Arnold Brunner's 1905 11th Street Public Baths -- 538 East 11th Street

Water-themed designs like porpoises surrounding the cartouches and Neptune's tridents decorate the facade -- photo by Alice Lum

As the 19^th century drew to a close and the city’s poor crowded into cramped tenements, the problem of bathing was increasingly serious.  In the Lower East Side in 1896 there was one bathtub for every 79 families.

Half a century earlier the public had demanded action by the city.  By the time of the Civil War middle- and upper-class families in New York had begun bathing regularly, as the Europeans did.  But the lower classes had no means to bathe.  By 1858 the Committee for Free Public Baths had been formed, but nothing would be done about the situation for decades.

Even after the New York Senate passed a law on April 21, 1895 requiring that all first and second class cities create free public bathing facilities, Manhattan’s first bath did not open until 1901; governmental red tape miring the process.

Following the opening of the Rivington Street baths on the Lower East Side in 1901, the project gained momentum.   In 1903 the City bought two lots at 538-540 East 11^th Street in the Tomkins Square neighborhood which was populated mainly by German immigrants.  Architect Arnold Brunner was commissioned to design a public baths.  Construction was completed in 1905.

The first years of the 20^th century were marked by the City Beautiful Movement.  The philosophy behind it was that imposing, monumental structures would inspire citizens to behave consistently with their surroundings.  Brunner’s baths would follow that viewpoint—a gleaming white Italian Renaissance structure with splashes of Beaux Arts ornamentation.  Situated among the dark brown brick tenement buildings, it shimmered like a pearl.  The building, constructed of Indiana limestone, cost the city $102,989.

The Bureau of City Betterment of the Citizens’ Union of the City of New York had laid out their instructions for proper public baths:

1  * People’s baths houses should look and be clean, feel warm, smell sweet and be quiet and orderly.

2. * Bathing is a means of safeguarding the public welfare by the prevention of disease and by the raising of the standard of personal cleanliness and morality.
*  By the maintenance of free public baths universal bathing is more nearly and most economically accomplished.

The 11^th Street Baths followed these principals.  There were two separate entrances; one for males and one for females.  No proper Victorian would have mixed the sexes even in the lobby.    There were 94 rain baths (today called “showers”), 67 for men and 27 for the women; and seven bathtubs, two for men and 5 for women.   Bathers would bring their own towels and soap.  Privacy was an important factor and each stall had its own changing room.  Each person was allowed 20 minutes to bathe.

Male and female patrons had totally separate facilities -- "Modern Baths and Bath Houses" 1908 (copyright expired)

William Paul Gerhard, in his 1908 book “Modern Baths and Bath Houses,” noted that the 11^th Street Bath was “the only bath in which the generally insufficient city water pressure on the second floor is taken into consideration, and in which provision is accordingly made for pressure and air tanks, supplied from steam pumps and air compressors.”

Privacy was assured by individual shower stalls, each with its own dressing area -- "Modern Baths and Bath Houses" 1908 (copyright expired)

The first summer after the baths opened was insufferably hot.   On the last day of June 1906 14 people died of the heat and The New York Times reported “it was the hottest June since 1901.”  The indigent poor in the Tompkins Square neighborhood suffered.  The newspaper noted “The east side, which has always been the worst sufferer in hot waves, again supplied the biggest number of heat cases yesterday.”   To escape the heat people sought the cooling waters of the Public Baths.

“At the Eleventh Street baths people stood in lines four deep,” reported The Times.  “By and by the crush became so great that, despite the eighty-seven sprays and numerous tubs…the police reserves had to be called to preserve order.  The lines broke, and as each batch came out of the baths two or three hundred rushed to get in.  Order was finally evolved by the police and it was not necessary to make any arrests.”

The public school system used the baths, as well.  With no bathing facilities in students’ homes, shower baths were installed in public schools to promote personal cleanliness.  In 1917 the Board of Education’s Annual Report noted “The public bath is located in 11^th street near Avenue B.  This bath supplements nicely our school shower baths and enable us to reserve the latter for pupils of the intermediate or lower grades.”

In March of 1926 The Times remarked on the success of the city’s system of 15 public baths.  “Tenants in houses that were reared along about the time when the only tub in town was the celebrated marble affair in the late mansion of the Vanderbilts, are using the city-owned showers and pools three or four times a week instead of once or twice.” 

Despite the newspaper’s optimistic attitude, it was obvious to the city that the poor were using the public baths to keep cool rather than clean.  Patronage fell sharply off during the winter months.

