The Seemingly-Doomed Bancroft Bldg -- No. 7 West 29th St.

The pinnacles of Marble Collegiate Church (one seen at far right) were nearly duplicated on the roof of the Bancroft Building.

In February 1875 the Association of the Bar purchased the substantial brick home at No. 7 West 29^th Street.  Midway between Fifth and SixthAvenues, the mansion sat in a most fashionable area for the club’s proposed headquarters.  The neighborhood and the exceptional size of the property—75 feet wide, or about three full building lots—were reflected in the price; $100,000 or about $2 million today.

The Association’s minutes noted “The situation is healthy and agreeable, central, and easily accessible from every direction, and it was believed the property was not likely for a long time to come to depreciate in value.”  Regarding the mansion, the notes called it “A brick building of substantial structure covered forty-five feet of the width of the lots, and was of convenient depth.  By property alterations, without undue expense, it could, in the opinion of the Committee, be made adequate for the purposes of the Association for several years to come.”

Indeed, the Association was in the mansion for several years—twenty, to be exact.  Then on October 1, 1895 it sold the property as it prepared to move to its new headquarters that extended from 43^rd to 44^th Streets between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.   The buyer, real estate developer Edward H. Van Ingen, paid $225,000 for the property, $25,000 below asking price.  The New York Times surmised “The purchasers…will probably erect a business structure on the site.”

The New York Times was right.  The 29^th Street neighborhood was no longer one of clubs and mansions.  Business buildings and hotels were now cropping up in the area.  Van Ingen commissioned esteemed architect Robert H. Robertson to design an eye-catching modern office building on the site of the venerable mansion.

Robertson had become known for his own take on Romanesque Revival in the previous decade.  But for what would become the Bancroft Building, he went in a completely different direction.  Completed in 1897, six stories of red brick and white stone were sandwiched between a limestone top floor and a three-story rusticated limestone base.   The stone bands and voussoirs created a vibrant contrast with the rich red brick—reminiscent of the popular Venetian Gothic and Ruskinian Gothic styles of a generation earlier.  Above it all, Robertson perhaps gave a friendly nod to the Marble Collegiate Church next door, facing Fifth Avenue, by adding near-matching pinnacles on the Bancroft roof.

Sturdy limestone piers and columns contrast with the light-hearted red and white treatment of the middle floors.

With the building completed, Van Ingen was ready to cash in.  On August 25, 1897 he traded the Bancroft Building for another plot ready for development.  The New-York Tribune reported “The valuable plot of land at Broadway and Thirty-ninth-st., on which it was intended to build the Herald Square Hotel, was traded by Julien T. Davies to Edward H. Van Ingen for the Bancroft Building and a sum of money.”  The New York Times estimated the value of the still-vacant Bancroft Building at “from $650,000 to $750,000."

Davies was quick to fill his new building.  Among the first tenants were a surprising number of architects.  Two months later, in January 1898, Architecture and Building commented “The Bancroft Building, 3, 5, and 7 West Twenty-ninth Street, New York, is about to become quite an architectural centre.  Mr. Henry Rutgers, Marshall Babb, Cook & Willard, Parish & Schroeder and John E. Howe occupying the entire ninth floor.”

J. B. Colt & Co., “prominent in the business of making and selling projection lanterns and the like apparatus,” according toElectrical Engineer, also moved in that year, and expanded into the “sale of acetylene gas generators for the lighting of all kinds of buildings, etc.  On account of this decision they are offering special opportunities in price to buyers of projection apparatus, arc focusing lamps, magic lanterns, stereopticons, slides and other accessories.”  The J. B. Colt firm would be the first, but not the last, tenant interested in the growing field of photography.

In March Knauth Brothers signed a five-year lease on the store, basement and second floor. Manufacturers of surgical instruments the 23-year old firm had become what the Journal of Surgical Technology called “among the foremost houses in the trade.”  TheJournal commented on the new space in the Bancroft Building.  “This establishment on Twenty-ninth street embodies the latest sanitary and artistic construction, and the total amount of space at the disposal of the firm equals about 30,000 square feet.”

