The Lost Franklin Savings Bank -- 42nd St and 8th Avenue

The Inland Architect and News Record published a photograph of the newly-completed building in 1901.  A bronze bust of Franklin would soon grace the square granite block above the doors.  (copyright expired)

The Franklin Savings Bank was doing well as 1897 drew to a close.  The institution boasted a surplus of $912,000 and the devastating depression, known later as the Panic of 1893, had finally abated.

On January 19, 1898 The New York Times reported that “The building occupied by the Franklin Savings Bank, at Eighth Avenue and Forty-second Street, will soon be replaced by one of much more modern construction.”  Bank directors estimated the cost of the new building at $200,000—over $4.5 million by today’s standards.  The Times remarked that “although it will be only one story in height, it will be devoted entirely to the bank, and will, it is promised, be an ornament to the neighborhood.”

To design this new ornament the trustees called upon architects York & Sawyer.   With the depression fresh in the minds of depositors, the firm was charged with producing a bank that would instill a sense of permanency and confidence.  And they did.

The first of many bank buildings York & Sawyer would design, it was nothing if not solid-looking.  Constructed of granite it drew its inspiration from the Roman temple.  The heavy, rusticated façade was broken by three enormous arched openings on the 42^nd Street side.  A matching arched window above the massive bronze doors continued the design to the recessed entrance.  Two monumental columns upheld the entablature below the cornice that was surmounted by a classical triangular pediment.

The oversized bronze bust of Benjamin Franklin (left) would find a place above the entrance doors -- American Architect and Building News, July 13, 1901 (copyright expired)

The new bank, completed in 1901, sat on the southeast corner.   Above the magnificent bronze entrance doors which weighed several tons sat a bronze bust of Benjamin Franklin.  Inside the architects carried on the classical theme.  Roman-inspired railings (quite similar to those that would be found in McKim, Mead and White’s monumental Roman-style Pennsylvania Station a few years later); soaring arched ceilings; and a host of materials—Caen stone, colored marbles, bronze and brass—created one of the city’s grand internal spaces.

Materials like marble wainscoting, bronze doors and brass railings were used -- American Architect and Building News, July 13, 1901 (copyright expired)

The somber bank building brought little attention to itself, other than merely by its own colossal appearance, over the decades.  Rare publicity did come in the form of a corrupt police officer in 1912, however.  Lieutenant Charles Becker was the head of the NYPD’s Vice Squad.  He augmented his salary by accepting hefty bribes from illegal gambling clubs.  When the owner of a Broadway gambling house, gangster Herman Rosenthal, known as “the Black Ace,” got in his way, Becker had him murdered.

The sensational trial made front-page headlines for months and introduced readers to colorful witnesses like Lillian Rosenberg, called by The Evening World “the ‘baby-doll’ wife of Lefty Louie,” and Jack Rose who personally collected Becker’s graft.

The corrupt Lt. Becker deposited his ill-gotten gains in the Franklin Savings Bank.  He was later sentenced to death for murder.  photo UPI (copyright expired)

The corrupt cop chose the Franklin Savings Bank to stash his gains, so the prosecution called bank employee Daniel A. Bentien to the stand to testify about Becker’s unusually large deposits.  According to The World on August 14 of that year, he had banked "$38,115 in the last nine months.”   That figure would translate to over half a million dollars today—an unusually high income for a civil servant.

By 1903 Benjamin Franklin had found his perch.

In 1926 the architects were called back to enlarge the bank, continuing the rusticated façade and copying the arched openings southward on 8^th Avenue.  At the same time illustrator N. C. Wyeth was hired to execute a mural of Benjamin Franklin standing before Independence Hall.

N. C. Wyeth executed "The Apotheosis of Franklin" for the building's extension. --http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/essays/apotheosis.htm

The extension nears completion in 1926 -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Half a century later the bank commissioned architects Poor and Swanke and Partners to design a new, up-to-date headquarters across the street.    In stark contrast with its classical predecessor it was a modern linear building that accentuated clean lines and angles.

The city was shocked on August 5, 1974 when, with its new headquarters completed, the bank’s executive vice president, Edward Rollins, announced the decision to demolish the old building.  The New York Times reported “The bank plans to replace the old building with either a parking lot or a one-story retail building, believing that the cleared site would be more attractive to potential developers.”

photo NYPL Collection

Rollins called the granite landmark a “dump the city would be better off without,” and another executive vice president, Adam J. Zaun chimed in saying, “A building like that is an eyesore if it isn’t being used for its legitimate purpose.  We don’t want to contribute to the Times Square neighborhood going downhill any further.”

The New York Times lashed out at the bank’s directors in an editorial nine days later.  “The ‘dump’ has sculptured bronze doors valued at $35,000 and fixtures that will go to the Brooklyn Museum, arched windows, vaulted ceilings and solid cut-stone facades.  It also has something increasingly rare in this and other cities: quality of structure and validity of style.

“’More attractive,’ in Franklin’s curiously inverted reasoning, means a parking lot…Bulldozing the good old building immediately will be the bank’s contribution to upgrading the neighborhood.”

Unmoved by the outrage of newspapers, preservationists and city officials (Richard Lam, director of the city’s Office of Midtown Planning said “I don’t believe the building is an eyesore—I have more serious questions about the advisability of using that site for a parking lot.”), the bank forged ahead with the destruction of its granite Roman temple to finance.

The Wyeth mural was saved at the last minute and eventually was donated to the University of Pennsylvania.  The bronze bust of Benjamin Franklin was donated to the Brooklyn Museum.  Sadly, despite The Times' hopes, the museum could not accept the mammoth bronze doors because of their size and weight.  It appears they were sold for scrap metal.

On January 12, 1976 New York Magazine had the last word.  It editorially awarded the management of the Frankling Savings Bank “one massive withdrawal slip…for demolishing its elegant, neoclassical monument…and then constructing a Laundromat-type branch diagonally across the way, and topping it off with a trompe l’oeil mural of a Uris-type façade.”

Ironically, the 1976 building did not last long, replaced by the above structure -- photo by Alice Lum

The 1849 Thomas Egleston House -- No. 10 5th Avenue

One of the last remaining lower 5th Avenue mansions, the Egleston house retains much architectural detail despite commercial conversion.

