The Philip A. Rollins Mansion -- No. 28 East 78th Street

The 78^th Street block between Fifth and Madison Avenues had greatly changed as the 19^th century drew to a close.  At the southeast corner of Madison and 78^th Street the row of four-story brownstones, erected three decades earlier, were being eclipsed by elegant limestone and marble mansions that spilled east from Central Park.

Although the vintage rowhouses were comparatively modest—a mere 16-feet wide—the increased property values of the block became evident when “Mr. Barnum” sold No. 28 East 78^th Street in 1897 for $35,000.  The price tag would equate to just under $1 million in 2016.

Millionaire Philip Ashton Rollins accumulated several of the old brownstones and begin plans for a lavish mansion.  In 1901 he commissioned architects McKim, Mead & White to design his new palace.  The firm put William Mitchell Kendall in charge of the project.  He produced a dignified neo-Georgian mansion of red brick and limestone which sat on a rusticated stone base.

The Colonial Revival movement had taken root within the last decade, resulting not only in reproduction furniture but residential architecture that mimicked America’s earliest structures.  The trend resulted in other Manhattan homes like the massive Andrew Carnegie mansion and the Willard D. Straight house.

The American Architect & Building News, May 12, 1906 (copyright expired)

The Rollins house was completed in 1902.  Five stories tall, it was described by critic Herbert Croly as “a building with an air of great elegance and distinction.”  A handsome columned portico sheltered the entrance and provided a roomy balcony at the second floor, where the socially-important drawing room was situated.

Writing in the Architectural Record, Croly explained “The importance of the second floor…is brought out by the arched openings, connected at their springing by a band of cut stone and adorned in the recess of the arch by elaborate festoons.”  He pointed out that the private, and therefore less “important,” floors above had increasingly shorter openings.    Finally the fifth floor was hidden from view by an elegant stone balustrade.

The mansion replaced brownstone rowhouses like those on either side.  Architectural Record, June 1903 (copyright expired)

Croly mentioned the top floor in socially-supercilious terms.  “There is a fifth story; but like all the other fifth stories, it simply does not figure in the design at all, even less than the servants who doubtless very largely occupy it, figure in the lives of the inhabitants of the house, except as a convenience.”

Philip Ashton Rollins’s background was nearly unique among Manhattan millionaires.  When he was just five years old his father, a railroad tycoon, moved the family from New Hampshire to Wyoming.  Despite his privileged circumstances, he grew up among cowboys and cattle.  His intimate familiarity with Western life would define his legacy.

Rollins attended Princeton, Columbia and New York Universities and was admitted to the bar in 1895, the same year he married Beulah Brewster Pack.  Although he sold off the cattle ranches he had inherited from his father; he continued to collect Western lore.  He later explained that the depiction of the West that Americans received through motion pictures disturbed and annoyed him. 

“I wanted to show that the West was not as wild as it was painted,” he told a reporter.  “Princeton is a great deal wilder.  In many ways the West was as conventional as the Knickerbocker Club.  I’d walk into any cow camp sooner than I’d cross the Princeton campus the night the juniors take over the steps.”

Philip and Beulah Rollins, would live in the 78^th Street mansion for decades.  While Rollins amassed an enormous library of Western Americana (it would eventually total over 3,000 volumes); Beulah filled the role of Manhattan socialite.  The house was, as expected, the scene of luncheons, receptions, teas and dinner parties.

In 1922 Rollins's role of collector of Western literature progressed to author.  He published The Cowboy, His Characteristics, His Equipment and his Part in the Development of the West that year.  It was an authoritative effort to give American readers a true-life depiction of Western life.   He issued an updated edition in 1936 explaining in the preface “In this new edition the text has been much enlarged as concerns branding, roping, trail-driving, riding of bucking horses, social customs, technical terms and old-time slang.”

His passion for the subject resulted in the 1927 Jinglebob: A True Story of a Real Cowboy, the 1939 book Gone Haywire; Two Tenderfoots on the Montana Cattle Range in 1886, and magazine articles and pamphlets.

After more than four decades in the mansion, in 1945 the aging couple left Manhattan.  Rollins was now 76-years old.  He and Beulah moved permanently to their Princeton, New Jersey estate.  His massive compilation of Western books was given to Princeton University Library.

