The Magificent 1913 Woolworth Building -- Broadway at Park Place

print from the Library of Congress

Frank Winfield Woolworth worked on his parents’ farm in Great Bend, New York until he was 21 years old.  During his last two winters on the farm, when chores were fewer, he worked in a grocery store in town for free, telling the owner he simply wanted the experience.

When he finally left home he ventured off to Watertown, New York, where he convinced the owner of the dry goods store Augsbury & Moore to allow him to work free for three months, after which he received $3.50 a week; the exact amount he was paying for his room at a boarding house.   By 1878 the 26-year old was earning $10 a week.

It was that year that the store in Watertown where he was working installed a revolutionary marketing concept:  a five-cent counter.  Woolworth took the idea farther.

A year later he opened his first store in Utica, New York with $350 worth of goods purchased on a note endorsed by his father.  The store failed, but Woolworth was undaunted.  By 1911 there were 596 F. W. Woolworth stores and Woolworth had become an extremely wealthy man by selling goods priced at five or ten cents.

In 1910 Woolworth began planning a new headquarters building.   His initial thoughts of a typical 12- to 16-story office building gradually changed until it would become the tallest building in the world.    In the summer of 1911, for about $2.5 million, Woolworth acquired the corner lot at Broadway and Park Place and commissioned Cass Gilbert – known for monumental public buildings like the Minnesota State Capitol building—to design his new headquarters. 

Initial plans called for a 55-story building.  Even before the addition of five more stories, not everyone was pleased.  One reader of The New York Times who signed his letter simply H. P wrote “But is it wise, or even safe, for the city to longer neglect the subject of limiting the height of buildings?  Fifty-five stories now—what next?  And yet, it seems I have already heard mention of a ‘next.’”

Woolworth was fond of the London’s Gothic Houses of Parliament and this admiration probably played an important part in the style of the new skyscraper.   Referring to Woolworth’s input, Gilbert later said “Mr. Woolworth loved beautiful architecture and earnestly desired that his building should be noted for its beauty as well as for its practical convenience and substantial construction.”

Mr. Woolworth would get from Cass Gilbert both beautiful architecture and substantial construction.

To support the immense structure, estimated to weigh 136,000 tons, 69 concrete piers extended 100 feet down to bedrock.  The construction of the foundation alone cost $1.2 million.

A billboard announces the coming skyscraper as caissons are driven deep into the earth for the foundation in 1911.

On the night of April 24, 1913 President Wilson pressed a button in the White House and 80,000 electric lights in the Woolworth Building flashed on.  The building was completed.   In the 27^th-floor dining room Woolworth hosted a banquet for journalists, business moguls and politicians.   Outside, the tower was bathed in light; an early example of architectural illumination.

The six-story tower had dozens of gargoyles -- photo "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

The 60-story skyscraper, which cost Woolworth $13 million, was a marvel.  It was clad in gleaming white terra cotta, cast in elaborate Gothic shapes – finials, gargoyles, spires and intricate tracery.   Two decades later the WPA’s “New York City Guide” would say “Crisp and delicate terra-cotta surface ornament drops over the building like a veil.  All the details are Gothic, even to the tourelles that surround the peak, the finial that surmounts it, and the flying buttresses.”

The main entrance doors on Broadway are dwarfed within the enormous Gothic arch -- photo "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

The architectural details of the tower, 792 feet and one inch above the sidewalk, were over-sized so as to be visible from the street and to maintain proportions.  Edwin Cochran noted later that year “the proportions have been executed with such studious care and fidelity to detail that its enormous height is not realized from the street.”

Not all of Gilbert's details were traditionally Gothic.  Here he gives a nod to American history -- photo Library of Congress

Inside, Gilbert lavished the lobby with creamy marble quarried on the Isle of Skyros in Greece.  The Gothic curves and arches of the grand corridor rose to the glass-mosaic domed ceiling.  The glass was illuminated by concealed lights in the lacy carved marble cornice.  Gilbert playfully represented real people in the grotesques below the cornice—the architect himself was represented holding a model of the building, Woolworth has a bag of nickels, engineer Aus holds a steel beam, and rental agent Frank Hogan, building Louis Horowitz and banker Lewis Pierson were also portrayed.

The architect portrayed himself holding a model of the building in a marble grotesque -- photo Library of Congress

 Woolworth leased out much of the building, where 12,000 workers would come and go every day.  The Irving National Bank and the Broadway Trust Company occupied the first floor.  In the basement were the “Postkeller,” a restaurant with frescoed, vaulted ceilings; an enormous barber shop; a Turkish bath and swimming pool.  

In the basement was The Postkeller, where patrons dined beneath frescoed ceilings -- "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

But the Woolworth offices were dazzling.

Frank Woolworth’s private office was decorated in the Renaissance period.  A Flemish Renaissance tapestry woven around 1650 hung over a velvet-covered bench raised on a platform a step higher than the floor.  A carved stone Italian Renaissance mantelpiece filled the height of the room at one end and an elaborate coffered ceiling hung over Woolworth’s centuries-old desk.

Frank Woolworth's private office is still intact today -- photo "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

The President’s office was referred to as “The Empire Room.”  The walls were executed in various colors of marble.  Period French furniture was complemented by an enormous portrait of Napoleon.

The walls of the office of the President of the firm were of several types of marble -- "The Cathedral of Commerce" 1913

The Otis Elevator Company quickly used the building in its marketing scheme.  Ads boasted of “The marvelous vertical railways in the new Woolworth Building that are to ‘whiz’ the army of workers up with lightning speed 726 feet in the sky in absolute safety and comfort.”  In fact, safety was a major consideration of Woolworth when planning the elevators and he was personally involved.  Two of the elevators, which ran from the lobby to the 54^th floor, were the fastest elevators in the world, traveling at 700 feet per minute.

Astonishing detail went into the facade -- photo NYC-Architecture.com

A messy law suit was filed two months after the building opened.  The building managers, Broadway-Park Place Company, had given a monopoly to the Virginia Bear Water Company to supply drinking water to the tenants.  When some tenants like the Friesdedt Underpinning Company chose to buy from the Pine Hill Crystal Spring Company instead they were forbidden to use the elevators to transport the five-gallon bottles.   Office workers were forced to carry the bottles from two to thirty-seven flights of stairs.

