The Lost Proctor's Theatre -- Nos. 139-145 W. 23rd Street

photograph by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYW6WGQ3&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

In 1883 Manhattan’s entertainment district ran along West 23^rdStreet.  The thoroughfare was dotted with music halls and theaters between Fifth and Eighth Avenues.  Some were quite grand like the white marble Grand Opera House on the northwest corner of Eighth Avenue and Booth’s Shakespearean Theatre at the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue; others were noisier and robust like Koster & Bial’s Music Hall.  But when Salmi Morse tried to get into the act, he was met with stern opposition.

Morse purchased “the Armory,” an old structure previous used a “Dr. Sause’s church, on the north side of 23^rd Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, and set to work converting it to a theater.  His intention—a quite lofty one in his mind—was to stage a Passion Play here.  As rehearsals and $70,000 renovations continued, he applied for a license for run his theater.

Mayor William Russell Grace was the founder of W. R. Grace & Company and the city’s first Roman Catholic mayor.  He denied Morse’s application because, according to The New York Times, he “thought the play sacrilegious.”  Witnesses at a subsequent hearing were confused—testifying that rehearsals proved that the play was simply a reenactment of the life of Christ.  (It is quite possible that the religious mayor was offended by a church building being used as a place of entertainment; or possibly it had something to do with Samuel Morse’s real name being Solomon Moses.)

When Grace’s term ran out Morse reapplied to the new mayor, Franklin Edson, who also denied the license on the grounds that the play was sacrilegious.  The producer pressed on, continuing rehearsals in February 1883 in his Temple Theatre.  When police arrived to make sure he was not operating without a license, an offended Morse replied “My object is too dignified for me to try to bring out the Passion surreptitiously or to evade the law.”

Morse tried another tactic.  He planned a full dress rehearsal and issued invitations to prominent citizens.  The publicity of the several hearings regarding the supposedly irreverent play worked to Morse’s advantage.  According to newspapers, no fewer than 2,000 people crowded into the Temple Theatre.

“Gentlemen whose clothes and air were clerical mingled in the throng; the Hebraic element was noticeable, and there were many actors and actresses whose successes, such as they were, were made years and years ago.  Sealskins and diamonds were as plentiful as at a Wallack or Union-Square matinee, and everybody seemed to expect an evening of uninterrupted pleasure,” reported The New York Times.

An uninterrupted evening was not to be. The audience was thoroughly enjoying the lavish production when suddenly the producer’s attorney stepped in front of the footlights.  “He emphatically expressed his regret that in the midst of beautiful concerted sacred music Mr. Morse had been arrested by the Police.  A storm of hisses filled the house, and cries of ‘Shame! Shame!‘ were heard in the balcony and orchestra.”

Ironically, Morse received his license within a few months—public outcry no doubt having much to do with the decision—then died under suspicious circumstances (he drowned in a bathtub) a year later. 

The Temple Theatre was purchased by the Gospel Tabernacle and reopened as the Twenty-third-Street Tabernacle.  While it was supposedly a house of worship, the first thing the Tabernacle did was stage “Othello.”  On April 10, 1884 The Times reviewed the play, approving black actors on stage rather than whites in black face.  Heretofore there “were the minstrels and the ham-fat men, to be sure, but no self-respecting colored man would give countenance to such low-down imitations of white trash foolishness.  It has long been felt that no person in the upper circles of colored society could as much as think of a race theatre until one of Shakespeare’s best tragedies had been placed upon the boards by colored actors and actresses of undoubted ability.”

The Tabernacle Theatre did not survive and on June 21, 1888The Times reported that “The walls of the old church in Twenty-third-street just west of Sixth-avenue, which afterward became Salmi Morse’s theatre when the unfortunate manager undertook to produce the Passion Play, have been leveled to the ground, and work on the new theatre which is to rise on the site is being rapidly pushed.”

