Thursday, July 18, 2002
Former Tammany Hall building slated to be landmarked
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
This is good news for theatergoers and Union Square afficionados. The 1928 building at 100 East 17th Street, corner Park Avenue South, built to be Tammany Hall headquarters and sold to the powerful International Ladie Garment Workers Union in 1943, is expected to be designated a NYC landmark, a memorial to the city's history.
Tammany Hall, founded 1788 as the Society of St. Tammany or Columbian Order, was the major power in NYC's Democratic politics for over 170 years . Despite the Indian names and ceremonial headdresses, the leaders were populist progressives. The club soon became riddled with graft and scandals, much of it associated with Mayor Fernando Wood, Boss William M. Tweed, Richard Croker, Charles F. Murphy and Carmine DeSapio, the milestones in its history (the latter, born in 1908, a leader who attempted to run the organization more openly, still lives in the area, on 5th Avenue near Washington Square).
After 1868 Tammany's headquarters building had been on East 14th Street, on the site of the present Con Ed tower. In 1928, at the height of the sachems' power, with Jimmy Walker as Mayor, the sachems built the new structure, a Colonial Revival of beautiful Harvard brick and limestone trim, as a low-rise attuned to the brownstones to the East of it (now the East 17th Street/Irving Place Historic District). The building, designed by Thompson, Holmes & Converse and Charles B. Meyers, has a meeting hall with a stage and a balcony to the left of the columnated entrance, and three stories to the right, built to house the Democratic County Committee and its ground floor commercial tenants. A classic balustrade runs along the roof edge, and plaques of relief images depicting the patron saints, the imaginary Chief Tammany and Christopher Columbus, flank the center window, to greet the party's braves and sachems as they gathered for meetings. The design is similar to the original Federal Hall, where in 1788 George Washington swore to uphold the Constitution, possibly an attempt of the political machine fixers to cloak themselves in the garments of democracy (it took a Democratic Reform movement led by Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert H. Lehman and Robert Wagner to clean up the machine, from 1961 onwards).
When Gentleman Jimmy was forced to resign in 1932, following the findings of corruption by the Seabury Commission, and the Fusion candidate Fiorello LaGuardia was elected Mayor in 1933, Tammany's influence waned. Unable to meet the mortgage payments, in 1943 County Committee sold the building to David Dubinsky's powerful International Ladies Garment Workers Union, who renamed the meeting hall as Roosevelt Auditorium. For years, East 17th Street periodically was the scene of union meetings and elections, since ILGWU let other organizations rent the great hall. The street action ranged from moderate to raucuous, the latter prticularly so when the newspaper deliverers' unions met. Candidates for office brought in house trailers, and their henchmen trolled the street, bringing voters into the wagons for drinks and an encouraging word, sometimes a minor donation for the voter's favorite charities. These were obviously popular offices, and one cannot help but admire the public-spiritedness of the candidates. Look, I'm for unions, but in those days you had to be singularly naive not to catch thedrift.
Around 1986 things had changed, garment capital New York had ceded its place to the South and 3rd World countries. The building was rented to cultural organizations. The popular revival theatre, Roundabout, had the hall, with the upstairs going to the Film Academy, another fine cultural institution. Eventually, with growing public acclaim, Roundabout expanded to the Times Square area, and is currently housed in the American Airlines Theater building on 42nd Street, as well as in the Gramercy Theater on 23rd Street. As for 17th Street, enter Union Square Theater.
As Margaret Cotter, President of Liberty Theaters, explains it, the mission of her house is to provide the setting for independent productions. With 499 seats, is is one of the largest off-Broadway venues (Liberty also owns Minetta Lane and Orpheum, popular sites for smaller productions.) This is a for-profit environment, and the plays have to make it on their merits. Currentlyxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx...
These are hard times, and ILGWU has recently seen fit to sell out. Reading International, a real estate firm affiliated with Liberty, has bought the huilding, which should assure us of continued theatre presence in our traditionally culturally rich neighbourhood.. Further, they are sympathetic to to the preservationist efforts to save the building as part of N York City's rich architectural and historic heritage.
The Union Square Community Coalition people, in conjunction with the Gramercy Park Associates, have been working to secure the building's status as a landmark for some time. Now the Historical Districts Council has joined in. With the good will of the landlord, it is expected that the the Landmarks Preservation Commission will have no problem in seeing their way to a well deserved designation.
Wally Dobelis also thanks Jack Taylor and Andrew Scott Dolkart.
