Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Tammany Hall, a potential landmark
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The local preservationists, flush with success, with landmarking of the ConEd building, the former Bauman Brothers Department Store and Guardian Annex are expressing a renewed interest in obtaining the designation for the former Tammany Hall building, at 100 East 17th Street, on the southeast corner of Union Square and Park Avenue South. Busy at the task are the Municipal Arts Society, the Historic Districts Council, Union Square Community Coalition and several NYC Council, and NYS Assembly and Senate members, as reported by Jack Taylor of the USCC>It is an important former institutional building, once the headquarters of New York City's Democratic Party political machine. In the fall of 1927, the Society of Tammany sold its headquarters on East 14th Street and announced the construction of a new Tammany Hall. Plans for the new building were to be made public in January 1928. The building was to be a Colonial Revival structure built of red Harvard brick with granite trim (limestone was later substituted). The Real Estate Record described the design as "a dignified architectural treatment, one of the chief motifs of which are the severe Colonial columns in the centers of the Union Square and the Seventeenth-street facades which recall the days of early American architecture."
The building, as completed in 1929, included commercial space facing Union Square (originally occupied by a branch of the Manufacturers Trust Company), a large public meeting hall on the east side of the first floor, offices for the Democratic County Committee, and a series of committee and meeting rooms. In 1943, the building was sold to the International Ladies Garment Workers Union; the main meeting hall, named Roosevelt Auditorium, became one of the most important centers for union activities in New York City. In 1984, the hall was renovated for use as an Off-Broadway theater (Roundtable, remember?). In 2001 it was sold to Liberty Theater, and is the home of Union Square Theatre. Another important tenant is the New York Academy of Film, whose Film School was founded in 1992.
Tammany Hall, originally Tammany Society, was the Democratic Party political structure that played a major role in controlling New York City's politics and helped the mostly immigrant working class New Yorkers (notably the Irish) rise in American politics, from 1790 on. Starting with the victory of Fernando Wood as Mayor in 1854, it controlled most Democratic nominations and patronage, until the election of Fiorello LaGuardia on a Fusion ticket of Republicans, reform -minded Democrats and Independents in 1934. Tammany Hall was permanently weakened, and, despite resurgence in the 1950s, with County Leader Carmine DeSapio, it ceased to exist in the 1960s, as the Reform Democrats took over. I wrote a catch-as-catch- can personal history of the Reform days, as a member of the late maverick Murray Hill Reform Democratic Club, helped along by the recollections of Charles Kinsolving, Lou Sepersky, Ken Mills, Bea Dolan, Maureen Lynch, Irene Shea, Carol Greitzer, Louise Dankberg and a hundred others whom you may recognize as the story moves along. The six articles, dated 2004 (actually published in 1996) can be found by googling Wally Dobelis & Tammany Hall.
Kinsolving dates the early start of reform to 1946, the beginning of the Mayoralty of William O'Dwyer, or, more likely, to 1949 when Lexington, the first Reform Democratic club, was organized. That was the year when Courtland Nichols ran for the Assembly with the aid of various mainstream Penn and Columbia Law graduates, and when Franklin Roosevelt was elected to Congress from the Upper West Side district of the late Sol Bloom, against the opposition of the regular old line Democratic organization. Reform grew stronger in 1951, when Vincent M.Impellitteri was Mayor and Carmine DeSapio chaired the New York County Democratic organization. The articles progress to the 1970s.
As for history of the various Tammany wigwams, the Tammany Society (named for a Lenape Indian chief) emerged as the center of the Democratic-Republican politics in the early 1800s.The first "wigwam" serving as its headquarters was on Spruce Street, where Pace University now stands, moving to Frankfort and Nassau Streets (now Brooklyn Bridge ramp) in 1812. It shifted uptown as the city grew and in 1868 the Hall (now torn down) was on East 14th Street, west of 3rd Avenue. In 1943, as Tammany lost power, and the party offices were moved to a modest uptown environment, as the NY County Democrat headquarters, the 17th Street Hall was sold to the ILGWU, Local 91, and its Roosevelt Auditorium served as a meeting space for union events. Particularly memorable for us locals were the newspaper deliverers' annual elections, with the entire block filled with union members, as though for a party, the campaigning officials' vehicles serving as bars and election quarters.
So much history revolves around the old Tammany Hall that it richly deserves to be designated as a landmark.
