The Lost St. Nicholas Skating Rink - 69 West 66th Street

photo via Office of Metropolitan History

On July 13, 1895 the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide reported that the newly-formed St. Nicholas Skating and Ice Company had "just concluded the purchase of a site for a model ice skating rink on the north side of West 66th street, between Columbus avenue and Central Park West."  It was an exciting development for New Yorkers, since the technology necessary for creating such a massive ice sheet was new.

The price for each of the nine building plots, stretching 225 feet along West 66th Street and 100 feet deep, was about $29,000.  The Record & Guide reported that architects Ernest Flagg and Walter B. Chambers had placed the cost of construction of the "ice-skating rink and club-house" at $130,000; bringing the total outlay to more than $12 million in today's dollars.

The Record & Guide described the internal layout above the rink.  The second floor would hold a viewing gallery and "there will also be on this floor private rooms for ladies, a buffet and toilet rooms."  The third floor was "to be for the men of the club," and here were the locker rooms, dressing rooms and accommodations for visiting hockey teams.  A private gallery on this level was to look down upon the rink.  (As it turned out, the third floor never materialized.)

Calling it "New York's Palais de Glace," the New York Herald reported on the completed structure on November 8, 1896.  The writer deemed the building a "large, handsome structure."  

"The "place of rendezvous," said the article, included "lounging rooms, dressing rooms, buffets, music, all modeled on the best Parisian plan...There are also ample storage for bicycles and cloak rooms for the public...The ice is surrounded by a broad promenade.  On one end is a great lounging room, shut off from the ice by plate glass.  This apartment is for the use of the public.  A great fireplace, on which logs will burn brightly, occupies one end of the room, and it is from this room that spectators will get the best and most comfortable view of the gay scenes on the ice."

On the opposite end were the private rooms of the St. Nicholas Skating Club members.  Among those who paid the annual $25 dues were "the Astors, Millses, Livingstons, Hewitts, Hoyts, Baileys, Mrs. Ladenburg, Whitneys, Remsens, Morgans, Belmonts, Hitchcocks, Kernochans...In fact, the list is just like that of the Patriarchs [Ball], or opera or Horse Show boxes," said the New York Herald.  So that social royalty need not share the ice with more pedestrian skaters, the rink was closed to the public on Sundays and Mondays and only members were admitted.

A uniformed attendant helps a woman with her skates while fashionably-dressed skaters glide by.  Upstairs women enjoy the ladies' buffet room.  The New York Herald, November 8, 1896 (copyright expired)

The other skaters paid "a small fee" for admission, and had access to most of the amenities of the St. Nicholas Skating Rink, including a tea room, smoking room, and reading room.  A band played during the mornings and evening sessions.  The New York Herald lamented that the St. Nicholas Skating Rink "probably will not be as lively and interesting" as a similar rink in Paris, "for we take our pleasures in a little more subdued, if not sadder, fashion than the French."  But, nevertheless, "the beauty, the novelty of the scene, is certain to be appreciated by everyone who finds his way within."

Leslie's Weekly, March 15, 1896 (copyright expired)

A branch of the St. Nicholas Skating Club was its hockey team, composed of well-to-do gentlemen with names like Astor, Brokaw and Vanderbilt.  Hockey, as The New York Times pointed out, had "come to be quite the vogue" and the men held their own among other teams.  In its March 1898 issue the New York Athletic Club Journal noted that a tight race for the Hockey League championship was between the New York Athletic Club, the St. Nicholas Skating Club and the Hockey Club.

Leslie's Weekly noted that the "indoor game" was played on "artificial ice."  April 1896 (copyright expired)

As it turned out, the St. Nicholas Skating Club took the championship that year.

Among the casually-posed champions in 1898 was the massively wealthy Irving Brokaw, wearing number 3. The Illustrated American, February 12, 1898 

The excellence of the skating surface prompted the National Amateur Skating Association to hold is annual contest for the figure skating championship here.  Irving Brokaw was not only a splendid hockey player, but a figure skater as well.  As the 1899 contest neared, newspapers noted that he would not participate this year.  "Brokaw is this season in Europe to compete in the world's championship at Vienna."