The 78^th Street mansion was purchased by the Automobile Club of New York.   All five floors were converted for office use.  The new clubhouse was officially opened on October 31, 1946 with the ribbon-cutting done by Governor Thomas E. Dewey.

Dewey took the opportunity to announce his intentions to improve roadways.  Decades before the first interstate highway systems were initiated, he warned that most of the New York thoroughfares were built for “the model T Ford era” and declared that “extensive road construction is vitally needed to meet modern travel requirements.”

To emphasize the Governor’s point, Automobile Club President William J. Gottlieb pointed to the increase of drivers since the end of the war.  In October 1945 there were 41,300 members in the Automobile Club of New York.  A year later membership had increased to 92,500.

The Automobile Club of New York pressed for highway safety and improved laws.  It was the resource for American motorists for maps and travel information (like hotels and vacation spots).   The Club sponsored an annual National Safety Poster contest for school children.

Not all the efforts of the Automobile Club were appreciated by everyone.  Down the block from the headquarters was Doris Duke’s sumptuous mansion at No. 1 East 78^th Street.  The heiress preferred that the curb in front of her home was not sullied with automobiles not owned by her.  So she had No Parking signs erected.

Not only did motorists assume that the signs were officially posted; apparently so did at least one traffic cop.  When he noticed a car parked in front of the Duke mansion he issued a summons.  “This led to the investigation by [The Automobile Club of New York] which wrote to the Traffic Department for a definition of the right of way,” reported The New York Times.

The Club’s prompting resulted in a ruling by Traffic Department to have Doris Duke’s signs removed.  The headstrong and fabulously wealthy woman was, no doubt, not pleased with her neighbors at the opposite end of the block.

It was, however, the Automobile Club which was the target of an investigation two decades later.  Consumer advocate Ralph Nader discovered that the organizations five top officers, its general consul and two retired directors were principals in a private automobile insurance agency which they portrayed to members as being a part of the club.

The insurance company, Club Agency, Inc. had offices in the 78^th Street building, and the Automobile Club regularly referred members to the agency.  Nader’s spokesman, Ron Landsman, called the arrangement “at least unethical.”  Club director Leo T. Kissam countered, simply saying “Mr. Landsman is a wacky bird.”

The American Automobile Association moved out of the former Rollins mansion in 1990.  The building received a $1 million renovation that resulted in a combination art gallery and museum, headed by art dealer Chozo Yoshii, Milwaukee gallery owner Michael Lord, and French curator Jacques Demons.  The New York Times said on May 12, 1991 they had teamed up “to lease the building and turn it from a temple of automobile to a palace of art.  They have named their effort Elysium Arts.”

The gallery opened in May 1991 with an exhibition of Monet paintings.   Although the valuable canvases were not listed for sale; Michael Lord told The Times “that offers will be considered.”

The last of the 16-foot Victorian brownstones survives next door, its stoop long ago removed.

The building remained an art gallery through 1998, when it was purchased by Arthur Carter, owner of the New York Observer for $7.6 million.  He resold it in 2006 for $34 million, making an unarguably tidy profit.  Although the mansion still contains offices throughout; it remains externally unchanged since the days when Philip Rollins filled its library with rare books on Western life and Beulah served tea to Mrs. Hamilton R. Fairfax of the Colonial Dames. 

photographs by the author

The 1902 Babies' Hospital -- 135 East 55th Street

In the early 1880s Julia G. McNutt and her sister, Sara, had highly unusual professions, at least for women.  They were doctors.   Sara later remembered the comments made by Dr. Blackwell, who advised “There are a great many women and children needing good medical and surgical care.”  He said that if she excelled in her work, “you will soon have so much to do that you will not have time to wonder if some one else does not approve of women physicians.”

For six years Sara worked with children and women, acutely aware that there were no special facilities for infants and toddlers in the city.  In 1887 she took steps to found the Babies’ Hospital of the City of New York.  “It was thought that I would be able to take the medical care with my sister, Dr. Julia G. McNutt’s help,” she later recalled.

