The Lost Hoffman House Hotel -- Broadway and 25th Street

The Hoffman House with its annex on the corner was among the grandest of New York City hotels. -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

By the time of the Civil War change was already coming to the Fifth Avenue neighborhood around Madison Square.  The first incursions of commerce into the exclusive residential district were high-end hotels and one of the first was the Hoffman House.

Another hotel, the Brunswick, was already in operation at the northern end of the park in 1864.  That year the Brunswick’s proprietors, Read & Mitchell, left to open the elegant Hoffman House nearby on Broadway between 24^th and 25^th Streets.   Around three years later Mitchell retired, leaving the 35-year old Cassius H. Read as sole proprietor of the hotel.

The stretch of Broadway from 23^rd Street to 25^th was soon lined with hotels—the grand Fifth Avenue Hotel at the corner of 23^rd, the Albermarle at 24^th with the Hoffman House next door and its “new annex” of about 1870 reaching to the corner.   At the opposite corner of Broadway and 26^th Street was the famous Delmonico’s Restaurant, familiarly known to New Yorkers as “Del’s.”



An 1870 brochure depicted the original 1864 structure (left) and the annex on the corner.

The combined hotel and annex contained 300 “elegant rooms and bath-rooms, with all modern conveniences, at prices ranging from $2 per day and upwards,” boasted an advertisement in 1870.  “The Cusine [sic] is Parisian, and unexcelled.”

The Hoffman House would become internationally known for its “grand salon,” or bar in the 1880s--but prior to that the hotel was remarkable for its lavish decorations, artwork and cuisine.  William Ballantine, in his “The Old World and the New,” noted “Their preparations of ‘beef-steaks’ in different forms, and under different names, are really good, and partake of the character of old English cookery.  Of course everything is expensive, and l’addition proclaims in no unmistakable language that its recipient has been dining in the midst of gilt and looking-glass.”

Eyebrows were no doubt raised when, on January 22, 1870, the New York Herald reported on sisters Victoria C. Woodhull and Tennessee (Tennie) C. Claflin who had taken Parlors No. 25 and 26.  The women were newsworthy because they had ventured bravely into a male-only domain: that of stockbrokers.

The Herald described Parlor No. 25 as “profusely decorated with oil paintings and statuary and…furnished with a sofa, chairs, a piano and the various other articles, useful and ornamental, which go to the make up of a ladies’ drawing room.”

Feminists before their time, the sisters undauntedly responded to the reporter’s questions.

“It is a novel sigh to see a woman go on the street as a stock operator, and I presume you find it rather awkward?” he asked.

Tennie Claflin fired back “Were I to notice what is said by what they call ‘society,’ I would never leave my apartments except in fantastic walking dress or in my ballroom costume; but I despise what squeamy, crying girls or powdered counter-jumping dandies say of me.  I think a woman is just as capable of making a living as a man.”

The stock broker sisters would set the tone for decades to come.

In the meantime, the Hoffman was the favorite rendezvous for Democratic politicians, while the Fifth Avenue Hotel was popular among Republicans.  The Sun would later comment “But it was more than that.  It was the centre of a large sporting interest.  On the eve of every important election, every college football game or other vital event into which entered some element of chance it was at the Hoffman that one learned just what were the betting odds, and it was there large sums were staked on the issue…After the great football games the ‘rah-rah boys’ flocked to the Hoffman House bar to celebrate, and the brawny staff had their work cut out to restrain the celebrants within bounds.”

The hotel lured celebrities, politicians and writers.  Sarah Bernhardt took suites here when in New York and noted guests would include Grover Cleveland, Buffalo Bill Code, Tony Pastor, John L. Sullivan, General Winfield Scott and others.

Famed actress Sarah Bernhardt strikes a post at the Hoffman House in 1888 -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In 1883 Read took on Edward S. Stokes as partner.  It was a move her would regret.   

Stokes had been a guest at the Hoffman House in 1872 when he was arrested for the murder of James Fisk, Jr. on January 6.    While being held in The Tombs, he sent for Read and asked him to take care of his affairs.

Although the first jury sentenced Stokes to hang; he obtained a second trial.  When he was again convicted of first degree murder he was granted yet a third trial.  This time he was found guilty of murder in the second degree and spent four years at Sing Sing prison.

During his absence, Read diligently stored his personal property and looked after his Wall Street interests.  In addition, he gave the murderer a personal loan of $1,500.  Immediately upon his release from prison, Stokes went to Read “who supplied him with all the money he needed,” said The New York Times.

Although Stokes’s name would forever be linked to the infamous murder, Read stood by him.  The pair were involved with several business ventures until finally Read offered him a one-third partnership in the hotel.