The rink as it appeared in 1898.  photo by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

As the decades passed, the building would be reworked again and again.  The first major renovation came in October 1904 when architects Tracy & Swartwout designed new iron staircases, a new gallery, skylight, new fireproof dressing rooms and iron columns and beams.

Architect George A. Pearse's plans for remodeling in February 1911 used a puzzling description, calling the building a "brick garage and skating rink."  (There is no evidence that there was ever a garage in the building.) Other work in 1913, 1914 and 1915 resulted in new bleachers, repaired masonry and a new marquis.

In 1915 a fad swept New York--dancing on ice.  On November 21 The Sun reported "Fashion has set the seal of approval on the difficult art and the fox trotters are taking to the rinks."

Couples dance on blades at the St. Nicholas Rink.  The top couple is performing "The Hesitation."  The Sun, November 21, 1915 (copyright expired)

The following year, on October 22, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported "Ice skaters are indulging in their favorite recreation with more enthusiasm and in greater numbers this season than ever before in New York's history."  The article made note of the St. Nicholas Skating Rink's "Marimba Band and its corps of expert exhibition skaters." 

The Marimba Band was new--part of yet another renovation.  In 1915 a $20,000 improvement resulted in "enlarged and redecorated lounging, locker and club rooms" and new quarters for the visiting hockey teams.  Another significant change came the following year; one that had nothing to do with the structure, but with its policies.  According to The Evening World on October 7, 1916, "There will be no private sessions this season."  The ultra-wealthy had moved on.

By 1916 the rink was less ornate; however the columns and their capitals imitated ice and the railings and benches mimicked the rustic details of the natural Central Park skating area.  from the collection of the New-York Historical Society.

The days of skaters and hockey games came to an end in October 1918 when the rink was leased for ten years to The Palace Carnival.  The Record & Guide reported that the group "expect to make alterations costing $100,000 to convert the structure into a dancing establishment."

The Evening World, January 18, 1919 (copyright expired)

The Dancing Carnival would remain for years, a popular destination for footloose couples.  One group of young people enjoyed a night here on March 10, 1921; but a light-hearted bet landed one of them in jail.

Elsie Fisher was 22-years-old and worked as a stenographer downtown.  She and her friends left at around 11:00 that night, but their suspicious movements caught the attention of a cop.  The New York Sun reported "Patrolman William Stalba...followed a crowd that came out of the St. Nicholas skating rink...and found the object of the crowd's pursuit was a slender young man who looked innocent enough."

Intent on discovering why the group was so interested in the fellow, Stalba pushed through the group, until "the policeman's keen eye spied the end of a blonde curl sticking out from under the soft hat.  He took the curl, which was growing on a girl's head, to the Wet Sixty-Eighth street station, where after much argument, the curl's owner admitted she was Elsie Fisher."

Elsie had taken a bet that she could walk a mile in men's attire without being detected.  Cross-dressing in 1921 was a crime and Elsie was held at the West 13th Street station overnight.  The next morning she appeared in court, "dressed in the garb of her sex, which friends had brought her."  The judge listened to her story, gave her a suspended sentence, and warned her to stop "trying to paint the lily white."  The Sun reported "She told him she would."

Another group got in trouble eighteen years later.  The New York Sun reported on January 7, 1929 that 33 young women had been arrested in the "St. Nicholas dance hall" the previous Saturday night.  "They were arraigned as wayward minors yesterday before Magistrate Bushel in the Women's Court."

The Great Depression resulted in the Corn Exchange Bank Trust Company's taking possession of the building.  Calling it "The Crystal Palace, a dancing pavilion," The Sun reported on its sale in March 1934 to Jean Sunnenfeld for $340,000, a significant $6.38 million today.  It was the end of dancing in the old St. Nicholas building.

