The 1903 Church of St. Veronica -- No. 153 Christopher Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1796, about three decades before the rural village of Greenwich would explode in a flurry of development, the imposing Newgate State Prison was opened at the foot of Christopher Street.  The institution would be abandoned by 1829 and slowly demolished; but the area would little improve.

Further away, respectable Federal-style brick rose along the twisting streets of the Village and on 6^th Avenue the elegant Greek Revival St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church was erected in 1834 to serve the expanding community north of the city.   But as the century progressed, the neighborhood along the riverfront filled with less comfortable residents.

Irish immigrant laborers were drawn to the area by the low-paying but readily available jobs on the docks and in surrounding businesses.   In 1845 Nash, Beadleston & Co. opened a brewery in part of the old prison, a coal yard appeared on nearby Charles Street along with an iron works, a soap plant and a lime shed.    In stark contrast to the prim homes of the middle class nearer to St. Joseph’s, these families settled in cheap tenement houses.

In the 1880s, as the population continued to increase, the neighborhood was at best seedy and, at worst, dangerous.  At the foot of Christopher Street was Mulqueen’s tavern, opened in 1883 where dockworkers and sailors gathered for stout and malt liquors.  The New York Police Department would later describe the area as “the resort of outcasts, drunkards, dissolute people, and a dangerous class of depredators and petty highwaymen.”

The situation drew the attention of Archbishop Michael A. Corrigan.  St. Joseph’s Church was already overcrowded and the riverfront area was teeming with poor Irish workers.  In January 1887 he created the parish of St. Veronica’s to serve the “6,000 souls” estimated to live there, covering the area bounded by West Houston, Bank and Hudson Streets.

Father John F. Fitzharris, who had been first assistant pastor at the refined St. Joseph’s, was reassigned to lead this new flock in the much less refined neighborhood.   Four months later, on Palm Sunday April 3, the first services were held in what The New York Times called “a temporary chapel in Washington-street.”  The newspaper noted that the “chapel was crowded at all the services.”

The “temporary chapel” was a warehouse-stable building.  Father Fitzharris faced a significant financial challenge in establishing his parish.  He started out with $626 collected from among the St. Joseph’s worshipers on March 27.  Adding to the funds would be an uphill journey.

The old warehouse and stable was costing Father Fitzharris $2,000 per year and he spent $6,000 to convert it into what resembled a church.  The priest elicited donations not only from the neighboring churches—St. Bernard’s, St. Joseph’s and St. Francis Xavier’s; but from as far away as St. Peter’s Church downtown on Barclay Street.

The unrelenting priest collected enough that a year later he was able to purchase property on Christopher Street, between Washington and Greenwich Streets for $69,500.   The cornerstone would not be laid until March 16, 1890, however.   With the impoverished parishioners giving what they could to the building fund, it would be a slow process.   At a time when churches and other substantial buildings were being erected within a year or possibly 18 months, it would be another 13 years before the church was completed.

The congregation worshiped in the basement throughout this time as construction plodded along above their heads, sometimes halting for a year or more while funds were gathered.  The architect chosen for the project was John J. Deery whose home office was in Philadelphia, but who divided his time between there and New York.  Deery had started out in 1875 working under Edwin F. Durang who almost exclusively designed Catholic church projects.   By now Deery worked on his own and, like his mentor, concentrated on ecclesiastical projects—although he would also design the baseball fields for the Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago teams.

Deery’s design for St. Veronica’s would result in a somewhat bulky Victorian Gothic structure of brick and limestone.   What it lacked in ethereal grace it made up for in stocky solidity.  

photo by Alice Lum

Four years after starting his project, Father Fitzharris died, never to see his completed church.  His successor Father Daniel J. McCormick would not live to see the structure either; dying in January 1903.  Finally, on June 7 of that year, sixteen years after the parish was founded, the Church of St. Veronica’s was opened.  The parishioners had good reason to be proud.   Despite having little money, they had raised enough to build a substantial church building.

Much of the money had come from two parish fairs staged by the women—events that often lasted a week or more and included carnival-like festivities like games of change, refreshments, music and entertainments and home-made gifts to purchase.   At one, held in 1880, a featured prize was a full set of bow and arrows and a tomahawk said have once belonged to Rain-in-the-Face, a Native American from the Camp of Sitting Bull.  The two fairs alone had raised over $33,000.

Tenement buildings crowd in against the church building in the early 20th century -- NYPL Collection

The priests of St. Veronica’s would deal with much in the impoverished and mostly illiterate parish.  In 1908 the Greenwich House Papers reported that nearly 50 percent of the fathers of St. Veronica’s students were unemployed.    Alcohol and violence often resulted in tragedy.

57-year old Frank Van Heck lived at No. 76 Morton Street and often visited neighborhood saloons playing his accordion.  On the evening of July 7, 1901, however, he visited friends in the building--Peter Gilleyn and his wife, Mary.  There were also two men there whom Van Heck did not know.  “They were all drinking and having a lively time in Gilleyn’s apartment,” reported The New York Tribune the following day.  Then things turned ugly.

Gilleyn asked Van Heck to play his accordion.  He refused.   The host said “Well, if you don’t do it right quick, I’ll make you.”  To prove his point he produced a club and knocked Van Heck down. Within seconds there was a melee.  The two strangers wrenched the club from Gilleyn while his wife grabbed a pair of scissors and joined in the skirmish. 

When Van Heck saw Gilleyn heading for him with an axe, he bolted out the third floor window.  Father Horrigan of St. Veronica’s rushed to the scene where the man who refused to play the accordion lying on the sidewalk with a broken skull and jaw.   While the two strangers fled, police took Peter and Mary Gilleyn into custody.  Father Horrigan administered last rites on the pavement.

