The Magificent 1913 Woolworth Building -- Broadway at Park Place

print from the Library of Congress

Frank Winfield Woolworth worked on his parents’ farm in Great Bend, New York until he was 21 years old.  During his last two winters on the farm, when chores were fewer, he worked in a grocery store in town for free, telling the owner he simply wanted the experience.

When he finally left home he ventured off to Watertown, New York, where he convinced the owner of the dry goods store Augsbury & Moore to allow him to work free for three months, after which he received $3.50 a week; the exact amount he was paying for his room at a boarding house.   By 1878 the 26-year old was earning $10 a week.

It was that year that the store in Watertown where he was working installed a revolutionary marketing concept:  a five-cent counter.  Woolworth took the idea farther.

A year later he opened his first store in Utica, New York with $350 worth of goods purchased on a note endorsed by his father.  The store failed, but Woolworth was undaunted.  By 1911 there were 596 F. W. Woolworth stores and Woolworth had become an extremely wealthy man by selling goods priced at five or ten cents.

In 1910 Woolworth began planning a new headquarters building.   His initial thoughts of a typical 12- to 16-story office building gradually changed until it would become the tallest building in the world.    In the summer of 1911, for about $2.5 million, Woolworth acquired the corner lot at Broadway and Park Place and commissioned Cass Gilbert – known for monumental public buildings like the Minnesota State Capitol building—to design his new headquarters. 

Initial plans called for a 55-story building.  Even before the addition of five more stories, not everyone was pleased.  One reader of The New York Times who signed his letter simply H. P wrote “But is it wise, or even safe, for the city to longer neglect the subject of limiting the height of buildings?  Fifty-five stories now—what next?  And yet, it seems I have already heard mention of a ‘next.’”

Woolworth was fond of the London’s Gothic Houses of Parliament and this admiration probably played an important part in the style of the new skyscraper.   Referring to Woolworth’s input, Gilbert later said “Mr. Woolworth loved beautiful architecture and earnestly desired that his building should be noted for its beauty as well as for its practical convenience and substantial construction.”

Mr. Woolworth would get from Cass Gilbert both beautiful architecture and substantial construction.

To support the immense structure, estimated to weigh 136,000 tons, 69 concrete piers extended 100 feet down to bedrock.  The construction of the foundation alone cost $1.2 million.

A billboard announces the coming skyscraper as caissons are driven deep into the earth for the foundation in 1911.

On the night of April 24, 1913 President Wilson pressed a button in the White House and 80,000 electric lights in the Woolworth Building flashed on.  The building was completed.   In the 27^th-floor dining room Woolworth hosted a banquet for journalists, business moguls and politicians.   Outside, the tower was bathed in light; an early example of architectural illumination.

The six-story tower had dozens of gargoyles -- photo "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

The 60-story skyscraper, which cost Woolworth $13 million, was a marvel.  It was clad in gleaming white terra cotta, cast in elaborate Gothic shapes – finials, gargoyles, spires and intricate tracery.   Two decades later the WPA’s “New York City Guide” would say “Crisp and delicate terra-cotta surface ornament drops over the building like a veil.  All the details are Gothic, even to the tourelles that surround the peak, the finial that surmounts it, and the flying buttresses.”

The main entrance doors on Broadway are dwarfed within the enormous Gothic arch -- photo "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

The architectural details of the tower, 792 feet and one inch above the sidewalk, were over-sized so as to be visible from the street and to maintain proportions.  Edwin Cochran noted later that year “the proportions have been executed with such studious care and fidelity to detail that its enormous height is not realized from the street.”

Not all of Gilbert's details were traditionally Gothic.  Here he gives a nod to American history -- photo Library of Congress

Inside, Gilbert lavished the lobby with creamy marble quarried on the Isle of Skyros in Greece.  The Gothic curves and arches of the grand corridor rose to the glass-mosaic domed ceiling.  The glass was illuminated by concealed lights in the lacy carved marble cornice.  Gilbert playfully represented real people in the grotesques below the cornice—the architect himself was represented holding a model of the building, Woolworth has a bag of nickels, engineer Aus holds a steel beam, and rental agent Frank Hogan, building Louis Horowitz and banker Lewis Pierson were also portrayed.

The architect portrayed himself holding a model of the building in a marble grotesque -- photo Library of Congress

 Woolworth leased out much of the building, where 12,000 workers would come and go every day.  The Irving National Bank and the Broadway Trust Company occupied the first floor.  In the basement were the “Postkeller,” a restaurant with frescoed, vaulted ceilings; an enormous barber shop; a Turkish bath and swimming pool.  

In the basement was The Postkeller, where patrons dined beneath frescoed ceilings -- "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

But the Woolworth offices were dazzling.

Frank Woolworth’s private office was decorated in the Renaissance period.  A Flemish Renaissance tapestry woven around 1650 hung over a velvet-covered bench raised on a platform a step higher than the floor.  A carved stone Italian Renaissance mantelpiece filled the height of the room at one end and an elaborate coffered ceiling hung over Woolworth’s centuries-old desk.

Frank Woolworth's private office is still intact today -- photo "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

The President’s office was referred to as “The Empire Room.”  The walls were executed in various colors of marble.  Period French furniture was complemented by an enormous portrait of Napoleon.

