The Leo Schlesinger Toy Factory -- Nos. 292-296 Lafayette Street

In 1889 Leo Schlesinger most likely surprised other businessmen along Elm Street when he supported the proposed extension of Elm Street to Lafayette Place.  At the time Elm Street ended at Jersey Street.  Lafayette Place began about two blocks to the north.  The public works project would necessitate the demolition of several significant business structures.  One of the buildings that would be affected was Schlesinger’s.  His toy factory at Nos. 129-131 Crosby Street ran back along Jersey Street and straddled the proposed new thoroughfare.

But on November 9, 1889 the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported “One of the most important briefs was from Leo Schlesinger, of Crosby street, the well-known manufacturer of toys and tinware, who strongly favored the improvement, notwithstanding that it would have taken 80 feet away from the front of his manufactory.”  Schlesinger argued that cutting the street through would improve transportation and, therefore, the city and its industries in general.

Six years earlier, on October 13, 1883, The American Machinist had reported “Leo Schlesinger, 11^th st. and Avenue D…will have a new manufactory of tin toys on Crosby Street.”   The toy maker had purchased the two lots on Crosby and three on Jersey Street from the Stewart Estate for $205,000 ($5 million in 2016).  He commissioned the architectural firm of H. J. Schwartzmann & Co. to design the toned-down Queen Anne style building, completed in 1894.

Schlesinger, who was also a director in several banks and other corporations, employed an average of 160 workers in his factory.  He leased extra space in the building to commercial tenants.  In June 1884 the Industrial Printing Co. was here, looking for a “First-Class job compositor,” one who was “accustomed to fine commercial work.”  The firm promised “steady position to the right man.”

The Crosby Street elevation, once the front of the building, is now blocked up.

There was one rather surprising tenant.  In January 1884, according to The Sun, “the United Hebrew Charities determined to take measures to save the poor boys of their race in this city from what seemed to threaten them as a common fate, viz., becoming peddlers.”

The Hebrew Technical Institute was formed and in its 25^th Anniversary booklet it remembered “four months later the sixth and seventh floors of a factory building at 129 Crosby Street were rented from Mr. Leo Schlesinger, who was to furnish heat and power.  There the school continued from May, 1884 to February, 1887.”

While the debate on the extension of Elm Street dragged on, Leo Schlesinger expanded his business.  In August 1895 he partnered with L. Stern to form The Stanley Cycle Mfg. Co.  Iron Trade Review reported the new firm would “manufacture high grade bicycles.  The company expects to turn out between 10,000 and 15,000 wheels per annum” at the Crosby Street factory.

Finally, in 1897 the city condemned and demolished the buildings between Jersey Street and Great Jones Street in the way of the Elm Street project.  Included was the 80-foot section of Schlesinger’s factory building, for which the city paid him a handsome $96,000.  But rather than abandon his reduced property, or demolish the remaining chunk and start over; he commissioned the architectural firm of Buchman & Deisler to remodel it.

On July 10, 1897 the Record & Guide reported on the filing of 11 building plans related to the widening and extension of Elm Street.  Among them were Buchman & Deisler’s plans for Schlesinger’s seven-story factory.   The Guide’s description was nebulous: “extension of rear wall and new front.”    The project would be much more.

The architects essentially flipped the front of the building—moving the architectural focus to the wider, newer Lafayette Street.   While harmonious with Schwartzmann’s Queen Anne-style Crosby Street design, Buchman & Deisler’s Renaissance Revival Lafayette Street elevation was more aggressive.  White limestone starkly contrasted with the deep red brick.  Handsome stone capitals capped the three-story brick piers at the fourth through sixth floors.  As an added touch, the architects chamfered the corner; a detail which extended to the cast iron store front.

More than a year after the Elm Street-Lafayette Street project began, businessmen were furious with the city’s delay in its completion.  On September 30 Leo Schlesinger was the chief spokesmen at a meeting with the Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck.  He presented the Mayor with three photographs “which clearly proved not only the incomplete state of the work, but the generally obstructed condition of the thoroughfare,” reported the Record & Guide.  Schlesinger called the conditions “disgraceful.”

Leo Schlesinger Company produced children's toys, like this Red Riding Hood tea set.