Gradually, private bathrooms were installed even in the tenement houses and the need for the free public baths eroded.  By the middle of the century, only three public baths were in operation in the city, one of which was East 11^th Street.  Although in 1958 131,000 persons used the three baths, the city closed the 11^th Street and 109^th Street baths in money-saving move.

Brunner’s miniature limestone palazzo sat neglected for three years, then it was sold in 1961 and converted into a parking garage.  The steps into the arched men’s and women’s entrances were removed and ramps installed to enable cars to drive in.  As the neighborhood declined in the next decade, with Tompkins Square park becoming a notorious drug center, the baths building became a warehouse.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Eddie Adams and his wife Alyssa purchased the building in 1995.  It was converted into a photography studio, the grimy façade cleaned and replacement gates to the arched entrances installed.

Car ramps that replaced the entrance steps of the two outside arches are still evident -- photo by Alice Lum

Despite the abuse suffered by the 11^th Street Public Baths in the last half of the 20^th century, it emerged as “a highly intact example” of Arnold Brunner’s work, as described by the Landmark Preservation Commission.  It is an attractive reminder of a time in New York City when the simply task of taking a bath was difficult for many.

TAXI! The Samuel S. Cox Statue - Tompkins Square Park

In the May 19, 1853 issue of the Columbus, Ohio newspaper Statesman of which he was owner and editor, Samuel S. Cox wrote about the sunset of the previous evening.  His goal was to prod the paper’s readers to appreciate life.   His flowery Victorian prose style gushed on and on.

“What a stormful sunset was that of last night!  How glorious the storm, and how splendid the setting of the sun!  We do not remember ever having seen the like on our round globe  The scene opened in the West, with the whole horizon full of golden, interpenetrating luster which colored the foliage, and brightened every object into its own rich dyes.  The colors grew deeper and richer until the golden luster was transfused into a storm cloud full of the finest lightning, which leaped in dazzling zigzags all around and over the city.”

Cox went on.  And on.  And then went on some more.  He was forever after known as Sunset Cox.

Born in Zanesville, Ohio to a political family, Cox went on to serve as Congressman from Ohio and later from New York.  In 1885 Grover Cleveland appointed him Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.  After only one year, he returned to Washington again as New York’s Congressman.

Samuel S. Cox around the time he served as Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire - Library of Congress

 Cox was a passionate orator, yet he would have undoubtedly passed into oblivion had he not aggressively fought for paid benefits and a 40-hour work week for the United States postal workers.  The Post Office employees dubbed him “the letter carriers’ friend” and the day after his death on September 10, 1889, they started a campaign to erect a monument to him in gratitude.

On September 11 a special meeting of the New York Letter Carriers’ Associate was held.  It was resolved that a committee be formed to collect subscriptions for “a suitable monument to be placed over the remains of the devoted friend of the Letter Carriers of the United States.”

At Cox’s funeral President Grover Cleveland and General William Sherman served as honorary pallbearers.  Among those attending was Louise Lawson, a young woman from a prestigious Ohio family.  Before long she would be even more connected with Samuel S. Cox.

On October 4, 1890 The Illustrated American noted that “Louise Lawson is the sculptress who has been selected by the letter-carriers of the United States to execute a statue of the late Congressman Samuel S. Cox.”  The article told of Lawson’s hard work and artistic study – she trained under Rodin in Paris for a year.  It hinted of her privileged upbringing, as well.  “Many American girls visit those homes of art and are obliged to undergo privations and physical suffering in order to study in the best schools,” it said.  “Miss Lawson’s experiences have not included life in a garret sustained by stray crusts.”

This was the first important commission Lawson had won and The Illustrated American was impressed on how quickly she obtained it.  “It is, of course, the most important she has yet received.  Fame is usually slow in helping forward young sculptors, and few of the men of that profession whose names are now famous achieved public recognition in so short a time as has Miss Lawson.”

The accolades would be short-lived.

The site for the statue was chosen not “over the remains” of Cox as the letter carriers had originally planned, but in Astor Place at Fourth Avenue.  Costing over $10,000 ($8,965 of which went directly to the artist), it was dedicated on July 4, 1891.  Two thousand letter carriers turned out from Brooklyn and New York alone.   Bands and drum corps provided music for a parade that started up Broadway from the Post Office at City Hall Park. 