The fledgling institution would quickly encounter resistance.  In November 1887, with the backing of wealthy New Yorkers like Mrs. William H. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Ambrose C. Kingsland, Mrs. Abraham S. Hewitt and others, the four-story brownstone at the northeast corner of Lexington Avenue and 45^th Street was purchased from “Mr. Gleason” for $26,000.  The handsome dwelling was described by the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide which said “It has a bay window on each story, and is handsomely finished in hardwood trim.”

But one neighbor on the upscale block was infuriated.  Thomas B. Gifford went to court, contending “that the hospital was a nuisance in the neighborhood occupied almost entirely by private families.”  He pointed out that children with contagious diseases would be a threat to the block’s residents.

On June 18, 1888 Judge Beach, seemingly begrudgingly, ruled in favor of Gifford.  He began saying “The hospital is not a nuisance prima facie;” but admitted “The care of children in numbers bring danger to the youthful members of families living near.”  Most importantly, there was a covenant in the deed that restricted the property to residential use only.

The officers of the hospital did not wait for Judge Beach’s decision.  Because “many applications have been made for the admission of children, owing to the hot weather, during which the infant mortality is abnormally high,” they rented a house at No. 161 East 36^th Street.

It opened on June 16, 1888, two days before the court case ended.  There were 24 beds for the tiny patients.  Avoiding a second problem, the officers announced “that they do not intend to admit contagious dieaes, and ask for gifts of money and infants’ clothing.”

The McNutt sisters were unprepared for the response.  Sara told The Medical Record in December 1918, “The medical work, however, grew so rapidly, and encroached so much upon our private work, that we felt obliged to withdraw from the Babies’ Hospital a year after assisting in founding it.”

The hospital moved into two adjoining houses at the northeast corner of Lexington Avenue and 55th Street -- Directory of Social and Health Agencies of New York City, 1898 (copyright expired)

By 1891 the Hospital had moved to two four-story houses at No. 657 and 659 Lexington Avenue, at 55^th Street.  Three years earlier Dr. Allan M. Thomas and Dr. William C. Denning had developed a three-foot by three-foot “hatching cradle"—the precursor of today’s incubator.  The Babies’ Hospital owned the now-improved model when a tiny premature infant was brought in in January 1891.

The boy was born two months early on December 21, 1890.  His mother died in childbirth.  Had he been brought immediately to the Hospital, his chances would have been greatly improved.  But a well-meaning neighbor woman tried to nurture him for four weeks.  The New York Times advised “When she turned him over to the Babies’ Hospital he weighed but three pounds and was terribly emaciated.  It was decided at once that there was but one way to save the little fellow’s life, and that that was to put him into an incubator.”

The prognosis was cautiously optimistic.  The newspaper said on February 1, “It seems almost too much to believe, but there is a probability that the helpless, pitiable atom in the box may develop into a strong, handsome man.  The nurse says that her charge may some day be President of the United States.”

The Hospital’s valiant attempts proved futile.  Three days later the funeral of Baby Johnson, deemed by The Times “a mite of humanity,” was held in his father’s home on West 60^th Street.

Two weeks later Nell Nelson, writing for The Evening World, described the hospital.  “The ‘Babies’ Hospital of the City of New York’ is the only institution of its kind in the country, and as far as can be ascertained it is the only one in the world that is reserved for the exclusive accommodation of babies.”

Of the 214 babies that were admitted in 1890, 57 died.  Often the condition of the infants was such that there was no hope of survival when they arrived.  Nelson reported that on the day she arrived there were four “little Dutch cradles” in a bay window, one of which was empty.  That child’s body had just been removed.  She asked the nurse about the remaining three patients.

“Marasmus, and they cannot live.”

She was informed that another name for marasmus was “starvation.”  Further investigation explained the plights of the urchins.  In 23 cases the father was unemployed; in five he was sick or hospitalized; “in one case the father was in prison; in fifteen cases the mother was deserted by the father.”  Two mothers were insane; in six cases the mothers were dead and in another six cases she was too sick to care for the child.

The stifling heat of summer worsened the chances of the babies’ survival.  And so by the summer of 1894 the hospital acquired three cottages at Oceanic, New Jersey.   On July 14 that year The New York Times reported “The Babies’ Hospital, at 657 Lexington Avenue, has a deserted appearance.  There are reminiscences of babies everywhere in rows of little empty cribs, some of them with tiny baby caps, little gowns, and shoes lying around them, but not a baby is to be seen anywhere about the house.”

