bloomingdale history

Every era has its squatters, with people living on land or in buildings they do not own. After World War I, veterans camped along the Hudson River. In the Depression in the 1930s, squatters lived in “Hoovervilles” in Central Park and along the river. In the 1970s, people seized abandoned property and became owners through “sweat equity.” Today, people may find squatters in their unoccupied apartments. In nineteenth-century Manhattan, squatters settled in many areas where land was owned but undeveloped, becoming a part of city life.

News accounts about squatters began in the 1850s, as New York experienced a surge in immigration, with many impoverished newcomers arriving from Germany and Ireland. The Irish people came from a country in a famine crisis, and were in the worst shape. Charles Loring Brace wrote for The New York Times about the hardworking squatters who built their “cabins” on vacant lots, making a living by picking through the streets and collecting anything of value.  But Brace also sounded an alarm that “from these hordes come our thieves, vagabonds, and prostitutes.” He appealed for help in establishing a Hudson River Industrial School on West 28^th Street, where the young people would learn English and job skills.  Brace founded the Children’s Aid Society, where one of the solutions to handling orphaned immigrant children was to place them on Orphan Trains bound for the West.

In 1867, a newspaper describes the squatter father as a laborer for a “street-opening contractor,” while the mother takes in washing and ironing from a private house, raises poultry, and “supplies a small shop with the milk from a sickly cow.” Some squatters pay a nominal rent to a landlord who is trying to make some money while they wait for the price of the land to increase. Others go to City Hall to study the property maps and choose land owned by old New York families, rather than real estate speculators who would be more likely to evict them. Other news reports describe their shanties, built of scrap wood with pieces of tin nailed to the roof.

Other news articles take a more sensational tone, describing the places where squatters gather as “dens of wretchedness, murder, theft, and riot,” blaming the squatters for the 1863 Draft Riots, and bemoaning the number of Democratic voters who live there who are known to vote multiple times in any election.

Real estate owners began to organize in the 1870s to promote their interests as they recognized the increasing value of uptown real estate. Although the 1873 economic recession was a setback, the building of the Ninth Avenue elevated railroad in 1879 spurred development. The west side had more rocky outcrops, so street-opening was more difficult as the grid of mapped streets was created. Streets had to be built, block by block, by blasting and cutting through the rocks, filling in the hollows, grading, establishing water and sewer lines, and finally paving.  Landlords often delayed leveling their property until real estate values rose, thus leaving the unoccupied space available for squatting.

Today, you can see a rocky outcrop that was never demolished on West 114^th Street between Broadway and Riverside Drive.

This photo of the old Brennan farmhouse, rented by Edgar Allen Poe in the summer of 1884, shows how the first buildings perched on the uneven landscape.

The real estate owners who joined the West Side Association, formed in 1866, began to push the City of New York for both street openings and the completion of parks, including Morningside and Riverside, as well as assistance in handling the squatters who dotted the West Side.

In the 1870s, the real estate men pushed the state legislature to pass laws forbidding the relocation of shanties from one lot to another, extending the fire aw so that it would be illegal to and later, they advocated for the requirement that all structures be connected to city water and sewage lines. Meanwhile, owners committed to removing the squatters from their land by May 1880 by serving the illegal dwellers with a 10-day notice, followed by the marshals’ eviction, and then the demolition of the structure.

The New York Herald reported on May 23, 1880, on the raids on “hovels extending from West 65^th to West 72^nd Streets,” demolishing some fifty shanties, along with the occupants threatening trouble. That report estimated that there were 2,500 structures on the west side, from 59th to 110th streets, with a population of 13,000. Another source reported that Deputy Marshals had been attacked, some by dogs, and one had a milk can emptied over his head. Herman H. Camman, an owner of many west side properties, claimed he had eliminated 200 squatters.

In September 1880, Harper’s Monthly published an article with sketched illustrations that portrayed the squatters of the west side in a somewhat romantic light, depicting them as hard-working individuals with numerous garden plots throughout the neighborhood. As many writers did, this one noted the contrast between the new buildings of New York and the squatters in their hand-made hovels, quoting another writer who called the city “Paris, but with a backwoods.”

If you stand in the hollow at the corner of 86^th Street and Eighth Avenue, you will see a long stretch of garden with a weathered old cottage near the middle, and if you do not raise your eyes, it will seem to you that you are in Ireland. But the actual location is recalled to you by the elevated trains buzzing to and from Ninth Avenue, and through the thread-like work you can see, further away, an abandoned mansion with an aristocratic cupola blinking in the sunshine.

In April 1880, The New York Times estimated that approximately ten thousand people were living as squatters between 59th and 100th Streets, mostly of German and Irish descent, congregating by nationality. The article noted that there was a group of “Hollanders” near West 81^st Street in a district known as Ashville because it was a favorite dumping ground for ashes. They had their own church and school. But, regretfully, no sewerage hookup, so the area had an “offensive” odor in the warm weather.

Prior to the Civil War, the concept of “Squatter Sovereignty” emerged at the national political level, suggesting that people occupying the territories of the United States had the right to legislate for themselves, particularly in deciding whether their territory would become a slave state. That term would later be applied to the New York City squatters who claimed ownership rights to their space. This was particularly true for those who were paying rent or had purchased a shanty. In the early 1880s, a popular show by Edward Hannigan, a resident of West 101 Street,  titled “Squatter Sovereignty,” became one of the earliest musical comedies, portraying life outside the fashionable society, and making the immigrants of New York part of the city’s story. It was revived in the 1890s — an indication that squatters were still part of New York life.

By the 1890s, the news reports of squatters were more about the end of their settlements. Shanties became a feature of photographs of the new apartment flats with a wooden structure nearby, although many were legal property owners who grew fields of vegetables, fruits, and flowers for the local markets. Photographer Robert Bracklow, whose photo can be found at New York Historical, documented the final days of old wooden buildings on the west side.

Some journalists were able to write about actual people, such as Mrs. Rose McGloin, whose home had been located on the old Apthorpe Lane, which ran between West 93^rd and West 94^th Streets. The forty-year resident had lost access to the street as the new buildings fenced her in, and the Lane was officially demapped as a legal street.  Another writer discovered a group of men living on an empty lot on West 96th Street, huddled in a cave-like room carved out of the rock outcrop that remained.

In 1898, The Irish American reported the death of Mary Ann Burns, one of the last Boulevard squatters who lived in a three-room shanty near Grant’s Tomb, convinced that she had rights to her site “by right of long occupancy.”

By the end of the nineteenth century, the West Side’s blocks were filling in with brownstones and rowhouses, with little resemblance to the days of the “Harlem goats and Bloomingdale pigs.”

Sources

Newspaper archives at www.newspapers.com

“Squatter Life in New York,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine No CCCLXIV, Volume LXI, September 1880

Pam Tice is a member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group

In the early morning hours of April 14, 1918, the New York Assistant District Attorney led a group of police officers and military policemen in a series of raids of chop suey restaurants, beginning in the Tenderloin area of the city and culminating at Lee Suey’s restaurant at 210 Manhattan Avenue between West 109^th and West 110^th Streets.

Place after place was visited and closed up while the police interrogated the people found there. Women were asked if they were married to the man they were sitting with, and to provide a wedding ring to prove it. “Slackers,” as single young men were called, were ordered to show their military registration cards. Men in military uniforms were let go, but their names and addresses were taken.

According to a description in the New York Tribune women who were not married to their escorts were taken to the local police station house unaccompanied, held until 6 am, and their names and addresses were taken with a warning not to frequent a chop suey restaurant again. They were warned they could be served with a subpoena that would bring them to the District Attorney’s office for further questioning. This must have been scary for a young woman who might be a stenographer, a bookkeeper, or in the entertainment industry as a chorus girl or an actress. Perhaps she had just had a date for a movie and stopped for something to eat afterward.

What was happening in the northern blocks of the Bloomingdale neighborhood? The violation of the rights of the restaurant owners and their patrons is surprisingly harsh, at a time when the city was modernizing.

By the second decade of the 20^th century, the West 110^th Street blocks known as “Little Coney Island” had been pretty much removed by real estate developers who were building grand apartment houses along the street at the southern edge of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine’s property. The National Academy of Design had its building on West 109^th and Amsterdam but had not been able to raise the funds to build a more permanent structure. The Women’s Hospital relocated to the south side of West 110^th in 1906, near the corner of Amsterdam.

The dance halls and saloons of the earlier time had caused “disorderly houses” (the contemporary name for houses of prostitution) to be located on West 109^th and West 108^th Streets, and some even further south. These places seemed to be entrenched. In his book, City of Eros, Timothy Gilfoyle mapped the houses of prostitution on West 108^th and West 109^th Streets between Broadway and Central Park West, using the data in George Kneeland’s 1913 report on commercial prostitution in New York City.  

Closer to Columbus and Manhattan Avenues and Central Park West/Eighth Avenue, the elevated train made its wide curve and continued uptown, keeping the real estate values much lower at this end of the neighborhood. In the history of the early years of the 20^th Century, Greater Gotham, historian Mike Wallace wrote about how the expansion of transportation provided new opportunities for sex workers to expand their locations. The creation of the Ninth Avenue El and later the subway under Broadway brought them to the Upper West Side, mostly around Columbus Circle, but also locations further uptown.  Gilfoyle comments in his book “At Healy’s Restaurant, on Columbus Avenue at West 66th, half the women were prostitutes and half respectable.”

In 1915, real estate developer Leon Sobel was accused of renting to “disorderly” tenants in buildings he owned on West 108^th, West 109^th Streets, and Manhattan Avenue. This violated the Tenement House Law prohibiting such use. The New York Tribune reported on February 6, 1918, that the police captain of the 100^th Street station testified to specific locations at numbers 4,5, 6, and 107 West 109^th Street, 19 West 108^th Street, 12 West 101th Street, and 200 and 202 Manhattan Avenue. Along with his residential buildings, in 1913 Mr. Sobel built a theater with a roof garden on the southwest corner of West 109^th Street and Manhattan Avenue. A 1915 jury trial failed to convict Mr. Sobel. In the spring of 1918, the Manhattan District Attorney had taken up the cause again.  

Some like to call chop suey the Big Mac of the era. New York City’s restaurants had developed for wealthier citizens and it wasn’t until the development and acceptance of the inexpensive Chinese food that so many chop suey restaurants opened all around the city.

In a song of the time, China We Owe A Lot to You, chop suey was recognized as a part of the American adaptation of Chinese products, although with lyrics that likely would not be acceptable today:

China, ‘way out near Asia Minor,

No country could be finer beneath the sun;

You gave us silk to dress our lovely women,

‘Twas worth the price,

And when we couldn’t get potatoes, you gave us rice.

We mix chop suey with your chop sticks,

You’ve taught us quite a few tricks we never knew,

We take our hats off to one thing we’ve seen,

Your laundries keep our country clean,

China,

We owe a lot to you.

(China We Owe A Lot to You words by Howard Johnson, music by Milton Ager)

Most chop suey restaurants were owned by Chinese businessmen who leased the space to individual operators for a relatively small investment. The food became a part of New York’s bohemian culture. The restaurants were near factory and office workplaces where workers could find a cheap lunch. They were an integral part of any entertainment district. Later, in 1929, Edward Hopper painted a picture as one of his iconic urban spaces.

The chop suey places had an edge: there might be a screened private booth, and benches instead of chairs that were viewed as an invitation to human contact. Even more of a problem were the waiters who would step out to the closest saloon to purchase liquor for a customer, serving it in a teacup to disguise it. Chinese-owned businesses also carried early 20th-century prejudices against the Chinese as purveyors of opium and promoters of “white slavery.”

In sum, here was the vice problem of 1918: young single women, unattached men, cheap food, and liquor. In the northern edge of the Bloomingdale neighborhood, add Mr. Sobel’s theater, and, close by, his disorderly houses. 

There’s another piece of background to the 1918 raid story. The United States was a full year into World War I by the spring of 1918. The Spanish Flu pandemic was just getting started but would not be recognized until later that year. The U.S. Military initiated an effort to protect young soldiers and sailors from getting involved in “vice” at their points of embarkation so they would be healthy when they arrived in France.

Earlier that year, the military police had taken over certain districts in Philadelphia to “wipe out vice”. Then they sent Captain Timothy Pfeifer to New York City to work with the municipal authorities to guard against the young men becoming involved with liquor and other vices. District Attorney Edward Swann and his Assistant DA, James E. Smith, undertook the raids seemingly with great relish.

Captain Pfeiffer was part of the law enforcement division of the Commission on Training Camp Activities (CTCA), part of the U.S. War Department’s effort to control venereal disease under the Selective Service Act of 1917. The CTCA would create vice-free zones for a five-mile radius around military installations. While Manhattan did not have a training camp, it was a point of embarkation and thus brought the military to help out in clearing vice locations.

The head of the CTCA was Raymond Fosdick, brother of the esteemed preacher at Riverside Church, who had learned his vice-elimination skills while working for New York’s Committee of Fourteen chaired by John D. Rockefeller. Bloomingdale’s own Episcopal minister, John Peters, was an active participant in the work of the Committee of Fourteen which had helped close down the “Raines Law hotels” as centers of vice. Fosdick ensured the Committee of Fourteen participated in the city’s moral crusade against vice in the spring of 1918.

An attorney for the Chop Suey restaurant owners asserted the illegality of the DA’s actions but did not challenge the raids in court. The proprietors met with Mr. Smith, as reported in The New York Times on April 19^th, promising not to admit intoxicated soldiers or sailors or girls under eighteen years old. They promised to remove the screens and to provide chairs instead of benches. They promised that their waiters would not go out for beer for their patrons.

