Remembering Keith Staulcup

The Cape Man of W51 Street:

Hell's Kitchen Miniature Carousel 

Maker and Community Activist 

I first saw him on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen on my post midnight walk in late July 1977, the summer when serial killer “Son of Sam” Berkowitz terrified the city.

He appeared from the shadows of West 51 Street a tree-lined street of dark chocolate-colored one hundred year old brownstones and five-and-six story tenements with handsome exteriors.

Even on the drug-infested, mugger-laden streets of Hell’s Kitchen peppered with half-naked prostitutes, knife-toting drug dealers, and Eighth Avenue pimps, straight out of the movie Super Fly, dressed in flashy colored suits with matching hats and shoes and driving Cadillac Eldoradoes of the same hue, Keith Staulcup stood out.

He walked slowly, draped in a black Victorian opera cape with a high collar held together by a silver clasp at the neck. He toted a walking cane with a white handle and tip. His cane thumped the sidewalk in cadence with each step he took and punctured the silence of this humid night.

Portly built, slightly balding with round sloping shoulders, full white bushy sideburns, and a thick walrus mustache Staulcup resembled a Dickens character in search of another time  - one with cobblestone streets, horse-drawn carriages and gas-lit street lamps.

Who is this guy? What is his story?

Fourteen months later I found out. I met Keith Staulcup at the monthly police community meeting I covered for a neighborhood paper. I arrived early carrying a reporter’s notebook when a man from behind me said, “Our recording secretary is sick. Can you take minutes?” The voice belonged to the caped man. I agreed. Within minutes 80 angry people packed the room.

Staulcup banged the gavel on the table to quiet the crowd. He yelled, “Let’s get started.” The noise continued. He hit the table hard two more times. “Save your gripes for the police.”

As president of both the West 51st Street Block Association and the Midtown North Police Precinct Council, he became one of Clinton’s (then called Hell’s Kitchen, a neighborhood on Manhattan’s West Side) leaders fighting for a safer and cleaner neighborhood.

Not as scraggy looking as the Occupy Wall Street crowd this group had serious issues as well. They had grown tired of a despondent police department unable to deal with the surge in muggings, drugs dealings, and prostitution that overwhelmed their neighborhood.

Sitting on the stage alongside Staulcup, the council’s board members and the precinct’s commanding officer I saw Hell’s Kitchen diversity first hand; merchants, parents, singles, elderly, minorities, gays, unemployed, white and blue collar workers, clergy, actors and reps from local schools and nonprofits. New York had not yet become the city of multi million dollar apartments and glass towers. Once a place of promise, many critics back then called it “America’s Murder Capital” an ungovernable city in financial and social turmoil on the brink of collapse. 

Staulcup’s reversible cape fitted him well in his dual roles as activist and miniature carousel maker.

Born in 1936 in Glassboro, New Jersey he loved theater and the arts and moved to New York to studying acting.

“When I stepped off the bus I was in awe of the city’s size and energy but after I took my second and third steps I knew this is where I had to be.”

He settled in Hell’s Kitchen in 1963 and got involved in neighborhood affairs ten years later out of desperation when his block’s (West 51st between 8 and 9th Avenues) quality of life disintegrated. A mini restaurant row with six well-known French eateries including Tout Va Bien (still open) and the long defunct Rene Pujol and Café des Sports the street drew theater-goers and business people. It also had a sordid side.

 “People were shooting up on our stoops and having sex in our vestibules. Dealers sold drugs out of ground floor apartments,” he said.

“Some nights I called and called the precinct. The phone rang forever. When someone finally answered I was often told ‘this is Times Square. We’re too busy. Call back later.’

“The police wanted to see blood in the streets and garbage kicked all over it before they did anything,” he said. “I learned you needed to be dramatic to get their attention.”

Ninth Avenue, the spine of Hell’s Kitchen, famous for its International Food Festival Ninth Avenue, even in those days, attracted thousands of visitors to its annual two-day event in May, but many also came here for other reasons. Office workers, suburban college kids and cars with out of town license plates flooded Hell’s Kitchen for drugs and hookers.

“Ninth Avenue was a drug haven. Pot, pills, ecstasy, cocaine, heroin were available day or night,” Staulcup said.

“We spent months, years fighting with the city to close a drug supermarket, then we battled to close an illegal social club. We contacted every city agency from the mayor’s office on down, not once, not twice, but many times.”

