helen Rose in 1896; and Lawrence (known as Pete), in 1902.

Max and Julia Wolff later in life (original sources unknown)

The offices of the Palace Ribbon Manufacturing Company were located at 62 Greene Street, while the mills were in South Allentown, Pennsylvania.  On January 18, 1899, Wolff traveled to the mills, where the foreman, Maurice Zinderstein, had recently been fired.  At the end of the day, around 5:30, Wolff left the office to take a cab to the train station.  As he descended the stairs, he confronted Zinderstein who was brandishing a revolver.

Wolff rushed back up the stairs, but the office door had locked behind him.  As he struggled with the knob, Zinderstein fired.  The Paterson Evening News reported, "Those in the office, hearing the shots, ran out and picked up Wolff and carried him into the building."  The article said that the 61-year-old Zinderstein, "is said to have been drunk at the time."  One of the bullets had missed, but two struck Wolff, one in the back and the other in the thigh.  He was taken by train to St. Luke's Hospital in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  "It was believed there that he had a chance of recovery," said the article.

Back home on West 87th Street, Julia received the terrifying news.  The New-York Tribune reported, "his wife hurried out to South Bethlehem."  Saying that Max Wolff "is well known in the drygoods world here," the article described his injuries as "dangerous, if not fatal."  (Zinderstein, in the meantime, was arrested for attempted murder.)

Max Wolff recovered from the assassination attempt.  In 1915, the family took in a boarder, Dr. George Birmingham McAuliffe and his children.  Born in 1865, McAuliffe's wife, Margaret Gervais, had died the previous year.  He had four children, Felix Vincent, who was 22; George G., who was 21; 19-year-old Gervais Ward; and Aubrey, who was 15.

With tensions worsening in Europe, in 1916 Irving Wolff joined the Army and was sent to the Plattsburg Military Training Camp. 

The house was the scene of Helen Rose Wolff's marriage to Leo Samuel Frenkel on November 24, 1920.  The New-York Tribune reported that the newlyweds would live in the city after "a short honeymoon in the South."

Six months later, on May 22, 1921, the New-York Tribune reported that the Wolffs had sold 26 West 87th Street "to a physician."  That physician was their long-term boarder, Dr. George Birmingham McAuliffe.  He was a clinical instructor of otology at the Cornell University Medical School.  The family's summer home was in Sag Harbor, Long Island.

On November 6, 1922, the New York Herald reported on the engagement of McAuliffe to Marguerite Laux.  The couple would have two children together, Marguerite Georgette, born in 1924, and George Jr., born on March 30, 1926.

Like their neighbors along the block, the McAuliffes maintained a domestic staff, as well as George McAuliffe's trained nurse, Helen Martin (known to her friends as Blossom).  Although she was engaged to be married, Helen caught the eye of the family's butler, Philippine-born Eulogia Lazado, who was hired in 1922.  His romantic advances were not welcomed.

At one point, Helen's rebuffing of his attentions infuriated Eulogia.  Helen's close friend, Mary Harrington, later recounted, "the ringing of a telephone bell probably saved the life of the nurse" when Lazado choked her.  Helen told the incident to Dr. McAuliffe and said she was going to resign.  "She stayed, however, on being assured the butler would not molest her again," reported the Times Union.

On June 8, 1923, Lazado told Helen that he had purchased a $300 diamond ring for her.  According to Lazado later, Helen replied, "Well, I have another man who is worth a lot more than you and will shoot you if you bother me any more."

In a rage, the butler strangled Helen to death.  He pulled down a drapery from the window in his room and--with her knees pulled up to her torso--wrapped her body first in the drapery and then in brown paper and tied the bundle with cord.

Lazado managed to get the package to the Staten Island Ferry with the intention of dumping it into the harbor.  The New York Times reported that he "did not do so because passengers were watching."  On the Staten Island side, he took a taxicab to the Elizabethport Ferry.  The cabbie, Edward Mareuer, helped him carry the bundle to the boat.  Mareurer (not surprisingly) became suspicious and notified Police Sergeant John Miller on the pier just as the ferry began to pull out.

