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

The Carow-Martin House -- No. 114 East 36th Street

photo by Alice Lum

By the turn of the last century Murray Hill would be an enclave of some of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens—a block east of the more obvious Fifth Avenue.  But in the decade prior to the Civil War the neighborhood was just seeing the rise of handsome residences; comfortable brownstone rowhouses intended for the well-to-do merchant class.

Around 1856 builder George J. Hamilton constructed No. 114 East 36^th Street—a four-story home nearly identical to its neighbors.   Two decades after its completion, in 1879, it became home to the Carow family, including young Edith Kermit Carow.  The charming and mannered teen was a life-long friend of one of the city’s most respected young citizens, Theodore Roosevelt. 

Edith was an avid reader and shortly after moving into the house, a copy of "Lucille," Owen Meredith’s lengthy poem, arrived at the door.  The inscription read “To Edith K. Carow on her eighteenth birthday, from her sincere friend Theodore Roosevelt.”

Almost exactly one year later Roosevelt married Alice Hathaway Lee, another member of Edith’s circle of friends.  The following year, in 1881, at just 23 years old, Roosevelt was named Republican candidate for the New York State Assembly.  He won election on November 8, 1881 but assured friends not to expect him to go into politics after one-year term was up—“for I am not.”  

To celebrate his win, Edith threw a gala party a month later in the 36^th Street house.  The rooms were filled with flowers and the well-dressed guests danced beneath the glow of gas chandeliers.  Theodore led the cotillion that evening in what would be one of the last entertainments the young couple would enjoy in New York for a year.  Three weeks later they left for Albany.

Alice, Theodore and Edith continued their deep friendship.  When Roosevelt was re-elected to another one-year term, Roosevelt purchased a house on West 57^th Street, just off Fifth Avenue, to ease Alice’s boredom with Albany.  The friends would attend the opera and other social functions together .

Tragedy struck when Alice contracted Bright’s Disease—kidney failure—which was masked by her advanced pregnancy.  Two days after baby Alice Lee Roosevelt was born on February 12, 1884 Alice died.  Around eleven hours later Roosevelt’s mother, Martha, died of typhoid fever in the same house.  Theodore Roosevelt’s diary entry that night was a large X followed by “The light has gone out of my life.”

Following his mourning period, Theodore began visiting Edith in the 36^th Street house.  The old friends now saw one another in a different light.  Their parlor meetings were discreet and few friends were aware.  Love blossomed and on November 17, 1885 Roosevelt secretly proposed.  Edith accepted.

There was now the problem of appearances.  Alice had been dead less than two years and a new engagement could seem unseemly.   Edith sailed off to Europe, as she had already planned to do, and polite society was kept in the dark.

First Lady Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt lived in the 36th Street house for about seven years -- photo Library of Congress

Upon her return, the couple married on December 2, 1886 and left for their European honeymoon.  Before leaving, the house at No. 114 East 36^th Street was sold to William R. H. Martin.

As was often the case in upscale families, the deed was put in the name of his wife, Elizabeth B. F. Martin.  Martin headed one of the city’s most recognized men’s clothiers, Rogers, Peet & Co., founded by his father John T. Martin.  A pioneer in ready-to-wear apparel for the middle class man, the firm’s success was due in part to treating its customers as though they were the wealthy clients of the most exclusive haberdasheries.

As the turn of the century approached, Martin turned his attention real estate projects, as well.  In 1900 he opened his lavish hotel near Times Square which he named after himself, the Martinique.  Within a few years he would construct a far less fashionable hotel, the Trowmart Inn, for single working girls.

And as his Martinique Hotel was rising, Elizabeth and William also took a look at their aging brownstone.  By now the wealthy homeowners in the neighborhood were updating their architecturally-passe homes by replacing them with new mansions, or hiring noted architects to remodel them.  In 1899 architect Samuel Edson Gage was given the job of transforming the old house into a fashionable, up-to-date residence reflective of the status of its owners.

Completed in 1900, the renovation was remarkable.  The brownstone façade was stripped off and another story added.  Rather than the gushing Beaux Arts style so popular for many residential designs at the time, Gage turned to the restrained neo-Georgian.  It was an architectural trend just taking hold and would result in mansions like those of Andrew Carnegie and Willard D. Straight.

