Hill & Stout's 1909 Nos. 49-51 West 24th Street

At the turn of the last century the crime-ridden neighborhood known as the Tenderloin, roughly between 23^rd and 42^nd streets from Fifth to Seventh Avenues, was being cleaned up by reformers like Anthony Comstock and Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt.  One by one saloons, gambling dens and brothels were replaced by loft buildings as the area earned the new moniker, the Mercantile District.

On March 7, 1908 developer Edmund Coffin purchased the “four story business building” at No. 51 West 24^th Street.  In reporting the sale, The New York Times mentioned “Mr. Coffin owns the adjoining property, No. 49, and now controls a plot 45 by 98.9.” 

Coffin had plans for the site and wasted no time in implementing them.   One month later, on April 11, The Record & Guide reported that architects Stout & Hill had completed the plans an the 11-story loft building of terra cotta and brick.  The report listed all the latest technology—steam heat, electric elevators and “skeleton construction.”  It mentioned that “two buildings will be demolished.”

Well-known contractors Thompson-Starrett Co. was awarded to contract to construct the building.  Founded in 1899, the firm was a pioneer in skyscraper construction and within the next two decades would build the Woolworth Building, the American Stock Exchange, the Equitable Building, and Chicago’s Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex, as well as other important structures.

While construction was underway, Coffin leased the building to real estate manager Lee Holstein “for a long term of years” in August 1908.  Holstein realized the potential in the area and the modern factory.  In November, as construction continued, he leased 20,000 square feet in the building to the United Manufacturing Trimming Company, Louis Barnett & Son, and Jacob Isaacson.  The future tenants were all engaged in apparel-related businesses.

Stout & Hill’s factory and store building was completed in 1909.  A two-story cast iron base of geometric designs, thin rope twist colunettes and leaded transoms, was framed in colorful terra cotta.  Most striking were the two Vienna Succession-inspired plaques on either side which announced the two addresses.

The architects created interest in the severely unadorned seven-story midsection by the use of starkly variegated stone.  Terra cotta joined brick at the top level to reintroduce the colorful decoration.  Here the façade leaned slightly back from the piers, catching the northern light much like an artist’s studio.

Among the building’s first tenants was Thalheimer Brothers., a button manufacturer.  Harry Jonas ran the firm, and his was a Horatio Algier-worthy success story.  Jonas had been hired around 1890 as an errand boy.  Over the next two decades he slowly worked his way up until, in 1909 he was made head of the firm.

On the afternoon of Saturday, June 10, 1911 Harry Jonas left his office and boarded the Sixth Avenue street car heading uptown.  Before going home to East Orange, New Jersey to his ailing wife, he intended to stop by the Turkish bath at Sixth Avenue and 42^nd Street first.  He took a seat on the street car and began reading his newspaper.

Sitting next to Jonas was a “fashionably dressed woman about 35 years old,” as described by The New York Times later.  Next to her was Thomas E. D. Ritchie, a traveling salesman for the Fred Lee Company.  The streetcar had gone about 10 blocks when suddenly Ritchie jumped to his feet, searched his pockets frantically and exclaimed that his money was missing.

The salesman told Jonas he had lost a $20 gold piece and a $10 gold piece.  The woman and Jonas both stood up so the seats and floor could be searched; but the coins were not there. 

At 42^nd Street Jonas got off the car.  Suddenly a policeman grabbed his shoulder.  Ritchie had jumped off the car before Jonas and told the first officer he found that Jonas had picked his pocket.  “I charge this man with taking my money!” he said.

Shocked, Harry Jonas consented to be searched.  The Sun reported “He had $300 in bills and silver in his pockets, but no gold.”  (The cash Jonas was carrying was evidence of the affluence he had achieved.  It would be equal to more than $7,700 in 2016.)

The two men were taken to the East 51^st Street station house, where Captain Raynor explained to Ritchie that he was “taking a risk in making a complaint.”  The salesman persisted and pressed charges of grand larceny against Jonas, despite there being no evidence at all.