The entire population of the hospital had been removed to the cottages, “comfortable, sunny, and spacious, [where] the babies grow well and rosy under the influences of fresh air, skillful treatment, and nourishing food.”

The demand for admissions far exceeded the facilities of the old brownstone houses.  In 1901 the architectural firm of York & Sawyer was given the commission to replace the property with a modern hospital building.  The firm filed plans for the “7 and 8-story brick and stone” building in January 1902. The anticipated cost was $80,000—more than $2.25 million in 2016.

A lavish fund-raiser for the building was held in the home of Mrs. William Hamilton Harris at No. 306 West 75^th Street on the afternoon of December 12, 1902.  The wealthy socialites who attended were less interested in the fact that “tea will be served and Sherry’s Hungarians will play;” than in dolls.

Manhattan’s top dressmakers had designed gowns for the doll sale.  And the dolls were displayed in elaborate settings.  The New-York Tribune announced “The dolls will compete in a maypole dance, in coasting, tobogganing and other winter sports, and will exhibit their skill in housekeeping, in the drawing room, bedroom and other departments of the household.”  One especially-appropriate scene was “a ward in the ‘Babies’ Hospital,’ with babies and nurses in costume, with beds and furniture in proper form.”   The moneyed ladies were offered “a rare opportunity [to] purchase dolls, dressed in the most exquisite taste, for Christmas gifts.”

While demolition and construction were underway, the Babies’ Hospital moved temporarily into the Nursery and Child’s Hospital.   On May 12, 1902 the New-York Tribune published York & Sawyer’s sketch of the building and gave readers an idea of what was to come.

The basement would house a “disinfecting plant,” the laundry, kitchen and “servants’ dining room.”  A dispensary was located on the first floor, as were a room for the “clothing committee,” offices and a clinic.  The second floor was for staff.  It held the nurses’ dining room and quarters for the hospital board, the secretary and the matron.

Nurses and other staff lived on the third floor; while the upper floors contained wards and “model nurseries.”  On the top floor was a solarium—a must-have at the turn of the century when sunlight was believed to cure diseases like tuberculosis—and a laboratory.  The Tribune promised “The hospital will be fitted up in the most modern fashion.”

Following the hospital’s completion, the Real Estate Record & Guide pointed to it as an example of the renewed interest in brick as the major component in building design.  On February 14, 1903 the journal insisted “A distinct revival in favor of brick is observable” and pointed not only to the Babies’ Hospital, but to the new American Express building on Madison Avenue, and Public School No. 43 on Amsterdam Avenue, among others.

The original structure was just two bays wide on Lexington Avenue.  A woman, coincidentally, pushes her baby carriage at the corner.  Architectural Record 1903 (copyright expired)

Indeed, the building, completed in December 1902, strayed from the expected limestone or marble cladding of its Beaux Arts style.  The porticoed entrance, on 55^th Street, was located in the two-story rusticated stone base.  A lush frieze of draping garlands undulated over blank medallions below four stories of variegated brick that created a textured façade.  French-inspired cast iron balconies relieved the flat surface at the fourth floor.  Above the copper cornice, supported on scrolled stone brackets, the solarium and laboratory were nearly hidden from street view.

A few weeks after the hospital moved in, it hosted the annual reception of the Board of Managers on January 16, 1903.  “The hospital will be open for inspection,” said the New-York Tribune, adding it “is fully equipped with the most approved appliances…The entire building is admirably arranged for its uses, and those who will visit it for the first time next Friday have a pleasure in store.”

At the reception meeting it was announced that Mr. and Mrs. John Sherman Hoyt had promised $500 a year to extend the hospital’s work.  The money would be used to provide home visitations, highly important because the condition of the infants often digressed when returned to their tenement homes.

“It has always distressed us to send the patients back into their often miserable homes, there to continue their downward career,” explained Dr. L. Emmett Holt.

Within only six years the facility was too small for its ever-growing work.  In September 1909 York & Sawyer filed plans for a $10,000, eight-story annex to house the dispensary and nurses’ dormitory.  The resulting addition was seamless; discernible only by the closest scrutiny.

