158 West 61st Street

by Tom Miller

Following his father’s profession, Ralph Samuel Townsend was listed in city directories as an architect in the 1870s while he was still in his 20s.  In 1886, he worked repeatedly for real estate developer James H. Havens, designing no fewer than ten flat buildings for him that year.  One of them was located at 158 West 61st Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues.  

Townsend followed the accepted tenement format in designing the brick-faced structure, with its entrance centered above a short stoop.  The uncomplicated, neo-Grec design included brownstone bandcourses that connected the windows on each level and a pedimented, pressed metal cornice.  Inside were four apartments per floor, plus two in the basement.

Located in the San Juan Hill neighborhood, known for its ethnic diversity and, often, significant poverty and crime, the building attracted immigrant families, not all of whom were law-abiding.  Living here in 1889 was Irish native Peter Donnelly.  He appeared in court on the morning of January 11, 1890, charged, according to The Jersey City News, “with complicity in the Thomas-Conti steal of two cart loads of lead from the electric batteries in the Farrier flats.”  Although the charges against Donnelly were dismissed, he was not entirely in the clear.  The article said, “he was held as a witness.”

Another Irish-born tenant was Walter McGrath, who lived here in 1895.  He drove a “dirt cart” for the Metropolitan Street Railroad.  He was involved in a disturbing accident at 3:30 on the afternoon of June 6, 1895.  In court five years later, he testified that he had “hauled the last load of ashes to the 77th Street shed” and headed to the stable on West 23rd Street near the Hudson River.  As he turned off Lexington Avenue onto 26th Street, tragedy ensued.

Charles Hubner, now a teenager, claimed he was suffering digestive and spinal problems stemming from the incident.

About 15 feet on 26th Street off of Lexington this boy was coming down, riding a wheel [i.e., a bicycle], and he wanted to turn around, and he ran his wheel under the horse’s belly and the horse’s foot got stuck in the wheel and threw him down, and the left wheel of the cart passed over him.

McGrath insisted he was not speeding and did not have a whip in his hand, but kept his horse “on a nice jog, kind of a trotting jog trot.”  The boy, he said, “did not call out to me to stop at any time before the collision,” nor did he ring his bicycle bell.

McGrath was defending himself because five years after the accident, Charles Hubner, now a teenager, claimed he was suffering digestive and spinal problems stemming from the incident.  Hubner also accused McGrath of drunk driving.  After hearing from multiple witnesses, the jury awarded the teen $5,000 damages—a debilitating $180,000 in 2024 terms for Walter McGrath.

A tragic resident in 1896 was Christina Sherman.  In 1893, her mother married an Irish immigrant named Thomas Corrigan.  That year, Christina, who was 16 years old, found work in a dressmaking and millinery establishment.  Also living in the apartment was Corrigan’s daughter from an earlier marriage.  While Christina and her mother both worked, Corrigan and his daughter did not.  Christina later said that since Corrigan married her mother, “he and his own daughter had contributed nothing to the support of the family and had lived on the earnings of herself and mother.  Every cent she earned had been taken from her.”

Trouble came in the middle of September 1896 when Christina lost her job.  On October 5, The New York Times reported, “Saturday her stepfather, Thomas Corrigan, she said, turned her out of doors, saying they could not support her in idleness.”  With no place to go, Christina, now 19, went to the Leonard Street police station “and asked that she be sent to some institution, as she had no home,” reported the article.  “I would like to be committed to the House of the Good Shepherd,” she said.

“That institution is only for fallen women,” answered Magistrate Mott.  “You are not a fallen woman, are you?”

“No, sir; I am a good, virtuous girl, my only sin is in being homeless,” she replied.

Mott was perplexed.  “Well, I do not know of any place I could send you.  If you were not a pure girl I could send you to any one of a dozen different institutions.  I do not know where to send a good girl in misfortune.”

Happily for Christina, an agent from the Gerry Society suggested St. Barnabas’s Home, noting, “fallen women were not received there.”  The New York Times said she was sent there “until her story could be investigated.”

Another Irish family, the Farrells, lived here by 1897 when James Farrell’s wife first advertised, “Laundress—Fine Washing at home; open-air drying; Farrell, 158 West 61st.”  The family would remain here at least through 1918.

At the time the Farrells leased their apartment, the building saw German immigrants here as well.  John B. Springsteel lived here in 1897, making his living as a carpenter, and a position-wanted advertisement in 1899 read simply, “Watchman—by middle-aged German.  158 West 61st st.”

In 1900, 10 of the 18 apartments were occupied by immigrant families.  In addition to the Irish and German residents were a family from Canada and one from England.  The tenants, of course, continued to be working class, with the women contributing to the household finances as best they could.

A position-wanted ad in November 1902 read, “Housework—By girl for general housework; small private family; seven years’ references. 158 West 61st st.  McNally’s bell.”  The girl’s mother was also looking for work five years later, her ad reading, “Nurse—by respectable woman, would like baby to mind at own home.  McNally, 158 West 61st st.”

Sensing he would never leave, he asked his 12-year-old son George to write down his will.

A heartbreaking incident occurred on March 7, 1911.  Resident John P. Chrystie was taken to Roosevelt Hospital in serious condition.  Sensing he would never leave, he asked his 12-year-old son George to write down his will.  The Sun reported, “The will, written in a schoolboy hand on a small sheet of note paper, reads, ‘All personal property and all interest in real estate and the money in the bank to his wife—Mrs. John P. Christie.’”

Christie then signed the makeshift will, The Sun noting that while his “signature is scarcely more than a scrawl, it is legible.”  Young George then rushed out to find two neighbors who returned with him to witness the signature as genuine.  John P. Christie died the following day.  The will was presented to the Surrogate’s office for probate on April 4.  Despite its unorthodox execution, it was accepted and processed.

In 1951, Mary Ann Dennis lived here with her aunt, “Mrs. Graham.”  A high-school drop-out, Mary Ann worked for the American Telephone & Telegraph Co.  She was discovered by an undercover policeman in the Metropole Somerset Café, a bar, on May 17, 1951, having a Tom Collins cocktail with her friend, Shirley.  The problem was that Mary Ann was not 18 years old.  She was summoned to testify in court the following year at a hearing to revoke the tavern’s liquor license.

Only a few years after Mary Ann’s underage consumption of the Tom Collins, the entire San Juan Hill neighborhood was the target of Robert Moses’s 18-city-block slum clearance plan.  No. 158 ilH

West 61st Street, however, would survive until 1985, when a two-block area from 60th to 62nd Street was bulldozed to make way for the Fordham University campus.

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