Impresario Frederick Francis Proctor built an impressive structure in the latest architectural rage—Flemish Revival.  The brick-clad theater, which quaintly recalled Manhattan’s Dutch heritage, featured a central and flanking stepped gables, picturesque capped dormers and a wide exterior balcony.  Large brass letters were embedded into the sidewalk spelling out PROCTOR’S.

Inside patrons were dazzled by electric lighting (although, as was customary, gas fixtures were available should the often-unreliable electricity fail).  The 1,550-seat auditorium featured gilded railings, velvet draperies and a gray-blue ceiling above red-toned walls.

While Proctor, at least initially, offered legitimate theater; he sought out innovative means to lure audiences.  On December 2, 1890 The Times wrote a critique of the afternoon performance the day before—during which bird-imitator Mable Stephenson shared the program with a one-act play “Barbara” and an exhibition of the new-fangled phonograph.

The newspaper (while noting the “not very numerous audience”) thought Mable “a remarkable mimic;” panned “Barbara” as “an early work and bears the impress of juvenility, and is based on a mock sentimental idea such as might occur to a very young person who had read too many books of fiction and not seen much of the world;” and had mixed thoughts about the phonograph.

“The exhibition was startling, but not pleasing.  The phonograph emphasizes defects and blemishes as the camera used to before photographers became artists.  A cornet is distressing enough at any time.  When its notes are treasured up on the phonograph cylinder and ground out by electricity the result is almost maddening.”

That same year David Belasco and Henry DeMille produced Men and Women here, a drama that dealt with the political and business life in America.  Later DeMille staged his last play, The Lost Paradise, at Proctor’s before his sudden death.

In 1892 Proctor switched from legitimate plays to vaudeville, becoming the first such venue in New York.  He offered continuous performances from noon to midnight six days a week.  For the price of admission a patron could stay all day and New Yorkers became familiar with his marketing slogan “After Breakfast Go to Proctor’s, After Proctor’s Go to Bed.”

In November that year Annie Eva Fay took the stage to conduct a séance before an audience of 1,500.   Although Fay was internationally famous as a medium and mentalist, The Times was not impressed.  “There was nothing in the performance given by Miss Fay last evening that was remarkable,” it said and added “It was the usual old cabinet performance, in which a lot of tambourines, banjos, guitars, and bells played the principal roles.”

The newspaper, as it would turn out years later, was correct.  Annie Fay was later exposed as a fraud.

Proctor managed to draw a wide variety of talent to the Twenty-third Street Theatre.  During the 1890s Ruth St. Denis landed an engagement here, dancing twice a day.  Her artistic talent, however, was in stark contrast to the sometimes-plebian vaudeville acts.  When the wealthy Mrs. Orlando Rouland saw St. Denis’s “hindoo” dance drama one afternoon, she was taken with the dancer; but appalled at the monkey act that followed.  She offered to sponsor St. Denis in a “proper uptown theatre;” the dancer’s first real break.

A newspaper at the time complained about the theater’s admission prices.  “At Proctor’s one has to pay fifteen cents to roost ‘among the gods,’ and the prices range as high as $1 for ‘a seat in a box.’”  But Proctor countered explaining it was “a first-class place of amusement at reasonable prices, that will combine the comforts and privileges of a ladies’ club with the entertainment of a select and carefully-managed theatre, where comic opera, the cream of the vaudeville stage, with musical sketches and crisp, bright comedy will be presented.”

Proctor was proud of his innovative “ladies’ club.”  Women of the 1890s were necessarily careful about their reputations and the theater was a perfect place to lose them.  On January 10, 1893 The Times noted that “The ‘ladies’ club’ idea is one that the management wants particularly to emphasize.  According to the announcement the ‘features include cozy parlors, dressing and toilet rooms, decorated and furnished artistically and luxuriously, where ladies may enjoy the same degree of privacy and comfort that they would if at home.’  This ‘ladies’ club’ idea is rather indistinct at present, but may develop.  The management reserves the right to exclude objectionable characters.”

