The Lost Bank of New York Building -- 48 Wall Street at William

from the collection of the Library of Congress

In 1783 the war with Britain was over, but financial conditions for the fledgling United States were nearly chaotic.  Continental currency, which had become worthless, ceased to circulate.  While the Government authorized paper currency, states issued bills of their own.  

The need for standards and organization was crucial.  An editorial appeared in the New-York Packet on February 12, 1784 proposing the establishment of the Bank of the State of New York, and laying out the advantages of such an institution.  With a slightly different name, the Bank of New York would be headed by a governor and six directors, who served without compensation until the bank was stable enough to pay its first dividend.

The constitution of the Bank of New York was written in March 1784 by Alexander Hamilton.  The institution's first home was in the magnificent William Walton mansion on St. George's Square (later Franklin Square).  The directors rented the house until 1787, when the bank moved to 11 Hanover Square.  By 1796 it required a larger facility, and in November the directors purchased the house of William Constable at the corner of Wall and William Streets.

The 1797 building sat within an elegant residential neighborhood.  To the rear, on William Street, can be seen a portion of the Phillips mansion, and to the right is General John Lamb's residence.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

The cornerstone of the new building was laid on June 22, 1796 and the bank opened in its new home the following year, in April.  For six decades the palatial structure served the bank.  But, according to bank historian Henry Williams Domett in 1884, "The need of better accommodation for the business of the bank had long been felt, and in 1856 a committee had been appointed to procure plans for a new building."

The architectural firm of Vaux and Withers was commissioned to replace the old structure with a modern building.  The bank temporarily moved to rented space at William Street and Exchange Place, and the old building demolished.  The cornerstone was laid on September 10, 1856 and construction was completed in March 1858 at a cost of $173,400--more than $5.6 million in today's money.

Henry Williams Domett wrote:

The structure was described at the time as 'built in the Italian style, of Little Falls brown stone and Philadelphia brick.  The banking-room is fifty-eight feet long, thirty-five feet wide, and twenty-six feet high, occupying two stories in the central and rear part of the building.  The ceiling and walls, and the whole fitting-up of the interior compare favorably with the elegance of the exterior, and the room is lighted on the east side, where it adjoins the present American Exchange Bank, by glazed panels in the ceiling.

The original Vaux & Withers structure was four stories tall.  image from Martha J. Lamb's Wall Street in History, 1883 (copyright expired)

The New York Times gave the building a mixed review.  An article on March 26, 1858 said, "The style shows great invention latent in the architect, and though it is most elaborately ugly in its details, the general effect is by no means unpleasant."  As unhappy as the critic was of the exterior, he was impressed with the interior.  He called the banking room "a beautiful apartment...lined with Caen stone, and finished with dark oak," and said, "The best taste has been exhibited throughout in the fittings up and in the smaller offices."  The article noted that the marble cornerstone from the 1798 building was inserted into one wall.

The Bank of New York was in its new home only three years before civil war broke out in the South.  On April 28, 1861, just two weeks after the first shot was fired upon Fort Sumter, the bank's president, A. P. Halsey approved a loan of $50,000 to the United States Government "for equipping volunteers."  The amount would top $1.5 million today.

In the summer of 1863 an Irish cleaning woman, Honora Barry, visited the offices of three separate brokers on Chatham Street.  She had $300 in bank notes--more than $6,300 today--and she most likely thought that by dividing it into smaller amounts  she would draw less attention.  She was wrong.  On August 5, The New York Times reported that she had been arrested "on a charge of stealing a package of bank bills" from the Bank of New York.  The article said, "The woman was employed in taking care of the premises at No. 48 Wall-street, and states that she found the money in the cellar."

The Bank of New York continued to grow, and in 1879 the firm of Vaux & Radford was called in to enlarge it.  The renovations, which cost the equivalent of $1.5 million today, resulted in two extra floors, one in the form of a fashionable mansard crowned with lacy iron cresting.  A safe deposit vault was installed in the basement, the outer door of which weighed three tons.

from A History of the Bank of New York, 1784-1884, by Henry Williams Domett, 1884 (copyright expired)

Extra space in the upper floors was leased as office space.  Among the residents in 1885 were attorney George B. Newell, and architect Thomas Stent.

It appeared in the summer of 1908 that the vintage building was doomed.  On August 1 the Real Estate Record & Guide reported that Clinton & Russell had been commissioned to design "a high office building to be at least twenty stories" on the site.  But the idea stalled and, instead, in July 1913 architects Marc Eidlitz & Son made "general alterations."

from Old Buildings of New York City, 1907 (copyright expired)

Nine years later, on June 20, 1922, The New York Times reported on the merger of the Bank of New York and the New York Life Insurance & Trust Company, "two of the oldest financial institutions of the United States."  The article noted that "for the immediate future," the business of the two institutions would be conducted from their present locations.