When one closed another appeared. Pimps opened a brothel in an apartment across the street from his place. Then transvestites moved in. Staulcup said, “It was an everything goes club." Drug, sex, fights, stabbings occurred almost nightly. It took 18 months to close.

The block association stretched from Eight to Eleventh Avenues. When a local gang sold drugs from a vacant building near Eleventh, cops told him the operation would only cease when the building was torn down. “Guess what!” Staulcup said. “The city demolished it. The dealers sold drugs in the empty lot.”

This sense of dramatics is a far cry from his creative world. As part owner and founder of Brilar Carousel Works, Staulcup labored through the night making carousels costing $500 to $5000.

He worked and lived on the first two floors of a brownstone at 337 on 51st. As you enter you walk into a small foyer that led to an ample sized palor with burgundy colored walls, plush floral carpeting and thick drapes. From there you pass under an ornate doorway with large sliding wooden doors to reach his workshop. Both rooms are decorated with turn-of-the century furniture, vintage black and white photographs, and large gold-framed mirrors lit with candles and kerosene lamps. All windows including the door to his backyard were outlined with antique molding and covered with curtains made from fabrics he retrieved from the old Met Opera house on 39th Street. Classical music played from his Victor-Victrola. Static from his ham radio, used to track police calls in Hell’s Kitchen, occasionally disrupted the room’s serenity.

Making miniature carousels required immense detail. They measured 15 inches in height with a base of 18 inches. These collectibles featured moving horses wrapped in colorful sashes, tiny hand-sculpted figurines about an inch or two in height, and monkeys holding balloons dressed in formal circus frocks wearing knee high-laced boots. Couples dressed in Gay Nineties fashions stand and listen to the carousel’s music. Young maidens in fluffy dresses wear floppy hats with flowers sit sidesaddle watched lovingly by their beaus.

Even with plump hands and thick fingers he had the manual dexterity and nimbleness of a Swiss watchmaker. It is hard to believe he created these delicate forms from eggshells, toothpicks, threads, tiny shreds of cloth and clay.

Staulcup made carousels for the Metropolitan Opera Guild, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, and Marshall Field’s and for Rita Ford, his mentor. Ford once a fixture in antique and contemporary music boxes started here in 1947.

Staulcup’s passion for acting also included the theaters especially those on Forty-second Street. Originally built for theater and opera they were converted during the depression to meet the rising popularity of “talking films.” He knew the history of each building and the actors who performed there. The New Amsterdam, one of the city’s most magnificent theaters, was his favorite.

One Friday night in September 1978 after I pounded him with questions about the Amsterdam, Staulcup said, “We’re going to the movies. I’ll give you a tour of the New Amsterdam.”

That night TGIF, the hot disco flick of the summer, starring Donna Summer, Jeff Golblum, and Debra Winger played there. The film had already started when we arrived. We sat in the last row near the entrance. Within seconds no longer able to contain his enthusiasm he began his tour.

For years Forty-second street, the one-block strip between 7 and 8th Avenues, had a notorious reputation as the city’s most dangerous street. Its Wild West atmosphere attracted hustlers, murderers, pickpockets, rapists, pedophiles, junkies, dealers, pimps, prostitutes, and scam artists from all over the country.

Before we entered the theater police had raided a nearby porn shop. More than a dozen cops led a line of men in handcuffs that stretched from a prisoner transport bus parked at the curb right into the shop. Welcome to Saturday night on the “Deuce.”

Built in 1903 by noted architects Henry Herts and Hugh Tallants the New Amsterdam included an eleven-story office building and two playhouses, the 1700 plus seat two-balcony main stage and the nearly 700 seat roof-garden theater. Described as

an architectural gem by critics this grand art-noveau masterpiece not only possessed beauty but also the most advanced mechanical stage ever built.

Sitting with Staulcup I realized we did not come here for the movie. The building had top billing. Worn and ragged and decades past its glory days Staulcup unveiled its magnificence long hidden under layers and years of neglect. He raved about its perfect acoustics and unobstructed views, cantilevered boxes, elegant friezes, intricate plaster relief panels, huge stage with elevators capable of moving sections up and down 33 feet. He described the leather-upholstered banquettes in the clubroom, the richly designed lady’s boudoir, the illustrious paintings and the spectacular mural of Drama above the proscenium.

