THEN AND NOW: 326 East 43rd St

 

1940

It was not until recently that we became aware there was another rowhouse ‒ 326 East 43rd Street ‒ pressing up against the western wall of The Hermitage. No. 326 looks like its fellow survivors up the street (Nos. 336, 338, and 340) and all were most likely built in 1870 by architect John Sexton.        

  2025

Finally yielding in 1963, No. 326 is bought and demolished to make way for the new Ford Foundation headquarters in 1967. Today, The Hermitage and the Ford Foundation have some kind of Tudor-Revival-meets-Brutalist look.

For more about Nos. 336, 338, and 340, see here.

Anatomy of a Photo: NORTH 42ND STREET

Again, another photographic deep dive through Tudor City where we attempt to extract something meaningful.

We begin with the photograph above, not a terribly impressive picture at first glance. The view is northwest; the building at top left is the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled. Thus, this is 42nd Street.

Then there is the sign on the side of the building which reads This Property Will Be Developed Under THE FRENCH PLAN as Part of TUDOR CITY. Such signs hung on many a building throughout the neighborhood.

But in fact, this building, along with the other roadhouses on both sides of 42nd Street, would remain standing until the late 1940s, when they were purchased by the city and demolished in order for the street to be widened.

At left, the cottage for the rental units of the Fred F. French Investing Company, moved from its original location, beside No. 45. It would not last long at this new site, moving to a brownstone across the street at 332 East 42nd St.

This part of the photo shows the wooden braces used to keep the wall from collapsing. Nearby, a group of men are gathered for an unknown reason. In the foreground, an unused wheelbarrow completes the tableau.

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A couple of quick notes. First of all, McFadden's bar at 42nd and 2nd has closed ‒ after 43 years ‒ and is in the process of being converted to a branch of Urgent Health Care. There's something about it that just doesn't sound right, but I assure you it is true.

Secondly, Manhattanhenge is almost upon us. The dates are:

Monday, May 30, at 8:14 pm

Tuesday, July 12, at 8:20 pm

BIRTHDAY GREETINGS to the 43rd Street Rowhouses

The 43rd Street rowhouses in 1930.

Birthday greetings to the venerable 43rd Street rowhouses (abutting The Hermitage), constructed in 1870 and now 150 years old! 

In 1870, Ulysses S. Grant was president, and post‒Civil War prosperity was in the air: that year the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded, Standard Oil incorporated, and the Brooklyn Bridge began construction. New York City real estate was enjoying boom times, with a surge of new construction that included Prospect Hill, theretofore a neglected shantytown. 

The rowhouses were built as three single-family brownstones, and sold for $12,000 apiece. In the 1920s, their owners were hold-outs when the French Company bought up the neighborhood, and thus Tudor City was built around them. In 1988, they were landmarked as part of the Tudor City Historic District.

Entrances of 336-338-340 East 43rd St.

Although little is known about the buildings' histories over the last 150 years, we've discovered that No. 336 was headquarters for an infamous underground film in the 1960s, No. 338 a speakeasy during the Prohibition era, and No. 340 the longtime home of Miss Traver's nursery school.

More particulars about these rowhouses here.

Anatomy of a Photo: PROSPECT PLACE AND 42ND STREET

An in-depth examination of a 1926 photo made at the intersection of 42nd Street and Prospect Place, just prior to the arrival of Tudor City. At the time, the neighborhood was an ill-kept patchwork of rundown rowhouses and tenements.

Above, the entire photo, looking west down 42nd Street. The roadway where the children are playing is one of the ramps leading up to Prospect Place; the fences enclose a makeshift playground atop the 42nd Street tunnel (later replaced by the Tudor City Bridge). 

Zooming in on the street sign on northwest corner of the intersection.

On the north side of 42nd Street, the taller building is the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled, now the site of the Ford Foundation headquarters. Abutting it, a string of 1870s rowhouses that were purchased by the French Company for the planned community, but never developed. Today, stone staircases and a children's playground stand in their place. 

Two kids in knickers playing in the street. Background center, the 42nd Street station of the Second Avenue El.

A swing set ‒ sans swings ‒ is a token attempt at outdoor recreation. 

Looking west down 42nd Street, the view of newly erected skyscrapers that sold Fred French on the viability of a planned community near a business district. The steeple in the upper left corner belongs to the Church of the Covenant, the only building still standing in the entire photograph.

Anatomy of a Photo: The TENNIS COURTS

Beginning a new series, Anatomy of a Photo, taking a close-up look at a single photograph. Today's subject, above, is a bird's eye view of the Tudor City tennis courts, made from a Woodstock apartment window in May, 1935. The photo looks south, with No. 5 at upper left. [The tennis courts are now the site of No. 2].

