The "Hell's Kitchen Crash Pad"--R. H. Bechaidner's 1886 452 West 50th Street

 

In September 1881 The New York Times described the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood as “one of the most miserable and crime-polluted neighborhoods in this City” and said “there is more disease, crime, squalor, and vice to the square in this part of New-York.”  A year later James D. McCabe, Jr., in his New York by Gaslight, wrote, “The city contains two classes of tenement houses.  Those of the first class are occupied by well-to-do working people; those of the second by the very poor.  The first are large, neat-looking structures, and are kept as clean as the great number of people occupying them will permit; the second are wretched abodes of misery, and often of vice and crime.”

Despite McCabe's over-simplified observations, some real estate operators were attempting to improve conditions in Hell's Kitchen.  Others, unfortunately, were taking advantage of them.  In 1884 architect R. H. Bechaidner filed plans for three identical five-story tenements at 448 to 452 West 50th Street.  The Real Estate Record & Guide listed Charles A. Buddensiek as "reputed owner."  Each was projected to cost $15,000 to construct (about $436,000 in 2023).

The Record & Guide's hesitance was based on Buddensiek's current legal problems.  His sordid reputation and shady ways of conducting business had caught up with him.  And on June 27, 1885, the journal reported, "The conviction of Buddensiek is an important thing to every man, woman and child who lives in a New York house."  Calling him "a rascal" and his tenements "man-traps," the lengthy article said in part, "The longer he built, the worse he built."

The project was taken on mid-stream by three separate developers.  Godfrey Haas took over the construction 452 West 50th Street.  Completed in 1886, like its identical neighbors it was designed in the neo-Grec style (although the entrances with their scrolled brackets and half-fluted pilasters were decidedly Renaissance Revival).  Four floors of red brick sat upon a brownstone-clad base.  Bands of brownstone connected the sills and lintels of the openings and complex, handsome mental cornices crowned the design.

While the fluted pilasters and scrolled brackets harkened to the Renaissance, the single anthemion perched on the entranceway pediment was purely Greek.

Expectedly, the apartments filled with working-class families, not all of them law-abiding citizens.  Living here in 1903 was 45-year-old Louis Pflugner, who operated a junk shop at 408 West 41st Street.  About two blocks away was the large factory of William E. Lyford's Hartford Carpet Corporation.  In September that year Lyford complained to police that "his company had been systematically robbed of wool," estimating his loss at $25,000 (about $795,000 today).

Four undercover men were put on the case.  On October 24 they watched as two of Lyford's drivers loaded wool onto two wagons, then followed them to Pflugner's shop.  The detectives waited until the wool was unloaded and when the two drivers and their helper came out of the shop, arrested them.  The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, "In the shop they found four bales of wool, weighing about 800 pounds each.  they also found, they say, bags of wool amounting in all to about $1,000 worth of property."

The New York Sun said, "When Pflugner was arrested he and two of his employees were putting the stolen wool up in bales."  Pflugner denied any guilt, but, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, could not "give any explanation."

Among the tenants in 1913 was truck driver Joseph Benson.  The 24-year-old was drunk on the job on October 20 that year.  When Policeman Dockstader ordered him to pull his wagon over, according to the New York Herald, "Benson whipped his horses and turned west in Thirty-second street."  He crashed into a bus and the automobile of John Mannes, the president of the Grand Rapids Furniture Company.  Dockstader arrested Benson, climbed onto the wagon and ordered him to drive to the police station. 

The inebriated young man was not ready to loose his freedom.  "When they turned into Sixth avenue, Benson urged the horses, which began to run."  The truck hit an elevated railroad pillar, throwing both the driver and the policeman onto the pavement.  The drunk driver was held on $500 bail awaiting his hearing.

The Hell's Kitchen neighborhood had not greatly improved by World War II.  Church, welfare and reform groups attempted to assist the residents by offering educational and recreational programs.  E. A. Gilbert, the director of the Home Recreation Library of the Boys Athletic League came up with a unique idea in December 1940.  By providing little girls the opportunity to "adopt" baby dolls and care for them, he hoped "to promote neatness and cleanliness."  A month later, the adoptive "mothers" were judged on the maternal care they had shown.