Soon thereafter the hotel would acquire a single piece of artwork that would make its barroom internationally known.   In 1873 artist Willilam-Adolphe Bouguereau had painted what he considered to be one of his most important works, “Nymphs and Satyr.”   The large painting was exhibited that year in Paris and purchased by the American art collector John Wolfe.  Considered scandalous by many for its depiction of naked nymphs frolicking with an equally-naked satyr, it was later sold at auction and hung in the Hoffman House barroom.

A stereopticon view discreetly blurred the painting under the red velvet canopy -- Library of Congress

William Ballantine wrote in 1884 “A magnificent entrance hall contains many very exquisite works of art—amongst others, a large picture of modern date by a native artist, representing a mythological old gentleman, who has apparently given offence to a number of nymphs, who are about to execute ‘Lynch Law’ by consigning him to a pool of neighbouring water; really, as far as I am able to judge, it is a very fine work, and is an object of interest both to the citizens and to strangers.”

Intricate tiled floors, a carved and stenciled ceiling, tapestries and "bric-a-brac" take second stage to the Bouguereau painting in the saloon -- photograph from the Collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Indeed it was an object of interest and visitors to New York made a special pilgrimage to gawk that the naked buttocks of the feminine subjects.  A red velvet, gold-fringed canopy sheltered the painting from the glare of gas lights.  It was cleverly positioned directly across from the large plate glass mirror behind the bar so that patrons could discreetly inspect the painting in the reflection.

Bartenders in the café were astonished on Sunday afternoon, July 27, 1885, when a policeman entered the decorous establishment.  Excise laws permitted the sale of alcohol on Sundays only as part of a meal—a point of law that caused a disagreement between police and bartenders.

“The neat, white-aproned bartenders of the Hoffman House were serving liquid nourishment to the gentlemen who sat at the mahogany tables among the bric-a-brac yesterday afternoon, when every one stood aghast at the entrance of Police Officer Samuel Ward, of the Twenty-ninth Precinct.  Bartender William F. Mulhall had just intrusted [sic] a waiter with a vermouth cocktail and a glass of frozen Kummel for a brace of dudes who were sitting at a table under a photograph of Judie, when Officer Ward arrested him.”

Frederick Loud, manager of the bar, protested “We are within the law because we do not sell anything to drink unless the customer has something to eat.”  When Mulhall was released, he returned to the hotel and “sold liquor as usual.”

Despite his having committed murder and despite the scandalous painting hanging in the salon-café, Edward S. Stokes would have no rumor of untoward goings-on in the hotel.  When Lord Lonsdale, manager of the British actress Violet Cameron called on her at the Hoffman House on September 27, 1886, Stokes asked to see him immediately.

Rumors were rampant concerning the married actress and Lord Lonsdale; causing Stokes to insist that the actress change hotels.  The Times reported that he told Lord Lonsdale “that he was running a family hotel, and that he felt sure that in view of all the circumstances of the case the 30 families that were living in the house would be annoyed at Miss Cameron’s presents.  He was compelled to protect his hotel from any breath of scandal that might find its way into it.”

In 1893 Stokes proposed that the old annex at the corner of 25^th Street be replaced with a modern structure.  The new “Moorish” style addition, designed by architect George Edward Harding, opened in 1894—a stark contrast to the old, original hotel.  A picturesque Moorish loggia that wrapped the second floor was echoed along the uppermost story.

An 1889 stereopticon view captured the ornate "parlor" -- Library of Congress

In the meantime, Cassius H. Read who had given Stokes financial help and a job was in trouble.   When he took in Stokes, the hotel became a “stock company,” or corporation.   Read’s personal worth was about $700,000—nearly $15 million today. 

The New York Times would later recount that “gradually Mr. Stokes managed to get control of the majority of the stock and elevate himself to the position of President…A series of unsuccessful business ventures followed and Mr. Read’s fortune kept dwindling.  In 1895 he was forced out of the hotel business and he had lived a life of seclusion ever since.”

Three years later Stokes sold his interest to Graham & Polly; leaving the hotel business as rich as Read was now poor.

In 1895 the hotel had upgraded its kitchens with a modern innovation:  gas ranges.  The novel idea was such that The New York Times felt it was worth reporting.  “One of the pleasantest places in the city to dine during the past Summer was in the eleventh-0story dining room of the Hoffman House,” it said.  “Probably, however, many of those who went there to enjoy the coolness and the view and the music did not know that all the food served wa cooked entirely by gas."

In 1888 the annex had been replaced with a "Moorish" addition and the original building had gained three floors on the roof -- photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The newspaper had little patience for those who were cautious about the new technology.  “The Hoffman House standard is well known in the hotel world, and its hearty approval of gas for cooking disposes at once of a great many stupid and ignorant objections that one sometimes hears urged.”

