Infamous New York Real Estate

130 West Tenth Street

2007-03-21T17:37:00.000-04:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > West 10th Street

Perhaps artist Birney Lettick [1919-1986] was seeking a run-down brownstone or any roof-line low enough to show a blue sky spiked by Jefferson Market's whimsical towers. When he selected this grouping (slightly west of Greenwich Avenue), Lettick was generous with his pen, widening a skinny 3-story townhouse and adding height to a one-story taxpayer.

• • The hilariously bohemian scene that tempted moviegoers to see Paul Mazursky's "Next Stop, Greenwich Village" [1976] featured a crowded Village Cafe, artists, beatniks, lovers, loners, dancers, and loafers. The character on the lowest step of the stoop - - closest to the fire hydrant - - would be played by a 33-year-old actor Christopher Walken. On the movie poster, the rowhouse is numbered 25 but it is, in fact, 130 West Tenth Street [3 stories] and its neighbor 128-A West Tenth [1 story]. Not shown is the solid firehouse next door, an 1892 structure that quarters Squad 18's firefighters.
• • Birney Lettick was similarly flattering instead of realistic when he painted the portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan for Time Magazine. His illustrations also appeared on the covers of National Geographic, Collier's, Reader's Digest, and many bestsellers.
• • The address attracted its share of notoriety in the 1880s when it was the location of various suicides and batterings. In 1885, Samuel H. Hoole walloped Mary E. Weston, who resided here, knocking out five of her teeth; Hoole was arraigned in Jefferson Market Police Court across the street for his brutishness.
• • For many years, investor Edward Swan owned 130 West Tenth Street and leased his skinny building to tenants who were either too deaf to mind sirens or who weren't fussy.
• • In 1943, former ice skater Alan E. Murray [1894-1976] leased the one-story hovel at 128 West Tenth, where he began to re-invent footwear.
• • On 7 February 1947, Murray bought the adjoining 3-story dwelling from Swan's estate. By then the inventor was knee-deep in patents for his Space Shoe, suspenders that fastened around the neck, ski boots, and what-not. Early on, celebrity clients were attracted by the curious customized and sculpted oxfords that Murray began pedalling in 1937. Danny Kaye bought several pairs and so did Lillian Gish, Arthur Godfrey, Steve McQueen, and the wife of the Soviet Ambassador to Washington.
• • By 1955, when Murray was minting millions, he was manufacturing his orthopedic "sole food" out of the old Helen Gould stable on 213 West 58th Street, where he also maintained a private ice rink. At some point, Murray painted his name around the Tenth Street doorway, a passage no longer afflicted with the odor of Neoprene and latex like Murray's uptown workshop.
• • In 1968 the Space Shoe went trendy, inspired maybe by the 74-year-old inventor's frisky blonde mistress Anna V. Schloegl, who pried Alan Murray away from his dependence on marital fidelity. Nevertheless, his wife Mrs. Lucille Marsh Murray, whose bloodline included two signers of the Declaration of Independence, refused to divorce him. Alan and Anna did not wed until 1976, when death dissolved Murray's previous marriage.
• • After 81-year-old Alan E. Murray passed on to the great shoe closet in the sky on 24 October 1978, the building acquired a basement full of fortunetellers. Though West Tenth Street's gypsy astrologer Pat Alvarez was arrested for fraud by police in 1999, as part of a crackdown on Tarot card readers and schemers in the Metro area, there is still a psychic in the cellar. Clearly, Murray left his sign and sole visible to seers and sight-seers.
• • Last year Michael and Isaac Namer anounced they would incorporate 130 West Tenth Street into their through-block condominium project, which also pulled in a brick stable designed by Charles Wright in 1874. Apartments will sell for $2,750,000 - $5,975,000. If you have longed to live next door to an active firehouse, where alarms are responded to 24/7, contact a mortgage broker immediately.
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• • Photo: 130 West 10th Street • circa 1975 and in 2004
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146 West Fourth Street

2007-03-16T16:36:00.000-04:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > 146 West Fourth Street

When the Corcoran Group unloaded a 2-bedroom co-op advertised during 2000 for $835,000.00 "in a pre-war loft building" at 146 West 4th (including 450 square feet of private roof space) - - which finally sold after being on the market for 26 weeks - - there were more than a few snickers in the West Village.
• • At house-warming parties, in between mouthfuls of wine, West Fourth Street residents can reminisce about the building's criminal past, bribes, money-laundering, raids by undercover agents, suicides, and other morsels.
• • In September 1871, a building permit was filed granting J.J. Lyons, the owner of this "brick first class dwelling" on a puny lot size [22' by 42'] to expand upwards. Lyons enlarged his "dwelling" from three stories and an attic to another "one and a half stories with a mansard roof."
• • Serenity ended a few decades later when villainy and police visits would become routine. The dwellers would be arrested for running an underground poolhall, a speakeasy, an illegal after-hours bar, and for quarterbacking money-laundering operations for the Carlo Gambino crime family. Yes, an address with a storied past is 146 W. 4th.

