The Federal Survivor at No. 37 East 7th. Street

 

By the 1830s attorney and banker Thomas E. Davis had become perhaps more interested in real estate development than his primary professions.  He would become a major player in the East Side north of the exclusive Bond Street neighborhood; as it transformed from farmland to residences.  Beginning around 1831, he erected rows of speculative brick homes in the area.

Partnering with Louis Wilcox in 1832, he began construction of one such row on East 7^th Street, which included No. 37.  The handsome Federal style residence was completed the following year and was valued at $6,000—about $165,000 today.

Clad in warm orange brick laid in Flemish bond, it rose three stories high above an English basement.  Diminutive carved brackets supported the stone window sills and a prim denticulated cornice capped the facade.  The major hint that the home was intended for a financially-comfortable family lay in the intricate doorway.  Here the round arched door surround with its faceted keystone featured delicate carving and suggested upscale interiors behind its double doors.

The interior of the entrance was paneled and a delicate egg-and-dart molding runs below the fanlight.

As the decades passed, the neighborhood changed.  The Lower East Side saw the influx of immigrant families following the end of the Civil War and tenements soon outnumbered private homes.  Nevertheless No. 37 hung on and in the 1890s was the home of Dr. Milo M. Duncan (sometimes spelled Mylo) and his wife Rebecca.

While Dr. Duncan may have led the respectable life of a neighborhood physician, Rebecca was somewhat of a bad girl.  On February 13, 1896 she found herself on the wrong side of the law.

According to a nameless young man, he was leaving the Star Theatre when he saw Mrs. Duncan.  “She was there with a crowd around her when I came along and I asked her what was the matter.  Then she caught hold of me and accused me of stealing a diamond ring,”

The Sun reported on the incident the following day saying “A fashionable dressed woman, who appeared to be intoxicated, collected a crowd about her in Thirteenth street, near Broadway, a 11 o’clock last night.  She had caught hold of a good-looking young man and clung to his arm, shouting: ‘You stole my ring!’”

Rebecca’s version of events was quite different.  According to the newspaper, she told police “that she had visited friends up town, and had started to go home at 8 o’clock...she rode down on an elevated train to Ninth street.  Then she had met the young man, and had a few drinks with him.  He afterward took her ring and refused to give it up, she said.”

The policeman on duty outside the theater corroborated the young man's story.  He was released.  And when Rebecca was questioned at the police station, her story fell apart.  “She could not remember where she had been drinking, nor could she say how many drinks she had.  Her forehead was cut, and she did not know how she had been injured,” said The Sun.

Worse, when the station house matron searched Rebecca’s pockets, she found a $20 pawn ticket for her diamond ring.  "She was locked up."

A year later Dr. Duncan had apparently had enough.  In May 1897 he sued Rebecca for “absolute divorce,” claiming she was intimate with Henry White on April 15.  Rebecca Duncan vehemently denied the charge and blamed their differences on the doctor.

“She says her husband preferred the society of his servants to that of his wife, and played cards with them; furthermore, that he continued to be on friendly terms with a doctor who, as she had told her husband, had made improper proposals to her,” reported The Sun on May 22, 1897.

Justice Andrews of the Supreme Court put an end to the couple’s differences by granting the doctor his divorce.  He was directed to pay Rebecca $150 in legal fees and $20 a week alimony.

As the turn of the century came, most of the houses along the block had all been altered or demolished—but not No. 37.  By 1904 the Independent Order B’rith Abraham of the United States of America was using the basement and parlor floor as its headquarters.  Max Schwartz, First Deputy Grand Master of the Order, owned the building.  The upper floors were apparently leased to The Baker & Taylor Co., booksellers.

Baker & Taylor ran its wholesale book company here in 1906--The School Journal March 17, 1906 (copyright expired)

Organized in 1887, the “fraternal beneficiary order” was composed mainly of Russian, Polish and German Jewish members.  The group maintained a cemetery fund, administered donations for charitable causes, and provided relief to indigent families. 

While the Independent Order B’rith Abraham focused on Jewish tradition; it also stressed the importance of learning English and becoming Americanized.  Within a very few years this stance would be vital.

On March 7, 1912 the New-York Tribune noted that Max Schwartz had renewed the lease for the “parlor floor, etc.” to the Independent Order B’rith Abraham of the United States of America.  The lodge would pay Schwartz $2,600 for the 15-year lease.  Quickly, however, the Order rethought the arrangement.

A report dated March 24, 1913 said “Upon recommendation of the grand master, the last convention authorized the executive committee to purchase the property at 37 East 7^thstreet, New York City, for the sum of $19,000, plus the cost of alterations.  This building has been used by the Grand Lodge as its headquarters for a number of years.”

The total sum paid by the Order to Max Schwartz was $29,373.39.  The immediate alterations included returning the upper floors to a single residence for the Grand Secretary, and the replacement of the stoop which was described as “worn out.”

