The McBride Atelier -- No. 3 East 52nd Street

photo by Alice Lum

The affluent neighborhood of Fifth Avenue and 52^ndStreet was shocked to its foundations when the house of Charles and Ann Lohman was raided in 1878.  Mrs. Lohman, who went by the pseudonym Madame Restell, marketed herself as a midwife; but many people were quietly aware that she was one of the city’s foremost abortionists.

For well over a decade Anthony Comstock had made it his business to clear the city of all manner of vice.   On August 31, 1872 The New York Times mentioned that Comstock’s “raids on dealers in obscenity have of late been frequent.”   Comstock, who headed the Society for the Suppression of Vice, had gone undercover to the Lohman house—a tactic he often used to gather evidence against brothels, gambling dens and purveyors of French postcards.  He purchased a contraceptive device here and his subsequent complaint led to the police arresting Ann Lohman at her house at No. 3 East 52nd Street.

The embarrassment and stress of the publicity coupled with the possibility of imprisonment was too much for the well-heeled woman.  On April 2, 1878 the New-York Tribunereported “Madame Restell, otherwise known as Ann Lohman, cut her throat with a carving knife, and was found dead in her bath-tub early yesterday morning.  The act is supposed to have been the result of her brooding over her recent arrest and indictment, and her anxiety over her approaching trial.  The estate which she has left is estimated to be worth half a million of dollars.”

Three days later the newspaper noted that “Madame Restell’s will leaves most of her property to her grandchildren.”

Ann Lohman’s death brought an end to the brief splash of notoriety for the four-story brownstone.  The house survived for another three decades with little notice.  But change would come to the affluent neighborhood and on March 27, 1913 The New York Times reported that “A new commercial structure in the upper Fifth Avenue district is about to be erected on the plot at 3 East Fifty-second Street.”

By now the once-exclusive neighborhood was being rapidly overtaken by commerce as its mansions fell to be replaced by business buildings, or were converted to high-end shops.   If the new owner, George Bovard McBride, intended to replace the old structure, he apparently changed his mind.  Department of Building records indicate that, instead, he renovated it beyond recognition.

Architect George Amouroux converted the old mansion for “McBride Atelier”—a high-end interior decorating firm.   It would seem that the quaint cottage façade of No. 3 was added at this time. 

Buildings with an atmosphere of a Hansel and Gretel-type storybook were popping up around the country at the time; like the 1909 Whyte’s Restaurant on Fulton Street that pretended to be a Swiss chalet.  Three pointy-peeks with suggested half-timbering, tiny-paned oriels, and delightful bracketed windows beneath the cornice created a playful, charming illusion.

photo by Alice Lum

McBride landed some influential commissions, such as the decorating of Andrew Carnegie’s Skibo Castle in Scotland.  But to continue in his upscale business, he required additional financial backing.  He got it from Nova A. Brown in November 1915.

But it all ended in the courts.  When a wide-eyed McBride was arrested on July 23, 1917 he told Deputy Sheriff Eisenstein that he had “no idea why he should be arrested.”

The following day The Sun reported “How George Bovard McBride is alleged to have got a moneyed partner to back him in his interior decorating business at the McBride Atelier, 3 East Fifty-second street, by telling ‘hocus-pocus stories’ of exaggerated profits on home made Louis XIV chairs and on [decorating jobs] is told of in a suit the partner, Nova A Brown, has had prepared to file in the Supreme Court, claiming $25,000 in damages.”

The McBride Atelier would not survive much longer.  On May 6, 1920 The Sun and the New-York Herald reported that McBride had leased “the three story store and studio apartment…to the Elm Tree Tea Room.” 

photo by Alice Lum

Upstairs Primrose House opened its shop and offices.   Elsie Waterbury Morris ran the business which promised that “Here Dwells Youth.”   Selling “Face-Molding Cream,” “Balsam Astringent,” Primrose House Hair Tonic,” and “Primrose House Hand Cream,” a 1921 advertisement in Theatre Magazine questioned “Do you cover up the years—or take them off?  Are you young only when your maid gets through with you—or are you young from the inside out?”

