Crawley's Poolroom -- No. 52 West 28th Street

In 1876 Dr. Shaffer, a spinal specialist, was living and practicing medicine from the four story brick house at No. 52 West 28^thStreet.   It was to Dr. Shaffer that Paris-born Arthur Alexander Hessler was referred that year to be fitted for a steel brace.  Unfortunately, Hessler had already spent all his money on doctors and could no longer afford the $35 Dr. Shaffer charged for the brace.  He dejectedly went back to the Roosevelt Hospital.

By now the once-respectable neighborhood was undergoing drastic change.   The same year that Hessler sought Dr. Shaffer’s treatment, Alexander “Clubber” Williams was given command of the 29^th Precinct—the district in which Shaffer’s house sat.  Williams happily expressed that he looked forward to getting some of “the tenderloin”—bribes and graft from the rapidly increasing number of brothels, saloons and gambling parlors.

The name caught on and the Tenderloin District became notorious as the most crime-ridden section of the city and possibly of the country.  Covering an area roughly from 23^rd to 42^nd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, social reformers called the neighborhood “Satan’s Circus.”

Dr. Shaffer’s 20-foot wide house was accessed by a brownstone stoop above an English basement.  Two bays wide, the windows decreased in size with each succeeding story.  A handsome bracketed Italianate cornice projected far from the façade.   The most eye-catching details were the ornate cast metal eyebrows above the openings.  The decidedly Victorian elements proved, originally, that the owners of the house were perhaps not wealthy; but were financially secure.

Especially handsome pressed metal lintels graced the windows.

Mrs. M. A. Palmer owned the house until January 15, 1887 when The Record and Guide reported that she sold “the four-story English basement brick house” for $30,000.  Considering the neighborhood at the time, it seems like a good price—about $675,000 in today’s money.

The house where the respectable Dr. Shaffer treated patients became Lovell’s poolroom.  To Victorian ears, the mere word “poolroom” conjured visions of depravity and social ills.  The term did not refer to billiards; but to horse betting.  Western Union telegraph wires transmitted the winners and losers directly into the poolroom. The owners of the establishments were known as “poolsellers.”

The upper floors of No. 52 were leased as sleeping rooms to tenants whose reputations were not always spotless.  Philip H. Irving was living here in May 1892.  Irving called himself a theatrical manager.  A year earlier in October he met Charlotte Werl who was working as a model in an artist’s studio.  Charlotte was married, but had been separated from her husband for years and purportedly believed he was dead.

Irving protected the married woman’s reputation, initially, by introducing her as his sister.  That ended when he announced that “they have since had intimate relations.”  Charlotte Werl had him arrested on May 12, 1892 “to recover $10,000 for defamation of character,” according to The Sun.

Philip Irving was apparently as surprised as Charlotte was offended.   The Sun reported “he believes the action is brought to fleece him, as he thinks she has the impression that he has money.”

It is doubtful that Charlotte thought that a man who lived above an illegal gambling parlor had a great deal of money.    The dubious characters who haunted Lovell’s were not just gamblers; some were out-and-out criminals.  Three months after Irving’s arrest, a group of five scoundrels devised a scheme to swindle unsuspecting bettors.

James Wood (alias Levy), William Murray (alias Mulholland), James Thompson (alias Grace), Fred Barry (alias Charles Martin), and Anthony Ettlinger approached speculator William Roff, telling him they could provide him with information he could use in betting on the horses.

They rented a room on the top floor of No. 52 West 28^th, ran a dummy wire from a bathroom on the first floor to the room, and told Roff they had tapped the wire that fed the race results to the poolroom. Roff was wary, however.  He had recently been fleeced out of $500 on a similar scheme and was reticent to part with the $2,500 he had in his pocket.

The New York Times reported on August 17, 1892 “Roff said that he sat in the upper room and when the winners came over the wire, which he was led to believe had been tapped, he went to the poolroom and there learned that the horses had been announced fully ten minutes before he got the information.

“This led him to suspect that things were wrong, and afterward he discovered that the gang got the names of the winners at the poolroom and telegraphed them from the bathroom to the room up stairs.”

Roff went to the police and the five scammers were arrested.

Fred Barry, whose legitimate job was as a dealer in electrical supplies on New Street, near Broadway, escaped conviction in the crime.  It would not be long before he was at it again.  He and four new accomplices were arraigned on January 29, 1893 for pulling the same scam, this time targeting Peter Downey’s poolroom on 12^th Street and University Place.

