The Busy Little "Traffic Building" -- No. 163 West 23rd Street

photo by Alice Lum

During the 1920s cafeterias and automats reached their height of popularity among working class New Yorkers. Secretaries and salesmen enjoyed inexpensive lunches in clean, attractive surroundings.

Wil-Low Cafeterias, Inc. ran twenty-two cafeterias in the city during this time.  A subsidiary of the organization was The Traffic Cafeteria Corporation.  The name came, most likely, as a reflection of the deliverymen and truckers whose patronage it sought.  “Traffic” during the first part of the 20^th century also referred to the trucking industry.

In 1927 the corporation hired often-forgotten architect Abraham Fisher to design a new cafeteria and loft building at 163 West 23^rd Street.  By now the area in what had been just two decades before The Ladies’ Mile—a fashionable shopping district—was a hodge-podge of commercial buildings and converted brownstones.   It was a bustling neighborhood ripe for a new lunch spot.

In designing what could have been a small, nondescript lunch room and office building Fisher outdid himself.  His resulting structure was six-stories of brown brick and terra cotta so creatively conceived and executed it demands attention.   Brick was laid out in a parquet-like diamond pattern; a large terra cotta panel announces the TRAFFIC BUILDING, flanked by terra cotta tiles with lush foliate designs; and two standing eagles perch atop the capitals of pencil-like swirling four-story columns.

photo by Alice Lum

If Art Deco was sweeping Manhattan at the time, it did not pay a visit to 163 West 23^rd Street.  It was, as the AIA Guide to New York City would describe it nearly a century later, “a tapestry of brick and terra cotta.”

Celtic-design terra cotta panels abut herring-bone brickwork -- photo by Alice Lum

One of the first short-order cooks at the Traffic Cafeteria was Chick Gum.   On the morning of April 16, 1929 he caused an uproar when a customer asked for a plate of flapjacks.  Mr. Gum poured the batter into the hot, greased frying pan and, when the time came to flip the flapjacks, he gave the skillet a quick flick of his wrist.

Outside, Police Officer George Leonard heard a loud scream and rushed into the cafeteria with his pistol drawn.  There, in the kitchen, he found Chick Gum.  One of the scalding hot pancakes, rather than flip back into the pan, had dropped into the cook’s open shirt.

The unfortunate cook was treated at Bellevue Hospital and sent home.

Intricate brickwork creates a background for slim rope-twist terra cotta columns.  Interestingly, the column sections were laid randomly; some turning right, others left -- photo by Alice Lum

The unhappy episode of the cook and the flapjack was the least of the cafeteria’s problems in 1929.   In the Spring of that year a city-wide strike by cafeteria employees threatened to put an end to the Traffic Cafeteria.  One morning in May about 15 union laborers entered the cafeteria around 11:30, just before the lunch rush hour.  The men threatened workers and prevented customers from entering.

Two marvelous, free-standing terra cotta eagles perch atop the capitals -- photo by Alice Lum

Around the same time strikers destroyed dishes and furniture in the Wil-Low Cafeteria at 245 Canal Street.   Pickets forced The Traffic Cafeteria to close its doors and the League for Industrial Rights wrote in its 1929 “Law and Labor,” that “The Traffic cafeteria has remained closed, and business in other restaurants is being carried on with difficulty and their clientele is of course much reduced.”

The League described the methods used by the group.  “The course of conduct of the strikers has been such as to indicate the danger of injury to property,” thus intimidating the cafeterias to close rather than suffer expensive damage.

Magistrate Hyman Bushel was not pleased.  “These strikers have been conducting a reign of terror in the cafeterias of the city,” he told the court.  And Magistrate Weil railed “Men of your type are a real menace to the community.  You should be deported.  You have no respect for law and order.  This condition has got to be checked.”

The strike was over before the end of the year and in March 1930 the Traffic Cafeteria, Inc. purchased its building, which it had until now been leasing.

photo by Alice Lum

There would be more problems with the unions, however.  In 1933 the mob demanded that William Lowenstein, who owned the Wil-Low chain, pay “protection” money to keep the unions at bay.   The manager of The Traffic testified four years later that he paid a mobster named Kranz $2000.  After the payment pressure on The Traffic Cafeteria from Local 110 of the Amalgamated Food Workers Union abruptly stopped.

photo by Alice Lum

Not long afterwards, however, The Traffic Cafeteria ceased operation altogether.  In June 1942 the building was leased to the Comet Express Company.   From the mid-1940s through the 1950s Standard Phono Corporation, distributors and sellers of vinyl records, was here.