The Breevorts, among of the oldest of the Dutch families in Manhattan, owned large tracts of land.  As development inched northward, the powerful and wealthy Henry Breevort shrewdly sold or improved plots.  In 1828 George P. Rogers constructed his refined country house on the northern edge of what had been until two years earlier a potters’ field, just south of Brevoort land.  The exclusive Washington Square neighborhood was begun.

By the 1840s the Square was among the most fashionable addresses in the city and already mansions had started spilling up the unpaved Fifth Avenue.  In 1848 Breevort started construction on four houses in the newly-popular Gothic Revival style.  Stretching from No. 10 at the northwest corner of 8th Street to No. 16, they were clad in brownstone and featured medieval touches such as crenelated rooflines, incised panels with quatrefoil designs and square-headed eyebrows over the windows.

Quatrefoil panels above some windows added to the Gothic motif.

The corner house was purchased by wealthy iron merchant Thomas Egleston while still under construction.  Upon its completion in 1849, he and his wife moved in with their 17-year old son, Thomas, Jr.   Egleston came from a prominent New England family, his ancestors having been among the first settlers of Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1635.

The nature and financial scope of his business was evident in 1860 when he sued Francis Spies for materials Egleston furnished for the building of the Bark Agnes.  Spies had failed to pay Egleston for $950 in iron parts—around $30,000 today.

In 1854 young Thomas graduated from Yale College and, after a few months working as an assistant in the laboratory of Benjamin Silliman, Jr., he sailed to Paris where he studied metallurgy at the Jardin des Plantes and, later, at the Ecole des Mines.   Upon his graduation in 1860 he returned to New York and the house at No. 10 Fifth Avenue.

Along the 8th Street side, windows paired up in regimented lines.

The younger Egleston realized upon his return that America had no scientific school of mineralogy.  Popular Science recalled in 1899 that “Mr. Egleston, as he was then known, saw and felt this lack, and planned to supply it.”  In March 1863 he published his Plan for a School of Mines in New York, embodying a three-year course for the degree of engineer of mines.  He approached Peter Cooper who decided that the school would be too specific for the general, comprehensive educational plan of Cooper Union.

Undaunted, he finally convinced the trustees of Columbia to establish his school.  Egleston was given laboratory accommodations for a dozen students—sufficient for the expected number who would apply for admission the first year.  On November 16, 1864 The New York Times reported on the opening of the Columbia College School of Mines.  “Several of these schools are in successful operation in Europe,” it said, “but this is believed to be the first and only institution of the kind in the United States.”

Twenty-four new students showed up on the first day of class—exactly double the number for school could comfortably accommodate.  Basements and floors of other buildings were quickly taken over and by the second year accommodations were made for 72 students; but 89 showed up.

The trustees of Columbia College realized that Dr. Eglestone’s innovative School of Mining required its own building and $70,000 was authorized for the renovation of a factory building on Fourth Avenue and 49^th Street.

His academic and financial success secure, Thomas Egleston, Jr. looked towards his private life.  On May 2, 1865 he married Augusta McVickar in the fashionable Trinity Chapel.  The newlyweds moved into the Engleston house on Fifth Avenue.  Theirs would be a life of unmatched devotion.

Egleston’s reputation and achievements quickly mounted.  He was one of the founders of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, a founder of the American Metrological Society, and of the Societies of Mechanical Engineers, and a founder of the Electrical Engineers.  In 1866 he was involved with the Agricultural and Geological Survey of the Union Pacific Railroad; in 1868 appointed a United States Commissioner to examine the fortifications of the coast; was a juror for the International Exposition at Vienna in 1873; and received the rank of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and rank of “Officier” from the Government of France.

But the professor’s interests and energies were not focused entirely on mines and minerals.  When James Audobon’s gravesite, originally far north of the city between 153^rd and 155^th Streets along Amsterdam Avenue, was threatened by the extension of 153^rd Street, Egleston moved to find another gravesite and erect a monument.  Through his endeavors, Audubon’s body was reverently moved and a striking monument erected to him.

As his Fifth Avenue neighbors abandoned the area to move further uptown, Thomas Egleston stood firm.  When he realized that the Tweed Administration was quietly positioning itself to eliminate the venerable Washington Square Park just two blocks south of his mansion; Egleston took action.

The Tweed regime sought to nudge the wealthy New York families out of their Washington Square mansions.  Popular Science said “Washington Square had been dug over and torn up, under the pretext of remodeling and ‘improvement,’ and the unsightly mounds and piles of earth were left for many months, not only to offend the eye but to generate malaria…The south side of the square had been ‘worked’ already, in the first attempt, and had largely lost its population of old residents; but the north side was still occupied by a select class of old New-Yorkers…

“Then began to be hinted some schemes for which all this was preparatory.  A great militia armory was to be erected on the western end, and other projects vaguely loomed up, involving the ruin of the park as such.”

Egleston recruited John Jay in organizing a small group to fight the destruction of the square, rallying politicians in Albany.  Their efforts were successful.  Popular Science, in 1899 said “That Washington Square remains to-day, an oasis of beauty in the desert of brick and stone, and a breathing place in that densely built portion of the great city, is due principally to the watchfulness and energy of Professor Egleston.”

Almost as a sign of defiance; while other wealthy New Yorkers moved northward, Thomas and Augusta Egleston moved south, leaving the house at No. 10 Fifth Avenue around 1881 for No. 35 West Washington Square.

photo The Columbia University Quarterly, 1899-1900 (copyright expired)

Egleston traveled extensively throughout the world.  His journeys gave him the opportunity to collect gemstones which he had set into jewelry for his beloved wife, Augusta.  Her collection of jewels was significant.  When she died in 1895 he had the jewelry disassembled.   He designed a golden chalice which he presented to Trinity Church in memory of Augusta.  It was studded with 180 gemstones, collected by him and worn by her.

Thomas Egleston, Jr. died in 1900, having left an ineradicable mark on the history of New York and the Washington Square neighborhood.

