The 1827 Joseph Benedict House - 263 Henry Street

 

The subtle change of brick color testifies to the addition of the upper floors.

The Dutch Rutgers clan first settled in Albany, but moved to New York in the 18th century.  Henry Rutgers was related to the Lispenard family by marriage.  He established a large estate on which, in 1798, he erected a Presbyterian church, known as "the kirk on Rutgers Farm."  According to The Sun decades later, "On, July 27, 1799, Rutgers on his own grounds paraded the militia before President Washington, Gov. Clinton and visiting Indian chiefs, and thereafter he was Col. Rutgers.  Gilbert Stuart painted Washington’s portrait at that time, and it was a prized possession of the Rutgers mansion.”

Streets were laid out on the sprawling Rutgers Farm in the first years of the 19th century.  Rutgers left his mark on the map, naming Rutgers Street where his mansion stood.  It intersected Henry Street, named for himself.  There were also Catherine Street, named for Catherine Rutgers, and Bancker Street, named for Rutgers's son-in-law.  (The street which divided the Rutgers estate from the De Lancey farm was given the name Division Street.)

The former Rutgers Farm became a high-toned residential neighborhood.  In 1827, a two-and-a-half-story, Federal style home was erected at 263 Henry Street.  Faced in red brick, the 24-foot wide residence would have had a handsome Federal style entrance with columns and sidelights (similar to the surviving example next door at 265), and dormers at the attic level.

The family of Joseph Benedict lived here at least from the mid-1830s through 1841.  He was a clerk in the Post Office on Nassau Street.  Mercy King, the widow of John A. King, occupied the house in 1853 and '54, followed by another widow, Hannah Ashford.  Living with her was her adult son, John A. Ashford, Jr.  Hannah died here on July 15, 1861 at the age of 69.  Her funeral was held in the parlor at 2:00 on July 17, and she was interred in Greenwood Cemetery.

There would be another funeral here less than a year later.  Charles H. and Caroline M. Smith next moved into the house and had a baby, Charles, Jr. on December 13, 1861.  The boy died four months later and his funeral was held on May 4, 1862.

The house continued to be leased to a succession of well-heeled tenants.  Emily Thompson, the widow of Andrew Thompson, lived here in 1864-65, and Henry Donald, a stevedore, occupied the house from 1867 through 1869.

No. 263 Henry Street was sold in June 1870 for $13,500 (about $325,000 in 2024).  It was purchased by Mary A. McEntee, who leased it to Nelson and Lydia A. Bush.  Nelson was the proprietor of an "eatinghouse," or restaurant at 166 Nassau Street.  

Nelson Bush joined his father's business in 1873, the same year the Bushes took in a boarder.  Jeremiah Hitchcock, a saddler, lived with the family from about 1873 through 1878.  

The Bush family moved to Wilson Street in Brooklyn in 1880.  That year George Graham and his wife purchased 263 Henry Street.  In May, they hired architect Gage Inslee to enlarge the property.  His plans said the dwelling would "be raised to four stories, also a four-story brick extension on rear."  The renovations cost the Grahams about $72,300 in today's money.  Inslee gave the openings fanciful brownstone lintels with vining, incised carvings.  The parlor floor windows were additionally embellished with diminutive molded cornices above the lintels.  Sandwiched between the lintel and cornice of the entrance was a fancifully carved Queen Anne panel with a sunburst and volutes.  A modern neo-Grec cornice crowned the design.

The renovations resulted in modern, Queen Anne fencing contrasted to the openwork Federal newels.

George Graham died at the age of 64 on August 26, 1890.  His funeral was held here three days later followed by a requiem mass at St. Theresa's Church, on Rutgers Street.

It appears that Graham's widow moved soon afterward.  She was living in Iceland, New Jersey in July 1898 when she hired architect Max Muller to erect an interior wall.  By now the Henry Street neighborhood had significantly changed--from one of aristocratic families to mostly Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.  Before long she would have a most celebrated tenant.

Rabbi Jacob Joseph was described by The New York Times as "the highest official in the orthodox Jewish religion in the United States."  Born in Russia, he was the head of the Congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagodai at 64 Norfolk and had written several books.  In 1894 he suffered a stroke, but continued to work.  Then in 1898 (the year Mrs. Graham had the wall installed), he had a relapse, which left him paralyzed.

According to Scott D. Seligman in his The Chief Rabbi's Funeral: 

Despite the astronomical salary he had been paid during his early years in America, he had never managed to amass a nest egg, and in the 1890s he was forced to relocate to a more modest home at 263 Henry Street.  By 1901 he was not only paralyzed but nearly penniless.

On the evening of July 28, 1902, according to The New York Times, "his family gathered about his bedside.  When he died his son and his married daughters were present."  The article said, "As soon as the death became known crowds began to gather in front of the house.  Nearly a thousand persons were there, and prayers were offered for the rabbi."

About 50,000 mourners accompanied the rabbi's coffin from the house.  Salvation magazine reported, "Seldom before, not even during the meat riot, had so many thousands of people thronged the streets.  Never had a man so well beloved by the Orthodox Jews died in this country."  The article said, "From the door of the Chief Rabbi's humble home at 263 Henry Street, to the gateway of the Temple Rodolph Shalom Cemetery, in Cypress Hills, L. I., the route of the funeral line was one continuous path of mourning."

