The Parfitt Brothers' No. 166 Fifth Avenue

photo by Alice Lum

When the wealthy Mrs. Margaret Hardenbergh Budd lived at 164 Fifth avenue, it was a residential street of wide brownstone mansions constructed, for the most part, prior to the Civil War. The widow of William A. Butt, she was one of three daughters of the celebrated Rev. Dr. James Bruyn Hardenburg .
The Hardenburgs were an old Knickerbocker family, reflected in the list of organizations to which Margaret belonged: the Historical Society, the Colonial Dames, the Holland Dames, the Huguenot Society, the Nineteenth Century Club, and the Patria Club. The New York Times would later describe her as “among the distinguished society notabilities.”

By 1890 Mrs. Budd’s children had grown and married and Fifth Avenue below 23rd Street was becoming less fashionable. She left her 1851 mansion and moved with her servants to the upscale Soncy Flats at 53 West 58th Street; retaining possession of and leasing both Nos. 164 and 166 Fifth Avenue.

This section of Fifth Avenue had already attracted several high-end art dealers and L. Crist Delmonico moved into No. 166. An esteemed dealer, Delmonico advertised “modern paintings and excellent works by leading artists.”

L. Crist Delmonico was renowned world-wide and in 1893 he lent A Sewing Bee in Holland, painted by German artist Fritz von Uhde to the Chicago World’s Columbia Exhibition, and three years later lent Fantin-Latour’s The Toilet (which had recently hung in the Salon de Champs-Elysses) to the 1896 Carnegie International Exhibition.

By the turn of the century little trace of the elite residential street remained. In 1899 Margaret Budd commissioned architectural firm Parfitt Brothers to design a commercial building in the place of the staid old home at No. 166.

Completed in 1900, the architects produced a visual confection; what the AIA Guide to New York City would deem “terra-cotta eclectic.” In fact it was a seven-story store and loft building in an adapted Northern Renaissance Revival style. Ornamented pilasters with Corinthian capitals separated the three bays of wide windows. The floors were separated by deep courses of buff colored brick. At the fifth story were arched windows and embellished spandrels under a prominent bracketed cornice.

Where once brownstone mansions stood, commercial buildings had taken over Fifth Avenue by the 1920s.  No. 166 is the third building from the corner of West 21st Street -- photo NYPL Collection

But above the cornice Parfitt Brothers pulled out all the stops. A two-story stone gable sprung from the mansard roof sprouting urns and scrolls, a circular window and a deep shell that rested like a tiara on top.

photo by Alice Lum

Two rather restrained dormers with triangular pediments peek from the mansard behind.

L. Crist Delmonico was the first tenant, moving back to the old address his clients remembered. The art gallery remained here for at least a decade before Delmonico’s death. On February 5, 1915 his personal art collection was auctioned off by the American Art Gallery.

By the 1920s No. 166 (far right) housed apparel firms.  The building in the center of the photograph is the site of Margaret Budd's mansion -- photo NYPL Collection

Throughout the 20th Century No. 166 Fifth Avenue would be home to various garment industry tenants – corset manufacturers, cloak and suit merchants – and at one time a first floor restaurant. While the upper floors remained essentially intact other than replacement windows, the ground floor façade was obliterated in the second half of the century. The arched loft entrance at the left side with its columns supporting a small balcony and the decorative detailing of the retail space were stripped off in favor of a flat veneer of colored stone slabs and plate glass.

photo by Alice Lum

Above the sidewalk level, however, No. 166 overflows with what could be called architectural entertainment – exactly what the Parfitt Brothers intended.

The 1901 Adolphe Openhym House - 352 Riverside Drive

photo by luxuryrealestate.com

In 1875, two years after his Central Park was completed, Frederick Law Olmsted designed Riverside Park high above the Hudson River. Before long millionaires bought up property facing the park, erecting massive mansions that took advantage of the stunning views and the clean country air.

While marble and limestone palaces were inching up Fifth at the base of Central Park, these wealthy pioneers were settling far to the north on Riverside Drive.

Grand residences were already erected two blocks away on Riverside Drive at 110th Street in 1894 -- photo NYPL Collection

Among these was Adolphe Openhym, a wealthy silk merchant and member of the family firm William Openhym & Sons whose business was located at Grand and Mercer Streets.

In 1899 architect Robert D. Kohn was commissioned to design a pair of connected townhouses at Nos. 352 and 353 Riverside Drive, between 107th and 108th Streets. Openhym would move into No. 352 with his wife and two sons upon its completion two years later.

The finished house was a five-story brick-and-limestone beauty. Its restrained Beaux Arts design featured a limestone base supporting a two-story bowed front. Above the double entrance doors, an ornate carved cartouche announced the address.  At the second floor, French doors opened to an elegant wrought iron balcony. A century later the AIA Guide to New York City would note “A grand entry portal bears a balcony for savoring Olmsted’s park.”