The walls of the office of the President of the firm were of several types of marble -- "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

The Otis Elevator Company quickly used the building in its marketing scheme.  Ads boasted of “The marvelous vertical railways in the new Woolworth Building that are to ‘whiz’ the army of workers up with lightning speed 726 feet in the sky in absolute safety and comfort.”  In fact, safety was a major consideration of Woolworth when planning the elevators and he was personally involved.  Two of the elevators, which ran from the lobby to the 54^th floor, were the fastest elevators in the world, traveling at 700 feet per minute.

Astonishing detail went into the facade -- photo NYC-Architecture.com

A messy law suit was filed two months after the building opened.  The building managers, Broadway-Park Place Company, had given a monopoly to the Virginia Bear Water Company to supply drinking water to the tenants.  When some tenants like the Friesdedt Underpinning Company chose to buy from the Pine Hill Crystal Spring Company instead they were forbidden to use the elevators to transport the five-gallon bottles.   Office workers were forced to carry the bottles from two to thirty-seven flights of stairs.

F. W. Woolworth died on April 8, 1919, one of the wealthiest men in the country.  His obituary stated “The Woolworth fortune, which was built out of nickels and dimes, is estimated at $65,000,000.”

Because Woolworth owned the building outright, his heirs were assessed inheritance tax of $3 million on the property.  In June 1920 they obtained a mortgage in that amount—the first mortgage carried on the building—from the Prudential Life Insurance Company of Newark.  Four years later the F. W. Woolworth Company obtained ownership.

It was not until January 16, 1931 that Cass Gilbert received the gold medal of the Society of Arts and Sciences for designing the Woolworth Building.  During the awards dinner, he was recognized as “the prophet of a new and great movement in architecture.”  President of the society, artist Walter Russell said “He forever destroyed the groveling power of the horizontal line and replaced it with the spiritual uplift of the perpendicular…He was the forerunner of the new space-time, air-conscious age in which architecture took the lead.”

The WPA “New York City Guide” in 1939 would echo the sentiment.  “The Woolworth Building was a genuine contribution to the development of the American skyscraper style.  It represents one of the earliest attempts to express the steel-frame structure—a departure from the ‘immobility of mass and weight of masonry’ that characterized the classic type of building.”

Thomas E. Dewey established his offices here and, when he began his investigation into racketeering and organized crime in Manhattan, things got lively.   Dewey’s offices housed extensive files on mobsters as well as the identities of informants and witnesses.   Other office workers on the floor became accustomed to seeing police officers assigned to the hallway outside Dewey’s offices 24 hours a day.

In April 1970 the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a hearing in an attempt to designate the Woolworth Building a landmark.   The Woolworth Company’s attorney, Kenneth W. Greenawait, attacked the proposed designation saying that the landmark law was “onerous and discriminatory.”   The owner, he said, is “discriminated against, effectively deprived of rights of possession without compensation, and thus denied equal protection of the law.”

Still, in 1977 the Woolworth Company initiated a restoration program to repair the badly weathered and deteriorating terra cotta.  A detailed inspection revealed that there were no structural problems and that only the cladding needed attention.    In the course of restoration, all 4,400 windows were replaced with aluminum, energy efficient ones. 

Terra cotta elements were duplicated in cast stone and fiberglass; upwards of one-third of the original material.

A stained glass ceiling panel can be seen in the corridor just past the masterful glass mosaic dome in the lobby -- photo by PAT M IN NYC

The magnificent Woolworth Building was finally designated a New York City landmark in April 1983.  Seventy years earlier, upon the building’s completion, Edwin Cochran said of it “The Woolworth Building has been called ‘A Cathedral of Commerce’—a monument to small things, but it is even more—it is the colossal and enduring gift to civilization of a true-born, patriotic American, Frank W. Woolworth, and it stands unique in the history of great buildings through the world.”

The World Trade Center Survivor -- Fritz Koenig's "The Sphere"

The Sphere, rededicated as a memorial to the victims of The World Trade Center - photo by Alice Lum

From the earliest conception of The World Trade Center, art was to play an integral part. Works by esteemed artists Louise Nevelson, Joan Miro, James Rosati, Masayuki Nagare, Alexander Calder, Roy Lichtenstein, Cynthia Mailman, Germaine Keller, Romare Bearden, and Kenneth Snelson were displayed in the two soaring silver towers. In addition to the works commissioned for the buildings, the Cantor Fitzgerald offices housed some 300 sculptures and drawings by Auguste Rodin.

In the plaza, a fountain by Elyn Zimmerman served as a memorial to the victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The World Trade Center buildings were not only a place of business, but a place of beauty and art.

On the morning of September 11, 2001 it all came to an end.

In the five-acre plaza, prior to that morning, there stood an abstract sculpture by Bavarian artist Fritz Koenig titled “Kugelkaryatide” or “Great Spherical Caryatid.” The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, owner of the World Trade Center, commissioned the piece five years before the buildings were completed.

Koenig cast the 25-foot high bronze and steel piece in 52 segments. He intended for the 45,000-pound sphere to symbolize world peace through world trade. Ironically, when finished it was installed amid a circle of fountains designed by Minoru Yamasaki, simulating the Grand Mosque of Mecca with the Kugelkaryatide standing in place of the Kaaba.

The Sphere as it appeared before the morning of September 11, 2001

Over the years World Trade Center workers who gathered around the sculpture to eat lunch or relax gave the sculpture the unofficial name “The Sphere.”

