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A Remnant of Speakeasy Days on West 54th Street

June 11th, 2010 by DavidFreeland
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Again I’m offering apologies for going so long without a new post.  I have been busy preparing for book lectures and signings, leading seminars and walking tours (including one last Tuesday for NYU that was great fun), and thinking about new ways to look at and learn from this complicated but fascinating city of ours.  But there are two midtown buildings, sitting side by side, that have been on my mind now for some months.

54th Street west of Broadway

They sit just west of Broadway on a bedraggled stretch of 54th Street.  A large portion of the block’s northern side on the opposite Eighth Avenue end has been demolished for what I can only presume will be another high rise – but who knows when that will ever get built.  These days the only thing we’re guaranteed when a building is torn down is an empty lot.  The building on the left looks like it may have been an old automobile showroom (there was a time when this section of Broadway was lined with such showrooms).  While rundown, it retains much architectural detail, including a lovely row of pilasters along the fourth story.  Not long ago this building and its immediate neighbor to the east looked as if they were slated for demolition; then, the real estate bubble burst.  Last month I noticed a “for sale” sign in its window, touting it as an “architecturally distinctive” property.  I guess we shouldn’t gripe – we’ll take preservation any way we can find it, right?

But it’s that building to the immediate east (231 West 54th) that has really captured my attention.  Here is a closer look:

231 West 54th Street

Intrigued by the colored window panes on the third floor, and by what appears to be a rooftop extension, I did a little research and discovered it was once home to the Fifty-Fourth Street Club, a 1920s speakeasy run by Helen Morgan, the great “torch singer” whose tragic life epitomized the giddy excesses of the Prohibition years and the tough, lean times that followed.

Helen Morgan

As a nightlife fixture Morgan was peripatetic, and after the Fifty-Fourth Street Club was padlocked for violation of Prohibition laws in February of 1927, she moved to a different location.  231 West 54th, meanwhile, was converted into the Chateau Madrid, later known as one of the fabled nightclubs of the Roaring Twenties.  One morning in October of 1928, Joey Noe, a close associate of bootlegger/gangster Dutch Schultz, was gunned down in front of the club, with the Times reporting that the shots were “fired from the windows.”  Schultz was believed to have blamed his arch-rival, Legs Diamond, for the shooting, and was said to have ordered the killing of crime kingpin Arnold Rothstein in retaliation.

Dutch Schultz

231 West 54th Street’s association with entertainment did not end with the repeal of Prohibition.  By 1935, it was operating as Dan Healy’s Broadway Room, with music by the orchestra of Joe Venuti, described by jazz historian Scott Yanow as “improvised music’s first great violinist.”  More recently the building was used as an XXX-rated video parlor and lingerie store.  Perhaps, it can be hoped, future plans will include a return to the music and entertainment for which it was once known.

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The Heights Theater

March 20th, 2010 by DavidFreeland
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It’s been a while since my last post, mostly because I’ve been occupied with a move to a new apartment and neighborhood.  The neighborhood is one I expect to be writing about on Gotham Lost & Found in the months to come.  It’s a sliver of upper Manhattan perched above the banks of the Hudson in the West 180s and lower 190s, filled with wonderful Art Deco apartment houses, expansive parks and small family-owned businesses – many of which, like Gideon’s bakery, have been here for decades.  Once the enclave was known as Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson, on account of the German-speaking Jewish population who called it home during the 1930s and 40s.  Elements of that old-world culture remain, but the area is now being changed somewhat by an influx of younger people – migrants from the Upper West Side and points to the south.

One of the nice points about living here is that it has given me a chance to explore other sections of uptown Manhattan nearby.  Coinciding with this development was my receipt of an inquiry from reader Adrian Allen, who wrote about “a building on Wadsworth Av. between 180 & 181 St.”  Adrian wrote a nice description of the exterior:

The building appears to be an old movie theater or a vaudeville house. On the facade are several “gargoyles” with different facial expressions. The building also has an imprint of a marquee. It is now a clothing store. Please check this building out. It is totally amazing!

I took Adrian’s suggestion and went to the site, located not far from the massive RKO Coliseum movie palace on 181st; the facade is indeed striking:

Heights Theater

It turns out that this building was in fact built as a movie theater, the Heights, which opened in the fall of 1913.  According to my friend Thomas Rinaldi, who wrote a fascinating paper on another of the neighborhood’s surviving old theaters, the Empress (which still contains its original pipe organ!), the Heights’ location was significant: “A middle class neighborhood, Washington Heights was well-suited as a proving ground for the growing film industry, whose strategy was to provide inexpensive entertainment to a mass market.”  By the 1920s, Tom writes, at least five motion picture theaters had opened in the area; most have survived (albeit in altered form) into the present day.

