Where Mary Todd Lincoln Shopped for China -- No. 488 Broadway

Photo by Alice Lum

By 1856 merchant E. V. Haughwout had amassed a fortune and lived in an elegant house on Gramercy Park with a private stable on 19th Street. He had opened his business in 1832 selling imported porcelain, china and glass and became one of the nation’s most esteemed merchants.

Haughwout expanded his business to include his own staff of designers, artists, glass cutters and engravers. In addition to his imported goods, the company manufactured pearl- and ivory-handled silverware and silver-plated hardware such as gas jets and chandelier parts. Here customers could choose blank French tableware to be hand-decorated to their specifications.

Broadway in the fashionable Bond Street area was becoming less residential as high-class commercial buildings replaced brownstone mansions. Here Haughwout commissioned architect John P. Gaynor to design an elegant showroom and workplace for his business on the site of three former mansions – Nos. 488 to 492 Broadway.

Haughwout planned his new emporium during a time of revolutionary architectural innovations – one of the most striking being Daniel Badger’s cast iron facades. Badger’s concept of hanging pre-cast iron sections to masonry buildings allowed for rapid construction, fire-proof facades and relatively inexpensive but elaborate decorative structures.

This site posed a problem though. Haughwout’s new building sat on a corner, requiring two iron facades.  The structure would have to support significantly more weight than a midblock building with a single metal face. Together Gaynor and Badger convinced Haughwout that an iron framework would strengthen the masonry structure and keep the cast iron façade from pulling the building down—in effect laying the foundation for steel and iron framed skyscrapers to come.

At the Crystal Palace Exhibition a few years earlier Haughwout had seen Elisha Otis demonstrate his new elevator with safety brakes. Even though the proposed five-story building would not really need an elevator, Haughwout contracted Otis to build one—the first permanently installed passenger elevator in the world and, as the merchant knew, a superb marketing gimmick. Years before electricity, a steam generator in the basement powered the new contraption.

Completed in 1857, the building was remarkable. Gaynor borrowed the windows of the 1536 Venetian library of Jacopo Sansovino in designing his Ango-Italian palazzo. Dignified and impressive, it would induce Paul Goldberger, in his “New York, The City Observed,” more than a century later to say “It is one of those rare pieces of architecture in which everything fits together perfectly and yet with room for passion.”

Using Venetian inspiration, Gaynor produced a show-stopping commercial palace -- photo by Alice Lum

Haughwout opened the store “for inspection” on the evening of March 23, 1857. “No goods will be sold during that time, in order that our employees may devote their whole attention to those who may desire to visit our establishment,” said the announcement. Potential customers were invited to browse through three floors of showrooms. The manufacturing departments took up the fourth and fifth floors.

Beneath the glow of gasoliers, the store glittered with cut glass, silverware, Sevres dining services and china vases. Bronzes, parian statuary and clocks “of new and unique designs,” chandeliers from Cornelius & Baker of Philadelphia, French porcelains and silver-plated tea services filled the showcases.

Well-heeled patrons anticipated what Haughwout described as “The elegant and varied assortment of new goods with which we shall open has probably never been equaled in this country.”


In 1859, two years after the store opened, a sleek carriage awaits its owner outside E. V. Houghwout & Co.  A close look reveals gasoliers with milk glass shades inside illuminating the wares. -- print Library of Congress

At the time of the opening, E. V. Haughwout & Co. was also the sole importer of champagne from the French vineyards of De Venoge & Co.   Customers purchasing quality hand-cut champagne glasses could now enjoy one-stop shopping.

With his new store in place, Haughwout set out to improve its setting. As chairman of the Broadway Association he complained about the condition of the street. “While we justly pride ourselves upon the finest street in America, we are perpetually mortified at its dirty condition; while we welcome to its spacious promenade and splendid warehouses and hotels, representatives from all parts of the world, we are constantly in the humiliating position of apologists for the mud and dust which alternately bear testimony to the disgraceful neglect of the City Government,” he complained.

Under his leadership, the merchants of Broadway contributed to having the street cleaned three times a week by James Thompson for $150. Three years later Haughwout and C. F. Tiffany, Treasurer of the Association, would make headlines by suing the mayor over the expense.

In 1860 three ambassadors from Japan visited New York. Because, according to The New York Times, American glassware was of a type “almost unknown in Japan” E. V. Haughwout & Co. presented them with “three magnificent services of cut table glass as presents.”  Each service was fitted into polished rosewood cases, lined with velvet, and mounted with silver shields engraved with the name of each ambassador. They included “goblets, champagne and wine glasses, decanters, celery glasses, rice dishes, polished lapidary diamond saltcellars, ruby gilt finger bowls, liqueurs, clarets, and green hock glasses.”

A year later Abraham Lincoln moved into the White House along with the first lady and her notoriously extravagant tastes. Mary Todd Lincoln found the White House china to be mismatched and damaged and set out to replace it.  She climbed aboard a train for New York City, heading for E. V. Haughwout & Co.