The tradition of graft and corruption among police in the Tenderloin District would run head-long into the reform efforts of Theodore Roosevelt when he became Commissioner in 1895.    In his 1919 “Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography,” William Roscoe Thayer recounted Roosevelt’s early visits to the Tenderloin.  “More than once Roosevelt surprised a shirking patrolman on his beat, but his purpose they all knew was to see justice done, and to keep the officers of the Force up to the highest standard of duty.”

Reforms were difficult to maintain, however.  Although Lovell’s poolroom was closed down, the gambling den soon opened under a new name.  On January 11, 1896 The Times complained “The building occupied by Lovell’s poolroom over ten years ago, when this city was overrun with such establishments, has been opened up again.”

The new owner was Tom  Crawley, a small-time operator who would quickly find that the old days, when a few dollars guaranteed that police looked the other way, were over.   In 1900 The City Record noted that during a meeting of the Police Board on August 24 C. W. Weddle lodged a complaint “of gambling house” at No. 52 West 28^th Street.  Crawley’s would be subjected to repeated raids by the newly-vigilant force.

One raid, just after midnight on May 1, 1901, was more than slightly botched.  “The Committee of Fifteen”—a group of detectives-- had been established to raid gambling houses and Crawley’s was on the list that night.  The men broke down the wrong door, however.

“It was reported about the neighborhood that when the committee reached 52 West Twenty-eighth Street with their attendant policemen, they broke into the house next door, at 54, for which they had no warrant, and that there they stumbled upon a gambling plant the existence of which they had not suspected,” reported The New York Times.

With no search warrant, the detectives could make no seizures or arrests.  Despite the disappointment, they went back into the street and headed for the right address.  By now some of the suspects at Crawley’s had escaped; but not all.

“One of the persons caught in this place got out through the front door and started running toward Seventh Avenue, pursued by half a dozen policemen,” said The Times.  “He ran through Seventh Avenue and doubled back through Twenty-ninth Street, where he was captured by Policeman Lesbader, taken to the station house, and locked up.”

In September 1902 another raid resulted in the arrests of John Ryan and Julius Ringgold.  Less than a month later another raid was made.  This time, according to the district attorney, “We were not looking for prisoners so much as we were for evidence of gambling houses being conducted in the Tenderloin.”

The detectives did not find much at Crawley’s, though.  “At 52 West Twenty-eighth Street, said to be conducted by Tom Crawley, the safe was entirely empty, with the exception of a small piece of anthracite coal.  [District Attorney] Mr. Jerome examined it, said it was of the first water, and carefully placed it back in the cotton in which it had been wrapped,” reported The New York Times on October 16, 1902.

The age of the Tenderloin was slipping away and by 1906 the neighborhood of 28^th Street and Sixth Avenue was becoming New York’s wholesale plant district.  By now Jennie Liddell owned the building which had lost its stoop.  That year she leased it to A. J. and J. J. Fellouris for five years.

An advertisement in 1906 announces som of A. J. Fellouris's offerings -- The American Florist December 8, 1906 (copyright expired)

The brothers were owners of A. J. Fellouris & Co., wholesale and retail florists who specialized in evergreens.  The American Florist noted on March 3, 1906 that “A. J. Fellouris & Co. are preparing to remove to new quarters on Twenty-eighth street this spring.”   Their new shop space would be short-lived.

Only two years into the lease, A. J. Fellouris & Co. filed for bankruptcy.  In 1908 The National Nurseryman reported that “The American Evergreen Company succeed the A. J. Fellouris Co.  They will shortly remove to 103 West 28^th Street.”

In their place florist O. V. Zangen moved in.  A wholesale dealer in cut flowers, Zangen had been doing business around the corner in the Coogan Building at 26^thStreet and Sixth Avenue.  The American Florist said “Mr. Zangen’s time is largely taken up with his seed business and the flower store will be managed by R. Gretsch.  If reports are correct, Twenty-eighth street will soon have them all.”

Within two years Gretsch formed a new firm when he partnered with the Ordonez brothers.  On June 11, 1910 The American Florist reported that Gretsch & Ordonez Bros. is the title of a new firm that will hereafter do business at 52 West Twenty-eighth street.  Mr. Gretsch has been located there for some time and is well known as an active and energetic young man.  The Ordonez brothers are importers and growers of orchids, with greenhouses at Madison, N. J.  They are well known in the trade and in this new venture we trust that all concerned will make good.”