Disaster was narrowly averted late on the night of November 24, 1902 when the water tank atop the building collapsed.  Fortunately for the businesses inside, there was no damage; however pedestrians must have been startled when “water poured over the roof into the street,” as reported by The Sun the following morning.

By 1915 the area around No. 296 Lafayette Street was the center of the millinery and hat-related industries.  Leo Schlesinger had moved his operation to Front Street years earlier.  Among the businesses in the Lafayette Street building was Ignatius Buckman who manufactured hat making machines.

That summer he did a friend, John Treubert, a favor by storing $4,000 worth of velvet “for safe-keeping.”  But the 51-year old Buckman hatched a nefarious scheme.  He staged a burglary of his own factory, instructing several of his clerks to sneak out the valuable cloth.

When Treubert arrived at the factory the first week of June, Buckman sadly reported that his place had been robbed and that in addition to Treubert’s velvet, the thieves had gotten away with $2,000 worth of Buckman’s property.

John Truebert was not convinced.  He notified detectives who questioned Buckman’s employees.  Unfortunately for Buckman, they readily confessed to having followed their boss’s criminal orders. 

Police surrounded Buckman’s house at No. 283 East 164^th Street on the night of June 11.  The Evening World reported “when they were demanding admission to the front door he appeared at a rear window in his night clothing and was about to jump when he saw other detectives and stepped back.”  Ignatius Buckman was arrested for having burglarized his own factory.

In 1919 the Crosby Street store was home to the International High Speed Steel Company; while on an upper floor the Bristol Hat Company was among the millinery firms doing business.  One tenant not in the hat business was Geringer Brothers, a manufacturer of “gas and lamp shades.”

Isidor Geringer was working late with two employees on the night of November 27, 1920.  That night a series of violent hold-ups erupted in both Manhattan and the Bronx.  One of them would take Geringer’s life.

At around 9:00 three men wearing masks and long raincoats barged into the shop.  The employees were ordered to raise their arms into the air.  Geringer nervously watched as one of the thugs was taking $12 from the pocket of Louis Lobell.  He dropped his hands to his side and was immediately shot.  The New York Herald reported “He was taken to New York Hospital and probably will die.”

A bizarre incident occurred here on November 2, 1922 after fire erupted in the building.  Fire fighters poured thousands of gallons of water into the burning building, the upper floors of which were occupied “by various paper and hat concerns,” according to The New York Herald the following day.

Six fire fighters from Hook and Ladder Company No. 9 entered the building and began chopping through a wall.  What they did not realize was that the well-built structure had trapped the growing amount of water, to the point that the walls were bulging, according to the newspaper.

Finally their axes broke through and the firemen were carried away in the massive flood of water which was released.  “Three of the firemen—Wynn, Scheck and Matofsky—were swept down the stairs from the first to the ground floor, and after being dashed from wall to wall finally were catapulted into the street, landing in the roadway half conscious.”  The three others, Lt. Lamb and Firemen Murphy and Murray “narrowly escaped drowning,” according to the newspaper, by clinging “to the only substantial article in sight, a stair rail.” 

The tenants suffered about $20,000 in damages.

The wooden beams and columns survive where tin toys were once manufactured.  photo by Corcoran Group

The former Schlesinger toy factory continued to be home to various small industries for the next six decades.  Then in 1984 the upper floors were converted to “joint living and work quarters for artists.”  Today the lofts where tin tea sets and fire trucks were manufactured are luxury residences that sell for over $3 million.  Buchman & Deisler’s well-preserved façade survives nearly a century and a quarter after Lafayette Street plowed through Leo Schlesinger’s factory.

photographs by the author

A Surviving Shell -- No. 31 East 74th Street

The first decade following the end of the Civil War saw an explosion of speculative development on the Upper East Side.  The Styles family—S. M. Styles, Frederick W. Styles and C. H. Styles—worked semi-independently on their building projects.  S. M. Styles, who doubled as a contractor and architect, brought his sons, John E. and Richard K. into his operation to form S. M. Styles & Sons.

In June 1876 C. H. Styles planned nine brownstone rowhouses that wrapped around the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and 74^th Street.  Each would cost $12,000 to build—about a quarter of a million dollars in 2016 terms.  He commissioned S. M. Styles as his architect.

