Where Hats were Made -- Brunner & Tryon's 1892 No. 661 Broadway

photo by Beyond My Ken

When Moses Sachlein acquired 661 Broadway around 1890, a five-story masonry building had stood on the site for half a century. Here for decades George P. Putnam ran his publishing business until his death in 1872.

Sachlein razed the old structure in 1891 and in its place he commissioned architects Brunner & Tryon to design an 8-story store and loft building. Arnold Brunner and Thomas Tyron had only recently established the firm and had completed the headquarters of Downtown Hebrew Institute just two years earlier.

The building was completed in 1892, a handsome French Renaissance Revival structure with angles, textures and a mixture of materials similar to the highly-popular Queen Anne and Eastlake styles of the day. The architects placed the building on a solid two-story base of cast iron and rusticated granite piers. The third through sixth floors were of buff-colored brick with cast iron window frames and terra cotta detailing. The top two floors burst forth with terra cotta embellishment of palm fronds, swags, wreaths, Corinthian capitals and an elaborate pediment over the eighth floor dormer.

Terra cotta, cast iron and brick combine below a slate-covered roof -- photo by Alice Lum

The property stretched back through the entire block where the less elaborate façade had the address of No. 228 Mercer Street.

The building filled with a variety of tenants, one of the earliest being George W. Nathan. In February 1894 Mr. Nathan took Thomas Hays to court, charging him with stealing a diamond pin at his offices here, valued at $30.  The case took an embarrassing turn when on February 11 The World reported that Hays was let go “because Nathan was not sure but he might have lost the pin. He got it back again.”

At the turn of the century the majority of tenants were millinery and haberdashery manufacturers. In 1906 Alland Brothers & Co. operated here, importers and wholesalers of ladies’ and misses’ “headwear in every branch of the trade.” The Washington Post said of them, “This firm is famed all over the country for the beauty and exclusiveness of its trimmed hats. Their creations are accepted as the standard of correctness. French conceptions fresh from the Paris style-creators, and their own adaptations of foreign and American ideas are represented”

In 1910 the ground floor store was the home of M. Kalischer, Flowers and Feathers while upstairs were the Florence Hat Company, Samuel D. Lasdon, manufacturers of ladies hats and novelties, Samuel Blum and the Gingold Brothers, clothiers, among others.

It was a time when no woman or man would be seen in public without a hat. Men wore different hats for business, boating, picnics, leisure and evening wear.  And for every hat a gentleman owned a lady would have two. Through World War I the building was home to The Western Hat Company, The Practical Clothing Company and Linder & Berger, wholesale dealers in women’s and misses’ hats.

Here, in 1925, the Needlebook Specialty Company had its headquarters  In its nationwide ads it promised “$20 profit daily selling needlebooks.” The ambitious entrepreneur would buy the books for three to five cents each and sell them for a quarter, emphasizing to the customer that their value was fifty cents.

The building, as well as the adjoining 663-665 Broadway, was purchased in April 1941 by the Adam Hat Stores – a chain of stores that had formed an affiliate called Adam 665 Broadway Corporation.  The combined buildings, acquired from the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, formed a Broadway frontage of 120 feet. Rental income from the combined structures was estimated at $50,000 per year.

In 1954 Adam Hats sold the buildings to realty operator Jack Braus but remained on, immediately signing a ten-year lease for the 50,000 square feet they occupied.  Brause announced his intentions to modernize the old buildings.

No. 661 Broadway continued to be popular with garment firms and a year later Irving Raincoat Company was doing business from here.

Styles change and, for better or worse, by the 1960s hats for men were out of fashion. In 1962 A. Rosen & Sons who had manufactured men’s hats and hatters supplies from the building declared bankruptcy. The golden years of haberdashers was over.

photo by Alice Lum

Brunner & Tryon’s handsome design has sustained some modernization, especially at street level; but overall the façade is relatively untouched. It is a delightful stand-out among the many and varied architectural treasures along this stretch of Broadway.

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.

The 1891 H. H. Upham & Co. Building -- No. 508 LaGuardia Place

The H. H. Upham Building four years after completion -- King's Photographic Views of New York City

In 1858 Henry H. Upham went into the sign-making business with John Garrett. The successful firm rose in importance, especially after 1870 when Upham became sole proprietor, changing the company’s name to H. H. Upham & Co. A year later he took on John Tully as a partner, followed five years later by Louis I. Haber.


Upham produced a wide variety of signs – painted signs on commercial buildings; metal three-dimensional signs and novelty signs. With their patent of the “wire sign and banner” on October 11, 1875, the firm struck commercial gold at a time when Victorians embraced fanciful designs.By 1880 the company was employing up to 49 painters and craftsmen. Ordinary laborers were paid $1.25 a day with skilled workers earning twice that much. It became necessary, in 1890, to consider leaving their long-held offices at 250 Canal Street for a more substantial building to house its offices, showrooms and factory.

Architects Brunner & Tyron were given the commission to design the new building. Located at 54 South Fifth Avenue (which would become 508 LaGuardia Place when the street was renamed four years later), the structure was completed in 1891.

Decorative bronze cartouches announced the date of the company's founding and the year the building was completed.

While the architectural firm was heavily involved in designing buildings for Jewish institutions – they were responsible for a dispensary for Mt. Sinai Hospital, the Downtown Hebrew Institute and three important Manhattan synagogues – here they produced an exceedingly handsome 5-story commercial structure for Upham & Co. A dignified Romanesque Revival building of ironspot Roman brick, it was trimmed with terra cotta and rock-faced brick. Large bronze cartouches below the cornice of the fifth floor were created by Upham & Co.; they not only served as an example of the firm’s masterful work, but announced the company’s founding date and that of the building’s completion.

By now the firm was among the preeminent sign makers in the country. The 1891 “History and Commerce of New York” said “From its inception the house has maintained a trade supremacy which fully demonstrates the energy and executive ability brought to bear in its conduct…The firm possess the most perfected facilities and have unsurpassed advantages for promptly meeting all the demands made upon their resources.

“Painting in all its branches is given careful attention, particular care being devoted to sign work of every description, and first-class service is assured in every instance.”

Orders arrived from throughout the United States as the firm widely advertised itself as “Makers of All Kinds of Signs – Engraved Brass Signs a Specialty,” and marketed its “painting, graining, kalsomining, etc.”

After Upham’s death, Louis Haber ran the company as President, Treasurer and Director; and brought his sons Ferdinand and Harold into the business. Harold Haber served on the board as Secretary.

H. H. Upham & Co. continued to create signs from No. 508 LaGuardia Place until the end of the 1950s. The building was used for various commercial and warehouse uses until it was renovated to residential space several decades later.

Luxurious residential space now exists where Upham's painters and sign makers once worked -- photo Citi Habitats

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation deems No. 508 LaGuardia Place as perhaps the finest example of industrial architecture of the late 19th Century in the South Village. Today the façade is relatively unchanged while inside are sleek and glamorous apartments. The four-bedroom penthouse with 30-foot ceilings was listed in December 2009 for $26,500 per month.

photo Citi Habitats

non-credited photographs taken by the author.  Upham postcard above from author's collection