After about twenty minutes of his descriptive nonstop narrative he nudged me and said, “Come on.” He headed to the aisle at the far end of the theater where he turned and walked to the stage. When he reached the first row he made a right and continued to center stage and stopped.

I walked to the first row. I did not follow him. I knew better than to stand in front of a few hundred people watching TGIF in a theater on the “Deuce.” He turned to me and waved his white-gloved hand for me to join him. I shuffled forward and then froze. He waved again. “Oh man, I hope I survive,” I thought as I moved towards him.

Think of all the famous people who appeared on this stage,” he said when I reached him. His eyes widened and his hushed voice rose as he rattled off names: “Richard Mansfield, Marion Davies, W.C. Fields.”

After the third name I heard nothing. My mind blocked out everything he said. He continued rolling out names: “Fanny Brice, Basil Rathbone, Will Rodgers, Marilyn Miller, Fred and Adele Astaire, Bela Lugosi, Bob Hope, Fred MacMurray, Ziegfeld’s Follies.”

Although thrilled to stand facing this glorious and historical place I said to myself,  “This is crazy. We should return when no one is here.”

Back then the Deuce and this one-block strip had a higher crime rate than many city precincts.

Several years before I saw the movie Shaft at a nearby theater with a tough and hostile crowd. A fight broke out. My friend and I squeezed underneath our seats as bottles went airborne.

Oblivious to how I felt Staulcup continued.

In black cape and large wide brim Cyrano De Bergerac hat with a black satin band and white feather, angled to one side partially covering his face, he pointed his cane from one end of the theater to other. I think he described the lavish cantilevered boxes, the spectacular domed ceiling, and the theaters elliptical shape.

Finally something seeped through. I heard the words “Last Dance” from TGIF’s hit song on the same name sung by Donna Summer.

Last dance

Last dance for love

Yes, it's my last chance

For romance tonight

“Last Dance, Last Dance” bounced over and over in my mind except the words changed to “Last Chance to Live.”

I scanned the crowd intently waiting for a Malt liquor bottle, or a bullet to fly our way or for someone to rush the stage with a club or a knife. We stood there for 45 seconds, maybe 60, maybe longer. It felt like an eternity.

When Staulcup pointed his cane to his right hundreds of pairs of eyes followed. When he pointed left eyes again followed. When he swung his cane to the ceiling all heads bobbed up. But amazingly nothing happened that night.

A week later a shooting occurred outside the theater.

I had my first and last theater tour with Staulcup.

Staulcup left New York in the mid-nineties. He returned to Gloucester County. He died in 1996 at the age of 63.

Photos by Rudi Papiri; Carousel photo from Full House Antiques

Editor’s Note:

Keith Staulcup’s carousel photo is available for $3500 at the following link: http://stores.ebay.com/FullHouseAntiques1407/_i.html?_nkw=carousel+&_cqr=true&_nkwusc=crousel&_sid=35736815&_rdc=1:

New Amsterdam: After years of decay the Disney Corporation with support from NYC and the 42nd Street Redevelopment Corporation spent $36 million to restore the New Amsterdam. Today it is once again the city’s most beautiful theater. The completely restored theater officially reopened with the concert King David in May 1997. The blockbuster play Lion King opened there in November of that year. It remained until 2006 when Mary Poppins took over the space.

West 51st: Now home to 12 restaurants, a boutique Hotel, the Washington Jefferson, and multi-million dollar brownstones. Tout Va Bien is the sole surviving French restaurant.

It is also home to a Single Room Occupancy hotel, St. Paul’s Chapel, a rescue mission and soup kitchen, and the Alexander Abraham Residence, a women’s shelter.

Garden Hardware: A Family Shop is the Nuts and Bolts of Hell's Kitchen 

When Bob Orgel moved his store, Garden Hardware, from Eighth to Tenth Avenue in October 2005, it marked another change to hell's Kitchen ever-shifting landscape.

Garden Hardware, founded by his grandfather Nathan Mandell and his father Bertram, opened in 1955.

His family’s presence on Eighth Avenue dates back even before ten. His grandmother Fay, a sharp businesswoman, bought the three-story building near 48^th Street, which housed the business, in the early 1940's. She also owned a brownstone at 306 West 48th Street. The backyard abutted the store, and housed the popular Swiss restaurant Mont Blanc, which has since moved across the street.

She opened Fay's corset shop. It closed shortly after World War II when this accoutrement went out of fashion. The store remained vacant for a couple of years before the family converted it to a hardware store.