In the meantime, the Fifth Avenue corner where he spent most of his life had changed.  The high stoop and parlor floor entrance were removed sometime after the turn of the century.  In 1917 a school had taken over the upper floors and on street level The Diamond Disc Shop sold the new Edison phonographs.  An advertisement that year touted “Through [Edison’s] wonderful phonograph, he has brought to you genuine music, music that is free from all mechanical blemishments, music that  is alive with the fleeting breath of reality, music that is true to the original tone from which it was re-created—genuine music.”

Two years later the upper floors were converted to bachelor apartments.  The Department of Buildings warned “Cooking in more than two of the apartments will render this building liable to immediate vacation by the Tenement House Dept.”

The stoop and entrance to No. 10 would have matched Nos. 14 and 16, seen here after the turn of the century -- NYPL Collection

Throughout the 20^th century Henry Breevort’s row of Gothic Revival houses suffered indignation.  Nos. 14 and 16 were stripped of their architectural detailing and converted to a single five-story apartment building.  No. 12 was demolished to make way for a tall Beaux-Arts inspired apartment house.  Thomas Egleston’s family home at No. 10, however, survived--if somewhat battered.

In 1930 shops were added at street level; but the alterations were unexpectedly sensitive to the original architecture.  In a valiant attempt to meld the modern and vintage architecture, a Gothic-style doorway to the upper floors was installed, and an applied, projecting bandcourse imitated the label moldings above.  It is an overall laudable nod to the historic fabric of the building.

The 1930 alterations at street level were surprisingly compassionate -- NYPL Collection

A metal sheath atop the cornice sympathetically matches the original crenelation underneath.  The quatrefoil panels at the second (originally the first) story windows amazingly survive as do the wonderful label moldings, or square-headed eyebrows.

The later conversion reduced the height of the parlor-floor windows above street level.  Yet the  sympathetic moldings and doorway of the 1930 alteration remained.

A 1962 conversion resulted in three and four apartments per floor above the now-commercial street level.  Along 8th Street the sidewalk level has been obliterated for modern store windows; and the Fifth Avenue base has gained a pseudo-rustication.  But overall the renovations fall in line with the 1930s updating--carefully avoiding the ruination of one of the last reminders of the mansion days of this area of Fifth Avenue.

non-historic photographs taken by the author

The 1904 Holland Hotel -- 396-397 West Street

Years of paint are slowly peeling away, exposing the buff-colored brick -- photo by Alice Lum

In the early 1890s the Greenwich Village riverfront was lined with saloons, marine supply shops and cheap transient hotels.   At No. 373 West Street Albert A. and Rosa Goebel Adler ran a hotel that catered to the seamen who came and went.  It had the lofty-sounding name of the Hotel Transatlantic.

Three blocks north, at No. 397, Morris Stack operated a saloon.   Riverfront businesses and patrons alike often found laws inconvenient at best and on December 9, 1895 Stack’s bartender found himself behind bars for serving beer on Sunday.

At the turn of the century the area along the Hudson River from Houston Street to 14^th Street was known by law enforcement as “The Farm."  The term most likely was a holdover from Trinity Farm--the expansive tract of land bestowed on Trinity Church by Queen Anne in 1714.  On July 6, 1902 The New York Times described the neighborhood for its readers who were unlikely to visit.

‘”The Farm’ affords enough facilities for lounging, concealment and escape through parks, trucks, piles of lumber, stacked goods, and open sheds and shanties, and for years, especially in fine weather, it has at night been the resort of outcasts, drunkards, dissolute people, and a dangerous class of deprecators and petty highwaymen.  From the latter class many notorious footpads have been graduated.

“Protection from these evildoers has been chiefly asked by seafaring people whose craft are moored to the docks along the North [Hudson] River front…Complaints have also been made of the ‘growler gangs,’ who are part of the make-up of this undesirable community.”

As part of a clean-up of The Farm, police raided Stack’s saloon on July 5, 1902, and arrested 27-year old Albert McNeil, “a reputed cockfighter,” and 21-year old Michael Mulqueen of No. 34 Morton Street, whom The New York Times called a “lounger.”

A year later Albert and Rosa Adler would eliminate Morris Stack’s saloon.  They obtained No. 397 and the adjoining corner property at No. 396 from Catherine A. Q. Trowbridge in January 1903.  The existing structures were demolished and the couple commissioned architect Charles Stegmayer to design a hotel on the site.

The resulting three-story Holland Hotel, completed in 1904, was three stories tall and contained thirty-eight rooms.    Stegmayer’s Renaissance-inspired design took full advantage of the corner setting with a rounded turret-like oriel that ran the height of the structure.   It was supported by a slender cast iron column at the chamfered corner entrance.

Constructed of beige-colored brick with terra cotta accents, its regimented rows of arched openings separated by ambitious pilasters gave the $20,000 structure a look of respectability.  The appearance was deceptive.

Six years after its completion the building was lost in foreclosure.   The Crescent-Star Realty Co., associated with the Jacob Hoffman Brewery, took over the hotel’s operation.   The hotel was renamed the Clyde Hotel; but a new name and new owners did not improve the neighborhood nor the patronage.

The Sun noted on February 17, 1919 that “Just as New York is the lodestone that draws young men from other towns with its larger opportunities in legitimate business for piling up income taxes, so is it the Mecca nowadays for youthful desperadoes who aspire to a high life in their chosen profession, the stickup game.”

Almost surely a conical cap sat above the rounded corner -- photo by Alice Lum

The riverfront neighborhood around the Holland Hotel was still rough and crime ridden.  It drew local residents John Cronin and James Redden who had “picked up a couple of revolvers in a clothing store,” according to The Sun.

Loaded firearms and liquor in a seedy saloon made for a dangerous mix when around midnight the men “dropped into the café attached to a seamen’s hotel at 396 West street,” according to the newspaper.

George Roswell, a marine engineer staying at the hotel was in the bar talking to about a dozen other sailors.  Cronin and Redden decided he was staring at them.  When they asked “What are you lookin’ at?” and got the reply “Nothing,” they took offense.

“They decided to finish their argument with their revolvers,” reported The Sun.  “None of the bullets struck Roswell, but he concluded not to stay and strain his luck.”

During his retreat he was struck in the right leg.  Two detectives, a block away, heard the discharges and saw the stream of sailors rushing from the hotel bar.

