YORKVILLE THE GHOSTS OF KLEINE DEUTSCHLAND My interest

LIS 688 YORKVILLE THE GHOSTS OF KLEINE DEUTSCHLAND
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YORKVILLE
THE GHOSTS OF KLEINE DEUTSCHLAND
Doris Straus
LIS 688 Pratt Institute
Summer 2013
December 1910
1916 East 85th street between 1st
and Avenue A
1904 Lower East Side
My interest in Yorkville came about because of an unexpected find
while going through some family papers. I found a few old postcards
that my grandfather, writing from Montana, sent to his parents in
Yorkville during the years 1910 – 1915. Their address was 501 East
87th Street. At 18 he had left New York City to try his luck at
homesteading in the Poplar-Fort Peck area of Montana. Evidently
this endeavor did not work out and he returned to New York, a
wiser man of 23, in 1915.
By coincidence I had recently bought an apartment on East
85th Street (built in 1910) for a price that I am sure has all my
thrifty, long dead relatives spinning.The apartment is between 1st
Avenue and York Avenue within 5 blocks of my great-grandparents
first home at 1507 Avenue A (York Avenue since 1929) and within 3
blocks of my grandfather’s last Manhattan address on East 88th Street.
This personal connection fed my curiosity about the history of
Yorkville and the decline of the German community here. Known
for over 150 years as a German enclave, there is now almost nothing
left of the once thriving community.
During the 1840s the Lower East Side south of 14th Street
and east of the Bowery was known as “Kleine Deutschland”. By
1860 the German population of New York was over 200,000 and
about one-quarter of the population, and growing rapidly.There were
20 German churches, 2 German language daily newspapers and many
schools that taught in German in the area around the Bowery.
Though the community was thriving, many Germans began a move
LIS 688 YORKVILLE THE GHOSTS OF KLEINE DEUTSCHLAND
1905 Deutsches Theatre East 86th
Street
November 28, 1882 The Sun
1870s Hell Gate Brewery
1881 Bromley. Ehret’s and
Ruppert ’ s b reweries
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north in the 1860s. Getting away from the congested streets of the
Lower East Side was definitely a step up. 1880 began a major wave of
German immigration of almost 1.8 million and Germans now comprised about one-third of the population of New York City. In 1883
that wave included my great-grandfather Herman Borowsky.
According to The WPA Guide to New York City, new immigrants and families escaping the Lower East Side were building
blocks of brownstones and Yorkville had become the new “Kleine
Deutschland”. It was from the start a more diverse area than is usually
thought of - religiously and by nationality. Besides Germans within
Yorkville there were sections of Czechs, Austrians, Hungarians, Slavs,
and German Jews – the German Jewish community preferring to
distance themselves from their unassimilated brethren downtown.
Anti-Semitism was rare until 1939. According to The Encyclopedia of
New York City - “German Jews were integrated into German society
on all social levels.” The “Germany” that many of these immigrants
left behind was not the unified country it is today.The mid-19th
century saw Bavarians, Swabians, Prussians, Hessians,Westphalians,
and Hanoverians who all brought their own dialects and customs,
and often had little sense of belonging to a “German” nation.There
was also a significant but scattered Irish population that included
James Cagney who grew up on East 96th Street.
In its heyday 86th Street east of Third Avenue was known as
“German Broadway” (replacing the Lower East Side’s Avenue B’s
claim to the title a generation before), 79th Street east of Third
Avenue was “Hungarian Boulevard” and 72nd Street east of Third
was “Bohemian Boulevard”. 86th Street and the surrounding area
had large and elaborately decorated beer halls, restaurants, shops, and
bakeries. And of course, nearby - breweries.The blocks of 2nd and
3rd Avenues between 90th Street and 94th streets were home to two
of the largest employers in the area – George Ehret’s Hell Gate
Brewery and Jacob Ruppert’s Knickerbocker Brewery. The surrounding area was well known for its “streets that smelled like beer”.
The Hell Gate Brewery was completed in 1867 and by 1877 was the
largest brewer in the United States. In 1965 both breweries were
closed and demolition began in 1969. During the demolition process
efforts were made to save the graceful signature clock tower of the
Hell Gate Brewery but it was so damaged by vandals that it was no
longer salvageable.The 100 year old red-brick compound famous for
its fine proportions and, according to 100 Years of Brewing, “ornamental gables rising from the cornices of every building” was gone. In its
place was an urban renewal project of high rise mixed-income apartments which opened in 1975. Called the Ruppert Towers the project
LIS 688 YORKVILLE THE GHOSTS OF KLEINE DEUTSCHLAND
The World June 16, 1904
The General Slocum, June 17, 1904
1904 Funeral procession of the
unidentified dead, East 6th Street
and Avenue A
The New York Tribune, Sunday
June 22, 1913
1934 86th Street crosstown trolley
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consists of 2 – 34 storey apartment buildings with a total of 1258
apartments and includes the 1.5 acre Ruppert Park on 2nd Avenue.
The buildings underwent a condo conversion in 2003 and recent
apartment sales average $986 per square foot.
By 1900 the German population had peaked at about
750,000 and the community had spread into Astoria;Williamsburg,
Brooklyn; and New Jersey. In 1904 the Lower East Side German
community suffered a tragedy from which it would never recover.
