Two Mechanics in Old New York

In 1788, New York City celebrated the the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, and the artisans of the city participated in one of the parades. In an article for the journal Material Culture, Thomas J. Schlereth wrote, “…the city’s shipwrights constructed floats mounted on wheels and outfitted to look like full-rigged vessels. Blacksmiths shops atop wagons carried working smiths toiling at their anvils and forge fires. Carpenters, instrument-makers, and printers demonstrated to all who lined the parade route the manual and muscular dimensions of their crafts.”*

The Carpenter on the Lower West Side

This is a photo that makes the hearts of many woodworkers go a-flutter. Amidst the signs and the assembled men one figure stands out: the strapping carpenter with mutton-chop whiskers and wooden plane in hand framed by the open doorway on the second floor of 3 Hudson St. It looks as though he has the carpenter’s square paper hat pushed back on his head, and unlike some of the other business owners in formal suits and top hats, he wears his shop apron. When this picture-taking business is over he will get back to work.

There isn’t a tremendous amount of information about J.V. Outcalt but there are a few details, and we can get an idea of the nature of his working neighborhood.

Numbers 1-5 Hudson St. are a short block, perhaps all of 165 feet, at the convergence of Hudson, Chambers and West Broadway (the 1865 photo was taken from Chambers Street looking down Hudson).

In the autumn of 1851, the Hudson Railroad Depot opened (on the map it is in the bottom, middle). The Girard House Hotel is the large building in the drawing. Horse-drawn traffic was heavy in this area with carts and carriages, and horses pulling arriving train carriages to the next station on the rail line. A photo from the other side of the street provides a better idea of the appearance of the area.

On the other side of that nice and clean pastel drawing is our block on Hudson Street. It is easy to imagine how busy this area would have been with goods moving by carts and people moving on horse-drawn trolley cars on grade-level tracks. Let’s not think too much about the amount of manure on the street, in the summer, the heat and humidity…

Moving from left to right in the photo, there is Ridley’s Candy (established in 1806) on Chambers Street (second entrance faces Hudson). Next, is the five-story brick building at 1 Hudson St. occupied by wholesale druggists Harral, Risley & Kitchen. In the 1865 photo we only see a small slice of this building on the far left.

Until a found a photo with higher resolution turned up it was impossible to figure out the name of the carpenter at 3 Hudson St. This second photo tells us J.V. Outcalt was occupying this property sometime between 1857 and 1860. What exactly is in the empty lot between numbers 1 and 3 Hudson? It could be anything from a small shop used by a tradesman to an outhouse, it’s hard to tell. It is not apparent if another business occupies the ground floor of 3 Hudson or if Outcalt has the entire building. On the far right is one edge of 5 Hudson and the occupant is a house and sign painter. It is likely the same business as seen in the 1865 photo.

In 1865 this short block had the addition of 2 Hudson where Henry Croker, Jr. opened his printing business. How was an even numbered address put on this odd-numbered block? First, there is no Hudson Street across the street, it’s West Broadway over there. Second, this was New York in the 1860s, so what are you going to do about it?

John Peake, the druggist, now occupies the ground floor of No. 3 and Leonard Ring (established 1848) has his house and sign painting business on the upper floors of No. 5. Using a jeweler’s loupe revealed the Sample Room on the ground floor of No. 5 was not part of the painting business. It is O’Brien’s Sample Room (just visible on the awning), where according to the sign behind the left-side door, one could sample ale and probably spirits. Well, that explains the barrel at curbside and the jugs arranged under the window.

Based on a poster advertising Aug. 3, 1865, as the date for the annual picnic of the Mutual Society Club we have an approximate date of the photo. The Civil War was over and New York, already experiencing a steady population growth, was about to take off. In 1840, the population count was around 313,000, by 1850 it was 516,00, by 1860 814,000 and in 1870 it was 942,000. Around the time of the 1865 photo the west side of Lower Manhattan had a population per square mile density of 93,500. People lived and worked cheek by jowl. Lower Manhattan was dense with businesses and boarding houses.

In 1854, No. 3 Hudson St. was occupied by Allen & MacDowell, carpenters. They don’t show up in later business directories. Peter Bertine, carpenter, is listed at 3 Hudson in the 1856/57 directory. J.V. Outcalt seems to be the next occupant, but is not found in the available city directories until the 1862/63 edition. There were competing city directories and he could be listed in an other edition.

In a later listing he uses his first name, John, and in the 1871/72 city directory his full name, John Voorhees Outcalt, is given and he has formed a partnership with George Youngs, a builder.

The business is Youngs & Outcalt, Builders. The 1871/72 directory included an advertisement for the business. In the city directories George Youngs also has his own listing with both addresses.

