Unlikely Survivors -- Nos. 354 and 355 Central Park West

While magnificent palaces facing Central Park rose along Fifth Avenue in the 1880s; Central Park West sat mostly undeveloped.  The problem was that land holders, sensing that the park-front lots would be highly desirable, priced them out of reach.  Somewhat unexpectedly, Riverside Drive became the West Side's mansion thoroughfare, instead.  

Along Central Park West first the Dakota, and then other scattered multi-family buildings were erected.  They sat in a half-built landscape of board fences and overgrown lots.   But in 1892 developer-builder Edward Kilpatrick made an exception by laying plans for five private homes—Nos. 351 to 355 Central Park West at the northwest corner of 95^th Street.

Kilpatrick commissioned Gilbert A. Schellenger to design the row.  Like the other architects busy on the Upper West Side at the time, he turned to historic styles which he then liberally splashed with his own modern touches.  The resulting merchant-class homes, completed in 1893, were generally Renaissance-inspired.  The corner house, No. 351, stood out, being a story taller than the other four and grander with its impressive 95^th Street entrance.

Nos. 352 through 355 were nearly identical, designed in an A-B, A-B pattern.  Each was accessed by a shallow stoop, about four steps tall, and featured a two-story faceted oriel.  Schellenger drifted into Romanesque Revival in Nos. 352 and 354 with arched parlor openings and medieval-style carvings below the bays.  Faced in beige Roman brick and trimmed in brownstone, the residences were light and cheery compared to the dark brownstone fronts of the previous generation.

The brick homes sat on limestone bases.  No. 351 at the corner hogged the attention.  photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

Brothers Julius P. and James C. Cahen were among Kilpatrick’s first buyers.  The brothers were in business together, partners in J. P. Cahen and Brother.  Although their father, Dr. Salmon P. Cahen was a highly-respected physician and an officer in the West-Side German Dispensary; they opted for the silk trade.

On April 5, 1894 The New York Times reported that James C. Cahen had purchased No. 354 for $25,000 and that Julius had purchased No. 355 for the same price.  The newspaper may have simply gotten the address wrong; but Julius bought and moved into No. 353, on the south side of James, instead.  The brothers each paid the equivalent of $680,000 in today’s dollars.

Purchasing No. 355, instead, was William F. Carroll and his wife, Catherine.  The title was transferred to Catherine C. Carroll on June 4 that year.  Carroll was active in real estate on the Upper West Side and it is unclear whether the couple lived in the house; or merely leased it.

In either case, the families in Nos. 354 and 355 Central Park West lived respectable and quiet lives in their 10-room homes.  Julius Cahen became secretary of the Board of Trustees of the West-Side German Dispensary (James was its president).  His wife focused her attentions on the New York City Mothers’ Club, rising to President in the first years of the new century.  The goals of the organization were “to promote the education of women in the wise care of children and to uplift and improve the condition of mothers in all ranks of life.”

The New-York Tribune ran a weekly column entitled “Things to Think About,” which presented readers riddles and puzzles to solve.  Those who sent in the solution would be rewarded with their names printed in the newspaper and their choice of a small prize.  One puzzle was related to “Little Men and Little Women.”  It was apparently a favorite pastime in the Cahen household.

On June 11, 1905 14-year old Harold A. Cahen won the prize for the previous week.  His little sister, Edith, who was five years younger, would get her share of the spotlight three years later.  On May 24 the Tribune reported “The neatest and best three answers were contributed by Edith R. Cahen, aged twelve years.”  It seems Edith was thinking of her brother when she chose her prize.  The newspaper noted that she “wishes a boy’s Tribune watch.”

By now the Carrolls were definitely leasing the house next door.  Despite an announcement in the New-York Tribune on June 4, 1902 that William had sold No. 355 to L. M. Aldrich; the deal was never completed.  In 1904 the house was being leased by Gerald Brooks, the son of Belvidere Brooks, general superintendent of the Western Union Telegraph Company; and by 1907 to newspaper broker William H. Gutelius.

Gutelius and his wife had two sons, William and Sylvester (known fondly as Buster).  The virtuous William left home in February 1907 for missionary work in China.  The younger Buster had adventures of his own in mind at the time.

