The 1886 Henry Maibrunn House -- No. 110 W 78th Street

Architect Alfred Zucker’s partnership with John Hinchman was only a year old in 1885 when the firm was approached by Henry Maibrunn to design his Upper West Side townhouse.  In announcing that the firm was drawing up the plans on January 24 that year, The American Architect and Building News got the name slightly wrong, calling the firm “A. Tucker & Co.”

Architects working on the rapidly developing Upper West Side enjoyed, for the most part, a freer hand than those designing homes on the east side of Central Park.  Houses sprouted turrets, gargoyles and towers in a multitude of materials.  The straightforward stoops of the East Side here took a turn of two before hitting the sidewalk and historical purity was often discarded for the sheer joy of design.

For Maibrunn Alfred Zucker & Co. produced a striking three story residence of red brick over a rough-cut brownstone basement, completed in 1886.  The architects melded the highly popular Queen Anne style with Renaissance Revival.  The formality of the brownstone pediments above the stair hall windows and the sober festoon-decorated panels below the openings was relieved by airy Queen Anne elements.  Brownstone bandcourses, carved keystones that floated above the lintels, and exuberant carvings joined with the hefty dogleg stoop to eliminate any stodginess.

Zucker added little details like the carved scallop of the brownstone lintel.

Maibrunn was born in Bavaria in 1833 and had come to New York as a boy.  His wholesale butcher shop in Greenwich Village had earned him a comfortable fortune.  His philanthropic interests connected him with Mount Sinai Hospital, the Montifiore Home, and the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society.

Henry Maibrunn, his wife, four sons and three daughters were still living in the West 78^th Street house when he commissioned A. Zucker & Co. in October 1887 to extend the show window in his building at No. 72 Greenwich Avenue.  But he would not stay on much longer.

At the time Louis Kemp-Prossor operated a high-end private school for boys at No. 315 Madison Avenue.  But in 1891 he rented the Maibrunn house.  He and his wife Edith moved in and on September 23 that year he announced in the New-York Tribune that “L. Kemp-Prossor’s School for Boys” would reopen on October 1, 1891 at 110 West 79^thStreet.

Tragically, only seven months after the school opened, on May 3, 1892, Edith died.  Her funeral was held in the house three days later at 2:30.

A gruesome face peers from the elaborate foliate carving of the stoop.

By the turn of the century the West 78^th Street neighborhood was home to several physicians.  One of them was Dr. Louis Heitzmann.  On October 5, 1901 the International Record of Medicine and General Practice Clinics reported that he had moved into No. 110 West 78^th Street.

Heitzmann had large shoes to fill.  His father, Dr. Charles Heitzmann who had died in 1896, was known internationally for his atlas of anatomy, his book A Microscopic Morphology, and his microscopic "laboratory," or school.  More than 1,000 physicians and students had attended his laboratory.

Louis Heitzmann operated his medical office from the home.  He also served as treasurer of the German Medical Society of New-York.  By 1909 he would be Professor of Pathology at New York Medical College.

It appears that in 1902 the Heitzmanns shared the house.  On February 2, that year the New-York Tribune reported that Mrs. H. A. Maurer had hosted a meeting of the Auxiliary of the Riverside Day Nursery.  Before the end of the meeting, when Mrs. Maurer served refreshments, the members heard a reading of Mrs. Dore Lyon’s paper “Woman’s Influence in Home, Club and Philanthropic Work," after which she read a poem “on the nursery, which embodied a touching plea for the children who are helped by it.”

In addition, “Mrs. Thomas sang a group of French songs, Miss Marguerite Curley gave several recitations and Miss Harriett Yam spoke briefly on philanthropy.”  It would seem to have been a long meeting.

Following Henry Maibrunn's death on August 13, 1908 the Maibrunn family kept the East 78^thStreet house and continued renting it to Louis Heitzmann.

Dr. Heitzmann followed in his father’s field of microscopy.  In January 1915 Heitzmann’s book Urinary Analysis and Diagnosis by Microscopical and Chemical Examination was published.  The same month the Medical Record noted “Dr. Louis Heitzmann gives instruction in microscopy, at his laboratory, mornings and afternoons.  Courses are given in urinary analysis, bacteriology, haematology, histology and pathology.”  His laboratory-school was in the West 78^thhouse (which was valued that year at $43,000—about $970,000 today).  For a six-week course of six lessons every week, students paid $25.00.

One student turned out to be less interested in medicine than in murder.  Dr. Arthur W. Waite came to the 78^th Street laboratory and, according to Dr. Heitzmann, “said he was a young physician of wealth, not under the necessity of practicing, and that he wanted to make a special study of poisons.”

Indeed, Waite learned the science of poisons; and it led to the untimely end of Grand Rapids millionaire John E. Peck, Waite’s father-in-law.  When Peck’s death was deemed suspicious, an autopsy was performed.  “In Mr. Peck’s stomach, said Dr. Vaughan, he found minute white specks, which he recognized as evidence of arsenic poisoning," reported a newspaper.

Dr. Heitzmann was called as a witness for the prosecution.  On March 24, 1916 The Evening World ran a sensational headline: WAITE CONFESSES; GAVE POISON THAT KILLED MILLLIONAIRE PECK.”

Two years after the scandalous trial, the Heitzmanns moved.  On March 29, 1918 The Sunreported that the Maibrunn Estate had rented the house “for a term of years to Nan Wester.”  The newspaper seems to have gotten the name wrong, for it was Fanny Avery Welcher and her husband Rev. Manfred P. Welcher who moved in.

Tragically, only four months later Fannie died at their Hartford, Connecticut home.  Manfred P. Welcher was still here in 1922.  He was a surprisingly early anti-cigarette activist; the field secretary of the Anti-Cigarette League of America.  On March 9, 1922 The Christian Advocatenoted that he had “received permission from a representative of the Board of Education to speak in the high schools, the junior high schools, the teacher training schools, and even the continuation schools of New York City, on the injury caused by the use of cigarettes and other forms of tobacco.”

The magazine said “As he has seventy-five admirable lantern slides, he is in position to illustrate the lecture in any school which can provide a lantern and a screen.”

For the next four decades the house would be home to a succession of families—none quite so engaging as Dr. Heitzmann or the anti-smoking minister.  In 1965 it was converted to two duplex apartments.  At some point the rich brick-and-brownstone façade was given a misguided coat of paint.