There was also a movement developing that spring in New York that restaurants should be licensed and would not be allowed to stay open all night. No one should be dining out between 1 am and 5 am. Licensing the saloons had helped the government get control over them; now they wanted to license the restaurants also.

Another aspect of the spring 1918 raids was the push at both the federal and state levels that there should be no “slackers,” men of working age who did not have proper jobs. On April 22, 1918, the New York Herald reported a raid on Ed Green’s cigar store on Manhattan Avenue between West 109^th and West 110^th Streets where several young men and four dice were taken from a backroom.

Like other states, New York passed a law that went into effect on July 1 that year but the District Attorney seemed to be enforcing it before that date. If you were a young man and could not produce a registration for the military, you were picked up. Also in early July, the War Department issued a “work or fight” order that if you were of draft age and not working, or working in an unproductive industry (including the entertainment industry) you would be called up for military service.

As reported in The New York Tribune on April 29, 1918, the federal officials who came to New York City to participate in the “housecleaning” were pleased with the orderliness of the city.

In 1917, Baltimore journalist H. L. Mencken wrote an article satirizing the work of the CTCA, comparing an earlier time when white slavery narratives characterized prostitutes as innocent victims with wartime discourse depicting all sexually active women as “diseased harpies.”

In the summer of 1918, Congress passed the Chamberlain-Kahn Act, authorizing the quarantine of citizens suspected of having venereal disease. Under the law, women suspected of being prostitutes could be stopped, detained, inspected, and sent to a rehabilitation facility if they failed their examination. By 1919, thirty states had constructed facilities to detain and treat women; historians estimate that 30,000 women were held during World War I. The law lasted into the 1950s.

In this photo from the 1920s, there is a Chop Suey Restaurant under the El at West 110th Street

Sources

Chin, Gabriel J. and John Ormonde “The War Against Chinese Restaurants,” Duke Law Journal, Volume 67, Number 4 (January 2018) pp 681-741

Gilfoyle, Timothy J., City of Eros, New York City, Prostitution and the Commercialization of Sex 1790-1920, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1992

Keire, Mara L., “Swearing Allegiance: Street Language, US War Propaganda, and the Declining Status of Women in Northeastern Nightlife,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, Volume 25, Number 2 (May 2016) pp 246-266

Reilly, Kimberly “A Perilous Journey for Democracy: Soldiers, Sexual Purity, and American Citizenship in the First World War,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, April 2014, Volume 13, Number 2 (April 2014), pp. 223-255

Wallace, Mike, Greater Gotham: A History of New York City, 1898-1919, Oxford University Press, New York, 2017

Manhattan Borough President photography collection at the Municipal Archives

www.newspapers.com

New York City Public Library Map Division.

by Pam Tice

Pam Tice is a member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group

The opening of the Votes for Women Grocery Store at 2540 Broadway at West 95^th Street in February 1913 made news across the country. The store was a project of Sophia Kremer of 233 West 83^rd Street, a Hungarian immigrant and the wife of Dr. Geza Kremer. The profits from the store were to be used for suffrage work in the “upper part” of the city.

Sophia Kremer was just one of several suffragists who lived on the Upper West Side. Their determination to pursue the right to vote resonates today as women struggle to gain and regain rights.

The campaign for women’s suffrage re-ignited during the Progressive Era. Women in neighborhoods all over the city took up the cause, launching a new movement after the deaths of both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in 1902. Stanton is commemorated today in the renaming of the building at 250 West 94^th Street where she lived with her daughter, Harriet Stanton Blasch, who herself was an important suffragist. After failing in 1915, the New York suffragists reached success in 1917 in passing an amendment to the New York State Constitution granting women full suffrage. This was a first for an eastern state and helped lead the way to the passage of the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1919.

Mrs. Kremer had incorporated as Suffrage Pure Foods Stores Company as she cleverly combined two big issues of the day: woman suffrage and pure food. Her board members were Sarah Meyer, Alice Snitjer Burke, and Aimee Hutchinson. They had hopes of opening more stores “further up Broadway and perhaps in the Bronx.” There’s no evidence that this happened and it’s not clear how long the first store stayed in business. William Astor’s Market opened across Broadway in 1915, a much larger enterprise.

The Votes for Women Grocery Store products and operations tell us a lot about grocery store shopping in the Progressive Era.

Upton Sinclair’s 1906 book The Jungle was one of numerous efforts around the country that got Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, an effort to produce hygienically and properly labeled products. In 1913 consumers used the Westfield Book of Pure Foods produced by chemistry professor Lewis B. Allyn of the Westfield (Massachusetts) Normal School. He analyzed manufactured food products and shared his knowledge in the book that Mrs. Kremer sold at her store. She committed to stocking only those products.

The Votes for Women store stocked foods produced on local farms in New York and New Jersey. These were sent to the store directly, avoiding middle-man costs, and passing the savings onto the customers. The products included chickens, home-cured ham, butter, eggs (35 to 40 cents per dozen), and honey. One farmer’s wife had agreed to supply country sausage, unsalted butter, head cheese, pig’s feet, scrapple, and sauerkraut. All “ordinary” groceries of the best grades would be available at regular prices.

The store opened at 7:30 a.m. Yellow was the suffrage color, so it had a yellow front, yellow banner, yellow parcel cord, and a yellow delivery wagon, although “good suffragists” were asked to take home their own packages, Each egg was labeled “Votes for Women,” and a suffrage brochure tucked into every package.

On opening day, it was reported that a man “came to rubber” (slang for gaping), and perhaps buy a pack of matches. When he left, he’d bought six pounds of cheese, two dozen eggs, a large bottle of olives, and three pounds of candy.

One newspaper report about opening day confirmed that the only man regularly in the store would be the ice-man making a delivery. Women would handle the customers and clean the shop. The New York Times described what the women working there wore: white linen waists and dark blue woolen skirts with a white butcher’s apron. Mrs. Burke wore a crushed raspberry linen skirt with a white apron, and Miss Hutchinson a green dress with a white apron. All of them had “Votes for Women” buttons on their white aprons. Zip, the store dog, had the same button on his blanket. He belonged to Mrs. Nevins, a Captain in the 15^th Assembly District, who was working in the store also, along with Mrs. Elizabeth Morton, her counterpart in the 17^th AD.

The yellow delivery wagon with its “Votes for Women” signage was originally handled by two boys who handled the purchases of women who chose not to carry them home. Within a month, the boys suddenly went on strike one day, too upset to work any longer due to the teasing they had to endure. Mrs. Kremer asserted “Girls wouldn’t have deserted us during a busy day. We put on our hats and did the deliveries ourselves.” She did admit to having some help from “regular” delivery boys and a couple of Boy Scouts. Later, there were reports of “two strapping women” hired to do the job.

The publication of the Woman Suffrage Party, The Woman Voter, referenced regular Saturday evening meetings at 96^th and Broadway, enrolling both men and women who supported the suffrage cause. The grocery store served as “a rostrum” for Wednesday afternoon meetings for high school students when Aimee Hutchinson would speak.

The grocery store was not Sophia Kremer’s first suffrage project. In September 1911, Sophia Kremer was featured in news articles as the “originator” of the first women’s political club at 120 West 85^th Street. Here, she hoped to prove that her suffrage clubhouse would demonstrate the successful combination of politics and domesticity. “Pure food will be our slogan,” she said. “Indeed, one of the reasons many women want to vote is to protect themselves and their families from slow poisoning and improper food supplies put on the market by the dealers.” The club served three meals a day in their restaurant. There were rooms for rent for women on the upper floors. Yellow was the predominant color for the wallpaper, candle shades, and stationery. There was a library, and weekly lectures and meetings were held there. They planned to have a “women’s exchange” shop where they would sell their specialty, preserved fruits as pure food, named for the leaders of the New York suffragists, “Cherries Penfield,” “Raspberry Laidlaw,” and “Peach Nathan.”

In October 1911, Mrs. Kremer was arrested at Broadway and West 87^th Street as she and the leaders of the 15^th Assembly District conducted an open-air meeting on the suffrage issue. The owner of a men’s furnishings store did not appreciate the disruption and called the police. Mrs. Kremer insisted that “headquarters” had approved of the event but she was taken to the precinct on West 100^th Street. Meanwhile, 25 new members of the Woman Suffrage Party were signed up, and the women said their husbands would never shop at the haberdasher’s. Later, in a letter to The New York Times, Mrs. Penfield, the Chair of the Woman Suffrage Party, sought witnesses to this “irregular procedure.”

By late 1912, the local political clubhouse for women, under the direction of Mrs. Kremer, was called the Interborough Suffrage League, located at 227 West 83^rd Street. Mrs. Kremer’s photograph was splashed across the country by the newspapers when she and two friends decided to paint the clubhouse themselves after the landlord refused. She purchased “69 cent blue coveralls” which provided a great attraction, feeding on men’s fears that women who voted were both losing their femininity and taking on men’s tasks. The women commented that the coveralls were so practical, that they expected to wear them for all sorts of household duties.

The final story found about Mrs. Kremer was a brief mention in August 1917 that she was on her way to Washington D.C. to picket the White House.

Mrs. Kremer’s colleagues on the board of her grocery store company were also suffrage activists. Aimee Hutchinson was a young woman who gained some notoriety when she was fired from her job as a teacher at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament school at Broadway and 71^st Street because she participated in the massive suffrage parade in August of 1912. Harriet Stanton Blatch seized on the opportunity to make a “martyr” of Miss Hutchinson, as an example of the kind of intimidation of pro-suffrage women faced from their employers. Hutchinson’s youth created comments that she “rivaled Inez Mulholland as the most beautiful suffragette.” She played an active role politically through 1917 when she began developing her career as an actor and a writer.

Alice Snitjer Burke also served on Mrs. Kremer’s board. In her thirties, she had been widowed twice: her first husband, Captain Armstrong, had been killed in the Spanish-American War while serving as one of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. Her second husband, Dr. Richardson Burke, died shortly after they were married. In the 1910 federal census, Mrs. Burke was living alone in an apartment at 2453 Broadway. She became a well-known suffragette by making speeches at Broadway and 96^th Street for 165 consecutive nights.

In April 1916, Mrs. Burke and her friend Nell Richardson made history by embarking upon an automobile trip across the United States. The women chose this presidential election year, before each political party’s convention, in the hope that they would add a suffrage plank to their party platform. Alice Burke spent time in 1915 driving around New York State and speaking in support of woman suffrage in an auto labeled “Victory 1915.”

For the U.S. trip, Burke and Richardson drove in a yellow Saxon, nick-named the Golden Flyer, a lightweight car donated by the company which also worked out an itinerary for them that would bring them to a hotel every evening as they had no plans to camp out. Carrie Chapman Catt broke a bottle across the radiator as they left 42^nd Street on the ferry to New Jersey and headed south.

The auto was loaded with two yellow trunks, a “hand” sewing machine, a typewriter, a “fireless cooker” and the tools needed for repairs. When questioned about a woman’s ability to manage a car, Mrs. Burke noted that she “can run this machine without any help and without getting all messy.” The media coverage also included a black kitten named Saxon that someone gave them early in the trip.

Intending to cover 75-100 miles a day, the women started down the eastern seaboard, traveled through the south, headed west to Texas and Arizona, and then reached the west coast. They headed north to Seattle, then across the west and mid-west to Chicago, and back to New York City. From time to time, Mrs. Burke wrote diary-style articles that were reported in various newspapers. She had a sense of humor, reporting on a horse that would not move across the road and how she talked suffrage to it in “equine” terms. Men gathered around when she had to change a sparkplug one day, and as she earned their respect for her mechanical skills, one commented, “A woman’s hand in the machinery of politics might have the same effect.”

They created a media stir and were in the news quite often as they went across the county. The Saxon company began featuring them in their advertising as their automobile held up well. The trip lasted for 178 days and covered over 10,700 miles. This trip is often cited as an example of the strong connection between independent women and cars.

In his book, Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Jim Mackin notes other suffragettes who were active during this same time. Mountaineer Anne Smith Peck, performance artist Jean Earl Moehle, educator May Gorslin Slosson, British suffragist Bettina Borrmann Wells, and perhaps the most well-known, Carrie Chapman Catt and her companion Mary Garrett Hay.

Sources

Tom Miller’s Daytonian in Manhattan (daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com)

Various articles in the archives at www.newyorktimes.com, particularly Christopher Gray’s article on October 7, 2012, about Kremer’s apartment building

www.newspapers.comWikimedia Commons

By Pam Tice, Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group Planning Committee

In the 1890s, a bicycling craze swept America as men and women purchased bicycles and took to the roads. The safety bicycle, a machine much like the one we have today with equal-size wheels and inflated tires, fueled the craze as the model became widely available by the mid-1880s. Bicycles cost from $45 to $75, making the craze very much a middle-class phenomenon.

In our Bloomingdale neighborhood, with its paved roadways and two parks, the bicycle craze became part of street life.

Central Park West was paved up to 135^th Street by 1898, although riders found the darkened street under the El (above 110^th Street) hard to maneuver. Central Park became popular for bicycling by the mid-1880s after Park rules allowed cyclists to ride on the drives, already busy with carriages and horses.

The Boulevard, later named Broadway, was a popular bicycling route, from Columbus Circle up to Grant’s Tomb and the Claremont Inn. Certain parts of the new Riverside Drive also attracted wheelmen and wheelwomen, as the bicyclists were called. In the spring of 1896, traffic counters noted more than 14,000 bicyclists over a sixteen-hour period.  

Over the decade, more control over bicycles developed. Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt initiated bicycle policemen. Traffic rules were passed, recognizing the bicycle as a vehicle, ruling that it must stay to the right, carry a lantern at night, sound a bell when passing or turning, and travel at no more than eight miles an hour.