Buster, 16 years old, was a student in the Preparatory Department of the College of the City of New York.  His best friend was John McWilliams Wylie, the 15-year old son of the pastor of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, next door to the Gutelius house.  The boys realized at some point that they had a “secret passage” between their homes.  An iron cover in the wall below No. 355 opened into the basement of the Scotch Presbyterian Chapel.  “From the chapel the passage led to the church basement, and from there up into the back yard of the rectory,” explained The New York Times later.  The two best friends would use the route in laying their plans for a Tom Sawyer-worthy exploit.

In April items began missing from both households. The cook in the Wylie house could not find her iron cake turner.  A brand new candlestick, tin plates and cups, candles and matches were suddenly gone.  And a broom from the Gutelius kitchen went missing.  And then on April 26 both boys disappeared as well.

After they had loaded up a crate of supplies, they realized it was too heavy to carry from the Wylie back yard.  They tried to convince an expressman to help, but he refused.  So they were forced to leave it behind.  Carrying their suitcases and using the $25 they each obtained by selling their bicycles, they boarded a train for Port Jervis, New York.

Their dreams of roughing it in the mountains seemed to be coming impossibly true when they found an abandoned farmhouse just over the Pennsylvania border.  Young Wylie later said “We bought an axe from Mr. Maloney, the storekeeper and postmaster [in Mill River, Pennsylvania], and we asked him what was good for us to cook.  He told us flapjacks and eggs and salt pork made good rations, and Mrs. Maloney, his wife, showed us how to cook.”

They had explained to the couple that they were students in a private school in New York and “were in search of some needed outdoor recreation.”  They had money and one boy carried a rifle, so everything seemed in order to the Maloneys.  Mrs. Maloney gave them some blankets for the cold nights and J. F. Maloney loaned them an old “sheet iron stove.”

Living in the old farmhouse was too civilized for the adventurers, and after a few days they moved into a “nice, warm, dry cave.”   They tried catching fish, and spent much time cutting firewood and honing their culinary skills.  They happened on a stone quarry where the boss told them he would hire them when they ran out of money.  “Breaking rocks is first class exercise,” he told the boys.

But the runaway teens’ hopes would soon be dashed.  When they had failed to come home from school that Friday afternoon, their parents had reported them missing.   By Tuesday the New York newspapers reached the Mill Rift Post Office.  Postmaster Maloney became suspicious.  When Wylie and Gutelius returned, he compared their faces with the photographs.  Rather than confronting them and risking scaring them away, he quietly mailed off a letter to Rev. David G. Wylie.  On the morning of May 3 Dr. Wylie and his other son arrived at the post office while the Gutelius family waited nervously on Central Park West for word.

Maloney sent a neighbor, Samuel Wilson, to the mountain cave with word that the postmaster needed to see him.  Leaving Buster cooking bacon and flapjacks, he rushed to the town.  When he entered Maloney’s store, he was confronted with his father and brother.  The quixotic adventure was over.

Buster Guletius was sent for, and The New York Times reported “When he learned what had happened he promptly ‘threw up the sponge,’ but it required a great deal of persuasion to induce him to return to New York with the Wylies.”  Before he would do so, he insisted that the entire party have dinner with them in the cave.  They accepted.

The Times wrote “Dr. Wylie was much impressed by the natural habitation, and was delighted to find that the boys had been living in a comfortable manner.  However, they had but $2 left.”

The following morning the New-York Tribune ran a headline reading “Cave Boys Come Home.”  The newspaper advised “The erstwhile cave men, or cave boys, did not willingly leave their subterranean retreat in a mountainside near Millville, Penn., but they came back at the earnest persuasion of Dr. Wylie.”

The Guletius family left No. 355 within the year.  William and Catherine Carroll continued to lease the house to a series of renters.  In 1912 Thomas Minal moved in; and in 1915 Charles Bloeh signed a lease.  By now the Carrolls were living in Colorado Springs.

By 1920 the Cahen family had left Central Park West.  The family of Frank Lowenfels now called No. 354 home.   Lowenfel was an executive with Julius Schmoll & Co., “dealers in hides,” at No. 150 Nassau Street. Working in the Lowenfel household seems to have been a challenge; for Mrs. Lowenfel was continuously looking for a maid.

On April 22, 1920 she placed an advertisement for a “chambermaid, waitress,” noting clearly that the family had “no children.”  The following year, in September, she placed another ad.  This one pointed out that she was looking only for a “white girl.”   Seven months later she was looking again.

