The 1911 Albert Blum Mansion -- No. 20 E. 73rd Street

In the 1880s the 73^rd Street block branching off Fifth Avenue was still lined with nearly-identical brownstone rowhouses constructed just after the Civil War.   John Foley, his wife Elizabeth, and their two sons, Frank and William (known as Willie), lived in No. 20.  

Among the staff was Miss Brown, the boys’ governess.   As was the case with all privileged and well-bred Victorian youths, Frank and Willie took their meals downstairs with Miss Brown.  The arrangement ensured that their table manners would be well-honed before they graduated to the upstairs dining room; and it prevented any unwelcome scenes among guests.

At the beginning of the school year in 1886 Frank was 13 and Willie was 11.  They both attended Public School No. 70, enrolled in the class of Kate P. Macdona.  One day in October young Frank casually asked his governess if she considered Miss Macdona a lady.  Puzzled, Miss Brown asked why the boy would ask such a question.

“Because she said something in school to-day.”

When his governess asked what the teacher had said, he refused to repeat it aloud; but whispered it in her ear.  Later The New York Times related “Miss Brown expressed her horror in unmistakable terms, and told the boy he must be mistaken; that his teacher never could have used such language.”

But, according to the newspaper, “the boy stood to his guns and said that his brother had heard the objectionable language also.”  Willie corroborated Frank’s story, giving Miss Brown “food for much unpleasant thought.”  She was put in the uncomfortable position of decided whether or not to inform her employer.  Two days later she did.

The revelation brought the expected results.  “Mr. Foley was shocked beyond measure.”  When he, as Miss Brown had done, told his sons they must be mistaken, the named two other witnesses to the outrage—Eugene Kahn and Rudolph Lindehaim.

The two classmates were summoned to the Foley house for a “rigid cross-examination.”  The Kahn boy supported the accusation; and young Lindeheim said he heard her say “that or something that sounded very like it.”

John Foley, Dr. Herman Kahn and Ambraham Lindeheim marched off to the office of Principal George White and insisted that their sons be removed from Miss Macdona’s classroom.  Although the change in teachers was sufficient for two of the families; it was not enough for the fuming John Foley.  Armed with written statements from the boys, he went to the school Trustees.

His plan backfired.  The young teacher was questioned and exonerated and the parents were informed that all the boys were to be expelled for spreading malicious stories.   Now that the Trustees had effectively labeled their sons liars, the parents joined forces.  On November 27, 1886 The New York Times said “The parents of the boys are not in a mood to let the board have its ways, and the fight is likely to wax much hotter before the decisive battle is fought.”

Indeed, the fight waxed hotter.  It raged for months, driving Miss Macdona to her sickbed and rousing the blood (as The Times put it) of the Board.   The boys were back in school by November 29; but after Congressman Dowdney insisted on an official inquiry things changed.  In February 1887 the four boys were finally suspended when “a thorough investigation [found] that the charge was without any foundation whatever.”

While the untidy matter of the Foley boys was playing out, Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens were still, for the most part, clustered below Central Park.  But by 1907 things had changed.  On May 26 that year, The New York Times noted that even the Vanderbilt family was giving up on trying to fend off commercial intrusion below 52^nd Street.   A recent real estate transaction, said the newspaper, “probably means that the Vanderbilts have finally abandoned their efforts to control the properties in the neighborhood of their mansions” and it had “convinced the Vanderbilts of the impossibility of checking or regulating to any appreciable extent the growth of Fifth Avenue.”

For a decade millionaires had fled northward along Central Park, erecting lavish palaces of marble or limestone.  The old brownstone homes on the side streets were quickly razed or remodeled into modern, upscale residences.   On Tuesday May 28, 1907 No. 20 East 73^rdStreet was sold at auction “by owners’ orders.”   The advertisement for the sale called it a “magnificent four story and basement brown stone dwelling.”

The purchaser, Mrs. Hugh Gordon Miller, would maintain the house for just three years.  When she sold it to Albert Blum in February 1910, it spelled the end of the line for the old brownstone.  On  April 17, 1910 The American Architect announced that Blum intended to erect a $40,000 dwelling designed by George & Edward Blum on the site.   The projected outlay would translate to about $950,000 today.

Completed a year later, the Blum mansion had nothing in common with the old Foley residence.   Clad in limestone, the opulent Beaux Arts structure harmonized with the Edward Herzog mansion next door at No. 22, erected a decade earlier.  Above the centered, grilled doorway just five steps above the sidewalk was a stone balcony with delicate ironwork.  Supported by heavy carved brackets, it was accessed by two sets of French doors surmounted by carved panels and projecting lintels.  The fourth floor hid behind a stone-balustraded balcony; and a steep mansard with copper-clad dormers made up the uppermost floor.

The street address was carved into the ornate cartouche above the doorway.

With his brothers, Albert Blum had founded the Alexander Piece Dye Works, which later partnered with the Boettger Piece Dye Works to form the United Piece Dye Works.  He and his associates would be credited with revolutionizing the process of fabric dyeing in the United States.  He was also a founder and director of the Commercial National Bank and Trust Company and director of the du Pont Rayon Company.

Albert and Clara Blum had two daughters, Edith and Mabel.  The family enjoyed the lifestyle of wealthy New Yorkers, traveling abroad and summering away from the heat of the city.  With the outbreak of World War I Albert became highly involved in organizing aide for French civilians.  It was the beginning of a life-long interest in Franco-American relations.  When the French Chamber of Commerce of the United States was founded in 1915, he became its Vice President; a position he would hold for life. 

Following the war, Blum continued his work to maintain good French-American relations.  When Jean Raphael Adrien Rene Viviani, former Prime minster of France, arrived in the United States in 1921, he not only visited Congressional leaders; but in New York he was received by the Mayor at City Hall, by the Chamber of Commerce, and was the guest of honor at a dinner in the Blum mansion.

While at the 73^rd Street mansion, Viviani bestowed the cross of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor upon Albert Blum on behalf of the French Government.   It would be far from the last such honor Blum received.

Among his similar positions was his directorship of the French Hospital in New York; chairmanship of the executive committee of the Alliance Francaise in the United States; and presidency of the Alsatian Society.  He made generous gifts to the Universities of Lyons, Paris, Strausbourg and Nancy.

