The 1900 James E. Nichols House -- No. 4 East 79th Street

In 1915 the wealthy widow Lizzie Nichols kept mainly to herself.  She had grown to an ample 250 pounds and was still recovering from her husband’s sudden death a year earlier.  On the evening of September 9 the house was unusually empty.  It was the butler’s night off and the cook, Ileona Toivonen, had gone home around 8:30.  Only a maid, Edith Langfeldt, and Onne Talls, the “second man” of the house, remained downstairs while the 60-year old Lizzie was in her sitting room on the third floor of her magnificent mansion at No. 4 East 79^th Street.

Around 9:30 the basement door bell rang.  Onne Talls and the maid answered it to find three men, one of which held a wrapped package.  When he announced that he was to deliver the package to Mrs. Nichols, Talls admitted him.  The other men rushed in behind him, one brandishing a revolver.

The servants were bound and gagged at gunpoint, then the three burglars rushed upstairs.  While faint noises from upstairs filtered down to the servants, Edith worked frantically to free herself.  She worked her hands free, then untied the handkerchief that bound her ankles and tore the gag from her mouth.  Without pausing to untie Talls, she ran to the telephone and called Police Headquarters.

Having alerted the police, she rushed up the stairs to help her mistress.  There in the third floor corridor she found the body of the Elizabeth Griggs Nichols.

A much slimmer Lizzie Griggs had married James E. Nichols in 1878.  The self-made man grew up on a farm in Meredith, New Hampshire and came to New York City in 1868 as a representative for two woolen mills based in his home state.  A decade later he and his associates took over the grocery wholesaling business of Fitts & Austin, establishing Austin, Nichols & Co., of which he was senior partner.

As the turn of the century neared he was also heavily involved in real estate (“prominently identified with the development of the commercial life of the west side of Manhattan,” according to The New York Times), and banking.  He was a Director and Vice President of the Irving National Bank; a Director of the Broadway Trust Company; the Fidelity Trust Company, the Childs Company; and the Merchants’ Refrigerating Company.

The athletic Nichols was also an avid horseman, owning several thoroughbreds, and a big game hunter.  He was intrigued by polar exploration and his firm provided the food supplies to the Greely, Peary, Fiala, and Roosevelt arctic expeditions.

Meanwhile, railroad magnate Henry H. Cook anticipated the upward migration of millionaires north along Fifth Avenue across from Central Park.   In 1883, while the cream of New York society was still constructing marble and limestone residences in the 50s, Cook completed his grand mansion at the corner of 78^th Street.

To ensure that his imposing granite home was not tainted by commerce, as was slowly happening in the blocks to the south, Cook bought the entire block from Fifth Avenue to Madison Avenue, 78^th to 79^th Street.   He then methodically sold off the plots of what became known as “the Cook Block” with the codicil that only one-family homes could be built on the site.

In 1912 The New York Times would recall “Not only, according to his idea, was the block to be used for private homes forever, but the new houses were all required to be of a certain type of construction, and he would not sell to any one who was not able to willing to improve his plot in splendid style.”

Nichols would build on the "Cook Block" which, by Cook's restrictions was lined with magnificent mansions.

In June 1898 James E. Nichols added his name to those who would build “in splendid style.”  He purchased the lot at No. 4 East 79^th Street, directly behind the magnificent French Gothic chateau of Isaac D. Fletcher that was currently being constructed.

The Beaux Arts design of the Nichols residence contrasted with the French Gothic Fletcher mansion on the Avenue -- Architectural Record, December 1902 (copyright expired)

The Nichols house, separated from the Fletcher mansion by a service alley, was completed in 1900.  Five stories tall, it was entered at street level above an American basement—the latest in architectural vogue.  The showy Beaux Arts elements--scrolled carvings, a bowed bay with French-styled windows and a flamboyant mansard--fought for attention with the scene-grabbing Fletcher residence. 

The Times deemed the home “magnificently furnished, being especially notable for the splendid collection of wild animal heads gathered by Mr. Nichols.”   To protect Lizzle’s costly jewelry, safes were cleverly hidden within the walls throughout the upstairs private rooms.

Unlike most of the houses that rose along the block, the Nichols mansion was seldom the scene of glittering entertainments or inclusions in the society pages.  Perhaps because of Lizzie’s increasing girth, the couple lived comparatively quietly.   In 1914 they sailed to Europe and while in Marienbad, Austria, Nichols was stricken with heart disease.  As Lizzle sat by his bed, James E. Nichols died on July 22.

Mourning and extremely wealthy, Lizzie returned to No. 4 East 79^th Street surrounded by what she considered to be a faithful staff.   Not long after her return, butler Arthur Waltonen left the position and was replaced.  It would be the first domino to fall, ending with the tragic death of Lizzle Nichols.

Lizzie’s former butler knew where the hidden safes were and he knew that she kept the keys to her jewelry boxes secured under her corset at the back.  Waltonen and Onne Talls devised a complex plan to steal the estimated $37,500 worth of jewels.

On the night of September 9, 1915, it was Arthur Waltonen whom Onne Talls admitted through the basement door, along with an accomplice referred to by the newspapers as “an unnamed Italian.”  The binding and gagging of Talls along with the maid was a charade—one that unraveled relatively quickly.

When Edith Langfeldt discovered the body that night, The Times reported that “A towel was wrapped tightly about her throat and a sheet had been thrown around her shoulders; her face was blue from strangulation, and her glasses had been broken, apparently in a struggle…the three men apparently had had to fight to overpower her.”