On January 27, 1928 The New York Times announced that Morris Rothschild intended to erect two apartment buildings—one “on the church property, which comprises the south corner of Central Park West and Ninety-sixth Street, and the other “surrounding the north corner of Ninety-fifth Street and Central Park West.”  Nos. 354 and 355 Central Park West would have seem doomed had the article not mentioned that Rothschild had purchased No. 354 “to protect the light of the new building” on the north corner and to preserve “the view of the park for all the apartments facing south and east.”

While Rothschild’s projects wiped out three of Edward Kilpatrick’s row; they ensured the survival of Nos. 354 and 355.

The following year both houses lost their porches.  The Board of Transportation noted in 1929 that both buildings “had stoops and porches which projected over the sidewalk.  In order to construct the subway and the sewer which came under these porches the Contractor removed them. The Borough President ordered the removal of all encroachments along Central Park West and counsel advised that these porches be not restored."  Eminent apartment building architect Rosario Candela was hired to make the necessary renovations.

No. 355 was sold at auction to Catherine F. Mitchell for $29,750 on September 11, 1931.  Two years later it was leased to the Florsheim Corporation which announced it “will be altered to rent as one and two room apartments.”

The former Cahen house next door remained a single-family home for decades.  In 1936 it was home to John W. Kelly and his family.  He and his wife, the former Evelyn Armstrong, had three grown children, John R., Evelyn and Edith; all married and living elsewhere.

John and his brother Gerald ran a jewelry store in the first floor of a tenement building at No, 791 Amsterdam Avenue during the Depression years.  In business with them were their sons, John R. Kelley and Gerald Kelly Jr.  Their surprising financial success during the difficult economic times was made clear when the FBI raided the store on July 3, 1936.   The Kellys were less in the jewelry business than in distributing Irish Sweepstakes tickets—an illegal operation in the United States.

The New York Times reported that authorities “believed the raids had smashed the largest distribution headquarters in the United States for the Irish Free State Hospitals sweepstakes.”  All four of the Kellys were arrested in what the FBI called “an ostensible jewelry store.”  The agents told reporters that the shop “served merely as a blind for the widespread operations which were conducted in a suite of old living quarters behind it.”

They Federal agents then visited No. 354.  The Times reported “The Central Park West address, according to the police, served as the executive and managerial headquarters for the ring, where orders were received and the business correspondence transacted.”

Despite his run-in with the law, John W. Kelly remained in the house.  Now widowed, he was still living here when he died on December 12, 1957.  The house remained a private home until 1968 when it was converted to one apartment on each floor.

No. 355, too, contained only four apartments until 2009.  That year it was reconverted to a single family home.  The last survivors of the 1893 row have changed little since they lost their porches in 1929.  Unusual as private homes on a thoroughfare of apartment buildings nearly 125 years ago; they are delightfully even more out of context today.

photographs by the author

Engine Company No. 15 -- No. 269 Henry Street

 

To the left of the 1884 fire house an elegant Federal home survives.

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

But Americus Engine Company No. 6 was a bit more refined.  In 1854 an upscale home at No. 269 Henry Street was converted to a firehouse.  It was situated in the midst of one of Manhattan’s most exclusive residential neighborhoods.  The renovated interiors retained many of their luxurious details.  

This engraving was made shortly after the house was converted to a fire station.  Well dressed ladies and a gentleman admired the handsome steam engines.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Nevertheless, its members—10 of whom lived permanently in the building in 1855--held blue-collar jobs; many of them maritime due to the nearby seaport.   That year the roster listed occupations like spar-maker, caulker, sail-maker, ship joiner, and stevedore.  Among the others were cartman, butcher, blacksmith, carriage-maker, cabinet-maker, marble-cutter and piano forte hardware.

A gasolier and oil paintings made the Americus "bunk room" home-like.  Our Fire Firemen, 1887 (copyright expired)

In 1861 there were 48 members of Americus Engine Company No. 6, popularly known as the “Big Six.”  That year the firehouse received a shiny new steamer, built by Silsby, Mynderse & Co. in Seneca Falls, New York.  The Board of Aldermen’s inspection noted that the company’s 200 feet of rubber hose and 300 feet of leather hose were “in good condition.”