Hell’s Kitchen has had several "rows" or themed blocks. Two of the city's most popular venues, Restaurant and Theater Rows are still thriving. Eighth Avenue had its own unofficial "mini row" featuring hardware stores. This ended when Orgel moved his business.

At one time at least six hardware stores operated on Eighth Avenue or its side streets. Each one had carved its own niche. W.H. Silver near 50th Street specialized in the movie and film trade; West End Hardware, located just off Eighth on 48^th served industrial customers; Longacre, located at the current site of the Food Emporium, at 49^th, supplied the old Madison Square Garden, then across the avenue at what is now World Wide Plaza; Silver and Sons, near West 45th catered to the Broadway theaters; and Times Square Hardware on the northwest corner of 42nd, which housed a bank for many years, now a 24/7 Duane Reade.

His grandfather and father carried specialty products for the hospital, hotel and restaurant industries. They also had a large client base of midtown office workers and westside residents.

Different businesses often require specific types of hardware. "The businesses we supplied though different had similar needs. We handled plumbing, electrical supplies plus pieces for doors, tables, bathrooms and so forth. You name it. We had it. We carried the oddball stuff they could only find here. After all, "What is a restaurant? It is a glorified hotel," Orgel said.

Garden Hardware has built a solid reputation over the years. Among their clients are top tier restaurants like Le Bernardin and The Four Seasons. It also supplied the famous Mama Leone's, once the busiest eatery in the country. It closed in the early 90's. Garden still supplies the parent company Restaurant Associates.

In the mid-90's, with the demise of Silver & Sons, Garden Hardware added the Broadway theaters to its list of clients.

When asked which shows and theaters have accounts with him Orgel said, "All of them. We do every single Broadway show, several off-Broadway and some TV and movie productions." He cites Le Miz and Phantom as his first shows.

The late Mickey Fox, a theatrical carpenter and stagehand, gave Orgel his entree to Broadway.

"One day Mickey called and said he needed a few things and that I should start stacking supplies for stagehands," Orgel said.  "Shortly after that Mickey faxed over his list. It turned out to be forty pages long. The pages kept coming and coming. Many of the things he needed I had never heard of before. And at that time I had twenty years in the business. The theatrical industry calls it by their name, and we in hardware had a different term for it.

"For example they call a cable clamp a Crosby. We say eye bolt, they say shoulder eye bolt, which actually is a much higher rated item," he added.

Orgel began working at the store part-time at 18. He made deliveries and got to know the neighborhood. His mother had lived on West 49th Street and had attended P.S. 17 just around the corner from the store. When Orgel, who grew up in Queens and Nassau County, finished college at the New York Institute of Technology, he began working full-time. Although he studied architecture for a time and then advertising he felt destined for the business.

Garden is an old-fashioned city hardware store filled with nuts, bolts, wrenches, screwdrivers, locks, paints and all the important things needed to maintain, repair or build your home or business. It is not the place where you walk around with a shopping basket. The aisles are cluttered with merchandise. The ceiling high shelves are packed with thousands of items. It is the place to go when you cannot find what you want anywhere else, or where you should have gone to in the first place.

Orgel’s knowledge in hardware supplies and repair is impressive. He is soft-spoken and humble but he knows-it-all and readily dispenses advice and the steps to complete a project, big or small, when asked. He is Hell’s Kitchen’s answer to WNYC radio “how-to home repair” gurus Al and Larry Ubell.

A slim 40-story glass tower now fills the old Garden Hardware site. The building remains unoccupied and has never housed a tenant. After all it is difficult to replace the Orgel family and their business.

Garden Hardware and Supply Company: 701 Tenth Avenue New York 10036;  212-247-2889; opened Mon-Sat.

JOE ZITO: Walking The Beat With The Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Historian

Walk Ninth Avenue with Joe Zito and let him transport you back in time. How far back he takes you depends on the blocks and the buildings you pass. He can whisk you seventy, ninety, one hundred fifty years back in time. Mr. Zito is not a time traveler nor is he a magician but he is a master at unraveling the history of old buildings. When you see a dilapidated tenement built in the mid-eighteen hundreds, he sees craftsmanship and beauty underneath years of neglect.

