The Little Red Lighthouse

The great grey George Washington Bridge spans the mighty Hudson River at a point where trecherous currents are caused by the jutting point of land called Jeffrey's Hook.  Barely noticeable there at the river's edge, a little red 19th Century lighthouse stands.

In 1889, long before the bridge or the lighthouse, a 20-foot high post outfitted with two red lanterns was erected on the site to warn ships and barges of the outcropping and shoals.  The lanterns were replaced with brighter lights six years later.

Meanwhile, in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, a 55-foot high bright red lighthouse had been erected in 1880.  The little lighthouse warned ship captains until 1917 when it was dismantled and put into storage at Stapleton, Staten Island.

By 1921 the traffic on the Hudson required an upgrading of the Jeffrey's Hook warning lights.  The little lighthouse from Sandy Hook was taken out of storage and reassembled by the Coast Guard.  The lower 15 feet of the structure were discarded and the little lighthouse got littler -- down to 40 feet.  The beacon, now known as The Jeffrey's Hook Lighthouse, was outfitted with a new lamp that rotated every 3 seconds and a bell and fog signal.

Exactly a decade later the massive new bridge was opened overhead and, because of the navigation lights on its towers, the little lighthouse was suddenly obsolete.  It sat, now useless, in the shadow of the huge bridge.

Inspired by the diminuative tower, Hildegarde H. Swift and Lynd Ward wrote a children's book in 1942, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge."  It told the story of the dejected little lighthouse that seemed to have no purpose anymore.  Then on one particularly foggy night the lights of the bridge were shrouded and only the bell and light of the little lighthouse saved the boats.  Even little things, the story taught, can be important.

In 1947 the Coast Guard decommissioned the lighthouse and put it up for sale as scrap.  Word spread across the country and school children everywhere banded together.  Letters and milk money poured into the Coast Guard from cities and farmtowns as children who knew the lighthouse from the book pled to save the it.

The Coast Guard relented.  The lighthouse could stay.  In 1951 ownership was transferred to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.  In 1986 it received a $209,000 restoration and, in 2000, a new coat of red paint true to its historical color.  It was landmarked on May 14, 1991.

Every year in September the Little Red Lighthouse Festival is held and, during the festivities, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge is read to the children.  Among the famous who have read it include James Earl Jones, Isabella Rosselini and Dee Dee Conn.

Thanks to thousands of school children the Little Red Lighthouse stands on Jeffrey's Hook today, still shining -- the last lighthouse in Manhattan.  They proved, as did the lighthouse in the book, that you don't have to be big to make a difference.

An Art Deco Behometh - 111 8th Avenue

from the collection of the New York Public Library

In the first half of the 20th century the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey handled tons of incoming freight.  At the height of the Great Depression a gigantic consolidation and redistribution warehouse was planned in the Chelsea area of Manhattan close to the shipping piers on the Hudson.  The construction would not only provide a badly needed warehouse, it would create jobs for thousands.  And size was not a restriction.

Designed by Lusby Simpson of Abbot, Merkt & Co., the brick and concrete Art Deco monster engulfed the entire block from Eighth Avenue to Ninth between 15th and 16th Streets.  Simpson, who became best known for his redesign of Bryant Park, managed to balance bulk with proportion. 

from the collection of the New York Public Library

When completed in 1932, The Port Authority Commerce Building, or Union Inland Freight Terminal Building No. 1, was one of the largest buildings in the world in terms of square footage.  Nearly all of the 17 floors could accommodate two full football fields--a staggering 2.9 million square feet of interior space.  It contained twice the floor space of its contemporary, the Empire State Building, completed a year earlier.

Two of the freight elevators were large enough to transport 30-foot semi trucks to the floors above for loading and unloading.  One of the first helipads in the city was on the roof, opened in the 1950s.

At street level, huge Art Moderne panels decorate the entries and window areas.  For the convenience of workers, the building had direct subway entrances eliminating the need to exit the building on inclement days.

A seagull carries a fasces over the open water in this panel above one entrance.  photo by Eden, Janine & Jim.