But it did not go smoothly.  Antisemitic sentiment was strong, and as the procession with the unpainted pine coffin passed the Hoe factory on Grand Street, workers hissed and jeered from the windows.  One employee recounted seeing his coworkers, "throw water and missiles down onto the surging crowds of mourners.  At last, he saw the hose turned on the streets," as reported by The New York Times.

A riot broke out.  The 300 policemen detailed for the event were overwhelmed, and their response, at least according to some witnesses, was focused on the mourners rather than the instigators.  On August 2, 1902, The New York Times headlined an article, "Police Denounced by Jews In Mass Meeting," and reported that 3,000 people had crammed into Cooper Union "to protest against the conduct of the policemen and factory workers who participated in Wednesday's rioting."

A community leader angrily protested, "The men in the factory insulted us wantonly.  Then the police, who should have protected us, clubbed us into insensibility."  A lawyer, Abraham D. Levy, headed a committee to bring charges "against the officers who had clubbed the mourners in the funeral procession," said The Times.  

The 1880 lintel is a spectacular example.

Mrs. Joseph Fine founded the Hebrew Day Nursery in the house in 1904.  Born in Poland in 1860, she was the daughter of Rabbi Joshua Seigel and "a prominent worker in various Jewish welfare organizations," according to The Sun.  She was a director of the Home of the Daughters of Jacob, of the Harlem Daughters of Israel, and of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School.

The Hebrew Day Nursery allowed mothers to work during the day.  It continued its work here after Mrs. Fine's death on March 28, 1919.  

On the afternoon of July 7, 1925, a fire broke out on the stairway between the second and third floors.  The New York Evening Post reported, "The dozen children who occupied the Hebrew Day Nursery at 263 Henry street yesterday are unharmed today...Teachers and nurses removed their charges to the street while the flames were extinguished."  The damage was limited to $200 (just under $3,500 today).

Lillian D. Wald founded the Henry Street Settlement in 1893 and two years later Jacob Schiff purchased the house at 265 Henry Street for the organization.  In 1935, the Settlement acquired 263 Henry Street and opened the Workers' Education Center, sponsored by the Works Progress Administration.  In her 2020 The House on Henry Street, Ellen M. Snyder-Grenier explains it, "served 150 students, most of them from the Lower East Side: unemployed cooks, clerks, laborers, stonecutters, shipping clerks, garment workers, and more."

A poster advertised an "information study group" here.  from the collection of the Library of Congress.

The house was renovated twice--in 1942 and 1994.  The first resulted in classrooms in the basement, first and third floors, with one apartment each on the second and fourth floors.  The last remodeling changed the basement and parlor floor classrooms to office space.

photographs by the author

The 1908 Seward Park Branch Library - 192 East Broadway

photo by Jim Henderson

Born in the attic of a tiny house in Dunfermline, Scotland, Andrew Carnegie's family could not afford a book.  According to the director of the New York Public Library in 1902, the young Carnegie promised, "that if he ever obtained the means he would establish a public library."  True to his word, in 1901 Andrew Carnegie, now a multimillionaire, offered the City of New York a gift of $5.2 million to build free circulating libraries.  The condition was that the city would provide the land and maintain the libraries.   

On June 6, 1908, the Record & Guide reported that work on the foundations of the Seward Park Branch, one of the Carnegie libraries, had begun.  The branch was designed by Babb, Cook & Welch--the firm that in 1899 had designed Carnegie's 64-room neo-Georgian mansion.  (The firm, at the time, was Babb, Cook & Willard.  Daniel W. Willard left the firm in 1908 and Winthrop A. Welch took his place.)  Perhaps as a nod to the philanthropist, their design for the Seward Park Branch would have striking similarities to the Carnegie Mansion.

A turn-of-the-century postcard depicts the mansion.

The Record & Guide noted, "The library is one of the largest and most important of the branches yet to be built, serving as it does a very crowded district of the city."  The Lower East Side neighborhood had filled with mostly Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.  Like Carnegie's, the families were too poor to afford books, and would heavily rely on the library.

The guide said, "The Jefferson st. front of the structure will be the most important and faces on Seward Park; but the two entrances are in wings on East Broadway and Division st."  One entrance was for adults, the other for children.  A rusticated Indiana limestone base would uphold three floors of red brick.

The Record & Guide said, "The interior finish will be of quartered white oak with rift grain Georgia pine floors and painted plaster surfaces."  On the first and third floors were the adults' circulation and reading rooms.  The children's department took up the entire second floor.  The roof behind the handsome stone balustrade was not wasted.  It would hold "a large out-of-door reading room, arranged to be well shaded by awnings when required and provided with electric lights for use in the evening," said the Record & Guide.

photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

The Seward Park Branch library was dedicated in the summer of 1909.  The ceremonies included school children who greatly impressed a New York Public Library official.  On December 26, 1909, The Sun quoted him saying:

Opening exercises usually have nothing of novelty about them.  This one had a novelty--the music supplied from an East Side public school.  The selections were of the best, and for young boys and girls whose parents had been but a few years in this country the execution was marvellous [sic].

from the collection of the New York Public Library

The school district's superintendent, Miss Richman, encapsulated the neighborhood and the children who would be using the library:

Not more than two per cent of the people in the districts which I superintend are of non-Jewish parentage.  At least 86 per cent of them are Russian Jews.  The others come from the various smaller countries of southeastern Europe.  Only a few of the parents of our school children were born on this side of the water.  Our pupils are only one generation removed from Russia, and the language of their homes, the synagogues and the shops which they frequent is some form of Yiddish.

