The 1905 Wareham Apts -- No. 231 Lexington Avenue

At the turn of the last century massive apartment buildings dripping with French-style ornamentation rose throughout the city—many on the Upper West Side.  The expansive apartments—some including up to 15 rooms—were outfitted much like private homes.  The era of 20th century apartment living had arrived not with a bang, but with an explosion.

For the past two decades architect James E. Ware had busied himself with uptown commissions, designing mansions, rowhouses and other buildings like his monumental 12^th Regiment Armory.  But in May 1904 Ware looked to the Murray Hill neighborhood to design and erect an apartment building without the middle man developer.

On May 7 the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that James E. Ware & Sons were making plans for a six-story “flat building” for the Ware Realty Co.   Exactly one week later, the journal noted that the two old structures at Nos. 231 and 233 Lexington Avenue were in the process of being demolished.

Unlike the lavish apartment buildings rising along Upper Broadway, Ware’s more modest structure would target the professional upper middle class.   Completed within the year, the building was an interesting marriage of two currently-popular architectural styles.

The five upper stories, clad in red brick, were accented by neo-Federal window treatments—quoined surrounds at the outer openings; and splayed lintels and layered keystones.  Ware then splashed the façade with Beaux Arts elements—a stone balcony above the entrance supported by festooned brackets, and unexpected scrolled keystones with dripping carved garlands above four of the outer windows.  The openings along the side received deep, angled metal bays filled with handsome leaded glass.  These not only added a third dimension to the façade; but caught wafting summer breezes.

Delicate leaded glass filled the oriel windows. The scrolled keystone of the opening below was an architectural surprise.

The Ware family congratulated itself on the new $40,000 apartment building, complete with elevator, by naming it The Wareham.  There were three apartments per floor in the building, and potential residents could choose from three, four or five rooms with rents ranging from $600 to $900 per year.  The rent on the most expensive apartment would equal just over $2,000 a month in 2015.

An advertisement in the New-York Tribune on August 13, 1905 called attention to The Wareham, a “new apartment house.”  The ad’s description of the apartments as “housekeeping,” distinguished them from “non-housekeeping” apartments which had no kitchens.  Those more upscale, or sometimes bachelor, apartment houses provided common dining rooms in the building for the residents.  The advertisement boasted that The Wareham had “everything modern.”

New-York Tribune, October 22, 1911 (copyright expired)

As intended, The Wareham filled with financially comfortable professionals.  Among the first was pharmacist Charles Neal Leigh and his family.  He had earned his pharmaceutical degree in 1896 with a thesis entitled “The Model Drug Clerk.”

The Leigh family had several pets in the Wareham; but one in particular caused a stir in January 1907.    On Thursday January 3, a kitten strayed from the apartment.  When it was still missing on Saturday, Charles Leigh placed an advertisement in a newspaper offering a $5 reward “for a tortoiseshell long haired kitten.”

But on Sunday morning when he opened his newspaper he was shocked to see that a typo resulted in his reward being $500.  The Sun reported “Several reporters went to see Mr. Leigh about it.  He refused to answer questions but wanted to know who in thunder could believe that any cat was worth $500.”

The tangled, involved story did not stop there.  The elevator men volunteered more information to the reporters.  The Leighs also had owned a fox terrier but “One of the men said that when the kitten disappeared the dog, which was much attached to the tabby (or tablet), fell ill from grief, or something, and died.”  Another elevator man deemed it canine suicide.

A female employee of The Wareham chimed in, saying that the terrier was simply ill and that its death, “which occurred in the bathtub of the Leigh apartments, was due to an overdose of medicine administered by Mr. Leigh.”   The elevator men then said that the Leighs’ West Indian maid, “was a much affected over the double bereavement as her mistress and cried much.”

Temporarily, news reports were more focused on the dead dog, Jim, than on the lost kitten.  The Sun reported “The gossip of the Wareham was that the dog…was treated with more consideration than most children.  He wore a coat of Persian lamb’s wool and little boots to keep his feet dry and warm in inclement weather.”

