Our Neighbor on Broome Street

THIRTEEN / WNET has a web series called City Concealed, in which they visit lesser-known New York landmarks. Their latest video concerns the Kehila Kedosha Janina synagogue here on Broome Street. Since 1927, the temple has been the spiritual home of the Lower East Side's Romaniote Jews, who came from the town of Ioannina (Yanina / Janina) in Greece. Neither Ashkenazi not Sephardic, this group has their own language and cultural traditions, although they worship in much the same way that all Jews do.

My favorite part of the video comes as the congregation members are discussing the foods of their culture, naming them one by one. As they get to fasolia, which someone says means "beans," congregation member Jerry Pardo interjects his own very personal memory of the dish:

"Fasolia's not just beans. Fasolia is your mother in the kitchen, five o'clock in the morning, Friday morning, with a cigarette hanging outta her mouth, and the beans are on the stove. They're simmering, and they're simmering, and they're simmering, and they're simmering, and there's pieces of lamb in it - the one that your father sucks the middle out of it, the marrow."

This dish isn't just some pot of beans - it embodies his mother's labor and love, her devotion to her culture and her family, and the special work she put into the weekly Sabbath meal.



The City Concealed: Kehila Kedosha Janina from Thirteen.org on Vimeo.

The synagogue is open for services and also open Sundays for guided tours of their small museum. Check it out next time you're in the neighborhood.

- Posted by Kate

ABC No Rio's Unlikely History

Only a few minutes from the tenement at 97 Orchard Street, ABC No Rio, the venue for art, activism, and raucous punk concerts, is an arresting part of the Lower East Side. Recently, I decided to go beyond the graffiti and junkyard gates of 156 Rivington Street to explore the roots of the building, how it evolved into its striking image today, and where it might go next. 


Artist's Rendering of the Current No Rio
Courtesy of abcnorio.org.

ABC No Rio began on New Year's Eve 1979 when a group of artists created "the Real Estate Show" in an abandoned showroom on 123 Delancey Street.



After months of attempts to obtain the space legally from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the group of squatters decided to enter the building, clean the space, and hold their exhibition without city permission. Hoping to show the brutal ways in which disinvestment and the city's policies regarding low-income neighborhoods had turned the Lower East Side into a ghost town, they planned for their makeshift art gallery to occupy the space for two weeks. Yet after a single day, it was shut down by the police.

Once the building was sealed and locked, the artists campaigned to retrieve their work and entered talks with the HPD to secure their own space at 156 Rivington Street. After living and working there on shaky legal grounds for decades, they became official owners of the building in 2006.

But the history of the 156 Rivington began long before No Rio.

Prior to the current tenement's construction in 1917, families lived in a more ancient building. Though records of the structure are hard to come by, we know a one-year-old infant, Feiga, died there in 1902.

In 1917, the old structure was demolished and a new tenement rose at 156 Rivington. Wittmayer Photographers, a photography business at street level, was a tenant from the beginning. Twenty-six years later, in 1943, business owner Gustave "Gus" Wittmayer purchased the three-story building at 158 Rivington (previously a bank) and expanded his business into a space next door.

Wittmayer was a well-respected photographer and took many portraits of the immigrants who flooded the Lower East Side at the turn of the century. His studio's sign could be seen in the window of the ABC No Rio building until 1978, when he left both 156 and 158 Rivington Street for Atlanta.

After Gus left and ABC No Rio moved in, 158 Rivington became a beauty supplies store, distributing goods to local hairdressers. Meanwhile, the basement of 156 Rivington housed a small upholstery shop, and all street-level rental space became a part of No Rio. During the '80s, its front window, once home to Gus' sign, was smashed by local troublemakers.

In the early '90s, No Rio became a haven for squatters and disenchanted punk rockers. Grassroots activists like Food Not Bombs began meeting there, and concerts were held in the dingy, cramped basement around exposed beams.

These advertisements for the punk shows held at No Rio during that time give you a real feel for the era - click for a larger view (the flyers feature some crude cartoons and bad language).

The worth of the building in monetary terms tells you something about neighborhood change: 156 Rivington was valued at $24,000 in 1939, and by 1998, ABC No Rio entered a deal with the city to acquire the space for $1.

It was only during the last decade, as massive redevelopment and expensive new housing took hold of Rivington Street, that the eccentric building began to look foreign in its own gentrified neighborhood.

Despite the layers upon layers of paint, artwork strewn on its walls, and melded metal decorations adorning its entrance, the old structure is not as lively as it appears. Years after providing the necessary renovation to secure the space, the city and the volunteer collective that run No Rio have both accepted that the wood and brick building is dilapidated.

Director Steven Englander says the timber walls cannot support a restoration attempt. Because the cost of another renovation would be only slightly less than starting over, he and the collective decided that it's time to rebuild.

Artist's Rendering of the New No Rio.
Courtesy of abcnorio.org.

As envisioned by architect Paul Castrucci, an expert renovator of historical buildings, the new ABC No Rio building will share little in common with its current grimy facade. Instead, it will continue the sleek aesthetic of modern structures on the Lower East Side while maintaining pieces of its tried and true character.

The stories of sloped glass topped by a wall of solar panels, all covered in vine-like greenery, will dramatically reduce the energy needed to run the concert space, art gallery, darkroom, computer lab, library, office, and other facilities on site. And according to No Rio's official website, the new plans include provisions for upgrades to one day power the building entirely from renewable resources.