On the morning of September 11 when the enormous Trade Towers fell, the artwork inside and around them was obliterated. Of the priceless bronze Rodins on the 104th Floor, nothing remained. Masayuki Nagare’s black granite sculpture “Cloud Fortress” and James Rosati’s stainless steel “Ideogram” were reduced to unidentifiable particles. “Commuter Landscape,” “Path Mural,” and “Fan Dancing with the Birds,” three decorative murals by Cynthia Mailman, Germaine Keller and Hunt Slonem, respectively, were lost forever.

But amazingly, as workers slowly removed tons of rubble and twisted steel beams, Fritz Koenig’s Sphere began to emerge. Although damaged, the sculpture that was meant to symbolize world peace had survived.

Inside a gaping hole ripped open at the top of the sphere, workers found a Bible, an airliner seat and documents from one of the upper floor offices. Koenig said later “It became its own cemetery.”

The Sphere was carefully dismantled and sent to storage near JFK International Airport. Almost immediately, the prospect of re-erecting the sculpture as a memorial was discussed. The artist was opposed. It was, he said, “a beautiful corpse.”

Yet as it was the only remainder of the World Trade Centers left essentially intact, Koenig relented. He personally supervised the re-erection of the sculpture in Battery Park. Fifteen iron workers and four engineers worked to create a new base for the Sphere. Six months to the day after the barbaric attacks on the Towers, The Sphere was rededicated on March 11, 2002.

Koenig remarked, “It was a sculpture, now it’s a monument. It now has a different beauty, one I could never imagine. It has its own life – different from the one I gave to it.” An eternal flame was lit on September 11, 2002 to the victims of the attack.

Upon completion of the National September 11 Memorial at Ground Zero, The Sphere will go home again.

A Place with Northern Light -- The 1908 Gainsborough Studios 222 Central Park South

Painters and sculptors in Manhattan at the turn of the last century faced a problem. There was little residential space available that provided sufficient northern light for them to work, or with adequate facilities to exhibit their art. Artist V. V. Sewell complained in 1903 “People have no conception of how difficult it is for one to find a suitable studio in New York.”

In order to solve the problem, at least for themselves, a group of established artists formed the Gainsborough Corporation with portrait painter August Franzen as president.  Their purpose was to build an artist’s cooperative studio building. The name came, most likely, from Franzen himself who admitted that Gainsborough’s work was a model for his own.

Included in the group were Elliott Daingerfield, vice president, well known for his dream-like landscapes; Colin Campbell Cooper, treasurer, who did portraits and landscapes; and Barron Collier, secretary, who was the lone non-artistic member and who most likely provided the financial leadership.

Central Park South was a perfect location for the intended studio. Facing the park, the artists were guaranteed that their northerly light would never be blocked by construction. The posh Plaza Hotel was completed in 1907, giving the neighborhood added prestige; and the American Fine Arts Society Building was a mere two blocks to the south.

The cooperative purchased and demolished the home of millionaire Walter E Delabarre at 222 Central Park South in 1907. The group commissioned Charles W. Buckham to design their studios. Buckham was an astute choice, the architect having innovated the concept of duplex apartment buildings.

He was given the task of designing a building appropriate to the status of well-established, successful artists while providing them with substantial light and space. Because only the Central Park façade would receive the flooding northern sunlight; the rear of the building would be reserved for rental apartments.

The Gainsborough Studios in 1909, the year after completion

Completed in 1908, the result was two duplex cooperative studios on each floor facing Central Park, and four single rental apartments to each southern floor. Because apartment buildings were restricted by law to be no more than one and a half times as high as the width of the street, the plans were filed under “hotel” to circumvent the restriction. Therefore a common kitchen and dining room were included and kitchen facilities in the apartments kept at a minimum. The artists enjoyed 18-foot ceilings, mahogany and oak woodwork, built-in cabinets with leaded glass doors and art tiled fireplaces.

Residents had use of a “ladies’ reception, package and telephone room, as well as a restaurant on the ground floor.” A central vacuum cleaner system, laundry room and storage room added to the conveniences.

It is the lavish ornamentation of the Gainsborough, however, that stands out today. A remarkable transition from Victorian to Edwardian styles, the lower levels exhibit traditional sculptural decoration while the upper floors explode in Arts and Crafts-style tilework.

Photo by Enric Archivell

Separating the first and second floors was a superb terra cotta frieze executed by sculptor Isidore Konti, a friend of both Daingerfield and Franzen. Titled “A Festival Procession of the Arts,” it depicts in classical style people from children to the elderly offering gifts to the altar of the arts. Helen W. Henderson, in 1917, described it as the “great charm of the building.”

Photo hausfitzgerald.com

Centered above the entrance was a carved painter’s palette on which a large bust of Thomas Gainsborough sat in a classical niche.

photo hausfitzgerald.com

Each of the large, two-story studio windows surrounded a Roman-style pseudo doorway filled with stone quatrefoils and fronted by small ornate, wrought iron balconies.

From the sixth story upwards, the façade bursts in a kaleidoscope of geometric, colorful glazed tiles produced at the Moravian Tile Works in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Henry Mercer, the factory's owner, devoted much of his life to researching and rediscovering the process of 18th Century German pottery and tile-making. Above, rather than a cornice which would theoretically lessen light, the building is finished with a stone corbel of shells.