Miller shouted to passengers to stop Lazado from trying to throw the bundle off the boat.  Two deckhands and a passenger seized him and the ferry reversed course back to the slip.  The New York Times reported, "Lazardo, meanwhile, had put up a spirited fight and nearly managed to throw the bundle overboard before he was felled by the fist of one of the ferry's crew."

Sergeant Miller took Lazado and the bundle into the ferry house where Miller began to inspect the package.  "The first thing he uncovered after tearing through a wrapping of heavy manila paper tied with clothesline was the head of a young woman," said the article.  Later, Lazado confessed "that he had strangled the girl in a quarrel over his intended gift of a diamond ring," reported The New York Times.

Five months later, after a sensational trial, on November 19, 1923 The New York Times reported that Lazado was sentenced "to die in the electric chair at Sing Sing."

The carved swags of the top floor pediments were intact in 1941.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Marguerite's engagement to John Egan O'Reilly was announced on April 1, 1946.  Her brother, George, Jr., was with the U.S. Army in Japan at the time, rebuilding the country under General Douglas MacArthur.  

Dr. George Birmingham McAuliffe died on October 1, 1954 at the age of 90.  Marguerite sold the house to Leon Tshernoff, who converted it to apartments, two per floor.

Among the earliest tenants was Eleanora Fagan, who moved in on June 21, 1958.  According to Paul Alexander in his Bitter Crop, "it was only after the landlord, Dr. Leon Tshernoff, a physician originally from Palestine, agreed to grant her a three-year lease at a rent of $135 a month that he learned his tenant was Billie Holiday."  Alexander writes that she shared apartment 1B "with her constant companion, a Chihuahua she adored named Pepe."  Although Holiday's husband, Louis McKay, was listed on the lease, he had moved to California.

Billie Holiday, from the collection of the New York Public Library

On July 18, 1959, The New York Times reported, "Billie Holiday, famed jazz singer, died yesterday in Metropolitan Hospital...Miss Holiday had lived at 26 West Eighty-seventh Street.  She had been under arrest in her hospital bed since June 12 for illegal possession of narcotics."  It was the ignominious end to a brilliant career that greatly changed the course of jazz music.

The upper portion of the house returned to a single family home in 2015, with an apartment in the basement.  It was listed for sale that year as $12.95 million.

photographs by the author

The Luis Napoleon Henriques House - 17 West 87th Street

 

Patrick and John J. Farley erected a row of five brownstone-fronted houses on the north side of West 87th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue in 1891-92.  Designed in the Renaissance Revival style by Thom & Wilson, their rich details reflected wealth and taste.  

Twenty-feet wide, 17 West 87th Street was an A model of the A-B-A-B-A configuration.  A dog-legged box stoop led to the double-doored entrance, the proportions of which matched the parlor window.  Both sat within matching, heavily carved frames.  A bowed oriel dominated the second floor, its windows separated by Ionic pilasters. 

On November 26, 1893, the New York Herald reported that "a Mr. Henriques" had purchased 17 West 87th Street.  Luis Napoleon Henriques (who often Anglicized his name to Louis) was born on August 24, 1844 in Santa Marta, Colombia.  He and his wife, the former Carolina de Morales y Jullien had six sons and five daughters.

Late in 1894, son George, who was 18 years old, sailed to Havana.  As it turned out, it was not a good time to visit the island.  The Cuban Revolution (which was an attempt to break free of Spanish control) broke out on February 24, 1895.  George found himself amid chaos and violence.  Finally, he escaped on the steamer Orizaba, arriving in New York on March 25.  The teen was immediately suspect.

The New-York Tribune reported, "it was rumored that Henriques had been in some way connected with the revolutionists, and had left Havana hastily.  He came on board the steamer without any baggage and with a passport from a South American nation."  (That nation, of course, was Colombia.)  The revolutionary mobs, George explained to officials, had stolen his possessions.  He was eventually released.

image via NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Also detained that year was Albert Fombona, attaché to the Venezuela Legation in Washington D.C.  The diplomat was in New York City on September 14 when he was arrested for pressing unwanted attentions on three young women at the corner of Seventh Avenue and West 23rd Street.  One by one, as they approached, he would drop his cane to the sidewalk in front of them and ask, "Excuse me, my dear, are you out for a promenade?"  

