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
Ironically, the previous and original owner of the building was the Nippon Club. Founded in 1905 by well known research chemist Jokichi Takamine (1854- 1922), the men’s club for Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals was originally located at 334 Riverside Drive, between 105th and 106th Streets.
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
Advertisement
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
Between the end of WWII and the mid-1960s, more than a million Puerto Ricans had moved to New York. Those who came to live on the Upper West Side lived in very crowded brownstone rooms. When the weather was fine, families sat out on stoops. The music from transistor radios and from cars with windows left open was loud and in Spanish. That’s why hearing Latin music today immediately transports me to my native land – West 93rd Street.
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.
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.
As a resident of 175 West 93rd then and now, I believe I have the sole distinction of witnessing Joan Of Arc – originally “Junior High School” being built twice. Once in the late 1930’s -and completed in 1940 and currently being expanded to accommodate the children from several schools who now attend classes there.
The current project is expected to take as long as five years. As you might guess -those of us who live across the street – are not enthusiastic about the present construction schedule where work often starts promptly at 7 am – and can go on until after mid-night.
Another note about the neighborhood – the Japanese Club which occupied
the building right next door – later the Elk’s Club, was vacated by its members on
December 7th, 1941 – the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor. My grandmother,
who was also a resident at 175 often told the story.
I graduated from two schools on 93rd Street, had three grandparents who lived here and much more recently, I was the owner of “Little Extras” a kids store, on Amsterdam at 93rd.
Many thanks for the memories.
Would you be willing to video chat with a second grade class to tell us how the block has changed”
I lived at 200 W 93 st and attended ps93 and Joan of Arc. We moved to Hempstead when I was in 7th grade. Then to West Hempstead. I remember walking
to the library on 100 st. Friends and I would ride the bus down Broadway looking for a movie to watch. After the movie we’d walk to Times Square and browse stores where we shouldn’t have been. Often spending all our money and having to walk home. Good old days!
I attended PS 93M on the northwest corner of 93rd and Amsterdam Ave. from the first grade on. During our sixth grade, the school marched us (1951? 1952?) as a group from PS 93 to the west side of West End Ave, between 95th and 96th street and into the new building — PS 75M, The Emily Dickinson School. That year, our class was the first graduating class of PS 75. I’m happy to report I am still in touch with a few classmates who were that last 6th grade class who walked from PS 93 to PS 75.
My grandparents lived on 93rd two buildings East of Columbus on the North side of 93rd. My father and his 4 siblings were raised there. I would spend two weekends a mount there between 1943 and 1960. There was @n Irish Bub on the corner and only about one half a block to the park.