Tom was also kind enough to provide me with a copy of Motion Picture News from 1913, which gives a description of the new Heights’ interior:

The “Heights” theatre is devoted to high-class motion pictures exclusively.  They are projected on a gold fibre screen and are accompanied by one of the Wurlitzer Unit orchestras.  The auditorium is lighted with the indirect lighting system and no side lights on the walls to shine in the eyes of the audience.  Six hundred of the most comfortable seats, carpets in the aisles, brass railings, etc., complete the arrangements of the auditorium.

As Tom emphasizes so well in his paper, the Heights’s history is inextricable from that of its neighborhood.  In later years, it showcased foreign and art films (including Tosca, in 1956), then, by the early 1980s, xxx-rated features.  Today it houses a shoe store.  Whatever is left of the original interior is hidden behind drop ceilings, but outside the decorative work remains intact.  Here’s a closeup:

Heights Theater 2

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A Small But Important Boost for Tin Pan Alley

January 19th, 2010 by DavidFreeland
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There is a bit of good news for those of us concerned about development threats to the 19th century row houses that once constituted Tin Pan Alley on West 28th Street, the birthplace of the American popular music industry.  These threats have been reported upon extensively during the past year and a half, in my book, on Lost City, Curbed and other websites, and by the Historic Districts Council.  The impending sale of several of Tin Pan Alley’s buildings wound up being forestalled by the real estate market’s downturn; otherwise, preservation efforts have lacked the kind of high-profile public support they’ve needed to really get momentum going.

Tin Pan Alley around the turn of the 20th century, courtesy of Getty Images

Tin Pan Alley around the turn of the 20th century, courtesy of Getty Images

Fortunately, historians and preservationists may now have more time to make their case.  My friend, tenants rights lawyer Robert Petrucci, who has been representing tenants in the West 28th Street buildings for a number of years, tells me that he has just received a favorable recommendation in his effort to establish the four buildings from 49 to 55 West 28th Street (which, incidentally, are among the most historically significant of Tin Pan Alley’s surviving edifices) as a single unit.  In a report dated January 15, 2010, Administrative Law Judge John B. Spooner explains the reasons for his recommendation:

“Constructed as townhouses in the 1860s, the four buildings have been under common ownership since 1903…Based upon the overwhelming number of factors establishing that the four buildings have been owned and operated together for over a hundred years, I find that the four buildings constitute a single horizontal multiple dwelling.”

Judge Spooner cites a number of features, among them a common fire escape and boiler, along with cellar openings between 49 and 51, in support of his decision.  Petrucci explains that the findings will still need to be adopted by the NYC Loft Board, but that in these kinds of cases “acceptance is the norm.”  What this means is that it would now be “very difficult,” according to Petrucci, for the individual buildings to be developed separately.  That, in addition to the fact that a portion of the lot upon which number 49 sits is still designated as M1-6, for manufacturing use (the now-famous 1995 rezoning which opened the area up to commercial/residential use only extends for a specific number of feet from Sixth Avenue), signifies an impediment to prospective developers.

Not the overarching victory we’ll need in the long run, but nonetheless an important development that may help vouchsafe the immediate security of the place where a teenage Irving Berlin worked as a song plugger, and where popular music came into its own as a marketable, hit-making force.

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Williamsburg(h), Brooklyn

December 15th, 2009 by DavidFreeland
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Did you know Williamsburg used to have an “h”?

Williamsburgh 1

Original Williamsburgh Savings Bank Headquarters at 175 Broadway (Source: Flickr)

This week’s entry will be a cross-post with Untapped New York, a fascinating and informative blog run by architectural historian and musician Michelle Young.  On a recent afternoon, Michelle and I trekked across the river to the Marcy Avenue subway station (J/M/Z line) in Brooklyn, our starting point for an exploration of Williamsburg, one of Gotham’s most diverse and intriguing neighborhoods.  New York City’s toponymological evolution can often be traced in the design of its buildings; and today, specifically, we were looking for physical signs of Williamsburg’s original 19th-century spelling: “Williamsburgh.”

dime-bank

Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburgh (Photos by Michelle Young)

Our first stop was the Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburgh (at the corner of S. 5th and Havemeyer Streets), a solid-looking Greek revival edifice whose frieze, set above a line of Corinthian columns, is inscribed with the bank’s full title – including the final “h.”  Across the park at 175 Broadway is the domed Renaissance-inspired HSBC Bank, the original headquarters of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank built in 1870-75.  The landmarked building fortunately preserves some of the original signage.  According to most historical accounts, the “h” was dropped after Williamsburg became consolidated with Brooklyn in April of 1854.  One of the more interesting footnotes unearthed during research for this post was the argument, expressed by an editorialist in the Brooklyn Eagle of June 6, 1853, that with consolidation, “we should also be much better able to stand against the oppressive measures of the big city over the river.”  Of course, all of Brooklyn was eventually incorporated into that city, in 1898.