The bicycle’s popularity spurred manufacturing from the bicycles themselves to the accessories needed, including clothing. Tailors and bootmakers were kept busy. There were many shops around the city, and riding academies, inside spaces, where novices could learn how to ride and how to maintain their wheels.

Bicycle clubs were popular, at first just for men, and later including a few women.  Eventually, there was a club exclusively for women.  Even New York’s elite “400” had their exclusive club, the Michaux, by 1894.

In Bloomingdale, the Riverside Wheelmen became one of the city’s most popular clubs. They purchased a brownstone house headquarters at 232 West 104^th Street in 1889. As with all the clubs, the newspapers had regular columns reporting on bicycling activities. The wheelmen of the Riverside club had standard male social practices and club amenities, including a billiard room where contests were held, “smokers” and other social activities, like group singing, piano solos, and comic recitations. They sponsored dances at a location uptown. It’s unclear if they admitted women or just tolerated a few who had good riding skills.

The Riverside Wheelmen organized their bicycling activities into two general categories: races and sponsored day rides. For amateur racing, the League of American Wheelmen established racing rules the clubs agreed to follow as members. If they allowed women to participate the event would be “unsanctioned.” The Riverside Wheelmen organized races at Manhattan Field at Eighth Avenue and 155^th Street, a popular spot for college football and other sports events. At an annual July event, the Riverside Club presented a day of racing events of different challenges, attracting huge crowds.

For non-racing members, the Riverside Wheelmen organized weekend day-long rides up to Westchester County, over to New Jersey, or through Brooklyn to the Rockaways where swimming was added.

One of the first Captains of the Riverside Wheelmen was Franklin M. Cossitt. He married Caroline Gray in 1887; they are listed in an 1890 city directory at West 119^th Street. “Carrie” joined him in his bicycling enthusiasm and in some news reports she is referred to as a member of the Riverside Wheelmen. She signed up for a century (100-mile) ride in Philadelphia in 1890 but the poor condition of the roads exhausted her and she could not finish, the only time she tried an event she could not complete.

There is a photograph of Mrs. Cossitt in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York with a note on the back indicating that she was the first woman in New York City to use a safety bicycle. Because there were so many women learning to ride at this time, the statement is discounted today. The Cossitts moved to New Jersey by the mid-1890s and continued their bicycling there.

 

Another woman who was sometimes referred to as a Riverside Wheelmen member was Nellie Benson. She lived on West 65^th Street and rode tandem with Fred Lester who lived at the same address, although she was always referred to with a “Miss” before her name. In 1897, Fred and Nellie rode from City Hall in New York to City Hall in Philadelphia with Nellie in front. In 1896, Fred and Nellie were arrested for “scorching” (riding fast) on the Boulevard; when they were brought into court, the judge found that he could not fine “a lady” and so Fred had to pay the $3 penalty twice.

In 1891, the actor James Powers applied for membership in the Riverside Wheelmen, an announcement that also noted that many artists and writers were attracted to that club. Powers was a comedic actor and singer of some renown, living with his wife at the Ansonia. His papers are at the New-York Historical Society today.

Religious leaders across the country expressed concern about the bicycle craze and its tendency to keep young people from church on Sunday. Church attendance by men had already fallen off, and now ministers worried that women would stop attending Sunday services.

The Reverend John Peters of Bloomingdale’s St. Michael’s Episcopal Church (Tenth Avenue at West 99^th Street) had an idea. In June of 1896, he arranged for the church to set up a “bicycle check-in,” and encouraged people to attend the 7:30 am service before setting off for their Sunday ride. His wife, in a New York Times interview, expressed sympathy for working people whose only day off was Sunday, and how late-morning services interfered with having the whole day for restorative recreation. The Church placed a sign in the drugstore a block away at the corner of the Boulevard and planned further signage to attract the bicyclists riding uptown to stop by the church for the early service.

The city’s bicycle clubs all had uniforms, so when they rode together, they would be recognized. By mid-decade, bicycle parades were popular. A June 1896 event sponsored by the Evening Telegram, brought crowds to the westside. Costumed riders headed uptown on the Boulevard at West 66^th Street, riding up to West 108^th Street, crossing over to Riverside Drive, then up to Claremont Avenue, and back downtown. Riders were given awards for having the most grace, best costume, and best club. 

One of the lasting legacies of the bicycle craze was the effect it had on women and how it contributed to their liberation. The criticism of women was tremendous, ranging from the effect of mounting a machine that might lead to sexual arousal, to predicting her inability to have children. Some said her hands would become enlarged, another loss of femininity and feeding the fear that women would become more like men. The social norms which constricted women from meeting men only under the supervision of their parents were also challenged. Out of all of this change came the turn-of-the-century’s New Women.

Those in favor of bicycling for women presented the healthy outcomes that would result: the improvement of muscles and overall well-being, the opportunity to explore the world and learn about history and geography, and the freedom to move around without having to ask someone’s help. Susan B. Anthony said, “I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel …the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”

One of the most popular topics in the press about wheelwomen involved the proper clothing. Bloomers had a mixed history from an earlier attempt to make women’s clothing more rational. During the bicycle craze, the city’s tailors worked to develop comfortable and riding costumes. The choice that became the most acceptable was knickers with a shorter skirt over them, stockings, ankle boots, a short jacket, and a not-too-big hat. Some women, like century-rider Nellie Benson, wore just knickerbockers with no skirt.

Marie Ward, of the Ward’s Island New York family, known as “Violet,” included all of the best clothing choices in her popular book Bicycling for Ladies.  Her Staten Island friend, Alice Austin, did the photography. Ward included information on bicycle repair and the tools needed, reminding women that they used needles and scissors and could easily adapt to bicycle tools. Ward’s bicycle shop was on Staten Island.

One measure of the ending of the bicycle craze was the fall-off in League of American Wheelmen membership from over 100,000 in 1898 to just 8,600 in 1902. The craze was over. Bicycling returned somewhat during the Depression but by the 1940s and 1950s bicycles were considered children’s toys.

Sources

Newspaper database at newspapers.com

Ancestry.com

Ebert, Anne-Katrin “Liberating Technologies? Of Bicycles, Balance and ‘The New Woman’ in the 1890s” Icon, Vol 16. Special Issue (2010) pp.-52

MacPike, Loralee “The New Woman, Childbearing, and the Reconstruction of Gender, 1880-1900 NWSA Journal, Vol 1, No. 3 (Spring 1989) pp368-397

Taylor, Michael “Rapid Transit to Salvation: American Protestant and the Bicycle in the Era of the Cycling Craze” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Volume 9, No. 3 (July 2010) pp. 337-363.

by Pam Tice, Bloomingdale History Group Planning Committee

“The Sun may be in eclipse, but New York, never!”

Mayor John F. Hylan, quoted during the January 24, 1925, total solar eclipse over New York City

As we look forward to the solar eclipse on the afternoon of April 8, 2024, it’s a good time to remember the eclipse on the cold morning of January 1925 when the Bloomingdale neighborhood was at the center of attention. This year New Yorkers will see the sun 90% obscured by the moon. In 1970, many Upper West Siders gathered in Riverside Park to experience the 96% eclipse. But in 1925, it was a total eclipse. The last total eclipse had been 450 years before, and the next two were predicted for 2079 and 2144.

The path of totality was a bit undefined in the days leading up to the 1925 event. Initially, the line of totality was predicted to be between West 72^nd Street and West 110^th Street. A few days later, the line was set north of West 83^rd Street. Following the event, the line was firmly established: between West 96^th and 97^th Streets, or between 230 and 240 Riverside Drive. Pundits dubbed it “The West 96^th Eclipse.”

The Daily News published this map before the event.

Preparation for the 1925 event was covered in great detail in the press. Scientists wanted to gain more knowledge of the size and trajectory of the moon, and they wanted to know more about the sun’s corona.  Both still and motion picture photographers made plans to photograph the event, and many were dispatched in planes. The Army Air Corps sent 25 planes up from Mitchel Field on Long Island, said to be the largest fleet since the end of World War I.  The U.S. Navy brought its dirigible Los Angeles over to Lakehurst, New Jersey, and sent it aloft over Long Island on the day of the event to take pictures. A “live” radio report of the event was planned to be broadcast from the blimp. This short film was made: Solar Eclipse 1925 January 24 New York (youtube.com). Others were studying the effect of a solar eclipse on radio reception.

Eclipse viewers were warned to use smoked glass to watch the event. A green eyeshade or a piece of exposed film was also recommended. Street vendors sold small pieces of smoked glass for ten cents in the places where people gathered that day.

There was also concern for the safety of the city during the event. The banks were open on Saturdays and made plans not to open until 10 a.m., not to distribute any payrolls or large sums of cash, to have all the armed guards deployed on each bank floor, and to keep armored cars in the garage until after the event was over. The City of New York ordered the electric companies to turn on the street lights above 72^nd Street during the event even though this would disturb the experience. All available policemen were to be on duty that morning.

The Daily News warned, “Hold your smoked glass in one hand, keeping the other firmly on your pocketbook.”

The New York electrical companies planned to study the eclipse to measure its impact on the grid. In 1925, these were the Consolidated Gas Company and the New York Edison Company, today’s combined Consolidated Edison.  They wanted to measure the exact southern edge of the totality, to gauge the intensity of the sun, and to assess the impact on the grid. Since most homes were heated with coal then, the impact on the grid involved only lighting. The companies positioned men on rooftops along Riverside Drive, and it was this observation that set the exact line of the totality between West 96^th and 97^th Streets.

The eclipse was timed to begin at 8 am, reach its peak at 9:11, and finish at 10:20 am.

Many spectators went up into the city’s skyscrapers, hoping to get a viewing post above ground. The Woolworth building opened its observation deck early and every inch of space was taken. Although it was a Saturday, this was still a workday for many, and many employers, including the New York Stock Exchange, delayed opening. Passengers on ocean liners in the harbor crowded the decks in the cold morning air.

Uptown, students crowded onto the Columbia and City College campuses, and others headed for open spaces in Central and Riverside Parks, and further uptown in Washington Heights. Many people must have been tempted to just stay in bed on this Saturday morning since the temperature was at just nine degrees.

Here’s a Daily News photo of the crowd at Broadway and 95^th Street —- the splash of light is from nearby a sign that was lit.

On January 30, 1925, the Jewish Chronicle of Newark printed a thoughtful piece: The Eclipse From a Moral Point of View marveling at the work of scientists to gain every possible bit of information from the memorable event, and urging people “to respect the precise methods of the scientific spirit in a world where wild rumors, malicious gossip, and subtle propaganda can often replace durable truth.”

The New York Times wrote an editorial the next day that ended “makes us realize how closely akin we are in this common planetary boat on an ethereal sea that has no visible shore.”

Here is a photo owned by the Mystic Seaport Museum, Rosenfeld Collection; it’s identified as taken in New York City, and probably somewhere north of 96^th Street.

Sources

The New York Times archive

www.EclipseWise.com

Photo posted on http://mysticseaportcollections.blogspot.com/2015/02/cold-and-darknyc-january-24-1925.html

American Museum of Natural History Planetarium blog: http://www.amnh.org/our-research/hayden-planetarium/blog/84-years-ago-the-sun-blinked-out/

Newspapers available on www.genealogybank.com, and www.newspapers.com

Johnson, Susan Gail, editor, An Almanac of New York City 2024, Abbeville Press, New York City, 2024.

The story of the House of Mercy, located at the far end of West 86^th Street on the Hudson River, is a tale of women’s work. The House was founded in 1855 by a devoted Episcopal woman, Mrs. William Richmond, who used her religious convictions and social skills to establish the charitable home. In 1863, the House of Mercy was put under the management of Episcopal nuns whose establishment was a historical moment for the church. It is also the story of young women of New York City in the mid-nineteenth century and their struggles that reflect the social mores of the patriarchal culture of that era.

Researching the history of the House also offered glimpses into mid-century city life. A minister on his way there described the rickety stairs on West 86^th Street that led him down to the river where the House was located. The story of the nuns revealed the struggles between factions in the Episcopal Church. The report of a drowning in the Hudson River showed how the local residents reacted.

The Fallen Women of the 19^th Century and the Efforts to Rescue Them

The House of Mercy was a home for fallen women. In the 19^th century the term “fallen woman” applied to those who had transgressed current sexual norms. The fallen state goes back to the biblical fall in the Garden of Eden and the loss of innocence. “Fallen” was an umbrella term applied to a range of situations, including having sex just once or habitually outside marriage, a woman who was raped, or sexually coerced by a male aggressor, or a woman with a tarnished reputation or a prostitute. For many women in mid-19^th century New York City, prostitution was an economic decision.

In New York City, work with fallen women is divided between those seeking to save and rehabilitate women who have already fallen, and those trying to prevent young women from falling. There were numerous organizations that formed to take on this work.

The New York Magdalen Benevolent Society was formed in 1830 by several denominations to reform females who had abandoned themselves to prostitution. The Society had its first asylum on Carmine Street and moved to a larger site on Fifth Avenue at East 88^th Street. In the 1890s, this facility moved to West Harlem between 138^th and 139^th Streets overlooking the Hudson. The asylum had a second building there that functioned as a laundry, with the proceeds supporting the asylum. Not long after, in 1904, they moved to Inwood where they became known as “Inwood House.”

The New York Female Moral Reform Society (later changed to the “American” Society) was formed in 1834 to prevent prostitution. Other cities soon had similar organizations. Initially, women went to brothels and prayed for prostitutes and their clients. Later, women sought to criminalize men’s role in prostitution and to open homes for “friendless” women, and also for girls who might be diverted from “falling” as they got older.