The "immediate future" was short lived, at least for the venerable Bank of New York building.  In November 1922 the architectural firm of Clinton & Russell was hired to design a replacement skyscraper for the Bank of New York and Trust Company on the site.   But, as had been the case in 1908, the firm would be disappointed.  The commission was given, instead, to architect Benjamin Wistar Morris.  The new 32-story bank building was completed in 1929.

Benjamin Wistar Morris's office released this rendering in 1928.

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The Children's Aid Society School - 219 Sullivan Street

In the last decades of the 19th century the impoverished district just south of elegant Washington Square was dangerous and nearly lawless.  Seedy saloons which reformer Jacob Riis called "vile rookeries," brothels and crowded tenements made the neighborhoods one of Manhattan's most notorious.

The brick-faced, Federal style house at No. 219 Sullivan Street had been an upscale residence in the 1830s; but by 1887 its rooms were home to a number of blue-collar tenants.  Among them was tinsmith John Murray who was sitting on the stoop at 8:30 on the night of May 6 that year.  But just sitting outside could be a risk.

According to The New York Times the following day John Hays, "a young negro, living at 11 Carmine-street, came along."  He stopped in front of Murray, pulled out a revolver, and shot him apparently without any provocation or reason.  The bullet struck Murray in right eye, blinding him.

At St. Vincent Hospital Murray said he had never seen Hays before and had no idea why he shot him.  The New York Times had its own idea.  "He appeared stupid from liquor."

Reformers descended on the rough neighborhoods, opening missions where they sought to rehabilitate the drunkards and "debased women."   But one Protestant minister, Charles Loring Brace, was more concerned with educating the waifs and orphans.   He recognized early on a strong connection between illiteracy and crime.

The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Brace along with a few other concerned men in 1853.  Brace had been, according to King’s Handbook of New York City, “engaged in teaching some of the little arabs of the streets.”  The Society was incorporated in 1856 “for the education of the poor by gathering children who attend no schools into its industrial schools, caring and providing for children in lodging houses, and procuring houses for them in the rural districts and in the West.”

The industrial schools not only taught the children their A-B-C's, but skills they would need to survive as adults.  Boys learned woodworking and shoemaking, for instance; while girls learned to sew and cook--abilities they would need not only as homemakers, but as servants.

Most often the school buildings were donated by philanthropists or their wives who were involved in some way with the Children's Aid Society.  In 1891 Mrs. Joseph M. White and Matilda W. Bruce provided $90,000 (just under $2.5 million today) to erect a new building on the site of the old house where John Murray had been shot.
 
For nearly all its buildings the Society turned to the architectural firm of Vaux & Radford, which would eventually design 12 Children’s Aid Society projects.  Calvert Vaux, best remembered for his work in designing Central Park, had partnered with George Kent Radford in 1872.  The Sullivan Street School building would follow the same lines as their other Children’s Aid Society buildings—a blend of Victorian Gothic and Flemish Revival styles.

The newly-completed building replaced a Federal-style house, much like the one surviving at the far right, next to the entrance to the playground.  from the collection of the Children's Aid Society

The Sullivan Street School was completed in September 1892 and formally opened on December 21.  The delay may have been due to drilling the 420 children between 5 and 13 years of age for their parts in the event.  They were "marshaled" into the audience room dressed in new suits of clothing provided by Matilda Bruce--no doubt the first new clothes they had received in a very long time, if ever.

The Times reported "The programme by the children was opened by the 'salute to the flag,' with piano accompaniment, and was performed with admirable spirit and effect."  The older pupils then gave recitations and the entire group sang Christmas carols for the audience.

The room was decorated, Victorian-style, with bunting and flags.  A large Christmas tree was in a corner of the room, "which contained a gift for every member of the school."

One year later the Society's Annual Report made note of the new school's progress.  "This school was placed in one of the most depraved localities of the city and already an improvement in the neighborhood is visible.  The street is more respectable; the children of the quarter have better manners and are more neatly dressed, and through them the parents have been influenced to a more decent manner of life."

Boys learning woodworking in the Sullivan Street School.  Annual Report of the Children's Aid Society, November 1893 (copyright expired)

During the first year of its existence the Sullivan Street School had an enrollment of 449, with a daily average attendance of 365.  That year 50,293 meals were supplied.  The items made by the girls in the sewing classes were sold and the money given to their families.  Between November 1892 and November 1893 the total was $140 (about $3,850 today).  The seemingly modest amount, said principal Caroline A. Forman in her report, "has helped feed, clothe, pay rent and buy coal for a number of families during this severest of winters."