The pitiable circumstances of the parents who entrusted their children to the Babies’ Hospital was evidenced when a woman collapsed in the doorway of the East 51^st Street police station on January 29, 1910.  Mrs. Gertrude Lough was just 20 years old.  Her husband, Thomas, was an unemployed carpenter who had not been able to find work for several months.

Unable to pay their rent, the couple and their five-month old baby boy, Harry, had been evicted from their apartment three weeks earlier.  The landlord took pity and allowed them to live in a vacant building on East 50^th Street, as “caretakers.”   They had a place to live, but no food.

When Gertrude Lough was revived, she told police “they had had nothing to eat since Thursday, when they had a few crumbs of bread.”  The week before Thomas found an odd job and earned $5.  That was spent on milk for the baby and doctor bills and medicine for him.

A doctor diagnosed the woman with “starvation and fatigue.”  Dr. Arnold went to the Loughs’ rooms where he found Thomas holding the malnourished baby.   Harry was removed at once to the Babies’ Hospital.

In the meantime, back at the station house the police began passing a hat.  Four prisoners, who overheard Gertrude’s story, asked to contribute as well.  The men raised $15.  And Dr. Arnold offered to try to find work for Thomas Lough.

The heading bond brickwork results in a tapestry-like appearance.

Perhaps the most publicized patient of the Babies’ Hospital was little Mary Margaret Roberts.  She was born deformed on November 23, 1915 with an open spine, and was paralyzed from the waist down.  Her mother, in serious condition following the birth, was not informed of her baby’s condition for fear of the shock the news would bring.

Mary Margaret was brought to the hospital immediately after birth.  When her father, Joseph E. Roberts, and grandmother, Mrs. Margaret Branley, realized the condition of the girl, they insisted that she be allowed to die, “rather than live hopelessly deformed.”

“But they have been overruled by Dr. Maurice Rosenberg,” reported The Evening World the following day.  “Officials of the hospital, in a statement issued to-day, also let it be known that every effort would be made to prolong the life of Baby Roberts.”

But when Chicago surgeon, Dr. Harry J. Halseiden, was asked to travel to New York to perform the operation, he refused.  The New York Times said he felt “that science should not be employed to prolong the life of a monstrosity.”

With no surgeons with Halseiden’s expertise available, the doctors of the Babies’ Hospital were forced to capitulate.  On November 25 it was announced that the infant “will be permitted to die a natural death, even though an operation might prolong her life.”

The case received national press attention.  Dr. Harry Halseiden was, at times, depicted as a heartless cad.  In all instances, the doctors at Babies’ Hospital were shown to be disheartened at their forced decision.   Finally, on December 3, 1915, the New-York Tribune ran the headline “Baby’s Problem Solved by Death.”

During "Baby Week" in March 1916 the Babies’ Hospital published daily tips for mothers in the newspapers.  On March 9 the tip was “Babies get terrible whacks, some mothers forget them—stuff a ‘pacifier’ into their mouths—the worst thing ever made for a baby—and then they wonder why remonstrance follows later on.”

Children gather around a Christmas tree in 1926.  Columbia University Medical Collect Archives

In 1929 the Babies’ Hospital was absorbed by Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and left Lexington Avenue.  The building at Lexington and 55^th Street was converted to offices and retail spaces were carved into the street level.  At some point the lovely cast iron balconies were removed; but otherwise the structure, with its tapestry of brick, survives relatively unchanged.

photographs by the author

The 1928 Pythian Temple -- Nos. 135-145 West 70th Street

Wurts Bros. photographed the building shortly after its completion in 1928.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Justus H. Rathbone was impressed by Irish writer John Banim’s 1821 play Damon and Pythias which highlighted the ideals of friendship, loyalty and honor.  In February 1864 he founded The Knights of Pythias, a fraternal group which stressed those qualities and provided philanthropic aid.

Like other secret societies, The Knights of Pythias was organized around mystic rituals and included ceremonial props and costumes.  Local units were called “Castles” (a term later changed to “Subordinate Lodges”), and members, depending on rank, were Pages, Esquires and Knights.  And, like the Masons and Shriners, by the early 20^th century their elaborate lodges reflected exotic architectural styles—Moorish, Egyptian and Byzantine, for example.