In 1843 the Roman Catholics established the Sisters of Mercy to dissuade Irish girls from falling into prostitution and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd to redeem those who had. By the 1850s, both Sisters were operating asylums in New York City. The Sisters of Mercy had a home on Houston Street to provide protection, especially for young women coming into the city as immigrants. The Sisters of the Good Shepard had an asylum on 30^th Street.

The Charitable Christian Lady, Mrs. William Richmond

Sarah Adelaide Richmond founded the House of Mercy. She was the second wife of the Reverend William Richmond, the Rector of St. Michael’s Church located at Amsterdam Avenue and 99^th Street. Mr. Richmond led an active pastoral life, establishing new churches, and holding services at the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum, New York Hospital, and other almshouses. His son-in-law, Thomas McClure Peters, worked with him closely and eventually took over his role at St. Michael’s.

In 1849 Reverend Richmond lost his first wife to the cholera epidemic that had broken out in New York City. He decided to leave the city for the west. The California gold rush was in full swing and many others were on their way to California. Richmond was not looking for gold, however. He was to assist the Episcopal Church in its mission to the growing population of California and Oregon. He ended up in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, establishing a “mission house,” a new log house that he built, serving the area around Portland and Oregon City.

In October 1851, Reverend Richmond married Miss Sarah Adelaide Adams, a former governess to his brother James, and a former organist at St. Michael’s church. She was the daughter of “the late Thomas Adams of Boston,” according to a local news report. She had gone to Oregon to pursue work as a teacher. Her long journey to the West Coast speaks to an adventuresome nature. One wonders how she and Mr. Richmond ended up in the same place so far from St. Michael’s. Records of their ages differ somewhat but it was about 25 years.

After their marriage, the new couple made plans to establish a school that would become a college. However, by the time the first scholars were in place in March 1852, Reverend Richmond was ill. He had a recovery in the summer but in the fall was ill again, and the couple decided to return to New York City.

Ship records data for New York City shows Reverend Richmond and Mrs. Richmond arriving in New York City on February 18, 1853, on the steamship Ohio that departed from Aspinwall, Panama. Their journey demonstrates the difficulties of travel at mid-century. The trip across narrow Panama at this time was by mule, as the railroad was not yet built. A newspaper account mentions Ohio’s stop in Jamaica and how it ran aground leaving the harbor at Kingston. The news also reported the deaths of a few passengers of “bilious fever” and their burials at sea.

Reverend Richmond resumed his duties at St. Michael’s, and, while he had a lighter load of other pastoral duties, he did visit the prisoners on Blackwell’s Island. Mrs. Richmond accompanied him, visiting the women in the female penitentiary.  She saw that a place was needed to support young women who showed some signs of wanting to change their lives.

The assertiveness of Mrs. Richmond, along with her charitable nature came into action at this point. Newspapers were advertising the sale or rental of the Howland family’s mansion on West 86^th Street on the North River, as the Hudson was called. Soon she had a benefactor paying the rent on the mansion, and she established her home for wayward girls. In the 1855 incorporation papers for the House of Mercy, her objective was to provide a comfortable home for two classes of homeless females under 20 years (1) those who have just entered a vicious course of life and (2) very young girls who have not fallen but are in imminent peril.

Mrs. Richmond was now pursuing a career in one of the few areas of life outside the home open to women in the mid-century: charitable works. She had to fund her work beyond the support of the benefactor paying the rent on the mansion, so she organized bazaars to raise funds, using spaces available in midtown New York City. Often, they were auctions of donated items or concerts, all reported in the press. One year, the collectibles auction included two pelican skins and a Japanese carving made of charcoal.

Mrs. Richmond had a delicate pitch to make in her fundraising. The problem she was trying to help resolve was not something “ladies” could discuss openly. It was far easier to raise money for orphans or aged women in need. Newspaper reports of the fundraising appeals make an effort to characterize the young women as “innocents” who were somehow led astray by men. During the Civil War, the young girls were described as the sisters and daughters of the men “protecting our firesides” who were left to the tender mercies of a false friend. The New York Times said that “the trade for beguiling friendless and inexperienced girls is as thoroughly established in this as in any European city.”

Mr. Richmond died in 1858 but her widowhood did not seem to stop Mrs. Richmond in her efforts. She established an “intake” center downtown on Mulberry Street for the House of Mercy, right in the neighborhoods that were described by a newspaper as “in the midst of habitations devoted to the vilest of abuses.”  In a New York Times article, the writer described Mrs. Richmond’s willingness to deal with the problem of window sashes in the House of Mercy as evidence of her willingness to take on all tasks related to the House.

On a Friday evening In July 1858, tragedy struck the House of Mercy. Five young girls drowned when they were by the river trying to cool off. The housemother, Mrs. Knox, had given her permission and had someone watching them, but something happened and they struggled and sank. Small boats maneuvered to help them and soon the 22^nd Precinct men showed up with grappling irons. The search to recover the bodies took much of the day on Saturday. Mid-day, a cannon, owned by Mr. Scarf of Striker’s Bay, was fired every 50 feet down to West 72^nd Street as a way to bring a body to the surface, and this helped locate three bodies. A fourth surfaced later, but the fifth was never found. (Firing a cannon was a British superstition that found its way to the United States; it was thought that the firing would break the gall bladder of the corpse and cause the body to float. Both Edgar Allen Poe and Mark Twain used this mechanism in their writing. Thanks to the website straightdope.com for this.)

The 1860 federal census lists Mrs. Richmond herself running the House of Mercy, along with her 19-year-old niece, Helena Richmond, and two other women. There is a year-old baby named William Richmond who presumably belongs to Helena, but no relationships are given in this census. The “inmates,” as asylum residents were called, number eleven teenage girls, both foreign and native-born. There are also two women inmates in their thirties and another year-old child whose last name does not match anyone else’s.

This description of the House of Mercy in an 1861 article in The New York Times is characteristic of the way the Home was described. The funds to purchase it appear to have been raised and the Home was free of debt.

The mansion house and grounds occupy ten acres on the beautiful slope of the Hudson, at the foot of Eighty-Sixth Street, at a convenient distance from the Bloomingdale Road … it is a means of directing to its protecting walls some sister trembling on the brink of ruin. The natural bathing facilities are charming, and all the inmates are encouraged to avail themselves of them …. There are thirty young girls in the Institution …these are all taught the plain, essential branches of education …. Sewing is a regular part of the daily routine, and much of the elegant embroidery demanded by the Southern market has been done here, but is now greatly diminished …girls whose proclivities lean towards the rougher branches of toil are employed in housewifery, horticulture, collecting outdoor material for domestic economy such as herbs, seeds and husks from the cornfields in Autumn, which latter are made into shreds and made into healthy beds for the inmates…there is a “Park Ramble” from the road gate to the main entrance which shows their gardening work … there are spacious halls and deep-windowed salons ….lights are out there is no talking allowed … the washroom is furnished in complete style by generous donations and the donated workmen who connected it to the reservoir with lead pipes which supply the stationary bowls around the room with neat copper faucets.

Despite the report of success, however, all was not well. Mrs. Richmond became ill with cancer, and, while she continued her work, the management of the House was too difficult for her to handle. (She died in 1866.) Her son-in-law, Thomas McClure Peters, reached out to another Episcopal clergyman for help, William Augustus Muhlenberg.

Episcopal Nuns take over the House of Mercy management

From 1863, until the House of Mercy moved uptown to Inwood in 1891, the Home was operated by the Sisters of Saint Mary. These Episcopal church nuns were simultaneously establishing their own organization and its work as they managed the House of Mercy. The Sisters were organized by Dr. Muhlenberg to provide nursing care at his project, St. Luke’s Hospital, originally on Fifth Avenue at 54th Street. The organization of the nuns was not working, and a few had withdrawn from their work at the hospital. Dr. Peters saw that they might be better situated at the House of Mercy and five women soon arrived on West 86^th Street in September 1863. A history of the Sisters (cited in Sources listed below) describes the arrival of Harriet Cannon, Mary Heartt. Jane Haight, Sarah Bridge, and Catherine Hassett, and gives us a glimpse into the operation of the House.

Mrs. Richmond was not there, as she had gone to Albany to bring back a runaway. The fifteen “inmates” were dressed in rags and some had no shoes. They were living on a diet of bread moistened with left-over tea or coffee. The budget called for eight cents a day for meals, an amount that would offer a main meal of cheap meat, a vegetable, bread, and molasses. Supper would be bread and tea. The milk supply depended on a cow which was preferable to buying milk that was watered down and under no sanitary code. The Sisters started making new clothing for the girls and household linens.

The girls housed there resisted their care at first. They swore and sang “ribald songs” to defy and shock the sisters. Little by little, the dirt disappeared, and the girls came around, especially after the Sisters nursed them through an outbreak of spotted fever.

The Sisters did so well in their work that by 1864, Dr. Peters asked them to assume the management of his new project “Sheltering Arms”. He had given up his own home at Broadway and 101^st Street to take in children there who had parents who were unable to care for them. Parents were unwilling to surrender their children to the Catholic orphanages because they had to relinquish custody.

Meanwhile, with the approval of the Episcopal Bishop Horatio Potter, plans were drawn up to create a formal monastic Sisterhood which became the Sisterhood of Saint Mary. In February 1865, five women were “received into the fellowship” at St. Michael’s Church in Bloomingdale. The history of the Sisters notes that “not since the dissolution of the English monasteries in the sixteenth century had an Anglican Bishop dared to stand in a parish church and officially constitute a religious community. Moreover, one designed to be a true monastic body and not a philanthropic society.”  He argued later at the Diocesan Convention that their vows, although regarded as a lifelong commitment, were revocable, in an effort to appease his fellow Episcopalians.

For the next 25 years, the Sisters of Mary operated the House of Mercy at West 86th Street. During this time, the Sisters were also building their own organization with some success as they grew to include “houses” in Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Sister Harriet was referred to in news reports as the Mother Superior. They added to their responsibilities in New York City, temporarily taking over the management of Barnabas House in downtown Manhattan, the intake center for the House of Mercy. They started a school in the East 40s, a children’s hospital nearby, and acquired land in Peekskill, New York that eventually became the Convent of the Sisters of St. Mary.

The House of Mercy received a glowing report in 1866 when a reporter described four similar shelters for women. The Sister had created “a beautiful homelike retreat” with three dormitories with twelve beds in each all neatly arranged with snowy coverlets, a sewing room, and a schoolroom. The Catholic Church was the main provider of such help, however, as their shelters housed 200 of the 300 women and girls who were receiving help.

The Sisters’ history book described their clothing during this period: “a plainly made black serge gown with a plain, deep overcape of the same color and material reaching down to about four inches below the waist, and, on the street, a long black cloak and a black English cottage straw bonnet with a black veil.”

In 1870, when the Sheltering Arms moved uptown to 129^th and Tenth Avenue, a “Grand Bazaar” was planned to raise funds to cover its debt. A number of Episcopal women whose fundraising skills were vital to this effort began to make “inquisitorial” visits to the site, checking on the daily routine of the Sisters. These women found that “they prayed seven times a day” and had “Popish tendencies.” The issue at hand was the difference in the Episcopal Church between those in the “low” church and those in the “high” church. The anti-Catholicism of the mid-century along with publications that described Catholic nunneries as “white slavery in the land of freedom” helped form the images that certain Episcopalians held. The nuns were just too conservative for the worshippers in the low church and they threatened the withdrawal of their support for the Sheltering Arms. The solution to the problem was the withdrawal of the Sisters from the management of Sheltering Arms. All of this played out in the New York press, with a great deal of sympathy for the Sisters. However, the Grand Bazaar was a huge success and the debt of the Sheltering Arms was covered.

While the disruption was going on at Sheltering Arms, the State of New York granted funds to the House of Mercy to build a new building next to the Howland mansion, a building that included a dining hall, a chapel, school rooms, and more sleeping space. The new building was designed by architect Charles Haight who was just getting started in his career after service in the Civil War. He also designed the new building for Sheltering Arms.

In the 1870s and 1880s, the newspapers reported on the Annual Reports issued by the House of Mercy. With the expanded space, there were more inmates.  The Sisters no longer maintained the downtown intake center, called St. Barnabas, but another branch of the Episcopal church did. The courts in New York assigned a young woman to the House of Mercy after an arrest and the City paid for her support.  An 1871 report showed the movement of young people through the House of Mercy: 18 were sent to service; 32 were sent to friends, 8 were sent to hospitals, 19 to other institutions, 32 left with permission, and 19 without permission, 4 were “sent away” and 6 died. A news article in 1873 mentioned that the laundry was the chief occupation of the inmates. By this time, the State of New York had withdrawn from contributing to denominational charities because the Catholic Church with their extremely high number of asylums and their inmates was taking too large a large part of the appropriations.

In 1878, newspaper reports of the case of Grace Hagar revealed details of the House of Mercy that were not as charitable as before. Grace had been sent to the Home at 12 years old; she was an orphan and “disobedient” so her two aunts had somehow committed her there —- although a search for the court order doing so was never found. A writ of habeas corpus brought her into court when she was 17 years old and the details of her treatment were given by a woman who reportedly was an unhappy former employee of the House of Mercy. Allegedly, Grace was kept in a cell in the cellar for days, and fed only bread and water. The “Lady Superior” from the Home reported alternatively that Grace was treated kindly. (Although no article about the final deposition of Grace’s case was found, she may have been released to a guardian.)

In this news story, the dresses of the inmates were detailed as well: brown dresses for those assigned to the Home with “an inclination to reform” and blue dresses for those who had not shown evidence of reform. This description touched upon one of the original dilemmas of those seeking to save “fallen women.” Should they be punished for their sins by shaving their heads and starvation, or should they be shown kindness and allowed to live in some comfort, taught Christian morals, trained for a job, and encouraged to change?