In 1931 he was made a Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Strasbourg, and in 1938 the French Government made him a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. 

Blum’s contributions to the fabrics industry were as far-reaching as his work with Franco-American relations.  In 1932 he was awarded the Michael Friedsam medal by the Architectural League of New York “for his influence in the improvement of the quality of artistic design in the printing and dyeing of silk fabrics.”

In 1938 the mild-mannered Albert Blum’s health deteriorated.  After a two year illness he died in the 73^rd Street mansion on May 2, 1940.  Edith and Mabel, still unmarried, lived on in the house with their mother.  Clara Blum received the bulk of Albert’s estate; although charities received handsome legacies, such as the French Hospital on West 30^th Street which received $50,000.

Mabel was First Vice President of the French Hospital when she died in the house on May 1, 1965.  Edith and Clara survived her; still living in the mansion that Albert had built nearly half a century earlier.

On October 17, 1974 the mansion was the scene of a terrifying robbery.  The New York Times reported “A masked burglar broke into [the house] and forced Janice Abbot to open a safe at knifepoint and fled with $1,000 in cash and an estimated total of $50,000 in jewelry.”

Unlike so many of the lavish mansions of the early 20^thcentury; No. 20 remained a single family residence.  In 1980 it sold for $3.4 million and six years later it brought $5.6 million.  In 2000 the new owner updated the Edwardian interiors, spending $7 million in a renovation that included a basketball court in the basement.  One wonders if the Blum women would have approved. 

photographs by the author

The Terra Cotta Beauty at Nos. 22-24 E 41st Street

In 1899 the march of commerce up Fifth Avenue had changed much of the residential neighborhood around the massive Croton Reservoir between 40^th and 42^nd Streets.  Yet the houses on the east side of the Avenue and the blocks between Fifth and Madison Avenues were still, for the most part, private residences.

That year the popular and successful actress Maude Adams purchased the brownstone house at No. 22 East 41^st Street, paying $35,000—a respectable $950,000 in today’s dollars.  Sitting above a high stone stoop, it was unusually narrow for the still-upscale neighborhood; only 12.6 feet wide. 

The actress, whose full name was Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden, had begun starring in plays by J. M. Barrie two years earlier, including The Little Minister.  Six years later she would introduce the playwright’s character Peter Pan to the New York stage.  It was her most memorable role and contributed to her being the highest paid performer of the day—earning over $1 million a year at one point.

Maude escaped from the public eye within her brownstone house.  The Theatre Magazine spoke of it in 1903.  “The few visitors who have been admitted to the narrow four-story English basement house which Miss Adams owns at No. 22 East Forty-first Street, describe it as an oasis of scholastic peace amid the roar of the busy metropolis.  Servants glide noiselessly about, speaking in the hushed tones of those accustomed to the enforced quiet of a sickroom, and as if watching jealously to guard a nervous and highly strung temperament from the jar of city turmoil.”

Maude Adams relaxes in her parlor -- The Theatre Magazine, 1903 (copyright expired)

By 1904 Maude Adams’s tranquil block would face upheaval.  The magnificent New York Public Library had replaced the Croton Reservoir and developers were purchasing up the old houses.  On June 12, 1904 The New York Times remarked on the real estate fever.  It reported that the 1860 brownstone mansion at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 41^stStreet, originally costing $14,000, had just sold for $40,000.  “The advancing values in the side streets just off Fifth Avenue is nowhere more apparent than at this point.  A striking comparison is afforded by 3 and 4 East Forty-first Street, almost directly opposite each other, and of very nearly the same size.  Michael Coleman bought No. 3 at auction in 1901 for $59,950.  No. 4 changed hands recently at $107,500.  No. 11 East Forty-first Street was sold in 1901 for $54,500.”

Not oblivious to the changes, when her next door neighbor, Mrs. Emma A. Streeter, put No. 24 on the market in January 1905, Maude Adams snapped it up.  “With the recent demand for new building sites on Fifth Avenue…real estate men say that Miss Adams’s purchase giving her control of a frontage of 25 feet is a shrewd speculative move,” said The New York Times on January 11.

The actress continued her peaceful life in No. 22 and waited.  Then, in 1912 the Holland Holding Company purchased Nos. 18 and 20 East 41^st Street.  Within a year a striking terra cotta-clad Gothic Revival office building 20 stories tall rose on the site.  As it rose the firm’s advertisements boasted of “light on four sides.”

It was a selling point that could be obliterated if Maude Adams sold her property to a developer with a skyscraper in mind.  In a pro-active move to prevent that, the firm approached Adams.  On September 27, 1912 The New York Times announced that she leased Nos. 22 and 24 East 41^stStreet to the Holland Holding Company.  “The lease was arrange to give protection to the easterly light of a twenty-story office building, which the company is preparing to build on the adjoining fifty-foot plot,” it said.  The newspaper noted that Holland Holding “intends to replace the present structure[s] with a five-story business building.”

George & Edward Blum, the same architects responsible for the 20-story office building, would design the structure to replaced Maude Adams’s houses.  Both buildings were encased in terra cotta—but the similarities stopped there.

The architects surrounded the central portion of No. 22-24 in an oversized-picture frame.  The tiles here and in the window sprandrels reflected the popular Art Nouveau and Arts-and-Crafts styles of the period.  .

 Each floor was flooded with sunlight from the expansive windows.  Like its big brother next door which announced “No Manufacturing Allowed,” the building would preserve the upscale tone of the street by leasing to salesrooms.

Tenants came quickly.  In 1914 N. Levin & Co., men’s custom tailors, signed a 10-year lease for the third floor.  Wallace Novelty took the top floor that same year.  Wallace would stay on for years, selling wares like its most well-known item, the electric lamp that “stands, hangs, clamps or sticks any place and at any angle you put it.” 

Wallace's biggest money-maker was its $2 versatile lamp -- Hardware Dealers' Magazine, February 1915 (copyright expired) 

The following year Wallace advertised for regional salesmen.  An ad in the Richmond, Virginia Times-Dispatch warned potential applicants “Haven’t time to talk to any but energetic hustlers.”