The dinnerware she ordered would have a broad band of lilac, the color selected by Mrs. Lincoln because it came close to magenta, a highly popular color with ladies at the time. Beneath a rendering of the United States coat of arms was the motto E. Pluribus Unum. Along the border a two strands of gold cable intertwined.

Mary dropped off a deposit and returned home with the invoice to be processed by the government.  According to a Maryland journalist, Mrs. Lincoln “bought a lot of china for $1500 in cash and sent in a bill for $3000.”  The President refused to approve the invoice before sending it on to be paid by the government. The bill, he felt, was “exorbitant.”

Upon hearing that his $3000 invoice was being held up by the President, Haughwout wrote saying “You forget, sir,…that I gave Mrs. Lincoln $1500.”

Before E. V. Haughwout closed its doors for good, its distinguished patrons would include not merely the wealthiest and most celebrated names in the country, but foreign dignitaries and heads of state, such as the Czar of Russia.

The estate of Walter Langdon sold the building on March 5, 1895 for around $375,000. The stores catering to the carriage trade had begun moving northward and in the year just prior to World War I Haughwout’s once-elegant showrooms were home to various manufacturers. Among them were The Vulcanized Rubber Co. of New York; The Kursheedt Mfg. Company, makers of braids; Morris H. Pulaski, dealers in fancy goods and notions; and Cheney Brothers, a firm that made “silks and ribbons.”

On September 24, 1936 The Broadway Manufacturers Supply Co. signed a lease for the entire building. By now the glamorous history of E. V. Haughwout’s cast iron palace was long forgotten.

The middle of the 20th century was a dark time for the Cast Iron District. Ornate facades rusted under layers of grime and filth. Fergus M. Bordewich recalled in The New York Times in 1975 the character of Soho in the 1960s. “It seemed a strange, grim neighborhood then, characterlessly old, filled with buildings oddly ornate beneath their uniform layers of grime and dull paint.”  Structures that once housed high-end stores and expensive office space were now used as warehouses and small manufacturers. The E. V. Haughwout Building was neglected and deteriorating.

It was during this period, in 1966, that the Landmarks Preservation Commission held hearings to give the building landmark designation. Chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority Robert Moses was not pleased. Moses had come up with a scheme to build a $110 million highway through the lower portion of Manhattan. His Lower Manhattan Expressway would wipe out countless buildings, including the magnificent Beaux Arts former Police Headquarters and the Haughwout Building.

For decades, the wonderful clock, running once more, was surrounded by grimy, rusting columns and arches -- photo by Alice Lum

His plan hit a wall when preservationists stood firm. He struggled to keep the building from obtaining historic protection. Writing to the city’s transportation administrator he insisted that the Haughwout Building was of “dubious historical and artistic value. Certainly this is no way to dispose of the Lower Manhattan project.”

Moses lost the fight and No. 488 Broadway gained protection. It would be years, however, before the majestic emporium was restored.  In 1995 the deteriorating cast iron was restored under the supervision of preservation architect Joseph Pell Lombardi, including re-painting it in its original “Turkish drab” color.

Completely restored, the magnificent cast iron emporium gleams again -- photo by Alice Lum

Today the store where Mary Todd Lincoln purchased the White House china before the Civil War gleams again.  Contesting Robert Moses’ opinion that the building is of “dubious historical and artistic value,” G. E. Kidder Smith, in his “Source Book of American Architecture,” called the E. V. Haughwout Building “The greatest remaining single monument to cast iron.”

A Bogardus Treasure Reclaimed -- 75 Murray Street

Photo epicharmus.com

In the years prior to 1860 the commercial district was still in the downtown section of Manhattan. Here, in 1848, John Bogardus designed, produced and installed a cast iron façade for the John Milhau’s new pharmacy at 183 Broadway, between Corland and Dey Streets.

The great fires of 1835 and 1845 that decimated the lower portion of Manhattan created a near-paranoia among merchants and developers. Bogardus’ new concept of facing buildings in an incombustible material was ground-breaking and exciting.

In addition, Milhau’s drugstore which featured soaring piers with Doric columns at every floor, applied ornamentation and an elaborate cornice frieze was constructed in the span of three days.

Bogardus was on the way to fame and success. The inventor who only a year earlier was hawking his cast iron “eccentric sugar mill” and who listed himself in the city directory as “eccentric mill maker,” was now an architect and structural façade founder.

Photo epicharmus.com

In 1858 Bogardus manufactured the commercial building at 75 Murray Street. By now his facades had become more ornate and visually appealing and this new building had all the bells and whistles. Italianate in style, each of the five stories was separated by deep cornices supported by modified fluted Doric columns. Fearsome Medussa head keystones capped the window arches on the third and fifth floors below elaborate leafy knee brackets.  Rolling iron shutters, devised by Daniel Badger, were installed over the street level entrances and windows that could be lowered at night for total security.