The shop offered consultations by “the most experienced specialists” that included instruction in posture and face molding.

In the meantime the Elm Tree Tearoom became a favorite for women’s society functions.   On January 28, 1921 The League of American Pen Women, New York Auxiliary, hosted its dinner here, followed by a business meeting and election of officers.

By 1926 the ground floor was home to a store called Anna Stabler, Inc., run by Miss C. A. McCann.  On February 13 that year Ruth Ruickholdt entered the store and began selecting expensive items of clothing.  The wife of Dr. William Ruickholdt of New Haven, Connecticut, she settled on “the purchase of gowns, slippers and other articles,” according to The New York Times.  She handed over a check in the amount of $153 as payment (about $1500 today).

Unfortunately for both Mrs. Ruickholdt and the store, she had no account at the First National Bank of San Francisco where the check was drawn.   Mrs. Ruickholdt, it turned out, had recently been released from Auburn prison after a six-year term for grand larceny.

“The devil took me by the hand,” she cried, “and walked me into that store.  What is a woman to do when she comes out of prison…My clothes were all worn out—like my heart.”   Ruth Ruickholdt’s period of freedom came to an abrupt end when she was taken away to the Women’s Prison at Jefferson Market.

Anna Stabler, Inc. was gone by 1940 and a nightclub, the Whirling Top, was in the ground floor.  Its operators, the 3 East Fifty-second Street Corporation, were indicted on June 4 that year for collecting $5,000 in Federal tax from its patrons, but never turning the funds over to the government.

It was perhaps that financial difficulty that ended the life of the Whirling Top; but within the year the nightclub had become La Vie Parisienne.    The new club soon experienced similar troubles.

In July 1944 the city charged that the nightclub owed $13,000 in sales taxes.   The government placed “watch dogs” at the club and two others, the Copacabana and the Stork Club, to review the evening’s receipts and taxes due.

Club owner Arthur Lesser was irate.  “He said his place seated only 75 persons,” said The Times, “that he had been in business only two years and it would take at least six years to take in the $1,300,000 receipts indicated by the city’s sales tax claim of $13,000.”

Despite Lesser’s protests, a month later on August 15 Edward G. Elkins, a personal property custodian for the city, was on hand at the club’s 4:00 a.m. closing.  He appropriated the evening’s receipts as partial payment against the city’s claim.

It was the last straw for La Vie Parisienne, up to now one of the city’s most glamorous nightclubs.  The Treasury Department and the city had scheduled a public sale of the club's assets for later that week.   The city foreclosed on the “club’s fixtures, furniture and equipment” and ordered the club closed.

While the drama was playing out on the ground floor, upstairs Bernard Lamotte had taken the upper floors as his art studio.  Lamotte, a painter, had studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.  Reportedly his studio was the gathering place of motion picture stars like Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich and French actor Jean Gabin. 

photo by Alice Lum

In the early 1960s the quaint cottage-style building became home to La Grenouille, opened by Charles Masson and his wife, Gisele.   Masson, who was also an part-time artist, already knew Bernard Lamotte’s work through his murals at the 1939 World’s Fair restaurant Le Pavillon where Masson had worked.    The two often worked together in Lamotte’s studio creating paintings. 

Following Charles Masson’s death in 1975, his son, also named Charles, took over La Grenoille. The walls of the main dining room exhibit works by both his father and Lamotte.  The restaurant is renowned among New Yorkers for its fine French cuisine.  Its elegant interiors successfully hide any hint of the nightclubs, exclusive women’s store, and interior decorating shop that shared the space since 1913.

