The 1904 Blennerhasset Apartments - 507-511 West 111th Street

In 1903 the opening of the IRT subway, which would make the neighborhood near the rising Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine more easily accessible, was just a year away.  Among the developers who scrambled to take advantage of the opportunity was Max Liebeskind who hired architect George Fred Pelham to design an apartment building at Nos. 507-511 West 111th Street.  On May 30 that year the Real Estate Record & Guide reported that the proposed building would house "four families on a floor" and listed the construction costs at $70,000--or just over $2 million today.

The Blennerhasset was ready for occupancy the following spring.  Pelham's six-story structure borrowed from a variety of styles--Beaux Arts, Baroque and Italian Renaissance.  A columned entrance portico crowned by a balustraded balcony more than made up for the otherwise sparsely decorated two-story base.  The building's name was prominently carved into the entablature.

Delicate stone garlands drape the door and window frames within the portico and a remarkable foliate carving with a face supports the sill.

The red brick, three-story midsection was richly decorated with arched Renaissance style pediments, ornate keystones and carved spandrels.  Below a bracketed cornice, the top floor alternating courses of brick and stone, splayed lintels and decorative keystones.

An advertisement in The Sun on April 10, 1904 boasted that the apartments were "Handsomely appointed and contain every new and modern device; mail chute.  All-night elevator service."  Potential residents could choose from apartments of four to seven "large light rooms with shower baths."  Rents ranged from $480 to $900 per year, or around $2,200 a month for the most expensive apartments.

Photographed in 1908, the building wore a distinctive rooftop balustrade and parapet.  Apartment Houses of the Metropolis (copyright expired)

Perhaps the first tenant to move into his new building was Max Liebeskind, himself.   And like him, the other residents would be for the most part well educated professionals.  There was one family, however, which was less upstanding.

On May 12, 1905 the New York Morning Telegraph exposed a scam, saying "Up at 507 West 111th street, in the fashionable Blennerhasset, Superintendent William Meyer five months ago leased a $75 seven-room flat to Miss J. A. Sturgis."  According to the article, when Meyer asked the young woman for references, she replied, "We are very high class folk.  My brother is former Fire Commissioner Sturgis.  He is coming here to live with us; also his son.  Reference!  The very idea!  I should say that we need no further reference than the fact that my brother was the Commissioner."

Indeed former Fire Commissioner Thomas Sturgis held a sterling reputation.  Meyer apologized and before long the woman's family moved in--two sisters, an elderly woman, a "gray-haired, slender man of 50" who was introduced as Commissioner Sturgis, and his son.

After the second month of not paying rent, Miss Sturgis explained "Since my brother got out of the Fire Department his affairs have been badly tangled, and we are waiting for a settlement from his lawyer."  But three months later Meyer began to become nervous as the past due rent now topped $6,000 in today's money.  Word somehow got to Commissioner Sturgis who was indignant.  Saying that the tenants were not related to him he told reporters "Well, I would like to get hold of that chap and make an example of him...I feel very sorry for the poor janitor who stood good for my name.  He deserves a better fate."

There were four apartments per floor, of various sizes.  Apartment Houses of the Metropolis (copyright expired)

The more respectable tenants at the time included Aaron L. Dotey, a teacher in the Dewitt Clinton High School on West 102nd Street; and Dr. Jesse Fleet Sammis, who graduated from Princeton in 1902 and the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1906.

Walter F. Goodnough, president of the American Wire Form Company, lived in The Blennerhasset in 1909.  On April 19 that year the city was pummeled by a violent thunderstorm which caused damage to buildings and injuries to pedestrians.  One of them was Goodnough who attempted to cross Broadway at 111th Street when he was hit by a streetcar.  The New York Press explained "He could not see the car approaching in the rain.  He was knocked down and severely bruised."

In the fall of 1913 the neighborhood was plagued with a rash of daytime burglaries.  The New-York Tribune said the crooks "have been making higher the present high cost of living for apartment house dwellers, and incidentally reaping a rich harvest in furs, jewelry and women's clothing for themselves."  Among those victimized were Hazel Mora and Gertrude Ott who lived in The Blennerhasset.  They were among the lucky few who got their stolen jewelry back.

