The 1889 Schuetzen Hall -- 12 St. Mark's Place

The imposing terra cotta panel survives beneath a graffiti-slathered mansard -- photo by Schreibkraft

In the last half of the 19th Century, over a million and a half German immigrants poured into the Lower East Side neighborhood creating what came to be called “Kleindeutchland” or “Little Germany.”  The Bowery was lined with music halls and beer gardens where the locals could relax.

In 1889 another gathering place appeared – the Deutsch-Amerikanische Schuetzen Gesellschaft, or the German-American Shooting Society at No. 12 St. Mark's Place.

The Hall as it appeared in 1893 - King's Handbook of New York (copyright expired)

More commonly referred to as Schuetzen Hall, it was designed by William C. Frohne for a conglomeration of two dozen shooting clubs. The Society’s main thrust was a yearly shooting contest, held normally in Queens or on Long Island, and the hall was used as a place for meetings and conviviality.

Frohne lived in the neighborhood at the time and the Hall was one of his first major commissions. He reflected the Society’s native roots by designing the building in an enthusiastic German Renaissance style. The architect lavished the limestone and brick façade with terra cotta ornamentation; the most pronounced being the enormous cast panel of the fourth floor depicting crossed rifles behind a target. Four flags, a spread-eagle and the motto in German “Unity Makes Strong” completed the elaborate panel. Above, a nearly-vertical slate-tiled mansard featured a severely angled mansard cap between two dormers.

photo by Alice Lum

Separating the second and third floors was a wide frieze announcing the name of the Society and between the third and fourth were decorative terra cotta panels of swags and a female face.

photo by Alice Lum

In the basement were a shooting gallery and a bowling alley. The street level housed a saloon, a large meeting room and a restaurant. The rest of the building was reserved for lodge rooms and an apartment for the caretaker on the fourth floor.

The lodge rooms were rented to a variety of union groups over the decades – the International Molders and Foundry Workers’ Union, The National Federation of Post Office Clerks, the Building Trades Council, and the Gas Workers Union among them.


Carved faces flank the date when construction commenced -- photo by Alice Lum

On the evening after Christmas in 1888 the hall was formally dedicated. The New York Times reported that “The entire building was handsomely draped and festooned with the national colors of Germany and America and with fancy banners.”

The annual shooting contest – called the Schuetzenfest – attracted competing clubs from around the country. The Society along boasted over 1400 members and the scope of the event was staggering. In 1891 as planning got underway, The Times noted that “The complete arrangements for the contest will involve an outlay of nearly $150,000. Fifty rifle ranges will be constructed and immense dancing, reception, and refreshment halls will be erected.”

Not all of the 24 shooting clubs were solely German. Among them were the Christopher Columbus Company, The Grenadier Company No. 11, the Washington Rifles of New Jersey and the Gotham Revolver Club.

With its strong ties to labor unions as well as shooting clubs, the Hall was the site of a reception and dance in December 1909 for the benefit of girl shirtwaist strikers who were arrested and sent to the workhouse for picketing.

On Wednesday, Jun 15, 1904 Little Germany experienced its most devastating tragedy when 1,031 women and children were drowned or burned to death in the fiery sinking of the paddle steamer, the General Slocum. The group, organized by St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, was on a pleasure excursion for the day.

Three months later a group of 300 survivors and bereaved met at Schuetzen Hall to demand the punishment of the negligent ship owners and the Federal Inspectors who “willfully and dastardly permitted this unfit vessel to be in commission.”

Charles Dersch announced “While most of us are of German birth or descent, we are here to demand our rights as American citizens.”

The fight for those rights would go on for years.

The group was back at the Hall in August 1911 protesting the release of the boat’s Captain, William Van Schaick and again on December 21, 1912 when President Taft restored the captain’s citizenship.

The Slocum disaster eventually led to the end of Little Germany. The devastated community never really recovered and slowly the community dissolved as residents moved away. In 1920 the Society sold its headquarters to Anna M. Brindell.

In the late 1920s it became a homeless shelter called The Tub, run by Urbain Ledoux.  Ledoux, known to the men he helped as “Mr. Zero,” accommodated 135 homeless men on steamer chairs and advertised “auctions” of the men’s services in order to find them temporary work.

As the Great Depression hit New York, desperate men flocked to The Tub for a free meal and hopes of employment. On New Year’s Day 1929, over two thousand homeless men ate dinner here. The line outside was unbroken from early morning through the afternoon.

The financial burden of maintaining the facility became too much for Ledoux, however, and by the end of the year he owed Anna Brindell $7,345 in rent and was dispossessed.  She sold the building the following year.