F. W. Woolworth died on April 8, 1919, one of the wealthiest men in the country.  His obituary stated “The Woolworth fortune, which was built out of nickels and dimes, is estimated at $65,000,000.”

Because Woolworth owned the building outright, his heirs were assessed inheritance tax of $3 million on the property.  In June 1920 they obtained a mortgage in that amount—the first mortgage carried on the building—from the Prudential Life Insurance Company of Newark.  Four years later the F. W. Woolworth Company obtained ownership.

It was not until January 16, 1931 that Cass Gilbert received the gold medal of the Society of Arts and Sciences for designing the Woolworth Building.  During the awards dinner, he was recognized as “the prophet of a new and great movement in architecture.”  President of the society, artist Walter Russell said “He forever destroyed the groveling power of the horizontal line and replaced it with the spiritual uplift of the perpendicular…He was the forerunner of the new space-time, air-conscious age in which architecture took the lead.”

The WPA “New York City Guide” in 1939 would echo the sentiment.  “The Woolworth Building was a genuine contribution to the development of the American skyscraper style.  It represents one of the earliest attempts to express the steel-frame structure—a departure from the ‘immobility of mass and weight of masonry’ that characterized the classic type of building.”

Thomas E. Dewey established his offices here and, when he began his investigation into racketeering and organized crime in Manhattan, things got lively.   Dewey’s offices housed extensive files on mobsters as well as the identities of informants and witnesses.   Other office workers on the floor became accustomed to seeing police officers assigned to the hallway outside Dewey’s offices 24 hours a day.

In April 1970 the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a hearing in an attempt to designate the Woolworth Building a landmark.   The Woolworth Company’s attorney, Kenneth W. Greenawait, attacked the proposed designation saying that the landmark law was “onerous and discriminatory.”   The owner, he said, is “discriminated against, effectively deprived of rights of possession without compensation, and thus denied equal protection of the law.”

Still, in 1977 the Woolworth Company initiated a restoration program to repair the badly weathered and deteriorating terra cotta.  A detailed inspection revealed that there were no structural problems and that only the cladding needed attention.    In the course of restoration, all 4,400 windows were replaced with aluminum, energy efficient ones. 

Terra cotta elements were duplicated in cast stone and fiberglass; upwards of one-third of the original material.

A stained glass ceiling panel can be seen in the corridor just past the masterful glass mosaic dome in the lobby -- photo by PAT M IN NYC

The magnificent Woolworth Building was finally designated a New York City landmark in April 1983.  Seventy years earlier, upon the building’s completion, Edwin Cochran said of it “The Woolworth Building has been called ‘A Cathedral of Commerce’—a monument to small things, but it is even more—it is the colossal and enduring gift to civilization of a true-born, patriotic American, Frank W. Woolworth, and it stands unique in the history of great buildings through the world.”

The 1896 No. 832 Broadway -- Road Gangs, Neckties and Communists

The decorative elements of 832 Broadway bear a marked resemblance to Louis Korn's 91-93 Fifth Avenue -- photo by Alice Lum

As the 19^th century drew to a close the blocks on Broadway just above Grace Church saw dignified old mansions razed for commercial buildings.  On September 28, 1895 Jacob Hirsch purchased the two lots at 832 and 834 Broadway, only to resell them a month later “at a profit” to a builder.

By the next summer the existing structures had been demolished and the foundation for a large, speculative loft building was being excavated.  Jacob Zimmerman was the contractor.

When Zimmerman’s crew reported to work on Monday June 16, 1896, they noticed that the severe rainstorm of the night before had washed out the earthen walls and undermined the sidewalk.   Later in the morning, several workmen and three passersby were on the sidewalk when it collapsed, plummeting them all ten feet down into the job site along with a row of planking.  Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.

Despite the incident, the building was completed within a year.  Ten stories tall, it was an elaborately decorated brick and limestone structure, much in the style of architect Louis Korn.   Carved swags, urns, and classical designs embellished the pilasters, spandrels and sections between floors.  The classical treatment of the two entrance doors flanking the retail space were reflected similar framing and pediments of the two balconied windows of the fifth floor.

photo by Alice Lum

Beneath the overhanging copper cornice were five large carved torches at the tenth floor, symbols of learning and education.

Torches, often used as symbols of learning, decorate the 10th Floor - photo by Alice Lum

If the torches were added in anticipation of publishing firms moving in to the building, it was not to happen.  Among the variety of firms to lease here, most were clothing manufacturers.  One of the first, in 1897, was the Improved Elastic Truss Company, whose advertisements asked “Why will you continue to suffer when we can relieve and cure you?”

 

Bauman & Sperling, makers of cloaks, employed several hundred workers here in 1898.

By the turn of the century the tenants were somewhat more diverse.   Although, in 1907, apparel manufacturers like Lewine Brothers which made neckwear were still represented, other industries were leasing space.  Murphy & Ronan were makers of wagons, Max Kurzrok ran his real estate business here and the Decorative Plant Company, as the name suggests, manufactured artificial plants.

One of the more interesting tenants was the National Free Labor Association which had offices here for several years.  While the name suggests a labor union or Socialist organization, the association instead lobbied hard for state's use of free convict labor, especially to construct roads.

Its first publication issued from No. 832 Broadway in 1913 was entitled “Road Making by Convict Labor.”  A year later a 50-page bulletin was issued including an article by Julian Leavitt titled “Good Roads and Better Men.”   Leavitt insisted that road gangs would not only enhance the public transportation system, but would be good for the convicts.

“We have scarcely begun to realize that in our 1,400 prison houses we have stored the labor power of 100,000 men and boys, truly an army of liberation if only applied to good purpose,” he said. "I have shown elsewhere how this great mass of human energy is permitted to degenerate in the cell until it poisons not only the immediate victim, but the rest o society.”

The association’s efforts were not in vain.  The road gang was a common method of road building for decades, especially in Southern states.

Throughout the next decades the building would be home to assorted apparel manufacturers; The Big Four Manufacturing Company, Goldstein & Levy, and Ashland Textile among them.