On January 30, The New York Sun reported, "Eileen Haberlack, 8 years old, who lives at 452 West Fiftieth street, was the proudest girl in her neighborhood today, for her adopted doll won the prize."  (An unplanned prize, incidentally, was given to a non-participant.  The article said, "And a prominent gentleman was Peter (Tubby) Youngsworth, 6, of 643 Tenth avenue, who tried to crash the party with his teddy bear.")

A terrifying incident occurred here that year.  Mrs. Helen Swift lived on the fourth floor.  On May 8, 1943 her 23-year-old son-in-law, Edward Clark, who lived in Queens, brought his three children, three-year-old Edward Jr., two-year-old William, and seven-month-old Thomas for a visit.  When Helen left the apartment to go shopping, Clark fell asleep.  At noon he awoke to find the building on fire.

Unable to leave the apartment because of thick, black smoke in the hallways, he yelled from a window for help.  Women on the street who had fled the building pleaded with the responding firefighters, "Save the three babies upstairs!"  An aerial ladder was raised to the window and three firefighters clambered up, each bringing down a child with Clark following behind.  Two of the children and Clark were burned and treated at a hospital.  In the meantime, the blaze which spread between the fourth and fifth floors was extinguished.

Three decades did not improve conditions.  In their 2003 book A Goodfella's Guide to New York, Henry Hill and Bryon Schreckengost described 452 West 50th Street in the 1970s saying, "This West Side residence was known as a Hell's Kitchen crash pad for some of the city's worst.  There was always someone up or something going on here.  If you needed to score some junk, buy a gun, or have someone clipped at 4 A.M. on a Tuesday, you came here."

Among the most notorious of the residents in 1975 was Patrick "Paddy" Dugan, a junkie.  He shared an apartment with Billy Beattie, a bartender at the 596 Club.  That summer Dugan murdered his closest friend, Denis Curley in front of several witnesses.  In The Westies, Inside New York's Irish Mob, T. J. English writes, "Hell's Kitchen had always been a violent place, but the idea that someone would shoot his best friend because of a barroom argument was horrifying to a lot of people.  It represented a new kind of violence, where the traditions of loyalty and friendship no longer seemed to mean much."

Street justice played out at 452 West 50th Street.  On November 17, 1975 Paddy Dugan disappeared.  English wrote, "The last anyone saw of him he was headed for his bachelor pad at 452 West 50th Street."  Later it was discovered that Dugan had been murdered in his apartment, then beheaded and his private parts severed.

The 21st century finally brought change to the 50th Street block.  The apartments in 452 West 50th Street with their modern appliances and refinished floors no longer harbor murderers or murder victims.  On the outside, however, there is little change to the building since Godfrey Haas hoped to improve living conditions in Hell's Kitchen more than 135 years ago.

photograph by the author

no permission to reuse the content of this blog has been granted to LaptrinhX.com

The Theodore Miller House - 449 West 50th Street

 

In the years following the end of the Civil War, George H. Page and his family occupied the three-story and basement house at 301 West 50th Street (renumbered 449 in 1868).  One of a pair of identical residences, the 20-foot-wide home was faced in red brick and trimmed in brownstone.  Its elliptically arched openings were the latest in domestic style.  The double-doored entrance sat below a handsome arched pediment, and an ornate bracketed cornice crowned the design.

Page was the head of George H. Page & Co., dealers in "steam warming apparatus," at 135 Mercer Street.  He sold the West 50th Street house in 1870 to Theodore Miller.

The 53-year-0ld Miller was in the brass business when the family moved in, but in 1873 changed courses, opening a furniture store at 1277 Broadway.  He and his wife Catherine, had a son, Theodore Jr., who joined his father in the new business.

It seems likely that Miller had anglicized his surname from Müller upon arriving in America.  He was a member of the German language Liederkranz, a men's singing club.  And Catherine changed the spelling of her first name, which was sometimes noted as Katharina on legal documents.

