The 1916 Terra Cotta Globe-Wernicke Bldg -- Nos. 451-453 Broadway

photo by Alice Lum

In 1916 the Cincinnati-based firm of Globe-Wernicke was among the foremost furniture makers in the country.    Much of the credit for the company’s success could be directly attributed to the novel and immensely popular “elastic bookcase.”  An outgrowth of Globe-Wernicke’s office furniture, the bookcase was modular—a novel design that allowed the purchaser to add or remove sections depending on need.   The cases, many of them built of golden oak in the Mission style, appeared in offices, homes and apartments across the country.

That year the company purchased the five-story building at Nos. 451-453 Broadway which had been home to Loeb & Schoenfeld, embroidery importers, for years.   Globe-Wernicke announced it would spend approximately $75,000 to renovate the property for use as a central distribution point to be solely used by the firm.  “It will contain the most extensive line of furniture equipment ever shown in America,” promised The American Stationer.

The New York manager, Lester S. Woodward, explained that the choice of the 60,000 square foot building had to do with location.  “We desire a permanent central home, and after careful analysis we are convinced that this is the most central location for our permanent display room.  One reason why we reached this conclusion is the fact that Canal street is the only point on Manhattan Island where all four subways, present and proposed, will have stations parallel to each other, and I thoroughly believe in Broadway.  When all is said and done, Broadway is Broadway…The name ‘Broadway’ is synonymous with New York City’s trade and commerce.”

A 1921 advertisement shows a college man studying at a modular desk/bookcase.  His roommate strums a ukelele either as entertainment or simply to be annoying.

Globe-Wernicke commissioned architects Starrett & Van Vleck to renovate the old building.  And renovate they did.

The architects brought the Victorian building into the Edwardian Age.  A soaring first floor showroom, nearly double-height, joined the second floor display rooms as a single expanse of glass and cast iron framed in terra cotta.  A polite line of egg-and-dart molding supported a Greek key freize that separated the upper office floors from the showrooms below.  The entire façade was blanketed in flat, white terra cotta tiles.  At the top-most floor, each of the three sets of paired, arched windows had a centered, semi-engaged Doric column.

A bas-relief terra cotta globe logo decorated the hefty parapet and a round plaque with G-W along with a broad terra cotta ribbon embellished the fourth floor.

photo by Alice Lum

Perhaps to the annoyance of manager Woodward, as the building was being completed Charles S. Nathan opened its office furniture store directly across the street at 450-452 Broadway.

The president of another office furniture manufacturer, James H. Rand, Jr. was on his way to nearly monopolize the business in 1925.  That year his company, the Rand Kardex Bureau, Inc., acquired control of the Library Bureau.    Within a few months, in January 1926, it took over the Globe-Wernicke Company.  Rand called the Globe-Wernicke firm at the time of the sale “one of the largest and oldest manufacturers of office equipment in the country.”

This Gibson Girl-looking housewife is overjoyed with her new sectional bookcases.

According to Rand, the merger would make Rand Karcex Bureau, Inc. “the largest distributor of business equipment in the world, both in sales volume and the number employed.”  Annual sales volume of the concern was expected to exceed $40 million.

Before long James H. Rand, Jr. would have his fingers in many more corporate pies, however.   A year later Remington Rand was formed when the Rand Kardex Company merged with Powers Accounting Machine Company and the Remington Typewriter Company.   Rand vacuumed up other firms and in 1928 The New York Times announced the consolidation of the executive offices of “Remington Typewriter Company, the Dalton Adding Machine Co, the Powers Accounting Machine Co., the Rand Company, the Kardex Company, the Line-a-Time Company, the Kalamazoo Loose Leaf Company, the Safe Cabinet Company and the Baker Vawter Company.”

Although the conglomerate assured that the headquarters would be in the Graybar Building as well as “three entire buildings at 451 Broadway, 374 Broadway and 126 Centre Street,” the gleaming white terra cotta building would not display sectional bookcases and desks for much longer.

On February 12, 1929 the property was sold to the Goldrin Realty Corporation “for investment.”  Interestingly, a full decade later when the building sold again, The Times still reminisced that it “for many years was the New York headquarters of the Globe-Wernicke Company, manufacturers of office equipment.”

For the rest of the century the antiseptic-looking terra cotta building would be used by a variety of tenants.   Then in 2007 the large plate glass windows that once displayed Mission oak bookcases were showing furniture again.

CB2, the Chicago-based store that retails updated furniture, lighting and accessories, moved into the 14,000 square foot space.   Today the clean lines of Starrett & Van Vleck’s 1916 design are essentially intact – a timeless re-do of a Victorian loft building that still works today.

Flowers, Communists and Murder -- the 1903 Nos 131-133 W. 28th Street

On the morning of March 1, 1895 workers filed into the new buildings at Nos. 151 to 157 Orchard Street recently erected by William F. Lennon.  Four of them would not return home that night.

Louis A. Hornum was Second Deputy Superintendent of the Department of Buildings and he, along with Inspector Guy B. Waite, had inspected the buildings during their construction.   The architect’s plans for the structures were defective in regard to the load put on supporting walls, the materials were poor and workmanship bad.  The construction nonetheless passed approval.

On that day in March, the buildings collapsed, killing Vincenzo Ferraro, Frank Thornton, Giovanni Mauro and Giuseppe Crescento.

Within two weeks a jury composed of architects and builders headed by architect Ernest Flagg came to a verdict:  Hornum and Waite were found to be “grossly careless.”  It was the end of Hornum’s career with the Department of Buildings.

Instead of inspecting buildings, Louis Hornum turned to designing them.