C. H. Styles seems to have had problems selling one of the homes.  On March 11, 1877 an advertisement in The New York Herald offered “For sale cheap—Call and see that fine four story brown stone high stoop house No. 31 East 74^th st.; will be sold at a bargain.”

A year later, on March 3, 1878 the developer was willing to nearly break even on the still vacant house.  An advertisement explained “$5,000 cash will buy an elegant four story House, cabinet finish.”

Despite the bargain price, No. 31 East 74^th Street was still unsold the following year.  On March 23, 1879 Styles offered “Finest located four story brown stone house in this city for the price, in perfect order throughout.”

Another prolific developer, William W. Hall, purchased the house in 1896.  By now Fifth Avenue in the 70s was filling with lavish mansions; and the side streets followed the trend.  The outdated two-decade old brownstones were rapidly being demolished or remodeled into more fashionable dwellings.  Hall hired architect Alexander M. Welch to transform No. 31 into a modern home acceptable to an upper class owner.

The renovations were completed in 1897.  Somewhat surprisingly, Hall and his architect seem to have focused on interior improvements.  The brownstone stoop was retained even when the “English basement” plan had fallen out of favor; and the old 1877 design was only vaguely veiled by the neo-Renaissance motifs.  The second floor sprouted an angled oriel which supported a third-floor balcony.  The arched openings of the top floor received handsome carved framing and an updated, projecting copper cornice was added.

The renovations, while outwardly cosmetic, were successful.  William Hall quickly sold the remodeled 16-foot wide house to Raymond Lesher.  He was a partner with his brothers Arthur and Nathaniel in the “clothiers’ supplies” importing firm of Lesher, Whitman & Company.

Lesher and his wife did not remain in the house for long.  On June 27, 1901 he sold it to William S. Wyckoff for $46,000.  Wyckoff’s wife, Jennie, had died a year earlier, on February 5, 1900.  The New York Times described him as “a well-preserved, tall man.” 

Wyckoff had one grown son, Clarence, who had his own bachelor apartment in the Hotel Manhattan “when not at Palm Beach, Fla., or abroad,” according to a newspaper.  Like his son, William Wyckoff spent more and more time abroad.  He had two sisters, one in England and the other in Scotland.  Around 1905 his attention was focused on a Prussian woman living in London, Sophie Manasse.

The 60-year old’s romance culminated in April 1906 in a surprising coincidence.  Clarence P. Wyckoff returned to his apartment on the evening of April 5 to find a telegram from his father who was in London.  It revealed that William had applied to the Archbishop of Canterbury for a “special license” for the New Yorker and the Prussian to marry.

The New York Times reported “After he read it he looked up with a smile and said: ‘H’m, I’m to be married myself tomorrow.’”  The father and son, “both well-known members of society,” would miss one another’s nearly simultaneous weddings.

It was probably William S. Wyckoff’s overseas romance that had prompted him to sell No. 31 East 74^th Street a year earlier.  In January 1905 Newman Erb, Vice President of the Pere Marquette Railroad Company, purchased the house for his daughter.

The generous gift was not a wedding present.  Fannie Erb had married Irving Meade Dittenhoefer on November 18, 1896—the same year that William Hall began the renovations.  The 42-year old Dittenhoefer had graduated from the Columbia School of Law in 1885 and was now a partner in the law firm of Dittenhoefer, Gerber James.

The couple had one son, Newman Erb Dittenhoefer, and like other modern and wealthy families, they traveled widely.  On May 1, 1908 Irving wrote to a former classmate “I have traveled extensively in Europe, having made automobile trips in Italy, France and Germany of over 15,000 miles.”

Unlike the previous owners, Irving and Fannie stayed for nearly two decades.  They sold the house in October 1919 to the 44-year old physician, Dr. Frederick Knowles and his 34-year old wife Sophia.  Living with the Knowles were Charles Stevens, the butler, and his English-born wife, Mahlik, the cook.

Knowles established his doctor’s office in the house.  When elevator operator John Martina Feirera collapsed at the corner of Madison Avenue and 74^th Street on February 20, 1933, a market employee carried him to the Knowles house.  Sadly, the 30-year old died on the stoop before the doctor could be called out.