The Democrats continued to use the Hoffman House as their meeting place—sometimes to the disgruntlement of paying guests.   On June 5, 1900 the New-York Tribune reported that “The Bryan Democrats had a field day yesterday.  All morning and afternoon they thronged the corridors of the Hoffman House, packed the barroom, jammed the writing room and café, and overflowed into the street.  They came with a whoop and a howl, and they kept up a flail-like swinging of arms, a tremendous din of argument and a made scrambling to be seen and heard.  They were as noisy and disorderly as the law allowed, and made themselves as objectionable to the regular guests of the hotel as possible.”

On July 14, 1904 the management announced that the original portion of the Hoffman House—filling two thirds of the block—would be razed and a new section built.   The replacement building would be in the “Moorish Renaissance style” more in keeping with the annex, they said.  The Times noted that “An interesting landmark which will go with the ‘old Hoffman’ is the café on the Twenty-fourth Street side of the house, which has been known for years because of its pictures.”

The new building opened in October 1907 and was remarkable for its architecture which, in no way, imitated nor attempted to meld with the architecture of the Moorish-influenced annex.  The Times, however, reported that “Built of white limestone, it harmonizes well with the Moorish style of what is now the ‘old’ part of the hotel.”

The 1907 replacement of the original hotel buildling (center) spelled the end of the Hoffman House.  At the left is the Albermarle Hotel.  photo from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Earlier that year, in August, the well-known lecturer, writer, and suffragist Harriot Stanton Blatch and a friend had spent the afternoon in the Women’s University Club.  Upon leaving Blatch invited her companion to dinner.  They entered the Hoffman House, but debated about the advisability of going to the roof garden—they were, after all, unescorted.

A young man at the clerk’s desk assured them they could have supper on the roof, so they took the elevator up.  As they sat, the waiter asked if they had an escort and, when they admitted they did not, he asked them to leave.

Embarrassed and angry, Blatch insisted on seeing “someone in authority,” and was taken to the office.  After hearing the story, the women were told “I am very sorry, but that is the regulation of the house, and we cannot make any exceptions in its application.  We do this for the protection of just such ladies as you are.  We do it to keep out objectionable women; women of the type you would not like to have dining in the same room with you.”

Harriot Stanton Blatch retorted “I have never been bothered by objectionable women.  When I have been annoyed it has been by men.  I do not suppose you make any effort to keep objectionable men out.”

The activist’s subsequent law suit against the hotel’s management caused consternation among some women.  On November 30, 1907 a head line in the New-York Tribune read “Women Fear to Offend Hotel by Discussing Mrs. Blatch’s Case.”

The timing of the upgrading of the hotel could not have been worse.   When the main building was closed for demolition and rebuilding, the operation sustained a great loss of income during a prosperous period in the hotel business.  When the new building opened, the country was suffering the Financial Panic of 1907.   In 1910 the Hoffman House went into bankruptcy.

The hotel staggered along for another four years before finally closing its doors for good in March 1915.  A month earlier the announcement was made that both the Albermarle and Hoffman House would be demolished to be replaced with a sixteen-story store and loft building.

For nearly half a century Bouguereau's "Nymphs and Satyr" was kept in hiding -- Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute

The scandalous painting “Nymphs and Satyr” was purchased and stored in a warehouse where the buyer hoped to shield the public from its “offensive” content.  It was rediscovered in storage in 1942 by Robert Sterling Clark and exhibited in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in the Berkshire mountains.

In May 2012 it returned to New York City to be displayed on loan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for two years.  Few viewers will realize that they are viewing a painting once seen only by men, many of whom stole a glimpse of it only as reflected in a barroom mirror.

No trace of the world-class hotels that filled the block remains - http://www.madparknews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/1107-Broadway.jpg

 Many thanks to reader MjH for requesting this post.

Monumental Mysteries

Over thirty-five years ago when I moved to Manhattan, I was overwhelmed by the wealth of history and architecture the city offered.  Yet I was also taken with the busy New Yorkers who rushed past buildings and monuments, never looking up, never wondering why or how that statue or building or memorial came to be.

When I started my blog I hoped to share the human stories behind those structures—the joy and pathos, the happiness and tragedy of the people who lived among us.  As important as the lives and deeds of statesmen and generals are; even more fascinating (at least to me) are the human stories of the people who resided and worked in our buildings, who planted our parks and who died in our disasters.

The study of history, we are often told, is necessary to avoid repeating mistakes.  Baloney.   History tells us where we came from, who we are, and possibly where we are going.   And as important as dates and events are the regular human lives involved.

It is important not to confine ourselves by living solely in the Now.

