The Humphrey Bogart House -- No. 245 West 103rd Street

photo by Alice Lum

Adam Bogart had greater ambitions than continuing his family’s tradition.  The Bogarts were among the earliest of the Dutch settlers; one of Adam's ancestor being the first European infant born in New York State.  While Bogart’s family had been burghers, they more recently made their living as truck farmers.  Adam instead became an innkeeper and fiddled with printing on the side.    When he invented a process for transferring lithographs to easily-manipulated tin sheets--an innovation that transformed the printing industry--his fortunes soared nearly overnight.

With his new found wealth, Adam transplanted his wife and son, Belmont, to Manhattan.   Here the Bogarts would rub shoulders with other families with old names and relatively new money like the Astors and Rhinelanders.  Adam Bogart’s primary drive was the elevation of his son within society.

Belmont DeForest Bogart was outfitted in gentlemanly clothes, polished in his social demeanor, and sent to private schools.   He graduated from Columbia College medical school and, at the age of 30, met the striking and successful Maud Humphrey who was one year younger than he.

Unusual for a woman in the 1890s, Maud had already made a professional name for herself.  At the age of 16 the talented artist had already sold her drawings to publications.  Like most artists at the time, she studied in Paris.  Among her compatriots there was James McNeill Whistler.  She then returned home to ply her trade.  Maud Humphrey focused on commercial art rather than pretty landscapes and portraits.  She illustrated calendars, books and advertisements for highly-visible products like Ivory Soap.

Belmont and Maud’s courtship was strained from the beginning.  She was an early feminist with strong ideals.   His beliefs were rooted deeply in masculine Victorian values that clearly rejected women’s equal rights.  Belmont would go on to earn the handsome salary of $20,000 a year as a surgeon and heart and lung specialist—about $500,000.   But Maud was the highest-paid female illustrator in the nation, earning more than double his salary.  Her $50,000 income was well over a million dollars in today’s money.

The differences were too strong and amicable good-byes were said.   It would have been the end of the road for the couple had not a horrific accident occurred.    As Belmont was riding in an ambulance one of the horses pulling the vehicle became spooked.  It reared, causing the ambulance to topple, seriously fracturing the physician’s leg.  The leg was poorly set, then rebroken and set again to correct the botched procedure.  For the rest of his life Dr. Belmont Bogart would suffer pain and rely on medications like morphine.

Hearing of the accident, Maud Humphrey paid a visit to offer consolation.  One visit turned into another, then another, and before too long the unlikely couple was married.

While all this was happening the Upper West Side was developing at an astonishing rate.  Clusters of modern speculative rowhouses had cropped along the side streets and the avenues were lined with grand mansions.  On West 103^rd Street, between West End Avenue and Broadway, a row of brownstone houses had appeared.  Intended for well-to-do families, they sported up-to-date features to lure new homeowners—angular bays, decorative carved panels and handsome interiors.



Carved panels of faces among vines and fruity garlands decorate the facade -- photo by Alice Lum

The newlyweds purchased No. 245 and on Christmas Day 1899 their first child was born.  The boy took his mother’s name—Humphrey.  Along with the family in the house were four servants: a laundress, two maids and a cook.  Later two little girls would arrive—Frances (known at Pat) in 1901, and Katherine (known as Kay) two years later.

Marriage did not necessarily bring the end to the stark disparities between Belmont and Maud.  She headed the household and continued her career; a somewhat shocking choice for a turn-of-the-century woman.  The children were raised, for the most part, by nursemaids.  Nevertheless, Maud grasped the opportunity of readily-available models in the household.

The bowed, upper bays created a eye-pleasing undulation.  Originally tall brownstone stoops accessed the parlor levels -- photo by Alice Lum

Little Humphrey’s chubby angelic face began appearing on advertisements and jar labels of Mellin’s Baby Foods.  His early and unwilling celebrity would irk him throughout his life.  According to author George Perry in his “Bogie: A Celebration of the Life and Films of Humphrey Bogart,” the actor later said “There was a period in American history when you couldn’t pick up a goddamed magazine without seeing my kisser in it.”

Belmont was addressed by the children as “father,” and the feminist Maud instructed the children to call her by her first name.    Neither parent was emotionally demonstrative.  Reportedly the children were never hugged; instead they received the more properly-Victorian pat on the head or back.

Belmont was not totally without some input into the children’s lives.  While Humphrey was still a toddler his father made preparations for the boy’s entrance into Philips Academy Andover; a prestigious boarding school.  The school would be an effective stepping-stone for the boy to enter the medical profession his father envisioned for him.