Construction is set to begin this fall and be completed in just over a year.



Shedding its funky image, 156 Rivington will once again fit in with its surroundings, at least superficially, but the original structure will be lost to history. From photo store to art gallery, stoic old New York holdout to proposed energy and design trendsetter, ABC No Rio has seen incredible change even for the shape-shifting neighborhood of the Lower East Side. What do you think about the redesign?

You can discover how other landmarks on Rivington Street and the surrounding Lower East Side neighborhood have evolved through generations of renewal on Next Steps: A Neighborhood Walking Tour.

-Posted by Joe Klarl

Looking Back at the Forward Building

During the early part of the twentieth century, many of the Yiddish-speaking immigrants who flooded the Lower East Side looked to famed newspaper The Jewish Daily Forward, or Forverts, for news and a gateway to American culture. First published on April 22, 1897, the socialist newspaper greatly influenced the political leanings of early Jewish immigrants and, by 1912, as readership exploded, The Forward became a leading national newspaper. Under the outspoken leadership of Abraham Cahan, a member of the Social Democratic Party of America, the paper continued to gain readers with its politics and increasing focus on issues close to the hearts and minds of workers, such as the crusade for labor unions.

It was during this era, amidst a frenzied competition with Russian-Jewish bank owner Sender Jarmulowsky to build the tallest structure on the Lower East Side, that the newspaper erected its headquarters at 175 East Broadway. Though falling short of the Jarmulowsky Bank's twelve story limestone and terracotta giant, architect George Boehm's Forward Building was nevertheless an impressive feat and cemented the paper's importance to the predominantly Jewish neighborhood. For a time, East Broadway even became known as "Yiddish newspaper row."

Readership waned in the decades after the 1920s, despite steps to modernize the paper. With the Red Scare, the paper pulled back on socialist politics in favor of a less radical liberal bent. Immigration from Yiddish-speaking countries was also on the decline, meaning fewer Jewish Lower East Siders and fewer readers. During the 1960s The Forward launched an English-language version to reach new audiences, and by the mid-70s, there was little reason for the paper to remain on East Broadway. The Forward left its original home, moving to midtown. The building's new tenants opened a church and community center for the growing Chinese population of the Lower East Side.

Taken in the seventies, in the wake of the newspaper's departure, the following photograph provides a closer look at the building's ornate facade, which retained its original marble and stained glass flourishes. You can also see the carved portraits of socialist heroes Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, and Ferdinand Lasalle on either side of the "Forward Building" sign above the entryway.

Collection of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum (c) 2010

And in this picture from 1980, you can see that The Forward maintained its imposing ten-story presence over the comparatively humble Lower East Side, even as new waves of immigrants arrived. Chinese characters were added to its side wall:

Collection of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum (c) 2010.

Today, the interior of the Forward Building houses condominiums rather than radical politics, and its exterior has been restored to more closely resemble its beautiful original appearance, as you can see in this photograph, taken last Thursday:

The Forward, now a weekly magazine, was located at East 33rd Street until recent years when that building too was sold to developers looking to build luxury condos. Currently housed at 125 Maiden Lane in New York's Financial District, The Forward is still an influential news source, particularly for Jewish Americans, though its circulation is only about a quarter of what it was during the paper's glory days.

To see the historic Forward Building for yourself, make sure to take Immigrant Soles: A Neighborhood Walking Tour. Educators can tell you more about the paper's importance for the Lower East Side's early Jewish residents. The tour is offered daily. Get your tickets today!

- Posted by Joe Klarl

Questions for Curatorial: Orchard Street's Early Days

Curatorial Director Dave answers your questions.

Was 97 Orchard Street the first tenement to be built on the block?

By 1828, there were structures on all thirteen lots on the western side of Orchard Street between Broome and Delancey. Except for a church and the building on the corner of Broome Street, which was probably a multifamily residence with a store on the ground floor, all were mainly residential. For the most part, these were two-to-three story wood frame dwellings which by the 1850s were being used as multifamily residences.

95, 97, and 99 Orchard Street circa 1999.
Collection of LESTM.

Initial development of the 97 Orchard Street lot began with the erection of a Reformed Dutch Church in 1828, which stood on what is today 95, 97, and 99 Orchard Street. In 1860, the Dutch Reformed congregation sold the church to a Universalist congregation, who not long after sold it again to the Second Reformed Presbyterian Church.

Three years later, in 1863, the property was purchased by Lukas Glockner, Adam Strum, and Jacob Walter. The new owners demolished the church structure, for the 1864 Orchard Street tax rolls list three new five-story tenements on the lots, one belonging to each of the buyers. [Editor: Can you see the headline today? "High Rise Housing Development Destroys Church"]

As only one-fifth of the buildings located in the 10th ward were tenements, 95, 97, and 99 Orchard Streets are the earliest surviving tenements on the block bounded by Broome and Delancey.