Harry Jonas’s stature in the business community resulted in the story being followed for two days by various newspapers.  He was held in jail for nine hours, all the while insisting, according to The Times that “the complainant was making a grave mistake.”

When his case was brought before the magistrate in the Yorkville police court on June 11, the courtroom was filled with friends and businessmen who came to “testify to his good character,” according to The Sun.

Jonas told the judge “I have never had any imputation made against my honesty since I have been in business…The accusation of picking pockets almost knocked me flat.”  As he finished his testimony regarding the events of that afternoon, he added “The humiliation and the mental agony that I underwent was more than I would voluntarily suffer for a million dollars.”

Happily for Jonas, the magistrate declared “You have been grievously wronged, but I can do no more than honorably discharge you, which I do with great pleasure.”  He suggested that Jonas “get redress in the courts against the man who caused your arrest.”

Along with the many businessmen in the front row of seats was Jonas’s sister.  The wave of relief and emotion caused him to break down and he wept on her shoulder.  But he well intended to take the judge’s advice regarding Ritchie.

“Your Honor,” he said, “this is the saddest day of my life.  I fear I shall never get over the humiliation of this day.  But I will make my accuser pay well for it.  My wife is ill and I am afraid she knows of this awful occurrence.” 

One of the many-paned transoms which survive within the elaborate cast iron base.

At the time the building was filled with other apparel firms, including Spitzer & Harris Co, makers of “waists and dresses;” Jacob Aaron Herman, manufacturers of “dresses, skirts, and petticoats for woman and children;” and W. Schwartz & Sons, “cloaks.”  Ellner, Edelstein Co., which also made cloaks, occupied the entire 9^th Floor and renewed the lease in 1915.

J. A. Herman patented this "maternity gown" in 1912.  (copyright expired)

While we often think only of young women bent over the sewing machines in early 20^th century garment factories; the majority of employees in several of the firms here were men.  In 1913 Jacob Guttentag employed 33 men and 12 women making cloaks; in 1915 Goldfinger & Katz, makers of “cloaks and suits,” employed 30 men and just six women.

In December 1919 Edmund Coffin sold Nos. 49-51 West 24^th Street to the Manport Realty Company.  The Real Estate Record and Guide pointed out that the leases on five lofts would expire within two months, and the others in 1921; hinting that the buyer had plans for the building.  Instead Manport Realty sold it in January 1920 to Julius Tischman & Son.

The Tischmans continued leasing the lofts to apparel firms.  Kramer & Schott “ladies coats” was here in 1920; in 1922 Franco-American Dress Co., Inc. took the top floor; and by 1925 William J. Klein was manufacturing buttons here.

When this photograph was taken around 1940 low-rise vintage buildings still survived on West 24th Street.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

By mid-century the tenants list had slightly changed.  Instead of trimmings and women’s apparel the tenants were involved in the leather accessories trade.  In 1952 Fortuna Machine Co. moved in.  The firm manufactured “leathering machinery.”  And by 1957 the Amber Belt Company was here.

New York City artist Sharon Florin captured the terra cotta detailing in this 2016 painting.

Somehow, as the 20^th century became the 21^st, the building escaped being converted to high-end residential space and still houses small factories.  Somewhat amazingly, the cast iron and terra cotta of the lower two floors have survived almost entirely intact.  Except for the trendy pizza café at street level, the building looks little different than it did on that summer afternoon when Harry Jonas left work only to face public humiliation.

many thanks to Sharon Florin for suggesting this post.
photographs by the author 

The 1904 Yorkville Theatre -- Nos. 157-161 East 86th Street

On September 17, 1904 the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide noted that the Colonial Theatre at Broadway and 62^nd Street, was under construction.  It was architect George Keister’s first endeavor at theater design; and the first step in what would become a specialty for him.

Simultaneously, the Yorkville Theatre was rising on three 86^th Street plots—Nos. 157 through 161--commissioned by developer brothers Arlington C. and Harvey M. Hall.   The ornamental ironwork for the ground level front and interior spaces was executed by Harris H. Uris, at the time the preeminent ironworker in the city.  Although owned by the Halls, the Yorkville Theatre project (as well as the Colonial) was the brainchild of Meyer R. Bimberg; who closely supervised its interior design.  He would eventually be responsible for five Manhattan theaters.