The structure was renovated as a meeting space, and sports and performing arts venue, now known as the Royal Windsor Hall.  On April 29, 1938 the New York Post announced "More than fifty New York University students will take part in 'That's Life,' the annual varsity show, which will be presented to night at the Royal Windsor."    Less light-hearted were the massive union meetings and rallies held here for years.  On May 26, 1940, for instance, The New York Times reported on the New York State Convention of the Communist Party here.

Wrestlers Hans K. and H. Olson battled it out in 1936.  photograph by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

But it was professional boxing and wrestling, for which the hall was best known to most New Yorkers.  A raised ring was moved into the center of the hall for bouts.  Over the years newspapers would report on the fights of greats like Kid Chocalate, Rocky Graziano, Floyd Patterson (who fought his first professional match here in 1952) and Cassius Clay (who later took the name Muhammad Ali).  Tuesday night matches were aired on television to fans across the country.

When the last boxing match was held on May 28, 1962, more than 30,000 bouts had reportedly played out here.  The old St. Nicholas Skating Rink building limped along until the 1980's when it was demolished for the expansion of the ABC TV offices.

The rink sat just to the east of the corner.  image via Google Earth

The Church of the Good Shepherd -- No. 152 West 66th Street

In 1887 development of the Upper West Side was picking up speed after the Panic of 1873 had brought construction nearly to a standstill.  Now, lured by improved transportation, new sewer lines, and street paving, developers rapidly filled blocks with rows of upscale and middle-class homes.

But not all of the Upper West Side was so comfortable.  The neighborhood that somehow acquired the nickname San Juan Hill stretched roughly from 59^th Street to 65^th, and from Amsterdam Avenue to 11^th Avenue. While New York’s other grittiest neighborhoods--Hell’s Kitchen immediately to the south, Mulberry Bend and Five Points—were made up of a mix of ethnicities, San Juan Hill’s residents were almost exclusively black.    It was a district of gang violence, bloodshed, poverty and hopelessness.

With development came the need for stores, schools and churches.   The West Presbyterian Church on 42^nd Street took a page from its Episcopalian and Roman Catholic counterparts and laid plans for a mission church. 

On January 6, 1884 a meeting was held in the church, led by its well-known pastor the Rev. Dr. John R. Paxton.  Frank Leslie’s Sunday Magazine described it as “a meeting in the interest of church extension in this city.”  The magazine noted that “The need of new churches on the east and west sides…was spoken of in detail.”

For the West Side the church chose the plot of land at No. 152 West 66^th Street; on the eastern fringe of San Juan Hill.  And for its architect it selected J. C. Cady & Company.  Josiah Cleaveland Cady, who was known professionally as J. Cleaveland Cady, designed a wide variety of structures—from hotels and libraries to churches and synagogues.  In 1887 he put pencil to paper for the design of what would become the Church of the Good Shepherd.

It would be another six years before the church became a reality.  On February 4, 1893 The Evening World reported “The new Church of the Good Shepherd, on Sixty-sixth street, west of the Boulevard, will be dedicated at 11 o’clock to-morrow morning.”  It added “The church is a branch of Dr. Paxton’s West Presbyterian Church on Forty-second street.”

Costing $90,000 (in the neighborhood of $2.5 million today), it was capable of seating 750 worshipers.  Cady had produced a charming Italian Romanesque structure of light-colored brick.  The New-York Tribune called it “characteristic of many old Italian churches.”  Indeed, it shared many elements of country churches of the Southern Sicilian Romanesque style.

Within its first years the mission church seems to have done what it was intended to do—serve the underprivileged residents of San Juan Hill.  But that success came with a cost.  On May 16, 1900 the annual meeting of the congregation of the West Presbyterian Church was held.  Reports were read concerning the activities of the church’s various organizations.