The items turned out by the boys were helpful at home as well.  On July 26, 1893 The Evening World pointed out "In [the] Sullivan street school, where manual training is taught on a small scale, the boys make kitchen and toilet brushes for use in their own homes.  One of the first pieces of work turned out of the class carpenter shop was a pair of crutches for a crippled child."

The Children's Aid Society had, by now, embarked on a program of sending orphaned boys to Midwestern farms.  Their work as unpaid, indentured farmhands was intended to provide them with a wholesome environment, clean air and a bright future.  The cruel fact was that, at least in some cases, it proved to be nothing more than veiled slave labor.

But one nine-year old boy named Jimmie was willing to take his chances in 1893.  Although he was not an orphan, he was deemed by Principal Forman "worse than motherless."  On a bitterly cold morning he came to her and pleaded, "Won't you send me away.  My mother sends me for whiskey all the time."  At this point he showered her a dime and pulled a bottle from his coat.  "She makes me go beg for the money and then buy whiskey."

The involvement of Mrs. White and Matilda Bruce did not stop with their funding the building.  They both were instructors in the kitchen-garden and cooking classes and Matilda paid for the manual training classes and the hot meals.  Mrs. White paid for two "visitors" who checked on students and families at home.  The visitors made 1,473 calls on the sick and poor in the 1897-98 school year.

An example of the piteous home conditions was evidenced when one of those visitors checked on why three children had been absent from classes for several days in 1898.  The family, consisting of the parents, a grandmother, and the three children, lived in two rooms.  The father, it was discovered, had been taken to a hospital.  Two of the children were bedridden on a cot in a near-staving state.

The visitor reported "There were a few cinders in the stove which the mother had taken from ash cans during the day.  Mother and children when able made flowers through the day and part of the night to help with the rent."  The school sent food to the family until the children were strong enough to return to class.

That year the school announced it had added "Venetian ironwork" to its manual training classes, noting the boys were "greatly interested" in learning the craft.   Other classes offered were "kitchen-gardening, cooking, darning, buttonholes, dressmaking and all kinds of plain sewing to the girls, and printing, modeling in clay, woodwork" to the boys.

A problem was that families needed their boys to earn a living and, therefore, pulled them out of school after the age of about 11.  Some, however, realized that by suffering through a few years longer, the financial rewards would be far greater.  The 1898 report gave the example of one family of six "who are depending mostly on the support of one daughter, whose salary is only $12 per month," but refused to take the other daughter out of the school.

That girl, named Nettie, had graduated in June and was now attending the free Normal College to receive her teacher's certificate.  The base salary for New York City teachers was $600 per year at the time--$18,000 today--decidedly more than the family's current $144 income.

The work of the Sullivan Street School was ever-adapting.  Art classes and the "Christopher Columbus" history club (aimed, according to the New-York Tribune in September 1909 at the "Italian children attached to the industrial school") were examples of additional features aimed at attracting and enlightening neighborhood children.  Around the same time of the Tribune's comments a dental clinic was opened in the building.

In 1931 the Children's Aid Society gave up its role as educators, transferring its classes to the New York City Public School system.  The facilities now focused on recreation and health.  The Sullivan Street building was renamed the West Side Center.   Neighborhood boys during the Great Depression years signed up for the Center's Yankee Sandlot League.

In 1937 the team voted on its favorite member of their namesake team.  New York Yankee great Joe DiMaggio won the honor.  To the boys' surprise and glee, the star athlete visited the center on August 2.  Knowing that escaping from a score of hero-worshiping youths would be difficult, Joltin' Joe devised a clever scheme.  As the visit came to an end, he tossed out a dozen autographed baseballs and slipped out while the boys scrambled for them.

Eagerly anticipated events at the West Side Center beginning in the early 1940s were the annual Pet Show and the Pigtail Contest.  Although the families living in the neighborhood no longer suffered the brutal poverty of the 1890s, they were still low income.  So children competing in the pet contest had to be creative in finding pets.  In 1943 The New York Times noted that "Cats, insects and dogs of every description also competed."

That year a two-year old toddler, Alfred Pruzzin, was allowed to enter his turtle, Florence.  While 200 children watched, Florence was given her chance.  She pulled into her shell and refused to come out.  Alfred, said The Times, was "puzzled and unhappy."  The judges awarded Florence the award for "the most bashful turtle in the show."