The matching bowed fronts of Nos. 353 and 352 with their heavy-bracketed graceful balconies -- photo projecthistorynyc.blogspot.com

The gently bowed façade created a second balcony at the fourth floor protected by a handsome stone balustrade. A limestone dormer with an arched pediment broke the mansard roof of the top level. The luxurious side yard between the mansion to the south afforded unusual sunlight.

The garden between No. 352 and the mansion next door let sunlight flood into the southern windows -- photo NYPL Collection

The matching residences were a slice of Paris facing the Hudson River.

Inside was a wide, majestic wooden staircase the hugged the wall below a Tiffany glass skylight, a baronial dining room with beamed ceilings, heavily carved fireplaces, intricate plasterwork and sweeping views of the river. But none of this was enough to remedy Adolphe Openhym’s inner turmoil.

The bold, sweeping paneled staircase -- photo luxuryrealestate.com

Although his business was reportedly “highly prosperous,” he was an active member of at least six clubs, his health was good and his family life seemed happy; something was wrong.

Every morning the 49-year old Openhym would leave No. 352 and take a horseback ride in the park before heading downtown to his office. On the morning of March 30, 1903 his routine changed.

At 9:30, after his ride, rather than going downtown, he boarded an Amsterdam Avenue car going north. An hour and a half later a man was noticed by Frank McConville, a bridge tender at the High Bridge – the great stone span that connected Manhattan with The Bronx, rising 140 feet over the Harlem River. The gentleman walked quickly to the middle of the bridge, laid his hat and umbrella carefully on the pavement, and jumped over the side.

Inside the hat was Adolphe Openhym’s business card.

Six boats were employed in the search of the river, traveling up and down seven times. The family offered a $2000 reward for the recovery of the body, which was later raised to $5000. Finally, a few days later, the body of Adolphe Openhym was found. The recovery efforts cost the family, including reward, $9,640.

On Wednesday, April 29, 1903 at 10:00 am funeral services were held in the parlor of No. 352.

Mrs. Openhym and her sons remained in the house. Her husband’s estate, at just under $850,000, afforded her to continue her lifestyle, including her several philanthropies. She was a member of the National Arts Club, Women’s Health Protective, Hebrew Orphan Asylum of the City of New York and the Consumers’ League of New York.

photo luxuryrealestate.com

Ardently supportive of health causes, she hosted a meeting of the Managing Committee of the Bloomingdale District Nurse Association here in 1905. The group supplied trained nurses for the very poor in the far upper west side.

Mrs. Openhym died in 1933 and shortly afterwards Amos Canfield and his wife were living in No. 352. Rosa Murphy Canfield had been private secretary to John D. Rockefeller. The Canfields cautiously updated the house, including installing elevators in 1939. After Amos Canfield’s death in 1939, the house became the residence of young Jesuit priests.

Little was changed with this new use of the structure. On the first floor were the kitchen, reception and lobby. The second floor was used for the dining room and the “chapel lounge,” while above were bedrooms, offices, studies and “servants quarters.”

The circular sitting room follows the lines of the bowed facade -- photo luxuryrealestate.com

Almost three decades later, the order sold the house to Alabama native Jim Rogers – the former hedge fund broker who co-founded Quantum Fund and retired at the age of 37. Rogers paid $107,300 for the nearly-untouched vintage property.

Rogers’ investment sense paid off. After moving his family overseas, he sold No. 352 to Helen LaKelly Hunt, daughter of oil magnate H. L. Hunt in October of 2006 for $15.5 million.

With her husband, clinical pastoral counselor Harville Hendrix, Ms. Hunt conducted couples workshops and was a founder of the Sister Fund whose goal is to empower women and girls in all areas – financial, spiritual, political and social.

The pristine property, astonishingly never broken into apartments or disfigured, was put back on the market in 2011 for $61.9 million.

The 1847 Andrew S. Norwood House -- 241 West 14th Street

Photo by Beyond my Ken

Almost from its earliest days, the tradition of New York City’s fashionable residential neighborhoods has been one of northward movement. As commerce developed and spread, wealthy citizens migrated to areas that were still quiet and dignified; abandoning their fine homes that would soon be swallowed up by the encroaching tide of business.

So it was with Andrew S. Norwood. In 1829 he moved uptown from 622 Broadway to the elegant Bond Street section. Only 11 years later, however, the “solid and substantial” citizen, as Valentine’s Manual of Old New York described him, moved on, settling temporarily at 325 West 14th Street.

Norwood was highly respected and extremely wealthy. Born in 1770 he started business as a merchant in 1791, joining the firm Norwood & Austen. He was one of the originators and owners of a fleet of merchant ships and a founder in 1807 of the church on Cedar Street which would eventually become the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.