Zito, a "lover of cities has studied architectural history almost forty years. Known as  "Clinton's Historian" after the New York City neighborhood where he resides, Zito has written a column for the local community newspaper The Clinton Chronicle since 1999. Clinton or Hell's Kitchen is a one-time rough neighborhood stretching from 34th to 59th Streets. When Zito first started researching the area's buildings and history few visitors ventured west of Eight Avenue.

He has conducted walking tours, lectures and slide shows at the Brooklyn Museum, The Municipal Arts Society, NYU, community centers, and The New York Public Library branches at the Science, Industry and Business on West 34th at Madison Avenue, and at Columbus near 51st street on Tenth Avenue. He often lectured at the old Donnell branch and once gave an excellent lecture comparing London and New York architecture.

He has led tours in downtown Brooklyn and in Manhattan from the Financial District to Harlem. "I have taken groups to Kleindeutschland. Few people know where that is," Zito, laughed referring to what was once the third largest German speaking community in the world, located from 14th to Houston, to the East River.

Three years ago I stood along traffic clogged Ninth Avenue with Zito, then 95 years old. Unfazed by the sweltering heat of this late August afternoon, layered with exhaust fumes from vans and buses blocking the intersection in front of us Zito, who packs more energy and enthusiasm than people half his age walked over two miles that day, and unveiled his secret world of sculptured faces, angels, winged-lions, nymphs, arched serpents, renaissance arches, Victorian turrets all of which decorate buildings in Clinton. He also offered answers to buildings I often stopped to admire but knew nothing about. He praised the beauty of two buildings he saw for the first time while taking a mental snapshot of their location and architectural details. Within a week Zito would know everything about these buildings.

He rhapsodizes poetically on these forgotten gems. The wail of emergency vehicle sirens and the deafening sounds generated by the construction sites we passed did not distract him from talking about Florentine palazzos, and Greek mythology, images he uses to describe his buildings.

Zito became interested in architecture near the end of his thirty-year NYPD career. Vacations to Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Washington with Joan, his late wife of 55 years, spurred his interest. "We planned trips as vacation/learning experiences. We studied architecture and cultural history," he said. "I learned how style connects with history."

Walking and his keen attention to detail harken back to his days as a beat patrolman in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He also worked in the police commissioner's office and the detective's division. Rising to the rank of Captain, he served briefly at the 16th Precinct on West 47th, now Ramon Aponte Playground. A modest man he downplayed his last post as commander of 200 personnel at a Staten Island precinct. "We rescued a lot of cats from trees," he said. "I felt like a sheriff in a small town."

He grew up in Brooklyn and attended New Utrecht High, then graduated from Fordham University during the depression. "There were no jobs. Times were tough," he said. He got a job as a rewrite man and copyreader for a racing newspaper. "I read for mistakes,” he said. "And The Encyclopedia of New York has plenty."

When the paper he worked for in Boston folded Zito joined the NYPD. After retiring in 1972 he took art and literature classes at NYU and assisted his professors with class tours. He has lectured ever since. When he moved to Clinton 23 years ago Napoleon LeBrun's Sacred Heart of Jesus Roman Catholic Church on 51^st street just off Tenth Avenue street first captured his attention. "The deep red brick blends beautifully with the terra cotta and light-colored stone arches," he said.

His late daughter, Donna, a nurse at Roosevelt Hospital, told him about St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church on West 46^th east of Seventh Avenue. Designed by Pierre LeBrun, Napoleon’s son, Zito applauds the use of ornamental brick and terra cotta figures on the facade.

Zito specialty is pre-law tenements. Two of his favorites are the 1886 Werner building, #787 Ninth Avenue, home of the  "Green Men" - the four stone masks of Greek mythology that adorn the building’s second floor. Years of neglect have tarnished its grandeur. "It is as beautiful a building as you will find on Fifth or Park Avenues." Zito said. The second is Stanford White's elegant 1887 Wanaque (photo r), a French Flat, and forerunner to the apartment house,  a residence used 
by Fountain House.

When asked how he prepares, Zito replied, "I visit the sight, I read extensively and I research.  He added, "I remember what a brilliant policewoman once said  'review, review, review.'" 
I never skim the surface. I enjoy digging deep. It helps to have a

passion for what you do."

Please visit Joe Zito’s blog: http://joezitonyc.blogspot.com/

Photo top: Joe Zito standing in front of the site of  Stillman's  gym - 300 West 55th St. - where Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano and others trained.

Photo bottom: Wanaque - 359 West 47th St.  Photos by Rudi Papiri

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