In 1916 additional interior changes were made when the Order commissioned architects Sommerfeld & Steckler & Samuel Cohen to “erect walls and rearrange rooms” according to the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide on March 11.

By the time the United States entered World War I, the German population of Manhattan had greatly abandoned the Lower East Side for the Yorkville area.  Nevertheless the neighborhood around the Order B’rith Abraham still had a noticeable German-born population.  Now with Germany the nation’s enemy, German-speaking New Yorkers were eyed with suspicion and fear.

In February 1918 every German in Manhattan was required to register as an “enemy alien.”  The New-York Tribune reported on February 6, “The Eighty-eighth Street station, in the most populous Teutonic district in the city, had registered exactly 501 out of its estimated total of 3,000 aliens by 5 o’clock last night.”  Each registrant was fingerprinted and his personal data recorded.

“Next Sunday, after the close of the registration period, each policeman will start out to investigate and verify the information given by the registrants on his beat.  If everything is found correct, registration cards will be issued within a fortnight,” said the Tribune.  “Wrong addresses or misinformation, will result in turning the case over to the Department of Justice.”

Those Lower East Side residents with Germanic surnames lined up outside No. 37 East 7^thStreet.  Somewhat ironically the majority of the lodge members were of Germanic descent.  From its inception, however, the order had been outspokenly patriotic. 

Later that year, on October 1, The New York Times reported that “The New York branch of the Independent Order of B’rith Abraham subscribed $50,000 yesterday to the Fourth Liberty Loan, the announcement being made in connection with the raising of the order’s service flag, containing 8,460 stars, in front of its headquarters at 37 East Seventh Street.”  The generous subscription to the Liberty Loan would translate to about $725,000 today.  Before the war’s end the order would sell $5 million in Liberty Bonds.

It was around this time that the organization added a masonry parapet above the building's cornice.  But as other houses on the block continued to be drastically altered, little else was changed to the Federal style building.

Somewhat surprisingly, the end of the war did not bring an end to alien registration.  On December 19, 1922 the Executive Board of the Grand Lodge of the Independent Order, B’rith Abraham, held a meeting in the 7^th Street headquarters.  Wartime registration was one thing, felt the members; but registering aliens in peacetime was not what the United States was all about.  A resolution was passed ‘denouncing” the alien registry bill.

“The resolution declared that any law requiring aliens to be photographed and registered annually was un-American,” reported The New York Times.

Living in the house at the time was Max L. Hollander.  He had been Grand Secretary since 1909.  Born in Czechoslovakia in 1870, he arrived in New York as a child.  After a 23-year career as a tailor on the Lower East Side, he devoted himself to B’rith Abraham.

The socially and politically involved Hollander went to the White House to appeal to President Theodore Roosevelt for financial aid for survivors following the massacre of Jews during the Kishinev pogroms.  A founder of the American Jewish Congress he twice served as grand secretary at its World Conventions in Geneva and Washington, DC.

The 73-year old Max Hollander died in the house on the afternoon of February 20, 1943 after being ill about five months.  Three days later The New York Times said “The synagogues of Manhattan’s lower East Side went into a week’s period of mourning yesterday, and 1,500 persons attended a funeral service in the afternoon for Max L. Hollander.”  Following the service the cortege was escorted by 40 automobiles to the cemetery.

The Independent Order B’rith Abraham remained in the house for decades.  Sometime around mid-century the parapet was removed, making the building appear even more frozen in time. 

In 1981 Princeton architectural student Kevin Lippert and his classmates struggled with the large French drawing books from the turn of the century.  Lippert’s idea was to create more easily handled, reduced-format editions.  The Princeton Architectural Press was born of his idea.

Lippert was graduated in 1983 and two years later moved his publishing firm into the East 7^thStreet house where it remains today.  Because of its good fortune of being the home of a fraternal organization for many decades, then to an architectural publishing firm; No. 37 East 7^th Street has survived as a nearly-intact 1832 example of Federal domestic architecture. 

photographs by the author

The 1835 Thomas E. Davis House -- No. 68 East 7th Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1835 attorney and banker Thomas E. Davis constructed his upscale brick home at No. 68 East 7^th Street, just blocks from the ultra-fashionable Bond Street neighborhood.  The three-story home sat above a brownstone English basement.  Its comfortable 25-foot width was a reflection of the wealth of its owner.  The unpretentious Greek Revival elements were the latest in architectural fashion; just beginning to nudge out the Federal style.

Davis and his wife, Anne, would have five daughters and a son.  Six years after erecting the 7^thStreet house, Davis built a luxurious country home on Staten Island’s fashionable Richmond Terrace.  The New-York Tribune described it on November 17, 1841.  "The elegant country seat, with about four acres of land adjoining, recently finished by Thomas E. Davis, Esq. at a cost exceeding $60,000…is unrivaled for beauty of situation.”  The home cost the attorney a little over $1.5 million by today’s standards.

