Catholic Charities and a Concentration Camp Survivor; The Francis B. Hoffman House -- No. 58 East 79th Street

photo by Alice Lum

As 19^th century drew to a close the mansions of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens crept further and further northward up Fifth Avenue along Central Park.  Upscale residences spilled onto the side streets, replacing the more modest homes erected after the Civil War.

Emeline Laurent lived in a wood-frame, three story house at 58 East 79^th Street in the 1880s.  Although she was financially comfortable, her home was not in line with the limestone or marble chateaux that would rise within the next decade.  On August 11, 1897 The New York Times announced that the house had been sold.  “The buyer will remove the present structure and erect a stable on the plot.”

The stable never materialized.  Even the most elegant carriage house, with the noises and smells that would accompany it, would be unacceptable so close to fashionable Fifth Avenue.   Instead, a five-story brick-and-stone Beaux Arts residence was built.  The deep porch of the centered entrance extended to the sidewalk above an American basement.

Tall French doors opened onto an elegant cast iron balcony, supported by paired carved brackets, that extended the 26-foot width of the second floor.   Another balcony, this one of carved stone, ornamented the fourth floor.  Limestone quoins and a mansard roof finished off the French flavor of the up-to-date mansion.

Elaborately carved paired brackets support a stone balcony.  The window air conditioning units are unfortunate additions -- photo by Alice Lum

Francis Burrall Hoffman purchased the house.  Hoffman, who came from one of New York’s old Knickerbocker families, was a wealthy produce exchange broker and the son of Colonel Wickham Hoffman.  Colonel Hoffman was a distinguished officer of the Civil War, First Secretary of Legation at the Court of Versailles and Minister Resident and Consul General to Denmark.

Hoffman’s wife, Lucy, was from a socially prominent family as well.    And although Francis Hoffman had been educated at the Calthorpe School in Connecticut and, later, in France and Germany, all four of the Hoffman boys attended Harvard by the time the family moved into the new house.

photo by Alice Lum

One of the Hoffman’s first entertainments was a dinner for Prince Alexander George, the youngest son of the Duke and Duchess of Teck.  A few years later, on January 24, 1903, Lucy Hoffman gave a dinner with the guest of honor being Lady Swansea.  In early 20^th century New York society, entertaining a titled guest at one’s dinner table was a social coup.  

But while Mrs. Hoffman would be known for her sumptuous entertaining, she would also make her mark for her charitable works and her ardent involvement in Catholic causes.  

The Hoffmans were not members of the Newport set, preferring instead their summer estates in Southampton and Lenox, Massachusetts.   Their wealth was evident when in 1901 burglars broke into the 79th Street house, making off with over $30,000 worth of jewelry.  By today’s standards Lucy lost about $800,000 in jewels.

When not relaxing at their summer retreats, Francis Burrall Hoffman managed to get away by leasing a 7,000-acre game preserve in North Carolina.  The last of his annual outings there occurred in 1906 when he and his guest, Jonathan Godfrey, were arrested and fined $250.

The State of North Carolina had changed the hunting season that year.  Previously, quail hunting lasted until March 15 but now was shortened to March 1.   The attendants of the hunting lodge failed to update Hoffman of the change.

On March 3 the two men spent the entire day in the field, shooting quail and filling their game bags until they bulged.  The next day the men while in Greensboro they boasted of their luck.    Unfortunately for them, a deputy sheriff who happened to also be game warden overheard them.

The New York Times reported that “the irate sportsmen were taken before Magistrate Collins.  He imposed a fine of $5 for each bird shot.”  

Hoffman returned immediately to New York while his friend left for Florida.  Jonathan Godfrey was quoted by the New York Tribune saying he would just as soon be robbed “in the land of palms than here in the heart of moonshine and corn whiskey.”

The following year, while youngest son Albert was still at Harvard, a number of young New York society girls made plans to attend the school’s Hasty Pudding Club dance.  As The Times noted, “The dance of the Hasty Pudding Club is a fashionable affair and takes place every year at its clubhouse at Cambridge.  The club itself is one of the Harvard’s oldest and best-known organizations, and the annual event is looked forward to with much interest by the younger contingent in society.”

Young women did not embark on such an excursion alone, of course, so Lucy Hoffman joined Mrs. Alfred Vanderbilt in chaperoning the weekend-long trip.  Mrs. Vanderbilt was generous enough to supply her private train car for the journey.

While the bulk of Manhattan society was Episcopalian, the Hoffmans were decidedly Roman Catholic.  On February 11, 1912 Francis Burrall Hoffman hosted a dinner party for Cardinal Farley in the house.  About thirty prominent men were invited “and their wives were asked in afterward to meet the Cardinal,” noted The Times.

The Cardinal was treated regally, with the papal arms displayed on the wall behind his chair, the table covered in red satin and the silver candelabra outfitted with red shades.  Before dinner, Hoffman’s sons William Wickham Hoffman and Francis Burrall Hoffman, Jr., escorted the Cardinal to the drawing room “where the guests were presented to him.”

In 1913 Lucy Hoffman began a nation-wide effort to erect a national shrine in Washington D.C.  On February 8 she held the first meeting in the 79^th Street house.  “It is proposed to make the church the national shrine of the Immaculate Conception, in which a grotto will be placed, and to which pilgrimages may be made as to the famous grotto of Lourdes,” reported a newspaper.

Under Lucy Hoffman’s supervision, committees were formed across the country and by 1914 the designs for the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception were being drawn up.

The Hoffman sons made names for themselves, as well.  Francis Burrall Hoffman, Jr., was an architect.  He would live to the age of 98, dying in 1980, having helped design the magnificent 1916 Villa Vizcaya for John Deering  in Florida and half a century later the wing to historic Gracie Mansion.   William became a captain in the military during World War I and served on the Mayor’s Committee on National Defense. 

