The 1908 Spero Building -- Nos. 19-27 W. 21st Street

At the turn of the last century the block on 21^stStreet between 5^th and 6^th Avenues saw a burst of development.  The high-end brownstone homes of a generation earlier were quickly razed and tall manufacturing loft buildings were being erected.    Because many of the large retail stores along 23^rd Street had their shipping and receiving entrances in the rear, 22^nd Street was less desirable than 21st Street for light factory buildings because of the traffic.   In January 1908 The New York Times remarked that “This block on Twenty-first Street has shown unusually steady growth.”

Stern Brothers Department Store was one of the emporiums on 23^rd Street.  Several years before the Times article was written Benjamin Stern had acquired the string of properties from No. 19 to 27 West 21^stStreet.  His intention was to open an annex connected to the main store by a tunnel.  Although the tunnel was built and was being used for the transfer of stock; the plan to build the annex was abandoned as the block rapidly filled with mercantile buildings as opposed to retail establishments.

In 1907 Stern sold the 104-foot wide property to developer David Spero who planned a modern loft building for the site.  The New York Times reported that “One of the few large gaps remaining in the rows of tall loft buildings on Twenty-first Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, will soon be closed by the new twelve-story structure.”   Spero commissioned architect Robert D. Kohn to design the building.

In April of  that year Kohn’s magnificent headquarters for The Evening Post was completed.  It was exceptional among Manhattan buildings in that Kohn strayed from the safety of Beaux Arts and Renaissance-inspired architecture and looked across the ocean to the ground-breaking Art Nouveau style.  The Evening Post Building was a bold expression of the Vienna Secession offshoot of the avant garde style.  For David Spero’s new building Kohn would go back to the well.

Completed in 1908 at a cost of around $350,000, the muscular façade was clad in grey brick, limestone and granite.  Kohn ornamented the building with hefty two-story piers at the base that terminated in fountain-like art nouveau carvings.   In between, copper-roofed oriel windows added light to the interior and created an undulating movement to the façade.   The irregular roofline and the verticality of the uppermost floors which protruded slightly from the lower surface supported by metal brackets, reflected the Vienna Secessionist influence.

The Spero Building as it appeared one year after completion -- Architects' and Builders' Magazine, 1909 (copyright expired)

The neighborhood had already become the center of the apparel industry and quickly the building filled with garment firms.  N. Altman & Co. took 10,000 feet on the second floor in 1908.  Turkel & Felstiner was another early tenant in the apparel industry. 

Rosenberg & Co. was here in 1911 when one of its employees went missing.  Although the poorly-paid girls in the dressmaking shops were often nearly-illiterate immigrants, 22-year old Hannah Reiner was educated and a lover of books.  During the summer months on her time off the Bronx resident would often hire a rowboat, row far out onto a lake in a park, then drift lazily along lost in a book.

On Tuesday, June 13 she did just that.   A 3:45 she rented a boat from Grosse’s boathouse in Pelham Bay Park and left her valuables for safekeeping—a pocketbook containing letters and $1.35, her white silk parasol and some other articles--then rowed out onto the bay with a copy of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”  

It was the last anyone time would see her alive.

When Hannah failed to return for dinner, her mother became alarmed and sent her brother to find her.  The rowboat was found, without its oars, with the girl’s book on the floor.   As days passed, the police dragged the bay to no avail.  “Relatives of the girl believe that as she sat in her rowboat reading a novel some men in a motor boat swooped down upon her and dragged her into their craft,” reportedThe Evening World on July 21.  “It is believed that some vicious character observed the girl’s habit and lay in wait for her.”

Hannah Reiner worked in the Spero Building as a dressmaker when she disappeared -- The Evening World, July 22, 1911 (copyright expired)

The following day the same newspaper reported “Hannah Reiner Slain by Motor Boat Thugs.”  The article said that her body “was found this afternoon cast upon the beach at Throgg’s Neck.  The police discovered marks of violence upon the arms and face that indicated that she had been the victim of a mysterious murder.”

The coroner’s physician reported finding “many cuts and bruises.  A deep cut appeared on the head.  The arms were bruised and there was a depression on one side of the head that seemed to have been made by a blow.”

Amazingly, however, one day later, on July 23, the police and the coroner made a 360 degree reversal.  The Sun reported that “The police and Coroner are convinced that the young woman fell out of the boat in which she was rowing and that her death was an accident.”  The marks of violence were suddenly forgotten.  “The clothing was not torn and the body showed no bruises or marks.”

Although the family vehemently argued that there was foul play involved, the case of Hannah Reiner was abruptly closed.

Earlier in that year, the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist fire resulted in the horrific deaths of 145 garment workers.  A year later, on March 21, the memory of that tragedy was fresh in the minds of girls making women’s waists, or fitted shirts, at the M. I. Nathan Company in the Spero Building.   40-year old Julia Gaillard went to the back room to brew a cup of tea over a small gas stove.  As she turned, her dress caught fire and the flames rapidly enveloped her clothing and seared her face.

“Screaming frantically, the girl began to race madly down the long aisle, the fire lapping out to threaten all the piles of cloth and paper patterns,” reported The Evening World.  Although a clerk, Isadore Nash, wrapped the woman in an overcoat and snuffed out the flames, it was too late to control the panic among the hundred other workers.  The World said “Remembering the Triangle fire, they began a mad scramble for the elevators.  Their panic was contagious and within five minutes several hundred more fear-mad women were clawing each other at every angle of the stairway from the second to the twelfth floor.”