• • Carlyle and Viola Sherlock prospered at this address during Prohibition. Their illegal cabaret shows were so successful that on 17 February 1927 Carlyle expanded The Pepper Pot's operation to the adjoining building. Naming their (wink-wink) liquor-fueled establishment after the spicy national dish of Guyana, the married couple regularly had a rousing group of paying patrons partying well into the wee hours. Wisely, Sherlock generously paid off the local precinct. Even when his neighbors tried to sue him for "maintaining a public nuisance" [i.e., a speakeasy] and non-stop noise, Carlyle Sherlock invariably won the case because the complaining residents were afraid to show up at Jefferson Market Court.
• • Once in awhile, of course, the police handcuffed Viola Sherlock for violating the Volstead Act. Even Texas Guinan was arrested . . . then released. In January 1923, the cops locked up the athletic tennis-playing Viola [born in 1895] as well as a few out-of-towners from Chicago who were buying way too many drinks. But Carlyle and Viola's popularity was such that The Pepper Pot was made "the official and only stop in Greenwich Village of the Gray Line, Commodore Line, and others" - - or so stated their press materials.
• • By 1971, the undercover police and federal agents became even more interested in the mortgage holder of this townhouse. On the books, his name was Nicholas Di Martino, businessman. Nicky was the step-son of Mafia soldier Paul Di Bella who had his hand in many gay clubs and nightspots in the Village. By then the groundfloor premises were named The New Showplace. Godfather Carlo Gambino had wanted to preserve the legacy of the previous club, The Showplace, where Jerry Herman once put on his revues, and an unknown actress Phyllis Newman choreographed live entertainment.
• • No doubt the bullet holes were spackled over before the building went [ahem] co-op.
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• • Photo: 146 West Fourth Street • circa 1927
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20 Fifth Avenue

2007-03-14T19:34:00.000-04:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > 20 Fifth Avenue

Once part of Sir Peter Warren's Farm - - before it was sectioned off into an avenue and its right-angled side streets - - the site that shows the Berkeley Hotel has a hansom cab parked outside.
• • This six-story brownstone building was built in 1876 [and christened after its tony namesake in London, England] by William C. Rhinelander, who also owned a mansion on Washington Square North during that time. In 1844, Rhinelander had acquired this wide corner lot [80.6 by 124.1 feet] when he wed one of the heirs. Clearly, he knew the value of marrying a millionaire, a shortcut to amassing a real estate empire.
• • Across from the Berkeley Hotel was the far livelier Breevoort Hotel, steps away from James Renwick's townhouse where the American humorist Mark Twain had once been in residence.
• • Society bluebloods favored the Berkeley as a pied-a-terre. Occasionally, however, a few scandals and headlines found their way to this address. In June 1903, for instance, the son of publisher Thomas Y. Crowell visited his parents at 20 Fifth Avenue. The 22-year-old Ralph M. Crowell lived one block away from his family at the Lafayette [Ninth Street at Universaity Place] and had recently graduated from college. Tense after his final exams perhaps, Ralph Crowell began to quarrel with the waiter who was serving his family supper. When he became violent, doctors were summoned. Eventually, the hotel staff fashioned a makeshift straitjacket out of blankets and tablecloths - - and off went Ralph to Bellevue.
• • There were no protests when the wrecking crew tore down the sedate Berkeley Hotel in 1939 for a larger apartment house. But when the city announced it would raise the beloved Brevoort and Mark Twain's residence, preservationists became enraged and tried to stop the destruction of these historic structures. The news media and literary figures battled to save these Fifth Avenue landmarks - - to no avail, alas.
• • Enjoy this photo of lower Fifth Avenue during the late 1920s.
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Real Estate
• • Photo: Fifth Avenue north of Eighth Street • circa 1928
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52 West Eighth Street

2007-03-12T13:24:00.000-04:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > 52 West 8th Street

Contributing to the retail meltdown on the once desirable stretch of West Eighth Street [between Sixth Avenue & Fifth Avenue] comes this bad news. One of the best video emporiums in all of Manhattan - - T.L.A. Video [52 West 8th] is closing its doors. At T.L.A. you could find current movies as well as film classics such as Mae West and Cary Grant in "She Done Him Wrong" [1933] and "My Little Chickadee" [1940] starring Mae West and W.C. Fields.

• • West Eighth Street once had charming, top-rated eateries that were the destinations of restaurant critics, tourists, and New Yorkers, for example, the excellent SeaFare, the bohemian Polly's, the private al fresco Italian loggia of Marta Village Garden Restaurant [23 West 8th], and the versatile indoor-outdoor Main Street [33 West 8th] with its peek-a-boo look into the rowhouse gardens along the south side of West Ninth Street.
• • Enjoy photos of this block during the 1940s - - and be amazed.
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• • Photo: West 8th Street • 1940s
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72 Washington Square South

2006-05-08T18:34:00.000-04:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > Washington Square South

The Washington Square of Henry James meant the genteel northern edge. Across the park, the southern side was for bohemians. One building was called "The House of Genius" because of all the well-known authors who roomed there.
• • It was 100 years ago when Mary Louise Cecilia Guinan [1884-1933] arrived in Manhattan — alone, newly divorced, and steeled by self-determination. In Waco, Texas, the Irish-American tomboy had been called “Mayme.” She matured into “Marie Guinan,” recalled broadcaster Lowell Thomas (in his 1976 autobiography), the demure Sunday school teacher he had a huge crush on. In 1907, the ambitious 23-year-old rented a $2/ week room in 72 Washington Square South and assumed a louder identity: TEXAS Guinan. Soon she made her family move east to join her.
• • “Tex could never have lived anywhere but in Greenwich Village,” observed her biographer Louise Berliner, whose grandfather Maxwell E. Lopin was the lawyer who kept the speakeasy hostess out of jail after numerous police raids during the 1920s.
• • Here's the neighborhood that Texas Guinan saw around her - - before the N.Y.U. Goliath swallowed up all the real estate.
• • • • TEXAS GUINAN in GREENWICH VILLAGE: • • • •
* * Walking Tour on 20 August 2006 * *

1-Day Only: MAE WEST & TEXAS GUINAN BRUNCH & TOUR
BRUNCH: Village Restaurant, 62 West 9th Street, New York, NY 10011
FEE: Brunch with 2 gin cocktails + walking tour: $25.00
DATE: 20th August 2006 - Sunday - begins at 12 noon
TOUR: historical Village locations focused on Mae West and Texas Guinan
GUIDE: Village historian LindaAnn Loschiavo
RSVP: T: 212-505-3355 - Village Restaurant, 62 West 9th Street, NYC
BONUS: Pay in advance and get a free gift
WHY: Exhibition & events are part of the annual Mae West Birthday Gala
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• • Photo: 205 West 54th Street •
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205 West 54th Street

2006-03-22T09:32:00.000-05:00

Manhattan > Midtown > West 54th Street

Spirits that broke the law of probabilities rather than the Volstead Act appeared early yesterday morning at Texas Guinan's Club Intime [203 West 54th Street, between Broadway & 7th Avenue] to entertain a selected circle of Manhattan celebrities.

