The 1929 Tammany Hall -- No. 100 East 17th Street

photo by Alice Lum

At the end of the 19^th century, Tammany Hall was nothing like the benevolent organization organized in Philadelphia in the 18^thcentury.  By the time a New York branch was formed The Society of St. Tammany, or Columbia Order, had spread throughout New England.

It was not until the presidential campaign of 1800 that Tammany involved itself in politics, actively supporting the Jefferson-Burr ticket.  A year later the first New York Tammany Hall was erected, on Frankfort and Nassau Streets.  It was replaced when the organization moved northward and opened the new Hall on July 4, 1868 on 14^th Street.

By the turn of the century Tammany Hall was hugely powerful and often corrupt.  It was in total control of the Democratic Party in New York County and often raised the wrath of reformers and religious leaders alike.

In the 1920s Governor Al Smith joined in an attempt to reform Tammany Hall.  Nightlife-loving Mayor Jimmy Walker’s open defiance of Prohibition offended the governor.  The battle between the two politicians shook the foundations of Tammany.  According to Mary M. Stolberg in her Fighting Organized Crime,  “By 1929 the split between Smith and Walker had further weakened Tammany Hall.”

One of Walker’s counte rmoves was to abandon the old Tammany Hall—a symbol of graft and corruption.  Three blocks to the north, opposite the northeast corner of Union Square, sat the Westmoreland Apartments, constructed as a hotel in 1877.  The old structure was razed in 1928 to make way for a new patriotic-themed hall Tammany Hall.

Wide World Photos published a view of the anticipated structure in August 1928 entitled "The New Home of the Society of Tammany" (copyright expired)

Architects Thompson, Holmes & Converse in conjunction with Charles B. Meyers reached back to the organization’s early Federalist roots.  The Union Square elevation was meant to invoke the original Federal Hall where George Washington had taken the Oath of Office.  Typical neo-Georgian and neo-Federal elements distinguished the design and reflected Colonial America.  The bricks were custom-made in Virginia and a 1929 advertisement by the Old Virginia Brick Company in Salem, Virginia, stressed the patriotic theme:

“How fitting, therefore, that in this building should be used bricks made in the Virginia Jefferson so proudly served.  Likewise in the same size, and made in the same kind of cherry and maple moulds as those of his beloved Monticello, 30 years in its building, and where Jefferson lived for a full half century.”

High on the 17th Street side a carved plaque sits against the custom-made Flemish bond brickwork -- photo by Alice Lum

Not everything would look back to the Jefferson period.  Inside, the black marble floor, the wrought iron railings and curved staircase were rescued from the old 14^thStreet Hall.  The interiors were furnished with reproduction Empire period furniture, white enameled paneling and mahogany woodwork.

The official opening of the new building, which cost $350,000, was held on July 4, 1929.  Interestingly, the now-Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt shared the spotlight as chief speaker with Alfred E. Smith.  Both Roosevelt and Smith were Democrats; but both shared their ardent disdain of Tammany Hall. 

In 1929 Manufacturers Trust Company took space at street level.  Note the clever adaptation of fan lights into the square openings.  photo from the collection of the New York Public Library

The year following the new building’s completion Governor Roosevelt instigated an investigation into the scandals and alleged corruption.  The heretofore highly popular Mayor Walker was forced to resign in dishonor and Samuel Seabury, who headed the magistrates’ courts, suddenly resigned due to “ill-health.”

Things only got worse for Tammany Hall when Roosevelt became President in 1932.  And in 1933 the new mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, joined forces with the President to take apart the Tammany organization. 

In 1939 the Federal Writers’ Project’s New York City Guide remarked “When the organization wins at the polls, club leaders and district workers swarm to the Hall for a rousing election night celebration, but such joyful gatherings have been infrequent in recent years.”