The two elevator boys, Joe Lowrey and Joe Paul ran the cars up and down non-stop, attempting to take as many as possible at a time and trying to ensure the women that there was no fire.  “Meanwhile, all the building, from top to sidewalk, had caught the infection of panic,” said The Evening World.  “The stairs became jammed almost immediately, and those who heard the cry of ‘Fire!’ on the upper floors and rushed to the stairways found them clogged by those who were already fleeing in blind terror.  The fire escapes on the back of the building became black with girls.  Some threw open the windows on the Twenty-first street side of the building and screamed for rescue to those in the street.”

Although order was eventually restored, the burns to Julia Gaillard proved fatal.

In 1914 the prominent clothing manufacturer Joseph Jonasson & Co. contemplated leaving the Spero Building for “a new home in the uptown neighborhood.”  In its announcement, the firm seemed nearly apologetic.  “The Spero Building is not so very old and it is in the district close to Fifth Avenue, where the manufacturing houses flocked a number of years ago, and while its equipment and arrangement cannot be criticized, Joseph Jonasson & Co. have found that the increasing demands of their trade make it imperative that new and larger quarters be secured.”

American Cloak and Suit Review said that “There is no house in the entire industry that is more respected and esteemed than the Jonasson institution.”  The Spero management was no doubt nervous about losing one of its better-known tenants.   Yet the building continued to be filled with similar firms.

In 1916 Jacob Liss, “manufacturers of ladies’ waists,” moved in, followed by the W. & B. Dress Company on the 10^thFloor.   During the 1920s there were new tenants like the Champion Cloak Company and the S. J. Hartsfeld Co., Inc. which made “boys’ wash suits.”   Superior Stitching Company took the 6^th floor in 1927.

Hartsfeld took out the above ad in The Boys' Outfitter in September, 1920 (copyright expired)

As the garment district migrated northward to 7^thAvenue, the Spero Building saw a more varied tenant list.  In 1935 Orion Press, Inc. was here and in the 1940s was Berton Plastics, Inc.    Today an even great variety of renters can be found from Pangloss Films, the documentary film production company founded by filmmaker Peter Yost, to an acupuncturist office.  On the ground floor is a massive costume shop, Abracadabra.

Richard Kohn’s masculine art nouveau design, reflective of the manufacturing purpose of the building, is nearly unaltered a century after completion.  It is a remarkable example of a rarely-seen style of architecture in New York City.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

A Touch of Paris at Nos. 7 and 9 East 20th Street

Idential doorways, one for the restaurant and one for the loft spaces, preserve the structure's symmetry.

When Christian P. F. Holtz arrived in the United States from Hamburg, Germany in the mid-19^th century, he changed his name to the more American-sounding Charles F. Holtz.  Unlike so many German immigrants in the 1850s who crowded into Little Germany on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Holtz settled across the river in Hoboken, New Jersey.

By 1859 he had opened the Park Hotel on the corner of 4^thStreet and Hudson Street, described by the Internal Revenue Service as a “4^thClass” hotel with three billiard tables.   In 1863, however, he had crossed the river to open a saloon-restaurant on Duane Street.  Trow’s New York City Directory listed Holtz in 1869 as a dealer in “Havana segars, champagnes, Bordeaux & Rhine wines.”

For a few years in the 1870s Holtz took on a partner, Henry Koennecke and the restaurant was coupled with an importing business.  The pair imported German and French wines and champagne, mineral water, “bitter water,” and canned goods.   Koennecke and Holtz parted ways in the mid 1880s and a new partner, Bruno Freystedt, joined the business.

Although the restaurant-saloon retained the name of Holtz Restaurant, the new Holtz & Freystedt partnership would be used for the retail and import business.  In 1896 the elderly Charles Holtz, now around 70 years old, either died or retired.  The company was re-incorporated as “Holtz & Freystedt Company of New-York City,” with a board of five investors.

That year a second Holtz Restaurant was opened at the corner of Broadway and Franklin Street.  The new directors aggressively expanded the business.    Six years later in 1902 they renovated the lower floors of the 6-story building on the corner of Broadway and Houston Street as their third restaurant location.  The Holtz Restaurants had developed from a single saloon downtown to classy, high end establishments that catered to businessmen and the well-to-do.  The New York Times called the newest restaurant “one of the finest in appointments in the city.”

In the cellar of the Broadway and Houston Street restaurant were stored thousands of cigars as well as the wine and alcohol.  Around 4:00 in the morning of June 12, 1904 smoke began wafting from the roof of the building.   Firemen were perplexed when no fire could be found, until they realized it was in the basement.  “When they at least discovered that it was in the subcellar, they lost no time in ripping up the glass sidewalks and demolishing the handsome stained glass domes over the basement entrance,” reported The New York Times.

And then came the rush of overpowering tobacco and alcohol fumes, so strong that “the firemen standing over the openings made in the sidewalk were toppled over like tenpins.”  The cigar smoke blinded the firemen, causing such pain to their eyes that “it was some time before they could see enough to make them available for service.”  Several fire fighters challenge faced the smoke and fumes to retrieve ice and seltzer and set up a make-shift bar on the opposite side of the street where overcome firemen were treated.  Cloths soaked in ice water were bound around their heads and they were given cold drinks of seltzer.

When the difficult blaze was finally subdued, the newest Holtz Restaurant was in ruins.

