150 West 64th Street

by Tom Miller

In April 1891, the architectural firm of Hudson, Holly & Jelliff filed plans for three “five-story stone flats” on West 64th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues.  Each would cost their developer, W. Rankin, $20,000 to erect, or about $691,000 in 2024 terms.  Designed as a cohesive trio in an A-B-A configuration, they were faced in brownstone.  The western-most building, 150 West 64th Street, featured a broad stoop, carved festoons above the second floor, and a handsome bracketed cornice.

Each floor had two apartments of six rooms and a bath, the rents for which ran about $1,100 per month by today’s conversion.  They became home to middle-class families who had at least one servant.  Among them was Justin Burns, an assistant engineer with the Deputy Commissioner’s Office.  He earned a salary of $1,800 per year, or about $67,500 in today’s money.

In March 1895, Rachel Confield and her son, Edward W. Confield moved into a fourth-floor apartment with their live-in maid.  Rachel was described by the New York Herald as “a handsome woman, forty-five years old.”  She had been ill for about a year, suffering from insomnia.  That may have been the reason for her separation from her husband.  To add to her problems, according to neighbors in the building, “she had been annoyed by her husband” who “came to the house at intervals and attempted to force her to give him money.”  Like a gossiping woman over a backyard fence, a reporter from the New York Herald wrote, “He, it was said, is living with another woman.”

Concerned about his mother’s condition, Edward Confield hired a full-time nurse in the last week of April.  The New York Herald said, “Fearing that she might be impelled to do herself harm, her relatives have watched her carefully.”  Edward and his mother took a walk on the afternoon of May 1.  When they returned at 4:00, he did not go up, but “asked the servant through a speaking tube to see that Mrs. Confield reached her rooms in safety.”  The maid came down, accompanied Rachel to the apartment, then went to the roof to hang clothes.  At 5:00 she heard a gunshot.

Mason had accidentally swallowed carbolic acid.

Running down to the apartment, she found Rachel on the bed with a pistol next to her.  The maid summoned a medical student who lived upstairs.  When he asked her, “Have you shot yourself,” she answered, “No, I’m not hurt.  I’m out of my head.”

But Rachel was, indeed, hurt.  She was taken to Roosevelt Hospital, where she admitted picking the lock of a trunk to get the firearm.  The New York Herald reported, “When told that she would recover, she expressed much disappointment, and said she would prefer to die rather than face the result of the disgrace of her act.”

Isaac Harby moved into an apartment in 1899.  He may have known Justis Burns, since he, too, was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

In the first years of the 20th century, at least two physicians lived here—Dr. Pulp and Dr. Del B. Allen.  Dr. Allen was an instructor at the Fordham University School of Medicine and was associated with Presbyterian Hospital and Bellevue Hospital.

Dr. Pulp was the family physician of the Mason family, who lived at 180 West 64th Street.  Charles Mason was a “well to do hay merchant,” according to the New York Sun.  Dr. Pulp was awakened sometime after midnight on August 20, 1905, by one of Mason’s family members.  He had come home late and, before going to bed, went into the bathroom in the dark to take medicine.  “A sudden shriek that he uttered brought the family from their beds to find him writing in agony on the floor,” reported the New York Sun.  Mason had accidentally swallowed carbolic acid.  (Why the family stored carbolic acid in the medicine cabinet is unclear.)  Although Dr. Pulp rushed to the scene, Mason “was past medical aid.”

An interesting resident in 1908 was General Ramon Ayala, the exiled former Vice President of Venezuela.  His apartment was repeatedly the scene of high-level meetings of former government figures who either lived in or were passing through New York.  That was because, on July 21, 1903, a coup d’etat overthrew the regime that had ousted Ayala’s government.  On December 25, 1908, the New-York Tribune reported, “Nearly all of the expatriated natives of the republic who have been perforce sojourning in this city will sail tomorrow…for Caracas, to join in the work of reconstruction.” Among them, of course, was Ramon Ayala.