The Gainsborough attracted esteemed artists and in 1912, in addition to the founding group, residents included Montague Flagg, Edward Potthast, Robert MacCameron, Frederick Crane, Content Johnson, and Albert L. Groll. That year, on August 28, a fire broke out in the Colorado Boarding and Livery Stables on 58th Street, directly to the rear. Although there was a 12-foot alley separating the buildings, the “artist tenants of the studios were awaked by the crash of glass in their rear windows, due to the heat. Women hastily slipped on opera cloaks over their night dresses and hurried to the elevators” as reported in The New York Times the next morning.

Although the building was not seriously damaged, it “was scorched.”

Over the years the Gainsborough was home to other celebrated figures such as renowned photographer Erwin Blumenfeld; portrait painter and president of the National Academ of Design, Dewitt Lockman; author Thomas Alibone Janvier and Barbara Howard, daughter of Hollywood mogul Jack Warner.

A minor scandal ensued in 1924 when sculptor Helene M. R. White was padlocked inside the studios of Consignment Arts, Inc. on the first floor by interior decorator Paul C. Leatherman and kept prisoner there for a weekend.

By the 1950’s the building’s residents tired of the Arts and Crafts décor and hired interior designer Donald Deskey to remodel the lobby and entrance. Deskey removed the decorative iron entrance doors with aluminum ones and stripped out the period detailing.  Around that time the ornamental balconies were removed.

Thirty years later, however, the corporation reversed itself and in 1981 spent $100,000 to restore the lobby and reconstruct the iron doors based on early photographs.





In 1988 under the guidance of architect and resident Tod Williams, an exterior restoration was initiated at a cost of over $1 million. New tiles were made to replace those too damaged to salvage and the Konti’s ornate frieze and the bust of Gainsborough were removed and replicated.  The window balconies were not returned.

The Gainsborough Studios was landmarked in February 1988, The Landmarks Preservation Commission calling it “an unusual building, well-adapted and suitably decorated for its specific purpose.”

A Palace for Horses -- The Gould Carriage House 213 West 58th Street

Photo Unity Center New York

When Jay Gould died in 1892 he left his four children between $65 and $70 million.

The Gould heirs reacted to the sudden flood of cash differently. Anna spent lavishly and married, successively Count Boniface de Castellane and the Duc de Talleyrand. Frank Jay loved gambling and was twice divorced. George Jay had three children with Guinevere Sinclair before marrying her.

Helen Miller Gould, however, was different.

Trained in finance by her father, she attended the New York University School of Law. While her siblings frolicked the summers away in Newport, she was content to spend quiet time at Lyndhurst, Jay Gould’s magnificent Gothic Revival estate in Tarrytown-on-Hudson. Embarrassed by her father’s cut-throat reputation, Helen spent the rest of her life supporting various charities.

Helen remained in the Gould mansion on 5th Avenue at 47th Street while her siblings moved on. As time passed, though, there was the problem of adequate accommodations for her horses and carriages.

On November 13, 1901 Helen M. Gould purchased for $107,500 the four-story brownstone residence of Lambert Suydam at 212 West 59th Street. The property extended south to 58th Street where the Suydam’s private stable was located, in line with the stables of other neighboring millionaires. Curious about the sale, The New York Times sent a reporter to the Fifth Avenue house for more information.

The Gould mansion -- 5th Avenue at 47th Street

“When inquiry was made at Miss Gould’s residence last evening she sent word that she did not care to say anything in regard to the purchase,” reported the Times.

It would not be long before Helen Gould’s intentions were obvious. The Suydam stable was demolished to make way for her own private carriage house; one fit for royalty.

Designed by York & Sawyer the grand brick and limestone stable was based on King Henry IV’s 17th Century Place des Vosges in Paris. Completed in 1903, the four levels of the French Renaissance structure housed the Gould horses and carriages, hay and feed, as well as apartments for the coachman and groom.

The great, soaring chimneys on either end, the attenuated, hipped slate roof and the ornate iron-railed balcony on over the arched entranceway joined to create a palatial structure for draft animals. Sawyer added a near-whimsical touch in the huge, carved limestone tethering rings on either side of the entrance.

Helen Gould finally married in 1913 at the age of 45. Time Magazine said of her “she was plain, plump, not much concerned with ‘Society’ – she dedicated herself to good works while her brothers and sister went out in the world.” She died in 1938, The New York Times calling her “the best loved woman in the country.”

Helen Miller Gould

The Gould carriage house is now the headquarters of The Unity Center New York, which describes itself as a “worldwide Spiritual Movement dedicated to helping people discover and express their divine potential.”

The regal Parisian-style stable was designated a New York City landmark on August 29, 1989.

The 1894 Scribner's Sons Building -- No. 155 Fifth Avenue

1846 was at a time when quiet evenings were spent with a bound book and one’s level of sophistication could be measured by his personal library.  That year Charles Scribner and Isaac D. Baker formed the publishing firm “Baker & Scribner” which, after Baker’s death, became Charles Scribner Company.

Having started out in part of a chapel of an old brick church at the corner of Nassau Street and Park Row, the growing company moved in 1856 to 377-379 Broadway; then to 124 Grand Street in 1858; and later to 654 Broadway. In 1875 it moved again to 743-745 Broadway.  But by 1892 the firm would need to expand yet again.