A former streetscape revealed in destruction on Grand Street

Our Minding the Store project manager, Chris Neville, has been researching the businesses that operated out of 97 Orchard Street from 1863 to 1988. As such, he's become mildly obsessed with the streetscapes of the Lower East Side. He thinks a lot about facades and buildings and how businesses incorporated themselves into tenements. He looks all the time for evidence of how stores in the earlier part of the 20th century, and even into the 19th century, might have set up their spaces. We don't have a lot of documentary evidence about the businesses in 97 or the building's facade, so we look around the neighborhood for similar tenements, checking for the layers of physical fabric that so often exist in older neighborhoods.

His eyes attuned to notice architectural details, Chris right away noticed some markings on the brick walls of the tenements next door to the two that were demolished recently, after the deadly fire on Grand Street. He did some research and discovered what existed on those lots before the tenements were constructed in the 1890s.

Head over to Bowery Boogie to read his post.

See you at the Confetti Dance?

Educator Allison Siegel continues her research into buildings on the Lower East Side. At the request of curious Tenement Museum staffers, she looked into 345 Grand Street, a cast iron building at the corner of Ludlow.

My first attempt at researching 345 Grand Street brought me to an interesting blog called Coretalks.com. Click to read more, but in a nutshell, over the years the building was a dance hall and a piano showroom.

I was immediately obsessed with finding out more! Could this building have been all that was claimed?

 
I was able to confirm H.W. Perlman’s Piano outlet was there, but was unsuccessful locating when. After hours of research, I caved and contacted the author of the blog, David Grossman, who put me in touch with one of the previous owner of the building. Here’s what he had to say:

Hello Allison,

David's article tells you most of what I know about the building. The exterior photo from around 1900 was retrieved from NY City archives by another owner, David Rakovsky on the 4th floor. When I was negotiating to buy the building in 1999, a man named Jimmy, who had been employed as a super by the owners Alan and Alice Friedman for many years, told me there used to be a dance parlor in the place, and with nods and winks he suggested that where there was dancing, there was probably a brothel too. I have no idea if that's true as a generalization, let alone true for 345 Grand.

In any event, the dance ticket we discovered under the floorboards confirms that the 2nd floor was a dance hall, and the stairway that used to connect the 1st and 2nd floors suggests that it might have occupied both floors -- perhaps a lounge or smoking room downstairs? We Googled the performers, Little Willie and Big Sam Kaplan, and contacted a few Kaplans with a LES background but learned nothing more. We surmise that a confetti dance had the band playing a medley -- a polka, a waltz, etc -- and there's an 1889 short film cited on Google called The Confetti Dance, but no information about it.

That's about all I know, except for a few half-credible stories about Lou Reid and Blondie having (at different times) lived next door or behind us, on Ludlow.

cheers

Phillip Frazer

(I am working on continuing Mr. Frazer’s research of Little Willie and Big Sam Kaplan and The Confetti Dance- stay tuned for what I find!)

While Mr. Frazer couldn't specify years, he did provide me with a ton of additional info to research, and so I did…

Not only was there a dancehall at 345 Grand, but when the building opened between Dec. 2 and Dec. 8, 1888, it did so as a “combination museum, theatre, menagerie and aquarium” in 1888.

“THE GRAND STREET MUSEUM A VERY humble east side place of amusement was THE GRAND STREET MUSEUM situated at Nos 345 and 347 Grand Street It was opened Dec 8 1888 and besides the living and other curiosities to be seen there dramatic performances were given and all could be enjoyed for ten cents.”

A history of the New York stage from the first performance in 1732 ..., Volume 2
By Thomas Allston Brown
Page 591

Yet another intriguing piece of New York City’s history, and folks, if you fancy yourself a new condo (FYI: according to the NY City Register, the building converted to the Grand Digs Condominium on April 8, 2003) -- some of the units are up for grabs.

‘til next time.
-A. B. Siegel

Thanks to Coretalks.com for the images.

Public Housing Projects

The La Guardia and Wagner Archives at CUNY have a wonderful database of information about the city, especially during the 1930s and 1940s. If you haven't checked it out before, it's highly recommended.

They recently put some photos from their collection on Flickr, and they're fascinating. I was particularly interested in the NY Public House set, which includes images relating to the public housing projects constructed in NYC in the mid-20th century. Many of those projects displaced tenants from their homes, which the government considered sub-standard.

The archive includes a number of pre-development site photos, which are pretty interesting if you never saw the former buildings in person. There are also images of the new construction which provide a good counterpoint to the empty-lot photos and, I think, complicate our notions of what public housing and "slum clearance" projects meant to the city and to the people who lived here then.

Here are some of my favorites from the set:

Here's an arial shot showing the new Lillian Wald and Jacob Riis projects on the East River, along with Sty-Town to the north, from 1949:



Here's a woman in her tenement apartment building in Chelsea, summer 1941. This apartment looks so much like our restored Baldizzi apartment. We probably have the same model washtub (cheapest available):



Here's another tenement kitchen, this one on the Lower East Side, in 1945:



Here's a look at Orchard and Rivington in 1936. Thankfully this street was never razed:



But, these tenements on 4th and D were - they were on the site of the present-day Wald Houses:



These also met the wrecking ball (Baruch Houses, 1950):



Stores like this one, on the site of the future Lincoln Center, lost their spaces and the neighborhood clientele who shopped there:



On the other hand, couples like this one found promise in new, clean homes with modern technology, which were in short supply after the war. So much of the city's housing stock was old and deteriorating that new buildings were much appreciated (1947):



Housing projects like the Red Hook Houses also provided classrooms for immigrants to learn English, like this one below (1940):




Have a look through the La Guardia and Wagner Archives' Flickr set and let us know which photos strike you the most.