Sometime before World War I the balustrade was removed from the cornice.  photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

On November 18 "the small, undersized person of Harry Bloom, a seventeen-year-old errand boy," was arrested at the cleaners where he worked.  Elevator boys in the various apartment buildings had placed him at the scene of each burglary.  

Bloom's scheme was ingenious.  When he was sent to an apartment building to pick up laundry, he took along an accomplice who would take the stairs to the basement.  Bloom then asked the elevator boy to let him off on a particular floor, would ring all the bells until he was sure he found one that was unoccupied, and use a jimmy to break in.  Once inside, he gathered jewelry and other valuables into a bundle and sent it to the basement on the dumbwaiter.   With that task done, he proceeded to pick up the laundry.

In the early years after World War I cigar maker Louis Cohen leased an apartment on the sixth floor.  It appears that the bulk of his income did not come from the cigar business, however.  According to the New-York Tribune a letter arrived at the desk of Police Inspector Cornelius Cahalane early in 1921 "saying that gambling was going on in the apartment of Cohen."   On the night of January 5 he launched a raid.  

The officers broke in the door where Cohen, "two other men and six fashionably gowned women" were "sitting around a table upon which were a large number of racing charts and other papers relating to horseraces."  The Long Island Daily Press reported, "The women began screaming as the door broke and when the detectives rushed in they rushed, shrieking, for the windows.  The women were intercepted but were not consoled.  They begged the detectives not to 'tell their husbands.'"

Cohen and his cohorts did not go easily.  "Several pieces of furniture were smashed in the fight," said the detectives, and according to the Long Island Daily Press "So much noise was made, in fact, that when the patrol wagon arrived almost 300 persons were gathered outside the house, including many of the apartment house tenants."  The group was charged with "maintaining a gambling house, vagrancy and disorderly conduct."

When Beatrice Dale separated from her husband, she and her nine-year old daughter, Beatrice, moved into the apartment of her mother, Fannie Kenny.  Beatrice, who was 29, seems to have been moving on with her life and in 1925 was romantically involved with another man.

But when she went to a nightclub on Saturday night November 7, 1925 with a different suitor, her boyfriend found out and was enraged.  Two days later he "upbraided" her for her infidelity, according to The New York Sun, "and she grieved over it."  So upset was she that she drank poison.

Little Beatrice was just arriving home from school when the ambulance crew were examining her mother's body.  "The child was led aside and not told of Mrs. Dale's death until later," said The Sun.

In November 1934 Bessie Scheffer's name appeared in newspapers for gambling on the horses.  But, unlike Louis Cohen, her betting was legitimate.  She had bought a ticket in the Army and Navy Veterans Sweepstakes, which was run in Manchester, England.  Her ticket was on Pip Emma, an outside contender.  On November 24 she received word that she had won the $30,000 first prize, worth more than half a million in today's dollars.  It was an enormous windfall for the stenographer, who told reporters at a luncheon for winners on December 2 that she would use the money "to send her son and daughter through college."

By the 1960's the neighborhood around The Blennerhasset had sorely declined.  On September 30, 1964 The New York Times architecture columnist Ada Louise Huxtable referred to Morningside Heights as "600 acres of trouble, ranging from the deteriorating surroundings of a galaxy of educational institutions long known as the Acropolis of America, to the most sordid slums."  The following year the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan was approved by the city, which would displace 8,000 families and raze scores of residential structures, including The Blennerhasset.

In 1967 a Certificate of Eviction was filed by the landlord.  But the residents banded together to fight.  After a long and difficult battle, they won and The Blennerhasset survived.

Prominent in the fight were residents Bruce Bailey and his wife, Nellie Hester.  By the early 1970's he was working with residents in Harlem and Washington Heights as well.  Bailey's work in organizing tenants was not appreciated by developers and landlords.  According to his wife, he "received threats over the years" and once had been beaten by two thugs.

On June 21, 1989 he left The Blennerhasset to drive to a tenants' meeting on West 125th Street.  He did not return home that night and Nellie filed a missing persons report.  The following evening at 5:30 a passerby discovered four large plastic bags.  Inside were the decapitated torso, two arms without hands and two legs without feet.  Nellie Hester identified her husband by a birthmark and a scar on his right knee.  Detectives had a broad field from which to find suspects.  Times journalist H. Eric Semler commented on June 21, "As head of the Columbia Tenants Union he assisted thousands of tenants and often drew the wrath of landlords, drug dealers and even some of his closest colleagues."

