Maybe, Maybe Not

Today’s tiny mystery: what is up with that blob?

It’s squeezed between two much larger buildings on East 58th Street and is nearly featureless. The configuration of the ground floor suggests that maybe there used to be a vehicular door there, but that explains nothing. Looking at the city’s official land-use map shows that the address is 129 East 58th Street and it’s an appendage of a much larger building on the other side of the block, at 130 East 59th Street or maybe 734 Lexington Avenue.

It seems like a good angle to approach this is that the blob’s geometry sure seems to match that of a typical nineteenth-century rowhouse. I usually go backwards in time when I try to track down something like the blob, but in this case it works better going forwards. Here’s the block in 1892:

There’s a lot going on at this block. There was the Orthopedic Hospital and Dispensary on 59th Street. The Vienna Hall was maybe (based on an ad I found) a catering hall, the Liederkrantz Hall and Arion Society were both German-American arts organizations, and the Fidelio Club seems to have been a dinner-and-music venue. There were also rowhouses facing 58th and 59th Streets and Lexington Avenue. Note that 129 East 58th was a very ordinary-looking rowhouse set back behind a small front areaway. Jumping ahead 15 years:

The Fidelio was now the Plaza Assembly Rooms (looks to be the same building); four of the 58th Street rowhouses had been replaced by a branch of the NYPL; and the Orthopedic hospital had colonized 129 East 58th and turned it, at least in part, into a nurses’ dorm. The connection to the hospital included a rear-yard extension that almost fills the lot. Skipping by the 1916 map, which looks much like 1907, we arrive at 1922:

The stable at the southwest corner of the block had just been replaced by a 14-story steel-frame apartment house; the Arion Club had been replaced by the Anderson Galleries (possibly the same building modified); and the hospital had been replaced by the Crimmins Building, which appears to be the hospital altered and which has decolonized 129 East 58th Street. It looks like the hallway connector between 129 and the hospital was demolished and the rest of the rear-yard extension remained. Onward to 1930:

Almost the same as 1922 except that someone was assembling the lots at the southeast corner for a big building. I am amazed that 129 East 58th didn’t get folded into that assembly. Possibly the beginning of the Great Depression interfered with the plans. It certainly interfered with the construction plans: this was supposed to be a thirty-story building for the Steuben Club (another German cultural group) with some 24 stories of rental space over a six-story clubhouse. The club lost the building to the owners of the land they were leasing, because of financial problems, when the construction had made it as far as the 14th floor. The owners completed the building as a 14-story medical and professional office building, opening in late 1931. Onward to 1955:

The Anderson Galleries were now the Park Avenue Theater, possibly still the same Arion Club building; the Wickersham Professional Building was now more than twenty years old at the southeast corner; and around 1951, the northeast corner, including the Crimmins Building, had been demolished for the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies building at 130 East 59th Street. That building was apparently built in stage because sometime after 1955 it encompassed the two remaining rowhouses at the northeast corner. In 2007, the brick facade was removed from 130 East 59th and replaced by a mostly-glass facade. More importantly for today’s rabbit hole dive, the new 130 East 59th included the 158 East 58th site from the beginning. If you back to my photgraph, you can see the ghost of the old rowhouse’s roofline on the west wall of the Wickersham building.

My guess, based on other developments, was that 129 East 58th was the loading dock for the new building, conveniently hidden away from the pedestrian entrances and front facades. Most likely the old wood-joist floors were removed to make it fire-rated, to match the new building. Maybe not. But in the manner of these things, the old party walls are probably still there, stuck into the newer buildings on each side.