But Charles Neal Leigh and the building staff soon had more important things to deal with than how the press reported on the pampered, deceased terrier.   The first of the young boys seeking $500 arrived at the apartment house only a few hours after the newspaper hit the streets.

He brought along a cat in a bag.  “It was a long haired cat that looked as if it had seen better days and many of them,” said The Sun.  “It was about as far from kittenhood as it could get and be alive.”  The janitor sent the boy away and the cat was let out of the bag.

Not far behind were two other boys, each with a cat in a bag which they insisted was the missing feline. Once again the janitor ousted them; although these boys complained that they should at least receive car fare for their trouble.  “They also released the creatures at the door.”

Almost before the janitor could close the door two elderly women appeared, each with a cat.  “They tried to convince the janitor that the cats were the missing one, but the janitor declared that the Leigh kitten was not twins and that he guessed they would have to take the cats away again.”  The spinsters did so, but not before protesting that if they could just show the cats to the Leighs they would no doubt accept them “for consolation.”

The disgruntled women remarked that anyone who could afford to pay $500 for a missing cat surely ought to be able to pay $100 for “the fine specimens they had.”

Lexington Avenue soon had what was deemed by one newspaper “the cat line.”  A Wareham employee was stationed at the door to keep the line moving along.   By nightfall the neighborhood was filled with a cat population released by young boys hoping to reap a windfall.  The Sun noted “No boy took his cat away with him, and the Sunday night concert in the neighborhood was unusually strong.”

Another respected resident was Dr. Charles H. Duncan, who came from a family of physicians.  His grandfather and two of his uncles were doctors.  Duncan’s professional career was astonishingly broad.  Before he moved into The Wareham he had been Mechanical Engineer of the Illinois Steel Company; a co-founder of the Volunteer Hospital; and was now an Attending Surgeon and Genito-Urinary Specialist in the Volunteer Hospital of New York City.

Dr. Charles H. Duncan -- Autotherapy, 1918 (copyright expired)

He was most noted, however, for developing Autotherapy, a rather remarkable precursor to the modern day inoculation process developed by Pasteur.  Duncan’s approach to “curing disease with its own poison” involved removing bacteria from a patient and developing a vaccine to be used only in that patient.  “Similar bacteria taken from another patient may be useless,” he explained.

In 1924 The Wareham underwent “alterations.”  The arcane documentation for the work is unspecific; however surviving interiors suggest that some apartments received a 1920s update.

Tragedy struck The Wareham on February 9, 1926 when Mildred Russell, who was working as the elevator operator, accidentally fell down the shaft.  She died instantly of a fractured skull.

The horrible accident led to a bizarre court battle that dragged on for years.  Mildred’s father received $5,000 in Workmen’s Compensation benefits and $750 from the owners of the building, the 231 Lexington Avenue Corporation.  But he was not satisfied and filed three suits against the building and two employees.

The owners’ defense was surprising.  They simply declared they had no idea who Mildred Russell was, and she was not employed by them.   It appeared that the building superintendent had made a side agreement with her.  The president of the corporation proclaimed “I never hired the girl, and never told him to hire the girl.  I didn’t need anybody.  In fact, I never wanted any help.  The house was run very nicely without help.”

A far happier incident occurred on February 16, 1939 when resident Elsie Compton’s automobile headed across the Henry Hudson Bridge just after noon.  At the wheel was Mary Kindrick, “a salesgirl.”  The women were gleefully surprised when the car was stopped on the opposite side of the span by the New York City Parkway Authority.   Elsie’s vehicle was the 18 millionth car to cross the bridge and she was awarded a 50-trip book of toll tickets.

As the Lexington Avenue blocks changed drastically throughout the rest of the century, The Wareham apartments did not.  Today there are still three apartments per floor, other than the top floor where duplexes extend to a penthouse level.   And James E. Ware’s handsome building survives as a reminder of a time when upper middle-class families filled the gap between tenements and lavish flats.

photographs by the author

The Childs Restaurant Building -- 377 Fifth Avenue

The upper floor appear to have lost their ornamentation while, in fact, they are intact as designed.