The New York Times was impressed by the appearance of the postal workers.  “Every man wore white gloves and had a white tie over his collar button,” it reported and “the fat fellows were in a sad minority.”

Lawson’s 8-foot bronze statue depicted Cox speaking in Congress.  The granite pedestal was 12 feet high.  When the American flag was removed The Times issued the first artistic critique.  “Whether it will ever be greatly admired as a work of art is doubtful.”

The Sun’s Guide to New York did not hold back either, saying “It is a stiff, inartistic affair.”

A year after the statue’s dedication, the Board of Aldermen met and resolved “that four lamps be placed about the statue of 'Sunset' Cox in Astor Place.”

The postal employees ignored the critics.   Additional donations were gathered and two additional bronze plaques were added to the pedestal.  One announced “Erected in Grateful and Loving Memory of His Services in Congress” while the other contained the names of the 187 cities in the United States from which contributions were sent.

Four years to the day after its dedication, the statue was turned over to the City by the postal workers.    The monument was draped in flags and flowers and large potted plants were arranged around it.  Louise Lawson was on the platform with Mrs. Cox and city dignitaries.  Games and entertainments had been planned following the formal ceremony, however a severe rainstorm spoiled the day.

Twenty-eight years after its unveiling, the statue should have been safe from further critique; but it was not to be.  The New York Times’ art critic Layton Crippen attacked vehemently.  In the May 7, 1899 New York Times illustrated magazine, he wrote “It has never been alleged…that the figure of Samuel S. Cox, in Astor Place, is a thing of beauty.  But it is equally certain that it is not decorative, and if its surroundings were in harmony with it the City of New York would have to be deserted.”

As plans were being made to extend Lafayette Street, it became obvious that the Cox statue would have to be relocated.   The question was where to put it.  On May 21, 1905 The Times argued that “the statue of ‘Sunset’ Cox, now on its travels, having been crowded out of Astor Place, would gain an explanation of its existence, and as much effect as its character would allow, if it were seen in connection with the Post Office, the subject’s services to the occupants of which it commemorates.”

No one listened.

The monument, which a Times reader in 1904 deemed “the unfortunate statue of Sunset Cox,” was moved to the southwest corner of Tompkins Square Park in November 1924.  Samuel Cox stands with his back squarely to the park, facing East 9^th Street instead.

The late 20^th Century was not kind to fountains and monuments in Tompkins Square and Samuel Cox’s statue was in sad shape by 1998.  That year the City Parks Foundation Monuments Conservation Program restored it.  The statue was cleaned, repatined, and received a protective coating.  The granite was cleaned and the lettering restored.

Louise Lawson’s first commission no longer gets brutal artistic criticism; however the statue is fondly called “Taxi” by locals because of the congressman’s upraised finger, appearing to hail a cab.

non-credited photographs taken by the author.

Renwick's 1884 St. Mark's Memorial Chapel -- 288 East 10th Street

Peter Gerard Stuyvesant and his wife Hellen Rutherford Stuyvesant were childless. As Stuyvesant aged, he worried that the distinguished family name would die out. His sister, Judith Stuyvesant Winthrop, had one male great-grandson.  His name was Stuyvesant Rutherford.

In the boy, Stuyvesant – who was the great-great grandson of Petrus Stuyvesant, Director-General of the colony of New Netherland – recognized his last chance.  When he died in 1847, he left one-third of his imposing estate to the then 4-year old boy; on the condition that his name be changed to Rutherford Stuyvesant.

And so it was.

The Stuyvesant land covered much of what is now known as the East Village. During the 19th century what had been rolling farmland was developed with row houses, commercial buildings and tenements. After the Civil War, German immigrants crowded in, creating a lively and colorful neighborhood.

In the meantime, Rutherford Stuyvesant married Mary Rutherford Pierrepont on October 13, 1863. She was the daughter of the prestigious and wealthy Henry Evelyn and Anna Jay Pierrepont of Brooklyn. Their lives together were happy and loving; but then on New Year’s Eve 1879, the expectant Mary went into labor.  Neither Mary nor the infant survived.

In deep grief, Stuyvesant planned a monument to his wife. He arranged to build a memorial chapel connected with St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, the Episcopal church built by Peter Stuyvesant in 1795 on his farm land.

Stuyvesant chose a large plot of land at the corner of East 10th Street and Avenue A where a small St. Mark’s mission structure already stood. He hired the eminent architect James Renwick, Jr. who was already responsible for the magnificent Grace Episcopal Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  Renwick worked with W. H. Russell in creating an edifice far removed from those lacy Gothic churches.