The new career path was successful.  By 1908 he had offices at 145 East 42^nd Street and early that year he received a major commission to design a loft and office building.

The Tarrytown Building Company, of which John A. Walker was president, had bought up the two five-story buildings at Nos. 131 and 133 West 28^th Street and in April announced plans for a 7-story “business building.”  Plans were filed in July with an anticipated completion date within only four months at a cost of $100,000.

Before the plans were off the drawing board, the entire building was leased at a net rental of $300,000.

The elaborate spandrels of the second floor arches were reflected in the the pediment of the temple-like window treatment a floor above.

Hornum combined the equally-popular Italian Renaissance and Beaux Arts styles in his eye-catching design.   The two-story stone base rose with four tall arches.  The spandrels gushed forth with carved wreaths, garlands and deep scallops.

Deeply carved, graceful scallops fill the spandrels of the end-most windows.

The four-story central section was clad in buff-colored brick and stone that echoed the arches below; while the arcade of the top floor above a bracketed cornice doubled the number of arches.  In the center of it all, one classical pediment at the third floor strayed from the arch motif—looking like a wayward Greek temple.

The neighborhood was already the center of New York’s wholesale flower district and in 1915 Traendly & Schenck “wholesale florists and cut flower exchange” was sharing the ground floor with William Kessler “wholesale plantsmen and florists.”  

The floors above filled with printing firms sub-tenants; among them The Williams Printery which offered typographic service and the Goldberg Printing Company.

Things went smoothly at No. 131-133 West 28^th Street until 1930.  In January of that year Dettner Estate, Inc. took the deed to the property.  The new owners would soon, most likely, regret the move.

It was a period when communism, socialism and union movements directly and sometimes violently clashed with capitalism and mainstream business.   The first hint that the social upheaval was taking seed in 28^th Street building came on November 24, 1930 when worker Philip Nicholas was arrested for taking part in a riot a few blocks away.

In an article with the headline “70 Police Battle 1,500 Rioting Reds” The New York Times recounted how “a crowd of Communists” attempted to force Zelgreen’s Cafeteria at 257 W. 34^th Street to replace its staff with American Federation of Labor workers.   Fighting  broke out and before it was over policemen and rioters were hurt and Nicholas, along with 14 others, were hauled off to jail.

By 1932 the Needle Trade Workers’ Industrial Union was established on the third floor of No. 131 West 28^th Street.  Ben Gold, a prominent Communist labor leader, was secretary.  In March of that year the Union was attempting to induce workers at the Ritz Hat Company down the block at No. 151 to strike.  The Ritz Hat employees were less than amiable to the idea.

Around noon on March 8, the union members entered the Ritz factory, shut off the power and harangued the workers to strike.   Instead of wooing the workers to their side, the union simply angered the hat workers.

Later in the afternoon Gold and five other union members were in the office when five workers from the hat company entered.   According to Gold one man asked for him and when he identified himself, the man “punched me in the nose.”  When Gold fought back, the intruders brought out blackjacks and iron pipes and a pistol.

The Times reported “A free-for-all fight ensued in which the radicals, without weapons, at first had the worst of it.  Gold was knocked down.  As he arose, he said, three shots were fired at him.  A number of other shots were fired, one nicking a finger on Gold’s left hand and another wounding the left arm of Edward Stark, union member, described by the police as a Russian tailor.”

The noise and the shots attracted a crowd and the hat workers escaped to the Ritz building where all but the shooter, who was arrested, disappeared into the crowd of other workers. 

A year later the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union had grown to include 11,400 members in the “fur section” alone.  Ben Gold was now “national secretary,” a term that translated to “president,” and the Union had lead strikes not only in New York City, but in Chicago; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Gloversville, New York and other cities.

The union’s violent conflicts were not restricted to non-union groups.   In March 1933 Morris Langer, Communist leader and union manager at Chatham, New Jersey entered his automobile and turned the ignition key.  A bomb that had been placed under the hood exploded, killing Langer.  The union blamed Ben Gold and the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union and sought revenge.

A month later, on April 24, around 10 a.m. a gang of men forced their way into the second floor headquarters on 28^th Street armed with pipe bludgeons.   One of the men rushed to the desk of Shirley Koretz, the telephone operator, and ripped the wires from the wall.

The intruders then began pummeling their union rivals with the pipes.   The fight escalated when some of Gold’s men brought out razor-sharp furrier knives and began stabbing their attackers.  This induced the use of revolvers from the opposing side.

Over 100 police swarmed into No. 131-133 West 28^th to quell the melee.  By the time the fight was over one man, Manny (Birdie) Burdy, was dead, nine were arrested and sixteen injured.

As a result of the latest raid, Police Commissioner Bolan assigned an additional 50 detectives and 150 uniformed patrolmen to the area around the building.    The Commissioner said the action was aimed “to prevent a recurrence of armed hostilities between Communist and other factions of needle workers.”   The 200 cops “have instructions to search every suspect for weapons and to break up gatherings on the streets where trouble might arise,” noted The Times.

Nine years later 32-year old Samuel (the Dove) Turtletaub was convicted of second-degree murder in the Burdy killing.

Things at Nos. 131-133 West 28^th Street settled down in 1950s.  In 1957 the ground floor was still home to wholesale florists and the upper floors held offices and “light manufacturing.”  As the century drew to a close, the industrial flavor of the neighborhood changed.  Modern, high rise apartment buildings began replacing parking lots and loft buildings.

In 1982 the upper floors were renovated to become 24 loft dwellings with four apartments per floor.  The owners of $1 million homes are most likely unaware that they are living where radical union members were once involved in stabbings, shootings and violent beatings.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The Colorful Broadway Chambers Bldg -- No. 277 Broadway

In 1900 the Broadway Chambers Building towered above Broadway.