Both the children and their parents were thirsty for knowledge.  The New York Times reported on May 9, 1913, "The annual report says that the Seward Park Branch of the library reads 425,571 books a year--that is to say, the readers take them home from the library and into their homes."  The article noted that of that amount, "only 51 per cent was fiction" and, "At Seward Park there are sterner uses for life and time than the reading of fictitious weal and woe."  It added, "Nothing short of an inspection of the Seward Park Library actually at work in its polyglot neighborhood will convey any idea of its enormous social power."

Throngs of children file into the second floor Children's Department.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

While they felt welcomed within the library which made books available in Russian, German, Yiddish and English, the immigrant readers were facing conspicuous discrimination outside the library's walls.  In his June 30, 1911 annual report, Federal Commissioner of Immigration William Williams denounced the Eastern European inflow, calling the refugees, "backward races with customs and institutions widely different from ours and without the capacity of assimilating with our people as did the early immigrants."  Despite this, the New York Public Library report that year said the Seward Park Branch circulated more books than "any other branch library in the world."

The children's interest in reading was reflected in the Seward Literary Club, organized in 1911.  The Bulletin of the New York Public Library explained in 1914 that it "is composed of Jewish boys who have met together for three years at the Seward Park branch to exchange reviews of books they are reading, to tell stories, and to hold occasional debates."

An article in The New York Times on March 9, 1913 flew in the face of William Williams's bigoted remarks of two years earlier.  "It is not far-fetched to say that many of the statesmen of the future are now in the making at Seward Park library," it said.

The open-air, rooftop reading room, sheltered by canvas awnings.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The library was, as well, a cultural center for the neighborhood.  In April 1914, librarian Frank Goodell worked with the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society to organize an exhibition of figures of immigrant citizens.  The New York Times said the presentation was meant, "To demonstrate the serious character of the Jewish immigrants from Russia and Rumania and their eagerness for self-improvement and assimilation of American influence."

The cultural programs consciously related to the neighborhood demographics.  On December 30, 1917, The Sun reported, "At the Seward Park Branch Public Library there is now open an exhibition of the work of Nathaniel Dolinsky, a comprehensive collection of paintings and drawings."  Dolinsky was born in Russia in 1890 and at 23 was the youngest artist to be exhibited in the 1913 Armory Show.

Adults check out books in the Circulation Department.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

A letter to the New-York Tribune published on October 20, 1922, pointed out the sad ratio between the voraciousness of the children and the supply of books.  "There are sometimes but six copies of a book and sixty or seventy demands daily from school children," said the writer.

A crush of juvenile readers wait at the desk in the Children's Department. from the collection of the New York Public Library

In November 1959, four filmmakers produced a motion picture, The Lower East Side and the Library--Yesterday and Today, in celebration of the Seward Park Branch's 50th anniversary.  The Villager noted, "One factor shown to be constant, however, is that neighborhood residents and patrons of the library are still ethnically varied."

The film highlighted the changing demographics of the Lower East Side.  "An example of this continuing 'melting pot' aspect of Lower East Side life," said the article, "is a shot of three very different neighborhood stores standing side by side--a Jewish butcher shop, a Chinese laundry, and a Spanish 'bodega.'"

As the face of the branch's patrons changed, so did the library's outreach.  In the third quarter of the century, films were screened for children, like The Ugly Duckling on August 3, 1975.

The East Broadway entrance.  photo by Beyond My Ken

More than a century after it opened its doors, the Seward Park Branch library remains an integral part of the much changed Lower East Side neighborhood.  Babb, Cook & Welch's dignified structure is a symbol of the philanthropy of another poor immigrant who thrived in his new home of America.

The Methodist Mission Building - 209 Madison Street

 

photograph via apartments.com

When Joseph C. Skaden's three-story brick house at 209 Madison Street was offered for sale shortly after his death in 1853, it was described as having "all the latest improvements, cold and hot water baths, gas, &c."  The advertisement noted, "The location [is] one of the most desirable in the seventh Ward."  And an inventory of the furnishings testified to the high-end status of the neighborhood.  It included a "rosewood parlor suite in crimson plush, with covers; mahogany marble-top chamber furniture" as well as "fine oil-paintings [and] marble mantel ornaments."

By the mid-1870s, 209 Madison Street was home to the family of Reverend M. F. Compton.  His son, George N. Compton, would become a Methodist minister as well.  

On June 25, 1885, a trio of purchasers acquired the house for $15,000--or about $435,000 in 2023 money.  In the three decades since Joseph Skaden's death, the neighborhood had greatly changed.  Most of the once-refined homes had been converted to rooming houses, or demolished to make way for tenements for the waves of immigrants flooding the Lower East Side.  

The group had purchased 209 Madison Street for the New York City Church Extension and Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  Rev. George N. Compton, who had previously lived in the house, was no doubt highly involved in the transaction--he was the pastor of the Madison Street Mission, founded around 1856.

The trustees hired the architectural firm of D. & J. Jardine to make massive renovations.  Their plans, filed in June 1886, called for the "front [wall] taken down and rebuilt and rear wall in basement and first story taken out and iron beams furnished, height of building increased 4 feet."  The plans further noted that the top floors were "to be occupied as a mission chapel."  