Zooming in, the building in the center is 8 Prospect Place, the holdout rowhouse that refused to sell to Fred French, thus preventing development of the lot for nearly 30 years. More about it here. The smaller, pitched-roofed structure beside No. 8 is the tennis court office.

Cabs lined up at Tudor City's official taxi stand on the corner of 41st St. and Prospect Place, with the dispatcher's booth next to the street lamp. The Parmelee taxi company had an exclusive contract in the colony. More about Tudor City and taxis here.

Only one tennis court is in use, and its players have attracted a number of spectators, lined up against the fence. More about Tudor City's tennis courts here.

THEN AND NOW

340 E. 43rd Street, then and now.

1946

2018

The rowhouse at 340 E. 43rd Street, constructed in 1870, was landmarked in 1988 as part of the Tudor City Historic District. It looks much the same now as it did when the Wurts Brothers photographed it in 1946.

The most obvious difference are the missing architectural details around its windows, starting with the lintels. They were most likely removed in the 1980s, following the enactment of Local Law 10, mandating inspection of building facades after falling masonry around the city killed several pedestrians. Many buildings stripped away these details rather than repairing and maintaining them, and we suspect such was the case at No. 340.

STRANGE BUT TRUE: Slumnest

Proving yet again there is no subject too arcane for this blog, here is the strange-but-true story of Slumnest, a memorably named dwelling that was the brainchild of architect/resident Theodore A. Meyer.

Meyer is one of a wave of upper-class pioneers in the 1920s seeing potential in the industrial wasteland along the East River (Sutton Place and Beekman Place are founded by similar gentrifiers around this time). In a letter to the New York Times regarding a proposed 14th Street power plant, Meyer lays out his vision for the river:

We must not abandon our East River waterfront to the 'greatest power plant in the world,' any more than to the greatest slaughterhouse in the world or the greatest leather tannery in the world, or any other greatest nuisance in the world. . . The East River should be one of the most beautiful waterways in the world. It should be bordered by parks.

Around 1920, Meyer puts his money where his mouth is and purchases a brownstone for his own use near the northwest corner of Prospect Place and E. 41st Street (current site of No. 2). The building is four stories tall, 17 feet wide, and 75 feet long, one of the many rundown tenements and rooming houses clustered together on Prospect Hill. He dubs the house Slumnest, an arch reference to its location, remodels it into two duplex units, and likes the result. He buys three adjoining properties at 348-350-352 E. 41st Street (today the 3 Hs), planning to do the same.

Arrow indicates Slumnest's approximate location. View looks west from Prospect Place down 41st Street, with the 2nd Avenue El at bottom center. Prospect Hill Apartments at far right. Photo circa 1926.

By some quirk of fate, pictures of Slumnest's interior survive, published by Good Furniture Magazine in February, 1922. Good Furniture describes Meyer's refurb as "singular," while dismissing the neighborhood as a group of "shabby buildings owned by landlords who permit their property to fall to ruin." 

Slumnest's interior, with Good Furniture's original captions, below.

Furnishings throughout are spare, no doubt due to the house's 17-foot width.

The living room and sunshiny kitchen comprise the ground floor.

Colonial furniture is in vogue at the time. Stairwell leads to two upstairs bedrooms.

Slumnest proves to be a short-lived endeavor. All of Meyer's properties are acquired by the French Company during the great Tudor City land grab of 1925 and eventually demolished. Meyer's hopes of developing a residential colony on Prospect Hill are dashed, trumped by Fred French's much bigger vision of the same idea.

The 43rd Street ROWHOUSES

A look at some unsung buildings in the complex, the three nineteenth-century rowhouses at 336-338-340 E. 43rd Street. Their owners refused to sell to the French Company, so Tudor City is built around them. In 1988, they are landmarked ‒ by happenstance ‒ simply because they lie within the boundaries of the newly designated Tudor City Historic District.

340 / 338 / 336 E. 43rd St. in a 1930 photograph

The rowhouses go up in 1870, part of a surge of construction in New York City following the Civil War. They're built on speculation by the landowner, one J.L.T. Smith, who gets the land cheap. Not that long before, the area was a rough slum ruled by a local thug, Paddy Corcoran. By 1875, it has transitioned into a respectable middle-class enclave.

Above, what the Prospect Hill building boom of the 1870s wrought.
View looks north up Tudor City Place (then known as Prospect Place) from 42nd St.

J.L.T. Smith hires architect John Sexton to construct six identical brownstone rowhouses. Sexton is a prolific, workmanlike builder, and designs the 43rd St. rowhouses in the Italianate style ‒ his specialty ‒ with brownstone fronts, tin roofs, and galvanized iron cornices. They are sold as single-family residences for $12,000 apiece.

