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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

photographs by the author

The Hungarian Reformed Church -- 121 East 7th Street

photo by Alice Lum

It was not until after the unsuccessful Hungarian Revolution of 1848-1849 that the first real wave of Hungarian immigrants began arriving in New York City.  But by the 1870’s there were more than 10,000 Hungarians in Manhattan living in, for the most part, the Lower East Side and the Yorkville neighborhood further uptown.

The Lower East Side, once a fashionable residential neighborhood of Federal and Greek Revival homes, was now an immigrant district often called Kleindeutchland—or “Little Germany.”    Here the new Hungarian immigrants lived peacefully shoulder-to-shoulder with the Germans.  In 1895 a small group founded The First Hungarian Reformed Church, or New York-i Első Magyar Református Egyház.  After worshiping in temporary spaces for a few years, the congregation sought out a permanent structure.

The old house at No. 121 East 7^th Street had been built shortly after Daniel Burnett bought the property in 1843.   Now, on May 10, 1902, The New York Times reported that the Hungarian Reformed Church had purchased the dwelling.   The group hired architect and builder Frederick Ebeling to convert the structure to a church building.

The building was consecrated in 1903.  Within the next year Ebeling extended church to the property line and incorporated a central bell tower characteristic of a Hungarian country church.  The quaint little church had a comfortable, overall charm.   And yet there was little to hide the fact that this was a house-turned-church.

photo by Alice Lum

The church’s pastor, Rev. Zoltan Kuthy, awarded The Medal of Virtue each year to the two congregants who best exhibited true virtue.  Kuthy’s three qualifications were that the winners must “be pure of thought, word and deed; must be of careful life in his habits; must be loyal to his church.”

Reverend Kuthy felt that attaining virtue should not be all that difficult for his Hungarian flock.  “You see, the real Magyars are naturally good,” he told The Sun on June 2, 1912.  He said “as a race they are loving, law abiding and not a roistering people.”

The winner of the medal that year tended to disagree.  Michael Garan had attempted to win the prize since 1909.  Finally he held it.  “I try, oh, so hard, to be good, but to be good is not easy,” he told a reporter.

photo by Byron Company from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWBZMW2C&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

Unfortunately, other congregants disagreed about which member was most virtuous.  When the names were leaked a few days before the presentation, an uproar erupted.  On May 25, 1912 The Sun reported “Then two other members of the congregation let it be known that they were the most charitable and kindly of the First Hungarian Reformed flock and would prove it by beating the pastor and the recipients of the medal.”

Police from the 5^th Street police station lined the sanctuary on Sunday May 24.  Reverend Zoltan had asked “for assistance in case other charitable and kindly men should start something,” said the newspaper.

“Capt. Ormsby assured the pastor that he would have uniformed policemen in the church, well up toward the pulpit, to see that the friends of the disappointed candidates for charitable and kindly distinction do not rend the garments of peace during the services.”

A misguided congregation decades later would encase the stone facade in artificial stone -- photo by Alice Lum

By 1914 the growing congregation and the stiflingly-crowded Lower East Side neighborhood prompted the First Hungarian Reformed Church to move uptown.   A plot was purchased at 344 East 69^th Street and Hungarian-born architect Emery Roth set to work designing a new, larger structure—including the iconic central bell tower.  The new building was completed in 1916 and the congregation said good-bye to its house-turned church on East 7^thStreet.

The old building was purchased by the cumbersomely-named Christian Orthodox Catholic Church of the Eastern Confession in North America.     It became home to the Holy Resurrection Church and it would not be long before trouble ensued.

A year after moving into the new church, Evdokim Meschersky planned a trip to Russia.  Meschersky, too, had an unwieldy title:  “Archbishop of the Ecclesiastic Consistory of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, and the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, and the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of North America.”

As his trip neared, on August 17, 1917 he appointed Vladimir Rykhloff “temporary rector” and priest of Holy Resurrection Church.   When the archbishop returned a year later, his temporary replacement was apparently not overjoyed to see him.

With both men claiming the title of archbishop, an ugly tug-of-war ensued.  Court papers claimed that Rykhloff “has refused to vacate the church and to cease officiating as a rector and priest thereof.”   No matter what Meschersky did, his underling continued officiating as though he were pastor of the congregation.  The frustrated archbishop was finally forced to take matters to the courts in November 1918.  The case would drag on for months.

In 1935 the building was sold to the Russian Orthodox St. Peter and Paul Church.  That the Lower East Side neighborhood was still highly-ethnic was reflected in the colorful funeral that took place in the church on July 20, 1938.

The funeral cortege of Louis De Metro, described byThe New York Times as a “20-year old member of a gypsy tribe,” brought vehicles to a standstill.  “Traffic on Avenue A, First Avenue and on Seventh and Eighth Streets, between Avenue A and First Avenue, was impeded for a time while the cortege moved along,” said the newspaper.