The new home for the Madison Street Mission (better known as the Methodist Mission), left little trace of the building's domestic beginnings.  D. & J. Jardine's design was an ecclesiastical take on Romanesque Revival.  The three arched openings of the first floor shared a continuous, terra cotta triple eyebrow.  The architects saved the Mission Society funds by placing a flat terra cotta pediment over the entrance, rather than a hood or portico.  The double-height chapel in what had been the second and third floors was illuminated by two tall stained glass panels that flanked a rose window.

Rev. George N. Compton, who also served as the superintendent of the Sunday School, had a considerable commute.  He lived far north at 223 East 124th Street.  Only the sexton, John R. Hayes, lived in the mission building.

The Methodist Mission administered to the impoverished residents of the neighborhood by supplying medical aid as well as religious services.  Physician William James Hall was in charge of the mission's dispensary and tended to the sick locals.  The Gospel in All Lands would later say (rather self-righteously), that the Methodist doctor worked "among Roman Catholics and Jews, drunkards and thieves, in the Madison Street Mission...rejoicing in the work of relieving distress, and leading the sinful to the Physician of souls."

On August 12, 1890, Dr. Hall addressed an open-air meeting of the Seventh Ward, demanding that Rutgers Slip be made into a park.  The World commented that the neighborhood housed "one of the densest tenement populations in the city."  Hall said in part, "Some years ago, the people of the neighborhood could get a breath of pure air along the river front, but the demands of commerce have driven them back, and now they have only narrow and ill-smelling streets, confined by tall tenement houses."  He predicted victory for the locals, saying "This place that is now a disease-breeding scar on the face of New York will become a health-giving ornament and a joy to all the children."

A week later, The World reported that children were flocking to the Methodist Street Mission to join the fight.  The article said the mission "has become the recruiting place during the past week of the little people of the Seventh Ward who have set their heads on having Rutgers slip as a playground."  (An open space for children was, indeed, needed.  Of the 75,000 people living in the ward, 35,000 of them were children.  Dr. J. Coughlin of the Anti-Poverty Society told a reporter from The World that on hot days, "They have nothing left them but to sit in the windows and on the doorsteps and shrivel up in the sun.")

An example of the plight of the tenement dwellers was Norbert Pfannerer, an unemployed shoemaker who was referred to the mission in January 1894 by Police Headquarters.  He had gone there in desperation, begging "for some work that he might earn bread for his loved ones," according to The Evening World on January 23.  

"We are starving," he pleaded, "but I don't want charity.  I only want to work and earn bread."

Pfannerer and his family lived on the top floor of a tenement building.  His eldest child was 6 years old and the youngest not yet a year.  When his wife gave birth to the last child, according to The World, "her husband was too poor to furnish her with the necessaries of life which her condition required, and consumption [i.e. tuberculosis] rapidly seized upon her."  For the past few days the family had eaten only "a soup made from stale bread."

In 1895 the Methodist Mission Society moved the Hope of Israel Mission into the building.  Founded in 1893, it continued the dispensary work, under Dr. A. C. Grimm, who treated from 50 to 80 patients a week that year.  

In his first report to the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Rev. A. C. Gaebelein said:

Our new quarters at 209 Madison Street are admirably fitted for our mission work.  By the help of kind friends, we have been enabled to refurnish the whole house, and also to make very necessary repairs in the plumbing roof painting, etc., amounting in all to about four hundred dollars.  Here we have our offices and the headquarters of our publication department.

A reading room in the basement contained Bibles in English, German, Hebrew and Russian, along with newspapers in those languages.  

The goal of this group, however, was notably different from the Madison Street Mission.  As the 20th century neared, the Lower East Side was increasingly filling with Jewish immigrants.  The Hope of Israel Mission set out to convert them.  

Rev. Gaebelein insisted there were no strong-armed tactics involved.  He said the neighborhood Jews "understand now that we are not doing this work from any selfish motive or trying to proselyte them, but that we have a higher aim...No effort is made to induce passers-by to enter the church, though a few signs in jargon bidding everyone welcome hang in the windows."

Ironically, in June 1897 the Mission Society sold the building for $24,000 to congregation Chevra Etz Chaim Anshe Walosin.  Now a synagogue, the basement of the building where the Hope of Israel Mission attempted to convert Jews to Christianity was transformed into a mikveh (a ritual bath) in 1907.  Architect David Stone's renovations included, "toilets, tubs and vault" at a cost of more than $445,000 by today's conversion.

In 1915 the congregation hired architect Fred Horowitz to make exterior alterations.  It was possibly at this time that the a Magen David, or Star of David, was imposed upon the rose window and onion dome-like pinnacles crowned with Magen Davids were placed upon the parapet.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

At some point following World War I the building became home to Congregation Agudath Achim Anshei Barisoff, organized in 1891.  The synagogue continued to serve the neighborhood until the structure was converted to residential purposes in 1993.  The double-height worship space was floored over, creating two internal stories.  

The stoop and stained glass windows were removed, and the rose window bricked up.  Shop spaces were installed in the basement and former first floor.  There were now three apartments per floor in the upper portion.

