The 1900 Abner C. Thomas House - 315 West 84th Street

 

James Ross and Charles R. McNeill established their architectural practice in 1898.  Among their first commissions was the designing of six upscale rowhouses on the north side of West 84th Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue for Matthews & Eppenstein.  Completed in 1900, the five-story homes were designed, overall, in the Beaux Arts style.  Ross & McNeil created an off-balanced row in an ABBBAA configuration.  The flat-faced "A" models were clad in red brick.  The B models, which included 315 West 84th Street, were faced in brown brick above their rusticated limestone bases.  The upper three floors were bowed, terminating in a dignified stone balustrade that fronted the tiled mansard.  Its prominent dormer wore an arched pediment.

The houses form a dignified row.  315 West 84th Street is hiding behind the tree in the foreground.

Matthews & Eppenstein had purchased the property from Henry Oppenheimer in November 1899.  The transaction did not come without a problem.  A house already existed at 315 West 84th Street and it was being leased to attorney Abner C. Thomas and his family.  The developers apparently negotiated with family, because when the row was completed, the Thomas family moved into 315 West 84th Street.

Abner C. Thomas was born in Brooklyn in 1844.  He received a civil engineering degree from the Polytechnic College of Pennsylvania.  At the age of 21, he changed course, studying law in Bridgeport, Connecticut.  He relocated to New York City in 1866 and opened his law office.  

Thomas and his wife, the former Lucy Carnahan, had four children: Ethel Cary, Rhoda Cary, Lucy Cary and Abel Cary.  Lucy had a long American pedigree.  She was the first president of the Daughters of Ohio, and a member of the Daughters of the Revolution, and the Daughters of the War of 1812.  She was, as well, a member of Sorosis, the first professional women's club in America.

The Thomas family had lived in the previous house as early as 1895.  The last social event in that residence took place on December 5, 1899.  That evening Rhoda Cary Thomas was married to Cornelius W. Luyster Jr. at the Church of All Angels on West End Avenue.  The New-York Tribune remarked, "a supper and dance for the members of the bridal party will follow at the home of the bride's parents, No. 315 West Eighty-fourth-st."

In addition to his law practice, Abner C. Thomas was an author.  He wrote, according to The Evening World, "many text books on law," most of which dealt with real estate law.  In 1899, he was appointed surrogate justice by the Tammany organization.

In March 1903, F. W. Drury and his wife, Josephine, purchased 315 West 84th Street.  Their residency would be relatively short and in May 1907, they sold the house to Corinne Roche.

A graduate of the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Corinne was highly involved in real estate, buying and selling properties in Manhattan.  Her parents, Walter and Mary Amelia Doherty Roche, were both dead and moving into 315 West 84th Street were Corinne's sisters, Beatrice, Marie and Amelia.  The Roches' summer home was in Deal Beach, New Jersey.  At the time, Beatrice was still a student in the Convent of the Sacred Heart.

On September 24, 1907, Marie was married to Joseph Thomas Ryan in Deal, New Jersey.  Her brother, John Doherty Roche, gave her away.  The New York Times noted, "A reception followed the wedding at the Roche Summer home."

The Asbury Park Press began an article on September 11, 1909, "While on a vacation from the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Manhattanville, N. Y., several years ago, Miss Beatrice Roche gave a birthday party...and it was there that she first met Dr. William Vincent Pascual of Brooklyn, then a student at Columbia university."  The article said a "rather romantic courtship" followed.  Beatrice and Pascual were married in Deal on the morning of that article.  Corinne was Beatrice's maid of honor and John gave her away.  The reception was held in Marie and Joseph Ryan's summer home.

There were now just two sisters in the West 84th Street house.  Corinne busied herself with her real estate dealings while remaining highly active in her alumnae association.  On June 15, 1919, for instance, the New York Herald announced, "On the campus at Manhattanville members of the alumnae association of the Convent of the Sacred Heart College held their 'Old Students' Day' Tuesday."  The article noted that Corinne Roche was the chairman of the arrangements.

Amelia was married to John William Kehoe in the Church of the Holy Trinity in September 1920.  She was given away by Joseph Ryan.  (John D. Roche had died on January 29, 1918.)  Corinne attended her sister.  The New York Times reported, "The ceremony was followed by a wedding breakfast at the home of the bride, 315 West Eighty-fourth Street."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

Corinne was not left alone in the house.  Amelia and John moved in.  Kehoe was a textile executive and Amelia kept busy with charity work.  She was vice president of the Manhattanville Children of Mary, was highly active in the ladies' auxiliary of St. Joseph's Day Nursery, and was treasurer of the Maplehurst Alumnae of the Sacred Heart.  And in 1933, The New York Sun reported that she was chairman of the International Federation of Catholic Alumnae's annual bridge party.

Corinne Roche continued to buy and sell real estate.  On May 9, 1930, for instance, The New York Times reported that she had purchased an apartment building on East 123rd Street, and by the early 1940s she owned a theater on Eighth Avenue.

In August 1944, real estate operator M. C. Berg purchased 315 West 84th Street, sparking a game of real estate hot potato.  He resold it the following month "to an investor," according to The New York Sun on September 28.  In April 1945, G. W. Cane purchased it and resold it the following month to real estate Dorothy Kaliski.  She rented rooms in the house until 1953, when The New York Times reported on June 4 that she sold it to a buyer who would convert it into ten apartments.  But, once again, the purchaser resold 351 West 84th Street the following month.  On July 24, The New York Times reported, "The buyer plans to alter the building and occupy a large part of it."