Knowles, now 71, sold the house in April 1946 to real estate operator Norman. S. Riesenfeld.   He quickly resold it to the World Federalists, U.S.A. and the residence became known as World Government House.  The goal of the global World Federalist Movement was to create “a new world order” that could prevent another international war.

Later that year, on November 11, 1946, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor arrived on the Queen Elizabeth.  Another passenger on the ship was heading to East 74^th Street.  The New York Times reported “Ulric Nesbet, British representative of the Federal Union, who has designed a world flag, came here to confer with members of World Government House, 31 East Seventy-fourth Street.”

World Government House lasted only a few years at the address.  In 1949 the house was converted to apartments and the stoop was removed.  Among the most interesting of the businesses in the newly-formed commercial space throughout the upcoming decades was Alaska Shop—Gallery of Eskimo Art which occupied the store in the early 1980s.

In 2010 No. 31 East 74^th Street got its stoop back—at a price.  CareOne, a firm that operates nursing and assisted-living facilities, hired restoration architects Beyer Blinder Belle and contractors New Line Structures, Inc. to “reinvent the interiors” (as described by CEO Daniel E. Straus) of six brownstones on Madison Avenue, along with No. 31 and its neighbor, the 33-foot wide Grosvenor Atterbury-designed mansion at No. 33.

Completed in 2015, the project called 33 East 74^th Street was no nursing home.  As renovations were underway on November 2, 2013, The New York Times journalist Alison Gregor explained “Demolishing all the brownstone interiors enabled Mr. Straus to create the layouts that he believes will best appeal to his target buyers.”  Those target buyers could expect to pay from $14 million to more than $30 million for the three- to five-bedroom condo units.

The completed project retained the vintage facades, but gutted the interiors.  No. 31 can be glimpsed behind the tree at right.  photo by Douglas Elliman Real Estate

Externally, No. 31 with its replacement stoop looks little changed, other than a cleaning-up and replacement windows.  But it is a stage set.  Behind the veneer nothing remains of the house C. H. Styles could not sell and which William Hall fancied up 20 years later.

photographs by the author

The 1919 Henry M. Day Building - No. 81 Hudson Street

The gleaming white building with minimal decoration stands out among its red brick neighbors.

In April 1919, demolition had begun on the Federal-style house at 81 Hudson Street on the southwest corner of Harrison Street.  The once-elegant home was the last holdout of a refined residential neighborhood.  Now, with its red bricks and handsome splayed lintels covered in flaking white paint and a storefront replacing the ground floor, it had until recently been home to Austin, Nichols & Co., wholesale grocers.

With the war in Europe over, Captain Henry Mason Day, Jr. returned home.  His service in France had earned him the Legion of Honour.  Day’s father, who died on January 16, 1909 at the age of 57, had founded Henry M. Day & Co., a fruit and nut importing business.  Now the aggressive and ambitious 33-year-old took the reins.

In February 1919, just three months after Armistice, Henry Day purchased the old house on Hudson Street.  On March 1, The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide noted, “The buyers are commission brokers in export and import food supplies and will erect on the plot a new 3-story building for their exclusive occupancy.”

On April 7, 1919 Wurts Brothers documented the first steps in the demolition of the venerable house.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The New-York Tribune made another observation.  “This marks a departure from the usual custom in the district, as it will be the first building to be so erected and occupied.”  That was not the only “departure from the usual custom in the district” which would be set by the Henry M. Day & Co. building.

Wurts Brothers continued to document the process.  The newly-completed building is still vacant at top; and below the final touch had been added with the company's name installed below the cornice.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The Tribeca Produce District had filled with substantial masonry loft buildings which rose high above street level with hefty Romanesque arches and ornate carvings.  Day’s architects, Schwartz & Gross, designed a low-rise, terra cotta-clad structure elegant in its simplicity.  Technically neo-Renaissance in style, it featured three-story arches broken by spandrels of recessed panels.  Below the simple cornice large bronze letters announced the company’s name.