The building was fully-occupied in 1915 when the store and basement were rented by the Defiance Manufacturing Co., sellers of architects’ supplies and drawing materials.  The following year Maude Adams decided to liquidate the property.  On December 27, 1916 the New York Clipper announced that she had received $703,000 for the building.  The actress walked away with what would amount to about $14.5 million today.

The 1920s saw similar tenants in the building.  Pincus I. Rosenblum, “merchant tailor,” moved in in 1922 and the Standard Gas Equipment Corp. was here by 1926.  In 1922, however, there was a terrifying turn of events.

When the Holland Holding Corp. constructed the two buildings, they included a joint vault underground used for storage.  The Alliance Bleacheries Company stored concentrated acids and chemicals there.  Large carboys contained caustic substances like sulphuric and muriatic acids, and were kept in the vault behind closed doors.   Improperly sealed, the large bottles began seeping fumes.

On New Year’s Eve 1922 two porters noticed the choking fumes.  With no one in the building, the fumes had risen throughout the building.  The New York Times reported the following day, “Although the door of the vault was closed the fumes leaked through the cracks in the casing.  When the members of the rescue squad opened this door they found the air so heavily laden with the dense acrid fumes that even with their gas masks on they could not stay in the vault more than fifteen minutes.”

The men worked in relays, each man having his oxygen tank refilled at each rest period.  The “powerful acid fumes quickly exhausted the oxygen supply carried,” explained the newspaper.  As pedestrians crowded onto East 41^st Street to witness the work, they were quickly repulsed by the pungent fumes.

The firemen and rescue squad worked for two hours attempting to air out the building; but found that the fumes merely spread again.  It was then that a large tank containing about 220 cubic feet of chlorine gas was discovered leaking in the vault.  In what today might be considered a rather environmentally unfriendly move, Deputy Fire Chief Joe Martin ordered that the tank be dumped into the East River.

The Depression years saw the building still occupied.  The New York Office of Philadelphia-based Adrian Bauer Advertising Agency was here in 1936.  A year later the century-old stationery firm H. K. Brewer Co purchased the building and established its permanent uptown headquarters here.  And in 1939 women’s wear retailer Frances Antonier took the second floor.

Somewhat ironically, remembering Maude Adams, in 1970 H. A. Adams Associates was in the building.  The firm’s advertisements cautioned “Before you alter, buy or sell a brownstone, avoid the pitfalls…it’s smart to consult our experts.”

The unbelievably intricate terra cotta designs incorporate a mixture of styles.

Two years before the Adams ad appeared in New York magazine, Patrick Cooney arrived in New York from Ireland.  His street level restaurant, O’Casey’s would leave its mark on the Blum brothers’ design.   O’Casey’s still operates behind a faux Irish pub front.  While its dark wooden façade is immensely preferable to the plastic signage and metal storefronts of delis and electronics shops; it is hard not to wish the delicate terra cotta structure had survived intact.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The Gothic Skyscraper at 18-20 East 41st Street

In 1912 the Fifth Avenue neighborhood around 41^stStreet was no longer the exclusive residential district of a generation earlier.  In 1902 the 10-story Knox Hat Building had replaced the mansion of Colonel Lawrence Kip at the southwest corner of 40^th Street while directly across the street the cornerstone was laid for Carrere & Hastings’ masterful New York Public Library.

The Knox Building was an ebullient Beaux Arts concoction while the white marble Library was a more stately and reserved version of the style.  But now a new fashion was making itself known.  Only a few blocks away, at No. 110 West 40^th Street, the Gothic Revival World’s Tower Buildingwas rising—a 30-story office building clad in terra cotta.  Simultaneously a Gothic Revival masterpiece, Cass Gilbert’s iconic Woolworth Building, was being erected far downtown.  The style would soon appear just half a block from the Library.

On May 15, 1912 The New York Times reported that two more of the area’s once elegant homes had been purchased.  Judson S. Todd, of the Holland Holding Company, had purchased Nos. 18 and 20 East 41^st Street for $275,000—in the neighborhood of $6.4 million today.  Todd commissioned brothers George and Edward Blum to design a 20-story office building on the site.

Known mostly for their apartment buildings, the Blums often worked in the trendy Arts and Crafts style.  But for the 41^st Street project, they would turn to Gothic Revival.  Completed the following year, No. 18-20 East 41^st Street was less elaborately-ornamented as either the World’s Tower or the Woolworth Building.  But it turned heads, nonetheless. 

The Gothic terra cotta elements included graceful arches, sumptuous floriform clusters and trailing fig-laden vines running down the centers of the two-story piers above the second floor.  In places, the brilliant white glaze was offset by a background of rich, deep blue tiles.  Faceted balconies running 13 stories up the façade were ornamented with heraldic shields. 

The newly completed tower was illustrated in American
Architect and Architecture on July 29, 1914 (copyright expired)

An advertisement appearing in the New-York Tribune on January 4, 1914 clearly announced that this was an upscale office building.  “No Manufacturing Allowed,” it warned.  The ad touted the new structure’s advantages, including “four high speed elevators” and “light on four sides.”

Art Nouveau married Gothic in the sinuous ornamentation.

A number of medical and educational tenants were among the first to move in.  Dr. E. W. Roberts established his office in the building; and the two-year old Nitchie Service League moved in.  The League “gives scholarships in lip reading with the purpose of helping deaf persons to ‘hear with their eyes,’ and thus be enabled to take their places with the unafflicted,” explained The Outlook on June 20, 1914.

The Nitchie Legue also ran an employment service for the deaf, made loans for those in serious financial straits, and “conducts a club-room and gives entertainments at which persons hard of hearing may meet on equal terms.”

The Directory of Social and Health Agencies of New York Cityexpanded on the goal of the entertainments.  “Among many other problems the League is trying to solve, is the one of bringing light into the lonesome lives of the deaf by aiding them to enjoy social life by means of teas, receptions, plays, contests, etc., for the deaf.  No limitations as to age, sex, nationality, race or sect.”

Four years later the School for the Hard of Hearing, run by the Nitchie League in the building, would find itself with a new group of students.  In 1918 soldiers were returning to the States having lost their hearing in combat.  The school established special classes for deaf soldiers.