In 1898 The Journal of Surgical Technology published photographs of Knauth Brothers' new space (copyright expired)

Along with Knauth Brothers and the architectural firms came a number of publishers.  The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions moved in in 1898, publishers of "The Student Missionary Appeal."  The 563-page volume reprinted addresses given at missionary conferences.

Publisher R. H. Russell was another new tenant.  He took the entire sixth floor in March (sharing it with the Cassler Magazine Company) and within the next few months published Thomas Nelson Page’s “Two Prisoners,” “Poems,” by Robert Burns Wilson, and “Shapes and Shadows,” a book of poems by Madison Cadwein among others.

In January 1898 the International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association leased the entire 10^th Floor.  By April the space was ready and the organization moved in.  The report of “The Jubilee of Work for Young Men in North America” reported “This floor is subdivided into a large number of offices occupied by secretaries of various departments such as Publication, Business, Field, Railroad, Army and Navy, Educational, Physical, Special Religious Work, and Boys’.  Here also is the editorial office of Association Men.”

A few days after the YMCA took the 10th floor, the Camera Club of New York leased the entire 8^th Floor; signing a lease of five years.   Two years earlier Alfred Stieglitz, one of the principals of the club, had helped negotiate the merger of the Camera Club with the Society of Amateur Photographers.  The group was now among the wealthiest and largest clubs in the nation.  As a result the space in the Bancroft Building not only included the expected darkrooms, labs and camera equipment; it reportedly had all the amenities of an upscale club, including a library.

From here Stieglitz published the quarterly Camera Notesthat included photogravures and half-tones.  The man who almost single-handedly raised photography from a hobby to an art form was honored with an exhibition of his photography here from May 1 to May 15 in 1899.

The following year, on April 2, Frederick E. Partington delivered a lecture for the benefit of the library fund of Vassar College in the Camera Club rooms.  Partington’s subject was “Romantic France and the Pyrenees,” and was illustrated by “slides taken from original photographs,” said The New York Times.  The newspaper noted that “There is a long list of prominent New York women, most of them members of the alumnae association of the college, who are patronesses.”

Meanwhile the Young Men's Christian Association International Committee had its hands full as the Boxer Uprising threatened missionaries in China.  Erratic communication left the office unsure if some families of missionaries were safe and rescue parties were sent by steamer.

Reverand Horace Pitkin wrote to the office here on May 14, 1900 saying "Our guard of soldiers still come at night, but they will be of little service in case of actual outbreak.  The morale of their presence is the only justification for keeping them."   Miss Mary S. Morrill, writing from Pao-ting Foo, prompted other missionaries to keep their children in the safety of the schools "since their large feet would show forth the family connection with churches."

A variety of tenants, many of them architects and publishers, continued to come and go.  In 1900 the American Swedenborg Printing and Publishing Society was here, as was the architectural firm of Hardy & Short.  In 1903 the Moyea Automobile Company established its offices in the building and on May 1 of that year Frank Presbrey Company, “general advertising agents,” took over the entire 8^thfloor.  The School Journal said at the time “This agency numbers among its patrons some of the most solid and representative advertisers in the world.”

In 1911 when Hints, an entertainment magazine, moved into its new quarters the Anthos Company was already doing business here.  That company, run by Mrs. Millicent Searle, sold patent remedies like Tonia, Ceratum, Baquilles, Elixir and Sal-Nutrient.  Anthos representatives went door-to-door, selling the tonics mostly to housewives.  The practice drew the suspicion of the County Medical Society.

Police matron Isabella Goodwin was sent undercover to work for the firm.  She later testified before Chief Magistrate McAdoo that she would earn 20 cents for every dollar’s worth of preparations she sold.  She was advised “to influence patients to take three to six months of treatment.”  When she asked her supervisor whether she should not merely suggest a month’s treatment, he responded “Are you a piker?”  