It was, according to Joe Mysak, author of Perpetual Motion: The Illustrated History Of The Port Authority Of New York & New Jersey, "...built as this truck palace, almost an economic incubator for New York City"

The building set a legal precedent for public properties involved in commercial business by reserving the upper floors as rental space for private concerns.  It was here that Chemical Bank placed their enormous check processing offices.  The largest paper check processing center in Manhattan, the majority of checks written in New York City passed through this facility.

The building housed the warehouse and Port Authority offices until 1972 when they moved to the World Trade Center.  The massive Eighth Avenue building was sold at auction to Sylvan Lawrence Company who rented space to small companies for over two decades.
 
In 1998 Sylvan Lawrence Company took steps to dissolve its company.  The Port Authority Building was put up for sale.  In a $387,500,000 deal, Taconic Investment Partners took over the building. After investing $50 million of capitol improvements, Taconic marketed the space to telecommunications companies based on the sturdy floors and fiber-optic infrastructure.
 

After September 11, 2001, high tech companies sought to relocate north of the Financial District.  In the meantime, the somewhat seamy Chelsea neighborhood was slowly changing.  In the once sordid Meat Packing District just west of the building high-end boutiques and cafes began appearing. The mom-and-pop stores on Eighth Avenue were being replaced by trendy shops and art galleries were established in former warehouses.  The changes would make a huge impact.
 
In 2009 The High Line opened, a unique park on the old elevated train bed along Tenth Avenue.  Immediately the area west of the 111 8th Avenue blossomed.  Across the street the sleek Apple Store opened and the Chelsea Market, a mall-like collection of food and specialty stores, took over the old National Biscuit Company factory.  It was the sort of environment that would attract companies like Google.

 photo by Tdorante10

And that it did.  In 2006 Google took 260,000 square feet of the building.  Early in 2010 it added another 57,000 square feet.  Other high tech tenants including MCI, Sprint and Qwest, made 111 8th Avenue the foremost communications hub in New York.
 
Taconic had no intentions of putting all its eggs in the high tech basket, however.  The building attracted diverse tenants: fashion offices (Armani A/X and Nike USA), arts publisher and media company LTB, and Todd Street Productions.  In 2006 the Atlantic Theatre Company opened a 99-seat theatre in the sub-basement.

On December 3, 2010 Google purchased the entire building for $1.9 billion dollars.
 
Impossible to ignore, the Port Authority Commerce Building is an stunning example of Art Deco commercial architecture and an exemplary illustration of re-use of a vintage structure.

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The Jeanne d'Arc - 200 West 14th Street

At the time of the Civil War, wide 14th Street around 7th Avenue was lined with elegant brownstone and brick residences.  The 1854 Academy of Music, the opera house attended by names like Astor and Vanderbilt, sat regally at 14th and Irving Place.

But neighborhoods in New York constantly change.  By the 1880s 14th Street was no longer strictly residential.  The meatpacking district was growing at the far west end.  The new Metropolitan Opera House which opened in 1883 drove the Academy of Music to close in 1886 and by 1888 the venerable institution was offering vaudeville.  Businesses took over the street levels of the brownstones.

While this change was taking place, the middle class of Manhattan was growing.  Merchant class families needed affordable yet respectable housing in which to raise their families.  Developers devised the concept of roomy, attractive apartment houses a step up from tenements yet nothing so grand as the luxury apartments being built for the wealthy.

Marketed with the sophisticated-sounding name "French Flats," one of the very first of these was built by Jersey City businessman Henry Meinken at the corner of 14th Street and 7th Avenue.  Meinken called on James W. Cole to design his new building in 1888.  Cole was a favorite of the Astor family and he built several factory, warehouse and apartment buildings for them, several a few blocks west on 14th around Hudson and 9th Avenues.

It was completed in 1889 and given the cultured name "The Jeanne d'Arc."   The five-story brick building with brownstone trim had commercial space on the street floor and 8 commodius apartments above -- two apartments per floor.  To set the building apart from the baser tenements, Cole added an attractive pressed metal cornice and carved brownstone sills and lintels.  Some of the windows received decorative pediments and some were "supported" by scalloped brownstone half-basins.