It would take a year before the restaurant could be reopened.  And shortly thereafter the directors laid plans for yet another Holtz Restaurant.   In 1907 the Fifth Avenue and Broadway area just south of 23^rd Street was a hotbed of development.  The staid mansions of a generation earlier were gone or converted to business as residents moved uptown and commercial buildings rose.  The towering 22-story Fuller Building, known popularly as the Flatiron Building, had changed the complexion of the area in 1902.  The neighborhood teemed with businessmen and hotel patrons.  It was an ideal location for the newest Holtz Restaurant.

Philip Braender owned the property at Nos. 7 and 9 East 20^thStreet on the short block between Fifth Avenue and Broadway.   He commissioned architect William C. Frohne to design a 12-story loft and store building, with the lower two floors being specifically customized for Holtz.  The German-born architect had produced handsome gathering spots the German community like the Bohemian National Hall and the 1889 Schuetzen Hall.  But for this building he would turn to France for inspiration.

The nine-story central arch stressed the building's height at the dawn of the age of skyscrapers.

Completed late in 1907 the brick and stone structure was embellished with Beaux Arts carvings of garlands, wreaths, lions’ heads and scrolls.   A central, nine-story arch flanked by single openings emphasized the soaring verticality of the skyscraper.   An imperious goddess head looked down on the passersby from below a sturdy cornice.

Banded fasces rise to the haughty goddess.  Carved shells terminate the long columns of single windows along the building's sides.

But the Holtz Restaurant space would grab the spotlight.  Frohne lavished the two-story space with expanses of glass and at the second floor created a full wall of French windows.   Above, a decorative medallion announced “HOLTZ, flanked by a pair of odd creatures—part griffin, part cornucopia.  It was Paris on 20^thStreet.

The new Holtz Restaurant opened on March 12, 1908 as commercial tenants filled the upper stories.   A. G. Thienel, manufacturer of ostrich feathers, moved in that year as did the Daisy Costume Manufacturing Co.    Before long Staheli, Reitmann & Co. would take the 5^th, 6^thand 8^th floors for their lace curtain factory.   Barnard Rapp tried to make a go of his cloak and suit company, but it did not work.

An advertisement in The Sun on March 12, 1908 promised the same standard of "cuisine and management" (copyright expired)

The apparel maker began business on July 15, 1912 as a partner in Rapp & Meyer.   The partnership dissolved only four months later and Rapp continued on alone.  A year later, on August 6, 1913, he was forced to file bankruptcy.  That same year the Holtz Restaurant closed for business.

Lions holding clusters of fruits, garlands and ribbons, and carved scrolls embellish the entrances.

Philip Braender died in 1917, leaving an estate of just over $1 million.  On January 7, 1920 Meister Builders purchased the building from his estate, quickly flipping the property eight days later.  In the meantime, the building continued to attract apparel-related firms.  In 1921 the 8^th floor was home to Babash, Kailo & Udoff, and Mendelsohn Brothers took the 2^ndfloor.  The following year the Belgian Waist and Dress Company took over the 5^th floor.

Perhaps its side street location protected the structure from the brutal street level modernization that so many buildings in the neighborhood suffered during the mid- to late 20^th century; yet Frohe’s handsome designs for the Holtz Restaurant, including the cast panel above the French windows, survive.

In 1987 the upper floors were renovated to apartments, with the exception of the 10^th which became a “studio,” according to Building Department records.  Here the Castillo Theatre operated throughout the 1980s.    Now called the Holtz House, the space where cloaks, suits, dresses and lace curtains were manufactured is now 14 residences.    And where diners once savored French cuisine and champagne, a kitchen and bath showroom displays bathtubs and faucets.

photographs taken by the author.

An 1893 Moorish Fantasy -- No. 256 Fifth Avenue

photo by Alice Lum

In the 1870s West 23rd Street from Fifth Avenue to Eighth Avenue had taken over as the entertainment district of Manhattan. Opera houses, theatres and music halls dotted the thoroughfare, promoting the construction of hotels and commercial buildings in the area.

Charles A. Baudouine purchased the plot at 256 Fifth Avenue, between 28th and 29th Street and began construction of a retail store and loft building in 1892. Baudouine had been an important furniture maker whose high-end Rococo-style furniture graced the parlors of New York’s wealthy and rivaled that of cabinet makers like John Henry Belter.

He retired in 1856 and turned his interests to real estate. For this project he commissioned architects Alfred Zucker and John H. Edelman. The six-story building, completed in 1893, would be one of the most interesting and unusual in the entire area.

Intricate pressed terra cotta encases the facade -- photo by Alice Lum

With fanciful abandon, the architects combined historic styles into a conglomeration loosely termed Moorish Revival today. The light colored brick façade is slathered in matching terra cotta. Two-story columns are banded and laced, intricate arabesques twine around the second story windows and rounded arches are capped with Gothic points. The face of the structure was broken by an ornate projecting balcony at the sixth floor.

Among the first tenants were apparel merchants. In its February 1894 issue, The Clothier and Furnisher reported “E. A. Newell will move from his old store, where he has been for many years…to his new store at 256 Fifth Avenue, in the handsome, new white-stone building recently erected.”

Rupert A. Ryler Co., tailors, also moved in, advertising “all the latest novelties in fine special cloths, golf suits, knickerbockers, mufti, tattersalls, vestings, and a host of others.”

Terra cotta blends with brick to form texture and dimension -- photo by Alice Lum

The building’s prestige was heightened when esteemed portrait photographer Napoleon Sarony established his studio here. Many of the popular “cabinet cards” featuring theatrical stars were shot by Sarony and the building’s proximity to the theatre district was ideal.