The family initially took in boarders for additional income.  In 1870 four working class men and one widow lived with the Millers.  But beginning in 1873, only the family was listed here.

Theodore Sr. died at the age of 58 on May 17, 1875.  His funeral was held in the parlor two days later.  Catherine and Theodore Jr. remained at 449 West 50th Street.  He changed his profession in 1876 to real estate agent.  It was apparently through his professional guidance that his mother's financial condition noticeably improved.

By the mid-1880's, the woman who had once had to crowd her home with boarders was dealing in real estate.  She owned and leased the house next door at 447 West 50th Street.  And on August 30, 1884, the Record & Guide reported that she had hired the architectural firm of A. Pfund & Son to erect a four-story brick store and tenement on Tenth Avenue at 48th Street.  In the late 1880's and early 1890's, Catherine was actively buying and selling real estate in Brooklyn.

By then she had left 449 West 50th Street.  She sold it to Katharina Leinbach in 1885 for $12,500, about $363,000 in 2023 terms.  The house was being operated as a boarding house by the early 1890's, home to respectable working class tenants, like James O'Connell, a worker in the city's Department of Street Cleaning.  (O'Connell earned $2 per day in 1889--around $60 in 2023.)

Living here in 1894 was David Crothers, a streetcar conductor with the Belt Line.  He was on the back of his car on the night of August 14 that year when 13-year-old Stephen Mock jumped on the platform and "ran his hand into his change pocket, securing a handful of nickels," as reported by The Evening World.  Before Crothers could react the boy jumped off, but as he did so he dropped most of the coins.  "A dozen boys were on the street in an instant scrambling for the money."

Unfortunately for Mock, also witnessing the crime was Policeman Moran.  He chased the delinquent through the trucks parked along the street, finally catching him.  The teen appeared before Judge Martin in the Court of General Sessions the following day.  There the Gerry Society (the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children), presented his record, which showed he had been previously released on charges of stealing a horse and buggy, and for burglarizing a store.  This time the judge was not so lenient.  Although his stumble off the streetcar had netted him only 55 cents, he was held on $1,500 bail for trial.

Like Crothers, most of the boarders at 449 West 40th Street were Irish-born.  Living here in  1895 was Thomas J. Doane, who was appointed an election captain that year.  Andrew J. Cooley, a motorman on the Sixth Avenue streetcar line, was a resident in 1898; and in 1909 Francis P. Hughes lived here while working as a policeman.

Another Irish policeman, James Conway, purchased the house before the outbreak of World War I.  He retired with the rank of sergeant, earning a yearly pension of $750 in 1918 (about $13,500 in 2023).  Like Catharine Miller, the widower invested in real estate and owned a house in Brooklyn at 72 Dikeman Street.  Sharing 449 West 50th Street with him was his son, Thomas J. Conway.

James Conway died in 1921.  He was generous in his will, giving donations to three Hell's Kitchen churches--the Roman Catholic Church of St. Ambrose, the Church of the Sacred Heart, and the Church of the Assumption--and bequeathing $1,000 to his brother Patrick.  Thomas received the bulk of the estate, including the Brooklyn house.  

James Conway had apparently had a warm relationship with his Brooklyn tenant, Mary Ann Donegan.  He left her $400, "together with my sewing machine."  His will also stipulated, "I direct that as long as said Mary Ann Donegan shall remain a tenant of my real property at 72 Dikeman Street...her rent shall be no greater than Ten ($10.) Dollars a month."

Thomas Conway's relationship with Donegan was not so warm.  He took his inherited tenant to court to evict her.  He explained that his expenses greatly outweighed the $120 per year rent she was paying.  Mary Ann Donegan, who had witnessed the James Conway's will, protested that it made her a life tenant.  The judge agreed with Conway and Mary Ann, with her sewing machine, was soon looking for a new place to live.

A sign for rented rooms is attached to the facade in 1941.  The top floor molded lintels survived at the time.  image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The Hell's Kitchen neighborhood was blighted with poverty in the 1920's.  Renting a rooms at 449 West 50th Street in 1927 were Harry Bakuyian, his wife Aileen, and their six-year-old son, Edward.  When Harry was hospitalized for a long term, Aileen was forced to find work, leaving little Eddy to his own devices.  He worked out a scheme by which to become rich.