When, in 2007, the owners sought to restore the exterior, they worked with Walter B. Melvin Architects and East Coast Restoration and Consulting Corp.  A complete façade restoration followed, including the stoop.  Two years later the remarkable results earned the project the Unsung Heroes of the Upper West Side for façade restoration by Landmark West!  The group said “Restored to its former glory, it is a model for owners seeking to undo the mistakes of the past and preserve their historic buildings for generations to come.”

photographs by the author

The 1896 Baudouine Bldg -- No. 1181 Broadway

Charles A. Baudouine opened his first cabinetmaking shop on Pearl Street around 1830.  As highly-ornate Victorian style came into fashion, his exquisitely carved Rococo Revival furniture earned him the reputation as one of New York’s premier cabinetmakers in the decades after Duncan Phyfe.  His sole competitor in New York was John Henry Belter with whom he was (and is) consistently compared.

This Rococo Revival sofa came from the workshop of Charles Baudouine -- The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

When Cyrus West Field purchased his mansion on the newly-developed Gramercy Park, he commissioned Baudouine to furnish the entire house—it was the first time in New York that a professional designer was hired as an interior decorator.

As Baudouine’s wealth accumulated, he invested heavily in real estate.  Recognizing the potential of the northward movement of commerce up Fifth Avenue and Broadway, he bought up small buildings and erected modern business structures.  Charles Baudouine would not live to see his last project fulfilled.  He died on January 13, 1895 leaving an estate of approximately $3 million.  

At Nos. 1181 to 1183 Broadway stood an old hotel known as the Brower House.  The building was demolished and not long after Baudouine’s death construction commenced on a 10-story store and office structure--the Baudouine Building.  Designed by architect Alfred Zucker, it was completed the following year.  Situated at a slight bend in the thoroughfare, it claimed a commanding presence to anyone looking down Broadway.

 

Even today the location affords the building an opportune presence.

Zucker clothed his steel and iron framework in sandy-colored brick and terra-cotta on a rusticated two-story base of limestone.  Despite the decorative elements, including an ornate closed pediment on the West 28^th Street side; Zucker’s design would have been less-than-remarkable were it not for one feature: a large, meticulously designed Greco-Roman temple on the roof.

Painstaking details in the temple, invisible from street level, are seen from a roof across the street -- photography by C. T. Brady, Jr., from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York, http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UP1GWSE63V&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

It is possible that the two-story temple was designed specifically as the offices of the Charles A. Baudouine Realty Company, the first tenant in the building.  Run principally by son Charles A. Baudoine, it was also perhaps the first tenant to run into trouble.

Baudoine had in his employ a 27-year old “confidential clerk,” Albert Page Wood.  On November 4, 1897 Baudoine sent the man to the Second National Bank to deposit $700 in checks and $262 in cash.  When he returned to the office around noon, he made the excuse that he had left the deposit book at the bank.   On November 6 The New York Times reported “The officers of the bank said that Wood had made no deposit, and they knew nothing of the book.  The police found the book and checks in Wood’s pockets.  He refuses to tell what he did with the cash.”

Young Albert Wood was arrested and learned a valuable lesson:  When you steal $262 in cash from your employer, it is best not to go back to work.

Unlike his father, Charles had difficulty keeping his name out of the newspapers.  In 1894 he married Agnes M. Rutter, daughter of Thomas Rutter, president of the New York Central Railroad.  That same year they became friendly with writer Casper W. Whitney and his wife, Annie Childs Whitney, who lived nearby the newlyweds on West 58^th Street.  In December of that same year the Baudouines were divorced and a month later the Whitneys separated.

Six months later Charles and his new love were married and sailed off to Europe where they remained until February 1897.  They returned to find that Casper Whitney had sued to have his wife’s divorce decree set aside and he filed for his own divorce.  Since the original divorce was no longer legal, neither was Charles’ and Annie’s wedding.  The couple was remarried amid the glare of newspapers and society.

Louis L. Meyer ran his tailoring business on the second floor of the Baudouine Building in 1899.  He was found dead on a sofa here on April 11 that year in mysterious circumstances.  A janitor reported seeing a “strange man” leaving the vicinity.  On the floor nearby Meyer’s bloodied body was a broken bottle which had contained carbolic acid.  His lips were acid-burned and an ambulance surgeon said that “his death had undoubtedly been caused by carbolic acid,” according to The New York Times.

Friends of the tailor said they believed he committed suicide while “mentally overbalanced from overwork,” despite the fact that his business was prospering.  The Times noted that “The blood stains were not accounted for.”

At the same time, the famous stage actress Julia Arthur had her offices here.  One of her celebrated roles was that of a man—Hamlet.  Readers of The New York Times were delighted when, on July 13, 1899, the newspaper reported “It was said yesterday at the offices of Miss Arthur’s company, 1181 Broadway, that she would probably be seen as the Dane before her engagement at the Broadway Theatre ends.”

A succession of renowned architects would take space in the building over the years.  In 1900 Henry Anderson moved in; in 1909 Henry Atterbury Smith was here when he designed a group of four tenement houses for Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, specifically designed for tuberculosis victims; and William A. Hewlett occupied offices here in 1914 through 1916.

In 1901 Harry Elliott ran his pharmacy in the Baudouine Building; the same year that The Art Publishing Company came up with a clever gimmick to sell issues of its new magazine.  The firm ran advertisements in newspapers like The Sun publicizing a contest to name the new periodical.  It offered $3,500 to the person who submitted the winning title.

“Can you suggest a suitable name?  The publication is handsomely bound with colored cover, and printed on the finest super-calendared paper, is beautifully illustrated and full of bright, up-to-date articles on current topics, all of which are of a most interesting character.  In other words, you will find it the most interesting and instructive publication you ever read, and fit for the finest homes in the land.”

The Art Publishing Company was careful not to reveal too much about the contents.  It wanted to sell a copy to each of the aspiring contest participants with the glint of $3,500 in their eyes.  “The best and surest way to win the money is to get a sample copy so that you can see what it’s like.  You can then form an idea of what would be a suitable name for it, and may suggest and send any number of names from 1 to 30 to select from.”  In order to find out what the magazine was all about, the reader was required to mail in a dime, the price of a single issue.

