The Pepper Pot Inn -- No. 146 West 4th Street

The elegant brick-faced, Federal style homes that lined Washington Square by the mid-1830s spilled onto the side streets.  One such house rose at 146 West 4^th Street, just half a block off the Square towards Sixth Avenue.  Three-and-a-half-stories high over a deep English basement, it featured a refined, arched entrance with a delicate fanlight.  The red brick was accented with white stone, similar to its high-toned neighbors on the park.  In 1871, owner J. J. Lyons added a full fourth floor and a gently sloped roof which his building permit deemed “a mansard roof.”

By 1915, the streets once busy with the landaus and coupes of the wealthy saw the first horseless carriages.  The wealthiest residents had moved further north and Greenwich Village was now New York’s Bohemia—drawing poets, artists and musicians to its quaint and rambling streets.  It was a time of enormous change and the nation was fascinated with a new mode of entertainment--the motion picture.

New York was the epicenter of the silent movie industry and one couple, Dr. Carlyle Sherlock and Viola, tried their hand at acting.  In 1915, Carlyle played the part of Paul Greer in The Stain of Dishonor.  The 23-year old Viola acted in a handful of productions.  But before long, they would abandon the silent screen for another endeavor.

In 1918, Carlyle Sherlock purchased 146 West 4^th Street and renovated it as a restaurant-nightclub, The Pepper Pot Inn.  A later promotion would say it was “established by Carlyle Sherlock for his wife, Viola, when they retired from the Motion Picture Screen, as a meeting place for their friends of the motion picture, theatrical, bridge and chess world.”  (More than acting, chess was a passion of “Doc” Sherlock.)

The former English basement, a few steps below street level, became a restaurant where “Vi” served her homemade cakes, pies and puddings.  A postcard would boast, “The chickens and eggs come from ‘Air Castle Acres,’ Viola Sherlock’s 300 acre Orange County estate.  The special blend of coffee is percolated and then filtered through Japanese rice paper; the Chili Con Carne is done in real Mexican style; the Virginia Ham, and other Southern Dishes specially prepared by our old Southern chef.”

The ceiling of the dining room, below street level, was strung with chili peppers and paper lanterns.

The parlor and second floors of the old house became dance floors.  And while the Sherlocks rented rooms in the house directly across the street at 145 West 4th Street, Carlyle reserved the top floor for Viola’s private studio, “the largest in the village.”   Flooded with sunlight from the expansive studio windows, the space was decorated in true Edwardian style with wicker furniture, Chinese lanterns and palms.

The top floor became Viola Sherlock's private refuge.

On the third floor was the Bridge Room.  The space was rented for private banquets and meetings and soon became home to Frank Marshall’s chess club.  Marshall had held the title of United States chess champion since 1909 and the club attracted professional and amateur chess players nationwide.   On September 24, 1920, for instance, The Evening World announced, “The chess champion of the United States, Frank J. Marshall, will begin tonight a series of exhibitions of simultaneous play, playing a score or more of experts at once, at the Pepper Pot, the Greenwich Village chess divan conducted by Dr. Sherlock…Mr. Marshall and Dr. Sherlock will also play a match at ‘Kriegslpiel,’ a chess game in which each player moves without knowing the moves of his opponent.”  The exhibitions were given every Friday evening and “will be witnessed and participated in by many of the strongest players in the Greater City.”

The Pepper Pot was a sensation.  Entertainers like Al Jolson stopped in and neighborhood artists called it home.  Waitresses, or “hostesses,” were often music or art students from nearby New York University.  But it was the bohemian atmosphere as much as the good food that drew the crowds.  “The uniqueness and originality, the environment and bonhomie, all serve to make you remember the Pepper Pot when you are away from it and you long to return,” said an ad.  “It gets into your heart, too, and you will never be able to lose the magic of it all the days of your life.”  Theatre Magazine called it “the realest thing in Bohemian atmosphere” in the country.

Young hostesses, often students, pose in the garden.

On the tables of the restaurant were candles—actually globs of wax created by innumerable melted candles—inspired by The Pepper Pot Club in London.  The first candles were lit in a glass tumbler.  When the initial candle was melted down, another was added, and then another.  Before long a tall, volcano-looking mountain of wax resulted, some up to four feet tall.  Visiting artists would often sit before the wax at their tables and carve sculptures out of the waxen mound—temporary works of art that would soon be covered in dripping wax.