In February 1905 Braun, Clement & Co., leased the store along with the basement and second floor. The firm sold “carbon prints,” reproductions of “old and modern masters in the leading public and private art galleries of Europe.” The store offered over 100,000 different images.

Harry Rapp ran his Market Representative Company here in 1916--buyers of dress goods and designs for apparel manufacturers most of which were in the West.  Yet the 45-year old Rapp was discouraged about his business and his wife had recently separated from him.

The defeated executive’s body was found on the shore of Block Island, Rhode Island after he failed to appear at his office for several days.

By this time the theatre district had shifted northward to Times Square and upscale manufacturers like Royal Copenhagen Porcelain made their home here.

photo by Alice Lum

Unfortunately, in the latter part of the 20th Century the unique storefront designed by Zucker and Edelman was ripped off, replaced by a flat polished stone façade identical to hundreds of others. Sometime before 2001 the sixth-story balcony was removed, leaving vacant slots in the decoration where the supporting brackets had been.

Voids remain where the brackets and sides of the sixth floor balcony once met the facade -- photo by Alice Lum

Despite this architectural vandalism, almost all of 256 Fifth Avenue remains intact; what the AIA Guide to New York City calls “a Venetian-Gothic phantasmagoria in terra cotta,”

The 1862 Mortimer Building -- 935-939 Broadway

In the final years before the Civil War the staid mansions on Broadway from 14th Street to 23rd Street gradually gave way to commercial buildings. One of the first of these was the dignified five-story structure at Nos. 935-939 Broadway.

Richard Mortimer owned real estate throughout Manhattan and for this plot he commissioned architect Griffith Thomas to design an Italianate brownstone structure that would blend comfortably in with the elegant residences. Thomas, who decades later would be praised by the Architectural Record as “the most fashionable architect of his generation,” produced a refined building with Renaissance detailing such as the pediments over the windows. Retail space would fill first floor while office space was above. Mortimer’s building filled the 22nd Street block front from Broadway to Fifth Avenue.

Construction began in 1861 and was completed a year later.

J. & C. Johnston Dry goods was one of the first tenants, while on one of the floors above the business college of Stratton & Packard did business. The offices of the makers of Dr. Jayne’s Expectorant were here as early as 1863 when this ad was published:

DR. JAYNE's EXPECTORANT will afford immediate relief by removing the difficulty of breathing and producing an easy expectoration, where by all irritating and obstructing manners are removed from the lungs. Having maintained its reputation, in all parts of the world, for over a quarter of a century, it is confidently recommended as the best remedy ever offered for the diseases it professes to cure. Sold by agents and druggists everywhere, from whom may also be obtained Dr. D. JAYNE's SANATIVE PILLS, a prompt and effectual cure for costiveness, sick headache, and all bilious affections

A contemporary tenant offered Grover & Baker’s “highest premium elastic Sewing-Machines for sale.” For those patrons not interested in doing the sewing themselves, the same business would do “family sewing, embroidering, braiding, quilting, tucking, etc., beautifully executed on the Grover & Baker Sewing-Machine.”

The American Institute of Architects, which was founded in 1866, established its offices here. On November 16, 1869 the third annual convention was held, chaired by President Richard Upjohn, in an effort to unite American architects and share ideas on “artistic, scientific and practical efficiency of the profession.”

It was here In February 1871 that New York’s elite gathered to view an exhibition of paintings, valued at $3,300, which were to be raffled off for the benefit of the orphans of Civil War soldiers in the Union Home and School.

By 1895 both Broadway and Fifth Avenue were bustling thoroughfares of grand emporiums and high-class retail shops. That year the store on the Broadway end of the Mortimer Building was occupied by C. W. Schumann’s Sons, jewelers and silversmiths. A. Besthoff & Son ran the store next door, which extended to the 5th Avenue side, selling “European novelties and leather goods.”

Oriental rug merchants Van Gaasbeck & Arkell did business from fourth floor while upstairs were the studios of Pach Brothers – counted among the most esteemed of New York City photographers.

Around 1:20 in the afternoon of February 16 that year a fire broke out in the Pach Brothers space, Quickly it spread to a three-alarm fire that could not be controlled for more than an hour. By the time it was extinguished, the fire had burst through the roof; destroyed parts of the cornice, pieces of which fell to the street; the intense heat had blown out windows.

Water damaged proved worse than that caused by the fire. On the same floor as Van Gaasbeek & Arkell was Geoffroy & Co., jewelers. Below, on the third floor, were Cochrane Carpet Company and Horner Brothers’ Carpet Company. Water poured through the floors soaking their inventory.

On the ground floor, Schumann’s employees took no chances. Before the water could reach the first floor they had quickly stowed everything of value into the vaults.  At the time, the store was showing paintings valued at as much as $30,000 each, two of which had recently been exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair.  All but two were rushed across the street to a clothing store for safe keeping.

Property loss due to water damaged was estimated at $40,000. Gotthelf Pach placed his own firm’s damaged at $20,000.

Within the month Richard Mortimer (whose main business was stock broker) filed plans for alterations of the burned structure at a cost of $500.

Pach’s misfortune with flames with not end with the near-destruction of the Mortimer Buildling. Two years later in December the photographer was commissioned by the rector of Grace Church to photograph the church's new chapel. When the magnesia powder was ignited to take a flash picture, the resulting explosion blew out some of the stained glass windows.

In 1912 architectural firm Rouse & Goldstone was called in to add a sixth floor to the building. The roof was removed and the attic space raised. Square, inset windows were inserted just under the new cornice.