Dr. Del B. Allen still lived here on June 14, 1911 when he was called next door to the apartment of Mrs. Delia Lufburrow at 148 West 64th Street.  The Lufburrows had had a boarder, policeman John J. Delaney, for four years.  The arrangement led to a romance between Delaney and the Lufburrows’ only daughter, Helen.  The two were engaged to be married in September.

The New York Times reported, “On Monday night [Delaney] reported at 11 o’clock for duty at his station and patrolled until seven the next day, expending to have four hours off, followed by eight hours of reserve.”  Instead, he was sent to the courtroom of the Grand Jury and did not get home until 4 p.m. on Tuesday.  “He was scheduled to report for duty again at 11 P.M., and having had no rest he said that he was irritable when he prepared to retire.”

Delaney’s room was next door to Delia Lufburrow’s.  He and Helen got into an argument, and he tossed his helmet into a corner of the room, and threw his coat on a chair next to his bed.  As the two continued to quarrel, he tossed his pistol towards the chair just as Delia walked into the room.  The gun went off, hitting Delia in the side.  Helen ran to a neighbor who in turn ran to get Dr. Allen.  When he arrived, Delaney was trying in vain to stop the bleeding.  Allen stabilized her, then sent her to Harlem Hospital.  There, according to The New York Times, “Although dangerously wounded the doctors said she would probably recover.”  Officer Delaney was arrested.

By 1920, fifty percent of the heads of households at 150 West 64th Street had been born in another country.  And of the 24 roomers within those households, 15 of them were immigrants.  By now, some of the residents were finding themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Living here in 1922 was 23-year-old musician Lawrence Veinburg.  On March 28, he and Louis Lax went to Chinatown.  When Detectives O’Leary, Devoti and Coffee saw them running, they were stopped and frisked.  Louis Lax had a blackjack in his coat pocket.  He was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon and Veinburg on a charge of “acting in concert.”  At the station house, Lax told detectives that “he had found the blackjack in Chinatown…and had involuntarily put it in his coat pocket.”

Detective Gilmartin pulled Ridley from the phone booth “and found 300 slugs in his pocket, all cut neatly from aluminum.”

A more serious charge was pressed against resident Andrew Olsen seven years later.  On March 15, the California newspaper, the Berkeley Daily Gazette, reported that he was one of a gang of liquor smugglers taken down by Federal officials.  The syndicate was characterized “as the largest yet discovered.”  Prohibition agents had been surveilling a former convent in Hempstead, Long Island for weeks.  According to the agents, “Thousands of cases of whiskey were landed weekly on the expensive beach front of the estate, and stored on the large grounds until the syndicate trucks could haul it away.”

Mary Brown was 25 years old and worked as a maid in 1938.  She was arrested on November 28 when she was caught pulling the fire alarm box at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 64th Street.  She was charged with malicious mischief and jailed.

Another resident who found himself in handcuffs was 21-year-old Wade Ridley, who worked as a printer.  But he also ran his own “slug business,” as worded by the New York Press on April 6, 1939.  Describing him as an “enterprising young man,” the newspaper said he had walked into the cigar store in the Flatiron building the previous afternoon and started to make a telephone call.  A sharp-eyed detective in the store noticed the glint of the coin Ridley was about to drop in the slot.  The article said he “realized no legitimate coin had such mirror-like quality.”

Detective Gilmartin pulled Ridley from the phone booth “and found 300 slugs in his pocket, all cut neatly from aluminum.”  Ridley said he had hoped to sell them “two for a nickel.”  He also mentioned he “had hoped it would be more successful than his previous venture, one into burglary, which had resulted in his being placed on probation two months ago.”

Hudson, Holly & Jelliff’s handsome, stone-faced building survived until 1956, when it was cleared for the Lincoln Center renewal project.

Tom Miller is a social historian and blogger at daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com