The 1850's "Muffin House" -- No. 337 W. 20th Street

Its original use as a foundry most likely accounts for the building's extra-wide frontage.  The decorative cornice has been lost.

When Samuel Bath Thomas left his home in England in 1874 the Chelsea region of New York City had already become a vibrant, mixed neighborhood.    Half a century earlier the once-rural family estate of Clement Clarke Moore had been cut into building plots as the streets and avenues invaded the property.

By now row houses, churches and businesses lined the avenues and side streets.     The westerly location of Chelsea near the Hudson River, still north of the established business district and many blocks from 5^th Avenue, kept property values affordable.  Yet it was also near enough to the Broadway hotels to be advantageous to businesses serving those establishments—like a commercial bakery.

Along with his personal effects, Samuel Bath Thomas brought his most valuable possession—a muffin recipe.   Thomas’s muffin was totally unlike anything American breakfasters were accustomed to and it would lead to his fortune in his new country.

In 1880 Thomas opened his first bakery at No. 163 9^thAvenue.     He sold only to commercial establishments, possibly to the discontent of passersby who smelled the aromas wafting from the bakery.   He advertised delivery “to hotels and restaurants by pushcart.”

Before long the demand for Thomas’ English Muffins was such that a second bakery was necessary.  Thomas opened the branch location just around the corner at No. 337 West 20^th Street.  What would seem to be a rather surprising spot on an otherwise quiet residential street directly across from St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, was most likely a shrewd move.

The existing brick-and-brownstone building had been built a decade before the Civil War.  A foundry was once housed in the lower levels which would have necessitated large brick ovens.   It was nearly a custom fit.

Thomas renovated the existing building and, perhaps with deference to the neighbors and the church, only slightly altered the Anglo-Italianate street level.  It was possibly at this time that the pressed copper cornice above the first floor was added.    

In the basement massive brick ovens stretched back underneath the garden.    From here the Thomas bakery produced the tasty English muffins for decades.

When Thomas died in 1919 his family took over the bakery, later selling the business.   Eventually the West 20^th Street location was abandoned and the former bakery became, like the upper floors, apartments.  The great brick ovens under the garden were walled off and forgotten.  In 1952 there were two apartments per floor and any memories of Thomas’s baking operation in the basement were long forgotten.

Then around 2005 Mike  Kinnarie and Kerry McInerney purchased their duplex apartment—the first floor and basement--in the building which was now a co-op.   In July 2006 Kinnarie was in the process of some home improvement and removed an old radiator on the first floor.  In the process some floorboards were pulled loose.

In the darkness below he could see bricks and what appeared to be a door or perhaps a window.  In an act of urban archeology, Kinnarie cut a section from the basement bedroom wall and aimed a flashlight beam into the darkness.  There were Thomas’s ovens—an arched grotto-like brick structure bearing the black scars of years of intense heat.

The co-op at No. 337 West 20^th Street has been christened The Muffin House.   The mid-19^thcentury building draws little attention by its unexceptional architecture.  Yet underneath the garden are remnants of a most interesting page of New York and culinary history.

photographs taken by the author

The 1854 Robert Bayard House -- No. 83 Jane Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1804 much of the rural countryside north of New York City was taken up by sprawling country estates of British officers and wealthy townspeople.   Two such properties, the Bayard and Ludlow estates, abutted one another near Greenwich Village.    Jane Street, a country lane running essentially east-west which lead to the Jayne Farm, separated the two estates—Bayard’s being to the north and Ludlow’s on the south.

The sumptuous nature of Bayard’s home was hinted at when newspapers reported on a lightning strike to the residence on June 10, 1775.  “Last Sunday week the House of William Bayard, Esq., at Greenwick [sic], was struck by Lightning, which occasioned considerable damage.  In several apartments large Pier glasses were broken, and a quantity of silver plate contained in a chest was pierced and otherwise affected without doing the least injury to the chest.”

While engaged in a particularly fierce political debate that year, Aaron Burr challenged Alexander Hamilton to a duel.  Hamilton accepted.   The duel was fought in Weekawken, New Jersey and Hamilton was fatally wounded.  He was ferried across the Hudson River to the nearest house—that of his close friend William Bayard, where he died.

By the 1820s both the Bayard and Ludlow families were dissecting their estates into building plots as the development of Greenwich Village flourished.   Little Jane Street, a country road two decades earlier, was soon lined with brick-faced homes.  And by the middle of the Civil War, popular lore would insist that Alexander Hamilton died in William Bayard’s home at No. 82 Jane Street—an address that did not exist in 1804.

William Cullen Bryant later wrote “there is a prevalent error in regard to the house in which Hamilton died, which is worth correcting, if only to show how little tradition is to be trusted.”

The Bayard Farm had been established by Nicholas Bayard, a relative of Peter Stuyvesant, in the 17^th century.   He owned thousands of acres of land outside of Manhattan; but his estate here encompassed 200 acres.  By the time of Hamilton’s death, the country house was owned by William Bayard, Jr. and change was on the way.

In 1833 William Bayard’s heirs sold the family house and much of the land to Francis B. Cutting for about $50,000.  In April, two years later, Cutting divided his property into 175 lots which he sold at auction for $225,000.  The Bayard mansion was demolished.