Before Cass Gilbert would design early 20^th century Manhattan structures like the Gothic-inspired Woolworth Building or the monumental U. S. Customs House, he would turn heads with a colorful early skyscraper—the Broadway Chambers Building.

Construction of new office buildings was booming along lower Broadway in the last years of the 19th century.  The land at the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street was owned by the Andrews family of Boston when, in 1896, Edward R. Andrews expressed interest in improving the corner with an office building.

Ohio-born architect Gilbert was living in Minnesota at the time and had already made a name for himself in the Midwest.  But that particular year one of his designs, the Second Brazer Building, was just being completed on State Street in Boston.  One of the building’s financial backers, attorney Alexander S. Porter, was impressed  by it and introduced the architect to Edward Andrews.

After three years of talking, the pair signed a contract in March 1899 for what would be known as the Broadway Chambers Building.

Gilbert knew what he wanted for the soaring new office building—a richly-ornamented structure in the Beaux Arts style made madly popular by the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.  The Exposition was responsible for an sudden profusion of monumental marble or limestone buildings dripping with wreaths, fruited garlands and classical figures that would last for over a decade.   Such was the building Gilbert presented to Andrews.

But, perhaps to the architect’s surprise, Andrews had his own ideas about what he wanted in an office building:  color.

Andrews stressed the use of terra cotta and brick, along with stone; Gilbert had envisioned the more expected monochromatic façade for his Beaux Arts design.   Their correspondences politely dueled about the issue, Andrews pointedly writing at one point “…personally I am strongly in favor of color.”

Andrews won.

Before the first spade of dirt had been tossed, The New York Times said that visiting foreigners were already talking about the 18-story building.   In announcing the signing of the contracts for the $700,000 building, the newspaper said the “character” of it “has so impressed Li Hung Chang and other foreigners upon their first visits to new York.”

Construction by the George A. Fuller Company began in May 1899, only to be plagued by a frustrating series of setbacks.  But despite difficulties with laying the foundation, deliveries of the copper for the roof and even a fire at the mill that supplied the interior woodwork, the building was finished within four months.  The astonishing speed with which Fuller constructed the building boggled Cass Gilbert who called it a “triumph of organization.”

Gilbert defined the three sections of the building through color -- photo by Alice Lum

Andrews' demand on color paid off.  Among the new gray and white commercial buildings along Broadway, this one stood out.  Modern City Planning and Maintenance commented “An interesting example of colors in natural materials is seen in the Broadway-Chambers Building, New York, in which brick and tile furnish reddish and terra cotta effects in a most pleasing and harmonious manner.”

photo by Alice Lum

Three stories of rusticated granite, interrupted by a cornice between the second and third floor, supported the upper two portions of the buildings.  Carved wreaths, garlands and blank panels embellished the lower section.

Carved rams' heads hold .ribboned wreaths at the corners -- photo by Alice Lum

Gilbert brought in bricks for the 11-story central portion from his hometown of Zanesville, Ohio.  Produced by the T. B. Townsend Brick Company, they were laid to mimic the rustication of the granite below.   The upper section exploded in color and ornament.

Using terra cotta elements created by the Perth Amboy Terra Cotta Company of New Jersey, Gilbert encircled the 15^th floor with a foliate band.  The upper floors were lavished with colorful garlands of flowers, and below the cornice were enormous heads of Mercury, lion heads at the corners, and hanging fruit.

Lions' heads guard the corners, sharing space below the cornice with heads of Mercury -- photo by Alice Lum

Even as the building was rising, Gilbert began marketing it.  He hired Hughson Hawley to do a rendering of the proposed structure and presented it at the annual exhibition of the Architectural League of New York.  In the meantime, George Fuller created two 11-foot models—a steel model of the framework and a plaster model of the finished structure—to be shown at the 1900 Paris Exposition.  Along with the models Fuller exhibited full-scale replicas of architectural elements.

Unseen from street level, ornamental cast iron torches decorate the arched window openings.  Green and red discs alternate along the fruit garland and deep red inset panels line the arches.  -- photo by Alice Lum

Before the first tenant walked into the door, the building had won five awards at the Exposition including a Grand Prize for the George A. Fuller Company.  (Two years later The Numismatis would report “At the Paris Exposition of 1900, Mr. Cass Gilbert…exhibited a model of this structure.  The Architectural Review a short time ago stated that a medal addressed to ‘Monsieur Broadway Chambers’ was seeking an owner, and the next day a letter carrier handed to Mr. Gilbert a brown pasteboard box containing the diploma.  The address on the wrapper read: Monsieur Broadway Chambers, Etats-Unis. ..how the Postoffice authorities in New York City discovered [the identify] of the addressee is a marvel.”)

Tenants began arriving in April 1900, lured by up-to-date amenities not found elsewhere.  Every floor had a mail-chute, almost every office had a sink with running water for washing hands and cleaning up, and there was an independent electrical lighting plant when the reliability of electrical service was unreliable at beset.

Several insurance companies were among the first tenants, including The Peoples Security Company in 1901, and Frank F. Eagles, an agent for the Aetna Life Insurance Company who occupied room 1106 in 1907.

On August 1, 1904 a freak summer lightning storm ravaged lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Scores of buildings were struck by lightning, rain fell in torrents flooding the streets, and ferocious winds ripped away awnings and signs.  Boats in the harbor sought shelter and fires, sparked by lightning strikes, erupted throughout the area.  The Times reported that “On the roof of the…Broadway-Chambers Building…was a flagpole about ninety feet in height and weighing almost a ton.  When one of the flashes hit that pole it turned a good part of the wood into fragments like toothpicks and left the rest in a dangerous condition.”

