Echoes of Carnegie Hall on Fifth Avenue
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY Published: August 3, 2008 Q There is a handsome orange brick building at the northeast corner at Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street that looks like the son of Carnegie Hall . Who was the architect? What was its original purpose? Is it a landmark? ... James Duncan, Manhattan A This lovely light-orange building was built in 1890 by a carriage manufacturer, A. T. Demarest & Company, and designed by Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell. The Demarest concern was established in 1860, and by the 1880s its factory, in New Haven, had 300 workers.
The Renwick firm is best known for its founder, James Renwick Jr., designer of major works like Grace Church, at Broadway and 10th Street, and St. Patrick's Cathedral. By the late 1880s, the office was producing many relatively small commissions of very high quality, often for socially connected clients.
These include the small apartment houses at 9 East 10th Street and 39 East 10th Street, the fraternity house of St. Anthony Hall at 29 East 28th Street, and the loft building of the 10th Church of Christ, Scientist, at 171 Macdougal Street, which is now being reconstructed as a condominium.
Both the Demarest building and Carnegie Hall were designed in 1889, the latter by William Burnet Tuthill, so it is not very likely that Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell borrowed from Carnegie Hall.
For the Demarest building the firm used mottled iron-spot brick for a facade made impressive by the giant four-story-high arches.
This urbane design in a light palette has much in common with other high-style buildings of the period, like the 1890 Madison Square Garden (when it was actually on Madison Square) and the 1892 Judson Memorial Church, on Washington Square South.
Despite its notable presence, the Demarest building is not a designated landmark.
In 1893, The New York Times said the Demarest company had some 200 carriages, valued at $150,000, in the building. Demarest moved up to Broadway and 57th Street in 1909, and the 33rd Street building was converted to offices.
In 1913, The Times reported that a doctor from Berlin, Freidrich Franz Friedmann, had an office there and offered free treatment for tuberculosis. A thousand patients showed up, including 15-year-old Leonard Curatolo, who walked up from Elizabeth Street with his father, a shoemaker, and mother. Census records list the family as Italian. Only the boy spoke English. But the leasing agent prohibited Dr. Friedmann from treating anyone, and the Curatolos and everyone else were turned away.
It is not clear if Dr. Friedmann had a real cure for tuberculosis, but he was back in Germany in 1934, when The Times reported that the Ministry of Agriculture had denounced the “worthless” work of “this Jewish physician.” Dr. Friedmann lived until 1953 and died in Monte Carlo. |
