The Lost P. Divver Assc. Clubhouse - 59 Madison Street

 

from the collection of the New York Public Library

In the second half of the 19th century, small political clubs dotted the city.  It was a time when the sons of struggling immigrants could rise to wealth and power through political affiliations.  Among them was Patrick Divver, widely known as Paddy.  Born in Ireland on May 1, 1844 the youngest of 11 children, his parents brought him to New York City when he was two.  

After attending public school, he started out as a messenger boy on Broadway and later apprenticed as a "morocco dresser" earning $2.50 per week.  (A morocco dresser decorated leather for book bindings and such.  Divver's pay would translate to about $50 today.)  He got married just after his 17th birthday.  The New York Times would later note, "He was the father of fifteen children and he strove to rear them with every advantage within his reach."

With that goal in mind, he turned to politics and in 1866 was a member of the Tammany Hall General Committee.  He became a leader in his Lower East Side Second Assembly District and when Mayor Hugh J. Grant took office in 1890, he appointed Divver a Police Justice.  The New York Times would later say, "It has been said that he meted out justice with rare fairness, that ungrammatical lingo was probably his greatest fault." 

Tammany Hall Souvenir of the Inauguration of Cleveland and Stevenson, 1893 (copyright expired)

A reporter from the New York Herald flatly asked Divver if he used his popularity in the assembly district to wrest the justice position.  The journalist wrote:

In reference to an insinuation that he owed his appointment partly to a threat on his part to forsake Tammany Hall unless he got a fat office, he laughed and said that it would take a great deal more than failure to get an office to separate him from Tammany Hall.

On June 28, 1890, the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported that the Patrick Divver Association had purchased 59 Madison Street for $14,000 (about $498,000 in 2026).  The notice mentioned, "three-story stone clubhouse projected."

The New York Herald described the Patrick Divver Association on December 20, 1890 as "partly a political and partly a social organization."  When the club purchased the Madison Street property its 400 members occupied rooms at 80 Oliver Street.  The article said that all the funds necessary to build the proposed clubhouse had been raised.  "The building will be up in less than a year," it said.

On January 22, 1891, the New York Herald reported, "Architect John S. O'Meara was employed to make the drawings and specifications."  The article said, "the other east side associations...are green with envy," noting that the new clubhouse would have "all the modern improvements and appliances, hot and cold water, gas, steam, and lavatories."

The New York Herald, January 22, 1891 (copyright expired)

O'Meara blended Romanesque Revival with Flemish Renaissance Revival to create his design.  The undressed brownstone of the arched first floor openings and of the Palladian-inspired second story grouping were drawn from the former, while the striking stepped gable with cascading volutes reflected the latter.   The New York Herald said, "The entrance steps will be of white marble, and in place of storm doors there will be gates of heavy iron."

Between the first and second floors would be a large terra cotta shield with the monogram "P.D.A."  The newspaper promised, "the letters will be so plain that they can be read a block away."

A terra cotta shield bore the monogram of the club.  cropped image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Above the center window of the second floor was a sculpted head of a Native American chief, "to indicate that the Divverites are Tammany braves," explained the New York Herald.  Turning to the interior, the article said:

The entrance door opens into a wide hallway.  To the left and in front will be a small reception room, in the window of which the Divverites may sit and stare in the most approved club fashion.  Back of this is the assembly room, 73 feet long.  A wide stairway leads to the second floor.  In front is a small committee room, and six card rooms open into each other, and with a large billiard room occupy the rest of the floor, except the janitor's living rooms.  The basement contains bowling alleys.

O'Meara projected the cost of construction at $20,000, or about $711,000 today.  The project was completed within the year and on December 11, 1891, The Evening World announced, "The Divver Club, of the Second Assembly District, formerly known as the P. Divver Association, will formally open its new clubhouse at 59 Madison street next Monday evening."

Trouble came to Patrick Divver three years later.  While he was away on vacation on the West Coast, several of his election district officers were arrested for election fraud.  "Some of them were fined, and some went to Sing Sing," reported The New York Times on October 21, 1894.  When Divver returned, he would not comment on the scandal.  "This made his followers more dissatisfied than ever, and there came very near a revolt in the district," said the article.

Divver did not survive the uproar.  The New York Times reported, "Patrick Divver has resigned the leadership of Tammany Hall in the Second Assembly District."  Even his former benefactor turned away.  "There was great rejoicing at Hugh J. Grant's headquarters...when his resignation arrived there late yesterday afternoon," said the article.

Patrick Divver took a long respite in California.  In the meantime, the Divver Club went on.  

The members had a significant scare on December 4, 1896.  The New York Journal reported, "A respectable gathering of the members was on hand last night when the gas meter in the cellar exploded."  The members fled to the street and "in a jiffy the flames began to ascend."  Firefighters arrived quickly and extinguished the blaze, but not before "the new furniture of the club" was damaged, "and the building also."  