 - posted by kate

A Little History of 75 Essex Street

Hello all! It’s Allison Siegel, Tenement Museum educator. In the upcoming months I’ll be writing some posts for the blog on neighborhood history stuff. First up is a mini neighborhood landmark!

Not too far from our lady of Orchard Street is another relic of a bygone era. At the corner of Essex and Broome Streets stands 75 Essex Street (left), once home to the Eastern Dispensary.

A little background on dispensaries is required, so please allow me to tell you about the Eastern Dispensary’s sister, the Northern Dispensary in Greenwich Village (right). You may know it as the place where that somewhat famous writer, Edgar Allen Poe, once stayed as a patient. Founded in 1829, the Northern Dispensary is the only building in New York City with one side on two streets – Christopher and Grove Streets – and two sides on one street – Waverly Place.

Both the Eastern and Northern Dispensaries are freestanding buildings, which are pretty rare in our fine city of party walls and few alleyways.

But back to the Lower East Side:

The Eastern Dispensary (also known, by the late 19th century, as the Good Samaritan Dispensary) opened in 1832 and was built to provide the sick and poor with a place to receive aide and medicine. Helen Campbell, a 19th century missionary, described its patients in her 1898 book Darkness and Light; or, Lights and Shadows of New York Life:

Weary mothers with sick and wailing babies in their arms; women with bandaged heads and men with arms in slings; children sent by sick fathers and mothers at home for needed medicine. On most is the unmistakable look that tells of patient suffering and half-starved lives. . . .

Other publications focused on promoting the Dispensary’s success in aiding New York’s impoverished:

The dispensary is open daily, and furnishes gratuitous medical and surgical aid to the destitute sick of the eastern portion of the city. It also gives special attention to vaccination, which is freely performed upon all who apply for it, without respect to their station or pecuniary circumstances. Those able to pay for this service are invited to, and it is stated, generally do contribute to the funds of the institution.

Since its opening, it has aided seven hundred and sixty-four thousand persons, at an average cost, of fifteen cents each. The number treated the past year was twenty-six thousand two hundred and eighty-six…

The institution was visited June 4th [1870], and its operations observed.... The medical staff consists of a house physician and full boards of visiting and attending physicians and surgeons, the latter serving without pay. It is a well ordered and finely managed medical charity, worthy the gifts of the benevolent and the aid it receives from the State. (The 1870 Annual Report of the Board of State Commissioners of Public Charities of the City of New York State Page 170)

Fifteen cents! Somebody get Obama on the phone. Actually, there are still many clinics around the city providing pay-as-you’re-able health care – the Community Healthcare Network's downtown health center on Essex has been serving the Lower East Side since 1971. It’s certainly the legacy of the 19th century dispensaries.

But the Dispensary provided more than just doctor care. Have any of you been on our Moore family tour? If so, you already know about the 19th-century contaminated milk epidemic and its fatal effects on infants. One of the city’s “milk laboratories,” which provided sanitary milk for infants, was located at 75 Essex Street. Read yesterday’s post for more on that.

The Good Samaritan Dispensary closed in 1955. The New York City Register shows that on April 25, 1977, the City foreclosed on 75 Essex Street due to unpaid taxes. Cue the Eisner Brothers!

Shalom Eisner grew up in Williamsburg and rented the first floor space of 75 Essex Street in 1977. It was there that he opened the Eisner Brothers Store. They sell everything! Here’s a blurb from their website:

Our tremendous selection includes tee shirts, sweat-shirts, golf shirts, jackets, caps and hats… [we’re] the haven for uniformed officers; they know they can count on us for all their wardrobe needs.

Professional sports buffs and amateur wannabes: you won't find a better array of boxing equipment and licensed sports products than this.

Our collection of "I Love New York" items is beyond compare: creative, original and stimulating.

By 1985, Shalom Eisner and his family purchased the entire building. They’ve been in business for over thirty years. In this internet age, they’ve also been pretty successful with online sales.

Last year, 75 Essex Street was placed on the market for a cool $18 million. I had to know why, so I called the store and spoke with Shalom. He cited the recession as the reason why he decided to try to sell. (May I just add: People. Eisner Brothers is a neighborhood institution. GO SHOP THERE!)

While gushing over the 20 ft ceilings on every floor and the 14 ft-high ceiling in the basement, Shalom told me it’s his dream that if he sells the building “it will be left as is on the outside and become a single-family home for a famous person… Someone like Madonna. She could have her own Lower East Side home.”

He emphasized that whoever (in case Madonna isn’t interested) purchases 75 Essex Street will have to leave the outside as is (“that will be set forth in the contract”). So, not to fear, Lower East Siders and friends of preservation – while the Eastern Dispensary and its patients are long gone and Shalom and his brothers are on their way out, I can say with certainty that although Shalom believes there’s “potential for a swimming pool in the rear yard,” 75 Essex Street is going to stand strong for another 180 years.

Peace and Blessings until next time,

- Allison B. Siegel

Allison is an educator at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, self-proclaimed (and some other folks think so, too) 19th/20th century local historian and preservationist-in-training.

