An Art Deco Gem Comes Out of Hiding

By the 1990s the block of 8th Avenue north of 34th Street had sunk about as low as it would.  Bargain and electronic stores took the place of earlier more respectable businesses.  The building at 488 8th Avenue housed an adult entertainment center and was sheathed in a pseudo-modern metal facade.

In the late summer of 2000 that metal facade began giving way and had to be removed.  What emerged was the long-forgotten Bickford's Restaurant building.  Faced in white terra-cotta it rises to an Aztec-inspired Art Deco cartouche.  There in large script "Bickford's" can still be read, although the applied lettering was lost long ago.

Immediately below, rows of sharp zig-zagging Art Deco waves support the entire design.  Bickford's architect was F. Russell Stuckert, son of the architect who designed some of the 1890s Horn & Hardart buildings.

Bickford's Restaurants were a mainstay of early to mid-20th Century New York.  It all started in 1902 when Samuel L. Bickford opened his first restaurant.  Within two decades later he owned a chain offering quick food at affordable prices.  In those pre-Depression days, the company described itself  saying "The lunchrooms operated are of the self-service type and serve a limited bill of fare, which makes possible the maximum use of equipment and a rapid turnover.  Emphasis is placed on serving meals of high quality at moderate cost."

photograph S. L. Bickford Family

The little building at 488 8th Avenue made the newspapers in 1932 when Bickford's replaced a glass windows using non-union glaziers.  In retaliation union members drove past while a passenger shot out the plate glass with a slingshot. 

The appeal of Bickford's, as well as their rival Horn & Hardart, was good food served quickly in a pleasant environment at an affordable cost.  The working class of the nearby 34th Street office buildings flocked in at lunchtime for lamb stew or chopped steak, followed by apple pie or rice pudding.  The 24 lunchrooms in the 1920s doubled to 48 by 1960.

The restaurants became so imbedded in New York culture that Allen Ginsburg in his 1956 poem "Howl" wrote "I saw the best minds of my generation...Who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s..."

Good times naturally come to and end.  For Bickford's the end started in the 1960s when crime in New York escalated.  Muggers, the iconic black eye of Manhattan in those years, roamed the streets after nightfall.  Patrons stayed home at night.  Business disappeared.  And so did the Bickford's Restaurants.  By the 1980s there were no more lunchrooms.

Bickford's was forgotten by an entire generation until the summer of 2000 when a little Art Deco gem came out of hiding.  Today the facade is largely covered by a huge Vornado ad and the original street level has been obliterated.  But the sleek design of the upper stories remains thankfully intact.

The Northern Dispensary - Greenwich Village

original photograph source unknown

The City of New York established a dispensary for the treatment of the poor in 1791 in the neighborhood of City Hall.  But as the city grew it quickly became apparent that the single infirmary was insufficient.  In 1824 citizens pushed for a provincial branch far to the north in Greenwich Village.  After working from a few temporary locations, the nonprofit Northern Dispensary organization was given the peculiar triangle of land formed where the Y-shaped Waverly Place runs into Grove and Christopher Streets.

In handing over the plot, the City placed a stipulation on the property:  it was to be used solely for the purpose of treating the indigent who could not afford hospital care.

Built by a mason, John Tucker, and a carpenter, Henry Bayard, it was completed in 1831.  The unimposing orange-brick structure was two stories tall, surrounding by the simple cast iron fence with acorn finials and occasional Federal-style palmettes still intact today.  Over the door a marble plaque was inset into the facade which read:  Northern Dispensary.  Instituted 1827.  Built 1831.  Heal The Sick.


Despite its motto, some leaders of the Northern Dispensary had second thoughts when the destitute hoardes began arriving.  In its annual report the board voiced concern over exposing the physicians to "the miserable and degraded of our species, loathsome from disease and...disgusting morals."

Yet heal the sick it did.  In its first annual report the Dispensary documented 3,296 patients.  Among those treated in 1837 was Edgar Allan Poe who complained of a winter cold.  And as the city grew northward, the numbers treated in the Dispensary increased.

By 1855 a third floor was necessary.  The change in brick is noticeable between the second and third floors even today.  Although the unadorned window lintels and sills were copied, a mid-Victorian crenelated cornice was included for interest; however by the turn of the century it had disappeared.  Around that time the work of the Dispensary was at its height, caring for 13,809 patients in 1886.


With the advent of the 20th Century, fewer patients were seen, declining to under 5,000 in 1920.  Just prior to World War II around half of the Dispensary's efforts was in dental work and by the 1960s it had become solely a dental clinic for those who could not afford other dental care.