Also in the building was T. Cook & Sons, ticket agents for the Midland Railway, an English railroad that promised “the most interesting and picturesque route through the centre of England.”  The agents would stay on in the Baudouine Building for years. 

At the same time the New York Registry Company was located here.  A sort of life insurance firm, clients would “register” and were provided with a brass tag on which a number was inscribed.  Upon producing the tag, which was intended to be worn by the insured, the beneficiary would be paid.

The company figured somewhat ghoulishly in the life (and death) of canal boat captain Gordon Maxon in 1903.   Early in December of that year Maxon moored his boat the H. A. Comiskey to a pier at Coenties Slip.  He was nagged by an uneasy premonition and told acquaintances “he felt that he would drown sooner or later.”  He therefore registered with the New York Registry Company.   Only a few nights later the Captain and his wife were aboard the canal boat.  He went above board to make sure things were properly moored and did not return.

The Evening World assumed “In some unknown way he fell overboard and was drowned.”  Mrs. Maxon headed off to the Baudouine Building to claim her insurance benefits; but Captain Maxon wore the tag around his neck and the body was missing.

Finally, four months later on the afternoon of April 10, 1904, the body of the 60-year old captain was found floating in the river.  “When his body was found the tag was found in his clothes and the identification made,” reported The Evening World.  “Maxon’s wife has been unable to collect the insurance on her husband’s life because the tag must be produced, but will be able to do so now.”

While the New York Registry Company was selling insurance, the St. James Society was offering cures to drug addiction.   One advertisement in the February 1901 issue of The Cosmopolitan recounted the story of a New York businessman who lost his job and whose life was being ruined by morphine.  “I sent for a trial bottle [of the cure], which the doctor sent me free of charge, and before I had taken all of the trial bottle I felt a change come over me—in fact, the FREE TRIAL almost cured me of the desire for drugs, and the St. James Society gave me the only comfort and encouragement I had received in five years.”

The Evening World, October 27, 1903 (copyright expired)

Within three months, said the advertisement, he had his job back, was earning $10,000 a year, “which is more salary than I was getting when I lost my position,” and was free of addiction.  The ad offered the free trial bottle; but neglected to mention what the follow-up doses would cost.

James D. Murphy Company, a major building contractor, had its offices in the building in 1904 when it had the unenviable task of forcing 32 families out of their homes in the Lexington Avenue and 25^thStreet neighborhood, to make way for the anticipated 69th Regiment Armory.

James D. Murphy was painted as a cold-hearted brute by newspapers.  “In many cases persons were too ill to be removed, and, in one instance, a death resulted from catching cold while looking for another apartment,” said The Times on February 16.  Murphy tried to explain.  “It is not the James D. Murphy Company which is doing what is being done, but the city…There is no desire on the part of the Murphy Company to be harsh or hard, or to create trouble for any one.”

Another large contracting firm here was that of Patrick Gallagher.  Gallagher, his wife and daughter, lived nearby on East 29^th Street.  In 1905 he received a number of building contracts “and as he could not go on his own bond, he transferred…the property…to his wife, so that she could qualify,” said The Times.  The somewhat questionable move would cause problems later.

Three years later Gallagher instructed his wife to reconvey the properties to him.  She refused.  So he sued her and received a court order in his favor.  Mrs. Gallagher appealed.  So Gallagher sued her again in September 1908—this time for contempt of court.  The New York Times found the back-and-forth legal squabbling puzzling.  “Husband and wife are living in the same house and have a 17-year-old daughter,” it said.

Mrs. Gallagher’s lawyer was equally shocked.  “Never before in the history of our jurisprudence so far as I have been able to discover, has a court of justice been called upon by a husband to send his wife, with whom he is living, the mother of this child, to jail for contempt on a charge of this kind.”

Gallagher insisted he did not want his wife jailed; he merely wanted his property returned.

His domestic problems were not the only reason Gallagher that would see the inside of a courtroom that year.   He had contracts to construct school buildings for the city; but in August 1908 his payments were not being received and he sued the City.   The Committee on Buildings of the Board of Education agreed with him.  “The committee asserts that the Controller has delayed for months the payment of money to contractors which should never have taken more than ten days,” reported The Times.

Gallagher did not care who was responsible—he simply wanted to be paid.    He wrote to the Controller saying he intended to sue him and the city “for loss which he says the Controller has caused him by withholding money due on contracts.”

The outspoken Gallagher was back in the press a year later when he lashed out at the Mayor for “his expressed ignorance of the provisions of the newly revised Building Code.  In his letter to the His Honor, the contractor said in part that “city finances are so crippled by the fearful mismanagement and unpardonable extravagance of our officials that we have been and are unable to start any new school buildings for near one year.”

Bold letters announce the building's name on both elevations.

By now the Garment District was inching towards Broadway and 28^th Street.   The Croonborg Sartorial Academy, a school of fashion and apparel, was in the building by 1907.  Once a year it put on its Annual Garment and Style Exhibit—a fashion show that brought both women and men up to date on current trends.

The August 1907 show proved that dark blue was the new color for men's formal wear.  “Of all the evening suits on exhibition there from the scissors of some of the most celebrated tailors in the country, two-thirds are made of blue worsted,” reported The Times.  “The new suits are otherwise not much different than the evening clothes of last year.  The tails are chopped off a bit squarer, but that is all.”

The newspaper’s critic was not taken with most of the new styles, saying they looked “very much like the wardrobe of a vaudeville slapstick artist or a Dutch comedian.” Speaking in particular of one coat the exhibitors said promised to be “very popular,” the writer cautioned “Any one who appeared on Broadway a year ago wearing that coat would have been followed for blocks by a mob anxious to see what he was advertising.”

Other apparel concerns followed; among them Croonberg Fashion Co.; Thain, Hewlett & Reddy; the Pennsylvania Button and Trimming Company; and the Matthews Clothes Shop in the first floor retail space.  Matthews would be a fixture in the building into the 1920s.