The days of American Engine Company No. 6 were numbered by now.  The devastating fire that destroyed Barnum’s Museum in 1865 along with pressure on the State Assembly by reformers resulted in the Act of 1865 that coupled Brooklyn and New York with a paid, united “Metropolitan District” fire department.

On September 5 that year The New York Times reported that the Big Six, in preparation “to give up housekeeping” was selling off its “furniture and adornments of their house” that day.  The items up for sale gave a hint of the comfortable accommodations here.  “Among the furniture are two cooking-stoves and a chowder-pot, a piano, music and stool, thirty velvet-cushioned chairs, and no less than five sofas.  Among the decorations are about one hundred oil paintings, some of them of considerable value.”

Two weeks later, on September 19, the Committee on Appointments and Discipline recommended “an engine company be organized, to be known as Metropolitan Engine Company No. 15, in the house formerly occupied by Americus Engine Company No. 6, stationed at No. 269 Henry-street.”

The professional Engine Company would make do of the aging accommodations for two decades.  In 1882 the first steps were taken to replace it with a modern fire house.   In December requests for “sealed proposals for furnishing the materials and labor, and doing the work required” for construction a fire house were made by the Fire Department.  Nearly a year later, in September 1883, the proposal of $18,200 by Mahony Bros. was accepted and the contract awarded.

The plans for Engine Company No. 15 had been filed on May 11.  For four years Napoleon LeBrun & Son had been the official architects for the New York Fire Department.  The firm’s designs were as handsome as they were utilitarian.  For Engine Company No. 15 it mixed Romanesque Revival with the newly-emerging Queen Anne style.    The cast iron base followed the customary fire house arrangement—two openings flanking a large central engine bay.  The lively capitals incorporated torches—emblematic of the fire department—and stylized sunflowers, an important Queen Anne and Esthetic Movement motif.  The sunflowers reappeared below the cornice, lining up as large terra cotta tiles.

Panels of saw-tooth brick separated the upper levels and created tactile interest.  The arched openings of the top floor, the nod to Romanesque, were joined by a single vaulting brick eyebrow.  On either side, ambitious brick console brackets embraced the cornice.  Here, too, was an important Queen Anne element, the sunburst.

The architects were apparently pleased with their design.  They used it two more times in the identical Engine Company No. 53 on East 104^th Street and Engine Company No. 54 on West 47^th Street.

The firefighters living and working from late 19^th century firehouses faced great danger, not only from the fires and dangerous illuminating gas in the buildings; but from the steam-powered engines and the galloping horses that drew them.  And the public was often placed in peril as well.

On January 19, 1903 the Heyward Brothers & Wakefield Company chair factory on Madison Street caught fire following an explosion of benzene.  The New-York Tribune reported the blaze “was made exciting by falling walls, brilliant rescues and the jumping into a net of one of the victims.”

There were about 50 employees in the factory at the time, many trapped by the rapid spread of the flames following the explosion.  When Engine Company No. 15 arrived, they saw 23-year old Frederick Zimmerman standing on a sixth floor window ledge with flames licking close behind him.

With no time to run a ladder up to him, the firemen rushed to pull the life net from the hose wagon.  Civilians helped pull it taut over the sidewalk and Zimmerman was instructed to jump.  He thought about the six-floor plunge for a few seconds, then stepped off the ledge.  The Tribune reported “He kept his balance well in the air, and as he neared the net threw himself backward and landed in the net on his back.”

The crowd expected to see him bounce slightly in the net; but to their shock and horror he crashed through the net onto the sidewalk.  He was taken to Gouveneur Hospital with suspected internal injuries.

The other trapped employees were far more fortunate.  Daring rescues were made that night, at least one man being carried down a ladder on a fire fighter’s back.

Later that year, on July 22, Engine Company No. 15 responded to an alarm.  A crowd of children were playing on the sidewalk on Clinton Street when the fire engine tore around the corner from Henry Street.  Five-year old Sarah Adelman, unaware of the danger, started across the street.  The New-York Tribune reported “As unconcerned as if she were still playing on the sidewalk, she stood in the middle of the street.  On hearing the cries of women and seeing the swaying tender approaching, she became paralyzed with fear and made no effort to get out of the way.”

Michael Martin, driving the engine, realized that the team of horses was going so fast he could not slow them in time, nor even swerve to avoid the girl.  Taking a desperate change, he aimed directly for her, “trusting to luck that she would pass between the horses.”