A writer from Theatre Magazine in 1922 described her visit.  “We found ‘The Pepper Pot’ jammed…that is the main room, several steep steps down from the street level.  And it had all the earmarks of your true Bohemia…low ceilings…candle-light…a pleasingly irregular shape fitted with nooks and corners and wooden seats along the walls.”  The writer, Angelina, noted a large table in the center of the room.  “This table was filled with young artists and newspaper men, we were told, and every few minutes someone jumped up from it and went to the piano and played…popular stuff, but with a nice feeling for the soft pedal and a full extraction of the rhythm.”

Angelina then noticed Metropolitan Opera star Sophie Braslau in one corner, and Chicago Opera tenor Signor Ciccolini at another table.  Soprano Marguerita Sylva was there with her aviator husband, Major Smith.   The diva said to Angelina “Isn’t this the most interesting place!”

Artists carved the accumulated wax of a succession of candles into artworks.

The 1920s would bring two major forces to New York and The Pepper Pot:  Prohibition and Jazz.

Like many of the nightclubs of Manhattan, The Pepper Pot managed to continue business almost-as-usual despite Prohibition.  Patrons still managed to have wine or drinks with dinner—and only occasionally did the Sherlocks have to answer for it.

But there was that problem of jazz.

In the days before air conditioning, open windows let in the night breezes but also let out the blaring music.  Inside The Pepper Pot, flappers in fringed dresses danced the Charleston and the Black Bottom with college boys.  The Roaring Twenties had arrived and the neighbors were not pleased.

On February 11, 1921, two women from across the street--Mrs. Hoolis B. Page of No. 143 West 4^th Street and the Sherlocks's landlady, Mrs. Alberting de Creveling of No. 145—filed a complaint with Magistrate Corrigan in the Jefferson Market Court.

Mrs. De Cleveling complained, “We can get no sleep.  Something has got to be done with these coal mines, these diamond mines, these gold mines and—that Pepper Pot at No. 144 W. 4^th Street, directly opposite our homes."

When she insinuated that the restaurant sold liquor the magistrate asked, “Do you mean intoxicating?”

She replied, “Why, our young girls and boys are picked up unconscious from the stuff they receive at these places.”

After calling the patrons “slum seekers,” she turned her attention to the noise.  “That jazz music—oh, my!  Those funny ditties that they play on the phonograph.  I need sleep.”

When Carlyle Sherlock arrived in court before the magistrate on February 17, he was armed and ready.

“Mrs. Creveling says realty values have depreciated in Greenwich Village because of the foreign element,” he said.  “I rent my apartment from her.  A year ago I paid $25 a month, and now my rent has been jacket up to $125 a month.  Realty may have depreciated, but rents in the Village have not.”

The Evening World reported, “the proprietor had on hand a number of witnesses and other evidence to show the place is so quiet chess players make it a headquarters.”  The charge of “conducting a noisy place and public nuisance” was dismissed.

Jazz continued on West 4^th Street, even finding its way to the third floor chess club.  On March 14, 1922, The Evening World reported that players, “even get up in the midst of a game, it is alleged, and change a gambit into a gambol, gaily seizing their partners about the waist and tripping all around the place under the inspiration of a jazz band.”  The newspaper described the Pepper Pot saying, “It is extremely Greenwich Village—with an automatic piano in the candle-lit basement and a group of furious jazzers two floors above.”

In what had been a dignified parlor in the 1830s, flappers danced the Charleston in the 1920s.

A year later Viola, now 28 years old, would be arrested along with two customers by Patrolman Joseph Reilly.  Harry Maunbach was a 33-year-old artist from Chicago who was having dinner with a Brooklyn blue print maker, 25-year-old Walker Wacke.  “The patrolman testified in Essex Market Court yesterday that he found some liquor at a table occupied by Maunbach and Wacke in the restaurant,” reported The New York Times on January 15, 1923.  The trio was held on $500 bail each.

Nineteen-year-old Adelaide Miller was in charge of the check room on the evening of December 19, 1925 when 70 sophomores from the City College were holding a smoker in the Bridge Room.  What started out as a normal night turned into anything but that when 200 freshmen rushed in and started a riot.

“Four or five hundred additional guests were directly or indirectly drawn into the turmoil, and pottery, silverware and chair legs, according to the police, were used by the combatants,” said The New York Times.

In the melee, Adelaide was knocked down and received cuts and bruises.  Several of the gang broke into Viola's upstairs studio, “breaking several rare Egyptian vases and leaving the place in confusion,” the newspaper reported.  Despite reserves of the Mercer Street police station being called in, no arrests were made.