Now five stories tall with a mansard attic, the dignified home was a blend of red brick and white limestone.  Rather than climbing one or two steps to the entrance as might be expected, the guests would descent one step from the sidewalk.  Tall windows were lined in limestone quoins and capped by bracketed window hoods.   Above it all eye-catching circular dormers projected from the shingled mansard.

photo by Alice Lum

On December 2, 1905 the family had a scare when William, Elizabeth and their niece, Elsie Martin, left the house for the debutante reception of Catherine Hall nearby at No. 124 East 38^th Street.   The trio climbed into Martin’s stylish brougham, no doubt covering themselves with piles of carriage blankets to ward off the cold, and headed off.  As the carriage driver, Frederick Dodge, was crossing Lexington Avenue at 37^thStreet, he saw the Lexington Avenue electric street car approaching.  Before he could clear the tracks, the car struck and overturned the carriage.

Dodge was thrown from the driver’s box and received a cut to the head.  Martin and the two women were uninjured.  Although Martin complained that the motorman, John Cunningham, had apparently lost control of the brakes, the police surmised that the tracks were so slippery that the car was carried down the avenue’s decline by its own momentum.  The Martins, no doubt, had an interesting story to tell at the reception.

The entrance was placed, somewhat surprisingly, below street level -- photo by Alice Lum

In 1906 son Lucius Trowbridge Martin was married to Amy Bowers.  The couple sailed off to Europe for their honeymoon, but a few weeks later there was trouble.  William R. H. Martin set sail and returned with a month of the wedding with his daughter-in-law.  She moved in with William and Elizabeth.  The New-York Tribune reported “Her husband remained abroad, and rumors were spread that there had been an estrangement.”

The following year Martin was struck with a severe attack of “indigestion” and was confined to bed for over a week.  The New York Times reported that “He is recovering and will probably be out again within a week.  His son, who is in England for the hunting season, has been kept informed of his father’s condition by cable.  He is expected home in a few weeks.”

The “hunting season” that was keeping young Martin from his wife had now extended over a year.  In January 1908 Amy obtained a divorce and two months later, on March 3, Lucius remarried.  The New-York Tribune ran the headline “L. T. Martin Married Again.”

On January 30, 1912 William R. H. Martin died in the house on East 36^th Street.  The funeral was held there two days later.  Elizabeth stayed on in the house for a year and a half before leasing it in June 1914 to William H. Post. 

Post was the secretary and a director of the Post Mortgage and Land Company.  The family included daughters Fanny and Mary.  On November 1, 1915 Mary’s engagement to Philip B. Brewster was announced, and in January 1917 they were married.  The fashionable wedding took place in the Church of the Incarnation with the groom’s father officiating.  Assisting was the groom’s uncle, Bishop Brewster of Connecticut.

The Posts remained in the house until Elizabeth Martin’s death, after which it was sold to Charles E. Warren in September 1919.  Warren was President of the Lincoln National Bank and a member of the ultra-exclusive Union League Club.  In reporting the sale the New-York Tribunesaid “This house is considered one of the best built houses in the Murray Hill section and is cabinet trimmed throughout.”  Unlike so many wealthy Manhattanites who were migrating northward, Warren moved south.  His former residence was at No. 326 West 89^th Street.

When the Warrens purchased the 36^th Street house in September they were still at Brae, their country estate in Lawrence, Long Island.  The Sun notified society on September 23 that the family, including daughter Margaret, would close the summer house “in the autumn and will occupy their new house.”

Along with the Warrens came Bridgeport, Connecticut socialite Mrs. Thomas Hood Macdonald.  On announcing the engagement of her daughter on December 7, 1919, The Sunmentioned that she “is passing the winter at 114 East Thirty-sixth street.”

Margaret Warren would not be far behind in becoming engaged.  The debutante had attended the prestigious Spence School and was a member of the Junior League and the Daughters of the Cincinnati.  She had, in other words, all the credentials of a well-bred young woman of polite society.   In October 1920 the Warrens announced her engagement to Shannon Lord Meany. 