Brooklyn Public Library

Brooklyn Public Library (Photo by Michelle Young)

Making our way past 1930s housing developments and 19th-century row houses (a few of which were being replaced, evidently for new construction), we landed at the Williamsburg branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (built in 1903 at Division and Marcy Avenues), where the original “h” is again preserved in the building’s design, in a frieze above the main entrance.  The book stacks inside the library are arranged radially in a semi-circle, filling a large bay window, and include many titles in Yiddish (which is spoken by the Satmar Hasidim who comprise one of the neighborhood’s most populous social groups).  Outside Michelle took a few photos of the imposing Classical Revival facade, but was then stopped by a security guard.  I was reminded of the many insidious ways in which New York has become a city of “don’ts.”  Few of these proscriptions make any logical sense; they stifle the expressive freedoms for which New York has always been known.  After pointing out to the guard that there is no law preventing buildings being photographed from the outside, we moved on.

Williamsburgh Street

Williamsburg(h) Street. (Photo by Michelle Young)

If “Williamsburgh” did indeed become “Williamsburg” after consolidation, evidence suggests that the two spellings were used interchangeably for a long time.  Even today, an “h” will sometimes appear in printed references to the neighborhood.  This confusion was made manifest as we strolled along Williamsburg Street, half of which seems to have been lost to the expressway which runs parallel to it.  A street sign announcing “Williamsburg St” sat one block away from one that proclaimed “Williamsburgh St”; the signs appeared to be about the same age, of relatively recent design and placement.  If “Williamsburgh” has indeed been removed from the New York lexicon, it is having a serious case of departure anxiety.

williamsburgh1

Williamsburgh Savings Bank (Photos by Michelle Young and Jake Dobkin, top left, bottom right)

We ended our tour at the Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower near the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) downtown, for the documentation of one final “h” (above the central arch) and a view of some exquisite tile mosaics in the lobby.  Still the tallest building in Brooklyn, the tower’s landmark status helps ensure that “Williamsburgh” will not disappear any time soon.  It is currently being converted into condos, which despite anti-gentrification proponents, is sometimes a way to preserve historical architecture – in this case, 63 ft vaulted ceilings, marble interiors and 40 ft ornamented windows.  And in the tradition of the preservation, this building did not generate any media or internet presence until after 2007, when it closed and was sold to developers.

savings-bank-2

Williamsburgh Savings Bank Facade and Mosaic (Photos by Michelle Young)

How to Get There:
Dime Savings Bank J/M/Z Subway to Marcy Avenue

Williamsburgh Savings Bank 2/3/4/5/B/D/M/N/Q/R Subway to Atlantic-Pacific

Special thanks to Jake Dobkin for usage of his beautiful nyc photography from www.bluejake.com

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East Harlem Theaters, Part 2: The Cosmo

November 27th, 2009 by DavidFreeland
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East 116th Street in “El Barrio,” East Harlem, is one of my favorite Manhattan thoroughfares because of the life that seems to pulse from every storefront and window.  A sign jutting from a row of stately 19th century townhouses advertises “Lupe, Spritualist Reader & Advisor,” who is also described as a “profesora en espiritismo.”  Dental offices proclaim extractions and other services offered “con gas,” while the steady heartbeat of salsa and Latin jazz emanates from glass-fronted record shops, filling the streets with music.

Architecturally there is much here to admire, including this lovely old theater (now Regine’s clothing shop) at number 176.

DSC04699

I’ve passed this theater a number of times and have longed to investigate its history.  My first stop, after taking this photo this morning, was to visit cinematreasures, which can always be counted on for well-researched information.  According to the site, Regine’s was once the Cosmo, a venue for not just Spanish-language films but (like the Campoamor Theater profiled in an earlier Gotham Lost and Found post) live performance as well.  In fact, one Cinema Treasures contributor recalls seeing great Latin artists such as Celia Cruz and Tito Puente here, some time before they crossed over to a wider public and began performing at larger venues such as Radio City Music Hall.  As we’ve seen with so many of New York’s performance spaces, the Cosmo resonated with the culture and spirit of the community that surrounded it.

