The 1899 Oliver Gould Jennings House -- No. 7 East 72nd Street

As the turn of the last century approached, Oliver Gould Jennings ranked among the wealthiest and most influential of Manhattan’s citizens.  His father, Oliver Burr Jennings, was a founder of the Standard Oil Company; and his own far-flung interests included directorships in Bethlehem Steel Corporation, McKesson and Robbins, Inc. the National Fuel Gas Company, the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, and several others.

Jennings married Mary Dows Brewster, the daughter of Benjamin and Elmina Brewster, on December 16, 1896.  Two years later, the millionaire laid plans for an impressive home for his bride.   For the site, he chose No. 7 East 72^nd Street, where Caroline de Forest’s 28-foot wide brownstone home stood, just steps from Fifth Avenue and Central Park.  Next door at No. 9 the massive and elaborate Henry T. Sloane mansion had just been completed.

Architects Flagg & Chambers closely followed the lead of the Sloane mansion—matching the arched first floor openings and continuing the ebullient Beaux Arts motif.  The completed Jennings house appeared nearly as an extension of its neighbor.  Finally, on November 28, 1899, the New-York Tribune reported “Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Gould Jennings will this winter occupy their new home, No. 7 East Seventy-second st.”

When Architectural Record published this photo in 1901, the lot next door was still vacant  (copyright expired)

As with all the grand city mansions, No. 7 was opened only during the winter season--about five months each year.  At other times millionaires occupied their country homes, high-end resorts, and, of course, traveled abroad.  On May 28, 1911 The Sun noted “Mr. and Mrs. Oliver G. Jennings of 7 East Seventy-second street, who are now at their country place at Fairfield, Conn., will go on to Newport in July.”

Oliver and Mary retained ownership of their elegant French home for 15 years.  In April 1914 Jennings purchased the vacant plot at No. 882 Fifth Avenue between 69^th and 70^th Street and sold the 72^nd Street house.  The New York Times reported the buyer as “the Four West Fifty-seventh Street Company, controlled by W. Emlen Roosevelt.”  Jennings had put a $325,000 price tag on the house—about $7.8 million today.

One day later the title to the mansion was passed to Frank Schlitt, “whose name frequently appears as temporary possessor of valuable New York realty,” said The New York Times.   While the new Jennings mansion was being constructed, Oliver and Mary remained in the 72^nd Street house.  

The Jennings mansion was in architectural harmony with its lavish neighbor.  To the right of the Sloane residence is the home of Benjamin Guggenheim. 

On August 3, 1915 Jennings was being driven by his chauffeur near Harris Corners, around Westport, Connecticut.  On the same road was Simon J. von Der Lin, a waiter at the Hotel McAlpin.  Von Der Lin had taken his wife and 3-year old daughter for a country drive in a motorcycle with side car.  The meeting of the Jennings limousine and the open motorcycle would end badly.

Jenning’s chauffeur hogged the road and, according to von Der Lin, “forced the motor cycle so far to the side of the road that it collided with a telegraph pole.”  The toddler suffered a compound fracture of the knee, subsequent hemorrhages, and was partially paralyzed.  The waiter sued Jennings for $10,000 in damages in September.

On December 18 that year the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide noted that “Oliver Gould Jennings, 7 East 72d street, will soon be able to occupy the handsome dwelling being erected for him at 882 Fifth avenue.”   As Oliver and Mary Jennings moved out of the 72^nd Street residence, Sumner Gerard and his wife, the former Helen Coster, moved in.

While undeniably lavish, sections of the Jennings mansion could be considered "cold."  Architectural Record 1901 (copyright expired)

The couple’s first child, James Watson Gerard, had been born a year earlier and his brother, Sumner Gerard, Jr., would be born in the house on July 15, 1916.  Another son, Casper, would come along in March, 1919.

While the Gerards were socially visible, they took active parts in political and patriotic causes.  At the age of 46 in 1920 Sumner held the rank of major in the Army Reserve Corps.   Helen was a member of the Women’s Committee of One Hundred of the Serbian Child Welfare Association.  As the group pushed to collect funds for relief efforts, Helen Sumner was a major player.  On January 2, 1921 the New-York Tribune noted “The most ambitious affair will be a bridge to be held at the residence of Mrs. Sumner Gerard, 7 East Seventy-second Street, on Tuesday, January 11.”

While attending the Hyde Ball in 1905, Sumner Gerald posed for a photograph.  He buttoned his tuxedo trousers above the calf for the shot.  Photograph by Byron Co. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYWCO2N3I&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

A year later, on January 4, she invited 100 women into the house to discuss fund raising for the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.  The foundation was “organized to perpetuate the memory and ideals of the former President.”

Within four years the Gerards were gone from No. 7 East 72^nd Street, replaced by the Henry Ingersoll Riker family.  A member of one of New York’s oldest families, Henry and his wife, the former Mary Jackson, had three children: John, Mary, and Henry, Jr.  Like Mary Jennings, one of Mary Riker’s favorite charities was the Babies’ Hospital and she routinely hosted meetings of the Sewing Circle of the Babies’ Hospital here.  Her husband, who had graduated from the Harvard Law School, never practiced.  The New York Times later mentioned “After a few years in Wall Street, he devoted himself to the management of his property.”

In November 1927 the 55-year old Henry Ingersoll Riker caught a cold, which quickly advanced to pneumonia.  After being sick only a few days, he died in the mansion on November 14.