Albert would earn the Legion of Honor from the French Government in World War I and become a well-known banker, .  In 1918 he married the Philadelphia debutante Leta Sullivan.  Tragically, she died within a year of their marriage.

Lucy continued her staunch support of various causes.   In the early days of women’s rights, she hosted a luncheon of “several hundred well known society women,” according to the New York Tribune, at the Plaza Hotel.   Taking place on October 20, 1921, it was organized under the auspices of the Woman’s National Foundation.  Earlier that same year she hosted at meeting in her home for 75 women of several national organizations “to consider a plan to provide national headquarters in Washington,” said The Times.    During the month of May three such meetings would be held in the house.

In April 1922, a month before Albert would marry again, Lucy made the newspapers again when she approached  Senator William M. Calder concerning the “tide of burglary and banditry” that was overtaking the city.  Police Commissioner Enright envisioned a National Crime Bureau in Washington DC and Mrs. Hoffman firmly “asked Senator Caldor…to interest himself” in the plan.

Francis Burrall Hoffman died in the summer home, Eden Glassie, at Southampton on September 20, 1924.  The house on East 79^th Street was inherited by Lucy.  He bequeathed funds to numerous “asylums and Roman Catholic schools,” but to Albert he willed two of his most prized possessions: a silver dessert service given to Hoffman’s grandfather by German Emperor William I in 1870 and, a testament to his Catholic fervor, a piece of “the true cross.”  With the fragment, reported The Times, “is a certificate of its authenticity.” 

Only five months later, on February 9, 1925, Lucy Shattuck Hoffman died in the house on East 79^th Street at the age of 69.   Albert and his wife, Miriam, moved into the house where they would remain for nearly two decades.  From here Miriam was active in a child shelter charity called “Save-a-Life Farm.”  She often hosted bridge parties for the benefits of the farm, located in Nyack, New York, often accompanied with sales of “useful articles.”

In the meantime, war broke out in Europe.  In 1944 a Hungarian woman, Olga Lengyl, along with her parents, husband and two sons, were packed into a cattle car and shipped to Auschwitz-Birkenau.  Only Olga would leave the camp alive.

Because she was a trained doctor’s assistant, she was put to work in the infirmary.  Secretly, at enormous personal risk, she worked with the French underground and helped to demolish a crematory oven.  After the liberation of the camp, she ended up in New York where she wrote about her ordeal in a book published in 1947:  “Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz.”  It was one of the earliest personal documentations of the death camps and would, years later, inspire William Styron’s novel “Sophie’s Choice.”

Although she was ill with pneumonia the first six months in America, alone and poor; a number of prominent academics and anti-German activists helped her get on her feet and organize the Just Peace Movement.  They also helped her to regain her family’s property and funds.

The young woman who had recently been living in a concentration camp was now living at 58 East 79^th Street.  In 1963 she was finally able to buy the residence.  In memory of her lost husband and father, she renovated the house to established the Memorial Library and Art Collection of the Second World War.

After her death at 90 years old in 2001, the Directors of the library focused their attention to teacher education.  The Holocaust Educators Network was formed; a nationwide program with a goal of bringing the lessons of the Holocaust into the 21^st century.

In 2004 architect Edward Arcari of Arcari & Iovino Architects, P.C., of Little Ferry, New Jersey, initiated a conversion of one floor of the mansion into a 21^st century library and gallery.  The entire floor was gutted and a new, up-to-date space was created.

photo by Alice Lum

While preservationists may cringe at the thought of ripping out the turn-of-the-century architectural detailing; Arcari’s design managed to address the needs of the Library that the residence could not.  A remarkable wooden mosaic floor is perhaps the most compelling feature of the space.

With little exterior alteration, the Hoffman house survives intact--a century-old building that housed a staunchly Catholic society family and a Hungarian Jewish concentration camp survivor.

The 1912 High Pressure Service Headquaters -- No. 226 West Broadway

With the advent of the 20th century came a problem for fire fighters in New York City – skyscrapers. Suddenly five-story buildings were being dwarfed by soaring structures made possible by steel-frame construction and motorized elevators. The stream of water produced by fire department’s pumper trucks was inadequate to reach high floors.

In 1905 George E. Walsh wrote in Water and Sewage Works “The question of reducing the fire hazard in New York is now under discussion…Down in the great business districts the question of pumping water up to the top stories of the high office buildings is a serious one with the fire department.”

To solve the problem, New York looked to the new high-pressure system in Philadelphia as a model. Within three years essentially the entire area from West 23rd Street to the Battery was protected by a similar system. A series of fire hydrants sprouted along city sidewalks and two pumping stations were constructed--one at Gansevoort and West Streets, the other at Oliver and South Streets. The stations pumped both salt and fresh water through 36-inch lines, each powered by five electrically operated pumping units. The entire system—265,000 feet of mains and 1,272 hydrants--required only seventeen months to complete.

The power of the stations was remarkable; each unit discharging 3,000 gallons of sea water per minute at a pressure of 300 pounds per square inch. “What a roaring, seething, stupendous thing of might the stream from the high pressure service really is must be actually seen to be appreciated,” wrote The Technical World Magazine in March 1909.

“Should the fire be in a thirty of forty-story skyscraper where terrific pressure is required to send the water to the top floor, only a pair or three hydrants need be connected with the stand pipes in the building and clear to the top floor leaps a deluge which all the engines in Greater New York could not begin to force high than three-fourths way up the structure,” the article continued.

The writer predicted with “Within five years…not a fire engine will be seen within the heart of any first class city in the country.” He was referring, of course, to the pumper truck.