The 14th Street neighborhood spreading east and west from Union Square became fashionable as rural countryside gave way to parks and homes. In 1845 Norwood purchased three lots on the north side of 14th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. Within two years three handsome matching townhouses were completed, the first masonry residences to appear on the block. Their design was a melding of Greek Revival and the new Italianate architectural styles.

The Norwood family moved into No. 241. Four stories tall, it sat above a deep brownstone English basement. A broad flight of steps led to the impressive brownstone-framed entrance. On the parlor floor, two French doors opened onto an Italianate cast-iron balcony. Above, the windows (decreasing in size with each ascending story) were fully-framed in stone.

Inside, sophisticated carved marble mantles and decorative ceiling plasterwork reflected the Norwoods’ wealth. The elegant, curving staircase wound upwards under a stained glass skylight.

An exquisitely-carved Carrera marble mantle graces the parlor -- photo yelp.com

As was customary, the architectural decoration subsided with each upward floor. The sumptuous carved mantles of the first floor, for instance, gave way to rather plain, Gothic Revival surrounds upstairs.

photo by yelp.com

Andrew S. Norwood died in the house on November 14, 1856. The Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review noted “Mr. Norwood was a favorable specimen of the New York merchant of the old school” and “an old and highly respected citizen and merchant.”

The house passed to his son, Andrew G. Norwood, a stock broker and partner in the firm Norwood & Robinson (later to be renamed A. G. Norwood & Co. when his son was admitted to the firm). By the time he retired in 1865, he had amassed a sizable fortune on his own.

Before 1871 Andrew G. Norwood had moved his family across the street to No. 236 West 14th, while retaining possession of the family home. No. 241 became a boarding house catering mainly to unmarried school teachers. Annie E. Knight was here in 1871, and Helen L. Todd was listed here in 1874 – both of them public school teachers. In 1875 the Report by The New York Board of Education showed that school teacher Miss Esther Tobias was here.

Fourteenth Street was changing by the 1880s when Mrs. Stevenson leased No. 241 as her boarding house. Problems came when Mrs. Stevenson’s daughter, Mary, was wooed into marrying Edward De Benyons in 1882. De Benyons presented himself as a Spanish count, “wealthy, but under a cloud.”

Shortly after the marriage, Mary discovered her groom was definitely not of noble birth. Later, taking the $2000 that Mary inherited from her grandmother’s estate, De Benyons took over Mrs. Stevenson’s boarding house – preferring to call it a “hotel.”

Their marriage was a violent one. Finally in November of 1888 the man whom The New York Times described as “a very dark young man, whose face wore an ugly scowl,” was arrested for assault on Mary; this happening one month after he was arrested for stabbing his chef.

A year later the Methodist Church converted the house to The New York Deaconesse’s Home. There were four deaconesses upon its opening on May 10, 1889 in what The Times called a “large and well-appointed house which has accommodations for twenty-five.”

The organization was “in the line of practical Christian philanthropy” and the women were charged with “ministering to the poor, visiting the sick, praying with the dying, caring for the orphans, seeking the wandering, comforting the sad, and saving the erring.” Three years later the women were making as many as 1,700 visits a month.

By 1894 there were 25 deaconesses in the house and the facility was becoming over-taxed. Townsend Wandell donated $20,225 a year later to a building fund for a suitable building, adding another $5000 a few months later.

The New York Deaconesse’s Home moved on and in its place the Shelter For Respectable Girls was formed. The organization, founded in 1871 and incorporated in 1880, provided a residence for young women seeking employment.

Although the Shelter remained at No. 241 through the turn of the century, it was in serious financial trouble by 1899 when its president, Rev. Dr. George F. Baker, pleaded for donations. The shelter relied mainly on individual contributions and, while a nominal rent was charged to some girls; others who had little funds were admitted for free.

In 1903 the house was a boarding house again, and once again there were educators living here including Eliza M. Jackman who was principal of Public School No. 36.

The Norwood estate’s real estate holdings were auctioned off on February 13, 1904. By now 14th Street was far from fashionable. Loft buildings and warehouses had sprung up a from the Hudson River eastward and once-elegant townhouses were being converted to businesses.

The New York Times reported on the “lively bidding” at the auction by developers who “realized the possibilities…for improvement with loft buildings for storage and light manufacturing purposes.”

Somehow the Norwood House escaped. “With the exception of the dwelling 241 West Fourteenth Street, the entire offering was taken by the professional element,” the paper noted.

Throughout the early decades of the 20th Century the building remained a boarding house. Dentist John Chechi lived here in 1912 and in 1920 Michael Monahan, a bookkeeper, had a room in the house.

During mid-century, No. 241 was used as a funeral home – a situation that prevented the interior detailing from being lost. When Raf Borello purchased the house in 1976 it was an 1847 time capsule. The thirteen marble mantles were intact, the mahogany interior doors, the elaborate plaster ceiling moldings, even the chic little metal teardrops that swung over the keyholes to prevent prying eyes.

