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Housing

Swanky Restaurants, Luxury Hotels, & Radical Theater: A Review of the Immigrant Communities of New York

Beginning in 2018, For the Record posted articles about the Municipal Archives ongoing project to preserve and inventory the Manhattan Building Plan collection. In the most recent post last year, Project Archivist Amy Stecher provided a Building Plan Update. This week, conservator Elsie Karlak contributes a narrative of her three months on the project:

Everybody gets confused sometimes. REC0074_0418_043: Front elevation, 293 Broome Street. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

I was lucky enough to join colleagues as we continued to process plans for buildings located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The first home for many immigrants to the United States, this neighborhood experienced rapid growth during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as evidenced by the large volume of “new building” (NB) applications submitted to the Department of Buildings to construct multi-family dwellings, usually described as tenements. Likewise, requests for permits to add plumbing, fire escapes, and other alterations illustrated the ongoing work necessary to make tenements safer for their residents.

I also discovered plans for many other aspects of city life such as entertainment venues, community service organizations, schools, and places of worship. The plans chart the ebb and flow of the neighborhood, as immigrant communities moved out and others moved in, and as city officials created parks and public housing.

Here are some highlights of what I discovered along the way. 

Entertainment:

Block 416, Lot 20

This plan shows a swanky restaurant called Jack Silverman’s Old Romanian with space for 500 diners, dancing, and an orchestra. The Crystal Lounge wound around the curved bar.

REC0074_0416_020: Jack Silverman’s Old Romanian, 169-171-173 Allen Street. First floor plan. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

169-171-173 Allen Street, ca. 1939. 1940s Tax Photograph collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Block 416, Lot 8

A short-lived radical theater, the plan depicts a classic black box theater, with seating around a central stage. The “People’s Drama” appears to be most famous for a run of a play, Nat Turner a highly fictionalized dramatization of the uprising led by the enslaved Nat Turner in 1831.

REC0074_0416_008: The People’s Drama, 210 Eldridge Street. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

210 Eldridge Street, ca. 1939. 1940s Tax Photograph collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

 Block 427, Lot 27

This theater was one of many ventures by the Minsky brothers, famous for staging burlesque shows. Designed by theatre architect Thomas Lamb, it became the home for Yiddish productions and burlesque shows. The NB plans show the orchestra seating area and the curtain line that would hide backstage.

REC0074_0427_027_01: Minsky Theatre, Houston and Chrystie Streets. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

111-117 East Houston Street, ca. 1939. 1940s Tax Photograph collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Block 420, Lot 39

A luxury hotel in the heart of the Lower East Side? I was confused when I came across plans for a twelve-story building, seemingly out of place amongst the walk-up tenements I had been cataloging. The Libby Hotel and Baths, built in 1924 for a staggering $1.3 million, was the passion project of Max Bernstein. Unfortunately, the venture was short-lived. The property was foreclosed and the hotel was demolished in 1934. The City took the property via eminent domain, along with seven blocks along Houston and Canal Streets to build the Sara D. Roosevelt Park.

REC0074_0420_039_01: The Libby Hotel and Baths, 12 Story Hotel and Baths to be erected at the NE corner of Delancey and Chrystie Street, Chrystie Street Elevation. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0420_039_02: Plan of Sub-Cellar, The Libby Hotel and Baths. This plan show the maze of electricity that powered the Russian and Turkish baths. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Community Spaces:

Blocks 418 Lot 1

Sara D. Roosevelt Park is named after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s mother, the first Presidential mother to be alive for her son’s inauguration since George Washington took office in 1789. One of the first projects completed by Robert Moses after his appointment as Parks Commissioner by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1934, the plans include wading pools, playgrounds, “comfort stations” (bathrooms), and landscaping. My favorite plans show a diagrammatic view of the park benches, and the textures used for different stones in the paving and landscaping.

REC0074_0418_001_01: Chrystie - Forsythe Park Plots [Sara D. Roosevelt Park], Detail of Foot Bath, Plot Plan of Building C, Park Benches, Curb Enclosures for Vines. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0418_001_02: Chrystie - Forsythe Park Plots [Sara D. Roosevelt Park], Canal to Houston Street, construction plan of plot between Grand and Broome Streets, Block 5, building C. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0418_001_03: Chrystie Forsythe Park Plots [Sara D. Roosevelt Park], Construction details of Foot Bath, Ramp Steps & Scum Gutter of Wading Pools. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Block 415, Lot 18

The University Settlement House was the first settlement house in the U.S. Created by reformers during the Progressive Era of the early 1900s, settlement houses served poor immigrant communities. The plans show the organization’s library, lecture hall, and nursery.