A sign above the entrance announces "Moving Pictures" in 1895 -- King's Photographic Views of New York City, 1895 (copyright expired)

Proctor kept his theaters current with changes in public taste and technology.  By 1895 he was showing "moving pictures" and in 1899 he formed a relationship with filmmaker William Paley, screening his first kalatechnoscope projected motion picture at Proctor’s on October 9, 1899.

By the turn of the century F. F. Proctor had opened his second vaudeville venue, the Pleasure Palace on East 58^th Street.  He added a third, the former Fifth Avenue Theatre, in 1900.  Somewhat confusingly, he would call all three “Proctor’s Theatre.”

Along with the vaudeville acts were plays staged by the Proctor Stock Company.  In May 1901 the group produced the two act musical comedy Cinderella at School; preceded and followed by “high-class varieties and novelties” including Lillie Western, “the musical artiste;” comediennes the Doherty Sisters; vocalist Kathryn Pearl; and Tegge and Daniels, “Dutch comedy.”

Variety acts included the Cycle Whirl in 1901 -- photograph by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYW6WGQ3&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

Buster Keaton appeared here with his family, The Three Keatons; and in 1903 the former boxer James J. Corbett took the stage in a one-man show telling audiences “some of the funny things that happen to a champion pugilist.”  That year audiences would be amused by the low-brow humor of the comic acts like Mooney and Holbein, and Barton and Wakefield.

“Did you ever hear the peacock story?”

“No. What is it?”

“Oh, it’s a beautiful tale.”

One quick joke would be followed rapid-fire by another.

“Did you know my sister who worked in the rubber factory?”

“Yes, What of her?”

“Well, she got bounced.”

Audiences were treated to more upscale humor when Will Rogers signed on on July 1, 1905 at $150 per week for two performances a day.  Sharing the bill was comedienne-singer Edna Wallace Hopper (who got top billing over Rogers), actor Charles Grapewin, the Elinore Sisters, To-To The Mysterious Musician, The Esmeralda Sisters and the Four Flower Girls among others.

Roger’s salary was nothing when compared to the amount Proctor was willing to pay for big names that would attract his audiences.  On March 17, 1905—when the average American worker was earning between $200 and $400 per year--he offered the famous actor Joseph Jefferson $5,000 a week for twelve weeks, “twenty-five minutes twice a day for six days a week.”  That would translate into about $95,000 a week in today’s dollars.

Jefferson turned down Proctor; but a few months later the famous Lillian Russell accepted.  “Many managers have tried to get Lillian Russell to go into vaudeville,” reported The New York Times on August 1, 1905, “and now F. F. Proctor has succeeded.  She has consented to appear in the Proctor theatres at a weekly salary which is said to be somewhere near the $4,000-mark.”

The theater is plastered with signs announcing the appearance of the great Lillian Russell in 1905 -- photograph by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYW6WGQ3&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

The star started her tour at the 23^rd Street theater in October, staying for several weeks.  The Times said “She will sing new songs and some of the old ones familiar to the vaudeville audiences of years gone by  She is going to get the handsomest gowns, the press agent says, that were ever seen on the stage.”

The days of live shows at Proctor’s Twenty-third Street Theatre were quickly drawing to a close.  Motion pictures were the new rage and on December 6, 1907 Moving Picture World announced that the theater would become a motion picture theater exclusively.  “Admittance will be five cents and ten cents.”  The magazine noted “With the change in style of amusement, the theater’s name will also be changed.  Thenceforth it will be the Bijou Dream.”

In the spring of 1929 F. F. Proctor retired.  On May 14 the Radio-Keith Orpheum Corporation purchased his four New York City theaters, including the 23^rd Street venue.  RKO screened motion pictures in the Flemish Revival building for only about seven years.  On March 7, 1937 a devastating fire swept through the theater.