Charles Scribner, Sr., had died in 1871 but his firm, now known as Charles Scribner’s Sons, continued its distinguished reputation as a publisher of theological, historical and philosophical books.  Scribner’s published the first American edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, started a subscriptions department, and expanded into magazine publishing with highly popular periodicals like Scribner’s Monthly, Century Magazine, and the children’s St. Nicholas Magazine.

The firm purchased the Glenham Hotel on Fifth Avenue between 21^st and 22^nd Streets for about $250,000 (approximately $5.5 million today).  The New York Timesannounced on August 3, 1893 that “an office building will be erected on the site.”

The “office building” would be designed by the well-respected architect Ernest Flagg.  At the time social reform was gaining steam; and Flagg was already recognized for his concern with adequate light and ventilation, sanitary conditions and zoning laws regulating the height of buildings and setbacks.  The architect was a major proponent of the Beaux Arts style, and the new Scribner’s Sons Building would be a fine example.

Flanking the central dormer, the dates of the firm's founding and the construction of the new building were carved.

Flagg looked to France for inspiration, as evidenced in the similarities between Edmond Guillaume’s 1880 Maison Commerciale at 3 rue d’Uzes and Flagg's designs for Scribner’s.  His resultant limestone-clad structure, completed in 1894, rose six stories to a mansard roof.  An elegant glass marquee sheltered patrons arriving at the first floor retail space.  Below ground was the packing department, offices took up the second floor, and the upper floors housed the subscription-book, surplus stock, magazine and mailing departments.

Ernest Flagg’s minute attention to the functional aspects of his designs extended to the bookshelves in the new building.  The New York Times noted that “at the suggestion of Ernest Flagg, the architect, they had their entire store…refitted with glass shelves.  Mr. Flagg originated the idea, having observed that wood and iron shelving, whether smooth or covered with cloth, had the effect of wearing the bindings of books.”

The heavy, pricey shelves were custom-made in France in two sizes and thicknesses—the larger being three-quarters of an inch and the smaller half an inch thick with rounded edges.  “This glass for one thing is perfectly inflexible,” explained the newspaper, “which gives it an advantage over wood.  Its strength also has been abundantly proved.  It is not only more cleanly looking than anything else in the way of shelving, but it in fact easier to keep clean.”

The Times said “The Messrs. Scribner are enthusiastic in praise of glass shelving, and all who examine it are impressed with it value in the preservation of books.”

Exquisite carvings surround the plaque that originally announced Scribner's Sons.

By May 25, 1894 the move into the new building, deemed byThe Times as “built of white limestone and graceful with classic simplicity,” was nearly completed.  Over 300,000 volumes had been carefully packed and moved over a period of a month.  The newspaper was astounded that there had been no damage to the inventory.  “Of all the delicately beautiful volumes which were transferred from the old building to the new—missals, books of hours, incunabula, bindings of the old masters, and of Cobden-Sanderson, new editions in covers fresh as the lilacs o May—not one was even imperceptibly damaged.  Not one!”

Well-dressed women window shop in front of the bookstore in 1895 -- King's Photographic Views of New York (copyright expired)

The Times estimated the cost of the new building by using the taxes and interest on the property as a guide.  It arrived at a figure of “more than $500,000.”

A clever cover illustration depicts women gazing into the store window of the new Scribner bookstore in November 1894 -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

Scribner’s Sons was not the only large publishing house and bookstore to move that year.  Dodd, Mead & Co. established itself right next door at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 21^st Street, and D. Appleton & Co. moved into its new building at Fifth Avenue and 13^th Street.  A journalist noted in December 1894 that “The growing literary taste of the public is being shown by the publishers who are moving into enlarged quarters to meet the demands of their customers.”

A white marble staircase led to additional retail space.  Note the interesting gas lights encircling the columns -- King's Photographic Views of New York 1895 (copyright expired)

The writer made note of Scribner’s retail area.  “Inside the new building of Charles Scribner’s Sons there is the appearance of a large public library, with a wonderful collection of books, fresh and new, and in beautiful bindings of many kinds.  Book shelves run up into a second story, and in the rear there is a top light of glass so large that there is not a dim nook or corner to be found.”

Scribner’s was fortunate to have published The Sherman Letters that year—a 50-year compilation of correspondence between brothers General William Tecumseh Sherman and Senator John Sherman dating from 1837 to 1891.  The firm also published Frances Hodgson Burnett’s newest children’s book Piccino that year; the latest in a series that included the popular Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Meticulous in its choice of authors, Scribner would introduce and represent over the years Edith Wharton, Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling and George Santayana among many others.

In honor of Theodore Roosevelt's return from his African safari in 1910, Scribner's is framed in bunting and a two-story picture of Roosevelt is decorated with two large flags -- photograph by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWE01010&SMLS=1&RW=1366&RH=667

Scribner’s Sons tradition of uptown moves continued.  After just two decades in its handsome headquarters, the firm called back Ernest Flagg to design another, larger, office building and bookstore further uptown in 1913. 

The Scribner family retained ownership of the old property, however.  In January 1934 it leased the building to the 153 Fifth Avenue Corporation which announced plans to remodel “with stores on the first floor and lofts above, at a cost of about $40,000.”  Architect Arthur Weiser made the renovations and it was possibly at this time that the marvelous glass marquee was removed.

The store level was modernized again in 1969; yet the beautiful French detailing of Ernest Flagg was mostly preserved.  By now the Scribner family no longer owned the building, having sold it in 1951.