The 103^rd Street house was modified to accommodate the Bogarts’ professions.  The English basement was modified into an office for Belmont’s medical practice; and an upper floor was converted to a studio for Maud.  On the roof Belmont kept coops of pigeons which he raised as a hobby.

The children enjoyed the fruits of privilege that came from two highly successful parents.  The family owned a sprawling 55-acre estate, Willow Brook, on the shore of Canandaigua Lake in Seneca Point in upstate New York.   Here Belmont taught his son to sail.

Life in the Bogart household was troubled, however.  Maud suffered migraines and bouts of mental instability.  Belmont more and more showed signs of morphine addiction.  The significant differences that had led them to part company years earlier were now magnified.  The children would later relate of frightening nights spent lying in the dark listening to their parents verbal fighting.

Young Humphrey was sent to the exclusive Trinity Schoolwhere he spent eight years being prepared for the Ivy League.  He was, at best, a mediocre student; excelling in nothing.  Neither academics nor sports interested him; yet Maud held out hope that he would go on to Yale and Belmont held fast to the idea that he would go to Phillips.

The United States’ entry into World War I offered Humphrey Bogart an escape from the house on 103^rd Street.  In the spring of 1918 he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, officially reporting for duty on July 2 in the Bronx.  After weeks of instruction he boarded the U.S.S. Leviathan as a seaman.  Two days later the Armistice was signed, ending the conflict.   Rather than seeing fighting, the teenager became part of a crew transporting the war-weary soldiers back home from Europe.  He later remembered “At eighteen war was great stuff.  Paris! French girls! Hot damn!” 

When he returned to New York he got an office job at World Films.  He first appeared on stage in 1921 and within the next 16 years he would appear in 17 Broadway shows.

The Bogart family moved out of the 103^rd Street house in 1925, relocating to No. 79 East 56^th Street.  It would not be long before the homes of the once-fashionable block became boarding houses and apartments.  In the spring of 1938 the former Bogart house was listed as having 13 furnished rooms.   It would remain that way until 1962 when it was converted to apartments—one per floor.  It was most likely at this time that the brownstone stoop was removed that the entrance moved to the former English basement, a few steps below sidewalk level.

The stoop was removed to be replaced by a featureless doorway into the basement. -- photo by Alice Lum

Today the house is owned by the city as low-income housing.   The attractive but typical row house would draw no attention at all were it not for the baby born here in 1899—the boy whose face on a baby food jar would later become a silver screen icon.

Murder in The Collegian Flats -- No. 345 West 21st Street

The Collegian Flats was the the latest in multi-family residential design in 1884.

By 1884 the quiet and respectable block of West 21^stStreet between 8^th and 9^th Avenues was undergoing change.  The brick and brownstone one-family homes were slowly being converted to boarding houses.   And before the end of the century many of them would be razed to make way for modern apartment buildings.

Among the very first of these would be built by the Evans Estate at No. 345 and would be, as The New York Times put it, “dignified by the title of the Collegian Flats.”    Built for middle-class families, the five-story building offered two roomy apartments per floor, with tall double-hung windows for ample ventilation.

The red brick building was trimmed in stone with up-to-the-minute Eastlake touches—a sawtooth cornice between the first and second floors, for instance, and incised lintel carvings.   The rows of windows at each level were connected by a stone course at the sills and at the lintels, and by a decorative floral tile band –a nice added touch.  Two semi-attached polished granite columns supported a solid stone hood over the entrance, proclaiming that this was not another tenement building.

Bands of decorative floral tiles at each floor were a colorful added touch.

The Collegian Flats would quickly become the center of a scandalous murder trial that started far away in a Cleveland, Ohio.

In May 1884 24-year old George W. Evans stopped at the American Hotel in Cleveland.  Across the street was the Johnson House where Annie Belts, “a very attractive young woman,” according to newspapers, was a guest.  Annie was the daughter of a Steubenville livery stable owner and had argued with her parents and run away from home.

Evans flirted with Annie through the hotel windows, finally becoming acquainted with her.  What Annie did not know was that he was also the son of Alexander Evans, a notorious pickpocket and sneak thief also known as “Nevins,” and “the milkman.”  Nor did she know he was cruel and abusive.

Evans was attracted to the young girl not only for her good looks, but for the $40,000 of Steubenville property of which she would become the sole heiress.  He convinced Annie to come back to New York with him and in the Fall they were married.   On November 1 he was hired as janitor of the new Collegian Flats.  The couple was given the four-room apartment in the basement.   Things seemed to be going well for the newly-weds.