RKO moved its theater into the former Grand Opera House on Eighth Avenue.  Before long only the brass letters in the sidewalk announcing PROCTOR’S would remind passersby of the long-gone 23^rd Street entertainment district.  Those, two, disappeared in the 1970s.

When the unexciting brick building was constructed in the second half of the 20th century the brass letters PROCTOR'S inlaid into the sidewalk were lost.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

C. P. H. Gilbert's Queen Anne Surprise -- No. 348 West 23rd Street

In the 1880s West 23^rd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues had come a long way from the bucolic country estate of the Moore family, Chelsea.  Now a fashionable residential neighborhood, high-end brick and brownstone residences lined the thoroughfare.

But change was coming to West 23^rd Street.  A new concept was just emerging for well-to-do families—the apartment house.  Termed “French flats” or simply flats to distinguish them from the crowded, unhealthy tenements, they were slowly gaining acceptance among a class accustomed to owning private homes.  In 1885 the owner of the 25-foot wide house at No. 348 West 23^rd Street decided to alter and update the structure.

Around that same year a 24-year old engineer and architect returned from the mining towns of the West.  Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert would not officially begin practicing architecture in New York City for another year.  Once he did, he would become famous as C. P. H. Gilbert, the designer of some of the city’s grandest and most opulent mansions.  But for now he would alter the West 23^rdStreet house—one of his first commissions in New York open his return.

On June 27, 1885 The Real Estate Record and Guide briefly noted “Chas. P. H. Gilbert…is also the architect for altering No. 348 West Twenty-third street into a four-story ornate apartment house at a cost of $25,000.”  The cost of renovating the residence into apartments would translate into more than half a million dollars today.

Gilbert’s radical transformation was like nothing else on the block of staid rowhouses.  The architect turned to the newly-emerging Queen Anne style—the last word in architectural trends.  The house retained its steep stoop and English basement; but then all similarities to the old brownstone stopped.  Brick, stone and terra cotta joined forces to create a fanciful and vibrant façade.  The windows of the staircase hall were trimmed in a somewhat reserved arch and keystone and, most likely, contained stained glass.  The angled bay that rose the full four-floors, however, was less shy.  Gilbert embellished the slightly protruding bay with geometric shapes, sunbursts, carved stone panels and swags.  The various materials provided contrast in texture and color, most likely making No. 348 the star of the block upon its completion.

Among the ornate details, a whimsical stylized cloud partially covers a radiant sunburst.

There were four commodious apartments—one per floor—that drew well-to-do residents.  In December 1897 the widowed John Frederick Hashagen married Maude Inglis Hollingsworth in the New York Avenue Methodist Church in Brooklyn.  Hashagen’s daughter, Florence, was the maid of honor.  The New York Times noted that “The couple will make their home at 348 West Twenty-third Street, this city.”  For years the Hashagens were mentioned in the society pages as they traveled to Europe on steamers, sharing the passenger list with names like Astor and Belmont.

At the time the building was owned by Benjamin F. Spink.  A jeweler, his store was located at No. 659 Sixth Avenue and he dabbled in real estate on the side.  On November 22, 1898 The New York Times reported that he sold “the five-story single flat” building to E. Holbrook Cushman.   The Cushman family had been major players in real estate development in Chelsea since the 1830s and lived nearby at No. 337 West 22nd Street.

The report of the transaction was, perhaps, confusing to readers considering that E. Holbrook Cushman had died three years earlier.

The facade has been painted, sadly obliterating the original contrast in materials and colors.

At the same time the building’s most notable resident was living here.  Clarence W Meade was, as The New York Times said, “one of the best-known men in the city.”  Born in “the neighborhood of old Chelsea Village” in 1842, he had earned his fortune as a dry goods merchant and a member of the Produce Exchange.    His political career began in 1870 when he was appointed Assistant United States Appraiser.  He held the position until 1890 when Governor Alonzo B. Cornell named him Port Warden; the same year that Mayor Hugh J Grant appointed him a Police Justice.

