A Bicycle Academy, Silversmiths, and Electric Guitars -- The 1896 No. 144 West 14th Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1894 William J. Cabury, rector of the Church of the Annunciation on West 14^th Street between 6^th and 7^th Avenues, joined with scores of businessmen in protest against the proposed 14^th Street elevated train.   The structure would block out the sunlight to the street and the ruckus created by the passing trains would be intolerable.

Reverend Cabury had more to worry about than an elevated train.

Fourteenth Street had been for decades a fashionable residential neighborhood.  The extra width of the street caused it to be airy and sunlit.  Merchant Richard P. Dana had built his home at No. 146 in 1854 and next door at No. 144 was Jaques Arnold Bernheimier.  A decade later Calvin Cross was living in the Bernheimier house.

Reverend Cabury’s Gothic Revival church had been built in 1846.  By 1877 the church had acquired No. 144 as its rectory and Cabury was living here when he protested the train.   But there was a far more serious issue facing the church.  It was in deep financial trouble.

By the 1890s West 14^th Street was heavily commercial.   The 6^th Avenue elevated train, erected in 1880, gave birth to a shopping district along 14^th and the wide, brick or brownstone mansions were one-by-one razed or converted for commercial purposes.   As the residents moved away, the Church of the Annunciation lost its congregation.

On February 25, 1895 the church building and the four-story brownstone residence were lost in a foreclosure sale; sold for $50,000 to Joseph L. Buttenwieser.

Buttenwieser was an established wheeler-dealer in real estate and his interests, understandably, did not lie in the salvation of a church building only 50 years old with no supporting congregation.  Within the year the existing structures were gone and in their place was an attractive Renaissance Revival-style loft building.

Buttenwieser had commissioned the firm of Brunner & Tryon to design the building.   The seven-story loft was constructed of limestone and buff-colored brick with classical terra cotta detailing.    Costing around $250,000, it featured a row of eight soaring arches from the third to sixth floors, above which were sixteen one-story arches. 

Arnold W. Brunner had a background as a watercolorist and was a skilled draftsman.    The façade of No. 144 West 14^th Street reaped the rewards of his training with exquisite detailing.

Brunner added cartouches flanked by delicate palm fronds between each pilaster -- photo by Alice Lum

Two years after its completion, Buttenwieser sold the building to Frederick Hill Meserve, executive director of the Deering Milliken Company.  Meserve passed the deed on to his uncle, Seth M. Milliken in 1899 and the family would hold at least a partial interest in the property until the middle of the 20^th century.

No. 144 filled with a variety of tenants.   R. H. Macy & Company established a factory here in 1898 with two departments; one for manufacturing American flags and the other for “ladies silk waist and silk underwear.”   Silverman Brothers produced suspenders here and a variety of silver and jewelry concerns moved in as well.

Not intended to be a dreary factory building, it was covered by the architects with classical ornamentation -- photo by Alice Lum

Stern Brothers silver company (not to be confused with the Stern Brothers dry goods firm) moved in, and Graff, Washbourne & Dunn were silversmiths here for half a century before being bought out by Gorham Silver in 1961.  Lenox Silver Corporation and the electro-plating company of Cohen-Epner were tenants. 

But the building was not home merely to factories and jewelry makers.

The large, open floor plan made a perfect location for Karmel Brook’s bicycle academy.  As early as 1897 Brooks had opened his indoor academy here, and pupils were instructed on an oval track.  Bicycle racks lined the walls and all was going smoothly for Brook’s enterprise—until Mary L. Smith walked in the door.

The 45-year old Mrs. Smith felt it was high time to learn to ride a bike.   After her third lesson, on March 17, 1897, she felt she was proficient enough to negotiate the track unassisted.  After her second lap she veered into a bicycle rack and broke her right shoulder.  The doctor bill amounted to $138 and Mary Smith sued Brook for $7,500 insisting she would never use her arm again.