By the time Hearn Broadway Builders, Inc. sold No. 832 Broadway in July 1949 to the Rorgan Realty Corporation the building had been combined with the 11-story building next door at No. 830 Broadway.

When Max B. Cane bought in 1956 it was already home to a Communist printing house.  New Century Publishers were here, called the “official Communist publishing house,” and publishers of The Daily Worker.   When the Internal Revenue Service seized books and manuscripts from their offices in the Spring of 1956, the Communist party sued in Federal Court for their return.

In support, another Communist organization, the “Independent Emergency Committee for a Free Press,” set up offices at No. 832 to organize fund-raising efforts.  The committee denounced the seizure as “a tyrannical and illegal act.”

It may have all been too much for Max Cane, for within a year he sold the building to a group of investors.

The New Century Publishers remained in the building into the 1960s, co-existing with garment and accessory manufacturers.

In 1982 No. 832 Broadway was converted to luxury cooperative apartments, one per floor.   Where neckties and trusses were once made and a Communist newspaper was printed, now wealthy residents enjoy 4,500 square foot living spaces.

photo by Alice Lum

The sumptuous façade of No. 832 Broadway, including the street level, has been well-preserved; part of the architectural feast along this stretch of Broadway.

A Place with Northern Light -- The 1908 Gainsborough Studios 222 Central Park South

Painters and sculptors in Manhattan at the turn of the last century faced a problem. There was little residential space available that provided sufficient northern light for them to work, or with adequate facilities to exhibit their art. Artist V. V. Sewell complained in 1903 “People have no conception of how difficult it is for one to find a suitable studio in New York.”

In order to solve the problem, at least for themselves, a group of established artists formed the Gainsborough Corporation with portrait painter August Franzen as president.  Their purpose was to build an artist’s cooperative studio building. The name came, most likely, from Franzen himself who admitted that Gainsborough’s work was a model for his own.

Included in the group were Elliott Daingerfield, vice president, well known for his dream-like landscapes; Colin Campbell Cooper, treasurer, who did portraits and landscapes; and Barron Collier, secretary, who was the lone non-artistic member and who most likely provided the financial leadership.

Central Park South was a perfect location for the intended studio. Facing the park, the artists were guaranteed that their northerly light would never be blocked by construction. The posh Plaza Hotel was completed in 1907, giving the neighborhood added prestige; and the American Fine Arts Society Building was a mere two blocks to the south.

The cooperative purchased and demolished the home of millionaire Walter E Delabarre at 222 Central Park South in 1907. The group commissioned Charles W. Buckham to design their studios. Buckham was an astute choice, the architect having innovated the concept of duplex apartment buildings.

He was given the task of designing a building appropriate to the status of well-established, successful artists while providing them with substantial light and space. Because only the Central Park façade would receive the flooding northern sunlight; the rear of the building would be reserved for rental apartments.

The Gainsborough Studios in 1909, the year after completion

Completed in 1908, the result was two duplex cooperative studios on each floor facing Central Park, and four single rental apartments to each southern floor. Because apartment buildings were restricted by law to be no more than one and a half times as high as the width of the street, the plans were filed under “hotel” to circumvent the restriction. Therefore a common kitchen and dining room were included and kitchen facilities in the apartments kept at a minimum. The artists enjoyed 18-foot ceilings, mahogany and oak woodwork, built-in cabinets with leaded glass doors and art tiled fireplaces.

Residents had use of a “ladies’ reception, package and telephone room, as well as a restaurant on the ground floor.” A central vacuum cleaner system, laundry room and storage room added to the conveniences.

It is the lavish ornamentation of the Gainsborough, however, that stands out today. A remarkable transition from Victorian to Edwardian styles, the lower levels exhibit traditional sculptural decoration while the upper floors explode in Arts and Crafts-style tilework.

Photo by Enric Archivell

Separating the first and second floors was a superb terra cotta frieze executed by sculptor Isidore Konti, a friend of both Daingerfield and Franzen. Titled “A Festival Procession of the Arts,” it depicts in classical style people from children to the elderly offering gifts to the altar of the arts. Helen W. Henderson, in 1917, described it as the “great charm of the building.”

Photo hausfitzgerald.com

Centered above the entrance was a carved painter’s palette on which a large bust of Thomas Gainsborough sat in a classical niche.

photo hausfitzgerald.com

Each of the large, two-story studio windows surrounded a Roman-style pseudo doorway filled with stone quatrefoils and fronted by small ornate, wrought iron balconies.

From the sixth story upwards, the façade bursts in a kaleidoscope of geometric, colorful glazed tiles produced at the Moravian Tile Works in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Henry Mercer, the factory's owner, devoted much of his life to researching and rediscovering the process of 18th Century German pottery and tile-making. Above, rather than a cornice which would theoretically lessen light, the building is finished with a stone corbel of shells.

The Gainsborough attracted esteemed artists and in 1912, in addition to the founding group, residents included Montague Flagg, Edward Potthast, Robert MacCameron, Frederick Crane, Content Johnson, and Albert L. Groll. That year, on August 28, a fire broke out in the Colorado Boarding and Livery Stables on 58th Street, directly to the rear. Although there was a 12-foot alley separating the buildings, the “artist tenants of the studios were awaked by the crash of glass in their rear windows, due to the heat. Women hastily slipped on opera cloaks over their night dresses and hurried to the elevators” as reported in The New York Times the next morning.

Although the building was not seriously damaged, it “was scorched.”

Over the years the Gainsborough was home to other celebrated figures such as renowned photographer Erwin Blumenfeld; portrait painter and president of the National Academ of Design, Dewitt Lockman; author Thomas Alibone Janvier and Barbara Howard, daughter of Hollywood mogul Jack Warner.

A minor scandal ensued in 1924 when sculptor Helene M. R. White was padlocked inside the studios of Consignment Arts, Inc. on the first floor by interior decorator Paul C. Leatherman and kept prisoner there for a weekend.

By the 1950’s the building’s residents tired of the Arts and Crafts décor and hired interior designer Donald Deskey to remodel the lobby and entrance. Deskey removed the decorative iron entrance doors with aluminum ones and stripped out the period detailing.  Around that time the ornamental balconies were removed.