By 1897 Meade and his wife were living at No. 348 West 23^rdStreet.  Their married daughter lived a block to the east, at No. 226.  That year the positions of City Magistrates were created and Senator Thomas C. Platt urged Mayor Strong to appoint Meade to one of the seats.  The position earned Meade the enviable salary of $7,000 per year—about $163,000 today.

Meade’s wife was as interesting as he was.  Born in Boston in 1844, she was the daughter of actor Charles M. Walcot.  The Times said that Walcot, “in the time that Wallack’s Theatre was at its best, was one of the cleverest comedians on the stage.”   Wishing to provide his daughter the best education, he sent her to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, although she was a Protestant.  During the 1860s she was well-known for translating French dramas and comedies; most of which were then produced at Wallack’s and at the Garden Theatre.

While her husband made rulings on high-profile cases, Mrs. Meade collected art.  The New York Timesmentioned that “the works of some of the best-known masters are to be found” in her home on West 23^rd Street.

In April 1900 doctors gave Mrs. Meade a terrifying diagnosis: stomach cancer.  Emotionally devastated, she shut herself up in the apartment, rarely being seen outside of her home.  Six months later, at around 7:00 in the morning on November 3, she died in the apartment.  Her funeral was held here prior to her burial at Greenwood Cemetery.

Clarence Meade lived on in the apartment with his servants.  Two years later, on June 17, 1902, the first hints of medical problems appeared in The Evening World.  The newspaper noted that the judge was “ill at his home,” but the reports downplayed the severity of his condtion.  “It was said at the home of Magistrate Meade that the severe hot weather had brought on a return attack of diabetes, from which he has been a sufferer for about two years.  His doctor thought that with rest he would be soon around again.  Magistrate Meade, it was said, is not dangerously ill, and is improving.”

In fact, the 60-year old Meade had suffered a stroke.  Although he functioned mentally, he was paralyzed, and within the next four years he would suffer four more strokes.   The technicalities governing his appointment now presented a problem.  His position on the bench was irrevocable, even by the Mayor.  His seat could be made vacant only by resignation or death.  And Meade had no interest in either option.

It was impossible to hide Meade’s true condition for long.  It was apparent that he could not resume his duties; yet he steadfastly refused to step down.  Before long the other magistrates “who were forced to cover extra territory because of his absence,” as explained by The Times, protested to the State Legislature to have him removed.  But, as the newspaper said, “the protest availed nothing.”  The invalid Clarence Meade retained his position and continued drawing his hefty salary from his comfortable 23^rd Street apartment.

Finally, a year before his term was set to expire, Clarence W. Meade died on July 16, 1906 in the bedroom where his wife had passed away six years earlier.  His death, while distressing, was also a relief to the other judges.  They scurried to find a replacement.  “When the news of Magistrate Meade’s death reached the police courts yesterday a special meeting of the Magistrates was held in the West Side Court,” reported The Times.

The estate of E. Holbrook Cushman would continue to own the building well into the 1920s as it continued to house high-end tenants.   Daniel A. Barker was one of them; a member of an old New York family.  For years, at a time when interest in historic preservation was focused mainly on battlefields and homes of political figures, he devoted time to the preservation of Chelsea landmarks.  Barker was a well-known dealer in antiques and he died of pneumonia in his home here on March 28, 1922.

Each of the venerable houses of West 23^rd Street, including No. 348, received a lamentable renovation in 1929 when all the stoops were ordered removed for the planned widening of the street.  Rows of elegant brownstone stairways were hacked off in preparation for a street project that never happened.

With the removal of the stoop at No. 348, interior alterations were made as well.  The basement level, now the first floor, became a doctor’s office and apartment.  The homes on the floors above were dissected, doubling the number of apartments.