But visual impact was reserved for the entranceway on 14th Street.  In a free-handed mixture of architectural periods, imposing heavily-carved carytids support a classical balcony with medieval balusters, topped by two fierce-looking winged griffins.  Above the balcony a glistening white statue of Joan of Arc sits on a weighty brownstone base.

Although the official address for the Jeanne d'Arc is 62 Seventh Avenue, Meinken's 14th Street entrance gave the residents the more impressive-sounding 200 West 14th Street mailing address.

The French Flat movement did not arrive without its detractors.  The New York Times discussed the trend on September 24, 1899.  "The intermediate dwellings, the so-called 'French Flats,'" it said, "are those upon which we really are in most urgent need of ... a standard.  We have apartment houses for the rich designed by competent architects.  We have tenement houses for the poor designed by competent architects.  But no competent architect has ever been invoked, that we know of, to design dwellings for the great middle class...whose members cannot afford a whole house, nor yet a "swell" apartment, but can afford a rent which, in any other city than this would secure a healthful and comfortable dwelling."

"To call the things that are actually provided 'French Flats' is to insult a friendly nation," The Times went on.  "Nothing like them was ever seen or would be possible in France."

The problem with buildings like the Jeanne d'Arc, according to the newspaper, was lack of light (the bedrooms were "dark cells") and ventilation.  While the upper-class apartment residents enjoyed the convenience of elevators, the middle class renters were walking up five floors exactly as were the tenement dwellers.  What were marketed as light courts were in actuality, said The Times, "a flue, a conduit not for light and air but for sounds and smells."

The French Flat solution for housing middle-class families, however, remained viable for decades.  And despite the problems contemporary critics found with the design, the Flats filled a crucial void in the late 19th and early 20th Century housing market.

The Jeanne d'Arc is the earliest surviving example of a French Flat building on 14th Street and one of the earliest in the city.  The exterior is in a remarkable state of preservation.  The ornate cornice is intact and the brownstone detailing is in overall good shape.  Most remarkable is that the statue of Joan of Arc still stands over the doorway more than a century after being placed there.

The carved brownstone entrance has been painted a barn red and a portion has been chopped off to accomodate the widening of the sidewalk.  The many-paned entrance doors and fanlight appear original.  On the support beneath Joan, the words "JEANNE D'ARC" which until a few years ago stood out in deep relief, have sadly been mostly lost through well-intentioned by clumsy maintenance.

1930 Salvation Army Centennial Memorial Temple

When the Salvation Army first branched out into in the States in 1880, there was little need for a headquarters.  Meetings and revivals were held in tents or in the open air.  Founded in 1865 by William Booth in London with assistance from his wife, Catherine, the organization waged "warfare against evil" complete with military-styled uniforms.

As the turn of the century neared though, things changed.  Gilbert A. Schellenger was commissioned to design a headquarters building at 120 West 14th Street.  The active street, along with the proximity to the 6th Avenue elevated train station, was a guarantee of high visibility for the organization.  Schellenger's building was a seven-story Italianate fortress in keeping with the Salvation Army's military theme.

In spite of the good that the organization did -- such as alcohol and drug rehabilitation and social reform -- the public often viewed the organization with suspicion and negativity.  Booth's daughter, Evangeline, was sent to New York in 1904 to take charge of the U.S. operations.  As the 50th Anniversary of the Salvation Army's work in America and the centennial of her father's birth neared, Evangeline set out to change public perception.

Her goal was to present the organization in a more progressive light.  In 1928 Booth contracted architects Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker to do just that.  The firm was on the cutting-edge of modern architecture in New York at the time.  They were responsible for some of the most unique art deco skyscrapers in the city including the Bank of New York, The Western Union Building and the Irving Trust Building.  Ralph Walker, whose reputation for creating visually distinctive designs with unusual materials was already firmly established, was put in charge of the project.

photo NYPL Collection

Dedicated in 1930, Walker's complex included the organization's headquarters, a residence hotel for working women, meeting rooms and the grand Centennial Memorial Temple.

photo NYPL Collection

The Temple included a 1600-seat auditorium in a cavernous Art Deco space.  It was the first religious space in New York to have extra-wide seating for overweight audience members.  The dedication was a gala affair including a concert on the new $22,500 organ by Henry F. Seibert, organist of the Town Hall.  John Phillip Sousa wrote a march for the occassion, "The Salvation Army March" and personally conducted the Salvation Army Band.