Miss Guinan was giving a party, and it took the form of a spiritualistic seance, reported The N.Y. Times [5 March 1929].
• • As actress Ethel Barrymore, The New Yorker's Heywood Broun, and Park Avenue swells held hands, apparitions appeared. According to The Times, "First the spirit of Rudolph Valentino strummed the gay guitar. Then the ghost of Arnold Rothstein avoided astutely a question as to who shot him." [It's known where the gun was found but what does that prove, right?]

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• • Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Ziegler (of 575 Park Avenue) left early with a Viennese guest Margot Colin, who didn't like spooks and "all that darkness with white hands in the air and everything." That's when Margot discovered her jewels were missing.
• • Curiously, Mae West's name doesn't come up. However, the Broadway headliner was living here in April 1928, right after "Diamond Lil" opened on Broadway to great acclaim. Then called the Hotel Harding, this 12-story building also housed the mobster Jack "Legs" Diamond and Texas Guinan's gun-toting nightclub manager Hyman "Feets" Edson. Also located here was the speakeasy Club Abbey, where Dutch Schultz was shot in a turf battle over Broadway beer-running rights in 1931.
• • Texas Guinan got Mae West interested in seances in 1926.
• • Certainly, since the residents witnessed enough bloodshed, murder, and mayhem on the premises, it must have been child's play to summon up at least a few ghosts.
• • During the run of "Diamond Lil," Mae bought her own townhouse and moved out.
• • Subsequently, the Hotel Harding was renamed "Hotel Alba" to distance the building from all of the horrifying rub-outs and scandals that occurred here when the area was known as the Tenderloin.
• • Have all the prostitutes, druglords, crack addicts, and unsavoury types moved out? Ha-ha-ha. The ghosts don't believe that for a minute.
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• • Photo: 205 West 54th Street •
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21 East 9th Street

2006-03-16T00:37:00.000-05:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > East 9th Street

Built during the 19th century for America's royalty, the 30-feet-wide rowhouse at 21 East 9th Street [between Fifth Avenue & University Place] has fallen on hard times. Chopped up into chicken-coop sameness, the interior has a sliver of an elevator that services twenty studio apartments under a penthouse - - and Arte, a street-level eatery with a "no stars" rating and a vista that overlooks the ramp of The Brevoort's parking garage.

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• • Tailpipe-fanciers from the Bronx dine here. The urban al fresco seeker can choose from not one but TWO tables poised along the narrow 9th Street sidewalk. If the wind is right, odors from the pet clinic next door will remind your nostrils of Rover or Fido as Tony serves your minestrone.

• • But speaking of 21 East 9th's FALLING from grace, James Robb, a dashing waiter at CRU [where the executive chef is Shea Gallante, and the wine portfolio could serve Madison Square Garden] heard and saw a 6-foot-long shutter snap off the facade, and plunge to the pavement on the windy afternoon of March 15, 2006.
• • "I couldn't tell if this projectile was made of iron or wood," said Robb, "but I could see that the woman carrying a hefty Gristede's shopping bag didn't see it coming. As I crossed 9th Street, I began dialing 911 on my cellphone."
• • "We were waist-deep in a ditch," explained Con Ed worker Joseph Putney, "when something clattered against the side of a building. A waiter was on the sidewalk, smoking. I told my buddy, 'Looks like somebody threw a table-top off the roof!' That lady's going to get clobbered."

• • Aftermath: shaken and stirred - - but not broken.
• • Department of Buildings complaint # 1161883.
• • Sixth Precinct Aided Report # 254 by Police Officer Taylor.
• • This house had a history of colorful residents before it was reconfigured into a sardine-can cellblock.
• • For many years, banker Aquila G. Stout lived here with his hearty socially-active wife Ann Morris Stout [1806-1900] and their daughter Sarah Morris Stout [1834-1904], who married a Baron A. deVaugrigneuse, but never had children. Mrs. Aquila G. Stout hosted many meetings of The Society of Colonial Dames (an organization founded on West 9th St.). When the French baron died, Sarah returned to the mother-ship, and inherited this house and holdings worth $500,000+ "in trust" when mama died in 1900 - - since Sarah was quite senile and required a legal loop-de-loop spun around her funds. Sadly, the trustees of the Baroness's inheritance were untrustworthy and lawsuits were hurled at them by assorted blue-blooded relatives.
• • Arthur Garfield Hays [1881-1954] bought the leasehold to this property and held it until it was sold by his estate in 1957. Intent on income, Hays had this once-gracious rowhouse stripped of its stoop, and carved into 19 measly apartments and a store. Named after three presidents, the short and stock attorney made his living from a corporate practice in New York, but was most drawn to defending society's underdogs - - usually without charge. Described as a person of "genuine sympathy and understanding," Arthur Garfield Hays was active in many cases concerned with civil liberties. He distinguished himself as a defender in the Scopes Case (1925) in Tennessee, and in the Sacco-Vanzetti Case (1927). He was counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union and conducted the investigation of civil liberties in Puerto Rico (1937). He wrote Let Freedom Ring (1928, rev. ed. 1937), Democracy Works (1939), and an autobiography City Lawyer (1942). Working on the Scopes trial with Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, Hays saw this as an opportunity to educate the public about evolution. At the close of the trial, Hays sent Judge Raulston a copy of The Origin of the Species.
• • In 1939, Juanita Medbury [1901-1939], who illustrated for McCall's Magazine, committed suicide in her tiny apartment at 21 E. 9th by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.
• • In 1946, 21 E. 9th resident Jesse R. Sprague, 74, an author of books and magazine fiction died. His work had been published in Harper's, Scribner's, The Saturday Evening Post, The American Mercury, etc.
• • In 1988, a restaurant opened on the ground-floor.
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• • Photos: 21 East 9th Street • St. Vincent's Hospital
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218 Lafayette Street

