236 West 67th Street

by Tom Miller

Gilbert M. Speir, Jr. was active in real estate operation and development in the 1880’s and 1890’s.  Many of his properties were tenement houses, like the five five-story brownstone tenements at 232 to 240 West 67th Street between Amsterdam and West End Avenues.  The identical buildings were a mixture of styles—neo-Grec, Italianate and Romanesque Revival—and were entered above short stoops.

The buildings sat within the notorious San Juan Hill neighborhood.  The tenants of 236 West 67th Street, like those of its neighbors, were working class, and almost all of them had Irish surnames.  Both the men and the women worked to support their families.  One of the first-floor residents placed a job-wanted ad in December 1896.  “Laundress—By a first-class laundress; understands collars and cuffs.”

Resident John Renol worked as the motorman on a Fourth Avenue electric trolly car in 1898.  The 22-year-old was involved in a horrific accident on the night of August 8 that year.  The New York Times reported, “The car got beyond control and crashed into a wagon of the Consolidated Ice Company.”  On the rear of the wagon was 19-year-old Dennis Corcoran.  “He was knocked from the step and ground under the car fender,” said the article.  The teen died at St. Vincent’s Hospital and Renol was arrested and charged with felonious assault.

“The car got beyond control and crashed into a wagon of the Consolidated Ice Company.” 

Many of the tenants were listed simply as “laborers.”  The term would have been applied in 1903 to William Morrison, who worked on the Broadway subway excavation that year.  On the afternoon of September 19, he was supervising the blasting of bedrock in the section of Broadway at 34th Street.  Just as a charge went off, five-year-old Wanda Staehell and her mother were passing on the crowded sidewalk.  The World reported that the little girl “was painfully cut and bruised by rocks hurled out of an excavation by a blast.”  Luckily, neither her mother nor anyone else was hurt.  Morrison was arrested for causing the girl’s injuries.

Children who grew up in the San Juan Hill neighborhood faced challenges on the street.  And, like today, many of them turned to gangs for companionship and protection.  Edward Fitzgerald, who lived here, got an early start.  On April 22, 1904, The Evening Post reported on the arrest of three boys, including 7-year-old Edward Fitzgerald, for the beating and robbery of 14-year-old Ralph Weeks.  The article said, “These lads are said to be members of what is known among the schoolboys as ‘Gallagher’s Gang,’ of which John Fitzgerald is the alleged leader.”  (John and Edward Fitzgerald were not related.)

According to Weeks, Ennis and Edward Fitzgerald, “with other members of the gang, tripped him up and then robbed him on the street.  One boy knelt down behind him, he said, another pushed him over the kneeling boy, while others held his hands and went through his pockets.”  Nearly 40 pupils of the public school at 77th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, led by the principal, filed into Children’s Court as witnesses against the boys.  John Fitzgerald was remanded for sentence, Ennis was sent to the Catholic Protectory for six months, and Edward Fitzgerald (most likely because of his age) was paroled in the custody of his parents.  He may have preferred a term in the Protectory.

Another youth to appear in Children’s Court was 14-year-old Henry Campbell.  On the afternoon of February 21, 1912, Policeman Green “was meditating on the wave of crime” when he looked up to see “a sturdy youth struggling down Amsterdam avenue hauling a barber’s pole by a rope,” as reported by The Syracuse Herald.

“Hey, you,” the officer called out, “What’s that you’ve got there?”

“That is a pole that a barber had, but he hasn’t got it any more.  Anybody ought to be able to see that.”

Unsatisfied with the answer, Green replied, “But what are you doing with it?”

Again, he received an abrasive answer.  “I’m taking it away.  Anybody ought to be able to see that, too.”

When further pressed, Campbell removed his hat and explained, “Look at this haircut.  Do you see it?  Ain’t it fierce?  Ain’t it the worst you ever saw?  My mother made me go yesterday to Joseph Krapp’s shop at 200 West Sixty-sixth street.  This is what he did to me.  I’m getting even.  Do you blame me?”

“That is a pole that a barber had, but he hasn’t got it any more.  Anybody ought to be able to see that.”

Green quietly admitted to a reporter that he did not blame the boy, “but duty is duty.”  Campbell was arrested.

In the meantime, tenement residents in neighborhoods like Hell’s Kitchen and San Juan Hill did not expect much from their landlords.  But in 1904 the building’s plumbing was given an overhaul.  The rather nebulous term may have indicated that the residents got hot water in their apartments.  Typical of the tenants at the time was William Ryan, who worked as a laborer for the Department of Bridges.  On August 31, 1906, The City Record noted that his salary “is fixed at $12 per week.”  That amount would be equivalent to about $373 in 2022.

Life was hard and dangerous in San Juan Hill, even during recreation.  Resident Thomas Doyle attended a party at the apartment of Joseph Prendergast on September 17, 1916, where, according to the New-York Tribune, “two strange men” walked in on the group and “demanded they be fed.”  Doyle and the other guests attempted to throw them out, and in the melee that ensued Doyle was slashed in the head and Daniel Sullivan was shot in the stomach.  The two troublemakers escaped.

The end of the line for 236 West 67th Street and its twin at 234 seemed near in 1917 when the magazine The Horseless Age reported that a six-story garage “will soon take the place of the two five-story flathouses.”  But something derailed the plans and the buildings survived for another half century, demolished among the Urban Renewal eradication of San Juan Hill in 1965.

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