She told the judge that the bicycle racks were too close to the track, rendering the academy unsafe.   Brook, on the other hand, testified that Mrs. Smith “was entitled to only half an hour’s instruction, and she staid on her wheel in order to steal a ride after her time for instruction had expired.”

Feeling that the jury might be prejudiced by the fact that a middle-aged woman was bike riding at all, Justice Smyth instructed the jury to consider only whether the neglect was Mrs. Smith’s or Brook’s.  “This lady,” he said, “has long since reached the age of discretion, and if she desired to learn to ride a bicycle it was a matter for her own good taste, and she had the right to do so whether she was forty-five or one hundred and forty-five years old.  You have nothing to do with that.”

No. 144 continued to attract a diverse list of tenants.  In April 1935 Epiphone signed a lease that would extend nearly two decades.  The company designed and manufactured stringed musical instruments and was dubbed by The New York Times as “one of the world’s largest” of its kind.   The company’s success prompted it to double its space in the building only two years after moving in.  Here Epiphone produced the first “solid-body” electric guitar in 1941, designed by legendary jazz guitarist Les Paul.

photo by Alice Lum

The building was purchased by Pratt Institute in 1999.  The school immediately commissioned a renovation by architects Ehrenkrantz, Eckstut & Kuhn.  The rehabilitated structure has served as the Pratt Manhattan campus since 2001, encompassing instructional classrooms, labs, a library and offices as well as a respected public art gallery.

Although the doors could be more sympathetic to the structure, the entrance is intact -- photo by Alice Lum

While moderate changes to the façade occurred over the decades, the building has survived with no major damage to the original design.  Even the stately original main entrance at street level—traditionally one of the first elements to be removed or modernized—remains.    The building was designated a landmark in 2008.

A Colorful Blending of Styles -- No. 154 West 14th Street

photo by Alice Lum

Leslie R. Palmer was a busy man in the first decade of the 20^th century.  An attorney, he was also a banker and active real estate developer and sat on the Board of Directors of the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company.   In 1911 Palmer eyed the five old buildings of the Adams Express Company at the southeast corner of 7^th avenue and 14^th Street.   And he saw opportunity.

On New Years Eve of that year The New York Times noted “The plot is one of the choicest in the lower Seventh Avenue district, which is likely, in the next few years, to witness a marked business transformation due to the extension of the avenue south of Eleventh Street to Varick Street and the prospect of a subway improvement under Seventh Avenue.”

Indeed, scores of buildings were being razed as 7^thAvenue was being cut through Greenwich Village as an additional thoroughfare to downtown.   And discussions were underway for the 7^th Avenue subway which would transport thousands of workers and shoppers daily.

Palmer formed a syndicate called the Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenue Construction Company and purchased the large plot from Adams Express Company for about $260,000.  Included in the sale of was the old residence that still survived at No. 51 7^thAvenue.  The New York Times reported that Palmer intended “to tear down the present old structures and erect on the site a high-class twelve-story office and loft building.”

The developer would develop a close working relationship with architect Herman Lee Meader who received the commission.    Meader would go on to design four more buildings for Palmer who took advantage of this project to spotlight the work of the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co.   And the architect did not disappoint.

In the last years of the 19^th century European designers and architects had revolted from traditional restraints.  By now the ground-breaking styles had reached the United States.  For No. 154 West 14^thStreet Meader created a taster’s menu of Arts & Crafts, Mission, Art Nouveau and Vienna Secessionist styles.

Completed in 1913 at a cost of approximately $350,000 the building was praised by The Times for its modern design as well as its bold use of color.  Meader used an aggressive palette of Arts & Crafts inspired earthy tones—mustard, beige, white, celadon, green and cobalt—most noticeably in the sinuous Art Nouveau three-story base and in the 11^th story Secessionist decoration.    The newspaper noted that expanses of glass and absence of the customary cornice.