“Crowds of curious, who had read of the prayerful vigil kept by the youth’s friends outside Bellevue Hospital, lined the streets as the body was carried by members of the family and friends to Russian Orthodox St. Peter and Paul Church, 121 East Seventh Street, where the funeral service was conducted by the Very Rev. Alexander J. Chechila, the pastor.”

Many of the mourners were attired in “gypsy costume,” and a ten-piece ensemble played a dirge on the street outside the church.

photo by Alice Lum

The pastor was embarrassed when his 26-year old daughter was the subject of messy publicity a few years later.   On New Year’s Day 1942 The Times reported on the dueling lawsuits between Olga Chechila and 49-year old jewelry executive Harry S. Fischer.

Fischer lived in the penthouse apartment at No. 737 Park Avenue and on December 23 had given a party for “two men friends.”  The get-together ended in what The Timescalled “a fracas.”   While Olga told police that Fischer had stolen $1,000 in cash from her—money she had withdrawn from a bank as a Christmas present to her father; Fischer accused her of stealing a $3,200 diamond ring.   She insisted he had loaned her the ring “to wear at the party.”

Both parties were released on bail awaiting a hearing.

In1961, when St. Mary’s American Orthodox Greek Catholic Church purchased the building, the congregation thought it a good idea to modernize the structure by encasing Ebeling’s stone façade in “Naturestone;” an artificial stone material. 

It was not a good idea.

Despite the offensive make-over the little house-turned church retains its charm; a relic of a time when foreign-speaking immigrants drew together in a new land to worship together.

photo by Alice Lum

The 1928 Birns Building -- 111 Second Avenue

In 1915 Saul Birnzweig was in trouble.  

The somewhat shady entrepreneur had gotten in on the wildly popular phonograph or “talking machine” craze.  Starting out selling the machines at No. 117 Second Avenue, he later had moved down the block to No. 111.  Somewhat suspiciously, he changed the name of his business several times—operating as the Atlantic Talking Machine Company, the Metropolitan Talking Machine Company, and as Saul Birns.

While his business was successful, he cooked up a scheme to make more money.  He ran newspaper advertisements in foreign languages targeting immigrants. They promised a high-quality phonograph plus records of songs in their native tongues on a 30-day free trial.  If the recipient liked the machine, it could be purchased on an easy installment plan.

But Assistant District Attorney Content protested “Birnzweig never sent any of the advertised machines or records on free trial…but when intended purchasers communicated with him, demanded a deposit of $5 to $8 in advance.”  After he received the deposits, “Birnzweig sent a cheap phonograph C.O.D. for about 70 percent of the purchase price and stated that the remainder of the purchase money could be paid in installments.”

Birnzweig, who soon went by the name Saul Birn,shipped phonographs that “were of foreign make and inferior to the standard ones made here,” said the Assistant D.A.  Birn was arrested on July 13, 1915.  The charges alleged “that foreigners living in all parts of the country were being swindled by means of a mail order scheme,” reported The New York Times.

Although caught, Birns profited hugely from his plan.  Later that year the Annual Report of the Industrial Commissionstated that Birn was making about $125,000 per year on the ads, “and that he had provided an emergency deposit of $30,000 to be used for legal services should he be arrested.”

Birns was indicted and convicted but the Report was less than pleased with the results.  “He was fined $750, an absurdly inadequate punishment for a man whose swindling operations extended from ocean to ocean, and who for years had unscrupulously robbed ignorant and hardworking foreigners to the amount of over $100,000 per year.”  Birns’s profits from the scheme would amount to about $2.25 million a year today.

A year later Birns was still running the offers; but presumably was backing them up. The Evening World, October 23, 1916 (copyright expired)  

In the years after World War I Birns was investing in real estate, constructing modern apartment houses in the Lower East Side.  He told reporters he wanted to improve housing for the mostly Jewish families living there.  Given his record, his purely altruistic motives might be questioned.

Then, on May 19, 1923 The Music Trade Review announced that Birns intended to demolish his Second Avenue building and erect a skyscraper.  “What is without question one of the most ambitious building projects undertaken recently by any music merchant is the plan of Saul Birns, well known throughout the metropolitan talking machine trade as a live wire, to construct a twelve to fifteen-story building on the site of the property, which houses his headquarters at 111 Second avenue.”  The trade journal said “Mr. Birns stated that provision will be made for the display of his line of talking machines, musical instruments and pianos on an elaborate scale.  There will also be a large auditorium where musical events will be staged, and in addition, if present plans go through, there will be a radio broadcasting station.”

As it turned out, plans did not go through.  Instead, the ambitious project was scaled back to a five-story store and office building.  Begun in 1928 it was completed the following year.  Birns’s plan for an auditorium did materialize, however, on the fifth floor.  It featured extra-high ceilings and a row of arched windows on the avenue.  The multi-purpose space would be leased out for meetings, weddings and bar mitzvahs, dances and other social events.