The storybook building stands in stark contrast to its ultra-modern Midtown neighbors -- photo by Alice Lum

The 1905 Edward Holbrook House -- No. 4 East 52nd Street

In 1845 Archbishop John Hughes pleaded his case before the city fathers, seeking land on which to build an orphan asylum.  The Roman Catholic Benevolent Society’s facility at Prince and Mott Streets was overcrowded and inadequate as more and more Catholic foundlings were brought to the Sisters of Charity.  The nuns and the Archbishop knew only too well that if Roman Catholic waifs were admitted into a Protestant orphanage they would be lost to the faith.

The city offered the block of land far north of the developed city, on the still unpaved Fifth Avenue between 51^st and 52^nd Streets, stretching back to Madison Avenue.  The church would pay the city one dollar per year rent, with the caveat that the property would be used to house orphans.  The deed was signed on August 1, 1846 and the new asylum was completed in 1851.  At the time, aside from the block-wide property of St. Luke’s Hospital between 54^th and 55^thStreets, there were only one or two homes or shops in the neighborhood.

In 1853 Hughes would commission James Renwick, Jr. to work on his ambitious St. Patrick’s Cathedral project that filled the block across the street to the south.  By the time the cathedral was completed in 1879, the neighborhood had drastically changed.  The homes of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens were inching closer up the avenue

When St. Luke’s Hospital was razed in 1896, Fifth Avenue around the asylum was the most exclusive residential district in the city.  The value of the land had soared.  As was the case with the hospital, relocating the orphanage and selling the land made financial sense.  In 1897 the church began discussion of moving the orphanage and two years later construction of new buildings began in the Bronx.  In 1900 building lots on the old asylum land became available.

The lucrative possibilities of the choice real estate did not escape Edward Holbrook.  The president of the Gorham Manufacturing Company lived in Stamford, Connecticut.  He, therefore, perhaps underestimated the passion with which the millionaires in the surrounding mansions detested the threat of commercial intrusion.  He would soon be informed.

On June 5, 1900 The Evening Post Record of Real Estate Sales in Greater New York reported that “The two lots on Fifty-second Street of the Orphan Asylum property which were bought by Worthington Whitehouse for a client were sold by him to Edward Holbrook.”  The lots were Nos. 6 and 8, and Holbrook had big plans.

Within a few months he had commissioned renowned architect C. P. H. Gilbert to design an apartment house.  The Brickbuilder noted in 1901 “C. P. H. Gilbert is drawing plans for a fourteen-story bachelor apartment house to be erected on 52d Street near Fifth Avenue for Edward Holbrook.” 

Neighbors like the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers were already infuriated over John Jacob Astor’s St. Regis Hotel—construction of which had just begun on Fifth Avenue at 55^th Street.  Evidently someone had a talk with Holbrook, for a few months later he changed his mind.  The New York Times reported on May 28, 1901 “Plans were filed yesterday by Architect C. P. H. Gilbert for the two dwellings to be erected at 6 and 8 East Fifty-second Street…at a cost of $114,000.”  Rather than the 14-story apartment building, Gilbert would produce two limestone-clad six-story mansions.

The silver executive apparently was pleased with Gilbert’s designs, and in November 1903 he began work on his own mansion next door, at No. 4 East 52^nd.  Again he turned to C. P. H. Gilbert for the design and plans were filed for a six-story house.  The New York Times reported it would be “wholly of fireproof construction” and the New-York Tribune added “The front is to be of dark blue Indiana limestone…The building will cost about $95,000.”  The cost of construction in today’s dollars would be about $2 million.

Street construction is going on along 52nd Street in front of the newly-completed mansions.  The Holbrook mansion (left) is overshadowed by the mammoth Plant house on the corner.  To the right is the white marble home of Robert Goelet at No. 647 Fifth Avenue -- photo by Wurts Bros., from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York, http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWJU5AZ&SMLS=1&RW=1366&RH=605

Construction would take over two years to complete.  In 1905 the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide commented on the progress.  “Exterior complete.  Windows and doors in.  Interior work under way.”  As the Holbrook residence rose, it was overshadowed by the magnificent Morton Plant mansion nearing completion next door—a palatial Italian Renaissance palace that diminished Gilbert’s handsome design.