The New-York Tribune reported on the following morning that “Mrs. Hannah’s report of the work in the Church of the Good Shepherd, a mission of the West Presbyterian Church was very gratifying.”  But, it admitted, in a not-so-Christian response to African American worshipers, many congregants had left.  “In reading a report of the pastor of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Dr. Evans said that the flood of colored population in the neighborhood of the church caused a falling off, and that 129 names had been stricken from the rolls.  Still, the church was prosperous.”

In 1926 pastor Rev. Dr. F. R. Clee was called upon to lead an unusual funeral service.  William Henry Johnson had died of pneumonia at the age of 84 in Bellevue Hospital.  His funeral was held at the Campbell’s Funeral Church nearby at 66^th Street and Broadway, on April 28.

Better known as “Zip—What Is It?,” he was called by The New York Times “the famous freak, one of the first to be exhibited by P. T. Barnum back in the ‘60s.”  The newspaper’s account of the funeral was less reverential than sarcastic.

“Circus sideshow folk, giants, fat girls, sword swallowers, tattooed men and rubber-neck men filled the chapel, and their faces showed their sorrow.”  The article listed performers who had come from as far away as Chicago. “Then there was Alfonso, the human ostrich, who ate glass and other things for thirty-five years alongside of Zip at the sideshows of the circus and at Coney Island…Other circus freaks who attended were Lillian Maloney, the Albino girl; Carrie Holt, fat girl; Gus Birchman, the iron claw man; Frank Graef, tattooed man; Ajax, sword swallower; Joe Kramer, the rubber neck man, and Maharajah, the ‘This way, laydees and gentl-el-men’ lecturer of the Seaside circus sideshow of Coney Island, where Zip spent his Summers.”

Johnson’s funeral was, despite the description, conducted with dignity.  Organist and tenor Alexander Blander sang “Lead Kindly Light” and “Going Home,” from Anton Dvorak’s New World Symphony.

On November 13, 1932 the 45^th anniversary of the Church of the Good Shepherd was celebrated.  In his sermon that morning, the Rev. William F. Wefer questioned whether things had really changed much in nearly half a century.

“A striking sameness may be noticed in the years 1887 and 1932.  About forty-five years ago we had sweeping Democratic victories just as we had this past week.  Charges of political corruption were hurled about then.

“The problems of that day were much the same as our own.  Fashions may change, but there is still the clamor over women’s dress.  Today we have gangsters, then we had gangs.  Today we have speakeasies, then we had ‘blind pigs.’  The ‘by-cycle-scorchers’ have given way to the reckless automobile drivers.”

Certainly one thing that had not changed was San Juan Hill.  The 1940 census indicated that the neighborhood was still exclusively black.  Residents still struggled and families were confronted with the problems of violence, gangs and crime.

Twelve-year old Martha Punt was one of the local girls who tried to better herself.  She regularly attended Sunday School at the Church of the Good Shepherd.  Martha lived with her mother, Elizabeth James, who was separated from her second husband.  The girl tried her best to survive in the squalid neighborhood.  In December 1943 a 63-year old street cleaner was accused of “trying to impair the child’s morals,” according to The New York Times.  The charge was dismissed on December 19.

Martha Punt would never make it to her teen years.

A month later, on the morning of January 20, 1943, her brutally battered body was found in the “poorly furnished” fourth floor apartment of two kitchen workers, at No. 513 West 59^th Street.  She had been beaten about the head with a claw hammer and her throat cut.

The tragedy brought together at least some of the locals.   Three days later The New York Times reported “Martha Punt will not be buried in potter’s field, for the people of San Juan Hill yesterday were able to raise $138 to give the slain 12-year old schoolgirl a fitting funeral service and burial.

“Even strangers strolled into Abe Sable’s bar and grill at 2 Amsterdam Avenue to deposit dollar bills and coins in a beer container to help the family of the girl, who was brutally beaten to death in an apartment at 513 West Fifty-ninth Street Wednesday morning.”

The pastor of Good Shepherd, the Rev. Charles E. Souter, officiated at Martha’s funeral.