The widening of 23rd Street never came to pass, making the removal of the architecturally-important stoop and entranceway pointless.

Dr. Martin Biederman took over the street level.  Biederman had graduated from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1922.  The apparently tireless doctor was on the attending staff of St. Clare’s, St. Elizabeth’s and Gouveneur Hospitals.  Like so many of the tenants before him, he was active in the Chelsea neighborhood; a member of the Chelsea Association and at one point a Commander of the Chelsea Post of the American Legion.

Dr. Biederman practiced from the office here, and lived in the adjoining apartment with his wife and two children, James and Ruth.  He continued to make a name for himself when he organized and ran the Hernia Clinic at St. Clare’s Hospital.   The 47-year old physician was taken to that hospital when he became ill in December 1944.  He died soon after on January 7, 1945.

Today the ground floor of C. P. H. Gilbert’s delightful Queen Anne makeover is still a commercial office and upstairs there are still two apartments per floor.  Unfortunately, the building was slathered in paint in the 20th century, disguising the purposeful contrast in materials.  A recent paint job attempted to pick out some of the detailing, but the busy facade silently pleads for a restoration.  The windows have been replaced, resulting in the loss of the stained glass panels.  Nevertheless, the structure survives as an unexpected and pleasant surprise somewhat squashed between two modern apartment buildings.

photographs taken by the author

The 1888 Artist-Artisan Institute Bldg -- Nos. 136-140 West 23rd Street

By the mid-1880s, the once-refined neighborhood of 23^rdStreet between Sixth and Seventh Avenues had changed.  Wide 23^rd Street had become the center of New York’s entertainment district and theaters and musical halls dotted the thoroughfare from Fifth Avenue to Eighth Avenue.  The brick and brownstone homes were seeing new lives as boarding houses or were converted for business purposes.

No. 138 West 23^rd Street was among them.  On February 14, 1885 The New York Timesdescribed the changes to the old residence.  “A cheap eating house at No. 138 West Twenty-third street, is kept by Theodore Lichtwitz, who accommodated transient guests with lodging on the top floor.”  When fire broke out in the upper floor, the lost grandeur of the home was hinted at in the newspaper’s assessment that “the damage to the building and frescoes is from $700 to $800.”

Two years later the house would be used as a recruiting office for the First Regiment.  It was around this time that Mary Cook sold her house next door, at No. 136, for $29,500—a respectable $650,000 or so in today’s terms.

In 1888 both Nos 136 and 138 would be purchased, along with the abutting No. 140.  Within the year the three homes would be demolished and an up-to-date artists’ studio building erected.  Professor John Ward Stimson had big plans for the site.

Stimson resigned his position as Director of Art Education at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that year to devote himself to “artisan” arts.  Believing that America paled in the artistic nature of its manufactured arts—like wallpaper, book covers, stained glass windows, and such—he set off to establish the Artisan-Artist Institute.   The editor of the New York Times agreed with the concept, saying “Here in New-York we have Mr. John Ward Stimson, a voice crying in the desert, in season and out of season, with letters to the papers and lectures before Columbia College, that our industries must be made artistic, and that the way to make them so is to establish a system of instruction.”

Stimson’s goal was, in his words, “to build up a practical art school worthy of American spirit and taste.”  Unlike other academies, the Institute would teach art as a means to improve American industrial decoration and to instruct students to make a living through art as craft.  The Times said “Mr. Stimson’s idea in the establishment of the institute was…teaching principles instead of mere imitation, and developing the democratic American idea that art is not necessarily the mere foible of the foolish, the fad of new fashionables, or the monopoly of the speculator.”   At the Artisan-Artist Institute the focus of art was on its application to industry.

Where the three houses on West 23^rd Street had stood rose the new Institute building.  Five stories tall, it blended red brick with terra cotta and traces of limestone trim in the latest Queen Anne style.  Great expanses of window openings provided natural, northern light to the studios.   The Artist-Artisan Institute took over the fourth floor.  The building’s exuberant terra cotta panels, bands and other decorations reflected the concept of the work going on inside: practical decorative arts.