Thirty years later, however, the corporation reversed itself and in 1981 spent $100,000 to restore the lobby and reconstruct the iron doors based on early photographs.





In 1988 under the guidance of architect and resident Tod Williams, an exterior restoration was initiated at a cost of over $1 million. New tiles were made to replace those too damaged to salvage and the Konti’s ornate frieze and the bust of Gainsborough were removed and replicated.  The window balconies were not returned.

The Gainsborough Studios was landmarked in February 1988, The Landmarks Preservation Commission calling it “an unusual building, well-adapted and suitably decorated for its specific purpose.”

The Busy Little "Traffic Building" -- No. 163 West 23rd Street

photo by Alice Lum

During the 1920s cafeterias and automats reached their height of popularity among working class New Yorkers. Secretaries and salesmen enjoyed inexpensive lunches in clean, attractive surroundings.

Wil-Low Cafeterias, Inc. ran twenty-two cafeterias in the city during this time.  A subsidiary of the organization was The Traffic Cafeteria Corporation.  The name came, most likely, as a reflection of the deliverymen and truckers whose patronage it sought.  “Traffic” during the first part of the 20^th century also referred to the trucking industry.

In 1927 the corporation hired often-forgotten architect Abraham Fisher to design a new cafeteria and loft building at 163 West 23^rd Street.  By now the area in what had been just two decades before The Ladies’ Mile—a fashionable shopping district—was a hodge-podge of commercial buildings and converted brownstones.   It was a bustling neighborhood ripe for a new lunch spot.

In designing what could have been a small, nondescript lunch room and office building Fisher outdid himself.  His resulting structure was six-stories of brown brick and terra cotta so creatively conceived and executed it demands attention.   Brick was laid out in a parquet-like diamond pattern; a large terra cotta panel announces the TRAFFIC BUILDING, flanked by terra cotta tiles with lush foliate designs; and two standing eagles perch atop the capitals of pencil-like swirling four-story columns.

photo by Alice Lum

If Art Deco was sweeping Manhattan at the time, it did not pay a visit to 163 West 23^rd Street.  It was, as the AIA Guide to New York City would describe it nearly a century later, “a tapestry of brick and terra cotta.”

Celtic-design terra cotta panels abut herring-bone brickwork -- photo by Alice Lum

One of the first short-order cooks at the Traffic Cafeteria was Chick Gum.   On the morning of April 16, 1929 he caused an uproar when a customer asked for a plate of flapjacks.  Mr. Gum poured the batter into the hot, greased frying pan and, when the time came to flip the flapjacks, he gave the skillet a quick flick of his wrist.

Outside, Police Officer George Leonard heard a loud scream and rushed into the cafeteria with his pistol drawn.  There, in the kitchen, he found Chick Gum.  One of the scalding hot pancakes, rather than flip back into the pan, had dropped into the cook’s open shirt.

The unfortunate cook was treated at Bellevue Hospital and sent home.

Intricate brickwork creates a background for slim rope-twist terra cotta columns.  Interestingly, the column sections were laid randomly; some turning right, others left -- photo by Alice Lum

The unhappy episode of the cook and the flapjack was the least of the cafeteria’s problems in 1929.   In the Spring of that year a city-wide strike by cafeteria employees threatened to put an end to the Traffic Cafeteria.  One morning in May about 15 union laborers entered the cafeteria around 11:30, just before the lunch rush hour.  The men threatened workers and prevented customers from entering.

Two marvelous, free-standing terra cotta eagles perch atop the capitals -- photo by Alice Lum

Around the same time strikers destroyed dishes and furniture in the Wil-Low Cafeteria at 245 Canal Street.   Pickets forced The Traffic Cafeteria to close its doors and the League for Industrial Rights wrote in its 1929 “Law and Labor,” that “The Traffic cafeteria has remained closed, and business in other restaurants is being carried on with difficulty and their clientele is of course much reduced.”

The League described the methods used by the group.  “The course of conduct of the strikers has been such as to indicate the danger of injury to property,” thus intimidating the cafeterias to close rather than suffer expensive damage.

Magistrate Hyman Bushel was not pleased.  “These strikers have been conducting a reign of terror in the cafeterias of the city,” he told the court.  And Magistrate Weil railed “Men of your type are a real menace to the community.  You should be deported.  You have no respect for law and order.  This condition has got to be checked.”

The strike was over before the end of the year and in March 1930 the Traffic Cafeteria, Inc. purchased its building, which it had until now been leasing.

photo by Alice Lum

There would be more problems with the unions, however.  In 1933 the mob demanded that William Lowenstein, who owned the Wil-Low chain, pay “protection” money to keep the unions at bay.   The manager of The Traffic testified four years later that he paid a mobster named Kranz $2000.  After the payment pressure on The Traffic Cafeteria from Local 110 of the Amalgamated Food Workers Union abruptly stopped.

photo by Alice Lum

Not long afterwards, however, The Traffic Cafeteria ceased operation altogether.  In June 1942 the building was leased to the Comet Express Company.   From the mid-1940s through the 1950s Standard Phono Corporation, distributors and sellers of vinyl records, was here.

Today, appropriately, the first floor is home to a diner.  Unfortunately the street level has been completely obliterated; modernized with tacky stone tiles where once were decorative terra cotta and brick.  But above this, Abraham Fisher’s intricate design is wonderfully preserved.  A marvelous little building with so much detail that the passerby has to pause to soak it all in.

many thanks to reader Simone for requesting this post.

A Palace for Horses -- The Gould Carriage House 213 West 58th Street

Photo Unity Center New York

When Jay Gould died in 1892 he left his four children between $65 and $70 million.

The Gould heirs reacted to the sudden flood of cash differently. Anna spent lavishly and married, successively Count Boniface de Castellane and the Duc de Talleyrand. Frank Jay loved gambling and was twice divorced. George Jay had three children with Guinevere Sinclair before marrying her.

Helen Miller Gould, however, was different.