In 1898 Prominent Families of New York commented on New York’s “many famous merchants in the closing years of the last and the first half of the present century.”  The tome opined, “it is not too much to say that foremost among the most energetic and enterprising of them were those who were of the intelligent and thrifty Scottish race.”

Among those Scottish-born businessmen was Adam Norrie who arrived in New York in 1820.  Norrie joined the already successful firm of Boorman & Johnston and amassed a substantial fortune.  He was known not only for his brilliance in business; but for his generous philanthropies. 

In 1853, Norrie’s only son, Gordon, constructed a stately brownstone mansion at 377 Fifth Avenue.  The exclusive tone of the block was evidenced by his next-door neighbor at No. 379—Cornelius Vanderbilt.  Gordon and his wife, the former “Miss Lanfear of New Orleans,” had three daughters and two sons.   In the 1880s, sons A. Lanfear Norrie and Adam Gordon Norrie were both attending Columbia College.  One by one the children would marry—each wedding a socially prominent event—leaving their parents alone in the Fifth Avenue mansion with their servants.

The first decade of the 20^th century saw the Norries' neighborhood drastically changed.  Two blocks to the south the Astor mansions had been replaced with the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.  Just steps away from the Norrie mansion the massive B. Altman & Co. department store stood at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 35^th Street.

But unlike most of his neighbors, Gordon Norrie stayed in his vintage brownstone.   Then, on the afternoon of November 8, 1909, he died at the family’s summer home in New London, Connecticut.  Ten days later it was announced that he had left “the jewelry, paintings, statuary, books and other contents of his town house at 337 Fifth avenue to his wife, as well as the country home and its contents at New London.”

In 1908 the Norrie house (third from the corner) was still a private home, despite the changing neighborhood.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Before long Norrie’s widow left the house and it was gently converted for business purposes.  When the shop of Crocker, “Mourning Specialty House,” next door at No. 375 was damaged by fire in 1917, the firm moved into No. 377.  The specialized store sold mourning apparel and related accessories—so important in the Edwardian era.

Throughout the next two years the “basement store” and the upper floors would be leased to various small businesses, including the Duryea War Relief office in 1919.  That year, on August 19, Nina Larrey Duryea wrote to the editor of The New York Times pleading that thousands of children in Lille, France, “are in a grave physical condition.”  Calling them, “maimed and depleted,” she explained that the Duryea group sought to send them to the country, “where they could live in tents set up in the big open fields and receive medicinal treatment.”  The letter urged readers to send cash to the 377 Fifth Avenue office so “these innocent little ones, who suffered for four years in a way that no American child has ever suffered, may be saved for the future of France.”

Before long the Duryea War Relief office would have to find other accommodations.   Two months earlier, on June 25, 1919, gossip circulated that Emily L. Norrie had sold the former family home.  “According to one rumor a large retail concern has bought the building and intends to alter the structure for its exclusive occupancy,” reported The Sun.

Finally the hearsay was put to rest when on October 19, 1919 The New York Times reported, “The old Norrie residence at 377 Fifth Avenue, one of the landmarks of the section, was sold yesterday.”  The Childs Restaurant Company had paid $450,000 for the property as a site of another restaurant in its extensive chain.  On the same day The Sun reported, “The Childs company will erect a modern business building for its exclusive use on the plot.  The building is expected to be six of seven stories high.”

Rather than erect a new building, the firm commissioned the architectural firm of Severance & Van Alen to convert the brownstone mansion into a modern commercial building.  Completed within ten months, the limestone-faced restaurant and office building revealed no hint of its former life.