A terra cotta medallion depicts a "Liberty Cap."  -- photo by Alice Lum

By 1943 the diluted organization could no longer afford to pay the mortgage on Tammany Hall.  That summer it sold the building to Local 91 of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.  The Union made interior alterations to accommodate its needs.  Offices were built out and the auditorium stage was enlarged.  It was officially opened with a concert and dedication ceremony on December 18, 1943.  Ironically both Jimmy Walker and Fiorello LaGuardia were there.  Sharing space did not mean that the pair had reconciled, however.

LaGuardia told reporters “This building was built under the Walker Administration and put out of business—or on the bum—by the LaGuardia Administration.”  He added “You know, I wouldn’t change the name of the building…I would keep it as a permanent monument to the change that came for the City of New York when a mighty, ruthless organization lost the building to an organization of the people.”

In 1947 Local 91 dedicated the 1000-seat auditorium to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, renaming it the Roosevelt Auditorium.  For years its use was offered to other unions and organizations for meetings and rallies.  On March 16, 1983 cabdrivers voted on a strike here; on December 30, 1981 cemetery workers authorized their strike against 70 cemeteries; and on October 29, 1964 firemen turned down the $900 pay increase which had been accepted by the NYPD.  That same month 250 delegates of the Teamsters Union ignored the pressure from Jimmy Hoffa and voted to endorse John F. Kennedy for President.

By 1962 the auditorium was also being used by the “Roosevelt Yiddish Theater.”  Here Max Perlman produced plays like Don’t Worry, Brother, and A Honeymoon in Israel. 

In 1984 the Roudabout Theater signed a long-term lease for the auditorium with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.  The theater group was at the time at No. 333 West 23^rd Street.  It commissioned architect Robert Asscione to refurbish the interior structure.

“The auditorium will be renovated for the Roundabout company into a 499-seat facility with no seat more than 40 feet from the stage,” reported William G. Blair of The New York Times on July 1, 1984.

The $850,000 in renovations were completed  early in 1985 and the opening was held on February 1.  In attendance were E. G. Marshall, Jim Dale, Kate Burton and Tovah Feldshuh among others.  On February 13 the first production was staged, Playboy of the Western World.  Over the near few years significant performances and productions included A Man for All Seasons starting Philip Bosco and Charles Keating; Dorothy Laudon in The Matchmaker; Room Service, directed by Alan Arkin and starring Mark Hamill, and a revival of Raisin in the Sun which was aired by PBS in 1986.

Following the Roundabout, the auditorium was leased somewhat briefly to Raymond L. Gaspard.  His Union Square Theater staged eight productions.  Then in 1994 the New York Film Academy leased space here.  The film and acting school had been founded two years earlier by producer Jerry Sherlock.   Its graduates have included comedians Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans, Jr.; actress and figure skater Sasha Cohen; and “Glee” actor Chord Overstreet.

 

Above the entrance "The Society of Tammany" is carved into the stonework.  photo by Alice Lum

In 2001, after nearly 60 years of ownership, Local 91 sold the building to Liberty Theatres, Inc.  In 2013 it was designated a New York City Landmark.  Although retail spaces have been carved out of the rusticated limestone base, above street level the handsome Federal design survives.  It is the last relic of a political organization that tried hard, and unsuccessfully, to disguise its gang-like activities behind a patriotic veil.

The 1908 Roosevelt Houses -- Nos. 47-49 East 65th Street

The Sara Delano Roosevelt-Franklin Delano Roosevelt House -- photo Cromwell International

Sara Ann Delano, who could trace her ancestors to the Mayflower, married the wealthy widower James Roosevelt in 1880. They had one son, Franklin.   When James Roosevelt died in 1900 the domineering Sara doted even more on her already-spoiled son.

Sara poses with Franklin in a highlands outfit in 1887 -- photo Franklin D. Roosevelt Library

Two years later the Harvard student, Franklin, met his distant cousin, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1903, after a reception and dinner at the White House (President Theodore Roosevelt was Eleanor’s uncle), the two began seeing one another. A year later, in November, Franklin proposed.