Irish priest John J. Brady was assistant rector of St. Veronica’s in 1916 as the United States’ involvement in World War I seemed imminent.   He left his position to join the Navy, taking a berth on the battleship Arkansas.  Almost immediately after the U.S. entered the war he asked for a transfer to the Marine Corps.   He became the first Catholic chaplain to land with the first American troops in France.

The feisty priest did not wait behind the lines for the injured to be brought back.   He would later be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for manifesting “utmost disregard for personal safety during the attack of June 6, 1918, in the Bois de Belleau, exposing himself fearlessly throughout the attack, passing up and down the front lines, cheering the men and caring for those who were wounded.”

Fourteen days later he was at it again.  On July 18 at Chateau Thierry he made “two complete tours of the front lines under severe fire and administered to the men under unusually trying circumstances.  He continued to expose himself to mortal danger to carry cigarettes to the men in the line who had no other opportunity to get them.”

Father Brady, a true man of the cloth, did not restrict his attentions to the Allies.  “Chaplain Brady knew the Germans in opposite trenches would need last rites soon,” reported The Sun.  “He assisted in carrying wounded to first aid stations and gave the last rites to the desperately hurt not only of his own command but to dying Germans on the field as well.  It is said that he gave consolation to thirty Germans, but as a patriotic Yankee he drew the line at carrying them off the field.”

On St. Patrick’s Day, 1918, Brady was riding in a jeep with three French soldiers when a shell hit the car.  Everyone except the priest was killed.  In a letter to his mother, Father Brady said that “the blessed Irish Saint” must have been with him.

For some reason the red brick has been painted red and the white limestone has been painted white.  photo by Alice Lum

On the morning of September 19, 1926, the new Bishop John Mitty celebrated his first pontifical mass.  He did so in the Church of St. Veronica’s.  Mitty had attended church here as a boy and then, having become a priest, celebrated his first mass here.  He felt it appropriate to begin his elevation in the friendly surroundings of his old church.

Among the messages of congratulation was one from Gene Tunney, challenger for the world’s heavyweight boxing title.  “The message expressed Tunney’s regret at not being able to attend the services,” reported The New York Times.   The Irish fighter was a member of the congregation and had graduated from its school in 1911.  The parish was proud of its newly-famous member, although the pastor, Rev. Patrick H. Drain, had to tip-toe around the prize-fighting issue.

“No, the Catholic Church is not opposed to prizefights as long as they are conducted in a legitimate way,” he told a reporter.  “Pugilism in the past was conducted in a ‘rough-neck’way, but now it is becoming elevated by Gene Tunney.  He is a man of high moral character.  He is a good Catholic.  He often comes to mass here on Sunday when he is in town.  He likes to be known as a ‘Greenwich Villager.’”

Tunney’s prizefighting was also a potential source of revenue.  There was still a substantial debt owed on the church building in 1926 and, therefore, it had never been consecrated in its 23 years of existence.   Father Drain was determined to erase the $279,000 mortgage and in his fund-raising sent a letter to Tunney asking if he would care to help the parish.

Just before Tunney’s reply came late in September 1927, the money had all been raised.    When Father Drain opened the envelope from the prize fighter, he found a check for $1,000 “to help the church in any way you see fit.”  With the mortgage paid, the priest decided that “what would help the most just now was to paint the rectory inside and outside,” said The Times.

With a new paint job supplied by Gene Tunney, the Church of St. Veronica’s was finally consecrated by Cardinal Hayes on November 27, 1927.   The cardinal reflected on the 12-year effort to erase the debt saying “I want to say publicly that this is an accomplishment which will go into the records of this archdiocese and that it will be recorded in letters of gold.”

In April 1930 a memorial tablet was unveiled in honor of the deceased war veterans of the parish.  It was a gesture that would hauntingly foreshadow another memorial decades later.

photo http://catholicmanhattan.blogspot.com

By the 1970's the neighborhood that had once been home to poor, hard-working Irish immigrants was the center of New York’s gay culture.   Christopher Street was synonymous nation-wide with the Gay Rights movement and bars and shops catering to homosexuals lined the street from 6^th Avenue to the Hudson River.    The congregation of St. Veronica’s was now a broad mixture of ages, races and sexual orientation.   Gay groups met in the basement of the church.

But the AIDS epidemic would change the complexion of Greenwich Village forever.

As more and more men became ill and died, the light-hearted atmosphere of Christopher Street plunged into despair and fear.    By the mid 1980's hundreds of Village residents were dying every year and the Catholic Church was viewed by many as an enemy.   Cardinal John O’Connor declared that there would be no talk of condoms in his “jurisdiction,” although it was widely known that the use of condoms would prevent the spread of AIDS.  At the same time he ousted the gay group Dignity from a Manhattan church where it held its weekly masses.

O’Connor was confused when he gave AIDS patients “the smile I am told does wonders on television,” only to be turned away.   But when it appeared that the cardinal was blind to the needs of one part of his flock who felt shunned by their church he did a remarkable thing.

O’Connor reached out to Mother Teresa for help.   The nun sent a staff of her Missionaries of Charity to New York to establish the Gift of Love Hospice in their converted rectory of St. Veronica’s.   The nuns, in their iconic blue-and-white habits, became a comforting and familiar presence along Christopher Street.   The small house could shelter only 15 AIDS victims, but the nuns worked tirelessly caring for the dying men.

