Max Hensel's 1888 100 West 67th Street

Developer and builder M. Giblin kept architect Max Hensel busy in 1887.  In the eight month period between March and October alone that year Hensel filed plans for at least 11 structures for Giblin, mostly tenement buildings with stores.  Among them was a structure at the southwest corner of Ninth (later Columbus) Avenue and 67th Street.  Hensel's plans, filed on September 16, called for a five-story tenement building with stores to cost $25,000 (in the neighborhood of $712,000 today).  

Essentially forgotten today, the German-born architect was prolific at the time, specializing in tenement buildings.  That would come to an end in 1892 when he was appointed a foreman in the Government's Office of the Supervising Architect, overseeing Federal projects in New York.

No. 100 West 67th Street was completed in 1890.  Hensel had saved his employer money on the crisp-lined building by executing most of the ornamentation in brick.  Robust Greek key bands ran between the second and third floors, recessed panels were adorned with simple cross-hatches, complex geometrical designs, and other decorations.   Chimney backs, which began at the third floor, were cunningly designed to match the fluted brick pilasters between the openings along the fourth floor.  Above these, tympana were filled with honey-comb pattern brick.   The pressed metal cornice repeated the Greek key pattern of the lower section.

Expert bricklayers were required to carry out Hensel's complex decorations.

Giblin sold the building to Louis Bauer, who leased the corner store to William A. Markgraf beginning January 1, 1900.  Markgraf's five-and-a-half-year lease began with a $1,800 per year rent, rising to $2,000.  (He would be paying the equivalent of $5,000 per month today at end the of the lease.)

The apartments, all six-rooms each, were accessed by an impressive limestone entrance above a four-step stoop on 67th Street.  The proportions of its arch mimicked those of the shop windows along side, and it was embraced by fluted columns which morphed into overblown brackets.  These, in turn, upheld an ambitious cornice.  Pretty carved flowers filled the small spandrels of the arch.

Bauer's advertisement in The Evening Post on April 16, 1892 offered:

HANDSOME CORNER FLATS,

One Block from L Station,

100 West 67th st.,

Six light rooms and bath-room, steam heat, in perfect order. 

Rents $37.50, $42.50

The announced rents were annual; and so tenants in the most expensive apartments were paying just over $100 per month in today's money.

Bauer held onto the property only until July 1895 when he sold it for $72,000.

Among the tenants in 1896 was Mamie Jane Atwood, also known as May.  The New York Herald sarcastically described her on September 17 as being "known to herself as 'Miss' and to her friends as 'Mrs.'"  The article went on to say "Miss Atwood is a handsome, lavishly dressed woman.  She is about thirty years old.  She lives alone on the 5th floor of the house."

She had been May Carmen, the widow of a dental surgeon, before her marriage to Frank J. Atwood.  They had known each other only three months before the wedding and the groom soon regretted it.  Three months into the marriage Atwood was convinced his wife was unfaithful.  He left her and went to Norfolk, Virginia.  Mamie had him arrested there "for the theft of $1,600 in promissory notes."

Later, when he found incriminating letters to her from a man who signed them only "H," the pair had a "fierce quarrel," according to The New York Times.  Atwood "threw her out" and initiated divorce proceedings.  

But the New York Herald's interest in Mamie had nothing to do with her messy domestic past; but with the fact that a wealthy, married man had been just been found dead in her apartment.  Herman Feilman was "a fire adjuster and a man of wealth," according to The New York Herald.  He lived with his wife and daughter at No. 26 West 86th Street.  The newspaper described him as being 50-years old and "a handsome man in the prime of life.  He was well and tastefully dressed.  He was one of those men who sought to keep young."

Feilman shot himself in the head on the evening of September 16 in the Atwood apartment.  Mamie's version of things placed her away from the scene.  She told authorities that she had just returned home from a walk with a Mrs. Lewis and the two were talking on the low stoop of No. 100.  Feilman came along and, although she "knew him only slightly," he asked "permission to go up to her apartments last evening to rest, for he complained of being very ill and weary."  

Mamie said she gave him the key and remained on the stoop talking with Mrs. Lewis.  Suddenly they heard the report of a gunshot and ran upstairs.  Feilman 's coat and waistcoat were lying on a chair in the parlor and his body was on the bathroom floor.  They immediately summoned police.

The Evening World found her story suspicious.  "Feilman and the Atwood woman had known each other for a year or more," said the article.  (Frank J. Atwood agreed, telling authorities he was positive the love letters signed "H" were from Herman Feilman.)  And it noted "There were many physicians' offices in the neighborhood where he might have gone.  And his own home was not far away."

The Evening Telegram did not have to surmise.  On the same day as the Herald's article, it ran a headline "Why Feilman Died."  The article said that two letters had been left by Feilman, one addressed to his wife and the other his employer, Leo Frank.  Reporters who filed into Frank's office were told that he would make the contents known after reading the letter, "but on reading it his face assumed a very serious look," said The Evening Telegram.  He now said "that out of consideration for Feilman's family he could not tell the full contents of the letter."  The coroner was more forthcoming, saying that the letter indicated "that he killed himself on account of financial difficulties and his love for Mrs. Atwood...and was unable to support Mrs. Atwood any longer."

Both Mamie and Mrs. Lewis were forced to change their stories when police informed them they had also found two photographs in his pocket--one of Mamie and the other of Mrs. Lewis (who had previously insisted she had never seen the man before).   Mamie now admitted that she had known him "a year" (The World preferred to say she knew him "very well") and that "he called on her occasionally."

The World did some investigating and threw more light on Mamie Atwood.  "The majority of her visitors were men.  They were very quiet.  There was never any disturbance."  Mamie took the first opportunity to bolt.  "Police looked for her yesterday," said The World, "but failed to find her.  She left the flat without telling any one she would be gone.  Her only desire was to get away."

James Ford, who lived here in 1898, was friends with Frank A. Keller.  Keller worked for the Paris-based art dealers Goupil & Cie at No. 170 Fifth Avenue.  Early that year it was noticed that paintings and etchings were disappearing and in March the police were called in.  The New York Times reported "Their suspicion was directed to Keller, who for the past eight years has been the stenographer for the firm."