When this shot was taken in 1920, Fruhauf Brothers was the only upper tenant.  Architectural Record January 1921 (copyright expired)

The Childs Restaurant chain was as well known for its architecture as for its food.  William Van Alen (best remembered for his designing of the Chrysler Building) designed at least two structures for Childs.  The completed 377  Fifth Avenue was so restrained in its ornamentation that it appeared nearly unfinished.  There was no cornice and the tall base was severely planar.  A sixth floor opening was ornamented with a broken pediment and urn (echoing the two classic urns perched on the spartan parapet) and a French-styled Juliet balcony.  Only the spandrels of the second floor, with delicate festoons, were ornamented.

The double-height base featured a broad show window with an handsome pseudo-fanlight.  Architectural Record January 1921 (copyright expired)

The first tenant of the upper floors was clothing manufacturer Fruhauf Brothers & Co., which took the fifth floor.  Henry Fruhauf was highly involved in local politics and interested in police work.  Later, in July 1925, he would be appointed “Special Deputy Commissioner” by Police Commissioner Enright.

The New York Times explained on July 19 that “He has been connected with the Police Department for the last three years as Honorary Captain and Honorary Inspector.  The position of Special Deputy Commissioner bestows most of the privileges of a Commissioner, but carries no salary.”

Fruhauf’s name would be in the newspapers for another reason that year when he organized the “Five Cent Fare Club.”   When Mayor John F. Hyland opposed a proposed hike in public transportation fares, the clothing merchant jumped into action.   His “club” was actually a petition.  He started with the names of his own employees, and by August 1925 had accumulated over 12,600 signatures.  He explained his motivation to reporters saying that “with the continuance of a five-cent fare, enabling his employes to get out of the congested sections of the city to where they could live comfortably, he would have no difficulty in getting labor.”

Childs remained in the first floor space for decades.  The country’s entry into World War II created changes in the lifestyles of Americans.  Commodities like sugar, silk and gasoline were no longer as easily available.    In 1942, the Government put a freeze on tin and, as a result, alloys became scarce in the private sector.

On April 1, 1942, The New York Times reported that “Silver is taking the place of white metal in costume jewelry, it became evident yesterday." The alloy consisted of 90 per cent tin.  The restriction caused the closing of tenant Leo Glass & Co.

The jewelry firm announced that it was shutting down for the duration of the war.  “We are retiring because we cannot get any of the types of metals which we are accustomed to sell, including brass and white meal, which form the foundation of our business,” said Leo Glass, president.  He added “it was patriotic not even to attempt to manufacture novelties and costume jewelry of raw materials which are essential to the manufacture of defense products.”

The Childs Company sold the building in 1945, moving its restaurant out after a quarter of a century.  Throughout the remainder of the century the building saw a wide variety of tenants, many from the novelty and accessory industries.  In the 1940s the Newark Glove Company, the showrooms of the Amber and Filflex Foundations, and the Valjean Pearl Corp showrooms were in the building.

The 1950s saw 377 Fifth Avenue home to Handbag Fashions, and to Majestic Specialties, Inc., manufacturers of “handbag frames, compacts and parts.”  And in 1966 Sportsmen’s Affiliates, Inc. offered life insurance for professional athletes in their 4^th floor offices.

The block of Fifth Avenue, once home to millionaires, still reflects the Edwardian changes.

Severance & Van Alen’s elegant street level façade has been replaced with an uninteresting modern storefront.  Where Fifth Avenue shoppers and businessmen stopped for lunch in the 1920s, tourists now pick through cheap t-shirts and souvenirs.  The upper floors, however, remain essentially intact since the brownstone façade of Gordon Norrie’s home was stripped off and replaced with limestone.

photographs by the author

"The Waist House" No. 865 Broadway

By the mid-19th century, the tradition of Manhattan’s fashionable residential neighborhoods was a northward migration away from the ever-expanding commercial districts.  But the residential nature of the blocks between Union Square and 23^rd Street was astoundingly short-lived.