New Yorkers marvel during a demonstration of the high-pressure stream produced by the new system in 1909 -- The Technical World Magazine (copyright expired)

While the new system was being installed, the Fire Department was using an old building at 226 West Broadway as a storehouse. The building had been purchased in 1856 for $9,000 and was no longer useful.

On June 23, 1910 Fire Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo wrote to Mayor William Gaynor and the Commissioners of the Sinking Fund saying “Sir – I have the honor to inform you that the Fire Department has no further use for the premises at No. 226 West Broadway, Manhattan…and I respectfully request that possession be returned to the Commissioners of the Sinking Fund.”

A year later the department changed its mind.

The new high pressure system by its very design required heavy maintenance. Falling under the joint control of the Fire Department, the Department of Water Supply, Gas and Electricity, and the Street Cleaning Department, the repair facility had been located in a street cleaning space at 7 North Street. By now the building was proving insufficient. The Committee approached the Sinking Fund Commission to get the West Broadway property back.

“Your Committee believes that if the Fire Commissioner will erect an adequate new building on the property adjacent to Hook and Ladder 8 on North Moore street, the Commissioners of Street Cleaning and of Waste Supply, Gas and Electricity can obtain property and adequate accommodations therein, reserving the first floor for the use of the Fire Department…Therefore, your Committee recommends that Parcel 1 (226 West Broadway) be held by the Commissioners of the Sinking Fund until the Commissioners of the three departments affected have considered this report and…reached a joint conclusion.”

Within a year the old building had been demolished and in July 1912 plans for a new High Pressure Service Headquarters were filed with the building department. Architect Augustus D. Shepard, Jr. was given the commission to design the $30,000 building which, it was promised, would be “fireproof.”

Shepard produced a delightful four-story structure replete with emblems relating to the high pressure system. Clad in terra cotta (faithful to the mandatory fireproof quality) the façade is adorned with nearly-whimsical valves, hydrants and pipe couplings.

photo by Alice Lum

Above, an aggressive half-circular parapet surrounds a deep-relief cast terra cotta Seal of the City. What could have been a hum-drum utilitarian repair facility instead was a fresh breath of architectural air. It was what the AIA Guide to New York City would nearly a century later call “a small gem.”

photo by Alice Lum

Because of the building’s purpose it remained unscathed throughout the 20th century; immune to the alterations that normal commercial buildings endure. But as the century drew to a close, the little terra cotta facility was not longer adequate.

In 1989 it was converted to two duplex apartments; then later remodeled to a one-family townhouse. The shop where pipe joints and pump parts were formerly repaired was now a four-bedroom, four-bath luxury residence that sold in 2011 for just under $6.5 million.

photo by Alice Lum

The “little gem” at No. 226 West Broadway survives as a splendid example of utilitarian city property that managed to rise above its expected commonplace appearance.

The Last Window Shopper -- No. 217 Fifth Avenue 1903

photo Library of Congress

As the 19^th century became the 20^th, Fifth Avenue around Madison Square was seriously changing.  Since the years just prior to the Civil War the brownstone mansions of New York’s wealthy co-existed with the grand Fifth Avenue Hotel at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 23^rd Street.   However the exclusivity of the $2 million hotel that hosted princes and presidents prevented it from being considered “commercial” and thus detracting from the high-end neighborhood.

The same could be said for Delmonico’s.  The fashionable restaurant razed mansions in 1876 on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 26^th Street to erect its uptown branch.  But its elite patronage pardoned its intrusion into the residential area.

Elegant carriages await patrons outside of Delmonico's in 1888 -- photo NYPL Collection

That would all change, however.  Fifth Avenue’s millionaires fled northward as commercial interests crept up from Washington Square.  Mansions were converted to business purposes or replaced by loft-and-retail buildings.   The entire row of mansions on the east side of Fifth Avenue between 26^th and 27^th Streets was purchased and converted into the Hotel Brunswick.   The wide brownstone stoops were removed and cast iron storefronts installed at sidewalk level.

The venture did not succeed, however, and the Brunswick closed its doors around 1893.  The windows of the upper floors remained dark and vacant as shops continued to do business from street level.  Here domestic goods and millinery were sold alongside John C. Graul’s art store.  Framed mirrors, hand-colored prints and reproductions of old masters were offered to female shoppers looking to re-do their parlors.

The Hotel Brunswick sat empty for a decade as the area continued to change.  In 1899 Delmonico’s left its corner building.  Two years later ground was broken at 23^rd Street and Fifth Avenue for the soaring new skyscraper that would become known as the Flatiron Building.

A year later, on November 13, 1902 The New York Times reported that the old Hotel Brunswick would be razed and “a twenty-story hotel will be erected on the property.”   The new Brunswick Hotel would cost an estimated $7.5 million -- $2.75 million for the land and another $4.75 million for the building.

In the early Spring of 1903 a photographer paused in front of John C. Graul’s art shop.  Plastered across the façade of what had been the proud residence of one of Manhattan’s most prominent families was a billboard advertising canned meat.  The carved brownstone frames of the old mansions still remained, although the windows had now been removed.  The $5.00 Hat Shop at No. 215 was already empty, having moved a block northward to No. 359 Fifth Avenue.  Two other shops displaying table lamps in their windows advertised their removal sales.

And a young woman in a woolen spring outfit stopped to window shop before John C. Graul's.   

The photographer managed to trap in time a poignant moment—a photograph not simply of a woman shopping for discounted artwork; but of a New York City that often lurches into the future, destroying its own history in doing so.

The 1904 Hotel Wolcott -- No. 4 West 31st Street

At the turn of the century, when Fifth Avenue in the 30s was being transformed from an area of mansions to a high-end commercial district—spurred by the construction of the hulking Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on the site of the Astor houses—apartment living still carried the stigma of the tenement.