Even more visible in the building were horse racing organizations.  The Turf and Field Club, the Jockey Club, United Hunts Racing Association, and the National Steeplechase and Hunt Association all had their headquarters here.  For years the rules of horse racing would be discussed and changed in The Jockey Club’s offices.  On April 13, 1916, for instance, rules were changed relating to the number of races a horse could participate within a day; the naming of foals (to prevent duplicate names); and a rule quite alien to non-horse types:

“It was the unanimous opinion of those present that the amendment to the rule doing away with the allowance of three pounds to geldings should not be considered retroactive.  It was, therefore, resolved that in future geldings would be entitled to the three-pound allowance in all stakes which closed prior to the passage of the rule,” explained The New York Times to readers who understood horse racing.

In 1914 New York City, Queens and New Jersey were still the center of the motion picture industry.  The newly-formed Motion Picture Board of Trade of America established its offices here in 1915.  Its purpose was to “further the interests of the motion picture industry in every legitimate way, giving special attention to legislation proposed or on the statue books considered unjust.”

Already in the building was the International Education League which endeavored to spread the teachings of the Church and Social Service Bureau through motion pictures.  The Duke of Manchester had invested a sizable amount of the $10,000,000 capital.  The New York Times, on September 24, 1914, noted “The Duke expected to sell his stock with ease, and through his own acquaintances to obtain valuable film rights in Eastern countries.”

But then war broke out in Europe, upsetting the League’s plans.  “The war caused such a scarcity of money that it is said not a single share of the stock was sold,” reported the newspaper.  To make matters worse, C. J. Hite, President of the Thanhouse Moving Picture Company,” said to be the practical man of the league,” had died just a few weeks before the Times article.

On September 23 the office was closed and the furniture carted away.  It was all too much for the Duke of Manchester who suffered a nervous breakdown in Philadelphia.

A long-term tenant was the London-based pharmaceutical firm Burroughs Wellcome & Company.  The firm manufactured “compressed medicine tablets” marketed under the brand name “Tabloid”—a blending of the words “tablet” and “alkaloid.”

A clever item was this traveling first-aid kid -- Flying, September 1915 (copyright expired)

Burroughs Wellcome & Company expanded into New York in 1912.  It would be a presence in No. 18-20 East 41^st Street well into the 1920s.   By then the New York Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects had its headquarters in the building.  In 1925 landscape architect Harold A. Caparn suggested changes to Central Park.

He told reporters that the fact that just two men (Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux) could produce the vast project “is a little less than a miracle.”  But, he said, they were “only human” and “these two young men made, as I see it, two mistakes.”

Caparn offered that the Park should be pointed at the northern and southern ends, rather than following the grid plan.  He felt that modern traffic would not “butt into it,” but flow smoothly to either side.  He also complained that there was a “lack of shortcuts” for traffic to transverse the park.

Finally, he wanted to see the Central Park Reservoir removed.  “Central Park ought to be completed, and this cannot be done so long as the reservoirs are there,” he said.  During the 1920s the historic integrity of buildings and places like Central Park were, on the whole, under-appreciated.  Looking back it is somewhat surprising that none of Caparn’s suggestions were put in place.

Perhaps the building’s most unusual use of space was by The Homeland Company.  Beginning in the early 1920s the firm leased several floors in the building.  Here full model homes were constructed, complete with yards.  In 1928 Homeland Company added more space and on May 13 The New York Times announced “In the several floors which the company now occupies will be found typical models and pictures of homes which have already been built, together with blueprints and plans, showing varied types of architecture which ‘fit’ into given locations.

“On one floor will be a typical home with a garden layout, with walks and shrubs.  Around this, will be landscape paintings of actual homes in their Westchester settings, pictures of home communities and models of communities, complete.”

On another floor, said the newspaper, customers browsed among “specimen doorways, staircases, and ornamental windows, built-in home apparatus, such as bookcases, dresser closets, breakfast nooks which fold into the wall out of sight, kitchen cabinets, wrought iron hinges, lamps, copper and brass housefittings and furniture, shades, awnings, types of roofing, hot water heating devices and showers.”

The following year The Times noted that the Permanent Home Planners’ Exposition, which had been for three years at No. 441 Lexington Avenue, would be held at No. 18-20 East 41^st Street.  Three floors of the building would present home builders with the latest in domestic architectural ideas.

The 20^th floor of No. 18-20 was converted to a six-room penthouse apartment which, in 1930, was home to motion picture director Dudley Murphy.  On January 15 that year the apartment would be the scene of a mysterious death appropriate for one of Murphy’s movies. 

Designer John M. Barbour shared the apartment with Murphy.  In December 1929 the director had met Harriet Adler, the estranged wife of a bond broker, at the Algonquin Hotel where he frequently lunched with the literary group composing “the round table.”

Three weeks later Murphy and Barbour went to the theater.  Upon leaving they ran into friends who wanted to get a bite to eat.  Murphy joined them and Barbour went back to the penthouse.  There he received a call from Harriet Adler asking for Murphy.  When he told her Murphy was not home, she called back within 15 minutes; and then again.  The third time she accused Barbour of being Murphy, disguising his voice and said she was coming to the apartment at once.

It was after 1:30 in the morning when she appeared at the door.   According to The New York Times on January 16, 1930, “Half an hour later Murphy entered the apartment.  Both men said they offered to escort Mrs. Adler home.  When she insisted upon staying, they excused themselves and went to bed, according to the stories they told the detectives.”

At 9:15 Neutrice St. Louis, the maid, let herself in.  Harriett was still lying on the sofa and the men were both asleep.  Around 10:15 someone rang the doorbell, which awakened Murphy who, according to The Times, “shuffled into the living room in bathrobe and slippers.”  He tried to rouse Harriett Adler, but she was dead.

Suspiciously, the police were not notified until nearly noon.  They found a well-dressed corpse.  “Mrs. Adler was wearing a black satin dress, black mesh stockings and gray kid shoes…Upon one wrist Mrs. Adler wore a jade link bracelet, and upon the other a platinum wrist watch set with diamond chips.  She wore a diamond ring upon one of the fingers of her left hand.”