In 1889, the House of Mercy announced that it had been able to sell their site on West 86^th Street for $225,000 and this would fund a new building on land they had purchased in Inwood. The new building would have space enough to separate the inmates who were newly assigned there from those “undergoing the work of reformation.”  The House of Mercy was joined in the Inwood neighborhood by the Magdalen Benevolent Society home and a tuberculosis hospital.

On West 86^th Street, the House of Mercy buildings were taken by Miss Ely’s School for Girls, a private school for upper-class young women. Later, the School moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, and the buildings were demolished in 1906.

After the move to Inwood, the press began to report on individuals at both the House of Mercy and Magdalen Benevolent Society, stories of mistreatment and punishment that no doubt sold papers. The National Police Gazette presented an image of young girls trying to escape their “capture” at the House of Mercy. These institutions became what today we call “Magdalen laundries” which typically refers to Irish homes for wayward girls run by the Catholic church. 

In 1895 a news story told of Annie Sigalove who had been “taken from a Coney Island dance hall at age 18 and committed to the House of Mercy until she is 21.” The news reported that her head had been shaved and she was prevented from seeing her parents. The parents were trying to free her, and said she was 22 years old. Another case, Laura Foreman, was sent to the House of Mercy by her father, and punished by being fed only bread and molasses.

By the 1920s, the Sisters were unable to raise funds for the support of the House of Mercy and it was closed down. The building fell into disrepair and was eventually demolished when Inwood Hill Park was developed.

The Sisters of St. Mary are still operating today in three separate organizations in a number of locations. The Sisters of the Community of St. Mary, Eastern Province, is located in Greenwich, New York. Recently, they left the Episcopal Church to become part of a more conservative organization, the Diocese of the Living Word in the Anglican Church in North America.

Sources

Hilary, Sister Mary, Ten Decades of Praise: The Story of the Community of St. Mary During the First Century 1865-1965,  Devoken Foundation, 1965

Peters, John P. Annals of St. Michael’s 1807-1907 New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1907

Richmond, John Francis New York and Its Institutions 1609-1871 New York E.B. Treat 1872 (accessed in digital format 4/11/22 at googlebooks.com)

Seymour, George “History of the House of Mercy” Fortieth Annual Report of the House of Mercy, New York, 1899

Theodora, Mary “The Foundation of the Sisterhood of St. Mary” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Volume 14, Number 1 (March 1945) pp. 38-52

www.newspapers.com

www.ancestry.com

www.nytimes.com

www.myinwood.net

by Pam Tice, member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group Program Committee

A recent question from a family researcher led me to the 1855 New York State census. As I located our Bloomingdale neighborhood in the city’s 12^th Ward, I discovered how the pages of the census could become a lens into life in Bloomingdale in the mid-19^th century. This was Bloomingdale before the Civil War, the Lion Brewery (1858), the 9^th Avenue El (1879), and before most of the streets were laid out.

New York City historians covering this period characterize the Bloomingdale neighborhood before the Civil War as a place of “country seats,” many developed in the late 18th and into the early 19^th centuries by wealthy merchants. They built in the bucolic Bloomingdale to escape the crowded downtown, especially when a cholera or smallpox epidemic threatened.  There’s scant attention paid to the working-class and poor residents of the neighborhood except to note that there was a “village” around 100^th Street.

Even as late as 1868, in an Atlantic Monthly article, Bloomingdale was described as a rural village near the city with family mansions and large asylums for “lunatics and orphans.”  (The Bloomingdale Insane Asylum opened in 1821 and the Leake and Watts Orphan House opened in 1843.) The author describes the Bloomingdale Road as “Broadway run out into the country,” a road serving “fast-trotting horsemen.” The Hudson River Railroad runs beside the river with “much of the intervening ground occupied by market gardens.”  In his book on the history of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, located at today’s Amsterdam Avenue and 100^th Street, John P. Peters describes two projects that changed the character of Bloomingdale. The first was the Croton Aqueduct, a “monumental structure” that emerged from underground at 113^th Street and Tenth Avenue, turning eastward through Manhattan Valley, and running down  the westside to West 84^th Street.

The other public project was the Harlem River Railroad, incorporated in 1846, and permitted to run locomotives along the Hudson from West 30^th Street to Albany beginning in 1849. Peters describes this improvement as destroying the beauty of the country residences along the Hudson River, driving many owners to other regions. Bloomingdale went from being a country suburb to having a more numerous, poorer population. Another historian of the neighborhood in the mid-19^th century, Hopper Striker Mott, describes Bloomingdale as a charming spot up to 1853, when too many shanties with poor inhabitants emerged, although he complains that this happened most often in the blocks south of West 68^th Street.

The 1855 New York State Census captures this change in Bloomingdale. There had been previous state censuses, starting in 1825. The 1855 census was the first to record the names of every individual in the household, and the relationship to the head of the family—the federal census did not do this until 1880. Citizens were urged to prepare for the visit from the Census Marshal in an article in the The New York Daily Herald in early June, 1855.

Our local history group defines Bloomingdale today as the area between West 96^th and West 110^th Streets, Central Park West to the Hudson River. In 1855, this area was just a portion of the 12^th Ward’s Election District 1 (ED1). The Ward also had four additional election districts, encompassing all the east and west sides of Manhattan, north of 86^th Street. On the east side, Randall’s and Ward’s Islands in the East River were included in Election District 2 which covered the Yorkville neighborhood. District 3 covered Harlem, and District 4 was further north, covering Manhattanville. District 5 covered the topmost part of Manhattan.

An 1857 article in The New York Daily Herald provided a description of all the 12^th Ward Election Districts. Election District 1 containing Bloomingdale had a northern boundary of West 120^th Street with an eastern edge at Fifth Avenue, the southern edge at the north side of West 86^th Street, and the western boundary at the Hudson River.

Locating a particular resident is a challenge as there are no street addresses in the 1855 census. We assume that the Census Marshals moved around in some orderly fashion; the only was to determine this is to look at the date of each recorded page, and assume that the dwellings listed are in some proximity. If there is a recognized mansion or institution it can help place the other dwellings geographically. Another method is to use the numerous city directories of the period to find a listing for a resident. However, many listings simply say “Bloomingdale.”  My colleague in the history group, Rob Garber, did in fact check numerous names in the directories but relatively few of Bloomingdale’s residents were found. Another tool is the 1851 Dripps Map that places some of the mansion owners. 

The most surprising feature of the 1855 population census was the first two columns noting the value of each structure the family lived in, including the land, and the material used to build the dwelling.  There were no instructions as to how the value was to be calculated. The information for each person included the usual census questions regarding name, age, gender, race, and birthplace, whether another country, another U.S. State, or another county in New York State. Additional columns captured the length of residence in the current place, occupation, citizenship (and therefore voting) status, ability to read and write, and if a landowner or leaseholder. The final column covered whether the person was blind, deaf and dumb, or insane or idiotic (19^th century words). If the person was “colored,” whether he was taxed. At this time suffrage was granted to black males if they owned unencumbered property valued at $250 or more. If the person was of foreign birth, it is noted whether he or she is naturalized. An alien could become naturalized after five years residence in 1855; citizenship was automatically granted to wives of U.S. citizens.

 The Marshal was also to record on a separate schedule marriages and deaths in the past year, with questions about each. Other non-population schedules for each district sought information on farms and crops, shops and factories, details about animals, such as horses, mules, oxen, cows, swine, and sheep. The news article pointed out that this was especially important in the 12^th Ward of the city where Bloomingdale was located, since the City Council had just passed a law that there should be no swine kept except in the northern districts of the city. There was also a separate schedule to report churches, schools, hotels, taverns, stores, and newspapers in the district.

The Census Marshal who walked the 12^th Ward’s Election District 1 was A. C. Judson. He lived in Election District 3, on the east side of Manhattan. His occupation was “civil engineer.” Reviewing the pages of the census, his mis-spellings become apparent, a common census defect. He also did not list many of the market gardens in the agricultural schedule although other marshals did so. Since he did not completely fill out the agricultural schedule, he also did not count animals.

The pages of Ward 12, ED 1 show 1,635 people living there. There are 216 “families” and 188 dwellings.  An estimate places about 130 dwellings between West 96^th and West 110^th Streets.In the case of the asylums and hotels, everyone was grouped as a “family,” whether a relative, a servant, an inmate, or a boarder. There were only 15 cases of multiple families housed in one dwelling. In only one dwelling there were four families housed. The Bloomingdale Insane Asylum housed 177 people, Leake and Watts Orphan House housed 136, and the House of Mercy, a home for “fallen women” was home to 12 people, making these three institutions responsible for housing nearly 20% of the ED1 population. Most of the hotels listed no boarders although the summer season was beginning.

Bloomingdale Dwellings

The buildings of ED1 were categorized as stone, brick, frame, and “plank.”  (Census Marshals in other districts referred to the un-framed homes as shanties.) For the most part, the stone and brick structures were valued above $20,000, although there was one stone building, perhaps an out-building on a former estate, valued at $240. Most of the buildings in the district were frame. The Elm Park Hotel at West 92^nd Street (formerly the Apthorp/Jauncey/Thorpe residence) was valued at $600,000 perhaps because the real estate included some forty acres.  The Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, the Furniss House at 100^th Street, and the Paine house were all valued at over $150,000. Thirteen homes were valued at $20-$50,000. The greatest number of homes, seventy-four, were valued at $1,000-$8,000. Sixty-two homes were valued $300-$800.  

Twenty-one dwellings were listed as plank, seemingly constructed out of boards with no carpentry involved, and valued at less than $300. For the most part, these poorest dwellings housed laborers, but a few housed a mason or a gardener. ED1 did not have a “shanty-town” as other districts did, with many people living in plank structures, evidence of a shortage of what we call today “affordable housing.”

As immigrants and working-class people flooded the city, landlords developed tenement housing,  accommodating more people than was healthy into the older row-house structures of downtown Manhattan. It took until 1859 for an investigation of the city’s deplorable housing conditions. The people in plank houses uptown were perhaps more fortunate since they could live as a single family.

The plank housing in Bloomingdale was often clustered together with very low-value frame dwellings, making small pockets of poor people. Nothing reached the numbers that made up the area called “Dutch Hill’ near 40^th Street and First Avenue overlooking Turtle Bay, described in detail in a contemporary New York Times article published on March 21, 1855. New York City’s shantytowns were usually described with some measure of moralizing. Egbert Viele remarked long after Central Park was built that the residents of the area we now call Seneca Village was inhabited by the “foreign born in rude huts, living off the refuse of the city.” This observation of people living in the West Eighties would no doubt also apply to any of the other blocks of the upper westside Bloomingdale area.

In an 1865 report, the Council on Hygiene described a squatter’s shack or shanty: “Rough boards form the floor, on the ground but a little raised above it; six to ten feet high with no fire place or chimney, just a stove pipe, which passes through a hole in the roof. The shanty was one room, maybe a second one as a bedroom. It has no sink. Drinking water comes in pails from Croton hydrants.”  An 1859 article in the New York Sun asserted that most shanty owners ask permission of the landowner before they squat on the land, paying a small ground rent and raising vegetables on land otherwise unimproved.  Contemporary articles about shanty-dwellers describe them as bone-boilers or making a living collecting cinders near the railroad tracks. But no one in ED1 gave bone-boiler as an occupation although there was German man in today’s Morningside Heights area who gave his occupation as soap-boiler.   

Immigrants

Historians writing about New York City in this mid-century period cite population statistics that demonstrate the phenomenal growth of the city due to immigration. The city’s population more than doubled between 1845 and 1860, going from 371,223 to 813,660. German and Irish immigrants led in numbers. The German immigrants were driven by population growth which made land holdings smaller and smaller until families had to settle elsewhere in order to survive. Political revolution also drove immigration as young Germans chose to emigrate to avoid military service; others came for religious reasons. The Irish began arriving in increasing numbers as starvation caused by the potato blight created famine conditions. The 1855 State Census was the first in New York State to fully list nativity, showing the importance immigration held in the politics of the time.  Immigration historian Robert Ernst charted the 1855 population by Ward, with the foreign-born making up 52.7% of the New York City population, the Irish at 33% and the Germans at 12.2%.  In all of Ward 12, 5,831 people were Irish, and 2,130 were German; all other foreign-born numbered less than 200 individuals for each country, except the English who numbered 629.  This pattern of nativity was reflected in ED1.

Market Gardeners

Of all the occupations the 1855 census reveals in ED1, gardeners stand out. In fact, growing vegetable gardens continued in our neighborhood until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Photographers captured scenes like this:

Historians who write about the city’s market gardens of the 19^th century cite Louis P. Tremante’s thesis “Agriculture and Farm Life in the New York City Region, 1820-1870.” (The link to the thesis is cited below.) Tremante summed up his findings in a journal article listing the factors that made agricultural production on the city’s outskirts possible: a large and increasing population, high land values, a deep pool of immigrant labor, the availability of stable manure, and the presence of a large retail market.  In our Bloomingdale neighborhood, the landowners holding onto their former estate land were able to lease it to the gardeners, creating short-term income from the land while they waited for the value to increase when housing was developed. Many German immigrants had been market gardeners in their home country. Manure to feed the soil was no problem. There was a huge population of horses in mid-19^th century New York City and the collection and sale of manure to farmers in the region was an organized business.  Finally, the city had a highly-structured food market system, although changes were underway at mid-century as food sales moved from the city markets to retail groceries and street vendors. The Bloomingdale gardeners most likely sold their products locally or moved it downtown to the Washington Market located in today’s Tribeca neighborhood.