One way developers evaded this taint was to build “residence hotels.”   Tenants availed themselves of the freedom from maintaining a private house, enjoyed the full services of a hotel staff, and avoided being branded as apartment dwellers.

Among the first of the stylish hotels just off Fifth Avenue was the Hotel Wolcott at No. 4 West 31^st Street.  It was the latest venture by James H. Breslin who had been in the hotel business since the Civil War.  Breslin’s extensive experience with the best hotels in New York, including the Fifth Avenue and Gilsey House Hotels, provided him with the acumen to cater to the wealthiest and most demanding of guests.

The hotelier became known for his  list of guidelines for men in the hotel trade:

Work.
Don't grow old.
Keep good natured.
Don't forget names and faces.
Stick to honest dealing.
Remember that cleanliness is next to godliness.
Keep pace with the times if you can't keep a little ahead of them.
Keep your old employees around you so that when old friends enter your door they will feel as though they were getting back home.

The new hotel was designed by John Duncan; a twelve-story Beaux Arts confection dripping with carved garlands, heavy scrolled brackets and over-sized sculptures.  One- and two-story dormers broke the surface of the towering mansard roof and the lobby was like entering Versailles.

Named after Henry Roger Wolcott, a Senator from Colorado, the hotel opened on May 1, 1904.  Among those looking over the 300 rooms were eminent politicians like Representative Charles Arnette Towne and former Governor Frank S. Black.  

The brochure at the time of the opening boasted a bathroom with every suite.  “The rooms are big enough, but not too big.  Comfortable, not barny,” it said.   The brochure spoke of the freshness of the Cape Cod oysters and the “little chickens that come unplucked from the Jersey farms,” to be had in the restaurant.

But it was service that Breslin knew would impress his upper-crust clientele.  “There is always a servant glad to do just what you want done, in just the way you want it done, at your command on the instant.  Never a servant to annoy you with superfluous attention.”

The brochure promised “A valet always at hand to brush your clothes and press them.  A ladies’ maid deft in the hooking up of delicate gowns.  If you like your trunk will be unpacked when you come, and packed again when you go.”

Immense carved keystones ornament the first floor windows.

James Breslin introduced a service taken for granted today: the supplying of miniature toiletries, bathrobes and other often-forgotten necessities.  “A white cravat or hairpin, a tooth-brush, or a welcome knot of fresh chiffon.  A bath-robe or a night dress—spick and span in a sealed envelope.  An umbrella for a rainy day.  Fresh brushes and combs—indeed everything that the difficulties of one guest suggest, has been provided, against the possibility of a like difficulty again.”

The up-to-date hotel offered a telephone in every room, connected to the main office, which could “connect with every other telephone everywhere."

This 1907 postcard view shows that Fifth Avenue had become heavily commercialized, while brownstone homes still abut the Hotel Wolcott along 31st Street.

The level of accommodations is evident in that the room rates remained for years nearly identical to those charged at the Waldorf-Astoria.  On opening day a room with bath ranged from $3.00 upward; a suite of drawing room, bedroom and bath from $8.00.  Servants rooms were $2.00 with an additional $1.50 for meals.   (In 1917 both the Waldorf and the Wolcott were charging $5.00 a night for a double with bath.)

The proximity to Fifth Avenue and the Waldorf-Astoria attracted wealthy transient guests, as well as long-time residents.   On October 21, 1905 Mrs. Calderon Carlisle, of Washington DC, and her daughter checked into rooms 608, 609 and 610.   The following Wednesday evening when the women attended the theater, Mrs. Carlisle wore a pair of large pearl earrings and a matching pearl necklace--this at a time when matched pearls were as costly as diamonds.

The following afternoon, around 2:00, Mrs. Carlisle opened the silver jewelry box on her dresser.  Her pearl earrings were gone.  Further investigation revealed that the necklace, valued at around $5,000, was also missing, along with other items—a total theft of around $10,000.

It was not the sort of publicity the relatively new hotel needed.  The management hoped to keep news out of the press and away from potential, rich patrons.   While the house detective was put on the case, the police were not notified, causing The New York Times to pronounce an “attempt to hush it up.”

Indeed the victim was not of much help either.  When the police heard of the crime and sent a detective to investigate, the Washington socialite “told Detective Brueck very little about the robbery, resenting what she called the interference of the police,” said The Times.

On March 31, 1906 James H. Breslin died in his rooms at the Hotel Wolcott.  The 72-year old had suffered from Bright’s disease for more than a year.  Two years later, George T. Stockham purchased the lease and furnishings of the hotel.  Stockham had been manager of the Hotel Breslin nearby on Broadway which opened the same year as the Wolcott.

Among the permanent guests at the time was John Griffin Carlisle, a retired politician whose distinguished career included the post of Secretary of the Treasury under Grover Cleveland.  Others included General Jose de Zayas and his wife, a wealthy retired Cuban merchant.  The couple spent their winters here and summered in Paris.

Robert c. Rathbone, known  as the “dean of the insurance business in New York City,” lived here at the same time as Philip J. Dwyer, a “notable horse figure” in the city.

The hotel became a yearly meeting place for the American League baseball owners around 1910.  It was here that year that R. L. Hedges announced to the League that he would sell his majority interest in the St. Louis Browns baseball club.  The New York Tribune reported that “It was estimated that the sum involved would mount well into six figures.”

An even bigger sensation was caused in 1918.  The Times reported that “A prolonged whispering discussion between Manager Miller Huggins of the Yankees and President Frank Navin of the Detroit Club caused a flurry among the baseball men assembled at the Hotel Wolcott yesterday and started the sensational report that Ty Cobb might be tempted to wear a Yankee uniform next season.”

Despite the somewhat less-than-genteel atmosphere of baseball talks, the Hotel Wolcott continued to be a destination for wealthy travelers.  And it also continued, therefore, to be attractive to jewel thieves.