Bogardus created, for a relatively low cost in an extremely short construction time, a sumptuous building.

Brothers John and Francis Hopkins established their glassware business on the first floor while among the tenants on the upper stories was John F. C. Thielemann’s importing business.

In 1874 General Francis Darr manufactured “fancy soaps” at 75 Murray. In his employ was young James R. Washington, a clerk and bookkeeper. In June of that year Washington quarreled with the building’s porter, Joseph Pfohl, drew a revolver and shot the janitor in the right knee.

Pfohl was quickly transported to St. Vincent’s Hospital in a carriage and, despite Darr’s attempts to cover up the shooting, Washington was arrested by Detective McDonnell shortly thereafter. Darr bailed out his employee for the astonishing amount of $1000, explaining that the boy was General George Washington’s last direct descendant.

By the turn of the 20th Century the building was owned by the Heyman Brothers who held significant property in Manhattan.

Various tenants moved in and out of 75 Murray throughout the 20th Century and the wear and tear of a century and a half of use was evident when George and Christiane Aprile first saw it in 1992. The couple’s son, Matthew, would be attending nearby Stuyvesant High School and they needed a home closer than their Brooklyn neighborhood.

When they purchased the building for $635,000 the following year it had “no windows, no water, no electricity – just a façade,” according to Aprile. The couple immediately sought to restore the façade of the landmarked building.

Within the architectural community, a confirmed Bogardus building is the baseball card equivalent of an Honus Wagner. In his 1956 book “Bogardus Revisited,” Turpin C. Bannister said “For most historians, the prophet, apostle, and patron saint of Ferromania has been James Bogardus.”

The New York Landmarks Preservation Commission had carefully avoided attributing the structure to Bogardus. Because building permits did not exist in Manhattan until the spring of 1866, there was no official documentation to support the claim, despite the similar character of other existing Bogardus works.

It was historian David Kahn who noticed a foundry mark on the cast iron steps where the thick layers of paint had started to chip away. The foundry mark read “James Bogardus Originator & Patentee of Iron Buildings Pat’ May 7, 1850.”   No. 75 Murray Street was one of only a handful of surviving Bogardus structures.

The Apriles owned a treasure.

The approximately $600,000 restoration began in November of 1993, resulting in the cream-colored façade gleaming once again. The street level amazingly retains its original 19th Century storefront, including the Badger roll-down shutters – still in working condition.

photo sothebyshomes.com

Each of the first four floors was renovated into full-floor loft spaces for events, a “ballroom” and temporary exhibition space. The top-most floor became a residential penthouse with private roof deck.

photo sothebyshomes.com

In 2010 the 12,000 square-foot property was put on the market for $17.5 million.

The Cast Iron Bennett Building -- 139 Fulton Street

Sidewalk awnings (and a pair outside a top floor office) help shield Summer's heat in the pre-air conditioning era. -- photo NYPL Collection

In 1872 the somewhat eccentric James Gordon Bennett, Jr. was internationally-known as the publisher of the New York Herald; a reputation that had been greatly enhanced a year earlier when he sent reporter Henry M. Stanley into Africa in search of Dr. David Livingstone. His far-reaching and innovative improvements in the newspaper industry made him a fortune – estimates were that he had made over $30 million before his death thirty-one years later in 1913.

Bennett purchased the large plot of land covering the Fulton Street block front from Ann to Nassau Streets and commissioned Arthur D. Gilman to design a large, modern office building for the site. Construction began in 1872 and was completed a year later.

Six stories tall, Gilman’s resulting Bennett Building was a cast iron beauty. The architect used the versatile material at the height of its popularity to create an ornate Second Empire structure with a repeating pattern of windows, columns and cornices at each level. Gilman gently wrapped the corners with a distinguishing curve and topped the whole with a fashionable mansard roof.

While Bennett maintained an office in the 9,000 square foot building, it was built as a speculative investment intended for rental office space. The offices filled quickly with a variety of tenants. In 1876 it housed firms as diverse as Jose Vilar & Co. a manufacturer of cork soles, and C. M. Fisher & Co., which made “gold pens, cases, holders, pencils and tooth-picks.”

Around the time that Bennett was co-founding the international telegraph firm, Commercial Cable Company, in 1893, a drug store owner was just testing the waters of downtown real estate. Although John Pettit had little capital, he recognized the potential of run-down older buildings. Buying small buildings on side streets for little money, he invested in paint, new flooring and doors. Once they were again rentable, he would sell the properties for a small profit.

Before long Pettit was buying some of his buildings entirely on credit. Little by little his rehabilitation of the old structures became more ambitious. Where stairways had been he installed elevators and old storefronts would be completed renovated. Years later The New York Times would say “The changes meant increased rentals, and increased rentals meant the probability of selling out at a profit.”

After a decade of practice, Pettit was ready for his biggest step yet: he would purchase and renovate the cast iron building that bore James Gordon Bennett’s name.