Designed by architect Ralph Segal, the terra-cotta clad structure cost Birn $300,000; nearly $4 million in today’s dollars.  The handsome Art Deco palazzo design would have been equally appropriate for a department store.  Pseudo-balconies and Art Deco motifs smacked of the lavish movie palace architecture of the time.  The phonograph dealer-real estate developer emblazoned the parapet with his name: Saul Birns Building.

As the building neared completion, The Bank of the United States was granted authorization to open a branch here.  It would share the ground floor retail space with Saul Birns’s phonograph store, taking the southern end at Nos. 107 through 109.  The rather hefty rent, starting on November 1, 1928, was $15,000 per year, increasing to $22,000 by the expiration of the 21-year lease.

Unfortunately, it was a bad time to open a new bank branch.  In October 1929 the stock market crashed, sending the nation into the Great Depression.  The Bank of the United States did not survive and closed its doors the following year.  Twenty-three banks of the New York Clearing House Association arranged that depositors could receive loans up to 50 percent of their balances.  On December 22, 1930 those depositors thronged the sidewalks outside the Birns Building.

“Many of the depositors arrived far in advance of the opening house,” reported The New York Times the following day.  “About 500 were on hand when the branch at 107 Second Avenue opened, some of them having been there, according to the police, since 4 o’clock in the morning.”

Meanwhile, the auditorium upstairs, known as the Central Plaza Hall, was the scene of labor meetings and strike plans of various union organizations through the 1930s.  One especially interesting meeting was that of the National Labor Committee for the Jewish Workers in Palestine, held on April1, 1934.  That night Albert Einstein was the guest of honor and principal speaker.  “The proceeds of the affair, which will also include music and drama, will go to the Arlosoroff Memorial Fund to aid Jewish colonists in Palestine,” reported The Times.

Lieutenant Governor Charles Poletti addressed an all-day meeting of the Hias Council of Organizations here on December 14, 1941, one week to the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Poletti was frank in predicting a long fight and warned that “we must accept our individual responsibilities and sacrifices.”

The attendees that day, 2,900 delegates representing 1,157 national Jewish benevolent and labor organizations, had another enemy in mind:  Adolph Hitler.  Poletti told the audience “It may be a long fight, but we are confident that the forces of barbarism will ultimately be crushed.  Our  burdens will be heavy, but we will bear them courageously and cheerfully.”

The Acting Mayor, Newbold Morris, added his thoughts, saying that all Americans would “rather be dead than slaves of Adolph Hitler.”

The terra cotta facade features a wealth of Art Deco details.

Throughout the 1940s and ‘50s, the Central Plaza Dance Hall was famous for its jazz concerts.  The room was alive with the sounds of the nation’s best-known jazz ensembles while patrons danced through the night.

In 1958 the Birns Building took on another role—that of television rehearsal studios.  On November 8 The New York Times said “This squat, five-story building on the lower East Side is normally used for weddings, dances and lodge meetings.”  But now, wrote Richard F. Shepard, “Some of the most able talent in show business rehearsed for some of television’s most expensive and promising productions yesterday in the Central Plaza.”

Frederic March and cast were rehearsing on the second floor for Columbia Broadcasting System’s production of “The Winslow Boy.”  On the two top floors, dozens of dancers were “whipping into shape ‘Kiss Me Kate’ for the National Broadcasting Company on Nov. 20.”  On other floors, daytime soap operas were in rehearsal.  “Although the building housed at the moment the hopes of television programs that cost, altogether, at least half a million dollars, it was just another day at the Central Plaza,” wrote Shepard.

Meanwhile, for decades the former Birns phonograph salesrooms downstairs had been home to Ratner’s kosher restaurant.  Shepard said “On the main floor, oblivious of the artistic endeavors above, waiters rattled their dishes and made the customers feel like equals in Ratner’s a vegetarian restaurant that has become a sort of downtown ‘Sardi’s’ in its own way at 111 Second Avenue.”

The original Ratner’s opened in 1905 on Pitt Street, founded by brothers Jacob and Harry L. Harmatz and their brother-in-law, Alex Ratner.  Austria-Hungarian immigrants, their restaurant specialized in Eastern European Jewish fare cooked by their wives.  Eventually the brothers went their separate ways, opening their own restaurants.

By now the Second Avenue Ratner’s was run by Abraham Harmatz.  The New York Times called it in 1974 “a gastronomic diadem in the crown of what years ago was called the Jewish Rialto.  Its blinzes and onion rolls, its pirogen and fish, its caloric pastries were adrenalin for the emotionally drained audiences issuing from performances of the many Yiddish theaters along Second Avenue.” 

The neighborhood around the Birns Building (still owned by the Birns family and managed by Bernard Birns) had drastically changed by the 1970s.  The New York Times explained on May 30, 1974 “With the disappearance of the once large resident Jewish population, much of Ratner’s business is in its last years came by taxi and automobile.  It was one of the last preserves of the Jewish waiter, a breed that was usually Jewish but could be Puerto Rican or Iranian, too, and was distinguished by frantically efficient service and a democratic air.”