By now the name of the church had become Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church.  When Faith Chapel, another of West Presbyterian Church’s missions, gave up its building at No. 423 West 46^th Street, the two congregations merged.

Around 1953 the Comic Opera Guild began giving presentations at Good Shepherd.  It was the beginning of a tradition of musical concerts and plays here.   But both concerts and religious services nearly came to an end when Robert Moses laid plans for his ambitious Lincoln Center project. 

Moses had been approached by Fordham University and the New York Philharmonic which were seeking venues in Mid-Manhattan.  His solution was to eradicate a slum and replace it with a fine arts complex.  He faced opposition by some groups—including the Lincoln Square Chamber of Commerce and the Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church.

On May 9, 1957 400 people attended at rally at the church to protest the redevelopment project.  While the envisioned Lincoln Center would replace urban blight; it would also put more than 40,000 residents on the street.

The local groups were defeated and the city began demolition of 16.3 acres of buildings—all except the Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church.  The stubborn little building managed to hold out as everything around it was bulldozed to rubble.

The church continues its role as a performance center—in the 1990s productions by the Seventh Sign Theater Company were staged here.  Ever changing with the neighborhood, it became home as well to the Korean Central Church and the Catholic Apostolic Parroquia del Espirit Santo y de Nuestra Senora de la Caridad.   The three Sunday services are performed--one each in English, Korean and Spanish.

The church is dwarfed by the 1980s structures that surround it.

The last vestige of San Juan Hill in the immediate Lincoln Center area, J. Cleaveland Cady’s remarkable Italian Romanesque mission church is a miraculous and stunning survivor.

photographs taken by the author

The 1901 Durland's Riding Academy 7 West 66th Street

The riding ring was in the then-main section (at left).   Little architectural detailing remains to hint at its former grandeur.  photo by Alice Lum

In the second half of the 19th century Central Park was, as it is now, a bucolic escape for New Yorkers.  Carriage rides along the drives, strolls through the Rambles and light refreshments in the pavilions made the Park a popular destination.  For others, the bridle paths provided an afternoon of horse riding away from the routine of everyday life.

To accommodate these day-trip equestrians, Riding Stables and Riding Academies cropped up, most of them along the periphery of the Park’s western edge.  Among the most elegant was Durland’s Riding Academy on Columbus Circle.  Here, as their mounts were readied, ladies waited in well-appointed rooms with dainty furniture, and men lounged on leather-tufted club chairs beneath handsome brass chandeliers. 

In 1900 the old Durland's Riding Academy on Columbus Circle was deemed "unsafe." Note the stone horse trough with the sculptured horse on top.-- photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

But at the turn of the century, 13 years after opening, the building was deemed unsafe.  Durland’s Riding Academy laid plans for a new, even more impressive structure.  In 1895 the Academy had already considered a new building and bought land on Central Park West between 66^th and 67^th Streets and began work on an impressive complex that would stretch 150 feet along Central Park West.  But trouble ensued.  “Work was started, but little progress had been made when foreclosure proceedings were commenced and the property was bought by …the American Loan and Deposit Co.,” reported the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide.

By now a seven-story apartment house was being build on the Central Park frontage, but the real estate directly behind it was still available.  On January 6, 1900, the Record and Guide reported “Plans were filed this week by Henry F. Kilburn for a 2 and 5-story riding academy and stable to be built on the north side of 66^th st., 100 feet west of Central Park West and running through to 67^th st.”

The estimated cost of the ambitious complex was $200,000—more than $5 million today.  The scope of the project was such that the Record & Guide noted “It is reported that the building of the academy will result in opening an entrance to the park at 66^th st.”

The riding ring was housed in the central section behind soaring three-story tall windows -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

The new Academy building was opened in March 1901.  Kilburn’s brick and stone complex was impressive, despite tepid architectural reviews.  The central pavilion, slightly lower than the flanking sections, housed an enormous riding ring under a great span of roof supported on giant trusses.  Three-story-tall arched windows flooded the ring with sunlight on clear days.  Viewing galleries accommodated 600 spectators and a separate musicians’ gallery could hold an entire 40-piece orchestra.  This was necessary for Durland’s popular afternoon “music rides.”