Today, appropriately, the first floor is home to a diner.  Unfortunately the street level has been completely obliterated; modernized with tacky stone tiles where once were decorative terra cotta and brick.  But above this, Abraham Fisher’s intricate design is wonderfully preserved.  A marvelous little building with so much detail that the passerby has to pause to soak it all in.

many thanks to reader Simone for requesting this post.

The Suydam House -- No. 362 W 19th Street

In the 1820s and ‘30s, the farmland north of 14^thStreet on the west side of Manhattan changed as streets were laid out and avenues extended.  Eighth Avenue was extended northward in 1816 and in May of 1825 the George Rapelje farm—stretching from 16^th Street to 18^th Street and from Seventh to Tenth Avenues—was dissected into building lots.

In the 1830s brick homes were rising along West 19^thStreet, at the northern rim of the Rapelje farm.  One of these was No. 362 West 19^thStreet.  The Greek Revival style was just beginning to nudge out the Federal style and the three-story brick home would reflect many of its elements.  Bold carved stone lintels sat above the openings and a corresponding limestone entrance surround sheltered the recessed doorway.  The rusticated brownstone basement was protected by an iron fence with a Greek key lower border and handsome palmettes along the top.  The sumptuous stoop railing terminated at street level with intricate basket newels perched on brownstone drums.

During the first years following the end of the Civil War No. 362 was home to Susan M. Suydam.  The unmarried woman apparently became concerned when she lost contact with her brother, Charles, who had gone to California.  On June 9, 1871 an advertisement appeared in the Daily Alta Californianewspaper:  “Information Wanted—By Miss Susan M. Suydam, No. 362 West Nineteenth st., New York, of the residence of CHARLES W. SUYDAM.  Address as above or care of Wells, Fargo & Co., San Francisco.”

Sadly, Susan was too late.  The 41-year old Charles’s death had been reported in the San Francisco Call on February 10 the year before.  Susan would live in the 19^th Street house at least through 1872.

By 1885 the house was home to the Meserole family.  Cornelius Meserole was the head of Cornelius Meserole & Co and, according to The Sun on in 1887, “was the man who invented the paper collars.”

Meserole’s children opted for show business rather than take up the paper collar trade.  Daughter Fannie was, according to the newspaper, “a song-and-dance artist.”  On March 25, 1885 she married Samuel Lynch who styled himself as a speculator.  “The ceremony was performed by the Rev. T. G. Veitch,” said The Sun, “and the couple went to live at 362 West Nineteenth street, the home of the Meserole brothers, who are acrobats.”

The couple would soon encounter problems.  “Lynch and his new wife separated, and Lynch put up at the Coleman House.  This summer he has followed horse racing,” advised The Sun on July 4, 1887.  But more serious issues would soon take up Lynch’s time.

It seems that Samuel Lynch had neglected to mention to Fannie L. Meserole that he already had a wife, Sadie W. Smith Lynch, who lived at No. 120 East 26^th Street.  In July 1887 Fannie’s brother, Charles, did some investigating and “called on Mrs. Sadie Lynch, who informed him that she was married to Lynch on Sept. 4, 1882, by the Rev. George H. Houghton in the Little Church Around the Corner, and that Lynch had deserted her."

Fannie’s infuriated brother swore out a warrant at Jefferson Market Courthouse charging Samuel Lynch with bigamy.  Court Officer Nixon went to the Coleman House and arrested the 27-year old Lothario.  When he appeared in court, despite being confronted by Sadie and Charles, he pleaded not guilty.

The Meserole family seems to have left West 19^thStreet within the year.  Miss Adelia O’Rorke lived here at least for four years, from 1888 through 1892, while teaching at Grammar School No. 24.  It then became home to Dr. Euphemia Jane Myers Sturtevant, who moved here from No. 302 West 12^thStreet.

In the 19^th century the mere idea of a female doctor was nearly preposterous; yet Dr. Sturtevant was associated with the New York Medical College and Hospital for Woman; and had been Assistant to the Chair of Surgery there since 1883.  In 1888 she became a member of the International Hahnemannian Association.