Sinuous, colorful art nouveau decoration covers the base -- photo by Alice Lum

“The corner of the ground floor will be a store, and the floor above will be planned as a showroom.  Both will have fronts mainly of glass.  The façade has been designed to supply all the light possible, and besides, making the windows as large as is practicable, the upper part will not depend upon the inevitable cornice to ornament the top story and cast dark shadows over the windows below.”

The 154 West 14^th Street Building stood out in Manhattan.  While the modern architectural styles that Meader showcased here were embraced in American cities such as Chicago, New York’s staid tastes tended towards the accepted and safe.  Very few Art Nouveau or Mission buildings appeared as compared with other urban centers.

The 12th story with its intricate Mission-inspired motifs can be seen here in 1931 -- photo NYPL Collection

The nearby residential neighborhood had already been settled by Spanish-speaking immigrants, earning the designation of “Little Spain.”   In January 1918, just as the 7^thAvenue subway station opened at its front door, the retail space was leased to Jaime V. Lago.    Lago, whom The Sunreferred to as a “Spanish banker,” opened his private bank to serve the Spanish-speaking residents.   The enterprising young man had started his bank only a year earlier while working as a bell boy in a local hotel.  A year later the Campania Hispano-Americana, a Spanish-language bookstore opened here.

In 1921 Lago, who by now had Anglicized his first name to Joseph, enlarged his banking space and the following year renewed his lease for 14 years at $3600 a year.  Things were looking good for Joseph V. Lago.  That same year the Corn Exchange Bank took the corner street level space, signing a lease of 21 years with an annual rent of $22,000.  

Vibrant Vienna Secessionist ornamentation wraps the facade beneath the ruined top floor -- photo by Alice Lum

Along with the banks were various tenants.  The Postal Telegraph Cable Co. took the 8^thfloor and in 1927 S. Bruner, Inc., jewelers was here.  June 21 would be a day long remembered by Max Wolf, one of Bruner’s salesmen.

Around 9:00 that morning Wolf left the store with his sample case.  Inside were 192 gold wrist watches, 149 gold rings and 24 monogram button insets for the rings.  The goods were valued at around $4,000.  When he reached his car parked at the curb, he found it wedged in by a delivery truck.    Wolf sat the case on the sidewalk and worked his automobile little-by-little back and forth until he could finally pull out of the tight parking space.  And off he sped to New Rochelle to meet with buyers—leaving his case of gold watches and rings on the pavement.

Throughout the morning hundreds, if not thousands, of busy New Yorkers rushed past the case.   Finally at approximately 2:00 George Bovens stopped to investigate what today would be called “an unaccompanied package.”  He immediately rushed the case to the Charles Street police station.

In the meantime Max Wolf reached his first appointment.   Within minutes he was headed back to the city at a greater speed than he had left.  For his honesty Boven received a gold watch from the jeweler.

In July of 1928 Jaime V. Lago’s streak of good fortune came to an end.  The 35-year old banker was arrested and held on $5,000 bail for accepting deposits while knowing his bank was insolvent.   A shortage of $250,000 had been discovered by Superintendent of Banks Frank H. Warder.

Investigation found that Lago had skimmed the money to finance the maintenance of a “rooming house for fellow-countrymen at 317 West fourteenth Street and a bookstore,” said The Times; as well as stock transactions.

Other tenants came and went including the New York Globe Ticket Company who moved in in 1930.  The United States Treasury Department took three floors—about 33,000 square feet—in July 1937 for the WPA Cartographic and Map Making Project.  The project produced relief maps of New York City, models of tunnels, and maps of foreign countries.

In the mid-1950s, Hugo Gernsback moved his several companies into the building.  Called the “father of modern science fiction,” his businesses included the Popular Book Corp., Gernsback Publications, Inc. and Hudson Specialties, Company.  It was around this time that the top floor of the building was stripped of its wonderful Mission façade of curved gables, winged cobalt blue disks, brackets and floral bosses.