Detectives got a break in the case when Keller and James Ford passed several worthless check on saloon keepers.  When the proprietors confronted them, Ford and Keller offered valuable paintings to make good on the checks.  At 1:30 in the morning on April 15 detectives broke into Ford's apartment and arrested him.

Police said that Keller would use his key to get into the gallery at night.  He and Ford would select artworks which they believed they could sell.  The thieves had little-by-little spirited away $15,000 worth of paintings and etchings--nearly half a million in today's dollars.  Investigators found several of the paintings in Ford's apartment.  Other works were found in saloons, Keller's apartment, and pawnshops.

The entrance has been modernized, but its handsome stone enframement is intact.  The now clownishly-painted ground floor originally matched the brick-and-brownstone facade seen above.

Also living in the building that year was 18-year old Louise Betzer, who shared an apartment with Mrs. Charles Banks.   The teen began visiting fortune tellers who told her the same story: that she would meet a handsome young man.  Louise became preoccupied with the promise, repeatedly visiting the clairvoyants and astrologists.  Later, according to The Newtown Register on September 29, Mrs. Banks said, "This seemed to occupy her mind more than anything else" and she frequently talked about her unknown lover.  The Long Island City newspaper, The Eagle, on September 26 noted "The fortune tellers kept assuring her that she was to meet the young man soon, but finally she lost hope and talked of ending her life."

On Saturday morning, September 17 Louise left No. 100.  Later that afternoon, grave diggers in the Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, "came across the prostrate form of a pretty young women, lying on the grass in [the] rear of Lutheran Church, which is in the cemetery, with an empty bottle that had contained carbolic acid by her side."

The Newtown Register reported "The girl was still alive when found, and the grave-diggers picked her up carefully and took her to the cemetery office."  Doctors felt she would recover "notwithstanding the fact that she swallowed three ounces of carbolic acid."  Louise regained consciousness the following day and confessed to police "that the reason she attempted her life, was that she was despondent."  The Eagle commented "Why she selected the entrance to Lutheran Cemetery as a place to end her life is not known."

By 1908 the Reilly Restaurant was in the corner store.  The proprietor seems to have struck a deal with the owner and doubled as a sort of in-house rental agent.  An advertisement in The Evening Telegram on December 19, 1908 read "Fine corner apartments, six rooms and bath, all improvements, to let...rent reasonable.  Inquire in Reilly Restaurant, 100 West 67th, corner Columbus av."

In the first years following World War I Wilma Gilmore ran her dance studio in the building.  Her ads noted "Modern Dances, Stage and Society Jazz, specialized."

The former Reilly Restaurant space had become the Buckingham restaurant by 1932.  Problems came for the owner that year when U. S. Marshall Raymond J. Mulligan ordered a raid.  An official announcement to the public in the New York Evening Post on March 29 read:

I have seized and hold One Cash Register, a quantity of Intoxicating liquor and a quantity of furniture and equipment found in premises known as Buckingham, designated as 100 West 67th Street, in the Borough of Manhattan...Notice is hereby given that the case is appointed for trial at the U.S. Court and Post Office Building, Manhattan, New York on April 12, 1932...All persons are notified then and there to appear and defense their interest...All not appearing will be defaulted.

We can most likely assume that no one came forward to claim the liquor.

The parents of teen-age John McKeever became concerned when he didn't come home in October 1940.  After receiving missing persons, a Mount Pleasant, New York police officer spotted McKeever and picked him up.  The boy was being held at the police station awaiting the arrival of his parents.  But he had other ideas.

The Yonkers newspaper The Herald Statesmen reported on October 22 that the teen "casually wandered away, stole Chief Joseph Klaus' car and then led police on a chase."   With police vehicles not far behind, McKeever sped down the parkway before losing control and running the Chief's car into the Woodlands' viaduct in White Plains.  "Leaving the car slightly the worse for wear, McKeever proceeded on foot into Scarsdale, where he stole an automobile owned by Joseph Lyon Andrews parked in front of his house."

By now Parkway Police, provided with a description of the Andrews vehicle, had joined the chase.  It was spotted by Patrolman Van Cura who "brought McKeever's short crime fling to an abrupt end."   The teen had managed to elevate his status from one of a non-punishable missing person to being held on grand larceny charges.

In 1983 the new Applause Cinema Books, a bookstore devoted to the theater opened here.  That year journalist Lisa Faye Kaplan wrote "The script for just about every play ever produced in modern times is for sale at Applause...The store, on Manhattan's West Side, has a complete selection of Samuel French scripts, and one of the largest stocks of English plays in the country."

But it was more than that.  Writing in New York Magazine on October 19, 1987 Joanna Molloy called it "the city's largest film bookstore" and added "If this were just a bookstore, it would be interesting.  Because it is also a scriptstore it is positively fascinating."

For years, beginning around 1997, Nick & Toni's Cafe was a familiar eating spot for Upper West Siders.   While the Columbus Avenue store level has been totally modernized, the upper floors are intact; Max Hensel's complex, eye-catching elements giving no hint of the colorful history that played out inside.

The 1905 Atelier Bldg - 33 West 67th Street

On December 5 1903 The New York Times announced "Plans have been filed at the Building Department for the new studio building to be known as The Atelier."  The article noted "It is to be a T-shaped structure of Holland brick, with limestone trimmings, with a frontage of 75 feet."  Estimated to cost $250,000 (nearly $8 million today), it was being designed by Simonson, Pollard & Steinham for builder-developer William J. Taylor

The concept of a "studio building" was in no way new.  In 1857 James Boorman Johnson had envisioned a building exclusively as living and working space for artists.  The resulting 10th Street Studio Building, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, initiated a movement.

By the turn of the century studio buildings, many of which were upscale, were cropping up throughout the city.  Vast widows--often two stories tall--were positioned to admit the much-needed northern light.

Nowhere, however, was the studio movement more evident that on West 67th Street.  A year earlier Taylor had already begun construction on the 67th Street Studios, abutting the Atelier site, for a group of artists headed by Frank V. D. Du Mond, Henry W. Ranger, and Louis Paul Dessar.  In 1905 work would commence on the Colonial Studios, at 39 West 67th Street, and before long the block between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West would be filled with similar structures, earning it the name "the Studio Block."