Some time ago I discovered Don Wildman’s addicting Travel Channel series “Mysteries at the Museum.”  Don shares my interest in the back stories of history.  In that series he investigates the coincidences of fate that enable an otherwise mundane object to change or make history.

Recently I was alerted to an upcoming series by Wildman, “Monumental Mysteries” and was given the opportunity to ask him a few questions about it (check it out below).  The concept of a television show that explores the stories of American monuments is, of course, right up my historical alley.  I love telling the story of the Thomkins Square memorial to the children lost in the General Slocum side-wheeler disaster, the greatest loss of human live in New York until 9/11; or the background of the Roscoe Conkling statue in Union Square—a monument to a philandering politician who got lost in a blizzard and subsequently died; or the story of the Tomb of an Amiable Child, a once-rural grave marker in the shadow of Grant’s Tomb now engulfed by the city.

Don Wildman was informative and patient (I was told I had eight minutes to fire questions at him; so when ten minutes elapsed, I was out of questions!).  I am excited about the series “Monumental Mysteries;” which is why I interrupted my normal blog flow and issued an unexpected, editorial Sunday post to mention it.

But just because you tune into the series doesn’t mean you can stop reading Daytonian in Manhattan.

The Hawes Building - No. 872 Broadway

Things changed quickly along Broadway just north of Union Square in the decades prior to the Civil War.  In 1847 the Manhattan Bank Company began construction of a block-long row of brick-faced houses that stretched from 17^th to 18^th Street on the east side of Broadway.

Completed a year later, the commodious homes were four stories tall and three bays wide—except for No. 872.  The house at the corner of 18^th Street was a bit grander and wider with an additional bay—a full 34 feet.  In 1849, a year after the row’s completion, O. Cammann purchased Nos. 872 and 868.  The enterprising Cammann would soon convert the dwellings to income-producing properties.

Among the first commercial tenants was George C. Anton’s “Classical French and English School.”  An advertisement in the New-York Tribune on November 26, 1857 boasted of six assistant teachers and a “teacher of Gymnastics.”  In addition to the regular classes, there was a Primary Department for boys from 6 to 8 years of age.  The ad promised “lessons as far as possible taught in School.”

Downstairs at street level was R. H. Timpson & Brother’s grocery store.

By the time of the Civil War Samuel P. White had established his doctor’s office here.  The physician kept an enviable schedule of office hours, 8:00 to 9:00 am, and 2:00 to 6:00 pm.  It would appear that at the same time at least one set of rooms was let out for residential use.

In 1865 a scandalous affair made the news involving a couple living here, apparently out of wedlock.   Around 1850, the “petted son of a millionaire,” as arcanely described by The New York Times in 1865, “wooed and won the beautiful and accomplished niece of an Ex-President of the United States.”  The couple lived happily for ten years, then the wife learned that her husband was having an affair with an opera singer.

Despite her pleadings to her father-in-law, who eventually disinherited his lothario son, The Times unsympathetically reported that the cad continued to pursue “the siren of the sock and buskin,” and left his wife.

When that affair fizzled, he “engaged several young women in correspondence,” finally settling on a married woman, Mrs. Emily Florence Elliott.  On August 14, 1865 the couple was living at 872 Broadway when the wronged wife discovered their whereabouts.

When all three appeared in court a dramatic scene unfolded worthy of any Victorian novel.  “The real wife, pale and haggard, suffering under that intense grief which refuses to yield a tear of relief, measured her words, but put them firmly, demanding of her husband whether she were his wife; whether she had been ever faithful and kind, and whether she had given him cause to abandon her; and the penitent sinner confessed in presence of his enciente victim, whose indignation knew no bounds.”

The husband was fined $500 for abandonment and the newspaper felt he would be released “with his wife and henceforward conduct himself as a faithful husband.”

Not long after the scandalous affair, No. 872 was physically connected with No. 28 East 18^th Street to the rear as the building filled with photography studios and related businesses.  In 1870 J. N. Gimbrede, “card engraver, stationer and importer of fancy goods,” was here.  That year Gimbrede published a small booklet on Card Etiquette that prompted The Southern Review to note “This little book contains the whole code of card etiquette, as well as the finest specimens of all the different kinds of cards,--business cards, visiting cards, wedding cards, menu cards, cards of announcements, cards fo balls, cards in memoriam—in short, all sorts and descriptions of cards, except inelegant ones.” 

The booklet was, according to the magazine, “a safe guide to all who would shun errors of taste, breaches of card etiquette, and, above all, the awful ban of the reigning fashion!”

As for Gimbrede, he was said to be “well known to the polite world, for his exquisite taste and skill as an engraver.”