Trained in finance by her father, she attended the New York University School of Law. While her siblings frolicked the summers away in Newport, she was content to spend quiet time at Lyndhurst, Jay Gould’s magnificent Gothic Revival estate in Tarrytown-on-Hudson. Embarrassed by her father’s cut-throat reputation, Helen spent the rest of her life supporting various charities.

Helen remained in the Gould mansion on 5th Avenue at 47th Street while her siblings moved on. As time passed, though, there was the problem of adequate accommodations for her horses and carriages.

On November 13, 1901 Helen M. Gould purchased for $107,500 the four-story brownstone residence of Lambert Suydam at 212 West 59th Street. The property extended south to 58th Street where the Suydam’s private stable was located, in line with the stables of other neighboring millionaires. Curious about the sale, The New York Times sent a reporter to the Fifth Avenue house for more information.

The Gould mansion -- 5th Avenue at 47th Street

“When inquiry was made at Miss Gould’s residence last evening she sent word that she did not care to say anything in regard to the purchase,” reported the Times.

It would not be long before Helen Gould’s intentions were obvious. The Suydam stable was demolished to make way for her own private carriage house; one fit for royalty.

Designed by York & Sawyer the grand brick and limestone stable was based on King Henry IV’s 17th Century Place des Vosges in Paris. Completed in 1903, the four levels of the French Renaissance structure housed the Gould horses and carriages, hay and feed, as well as apartments for the coachman and groom.

The great, soaring chimneys on either end, the attenuated, hipped slate roof and the ornate iron-railed balcony on over the arched entranceway joined to create a palatial structure for draft animals. Sawyer added a near-whimsical touch in the huge, carved limestone tethering rings on either side of the entrance.

Helen Gould finally married in 1913 at the age of 45. Time Magazine said of her “she was plain, plump, not much concerned with ‘Society’ – she dedicated herself to good works while her brothers and sister went out in the world.” She died in 1938, The New York Times calling her “the best loved woman in the country.”

Helen Miller Gould

The Gould carriage house is now the headquarters of The Unity Center New York, which describes itself as a “worldwide Spiritual Movement dedicated to helping people discover and express their divine potential.”

The regal Parisian-style stable was designated a New York City landmark on August 29, 1989.

A 1904 Horse and Carriage Auction House -- Nos. 126-128 E. 13th Street

photo by Alice Lum

By 1903 the Van Tassell & Kearney Auction Mart had established itself as one of the premier houses in New York City for the sale of carriages as well as horses. That year an ad appearing in the New York Tribune boasted “Finest display in New York of Carriages of the highest grade and most fashionable designs. Broughams, omnibuses, victorias, station wagons, wagonetts, traps.”

To the 21st century mind, Victorian horse-drawn transportation were “carriages.” But just as we differentiate among SUV’s, sedans, convertibles, sports cards and minibuses, the turn of the century buyer purchased vehicles specific to his needs.

Van Tassell & Kearney sold various vehicles including "gooch wagons," tub carts," and "governess carts."

Van Tassell & Kearney operated from buildings at Nos. 130-132 East 13th Street and Nos. 125 to 129 East 12th Street. In February 1903 two four-story brick buildings at Nos. 126 and 128 East 13th Street became available at auction and were purchased by John J. Sullivan. The cleared lot would become an adjoining showroom and auction space for Van Tassell & Kearney’s Auction Mart.

Completed in 1904, the masculine, utilitarian structure was designed by the prominent architectural firm of Jardine, Kent, and Jardine. Constructed of red brick and contrasting limestone, it was a brawny mass with Beaux Arts splashes – the visual focus being a large central arched window embellished with a carved cartouche.

Carved, decorative stonework added interest to the utilitarian structure -- photo by Alice Lum

Van Tassell & Kearney’s not only sold to New York’s most elite – among them buyers with names like Belmont, Vanderbilt and Mackay – but they were trusted by the wealthy to sell their own stock.

In 1904 the book “Prominent and Progressive Americans” spoke of retired Dr. W. E. Woodend. “Dr. Woodend and his wife are popular members of society, and have been prominent in many of the horse shows which have come to be leading social functions. They maintain a fine stable of horses…In the New York Horse Show of 1903 their horses were conspicuous prize-winners, and in the course of the show captured no fewer than twenty ribbons.”

On March 13, 1906 some of Dr. Woodend’s geldings were among the 24 horses auctioned at Van Tassell & Kearney’s; the total sale amounting to $11,250 – more than a quarter million dollars today.

The architects created sunburst effects with creative brickwork around the oval windows -- photo by Alice Lum

A year later The New York Tribune reported that “Mrs. John Gerken, always one of the most prominent figures at the Horse Show, has decided to give up nearly her entire stable. Her failure to carry off as many awards as usual at the last horse show, she says, has nothing to do with her determination. Her only object, she says, is to get rid of the trouble and annoyance of a big stable. She will maintain only eight show horses. The rest will be sold on May 20 by Van Tassell & Kearney.”

That year was a good one for the firm.  In October the New York Herald mentioned “At Van Tasell & Kearney’s regular semi-weekly auction sale on Tuesday a cabriolet brought $760 and a brougham brought $825. These are record prices for second-hand carriages sold this season and are almost up to the standard of values current when automobiles were unknown. Not less significant than the prices were the number and character of the bidders who came to buy these and other carriages in the last week’s sales.”

The reporter said that Mr. Kearney was very pleased and “it looked quite like old times.” It appeared to the auctioneer that the fad of the automobile was fading and “the carriage horse is coming back.”

Van Tassell & Kearney custom-built this trap for "Mr. LaSalla."  The 500-lb. vehicle could be drawn either by one or two horses -- The Rider and Driver 1911

Although the era of the carriage horse would not come back, it would be a while before it disappeared entirely. In 1911 The Rider and Driver magazine marveled at the Van Tassell & Kearney’s operations. “Few people are aware of the magnitude of their premises and the extent of business they are doing with our wealthiest and most critical class of carriage buyers in town and country. Their patrons include members of the Cabinet and foreign ministers, prominent citizens, city officials; and at all horse shows, floral parades and summer resorts are to be seen every description of traps from Van Tassell & Kearney’s.”