Martin’s gamble worked.  Sarah stood motionless as the horses galloped by on either side of her.  She was knocked down by the pole and the tender passed over her without the wheels touching her body.  The little girl escaped with a cut on the head and a lesson learned.

Burning torches are incorporated into the leafy capitals, and flames erupt from behind the round medallion.

The once-elegant neighborhood around the firehouse had substantially changed by now.  Fine homes had been replaced by tenements and the Henry Street area was one of immigrants, many German Jews.  Near the fire house, on Gouverneur Street, between Henry Street and East Broadway, was the East Side Kindergarten and Industrial School.  When an overheated stove set fire to the building during school hours on March 17, 1908, the principal did some quick and resourceful thinking.

Before Engine Company 15 could arrive, Mrs. Hill prevented the 500 children from being panic-stricken by announcing that classes were being let out early “as it was Purim.”  The New York Times reported “The children marched out quietly” and the fire fighters put out the blaze.

In the fall of 1910 an arsonist was determined, for whatever reason, to destroy the tenement building at No. 170 Clinton Street.  During the first week of November four unsuccessful attempts were made to set fire to the structure.  After those attempts failed, he apparently turned to the building next door at No. 172.  This time he was rewarded.

The fire started in the basement and spread rapidly through the airshaft.  It was discovered then 19-year old Jacob Andrer started down the stairway with his three younger siblings.  The residents of the building, mostly impoverished immigrants, were thrown into a panic.

When Engine Company 15 reached the scene, tragedy had already occurred.  Jacob Andrer had alerted his parents, 60-year old Rebecca Andrer and Rabbi Samuel Andrer, of the quickly growing danger.  There was no way down, so the family of six, who lived on the third floor, started up the fire escape to the roof.  Part way up Rebecca lost her footing on the rickety stairs and fell, nearly taking the rabbi with her.  Her body smashed on the courtyard pavement.

Fire Engine Company 15 rescued the other residents of the building, including the rest of the Andrer family and four children trapped in a fourth floor flat.

 

Boys play in the street in front of the fire station in 1939.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The heroism of the fire fighters was not reserved to conflagrations.  When the United States entered World War II, fireman Peter J. Dannhardt left Engine Company No. 15 to fight for his country.  He never returned.  The men of the station house pooled their money to pay for a bronze plaque in his memory.  Affixed to the firehouse wall, it was unveiled by his parents on his 30^th birthday, July 6, 1946.

The station lost another firefighter in a bizarre accident that year. At around 3:30 on the morning of December 30, the Company responded to a ground floor grocery store fire at No. 234 Henry Street, just one block away.  The blaze was under control an hour later, but Engine Company No. 15 remained for “overhauling” operations.  At 5:25 the fire truck was just pulling into the firehouse when somehow 34-year old Daniel Krauss was thrown from the truck.  He died in the hospital at 6:49 that morning.

In 1975 the City was on the verge of financial collapse.  City employees, like sanitation workers, were being laid off or their number of work days cut back.  The closing of fire stations was seen as another cost cutting method.  When Mayor Abraham Beame’s administration announced that Engine Company No. 15 was on the list of stations to be closed, the neighborhood rebelled.  On July 11 more than 200 demonstrators marched in front of the Fire Department Headquarters on Church Street in protest.

Rather surprisingly, the protestors, many of whom were elderly, were heard.  Engine Company No. 15 remained active.  But then in 2002 the Company moved to a firehouse on nearby Pitt Street.  The old LeBrun-designed building sat vacant, its cast iron tag ENGINE COMPANY NO. 15 removed from above the bay doors.

In 2007 the City transferred ownership to the Henry Street Settlement.  A repurposing plan designed by preservation architects J. Lawrence Johns & Associates and Beyer Blinder Belle Architects will result in a multi-function community and Settlement space while preserving the historic integrity of the design.

photographs by the author

George Pelham's 1897 No. 97 Wooster Street

In the years following the Civil War the block of modest brick-faced homes on Wooster Street between Prince and Spring Street had seen significant change.  One block to the east, Greene Street was a notorious red light district; and the Wooster street houses were now being used for a variety of purposes.

In 1867 No. 97 Wooster Street was converted to a Young Men’s Christian Association branch.  But this was like no other Y.M.C.A. club in the city.  It was for “colored” boys only.  The New York Times would later recall that “It was an organization independent of the New York City YMCA, although the two cooperated.’