The lobby gushes with rococo ornamentation.

On April 19, 1920 John A. DeKay, editor of the Montreal Spur, and his wife returned to their rooms after an early dinner.  They found one of their trunks open and a jewel case containing gems and cash missing.  The total value of the items stolen was around $10,000.  Detectives suspected the guest who was registered in the room next door, whom The Times described as a “swarthy, stocky man of about 30 years.”  When the hotel intercepted a telegram from the man’s wife with a return address in upstate New York, the police were on his tail.

In 1942 nothing had changed other than a new electric sign.

Although the 31^st Street neighborhood experienced a decline after the middle of the 20^th century, and the Wolcott along with it, the area revived with the dawn of the 21^st.  The hotel underwent an extensive renovation and restoration of the façade, bringing the rooms onto par with modern hotels while retaining the grandeur of James Breslin’s 1904 showplace.

Bay windows add dimension to the facade, rising to immense carved faces, swags, and a cartouche reading "WOLCOTT."

non-credited photographs taken by the author

Hidden Faces, Dancing Cherubs and Monsters -- No. 151-155 W. 22nd St.

The architect playfully used a variety of treatments-- a planar basement, rough-cut stone first floor, rusticated second, ornamented third and fourth, rising to an Italian-inspired fifth floor.

The West 22^nd Street block between 6^th and 7^th Avenues was still lined with comfortable brownstone homes in 1890, like that of surgeon William O. Cutliffe.  But the development of 6^th Avenue with its grand, block-wide emporiums and the commercial growth along 7^th Avenue would soon change all that.

Residential hotels were coming into favor among the upper-middle class as a means to avoid the expense and bother of maintaining a private home.  On the site of Dr. Cutliffe’s home and its matching neighbor, one such hotel rose at Nos. 151 and 153 West 22^nd Street.  Developer Henry Meinken commissioned his architect of choice, James W. Cole, to design the new structure which was completed in the spring of 1891.
 

The five story hotel sat above a deep English basement which was protected by a wrought iron fence.   A mixture of Italian Renaissance and the highly-popular Romanesque Revival styles, it featured a medley of ornamental details.  The arched entrance ways with clustered medieval columns sat above broad stoops.  The stairs were flanked by heavy brownstone walls that cascaded onto miniature colunettes under foliage carvings.

The Romanesque-revival stoop, now painted, echoes the entrance with colunettes and foliate carving.

The brownstone of the first floor was carved to simulate rough-cut blocks.   Heavy lintels were carved in foliage designs, under an intricate frieze.  And here we begin to see the stone carver’s playful treatment of the decoration.

Within the ornate, tangled foliage of the frieze are hidden faces—women, a king and an impish creature—along with a salamander, a dragon and a unicorn.  The heavily-carved keystone of the entrance arch presumes to be an abstract, leafy design, but upon inspection is a grotesque face.

Like a stone carver's tongue-in-cheek double entendre, the face in the keystone is camouflaged by foliage.

The third and fourth floors explode in hidden images.  Rows of square floral tiles adorn the piers, each one a fantastic face in every manner of expression.   From the midst of elaborate panels peeked infant faces, mustached visages and one dancing nude child.   It was a 19^th century version of Where’s Waldo in stone—a delightful testament to the wit, whimsy and talent of the architectural stone cutter.

A close inspection of the carved tiles between the windows reveals elaborately disguised faces.  Above, a handsome pressed cornice tops an series of arched windows with face-carved keystones.

The humorous and quirky details of the façade would be equaled by the remarkable lives of the building’s residents.    While those living here were not of the upper class, they were distinctly colorful.

Jeannette Neal Horton was living here with her mother in 1905.  There were rumors that Ms. Horton made her living as an actress; but her vocation was not discussed.  Seven months earlier she had met Herbert V. Croker through his brother, Frank, who was a long-time friend.  Herbert And Jeannette fell in love and made plans to go West.

Paneled carvings which at a glance appear to be merely swirling foliate designs, hide faces, birds and animals.

On May 4 Croker asked Mrs. Horton for her daughter’s hand in marriage and received her consent.  The next morning the young man boarded a train for Bliss, Oklahoma with his intended wife and her mother to follow in two weeks.

Croker never made it to Ranch 101 in Oklahoma where the two had planned to be married.  On May 13, as the train approached Newton, Kansas, he was found dead in his seat.  The unexpected death set off a volley of accusations and slanderous remarks.

Children throughout the decades have delighted in finding carvings like birds, faces and snarling monsters.

Printed articles that Croker had been in an opium den the night before his death incensed Jeannette.  “It’s a libel on Herbert’s memory,” she asserted.  “He did not smoke opium; of that I am certain.”  She did concede that “He may have taken a little too much drink, and this may have affected his heart.  He told me several times that he had a weak heart.”

In the meantime, Croker’s mother denied that her son had anything to do with the actress.  She authorized a formal statement to the press that she “did not believe Miss Horton’s assertion.”

Although Jeannette admitted Herbert had told her his mother was against the marriage, she told reporters, “I had never met his mother, but I knew Flossie, his sister.  I could not see why Mrs. Croker should object.”

When Mrs. Horton met with reporters, she brought along a clergyman.  When she was asked if her daughter worked, he answered for her.  “She does work,” then turning to Mrs. Horton added, “You’d better tell, it will get out anyway.”

The New York Times reported that “Mrs. Horton denied that Miss Horton was an actress, but refused to tell her daughter’s vocation.”

A scary demon peers from among the foliage of a pilaster capital.

The hotel was in the newspapers again when Mrs. Grace Clarke Sutter was arrested.  The 33-year old resident devised a scheme to collect charity money to supplement her income.  She would approach a florist stand, order flowers to be sent to a particular address C.O.D., then as the transaction was being completed, casually ask if the vendor cared to contribute to her non-existent cause.