In June 1993 the AIDS Memorial in the Village was installed in the balcony of St. Veronica’s church.   It consisted of brass plaques with the names of Villagers who had succumbed to AIDS.   There are over 1,000 of them.  Every year during Gay Pride week, St. Veronica’s holds an interfaith service to remember the victims of the devastating epidemic.

photo by Alice Lum

The Archdiocese of New York converted the church to a chapel of Our Lady of Guadelupe/St. Bernard’s Church on West 14^th Street in March of 2006.   Now formally titled the Mission of Our Lady of Guadalupe, no one calls it that.   To New Yorkers and, particularly, Greenwich Villagers, it will always be St. Veronica’s.

The 1849 Noah Woodruff House -- 335 W. 20th Street

The small window to the right of the entrance sits above a "horse walk," or passage to the rear yard.

The Chelsea neighborhood in the 1840s was rapidly developing and already West 20^th Street between 8^th and 9^th Avenues was becoming lined with respectable brick and brownstone residences.   On the south side of the street stood the two impressive buildings of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, making this block of West 20^th Street especially charming.

In 1849 Noah Woodruff completed his 25-foot wide home at No. 219.  The brick-faced Greek Revival structure was four stories tall above a deep, rusticated brownstone English basement.    The house stood out slightly from its neighbors.  The basement was just a bit higher, resulting in the brownstone stoop being one step taller and just a bit more impressive.

Woodruff moved from his former home at No. 226 West 19th Street.  A mason and stonecutter, he operated a successful business and used indentured apprentices to help staff his stone yard.  Young boys signed agreements to work without pay--normally for a period of around seven years--to learn their trade. 

Eight years before he built the 20th Street house two of the boys escaped.  His announcement of a one-cent reward on October 11, 1841 smacked of similar advertisements by Southern plantation owners seeking the return of runaway slaves:

Ran away from the subscriber, on the 14th of September last, an indented apprentice to the stone cutting business, by the name of Patrick Divine.  Also, on the 28th, Peter Brady.  All persons are hereby forbid harboring or trusting them, as they will be dealt with as the law directs.

Soon after Woodruff completed his house he died.  His estate leased it for $700 a year (approximately $1,860 per month today) until April 15, 1852 when it was sold at auction.  The announcement described it as a "handsome four-story brick house and lot of ground...The house is finished in excellent style, with iron balcony in front, having all the modern improvements for convenience, such as Croton water, bath-room, &c., &c., all in the very best order."

The new owner operated a boarding house.  Moving in from Greenwich Village in March 1853 was Dr. David P. Holton, renowned for his lectures on physiology.   He announced his move in The New York Times, advising "Trustees and Teachers of Public and Private Schools, desirous to arrange for a Course of Lectures, in Institutions under their charge" to reach him at the new address.

An ad in The New York Herald on October 30, 1855 offered the first floor "consisting of two parlors, three bedrooms, three pantries and kitchen, bath, Croton water, and everything complete."  And six months later, on April 26, an advertisement appeared that read "A lady, having a house, with all the modern improvements, will let two gentlemen and their wives and a few single gentlemen a parlor on the first floor, rooms, bedrooms and pantries on the third floor, with full or partial board."

In January 1856 the house was offered for sale for $12,000 (around $182,000 today).   In 1865 West 20th Street was renumbered, and the former Woodruff home got the new address of No. 335.  Lottie L. Jones, a teacher in Primary School No. 27 on 37^th Street near 10^th Avenue, rented a room here in 1868, just before Bowen G. Lord purchased the home.  Lord was the Captain of the Sanitary Company of Police.

The Sanitary Police had been formed in 1859 as an arm of the New York City Police Department.   The organization had “summary power to abate all nuisances on ferry-boats, tenement-houses, edifices suspected of being unsafe, manufactories and slaughter-houses,” according to The New York Times in April 1860.  The newspaper predicted that with the new Sanitary Police on duty “our City will present a novel spectacle of cleanliness during the coming warm season.”

Lord organized the Sanitary Squad of Police at its inception and took command of it.  The Times called him “An officer of excellent judgment, fully equal to the delicate and important duties devolving upon him in the enforcement of health laws.”  The newspaper also deemed him “in private life an estimable gentleman enjoying the confidence and respect of  a large circle of friends.”

In 1869 Captain Lord became ill.   The sickness progressed to the point that he was confined to the house on West 20^th Street for about six months until on Wednesday August 24, 1870 he died in an upstairs bedroom.

About three years later the Lord home was purchased by the 16^th Street Baptist Church as the home for its popular and opinionated pastor Rev. David B. Jutten.     The minister called attention to himself with his views that sometimes bordered on Protestant heresy.  On January 20, 1878, for instance, he preached a sermon that maintained that the physical tortures of hell were symbolic rather than actual. 

“It can hardly be supposed that we are to take the Scriptural descriptions of future punishment in their literal sense,” he said.  “The physical suffering is to be recognized as symbolical of a spiritual agony.  But though the suffering may be only mental, it is none the less terrible, for there is no more acute suffering than agony of the mind.”

It was about this time that the outmoded exterior of the house on West 20^th Street was updated.  A pressed metal cornice replaced the original.  The windows were given modern lintels with incised decoration and attractive scrolled brackets, and the entrance was modernized with handsome fluted pilasters with foliate capitals and scrolled bases.  Above it a decorative pediment was added.  

Cast metal window lintels and updated door surround (today a bit rusty) brought to old house up to date.