His actions attracted the attention of Policeman Walsh.  After the third attempt, Walsh approached and said, "Say, young man, I will give you a promenade.  You come with me to the station house."  Once there, the indignant attaché sent a message to Luis Henriques, who furnished his bail.

In 1899, Luis Henriques purchased 203 West 38th Street and sold the West 87th Street house to Charles Rohe, a dealer in "provisions and lard," according to The Financial Red Book in 1903.  He was head of Rohe & Brother's, president of the Eastern Live Stock Express, vice-president of the West Side Bank and a trustee of the North River Savings Bank.

By 1911, the Rohe children were young adults.  The first to wed was Olga.  On April 4, 1912, the American Meat Trade and Retail Butchers Journal reported that she would marry Henry C. Steneck in the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on Central Park West on April 25.  Her siblings were part of the ceremony--Gertrude was maid of honor and William and Charles Jr. were ushers.  The New-York Tribune reported, "Mr. and Mrs. Steneck will sail on Tuesday on the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria.  They will be away about two months."

Olga's wedding was closely followed by William's.  He was married to Maude Underwood Wait in Sherry's two months later on June 27.  "Mr. and Mrs. Rohe will sail within a few days for Europe, where they will spend the Summer," reported The New York Times.

On the night of January 22, 1913, Charles Rohe received a telephone call from Charles Fink, the collector of Rohe & Brother's.  At about 7:30, Fink and William Bornemann were counting money in the company's cashier's cage.  The New York Herald reported, "five men dashed up to Rohe & Bro.'s wholesale meats, provisions and oils plant at 527 to 531 West Thirty-sixth street...and at the point of revolvers held up two inside and two outside employees of the firm, vaulted over the wire screen around the cashier's cage and dashed away again with about $700 of the firm's money."  The heist would equal about $23,000 today.  The robbers escaped in a taxi.

Charles Rohe was certain the robbery was not an inside job.  He told police, according to the New-York Tribune, "Fink had been in his employ for a number of years and was a reliable, trusted man."

Gertrude was the next of the Rohe children to marry.  On January 4, 1914, The New York Times reported on her engagement to Leopold Sommer.  The couple was married on November 11 in the Church of the Advent.  

Gertrude posed with her bridesmaids on the day of her wedding.  photograph via lookingoppositvely.com

Tragically, five years later Leo Sommer contracted influenza and died on January 16, 1919.  He and Gertrude had a two-year-old daughter, Charlotte.  Gertrude and Charlotte moved back to her parents house on West 87th Street.  Charles Jr., still unmarried, was also still here.

Charles Rohe was president of the North River Savings Bank in April 1922 when he sold 17 West 87th Street to Minnie A. Broadback for $40,000 (about $748,000 today).  Broadback resold the house in 1924 to Dr. Benjamin Dubovsky.  On March 19, the New York Evening Post reported that he "will occupy it as his residence and professional office."

It appeared that the house was doomed in 1944.  On October 12, The New York Times reported, "A twelve-story apartment house for 108 families was filed for a site at 5-17 West Eighty-seventh Street, to cost $450,000."  But something derailed those plans.  The row survived and in 1960, 17 West 87th Street was converted to two apartments per floor.

The conversion did not affect the exterior appearance of Thom & Wilson's design.  More than 130 years after its completion, the house looks much as it did when Luis Napoleon Henriques and his family moved in.

photographs by the author

Thom & Wilson's 1890 59 West 87th Street

 

Real estate developer Charles Gahren commissioned Thom & Wilson to design a row of five-story flats on the northeast corner of Ninth Avenue (later renamed Columbus Avenue) and 87th Street in 1889.  They were completed in 1890, a successful blend of Romanesque Revival and Renaissance Revival styles.  The easternmost building, 59 West 87th Street, stood out from the row, with a full-height, three-sided bay.  The lower two floors were faced in brownstone, its impressive arched entrance sitting above a short stoop.  Purely Romanesque Revival in style, clustered colonnettes supported the intricately carved layered arch.  The spandrels and entablature were filled with equally elaborate medieval inspired carvings.