One by one the Riker children would marry and leave East 72^nd Street.   The first was Mary, who wed William Chandler Riker on April 26, 1930 in the Church of the Incarnation “with which for many years the Riker family has been associated,” said The New York Times.  The newspaper noted that the wedding was attended by “a representative gathering of old New York families.”

For readers who wondered about the Riker-Riker connection, The Times explained.  “The bride and bridegroom are distantly related and are descendants of Abraham Van Rycken who came from Amsterdam when New York was New Netherlands.”

The Riker sons both went on to become doctors.  John Lawrence Riker married Isadore Jean Beaudrias in 1932; and his brother married Cornelia Shepard on February 17, 1937.  Mary Jackson Riker now lived alone in the grand relic of the Gilded Age on a street much changed since the days when elegant carriages transported millionaires to and from their mansions.  She died in 1947.

At the time of Mary’s death, Frank Lloyd Wright was busy creating several designs for the Solomon R. Guggenheim art museum.   In February 1957 the Guggenheim opened in the Jennings mansion while its iconic building on Fifth Avenue was under construction.   It shared space with the Danish delegation to the United Nations.  The strange bedfellows would remain in the house until 1959, when the permanent Guggenheim museum opened.  The Danish group left within a few months.

The Jennings Drawing Room as it appeared in 1901 Architectural Record, (copyright expired)

In August 1960 the Lycee Francais de New York leased the mansion as additional facilities to its main school at Nos. 3-5 East 95^th Street.  Four years later the school purchased the house along with the former Sloane mansion next door.  Walls were broken through combining the two buildings.

The school added its own touches to the Drawing Room--like fluorescent lighting and required sprinklers -- photograph by JGNY https://www.flickr.com/photos/jgny/582668230/in/set-72157603255161778/

The school retained possession of the two magnificent structures until 2010 when it sold them as a package to the Emir of Qatar for $26 million.  He commissioned architect Thornton Tomasetti to blend them into a single massive residence the likes of which even the Sloanes and the Jennings would struggle to compete with.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The 1815 John Wood House -- No. 74 Franklin Street

When John Wood erected his handsome Federal-style residence at No. 74 Franklin Street in 1815, the neighborhood was quiet and refined.  Wood’s home, 25-feet wide, was clad in brownish-red brick laid in Flemish bond.  Splayed stone lintels with layered keystones ornamented the openings.  Three and a half stories tall, the house marked the success of its owner.

In 1840, several blocks to the southeast, G. A. Bradbrook operated what he termed a “general and fashionable outfitting store” at No. 353 Pearl Street.   An advertisement that year in A. E. Wright’s Commercial Directory promised shoppers that he “Keeps constantly on hand the following articles, viz.—Shirts, Under Shirts, Drawers, Belts, Cravats, Bosoms, Stocks, Gloves, Hosiery, Handkerchiefs, Scarfs, Collars, &c, &c.  LINEN made to order in a superior style.”  Bradbrook was not interested in haggling with his patrons.  “No deviation from first price” said the ad.

As the years passed the commercial district inched northward and so did G. A. Bradbrook.   By 1851 his store was located just four blocks south of the former Wood home, at No. 297 Broadway.   Then two years later he had moved to No. 74 Franklin Street and the wealthy merchant set to work converting his property for his store.  In 1853 Tax Assessment Records reflect improvements and it was most likely at this time that the attic was raised to a full fourth floor and the cast iron shop front was installed.   Rather remarkably, while the architect added a modern Italianate cornice; he carefully reproduced the Federal-style lintels over the new openings.  Bradbrook’s rather common storefront with its fluted Corinthian columns was, nonetheless, pleasing.

The wealthy merchant maintained a country estate far to the north.  But in 1857 he decided to sell.  An ad in the New-York Tribune on Tuesday, May 26, 1857 offered “Beautiful Gothic Country Residence…Furniture, Horses and Carriages for sale.”  Bradbrook described the estate glowingly.  “The House contains 16 Rooms, with all of the modern improvements and outbuildings; a Garden well stocked with choice Fruits, and everything calculated for a Gentleman’s residence.”

Although the Bradbrook family would retain possession of the building for decades; it appears that by 1869 G. A. Bradbrook’s store was no longer here.  That year Bechel & Wolff “importers of French, German, and English fancy goods and corsets” was listed at No. 74 Franklin Street.

The upper floors where the Wood family had lived in comfortable style became factory space.  In 1882 E. Lux advertised for “Hands on Lamb knitting machine;” and two years later, on February 7, M. Schlesinger & Co. sought “Experienced hands on embroidered ties and to iron gents’ lawn ties.”

Around the same time the Wilsons—John, Richard and William—ran their operation here.  The three respected businessmen were all members of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York.

For several years Goodman & Lazarus, makers of umbrellas and parasols, had done business from No. 84 Franklin Street.  But by 1898 they had moved down the block to No. 74.   That year the firm had either a boom in production or a heavy turnover in workers.  It advertised on January 28 for “operators;” on February 6 for an assistant cutter; and two days later for a veteran cutter.

Goodman & Lazarus was a substantial operation, employing 11 men and 20 women in 1900, each of them working an average of 51 hours a week. 

The manufacturers advertised in round-about New York: 1902 -- copyright expired

When the City of New York assessed No. 74 Franklin Street at $55,000 in 1906, G. A. Bradbrook was still listed as its owner.  The valuation would translate to a significant $1.5 million today.