In the years since that tragedy The Blennerhasset has been renovated and in 1999 facade repairs were made.  Today it is as dignified as it was in 1908 when Apartment Houses of the Metropolis called it one of New York's "high-class houses."

photographs by the author

The 1904 Clara Court - 503-505 West 111th Street

The extension of the IRT subway to Morningside Heights in 1904 set off a flurry of apartment building construction.  Among the earliest developers to seize the opportunity was Emmanuel Doctor who purchased the two lots at Nos. 503 and 505 West 111th Street--steps away from the rising Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine early that year.

On April 14, 1904 Engineering News reported that architect John Hauser had filed plans for a "6-story brick flat" on the site with a projected cost of $95,000--just over $2.75 million in today's money.  He would be working with an oddly trapezoidal-shaped plot.  It was 82 feet wide along 111th Street but only 54 feet wide at the rear.

Construction proceeded at lightning speed and the building was ready for occupants by Christmas.  Blending Renaissance Revival with Beaux Arts, Hauser designed his building in three layers--known as a tripartite design.  The two-story rusticated stone base sat back from the property line behind an ornate iron fence.  The off-set entrance sat within a handsome porch with columns and balustrades which announced the building's name: Clara Court.

Unwilling to settle for a more expected portico, Hauser created a full porch, adding charm.

Unlike the more reserved base, the three-story middle section was highly decorated.  The red brick contrasted with terra cotta window surrounds, some of which boasted Beaux Arts style cartouches, some with scrolled and festooned keystones, and others with blind balustrades, ornate pilasters and elaborate pediments.  The understated top floor was embellished only with bands of stone.

An advertisement in the New-York Tribune on December 27 touted Clara Court as a "new elevator apartment house" and stressed that it was "near subway and elevated stations."  There were five apartments per floor and potential residents could choose among suites of four, five or six rooms with bath, including "every improvement."  Rents ranged from $37 to $55 per month, the cheapest and smallest apartments costing the equivalent of $1,020 per month today.

Doctor apparently had no interest in being a landlord and in May 1905 he sold the new building for $165,000, making a tidy profit in the deal.  In the meantime, white collar residents called Clara Court home.  Newlyweds Leonard Valentine Holder and his bride Viola Alida were among the first residents.  They had been married on June 18, 1904.  Holder was a foreign exchange broker with offices at No. 56 Pine Street.

In 1909 Mrs. O. F. Page busied herself with the duties of president of the ungainly named Messiah Branch of the Church of the Messiah of the National Alliance of Unitarian and Other Liberal Christian Women.  Also in the building at the time was Henry Despard, his wife and two children.  Despard had founded the marine insurance brokerage firm of Despard & Co. and was secretary of the New York Club.

The Despards, Holders, Pages and their neighbors enjoyed a new amenity that year--telephone service.  It was most likely a centralized switchboard rather than in-apartment service, but was a welcome innovation nevertheless.  It may have been responsible, however, for a rent hike.  The smaller apartments were now 50 cents per month more expensive and the largest went up by $5.

The Holders, who had a summer home on Long Island, had had a rocky start to their marriage.  In 1916 Viola sued for separation, causing The New York Herald to say that the suit "caused interest" among the "society colony" in Garden City.  "Mr. and Mrs. Holder have been active here in social affairs," the article explained.

Viola said in her complaint that Leonard was very jealous and that early on in Clara Court "he accused her of flirting with other men [and] that he came home in November [1905] and asked her if she knew 'one Calahan,' and that on being told that she did not he chased her about the house."

After several instances of physical abuse, Viola left Leonard in September 1915, but several weeks later "was induced by her friends to return to him."  Things went well enough until April 1916 when "he again chased her and then threatened to shoot her."  When he went to look for his revolver she bolted from the apartment never to return.  In her plea for alimony she asserted that Holder earned a $94,000 salary in today's dollars.

There was less drama and more music coming from the apartment of Florence Colell de Montlord in 1916.  The professional pianist had studied under the famous Rudolph Ganz and under Maurice Bastin of the Opera Comique.  She taught pupils in her Clara Court studio at least through 1917.