There was one thing that bothered Dr. Harry Weinberg, Assistant Medical Examiner.  “In some manner the string of pearls had been pressed against Mrs. Adler’s throat until they left tiny indentations in the flesh.  These ligature marks and a slight discoloration of the face hinted strongly enough at possible strangulation, Dr. Weinberg said, to make it wise to ‘avoid guess-work.’”

One detective offered an outlandish explanation that would relieve the well-known motion picture figure from suspicion.  “The only indication of any sinister circumstances was the imprint of the pearls upon her neck,” said The Times.  “The indentation was not deep, and Detective Mullarney said he believed the woman, in fainting, had caught her arm in the necklace and drawn it tightly about her throat.”

The lowest floors were obliterated in the late 20th century; but a sympathetic renovation approximates the original storefronts.

There were still medical firms in the building as the decades elapsed.  In 1940 Theodore Radin, Inc. was here, peddling cures for a variety of ailments.  But on May 17 that year the Federal Trade Commission ordered the firm to cease representing its medicines as “cures and remedies for asthma, hay fever, sinus discomfort and bronchial irritations, and that they are absolutely harmless, no matter how often used.”

The Commission said that the epinephrine and ephedrine in the firm’s products would cause tissue damage “from anoxemia” over a period of time.

Through the 1950s Young America Films, Inc. was in the building, the last instance of the long-standing motion picture industry presence at No. 18-20 East 41^st.

As happened with so many structures, George & Edward Blum’s handsome storefront was annihilated at some point.  But before 2012 a sympathetic restoration was completed.  The renovated lower floors are the result of an admirable attempt to tie them to the original Gothic design above.

As was the case in 1914, No. 18-20 East 41^stStreet is heavily occupied by medical offices.  The striking Gothic Revival façade is worth a detour down the mostly-overlooked block.

The 1912 Adlon Apartments -- No. 200 West 54th Street

photo by Alice Lum

Brothers George and Edward Blum were 9 and 12 years old, respectively, when they arrived in New York from France in 1888.  They would both return to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris before opening the New York architectural firm, Blum & Blum in 1909.  It was a partnership that would change the face of speculative apartment buildings in New York.

Within the next two decades the Blum brothers would be responsible for at least 120 apartment houses.  Their grasp of French architectural trends that transcended their Beaux-Arts training—like Art Nouveau—would impact their designs in New York.  While other architects stuck to the mainstream to insure affordability and acceptance for the developers; the Blums used an unexpected variety of materials and ornamentation that made their buildings stand out.

Among these was the Adlon at 200 West 54^thStreet  at the southwest corner of Seventh Avenue.  In 1912 the neighborhood was experiencing rapid development as old ramshackle structures made way for office and apartment buildings.  The New York Times noted in October of that year “The immediate vicinity has been highly developed recently with fine apartment houses.”

The Adlon would be no exception.   Hired by the Adlon Construction Company, the Blums designed a 12-story structure with Italian Renaissance bones; but distinguished by colorful cast stone, inset tiles, and creative brickwork.  Inset Arts and Crafts-style tiles and plaques decorated the piers; the two-story pressed copper fluted pilasters of the 11^th and 12^th floors appear, at first glance from the street, to be ordinary Ionic designs—yet a closer inspection reveals exuberant Arts and Crafts designs in the capitals and in the spandrels above.

photo by Alice Lu

As the building neared completion, The Times reported on October 27, 1912 “It will be ready for occupancy about Dec. 1.  The house contains ninety-five suites of three, four, and five rooms.  One of the novel features is a sun parlor and reception room on the fourteenth floor, for the use of tenants and their friends.”  The newspaper then insulted Edward Blum by reporting his name as “Edwin.”

The new building borrowed its name from the fashionable Hotel Adlon that opened in Berlin five years earlier.  The World’s New York Apartment House Albumdeemed The Adlon “of the highest class,” and assured potential tenants that “Apartments contain every modern equipment for housekeeping.”  Among the up-to-date conveniences were a safe in every bedroom, telephones in “kitchen and also in apartment,” and “laundry and dryers in basement for every apartment.”

The Aljomor can be seen directly behind the Adlon in 1912 -- The World's New York Apartment House Album (copyright expired)

To cater to its anticipated high-end residents, the management hired 24-hour uniformed staff, offered valet service and additional servants’ rooms in the building.

Simultaneously the investors (Joseph Graf, Morris Goldstone, and Alexander Pincus), built an adjoining 13-story apartment, the Aljomor.  The exotic-sounding name was created by using the first letters of each man's first name.

Third floor windows were entirely framed in colorful cast stone -- photo by Alice Lum

The Adlon’s location drew theatrical types, including Zeigfeld Follies girl Vera Maxwell (and her mother), actor DeWolf Hopper, and sister actresses Jean and Helen Raymond.

But nearly from its opening The Adlon seemed destined for scandalous press.  Among the first tenants was Mrs. Jane Hathaway.  She became friendly with the Russian Prince Nicholas Vladaovich Engalitcheff whom The Evening Sun called “erstwhile pet of the Czar.”  According to Princess Evelyn Partridge Engalitcheff, however, the pair became too friendly.

By Christmas Eve 1915 everyone was in court and the newspapers reported the juicy scandal in detail.  The princess sued her husband for divorce, seeking custody of their 14-year old son, on the grounds that he was philandering with Mrs. Hathaway. The Times printed verbatim questions and answers between counsel and witnesses.

“Did Mrs. Harathaway ever kiss you,” the prince was asked.

“’That’s a vulgar lie,’” he replied with some emphasis, said The Times.

The Evening World reported the exchange more floridly.  “'Umph!' the Prince growled when he was asked if he had ever kissed the co-respondent, Mrs. Jane Hathaway of No. 200 West Fifty-fourth Street.  ‘Do you think WE of royal blood kiss in public?  Why, sir, I never do my kissing in public.  The idea!’”

Elizabeth Hammett, “a colored servant,” however, was less sure about that.  “She said that the Prince was in the habit of calling on Mrs. Hathaway in the afternoon,” newspapers reported.  “He never remained to dinner.

“He was a congenial gentleman, and would sit on the lounge with Mrs. Hathaway and make love to her,” she testified.

The prince apparently found the entire procedure beneath him and when his wife’s attorney, Almuth C. Vandivetr, asked his age “the Prince growled again and said: ‘Why, the idea!  I decline to answer that question, sir, and I defy you to force me to answer it.  It is insulting,” reported The Evening World.