The 42-year old Bimberg had made his fortune in a most unusual way.  During the 1896 St. Louis political convention, he came up with the idea of picturing the candidates on tin buttons.   Hearing that McKinley and Hobart would get the nomination, he had 100,000 buttons made—the first political campaign buttons in history.

When Theodore Roosevelt returned from the Spanish-American War and was urged to run for Governor, Bimberg took a gamble and made up thousands of buttons depicting Roosevelt in his Rough Rider outfit, with the slogan “Our Choice for Governor.”  He gave the first to Roosevelt.  Then, according to The New York Times later, “They went like hot cakes.”  Bimberg earned the nickname “Bim the Button Man.”

The Yorkville Theatre was completed just in time for the season of 1904-05.  It opened on October 3, 1904 with Henrietta Crosman in Sweet Kitty Bellairs.  The New-York Tribune said Henrietta was “as charming as ever” and commented “The maiden performance of the new theatre drew an enthusiastic crowd, and throngs packed the sidewalk and street long before the doors opened.”

Theater goers filed into an auditorium capable of seating 1,372.  There were six boxes and two balconies.  The Tribune called the façade “colonial” and said “its interior is ivory white, gold and pale blue.  The seats and carpets are a bright red.  The chief decorative feature is a group of five large panels over the arch, representing, respectively, Comedy and Tragedy at the extreme sides, while in the centre is a reproduction of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s picture representing Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse.  On either side of this centre panel are two Shakespearean scenes.”

The newspaper’s description of the façade as “colonial” was a stretch.  Keister clad the building in sandy-brown brick, trimmed in white terra cotta.  The angled piers which rose from the marquee level to the top floor were capped by Art Nouveau female busts influenced by the Vienna Succession movement.  The center figure, which rose into the peaked parapet, was backed by an explosive fan—an unintentional foreshadowing of the overblown headdresses of Follies girls of the years to come.

The New York Times called the opening “a great occasion for Yorkville and a greater for Bimberg.  The old residents of the neighborhood blossomed out in all the glory of first nighters to such an extent that standing room was sold out long before the curtain rose.  “Bim’ made a speech at the end of the third act.”

Bimberg told the audience “The old-timers in Yorkville have been talking about a theatre for forty years and I’m proud and pleased to have given ‘em one they needn’t be ashamed of.”

The Times was pleased.  “The decorations are extremely pleasing, and the temperature is regulated and fresh air supplied by the latest mechanical devices.”

Like the opening production which had earlier played at the Belasco Theatre, Bimberg’s initial offerings would be restagings of shows that had opened elsewhere and proved successful.   Such was the case, for instance when the Tribune announced that Miss Percy Haswell and Robert T. Haines would appear in The Darling of the Gods for one week only.  The newspaper noted they would perform with “a company of the same proportions as characterized the original Metropolitan production.”

And on January 22, 1905 the Tribune announced that Henrietta Crosman “and her associates” would revive Sweet Kitty Bellairs for a week.  The article pointed out “Special attention is called to the fact that the best seats will best sold for $1.50.”  It was a substantial admission price—equal to more than $40 in 2016.

A week later a young man shocked New Yorkers (and his father) by choosing the stage as his career.  Young Harry Carey had graduated from New York University where he studied law.  He was the son of former Judge Henry D. Carey and on February 1, 1905 the New-York Tribune noted “It was expected that young Carey would begin the practice of law to-day.”

Instead, he had secretly been rehearsing his part in When Knighthood Was in Flower at the Yorkville Theatre for several weeks.  The Tribune reported “it was only on Sunday that his father discovered it.  He was at first displeased, but later gave his consent.”

Not only did Harry Carey succeed in his stage debut at the Yorkville Theatre; he went on to be one of America’s most famous actors.

Bimberg scored a theatrical coup when he introduced a new production in 1905 starring the popular actress Odette Tyler.  The Times reported on March  12 “To-morrow night, and for the first time on any stage, Odette Tyler’s new Du Barry play, ‘The Red Carnation,’ will be presented at the Yorkville Theatre. Miss Tyler will appear in the principal role, and this will mark her reappearance on the New York stage in the legitimate drama.”