The once elegant home became a rooming house.  The following year, on December 21, 1954, The New York Times reported that the owner and nine other rooming house owners had been "threatened with forced evacuation of their tenements as firetraps."

A renovation completed in 1956 resulted in one apartment each on the first and second floors, two each on the third and fourth, and two furnished rooms on the fifth floor.  There would be three more renovations to come, each one reducing the number of units.  In 1973 the first and second floors were combined as a duplex, in 1995 that apartment was enlarged to a triplex, and, finally, in 2017 315 West 84th Street was restored to a single-family home.

photographs by the author

The William H. H. Moore House - 349 West 84th Street

 

Prolific Upper West Side architect Clarence F. True designed a row of five brick and stone rowhouses for developer Richard G. Platt in 1896.  Stretching from 349 to 357 West 84th Street, just steps from upscale Riverside Drive, they were designed in the Renaissance Revival style.  Completed the following year, the eastern-most house, 349 West 84th Street, was five stories tall, its American basement plan foregoing a high stoop in favor of a short flight of four steps.  True gave the first four floors a faceted front that provided additional light and ventilation to the front rooms.

The rusticated limestone base included a columned portico that provided a stone-railed balcony at the second floor.  Here French windows sat within a handsome Renaissance style frame of Scamozzi columns upholding a classical pediment.  An intermediate cornice introduced the fourth floor, where arched openings were crowned by scrolled keystones.  The fifth floor sat back from projecting facade, its rusticated stone face punctured by cruciform windows.

The 17-foot-wide residence was purchased by William Henry Helme Moore and his wife, the former Adelaide Louisa Lewis. Moving in with the couple was their unmarried son William Clifford; and their daughter Julia Louise Moore, her husband LeRoy Cholwell Fairchild, and their three children.  Another son, Arthur Lewis, was married to Sarah Frelinghuysen Chambers and lived in London, while daughter Adelaide Irving was married to well-to-do broker Elias Hicks Herrick.

Born in Greenport, Long Island in 1824, Moore was educated as an attorney.  He entered his brother's law firm, Cutting & Moore, in 1847, but he later changed course dramatically, pursuing a career in insurance.  He rose to the presidency of the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company, retiring on April 7, 1897--the year the family moved into 349 West 84th Street.

The Moore house is at the far right of the row. 

Retirement did not mean inactivity.  Deeply concerned about charitable causes, he was president of the Haven's Relief Fund, manager of the Burke Foundation, and president of the Life Saving Benevolent Association.  In 1909 he was elected a director in the Society for Promoting the Gospel Among Seamen in the Port of New York.

The family's summer estate was in Greenport, Long Island.  The 1896 Portrait and Biographical Record of Suffolk County noted, "The Moore family has been represented on the island since 1630, and the old homestead on the North Road is now owned by William H. H. Moore."

On November 28, 1909, The New York Times reported that William and Adelaide Moore "have sent out invitations for the wedding of their granddaughter, Miss Adelaide Fairchild, to John Welles Arnold."  The article noted, "It will be a home wedding, followed by a small reception."

The following month, on December 28, William Henry Helme Moore caught cold, according to The Sun.  It developed into pneumonia and a week later, on January 4, 1910, the 86-year-old died.  The New York Times said that since his retirement he "had been in failing health."

The New York Herald reported on May 20, 1910 that the Henry H. H. Moore estate had sold 349 West 84th Street.  Nevertheless, the Handbook of the Municipal League listed Adelaide and William (who never married) still living here as late as 1914.

The family of insurance broker Harry H. Fuller lived here by 1920.  They were looking to replace a servant that year, advertising in the New York Herald on October 10, "Chambermaid-Waitress for family of 4; 3 maids kept."

Fuller was summoned for jury duty in high-profile bribery case of former State Banking Superintendent Frank H. Warder in 1920.  On October 21, attorney James I. Cuff asked Fuller "if the fact that Warder might not take the stand in his own defense would influence his judgment," reported The Standard Union.  

Fuller was frank.  "It certainly would influence my judgment.  I think he should take the stand."  The article said flatly, "Mr. Fuller was excused."

No. 349 West 84th Street remained a single-family residence until a renovation completed in 1966 resulted in a duplex apartment on the first and second floors, one apartment on the third, and two duplexes sharing the fourth and fifth floors.

photographs by the author

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The James Morris Leopold House - 347 West 84th Street

 

In 1888, Nathan Murray began construction of the first house on the West 84th Street block between Riverside Dive and West End Avenue.  Designed by Joseph M. Dunn, 347 West 84th Street was completed the following year, its three-story, brownstone clad facade reflecting the currently fashionable Queen Anne style, splashed with neo-Grec touches.

The high stone stoop led to an impressive portico with banded Corinthian columns and pilasters.  The two parlor windows were united by a single frame and separated by fluted Corinthian pilasters.  Their single, triangular pediment was filled with a carved sunburst--a common Queen Anne element.  The upper story windows sat within architrave frames, with those of the second floor wearing pediments that echoed those of the doorway and parlor window.  An ornate pressed metal cornice topped the design.