Problems came in 1986 when, as the AIDS epidemic was sweeping Greenwich Village, the Dispensary refused to provide dental services to AIDS victims.  Reminiscent of the 1828 concern over  "the miserable and degraded of our species, loathsome from disease and...disgusting morals," the doctors disregarded both the Hypocratic Oath and the motto that had been displayed over the door for 150 years:  Heal The Sick.

Rather than treat its patients, the Northern Dispensary closed down in 1989 after a battle with New York City's Human Rights Commission.  A year later the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York purchased the building with the somewhat ironic hope to open a 15-room haven for homeless people with AIDS.  The plan was thwarted by a group of concerned neighbors and nearby business.

Having sat empty for a decade, the building was sold to William Gottlieb who died a year later.  The beautiful triangular building still sits unoccupied.  Twenty years of dust has accumulated on the dental equipment that was abandoned inside.  The 1820s deed restrictions limiting the use of the property for a medical facility for the poor are still in place, making rehabilitation of the building more difficult and its future unclear.

photo by Brian Dube

The Asser Levy (East 23rd Street) Public Baths

The 19th Century was a time of tremendous growth in New York City.  In the 50 years between 1820 and 1870 the population increased tenfold and communicable diseases were rampant.  Immigrants, crowded into tenement housing with no toilets or bathtubs, were subject to typhoid and cholera.  In the Lower East Side in 1896 there was one bathtub for every 79 families.

Prior to the Civil War, the public began to demand that the City do something.  Middle class and upper class New Yorkers had, by now, taken up the European example of bathing the entire body regularly.  In 1858 Gustav Struve, President of the Committee for Free Public Baths, wrote the editor of The New York Times scolding that Mayor Tiemann had promised six weeks earlier to petition the Common Council to establish free baths for the people.  "Why is nothing done by these gentlemen?  Many thousands of citizens are anxiously waiting for a decision from the Fathers of our City."

Those six weeks turned into thirty years before, in 1889, Dr. Simon Baruch led an impassioned drive for public baths.  Although the City established a few wooden floating baths in the rivers in 1870 -- the number climbing to 15 by 1888 -- there was the problem of sewage in the water and the seasonal limitations.  Obviously they could be used only in summer.

On April 21, 1895 the New York Senate passed a law requiring that all first and second class cities create free public bathing facilities.  Manhattan's first bath did not open until 1901, the process mired in political red tape.

Two years later the Department of Docks and Recreation chose the lot in the Gashouse District at Avenue A and East 23rd Street for a new bathhouse.  Designed by Arnold W. Brunner and William Martin Aiken, it was to mimic the monumental bathhouses of ancient Rome.  The "City Beautiful" movement of the period was motivated by the theory that the public would behave more civilly if surrounded by civilized buildings.

The architects, according to a 1904 New York Times article, were faced with considerations specific to bathhouses -- keeping water steaming hot, venting the steam and maintaining sanitation.  The baths, it said, "...are attractive, both outwardly and inwardly and have the dignity desirable for municipal structures.  The interior finish is intended to make for cleanliness, lightness and airiness."

Labeled Neo-Roman or Roman-Revival at the time, the new bathhouse was one of the most lavish in the City when it finally opened on February 17, 1911.  Costing $259,432, it boasted vaulted ceilings, balconies, skylights, stone urns and a fountain decorated with dolphins.  The facility included 79 showers for men and 59 for women, serving approximately 200,000 bathers per year.

In 1936 Parks Commissioner Robert Moses added an outdoor swimming pool and playground.  However by 1973 the aging building was in serious need of repairs and was closed.  While plans for extensive restoration of the interior architectural details were being drawn up, a fire seriously damaged the structure.

Nevertheless, in 1988 the rehabilitated bathhouse was dedicated -- renamed the Asser Levy Recreation Center after the 17th Century Jewish immigrant who stood up to Peter Stuyvesant and obtained civil rights for colonial Jews in New York.

Today the bathhouse offers a gym with weights, workout machines and treadmills; classes in yoga, aerobics, pilates; basketball, handball and indoor and outdoor pools.  But the modernized East 23rd Street Bathhouse retains the monumental quality so sought by the City Beautiful committee.

Byzantium on Park Avenue - Christ Church

Timing is everything.  And if the leaders of Christ Church, Methodist Episcopal did not know that in September of 1929, they found out very quickly.

In the early 20s, the congregation, originally called the Madison Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church was rapidly outgrowing its Romanesque 1882 R. H. Robertson-designed structure on Madison and 60th Street.  A plot was purchased one block away on the northwest corner of Park Avenue and 60th Street in 1929.  The title was signed in September -- exactly one month before the Stock Market crash and the onset of the Great Depression.