Trouble soon surfaced.   The jealous husband felt that Augustus White, a partner in the management company of the building, W. A. White & Sons, was taking too great an interest in his wife and that she appeared to reciprocate.  Quarrels ensued.

Tenants began complaining that Evans would lock himself in the apartment with his wife and beat her.  According to The New York Times “sounds of blows and shrieks indicated that he was chastising her, and she afterward complained that he not only beat her, but tried to strangle her.”  The residents were, said The Times, “shocked by Evans’s brutality to his wife.”

The Sun was less sympathetic.  It reported that the tenants “suggested to the agents that he should be removed from the flats, as the woman’s cries were annoying.”

By January Annie Evans was fearful for her life.  When White called one morning and Evans was not at home, she implored the man to help her.

“She said she had discovered that her husband, whom she married hastily, was a villain,” White later recounted.  “He had a bad temper and had beaten her and threatened to kill her.  She told me she was afraid of her life and begged me to help her to get back to her home and friends in Ohio.  Unless I did so she would be driven to killer herself.”

A plan was hatched whereby Annie would have enough time to pack and escape.  On Wednesday, January 28, Evans was summoned to the White offices at 1:00 to discuss maintenance of the water pipes in the building.  When he arrived, White told him he had to take care of something, but not to leave until he returned.

White finally came back at 6:00 in the evening, apologized and asked Evans to return the next day.  When the janitor arrived at the basement apartment, he found that his wife had packed and left.   In the morning he was fired and told to leave.

George Evans, however, did not take losing his wife nor losing his job easily.  He spent 24 hours searching for Annie and at one point was informed she had been seen “walking with Mr. White.”  Evans was enraged.

When he returned to the apartment on Friday night at 11:30, he encountered the new janitor, a black man named Thomas Currie.  The two got into a violent argument which was heard on the upper-most floor.  The apartment of Edmund Coon was on the top floor and in the rear room was top of a shaft that connected to the cellar by the coalbins.  Thomas Coon, a nephew, was awakened by the angry voices below.

“I want you to understand I’m janitor here until tomorrow; then my time’s up.  I have orders not to let anyone in the house at night.  So you get.”

The 36-year old Currie argued that he was obeying the orders of White to stay.

Edmund Coon, who was in the front room of the apartment at the time, was startled by a gunshot.  His nephew told him what he had heard and the pair listened at the shaft, first hearing groaning, then “What did you expect—that I’d let you ‘boss’ me?  I had to defend myself.  Do you want a doctor?”

The men rushed to the basement to find a dazed Currie at the foot of the cellar stairs, bleeding  from the head.  He was able to say that Evans had shot him.   He was taken to New York Hospital where he died four days later.

The manhunt was on for Evans whom police described as “5 feet 9 inches in height, small side whiskers, small black mustache, black hair and eyes, ruddy complexion, medium build, dark clothes and a derby hat.”

Assuming that Annie fled to Ohio, Evans headed there.  Authorities tracked him to Cleveland, Chicago and St. Louis; and then lost the trail.  Nearly a year would pass before Evans was caught.  Detectives rented a room across the street from Evans’s aunt who lived at No. 312 East 105^th Street on a hunch that he might return to New York.  Finally, in December, they spotted him at the window of his aunt’s apartment.

He was arrested later on the street.  In the waistband of his trousers was a pearl-handled double-edged dagger 7 inches long.   Evans confessed to the killing.

But it would not be the end of the story.

On January 21, 1886 George W. Evans appeared in court to face his first-degree murder charge.   The Times sized him up for its readers.  “As he sat in the Court of Oyer and Terminer yesterday, on trial for murder in the first degree, he looked very different from the typical criminal.  He had a clean-cut face, a clear complexion, and a bright, intelligent expression.  By his attire he showed himself possessed of good taste.  But there was a flippancy about him that was not pleasant to see in the manner of a man on trial for murder.”

When Evans’s attorney, William f. Howe, stood before the jury, the account of the killing was drastically changed.  According to Howe's version, Evans had acted solely in self defense.  The counsel told that when Currie was told to leave he refused and drew a revolver.  Evans then pulled out his own gun and Currie relented, putting his in the pocket of his overcoat.   When Evans turned to leave to summon a policeman to oust the intruder, Currie said “Now I’ll kill you.”