A Princeton graduate, the groom had served as a captain in the war and came from a wealthy New Jersey family.  The family home, Alnwick Hall, was located in the town of Convent and The Times noted “His clubs are the Morris County Golf and Whippany River.”  Following the wedding on January 22, 1921 the reception was held in the house on 36^thStreet.

Warren sold the house in 1924 to Dr. Van Horne Norrie.  A bachelor, he was among the most respected of New York physicians.  For years he was a member of the faculty of Columbia University as Professor of Clinical Medical and had risen to the position of Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Medical Board of Bellevue Hospital.  The New York Times called him “one of the leading diagnosticians in the city.”

Norrie lived quietly in the house for nine years.   He filled the house with a valuable art collection.  Unlike many millionaires of the period, Norrie turned away from collecting old oils; preferring instead etchings, sketches and prints.  Among the works that decorated his walls was Whistler’s etching “The Kitchen.” 

Whistler's evocative "The Kitchen" was among Dr. Norrie's extensive collection -- http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/james-mcneill-whistler/the-kitchen

Just after New Year's Day in 1933 Dr. Norrie was confined to the house with heart trouble.  He died here four weeks later, on January 31, at the age of 71.  His $2.5 million estate was divided among charities such as the New York Public Library, and his four relatives; a sister, two nieces and a nephew.

No. 114 was valued at $80,000 (around $1.5 million today) and was left to the doctor’s nephew, Lanfear Barbey Norrie.  A mining engineer and minerals prospector he followed in the footsteps of his father, A. Lanfear Norrie.  The senior Norrie had famously discovered the iron ore of the Gogebic range of upper Michigan.  The Norrie mine was considered, around the turn of the century, to be the greatest iron mine in the world.

Like his uncle, Lanfear Norrie lived on inconspicuously in the grand home.  Unlike the residents before the Norries, he hosted no spectacular parties with guests lists plastered throughout the social pages of the newspapers.   He lived here for four decades, leaving in the mid 1970s.

In 2005 the house where a future United States President courted a future First Lady was converted to apartments—two each on the first three floors and an expansive duplex engulfing the upper two.  The luxurious duplex was purchased in 2007 by The Morgan Library & Museum for its incoming Director.  The New York Observer reported that the $3.25 million apartment boasted two bedrooms, three and a half baths, three marble fireplaces, and a wet bar.

photo by Alice Lum

The Theodore Roosevelt House -- No. 28 East 20th Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1848 the six matching brownstone houses at Nos. 18 through 28 East 20^th Street, built on speculation, were choice properties.  Sitting about half-way between Fifth Avenue and fashionable Gramercy Park their staid Gothic Revival exteriors hinted at the social and financial status of those living inside; although almost six decades later, in 1905, The New York Times would remember the the block as “in a location respectable, though not ‘swell.’”

By now the Roosevelt family had been in New York for two centuries and had accumulated substantial wealth and social importance.  Theodore and Robert Roosevelt purchased the new houses at Nos. 28 and 26, respectively.   Theodore, a lawyer, married Martha “Mittie” Bulloch five years later.  His brother Robert was a publisher.

Theodore and Mittie started their family in No. 28 when little Anna Roosevelt was born.  Soon after came the first boy, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., born on October 27, 1858.  There would be another son and daughter.

Little Theodore was asthmatic and sickly.  Confined mostly to the East 20^thStreet house, he developed an acute interest in zoology.  That interest was reportedly sparked when he saw a dead seal at the age of 7 at a market and brought the head home.  With two of his cousins he started what they called the “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History.”

He taught himself the basics of taxidermy and his little museum exhibited stuffed animals he had killed and prepared.   By the age of nine he had documented his study of insects in a paper “The Natural History of Insects.”   Much to his delight, the backyard of the Peter Goelet mansion on Broadway, behind the Roosevelt house, held a menagerie of cows, pheasants, storks, and other exotic animals.

Despite Theodore’s sometimes life threatening illnesses, Theodore, Sr. did not coddle him.  He installed an outdoor gymnasium for his frail, near-sighted son, and told him “Theodore you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should.  I am giving you the tools, but it is up to you to make your body.”