One day when Goodwin arrived at the Bancroft Building office feeling under the weather, she asked her supervisor if she should take one of the preparations. She testified that he replied “No.  Our medicines will do you no good.  I take some of them now and then, because I like the taste.”

Mrs. Searle was arraigned on the charge of illegally practicing medicine on May 30, 1911.

On December 12, 1914 Julien T. Davies traded the Bancroft Building for a new apartment building on Lexington Avenue and 72^nd Street.  The new owner was the E. A. L. Realty Company.  The firm would not hold the property long and on February 11, 1916 The Times reported that the building’s original owner, Edward H. Van Ingen “yesterday acquired the title in the Bancroft Building.”

By now the millinery and apparel district was moving northward from the Broadway district below 14^th Street.  In 1915 Eden Manufacturing Company was one of the first of the clothing firms to move in.  In 1919 another publisher took space in the building.  Gallon-Hall Corporation was the publisher of Automotive Engineering.

That same year tenants Schwabach & Raphael, who were “engaged in the cotton goods business,” according to The New York Times, purchased the building from Van Ingren.  The sale was perhaps a reflection of the expanding garment district and other apparel firms quickly moved in.  Among them were C. Reis, manufacturers of “cloaks, suits, waists and furs;” P. S. Farmer, resident buyer of cloaks and suits; the Manhattan Petticoat Company; and Weisberg & Zimmern.

In the second half of the 20^th century Marble Collegiate Church acquired the Bancroft Building.  In 1961 a renovation was completed resulting in meeting, religious, chapel and social rooms on the first floor and offices and a Sunday school on the second.  In doing so a well-intentioned but ungainly and architecturally inappropriate addition was erected at street level.

Concern over the preservation of architecturally or historically significant structures has never been a hallmark of religious institutions and in the spring of 2013 Marble Collegiate Church began plans to demolish the Bancroft Building.  In its place the church envisioned an obtrusive glass slab with no context in the neighborhood.

The proposed new office tower -- NY.Curbed.com

In June 2013 neighbors petitioned Community Board 5 and the Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the Bancroft Building a New York City landmark.  The battle over the Victorian structure, not only an anomaly among Robertson designs but an historic spot in the history of American photography—continues; although the outlook for the Bancroft Building looks gloomy.

 

photographs taken by the author

many thanks to reader Ward Kelvin for requesting this post

The Lost 1865 National Academy of Design -- 4th Avenue and 23rd Street

photo NYPL Collection

Towards the end of the 1850s John ruskin's aesthetic theories influenced a group of young, idealistic New York artists and architects.  Dismayed at the lack of truly American art and architecture, the formed the Society for the Advancement of Trust in Art in January 1863.  Among the group were architects Russell Sturgis, a friend of Ruskin; and Peter Bonnet Wight; artists Thomas Farrer and Charles Moore; and art critic Clarence Cook.

The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation took place almost simultaneously and the group rallied against slavery saying it made truthful art impossible.   They pushed the Pre-Raphaelite principals in art, scoffing at the French Romanticist works being hung in the parlors of America’s wealthy patrons.  And they actively sought solid, home-grown architecture to be proud of.

If they wanted American architecture, they had gotten a taste of it in 1855 when Jacob Wrey Mould’s unconventional All Soul’s Church was completed at the corner of 4^th Avenue and 20^th Street.  The exotic Italian Romanesque style structure was like nothing ever built in the United States and its contrasting stripes of red and beige quickly earned it the nickname “The Church of the Holy Zebra.”

According to Peter Bonnet Wight, Mould’s designs for the church made him realize “what an architect was.”

By 1863, no doubt through the incitement of the Society, New Yorkers laid plans for an academy for the training of American artists.  The lofty concept was paid for entirely by public donations and it was Peter Wight who would receive the commission to design the new National Academy of Design at the corner of 4^thAvenue and 23^rd Street.  And his admiration of Gould’s spectacular church three blocks to the south would be a evident.