On June 15, 1904 the wooden excursion boat the General Slocum
chartered by St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church on East 6th
Street and carrying mostly women and children burned and sank
killing at least 1021 people. It was the worst disaster in New York
City history until the World Trade Center attack.The German community of the Lower East Side never recovered and quickly declined.
Many of the surviving families moved to Yorkville.
The spread of public transportation north from lower
Manhattan contributed significantly to Yorkville’s growth in the late
19th century. In the 1850s the 3rd Avenue horse-drawn railway
stopped in Yorkville, followed by 3rd Avenue El service which began
in December 1878 and 2nd Avenue El service in August 1879.
Ironically the demolition of the 2nd Avenue El in 1940-42 and especially the demolition of the 3rd Avenue El and the surrounding
brownstones in 1955 would be for many the beginning of the end of
Kleine Deutschland when many long-time residents and shops were
displaced by large soulless apartment buildings.
In 1913 The New York Tribune reported on the excellent
“chances for speculators along the Lexington Avenue subway” in an
article titled “Bright Outlook in the Yorkville Section”.The article
goes on to describe the Yorkville of that time as “thickly populated
and thriving”. 2013 sees almost identical word-for-word sentiments
expressed about the 2nd Avenue subway now under construction and
the benefits it will bring to the area east of 2nd Avenue. However we
still do not have an East-West crosstown subway as described in this
1913 newspaper - “it may not be very long before it becomes a reality” - one hundred years and counting.
During the First World War German language classes were
eliminated from schools, German Opera was no longer performed at
the Metropolitan Opera house and some Germans felt the need to
“Americanize” their names. Even hamburgers become “Liberty
Sandwiches” – a precedent for the “Freedom Fries” of 2003-2006,
served in Congressional cafeterias and elsewhere in response to
France’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Despite efforts to
LIS 688 YORKVILLE THE GHOSTS OF KLEINE DEUTSCHLAND
Late 1940s. Delicatessen at 236
East 86th street
Schaller & Weber in an undated
photo and in 2012
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revive German pride after World War I, by 1939 World War II and the
Nazi party made life difficult for the German-American community
in New York City.The presence of a pro-Nazi German-American
bund in Yorkville did not help matters although its leader was imprisoned for embezzlement and the office shut down in 1941.
Increasingly Germans chose to live on Long Island and in New
Jersey. Immigration quotas from Europe in the 1950s and 1960s also
had an effect on the population.Yorkville declined rapidly during the
1960s and 70s with old-timers pointing to climbing rents and a flight
to the suburbs that had been going on for some time. By 1990 of a
population of 7,322,564 only 301,993 residents of New York City
claimed German ancestry.
Symbolically, the final blow may have been the demolition in
1984 of the Turn Verein hall – a popular German social and cultural
center founded in 1850 – and the neighboring Mozart Hall at 85th
Street and Lexington Avenue. In its place was built, according to The
Encyclopedia of New York City, another “nondescript, expensive high
rise apartment building”,The Ventana, with a Starbucks on the
ground floor replacing one of the city’s best known German restaurants - Hans Jaeger’s. Also of note, the home of the most influential
German family in 19th century Yorkville, the Rhinelanders, has now
become a Ralph Lauren store.There are a few old-time holdouts that
fortunately own their buildings, among them the Heidelberg restaurant, and the Schaller and Weber butcher shop, both located on 2nd
Avenue between 86th and 85th streets. The New York Times in a 2006
story, “On the Upper East Side, Memories Fueled by Strudel”, by
Joseph Berger writes that “terraced high-rises replaced working-class
tenements, and the striver children and grandchildren of the immigrants fanned out to Queens and the suburbs”. In my case though, at
least one of them has returned.
Sources
Dick, B. F. (1993). The Merchant Prince of Poverty Row: Harry Cohen of Columbia Pictures,
Lexington. University of Kentucky Press.
Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration in New York City. (1939). The
WPA Guide to New York City:The Federal Writers’ Project Guide to 1930s New York.
1936 Maxl’s 243 East 86th Street
The New Press edition 1995.
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Homberger, E. and Hudson, A .(2005). The Historical Atlas of New York, 2nd Edition. New
York: H. Holt.
Jackson, K. L. ed. (1995). The Encyclopedia of New York City, New Haven.Yale University Press.
White, N.,Willensky, E. and Leadon F. (2010). The AIA Guide to New York City, 5th Edition.
New York. Oxford University Press, USA.
100 Years of Brewing:A Complete History of Progress Made in Art, Science & Industry of Brewing in
the World, (1974) Arno reprint originally published in 1903 by H.S. Rich &
Company, Chicago
The 13th Annual Report of the Board of Education of the City of New York,Year Ending Jan 1,
1855 (Journal of the Board of Education of the City of New York) via Google Books
Berger, J.(2006, April 7). On the Upper East Side, Memories Fueled by Strudel. The New York
Times (online)
Gray, C. (2012, March 22). Where the Streets Smelled Like Beer. The New York Times (online)
Presley-Noble, B. (1989, July 23). If You’re Thinking of Living in Yorkville.The New York Times
(online)
Wikipedia.org entries – Yorkville,Turn Verein, Rhinelander mansion, German American
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs online: www.loc.gov/pictures
NYPL Digital Gallery: www.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm
Museum of the City of New York online collections:
www.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=Home
New York Historical Society: Beer Here: Brewing New York’s History:
www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/beer-here
Immanuel Lutheran Church NYC: www.immanuelnyc.org
NYC.gov/buildings
Late 1940s. 86th Street and 1st
Avenue