Manufacturing umbrellas and parasols had made Joseph Lazarus a wealthy man.   By now he had moved his family into a spacious apartment at No.  200 West 111^th Street on a block lined with similar upscale buildings.  On the afternoon of April 12, 1907 a maid answered the doorbell to find a young man at the door.

“I suppose Joe is at home,” he said.

“Who do you mean by Joe?” she asked.

“Why, Mr. Lazarus, of course.  I am a distant relative of his.  He is in, of course?”

The maid explained that Joseph Lazarus was at his Franklin Street office, the children were away at school, and Mrs. Lazarus was out calling.  The visitor acted perplexed.  He told the servant that he had telegraphed Lazarus that he was coming to visit. 

“I should have thought that he would be home to receive me.  Well, I may as well wait.”

Everything seemed plausible so the maid allowed the man to enter the parlor.  He picked up a picture from the mantel and said “How well the children look!”

He took off his overcoat, asked for a morning newspaper and settled in.  The maid returned to the kitchen, but a few moments later was called.  “Can I have a glass of water?”

When she brought the water he dismissed her saying “I will call you if I want anything else.”

About an hour later she stepped into the parlor to see if Joseph Lazarus’s nephew indeed needed anything else.  She was surprised to find he was not there and a search of the apartment showed that he had left.  “It also revealed that with him had gone a quantity of Mrs. Lazarus’s clothing and jewels, which had been in her room opening off the parlor,” reported The New York Times the following day.

“Thoroughly frightened,” the maid telephoned Joseph Lazarus who rushed uptown.   Detective Walsh arrived shortly afterward.  Lazarus gave the police a list of the missing items, which amounted to between $3,000 and $3,500.  Included were “a valuable Persian lamb coat belong to Mrs. Lazarus, a pearl and diamond ring, with five stones, a gold watch and chain, a second watch and chain marked with the initials ‘H.L.,’ a diamond and pearl locked and chain, a pair of diamond cuff buttons, and a string of matched pearls.”

Detectives wondered how the burglar had such intimate knowledge of the family.  At first Lazarus claimed to be at a loss to account for this.  He later broke down and admitted he suspected “the son of a prominent Harlem family, who disappeared from his home some weeks ago.” 

The circumstances surrounding Lazarus and the youth seemed a bit questionable—possibly explaining the respected manufacturer’s reluctance to talk.

“This young man, Mr. Lazarus said, he had met at Asbury Park in Easter week and had become very well acquainted with him,” reported The Times.

Joseph Lazarus’s bad luck returned four years later.   On Thursday November 16, 1911 he sealed a large business deal.  The banks were already closed so he stuffed $6,000 in cash and $15,000 in certified checks and notes into his wallet and headed home.

He told his wife of the huge transaction and offered to take her out on the town to celebrate.  When the couple left the apartment, he still carried the cash-laden wallet with him.

Lazarus and his wife enjoyed a night at the theater followed by dinner at the Hotel Traymore on West 58^th Street.  When they arrived home he realized his wallet was gone.  After tossing and turning throughout the night, he called an emergency meeting of the members of his firm the following morning.

While the conference was going on, the telephone rang.   Gus Schnabel, manager of the hotel, had called to notify Lazarus that a waiter had found his wallet under the table.  “Shall I send it down?”

Lazarus instructed Schnabel to messenger the wallet to him and carefully took down the waiter’s name.  When he received the wallet—containing the full $21,000 in cash, checks and notes—he sent a letter back to the hotel.  It included a $500 for the waiter, Philip Loew—a tidy reward of nearly $13,000 today.

Ironically, no one at the hotel, including the waiter, had bothered to look into the wallet other than to pull out Lazarus’s business card.

Throughout the next seven decades the building would house dry goods firms, like Melville L. Levy, “cottons,” and Phoenix Linen Corp., importers and jobbers, who were here in the 1920s.   The former house saw rapid turnover of owners at mid century.  Between 1944 and 1948 it was sold four times, and again in 1956 when the Manhattan Textile Import-Export Company purchased it.

The former house retains its residential appearance, despite the cast iron store front.

In 1998 the building was converted to residential space on the upper floors and showroom space at ground level.  Today John Wood’s 1815 home is the last recognizable relic of Franklin Street’s far distant residential past.

photographs by the author

Underwear and Cupcakes -- No. 75 Franklin Street

In the 1820s the 19-foot wide house at No. 75 Franklin Street was home to the Rev. David Patterson.  Described by The Magazine of the Reformed Dutch Church in 1829 as a “very able and successful teacher of the Classical Department of the school,” he was also an author of educational texts.  That year he had published Caesar’s Commetaries and earlier the Greek Reader.   But before the outbreak of Civil War, Patterson’s neighborhood would drastically change.

As commerce and industry engulfed the neighborhood old residences were demolished to be replaced with loft and store structures.  Eliza McBrair Sanderson, the wife of James Gardner Sanderson, had inherited a significant amount of property from her grandfather, James McBrair.  Her problem was that only expensive renovations or replacement would bring her holdings up to their potential value.   In the meantime the assessments and property taxes were brutal and she struggled financially.  On May 8, 1869 court papers noted “certain of said real estate was and is vacant and nearly unproductive, and certain other has become vacant and wholly unproductive, and can only be improved at large expense.”

Before things got to that point, however, Eliza had already addressed the improvement of No. 75 Franklin Street.   The Rev. Patterson’s former house was demolished in 1864 and a three-story commercial building was completed a year later on the site. 