In 1853 William’s youngest son, Robert, began construction of a fine four-story brick home at No. 83 Jane Street for himself and his wife, the former Elizabeth McEvers.  The house would sit opposite the fabled No. 22 (and on the Bayard side of the street).  The Bayards’ two daughters, Ruth Hunter and Elsie Justine, were both grown and married by now.  Son William had died a decade earlier at the age of 21.

photo by Alice Lum

Completed a year later, the Bayard house distinguished itself from the other homes on the street with a full-width cast iron balcony at the second floor and the noticeable absence of a steep stoop.   Designed in the up-to-the-minute Anglo-Italianate style, the entrance was essentially at sidewalk level.

Robert Bayard owned other lots on Jane Street, closer to the Hudson River (then called the North River) and in the decade prior to the Civil War leased three lots to the City of New York as a “corporation yard.”

Unlike its neighbors with raised parlor levels, No. 83 was accessed at street level -- photo by Alice Lum

Despite its relative proximity to the waterfront, the Jane Street block maintained its respectable status throughout the 19^thcentury.    In 1884 Jennie M. Campbell lived at No. 83.  She was a teacher in Primary School No. 9 across town at No. 42 First Street.

Five years later the house was home to Terrance Shields.  Shields was a “parkkeeper” who earned $2.75 per day from the City.   His salary today would translate to approximately $17,500 per year.

During the Great Depression the luxury of spacious private homes was unaffordable to nearly all but the wealthy.  In 1937 the house was converted to apartments—one per floor.   Later, in the mid-1950s into the 1960s, F. Thomas Heller lived here.  Heller was a nationally-known seller of rare and vintage books.

In the 1970s the house was converted to a duplex on the first two floors and two full-floor apartments above.  In 1998 the owners put it on the market for $2.6 million and sold it a year later for $2.45 million. 

In reporting the sale The New York Observer ran the headline “Alexander Hamilton’s Deathbed.”  Having caught the readers’ eye, however, the Observer clarified that “Alexander Hamilton was brought to this neck of the woods to die in 1804…”

The new buyers reconverted the handsome house to a single-family home. 

In the meantime, in 1936, across the street at No. 82 a plaque was affixed to the 1886 apartment building that replaced the former house there.  The bronze tablet—still there today--reads “82 Jane St.  Site of the William Bayard House where Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury, died after his duel with Aaron burr, July 12, 1804.”

Although the Bayard mansion sat far back from the little country lane that divided his estate from Ludlow's, popular lore is cast in bronze on the Victorian building at No. 82 Jane Street -- photo by Alice Lum

In William Cullen Bryant’s words, the plaque is a wonderful example of “how little tradition is to be trusted.”

A History of Tragedy -- No. 211 West 22nd Street

In 1883 No. 211 West 22^nd Street was no longer a private home.  It was, as described by The New York Times, “a respectable furnished room [sic] house.”  Built around the time of the Civil War, it was one of six speculative row houses intended for the financially-comfortable merchant class.

The houses were built as three pairs of mirror-image residences in the up-to-date Anglo-Italianate style.  In place of the tall brownstone stoops that marked the Greek Revival townhouses of the 1840s and 50s, a short flight of four steps let to the entrances over shallow basements.  Just two bays wide, the brownstone-clad houses marked their territories by quoins that ran up the sides.  Three stories of planar stone sat upon a rusticated base where extremely handsome carved enframements with foliate keystones surrounded the double doors.

Now Mrs. G. R. Williamson ran the boarding house and on May 23 she accepted Horace B. Shepard and his wife, Kitty, as boarders.   Shepard was employed by Herring & Co. at No. 251 Broadway as a traveling salesman.  The only son of the Rev. P. L. Shepard of Saybrook, Connecticut, he had for a while taught at his father’s military school, the Seabury Institute.

Although Mrs. Williamson had quiet misgivings (she later admitted “They did not act as married people do), she rented them “a well furnished room.”  The couple kept to themselves.  While Shepard was at work, Kitty mostly stayed in her room.  Mrs. Williamson noted that they took all their meals at restaurants.

Oddly enough, Shepard never mentioned his marriage to his co-workers.   A member of Herring & Co. said of him on July 30, 1883, “He was as gentle as a schoolgirl…He kept the petty cash and his accounts were correct.  He had not spoken of his marriage, and no one knew that he had an attachment, serious or otherwise, for any woman.”

As it turned out, Mr. and Mrs. Shepard had never bothered with the formality of marriage.  Kitty was in fact Mrs. Kate Voullaire whose husband had died a few years earlier.  She had four children--a daughter and three sons; Belmont, aged 29 and a “commercial traveler;” Alphonse, a 23-year old employed at O’Neill’s Dry Goods only about a block from No. 211 West 22^nd Street; and little 8-year old Paul.  All the children, as well as Alphonse's new wife, lived in an apartment on the fourth floor of No. 117 West 15^th Street.

Horace Shepard and Kitty Voullaire had met about a year and a half earlier and her grown sons were “bitterly opposed to their mother’s conduct,” as reported in The New York Times.   The newspaper described the 42-year old woman as “a buxom brunette, with luxuriant black hair.”  Trouble came for the pair when Shepard’s parents arrived in New York City in June.