Begun in 1882, it was constructed of red-orange brick and abundant terra cotta trim of a nearly-matching hue. The building drew on several of the prevailing styles of the day: Romanesque, Gothic Revival, Renaissance Revival, Queen Anne and Eastlake.

The great mass facing Avenue A was broken by stepped dormers, a multi-level roofline and terra cotta courses separating the floors. A dramatic Gothic entrance separated the chapel from the school and administrative sections. A tall, impressive bell tower rose above the roof to a pyramidal cap.

The building was finished in 1884 at a cost of $200,000.  Three hundred and fifty worshipers could be seated on the main floor with another 100 in the gallery. The Avenue A side housed the library and reading room, a day school, kindergarten and day nursery and a Sunday school room that spanned the entire length of the building at the ground floor. The New York Times remarked that “it is a very cheerful and attractive place of worship.”

The Avenue A side housed the classrooms and library.

The chapel was immediately heavily involved in social and charitable works. It was home to the Guild of the Good Samaritan, which provided “physical air and medical attendance, etc., to the needy and sick poor in the neighborhood.” The Ladies’ Benevolent Society provided sewing for poor women, and the library with its 1,200 volumes provided free books. A Loan Relief Association was available when neighbors could not pay their rent, buy coal or medicine and other emergencies. Also here was the Parish Association that provided care and training of children, sought jobs for the unemployed and cared for the sick and aged.

In 1897 the forward-thinking Rev. Dr. J. H. Rylance was rector at St. Mark’s Memorial Chapel. He closed the parochial school which took up two full floors because it “was found to be competing with the public schools.” He initiated the eyebrow-raising “pleasant Sunday hour;” a meeting in the library every Sunday afternoon with literary and musical entertainment.

According to The Times, “The position of the Rev. Dr. Ryland on the Sunday question is well known. He is strongly in favor of making Sunday a day, as he expresses it, of ‘religion, rest, and recreation.’ The pleasant Sunday hour is therefore a practical experiment of the rector’s ideas.”

Ryland went on to introduce mothers’ meetings, boys’ and girls’ clubs, day nursery and a saving fund. The same year he had the chapel frescoed and painted and installed a modern heating system.

A grotesque face peers from amidst intricate terra cotta foliage below a plaque of a lion, the symbol of St. Mark.

The St. Mark’s Memorial Chapel would not enjoy the new paint job and heating system for long. By 1909 it had been taken over by the Holy Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church.

On a cold January 4th, 1921 200 unemployed men marched north from the Bowery at the Manhattan Bridge. They formed two groups of 100 men each and marched in military formation, tattered and unwashed, towards East 10th Street. When they were stopped by a police officer, they explained there were merely “going to church” and he allowed them proceed.

Upon arriving at the church, they found the chapel door open. The men marched into the main building and took up quarters in the gymnasium, reception hall and music room. With no jobs and no homes, they had no place to go.

The Rev. Dr. Guthrie of St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery was quick to give his opinion of the “problem.” While he admitted that the “use of a church for any except strictly religious uses is worse than a crime—it is a blunder, a violation of psychology,” he quickly added “could any Christian minister in his senses demand that they go forth into the night because the church is consecrated and unable to yield them emergency shelter? I hardly think so.”

And then he pointed the finger at city government. “Can a great, generous community like ours afford to have inadequate means for sheltering with self-respect the helpless and homeless? Should it merely regret the hard time and let the unemployed starve? Perish with cold? Build jails and asylums for the criminal and insane, hospitals for the sick, and have no provision for the non-criminal, sane, and well who cannot find work?”

In 1925 the newly-formed congregation of St. Nicholas of Myra Church rented the building. Part of the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, it made Rutherford Stuyvesant’s chapel its home, finally purchasing the building in 1937. Large copper Orthodox crosses were erected on three of the gable peaks.

The handsome church continues to be used by the Russian Orthodox congregation today. Immaculately maintained, it is a wonderful example of late Victorian religious architecture, deemed by the Landmarks Preservation Commission as “lively and picturesque.”

photographs taken by the author

Henry Cogswell's 1891 Temperance Fountain -- Tompkins Square Park

Henry Cogswell's fountain barely survived public opinion -- photo Beyond My Ken

Henry D. Cogswell had a rough start. Born in Connecticut in 1820, he worked in cotton mills in Connecticut and Rhode Island, spent time in the poorhouse, and wandered from place to place looking for temporary work. Finally, having educated himself, he achieved the position of principal of the Orwell High School in Orwell, New York and became a dentist.