A special attraction that year was the appearance of Saddler, a member of the War Dog Fund.  His purpose was to recruit "4-F" dogs for the Army and to raise money for military canine training.

The Pigtail Contest was an opportunity for little girls to show off their dexterity in braiding and in decorating their hair.  That event lasted until around 1960.

As the West Village changed, so did the West Side Center.  Still owned by the Children's Aid Society, it was home in part to the Visual Arts Center by 1972.  Alfred Alexander taught photography to small classes of students "all all levels of experience," according to New York Magazine on January 17 that year.  The article noted "The darkroom facilities are less than ideal, but Alexander hopes to expand them in future months."

The Center was the site of the New York International Children's Film Festival in December 1997.   No collection of cartoons and fairy tales, it was intended by Eric Beckman to "give kinds things to think about, and parents and children things to talk about."  To that end films like The Boy, the Slum and the Pan's Lid, about an impoverished Brazilian boy, and the Swedish film Lucky Girl, about a 7-year old Guatemalan girl who took care of her siblings while her mother gave birth, were screened.

In the fall of 2007 Notes in Motion, a dance troupe, established the Outreach Dance Theater in the building, now known as the Philip Coloff Center, where artists offered children workshops in writing, theater, visual arts, music and dance.  At the end of the courses, the original performances by the students were staged.

But the end of the line for the children's programs in the building was on the near horizon.  In December 2010, after more than 115 years serving the area, the Children's Aid Society announced it was selling the building.   The neighborhood, once described as among "the most depraved localities," was now middle class.  The Society pointed out that the median income was more than twice that of the Morissania section of the Bronx, where its help was more needed.

Preservationists and locals worried.  The building sat just outside of the Greenwich Village Historic District.  Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation pointed out that without that protection the building would likely be demolished.

The 1892 building is now part of the modern condo seen partially at the right.

Perhaps surprisingly, it was not destroyed.  Instead it was gutted and incorporated into the new residential building designed by Rawlings Architects, PC.  The facade has been a bit over-restored, muting the contrast of brick and stone into a nearly monochromatic palette.  Happily, nonetheless, the picturesque Flemish building where indigent children were offered hope survives.

photographs by the author

The Sixth Street School - No. 630-634 East 6th Street

The Children’s Aid Society was founded by Charles Loring Brace along with a few other concerned men in 1853.  Brace had been, according to King’s Handbook of New York City, “engaged in teaching some of the little arabs of the streets.”  The Society was incorporated in 1856 “for the education of the poor by gathering children who attend no schools into its industrial schools, caring and providing for children in lodging houses, and procuring houses for them in the rural districts and in the West.”

A year before the Society was organized, Emily Thorn Vanderbilt was born. The second daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt, she grew to a beautiful young woman who was as much interested in philanthropic causes as the social whirl into which she had been born.  In 1872 she married the wealthy William Douglas Sloane and her generous charitable patronage continued.

Emily Thorn Vanderbilt -- from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In 1886 she and her husband founded the Sloane Maternity Hospital; and in 1888 she personally financed the creation of the Sloane Hospital for Women with a gift of more than $1 million.  That same year she presented the Children’s Aid Society with a school building in the depressed tenement area of the Lower East Side.

For nearly all its buildings the Society turned to the architectural firm of Vaux & Radford, which would eventually design 12 Children’s Aid Society projects.  Calvert Vaux, best known for his work in designing Central Park, had partnered with George Kent Radford in 1872.  The Sixth Street School building would follow the same lines as their other Children’s Aid Society buildings—a blend of Victorian Gothic and Flemish Revival styles.

Strikingly similar to structures like their 14th Ward Industrial School, opened in 1888, and the Elizabeth Home for Girls, completed in 1892, the Sixth Street School building featured an asymmetrical design which included a three-story angled bay, prominent stepped gable, copper-clad dormer and terra cotta panels.

A decorative terra cotta panel integrates the monogram of the Children's Aid Society.

Not only did Emily Vanderbilt Sloane donate the building, she continued to pay for the costs of maintaining the facility.  It was, in effect, her school.

Unlike the academic classes stressed in public schools, the Children’s Aid Society schools within the tenement neighborhoods focused on industrial and domestic arts classes.   Poverty-stricken students needed desperately to learn a trade by which they could earn a living before going out in the world.   In addition to academic basics, boys were taught skills like woodworking, while girls received lessons in nutrition and sewing.  The Sixth Street School also provided its students what were often their only nourishing meals.

In November 1892 the report of the Society noted “The Sixth Street school, under the generous support of Mrs. William D. Sloane, continues its good work among the poor of the east side.  The primary and industrial classes are most successful.”

