The 1898 Sohmer Piano Co. Building -- 170 Fifth Avenue

During the last decade of the 19th Century Henry Corn was busy developing lower Fifth Avenue. From 14th Street to 23rd Street, as the brownstone mansions that lined the avenue fell one by one, Corn erected one office and loft building after another.

Until 1897 a four-story stone-fronted house sat on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 22nd Street. As wealthy residents moved uptown, it became the home of Knoedler’s Art Gallery where well-to-do New Yorkers shopped for paintings and objects d’art.

Corn obtained the property and commissioned Robert Maynicke to design a 12-story store and loft building on the site. Maynicke was a favorite of the developer and designed several structures for him.

The resulting building, completed in 1898, was no wider than the brownstone house it replaced, 29 feet, but extended back on 22nd Street 120 feet. It was a long sliver of a structure that, if not handled expertly, could have produced an awkward design.

Anything but awkward, it was a striking work. A two-story base of rusticated pilasters would accommodate retail store space. Above a stone cornice the building rose eight stories to a bracketed cornice. Renaissance-inspired pediments capped windows on three floors, wrapping the corners.

Above the tenth-story cornice on 22nd Street rose a slate mansard roof, punctuated by robust dormers. On the Fifth Avenue side, the building was crowned by two eight-sided drums supporting an octagonal dome; an eye-catching culmination of a dignified addition to lower Fifth Avenue.

Free-standing Corinthian columns surround the top-most drum under the dome, while neo-Baroque details decorate the lower section -- photo Beyond My Ken

Nearly a century later in his “The American Skyscraper, 1850-1940: A Celebration of Height,” architectural historian Joseph J. Korom would call it “a delicate creation” and a “petite lady wearing white brick and limestone.”

The ground floor space was leased by the Sohmer Piano Company for its showroom and offices. The innovative company was responsible for the first modern baby grand piano and led the pack in marketing player pianos. The well-respected instruments were preferred by musicians like Irving Berlin and Victor Herbert.

Other tenants included publishing firms such at Toilettes Publishing in 1900, a monthly fashion magazine, and the Colonial Press in 1903. Esteemed architects Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson as well as Robert D. Kohn had their offices here and various other businesses leased space: antiques dealers Manxl, Joyant & Co., dentist Edward L. Goodell and the United States Street Cleaning Company.

In July 1909 Sohmer & Co. moved north to Henry Corn’s building at 315 Fifth Avenue, signing a 10-year lease for the store and basement at $25,000 a year.

The magnificent building escaped the architectural abuse many of its neighbors endured throughout the 20th Century. It retained its small, marble-paneled lobby and detailing. Here, until 1960, were the offices of the American Civil Liberties Union.

By the end of the century the tall wooden flagpole on the cupola was replaced with one of aluminum and in 1995 2,700 sheets of 23.5-caret gold were hand applied to the dome – each sheet about the size of a playing card.

The building was converted to residential use in 1999 – one apartment per floor above the second story and in 2005 Bone/Levine Architects did a full restoration of the façade.

Philanthropist Gregory C. Carr purchased the penthouse in 2007 for $7.1 million--an astonishing space in the two-story cupola with 360-degree views and ten-foot high windows. Four years later it was listed for $17 million. Other noted tenants included Washington lobbyists Tony and Heather Pedesta.

Workers were once again busy maintaining the cupola in June 2011 -- photo by Alice Lum

Robert Maynicke’s masterful use of a long, narrow site caused the AIA Guide to New York City to recommend that “Hip young architects should see this for themselves and take notes.”

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

photo corenyc.com

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the restored three-story dome - photo by Alan Schindler

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

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

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

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

The Asch Building and the March 25, 1911 Triangle Waist Company Tragedy

The Asch (Brown) Building today.  Scores of young women flung themselves from the cornice under the arched windows of the 10th floor. - photo by Robert Guffey

Early on the morning of Saturday, March 25, 1911 Mary Herman pulled on her coat, shut the door behind her, and started off to work at the Triangle Waist Factory near Washington Square. Mary would not return home that evening.

The building to which Mary headed was the Asch Building, completed in January 1901. Built by furrier Joseph J. Asch with Ole Olsen, it was intended to be the latest in fire-proof design with an iron and steel framework clad in non-combustible terra-cotta. At only 135 feet high, fire laws allowed wooden floors and window frames. Although sprinklers were not required by law, plans did call for a fire alarm system, fire hoses on all floors, two staircases per floor and an iron fire escape clinging to the exterior wall of the light court.

Further fire precautions were added by the Buildings Department which rejected the initial plans, calling for an additional set of fire stairs and complaining that the rear fire escape “must lead to something more substantial than a skylight.”

The architect, John Woolley, however, argued against the additional staircase. Because the floors were all open, being loft manufacturing spaces, and the planned stairs were far from each other, he reasoned that the exterior fire escape counted as a third staircase. The Building Department accepted his argument.