Finally, after decades of doing business here, Ratner’s closed its doors on May 28, 1974.  The following day, Abraham Harmatz died, one day before his 66^th birthday.  He had participated in the management of the restaurant for 45 years.

Following Ratner's, a grocery chain leased the store space.  photo by Edmund V. Gillon from the collectino of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/Collection/%5b105-107-Second-Avenue.%5d-24UAKVM55NN.html

In place of the famous landmark restaurant, a grocery store moved in.  New York University’s School of the Arts took over the top floor for its arts theater.  Eventually the school purchased the entire Birns Building and in 2012 did a major renovation.

Today Saul Birns’s ambitious building with its colorful past gleams again-a handsome survivor of a time when Second Avenue was lined with Yiddish theaters.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The St. John Baptist House -- Nos. 231-233 East 17th Street

photo by Alice Lum

By 1875 the lower east side teemed with tenements crowded with impoverished immigrants, mostly German.  A quarter of a century earlier, in Clewer, England, the Sisterhood of Saint John Baptist had been formed to alleviate the suffering of the poor.  Now, in May 1876, a New York branch was established to further the work.

The sisterhood was part of the Protestant Episcopal Church and fell under the direct charge of the influential Bishop Henry C. Potter and the Reverend G. H. Houghton.  In 1877 Helen Folsom purchased two plots of land at Nos. 233 and 235 East 17^thStreet in the fashionable Stuyvesant Square neighborhood for the Sisterhood.

Helen came from the well-known Winthrop family of Massachusetts.  She purchased the land from Rutherford Stuyvesant, a family relative by marriage, and conveyed it to the Saint John the Baptist Foundation for $10.  Her magnanimous gesture was possibly prompted by a family interest—it is thought that Sister Helen Margaret was her niece.

Architect E. T. Littell set to work designing the “Mother House and Novitiate” that would house up to 40 sisters.   The building, most often referred to as the St. John Baptist House, was completed within the year.  Littell produced an asymmetrical Victorian Gothic pile in keeping with the religious organization it housed.  Between the pointed arches of paired Gothic windows within single brownstone arches were carved quatrefoils.  The offset doorway was approached by a steep, wide brownstone stoop and bandcourses of the same stone ran between each floor, doubling as sills.   Especially picturesque was the jerkin-headed gable that interrupted the steep slate-tiled roof.

The sisters quickly took up their vocations of tending to the poor and sick.   Headed by Sister Frances Constance, the Lady Superior, they visited and ministered to the residents of the tenements.  The New York Times noted “Their dress is very similar to that of Roman Catholic nuns, and when walking the streets they are easily mistaken for nuns.”

They established a “work-room for ecclesiastical embroidery” in the house, where women learned needlework and a means of income.  The Times said “They act as teachers to the pupils, and also devote themselves to general missionary work for the Church.”

Among the missionary sisters was Sister Gertrude Verena; one of the original group.  By 1880 the Holy Cross Mission had been established by the sisterhood a few blocks away on East 17^thStreet and Avenue C.   Early on the morning of November 7 Sister Gertrude Verena went to the mission, as she always did; then headed back sometime after 10:00.

A tall, thin stranger had been noticed in the neighborhood during the past few days loitering around Stuyvesant Square and sometimes blankly staring at the St. John the Baptist House.  Thomas Stanton lived in a rented room in the basement of No. 43 Grand Street and, according to The Sun on November 9, “For the last week he had been out of work, and to pass the time he strolled up to the park in Stuyvesant square, and sat on the benches.  He saw Sister Gertrude pass in and out of the house several times.”

Stanton was a Roman Catholic and assumed that the woman in the black habit was a Catholic nun.  That morning, as she approached the stairs of the St. John Baptist House, Stanton was abruptly standing there on the sidewalk.  The Times reported “When Sister Verena had approached to within 10 feet of the strange man, he suddenly drew from his pocket a six-shooter, and taking deliberate aim, without saying a word, began firing at her.  Two shots were discharged and entered the woman’s left thigh.”

Sister Gertrude Verena, despite her wounds, ran up the brownstone stoop.  Stanton pursued her, firing his weapon over and over until the rounds were spent.  One entered the sister’s right ankle, another went through her left thumb and the other two struck the stone steps.

At the time the other sisters were in the chapel at the rear of the house; but the gunfire was audible, followed by the frantic ringing of the doorbell by the wounded woman.  The sisters rushed to her aid, helping her into the hallway where she fell unconscious.

The National Police Gazette provided its vision of the attack on November 20, 1880 (copyright expired)

In the meantime, Stanton casually walked along East 17^thStreet toward Third Avenue audaciously carrying the spent weapon in his hand.  The two men who had witnessed the shooting from across the street disappeared before they could be questioned.  It was a stalwart newsboy who seized Stanton and held him until Police Officer William B. Deems arrived to arrest him.

The National Police Gazette, under the headline “The Very Stones Cry Shame—A Little Sister of the Poor Shot While Returning From an Errand of Mercy,” opined “It was clear that he was insane, and he was locked up to await an examination.”