Harper's Weekly published a sketch of the exotic new building -- NYPL Collection

The cornerstone was laid on June 27 and The New York Times promised it “will be one of the handsomest buildings in the United States, and different from any other edifice in the City.  It will combine many novel and beautiful characteristics in the highest style of art and taste.”

A “fine band of music graced the ceremonies with appropriate interludes” and the ceremony “called together a large concourse of the most refined classes of our people,” said The Times.  Along with the usual documents and coins placed Inside the copper casket within the cornerstone was a letter from Abraham Lincoln.

Unlike the construction of St. Patrick’s Cathedral which came to a halt due to the Civil War, the building of the Academy went on—despite most of the city’s workforce having marched off to battle.

Wight intended for his Academy building to make a point.  His building would prove that American architecture could be imaginative and beautiful—a work of art in itself.

He designed a Venetian Gothic palace of white marble from Tuckahoe, New York, with contrasting blue-grey Hastings marble and bands of “North River greywacke stone.”   A split staircase descended from the Gothic-arched entrance to the sidewalk like outstretched arms.  The various colors of marble created zig-zag and diamond patterns, stripes and stars.  The cornice was a diadem of Gothic tracery.  It was, as The Times predicted, “different from any other edifice in the City.”

The Gothic theme continued inside and the ornately-carved capitals of the marble columns caused problems for the stone carvers.   Each of the eight columns with its individual white marble capital of carved flowers, was presented by a different member of the Academy.

Interior colors were achieved through the use of natural woods -- Harper's Weekly, 1865 (copyright expired)

But Gothic ornamentation was nearly unheard of among the carvers who were accustomed to Corinthian, leafy motifs.    The craftsmen had to practice in modeled clay to get the details right; and even then did not always do so.  The New Path would later suggest that there were “capitals now standing in the building which had better been rejected.”

Wight relied on natural woods for colors inside.  The interior was finished in white pine, ash, mahogany, oak and black walnut—there was no interior paint anywhere throughout the building.

Passing pedestrians refresh themselves at the fountain below the entrance -- Harper's Weekly 1865 (copyright expired)

Nevertheless, the completed building was a staggering success.  The dedication was postponed due to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.  It was opened twelve days later on Thursday evening, April 27, 1865.

Harper’s Weekly called it “a beautiful Temple of Art.  It went up in the years of angry strife, but at the time of its dedication the time of peace was almost fully come…It is spacious, solid, convenient, simple in arrangement, ample in accommodation, and very beautiful and effective.”

Despite the President’s recent death, Harper’s said “The gay groups ascending and descending the Grand Staircase…afford[ed] a splendid spectacle.”    The New York Times predicted that the building would cause a change in architectural trends.  “The Gothic renaissance will be the chief style of architecture, with some florid adaptations of the still more modern day.”

The New Path agreed, saying that Wight’s building showed that “our cities need not be the homes of ugliness that they now are.”

The lavish structure had cost around $200,000.  The street level, below the first floor, held the offices and janitorial accommodations.  Above were exhibition space, lecture halls and school rooms.  The second floor held galleries and studios.  The Nation beamed that it was “the most beautiful work of architectural art in America.”

Along with instruction, the National Academy of Design presented exhibitions of the works of its members and students.  American art was suddenly becoming acceptable and collectors need not be ashamed if a work was not European.

Worthington Whittredge remembered in his autobiography “The Academy…was built chiefly during the war and it was during the war and a little later that the very popular artists’ receptions were held there, for which it was often difficult to get a ticket, so many fine people were desirious [sic] of attending them.  They were the great occasions for the artists to show their works and meet nearly all the lovers of art in the City.  The painters sold their pictures readily and native art flourished more conspicuously than now.”