While the Russian prince and Mrs. Hathaway were dallying away the afternoons in her apartment, wealthy broker Max Blumenthal was courting the actress Louise Meyers.  Ms. Meyers had most recently been seen on Broadway in the Follies of 1914.  If the age difference between the financier and the entertainer raised some eyebrows, they were further raised when the couple obtained their marriage license on June 25, 1915.

The New-York Tribune noted “He gave his age as forty-eight and his residence as 200 West Fifty-fourth Street.  She confessed to twenty-six.”

The ecstatic groom threw himself an $80 a plate bachelor dinner which the New-York Tribune said “recently caused considerable comment.”  Unaffected by wagging tongues and newspaper gossip, the newlyweds sailed off to honeymoon at the Panama-Pacific Exposition.

A less sensational marriage that year was that of tenant Dr. Henry S. Pascal to Irene C. Toumey.  Pascal was on the surgical staffs of the Harlem and St. Elizabeth hospitals.

Mrs. Estelle Allison lived in the building at the time.  As the country became embroiled in World War I, Mrs. Allison devised a clever fund-raising scheme for the benefit of the War Camp Community Service.  She sent little boys in Boy Scout uniforms onto the city buses and elevated train platforms to sell paper dolls dressed in Allied uniforms.  It was a commendable effort—or would have been if the Boy Scouts were really Boy Scouts and Estelle Allison was not pocketing the money.

The plan fell apart when one of the boys approached District Attorney Swann on a Fifth Avenue bus in the summer of 1918.  The prosecutor watched the boy work the crowd, selling the “Fannie Dolls” for 15 cents each.  Swann became suspicious and initiated an investigation that included at least two visits to Mrs. Allison’s apartment.

“I found that the boy on the bus, while he said he was a Boy Scout, is not a member of the organization,” he told reporters.  “I also found that..Mrs. Allison has not furnished a satisfactory statement of her activities.”

An indignant Mrs. Allison defended herself before the prosecutor.  “She thought, she said, that there was no way in which she could help make the world quite as safe for democracy as by boosting the ‘Fannie Doll’ market,” reported The Sun on August 2, 1918.

The war affected another tenant a few months later.  50-year old Josephine Phillips had moved into The Adlon in 1914.  The lonely, well-to-do widow had formed a close friendship with a young army officer.  When he was deployed to France in 1918, she described him to neighbors as her “last friend gone.”

On the morning of October 2 Adlon employees smelled gas in the hallway and summoned Patrolman Matthews of the West 47^th Street Station.  Six of the lighting jets in her apartment were turned on and the despondent widow was found dead of asphyxiation.

At the same time actor Eugene Howard lived in the building.  He and brother, William, were playing at the Winter Garden that fall; a time when detectives were trying to clean up the Theater District of illegal race betting.  Inspector Dominic Henry told reporters on September 21, 1918 that he had “been receiving complaints recently concerning persons who congregate on Broadway corners in the theatrical district and who are said to be on the races in handbooks circulated among them.”

With unfortunate timing, the Howard brothers decided to try their luck just as undercover detectives “did a little mingling,” as reported in The Sun.  The men were both arrested and held “on a charge of disorderly conduct in obstructing traffic while placing bets on horse races,” the newspaper reported on September 22.

The following year was a good one for real estate investors and on July 6, 1919 The New York Times said “That the realty market is on the boom was shown conclusively by the volume and importance of last week’s transactions.”  Included in the sales were The Adlon and the Aljomor directly behind it, now joined to become what the newspaper called “The Adlons.”  Purchased from the Adlon Construction Company by developers Bing & Bing for $1.5 million, the combined buildings now contained ten retail stores and 142 apartments.

A year earlier William and Eva Sheer had been married and moved in.  Both quickly realized that the marriage was an unhappy one and Mrs. Sheer moved to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.  But divorces in 1919 were not so easy to come by.  William and Eva schemed to produce evidence of infidelity.  Eva produced witnesses “to prove that her husband and another woman had at 11 o’clock one night last August engaged a room in a hotel on Columbus Circle,” reported The Sun on March 22, 1919.  The judge was not buying it.

The newspaper said “The possibility of collusion between Mrs. Sheer and her husband to concoct evidence justifying the decree was broadly hinted by the Justice.”  The court denied Eva’s decree of divorce.

Motion pictures provided a boost in actor Conway Tearle’s income.  The stage and film actor was living in The Adlon with his second wife when he signed a contract with Lewis J. Selznick for $1,750 a week “with an optional arrangement under which Mr. Selznick may retain the motion picture star next year at $2,000 a week,” reported the New-York Tribune on May 4, 1921.  The salary would translate to about $20,000 a week in today’s dollars.

Word of Tearle’s auspicious deal reached his first wife, Josephine Park Tearle, who was receiving $25 a week alimony.   She took the actor to court, demanding a raise in alimony to $65 a week.  Conway Tearle’s attorney complained to the judge that the actor’s former wife was trying to ruin him.

The Adlon’s proximity to the Theater District continued to attract entertainers.  Married stage actors Joseph Hart and Carrie De Mar lived here at the same time as Conway Tearle.  Hart had been a child actor, appearing in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ten Nights in a Barroom.  Now the middle-aged actor was best known on the vaudeville stage and as a producer.

On the morning of October 3, 1921 the 59-year old died “after a stroke of apoplexy,” according to the Tribune, in the Adlon apartment.  Carrie De Mar, his wife since 1905, was with him at his death.

On September 11, 1930 the buildings were sold to the United Cigar Stores Company.  The firm announced it would expend “about $100,000 remodeling and modernizing it,” according to The New York Times.  It was perhaps at this time that the lobbies were joined as one

Perhaps the Adlon’s most colorful tenant was Dr. Emerson Gilbert, a faith healer and spiritualist who lived here in the 1930s.  Gilbert promised quick healing after operations by summoning spirits which would lay hands on the patient.  When detectives got word of his actions, Policewoman Hannah Dolan sought his services for the after effects of a ficticious “appendicitis operation.”