Indeed, Stanton appeared to be disturbed.  He told investigators he had been bewitched by the sister, who harbored a demon who spoke to him.  “I didn’t want to hurt her.  I only wanted to scare her and make the witch leave her,” The Sun quoted him as saying on November 9, 1880.  The witch, he said, was “always around me and talking to me.  No; I can’t see her, and never did see her.  I can’t repeat anything that she says, but I always hear her talking, day and night.”

For some reason the innocent Sister Gertrude Verena drew his attention.  “He saw Sister Gertrude pass in and out of the house several times, and on Sunday he made up his mind that she was the cause of all his trouble.”

Meanwhile, the sister was cared for by Dr. Stuyvesant F. Morris, the physician of the House, who pronounced the wounds “very serious, but not necessarily fatal,” according to The New York Times.  It was believed that the heavy fabric of her habit had helped break the force of the bullets.

Within two days The Sun reported that she was “in a fair way to recover” and Dr. Morris believed he would be able to extract “the bullet imbedded in the muscular tissues of her back” that day.

The wounded Sister Gertrude Verena desperately climbed the brownstone stoop seeking help.  At the time the school addition, at left, had not been constructed. -- photo by Alice Lum

The sisters’ work continued and in 1883 the plot at No. 331 abutting the House to the west was acquired for a school.   Architect Charles C. Haight received the commission to design the structure which sympathetically expanded on Littell’s original plan.   The St. John Baptist School doubled as a boarding and day school, and was described by “The Centennial History of the Protestant Episcopal Church” the following year “a new school-house for young ladies” which would accommodate about 30 pupils.  Haight’s building projected beyond the St. John the Baptist House nearly to the property line.  The addition resulted in the entrance of House becoming visually centered.

By 1892, in addition to the embroidery school in the House and the St. John Baptist School next door, the sisters had undertaken a staggering amount of work.  They were in charge of St. Hilda’s School, a boarding school “for young ladies,” in Morristown, New Jersey; the St. Andrew’s Hospital for Convalescent Women at 213 East 17^th Street; the Mission of the Holy Cross and a Girls Day School in connection with it; St. Anne’s Cottage, a summer home for the women and children of the Mission; the Midnight Mission on Greene Street in the desolate area of brothels and vice where the sisters created “a refuge for fallen women;” St. Michael’s Home on Long Island which Living Church Quarterly described as “an offshoot of the Midnight Mission, chiefly for young and hopeful cases, and partly prevential;” and the Christ Church Home, an institution for children in South Amboy, New Jersey.  In addition to this all, Living Church Quarterly reminded readers that the sisters carried on “mission work among the German population of the East Side of New York.”

In 1915 the church sold the East 17^th Street buildings to Evodkim Mescherky for $70,000—about $1 million today—who quickly established the Russian National St. Vladimir’s Home.    The buildings were little changed and Russian immigrants, some having fled the recent turmoil at home, were housed here. 

On March 24, 1918, with Russia caught up in World War I and revolution, Colonel Nicolay Nicolaywich Koch was living here.  Formerly a Colonel in the Russian Army, he issued a passionate plea to his countrymen to help fight Germany.

He said in part, “The world calls us an ignorant, unfortunate and poverty stricken people.  But this is only half of a misfortune.  It is not our fault; but, the most terrible thing of all, we are accused of treachery before our faithful allies in the fight for the world’s freedom.”  He said that because many called the Russians “contemptible,” that “many of us, because of lack of courage, begin to consider concealing our Russian nationality.”

His emotional plea continued “To you, sons of our downtrodden, beloved, and only recently great, free Russia, I appeal in this terrible hour of unheard-of trials and beg you from the depth of my tortured heart to firmly decide to stand up and defend our native land, threatened with long slavery and innumerable sufferings, to free her from the iron grasp of the tyrants.”

Among the Colonel’s co-residents here were some who openly supported the Bolshevik party.  When two of them joined like-minded protestors in a demonstration in Washington Square in October 1919, they found themselves behind bars.

The New-York Tribune reported on October 12 that “Six men and a woman who were arrested Wednesday, when several hundred aliens professing Bolshevik convictions tried to parade from Washington Square without a permit, were sentenced to six months in the workhouse yesterday.”   Among those arrested for disorderly conduct were 28-year old Karl Schula and 25-year old David Klipper of St. Vladimir’s Home.   

The judge was particularly mindful of the group’s banners; one in particular which read “Deport Us to Russia—We’ll Be Free There.”  The New-York Tribune noted “He agreed heartily with the suggestion of some one in the packed courtroom that Henry Ford or some other wealthy man would earn national gratitude by chartering a ship and giving free passage to those who approved of Lenine and Trotzky.”

On July 18, 1920 Eastern Orthodox history was made in the chapel of St. Vladimir’s Home.   The former chapel of the Sisterhood of St. John Baptist was now the Catholic Church of the Transfiguration, a branch of the Holy Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Nicholas.    The Times reported that “For the first time in the 1,894 years of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Litany of St. Chrysostom will be said tomorrow morning in the English language.”