At the same time that Adelaide Miller was checking coats, 28-year-old Gerold Schrage worked a few nights a week singing and playing piano.  The classically-trained pianist came from Aberdeen, Washington and tried in vain to launch a concert tour.  The New York Times noted, “Schrage’s tenor voice was much admired in the Village, where he sang at numerous parties of friends.  It was said, however, that his subjects—invariably classical—frequently were ‘over the heads’ of his listeners, and that his efforts to entertain consequently often ‘fell-flat.’  Jazz was not in his repertoire.

The young entertainer lived in a second floor room at 289 West 12^th Street nearby.  Things were going alright until his mother sent word that she was coming for a visit in June 1926.  Schrage panicked, realizing that his mother would find out that he was not working as a classical pianist, but as a nightclub entertainer.

“I cannot bear the thought of her learning that I am a cabaret singer,” he told friends.

A week before his mother’s scheduled arrival, Schrage left the Pepper Pot and returned to his room.  He ripped his bed sheets, stuffing the fabric into the crevices of the doors.  Newspaper and strips of cloth were pushed into the keyholes and cracks along the windows.  He then turned on the gas jets.

By the time his landlady, Veronica Flanagan, smelled the odor of gas and the door was broken down, the young man was dead.

Greenwich Village was still the center of art in the 1930s and Washington Square became an impromptu outdoor gallery in 1932.  But winter weather threatened to end the struggling artists’ exhibitions.  “Doc” Sherlock came to their rescue by offering two floors of The Pepper Pot as an indoor, year-round gallery.  By December 9, fifty of what The New York Times called “needy artists” had taken advantage of the offer.  About 300 oil paintings, water colors and etchings were hung here to be admired—and bought—by patrons.

Few traces of the Federal-style residence survive -- photo by Alice Lum

Exactly a year later, on December 5, 1933, Prohibition was repealed.  Finally, New Year’s Eve could be rung in with a toast.  On January 1, 1934, The Times said, “The lid was off last night in the city’s hundreds of hotels, restaurants and night clubs.  Not since the beginning of the dry era fourteen years ago was there so great a New Year’s crowd as that which turned out to greet 1934.”  The newspaper reported on the cost of celebrating in the Village.  “At the Pepper Pot, liquor-licensed, the charge was $10 a couple, with a bottle of wine and dinner.”

By 1938, the Carlyles had retired to their country home and Harry Schecter took over the Pepper Pot.  The New York Times described the club “which boasts it is the Village’s oldest night spot and certainly has been in business a lot of years.”  The newspaper said it had,

...a certain feeling as of the old speakeasy days, dim lights, intimate surroundings, a small dance floor, no regular show but an m.c. (Boyd Heathen) who sings.  Also, Works of Art on the walls, a fortuneteller and, over in one corner, the patriarchal John Henry Titus, author of one version of ‘The Face on the Bar Room Floor;’ if not Mr. Titus, then another neighborhood celebrity, of whom there have been many in the proud Pepper Pot past.  It is that kind of place, and it gets livelier as the evening goes on.   

The club now had “the famed Voodoo Room, which is a sort of Greenwich Village version of Small’s Paradise in Harlem.”  Here were singing waiters, a tap dancer named Little Baby Bangs, “songstresses who dispense the torch, sophisticated and rowdy-dow,” and the hostess, Dotty Keane, whom The Times deemed, “attractive and courteous.”

The elegant Federal doorway that survived through the mid-20th century was replaced with something more mundane. -- photo by Alice Lum

The Pepper Pot, once the most popular eating place in the Village and a nation-wide destination, would not last forever.  In 1965 there was still a bar and restaurant in the basement and first floor, but the upper floors had been renovated into apartments.  The 1830s Federal-style entrance had been obliterated for a modern, nondescript doorway.

Where jazz music once played, an illicit after-hours club called The New Showcase was run by the Mafia family of Carlo Gambino.  It was shut down by Federal and NYPD officers on July 18, 1971 in a predawn raid.

Today all traces of Viola and Carlyle’s jazz-age nightclub are gone.  The upper floors have been renovated into luxury co-ops and the Pepper Pot’s dining room below sidewalk level is now the Campus Laundry & Cleaners.  One floor above, where young girls with bobbed hair and rolled-down hose danced to the annoyance of neighbors, the Beauty Jewel Spa offers laser skin care.

photo by Alice Lum

Many thanks to reader Eric Stott for suggesting this post.  

The above postcards were supplied through the generosity of Mr. Stott.

LaptrinhX.com has no authorization to reuse the content of this blog

Chelsea's Portraits in Stone --Face-Carved Keystones

The sculptor brought astounding detail to this realistic 1912 portrait over a doorway on West 20th Street.  He included the double-breasted coat, furrowed expression and even a disheveled, upturned collar.