While J. N. Gimbrede was providing the carriage trade with calling cards and stationery, W. Kurtz established his photography studio here.   In 1871 the American Institute of the City of New York awarded him “First Premium” for “the best plain photograph; for the best photograph finished in India ink; for the best photograph on porcelain.”

Other photography studios here at the time were those of J. Gurney & Son and Abraham Bogardus.

Bogardus was especially prominent in the field and while here he would photograph Presidents James A. Garfield, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes and Chester Arthur.  Governors, writers and other prominent citizens sat before his camera—among them William Cullen Bryant, Jay Gould, Henry Ward Beecher, and, amazingly, the camera-shy William H. Vanderbilt. (New York’s Great Industries remarked “Mr. Bogardus took the only picture that Mr. Vanderbilt has ever allowed to be sold.”)

By 1884 the reputation of Bogardus was well established.  New York’s Great Industries called him “the leading photographer of our presidents, senators, congressmen, clergymen and men of note in the various walks of commercial and social life.  The best pictures of Arthur, Blaine and the late President Garfield ever taken, are those of Mr. Bogardus.”

U. S. Grant posed in Bogardus's studio.  Currier & Ives produced the above egraving based on the photograph.  The reverse read "Portrait by permission of A. Bogardus & Co., 872 Broadway, N. Y., from their splendid photograph, the last and best taken of General Grant" -- from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Working with Bogardus for a period was O. W. Heffer.  The British native whom Illustrated New York called “of pleasing manners and strict probity” came to New York around 1878.  In 1887 he decided to strike out on his own.  Heffer opened a large photography studio and gallery in the same building as his former employer.

Illustrated New York: The Metropolis of To-Day wrote of his large office and staff here in 1888.  “The premises occupied, including office, reception parlors, gallery, and operating-rooms, are spacious and commodious, and are handsomely appointed and completely equipped with the latest improved apparatus, devices, and general appurtenances, while from six to ten competent and courteous assistants are in regular attendance.  Photography in all its branches is executed in the highest style of the art, crayon, pastel, India ink, oil, and kindred artistic work being done in the most superior and expeditious manner, while popular prices prevail, fine portraits being the specialty, and altogether a very extensive and influential patronage is received.”

The publication made note of his Broadway studio and gallery, saying there were “elegantly and artistically fitted up and furnished, possessing the finest possible facilities for the practice of his art.”

By now Dorcas—A Magazine of Woman’s Handiwork had been published from No. 872 for nearly a decade.     The equivalent of a crafts magazine today, it offered readers patterns for knitting and crocheting lace, infant’s skirts, tidies and shawls among other things. 

In 1883 Good Health recommended the February edition of Dorcas for its “excellent article on Home Decoration.”  The editor added “we wish to commend these articles, as they will enable one with a small amount of material and moderate skill to make a handsome house at little cost.”

A year later Dorcas introduced a companion magazine dealing solely with knitting.   The Continent felt it was a wonderful idea, especially for the infirm.  “For an invalid it is always a resource, and a ‘new stitch’ is almost as important a matter as a new remedy, and if fascinating enough, may even do away with the necessity for the remedy,” it said.



Dewey advertised in "Souvenir Album: Some Prominent New York Clergymen" in 1894 (copyright expired)

The street level retail space was home to Edward J. Dewey Lamps by 1894, renamed as Dewey & Johnson Lamps three years later.  As the turn of the century approached the apparel and millinery district inched up Broadway.    Perhaps the first indication here was The Cosmopolitan Shirt Store in 1899.  Upstairs the same year was Westlotorn’s Detective Agency.

After more than half a century of family ownership, Oswald Cammann sold the building to James W. Ketcham.  

No. 872 (white building at center) before its transformation -- The Evening Mail, 1899 (copyright expired)

The Whitcomb Metallic Bed Company was here on November 17, 1900 when an earth-rattling manhole explosion occurred outside.  A cable car had just passed over the manhole cover and the passengers “many of them women, rushed for the street.  The conductor quieted them, however, and no one was injured,” reported The New York Times.

Exploding sewer gas sent the manhole cover several feet in the air and the blast shattered the large plate glass window of Whitcomb’s.  “Many hundred dollars’ worth of plate glass was broken,” said The Times.

James Ketcham was unable to make payments on the property and in January 1901 it reverted to Cammann in foreclosure.    Cammann quickly turned the building over to B. F. Hawes.

Hawes started an extensive renovation project to bring the old converted house into the 20^th century.  He commissioned architect Frederick Jacobson to refurbish the structure into a modern commercial building.  The result was significant.