The 18-foot-wide house was purchased by real estate operator Frank N. Gill, perhaps best known for erecting the Gill Building at 9-13 Maiden Lane.  He leased the house for several years before selling it to James Morris Leopold and his wife, the former Florence Rosetta Kohn, on November 29, 1897.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1860, Leopold was the head of the banking and brokerage firm James M. Leopold & Company.  He and Florence had four children, James Jr., Florence Henriette, Leopold, and Jane Rose.

(original source unknown)

Leopold's brother, Alfred, was a partner in James Leopold & Co.  He went to police headquarters in 1901 to file a complaint against a new client.  On May 6 Theodore Barron's check for $11,190 was returned by his bank marked "N.G." (no good).  The 38-year-old was arrested on May 14.  The Leopold brothers were not eager to speak about the incident.  The New York Times reported, "At the home of James M. Leopold all information was refused, reporters being told to go to the house of Alfred M. Leopold."  There the journalist was told that Alfred "would not return during the night, as he would stay at a hotel for the night."

Leopold sold 347 West 84th Street to George W. Thedford around 1908, who quickly resold it to Otho Sprigg Cockey and his wife in March 1909.  Cockey, whose family had deep American roots, was the general agent of the Grand Trunk Railway System.  

A year before moving into the West 84th Street house, Cockey was called as a potential juror in the most sensational murder case of the day--the trial of Harry Kendall Thaw, who had fatally shot architect Stanford White.  But, according to The Evening World, “The fact that Otho S. Cockey...had been associated with Thaw’s father in business barred him.”

The Cockeys beloved pet, a French bull terrier, ran off in the spring of 1913.  They wasted no time in offering a reward for her return.  On April 26 a notice in The New York Times read: 

STRAYED from 347 West 84th St., at 8 o'clock this morning, small toy, dark brindle French bull bitch; answers to the name of 'Wiggles'; liberal reward.  O. S. Cockey. 347 West 84th St.

It is unclear if Wiggles ever came home.

The Cockeys were at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia on May 9, 1915 when Otho died.  His body was brought back to 347 West 84th Street where his funeral was held three days later.

Cockey's widow remained in the house for several years, then leased it.  On September 2, 1920, the Musical Courier reported that Adelaide Gescheidt had "added more space for her teaching facilities by taking the house at 347 Wet Eighty-fourth street, New York, retaining her main studios at 817 Carnegie Hall."

Born in Mount Vernon, New York in 1877, Gescheidt had been an operatic soprano.  Her stage career ended when, as she recalled in her 1930 book Make Singing a Joy, she "met with a serious accident to my neck by falling from an awkward height across a steel bar."  Now, she turned to coaching opera and concert singers whose voices had been damaged by "injury, illness, or other defects."

Adelaide Gescheidt, Musical Courier, November 23, 1922 (copyright expired)

On June 26, 1920, three months before Gescheidt leased 347 West 84th Street, Nina Teresa Melville was married to Gould Thorp Miner in Massachusetts.   Now, after their honeymoon, they subleased rooms from Adelaide Gescheidt.

The young groom had served in the navy during World War I.  He was now associated with the Bankers Trust Company.  They, like their landlady, rubbed shoulders with polite society.

On May 27, 1921, the New-York Tribune reported that the Miners had welcomed their first child, Olive Emelie.  The article noticed, "Mr. and Mrs. Miner will pass the summer with Mrs. Edward Gleason Spaulding, at Princeton, N. J., and Woods Hole."

This would be the last season that Adelaide Gescheidt received students in the West 84th Street house.  Musical Courier, July 6, 1922 (copyright expired)

In July 1923, The Sun reported that Mrs. Cockey had leased the house for a period of ten years.  It was operated as a respectable rooming house, with residents like Herbert H. Wentworth, a sales engineer with the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co., coming and going for a decade.

At the end of the lease, on September 6, 1933, The New York Sun reported that an agent "leased for Mrs. M. Cockey of East Orange, N. J., her dwelling at 347 West Eighty-fourth street to a client who will alter and occupy the house."  Around 1940, the Cockey estate sold the property to Harry W. Thedford, who was, ironically, the brother of George W. Thedford, from whom the Cockeys had purchased it.

In 1964 the house was converted to apartments, one per floor.  Then, a substantial renovation completed in 2019 resulted in an apartment in the basement and a triplex residence above.  While O'Neill Rose Architects removed almost any trace of Joseph M. Dunn's 1888 interior details, its sweeping redesign earned it Architect Magazine's 2019 Residential Architect Design Award.

photographs by the author

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The 1906 Hyperion Apartments - 318-320 West 84th Street

 

Morris Rosenburg worked as the night watchman at the construction site of the Hyperion apartment building at 320 West 84th Street in 1905.  Early on Christmas morning the superintendent of construction Adam Kleper checked in.  After walking throughout the nearly completed building and not running into Rosenburg, he searched for him.  The New York Times reported, "he went to the small room in the rear where the man usually stayed."  Rosenburg's shanty was heated by a coke stove.

Kelper forced open the door and found a grisly scene.   The article said, "The watchman was dead, his left arm and leg badly burned, as was his left side.  It is supposed that, overcome by the coke fumes, he toppled over on the stove and, upsetting it, was burned to death."