On February 22, 1935 the doctor plunged the 10^thfloor apartment into darkness and summoned spirits to lay hands on Officer Dolan’s exposed back.  Detective Frank O’Neill waited silently in the hallway outside.

Into the darkened room a glowing spirit appeared.  It was, in fact, Dr. Gilbert naked underneath a phosphorus-impregnated cheesecloth shroud.  When Detective O’Neill burst into the apartment “he caught Dr. Gilbert climbing out of the shroud into an undershirt,” said The Times.

The Adlon was thrown into turmoil when a crowd of thirty reporters and photographers, police investigators, spiritualist debunkers and supporters, lawyers and Judge Jonah J. Goldstein tried to crush into the Gilbert apartment on March 3, 1935.  Gilbert was pressed to produce ghosts, supernatural voices, or any other evidence that he was not a quack.

The Times reported that “shortly after 6 o’clock last night the building was thrown into bedlam.”

The number of onlookers was quickly thinned by the Adlon’s management.  “The hall there was not wide enough to accommodate the crowd,” reported The Times.  “It was then that the antagonistic vibrations and upsetting comments of the skeptics must have influenced the spirits.  They angered the building agent, too.  He tried to eject the ghost-hunting expedition single-handed.”

The demonstration finally continued in the “dark-paneled séance room, where about twelve women members and a few male members of Dr. Gilbert’s cult were nervously aflutter.”  After twenty minutes, Dr. Gilbert emerged pleading “nervous nausea,” and blamed the newspaper men for the failure of the spirits to present themselves.

Dr. Gilbert was charged with practicing medicine without a license.

The Adlon would be in the embarrassing spotlight one more time in the first half of the century.  In 1936 36-year old John Cook and 33-year old Leon Furman transformed a four room apartment on the 12^th Floor into a casino.  The living room was set up with a dice table and another room served players of roulette.  When plainclothes detectives raided the make-shift gaming hall on January 14, 1937, they found chips in denominations from $25 to $500, liquor and champagne, and three telephones with headsets for relaying horse race bets to New Jersey.

The Adlon settled into a more quiet existence afterward.  Entertainers continued to live here—actress Gigi Gilpin was here in the 1940s.  She appeared with Burgess Meredith and Ingrid Bergman in Molnar’s Liliom and composer Kurt Weill often stayed at her apartment when in New York.

Other notables living here at the time were Nannine Joseph, the literary agent who included among her clients Eleanor Roosevelt; Russian-born dancer and instructor Louis H. Chalif; and comedy writer Paula Smith. 

In the 1950s composer and voice teacher Renato Bellini lived here, as did actor Julian Noa and theatrical agent Jack Davies.

Around 1989 the combined Adlon and Aljomor were been converted to cooperative apartments.  The magnificent façade had been sorely abused by now.  Pieces of the copper and cast stone ornamentation were falling away, the street level was slathered in paint and the iron balconies were gone. 

photo by Alice Lum

In 1999 the owners recognized the importance of the fading façade and initiated a reclamation project.  Along with cleaning and repointing, the co-op repaired the cornice and replaced lost detailing, resulting in a resurrected gem of early 20^thcentury apartment architecture.

The Scene of the Perfect Crime -- No. 235 E. 22nd St.

Extraordinary Art Deco designs ornament the entrance -- photo by Alice Lum

As the Great Depression darkened the country, American movie-goers escaped into the glamorous Manhattan penthouses and Park Avenue apartments via the silver screen.   As Ginger Rogers and Ruby Keeler, in clinging satin evening dresses, entered sunken living rooms with sleek Art Deco furnishings the worries of rent payments and bread lines in the reality outside were briefly forgotten.

Just months after the Stock Market crash architect brothers Edward and George Blum started work on a massive Art Deco apartment building at the northwest corner of 22^nd Street and Second Avenue.  Completed in 1931 it may not have sat on Park Avenue, but it was definitely Fred Astaire-ready.

The building was marketed to the financially-comfortable, and potential residents were shown apartments surrounding an interior garden courtyard, hand-painted bathroom tiles, parquet floors and stylish tray ceilings. 

As the 16-story building was nearing completion on February 1, 1931, The New York Times commented on its features.  “The façade of the new house will be of polychrome terra cotta and marble and brown brick.  Apartments will range from one to four rooms and many will have terraces.  There will also be five and seven room penthouse suites.  Special features include wood-burning fireplaces, tile showers, dressing rooms, incinerators and mail chute.”

The Blums tossed aside the gloom and doom of the Depression and wrapped the new building with a colorful band of terra cotta.  Here pointy zig-zags like mountain ranges sat above a gentle wave pattern like a river.  The southwestern color scheme—turquoise, green, ochre and navy—prompted one architectural historian to call it “Pueblo Deco.”  The Art Deco design culminated in the two-story entrance and its three stylized terra cotta waterfalls.

photo by Alice Lum

Depression or not, the building filled with tenants.  Robert E. Hill took one of the terraced suites immediately upon the building’s opening.  Agnes C. Tufverson, a  professional woman whom The New York Times called “a brilliant corporation lawyer,” moved in.  The unmarried attorney’s maid did not live in the building, but arrived in the mornings.

Ludwig Schopp moved in on September 1, 1933.  He hung paintings and etchings on the walls valued at $10,000.  Although the 38-year old held a PhD from the University of Bonn; the economy, perhaps, forced him to earn a living as an insurance salesman.

The economy also forced Schopp to skim money from his premium collections—a lot of money.  To make up the shortage, he devised a plan to collect the insurance on his art collection:  He would set his apartment on fire.

Schopp promised Dorothy L. Tipping that he would pay her $1,000 of the insurance if she would set the fire.  On Monday night, November 29 he made himself conspicuously not at home.  In the meantime, Dorothy Tipping entered the apartment, piled the etchings and paintings in the middle of the living room floor, and then set fire to the couch and the bed.

Fire investigators, understandably, found the fire to be suspicious.  The investigation of Assistant Fire Marshal Isidore Srebnick quickly tracked down Schopp who was hiding out in the apartment of Otto Stemman at No. 37-549 81^st Street in Jackson Heights, Queens.  When the marshal arrived at the apartment with a team of detectives, “Schopp ran into another room.  As the detectives followed Schopp pushed himself through a window and was captured as he attempted to jump to the street nearly forty feet below,” reported The Times.