This is good news for theatergoers and Union Square afficionados. The 1928 building at 100 East 17th Street, corner Park Avenue South, built to be Tammany Hall headquarters and sold to the powerful International Ladie Garment Workers Union in 1943, is expected to be designated a NYC landmark, a memorial to the city's history.
Tammany Hall, founded 1788 as the Society of St. Tammany or Columbian Order, was the major power in NYC's Democratic politics for over 170 years . Despite the Indian names and ceremonial headdresses, the leaders were populist progressives. The club soon became riddled with graft and scandals, much of it associated with Mayor Fernando Wood, Boss William M. Tweed, Richard Croker, Charles F. Murphy and Carmine DeSapio, the milestones in its history (the latter, born in 1908, a leader who attempted to run the organization more openly, still lives in the area, on 5th Avenue near Washington Square).
After 1868 Tammany's headquarters building had been on East 14th Street, on the site of the present Con Ed tower. In 1928, at the height of the sachems' power, with Jimmy Walker as Mayor, the sachems built the new structure, a Colonial Revival of beautiful Harvard brick and limestone trim, as a low-rise attuned to the brownstones to the East of it (now the East 17th Street/Irving Place Historic District). The building, designed by Thompson, Holmes & Converse and Charles B. Meyers, has a meeting hall with a stage and a balcony to the left of the columnated entrance, and three stories to the right, built to house the Democratic County Committee and its ground floor commercial tenants. A classic balustrade runs along the roof edge, and plaques of relief images depicting the patron saints, the imaginary Chief Tammany and Christopher Columbus, flank the center window, to greet the party's braves and sachems as they gathered for meetings. The design is similar to the original Federal Hall, where in 1788 George Washington swore to uphold the Constitution, possibly an attempt of the political machine fixers to cloak themselves in the garments of democracy (it took a Democratic Reform movement led by Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert H. Lehman and Robert Wagner to clean up the machine, from 1961 onwards).
When Gentleman Jimmy was forced to resign in 1932, following the findings of corruption by the Seabury Commission, and the Fusion candidate Fiorello LaGuardia was elected Mayor in 1933, Tammany's influence waned. Unable to meet the mortgage payments, in 1943 County Committee sold the building to David Dubinsky's powerful International Ladies Garment Workers Union, who renamed the meeting hall as Roosevelt Auditorium. For years, East 17th Street periodically was the scene of union meetings and elections, since ILGWU let other organizations rent the great hall. The street action ranged from moderate to raucuous, the latter prticularly so when the newspaper deliverers' unions met. Candidates for office brought in house trailers, and their henchmen trolled the street, bringing voters into the wagons for drinks and an encouraging word, sometimes a minor donation for the voter's favorite charities. These were obviously popular offices, and one cannot help but admire the public-spiritedness of the candidates. Look, I'm for unions, but in those days you had to be singularly naive not to catch thedrift.
Around 1986 things had changed, garment capital New York had ceded its place to the South and 3rd World countries. The building was rented to cultural organizations. The popular revival theatre, Roundabout, had the hall, with the upstairs going to the Film Academy, another fine cultural institution. Eventually, with growing public acclaim, Roundabout expanded to the Times Square area, and is currently housed in the American Airlines Theater building on 42nd Street, as well as in the Gramercy Theater on 23rd Street. As for 17th Street, enter Union Square Theater.
As Margaret Cotter, President of Liberty Theaters, explains it, the mission of her house is to provide the setting for independent productions. With 499 seats, is is one of the largest off-Broadway venues (Liberty also owns Minetta Lane and Orpheum, popular sites for smaller productions.) This is a for-profit environment, and the plays have to make it on their merits. Currentlyxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx...
These are hard times, and ILGWU has recently seen fit to sell out. Reading International, a real estate firm affiliated with Liberty, has bought the huilding, which should assure us of continued theatre presence in our traditionally culturally rich neighbourhood.. Further, they are sympathetic to to the preservationist efforts to save the building as part of N York City's rich architectural and historic heritage.
The Union Square Community Coalition people, in conjunction with the Gramercy Park Associates, have been working to secure the building's status as a landmark for some time. Now the Historical Districts Council has joined in. With the good will of the landlord, it is expected that the the Landmarks Preservation Commission will have no problem in seeing their way to a well deserved designation.
Wally Dobelis also thanks Jack Taylor and Andrew Scott Dolkart.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 4:05 PM 