The club remained in the building at least until 1889.  But by now the area was undergoing change once again.  The former homes were rapidly being razed for tall factory and store buildings as the dry goods district overtook the blocks.

Husband and wife team Louisa and Samuel A. Friedline got in on the lucrative trend.  Friedline was a builder, and his wife bought and sold real estate.  In 1893, for instance, they commissioned architect George F. Pelham to design a $20,000 factory building on North Moore Street.  Three years later they would work together again, on Wooster Street.

The end of the line for the old Young Men’s Christian Association building at No. 97 Wooster was near when Edmond J. Sause purchased it for $22,000 in August 1895.  He resold it to the inexhaustible loft developer Max S. Korn, in February the following year.

It appears that Max and his brother, Isaac S. Korn, initially intended to develop the property; for when they sold it to Louisa Friedline two months later it was described as a “lot” with no building mentioned.  On April 11, 1896 the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide noted that the Friedlines purchased the 25-foot wide property “for immediate improvement by the erection of a seven-story warehouse.”

George F. Pelham was brought back for the project and, of course, Samuel Friedline handled the construction.   Ground was broken on May 11, 1896 and completed in November 1897.   A commercial take on Romanesque Revival, the brick, stone and cast iron building offered five upper floors of factory, or “loft,” space above two retail floors.

The carved entablature and cornice above the second floor are highly unusual.

The two-story cast iron store front was framed in beige brick with rough-cut stone courses providing dimensional interest.  A highly-interesting entablature resembled an unrolled fluted column, below a textured cornice of regimented nubs.  The upper floors were decorated with medieval carvings; most notably at the fifth floor where carved faces upheld engaged columns.  Their capitals, carved with spiraling ferns, were connected by an ornate frieze. 

The heads and columns were reintroduced at the top floor, where they melded into the complex cast metal cornice.  Eye-catching were the twisted column extensions and the nubby cornice detail that mimicked the stone version below.

As was the case with most other loft buildings in the area, the Friedline’s new building filled with tenants in the textile or apparel trade.  Michael Abrahams, manufacturer of petticoats; and The Baker Underwear Co. were among the earliest. 

Baker Underwear also had a small factory in Peekskill, New York where it manufactured muslin underwear.  A seductive advertisement in The Sun on June 27, 1901 was cleverly worded to entice young workers there.

“A chance for a pleasant country vacation.  Fifty operators on Singer machines are wanted at Peekskill in a clean, cool factory.”   The ad promised “Good pay; pleasant workrooms; country air; healthful surroundings.”

The excited young women reading the tempting advertisement might have overlooked the fact that they were responsible for expenses, including the $3.50 per week “board in private families.”  It was briefly mentioned in “This is a splendid chance for good operators to get away from the hot city, and besides paying all expenses, have the benefit of the country.”

On the top floor in 1903 was the petticoat and women’s underwear factory of Benjamin Lustgarten.    On May 11 that year, the manufacturer would be highly grateful that next door, at No. 99 Wooster Street, was the firehouse of Engine Company No. 13.

Lustgarten and two employees, Max Weissner and Benjamin Lerner, were working late on Monday night, May 11.  There were no other workers in the building so no one noticed when fire broke out on the fifth floor.  Several firefighters were standing around in front of the firehouse and Lt. George J. Irving was looking out of the station’s top floor window when, according to the New-York Tribune the following day, “a window was blown out of the fifth floor, and smoke followed.”

Lustgarten and his employees were trapped on the seventh floor of No. 97 and, were it not for the proximity of the firefighters, most likely would have perished.  Lt. Irving rushed to the roof of the firehouse, three floors below the trapped men.  He dropped a rope to the firemen below, who tied a scaling ladder to it, which the lieutenant hoisted up.

As he climbed upwards, the other firefighters reached the roof with additional ladders.  When Irving reached the seventh floor Lustgarten was already partially overcome by smoke inhalation.  The Tribune reported “Irving handed the men down to the firemen, who took them to the roof of the firehouse and to the street.”

Commission merchant Herman Sudgen was also a tenant about this time.   Why, on June 3, 1905, he was carrying $290 in his pocket (more than $8,000 today) is unclear; but on his way home to Brooklyn that night he nearly lost it.