Each year Emily Sloane gave the Society her check for $3,000 to maintain the school—a little more than $80,000 in 2016.  By the turn of the century inflation had increased that amount to $3,450.  And every year she provided Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners to the youths; a cost of about $150 for each Thanksgiving and $300 for Christmas in the 1890s.  Without these events, the tenement-dwelling children would have no real holiday meals.

The importance of the holiday meals was evidenced on Christmas Eve 1897 when The New York Times reported “The little ones who attend the Sixth Street School, some 350 in number, had a rare treat on Wednesday afternoon.  Mrs. William Douglas Sloane, who has long been especially interested in the work of the school, gave them a Christmas dinner.”

In 1908 the Sixth Street School imitated a new class—one for aspiring office boys.  In the days before fax machines, email, or wide-spread telephone use, office boys were invaluable not only for mundane chores, but for running messages between businesses.  The New York Times described the class on November 8.  Saying that classes which met three times a week taught the trade “as a fine art,” the article explained “They diligently copy letters, striving not to leave out words or letters; they anxiously tie bundles in the most orthodox fashion.”

But special focus was given to the running of messages.  “More than this, they study New York City geography.  When this was mastered they were promised a telephone switchboard on which to achieve grace and dexterity in mixing the plugs.  Before this desirable advancement was reached each pupil had to show proficiency in New York City geography.”

More than simply knowing streets, alleys, and avenues; the boys were required to make on-their-feet decisions.  “It includes learning to judge when it is best to hurry and spend two fares, or walk and use one, all from the tone of voice of the given order.”  The boys were also trained in thinking out a problem if they realized they had been given a wrong address.

As part of their training, the students were sent out into the streets with assignments—some with purposely incorrect addresses, some with implied urgency of the task.  The instructor then waited, timing each boy’s performance.

William Douglas Sloane died in 1915.  Five years later Emily married Henry White, who had been a member of the American Peace Commission and signed the Treaty of Versailles.  White died at their massive Lenox, Massachusetts summer house, Elm Court, on July 15, 1927.

Emily Vanderbilt Sloane White continued to maintain the Sixth Avenue School.  On June 27, 1928 The Times reported on the 34 graduates of the Sixth Street School.  The article noted “During the year 18,002 nutrition lunches were provided and 31,832 bottles of milk consumed by the scholars, who were being trained in healthy dietetic habits.” 

The newspaper pointed out that the school’s outreach went out into the tenement neighborhood. “The school nurse made 431 visits to homes and 1,274 children were treated in the school dispensary.”  Yet despite even these efforts, the impoverished neighborhood children faced severe problems.  Three days before Christmas that same year The Times noted “About 260 children suffering from cardiac trouble and malnutrition, who are being treated at the Sixth Street School Health Centre of the Children’s Aid Society…were guests at a Christmas dinner given yesterday by Mrs. Henry White, the former Emily Vanderbilt…The children ranged in age from 4 to 10 years old.”

With the advent of the Great Depression, Emily Sloane White’s school building would be needed for other purposes.  In 1932 it was converted by the Salvation Army and Y.M.C.A., which opened it on March 1, 1932 as “Cheer Lodge,” a men’s homeless shelter.  Here 50 to 100 homeless and out-of-work men were housed.  New Yorkers were asked to donate games, jig-saw puzzles and books to the ironically-named shelter.

Elmer Galloway, executive secretary of the Bowery Y.M.C.A. spoke of the new shelter two weeks later, pointing out that “homeless and jobless young men, driven in from the cold streets, stood in line for lodgings and meals.”  He was proud that the Cheer Lodge offered these men a facility to wash and iron their clothes.

“This day laundry, where destitute men may tidy up and which is operated by the cooperation of civic and welfare organizations,” he said, included “twelve tubs in use all day, in which the men wash their clothing, dry them by gas heat, and then iron them with gas-heated flat-irons.”

On March 13, 1936 Cheer Lodge was transformed from a men’s shelter to one for women and children.  A disturbing incident occurred two years later in August after Margaret Daly, who came from Chicago, temporarily moved in with her three year old son, Robert. 

Margaret became friendly with an 18-year old resident, Vivian Platte.  What she could not have known was that Vivian also went by the alias Lauries March.  And the alias Helen Major. 

On Wednesday, August 30 a terrified Margaret Daly realized that Bobby was missing.  Officials soon noticed that Vivian Platte had also disappeared.  Police blanketed the city searching for the teen-aged kidnapper and the boy.