The Evening World, November 26, 1920

In March 1918 the Baudouine family received a shock when Charles’ niece, Marguerite Baudouine Burke, sued her father and uncle for a share in her grandfather’s estate.  Her vicious attack asserted that her father was an “inveterate gambler and speculator” who “lived a life of dissipation” and was “morally and financially irresponsible.”  She said Charles was “living a life of luxury and pleasure and devoting himself to horses and dogs.”  She said he has “lived a life of idleness, luxury and display” and described her father as “openly branded by his creditors as a cheat and fraud.”

Therefore, she explained in her court papers, $15,000 a year would be sufficient for Charles and John Baudouine (about $150,000 today) from their father’s $3 million trust.  Assumedly that would leave “sufficient” money for Marguerite and her siblings upon her father’s and uncle’s deaths.

On December 6, 1929 tragedy struck here when Mrs. Henriette Insko visited her husband in his jewelry office.  The 23-year old woman dropped a package in the elevator and, as she bent to retrieve it in the moving cab, her head hit the landing of the ninth floor.  She died within minutes.  Oddly enough, Melvin Anderson, the elevator operator was arrested on a technical charge of homicide.

Throughout the remainder of the century the building continued to be home to apparel firms like the Bowcraft Co., a “shoe trimmings” firm that took a full floor in 1950; and novel companies like the Interstate Toy Co.  In 1979 a gas explosion in the basement of a novelty store at street level injured five persons.  The blast caused a brief flash fire, broke windows in the area and created gaping holes in the concrete sidewalk.

By 2004 the wonderful temple on the roof of the Baudouine Building had become residential—home to a business tenant whose office was on a lower floor.   Although the street level of the building has been brutally altered to accommodate garish novelty and electronics stores; above the structure is unchanged.  And the out-of-place slice of Rome atop is a marvel, prompting the “AIA Guide to New York City” to call the building “A sliver with a meticulous Ionic-columned Roman temple on top.  Peer upward.”

photographs taken by the author

An 1893 Moorish Fantasy -- No. 256 Fifth Avenue

photo by Alice Lum

In the 1870s West 23rd Street from Fifth Avenue to Eighth Avenue had taken over as the entertainment district of Manhattan. Opera houses, theatres and music halls dotted the thoroughfare, promoting the construction of hotels and commercial buildings in the area.

Charles A. Baudouine purchased the plot at 256 Fifth Avenue, between 28th and 29th Street and began construction of a retail store and loft building in 1892. Baudouine had been an important furniture maker whose high-end Rococo-style furniture graced the parlors of New York’s wealthy and rivaled that of cabinet makers like John Henry Belter.

He retired in 1856 and turned his interests to real estate. For this project he commissioned architects Alfred Zucker and John H. Edelman. The six-story building, completed in 1893, would be one of the most interesting and unusual in the entire area.

Intricate pressed terra cotta encases the facade -- photo by Alice Lum

With fanciful abandon, the architects combined historic styles into a conglomeration loosely termed Moorish Revival today. The light colored brick façade is slathered in matching terra cotta. Two-story columns are banded and laced, intricate arabesques twine around the second story windows and rounded arches are capped with Gothic points. The face of the structure was broken by an ornate projecting balcony at the sixth floor.

Among the first tenants were apparel merchants. In its February 1894 issue, The Clothier and Furnisher reported “E. A. Newell will move from his old store, where he has been for many years…to his new store at 256 Fifth Avenue, in the handsome, new white-stone building recently erected.”

Rupert A. Ryler Co., tailors, also moved in, advertising “all the latest novelties in fine special cloths, golf suits, knickerbockers, mufti, tattersalls, vestings, and a host of others.”

Terra cotta blends with brick to form texture and dimension -- photo by Alice Lum

The building’s prestige was heightened when esteemed portrait photographer Napoleon Sarony established his studio here. Many of the popular “cabinet cards” featuring theatrical stars were shot by Sarony and the building’s proximity to the theatre district was ideal.

In February 1905 Braun, Clement & Co., leased the store along with the basement and second floor. The firm sold “carbon prints,” reproductions of “old and modern masters in the leading public and private art galleries of Europe.” The store offered over 100,000 different images.

Harry Rapp ran his Market Representative Company here in 1916--buyers of dress goods and designs for apparel manufacturers most of which were in the West.  Yet the 45-year old Rapp was discouraged about his business and his wife had recently separated from him.

The defeated executive’s body was found on the shore of Block Island, Rhode Island after he failed to appear at his office for several days.

By this time the theatre district had shifted northward to Times Square and upscale manufacturers like Royal Copenhagen Porcelain made their home here.

photo by Alice Lum

Unfortunately, in the latter part of the 20th Century the unique storefront designed by Zucker and Edelman was ripped off, replaced by a flat polished stone façade identical to hundreds of others. Sometime before 2001 the sixth-story balcony was removed, leaving vacant slots in the decoration where the supporting brackets had been.

Voids remain where the brackets and sides of the sixth floor balcony once met the facade -- photo by Alice Lum

Despite this architectural vandalism, almost all of 256 Fifth Avenue remains intact; what the AIA Guide to New York City calls “a Venetian-Gothic phantasmagoria in terra cotta,”

The 1889 Ehrich Brothers Dry Goods Store



The building turns to red brick as it proceeds down West 22nd Street

  The four Ehrich Brothers, Julius, Samuel, Louis and William, opened their dry goods store on Eighth Avenue at 24^th Street in 1857.  The location would have been ideal; except, unknown to them at the time, the grand shopping district which would become known as The Ladies Mile would develop two blocks to the east on Sixth Avenue.

As the concentration of shops on Sixth Avenue lured shoppers away from Ehrich’s, the brothers initiated a free coach service between the two thoroughfares in the 1880s.  Finally in 1889 they gave up and built a new emporium on the west side of Sixth Avenue at 22^nd Street, just south of William Moir’s jewelry store.

Architectural historians disagree on the architect, crediting either William Schickel or Alfred Zucker with the attractive design.  Rising five stories, it was a graceful Renaissance Revival structure with intricate molded foliage details and a graceful bracketed cornice.  As business would flourish, the brothers would continue to enlarge the store, almost seamlessly; finally wrapping around Moir’s little corner building.  It would be a harmonious marriage of limestone, cast iron and brick -- depending upon the section.

William Moir's elegant cast iron store at 6th Avenue and 23rd Street, now barely recognizable, was eventually engulfed by the Erlich building.