The local preservationists, flush with success, with landmarking of the ConEd building, the former Bauman Brothers Department Store and Guardian Annex are expressing a renewed interest in obtaining the designation for the former Tammany Hall building, at 100 East 17th Street, on the southeast corner of Union Square and Park Avenue South. Busy at the task are the Municipal Arts Society, the Historic Districts Council, Union Square Community Coalition and several NYC Council, and NYS Assembly and Senate members, as reported by Jack Taylor of the USCC>It is an important former institutional building, once the headquarters of New York City's Democratic Party political machine. In the fall of 1927, the Society of Tammany sold its headquarters on East 14th Street and announced the construction of a new Tammany Hall. Plans for the new building were to be made public in January 1928. The building was to be a Colonial Revival structure built of red Harvard brick with granite trim (limestone was later substituted). The Real Estate Record described the design as "a dignified architectural treatment, one of the chief motifs of which are the severe Colonial columns in the centers of the Union Square and the Seventeenth-street facades which recall the days of early American architecture."
The building, as completed in 1929, included commercial space facing Union Square (originally occupied by a branch of the Manufacturers Trust Company), a large public meeting hall on the east side of the first floor, offices for the Democratic County Committee, and a series of committee and meeting rooms. In 1943, the building was sold to the International Ladies Garment Workers Union; the main meeting hall, named Roosevelt Auditorium, became one of the most important centers for union activities in New York City. In 1984, the hall was renovated for use as an Off-Broadway theater (Roundtable, remember?). In 2001 it was sold to Liberty Theater, and is the home of Union Square Theatre. Another important tenant is the New York Academy of Film, whose Film School was founded in 1992.
Tammany Hall, originally Tammany Society, was the Democratic Party political structure that played a major role in controlling New York City's politics and helped the mostly immigrant working class New Yorkers (notably the Irish) rise in American politics, from 1790 on. Starting with the victory of Fernando Wood as Mayor in 1854, it controlled most Democratic nominations and patronage, until the election of Fiorello LaGuardia on a Fusion ticket of Republicans, reform -minded Democrats and Independents in 1934. Tammany Hall was permanently weakened, and, despite resurgence in the 1950s, with County Leader Carmine DeSapio, it ceased to exist in the 1960s, as the Reform Democrats took over. I wrote a catch-as-catch- can personal history of the Reform days, as a member of the late maverick Murray Hill Reform Democratic Club, helped along by the recollections of Charles Kinsolving, Lou Sepersky, Ken Mills, Bea Dolan, Maureen Lynch, Irene Shea, Carol Greitzer, Louise Dankberg and a hundred others whom you may recognize as the story moves along. The six articles, dated 2004 (actually published in 1996) can be found by googling Wally Dobelis & Tammany Hall.
Kinsolving dates the early start of reform to 1946, the beginning of the Mayoralty of William O'Dwyer, or, more likely, to 1949 when Lexington, the first Reform Democratic club, was organized. That was the year when Courtland Nichols ran for the Assembly with the aid of various mainstream Penn and Columbia Law graduates, and when Franklin Roosevelt was elected to Congress from the Upper West Side district of the late Sol Bloom, against the opposition of the regular old line Democratic organization. Reform grew stronger in 1951, when Vincent M.Impellitteri was Mayor and Carmine DeSapio chaired the New York County Democratic organization. The articles progress to the 1970s.
As for history of the various Tammany wigwams, the Tammany Society (named for a Lenape Indian chief) emerged as the center of the Democratic-Republican politics in the early 1800s.The first "wigwam" serving as its headquarters was on Spruce Street, where Pace University now stands, moving to Frankfort and Nassau Streets (now Brooklyn Bridge ramp) in 1812. It shifted uptown as the city grew and in 1868 the Hall (now torn down) was on East 14th Street, west of 3rd Avenue. In 1943, as Tammany lost power, and the party offices were moved to a modest uptown environment, as the NY County Democrat headquarters, the 17th Street Hall was sold to the ILGWU, Local 91, and its Roosevelt Auditorium served as a meeting space for union events. Particularly memorable for us locals were the newspaper deliverers' annual elections, with the entire block filled with union members, as though for a party, the campaigning officials' vehicles serving as bars and election quarters.
So much history revolves around the old Tammany Hall that it richly deserves to be designated as a landmark.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 4:40 PM 