The great wave of German immigrants who settled in New York in the mid- to late 19^th century included laborers skilled in trades learned at home—cabinet makers, cigar manufacturers and stone carvers among them. 

Some of the stone carvers—gifted sculptors in their own right like Karl Bitter—would go on to celebrated careers.   But most labored away anonymously in the dusty cavernous workshops with scores of other carvers creating mantels, lintels and doorway surrounds.  It was grueling work that earned them a meager living to support their families.

On West 25th Street, what appears to be an entire family is depicted over the window openings.  Of the total of five realistic faces, three shown here, is one of a deceased infant (as noted by the wings).

As early as 1852 a reporter for The New York Times took notice of the conditions in which the men worked.    The writer noted that while passing a stone-cutter’s yard “our attention was directed by the clinking music of mallets in the hands of a horde of busy artisans, to a few of their noble productions standing outside, which rather excited a curiosity to see more—and we walked in.  While wandering there and wondering over the many specimens, which we thought gave evidence of the surprising perfection to which the art has been brought, our attention was arrested by the occasional hacking coughs and emaciated appearances of some of the workmen; but when we saw them bending over their work, and inhaling the poisonous particles of dust created by their chisels, we thought the phenomena easily accounted for.”

The journalist consulted with a doctor who confirmed that “coughs, consumption, and other affections of the lungs have been frequently produced” from inhaling stone dust.  The Times simply advised stone carvers to “cover the mouth or face with gauze…We hope for the sake of this very useful, and respectable class of artists, that these plain hints will not be overlooked.”

At the time of the article the work of the stone carvers for the exterior of buildings was relegated mainly to reserved decorative lintels, door surrounds and cornices.   In the second half of the century their artistic talents would be more heavily taxed, including sculpted human forms.   The revived Italian Renaissance architecture brought with it busts of gods and goddesses—most often Hermes or Athena—who aloofly gazed down on passersby.

This ambitious late 19th-century apartment building on 8th Avenue in Chelsea kept sculptors busy with over 100 carved faces--each one unique.

Then, with the medieval-inspired Romanesque Revival style that began sweeping the country in the 1880s fantastic heads of helmeted Vikings, warriors, kings and noblewomen appeared as carved keystones and in the elaborate capitals of carved columns.   Some buildings required dozens of faces carved from brownstone, limestone or marble.

The workshops were frenzied with the clinking of chisel against stone and, often, the advanced stone carver was given broad liberty in his creations.   Faced with producing an endless list of carved faces, he sometimes drew his inspiration from his own family or friends.   The sculptor produced unheralded, lasting images of his wife or children as elements of the new structure.

As human forms began appearing as architectural elements, life-like faces like this in Victorian dress may have belonged to a family member of the sculptor.

Through it all the carvers' wages did not necessarily reflect the increase in architectural sculpture.  A letter to the editor of The New York Times pleaded the case of the stone carver and his meager wages. 
 
“A stone carver is an artist and a skillful mechanic.  He must be an expert in freehand drawing.  He must be a modeler.  Styles of at least a score of different periods in history must be common knowledge to him.  A study of nature in its various forms is necessary—foliage, flower and fruit, as well as the anatomy of the animal and the human body.  He must have an inborn and cultivated sense of harmony and contrast.  But all these studies and talents are nil if he cannot use the chisel and the mallet and the different tools of his profession on delicate and costly material for sculpture, natural stone, marble and granite.  A different technique is necessary to apply to limestone, marble, granite and sandstone.

“And after several years of concentrated effort and application, when he becomes a proficient mechanic he finds himself unable to properly care for his family.”

This drowsy-looking gentleman on West 22nd Street boasts a fine Edwardian mustache.

These artistic abilities did not go unnoticed by the wealthy real estate developers who were building New York.   Around the turn of the century it occurred to some that they, too, could be immortalized in stone on their own buildings.    In the Chelsea area alone, scores of buildings, mostly apartments, rose with the owner’s or developer’s proud face adorning the entranceway.  Suddenly entrepreneurs shared the limelight with Vikings and warriors.

A cravat-wearing gentleman bears the 21st century humiliation of a coat of aluminum paint.

Ironically, the wealthy men who posed before the poorly-paid stone carvers in order to be remembered forever achieved the same fate as the sculptors’ families—anonymity.   The wonderful stone portraits—these photographs in stone—are essentially overlooked and the names that belonged to the faces have been lost to time.

photographs taken by the author

The 1854 Bancroft Hotel Building -- No. 922 Broadway

Around 1854, as Broadway just south of the fashionable Union Square filled with refined residences, Jacob Cram build a row of Italianate brick rowhouses on the thoroughfare's east side between 21^st and 22^nd street.   If Cram’s attractive building at the corner, No. 922, was ever intended as a single-family home it did not remain one for long.