Lacy cast iron spandrels trace the shape of the original glass marquee. 

In 1973 the United Synagogue of America purchased the former bookstore/publishing building.  Organized the same year that Scribner left the building—in 1913—its goal was to establish a middle-ground between the Reform and Orthodox communities. The group dubbed the building "Rapaport House."

The organization of 700 affiliated congregations used the building until 2007 when it was sold to Philips International Holding Corp. for $26.5 million.  A year later the company resold it to the Eretz Group for $38 million.

Ernest Flagg’s handsome and restrained Beaux Arts building survives essentially intact—a reminder of a time when publishing houses populated Fifth Avenue south of 23^rd Street, and when families settled in at night with a book.

Snarling lions adorn the brackets upholding the carved balcony at the third floor.

photographs taken by the author

The Houses that Time and Change Passed by -- Nos. 120 and 122 East 92nd Street

North of the established city, surrounded mostly by farm land, Adam C. Flanagan hired Albor Howell to build his three-story wooden house at what would become 122 East 92nd Street. Howell was a carpenter and builder by trade and he produced for Flanagan a delightful Italianate-style home.

Openwork columns supported the ample front porch where the cooling summer breezes would be enjoyed. Floor-to-ceiling parlor windows could be opened behind the louvered shutters to allow the night air to circulate. Slightly arched second and third story windows added to the visual appeal under a deeply overhanging cornice.

Flanagan lived in his modest and respectable frame house for a decade before the neighborhood began building up. In 1870 two homes appeared directly across the street, and in 1871 the house next door, at No. 120, was erected.

No. 120 was also a frame building, snuggled directly up against the Flanagan house. Three wooden stories sat on a high, brick basement level, and were accessed by a steep wooden staircase. With porch columns nearly matching its next door neighbor, the new house was a perfect compliment.

Like the older home, too, No. 120 had a double entrance door to the right, with two floor-to-ceiling French doors in the parlor. A cast iron fence protected the small front yards of both properties. Adam Flanagan’s new neighbor would be one of the last frame houses in Manhattan; the building law of 1877 would forbid the construction of wooden buildings.

By 1894 No. 120 was owned by Anton Hoffman, a cooper. That was the year that the entire block of residents took issue with the Salvation Army at 107 East 92nd Street, complaining about the noise of the cymbals and drums.  A petition was signed that asserted “It disturbs our rest Sundays and is using up our nerves. One of our neighbors is suffering from nervous prostration and it is simply preventing his recovery.”

Hoffman chimed in, saying that when, on the day of his daughter’s death the Salvation Army was asked “not to parade or to beat drums or cymbals until after the funeral, the reply was: ‘We have a permit to parade, and we are going to do it. Forward march.’”

The Hoffmans lived at No. 120 East 92nd Street for most of the next century; a total of 70 years. During that time there were no changes made to the structure. Similarly, No. 122 managed to ignore the 20th Century, with little alteration until renovations were made in 2005 and a set-back roof addition was added.

Both of the remarkable Victorian survivors were added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 29, 1882. In 1996 No. 120 sold for $4.2 million and was sold again in 2010.

The two little wooden houses create a picturesque and enchanting ensemble amidst the brick and steel of Uptown Manhattan.  The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission said that No. 120 "...comes as a delightful surprise.  Time and change have passed it by, as well as the very similar frame house that adjoins it to the east."

Engine Company 33 -- Nos. 42-44 Great Jones Street

photo by Alice Lum

The collection of sometimes rag-tag volunteer fire companies was consolidated and organized into New York’s professional fire department in 1865.  The fire houses were utilitarian structures designed to accommodate vehicles and horses on the ground level and fire fighters on the upper stories.  There was little effort at grand design.

But that would all change within a few decades; mostly through the genius of architect Napoleon LeBrun who stepped into the position of the fire department’s main architect in 1879.  His sometimes lavish fire houses took the form of Italian palazzos and French chateaux.  Having designed over 40 such structures, LeBrun & Sons designed their last fire house in 1895. When the city decided to build a new station for Engine Company No. 33 three years later, architects Ernest Flagg and W. B. Chambers had big shoes to fill.  

Engine Company 33 was formed the same year that the Fire Department was organized, and it still operated from its original house on Mercer Street.  Now the city planned erect a new station for the Company on plots purchased at Nos. 42 and 44 Great Jones Street.  The plans were to incorporate the Fire Chief’s “night headquarters” within the building.

The neighborhood had been, half a century earlier, among the most exclusive residential areas of the city, known as the Bond Street area.  Here wealthy citizens with names like Astor and Delano lived in fine Federal-style mansions.  By now, however, the upper-class had moved on and the old homes that had not been converted for business purposes housed sometimes less-than-respectable boarders.

In 1897 Mary Norton had died in her home at No. 42 Great Jones Street at just 39 years old.  Early that same month, on March 5, May Franklyn who lived next door in No. 44 was shot twice by Philip Metz.  The New York Times said May was “described as an actress” and that she “told the police that Philip Metz shot her because he was jealous.”

The two old houses were demolished in 1898 and construction began on the new Engine Company 33 house.  By now public buildings were being designed with the City Beautiful Movement in mind—a philosophy that citizens who were surrounded by beautiful, monumental buildings would be prompted to lead lives of social harmony and order.  Flagg’s and Chambers’ design would follow the lead.