My next step in researching the Cosmo was the page for 176 East 116th Street on the NYC Department of Buildings’ Building Information System.  According to the “NB” (for “new building”) entry there, the permit for the theater was applied for in 1920, which means that the building would have been completed by 1921 or 1922 (and a certificate of occupancy, also available for viewing on the site, dated January 1922, confirms this).  A perusal through the New York Times historical archive (not free, I’m afraid) reveals something of a tumultuous history, including a fire, two robberies (including one in which the thieves used acetylene torches to melt the burglar-proof safe), and a shooting within its first two decades of existence.  According to Cinema Treasures, the theater continued to show action and Spanish-language movies until it closed during the middle 1980s.

Today nothing of the interior is visible, although I suspect that some original decoration survives beneath the expansive dropped ceilings.  The facade remains extremely well-preserved, as can be seen in this photo:

DSC04702

We’ll continue our exploration of East Harlem’s theaters within the coming weeks!

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A Halloween Special

October 31st, 2009 by DavidFreeland
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Dear Gotham Lost and Found readers,

This week I’m linking to a post I’ve written for my publisher NYU Press’ blog, From the Square, regarding some rather mischievous ghosts from 19th-century Gotham.

You can read the ghost story here.

Have a safe and happy Halloween!

David

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West 29th Street Underground Railroad Stop Wins Landmark Designation

October 13th, 2009 by DavidFreeland
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Here’s a really inspiring story: Late this afternoon, the Landmarks Commission approved the designation of the Lamartine Place Historic District, a short row of West 29th Street houses, one of which served as a stop on the Underground Railroad (I found the photo below at the Bay Ridge Journal blog).

Lamartine Place

This is a designation that came solely as a result of community activism and persistence, and serves as proof that our efforts really can make a difference.  It’s also a stirring reminder that our collective struggles as New Yorkers – to fight for social justice and a city in which we all belong – deserve to be memorialized.

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The Mount Morris Theatre, aka El Teatro Campoamor

October 12th, 2009 by DavidFreeland
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Walking through Central and East Harlem this morning I was reminded of this real beauty of a theater at 116th Street and Fifth Avenue.  Today it is used as the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith; and, if its exterior is any indication, it is in excellent shape.

Mount Morris Theatre

Although I had seen the theater on earlier walks, this was the first time I stopped long enough to notice some truly striking decorative features, which include a row of lions’ heads above the first story.  Note the whimsical interplay with the statue of an owl that someone, in more recent years, has placed at the base of a pilaster (there is a second owl on the other side).

Mount Morris Theatre - Lion

The lions, jaws gaping to reveal fearsome teeth, remind me of those which decorate the facade of another Harlem theater, the 1903 Alhambra, on 125th Street at Seventh Avenue.  New York buildings have a curious way of revealing their histories through the accretion of layers, and this one is no different.  Although hard to see in the photo below, the words “Mount Morris Theatre” are just perceptible, in faded outline, along the frieze below the cornice.

Mount Morris Theatre - Facade

Here’s a brief history I’ve uncovered this afternoon: Named, evidently, in honor of nearby Mount Morris Park, the theater appears to have been built around 1912, at a time when the surrounding neighborhood was largely Jewish (although one New York Times account indicates that the building was actually owned by the Ancient Order of Hibernians).  Likely it opened as a vaudeville playhouse, although it was showing films as early as 1917, as evidenced by a Times notice from January of that year, advertising the outrageous silent star Alla Nazimova in “War Brides.”  Later in 1917, a member of the Institutional Synagogue, which held services in the building, used the stage as a platform from which to denounce the Russian Bolshevik movement.  In 1934, the Mount Morris (by this time no longer owned by the Hibernians) was shut down by the city’s zealous License Commissioner, Paul Moss – reportedly because it owed its film projectionists $1,500.

At this point, the excellent website, Cinema Treasures, is helpful in letting us know what happened next.  According to one contributor, in August of 1934 the old Mount Morris reopened as a Spanish-language theater, the Campoamor; later it was known as the Cervantes, Hispano, and Radio Teatro Hispano.  The first performer there was Argentinian tango idol Carlos Gardel (actually, he was born in France; sadly, he would be killed in 1935 in a plane crash).  The Campoamor also played a role in the evolution of Afro-Cuban jazz in New York.  The website Cuba Now explains that Alberto Socarrás, a great flautist born in Cuba in 1903, opened at the 116th Street Campoamor in 1934.  Excelling in Cuban dance music as well as jazz and blues, Socarrás also performed at Harlem landmarks such as Connie’s Inn and the Apollo Theater (on a bill with Bessie Smith).  As such, he helped forge a key relationship between the Cuban and U.S. musical cultures, one which would flourish in the decades to come.