By 1890 the Institute had 250 enrolled pupils for the fall term.  They were offered a staggering field of instruction: painting, sculpture, architecture, illustration, etching, “stain glass,” ceramics, carving, metal working jewelry, interior decoration and plastic modeling.  Well-known firms that relied on employees trained in the decorative arts were quick to support the school.  Patrons that year included Tiffany & Co., the Gorham Manufacturing Company, the Whiting Manufacturing Company, Herter Brothers, Lamb Brothers, the Phoenix Silk Company, and others from the “jewelry, wallpaper, stained glass, silk and other art industries,” according to The Times.  The newspaper deemed it “the most promising among the art educational institutions of the country.”

The use of crisp terra cotta extended to the engaged columns of the second floor.

The firms kept a close eye on the Institution, sometimes purchasing the rights to a silverware or wallpaper pattern, for instance, produced by a student for class; or sometimes simply offering a full-time position to a student before his class work was even completed.  In March 1889 one student nearly gave up.  His father died and, burdened with the support of his mother, he saw no way that he could continue his studies.  “Within a week thereafter one of his designs was sold to a large jewelry manufacturing firm in this city,” reported The New York Times, “and it was so well liked that he was sought out by the firm and given a lucrative position in their employ, with leisure to complete his studies at the institute.”

Even with the patronage of commercial firms, the school was not cheap.  Students paid $50 “in advance” for 8 months of day classes, about $1,000 today; and half that amount for night classes.

Women work in the modelling class in 1898 -- The New-York Tribune February 13, 1898 (copyright expired)

Space was available to other art-related organizations.  Madame S. E. Le Prince, who was also an instructor in the Institute, had a studio here in 1892.  On February 1 that year her studio became home to the New-York State Ceramic Club when “A number of ladies interested in the art of mineral painting” met and organized the club.  The Times noted that “Its object is to promote the interests of this branch of art, to form the nucleus of a school for mineral painting, and to take as active a part as possible in making a creditable exhibition at the World’s Fair.”  Mineral painting was a common pastime for respectable women at the time, resulting in homes filled with chocolate sets, china tea services and cup-and-saucer sets.

 

"The World’s Fair" mentioned by The Times was the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, intended by organizers to show the world that the United States was on par with European industry.  In September 1893 The Evening World said of the Artisan-Artist Institute, “This institution is now practically at the head of the movement to raise American industry to a level of excellence, from the artistic point of view, that will enable American manufacturers to compete with the best foreign products of industry, not only in America, but abroad.

“This movement has received a great impetus since the opening of the World’s Fair.  The object of the Artist-Artisan Institute is national and American.”

At street level was retail space, rented in 1894 appropriately enough to art dealer Ernest Huber.  Huber dealt in high-end art, one piece of which would cause a sensation throughout the city in 1894.  George W. Simms was a wealthy cloak manufacturer and an old friend of Huber.   Simms stopped by the shop around June 14 and Huber showed him a valuable collection of etchings.  “After he had gone, an etching entitled ‘A Lecture,’ by Diderot, was missing,” said The New York Times.

A week later it showed up a block away at the Knoedler Art Gallery at 22^nd Street and Fifth Avenue when it was offered for sale.  Knoedler turned down the etching and notified the police.  Two days later George Simms was arrested, charged with stealing the $300 artwork from his old and trusted friend.

Seven years after the inception of the Institute The New York Times reported that the school’s own success was its greatest problem.  On June 3, 1894 it wrote “The institute has no lack of pupils, but it does need more room and more teachers…Mr. Stimson is greatly hampered by lack of funds for additional teachers and lack of room for the accommodation of pupils.  He should have a series of buildings, with ateliers and shops, in some lively manufacturing centre, like certain parts of New-York, Brooklyn, and Jersey City.”