Lush groups of pineapples, melons and other fruits hang against the colorful panels -- photo by Alice Lum

As the cooperative movement sweep Chicago and New York in the early days of the century, triggered by the socialist and communist ideals, W. M. Brownell formed the Manufacturers Purchasing Corporation and opened his offices here in December 1916.   He established a cooperative of “the most successful manufacturers in the candy, chocolate and ice cream” industries, according to The International  Confectioner magazine.  By paying “a small fee” members could buy their food ingredients at much lower prices, obtained through the group-buying rates of the coop.

The lovely copper cheneau was gone after 1925.  The building to the left is the Shoe and Leather Bank Building.  -- photo NYPL Collection 

The crown-like copper cheneau of the cornice was sadly removed in 1925, leaving a clean-edged roofline.  But otherwise, with a few expected changes along street level, Cass Gilbert’s vibrant and colorful Broadway Chambers Building is strikingly intact.  The comment made by The Rotarian magazine in November 1912 remains true today.  “The proof that this building is one of the best designed forerunners of our present architecture, is its still modern colored terra cotta and brick appearance.”

The Broadway Chambers Building was designated a New York City landmark in 1992.

The Lost 1836 Astor House Hotel -- Broadway at Vesey Street

photo Library of Congress

Through his fur trade the original John Jacob Astor had amassed a fortune of nearly a quarter of a million dollars by 1800.  But it was his genius in real estate that would make him the first multi-millionaire in the country.

During the Revolutionary War the Bull's Head Tavern sat on Broadway, on the block just north of St. Paul’s Chapel.   The area was open and mostly undeveloped and the grounds around Adam Vanderburgh’s tavern were shaded by spreading trees.

As the city inched northward the tavern disappeared, replaced by fine brick homes of New York’s wealthy.   Astor owned one of these, at the corner of Broadway and Vesey Street, which he advertised for rent in The New York Gazette in 1813.  The ad doubtlessly infuriated his elite neighbors.

To let, for one or more years, a pleasant situation and an excellent stand for a drygoods store, the corner house of Vesey Street and Broadway.  Inquire of John Jacob Astor, corner of Pearl and Pine Streets.

As the years passed Astor envisioned a grand hotel on this most fashionable of blocks.  In 1830 he began purchasing his neighbors’ mansions—John Rutherford’s home; the house that had belonged to British officer Colonel Axtell then home to Lewis Scott; and Senator Rufus King’s mansion.   Finally he had them all except John G. Coster’s house.

Coster was not only quite wealthy, he was very attached to his corner home and had no intentions of selling it.    Finally, out of frustration, Astor approached Coster with an offer he could not refuse.  If Coster would produce two friends, Astor would choose one of them to put a value on the Coster property.  Whatever that amount was Astor would add $20 thousand to it and write a check on the spot.  John Coster agreed and Astor was forced to pay $60,000 for the house—about $1.7 million today.

Astor’s friends cautioned him about building a hotel on the site.  According to The New York Times years later he was admonished “It can never be a success.  It is altogether too far uptown.”

But Astor was unmoved.   On April 4, 1834 Philip Hone wrote in his diary of “the pulling down of the block of houses next to that on which I live—the whole front from Barclay Street to Vesey on Broadway—where he is going to erect a New York ‘palais royal,’ which will cost him five or six hundred thousand dollars.”

The cornerstone was laid on the Fourth of July that year.  It was a momentous event with the mayor, Cornelius W. Lawrence, presiding and the militia parading up Broadway to the site.  A silver tablet bore the names of John Jacob Astor and the architect, Isaiah Rogers.  Inside was a picture of Lafayette, a picture of New York and copies of the newspapers of that day.

Construction of the mammoth hotel would take four years and cost around $400,000.   On June 1, 1836 the doors opened to the public and the lavish hotel made news as far away as England.  A London newspaper called it “A model of architectural beauty and of massive grandeur, luxurious and elegant in its appointments.”

In 1850 the Broadway neighborhood around the Astor House was still quiet -- Library of Congress

The Astor House was a near copy on a grander scale of the earlier, fashionable Trement House, also designed by Rogers.  Railroad and Steamboat Companion remarked that it was built “in a remarkably massive style, simple and chaste.”  Five stories tall, it was built of Quincy granite—a bluish stone that was also used in a nearby prison—with a Greek Revival entry.  The choice of material would be questioned by many; Putnam’s Magazine complaining that it “looks more like a penitentiary than a hotel.”

The opening was attended by press from Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia and other cities.  The New Yorker said the interior was of a “style of unostentatious richness and severe simplicity.”  Custom-made black walnut furniture sat among marble columns on blue-and-white marble mosaic floors.  A New York reporter remarked that New Yorkers must now know how Romans felt when they first saw the completed Coliseum.

The hotel introduced travelers to the most modern innovations.    At a time when most houses still relied on candles, it had its own gas manufacturing plant that supplied gas lighting throughout.   The New York Constellation reported that “The house was lighted by this gas everybody is discussing.”   The unfamiliar technology proved a bit dangerous to some guests.   Rather than turn off the gas jet, these visitors would blow out the flame, as they would a candle, with the result that several guests were asphyxiated in their sleep.

A steam engine in the basement ran a pump that provided water to all floors and powered machinery in the kitchen and laundry.   Reservoirs in the attic provided running water to 17 bathing rooms and two showers.  Each floor had hot and cold running water as well as water closets.  The indoor plumbing alone was considered miraculous.