When E. W. Clawson erected his fine four-story brick home at No. 865 Broadway in 1843 he most likely anticipated spending many years here.  And yet only seven years later the Clawson family was gone and their home taken over by the Esther S. Leverett school.    That year The New York Mercantile Union Business Directory noted that along with Esther, Alphonse Perrin and D. Cherbuliez were instructing young ladies in French.

Joseph D. Beers owned the building by the 1860s.  As the War of the Rebellion raised patriotic fervor, the former Clawson home was leased to Major Halasko’s Drill Academy.  The military school staged an exhibition at Niblo’s Garden on the afternoon of Saturday, January 24, 1863.

The New York Times reported “There were in attendance about sixty of the pupils, who, by the way, style themselves New-York Cadets.  The exercises opened with Company drills, and then an amusing play, so cast as to bring the entire class upon the stage, and to give them an opportunity of exhibiting their proficiency in drill, was given.”  The newspaper noted that the Garden was “crowded to its utmost capacity” and the audience was “evidently greatly pleased with the exercises.”

Joseph Beers was an active player in the real estate field.  In 1869 he had the brick house totally renovated.  Although the alteration permit listed Charles B. Wood as the owner; there is little doubt that Beers still owned the building and would continue to do so for decades.  It was most likely a clerical error.  Charles B. Wood was an architect and the permit omitted the architect’s name.

The renovations resulted in a stylish cast iron façade and storefront and an up-to-date mansard roof.  Cast iron was recently popular for commercial structures, not only because of the rapid process of bolting the new face onto the structure, but for its relatively low expense and the fireproof qualities.  The new “Commercial Palace” styled façade pretended to be stone with rusticated piers running up the sides and vermiculated keystones over the openings.

The revamped structure became home to Howard & Co., jewelers.  Like other upscale jewelers, the firm also offered “real bronzes, of fine make and finish,” and other expensive decorative items.   But perhaps its most profitable business was in Waltham watches.  Howard & Co. was the exclusive agent for that firm.

Howard & Co. ambitiously entered the mail-order market by 1872 when it targeted the Far West in an advertisement in Appletons’ Journal.   Readers requesting a catalog and price list could order a watch, delivered “by Express,” with no obligation to pay until the watch was examined.  The advertisement advised “Residents of California, Oregon, and other distant places will find a great advantage in dealing with us.”

An advertisement in the New-York Tribune listed several of the models available in the store.  Included were “the new small-size Ladies’ Stem-winder,” presentation watches, and “a full line of Stem-winding Watches for gentlemen.”

But the Howard & Co. soon failed.  Perhaps all those watches being shipped to the West with no down-payment and no way of tracking down the recipient proved to be a bad idea.  On December 22, 1872 The New York Times reported that Howard & Co…have reduced the prices on their goods twenty percent, having determined to close out their stock.”  The newspaper said “Chains, rings, lockets, bracelets, &c., of elegant design, and especially suited for presents, may be purchased at this store at very low prices.”

Two years later, Charles B. Wood was called back to alter the structure again.  The mansard roof was replaced by a full fifth floor, faced in brick, which closely mimicked the architecture below.

The store space was taken over by a fashionable “hat and fur store.”  The shops along this stretch of Broadway catered to New York’s carriage trade.  Only Manhattan’s upper class could afford to shop at No. 865 Broadway in 1875.  Annie Johnson was not among them.

On Saturday evening, November 20 that year Annie strolled into the shop.  She browsed through several items, and then chose a hat.  When the clerk turned his back to wrap the item, he heard the door shut as Annie abruptly left the store.

The New York Times reported that “immediately after her departure the clerk missed a seal-skin sack valued at $200.”  The highly popular accessory was no small theft.  The price tag would translate to about $4,450 today.

Annie Johnson, who gave her occupation as a dressmaker, was subsequently arrested and held at a staggering $2,000 bail.  She “pleaded her innocence of the theft.”