History of 103 Orchard Street

Standing across the street from the corner tenement at 103 Orchard today, there is little evidence suggestive of the immense changes it has undergone since it was erected in the late 19th century. In 1888, the wood-frame dwellings at 103, 105, and 107 Orchard were replaced by three separate, individual dumbbell tenements, each 25 feet wide by 88.6 feet deep, each with 18 individual apartments.

Commissioned by Michael Fay and William Stacom, and constructed by architects Rentz and Lange for the sum of $25,000, these three tenements were built according to requirements of the 1879 Tenement House Act, known also as the “old law.”

The light and air requirements of the Act were physically manifested in the form of the dumbbell tenement, with its characteristic airshaft. Though the new design was intended to ameliorate the dark, dank interior rooms of pre-old law tenements (like 97 Orchard), they too soon became burdened with their own problems. Just eight years after being built, 105 Orchard Street was mentioned in a September 1895 New York Times article as a building the Board of Health would forcibly vacate if “not put in better sanitary condition within five days.”

In 1903, Delancey Street was widened as an approach to the newly built Williamsburg Bridge. In this widening, the tenements at 109, 111, and 113 Orchard Streets were demolished and cleared. The corner building at 83 Delancey Street was cleared as well. For about three years, the Delancey Street end of the block probably looked as if something was missing—the end of the street just shorn off. In 1906, the tenements at 103, 105, and 107 Orchard Street were purchased by Joseph Marcus, founder and president of the Bank of the United States. He completed major alterations that turned 107 Orchard into a corner building. Total cost: about $10,000.

The 1906 alteration was only the first of a series of changes that occurred at 103, 105, and 107 Orchard during the first decades of the 20th century. Undoubtedly the most far-reaching of these occurred in 1913. According to this Tenement House Department “Application to Alter a Tenement House,” 103, 105, and 107 Orchard were combined to create one building.

The description of alterations reads, “Rear part of all the buildings and southerly building to be removed; lots to be reapportioned and buildings altered so as to make one corner building. All stairs to be removed and new fireproof stairs erected. Partitions to be altered and bathrooms installed.”

Before completion, these major alterations were met with some concern by the Tenement House Department. In this series of memoranda from July 1913, Acting Commissioner Abbot notes his opinion that “the three original buildings have been so changed in form, occupancy and location that the portion of the structure remaining when alterations are completed constituted so different a type of structure that existed originally that I feel the Department would have to treat the alteration of such a gigantic nature requiring the filing of the application form for a new law tenement…”

The old dumbbell tenements were altered to create one, single new law tenement. While each of the original buildings had 18 apartments, for a total of 54, the new building at 103 Orchard Street had a total of only 16 individual apartments, or four apartments on each of the second, third, fourth, and fifth floors. No residential units existed on the first or ground floor after 1913, as this level was dedicated commercial space. Sometime between 1913 and 1917, one apartment on the second floor was turned into a dentist’s office. In 1938, another apartment on the second floor was discontinued and used for storage. From 1938 to the present, 103 Orchard Street has had a total of 14 individual residential apartments.

103 Orchard Street photo courtesy Municipal Archives.

Preservation News... Landmarks on the Lower East Side?

Jarmulovsky Bank Building, via Greenwich Village Daily Photo.

In July, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission met to discuss landmark designation for 17 individual historic properties, including:

- 143 Allen Street House, at Rivington Street in Manhattan, a two-story intact Federal style residence constructed c. 1831.

- The Hebrew Actors’ Union, at 31 East 7th Street between Second and Third avenues, constructed in the late 19th century

- The former Germania Fire Insurance Company building, at 357 Bowery, south of Cooper Square, a Second Empire style, 3 ½ story building completed in 1870

- 97 Bowery building, near Hester Street, a five-story Italianate commercial structure with a cast-iron façade constructed c. 1869

- Ridley & Sons Department Store, 319-321 Grand Street between Orchard and Allen streets, one of a pair of five-story, cast-iron buildings constructed c. 1886.

- Jarmulowsky Bank, 54 Canal St. at Orchard Street, a 12-story limestone and brick Beaux Arts style building built 1911-1912

You may remember reading about the Jarmulowsky clan in a past blog post. The Ridleys were just as nutty; read about them on the Inside the Apple blog.

The Ridley & Sons Department Store was a major neighborhood landmark, providing jobs for young immigrant women and fashionable clothes for a fraction of the cost of the stores uptown. The large windows are a sign of the times when indoor lighting was minimal. You can also see where the building was chopped up after Allen Street was widened in the early 20th century. All interesting stuff.

Former Ridley Department Store. Note where the arch in the brown windows abruptly ends - the building was sheared off when the El was torn down and the street was widened.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission recently let us know that they've added these properties to the calendar and will review their historic merit at an upcoming meeting. As it turns out, they are discussing Jarmulowsky at a meeting today. Too bad they don't have a live blogger or a Twitter feed... we'll have to wait to find out how it's going.

This is all good news; while the Commission is waiting to review the buildings, the owners can't alter them or tear them down. The Grand Street property that was once Ridley's is currently up for sale, as was Jarmulowsky's in the spring, so it's definitely a positive step for these properties to have protection.