The $25,000 building (in the neighborhood of $345,000 today) was completed by the fall of that year.  On October 11, 1919, The Canner (confusing terra cotta for stone) noted “Henry M. Day & Co., who are now located in their new white marble building on Hudson Street in New York, are being frequently favored by out of town visitors who drop in to give their quarters the once over.”

Those out of town visitors would not have met with Henry M. Day, however.  He was already focusing on other things than canned fruit.  On December 20, 1919, the New-York Tribune reported on steamer passengers returning from Europe and mentioned, “Another traveler on the Baltic was Henry M. Day, president of the American Foreign Trade Corporation, of this city, who has spent six months in Turkey and Russia.”

Not only was Day the head of the Foreign Trade Corporation and Henry M. Day & Co., he was president of the International Barnsdall Corporation.  And the colorful millionaire Henry F. Sinclair was eyeing him for the position of vice president of the Sinclair Exploration Company as an “oil scout.”

On August 18, 1921, the New-York Tribune reported that Henry M. Day & Co. had sold “the new three-story and basement office and salesroom building, in the heart of the grocery district” to an investor.  The article added, “Negotiations are under way for the lease of the property to a grocery concern.”

Henry M. Day was done with the grocery business.  As an executive with Sinclair, he attended a conference in Genoa, Italy in 1922 and another in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1924 with the goals of protecting American oil companies in settlements.  His business dealings took him to Persia and Mesopotamia (now Iran and Iraq, respectively), and to Russia, where he was credited among other things with writing the contract for the development of the Baku oil field, the most extensive contract of its kind ever written.

When Harry Sinclair went on trial for his involvement in the Teapot Dome oil scandal, the highly-respected Henry M. Day found himself in hot water as well.  Both men were convicted and sent to jail for three and a half months for “jury shadowing.”  Day resigned after his release and his subsequent career would continue to be remarkable and colorful.

He became a senior partner in the Stock Exchange firm of Redmond & Co. (resigning in 1938 after it was censured by the Stock Exchange for Federal infractions); engineered the $6 million deal with the National Distillers Products Corporation and Overhold Distillery involving 35,000 barrels of whiskey in 1933 following the end of Prohibition; and was the consultant to the Illinois Glass Group.

In the meantime, the letters spelling out Henry M. Day & Co. were removed from 81 Hudson Street.  The floors were leased to various produce firms, like Eligio Cerruti, importer and exporter, who took a loft in April 1922.

While the Produce District changed, 81 Hudson Street did not.  In 2009, as the renaissance of Tribeca turned factories and warehouses into shops, restaurants and luxury apartments, No. 81 was converted to a restaurant-tavern at street level and a single-family home above.  Outwardly, the dignified white structure is little changed, its architectural personality as unique in the neighborhood as that of its remarkable builder.  

photograph by the author

The Lounsbury and Seabury Houses -- Nos. 137 and 139 W. 72nd Street

On June 26, 1885 architects Thom & Wilson filed plans for five “four-story brick (stone front) dwellings.”  Designed for developer Robert Irwin, each was projected to cost $25,000—or a little more than $635,000 today.

Architects working on the new Upper West Side at the time freely dipped into a grab bag of historic styles, creating sometimes picturesque, sometimes quirky, and often romantic architectural concoctions.  Thom & Wilson’s five houses on West 72^nd Street joined the trend; and two of them would especially stand out.

A year later, on August 7, 1886, The Record and Guide remarked on the flurry of construction taking place on the Upper West Side.  It specifically pointed out the block of West 72^nd Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues and mentioned “Robert Irwin has almost finished five handsome brown stone dwellings, two of which are in the Maresque style of architecture.”

The Record & Guide was referring to the mirror-imaged Nos. 137 and 139; but its description of “Maresque” to define the style was simplistic at best.  Indeed, there were pierced Moorish decorations high above the sidewalk level; but they coexisted with Gothic pointed arches, Chateauesque towers with conical caps, and medieval-style carvings.

By the time the houses were completed in 1886 Phineas Chapman Lounsbury was 65 years old and highly successful.  He was President and Director of the Connecticut Merchants’ Exchange National Bank and of the Savings Life Assurance Society; and was a director of the Provident Savings Life Assurance Society and the Worcester Salt Co.  More importantly, he had served several terms as a member of the Connecticut Legislature and was currently serving as that state’s Governor.