Being pastor for a wealthy Baptist church with over 650 members had advantages beyond a capacious home.   On June 11, 1880 The New York Times reported that the minister would “with his wife, sail for Europe to-morrow morning at 8 o’clock in the Inman steamer City of Berlin, from the foot of Charlton-street, North River.  The reverend gentleman expects to be absent for three months."  A grand “farewell meeting” took place that night in the lecture room of the church.  Already arrangements for guest ministers for the summer had been made.

With the congregation increasing, at least partly because of Jutten’s efforts and high regard, a female member offered $50,000 towards the construction of a new church, provided the name be changed to the Memorial Baptist Church.  Dr. Jutten liked the idea and focused on fund raising for the new structure and land.  Before long he had raised another $20,000 toward the project.

But not everyone agreed with the proposal.  The congregation was split and bitter debates resulted.  Finally, in a major blow to his authority and leadership, the decision was made to stay in the existing building.

Jutten made his feelings known.  On October 28, 1883, shortly after the decision, he preached his last sermon as pastor of the 16^th Street Baptist Church.   The Times reported that “His remarks on severing his connection with the church brought tears to the eyes of many of the ladies present, while there were some among the men who were visibly affected.”

In a slightly veiled reference to the decision that he no doubt considered a slap in the face, Jutten spoke of the new pastor, “whoever it might be.”  He warned the congregation “not to smother him with kindness at first and treat him with coldness and abuse after he had served them for a time.”

When the church sold the property on West 20^th Street it became home to Lieutenant-Colonel Albert N. Nicholson.  Nicholson, who had led the 47^th Regiment during the Civil War, lived here with his wife and three sons for only a year before he died in the house in February 1884.  The parlor was the scene of his funeral on February 11 where, after the religious ceremonies, the Meade Post No. 38 conducted the services of the Grand Army.

The house at No. 335 West 20^th Street seemed destined to be home to clerics and as the turn of the century approached it was owned by Trinity Church.  While many of the other homes on the street were now being used as boarding houses, it remained a single family home under the church’s ownership.

The Rev. J. Henry Watson lived here in the late 1890s.  Although Watson had two sons and a daughter, they were fully grown by the time he moved into the 20^th Street house with his wife.   

Watson, in his 50s, had been around.  Upon graduating from the Berkeley Divinity School in Middleton, Connecticut, he had immediately become assistant rector at the fashionable Trinity Chapel in Manhattan.  He then moved on to churches in Stamford, Philadelphia, Hartford and New Rochelle.  Returning to New York City, he gave up parish work and devoted himself to the missions in the impoverished areas.

Watson also provided his services as the chaplain of the Army and Navy Aid Association.  The group provided help to veterans, many of whom had served in the recent Spanish-American War.  In the minutes of a meeting opened by Watson on May 18, 1900, it was noted “Many pathetic letters have been received, the most of them containing requests for work.”

The house would continue, for a while, to be a single family residence.  In 1908 the Secretary of the United States Council, No. 639, of the Royal Arcanum lived here—a Mr. McGahan.  The Royal Arcanum was, above all, a life insurance company.  But it functioned as a social and fraternal organization which required membership.  By the time McGahan moved into No. 335 there were nearly 260,000 members.

Members were furnished life insurance at cost.  The group also provided “for sick and distressed members.”  The Royal Arcanum recommended itself as a “favorable consideration of every man whom a sense of uncertainly of all things but death prompts to make sure provision for the support of his dependents after his demise.”

Before the brick facade received an ill-advised coat of white paint, the new metal details would have stood in marked contrast.

But the single family status of the building would not last forever.  In 1973 it was converted to apartments-three each in the basement and parlor level, two each on the upper floors.  And although someone thought that painting the brick white would be a good idea, the façade of No. 335 is beautifully untouched.  

photographs taken by the author.

The 1911 William Cullen Bryant Statue - Bryant Park

photo by Alice Lum

By the time of his death on June 12, 1878 William Cullen Bryant had come a long way from the log house in Cummington, Massachusetts were he was born nearly 84 years earlier.   Had he never written a poem, he would have been remembered as the editor of the New-York Evening Post, a strong political voice and supporter of Abraham Lincoln, and one of the city’s most aggressive promoters of the Central Park project.

But he did write poetry and as early as 1832 was recognized as the foremost poet in America.

Bryant’s involvement with Central Park did not end with his newspaper's publishing in 1858 the winning design submitted by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, nor with his later supporting Olmsted’s candidacy as Superintendent of Parks.   It was Bryant who most often addressed the crowds at the unveiling of statues and monuments in the park—as a matter of fact his death resulted from complications from a fall suffered during ceremonies in the park honoring Giuseppe Mazzini.

So where else than Central Park would be a fitting location be found for an tribute to the poet, reformer and editor?  It would be a question embroiled in politics and argued for years.

In 1847 Bryant founded The Century Association with a few like-minded friends.  The private club was formed to encourage interest in literature and the fine arts and its initial intended membership of 100 led to the name.  In honor of his life-long contributions to American literature and the City of New York, the club commissioned artist Launt Thompson to sculpt a bronze bust of Bryant on his 70^th birthday in 1864.  Upon its completion the Association presented it to the Park Commissioners to be placed in Central Park.

The bust was accepted, but its placement was denied.

The Commission had earlier resolved that no bust or statue of a living person would be erected in the park.   A decade later The Century Association was frustrated that the valuable bust “has been lost to the sight of the public ever since.”  Bryant was now celebrating his 80^th birthday and the club suggested “that the bust would make an appropriate pendant in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

The Museum accepted the bust on loan in 1874 “until the time—long hence, we pray—when…the bust be entitled to the conspicuous position in the Park which its merits and the fame of the Poet and the Man, the then Commissioners, we doubt not, will unanimously accord it.”