- Posted by Kate Stober

Building Research Part 3 - A School for Immigrant Children Sponsored by the Astor Family

Now an apartment complex, once a school for underprivilged immigrant children

A reader suggested that I look into the history of the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School on Mott Street between Houston and Prince, founded in 1889 by the local nonprofit Children's Aid Society. Designed by architect Calvert Vaux (whose resume also includes Central Park), it's surprisingly opulent for a charity-run school, with bay windows, terracotta panels, and a jagged gable roof. And no wonder: it was funded by John Jacob Astor, whose wife, Charlotte, had supported a similar program in the neighborhood for over 25 years. (Children's Aid managed several schools throughout the city, predominantly serving the immigrant community.)

An original architectural drawing of another Children's Aid Society school, built in 1875 on East Broadway.

"For thousands of children the school has given an opportunity to obtain the training needed to make them self-supporting," the New York Times wrote in a piece on the school's innauguration. "A great deal of work has been done among the Italians, who have proved to be among the best students the school has ever had."

When Mrs. Astor died, her husband bought a lot at 256 Mott Street for $21,000 (previously the site of a frame house and a wooden cottage, and a stable where a brawl between Greek and Italian immigrants took place) and shelled out another $42,000 for a new schoolhouse's construction. The finished structure was dedicated to Charlotte.

A kitchen and dining hall occupied its "roomy basement," and the four above-ground floors housed classrooms, teachers' lounges, and workshops. "The building is heated by steam and well supplied with fire escapes," The Times made sure to note. "There is a small playground on the south side of the building, reached by a flight of steps from the basement." Which is long gone, now that the building's been divided into apartments.

-posted by Liana Grey

A Hair-Raising Story

I thought you readers would be interested in this fun article about a woman in the UK who is about as devoted as we are to recreating authentic plastering techniques in her historic home.

As some of you might know, horse hair was mixed into the plaster used on the walls of 97 Orchard Street. A little scientific research tells us more. Not only do we know that the hair was from a horse, but we also know where the hairs came from - the body and the mane of the horse.

Below are two photographs that show some of the hairs at 200x magnification. The courser hair in the top photo is from the mane. Neat!



























- Posted by Derya Golpinar, Collections Manager / Registrar

The Mysterious History of the Ridley Department Store

The Inside the Apple blog has a fascinating history of the former E. Ridley & Sons department store at the corner of Orchard and Grand.

Apparently the building is up for sale and can be yours for a mere $25 mil! Let's hope the purchaser keeps this historic building intact.

Read the history - full of eccentrics, fraud, and murder - here. Then come back October 5 when we host the authors of the Inside the Apple book for a Tenement Talk.

- Posted by Kate Stober

How to Research a Building Part 2

Earlier this month, I set off to research the history of random buildings in lower Manhattan, and discovered that 46 East Houston Street, a luxury condo just north of Little Italy, once housed immigrant apartments, a rowdy hotel and theater (known respectively as Scratch Hall and Dramatic Hall), and inventor Nikola Tesla's lab. Two mysteries remained: what did the original building look like? And did the lab and two halls ever coexist?

I headed down to the Municipal Archives office on Chambers Street to search its collection of tax photos - snapshots taken during the Great Depression of every single New York City building - for an image of the structure's exterior.


46 Houston in the 1940s, courtesy of the Municipal Archives

The hardest part wasn't locating 46 Houston in a cabinet full of microfilm; the images are organized by numbers assigned to buildings for tax purposes. Rather, it was threading the film through a malfunctioning scanner and printing out a decent copy. (During one attempt to use the machine, the spool used to secure the film to the scanner broke off.)

Museum staff member Chris Neville pointed me to a resource he used back in his days as a historic preservation consultant: the New York Public Library's online collection of postcard-sized photos of streetscapes, which turned up a high-quality image of the original 46 Houston (also known as 300 Mulberry Street). I also found an 1868 illustration of the building, which apparently housed a police station at the time, infamous for handling criminals ranging from Boss Tweed to an Italian woman who murdered her lover.


A 1913 photograph and 1868 illustration, courtesy of the NY Public Library

A trip to the library's 5th Avenue branch helped me solve mystery number two. I typed Dramatic Hall into a database of 19th century newspapers, and the headline of a 1894 Daily Tribune article popped up: "Dramatic Hall Torn Down." On a microfilm scanner down the hall (luckily, nothing broke this time), I scrolled through the May 1st issue and found the article on the last page, in a section of paragraph-long news briefs about the openings and closings of various New York City businesses. I wasn't able to print a copy, so I retyped it here (look out for some rather amusing descriptions of the building, like "nightly abode of an army of tramps" and a "breeding ground for disease").

Workmen yesterday began to tear down the four story building on the north side of Houston Street midway between Mulberry and Mott Streets, which was a well-known place of amusement in war times when the next block in Houston Street was known as "murderer's row." The building was called "Dramatic Hall' for 20 years after the war, although it degenerated to a dance hall with a bar-room on the first floor, and regular theatrical performances disappeared from the place forever. Several years ago, it was turned into a cheap lodging house and became the nightly abode of an army of tramps, fairly earning the significant name of "Scratch Hall." It became such a breeding place for disease that the Health Board revoked its license. In late years it had been occupied as a furniture warehouse. A seven-story business structure is to be erected on the site of the old building.