Through the first half of the 20th century the Mortimer building continued to be home to small apparel companies. In 1920 the Samuel Buyer garter manufacturer took space here followed in 1922 by the newly-formed Earl Shirt Company. In 1935 the Kase-Quinby Rubber Company opened its offices here.

When Jack Albert purchased the building he added enormous gold-toned letters on the 22nd Street and 5th Avenue corner vertically spelling A L B E R T. The large, Victorian-looking letters became an important part of the building to New Yorkers, as well as the clocks on both corners.

Towards the end of the century, Restoration Hardware moved into the entire first floor of the old Mortimer Building. A complete restoration of the greatly-altered storefront brought it back to its original appearance. Around the same time the wonderful gold ALBERT letters were removed.

The matching 5th Avenue facade.  The 1912 addition of a sixth floor is evident.

For some reason amateur New York historians insist on confusing the Mortimer Building with the Glenham Hotel. The Hotel, however, sat next door on the 5th Avenue side and was replaced by the 1893 Scribner’s Building that still survives.

The Mortimer Building is a rare example of Civil War period architecture in the lower 5th Avenue district.

The Surviving Sliver of the Old Lord & Taylor Store

On the corner of Broadway and 20th Street stands what is left of the elaborate 1870 Lord & Taylor store -- a busy cast iron montage of pillars and balconies, deep-set windows and dormers, and the dramatic Second Empire mansard cap over the corner that most distinguishes the building.

The structure was Lord & Taylor's third.  Cousins Samuel Lord and George W Taylor opened their first dry goods store in 1826 on Catherine Street.  By the outbreak of the Civil War they had moved to Grand Street and Broadway and in 1869, having established a reputation among Manhattan's carriage trade, needed a yet larger store.  Upscale stores like Tiffany's and Lord & Taylor's rival Arnold, Constable & Co. had relocated northward to the Union Square area that same year.

Purchasing land from the Goelet family (895-899 Broadway) and the Badeau family (the corner lot at 20th Street only a block south of the new Arnold, Constable store), Lord & Taylor prepared for their move.  James H. Giles was commissioned to design their emporium.  A Brooklyn architect who was responsible for a few lower Manhattan cast iron buildings as well as the earlier gothic-style Christ Church in Williamsburg (where he even designed the organ cabinet), Giles went all-out for the new store.

NYPL Collection

His five-story extravaganza, costing half a million dollars, departed from conventional cast iron designs.  Rather than creating a facade pretending to be stone, his was unabashedly cast iron.  Architectural critics of the day praised the innovation; one of the few criticisms being the overall beige color rather than a polychromed paint scheme.



Shoppers ride the hand-hoist elevator on Lord & Taylor's opening day in 1870 - NYPL Collection

Thousands of shoppers crowded into the new store on November 28, 1870 through the impressive main entrance on Broadway, south of the corner building we recognize as the Lord & Taylor building today.  Hand-hoisted elevators carried customers from floor to floor to sample the latest in imported merchandise.

The emporium enjoyed tremendous success in the new location, prompting further additions towards Fifth Avenue.  This growth was due in part to Lord & Taylor's innovative marketing -- they were the first, for instance, to install Christmas windows -- the start of a treasured New York tradition.

NYPL Collection

As other large retailers moved further uptown so did Lord and Taylor, building their present location at 38th Street and 5th Avenue in 1915 and abandoning the grand cast iron structure.   Almost immediately the old store changed.  That year the main section on Broadway lost its cast iron facade and was refaced in stone.  Little by little, only the corner building at No. 901 Broadway was left intact.

The 20th Century was not kind to No. 901 Broadway.  Used for loft space and manufacturing for decades, by the 1980s it was grubby and rusting and largely empty.  Despite landmark status, the future for the old Lord & Taylor store was grim.

A series of owners, starting with Darius Sakhai in 1995, reversed the trend.  The upper facade was restored and tacky storefronts replaced.  In 2006 Joseph Sitt paid $17.375 million for the building and three years later resold it for just under $25 million.  Although still not completely occupied the surviving sliver of Lord & Taylor's 19th Century emporium seems to have a brighter future.








non-credited photographs taken by the author

Muslin Drawers and Compassion -- Nos. 45-51 West 21st Street

Until 1901 the Evangelical Lutheran Church stood on the north side of West 21^st Street between 5^th and 6^th Avenues.  Smart brownstone residences lined the street, the last remnants of the block’s genteel history that was quickly coming to an end.

By now Fifth Avenue in the area was commercial and many of the 21^st Street homes had been converted for business purposes.  Where the Lutheran Church had been were now two industrial loft buildings stretching from No. 45 to 51.

Meanwhile, further downtown on at Nos. 105-113 Wooster Street was the office and factory building of D. E. Sicher & Co.   The firm had begun in 1872 with three sewing machine operators and grew to be the largest women’s underwear manufacturers in the world.  By now it employed 3,000 workers who turned out “muslin drawers” and other feminine under garments.

When one of the loft buildings on West 21^st Street was heavily damaged by fire in 1908, Dudley D. Sicher, president of D. E. Sicher, jumped on the opportunity.  On September 13 the New York Tribune reported that the company purchased both buildings.

Three days later The New York Times added its take.  “The removal of this concern…from Wooster Street to Twenty-first Street is a striking illustration of the northward migration from the older mercantile district,” it said, “and will probably be not without influence in bringing about other removals.”  The article projected that Sicher would spent about $100,000 to renovate the building and install its new factory.