In January 1915 she ordered $11 worth of flowers from Stephen Massas, a florist at 129^th Street and Lexington Avenue.  The arrangement was to be delivered to Mrs. Philip Case nearby at 245 West 128^th Street.  “The woman pleaded for 25 cents to add to a subscription for a cork leg for some child in the hospital,” according to the Harlem Court.

Mrs. Sutter knew that anyone with a heart could not refuse the request of a quarter towards a child’s cork leg.

Having collected her 25 cents, she moved on to another stand, also owned by Massas, at 2548 8^th Avenue, where she ordered more flowers for Mrs. Philip Case at a different address.  There was, it turned out, no Mrs. Philip Case and no legless child.

Following her arrest, The New  York Times reported that “Investigation by Joseph McKay, probation officer, showed that many tradesmen had contributed to the alleged charity.  The goods Mrs. Sutter ordered were always returned.”

McKay revealed that the woman had “in Providence, R. I., practiced the same tricks and was convicted three months ago of being a common cheat and put on parole.”

Howard Seip was living here when he took a job as concessionaire at the Seneca County Fair in Upstate New York during the summer of 1924.  One of Seip’s duties was to mesmerize the fair-goers by handling a giant rattlesnake.   On August 20 the city boy, believing that the fangs of the big snake had been removed, grabbed the reptile—only to discover the fangs were quite intact.  The snake sank both fangs into Siep’s left hand.

Although he quickly applied a tourniquet and removed the snake from his hand; his condition became grave.  His mother, Mrs. Carrie Seip, received a telegram from the Waterloo Memorial Hospital “to come at once if she wishes to see her son alive.”

By the 1930s the building was being run as an apartment house and continued to house a wide variety of tenants.  Vaudeville actor Benjamin Bernon Noyes died in his apartment here in 1930 at the age of 65.  Known as “The Man of Many Characters,” he had played opposite popular actors of the day like Richard Mansfield and Nancy O’Neill.

In February 1933, 54-year old resident Paul Stevens apparently felt his income as a timekeeper for Roosevelt’s Civil Works Administration was insufficient.   At the time gangsters made illegal money through “policy rackets,” a sort of numbers game.  Twice during the week of February 3 Stevens was arrested for possession of policy slips, resulting in his admission to being a collector “for the Schultz gang,” according to arresting officers.

The same year resident William Dooley came to an unglamorous end.  The 45-year old was a shipping clerk in a Brooklyn proprietary medicine company.  On September 15 he took his landlady, Irene Casey, and a friend, Else Powers, to the cafeteria just around the corner at 168 23^rd Street. 

After a single bite of his sirloin steak, he began choking.

Although a doctor from St. Vincent’s Hospital arrived and removed the steak, and the Emergency Square 3 from the W. 13^th Street Station treated the man from 7:30 to 10:30; he never regained consciousness.

The owners of the building, George Gottlieb & Co., commissioned architect Samuel Roth to update the apartment house in April 1938.  The modernization cost around $35,000 and luckily, did not involve the remarkable brownstone façade.

The building continued to attract middle-class residents through World War II, like Edward Dondero, a newspaper delivery truck driver.  But by the 1980s the aging structure had become a single-room occupancy flophouse.

Change came in 1982 when the Franciscan friars purchased the building.  Beginning in 1970s the friars from St. Francis Church near Penn Station had been working with the mentally ill homeless.  They converted the old apartment house into a 115-room residence where the otherwise homeless receive psychiatric and social services.

Father Tom Walters explains that “Every tenant lives in his or her own room, sharing a bathroom down the hall with four others.  The rooms are, like everything else in the residence, bright and clean.”

Sadly the western portion lost its original ground level facade in the renovation.

The delightful building with its tongue-in-cheek decoration can be found in no guidebooks, but its unique architecture and quirky history are worth a notice.

The Bohemian National Hall -- Nos. 321-325 East 73rd Street

photo by Alice Lum

Czech and Slovak immigrants first settled in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and by the 1870s were firmly established as a community around Tompkins Square.    With them they brought the vocations they had learned at home; but most, by far, were familiar with cigar making.

Even those new residents who sought other types of work often ended up in the tobacco trade and many of the women and children made cigars in their homes as piecework.

By the 1880s the Yorkville area was attracting German, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak and other immigrants.  Conditions in the Lower East Side were increasingly crowded.  For the Czechs and Slovaks, the northern area not only offered better housing, it was nearer to the cigar factories.

The tradition of social clubs for the various ethnic groups was well established in the Lower East Side and the Czechs and Slovaks had theirs:  the National Hall on East 5^th Street.  Here socializing, political rallies, sports club meetings, and other functions were held.

As the population shifted to Yorkville, another hall was necessary.

More than fifty organizations pooled money to erect a new, impressive structure.  Fundraising efforts began in 1892, including a concert led by Antonin Dvorak that same year.  Construction would begin three years later.  Architect William C. Frohne produced a dazzling Renaissance Revival style hall of beige Roman brick, terra cotta and stone.  An impressive porch supported by paired granite columns vied for attention with a series of two-story arches, also supported by paired columns, below the cornice.

photo by Alice Lum

The Narodni Budova, or National Hall, was opened in 1896; but Frohne was called back the following year to enlarge it, extending the building 25 feet eastward.  The resulting structure, costing over $200,000, included a restaurant, bar, shooting range, bowling alley, various club rooms and, most popular of all, the ballroom-theater.

photo bohemiannationalhall.com

The ballroom was designed to hold up to 800 guests and saw weddings and receptions, theater productions and dances.  It was here on December 19, 1901 that famed violinist Jan Kubelik brought his audience to tears when he played the Bohemian National Anthem on his Stradivarius.