Using the funds from the sale of the former church and land, plans went on.  The church, now officially renamed Christ Church, Methodist Episcopal, of New York City retained architect Ralph Adams Cram --reknowned for his ecclesiastical and collegiate buildings -- to design the new structure.  Having just finished a 22-year position as Supervising Architect of Princeton University, Cram had earned his reputation with such commission as The Cathedral of St. John the Divine and 5th Avenue's St. Thomas Church.

While Cram was highly recognized as a master of Gothic design, he chose a combination of Romanesque and Byzantine styles for the Park Avenue church.  Protestants, he explained, were "adverse to Medieval Catholicism both by inheritance and doctrine."

Anything but light and airy, Cram's building -- at once sophisticated and rough -- combined brick and stone, pillars and arches to create the illusion of a venerable, centuries-old structure.  Its solid mass is softened by the deep 60th Street arches and the pillared gallery of the top-most level.

Cram's plans included a sanctuary seating 800 congregants, a chapel that could accomodate 110 and a parish hall large enough to hold 250.  Included in the complex was a parish house incorporating a gymnasium, clubrooms, a men's lounge and women's parlors.  The nave and chapel were dedicated November 26, 1933 however the Depression finally took its toll.  Funds ran out and no interior work could be done.  Unadorned grey concrete walls would surround the congregation for years.

Timing is everything.  Just as the Great Depression started to ease it's grip, World War II broke out in Europe and two years later in 1941 the United States was drawn in with the attack on Pearl Harbor.  The resulting shortages in materials prevented any interior work being done on Christ Church until 1948.

Finally in the summer of 1949 the breath-taking sanctuary was complete.  Drawing on the Byzantine mood of the architecture the interior was encrusted with over 7 million Venetian mosaic tiles covering 14,000 square feet.  Thirty-four separate types of marble were used.  The generous use of gold tiles is visually staggering.  There is not a new visitor who enters the sanctuary without gasping in awe.

The Episcopal roots of the church are evident in several physical aspects.  A decorated choir screen hides the choir from the congregation -- unheard of in Methodist tradition.  Behind the altar are 16th Century icons from the collection of Czar Nicholas II; flanking the choir screen are a pair of 17th Century doors removed from a Russian Orthodox cathedral; and filling the half-dome above the altar, rather than the expected Methodist cross, is a majestic seated figure of Christ.

Interior photographs via Christ Church United Methodist

Now called Christ Church United Methodist, it took nearly 20 years to complete, but the result is one of the most remarkable churches and visually overpowering interiors in the city.  The church conducts tours of the sanctuary on Sundays after 11:00 services.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo Mansion - Madison Avenue at 72nd Street

photo by Alice Lum

When the William K. Vanderbilts broke the brownstone tradition with his French Renaissance Fifth Avenue mansion in 1883 a trend erupted among the monied Manhattanites.  Chateaux and palazzos began rising from the pavement throughout the city.  Not to be left out was Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo, a descendant of patroon Philip Jacob Rhinelander.

Gertrude's husband, Francis Waldo, died in 1878, two years after their marriage.  In 1882 she purchased the extensive building lot at the southeast corner of East 72nd Street and Madison Avenue, significantly north of the established Millionaires' Row south of 59th Street on Fifth Avenue.  She envisioned a mansion that would outshine even Vanderbilt's limestone palace. 

Yet it was not until 1894 that construction began.  Gertrude chose architectural firm Kimball & Thompson to design a 16th century French Renaissance chateau.  It would be one of the largest residences in the city.  The commission was a severe departure from Kimball & Thompson's regular commercial designs.  The plot Mrs. Waldo provided proved challenging to the firm as well -- the avenue slopes severely downward from south to north as it approaches 72nd Street.

The street level was reserved, therefore, for reception areas and servants rooms.  The drawing room, salons and and dining room were on the second floor.  The master bedroom occupied the third floor and servants quarters and guest rooms were on the fourth.  The rich French Gothic ornamentation included spiky dormers, a steep slate roof and statuary-filled niches.

photo by Alice Lum

As the residence was being  built, Gertrude Waldo toured Europe buying furniture and objects of art for her new showplace.  Crates of statuary, paintings, tapestries and antique furnishings were delivered and piled in the hallways and rooms of the completed mansion.  But they were never opened.  And Gertrude never moved in.

Instead she took up residence with her unmarried sister, Laura Rhinelander at No. 31 East 72nd Street within view of the gleaming new mansion.