Borello used the house as a private residence until his death in February 2005. Although the exterior had been granted landmark status, its remarkable interiors could not be designated--interiors of private residences are not subject to landmark restrictions in New York City.

Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation told The New York Times, “When an intact gem of a house comes on the market, you hold your breath. Sometimes it’s lovingly restored on the inside, and other times you see all of the historic fabric just ripped out.”

Before long, preservationists could take a breath. The house was purchased for $8.7 million to be converted into “Norwood Club” – a private members club run by the management of a similar club in London called “Blacks.”

The club targeted as its members those in the creative fields: painters, musicians, writers, fashion designers, and collectors. Owners Alan Linn and Steve Ruggi worked with designer Simon Costin to convert the space without losing its integrity. Dining areas, salons and meeting places filled the four floors with “decadent grandeur.”

On an upper floor, with a less ornate Gothic Revival mantle, is an intimate bar area -- photo yelp.com

The Andrew S. Norwood house is a remarkably preserved slice of early Victorian architecture and lifestyle – both inside and out. It is listed on both the National Register of Historic Places and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The Art Deco 1929 State Bank & Trust Co. Building -- 8th Avenue at 43rd Street

Although tacky shop signs mar the street level, the Art Deco design remains intact -- photo by Alice Lum

New York, as well as the rest of the country, experienced radical changes after World War I.  Conventional ideas regarding social proprieties, art and music were shaken.  Shocked socialites gasped at the thought of flappers with bobbed hair exposing their knees and dancing the Charleston.   

As the Roaring ‘20s swept across the nation, architecture changed as well.  Fussy Edwardian ornamentation was stripped away, replaced by the clean, geometric and idealized lines of the new Art Deco movement.

The architectural team of Dennison & Hirons were high on the Art Deco bandwagon.  English-born Frederic Charles Hirons probably met his partner, Ethan Allen Dennison in Paris while the pair studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.  They opened their office together in 1910 in New York City with Hirons doing most of the designing and Dennison handling the business end.

In those early days they produced extravagant Beaux-Arts-style structures often ornamented with terra cotta embellishments.  By the 1920s the architects had turned to Art Deco, but continued to use the highly-versatile material for decoration.  

Architects customarily commissioned artists to execute the sculptural details of their designs and the practice continued with the new Art Deco structures.    Hirons’ favorite architectural sculptor was Rene Chambellan, a New Jersey-born artist whose details in bronze, stone and terra cotta graced important buildings throughout New York City and elsewhere.

Hirons told a journalist from Pencil Points, “The most satisfactory way is to select a painter or sculptor by quality of his work –and not by competitive bids.”

On February 19, 1928 the United Capitol National Bank and Trust Company announced plans for a new bank building on the northwest corner of 8^th Avenue and 43^rd Street on a plot 60 x 100 feet.   The bank commissioned Dennison & Hirons to produce their three-story building.

The bank was founded in 1890 at 347 Grand Street and in the course of its three decades had undergone several name changes.  By the time the new building opened on January 17, 1929 – just nine months before the onset of the Great Depression – its name was changed again, to the State Bank & Trust Company.

The building embodied everything that the Jazz Age stood for:  it was new.  A sturdy stone block with a wrapping cornice, it relied on light and shadow for visual interest.  Recessed windows were separated by two-story pilasters, allowing for dimension and depth.  Bronze Art Deco panels separated the tall banking floor from the third.  But most eye-catching were Chambellan’s sculptured capitals – Art Deco stylized foliate forms in colorful terra cotta.

Colorful terra cotta capitals crown the fluted stone pilasters, separated by bronze panels -- photo by Alice Lum

Throughout the next few decades, as had been its habit, the bank would change its name repeatedly; becoming Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company in 1961.  Around 1990 the bank abandoned its striking building, which would sit empty and neglected for eight years.

photo by Alice Lum

In the meantime, during the 1970s, Robyn Goodman and Carole Rothman founded the Second Stage Theater with the intention of producing, for the most part, American plays (which would account for the decidedly American spelling of Theater).  By the late 1990s the highly-successful group was ready to expand.

Esteemed Dutch architect and designer Rem Koolhaas was commissioned to transform the bank into an up-to-date theater.  He worked rich Richard Gluckman in the renovation and in 1999 it was ready for unveiling – a sleek 296-seat playhouse with little hint of its former use on the inside but virtually intact on the exterior.

photo by Alice Lum

The auditorium was placed on the second floor in what had been the main banking area.  New York Times architectural critic Herbert Muschamp may have wanted just a little more, calling it “an architectural hors d’oeuvre, really just a piece or two of sushi on a plate.