Although police arrived within five minutes of Edith’s phone call, the men had disappeared.   When the servants were questioned, the cook remembered seeing three men loitering around the front of the house when she left.  She recognized them “as friends of Talls.”  It was the lead that eventually resulted in the arrest of the criminals.  Because Talls did not take part in the murder he was given a life sentence.  His accomplices went to the electric chair.

On September 12 the funeral of Elizabeth Nichols, who left a $2 million estate, was held not in a socially-fashionable church, but “from an undertaker’s chapel at 406 Fifth Avenue,” as reported in The Times.  The body of the widow was place next to her husband in the family vault in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Five months prior to Waltonen’s arrest in September 1916 in Chicago, Miss Catharine A. Fitzpatrick bought the Nichols residence for $350,000.  “It is in the famous Cook block,” reported The Times, “which is one of the best developed private home blocks in the city…It will be remodeled for Fall occupancy.”  Catharine commissioned architect Herbert Lucas to make the changes in the home.

She never moved in, apparently.  A month later banker Joseph Wright Harriman owned the house and it was Harriman who paid Lucas the $3,000 to construct a new conservatory on the roof.  The Harrimans divided their time between East 79^th Street and their country estate, Avondale Farms, in Brookville, Long Island.  

Harriman was the President of the Harriman National Bank and on May 21, 1922 the engagement of his only daughter, Miriam, to Albert Lincoln Hoffman was announced.  Hoffman was the son of the socially-prominent Mr. and Mrs. Francis Burrall Hoffman and had married Leta Sullivan in 1918.  Leta tragically died the following year after the birth of a son.

Hoffman was a "club man"—having memberships in the Knickerbocker, Racquet and Tennis, Harvard, and Piping Rock Clubs—and was an officer of the National City Bank.  Miriam was “prominently identified with the work of the Junior League” (she was vice president), and was a graduate of Miss Spence’s School.  The Times noted that the engagement was “of keen interest to society, owing to the prominence of both families.”

But something went wrong.

On September 19 Harriman curtly announced that the engagement “has been broken by mutual consent” and that he “would make no further comment.”

Miriam finally married four years later in St. Bartholomew’s Church.   She wore her mother’s wedding gown as Joseph Harriman escorted her down the aisle.   The reception was held in the 79^th Street house.  Mariam and her new husband, Boykin Cabell Wright, moved to 1088 Park Avenue after going abroad on their wedding trip.

The Harrisons were followed at No. 4 in 1926 by Mrs. Clara Jay William Keech.  The former wife of Colonel Frank B. Keech, she was president of the Virginia Day Nursery, an old and esteemed institution.  Mrs. Keech provided scholarships to the National Academy of Design for talented boys from the East Side.

When Clara Keech died at her winter home in Boca Grande, Florida, on February 9, 1937, the house was inherited by her broker son, Gilbert W. Keech, who died within the year.

At around the same time Ogden Phipps married Mrs. Lillian Stokes Bostwick McKim.  Both parties were divorced and the understated wedding took place in the bride’s apartment at 117 E. 72^nd Street.  Phipps was one of the nation’s most outstanding court tennis and racquets players and a grandson of Ogden Mills.

In April 1938 Phipps paid cash for the 79^th Street house.   Phipps' new neighbors included millionaires like William C. Dickerman, Charles W. Ogden, Sumner Ballard and Winthrop W. Aldrich.  On the corner of Fifth Avenue was the Duke house and, along the avenue, were the homes of Mrs. Payne Whitney and Joseph F. Feder.  In reporting the sale, The Times remarked “This block has attracted wide interest because of its resistance to the invasion of apartment houses.”

Department of Buildings records are sketchy; but it was possibly the Phipps who were responsible for the toning down of C. P. H. Gilbert's turn of the century design.  The bowed bay to the front was removed and most of the Beaux Arts pomposity removed to produce a more understated, modern dwelling.

Lillian Phipps was deeply interested in the arts.  On November 8 she held the first of a series of twelve illustrated lectures by Mrs. Helen Appleton Read on “the season’s major art events.”  Reflecting society’s ongoing love of late hours, the lectures began at 11:00 pm.

The Phipps remained in the house until 1946, when it was sold to become the French Mission to the United Nations.  It was here on May 6, 1948 that the UN subcommittee met to discuss the five-point outlined submitted by France as the working bases for a study of the provisional regime for Palestine.

The murderers of Lizzie Nichols in 1915 would have slipped into the service door to the basement at the side.

Despite Henry Cook’s stipulation that only one-family residences could be built on his block, in 1992 No. 4 was converted to offices and, on the uppermost floors, two duplex apartments.  The renovation was short-lived, however, and in 2005 it was reconverted to a single-family residence; no doubt much to the approval of the late Mr. Cook.

photographs taken by the author

The 200-Year Old Grocery Store at No. 329 Bleecker Street

Thirty years after the Revolutionary War the tiny village of Greenwich was sparsely populated.  It would be two decades before the outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever in the crowded city to the south forced New Yorkers to seek refuge here.  An old road, renamed Christopher Street in 1799, ran along the southern boundary of Vice Admiral Sir Peter Warren’s country estate and here, around 1802, a two-and-a-half story wood fronted building was erected. 