Getting Bryant into Central Park even after his death would be a challenge.  The editor of The New-York Evening Post had made powerful enemies.

Bryant was a staunch foe of the corrupt Tammany Hall ring.  When efforts were made to erect a statue to William Marcy Tweed in Central Park and the Park Commission ruled against it, The Post unabashedly celebrated the decision.  The Tweed ring would not forget the insult.

After Bryant’s death in 1878 expectations were that the bust would be removed from the museum and placed with great ceremony in Central Park.  It did not happen.  When John Bigelow, chairman of the bust committee, approached the Park Commissioners he was turned away.  The New York Times reported that Bigelow was told “The department rule is that no statue shall be erected in the parks unless the person so honored has been dead at least five years, and the committee was informed that when this requirement had been met a suitable site would be designated for the bust.”

The “suitable site” was not necessarily Central Park.

In the meantime the Century Association had a bigger and better idea.  Bigelow filed an informal report suggesting “that the proper way to honor the memory of the dead poet was to erect a statue, at least as imposing as the statues of Burns and Scott,” already sitting in Central Park.  Henry A. Oakley, Treasurer of the club agreed, noting in The Times on June 6, 1883 “I can’t see why we should pay more honors to foreign poets than to our own.”

The Association immediately began collecting public subscriptions to raise the statue, estimated to cost between $15,000 and $20,000.  And it took back the bust from the Museum.

“Meantime, the bust originally made becomes the property of the club, and it is one of the most magnificent works of art in our rooms,” reported Oakley.

While funds were being collected, the Association came up with yet another way of honoring its founder.   Where the 1853 New York Crystal Palace had stood behind the hulking Egyptian Revival Croton Reservoir on 6^th Avenue between 41^st and 42^nd Streets was Reservoir Square.  The club succeeded in having the open space renamed Bryant Park in 1884.

And yet by June 1893 still nothing had been done regarding the statue.  John Bigelow approached the Park Commissioners again.  Surely by now they would approve a site within Central Park, which that owed so much to William Cullen Bryant.

A dejected Bigelow later reported that “our application had become complicated with local Politics,” and, referring to the earlier Tweed issue said, “I attributed to no inconsiderable degree that insensibility to our appeals for a site for a memorial of Mr. Bryant.”

For many, as the turn of the century came and went, it appeared that the Bryant statue would never come to be.

Then in 1911, as Carrere & Hastings’s magnificent white marble New York Public Library was completed on the site of the old reservoir the solution became obvious.   Bryant’s statue would be erected behind the monumental new structure in the park that bore his name.

Sculptor and Century Association member Herbert Adams set to work on the larger-than-life-sized figure while Thomas Hastings designed the pedestal and setting to compliment his masterful library.  Adams depicted an aged Bryant sitting in a large armchair, a lap robe spread over his knees.   A newspaper laid on his lap.

Craftsman magazine published a photo of the plaster model in 1911 (copyright expired)

Hastings’s monumental white marble setting nearly outshone the statue.  A architecturally-rich half dome approached by three shallow steps and supported by Doric columns sheltered the pedestal.  The monument was centered on the terrace, flanked by enormous marble urns atop a graceful balustrade.

photo by Alice Lum

After having battled for over three decades to see a statue to Bryant completed, John Bigelow—one of the last surviving members to have known the poet—was now too infirm to attend the unveiling on October 24, 1911.  “It has been the purpose of the Century Association that Mr. Bigelow himself, as the most intimate friend of Bryant now living should draw aside the veil, but the choice fell to Miss Godwin after it was learned that Mr. Bigelow feared to venture out.”

“Miss Godwin” was Frances Bryant Godwin, great-granddaughter of Bryant and the granddaughter of Parke Godwin, the long-time associate of Bryant in the editorship of the New-York Evening Post.  Around 1,000 people crowded into Bryant Park for the unveiling, causing Library Trustee George L. Rives to express humorous surprise “that the number was so large, in view of the conflict of the unveiling with the fourth game in the world series,” reported The Times.

Mayor William Jay Gaynor called it “a noble monument,” and The Sun said “The city of New York became the richer” for the presence of the statue.  On the pedestal was carved a verse from one of Bryant’s lesser-known, later poems, “The Poet.”

Yet let no empty gust

Of passionate feeling find utterance in thy lay.

A blast that whirls the dust

Along the howling street and dies away;

Best feelings of calm and mighty sweep,

Like currents journeying through the windless deep.

A century later the “noble monument” to William Cullen Bryant still reigns majestically over Bryant Park.  To park visitors Thomas Hastings’s marble pedestal has become part of the Library architecture.    The Century Association’s inability to erect the statue in Central Park due to the Tweed Ring’s vengeful intervention resulted in an even more auspicious setting for his monument.

photo by Alice Lum

A Touch of Paris at Nos. 7 and 9 East 20th Street

Idential doorways, one for the restaurant and one for the loft spaces, preserve the structure's symmetry.

When Christian P. F. Holtz arrived in the United States from Hamburg, Germany in the mid-19^th century, he changed his name to the more American-sounding Charles F. Holtz.  Unlike so many German immigrants in the 1850s who crowded into Little Germany on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Holtz settled across the river in Hoboken, New Jersey.

By 1859 he had opened the Park Hotel on the corner of 4^th Street and Hudson Street, described by the Internal Revenue Service as a “4^th Class” hotel with three billiard tables.   In 1863, however, he had crossed the river to open a saloon-restaurant on Duane Street.  Trow’s New York City Directory listed Holtz in 1869 as a dealer in “Havana segars, champagnes, Bordeaux & Rhine wines.”