Founded in 1880, the association had splintered off from the mainstream homeopathic doctors who followed the teachings of Samuel Hahnemann.  He had revolutionized the focus of 18^th and 19^th century medicine by stressing the importance of proper diet, exercise, improved hygiene and reduced stress.

Although the conventional Hahnemannian doctors forcefully decried the new Association; Dr. Sturtevant and her comrades were convinced of their lofty ideals.  In an editorial in The Hahnemannian Advocate the group said “The work is radically different from that presented in any other National Association, being a consideration of Homoeopathy pure and simple.”

Around the time the Meserole Family lived here, skinny updated double doors were installed.

Dr. Euphemia Sturtevant lived in the house at least four years—from 1893 through 1897.  By the turn of the century 18-year old William J. Rogers was here.  The boy was employed as a clerk by Theodore Leneburg, who owned Rennenberg’s Drug Store at No. 103 Ninth Avenue, just two blocks away.  His boss would tell reporters that “Rogers was employed to assist the registered clerk.”  He was authorized to wait on customers and dispense drugs that did not need mixing.

At No. 408 West 16^th Street lived the family of street sweeper Louis Caputa.  Mrs. Caputa’s mother, 60-year old Joua Vinca, lived with the family to help with the housework and childcare.  On November 20, 1902 the Caputa’s six-month old son, Joseph, was ill.  Mrs. Caputa sent her 8-year old daughter Jenny to the drug store to get “ten cents’ worth of castor oil  and almond oil mixed,” according to The Evening World the following day.

When Mary returned, her mother smelled the bottle and could detect no odor of almonds, and sent the girl back with her older sister, Mary.  According to The Evening World, William Rogers was on duty and “when told that the oil of almonds had not been mixed with the castor oil said he would fix it.  He did.”

The youthful Rogers made a horrific mistake.  Instead of filling the bottle with castor oil and almond oil, he gave the little girls a bottle of Cyanide of Potassium—a deadly poison.

The following morning the grandmother “poured some of it into a teaspoon and gave it to little Joseph Caputa, after which she took a tablespoonful herself,” reported The New York Times.  “In five minutes both the child and the aged woman fell into convulsions.”  The Evening World described them as being in “frightful agony.”

By the time Dr. James Shea arrived, the grandmother was dead.  The baby was taken to the New York Hospital where he died a few minutes later.

The Caputa sisters took police to the drug store where they identified Rogers as the man who had given them the poison.  “Rogers himself said he had not sold the mixture to the children and had never seen them before,” said The New York Times.  Despite his protests, he was arrested and held at $2,000 bail—more than $50,000 in today’s dollars.

Throughout the first half of the century No. 362 remained a single family house, bought and sold as would be expected.  In 1906 John A. Addison sold it to Louis Schramm; and in 1939 Rose F. McKenna sold it to Anna Taylor.

Then, in 1952, plans were submitted to the Department of Buildings “for altering the three-story and basement brick…into two duplex apartments.”  Those plans were apparently never executed; for in 1959 the house was converted to a triplex dwelling on the basement through second floors; with a separate apartment on the third.

In 2007 the house was re-converted to a single family home.  One real estate critic said “the house underwent a significant renovation…but it was hardly what might qualify as a restoration.”  Perhaps years of neglect forced the owners to do what was essentially a gut renovation; but few traces of the interior details remained.  It was sold not long after for $1.5 million; then was relisted in 2011 for $6.5 million. 

An exquisite, yet period-inappropriate Civil War period mantel attempts to regain a sense of history.  Otherwise, little remains to suggest a vintage home.  http://streeteasy.com/building/362-west-19-street-new_york

Despite the unfortunate treatment of the interiors, the façade of the dignified townhouse is lovingly maintained.  The replacement windows are quaint, if incorrect; but the wonderful ironwork of the railings and fence happily survive.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The Lost Proctor's Theatre -- Nos. 139-145 W. 23rd Street

photograph by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYW6WGQ3&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

In 1883 Manhattan’s entertainment district ran along West 23^rdStreet.  The thoroughfare was dotted with music halls and theaters between Fifth and Eighth Avenues.  Some were quite grand like the white marble Grand Opera House on the northwest corner of Eighth Avenue and Booth’s Shakespearean Theatre at the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue; others were noisier and robust like Koster & Bial’s Music Hall.  But when Salmi Morse tried to get into the act, he was met with stern opposition.