A similar house sat next door at the corner of Herring Road.  In March 1807 a three-member commission composed of Gouveneur Morris, surveyor Simeon De Sitt and attorney John Rutherfurd, was appointed to plot a comprehensive street plan for Manhattan–decades before most citizens could imagine the city engulfing the island.  The three men met in the tiny corner structure.

Civil engineer John Randel, Jr., advised the commission and years later he reminisced about the village at that time.  “In going from the city to our office in 1808 and 1809, I generally crossed a ditch cut through Lispenard’s salt meadow, now a culvert under Canal Street, on a plank laid across it.  From this place I followed a well beaten path leading to the then village of Greenwich, passing over open and partly fenced lots and fields, not at that time under cultivation, and remote from any dwelling house, now remembered by me, except Col. Aaron Burr’s former country seat on elevated ground called Richmond Hill and was then occupied as a place of refreshment for gentlemen taking a drive from the city.”

Randel mentioned another country estate.  “I continued along this path to a branch diverging from it to the east south of Manetta water, now Minetta Street, which path I followed to Herring Street passing on my way there, from about two hundred to two hundred and fifth yards west, the country residence of Col. Richard Varick, called Tusculum, the site of which is now Varick Place on Sullivan Street between Bleecker and Houston Street.”

At the time there were only about three other homes along Herring Street–later renamed Bleecker Street–in one of which Thomas Paine boarded.

The glint of historical importance for the little corner building was over in 1809 when the commissioners finalized their visionary street plan which would be published two years later.  Things returned to normal on the corner of Christopher and Herring Streets.

Until 1828.

By now Greenwich Village was experiencing a building boom as Federal-style brick homes and businesses filled the streets.  Herring Street was widened that year, taking away the corner building and the wall that had separated it from its neighbor at 93 Christopher Street.

No. 93 got a new brick exterior side wall.  Flanking the central, arched window below the cornice were two quarter-round windows, mimicking those that would be found below a traditional Federal-style pitched roof fashionable at the time.  When Herring Street was renamed the following year, the corner property got a new address as well:  329 Bleecker Street.

Behind No. 329 in 1925 a row of buildings constructed after the 1828 widening of Bleecker Street remain.  Trolley tracks run down the middle of Christopher Street and awnings protect produce from the summer sun.  -- photo New York Public Library Collection

David McAllister and John N. Moore ran their small dry goods store, McAllister & Moore, until the partnership encountered problems.  On February 1, 1843 the New York Daily Tribune announced that the business was “dissolved by mutual consent.”

Richard Barrick lived here in 1871, and most likely ran his business here.  The man had a bad day on October 6 when he got into what The New York Times called “an affray” with John Cunningham on West 10^th Street near Bleecker.   The newspaper reported that Cunningham “thrust the end of a rake-handle into the eye of Richard Barrick…and destroyed it.”

The little store continues business as a turn-of-the-century apartment building has risen next door and, across Bleecker, a 1930s behemoth replaced earlier structures. -- photo New York Public Library Collection

At the turn of the century Nicola M. La Rocca ran his fruit stand from here and for nearly a century the corner store would continue as a grocery.

In 1922 Sam Ribyat, president of Ribyat Brothers, owned the store.  He commissioned architect Thomas Williams to do renovations.  Subsequent photographs show no cosmetic improvements of the Christopher Street façade; so it was probably at this time that the supporting tie rods on the Bleecker Street elevation, with their decorative iron star-shaped masonry supports, were installed.

On June 18, 1936 famed photographer Berenice Abbott captured the corner store.  A boy, dressed with a tie for school, sits on the cut-stone curb while a woman stretches to drop a letter in the mailbox.  Christopher Street is a one-way street -- going the opposite direction it does today -- photo New York Public Library Collection

At some point the Christopher Street front was raised to a full three stories and the decrepit clapboards were stuccoed over.  For decades the Bleecker Street Grocery's metal sign “FANCY FRUITS DAIRY” was a familiar landmark for Villagers.

But as trendy shops and restaurants invaded the quiet, twisting streets of Greenwich Village so did high rents.  The corner grocery was replaced by a rapid-fire succession of business—among them Bronca Pizza, Goodfellas Kitchen and Bleecker’s Corner, a fast-food deli.

After decades in the same spot, the Bleecker St. Grocery was no more in 1997.  The sign in the window portends the coming pizza parlor. 

Today the 200-year old store is sand-blasted and manicured; home to the UK-based chain store, Accessorize that sells glittery jewelry, belts, hair pieces, bags and cosmetics—far removed from the humble structure that sat on a dirt road in the first decade of the 1800s. 

non-credited photograph taken by the author

The Block That Refused to Update -- East 64th Street, Madison to Park Avenues

East 64th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues, was lined with speculative four-story brownstones by the late 19th century. -- photo by Alice Lum

The Upper East Side underwent a building boom in the 1870s and 1880s as comfortable brownstone homes were erected for middle and upper-middle class families.  But as the city’s millionaires moved northward along Fifth Avenue, these traditional, now-out-dated homes were demolished to make way for more lavish structures.

Most of them were, anyway.

As mansions were rising on the nearby avenues in 1898, Dr. William Horatio Bates was living contentedly at No. 50 East 64^th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues.  The narrow brownstone—only two bays wide—was a match to its next door neighbor at No. 48.  The twin houses had been built on speculation in a modified Italianate style.