2006-03-09T06:38:00.000-05:00

Manhattan > SoHo > Lafayette Street

In 1868, when this sleepy tumble-down thoroughfare was still called ELM STREET, a group of actors fond of drinking founded a fraternal order - - The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks - - in a cheap boarding house at 188 Elm Street at the NW corner of what is now the intersection of Broome and Lafayette Streets. The club, chartered to give them generous drinking privileges, was named for an animal considered to be gregarious, gentle, and strong.
• • For years this was a patchwork precinct filled with cheap lodgings and real estate risks. For decades, the Board of Aldermen debated the demerits of Elm Street [which ambled from busy City Hall Place up to the far loftier Lafayette Place], and then spent ten years widening it and disrupting it with subway construction, pinching feet and inches away from property owners as the city planners constructed a wider LAFAYETTE STREET to relieve the excessive traffic on Broadway. Consequently, few buildings were being built on Elm Street for fear NYC would nab the sidewalk and slice it away from an owner's shrinking lot size.
• • As Elm Street became Lafayette Street, the imperfectly widened byway left behind many oddly proportioned ugly parcels known as "gore lots." Italian immigrants settled there when a mini building boom began in 1909.
• • Though Daniel Brady's family owned land on Elm Street from 1862, they never "improved" it. In September 1909 the first building on 218 Lafayette Street took shape when Michele Briganti put a 6-story store and loft building on Brady's 25' x 100' lot. His architect was Charles M. Straub.
• • Italian names dominated this unprepossessing stretch of Lafayette between Spring and Broome Street years before John A. Zaccaro took over this building and its adjoining property in 1981. And real estate owners were tenacious - - largely because no one wanted to buy these booby prizes. As a result, 218 Lafayette remained in one family's hands from 1862-1942.
• • Several petty criminals resided at this address over the years and no businesses seemed to thrive - - not even the bootleggers who ran a speakeasy disguised as a trattoria called Monte Rosa. One notable who lived here was Angelo M. Rizzo [1848-1924], who arrived in 1874 as a poor Italian laborer and got a job lighting lamps around town. Later, as a contractor, Rizzo got the job of installing gas lamps throughout New York City. Active in politics and a benefactor of immigrants in the Fourteenth Ward, Rizzo was horrified when Joseph Petrosino, Chief of the Italian Bureau of the New York Detectives, was murdered in Sicily [March 1909]. Rizzo paid his respects to the Petrosino family who resided across the street (at 233 Lafayette Street).
• • By 1959, no one lived here. The tenement was converted to offices and light manufacturing.
• • By 1966, the city condemned the property and slated it (along with surrounding structures) for "urban renewal."
• • Despite that, in 1981 when NYC had gone bankrupt, Philip Zaccaro and his 48-year-old son John acquired it intact and began advertising a "Vacant SoHo Building" (5 stories + basement) with a cast-iron facade for sale. There were no takers.
• • In 1984 Geraldine Ferraro's vice presidential quest brought new scrutiny to her husband's real estate empire headquartered at 216-218 Lafayette St. Though Geraldine relinquished her White House dreams before the newspapers FULLY disclosed Zaccaro's ties to Gambino crime boss Aniello Dellacroce as well as "D.B." [child-pornography king Robert DiBernardo, the president of Star Distributors] who ruled an empire of X-rated slime from two Zaccaro-owned buildings along Lafayette St. - - until John Gotti shot him in 1986 - - John Zaccaro was indicted and pled guilty in January 1985. Ferraro's campaign sank faster than the Titanic.
• • Big Apple Tour Guide Alert! Infamous "D.B." (played by actor Frank Vincent) co-starred in HBO movie "Gotti" aired August 1996.
• • Unable to rent his groundfloor, Zaccaro gave favorable terms to a chef with French bistro dreams who opened L' Aubiniere at 218 Lafayette Street in 1991. Few customers came and the restaurant closed but Zaccaro decided to build an eatery his son would run and he partnered with a popular chef with a following, Tom Valenti. Rated two stars, Cascabel filled its 120 seats from 1993-1998 - - but when Valenti exited, so did the crowds.
• • In 1998 Frank Giovanetti installed Oona there. Ruth Riechl upbraided the kitchen for its lack of adventure, very few diners were lured there, and Oona tanked in August 1999. He got the message: nothing lives here.
• • Dorrian's Red Hand is the Upper East Side ginmill where pretty Jennifer Levin rendez-voused with Robert Chambers, who choked her in Central Park one summer night in 1986.
• • Dorrians go downtown. The Dorrians, a controversial New York pub family, took over the struggling street-level space and opened The Falls. According to news reports, owners Michael and Danny Dorrian are the grandsons of John "Red" Dorrian, a one-time IRA gunman who came here in 1921, penniless and with a price on his head. Red worked as a bootlegger in Midtown speakeasies - - where his patrons included columnist Walter Winchell and the womanizing "Night Mayor" Jimmy Walker.