By 1883 interest in Asian culture and decorative arts had swept the country, heavily influenced by the Aesthetic Movement.   Every up-to-date home had a room or at least a corner devoted to an Asian motif.   The store where Annie Johnson pilfered the sack was now home to The First Japanese Mfg. and Trading Co.  As Christmas neared that year, it advertised “Ornamental and useful holiday gifts in porcelain, bronze, silver, screens, cabinets, and curios.  An Inspection Solicited.”

The store used lectures by experts in home décor as an interesting marketing ploy—experts who no doubt stressed Asian decoration.   On Monday, February 15 1886 at 3:00 Edmund Russell gave “a lecture on the decorative arts” at the First Japanese Trading Company’s gallery.

An interesting advertisement appeared in The Sun later that year, on December 5.  The one-line ad informed shoppers that “Christmas Cheap Counters Are Ready.”

In the first years of the 1890s Harris Brothers, manufacturers of expensive gloves, held a long-term lease on the building.  The first signs of trouble appeared in late September, 1893 when The New York Times reported that the firm had sought to sell its lease.  “It seems the rental is $12,500 per year, until next May and $13,000 per year thereafter for five years.  There was no bid.”

Almost simultaneously, the Joseph Beers estate negotiated with John Pettit to trade the Broadway building for the Electrical Exchange Building on Washington Street.  The deal was conditional on Pettit’s being able to raise a loan of $150,000 on No. 865 Broadway.  When that did not happen the deal fell through and the Beers estate retained possession.

Unable to get out of its lease, Sigmund and Albert Harris continued to struggle on.  Their merchandise included ladies’ kid gloves, and suede and “castor mousquetaires.”  Three months later, as the holidays approached Harris Brothers launched a half-price sale to attract customers.  “Variety and quality unsurpassed,” promised the advertisement on December 9.

Although the firm “rallied temporarily,” according to The New York Times months later, business “afterward went down steadily.”  The Harris brothers were forced to declare bankruptcy.   The humiliation was too much for Albert.

On Saturday morning, October 6, 1894 he got up around 6:30 in his home at No. 103 East 72^nd Street.  Two days later The New York Times bluntly reported “Arising before the rest of the family, he went down into the parlor, and, after closing the heavy doors, blew his brains out.”

No one in the house heard the shot and it was not until a family member went to call him for breakfast and found his room empty, that his body was found.

Well-to-do Victorian families avoided the scandal of suicide and Albert’s was quickly hushed.  The report of the undertaker who was hired to remove the body simply read “sudden death.”  Sigmund had taken the pistol from the body.

When rumors of suicide reached the East 77^th Street Police Station, Policeman Walter Thompson investigated.  “The family told Thompson that the story of suicide was untrue; that Harris had died o heart failure, having been taken sick on Friday afternoon,” reported The Times.

But the whispers in the neighborhood persisted and Police Captain Strauss was unconvinced.  He sent a plain-clothed detective to the house “with the warning that if the full facts were not at once reported to the station house, every one in the house would be put under arrest.”

The Times wrote “This warning had the desired effect.”  Albert’s son and a family confidante, Charles Lessen, went to the station and laid out the facts.

Lessen explained “that the family had not intended to violate the law, but thought that they had a right to conceal the suicide.”  The Times noted that Harris “had been depressed for some time, owing to business troubles.”

For a few years immediately following Harris Brothers’ moving out, No. 865 Broadway was home to the Lindenborn Auction galleries.  In April 1895 one auction, lasting more than a full week, offered the entire contents of “Rophine Rouis, of Fifth Av.”  The exclusive “bric-a-brac and lamp store,” which also had a branch on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, had gone under.  D. Lindenborn’s auction advertisement mentioned “lamps, shades, and artistic furnishings.”

In a situation eerily similar to that of Albert Harris, two months after the auction sale, George W. Rouis, cousin of Rophine Rouis and former manager of the Fifth Avenue store, committed suicide by shooting himself in the right side of the head.

Following Lindenborn in the building was the John Forsythe Company.   The firm manufactured and sold men’s apparel and accessories; but this location would be solely dedicated to its women’s wear—the shirt waist.  The building was dubbed “The Waist House” by June 1899.