Along with thousands of other young men with the glint of gold dust in their eyes, Cogswell traveled to San Francisco with the outbreak of the California Gold Rush of 1849.  But rather than pan for gold he set up a lucrative dental practice and tinkered with real estate. The combination of the two earned him a fortune of about $2 million within a period of about seven years.

Cogswell retired and set out to put his money towards public good. After founding the Cogswell Polytechnic Institute, he focused on the popular temperance movement.

Beginning around the time of the Civil War, alcohol was blamed for a raft of social ills including domestic violence, poverty and immorality. Around the nation groups like the American Temperance Society and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union cropped up to stamp out the evils of demon liquor. Among their favorite weapons was the temperance fountain.

It was believed that by supplying an abundant supply of healthful, clean water to the working classes, the temptations of alcohol could be thwarted; and Henry Cogswell took a liking to the idea. In 1878 he donated the first of fifty temperance fountains across America. New York would be on the list before long.

On October 15, 1884 Cogswell submitted his plans for an “ice-water fountain” to the Park Commissioners. The New York Times reported that “It will be 24 feet in length, in the form of a pavilion of polished granite and marble, and will be surmounted with an ideal figure of a man extending a cup of water. The water will flow from the mouths of two bronze dolphins.”

Cogswell estimated the cost of his fountain to be around $12,000 and with it came the conditions that the city provide a constant supply of ice to cool the water in the warm months, and that four lamp posts would be installed at the corners.

Because Tompkins Square bordered on New York’s “Little Germany,” Garrett Peck in his 2011 book “Prohibition in Washington D.C.: How Dry We Weren’t” was caused to mull, “You wonder how successful such heavy-handed moralizing was to a community that made beer into America’s favorite alcoholic beverage.”

The former dentist combined his efforts with The Moderation Society; however six years went by in futile attempts to obtain the permit to construct the fountain. Then in June of 1891 the Moderation Society announced the permit had been issued and the site was chosen: the south side of Tompkins Square.

In the meantime, changes had been made to the design. Now, completely fashioned in granite and manufactured in sections in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it would measure 20 feet square. The granite canopy would be supported by four 10-foot columns and the surmounting figure would no longer be a man, but Hebe, the Greek water carrier. No longer bronze, the statue would be zinc and the completed fountain would cost the Society $20,000.

The Hebe figure was based on an 1816 marble statue by Danish artist Albert Bertel Thorvaldsen.

Hebe, the Greek water carrier, stands above M. S., the initials of the Moderation Society -- photo by Beyond My Ken

On August 27, 1891 The New York Times quietly mentioned that “The new Granato Gift Fountain presented by the Moderation Society to Tompkins Square has been erected and the water will be turned on this evening.”

Below the statue a bold monogram M.S., for the Moderation Society, was carved and around the sides were the objectives the Society promoted: FAITH, HOPE, CHARITY and TEMPERANCE.

Unfortunately for Cogswell, his fountains and sculptures were not always well-received. The same year that the Tompkins Square fountain was installed, the San Francisco Examiner referred to “some of the horrors that Cogswell has already inflicted on the city” and called the several fountains he had donated “advertisements perpetrated in pig-iron.”

Two years later Boston refused a fountain, calling it “an offense to lovers of art.” Cogswell traveled there to haul it away only to be further insulted by San Francisco. The Times reported on January 14, 1894 that “His fountain at the junction of California and Market Streets was crowned by a full-length statue of the fountain-giver philanthropist until the close of the last year. On the first of the new year certain citizens found no better way of relieving the exuberance of their spirits, or of attesting their dislike of the statue as a work lacking art, than to hitch a rope about the neck of the good doctor’s image and pull it to the ground.”

Although the newspaper decried the vandalism, only three months later in an article titled “Weeding Out Bad Sculpture,” it summarily declared “The Cogswell fountains are first to go.”

Working class and poor residents take advantage of Tompkins Square Park prior to World War I -- photo Library of Congress

The Temperance Fountain in Tompkins Square survived the flush of bad-art public temperament; however sentiment did not turn a kinder face for decades. In 1909 the Art Commission of the City of New York in its Catalogue of the World of Art Belonging to the City of New York said of the fountain “In the center of the pavilion is the stump of a granite column, out of which the water flows.”