• • • Enter an ELK: gregarious, gentle, and strong-minded Imette St. G. • • •

• • After 4AM Saturday, 25 February 2006, 24-year-old John Jay College of Criminal Justice graduate student Imette St. Guillen was kidnapped, assaulted, and brutally murdered after leaving The Falls Bar. That night at 8:43PM an anonymous male, calling from a free payphone near a Brooklyn diner, directed police to her tortured, nude body, dumped about 15 miles away from 218 Lafayette Street.
• • Suspected is a 200-lb African-American convict, who was violating parole by working as a bouncer here. For he's a jolly good felon . . . Hiring inmates with aliases: is this a trend? Or is it just a preference for these working-off-the-books types copied from East Village eateries?
• • State Liquor Authority: another round?
• • A State Supreme Court Judge who writes thrillers and reads this blog said Zaccaro is in deep doo-doo as well. Stay tuned.
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• • Photos: 218 Lafayette Street - The Falls
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133 East 56th Street

2006-03-04T02:59:00.000-05:00

Manhattan > Midtown > East 56th Street

In palmier times, a well-regarded restaurant was located on the street level: Madame Romaine DeLyonn. Food writer Clementine Haskin Paddleford [1900 - 1967] dined here and included some of Madame R's recipes in her New York Herald Tribune columns; she was their columnist from 1936 - 1966.
• • Currently, P.J. Carney's, a pub for noisy Irish drunks, is on the tiny [16' X 42'] site.
• • Upstairs, in Apartment 3-F, is the lovenest maintained by KY-Jelly bulk-buyer James Colliton, age 41, a father of 5 children (bunking at 28 Millbank Road, Poughkeepsie, NY with Mrs. James Colliton) who used to be employed as a tax attorney by Cravath, Swaine & Moore. SWAIN indeed! The lolita-loving sex fiend kept an underage harem on tap, reported yesterday's New York Law Journal and The New York Daily News.
• • The youngsters were forced into prostitution by their work-averse mommy, age 38, when her daughters were then 13 and 15. [The female who dropped a dime on "Big Jim" Colliton is now 21 years old.] James Colliton's birthdate is April 10th, 1964.
• • "I was paid $300 or $400 depending on what I had to do," the minor told police. "And I had to do NASTY things." The teen was also given marijuana, tickets to rap concerts, jewelry, a computer, and a TV - - but her mother grabbed those items as well as half the cash.
• • The building's sign says "Apartment for Rent." Y'all come over. Meet the neighbors.
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• • Photos: 133 East 56th Street - 16 feet X 42 feet
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35 West 64th Street

2006-02-20T04:10:00.000-05:00

Manhattan > Midtown > West 64th Street

Jack "Legs" Diamond (1897 - 18 December 1931), also known as Gentleman Jack, was the alias of John T. Nolan, an Irish-American gangster based out of New York City.
• • A bootlegger and close associate of Arnold Rothstein, he survived a number of attempts on his life between 1919 - 1931, causing him to be known as the "clay pigeon of the underworld."

• • On 12 October 1930 he was shot five times, while clad in pajamas, in his suite at the Hotel Monticello [Suite 829], 35 West 64th Street. His mistress, a dancer, was asleep next door. His wife Alice, who was at their home in Acra, NY at the time, took a plane and went straight to her husband at the hospital. After a 20-minute visit, she was escorted to the police station by detectives. Alice's first words were, "I didn't do it."
• • In 1930, a rival gangster "Dutch" Schultz complained, "Ain't there nobody what can shoot this guy so he don't bounce back?"
• • On 18 December 1931, 34-year-old "Legs" Diamond was finished off when he was laying low in his Albany, New York hide-out.
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• • Photos: Legs Diamond •
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11 Fifth Avenue

2006-01-16T18:25:00.000-05:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > Fifth Avenue

Before leaving from Greenwich Village for the ill-fated "Winter Dance Party" (a quickie Midwest concert tour) on 20 January 1959, Buddy Holly had been busy creating new songs and soaking up the rhythms around Jefferson Market. Let's back up a bit.

• • In 1958, on a visit to Peer-Southern Music [810 Seventh Avenue] and Murray Deutch, the executive V.P. who had persuaded Coral-Brunswick Records to take a chance on a new group called Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the young Texans were greeted by a comely 25-year-old Puerto Rican receptionist. Maria Elena Santiago was the niece of Provi Garcia, who ran Peer's Latin division.
• • It was love at first sight for 21-year-old Charles Hardin "Buddy" Holly [born 7 September 1936 in Lubbock, Texas].
• • Buddy and Maria Elena wed on 15 August 1958 in Texas.
• • Financial disputes with manager Norman Petty led Buddy Holly to break away and do things differently.
• • Provi Garcia, Maria Elena's aunt and guardian, lived at 33 Fifth Avenue [near 10th Street]. After the girl's parents died in Puerto Rico, she came to the Village and stayed with her only living relative.
• • By September 1958 the newlyweds had settled in - - a block from Provi and down the street from Jefferson Market.

Home was 4-H, a corner apartment at the Brevoort, 11 Fifth Avenue [at 9th Street].