Patrick Divver returned to New York late in 1897 and things between him and the district officials were patched up.  On December 3, The Sun reported that the members of the Second Assembly District, "who have been fighting him for two years shook hands and made it up last night."  The article said, "everybody recognized Divver as the new leader."

Divver held the reins until 1901, losing the leadership to Alderman Thomas F. Foley.  Patrick Divver died in his home at 7 Madison Street on January 28, 1903.  In reporting his death, the New Jersey newspaper The Morning Call remarked, "'Paddy' Divver was one of the picturesque figures of the Tammany regime."

At the time, the Second District Municipal Court had been "situated above a saloon at the corner of Centre and Pearl Streets," since 1890, according to The New York Times.  On September 16, 1904 the newspaper reported that the court "moved to its new quarters yesterday morning in the P. Divver Association's clubhouse."  The Divver Club moved into the basement of the courthouse, "and will receive $3,000 a year from the city for rent for the use of the building."

When the three-year lease expired, The Downtown Tammany Club, headed by Divver's former political rival Thomas F. Foley, moved into 59 Madison Street.  

Like Divver, Thomas Francis Foley came from humble roots.  He left school at the age of 13 to support his widowed mother by working as a blacksmith's helper.  By the time he began his political career in 1877 as an election district captain, he was a saloon owner.

On November 3, 1917, Tom Foley, an ardent anti-suffragist, told The Sun reporter Eleanor Booth Simmons, "that women should never, no never, be admitted to the nice comfortable Democratic clubhouse at 59 Madison Street."  But three days later, New York State approved women's right to vote.  On February 24, 1918, Simmons wrote, "I called him up this week to ask what arrangements had been made about the new voters at the Democratic clubhouse at 59 Madison street.  His voice came resignedly over the wire, as of one who admitted his chastisement."

An enormous Tammany banner stretches across Madison Street in front of the clubhouse in October 1933.  from the collection of the New York Pubic Library

Foley (no doubt begrudgingly) replied, "Oh yes, the women are here, they are voters, and they will have the use of the clubhouse the same as the men.  So far no arrangements have been made for their meeting on separate nights...It is their clubhouse as much as it is the men's."

In its July 1924 issue, The Atlantic Monthly commented, "Perhaps the most famous [Tammany clubhouse] is the Downtown Tammany Club at 59 Madison Street...which is run under the aegis of Tom Foley, one of the last of the old-type leaders.  Foley began life as a saloon keeper and his ways have been none too gentle." 

Thomas Francis Foley died in 1925.  On the day after his funeral, The New York Times ran the headline, "East Side Crowds Mourn the Passing of Almost the Last of Old-Time Leaders."  

The Downtown Tammany Clubhouse continued to provide for the community.  On July 27, 1927, for instance, The New York Times reported, "More than 10,000 women and children attended the picnic and outing of the Downtown Tammany Club of 59 Madison Street, which is Governor [Alfred] Smith's old district, held yesterday in Battery Park."  The article said that about 25,000 hot dogs and 4,000 quarts of ice cream were consumed.

A disturbing incident occurred a decade later.  The club members collected money for 1,500 bags "of Christmas cheer" for poor families in the district.  The bags were already delivered and stored in the cellar when on December 23, five gunmen stormed the clubhouse and stole the money.  The Tammany leader of what was now the First Assembly District, Dr. Santangelo, stepped forward to say he would personally cover the loss.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

On January 17, 1942, The New York Times reported, "Memories of the colorful days in Democratic politics on the lower East Side of Manhattan, when Paddy Divver and 'Big Tom' Foley ruled the destinies of Tammany in that neighborhood, were revived yesterday by the announcement of the sale of the property at 59 Madison Street."  The article said that the buyer was "a well-known funeral director" who "will remodel it."

The property was acquired by the city in 1946 to make way for the Alfred E. Smith Playground, dedicated in 1950.

The Nicholas Keane House - 96 Madison Street

 

In the 1820s and 1830s, prim Federal-style houses rose along the Madison Street block between Catherine and Market Streets.  As early as 1830, Lewis Higgins and his family occupied 80 Madison Street, a two-and-a-half story, brick-faced home (renumbered 96 in 1852).  Two dormers pierced its peaked roof.  Higgins was a wholesale grocer at the nearby Catherine Market.

By the mid-1840s, the Jonathan Gardiner Fleet family occupied the house.  Born in 1801, Gardiner and his wife, the former Lydia Seaman, had four children, Harriette Rebecca, Sarah Cornelia, Maria, and Jennie.  Fleet operated two livery stables.

The family received a scare at around 7:30 on the night of March 30, 1847 when a fire started.  The Evening Post reported, "It was caused by a bed in the second story accidentally taking fire."  How the bed caught fire was not explained.

The Fleet family left Madison Street in the spring of 1851.  As was common, they sold everything in the house and started over in their new home.  An auction listing on March 28 reflected the Fleets' comfortable lifestyle.  It included, "tapestry carpets, rosewood furniture covered in maroon velvet, sofa, tete a tete," marble top center table, a piano forte, and oil paintings.