The rising Hyperion sat on the site of two mansions, one of which had been owned by James and Margaret Sbreel Slattery.  They had sold it to the developers Rosenberg & Feinberg for just over $300,000.  The couple's son, John Richard Slattery, is remembered today as the Catholic priest who worked throughout his religious career for the betterment of the condition of Blacks and for the Catholic Church's acceptance of Black clergy.

In the spring of 1906, a few months after Morris Rosenburg's horrifying death, the first residents of the Hyperion moved in.  It was described in an advertisement that April as "just finished" and being "beautifully decorated."  There were just two apartments per floor, one of eight rooms and the other of seven--each with two bathrooms (one for the servants).  The ad noted amenities like "uniformed attendants" and "telephone in each apartment."  Rents were either $1,300 (for the seven-room suite) or $1,400--approximately $4,000 per month in 2023 for the pricier apartments.

Architect Edward A. Meyers's dignified Beaux Arts design forewent the festoons and dripping swags seen in many other apartment buildings in the style.  Instead, the upper floors were enhanced with Renaissance style pediments above the third floor windows; and Gibbs surrounds and splayed lintels, more expected in neo-Federal style buildings, on the top three floors.  Two balconies, one over the entrance and the other at the fifth floor, relieved the otherwise flat facade.  A prominent stone balustrade sat above the cornice.

from Apartment Houses of the Metropolis, 1908 (copyright expired)

 A brochure lured potential, well-heeled residents.  It boasted, "The environments are delightful, being in one of the most fashionable neighborhoods of the West Side, and within a few hundred feet of the Columbia Yacht Club station at the foot of 86th street, where many world-known yachts ride at anchor."  The advertisement further noted, "Parlors and libraries are finished in mahogany, dining rooms in antique oak, all other rooms in white enamel.  Parquet flooring in every room."

Among the Hyperion's early residents were attorney Myron Turn Townsend, a 1902 graduate of Columbia University; Dr. Robert G. Moore, an attending orthopedic surgeon at Seton Hospital;  and Richard Phelan, who left his comfortable surroundings here at the outbreak of war in Europe to attend the Plattsburgh, New York military training camp.

A dignified balustrade originally crowned the Hyperion.  Apartment Houses of the Metropolis, 1908 (copyright expired

Laurence Schwab would be a long-time resident.  He was living here by 1917 when he was the theatrical manager of the Palace Theatre.  He had graduated from Harvard three years earlier.  As it had done to Richard Phelan, World War I interrupted his life.  On December 7, 1917, the very day America entered the war, Schwab enlisted into the U.S. Navy.  Despite his ship's being destroyed by an explosion, Schwab survived.  He resigned his position as Lieutenant in February 1919 and returned to the Hyperion.  He wrote in 1924, "I have since been back at work producing playlets and musical sketches for vaudeville."

By 1918 the Hirsch family had an apartment here.  Adolph was a broker of fertilizing materials and chemicals.  Also in the apartment were adult sons Ralph T. Hirsch, who was a well-known mining engineer, and Herbert Adolph.  A bachelor and 1905 graduate of Harvard, Herbert did not list an occupation.

On June 16, 1922, resident Anton Weigand seemed like an easy mark for pickpocket Elverite Monjellio.  Weigand, who was a tea and coffee merchant, was on a streetcar when he realized the 27-year-old was stealing his wallet.  Monjellio, as it turned out, had picked the wrong target.

The Evening World reported, "Men and women in a 125th Street crosstown car early this morning were greatly excited when Detectives Sullivan and McCoy...dashed through and arrested Elverite Monjellio."  The detectives had been in the front of the car when they "heard shouts and a struggle on the back platform."  Weigand had overpowered and held the would-be crook "who protested his innocence," said the article.

Other residents at the time were William G. Armstrong, the secretary of the National Liberty Insurance Co. of America; author Herbert Manchester, whose 1926 The Romance of the Match was published while he lived here; and actress and Metropolitan Opera soprano Dicie Howell.  

A cabinet card depicted Dicie Howell around the turn of the century.

On August 13, 1919, The Columbia Daily Spectator reviewed the opening night production of Horatio Parker's Dream of Mary.  The critic noted, "Dicie Howell, soprano, played the role of Mary and captivated the audience by her superb singing."

Charles F. Wiebusch was the president of hardware manufacturing firm Wiebusch & Hilger, Ltd.  He had entered the firm founded by his father as a young man.  At the time of the 70-year-old's death on May 12, 1930, change was on the near horizon for the refined Hyperion apartment house.

By 1935, the sprawling apartments had been subdivided.  Perhaps the first evidence that not all of the residents were respectable came at 6:30 on the morning of October 22 that year.  Hugo Chiarello and Joseph Pegno, who shared a one-room apartment, headed out of the lobby during a period of what the Niagara Falls Gazette called "gang warfare."  They may have been on the way to the funeral of the notorious gangster Dutch Schultz but, if so, they would not make it.

Gangland figures Chiarello and Pegno were gunned down in the Hyperion's lobby.  New York Post, October 28, 1935.

