Hatfield House -- No. 101-103 East 29th Street

As the turn of the last century approached, unmarried men had a problem: where to live.  Bachelors were not generally welcomed by most boarding houses and respectable apartment houses.  Yet the number of unmarried men in the city skyrocketed between 1870 and 1890, when nearly 45 percent of the male population was single.

The solution as the bachelor hotel, first conceived around 1880.  Within two decades the idea had proved successful and bachelor hotels sprung up around town.  Joseph Flesichman decided to get in on the trend in 1899.  A florist by trade, he was also highly involved in real estate.

The neighborhood around Park Avenue between 42nd and 29^thStreet was a mixed bag.  Grand mansions still lined both sides of the thoroughfare; yet they shared space with the large hotels that served nearby Grand Central Terminal.  The location was choice for a residence hotel—near both the train station and the upscale residential neighborhood.

On May 18, 1899 two vintage houses at Nos. 101 and 103 East 29^thStreet, between Park and Lexington Avenues, were sold at auction.  Joseph Fleischman made the winning bid of $38,700, right around $1 million today.  The following day The New York Times noted “The buyer will have plans prepared immediately for a twelve-story fireproof bachelor apartment house, which he will erect on the site at a cost of about $150,000.”

Fleischman seems to have quickly cut back his ambitious plans.  When plans were filed by architects Buchman & Deisler a week later, two floors and $25,000 of the estimated cost had been shaved off.   But Fleischman was not done yet.

On October 21 The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guidenoted that bids for construction were about to be taken  The proposed structure was now described as an “8-story bachelor apartment house.”  Two more floors had disappeared.

Borrowing the aristocratic name of the ancestral country home of Britain’s Lord Salisbury, Hatfield House was completed in 1901.  In the course of construction it had lost one more floor, topping off at seven.  As its name suggested, it bore a rather regal presence among the old houses of East 29^thStreet.  Buchman & Deisler used a combination of red brick and limestone to produce an appealing marriage of Beaux Arts and neo-Tudor styles.

The carved bands of the pilasters flanking the doorway were carried onto the richly-grained stone columns.

Banded stone columns supported the entrance portico and balcony.  Heavily-carved pediments and window spandrels embellished the mid-section, along with the stone quoins that connected three floors of openings.  The decoration climaxed at the top two floors with beefy carved brackets, clustered windows and an ornately-carved parapet.

Fleischman's plans had changed in one other aspect.  Hatfield House accepted women. 

Among the first tenants was Grace B. Faxon.  A patriotic newspaper Spirit of ’76 said in 1902 “Miss Faxon, the author, is known to the public as editor, reader, teacher of elocution, and writer and director of all branches pertaining to the entertainment field.”  A member of the Daughters of the Revolution, that year she had written a play for the group “and other patriotic Societies,” entitled “Maids and Matrons.”  For $50 and expenses, Grace would oversee three rehearsals of the play “including the teaching of the minuet, directed by the author.”  The periodical mentioned “Correspondence solicited” and instructed those interested to write “Miss Grace B. Faxon, Hatfield House.”

Unlike the lavish apartment hotels of the Upper West Side in which flats included libraries and servants’ rooms, Hatfield House targeted a more middle-class occupant.  Residents, like Grace, were well-educated and respectable; including W. Mansell Daintry, a member of the New York Zoological Society for years; Harvard College graduate John Hudson Bennett; mining engineer Henry H. Knox; and Mrs. Julian Nathan who was Recording Secretary of the Federation of Sisterhoods in 1905.  The federation worked with various women’s Jewish charity groups “for the purpose of performing more effectively the charitable and philanthropic work for which they were organized.”

While, most likely, Mrs. Nathan’s apartment was more commodious; furnished apartments as small as one or two rooms “with bath” were advertised in 1907. 