The 2-bedroom unit with a wrap-around terrace rented for $1,000/ mo.
• • Married life with María Elena and Greenwich Village set Buddy Holly aflame. According to his widow, he loved listening to jazz at the Village Vanguard and poetry at local coffeehouses. He wanted to write movie scores. He wanted to record with Ray Charles and adored gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. He wanted to produce young artists and had a protégé, Lou Giordano. Ritchie Valens had asked Buddy to record him. Dining at Cafe Madrid with María Elena and his friend Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers, he was so taken with the flamenco guitar that between sets he asked the guitarist to teach him how to play. He told Provi García he wanted to translate and cover Spanish classics.
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• • All these songs were recorded at The Brevoort in his living room on an Ampex reel-to-reel recorder purchased from Norman Petty, the same machine used to tape most of his early hits.
• • 3 December 1958 • THAT'S WHAT THEY SAY (1:12) • Composer: Buddy Holly
• • 3 December 1958 • WHAT TO DO (1:54) • Composer: Buddy Holly • • Buddy Holly – vocal and acoustic guitar
• • 5 December 1958 • PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED (1:47) • Composer: Buddy Holly • • Buddy Holly – vocal and acoustic guitar
• • 8 December 1958 • THAT MAKES IT TOUGH (2:14) • Composer: Buddy Holly • • Buddy Holly – vocal and acoustic guitar
• • 14 December 1958 • CRYING, WAITING, HOPING (1:48) • Composer: Buddy Holly • • Buddy Holly – vocal and acoustic guitar
• • 17 December 1958 • LEARNING THE GAME (1:31) • Composer: Buddy Holly • • Buddy Holly – vocal and acoustic guitar
• • Since Norman Petty refused to release money, Holly agreed to play the "Winter Dance Party," a fast-paced rock 'n' roll tour after Christmas. Since his bride was pregnant, he didn't want her to travel.
• • Mid-evening on 2 February 1959, he phoned Maria Elena on Fifth Avenue to say that the promoter's cheap buses had lost their heat and broken down once too often. He and a couple of other guys were going to Moorhead, South Dakota on their own. He never mentioned they would be flying.
• • On 3 February 1959 Buddy Holly, age 22, was killed along with Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper when their small airplane crashed into an Iowa cornfield shortly after 2:00 AM. A few weeks later, Maria Elena had a miscarriage.
• • Perhaps Jefferson Market Library has these titles:
• • The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens by Larry Lehmer [NY: Schirmer Books, 1997]
• • Rave on: The Biography of Buddy Holly by Philip Norman [1996]
• • Or rent The Buddy Holly Story [1978 film] starring Gary Busey. It's available at TLA, 52 West 8th Street.
• • • • Self-Guided Tour • • • •
• • Buddy Holly's home: Brevoort, 11 Fifth Avenue
• • Provi Garcia's home: 33 Fifth Avenue
• • Village Vanguard [est. 1935]: 178 Seventh Avenue So.
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• • Photos: 11 Fifth Avenue - Buddy's "apartment tape"
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37 West 10th Street

2006-01-06T17:34:00.000-05:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > West 10th Street

Marital misery ruled the roost here. Painted a dismal "Pepto Bismol" pink currently, this townhouse refuses to blend in with its neighbors. The original 19th century staircase leading up to the front door was, unfortunately, ripped out, depriving the facade of its former grandeur and distinction.

• • In 1919, Henry Martin Hoyt, fleeing to Greenwich Village to escape ongoing connubial vicissitude and discord, bought this house. Grandson of the 18th Governor of Pennsylvania, and a son of a philandering Attorney General, Hoyt inherited money when his father died in 1910, and began buying up real estate in the Washington Square area and aligning himself with spirit kin: artists and poets. The artist committed suicide here in August 1920 in front of his friend William Rose Benet [a writer who would later marry Henry Hoyt's sister, Elinor and advance her literary career].
• • In 1928-1929, author Sinclair Lewis and his wife, the journalist Dorothy Thompson, lived here and (by all reports) were wretchedly unhappy with each other.
• • Lewis’s first play "Hobohemia" - - which he adapted from his story of the same name - - opened on 8 February 1919 at the Greenwich Village Theatre, Sheridan Square, New York.
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• • Photo: 37 West 10th Street
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11 Bank Street

2005-12-26T21:22:00.000-05:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > Bank Street

Ghost-busting turned the corner on Bank Street during ceiling renovations at number 11.

• • Mystery maven Elizabeth Bullock, who worked at Farrar and Rinehart, and frequently reviewed mysteries for The New York Times, met a quick end on Hudson Street. In January 1931, the 51-year-old Greenwich Village resident collapsed after she was struck by a car. Neighbors carried her to a local drugstore, where she died. Cremated on 21 January 1931, her ashes wound up in the possession of a friend who had been living at a 19-room boarding house [11 Bank Street] during the Depression.
• • Residents had included the model for "Noel" in the Herman Wouk novel Marjorie Morningstar. [Marjorie Morningstar, the daughter of Jewish immigrants and an aspiring actress, pursues Noel Airman, a judge's son, songwriter, and a Broadway-wannabe playwright. They have a passionate but dead-end love affair.]
• • Fast forward to 1948. Engineer Harvey Slatin and artist Yeffe Kimball [1914 - 1978], an Osage Indian born in Oklahoma, get married. In 1951, the couple begins to convert the property back to a single-family household. Lodger-free finally, the house seems mausoleum-quiet and that's when the footsteps and hammering upstairs become apparent. Harvey and Yeffe clock the ghostly pacing; it begins around 11:00 AM, and tapers off around 4:00 PM. Each time they check the second floor, they find no one.
• • They hire a fellow Villager to make repairs. During his dismantling of a ceiling installed in 1880, he discovers a metal canister containing Elizabeth Bullock's remains incinerated in a Middle Village Queens crematorium two decades ago.
• • When they gave Elizabeth-in-a-can a new home on their piano, they noticed the pacing above them stopped.
• • Yes, but does that mean noisy phantoms no longer tap-dance on the parlour ceiling here?
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• • Photo: 11 Bank Street
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53 West 9th Street

2005-12-09T04:18:00.000-05:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > West 9th Street

Built in 1899, this 16-foot skinny mini was perhaps too narrow to cut up into cellblocks -- er, studio apartments. Therefore, the 4-story property had remained a single-family residence. In the early 1950s, when New Yorkers were fleeing to leafy green suburbs [i.e., Levittown, Long Island], Greenwich Village became "bargain-ville." Two newly-wed psychiatrists purchased it. Soon after they moved in, a baby was born. A year later, the husband died.
• • Alice E. Fabian, M.D. kept the second floor as her office and consultation rooms, seeing patients while raising her daughter. Dr. Fabian subscribed to many medical journals and, apparently, never threw anything out.
• • In need of breathing room maybe, her daughter moved to London, England.
• • Left alone, Dr. Fabian slipped into madness, keeping a daily journal that meticulously recorded the phantoms and apparitions that tormented her. The property deteriorated as her mind did and yet she desperately held on to reality through her daily routines, for example by tending one lone tree in front of her house.
• • When she died, this daily journal crammed with sad details was turned over by Miss Fabian to a performance artist who did a site-specific indie film there - - The Mud Queen - - before four decades worth of periodicals and bric-a-brac were carted away.
• • A successful movie mogul lives there now with a pretty blonde wife. Betcha there's one film they've never seen . . . .
• • Do noisy phantoms and satanic changelings still lurk here - - such as the unearthly tormentors that Alice Fabian's journals so vividly described?
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Photo: 53 West 9th has a wrought iron balcony [2nd floor]
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57 East 54th Street

