Infamous New York Real Estate

20 Fifth Avenue

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
NYC
Real Estate.

Labels: 1929, 20 Fifth Avenue, apartment house, Berkeley Hotel, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, NYC, Rhinelander, Washington Square

posted by Mae West NYC @ 7:34 PM

205 West 54th Street

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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Real Estate
• • Photo: 205 West 54th Street •
NYC
Real Estate
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Labels: 1927, 1928, 1929, 205 West 54th Street, ghosts, Mae West, Manhattan, midtown, seance, Texas Guinan, Volstead Act

posted by Mae West NYC @ 9:32 AM