In the mid-1920s the Pythians began accumulating property for its new Manhattan lodge.  They had chosen a rather unlikely location—West 70^th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, a narrow, residential street.  By 1926 eight four-story houses had been demolished and construction begun.

The Knights of Pythias turned to architect Thomas White Lamb to design the large building.  Their choice was possibly influenced by his reputation for creating lavish motion picture palaces for the Fox, Loew’s and the Keith-Albee chains.  The Pythian Temple would emerge in 1928 as an exotic $2 million behemoth among the rowhouses--the counterpart of an epic silent movie set,

Lamb freely borrowed from Egypt, Byzantium and Syria in lavishing the façade with cast stone bas reliefs, monumental full-figured seated pharaohs and polychrome bulls.  The dramatic entrance, decorated with Egyptian symbols like crowned cobras, vultures, lotus flowers and winged lions, was executed in blindingly colored terra cotta.  The nearly-windowless midsection was adorned with handsome gray brick diapering and an enormous Pythian symbol.

Even before the lodge was completed the main auditorium space was leased.  On October 6, 1927 Dr. Nathan Krass, rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, preached his Yom Kippur sermon on “Tolerance” here.  The following month an operatic concert was held here; and on January 20, 1928 the New York Press Club held an “entertainment and dance.”

Five days later the building was officially dedicated in the larger of the two auditoriums.  More than 1,600 persons were in attendance and the program was well underway when Mayor James Walker—who had a reputation for being late—arrived.  He had not been informed that his arch rival, former Mayor John H. Hylan, would share the stage with him. 

Walker did not notice Hylan until he had already begun his address.  He handled the awkward moment by nodding to his nemesis and saying “If I’d seen you when I first came in, I would have paid my respects then.  Time has brought a sympathy for you I never held before.”

Walker joked about his tardiness, saying “I suppose you have heard of the ‘late Mayor.’ It is a characterization I can’t deny.”  But he apparently did not appreciate the shock of Hylan’s presence.  Following his speech, in which he congratulated the Knights of Pythias on the new building, he walked off the stage and left.

Four enormous polychrome pharaohs sit high above the street, below an Egyptian peristyle. photo by Beyond My Ken

The larger auditorium featured a pipe organ; and the Christman Piano Co. of New York proudly announced that the Temple had purchased eight pianos, “some of which are Studio grands and the rest uprights.”   At least one of these would be housed in the smaller auditorium, which was capable of holding 500 persons.  

The new building offered members a gymnasium, a bowling alley and billiards room in the basement, 15 lodge rooms decorated in Aztec, Egyptian and other motifs, and a rooftop solarium.

The auditoriums and meeting rooms were routinely leased for wedding receptions, musical programs and lectures.  Meetings as diverse as those of the Christian Science Liberals, graduation exercises of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the church services of the Manhattan Congregational Congregation were held here.

The week-long hazing of Columbia University fraternity pledges ended here on February 17, 1929.  The Columbia Spectator reported three days later, “Since noon of last Tuesday twelve Sigma Chi pledges have been going through the well known miseries connected with ‘Running Week.’  Much to their relief it all ended Sunday night with the formal initiation and banquet.  These functions were held at the Pythian Temple on West Seventieth Street.”

While the Calvary Baptist Church was being constructed in 1929, the congregation held its Sunday services and its weddings and funerals here.  And in April 1930 the Milton Herbert Gropper and Oscar Hammerstein II play New Toys opened here by the Garfield Players.

By now many of the meetings held here were of a more political nature.  The first session of the Annual Convention of the Federation of Polish Jews met in May 1930.  More than 400 delegates met to draft a resolution to Warsaw asking for aid for Polish Jews.  That same month Daniel F. Cohalan and Saliendra nath Ghose addressed Indian Nationalists on the 73^rd anniversary of the Sepoy Mutiny and the imprisonment of Mahatma Ghandi.  And the following year the United Romanian Jews met here, as did the convention of the Advancement of Atheism, formed five years earlier.