Jacobson stripped off the brick façade and replaced it with stone that framed two three-story tall bays.   Around corner the architect left the old brick, but repeated the stone-framed show windows for continuity.  Large, elegant open shells added flourish to the carved moldings.  Above it all, an overhanging cornice on the slightly heightened façade announced HAWES BUILDING.

The refurbished building had a variety of tenants.  In 1903 mining broker J. A. Fysh had his office here.   Plymouth Raincoat Company moved in and by 1917 Mort Peoples, an electrician, was doing business here.

from The Millinery Trade Review, 1921 (copyright expired)

Along with Plymouth Raincoat more and more apparel companies appeared.  In the 1920s Panama Neckwear, makers of men’s silk neckties and cravats, was here.  At the same time La Mode Hair Net Company was a tenant as well as the Highgrade hair Co., which also dealt in hair nets.  Hazelkorn Brothers, button wholesalers, was in the building in the 1930s.

The other four houses of the original row still retain much of their residential flavor.

Within the next few years the Garment Center would move northward and No. 872 Broadway would slowly become home to small companies, not all of them reputable.  In 1988 Customs agents seized a shipment of 500,000 crack stems imported by Freedom Imports.  The firm cleverly tried to avoid notice by invoicing the drug paraphernalia as “glass beverage stirrers.”

While the street level of the Hawes Building has been substantially altered, the upper floors are intact.  A glance at the four buildings to the south, survivors of the row of one-matching houses, provides an idea of the original appearance of No. 892 and of the residential character of the block in 1847.

 photographs taken by the author

The 1818 House at No. 83 Perry Street

No. 83 (right) was once a mirror-image of its neighbor at No. 85 -- photo by Alice Lum

Retired clothing merchant Aaron Henry dived headfirst into real estate speculation in 1817.  That year he began construction on nine brick houses in Greenwich Village, among them the quaint pair of mirror image homes at Nos. 83 and 85 Perry Street.

The little two-and-a-half story houses were clad in Flemish bond brickwork and completed in 1818. Their recessed doorways were accessed by brownstone slab porches that spanned the entrance to the low English basement below.  The modest residences featured few extra details—like the carved rope molding around the entrance.   But the builder sensitively placed the doors on the opposite ends of the houses, creating a pleasing balance.

Henry’s ambitious plan was perhaps a little too aggressive; in 1821 he lost the two houses.  They were sold to satisfy his creditors at public auction at the Tontine Coffee House, far to the south at Wall and Water Streets.  Ironically, a year later the devastating yellow fever epidemic that swept New York City forced throngs of New Yorkers north to Greenwich Village.  Had Aaron Henry been able to hold onto his property for one more year, the calamity would probably have been his financial salvation.

Prior to 1865 the homes and businesses of New York’s residents were protected by a loosely-organized group of volunteer fire companies.  Henry Springstein, who listed his vocation as “carpenter,” was living in No. 83 in 1855 and volunteering with the Guardian Engine Company No. 29.   Carpentry was, perhaps, not Springstein’s forte.  Four years later he listed his occupation as “fruit dealer.”

Sometime between Henry Springstein’s residency and that of James Kerrigan in 1898 the top floor (and that of No. 85) was raised to a full third story.    The 28-year old Kerrigan had been a candy maker in Brooklyn where he lived with his wife and three children for 10 years.  Trouble came in 1893 when the Kerrigans hired Jessie Shaw was hired as a domestic.

The young woman caught the eye of her employer and the following year the pair ran away.  The resolute Mrs. Kerrigan was as much bloodhound as wife and traced them through Montreal to Detroit “and then lost the trail and returned to Brooklyn and involuntary widowhood,” reported The New York Times.

Single motherhood in 1890s New York was not an easy role.  The wronged woman obtained a job and placed her two oldest children, 12-year old Joyce and 10-year old Jerome, in the St. John’s Home on Willoughby Avenue in Brooklyn.  She kept her 5-year old son Aubrey with her.

Suddenly, in late October or early November 1898 Kerrigan and Jessie Shaw began living at No. 83 Perry Street.   Kerrigan went to the St. John’s Home, posed as Jerome’s uncle and was allowed to take him away.

The boy’s mother was not about to have her son stolen away by her cheating husband.  “Mrs. Kerrigan, who has a sort of amateur detective genius,” reported The Times, “traced the youngster to the Perry Street house, and haunted the neighborhood for some days with determination and a cab.

“Finally her vigilance was rewarded by seeing the boy on the street.  She promptly bundled him into the cab and drove triumphantly home with him.”

Afraid of losing her children to her kidnapping husband again, she quit her job and brought all three of them to No. 191 West 9^th Street in Brooklyn.  Her brother George Dennison helped support her.