The following year Jennie Liddell leased the building to Louis a. Rubenstein “for a term of years.”  Rubenstein would manage the property for years and on January 19, 1915 he rented the former flower store of Gretsch & Ordonez Bros. to Hugo Werner.

New York City’s wholesale plant district remained centered around Sixth Avenue and 28^th Street for nearly a century.  The sidewalks were crowded with trees and palms, causing many to refer to the stretch of Sixth Avenue as the “jungle.”  Then in 1993 major flower wholesalers began eyeing the South Bronx where space and traffic were not a problem.

In the meantime, the block of West 28^th Street surrounding No. 52 had changed dramatically.  The little brick building, now painted barn red, was nearly the last surviving remnant of the residential, the Tenderloin, and the plant district eras.  Today the house is easily overlooked, dwarfed by the soaring buildings on either side.  The hot pink awning at street level, the scaling red paint and the decades-old fire escape successfully disguise the still-handsome house and its place in a sordid chapter of Manhattan social history.

photographs taken by the author

Tom Gould's San Souci No. 56 West 31st Street

Tom Gould's notorious Sans Souci was at No. 56 in the right side of the now-combined buildings.

On January 9, 1886 a hearing was held in the Gilsey House hotel on Broadway and 29^th Street.  The Gilsey House was just one of a string of respected hotels within a few blocks of one another in the area; but despite their presence, the neighborhood to the west was rife with prostitution, gambling and other vices.  Known as the Tenderloin, it was also termed “Satan’s Circus” by social reformers.

Police Commissioner John N. Beckley listened to witnesses who praised the moral character of saloon owners, including perhaps the most notorious of all, Thomas Edmond Gould.  The New York Times reported that listeners in the make-shift courtroom could not help being amused at the farce.

“Smiles flitted across their faces in spite of themselves when the witnesses spoke of the reputable and highly moral character of the women who frequented the Haymarket and Tom Gould’s.  Such listeners as hadn’t before learned of the high moral character sustained by various resorts on Sixth-avenue, between Twenty-sixth and Thirty-first streets, rubbed their eyes and wondered.”

Tom Gould’s saloon, the Cremorne, was at No. 52 West 31^st, just steps from the Grand Hotel on Broadway.  Gould’s brother-in-law, Thomas F. Parker, was his right-hand man and trusted accomplice and the pair had quickly gained an unsavory reputation with police and the press.  On July 26, 1885 The New York Times reported on Tom Gould’s expired liquor license.  The newspaper said it was “now running without licenses, and the police are called upon to take action in the matter.”

A hearing was held on September 7 regarding the issuing of a new license for Gould’s saloon.  “Commissioner Morris opposed the granting of the license strenuously, and stated that, according to Capt. Williams’s report on the place, it was a concert saloon and patronized by men and women of bad character,” said The Times the next day.  But Tom Gould knew people.

The application was in Tom Parker’s name.  “Among those who spoke a good work for Mr. Parker were Senator Gibbs and residents of the vicinity.  Excise Commissioners Mitchell and Haughton voted in favor of the place and it was licensed,” said The Times. 

Only a month later the commissioners who had approved Parker’s license were on the hot seat themselves for graft and corruption.  A committee of Senators, called the Gibbs Committee, investigated what The New York Times called “the lurid light of the facts.”  Of particular interest to the senators was the issue of Tom Gould.

“Speaking about the Excise Board’s dealings with Tom Gould and his dummy, Thomas F. Parker, Commissioner Morris said that though he had never been inside of Gould’s place he had frequently remained in the neighborhood outside of it until after midnight, observing the people, particularly the women, who passed in and out.  The witness saw among them women of the most dissolute character.  No respectable women ever went in there.”

Before long Tom Gould moved his business a few doors west, opening the San Souci Gardens at No. 56 West 31^st Street in a converted three-story brick house.  Once the home of Sarah Marsh in more respectable days, it now had a spacious barroom with the handsome carved hardwood bar expected in Victorian watering holes.  Here, in addition to drinking and enjoying the attentions of “dissolute” women, patrons were treated to entertainments.  The problem for Gould, once again, is that he had no license for that sort of operation.

On November 9, 1886 he was charged with contempt of court “having violated an injunction obtained by the city to restrain [him] from giving theatrical or minstrelsy entertainments in the Sans Souci without first obtaining a theatrical license from the Mayor.”