There were elegant club rooms for the Riding Club, formed in 1881, which listing among its members some of New York City’s wealthiest citizens. The group had changed its name in 1885 from the somewhat snootier “the Gentlemen’s Riding Club.”  There was also leased space for boarding private horses and carriages.  And, of course, saddle horses could be hired for an afternoon in the Park.  William Durland also sold horses; either as a side business or because the animals had passed their prime.  On January 12, 1902 he advertised in The Sun for “Saddle Horses for Sale—Conformation, Action, Style.”

Equestrians gather outside the newly-completed structure -- photo by Irving Underhill from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UP1GIJJEEA&SMLS=1&RW=1366&RH=579

The Christmas ride, a long-standing annual tradition, was continued in its new headquarters.  But in December 1902 Durland instituted a new twist—the lavish spectacle of riding actors and actresses in an equestrian show was enlivened by a variation of pony polo.

The Sun reported on December 31, “Santa Claus brought a new game to town last night and it furnished sport and excitement to the crowded house at the fifteenth annual Christmas ride of the Durland Riding Academy.  It was pushball, played on pony-back by eight nimble youths.” 

In addition to the game, the newspaper described a slight hitch in the spectacular production .  “An evolution ride to music, in which seventy women and men were the actors, opened the evening’s show.  It was commanded by Charles T. Krauss and at the end the equestriennes in the class were presented with souvenirs by a Santa Claus, who came straight from Toyland on a float representing a Nuremberg cottage.  His horses bore jingling bells and were harnessed in white fur.  Santa Claus wore a red coat which had the effect on the horses of a red rag to a bull, so it was all the women could do to get their nags close enough to old St. Nick to enable them to take the gifts from his hands.  But the act was a great success and a good starter for the night’s amusements.”

Another annual event held at Durland’s was the Spring Horse Show.  A benefit affair, it was patronized by Manhattan’s elite.  In 1918 the show was to benefit the American Red Star Animal Relief and among those taking boxes were Mrs. Orme Wilson (daughter of Caroline Astor), Mrs. Frederick W. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Morton F. Plant, Mrs. Edward S. Harkness, Cornelius K. G. Billings and Clarence H. Mackay.

On March 30, 1925 Durland’s Riding Academy hosted a celebrity—Tony, the horse of Western movie star Tom Mix.  “Rare is the individual who receives such immediate and wholehearted attention upon his arrival in New York as did Tony when he came into Pennsylvania Station yesterday afternoon from his home in California,” reported The New York Times the following day.  “Followed by throngs of his admirers Tony crossed the floor to the taxi entrance and took a ten-ton taxi-van up to his lodgings in Durand’s [sic] Riding Academy, on Sixty-sixth Street.”

Although William Durland retired two years after Tony spent the night; Durland’s Academy continued.  The Riding Club disbanded in 1936, causing The New York Times to sigh “Old-timers of the boots and saddle era of a generation ago paused a bit wistfully yesterday at the doors of the Riding Club in West Sixty-sixth Street to watch an occasional horseman emerge for a canter in Central Park…They had just been notified that the club, on whose roster once were such names as J. Pierpont Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, August Belmont, John Jacob Astor, Thomas Fortune Ryan and several of the Vanderbilts, would close on May 1.”

But another club, the Riding and Polo Club, continued.  In reporting on the club’s two-day horse show on December 30, 1936 The New York Times noted the large attendance “in the arena of that organization at 7 West Sixty-sixth Street before a crowd of enthusiasts that packed the galleries and the reserved balconies.”

Interestingly, the riding ring was the scene not only of horse shows; but at times it hosted the annual New York Hound Show.  On Friday, January 31, 1941 “this colorful canine affair,” as described by The New York Times, was held here.  A total of 269 dogs competed for ribbons that year. 