Early in 1928, Patrolman John Creehan came across the boy and his dog Boozey performing at the Shubert Alley Bus Terminal behind the Hotel Astor.  Eddy "had neither coat nor hat and was waring a pair of trousers which admitted the winter blasts at several places," wrote The Pawling Chronicle.  Creehan stopped the show and prepared to take the boy and his dog to the station house.

Eddy pleaded his case:

Now see here, mister.  I'm six years old and I've got a living to make.  This here dog of mine is an expert dog.  We give shows all over town.  Boozey, say "how-do-you do" to the cop.

The dog, who had a piece of rope attached to his collar, sat up on his haunches and barked.  Passengers waiting for their busses insisted that they had gotten their dime's or quarter's worth of a show, but Creehan was more concerned that the boy was so poorly clothed in the winter weather.  He again started off to the station.

Eddy cried, "Have a heart, won't you, mister?  I can't make no money in a police station.  My father's sick in the hospital and my mother has to go out to work, so I got to take care of myself, see?  We got to get a start this way.  Boozey and me are going to be on the stage some day."

Despite their performing a repertoire of canine tricks for the policeman, the boy and dog were taken to the back room of the station house.  When his mother arrived, she confirmed his story about her having to work and his father's being hospitalized.  The Pawling Chronicle reported she told the officers that "since he had found Boozey and had taught the dog tricks, she had spent a great deal of her time retrieving them both from the various police stations."  Both inmates were released to the custody of Mrs. Bakulian.

 

The house contains two duplex apartments today.  It and its twin next door have been shorn of their molded lintels, and yet are otherwise mostly intact.

photographs by the author

no permission to reuse the content of this blog has been granted to LaptrinhX.com

The Clarice -- No. 739 Ninth Avenue

Striker added the name CLARICE in a panel below the cornice.

Elsworth L. Striker came from an impressive background.  An ancestor, Jacobus Van Strycker had arrived in New Amsterdam in 1651.  In the decades before the Revolution, Jacob Stryker was a magistrate in the Court of New Amsterdam.  Through various marriages the Striker family would become connected with New York’s preeminent families, the Motts, Hoppers and Van Rensselaers among them.

John Hopper “the elder” acquired an estate in 1667, known as Hopper Farm.  It comprised 80 acres and spread from about Sixth Avenue to the Hudson River, and from approximately 48^th to 55^th Streets.  He built a house on the land for each of his sons.  His own house, Rosevale, sat near what is now 53^rd Street.  When James Striker married Mary Hopper, they moved into the house built in 1752 for John Hopper, Jr.

Part of John Hopper’s land was relegated to a family burial ground, at what would become the southwest corner of Ninth Avenue and 50^th Street.  When Hopper died in 1778, his will made his intentions for the graveyard clear.  It instructed that each descendant who took possession would preserve it “for the above-mentioned laudable purpose of burying.”  Each subsequent owner was directed to maintain “all that burying ground now in fence, consisting of 48 feet square parcel of said lot of land and commonly called the ‘family burying ground,’ with free ingress, egress, and regress into, on, and from the same, to bury the dead.”

The John Hopper house passed on to General Garrit Hopper Stryker, who died in 1869.  The land was passed to his son Ambrose Kingsland Striker (who continued to live in the old Hopper house).  The New York Times described the anachronistic cemetery on May 18, 1879.  The article explained that the elevated train station at Ninth Avenue and 50^th Street was called the “Grave-yard Station” because of the Hopper burial ground.  The Hopper-Striker land was now part of the depressed and dangerous Hell's Kitchen neighborhood.

By now only two sides of the cemetery's six-foot high stone wall remained.  The other sides of the graveyard were enclosed by the blank wall of a store on one side, and on the other by “a wooden tenement-house, from which a door opens upon it, and to which it makes a convenient front yard.”  The indigent Hell’s Kitchen residents apparently cared little about the sanctity of the graveyard.