That year was especially traumatic for the Rev. Jesse F. Forbes.  His father-in-law, Charles C. Savage was both highly-respected and influential.  The 88-year old was President and Director of the De Milt Dispensary nearby on East 23^rdStreet, a member of the Board of Managers of the American Tract Society, the New York Typographical Society, was highly involved with Roosevelt Hospital; and was a member of the Old Guard of the 12^th Regiment.  On Saturday, November 9 the old man was at the Forbes apartment in Hatfield House when he died. 

Gertrude Ina Robinson not only called Hatfield House home; but she operated her studio here.  A professional illustrator; she was even better known as a harpist.  As the fashionable Manhattan churches reopened following the summer social season in 1908, the New-York Tribune noted “Miss Gertrude Ina Robinson, whose studio is at No. 103 East 29^thStreet, will resume her work as harpist at Madison Square Presbyterian Church on September 27.  During the coming season Miss Robinson will give five recitals with organ accompaniment as preludes to special musical services.”

New-York Tribune, September 5, 1908 (copyright expired)

Gertrude was busy elsewhere that year as well.  In June she had played at a concert in the Plaza Hotel.  On June 28 the New-York Tribune reported “Among the numbers that most pleased those present was a harp solo, mazurka (Schnecker), by Miss Gertrude Ina Robinson, the well known harpist.”  And the following month she played the requiem mass at the Church of the Transfiguration.

Among Gertrude’s neighbors was the elderly Rev. Dr. Robert J. Keeling.  Although his family had prepared him for a commission in the United States Navy; he decided instead on the Episcopal ministry and graduated from the Theological Seminary of Virginia in 1858.  Now widowed, he lived alone in Hatfield House until his death in his apartment on December 9, 1909.  The Rev. Jesse F. Forbes, who was still living here, died the following year.

Scandal visited Hatfield House in 1911.  Long term resident Dr. Cleveland C. Kimball was a well-respected urologist.  His love interest was, however, a married woman.  On November 2 that year The New York Times printed a special report from Reno, Nevada.  “Mrs. Rachel Schley, who this afternoon obtained a decree of divorce from William Schley in the District Court, says she is to marry Dr. Cleveland Kimball of New York.” 

Although Rachel’s divorce was based on “desertion and failure to provide;” it was apparent that doctor had been seeing the still-married woman.  “At Dr. Kimball’s office, 103 East Twenty-ninth Street, it was said that Dr. Kimball was out, and that no one there knew anything about Mrs. Schley,” reported The Times.

The somewhat lurid attention eventually faded and Kimball was still here as late as 1918.  Other upstanding residents by then were Charles F. Seeger, the principal of the shipping and forwarding business that bore his name; and Dr. Eleanor Hertine who wrote a lengthy article “Ambulatory Types of Thyroid Disease” for the Cornell University Medical Bulletin in 1919.

The comfortable lifestyle afforded the residents was reflected in an advertisement in The Sun and the New York Herald in September 1920.  The available apartments in the building came with “maid service.”

That would all change with the coming of the Great Depression.  Hard times, coupled with Prohibition, resulted in a terrifying reign of mobsters and gang violence in America's large cities.  Hatfield House became a center of underworld hostility at the beginning of the 1930s.  In the spring of 1931 warfare between Italian mobster John (Aces) Mazza, and Abe Wagner raged.  By April a dozen gangsters had been killed.

Police said that the 20-year old Mazza was “the leader of a gang of alcohol wholesalers and hijackers operating on the east side.”  Abe Wagner and his brother Al, were young men “trying to get ahead in the ‘alcohol game,’” according to The New York Times.

On Friday morning, February 21, 1931 Abe Wagner left a restaurant with two companions.  As he started to get into his car, a series of shotgun blasts “blazed out from an upper window in a loft building across the street,” according to a newspaper.  The men fled in various directions.  When police questioned Abe’s brother, Al, he refused to give any information.