The aging Sousa's composition was somewhat uninspired compared to several of the other marches composed for the event.  Somewhat abashed, Sousa apologized to Staff Bandsman Burtenshaw afterward.  "If I'd known that you had so many bandsmen who could play like that, I would have written a more challenging march," he said.

The architectural masterwork of Walker's complex, however, is the deep grotto-like entrance.  The stepped concrete facade with curtain-like folds was cast in place.  Great metal Art Deco gates span the entrance with a rising sun motif.  And while Evangeline Booth sought to downplay the militaristic aspects of the Army, she retained the organizations battle cry in large bronze letters on the entrance wall:  Blood and Fire.

Ask three architectural historians to identify the style of the Centennial Memorial Temple and you will get three separate answers.  It is variously tagged Art Deco, Ziggurat Moderne, and German Expressionism.  I have my own term:  Wizard of Oz Art Deco.  I simply cannot stand before that incredible entrance and not expect to look up to see SURRENDER DOROTHY written across the sky in smoke.

Although the Salvation Army's 14th Street headquarters is largely overlooked, it has survived 80 years with virtually no alterations and remains one of New York City's most significant Art Deco design works.

The House that Scandal Built - 18 East 68th Street

Henry T. Sloane was a young and wealthy executive in the family carpeting firm, W. & J. Sloane, when he met Brooklyn debutante Jessie A. Robbins.  Jessie, whom The New York Times later recalled was "ambitious," became Mrs. Henry T. Sloane in 1882.


Sloane's firm not only provided carpeting to the mansions of New York's millionaires, but went on to carpet the entire Waldorf-Astoria hotel where the Empire State Building now stands.  In 1896 Sloane would provide the carpeting for the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II.  
 
The Times related that Jessie "...with the wealth that she commanded when she became Mrs. Sloane soon won a prominent place in exclusive circles.  She entertained largely, both here and in Newport."  Society women noticed.  The Times said "She threw herself into the life of this set with an earnestness and enthusiasm which caused much remark."
 
New York society, Jessie would find, often made "much remark."

In 1894, both to reflect his wealth and to provide a venue for his wife's entertainments, Sloane commissioned architects Carrere & Hastings, to design a lavish townhouse at 9 East 72nd Street.  The house was completed in 1896 and Jessie threw a ball for 200 of New York's most elite in January 1897.  That night many eyebrows were raised and whispers passed from one pearl-laden socialite to another when Mr. Sloane failed to make an appearance.  Trouble, it seemed, had moved in to 9 East 72nd Street with the Sloanes.

Then as the winter social season was about to start in 1898, Jessie Sloane announced that she would not be entertaining.  In Fifth Avenue parlors rumors flew.

And sure enough, on December 22 The New York Times reported "The gossip of New York society during the last few days concerning the supposed differences of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Sloane was brought to a climax yesterday by the report that they had decided to separate."

The day before, Sloane had transferred the 72nd Street house to his wife.  "Then," said The Times, "because of their prominence in society, the gossip started and surmises were rife on every side."  In fact, Sloane had been living in a hotel on upper Fifth Avenue for some time.  Social gossipers were exasperated by tight-lipped friends of the Sloane family who "absolutely declined to discuss the matter."

Speculation became fact and the topic for conversation over tea when on April 28, 1899 the Sloanes were divorced at 3:59 pm.  Jessie had been carrying on an affair with Perry Belmont of the fabulously wealthy August Belmont family.  Included in the divorce agreement was the stipulation by the embittered Henry Sloane that Jessie could not marry in the state of New York as long as Sloane was alive.

The couple would not be stopped.  At 6:30 that evening Belmont boarded a train for Greenwich, Connecticut.  Half an hour later Jessie and her maid followed.  By 10:00, six hours after the divorce, they were back in New York as Mr. and Mrs. Perry Belmont. 

Although Jessie returned the 72nd Street house to Sloane, he never went back.  Instead he had mansion designer C. P. H. Gilbert build a graceful Beaux Arts home at 18 East 68th Street for himself and his two daughters which was completed in 1905. 