“But it’s fresh and tangy, a morsel of the sophisticated design many New Yorkers have been craving,” he added.  “To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, this latest addition to the Theater District is exquisite and leaves one unsatisfied.”

Koolhaas kept the original, tall banking floor windows.  The seats are constructed of material first designed to manufacture bicycle seats.

The AIA Guide to New York City was pleased, saying the “interior is appropriately spartan (no 1920s retro flamboyance here),” although it added, “but the bathrooms are orange.”

Muschamp summarized “Straightforwardness filtered through a wayward imagination: this is a Koolhaas design, all right.  A theater with windows?  No wall between lobby and auditorium?  These ideas may be odd to contemplate, but they fit.”

Most importantly, Second Stage Theater adds one more example to the list of successfully recycled vintage structures.  The exterior, with what the AIA Guide described as “multicolored column capitals in a rich abstraction of Art Deco variations on a Classical theme,” remains a familiar anchor at 8^th Avenue and 43^rd Street. 

Dennison & Hirons’ wonderful design – at once austere and jazzy – is preserved as a reminder of pre-Depression days when times were changing and everyone, it seemed, was growing rich.

The Federal Style No. 210 West 20th Street - A House with a Past

The modest home at 210 West 20th Street most likely had twin dormers above the cornice.

Even the most modest buildings, after a certain age, have a history of their own – and often it is precisely their humble station that makes their stories so intriguing.

In the 1830s while wealthy New Yorkers were erecting fine brick residences in the Bond Street area and filling them with expensive furniture from the workrooms of Duncan Phyfe or Joseph Meeks, working class citizens were struggling to get by.

When the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 created the grid plan of streets and avenues in Manhattan, previously undeveloped north of the established city began being settled. Clement Moore’s family estate, Chelsea, was part of this expansion. As new roads criss-crossed the open landscape small Federal-style homes appeared – like the one built in the 1830s at 210 West 20th Street.

A comfortable 25 feet wide, it rose three stories over a brownstone English basement. From its beginnings the house was not meant to impress, but simply to provide a home to a hard-working family. Its simple, vernacular design boasted no Flemish bond brickword, no paneled lentils, no striking doorway. The six-over-six paned windows sat on plain brownstone sills with matching lentils. Like hundreds of similar buildings going up throughout Manhattan, it was built for someone of very modest means.

No. 210 was separated from its neighbor at 212, built around the same time, by a narrow horse walk. Common during the first half of the century, horse walks provided access to the rear of the structures from the street. In the yard behind the houses, along with a privy and garden, would normally be another small building. This would be either rented out to a boarder or used as a shop, or would stable the horse of the more fortunate home owners who could afford one.

By the time the Civil War ended, the Chelsea area around West 20th Street was highly developed. Here at No. 210 in 1871 Jessie McGregor was living, making a living tutoring physics.

Twelve years later 26-year old Patrick Brady lived here. Although Brady started out as an honest laborer driving a manure cart, his life took a turn to crime. After operating as a petty thief for a time, he turned to burglary and served a two-and-a-half-year term in the Trenton Prison.

A life of crime in the late 19th Century, as today, was often one of violence and dangerous associations.  And so it was for Brady.  Early on the morning of July 22, 1883 he was headed home to No. 210 when he was accosted by Eugene O’Hara who lived at No. 311 West 17th Street.

O’Hara was well-associated with Michael E. McGloin, a 19-year thug who had been convicted for the murder of Louis Hanier, a French saloon-keeper and wine merchant, the year before.  O'Hara was extremely dangerous himself and he had a score to settle with Patrick Brady.

O’Hara attacked Brady with a knife, cutting him in the chest before police rescued him.

Before the end of the year, Brady’s problems would worsen. Police were searching for him in regard to a robbery he committed with Francis McMahon at No. 406 West 40th Street on August 14. On November 21 he was spotted atop a freight car traveling up 8th Avenue by Police Officer Charles J. Ryan.

Realizing he had been seen, the fearless Brady brandished a revolver and threatened the officer.

Ryan and fellow officer Thomas M. Clifford caught up with both Brady and McMahon shortly afterwards on 11th Avenue near 46th Street where the pair was attempting to get to a stolen boat McMahon had hidden.

After a scuffle with the watchman of the Municipal Gas Company, Brady jumped into the river where McMahon, who had already pushed off in the boat, retrieved him. Before the afternoon was over, Brady had been shot in the heart.

Things were a bit quieter at No. 210 West 20th Street for several years afterwards. By now the Twentieth Street Police Station House had been built a little further west on the block and in 1896 the American Tobacco Company took ownership of the seven-story factory building directly across the street from No. 210.

As the turn of the century passed, the neighborhood remained a working-class one filled with mostly Irish immigrants. In 1903 the Eagan family was living in the little house.