In 1855 George S. Park’s “Select School for Boys” (formerly D. P. Baron’s) occupied the upper floors.  The well-heeled students entered through a door on 21^st Street.   As the school prepared to re-open on September 8, 1856, it advertised in the New York Daily Tribune.  “There are three Departments—Senior, Middle, and Primary, with gymnastic Apparatus for physical training.  Circulars may be had at Lockwood’s Bookstore or at the School-rooms.”

The students here were schooled in “Classical, French, English and Primary School,” according to its advertisement the following year.  “Pupils are prepared for college or the counting-room.  Those between the ages of six and ten are under the care of a female teacher.  The Gymnasium is open to all departments.”

In the meantime the street level was home to the showroom of Colt & Whittelsey.  The firm sold chandeliers and gas fixtures to its high-end clientele.   On October 4, 1856 the store advertised a new shipment.   “Fifty New-Pattern Chandeliers—Never before offered in any market, will be OPENED THIS WEEK, for the inspection of purchasers.”

Additionally, homeowners could purchase weather stripping here.  An advertisement a month later urged “Every Dwelling-House should have Mathewson’s Patent Weather Strip on its Doors and French Windows.”  These were described as “a perfect prevention to the ingress of wind, dust and rain, besides being highly ornamental.  Can be applied to any door or window in a few minutes, at a trifling expense.”

For the cautious potential customer Colt & Whittelsey promised “1,000 City references given.”

In addition to lighting fixtures the firm supplied brackets and related chandelier parts and provided installation and customization of the devices.    At a time when most chandeliers were fueled by whale oil, the Colt & Whittelsey offered up-to-the-minute gas fixtures as well.

A May 5, 1857 advertisement in The New-York Tribune touted Colt & Whittelsey's wares (copyright expired)

George s. Park’s school for boys was gone by 1859 and the upper floors of No. 922 had been converted to the Bancroft House hotel.   Run by M. L. and A. W. Bordwell, it had previously been located just a block to the south at No. 906 Broadway.

Julia Fitzgerald was a chambermaid here in December 20 of that year when a friend was invited to a ball.  Apparently her friend had nothing appropriate to wear, so Julia “borrowed” jewelry—a gold bracelet and breastpin—from the room of a guest, Mr. Duscom.  She also borrowed $25.

Since she had not bothered to inform Mr. Duscom of the loan, he complained and the chambermaid was detained by Judge Quackenbush.  On January 12 she appeared in court before Judge Russell. The New York Times reported that “As she made it appear probably that she had only used it as a personal decoration for a party to which she was invited, judgment was suspended.”

Her employment at the Bancroft House was suspended as well.

The fish-scale slate shingles survive after nearly a century and a half .

Exactly one year later South Carolina seceded from the Union and the first storm clouds that would become the Civil War formed.   By 1864 the nation was embroiled in a bloody conflict.  On Saturday October 1 of that year a group of “War Democrats” chaired by Peter Cooper met at the Bancroft House.

The delegates agreed on “no surrender of flag or principles to rebels in arms against the country, and no armistice that would give the traitors any advantages over the soldiers of the Union,” reported The Times.

Three days later the group met here again.  It resolved to appoint a Committee of War Democrats to work with the War Democratic State Committee of the State of New York, and the War Democratic General Committee of the City and County of New York to make arrangements for a “mass Convention of the War Democracy in the City of New York” prior to the upcoming election.  The committee was composed of the leading names of the city, including A. T. Stewart, George Butler, and Edwards Pierrepont.

The New York Times noted that “After some patriotic speeches, during which much enthusiasm was evinced, the meeting adjourned.”

Not all of the guests at the Bancroft House were travelers.  Seth Adams had lived here two years when in January 1865 he was sued by Andrew j. Millspaugh for “alleged criminal intercourse with his wife.” 

T. Redding was a long-term resident here as well.  In January 1866 he wrote to the Editor of The New York Times in support of the proposed mass transit—subways and elevated trains.

Regarding the “tunnel and aerial roads” he wrote “I know, Mr. Editor, there is no room for any argument as to the great benefit that would accrue from this enterprise.  An axiom needs no investigation.  It is a fixed fact that one or both roads must be built, and that soon.”   The passionate Mr. Redding plead, “In the name of suffering pedestrians, let it be done.”

Despite its proximity to the exclusive Fifth Avenue Hotel on 23^rd Street and Broadway, the Bancroft House remained popular as a respectable and more affordable hotel.   Room rates were advertised at 50 cents, 75 cents and $1 per day with “weekly reductions.”