The search ended on September 2, 1938 when Vivian and Bobby were found in another settlement house, at No. 184 Eldridge Street.  Vivian explained herself matter-of-factly.  According to The Times, she “told police she took the child because she believed her chances of getting a position would be enhanced by its presence.”

Vivian was held without bail.  She insisted that she had been the ideal custodian of the boy.  “She said she spent $1.60, all the money she had, for milk for the child.”

Mary Nagel typified the heart-wrenching conditions of some of the women sheltered here.  The 32-year old was brought here on July 5, 1939 after neighbors living near a condemned building on East 37^th Street told authorities they suspected someone was living in the partly-demolished structure.  Police investigated and found Mary with her seven children, including a nine-month old, “in a room so bare of furnishings that they had to sit and sleep on the rubbish-filled floor,” according to a newspaper.

Mary explained that her husband had abandoned her about 10 days earlier.  Fearing her children would be taken from her, she sneaked them into the abandoned building.  When she went to work as a hospital janitress, her 10-year old daughter Rose watched over the other children.

As she feared, the children were taken to the Children’s Aid Society for care and the infant was sent to the Foundlings Home.  Mary Nagel was directed to stay at the Women’s Shelter on East 6^th Street “until adequate assistance could be provided for her.”

The increase of jobs for women brought on by World War II eliminated the need for the Women’s Shelter.  On June 8, 1943 it was closed and the few remaining residents were moved to the Municipal Lodging House on East 25^th Street.

The former Sixth Street School building became the new home for the Stuyvesant Town Development’s Children’s Center, which had outgrown its Avenue B facility.  The building was once again a Children's Aid Society facility--now appropriately called the Children’s Aid Society’s Sloane Center.  Here the Center offered space to the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Children’s Aid Society and once children were taught about nutrition and other relevant courses.

Throughout the decades the Sloane Center would host annual events like the “Anything on Wheels Derby” which pitted child against child in races like toddlers pushing baby doll carriages, and boys maneuvering their red wagons.  Children who took cooking classes—boys and girls alike—were eligible to participate in the Nourishing-Meals Contest.  And every year the children voted on Policeman of the Year, based on a local officer’s work with youngsters.

In 1975 the building was taken over by Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Church after its 1847 building was demolished.  The congregation remained here until the completion of its new church building on East 9^th Street in 1993.

The church’s former landlord at No. 630 East 6^th Street, the Lower East Side Service Center, operated a variety of social programs from the building, and then in August 1999 began an alteration into 40 apartments to house AIDS victims.  In converting the building, architectural firm Harden & Van Arnam restored the time-weary Vaux & Radford façade.

photographs by the author

The Elizabeth Home for Girls -- 307 East 12th Street

The unmarried Elizabeth Davenport Wheeler had dedicated her relatively-short life to the betterment of the poor.  When she died on May 3, 1890, she was the manager of the Society for the Relief of Half-Orphan and Destitute Children.

In her memory, her widowed mother and two sisters purchased the former home of the recently deceased William Bigley, at 307 East 12^th Street.  The women donated it to the Children’s Aid Society, with the stipulation that it be used as the site of a girl’s shelter—the Elizabeth Home for Girls—for which they would also pay.

The Children’s Aid Society had been founded by Charles Loring Brace along with a few other concerned men in 1853.  Brace had been, according to King’s Handbook of New York City, “engaged in teaching some of the little arabs of the streets.”  The Society was incorporated in 1856 “for the education of the poor by gathering children who attend no schools into its industrial schools, caring and providing for children in lodging houses, and procuring houses for them in the rural districts and in the West.”

The lofty goals of the Society were clearly laid out in an address in 1857 by the group’s secretary:

  How many idle hands will be made useful, how many petty thieves become industrious laborers, how many vagabonds turned into steady householders; how many vagrants, how many robbers, how many housebreakers, how many despairing girls and vile women, how much laziness, how much vice, how much crime, how much poverty and hunger will be saved to society in this number!  What friends to temperance there will be among these; what haters of vice, what lovers of good order and virtue, what virtuous women and strong men, who will remember the ‘pit’ in our cities from which ‘they were dug!’

 As the Society had done for its eleven earlier structures--lodging houses and industrial schools—it commissioned the architectural firm of Vaux & Radford to design the Elizabeth Home.  It seems that Calvert Vaux, best known for his co-designing of Central Park, was the leading hand in the designs.

Construction began in 1891 and was completed in December the following year.  Like Vaux’s other Children’s Aid Society buildings, it was a blend of Victorian Gothic and Flemish Revival.  Its asymmetrical red brick façade featured a multi-paned arched opening nestled deeply with the hefty stone balcony that sprouted over the entrance, a prominent stepped gable and two charming dormers with copper hoods.