Construction on The Atelier began in 1904 and was completed the following year.  Simonson, Pollard & Steinam created a 14-story neo-Renaissance-style structure of ruddy brick and limestone.  Despite the elaborately-carved entrance, the variegated Flemish bond brickwork, and the stone quoins of the base and central section; it was the upper four floors--looking like a chunk of Renaissance palace--which most distinguished the structure.

The Atelier Building is unchanged since its 1905 completion.  photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The Atelier, as was the case with the other 67th Street studio buildings, was cooperative.  Its residents were not struggling artists, but well-established and financially comfortable.  

Among the first to move in was the family of Boudinot Keith.  Although Keith was not an artist--he was a well-known lawyer and reformer--both his wife and mother-in-law had already earned reputations in the art world.  Dora Wheeler Keith, his wife, was a muralist and painter who had already done portraits of figures like Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Dean Howells and Walt Whitman.  In 1893 she had painted the ceiling of the Women's Building at the Chicago Columbian Exposition.

In 1883 William Merritt Chase painted Dora Wheeler.  Cleveland Museum of Art

Her mother, Candace Wheeler, lived with the family in the Atelier.  In 1906 Louise Forselund, writing in Good Housekeeping, rather romantically said "In the Atelier building in Sixty-seventh street, New York, where artists, both men and women, seek to capture on canvas Beauty all the day through, there lives with her artist daughter, Dora Wheeler Keith, an old lady who has gone back to the home-keeping days of the ingle nook and who with her restful needle stitches few dreams for herself now save the dreams of the past."

Forselund was obscurely referring to Candace Wheeler's founding of the School of Decorative Art in the 1870s where women worked in embroidery and fabric design.   She also founded the Onteora Club, and wrote several books on home decoration.  For years she was the head of the Associated Artists, of which she was a founder.

Hidden among the intricately-carved foliage of the entrance are an owl, a beast, and a face.

The internationally-known brothers Francis Coates Jones and Hugh Bolton Jones moved into the Atelier Building in 1906.  Francis's paintings of women in lavishly-decorated interior settings had earned him a solid reputation and he taught at the National Academy of Design for three decades.  Hugh, on the other hand, was best known for his detailed and peaceful landscapes influenced by the Hudson River School.

The studios, often expensively decorated, were also the scenes of receptions and other entertainments.  On the evening of December 8, 1907 painter Alphonse Jongers and his wife gave a "soiree musicale" during which "Mme. Adelaide Norwood, who has recently returned from Europe, sang," according to The New York Times the following day.  Among the wealthy patrons in the room were Mr. and Mrs. George A. Hearn.   The owner of one of the largest dry goods stores in the city, James A. Hearn & Son, he was among the foremost art collectors in the nation.  

Also among the party that evening were portrait artist Ben Ali Haggin and his wife, Bonnie Glass, who also lived in the building.  Bonnie's claim to fame was that she had been Rudolph Valentine's former dancing partner.

Other prominent artists in the Atelier were James Montgomery Flagg, Charles Bittinger, painter Robert Vonnoh and his sculptor wife Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Williad L. Metcalf and Adolfo Muller-Ury.

At the time former opera singer Ethel S. Elliott was having financial problems.  She had married the millionaire President of the Consolidated Arizona Smelting Company, John Love Elliott, in 1900.  When she divorced him in 1907, he agreed to pay her $20,000 a year in alimony.  The carefree divorcée moved into the Atelier Building and began freely spending the money.

In fact, she spent more than her sizeable income (equal to more than half a million dollars today).  In September 1911 she filed for bankruptcy, explaining that she needed to "get rid of" her debts.  Her unhappy creditors included Tiffany & Co. and at least two Paris dress makers.  She owed $11,000 for "dresses, hats and furs," $1,391 for jewelry, and $222 in fur storage.  Other expenses she was unable to pay included the cost of  "saddle-horse hire," $200 for hair treatment, silverware, flowers and $310 in music lessons.

Ethel Elliott's financial embarrassment was unique among the residents at 33 West 67th Street.  That same year, for instance, sculptor Edward Edgar Walter (who had studied under Auguste Rodin) received the profitable commission from philanthropist Alfred Seligman for a Central Park fountain.  A newspaper described the work as "a large rock with a base hollowed out in a cave.  From the entrance of the cave a faun looks at a bear on top of it."  Sadly, Seligman was killed in an automobile accident before the completion of the Bear and Faun fountain in 1914.

In 1915 Walter and Louise Arensberg began hosting a nightly salon in their duplex studio.  They had already assembled what was considered a "daring" collection of avant-garde artwork, including African and pre-Columbian pieces intermixed with paintings by Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp. 

The Arensberg studio mixed colonial furniture, Oriental rugs, and modern artwork.   In this 1919 shot Constantin Brancusi's The Progical Son sculpture sits on the mantel at the left; juxaposed with an African Fang sculpture on the right.  photo in the collection f the Whitney Museum of Art

 

According to Carolyn Burke in her 1996 Becoming Modern, the Lift of Mina Loy, the Arensberg salons were the New York equivalent of Gertrude Stein's in Paris.  "Their nightly gatherings were known for scintillating talk and racy innuendo," she writes.  And the list of artists who came and went "reads like a Who's Who of modernism."

Among the Arensbergs' close friends was Marcel Duchamp who was a house guest for a few days.  Later Walter Arensberg provided Duchamp a studio in the Atelier, two floors above theirs.  In return Duchamp gave the Arensbergs his sculpture The Large Glass, (or The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors).

While the avant-garde gathered in the Arensberg studio, artist and illustrator James Montgomery Flagg was working on more conventional projects.  When the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, a patriotic fever swept the nation.  Flagg, inspired by Alfred Leete's 1914 British poster of Lord Kitchen announcing "Your Country Needs YOU," created what would become the United States' most iconic recruiting image.

Flagg used himself as the model for Uncle Sam, magnifying his angular features and adding a beard.  First published in Leslie's Weekly in July 1916 (hence Uncle Sam's Independence Day outfit), more than 4 million posters were published.  Flagg's image with its "I Want YOU for U.S. Army" is credited with significantly boosting recruitment.

collection of the Library of Congress

Francis C. Jones and Hugh Bolton Jones, too, turned their attention to the war effort.  On April 14 1918 The Sun said that they "are beyond the age at which men put on khaki and go to the front...But they have found a way to help."