Tesla moved his lab into the top floor new building in 1896 (it would be interesting to find out what businesses occupied the other floors) - and it wasn't until nearly a century later that it was replaced with a luxury building. I browsed an interactive map of Manhattan for more details on the current building's status. Constructed in 1986, it's 12 stories high, about 86,746 square feet, and owned by the development firm Columbia 298 Mulberry.

So what next? A friend requested that I look into her apartment building on Avenue B, an ornate red-brick tenement that looked identical back in the 1940's (it was built in 1900), save the laundromat now on the ground floor. What caught my eye in the Great Depression tax photo was the building next door: an elegant structure reminiscent of a synagogue. I couldn't recall seeing it last time I was in the neighborhood, so a friend and I took a stroll over to Alphabet City one afternoon to check it out. In the mystery building's place (or perhaps near it - there's an empty lot next to the tenement) sat a drab 6-story nursing home built in the 1980s.


60 Avenue B, today and in the 1940s, when it stood next to a stunning temple-like building, now an empty lot or perhaps replaced with the Cabrini Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation; it's hard to tell from the pictures.

Speaking of temples, my friend Madhavi told me, there's a Hindu one near 7th Street and Avenue B. She'd worshiped there a couple times, and was curious about its history. We headed up a couple blocks to 96 Avenue B, a rundown gray-brick building just steps from Tompkins Square Park.

A sari-clad woman with an Eastern European accent greeted us in the entryway of a two-room space cluttered with statues of deities, some strung with brightly colored garlands. In the back room, wood carving of religious scenes covered almost every inch of the walls. According to the temple's website, extensive renovations were conducted on the "simple East Village space" before it opened in 2003. ( It claims to be the first Hindu temple in New York City, but there are much older ones in Queens, like the 30-year-old Ganesha Temple in Flushing that recently underwent renovations.)

About a decade ago, 96 Avenue B housed a vintage clothing store, Metropolis, dubbed the city's "best and cheapest" by the New York Times. It was one of several outposts of hipster culture in the neighborhood, including a tattoo parlor and a leather goods shop.

For at least part of the 19th century, the building was a three story tenement with a "cloak and suit establishment" on the ground floor. The landlady, an elderly woman named Mrs. Louis Thielmann, was hosting her daughter and two young grandchildren in her top story apartment when a fire broke out, prompting a dramatic rescue by a fireman that happened to be across the street.

Once safely outside, according to an 1888 New York Times article describing the incident, both the landlady and her daughter bestowed kisses of gratitude on the fireman.


A two-story building at 96 Avenue B houses the Radhe-Shyam Temple. During the Great Depression, it was a tenement house.

Coming up next: the history of a tenement on Second Avenue once home to a restaurant and a handful of interesting residents. And hopefully, some answers about the mystery building that once sat near my friend's apartment building on the corner of 5th Street and Avenue B.

-Liana Grey

180 Orchard Street - Former Tenement, Future Shopping Mall

At least there's no parking lot...

A rendering of the future 180 Orchard Street, posted on a concrete column in the massive construction zone between Houston and Stanton streets, looks like a strip mall straight out of Southern California: squat and long, with smooth beige walls and a pointed red roof.

After a five-year saga involving stalled construction (the half-finished skeleton of what was originally supposed to be a 22-story luxury hotel hung in limbo as the Department of Buildings sorted out a permit problem), a rumored shift in ownership, and a startling design change, local brokerage firm Misrahi Realty is now soliciting tenants for an 11,000 square foot retail center set for opening next May.

The building's future may be somewhat of a mystery (Misrahi told Curbed.com that the finished shopping center may not turn out exactly like the rendering), but I was at least able to dig up a thing or two about its past.


The construction site at 180 Orchard once looked much like the historic tenements surrounding it


Back in 1870, when the block was occupied primarily by Irish, Jewish and Italian immigrants, the site housed a four-story tenement that made it into the New York Times after kerosene oil exploded in one of the apartments, causing a small fire and $100 dollars worth of damage. A year later, it was back in the news when a resident, Henry Lunsman, was attacked on his way home by a stranger wielding a baker's peel. (Henry walked out of a bakery without paying, perhaps?)


According to the Department of Buildings website, a new building was constructed at the address in 1900 - though exactly what type is unclear. It received a string of "unsafe building" notices beginning in 1914, a handful of complaints throughout the mid 20th century, and was leased out to several trendy boutiques and galleries in the late 1990s when the Lower East Side was just beginning to gentrify.

-Posted by Liana Grey

How to Research a Building Part 1

Blog writer Liana Grey charts her experience researching the history of lower Manhattan's everyday buildings.

Today, it's a seven-story apartment complex with a Subway, dry cleaners, and billiards hall on the ground floor - so nondescript you wouldn't give it a second glance. But from what I've pieced together from 19th century city directories and newspaper articles, 46 Houston Street, on the billboard-cluttered border between Little Italy and the East Village, once housed a famous inventor's lab, an auditorium, a rowdy lodging house, and apartments possibly crowded with Jewish immigrants.

46 Houston's conversion into a luxury building (the rent for one bedrooms is about $4,500 a month) obscured its eclectic and at times seedy history.

The building took a while to locate. I had to circle the block a couple times and conduct a property search on the Department of Buildings website before I realized that 46 East Houston is now known as 298 Mulberry Street - and that a series of renovations and a 1962 demolition had all but buried its fascinating past.