The tony American Jockey Club rented long-term rooms at the Bancroft in the Spring of 1868 for its “subscription rooms.”   The club met here on June 4 to discuss the new betting procedures based on the London Tattersalls.  In stilted Victorian prose the secretary noted “The obligations contracted there, although not subject to enforcement in the courts of law, have always been rigidly kept, even at the cost or utter ruin to the unfortunate backer of the beaten horses.  The only bond has been the word of honor of gentlemen, and the wreck of many a princely fortune and the forced expatriation of many a proud nobleman, have born testimony to the fidelity with which the bond has been paid.”

Not everything went perfectly at the Bancroft House.    Only a month earlier Mrs. Margaret Butler returned to her rooms here around 2:00 in the afternoon of May 27.  She noticed that the door, which she had locked, was forced open.  Hearing her at the door, two men rushed past and darted down the stairs.

The New York Times reported “Sensing the true state of the case, she followed them, crying ‘Stop thief!’”  A police officer apprehended one of the thieves, William Wall, whom the newspaper called “a man of respectable and sedate appearance.”  Wall had on him burglar tools including four skeleton keys, a pair of nippers and a jimmy.  The other man “mysteriously disappeared.”

In the early 1880s Amos R. Eno owned the property.  Eno was a major player in the real estate field and also held title to the strange triangular plot of land just across Broadway which would later become the site of the Flatiron Building.   In June 1884 he sold No. 922 to Charles W. Burgoyne, a “provision dealer,” for $138,750 who established his store on the ground floor.  By now it had gained a handsome mansard roof, adding an entire floor, and had been extended back along 21^st Street from 65 feet to 97 feet.

A bizarre string of suicides in the hotel occurred over the next two decades.  In May 1891 Thomas Atchison, just 21 years old, shot himself in the temple with a revolver.  He was a bellboy at the Hotel Clarendon.  On August 24, 1895 61-year old Ferdinand William Herrman, who had lost his fortune and was despondent over the financial troubles to his family, took poison.   Six years later on December 12, Frank Neumann drank carbolic acid here.  The 30-year old lived in Newark, New Jersey.  And on July 30, news correspondent Joseph B. McShane filled his room with gas and died for no apparent reason.

A ghastly murder-suicide occurred on July 30, 1887.   John E. Emmerson had been employed as a porter by the Bancroft House for about five months, but he resigned to work at the Astor House.   The middle-aged man whom the New York Tribune described as “of surly disposition and unsocial in his relations with other employees,” kept his rooms on the third floor here, though. 

19-year old Charles Greer, who was visiting the United States from Ireland, had run out of money and while waiting for funds to arrive from home, took a temporary job at the Bancroft House so he would not have to borrow from friends.  It was a fatal decision.

The Tribune reported that he “was butchered in a most brutal manner by John E. Emmerson…After killing Greer, Emmerson killed himself.  There was absolutely no provocation for the murder and suicide, and the only explanation of the tragedy was the supposed insanity of Emmerson.”

On October 26, 1888 Burgoyne received $200 for allowing the Committee of Democrats and Independents to attach one end of a banner to the Bancroft House.   The banner, which stretched across 21^st Street, read “For President, Grover Cleveland.  For Vice-President, Allen G. Thurman.  For Governor, Warner Miller.  For Clean Government and Ballot Reform.”  Except for the names, nothing much has changed in a century and a half.

The Sun commented on the imposing banner.  “It is made of netting, with the portraits of the three candidates on canvas attached to the netting.  Its workmanship is excellent.  It is perhaps the prettiest banner in town.”

Despite the scattered earlier tragedies, the Bancroft House continued its long run of success.  In 1896 the hotel was entirely refurbished and renovated.  It now offered rooms to “gentlemen only.”

In 1904 the property was owned by a young girl, Ruth Stephenson, who had inherited it from William W. Stephenson.  Her guardian, George G. Stephenson petitioned the courts on August 22 to raze the venerable Bancroft House and erect a 12-story mercantile building.  Stephenson argued that the annual income was about $20,000—“much less than it should yield if properly improved.”

Despite his attempts, young Ruth Stephenson stayed in the hotel business.

In 1909 the building is whitewashed and an American Express office is on the ground floor -- NYPL Collection

For some time American Express ran a branch office from the ground floor.  Then in 1919 Max Haber, who owned the Delmonico, Waldorf and Columbia restaurants, leased the store and basement of No. 922 Broadway where he established a restaurant and bakery.   The space would remain a restaurant for decades and in January 1927 the K & B Lunch Company took the lease for 21 years.

Brick panels on the chimney fronts add architectural interest.