Rather than creating a crisp angle, Gilman wrapped the corner with a gentle curve -- photo by Alice Lum

In its September 1890 issue the printing industry journal Inland Printer reported on the sale, giving the price paid by Pettit as $1 million. The New York Times estimated the cost at more like $625,000, a figure the newspaper said was “about $200,000 less than its value.” Like all of the buildings Pettit bought, the Bennett Building had seen better days.

“That building in its day had been the best of its kind,” noted The Times, “but it had since been left in the rear by the march of improvement. Beside its newer and more modern competitors it looked dwarfed and dingy, and its rent roll was no more attractive than its appearance.”

As always, Pettit went about making improvements. He abhorred structural ornamentation saying it “did not add a dollar to the rent, but did increase the amount of investment.” To this end, he kept an in-house architect and acted as his own contractor. Yet for the Bennett Building he strayed from his philosophy.

Architect James M. Farnsworth was instructed to enlarge the building and make it competitive with newer office buildings. He stripped off the mansard roof and added four floors in seamless imitation of Gilman’s original design; a remarkable example of sympathetic treatment of existing architectural for the time. Inside “swift-running” elevators were installed and the interiors were totally renovated.

Pettit’s renovations cost $200,000; but a second mortgage of $300,000 prevented his spending a dollar of his own money.

Farnsworth's seamless four-floor addition is evident in this 1928 view -- NYPL Collection

With the alterations complete Pettit put the building on the market and in May 1894 a sale was announced. Pettit released the news that Theodore A. Havemeyer purchased the Bennett Building for $1.5 million. The profitable deal fell through, however, and Pettit remained the owner until 1898 when things began getting uncomfortable for the real estate manipulator.

With the upward addition, the repeating pattern of brackets, pilasters ad cornices is hypnotic -- photo by Alice Lum

Pettit’s long string of borrowing was resulting in loans and mortgages coming due and there was no ready cash to satisfy the creditors. In 1898 William Calhoun filed suit against Pettit Realty Company for $1 million.  Referring to Pettit, The Times reported that “His struggle against an increasing flood of indebtedness caused him to incorporate two of his best remaining properties, the Bennett and Beekman buildings…He struggled hard to meet maturing interest and other obligations, and recently the New York Life Insurance Company, as mortgagee, placed a receiver of rents in the Bennett Building.”

Suddenly Pettit disappeared.

With a law suit against him and buildings falling into receivership, John Pettit was gone. In June he left his magnificent estate in East Orange, New Jersey, never to be heard of again. Two months later, in his absence, the Pettit Realty Company sold the Bennett Building to H. B. Sire for about $1.5 million.

The building was in trouble again in 1904 when it was sold under foreclosure to the New York Life Insurance Company for $907,000. “There was practically no competition for the property yesterday and the auction was apparently nothing more than a formality for getting rid of this old mortgage,” reported The Times on April 12.

One of the original entranceways.  Although highly altered, much of the detailing remains -- photo by Alice Lum

The insurance company held the building for two years before selling it to Philadelphia businessman Felix Isman for $1 million; essentially the same price Pettit had paid for it more than a decade earlier. Isman had been actively purchasing and developing Manhattan real estate for about four years.

Later that year his new acquisition caused Isman a headache when Water Register Michael C. Padden discovered an unmetered water pipe in the basement. The City Controller’s Office sent a bill for $2,550 to cover 17 years of unpaid water usage at $150 a year. Isman refused to pay.

The unmetered water pipe was ripped out, upsetting the flow of water to parts of the building. One tenant, in particular, was displeased.

The New York Times reported that it was most inopportune timing “for there is a Turkish bath establishment in the building, and bathers were left in various conditions and tempers. Some were being rubbed dry and couldn’t get moistened up again; some were shaking from the cold water and wanted the hot water turned on, but the ripping out of the pipe had upset the entire waterworks system of the place. Some didn’t want to pay their bills because they had not received all that goes with a Turkish bath. There was confusion all around.”

Isman struck a compromise with the city and a meter was installed on the reinstalled pipe.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century the Bennett Building was used not only for stores and offices, but for small manufacturing. During most of this time it was owned by George B. Wilson and, later, his family. In 1949 it was purchased by Jackadel Associates who brought the structure up to code by moving the south entrance on Nassau Street to sidewalk level, closing the Nassau street entrance and relocating the Ann Street entrance to street level.

In January 1951 it was sold to Harry Shekter of the Dorlen Realty Company who retained ownership for three decades. After taking control of the property in 1983 Haddad & Sons Ltd. Renovated the exterior by replacing the windows of the second floor and adding new storefronts on Fulton and Nassau Streets. It was sold again in 1995 to ENT International in 1995, the year it obtained landmark status.

photo by Alice Lum

Today the massive Bennett Building, the tallest habitable cast-iron façade building ever erected, remains remarkably intact. The Landmarks Preservation Commission called it a “major monument to the art of cast-iron architecture.”