But Evans was faster than Currie, recounted Howe, and his bullet stopped the would-be murderer.   When Evans realized that the new janitor was shot, he fled because he did not have enough money to hire an attorney to defend him.

Two days later a verdict was reached.   Evans was guilty of manslaughter in the first degree, punishable by 15 years in prison.  “He took the verdict of the jury and his sentence coolly,” said The Times, “and without evident emotion, nor did he break down or show either the quivering of the lip or the moistening of an eyelid when his father, mother, and grandmother gave vent to their feelings in great sobs of grief.”

Evans’s attorney had more tricks up his sleeve, however.

When Thomas Currie had identified Evans as the shooter, detectives were required to ask the question “Have you any hope or recovering from the effects of the injury you have received?”  The question was necessary to establish an “ante-mortemstatement;” one which was made by a person believing he was about to die. 

Currie replied “It is hard for me to say.”

William F. Howe appealed to the Supreme Court.  If Currie was not certain that he was going to die, his statement could not be “ante-mortem.”  Evans was granted a new trial.

In a plot twist that is inconceivable today, the General Term of the Supreme Court set aside the verdict on June 1, 1886 on the grounds that the dying man’s statement was not “a legal ante-mortem statement.”    There was no retrial because, as reported in The New York Times, “the only evidence against him beyond the excluded statement of Currie is circumstantial and not strong.”

George Evans, the cruel and malicious physical abuser of his young wife and the cold-blooded murder of Thomas Currie was a free man.

The Collegian Flats never again was the subject of such dark publicity.   Reputable tenants continued to live here like Susanne Pallet who was here in 1911.  A member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, she was descended from John Hart who served under Captain John Prout Sloan on the Marine sloop Enterprise in 1775.

There was, however, a bit of embarrassment when truck driver William P. Jones was arrested for his involvement in a band of pier thieves.  John Quinn was employed as a checker by the Lehigh Valley Railroad at Pier 30.  Quinn would steal valuable freight, like silverware, that was transported by Jones to others who would sell the goods.

But for the most part, the lives of residents at No. 345 West 21^st Street like Lt. Francis E. Liszanckie of Fire Engine Company 8 who lived here in 1951, was quiet and unexceptional.

In 1974 the building was converted from two to four apartments per floor.  Otherwise, the prim and attractive Victorian apartment building is unchanged.   Its Chelsea residents come and go unaware that its basement was the scene of one of the most publicized murders in New York in the 1880s.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The Samuel Raynor House -- No. 136 East 16th Street

photo by Alice Lum

East 16^th Street between 3^rd Avenue and Irving Place in 1850 was becoming an attractive spot to build a new home.  Four blocks to the north was Gramercy Park and a block and a half to the west was Union Square.  Around both of these parks elegant brick or brownstone mansions were rising as the area became both exclusive and fashionable.

A row of nearly identical brownstone houses were completed that year along the south side of East 16^th, including No. 136.   They were typical of the scores of similar homes designed in the popular Greek Revival style rising throughout the city.  Steep brownstone stoops rose to the parlor level which sat above a high English basement.   Four stories tall, their understated elegance relied solely on the brownstone entranceway, bracketed cornice and restrained lintels for decoration.

Inside heavily-carved newel posts would grace the staircase and ornate plasterwork would adorn the ceilings of the parlor and dining room.   Matching marble mantels on the first floor as well as rich woodwork would reflect the social station of the new residents.

Samuel Raynor lived at No. 136.   When Raynor was still just 12 years old, he left his home in Hempstead, Long Island, and took a job in a stationery company owned by Richard Barlett  at No. 76 Bowery.   The small business printed playing cards, legal blanks and blank books.  In 1835, when Raynor was now 25 years old, Barlett took him as a partner. 

When Barlett died two years later, Raynor brought his brother, Hiram, into the business, renaming it H. & S. Raynor.  Hiram retired in 1847 and Samuel forged on.  His fortunes soared when, in 1858, he began manufacturing envelopes at a time when most people will made their own by folding a sheet of paper and sealing it.  His pioneering spirit did not stop there.  He introduced fast-running machines, ordering twelve of the $500 devices in a brave but risky investment.

By 1888 Samuel Raynor & Co. was one of the largest envelope manufacturers in the nation.  He was also a Vice President of the Metropolitan Savings Bank, a director in six insurance companies and sat on the board of the New York Board of Trade and Transportation.  The 78 year-old had made a fortune and was living comfortable on East 16^th Street with his wife, Sarah Dodge Raynor. 