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The William G. Edwards House - 35 East 7th Street

 

By the 1830's attorney and banker Thomas E. Davis had become, perhaps, more interested in real estate development than his primary professions.  He would become a major player in the East Side east of the exclusive Bond Street neighborhood as it transformed from farmland to residences.  Beginning around 1831, he erected rows of speculative brick homes in the area.

Partnering with Louis Wilcox in 1832, he began construction of one such row on East 7^th Street between Second and Third Avenues.  The handsome Federal style residences were completed the following year, valued at $6,000 each—about $191,000 today.

Among them was 35 Seventh Street (the "East" would come later).  Identical to its neighbors, the 25-foot-wide residence was clad in warm orange brick laid in Flemish bond and rose three stories high above an English basement.  Diminutive carved brackets supported the stone window sills and a prim denticulated cornice capped the facade.  The intricate doorway was an upscale element, reflecting that the home was intended for a financially-comfortable family.  Here the round arched door surround with its faceted keystone featured delicate carving and suggested upscale interiors behind its double doors.

The entrance originally matched that of 37 East 7th Street (right).

By the mid-1840's the house was home to William G. Edwards, a fur merchant, and his family.  As was common, they took in a boarder.  William C. Booth an unmarried woolens merchant on Cedar Street, moved in with the family in 1845 and would remain throughout their residency.

A servant made an unsettling discovery that fall.  On September 24, 1845, The Evening Post reported:

Several days ago a male infant was left at the door of the house No. 35 Seventh street.  It was taken into the house, and every effort made to save its life, but it died yesterday.  If the unnatural mother had a heart, this news would wring it to the core.

In 1850 the Edwards family moved down the block to 43 Seventh Street.  Their relationship with their boarder was obviously quite close, and he moved with them.

No. 35 Seventh Street became home to attorney and writer Richard Burleigh Kimball and his wife, the former Julia Caroline Tomlinson.  The couple had married in 1844 and would have five children.

Born in Plainfield, New Hampshire on October 11, 1816, he had graduated from Dartmouth at the age of 17 in 1834 before studying law in New York and Paris.  Kimball traced his American ancestry to Richard Kimball, who landed at Boston in 1634.  

Three years after moving into the Seventh Street house, Kimball left his law practice and ventured into the development of Texas and into writing.  An advertisement for the Texas Land and General Agency said, "The Proprietor of the above Establishment instituted at the City of Houston in March 1843, can be found to day at Richard B. Kimball's, Esq.; No. 35 Seventh-street."  He founded the town of Kimball, Texas and built a portion of the first Texas railroad.

Through his extensive travels he became acquainted with important American and European figures.  According to Appletons Encyclopedia, "He knew Dickens intimately and had met Lamartine, Thackeray, Lord Palmerston, and the elder Peel, and among prominent Americans knew Washington Irving, Webster, and Clay." 

Richard Burleigh Kimball in 1854. original source unknown

Among his many works were the 1850 Cuba and the Cubans; Romance of a Student Abroad, published in 1852; and the 1870 To-Day in New York.

It was most likely one of his many trips that prompted Kimball to first lease his home in 1855.  An advertisement in the New York Herald read:

To Let--The three story furnished house, 35 Seventh street.  It is completely and handsomely furnished, and fitted with gas and water, and all the modern improvements.

The well-respected Kimball suffered a blow to his reputation in the summer of 1885.  On July 24 The New York Times reported, "Richard B. Kimball, a lawyer, was arrested yesterday on an order of arrest...at the instance of Mary A. and Louise Crotty."  The sisters accused him of  appropriating "about $2,689 of the property" of their deceased father's estate for his own use.

In the meantime, around 1861 two widows, Mary A. Rogers and Ann E. Cox, were living in the East 7th Street house--most likely renting it from Kimball.  It is quite possible that the two were sisters.  They remained until 1878 when it was purchased by William Wicke.

It may have been Wicke who replaced the areaway ironwork with extremely eye-catching Aesthetic style fencing.  He sold the house in January 1885 to real estate operator George Roll for $14,500 (about $403,000 in today's money).  By then the neighborhood had changed from one of monied professionals to immigrants, many from Germany.  The once-proud house was now home to several families.  

The Aesthetic period ironwork replaced the original Federal fencing.

When Gustave Solomon purchased the house from  George Roll's estate in 1896, it was described as a "three-story brick tenement."  Interestingly, the property values had not fallen since Roll purchased it.  Solomon paid $15,000 for the house, or $477,000 in today's terms.  Solomon immediately made renovations, hiring architect William C. Sommerfield to remove and reconfigure walls on the second and third floors.

Among the tenants was Dr. Alexander W. Beck.  He was called to the room of Pauline Barnett (described by The New York Press as "a most consummate actress") at 11:00 on the night of November 9, 1896.  The newspaper also mentioned that she "did not bear a reputation beyond reproach," however.  In fact, it appears that Pauline engaged in prostitution with the full knowledge of her husband.

Pauline had been "choked and robbed" the night before, according to the article.  There had been two similar assaults on women recently, causing the newspaper to opine this "might suggest the existence of some maniacal strangler." 

Pauline's husband had not called police.  "It is explained that he thought his wife might recover, and exposure would make their mode of living the harder for them," said the article.  By the time Dr. Beck was summond, he "found the woman violated and unable to recognize any one."  The New York Press said, "He administered morphine, but feared that insanity, if not death, might result."