When Rev. Shepard arrived at the boarding house to visit his son one afternoon, Mrs. Williamson noted that he “did not remain long with him.”  A day or two later his mother appeared.  Horace managed to prevent his parents from meeting Kitty—she most likely stayed in the flat with her children, as she sometimes did.  Mrs. Shepard stayed overnight in a room in the West 22^nd Street house and his landlady noticed that “neither visit appeared to be a pleasant one to Horace.”

Although Horace kept his family in the dark about his liaison, his mother had suspicions.  The Times later mentioned that “it was certain that neither the Rev. Mr. Shepard nor his wife ever saw Kittie, and that, while [the minister] had never heard of her, Mrs. Shepard knew enough of her to be anxious.”

Horace Shepard’s personal guilt grew to the point of madness.  Believing that his mother had shared her suspicions with his father, Shepard penned a letter on July 20 that read:

The Rev. P. L. Shepard, Saybrook, Conn.:

My Dear Mother and Father:  Kitty and I were secretly married.  There will be nothing revealed of the ceremony.  We have been very happy together in life, but we will be happier in death, which seems too pleasant.  Our last wish and request is that we may rest together.  With all our love and devotion we are your affectionate son and daughter,

Kitty and Horace Shepard.

It is doubtful that the decision to be “happier in death” was made in conjunction with Kitty.   Although he wrote the letter on the 20^th, he took no immediate action.  His co-workers noted that he “had been disturbed in mind for the past month, and he was reprimanded for having his work behind.”   On Thursday, July 26 he asked for some time off “on the plea that he had private business to attend to.”  He knew that the following week his father was coming back to New York City on business.

At 9:00 on the morning of June 30, with the Rev. Shepard in the city, boarders in the West 22^nd Street house were alarmed by the report of two pistol shots in quick succession.   Mrs. Williamson sent for Officer Thomas Clarke of the 16^th Precinct, who forced open the door of Shepard’s room.  Horace and Kitty were dead.

“Both Shepard and the woman were in their night robes and partly covered by the bed-clothes,” reported The Times.  “It was evident that Shepard had killed the woman while she slept, and had then shot himself in the right side of the head, as he had shot his victim.”

While witnesses said that Kitty’s features were “tranquil;” Horace “wore an expression of agony.”  The newspaper was explicit in the gruesome details.  “He appeared to have shot himself sitting up in bed, and he fell on his pillow, so that the back of his head slid toward the south side of the bed, and the blood from his wound trickled from the pillow to the floor and formed a pool on the carpet.  The revolver fell between him and the woman and lay near his right hand, the index finger of which was slightly blackened by ignited powder.”

A few hours later Rev. Shepard appeared at the offices of Herring & Co. to see his son.  “He staggered when he heard of his son’s death and the murder of the woman, and went straightway to No. 211 West Twenty-second-street,” reported The New York Times.  “The bodies had been removed and were barely a block away, but after making a few inquiries, he stopped dazed and broken-hearted, declining to look at his son’s body on the plea that the sight would be a shock that he could not bear.”

At the inquest on August 3, Rev. Shepard insisted that the suicide note had not been written by his son and insinuated murder.  The New-York Tribune said “He described his son as most dutiful until three years ago.  He was timid and girlish by nature, and was the favorite of every person who met him.  He did not think that his son would be associated with any woman who was not his wife, for he had ‘a righteous hatred of immorality.’”  The minister believed his son “was duped into believing he was married without his being actually so.  He did not think his son had sufficient courage to commit a deed of violence.”

The coroner and the jury disagreed.  The powder marks on his hands and the positions of the bodies pointed to murder-suicide.

Howard Shepard’s last request was not granted.  He and Kitty were buried miles apart—he in Connecticut and she in New York State.

Hefty mid-Victorian newels anchor the cast iron railings.

The owner of No. 211 at the time was Sarah Meyers who owned several investment properties in Manhattan, including several on upper Broadway which she had architect E. T. Hatch renovate in 1885.

Renovations were slower to come to No. 211 West 22^ndStreet and in 1907 the house was still lit and heated by gas.  On February 19 of that year Mrs. Annie Young and Gertrude Looman took a furnished room here, apparently sharing the single room to save expenses.  Only a day later, just before midnight, their bodies were discovered lying side by side in the bed.  The women had been fatally overcome by gas escaping from a radiator.

Less tragic was the incident that occurred to Archibald Wagner and his wife on October 6, 1909.  The couple traveled from rural Adams, New York to enjoy the Hudson-Fulton Celebration and were staying with friends at No. 211.  That morning Wagner and his wife left the house to mail a letter.  After purchasing a stamp at the drug store at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 22^ndStreet, Wagner ran into a young boy.

“Where can I mail this letter, sonny?” he asked the mischievous boy.  

The youth recognized that Archibald Wagner was no city slicker and pointed him to a fire alarm box on a utility pole.  “Put it in that red box on the post.”

The boy dodged around the corner to watch the developments.

“Mr. Wagner tinkered with the fire-alarm box while his wife waited,” reported The Times, and finally he got it open.  He followed the instructions to pull down the hook, but he couldn’t see the place for the letter.  While he was thinking the matter over a great clatter of hoofs sounded and two fire engines and a truck pulled up to the curb.”

Chief Turpenny, realizing it was a false alarm, called the police.  Before the tourists, who were bitterly pleading their innocence, arrived at the station house Chief Turpenny “guessed it was all a mistake after all” and had the policemen let the couple go.