Upon the formal opening of the home on December 13, 1892, The New York Times noted, “The handsome structure was designed as a home and training school for destitute girls, and is well adapted to the needs of the inmates.”  In the basement were two dining rooms, the kitchen, the girl’s laundry and drying room, “together with a large ironing, washing, and drying room for custom work, two bathrooms and closets.”

The goals of the home were evidenced not only in the laundry rooms downstairs, but in the “typewriting and sewing-machine” classrooms on the first floor.  On this level were also the office, a reading room, a waiting room for applicants and “fitting room for the dressmaking department.”

Even on the upper floors where the dormitories and bedrooms were located, the girls were not far from instructional areas.  On the third floor was the dressmaking workroom.   The roof space was not overlooked, either.   The Times said it was “so arranged as to be available for gardening purposes or as a lounging place on Summer evenings.”

                                                                     

The girls who would take up residence in the Elizabeth Home for Girls were under the close scrutiny of the matrons and Superintendent Elizabeth S. Hurley.  Mrs. Hurley, whose physician husband was killed in the Civil War, had worked for the Society since 1855 on East 40^th Street in the “shanty district” then known as Dutch Hill.  The Times noted that she was given the supervision of the Elizabeth Home because of “her skill in training unruly girls and her sympathy with and affection for her charges.”

The often street-wise and difficult girls received no free rides.  In the year prior to the Home’s opening, 22 girls had been training in dressmaking, 99 learned to use sewing machines, two dozen were trained in the laundry and 35 “in housework.  The New York Times reported that “108 had been sent to situations, 28 to employment, 44 returned to friends, and 4 to various institutions.”   The distinction between “situations” and “employment” was not explained, nor was the meaning of “various institutions.”

During the dedication ceremonies two society women spoke on the areas they felt were most important in molding the girls.  Mrs. Bainbridge “made a plea for spiritual training;” while Grace Dodge argued that the “geometry and physiology of dressmaking” and the “methods and management of the housewife” were prime essentials.

Residency in the Elizabeth Home for Girls was not intended to be anything but temporary.  A few years later, in 1902, Children’s Aid Society agent R. L. Neill commented that the Home was “used only until a child is fitted to become a member of a private family and until a suitable home for it presents itself.”  Becoming a “member of a private family,” of course, meant finding a job as a servant.

Wealthy New Yorkers donated for Thanksgivings and Christmas celebrations at the Society homes.  In most cases, a single family chose its favorite location and annually donated the funds.  In the case of the Elizabeth Home, it was millionaire W. Bayard Cutting who year after year provided Thanksgiving feasts.

For girls who rarely received small gifts or tasted gravy, Christmas was a special day.   The day after Christmas in 1897 The New York Times described the holiday in the Home.   The girls, it said, “assembled early in the evening, and until supper was served they spent the time in singing Christmas carols, and when they marched into the dining hall and saw the long rows of tables covered with snow white cloths, and smelled the aroma from the well-prepared dishes, giggles and exclamations of ‘Oh, isn’t this just too lovely for anything,’ were heard all along the line.  Then after grace had been said, the clatter of knives and forks and merry conversation began.  After supper there was more singing.”

In 1901 the success of the Elizabeth Home was praised by the New-York Tribune.  “The present commodious building on Twelfth-st. has accommodations for fifty inmates, and is usually well filled.  It is well equipped with rooms for sewing and cooking lessons, a flourishing laundry, where girls may receive thorough and practical training, and pleasant rooms for evening classes in the rudimentary English subjects.”  The newspaper added “Intended from the first for the purpose of affording shelter to girls under eighteen years whose means of livelihood are precarious, it is always open to respectable girls.”

On August 14, 1901, the New-York Tribune reported that the building next door had been purchased as an annex.  The newspaper explained that more space was needed to house “a larger number of homeless and orphan children.”

The girls in the laundry did their work in the Home; while as the other girls became proficient they were sent out into the city to work in, for instance, dressmaker shops where “meager wages are paid.”

Girls still under training lived in the Home at no charge.  Once they earned wages, they paid $1.50 per week for their “comfortable bed in the dormitory,” as described by the New-York Tribune.  The annex allowed the Elizabeth Home to accept temporary residents who were not rescued off the streets.   Young women looking for work in the city could rent a bed at 10 cents a night and receive meals for six cents.   A few lucky working girls were housed here as well.  The newspaper noted “Six small rooms, daintily furnished, are rented to those obtaining fairly good wages for $1.50 a week.”