By the 1980s Tompkins Square was essentially derelict and its monuments and street furniture were badly abused. Vandals had sawn the hands off Cogwell’s statue of Hebe and the granite was slathered in graffiti.

A 1992 restoration replaced the damaged zinc statue with a more durable bronze replica and the stone was cleaned and restored.

Today the Tompkins Square Temperance Fountain is one of a handful remaining of Henry Cogwell’s original fifty. Rather than being “bad sculpture” or “lacking art,” it stands today as a superb example of Victorian morality presented in stone.

The General Slocum Memorial Fountain - Tomkins Square Park

Gradually, whether good or bad, tragedy fades from our historic memory.  Little by little grievous disasters become, at best, stories protracted by bronze plaques or statues; at worst totally forgotten. 

Hundreds of people pass the beautifully-veined pink marble fountain in Tompkins Square every day.  Hardly anyone knows why it is there.

At the turn of the last century the Lower East Side housed an enclave of German immigrants; called "Kleindeutchland" or "Little Germany."   On the morning of Wednesday, June 15, 1904 the members of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church at 323 E. 6th Street near 2nd Avenue set off on their 17th annual summer outing.  For $350, they had chartered the 235-foot steam sidewheeler The General Slocum for a day trip up the East River, across the Long Island Sound to a picnic grove on Long Island. 

They never made it there.

Because it was a Wednesday morning and because children rode for free, the boat was filled mostly with women and children.  Over 1,300 passengers boarded the steamer which carried a crew of 35.  The church party was unaware of The General Slocum's recent history of problems -- running aground several times and, at least twice, colliding with another ship.  Worse yet, Captain William Van Shaick had never practiced fire drills with his crew, as required by law, in years.  Life preservers and fire hoses had not been inspected since the craft was constructed 13 years earlier.

The ship pushed off from the Third Street Pier at 9:30 am.  A band on board played carefree tunes and children ran about on the upper decks.  By 10:00 it was entering the trecherous Hell Gate section of the river.  It was a this point that onlookers on shore, hearing the music, noticed smoke billowing from below decks and began gesturing to those on board.

The fire below decks intensified when it reached a paint locker filled with gasoline and other flammable liquids.  Panicked passengers rushed for life jackets, most of which fell apart in their hands, the canvas fabric having rotted after years of exposure to the elements.  The cork filling in the rest of the vests had granulated over time so when mothers  laced their children into the vests and tossed them overboard, they watched in utter horror as the cork absorbed the water and pulled their children under.

Captain Van Schaick told The New York Times the following day that he looked out from his pilothouse and saw "a fierce blaze -- the wildest I have ever seen."

Crew members tried in vain to fight the conflagration with rotten fire hoses which burst under the water pressure.  Having been repeatedly painted in place, life boats were stuck to the ship's side.  Pandemonium reigned as children jumped into the river, some sucked under in the turbulant Hells Gate eddies, others pulled into the side wheels and beaten to death.  Women who jumped overboard in their woolen Edwardian garments were quickly weighed down and drowned. 

The captain steered the ship towards North Brother Island in the Bronx, into the wind, which fanned the flames and intensified the conflagration.  Suddenly the main deck collapsed dropping hundreds of women and children into the inferno below.

As with the Miracle on the Hudson -- the US Airways jetliner that landed in the river a century later -- New Yorkers rushed to the rescue.  Two fireboats, at least a dozen tugboats, ferries, a police boat -- over 100 vessels in all -- hurried to the scene.  For most it was too late.  Within a span of 15 minutes the General Slocum was burned to the waterline.

Only 321 of the 1,300 people on board survived, the rest perished either by fire or drowning.  It was the greatest loss of life in New York City until September 11, 2001.   The New York Times reported "The disaster stands unparalleled among those of its kind. Whole families have been wiped out. In many instances a father is left to grieve alone for wife and children, and there was hardly a home in the parish, whence but a few hours before a laughing happy crowd went on its holiday, that was not in deep mourning last night."

The entire nation was stunned.  Little Germany was decimated and never recovered.  Those who survived moved away.

The Sympathy Society of German Ladies commissioned sculptor Bruno Louis Zimm to design the memorial fountain.  Dedicated in 1906, his 9-foot high stele is sculpted of pink Tennessee marble.  On the front, above the carved lion's head spout and basin, a low-relief depicts two innocent children staring off towards the sea. 

The inscription reads "They were Earth's purest children, young and fair."