In 1911 Van Tassell & Kearney introduced the "Horse Show Dog Cart," a small trap-type carriage --The Rider and Driver 1911 

The magazine described in detail the assembly of buildings, with underground space that ran from 13th to 12th Streets. “The basement is fitted up for accommodating one hundred and fifty horses, where they are stabled in well-ventilated stalls.”

The firm steadfastly refused to accept the invasion of the automobile into the staid tradition of horse-drawn buggies and carriages. On July 28, 1918, as more and more motorcars chugged along the streets and avenues of New York, a Van Tassell & Kearney ad in the New York Tribune insisted “The report that horses and carriages are coming back to their own in Newport is positively founded on fact.”

The prediction, of course, was not to be and before long the venerable auction house that refused to adapt to change was no more.

The cavernous building was used a a machinery shop in the decades leading to World War II. Then on December 28, 1941 the Delehanty Institute announced it would be using the building as instructional space. With most of the able-bodied men off fighting in the Pacific and Europe, the institute opened “a branch in machine shop practice for women” here. The former auction space was used for teaching women “assembly and inspection work, the reading of blueprints, and various mechanical aspects needed in defense industries.”

In 1978 artist Frank Stella took over the building, using it as his studio for 27 years. It was from here that the influential artist added free-standing sculpture to his painting and print-making art. In 2005 the building was sold to Isaac Mishan for $10 million. Mishan planned to demolish the structure to replace it with a seven-story sleek condo building.

A proposed 7-story condo was slated to replace the old auction mart -- sketch Gothamist.com

Preservationists rushed in. By September 3, 2006 the developer had construction permits in hand, but demolition permits had not be issued. At an emergency meeting of the Landmarks Preservation Commission the next day, politicians including State Senator Tom Duane, Assemblywoman Deborah Glick and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer pleaded to save the building. Local residents joined representatives from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the Municipal Arts Society, and the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America in the appeal.

During the meeting Johnathon Hayes who lived in the neighborhood asserted “The space cries out for adaptive reuse…We cannot live by luxury condominiums alone.”

Although to this day the Landmarks Preservation Commission has not designated the structure, the owners were swayed. They voluntarily allowed it to be listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places, giving up the right to alter the exterior or build on it in anyway inconsistent with historic preservation guidelines. In exchange they received a substantial tax write-off.

In 2007 the Peridance Center leased the building and began a nearly three-year renovation. When opened in December 2009, it housed six roomy climate-controlled, soundproof dance studios, a 200-seat theater for the Peridance Contemporary Dance Company, a café and boutique.

The handsome old auction house where Belmonts and Vanderbilts shopped for show horses is a faultless example of creative recycling of historic properties.

The Houses that Time and Change Passed by -- Nos. 120 and 122 East 92nd Street

North of the established city, surrounded mostly by farm land, Adam C. Flanagan hired Albor Howell to build his three-story wooden house at what would become 122 East 92nd Street. Howell was a carpenter and builder by trade and he produced for Flanagan a delightful Italianate-style home.

Openwork columns supported the ample front porch where the cooling summer breezes would be enjoyed. Floor-to-ceiling parlor windows could be opened behind the louvered shutters to allow the night air to circulate. Slightly arched second and third story windows added to the visual appeal under a deeply overhanging cornice.

Flanagan lived in his modest and respectable frame house for a decade before the neighborhood began building up. In 1870 two homes appeared directly across the street, and in 1871 the house next door, at No. 120, was erected.

No. 120 was also a frame building, snuggled directly up against the Flanagan house. Three wooden stories sat on a high, brick basement level, and were accessed by a steep wooden staircase. With porch columns nearly matching its next door neighbor, the new house was a perfect compliment.

Like the older home, too, No. 120 had a double entrance door to the right, with two floor-to-ceiling French doors in the parlor. A cast iron fence protected the small front yards of both properties. Adam Flanagan’s new neighbor would be one of the last frame houses in Manhattan; the building law of 1877 would forbid the construction of wooden buildings.

By 1894 No. 120 was owned by Anton Hoffman, a cooper. That was the year that the entire block of residents took issue with the Salvation Army at 107 East 92nd Street, complaining about the noise of the cymbals and drums.  A petition was signed that asserted “It disturbs our rest Sundays and is using up our nerves. One of our neighbors is suffering from nervous prostration and it is simply preventing his recovery.”

Hoffman chimed in, saying that when, on the day of his daughter’s death the Salvation Army was asked “not to parade or to beat drums or cymbals until after the funeral, the reply was: ‘We have a permit to parade, and we are going to do it. Forward march.’”

The Hoffmans lived at No. 120 East 92nd Street for most of the next century; a total of 70 years. During that time there were no changes made to the structure. Similarly, No. 122 managed to ignore the 20th Century, with little alteration until renovations were made in 2005 and a set-back roof addition was added.

Both of the remarkable Victorian survivors were added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 29, 1882. In 1996 No. 120 sold for $4.2 million and was sold again in 2010.

The two little wooden houses create a picturesque and enchanting ensemble amidst the brick and steel of Uptown Manhattan.  The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission said that No. 120 "...comes as a delightful surprise.  Time and change have passed it by, as well as the very similar frame house that adjoins it to the east."

The Lost 1856 House of Mansions - Nos. 487 to 491 Fifth Avenue

George Higgins advertised "moderate terms" for his eleven unified residences in 1856 -- NYPL Collection

The idea of a row of houses pretending to be one, unified structure was not new in 1856.  The British upper class had been living in such elegant homes like the Royal Crescent in Bath since the Regency Period.  In New York Seth Green had erected the elegant, marble LaGrange Terrace on Lafayette Place in 1833.

But carpet manufacturer George Higgins’ project would be somewhat different.

The highest point in Manhattan in 1855 was Murray Hill, named after the Murray family.  The Murrays were wealthy Quaker merchants and family head Robert Murray had erected a manor house in the area in the mid-18^th century.  The estate stretched approximately from what would become 33^rd to 39^th Street and from Lexington Avenue to nearly Fifth Avenue.

Although Fifth Avenue was already laid out by the time Higgins purchased the land between 41^st and 42^nd Streets and the hulking Murray Hill distributing reservoir had been erected directly across the street more than a decade earlier; the area was still mostly undeveloped and essentially rural.