But rather than obtain a license, Tom Gould simply continued to run his business as usual.  Each time he was ordered to appear before a justice on contempt charges, he pleaded that he was “dying of consumption.”  The New York Times later remarked that Gould’s constitution always improved “as soon as an adjournment of his case was secured.”  After five such instances, Recorder Smyth issued a bench warrant and declared his bail forfeited. 

So Thomas Gould crossed the river to Hoboken where he assumed he was safe from arrest by New York officials.  But in February 1887 he was arrested in Busch’s Hotel and “was much distressed when he found himself in custody,” according to The Times.  But it was midnight, the recorder had gone home, and a Justice of the Peace named Gustav Streng was roused from his bed to hear arguments against the prisoner.  He thought the entire affair a lot of “fuss” and accepted bail.

“After a little, Gould remembered an engagement of importance and left the company,” said the newspaper on February 18, 1887.  “Some said that he had gone to Philadelphia, others named Canada.”

Although his lawyer insisted he did not own the West 31^stStreet saloon, the six indictments against him could earn him four or five years in prison plus a fine.  “Consequently he is not expected again hereabout for some time,” opined The Times.  “The place on Thirty-first street was running as usual last night.”

When Gould failed to appear before the court on February 18 police shut down the Sans Souci.  Captain Williams told reporters on February 18, 1887 “The place has been shut up, and I propose to see that it is kept shut.  If anybody tries to open it I will put a uniformed barkeeper in there who will make things lively.”

Gould’s attorneys promised that he would appear “without fail” on Friday March 4.  But the hearing came and went without an appearance.  “Tom Gould, the indicted dive keeper, whom the New-York police are very anxious to get hold of, disappointed Justice Strong, of Hoboken, again yesterday,” reported a newspaper.  Gould’s Hoboken bondsman, Thomas Miller, suggested that the fugitive was in Canada and newspapers predicted “is not likely to return until the storm blows over.”

By fleeing to Canada Tom Gould forfeited $2,000 in bail—over $47,000 today.  Then he surprised everyone involved when he reappeared in the Hoboken courthouse with his attorney, Mr. Hummel, on April 29.  He pleaded guilty to four indictments and Hummel “made an appeal for mercy.”

After all, said the attorney, “He was without occupation and his place of business had been closed up.”  Fortunate that the case was heard in New Jersey rather than New York, Tom Gould had a sympathetic ear in Judge Gildersleeve.  He received no jail time and was fined $500 for violating the amusement law and $500 for violating the excise law.  “The fine was immediately paid and Gould left the court room with his friends,” reported a disappointed reporter for The New York Times.

The close call did not teach Tom Gould any lessons in law abiding.  On February 15, 1888 The Timesran the headline “After ‘Tom’ Gould Again.”  Despite the injunction that forbade him to give theatrical entertainments at San Souci without a license, nothing changed.  Officers John F. Tappan and John F. Flood visited the saloon on February 1, 2, 4 and 5 and “heard music and songs, saw men and women drinking and smoking, and that ‘Tom’ Gould was the ‘boss’ and gave the orders.”

The New York Times reminded readers that he had been judged guilty of contempt a year earlier “whence he was released on account of the affidavit of the jail physician that he was dying of bleeding of the lungs.  Gould at once regained his health after release.  Should he get in again he will have to stay for a long while.”  The charges against Gould and his saloon did not touch upon the true nature of the place.  The Times described the San Souci as “as vile a den as there has ever been in this city.”

On December 26, 1891 Tom Gould was arrested in connection with the murder of John J. Wogan.  “There is no question that Gould is one of the most dangerous and disreputable characters in the city,” said The Times. “Crime has for years been his daily routine.  Anybody who was liable to meet Gould is safer to-day from the fact that the man is under lock and key.”

The days of the San Souci Gardens finally came to a close.  The saloon was converted to the pawn shop of Hyman Stern.  Stern was probably pleased when a young Englishman, Arthur Edward Matthews walked in on January 26, 1893 with 36 silver forks and 5 spoons to pawn.  The 25-year old Matthews left with $35 cash (nearly $900 in today's money).  It was not until detectives arrived a few days later that Stern discovered that Matthews, the butler of millionaire Henry Villard, had stolen the silverware.

Over a period of two months, the butler had taken silverware to a number of pawn shops.  “But for his arrest he would doubtless have left his employer without silver enough to set the table,” said a newspaper account.  Unfortunately for Stern, the stolen flatware was confiscated by police.