The building filled with textile firms.  Among the tenants here in 1877 was Charles Kohlman & Co, Inc.  The company was a converter of cotton goods.  That year saw one of the nation’s most violent, deadly and expensive labor events in history—the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, or the Great Upheaval.

The 45-day confrontation was not organized by labor unions; but was a series of spontaneous outbreaks in various cities resulting in violence against the railroads.  It was finally ended by Federal troops and local and state militia after terrifying carnage, loss of life and property.  When the smoke cleared and the debris removed, manufacturers and suppliers tallied their losses and sought restitution.

On April 8, 1878 Charles Kohlman joined 38 other New York City firms filing suit against the Pennsylvania Railroad.  Included in the more than $60,000 damages was Charles Kohlman claim for $1,190.13—about $29,000 worth of cotton fabric in today's dollars.

In the building by 1885 was S. Brainard Pratt & Co., knit goods manufacturers.  Based in Boston, the far-reaching firm also had a factory in Chicago.  Leading Manufacturers and Merchants of the City of Boston described the firm’s output that year as “all sorts of fine knit goods, which include many entirely new shades, from the most delicate to the most pronounced, while the patterns are of extreme beauty without the lease exhibit of mere tawdry show.”

Another Massachusetts clothing manufacturer with an office in the building was the Wachusett Shirt Co.  The Clothier and Furnisher reported in 1888 that the firm was “doing a tremendous business in their unlaundered white shirts. They are manufacturing a line of goods that can be sold at a low figure and are of splendid notice.”

About the time that Abraham Eisenman established his suspender factory in the building, it was enlarged to the rear and got a facelift.   While other structures in the neighborhood were faced in limestone, marble or cast iron, the owner of No. 75 decided on a more economic brick façade with a cast iron storefront.

The resulting Romanesque Revival façade was straight forward and attractive.  Two-story pilasters separated the openings.  The architect used bull-nosed bricks to round the edges, providing visual interest. 

Abraham Eiseman’s suspender shop was a small operation He employed just two men and two women; but he got his money’s worth from them.  In 1895 they each worked an average of 51.5 hours per week.

The Indiana-based furniture company, Hoosier Manufacturing Co. was founded in 1899 and opened its branch office in the building.  The firm’s name would forever be remembered in its most iconic item—the multi-purpose kitchen piece known as the Hoosier Cabinet.

By now the building was owned by the Denison P. Chesebro ladder manufacturing company.  The ground floor retail space housed a small restaurant that catered to the many factory workers along the block.  Upstairs the Wright Health Underwear Company’s salesrooms shared space with other clothing firms. 

A 1902 ad boasted "it draws exhalations and perspiration from the skin"  (copyright expired)

In an advertisement that appeared in Metropolitan magazine in December 1905, Wright’s promised “It is a delightful change from the ordinary scratchy underwear to the luxurious softness of Wright’s Health Underwear.”  The ad said, rather explicitly, that the underwear “allows the pores to breath freely and the skin to throw off its natural excretions unimpeded.”

Wright’s would remain at No. 75 Franklin Street for many years; joined by another underwear manufacturer, Rob Roy Hosiery before 1910.   That firm’s mills were in Troy, New York where it produced “flat woolen underwear.”

The building continued to house garment firms throughout the first decades of the century, including Timmerman Co., brokers of “plain cloths, fine and heavy fancies, and silks and cottons,” and Brown, Norton & Co., cotton goods converters who would remain well into the 1920s.

The leasing of the ground floor to a bookstore in 1914 was the foreshadowing of things to come.  Throughout much of the 20th century the building was used by a printing and stationery concern for its warehouse and offices. 

The gritty, sooty Tribeca area, where delivery trucks rumbled below the windows of overheated factory lofts was reinvented in the late 20^th century.  Vast loft spaces were transformed to luxury residences and the showrooms and shops became trendy restaurants, galleries, and stores.  Around 2010 Billy’s Bakery, already famous in the Chelsea neighborhood for its gourmet cupcakes, moved into the retail space at No. 75.  Overall little has changed to the outward appearance of the building since its 1890s makeover.

photographs by the author

Queen Anne on Lower Broadway - 370 Broadway

The blocks of Broadway just south of Canal Street saw incredible change during the 19^th century.  In the 1830s and through the mid-1840s Richard Kingsland lived in the 25-foot wide house at No. 370 Broadway.  The well-to-do hardware merchant operated his business at No. 89 Maiden Lane.  But by 1848 the Kingsland house had been replaced by a commercial building where Collins & Brother, publishers operated through the 1870s.

That building, too, would not last.  On April 17, 1880 the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide reported that John Jay and Edmund B. Aymar intended to replace the structure with a “five-story brick store” extending through to Courtlandt Alley.   The men had chosen architect-brothers David and John Jardine to design the building.

All around the site stone-faced Italianate-style office and loft buildings had already appeared.  But D. & J. Jardine would go in a different, trendier direction.  They turned to neo-Grec, updating it with liberal splashes of Queen Anne decoration.  The red brick façade was ornamented with terra cotta tiles and panels featuring popular design elements of the period—sunflowers, ferns and stylized leaves.  The architects softened the corners of the openings with bullnosed brick.  The stone lintels were delicately carved with a floral motif, nearly unperceivable from the street; and the  sills dripped with rounded dentils.