The building, completed in 1899, was nothing if not monumental.  Unlike its earliest predecessors the French Beaux-Arts structure nearly dismissed its utilitarian purpose in favor of flamboyant display.  Above the solid limestone base with two bay doors, a grand central arch propelled upward.  The concave arch was decorated with a bold, ornate cartouche, and within it three stories of windows were lavished with French-styled railings, a handsome pediment, and balcony.  Above it all the deeply-overhanging cornice was supported by wonderful over-sized, paired brackets.

Fantastic paired brackets uphold the overhanging cornice -- photo by Alice Lum

Along with Engine Company 33, Fire Chief Edward F. Crocker moved into the new building.  A newspaper reported that his office was decorated with “the usual paintings, statuary, and hunting accoutrements” expected of a high-level official. 

The Company received a new steam-powered engine built by the Clapp & Jones Manufacturing Company that could shoot a stream of water 215 feet.  The company's vehicles would be pulled by horses for years to come; seemingly fearless animals trained to pull the tenders and engines at break-neck speed through crowded city streets.

On September 28, 1901 the company was responding to a fire at West Broadway and Houston Street, going “at full speed,” according to The New York Times.  Workmen had piled stone and brick building materials in the street near the curb near No. 49 West 3^rdStreet.  The tender ran squarely into the pile.  “Every man on the tender was thrown to the street,” reported the newspaper.  “Fireman E. B. Murphy landed on his face and slid along in the mud, but was not badly hurt.”

When an ambulance arrived, Murphy refused to go to the hospital, preferring instead to join his company responding to the alarm.  Chief Croker was on the scene and, although the fire fighter did not go to the hospital, Croker took him back to No 42 Great Jones Street.

The Engine Company's number is incorporated into the elaborate design of the ironwork -- photo by Alice Lum

It was the sort of valiant attitude the chief respected in his men and expected of them.  A few years later he would remark “Firemen are going to get killed. When they join the department they face that fact.  When a man becomes a fireman his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished.  What he does after that is all in the line of work.”

At the turn of the century, gas heating and lighting, poor electrical wiring, flimsy construction techniques and overcrowded tenements were all the ingredients necessary for devastating fires.  Alarms of fire sometimes sounded in quick succession.  Not all of them, however, were real—but each had to be taken seriously.

On the last day of May in 1902 the men from Engine Company 33 found themselves rushing from one location to another.  It started that morning when a man rushed into the fire house reporting a fire in the building at 23 West 4^thStreet—a six-story business structure.  The firemen arrived to find smoke pouring out of the windows.  After breaking down the door of the locked building, the men rushed throughout the smoke-filled building looking for the fire.

Finally one of the men went to the cellar where he found that a stove filled with soft coal, banked for the night, was sending out the smoke.  There was no fire.

As the firefighters were packing up, a bell began clanging on an upper floor “in a most alarming way,” said The Times.  “It sent the firemen scurrying up the stairs, and added to the excitement on the street.”  The men had triggered the automatic burglar alarm.   They turned on the dampers of the stove and headed back to the fire house.

But they had hardly made it back before another alarm was sounded.  They rushed to No. 201 Greene Street where the clothing shop of Silas Whitcup on the fifth floor of the building was in flames.  The men struggled with the stubborn fire before finally extinguishing it.   Whitcup suffered $2,000 in damages.

The neighborhood around the fire house was filled with garment and millinery factories around this time.  The cloth, straw, glues, machine oil and ribbons made good kindling if a fire was sparked.  Just five buildings away from Engine Company 33 was the hat-making operation of M. A. Schwartz at No. 30 Great Jones Street in 1906.  Next door to Schwartz’s establishment was the Mission House of Father Fitzpatrick where as many as 300 boys and men were fed and sheltered.

Around noon on May 29 there were only about ten girls working in the hat factory, along with Sammy, the son of the proprietor.  The Evening World reported that “In the rear of the place is a loft where the supplies are kept.  It is very dark and a gas jet is kept burning constantly.  Sammy entered the room and climbed up on a pile of big packing boxes to get some chiffon.  He was nicely balanced when the boxes caved in and he fell to the floor with a crash.  Most of the boxes fell on him.”

Some of the boxes and chiffon fell against the open gas flame and the fabric blazed instantly.  Little Sammy got himself out and ran for the door, followed by the ten girls.   The Evening World said that the girls “fled, screaming and some of them ran to Engine Company No. 33 a few doors away.  Number 33 was out in a second, and as there was a great yellow flame shooting from the windows an alarm was turned in that brought more engines.”

When the firefighters arrived, just minutes after the fire broke out, they were surprised to find a large stream of water “playing through the rear windows.  At times it broke through the front and into the street.”

Instead of panicking, the boys from the mission had rushed to the fire hose on the third floor of that building and shot its stream out the window onto the flames in the adjoining building.  “Great tongues of fire swept almost in their faces, but they stood their ground pluckily and poured the stream straight into the heart of the white-hot storage room,” said the newspaper.

The quick and brave action of the mission boys held the fire at bay until Engine Company 33 could extinguish it totally.

photo by Alice Lum

Fire stations often drew the admiration and of “buffs” who haunted the streets outside and formed friendships of a sort with the fire crew.  The number of “buffs” who gathered outside Engine Company 33 became a problem, since it was also the headquarters of Chief Croker.  On Independence Day 1907 the crowd of “buffs” was so great that the fire patrol was called out to disperse them.  A few ended up being arrested and some fined.