For a few years in the 1870s Holtz took on a partner, Henry Koennecke and the restaurant was coupled with an importing business.  The pair imported German and French wines and champagne, mineral water, “bitter water,” and canned goods.   Koennecke and Holtz parted ways in the mid 1880s and a new partner, Bruno Freystedt, joined the business.

Although the restaurant-saloon retained the name of Holtz Restaurant, the new Holtz & Freystedt partnership would be used for the retail and import business.  In 1896 the elderly Charles Holtz, now around 70 years old, either died or retired.  The company was re-incorporated as “Holtz & Freystedt Company of New-York City,” with a board of five investors.

That year a second Holtz Restaurant was opened at the corner of Broadway and Franklin Street.  The new directors aggressively expanded the business.    Six years later in 1902 they renovated the lower floors of the 6-story building on the corner of Broadway and Houston Street as their third restaurant location.  The Holtz Restaurants had developed from a single saloon downtown to classy, high end establishments that catered to businessmen and the well-to-do.  The New York Times called the newest restaurant “one of the finest in appointments in the city.”

In the cellar of the Broadway and Houston Street restaurant were stored thousands of cigars as well as the wine and alcohol.  Around 4:00 in the morning of June 12, 1904 smoke began wafting from the roof of the building.   Firemen were perplexed when no fire could be found, until they realized it was in the basement.  “When they at least discovered that it was in the subcellar, they lost no time in ripping up the glass sidewalks and demolishing the handsome stained glass domes over the basement entrance,” reported The New York Times.

And then came the rush of overpowering tobacco and alcohol fumes, so strong that “the firemen standing over the openings made in the sidewalk were toppled over like tenpins.”  The cigar smoke blinded the firemen, causing such pain to their eyes that “it was some time before they could see enough to make them available for service.”  Several fire fighters challenge faced the smoke and fumes to retrieve ice and seltzer and set up a make-shift bar on the opposite side of the street where overcome firemen were treated.  Cloths soaked in ice water were bound around their heads and they were given cold drinks of seltzer.

When the difficult blaze was finally subdued, the newest Holtz Restaurant was in ruins.

It would take a year before the restaurant could be reopened.  And shortly thereafter the directors laid plans for yet another Holtz Restaurant.   In 1907 the Fifth Avenue and Broadway area just south of 23^rd Street was a hotbed of development.  The staid mansions of a generation earlier were gone or converted to business as residents moved uptown and commercial buildings rose.  The towering 22-story Fuller Building, known popularly as the Flatiron Building, had changed the complexion of the area in 1902.  The neighborhood teemed with businessmen and hotel patrons.  It was an ideal location for the newest Holtz Restaurant.

Philip Braender owned the property at Nos. 7 and 9 East 20^th Street on the short block between Fifth Avenue and Broadway.   He commissioned architect William C. Frohne to design a 12-story loft and store building, with the lower two floors being specifically customized for Holtz.  The German-born architect had produced handsome gathering spots the German community like the Bohemian National Hall and the 1889 Schuetzen Hall.  But for this building he would turn to France for inspiration.

The nine-story central arch stressed the building's height at the dawn of the age of skyscrapers.

Completed late in 1907 the brick and stone structure was embellished with Beaux Arts carvings of garlands, wreaths, lions’ heads and scrolls.   A central, nine-story arch flanked by single openings emphasized the soaring verticality of the skyscraper.   An imperious goddess head looked down on the passersby from below a sturdy cornice.

Banded fasces rise to the haughty goddess.  Carved shells terminate the long columns of single windows along the building's sides.

But the Holtz Restaurant space would grab the spotlight.  Frohne lavished the two-story space with expanses of glass and at the second floor created a full wall of French windows.   Above, a decorative medallion announced “HOLTZ, flanked by a pair of odd creatures—part griffin, part cornucopia.  It was Paris on 20^th Street.

The new Holtz Restaurant opened on March 12, 1908 as commercial tenants filled the upper stories.   A. G. Thienel, manufacturer of ostrich feathers, moved in that year as did the Daisy Costume Manufacturing Co.    Before long Staheli, Reitmann & Co. would take the 5^th, 6^th and 8^th floors for their lace curtain factory.   Barnard Rapp tried to make a go of his cloak and suit company, but it did not work.

An advertisement in The Sun on March 12, 1908 promised the same standard of "cuisine and management" (copyright expired)

The apparel maker began business on July 15, 1912 as a partner in Rapp & Meyer.   The partnership dissolved only four months later and Rapp continued on alone.  A year later, on August 6, 1913, he was forced to file bankruptcy.  That same year the Holtz Restaurant closed for business.

Lions holding clusters of fruits, garlands and ribbons, and carved scrolls embellish the entrances.

Philip Braender died in 1917, leaving an estate of just over $1 million.  On January 7, 1920 Meister Builders purchased the building from his estate, quickly flipping the property eight days later.  In the meantime, the building continued to attract apparel-related firms.  In 1921 the 8^th floor was home to Babash, Kailo & Udoff, and Mendelsohn Brothers took the 2^nd floor.  The following year the Belgian Waist and Dress Company took over the 5^th floor.

Perhaps its side street location protected the structure from the brutal street level modernization that so many buildings in the neighborhood suffered during the mid- to late 20^th century; yet Frohe’s handsome designs for the Holtz Restaurant, including the cast panel above the French windows, survive.

In 1987 the upper floors were renovated to apartments, with the exception of the 10^th which became a “studio,” according to Building Department records.  Here the Castillo Theatre operated throughout the 1980s.    Now called the Holtz House, the space where cloaks, suits, dresses and lace curtains were manufactured is now 14 residences.    And where diners once savored French cuisine and champagne, a kitchen and bath showroom displays bathtubs and faucets.

photographs taken by the author.