But then she let her guard down.  On the evening of November 20, 1898 she allowed a friend, Nellie Crossen, to take the children to St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church.  When they emerged from the church after services, Kerrigan and Jessie Shaw were waiting in ambush on the other side of the street.

Kerrigan grabbed his daughter, but she struggled free and ran.  “Jerome, however, who had fallen into the woman’s clutches, was not so lucky,” said the newspaper.  “His father, aided by the woman, lifted the boy into a Court Street car and started toward Manhattan.  The youngster struggled and cried, but the passengers set him down for a refractory child and forbore to interfere.”

Kerrigan and his concubine disappeared into the night with the young boy.

The house soon became home to a much more respectable family—that of Richard A. Olmstead.  Olmstead was a retired corset manufacturer whose business had been at No. 781 Broadway from 1860 to 1880, opposite the A. T. Stewart emporium.

On June 17, 1890 his wife and daughter had helped form the Little Mothers’ Aid Association.   The object of the organization was “to provide summer day outings and winter industrial classes for those children of the tenements who are too young to be wage-earners, and upon whom household labor and care of the younger children fall, while parents are at work.”   After the death of her mother, Miss J. Olmstead was both the Secretary and Superintendent of the Little Mothers’ Aid Association for years.

On May 30, 1900 Richard Olmstead died in the little brick house on Perry Street.

In 1914 Edith Dupont was living here.   That summer she became acquainted with Frank Rowan who lived nearby at No. 369 West 11^th Street.  According to The Evening World the young man “paid her much attention.”

A friend of Rowan’s father, Joseph Fitzhenry, had taken an interest in him and had given him money to get on his feet.  It was a nice gesture, but Rowan felt he needed more cash.  On August 20, 1914 while his benefactor’s family was out, he was seen entering the Fitzhenry house by a fire escape.

Joseph Fitzhenry reported to police that when he returned home, jewelry and clothing worth $300 were missing.  Detectives put a tail on Edith Dupont.

On August 27 they “saw Rowan join her at Glen Island.  She was overcome with humiliation when the young man was arrested, and convinced the police she did not know he was not a proper person to have as a friend,” said The Evening World.

The house at No. 83 Perry Street seemed destined to receive bad press and it happened again on December 2, 1928.  James E. Sullivan was living here and acting as steward of the Beacon Elks Club in Beacon, New York.   Prohibition agents raided the lodge and found alcohol being served.  Sullivan’s name was plastered in The New York Times and the Elks Club was padlocked for a year.

The alterations to the windows of the two upper floor windows created an odd mish-mash of openings -- photo by Alice Lum

In 1931 the house underwent strange alterations.  The three second story windows were replaced by two oddly-chunky ones and the third floor windows were elongated.

After Allyn Richer Marsh, who had been with the Willcox Construction Company, died in February 1950 in the French Hospital in Chelsea, Ruth May took up residency.  Ruth was a literary agent whose most illustrious client was, perhaps, Irish writer Walter Macken. 

Because Macken was traveling from Ireland to Manhattan in November 1950, Lovat Dickson addressed a letter to the writer in care of Ruth May on Perry Street.  In it he broke the news that the Literary Guild had chosen “Rain on the Wind” for following publication the May.  “This means a fantastically large circulation, and a considerable sum of money for you, so that the cottage in Connemara should now be within reach,” said Dickson.

photo by Alice Lum

The house, today, is divided into two duplex condominium apartments, one of which was listed in 2012 for $2.5 million.  Little trace of the original interiors is to be found; yet the brick house with its quirky jumble of windows has a particular charm after nearly two centuries of fascinating stories.

The Wm. Vogt Stables -- No. 107 West 17th Street

Located in the high-end retail district, the commercial stable was especially handsome.

As the great retail emporiums lined New York’s Ladies’ Mile stretching from 14^th to 23^rd Streets along 6^th Avenue, the side streets filled with an assortment of structures.  Some of them, like warehouses, were connected with to the stores.  Others were only marginally associated with the retail industry.

Among the latter group was William Vogt’s stable at No. 107 West 17^th Street.  The three-story Italianate structure was a handsome take on the traditional stable design.  Constructed almost entirely of red brick, it boasted especially attractive architectural details.

The brickwork of the six piers at street level was laid to mimic rusticated stone.  They sat on carved stone bases and were capped with stone capitals that supported a wide stone entablature.   The keystones of the first and second floor were carved with simple foliate designs.  At the second and third floors, incised panels nestled between the centered, paired arched windows and the single openings on either end.   Here, at the second floor, painted signs advertised the vehicles and horses available to rent.

The architect added unnecessary but wonderfully decorative elements--brick voussoirs, carved keystones, deftly-carved capitals and small touches like the recessed niche.

