The tenement on East Seventh Street the place I reside was once inbuilt 1893, when a monetary disaster within the United States had began to corrode a fabled, materialistic and short-lived time referred to as the Gilded Age, chronicled maximum just lately within the HBO sequence of the similar title.
The development’s authentic proprietor, Sigmund B. Steinmann — who as soon as abducted a kid violinist, amongst different crimes — represented the generation vividly sufficient to have his personal tale line at the display.
Akin to now, it was once a time of serious wealth and nice poverty. My East Village walk-up took in immigrants enduring the latter. Mr. Steinmann and a trade spouse financed it for an estimated $21,000. It had 22 flats, every round 325 sq. ft. No doubt a tale was once at the back of each door.
But Mr. Steinmann gave the impression to be in a league of his personal when it got here to chicanery and exploits of the time. So I got down to examine him and, in consequence, my house of 32 years.
A handy guide a rough seek printed that the actor Walter Matthau and his circle of relatives had as soon as lived in my development as they bounced across the Lower East Side, which he remembered as “a nightmare, a dreadful, horrible, stinking nightmare.”
Mr. Matthau was once born in 1920, so through that point, the Tenement House Act of 1901 had mandated that present multifamily dwellings set up, amongst different issues, indoor bogs — now not simply supply outhouses. According to at least one account, the neighbors nicknamed Mr. Matthau Shakespeare for his over the top studying conduct within the shared toilet on his ground. (Each condo in the end had a rest room put in.)
Mr. Steinmann predated the nature actor, however figuring out when he offered or misplaced the development on East Seventh Street is elusive.
Ancestry.com has his passport information. Born in Austria in 1851, he emigrated to New York in 1876 aboard a steamship from Antwerp. He was a U.S. citizen in 1883, the similar yr he made The Times for assaulting a painter.
In 1886, Mr. Steinmann married Theresa Pollatschek, a Hungarian immigrant. But he was once at the rebound, apparently; Ancestry’s newspaper data exposed his prior pursuit of a “Miss Isaacs.” Her father, a rich importer of Japanese curios, hostile their engagement, “flatly refusing to accept him as a son-in-law,” in keeping with a news file. She married every other guy as an alternative. Mr. Steinmann retaliated through suing her father for $10,000.
Deep into the cleaning soap opera at this level, I reached out to Tom Miller, whose weblog, Daytonian in Manhattan, main points the again tales of structures. He helped me to find extra articles about Mr. Steinmann, who reportedly complained in courtroom of the cash he’d spent on Miss Isaacs. He was once “fond of jewelry and not afraid to wear it,” one article stated.
The subsequent yr, Mr. Steinmann, in spite of being newly married to Theresa, threatened to subpoena over 200 acquaintances of Mr. Isaacs “to get at the true inwardness of the matter” (this is, of his daughter rejecting him). One article had the headline: “Unshed Tears. The Banker Married Another and So Did the Lady. And Yet He Seeks Damages.”
Mr. Steinmann misplaced the case and was once ordered to pay $200.
By 1890, he was once again in courtroom, this time for promoting a $100 bond to 2 brothers who didn’t discuss English. They misunderstood that it was once redeemable in two years; as an alternative, it was once 40. They sued, and Mr. Steinmann was once publicly denounced as a “high-handed swindler.”
The 1900 census described him as a “boarder” in Brooklyn. By 1901, he was once bankrupt. But he wasn’t executed.
In 1903, Mr. Steinmann, then 52, was once embroiled within the plight of Kun Arpad, a Hungarian kid violinist. The boy had arrived in steering at Ellis Island, together with his mom and grandmother. Publicity fabrics proclaimed he was once 8, a protégé of Austria’s Emperor Franz Joseph I and the best musical genius since Mozart.
In courtroom, Kun’s mom claimed Mr. Steinmann had tricked her into signing a contract to control the prodigy, then abducted him. After recapturing her kid, the mum testified that she was once terrified of Mr. Steinmann, who had threatened to place her in a psychological health facility.
By 1910, Theresa Steinmann was once a widow, in keeping with the census. Her husband was once alive however useless to her. Later addresses for his or her most effective son incorporated Sing Sing and an Illinois jail. He had no youngsters, so the circle of relatives tree ends.
Mr. Steinmann’s demise in Manhattan in 1917 were given a unmarried line in a ledger, no motive given. Apparently, nobody afflicted to jot down an obituary. Nor are there any Steinmann descendants who may have benefited from the hot sale of my humble tenement for $8.3 million. These days, influencers, N.Y.U. scholars and hedge funders fill its halls.
Some historians are calling this time the Gilded Age 2.0. Time will turn out if it’s any longer sustainable than the closing one.
Julie Besonen has coated the goings on of her East Village tenement, and the valuable artifacts therein, for the reason that onset of the pandemic.