In Ward 12 ED1, most of the gardeners were German. This was typical of the time, as Germans often arrived with some resources which allowed them to lease land and grow market gardens. Irish workers listed as gardeners were usually part of a larger operation where they were servants in a mansion family or “employees” of a larger garden operation. In ED1, there were 40 gardeners as household heads; only eight were Irish, a few were English or French, but the group was predominantly German. There were an additional 28 gardeners who were “servants;” of these, 13 were Irish. 

Taking the Census, June 1855

Our Bloomingdale Census Marshal, Mr. Judd, performed his duty over eight days in June, 1855. He started on June 4, but well outside today’s Bloomingdale neighborhood. He went to the northeastern corner of ED1, at 120^th Street.   In Schedule 1, the population count of the census, Mr. Judd begins by listing nine German families with “gardener” as the head of family’s occupation. In his notes in the Agricultural section, he writes, “The Watts property is lying mostly to commons and is occupied by squatters to a great extent. Germans cultivate patches for gardens and make out to raise enough to live upon, in their way, but nothing more, with a large garden which is put into Schedule 1.” In another section of the agricultural schedule, he determined that the “Watts property” in this district was 42 acres.

The property in this area was a part of the Archibald Watt estate. Mr. Watt and his family had a mansion estate further uptown in today’s Harlem, at about 139^th Street near Seventh Avenue, part of the Twelfth Ward’s ED4. Mr. Watt and his step-daughter were fascinating 19^th century New Yorkers who were real estate moguls. Sara Cedar Miller writes about the family in her new book Before Central Park.

The Watt land that was in ED1 was mentioned in a family lawsuit of 1858 when 300 lots between West 118^th and West 123^rd Streets between 8^th and 9^th Avenues, were in dispute.

While Mr. Judd has these German families “squatting” on the Watts land, the listing for the first family indicated they are “owner” which may have referred to a lease.  Mr. Judd visited other families that day, reaching 25 dwellings in total. One was Thomas Dunlap, a florist at 8^th Avenue and 116^th Street, identified in a newspaper mention when his property was auctioned; he is also on the Dripps Map. Dwellings 13-17 are a collection of five plank houses.

Mr. Judd’s fellow Census Marshal, Mr. Baldwin of ED4, commented in his notes that the market gardeners of the area had suffered from “drough” (sic) in 1854 but were hopeful early in the growing season of 1855 that their prospects were improved. Mr. Baldwin also commented in his notes that there had been a “prevailing epidemic” in the district which he called “diarrhoea” (sic) with the deaths of 28 males and 42 females, and 37 of them “foreigners” under the age of ten years.

Mr. Baldwin counted market gardens in his agricultural schedule, listing thirteen such gardens.

Despite the number of gardeners in ED1, Mr. Judd listed only five locations growing food in his Agricultural Schedule for the district. He ignored all the details of these operations, such as crops, their value, and animals kept. He noted that the Payne/Paine estate had seven acres and Weyman estate five acres under cultivation. Both of these were on the district’s western edge, below West 96^th Street. He listed fifteen acres under cultivation by the Leake and Watts Orphan House, but nothing was listed for the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum even though there were six farmers on the staff there. He noted that the hotel at Elm Park near West 92^nd Street had six acres under cultivation but the Striker’s Bay hotel at West 96^th Street had no land being used for growing vegetables. Mr. Judd’s fellow marshal from ED4 listed the market garden crops of corn, potatoes, peas, beans, and turnips. From earlier estate sales ads in Bloomingdale, reference was often made to fruit trees, probably planted earlier in the century by the estate owners, and still producing.

Mr. Baldwin also provided some detail on the crop value of the thirteen market gardens in his district: those with ten acres grew food valued $3500-$4500; those that were three or four acres grew food valued at $1000-$2000.

The other 1855 non-population schedules

Mr. Judd listed only two businesses in ED1 that qualified as “Industry.” Thomas Nafie, found in the population schedule for ED4, had a “chemical works” employing two men and a boy with a monthly wage of $35.00 for all.  Mr. Nafie lived in a boardinghouse in ED 4 and his manufacturing may have been lampblack, according to the note on his occupation. It’s not clear where this business was located. Thomas Allen, also not found in the ED1 population schedule, is listed as the owner of a broom factory, employing seven men and two boys with average monthly wages paid at $30.00. The factory made 60,000 brooms annually with a value of $12,000. The work was all by hand. There were three homes in the population schedule where the family head was listed with the occupation of broom-maker.  Dwelling #131, headed by Joseph Knapp, appears to be the broom factory. Mr. Knapp, from Connecticut, and his wife and three children live there with four “servants,” all listed as broom-makers.

Mr. Judson also made the following note: “In this district here are many establishments for making Rope that are doing nothing and have done nothing for the past year. Also, an establishment for manufacturing glass. I have endeavored to get at the value of the property and put it on the Schedule.” Whether or not they were working, there were five homes in ED1 where the head of the family had an occupation involving rope.  No one on the ED1 population schedule gave an occupation regarding glass. However, this glass factory, located at Broadway and West 104-105^th Street, was advertised for sale in The New York Daily Herald in 1855 and again in 1863.

On yet another schedule, the count of marriages and deaths in the district, Mr. Judd noted two marriages and forty-eight deaths. Twenty-seven of the deaths took place at the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. Of the twenty-one other deaths, fifteen were children who died of diseases such as measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, cholera, and consumption.  The six adults who died had heart problems, consumption, typhus, or simply old age.  More alarming are the deaths in ED2 covering Ward’s Island where over 2,300 deaths were listed, including hundreds of children.

In these additional schedules, Mr. Judd noted that ED1 had five hotels, inns and taverns, and four grocery stores. There was no school in ED1 — the closest Ward School was in Ward 22, the District #9 School at 82nd Street and Eleventh Avenue, today’s West End Avenue. There was also a school in Manhattanville. There was only one church in ED1, St. Michael’s Episcopal at Tenth Avenue and 99th Street. There was a Catholic Church in Manhattanville, a Presbyterian Church around West 84th Street, and the Dutch Reformed Church at West 68th Street.

Other Occupations in Bloomingdale

Anyone working in a dwelling and not part of a family was labeled “servant” to show the relationship in the family. Additionally, their occupation was sometimes listed. The word “employee” was not used. There were about 194 servants in ED1, and their occupations ranged from gardener to ropemaker if they were working in the home of a business owner. This was a time when a home and a business tended to be in one place in the rural parts of the city. The servants in the mansion houses and hotels were listed as coachman, cook, waiter, governess, hostler, or chambermaid.

 In the census pages of ED1, those who were “laborers” tended to be Irish, reflecting a lack of skilled training. There were 43laborers as heads of families, and numerous others that were part of a family or mansion staff. Mr. Anbinder states in his book on immigration that only 12% of the “famine Irish” had a trade, so they had to take the low-paying, menial jobs. Also, many recent Irish immigrants did not speak English. Anbinder describes these workers as taking unskilled construction jobs, digging foundations, carrying heavy loads of bricks and mortar to masons, hoisting lumber to carpenters. They worked six days a week, ten hours a day, 7 am to 6 pm, with a dinner break at noon. Some eventually learned skills. This was the workforce that built Central Park, the city’s infrastructure, and its buildings.

Other occupations in Bloomingdale tended to be held by those of a certain nativity. Three of the four blacksmiths were Irish, as were the two of the three policemen. The three builder/contractors were English. The tailors, and three of the four grocers were German. The mansion owners were labeled gentleman, or lawyer, or merchant. They tended to be born in the United States, with Mr. Carrigan from Ireland and Mr.  Marshall from Scotland the exceptions. Mr. Carrigan was President of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, and had five servants to help care for his wife and five children. (It was the Emigrant Savings Bank records that helped NYU researchers studying the Irish immigrants of Ward 12, sharing their research here.

Women Residing in Bloomingdale

There were fifteen dwellings with a family headed by a woman in ED1 of the census. Generally, women in this census were counted as the wife of a head of the family, or a servant living in another family’s home. Only one woman heading a family was given an occupation, that of seamstress. She had a young child and employed a 14-year-old girl as a servant. Three of the women were black, including a widow living alone, and a younger woman who housed a mulatto female boarder with a small child. Three of the women were widows with older children living with them. Two elderly women in Bloomingdale are noticeable: Mrs. Eliza Maier, age 78, is in her mansion “Willow Bank,” near West 118th Street, surrounded by family members and servants to care for her. Mrs. Isabella Weyman, age 80, in her mansion “Mount Aubrey,” between West 93^rd and 94^th Streets near the river, with her gardener and his family living in her home. Her daughter, Caroline, married H.W.T. Mali, the Belgian Consul, and was nearby in her home near West 113th Street and the Hudson River.

Female domestic servants, most often Irish women, were given occupations, that of cook, seamstress, waiter, or laundress. Irish women were fortunate to find a job as a servant because it gave them shelter also. There is a well-documented history of such women being able to save some of their earnings to help other family members back home, and to help them emigrate in the chain-migration style of Irish families. However, as Irish prejudice grew in this decade, many families did not want young Irish women in their homes. Employment agencies advertising domestic jobs specifically stated “Protestant only” and “no Irish need apply.”

Bloomingdale’s Black Families

There were very few black citizens living in Bloomingdale at mid-century. The 1855 census lists the two black women heading families, mentioned above. There were two other families headed by men, one was a cook with a wife and children, and the other was a “jobber” with a wife and child. The cook lived in a modest two-family dwelling (valued at $300) with a young German family, an unusual arrangement in this time of strict racial segregation. The other black men living in Bloomingdale were a waiter at the Woodlawn Hotel, and two men who were hostlers at Stryker’s Bay Hotel, taking care of the horses. In the home of the broom-maker, Joseph Knapp, there is a 60-year-old black woman, a servant, but no occupation was listed.  

Following the Census Marshal

Mr. Judd performed his duty over eight days in June, 1855. We’ve already covered Mr. Judd’s first day, June 4, when he listed dwellings 1-25 in the upper section of ED1, at West 120^th Street, an area well-outside Bloomingdale.

On June 5 and 6, Mr. Judd worked his way south. On June 5 he appears to be working his way west, listing dwellings 26-47. One of them the Meier mansion at 118^th Street near the Hudson. He also listed the Carrigan mansion at West 114^th Street and the Bloomingdale Road, and the Whitlock mansion at West 109^th Street.  

The recording of dwellings and people on June 6 provides an opportunity to demonstrate how one might make a guess where the Census Marshal traveled. That day lists dwellings 48-79, including many inexpensive frame and plank dwellings clustered in numbers 53-69. As population grew in New York City, the land that would become Central Park had seen “the proliferation of marginal subsistence farmsteads, small dwellings, and rented or illegally erected shanties” according to the first of the Hunter reports studying the northern quadrant of the Park in 1990. Could 1855 dwellings be the miscellaneous small buildings shown on Egbert Viele’s “Map of the lands Included in the Central Park from a topographical Survey, June 17, 1856”?  Viele’s work in surveying the pre-Park lands can be viewed here.   This map reflects the Park as originally planned, to 106^th Street; the blocks up to 110^th Street were added in 1859.

On June 6, Mr. Judd listed first that day a plank dwelling valued at $200 where an Irish girl, Mary McLaughlin, 15 years old, was the head of the household for her seven brothers and sisters, age two to thirteen. The next dwelling housed Andrew Cullen “the keeper of the magazine.” On some early maps of this area, what we call the Blockhouse today, in the Park’s northwest corner, was labeled “the Magazine.” This is the structure that was built as part of fortifying the city during the War of 1812.

Dwelling 51 on June 6 is a substantial frame house occupied by Benjamin Sutton. Could this be the Burrowes mansion that stood at the top of the Great Hill in today’s Central Park? Mr. Sutton owned the mansion starting in 1851, but real estate records show that he sold it to John Purple Howard in 1852. Could the Sutton family still be there? The placement of the dwelling near the house of the “magazine keeper.”  suggests this might be possible. The Hunter report of 1990 reports that a network of lanes in this area gave access to the Great Hill and the Burrowes mansion. Of interest to today’s historian is the geo-mapping of all the structures of the Park’s northern quadrant by the Central Park Conservancy; some of these could be the ones Mr. Judd listed in 1855.

Dwelling 55 was a plank home valued at $300 housing an older couple with no children living with them. The family head, James McLaughlin, gives his occupation of “lamplighter.” An 1852 news article reported a plan to “light 96^th Street with oil from Fifth Avenue to the Bloomingdale Road.” It’s possible that Mr. McLaughlin was the man hired to keep those lamps lit.

Regarding the Central Park buildings and population, of note is the counting of the Mount St. Vincent Academy at around West 104^th Street, on the eastern side of the Park, west of Fifth Avenue. For some reason, this population was included in ED2, even though it is located in ED1. Mt. Saint Vincent, owned by the Sisters of Charity, was on the hill to the east of the Park’s East Drive which had been the Kingsbridge Road. By 1855, there was a main building, a chapel, a chaplain’s residence, a barn, poultry house, and school building. Several female students were housed there.  

Mr. Judd’s day on June 6 ended at Mr. Marshall’s home at Columbus Avenue and 104^th Street, formerly the Clendening estate, a place covered in an earlier blog post.

When Mr. Judd started his work again on June 9, covering dwellings 80 to 101, there was another cluster of nine homes of low value. In this day’s pages there was another grocer, a multi-family dwelling with four families, and two blacksmiths. He ended his day further south, on West 95^th and West 96^th Street where my colleague Rob Garber was able to identify two owners of large frame dwellings. Perhaps Mr. Judd worked his way down from West 104^th Street that day, covering dwellings on both sides of the Croton Aqueduct structure.