But the speculative Higgins envisioned a group of eleven fashionable homes that would lure potential buyers to an area yet untested for residential use, yet abounding with clean air and delightful views.  He commissioned the well-known architect Andrew Jackson Davis to design the homes. 

Davis had made his mark designing structures in historic revival styles and just a decade earlier had produced a row of 36 gracious Greek Revival mansions on 23^rd Street for Clement Moore which, too, were disguised as a single edifice.    The eleven grand residences were completed in 1856.   Melding into a castle-like whole, they featured crenelated towers, lancet windows, and two-story oriel windows with Gothic tracery.

A corner of the massive Egyptian Revival Murray Hill Reservoir can be seen across Fifth avenue -- NYPL Collection

 "The pile is altogether unique in its character and plan," said Higgins' advertisement,  "the eleven dwellings being combined as in one palace, or massive edifice, thereby exhibiting a unity in mass not before attempted, though often desired by critics."

The homes sat back from the sidewalk allowing for ample lawns and the rooms were filled with an unusual amount of daylight for the time.    The views from the upper story windows looked across the reservoir "of Oriental magnificence" and the southerly views took in the whole of Manhattan.  Interior staircases were lit by skylights and a rear alley provided servants' access.

Higgins marketed his houses as “differing in size, price and amount of accommodation”  Jackson designed each with a unique exterior elevation and individual floor plans from twelve to eighteen rooms to ensure individuality for potential Victorian homeowners. 

He promoted the “durable fire-brick” and “cheerful tint of color and variegated architecture” and promised the most fastidious home-seeker would be satisfied.  The views from the windows, he insisted, were “unrivaled.”  He called his project “The House of Mansions.” 

Atop the massive Egyptian Revival Murray Hill Reservoir was a promenade which became etremely popular for Sunday strolls.  Directly behind the reservoir, since 1853, stood the Crystal Palace erected for the World’s Fair.  The Crystal Palace still attracted thousands of New Yorkers and tourists alike every day.  So despite its somewhat remote location, the House of Mansions seemed, at least to George Higgins, to be a profitable idea.

It wasn’t.

Higgins was just a few years too early in developing his block of Fifth Avenue.  Within twenty years the mansions of New York’s wealthiest citizens – the Vanderbilts and Astors among them—would be rising along this stretch of the avenue.  But for now it was too far north.

The House of Mansions, also referred to as The Spanish Row, was a failure.  Two years after its completion there was talk of converting it into a hotel; but the idea never came to fruition.  Instead it was purchased by the Rutgers Female Institute as its new campus in June of 1860.  The Institute was the first institution of higher learning for women in the city.

It was first opened in 1839 on Madison Street, on the former estate of Colonel Henry Rutgers, a Revolutionary War officer.   After two decades of instructing well-heeled young women in “the belles-lettres, history, mathematics and philosophy,” the institute needed larger accommodations.

The House of Mansions was purchased for $60,000—a little over $1.5 million by today’s standards.  The eleven houses were renovated for the institute’s needs  “They design,” reported The New York Times, “making extensive additions in the rear of the buildings fronting on the avenue, for the purposes of a chapel, laboratory, school-rooms, painting-gallery, and observatory.”  The newspaper mentioned that the observatory “will overlook the entire island” and “two thousand dollars have already been donated for the purchase of a telescope.”  Two thousand volumes were transported from the Madison Street facility to the new library.

photo NYPL Collection

Humphrey Phelps, in his “Phelps’ Strangers and Citizens’ Guide to New York City,” praised the school.  “It has a fine library, selected with great care and excellent philosophical apparatus for illustrating the subjects of astronomy, chemistry, and other branches of science.  Its course of instruction embraces history, general philosophy, mathematics, and belles letters, by which young ladies are thoroughly prepared for the pursuit of general knowledge, for the duties of teachers, and for that moral and intellectual power so necessary to be possessed by the mothers of our republic.”

There were those, whoever, who felt that the mothers of our republic had no place in school but should, instead, be home learning to sew, cook and clean.  President of the Institute, Heney M. Pierce, was often forced to defend the idea of a school for women.  “I am fully persuaded that the time is not far distant,” he said during commencement exercises in 1867, “when it will be thought almost incredible that the question of the inferiority of woman should ever had been seriously debated.”

“If,” Pierce argued, “it is best for the young man that by a liberal education, his memory should be strengthened, his reasoning powers disciplined, his judgment matured, his mind enlarged—why is it not best for the young woman also?”

By October 24, 1860 the new space was ready and dedication ceremonies were held in the chapel.  “The chapel, together with the lobbies and adjacent rooms, was crowded to excess, the larger portion of the audience being ladies,” reported The Times.  The new facility opened with 200 registered students.

In 1861 DeBow’s Review listed the costs to the students.  For $300 per year they received “Board, including fuel, lights, and washing, and instruction in English branches.”  The tuition and board were payable quarterly in advance.   Extra courses were available for additional fees.  French, German, Italian or Latin would cost $5.00.  Oil Painting and Pastel lessons were $10.00.  For $15 to $35 a budding musician received piano lessons and an additional $15 to $20 would provide Guitar instruction.

Graduation exercises were always extravagant affairs and on June 8, 1866 The Times reported that “The young lady pupils of the Institute were dressed with uniform beauty and simplicity in dresses of snow white illusion, wreathed with emerald tulle, and wearing coronals of vernal leaves, intertwined with flowers.”   The reporter noted that the room was “crowded some time before the exercises …with the elite of Fifth-avenue and that august neighborhood.”

By the last quarter of the 19th century Fifth Avenue was no longer pastures and open fields -- New York Historical Society

A year later detractors of the institution and female education as a whole were shocked when the State Legislature conferred “the powers and privileges of a college” upon Rutgers.    The name was changed to Rutgers Female College and, immediately, plans were made to enhance and enlarge the programs.  Donations amounting to $50,000 poured in for the addition of, among other things, a full Art Department.

The new status resulted in a remarkably quick growth and the Fifth Avenue building was suddenly too small.   Only a year later the “Documents of the Senate of the State of New York” noted that “These accommodations, however, are too limited for the wants of the college under its new organization, and a new and more ample location is very desirable.