Home schooled by tutors, little Theodore Roosevelt’s mind and body developed at No. 28 East 20^th Street.   He did breathing and strength exercises in the back yard and began boxing.   It was here that his championing of “the strenuous life” started.

His father’s influence went beyond the physical.  Theodore Jr. would say of him later “My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever knew.  He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness.  He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness.”

In 1873, when Teddy was 14 years old, the family left No. 28 East 20^th.   The home was immediately converted to a rooming house and in 1874 an advertisement in The New York Times offered “two handsomely furnished front rooms on second floor.”

Various advertisements would appear throughout the next two decades.  With most well-to-do families away for the summer on July 19, 1880 an ad in the New-York Tribune offered “rooms to let, with or without board, at very low summer prices.  References.” 

The advertisement in the same newspaper on August 19, 1886 was apparently successful, for it ran verbatim for years:  “At 28 East 20^th-ST., near Broadway—Handsomely furnished rooms for gentlemen; first-class attendance.”

By 1894 Dr. Elmer P. Arnold had established his practice here; most probably in the basement level.  He hired as his nurse Mrs. Ellen A Clayton, who lived conveniently nearby at No. 37 East 20^th Street.  Ellen made a shopping trip to one of the Sixth Avenue emporiums on January 11, 1895.  A few inexpensive items caught her eye so she took them.  Literally.

Unfortunately for Ellen, a store detective noticed her stuff a pair of 60-cent gloves in her pocket.  She was arrested with goods totaling less than $3.00 on her.  Amazingly, she had $116.16 in cash in her purse—nearly $3,000 in today’s money.

When the Sergeant at the West 13^th Street Station asked her why she stole the items, “She told the Sergeant she thought she must be crazy,” reported The Times.

In 1898 the Roosevelt family, who still held the property, stripped off part of the brownstone façade and erected an ungainly glass and metal storefront.  Just before New Year’s Day in 1898 The Wendell Dining Rooms opened, a restaurant that boasted a French chef “and superior appointments.”

An 8-foot store front was added in 1898 -- photo Library of Congress

The Wendell Dining Rooms would last only a year or two.  The Roosevelts sold the house, oddly enough still described as a “four story dwelling,” to William R. Kendall in 1899.  Coexisting with the variety of businesses in the building were a few tenants.  In 1900 artist Paul Nimmo Moran was living here.

The restaurant offered convenient lunching for female shoppers -- The Sun, December 30, 1898 (copyright expired)

The Mutual Publishing Company was in the building by 1901.  In advertising for material, it said “We want manuscripts for books, fiction, poetry, history, philosophical or religious works; large royalties to new writers.  If you are looking for an energetic publisher, who will bring you before the public, call or write.”

That same year Theodore Roosevelt was elected the 26^thPresident of the United States.  Early in October, 1904 a group of Republicans from the 17^th Election District “formulated the plan of holding meetings in a ‘hallowed spot,’” as reported in The New York Times on October 21.  The new organization called itself the Roosevelt Club and leased the only room available in the Roosevelt birthplace.

The Times said “it was found that the only space available was the rear room on the top floor, four flights up from the street.”  Nevertheless the group took the space and “got to work to decorate the little room, which is about 6 feet by 9, with flags and lithographs of the Republic candidates.”

Until the night of their first meeting, there was considerable debate among New Yorkers as to whether the highly-altered building at No. 20 West 28^th Street was even the President’s actual birthplace.  All questions were put to rest when a telegram from the White House arrived at the clubroom which read:

“Permit me to extend my hearty congratulations on the occasion of the meeting of the club in the house where I was born.  THEODORE ROOSEVELT.”

By 1919 the once-proud residence had been even more severely altered.   In March The New York Timesnoted “Before the house was sold several years ago for commercial uses it was a four-story brownstone, but alterations to make it useful for a restaurant and shops made it of only two stories.”

The house and the adjoining John E. and Robert Roosevelt house were purchased for a group of concerned women, calling themselves the Women’s Roosevelt Memorial Committee.  The Times said “When the Women’s Memorial Committee was organized, one of the first proposals made to it was that the birthplace of the twenty-sixth President should be bought and preserved for posterity as many other houses of famous men born in this city have been preserved.”