Odette Tyler -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

In March 1908 Meyer R. Bimberg was stricken with tonsillitis.  He refused medical attention, and when his condition worsened a few days later, he took to his bed.  He told the family “Do not disturb me until I awaken.  I feel as though I would like to sleep.”  He never woke up.  The 46-year old button-man and theater builder died in his sleep on March 25, 1908.

Bimberg’s death would take a substantial toll on the Yorkville Theatre.   A little over a year later, on October 1, 1909, the New-York Tribune reported that Bimberg’s estate was foreclosing on the $40,000 mortgage held by the Hall brothers.

Mildred Holland's (center) appearance here in A Royal Scandal in January 1909 was among the last of the legitimate dramas.  The Theatre, January 1909 (copyright expired)

The estate wasted no time in leasing the theater.  Just two weeks later it was announced that the International Vaudeville Co. had signed a five-year lease at $25,000 per year.  Meyer Bimberg’s offering of high-class theatrical productions gave way to a more pedestrian entertainment.  Admission prices dropped dramatically to 5 and 10 cents.  The Tribune noted that “vaudeville and pictures” would make up the attractions.

Moving pictures had firmly taken hold by now, threatening live entertainment.  While the International Vaudeville Co. held the lease, The New York Times reported “The Yorkville Theatre will become a motion-picture house next week, under the management of Marcus Lowe.”  Lowe would find the venue so successful that in 1914 he erected a more opulent motion picture theatre across the street, the Orpheum.  But in the meantime motion pictures and vaudeville shared the stage at the Yorkville.

Vaudeville entertainments were wildly popular for the variety of acts—jugglers, singers, comedians and animal acts among them.  On December 17, 1914 things went horribly wrong at the Yorkville Theatre.  The auditorium was filled with more than 1,000 men, women and children who thrilled at the lion act of Madame Marie Andree.  The petite and beautiful lion tamer put her six lionesses through their paces to the amazement of the audience.

When the curtain lowered, a quartet, The Four Harts, came on stage to sing “Follow the Crowd.”  Behind the curtain Marie Andree supervised her staff as they herded the animals into their “shifting den,” a light-weight cage used to transport them from the stage to permanent cages.

Marie Andree poses with her lionesses.  At the lower left is Sgt. Daniel Glenn, who was shot in the incident -- New-York Tribune December 18, 1914 (copyright expired)

But, as reported in the New-York Tribune the following day, “Instead of marching sedately in single file to the gate, the six lionesses, Belle, Alice, Queen, Grace, Lady and Lina, made a concerted rush.  In the scramble to get out of the narrow gateway, the shifting den was upset.”

One lioness, Alice, found an opening in the curtain and walked onto the stage.  “Those in the audience who noticed the cringing yellow beast as it stole forward toward the centre of the stage took it for part of the performance, and held their breath in delicious horror.”

When the Four Harts noticed the carnivore, they found the situation less delicious.   When they started off the stage, a police detective ordered “For God’s sake, go back there and sing!”  And they did.

But when one of Marie Andree’s workers came on stage with a whip and tried to induce the lioness backstage, the audience realized their danger.  Panic ensued and 1,000 patrons tried to get through the exits at once.  The chaos aroused the lionesses, who struck out in several directions, several heading directly into the audience.   One man exhibited his bravery simply by playing dead.

“Mark McDermott, of 511 East 84^th st., saw [Alice] coming.  She was headed straight for him and was but a few seats away.  McDermott had heard that the thing to do when you couldn’t run away from a lion was to play ‘possum.  He lay flat on the floor.  In another instant one of Alice’s paws raked the side of his head as she stepped over him.”

In the end, the one lioness who escaped the theater was killed by policemen.  The others were recaptured.  Among the injured was Sergeant Daniel Glenn, who took a bullet in the back during the affray with the escaped beast; and a 10-year old girl who was knocked down by a lion.  The Tribune reported “Twoscore women, who sought refuge in the women’s dressing room of the theatre, were rescued by firemen with ladders while policemen and trainers were corralling the five lions which roamed the deserted theatre.”