The store specialized in millinery and silk dress goods.  There were, however, departments for the rest of the family as well.  Boys’ and girls’ fine Jersey caps were advertised for 28 cents each, the household department sold blankets and table and bed linens, and men’s hosiery, underwear and suspenders were available.

As a side business the store made theatrical costumes.  In 1893 as Marie Tempest was in rehearsals for the comic opera “The Algerians,” Ehrich Brothers was hard at work creating her wardrobe of “four complete costumes and two wraps.”

The store attracted the wrath of the Chairman of the U.S. Congressional Committee of Ways and Means, William M. Springer, in 1893 when he took issue to the small children working in the store.   He reported to Congress that children “who I should say are not above 10 years of age” were working twelve hours or more every day.

“I have seen Ehrich Brothers’ store open and crowded as late as 11 o’clock at night,” he wrote, “and those children still on duty.” 

The brothers were convinced to amend their hiring practices.

The fine selection of goods was too much for Kate Kelly and Maggie Johnson to resist.  On January 17, 1894 the two women, 28 and 29 years old respectively, casually looked over the selling floor around 6 pm.  Detective Charles Jones watched the suspicious-acting pair as Kate Kelly slipped a bundle of three skirts under her cloak.  The two then calmly left the store.

When the detective tried to detain the girls on the sidewalk, they dropped the stolen property and bolted towards 23^rd Street, followed by a group of clerks who had vaulted over their counters to join in the chase.  The commotion cause a crowd of what The New York Times estimated at “of a thousand or more persons” who made escape impossible.

The skirts were valued at $40.

By 1910 the shopping district was moving northward, following Macy’s enormous 1901 department store on 34^th Street.  In an effort to lure customers, Ehrich Brothers followed the example of the Eden Musee just around the corner on 23^rd Street – they showed motion pictures.

According to Louis Pizzitola in his “Hearst Over Hollywood:  Power, Passion, and Propaganda in the Movies,” the store allowed motion picture pioneer Florian Zittel to install a small movie theater in the back.  “Curious movie patrons weren’t charged a fee; putting on the film program, which changed daily, wasn’t expensive, and the Ehrich Brothers found that films filled their store and increased their sales,” according to Pizzitola.

“We made it pay,” Zittel later said, “and that is the purpose of all business.”

But free movies could not keep the business profitable and in 1911 the Ehrichs decided that rather than move their business uptown they would simply close.  The Edison Monthly reported that the Ehrichs were millionaires upon retirement.

When J. L. Kesner took over in 1911 the 6th Avenue Elevated still ran down the center of the street.  Taylor & Levi's changes can be see at roof level -- photo Edison Monthly (copyright expired)

The prominent Chicago dry goods business of J. L. Kesner Company bought the building and immediately did some updating.   Architects Taylor & Levi modernized the street level with stylish Arts and Crafts style pilasters encrusted with terra cotta panels by Hartford Faience.  The earthy-toned tiles in beige, blue, green and white featured the initial K and were much in line with the subway station decorations being installed at the same time.  Cast iron ornamentation on this level included the K motif.

"K"s appear in the warm-colored tiles and in the cast iron cartouche above

Changes were made inside, as well.   A new electric lighting system was installed, an up-to-the-minute optical department was added to test for eyeglasses, and an ingenious conveyor system for delivering parcels from the basement to the street was set up.

Kesner added 100-watt electric lights 9-1/2 feet off the selling floor to increase merchandise visibility -- photo Edison Monthly (copyright expired)

A conveyor belt moved the packages to bins and then to a motor-driven escalator that carried them to the sidewalk where delivery wagons waited.  Also in the basement was a machine that pressed waste paper into bale and a ventilating system.  There was a restaurant on the four floor and a soda fountain for weary shoppers.

Workers behind the scenes used forty different sizes and types of flat irons to press everything from men’s suits to women’s lingerie.

Kesner’s spared no expense to insure that the new enterprise would be successful, to the point of relocating especially successful Chicago sales personnel.  The magazine Notions and Fancy Goods noted in January 1911 that “Elsie H. Cullerton, formerly buyer of gloves at Hillman’s department store, Chicago, Ill, has resigned to take a similar position in the new department store to be opened on Sixth Avenue, New York, under the name of J. L. Kesner Co., in the old Ehrich Bros.’ building.”

But no amount of renovation or advance planning could alter the fact that the Ladies’ Mile was dying.  Within two years J. L. Kesner went bankrupt.  In June 1913 1600 people attended the auction of the firm’s stock and the grand emporium closed its doors forever.

Throughout the 20^th Century the Ehrich building underwent the same degradation that all the great retail palaces along Sixth Avenue experienced.  By the 1980s it was rusted and grimy with small businesses operating throughout.

With the renaissance of the avenue and the creation of the Ladies’ Mile Historic District came hope for the building; despite protests by the owners against landmark status of a “rundown building.”

By 1993 Staples had leased about half of the ground floor and exposed the Arts and Crafts tiles which had been covered over by modern storefronts.  A year later Burlington Coat Factory took over a full 85,000 square feet and commissioned Frank Richard Gencorelli to renovate the structure.

Back from the edge, the Ehrich Brothers’ emporium gleams again as it did in 1889.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The Lost Progress Club -- 5th Avenue and 63rd Street

The over-the-top clubhouse sat among the mansions of Manhattan's wealthiest citizens -- photo by Byron Co. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWN4LPSU&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

As the sons of Manhattan millionaires grew to manhood, membership in at least one—but preferably several—of the exclusive men’s clubs was expected.  Passing the rigid selection process proved one's good breeding and social status; but most of all money.  None of those qualifications mattered much, however, if the man were Jewish.

Manhattan society was, for the most part, made up of Episcopalians with some ultra-wealthy Roman Catholics tolerated (although not in the ballroom of Caroline Schermerhorn Astor).  Despite the staggering wealth of some Jewish families, only a handful of Jews would manage to wrest memberships in the highly-exclusive Union or Metropolitan Club, for instance.  And so they established their own private club.