REC0074_0415_018_01: University Settlement House, Plan of 2nd Floor. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0415_018_02: University Settlement House, 3rd Floor Plan. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Block 415, Lot 20

Designed by McKim, Mead and White, the Rivington Street branch of the New York Public Library branch was built in 1904 with funding from philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The plans show both a custodian apartment and roof garden on the top floor which must have been a nice place to get fresh air and relax while reading. Together with the University Settlement House next door, this block became a hub for community services. The building survived only a few decades before becoming home to a church. It was later converted to condos. 

REC0074_0415_020_03: Front Elevation, Rivington Street Branch of New York Public Library. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0415_020_06: First Floor Plan, Rivington Street Branch of New York Public Library. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0415_020_02: Janitors Floor Plan, Alternate Scheme with Roof Garden, Rivington Street Branch of New York Public Library. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0415_020_01: Alternate Scheme Showing Roof Garden, Rivington Street Branch of New York Public Library. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

New York Public Library, 61 Rivington Street, ca. 1939. 1940s Tax Photograph collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Synagogues:

Block 414, Lot 27

One of many synagogues of the Lower East Side, Kehila Kedosha Janinae is unique as the only Romaniote rite synagogue in the Western Hemisphere. Romaniote refers to a specific tradition of Greek-speaking Judaism. The plans show front facade details, including a Star of David in stained glass, as well as the main floor space, with pews for men, and a mezzanine level for women. The building is a New York City Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places.

REC0074_0414_027_01: Front elevation of 280 Broome Street (Kehila Kedosha Janinae). Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0414_027_02: Plan of 1st Floor of 280 Broome Street (Kehila Kedosha Janinae). Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0414_027_03: Plan of mezzanine balcony, 280 Broome Street (Kehila Kedosha Janinae). Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

280 Broome Street, ca. 1939. 1940s Tax Photograph collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Block 419, Lot 49

Designed by J. Cleaveland Cady this synagogue is located at the corner of Delancey and Forsyth Streets. Cady also designed the American Museum of Natural History. The plans, dated 1889, show alterations to convert the building into a synagogue for a group of Jewish immigrants from the same town in Lithuania. The plans show the beautiful building facade, including large stained-glass windows and a dome, and the intricate Torah ark at the front of the congregation.

REC0074_0419_049_01: Front Elevation, 126 and 128 Forsyth Street. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0419_049_02: Cross section of Torah ark, 126 and 128 Forsyth Street. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0419_049_03: Front Elevation on Delancey Street at Forsyth Street. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

126 and 128 Forsyth Street, ca. 1939. 1940s Tax Photograph collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Housing:

Block 426, Lot 6

The Bowery was known for its “flophouses,” or places where you could rent a small cubicle by the night. In just one block, the Sunshine Hotel, Bowery Mission, and Salvation Army Hotel all provided this kind of housing. Plans for the Salvation Army Hotel show small rooms packed together to maximize the number of available beds (64-67 per floor, with nine floors of rooms). This type of housing later became known as Single Room Occupancy.

REC0074_0426_006_02: Plan of 2nd to 7th Floors. Alteration to Premises 2231/2 to 225 Bowery for The Salvation Army, 120 West 14th Street. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0426_006_03: Plan of Cellar and 1st Floor. Alteration to Premises 2231/2 to 225 Bowery for The Salvation Army, 120 West 14th Street. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

225 Bowery, Salvation Army, ca. 1939. 1940s Tax Photograph collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Block 430, Lot 10

The First Houses take their name from the fact that they were the first public housing development built in New York (and the United States) by Mayor LaGuardia’s newly created New York City Housing Authority. The property was assembled through a combination of eminent domain and donations by prominent New Yorkers. To keep costs low, builders reused materials from the demolished tenements. While plain in appearance, the First Houses reflect the perceived benefits of open air and large courtyards. The plans show the squat rectangular buildings at elevation, a common floor plan showing four apartments, and the city run health center in one of the first-floor storefronts. Each apartment was spacious and full of amenities especially compared to the cramped tenements they replaced. Every room had a window, and each apartment had separate bathrooms and kitchens, fireproofing, electricity, and radio connectivity. More than 3,000 families applied for just 120 apartments, underscoring the enormous demand for public housing. 