Holbrook moved into the new house with his wife, Frances, and daughter Lillian.  In turn-of-the-century New York there was no surer way to garner the envy of other socialites than to marry one’s daughter to European nobility.  Frances Holbrook’s social coup came soon after when Lillian married Count Guillame de Balincourt in the new mansion on January 3, 1906.

The New-York Tribune could not resist mentioning that “The count is a Catholic and the bride a Protestant.”  The new countess and her husband sailed off to France, to live in Paris.

Edward and Frances would not remain in the mansion long after the wedding.  In June 1907 he sold the 30-foot wide house and a month later curious neighbors would discover the identity of the buyer.  The Timesreported “James B. Duke, President of the Tobacco Trust, was the purchaser of the new dwelling at 4 East Fifty-second Street, the sale of which was announced in The Times about a month ago.  At the time the name of the purchaser was not known, and since then there has been much speculation as to the future home of the tobacco magnate and his future bride.”

The newspaper went on saying “It has long been current gossip that the social ambitions of the President of the Tobacco Trust and his bride-elect, Mrs. William Inman of Atlanta, would lead them to settle in close proximity to Fifth Avenue.  A week ago it was reported that Mr. Duke would purchase the home of the late Henry H. Cook, at Seventy-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue, and that he would occupy it with his bride on their return in the Fall from the tour of Europe they expect to make on their honeymoon this Summer.”

 

James paid $300,000 for the mansion—fully three times what it cost Holbrook to build.  He and his bride, Nanaline, would not be in the house long, however.  As The Times predicted, Duke did buy the old Henry Cook house.  He had it demolished and in 1909, while his new mansion was being erected the newlyweds moved into his brother’s splendid home at No. 1009 Fifth Avenue.

No. 4 East 52^nd Street became home to Harry James Luce and his family.  Luce was the president of the Acker, Merrall & Condit Company of New York, one of the oldest grocery firms in the city.  He was also the president of the candy firm of Henry Maillard, Inc., and a director of Faber, Coe & Gregg, Inc.  The well-connected millionaire was a member of the best clubs—the Metropolitan, New York Yacht and Knollwood Country Clubs among them.

Like the Holbrooks, Harry and his wife, the former Katherine H. Moxley, had a daughter.  December 1914 was a busy time in the house as Margaret Payne Luce was introduced to society.  On December 6 The Times reported that “Mrs. Harry J. Luce of 4 East Fifty-second Street is to give the second dinner for her daughter, Miss Margaret J. Luce, on Thursday.”

Like many society girls, Margaret answered the call to help her country with the outbreak of World War I.  She joined the canteen service of the Y. M. C. A. and was sent to Nice, France in 1918.  War relief turned to romance when Margaret met the dashing (and wealthy) U. S. Navy Lieutenant-Commander Hamilton Vose Brian.  In March 1919 Harry and Katherine announced their daughter’s engagement.  With the armistice signed and the war over, they traveled to Paris in July 1919 for the wedding which took place in the Church of the Holy Trinity there.

It would be three years before the Luces would see their daughter again.  She and her husband arrived in New York on the Olympic for a visit on May 10, 1922 after being stationed in Constantinople and Tifilu.  Margaret would come home to a much-changed neighborhood.

The Morton Plant mansion next door was now the home of Cartier Jeweler.  The white marble mansion around the corner at No. 647 had been converted to the art dealership of Gimpel & Wildenstein.  Commerce was taking over the old residential district.

Five years later the Luce mansion would fall to the trend.  Cartier, Inc. purchased the house in 1927 and Harry and Katherine moved to the nearby Gotham Hotel.  Pierre Cartier converted the mansion to L’Alliance de Francaise de New York—a school offering classes in French and French literature.  Dr. Leon Vallas, a professor of the Sorbonne, was brought in to direct the school.  The school shared the mansion with the French Chamber of Commerce.  It was here, in 1935, that Pierre Cartier was elected its president.