The building was completed within the year, costing Jay and Aymar $35,000—about $825,000 today.  The store space on the first floor became home to Butler Brothers, “dealers in hosiery and notions,” while the upper floors were reserved for light manufacturing.  William Maas & Co., “manufacturers of jet goods and jewelry,” occupied the second and third floors.  The fourth and fifth floors were joined with No. 368 Broadway by internal doorways. Here Danzig & Feuchtwanger made underwear and Danzig Brothers produced ladies’ suits.  A central skylight provided additional light to the interior of all the floors.

The clothing factories on the uppermost floors employed about 100 girls.  Wood-burning stoves not only provided warmth during the winter months, but heated the smoothing irons.   When the floors were closed up on the evening of January 7, 1882 at least one of the stoves was left burning. 

Just after 6:00 that night William H. Hall, a Butler Brothers salesman, was standing under the skylight area.  He glanced up to see the glow of flames on the fourth floor.  Firemen rushed to the building and lugged their fire hoses as far as the third floor, where they found the stairway boarded up.

“They were compelled to retreat, and then carried their hose up ladders placed against the rear of the building on Courtlandt-alley,” reported The New York Times the following day.  Other fire companies responded and hoses were hauled to the roofs of adjoining buildings.  As they fought the fire, the fourth and fifth floor windows on Broadway burst out, showering the sidewalk with glass.  An hour after it was discovered, the fire was extinguished.

The two top floors were burned out and the lower floors were heavily damaged by water.  The Times said they were “deluged.”  Butler Brothers lost about $25,000 in stock; Wm. Maas & Co. between $35,000 and $40,000; and the two clothing manufacturers together lost between $10,000 and $15,000. 

“The building is owned by the Hon. John Jay, and can be put in proper repair for $5,000,” said The Times.  “The fire is supposed to have originated from the upsetting of a stove.”

A month later, on February 3, plans were filed for repairs to the building.  The Times’ estimate was not far off.  Contractor E. Smith placed the cost at $4,677.

On April 14, 1888 Edmund B. Aymar sold his one-third share in the property to Jay’s wife, Eleanor, for $51,667.  Wm. Maas & Co. was still in the building, along with its related firm Mass, Blum & Co., which manufactured leather goods.  Wm. Maas & Co. had been organized in 1867 and by 1886 was, according to Finance and Industry “one of the most prominent houses engaged in manufacturing novelties and fancy goods.”  It not only manufactured, but imported its goods.

By now they had taken an additional floor at No. 370 Broadway and established a large factory in Harlem.  Finance and Industry called the Broadway premises “very commodious and spacious…admirably arranged and equipped with every appliance and facility for the display of the varied stock, and the convenience of customers.”  The authors called William Maas and M. Blum, “gentlemen of the highest character and integrity, who are thoroughly conversant with every detail of the business, and are constantly placing before the trade the latest novelties.” 

The top floor of the building was leased by Israel Levy, proprietor of the Excelsior Cloak Manufacturing Company.  His good fortune began a downturn on October 27, 1888 when he was arrested for fraud.  Robert Kell charged “that Levy had fraudulently disposed of his stock and cash, and then offered to settle with his creditors at 40 cents on a dollar.”   Levy managed to pull together the hefty $5,000 bail; more than $125,000 in today’s dollars.

The Excelsior Cloak Manufacturing Company was bankrupted by the scandalous affair.  But Levy would be back in the newspapers—and jail—two years later.  Officials discovered that when Levy realized his business would crumble, he gave large amounts of cash (as much as $70,000 in one instance) to other garment manufacturers, then signed loan agreements with them for the same amounts—in effect borrowing his own money.

When the list of creditors was compiled during the bankruptcy proceedings, the “lenders” were included.  When they received their payouts, they simply gave Levy his money back.  Israel Levy and three others were arrested on October 10, 1890 “for alleged fraudulent disposition of property.”

The factory space formerly rented by Levy was taken over by Lichtenstein & Lyons, wanother cloak manufacturer.  In 1891 the firm employed a bright 18-year old as its bookkeeper.  Unfortunately, Julius Kleiblatt was taking home more than his salary.  The teen was arrested on September 11, 1891 on grand larceny charges.  “It was alleged that for some time he has been defrauding the firm by raising the pay rolls and also by overcharging customers,” said The New York Times.  “He was held for trial.”

In the meantime, Wm. Mass & Co. continued growing.  Seeger and Guernsey’s Cyclopaedia of the Unitd States-New York listed a seemingly unending list of the goods produced by the firm.  Among them were bar pins, hair pins (ivory and tortoise shell), leather novelties, pocketbooks, purses, combs, and hair ornaments.  The publication listed among the types of jewelry: amber, celluloid, coral, diamond, enameled, electro-plated, horn, ivory and mother-of-pearl, shell, rubber, silver, mourning, and hair jewelry.

The firm suffered a tremendous blow on September 4, 1898 when its five-story Harlem factory building was all but destroyed by fire.  The New York Times called it “one of the fiercest that the department has combated in months, and for an hour the destruction of the entire block of buildings was threatened.” 

One wall collapsed onto the street, nearly burying a fire engine and destroying it.  The cost to the owners, whom the newspaper called “manufacturers of bone, rubber, horn and ivory goods,” was estimated at $200,000.  The Times added “More than 300 persons, largely girls, will be thrown out of employment as a result.”

As the new century dawned, Wm. Maas & Co. abandoned No. 370 Broadway, to be replaced by linen dealers.  In 1905 Granite Linen Co. was here, joined by Crest Handkerchief Mfg. Co. and James Elliott & Co, purveyors of linens and handkerchiefs, by 1907.