On Sunday February 18, 1900 Forsythe advertised its new line of “real rumchunda waists and squares.”  The three sidewalk-level show windows were given over to the new display which the ad promised “will produce a profound sensation.  Nothing like it has ever been attempted before.”

 

John Forsythe deemed the new goods to be on the cutting edge of fashion.  “Ladies going abroad this year will find Waists made from the Real Rumchunda Squares extremely fashionable.  We have them in larger assortment, and in more exclusive styles than any house in Europe.”  The advertisement mentioned the “Special Exhibit on Third floor, where you may buy the Waists and Neckwear to match or the pattern lengths as you desire.”

John Forsythe advertised his hand-knit sweater as "indispensable for Skating, Riding, Driving, Golf, Etc."  The New-York Tribune, December 15, 1901 (copyright expired)

The Waist House continued to prosper.  In 1904 Forsythe renewed his lease—signing a new agreement for 10 years at $18,500 per year.  The following year he grabbed the opportunity to purchase the building.    His line of ladies’ apparel grew and in 1906 had made the third floor the Corset Department where the well-known Redfern whalebone corsets could be purchased.  In other areas of the building women could shop for walking suits and shirt waists, including “pure Irish linen hand embroiders shirts waists” and “Baby Irish crochet lace waists.”

In September 1907 John Forsythe brought his men’s and women’s businesses together when he expanded into the former Ditson Building next door.  On September 22 The New York Times announced “John Forsyth, [sic] originally using the single building at 865 Broadway, has taken over the adjoining structures up to and including the Eighteenth Street corner, and by reconstruction has converted the whole into one establishment with 185 feet of street frontage.”

It was apparently an over-aggressive move.  In June 1910 the Bank for Savings initiated foreclosure proceedings and on August 5 the building was sold.  Within two weeks the buyer, Edward Kates, had resold the property to Mrs. E. Blumenthal.  Her ownership, too, would be short lived.  On June 1, 1911 the building was sold in yet another foreclosure sale.  The purchaser, ironically enough, was the Beers Realty Corporation.

Beers moved the fire escape from the rear to the front of the building in 1912.  That same year it leased the store and basement to Fry and Friedsam, ribbon merchants.  That fall the Plymouth Raincoat store moved in.  It was a temporary move for Plymouth, prompted by being “ousted” from its Sixth Avenue store.  An October 24 advertisement explained “Our store leased over our heads by unreasonable landlord, forcing us to vacate with large stock on hand…We have therefore taken Temporary Store at 865 B’way.”

Beers Realty still owned No. 865 Broadway when it leased the entire building to the New York Edison Company for a term of 15 years in December 1922.  The firm kept the first floor retail space intact, while converting the upper floors to “factory” space.

Despite its 10-year lease, New York Edison Company was apparently gone from the building by 1939 when Womrath Book Shops and Libraries, Inc. took an entire floor “which will be occupied by the firm’s mail-order department,” advised The New York Times on December 2.  The following year Imperial Drug Exchange took a full floor.

When Kitty Less bought the building in 1941 the decline of the neighborhood was reflected in the property values.  “The tax valuation of the parcel is $53,500” reported The Times, “of which $42,500 is on the land.”    The $11,000 building value would amount to only about $177,000 today.

Throughout the rest of the century the building would see the comings and goings of small businesses like the wholesale sunglasses firm doing business here in 1951 and ’52.  The company advertised “aviation type” sunglasses at $4.20 per dozen.

By the turn of the 21^st century the neighborhood saw a revitalization and many of the vintage structures along Broadway were restored as trendy restaurants and shops rediscovered Union Square.  No. 865 has not been so lucky to date.  The cast iron façade, veiled by the zig-zagging fire escape, wears a paint of dull and flaking maroon paint.  But its location within the Ladies’ Mile Historic District promises that a renaissance is just a matter of time.

photographs by the author