The firm hired architects Goldwin, Starrett & Van Vleck to re-do the damaged building.   Completed in February 1909, it was an exceptionally handsome industrial structure.  Composed of red brick with limestone trim, it rose six floors from the pavement.  Two heavy stone entrances flanked the long salesroom space at street level.  The upper floors were dedicated to office and factory space.  Expansive windows on the second and third floors allowed sunlight to flood into the work areas.  Contrasting with the red brick were carved limestone pediments and window framing, and quoins.  

The New York Times printed a rendering of the building a year before its completion (copyright expired)

Dudley Sicher would earn a reputation through his concern of workers’ safety and conditions.  His input was evident here.  “In these workrooms many new devices will be employed both for disposing of waste materials and adding to the building’s sanitary and fireproof qualities,” reported The Times.

The new building also boasted its own “light, power, and ventilating plants.”

The workers who filled the upper floors of the Sicher Building were mostly untrained, uneducated immigrants; many of them girls in their late teens.  Working conditions for sewing girls at the beginning of the century were often brutal.  As labor unions rose up against harsh owners and managers, strikes crippled production.  The result was often vicious retaliation by management.

Unusual for factory buildings of the time, large windows on the second and third floor gave sewing girls exceptional sunlight.

Sicher, on the other hand, was compassionate.  In 1912 he pleaded with other factory owners to participate in collective bargaining and to recognize the union.  His own workers, accustomed to wages above scale, ultimately refused to join the labor organizations and Sicher’s factory paradoxically became a union shop in principle and an open shop in practice.  He introduced the idea of a company cafeteria and a “clubroom” in which workers had “community sings” to alleviate the monotony of their work day.

In the spring of 1913 the garment industry was hit with a general strike.  Rather than bristle at the workers’ insolence, Dudley Sicher was moved.   Years later he would recall that one of his earliest memories was of his father lugging a bucket of coal up five flights of stairs to keep his six or seven employees warm in the winter.  It was a legacy he would carry with him throughout his life.

On March 26, at a dinner of the Cotton Garment Manufacturers of New York, he read aloud a poem he had composed during the strike.  His hope was to inspire the other members “to recognize their obligations and responsibilities toward their employees.”

Sicher’s poem was entitled “The Dawn of a Better Day” and included lines such as:

Let us wipe the slate of the bitter score,

Let us turn the blotted page,

And grant that we owe our workers more

Than the dole of a “living wage.”

They give us more than their time and skill

In the health and strength they spend,

And earn the right to the kindly will

And helpful hand of a friend.

We must give them more than the coin we pay

Ere we hail the Dawn of a Better Day.

That same year Sicher was overtaken with an innovative and unheard of idea.   Strikes could be avoided, he decided, if the workers were educated.  Paid schooling for the immigrant girls was his solution.

“The idea came to me when the strike was on,” he told a reporter for The Evening World.  He explained that the Irish-American, German-American and “plain American” workers who had at least an elementary education “stuck by us—even sent a committee to assure the firm they had no complaint.”

“But the other girls, who came mostly from the pasture lands of Russia and Siberia, marched out the minute the strike was declared…I found out that the girls who walked out did so because they were undeveloped mentally and took their ideas from the mouth of some fiery agitator.”

Sicher convinced the Board of Education to conduct a test program with sixteen girls.  The first group of eight would attend classes in English, arithmetic, and “mental, moral and physical hygiene” for a week, earning their regular pay.  The two groups would alternate in work and school every week thereafter throughout the test period.

“The idea of the experiment is to help employees to help themselves.  We want to assist them in making their pay envelopes go further.  We desire to help the girls by training them for economic advancement.”

A year later, after the program had become fully-established, Lizzie E. Rector, principal of Public School 4 where the girls were taught, told The Sun ”If the employers of New York city would show the interest in this matter that D. E. Sicher has it wouldn’t require fire years to wipe out the illiteracy in this city.”

On June 4, 1914 Dudley Sicher hosted the first graduation exercises for the factory girls who wore white dresses and, according to a Times editorial, “were as proud as the graduating class at any commencement in the country.”  The excusably-proud Sicher commented, “this is the first attempt of the kind in New York City, possibly in the world and is the beginning of a great movement to hasten assimilation necessary to national unit; to promote industrial betterment by reducing friction caused by failure to comprehend directions and to decrease the waste and loss of wage incidental to the illiterate worker.”

The concept, in 1914, of paying workers to sit in school rooms rather than to sit at sewing machines was revolutionary, in the very least.  But it would not be the end of Dudley Sicher’s forward-thinking ideas regarding his workers.

In April 1917, just days before the United States entered World War I, the American Red Cross spoke to 500 of D. E. Sicher’s employees during the lunch hour.  The girls were invited to enroll in evening classes in hygiene and caring for the sick.

The New York Tribune reported that “Most of the girls, who are nearly all foreign born, accepted the offer enthusiastically.  If this experiment is productive of results, other factories in the city will be called upon.”

Fredericka Farley of the Red Cross told the girls that in “case of hostilities” their services could be invaluable.  “Should war be declared, the workers of factories and, in fact, all groups of trained workers, would be most useful to the government.  For example, this factory might be set to work of supplying the government with hospital garments.”

Dudley Sicher announced that since the course took one and a half hours, he would allow the girls to leave work forty-five minutes early with full pay.   As the country was pulled into the war, the girls received the rank of “nurse’s helper” and were eligible to help in government service for cooking, serving food or aiding the sick and wounded.