The silverware was not the only stolen item that passed through Hyman Stern’s hands and when the Lexow Committee—a Senate committee formed to investigate corruption within the police department—began its hearings in 1894, it turned its attention to the pawnbroker. 

On September 10 Hyman Stern took the stand and was questioned about a gold pocket watch.  The stolen Tiffany & Co. timepiece had been brought in by Detective Sergeant Charles A. Hanly on October 25, 1893.  Stern told the committee that when new the watch probably cost about $150, but now its value was about $75.

Senator Goff sensed that Stern and the policeman worked together to fence confiscated evidence.  He asked “It is customary for you to advance $60 on an article valued at $75?” and Stern replied that he tried to advance as much as possible so as to get as much interest as possible.

“And you have made money,” asked the dubious senator.

“Yes, I have.”

“Then you’re an extraordinary pawnbroker,” scoffed Goff.

Stern remained in business for years at No. 56 West 31^stStreet.  Whether he had poor judgment or poor ethics is unclear; but his operation still bore the taint of suspicion at the turn of the century.  In December 1901 Nina Von Erlanger entered the shop with an extraordinary collection of diamond jewelry.  The European opera singer went by the stage name Nina Diva; however she gave her name as Roeder to Hyman Stern.

The seven pieces of jewelry had belonged to the opera singer; but when she needed cash she received a loan from Louis Reinhardt, giving it to him as collateral.  Then, as her New York tour was coming to a close, she borrowed the jewelry.

With the diamonds back in her possession, she rushed to Hyman Stern who gave her $6,000.  Stern now had the jewels, Nina Diva boarded a steamer to Europe, and Louis Reinhardt had been swindled out of thousands.  When police showed up at Stern’s pawnshop on February 20, 1902 to retrieve the seven pieces of jewelry only five were still there.

As the century wore on the neighborhood, once the most notorious and crime-ridden in the city, was engulfed by the garment and novelty district.  Somewhat amazingly, the converted brick house where Tom Gould operated his saloon survived--albeit much altered.  Today, appropriately, it is home to a bar—one that is operated in a much more respectable fashion than Tom Gould's Sans Souci.

photographs taken by the author

A Tin Pan Alley Relic -- No. 40 West 28th Street

The newly-restored copper bays and cornice gleam.  A gouged out scar testifies to a 20th century attempt at modernization, now removed.  photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

By 1890 the once-residential block of West 28^thStreet between Broadway and Sixth Avenue bustled with commerce as old homes gave way to business structures.  As the entertainment district inched northward, Broadway saw the rise of elegant transient hotels.  In 1891 Edward Lamontagne leased the old four-story brownstone house at No. 40 West 28^thStreet to John Ulber. 

Ulber opened a saloon in what had been the English basement, and his Ulber’s Hotel above.  Sitting atop a saloon, one can imagine that the hotel was a bit less classy than its Broadway counterparts.  Although Ulber had signed a seven-year lease; his landlord apparently changed his mind within four years.

On May 30, 1895 The New York Times reported that Lamontagne had sold the 25-foot wide house “known as Ulber’s Hotel” to “an investor” for $60,000.  That figure no doubt played heavily in Lamontagne’s decision to break the lease—it would amount to over $1.5 million today.

The new owner gave the former residence a substantial makeover; replacing the brownstone with a prim limestone façade.  Expansive windows flooded the interiors with sunlight.  The openings at the third and fourth floors were framed in molded copper and two pencil-thin columns spanned the two floors.  The top floor, now the fifth with the stoop and English basement gone, featured arched openings with carved keystones.  A copper cornice crowned it all.

photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

One block to the east, West 28^th Street was already familiarly termed “Tin Pan Alley” and was lined with the offices of songwriters and music publishers.  With the opening of the new office spaces in No. 40, one of the best known of these moved in.  Publisher and songwriter Charles B. Ward moved his New York Music Company from No. 57 West 28th.  1895 was a banner year for the company with two major hits: “The Band Played On” and “Strike Up The Band.”

The self-congratulating Ward explained his innovative marketing ideas in Printers’ Ink in December 1895.  “I was the first music publisher to use a daily newspaper as a medium for bringing a song into popularity.  The paper was the N. Y. Sunday World and the song ‘And the Band Played on.’  It appeared in the issue of June 30, 1895, and made a hit.  While, of course, the song possessed a considerable degree of merit, yet I consider that its widespread popularity was largely due to the methods I employed.”