By 1906 even the girls receiving training were asked to pay for their board.   The Department of Social Welfare’s annual report that year noted “Homeless girls are received and are expected to pay five cents each for meals and lodgings; but no one is refused shelter or food because of inability to pay.”  There had been 324 girls cared for that year, and the Home was just breaking even.  The report said the receipts were $10,942.05 and the expenses were, to the penny, the same.

After serving the Children’s Aid Society for 55 years, the 84-year-old Elizabeth S. Hurley died of a heart attack in the Elizabeth Home in November 1909.  She had cared for as many as 20,000 girls and it was estimated that every year she had sent about 300 of them to various positions.  Officers of the Society announced that her influence and training were responsible “for the fact that 12,000 women have led useful lives who might otherwise have gone to evil ways.”

Elizabeth’s funeral was held in the Home on the night of November 17, 1909.  Coincidentally, above her obituary in the New-York Tribune was that of Charles N. Crittenton, “widely known as the millionaire founder of the Florence Crittenton Rescue Home for Girls.”  The two institutions would cross paths on East 12th Street within a few decades.

One of the working girls who found lodging in the Elizabeth Home for Girls in 1911 was Gertrude Williams.  She had come from Birmingham, Alabama and found work in New York as a cashier in an uptown restaurant.  She was keen to the evils of the city facing a single working girl and had no intentions of being accosted by a wolf.

She was on her way to work on the evening of April 25.  When she exited the subway at Times Square and headed down Broadway, she was aware that a man had followed her.  As she reached 39^th Street she was uncomfortable enough to turn back.

Charles Stewart, described by The New York Times as “a dapper-looking Englishman,” said “hello!”  That was the last straw for Gertrude Williams and she slapped his face, causing his hat to fall off.  As he bent over to pick it up, a policeman nearby arrested him.

Stewart explained to the court that he had mistaken Gertrude for someone else.  “You know, Judge, it is very easy to be mistaken for some one else in this country.  Why, a woman stopped me in Fifth Avenue the other day and said she thought I was a friend.  I didn’t have her arrested.”

The judge replied “I should think not.”  Nevertheless, he did not accept Stewart’s excuse for assaulting Gertrude with a too-familiar “hello.”  “I’ll fine you $10.”

The ordeal was all too much for Gertrude.  “As Miss Williams left the court room she fainted,” reported The New York Times.  “She was taken to an ante room and revived.”

The Children’s Aid Society operated the Elizabeth Home for Girls until 1930.  The building was sold to Benedict (who also went by Benjamin and Bernard) Lust who opened his American School of Naturopathy and Chiropractic here. Lust had purchased the word “naturopathy” from Dr. John Scheel to promote his approach to healing by the power of nature. 

His sometimes quackish medical practices included his “water cures,” one of which included standing under a running shower for eight hours without eating.  Ardently against the use of drugs, he had written the Universal Naturopathic Encyclopedia and published Nature’s Path magazine.  He also espoused the Indian concepts of Ayurveda and Yoga.

Lust’s practices did not always sit well with the law.  In 1935 he and the school’s dean, Sinai Gershanek, and its secretary, Mark B. Thompson, were led out of 307 East 12^th Street by police.  They were charged with “unlawful granting of degrees in chiropractic.”

On November 1, 1946 the building once again became a home for homeless or troubled girls.  Two hundred persons attended the opening of the Florence Crittenton League’s Barrett House.  The shelter would house girls between 16 and 21 years old, “some of them runaways, some under the jurisdiction of the Juvenile Aid Bureau of the courts, others detained as witnesses” while trained workers “arrange for their future,” said The New York Times.   The newspaper described it as “designed and equipped essentially as a home, with colorful, comfortably furnished rooms.”

The Florence Crittenton League’s Barrett House remained here for decades, but the troubled girls proved more unruly than those supervised by Elizabeth Hurley at the turn of the century.  On July 12, 1980, The New York Times reported that neighbors “say they have lost patience with the noise, violent behavior and sexual activity inside and outside.”   Even the residents and “house parents” had to admit there was a problem with some uncontrollable girls.  The newspaper said “the house parents and girls said many of the residents were lesbians” and “there were many complaints among the girls of cursing, stealing by their housemates” and even “hitting staff members.”

House parent Mary Bradley assured “But there is something good here, and there are plenty opportunities for the girls.  They just have to want it.”  Nevertheless, she admitted “A girl comes in here confused and leaves worse off in terms of respect for herself.”

Frustrated neighbors would not have to contend with the problem much longer.  In 1983 the building was converted to co-operative apartments.  While the original interiors were essentially gutted, the exterior of Vaux & Radford’s Elizabeth Home for Girls is largely untouched.

photographs by the author