In the basement was a printing press for the printing of daily menus.  There was an innovative system of bells and individualized door locks.  For gentlemen guests there was a grand dining room 108-feet long and smaller elegant dining rooms for women and their male escorts.  The hotel offered a reading room, a bar room, an oyster cellar, smoking rooms, barbers, hairdressers, a drugstore, tailors and boot makers.

There were around 360 rooms in the hotel which prompted The New Yorker to ponder on November 25, 1837 “On Wednesday night 647 persons slept in Astor House, and bye the bye, were not crowded.  How many villages are there in this country that make considerable show that do not contain this number?”

A decade after opening, Astor made a change in the hotel that would have long-lasting effects.  The central courtyard with its fountains and trees was enclosed under a great rotunda.   Here a richly carved bar was installed and the Astor House’s “free lunch” was served to generations of working New Yorkers.

In 1899 the rotunda was still the preferred luncheon spot for businessmen -- NYPL Collection

In 1848 rooms at the Astor House cost $2 per day.  It was around this time that Englishman William Chambers stayed here.  Dazzled, he wrote “An American hotel is not a house:  it is a town.”

The Astor House was the preferred hotel for celebrities, politicians and writers as well as the well-heeled traveler.  On February 16, 1853 President-Elect Franklin Pierce arrived at the Astor House.  He had notified the manager, Charles Stetson, that he wanted no excitement, reception or crowds.  The New York Times noted “He expressed himself in plain terms on this subject, and said if his desire was not complied with, he should take the first train South, en route to Washington.”

Pierce’s name would be added to the list of White House residents to stay at the Astor House:  Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, James Polk, Martin Van Buren among them.  The Prince of Wales, the Grand Duke Alexis, the Prince de Joinville, Louis Kossuth, Horace Greeley and Admiral Farragut were guests.  Sam Houston, Jefferson David, Henry Clay and Charles Dickens slept here.

When Jenny Lind stayed here, adoring crowds unleashed the horses from her carriage and pulled it from Castle Garden to the hotel by hand.

But Daniel Webster was perhaps the name most closely associated with the hotel.   Webster would stay at no other hotel and Stetson always vacated the finest suite in the house upon hearing of his arrival.   Webster wrote to a friend in 1849 "If I were shut out of the Astor House I would never again to go New York.”  Throughout the years Webster never paid for his rooms—a parlor, dining room and bedroom--despite his repeated attempts.

It was here in 1852 that Webster received the news that he had been defeated for the Whig candidacy by Millard Filmore.  Still wearing his dressing gown and slippers, he told the delegates John C. Calhoun and Silas Wright, “Gentlemen, my public life is ended…When perilous times come to you as come they will you will mourn in bitterness of spirit your craven conduct and your base ingratitude.  Gentlemen, I bid you a good-night.”

The following day Webster said good-bye to Charles Stetson.  According to The New York Times he said “Farewell, old friend.  We have known and loved each other for more than thirty years.  You will find a little present from me in the office.”  Two weeks later Daniel Webster was dead.

Charles Stetson would have no one else sleep in the suite of rooms used by Webster.  He turned two of the rooms into a ladies’ dining room and took the bedroom for himself.

Harper's Weekly published a drawing of Lincoln addressing the crowds in 1861 from the entrance pediment.

By the time of the Civil War, Broadway had become a bustling commercial area; but the Astor House remained.  In 1866 Miller’s New York As It Is remarked that “although so many others have arisen since, this well-appointed and extensive establishment still retains its high position.”

The hotel had been updated in 1862, including an elevator.   The Times reassured readers that “Otis’ improvements render this mode of traversing the lofty stories of the Astor House as safe as it is agreeable cutting off every conceivable chance of harm from the breaking of any part, by means of self-acting stops and the safety drum at the top.”

Large windows were cut in the facade at the top floor and the furnishings and decorations updated.  The New York Times raved about the improvements.  "But gorgeous as are the frescoes and gilding, to our mind no art can rival the rich effects and infinite variety of Nature, displayed in the grain of choice woods on the walls of the principal drawing rooms."  Writing of the "six or eight rich woods," the reporter praised "the grains of which are utterly inimitable by art, and until this very season had been of too extravagant cost for practical use."

In 1906 a “ghost dance” was held in the ballroom.  The ball celebrated the early days of the hotel and only those families who were around in the 1830's were included.  “Its invitation list is to include the old-line aristocracy of New York, and its tone is to be exclusive,” said The New York Times.  The guests, including Roosevelts, Hamiltons, Fishes, Clintons, de Peysters, Schuylers and Schermerhorns, were instructed to wear only costumes from 1836.

The grand entertainments and the luncheons under the rotunda would not last much longer.  On May 3, 1913 signs were posted in the corridors announcing that the hotel would close on Thursday, May 29.   The hotel was owned by feuding cousins William Waldorf Astor and Vincent Astor—Vincent owning the southern half and William the northern.  Vincent Astor had sold his share of the property when impending subway excavations threatened its stability.  Obviously, the other half would have to go as well.

Albert C. Kaufmann had been head waiter of the hotel for nearly 45 years when the notice was made.  He reminisced to a New York Times writer about the notable men he had served.  General Grant had a favorite table overlooking St. Paul’s and had a “weakness for roast beef.”  Chester A. Arthur preferred lamb chops and Grover Cleveland’s favorite was mutton chops.  Like Grant, Garfield always ordered roast beef.

The auction of the hotel's contents was advertised across the facade in 1913 -- photo Library of Congress

On May 29 Vincent Astor received a petition with over 5,000 signatures; a desperate plea from New Yorkers to save the venerable hotel.  Astor was unmoved.