Despite their six children and Davis’s substantial fortune—about $2 million by 1870—things apparently were not working out between him and Anne.  When daughter Lizzie married the Marquis Angelo Gavotti Verospi of Rome on October 10, 1861, the ceremony took place in the Church of St. Roch in Paris.  It was an indication of things to come.

By time the of Davis’s death on March 16 1878 only he and his son, Thomas E. Davis, Jr., remained in New York.  Anne lived in Paris as did three daughters; while Lizzie and Matilda lived in Italy.  Davis himself seems to have left 7^th Street to live on Staten Island.  While Anne received “all his horses, carriages, harness, diamonds, jewelry, bijouterie silver, furniture, ornaments, bedding, paintings, articles of vertu, clothing, wines, liquors, and all goods and chattels stores at his banker’s or elsewhere;” the only real-estate mentioned in the will was the house and land on Richmond Terrace (which was left to his son).

That the millionaire attorney would have abandoned the neighborhood is not surprising.  By the second half of the 19^th century the neighborhood was called Kleindeutchland, or little Germany.  Fine Federal and Greek Revival homes were quickly being replaced by tenement houses and German social clubs.  With the German Lutherans and Catholics came the German Jews, as well.

The year prior to Davis’s death there were 250,000 Jewish immigrants in the United States, more than one-third of whom lived in New York.  In 1877 J. J. Reynolds wrote, “A growing interest in missions to the Jews has resulted in the formation at New York of a ‘Church Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews,’ under the presidency of the bishop of the diocese, and with the countenance of eight other bishops and several other eminent men.”

The Episcopal Church, concerned that Jews should be saved through conversion, purchased the house at No. 68 East 7^th Street as the Society’s headquarters.  Two years later, on March 8, 1884, The Real Estate Record noted that the society had taken out a $9,000 mortgage on the property.  The money was no doubt necessary for renovating the house into school rooms and a chapel.  It is possible that some of it went to the exterior remodeling as well.  The façade got a stylish makeover with up-to-date Italianate details—including handsome pediments above the windows and a pretty pressed metal frieze below the cornice.

The architecturally out-of-date building got stylish new clothes -- photo by Alice Lum

The Church Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews explained its technique of reaching its audience in the Board of Missions’ 1893 The Spirit of Missions.  It listed “paid Missionaries” (in actuality, there was only one) and the “maintenance of Missionary Schools and Industrial Schools for the Christian education of Jewish children.”  The pamphlet stressed “The work is purely spiritual.  The Society does not give temporal aid.”

The Society House served as school and home to the missionary, Mr. Lerman, who happened to be a converted Jew, a chapel, and school.  The Society published what it called “Messianic and Missionary literature,” which was in the form of an oddly-named periodical The Gospel of the Circumcision.”

The aggressive work of the Church Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews did not go unnoticed by the city’s rabbis.  On April 21, 1893 The New York Times ran a headline reading “Jewish Ministers Aroused” and wrote “They think the eyes of the Jewish people ought to be opened to the serious inroads of the mission in order that this influence may be checked by counteracting agencies.”

Rabbi Silverman dismissed the idea of “conversion” and preferred to think of it as mutiny.  “A Jew cannot become a Christian.  It is against his grain.  If he says he is a Christian, he is really an infidel.”

The Church Society relied on donations to operate; but it would appear that the group had regular financial strains.  In 1891 another mortgage had been taken out, this time for $10,000; and in 1901 the Citizens’ Savings Bank approved a $11,500 mortgage.  Finally on March 26, 1904 The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that the Church Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews had sold the East 7^th Street house to Samuel Grossman for $17,250. 

In an act of supreme irony, six days later Grossman transferred title to Machizke Talmud Torah School.  The yeshiva had been founded only a few years earlier when a movement towards replacing Yiddish with English as the language of instruction among Jewish youths began.  A focus on traditional Hebrew, rather than Yiddish, and religious doctrine was stressed as well.

The school gave as its object “to instruct poor children gratis in the Hebrew language and literature, and to give them a religious education.  In addition, poor children were given shoes and clothing.  The school opened on January 22, 1905 with a generous $25,000 financial boost from Jacob H. Schiff.

Machizke Talmud Torah School remained in the converted home at least until 1916.  Afterward the building was used as a synagogue.  By the end of World War I the German population had moved northward to the Yorkville area; but the Lower East Side remained the stronghold of the Jewish community well into the second half of the 20^th century.

Scars in the brick reveal restoration of former in-wall air conditioner damage -- photo by Alice Lum

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Change eventually came, however.  The East Village saw much of the Jewish population displaced by the city’s avante guard artists, writers, musicians, and political and social activists during the 1960s and 1970s.  The Davis house was returned to a single family home in 1960; then in 1989 was converted to one spacious apartment per floor.  Three decades later the remarkably preserved façade is lovingly maintained.