Pickpockets were a constant worry at the turn of the last century; and while riding on a Bushwick Avenue streetcar Sudgen felt a hand in his pocket.  The crowded car was in the middle of the Williamsburg Bridge and “in an instant the car was in an uproar,” related The New York Times.

The crook tried to get away and dropped the cash.  But the resolute Herman Sudgen refused to release his tight grip on the 26-year old.  When the car reached the Brooklyn Plaza stop, Policeman Washington Irving arrested Henry Meyer, who was still in the clutches of his would-be victim.

Neckwear manufacturer George M. Batt was called for jury duty in 1907.  He sat on the case of Frederick Schoneland who was arrested on criminal assault charges.   Batt and the other jurors infuriated Judge Rosalsky when they attempted to force his ruling.

After hearing the evidence, they told Rosalsky that if he would impose a sentence of no more than two years in prison, they would find Schoneland guilty.  Otherwise, they would find him not guilty, resulting in his release.   Refusing to be intimidated or bullied, the judge sent George Batt and his co-jurors home and called for a new trial.

Abraham Wittcover’s Swiss Embroidery and Novelty Company, once a thriving concern, was doing poorly around the time of Batt’s expulsion from the case.   Finally, as the summer of 1908 approached, he declared bankruptcy and closed the firm.

No longer able to afford his home, he moved his wife and little girl to a Williamsburg flat on Thursday, June 11.  He then disappeared.  Mrs. Wittcover, according to newspaper reports, tried to find him in Manhattan.  And, ironically, Wittcover showed up at the Williamsburg apartment on Saturday while she was searching for him and, “finding the flat locked up, went back to Manhattan.” 

The desperately broken man had taken a room in a hotel on Third Avenue at 24^th street.  On Sunday morning hotel employees smelled gas.  “When they broke in the door they found Wittcover dead in bed, with a tube attached to an open gas jet in his mouth,” reported The New York Times.

The tragedy continued when Mrs. Wittcover identified the body in the morgue.  After throwing herself on her husband’s body in despair, she rushed to the East River where she attempted suicide.

William Diamondstein’s firm, The Carlyle Hem-stitching and Button Company, and apparel company Weinstein & Regoff would have to start over elsewhere after a devastating fire tore through the building early in 1917.   On May 15, 1917 agents William A. White announced they had fully leased the factory spaces of No. 97, “which has been extensively altered since it was partially destroyed by fire.”

Maxine Mfg. Co. had taken the third floor, Langer & Co. the fourth, H. Bernstein & Sons the fifth, Miller Bros. Co. leased the sixth floor, and Gustav Abrahams Co. was now on the top floor.   In December Frank & Lambert Co. filled the last vacancy when it leased the store and basement.

For the next few decades the building would continue to house garment companies.  But in the 1920s there were hints that the apparel district was abandoning the neighborhood.  The Iron Pipe and Specialty Co., Inc. was in the building through the late ‘20s, for instance.  And the Security Hand Bag Co. and the Cup Craft Paper Corp. added to the non-apparel tenant list.

By mid-century the neighborhood's loft buildings were neglected and abused—and many of them stood vacant.  But the area, now known as Soho, caught the attention of artists.  In an article about loft art shows on April 19, 1968 The New York Times noted “And last month, a group of artists who work in a building at 97 Wooster Street—Sue Aitkin, Tony Balzano, Rudolph Baranik, George Gillson, Bob Pittenger and May Stevens—staged a three-weekend group show in an empty studio lent them by the landlord.”

Where women’s muslin underwear had been manufactured, artists now lived and worked.  In 1971 artist Ruth Vodicka’s had her home and studio here, for instance.  And on September 16, 1972 A. I. R. Gallery opened in the building.  A cooperative run by and for women artists, it was deemed by The Times to be “the first women’s independent gallery.”   It would remain in the space at least until 1980.

A formal conversion of No. 97 Wooster was completed in 1986, resulting in “joint living-work quarters for artists” on the upper floors and a clothing store at ground level.   Yet, despite two fires and several remodelings, even the cast iron storefront survives intact.

The artists who lived here in the 1970s did not have the amenities offered today.  photo Corcoran Group

Although the loft spaces are still mostly open, the $8,000 per month rental fees for one apartment in 2016 suggest that the artists living here are no longer struggling.

photographs by the author