Houses like Dr. Bates's at No. 50 (left) was built with successful, professional buyers in mind -- photo by Alice Lum

Dr. Bates’ house sat high above an English basement; eleven brownstone steps rose up to the parlor floor.   Oaken doors with a beveled glass transom sat snugly-protected by a carved stone entranceway.  A rigidly angled bay at the second floor was decorated with foliate panels.

Details of the Bates house were up-to-the-minute style-wise -- photo by Alice Lum

It was the perfect home for a successful yet not overly-wealthy professional.   And while the neighborhood changed, Dr. Bates’ house did not.  As the 20^th century dawned, Robert I. Jenks razed the old brownstone two houses away at No. 54 and replaced it with a stylish neo-Georgian home with an up-to-date American basement plan.  Directly across the street limestone-clad Beaux Arts and French Gothic residences rose.

When Robert Jenks built his neo-Georgian home where brownstones had been, he no doubt expected other millionaires to follow suit; they didn't. -- photo by Alice Lum

In the meantime, William Bates practiced his medicine and wrote.  Excerpts from his “Suprarenal Therapy” were printed in the March 24, 1900 issue of The Medical News and he was author of several other medical publications.

John Bradley Cumings purchased the house around 1904.  Cumings and his wife, the former Florence B. Thayer, moved to New York in 1902 from Boston.  The broker became a member of the firm of Cumings & Marckwald at 36 Wall Street.  Before long he held a directorship in the Subsurface Torpedo Boat Company, manufacturers of military submarines.  His financial success was mirrored in his several club memberships:  The Racquet, Metropolitan, Riding and the Knollwood Country Club.

Further down the block, other attractive residences hang on -- photo by Alice Lum

In January 1912 the couple sailed to Europe for a brief stay.  For their return voyage, they opted for the best.  On April 10^th they boarded a luxurious new ocean liner in Southampton that carried 2,200 passengers and was reportedly the last word in transatlantic travel. 

It was named the RMS Titanic.

Aida M. Seaman, who sometimes hyphenated her last name as Seaman-Bates, moved in next.  She was active in charities, including the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.  In 1914, quite surprisingly, the south side of the block where Aida lived still retained nearly all of its old, outdated brownstone houses.

Dr. E. Neustadt owned No. 50 in the 1945, when he sold it to Major Edward D. Stone.  It would be the end of the line for the house as a private dwelling.  Stone was an architect, the head of Edward D. Stone Associates, and he announced his intention to “remodel the four-story house to provide for his offices on the two lower floors and his residence on the upper floors.”

In 1958 the house became the design headquarters and showroom of Luten-Clarey-Stern, importers and interior designers.   By now the north side of the block was filled mostly with hulking, high-end apartment houses and the Hotel Plaza Athenee.  Yet No. 50 remained unchanged.

Rainbows of light fall on the foyer floor from the beveled glass overlight -- photo by Alice Lum

“A magnificent brass doorknob from India and a shiny brass plaque that spells Luten-Clarey-Stern are the only indications that a brownstone at 50 East Sixty-fourth Street differs from the many others in New York City,” reported Noelle Mercanton in The New York Times.

For a time in the 1960s the old house was home to the Royal Marks Gallery.  Today Dr. Bates’ comfortable brownstone house has been renovated into apartments, with a bookstore in the English basement.

photo by Alice Lum

While the great middle bulk of the south side of the block retains its 19^th century brownstones, most have been heavily altered.  Even the twin house next door has lost its stoop, its door frame and its oak doors.  That the houses should remain at all, however, in this neighborhood where wealthy Edwardians made fashionable improvements, is quite surprising.

The Lost Peter Goelet Mansion -- 19th Street and Broadway

Behind closed shutters with broken slats, the reclusive Hannah Gerry lived out her last years -- photo NYPL Collection

Broadway around 19^th Street had drastically changed in 1895.   Tall commercial buildings replaced the proud brownstone mansions that once lined the street and high-end emporiums lured wealthy shoppers who now lived further uptown.  There was no trace of the fashionable residential neighborhood of a generation earlier. 

Except for the brooding brown mansion at the northeast corner of Broadway and 19^th Street where a single elderly woman sat behind closed shutters in constant twilight. 

The house was built by Cornelius T. Williams around 1830; the same year that he fought the city’s plans to intersect his immense property with streets and avenues.   The hulking four-story mansion was designed in the relatively new Greek Revival style.  The handsome cast iron balconies that hugged the parlor-floor windows and the dignified, columned entrance were the only ornaments to the otherwise staid home. 

Williams’ house was nearly centered on the lot, surrounded by grassy yards and gardens and protected by a high iron fence.   To the rear, a large glass-enclosed conservatory extended into the gardens. 

Despite his protests, Williams would see his land developed.  He had already given up land for Union Square to the south and in 1831 he would sell land to Samuel B. Ruggles to become part of Gramercy Park. 

In the meantime another family was accumulating Manhattan property.  Brothers Peter and Robert Goelet inherited valuable land acquired by their father and grandfather.   They continued the family policy of investing in real estate, paying close attention to the trends of the city’s expansion and development.  Their property holdings would become among the most extensive and valuable in the city. 

After Cornelius T. Williams died, the bachelor Peter Goelet paid $22,500 for the mansion at Broadway and 19^th Street in 1836.  Reclusive and a bit eccentric, he filled the yards with exotic birds from around the world—peacocks, storks, pheasants, and other brilliantly-plumed fowl.  Henry Hall, in his 1895 “America’s Successful Men of Affairs,” noted that “During the summer time, some of these were to be seen stalking about the grounds surrounding the Goelet mansion.” 