The newspaper explained that in their Atelier Building studio they "are preparing many landscapes known as designation targets."  The five by nine-foot canvases depicted French scenes--villages and countrysides, for instance--to be used at targets in training army recruits.  "The Messrs Jones have dropped all their work in order to devote themselves to preparing landscapes for shooting."

"The average New York youth will go through the canyonlike streets something in the manner of a rabbit in a warren," said The Sun.  "He sees only a small distance ahead of him...The landscapes which the Academietans are now preparing take the place of the views of the country which a soldier would encounter if he were aiming field pieces or machines guns on the European battle front."

On August 5, 1923 the 97-year old Candace Thurber Wheeler died in the Keith home.  Two years later Boudinot Keith died in the studio, at the age of 66. Although somewhat overshadowed by his wife's and mother-in-law's artistic careers, he had earned a reputation as a leader in several reform movements.  Dora Wheeler Keith would remain here until her death in December 1940.  The 85-year old had painted the ceiling of the Capitol Building in Albany and her portraits hung in institutions like the Brooklyn Museum and the Boston Public Library.

The Jones brothers, too, stayed on in their studio until their deaths.  Hugh Bolton Jones died in September 1927; and Francis died in the studio on May 27, 1932 at the age of 74.

In 1929 insurance broker Duncan MacD. Little and his wife held their first "movie party" in their studio.  Little had taken up amateur motion picture production as a hobby and a small group of friends were invited over for a showing.  A tradition was started which continued to grow.

On April 5, 1936 The New York Times reported that "Amateur movie-goers enjoyed a brief hour of glory last night at the seventh annual 'movie party' held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Duncan MacD. Little...Before an audience of fellow producer and innocent spectators, they unreeled the best specimens of their camera work and beamed like budding Sam Goldwyns when the guests applauded."

The following year what was now known as The Amateur Cinema had grown too large for the  Littles' apartment and was held at the Salle des Artistes.  A predecessor of the many amateur film festivals to come, in 1938 it included motion pictures from other countries.

The Atelier Building continued to be home to well-known artists for decades.  Samuel Johnson Woolf painted Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia here in 1941; Betsy Potter Vonnoh was still here when she died in 1955; and sculptor George Lober and landscape artist Roy Brown were both living in the building at the time.

Little has changed outwardly to the Atelier Building.  It sits quietly, as it has since 1905, along the Studio Block; its remarkable carved entrance prompting more attention than its remarkable contributions to the art history.

photographs by the author

The Colonial Studios No. 39 West 67th Strreet

In 1903 American impressionist painter Robert Vonnoh and his wife, sculptress Bessie Potter Vonnoh, took studios in the newly-completed 67th Street Studios building at No. 27 West 67^th Street.  The 14-story co-operative structure was constructed especially as artists’ residences and studios. 

The following year construction began on a similar studio building, The Atelier.  It was the second domino to fall in a trend that would soon give the 67^th Street block between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue the reputation as a “studio colony.”

In 1905 Robert Vonnoh joined the movement when he commissioned architects Pollard & Steinam to design a studio building at Nos. 39 and 41.  On November 5 that year The New York Times advised that plans had been filed for what would be called the Colonial Studios.  The architects had cleverly addressed the artists’ need for light and ventilation in designing the deep building.

“It is to be fourteen stories high in front, seven in the centre, and ten in the rear,” reported the newspaper.”  Pollard & Steinam estimated the cost at $200,000 (about $5.5 million in 2015).

Like the other studio buildings on the block, Vonnoh’s Colonial Studios would be a cooperative.  On June 26, 1906 as the building rose, he advertised in The Sun “YOUR OWN STUDIO APARTMENT; opportunity to become a stockholder in an attractive and safe investment of $8,000 to $15,000.”  By now the construction cost had risen to $275,000.

The Colonial Studios was finished in 1907, a neo-Renaissance structure influenced by the Arts and Crafts style also seen in other studio buildings on the block. The two-story rusticated limestone base included a classical pediment supported by planar pilasters.  Handsome double-height oriels, clad in pressed copper, overlapped the base and the third floor.  Above three projecting stone sections clung to a brown brick façade.  The deeply-overhanging cornice was supported by hefty copper brackets.

Unlike other studio buildings on West 67^th Street, the owner-residents in the Colonial were a mixed group.   Along with the expected artists was Dr. Lindsley F. Cocheu, who moved into the building 1908; and pianist Agnes Osborne who presented pupil Fanny Elizabeth Cass in a recital in her studio here on Friday, March 20 that same year.

Another non-artist in the building was Frederic Dean, a lawyer.  He leased his seventh floor studio to Mrs. Mary Castle in the summer of 1909.  Mary had recently separated from her husband and had been staying in the home of her cousin and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. William B. Craig.

In the brief time she lived there, Mary became infatuated with Craig, who was 35 years old.  It was possibly this awkward situation that led to her leaving the Craig household and moving into the Colonial.  Mary Castle’s passion for William Craig progressed to stalking and, finally, to violence on August 3.

The New York Times noted “She had a handsomely appointed apartment on the seventh floor, where she kept house with one servant.” Apparently William Craig had, at least initially, contributed to Mary’s affections.  Other residents of the building told reporters that he had been one of her most frequent callers.  “The lawyer, it was said, was here several times a week, and frequently took her out in the afternoons.”

The newspaper described the 36-year old Mary Castle as “rather fine looking, with plentiful dark-brown hair and large dark eyes and regular features.”  On the afternoon of August 3 when she left the apartment, she carried with her a “capacious handbag” in which was, “besides many articles of feminine use, nearly a full box of cartridges.”  The bullets were for the cheap revolver that was also in the purse.

Mary found William Craig on 34^th Street, outside of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.  Patrons later said Craig appeared at first startled, then seemed to enter the hotel in an effort to “get rid of the woman.”  She followed him into the crowded lobby and “were soon in an animated conversation.”  The Times reported “the man seemed to be urging the woman to leave him alone, she half pleading and half demanding to be heard.”

Craig rushed through the corridors, closely pursued by Mary; “he several times throwing up his hands as if in deprecation.”