“The detectives gathered the youths to their arms and relieved them of the revolvers, for which Cronin and Redden admitted quite simply they had no further use, as their programme for the day had been shot to pieces.”

Charles E. Bacon leased the hotel in 1926 and ran it for over two decades.  He announced intentions of “extensive alterations” and installed a barbershop and men’s clothing store on the ground floor.

In 1929 the ground floor was a mish-mash of small businesses -- NYPL Collection

In 1934 Crescent Star Realty regained the hotel in foreclosure.  When the firm sold the building in August 1949, The New York Times erroneously reported that “it was held in the Eighteen Nineties by the present sellers, who later sold it and then reacquired it.”

The building continued to be home to various businesses at street level throughout the 20^th century.   By 1970s the neighborhood was no longer maritime and Greenwich Village had become the center of New York’s gay culture.  In the early 1970s the old saloon became Peter Rabbits, a bar popular with a young, black gay clientele.  The bar remained in the space until around 1988.

The 21^st century saw a rebirth of the once-sordid riverfront and luxury condomiums and trendy restaurants replaced the former seedy bars and shops.   Around 2006 the first floor of the hotel became home to the upscale Italian restaurant Antica Venezia. The space where Village thugs once shot their revolvers in a crowded bar was now an Italian restaurant with a fireplace and, according to Crain’s New York Business that year, “an ebullient waitstaff.”

Terra cotta cartouches cap the second story windows and creative brickwork forms decorative panels -- photo by Alice Lum

The Italian restaurant was replaced by a French restaurant which, too, closed its doors.  In the meantime, the upper stories of the Holland Hotel building, despite severe alterations at street level, are amazingly intact. 

The J. J. Van Alen House -- No. 15 East 65th St.

photo by Alice Lum

It took spunk to stand up to William Backhouse Astor and even more nerve to defy his wife, the indomitable Caroline Schermerhorn Astor.  But their eldest daughter, Emily, would prove to have both.

Emily became enamored with the wealthy James J. Van Alen and the couple openly courted.  Her father was vehemently against it.  Reportedly he exclaimed “Damned if I want my family mixed in with the Van Alens.”

With a resolve unlikely in a wealthy 23-year old girl of the period, Emily Astor took things into her own hands and married Van Alen in 1876.  Quite expectedly, the relations between the two families were strained.

The only son of General James H. Van Alen, Emily’s new husband loved England as much, or more, than his native land.  He leased a 15^th century manor house, Rushton Hall, in England and the couple spent their time there as well as in New York and Newport.  But their lives together came to a tragic end in 1881 when Emily, just 28 years old, died in the birth of their third child.

James Van Alen turned the rearing and education of his children to tutors and relatives in England.  In 1883 he was taken by an Elizabethan manor house where he briefly stayed, Wakehurst Place in Sussex, and based his new Newport cottage on it.  Construction began on the Newport version of Wakehurst in 1894.  It would not be the only time that Van Alen would copy an English mansion on American soil.

The same year that construction began on Wakehurst, Van Alen's brother-in-law John Jacob Astor was planning an enormous private stable at the corner of 65^th Street and Madison Avenue.  The carriage house was to accomodate the monumental double mansion he was building for his mother and himself on Fifth Avenue at 65^th Street.  Among the wealthy residents of the area who were displeased was Miss E. T. Chisholm who lived at No. 15 East 65^th Street.  She ran Miss Chisholm’s School for exceptionally wealthy girls.

Miss Chisholm signed her name to a letter written during an “indignation meeting” in which area millionaires condemned Astor’s “great discourtesy” and accused him of “offending the sentiments of the community and injuring the neighbors and their property.”

By the early years of the 20^th century Van Alen’s children were grown and James Van Alen made a reputation for himself as a womanizer.  Even the Omaha Bee printed stories of his philandering.  On October 1, 1911 it wrote “There have been many widows in Mr. Van Alen’s life.  Of all kinds, there have been a baker’s dozen.  All have been pretty.

“Mr. Van Alen, son-in-law of the late Mrs. Astor and oldest brother-in-law of Colonel Jack Astor, is a most desirable parti.  He has houses and lands, stocks and bonds.  He owns a gray stone mansion in Newport, a palace in New York and a castle in England.  He is so rich—he can wear a monocle and an old Panama hat!  He keeps a flock of sheep to crop his Newport lawns, and he could pave his driveway with diamonds if he wanted to.

“The widows who have interested him have known all this.  It looked good to them.”

Embarrassment for the Astors because of the Van Alen connection did not come solely from James.  On September 24, 1913 daughter May married Griswold A. Thompson, a stock and bond broker and vice president of the Commonwealth Water Company of New York in London.  A month later she would provide one more reason for the Astors to shrink from the Van Alens.

As May Van Alen Thompson arrived in Boston on October 18, customs officials found that she was trying to smuggle in a pearl necklace “valued at thousands of dollars,” according to the New-York Tribune.  May had concealed the necklace in a small chamois bag “concealed in her bosom.”

The search of May’s bosom was inspired when her maid, named Connors, was found to have thousands of dollars in diamonds and other precious gems in her stockings.  May insisted that she was a British subject, and was not compelled to be searched.  The inspectors insisted she was an American and forced her to declare her baggage.  The newspapers made clear note of the fact that she was the granddaughter of Mrs. Astor and a cousin of Jack Astor.

Perhaps to escape continued American newspaper publicity or, as The Washington Times reported, to recuperate “from the fatigues of his past social successes and preparing for new ones,” Van Alen traveled to the soothing waters of Baden Baden, Germany in 1914.  It was a poor choice.

He was caught in Germany as World War I erupted.  “For several weeks his relatives and business representatives were unable to communicate with him and felt exceedingly worried about his fate,” reported The Washington Times.  “Finally Mr. Van Alen escaped from the maelstrom of war and hastened straight back to America.”

Unable to travel abroad, Van Alen set about constructing a new Manhattan mansion.  On April 26, 1916 The New York Times reported that he had purchased the four-story residence at 15 East Sixty-fifth Street.”  It was the very same house from which Miss E. T. Chisholm had fumed about Jack Astor’s stables.  James Van Alen had somewhat ironically purchased property right in the very nest of Astors.  John Jacob Astor’s double mansion was just around the corner on Fifth Avenue and his sister, Caroline Astor Wilson’s home was a block away at No. 3 East 64^th Street.