In 1943, until 1962, it became the home of the Polish community group called the St. Mark’s Community Center. As the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood changed, it was the Ukrainian Culture Center during the 1960s, and became the original site of the St. Mark’s Bookshop. Today the ground floor is home to a restaurant. 

The vibrant neighborhood has greatly changed since the days when German was the dominant language. Yet scattered throughout there are reminders of Little Germany like William Frohne’s remarkable Schuetzen Hall. It survives in a state of remarkable preservation and was designated a New York City landmark in 2001.

The 1892 G. Schirmer Publishing Bldg. -- No. 108 East 16th Street

Unfortunately, a modern black iron fire escape nearly veils the amazing facade -- photo by Alice Lum

Gustav Schirmer was born in Saxony in 1829, but at the age of 8 he settled with his family in what the “University Musical Encyclopedia” would call “the American metropolis”—New York City.   Life for immigrant boys in 1837 was not one of carefree play and school.  Schirmer was immediately put to work in the music house of Scharfenberg & Luis.

The boy learned the trade and in 1854 became manager of the Kerkeig & Breusing publishing house.   When the opportunity came to purchase the business in 1868, he joined with B. Beer and formed Beer & Schirmer.  After Beer’s death the name was changed again to G. Schirmer.

By 1891 Schirmer had positioned his company as one of the leading music publishers in the nation.  It was time for a new headquarters that would reflect the firm’s success.    The publisher contracted German architect William Kuhles to design the new structure.  Kuhles did not disappoint.

The 33-foot wide building stretched back 160 feet and rose six stories.  Kuhles created a mirror image façade separated down the middle by a slightly-projecting pier.  Melding the ragingly-popular Romanesque Revival style with a touch of German Renaissance, he used a variety of materials.  On December 19, 1891 American Architect and Architecture touched upon the matter saying “First-story front piers are of polished and rough granite.  The upper part of front, buff bricks and Indiana limestone.”

Architecture and Building published a sketch of the new structure in 1891 -- (copyright expired)

The great arches that encompassed the first and second floor retail space were adorned with cast iron colunettes and cast garlands.    Chunky capitals of the first floor piers, upon close inspection, contain carved lyres that reflected the owner’s business.   The motif was repeated in the elaborately-carved spandrels of the arches where a virtual still-life of musical instruments appear.

An intensely-staring "green man" serves as a keystone, while musical instruments fill the flanking spandrels -- photo by Alice Lum

Kuhles kept the German stone cutters busy with a profusion of carved decorations from sidewalk to the eye-catching dormers—stone capitals, fluted piers and grotesque keystone faces.

It would be one of Kuhles’ last designs.  A year later he died, to be followed by Schirmer’s death the next year in 1893.

Schirmer’s sons, Rudolph E. and Gustave, took over the business.  The upper floors not used by the Schirmer firm were leased as loft space.   The most well-known tenant was another publishing company, Edgar S. Werner who would be here for many years. 

Decorative iron cresting lines the slate-tiled mansard.  Stone carvings appear at every turn, including the two S initials in each dormer, signifying the publisher's name -- photo by Alice Lum

Werner published, for the most part, books and pamphlets dealing with recitation and elocution; along with Werner’s Magazine—a Journal of Express—Vocal and Physical.     Among  the publications Werner printed and distributed from here were “How to Read.  A Manual of Elocution and Vocal Culture,” “Guttmann’s Gymnastics of the Voice, and Cure of Stuttering and Stammering,” and “Recitations.”

In 1895 Werner published Lillie Eginton Warren’s book “Defective Speech and Deafness.”  Popular Sciencereported that in it she addressed topics such as “Dull Pupils; Invented or ‘Pathological’ Language; Lisping; Careless Speech; Stuttering; Stammering; and Cleft Palates.”

The lofts were not taken solely by publishing houses.   Among the original tenants was Andrews-Demarest Seating Co. which manufactured wood-and-cast-iron institutional folding chairs.

Andrews-Demarest provided churches and auditoriums with ready-made seating -- Pratt Institute Monthly 1896 (copyright expired)

In the meantime, Schirmer’s continued to grow as a leading music publisher and the two-story retail space was a destination for musicians and music lovers.   There was also a musical circulating library—the largest in the country—that allowed musicians to borrow music rather than purchase it.

Unlike most other music publishers, Schirmer made a specialty of publishing the works of American composers.   On staff were two experts, Dr. P. Goetschius and Dr. Theodore Baker, who served as literary advisers.  By 1906 Schirmer was publishing 18,000 titles.