Morse purchased “the Armory,” an old structure previous used a “Dr. Sause’s church, on the north side of 23^rd Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, and set to work converting it to a theater.  His intention—a quite lofty one in his mind—was to stage a Passion Play here.  As rehearsals and $70,000 renovations continued, he applied for a license for run his theater.

Mayor William Russell Grace was the founder of W. R. Grace & Company and the city’s first Roman Catholic mayor.  He denied Morse’s application because, according to The New York Times, he “thought the play sacrilegious.”  Witnesses at a subsequent hearing were confused—testifying that rehearsals proved that the play was simply a reenactment of the life of Christ.  (It is quite possible that the religious mayor was offended by a church building being used as a place of entertainment; or possibly it had something to do with Samuel Morse’s real name being Solomon Moses.)

When Grace’s term ran out Morse reapplied to the new mayor, Franklin Edson, who also denied the license on the grounds that the play was sacrilegious.  The producer pressed on, continuing rehearsals in February 1883 in his Temple Theatre.  When police arrived to make sure he was not operating without a license, an offended Morse replied “My object is too dignified for me to try to bring out the Passion surreptitiously or to evade the law.”

Morse tried another tactic.  He planned a full dress rehearsal and issued invitations to prominent citizens.  The publicity of the several hearings regarding the supposedly irreverent play worked to Morse’s advantage.  According to newspapers, no fewer than 2,000 people crowded into the Temple Theatre.

“Gentlemen whose clothes and air were clerical mingled in the throng; the Hebraic element was noticeable, and there were many actors and actresses whose successes, such as they were, were made years and years ago.  Sealskins and diamonds were as plentiful as at a Wallack or Union-Square matinee, and everybody seemed to expect an evening of uninterrupted pleasure,” reported The New York Times.

An uninterrupted evening was not to be. The audience was thoroughly enjoying the lavish production when suddenly the producer’s attorney stepped in front of the footlights.  “He emphatically expressed his regret that in the midst of beautiful concerted sacred music Mr. Morse had been arrested by the Police.  A storm of hisses filled the house, and cries of ‘Shame! Shame!‘ were heard in the balcony and orchestra.”

Ironically, Morse received his license within a few months—public outcry no doubt having much to do with the decision—then died under suspicious circumstances (he drowned in a bathtub) a year later. 

The Temple Theatre was purchased by the Gospel Tabernacle and reopened as the Twenty-third-Street Tabernacle.  While it was supposedly a house of worship, the first thing the Tabernacle did was stage “Othello.”  On April 10, 1884 The Times reviewed the play, approving black actors on stage rather than whites in black face.  Heretofore there “were the minstrels and the ham-fat men, to be sure, but no self-respecting colored man would give countenance to such low-down imitations of white trash foolishness.  It has long been felt that no person in the upper circles of colored society could as much as think of a race theatre until one of Shakespeare’s best tragedies had been placed upon the boards by colored actors and actresses of undoubted ability.”

The Tabernacle Theatre did not survive and on June 21, 1888The Times reported that “The walls of the old church in Twenty-third-street just west of Sixth-avenue, which afterward became Salmi Morse’s theatre when the unfortunate manager undertook to produce the Passion Play, have been leveled to the ground, and work on the new theatre which is to rise on the site is being rapidly pushed.”

Impresario Frederick Francis Proctor built an impressive structure in the latest architectural rage—Flemish Revival.  The brick-clad theater, which quaintly recalled Manhattan’s Dutch heritage, featured a central and flanking stepped gables, picturesque capped dormers and a wide exterior balcony.  Large brass letters were embedded into the sidewalk spelling out PROCTOR’S.

Inside patrons were dazzled by electric lighting (although, as was customary, gas fixtures were available should the often-unreliable electricity fail).  The 1,550-seat auditorium featured gilded railings, velvet draperies and a gray-blue ceiling above red-toned walls.

While Proctor, at least initially, offered legitimate theater; he sought out innovative means to lure audiences.  On December 2, 1890 The Times wrote a critique of the afternoon performance the day before—during which bird-imitator Mable Stephenson shared the program with a one-act play “Barbara” and an exhibition of the new-fangled phonograph.