The New York Post reported, "as the mobster was being laid to rest, trigger men mowed down two more men in the lobby of a West Eighty-fourth Street apartment house.  Today's targets were Hugo Chiarello, twenty-five, and Joseph Pegno, thirty-two, both known to police."  Chiarello was hit twice in the body and once in the head.  The Niagara Falls Gazette added, "Pegno got a bullet under his heart."  In their apartment, police found a loaded .45 caliber pistol.

Unsavory publicity continued in 1937 when 18-year-old resident Betty Sorsay was arrested as part of a national narcotics ring run by the Pennachhio family.  That same year on December 15, 34-year-old resident Omer F. Paradise was arrested and held without bail on a charge of burglarizing the Richard Schwab residence.  The Long Island Daily Press reported, "At the time of his arrest, Paradise...had about $300 worth of jewelry belonging to Schwab and his wife in his possession."

The decline of the once elegant Hyperion hit rock bottom in 1941 when it was renovated to a single-room-occupancy hotel.  Where there were originally just two commodious apartments per floor, there were now 16 sparsely furnished rooms.

Happily, exactly three decades later a remodeling brought the building back to respectability when the Hyperion was renovated to apartments, six per floor.

photographs by the author

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The Julius Chambers House - 9 West 84th Street

 

In March 1884, architect Frank F. Ward designed a row of six narrow, three-story houses for Margaret A. Brennan on West 84th Street, just east of Ninth (later Columbus) Avenue.  Another developer, Terence Keirnan, apparently took notice and the following year, in May, he purchased the plots at 3 through 9 West 84th Street, just off Central Park West, from Alfred Corning Clark.  The deeds demanded "that only first-class dwelling houses would be erected on the property."

As Margaret A. Brennan had done, Keirnan hired Frank F. Ward to design the 19-foot-wide houses.  Each would cost the equivalent of $494,000 in 2023 to construct.  On August 14, 1886 the Real Estate Record & Guide reported that the homes were nearly completed, saying Kiernan was installing the interior woodwork.  The article noted that the entire block was now nearly developed and that the "handsome character of the improvement on Eighty-fifth street is particularly noticeable."

Kiernan's brownstone-fronted houses were four stories tall above English basements.  Ward's formal Renaissance Revival design included intricately carved panels at the parlor level, and complex architrave framing of the upper floor windows.  The doorway, with its carved and paneled double doors, was flanked by Scamozzi pilasters that upheld a double cornice.  Ward strayed from Renaissance Revival in the stoop, where the iron railings were quintessentially Queen Anne with a delightful sunburst motif.

In October 1890 Kiernan sold 9 West 84th Street to Julius Chambers.  Chambers paid $32,000 for the property, or about $985,000 today.

Joseph Pulitzer had lured Chambers to his New York World as its managing editor the previous year.   Born in Bellefontaine, Ohio in 1850, he began his journalistic career as a "printer's devil" at the age of 11 at the Bellefontaine Republican.  (A printer's devil was an apprentice who did various tasks like fetching type and ink.)  Chambers had made journalistic history  while working for the New York Tribune.  In an early example of what today would be called undercover reporting, he had friends commit him to the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum where he gathered inside information on the facility.  After ten days, his friends had him released and a series of shocking articles were published.  Chambers's articles earned him the distinction of being labeled the original muckraker by many.

Julius Chambers, from the collection of the Minnesota Historical Society

Just months before buying the 84th Street house, Chambers found himself in court.  Millionaire drygoods mogul Alexander Turney Stewart died on April 10, 1876, after which a number of unflattering articles appeared in the New York Tribune.  On April 30, 1890 a grand jury voted to indict Chambers along with Pulitzer and two other executives for "contriving and intending to injure, defame, and vilify and disgrace the memory, character, name and reputation of Alexander T. Stewart," as reported in The New York Times.  The charges were later dismissed.

Chambers was an author of several books, as well.  While living here he published the fictional The Rascal Club in 1893.  Publisher F. Tennyson Nelly wrote of the book that year, "It is certainly a book to charm all youthful readers; and many an old greybeard upon dipping into its fascinating pages will find himself being carried back over the decades that have elapsed since, in good company, he haunted the 'ol' swimmin'-hole.'  There is a vigor in Mr. Chambers' descriptions of life in an Ohio town during war times that amounts almost to enthusiasm."

No. 9 West 84th Street was sold in 1905 to Weston J. Smith and his wife.  The couple had one child.  Smith was the head of the dress-goods department of Ehrich's Department Store on Sixth Avenue.  A shocking scandal would bring the Smiths' residency to an abrupt end within a year.

In the summer of 1905, a 14-year-old girl, Annie Eppert, was hired in the store as a "cash girl."  Later in court she would testify "that she was a virtuous girl."  Court papers said, "shortly after her employment at Ehrich's store [Smith] manifested an interest in her and frequently expressed a desire to have her meet him outside, to have her go riding with him and to have her take dinner with him."

The girl initially refused, but, finally, just before Christmas 1905, she met him at the elevated station platform at 58th Street and Sixth Avenue.  He gave her car fare and told her to meet him at Central Park.  In the park, "he persuaded her to let him have intercourse with her in a secreted spot, after which they separated and she went home."  After the encounter, she again refused his advances, but he was resolute and the girl fell victim to him a second time on January 11, 1906, again in the park.  But this time a police officer came upon them while engaging in the act.