The block of West 28^th Street was filled with song writers and publishers.  The shady neighborhood was also rife with illegal gambling houses and saloons.  Among them was Charles Rand’s pool room in No. 40 West 28^th Street.  The 19^th century term “pool room” did not refer to the game of billiards; but to horse race betting.  In 1895 Police Captain Pickett raided Rand’s operation and seized “all the money and paraphernalia,” according to The Evening World.

Charles Rand and his six employees were arrested and held on $1,000 bail each; a staggering sum of nearly $27,000 today.  Nevertheless all seven men provided their bail.  The newspaper noted that “The penalty is no less than one nor more than five years, and a fine not exceeding $2,000.”

Five years later Charles Rand’s pool room was gone, but George P. Smith was running the Arcadia here.  The saloon was raided on March 14, 1900 and closed down.  Smith was arrested “on charges of keeping a disorderly house,” according to the New-York Tribune the following day.

The New York Times said of the raid “Only the proprietors were arrested and each of the nine most notorious resorts in the Tenderloin precinct was visited.”

Benjamin Rikeldifer was the New York agent for the Baker-Rose Sanitarium at Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, New York and in 1906 his office was on the fourth floor of No. 40 West 28th.   As spring approached that year he received an disturbing letter from the sanitarium.

On March 4 the office girls in the Van Titzler Musical Publishing Company directly across the street became annoyed when Rikeldifer sat staring into their window for hours.   The St. Paul Globe reported that they "thought they were being insulted."

It started around 10:00 in the morning when "Suddenly he leaned back in his chair, turned slowly to the window and sat as motionless as a statue.  Slowly the hours passed, but Rikeldifer never moved.  His eyes were fixed on the windows across the street."

Mamie Bagly and Clara Schroeder were "typewriters" at the publishing office (the early 20th century term for "secretaries").  After six hours of being stared at the girls were indignant and another office worker, Samuel Earlish, decided to defend the women's honor and demand an explanation.

Earlish crossed the street and accosted janitor William A. Collins with a "vigorous complaint."  He threatened to call the police if the insolence did not stop.  Collins and the elevator boy went upstairs and unlocked Rikeldifer's office.  The janitor shook Rikeldifer by the shoulder, looked into his eyes and ran out in a panic.

The Globe reported "He had swallowed a dose of morphine sulphate in his office in the Twenty-eighth street building.  An open letter on his desk before him made the reason clear.  It was from his employers, and declared that he had failed to please them."

The New York Music Co. would score another hit with its tremendously successful "Take Me Out To the Ball-Game" published here.

The New York Music Company was still here in 1908 when it published another block-buster song, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”   The ground floor space was, by now, a more respectable establishment.  Max Herzka and his wife Annie ran their small restaurant here, catering to the many loft and office workers in the neighborhood.

The morning of February 7, 1910 was an brutally cold and when Max and Annie opened the restaurant shortly before 7:00 they did not realize that the boiler had frozen overnight.  Soon the employees began filing in.  Annie Vogel was the cashier, there were three waitresses, and 32-year old Mary Phillips arrived for her first day as a cook.

A customer walked in around 8:00 and ordered boiled eggs and buttered toast.  Mary started the toast and lighted the gas stove to boil the water for the eggs.  With her in the kitchen were Herzka and Annie.

“Hardly had the stove been lighted before the water started to boil, and then there occurred a terrific explosion,” reported The New York Times the next day.  “The stove was thrown backward and the boiler, which exploded, fell on top of it.  Herzka, his wife, and the cook were hurled with great force to the floor, and the cooking utensils fell on top of them.”

Meanwhile, in the restaurant area dishes crashed to the floor and the large plate glass window was blown out.  The customer and the four employees were knocked to the ground.  Within a few minutes the kitchen was on fire and passersby ran into the building to learn from the waitresses that there were three people trapped inside. 

Police arrived and found Herzka and the two women in the burning ruins.  Herzka and Annie were both unconscious and were carried to the street.  Mary Phillips was able to get herself out.  Both Max and Annie Herzka were taken to the New York Hospital, where Annie’s survival was questionable.  Mary’s burns were dressed and she was sent home with an unbelievable tale of her first day at work.

“The falling over of the gas stove caused a lively blaze in the rear of the restaurant,” reported The Times, “the loss being estimated at $5,000.  Nearly everything in the place was broken by the explosion and fire.”

Over the next few years the building would become home to a wide variety of small business.  In 1911 the Automatic Baseball Company leased space here.  The firm manufactured a tabletop baseball game.  The Progressive Embroidery Company and the Well Made Garment Company both took space here in 1913. 