By 1936, when the Campoamor was rechristened the Cervantes, it was, in the words of the Times, “the principal Spanish-language cinema house in New York.”

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What’s Happening with the Windermere?

October 4th, 2009 by DavidFreeland
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“They’re doing interior demolition on the building at 57th Street and 9th Avenue,” my friend Amber told me last week, “and it smells like death.”

The Windermere, enshrouded in scaffolding

The Windermere, enshrouded in scaffolding

Indeed it does.  Or perhaps it’s my febrile imagination that makes me think I can smell decay as far as a block from the rotted beauty known as the Windermere, an 1881 Queen Anne-style apartment house at 400 West 57th Street that once ranked among Manhattan’s most elegant and innovative residences (according to this 2002 report in the New York Times, it offered one of the city’s first building-wide telephone services).  Today, however, after decades of litigation, tenant harassment, and neglect, the Windermere has become a shell of its former self – although much of the astounding brickwork on its facade remains.

For years the Windermere’s owner, a Japan-based company, provided virtually no maintenance, in the evident hope that the building would rot to the point where demolition (and subsequent redevelopment) would be the only option.  Despite the company’s protest, the city stepped in and designated the Windermere an official landmark in 2005 – although the building continued its long slide into desuetude.  Good news seemed to arrive this May, when the Times’ City Room reported that a new owner had taken control and was planning to restore the collapsing structure.

Now, though, I’m beginning to wonder what’s really going on.  In the new photo below, the sky can be viewed through one of the upper windows – evidence that at least a portion of the roof is missing.  As we know, leaving an old building open to the elements will hasten its deterioration rapidly (remember the Harlem Corn Exchange?).

57th and 9th missing roof

I visited the Department of Buildings website to see what I could find out about the Windermere, and discovered an array of stop work orders and violations.  In fact, three complaints have been issued since August alone.  One, dated September 3, charges that the floor joists have been removed from the 2nd to the 6th floor.  If true, this is extremely distressing – joists are supporting structures.  I recall the Dwyer Warehouse floor collapse in my neighborhood in 2002, which killed a 53-year old constuction worker, Modesto Olivo.  Let’s hope that necessary precautions are being taken, and that nothing similar would ever happen to the Windermere.  That would be a tragedy far worse than the loss of a beautiful building.

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Welcome to “You Are Here!”

September 3rd, 2009 by DavidFreeland
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“You Are Here” is a public art project, linked to my new book, Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville, that helps New Yorkers (and that includes all of you, residents and visitors) experience the past through the present-day city, with the help of their mobile devices.  Throughout Manhattan I’ve put up 9 (with a bonus 10th to follow) dinner-plate sized signs, each on the surface of a building that once played a key role in the evolution of our entertainment culture.  When you find a “You Are Here” sign, simply text in the specified code to the number given on the sign – you’ll receive an instant message back, telling you some interesting fact about where you are and why this building is important.  Think of it as my historian’s fantasy – I’m putting up plaques on buildings that should have them, but don’t.

Now your job is to find the signs.  They look like this:

You Are Here Sign

The first 5 people who can text in codes from all nine sites will receive a pass to the Museum of the City of New York, as well as an autographed copy of Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville – and maybe a couple of other goodies I can find.  I’m not going to tell you exactly where they are (half the fun lies in the hunt) but here are some clues:

#1 is south of Canal, along Elizabeth: you’ll know the plot is getting thick, when you reach a site of russet brick.

#2 sits on twisting Doyers, above hidden foyers.

#3 lies east of Cooper Square; great Yiddish names once gathered there.

#4 captured New York scenes, in a building along Broadway in the lower teens.

#5 is on Second Avenue, in the East Village: where stars once ate, sushi takes the plate.

#6: They say old 28th sounded like a Tin Pan; see it now, while you still can.

#7: in the 130s east of 7th, the stars of swing would sing.

#8: On 135th, ‘neath a 60s-styled wall, sat a great Harlem theater, accepting to all.

#9: Near the spot where Duffy stands, the food was served with invisible hands.

Need more clues?  Check out the book – I write about each of these places in detail.  Happy hunting!

Special thanks to Darien Bates, of Discovering Oz Communications, who devised this campaign.

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