“Despite the petition, however,” said The New York Times, “the old hostelry, bar and restaurant were closed at midnight last night and it was said that it was for the last time.  Every patron was turned out.”

On June 10 the auction of the furnishings began.  Along with the items was the 108-year old Chinese bridal bed, a famous fixture of the house.  Carved of ivory with inlaid wood, it was said to have originally cost $2,500.

Crowds rush by in December 1913 as a piece of American history is destroyed -- photo Library of Congress

By the end of the year the monumental granite walls of the old Astor House were demolished.    New Outlook regretted the loss saying, “Thus the old Astor House, always a hotel famed for good cooking and cheer, has been something more than a mere hotel.  It has become a historic part of the metropolis; it has also become embodied in the Nation’s history.  Its passing will be regarded with real regret.”

Sports Film History and Modeled Clay --Nos. 244-246 West 23rd Street

photo by Alice Lum

Jacob Hirsch recognized the potential of West 23^rd Street in the mid-1890s.  The center of Manhattan’s entertainment district, the wide street was dotted with theaters, music halls and opera houses.  Yet interspersed among them were the mid-century brownstone residences of tenacious residents who refused to move out.

With the commercial district of the city moving ever northward, Hirsch purchased the four-story brownstone house at No. 244 West 23^rd for $23,200 in November 1891.  He then patiently waited (or perhaps not so patiently) for an adjacent house to come on the market.  Finally on May 12, 1894 he bought the near-matching house next door at No. 246 for $30,000.  He now had a sufficiently-wide plot for a commercial building.

Meanwhile Isidor Hoffstadt had erected a six-story business building at No. 248 on the land abutting the property in 1893.  He quickly sold that building In December 1894 for $86,000 and the aggressive developer purchased Hirsch's property for construction of a “seven-story fancy brick business building”, as reported in The New York Times.

Between the two speculators, the complexion of the block was rapidly changing.  At the same time that Hoffstadt bought the two lots at Nos. 244 and 246 from Hirsch, Hirsch was purchasing the “two marble front three-story and basement dwellings” across the street at Nos. 241 and 243.  The newspaper remarked that “This property will doubtless also soon be converted to business uses.”

Hoffstadt’s new building was a welcomed splash of color.  A high stone base supported six floors of contrasting red brick and limestone.  Resourceful brickwork resulted in imitation rough-cut stone pilasters at the second floor, banded three-story pilasters at floors three through five, and fluted pilasters at the top two stories.  Elaborate panels of classical urns of fruit, wreaths and garlands connected the arches.

While Hoffstadt could have used molded terra cotta for the repeating panels, instead each was carved in stone -- photo by Alice Lum

Among the first tenants in the building was the Veriscope Company which took the entire fifth floor.   The motion picture company drew national attention on March 17, 1897 when Bob Fitzsimmons knocked out Jim Corbett, winning the heavyweight championship of the world.  Veriscope had three hand-operated cameras at ringside to capture the Carson City event.

The 11,000 feet of film were edited into the first motion picture sports event.  The event was screened for admission-paying fight enthusiasts in theaters across the nation with live “lecturers” narrating the action.  It reaped large profits for the boxing sport and Veriscope.  But not everyone was happy with the concept.

Religious and conservative groups lobbied Congress to enact a ban against such films.  Editorial pages debated one another.  The New York World insisted that the motion picture camera was “a triumph of science over the poor, imperfect instrument, the human eye, and proves the veriscope camera is far superior."  The New York Times countered “It is not very creditable to our civilization perhaps that an achievement of what is now called the ‘veriscope’ that has attracted and will attract the wildest attention should be the representation of the prizefight.”

Nevertheless, the proposed legislation was defeated, partially due to Veriscope Company’s aggressive publicity campaign.  The film, “The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight,” was the first blockbuster motion picture in American history, grossing around $750,000 with profits of around $120,000.

Brick layers successfully created fluted pilasters -- photo by Alice Lum

In June The Times noted that the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight was showing at the Academy of Music and that “the demand for the pictures has caused the employees of [Veriscope Company] to frequently work overtime.”

One of those working overtime was the Secretary and bookkeeper, 56-year old Charles P. Schribner, whom The Times said was “particularly interested in the brief windfall” and “among the most zealous of all.”

The man would often work after hours and on Sunday when the building was closed and the elevator operator was absent.  Because he was somewhat overweight, the newspaper reported that “to save the laborious climb up the stairs to the fifth floor he had been in the habit of being his own elevator operator.”

On Sunday June 6 Schribner finished his work, opened the elevator screen and reached in for the rope to the elevator.  As the car passed him, he attempted to grab the rope again to stop the elevator, lost his footing and plunged down the shaft.   Within minutes the man whom The Times said was “only moderately situated financially” was tragically dead.

Graceful panels of classical urns separate the pilasters.  An unfortunate coat of red paint hides the limestone banding. -- photo by Alice Lum

In 1888 John Ward Stimson founded the Institute for Artist Artisans of New York—where young students were trained in earning a living by designing wallpaper, carpeting and Christmas cards.  “The necessity of schools for artisans was very clearly seen” by Stimson reported The Times ten years later.  “He was a voice crying in the wilderness, but the voice was not strong enough to enlist the aid of capital.”

In the Fall of 1897 Stimson transferred the school to a group of artists and “art lovers” who incorporated it, hired a staff of instructors and moved into a full floor of No. 244 West 23^rd Street.   By 1898 the enrollment of young people who studied drawing from life, designing, clay modeling, still life painting, costume and “antique” classes topped 100.   The eight-month courses cost $50 for day classes and $25 for nights.