Within hours Al Mazza was dead.  He walked out of Milfrank’s Cafeteria at No. 15 First Avenue directly into the line of fire of men shooting from a sedan parked at the curb.  “Police detectives frankly attributed the murder of Mazza to the Wagner gang and said they believed two other members of the Mazza gang had been killed and either hidden or left in some remote spot.”  Before nightfall Mazza’s cohort, John Franzone was dead.

That night 25-year old Al Wagner rented a suite at Hatfield House under the name of Al Katz.  “The Wagner gang, the police believe, took refuge in the unpretentious hotel to hold a council of war and keep out of sight until it was safer to venture out,” reported The New York Times the following day.  “They drank whisky and ale as they sat on the twin beds.”

Around 4:30 in the morning other tenants heard shouting and loud noises.  Police were called and upon entering the 7^th floor rooms, “found the body of Al Wagner sprawled on the floor between the twin beds.  He had been shot three times in the chest and the head.  The walls of the room were riddled and furniture was overturned and smashed.”

Detectives believed that the opposing gang members had slipped up the fire escape.  Harry Brown, a 26-year old member of the Wagner gang was severely wounded, as was Abe Wagner.  Police searched for the men, finally finding Brown at Bellevue Hospital with five bullet wounds in his arm, shoulder, back and jaw.  He had been found “reeling in the street” and was picked up by a taxicab.

Detective Barney Ruditsky grilled Brown in his hospital room.  “The only information that Ruditsky could get from him, however, was that ‘they got Abe.’”  The gangster refused to talk.  “If I die I’ll take the names with me,” he said.

And that is exactly what happened.  On February 26 he was died.

As police scoured the city for Abe, his mother begged through the newspapers for a truce to the violence.  She appealed to the Mazza gang to allow Abe to attend Al’s funeral.  “No such assurance reached her, so far as could be learned,” reported The Times on February 23.

The choice of Hatfield House by the Wagner gang as a temporary headquarters drew police attention to the building.  A week later, on March 4, two young men sat in a car in front of the apartment house.  That was enough to draw the suspicions of a policeman who searched the youths, 19-year old John S. Eremotti and 20-year old Raymond W. Elmore.  Ermotti, it turned out, was AWOL from the U.S.S. Colorado since November.  Elmore was on furlough from the Coast Artillery unit at Fort Totten.

The officer’s suspicions were substantiated.  Not only did he find a loaded pistol on the sailor; but the pair was charged with grand larceny when the owner of the car was found and reported it stolen.

When the massive Tudor City residential enclave was completed, its apartment buildings took the names of British mansions; one of which was Hatfield House.  The 29^thStreet apartment building was less-and-less known by its name and more simply by its address.

In the second half of the 20^th century Hatfield House became the Deauville Hotel.  The renovation to a boutique hotel preserved the original hand-operated elevator while adding an unfortunate sleek marquis that detracts from Buchman & Deisler’s design.  Regrettably the rusticated ground floor was painted white and gray.  And yet the turn-of-the-century hotel with its delicious past survives mostly intact.

photographs by the author

The 1898 New Era Building - 495 Broadway

photo by Hubert J. Steed

As the 19th Century wound to a close, Jeremiah C. Lyons had become one of the most prominent real estate developers in the city, owning and managing the J. C. Lyons Building and Operating Company. Many of the firm’s holdings were located along 5th Avenue; however Lyons developed rows of upscale residences in high-end neighborhoods, such as the eight limestone mansions on East 74th Street designed by Buchman & Deisler in 1898, one of which, at No. 55, Eleanor Roosevelt would later occupy.

Lyons had earlier commissioned the same architects to design an eye-catching commercial building that was completed that year at No. 495 Broadway—The New Era Building.

While Italianate palazzo-inspired buildings were rising along Broadway at the time, Buchman & Deisler stepped out of the box with their design. Drawing on the modern Art Nouveau sub-style popularized by designers and architects like the Scottish Charles Rennie Mackintosh, they produced a no-nonsense behemoth unlike any of its neighbors.