In 1915 Harry A. Bunyard leased the store and basement.  He hung a sign outside that read “The Uptown Seed Store—The Harry A. Bunyard Co., Inc., Seeds, Bulbs, and Plants, Grass Seed Specialties.”  The American Florist noted “As Mr. Bunyard is very well known in all branches of the trade, he had many callers during the past week, while fitting up his store.”

Harry Bunyard was also Secretary of the American Sweet Pea Society.  Despite his sterling reputation, however, the company went into bankruptcy the following year.

The same year that Harry Bunyard opened his plant store at ground level, Morris Sapo had a brush with thieves in his top floor office.  The diamond setter routinely kept more than $100,000 worth of gems in his safe.  The potential haul was tempting to four professional gem thieves.  Unfortunately for them, one of their girlfriends had a problem with drinking and with keeping her mouth shut.

The Sun, on May 27, 1915, reported “In an exchange of confidences over a highball or two in a cabaret near Times Square a girl bragged to a detective that her ‘friend’ was too clever for the police and that he was going to make a haul from Morris Sapo’s safe.”

Police Captain Gildea assigned 20 detectives to watch the building for a week.  Finally on May 26 four men arrived around 7:30 at night. The entered Sapo’s establishment and began to drill the safe.  The detectives were on the roof, watching through a ventilation scuttle.  After about an hour all 20 detectives charged into the office, capturing all four burglars.

The robbers had been working by a light screened by an opened umbrella.  One of the thieves had protested against using an open umbrella indoors.  “I told you we’d have bad luck if we opened that ----umbrella,” he growled after the fight was over.

By the time World War I erupted the Garment District had edged into the neighborhood and No. 40 West 28^th Street was mostly filled with apparel firms.  The building with the diverse past suffered neglect in the second half of the 20^thcentury; but around 2011 the façade was restored and the interiors were converted to apartments.

photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

Today the handsome building looks much as it did when turn of the century musical hits were published above illegal gambling dens here.

Prohibition Headquarters - Nos. 45-47 West 27th Street

Although its core was Beaux Arts; the design took on burly turn-of-the-century motifs like pilasters in the form of fasces and a chunky parapet -- photo Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

In the years just following the end of the Civil War, the neighborhood around West 27^th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues was a respectable residential one.   In 1870 “The Gentleman’s Directory” made note of the boarding house at No. 45 West 27^th Street, saying it “is presided over by Jenny Mitchell, a very agreeable and entertaining lady, who has four highly accomplished young lady boarders.”  It called it “a first class house” with “elaborate furnishings.”

As the turn of the century neared, however, the area had decidedly changed.  Sitting on the western edge of the notorious Tenderloin District, it filled with brothels, gambling houses and saloons in the 1890s.  It was perhaps just that reputation that prompted the French Church of St. Esprit to purchase both houses at Nos. 45 and 47 for $59,000 in March 1899.  The church continued to operate the buildings as rooming houses; no doubt with a strict eye on who boarded there.

Change came again to the neighborhood in the first years of the 20^th century.  Prompted by aggressive police crack-downs on illegal businesses and by the northward movement of the commercial and entertainment districts, the shoddy old hotels and antiquated houses were being replaced with up-to-date business buildings.

In 1910 Architecture and Building News reported that the two houses at Nos 45 and 47 had been replaced with “a building,” the architect of which was H. T. J. Fuehrmann.   Henry Fuehrmann had been chosen by the Manhattan Office Building Co. in 1909 to design a 12-story loft and retail store structure on the site of the old houses. 

Fuehrmann’s completed structure was a no-nonsense business building of buff-colored brick with limestone trim.  The vaguely Beaux Arts styled structure included a Greek key bandcourse above the two-story second granite and cast iron base, and terra cotta ornament at the bases of the long piers that hinted at Viennese Secessionist influence.

photo Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

As the Garment District crept northward the building filled with a number of apparel firms.  In 1913 Schroeder & Co., manufacturers of “juvenile dresses,” took an entire floor.  Also in the building were the Irene Underwear Co.; Rudinsky Cloak and Suit Co.; Karl Light, makers of cloaks and suits; and H. D. Fertel, “coats, neckwear and muffs.”

But more importantly, with the enactment of the Volstead Act, the building became Prohibition Enforcement Headquarters.   Prohibition agents made few friends in the underworld and his profession brought a violent and sudden end to the life of agent James F. McGuinness.