The Lost 1864 Central Park Casino

Sketch from the Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of The Central Park, 1864 -- copyright expired

When the 843 acres of city-owned land that would be known as The Central Park was officially designated in 1857, it was still unplanned, unimproved and studded with squatter’s shacks and other buildings.  A competition to design a proper park was won the following year by Frederick Law Olmsed’s and Calvert Vaux’s ambitious “Greensward Plan.”

Construction of the immense project began that same year, in 1858, and would continue until 1873.  The structures that the designers envisioned for the park would enhance the fabricated fantasy world—a turreted stone castle, rustic shelters, cast-iron pavilions and a Moorish bandstand.  Just off the Mall, where Victorian aristocrats would promenade in the height of fashion, Calvert Vaux designed his Ladies’ Refreshment Saloon in 1864.

Just getting to the park in the 1860s was a significant jaunt.   Civil War era women, dressed in yards of voluminous fabric and cinched into corsets, could find relief from the summer heat in the cool interior of the quaint two-room stone cottage.    Here they enjoyed food and refreshments sold at a modest price.

Victorian proprieties were set aside before long, however, as men were admitted.  The building was renamed The Casino and transformed from an inexpensive snack-bar to a high-priced established restaurant.   In 1882, James D. McCabe, Jr. gave it a mixed review saying that it was “a pretty cottage of stone, containing an excellent restaurant.  Good meals are served here, but the charges are somewhat high.”

The New York Tribune included a sketch of well-dressed New Yorkers enjoying The Casino in its June 27, 1897 article titled "Summer Fun In New York" -- copyright expired

By the time McCabe was assessing the Casino, the Upper East Side was quickly being developed.  In 1884, James Humbleton lived at 335 East 73^rd Street, just five blocks from the Park, when he shot a letter off to the editor of The New York Sun on May 28:

The laws of this State prohibit the sale of intoxicating drinks on the Sabbath day.  Notwithstanding this fact lager beer is sold and drunk openly at the Casino in Central Park every Sunday.  The authorities of this city of cognizant of the fact, and detail policemen to preserve order in the immediate vicinity.  Why is this thus?

Humbleton’s letter resulted in a chain of contradictory statements as a reporter from The Sun followed up.  Captain Beattie of the Central Park Police denied the charge.  “There is no liquor sold in the Park on Sunday,” he asserted.

But on the same day, the journalist visited the Casino to find beer being served.  “’We’re a hotel,’ said a waiter as he dashed around at the Central Park Casino with foaming beer on a tray last Sunday.  ‘Therefore we can sell this beer Sunday or any other time,’” the reporter wrote.

Park Superintendent Conkling had another explanation.  “The liquor at the Casino is left on storage there by private parties.  They go there after driving and drink it with their dinner.  Consequently, it is not liquor sold in defiance of the law.”  And Park Commissioner Olliffe was confused.  “I don’t believe they sell beer there at all.  It must be a mistake.”

The issue would not go quickly away, either.  A member of Rev. Charles Henry Parkhurst’s New York Society for the Prevention of Crime complained to police about the matter four years later.  And on Sunday evening, April 4, 1892, waiter Julius Peller was arrested by Officers Hagan and Fay of the Essex Market Police Court for selling liquor on Sunday.

Before the end of the century, the modest building would be significantly expanded --NYPL Collection

As an added attraction, diners at the Casino enjoyed evening entertainments.  Two days after Julius Peler was arrested, the Casino was back in the newspapers, this time because chorus girls were rebelling against their revealing costumes.  The Evening World reported, “In the new comic opera promised at the Casino some of the chorus girls must personate Hieland ladies and wear kilts and stockings that reach only to the knee-cap, leaving a portion of each limb exposed to the Summer draughts.  The girls fear rheumatism and protest.”  The reporter then added his own tongue-in-cheek comment.  “Why shouldn’t they object?  There are limb-itations to everything, even to comic opera costuming.”

The pastoral setting of the Casino, in the midst of the city, and the highly-acclaimed fare drew tourists as well as New Yorkers.  The tourists, however, sometimes were unfamiliar with metropolitan conventions—like tipping.  On June 22, 1893 a couple dined on the piazza of the Casino.  According to The Sun they were “a rather flashy-looking man, and a fat, but pretty girl.”  After a light supper they prepared to leave.

Their waiter, “a blond-moustached German, was very attentive,” insisted the newspaper.  He presented the bill and the man fished a handful of coins from his pocket, leaving the exact change on the table.  As they walked away the waiter called after them, “Haven’t you forgotten something?”

“Both stopped and looked puzzled,” said The Sun.  “The man looked at his hat and the woman examined her gloves and parasol.  The waiter stood bolt upright looking at the man indignantly, but the latter remained innocent, and with a careless ‘I guess not,’ he and his companion passed down the steps.”

By the end of the same year the Department of Parks realized that the popularity of the Casino necessitated enlarging the structure.  On December 20, 1893 it requested an appropriation of $10,000 “to complete the Casino.”  Although the proposition was briefly tabled, The Sun reported that “it was favored by Comptroller Myers.”

The Park Department did receive substantial funds for park improvements and in March of 1894 The New York Tribune lobbied in favor of the Casino project.  “This is a popular and well managed restaurant, which is far too small for the crowds that go there.  The building could be extended so as to take in a much larger area without becoming obtrusive or losing the artistic harmony with its surroundings.  It is so situated that it could easily be amplified and improved.”  The newspaper estimated that “Thirty or forty thousand dollars expended upon it would be money well applied.”