The Rare 1857 Bogardus Survivor at No. 63 Nassau Street

A grisly storefront detracts from the handsome design of the upper stories -- photo by Alice Lum

By the time William of Orange-Nassau ascended the English throne in 1689 the British had controlled New York for 25 years.  In his honor Nassau Street was named (as well as an Orange Street, but that was later renamed Baxter Street).   By the first decades of the 19^thcentury, the venerable, curving street was bustling with commerce.

In 1827 Thomas Thomas established his kitchen tinware factory and shop.   Thomas was successful in making and selling useful household objects and by 1842 had taken his sons, Cornelius and Augustus, into the business, now called T. Thomas & Son.  On December 28 of that year a straight-to-the-point advertisement was published in The New York Tribune.  “Coffee Urns—A good assortment of Block-Tin Urns, for sale by the manufacturers.”

Apparently the post-Christmas response was not as great as desired, for two days later T. Thomas & Son cut prices.  “Coffee Urns, for New-Year’s Day.  A variety, at reduced prices, to be had of the manufacturers.”

Within a year or two of that advertisement Thomas’s son, Augustus, built a new five-story structure on the site.   After Thomas Thomas died in 1856 William V. Curtis purchased No. 63 Nassau Street from Augustus Thomas for $28,750.  By now the jewelry trade had engulfed the Maiden Lane-Nassau Street neighborhood.    Curtis had already joined with Augustus Thomas in a silk goods importing business, A. Thomas & Co.” in the Milhau Pharmacy Buidling a block away at No. 183 Broadway.

The Milhau Pharmacy Building stood out among its neighbors.  In 1848 it had been designed and constructed by James Bogardus who bolted onto its front an architectural and engineering innovation:  a cast iron façade.  

Bogardus had started out as a watchmaker and “machinest,” but in the 1840s began conceptualizing pre-fabricated cast iron facades.  These could be quickly bolted to the brick fronts of buildings, could imitate carved stone, be easily cast with elaborate decorative elements and—most importantly—would be fireproof.  

On the morning of June 16, 1855 a devastating fire on Maiden Lane had destroyed several businesses and the constant threat of fire terrorized businessmen and residents alike--people like William Curtis.

Immediately upon acquiring the building at No. 63 Nassau, Curtis laid plans to update it.  There is little doubt that it was Bogardus whom Augustus Thomas and William V. Curtis commissioned around 1857 to renovate the structure with an updated cast iron façade. 

Bogardus gave the building a new, Italianate face with elegant arcades—a two-story arcade at street level succeeded by a three-story arcade above.   Highly-decorated spandrels erupted from the capitals of the tall, fluted columns that supported the arches.   A regimented corbel table supported the foliate cornice.  At the base of the second floor columns he attached alternating bas-relief portraits of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, an unusual decorative touch that he used in other of his buildings.

The two Benjamin Franklin portraits, framed in wreaths, survive.  The Washington plaques mysteriously disappeared sometime in the 1970s -- photo by Alice Lum

Thomas and Curtis most likely intended No. 63 Nassau Street to be an income producing property; and indeed jewelry firms like Auguste A. Abry, a Swiss-born watch maker, began moving in.   But the Financial Panic of 1857 and the ominous predictions of a civil war negatively influenced the jewelry trade.  In April 1860 the building was sold to Julien Gauton for $24,000.

Gauton, who was born in France, was a bootmaker whose shop was a block north at No. 89 Nassau Street.    As Curtis had intended to do, Gauton used the property as an income producer.    Joining Abry in the building were Edward Boband and Louise Cordier, watch case polishers who moved in in 1864; and Manzini & Lawson in 1866. Partners John A. Manzini and Samuel Lawson manufactured jewelry here. 

Throughout the rest of the century the building would be home to assorted jewelry and watch companies. Louis Squadrilli came to New York from Naples, Italy and set up his wholesale business here selling “coral, cameos, malachite, lapis lazuli, mosaic, lava, and garnet goods,” as the Civil War was coming to a close.   C. H. Zimmermann sold diamonds here starting in 1870, the same year that Alois Kohn & Son, dealers in gold chains; Stern Bros. & Co, sellers of watches; and Dorrevee & Troll, dealers in jewelry and gold chains moved in.

The original Corinthian capitals have fallen from the columns, but the bulk of the decorative ironwork survives -- photo by Alice Lum

In the meantime, the ground floor was home to a restaurant-saloon.  Albert Bossert and Frederick Schmid opened the business in 1864 and the space would continue as a restaurant, saloon, or both, constantly through 1917.

Stern Brothers was still here in 1881 when tragedy visited No. 63 Nassau Street.  16-year old John Maas was a clerk here, employed by Marcus Stern.  Around 8:45 in the morning on December 30 a 14-year old messenger boy, Henry Weinstein, entered the office.  Weinstein worked for another jewelry firm, Doppelbaum & Friedman, at No. 10 Maiden Lane.   He had been sent to Stern’s to pick up some rings that had been dropped off there to be finished.