The neighborhood's prosperity is short-lived, however. By 1880, the arrival of the sooty, noisy Second Avenue El and the growing sooty, noisy industrialization along the East River wreak havoc in the neighborhood. Its middle-class base flees, and the brownstones are reworked into rooming houses and tenements.

The 43rd St. rowhouses have many owners over time, and undergo many alterations. Stoops are removed, facades are stuccoed, and windows widened. Three of Sexton's original six rowhouses are demolished in the late 1920s, sold by their owners to make way for The Hermitage. Today, the three survivors are nearing their 150th birthday.

The rowhouses, in a panoramic photo made earlier today.

In earlier posts, we went into more detail about these properties. Read about the nursery school in 340 here, the speakeasy in 338 here, and the headquarters for the underground movie Ciao Manhattan! in 336 here.

STRANGE BUT TRUE #1

Today we introduce a new recurring feature, Strange But True, spotlighting Tudor City's more incongruous side.

We begin with something one wouldn't expect to find in the enclave ‒ barbed wire. And yet, here it is, hidden in plain sight, atop the western fence of the South Park.

It's apparently in place to protect the private garden of the 41st Street rowhouse profiled earlier. Along with the Fallout Shelter signs, it lends a groovy Cold War undertone to Tudor City's otherwise Gothic air.

Miss Traver's Private School

Today's lesson concerns Miss Traver's Private School, a long-running kindergarten/elementary school set in a 43rd Street rowhouse.

Newspaper ad detail, 1930

Eastern wall, 340 E. 43rd Street

Established by Miss Edna Traver, it opens on October 7, 1928 at 340 E. 43rd (at left). The schoolhouse proper is the first floor of building, with an an indoor playground (below) in the basement. Instruction ranges from kindergarten to sixth grade.

Traver selects Tudor City because she likes its country-in-the-city feel, and manages over time to secure a small corner of the North Park for the exclusive use of her students.

The children put on numerous pageants for the entertainment of residents, among them operettas, musicales, Christmas nativity re-enactments, and the like. Below, they pose for a tableaux having something to do with British history. 

Dated May 28, 1930, the caption reads

PARTICIPATING  IN TABLEAUX

Children of Tudor City, New York City, participated in a tableaux held in the North Park, under the direction of Miss Traver. Photo shows a part of the cast - Robert Houblein, as the "Herald" with the trumpet. The queen, Mary Ruth Pryor (standing center) is the daughter of Robert Pryor, son of the noted bandmaster. William Walker, as William Shakespeare, holds the Queen's hand.

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The school has a 26-year run, closing after Miss Traver's passing in 1954. In 1956, it re-opens as the Walt Whitman School, which sputters early on and shutters soon after. Today, the Pre-School of America ‒ set in No. 25's former coffee shop ‒ provides Tudor City schooling.

The Tudor City SPEAKEASY

During Prohibition, speakeasies abounded in Manhattan, with educated guesses placing the number somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000. Tudor City ‒ ever the full-service community ‒ of course had its own outpost, Gus & Eddie, one of many in midtown.
We only know its name since its membership card (above) somehow survived, and today is part of a collection in the Museum of the City of New York. These cards were given out to regulars for immediate access; outsiders were required to supply a password or secret knock.

Speakeasies came in all styles and sizes, and we suspect that Gus & Eddie was a rather nondescript joint operated out of the basement. Whether it ever served luncheon and dinner was beside the point -- it was the "etc." that drove the business, along with Prompt Delivery of the etc.

Above, the site of the club today (with a light over its entrance). Built in 1870, No. 338 is one of the four landmarked rowhouses in Tudor City.

Below, a selection of other midtown membership cards from the era. Some places like the Stork Club morphed into legendary nightclubs after the repeal of Prohibition.

THEN AND NOW

337 E. 41st Street, then and now

1946

2016

337 East 41st Street is the vintage rowhouse that lies adjacent to the South Park. As the photos above attest, not much of its Italianate facade has changed over the last 70 years, save for a new fence, enhanced landscaping and globe lights at the entrance.

Actually, not much about it has changed since it was built as a single-family dwelling in 1871, purchased by one S.J. Lazarus for about $10,000. By the mid-1880s, as Prospect Hill's fortunes started into decline, it became a boarding house, and it seems to have shifted back to single-family use around the turn of the century. When the French Company began buying up the neighborhood in 1925, it was a hold out. In 1970 it was sold to real estate titan Harry Helmsley, no doubt to be demolished as part of his plans to build on the Tudor City parks.

Helmsley's plans, of course, failed. 337 E. 41st Street remains a single-family dwelling today and cannot be altered ‒ it's part of the Tudor City Historic District.