For the upper four floors, Thom & Wilson turned to the Renaissance, their reserved decoration relying on honeycomb brick panels; creative, scale-like brickwork between the central panel between the fourth and fifth floors; and brownstone courses.

There were two apartments per floor, front and back.  An advertisement described, "Extra large apartments, 26 x 90; seven rooms, bath; butler's pantry, and private hall."  

Among the initial residents was Benjamin Graham, who suffered a terrifying ordeal on January 2, 1895.  Decades before the advent of efficient snow removal, carriages gave way to sleighs on city streets after snowfalls.  That afternoon, the banker was riding in a sleigh driven by a colleague, John Quinn, along 120th Street when the horse panicked and galloped wildly.  The New York World reported that Mounted Policeman Andrews saw the runaway and, "noticed that the bit had broken and the headstall had fallen off.  How to stop the animal was a puzzler to Andrews, but only for a moment."

The alarmed men could only hold on as the horse took them on the frightening ride.  Then, astoundingly, Andrews "got his horse into the roadway, held the reins in his teeth and as the sorrel dashed by he reached over and seized him by the windpipe."  The horses ran side-by-side and into Central Park with the policeman continuing to keep a grip on the runaway's throat.

The World reported, "Scores of sleighs, carriages and rigs of every description were on the drive, but the shouts of the onlookers warned their drivers in advance and they pulled aside."  Eventually, Andrew's tactic worked and the runaway horse, unable to breathe, fell to its knees, gasping for air.  Graham and Quinn, "jumped out and shook hands with Andrews, thanking him expressively for saving them from possible death," said the article.

George Obermeyer, his wife and their four-year-old son, were also early residents.  Born in 1856, Obermeyer was a partner of the dye manufacturing firm Charles Fischer & Co.  In December 1902, he went to the tax office downtown and complained that he had been over assessed for personal property.  The New York Times reported, "on the strength of his affidavit," he was taxed on a revised personal worth of $2,400.  (The original figure was $5,000.)  The article added, "The Tax Commissioners thought nothing of the circumstance."

George Obermeyer's guilty conscience did, however, think about the circumstance.  Over the next week or so, he suffered with "nervous prostration," according to his doctor.  His condition became so bad that a nurse was called in.

Finally, on January 28, 1903, Obermeyer returned to the tax office with his attorney.  He confessed that he had "inadvertently" made incorrect statements.  "He should be taxed on $38,000, he said, instead of on $2,400," reported The New York Times.  It was a significant difference--his revised personal worth would equal $1.4 million today, as compared with the former $88,300.

Despite rectifying his attempted transgression, the shame of his actions haunted Obermeyer.  Early on the morning of January 30, while his nurse was sleeping, he disconnected the rubber tube from a reading lamp and inserted the end into his mouth.  He died from inhaling the gas.

Another tragic resident was Pauline Drastler.  Following the death of her husband, Dr. Franz Drastler, she moved into an apartment here with her daughter and son-in-law, Adolph Amend.  The daughter died in 1904 and Pauline and Amend continued to share the apartment, The New York Press saying, that he lavishes "on Mrs. Drastler, friends, say, every attention he could to make her happy."

But Pauline Drastler's world was turned upside down when Adolph Amend remarried in February 1910 and moved with his bride to Gramercy Park.  Not only did the marriage disturb Pauline (The New York Times said it "seems to have grieved Mrs. Drastler"), the lease, which was in Amend's name, was due to expire on August 1.  The upheaval in her life was too much for the 62-year old to bear.

At 9:00 a.m. on August 1, the day Pauline Drastler was scheduled to move out, the janitress, Mrs. Johnson, noticed the apartment door was ajar.  She looked inside and noticed that all Pauline's things were packed up, but she also smelled gas.  The New York Times remarked, "Tracing this, she found Mrs. Drastler lying on the bed in an inner room in the seven-room apartment, lifeless."

In the meantime, Adolph Amend received a letter from Pauline, telling him that she intended to commit suicide.  The New York Press said, "Amend received it too late to interfere to save her life."  The newspaper titled the article, "Dies Rather Than Move From Home She Had Loved."