For a decade the imposing house sat empty, dust gathering inside the unlit rooms like a page from Charles Dickens.  In 1908 Gertrude received an offer on the property; but her enthusiasm to sell was tepid at best.  When an agent finally cemented a deal on the house and the papers were being prepared, Gertrude Waldo arose from the table announcing quietly "I don't think I'll sell" and left the room.

photo by Alice Lum

A heavy iron fence was erected to provide security, however the presence of paintings, statuary and other valuable objects inside was widely known.  The mansion was looted four times in 1909.  At the same time, lack of maintenance was taking its toll.  Water leaked in through the roof.  The stonework was streaked and discolored and interior water damage was extensive.  What was intended to be a showplace was looking more like a haunted house.

Gertrude Waldo died in debt in 1914.  Immediately The Dime Savings Bank took steps to demolish the structure in favor of an apartment house; although the block was protected by a restrictive clause limiting property use to private residences.  The bank argued that an upscale apartment house was, essentially, a group of private houses and therefore fit the definition of a "private house."  Unfortunately for the bank and fortunately for New York it did not win that argument.

So Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo's great house stood empty for another ten years.  In 1921 the ground floor was converted to retail space and two apartments were created in the upper floors.   At last, 23 years after being built, someone was living in the grand chateau.

Over the next 30 years the house was divided and subdivided into a series of apartments and retail spaces.  Then in the 1950's the entire house was leased by Edgar de Evia and his partner Robert Denning, sparing the grand home further abuse.   Interior decorators Tate & Hall and other small firms took up office space in the house.

photo NYPL Collection

The great turn-around came in 1983 when Ralph Lauren obtained the lease for his flagship store.  Between $14 and $15 million dollars and a year and a half later, under the supervision of Naomi Leff, the building was completely rehabilitated.  The rich carved staircase that Gertrude Waldo never walked down is pristine.  The woodwork and plaster work echo those gilded closing days of the 19th century when ostentatious New Yorkers showed off their wealth.

Interior photographs by D. J. Huppatz

The house sold in 1984 for $6.4 million, in 1989 for $43 million and again in 2005 for $80 million.  After suffering decades of neglect and abuse, Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo's intended showplace is exactly that.

photo by Alice Lum

The Isaac D. Fletcher Mansion - 2 East 79th Street and 5th Avenue

In the 1880's great brownstone mansions lined fashionable Fifth Avenue.  Standing out from the row of chocolate-colored homes, however, was the white limestone chateau of William K. Vanderbilt at 660 Fifth Avenue, designed by Richard Morris Hunt.  Vanderbilt's wife, the former Alva Erskine Smith, wanted her home to be noticed, and indeed it was.

As the century drew to a close, other marble and limestone mansions were erected, firmly establishing brownstone as a building material passe.  In 1898 banker and railroad tycoon Isaac Dudley Fletcher commissioned architect C. P. H. Gilbert to design a house at 79th Street and Fifth Avenue that would rival even Alva Vanderbilt's "Petite Chateau."  Gilbert, who trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, was being noticed among society, having already designed large residences for prosperous Brooklynites and a few Riverside Drive mansions.  In time he would be known as the architect of mansions, designing over one hundred homes in New York City, some of them true palaces, like the De Lamar House (now the Polish Consulate).

Upon its completion, the Fletchers commissioned Jean-Francois Raffaelli to paint a portrait their house.  collection of the Metropolitan Museu of Art

Gilbert designed an asymmetrical French Gothic limestone chateau exploding spiky turrets on the eaveline, ornate dormers and wide connected chimneys.  Fletcher and his wife Mary, along with their staff of eight servants, lived in the house until his death in 1917.   By the terms of his will the mansion was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, along with 251 objects of art from the couple's extensive collection which included works by artists such as Gainesborough, Rembrandt and Rubens--a windfall to the museum worth $2 million at the time. 

A year later, in order to create The Fletcher Fund for adding prints and drawings to the collection, the Metropolitan Museum sold the mansion to Sinclair Oil founder Harry F. Sinclair.  Sinclair and his wife Elizabeth left the house virtually untouched, other than having the Estey Organ Company install a three-manual, automatic roll player pipe organ in 1922.  One can imagine that the staid dinner parties hosted by the Fletchers were in sharp contrast to the pre-Depression era bashes reportedly thrown by the Sinclairs.

The Teapot Dome Scandal brought Harry Sinclair's carefree lifestyle to an end.  His trial, which began in October of 1927 ended up in the Supreme Court two years later.  While Sinclair was acquitted of the more serious charges, he was convicted of contempt of court, fined and sentenced to six months in prison (Sinclair had hired detectives to keep tabs on every jury member).