But the days of Durland’s imposing equestrian complex were drawing quickly to a close.   As The New York Times had noted a few years earlier, the last link had already been broken “between a brilliant sporting era of a half-century ago and the new automotive age.”

In 1949, somewhat surprisingly, the American Broadcasting Company purchased the building and converted it to television studio space.  From here live shows were broadcast to the living rooms of viewers nationwide.  Among the most memorable and historic was the split-screen live Presidential Debate between Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice-President Richard M. Nixon on October 13, 1960.

The set in the New York studio was carefully replicated and shipped to Los Angeles, where Nixon would speak.  John Kennedy debated the Vice President from the ABC studio on 66^th Street.  The first such televised event, the Kennedy-Nixon debate broke ground in political campaigning and went down in history as one of the major factors in Nixon’s loss.

The 1960s were years of unrest, protest and civil disobedience and these all came knocking on the door of the American Broadcasting Company on June 5, 1961.  Students were outraged by a Paramount theater in Austin, Texas that refused to abolish its policy of racial segregation.  Leonard Goldenson, president of the American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres, Inc., operated from his office in the former Durland Academy.

Four students entered Goldenson’s outer office that June morning demanding that he order the Austin theater to reform its policy.  “When he did not, they decided to spend the night in his reception room,” reported The New York Times.  “There was nothing that [he] could do about removing them, short of having them arrested.  This he refused to do, and so from 10:15 A.M., when they entered the American Broadcasting Company offices at 7 West Sixty-sixth Street, they sat quietly but determinedly on a sofa reading books.”

The sit-in, a favorite means of non-violent protest at the time, posed a problem for ABC and its affiliated Paramount company.  “They were quiet and orderly, and there was never any need for the police and detectives on hand to reprimand them,” reported the newspaper.  Having the students physically removed would result in bad press and the appearance of bullying.  Instead the firm simply made things as uncomfortable as possible.  “The four inside the building were never permitted to telephone their parents, nor were newsmen and television reporters permitted to interview them until 7:45 P.M.”

In the meantime, a group formed outside, “all of them white and most members of the Young People’s Socialist League,” which demonstrated by walking in circles and carrying placards that read “The Paramount Issue is Democracy” and “Movies May be Make-Believe, But Paramount Segregation Is a Real Thing.”

The demonstrators never did see Goldenson, whose company owned the Paramount theaters as well as ABC-TV.  An official tried to explain that “all of the company’s theatres, including those located in the South, are and have always been operated on an autonomous basis by local subsidiaries” and individual theater policies could not be controlled by Goldenson; the demonstrators were not convinced.

“The ABC-Paramount statement is a disgraceful attempt to give us the run around,” said a statement, “you’re the president and the buck has got to stop at your desk.”

Three years later Marlene Sanders would get her start with ABC.  In her Waiting for Prime Time: The Women of Television News she remarked on the old academy building.  “Even the modest building on Sixty-sixth Street looked impressive to me, fresh from a local station.  The news department, appropriate to its status at the time, was in the basement.  Almost everything was in one long room:  the assignment desk, the correspondents—all four of us—and our typewriters, desks, and chairs.”

In the 1970s ABC had the façade slathered in a pink-colored stucco.  Then years later, as ABC expanded its 66^th Street operation, it demolished the western section of the old Riding Academy.  But in 1998 ABC began a renovation project that included removing the stucco, replicating the cornice in fiberglass, and cleaning and repairing the brownstone and brick.

The elegant columned portico, the three-story bay windows, the elaborate cornice and arched upper windows are all gone.  photo by Alice Lum

Henry Kilburn’s striking Durland’s Academy complex is barely recognizable today.  The three-story arched windows of the riding ring have been bricked up and the soaring space inside floored over.  But the fact that the building—or most of it—survives is remarkable.  Within its walls Vanderbilts and Belmonts saddled their steeds and John F. Kennedy took his first step into history.

many thanks to reader Carolyn Muzzey for suggesting this post

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