But 1888 would be a devastating year in the Raynor household.

On March 11 of that year Raynor was caught in one of the most severe blizzards ever recorded in the United States.  The storm lasted for three days and up to 50 inches of snow fell.  The sustained 45 mile per hour winds caused drifts over 50 feet high.  It would be remembered as the Great Blizzard of 1888.

By the time the elderly Raynor was rescued, he suffered from exposure.  Confined to bed, his condition worsened to pneumonia and on Monday, May 7, he died.  At 10:00 in the morning two days later, his funeral was held in the parlor of No. 136 East 16^th Street.

Within a week there would be another funeral here.

In the damp Spring weather at the gravesite that Wednesday morning, Sarah Dodge Raynor caught a chill.   The 74-year old woman was unable to recover and on Sunday, May 13, she died of pneumonia, just as her husband had done a week earlier.  Her funeral was held in the parlor the following Tuesday.

The American Stationer remarked “Mr. and Mrs. Raynor were a particularly happy couple, spending fifty-three years of wedded life together, and their deaths so close together is noticeable.”

A year later the Raynor house was converted to “French Flats”—the term being used to clearly distinguish high-end apartments from tenements.  The conversion marked a trend towards apartment living in the neighborhood begun six years earlier when The Gramercy was erected on nearby Gramercy Park—the first cooperative apartment building in the city.  

The architectural firm Herter Brothers (not to be confused with the interior designers), was commissioned to handle the conversion and to update the façade.   The Greek Revival house that had previously been unexceptional was suddenly anything but.   The architects created cast metal window surrounds in a highly-unusual sawtooth motif.  Pyramidal bosses lined up along the sides and sills creating tactile visual interest.  An up-to-date parapet was added to the cornice and an imposing portico with free-standing Corinthian columns installed.   The ironwork of the stoop was updated to reflect the Eastlake influence, as were the double entrance doors.

The Herter Brothers' unusual and stylish renovations included pressed metal window surrounds -- photo by Alice Lum

Among the first residents of the apartments – one per floor—were poet Stephen Henry Thayer and his wife.  Mrs. Thayer was active in the New York Diet Kitchen Association, a charity that provided “nourishing food, such as beef-tea, milk, rice, and oatmeal, free, for the destitute sick.”  The group assisted 21,866 invalids during 1900 alone.  Thayer was secretary of the membership committee of the Authors Club; a select group that would accept no one whose works had not been published.

Sculptural insets above the top floor windows sat within a busy new cornice -- photo by Alice Lum

The poet’s best known collection, perhaps, was his 1886 “Songs of Sleepy Hollow, and Other Poems.”  Critical appraisal of the work was mixed.  The Atlantic Monthly was somewhat harsh, saying “Mr. Thayer’s collection of his poems ranges over a number of years, and includes apparently the casual recreations of an otherwise busy man.”

The New York Observer was a bit kinder.  “The author is a true poet in sentiment and feeling, and he is able to give to those thoughts which possess his own soul such expression that others feel and know them.”

The modern newels, the iron railings and the highly-decorative entrance were like nothing else on the block -- photo by Alice Lum

The unmarried Jane J. Boudinot lived here at the same time.  An American blueblood, she was a descendant of Elias Boudinot, President of the Continental Congress and Commissary-General of Prisoners under General Washington.   A member of the Colonial Dames of America and the Huguenot Society, Miss Boudinot regularly contributed articles to the Magazine of History and various newspapers.

In her will, she bequeathed a portrait of Washington by Remington Peale to the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.

The roomy apartments were home to a variety of other tenants—in 1917 Private First Class Gordon W. Jewett was living here when he marched off to war with the 165^th Regiment; and C. F. Goodwin Kuyk had an apartment in the building in 1924 when he was admitted to the New York Bar.

photo by Alice Lum

In 1956 the house was purchased by preservation architect Joseph Pell Roberto and his designer wife, Carol.   Renovations were done in 1958; however the spacious one-to-a-floor apartments remained.   Joe Roberto died in 1988, one of the most esteemed preservation architects in the city.  Carol Roberto remained on, living in the parlor floor apartment and earning the neighborhood nickname “The Litter Lady” for her fastidious cleaning of the sidewalks.  The indefatigable woman worked for preservation of parks and historic buildings until she was struck with heatstroke in August of 1998.  Two weeks before her 87^th birthday Carol Roberto died.

The remarkable house at No. 136 East 16^th Street still has only one apartment per floor.  And it remains, as Carol Roberto called it, a “showstopper.”