To ensure a supply of fresh milk, Goelet kept a cow in the backyard.  During winter the animals were housed in the stone Gothic Revival carriage house.   

Preferring his solitude, the wealthy landowner would spend his evenings in his basement shop where he had a forge and machinery.  Henry Hall noted that here “he manufactured, after the fashion of one of the Kings of France, various sorts of machinery, but particularly locks and curious and intricate patterns.”  Goelet installed his inventions throughout the house, never seeking patents or outside manufacture of his ideas. 

The Goelets had two sisters, Hannah and Jean.  In 1835 Hannah married United States Naval officer Thomas R. Gerry, son of the former Vice President of the United States, Elbridge Gerry.  The couple had a son, Elbridge T. Gerry who would become Commodore Elbridge Gerry, founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. 

When Thomas Gerry died in 1845, Hannah moved in with Peter and the two of them would live in mysterious seclusion for the rest of their lives. 

Peter embraced any form of money-savings he could muster.  Gustavus Myers wrote in 1910 that “His passion for economy was carried to such an abnormal stage that he refused even to engage a tailor to mend his garments…For stationery he used blank backs of letters and envelopes which he carefully and systematically saved and put away.  His house at Nineteenth street, corner of Broadway, was a curiosity shop…he had a law library of 10,000 volumes, for it was a fixed, cynical determination of his never to pay a lawyer for advice that he could himself get for the reading.” 

The New York Times would gently put it “In money matters Mr. Goelet was noted for his economy, which he practiced at all times, never allowing himself to spend a dollar the full worth of which he did not receive.” 

Myers called Goelet, “very melancholy and, apart from his queer collection of pets, cared for nothing except land and houses.”  Indeed, when not tinkering with his inventions he spent his time pouring over his ledgers of property.  He kept one cardinal rule:  never sell a foot of land. 

One by one, the mansions along Broadway fell victim to encroaching commerce until the house where Peter and his widowed sister lived was an isolated anachronism.  “The extraordinary spectacle of a cow, storks, guinea-pigs, and other animals, feeding quietly in the busiest and most bustling part of Broadway, was one that attracted every stranger’s curiosity, and during the fine days in Summer it was no uncommon thing to see a considerable crowd gathered in front of the house gazing through the iron railing at the unwonted sight within,” mused The Times years later, in 1879. 

Peter’s immense fortune, estimated at $6 million in 1861 had doubled in 1873, despite the crippling financial panic of that year. 

In 1878 Goelet’s physical condition declined.  The New York Times explained it, saying “His complaint, which was nothing more complicated than general decay consequent upon advanced age, confined him to his residence.”  A year later in late October he became seriously ill and he died in the house on November 22, 1879. 

Peter Goelet’s brownstone mansion was passed on to his niece, Mrs. Elbridge T. Gerry, Hannah’s daughter-in-law.   Unlike the rest of the family who, as The Lewiston Daily Sun noted on June 5, 1893, “have left the old Goelet homes and live in brownstone palaces farther up town in the ultra fashionable quarters,” Hannah stayed on in the house, tended to by two loyal servants. 

The family did not pressure the aged woman to leave and she remained on as if time had not already passed her and the old house by.  The cow and the peacocks had long disappeared.  The stone carriage house had fallen into ruin.  “Its once fanciful windows are shattered, its ornamented timbers are rotting and crumbling away, and the door on Nineteenth street has not swung on its hinges for a half dozen years or more,” said The Lewiston Daily Sun. 

“The house exists because its occupant lives,” the newspaper said. 

Truly, the once-magnificent mansion in which Hannah Goelet Gerry hid was neglected.  “The whole appearance of the edifice is that of an abandoned homestead,” The Sun said.  Hannah rarely left the house and the servants – an aged butler who had been hired by Peter 50 years earlier and an equally-old maid—were seen only sporadically.  The wooden shutters were kept closed with the slats partially opened to allow light inside.   Years later, in 1901, an article in The Book Buyer reminisced “…frequently the old lady’s face at an upper window surprised the careless glance of persons passing in the crowd of Broadway.” 

And yet, as one newspaper noted, “It is safe to say, however, that if the interest upon the ground rent which the property would command is considered Miss Goelet’s lonely home is more expensive than many of the palatial residences in the vicinity of Central Park.” 

Only the tenacious residency of Hannah Goelet Gerry kept the mansion standing.  In 1887 the travel guide “Brief Summer Rambles Near Philadelphia” said “This fine dwelling of a former day is almost smothered by the towering stores around it, and will soon give way to their advancing tide.” 

On September 3, 1895 The New York Times reported that the 90-year old widow was “dangerously ill from pneumonia at her home in the Goelet mansion…and it is feared that she cannot recover.” 

Within two weeks Hannah Gerry was dead.  

Not long afterward, the crumbling Gothic Revival carriage house was demolished “to make way for a business structure,” said The Times. 

But for over a year and a half the great mansion sat empty.  On March 14, 1897 The New York Tribune remarked on the disparity between the old relic and its new neighbors.  “The Lincoln Building, the Decker stone-and-terra-cotta structure, and a ten-story stone building, all of recent construction, are main features of the elevation and transformation of Broadway in Union Square.  The Sloane Building, at the southwest corner of Nineteenth-st., with its nine stories, stands in marked contrast with the old Goelet mansion opposite at the northeast corner.  This old house is one of the exceedingly few distinct landmarks of Broadway which have withstood the pressure of the last quarter of a century.” 

