by Daniel Wakin
On another level, the research into their histories came from a deep love of New York City—not just the life here but my life here and the visual backdrop all around it. It was refreshing to stay close to home, mentally, after part of a journalism career focused on the world. Traveling to the past, which existed in a very manifest way in the form of brick and stone, provided respite from the onrush of the digital future that has flooded our daily life. Maybe memorializing past lives helped soothe some creeping midlife anxiety about rounding Dante’s curve into middle age and that thing that comes after it. I hope I have reclaimed some of the lives of those who passed through the rooms of one row of seven townhouses on the edge of America, shades flitting by like falling blossoms and blowing leaves.
Chronology
1890 —William Ahnelt arrives in the United States
1900 —Jokichi Takamine isolates adrenaline
1901 —Gangsters John Oley and Percy Geary are born
—Julia Marlowe has her first big hit on Broadway, When Knighthood Was in Flower
1902 —330–337 Riverside Drive are completed
1903 —Samuel Rubel immigrates to the United States
—Julia Marlowe buys 337 Riverside Drive
—Mary Donnell buys 335 Riverside Drive
1904 —Northward extension of the IRT subway opens
1905 —Robert B. Davis buys 330 Riverside Drive
1906 —Julia Marlowe sells 337 Riverside Drive
1907 —Mary Donnell dies
1909 —Jokichi Takamine buys 334 Riverside Drive
1910 —Riverside Park completed.
—R. B. Davis sues Jennie Davis for divorce
—Canavan family buys 333 Riverside Drive
1913 —Rubel Coal and Ice Company by now founded
1914 —David Canavan, owner of 333 Riverside, dies at forty-seven
1915 —Jennie Weed Davis dies in Santa Monica, California
—Lucretia Davis and George Jephson marry
—Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst meet
1916 —Julia Marlowe retires from the stage
—David Canavan, owner of No. 333, dies
1917 —Marion Davies’s first film, Runaway Romany, is released
1918 —William Ahnelt sells 331 Riverside Drive; Marion Davies moves in
1920 —Prohibition, the racketeer’s jobs program, begins
1921 —Jokichi Takamine sells 334 Riverside Drive to Richard Forhan; Takamine dies the next year
1922 —Filmed version of When Knighthood Was in Flower makes Marion Davies a star
1925 —Davies moves out of 331 Riverside Drive
1931 —Jack “Legs” Diamond killed in an Albany rooming house
1932 —Raymond Penfield dies
1933 —21st Amendment ratified, ending Prohibition
—John “Butch” O’Connell kidnapped in Albany
—Richard Forhan sells 334 Riverside Drive to a realty company
1934 —Rubel armored car heist takes place in Bath Beach, Brooklyn
1936 —John Manning is murdered
—Artist Michael De Santis dies
1937 —Geary and Oley convicted of O’Connell kidnapping
1938 —Rubel indictment handed up
1939 —Rubel trial takes place
1941 —Jack Alexander, the Rubel heist’s chronicler, writes the article that introduces Alcoholics Anonymous
1945 —James Preston Penfield, last of the family at 336 Riverside Drive, dies
1955 —Saul Bellow writes his novel Seize the Day at 333 Riverside Drive
1957 —John Oley released from prison
1960 —John Oley dies at fifty-nine
1963 —New York Buddhist Church builds small structure on site of 332 Riverside Drive
1968 —Columbia University student Pauline Sargent, of 334 Riverside Drive, becomes first person jailed in campus protest there
1977 —Daniel O’Connell, the Albany political boss, dies at ninety-one
1979 —Lucretia Davis, the owner of 330 Riverside Drive, dies at ninety-three
Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE COME about without Constance Rosenblum. Doubly so. As editor of the City Weekly section at the New York Times, Connie published the story that served as its kernel. Then, years later, she read a rudimentary manuscript and was unflinching in her encouragement that it could be a book. She should know—she’s written a few volumes about New York City herself, and has moved on to a second career as a book doctor. The other major source of encouragement was my agent and fellow Dutchman Andrew Blauner, who stayed the course on a twisty route through the publishing world. And special thanks to Lilly Golden, my editor at Skyhorse, who from the start was a calm presence and expert guide through the byways of book publishing.
In the researching of the book, I owe a debt of gratitude to Brenda Steffon, the granddaughter of Harry Weed (Jennie Davis’s brother), who was extraordinarily generous in opening up her family’s archives, giving me access to letters, legal documents, and appraisals—and entrusting those materials to me. Her friend, photographer Julia Kracke, was also helpful in making copies of Davis/Weed family photographs. Current owners and occupants lent me their time and memories: Graciela Chichilnisky at No. 335, Sherry Bronfman at No. 337, and Brian Finnerty at No. 330. I extend thanks to Ben Gocker at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Collection and Ellen Belcher at Special Collections of the Lloyd Sealy Library of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who were helpful in directing me to information about the Rubel heist and related matters. At Columbia, thanks also to Jocelyn K. Wilk, archivist at the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and Roberto C. Ferrari, the curator of Art Properties.