The finished loft building was attractive in ecru-colored brick and terra-cotta. Designed in the latest Renaissance Revival style, it was embellished with ornate terra-cotta panels and wreaths. The tenth floor stood out with a series of arched windows lining up beneath a deeply-overhanging cornice.

The Triangle Waist Company – often referred to as the Triangle Shirtwaist Company – set up its factory in the top three floors of the Asch Building at Nos. 23-29 Washington Place. Here, aside from the offices on the 10th Floor, young women mostly in their teens and early 20s bent their backs over sewing machines constructing shirtwaist blouses – the high-necked, tailored garments which were the height of fashion.

The girls were poorly paid, conditions were miserable and work was hard. When the International Ladies Garment Workers Union struck in 1909, Triangle retaliated by firing 150 sympathizers. From then on owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris locked the girls in, kept the light court windows shuttered and ruled the sewing floor by fear. Sewing girls told of raising their eyes from their machines only when they were certain they would not be caught. Speaking was forbidden and restroom breaks were closely monitored. The women were all searched upon leaving the building at quiting time.  Anyone wishing to work for Blanck and Harris was required to provide her own needles and thread.

Mary Herman was working on the 9th Floor that Saturday. The girls would all be going home in ten minutes – at 4:45 pm. There was unspoken relief in the room.

Meanwhile, downstairs on the 8th Floor a pile of fabric somehow caught fire on a table. Paper patterns hanging above quickly ignited and the blaze grew. When a floor manager rushed to the fire hose in the hall, the rotten hose crumbled. The bookkeeper, Mary Loventhal, called the offices on the top floor and warned of the fire. No one thought to notify the 9th Floor where Mary Herman was working.

Most of the panicked women on the 8th Floor rushed to the elevator and stairs and escaped; however others, unable to make it to the stairs or wedge into the crowded elevators jumped to their deaths.

The remains of the 9th Floor where Mary Herman worked -- photo NYPL Collection

With the bookkeeper’s alarm from the 8th Floor, those on the top floor dashed to the stairways and all but one survived.

Meanwhile, on the 9th Floor business went on as usual. When the closing bell clanged the girls accepted their pay envelopes and headed for the coatroom. Suddenly the fire reached the floor. As the room filled with smoke, panicked girls fell over tables and machinery. As workers crammed into the stairways, a barrel of machine oil near one set of stairs suddenly exploded, blocking that exit. Mary Herman was seen rushing to a door which, to her terror, was locked.

Lillian Wilner fought with the iron shutters on a light court window, finally prying it open and desperate women packed onto the 17-inch wide iron fire escape. To their utter dismay the drop ladder at the bottom had never been installed and they were trapped on the metal escape.

As more and more women crammed onto the fire escape their combined weight and the heat of the fire caused it to collapse. The workers plunged to the pavement of the light court.

The crumpled light-court fire escape that plummeted scores of workers to their deaths -- NYPL Collection

As other women were jammed into the slowly-descending elevators, workers jumped into the elevator shafts, landing on top of the cabs. Others tried to slide down the elevator cables.

The Fire Department arrived but, according to The New York Times, the fire engines had difficulty getting near the building due to the number of bodies scattered about the sidewalk and street. “While more bodies crashed down among them they worked with desperation to run their ladders into position and spread their fire nets,” reported the newspaper.

Emergency workers examine heaped bodies on the pavement -- photo Jewish Journal

Life nets broke apart with the force of bodies falling from the upper stories and when the fire ladders were extended, they were too short to reach the floors where victims were trapped. Police Captain Dominick Henry recalled “a scene I hope I never see again. Dozens of girls were hanging from the ledges. Others, their dresses on fire, were leaping from the windows.”

It was all over within 30 minutes. Mary Herman never went home that evening. Neither did 145 other shirtwaist workers. A wave of horror accompanied the story as it swept across the nation, fostering the beginnings of strengthened fire codes, better work conditions and stronger labor unions.

Days later most of the bodies were still unidentified, burned or disfigured beyond recognition. Finally on March 31, Mayor Gaynor decided that the city would bury the final 14 unidentified victims in a lot in Evergreen Cemetery in East New York.  Five days later over 80,000 mourners filed up Fifth Avenue in a procession sponsored by the WTUL and Local 25 for the unknown victims. Hundreds of thousands of workers walked away from their jobs that afternoon to view the procession.

Blanck and Harris were indicted for manslaughter in the death of Mary Herman on April 11 for locking the factory door in violation of New York State labor laws. The jury, however, found that proving the owners knew about the locked door was impossible and the pair was acquitted. Blanck and Harris received $200,000 from their insurance claim for fire damages. Twenty-three families each received a $75 settlement from Joseph J. Asch for the lost lives.

Despite the overwhelming tragedy and loss of life, the Asch Building was actually little-damaged. The terra-cotta cladding and iron and steel framework withstood the heat and flames as the designer intended. Joseph Asch had architects Maynicke & Franke correct logistical defects including adding a new fire escape, removing the iron shutters, and constructing two large water tanks on the roof. In 1912 a modern sprinkler system was installed. After the restoration and renovations it was renamed the Greenwich Building and continued its use as a manufacturing loft.