Decades later the AIA Guide to New York City would call it an “Art Nouveau marvel: from the squat street-level Doric columns, fairly bulging from the weight of the masonry walls above, to the colossal multistory copper mansard, six floors up.”

The solid-looking structure was originally intended for a printing firm; however it soon became the headquarters for Butler Brothers, one of the first mail-order catalogue companies in the United States. In the 1870’s the three Butler Brothers – Edward, George and Charles – started their business selling wholesale merchandise to retail stores across the country. Expanding to New York in 1880, the firm was selling to about 100,000 customers when it moved into The New Era Building.

In the final days of World War I, Butler Brothers made headlines when it refused to accept shipment of German-made toys and china shipped through Holland without notice; even though the goods had been paid for prior to the declaration of war years earlier.

“America does not need German-made goods and Butler Brother will in no way encourage the German propaganda designed to place German-made goods back in the American market,” said company vice-president Walter Scott. Speaking in October of 1918 he added “Butler Brothers feel that the American children should have American-made toys. They are therefore willing to accept any loss which may be occasioned by their refusal of this shipment, because they feel it will help to keep German-made goods out of this market.”

In 1927 the firm launched a string of franchised variety stores under the name Ben Franklin Stores. That same year fire raged through the New Era Building. On December 20 The New York Times reported that “Damage of $1,000,000 was wrought by the fire which early yesterday morning swept through the building at 495-497 Broadway, occupied by Butler Brothers, wholesale dealers in general merchandise, and came perilously close to injuring several companies of firemen.”

The fire had burned for two hours before smoke was detected and an alarm set off. Sections of floors fell through and no fewer than seventy firemen were necessary to fight the blaze.

After more than a century since its construction, The New Era Building looks remarkably as it did in 1898 and, as it did then, commands the attention of the most casual passer-by. The thick street-level columns, the bold, confident stone arches at the sixth floor, and the outstanding copper mansard make the New Era Building a one-of-a-kind treasure.




non-credited photographs taken by the author

The 1896 Alexander Building -- No. 636 6th Avenue

Twenty-six year old Andrew Alexander opened his first shoe store on Eighth Avenue in 1857.  As the better residential areas inched northward along Fifth Avenue and to the east, the Scotch-Irish merchant recognized the retail potential of just a block to the west.  Later the Christian Nation would recall “He was among the first to note the tendency of the retail trade toward Sixth Avenue.”

In 1877 he relocated to the northwest corner of 23^rdStreet and Sixth Avenue at the northern fringe of what would soon be called The Ladies’ Mile.  Eleven blocks to the south, at Sixth Avenue and 12^th Street, was the shoe store of Alexander’s greatest competitor—Alfred J. Cammeyer.

By the beginning of the 1890s Sixth Avenue from 14^thStreet to 23^rd Street was lined with mammoth emporiums catering to New York’s carriage trade.  In September 1893 Cammeyer moved squarely into the fashionable shopping area, taking over the newly-built structure on 6^th Avenue and the southeast corner of 20^th Street.  The New York Times called it “probably the largest and best equipped boot and shoe establishment in this country, if not the world.”

Andrew Alexander would not be long in answering the challenge.  Developers Lachman, Morgenthau & Goldsmith purchased and demolished a row of seven brick rowhouses along West 19^thStreet, reaching to the corner of Sixth Avenue.  Late in 1896 their new retail structure was completed--filling the southern half of the block where the Cammeyer Building stood.  Designed by Buchman & Deisler, it was a dignified neo-Renaissance building faced in limestone and brick.  Expansive show windows at the second floor ensured that attractive merchandise caught the eye of female shoppers passing along on the 6^th Avenue El.

Restrained ornamentation preserved the dignity of Buchman & Deisler's design.