As they passed a bank of elevators, the doors of one began to close.  William Craig bolted inside in an attempt to lose Mary Castle.  The Times reported “He had one foot in the car when the woman, apparently seeing that he certainly intended to leave her standing alone in the corridor, quickly drew from the black handbag she carried a small revolver.  Before the lawyer could offer the least resistance she had fired.”

Inside the elevator was, coincidentally, E. R. Carrington, a detective from Montreal.  He and the elevator boy, William J. Fitzgerald, were momentarily stunned as Craig staggered into the cab and Mary followed.  As the car shot up to the seventh floor, Mary desperately tried to shoot Craig again while Carrington struggled to wrest the weapon from her grasp.  She was finally disarmed and Fitzgerald returned the elevator to the lobby.

While the drama was playing out in the moving elevator, the lobby had been a scene of panic.  Now it turned to one of curiosity.  “The return of the elevator was the signal for the throng, many of whom were women dressed in bright Summer garb, to gather about the spot,” said The Times.

Maids scrambled to bring pillows and cushions to prop up Craig and house detectives worked to calm the crowd.  An inspection was made of Craig’s condition—the near range of the shot feared to be fatal.  Unbelievably, his brown suit had a clear-cut bullet hole and the fabric was scorched from the closeness to the firearm.  But the inside pocket held a heavy silver fountain pen, its “mountings bent and twisted by the impact of the ball.”

The bullet had struck the fountain pen which had taken the impact.  Later, even more astoundingly, the bullet was found in the same pocket.

Mary Castle, nearly hysterical, was taken away along with Craig to the police station.   In the car going to the station house she sobbed repeatedly, “He was the cause of all my troubles!”

Twice at the station she tried to break free and get to Craig.  And when he left she exclaimed “He loves me.  He will come back tonight and bail me out.  I have no fear of that.”

Rather predictably it was not Craig who bailed out his attempted assassin, but Mary’s landlord, Frederic Dean.  In the meantime, Mary’s cousin had little compassion and refused to believe there was anything to the affair.

“It is a clear case of ingratitude,” she told reporters.  “We took this woman into our house and did everything we could for her, but she became infatuated with Mr. Craig, and this is the result of it.  I know well enough what she says, but it is not true.”

Eye-catching pressed copper bays with dripping blossoms and garlands adorn the facade.

Among the resident artists was Charles Courtney Curran.  The painter was born in Kentucky in 1861 and by the time he moved into the Colonial (of which he was secretary and treasurer) he had garnered many prestigious awards including several medals from Expositions ranging from the 1893 Chicago Columbia Exposition to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904.  He was also an accomplished fencer.

Another was Isabel Vernon Cook, who preferred to be known as Mrs. Jerome C. Cook.  Isabel had studied in Paris and now lectured on art and travel as well.  The Woman’s Who’s Who of America later mentioned in 1915 that she “Favors woman suffrage.”

She had a comrade in painter Harriet Sophia Phillips.  The colorful artist had been trained in Germany and Paris and had a broad range of interests, including woman suffrage.  Among the entertainments she hosted in her studio were suffragist teas.

But not everyone in the building shared the women’s passion.   Richard Barry was, as described by The New York Times in 1911 “the ardent anti-suffragist.”  A writer of magazine articles, he raised the ire of the theatrical community and the Woman’s Suffrage Party when his article appeared in Pearson’s Magazine in March 1911 entitled “Why Women Are Paid Less Than Men.”

The highly-sexist article included passages like:

The chorus girl gets as much as the chorus man.  She ought to have more, for who cares anything about the chorus man  It is the chorus girl that draws people to the musical shows  Again, the reason her pay is not more is that the supply of her is seemingly inexhaustible.  Besides, she is not dependable; she may be on hand for a performance; she may not be.

If the theatrical community did not find that, alone, insulting; it definitely took offense to “Very few persons on the stage know how to think.  In fact, few of them know how to feel, though they all make some sort of bluff at it.”

The Players, the Gramercy Park club for those in the theatrical profession, dropped Richard Barry from its rolls.

Mrs. Barry shared her husband’s convictions and on March 23, 1913 signed the petition that was sent to Albany.  It began with the sentence, “We, your petitioners, believe that the present favorable status of women in this State is just and right because we are women.”  One may imagine that the corridor conversations in the Colonial Studios building between Mrs. Jerome C. Cook or Harriet S. Phillips and Mrs. Richard Barry were polite and short.

While some residents of the Colonial Studios busied themselves with political issues, Bernetta Miller had more thrilling adventures on her mind.  She had been a bookkeeper in Canton, Ohio but moved to New York at the age of 22 in 1912 to pursue a dream.

She procured an apartment in the Colonial Studios and enrolled in the Moissant School.  What her family did not know was that it was an aviation school.   Bernetta was still a novice student on June 21, 1912, having only had three lessons.  To date she had “not yet attempted anything more difficult than running an aeroplane over the ground,” said The Evening World the following day.

To ensure that the plane stayed on the ground, the wing elevators were disabled. Newspapers gave conflicting accounts on what went wrong.   According to The Sun, “a piece of wood that blocked the elevating plane dropped out;” while The Evening World said “some one removed the fastening.”

Whatever the case, Bernetta Miller suddenly found her monoplane shooting into the air.   “She retained her presence of mind,” said The Evening World, “and before the monoplane had ascended higher than about twenty feet, shut off the motor.”

The airplane nose-dived to earth where it “pancaked” to the ground.  The Sun reported “Miss Miller climbed out of the machine somewhat frightened, but unhurt.”  The Evening World deemed the aircraft “completely wrecked” and said “Miss Muller [sic] was not injured, and jumping up ran for the hangar to escape the newspaper men.”

A much more tragic story played out in 1916.  Socially prominent Estelle Garrett Baker, society editor of The Atlanta Georgian and a member of the well-known Garrett family, was in the process of divorcing her husband.  She slipped away from Georgia press to stay with her widowed sister, Emma Garrett Boyd, who lived in the Colonial with her 10-year old son, Spencer Boyd.

Although Estelle seemed, for the most part, normal; she gave her sister a scare on the day she moved in when she bolted up and tried to snatch a firearm from the mantelpiece, “but was prevented,” as Emma later recalled.  Following that episode, Emma made sure that Estelle’s bedroom window was always locked.