By the terms of the divorce agreement, Jessie could never see her daughters until their 21st birthdays.  If she saw them on the street, she was barred from speaking to them.  She was disallowed to write a note to them.

The 36 foot-wide 30 room limestone mansion Sloane and his daughters moved into boasted 17 baths, three terraces, 17-foot ceilings and 11 fireplaces.  While the house had an enormous ballroom, it was doubtlessly rarely used.  Sloane, according to The Times, "...has never seemed to care for gayety, and it has been generally understood that he was devoted to his business and was essentially domestic in his tastes."

In 1941 an art dealer bought the Sloane mansion for $180,000.  About 7 years later it was sold again and divided into nine apartments.  After changing hands a few more times, it was purchased in 2007 for $39 million and restored to a private home.

Photograph The New York Daily News

By May of 2011 the owners had defaulted in over $28 million in loans and Henry Sloane's mansion sold at a foreclosure auction a month later.  The sole bidder, Ukranian-born businessman Alexander Rovt, paid around $40 million.  Rovt, head of the fertilizer company IBE Trade Corporation, purchased the property with plans to reconvert it to a single family home for his family.
Much of the interior detailing remains -- the French paneling, the scenic hand-painted walls, the parquet floors, and the marble staircase and oil painted murals in the ballroom.  Today Gilbert's limestone facade looks as it did in 1905 when the indignant and wronged Henry Sloane moved in.

Photo The New York Daily News

Bow Bridge - Central Park

As Central Park was being planned in the 1850s, the list of items to be designed by Calvert Vaux and his assistant Jacob Wrey Mould grew longer and longer.  On that list was a bridge across the lake to connect the Ramble with Cherry Hill.  The commissioners envisioned a suspension bridge; a minor craze for these having swept the country starting a decade earlier.

Instead, a compromise was reached with a low-rising cast iron bridge the graceful arch of which resembled an archer's bow, hence the name.

Problems had to be overcome from the start.  For one thing, the northern bank is much lower than the southern side.  Therefore the north abutment is necessarily higher.

A much repeated story was that because the cast iron would need to expand and contract with changes in temperature, cannon balls were integrated into the abutments to act as giant ball bearings.  Indeed, the expansion differential is as much as 2 inches between high summer and mid-winter. The roadway was constructed of South American hardwood which successfully allowed for expansion and contraction.

Rising nine and a half feet above the lake, Vaux and Mould's graceful sweeping bridge would be a masterpiece of Victorian design.  Intricate, interlaced pierced ornamentation leads the eye across the span.  Vaux contracted Janes, Kirtland & Co. to manufacture the ironwork.  These were good days for the firm.  While they were casting the span they won the contract for the Capitol dome in Washington, DC.

The bulk of construction was completed between 1859 and 1860; the last details being finished in 1862.

Bow Bridge was immediately a romantic destination for lovers and a favorite site for proposals.  It quickly became one of the most photographed spots in the Park, with hundreds of stereopticon card depictions being published.  It has been the constant subject of paintings for more than a century.

Sometime in the 1920s the large, ornamental Victorian urns at the four corners of the bridge were removed.

The bridge, undisputedly one of the most picturesque sites in New York, became the setting of countless movie scenes as the 20th Century wore on.  Movies like Highlander, Great Expectations, Spiderman 3, Autumn in New York, Keeping the Faith, Uptown Girls and You've Got Mail constitute just a fraction of the list.

Photograph Andrew C. Mace

In the 1970s, with New York City on the brink of financial collapse and no funds available for the upkeep of the Park, Bow Bridge, along with so many other Central Park features, fell on hard times.  The graceful iron arch was seriously rusting and the stonework was in disrepair.  A $368,000 restoration, made possible by private donations, was done in 1974 by P.A. Fiebiger, Inc.  During the restoration, no cannonballs were found--causing much surprise and disappointment. 

Then, in 2008, working off period photographs, artisans funded by the Central Park Conservancy created cast iron copies of the 3.5 foot high ornamental urns.  When they were installed, Bow Bridge looked as it did at its unveiling in 1862.