By 1918 Sicher had established a school on the factory premises for all employees, male and female.  Every morning for forty-five minutes employees who wished to participate received instruction in speaking and writing English, composing letters, fundamentals of arithmetic, history and civic government, good citizenship, use of the telephone and the telephone book, and finding one’s way around the city streets, among other useful information.  A teacher was provided by the Board of Education and the workers received their full pay for the time.

The New York Tribune praised the in-house school.  “[The worker] learns thrift, and subsequently orderliness.  Gradually he feels the thrill of power that comes through knowledge.  He hears the foreman talking to the boss and understands what is being planned for his welfare and the success of his business.  For the first time he appreciates the fact that he is a necessary part of an organization, and natural pride manifests itself in quicker movements and an eager alertness to get the most out of his particular job.”

War brought with it harder times and in 1919 Sicher predicted “that both merchandise and labor are going to continue to become scarcer for many months to come, and that pre-war prices in almost all liens of merchandise and commodities are not to be looked for for many years to come.”

Hard times did not cause the progressive manufacturer to waiver in his programs.  He continued with his aspiration of educating not only his staff, but the 20,000 immigrant garment workers in the city.

In 1927 D. E. Sicher & Co., the largest ladies’ lingerie manufacturer in the country, was also turning out “wool shawls, such as are now in vogue in this country, ladies’ hand bags, and men’s athletic underwear, both two-piece and union suits.”  That year Dudley Sicher decided to close his factory so he could devote his full energies to charitable causes.

The factory doors would not be closed for another year, however.  “Not until the last of the 500 employees had been placed with other concerns did Mr. Sicher close the factory,” reported The Times.

Dudley David Sicher died at his home at 15 East 80^th Street on December 29, 1939.  He had spent the remainder of his life in philanthropic endeavors, donating his full-time positions with several organizations.  The mark left on the garment industry by the caring and compassionate Sicher was immeasurable.

The dignified factory building of D. E. Sicher & Co. filled with a variety of tenants as West 21^st Street became decidedly industrial.    Towards the end of the century the ground floor became home to an enormous night club.  Today 20,000 square foot of the building is home to Duvet, a venue space and club.

In April 2011, as the Chelsea neighborhood continued its trendy metamorphosis, the architectural firm of Insite 123 Development signed a five-year least for nearly 3,000 square feet on the fourth floor.

The cast iron ground floor remains unchanged in 2011.

In the meantime, the handsome exterior of the D. E. Sicher & Co. building – where muslin drawers were sewn and immigrant girls learned English—is essentially unchanged.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The Beaux Arts Beauty at No. 141-147 Fifth Avenue

photo corenyc.com

In 1896 Fifth Avenue between Washington Square and 23rd Street had ceased to be a fashionable residential area. Where only four decades earlier there were wide, dignified brownstones and trees, commercial loft buildings were now rising.

Robert L. Cutting had purchased his four-story mansion at No. 141 Fifth Avenue in 1854 and his next door neighbor, Clarence A. Seward, at No. 143 took possession in 1864. On April 23, 1896 the two residences were sold. The New York Times remarked “Both have been famous mansions in their day, identified with old New-York society.”

“Beginning on May 1, the present buildings will be torn down and a nine-story fire-proof store and lofts building will be erected in their stead,” the newspaper reported.

Real estate developer Henry Corn, who was active in the commercial development of lower Fifth Avenue, had purchased the mid-block houses. Rather than the nine-story building The Times predicted, he commissioned Robert Maynicke to design an 11-story Beaux-Arts building in limestone and terra-cotta.

Maynicke at the time was busy – designing scores of commercial buildings throughout the city. The new structure would cost $200,000. The Merchant Bank of New York occupied the lower floors and, while Maynicke’s design was dignified and restrained, its repeating layers of rectangular windows between pilasters provided a structure that was more monotonous than truly exceptional.

N. C.McCready purchased the building from Corn in 1897 for $462,500 and set about acquiring the corner plot to the north which he bought in 1898 for $341,000.



Ficken's taller addition can be seen in the architectural drawing by CentraRuddy



The following year McCready hired architect Henry Edwards Ficken to extend the building to the corner, instructing him that the addition was to be in “the same character” as the existing structure. Ficken perfectly melded his design with Maynicke’s structure, creating a flawless transition. The architect raised the addition by two floors and added a dramatic three-story dome at the corner. His cast-iron façade curved around the corner and he added embellishments such as balconies and round windows to make the formerly ho-hum building a show-stopper.

The building filled with various tenants – J. B. Thompson and Company taking an entire floor in 1900 and J. F. Feeley & Co., lace dealers, taking space in 1906.

Park & Tilford’s was an important tenant, selling everything from “fancy groceries” to ladies’ toilet articles. In 1911 New Yorkers were stunned when druggist Percy W. Shields was arrested for stealing more than $30,000 worth of imported perfumes from the store. The pricey French perfume called Ideal Houbigant, sold for an extravagant $10 per bottle.

McCready’s heir, Caroline A. McCready, sold No. 141-147 in June of 1912 to C. Grayson Martin for around $1.5 million. The New York Times accompanied its report of the sale with a photograph showing scores of men in straw boaters crowding the sidewalks around the building. It tagged the shot “Congestion during Noon Hour.”

Indeed, the influx of manufacturing lofts in the area was causing problems on the avenue. Just six months after the sale, real estate assessor Henry Brady said “The neighborhood is particularly objectionable for retail trade, on account of the many sweat-shops, the workers in which congregate in large crowds along Fifth Avenue from Fourteenth to Twenty-third Street.”