Celtic braid girds a pilaster capital below a stylized lyre -- photo by Alice Lum

The Schirmer brothers were, by now, very wealthy men.  Gustave and his wife owned a comfortable home at No. 117 East 35^th Street and a country estate in Princeton, New Jersey.   The well-rounded publisher was not only an accomplished violinist, he was an astronomer, a botanist and had acquired a reputation nation-wide as a patron of the arts.

In July 1907 Gustave prepared to join his wife who was traveling in Germany with their daughter and two sons when he was suddenly stricken with appendicitis.   He was taken to a private hospital where he was operated on and where he died shortly afterwards.

The control of G. Schirmer publishing was now in the hands of Rudolph.   Two years later, with the business having outgrown its headquarters, he sold the building on East 16^thStreet to George Leerburger and Zade Metzler.

Later, in 1916, Rudolph Schirmer married the opera star Ann Swinburne, a particularly appropriate match.  On August 20, 1919, having suffered a prolonged illness, the publisher realized his death was imminent.    He requested his wife and a friend, R. B. Gring, to sing an air from Beethoven while he quietly died to the music.

The building on 16^th Street continued to be used by a variety of manufacturers.  During World War I and for several years afterward the Clothing and Equipage Division of the Quartermaster Department of U.S. Army was here.  The Department supplied uniforms to the troops.

In 1920 the Individual Towel & Cabinet Service Co. was here, offering hospitals and other institutions the “Individual towel cabinet service [that] assures each person a clean towel every time at a cost much less even than that of paper towels—without the bad features.”

At the same time the Re-Be Soap Company was here, manufacturing liquid soap.

Boys at midcentury sent their allowances to Panther National, Ltd. with order forms clipped from Boys’ Life magazine.  The distributor offered everything from a set of 12 different “whittling and carving knives” for $2.00 to a balsa wood chest of 12 hand-tied fishing flies for $1.00.

It was about this time that the owners decided to modernize the street level.   Unlike most “improvements” during this period, however, the façade was not demolished, but covered over with metal panels. 

In 1998 Alfredo De Vido architects was called in to correct the 1950s updating.   The false façade was removed, the stonework restored and a new entrance installed.

The Schirmer Building's distracting neighbors, including a brutal parking garage, coupled with the fire escape, cause the structure to be often overlooked -- photo by Alice Lum

In 2001 the Talwar Gallery opened here, exhibiting the contemporary works of artists from the Indian subcontinent or of artists with Indian origins born outside of the country.  The retail space where G. Schirmer once sold sheet music and books is now home to Italian Wine Merchants.  Not your ordinary wine store, New York Magazine said of it “this place feels more like a designer showroom than a wine shop.  Only one bottle of each wine is on display; the rest are stored in the cellar.”

Today, other than a ghastly and distracting industrial fire escape that zig-zags down the façade, the G. Schirmer publishing building looks nearly exactly as it did when Gustav Schirmer’s first customer walked in the door in 1891.

The 1902 Speyer School -- Nos. 512-516 W. 126th Street

James Joseph Speyer had worked in the Frankfort, Paris and London branches of his family's bank before returning to New York City in 1885 to join Speyer & Co.  Although he sat on the boards of several other banks and trust companies; his interests went far beyond banking. 

He was one of the founders of the Provident Loan Society following the Financial Panic of 1893.  The organization was established to aid the poor who were being taken advantage of by unscrupulous pawn dealers.  The same year that the Provident Loan Society was incorporated, in 1894, he was actively involved in the overthrow of Tammany Hall.

When Speyer married the young widow Ellin Lowery in 1897 he was already a trustee of the Teachers’ College of Columbia University.  At the time settlement houses were cropping up in impoverished neighborhoods, a result of the rampant social reform movement.  In these facilities struggling women learned skills like sewing and housekeeping; and children were provided with practical instruction as well as a clean, safe environment for play.

Speyer was not merely interested in the concept.  The New York Times noted in 1901 that “He is prominently connected with the University Settlement Society.”  On June 11 that year the newspaper announced that Ellin and James J. Speyer had donated $100,000 to Teachers’ College for “a building for an experimental school, equipped with the latest appliances.”  The significant donation, more than $2.5 million today, would be spent in the gritty neighborhood of Lawrence Street (later renamed 126^th Street) near Amsterdam Avenue.

The New-York Tribune reported on the same day, “The purpose of the givers is to provide a model public school.  The building will have five stories and a basement.  In the basement are to be a large gymnasium, baths, toilet rooms, janitors’ quarters and heating and ventilating plants.  The first story will contain an office for the principal of the school, a children’s reading room, a library a kindergarten room and classroom.  On the second and third floors are to be eight classrooms, each with desks for thirty children, and four recitation rooms.  The fourth floor will provide rooms for manual training, sewing and cooking, a dining room and two recitation rooms.”