It was an extraordinary break in tradition, possibly prompted by financial problems.  The Times noted that “As the Russian Church in America has been embarrassed financially ever since the revolution in Russia, the English branch will be maintained by voluntary contributions.  All pecuniary aid from Russia stopped after the Bolsheviki took $200,000,000 from the churches there.”

The Church of the Transfiguration would not be here long, however.  A month later the building was sold in a foreclosure sale and was acquired by the Russian Church Relief Corporation for $64,000.  Just four months later, on December 10, newspapers reported that the buildings had been sold.

Controversy in the brick and brownstone buildings came to an end as the newly-formed Smith College Club converted them to club rooms, dining rooms and twelve sleeping rooms per floor above the first floor.  Here alumnae of the prestigious women’s college found temporary housing; and fund raising and educational events were held.  For eight years the society pages would publicize the glamorous affairs.  One of the first was the benefit dance “and bridge” at the Plaza Hotel on the day after Easter that year, a month after the club moved into their new clubhouse.

Then, in June 1929, the Smith College Club sold the building to the Friendly League for Christian Service; an organization for business woman.  The Times reported that it “will be opened as a home for business woman on July 1.”

A month later the newspaper would write about some of the organization's unusual features.  “The new Friendly Centre which has been opened by the Friendly League for Christian Service…has removed any age limit on employed women, and it is for business women that the residence will be operated.  Most homes of this kind do not permit women to stay after they are 35 years of age.  Nor will the centre refuse admission to a business woman who receives a generous salary.”

The article did point out that the cheapest rooms would be held for financially struggling girls.  “The reasonable rooms, however, will be reserved for employed girls and women with small incomes.”  The women living here enjoyed a library, lounge and auditorium.

The Friendly Centre would stay on in the building for decades; finally selling it in 1996 to the Salvation Army.   A minor conversion updated the facility, with laundries and offices on each of the floors, along with the bedrooms, and a chapel on the first floor.

The 2080 square foot apartment above was listed in 2013 for $2.3 million http://www.corcoran.com/nyc/Listings/Display/2578861 

Then in 2008 the venerable structure was converted to luxury condominiums.    No trace of the interiors remains where sisters in black habits once shuffled dutifully about.  But while the windows have been replaced; the exteriors are remarkable intact and still delightfully picturesque.

photo by Alice Lum

The 1831 De Forest House -- No. 26 Bond Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1831 James Roosevelt sold the property at No. 26 Bond Street to merchant Alfred De Forest.  Whether Roosevelt was responsible for the construction of the handsome red brick mansion on the lot; or if De Forest had it built is unclear.  Whichever the case, the new Federal-style residence was exquisite.

What would become known as the Bond Street District was just developing and within a decade would be among the most exclusive residential neighborhoods in New York.  The city’s most prominent and wealthiest citizens built lavish, if stylishly-restrained, homes here; red brick edifices trimmed in contrasting white marble.  In front of each house along Bond Street two trees were planted, creating a regimented and handsome row of foliage and elegant residences.

Guests crowd around a Bond Street home after a wedding in 1857 -- http://www.merchantshouse.org/

The De Forest house would set the bar for neighboring homes built shortly after.   The Flemish-bond red brick façade rose three stories to a dormered attic.   The builder spared no expense, executing the refined entranceway white marble.    Stone steps graced with elaborate cast iron railings led to the doorway with an arched Gibbs surround—an enframement interrupted by blocks of stone, in this case vermiculated (carved with wavy, wormlike lines), and named after the architect James Gibbs.

Despite the building's 20th century abuse, the exquisite marble Gibbs surround and the original stoop survive -- photo by Alice Lum

Inside intricate plasterwork adorned the ceilings and rich woodwork, marble mantels and a glass skylight above the graceful winding staircase added to the upscale tone of the home.

Alfred De Forest was the nephew of Benjamin De Forest, a wealthy merchant doing business at No. 185 South Street.  Benjamin had come to New York around 1804 and, although a shoemaker in Connecticut, he opened a shop in the harbor area at No. 31 Peck Slip know as Benjamin De Forest and Company

In 1811 he convinced his nephew to leave Connecticut as well and brought him into the business--which was now De Forest and Smith since Benjamin’s partnership with Gershom Smith in 1805.  The  uncle and nephew each had a sizable fortune.

Alfred had married the only daughter of Augustus Wright; and upon his death she had inherited a considerable fortune which, as well.   Alfred inherited her large estate when she died.

Benjamin was married to Mary Burlock, “the beautiful daughter of Thomas Burlock.”  Upon the death of Mary’s wealthy brother, Henry, she inherited a large portion of his estate.   Benjamin and Mary originally moved into Alfred’s house at No. 20 Beekman Street; but since 1826 they all had been living at No. 27 Bond Street, directly across the street from the new house.   Now, in 1831, the extended family moved into the elegant new home at No. 26 Bond Street.

photo by Alice Lum

Alfred De Forest had no children; and Benjamin and Mary had two daughters, but no sons to continue the business under the family name.   Concerned that there was no one to carry on the business under the family name, they brought distant relative George B. De Forest into the firm around 1842 or 1843. 