Insulted, they banded together to form a club.  “The ‘buffs’ of Engine Company 33, on Great Jones Street, whose trials and tribulations have recently been aired in the newspapers, are determined that their enemies, who say they have no business making the vicinity of Chief Croker’s night headquarters their congregating place, have determined to form a club, and with this object in view they are going to raffle off a five-dollar gold piece to-night,” reported The New York Times on August 31, 1908.  “The proceeds of the raffle will be donated to the renting and equipping of a room where the ‘buffs’ can assemble without fear of police or fire patrol interference.”

One of the “buffs” told the newspaper “we made up our minds to start our own club, with a piano, chairs, and a pinochle deck, and when we get it going the ‘cops’ won’t have a chance to say ‘Move on’ again, so far as we are concerned.”

The men of Engine Company 33, apparently tired of the nuisance, responded to the plans.  One of them told a reporter “That piano had better be a well-behaved, quiet instrument, for if it disturbs the sleep of No. 33’s fire-fighters something will be apt to drop.”  The journalist added “The fireman did not say whether the object that would get the fall was the piano of the ‘buff’ who is destined to play it.”

When the first alarm was sounded for the fire in the Asch Building on March 25, 1911 it was Engine Company 33 that responded.  Upstairs in the building was the Triangle Waist Factory where dozens of women, mostly in their 20s, were trapped by the flames.  When firefighters arrived they had difficulty getting near the building due to the number of bodies scattered on the sidewalk—women who had thrown themselves from the windows 9^th and 10^th floors.

Life nets broke apart with the force of falling bodies and when the fire ladders were extended, they were too short to reach the floors where the victims were trapped.  It was all over within thirty horrific minutes; but in the end 146 shirtwaist workers were dead.

Lieutenant George Dunn later testified as a witness in the investigation into the fire, as did Chief Croker. Five weeks after the fire, on May 1, 1911, Edward F. Croker resigned.  He was not forced out, nor did he resign out of public humiliation.  He explained that he was stepping down after 27 years with the FDNY to devote the rest of his life “to preventing, instead of fighting fires.”

A fire on December 11, 1922 resulted in a heart-warming story for New Yorkers.  The fire in the five-story building at No. 52 East 4^th Street started on the second floor in the loft occupied by Klein & Sons.  It had already established itself before a patrolman noticed the smoke and turned in the alarm.   By the time Engine Company 33 arrived shortly before midnight the floor was filled with dense smoke.

Fireman Frank Maixner made his way onto the second floor and groped through the space to get windows open to release the smoke.  In the murky darkness he heard the whining of a dog.   Feeling his way through the darkness, he located the animal, which was unable to walk, and carried it to safety.

The dog was a brown collie and the firemen immediately named it “Smoky Joe.”  The New York Times noted that “A few moments later, however, the name was lengthened to ‘Smoky Josephine.”  The female dog was in great distress from smoke inhalation and after the blaze was under control two firefighters “worked over her and revived her somewhat.”  Then the men noticed something else.

“Then it was seen that Josephine was worried over other things.  The arrival of junior ‘Smoky Joes’ and ‘Smoky Josephines’ was imminently expected."

Battalion Chief John J. P. Waldron took the pregnant animal to the Hospital of the New York Women’s League for Animals in his personal red automobile.  The Times reported that “Brown collie pup mascots are expected to be the style in firehouses in the neighborhood soon.”

In 1948 Ladder Company 9 moved from its old Elizabeth Street house to join Engine Company 33 in the Great Jones fire house.  Like Engine Company 33, it had been organized in 1865.  Firefighting was still a men-only profession and would stay that way for another thirty years.  But after the Fire Department was sued for discrimination in 1979, 41 women were hired in 1982.

The women soon found that being hired did not mean being accepted.  One of them was Cecelia O. Salters, the first woman to join Ladder Company 9.  She later reported that the men quickly let her know her presence was not appreciated.  Although, as she told reporter Evelyn Nieves later, “some shunned her, some made snide comments, others became overprotective.”

Salters toughed it out and when former transit police officer Andre W. Cox joined Engine Company 33 things got a little better for her.  Cox said he admired her “grace under pressure” and the two quietly began seeing one another.  For two years no one suspected their romance; but when they finally admitted their involvement, they were met mostly with acceptance.

On the evening of July 21, 1990 the couple married—the first New York City firefighters from the same firehouse to do so.  Half of the firehouse’s fifty members were present at the wedding.

The firehouse on Great Jones Street was devastated after 14 of its firefighters responded to the attacks on the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001.  One of them was Lieutenant Kevin Pfeifer, whose brother Joseph was a battalion chief.  When Engine Company 33 arrived at the disaster the two brothers spotted one another and exchanged a quick word before going in separate directions.  It would be the last words they would share.

Both of the Pfeifer brothers died that morning.  Of the 14 members of Engine Company 33, only four survived.  September 11, 2001 was the darkest day in the history of the Company’s 136-year history.

photo by Alice Lum

The exterior of Flagg’s and Chambers’ monumental fire house is little changed today.  It was designated a New York City landmark in 1968; at which time the Landmarks Preservation Commission called it “an exceptionally distinguished public building.”