Phineas Chapman Lounsbury, from the collection of the Museum of Connecticut History.

Following the end of his term in January 1889, Lounsbury moved into No. 137 West 72^nd Street.  In 1896 he and his wife, the former Jennie Wright, built a neo-Classical summer house on a sprawling estate in Ridgefield, Connecticut.  They would also own homes in the Adirondack Mountains and in Florida.

In 1904 Lounsbury’s neice, Annie Rockwell Wetherby (the daughter of his brother, Joel L. Lounsbury) and her husband, John, visited from Minneapolis.  The pleasant stay turned tragic when Annie died in the 72^nd Street house on Friday evening, December 2.

photograph courtesy of Sarah Williams.

The appearance of the Lounsburys name in the newspapers was, of course, routinely happier.  On April 30, 1905, for instance, the New-York Tribune noted “Ex-Governor Lounsbury and family, No. 137 West 72d-st., will soon go to their summer home in Ridgefield, Conn.”

In the meantime, Gardner Thurston Seabury was living next door.  In 1889 three servants lived in the house with him and his wife, the former Clara Elizabeth Vinton. 

Gardner died in 1906.  Five years later Clara established the Seabury Memorial Home in Mt. Vernon, New York.  And she would have been best remembered for that “home for those who have labored in Literature, Art, and Education, Music— or any of the various professions” were it not for Albert Hill Noland.   

Clara Seabury was 68 years old in 1912 when the 40-year old Albert not only moved into No. 139 West 72^nd Street, but changed his name to Albert H. Seabury.  New York society must have whispered behind drawing room doors as Albert and Clara acted as though their peculiar relationship was completely normal.  On March 1, 1914 The Sun noted that tickets for The Symphony Club’s concert in the Waldorf-Astoria ballroom could be purchased “from Albert H. Seabury, 139 West Seventy-second street.”

A social shock wave made its way across the country when newspapers announced on July 25, 1915 that Clara had adopted Albert.  The New-York Tribune’s sub-headline read “A. H. Noland Now Officially Child of Mrs. G. T. Seabury, Rich Widow.”  Clara’s petition to the court revealed that her personal property was valued at more than $1.2 million in today’s dollars, and that she was “a widow of mature years.”  (Upon her death, the estate was disclosed to be more than 5 times that amount.)

The Tribune explained that until 1915 the adoption of an adult was illegal in New York.  “Notwithstanding this, they assumed the mutual actual relations of mother and son.  He lived with her and they travelled extensively here and abroad in such relation, and she had made financial provision for him.  The relationship has been mutually agreeable, beneficial and advantageous.”

The relationship certainly proved “beneficial and advantageous” to Albert following Clara’s death in October 1918.  The bulk of her massive estate was left to him.

Phineas Chapman Lounsbury died on June 22, 1925.  West 72^nd Street, once the most exclusive address on the Upper West Side other than Riverside Drive, was now traffic-clogged; its noble residences converted for business purposes at sidewalk level.  That year architect Mortimer E. Freehof was commissioned to convert the lower two floors of the Lounsbury house, No. 137, to stores and offices, and the top floors to a “two-family dwelling.”

The drastic change in the neighborhood was evidenced when a hold-up man named McGlynn was shot by police in the street level business in 1926; and when Prohibition agents raided the operation a few months later.

On November 12, 1932 emerging artist Mark Rothkowitz, who would later gain fame under the name Mark Rothko, married jewelry designer Edith Sachar.  The newlyweds moved into an apartment at No. 137.  They lived here for about a year.

Like its next door neighbor, No. 139 was altered for commercial use in 1927.  Architect Otto A. Staudt created a two-story extension at street level for owner Charles K. Clisby.

In 1935 the upper floors of both buildings were combined internally, creating two apartments each on the third through fifth floors.  Sometime in the succeeding decades much of the 1887 detailing was removed or shaved flat.  Today the fairytale remnants of the Lounsbury and Seabury residents loom above grotesque storefronts.  But just enough of Thom & Wilson’s whimsical creations remain to catch the eye of even the most disinterested passerby.

photographs by the author