The Chief admonished the cops, however, “You’d better get after the fresh kid who put up the job on the old man.”

The boarding house got more unwanted publicity on May 19, 1923.  Thirty-one-year old boarder Charles Hughes had already served previous terms in jail for shoplifting.  Now he stood before a judge after admitting the theft of a silver fruit dish priced at $22 from Bloomingdale’s Department Store on East 59^th Street on May 5.   Although the value of the item was not exceedingly great—about $250 today—his record resulted in a stiff sentence.  He received “an indeterminate sentence of from six months to three years in the penitentiary,” reported The New York Times.

The seeming tradition of calamity continued when, around 5 a.m. on August 29, 1940, the building caught fire.  Milton Kassel, an employee of a nearby garage, noticed the fire as he was walking along the block.  He shouted to another passerby to pull a fire alarm while he ran into the house to arouse the occupants.

Back on the sidewalk, he noticed young Vera Logan climbing out of the fourth floor window and holding herself on the sill.  Kassel shouted that help was on the way, but the woman could not stand the heat and flames directly at her back.  “She pushed herself from the window ledge and fell to the stoop of the house just as the first fire apparatus arrived,” reported a newspaper the following day.

Other boarders, John and Mildred Simons, were hanging by their hands from the windows of the second floor and Kassel reached their feet and assisted them down.  Another woman, Cecelia Conrad, stood on a fourth floor window sill screaming for help.  Fireman Walter Hunt raised a ladder and brought her down, suffering face and hand burns in doing so.  Other roomers jumped from the second floor windows.  Lubomir Shiskedjeff, possibly fractured his skull and John Miller injured his left leg.

Although injured, all the occupants except Vera Logan, whom boarders said was 22 years old, survived.  The fall to the stoop was fatal to the woman who had just been married six months earlier.

Four days later Vera’s husband was found around 8:30 a.m. sitting on the ledge of the fourth-floor window where she had plunged to her death.  Wearing the uniform of a Regular Army private, he was first identified as Private Stanley Logan; but it was later revealed by Sergeant J. W. Patterson of Fort Wadsworth that he was 20-year old Stanley Joseph Karczewski who had deserted from Fort Benning, Georgia about a year earlier.

The couple was married using his assumed name and now the grief-ridden man threatened to toss himself from the burned-out building.   Unable to persuade him down, police sent for the priest of the nearby Church of St. Vincent de Paul when they noticed that the ex-soldier held rosary beads.   Hemmed in by police at both the front and rear of the building, Karczewski attempted to hang himself from a beam with an electric cord, but the charred timber broke under his weight.

While Rev Emanuel Gonzales distracted the man, Fireman Charles Sedera was lowered from the roof on a rope.   With a quick shove he pushed Karczewski back into the building where two policemen wrestled him into submission.   It was discovered that his wife was not 22-years old as thought.  Her sister, Mrs. Harold Hang, identified her as Veronica Honejko, only 15 years old, who had run away from home.

The following year Firefighter Sedera was awarded the Thomas F. Crimmins Medal and the Department Medal for his act of valor that day.

The 2009 renovation resulted in high-end apartments -- photo streeteasy.com/nyc

In 1966 the house was divided into apartments, two per floor; and in 2009 another renovation created a triplex apartment in the basement through second floor, with one apartment on each floor above.  The property was purchased in 2011 for $3.85 million and a subsequent restoration brought the house back to a single family residence for the first time in nearly a century and a half.

Since the last years of the 20th century the house at No. 211, now once again a private home, enjoys happier days.

 photographs taken by the author

The 1855 No. 111 East 19th Street

Like its matching neighbor No. 111 lost its exterior detailing during 20th century updating.  Yet both homes retain their dignified proportions.

In 1831 James Duane’s Gramercy Farm on the east side of Manhattan included both fields and swampy marshland.  With the city inching ever northward, Samuel B. Ruggles recognized the potential of the area and purchased land from Duane to develop into a fashionable neighborhood of mansions ringing a central, private park.

A year later he had drained the marsh and enclosed what would be Gramercy Park with a heavy cast iron fence.  In 1844 he began the landscaping of the park and one by one grand residences began rising along the 60 plots that surrounded it.

Among those mansions was the home of Judge Thomas J. Oakley at No. 12 Gramercy Park.  Oakley had served two terms in Congress, concurrently with Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun.   John Sergeant of Philadelphia who served in Congress at the same time, spoke of Oakley as “the ablest debater then to be found in that body.”

Upon leaving Congress he succeeded Martin Van Buren as Attorney General of New York.  But by now the wealthy and highly respected lawyer was Chief Justice of the Superior Court of New York City; a position he held for many years.

As Gramercy Park developed into the fashionable neighborhood Ruggles had envisioned, so did the surrounding area.  Directly behind Oakley’s home were two undeveloped lots at No. 111 and 113 East 19^thStreet.  Around 1855 the Justice purchased the properties and had two refined, matching row houses constructed in the up-to-the-minute Anglo-Italianate style.

While the city was filling with Greek Revival houses with steep brownstone stoops, Oakley’s new houses were entered nearly at sidewalk level.  A shallow set of four steps accessed the parlor level over an American basement.   The formal, dignified facades, perhaps, reflected the Judge’s own conservative nature.  The New York Daily Tribune said of him, “He had a great abhorrence of innovations, and may have erred in excess of conservatism.”