The following year the Yorkville Theatre received another make-over.  The New York Times reported on August 8, 1915 that “after completed alterations [it] will open next Saturday evening as a burlesque theatre, with two performances a day and a new program each week.”  The opening production was Frank Calder’s The High-Life Girls.

The following week the Evening World explained that The High-Life Girls was “two one-act burlesques, ‘A Country Vacation’ and ‘At the Pekin Cabaret.’”  The newspaper opined “The favor with which the performance was received indicates a successful career for the Yorkville under the new order of things.”

The burlesque offerings were far different from Bimberg’s vision.  Later that month Parisian Flirts was staged, with Charlie Robinson featured “in comedy characterizations.”  Eight months later Florenz Ziegfeld sued the theater for advertising The Follies of 1916.  The Times reported on April 20, 1916 “Mr. Ziegfeld at once instituted proceedings to protect his title, which is copyrighted.”

By now Yorkville was the center of New York’s German population.  Many of the productions staged at the Yorkville Theatre were presented in German.  But even in German, burlesque acts sometimes stepped over the line of Edwardian decency. 

Mizi Gizi was a popular actress of the German stage and she was scheduled to appear in “a program of German playlets” here on May 23, 1916.  The Times reported the following morning that theatergoers were “disappointed because there was no performance.”  The newspaper explained that the “Police Department…notified the theatre management after last Saturday night’s performance that two of the playlets on the bill would have to be toned down before they could be given again.” According to Police Commissioner Woods, he had received “complaints as to the alleged improper nature of some of the playlets offered.”

Mizi Gizi was back on stage on October 24 in a musical comedy, Die tolle Dolly.  The Times called it “a typical and conventional German musical comedy as to plot and humor, although its pleasing, if not distinguished melodies are produced more in the Broadway manner than is customary on the local German stage.”

Although German productions continued in 1917 (in November Mizi Gizi starred in a three-act German language operetta Auto Love; and in December Johan Strauss’s operetta On the Blue Danube was staged); anti-German sentiments were high following America’s entry into World War I. 

By the following season German productions were halted throughout the city.  The Metropolitan Opera House banned German operas.  The Times later noted that German plays were barred “from the Irving Place Theatre and the Yorkville Theatre.”

The New York Times reported “The German company which has held the boards of the Yorkville Theatre in Eighty-sixth Street for the last three or four years will give way to an American company this season.”  There was little question regarding the political tone of the country on opening night 1918.

“The opening attraction will be ‘Tell That to the Marines,’ a play by Mr. Philipp and Edward A. Paulton."   The newspaper added for good measure, "Philipp is an American citizen.”

It was not until the season of 1925 that German was heard again in the Yorkville Theatre.  On October 1 that year The Times reported it “will reopen as a German playhouse.”  Later that season, in January 1926, Strauss’s opera The Gypsy Baron was staged and the following month Anneliese von Dessau debuted.  The German operetta was written by Robert Winterberg.

Heinrich Knote, renowned tenor of the Munich Opera, appeared at the Yorkville Theatre in May 1928.  His would be one of the last performances here.   The theater shut its doors for good that year and was converted to stores on the first floor, a dance hall on the second, and meeting rooms above.

Today pseudo-modern store fronts have erased any trace of the Yorkville Theater entrance.  But on the heavily altered upper floors the dramatic 1904 decorations survive.

 photographs by the author

The 1907 Volunteers of America Bldg -- No. 34 West 28th Street

The exuberant cast cornice sits like a tiara on the beautiful, if abused, building -- photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

As the 19^th century drew to a close, the social reform movement gained unprecedented momentum.  The focus of helping the poor was turning from merely providing charity to teaching skills and a means of improving their desperate conditions.  Among the leaders of the movement were Ballington and Maud Booth who in 1896 founded the Volunteers of America.  Booth was the son of William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army.