“The pupils are apt to be young women with comfortable homes, who hope in time to support themselves by work in some line of applied art, or young men preparing themselves to be supervisors of labor rather than artisans.  Indeed, there are not a few who in the New York Institute see a good preliminary school on the way to a career as painter or sculptor,” said The Times.  The Artist-Artisan Institute would remain in the building well into the 20^th century.

In 1898 Isidor Hoffstadt lost the building to foreclosure and Jacob Hirsch purchased the property back for $105,487.

The first decades of the new century saw a broad range of tenants.  Van-Ness Cooper Company was here in 1904, “manufacturing chemists” who marketed Lacto-Lithiated Strontium Compound which was guaranteed to cure Bright’s Disease.

One of the longest lasting tenants was the Angle Mfg. Co., makers of oil lamps.  For years the firm would advertise its highly decorative and unique lamps saying they produced “a light that’s near to sunshine than any other artificial glow” and were “entirely free from danger.”

In 1917 the company waged war on the electric bulb.  It warned the consumer of the “over-brilliant white light from electricity,” and cited an unnamed Cleveland eye doctor who reported on its danger.   Angle’s advertisement cautioned that electric light was “responsible for ninety percent of the eyestrains and headaches which endanger sight and health.”

The Angle Mfg. Co. promised that the Angle Lamp "will not disappoint in any way."

At the same time Peerless Printing Company was here, publishing Every Boy’s Magazine, and the U.S. Slicing Machine Company that promised its system of slicing was the “secret of making money on meats” and would draw trade to butcher shops.  The company offered a free book touting its slicing machines entitled “Make More Money in Your Meat Market.”

Other firms in the building included the American Bronze Honor Roll Company and the American Fabric Products Company which manufactured automobile robes and seat covers “for Fords and other popular cars.”

In 1914 the ground floor retail space was home to Cushman & Dennison, stationery dealers.   On June 3 a fire started in their storeroom in the cellar and spread up a pipe casing to the third floor.  Here the fire spread through the Engle Manufacturing Company.  By the time a second alarm was sent, many of the rear windows had blown out.  Ten firefighters had to be carried out, overcome by exhaustion and smoke, and two others were injured in the blaze that cost $10,000 in damages.

In 1922 Mergenthaler & Son leased the third floor and for over four decades the New York Mergenthaler Linotype School would operate here.  The building was purchased in 1938 by the Brodwin Piano Company, Inc.  Established in 1914 by Harry Brodwin, the firm established its “office and modern factory” in the building where it would stay for several decades.

Chelsea residents now live in the spacious rooms where sports film history was made -- photo by Alice Lum

In 1982 the upper floors were converted to twelve large cooperative apartments.  While the interior spaces where young artisans learned to model clay and the first sports films were edited are obviously vastly altered, the striking exterior remains essentially unchanged.

A 1930 Experiment in Socialized Housing -- No. 433 West 21st Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1844 in Rochdale, England, a group of consumers had an idea.  By purchasing their own store, they could avoid the costs of a proprietor and save money on necessities.   In 1911 The Saturday Evening Post would call that idea “a commercial mustard seed.”  By the early 20^th century the cooperative store concept had spread to America.

Called the Consumer Cooperative Movement, cooperative stores spread throughout the Chicago area and New England.   Many of them were part of the Rochdale Cooperative Society.   While in Europe the Russian monarchy fell to communism and Karl Marx’s revolutionary ideas about society and socialism were more widely accepted, Edwardian Americans were wooed by the siren song of shared wealth and affordable goods.

In 1913 W. M. Stickney, chairman of the Local Board U.S. Cooperative Company in Chicago wrote of the movement.  His words sound uncannily like those uttered by the Occupy Wall Street protestors of today.

“Much has been said and written in regard to the high cost of living…Out of it all, however, will soon come some workable plan that will enable consumers to get together in a spirit of helpfulness and organize for mutual protection.

“[The average consumer is] hampered by a clumsy, antiquated, wasteful system of distribution.  It is this entire system that we are warring against, and it must eventually be stored away in the world’s garret among other second-hand and discarded methods of commerce.”

By the 1920s the cooperative concept had spread to housing.    Between 1925 and 1927 the Worker’s Cooperative Colony was built in the Bronx under the sponsorship of the United Workers Cooperative Association, one of the two largest cooperatives in the country.    Designed by Springsteen & Goldhammer, the project furnished housing, for the most part, to Eastern European Jewish garment workers—this particular group having a decidedly left-wing political viewpoint.  For $125 down and $20 a month, single men or childless couples received small apartments and use of the library, reception room, gymnasium and restaurant.

In the meantime, Mary Ellicott Arnold was deeply entrenched in the cooperative movement.  She managed the “Our Co-operative Cafeteria,” that had three New York City branches and 1,000 members, mostly women.   In 1922 Mary stressed the goal of the cafeterias to the Third Congress of the Co-operative League in Chicago.  “Co-operators believe that no motive of private interest or greed must interfere with our main purpose—service.  Therefore our aim is that private profit must be eliminated from industry.”

About a month after the stock market collapse that no doubt further steeled Mary’s aversion to capitalism, she was ready to take the giant step from cafeterias to housing.   On December 1, 1929 titles to five four-story houses at Nos. 429 through 437 West 21st Street were transferred to the Consumers’ Cooperative Services.    The New York Times reported that “After ten years of cooperative purchasing of food and meals the members of the Rochdale Cooperative Societies and the Consumers’ Cooperative Service, inc., with nearly 3,500 members in New York, have extended their ideas of mass buying to the apartment house field.”

Probably due to the architects' work in the Bronx, the cooperative commissioned Springsteen & Goldhammer to design the 12-story and penthouse structure.    There would be apartments for 66 families ranging in size from one to four rooms.  The main source of funds for the project came, initially, from the cooperative cafeterias and food shops managed by Mary E. Arnold.