“Near this door some of the mounds have been leveled, and a patch of ground a few feet square has been dug up and raked over so as to form a bit of a garden.  Dirty children tumble and play over the other graves, and among the tottering stones, and, above all, lines of newly-washed garments are blown about in the wind.  No tender recollections appear to cling to the spot, and its appearance is pathetic.”

When Ambrose Striker died a bachelor at the age of 50 in 1883, The Sun mentioned “The residence is said to be the oldest in the city…Old paintings adorn the walls of the mansion, and the collections include animals and minerals.”

Now this portion of the old Hopper Farm passed to Elsworth L. Striker.  The property once described as containing a garden “noted for its roses, its massive box hedges, its beautiful parterres laid in irregular shapes, its fruits and nuts,” was filled with dilapidated wooden houses and warren-like buildings.

Elsworth Striker lost no time in developing his inherited property.  Almost immediately he began erecting tenement buildings at a dizzying rate.  For example, on April 9, 1887 the Record & Guide announced that George B. Pelham was busy designing “forty-two brick and stone tenements and four flats” for Striker.  But two years before that project was underway, Elsworth had dealt with a problem—the family burial ground.

The graveyard as it appeared a year before its removal.  The New York of  Yesterday, 1908 (copyright expired)

The New York Times made an interesting observation.  “The lower side of the plot was reserved for the burial of the negro slaves of the family, and the last interment with its walls was that of a body of the last of these slaves, an old negro aunty who died some 30 years ago.”

Whether Elsworth L. Striker was aware of the covenants of John Hopper’s will or not is unclear.  Nevertheless in April 1885 he ordered all the graves exhumed and the remains moved to Woodlawn Cemetery.  Within a month the architectural firm of A. B. Ogden & Son filed plans for a “five-story brick store and tenement” to cost $35,000 (about $890,000 in 2016).

Elsworth's rapid development of his property resulted in improved housing for the destitute Hell’s Kitchen residents, as dilapidated wooden buildings made way for modern tenements.  (Unfortunately, so did a colonial graveyard and an 18^th century country mansion.)  The completed structure on the Hopper burial ground site was an eclectic mixture of styles—neo-Grec, Eastlake, and a generous splash of Queen Anne.  The building called the Clarice took three addresses.  Residents of the apartments upstairs entered through 400 West 50^th Street; the corner store space was a saloon, numbered 739 Ninth Avenue; and a second, smaller grocery store was at No. 737.

A. B. Ogden & Sons designed the exterior chimney backs, which appear to cascade down the facade, as an important part of the design.

Striker’s tenants were almost exclusively Irish immigrants.  While some were hard-working, others were involved in the many forms of crime for which the neighborhood was so notorious.

But before long Elsworth L. Striker would have other things to worry about than the lifestyles of his tenants.  In March 1890 the Hopper family, enraged and indigent over the destruction of the cemetery, sued Striker, “believing that they held the title to the old burying ground,” according to The New York Times.  The family claimed ownership of the apartment building and filed for “ejectment against Mr. Striker and his tenants.”  The newspaper valued the property at between $75,000 and $100,000.

It may have been the legal problems, or simply that Striker had overextended himself with his extensive building projects; but for whatever reason he lost the building in foreclosure on April 23 that year.  The successful bidder paid the bargain price of $68,875.

Residents passed through an attractive stone entrance on West 50th Street.  Note the faces peeking through the foliate capitals.

In the meantime, police paid attention to the goings-on at 400 West 50^th Street.  On December 1, 1889 Policeman Riley followed two teens, William Finnegan and Daniel Donohue, into the cellar.  There he caught them with about $200 worth of stolen electrical goods “packed and ready for removal,” according to The New York Times.  The boys, 18 and 19 years old respectively, were held at a staggering $1,000 bail.

Other residents found themselves behind bars throughout the next few years.   In September 1894 43-year old Charles Haldane, who listed himself as a lawyer, was arrested for larceny of trust funds; and in 1899 Michael T. Murphy, a streetcar conductor, was arrested for receiving 25 cases of stolen liquor.