After his release, Sinclair attempted to continue his life as before.  His reputation was ruined, however, and in 1930 he sold No. 2 and moved west where he lived until his death in Pasadena in 1956.

Gilbert's astounding detail carved children upholding a bronze figure upholding a complex Gothic element. photograph by the author

It was Augustus Van Horn Stuyvesant, the last surviving descendant of Peter Stuyvesant to carry the surname, who purchased the former Fletcher mansion.  A reclusive bachelor, he moved in with his unmarried sister, Anne, thereby beginning the strangest period in the history of the house.  The pair, heirs to one of the most venerated names in New York, spent their time cloistered in the home, hidden away from the bustling world outside.

In 1938 Anne died, leaving Augustus Van Horn Stuyvesant alone in the cavernous mansion.  Preferring not to entertain nor to be entertained by others, he lived out his life with his servants.  According to Fortune Magazine in 1939 he "eats utterly alone at the big dining room table...served by Vernon, the butler, and an assisting footman."

When Stuyvesant died in 1953 the great house sat quietly vacant for two years.  An auction of the Stuyvesant furniture, carpets and artwork left it eerily empty.  Then in 1955 the Ukranian Institute of America purchased that house as their headquarters.  The Institute promotes the history, art, music and culture of the Ukraine and regularly hosts concerts, exhibitions and lectures.  Few people realize that the Ukranian Institute is open to the public.

With very few alterations, the great limestone chateau looks very much as it did that day in 1898 when Isaac and Mary Fletcher first walked in.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The Surviving Sliver of the Old Lord & Taylor Store

On the corner of Broadway and 20th Street stands what is left of the elaborate 1870 Lord & Taylor store -- a busy cast iron montage of pillars and balconies, deep-set windows and dormers, and the dramatic Second Empire mansard cap over the corner that most distinguishes the building.

The structure was Lord & Taylor's third.  Cousins Samuel Lord and George W Taylor opened their first dry goods store in 1826 on Catherine Street.  By the outbreak of the Civil War they had moved to Grand Street and Broadway and in 1869, having established a reputation among Manhattan's carriage trade, needed a yet larger store.  Upscale stores like Tiffany's and Lord & Taylor's rival Arnold, Constable & Co. had relocated northward to the Union Square area that same year.

Purchasing land from the Goelet family (895-899 Broadway) and the Badeau family (the corner lot at 20th Street only a block south of the new Arnold, Constable store), Lord & Taylor prepared for their move.  James H. Giles was commissioned to design their emporium.  A Brooklyn architect who was responsible for a few lower Manhattan cast iron buildings as well as the earlier gothic-style Christ Church in Williamsburg (where he even designed the organ cabinet), Giles went all-out for the new store.

NYPL Collection

His five-story extravaganza, costing half a million dollars, departed from conventional cast iron designs.  Rather than creating a facade pretending to be stone, his was unabashedly cast iron.  Architectural critics of the day praised the innovation; one of the few criticisms being the overall beige color rather than a polychromed paint scheme.



Shoppers ride the hand-hoist elevator on Lord & Taylor's opening day in 1870 - NYPL Collection

Thousands of shoppers crowded into the new store on November 28, 1870 through the impressive main entrance on Broadway, south of the corner building we recognize as the Lord & Taylor building today.  Hand-hoisted elevators carried customers from floor to floor to sample the latest in imported merchandise.

The emporium enjoyed tremendous success in the new location, prompting further additions towards Fifth Avenue.  This growth was due in part to Lord & Taylor's innovative marketing -- they were the first, for instance, to install Christmas windows -- the start of a treasured New York tradition.

NYPL Collection

As other large retailers moved further uptown so did Lord and Taylor, building their present location at 38th Street and 5th Avenue in 1915 and abandoning the grand cast iron structure.   Almost immediately the old store changed.  That year the main section on Broadway lost its cast iron facade and was refaced in stone.  Little by little, only the corner building at No. 901 Broadway was left intact.

The 20th Century was not kind to No. 901 Broadway.  Used for loft space and manufacturing for decades, by the 1980s it was grubby and rusting and largely empty.  Despite landmark status, the future for the old Lord & Taylor store was grim.

A series of owners, starting with Darius Sakhai in 1995, reversed the trend.  The upper facade was restored and tacky storefronts replaced.  In 2006 Joseph Sitt paid $17.375 million for the building and three years later resold it for just under $25 million.  Although still not completely occupied the surviving sliver of Lord & Taylor's 19th Century emporium seems to have a brighter future.








non-credited photographs taken by the author