The Sympathy Society of German Ladies installed the fountain so that the unspeakable loss of lives on The General Slocum would never be forgotten.  We have, unfortunately, forgotten.

Calvert Vaux's "Tompkins Square Boys' Lodging House" -- No. 295 E. 8th Street

photo by Alice Lum

In the middle of the 19^th century, orphans and the children of criminals and alcoholics roamed the street of New York City.  They were trapped in a socioeconomic situation from which there was little hope of escape.  Although some of the grimy urchins earned a few cents as newsboys and bootblacks; most turned to petty crime.

In his 1880s "New York by Gaslight," James D. McCabe told how such boys were recruited by older criminals.  “The pickpockets are largely recruited from the newsboy class.  These boys grow up in such constant association with criminals, that their moral sense becomes so stunted that they step readily into lives of crime.  They are utterly cut off from any saving or refining influence, and their lives throw them into the companionship of thieves and abandoned women, whose influence over them is all-powerful.”

Charles Loring Brace, in 1853, attempted to stop the pattern by forming The Children’s Aid Society with a few other concerned men.  Brace had been, according to King’s Handbook of New York City, “engaged in teaching some of the little arabs of the streets.”  The Society was incorporated in 1856 “for the education of the poor by gathering children who attend no schools into its industrial schools, caring and providing for children in lodging houses, and procuring houses for them in the rural districts and in the West.”

The lofty goals of the Society were clearly laid out in an address in 1857 by the group’s secretary:

“How many idle hands will be made useful how many petty thieves become industrious laborers, how many vagabonds turned into steady householders; how many vagrants, how many robbers, how many housebreakers, how many despairing girls and vile women, how much laziness, how much vice, how much crime, how much poverty and hunger will be saved to society in this number!  What friends to temperance there will be among these; what haters of vice, what lovers of good order and virtue, what virtuous women and strong men, who will remember the ‘pit’ in our cities from which ‘they were dug!’ “

Eventually the Society would provide summer outings to the country, job placements as household servants or minor workers in stores or manufacturing shops, medical aid, and industrial schooling.  But the lodging houses would be an important and visible part of its work.

 The 1884 Annual Report of the Society said “These have become ‘life saving stations’ for young humanity, not for their permanent shelter, but as paces of rescue from surrounding misery and vice, from which, after very temporary care and culture, they may step into better circumstances.  Here they are humanely cared fore, and come into contact with exemplary and sympathizing friends and teachers, and are imbued with a desire for a higher life.”

Robert L. Stuart made his fortune in the sugar refining business.  In the 1880s it was expected that the wives of such moguls were involved in at least one significant charity.  Mrs. Stuart was no exception.  In 1885 she placed in trust $50,000 for the construction of a fine new building to replace the 11^th Ward Lodging House for boys which was sorely outdated and cramped.  In 1883 the Society’s annual report had noted that those working with the children there did so “at the risk of life and health.”

It was a princely sum, equal to a little over $1 million today. 

A year later the Society reported that “the generous lady, Mrs. R. L. Stuart…will soon have the satisfaction of seeing the new building in course of erection.  Two lots, the best adapted in the eastern part of the city for our work, have been purchased on Tompkins’ Square, Nos. 127 and 129 Avenue B, on the corner of Eighth street.  It is a situation unusually open to air and light, and directly in the midst of the class we desire to benefit.  The price was $35,860, which sum is to be paid by the society.”

The announcement went on to note that “the designs for the building, from Messrs. Vaux and Radford, were accepted, and the contract given to Mr. Richard Deeves, builder.”

The architects mentioned were the esteemed Calvert Vaux, who had recently completed his monumental task of designing Central Park with Frederick Olmstead, and George Kent Radford, partners in Vaux & Radford.  This would be the third of around a dozen buildings the firm would design for the Society.

The Society termed the resulting building “picturesque” and, indeed it was.  The architects melded the currently popular Queen Anne style with Victorian Gothic elements to create an imposing, substantial structure with a series of sharply-protruding dormers, tall clustered chimneys and pyramidal caps to towers.

photo by Alice Lum

After construction was delayed by some legal wrangling with existing tenants on the building lots; the East-Side Boys’ Lodging-House and Industrial School opened in 1886.   The house had including innovations such as a Reading Room stocked with newspapers and periodicals and, according to the Society’s Annual Report “we are also seeking to interest the boys in a larger variety of games, and are striving to afford them better opportunities for such sources of amusement.  There are books, of course, for those who may be willing or who can be persuaded to read them.”