In the meantime the saloon on the corner went through a succession of owners—all Irish.  Originally owned by Peter Doolan, who also lived upstairs, it was operated by John McCabe in 1898.  By 1914 the liquor license was held by Mary A. Kiernan, and in 1918 and 1919 by Jennie E. O’Keeff.  Because Prohibition began that year, she would be the last saloon owner at 739 Ninth Avenue for some time.

While the Irish saloon operated next door, Germans Koch & Feldscher ran the grocery store.  Frederick Feldscher was still at 737 Ninth Avenue in 1900 when he received approval to erect a sidewalk fruit stand in front of the store.

The apartments continued to be home to Irish-named residents into the 20^th century.  In 1901 Edward Murray’s name was published by the city when he was arrears on personal taxes.  Timothy Rooney lived here in 1905 when he was hired as a dock laborer, and Cornelius O’Leary earned his living in 1907 as an electric taxicab driver for the New York Transportation Company.

O’Leary had to appear before Judge Wahle in night court on October 19 that year after being arrested for driving his taxi at 20 miles per hour.  The Sun reported that he told the magistrate he did not believe he was driving that fast.  In response, Wahle began reading from a letter he had received from another taxi driver.  In part it said “I personally know fifty chauffeurs, and every one of them is a liar and brags about it.”

The New York Times reported “O’Leary did not protest his innocence, and Magistrate Wahle let him off with a $5 fine, the usual tax in such cases being $10.”

Other residents were Morris Mahoney who was seriously injured when a freight car crashed into a passenger train in Brooklyn on March 7, 1913; and retired policeman John H. Conran.  Born in County Kildare, Ireland, Conran died in his apartment here in July 1919.

The following year George Walz found himself in trouble with the law.  He was working as a truck driver for Louis Mouquin, Jr., who ran several restaurants in the city.   Prohibition did not quench his patrons’ thirst for alcohol, and when the threat first loomed, Mouquin had amassed an enormous stockpile of liquor and wine. 

On May 8, 1920 George Walz was stopped while driving his employer to his summer estate.  The following day the New-York Tribune reported “To Louis Mouquin jr…goes the distinction of being the first citizen to be arrested for transporting liquor from his city home to his country residence.”  When Walz was pulled over police found 105 cases of vermouth in the truck.  Both men were arrested for Prohibition violations.

By the midst of the Great Depression the complexion of the neighborhood, although still gritty, had noticeably changed.  In 1933 Arnold Lindstrom opened his ladies’ accessories shop in the former grocery store at 737.  With Prohibition ended that same year, 739 was quickly reestablished as a bar.  Once the watering hole of Irish laborers, it now served a mixed crowd.

On June 15, 1936 The New York Times reported “After a fight in a bar and grill at 739 Ninth Avenue, at the corner of Fiftieth Street, three Arabs were treated for stab wounds early this morning…Three other Arabs, who were with the injured men when the fight started with other customers, were not hurt.”

In 1951 737 became home to the Garden Delicatessen.  But traces of the old Hell’s Kitchen still remained.  On New Year’s Day 1957 40-year old Clarice resident Thomas Walsh and his “long-time partner” John Harty were arrested at 4:10 in the morning attempting to “roll” a sleeping man on the subway.  Police said their criminal records stretched back decades and both had served a four-month prison sentence for the same offense on New Year’s Day 1953.

Perhaps the greatest evidence of change in Hell’s Kitchen here occurred in 2011 when the space once home to Peter Doolan’s rough Irish saloon became Flaming Saddles—a cowboy-themed gay bar.     Ironically, 737 is now home to an Irish bar with a fake pub entrance replacing the former storefront.

The Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, once dangerous, impoverished and crime-ridden, is now trendy.

Above street level little has changed to Elsworth L. Striker’s 1885 tenement.  The Ninth Avenue storefronts have long ago been obliterated; however much remains of the original street level design on 50^th Street.  And no one living in the building or grabbing a slice of pizza downstairs can imagine that the building caused such immense trouble when it replaced a colonial cemetery.

photographs by the author