The newspaper (while noting the “not very numerous audience”) thought Mable “a remarkable mimic;” panned “Barbara” as “an early work and bears the impress of juvenility, and is based on a mock sentimental idea such as might occur to a very young person who had read too many books of fiction and not seen much of the world;” and had mixed thoughts about the phonograph.

“The exhibition was startling, but not pleasing.  The phonograph emphasizes defects and blemishes as the camera used to before photographers became artists.  A cornet is distressing enough at any time.  When its notes are treasured up on the phonograph cylinder and ground out by electricity the result is almost maddening.”

That same year David Belasco and Henry DeMille produced Men and Women here, a drama that dealt with the political and business life in America.  Later DeMille staged his last play, The Lost Paradise, at Proctor’s before his sudden death.

In 1892 Proctor switched from legitimate plays to vaudeville, becoming the first such venue in New York.  He offered continuous performances from noon to midnight six days a week.  For the price of admission a patron could stay all day and New Yorkers became familiar with his marketing slogan “After Breakfast Go to Proctor’s, After Proctor’s Go to Bed.”

In November that year Annie Eva Fay took the stage to conduct a séance before an audience of 1,500.   Although Fay was internationally famous as a medium and mentalist, The Times was not impressed.  “There was nothing in the performance given by Miss Fay last evening that was remarkable,” it said and added “It was the usual old cabinet performance, in which a lot of tambourines, banjos, guitars, and bells played the principal roles.”

The newspaper, as it would turn out years later, was correct.  Annie Fay was later exposed as a fraud.

Proctor managed to draw a wide variety of talent to the Twenty-third Street Theatre.  During the 1890s Ruth St. Denis landed an engagement here, dancing twice a day.  Her artistic talent, however, was in stark contrast to the sometimes-plebian vaudeville acts.  When the wealthy Mrs. Orlando Rouland saw St. Denis’s “hindoo” dance drama one afternoon, she was taken with the dancer; but appalled at the monkey act that followed.  She offered to sponsor St. Denis in a “proper uptown theatre;” the dancer’s first real break.

A newspaper at the time complained about the theater’s admission prices.  “At Proctor’s one has to pay fifteen cents to roost ‘among the gods,’ and the prices range as high as $1 for ‘a seat in a box.’”  But Proctor countered explaining it was “a first-class place of amusement at reasonable prices, that will combine the comforts and privileges of a ladies’ club with the entertainment of a select and carefully-managed theatre, where comic opera, the cream of the vaudeville stage, with musical sketches and crisp, bright comedy will be presented.”

Proctor was proud of his innovative “ladies’ club.”  Women of the 1890s were necessarily careful about their reputations and the theater was a perfect place to lose them.  On January 10, 1893 The Times noted that “The ‘ladies’ club’ idea is one that the management wants particularly to emphasize.  According to the announcement the ‘features include cozy parlors, dressing and toilet rooms, decorated and furnished artistically and luxuriously, where ladies may enjoy the same degree of privacy and comfort that they would if at home.’  This ‘ladies’ club’ idea is rather indistinct at present, but may develop.  The management reserves the right to exclude objectionable characters.”

A sign above the entrance announces "Moving Pictures" in 1895 -- King's Photographic Views of New York City, 1895 (copyright expired)

Proctor kept his theaters current with changes in public taste and technology.  By 1895 he was showing "moving pictures" and in 1899 he formed a relationship with filmmaker William Paley, screening his first kalatechnoscope projected motion picture at Proctor’s on October 9, 1899.

By the turn of the century F. F. Proctor had opened his second vaudeville venue, the Pleasure Palace on East 58^th Street.  He added a third, the former Fifth Avenue Theatre, in 1900.  Somewhat confusingly, he would call all three “Proctor’s Theatre.”

Along with the vaudeville acts were plays staged by the Proctor Stock Company.  In May 1901 the group produced the two act musical comedy Cinderella at School; preceded and followed by “high-class varieties and novelties” including Lillie Western, “the musical artiste;” comediennes the Doherty Sisters; vocalist Kathryn Pearl; and Tegge and Daniels, “Dutch comedy.”

Variety acts included the Cycle Whirl in 1901 -- photograph by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYW6WGQ3&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

Buster Keaton appeared here with his family, The Three Keatons; and in 1903 the former boxer James J. Corbett took the stage in a one-man show telling audiences “some of the funny things that happen to a champion pugilist.”  That year audiences would be amused by the low-brow humor of the comic acts like Mooney and Holbein, and Barton and Wakefield.