By the middle of the century the stretch of Broadway below 23^rd Street was a bit dowdy and the once-respectable Bancroft Hotel was now called the Court Hotel—a little less respectable.

But in 1978 the upper floors were converted to four roomy “Class A” apartments per floor.   Today the street level has been mostly obliterated.  But the distinguished bulk of the hotel and its handsome slate-shingled mansard is highly unchanged from the days when gentlemen paid $1 for the best room in the house.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The Lost 1868 Dept of Public Charities & Correction -- No. 66 3rd Ave

NYPL Collection

By 1860 New York City was floundering in a disconnected tangle of public agencies.    Then on March 1 of that year The New York Times reported on the formation of the Department of Public Charities and Correction—a title with a seemingly incongruous authority.

The new Department would consolidate and oversee the workings of numerous institutions:  The Colored Home, the Colored Orphan Asylum, the Lunatic Asylum, the Nursery Hospital, the Smallpox Hospital, the Work House, and the Penitentiary among them.  Despite the dizzying collection of responsibilities, the bill specifically excluded from its supervision “the House of Refuge, Juvenile Delinquent Asylum, the House of Detention for Witnesses, and the County and Sheriff’s Jail.”

Three Commissioners were appointed to run the new Department, each earning a comfortable $3,000 per year—about $63,000 today—and they were expected to run their organizations with proper Victorian rigor.    There was, for instance, a long list of rules regarding vagrants and paupers in the workhouse.  They were permitted to work alongside only those committed for intoxication or assault and battery.   An account was set up for each pauper, charging him for board and crediting him for his completed work.  Unruly inmates of the workhouse were fed only bread and water.

Children who were under the care of the Department for more than three months were to be “indentured.”   Because inmates worked for free, the Department’s regulations forbade “the employment of any hired help for cultivating the grounds beyond one professional gardener.  All the money which accrued from the sale of vegetables raised on the land under the control of the Department, is to be deposited with the City Chamberlain.”

And so it went.

On May 3, 1860 the Commissioners reported on the progress.   There were at the time 7,382 inmates in the various institutions and the Commissioners had set about cleaning house.  Ten of the keepers of the Penitentiary were fired and replaced,  and the same action was done in the Workhouse where six keepers lost their jobs.  The Warden of the City Prison was earning $1,750 per year and the Clerk there was earning $1,500.  The Commissioners reduced their salaries to $250.

If anyone thought that the new Commissioners of the Department of Public Charities and Correction were not serious about reforming the institutions, they were quickly corrected.

The Department rented rooms at No. 1 Bond Street for several years before funds were set aside for a permanent headquarters in 1868.   The site chosen was at No. 66 3^rd Avenue at the corner of 11^th Street and architect James Renwick was commissioned to design the new structure.  It was neither the first nor the last of the public buildings Renwick would design.   Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island) would fill with Renwick buildings—the Workhouse, the Lighthouse, the Charity Hospital and the Smallpox Hospital among them.

The architect produced a chunky two-story building with and up-to-date mansard roof.   The French Second Empire style had recently been imported from Paris and the roof gave the structure a sophisticated, cosmopolitan touch.  But the squat proportions and the conflicting base provided ample fodder for criticism.    A writer for The New York Times felt the heavy mansard roof was cumbersome and the proportions resulted in “the costly looking barn one might mistake it for at first sight.”

Department workers entered on 3^rd Avenue while the public used the entrance on 11^th Street.   The ponderous workload of the Department went on from its new headquarters, assumedly with more comfortable surroundings (the walls were finished in black walnut.)

Shortly after moving in to the new headquarters the Commissioners met.  The minutes reflect the unwieldy scope of responsibilities.   Among the issues addressed were “That all Emigrants with Relapsing Fever be retained on Hart’s Island;” the problem of “boys not being at work at tailors shop” on Randall’s Island;  the night watchman of Hart’s Island, L. Van Buskirk, was absent without leave and had not returned his pistol (his dismissal was ordered); an additional nurse was needed at the Lunatic Asylum;  the Lunatic Asylum needed five new boilers; and a hospital was established “on the corner of Chambers and Centre streets, for the reception and medical treatment of persons Sun struck, or taken ill from excessive heat in the lower portion of the city.”

The report from the Apothecary of Bellevue Hospital necessarily included the “consumption of liquors for April.”   That month 81 gallons of whiskey, 66 gallons of port wine and 471 gallons of ale were consumed in the hospital.  The report, sadly, did not disclose who drank the liquor, other than “5-1/4 galls. Whisky and 55 pints ale given to mechanics, etc., by order of the Commissioners.”