The New York Times reported that “The Bohemian told to the Bohemians in simple notes the story of the Fatherland, so that at the end of his brief performance there were few dry eyes among his naturalized compatriots, and then there was a burst of hand clapping, not hysterical, but hearty and American.”

The wide-ranging activities of the Hall were highlighted by the New York Tribune on March 15, 1908 when it pointed out that the building “contains a restaurant, a café, a gymnasium, several lodge rooms, a room for the use of labor organizations, a room for singing societies, two school rooms where children assemble at 4 o’clock every day to learn to read, write and speak the Bohemian language, a library of books in English for children and another library for adults of about two thousand volumes in English and Bohemian pertaining to the history of Bohemia and kindred subjects; quarters for a trade school, a room for weddings and the use of the Bohemian Literary Association, an auditorium and a stage with scenery which is used for large assemblages, rifle ranges and bowling alleys.”

photo by Alice Lum

A member of each of the clubs and societies that contributed to the construction of the Hall was included in the Board of Directors to manage it.  By the time the Tribune published its account of the National Hall there were approximately 30,000 Bohemians living between 65^th and 67^th Streets, from Second Avenue to the East River.    The hard-working immigrants had bought up real estate, so that in 1908 The New York Times reported that "three-quarters of the houses in which they live belong to men of their own race.”

While the women still worked mainly in the cigar factories, the men had finally been able to diversify.   The East 67^th Street Police Station had several Bohemian policemen and the 67^th Street Post Office employed several Bohemian letter carriers and clerks.

The Times marveled at the close-knit Yorkville community around National Hall.  “It is really almost unnecessary for a Bohemian living in this part of New York ever to have dealings with an ordinary American,” the newspaper said on January 9, 1908.  “There are Bohemian doctors and Bohemian lawyers, Bohemian landlords who will take in no one but a native Bohemian.  The stores are Bohemian, and there are plenty of restaurants where Bohemian cooking and Bohemian wines may be obtained.  Finally, when one of the colony dies he will find a compatriot in business as an undertaker, ready to take him to the Bohemian church for the funeral service.”

The financial success of the ballroom/theater was evident on November 29, 1921 when a gang of four robbers broke into the building and bound and gagged the 60 year-old watchman, Antone Skrevanek.  The thieves made off with $2000 in cash and $1000 in Liberty bonds.

With the advent of World War I the Bohemian National Hall became a focal point for nationalist meetings.   Here ninety representative Slovaks met as a Congress of the Slovak League of America in 1918.  Their purpose was twofold:  to help America and its allies win the war in Europe, and to establish an independent homeland, free from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

photo by Alice Lum

The building continued as the central point of the Czech and Slavic community until mid-century.  Then, after World War II and like many other ethnic neighborhoods, the sense of community dissipated as younger generations moved on and the older residents died off.  With fewer groups using the space, funds for maintenance were scarce.

For the first time in its history the Bohemian National Hall was leased out to outside groups, including the Manhattan Theatre Club.  Among one of the young stars to appear here was Liza Minelli.

As the Hall became shabbier, the Manhattan Theatre club offered to purchase it.  Negotiations faltered, however, ending in a lawsuit that dragged on for several years.  In the meantime, the Czechs sought other organizations who might lease the building; however infighting among the various managing organizations prevented any headway.

While the lawsuit went on and the Czechs fought among themselves, the once-proud Bohemian National Hall deteriorated.  Finally, in 1986 the Department of Buildings declared it unfit for occupancy.  It seemed to be the end of the road for the noble structure.

As it stood dark and neglected in 1994.  The New York Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Hall a city landmark that year saying “Today, though vacant…it stands as a reminder of the once vibrant ethnic communities of Yorkville, and a monument of the immigrant experience that has characterized such a large part of the history of New York and the United States.”

Liza Minelli came to look at the old theater where she had performed years ago.   She asked to see her former dressing room and, when she saw the condition of the building, she broke into tears.

It was the Czech Republic who stepped in to save the building.  On December 7, 2001 it purchased the Hall for $1.00, taking over the responsibilities of restoration and maintenance.  The Republic gave one floor to the Czech groups for their use and began plans to use the rest for governmental purposes.

The condition of the building was so degraded that little could be saved.  $10 million was budgeted for the restoration and renovation to designs by Czech-American architect Martin Holub.  A Czech firm, PSJ Holding, and an American contractor, Vanguard Construction, worked jointly in the project.  Jan Hird Pokorny prepared the plans for the exterior restoration.

Holub lavished his attention on the ballroom/theater.  The heart of the old Bohemian National Hall, this was the one room that demanded restoration.   The painted stage curtain was reproduced, only real plaster moldings were used, and hand painted woodwork, travertine and hardwood floorings were all imported from the Czech Republic.

Having sat empty for four decades, the renovated Bohemian National Hall was reopened in October 2008.  By now the cost had escalated to $45 million.  The dazzling space not only houses the offices of the Czech Consulate General and the Czech Center, it now includes a 70-seat theater, library, and an upscale restaurant and lounge.  The Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association shares space in the building as well.

After decades of neglect, the grand building glows with life again. -- photo by Alice Lum

Plucked from the edge of certain destruction, the grand Renaissance Revival hall survives as a living reminder of New York’s rich ethnic heritage.

The Improbable Little Survivor at No. 488 Greenwich Street

Although both Federal homes are rare survivors, No. 488 (right) is less seriously-altered.

In the early decades of the 19^th century, on the west side of Manhattan between the established city and Greenwich Village, the Lispenard family owned a large swath of land referred to as Lispenard’s Meadows.   The meadows were, in fact, marshy and of little value until the area just to the south was developed by Trinity Church as St. John’s Park – the most exclusive residential district in New York.