Sara Delano Roosevelt was not pleased.

On her insistence, the engagement was not announced for a month while she argued against the marriage. Then, in 1904, Sara swept her son away on a cruise in the hopes that separation would bring him to his senses. It didn’t.

“I know what pain I must have caused you,” Franklin wrote to his mother, referring to the engagement, “I know my own mind, and known it for a long time, and know that I could never think otherwise.”

Much to Sara’s disappointment, the couple was married on St. Patrick’s Day 1905 with President Roosevelt giving way the bride.

The newlyweds took an apartment and then left for a three-month honeymoon. They returned to find that Sara Roosevelt had started plans for a double townhouse for the three of them – Franklin and his new wife on one side, she on the other.

Designed by architect Charles A. Platt the house was completed in 1908. Situated on East 65th Street near 5th Avenue, it was a stately red brick Neo-Georgian structure with a limestone first-story. The arched doorway with double wrought-iron doors framed a handsome fanlight. The foyer beyond contained the doors leading to the separate residences.


The house during the FDR Presidency - photo NYPL Collection

 At the second floor, with its four tall-multi-paned windows, a wrought-iron balcony extended the width of the structure. A striking carved cartouche between the third and fourth stories added visual interest.

Sara, known by society as Mrs. James Roosevelt, took up residence in No. 47, while Franklin and Eleanor moved in next door at No. 49. Totally dominating the couple’s lives, she chose their furniture and décor and hired their household staff.

Sara with her young daughter-in-law in 1908 -- photo Franklin D. Roosevelt Library

The couple stayed in the house when they were in New York, which as the years passed, became less and less.

In 1918 the Spanish Flu pandemic swept the globe. More than a quarter of the world’s population was infected and between 50 and 100 million died. On September 17 of that year, Franklin Roosevelt, now Assistant Secretary of the Navy, arrived in New York after two months abroad. Roosevelt had contracted the dreaded disease aboard ship which now had worsened with a slight case of pneumonia. Rather than being taken to his own home where Eleanor was waiting, he was taken to his mother’s side of the residence.

Only three years later, in August of 1921, Franklin was abruptly stricken with polio. After two months of hospitalization, he insisted on going to East 65th Street, rather than the more private Hyde Park estate upstate. Here, in the fourth floor bedroom, he spent months in a resolute struggle to recover and resume his political and social life.

Gradually Franklin and Eleanor spent less time at No. 49 until, by 1928, the family was there only sporadically. After her husband’s election to the White House, Eleanor preferred to spend her time in New York at an apartment at 20 East 11th Street in Greenwich Village. Finally, in October, 1934, The New York Times reported that “President Roosevelt's town house at 47-49 East Sixty-fifth Street is for rent. A rectangular sign saying so, freshly coated with cream-colored paint and lettered in bright ultramarine, was hung to the right of the arched doorway yesterday morning.”

Mrs. James Roosevelt, however, remained firmly entrenched. Sara gave regular teas in support of her many charities and the door to her side of the residence welcomed a steady stream of New York socialites until 1941.

Perhaps the first hint that things were not well was when, on September 5th of that year, Eleanor gave up her 11th Street apartment and moved back into the home on 65th Street (which The New York Times noted “has stood unoccupied for most of the period since her husband went to the White House in 1933). Eleanor told the press her move was in part economical but that she “will be next door to the President’s mother, who has not been in good health.”

Two days later Sara Delano Roosevelt was dead.

A week later Eleanor Roosevelt instructed the real estate firm of Pease Ellian, Inc. to put the house on the market. In October, the President and Eleanor went through the house for the last time to select “furniture and bric-a-brac that he wants to transfer to his home at Hyde Park on the Hudson,” reported The Times.