Although two men were arrested, Pauline denied that either was her assailant.  The New York Press reported, "Some of the police go so far as to say that the woman may be shamming to avoid being dispossessed."  (Prostitution was a sure grounds for eviction in most rooming houses.)

Dr. Beck responded to another disturbing case, this one just across the street, in 1898. On December 11 The Sunday Telegraph reported on "a strange death certificate handed in by Dr. Alexander W. Beck, of 35 Seventh street" to the City Coroner.  "The certificate stated that David Goldberg, aged 2 years and 1 month, of 32 Seventh street, had died Friday afternoon of asphyxia, the burning of one-quarter of his body, and opium poisoning."

The baby had been "horribly scalded by hot coffee" on December 8.  His parents' home treatment was peculiar by today's viewpoint.   They "applied oil and limewater to the burned parts and then poured ink over them."  When that did not work, they called for Dr. Beck, who prescribed a powder containing bismuth, boric acid and opium.  It was to be used sparingly, but the Goldbergs "put the powder on the child very freely," according to the article, "and in two hours the boy was unconscious."  Dr. Beck blamed the parents for not following his instructions, while the Goldbergs maintained that he gave them no directions.

Mrs. Jennie Dorf purchased 35 East 7th Street in 1906.  There were four families living in the house three years later when she hired the architectural firm of Harrison & Sackheim to make significant alterations.  The height was raised to four floors, and the entrance given with a Renaissance inspired triangular pediment.  The alterations cost Dorf the equivalent of more than $175,000 today.

The proportions of the arched 1832 dooway survive within the substantially altered entrance.  The stone pedestals at the foot of the stoop very likely once held wrought iron basket newels.  

A renovation completed in 1955 resulted in a doctor's office on the parlor floor and one apartment each on the others.  The Lower East Side neighborhood was dealing with a raft of problems like poverty and substance abuse at the time.  Living at 35 East 7th Street in 1964 was 19-year old Shirley Neff.  On June 19 that year, undercover police posed as out-of-town college students and visited the East 80th Street apartment of Margaret Hagopian.  They arrested Hagopian for "living off the proceeds of prostitution" and jailed three "alleged call girls," including Shirley Neff.

The venerable house was remodeled once again in 2006.  There are now five apartments in the building, one per floor.  The Edwards house, with its riveting history, stands out among the row with its somewhat quirky 1909 entranceway.

many thanks to reader Joe Ciolino for prompting this post.

photographs by the author

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The 1843 Isaac F. Jones House - 262 East 7th Street

 

Around 1849 a row of 22-foot-wide, brick-faced homes was completed on East 7th Street, between Avenues C and D.  While overall Greek Revival in style--with simple dentiled cornices above broad fascia boards, for instance--they hinted at the rising Italianate style, with bracketed window sills and molded lintels.  That they were intended for financially-comfortable families was reflected in the elaborate ironwork of the stoops, which rolled at the top like a breaking wave.

The family of Isaac F. Jones moved into 262 Seventh Street (the "East" would come decades later).  A commission merchant at 52 Ann Street, he was politically active.  In 1845 he ran for assistant alderman on the Whig ticket, and the following year sat on the New-York Whig General Committee and attended the Congressional Convention.

The Joneses, like many families took in boarders.  The house sat within the Dry Dock District, so-named for the shipbuilding industry on the East River, a situation reflected over the years in the professions of a few of the boarders.  Shipjoiner Edmund Plass lived here in 1851-'52, for instance, and John Boole, a shipwright, boarded with the Joneses in 1853.

Around 1860 the William and Mary C. Brinckerhoff replaced the Joneses in the house.  The seemingly busy William E. Brinckerhoff was a coppersmith and engineer who worked on the steam works of the ships built nearby.  But in 1861 he also listed his professions as real estate agent and commissioner of deeds.  He was, as well, a member of Company A of the National Guard.

Brinckerhoff's expertise was called upon after a fatal accident on February 14, 1863.  With the Civil War raging, military boats were being constructed in the Dry Dock District.  The New York Times reported, "About 1-1/2 o'clock yesterday morning, a serious explosion occurred on board the Government iron-clad gunboat Keokuk, lying in the dock at the foot of Eleventh-street, East River.  The steam-pipe of the boat exploded, instantly scalding to death four of the men on board of her, and seriously injuring one other person."

The possibility that rushed work had resulted in the tragedy was considered.  The New York Times noted, "A short time since explicit orders came from the Navy Department at Washington, to have all the iron-clads now in course of construction in this city, ready for sea within a given time."  The men working on the Keokuk, said the article, had been working "night and day, Sundays as well as week days, with a view to complete her at the time required by the Department."

Coroner Ranney immediately pulled together a coroner's jury at the 11th Precinct Stationhouse, composed of shipbuilding engineers.  Although Brinckerhoff had not worked on that particular ship, he was sent to examine it and testify.  He and the other engineers were perplexed.  Among his comments during the testimony was, "I cannot account for this accident, nor can I see any cause for its bursting."

In the fall of 1863 Brinckerhoff's wife, Ann, fell ill.  She did not recover and died soon afterward, on October 30.  She was just 32 years old.  Her funeral was held in the parlor on November 1.

Jacob Spiero, who listed his profession as "news agent," leased 262 East 7th Street by 1871.  Born in 1818, he and his wife, the former Babette Frankenbach, had five children, Amelia Clara, Isaac, Bertha, Esther, and Caesar.