Both Schopp and his female accomplice confessed.

Smart automobiles line East 22nd Street in front of the apartment building on December 1, 1939 -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In the meantime, Agnes Tulfverson was doing well for herself.  She was working in the law firm of Myron C. Herrick and was making an enviable income.   Two months before the soon-to-be arsonist Schopp moved into her building, the 43-year old Tulfverson was in Europe on vacation.   In July, on a “boat-train” between London and Southampton, a handsome Yugoslavian Army captain struck up a conversation.

The middle-aged spinster was soon hooked.  Ivan Poderjay was at least ten years younger than Agnes.  The New York Times said he was “handsome and described as ‘a very charming personality.’”  He told Agnes that he was on his way to the United States to sell a patent to an American company for a door lock that should reap him a million dollars.

What Agnes C. Tulfverson did not know was that just a month earlier, on May 12, 1933, the British magazine John Bull had published an article about the smooth-talker sitting next to her.  It told how he had conned two older women out of their life savings. 

As fate would have it, the pair traveled to New York on the same steamer from Southampton and Agnes was swept off her feet.  Before the ship docked they had decided to marry.  After Poderjay returned to England for a short visit, the couple was married in the Little Church Around the Corner—the wedding church—on December 4.

The newlyweds moved into Agnes’ apartment on East 22^ndStreet and booked passage on the S.S. Hamburg, leaving on December 20, for their extended European honeymoon.   Agnes went shopping with a friend and purchased over $1,000 worth of lingerie and gowns for her trousseau.  On the day of the voyage, Agnes’ maid, Eva, helped the couple pack.  Agnes made a telephone call to her sisters in Detroit, saying good-bye and telling them she would return by April.

While Eva and Agnes packed, Poderjay walked to a local pharmacy and purchased ten dollars worth of razor blades—enough at Depression Era prices to shave an entire Army base.  He also asked the elevator operator where he could purchase “a large trunk” in the neighborhood.

The couple took a cab to the pier at 46^th Street and the Hudson River with their luggage; then returned without the trunks to the apartment between 10 and 11:00 pm.  Eva was still there cleaning up.  She later reported that Agnes was “agitated” and the Poderjay was surly.  He sent her home and told her not to return the following day, but to come as usual the day after.

The elevator operators never saw Agnes leave the building after that.  When Eva returned on December 22 she found Poderjay going through Agnes’ personal papers.  He told the maid “She found it necessary to go to Philadelphia;” but he told the building staff that she had gone on to Europe ahead of him.

Eva was told to burn all of Agnes’ personal papers and Poderjay left the apartment.  He set sail on the White Star steamer Olympic with four trunks—including the new, exceptionally large one he had purchased—and six smaller bags.  It was the last Eva or the staff at No. 235 East 22^nd Street would see of Agnes Tufverson or Ivan Poderjay.

When Agnes’ sisters had not heard from her four months later, their concerns launched an investigation.  It was found that Agnes’ had withdrawn $17,000 in cash from several banks, that she had given her husband $5,000 in the form of a draft on London, and that all her stocks and securities were missing.  It was also discovered that the army captain was an imposter, in no way affiliated with the military.

Also missing was the extra-large trunk that Poderjay had taken aboard the Olympic.   He was tracked down in Vienna and questioned by Viennese police.  He told them he had no idea where his wife was and that “she is probably on a world tour.”   On June 29, 1934 The New York Times reported “While bewildered authorities here sought feverishly yesterday for some tangible clue to the whereabouts of Agnes C. Tufverson, dead or alive, chemists in Vienna tried to analyze reddish stains found on one of her wardrobe trunks in the apartment of Ivan Poderjay, her Yugoslav husband.”

In the days before advanced forensic techniques the stains, although reported by the Viennese newspaper The Telegraf to be bloodstains, were frustratingly vague.  “Preliminary microscopic examination failed to reveal the exact nature of the stains,” said The Times.

Further raising eyebrows of authorities was the discovery that Poderjay had married Marguerite Suzanne Ferrand in London on March 22, 1934; just four months after his marriage to Agnes.  When his newest bride was questioned, her attorney claimed she was “just another victim of another clever swindler.”  Authorities were concerned that in her possession were “certain garments that were at one time the property of Miss Tufverson.”

Assistant Chief Inspection John J. Sullivan of the New York Police Department told reporters that, according to Cunard stewards, Poderjay had spent most of the time on the voyage to Southampton in his stateroom.  “It was an outside stateroom,” Sullivan explained…It might even be possible that if he took the trunk with him that he might have disposed of it on his way across.”

Agnes’ sisters were alarmed by more evidence.   The Times said they were “discouraged by the news that among the articles found in Poderjay’s Vienna apartment was a brief case that Agnes Tufverson had prized as a good-luck symbol.  She had carried it with her everywhere and would not have yielded it to anyone if she were alive.”

In the meantime, Poderjay’s new wife told investigators that Agnes “often threatened suicide, but I am sure she is alive and will come forward to clear him.”

To the extreme frustration of Viennese and New York police, despite the highly-incriminating circumstantial evidence there was no body and not enough to charge Poderjay with murder.  He was extradited to New York in January 1935 on charges of bigamy and spent five years in Auburn Prison.

After his sentence (during which he lost an eye in a fight with another inmate) he was deported to Yugoslavia.  Authorities shook their heads, fully believing that the con man had dismembered his wife and dropped her body parts overboard during his voyage to Southampton.  He had committed the perfect crime.

The Blums laid bricks diagonally to create interesting,visually-tactile corners -- photo by the author

The Art Deco beauty on East 22^nd Street attracted little more scandal or drama in the succeeding years.  As World War II erupted in Europe, esteemed artist Marjorie Schiele fled Europe and moved to New York.  On November 1, 1940 she leased “a furnished suite” here.  While living here she became friends with other expatriate artists in New York including Piet Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp, Lyonel Feininger, Max Ernst and Fernand Leger.

The striking apartment building that shrugged off the gloom of the Depression remains nearly unchanged after more than 80 years.  The windows have been replaced as have the entrance doors; yet it is a striking example of Art Deco residential architecture in a somewhat surprising location.

photo by the author