The Casino was enlarged and continued to be a huge success.   The popularity of the restaurant was greatly attributed to its long-term manager, Isidor Isaac.  In 1896 The Tribune commented, “Mr. Isaac has shown rare skill in managing the establishment, and has given satisfaction to every one who goes to the Casino.  He has proved that he is a manager of exceptional ability, and the Casino during all the years in which it has been under his charge has been conducted in a manner to win general approval and general liking.”

Despite his popularity and success, Isidor Isaac was about to face his most daunting challenge.  The same year that The Tribune praised him, an act was passed which, in part, forbade the sale of “liquors, wines or beer in any building which is public property.”  This included the Casino in city-owned Central Park.

The New York Tribune was outraged.  “If the prohibition of the Raines law is construed literally and enforced rigorously, great inconvenience will be caused to every person who desires to take a meal [at the Casino] and who wishes to drink wine or beer with his dinner or luncheon or supper.”  Moreover, said the newspaper, it would be impossible for the restaurant to remain in business.  “They could not make any profit if they are not allowed to sell liquors, or wines, or beer, at any time and in any circumstances.”

Casino waitresses pose around the turn-of-the-century -- photo Library of Congress

Not only did the Casino weather this storm, but it would go on to become one of the most fashionable and exclusive night spots in Manhattan—an incarnation that would be its own undoing.

By the end of the 1920s the Casino was being run by small-time theatrical producer Carl F. Zittel.  Restaurateur Sidney Solomon recognized the potential of the restaurant as a sleek Jazz Age nightclub and convinced Mayor Jimmy Walker to give him the lease upon its expiration in 1928.  The flashy, dapper Walker was well known for his love of night life, chorus girls and speakeasies.  He refused to renew Zittel’s lease and gave it to Solomon.

Carl Zittel was managing the enlarged Casino when this postcard was published in the 1920s.

Zittel immediately sued the city, asserting that the sumptuous and expensive nightclub-restaurant flew in the face of the stated purpose of Central Park—a recreational spot available to everyone.  The courts did not agree with him.

If the courts did not agree, The New York Times did.  The newspaper would rather see the Casino razed than turned into a lavish nightspot.  “Such a place may be agreeable for the few who can afford to use it,” said the editor, who continued:

That it might, if elaborately renovated, be one of the most fashionable haunts in the city may well be assumed.  But the building occupies precious space in a park which already has too much of its area given over to other than park purposes.  If it were eliminated and the present knoll which it occupies were pleasantly landscaped, the land could be made into an added attraction.  Then more people would enjoy it than use the restaurant.

The editor did not sway Mayor James Walker who personally attended to the details of the $400,000 refurbishing.  Inside Calvert Vaux's Victorian cottage was an Art Deco black-glass ballroom where the orchestras of Leo Reisman, Emil Coleman and Eddy Duchin would soon play as the cream of society danced.  Throngs scrambled for reservations for opening night, but only 600 could be accommodated.

Among the celebrities who were met at the door by liveried footmen that night were producers Florenz Ziegfeld and Adolph Zukor.  The demand for tables was so great that a second “opening night” was held.  Walker and his mistress, showgirl Betty Compton, attended that one.  The Mayor was also a part-time composer and from that night on when he would walk into the ballroom of the Casino the orchestra would play his song “Will You Love Me in December As You Do in May.”

Despite the ongoing Prohibition, guests drank liquor with their French haute-cuisine.  To side-step the liquor laws, the wealthy patrons would step from limousines well stocked with bootleg alcohol.  The maitre d’ carefully observed each table.  When patrons ran low on liquor, he would signal their chauffeur who restocked that table.

As the Great Depression neared, the Casino had transformed from a Victorian two-room Refreshment Saloon to perhaps the most lavish and exclusive nightspot in Manhattan.  But Mayor Jimmy Walker had made a formidable political enemy who saw the Casino as his way of exacting revenge.

Parks Commissioner Robert Moses was never a fan of James Walker.  He had a near adoration for New York Governor Al Smith who mentored Walker and was greatly responsible for the Mayor’s political success.  Once in office, however, Walker made remarks against Judge George Olvany, who had nominated him for mayor, and who was close to the Governor.  Moses considered the remark an indirect insult to Smith.

Moses, according to some political historians, decided to get back at the Mayor by attacking his “Versailles.”  The Commissioner resurrected Carl Zittel’s argument and went to court in 1932.  He argued that the Casino was located on public property yet was not accessible to the general public.  He pointed out that a cup of coffee in a normal restaurant was a dime.  At the Casino it was an exorbitant twenty-five cents.  Moses argued that Jimmy Walker’s beloved Casino must be torn down.

Apparently the only person in 1932 who stopped to recognize the architectural and historic significance of the building rather than its function as a restaurant or nightclub was Judge John Carew.  He decided against the demolition of the Casino saying that “[Moses] is only to hold office for a brief term.  He is the passing creature of a day.  He will in time, and that not long, be superseded.  He may not ‘waste’ the heritage of New York.”

Shiny automobiles await their owners outside the glittering Casino -- photo nycparksgov.org

Whether he was a “passing creature of the day” or not, Robert Moses dug in.  He appealed the case and won.  In what has been called a political act of vengeance, the Commissioner had the building—an original and integral element in Olmsted and Vaux’s design of Central Park—demolished in 1935 to be replaced by the Rumsey Playground.

In retaliation, Mayor Jimmy Walker refused to pay his large outstanding Casino bill to the Park.