The prosecuting attorney told the court, "The defendant's wife and child were doubtless at their dinner or awaiting his return a few blocks to the west."  He was tried and found guilty of abduction and rape.  

Intricate Renaissance style carvings decorate the parlor level, including a bas relief face.  The sunburst railings can be glimpsed in the example to the right.

Shortly afterward Thomas Malloy purchased 9 West 84th Street.  Not long after the family moved in, the Malloys' daughter Elizabeth received her teacher's license on September 17, 1907.

Sometime after midnight on December 15, 1914, fire broke out in the apartment building next door.  The Sun reported the blaze "drove the ten families living there to the street in their nightclothes."  The article said that the families, shivering in the winter night air, "were given shelter in the home of Thomas Maloney [sic] at 9 West Eighty-fourth street."

Following Thomas Malloy's death, the family sold 9 West 84th Street to Frank and Rose V. Dingle in December 1920.  The couple resold the house in June following year to Charles S. Short.

It appears that in selling the house, the Dingles also let staff go.  An advertisement in the New York Herald that same month read, "Couple, congenial, would like to take care of estate, &c; or what have you to offer.  Bodkin, 9 West 84th st., New York city."

Short converted the house to a total of 14 furnished rooms.  Among the roomers in 1939 were Patrick O'Rafferty, a 42-year-old steeplejack; and Thomas Reilly.  

The two men were arrested separately in October that year on the complaint of Sally Ridder.  She told police they had appeared at her door representing themselves as detectives of the District Attorney's office.  They searched her apartment for a revolver and, when the "found" one, offered to "fix things up" for $200.  The New York Sun reported, "The commotion Miss Ridder made at this point, she said, put the men to flight."  Both men pleaded not guilty, however the article said, "A chuckle swept the line-up room and even O'Rafferty couldn't resist a grin when it was revealed that his record included a prison term of a year and a half in Dublin on charges of high treason, murder and escape."

In 1972, 9 West 84th Street was converted to apartments--a duplex in the basement and parlor level, and two apartments each on the floors above.  A subsequent renovation completed in 2009 returned it to a single family home.

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The Irving School - 35 West 84th Street

 

Charles and Anna McDonald were a successful husband-and-wife real estate development team in the latter part of the 19th century, focusing much of their attention on the Upper West Side.  On August 14, 1886, in an article describing the dizzying pace of construction in the neighborhood, the Record & Guide wrote, "Charles McDonald is preparing the foundations for five four-story brown stone dwellings on the north side of Eighty-fourth street."

The McDonalds commissioned architect Henry L. Harris to design the row.  Relatively forgotten today, Harris was busy at the time creating rows of speculative houses.  And like the McDonalds, he worked primarily on the Upper West Side.  The recently-popular Queen Anne style was a favorite of the architect and he used it again for the 84th Street row, while liberally adding Renaissance Revival touches.  Designed in a balanced A-B-C-B-A configuration, the residences were completed in 1887 at a cost of $18,000 each, or about $523,000 in 2023.

The center house, 35 West 84th Street, rose four stories above a high English basement.  In its article, the Record & Guide had noted "one of the characteristics of the building movement on the west side is the large use of rock-faced stone instead of the dressed stone which has been used almost exclusively in the older parts of the city."  And here Harris used the chunky stone for the basement and parlor levels.   The floor-to-ceiling parlor windows were originally fronted by railings that suggested balconies.  Above the openings at this level were foliate carvings and panels decorated with triangular pediments, each (originally) adorned with carvings like the bowl of fruit that survives over the central opening.

The undressed stone reappeared in the upper stories in the form of gear-like voussoirs.  The half-story mansard was fronted by a prominent triangular gable decorated with a modified Queen Anne sunburst.  In place of the expected wavy sunrays, Harris had substituted fern fronds and flowers.

William A. and Mary G. Topping purchased 35 West 84th Street.  Topping was a director in the Anglo-American Reduction Co. and the Fallsburgh & Monticello Railroad Co.  The couple had a daughter, Josephine S.  The family lived here until 1896 when the house was sold to Charles C. Cunningham.

It was sold again in April 1899 to Dr. Lewis Dwight Ray and his wife, the former Isoline Doty Brown, for "about $31,000," according to the Record & Guide.  The price would translate to just over $1 million in 2023.

Born in New York City in 1861, Ray had graduated from Columbia University in 1882, later earning his Ph.D. from New York University.  He and Isoline, a graduate of Hunter College, were married in 1888. 

In 1890 Ray founded the Irving School, a private institution for boys.  It offered "thorough preparation for College or Business."  Isoline was among the select teachers, whose classes averaged eight students.  

The West 84th Street house was converted for the school's purposes, including transforming the basement to a gymnasium.  On September 14, 1899 an advertisement in The Evening Post was headlined, "Irving School (Boys), Dr. L. D. Ray, reopens Sept. 28th in its New Building, 35 West 84th Street."  It announced:

Primary, Intermediate, and Collegiate grades.

Gymnasium 18x58.  Playground 200x225

Dr. Ray is now at school daily.

A fuller description read:

Irving Schoolhouse is a modern building, with sanitary plumbing, heating, and ventilation.  Attention is called to its well-furnished rooms, to its laboratory and manual training shop, to its indoor and outdoor gymnasium, and to its private playground.  Professional teachers not only teach in this school, but also prepare their pupils carefully for the following day's work.