Grasset Launy, a coppersmith, occupied the house through 1858, followed by Thomas Rice, who ran a saloon and hotel at 44 Catherine Street.  

James W. Hefflin took possession of 96 Madison Street from Rice in 1865.  Although he listed his profession as running a boardinghouse, the size of the residence limited his number of boarders.  That year William Hutchinson, a tailor, and his family lived here, and in 1867 Cornelius Haggerty, an oysterman at the Catherine Market, boarded here.  Hannah Stapleton, a widow, and her son, Tobias, who was a printer, lived here the following year.

Hefflin was not necessarily an upstanding citizen.  On December 3, 1868, the New York Evening Express reported that he had been arrested.  Describing him as "said to have been an ex-policeman, but at present the owner of a sailors' boarding house at No. 96 Madison street," the article said he had broken into the saloon at 41 Market Street at 1:00 that morning and stole $3,000 in cash and "a lot of segars of the value of $7.50."  (The cash would translate to about $33,600 in 2025.)

The article said:

Hefferon [sic] was found in the building up stairs with a jimmy, skeleton key, and a lot of segars beside him, and a receipt from the New York Gas Company, which the bartender testified was in the desk from which the money was taken, was picked up when the prisoner was found.

Hefflin told the judge, "it was a woman that brought him there."

His imprisonment ended Hefflin's career of running the boardinghouse at 96 Madison Street and it became home to the Nicholas Keane family.  Keane had operated a chandler shop at 171 South Street since 1849.  

Also living here with the Keanes was their adult son, Nicholas Jr., and his wife, Bridget.  The younger Nicholas worked in his father's business and, interestingly, spelled his surname Kane, perhaps to differentiate him from his father.  The Kanes had two children, David and Mary.

On December 4, 1879, The Sun reported, "Nicholas Keane, an old resident of the Seventh Ward, died in his home, 96 Madison street, yesterday in his 55th year.  The article mentioned that he "amassed a fortune" in his business and "was a conspicuous member of St. James's Roman Catholic Church."

The Kanes soon leased the house, and it was again operated as a boarding or rooming house.  In the spring of 1884, a sailor, Thomas Jackson, was brought here with serious injuries.  Jackson had been aboard the William A. Lincoln heading to Manila on February 25 when he was "cruelly beaten," according to a crewmate, with an iron bar by the ship's captain.  When the ship returned to New York, another sailor, Abraham Weeden, had Captain M. J. Daly arrested.  The New York Times reported on May 20, "Jackson is now laid up at No. 96 Madison-street on account of the injuries received."

In September 1886, David J. Kane, Nicholas's son, hired architect Bernard McGurk, to enlarge the house by raising the attic to a full floor and adding a one-story extension in the rear.  McGurk added stylish pressed metal lintels to the openings and a triangular pediment above the entrance.  An Italianate-style bracketed cornice finished the renovations.

As early as 1941, the brick was painted.  Before the 1886 renovations, the house matched the Federal-style house down the block.  via the NYC Dept. of Records & Information Services.

As early as the mid-1890s, Mary Kane Carroll, David's sister and daughter of Nicholas, occupied the house.  She and her husband, Michael Carroll, were living here when a fire caused $1,200 worth of damages.

On October 19, 1910, The New York Times reported that Mary, "daughter of the late Nicholas Kane and Bridget Kane, and widow of Michael Carroll," had died the previous day.  The following year, in August, David J. Kane hired architect Jacob Fisher to reconfigure the interior floorplan as a "tenement," according to Fisher's filing.

On April 3, 1918, The Evening World reported, "Shichisaburo Hosaki, twenty-five, a Japanese ship steward, was killed by one of his roommates in a sailors' boarding-house at No. 96 Madison Street at 2 A.M. to-day."  The article explained that four Japanese shared a room on the top floor.  One of them came home drunk and Hosaki scolded him.  "He drew a clasp knife and slashed Hosaki three times on the neck, killing him almost instantly," said the article.  His slayer fled before his roommates could stop him.

The following month, on May 13, Hitash Mogi, another steamer steward, was arrested in Boston.  Mogi admitted being in the room at the time of the slaying but insisted he, "had nothing to do with it."  He insisted the crime "was the result of a family vendetta" and named Roy Shida as the murderer.

A twist in the case occurred four weeks later when Lota K. Kamali was arrested in Lima, Ohio.  He was appearing with a troop of Hawaiian singers and guitar players at the Orpheum theater there.  The Lima Times-Democrat reported on June 18 that he was arrested for disorderly conduct and "suspicion of being the man wanted for the murder of Shichisaburo Hosaki, a Japanese knifed at New York on April 3d."

As it turned out, the case was never solved.  Both Mogi and Kamali were released without being charged for the murder.

Painted shades of blue today, the house sits within a streetscape of late 19th century tenement buildings.  The sole surviving relic of the block's earliest years, it looks much as it did in 1886 when David Kane remodeled it.

photograph by the author