The Progress Club was founded in 1864 and quickly developed a high-class standing.  The New York Times later said, “In Hebrew society the Progress Club has the same standing as the Metropolitan in other circles.”  By the 1880s it had established itself in a clubhouse at No. 110-112 East 59^thStreet at the corner of Park Avenue.  But that would quickly change. On July 28, 1887 the members sold its building for $105,000 and spent double that amount--$235,000 to be exact—on the 100-square foot corner lot on Fifth Avenue at 63^rd Street.  Newspapers reported that plans were being prepared for “a $250,000 clubhouse” directly in the center of the developing mansion district.  The total proposed outlay of $485,000 would amount to a jaw-dropping $11.5 million today.

Alfred Zucker was born in Freiburg, Silesia in 1852 and had settled in New York in 1883.  He busied himself designing cast iron loft buildings in the area now known as Soho.  Now the Progress Club chose the Jewish architect to design their new home. 

By the time the cornerstone was laid on November 28, 1888 work was well underway.  The New York Times promised that, when completed, it would be “one of the handsomest and most convenient clubhouses in the country.”

“The architecture of the exterior will be pure Italian Renaissance as adopted in Rome and Florence in the fifteenth century,” said the newspaper.  “The material used in the facades will be fawn-colored brick, terra cotta of a deeper shade, and Bellville gray rock..  For the balcony railings, basement window-guards, &c., ornamental wrought-iron will be used.”

By now the cost of the structure, excluding the plot, had doubled to $500,000.  The members of what newspapers routinely called the “Hebrew club” seemed determined to match or outdo the most lavish of Manhattan’s clubhouses.

Five months later the Progress Club hosted its last function in the old clubhouse.  Among the entertainments were a children’s production of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, and “as an interlude Miss Nellie Williams sang ‘Dere ain’t no Flies on Me,’ for which she was rewarded with loud applause,” reported The Times the following day.  It was announced that the club would be in its new Fifth Avenue clubhouse by the opening of the social season. 

Terra cotta drapes like a garland along the parapet -- photo King's Views of New York 1903 (copyright expired)

By the time the building opened on March 7, 1890 the cost had risen to a staggering $600,000.  Combined with the cost of the land, the clubhouse cost $21 million in today’s dollars.  The price was understandable once guests and reporters were shown inside.  The New York Times called the clubhouse “palatial.”

Well-heeled members in evening clothes ascend the grand staircase before the enormous stained glass window on opening night -- Harper's Weekly 1891 (copyright expired)

The following day the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide called it “regal” and “without doubt the most ambitious addition that has been made to the club-houses of this city since the Union League was opened.”   The periodical said “The design of the exterior is scholarly, straightforward and expressive, and with the accentuation given by the beautiful carving and terra cotta work the building is architecturally one of the most successful and interesting that has been completed in recent years.”

It pointed out the costly finishes: “the wealth of highly carved wood; wrought iron and brass; the great stained glass windows, one of which is 22x30 feet; the lavish use of onyx, serpentine and other semi-precious stones, the large picture ceilings, the ivory enameled walls, the superb hangings in coral plush and Etruscan gold.”  Everything—without exception—in the new building was custom built to the designs of Zucker.  The furniture, the draperies, carpets, chandeliers, even the candelabra, were manufactured according to the architect's drawings.

Silver chandeliers hung from the elaborate ceiling of the Banqueting Hall -- Real Estate Record & Builder's News, March 8, 1890 (copyright expired) 

Members entered through a great arch on 63^rdStreet into a marble-walled vestibule.  At the end of the vestibule was the grand staircase, dominated by a 22-foot high stained glass window at the landing.  Downstairs were the oak-furnished reading room with leather-covered walls and wrought iron chandeliers;  and two drawing rooms.  One of these was “First Empire” in style.  It dazzled with onyx columns with gold capitals.  On this floor, too, were the reception room, steward’s office and coat room, and an oaken dining room.

 

The First Empire Room was decorated in gold and white -- Real Estate Record & Builder's News, March 8, 1890 (copyright expired) 

At the second landing was an even larger stained glass window—30 feet high by 22 feet wide—depicting Progress ascending amid clouds. The magnificent banqueting hall fully engulfed half of the second floor.  At 90 feet long, 55 feet wide and 25 feet high, the Record deemed it “one of the noblest apartments in the city.”  The onyx columns with gold capitals upholding the ceiling sat on pedestals of malachite.  The ceiling was divided into nine large panels, from each of which were suspended silver chandeliers.  They were matched by silver sconces on the walls.  In this room was a musicians’ gallery of ormolu gilt.

The ballroom was one floor above and The Record & Builders’ Guide called its proportions “imperial.”  Here Zucker used the new electric light to full advantage.  “The ceiling, which is supported by the walls only, so that the area of the room is unbroken and the full effect of its size obtained, is coved several feet in depth and divided by means of heavy ornamental groins into six recessed panels, the centre of each panel being formed into a dome, in each of which is a cluster of electric lamps representing the descending stars of a rocket.  This idea is ingenious and the result excellent—with electric light, illumination is at last becoming a part of decorations.”

Zucker pulled out all the stops for the dazzling Ballroom -- Real Estate Record & Builder's News, March 8, 1890 (copyright expired) 

Zucker’s over-the-top décor in the ballroom included female figures crafted of onyx and ormolu holding the golden candelabra, and nymphs supporting chains that held back the draperies.  In the cove of the ceiling huge winged female figures wore tiaras of electric lights.  More than 1,000 persons could comfortably fit into the ballroom.

Also on this floor were the “dainty ladies’ drawing-room” in white and gold Rococo.  The ceiling was painted with a reproduction of Thuman’s “Amor and Psyche.”  On the opposite side of a foyer was the gentleman’s room.  These spaces were designed so that on grand occasions the entire floor could be opened into one large entertainment area.

Below ground were six bowling alleys, wine cellars, billiard room and café; as well as the expected kitchens, larders and mechanical rooms.

The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide summed it all up saying, “In conclusion, it may be said that from top to bottom the building is most carefully and artistically planned, the construction is everywhere of the most substantial and excellent kind, and reflects great credit upon the members of the club and the architect.”

The critics from The Times and the Record & Builders’ Guide were just two of 1,500 persons at the housewarming.  Among the guests who mingled among the potted ferns and palms that night were names like Rothschild, Bloomingdale, Blumenthal, and Stein; some of the wealthiest merchants and bankers of the city.  Mayor Hugh J. Grant, Governor David B. Hill and Board of Alderman President Arnold were all invited; but their names did not show up on the list of attendees. 