Van Alen had the outdated house demolished and commissioned Harry Allan Jacobs to design his new mansion.  Jacobs was well known for his fashionable homes designed in historic styles; but for this house he was given clear direction.  It was to be a near-copy of a Regency-period mansion on St. James Square in London.

The mansion in 1925.  One old brownstone still hangs on, to the right.  --photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Completed in 1917, it was London on the Upper East Side.  The three-story limestone house oozed British respectability.  Three identical arched openings pierced the rusticated base—the double-doored entrance, a grilled window and the access to the American basement below sidewalk level.

The second story grabbed the spotlight.  A Palladian window was framed by Corinthian pilasters and columns supporting a distinguished pediment.  Recessed, carved plaques ornamented the spaces above the flanking windows.  Despite the Van Alen reputation of philandering and even jewel smuggling, the house spoke refinement.

Van Alen had barely moved into the new mansion when rumors of Prohibition buzzed through the paneled rooms of Manhattan’s exclusive mens’ clubs.  James Van Alen was willing to abide the chiding of the American press; but he was unwilling to live in a country without liquor.

Congress passed the Volstead Act on October 28, 1919 enforcing the prohibition of the “manufacture, sale or transportation” of liquor.  Van Alen responded by selling his house and moving to England.

On December 13, 1919 The New York Times reported that “Carrying out his determination to dispose of his New York home if prohibition went into effect, J. J. Van Alen of New York and Newport has sold his four-story house at 15 East Sixty-fifth Street, to Rufus L. Patterson, Vice President of the American Tobacco Company.”

Patterson paid Van Alen $275,000 for the mansion—nearly $3 million today. 

“I know of lots of people that will leave the United States and make their home in countries where the laws are not so strict,” Van Alen told reporters.  He apparently had a well-stocked cellar in Newport, however; for The Times noted “It is said that he will make his home hereafter in England, but will return to summer at Newport.”

The Pattersons divided their time between the 65^th Street home and their summer estate in Southampton, “Lenoir.”   Mrs. Patterson, the former Margaret Morehead, entertained often in the mansion throughout their more than two decades here.

Rufus L. Patterson died in April 1943.  Two years later Margaret put the mansion on the market.  The Kusciuczko Foundation had been founded in 1925 to promote closer ties between the United States and Poland through scientific, cultural and educational exchanges.   The organization dearly wanted the mansion as its headquarters, but did not have the funds. 

Margaret Patterson lowered her asking price of $250,000 to $85,000 for the foundation.  The Kosciuszko Foundation purchased the house in 1945 and over the next few years Margaret donated another $16,000 to help the organization pay off the mortgage.

In 1945 when the Foundation moved in, the old brownstone next door had most definitely disappeared.  Little else had changed -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The dignified mansion of a man who bucked the New York and Newport social system for decades is virtually unchanged since its completion nearly a century ago.  It is a remarkable structure built by an equally remarkable character in New York social history.

The 1930 Horn & Hardardt Bldg -- 2710-2714 Broadway

On November 14, 1912 the New-York Tribune announced that "Joseph V. Horn, of Douglasville, Penna, and Frank Hardart, of Philadelphia...are to build a big bakery on the Cosine Farm."  The partners had leased land from William Waldorf Astor at the corner of 50th Street and Eighth Avenue where they planned a 6-story, $300,000 building.  "It is to be the distributing point for supplies to a chain of automated lunchrooms to be opened in this city," said the newspaper.

Over a decade earlier Frank Hardart became impressed with "waiterless restaurants" or "automatics."  He visited Europe in 1900 to see the cafeterias in operation.  Here customers chose food items from glass-doored compartments, inserted a coin and removed the food.  The concept required reduced personnel and, therefore, reduced prices.  Diners enjoyed quick service and inexpensive meals.

Hardart was a partner with Joseph Horn in the Philadelphia bakery Horn & Hardart Baking Co.  He envisioned the idea of a waiterless cafeteria catching on in the States.  Hardart purchased the innovative equipment in Berlin to be shipped to Philadelphia.  Unfortunately the ship transporting the machines sank.   Not to be defeated, Hardart reordered the equipment and in 1902 the first automat opened in Philadelphia.

As Frank Hardart expected, the new take on casual dining was a sensation.  Now, in 1912, the firm was ready to branch out to New  York City.  The first automat was opened on Times Square at No. 1557 Broadway.  It was the firm's first experiment with American-made equipment.  Shop girls, office workers and laborers found they could stretch their meager pay in clean, attractive surroundings where five cents would buy tasty, freshly-made food.

The coin machines accepted only nickels and women "nickel throwers" were on hand to make change. Because the coins dirtied the cashiers' hands, they wore black uniforms.  Despite the low food prices, Horn & Hardart did not scrimp on the interiors.   Marble, white tile and shining chrome were kept spotless and the cafeterias were often termed "classy."

Joseph Horn's approach to the restaurant business was simple.  "There is no trick to selling a poor item cheaply.  The real trick is to sell a good item cheaply.”

Originally the firm employed the Philadelphia architects Stuckert & Sloan to design the cafeterias.  But in 1916 it turned to a New York firm for its Manhattan projects.  Frederick Putnam Platt had taken his brother, Charles Carsten Platt, into his architectural business around 1919, creating F. P. Platt & Bro.  The brothers would design numerous automats for Horn & Hardart and as the Jazz Age engulfed Manhattan, their designs turned to the sleek and modern Art Deco.

In 1930 Frederick co-wrote an article in the Architectural Record entitled "Restaurants," which laid out the fundamentals of designing a viable food selling establishment.  That same year Horn & Hardart gave the firm another automat to design--this one at the southeast corner of Broadway and 104th Street.

If the Great Depression had any effect on the automat business, it increased it.  The quick and inexpensive food offered by Horn & Hardart was helpful to patrons who needed to account for every nickel.  Quite possibly, as well, the jazzy Art Deco buildings and the clean chrome-and-tile interiors helped brighten the diners' dismal outlook.