James Elliott and Granite Linen manufactured a wide array of "white goods" -- Dry Goods Economist, February 19, 1921 (copyright expired)

On January 21, 1911 the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide reported that the John Jay Estate had sold the building to F. S. Jerome and James H. Wright.  The New York Times announced that the property “was resold almost immediately” to Carson G. Peck, who owned the building next door at No. 372.  Peck, who was a business partner of F. W. Woolworth, paid around $135,000 for the building; almost four times the original cost.

Dry goods firms would continue to call No. 370 home for decades.  James Elliott & Co. was still here into the 1920s, as was Tile Crafton Company, Inc., sellers of blankets and bedspreads. 

The Great Depression hit many companies hard, including the exporting firm run by 40-year old Julius Stern in the building in 1930.  Stern lived in Lawrence, Long Island and on the afternoon of November 6 that year he telephoned his doctor saying he was not feeling well.  It was the beginning of a most bizarre episode.

When Dr. J. Barnett arrived, Stern excused himself and went into another room.  “A few moments later he returned holding a bottle of poison, staggered a few steps and fell at the doctor’s feet,” reported the New York Times the next day.  Despite the doctor’s antidote and two hours of care at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Far Rockaway, he died from the poison.

“The police declared that Stern was an exporter with offices at 370 Broadway, and that he had been despondent because of business depression,” said The Times.

The second half of the century saw No. 370 filled mostly with small civic or political offices, including the Bureau of Public Information and the Committee for Better Transportation for New York.

Other than the obliterated ground floor, D. & J. Jardine’s design is largely intact.  Its deep red brick façade and crisp terra cotta ornamentation stand out sharply on this mostly gray monotone block of Broadway. 

photographs by the autor

The Lost Colored Orphan Asylum -- 5th Avenue and 44th Street

A romanticized etching appeared in A. Costello's Our Firemen: A History of the New York Fire Department in 1887 (copyright expired)

Contrary to the conception of some, racial bias and discrimination were as much a part of Northern mores as they were of the Deep South's.   The 1936 history From Cherry Street to Green Pastures: A History of the Colored Orphan Asylum at Riverdale-on-Hudson recalled that the orphanage was “Founded in stirring times, when race prejudice was rife.”

Those stirring times were 1834 when two Quaker women, Anna Shotwell and her niece, Mary Murray, discovered that black orphans, unlike their white counterparts, were either confined to the alms house or to the streets to fend for themselves.    The New-York Daily Tribune later reported “Their only place of refuge was the Alms House at Bellevue, where colored children are mingled with the adult inmates, exposed in consequent to very corrupting influences, and imperfectly furnished with the means for any kind of instruction.”

The women relentlessly badgered city leaders “trying to make the officials understand that they were only storing up trouble for themselves if they did not find homes, education and a chance for self-respecting employment for hapless negro boys and girls.”  They also appealed to friends and wealthy citizens for funding.

In 1836 they purchased a house on 12^th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.  The purchase was necessary because no property owner would lease to a group housing black children.   With the house ready to receive orphans, three Quaker women headed to the almshouse.  They rescued 11 children who were being housed in the cellar there.   But there was a problem.  According to the 1936 history, “They could not be taken to their new home by carriage, for no coachman would drive negro children, yet several of them were too small to walk.”

Anna Shotwell picked up one of the toddlers and told Mary Murray and the other woman, “I’ll carry this one if thee will take the others.”  And a rather extraordinary pilgrimage through the streets of Manhattan was made to what the women called “the cottage.”

But the “cottage” would not suffice for long.  The group of women lobbied for funds to build an appropriate orphanage and school.   On December 12, 1842 the New-York Daily Tribune reported that work had commenced on the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue just north of the Croton Reservoir (now the site of the New York Public Library).  “Twenty lots of ground were appropriated for the purpose by the Corporation of the City, and private subscriptions to a considerable amount of have been received for the same object.”

The location, between 43^rd and 44^th Streets, was undeveloped and rocky.  Fifth Avenue was still a rutty, dirt road this far north.   But the high location and open lands provided fresh air and sunshine, highly prized attributes for Victorian orphanages.

The Tribune noted “Such an Institution was thought to be especially needed, because these children, although the most wretched of orphans, were virtually excluded from all the existing Orphan Asylums.”

The Asylum opened in May 1843.  It was an impressive brick structure sitting on a high basement faced in fieldstone.  Three-story pilasters separated the openings of the slightly-projecting central section, above which sat a classical pediment.   The New-York Tribune would report “Mr. Joseph B. Collins states that the Asylum for Colored Orphans was erected at an expense of $20,000, which had been procured in donations by the exertions of a few ladies.”   That amount would translate to about $650,000 today.

A primitive water color dated 1847 shows the unpaved 5th Avenue, the Croton Reservoir at 42nd Street, boulders and a shanty.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York  http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYW3AOT9M&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

“Shortly after the house was opened the Mayor and Common Council paid a visit and were so pleased that they gave the Association twenty additional lots.  This permitted the institution to keep two or three cows and to plant a vegetable garden,” reported the Asylum’s centennial history.

Only children under 12 years of age were housed here.   Education at the Asylum included the learning of a trade for boys, and domestic skills for the girls.  Once a ward of the Asylum reached 12 years old, he or she was released as a farm laborer or domestic servant.

To supplement donations, the mangers of the Colored Orphan Asylum held fairs.  These were a common Victorian method for churches and other institutions to raise money.  On December 26, 1845 one of the managers wrote a letter to the Editor of the New-York Daily Tribune that dripped with slightly-veiled sarcasm.