On February 5, 1897 The New York Times reported that Andrew Alexander had purchased the new building and “will take possession on March 1.”  Alexander declined to tell reporters the price he paid for the structure; but the newspaper took notice of the abutting monster shoe stores.  “He intends to abandon his old stand, at Twenty-third Street and Sixth Avenue, where he has been for twenty years, and to remove his entire stock to this new building, occupying the entire ground floor and basement.  Thus that entire block will be given over to the shoe trade.”

The building, now known as the Alexander Building, was “rated as a fire-proof structure.”  Two years after moving in, that rating would be tested.

Around 9:00 on the evening of January 18, 1899 defective insulation of electrical wires in the adjoining Cammeyer building sparked a fire in the basement.  By the time fire equipment could arrive, the blaze had spread to what The Times called an “inferno” and the store was nearly destroyed.

Andrew Alexander rushed to the scene around midnight.  “He said there was a four-foot brick wall between his building and the one on fire,” reported the newspaper, “and he did not expect to lose at all, unless in a small way from water.”  Surely enough, while Alfred Cammeyer suffered half a million dollars in damages (around $11 million today); the Alexander Building was unscathed.

In what must have been a somewhat daring full-page ad, a customer shows her maid her new shoes (and ankles!) in 1900 -- Scribner's Magazine, December 1900 (copyright expired)

Alexander was a religious and socially-conscious man.  He would serve as an elder in the Reformed Presbyterian Church on 39^th Street for nearly 50 years, was an active Sunday school worker, and a board member on the church’s Foreign Missions and Church Erection committees.  He was a member of the Board of Directors of the National Temperance Society and a member of the Presbyterian Union of New York.  His concern for his fellow man extended to his employees.

That concern manifested itself on the night of March 12, 1901.  Just as the emporiums of Sixth Avenue were closing for the night, a well-dressed woman was seen staggering along the avenue at 15^th Street.  A large crowd of unruly boys jeered and shoved her and, as she reached the corner of 19^th Street, she lost her balance and fell headlong on to the pavement.

William Parsons was a salesman at Alexander’s and he witnessed the woman’s fall.  Several people on the crowded avenue tried to help her, including Parsons.  As they were attempting to get her to her feet, rookie Policeman Neil Brown arrived on the scene.

The Times reported “Swinging his club as he shouldered his way, he ordered the crowd to clear away.  Most of them did so, but Parsons lingered for a moment.  Then it is said Brown grabbed him by the coat, hurled him out to the curb, and struck him twice on the head with his club.  Parsons protested, and for answer the policeman struck him again and pushed him back into the crowd.”

The last blow knocked Parsons unconscious and “cries of ‘Brute’ and ‘Shame’ went up from the crowd.”

Brown, who had only six months on the force, was enraged by the reaction of the throng of shoppers.  He “went at the crowd, striking men over the head, face, and arms, and striking women in the face, until the people ran in all directions, leaving him the master of the entire block.”

By now Parsons had regained consciousness and was on his feet.  The woman was still unconscious on the sidewalk when the patrol wagon arrived.  Both the woman and Parsons were loaded into the wagon and as it drove off, the crowd of infuriated witnesses and victims ran behind it.  When the wagon arrived at the station house and discharged its involuntary passengers, there was a mob of no fewer than 500 persons on the street and in the police station, according to newspaper accounts.

“There were groans and hisses from those in the room and louder noises from those without as the policeman brought in the man and woman,” said The Times.

The woman was deemed “to be utterly stupefied with drink, and she was dragged to a cell until she should be sober enough to give her name.”  Despite the hoards of protestors, Sergeant Murtha locked up the bruised William Parsons as well on the charge of interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty.  A doctor from the New York Hospital was called to dress his wounds.

While the angry crowd refused to leave the street in front of the station house; a long row of victims issued formal complaints against Officer Brown.  In the meantime Andrew Alexander had heard of the plight of his Good Samaritan employee.  He left his home at No. 14 West 47^thStreet and furnished bail for the battered salesman.