Plans were filed for the new automat stretching along Broadway from No. 2710 to 2714 in April 1930.  Five months later construction was completed, in October, at a cost of around $105,000.  On October 23, 1930 the finished structure was described in Department of Buildings as having "offices and showroom" above the street level and mezzanine restaurant space.

But then someone changed his mind.

Almost one month to the day later, on November 22, the papers were refiled.  Now instead of offices, the second story would contain a "golfcourse."

A wicker baby carriage sits outside the expansive entrance.  An electric AUTOMAT sign, more than a story tall, hangs at the corner -- NYPL Collection

Despite the huge one-and-a-half story arched entrance and the expansive second story windows, the Platts' limestone-clad structure might have been ponderous were it not for the colorful terra cotta decoration.  Executed by the Atlantic Terra Cotta Co., the large panels exploded in color--green, tan, and blue, with an unusual gold lustrer glaze.  The flat gray limestone face served as a canvas for the sophisticated Art Deco flowers and zig-zag patterns.

The Horn & Hardart automat served the Upper West Side successfully for decades.  Then in December 1954 the lease was cancelled.  A year later ownership of the building was transferred to the Broadway-104th Corp.  With the cafeteria now gone, developer Stanley Stohl commissioned architects Wechsler & Schimenti to convert the former automat space.

Horn & Hardart's Art Deco interiors, now passe, were ripped out and the mezzanine was closed off as a separate, now second, story.   In the $10,000 alteration the upper floors became offices and commercial space replaced the restaurant level.

Beginning in 1956 the New York Public Library briefly housed its Bloomingdale Branch children's room here.  Over the next decades a profusion of stores and businesses would come and go, including the Ames Business School on the second floor for nearly a decade and the El Taller Latino Americano, a non-profit art and education center founded in 1979.

As the 20th century drew to a close Rite Aid pharmacy took the lease of the expansive ground floor.  In a David versus Goliath triumph, local community activist, Michael Gotkin, persuaded the chain to cover, rather than destroy, the original F. P. Platt & Bro. elements.

One of the last Horn & Hardart buildings to survive in Manhattan, the Art Deco beauty at Broadway and 104th Street stands as a reminder of a time when a slice of apple pie could be bought for a nickel.

non-historic photograph taken by the author

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The D. Maitland Armstrong House - No. 58 W. 10th Street

photo by Alice Lum

By the 1830s modest brick homes were being erected along West 10^th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.   Among them was the home of Owen Crosby at No. 58, built in 1836.  Unlike its Federal-style next door neighbor at No. 56 built four years earlier, the Crosby house sat far back on the lot.  About twenty years later a three-story Greek Revival home was built at the property line, hiding the original little house in what was now the back yard.

The same year that the little Crosby house was built, David Maitland Armstrong was born in Newburgh, New York.  The boy would go on to an astonishingly varied career and celebrated life.   After graduating from Trinity College in 1858 Armstrong practiced law in New York City.  

In December 1866 he married Helena Neilson, the granddaughter of Nicholas Fish and a direct descendant of Governor Peter Stuyvesant.  But the attorney had a creative side and a year later he traveled to Paris where he became the first pupil of artist Luc-Olivier Merson.

For two years he shared a Paris apartment with a roommate—Augustus Saint-Gaudens—before leaving for Rome to continue his studies there.  In 1869 he was appointed the United States Consul to the Papal States; but upon returning to the States in 1872 his passion for art was reignited.

He was largely responsible for the formation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Later the New-York Tribune would say “Not only did he, in company with Robert Gordon and Dr. Nevin, first start the agitation for a representative museum in this city, but he also drafted suggestions for the carrying out of the project, with the result that the Metropolitan Museum as it exists to-day is largely organized on the lines he laid out.”

When the Paris Exposition was being organized in 1878, Armstrong was made director of the American art section—a laughable concept on the continent.  The New-York Tribune reported “The result was one of the great triumphs of his career and resulted in his election as a chevalier of the Legion of Honor.  It was the real initiation of the French people into a realization that such a thing as American art existed.”

Around the same time Armstrong and his wife purchased the little three-story house at No. 58 West 10^th Street.   The artistic block appealed to the artist—by now Armstrong was achieving his own reputation for his stained glass and mosaics.  Across the street lived John LaFarge and towards Fifth Avenue was the home of Mark Twain.   The little house in the rear had previously been the Tile Club—a meeting place for thirty-one eminent artists and architects.  Included in the club were Stanford White, Winslow Homer, Edwin Austin Abbey, William Merritt Chase and Armstrong’s former roommate, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. When the club disbanded, Armstrong bought the property.

It was good friend and club member Stanford White who transformed the old home and enlarged it; adding a one-story addition to the rear that connected it with the Crosby house.   The result of his handiwork is an interesting mix of periods and styles.  The Greek Revival inner door frame was retained; yet a Federal style leaded overlight and sidelights were added.  The outer entrance frame was replaced with one more in the Federal style with delicate applied swags and cattle heads.  The same treatment was carried on to the large, tripart window at the first floor.

Delicate applied garlands are strung between bulls' heads above the doorway and first floor window -- photo by Alice Lum

D. Maitland Armstrong took the opportunity to show off his glass-making skills.  He designed the lovely stained glass window of the first floor—containing over 400 panes--and the delicate staircase skylight inside.  Throughout the house Armstrong’s stained glass panels became part of the architecture.

photo by Alice Lum

D. Maitland and Helen Armstrong had six children in the three-story house.  Through the years much of the entertainment here centered around them—debutante and wedding receptions among them.   The children’s later lives would reflect their early years surrounded by some of America’s most eminent writers and authors. 

When D. Maitland Armstrong returned home from Florida in April 1918 he was not feeling well.  On April 15 he celebrated his 82^nd birthday and two weeks later suffered a stroke.  On May 26 he died peacefully in the house on West 10^th Street.  The following day the New-York Tribune reported “D. Maitland Armstrong, American artist and citizen of the world, lies dead to-day at his home at 58 West Tenth Street.”