“The interest manifested by H. Greeley, for improving the moral and physical condition of his fellow men, among whom I am pleased to observe he recognizes the colored man, induces me to take the liberty of directing his attention to ‘the Fair for the benefit of the Colored Orphan Asylum,’ got up entirely by colored people at their own suggestion.”

The orphanage was, by now, housing 145 children and costs were on the increase.  The letter ended saying “If you would pay a visit to the Asylum some Tuesday or Friday, you would, I think, be gratified to witness an assemblage of happy faces—made so by those who can sympathise with suffering humanity, regardless of the shade of complexion—and in the advancement of mind and morals he would rejoice that so large a number had been rescued from the contamination and degradation which their helpless condition must have subjected them.”

 

Etching from the collection of the New York Public Library

The Tribune followed up on the success of the fair on January 12, 1846.  “To their credit it is announced that on Saturday they paid over to the Institution nearly seven hundred dollars, beside presenting the inmates with a large quantity of cakes and other dainties.”  The newspaper concluded its article with a remark unthinkable to modern readers.  “This shows that they rightly appreciate and gratefully acknowledge the benefaction to their race conferred by the Society.”

But by the end of the year, the $700 was gone and the managers were once again pleading for donations.  On December 11 they wrote “The anxiety arising from the care of so large an establishment can scarcely be realized by those who have not deeply participated in its responsibilities.  The table must be daily supplied, clothing adapted to the coming season, and the moderate salaries and wages of those employed cannot be withheld.”

On May 10, 1847 the Asylum celebrated its 11^th Anniversary with an exhibition by the children.  The New-York Daily Tribune said they “numbered about 100, and presented a pleasingly tidy and orderly appearance.  The exercises in singing, geography, arithmetic, etc. were most creditable alike to teachers and pupils.”

In his remarks to the audience Mr. Ketchum wondered at the fates of the children were it not for the asylum.  “Not a third of them would have been visible to our eyes; those would doubtless have sunk to their graves who are now rescued by these benevolent ladies, washed and clothed, fed and provided with a comfortable home.”   He recounted the story of a Southern slave holder who, after visiting the Colored Orphan Asylum, went home and freed his slaves.  “Now, the managers did not ask him to do that—but doubtless there were very glad of it!”

In February 1851 the number of orphans had risen to 114 with net expenses totaling about $281 per month.  The indefatigable managers continued to hold fairs and knock on doors for support.

When one of the teachers died in August 1852, Rev. J. W. Pennington, pastor of the black Presbyterian church at the corner of Prince and Marion Streets, headed to her funeral at the Asylum.  Black citizens were barred from riding in public omnibuses; so he sought alternative transportation to no avail.

He wrote to the Editor of The New York Times on September 25 “On the block above my house is a carriage-stand, where I stopped and attempted to negotiate for a hack, but $1.50 was the lowest cent I could get one for, to go the distance!  So in painful excitement I walked the entire distance, under the burning sun of one of our hottest days, getting there after the hour, and not fit for service.”

Pennington said “it is a hard case that a man should be compelled, in the public service, to walk ounce after ounce of his heart’s best blood out of him every day, and not be allowed to avail himself of the public conveyances designed to save time, health, and life…I shall be told that the majority of the public will object to my riding in the ‘busses.  Is that true?  Will the members of a Christian public object to me, a minister of Christ, using the facilities of a public conveyance, while about my Master’s business?”  He concluded his letter saying “I ask for simple justice at the hands of my countrymen.”

By 1860, with the number of orphans now at 180, the Asylum had managed to get assistance from the City—60 cents a week per orphan.  In desperation the Directors appealed to the Department of Public Charities for additional funds--$1 per child—at its May 24^th meeting.  The Department’s minutes showed that the request, “with a number of others of less importance,” was referred to the Committee of the Whole.

The Directors waited three weeks until the Department came to a resolution.   On June 14, according to The New York Times, “it was decided that in the future 70 cents per week should be paid to the Colored Orphan Asylum for each pauper child.”

The Asylum received three unlikely orphans on August 25, 1860.  On July 22 the W. R. Kibby, a slave brig of Boston, was found abandoned by the Crusader off Anguills, in Spanish waters.  It was hauled to New Orleans.  On August 14 the New Orleans Picayune reported “On opening the fore hatch, one of the men discovered a wooly head, and thinking it was some one of the negro stewards from the Crusader, stowed away in order to go North, he hailed him as such, but no response, and it proved to be a boy, one of the original cargo.”

In fact there were three African boys in the cargo hold; now in need of water and food after eight days of hiding.  The W. R. Kibby was ordered to be sailed to New York, “for the purpose of condemnation, she having been found derelict, and subsequently with African slaves on board.”

Upon reaching Manhattan, the boys were put in the Eldridge Street jail.    They captured the attention of United States District Attorney James I. Roosevelt.  Although it appears he was more moved by the intelligence they could provide than by humanitarian reasons.

On August 24 The New York Times reported that Roosevelt, “who has manifested much interest in the three African boys found on board of the slaver Kibby, has written to the President, suggesting that they should be released from their imprisonment in Eldridge-street Jail, and be placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in this City, where they can be instructed, and thus enable the Government to obtain the particulars of their capture, and other facts concerning the voyage of the Kibby, the fate of their several hundred comrades, and such information as would be of servtee in suppressing the Slave-trade.”