Two years after the building’s opening, an art critic for The New York Times paused before a large work by the emerging landscape artist Albert Bierstadt, “Looking Down Yo Semite Valley Ca.”  “The distribution of the picture, we take it, is geographically correct…But we may ask with pertinence and justice, in what way is such a picture essential to our perception of beauty; to our apprehension of the sublime?”

A New York Times critic complained in 1866 that Bierstadt's "Looking Down Yosemite Valley" lacked a subject -- Birmingham Museum of Art

While the writer reiterated that Bierstadt’s technique was “correct” he cautioned that “The sunlight effect to which we have referred is ingenious enough, but it is by no means novel.  It detracts, perhaps, from the rigor of the scene, but it does not add to it human interest.”  Finally he concluded, “But to bring our remarks to a close, the defect of the picture is its lack of an appreciable subject.”

Generations of later art students would take issue with the verdict.

By 1870, on "varnishing day," the limited wall space of the Academy was already becoming apparent -- NYPL Collection

A decade after its opening, the building still won applause.  James D. McCabe, in his 1872 “Lights and Shadows of New York Life,” remarked “It is one of the most beautiful edifices in the city.  It is built in the pure Gothic style of the thirteenth century, and the external walls are composed of variegated marble.  It has an air of lightness and elegant, that at once elicits the admiration of the gazer.”

A stereopticon view caught the marble staircase and fountain -- NYPL Collection

As the century closed, the National Academy of Design became a victim of its own success.  On November 13, 1898 The Sun reported on the latest exhibition that included works by Frederick Church and Lockwood de Forest.   The newspaper complained about the crowding of the 333 paintings and 22 sculptures into the available space.    “It is better to have no more than two rows of pictures in an exhibition than tier upon tier to the sky line.”

Well-dressed art lovers browse the exhibition in 1882 -- Harper's Weekly (copyright expired)

Within a year of the article, the National Academy announced its intentions to build new facilities far north on “a site of sixteen city lots on Cathedral Parkway Drive,” as reported in The New York Times.

The Academy expounded on the need for a new, larger building in May 1900 when The New York Tribune reported “The Academy of Design has had little facility for the exhibition of sculpture in the past, and has frequently been deprived of the participation of sculptors in its exhibitions.  Again, prominent painters have of late been devoting most of their time to mural painting.  Many of them have found it impossible to exhibit with the Academy.”

By 1880 telegraph poles surrounded the Academy building -- NYPL Collection

As the Academy prepared to build its new structure, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company “paid a large sum” for the property on 4^thAvenue, according the New York Tribune.   On August 11, 1901 plans were announced for the demolishing the marble National Academy of Design.

The unique interior columns their individual capitals and bases, were salvaged to be incorporated into the new building uptown.

And then two weeks later the Academy began coming down.  On August 25 The Times reported “The inevitable and foreseen has occurred and workmen are demolishing the pretty home of the painters on Fourth Avenue which has given character to the Madison Square and Twenty-third Street zone for the last quarter of a century.”

With a casual slap at American sensibilities, the article noted “The walls of the Academy have enclosed much innocent and elevating pleasure for a small fraction of the citizens of New York not too dull to enjoy art, not too much harassed by the needs of bread getting to take advantage of what it had to offer.”

photo NYPL Collection

As the building disappeared Architects’ and Builders’ Magazine mentioned that “The corner-stone of the old National Academy of Design, now nearly demolished, has been uncovered, and the copper box contained within it has been removed to the Academy’s present quarters, at 109^th St. and Amsterdam Ave….It is said to contain many things of public interest of that date, but it has not been decided to open it, sentiment being rather in favor of depositing it intact in the new building when it is erected.”

And so the letter from Abraham Lincoln inside was saved from the wrecking ball along with the eight marble interior columns.   The rest of the exotic Venetian Gothic National Academy of Design--arguably the birthplace of American art--was smashed to the pavement, replaced by a utilitarian office building.