Trouble came to the Eagans when, on September 13, 1903 neighbors complained to police that small boys were gathering on 21st Street between 5th and 6th Avenues every Sunday where they “disturbed and disgraced the neighborhood by gambling in open daylight.”

Officers from the 30th Street Station approached the block from both avenues. There they found nine small boys so intent on their game of dice that none of them noticed the officers' approach. Among the group of boys transported away in a patrol wagon were Frank and Charles Eagan.

The brothers were charged with disorderly conduct and, no doubt, received further disciplining upon their return home.

The little house was threatened when two years later in October it was sold to “a builder who will erect a seven-story loft building on the site,” according to The New York Times. Similar houses at the time were being razed all along the block to be replaced with more modern apartment houses or manufacturing buildings.

West 20th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in 1918 was a respectable, yet decidedly blue-collar neighborhood -- photo NYPL Collection

The new buyer changed his mind, however, and No. 210 survived. In 1934 it was altered to become a multi-family residence and by the 1970s had two apartments per floor.

Although the neighborhood in the 1970s and ‘80s had become somewhat edgy, there was a revitalization of the Chelsea area as the 21st Century approached. Eighth Avenue became lined with trendy restaurants and bars and the area where once only blue collar families had lived was now a chic residential hot spot.

In 2004 the house at No. 210 sold for just over $3 million to Robert Molle. A sympathetic restoration of the façade brought it back to its early 19th Century appearance.

The restored entrance follows closely the simple lines of the Federal style

The simple doorway was replicated with its chunky overlight and paneled door. The original brownstone basement and stoop were imitated and modern but appropriate iron railings were installed on the steps and around the basement area.

Other than its survival, there is nothing exceptional about No. 210 West 20th Street. But as with every other vintage building, years of use result in a legacy of rich history.

photos taken by the author

The Lost 1838 Egyptian Revival "The Tombs"

J. Bornet's 1850 engraving depicts The Tombs in a bucholic setting -- NYPL Collection

As the population of Manhattan grew, so did the crime.  In 1833 the City of New York took the first steps toward a structure that would house not only the civil courts, but a place of detention for prisoners awaiting hearings.
During the 18^th Century the area that would become known as Five Points was a 48-acre fresh water lake called Collect Pond.  It was, in some spots, up to 60 feet deep.  The idyllic spot popular for picnics and ice skating became polluted and odorous when tanneries, slaughterhouses and other businesses dumped their waste here.  Derided by the end of the 18^th Century as “a very sink and common sewer,” it was filled in.  By 1813 the entire lake was undetectable.

It was here that the city fathers decided to built The Halls of Justice.  Architect John Haviland was inspired by a recently published and popular travel book “Stephen’s Travels” by John Lloyd Stephens that contained an etching of an monumental Egyptian tomb.  Haviland’s gargantuan prison would be one of America’s first, and certainly largest, Egyptian Revival buildings.

When excavation for the foundation began in 1835 the builders knew they were in trouble.  While Collect Pond, on the surface, appeared gone, it was very much in evidence below ground.  Quicksand and water that rose and fell with the tides threatened to derail the project.

The engineers devised a system of pilings – large hemlock trees lashed together – and a “raft.”  As The New York Times explained it in 1902, the building “was built upon a raft, inasmuch as the underlying foundation consisted of ranging planks imbedded or floated in the quicksand mud.”

The solution worked.  For a while.

When completed in 1838, John Haviland’s Egyptian mausoleum was a wonder.   Constructed of grey Maine granite, it was 253 feet long by 200 feet deep, consuming the entire block bounded by Centre, Elm, Franklin and Leonard Streets.   The main entrance, on Centre Street, was reached by a broad flight of steps that led to massive portico supported by giant Egyptian columns with lotus capitals.   The windows ran nearly the entire height of the structure, giving it the appearance of just one story.

Not everyone appreciated the design.  William Thackeray and George Augustus Sala derided it and Charles Dickens wrote “What is this dismal fronted pile of bastard Egyptian, like an enchanter’s palace in a melodrama?”  Dickens complained that the cells had no hooks so the prisoners could hang their clothing and he “disliked the odors.”

Despite its remarkable architectural integrity, it was described as “gloomy,” “dark,” and “foreboding.”   Its striking appearance earned it the immediate nickname “The Tombs,” and its official name would rarely be heard again.

The Tombs as it appeared in 1882 -- NYPL Collection

Unfortunately Haviland was more interested in the architectural appearance of his design than in its function.  From its opening it was unhealthy, dank, dark and poorly ventilated.  Windows, mere slits, provided such little light that gas jets were required during the day.

When a visitor passed through the entrance doors, he found himself in a large courtyard.  In the center was the male prison containing 150 cells.  It was connected to the main building by a covered passage – which became known as The Bridge of Sighs because the prisoners condemned to death passed over it on their way to the gallows.