"In view of the constant upward growth of the city, also, and of the fact that the present patronage of the college is largely in the upper portion of the city, and even towards Harlem, etc., it has been deemed advisable to prepare decidedly for a removal, in the course of a few years, to some place where ample buildings may be erected, surrounded by a certain amount of grounds.”

The “course of a few years” came in June 1870 when Californian James P. Pierce, the brother of President Franklin Pierce, purchased the school property for $117,000.  Pierce held the property for only three years before turning it over to Jacob B. Tallman for $120,000.  Tallman was a trustee of the college and his involvement with the property would later result in the school suing him unsuccessfully.

By February, 1882 when Tallman sold the old House of Mansions to August Pottier for $180,000 Fifth Avenue had drastically changed.   The once-pastoral area George Higgins chose for his eleven unique homes had become the most fashionable residential neighborhood in the city and, now, was seeing the encroachment of commercial buildings. 

The French-born Pottier had established the Pottier & Stymus Manufacturing Company in 1855.  In August 1883 he obtained a $200,000 advance on the property which he used to demolish the buildings to erect what The Times would call “the present fine building thereupon” for his firm.

John Donoghue, in his 1977 “Alexander Jackson Davis, Romantic Architect, 1803-1893” was less congratulatory about the loss of the unique and charming House of Mansions, saying  “it was destroyed to make way for the ubiquitous, featureless office buildings and stores that line Fifth Avenue today.”

The Players -- No. 16 Gramercy Park

The Players in 1905

A year before the end of the Civil War, Major General Robert B. Potter stopped at his 1847 Gothic Revival brownstone residence at No. 16 Gramercy Park. There he kissed his wife good-bye before heading south in command of the 2nd Division of the 9th Army Corps.

Potter was the son of the Bishop of Philadelphia, Alonzo Potter. His brother, Henry C. Potter, would become Episcopal Bishop of New York, one of the city’s most socially prominent figures of 19th Century. Theirs was a wealthy and esteemed family with a distinguished lineage and his dignified mansion on Gramercy Park reflected his social station.

On April 2 the next year, Major General Potter was shot through the body during an assault on the rebel lines at Petersburg. He was transported back to New York where he recuperated in his Gramercy Park home.  When General Potter moved to England for a period of four years in 1869, his brother, the Honorable Clarkson Nott Potter took up residence. Clarkson Potter was a lawyer, a judge, a civil engineer, US Representative from New York State from 1869 to 1875 and President of the American Bar Association from 1881 to 1882.

It was in the Gramercy Park house that Clarkson N. Potter diedcat the age of 58 on January 23, 1882.  He willed the house to his wife, Virginia Mitchell Potter, who stayed on in the house for another six years, surrounded by neighbors with respected names like Samuel Tilden and Stuyvesant Fish.

In the meantime renowned Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth was making plans. Booth, who also owned and ran the grand marble Booth’s Theatre on 23rd Street at 6th Avenue, had suffered severe dishonor and embarrassment with his brother’s assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The actor sought an outlet by which members of the theatre and other arts could convene to discuss the art.

Those in the acting profession were offered charity and shelter when times were hard, but they were never treated as equals among the club set. Booth established The Players, bringing together actors, managers, writers and others for the first time. Now he needed a clubhouse.

He gave the task of finding the appropriate venue to the club’s secretary, William Bispham. Accordingly, Bispham chose the Potter House. Booth purchased the house from Virginia Potter for $75,000, then had Stanford White, a Players member, renovate it as a club.

photo museumplanet.com

White added a two-story loggia to the front and moved the entrance door to the street level, and to the side. Ornate, wrought iron gas lamps illuminated the entrance. Entering the large vestibule, one could descend to the lower level where a bar, billiard room and kitchens were housed. Up a short flight of steps from street level was The Great Hall with large pillars and a grand marble fireplace.

Players entrance hall 1899

Fronting the park was the parlor and to the south was the wood-paneled dining room. The second floor housed the library, filled with theatrical memorabilia donated by Booth and other members. Edwin Booth retained the third floor as his apartments. He had the fireplace from his home in Boston installed here. A single framed photograph of his brother was the one remembrance he kept of him.

The Players Library - 1899

Above, on the fourth floor, were sleeping rooms for members.

The New York Times was tepid in its assessment of White’s changes. The “curious construction of the entrance way deprives it of an imposing effect. A heavy balcony juts out on a line with the first story. The entrance is in the basement, through a door in the shadow of this balcony pierced at the extreme east end of the house.

photo museumplanet.com

“At first glance from a distance the establishment looks more like a Turkish bath than the abiding place of a club of artists,” said the newspaper

The Times then relented, considering the practical reasons for the positioning of the entrance. “But seen near at hand, the elegance and solidity of the entrance strike you, and as soon as you enter you feel inclined to accept Mr. Stanford White’s odd doorway because its utility is at once apparent.”

At the first meeting of the club in its new home on New Year’s Eve 1881, Edwin Booth explained his goals for the house. He wanted it to be one “wherein I hope that we for many years, and our legitimate successors for a thousand generations may assemble for friendly intercourse and intellectual recreation.

“Frequent intercourse with gentlemen of other arts and professions who love the stage and appreciate the value of the drama as an aid to intellectual culture must inspire the humblest player with a reverence for his vocation as one among the first of ‘fine arts,’ which too many regard as merely a means to the gratification of vanity and selfishness. Such is the object of this club.”

The Players (the group has never used the word “Club” in its name) continues as a refuge for those involved in the theatrical business. The membership reads like a history of American theatre: Mark Twain, Lionel Barrymore, Eugene O’Neill, James Cagney, Eli Wallach, Alfred Lunt and Edward Albee among the hundreds of celebrities. When the club decided to admit women, Helen Hayes was its first female member, followed by the likes of Carol Burnett, Angela Lansbury, Rue McClanahan and Judy Collins.

Outside the gas lights still burn; among the handful of surviving gas lamps in the city. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1962, the description given by The New York Times on January 1, 1882 rings true today: “The impression, indeed, that the whole house makes upon one at the first visit is one of solid comfort.”