Robust pre-Civil War iron fencing protects the American basement.

Rigidly symmetrical, the homes rose four stories to an overhanging, bracketed wooden cornice.  Inside, rich architectural details were intended not only to add to the luxurious surroundings of the Judge’s tenants; but to reflect their financial and social status.  These included lavishly-carved white marble mantles, ornate ceiling plasterwork and stained glass skylights above the winding staircase.

A graceful floral motif in a white marble mantel upstairs is carried through in the cast iron surround.

Judge Thomas J. Oakley died at the age of 74 on May 13, 1857.  The family retained possession of No. 111 until 1864.  Before long it became the home of hotel proprietor Lyman Fisk.

Fisk had been involved in the hotel business since the age of 18.  Upon arriving in New York City in 1856 he was connected with the Girard House and later became proprietor of the Stevens House.  Although he attempted to retire in 1869, the siren song of the hotel industry proved too strong and in 1869 he purchased the Taylor Hotel in Jersey City, New Jersey.   The 12-story hotel was a favorite among “sporting men” and had a nation-wide reputation.

Light poured into the sharply-winding staircase through an oval stained glass skylight above.

The health of the aging hotelier began failing in 1880 and he was forced, finally, to retire for good.  In December 1888 he died in the house at No. 111 East 19^thStreet.   His simple funeral was conducted in the parlor on the morning of December 14.    The New York Times noted that “The service was simple and brief, in accordance with the wishes of Mr. Fisk.  There were no pall bearers.  Miss Fanny Davenport sent a handsome basket of pink roses and lilies of the valley; a while shield of immortelles was the gift of the Actors’ Fund.”

The home was purchased by another hotel proprietor, C. S. Wehrle who ran the Belvedere Hotel at 18^th Street and 4^thAvenue.

In the meantime, Judge Taylor’s daughter, Matilda, had married William Rhinelander of the staggeringly-wealthy and socially prestigious Rhinelander family.   The family had amassed its fortune in colonial days through sugar refining and the retail trade.   But in the first half of the 19^th century the Rhinelanders realized the greatest investment in New York City lay in real estate.

Matilda and her husband had already purchased No. 113 when, in 1898, they bought No. 111 from Wehrle.  Both of Judge Oakley’s speculative houses were now back in the family.

The Rhinelanders leased No. 111 as a boarding house where well-heeled, single men found respectable lodging.    In 1900 the bachelor banker Nathaniel Foote lived here.  He worked for the firm of Moore & Schley, members of the New York Stock Exchange.   Howard W. Bartle was here at the same time; a graphic artist who designed book covers.

In 1905 Matilda Rhinelander leased the house to Miss Kate A. Little who would continue running the boarding house; although no longer exclusively for male tenants.

One female tenant, Maria T. Ayling, unfortunately died here in 1911 of natural causes.  Author R. R. Whiting who was graduated from Harvard in 1900 was living in No. 111 in 1913.  Three years later he would publish his “The Judgment of Jane,” which he wrote here.

Roses and lilies twine from matching ribbon-tied bouquets on either side of a spectacularly-carved keystone.

John M. Monfort lived here in 1922.   The businessman was general manager of the architectural firm of Buchman & Kahn.  Monfort found himself in the midst of an uproar on September 15 of that year.

An outraged New York Times reported that “Gangs of young hoodlums ran riot in various parts of the city last night, smashing unseasonable straw hats and trampling them in the street.  In some cases, mobs of hundreds of boys and young men terrorized whole blocks.”

Swarms of youths, having decided that smashing straw boaters would be great fun, attacked pedestrians and motorists alike.   The groups snatched the men’s hats and trampled them on the pavement, then ran full speed to elude police.

All the while John Monfort was driving his automobile down 7^thAvenue, unaware of what The Times would the following day call “The Straw Hat Riot.”   10-year old John Sweeney, who lived at No. 363 West 16^th Street, was among a gang of boys running rampant along the avenue between 16^th and 18^thStreets.  He ran directly into Monfort’s car, breaking his right leg.

As World War II drew to a close, No. 111 East 19^thStreet became a private home again.  Having been used for nearly half a century as a boarding house, it had never been broken up into apartments nor been seriously maltreated.  On February 2, 1946 Mrs. Ann Kennedy bought the house “for occupancy.”

Few people prefer to live in a museum and succeeding owners made renovations.  The exterior lost its Anglo-Italian detailing around the windows--a common effort at updating.  A remarkably-surviving mid-20th century bathroom upstairs gleams in yellow and black; and late in the century a dentist office was installed in the American basement where Lyman Fisk's cook once toiled and the intimate informal family dining room would have been.

Today the house that Chief Justic Thomas Oakley commissioned over a century and a half ago survives as a reminder of a time when East 19th Street was developing as a fashionable residential neighborhood and the dark clouds of Civil War were still years away.

many thanks to Leslie Lalehzar for requesting this post.  photographs taken by the author.

The 1855 No. 111 East 19th Street

Like its matching neighbor No. 111 lost its exterior detailing during 20th century updating.  Yet both homes retain their dignified proportions.

In 1831 James Duane’s Gramercy Farm on the east side of Manhattan included both fields and swampy marshland.  With the city inching ever northward, Samuel B. Ruggles recognized the potential of the area and purchased land from Duane to develop into a fashionable neighborhood of mansions ringing a central, private park.