In his address after receiving the solid gold key to the building, club President Simon Goldenberg deemed the new building “the finest club quarters in America.”  The following day The Evening World called the architecture “perfection” and noted “The decorations are elegant, costly and in the best possible taste.”

Like every other high-end men’s club in the city, the Progress Club was not without its internal politics and dissension.  During the last week of January 1894 the club staged “a vaudeville entertainment which was being given by the club to its feminine guests,” as reported in The New York Times a week later.  There was a long-standing rule that whenever women were invited into the clubhouse, smoking in certain rooms was prohibited. 

That evening when J. Murray Danenbaum entered a supper room as the entertainment was going on, he noticed a member “enjoying a prohibited cigar.”  Indignant on the part of the women in the room, Danenbaum approached the member and rather sternly reminded him of the rule.  The New York Times said “The offending member, unmindful of the soft answer that turneth away wrath, answered in kind and smoked on.”  It was the beginning of a problem far worse than the offending cigar.

Danenbaum plucked the cigar from the man’s mouth and flung it to the floor.  If female guests were put off by the stench of cigar smoke in the supper room; they were no doubt terrorized by the pugilistic threats that were now exchanged by the two men.  Only the intervention of cooler minds prevented a full-out fist fight, according to reports.

Exactly ten years after the housewarming celebration the Progress Club announced it had “decided to dispose of its present house at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Sixty-third Street, and will erect a new home on a site yet to be selected.”  A club member told reporters on January 8, 1900 that “the reason for the club moving was simply that its present house is regarded by a majority of the members as inadequate.”

It took the club over a year to find a suitable property; but on November 3, 1901 it announced the purchase of three lots at the northwest corner of Central Park West and 88^th Street.  Simultaneously it was revealed that millionaire James B. Haggin had signed a contract for the purchase of the 63^rdStreet building.  “The reported price in the sale to Mr. Haggin was $735,000, and he will put up a mansion on the site costing about $1,000,000,” reported The New York Times.

The Progress Club moved to the West Side and, oddly enough, James B. Haggin did not build his new mansion; but let the hulking clubhouse sit empty and dark.  Instead, he moved into the lavish Crocker mansion one block north at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 64^thStreet in 1912. 

When James Haggin died in Newport on August 16, 1914, the Progress Club still sat eerily quiet and unused.  The following year, on December 11, 1915, the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that his estate had sold the property “to a syndicate formed for the purpose of erecting an apartment house suitable in every way to the location where it is to be constructed.”

The firm of Starrett & Van Vleck was commissioned to design the 12-story Renaissance-inspired building.  With one apartment per floor, the new building was marketing what could be termed horizontal mansions.  The rents were expected to be about $18,000 to $25,000 per year—about $47,000 a month in today’s dollars for the more expensive apartments.

Starrett & Van Vleck released this sketch of the coming building in December 1915.  It survives today. Real Estate Record & Builder's News, December 11, 1915 (copyright expired)  

Before the massive apartment building could rise, the Progress Club had to come down.  The lavish interiors of onyx columns and ormolu galleries were gone within weeks.  That it ever stood is largely forgotten.

Gargoyles Above Broadway -- the 1890 No. 716 Broadway

photo by Alice Lum

Broadway curved northward along the western edge of the farmland estate of Elbert Herring in the 18^th century.  But with the Revolutionary War’s end and the departure of the British, the fashionable residential district of the city crept further and further up the street, transforming pastureland into chic enclaves of Federal mansions.

When Herring died, his estate was divided among his heirs and Nicholas Herring obtained the section of land bounded by Broadway (then known as Great George Street at this point) east to Lafayette Place.   He quickly sold the land on May 12, 1789 to Anthony L. Bleecker for $812, who divided it into fourteen building lots.

Elisha Bloomer was a hatter on June 1, 1833 when he purchased the two northernmost lots.  The enormous price of $15,600 reflected the changing nature of the area.   Just to the east on Lafayette Place Seth Green had erected the stunning white marble LaGrange Terrace two years earlier.  The nine mansions, designed to appear as a single unit with a long, classic colonnade of Corinthian columns, were the grandest homes outside of London.

Bloomer followed Green’s lead and erected a mini-version of LaGrange Terrace—two identical white marble mansions that shared a deep classical portico supported by immense columns.  Bloomer called the two residences at Nos. 714 and 716 the “Colonnade Houses.”

When the wealthy and prominent Smith Ely purchased No. 714 for $30,000, Bloomer wrote into the contract an agreement that “whereas the two houses are built in such style and manner as to present an entire front of great beauty and elegance, and the marring and defacing or alteration of either might depreciate the value of the other,” neither could be altered without the consent of the neighboring owner.  The “neighboring owner” would be John Moon, who purchased No. 716 in 1836 for the same price.

The "Colonnade Houses," designed to appear as a single structure, lasted less than a century -- NYPL Collection

Moon leased the house for $16,00 a year to Philip Hone who had been the “gentleman mayor” of New York in 1826.

But a serious financial depression forced the foreclosure of both houses in 1841 for $28,000.  No. 716 was purchased by Charles G. Ferris on August 17, 1844 for $16,250—about half of its original price less than a decade earlier.    Ferris was an important attorney and politician and a personal friend of Andrew Jackson who was a frequent guest in the house.  The Ferris family would retain the house until his daughter, Mrs. Caroline F. Lewis died in the mansion around 1887. 

By now the wealthy residents had nearly all moved northward and their mansions were one-by-one being replaced by commercial buildings.  No. 714 had been renovated in 1878 as a commercial building.  At the time, The New York Times lamented that “This property—No. 714 Broadway—has recently passed into the hands of ex-Judge Dittenhoefer, who, finding the structure not available for rent in its present form, has been reluctantly compelled to despoil Broadway of one of its old aesthetic landmarks, by removing the grand old Doric front, and substituting a utilitarian iron one, susceptible of plate-glass windows.”

In not-so-surprising prediction the newspaper said “it is not likely that No. 716 will long outlive the distinction of its twin brother.”

Two years after Caroline Lewis died Jacob and William Scholle purchased the house for $75,500 on May 22, 1889.  The brothers commissioned Prussian-born Alfred Zucker to design a six-story commercial building with retail space on the ground floor.  Zucker outdid himself.