Ballington Booth poses in his Salvation Army uniform -- photograph Library of Congress

The couple organized volunteers who worked in the squalid tenement districts.  Initially the Volunteers provided housing for unmarried men and women, and organized day nurseries so mothers could work and earn money for food and rent.  The group would expand to providing summer camps for needy children and residences for newly-released prisoners until they could get on their feet.

Within a decade the Volunteers of America had spread to several major American cities.  General Ballington Booth described its organization to The World Almanac.  “It is organized in military style, having as its model the United States Army, but in conjunction with military discipline and methods of work it possesses a thoroughly democratic form of government.”

In New York the organization bounced around; starting in the Bible House at the corner of Fourth Avenue and 8^th Street, then moving several times until, in 1905, Harry L. Toplitz purchased Bartholomew Ward’s five story house at No. 34 West 28^th Street.  The old residence had been in the Ward family since 1858; but the once-quiet residential street was now anything but.  Commercial structures had taken over the block and newspapers announced that Toplitz “will erect on the site a six-story store and office building.”

The “store and office building” would be the permanent headquarters of the Volunteers of America.  Although The New York Times noted on April 20, 1907, upon the building’s completion, that “The vendor was Harry L. Toplitz, who built it;” it was an anonymous donors who paid for it. 

Coincidentally, the building was completed exactly two decades years after Booth and his wife arrived in New York.  He told reporters “Oh, it just comes to me—it is most interesting, most interesting.  Do you know, gentlemen, that it was just twenty years ago yesterday, at 10:45 in the morning, that Mrs. Ballington Booth and I sailed up New York Harbor to take up our work in America?  To think that it was at the same hour twenty years later when I took title to this magnificent building for the Volunteers!”

Architect Adolph Mertin had put his designs on the drafting table a year earlier and the resulting structure was up-to-the-minute.  Art Nouveau influences revealed themselves in the railings and cornice along with wonderful Vienna Secession piers.  An angled, three-story bay culminating in a railed balcony was entirely clad in gleaming copper.  Not only did the projecting sides of the bay provide for optimum light into the structure, they captured the slightest breezes on stifling summer days.

Art Nouveau piers flank the cast metal bay -- photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

The Times remarked that “The new building of the Volunteers is a very up-to-date affair both in design and construction…Expense was apparently not spared in its decoration, and it has all the modern devices for fire protection.”  The newspaper added that it “furnishes about as great a contrast to the present headquarters, in an old rookery at 38 Cooper Row, just off the Bowery, as can be imagined.”

Despite the debilitating Financial Panic of 1907, the $250,000 structure (an outlay of about $6 million today) was completely paid for.  The Volunteers of America would use the second through fifth floors for its offices and headquarters; renting out the store and basement as well as the three studios in the sixth floors.  General Ballington Booth’s private office was on the second floor, along with a board room large enough to accommodate 200.  It was here where the meetings of the executive heads of the Volunteers would be held.

photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

The financial offices of the organization were housed on the third floor, as well as the offices of the trade department.  The fourth floor was dedicated to the editorial department.  The New York Times reported that the fifth floor, “the lightest in the building, will be the headquarters of Mrs. Ballington Booth and her Prison League, which is now cramped up in a little room in the old shack on Cooper Row.”

Mrs. Booth’s Prison League had already placed 2,860 former prisoners in steady jobs and had 43,000 convicts still serving their time on the waiting list.  In the past year the Volunteers of America had cared for 3,933 “unfortunate women,” and provided lodging for 31,487 women.

Among those renting the top floor space was the architect himself, Adolph Mertin, who moved his offices here.

At the official opening of the building, on October 27, 1907, William Cullen Bryan spoke.  He noted the Volunteers of America’s focus on rehabilitation rather than hand-outs.  “No doubt the first duty to the hungry man is to feed him, but to do him permanent good one must give him high ideals and a nobler conception of life.”

He recognized, too, the more pragmatic and economic side of their work.  “It is cheaper to reform a man than to protect society against him.  A vicious man is an expensive luxury.  While Gen. and Mrs. Booth are doing work which costs money, I venture to say that it is worth to the people of the United States far more than is spent upon it.”