The house was acquired in 1942 by a group who presented it to Hunter College as a social and interfaith center. Franklin Roosevelt expressed his happiness the home’s new use, which was to foster “mutual understanding among Protestant, Jewish and Catholic students.” The joined houses, he said, brought “memories of joy and sorrow.”

Eleanor Roosevelt spoke at the dedication ceremonies.

photo by Alice Lum

The President personally furnished the library and presented a large number of books. The two dining rooms were combined as were the two parlors; but otherwise the interiors were kept essentially intact.

Today the dignified double home that Sara Delano Roosevelt built looks just as it did in 1908. It is a fine example of early 20th Century townhouse architecture and an important piece of American history.





The Ludlow-Parish Houses -- Nos. 6 and 8 E. 76th St.

The Ludlows lived at No. 6 (right) and the Parishes at No. 8 -- photo by Alice Lum

Margaret Tonnele Hall Ludlow had an impressive New York pedigree. She was closely related to the Roosevelt family and in 1863 she married Edward Philip Livingston Ludlow--a direct descendant of Philip Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and of Gabriel Ludlow who was named by King William III as a Vestryman of Trinity Church in 1697.

By the time Ludlow’s daughter, Susan, married the wealthy banker Henry Parish, Jr. in 1884 New York’s wealthy citizens were building imposing mansions along the east side of Central Park. The Ludlows and Parishes would join the trend in 1895 when Edward and Margaret Ludlow laid plans for a double mansion on East 76^th Street, just off the Fifth Avenue.

The Ludlows commissioned architects Parish & Schroeder to design two side-by-side homes—one for themselves and the other for their daughter and son-in-law.  By designing the houses as mirror images, the firm created what appeared to be a single Italian Renaissance palazzo—two mansions pretending to be one.  Sitting squarely at sidewalk level above two shallow steps, the separate entrances were disguised by a single portico supported by paired columns.

The limestone base gave way to four stories of beige-grey Roman brick trimmed in limestone.  Parish & Schroeder resisted the gushing ornament popular on other mansions of the period; instead relying on restrained decoration—brick quoins, simple iron railings and just two Renaissance-inspired triangular window pediments.

The houses were completed in 1896, the title of both being recorded in Margaret’s name.  The Ludlows moved into No. 6 East 76^thStreet, with the Parishes next door at No. 8.  The houses were connected internally by “wide sliding doors” between the drawing rooms, according to The New York Times.  While Margaret Ludlow gave the expected entertainments here and in her Newport cottage, Mount Airie, it would be Susan Parish who attracted the social spotlight.

On December 4, 1897 the Parish home was ready to receive guests.  The following day the New-York Tribune noted that “Mrs. Henry Parish, Jr., of No. 8 East Seventy-sixth-st., gave a housewarming yesterday afternoon, in her new home, which was one of the largest and most brilliant receptions of the day.”

For her afternoon housewarming Susan wore “a gown of mauve velvet,” and assisting her in receiving the throng of guests were five wealthy socialites:  Mrs.Goodhue Livingston, Mrs. Douglas Robinson, Mrs. Benjamin Welles, Mrs. William S. Cowles, and, of course, her mother who, the Tribune mentioned, “lives in the communicating house.”

Susan and Henry had just one child, Julia, a fact that did not stop them from hosting several debutante affairs, weddings and receptions in the house.  Henry’s sister, Edith married her “kinsman,” Daniel Parish Kingsford, in a wedding in July 1898 that the Vermont Phoenix deemed “notable because it involved some of the best blood of old New York.”  The ensuing wedding breakfast was held at No. 8 East 76^th.  The following year, on December 14, Susan gave a dinner for her relative Kitty Hall.  “The guests were all debutantes,” mentioned The New York Times.

Henry Parish, Jr. -- "Genealogical and Family History of Southern New York" 1914 (copyright expired)

But none of the events held in the house at No. 8 East 76^th Street would outdo the wedding that took place here on St. Patrick’s Day, 1905.