At the time of his death three of his children were already involved in the arts.  Helen Maitland Armstrong was a junior member of Maitland Armstrong & Co., a stained glass company founded by her father; Margaret was well known as a magazine writer and illustrator; and Lieutenant Hamilton Fish Armstrong, who was with the 22^nd Infantry at the time, was a known poet and writer.

The carved rosettes below the cornice date from the earlier Greek Revival period.  The 1832 house next door presents a pleasing combination --  photo by Alice Lum

Nine years later, in February 1927, Helen Neilson Armstrong died.   Hamilton Fish Armstrong described his mother as “quite typically New York—the New York of wide brownstone houses with high stoops and high ceilings, carriages to supplement but not replace the pleasures of walking, constant visits back and forth among relatives, large Sunday dinners followed by long amusementless Sunday afternoons.” 

While she witnessed many of her children’s achievements, she would not see their ultimate successes.   Margaret had been an illustrator for popular magazines such as the Century and Schribners and designed numerous book covers.   Prior to 1915 she spent several years in the Far West camping, hiking and studying native plants before collaborating on a book of western American wild flowers.  Then, at the age of 70, she wrote her first biographical novel, “Fanny Kemble: A Passionate Victorian.”    She was suddenly a best seller and wrote another biography and several mystery books.  By the time of her death in the house at the age of 76 in 1944 she had established herself as a first-rate author.

In the meantime her sister Helen was well-known for her stained glass windows, which The New York Times deemed “exceptional.”  She designed and executed windows for the chapel at Sailors’ Snug Harbor on Staten Island, a memorial chapel for Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont in Woodlawn Cemetery, for the All Souls’ Protestant Episcopal Church in Biltmore, North Carolina, and the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Perpetual help in Bernardsville, New Jersey to name but a few.   She died in the 10^th Street house of pneumonia on November 26, 1948.  She was 79 years old.

While the Armstrong family was in the house, the trim was painted a crisp white -- photo NYPL Collection

None of the siblings was more accomplished than Hamilton Fish Armstrong.  The founder and editor of the highly influential quarterly periodical Foreign Affairs, he established personal ties with world leaders.  He was able to convince leaders like Leonard Trotsky, Nikita Khruschev, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Marshal Tito, Nehru, Konrad Adenauer and Gamal Abdel Nasser to write for or be interviewed by the magazine.

In 1933 he interviewed Adolph Hitler and a year later published “Europe Between Wars?” detailing his prediction of a forthcoming war.  But his warmest publication was his 1963 “Those Days” in which he remembered growing up in the brick house on West 10^th Street and playing “bicycle hockey” on the block.

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, far left, joins the other Refugee Advisory Committee members at the White House in presenting a report to President Roosevelt.--photo Library of Congress

When Armstrong died on August 24, 1973, The New York Times called him “a journalist who counted many of the world’s leading statement among his friends and confidants” and added “He had lived his entire life at 58 West 10^th Street.”

In 1987 New York University announced that the house that had been home to the Armstrong family for nearly a century would be purchased by the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation.  The intentions were to renovate and maintain it as the Onassis Center for Hellenic Studies.  As renovations were underway, fire erupted on January 3, 1989.

Although the upper floors and roof were damaged, David Maitland Armstrong’s irreplaceable windows were unscathed except for the skylight.   Architect David Paul Helpern forged on with the renovation, keeping the architectural importance of the structure well in mind.

In 2007 the house became the center for New York University’s Creative Writing Program, supported in large part by Lillian Vernon.  The house is the setting for readings, panel discussions, lectures, seminars and other literary functions. 

photo by Alice Lum

The creative collaboration of D. Maitland Armstrong and Stanford White survives beautifully intact on one of New York City’s most charming and architecturally-interesting blocks.

The Lost J. D. Rockefeller Jr. House -- 10 West 54th Street

image from the collection of the Rockefeller Archive Center.

While other millionaires were building ostentatious mansions that spread northward along Central Park, John D. Rockefeller preferred to purchase an aging brownstone at 4 West 54^th Street.  A devout Baptist, he eschewed display and raised his family in a comfortable yet restrained environment.

Son John Junior would not share his father’s disdain of flamboyance.

October 9, 1901 John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s wedding to Abby Green Aldrich on October 9, 1901, was a major social event.  The wedding took place in the Aldrich summer estate in Rhode Island.  Rockefeller arranged for the 500 guests to be transported there on two private steamers from Manhattan and 45 special train cars.

The newlyweds lived in the Rockefeller mansion for a few years before moving across the street to No. 31 West 54th Street in 1905.  Rockefeller was earning a salary of $10,000 (about $200,000 today), working as one of three advisors to his father.  But as Junior’s family increased, so did his fortune.

By 1912, John and Abby had five children who taxed the size of their home.  Rockefeller Sr. gave his son some Manhattan property and his entire holdings in the American Linseed Company.  It was time for a larger house.

John Junior purchased the former mansion of Colonel John J. McCook at 10 West 54^th Street, abutting the side garden of his childhood home.  He commissioned William Wells Bosworth to design a gargantuan replacement--eight stories tall--that would dwarf his father’s Civil War period home next door.



The rising house dwarfs the nearby brownstone rowhouses in 1912 -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

Within the entrance were a large vestibule and two reception rooms.  The first floor was devoted to utilitarian purposes rather than entertaining.  Rockefeller’s office, a breakfast room and the servants’ quarters were all on this floor.  Upstairs things were a bit more impressive.

The Sun, on October 27, 1912, described the house as it neared completion.  “The second floor is planned to be one of the most attractive suites in the city.  Here will be the dining room, the drawing room and the music room, all of large dimensions, with plenty of window space.”

The newspaper took a swipe at other Standard Oil transplants from Ohio.  “Specially designed furniture and hangings are being made by the best manufacturers for this apartment, which while not intended to be as lavish or ostentatious as those in the homes of some of the Western men of means who have built homes on or near Fifth avenue will be unusually attractive.”

The third and fourth floors above were devoted to the family.  The entire third floor was reserved for John and Abby, including a library.  The fourth housed the children’s bedrooms and rooms for nurses and personal attendants of the family.  The fifth floor was entirely devoted to guestrooms, as was part of the sixth.