But two weeks later it would all end.  On April 2, the Tribune reported “With the filing of a set of building plans yesterday the passing of an old Broadway landmark becomes a certainty…It is not a great length of time since every stranger in the city, even those who had never heard of the house, stopped to look at it, being attracted by the strange sight of a cow that used to wander about the little patch of green behind the bars of the tall front fence.”

“But in time the cow disappeared,” said the article.  “Later the only evidence to be seen outwardly that the place was inhabited was the occasional sight at one of the front windows of the last occupant of the mansions, Mrs. Gerry.”

Later that summer Andrew C. Zabriskie, president of the American Numismatic and Archaeological Society, began an address by saying “While walking downtown on the bright and beautiful mornings of the past week, I have watched with feelings akin to sadness the demolition of that old landmark, the Goelet mansion, on the northeast corner of 19^th Street and Broadway.  Years ago it was a source of delight to me, a little child, when taken out for a walk, to stop and peer through the iron railings, at the cow, the peacock, and the golden pheasants and if perchance the peacock should spread his tail, my cup of joy would be full.”

Where an eccentric millionaire’s brownstone mansion had stood a massive eight-story brick-and-stone building arose.  And before long, the memories of peacocks, a cow, and the haunting visage of a lonely reclusive widow faded away.

The 1948 Millinery Center Synagogue -- No. 1025 6th Avenue

At the turn of the last century, the millinery trade was centered in the Broadway and Houston Street neighborhood.  But already it was slowly moving northward.  By the time World War I had ended, the millinery district had followed the migration of the apparel industry into the new Garment District.

Men’s and women’s wholesale hat manufacturers and related industries—trims, feathers, ribbons, etc.—were centered in a five-block area.  Between 5^th and 6^th Avenues, from 35^th Street to 40^th, were upwards of 600 hat firms with 15,000 employees; many of which were hard-working Jewish immigrants.

As the firms moved in, small houses and commercial buildings were replaced by factories and office space.  In the years between 1905 and 1930 more than two dozen multistory buildings went up.  Here workers toiled with felt and straw, ribbons and rhinestones, creating the hats that would keep America in fashion.

Religiously observant Jewish workers in the Millinery Center immediately faced a problem: living in Brooklyn or, in some cases, as far away as Long Island, they needed a local synagogue for daily minyan – prayer services – or for the prayers for the dead recited during the week.

In 1935 the Millinery Center Synagogue was founded to address this problem.  By now fully two-thirds of the hat makers in the United States were centered within the small Manhattan district.    The congregation made do, worshiping in a second-floor Millinery District loft for a decade.

But despite the Great Depression and the shortage of building materials after World War II, the determined congregation managed to raise $150,000 for the erection of its own building.  Then on October 7, 1945, the announcement was made that the property at 1025 6^th Avenue had been purchased as the site of an actual synagogue building.   The New York Times reported that “H. I. Feldman, architect, has been commissioned to prepare plans and supervise construction” of the three-story structure.

Feldman had begun his practice in 1921 and by now had almost single-handedly designed the Grand Concourse in the Bronx which was lined with his stunning Art Deco style apartment buildings.   By the time Feldman died in 1981 he had designed 2,500 apartment houses in the New York area.  The little synagogue on 6^th Avenue would be a unique commission.

The resulting synagogue, completed in 1948 was a somewhat severe Modernist design.  Faced in limestone, it boasted little exterior decoration—a centered magen david at the roofline, a frieze announcing the name of the synagogue in sleek mid-century lettering at the third floor, and a large rectangular stained glass window over the wide entrance doors.

Suddenly the small congregation had a building to be proud of—and even air conditioning.   The main floor of the temple would seat 128 worshipers and space was provided for social activities as well.  Here such groups as the Millinery Bowling League, the Millinery Salesman Union, the Millinery Textile Club and retailers convened.

photo by Martha Cooper, placematters.net

As the Millinery Center Synagogue was being completed, Joseph Guttman, a Czechoslovakian concentration camp survivor, was arriving in New York.    The young man--the sole surviving member of his family--brought with him a knowledge of the Jewish liturgy and a remarkable voice.

Guttman became cantor of the synagogue; a position he would hold for nearly four decades.  Reportedly it was here that he instructed two other young cantors the High Holiday liturgy.  Those young men would go on to fame outside their synagogues as the opera stars Richard Tucker and Jan Peerce.

Tucker reported the problems he had in reconciling his duties as a cantor with the demands of his profession.  Jewish groups were routinely offended by his singing at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday evenings or holy days.

Over half a century later the impressive little synagogue remains a mainstay for Jewish workers in the Garment District.  Its crisp Modernist façade sits in stark contrast with its dingy Victorian neighbors and serves as reminder of the rich cultural heritage of the area.

Many thanks to Keith Taillon for suggesting this post.  Non-credited photographs taken by the author.

The "Chelsea Firehouse" -- No. 323 West 21st Street

photo by Beyond My Ken

Before 1865 New York City’s fire fighting depended on an disorganized collection of volunteer companies.  When a fire broke out, young men in the neighborhood called “laddies” would scramble to the fire house.  Nearby fire houses would vie with one another to arrive at the fire first, or to become more skilled at extinguishing it.  The volunteer groups gained a reputation as rowdy, boisterous gangs whose fire houses were essentially social clubs.