A year later he had drained the marsh and enclosed what would be Gramercy Park with a heavy cast iron fence.  In 1844 he began the landscaping of the park and one by one grand residences began rising along the 60 plots that surrounded it.

Among those mansions was the home of Judge Thomas J. Oakley at No. 12 Gramercy Park.  Oakley had served two terms in Congress, concurrently with Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun.   John Sergeant of Philadelphia who served in Congress at the same time, spoke of Oakley as “the ablest debater then to be found in that body.”

Upon leaving Congress he succeeded Martin Van Buren as Attorney General of New York.  But by now the wealthy and highly respected lawyer was Chief Justice of the Superior Court of New York City; a position he held for many years.

As Gramercy Park developed into the fashionable neighborhood Ruggles had envisioned, so did the surrounding area.  Directly behind Oakley’s home were two undeveloped lots at No. 111 and 113 East 19^thStreet.  Around 1855 the Justice purchased the properties and had two refined, matching row houses constructed in the up-to-the-minute Anglo-Italianate style.

While the city was filling with Greek Revival houses with steep brownstone stoops, Oakley’s new houses were entered nearly at sidewalk level.  A shallow set of four steps accessed the parlor level over an American basement.   The formal, dignified facades, perhaps, reflected the Judge’s own conservative nature.  The New York Daily Tribune said of him, “He had a great abhorrence of innovations, and may have erred in excess of conservatism.”

Robust pre-Civil War iron fencing protects the American basement.

Rigidly symmetrical, the homes rose four stories to an overhanging, bracketed wooden cornice.  Inside, rich architectural details were intended not only to add to the luxurious surroundings of the Judge’s tenants; but to reflect their financial and social status.  These included lavishly-carved white marble mantles, ornate ceiling plasterwork and stained glass skylights above the winding staircase.

A graceful floral motif in a white marble mantel upstairs is carried through in the cast iron surround.

Judge Thomas J. Oakley died at the age of 74 on May 13, 1857.  The family retained possession of No. 111 until 1864.  Before long it became the home of hotel proprietor Lyman Fisk.

Fisk had been involved in the hotel business since the age of 18.  Upon arriving in New York City in 1856 he was connected with the Girard House and later became proprietor of the Stevens House.  Although he attempted to retire in 1869, the siren song of the hotel industry proved too strong and in 1869 he purchased the Taylor Hotel in Jersey City, New Jersey.   The 12-story hotel was a favorite among “sporting men” and had a nation-wide reputation.

Light poured into the sharply-winding staircase through an oval stained glass skylight above.

The health of the aging hotelier began failing in 1880 and he was forced, finally, to retire for good.  In December 1888 he died in the house at No. 111 East 19^thStreet.   His simple funeral was conducted in the parlor on the morning of December 14.    The New York Times noted that “The service was simple and brief, in accordance with the wishes of Mr. Fisk.  There were no pall bearers.  Miss Fanny Davenport sent a handsome basket of pink roses and lilies of the valley; a while shield of immortelles was the gift of the Actors’ Fund.”

The home was purchased by another hotel proprietor, C. S. Wehrle who ran the Belvedere Hotel at 18^th Street and 4^thAvenue.

In the meantime, Judge Oakley’s daughter, Matilda, had married William Rhinelander of the staggeringly-wealthy and socially prestigious Rhinelander family.   The family had amassed its fortune in colonial days through sugar refining and the retail trade.   But in the first half of the 19^th century the Rhinelanders realized the greatest investment in New York City lay in real estate.

Matilda and her husband had already purchased No. 113 when, in 1898, they bought No. 111 from Wehrle.  Both of Judge Oakley’s speculative houses were now back in the family.

The Rhinelanders leased No. 111 as a boarding house where well-heeled, single men found respectable lodging.    In 1900 the bachelor banker Nathaniel Foote lived here.  He worked for the firm of Moore & Schley, members of the New York Stock Exchange.   Howard W. Bartle was here at the same time; a graphic artist who designed book covers.

In 1905 Matilda Rhinelander leased the house to Miss Kate A. Little who would continue running the boarding house; although no longer exclusively for male tenants.

One female tenant, Maria T. Ayling, unfortunately died here in 1911 of natural causes.  Author R. R. Whiting who was graduated from Harvard in 1900 was living in No. 111 in 1913.  Three years later he would publish his “The Judgment of Jane,” which he wrote here.

Roses and lilies twine from matching ribbon-tied bouquets on either side of a spectacularly-carved keystone.

John M. Monfort lived here in 1922.   The businessman was general manager of the architectural firm of Buchman & Kahn.  Monfort found himself in the midst of an uproar on September 15 of that year.

An outraged New York Times reported that “Gangs of young hoodlums ran riot in various parts of the city last night, smashing unseasonable straw hats and trampling them in the street.  In some cases, mobs of hundreds of boys and young men terrorized whole blocks.”

Swarms of youths, having decided that smashing straw boaters would be great fun, attacked pedestrians and motorists alike.   The groups snatched the men’s hats and trampled them on the pavement, then ran full speed to elude police.

All the while John Monfort was driving his automobile down 7^thAvenue, unaware of what The Times would the following day call “The Straw Hat Riot.”   10-year old John Sweeney, who lived at No. 363 West 16^th Street, was among a gang of boys running rampant along the avenue between 16^th and 18^thStreets.  He ran directly into Monfort’s car, breaking his right leg.