2005-12-07T07:14:00.000-05:00

Manhattan > Midtown > East 54th Street

Built in 1888, this well-preserved "grand dame" of a rowhouse was originally built as a set of identical 19th-century brownstoned triplets. Always in the ownership of ONE family at a time, the home once belonged to Clement Clark Moore's grandson, who had a son -- as well as other daughter-poor families. Nevertheless, two little girls in long dresses haunt the premises, one dressed in lilac shrouded by a white apron. Their spirits have been seen in the second floor dining salon - - during daytime. And the tykes can be especially noisy on the landing when a solitary female is in the third floor Ladies Room. Occasionally, a bearded gentleman in a frock coat accompanies one girl.
• • Who are these restless entities?
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Illustration: courtesy of Barbara Bart
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12 Gay Street

2005-11-21T03:19:00.000-05:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > Gay Street

Ghost-busters are useless on Gay Street, especially at number 12. Author Kelley Roos fictionalized the real live -- or real dead -- incidents here in The Frightened Stiff [NY: Dodd, Mead & Co., 235 pgs, 1942].

The morning after Jeff and Haila Troy move into their garden apartment on Gay Street, someone looks out of an upper window and sees a dead man outside the back door. They recognize him as a man they have heard telephoning from a booth in Polly's restaurant [147 West 4th Street] around the corner. But when the other residents of the converted brownstone house are examined, they all identify him as a fellow tenant -- but a man whom not one of them knew. . . .
In fact, in 1917 Polly Holladay ran several establishments in Greenwich Village: The Useful Shop [3 Washington Square North], Polly's [135 MacDougal], etc. It's doubtful that a woman with a number of thriving businesses would have wanted to live on Gay Street during those years.
However, during the years right before and after World War I, 12 Gay Street was owned by Mary Ellen Strunsky, Frank Parris [creator of Howdy Doody], and Mayor Jimmy Walker who bought the rowhouse for his mistress, actress Betty Compton.

Apparitions and sightings include:
1.) Feeling the sensations of unseen beings; hearing footsteps on the stairs at night.
2.) A man clad in evening attire, wearing a top hat and tails, appeared at the door and smiled politely, and then evaporated into the air. (No one knows who he is.)
3.) Lost ghosts, perhaps from the old morgue, have been sighted in Frank Parris's former Puppet threatre in the basement.
4.) Frank Parris used to smell onions frying at odd hours.
5.) Hans Holzer, who thrice investigated the house, made contact with the restless entities here.

On December 16th, 1933, a 25-year-old former showgirl Edith Birney [stage name: Edith Babson] jumped or fell off the roof of 10 Gay Street.
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86 Bedford Street

2005-10-21T18:48:00.000-04:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > Bedford Street
This article was published in The Villager:

From activists and authors to madams and madwomen: The prisoners of Sixth Avenue
By LindaAnn Loschiavo

PHOTO: Texas Guinan at Chumley's [a speakeasy located at 86 Bedford Street in New York since 1928]

Hollywood is embracing an armful of women’s history attached to the crooked elbow of W. 10th St. west of Sixth Ave. In April, “House of D” by David Duchovny commemorated the Women’s House of Detention, which overlooked Village Square (now Ruth Wittenberg Triangle) until the prison was razed in 1973. A movie musical “Hello, Sucker” due out this year revisits the same location during the 1920s with Madonna as diamond-draped “Texas” Guinan, a Village resident and rodeo queen whose speakeasies landed her behind bars at Jefferson Market Jail. Sandwiched between those two premieres, the 30th anniversary of a garden established on that very site was celebrated this April. . . .
http://www.thevillager.com/villager_129/fromactivistandauthors.html
- - continued at www.TheVillager.com - -
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224 West 4th Street

2005-10-17T21:13:00.000-04:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > Sheridan Square
Greenwich Village Theatre: 1917 - 1930

It was the summer of 1922 and Mae West was about to celebrate her 29th birthday. Hungry for stardom and going nowhere in vaudeville, Mae bit the bait: a chance to star in a play The Ginger Box that could make her a star. According to biographer Emily Wortis Leider, The Ginger Box served up wall-to-wall Mae West. In addition to featuring her as Circe, turning her lovers into swine, it presented Mae West as a Broadway vamp (played to Harry Richman's victim), Mae West singing "I want a Cave Man," Mae West clowning Tommy Gray's "I'm a Night School Teacher," and torching a song whose regretful tone she would later rule out: "Sorry I Made You Cry." Major troubles were afoot, however, and revealed themselves during a two-performance try-out in Connecticut. Also, the flam-flam producer Edward Perkins was perpetually short of funds and vanished, leaving unpaid debts and I-owe-you notes to his cast. Ginger Revue Now a Pepless Stew as Promoter Disappears announced the New York Daily News [August 13, 1922]. Thirteen Equity actors sued Perkins to recover their salaries -- but not Mae, who was to have received a percentage of the box office.

The Greenwich Village Theatre was made famous by female impersonator Bert Savoy who performed in the acclaimed "Greenwich Village Follies" there, an annual revue that was so popular that it moved to Broadway. Located until 1930 on the western side of Seventh Avenue South where Christopher Street kisses West Fourth, it faced Sheridan Square. During the 1920s, the outstanding success of this cultural outpost put Sheridan Square on the map as a mecca for avant-garde entertainment. A fierce financial beast - the Wall Street crash in 1929 - killed this beauty.