Estelle was undergoing treatment for “nervous shock” by Dr. Foster Kennedy.  He mostly prescribed rest for her condition.    The treatments seemed to be working.  On Tuesday February 22, 1916 she seemed happy at breakfast and the New-York Tribune reported “She romped with Mrs. Boyd’s children and played the piano so cheerfully that her sister was not surprised at her fatigue in the evening, when she said she would not eat with family.  She retired to her bedroom.”

Estelle told her sister what she would have for dinner and asked her to have it sent up from the dining room.  Before going down to the dining room with Spencer at around 6:00, Emma double checked the window lock.

Fifteen minutes later “a chauffeur ran into the building and told the switchboard operator that a woman was lying dead on the sidewalk.”  Estelle had unlocked the bedroom window an thrown herself from the 10^th floor apartment.  Her skull was crushed and her legs broken.

The Colonial Studios continued to attract successful artists, including Theresa F. Bernstein, Maurice Molarsky and Clara Weaver Parrish; and in at least two cases, opera singers.  

Mme. Rappold, former Metropolitan Opera singer was leasing the studio of Mrs. Jerome C. Cook in 1922 when her habits prompted the New York Clipper to report on September 13 “Whatever charm an opera diva’s golden notes may possess when wafted over the footlights during regulation opera hours does no obtain during the wee small hours of the morning, according to the owners and tenants of a studio apartment at No. 39 West Sixty-Seventh Street.”

Mme. Rappold paid $300 a month rent on the apartment and had reportedly spent $2,500 in redecorating.  But Isabel Cook received numerous complaints, she said, from tenants who objected to her after-midnight concerts.

The diva laughed at the tempest, saying “I am going to stay…The whole affair amuses me.”

Mrs. Jerome C. Cook was less amused.  She filed eviction proceedings against her tenant, whose lease was up on October 1.   The New-York Tribune reported “Mrs. Cook declared, however, that she had started the action against the soprano not because of other tenants, but because she had made plans for some time to make the apartment her home after October 1.”  The newspaper noted that the majority of the tenants were “singers and painters.”

Eminent contralto Mme. Marguerite d’Alvarez lived here by 1925.  Early that year she received a “wild letter” from a perfumer who demanded immediate payment for expensive scents sold to “Mme. D’Alvarez.”  The curious invoice prompted an investigation and the opera star was soon to be shocked.

In February it was found that Mrs. Harriet Bridgeford, “tall and impressive,” according to The Times, had been impersonating Mme. D’Alvarez for years.  Among her ruses, the woman, who bore a striking resemblance to the singer, went about the city selling cheap silk as quality goods under the diva's name.   She was arrested on February 10, 1925 after Marguerite d’Alvarez pleaded with police that she “was causing her much embarrassment.”

After living in the Colonial Studios for more than two decades, Harriet S. Phillips died of pneumonia here at the age of 78 on July 30, 1928.

Other artists to live in the building were Charles Allen Gilbert, best known for his magazine illustrations; modern artist Walter Pach who moved in in 1932; A. Phimiser Proctor, Wheeler Williams and John Alonzo Williams.

By now described as “a leading American artist,” Charles C. Curran was still living in the building in 1942 when he died at the age of 81.

In 1962 the building took on another face when The Drama Studio moved its headquarters here.  It staged live productions for several years.

Outwardly little has changed to the Colonial Studios.  Like most of the studio buildings along the West 67^th Street block, it now is home to fewer artists and more wealthy residents attracted by the unusual layouts.

photographs by the author.

The 1903 67th Street Studios Building -- 27 West 67th Street

In 1903 artist V. V. Sewell mulled “people have no conception of how difficult it is for one to find a suitable studio in New York.”  It was a problem that had prompted James Boorman Johnston to erect the famous 10^th Street Studios Building in Greenwich Village nearly half a century earlier, in 1858.  His was the first step in the movement of artist residence-workspace buildings that would gain momentum at the turn of the century.

In July 1901 three artists—Frank V. D. Du Mond, Henry W. Ranger, and Louis Paul Dessar—incorporated the Sixty-Seventh Street Studio Building Association with capital of $25,000.  The well-established artists chose a rather questionable block on which to construct their cooperative studio building—West 67^th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.  Despite its proximity to the Park, it was lined with stables and other service buildings and described by the New-York Tribune as “the center of a negro settlement.”  Yet these were minor obstacles when compared to the unblocked northern light so important to painters.

Henry W. Ranger had initiated the project and recruited Dumond and Dessar as the initial stockholders.  He was also reportedly highly involved in the layouts of the apartment-studios.  Architects Simonson & Sturgis were given the commission for the 14-story building.  They turned to the currently popular Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau styles for the brick and terra cotta façade. 

Construction was nearing completion on Christmas Day 1902 when disaster occurred.  William Allen was employed by the contractor, W. J. Taylor, as a watchman.  He was given a room on the ground floor with an iron stove for warmth.

One of Allen’s responsibilities was the care of the little heating pots located throughout the building to keep the new plaster from freezing.  On December 26 The New York Times reported “There were pots of this kind on the third, fifth, and tenth floors last night.”

Just before midnight Allen was making his rounds.  He was on the 10^th floor when he smelled smoke.  Before he could find the source on the first floor, a passerby saw the flames and turned in an alarm.  Firemen soon arrived and extinguished the fire; but not before $3,500 worth of damages to woodwork and plaster was done.

While police attributed the blaze to Allen’s stove becoming overheated, the watchman was positive it was arson and a witness agreed.  William Martin, a watchman across the street, told reporters that “just at the time the fire started he heard the two fox terriers of the watchman on the ground floor barking furiously…He thinks someone got into the watchman’s rooms and started the blaze.”

The Times added “Allen is certain some one got in and set the fire.  He says his stove was one which was so set that it could not have started a fire in the room.”

The damages were repaired and by the end of March the building was nearly finished.  On March 27, 1903 The New York Times reported “No. 27 West Sixty-seventh Street is sufficiently complete, so that a dozen artists are already ensconsed [sic] therein, with more to come.”

The fire was not the only problem during construction.  “There have been the usual delays—trouble with the foundations, trouble from strikes, trouble about the architects—but at last the sober-looking pile (with its heavy-browed, low entrance, its marble vestibule decorated by Sewell with two friezes of youths on caracoling horses, its green painted casements and tall façade on red and black brick is taking on the animation of a hive of bees, as one studio after another receives its married couple or its bachelor occupant.”