By the first decade of the 20th century, architect William Burnet Tuthill, his wife, the former Henrietta Elizabeth Corwin, and their son, Burnet Corwin, occupied an apartment here.  The family maintained a country home in Newburgh, New York.  Born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1855, Tuthill trained in the office of Richard Morris Hunt before opening his own office in 1878.  A founder of the Architectural League of New York, he served on the Art Commission of the Chicago Columbia Exposition in 1893.  Perhaps his most notable design was the 1891 Carnegie Hall.  

The year 1917 would bring Tuthill great joy and crippling grief.  On January 2, the New York Herald reported that Burnet was married the previous day to Helen Hersey in Denver, Colorado.  Just two months later, on March 11, Henrietta died in the West 87th Street apartment at the age of 65.

(Burnet Corwin Tuthill, incidentally, became a well-known conductor and composer, co-founding the National Association of Schools of Music and organizing the the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, of which he was its first conductor.)

William Burnet Tuthill became ill in July 1929.  He died at the Newburgh home at the age of 74 on August 26 that year.

In the meantime, Fire Chief John Kenlon and his wife, the former Kathryn Fitzgerald, lived here as early as 1918.  Born in 1859, Kenlon went to sea as a "ship's boy" in 1873 on the coal schooner Gazelle.  He sailed for 14 years, eventually becoming the captain of the yacht of a millionaire.  His employer offered to get him a post in the Fire Department when plans for a southern cruise were cancelled.

Kenlon was appointed chief in 1911.  The New York Times would later remark, "He saw fire fighting as a science rather than a romantic game.  He established and became first president of the Fire College."  In 1922 he pushed for a law requiring gas cut-offs outside houses as a safety measure.

Kenlon retired in 1931 holding the longest tenure in the department's history.  He and Kathryn moved to Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, where he died on May 30, 1940.

Like the Kenlons, Stephen McFarland, founder of the Central Cigar Company, had lived at 59 West 87th Street as early as 1918.  Born in Ireland on August 12, 1853, he came to New York at the age of 28.  The immigrant firebrand immediately involved himself with Irish Independence.  He became active in the Irish Land League and was a contributor to causes promoting Irish freedom.  Through his activities, he became well acquainted with Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish leader.  McFarland was, as well, a member of the Irish-American Historical Society, the National Council of the Friends of Irish Freedom, the Tammany Society, the Holy Name Society and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.

He and his wife, Mary, had four sons, Joseph, John, Myles and Stephen; and a daughter Anna.  An ardent Democrat and a member of the general committee of Tammany Hall, McFarland was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1884, 1888, 1892 and 1896.  

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Stephen McFarland died in the apartment on October 28, 1929.  Still living with his parents was Joseph.  All the other children were married by then.  Stephen McFarland's concern about his son's bachelorhood was clearly reflected in his will.  On November 5, The New York Times titled an article, "Must Wed To Get Father's Legacy."  It went on to explain that Joseph's portion of the estate would be held in trust.  The funds would be paid to him, "if and when he gets married."

The nation's attention was directed to 59 West 87th Street in 1938.  Dr. Ignatz T. Griebl and his wife, Maria, immigrated to America from Munich in 1924.  He established an obstetrics practice here.  But as the Nazi movement grew in power in Germany, Griebel became the head of a spy network.  He joined the U. S. Army Reserves, recruiting spies among young German-Americans.

On June 8, 1938, Federal officials arrived at 59 West 87th Street to arrest Griebl, but found him gone.  The New York Evening Post reported that Maria Griebl was arrested "after admitting she had planned to take the 'first boat' out of the country."  The article said that she, "admitted having sent a trunk of his effects to him in Germany since he arrived there and that she also planned to send his automobile to him--evidence that he does not intend to return to this country."

As the war drew to an end, Dr. Ignatz Griebl was recognized while applying for a travel permit from the Allied Military Government on August 19, 1945.  Once again he escaped.  He remained a fugitive under indictment for espionage until March 14, 1950, when the U.S. Government dropped the case.

At time when sprawling 19th century apartments were being split up to multiple units, a renovation to 59 West 87th Street went the opposite way.  In 1996, the two apartments per floor were combined to one, resulting in a total of five apartments in the building today.

photographs by the author