The Department was in charge of the education of boys for the trades.   To prepare young sailors, the School Ship Mercury, was operated under the Department’s charge.    The boys did not necessarily choose a sea-faring vocation, however.

The Department issued a report to Mayor A. Oakey Hall regarding the Mercury on September 12, 1871 explaining the selection of the crew.   Some, it said, had been committed to the care of the Commissioners by the courts “for slight misdemeanors and vagrancy.  Others, and in large numbers, had been committed by their parents as incorrigible, or because of evil associates, who were leading them to ruin.”  The lawless boys, the Commissioners felt, “could not without a long probationship be recommended as apprentices, because of their wayward and reckless character, nor could they be discharged without the probability that they would again become vagrants, or fall into their former wicked associations.”  So they were loaded onto the Mercury to learn to be a sailor.

Incorrigible boys were sent off on the Mercury to learn sailing (copyright expired)

Boys put on the Mercury could not expect to see New York again for, sometimes, a year.  “The only effectual mode of instruction is the continuous handling of a ship at sea,” said the report, “and that the manifold duties of a thorough seaman can only be learned by actual service.”  The report outlined the cruise that had begun on December 20, 1870.   The boys took the ship to the Madeira Islands, then to the Canaries, then on to Sierra Leone.   From there they sailed to Barbados before returning to New York.

In 1880 the Commissioners Report reflected the struggle the Department had in keeping up with the burgeoning population and the resultant medical and charity cases.    The Pavilion for Insane was overcrowded and “we are obliged to place more than one patient in a room.  This is to be regretted, from the fact that this class of patients when admitted, become very much excited and often violent; such cases it is necessary to place under mild restraint, which, under the circumstances, cannot be avoided.”

The report noted that a separate pavilion for alcoholics was needed.  That year “the number of cases admitted suffering from alcoholism was 1,565, of which 45 died.”

Shortly after 1895 the Department left its 3^rd Avenue headquarters.  A separate Department of Corrections had been established, relieving the Department of an enormous work load.   Around this time orphaned and abandoned children were put under the care of the Out-Door Poor.   The Charity Organization Society of the City of New York approved of the move, but felt it did not fully address the problem.

“This was an improvement of course, on the former practice, since the children, while waiting, associated only with tramps, paupers and sick people, instead of with prostitutes and criminals but it was bad enough,” said the Society’s report in 1901. 

To address the situation, the Bureau of Dependent Children was established by Commissioner Keller in January 1899.  The Bureau took over the building at 3^rd Avenue and 11^th Street.   The organization realized early on that one of its most crucial tasks would be weeding out parents who tried to use the Bureau as a convenient dumping ground for unwanted babies.

Such was the case in April 1900 when jeweler Wilbur F. Hammond walked in with a two-month old baby.   The man told Superintendant Blair that he had gotten off the 23^rd Street Ferry from Jersey City, walked about four feet and noticed the child lying against the wall.   After he waited approximately 45 minutes and no one came to claim the child, he took it to the New York Foundling Hospital.

The Hospital refused to accept the infant and sent Hammond to the Bureau.   Now, sitting before a suspicious Superintendent Blair, he was asked if he wouldn’t like to adopt the child.  No, he answered, “but he was willing to pay for his care,” reported The New York Times.

Hammond’s story began unraveling when cabbie Thomas McDonald came forth saying that a man and a woman (she “veiled and well dressed), disembarked from the 23^rd Street Ferry and asked to be taken to the Foundling Asylum.   The man got out of the cab with a baby and the woman was driven to the elevated railway at 67^th Street and 3^rd Avenue.   There was only one baby brought into the Foundling Hospital that day; a fact that pointed to Hammond as the man.

Employees of the ferry terminal said Hammond’s story was “preposterous.”  Instead of the lonely station he described, the terminal teemed with “several hundred people.    Police became involved and Hammond faced a seven-year prison term for abandoning a child under six years of age.

The careful scrutiny of every case resulted in similar discoveries.  In 1908 10,519 children were brought to the Bureau.  Of them only 3,269 were accepted.

The city sold the building—now a half-century old—in 1917.  Automobiles crowded New York City streets and parking, as now, was a problem.   The old Department headquarters was unceremoniously converted to a garage and its mansard roof, controversial in 1868, was demolished.    Throughout the 20^th century the humiliation continued with glass brick replacing the window openings—no doubt with security in mind.

Yet amazingly the building survived until 1989 when Loew’s Theater Management leased the corner property.  Before long one of James Renwick’s surviving structures, already forgotten, was replaced by a cinema complex.

James Renwick's building was replaced by a concrete-and-glass theater complex -- photo by Alice Lum