Other important tenants were the related Vanguard record companies.  From around 1959 through 1966 The Vanguard Recording Society, Vanguard Stereolab, Inc., Vanguard Record Sales Corp. and the Bach Guild were here; among the preeminent record labels representing folk, popular and classical music at the time.

photo by Alice Lum

Herman Lee Meader’s phenomenal and brashly colorful blending of early 20^th century architectural trends into The 154 West 14^thStreet Building is as striking today as it was in 1913.  Equally impressive is that little of the original design has been destroyed or seriously altered.  The building stands as a rare and wonderful example of cutting-edge building design in the years just prior to World War I.

The Jeanne d'Arc - 200 West 14th Street

At the time of the Civil War, wide 14th Street around 7th Avenue was lined with elegant brownstone and brick residences.  The 1854 Academy of Music, the opera house attended by names like Astor and Vanderbilt, sat regally at 14th and Irving Place.

But neighborhoods in New York constantly change.  By the 1880s 14th Street was no longer strictly residential.  The meatpacking district was growing at the far west end.  The new Metropolitan Opera House which opened in 1883 drove the Academy of Music to close in 1886 and by 1888 the venerable institution was offering vaudeville.  Businesses took over the street levels of the brownstones.

While this change was taking place, the middle class of Manhattan was growing.  Merchant class families needed affordable yet respectable housing in which to raise their families.  Developers devised the concept of roomy, attractive apartment houses a step up from tenements yet nothing so grand as the luxury apartments being built for the wealthy.

Marketed with the sophisticated-sounding name "French Flats," one of the very first of these was built by Jersey City businessman Henry Meinken at the corner of 14th Street and 7th Avenue.  Meinken called on James W. Cole to design his new building in 1888.  Cole was a favorite of the Astor family and he built several factory, warehouse and apartment buildings for them, several a few blocks west on 14th around Hudson and 9th Avenues.

It was completed in 1889 and given the cultured name "The Jeanne d'Arc."   The five-story brick building with brownstone trim had commercial space on the street floor and 8 commodius apartments above -- two apartments per floor.  To set the building apart from the baser tenements, Cole added an attractive pressed metal cornice and carved brownstone sills and lintels.  Some of the windows received decorative pediments and some were "supported" by scalloped brownstone half-basins.

But visual impact was reserved for the entranceway on 14th Street.  In a free-handed mixture of architectural periods, imposing heavily-carved carytids support a classical balcony with medieval balusters, topped by two fierce-looking winged griffins.  Above the balcony a glistening white statue of Joan of Arc sits on a weighty brownstone base.

Although the official address for the Jeanne d'Arc is 62 Seventh Avenue, Meinken's 14th Street entrance gave the residents the more impressive-sounding 200 West 14th Street mailing address.

The French Flat movement did not arrive without its detractors.  The New York Times discussed the trend on September 24, 1899.  "The intermediate dwellings, the so-called 'French Flats,'" it said, "are those upon which we really are in most urgent need of ... a standard.  We have apartment houses for the rich designed by competent architects.  We have tenement houses for the poor designed by competent architects.  But no competent architect has ever been invoked, that we know of, to design dwellings for the great middle class...whose members cannot afford a whole house, nor yet a "swell" apartment, but can afford a rent which, in any other city than this would secure a healthful and comfortable dwelling."

"To call the things that are actually provided 'French Flats' is to insult a friendly nation," The Times went on.  "Nothing like them was ever seen or would be possible in France."

The problem with buildings like the Jeanne d'Arc, according to the newspaper, was lack of light (the bedrooms were "dark cells") and ventilation.  While the upper-class apartment residents enjoyed the convenience of elevators, the middle class renters were walking up five floors exactly as were the tenement dwellers.  What were marketed as light courts were in actuality, said The Times, "a flue, a conduit not for light and air but for sounds and smells."

The French Flat solution for housing middle-class families, however, remained viable for decades.  And despite the problems contemporary critics found with the design, the Flats filled a crucial void in the late 19th and early 20th Century housing market.