The devastating fire that destroyed Barnum’s Museum in 1865 along with pressure on the State Assembly by reformers resulted in the Act of 1865 that coupled Brooklyn and New York with a paid, united “Metropolitan District” fire department.

It was about this time that a new fire house was constructed at No. 323 West 21^st Street in the burgeoning neighborhood that only thirty years earlier had still been part of Clement Moore’s family estate, Chelsea.   The red brick, four-story building pretended to be nothing more than it was:  a firehouse.  Trimmed in brownstone, the central opening was wide enough to accommodate a new horse-drawn steam pumper engine.

It would seem that by 1875 the fire house had already been given over to other uses.  William Livingston was a carriage driver who was living here on May 16 of that year.  Livingston was arrested after the horse and carriage he was driving ran over and killed 9-year old Jacob Levi.

Emma K. Beam became owner of the building in 1908 and continued leasing out the upstairs rooms.  The American Art Directory listed John Yeats as living here in 1918.  Yeats was perhaps the first tenant in the building with an artistic bent; he would certainly not be the last.

Anna Gerard sought refuge here in 1921 to escape her husband, William, who still lived in their furnished room down the block.  The pregnant woman had filed for divorce charging cruel and inhuman treatment.

In court she complained, “Each morning before leaving home [Gerard] would give me $1 with instructions that that was to provide for the house that day.  On his return he would require an accounting of the money given.  When told that the dollar had been spent for food for the house he told me I lied and that I had spent it on other men.”

Gerard, who was a worker at the Art Printing Company in Manhattan, accused her of abandonment and added that he never struck his wife.

It would seem Gerard had some control issues.

In 1929 Emma Beam sold the building to “an investor who plans to alter the structure,” according to The New York Times.    Those alterations did not happen until 6 years later, according to Building Department records, when the firehouse was converted to a “garage for more than five autos” with offices on the second floor; and one apartment each on the upper floors.

It was most likely at this time that the architectural detailing of the brownstone lintels and main entrance surround were shaved flat—a common practice in an age that viewed Victorian ornamentation as grossly passé.

Although the building plans called for offices on the second floor, they never materialized.  In 1933 dancer Franziska Marie Boas had established her studio and “Boas School” here on the second floor and stayed on for nearly two decades.

Boas lived here with her friend, Jan Gray, and a big, shaggy sheepdog, “Name.”   The edgy artist staged avante garde performances like the “by invitation only” program of dances and percussion music listed in The New York Times on June 8, 1941.  Noted as “assisting artists” were dancer Valerie Bettis, and “director of Chinese music,” Danny Seid.

Franziska Boas confronted racism in the arts with multiracial dance groups and by opening her classes to all races.   She constructed a proscenium arch in the West 21^st Street space for her shows and would sometimes invite artists to sketch the improvisational dancers.  The room was decorated with ethnic instruments from around the world collected by her anthropologist father, Franz Boas.

In the meantime, struggling artists Andy Warhol and Philip Pearlstein were sharing a subleased, vermin-infested apartment at Avenue A and St. Mark’s Place in the East Village.  When the lease was up, they searched the New York Times classifieds and found someone who wanted to share her space.

It was dancer Franziska Boas.

Warhol and Pearlstein moved in to No. 323 West 21^st Street in 1949.  Boas set the artists up on one side of the proscenium while she conducted her school and programs on the other.  Pearlstein later said that “we were able to write to our families in Pittsburgh and our friends in New York that we have moved from one roach-ridden apartment to another.”

Directly below the apartment, at ground level, was now a bus service garage and parts company.  The accommodations above were barely more tolerable.  According to Warhol’s biographer, Victor Bockris, “One of the biggest problems was the ongoing battle with the roaches, who went after the black paint they used for lettering.  Andy would leave his empty soda-pop bottle out after lunch every day and by the evening it would be full of them.”

Warhol and Pearlstein managed to pay their portion of the rent to Boas; however she was not passing it on to the landlord.  In March 1950 all four tenants and the big shaggy dog were evicted.

In 1955 the building saw its first change in ownership since 1929.  At the time of the sale The Times noted “a store” on the ground floor of the apartment building.

As the Chelsea neighborhood around it changed, the red brick firehouse did as well.  In 1998 it was converted to luxury housing with a single-car garage in the former steam engine bay, and three apartments.  The high-end conversion landed the interiors of the duplex apartment (extending from part of the ground floor through to the second) in a 1999 issue of Architectural Digest.

In the same apartment that Andy Warhol fought roaches and Franziska Boas staged dance performances, more successful tenants now live -- photo www.elliman.com

From firehouse to luxury apartments, with some cockroaches and bus parts thrown in between, the mid-Victorian building at No. 323 West 21^st Street has a rich and varied history.

The 1902 Hamilton Fish House -- No. 55 East 77th Street

photo by Alice Lum

Remaining in the house he had shared with his wife, Emily Mann Fish was possibly too painful for Hamilton Fish after her death in 1899.   Shortly afterward the former New York State Assemblyman purchased the lot at No. 55 East 77^th Street and commissioned Charles Brendon to design an exuberant townhouse. 