New York University rented the 8th floor, where the fire had started, in 1915. A year later plans were announced to install the library and classrooms here. In 1918 the school took over the 9th floor and a year later expanded to the 10th – now inhabiting the three floors formerly home to the Triangle Waist Company.

By the 1920s the university had taken over the entire building. German-born philanthropist Frederick Brown purchased the structure and, on February 28, 1929, signed it over to New York University. The school renamed the building The Brown Building.

Every year, on March 25, firefighters, city officials, union leaders and fashion industry employees hold a ceremony at the Brown Building to commemorate the tragedy of March 25, 1911. A fire ladder is hoisted to the sixth floor – the extent that the ladders reached that day, too short to help those dying above – and a fire bell tolls once for each of the 146 lives lost.

The 1898 Germania Bank Building - a 72-Room Private Home

The graffiti-covered Germania Bank building appears abandoned -- it isn't -- photo by Jim Henderson

Hundreds of pedestrians pass the old Germania Bank buildling on the Bowery at Spring Street every day.  Few, if any of them, have the slightest notion that it is not abandoned and forgotten.  Neither, it turns out, is the case.

In the period following the Civil War the area east of the Bowery filled with German immigrants, earning the neighborhood the nickname Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany. By the 1880s there were more than 250,000 German-speaking residents and the Bowery was lined with restaurants and beer or music halls.

In December, 1896, the Germania Bank purchased three lots at the northwest corner of Bowery and Spring Streets where The Marks Arnheim merchant tailoring establishment stood. An immense custom-made men’s clothing manufacturer and salesroom, Arnheim’s was one of the largest markers of wool suits in America.

Founded in 1869, the bank had already outgrown one space and now needed to expand again. The board commissioned German-born architect Robert Maynicke to design the new headquarters. Builders Marc Eidlitz and Son, also German, broke ground on February 4, 1898.

In the wake of the Depression of 1893 and the subsequent recession in 1897, Maynicke produced a building the oozed stability and strength. Working in the popular Beaux Arts style, he eschewed the expected cartouches and scrolled brackets to create a masculine, refined stone brick façade. The rusticated first floor of Maine granite featured a series of large, arched windows with fan-like stone voussoirs.

The architect chopped off the corner of the building, creating a chamfered entranceway with polished granite Tuscan pillars. A dentil cornice above the street level was nearly matched above the fifth, and above the paired, arched windows of the sixth floor an elaborate copper cheneau crowned it all.

On December 28, 1898 the bank threw its doors open for a private reception. Several hundred invitations went out to bankers and merchants who toured the new $200,000 building.

The banking room, 38 feet by 75 feet, boasted high marble wainscoting, Sienna marble counter fronts, bronze light fixtures and gilded detailing. The floor was marble mosaic and the furniture was of Mexican mahogany.

“The offices and rooms around the vault are fitted up handsomely;” said The New York Times, “all the woodwork is of polished rock maple, and the floors and walls are tiled. There are coupon and committee rooms and a ladies’ parlor.”

The secure nature of the bank and its below-ground vaults was attractive to more than one type of customer.  In 1912 Henry Vogel and his female accomplice who posed as his wife ran an ingenious jewelry theft operation by hiring girls and placing them as servants in the homes of wealthy New Yorkers.  Once inside the homes, the girls would rob the socialites of their jewels and disappear.

On November 18 of that year, both thieves were killed in a shoot-out with police in their rooms at the Elsmere Hotel.   Two months later, on January 29, 1913, detectives opened a safe deposit box in the bank's vaults where they discovered the couple's cache of stolen jewelery

With World War I and rampant anti-German sentiment raging, the bank filed to change its name, becoming the Commonwealth Bank on April 15, 1918. Just prior to the Great Depression, Manufacturers Trust Company acquired the bank and operated the branch at No. 190 Bowery until the mid-1960s when it shuttered the bank for good.

And then the story took a twist.

Entrance doors in 1976.  Photo by Roy Colmer, NYPL Collection

In 1966 when photographer Jay Maisel looked at the old Germania Bank building, it was “knee-deep in garbage and coated in soot,” as he put it.  By now the Bowery was a dead end for drug addicts, alcoholics and the homeless and the once-proud building was swathed with graffiti.

Maisel raised the $102,000 to purchase the building – all 35,000 square feet and 72 rooms – and set about creating a monstrous single-family home in the middle of Manhattan.

The Maisels' Kitchen -- photo New York Magazine

Today Maisel still lives in the bank building with his wife and daughter. The kitchen is in the area where the cook staff once created meals for the bank officers' dining room. The original 1898 copper elevator cage, polished to its original gleam, has been restored and works again.

The original copper elevator cage -- working again.  Photo New York Magazine

The photographer uses the first three floors as his gallery (although the first floor has recently been advertised for retail space) and the main living area is on the top floor.

photo New York Magazine

The building was landmarked in 2005 and the exterior has remained essentially unaltered since it opened in 1898. The unexpected and unique single-family home was valued in 2008 at around $50 million.