The French Chamber of Commerce would remain in the house through the war years.  In 2000 Cartier did a renovation of both the Holbrook and the Plant mansions.  The two buildings were internally connected, making No. 4 an extension of the retail store.  While the first two floors of the Holbrook mansion have been extensively altered for commercial use, the upper floors retain the integrity of C. P. H. Gilbert’s handsome design.  And as it was in 1905, the mansion is still overpowered by Morton Plant’s monumental house next door.

photographs taken by the author

Turtle Bay Music School -- No. 244 East 52nd Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1845 the number of German immigrants in New York City numbered 24,416—only about a third the number of Irish-born residents.  But within the next five years the German population would double; then double again by 1860 to 118,292.  Most of the Germans settled in the Lower East Side earning the neighborhood the nickname Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany.

But in the first years following the end of the Civil War, one group moved further uptown to the still sparsely-settled 19^thWard, in the 50s around Third Avenue.  Determined that their children would succeed in their adopted homeland, the hard-working Germans quickly established a school—the German School Institute of the Nineteenth Ward—and constructed an impressive building at Nos. 244 to 246 East 52^nd Street around 1868.

The structure was similar to many of the buildings erected for the public schools at the time.  The entrance sat within a slightly-projecting bay above the sidewalk.  The basement and first floor were clad in stone, providing a base for the two stories of red brick above.  Decorative eyebrows over the central openings and a handsome double-corbel table were executed in brick.

photo by Alice Lum

When the students underwent their week-long examinations in April 1871, The New York Times praised the accomplishments of the institution.  “An elaborate programme has been prepared for the occasion, and as the Germans of the district take a deep interest in the institution, which, during an existence of only a few years, has become a model establishment, a large attendance may be expected while the examination progresses.”

At the end of the school season that year the students were treated with a “picnic and Summer night’s festival” at Hamilton Park on July 18.  The Times noted that it was patronized “by the elite of the German element in that locality, of which there was a large attendance on the festival grounds.”  In true German fashion the children met at the school and walked to the park with military precision, “presenting a fine appearance and exciting general admiration,” noted the newspaper.

By 1876 the Kindergarten class had 70 students between the ages of 3 and 6 who spent five hours in class each day.  The following year that number had jumped to 84.

Among the first teachers in the school was Emile Schau.  She taught for 17 years until her death in December of 1885.  The German community’s regard for education was reflected in the meeting that was held in the school building on the evening of May 9, 1887 “to take measures for erecting a monument to the memory of Emile Schau.”

When the German students left on the last day of school that spring, they would not return.  The German School Institute moved on and the old building was taken over by the Hebrew Free School Association; bringing the total number of Hebrew Free Schools to three.  Jewish children were offered religious classes, industrial classes and kindergarten; however it extended “its educational and other benefits only to children who attend the public schools of the city.”

On December 11, 1887 the Association held its annual meeting in the new location and reported on the growth.  In 1876 there had been 520 pupils.  So far in 1887 there were 2,581.  In 1892 The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine described the school:

“Each sex is divided into five grades, of which the instruction is religious.  That of the highest includes prayers, Bible, and catechism.  Recitations of Hebrew in concert, followed by excellent English translation, are verbally perfect, and deeply imprint lessons on the memory.  The pupils are all from the public schools.  So are many of the teachers.  Inspired by earnest purpose, and enthusiastic withal, the whole seem happy in their work.

“In the kindergarten is a reproduction of fairy-land, with tokens of bad air, hard fare, and rough experience upon the fairies.  All are forgotten, however, in the excitement of rhythmical motion, song, and juvenile histrionics.  The ‘Snow-storm’ is a favorite performance, all the more acceptable because a sheet of filmy gauze does duty for descending snowflakes.”

Students in the Hebrew Free School study the Torah -- The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, February 1892 (copyright expired)

The girls were also taught sewing, embroidery, dressmaking and other skills necessary to keep a house or make a modest living.  In the industrial classes boys learned wood-working.