REC0074_0430_010_01: First Houses, East Elevation, Revisions. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0430_010_04: First Houses, Storefront for Department of Health. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0430_010_05: First Houses, Typical Floor Plan. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

 Blocks 430, 431, and 432, Lot 1

The Village View Houses, originally called the FDR Houses, had their groundbreaking ceremony in 1964, on the 25th anniversary of the First Houses, showing how far public housing had come, all while sharing the same block of New York. Built as co-op apartments under the State-sponsored Mitchell-Lama program there are seven buildings with 1,236 units. Plans include a font used on signs throughout the buildings, a common layout for a floor, with ten apartments, and a site plan showing the three blocks the buildings were spread across.

REC0074_0430,431,432_001_03: Franklin D. Roosevelt Houses, Layout for Lettering and Field Office. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0430,431,432_001_05: Franklin D. Roosevelt Houses, General Site Plan. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0430,431,432_001_02: Franklin D. Roosevelt Houses, Typical Floor Plan. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

REC0074_0430,431,432_001_04: Franklin D. Roosevelt Houses, Letters & Numerals for Building Entrances. Manhattan Building Plans Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

THE EARLY TENEMENTS OF NEW YORK—DARK, DANK, AND DANGEROUS

Lower East Side, ca. 1890s. Department of Street Cleaning Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

We are a nation of immigrants. Whether our ancestors arrived on exploring vessels, slave ships, crowded steamboats from Europe and Asia or illegally from everywhere, most came seeking the American Dream. But while they searched for it, many endured racism, discrimination, and exploitation in schools, the workplace and housing.

Interior rooms of an Old Law apartment, n.d. NYC Municipal Archives Collection.

When they walked off their ships, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children stayed in New York and had to live in apartments—that were cramped, dark and impossibly small —in buildings that were decaying firetraps, with substandard or broken plumbing and conditions not fit for a human being.

Much that they found on the Lower East Side and northward is documented in records, government agency reports and graphic photos in the City’s Municipal Archives and Library. These include Jacob Riis’ ground-breaking book, How the Other Half Lives, and details about the nefarious “Lung Block,” the subject of a Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) exhibition running thru August 2019.

It is a classic tale of exploitation, greedy owners and developers and battles in Albany and City Hall between real estate interests and people striving for better lives.

First Report of the Tenement House Department of the City of New York, 1903. NYC Municipal Library.

The Municipal Library held a copy of Riis’ book, published in 1890, which noted in chilling detail and sickening photos the conditions of Manhattan’s tenement houses. Buildings that once housed comfortable dwellings were cut up and added onto to accommodate the newly arrived immigrants who swelled the city’s population, eventually quadrupling it from 125,000 in 1820 to just under one million by 1870.

To meet the need for quick, cheap housing, Riis reported that the properties “fell into the hands of real estate agents and boarding house keepers… and in the old garden where the stolid Dutch burgher grew his tulips or early cabbages, a rear house was built, generally of wood, two stories high at first. Presently it was carried up another story, and another. Where two families had lived ten moved in.”

More than 20 years after the Tenement House Act of 1867, Riis described such horrendous conditions—crowded and dangerous buildings that incubated cholera, malaria and tuberculosis—it resulted in a public outcry and led to an investigation by the Tenement House Committee. The Tenement House Act of 1901, which echoed Riis’ findings and called for reforms, led to the creation of New York City’s Tenement House Department, which issued annual and biennial reports from 1902 through 1937—all of which are housed in the Municipal Library.

Wooden stairs of Old Law Tenement, destroyed by fatal fire, n.d. NYC Municipal Archives Collection.

Prior to 1867, tenements known as “Pre-Law” buildings had few strict requirements. The Act of 1867 brought the first “Old Law,” buildings which required fire escapes—most shoddily built. Subsequent “Old Law” buildings, erected between 1879 and 1901, required slender air shafts for ventilation. Buildings erected after 1901 were considered “New Law” buildings and had stricter requirements.

Still, in its 1902 report, the Tenement House Department noted that “tenement conditions have been found to be so bad as to be indescribable in print,” including “vile privies… cellars full of rubbish… garbage and decomposing fecal matter… dilapidated and dangerous stairs… dangerous old fire traps without fire escapes (and) disease-breeding rags… The cleansing of the Augean Stables was a small task compared to the cleansing of New York’s 82 tenement houses, occupied by nearly three millions of people.”

Outdated building design, shabby construction and greed-fueled attempts to squeeze as many people as possible into the tenements spurred the transformation of the old one- and two-story Knickerbocker dwellings with a large backyard on a 90-foot lot, to cut-up tenements—often housing a 10-member family in a single apartment—then to dark and dank to rear tenement “caves” with a small yard between the front and back building.