“Did you ever hear the peacock story?”

“No. What is it?”

“Oh, it’s a beautiful tale.”

One quick joke would be followed rapid-fire by another.

“Did you know my sister who worked in the rubber factory?”

“Yes, What of her?”

“Well, she got bounced.”

Audiences were treated to more upscale humor when Will Rogers signed on on July 1, 1905 at $150 per week for two performances a day.  Sharing the bill was comedienne-singer Edna Wallace Hopper (who got top billing over Rogers), actor Charles Grapewin, the Elinore Sisters, To-To The Mysterious Musician, The Esmeralda Sisters and the Four Flower Girls among others.

Roger’s salary was nothing when compared to the amount Proctor was willing to pay for big names that would attract his audiences.  On March 17, 1905—when the average American worker was earning between $200 and $400 per year--he offered the famous actor Joseph Jefferson $5,000 a week for twelve weeks, “twenty-five minutes twice a day for six days a week.”  That would translate into about $95,000 a week in today’s dollars.

Jefferson turned down Proctor; but a few months later the famous Lillian Russell accepted.  “Many managers have tried to get Lillian Russell to go into vaudeville,” reported The New York Times on August 1, 1905, “and now F. F. Proctor has succeeded.  She has consented to appear in the Proctor theatres at a weekly salary which is said to be somewhere near the $4,000-mark.”

The theater is plastered with signs announcing the appearance of the great Lillian Russell in 1905 -- photograph by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYW6WGQ3&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

The star started her tour at the 23^rd Street theater in October, staying for several weeks.  The Times said “She will sing new songs and some of the old ones familiar to the vaudeville audiences of years gone by  She is going to get the handsomest gowns, the press agent says, that were ever seen on the stage.”

The days of live shows at Proctor’s Twenty-third Street Theatre were quickly drawing to a close.  Motion pictures were the new rage and on December 6, 1907 Moving Picture World announced that the theater would become a motion picture theater exclusively.  “Admittance will be five cents and ten cents.”  The magazine noted “With the change in style of amusement, the theater’s name will also be changed.  Thenceforth it will be the Bijou Dream.”

In the spring of 1929 F. F. Proctor retired.  On May 14 the Radio-Keith Orpheum Corporation purchased his four New York City theaters, including the 23^rd Street venue.  RKO screened motion pictures in the Flemish Revival building for only about seven years.  On March 7, 1937 a devastating fire swept through the theater.

RKO moved its theater into the former Grand Opera House on Eighth Avenue.  Before long only the brass letters in the sidewalk announcing PROCTOR’S would remind passersby of the long-gone 23^rd Street entertainment district.  Those, two, disappeared in the 1970s.

When the unexciting brick building was constructed in the second half of the 20th century the brass letters PROCTOR'S inlaid into the sidewalk were lost.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

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

A Bicycle Academy, Silversmiths, and Electric Guitars -- The 1896 No. 144 West 14th Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1894 William J. Cabury, rector of the Church of the Annunciation on West 14^th Street between 6^th and 7^th Avenues, joined with scores of businessmen in protest against the proposed 14^th Street elevated train.   The structure would block out the sunlight to the street and the ruckus created by the passing trains would be intolerable.

Reverend Cabury had more to worry about than an elevated train.

Fourteenth Street had been for decades a fashionable residential neighborhood.  The extra width of the street caused it to be airy and sunlit.  Merchant Richard P. Dana had built his home at No. 146 in 1854 and next door at No. 144 was Jaques Arnold Bernheimier.  A decade later Calvin Cross was living in the Bernheimier house.

Reverend Cabury’s Gothic Revival church had been built in 1846.  By 1877 the church had acquired No. 144 as its rectory and Cabury was living here when he protested the train.   But there was a far more serious issue facing the church.  It was in deep financial trouble.

By the 1890s West 14^th Street was heavily commercial.   The 6^th Avenue elevated train, erected in 1880, gave birth to a shopping district along 14^th and the wide, brick or brownstone mansions were one-by-one razed or converted for commercial purposes.   As the residents moved away, the Church of the Annunciation lost its congregation.