In June 1903 Andrew Alexander attended a church synod in Hopkinston, Iowa.  On July 29, as he was aboard a train heading back to New York City, he was stricken with what was most likely a heart attack.  He never recovered and on July 29 the 72-year old shoe merchant died.  His funeral was held in the 47^thStreet house a few days later.

Alexander’s will, probated a week later, reflected his charitable nature.  His estate was estimated to be around $3 million and he left substantial amounts to Presbyterian causes and $5,000 to the Board of Trustees for Indian Missions.  Interestingly, while he left $750 to his sister; he left $1,000 to one of the house servants, Margaret Lindsay.

Along with his widow, Matilda, only two daughters of his six children survived.  His will requested “that they continue his business.”

The most lavish ornamentation was reserved for the 19th Street elevation, rather than the avenue.

The business did, indeed, continue and in August 1915 a reporter for Boot and Shoe Recorder stopped by the store to see its end-of-season sale items.  “Mr. Bemis, the manager of the business, which is owned by the two daughters of the late Alfred Alexander, told me that the season now closing had been fairly satisfactory, trade keeping up well until the first of the month, while the present clearance sale was well patronized.”

Bemis did not seem to have an acute merchandising strategy.  “In women’s lines we don’t know what women will want.  We buy a few of what we think they will like, and if they go, we order more.  If they don’t sell, we’re stuck, that’s all.”

The manager blamed the unpredictability of shoe fashions on his female customers.  “Women’s tastes are so fickle that only after the season is fairly opened can we tell what they will decide upon.  But of one thing I am certain, styles will be quieter.”

Earlier that year a writer for the New-York Tribune commented on the Spring styles.  “Here I saw women’s Colonial pumps in patent colt, with medium heavy soles, especially priced at $3.  These can be had for the same price in gun metal kid.  Oxford ties with gun metal vamps and inlay sand colored backs are also $3.”  Shoppers were spending the equivalent of about $50 today on the stylish shoes.

The article reinforced the fact that Edwardian women had a broad range of shoe styles from which to choose.  “The ‘Court’ pump, a copy of one of the new smart models, has gray cloth back and gun metal vamp and is moderately priced at $3.  A specially reduced high boot has dull or patent vamp and smart dark gray top, with leather trimmings—laced--$4.35.  Satin dancing slippers in the usual evening shades cost $3.”

In 1919 Andrew Alexander opened a second store on Fifth Avenue.  Five years after the Tribune article, prices had not risen appreciably.  Boot and Shoe Recorder noted that the Sixth Avenue store offered “At $3.65 a pair, pretty slippers in colored satins; at $4.85, beaded slippers—black, white and bronze; also gold and silver cloth—all with Louis heels; and some at $4.85—oxfords for street wear.  Black and brown calf with Cuban heels.  Dull black kid and patent leather with Louis heels—all sizes in this lot.”

While nearly all of the great retailers abandoned the Ladies’ Mile for Fifth and Madison Avenues; Alexander’s would sell shoes from the Alexander Building well into the 1920s.  In 1924, after daughter Isabel Alexander Robey sold the building to the Sixth Avenue Leasing Corp., architect Herman Wolf was hired to redesign the first floor storefront.  Then in 1937 the buildings of the former shoe rivals—Cammeyer and Alexander—were joined internally.

The stretch of Sixth Avenue fell into neglect during the middle to latter parts of the 20^th century as the grand emporiums were turned into factory and small office space.  A rediscovery of the district finally came and in 1993 the Alexander Building was renovated into four floors of photo studios and offices; with a billiard parlor and lounge on the first floor.

In 2010 the Cammeyer Building was converted to 67 residential condominiums; once again separated from the Alexander Building.  A year later William Macklowe purchased the Alexander Building for $45.2 million.  Renovations continue on the building and although the street level has been obliterated, the distinguished façade above is mostly intact.  Where Edwardian women with fickle taste for footwear shopped in 1915, 21^st century sports enthusiasts browse through running shoes, shorts and tee-shirts.