Warm thanks also to my neighbors and neighborhood history lovers, Nancy Macagno, Al Berr, Jim Mackin, Gil Tauber, and Gary Dennis.
There is a common saying that every journalist has a book inside and that’s where it should stay. My friends at the Times, especially my lunchtime gang at the big round cafeteria table known as “The Table,” ignore this with great gusto, and have served as book-writing inspiration, journalistic role models, and great company over the years. One of them, Jeff Roth, the maestro of the morgue, was incredibly helpful in securing archival photographs. Special thanks also to my editors over the years at the Times, especially Jonathan Landman and Jim Oestreich. And I extend my appreciation to Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., and the Sulzberger family for keeping the Times enterprise alive and healthy.
Justin Davidson, who knows and writes about New York as well as anyone alive, also deserves my gratitude for his brains and friendship, and for immeasurably improving the manuscript—in its prose and organization. He aided in drawing connections I didn’t know were there. My colleague Michael Kimmelman helped shape my conception of cities and the City. Laurence Beckhardt, a best friend with whom I have been exploring this city since high school, came with me to the scene of the Rubel crime. My cousin Eric Wakin, a historian and archivist, was a clear-eyed sounding board. My son Thomas Wakin was an early reader of the manuscript, offering sharp-eyed and unbiased suggestions. In a funny sort of way, he and his brother Michael were inspirations for a book that in the end was about the passage of time and what we leave behind. My deepest debt of all, as a writer and as a person, goes to my wife and close reader, Vera Haller.
A Note on Sources
THE MORE THE JOURNALIST’S WORLD BECOMES a digital marketplace—where a reporter’s life is increasingly lived on Twitter and Facebook, where stories exist as URLs, and where we seek audience through multimedia and audiovisual pieces—the more acute grow the pangs of nostalgia for any lover of that artifact known as a printed newspaper. Don’t get the wrong idea. While I still regularly peruse printed papers, I have moved on. My journalistic existence, like that of most people in the field, is largely online now.
But oh, those clips! They are actual things (even if read in digital form) beamed to us from another age: the crammed-together stories, crowded he
adlines, ghostly photographs of men with slicked hair and coiffed women with pearls. And they include so much detail, including street addresses for people in the news. Without that, my task in chronicling the lives of the people in our townhouses on Riverside Drive would have been much more difficult. The papers—the New York Times, Brooklyn Eagle, the New York Tribune and the New York Herald-Tribune, Evening World, New York Sun, New York Post, New York Daily News—served as the backbone for much of my research into the townhouses and especially the story of the Rubel heist, with a supporting account from the decision by New York State’s Appellate Division upholding the Kress conviction.
Also invaluable for the Rubel heist was the two-part New Yorker series by Jack Alexander and two co-writers, Carroll Moore on the first article and Charles Bender on the second, published a month before the trial. I drew heavily on it for the story up until then. The newspapers also chronicled the ups and downs of Samuel Rubel and his ice and coal business.
Information about the backgrounds of Percy Geary and John Oley also came from their FBI files, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, and their Alcatraz prison files. William Kennedy’s O Albany! helped with their early criminal careers, as did Frank S. Robinson’s Machine Politics. The original trial record of the O’Connell kidnapping case, courtesy of the National Archives, provided details and the opportunity to actually hold the ransom notes in my hand.
The architect and historian Seth Joseph Weine provided me with a crash course in Beaux-Arts building design and helped inform my descriptions of the townhouses.
Census records helped establish who lived where and with whom. The Real Estate Record and Builder’s Guide is an invaluable treasure trove for anyone writing about New York City buildings. Russell Shorto’s book about the Dutch days of New York, The Island at the Center of the World, and the New York City Landmarks and Preservation Commission designation of the block as a landmark district provided historical context for our Seven Beauties. The same can be said for Burrough and Wallace’s Gotham.
Benardo and Weiss’s Brooklyn By Name helped with the story of Bath Beach; Gado’s Death Row Women gave me the Scarnici quote about doublecrossing; the Nasaw and Guiles books served me well for the story of No. 331 and its connection to Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst’s mistress. For the early years of No. 334, the Takamines’ residency there, and the corporate history of his successor company, the website enzyme-facts.com was helpful. The Soyinfo Center’s William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi produced an incredible trove of information on the Japanese scientist with their online publication that contains a summary of just about every published work, document and record related to him. Takamine is a fascinating, if forgotten, figure who deserves more attention.
Members of the Ellington family—Stephen and Michael James and Mercedes Ellington—were very helpful and generous with their time in reconstructing the Duke’s history at the townhouses. I also drew upon interviews in the Duke Ellington Oral History project at Yale University.
For No. 335, Mark Geiger’s work in his dissertation at the University of Missouri-Columbia uncovered fascinating details about the life of the Donnells. The Faber corporate website helped trace back numerous generations of Fabers, with the devilishly repetitive first names of Lothar and Eberhard.
Another historical figure in the Takamine category of worthy-of-resurrection is Julia Marlowe, who ruled the stage and newspaper columns in her day but receives little recognition in our time. Her story was constructed from the several books cited in the bibliography.
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