The white painted brick building at 161 West 93rd was across the street and half way toward Columbus Avenue from the apartment building where I lived with my parents from about 1955 to 1967.
via wikivisually.com
As I remember, 161 had a large (likely metal) elks head attached to a crest above the front door. I know now that the motto of the national Elks was and is “The faults of our members we write upon the sand, their virtues on the tablets of love and memory Charity, Justice, Brotherly Love & Fidelity.” Until 1973, it was an all White men’s club.
Advertisement
Jokichi Takamine: anonymous, unknown author / Public domain
The Club’s building on 93rd Street was built 1912. Its elegant interior, by then long gone, was described in a 2001 NY Times article: “carved sycamore chairs upholstered in gold with delicate patterns were brought from Japan, along with deep gold screens, deeply carved marble topped tables and lanterns of Sycamore slats and rice paper.” However, despite having distinguished guests and a history of hosting well known VIPs, in 1944, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the building was seized by the federal government. Twelve of its Japanese members were escorted by the police to their home and the club was closed.
The Alien Property Custodian sold the building to the Elks. Eventually, it came into its present use as the Templo Adventista on the first floor with condominiums above. After the war, the Nippon club re-established itself at another location and is now housed on West 57th Street.
Across the street and next door to my apartment house was Joan of Arc Junior High School. Weekdays, dozens of adolescents loudly jostled each other to get into the school in the morning and came pouring out at the end of the school day.
Joan of Arc Junior High School, c/o NYPL Digital Collections
The whole street had a lot going on.
93rd and Columbus, c/o NYPL Digital Library
93rd and Amsterdam, c/o NYPL Digital Collections
Of course, daily living is marked by experiences that are both special and those that are mundane. Amazingly, ballerina Maria Tallchief came to dance solo at the Joan of Arc JHS auditorium, a community performance by a stellar dancer. Later, I learned she had been discriminated against and not accepted by numerous ballet companies because of her Native American ancestry. Always, even after having achieved fame, she advocated against discrimination.
Maria Tallchief pictured on the February 1954 front cover of Dance Magazine: Unknown photographer / Public domain
Like most neighborhood drugstores, the one on the corner of 93rd and Amsterdam had framed prints on medical subjects displayed in the storefront window. These realistic scenes were distributed by a pharmaceutical company to decorate pharmacies. Surgeries of many kinds, inoculations and scientific breakthrough moments were all rendered in great detail, blood and all. Riveting. They depicted only male clinicians and male scientists from many cultures.
Advertisement
I had a friend who lived off the corner of Broadway and 93rd. On weekdays, we would meet up and head for the IRT subway to go uptown. At the start of the 1964 school year, she told me her family was terribly shaken by the murder of Andrew Goodman, her brother’s close friend.
A few months earlier, Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, civil rights activists who went to enroll Black voters in the South, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. Goodman, a Walden school graduate, had lived with his family at 161 West 86th Street. In 2014, 50 years after their deaths, President Barak Obama posthumously named the three men recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom — honoring them for their effort to bring justice and equality to Americans in Mississippi during Freedom Summer.
Missing persons poster created by the FBI in 1964, signed by the Director J. Edgar Hoover. Shows the photographs of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner. c/o Federal Bureau of Investigation / Public domain
The barely equipped basement-turned art room was functioning with donated materials. Undaunted, the art teacher commandeered a video camera and taught her students to create animations. One segment involved a skier executing a jump, soaring in the air above a steep slope. It was striking to see how that teacher modeled confronting adversity with a spirit, that for me, has always defined resiliency.
Get the Upper West Side newsletter:
I live on that block now. I moved to my current apartment in 1967 and yes the neighborhood was not safe but I soldiered through the bad years and love living here now. It was great to see what the block looked like so many years ago.
Until the 1960s Birch Wathen School occupied several brownstones not far from Joan of Arc on the north side of 93rd and the corresponding ones on 94th, and the gardens on two levels between them.
I lived at 43 west 93 street/WW2 until 1950 with my parents.
Many many memories.Walked our dog to Central Park past hooting boys at Columbia Grammar(all boys then)
Jane Dudley,Martha Graham dancer years before,lived in building.
Fond memory of the dumbwaiter in our kitchen where we left garbage,could talk to a
firiend through shaft .
Went to Walden and walking home at night after an event was scary,I clutched my
house keys.
stairs through shaft.