The Spiero family had an interesting boarder in the late 1870's.  An advertisement in the New York Dispatch on March 3, 1878 read, "Electricity Scientifically Applied by Dr. Stites, No. 262 Seventh street.  Fee $1."  The exact purpose of having the doctor apply electricity to the patient is unclear, but the fee would equal about $25 today.

After Jacob Spiero's death, Babette continued to lease the house, living here with Isaac, his wife Betsy, and their two children Moses and Louisa.  In the mid-1880's Isaac was a partner in Spiero & Fleck, tax examiners, at 199 Centre Street.

It was around this time that three of the houses on the row, including 262, got a make-over.  Modern paneled double entrance doors with transoms were installed, and up-to-date neo-Grec style metal lintels and sills were placed over the brownstone originals.  For some reason, while its neighbor next door at 264 received an impressive cast metal cornice, 262 did not.  Its handsome iron stoop railings, too, were preserved.

By 1893 Kate M. Bowe, the widow of Thomas Bowe, lived here.  She had earlier broke into a male-dominated sphere by being appointed Inspector of Common Schools.  Upon her reappointment in 1895, the New York Herald called her "a pioneer in her district, the Fourth, being the first woman inspector appointed there."

Like her predecessors in the house, Kate took in a boarder.  In 1896 it was John Cusick.  On the afternoon September 29 that year he went to the matinee at the People's Theatre on the Bowery.  The World reported, "John Cusick, forty-five years old, of No. 262 Seventh street, fell dead from his chair during a performance at Milner's Bowery Theatre."  The article noted, "Death, it is supposed, was due to heart disease."

Kate Bowe remained here until at least 1910.  The house would see a string of physicians over the succeeding decades.  By 1918 it was home to Dr. William Grossman, a graduate of Cornell Medical College.  He was connected with the Post Graduate and Philanthropic Hospital.  He was followed in the house by Dr. Abram Schwager, an eye specialist educated at Bellevue Medical School, here in the 1920's.

Renting a room here in 1927 was Ellen Gilmour.  A trip to Atlantic City that fall resulted in the 20-year-old's becoming a hero.   She was swimming near the Garden Pier "when she heard cries for help from the breakers close to shore," according to The Newburgh News on October 22.  Two boys were struggling in what today we know as a rip tide.  The New York Sun reported that it "started to carry them out."  Ellen Gilmour swam to them.  "The lads were clinging to each other and were hard to handle, but she brought them in before life guards arrived."  Possibly embarrassed at being saved by a female, "the two who were rescued ran off without identifying themselves."

Another doctor, Benjamin Escoe, lived at 262 East 7th Street during the Depression years.  He died in the house on September 21, 1940.

In 2016, 262 and the four neighboring rowhouses were threatened.  The house next door, 264 East 7th Street, had been purchased for around $3.8 million and on September 1 the new owners applied for a demolition permit.  Only six days later preservationists sent a letter to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, pleading to have 264 considered for landmark designation, while also urging that a historic district be created for the five homes (thereby warding off future threats to those structures).

The Landmarks Preservation Commission responded saying that 264 East 7th Street "does not rise to the level of an individual landmark," and the row did "not rise to the level of a historic district."  Ironically, it was the 1880's updating that put off the LPC.  The New York Times noted on November 25, "The commission...found that alterations done to the facade of 264 East Seventh Street were too extensive for the building to warrant landmark designation."

Locals and preservationists took the cause into their own hands, gathering before the charming row with signs saying "Mayor De Blasio Where Are You?" and "Save Our Neighborhood."  And the protests worked.   The owner, Elaine Hsu, president of GlobalServ Property One, instead beautifully restored the facade of 264 East 7th Street, and thereby preserved the continuity of the circa 1843 row.

Although the blue-green paint on the Isaac Jones house is flaking off, and unsightly 20th century fire escapes mar the facade, it and its immediate neighbors are rare survivors of the early 19th century along the block.

photograph by the author

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The Lost Essex Market-Eastern Dispensary Building - Essex and Broome Streets

 

Valentine's Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York, 1870 (copyright expired)

A petition was presented to the Board of Aldermen on June 29, 1818, requesting a market-place in the neighborhood of Ludlow and Essex Streets.  It said in part, "A large proportion of the inhabitants of this section are mechanics and laboring men, who reside from half a mile to one mile and a half from any of the markets now established."  The Board approved a new market, completed in September 1818.

The quickly erected structure, on the southwest corner of Essex and Broome Street, lasted only until 1824, when it was replaced by another.  The environment of the Lower East Side neighborhood at the time was reflected an article in The Press in November 1825 about the "hog catchers" enlisted to round up the animals running freely in the streets.

We are glad to learn--and the reader will be both surprised and gratified at the information--that the hog-cart, so long a desideratum here, is making a tour of sequestration through the city, and collecting the unsightly and ferocious quadrupeds which have hitherto enjoyed free commons on our streets.

By 1849 the police department had taken over the second floor of the building.  Here the Essex Market prisons and the Essex Market Court were established.  

On December 30, 1851 The New York Times reported that the Board of Aldermen had approved $53,229 for the rebuilding of the Essex Market.  Architect Benjamin G. Wells produced what Thomas F. De Voe, in his 1862 The Market Book, called "a large, handsome brick building."  The exterior was completed in December 1852, and the structure opened on March 23, 1853.