The Century had just one complaint—that aging building provided little fresh air.  “Both sexes would do better if complaints of vitiated air and defective ventilation had not such frequent and firm foundation in fact.”

By the turn of the century school building would get a slight make-over when the City took it over as an annex to the Girls’ High School.  On January 19, 1899 The New York Times reported on the School Board meeting held the day before.  “It was also decided that the buildings known as 244 and 246 East Fifty-second Street be put in order as soon as possible for use as an annex to the Girls’ High School in Twelfth Street.”

Parents and students barely had time to get used to the location as an annex to the Girls’ High School before it was changed again.  It quickly became an annex of the High School of Commerce at 120 West 46^th Street.  In 1902 the combined locations taught 610 students.

But when the September 1903 school year began things changed once again.  “An event of the day was the transfer of the pupils of the High School of Commerce…to the new school in Sixty-fifth and Sixty-sixth Streets, west of Broadway, which has 1,730 sittings,” said The Times on September 15.  The annex prior to the move was accommodating 836 students.

The school building on East 52^nd Street was now used for the Girls’ Technical High School of New York.  There were three other locations and in 1904 it had grown to 2161 students from its initial enrollment 338 in 1902.  The purpose of the school was to “make a more definite preparation for the occupations and responsibilities of life than other schools do” and to “prepare girls to earn their living at an early age while contributing largely to their physical and mental culture,” according to the school’s manual.



Girls work on their sewing skills in 1904 -- The School Journal, November 26, 1904 (copyright expired)

To those ends, the girls were offered courses in dressmaking, designing, housekeeping, printing, millinery, library assistance, various manual trades, and a “commercial course.”  The students were self-managed—in so much as Edwardian students were allowed to be.  The School Journal noted in 1904 “Each class of students is organized with three officers, a captain, a secretary, and a housekeeper.  The captain takes charge at the close of each recitation and conducts the class to its next room.  She also conducts the ‘setting up exercises’ or, as they are commonly called, ‘the Luther Gulicks,’ from the name of the physical training director who introduced them.”

Adolphe Montell-Sayre, the Journal’s writer who visited the school, was impressed.  “I like the spirit of the place.  That immobile rigidity, that deathlike stillness, so common in some New York school assemblies; that Sing Sing lock-step, or something like it, which pupils are commonly required to use when moving from place to place, is lacking.  The young ladies are as natural as they would be in any public meeting and as free as the young women collegians at Vassar or Smith’s.”

But by 1909 the Girls’ Technical High School was gone from No. 244 East 52^nd Street and it had been converted to commercial purposes.  The Knickerbocker Engineering Co. was here that year and on September 12 it advertised in the New-York Tribune “Experimental work, model making; inventors’ ideas developed; reasonable terms.”

In 1915 Paddington Sales & Mfg. Co. was in the building as was Wickersheim, manufacturer of “hat conformators and formillon.”  Paddington was the maker of the Paddington Pants-Presser which it advertised as “Works While You Sleep” and “This ‘Mechanical Valet’ is a Useful Gift for a Smart-Dresser!”

K. Wickersheim made his Hat Conformator here in 1915 -- The American Hatter, February 1915 (copyright expired)

Other small companies, like the drug manufacturer Nalo Products Co., would come and go until 1935 when the building was acquired by the Turtle Bay Music School, founded ten years earlier.  The school was formed as a non-profit community institution to provide musical education to those who otherwise could not afford it. 

The building, now three quarters of a century old, received substantial interior renovation and remodeling.  Eighty years later the Turtle Bay Music School remains in the old structure and has earned a familiar place in the neighborhood and in New York City’s musical community.  Among the “core values” the School lists on its website is that “Music education should be made available to all school-aged children.”

photo by Alice Lum

While the institution has garnered high regard over the decades, it remains content in its less-than-pretentious home.  Although a sidewalk widening resulted in the loss of the stoop and a sideways set of replacement stairs; the school built by German immigrants intent on their children's receiving a solid education is largely unchanged.