On Christmas Eve 1920 McGuinness’s body was found in shallow water in Newark Bay “with a bullet through his head,” according to the Bisbee Arizona’s Daily Review.  The newspaper said he “committed suicide, police [in Bayonne, New Jersey] stated tonight.  The family of the dead man, who was a prohibition enforcement officer, believe that he was murdered.”

Indeed Mrs. McGuinness’s cousin, Joseph P. Tumulty who happened to be secretary to President Wilson, told reporters “I am certain from the information now at hand that McGuinness met with foul play.  Every fact of his home life negatives any other idea.”

McGuinness was found with a 38-calibre Colt revolver in his hand; but at the 27^th Street headquarters, S. M. Sewell, acting enforcement supervisor said it was definitely not the weapon the agent used in his work.  Mrs. McGuinness “substantiated this by saying that the gun which he carried in his work was in his drawer at home,” said the New-York Tribune.

A neighbor, James C. O’Neill, who was connected with the bureau of investigation with the Department of Justice spoke of a “dark stranger, about five feet eight inches in height” who went to the McGuinness home the night of the agent’s death.  O’Neill said “there were men who had become his enemies through his refusal to aid them in evading the prohibition act.”

“I think that Mr. McGuinness was killed in an automobile in New York and his body taken to Bayonne and stretched out at the edge of the bay,” opined O’Neill.  “That gun might have been placed in his hand also.  I know that he was a happy man, in good health, without anything to lead him to suicide.  He had money enough too, because he was getting his wife a seal-skin coat for $200 and had bought $40 worth of toys for his children.”

McGuinness was in charge of about 150 agents and had recently been made chief of a squad of about 20 men. 

That the Prohibition Headquarters was in the neighborhood which, only two decades earlier, had been the center of vice and crime in New York City was ironic.  The agents worked tirelessly to rid the city of illegal saloons and clubs.  On December 7, 1921 the New-York Tribunenoted “Raids of well known resorts where liquor is said to be sold along Broadway will continue until the district is bone dry, according to a statement yesterday by Chief Enforcement Agent R. Q. Merrick.”

On the day prior to the article, more than twenty raids had been executed.   Arrests were not always confined to drinking establishments.  “On Sixth Avenue near prohibition headquarters, 47 West Twenty-seventh Street, agents arrested Lee A. Williams, a negro driver.  He had a barrel of real beer on his truck, they say.  The beer and truck were seized."  The enterprising man operated a sort of mobile saloon.  "Williams said he was working for himself and that his office was on his truck.”

A month earlier the headquarters was the scene of a string of suspicious robberies that the New-York Tribune hinted could be an inside job.  “A systematic robbery, said to have  been continued under the administration of three prohibition directors, of important documents and records from the prohibition enforcement headquarters at 47 West Twenty-seventh Street...Many of the records stolen are reported to have been necessary to prosecute certain cases now pending in Federal courts.”

The Headquarters was also responsible for controlling illegal narcotics.  In September 1921 Giovanni Ceppellaro was suspected of drug trafficking.  Armed with a search and seizure warrant, agents raided his office on Mulberry Street where they found a large safe made of wood and camouflaged to look like iron with a coating of shoe polish.  In the safe were paper bags containing $20,000 worth of drugs and $50,000 in jewelry.

Organized crime battled the agents as fervently as the agents battled them.  In January 1922 it was discovered that the telephone trunk leading into the switchboard at the Prohibition Headquarters had been tapped for months.  “Bootleg or other interests, it developed, have been in a position to hear all conversations of prohibition officials and enforcement officers,” reported the New-York Tribune.  “This may account for mysterious ‘tips’ which have reached big concerns about to be raided.”

With amazing nerve, the criminals listening in to the agents had set up their office in the same building--possibly even using the government's own instruments.  “Indications are that the listening-in station was on some floor below,” said the newspaper.  One telephone was missing from headquarters, as well.  “In checking up the telephone instruments assigned to headquarters the lineman found himself one instrument short.  No one could account for the missing telephone.”

photo Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

On December 5, 1933 the 21^st Amendment to the Constitution was ratified and Prohibition was suddenly history.  It was the end of the line for the State Headquarters of Prohibition, as well.  The exciting period at No. 45-47 West 27^th Street was over.  For the rest of the century the building housed apparel and novelty firms and drew little attention to itself.  Today, although retail stores have been gouged into the street level, the old building where “dry agents” fought bootleggers is little changed above the first floor.