The Jeanne d'Arc is the earliest surviving example of a French Flat building on 14th Street and one of the earliest in the city.  The exterior is in a remarkable state of preservation.  The ornate cornice is intact and the brownstone detailing is in overall good shape.  Most remarkable is that the statue of Joan of Arc still stands over the doorway more than a century after being placed there.

The carved brownstone entrance has been painted a barn red and a portion has been chopped off to accomodate the widening of the sidewalk.  The many-paned entrance doors and fanlight appear original.  On the support beneath Joan, the words "JEANNE D'ARC" which until a few years ago stood out in deep relief, have sadly been mostly lost through well-intentioned by clumsy maintenance.

The 1846 House at No. 44 Ninth Avenue

No. 44, on the corner, anchored the row of houses and stores -- photo Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

In the 1840s elegant brick or brownstone-faced townhouses would begin lining 14^th Street as the city inched ever northward.  But the homes erected on the blocks closer to the North River (later renamed the Hudson) would be less refined; built instead for working-class or merchant families.

In 1845 Henry Josephus Sanford began construction on a string of six Greek Revival homes.  Stretching northward from the northeast corner of 14^th Street and Ninth Avenue, they would rise three stories with dormered attics.  Completed a year later, they featured handsome pedimented brownstone lintels and interesting box cornices.  Most likely each of the homes had a storefront at street level.

The tall windows were slightly recessed below pedimented brownstone lintels - photo Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

The corner house, No. 44 Ninth Avenue, was occupied by Dr. Richard S. Seaman in the 1850s.  With him in the house were his wife and son; along with three boarders.  Two of these were attorneys, William H. Wiland and William I. Jones, and the other was a druggist, Ephraim Folsom.  It is possible the Folsom ran his pharmacy from the ground floor.

The commercial entrance was around the corner at No. 357 14^thStreet.  It would be the beginning of a long medical and pharmaceutical tradition for the building.   In 1865 Dr. Levi Jewett was living down the block at No. 233 West 14^thStreet.  He returned to New York following service as assistant surgeon with the Union Army’s 14^thRegiment.  In 1866 he would move into No. 44 Ninth Avenue.

Jewett established his medical practice and drugstore in the building.  Sharing the upstairs with the Jewetts was the family of William H. Stiles, a Deputy Sheriff.  The well-respected doctor was a favorite when he campaigned for the position of Coroner in 1879.  The New-York Tribune noted “Dr. Levi Jewett, one of the Republic candidates for Coroner, is earnestly supported for that office by his political associates.”

A group of eminent physicians signed a petition of support that read in part “His medical education, his services as Surgeon in the Union Army and in the Government hospitals, and his experience as a practitioner in this city, qualify him for the position.”

Jewett’s brother, Charles, was also a physician and drugstore owner, operating his business a block away at No. 91 Eighth Avenue. 

It appears that Levi Jewett lost the election and perhaps that was what prompted him to leave the medical field.  He moved in 1882 to Middle Haddam, Connecticut where he became “engaged in agricultural pursuits.”

Marcus F. Bender had arrived in New York City while still a boy and became a junior clerk for Charles H. Bell, whose drugstore was at the corner of Charles and Bleecker Streets.  While working under Bell he learned the pharmacy business and eventually was licensed by the New York State Board of Pharmacy.  When Levi Jewett’s drugstore became available, Bender purchased it.  Before long he also purchased Charles Levi’s drugstore; but, as recorded in the American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record “Five years later Mr. Bender sold this store to its present owner, George N. Syms, and devoted all his time to the Fourteenth street store.”  

Bender’s drugstore would be a familiar landmark on the corner for a quarter of a century.  Well-like and respected, he was a member of several clubs and societies and was one of the founders of the Interstate Retail Druggists’ League.