George had been in the dry goods business at No. 86 Cedar Street and lived at No. 30 Great Jones Street, close to the De Forest house.   In a confusing tangle of surnames, George B. De Forest married one of Benjamin’s daughters soon after joining the firm and moved into the Bond Street house with the rest of the family.

When Alfred De Forest died in 1847 he left his entire estate to Benjamin who died three years later.  Benjamin’s estate was estimated at approximately $1.5 million—about $31.5 million today.   Although George and his wife stayed on in the Bond Street house for a while, the migration of society would soon prod them northward to No. 66 East 21^st Street.

In 1853 the house was sold to John Haggerty.   Two years later the leading merchants of New York set out to compile a list of all citizens worth $100,000 or more.  The New York Times said that the purpose of the resulting pamphlet was “to ascertain the capital employed in trade and the wealth at the command of and ready for use in ‘backing up’ those engaged in it.”

High on the list was John Haggerty whose assets were listed as $1 million.  The Times called him “Of Irish parentage and formerly of the firm of Haggerty & Austin, auctioneers, and the richest man in that business.”

By the end of two decades the Bond Street neighborhood had severely changed.  No longer fashionable, its millionaire residents had forged northward.  Their fine homes with mahogany doors on silver hinges were now used as boarding houses and worse. 

In 1880 No. 26 Bond Street was a boarding house run by French-born Eugene Regard and his wife Mariette.   Along with the Regard family and the eleven Swiss boarders living in the house—most of them watch case makers—was Herman H. Wolff, a Prussian.  Unlike the hard-working watch case makers, Wolff turned out to be a scalawag.

During the first week of March that year Wolff presented himself at the home of Abiel B. Marks at No. 62 West 34^th Street.  Wolff was seeking a job on Marks’ household staff as a waiter.   Although Wolff presented a stack of references from the Reverend Dr. A. C. Morehouse and a number of respectable families he claimed to have worked for; Marks somewhat foolishly failed to check them out.

The New York Times later said that “from the man’s manner and personal appearance [Marks] became convinced that he had a jewel of a servant.”  Wolff was hired; much to his employer’s rapid regret.

On the night of March 26 while the household was asleep, Wolff filled a trunk with silverware, jewelry, wearing apparel, and books.  He lugged the trunk to Overin’s livery stable on West 39^th Street and, telling the proprietor he needed to hire a hack for Mr. Marks, had himself and the trunk taken to No. 57 Bleecker Street.  With astonishing gall, he told the stableman “to send the bill to his employer.”

Among the rare books Wolff had stolen were three volumes of Shakespeare, a volume of Milton and the Marks family Bible.  It was the last item that most distressed the millionaire, for, as was customary, it contained the Marks family genealogy. 

Wolff shaved off his whiskers to disguise himself and went into hiding.  Detectives found the Bible and the Shakespeare volumes in a Bowery pawnshop where the thief had pawned them for $5.  The Times noted that “Mr. Marks was delighted at this discovery, and, hastening over to the pawnshop, redeemed his books, and carried his much-prized Bible home in triumph.”

The shady Wolff would not remain a free man for long.  The newspaper reported that “A number of other articles were recovered by the detectives, but the dishonest waiter kept out of the way until Saturday, when he was seen in a Bowery beer saloon and arrested.”  Pawn tickets for the rest of the items were found on him.

As commerce crept into the Bond Street neighborhood, the house was converted in 1882 to include a “workshop.”   In addition to what was apparently a retail space in the basement level, rooms were leased upstairs.  On March 18, 1883 the house was the scene of the spring meeting of the National Association of General Passenger Agents of the Railways of the United States.   It was an important meeting, since negotiations were necessary to calm disputes between the various railroad lines.

The New York Times reported that Commissioner Fink “may possibly be able to satisfy the Western grumblers and prevent the rate war which some railroad men think inevitable.”

But the once-lavish rooms were the wealthy De Forest family had lived were now not simply being used as meeting rooms.  On the night of July 25, 1888 the house was raided by detectives headed by Anthony Comstock.  On the second floor a gambling house was operating.   The New York Times reported that “Theodore Brown, the reputed proprietor; William Bascome, the dealer; and James Kelly, the lookout, were captured.  They were locked up at Police Headquarters.  Six other persons found in the room were allowed to depart.  All the gaming articles found were seized.”

The neighborhood was soon the center of the fur trade and in 1888 Herman Coney ran house furrier shop in the building.    Another furrier, Edward Metcalf of No. 18 West 4^th Street, convinced an employee, William Woolsey, to rob Coney’s establishment.  Woolsey, an immigrant, had been in the country only a few weeks when he was enticed into the evil deed.   On November 6, 1888 Woolsey broke into Coney’s shop and made off with $1,000 worth of “sealskin sacques.”