The roof would provide outdoor space for a garden—not the expected roof garden of chairs and potted plants, though.  Instead it would be a true garden plot “in which children will be instructed in the care of plants and flowers.”

The fifth floor was reserved for staff “with a parlor, dining room, kitchen, six bedrooms and three private studies.”  Because the Speyer School would not be just for children, trained settlement house workers would live in the Speyer School.  That arrangement allowed the building to be open year round in the days and evenings for the use of the community.

Evening classes were provided for adults and the gymnasium and library were open to the public when not required for normal classes.  To assist the impoverished residents of the area to better themselves, “the facilities in manual training, domestic art and domestic science will be at the disposal of extra school classes when not otherwise in use,” reported the Tribune.  Because turn-of-the-century tenements had little or no bathing facilities, the baths were made available to the public as well when the children were not using them.

Boys and girls from the tenement districts had little hope for a bright future in 1901.  Social reformers aspired to change this.  “The Speyer School will be an experiment station,” said the New-York Tribune.  The newspaper explained that the school’s goal was to improve on the best that was offered by social settlements.

“A critical period in the life of most boys and girls is the years between fourteen and twenty.  It is the time when the support and guidance of the school are replaced by the necessity of earning a livelihood.”  The school, therefore, would focus on the occupations each child was interested in and provide addition studies on those fields.

On August 9, 1901, a month after the title to the plot of land at 94 Lawrence Street was obtained, architect Edgar A. Josselyn filed plans for the Speyer School.  The estimated cost of the structure was put at $70,000.

Josselyn would produce a five-story German Renaissance structure of buff brick and terra cotta.  Minimal ornamentation on the lower floors would be compensated for by a two-story stepped gable with swirling console brackets and exuberant carving.  A thin opening above the paired attic windows gave the impression of an additional floor.

Construction took over a year and the dedication exercises were held on April 23, 1903.  In his speech, Dean Russell stressed that the school was intended “to elevate the community in which it was planted.”  James Speyer spoke as well, diminishing his role in the process.  According to Manual Training Magazine, “The building, he said, is but a small thing.  It is the work of the teacher which tells.  Citizens must be intelligent as well as law-abiding.  In peace and in war, and in the solution of industrial questions, American schools will show their influence.”

The school shortly after completion -- http://www.tc.columbia.edu/news.htm?articleID=7495&pub=7&issue=256

The school was an immediate success, prompting the New-York Tribune to remark the following day “Already the building is taxed to its utmost capacity, and is the home of numerous boys’ and girls’ clubs.”

The roof was soon used for far more than merely the instructional flower and vegetable garden.  On May 30, 1906 the New-York Tribune reported “On the roof of the school is the playground, in the corner of which a model bedroom, with plenty of light and air, has been built by the children in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades.”

To help pay for additional equipment the Speyer School staged a sale of the students’ manual work.  The students themselves were responsible for the operation of the sales.  In December 1907, for instance, the 8^th grade was in charge of finance and the 7^th grade was responsible for “management of sale.”  There were seven special committees like the “examining committee” (“if carelessly made or unsuitably constructed, the examiners will reject articles and return them to the grade which was responsible.").  The “committee on arrangements” found suitable rooms, ensured they were properly cleaned and heated and provided suitable furniture, cash boxes, etc.  Although girls in the sixth through eighth grades supplied some baked goods, there was a special committee on “Candy and Cake.”  Its job was to “endeavor to secure the co-operation of adult friends of Speyer School, who may be willing to make candies for our sale.”

The School Journal noted that the year before the proceeds from that sale went for gymnastic apparatus for the roof playground.  This year the fifth graders had made address booklets for sale.  Frances Van Camp described them.  “First we covered the outside with Japanese paper.  Then cut twenty-seven papers for the inside and marked them.  We printed addresses inside and tied a silk cord with a pencil on the end.”

The sixth grade made needle-books, lamp shapes, baskets and mounted pictures; the seventh and eighth grades fashioned sofa cushions, clipping cases, teapot stands, and decorated fans.

When the sale closed the children had netted $82.92 to be spend on school equipment.  But far more importantly they had learned practical lessons in organization, retail practices, marketing and other business principals.

The focus of the school began to change in 1915.  On February1 that year the New-York Tribunenoted “A class for exceptional children will be opened at the Speyer School, a part of Teachers College, February 8.  The judgment of fond parents, however, will not be the sole qualification.  Dr. Louis E. Bisch, a specialist in the treatment of atypical children, and Dr. Naomi Norsworthy, associate professor of educational psychology, will examine and classify the children.”