Two months later the Volunteers were busy fulfilling what would be one of their most widely-recognized deeds—the annual Christmas boxes for the families of jailed convicts.  “Two hundred boxes of substantial clothing, groceries, and toys had been sent out to the wives and children of imprisoned men up to the last night by the Volunteers of America,” reported The Times on Christmas Day 1907. 

The group obtained the foot measurements of every child and mother in the families who were brought to its attention.  “To every boy we give a warm overcoat and to the girls a cloak of some heavy material,” said Maud Booth.  “The grown women receive dresses.  Underclothes are pretty generally distributed, while everybody gets a pair of stout new shoes.  Each box is packed with a particular family in view, so that there is no chance of our gifts proving inappropriate or misfit.”

In order to guarantee this, volunteers visited upwards of 80 families each, returning with a detailed report.  Mrs. Booth provided detailed examples of the conditions of the recipients. 

“I had a box for a girl at one house, and when I knocked at the door it was opened by what seemed to be a tiny little woman, who held her broom in her hand, while her sleeves were rolled up for work.  She was very small, but her face was marked with care and toil.

‘You have children,’ said I, thinking the box was for her child.

‘I am the only child,’ she answered, and I gave the things to her.  I found out afterwards that she was only 15.”

Heart-breaking letters from the needy arrived at the offices of the Volunteers.  A month before the following Christmas Mrs. Booth received a letter from a little girl.

Dear Santa Claus:  Won’t you please come to see us this year?  Last year you did not come, and we were very sorry, because we did not get a single thing.  Please do not disappoint us this year.  Papa is not working, neither is mother.  We are nine children, running in ages thus:  Girl, 16, the only one working; boy, 14; girl, 12; boy, 10; girl 6; girl, 7; girl, 5; girl, 3, and little baby, 1 year and 3 months.  Dear Santa Clause, please make us happy.  Do not disappoint, or we shall be very unhappy.

The Volunteers of America worked diligently from its new headquarters in attempts to relieve the suffering of the endless list of the destitute.  Ballington Booth documented cases in 1909 that included “A poor woman whose husband is in Sing Sing, and who lives with her three little children and her father, who has a cancer, and has had to have his arm amputated, in an uptown tenement, has been supporting herself and these on $3 per week.  They had absolutely nothing in the house, and were living on stale bread and milk.  The Volunteers have taken this case, and are caring for them” and “A woman who was a janitress and worked until faint and worn out was finally taken to the hospital.  The children, aged 2, 9, 16, and 18, were in dire need.  Through the instrumentality of our officers, the girl of 16 and the boy of 18 found employment, and the little children are being cared for.  Their condition was woe-begone and pitiable in the extreme.”

In the meantime, artists leased the sixth floor studios, providing extra income for the group.  In 1913 artist Lewis Stone had his studio here when he gave up on his foundering marriage.  He explained to the Supreme Court on January 9 of that year that “sex antagonism” was responsible for his failed marriage.

“You may personally love each other—man and wife—but be opposed sexually,” he said.  Stone and his wife had married in Paris in 1896 where they were both studying art.  But after 14 years “My wife began to show a passion for wine and did not seem to love our last child.”  When the artist prepared to go to their summer home in Hastings in 1912, his wife refused.  So he left with the children.

When he returned in the fall he discovered his wife was having an affair with two men.  “He says that he does not ask for the divorce in a spirit of vengeance, but because he feels that he can no longer live with his wife,” explained The New York Times.

Downstairs at No. 34 West 28^th Street the Volunteers of America continued with their good works.  The same year that Stone filed for divorce, the Volunteers of America was busy procuring funds for its summer camps.  Writing about the program to send city children “to the fresh air,” Ballington Booth wrote on July 21, 1913 “It would be difficult to adequately explain the rapid benefit and lasting good those children have derived.  It means so much to them to be moved from the hot-roomed and ill-ventilated tenement to the fresh air and breeze-swept camp.”

With the outbreak of World War I another branch of the Volunteers of America was organized.  The Booth’s daughter, Theodora, was president of the National Honor Guard of America; 6,000 girls and young women “who are prepared in case of a national crisis to replace men in many different occupations.”