The newspaper added “The boys appear quite cheerful, though evidently at a loss to understand why they are shut up in prison.”

Older girls pose with hoops in the paved play yard.  Younger children sit on the steps.  From the collection of the New York Historical Society

On January 27, 1860 the children once again exhibited their learning for the public.   The New York Times said that the orphans, “in matters of personal cleanliness and robust health, would challenge comparison with the attendants of any free educational institution in this City.”   The writer seemed astounded at their aptitude.  “The musical taste and tenacity of memory exhibited in these performances were surprising.  The songs were in several instances led by a most diminutive specimen of the colored race, whose old-fashioned antics excited immense laughter, and on one occasion even evoked an encore.”

On April 12, 1861 the Confederate Army opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, sparking the Civil War.   The orphans on Fifth Avenue, seemingly a world away, were happily unaware--for now. 

On November 29, 1862 The Times reported on Thanksgiving celebrations.  “A glad sight it was to see the hundreds of these colored children, rescued from poverty and crime, and placed under the kindest and best Christian influences, fitting them for a lift of respectability and usefulness.”  It would be the last Thanksgiving dinner in the stately orphanage building.

In 1863 the Draft Lottery was established to augment troops fighting in the South.  But corrupt practitioners focused on the working class—primarily Irish immigrants—while the wealthy bought their way out of service.    A protest quickly disintegrated into a bloody riot; three days of murder, looting and arson in July with innocent blacks being strung up from lampposts, shot and stabbed.

It was not merely men in the mob; women and children joined in the looting.  On July 13 the rabble headed for the Asylum.  The following day The New York Times reported “The Orphan Asylum for Colored Children was visited by the mob about 4 o’clock…Hundreds and perhaps thousands of the rioters, the majority of whom were women and children, entered the premises, and in the most excited and violent manner they ransacked and plundered the building from cellar to garret.”

Items were tossed out of the upper windows and one little girl among the mob, 10-year old Jane Barby, was killed “by furniture which was thrown upon her.”

The newspaper estimated that there were perhaps 600 to 800 terrified children within the building.  “When it became evident that the crowd designed to destroy it, a flag of truce appeared on the walk opposite, and the principals of the establishment made an appeal to the excited populace, but in vain.”

The newspaper reported that the entire orphanage had been ransacked, “and every article deemed worth carrying away had been taken—and this included even the little garments for the orphans.”   Repeatedly the rabble tried to set the building on fire.  Chief Engineer Decker stood on the top step of the entrance “amid an infuriated and half-drunken mob of two thousand, and begged them to do nothing so disgraceful to humanity as to burn a benevolent institution, which had for its object nothing but good.  He said it would be a lasting disgrace to them and to the City of New-York.”

Decker’s pleas were in vain.  The mob wanted not only to burn the orphanage, but to murder the children inside.  “The institution was destined to be burned, and after an hour and a half of labor on the part of the mob, it was in flames in all parts.”

Children flee through the crowds at the orphanage burns.  One orphan, at far left, is being beaten and stomped -- Harper's Weekly, August 1, 1863 (copyright expired)

Five stage coach drivers, among them Paddy McCaffrey, and the members of Engine Company No. 18 saw around 20 of the orphans surrounded by the murderous mob.  “It hardly seems credible, yet it is nevertheless true, that there were dozens of men, or rather fiends, among the crowd who gathered around the poor children and cried out, ‘murder the d—d monkeys,’ ‘Wring the necks of the d—d Lincolnites,” reported The Times on July 17.  “Had it not been for the courageous conduct of the parties mentioned, there is little doubt that many, and perhaps all of those helpless children, would have been murdered in cold blood.”

The children miraculously escaped through the courageous actions of heroes like Paddy McCaffrey.  The 19^th Precinct Station House received “two hundred and sixteen of the children, none over twelve years of age, who had escape from their home by the rear as the dastardly and infamous mob forced an entrance in front and fired the building,” reported The Times. “These little ones would undoubtedly have been slaughtered had they not been carefully guided away.  They were sadly terrified on reaching the Station, but were reassured, housed, and kindly cared for by Sergeant Petty.”

Looters carry away furniture as the Colored Orphan Asylum burns to the ground -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

On August 16 all the children were conveyed to Randall’s Island.   Their orphanage was a blackened ruin.

On November 12, 1863 the Superintendent of Unsafe Buildings directed that the charred walls of the Colored Orphan Asylum be taken down.  Almost immediately, fund raising began to rebuild.  But not everyone thought it was such a good idea.

In 1863 the land around the orphanage site was no longer rural, rocky terrain.   The mansions of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens had begun creeping up the now-paved Fifth Avenue.   One reader of The New York Times, who preferred to remain anonymous, voiced his concerns in a letter to the editor on August 1.

“The location, however good for the purpose originally, is bad, very bad, at the present time.  The land is altogether too valuable.  It would sell quickly at one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars,--and why devote so costly a property for such a purpose?”

To support his argument, he offered a nearly preposterous prediction.  “This building has been recently burned by a mob; who can tell when the next asylum, on the same spot, may follow suit?  Better build at a distance from the mob, where they would not be likely to go, and out of this county.”

The children were housed at 51^st Street and Fifth Avenue for four years until the new Colored Orphan Asylum was completed far away at 143^rd Street.  Fine mansions soon occupied the site of the old orphanage; replaced in the 1896 by the elegant Sherry's restaurant; and in the 20^th century by soaring office towers.

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