On June 11 Mr. Judd covered only a few houses but also visited the neighborhood institutions: the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, the Leake and Watts Orphan House, and the House of Mercy which was a home for “fallen women” on the north side of West 86^th Street near the river. On that day Mr. Judd listed all the workers and inmates, on his population schedule, covering several pages. He also listed the Elm Park Hotel at West 92 Street that day.  

On June 14, Mr. Judd listed dwellings 118 to 148.  There is another possible anomaly here; dwelling !20 is a hotel operated by Edwin Luff.  My colleague Rob Garber has identified him as a well-known hotel keeper with a hotel at Sixth Avenue and West 110^th Street in 1863. If he’s operating the same business in 1855, then he fits into ED1 of the 1855 census. It may be possible that Mr. Judd included this hotel along with the Elm Park in his work on June 11 but had to put a few entries at the beginning of a page which was subsequently filled in on June 14.  The remainder of his work on this day is in the westside Bloomingdale neighborhood.

Several of the homes and businesses were clustered around West 100^th Street, so this group is perhaps the “village” that historians have described. There was a flax man here, and a twine spinner, and others in the rope and broom business, including Mr. Knapp and Mr. Williams. There was a baker, a shoemaker, and a liquor store owned by Somerset Kinnaird who is also listed as a policeman. Mr. Kinnaird’s store is listed in a city directory on Broadway between West 98 and 99^th Streets. The value of his dwelling is quite high, $30,000, which seems high for a store. Again, a guess: could this building be the old Abbey mansion which was formerly operated as a hotel? The structure was the old Humphrey Jones mansion that had been on 11^th Avenue between West 102 and West 103 Streets since the 18^th century.  The Abbey property also included a seven-room cottage and garden; it’s possible that the former hotel was empty but the farmhouse occupied. The Abbey burned in either 1857 or 1859; in 1860, Mr. Kinnaird is living on “Dixon’s Row” on West 110^th Street.  

The St. Michael’s Episcopal Church minister, William Richmond, is in this group.  John and Bridget Cavanagh are also listed. John, age 52, is the only person in the district listed with a disability; his eyes were “burnt out” since he’d “been blasting rocks since he was 14.” When Bridget Cavanagh died the following year, a newspaper announcement on July 3, 1856, invited friends to attend her funeral “at her late residence, West 107^th Street and Bloomingdale Road.”  

Mr. Judd ended his day at the Woodlawn Hotel at West 107^th Street and Eleventh Avenue. This was the second Jones mansion, built by Nicholas Jones, son of the previously mentioned Humphrey.

On the seventh day, June 21, Mr. Judd continued working around West 100^th Street where he listed the Furniss mansion located between streets that became West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. The Furniss Family (spelled “Furnace”) were not there but their servants were counted.  The Stryker’s Bay Hotel at West 96^th Street and the Hudson River was included.  In an 1856 advertisement, an excursion to Stryker’s Bay and Woodlawn Hotels was offered with a steamboat bringing guests up the river for a Sunday afternoon’s enjoyment on the grounds of the two hotels. Stryker’s Bay was also a popular spot for New York City’s military companies who scheduled target practice excursions.

There were more businesses counted on this day: a shoemaker, two grocers, a broom maker, and a blacksmith and the home of a policeman. Mr. Twine, a builder listed in a directory at West 100^th Street and Broadway, is on the schedule that day. Mr. Twine had just finished building the second St. Michael’s Episcopal Church after the original building burned in 1853; he was also the Sexton for the church. David Jackson, Ward 12’s one-time Alderman, lived here. Further south, at West 92^nd Street close to the river, was Dr. Valentine Williams, the local physician, written about with fond memory in Hopper Stryker Mott’s book. 

Mr. Schieffelin’s mansion was also in this area at West 92^nd Street near the Hudson. One of the families listed in this section may have been renting it; Mr. Schieffelin ran newspaper advertisements offering the rental of his mansion which included five acres, a barn, and a “bathing house” on the river.

The final day of spring the census was on June 23, listing dwellings 174-188. These included Mrs. Weyman, previously mentioned.  Mr. Payne, which Judd should have spelled Paine, an attorney, was nearby in a grand house valued at $150,000 with 22 acres noted. In his book about the wealthy New York families, Moses Beach credits Mr. Paine as one of the principal movers behind building the city’s “new opera house” which may have been the 1854 Academy of Music built to replace the Astor House after its disastrous riot in 1849.

This ends a description of Bloomingdale revealed by the 1855 census.

Sources

“Along The Hudson River At New York” The Atlantic Monthly. Vol XXII, No. CXXIX, July 1868, pp1-9

Anbinder, Tyler. City of Dreams. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., 2016

Ancestry.com.  “New York, U.S., State Census, 1855” (database on line) Provo UT, 2013

Beach, Moses S. Wealth & Biography of the Wealthy Citizens of New York City. New York: New York Sun Office, 1855 accessed: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_6316657_000/ldpd_6316657_000.pdf

Bolger, Eilleen “Background History of the United States Naturalization Process” (Social Welfare. Library.vcu.edu (accessed May 2023)

Ernst, Robert. Immigrant Life in New York City 1825-1863. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1949

Family histories at www.familysearch.org

Hunter Research Inc. A Preliminary Historical and Archaeological Assessment of Central Park to the North of the 97^th Street Transverse Volume 1 and 2. Central Park Conservancy and The City of New York 1990 (Accessed at http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/arch_reports/444_A.pdf)

Hunter Research Inc. Archival Research and Historic Resource Mapping North End of Central Park Above 103^rd Street, Borough of Manhattan, New York City, Summary Narrative. Central Park Conservancy, 2014 (Accessed at http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/arch_reports/1617.pdf)

Miller, Sara Cedar. Before Central Park. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022

Mott, Hopper Striker. The New York of Yesterday: Bloomingdale. New York, The Knickerbocker Press 1908

Newspaper articles www.newspapers.com

Peters, John P. Annals of St. Michael’s. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907

Rode, Charles R. The New York City Directory. 1^st-13^th publications, 1842-1855

Rosenzweig, Ray and Elizabeth Blackmar. The Park and The People, A History of Central Park. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992

Spann, Edward K. The New Metropolis, New York City 1840-1857. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981

Still, Bayrd. Mirror for Gotham: New York as Seen by Contemporaries from Dutch Days to the Present. New York: Fordham University Press, 1994

Tremante, Louis P. “Agriculture and Farm Life in the New York City Region, 1820-1870” (Ph.D. dissertation, Iowa State University, 2000) Access here: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/38904832.pdf

Tremante, Louis P. “Agriculture in the Vicinity of Mid-Nineteenth Century New York City” New York History, Vol. 97, No. 3-4, Summer/Fall 2016. Pp 265-292

Trow’s New York City Directory for 1853 and 1854

Valentine, D. T. Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1855

Viele, Egbert. Map of the lands included in the Central Park, from a topographical survey, June 17th, 1856. (accessed: https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:3f463277s).

by Pam Tice, member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group Program Committee

Scrolling through the 1923 Daily News articles about our Bloomingdale neighborhood, I was struck by the number of automobile accidents and deaths, as well as the arrests of drivers who lived here.  The Upper West Side, of course, is famous for being the site of the first motor vehicle fatality in the United States, when Henry Bliss was killed as he got off a trolley car on Central Park West in 1899.

In June, 1923, Mrs. Howland of West 95^th Street was killed by an automobile while on her way home from St. Agnes Chapel on West 91st. Also in June, 13-year-old Theresa Bogert of 933 Columbus Ave. was killed at Riverside Drive and 108^th Street while crossing with two young friends and a teacher. In the winter, a snowplow had killed a man on West 106^th Street. Little Jimmie Walsh of Amsterdam Avenue was killed in April.

Also in April, readers of the Daily News were reminded of the law that automobiles had to stay eight feet away from the area where trolley car passengers were discharged, with a reminder that two people had been killed recently at Columbus and 98^th Street getting off the cars, a particularly dangerous location.

The Parks Commissioner threatened to close Central Park to automobiles after dark due to the damage done to the Park’s plantings and structures. In June, an auto travelling at 50 miles per hour crashed into a lamppost at West 102 Street, killing the driver.

Bloomingdale neighbors also got their name in the news as they were charged in Manhattan Traffic Court: Michael McIntyre of 792 Columbus was sentenced to 15 days and had his license revoked for driving while intoxicated; Mr. Scaramellino of 813 Amsterdam spent two days in jail for turning corners too sharply; John McCourt of 832 Amsterdam spent 5 days in jail for speeding, and a cab driver living at 784 Amsterdam was assigned to the Work House for 60 days for driving while intoxicated.

There were other incidents involving automobiles, whose drivers the News referred to as “autoists.” The word “car” was reserved for trolleys.

Two autos with alleged bandits inside crashed at Riverside Drive and 97^th Street. A young woman, screaming and clinging to the running board of a speeding auto that sped down Amsterdam from 86^th to 66^th Streets with 50 autos giving chase, ended up in an overturned auto and a bad injury.  Just south of Bloomingdale, a speeding auto hit a crosstown bus, exploded its gas tank, and kept going as a ball of fire for several blocks since it was speeding at 40 miles per hour.

What I was seeing in the news was the tremendous growth of automobile ownership in the 1920s, and the arrival of the American automobile age. The streets had to be turned over to automobiles.  In January 1923, The New York Times reported on the opening of the national Auto Show, at the Grand Central Palace, where it was promised that 350 models made by 79 different manufacturers could be seen. The Times reported that 300,000 cars were now registered in New York City.

But the streets in New York were not ready for this traffic. There were no painted lines, very few traffic lights, and a Police Department struggling to bring order to the streets. “Jaywalking” (an insult: walking like a “jay” or “rube”) was seen as a right by pedestrians, and children played in the streets, as not that many playgrounds had been built for them.

Traffic lights were introduced starting in 1920, but the first ones, mounted on wooden towers at intersections, were only on one of the busiest streets, Fifth Avenue at the intersections of 14^th, 26^th, 34^th, 42^nd, 50^th and 57^th Streets. These were later replaced by bronze towers.  The intersections in Bloomingdale might have had traffic policemen on some busy corners, perhaps helped by a manually-operated semaphore telling the driver to Stop or Go, a tool borrowed from the railroads that the Police Department adapted to auto traffic.

According to the traffic rules printed in Rider’s New York City Guide for 1923, the speed limit in the city was 15 miles per hour, and 8 miles per hour at intersecting streets in congested areas.  In more sparsely settled areas, the speed limit was 25 miles per hour.

The slaughter of pedestrians by automobiles, including so many children, was happening all over the U.S., particularly in cities. The Daily News began to regularly report a disturbing picture of 1923 New York City. The Medical Examiner released the numbers of people killed by guns, autos, and “moonshine” which the News converted to little circular clock-chart labeled “the hands of death” several times during the year. The latest one in 1923, dated December 31, showed 889 people killed by automobiles on the streets of the city. 

“Hands of Death” image from the Daily News, December 31, 1923

The high number of auto deaths in 1923 was not new. In 1922, The New York Times reported that there had been 964 deaths by automobiles with 477 of them the seaths of children.

In 1923, several solutions were proposed or tried. The News reported that Mayor Hylan wanted to convert many of the trolley surface-lines to bus routes so that people could access the vehicle at the curb, not in the middle of the street where they might be hit by a careless driver. The Board of Education declared a “Safety Day,” late in the school year, trying to impress school children about the dangers of the streets. The schools also initiated a procedure at the end of the school day whereby the children would stand up just before dismissal and be reminded by their teacher for two minutes about the danger of playing or running into the street. Magistrates at the City’s Traffic Courts began imposing harsher sentences. The Police Department introduced new techniques with very loud whistles and initiated a system of checking auto brakes. 

The Daily News kept reporting on their “hands of death” from 1924 to 1933 when the charts disappeared. Legalized liquor had diminished moonshine in 1933. Perhaps death by automobiles and guns was never to be solved and just part of modern life.  In 1931, auto deaths reached a high of 1448.  

Recent reports have noted the increasing number of traffic-related deaths in the U.S., many attributed to the number of SUVs and heavy trucks on the road, along with the distracted drivers who are focused on their phones. Indeed, in New York City in 1990 there were 701 traffic deaths. In 2014, New York City implemented “Vision Zero,” a Swedish program, a strategy to eliminate traffic fatalities. In our own neighborhood, at Broadway and 96^th Street where there had been two pedestrian deaths, the traffic was re-routed.  Even with this effort, through November 2022, 185 people were killed in automobile accidents, two in our neighborhood.

Sources

Newspaper databases at newspapers.com and The New York Times

Websites: www.crashmapper.org and a history of traffic at https://local1182.org/about-us/history-of-traffic/

Norton, Peter Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2008

Schmitt, Angie Right of Way: Race, Class and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America. Washington, D.C., Island Press, 2020.

by Pam Tice, member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group Planning Committee

The Upper West Side, a suburb in the early to mid-19^th century, provided an excellent location for an orphanage.  Land was cheap, the neighborhood’s country-like setting provided the fresh air children needed, and there was even space to grow food. 

New York’s increasing immigration in the 19^th century expanded both poverty and disease in the city, leaving many parents unable to cope with caring for their children.  The children of the poor who were left to fend for themselves were viewed by the City’s reformers as a threat to civic stability. In his 1872 book about the city’s many benevolent institutions, the Reverend J. F. Richmond wrote: “Every great city contains a large floating population, whose indolence, prodigality, and intemperance are proverbial, culminating in great domestic and social evil. From these discordant circles spring an army of neglected or ill-trained children, devoted to vagrancy and crime, who early find their way into the almshouse or prison, and continue a life-long burden upon the community.”   A Police Chief called them “vagrant, vicious and idle children.”  The descriptive language used reflected the general outlook of New Yorkers toward the thousands of immigrants who came to the New York City in the 19^th century and the moralistic tone of the Victorian age.