Photograph Astrakey

In February of 2010 New Yorkers, responding to a Department of Parks poll "Central to Your Heart," voted Bow Bridge the most romantic spot in Central Park.  The second oldest cast iron bridge in America, Bow Bridge is mid-park off 74th Street, west of Bethesda Terrace.

"The Wedding Cake of the West Side" - The Ansonia

Photograph NYPL Collection

Strolling along upper Grand Boulevard (which would be renamed Broadway) in 1895, William Earl Dodge Stokes had a vision: he imagined Broadway as a wide fashionable boulevard similar to the Champs-Elysses in Paris.  Over the course of the next few years he bought the property on the site of the former New York Orphan Asylum between 73rd and 74th Streets.

Here he planned for a grand French residential hotel.  But not just any hotel.  This would be the largest, the costliest and the most ornate; and its location at the bend in Broadway would make it visible for blocks. 

It would be named The Ansonia.  (The name came either from his grandfather, Anson Phelps; or from Phelps' firm The Ansonia Clock Company; or from the town where the factory was located, Ansonia, Connecticut.)

Stokes contracted the French architect Paul E.M. Duboy, who had studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, to design the building.  Duboy used Parisian Beaux Arts apartment buildings as inspiration, however the Ansonia would be three times the size.  Seventeen stories tall with foaming ornamentation, a curved mansard roof with corner turrets topped with enormous copper lanterns, it was hyperbole in steel and stone.  Everything was the most or the biggest.

With over half a million square feet, there were 1400 rooms and 340 suites.  Residents would have the use of the ballroom, several cafes and tea rooms, dining rooms, a Turkish bath, writing rooms, the largest indoor swimming pool in the world and, unbelievably, a lobby fountain with live seals.  Joseph Gill-Martin, hired as the building's curator, purchased over 600 oil paintings to decorate the interior.

William Stokes demanded so much input regarding the layout of the floorplan -- insisting on oval and other eccentrically shaped rooms -- that he finally paid the frustrated Duboy $5000 to go home to Paris.  Duboy did -- where he promptly suffered a nervous breakdown.

Ground was broken in 1899 and construction lasted five years.  The result was a sumptuous pile, its great bulk broken up by the over-the-top ornamentation, balconies, and irregular surfaces.  The Ansonia opened for business in 1904.  Its tiers of lavish decoration quickly earned its nickname "The Wedding Cake of the Westwide."

The residents would not want for much.  In the summer, frigid salt water was piped through the walls to keep the apartments at a constant 70 degrees.  An ingenious pneumatic tube system connected apartments with the staff so messages could be whisked back and forth.  The Persian carpets in the suites were custom woven and there were stained glass windows.  Three times a day a maid would replace the towels, soap, table linens and stationery in each suite.  A wide white marble staircase with a Beaux Arts iron and mahogany bannister spiriled down all seventeen floors.  For those occupants who had no intention of cooking for themselves there were apartments with no kitchens.

And for those who did cook, there was a small menagerie on the roof consisting of over 500 chickens, some ducks, and goats.  Every morning a porter would deliver fresh eggs to the tenants.  Every morning until 1907, that is, when the Health Department put the end to the rooftop farm.

The problem with the Ansonia was its location.  It was on the West Side and no amount of luxurious amenities could change that.  Instead of barons of industry and the social elite, the apartment lured atheletes and small-time criminals.  Babe Ruth lived here and considered the entire building home - often wearing his slippers and robe to the lobby to get a shave.  Yankee players Wally Schang, Lefty O’Doul, and Bob Meusel also lived there along with boxer Jack Dempsey.

Here the 1919 World Series was fixed when a group of White Sox players agreed to throw the game for $10,000 per man.  Gangster Al Adams lived at the Ansonia for two years before badgering from law enforcement drove him to suicide in his suite.

Entertainment personalities and musicians also called the Ansonia home attracted, for one thing, by the double-wide doors (installed in all apartments so as to accommodate a grand piano) and by the thick masonry walls throughout that guaranteed sound-proof rooms.