As World War II drew to a close, No. 111 East 19^thStreet became a private home again.  Having been used for nearly half a century as a boarding house, it had never been broken up into apartments nor been seriously maltreated.  On February 2, 1946 Mrs. Ann Kennedy bought the house “for occupancy.”

Few people prefer to live in a museum and succeeding owners made renovations.  The exterior lost its Anglo-Italian detailing around the windows--a common effort at updating.  A remarkably-surviving mid-20th century bathroom upstairs gleams in yellow and black; and late in the century a dentist office was installed in the American basement where Lyman Fisk's cook once toiled and the intimate informal family dining room would have been.

Today the house that Chief Justic Thomas Oakley commissioned over a century and a half ago survives as a reminder of a time when East 19th Street was developing as a fashionable residential neighborhood and the dark clouds of Civil War were still years away.

many thanks to Leslie Lalehzar for requesting this post.  photographs taken by the author.

The Twin Houses at Nos. 234 and 246 W. 22nd Street

By the outbreak of the Civil War the block of West 22^ndStreet between Seventh and Eighth Avenues was fully developed.   The area north of 14^th Street which had been pastoral farmland half a century earlier, was now the bustling community that took its name from the Clement Clarke Moore estate, Chelsea.

Nearly all the wide, upscale homes on the block were in the Greek Revival style, wildly popular for New York rowhouses from the mid 1830s through the 1850s.  Their tall brownstone stoops formed a regimented pattern along sidewalk.   The ubiquitous presence of the near-clones made two houses stand out—Nos. 234 and 246 West 22^nd Street.

The architect stepped out of the Greek Revival box and presented two upscale residences in the new Anglo-Italianate style.  Faced in brownstone, they dismissed the high stoops of their neighbors in favor of shallow, three-step porches.  Although they sat no further back from the property line than the rest of the houses, the absence of the necessarily-deep stoops provided extra large garden areas.  A substantial cornice separated the rusticated base with arched openings from the upper three stories.  Here the stone-framed windows of each successive grew gradually shorter.

Following the death of James H. Leverich of Louisiana, his widow and her two sons, along with James’s two brothers, Henry and Charles, moved to New York.  With the war raging, Mrs. Leverich moved north and into the new house at No. 234. 

The widow of Southerner James E. Leverich lived at No. 234 during the Civil War

At least one of James’s brothers, W. E. Leverich, remained in the South and in 1861 was in need of funds.  He applied to the Mechanics and Traders’ Bank to transfer 30 shares of capital stock from Henry’s account in New York.  It was an idea that raised the ire of the Confederate bankers and Attorney General.

On Friday June 21, 1861 the New Orleans Picayune reported “The President of the Bank entertaining serious doubts as to the propriety and legality of such a transfer, addressed a communication to the Attorney-General of the State, soliciting his opinion in the premises.  The answer of this officer is conclusive as to the illegality of the proceeding…No intercourse, other than a hostile one, can be tolerated between the people of the two sections.”

The Attorney-General Thomas J. Semmes said, in part, that there was no such thing as “war for arms and a peace for commerce.  Mr. H. S. Leverich being domiciled in New York is to be regarded as an alien enemy, and no person domiciled within the Confederates States can hold any intercourse or communication with him during the war.”  It was seemingly the last attempt of the Leverich brothers to exchange funds.

On Wednesday, March 23, 1864 the Mrs. Leverich's eldest son, Jasper Strong Leverich, died in the house on West 22^nd Street at the age of 28.  At 9:00 on Friday morning the 25^thhis funeral was held in his mother’s parlor.  Jasper’s brother, James H. Leverich, then only 6 or 7 years old, would grow into a successful businessman and a member of the Stock Exchange.

In the meantime, next door at No. 236 lived the family of Dr. Benjamin Wolfsohn, deemed by The New York Times to be “a respectable physician of this city.”  Born in Germany, Dr. Wolfsohn lived in the house with his grown son, Edward, an accomplished pianist.

On Friday evening, September 22, 1865 the 69-year old physician left the house to attend a meeting of the Harmonie Club at No. 141 8^thStreet.  Five days later The New York Times reported that “He tarried there until after 10 o’clock, and then, taking cheerful leave of his companions, departed, as everyone supposed, for his dwelling.”

The following morning Edward discovered that his father had never returned home.  Concerned, he made inquiries among the club members, but no one had any information beyond his leaving the club.  Concern grew to near panic as Edward feared that his father had been a victim of a local gang.

The Times explained “Dr. Wolfsohn having been a man of regular and abstentious habits and well-balanced mind, and never having been away from home at night without making whereabouts know, his family naturally feared that he might have fallen a victim of the Sixteenth Ward banditti while on his way home from the club.”

On Monday the Harmonie Club offered a $600 reward for information as to the whereabouts of Dr. Wolfson—an attractive $8,000 today.  Unfortunately, it was already too late.  Two boys rowing a boat in the Hudson River that morning off 23^rd Street discovered a floating body.  They secured it with ropes to keep it from floating away and notified police.

Dr. Wolfsohn left No. 236 West 22nd Street on September 22, 1865 never to return.