An 1865 stereopticon view of the courtyard where the gallows was erected for hangings -- author's collection

The male prison was segregated by floors – prisoners already convicted were on the ground floor; those charged with serious offences such as murder or arson were housed on the second; those charged with lesser offenses such as burglary or grand larceny were on the third; and the top level was devoted to those accused of lighter offenses.

A hearing takes place on a Sunday morning in The Police Court, which opened every morning "at an early hour" and at 6 am on Sundays -- author's collection

However, according to Jonathan Harrington Green in 1850, having been incarcerated here for a few days, there was further delineation of accommodations depending on one’s social station. 

“It was wrong to place me on the corridor with the miserable, petty larceny thieves and vagrants, who are usually found there in swarms, and to put me with the poor, diseased and filthy drunkards, was still worse, so he finally concluded that I should enjoy my own society, without coming in contact with any other prisoners, although confined within the same walls.”

Green, however, found his cell disagreeable.  “I found it difficult to sleep, but a word from Mr. Edmonds disposed of all these annoyances, by placing me on the next corridor, among the 'aristocratic criminals,' who are under the care of that excellent and efficient officer, Mr. Alexander Jackson (whose disinterested kindness I shall every gratefully remember,) who gave me the only cell at the time vacant, which singularly enough was the identical one in which several murderers had been confined.”

Although Jackson finally found a comfortable cell, few others did.  The cells, 10 feet by 6 feet, were designed for one prisoner.  They contained one cot with a straw mattress and a “water closet” – with “a water-pipe coming out of the wall several feet over it, from which cold water can be turned on to flush the closet.”  There was no table, no chair.   

But within a few years overcrowding was a major problem and most cells had two prisoners and a few, three.

Prisoners sharing the single cot would sleep feet-to-head.  If there were a third, he would sleep on the stone floor.   There was no exercise area so prisoners were confined to their tiny cells for 22 hours a day – being let out to walk, closely supervised, around the cast iron walkway one hour in the morning and one in the afternoon.

An 1865 stereopticon view of the entrance during the Civil War when prisoners of war were held here -- author's collection

There were also a women’s prison and a boys’ prison, run by the Sisters of Charity who attempted to minister to the spiritual needs of these groups.  The boys were given all the janitorial, maintenance and kitchen work.

The Tombs was the scene of several suicides; none so dramatic as that of John C. Colt, brother of the revolver inventor.   On the morning of November 18, 1842, the day he was to be hanged for the grisly murder of Samuel Adams a year earlier, Colt was married in his cell to Caroline Henshaw by the Rev. Dr. Anthon.  After the ceremony, Colt asked to be left alone.

When the preparations for the execution were completed, the Sheriff went to Colt’s cell.  The prisoner was dead, having stabbed himself in the heart with a bowie knife 16 inches long, smuggled in by his fiancé.

Collect Pond, in the meantime, continued to cause havoc.  By the end of the Civil War the prison was considered one of the worst in the country and in 1874 James B. McCabe, Jr. noted “The foundations have settled in some places to a considerable extent, owing to the marshy character of the ground, and the building has been pronounced unsafe.”

In 1895, nearly two decades after McCabe’s mention of “unsafe” conditions, The State Senate launched an investigation.   It concluded that The Tombs “its design and arrangement is radically and irremediably bad.”

Another problem was that only a few of the prisoners had been convicted of a crime – most were being detained awaiting hearings.  But because of the crowded court system, some remained imprisoned for up to 10 months in the hellish conditions only to be found innocent of the charges.  “And in such a cell they remain, in some instances for months, day and night, in the cold of winter, and the sweltering heat of summer, breathing the foul air of the prison and the fouler exhalations from the closets in the cells,” reported the Senate report.

It continued, “If that man was, in fact, guilty, his punishment, unless there were no extenuating circumstances, was severe; if he were innocent he is the victim of a horrible injustice.  Such treatment of dogs would be gross cruelty;  and when it is considered that the men so treated have not been convicted, and in many instances never are convicted of any crime…no language which can be employed can be too severe in denunciation of such an infamy.”

It ended with a death sentence:  “The Tombs prison, as it has existed for years past, is a disgrace to the city of New York.  It ought to be immediately demolished.  It cannot be made decent.”

Two years later the prison was slated for demolition.  Newspapers suddenly became nostalgic.  “In the fifty-eighth year of its existence,” reported The Times, “this prison has housed more notorious criminals than any in the country;” and it continued with a romantic retelling of stories of escape, recapture, suicides and hangings.

In another article the paper reminisced “…it has harbored nearly a half-million prisoners.  Hundreds of marriages have taken place within its walls.  Innumerable babies, some of them now grown to respectable manhood and womanhood, and others – criminals like their unhappy mothers—first saw the light of day behind its heavy bars of iron.”