Photos show the former theatre as well as the plain-jane that replaced it in 1931.
- love & kisses to Mae West -
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64 East 34th Street

2005-10-16T05:39:00.000-04:00

Manhattan > Midtown > East 34th Street

Bert Savoy [born Everett McKenzie in 1888, Boston, MA] polished his performance persona in Alaska, warming up along the Yukon Trail. When Savoy arrived in The Big Apple, he teamed up with witty Jay Brennan, a chorus dancer. Their vaudeville act consisted of Savoy, bejeweled and lavishly gowned, dispensing witty, girlish gossip about a fictional friend named "Margie" while Brennan played the straight man.
* * One of his taglines was: "You must come over!"
Savoy and Brennan headlined at the Palace and also did a few star turns in John Murray Anderson's Greenwich Village Follies [1920-23]. Savoy's exaggerated mannerisms and suggestive humor were widely imitated, and his provocative, hip-swaying walk was borrowed by Mae West when she made it to Broadway during the later 1920s.
On June 26th, 1923, as the 35-year-old Savoy was strolling with friends in Long Beach, a clap of thunder caused him to exclaim: "Ain't Miss God cutting up something awful?" Seconds later, a dramatic bolt of lightning had struck him dead.
In 1923, at the height of his fame, Bert Savoy was living at 64 East 34th Street, a rundown relic topped with an observatory, a former mansion. His ghost haunts the premises. Source:http://infamousnewyorkrealestate.blogspot.com/atom.xml

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107 West 45th Street

2005-10-14T02:20:00.000-04:00

Manhattan > Midtown > West 45th Street

Crowd Sees Club Locked
El Fey Entertainers to Spend the Interim in Vaudeville
[17 April 1925 N.Y. TIMES]

The El Fey Nightclub at 107 West 45th Street, one of the gayest of the midtown nightclubs, was padlocked yesterday at 4:30 o'clock and will remain dark until May 28. The club, operated by "Larry" Fay, was one of the 14 clubs in which, according to agents of U.S. Attorney Buckner, liquor was sold. As Deputy Marshal Hier was driving staples into the front door, while a crowd of several hundred looked on, Frank White who ran the entertainment at the club, said that Texas Guinan, hostess, and the members of the El Fey Follies would spend the idle six weeks in vaudeville. Special efforts were made to ensure the departure of Mecca, the tiger cat mascot of the club, before the padlock was snapped on. . . .
[Note: 1908-1916 this building was home to The Friars, a men's club, which moved to larger quarters.]
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201 West 52nd Street

2005-10-12T22:14:00.000-04:00

Manhattan > Midtown > West 52nd Street

Famous star and sheik of the screen Rudolph Valentino was feted on the second floor of this building on 52nd Street east of Broadway on Sunday night, July 25, 1926. Helping the Italian heartthrob celebrate the premiere of The Son of the Sheik were James R. Quirk, editor of Photoplay Magazine and Tommy Guinan, who owned the nightspot located here: Playground.
According to The N.Y. Times [24 July 1926]: "In courtesy to Mr. Quirk and appreciation of Mr. Valentino, MISS TEXAS GUINAN will appear with her entire "Mob" in addition to the Playground Review.
Shortly afterwards:
* 23 August 1926: Valentino dies in Manhattan hospital after surgery.
* 13 January 1927: Playground padlocked 6 months for violating Prohibition.
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30 East 55th Street

2005-10-08T20:35:00.000-04:00

Manhattan > Midtown > East 55th Street

Polly Adler [1900-1962]
During the 1920s, Russian-born bordello-owner Polly Adler was arrested repeatedly and escaped conviction until the 1930s, thanks to the police precincts that cherished those bribes and kickbacks.
ADDRESS AGONY: Brothels she ran were located in the West 50s near Seventh Avenue, 59th and Madison Avenue, 69th and Columbus Avenue, 77th and Amsterdam Avenue, West 83rd Street, West 54th Street, and (for three years during the 1930s) at 30 East 55th Street. In March 1935, after three of her former call girls were remanded to the Women's House of Detention, Polly soon followed; she scrubbed floors there for 30 days in May and June in 1935.
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BESTSELLERDOM: After her release, she settled in California, graduated from college, and penned a memoir with a ghostwriter. A House Is Not a Home became 1953's bestseller. Shelley Winters portrayed the pushy procurer onscreen and the famous title song A House Is Not a Home was composed by Burt Bacharach (with lyrics by Hal David) for the 1964 movie.
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Saint Luke's Place

2005-10-07T04:37:00.000-04:00

Manhattan > Greenwich Village > Saint Luke's Place

Saint Luke's Place rowhouses [Nos. 5-16] were built in the early 1850s.

* * No. 6: The former residence of "The Night Mayor," dapper gentleman Jim, has a pair of mayoral lamps. In 1932, Jimmy Walker resigned in disgrace and fled to Europe.

* * No. 10: Exterior of the home shown on "The Cosby Show."

* * No. 11: The Masses editor Max Eastman was raided by police here in 1920; psychedelic guru Timothy Leary was raided by police in 1965.

* * No. 12: In 1923, novelist Sherwood Anderson lived here. Later it was homebase for Starr Faithfull, 25, a flapper who lived with her mother, sister, and step-father here. Starr's body washed up at Long Beach, Long Island, instigating an intrigue that dominated Jefferson Market Court and newspaper headlines in the summer of 1931.

* * No. 12 1/2: Once the happy household where Jean Boudin won poetry prizes and civil rights attorney Leonard Boudin won cases, and their daughter Kathy Boudin, who became a member of the Weather Underground. During the 1970s, this intelligent group accidentally detonated a West 11th Street rowhouse and killed several fair Weatherman friends.

* * No. 16: In November 1923, Theodore Dreiser was living in a studio here as he worked on his novel An American Tragedy.
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