At the turn of the century, both parents of Susan’s cousin, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, had died.  Anna, who went by her middle name, moved in with the Parishes.  Eleanor’s uncle was President Theodore Roosevelt and following a reception and dinner at the White House in 1903, she was introduced to her distant cousin, Franklin Roosevelt.

Much to the disgruntlement of his domineering mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, Franklin announced his plans to marry Eleanor in 1904.  Despite Sara’s efforts to stop it, the wedding took place in the Parish mansion.  The house was transformed for the ceremony.  The Los Angeles Heraldsaid “A huge floral cluster of 1,000 pink roses, entwined with smilax and asparagus, was suspended in the center of the drawing room and formed a canopy.”  

The New York Times wrote “The two large drawing rooms on the second floor, done alike in pale amber-yellow satin brocade, were thrown into one large salon running the width of the two houses.”  With no father to give her away, Eleanor relied on her uncle, the President of the United States.

Getting to the Parish house for the President meant disrupting the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.  The Los Angeles Herald said “On the way he met a big St. Patrick’s day parade, which was stopped, the participants and the thousands who crowded the sidewalks wildly cheering Mr. Roosevelt as he went through and passed up Park avenue.”

At 3:00 in the afternoon he arrived.  “The president, with his niece leaning on his arm, preceded by the bridesmaids, passed into the drawing room through an aisle of white ribbons held by the ushers,” said the newspaper.

In 1915 Henry Parish retired from the Bank of New York and Trust Company where he had been vice-president and trustee.  Unbendingly old-fashioned, The New York Times remarked that “he had never allowed a telephone in the institution and permitted typewriters only out of his own earshot.”

The Parish house continued to be the scene of numerous entertainments, including the wedding of cousin Elizabeth Livingston Hall to Norwood Rathbone on February 8, 1922.  The New York Times could not resist mentioning that “Mrs. Rathbone is a cousin of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose wedding was also celebrated some years ago in the same house, long occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Parish.”

The Roosevelts and the Parishes had a close relationship and even after Franklin attained the presidency he and Eleanor were frequent guests on East 76^th Street and in the Parish homes in Newport and Llewellyn Park, New Jersey.  Henry and Susan were guests, as well, at the White House.

On June 26, 1942 the 82-year old Henry Parish died of a heart attacked in the Llewellyn Park summer home.  Susan continued to live on in the house on East 76^th Street and to maintain the New Jersey and Newport estates.

Four years after her husband’s death, Susan Parish was at home in New York while workman prepared the New Jersey house for her return in May 1946.  A lit cigarette was tossed onto the porch roof and before long the upper floors were on fire.  A gardener, William Kennedy, rushed into the burning house to rescue personal and historic items.  Among them were photographs “of the late President after his graduation from Harvard University and one of the Roosevelts at their wedding, which took place in the home of Mrs. Parish,” reported The Times.

The fire destroyed the second and third floors of the home, “one of the oldest residences in Llewellyn Park,” according to The Times; causing about $30,000 in damages.

Susan had the home restored.  By now the aging woman who had once been so socially prominent was a semi-invalid and spent her time in seclusion.  In 1950 she traveled to the Llewellyn Park estate for the summer and there, on July 9, she died at the age of 84.

The following year her estate sold the house on East 76^th Street where she had lived for over half a century in a cash deal.  It was the end of the line for the Parish house as a private home.

Both homes were converted to multi-family residences; their historic significance largely lost -- photo by Alice Lum

After her mother’s death, the house next door had been purchased by Colonel Thomas H. Birch.  He died here in 1929 and Mrs. Birch remained on until the early 1930s.  In 1946 it had been converted to apartments and doctors’ offices.

The same fate would befall the Parish home.  Following the sale in 1951 it was converted to apartments with doctors’ offices on the ground floor.

 

The two once-grand homes give little hint of their former lives.  No one remembers that here a President of the United States gave away a future First Lady in marriage, under a canopy of 1,000 pink roses.