Before the wrecking ball would arrive, the famous stage actress and singer Lillian Russell did.  On February 7, 1897, she moved from the women’s prison to the men’s and finally to the chapel where she sang for the boys.   The entertainer, more at home in the fashionable Delmonico’s restaurant than the putrid prison, commented afterwards, “That audience of boys was the best gallery I ever had, but I do not think I care to repeat the experience.”

The Tombs, shortly before demolition -- NYPL Collection

Although the historic preservation movement would not be born for a full century, an outcry arose pleading to have the structure dismantled and rebuilt in Central Park.  “The demolition of the Centre Street front of the Tombs will take from New York the only public building that has any architectural individuality,” complained The Times.  “Since 1838 when it was completed it has been visited, written about and pictured as one of the interesting sights of the city.”

Park Commissioners, however, concluded that the careful dismantling of the old structure and rebuilding in the Park would “cost more than the old thing was worth.”

Demolition took place in May of 1897.  Nothing of the structure -- the magnificent poly-chrome columns, the carved spread-winged scarabs, or the giant granite blocks—was preserved.  The building, described by The Times upon its destruction as “the finest specimen of purely Egyptian architecture to be found in the United States,” was a victim to its setting and its architect’s focus on design rather than function.

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

The Quiet Little Synagogue at 53 Charles Street

photo by Alice Lum

Since early in the 19th century, sleepy Charles Street ran on a slight diagonal from Greenwich Lane (later to be renamed Greenwich Avenue) to the Hudson River. But oddly enough, the north side of the block between West 4th Street and Bleecker Street was called Van Ness Place, named after the grand Van Nest estate that once stood here.

This small strip, which had its own house numbers, eventually was corrected to Van Nest Place; while the south side remained Charles Street with even-numbered addresses.

It was here that the seemingly nomadic Congregation Darech Amuno (variously spelled Darech Emunah and Darech Amino) finally settled at No. 2 Van Nest Place. Established in 1838, the congregation had moved throughout the 19th century from Greene Street, to 99 Sixth Avenue, to 7 Seventh Avenue, to 278 Bleecker Street, to a synagogue on West 4th Street, before purchasing the 1868 house on quiet Van Nest Place in 1912.

photo by Alice Lum

Rather than starting from scratch, architects Sommerfeld & Steckler altered the existing structure. The five-year renovation gutted the townhouse. What resulted was a three-story classically-inspired structure that hugged the property line. The nearly-flat fronted Roman design included a classical pediment and brick pilasters supporting stone cornices between each floor. The colorful stained glass of the dominating rose window, hefty fanlight over the entrance and six flanking windows highlighted the cream-colored brick trimmed in limestone.

The little synagogue at 2 Van Nest Place in 1929 -- photo NYPL Collection

A steep set of stone steps into the recessed entrance prevented loss of valuable interior space; allowing the facade to extend fully to the sidewalk. A strikingly similar synagogue was constructed simultaneously on Stanton Street for Congregation B’nai Joseph Anshe Brzezan, including the triangular pediment, vigorous cornices and brick pilasters.

The Orthodox congregation was especially active in providing free burials for needy Jews in the Mokom Sholom Cemetery in Jamaica, Queens; however for the most part the synagogue served its worshippers for decades with a low-profile; melding in with the brownstone residences of the block relatively unnoticed.

Three years after this photo was taken, Van Nest Place would become Charles Street -- photo NYPL Collection

On June 7, 1936, the New York Times reported that “The nomenclature Van Nest Place will be eliminated; Charles Street incorporating same. These structures will become 59 to 51 Charles Street; No. 53 of which is the Synagogue of the Congregation Darech-Amino, organized in 1838.”

A century later the congregation remains in its handsome little synagogue on the side street of Greenwich Village. Unexpectedly, it has become best known for its unlikely American roots music in the narrow basement social room.

photo by Alice Lum

In 2001 The Village Voice gave the congregation the “Best Bluegrass in a Synagogue” award saying “Following kabala class, ‘pleasantly Orthodox’ synagogue Congregation Darech Amuno offers congregants, neighbors, and passersby hours of riveting, energetic, upbeat American roots music. A troupe of talented musicians commands this narrow, ornate chapel, steered by mandolin virtuoso Andy Statman. Everyone strains forward in their pew, absorbed in the improvised bursts of frenetic, impassioned strumming. Masterminding the event is Herman, the synagogue's president and cook, who will fix you up some watermelon and bourbon during intermission as he recounts stories about the rabbi's legendary amulet-writing powers.”

The magazine added, “Post-intermission, stick around for a rousing encore of ‘Oy Susanna!’”

The Stratman Trio has appeared here hundreds of times over the years.

The arcane little synagogue sits quietly off the corner of Bleecker Street, minding its own business and affording a delightful discovery for the casual explorer of Greenwich Village.

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