 

A magnificent art glass lamp--a hybrid of Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau--clings to the undressed stone by slender tendril-like supports.

While the stone-and-brick “heavy browed” entrance was rather imposing with the address carved into shields and a magnificent art glass lamp with tendril-like supports on a purposely undressed stone base; the bulk of the façade was minimally decorated.  The architects relied instead on recessed sections and variation in colors and materials to provide dimension and interest.

The New York Times was not impressed.  “The front of the Sixty-seventh Street studios is not a thing of beauty, though their inner arrangement may be a joy forever.  The model might have been a plain or even ugly Jacobean house or a somewhat ornate factory. This has been drawn up into the air after the fashion of Manhattan in order to gain many floors, but the imagination of the architect has not kept pace with the upward expansion.”

The Times’ critic felt that the weight of the design gave the impression of flattening the arches and crushing the entrance.  He proclaimed the effect “depressing” and it was “not relieved by the colors chosen for the facing of brick.”

The absence of nearby structures gave the back of the building access to uninterrupted northern light. photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Nevertheless, the newspaper was taken with the resourceful layouts inside.  “Great ingenuity has been expended on the problem of giving each apartment a well-lighted studio large or small.  In some cases a tenant by taking two apartments and eliminating the dividing wall has doubled the size of his working room.”

The design did not rely on overt ornamentation; but on varying colors of brick and three-dimensional effects of recesses within recesses.

There were 14 two-story, 18-foot high studios flooded with northern light.  Duplex living areas were to the front.  These consisted of a dining room, study, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and a balcony that looked down into the studio.  There were an additional 20 smaller units in the rear, two per floor.

The New-York Herald glowed in its assessment.  “These Sixty-seventh street studios have brought domesticity—wives, babies and social life—into the studios.  Here are all the conditions for comfortable living—electric lights, private baths, salons, kitchens, bedrooms, as well as lofty studios—and all the machinery for ambitious as well as private life.”

The building was formally opened at a reception on the afternoon of April 5, 1903.  The New York Times reminded its readers at the time “This is the edifice erected by a knot of painters who found it difficult to get good studios in Manhattan.”

The Sixty-Seventh Street Studios welcomed an esteemed list of residents.  Among the first were, of course, Dessar, Ranger and Du Mond; joined by Robert W. Vonnoh, F. Childe Hassam, Robert V. V. Sewell (who executed the lobby frescoes), Charles Naegele, and sculptress Bessie Potter Vonnoh and her husband, impressionist painter Robert.

American Art News described the Vonnoh apartments on October 21, 1905.  “Both these studios are unusually large and well lighted and built under their owner’s supervision, with every convenience and comfort.  Mr. Vonnoh’s studio is beautifully finished with rare hangings, rugs, and furniture.  Mrs. Vonnoh’s is most artistic and interesting, though more plainly furnished than that of her husband, as is suited to her work as a sculptress.”

Bessie Potter Vonnoh and Robert Vonnoh -- photo Archives of American Art

In November 1903 The School of Decorative and Applied Art opened in the building.  Affiliated with the New York School of Art, it was supervised by Eliza A. Sargent.  Drawing and Manual Training Journal explained its purpose was “to meet the demands of the times that art, the crafts and the handicrafts be correlated.”

English-born sculptor Samuel J. Kitson died after a brief illness in 1904.  At the time he was working on a model for a bronze statue, “Christ, the Light of the World.”  The figure had been finished but it was his widow, Anne Meredith Kitson, who completed the base.  The model was awarded the Pope’s Gold Medal for Sculpture in 1906.  Anne stayed on in the studio, surrounded by models of her husband’s best works.

Artists taking space in the Sixty-Seventh Street Studios were not struggling.  They had taken their places in the art world and, in many cases, in society.  Anne Meredith Kitson herself was descended from an old New England family.  Among her impressive list of friends, past and current, were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Louisa May Alcott, Edwin Booth, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Samuel J. Tilden, General Philip H. Sheridan, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Alexander Graham Bell, and William McKinley.

Italian-born Pilade Bertieri took a studio in October 1905.  The New York Times noted that he “has painted portraits of several well-known society people…and will receive on Saturdays.  Mr. Bertieri spent the Summer at Newport.”

Like Anne Kitson, Cadwallader L. Washburn did not achieve his place in society, he was born into it.  Technology Review, in 1906, called him “the scion of an old and well-known family, and a wealthy young man to boot.”  The journal noted “He has been everywhere, all over Europe a score of times, to the Orient, across the Himalayas, and down into the heart of Africa.”

Washburn studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but turned his focus to art.  He earned the nickname the “Silent Artist.”   He worked at his easel alone in his studio here, “with never a sound to break the stillness save the plushing of his damp brushes upon the canvas or the delicate scratching of his etcher’s point,” wrote Technology Review.

The quiet was a result of Washburn’s inability to hear.  He had been a deaf-mute since the age of three.  “And yet, in spite of his affliction, there is probably no artist in all that life-loving and life-living profession who lives a fuller life, or one filled with a greater variety of enjoyment, than does Mr. Washburn.  When his workday is over, he diverts himself with society.”

Equally prominent was artist George Henry Clements and his family.  The landscape painter’s apartment was the scene of debutante entertainments in 1910 when daughter Anna was introduced to society.  They ended with a supper and theater party on Monday, December 5.  The joy of that occasion turned to grief only 11 days later when Anna’s 21-year old brother, Brent Dixwell Clements, died of pneumonia in the apartment.

Other artists in the building at the time included Ray Lindham, who had held an exhibition in his studio in February that year; portrait artist Lawrence Nelson; and Benjamin A. Morton.

Theodore Pembrook was an original resident and, like Cadwallader Washburn, was born into privilege.  On February 16, 1911 The Potter, Glass & Brass Salesman noted “The Pembrooks were wealthy and their home became a treasure house stored with the products of centuries of European genius.  Into this atmosphere the boy was born who was destined to become one of the foremost American artists.”

In 1914 F. Childe Hassam set a legal precedent when his law suit against the United States Express Company was decided.  In 1905 he had send a painting, “A Rainy Day in Washington Square,” to Denver to be exhibited.  On June 3 the express company was instructed to return the artwork to Hassam.