Rather than spending their summer months in fashionable resorts like Newport or Bar Harbor, the well-to-do Rays often traveled.  On July 10, 1914, for instance, the Columbia Alumni News noted, "Louis D. Ray, headmaster of the Irving School, 35 West Eighty-fourth Street, New York, and Mrs. Ray recently sailed for Asia Minor, where they will spend the summer."  It proved to be a somewhat perilous time for world travel.  

Upon their return, Dr. Ray wrote that on August 4, 1914, they were on the steamship Galicia traveling "through the Straits of Otranto, just beyond Corfu, having come from Constantinople and the Piraeus.  In the Straits, we saw an English fleet of four gunboats and four torpedo boat destroyers, but since England had not declared war at that time, our Austrian boat was not molested."  

Nevertheless, the couple was nearly stranded abroad.  When they prepared to return to Italy, they were told all boat and train service had been discontinued.  Ray wrote, "if we wished to continue our way there, we would have to either try our luck on a troop train or hire a motor.  The next day, we decided to do the latter."  The couple endured repeated gunpoint baggage searches, a ride in a peasant's wagon, and other hardships before finally boarding a steamship home.

The following summer's travel was less exotic and less dangerous.  On October 10, 1915, The Sun reported, "Dr. and Mrs. Ray spent the summer in western Canada, making short trips to the Panama Exposition and to other points of interest along the coast."  When the school reopened that fall the enrollment had greatly increased, prompting the addition of new teachers.  

The school had already outgrown the rear yard as outdoor space.  A year earlier The Sun reported, "Every afternoon and Saturday mornings many Irving boys are with instructors at Van Cortlandt Park or elsewhere for outdoor sports, wherein football at present has the larger share."

On June 18, 1916, The Sun reported, "Two leading New York city schools, Irving School and Berkeley School, have been consolidated and are to occupy a new school building on Eighty-third street near West End avenue."  Now named the Berkeley-Irving School, Dr. Ray remained as the headmaster and Isoline as a teacher.

image via the NYC Dept. of Records & Information Services.

The former Ray residence and Irving School now became a boarding house, home to residents like Ralph R. Perry, who had served in the navy during World War I.  Born in 1895, he was still an active member of the service, an ensign, while living here in 1921.  Another resident at the time was Fred E. Welsh, who operated his amateur radio station from the house from 1924 through at least 1926.  The residents continued to be middle class, like Philip T. Collins, who was appointed to the position of parole officer in 1931 with a yearly salary of $3,000 (about $55,500 today).

A renovation completed in 1971 resulted in apartments, one per floor.  

photographs by the author

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The 1889 James C. Matthews House - 43 West 84th Street

 

The blank arched pediment above the entrance was originally filled with intricate carving.

The real estate development firm of George C. Edgar & Son hired Gilbert A. Schellenger to design four rowhouses along West 84th Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue in 1888.  To ensure high-end tenor of the residences, the firm used six building plots for the four structures.  They were completed in 1889.

Shellenger designed the brownstone-faced row in the Renaissance Revival style with splashes of Romanesque Revival.  No. 43, like its neighbors, was four stories high above the tall English basement level.  A straight stoop with beefy stone railings rose to the double-doored entrance.  It sat below a carved entablature and an arched pediment that rose above the parlor floor cornice.  A gently curved bay at the third floor was the focus of the design.

Romanesque Revival panels with mythical beasts decorate the piers between the parlor windows.

No. 43 became home to the James C. Matthews family.  Since the early 1870's, according to the Boston Home Journal, Matthews was "conspicuously identified with some of the best hotels in New York City and in Saratoga."  He was the proprietor of the Sturtevant House hotel and managed upscale resort hotels.  

James C. Matthews  from The H. M. M. B. A. in California, 1896 (copyright expired)

Matthews's overseeing of the posh Sturtevant House was not surprising, considering that its owner, Albert P. Sturtevant, was his father-in-law.  But family ties would be strained two years after Matthews purchased the West 84th Street house.  

It all began when Matthews became so ill that, according to The Evening World, he "wanted to go away for his health."  He was suffering from Bright's Disease, a kidney affliction known today as nephritis, although the diagnosis was so far being kept quiet.  On October 11, 1891 he mortgaged the furnishings of the hotel to his father-in-law for $70,000--just over $2 million today--and appointed two trustees to run the operation.  Things quickly went downhill.

The Sturtevant House sat on the southeast corner of Broadway and 29th Street.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

On December 7, 1891 The Evening World reported "There is more trouble in the management of the Sturtevant House, this time between the trustees, who were appointed to run the hotel in the interests of Proprietor James C. Matthews during his illness."  Infighting led to a judge's removing and replacing one of the men.

The following month the newspaper began an article saying "The affairs of the Sturtevant House were again the subject of legal proceedings this afternoon."  James C. Matthews's recuperation in the country was interrupted by his necessary appearance in court.  In his absence a receiver had been appointed who now demanded to see the books.  The Evening World explained, "It is understood that the books are wanted in order to find out what became of $65,000 worth of goods for which claims have been made by creditors."