“If we take the death rate of children as a test, the rear tenement houses show themselves to be veritable slaughterhouses,” the report to the Legislature found. “The unfortunate tenants live virtually in a cage.”

The evolution of tenement design, from Pre-Law to Old Law to New Law, an illustration from the Tenement House Commission Report of 1895. NYC Municipal Library.

What followed was known as the “packing box” tenement with almost no ventilation, and a tiny yard, a design Riis described as “a hopeless back-to-back type, which meant there was no ventilation and could be none.” He noted that allowed “stenches from horribly foul cellars” to “poison” tenants living on the fifth floor.

Next came the double-decker” with a small air shaft. The state report called the double-decker “an evil which is peculiarly our own” and “the one hopeless form of tenement construction.” Though a slight improvement on the packing box, “the double-decker cannot be well-ventilated; it cannot be well-lit; it’s not safe in case of fire.”

The final iteration was the Dumb-Bell building, which had larger shafts along the sides in the middle, which gave the floor plan the look of that piece of weightlifting equipment.

Despite the new law, the Tenement Department, in its first heavily documented and illustrated report for 1902 and 1903 noted that “some of the conditions found in these buildings surpasses the imagination. It does not seem possible that human beings actually live under them and still retain the least vestige of health.”

First Report of the Tenement House Department of the City of New York, 1903. NYC Municipal Library.

The new department reported that in the first two years its employees made 337,246 inspections, filed 55,055 violations and made more than 21,000 repairs. It said that 16,768 families—or 83,840 people were now housed in new or upgraded buildings.

Shared toilet in tenement building, n.d. Credit Cosmo-Sileo. NYC Municipal Archives Collection.

It also breathlessly reported—perhaps too optimistically—that “the evil of prostitution has been practically abolished in tenement houses.” The report said all previously “dark” and “unventilated” rooms were now well-lit and ventilated and height and depth limits were set for all new buildings.

Among the first areas the new department targeted was the predominantly Italian “Lung Block,” bounded by Hamilton, Catherine, Cherry and Markets Sts. The 1907 and 1908 Tenement Department report noted that the block had the highest death rate of any block in the city; claiming there were 58 tenement houses in the 45-acre block with 829 families consisting of 4,145 people.

The reports of 1912-1914 noted the gradual elimination of many “Old Law” buildings but noted that some owners circumvented height requirements and limits on the number of allowable apartments by putting a store on the first floor that also contained apartments in the back.

Rear apartment rooms of a store at 193 Manhattan Avenue, 1935. NYC Municipal Archives Collection.

State lawmakers, apparently at the behest of owners and real estate interests, made periodic efforts to water down the law. The Department noted various schemes that included failing to file paperwork, making misleading and inaccurate claims and trying to grandfather in some dangerous buildings. In its 1915 and 1916 report, the Department said legislators passed various laws in “attempts to destroy” the “Department’s efficiency,” but Mayor John Mitchell vetoed them.

Rents continued to rise, and the Department noted that budget cuts and fewer inspections as part of a “do nothing policy” from 1918 through 1929 gave owners “no incentive to do anything” to improve rapidly deteriorating properties and deteriorated.

Family at kitchen table in a dumb-bell “New Law” tenement, ca. 1935. Note the angled kitchen window onto an air shaft. NYC Municipal Archives Collection.

In 1927, the State Legislature declared the Tenement House Law had “outlived its usefulness” and replaced it with the Multiple Dwelling Law. Around that time, as the Tenement House Department saw its effectiveness slipping away, the Fred W. French Company began buying and emptying buildings in the old Lung Block and used federal funds to erect the “affordable” Knickerbocker Village in what is now Chinatown.

Part of his argument, as quoted in the Lung Block Exhibit, was that poor people had no reason to live in Manhattan and should be replaced with “a certain class” of middle-class and more affluent people (aka gentrifiers) who were “wasting their time” commuting to work from the suburbs or other parts of the city.

Knickerbocker Village, Catherine and Monroe Streets, 1937. WPA Federal Writers’ Project Collection, Neg. 529. NYC Municipal Archives.

In 1933, French declared: “Another class of people, who live there now, and who need not live there… would thus make room for those tortured men and women who have suffered in the subways.”

Three hundred and seventy-nine Lung Block area families wanted to relocate to the “affordable” Knickerbocker Village, but only three could afford the rents.