While Jewish and Christian congregations continued to use the auditoriums on weekends throughout the next two decades, the increasingly extreme political assemblies filled the halls during the week.  On May Day 1939 the Federation to Combat Communism and Fascism, Inc. held a demonstration to “protest the infiltration of Communist, Nazi and Fascist propaganda.”  But on the same holiday in 1946 the Socialist Labor Party held its celebrations here.

The auditorium was routinely leased by the West Side Committee of American-Soviet Friendship, and the Upper West Side Civil Rights Congress; both of which drew the close scrutiny of the United States Congress.  A Congressional report dated February 15, 1947 focused on the Upper West Side Civil Rights Congress.    The report began “Having adopted a line of militant skullduggery against the United States with the close of World War II, the Communist Party has set up the Civil Rights Congress for the purpose of protecting those of its members who run afoul of the law.”

It reported that “On August 28, 1946, the Upper West Side Civil Rights Congress of New York City held a meeting at the Pythian Temple, 135 West Seventieth Street, which was cosponsored by the Communist Party, West Side; American Labor Party; American Youth for Democracy; United Negro and Allied Veterans of America; and the International Workers Order, Lodge 572.”  The Report cautioned that some of these groups used deceptively patriotic names.

In the first years of the 1950s the Knights of Pythias gave Decca Records the exclusive use of the main auditorium as a recording studio.  Some of the best known names in Rock ‘n Roll would produce their hits here.

Bill Haley and the Comets recorded the albums “Rock Around the Clock” and “Shake, Rattle and Roll” here in 1955; and Johnny Burnette and the Rock ‘n Roll Trio recorded its debut album here the following year.   Buddy Holly’s first recording session in the Pythian Temple studio was on June 19, 1958.  Other hits recorded here were Bobby Darin’s “Early in the Morning” and “Now We’re One,” and Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride.”

In the meantime the smaller auditorium continued to be used for operas, plays, and meetings.  In April 1956 the People’s Artists staged a “Hootenanny” here and in January 1957 folk singer Pete Seeger held a concert.  

One notable event was the meeting of the National Council of the American-Soviet Friendship Association in November that year.  The group had been meeting here for years with little real notice.  But that night, when actor and activist Paul Robeson spoke, the timing was ill-advised.  The Soviets had fired on student demonstrators in Budapest a month earlier, killing one.  It sparked the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and American sympathies.  When the meeting broke up, its members were pelted with eggs, spoiled tomatoes and other projectiles.

In 1957 the New York Institute of Technology purchased the building in foreclosure for $500,000—exactly one-quarter of its construction cost.  A few weeks later, in January, officials explored the structure to map out classrooms, lecture halls and other areas.  What they found was a bit startling and equally creepy.

Meyer Berger reported in The New York Times on January 20, 1958, “Wardrobe lockers still hold Egyptian, scriptural and other ritualistic garb.  There is great store of halberds, ancient staffs and magic wands and rods.

“Under several of the meeting-room altars, which are done in Egyptian, Babylonian or Aztec motifs, the college faculty found coffins filled with grinning skeletons, some done in plastic, some apparently human—the kind of thing used to chill and horrify initiates.”

For several days leading up to September 1, 1960 police had received reports of a mysterious cat-sized beast slipping among the buildings on the block.  The phantom animal was considered “imaginary” by officials--until it appeared in the lobby of the New York Institute of Technology that night.

Discovered by an elevator operator, the animal curled into a corner was Timmy, the escaped honey bear owned by 17-year old Robert Engler.   When police arrived a safari of sorts ensued.  Timmy bolted, making his way to a basement restroom; then upstairs to the lobby lavatory.  Police were close on its tail, literally.

Timmy was eventually captured, but not before Detective Walter Bentley was bitten on the wrist.  The prisoner was taken to the West 68^th Street police station in a pail and calm was restored to West 70^th Street.

In 1983 architect David Gura completed a conversion of the structure into apartments.  He called the project “like dealing with an enormous Rubik cube” because of the myriad spaces.  Windows were carved into the vast brick façade, the major change to the exterior, and 83 different apartment layouts were created.  Some of the resulting duplexes had 16-foot high living rooms.

Because of its side street location, the extraordinary building, now called The Pythian, is as overlooked today as it was in 1928.  But its dramatic, brilliant decoration is worth a detour.

non-credited photographs by the author