By the 1820s, Greenwich Street was the main route from New York to Greenwich Village, cutting through Lispenard’s Meadows.  When Canal Street was laid out, stretching east to west between the rivers, it included a sewer—resulting in effective drainage of the marshland.  What had been essentially worthless property was suddenly attractive real estate.

John George Rohr was a merchant tailor; a German immigrant who saw greater profits in real estate speculation than in the clothing business.  Around 1820 he began construction of small brick rowhouses along Greenwich Street on the Lispenard property.  A relative, also named John Rohr, was a mason and builder and he was most likely responsible for their construction.

In 1820 the Rohrs built three houses on the west side of Greenwich Street, northward from the corner of Canal Street.  Two more were added in 1821 and two years later the Rohrs leased six more lots to the north.

By 1826 their string of similar Federal-style, working class homes included five to the south of Canal Street and eleven to the north.   John Rohr (the builder) took ownership of the northern-most six homes in 1825 and lived in No. 498 Greenwich after 1827.  In the meantime, John G. Rohr continued with his tailoring business, joined eventually by his son, George.

Among the functional little buildings was No. 488 Greenwich Street.  Like its neighbors, it was a two and a half story house, clad in brick with a central dormer on the pitched roof.  It would appear that the house was always intended to have a business on the ground floor, and a side entrance to the upstairs living quarters.

The house most likely always had a shop entrance (left) and a private entrance to the upstairs living quarters.

John and Martha Rohr retained possession of the house (originally numbered No. 490) until 1837, renting it as additional income.  The early tenants came and went with surprising quickness.

James Wood, a tin and hardware dealer was here for one year, between 1824 and 1825.  He was followed by John Hannah, a copper smith, who also stayed only a year.  Grocer Anthony J. Werneken was here from 1834 to 1835.

In 1837 John and Martha transferred the property to their tailor relative, John G. and Rebecca Rohr, who conveyed it seven years later to their son, George.  George kept the property for only two years, until 1846, when it was foreclosed upon and purchased by Charles Hummel, the baker who lived next door.  Hummel had been living above his bakery in what is now No. 486 since 1831.

Hummel continued to lease his newly-acquired property to John McDermott who had been the tenant of No. 488 since 1838.  Somewhat a jack of all trades, McDermott listed himself in directories variously as a grocer, carman and smith.   By 1851 the little building was operated as a boarding house.  The proprietor managed to squeeze five working-class men into the upstairs quarters.

By now the area was bustling with small businesses serving the busy Canal Street commercial district.   Hardware dealer Robert Shiells purchased the house in 1852.  Shiells ran his hardware business until retiring in 1855 and, after his death in 1862, his two children, George and Elizabeth Shiells, held on to the property until 1870. 

When the house was placed at auction in 1899, the shoreline of the Hudson River, originally only about a block to the rear of the property, had been filled in and West Street and its many piers had been constructed.  Much of the Greenwich Street area surrounding the little house at No. 488 now boasted large warehouses and factories.

Ambrose K. Ely placed the winning bid on the house, spending $6,500 for it.  Ely owned the large storage warehouses next door to the north.  The land-rich Ely family would retain the property until 1944.  How the little building and its matching neighbor next door managed to survive is inexplicable; however in 1908 two businesses were sharing No 488.  A. Allan & Son was here, advertising itself as “inventors and sole manufacturers of The Allan Metal,” an anti-friction metal.  Sharing the building was Max Schnall “rag and paper stock dealer.”

By World War I the Ohio Foundry & Manufacturing Co. of Stuebenville, Ohio had its New York office here.  A 1917 advertisement touted, “Coal and gas burning grates for fireplaces, andirons of iron and brass, baskets, screens, dampers, gas logs, etc., for fireplaces.”  The firm also operated as “jobbers of spark guards and gas fittings.”

Throughout the first half of the 20^th century the house experienced a vast array of tenants.  Vito Cuoco ran a junk shop here in the 1920s, Alphonso Ruocco operated his fruit dealership from here around 1934, and a string of trucking-related firms followed—Express Carriers Corp around 1935, Tony Lupardi’s trucking company Baron’s Express Co., and V. Linetzky “truck covers” around 1939 to 1940.

After George Drakoudes purchased the house from the Ely Estate in 1944, it was home to Metal Converters & Expeditors before becoming Eddie’s Locker Room Luncheonette around 1959.  In 1965, the year that Eddie’s moved out, the façade of No. 488 was seriously bulging out. 

Normally, a pronounced bulge in the brickwork of a building is associated with a lack of ties between the walls parallel to the joists and the joists behind.  When John Rohr constructed the little house in the 1820s iron ties were unheard of.  Yet at some point in the 19^th century the flaw apparently became apparent, because long tie rods had been retrofitted with large cast iron stars lining up on the brickwork below the second floor.

The Department of Buildings ordered that the dangerous problem be corrected.  The entire brick façade was removed and, amazingly, refaced using the original historic bricks--most likely an economic rather than preservationist decision.  A year later the owner of the house next door, James Johnston, Sr., purchased No. 488.  Johnston had run his business, A. Johnston & Son Iron Works, from No. 486 since 1953.

In 1966 the brick was stripped off and the bulging facade corrected.  The late 19th-century star-shaped masonry supports can be seen below the second floor -- photo Historic Building Construction

The amazing little survivor at No. 488 was purchased in 1975 by John and Joanne Hendricks, along with No. 486.  The Hendricks restored the facades and returned the upstairs of No. 488 to residential use for the first time in over a century.  Today the delightful and surprising little building is home to the Hendricks while the first floor functions as Joanne Hendrick’s bookstore selling rare cookbooks.

Although its near-match next door at No. 486 also survives, it has been more seriously altered.

 non-credited photographs taken by the author