Marcus Bender owned the business, but still leased the property from the Henry Josephus Sanford Estate.  In 1887 the estate remodeled the drugstore storefront, replacing the granite corner post with a cast iron column.  Updated show windows were installed at the same time.

Bender became marginally involved in a questionable suicide in the summer of 1893.  Mrs. George Davis lived on West 17^th Street and took a stateroom on the steamer Saratoga that left New York City for Troy, New York on June 20.  That night her cape and hat were found on the aft deck and the woman was nowhere to be found.

The New York Times reported that she “is supposed to have committed suicide by jumping overboard” however questions were raised by a bottle found in her stateroom.  “Investigation of the stateroom showed a bottle partly full of chloroform, but labeled alcohol and bearing the stamp of M. F. Benders, 357 West Fourteenth Street, New-York.”  Why a gentlewoman would be traveling with chloroform—mislabeled—was puzzling.

In 1894 The Pharmaceutical Era praised Bender’s above-board reputation, saying “he is a bad man for smugglers to run up against.  He believes in buying goods legitimately.”  One such crook found that out on September 6, 1894 when the well-dressed young man walked into the store and offered to sell Bender a pound of phenacetine and suphonal for $10 each.

Because the prices were substantially below market value Bender immediately suspected the chemicals were smuggled.  Thinking quickly, he told the man that he was interested in both articles, but he did not have the ready cash.  If he would just return at 2:00 he would have the funds to buy the goods.

As soon as the man left the store, Bender telephoned W. H. Schieffelin & Co., the American agents for the manufacturers of the chemicals.  The firm sent a representative along with two detectives.  Promptly at 2:00 the man reentered the store and was arrested.

Around this time Marcus Bender inherited “a modest fortune” from relatives in Syracuse prompting the American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Recorddeemed him “comparatively wealthy.” 

Bender’s unblemished reputation was put to the test in 1896 through the actions of his clerk, William Chamberlain.  The man became bitter when a routine customer, 75-year old James Anderson, complained to Bender that Chamberlain was “inattentive to business.” 

The clerk attempted to exact revenge on the elderly man when he came to the drugstore in October 1896.  Anderson asked for 10 cents worth of quinine powder.  Chamberlain filled his order and took his dime.  The aged Anderson returned to his home at No. 690 Hudson Street and on the night of October 24 took the full dose.  What he did not realize was that Chamberlain had given him more than ten times the amount he had asked for.

The Druggists Circular and Chemical Gazette reported that Anderson “took 120 grains of quinine in one dose and came near dying.”  Having recovered, the old man sued Marcus Bender for $250 for “the pain he suffered and the time he lost by what he says was Mr. Bender’s clerk’s fault,” said the Gazette.

The entrance to the Ninth Avenue Elevated Train was on the corner.  photo from the collection of the New York Public Library

On Monday January 28, 1907 Marcus F. Bender died suddenly at his home at No. 123 West 95^th Street at the age of 58.  Bender’s son, Leach H. Bender, was a doctor; but the drugstore was left to his widow and daughter.  The American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record noted that it would “be conducted by his executors in the interest of his widow and daughter, for whom he has otherwise provided comfortably.”

On May 5, 1941 none of the original dormers had been altered yet.  Interestingly, there is only one on the 14th Street side.  photographer unknown.  From the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYW54LH75&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

Throughout the 20^th century the corner building would be home to a variety of businesses as the neighborhood became known as the Meat Packing District.  For three decades from 1945 to 1975 it was the Blue Star Food Shop and Luncheonette; the Old Country Kitchen Restaurant from 1980 to 1993; then Nick’s City Kitchen Restaurant until 2003.

Today the ground floor where Marcus Bender dispensed quinine and elixirs is home to The Diner, another restaurant in what is now a trendy upscale district of designer clothing stores, Google headquarters and a sleek Apple store.  But the picturesque row of 1846 houses survives as a reminder of a much different era along West 14^thStreet.

Two of the original dormers along Ninth Avenue survive unaltered -- photo Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com