Religious institutions became the caretakers for many of these orphaned children. Starting in 1850, Catholic children were cared for in orphanages on Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue in mid-town, and later moved to the Bronx. In 1860 the Hebrew Orphan Asylum was founded at Amsterdam Avenue at 137^th Street. In 1837, the Colored Children’s Orphanage was built at Fifth Avenue and 42^nd Street. This one became famous when it was burned during the draft riots of 1863. It moved to Amsterdam Avenue and 143 Street, and later to Riverdale.

South of our Bloomingdale neighborhood was the New York Orphan Asylum Society, organized by Isabella Graham in 1806. Initially, the group had an asylum in Greenwich Village. Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, recently widowed, was an early supporter. By 1839, the Society relocated to a large facility at Riverside Drive at 73^rd Street where they stayed until the end of the 19^th Century. The organization re-located to Hastings-on-Hudson where they are still in operation today as Graham Windham. Their property on Riverside Drive was purchased by Charles Schwab, who built his French Chateau on the site.

This blog post will focus on four orphanages located in and near our Bloomingdale neighborhood: the Leake and Watts Orphan House, the New York Society for the Relief of Half Orphans and Destitute Children, Sheltering Arms, and the Children’s Fold.

The Leake and Watts Orphan House

The Leake and Watts Orphan House was on the grounds of today’s Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine at 110-112^th Streets and Amsterdam Avenue. A portion of the Orphan House is still there.

The Leake and Watts Orphan House was created through the will of John G. Leake, a Scottish New Yorker of considerable wealth with a strong philanthropic inclination. Mr. Leake had no children so he decided to leave his fortune to Robert Watts, the son of his friend John Watts, if Robert would change his name to Leake. If Robert did not agree to the plan, the legacy would be used to erect and endow a building in the suburbs of New York City for the reception, maintenance and education of orphan children, with no regard to the religion of their parents, until the children reached an age to be put out as apprentices to trades. Robert did agree to the name change but died unexpectedly in 1829, and his father inherited his estate. Watts did not need another fortune, so he carried out the plan to build the orphanage, and named it after both of its benefactors.

The Leake and Watts board was formed in 1832, with representatives of the Protestant Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Reformed Dutch churches. In 1834, nearly 25 acres of land from 109 to 113^th Streets between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues was purchased from the New York Hospital, which had excess land from the development in 1821 of the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum grounds to the north and west. The Board hired Ithiel Town, a prestigious architect, to design the Greek Revival building, a portion of which still stands today on the Close of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The cornerstone was laid in 1838, and the Asylum opened in 1843.

The Orphan House was built to accommodate 300 children but the endowment income that supported the operation was never sufficient for that number. Children admitted were between three and twelve years old. There were about 200 children listed there in the 1850 federal census, but only about 140 in the 1880 census. An 1882 news article stated that, since its opening, the orphanage had cared for 1000 boys and 500 girls. Girls were not admitted until 1850.

The orphanage’s main entrance was from 110^th Street, where a path led a visitor through a grove of trees. Descriptions of the site also mention a “fine lawn” extending from Ninth to Tenth Avenues. The Trustees owned other small pieces of land in the area, but these were sold off over the years as Morningside Park and the Ninth Avenue Elevated were built.

The four-story building had two wings: the eastern for boys and the western for girls. Their space included a chapel, a dining room, wash rooms and ironing rooms, two large playrooms, an office, a parlor for trustees and visitors, and rooms for the Superintendent who lived there with his family, as well as numerous other staff as listed in the censuses. There were classrooms, as the City’s Board of Education listed the site as one of its schools. Each story had a wide verandah with an outside stairway that was meant to be a fire escape. Later, there was a one-story building added that served as a kitchen and dining room.

The occupations of the staff living there listed in the 1880 federal census provide a window into the operation of the orphanage. The Superintendent and his wife, the Matron, headed the team. In 1880 there was an Assistant Superintendent, three cooks, one waitress, two farmers, one Assistant Engineer, five seamstresses, one nurse, four laundresses, five teachers, and three servants. In the photos, the children are wearing smock-type clothing which must have been the uniform that kept five seamstresses busy.

The Leake and Watts Orphan House was in the news from time to time throughout the 19^th century. Most reports were positive about the happy children living there, and one reported a special occasion in 1847 when President James Polk visited the City. His carriage stopped by the site on his tour of New York City institutions and he addressed the cheering boys. On Sundays, Protestant Episcopal orphans were taken to St. Michael’s Church at 100^th Street where church pews were set aside for them. Other churches also welcomed them at their Sunday services.

In 1845, the Trustees of Leake and Watts received permission from the State Legislature to “bind out” children to farmers, factory owners, and artisans in New York in order to teach the orphans a trade, so that they could support themselves as they reached adulthood. In 1847, the right to bind out was extended to include other states. These indentures began at age 12 and lasted three years for girls and five years for boys. Allegedly, the Superintendent stayed in touch with the orphans through correspondence and occasional visits. The Kings Handbook described this process as “finding a Christian home for the orphans.”

Leake and Watts Orphanage sold its land and buildings to the Episcopal Church in 1888 for $850,000 and moved to a 40-acre site in Yonkers in 1890.  The Cathedral initially used the orphanage building for construction offices and housing for employees. In 1892 they converted a portion of the building to a chapel. They established their Choir School there in 1901.

As the Cathedral and accessory buildings on the Close developed, the orphanage building began to be demolished. In 1949 the east wing came down to make a parking lot and a basketball court. For many years the building continued to be used but began to crumble. When I worked there in the 1990s, it housed the Cathedral’s Textile Conservation workspace and other functions. Because the orphanage building sits on what one day will be the Cathedral’s south transept, no one wanted to take on its preservation. However, in 2004, a restoration project began, and today the restored building is called the Town building in honor of its architect.

The Leake and Watts Orphanage later changed its name to “Edwin Gould Services for Children and Families” and later took the name “Rising Ground” in 2018.

The Society for the Relief of Half-Orphans and Destitute Children

The Society was founded in 1836 by Mrs. William A. Tomlinson, whose widowed servant who told her of her difficulties in caring for two young children while she worked to support them. Mrs. Tomlinson and her sympathetic friends initially found a basement accommodation in Whitehall Street that housed 20 children.  To be admitted, one parent had to be dead, the child, age four to ten, had to be free of contagious disease, and the remaining parent had to pay 50 cents per week for board.

By 1837, the organization was incorporated with corporate powers vested in a board of nine male trustees who handled property and bequests. The “internal and domestic” management was given to a female board of managers. The age of the children taken into care was raised to fourteen years when the trustees were given the right to bind them out, or return them to their parent. The institution moved to West Tenth Street and later to its own building on Sixth Avenue. The Society was Protestant, but not denominational.

The Society relocated to 110 Manhattan Avenue at 104^th Street in 1891. There are few mentions of the Society or its asylum in the newspapers of the time; nothing of note seems to have happened while they were located there.   

In 1910, the Society received a donation of a 178-acre farm in Windham, New York, which became a summer residence for children in care. Eventually, it became Windham Child Care, and then joined with the Graham Home for Children, and became Graham Windham in 1977.

Sheltering Arms

In 1864, Reverend Dr. Thomas M. Peters, the Rector of St. Michael’s Church on Amsterdam Avenue at 100^th Street, formed Sheltering Arms to take charge of children during moments of family distress. Some of the children were half-orphans whose parent had to work, some had incurable illnesses, and others were true orphans, with no parents. Initially, Dr. Peters housed the children at his own home at 101st Street and the Boulevard, where he had purchased his large house and one and a half acres. (St. Michael’s history reports that Dr. Peters moved his own family up to 110^th Street to the old “Whitlock mansion.”)  In 1866, Sheltering Arms built a nearby annex building.

Sheltering Arms children did not have to wear uniforms and were allowed to attend neighborhood public schools. Their parents did not have to surrender them to the institution.

However, by 1868 when the Boulevard was fully developed as a roadway, the property was reduced by eminent domain, and was moved to Manhattanville, where a new building was constructed by 1870. This was the first to use the German “cottage system,” separating the children into smaller groups called “families.” 

In 1944, at a time when most orphanages were closing down, and foster care became recognized as a better way to care for children without parents, Sheltering Arms merged with another organization, creating Sheltering Arms Children’s Services, which is still located today on East 29^th Street in Manhattan.

New York City’s Parks Department acquired the uptown land and created Sheltering Arms Pool and Playground.

When Sheltering Arms was operating under Dr. Peters’ care, several children had to be rescued from two other Episcopal church organizations, the Children’s Fold and the Shepherd’s Fold, both operated by the Reverend Edward Cowley.  Cowley had started the two organizations with housing on Manhattan’s East Side, in order to accommodate children who were “orphans of unfortunates” who had died at City institutions on Ward’s, Blackwell’s, and Randall’s Islands.

Cowley’s organizations were paid $2 per week per child by the city. It’s unclear from the news accounts of the Cowley scandal if he formed the organizations to get the funding or if he was just a poor manager, but after an investigation by the newly formed Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Reverend Cowley was formally accused of starving one child, Louis Victor, and was sentenced to one year in prison and a $250 fine.

Cowley’s trial was sensational and included many details of child care during the 19^th century. It also caused positive change in the way New York State allowed individuals to incorporate organizations that care for children.

Thomas Nast included Cowley in the cartoon pictured below and he became a character in a play with a mean-spirited orphan-master. However, the Episcopal Church never prosecuted him.  Reverend Peters took over the two organizations in 1877, housing the abandoned children in Bloomingdale homes and at Sheltering Arms.

The Children’s Fold

One of the Bloomingdale homes the Reverend Peters was able to gain access to for housing the abandoned orphans of the Children’s Fold was the Valentine Mott mansion at the Boulevard (now Broadway) and 94^th Street.  Dr. Mott, a famous New York surgeon, lived in Gramercy Park but had a summer residence in Bloomingdale. The first mention of the orphanage in the Mott mansion is in a June 1878 edition of an Episcopal Church newspaper, The Churchman, where it was reported that “ice cream entertainment” was enjoyed at an annual festival of the home. The newspaper reported, “The building was formerly the Mott mansion, an old-fashioned but comfortable and very commodious residence with pleasant grounds attached, shaded by large trees.” There were 65 children there, with room for 70.  The Matron, Mrs. Skinner, a widow with two children, is listed in the 1880 federal census. Her staff consisted of her adult daughter, five “servants,” and two errand-boys to handle the 65 children counted there.

The New York Infant Asylum

For a short while in 1865-1866, thanks to the work of Mrs. Richmond, the wife of the third rector of St. Michael’s Church, the old Woodlawn Mansion at 106-107 Street near Broadway and West End Avenue became the New York Infant Asylum. Here, the staff cared for foundlings and abandoned children under two years old. The asylum also provided obstetrical care for unwed mothers, but only during her first pregnancy, as the Board decided that it was human to make one mistake, but immoral to make two.

The Infant Asylum was incorporated into other institutions and its history today is part of the complex of New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

Moving Children to the Country

While not part of Bloomingdale history, one other method for dealing with the thousands of children who required care in the mid-19^th century was to bind them out as apprentices on the many farms surrounding the New York area.  Recently, a friend shared a 19^th century family diary with me, that of a western Massachusetts farmer named Franklin Williams. He writes in 1855, “May 3 in morning 5 a.m., arrived in New York. Stayed at the Western Hotel. Run about all day to get a Boy to take home but did not suit myself.“  The following day, he found one that suited him. The ten-year old parent-less boy was named William Farrell.

Mr. Williams mentions also that he visited Mr. Pease’s School, which provided the clue to where he got his boy. Mr. Pease was in charge of the Five Points House of Industry, another institution that had the legal right to bind out children as apprentices.  Mr. Williams only mentions his boy William once more, in 1857 when he “acted bad,” running away from a job but returning home late in the day.

Getting children out of the city was ramped up considerably when the “orphan trains” were invented. The Children’s Aid Society was formed in 1853 and soon developed a way of dealing with the uncared-for New York City children by shipping them to farm families in the Midwest.  Between 1854 and 1930, 150,000 New York City children were so relocated.  Not all of them were orphans; some were sent away by their parents who saw this as an opportunity. Unlike the indentured children, the biological parents could retain custody.  In recent years, as more people become interested in their family history, the history of the orphan trains has gained much attention.

Sources

www.ancestry.com

The Churchman Volume 37, page 650 June 15, 1878

Cook, Jeanne F. “A History of Placing Out: The Orphan Trains” Child Welfare Volume 74, No 1, January/February 1995

https://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2018/10/noble-remnants-leake-watts-orphan.html

Dolkart, Andrew Morningside Heights: A History of Its Architecture & Development New York, Columbia University Press 1999

Franklin H. Williams Diary 1852-1891 published privately by the Williams Family 1975 Sunderland, Mass.

https://www.graham-windham.org/

New-York Historical Society files

1885 New York City Charities Directory (accessed online July 12, 2022)

www.newspapers.com

Peters, John P. Annals of St. Michael’s 1807-1907 New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1907

Presa, Donald G. and Jay Shockley, “Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine and the Cathedral Close” Designation Report New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, February 21, 2017

Richmond, John Francis New York and Its Institutions 1609-1871 New York E.B. Treat 1872 (accessed in digital format 4/11/22 at googlebooks.com)

Rivlin, Leanne G. and Lynne C. Manzo “Homeless Children in New York City: A View from the 19^th Century” Children’s Environments Quarterly Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 1988.

Smith, Catherine L. “Nineteenth-Century Orphan Asylums in New York City, A Tiered Migration North” paper written for Professor Dolkart’s class, April 14, 2020. Accessed online.

The New York Times archive, online.