The New York Times reported that “when the corpse was taken from the river it was found to be that of Dr. Wolfsohn.  The doctor’s gold watch, wallet, (containing a considerable amount of money), his gold spectacles, and other valuables being on his person, of course all idea of foul play was banished from the minds of the spectators and police.”

The family was not so sure.  The newspaper noted “but the relatives, unable to take a cool view of the subject, insisted that he had been foully murdered, although they could see no early reason for the commission of the deed.”

At the family’s insistence, a “searching inquest” was initiated.  Witnesses were interviewed and a week-long investigation was conducted.  The conclusion was that “it seems probably that the Doctor, when he left the stage which he took at the club-room door, busily engaged with his own thoughts, walked in the wrong direction and into the river.  This theory is supported by the testimony of the watchmen on two vessels which were moored near the Twenty-third-street-pier, who say that at about 11 o’clock on Friday night they heard a splash and a shout for aid.”

The first instance of real scandal at No. 234 West 22^ndStreet occurred in September 1881.  The widowed Rosetta Van Loan lived here with her young daughter, Hattie.  On September 9 Frank Hawley, who worked as a clerk at No. 391 Broadway, was arrested by a Deputy Sheriff on charges filed by Mrs. Van Loan.  According to her suit, he had seduced her daughter and she demanded $10,000 in damages.

It would not be the last instance of an unfavorable spotlight being focused on the house.

By 1896 No. 234 was apparely being operated as a boarding house—as were many of the once-refined homes on the block.  George McQuillan lived here and ran a saloon nearby at No. 216 Seventh Avenue between 22^nd and 23^rdStreets.  The Irishman’s brother, James, worked as a bartender and was described by The New York Times as being “reputed to be a skillful boxer and a hard hitter.”  Also working for McQuillen was waiter Elmer E. Holloway.

Holloway was from a respectable Michigan family, but “he was headstrong and wayward, and left his home in disgrace,” said The Times.  On May 7, 1896 Holloway had “been carousing” with a young woman, Carrie Simon and around 4 in the morning they encountered the bartender who was just leaving the George McQuillen’s saloon.

“Suddenly and apparently without any particular reason, angry words passed between McQuillan and Holloway.  Exactly what the quarrel was about none of the men or the woman seemed to know yesterday, but it was said that McQuillan had made a remark to the woman which Holloway resented,” said the newspaper.

James McQuillen landed two heavy blows on the face of the drunken Holloway, who fell into the gutter and struck his head on the curbstone.  He died instantly.

George McQuillen was still living in the house in 1901 when 40-year old Jennie Smyth caused a ruckus at Sixth Avenue and 17^thStreet.  Obviously drunk, she was handing out $100 bills to anyone who passed, causing a near riot.

When a policeman arrived, “he found a mob of howling men and boys surrounding a well-dressed woman who was struggling in their midst like the possessor of the pigskin in a football game.  Her clothing was disarranged and she was hilarious over the amusement she was creating.  In one hand she clasped loosely a huge roll of greenbacks.  With the other she separated the bills from the roll, and without regard for denomination scattered them among the crowd,” reported The Times on April 20, 1901.

She was arrested for intoxication and gave her name as Jennie Smith and her address as No. 120 West 148^th Street.  Then she changed her mind and said she lived at No. 120 West 28^th Street.  In fact, she did not live at either address.  She had $2,000 in cash on her at the time of her arrest.

George McQuillan came to her aid; bailing her out and arranging a cab for her.  He corrected her name with the police, but told them nothing more.  “I don’t know how she ever got $2,000,” he said.

In 1903 the New York Society for the Enforcement of the Excise Law was formed by reformist ministers and the Parkhurst society (a group intent on stomping out the evils of alcohol, illicit sex and other vices).  Agents of the Society busied themselves on Sundays checking to ensure that saloons and liquor stores were shuttered tightly.  If not, they filed formal complaints with the police.

A year later, on January 12, 1904, George McQuillan found himself in the Society’s sights.  He was held on $500 bail awaiting trial for serving liquor on Sunday.

In 1911 Mrs. Otto Kuster ran the boarding house at No. 234 West 22^nd Street.  Among her tenants was John D. Edwards who earned a living as a floor walker in one of the Sixth Avenue department stores along what would later be termed “The Ladies’ Mile.”

Mrs. Kuster’s relationship with Edwards apparently went beyond a landlord-tenant affiliation.  The Children’s Society reported that Edwards, “who is a big man,” assumed jurisdiction over her three children.”

Edwards’s form of child discipline was severe and physical.  Neighbors complained to the police regarding the beatings; especially of 10-year old Mary Kuster.  The Society reported that he “was especially cruel to Mary, and, according to the testimony, beat her on the face with a strap.”

On September 26, 1911 the Justices in Special Sessions committed the child abuser to 60 days in the City Prison.

By the middle of the 20^th century the Chelsea block had significantly declined.  Around this time the two houses were joined internally and in 1955 there were seven furnished rooms on the combined first floor, and eight on each of the upper stories.  The once elegant residences were reduced to, essentially, a flop house.

But neighborhoods in Manhattan change and as the century drew to a close Chelsea had become a trendy and popular residential district attracting upwardly mobile young professionals.  In 1989 the two homes were separated and No. 234 was converted to a single-family home again.  No. 236 would follow suit in 2001.  The elegantly-restored homes have returned full circle to their upscale beginnings.

photographs by the author