When Maas opened a drawer to get the rings, he moved Marcus Stern’s revolver and laid it on the counter top.     When young Weinstein picked up the gun by the barrel, Maas attempted to retrieve it.  In the confusion the gun went off.

Workers in the other offices and shops heard the gunshot, followed by a scream of horror.  When they rushed into the Stern workshop, young Henry Weinstein was lying on the floor with a bullet wound in the middle of his chest.  He was dead before he could be lifted off the floor.

The Nassau Street neighborhood continued to be the center of the jewelry district into the 20^th century.   It was the building’s location rather than its extraordinary façade, however, that was considered valuable at the turn of the century.   In 1909 the City valued No. 63 Nassau Street at $86,000 “without the building,” and at $90,000 with it.

That same year Morris Grossman ran his shoe store below street level, under the Nassau Café.   On July 22 a young man struggled down the steps from the street with a heavy satchel on his shoulder.  He approached the clerk, Isidor Grossman, and explained “Pardon me, but I’ve got $900 in silver in this satchel and I’d like to leave part of it with you.  I’ve got to carry it to Brooklyn, but you can see that it’s too heavy for one trip.”

Werther later said to a reporter from The Sun that “Clerking in Nassau Street accustoms one to odd requests.”

The young man, Tommy Davies, then opened the satchel and produced two white canvas bags.  Each was marked $200 and they landed on a bench with a noticeable thud.   Davies then left with his still-ponderous satchel.

Werther consider all of this and turned to the other clerk in the store, T. H. Gaffney, saying that “he’d bet anything some villainy was afoot,” according to The Sun.   “Think a chap like that would leave his money bags with a stranger and slip away without a receipt if all was as it should be?”

Werther called a policeman, who in turn summoned a plain clothes detective from the John Street station house.    The bags of silver dollars were put in the safe and the following morning the detective hid in a cubby hole and waited for Davies. 

When Davies arrived, he said that he had taken his $500 home to Brooklyn and he would now like the other $400 back.   Detective Bill Keating popped out and demanded “Where’d you get that money?”

The 28-year-old man nervously explained that he had inherited “a lot of stock” and he had taken it to Boody, McLellan & Co. at 111 Broadway who had offered him $900 for it.  He asked for the money in silver dollars, but the cashier gave him bills and referred him to the Sub-Treasury.  “The man at the Sub-Treasury was very pleasant and gave him silver dollars as directed,” reported The Sun, “500 in one bag, 200 apiece in each of the two others.”

The detective took Davies to Boody, McLellan & Co. where cashier Harold Rice confirmed his story.  At the Sub-Treasury, as would be expected, swapping silver dollars for the bank notes was vividly remembered .  Then Davies’s mother was called to the precinct house to vouch for her son.   She did.

When Davies was asked why he wanted coins, he explained “Money’s handier for spending that way.  “I just dump the dollars in my trunk and take one out when I need it.”  He added, “I sometimes spend as much as a dollar a week.”

Mrs. Davies, when asked if she didn’t think that leaving $400 in coins with a stranger was risky, shrugged, “No, sir.  I trust everybody and so does Tommy.  Nobody ever has fooled us yet.”

Grossman’s Shoe Store became the Golden Shoe Co. in 1911 when brothers Samuel L. and Bernhart Golden took over the space.   Their marketing gimmick was to sell quality shoes at one price--$2.95.  “All Styles One Price,” read their advertisements.   One of those styles, the “Genius” was advertised on October 1, 1915.  “Olive buck tops in dark tan, gun calf and patent gold—both lace and button.”

Two years after the Nassau Café closed in 1917, the ground floor façade was destroyed and a modern store front installed.  Now there were two retail stores and a separate entrance to the upper floors.  That year jewelers Schulz-Goldman Company and the Ostby & Barton Company both took a floor in the building.  Ostby & Barton were manufacturers of plain and engraved solid gold band rings, with their factory in Providence, Rhode Island.

Jewelry firms continued to lease in the building through the middle of the 20^th century.  In 1946, after the Gauton-Carroll family had owned the property for 86 years, it was sold.   The building changed hands numerous times before being purchased by Ullman Realty Co. in 1960.  A year later the ground floor was again completely remodeled.

photo by Alice Lum

Today, despite the unsightly ground floor store front and the desperate need of a paint job, James Bogardus’s handsome and early cast iron façade is largely intact.   It is one of only five known Bogardus buildings in the country, four of which are in New York City.  On May 15, 2007, against the protests of its owner, this remarkable and rare survivor was designated a New York City Landmark.

The 1857 Cary Building - 105 Chambers Street

Isaac Cary opened a small store selling “fancy goods” in 1827 on Pearl Street, near Maiden Lane, that area being the center of the dry goods business. With his death a decade later the store passed to his son who changed the name from Isaac H. Cary & Co. to William H. Cary & Co.