The lower two floors were framed in rough-cut brownstone that gave way to carved, grouped pilasters in offset segments that resemble clusters of bamboo.   Above the fifth floor threatening demons’ heads form the corbels of the decorative cornice.   The monsters are mere introductions, however, to the over-sized gargoyles that stare down from either side of the roof line at the shoppers below.  Between them, a copper panel above a copper-sheathed cornice announces the date of construction.

Menacing gargoyles stare intently down onto Broadway, flanking an unusual copper cornice and parapet -- photo by Alice Lum

The retail space was taken by the firm of Leach, Baird & Meyer.  The store’s large display windows proved too much to resist for a man whom police “believed to be crazy” on September 19, 1894.  The man threw a brick “maliciously,” according to The Evening World, through the window, resulting in his arrest by Policeman McGonnigle.

McGonnigle testified that the vandal “talked a gibberish which he could not understand” as the cop escorted him to the station house.  The following day, in Jefferson Market Police Court, the prisoner refused to identify himself; however Policeman Kennedy recognized him.  The officer related that the previous day, prior to the window-breaking, the man approach him at 6^th Avenue and 4^th Street, telling him he wanted to die.  The Evening World said that the man then “asked the officer if he wouldn’t die with him.”

Apparently Officer Kennedy thought better of the idea.

Decorative corbels are formed by horned demon heads -- photo by Alice Lum

At the turn of the century the Broadway neighborhood around No. 716 had become the center of the millinery and apparel district.   In February 1901 Indig, Berg & Co., cloakmakers, was here.  The company’s contract with their union employees expired that month and management decided to deal with the employees on a one-to-one basis, disregarding the union.

The workers were locked out as the owners waited for them to come forward to negotiate their pay and benefits outside of the union.  Instead, the workers struck in retaliation.  After a month of no production, Indig, Berg & Co. negotiated a new contract with the union and the cutting and sewing tables were active again.

Also in the building during the first few years of the new century were Samuel Lazarus, “maker of hand-made fancy hats;” David Henly’s Sons, manufacturers and suppliers of artificial flowers and feathers for hats; and the Excelsior Shirt Company of New York.

Isaac Nebenzahl was the manager of Excelsior Shirt Company in 1903 when he suddenly disappeared on May 3.  It was soon discovered that $25,000 had disappeared as well.   The unbelievably self-serving act  left his wife with no financial support and his son, J. Harry Hebenzahl who was secretary of the now-insolvent company, without an income.

The former Chief of the United States Secret Service, A. L. Drummond took up the case and doggedly pursued the embezzler.    The detective tracked him to St. Louis, then to “the City of Mexico,” as The New York Timesreported it.  The next trace of Nebenzahl was in Naples, Italy.   Drummond chased him to Vienna where he caught up with the man, but failed to nab him.  Nebenzahl then fled to Munich, Berlin, and finally to Paris.  

Drummond was too late to catch the robber at the Grand Hotel, but he finally captured him at a small Parisian family hotel.  Fleeing from ex-Chief Drummond was a costly venture.  When captured, Nebenzahl had $80 in his possession.

At the same time the Decorative Plant Company was here.  Twenty-nine year old John Simpson was hired as a traveling salesman in 1904.  A year later Simpson returned from a business trip to the South, then left for England in August for a vacation.

The vacation took a tragic turn when Simpson cut his own throat and jumped into the Mersey River in Liverpool.  The suicide attempt was foiled by a policeman who rescued him, after a violent struggle, and transported him to a hospital.

Arthur Siegman took an entire floor in 1907, manufacturing men’s scarves and neckties.  Siegman outfitted his new space with "all the necessary facilities and devices for the prompt, systematic and economical conduct of his business," according to Mercantile and Financial Times.   The firm’s up-to-date accessories were modeled after current French fashions.   The ties were available in multiple color combinations and sold at retail for about 25 cents.

Arthur Siegman offered these three ties in 1908, including the rainbow taffeta four-in-hand.  The ties cost 25 cents.  -- photo Men's Wear 1908 (copyright expired)

Another artificial flower concern was apparently doing very well in 1910 since owner Charles Spilka had absolutely no time to serve jury duty.  He ignored his first summons in February and when he received his second notice, he arrived at court just long enough to leave a pile of letters from “influential men” with the clerk that attested to how busy he was.

Supreme court Justice Goff was unimpressed, however.  Saying he would “tolerate no influence,” he fined Spilka $100 for contempt and $10 costs on February 23 and ordered the flower maker to report to duty for the rest of the term.  The New York Times noted with some consolation that “At the rate of $2 a day he will be able to earn something toward the fine.”

As World War I ended and the Jazz Age took over New York, No. 716 Broadway continued to attract small apparel firms.  Louis N. Cohen was here as well as J. H. Beman.     The retail store was home to Chain Shirt Shops in the 1920s, while upstairs was wholesale clothing firm M. Coleman and Company.  Edward Davidson Coleman, a graduate of Harvard who served in the Bureau of Aircraft Production during the war, not only worked in his family’s business, but lived in the building as well.

At the same time Max Zukow’s clothing factory was here.  Zukow was among a small group of people who got a fright on February 21, 1920 while going to work.  As the elevator rose between the second and third floors, two men suddenly drew revolvers and demanded the operator to stop the car.

The bandits quickly searched the passengers and removed their valuables, then ordered the operator to send the elevator back to the ground floor where they fled.  Max Zukow was relieved of $500 and a stickpin.

Only a few minutes later, after police were notified, one of the holdup men, 21 year old Michael Romano, was arrested not far from the building.

As the Noho neighborhood changed in the latter part of the 20^th century, so did No. 716 Broadway.    The overflow of artists from nearby Soho looking for studio and living space spread up Broadway from Houston Street and trendy shops began appearing.  In 1981 No. 716 was converted to artists’ living and working quarters—one per floor above street level.

Shakespeare & Co Booksellers has been successfully plying its trade in the retail shop for decades.  The store was called by New York Magazine “a favorite general-interest bookstore for chain-avoiding New Yorkers.”

photo by Alice Lum

Today Zucker’s remarkable façade has been carefully restored.  And if pedestrians along Broadway happen to glance up, they will see their stares returned by two frightfully macabre gargoyles.