Prohibition went into effect in January 1920.  It put thousands of workers--brewery and distillery employees, waiters and waitresses, and bottling plant workers, for instance--out of jobs.  But it presented an opportunity to Mary White.  On August 24, 1921 the Brooklyn newspaper The Standard Union reported "A new queen of bootleggers has been discovered, according to Federal Prohibition Chief William F. Kissick...She is Mrs Mary White, 42 years old, of 505 West 111th street."

Mary was involved in bootleg ring headed by Anthony Cassesse.  They worked with five young men ranging from 17- to 25-years old.  The gang serviced a string of road houses and inns on Long Island, providing them with "evergreen alcohol, grain spirits, whiskies and gins," according to the article.  That summer agents posing as liquor dealers arranged to buy 200 cases of whiskey from Cassese for $15,000.

On the afternoon of August 23 Mary headed to the drop off point, as she always did.  Her job was to be there when the delivery arrived and collect the cash.  This time however, when the truck pulled up and the men started unloading the hooch, the agents swooped in.  

The profitability of the bootleg business was evidenced when Cassese was found to have $61,000 in cash on him at the station house--about $856,000 today.  U. S. Attorney Wallace E. J. Collins told reporters that Mary White "is alleged to have thrown bundles of bills into a waste basket nightly from which it would be sorted out and divided."

For the most part, of course, the residents of Clara Court continued to live respectable lives.  Louis D. Phillips, who lived here in 1922, managed the Woolworth store at No. 1484 First Avenue.  For some reason a gang of burglars were obsessed with the safe in the five-and-dime store that year.  In March and again in June the premises were broken into and an attempt had been made to crack the 1,500-pound safe.

But the thieves were seemingly undeterred by failure.  When Phillips went to the store on October 29 he found a scene of devastation.  This time the burglars broke down the office wall, dragged the safe to the stairway and pushed it to the basement.  Nothing happened.  So they used nitroglycerin in an attempt to blow it open.  Again they were foiled.  "The explosion evidently frightened them away," reported the New-York Tribune, "for they left pliers, wire and gloves and a revolver."

Unfortunately for Phillips, while the would-be safe crackers did not make off with any money, they had wrecked the office and the stairs and heavily damaged the case of the safe.

In 1930 the 78-year old widow Mary Collins had an apartment here.  She shared it with her niece, Josephine, and her husband Charles Henry Albrecht, and their 10-year old son, Kenneth.  The Albrecht family would remain until 1940. 

Although Albrecht's occupation was listed as "salesman at a newspaper" at the time, he was destined for larger things.  He eventually became a major printer of color comic books and was the force behind the famous Charles Atlas comic book advertisements for mail-order body building booklets.

Clara Court was the scene of tragedy on January 11, 1937.  Three months earlier 40-year old Bertha Haber had leased a "kitchenette apartment" on the sixth floor where she lived alone.  At around 7:00 that morning the elevator operator, Frank Adams, found her body in the rear courtyard.  Whether she had jumped or fallen was unclear, however the responding doctor pronounced her death as being instantaneous.

The end of the line for Clara Court and its two flanking neighbors seemed evident in 1965 when the Episcopal Diocese of New York purchased it, the building directly behind on 112nd Street, and the corner building facing Amsterdam Avenue.  They were part of a vision to replace eight apartment houses with a modern home for the aged, designed by Philip Johnson.  The residents were evicted in anticipation of demolition.

Before that could happen, however, homeless families moved in.  But this was not a typical situation.  On November 14, 1970 The New York Times wrote "for the last three and a half month the squatters have been tending the buildings--carrying out garbage, making necessary interior repairs and fixing exterior damage.  Daily meetings of the squatters are held at 8 P.M. to determine what must be done the next day to maintain the buildings."

The diocese responded with, perhaps, unexpected kindness.  It earmarked $20,000 for boiler repairs to provide heat and hot water and a spokesperson said "there will be no legal action and no evictions.  We want those living in the building to be comfortable."

The odd shape of the plot resulted a sharp corner angle.

In the meantime, a neighborhood push was underway to save the buildings.  It was successful in preserving three of them, including Clara Court.  Today the building holds 30 cooperative units.

photographs by the author