On February 25, 1895 the church building and the four-story brownstone residence were lost in a foreclosure sale; sold for $50,000 to Joseph L. Buttenwieser.

Buttenwieser was an established wheeler-dealer in real estate and his interests, understandably, did not lie in the salvation of a church building only 50 years old with no supporting congregation.  Within the year the existing structures were gone and in their place was an attractive Renaissance Revival-style loft building.

Buttenwieser had commissioned the firm of Brunner & Tryon to design the building.   The seven-story loft was constructed of limestone and buff-colored brick with classical terra cotta detailing.    Costing around $250,000, it featured a row of eight soaring arches from the third to sixth floors, above which were sixteen one-story arches. 

Arnold W. Brunner had a background as a watercolorist and was a skilled draftsman.    The façade of No. 144 West 14^th Street reaped the rewards of his training with exquisite detailing.

Brunner added cartouches flanked by delicate palm fronds between each pilaster -- photo by Alice Lum

Two years after its completion, Buttenwieser sold the building to Frederick Hill Meserve, executive director of the Deering Milliken Company.  Meserve passed the deed on to his uncle, Seth M. Milliken in 1899 and the family would hold at least a partial interest in the property until the middle of the 20^th century.

No. 144 filled with a variety of tenants.   R. H. Macy & Company established a factory here in 1898 with two departments; one for manufacturing American flags and the other for “ladies silk waist and silk underwear.”   Silverman Brothers produced suspenders here and a variety of silver and jewelry concerns moved in as well.

Not intended to be a dreary factory building, it was covered by the architects with classical ornamentation -- photo by Alice Lum

Stern Brothers silver company (not to be confused with the Stern Brothers dry goods firm) moved in, and Graff, Washbourne & Dunn were silversmiths here for half a century before being bought out by Gorham Silver in 1961.  Lenox Silver Corporation and the electro-plating company of Cohen-Epner were tenants. 

But the building was not home merely to factories and jewelry makers.

The large, open floor plan made a perfect location for Karmel Brook’s bicycle academy.  As early as 1897 Brooks had opened his indoor academy here, and pupils were instructed on an oval track.  Bicycle racks lined the walls and all was going smoothly for Brook’s enterprise—until Mary L. Smith walked in the door.

The 45-year old Mrs. Smith felt it was high time to learn to ride a bike.   After her third lesson, on March 17, 1897, she felt she was proficient enough to negotiate the track unassisted.  After her second lap she veered into a bicycle rack and broke her right shoulder.  The doctor bill amounted to $138 and Mary Smith sued Brook for $7,500 insisting she would never use her arm again.

She told the judge that the bicycle racks were too close to the track, rendering the academy unsafe.   Brook, on the other hand, testified that Mrs. Smith “was entitled to only half an hour’s instruction, and she staid on her wheel in order to steal a ride after her time for instruction had expired.”

Feeling that the jury might be prejudiced by the fact that a middle-aged woman was bike riding at all, Justice Smyth instructed the jury to consider only whether the neglect was Mrs. Smith’s or Brook’s.  “This lady,” he said, “has long since reached the age of discretion, and if she desired to learn to ride a bicycle it was a matter for her own good taste, and she had the right to do so whether she was forty-five or one hundred and forty-five years old.  You have nothing to do with that.”

No. 144 continued to attract a diverse list of tenants.  In April 1935 Epiphone signed a lease that would extend nearly two decades.  The company designed and manufactured stringed musical instruments and was dubbed by The New York Times as “one of the world’s largest” of its kind.   The company’s success prompted it to double its space in the building only two years after moving in.  Here Epiphone produced the first “solid-body” electric guitar in 1941, designed by legendary jazz guitarist Les Paul.

photo by Alice Lum

The building was purchased by Pratt Institute in 1999.  The school immediately commissioned a renovation by architects Ehrenkrantz, Eckstut & Kuhn.  The rehabilitated structure has served as the Pratt Manhattan campus since 2001, encompassing instructional classrooms, labs, a library and offices as well as a respected public art gallery.

Although the doors could be more sympathetic to the structure, the entrance is intact -- photo by Alice Lum

While moderate changes to the façade occurred over the decades, the building has survived with no major damage to the original design.  Even the stately original main entrance at street level—traditionally one of the first elements to be removed or modernized—remains.    The building was designated a landmark in 2008.