On February 6, 1917 The Sun reported that the girls came to the aid of the navy militia who were tasked with keeping watch on sensitive bridge piers during the frigid winter nights.   Several times the military men received “visitors.”  “The visitors were girls of the National Honor Guard of America, and they came in automobiles, bringing sandwiches and coffee,” reported the newspaper.

The following year the “gray-uniformed girls of the National Honor Guard” were seeking $3,000 for their work in the remote military camps.  “Also they would welcome baseball hats, vases, jigsaw puzzles, phonographs, games of all kinds, book and anything else that would help to pass a solder’s time,” reported the New-York Tribune on May 12, 1918.  The appeal promised “We see that every dollar is spent to its greatest capacity, and often with $5 we can bring happiness and cheer to a camp of 300 or 400 men…We need flower vases for the flowers we give to our sick sailors and soldiers in the hospitals…We need new games, checkers, jigsaw puzzles for convalescent patients, dominoes, all kinds of games…We want flowers and fruit for our boys here; we want new magazines, tobacco.”

The Depression Era and the poverty and unemployment it brought meant even more work for the group.  But thirty-five years after the Booths had organized the Volunteers of America the pair was still going strong.  On August 1, 1931 The New York Times reported on the telegrams of congratulation that poured into the headquarters at No. 34 West 28^th on Ballington Booth’s 74^th birthday.  Five years later officers and workers of the organization gathered in the headquarters building to celebrate the Booths’ 40 year anniversary of the founding.

“In a modest, sunlit room where many flowers had been placed in their honor the General, who is a brother of General Evangeline Booth of the Salvation Army, and his wife, known as ‘The Little Mother of the Prisons,’ received pledges of renewed loyalty from scores of followers,” reported The Times on March 17, 1936.

On the same day that The Times printed its report of the celebration, Pittsburgh was struck with what became known as The Great St. Patrick’s Day Flood.  Between March 17 and 18 flood waters rose to 46 feet, devastating the city and destroying about 100,000 buildings.  As expected, the Volunteers of America charged into action.  Approximately 20 truckloads of bedding and clothing provided by the Volunteers left New York City for the West Pennsylvania flood areas.  Each of the trucks contained 1,100 blankets and 95,000 garments.

On September 13, 1940 Maud Ballington Booth celebrated her 75^th birthday by going to work, as usual, in the Volunteers of America headquarters.  Her six hours of work were interrupted by the need to acknowledge congratulations from well-wishers like President Roosevelt; Major General James G. Harboard, chairman of the board of Radio Corporation of America; and General John J. Pershing.

A much younger Maud Ballington Booth posed in 1905 -- photograph Library of Congress

Nevertheless, The New York Times said “Mrs. Booth showed no signed of relaxing her zeal for work.  She insisted there would be no personal celebration of her birthday.  She wanted the anniversary noted only to ‘carry again to the world my message on prison reform.’”

A month later, on October 5, Ballington Booth died.

After 34 years, almost to the day, in the building he designed, architect Adolph Mertin moved his offices out of the building on October 20, 1941; going to No. 101 Park Avenue.  

Maud Ballington Booth lived on until August 26, 1948.  The position of commander-in-chief of the Volunteers of America passed to son Charles Brandon Booth until 1958 when he was succeeded by John McMahon.

Change came to the Volunteers of America after nearly a century when Raymond C. Tremont stepped into the position of general in 1980.  His reorganization did away with the traditional blue uniforms, the military ranks were replaced with more corporate titles, and the organization moved from New York City to Louisiana.

In the half century that the Volunteers of America had been in its building the 28^th Street block had changed significantly.  The handsome headquarters was now broken up into small offices and manufactories and at some point the storefront was essentially obliterated.  Today the once-gleaming copper bay is covered with peeling brown paint and a tawdry advertising awning stretches above the retail store.  But overall Adolph Mertin’s wonderful 1907 design survives intact.

Pedestrians who rush by, not bothering to look above the tawdry store level, miss the magnificent details of the former Volunteers of America headquarters -- photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com