The rather severe three-story edifice smacked of Norman fortress architecture, with a crenellated corner tower.  A tall fire watch tower rose above it.  Again, while the ground floor housed fish, produce and butcher stalls, the upper floors were occupied by the police station, prison and Essex Courthouse.

Despite its recent renovation, within two years the market operations had moved to more modern quarters and

the condition of the building was woeful.  On August 17, 1855, The New York Times wrote, "Of all the rascally old rookeries that disgrace the town--considering the uses to which it it put--perhaps the Essex Market Police Court-room is the most wretched."  The article said, "Old and dilapidated, filthy, buggy, it has become a receptacle not only unsafe for the health of the officials necessarily attached to it, but absolutely perilous to the lives of its prisoners."  Happily, it noted, a proposition for a new Police Court and County Jail had just pass the Board of Councilmen.

At the time, the Eastern Dispensary was operating from a small building at 79 Ludlow Street, where it had been since 1836.  Incorporated four years earlier, it provided the only medical care available to the impoverished inhabitants of the neighborhood.  Medications were dispensed, vaccinations administered, and physicians treated patients either here, or in the squalid rooms in which they lived.  A letter to the editor of The New York Times in 1854 said the doctors, "are daily and continually administering to the wants of the afflicted poor, who, were it not for the timely assistance thus rendered, would be left to languish in secret helplessness and unattended through the time of sickness, and many of them to sink, through neglect, into a premature grave."

The old Essex Market building was again renovated, and in August 1860 the Eastern Dispensary moved in.  The World noted its occupation of the building was "at the pleasure of the municipal authorities."

The renovated first floor.  The dispensary proper took up most of the second.   Annual Report of the Eastern Dispensary of the City of New York, 1861 (copyright expired)

The considerable challenge faced by the doctors was evidenced in the 1861, which it required three pages to list the various conditions treated the previous year.  Among the most frightening were typhoid fever, gun shot wounds, cholera, botched abortions, and small pox.  More curious conditions on the list, by today's perspective at least, were idiocy, old age and masturbation.

The 1861 Report stressed that the wretched living conditions of the immigrant population, and heavy drinking among some, contributed greatly to their illnesses.  "Obviously the presence of intemperance greatly obscures the prospects of the poor, destroys their self-respect, absorbs their means and makes the descent to pauperism the more sure and rapid."  In 1860, 17 cases of Delirium Tremens (alcohol withdrawal) had been treated, with one death.

On July 14, 1861 The New York Times began an article about the rise in small pox saying, "Now that this dreaded disease is skulking on our byways and secretly holding sway in higher places, vaccination becomes a serious duty, to be overlooked only by those who would nurse a pestilence."  New Yorkers lined up outside police station houses and dispensaries to receive their shots.  The writer wrote with an elitist bent, "The class who form the majority of applicants at the Eastern Dispensary are descendants of generation upon generation of low intelligence."

The following year, on May 28, the newspaper reported on the annual spring "rush for vaccination at the Eastern Dispensary."  The article said it was the "busy season" for the dispensary, "as the annual period for mothers to convey their young infants, and make a general turn-out of the family to share in the privileges of vaccination, or such other blessings of prevention and cure as are to be had for the asking."  Once again, the newspaper descended into elitism at best and racism at worst.  It said the district was fortunate in that those seeking vaccines were "mainly among a robust and cleanly class of Germans and Swedes, whose infants are brought early to be operated upon while they possess a pure and wholesome vitality.  A perfectly healthy Irish baby, though more rarely produced, is thought very highly of by the physicians."

The challenges to the doctors were expressed to a visiting reporter from The Daily Observer in March 1875.  He described, "A very thin old man and a very plump little girl sat side by side.  Germans and Italians, Irish and native Americans, discussed their respective ailments and bragged of their great sufferings."  But when he spoke to a physician, the frustration became apparent.

We find that very many of the diseases are the result of the patient's own imprudence or wickedness.  Drunkenness is at the root of most of them.  And it is also very discouraging to have so much harm done by the people's not complying with the physician's orders.  They can't half the time.  They can't get nourishing food, but they might keep a little cleaner.  Fresh air is free, but often I have visited a small-pox patient or a case of scarlet fever, and found the windows all nailed down.  It's a wonder how a person strong and well could live in such an atmosphere.  Yes, it is rather unsatisfactory work.

In 1883 the Eastern Dispensary treated 21,948 cases.  The New York Times, on April 2, 1884, commented, "This total comprises all ages, colors, and conditions of persons who received relief."  The article noted that financial help from donors was needed.  "State aid to the dispensary has been discontinued, and its aid from the city is small."

The "pleasure of the city authorities" mentioned by The World in 1860 ran out in 1889.  The New England Journal of Medicine explained “The Trustees are compelled, now, however, to appeal to the public, because the city authorities have offered the Essex Market building for sale, and the dispensary officers are hence forced to provide a permanent home for the dispensary.  They have purchased a plot of ground on the corner of Broome and Essex Streets.”

The cornerstone of the new building at 57 Essex Street was laid on January 29, 1890 and the Eastern Dispensary was relocated in May 1891.  

The entire block where the Essex Market building stood was vacant in 1928.  To the left can be seen the 1891 Eastern Dispensary.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The block where the former Essex Market-Eastern Dispensary building stood was demolished in 1928 as the site of the Seward Park High School.  

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