A worker mislabeled the package, sending it to No. 27 West 27^th Street, an entrance to the Metropolitan Hotel.  The Sun later reported “An employee of the hotel signed the receipt for it and it remained unclaimed at the hotel.”

While F. Childe Hassam tried in vain to discover what had become of his missing painting, it sat behind the hotel’s desk for months.  An employee testified that it was still there on May 1, 1906 when he left the hotel’s employment.  “Shortly afterward the hotel was torn down and its contents sold,” reported The Sun.

On July 10, 1914 the court ruled in favor of the artist, granting him the $1,174 for the lost painting.  The Sun reported “The court holds that the express company is liable because the shipment was delivered at an address where the person to whom the shipment was made was not known.”

The New York Times chimed in, saying “What became of the picture is unknown.  It lay behind the desk in the hotel office until the building was abandoned.  In the course of a century or two, if Mr. Hassam takes rank as an ‘old master,’ the picture will doubtless be dug up and become the subject of debates as to whether it is a ‘fake’ or an original.”

Henry Ward Ranger died in the building he had conceived at the age of 58 on November 7, 1916.  His will directed that his paintings be presented to art institutions or galleries “in America having galleries open to the public.”  The remainder of his estate went to the National Academy of Design.

A year later, Theodore Kenyon Pembrook died in his apartment where he had lived for nearly 15 years.  An art broker, Charles H. Boynton, said Pembrook was often referred to as the “hermit artist” because “he seldom showed interest in anything outside his studio.”  The artist rarely sold his work, living off his inheritance.

On the evening of Thursday, September 20, 1917 Pembrook consulted with Charles Boynton about donating about a dozen of his landscapes for the war effort.  After the broker left, it appeared that Pembrook took up working on a painting.

“Pembrook, who had been troubled with a weak heart for some time had apparently tired of painting, and, still wearing his painter’s smock, he had taken a novel and lay down on a couch to rest and read,” surmised The New York Times later.

When the building’s janitor had not seen the 52-year old for two days, he entered the studio.  There he found Pembrook’s body on the couch with his brushes at his side.

Italian-born artist Luigi Curci shared a studio with his brother, Gennaro Curci in 1918.  The speeding fine of $30 that Gennaro incurred for driving an automobile at 30 miles an hour on Broadway in July that year was nothing compared to the problems that were to come.

Luigi was married to the successful operatic prima donna Madame Amelita Galli-Curci.  Things were not going well for the couple.  On September 4, 1918 the New-York Tribune reported that the pair had separated and each was suing the other.

Curci alleged that his wife’s manager and accompanist had alienated her affections.  He sued them for $250,000 damages—nearly $4 million in 2015.   Madame Galli-Curci, at the same time, instructed her attorneys to remove everything from the Sixty-Seventh Street Studios apartment.  She valued the contents at $17,000 and said they included “tapestry panels, rugs, a Capo di Monte vase, all the singer’s wearing apparel in the house, and the furnishings of a modern apartment.”

She issued a statement which said that since their marriage in 1908 she had earned all the money and he, “practically nothing.”  The Tribune advised “Also, for the last two years, she added, her husband’s brother, Gennaro, has looked to her for support.”

She said that when she returned from a European tour in 1917 she found her bank account nearly empty.  She was forced to change banks and revoke her husband’s access.  According to The New York Times “Galli-Curci at once issued a statement branding her husband’s charges as ‘absurd,’ and made for the purpose of humiliating her.”

By 1927 American novelist Fannie Hurst was living here.  Her works often dealt with women as victims of social and economic discrimination.  Two of her novels, Back Street and Imitation of Life would become the bases of successful screen plays.

Her societal interests were reflected in her activities, often taking place in the studio.  On March 7, 1927, for instance, she hosted a committee meeting of the National Health Circle for Colored People, Inc.  Five years later, in March 1932, she addressed a group of convicts on Welfare Island.  Several days later she received a knock on her door in the Sixty-Seventh Street Studios. 

The man at her door said he had heard her speech on that Sunday.  According to The Times he “described himself as Frank Brown, a newly released convict.  He said he could get a job as a musician if he had evening clothes.”

Fannie Hurst was sympathetic to the needs of society; but she was no fool.  “Miss Hurst checked up his story, found that he was an impostor, and refused to aid him,” reported The Times.

Fannie Hurst lived in the Studios Building for years -- photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

Frank V. Du Mond, one of the founders of the studios, was still here at the time.  On June 3 his daughter was married at the family’s country estate, Grassy Hill, in Lyme, Connecticut.  Also still here was Anne Meredith Kitson, after three decades.

Over the years several art patrons and galleries had made offers to buy the “Christ, the Light of the World” sculpture and have it cast.  The Times would later explain “But Mrs. Kitson declined all offers, expressing the desire to place it where she thought it would be most appreciated.”

Finally she found the right place in 1936 when she was introduced to Father Bernard R. Hubbard.  Called by some the “glacier priest,” he was also a scientist and explorer and had as his parish the 190 Eskimo inhabitants of King Island in the Bering Sea.  Father Hubbard had for months been seeking an appropriate statue for the desolate island “as a symbol to Christians of Christ’s love, even for the atheistic Soviets,” as explained by The New York Times, and to “commemorate the heroism of Catholic missionaries working among the Eskimos.”

Anne Kitson was exhilarated at having found the perfect spot for her husband’s masterpiece.  The 82-year old paid for and oversaw the arrangements for the casting, packing and shipping of the statue.   But on November 7, 1937, The Times reported “The exertion proved too much for her strength, she became ill and died on Holy Thursday.  Had she lived another week she would have seen her statue cast in bronze and started on its long journey to Alaska.”

The Sixth-Seventh Street Studios continued to be the home of established artists for decades, including Harrison Cady who moved into his eight-room studio in 1942.  By the 21^st century the unusual spaces had attracted those not involved in the arts, as well.   What had not changed was the financial status of the occupants.  When graphic designer Milton Glaser sold his duplex in 2007 the price tag was $4.1 million.

The striking façade of the Sixty-Seventh Street Studios, once considered “depressing” by one critic, is happily pristine.  And, almost miraculously, the marvelous art glass lamp over the entrance survives.

photographs by the author