Brendon headed up the architectural firm of, Charles Brendon & Co. which is barely remembered today.  While designing the Fish house, he was working on the 11-story Hotel Brayton that would rise at Madison Avenue and 27^th Street.  For Hamilton Fish, he pulled out all the stops.

Working in the then-popular Beaux Arts style, Brendon pushed the limits.  The brick-and-limestone house, completed in 1902, rose five stories over an American basement.  The rusticated first floor included an oval window with carved framing, a rectangular window, a recessed entrance behind iron gates and robust scrolled-and-wreathed stone brackets upholding a balcony.  A carved cartouche announced the address.

photo by Alice Lum

Undulating balconies with sinuous iron railings in the central bay dripped with carved ornamentation.  Above it all a robust dormer sat above the cornice.

The Fish family moved in.  Hamilton Fish, Jr. was 10 years old and would go on to make his own mark in American politics.  Eldest daughter Janet was, according to The New York Times, “one of the best liked girls in society…She is extremely tall and willowy, a pronounced brunette with much vivacity of expression.”   Julia Kean Fish (“who has spent considerable time abroad,” noted The Times), Emily Rosalind Fish and Helena L. Fish completed the family.

Society took note when, four years later, the wedding plans of Julia were announced.   The debutante married William Lawrence Breese, who lived both in London and New York, in a private ceremony in St. James Church conducted by Bishop Courteney.  Later a reception was held in the East 77^th Street house.

The couple sailed off to England where the new Mrs. Breese was presented at Court by the Dowager Duchess of Roxburghe, the mother-in-law of William’s sister.

An ambitious dormer with scrolls, wreaths and a shell crowns the residence -- photo by Alice Lum

A year later Hamilton Fish was elected to the US House of Representatives and leased the house to the Plauchon family.  While living there, 15-year old John Plauchon underwent a tonsillectomy at 301 E. 85^th Street.  When complications arose, he was moved to the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital where he died from “bleeding following an operation,” according to the Coroners’ Office.

John W. Ellsworth leased the house the following year.  In 1910 he and his wife, Magee, and their two children had five live-in servants.   Mrs. Ellsworth, not content with immersing herself in teas and dances, was a member of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York.

The Ellsworths stayed on until 1914, the same year that John, now 42 years old, bought his shiny new Reo automobile.   In their place came the successful, 34-year old Thomas Crimmins.   The Harvard graduate entered the contracting business of his uncle in 1900 as a partner in Thomas E. and Thomas Crimmins.  By 1903 he had organized the general contracting firm of Thomas Crimmins Contracting Co.  

The apparently tireless Crimmins was president of the Harvard Engineering Society of New York and a member of eight clubs and the Chamber of Commerce.    Crimmins and his family of four would stay here until around 1922.

Then, that year, the metallurgist Brent Nevill Rickard and his wife, Elizabeth, three children and their Irish terrier, Mickytwo, were living here.   Rickard came from a family of mining engineers and metallurgists and was Assistant Superintendent of the American Smelting & Refining Co. in Murray, Utah; a position that kept him away from East 77^th Street for periods.

The house that for three decades had garnered little attention was leased on January 22, 1932 by Dr. Otto C. Kiep, the German Consul .   With Adolf Hitler firmly in power in 1938 police guards were necessarily posted outside the house where, now, Consul General Johannes Borchers lived.  Threats to blow up the German Consulate General at 17 Battery Place were received by phone.

Protestors gathered outside the house on several occasions, including the Teachers Union on November 23.  Hamilton Fish, who still owned the house coincidentally, spoke out against the Reich; even while his Congressman son Hamilton Fish, Jr. was accused of supporting Hitler and his anti-Semitic policies.  Speaking of the German-American Bund, a propaganda tool, Fish told reporters “the Bund has no place in free America.”

After the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941 the house on East 77^th Street was empty again.

When Fish’s niece, Patricia Rosalind Cutler was married to Ensign Robert Ludlow Fowler 3^rd, USNR in St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie the reception was held in the residence.  The couple’s pedigree was sterling.  Patricia was descended from Colonel Nicholas Fish, Peter Stuyvesant, Peter Kean and Hamilton Fish.  Her husband was a descendant of Robert Livingston, first Lord of Livingston Manor.

In 1948 the house was sold and converted to high-end apartments.  Here Lois Balken was living in 1951 when 67-year old burglar Wllliam Hahn made off with $10,000 in jewelry from her apartment.   Hahn, whom The New York Times described as “tall, slender, conservatively dressed” and “ bespectacled,” was called by one detective, “probably the best jewel robber in the country.”  He was said to have stolen $1 million in gems in 1934 alone.

Among Lois Balken’s neighbors at the time was the wealthy Mrs. Henry Gansevoort Sanford.

The house served as CIA Centre in the 1975 film “Three Days of the Condor.”

Robert Redford rushes up the steps of No. 55 E. 77th in "Three Days of the Condor" -- photo http://onthesetofnewyork.com/threedaysofthecondor.html

No. 55 East 77^th Street was gently used by its high-end tenants and after being sold in 1988 was reconverted to a single family residence.  A year-long renovation was initiated by Renotal Construction Corp. in 2002 to bring the plumbing, electricity and HVAC systems up to date, as well as to repair the façade.

photo by Alice Lum

The mansion is little changed since its completion in 1902.  Its remarkable history is matched only by its over-the-top Beaux Arts façade—what the AIA Guide to New York City called “vainglorious architecture of its time.”