Remember that time we talked about how 123 Lexington evolved from family home, to inauguration site, to legendary spice store?[1] About fifteen minutes walk from Kalustyan’s/the Chester A. Arthur House, mostly south and a little bit west, is 85 Fifth Avenue, on 16th street. During the nineteenth century, Fifth Avenue was the destination for the wealthy and respectable, and the main change for decades would be how far north was considered desirable. The corner we’re standing on was occupied by an Italianate-style mansion owned by the Spencer family, who boasted an assortment of senators and admirals in its number when one of them married a Lorillard, a family who had made a fortune in snuff[2] and a has number of streets still named after them in the Bronx. By Reconstruction, stores were starting crop up along Fifth[3] and most of the surviving Spencers were taking advantage of being very rich by traveling and so they leased the mansion to Levi Parsons Morton.
Morton was born in Vermont in 1824, came to New York, and got extremely rich as a merchant and banker, like something out of Horatio Algiers or the Michael J. Fox movie The Secret of My Success.[4] Even though one of the goods he traded was cotton, when he started sidling into politics, he did so as a Republican. That’s why in 1880, when James Garfield was looking for a vice president that could appease Roscoe Conkling and the other Stalwarts, he went to congressman Morton. Morton, however, listened to his mentor and party boss Conkling and passed. Arthur took the gig and so Arthur became vice president and then president and his parlor the site of a swearing in. Morton would still go on to serve as vice president but under Benjamin Harrison in 1889. In 1895, he became governor of New York for one term. Like Arthur, he supported civil service reform and also the consolidation of the then five cities and now boroughs into New York as we know it, which would become official in 1898. He would also go on to be president of the Metropolitan Club which, historically, has had way fewer Nazi brawls than The Metropolitan Republican Club.[5]
There are important lessons we can learn from Levi Parsons Morton. One is that opportunity is difficult to parse and non-linear: it’s really hard to know when becoming Vice President will ensure you’re widely remembered and when you can hold a rarefied position but still seem to linger in the shadows. The other is that for all one might raise an eyebrow at the citizens of Metropolis not recognizing Superman in glasses, it’s hard to argue with the adage “change your hair, change your life” because take a look at the difference in the Honorable and Occasionally Hirsute Levi Morton:
The mansion was torn down in 1898 and a thirteen-floor building was put up in the lot. The neighborhood was becoming increasingly commercial and the teens into the low 20s became a kind of Novelty District with gift and gag shops along Fifth and Broadway. 1898 also saw the death of a man named David Shackman in Harlem on 111th street. His wife Bertha took over their import business and B. Shackman & Co was officially reformed and renamed in 1898 based on West 4th street. It is notable and worth pointing out that this was a business that lasted for a century, and that it was founded by a woman using an initial as a shield. B. Shackman & Co would move a few times before settling in at 85 Fifth Avenue in 1971. When they trademarked their collection from that address in 1985, the description read “Wholesale, Retail and Mail Order Sale of Toys, Dolls, Decorations, Bric-A-Brac and Novelties” which is all extremely charming. Bertha Shackman died in a car accident in 1925, and her grandson would eventually run the business through the 1980s, when he sold it to the employees. The store was eventually replaced by an Anthropology though you can still get a lot of their whimsical masks[7] and doll accessories online. From the description in the window, the incoming business is either a coworking space or a cult.[8]
So, that’s the story of a Vice President quite close to another Vice President, moving in circles around each other and not quite overlapping. I don't generally go in for What If? history: history is interesting enough as it happened and, as Tia Carrere said in Wayne's World, yeah? And if a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass when he hopped. I am, however, interested in parallel lines, and the streets that run beside each other until they intersect.[9] The thing about New York being so full of people and happenings and this and that is that next to every story is another story running its course, full of oddities and tangents and, if you’re lucky, phenomenal facial hair.
[1] Admittedly, I did most of the talking, but I do encourage you to talk back! Yell at your screen, if your location allows it! Sound off in the comments: what's your favorite style of roof tank? Where's your favorite water tower? What do you think is the worst thing about General McClellan?
[2] It’s like The Wire meets The Gilded Age.
[3] GASP!
[4] How rich is extremely rich? One of his daughters married a duke; one married William Corcoran Eustis and if his expensive name didn’t give things away, the fact that he apparently was too busy managing his “large estate” to focus at Harvard Law should give a sense of things; and one married Winthrop Rutherfurd, a socialite Edith Wharton considered an archetypical rich guy, had an affair with Consuelo Vanderbilt but was deemed Not Quite Enough to marry her and would go on to marry their governess/Eleanor Roosevelt’s former social secretary/FDR’s former side piece when Alice Morton’s untimely death left him a widower.
[5] To be fair… Yorkville has seen worse Nazi brawls.
[6] Full disclosure: I did not take the pictures of the man who died one hundred years ago. Credits are: C.M. Bell, photographer. Morton, Hon. Levi P. [Between 1873 and 1890] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2016689015/>. and Morton, Hon. Levi Parsons of N.Y. Rep., Vice Pres. of U.S. [Between 1865 and 1880] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2017895062/>., respectively.
[7] I absolutely had some of the masks and thought they were extremely fancy but I’m not sure what generation of hand-me-down they were.
[8] Or both! Nothing says synergy like multitasking!
[9] And mutton chops. I really wanted to share those. You deserve their glory.
I did not know my true appreciation of mutton chops until this moment. Thank you
Deborah - your father pointed me to your substack account and articles - very good on you! A long-ago friend of mine was a member of the Metropolitan Club, founded by J.P. Morgan and a handful of other wealthy New Yorkers, supposedly because one of their friends was black-balled at the Union League. I was his guest on a number of occasions. The interior rivals the exterior for opulence. Quite stuffy. And while I am quite sure that more than a few were allied with the America First movement during the 30s, I can't find any mention of the club and more recent new-nazi happenings - the references appear to be related to the Metropolitan Republican Club. A truly bad bunch.