Not exactly what I had in mind when I set out several weeks ago to research centuries-old buildings in the Lower East Side. After strolling through the neighborhood and picking buildings at random – the eye-catching orange-and-white-striped synagogue on Rivington Street, the ornate brown brick tenement on Orchard Street just north of Delancey – I headed over to the National Archives office on Varick Street, picturing myself sorting through files and poring over microfilm slides.

Once there, a staff member directed me to a computer, and I quickly learned that most genealogical records have been scanned into online databases and that few, if any, instantly reveal the history of single street addresses.

So I decided to scrap my list of buildings (at least for the moment) and work backwards, scouring historical data for mention of tenements, shops, or other physical structures. And, curious to see how far internet research could take me, I figured I'd stick primarily to online sources.


Left: the synagogue at 58 Rivington Street, now an apartment complex for artists, turns out to have a well-known and interesting history, and may be the topic of a future post. Right: the ornate tenement at 121 Orchard Street.

An online copy of an 1896 city directory - a sort of precursor to the phone book listing nearly 400,000 ordinary New Yorkers' occupations and home addresses - seemed like a good place to start. I browsed the book's 463 pages, crammed with ads for banks, umbrella companies, and storage facilities, for residences on the Lower East Side, and settled on 79 East Broadway, home of Joseph Mooney, a fireman.


A page from Trow's 1896 New York City Directory, courtesy of Ancestry.com, a subscription-only database that can be accessed for free at the National Archives regional office.

When a Google search of the address failed to turn up much background on the building's occupants (A 55 year old resident was mentioned in a New York Times obituary in 1899, and another made it onto a list of Tammany Hall's Republican Party members, but that's about it) and a trip to the site, in a section of Chinatown once home to working class Jewish immigrants, revealed nothing historical - only a two-story shopping center under the Manhattan Bridge overpass that was probably built within the last few decades - I scratched 79 East Broadway off my list and headed back to the Archives.

I gave the city directory a rest and tried my luck with the 1910 4th Ward census, which covers parts of the Lower East Side - but no matter how many times I zoomed in on the digital copy of the document, I struggled to read the census taker's handwriting.

Finally, after about an hour browsing the web, I stumbled across the resource that would lead me to 46 Houston Street: a 1900 book of biographical data on New York's most prestigious bankers, merchants, lawyers, and scientists. By chance, I came across an entry on Serbia-born inventor Nikola Tesla, best known for his work with alternating current, radio, and wireless electricity:

In 1896, Tesla set up a laboratory on the top floor of 46 Houston Street following a fire that destroyed his workspace on West Broadway. His new lab nearly suffered the same misfortune four years later, according to a biography of the inventor, when part of the building caught ablaze: "The Jews on the lower floor [were] burned out...[and this] frightened me nearly to death," he wrote in a letter to friends. It seems, from this account, that at least part of the building was subdivided into apartments. Whether Jewish immigrants (or even first or second generation Americans) were the only tenants remains a mystery.

Fire wasn't the only disaster to strike Tesla and his neighbors. An 1888 earthquake that shook the area around 46 Houston Street, drawing police and ambulances, was supposedly caused by one of his experiments. (Tesla claims he invented a device that could cause tremors in the earth through the transmission of vibrations.)


An old photograph of Tesla's lab, retrieved from a Google image search

Curiously, the New York Times archive - which dates back to 1851 - doesn't mention Tesla's connection to the building. Its entries on 46 Houston Street include an 1888 report on a drunken brawl between a 60 year old man and a thug nicknamed "The Sparrow", which took place in a 10-cent lodging house known as "Scratch Hall," (its proprietor was arrested less than 10 years later for illegally disposing of alcohol), and an 1869 article on a political gathering held by former Union Army soldiers at Dramatic Hall, an auditorium located at the same address.

In a testament to some of the limits of online research, I've had difficulty digging up more information about Scratch Hall, the auditorium, and the building in general (when were the two halls established? What was on the top floor before Tesla converted it into a lab? How tall was the structure in the first place?) - and property records on the Department of Building's website don't mention when 46 Houston was first constructed. (I sifted through all the "actions," or records of alterations, on the building, and the earliest was a 1900 elevator report.)

A visit next week to the New York Public Library's local history collection will hopefully shed some more light on the building's past - including, perhaps, the appearance of its original facade.

To Be Continued.

2009 Gala - Bowery Savings Bank

At our 21st anniversery gala last night, we honored architects Gary E. Handel, Enrique Norton, and Bradford Perkins. Fittingly, the space where we held the dinner was architectually exquisite - and as historically significant as 97 Orchard Street itself. For years, the Capitale event hall on Bowery and Grand Street housed the Bowery Savings Bank, built by the prominent architect Stanford White in 1834 to resemble a Romanesque church. It was popular with the Lower East Side's immigrant families, who needed a convenient place to store their savings. By 1980, the bank expanded to 35 branches across the New York metro area, but ran out of cash two years later (as a result of bank deregulation, which sent savings account interest rates skyrocketing) and was sold five times over the next two decades. Check out the gorgeous Corinthian columns, domed ceiling, and stained-glass windows in the ballroom, where guests dined and virtuoso fiddler Eileen Ivers performed (photos of the event are coming soon!):