“Members of the tenants’ organization will purchase bonds of their company,” reported The Times.  “The tenants will manage the building and control expenditures, pay taxes, mortgage interest and depreciation charges at the rate of about 2 per cent a year, and will share any profits.”

There would be a communal dining room on the first floor.  In an odd reversal of tradition the cornerstone was laid on September 13, 1930 to mark the completion of the building, rather than the beginning of construction.  Mary Arnold placed the cornerstone that afternoon and a new page in socialized housing began.  At the time 80 percent of the apartments had been sold with the remainder slated for rental, with the option of buying.  Apartments rented for $25 to $35 per room per month.

Expansive, multi-paned windows flood the apartments with sunlight  -- photo by Alice Lum

What emerged from the drawing tables of Springsteen & Goldhammer was a red brick, no-nonsense structure that could, perhaps, been easily mistaken for an factory building instead of a residence.  In keeping with the socialist convictions of the cooperative, the façade was starkly unadorned, its flat surface interrupted only by the modern and expansive many-paned casement windows.

Mary Arnold’s list of tenants were a bit more prosperous than the garment workers in the Bronx “Coops” (the name rhymed with “hoops”) with a large percentage working in the newspaper or library fields.   Among the first tenants was newspaper reporter and advertising man Romolo A. Fanciulli.   When he moved in, the 45- year old writer was editor and advertising director of The Winged Foot, the newspaper of the New York Athletic Club.  He had covered the flights of the Wright Brothers for the New York World, worked for the New York Evening Post and the Washington Post and was for four years the financial advertising solicitor for The New York Times.

Only a month after the building was completed and he moved in, Fanciulli died in New York Hospital after a short illness.

Angled walls at the entrance and short bands of brick are among the few decorative touches on the spartan facade -- photo by Alice Lum

Thomas R. White was another journalist living here.  The World War I vet had served on the staffs of The Birmingham (Alabama) News as sports editor, The Fort Worth Record where he was city editor, The Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser and the Mobile Register and other Southern newspapers.  In 1926 he joined the staff of The New York Herald Tribune.

For some reason the building attracted librarians.  During the 1930s there were at least six of them living here.  But not all the tenants had literary professions.

Frank C. Eaton and his family lived here at this time.  The retired industrialist had been the treasurer of the Kilbourne & Jacobs Manufacturing Company in Columbus, Ohio.   Jules Friedel, sales manager of the S. Gumpert Company, manufacturers of food products lived here as well.

The no-nonsense architecture associated with the cooperative system had a decidedly industrial feel - photo by Alice Lum

And the Joseph P. Ryan family was here in the 1940s.  A union boss, Ryan was the president of the International Longshoremen’s Association.  In 1945 the Ryan’s daughter Margaret Mary Ryan was married in the nearby Church of the Guardian Angel on 10^th Avenue to James Brannigan.   A decade later things would go downhill for Ryan.

In 1953 Ryan resigned from his union position after having been president for 25 years.  He was elected president emeritus for life with an annual salary of $10,000; an attractive income for doing essentially nothing.

The Longshoremen’s Association had long been associated with mobsters and the same year that Ryan resigned the American Federation of Labor ousted the union “because it was alleged to harbor racketeers,” according to The New York Times.  Two years later Ryan was indicted by a Federal grand jury for income tax evasion.

The jury charged the 70-year old with failing to report income of $81,123, thus evading taxes of $32,777.  The ailing Ryan, whom The Times called a former “waterfront boss” was convicted in 1955.  Although he called the bribes he garnered from stevedoring and trucking companies “Christmas gifts,” the jury saw it differently.

Despite an industrialist and a racketeer or two, the cooperative continued to be involved in reform work.  In October 1934 the “Our Credit Union” was authorized to change its location to No. 433 West 21^st Street, and in 1938 the American Women’s Committee for Republican Spain was spearheaded from the apartment of Dorothy Kenyon.   The committee intended to provide relief to children in the Loyalist area of Central Spain.

Two long-time tenants who were passionately active in reform efforts died in 1961.  Ninety-one year old Elisabeth Roemer came to the United States in 1901, joining the New York Child Labor Committee.   She investigated child labor in factories, in homes and the street trades.  A year later she was a working in a settlement house among the poor in Greenwich Village.  When the Russell Sage Foundation opened—an organization focusing on bettering conditions for indigent women, workers and children—she joined the mostly women-run foundation as a researcher.  The indefatigable Miss Roemer worked throughout the decades with the Carnegie Corporation’s Americanization study of foreign groups, the Vocational Advisory Service in 1922, and during World War II as special consultant for the War Jobs Training Information Unit of the United States Employment Services.

Six months after Elisabeth Roemer died, so did Cordice V. Hallett.  Like Roemer, Hallett dedicated her life to helping the less fortunate.  She graduated from the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy before working with the Westchester County Child Welfare Division.  In 1935 she joined the Emergency Relief Bureau, eventually becoming a supervisor in its Bureau of Child Welfare.  A member of the National Association of Social Workers, she was director of the Division of Foster Home Care and Adoption Service of the Department of Welfare when she retired in 1958.

As 21^st century protestors in Zuccotti Park decry the fortunes of a few and the conditions of the many, we tend to forget the socialist and reform movements of a century ago.  Mary E. Arnold’s utopian vision of a truly cooperative residential building eroded over the years (a two-bedroom apartment now rents for about $4,800 a month here), but No. 433 West 21^st Street stands as a testament to those lofty ideals.

many thanks to reader Steve Hopley for requesting this post.