The purpose of these was, “to make the lodging-house sufficiently attractive to offset, in some measure at least, the allurements furnished by the streets and those places which line so many thoroughfares, bright, with many colored lights but loathsome, because of the vileness of those who may always be found there.”

Harper's Weekly printed a view of the new Boys' Lodging-House in March, 1886 (copyright expired)

The building was designed so that the boys could not enter without being subjected to an obligatory washing.  Harper’s Weekly wrote in March 1886 that the “grimy little newsboys and their rivals in trade, the bootblacks, will be compelled to descend a flight of steps leading from the street into a little courtyard, from which they will gain access to the basement of the building, passing first into a large reception-room , and thence into a spacious and very useful wash-room adjoining, which is to be supplied with foot-baths, plunge-baths, and all necessary appliances for removing the traces of toil from the boys and fitting them to enjoy society.”

St. Nicholas Magazine printed a sketch of "the large, airy dormitory, clean as a ship's deck, with wire-beds arranged on iron frames" at a similar Children's Aid Society Boys' Lodging House (copyright expired)

By 1891 there were 1,147 boys registered in the Lodging House with nearly 20,000 hot meals being served.   That year the enrollment in evening classes dropped off, leaving social reformer Jacob Riis unimpressed with the capabilities of its management.

“In the Tompkins Square Lodging House the evening classes are thinning out,” he wrote, “and the keeper wails: ‘Those with whom we have dealt of late have not been inclined to accept this privilege; how to make night school attractive to shiftless, indifferent street boys is a difficult problem to solve.’”

Riis remarked simply “Perhaps it is only that he has lost the key.”

Vaux & Radford ornamented the building with fanciful finials, elaborate cresting and terra cotta detailing -- photo by Alice Lum

Present-day critics have accused the Children’s Aid Society for forcing young boys into a type of slavery by sending them to farms to work, essentially, for free.  Yet when one reads letters from some of the boys and takes into consideration what the crowded metropolis was like for these youths; the opportunity to get away seems less onerous.  George Fink wrote back to the Lodging House on December 19, 1890.  Among his updates were:

“I can say that I am as well satisfied as anybody would be.  I can eat until I am satisfied, I drink cow’s milk all I want I go a hunting when I want to—there are plenty of opposums, rabbits, squirrels and birds.” 

The boy related that he was now attending school and working the farm with its owner.  “There are two little mules on the place of which I like to play with there are also two colts and a mare.  There are three cows and one calf.  I have all the milk I want.  There is ten head of hogs outside.  We have plenty of hog meat…Wheat bread is gone out of fashion with me.  I want corn bread every meal.  Corn bread and butter-milk and butter is my choice for these late days.”

George ended his letter with “I am satisfied with my home’ I do not want to live in the city any more.”

As social handling of needy and orphaned children changed, so did the function of the Boys’ Lodging House.  In 1910 it was used only as a school; then until 1925 it was the Children’s Aid Society’s Tompkins Square School for Cardiac Children.

The Talmud Torah Darghei Noam purchased the building in 1925.  After renovations it established its Talmud Torah school here in 1928.  Children attended the Hebrew school after public school classes every day and on Sunday mornings.  In 1950 the East Side Hebrew Institute’s yeshiva was here and the institution also ran a non-denominational food and clothing charity for the poor.

A stone panel was added in 1925 when the building was renovated -- photo by Alice Lum

Tompkins Square in the 1970s was a notorious nest of drug dealers, users, and criminals.   Parents became fearful to send their children into the hazardous neighborhood and in 1974 the Institute abandoned the building.   It sat empty and neglected for three years.

Filmmaker and poet Roland Legiardi-Laura purchased the building and began a restoration and renovation of the building in 2003.  Layers of paint that had encrusted the brick and terra cotta were removed, revealing the polychrome design so typical of Calvert Vaux.  The roof regained its slate tiles, as originally designed.

To thousands of indigent boys who passed through the building's doorway, the Lodging House offered a stunning difference to the squalor they knew -- photo by Alice Lum

Now, where indigent street urchins found shelter, millionaires rent luxury apartments.  Actor Matt Dillon reportedly lived here, and in 2011 a 2,300 square foot, two-bedroom space rented for $8,900 per month.

The remarkable brick building is a wonderful example of Vaux’s architecture and a rare surviving page from a shabbier and sadder part of New York’s social history.