The newspaper also commented on the ongoing rivalry between American and Europe in decorative arts.  “In the main the goal of the institute is to furnish American factories, manufactures, trades, and industries with educated designers who shall act as captains in the silent conflict—the great ‘deaf war’—between modern nations at peace with each other, the war industrial, the war commercial.”

To prompt donations for the school, the newspaper appealed to its readers’ emotional and patriotic weaknesses, hinting that the stress was endangering Stimson.  “That work has told on his health.  He has been ill of late, and, while his friends have been reassured as the gravity of his illness, there could be no surer means of hastening his convalescence than the news that some benefactor of the Auchmuty stamp had decided to make the Artist Artisan Institute a school in which thousands rather than hundreds might prepare themselves to uphold the liberal arts and manufacturers of New-York and the Union.”

The drawing class -- New-York Tribune February 13, 1898 (copyright expired)

The stress was apparently not so great that Stimson could not interest himself in romantic dalliance.  In April 1898 his wife, Eleanor, moved to Europe and in divorce papers charged him with cruelty and with having an affair with Miss Martha L. Norton.  “The testimony brought out that Miss Norton was a pupil of the artist,” said The New York Times.

In the meantime, other art academies moved into the neighborhood around the Institute.  In 1895 the School of Applied Design for Women was just down the street, at the corner of 23^rdStreet and Seventh Avenue; The Associated Artists was at No. 115 East 23^rdStreet; a art school connected with the Academy of Design was at 23^rdStreet and Fourth Avenue; and in the building with the Artist-Artisan Institute was the School of Industrial Art and Technical Design for Women.  Also in the building was Mrs. Florence Cory’s School of Practical Design.

Perhaps as a means to expand its accommodations, in 1895 the Institute joined forces with Mrs. Cory’s School and the School of Industrial Art and Technical Design for Women.

In November 1897 the school came under new management.  The New-York Tribune noted that “The institution for artistic instruction, founded by Mr. John Ward Stimson, has passed into new hands and has been reorganized."  Among the new instructors were notable names in the decorative arts including Louis C. Tiffany, Frederick Crowninshield and Charles C. Curran.  The Tribune took it upon itself to advise the artists on their roles.  “If these gentlemen will so instruct their pupils that one of the latter for example, being a designer of wall paper, can go to a manufacturer and say: ‘This is what I can do.  I can draw designs like this, which will adapt themselves in such and such a manner to the purposes of your busines’; if, we say, the ‘Artist-Artisan Institute’ can fortify its pupils to plead their cause with employers in this practical way, its ministrations will be a boon.”  The newspaper admonished “Instruction that merely fits the student to paint the mediocre landscapes or flower pieces that thousands of young artists have painted before does more harm than good.”

The school continued in the 23^rd Street building into the first years of the 20^th century, when esteemed artists like William Merritt Chase were teaching here.  But by the end of World War I the studio building had been converted to loft spaces and offices.  In 1919 Bradford Sales Company took the third floor and L.W. Sweet & Co. leased the fourth.  A year later J. M. Harris, importer of lamps and art goods, leased the retail shop on sidewalk level.  Harris had been at No. 324 Fifth Avenue but The Pottery & Glass Salesman said “The new location will give Mr. Harris a considerably larger showroom and will him to carry stock for immediate delivery.”

Apparel-related firms moved in during the next few years.  In 1921 the Rome Embroider Company moved in and a year later the Riker Dress Company leased space.

In 1990 the building was converted to residential use.  A sixth floor and mezzanine was added; the architect closely matching the original brick color and adding a terra cotta medallion in a valiant attempt to tie in the 19^th century detailing below.  Today Chelsea professionals live in the spaces where young women and men learned the crafts that would earn them livelihoods as illustrators and designers.

The three houses that stood on the site would have looked much like the one that survives to the left.

photographs taken by the author