By the middle of the century William Cary’s business was booming and in 1856 he took on two partners, changing his store name once again. Cary, Howard & Sanger purchased a mid-block plot stretching from Chambers to Reade Street and commissioned the architectural firm of King & Kellum to design an imposing new emporium.

A year later their store was completed – the largest structure on the block. Two identical facades on either side were executed in intricate cast iron, cast by the Architectural Iron Works. The firm's founder, Daniel Badger, was called “the pioneer of this country in the use of iron for building purposes,” by The New York Times in his obituary in 1884. His innovative rolling iron shutters which disappeared into the façade enabled security for the ornate building without intrusion on the design.

Daniel Badger's sketch showing rolling shutters

King & Kellum’s Italian Renaissance design in cast iron imitated stone blocks and carved pillars. Sand was mixed into the yellow-white paint to enhance the illusion. Each of deeply-recessed, arched windows was separated by a pair of free-standing Corinthian pillars.  Beneath the pediment of both façades was an scrolled cartouche announcing “CARY BUILDING.”

Photo The Masterpiece Next Door.com

The Union Sketchbook listed Cary’s inventory as “the product of the taste and ingenuity of three continents . . . 1,500 different kinds of foreign and domestic fancy goods, comprising jewelry, perfumes, watches, cutlery, guns, musical instruments, combs, brushes.'' The store grossed annual sales of $3 million.

William Cary died in 1861. A year later the store was re-named Howard, Sanger & Co., although the structure remained in the Cary family. Sanger died in 1886 and the store’s name went through additional changes: Howard Brothers and Co. in 1882 and, finally, S. E. Howard’s Son and Co., in 1890.

Samuel Emerson Howard continued the business until his death in 1896. He had, according to the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, “…a great taste for business, and a full knowledge of finance, combined with an energetic disposition.”

In the 1920s Church Street was widened and the two buildings next to 105 Chambers were razed. Suddenly the Cary Building was on the corner of the block and its red brick Church Street side, originally an interior wall, stood out in stark contrast to the ornate cast iron facades.

The great emporiums by the turn of the century were well way northward towards The Ladies’ Mile on 6th Avenue and beyond. The Chambers Street area stores became lofts and warehouses, dusty and essentially forgotten. The Cary family, however, retained the property into the 1950s.

In 1982 the Cary Building was designated a New York City Landmark, its architectural elements astonishingly intact other than the Reade Street columns that had, for the most part, lost their Corinthian capitals.

Reade Street Facade - photo Wally Gobetz

Twenty years later the Cary Building breathed new life. The building, called “a masterpiece of cast iron design” by Andrew Dolkart and Matthew A. Postal in their 2004 Guide to New York City Landmarks, was purchased by Chambers Street, L.L.C.

The concern hired architect Martin J. Marcus to renovate the lower four floors as new commercial space. Li/Saltzman Architects were commissioned to restore the exterior and revamp the top floor into three residential apartments.

Today the Cary Building gleams under a coat of historically-accurate paint and looks very much as it did during the Civil War when Manhattan shoppers sought out their “fancy goods.”

The "Unexpected Surprise" at No. 326 East 18th Street

A deep front yard behind a cast iron fence and lacy ironwork on the veranda is almost out of place in the city -- photo by Alice Lum

On November 11, 1847 the land which had once been the sprawling farm or “Bouwerie” of Governor Peter Stuyvesant, now portioned off into city lots, was conveyed to the heirs of Peter Gerard Stuyvesant—a great-great grandson--who had died three months earlier on August 10.    The former farmland was already criss-crossed with streets and homes had begun rising.

Stuyvesant’s nephew, the Reverend Peter Stuyvesant Ten Broeck, who lived in North Danvers, Massachusetts, inherited the fifteen lots on the south side of 18^th Street between 1^st and 2^ndAvenues.

Five years later the three lots in the center of the block were still undeveloped.  The Reverend’s daughter, Cornelia Stuyvesant Ten Broeck leased the land in March 1852 to five developers:  stonecutters John Edwards and Henry Wilson; and the Youngs brothers, Theodore F., Charles E. and George V.   The Ten Broeck family was specific on the type of construction it wanted on its land.  Building was restricted to “good and substantial dwelling houses…being three or more stories in height and constructed either of Brick or Stone.”

Two of the Youngs brothers—George and Theodore—were carpenters.  Before long George and his brother William would go into partnership in a substantial lumber yard on 7^thAvenue.

Before the end of the year two of the houses were completed and No. 326 (numbered 205 at the time) was finished in 1853.  Henry Wilson, who became partners with John Edwards in a large stone yard called “Wilson & Edwards,” moved into the house.