Four blocks to the south, at Sixth Avenue and 13^th Street, was the home furnishings store of Sheppard Knapp--best known for its wide array of carpeting.  Because Victorian ladies of the 1890s expected their purchases to be delivered, high-end stores kept drays and horses.  Sheppard Knapp leased space in Vogt’s stable for its teams.

At the busiest time of the afternoon on June 21, 1893, just before 5:00, flames erupted from the bookbindery of George W. Alexander at No. 108 West 18^th Street.  The New York Times reported that “When the greatest crowds were surging along Sixth Avenue, between Fourteenth and Twenty-third Streets, yesterday afternoon the fire engines dashed up to the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighteenth Street.”

Crowds of onlookers watched in shocked suspense as flames licked out of all six stories of the structure.  “It was known that this building was a very bee-hive of industry and teemed with men, women, and girls,” said the newspaper.

As firemen on ladders rescued workers from the 18^th Street side, terrified females panicked at the back of the building.  Although the entire rear façade had a fire escape, “yet four women took flying leaps from the fourth story, expecting to reach the main roof of Sheppard Knapp’s stable at 109 West Seventeenth Street,” reported The Times.  “They all missed their calculations and were seriously injured.”

Young Annie Timmins landed flat on her back on the extension shed behind the stable, “rolled off the shed and struck a dog kennel, afterward falling to the ground.”  Her spine was fractured and she died. 

At the same time Mary Fitzpatrick jumped, landing in the rear yard of Vogt’s stable.  She sustained severe internal injuries and was taken to the New-York Hospital.  The other two jumpers, 48-year old Mrs. Hannah Van Orden and Mary McNamara were also injured.  Like Annie Timmins, she landed on the shed, wounding herself.  The McNamara girl broke her leg when she landed in the stable yard.

Vogt also ran an express office from the stable, receiving luggage and packages from steamers then either storing or delivering them.   His service became entangled in a missing person mystery the year shortly after the bindery fire. 

On September 14, 1893 20-year old Freida Kleinsteuber arrive in Hoboken on the Dania.  She had five heavy pieces of baggage which, peculiarly, were sent to different express companies in different areas of the city.  One trunk was consigned to Vogt’s operation on West 17^th Street.

The girl was on her way to visit Mrs. Mary Ernst in Chicago.  But she never arrived there.  When the girl’s brother wrote Mrs. Ernst in December to inquire why his sister had not yet written, the woman panicked.  She cabled back explaining that she was unaware that Freida had arrived in the country.

By March 1894 there was still no word of Freida’s whereabouts.  A friend told The Evening World “we are afraid that she has met with foul play or that she may have been made the victim of some evil woman.  She can speak English and French, and willingly, we are sure, she would not adopt a wicked life.”

William Vogt told investigators that the one trunk “remained here for a month until one day a pretty blonde little woman called for it, and, showing the proper checks, asked that it be sent to some house uptown.” 

Vogt no doubt frustrated detectives when he was pressed to show the date or delivery address.  He “found he found he had omitted to make an entry of the date of the transaction or the house to which the baggage had been sent,” reported The Evening World.

Stables, with their ample quantity of hay and other flammable articles, were often the scenes of fire and Vogt’s was no exception.  On February 6, 1885 three horses were burned to death in a fire in the rear of the building.

As the era of the horse and carriage passed, the many stables in New York were used as garages for motorcars, altered for business purposes, or simply razed.  In January 1941 Benjamin Schachter, a furniture manufacturer, leased the building from the Gazba Realty Corporation for its operation.

The grand emporiums of the Ladies’ Mile, in the 1960s, were dusty, vacant fossils and the glory days of Sixth Avenue were a faded memory.   The old stable building on West 17^th Street was home to Norman Lerner’s photographic studio.   He gave classes here in “photographic esthetics.”

During the 1970s the Asian decorative arts store, Miya Shoji, took the first floor.  Exotic screens and decorative household goods were sold in the space once occupied by coupes and horses.

Then, as the 21^st century neared, the Ladies’ Mile experienced a renaissance.  The expansive department stores were rehabilitated into new uses as residences and retail outlets.  No. 107 West 17^th experienced its own renovation that included a harsh façade cleaning that wiped away the century-old advertisements.

In the 1990s the Tuscan restaurant Ristorante da Umberto was here; an upscale eatery that catered to the trendy new crowd that roamed the reborn Chelsea neighborhood.

Then, with the new century, a remarkable thing happened at the second floor of William Vogt’s stables.  The stubborn painted Victorian signs leached out of the brick façade.  Considered lost, they once again announce to the passerby that victorias, coupes and horses are available inside.

Once erased by a well-intentioned cleaning, the Victorian painted signs have re-emerged.

photographs taken by the author