The tangle of litigation was still ongoing in the summer of 1893 when Matthews--no longer proprietor--was being personally sued by some of the hotel's creditors.  Happily for him, on August 7 the judge dismissed those claims.

Matthews's medical condition had forced him to give up the proprietorship of the Sturtevant House.  His good friend, hotelier James H. Breslin, gave him the management of the Gilsey House hotel, ironically on the opposite corner of Broadway and 29th Street from the Sturtevant House.  But his illness continued to interfere with his ability to work.

On November 17, 1894 The Evening Telegram reported, "So rapidly has been the recovery of James C. Matthews, of the Gilsey House staff, during the last few days, that his return to his post of duty is expected within a week.  'Gentleman James,' as he is called, has been critically ill from acute Bright's disease, complicated with erysipelas, and, to universal distress, it was even reported that a fatal termination was imminent."  The article celebrated his improvement and said "complete restoration to health is now hoped for."

James C. Matthews survived until 1901.  By then he and his family had been gone from No. 43 West 84th Street for several years.  In 1894 the family of stock broker C. A. Kolstede, Jr. called it home.  He and his wife, Annie, had a son, Alfred G., who was also a broker.

Kolstede was a member of the New York Athletic Club.  Its members were wealthy, respected businessmen.  But the innate racism of the period resulted in the club's creating sub-groups that would be seen as abhorrent today.  In its May 1903 issue, for instance, the New York Athletic Club Journal reported:

Forest glades environed the feast of more than a hundred dusky braves on Saturday evening, April 18, in the big council house of the club.  The tribe of the Huckleberry Indians of the N.Y.A.C. were gathered together for their annual pow wow, dances, songs and feasting.  The feast was spread on a long table on a dais where sat great Indians mighty in the chase, in council and war and six other long tables were surrounded by the tribesmen.  The tables groaned under their load of succotash and every known Indian and paleface delicacy.

Included in the list of "Indians present" that evening was C. A. Kolstede, Jr.

Alfred brought unwanted attention to the family in March 1902 for his failed attempt at illegal gambling.  The Sun reported that "a gang of alleged wire-tappers...fooled him with the old, old story that they could beat the handbook men by tapping the Western Union wires from the racetracks."  The article poked fun at Alfred, saying he apparently "did not know that no handbook man takes a bet after a race has been started.  Nor did he know that the wires that were to do the tapping were just twenty feet long, reaching from the middle of a cheap furnished room to the outside of the nearest window sill.  But he knows now."

Alfred had answered an advertisement in the New York Herald offering anyone with $1,000 the opportunity of making $20,000 quickly.  He was taken to a secret back room where a man was ticking away on a telegraph instrument.  He was told that a conspirator within the Western Union office would hold up ticker reports for four or five minutes before sending to the "handbook men," during which time Alfred could place a guaranteed winning bet.

The gang played Alfred along, giving him $800 winnings on his first bet.   He placed bets every day for a week, eventually losing a total of $265,000 in today's money before getting wise to the scam.

In November 1905 Annie Kolsted sold the house to John F. and Mary J. Lynch.  The couple, who had two daughters, Marie Arline and Claudine E., maintained a summer home in New Jersey.  

In May 1906 a man knocked on the door of No. 43 West 84th Street and asked if there were any odd jobs he could do.  The New York Herald reported "Because of the illness of a servant employed to wash windows and feed the furnace fires," he was told he could wash the basement windows.  After finishing, he asked Mary if he could do the upper floor windows, as well.

Her charitable act went unrewarded, however.  "She noticed after he had left the house that a bureau was in disorder," said the New York Herald.  The vagabond had taken a pair of diamond earrings valued at $600--in the neighborhood of $17,600 today.  The article noted "in his haste to escape he overlooked a diamond necklace valued at $2,000 which lay near it."

Mary J. Lynch died in the family's summer home on August 17, 1918.  Following John's death, Marie Arline sold No. 43 in September 1921 to a buyer "for occupancy."  The unnamed purchaser may have been actor Morris Carnovsky who lived here in 1923 when he was arrested for participating in "an obscene show."  Carnovsky was among the stellar cast of playwright Sholem Ash's God of Vengeance which also included Sam Jaffe and Lillian Taiz.  The plot revolved around a Jewish couple's attempts to find a respectable match for their daughter while operating a brothel in their basement.

Morris Carnovsky - from the collection of the New York Public Library

On March 6, 1922 the Apollo Theatre was raided and the entire cast was arrested, charged with "unlawfully advertising, giving, representing, and participating in an obscene, indecent, immoral, and impure drama or play."  The case was widely covered by the press and well-known names in the theatrical and Jewish communities, like Eugene O'Neill and the Jewish Daily Forward, coming to the actors' defense.

The Depression years saw No. 43 West 84th Street being operated as a rooming or boarding house.  Its tenants were respectable, like cotton broker William Wieck and playwriter Joseph Roosevelt Lebo.  Among Lebo's works were the 1934 comedy Nudist of Mine and the 1937 Truth Pays a Visit.  As radio plays became popular, he adapted, writing radio scripts like "The Man Before Marconi" which aired in August 1948.

In 1983 No. 43 was converted apartments--one each in the basement through second floors, and a duplex on the top two.  From outside, other than replacement windows, nearly nothing has changed since James C. Matthews moved his family in in 1889.