Other businesses moved in to the old house within the next two years.  In 1890 another furrier, M. J. Klein & Co. was here, as well as Columbia Neckwear Co. and trimmings firm Max Blau.  Upstairs boarders still took rooms, including the widow Frances Levine.  Yet the boarders still shared the upper floors with illegal gambling houses.

In the 19^th century the term “poolroom” referred to illegal gambling parlors where horse betting was held.  Telegraphed race results were received and bets won and lost in the murky rooms.   On March 25, 1890 The Times reported that George & Co.’s poolroom on the second floor here was doubly-dishonest.

When detectives arrested William J. Williams, “a telegraph operator and ‘horse fiend,’” on the technical charge of tampering with Western Union telegraph wires, the police said “The real charge, however, is tapping the wires of George & Co.’s poolroom, 26 Bond-street, so as to manipulate race-track reports, and the Central office detectives and Capt Brogan believe that an extensive conspiracy back by plenty of brains and money has been nipped in the bud.”

A year later the poolroom was still in operation; now run by William Smith, who also found himself in front of a judge on September 10.

Meanwhile, downstairs the legitimate fur dealers continued their trade.  In 1894 C. H. Lehman manufactured and sold furs here; and by 1910 fur merchant Drucker & Holmstock Co. was doing business from the address.

At the turn of the last century, No. 23 Bond Street, across the street, still retained its residential appearance -- photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

By 1920 there were no longer boarders in the house.  Business now operated from all floors and both the basement and parlor levels had been heavily altered for commercial purposes.  The block, once tree-lined and quiet, now bustled with delivery trucks and workers.  

At some point in the 20th century the elegant parlor windows were obliterated for an industrial-looking store window -- photo by Alice Lum

Demand for small business space was such that on November 17, 1920 the agents for the property, Charles F. Noyes Company, announced that it was raising the lease amount on the building from $10,000 a year to $15,000.  The Times remarked that “This increase indicates the scarcity of space in the Lafayette Street district just south of Astor Place.”

As the garment and millinery districts overtook what had been the furrier district, the house at No. 26 Bond Street attracted small businesses like the hat shop of Paul Hendler.  The 65-year old got himself into hot water in November 1936 when he was caught selling “ash-can hats.”

Later period Greek Revival-style houses across the street were home to hat shops in the 1930s -- photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

A two-year old law prevented “the sale of second-hand and made-over hats as new.”  A printed linen tag was required to be sewn into the hat telling the consumer that it was a refurbished hat.  Unscrupulous wholesalers, however, paid “scavengers” to search trash cans to find discarded women’s hats.  The scavengers were paid one to five cents for each hat.

Hendler pleaded not guilty, insisting he had no idea that the hats he was selling were second-hand, refurbished goods.  To his possible defense, an investigator said “It developed that many retailers had been selling ‘ashcan’ hats without knowing they had been retrieved from ashheaps and garbage cans.”

By the time Paul Hendler was dealing with accusations of cheating his customers, the once-refined homes of Bond Street that still stood were in a miserable state of abuse.  No. 26, however, retained its glorious entrance, its Federal dormers and, amazingly, much of its interior detailing.

During the second half of the 20^th century the house once again saw residential tenants.  Twenty-three-year old James N. Fouratt lived here in 1967.  It was the Age of Aquarius and the idealistic Fouratt joined a group of similar-thinking youths on July 22 headed out to make a positive difference.

photo by Alice Lum

A Special to The New York Times from Newark, New Jersey reported that “About a dozen New York hippies dressed in jump suits, mini-skirts, safari hats, buttons and painted faces carried Negro children on piggy-back rides and gave out flowers and groceries today at a Negro housing project here.”

The Douglas Apartments housing project had been the site of tumult during the six days of rioting that resulted in no fewer than 21 deaths.  Now the flower children intended to spread love.  They staged a “be-in” which Newark police, already stressed, did not welcome.

James Fouratt was charged with “creating a disturbance and failing to obey a policeman while handing out leaflets.”   The New York Times reported that, like that police, not all the residents of the housing project welcomed the unrequested show of support.

“’I don’t know if its going to do us any good to have people like you on our side,’ a Negro woman told one of the hippies,” reported the newspaper.

Mailboxes and wiring insult the amazingly surviving interior details of the entrance hallway --http://streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/795910-townhouse-26-bond-st-noho-new-york

As the 21^st century dawned, the old Bond Street neighborhood experienced a renaissance of a type.  The house at No. 26 was converted to a multiple-family dwelling and sold in 2013 for $10 million.  A rare surviving relic of a refined and elegant residential period; it still retains some of the interior details that hint at its former glory when its owners landed on the list of New York’s wealthiest citizens.

A "coffin niche" where the De Forest family once placed flowers or statuary survives on the gracefully-winding staircase -- http://streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/795910-townhouse-26-bond-st-noho-new-york