The purchasers were represented by the Douglas Robinson, Charles E. Brown Company.  The Robinson family was related to Theodore Roosevelt by marriage.

Popular lore today often insists that the house had been leveled and the Memorial Committee was charged with reproducing the house from scratch.  Although the house was heavily altered, tales of its complete demolition, like Mark Twain’s premature obituary, are greatly exaggerated.

The Times noted that because of the state of the building “the interior will have to be restored entirely” and “In restoring the house, the descriptions to be furnished by members of the family will be followed closely, as well as the description written by Colonel Roosevelt in his autobiography.”

In announcing its plans, the Committee said “With its assembly halls to be visited by people from all over the country who loved him and who would study the influences that made up his growth, it is to be made a centre of citizenship activities, a place where all citizens can come together in order that their understanding of America may become deeper and keener.  Colonel Roosevelt’s vigor of life, robustness of belief and energy of will are the real background of this memorial.”

The group established a goal of $1 million and fund raising started immediately.  In October Major General Leonard Wood delivered an address at Carnegie Hall; pledges from the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America flowed in; and William Webster Ellsworth gave an illustrated lecture on “Theodore Roosevelt—American.”  The New-York Tribune, on April 27, 1920, ran an advertisement saying “Men and Women of America are asked to help restore the birthplace of Theodore Roosevelt.”

The Memorial Committee commissioned female architect Theodate Pope Riddle to oversee the restoration.  Riddle used the Robert Roosevelt house, an exact copy, as a pattern for the new house museum.    The Gothic Revival drip moldings, the marvelous row of arches beneath the cornice, the floor-to-ceiling parlor windows opening onto the cast iron balcony and the fish-scale tiled mansard roof were all reproduced.

photo by Alice Lum

Then, having used the house at No. 26 for its details, she promptly obliterated them.   More than half a century later the Landmarks Preservation Commission would diplomatically say she “subordinated the features of the Robert Roosevelt house in order to enhance the importance of Theodore Roosevelt’s birthplace.”  In fact, seeing no historical importance in that building, Riddle replaced it with a flat, featureless wall with windows.   As would be expected in the 1920s, The Timessaw nothing wrong in the unsympathetic conversion.

In 1923, the Theodore Roosevelt House emerged like new; the Robert Roosevelt house was decimated -- photograph from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

“The house next door, where Roosevelt played much as a boy, as it belonged to his uncle, Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, a prominent Democratic politician in his day and American Minister to Holland under President Cleveland, has been designed for a museum and library.”

Roosevelt’s widow, Edith, and his two sisters donated original furnishings.  Rooms were outfitted to reflect the house as it appeared in 1865.  By October 1922 the Committee had received contributions totaling $1.9 million and collected thousands of items related to Roosevelt.  The house contained five period rooms, two museum galleries and a bookstore.

An early postcard showed the "library" and dining room-- from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The house was finally completed and dedicated on October 27, 1923.  Twentieth Street was roped off and “hung with American flags” and amplifiers carried the addresses to the crowd of 600 outside.   

The New York Times described the period rooms that “will be thrown open to the public, replete with exhibits touching on his life from birth to death.”  It said “The parlor of the home itself contains the original furniture, and the dining room table is that used by the family of the Colonel.  This room and the library are furnished for the most part with reproductions of the original furniture.  The front bedroom, where Colonel Roosevelt was born, is furnished with the original bedroom set, family portraits decorating the walls.  The nursery at the rear has some originals.  The library has many first editions, many of them autographed, of Colonel Roosevelt’s books.  The roof is given over to a garden where lunches and dinners will be served.”

The parlor furniture, seen here in a 1955 postcard, was original to the Roosevelt family

For years the Woman’s Roosevelt Memorial Association presented a bronze medallion at an annual reception in the house.  On January 4, 1933 it was Amelia Earhart who was awarded the medal which bore a portrait of Roosevelt.

A mid-century postcard shows the bedroom where the president was born.

In 1963 the house was donated to the National Park Service and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966.  Few passersby would suspect that the prim brownstone-fronted house suffered serious abuse a century ago and that little is original.  The Roosevelt House is a remarkably early example of historic preservation, especially considering the monumental task the women who envisioned it had before them.

photo by Alice Lum