By “exceptional” and “atypical” the school did not necessarily mean gifted.  Included were those “suffering all the disadvantages of the child mentally below normal,” as described by The Sun eight months later.  Dr. Bisch had implemented an experimental program to study and teach the learning challenged.  His students came not from the underprivileged neighborhood, but from the sitting rooms of Manhattan’s elite.

“In appearance most of the children are normal,” said The Sun on October 24.  “All of them are sons and daughters of well to do parents.  Some of them go to school in automobiles.  All of them have nurses or other attendants to look after them on their trips between home and classes.”  But, said the newspaper, “Each child is a special study in feeblemindedness.”

At the time slow learning and physically disabled children were essentially overlooked by the educational system.  The Speyer School was ground-breaking in this regard.

“All the children in the Speyer School are below normal.  One of them can read, one can write a little.  The senses of one little girl are acute, and she recognizes sounds or colors readily, though letters or numbers are too abstract for her grasp.  Another little girl easily catches the words of a song, but during singing becomes confused and forgets them.”

Not “all the children” in the school were challenged, as The Sun said.  The school looked to the other end of the intelligence spectrum as well.  In February 1916, 200 boys who had completed the 6^th grade were selected for another experimental program.  Based on their keen learning abilities, they were put into a “rapid advance” program.  “They are divided into groups, and shifted about on the basis of individual progress,” reported The Evening World on February 2.  “The boys with whom the experiment succeeds will be able, at the end of two years, to enter the second year of the city high schools, thus gaining one school year.”

At the same time the top floor had been converted for use as the Friendly Home for Girls.  The “home” trained 36 orphaned girls “in all branches of domestic science,” explained The New York Times on January 7, 1917.  The newspaper said that The Friendly Home “marks a departure in the treatment of orphans.”

Supervised by Mrs. Julius J. Frank, Chairman of the Ladies’ Serving Society of the orphan institution, the Home prepared young girls to obtain jobs.  “According to Mrs. Frank many girls already have been placed in households—not as servants, but as ‘mothers’ assistants.’”

As changes in theories of education continued, the Speyer School adapted.  In 1935 a new “experimental school” was established as a joint venture of Teachers College and the Board of Education.  On September 8, 1935 The New York Times described it as an “effort to discover and develop new methods for dealing with both the dull-normal and the bright pupil.”

The school was rechristened PO 500 and the program’s formal title was “The Public School Experiment with Mental Deviates.”  The “deviates” were selected by means of intelligence tests.  “Slow” learners were defined as children with IQ’s of 75 to 90; “rapid” learners had IQ’s of 130 to 200.

From its inception the experiment was to last only until each student’s thirteenth birthday or until February 1941.  After that, the school building was shuttered and, for the first time in four decades, sat unused.  On April 11, 1942 The New York Times reported that among the buildings a group looked at as a possible addition to the City College School of Business was “the abandoned Speyer School at Amsterdam Avenue and 126^th Street.”

Finally in May 1946 Columbia University announced that “Speyer School will be altered to allow quarters for 125 single students.”  It was part of the emergency housing project approved by Governor Dewey to provide housing for returning veterans attending college.  But later that year, in October, Teachers College donated the building to the two-year old Manhattanville Neighborhood Center.

A year and a half renovation costing $160,000 was completed in March 1948.  A dedication ceremony on March 21 drew 250 attendees.  The Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, in his comments, emphasized that the “center wants to go beyond the remedial needs of the neighborhood.”

From 1964 through 1977 the building was owned by the Episcopal Diocese of New York.  During the turbulent civil rights movement era it was the scene of several programs focused on civil rights.  Here one of the first Head Start programs was based and a week before his assassination Dr. Martin Luther King visited the building.

Finances were a problem and in 1977 the Diocese gave the building to the Paul Robeson Community Center; but that group, too, was unable to support it financially.

The former Speyer School, always a center of social outreach and neighborhood improvement, would continue its changing role in 1991.  Across the street sat St. Mary’s EpiscopalChurch which, throughout the 20^th century, had been active in social and community causes.  By now the Speyer School building had been abandoned and neglected for years and St. Mary’s purchased it in a joint venture with the Episcopal Mission Society.

After renovations, it opened as the St. Mary’s Center for persons with HIV/AIDS.  Today the facility continues to house and provide its clients with medical, social and psychosocial support. 

More than a century after its construction, the surprising German Renaissance structure continues its intended purpose of providing support and outreach to the Harlem community; just as James and Ellin Speyer intended.

photographs taken by the author