French doors opened onto the veranda, offering cooling ventilation on hot summer evenings -- photo by Alice Lum

The charming row sat far back from the sidewalk, providing a generous front lawn unusual for Manhattan houses.  Like its nearly identical neighbors, it was a simplified version of the Italianate style sweeping the city.    Two stories tall over an English basement, it was accessed by a pair of double doors under a protective canopy.  A veranda stretched along the width of the house, joining with that of the house at 328, supported by lacy ironwork. 

Henry Wilson remained in the little house even as his reputation and fortune grew.  By 1873 he was the President of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York.  He was still living here in 1888 when he took on the additional responsibility as a member of the Board of Education.

The robust Italianate ironwork of the fence and the railings along the porch and steps was more in keeping with the architecture than the lacier iron of the veranda -- photo by Alice Lum

Through Wilson’s success he never forgot that he had once been a hard-working stone cutter.  He treated his men with generosity and humanity.  Decades later, in 1921, a stone worker wrote to The Stone Cutters’ Journal praising Woodrow Wilson by comparing the President to Henry.  “I think he must have been some relation to that grand old boss of ours, Henry Wilson, of New York, that gave many a stonecutter a $10.00 bill in the winter time and when times were hard; he was different to some of our present day bosses.  I know some of them who never gave a dollar for anything, only for flowers to put on some scab’s grave when nobody else would send a wreath.”

What appears to be a brownstone stoop on No. 326 is actually openwork cast iron, as seen in its sister at No. 328.  A stucco-like covering at No. 326 hides the original.  -- photo by Alice Lum

By 1905, after Wilson’s death, Detective John J. Cray was living here.  Cray had joined the police department in 1885 and by 1890 had been promoted to detective sergeant “having already demonstrated his ability in dealing with safe-blowers and pickpockets,” according to The New York Times.  He rose in the ranks at a blurring speed.  While living at No. 326 he was made lieutenant in 1907, captain in 1912, an inspector in 1915 and Deputy Commissioner in 1920.

Cray’s success in law enforcement was partly a result of his ability to remember details.  “For years Cray wandered up and down Broadway and his uncanny memory for faces made him the terror of out-of-town crooks who flocked to the white light district,” said The Times.  He would turn up at the Jefferson Market Police Court with a criminal in tow who had been wanted for a crime miles from New York.

In 1905, for instance, “Biff” Ellison was a ward politician and street tough who ran his affairs from the Brighton Café on Great Jones Street.  That year he shot and murdered “Big Bill" Harrington and fled the city.  In 1911 he ventured back to New York where John Cray recognized and arrested him.

The Times was fond of Cray, calling him “one of the most picturesque of the old-time detectives.  He was portly and handsome, his trim gray mustache and gray hair making him a figure of some distinction.  He was always well dressed, with just a suggestion of the Broadway atmosphere in which he moved so long, and his unfailing courtesy and good nature made him a favorite not only of his men, but of others outside the department with whom he came in contact.

The group's exceptional ironwork, seen here on No. 330, survives in pristine condition - photo by Alice Lum

The detective was known among the underworld not only for his ethical behavior but for his fair dealing.  He became familiar with men on the street earned their trust; enabling him to construct a system of informants.  “This use of stool pigeons to keep in touch with what was going on in the criminal world was brought to a fine point of perfection by Cray, largely because of his personal qualities.”

Considering Cray’s reputation, it was perhaps amazing that in 1921 May Brown decided to live next door at No. 328.  Although she claimed to be the daughter of a wealthy merchant, Brown had a problem:  she was a drug addict.  Her husband divorced her “because of her downfall.”

On July 29 of that year she purchased a bottle of narcotics from Anthony Collucci of 19 West 18^th Street.  She no longer lived next door to the Cray family after that instance of bad judgment.

Four years later the 62-year old Cray was still living at No. 326 with his wife and ten-year old daughter, Catherine, when the newspapers reported that he was seriously ill at his home.    On September 15, 1925 he died in the house.  Three days later his funeral service was held in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

When the Deputy Commissioner's body passed through these doors with great ceremony, over 500 mounted policemen lined East 18th Street -- photo by Alice Lum

Cray’s coffin was removed from the house on East 18^thStreet by an enormous police escort that included 500 mounted men.  The casket, draped with the flag of the city, was carried by the police the entire distance from the house to the Cathedral.

Over 1,200 policemen gathered in the church while the Police Glee Club sang.  The Times reported that “Such a throng gathered at the entrance to the cathedral that thirty policemen were assigned to preserve order.”  The newspaper noted that during his 40-year career, ““his record of arrests listed some of the most notorious criminals in the country.”

John J. Cray's casket was removed from No. 326 (far right) around the time of this photo -- NYPL Collection

The little house at No. 326 and its two near matching sisters survived throughout the 20^th century with little change.  In 2004 it was converted to apartments—one per floor.

photo by Alice Lum

In 1973 The Landmarks Preservation Commission noted that the front yards of the three charming houses “provide unexpected surprise and refreshing contrast to the continuous line of brick and brownstone facades along the street.”

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