By the middle of the 20th Century the area had become somewhat bedraggled. No. 141-147 had lost its wonderful corner balcony and the first floor had been savagely altered. The Corinthian pilasters and delicate detailing were ripped away for modern store fronts.

In 2005, as lower Fifth Avenue experienced a revitalization, SL Green and Savanna Partners purchased the grand old building for about $60 million. The owners hired architect John Cetra of CetraRuddy to restore the façade and convert the building into 38 apartments.

In addition to adding two new floors, invisible from the street, Cetra not only brought the old building into the 20th Century, he took it back to the 19th Century. The long-vanished corner balcony was reconstructed. The missing stone and terra cotta ornamentation, including the Corinthian capitals and pilasters of the ground floor, gargoyles and urns, were reproduced in fiberglass. The handsome cupola was totally restored and 3,200 square-foot apartment installed within.

the restored three-story dome - photo by Alan Schindler

The renovation was completed in 2007, resulting in a merit award nomination for the architects for “adaptive re-use project.”

The unique dome apartment with its three terraces was advertised that year for $12 million.

Architect's illustration of the $12 million dome apartment -- by CentraRuddy

One of lower Fifth Avenue’s grand dames, No. 141-147 Fifth Avenue has come back to life.

The 1883 Western Union Building

When New Yorkers think of famed architect Henry J. Hardenbergh they think of the Plaza Hotel and The Dakota Apartments.  But a Hardenbergh beauty sits overlooked in the shadow of the Flatiron Building at Broadway and 23rd Street.

Although the entire street level floor has been obliterated, the bulk of the structure remains much as it looked in 1883.  Using brick, stone and terra cotta Hardenbergh produced a visual delight for the Western Union's uptown branch office.  The jutting dormers, typical of Hardenbergh, give interest to the roofline and decorative terra cotta bands and inset panels break up the otherwise flat surface.

Hardenbergh established his offices in this building.  In the days when foot messengers rushed back and forth across Manhattan the Western Union Building boasted a pneumatic tube, two and a half miles long, that whisked correspondence to and from the main office downtown.

You have to pause before the Western Union Building to fully appreciate the decorative Aesthetic Movement-style details.  My favorite, on the 23rd Street side, is the terra cotta panel declaring THE WESTERN UNION CO. in a banner that oddly enough forms a grotesque face in the center.  On either side are medallions of a woman and a native American in profile.  Below them entwined in floraform scrolls two male profiles can be seen, one looking very much like Abraham Lincoln.

Above photos by Bob Sheridan

Hardenberg used tiles and creative brickwork in the dormers to draw the passerby's eyes upward.

Converted to condimiums in 2006 this overlooked gem now enjoys landmarked status.  The more you look at Hardenbergh's Western Union Building the more you see.  It's a delightful stop on your way to the Flatiron Building or Madison Square.

non-credited photographs taken  by the author

The Arnold, Constable Dry Goods Store

Arnold, Constable & Co in 1894 -- King's Photographic Views of New York (author's collection)

Some years ago I guided a well-traveled friend to the corner of 19th Street and Fifth Avenue to show him the former Arnold, Constable Dry Goods building.  He gasped when he first saw the Fifth Avenue facade.

"Just wait," I said.  And we moved closer to the corner until the entire 19th Street side was visible.   "Have you ever seen anything like this?" I asked.

"Not outside of Paris," he answered.

Actually, the original entrance to the old Arnold, Constable Dry Goods store was on Broadway.  As the firm grew, so did the store; additions being added until at last the monster emporium spanned the entire length of 19th Street, taking out the former home of actor Edwin Booth with it.

Aaron Arnold, a British emigrant had opened a small dry goods business in 1825 on Pine Street in lower Manhattan, planting the seed of what would become the oldest department store in America.  In 1842 he took on James Mansell Constable as his partner, preferring to separate their names by a comma rather than an ampersand like his rival Lord & Taylor.

By 1857 the partners moved to Canal Street, where a five-story marble clad store awaited which was dubbed Marble House.  Offering "Everything From Cradle to Grave," Arnold, Constable & Company gained a reputation among the ladies of the monied carriage trade.  Business continued to boom and Marble House, only a decade later not only was the store cramped, but the retail district was moving northward

A second store was planned near Union Square.  The resultant 1869 five story marble, brick and cast iron palace designed by Griffith Thomas on Broadway at 19th Street incorporated large arched windows that allowed exceptional daylight into the selling floors.  A mere three years later Thomas was called back in to enlarge it down the 19th Street side.  He created a French Second Empire extravaganza -- Walt Disney Victorian architecture on steriods! 

 

 

A monumental two-story mansard roof was added to the entire structure.  The French-style architecture was most likely intended as a hint of the European goods offered inside -- gowns from The House of Worth in Paris, French china and imported silks.  The carriages that parked outside carried New York's feminine elite.  Mary Todd Lincoln was a regular shopper and the account ledgers read like the social register:  Vanderbilt, Carnegie and Astor for example.

Wiilliam Schickel designed the final westward additions and even established his offices in the building.  Despite a change in materials, the cast iron Broadway facade giving way to brick and masonry towards 5th Avenue, the additions are nearly seamless.  When the 5th Avenue end was completed, Arnold, Constable & Company became the first department store with a 5th Avenue address.

5th Avenue facade looking east down 19th Street

James Constable died in May of 1900.  Fourteen years later the store moved again, razing the Vanderbilt mansion at 40th Street and 5th Avenue for a new, more modern store.  Luckily for New Yorkers this grand old lady remains, a striking remnant of a fashionable era.

non-credited photographs taken by the author