Flo Zeigfield lived here with his wife while his mistress lived a few floors below.  Conductor Arturo Toscanini and his family moved in as well as scores of opera stars.  Rachmaninoff, Mahler, and Stravinsky had apartments here and, for three decades starting in the 1920's, Wagnerian tenor Lauritz Melchoir lived here, using the long hallways for archery practice.

In 1926 Stokes died, leaving the Ansonia to his son who was unenthusiastic about it at best.  He left its management to third-party companies and little by little the upkeep of the building was neglected.  The Depression hit the Ansonia hard.  The dining rooms closed.  Services were discontinued.  The grand main entrance was plastered over and mismatched storefronts intruded into the street level facade.

With the advent of World War II, the management stripped the building of "excess" metals for the war effort.  Tons of copper, including the decorative lanterns on the turrets were removed.  The cold salt water piping in the walls was torn out as was the pneumatic tube system.

And things just kept getting worse.

The building was sold in 1945 to Samuel Broxmeyer.  An unscrupulous crook, Broxmeyer bargained with the tenants, offering them large discounts if they would pay their rent several years in advance.  He then disappeared.  Broxmeyer ended up in prison and the Ansonia sold for $40,000 at a bankruptcy auction.

Jacob Starr, the new owner, soon realized that his $40,000 investment was going to cost him millions in needed repairs and updating to bring the old building up to code.  He decided, therefore, to do nothing.  As the 1960's approached the structure was in decrepit shape.  The roof had multiple leaks.  Pipes corroded.  The ornate balconies were rusting away.

In order to generate added revenue, Starr rented the old Turkish bath and swimming pool area to The Continental Baths in 1968.  Not a mundane gay bathhouse, it featured palms, a cascading waterfall into the pool, a disco and a clever system of colored lights that tipped off patrons of approaching police. 

And it had a cabaret.

Here aspiring entertainers performed for towel-clad young men.  As the word spread, husbands and wives straight from dinner on the town stood in line to see the show.  "Bathhouse Bette" was a favorite among the crowd.  She later became known as Bette Midler.  Her pianist, Barry Manilow, would sometimes play in a towel just to fit in.  Squeaky-clean John Davidson performed here early in his career as did Melba Moore and Peter Allen.

None of this helped the situation on the floors above.  In 1968 the tenants association won a decision from the courts to freeze rents until repairs were made on the building.  Starr had a better idea.  He would tear the Ansonia down and build a 40-story modern apartment building.

Refusing to cave in, the tenants sought support from the Landmarks Preservation Commission.  Starr was incensed.  He told one resident “I have the most powerful men in Washington representing me.”  When the Landmarks Preservation Commission held its first hearing in April 1970, Starr's lawyer flatly stated “The hotel’s architectural appearance is not worthy of designation of a landmark. I am not, nor is the owner, aware of any particular historic significance to the building.”

The testimony sparked demonstrations and a petition, signed by over 25,000, requesting Mayor John Lindsay to save the Ansonia.  The residents, many of whom were from the entertainment industry, had 73rd Street closed for a free five-hour fund-raising and public awareness concert.  A few months later the exterior of the Ansonia was designated a landmark.

Defiant, Starr refused to spend anything on the maintenance of the interior.  Life for the residents continued to get harsher.

The Continental Baths moved out in 1977 and Starr replaced it with Plato's Retreat -- an unabashed sex club where couples paid an entrance "membership fee" of $30 for a night of debauchery.  A sex shop opened on street level and men loitered around the building.  But before Plato's opened Jacob Starr had died.

His grandchildren inherited the Ansonia; however his will strictly stipulated that his money, which was left in trust, was forbidden to be used for upkeep of the building.  Jacob Starr died a very angry man.

Jesse Krasnow purchased the dowager building in 1978 and immediately took out $21 million in mortgages to be used for stabilizing and restoring the facade and for interior improvements.  He told The New York Times “The halls were yellow. Dreary. Discolored linoleum, fluorescent lights, bare bulbs, and old tiles.”  

In 1990 the tenants accepted a condominium plan.  Restoration and improvements continue, with Krasnow having put over $100 million into the old "wedding cake."  The Ansonia has been through some hard times but she still stands proudly at the bend of Broadway at 73rd Street

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