The upper two floors were partly for recreation.  On the seventh floor was “as perfectly equipped a gymnasium as it is possible to have in a house of this kind,” said The Sun.  There were also a squash court and “baths of various kinds.”  The uppermost floor contained an open air playground for the children, a roof garden, and a huge open sun parlor with glass walls.  In the days before air conditioning, the family could retreat here at night to the open air sleeping pavilion.

The completed 102-foot tall house was the tallest private home ever built in New York.

John Junior's soaring house rises above his father's Civil War period brownstone -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The John D. Rockefeller, Jr. family's mansion was completed in 1912—a year when unions and capitalists were butting heads, sometimes violently.  The Labor Defense Committee and the IWW staged protests that met with rough police reaction.  Labor versus management differences would be manifested on the threshold of the new house.

In May 1914, news reached New York about a tragic and violent end to a miners’ strike in Ludlow, Colorado.  In 1913, workers at a company owned by Rockefeller, Jr. had demanded that the company obey labor laws regarding safety and cash payment of wages.  An angry Rockefeller responded by having the workers—mostly immigrants—evicted from company-owned housing.

The homeless miners erected a tent city nearby where families suffered through a severe Colorado winter.  As the standoff continued, Rockefeller ordered the National Guard to attack the settlement with machine guns and rifles and set fire to the tents.

When the smoke cleared, 22 people were dead—workers, women and children—from beatings, bullet wounds and suffocation.

In response, activist and author Upton Sinclair organized a demonstration of peaceful resistance.  Rows of “silent mourners” paraded past the Standard Oil offices and, then, showed up at the 54^th Street house.

At 5:30 on the afternoon of May 2, five “mourners” appeared and walked back and forth before the mansion for four hours.  When it became obvious they were not going away, Detective Billy Ward “decided that the promenade was too short and compelled the walkers to lengthen the laps until they extended from Fifth avenue almost to Sixth avenue,” said The Sun the following day.  The detective’s ploy did not succeed, however, when one demonstrator attempted to make a speech from the mansion steps, “Ward made him scoot.”

Five days later the group of five silent mourners had grown to a crowd.  On May 7, traffic police were astonished to see “hundreds” coming up Fifth Avenue headed towards the Rockefeller mansion.  Leading them was a man in the black robe of Death.  The demonstrators marched from Sixth Avenue and 50^th Street.  The Sun reported, “By the time Fifth avenue was reached the crowd was so big that it cut off all traffic for between ten and twenty minutes.”

The man in the Death costume, Albert Turner, was arrested and the mob turned away before reaching the Rockefeller house.  Turner was sentenced to two months in the workhouse.

While the disturbances were taking place on West 54^th Street, Rockefeller and his family were entrenched in their heavily-guarded Pocantico Hills estate.

Priceless porcelains and French furniture decorated a sitting room -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Things eventually calmed down and life returned to normal in the house that looked rather like a hotel.  Despite his reaction to the Colorado miner strike, Rockefeller, like his father, was a devoted Baptist.  On April 19, 1917, his Bible class and others—nearly 300 persons in all—attended a service in the house by the Reverend Billy Sunday.  Referring to the lure of the lights and sins of Broadway, the preacher prayed “for those who tread the ‘Gay White Way,’ and said he hoped religion might touch their hearts and turn them to better things.”

The Rockefellers filled the mansion with an extensive art collection.  David Rockefeller would later remember that “Mother loved beauty wherever she found it, but Father’s taste was restricted to the more conventional and realistic art forms.”

Unbelievably, the massive house quickly became too small for the art collection.  The house next door was purchased and an entrance cut through on three floors.  The extension was used to display, among other valuable artworks, ten 18^th century Gobelin tapestries woven for Louis XIV, and the early 15^th century French Gothic tapestry set depicting the Hunt of the Unicorn.

John Rockefeller, Jr. discovered the following winter that even the Rockefeller name was not always enough to get him what he wanted.  The house was heated by a coal-powered heating plant that serviced several other homes in the neighborhood, as well.  When the plant ran out of coal in January 1918 and the temperature in his house plummeted, Rockefeller sent a requisition to the Standard Oil Company for 36 oil stoves.

The answer he received was not what he expected.  “Supply exhausted.  Can’t get them for you or anybody else.”

The manager of the distributing station was more pointed.  “Rockefeller looks like anybody else to me,” he told a reporter.  “If he walked in here with an oil can he wouldn’t get it filled any quicker than the dishwasher at that restaurant down the street.”

Unfortunately, the brutal winter with its accompanying lack of coal and heaters resulted in the pipes bursting in the 54^th Street mansion.  “The Rockefeller pipes froze and burst just like ordinary pipes, and the result was precisely the same as elsewhere.  Icicles and miniature glaciers became prominent features of the interior decorations of the house,” reported the New-York Tribune on January 6.

The family retreated, again, to Pocantico Hills where coal was in ample supply.

Life for the Rockefeller family was apparently happy in the big house.  On New Year’s Eve 1920, Rockefeller wrote to his father, “We spent a very happy Christmas here in New York, with the tree up in the big nursery and great mounds of presents all about the room for the different members of the family.” 

John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s prized collection of porcelains spilled over into a family dining room -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Nevertheless, the children were raised with the typical Rockefeller discipline.  Nelson would recall that he was responsible for mending his own clothes, weeding the garden and keeping detailed accounts of his 30 cent allowance.

But by now, the neighborhood was not the residential enclave of millionaires it had been.  David Rockefeller wrote in his biography Memoirs, “

With the advent of Prohibition in the mid-1920s, nightclubs and speakeasies selling bootleg liquor also appeared, and there were rumors that a number of brothels had opened as well.  The neighborhood, once the exclusive preserve of the Vanderbilts and Astors, had become seedy and down-at-the-heels.

John D. Rockefeller, Sr. died on May 23, 1937 just weeks before his 100^th birthday.  The family homes would not survive much longer.  The following year, John Rockefeller, Jr. announced plans to raze the houses as Abby Rockefeller’s vision of the Museum of Modern Art took form.

Twenty-five years after it was constructed, the towering John D. Rockefeller, Jr. house was demolished to make way for the sculpture garden of the museum.

photo by Alice Lum