George Youngs began his listings in the city directory around the same time as Outcalt. Another change for Outcalt was his home address, moving from East Seventh to West 55th Street. He may have gotten married, or was already married and with business more successful was able to move.

This photo was taken the year prior to the Outcalt and Youngs partership and was taken at the front of our Hudson Street block. It gives a better idea of the street traffic running at the front of the building. The triangle on the lower right is now the present-day Bogardus Garden.

In the 1875/76 city directory a Peter I.V. Outcalt, with no occupation noted, is listed directly below John V. Outcalt. This may be his son working at 3 Hudson. In the next year’s directory Peter I.V. is listed as a builder and he continues to be listed until 1880.

The 1877/78 directory has the last listing for J.V. Outcalt, carpenter, with the Hudson and Seventh Street addresses. He is not listed in the 1878/79 directory, however George Youngs is, but not Youngs & Outcalt. It is likely John V. Outcalt died sometime in 1878 or 1879 (city business directories run from June to the following May). In the 1880/81 directory there is a listing for Mary H. Outcalt, widow of John. As a side note, in all the directories checked no other John or J. Outcalt was listed. Based on the photo dated between 1857-1860 and the city business listings John Voorhees Outcalt had his shop at 3 Hudson St. for somewhere between 18-22 years. That’s a long run in a city changing at a rapid pace.

Another thing of note is Leonard Ring, the house and sign painter at 5 Hudson, was listed at a different address in the 1875/76 directory and in the 1877/78 and 1878/79 directories he is not found. His business was started in 1848 and it is quite possible he died within a year or two of Outcalt.

Get your hankies out for this next part. Sometime in the late 1890s Ridley’s Candy and the building at 1 Hudson St. were gone and in their place the Irving National Bank was built.

An additional change for the area was the elevation of the train tracks (dismantled decades later) and I decided to not make you depressed by showing you any more photos of what replaced Nos. 3 and 5 in later decades, or today. The Irving National Bank building eventually took on other names and today is One Hudson and filled with luxurious TriBeCa condos.

Let’s cheer up and go over to the Lower East Side and meet the other Mechanic.

The Ship Joiner on the Lower East Side

Daniel Coger was listed as a shipbuilder at 184 Front St. in the 1855/56 directory. The following year he (as a joiner) and Thomas Hanes (carpenter) were now at 480 Water St. and this probably marked the year he first owned his shop. Did he buy the shop with the ship’s wheel on the roof or did he put it there himself?

Daniel Coger is the only Coger listed at 480 Water St. until his son, John Jr. joins the business as a joiner in the 1864/1865 city directory. The photo above, taken in 1865, may mark the year the business became Daniel Coger & Son, certainly an important event for the family. Thomas Hanes is pictured to the left in the photo, at the front of the small brick shop.

These photos of workman assembled before their shops were a true event and possibly the only time they would have their photo taken, something that can be hard to believe in today’s selfie-drenched world. An effort was made to turn up in your best clothes and that might entail adding a vest over your work shirt and dusting down your trousers. The proprietor might but on a jacket and top hat. Shop goods would be positioned at the front door and if you had a wagon it was cleaned up ready to be photographed. The photographer would sell the photos on cartes-de-visite to be used as advertisements. And what must it have felt like when the photographer arrived with the finished product and for the first time seeing oneself in a photograph?

The shop at 480 Water St. (marked with the ship’s wheel) and its adjacent lumberyard are close to the Pike Slip that ran down to the water. A portion of the lumberyard can be seen on the right in the photo.

The group photo of 1865 may also mark the 30th year (possibly more) of Daniel Coger’s work as a ship joiner, for there is a Daniel Coger listed in Longworth’s Directory in the 1835/36 edition.

I couldn’t find a photo of the Pike Slip but did come across one of the Coenties Slip, which was further down the waterfront and near the Battery. It provides a glimpse of the kind and number of ships on the waterfront and where Coger & Son worked when 0utside of their shop.

Daniel Coger is listed in the city directories through the 1878/79 edition. In the following year only John Jr. is found. It is likely Daniel died. If so, he was a business owner for at least 22 years and before owning his shop he would have apprenticed and worked for others. Altogether he could have easily worked for 40 or more years along the waterfront, living long enough for his son to join the business and succeed him.

John Jr. is listed as a joiner and remains at 480 Water St. through 1883. In the 1884/85 city directory, he is at the same address but is now listed as a truckman. When he joined his father’s business the population of New York was around 814,000 and 20 years later, when he was no longer or could no longer be a ship joiner, the city population was 1.2 million. He saw the growth of Brooklyn shipyards shift work away from Lower Manhattan and at the same time great changes in the modes of transportation.

To pick up again on Thomas Schlereth’s Material Culture article, wheres the artisans of New York participated in and were honored in the 1788 celebrations things were vastly different in the 1853 New York Crystal Palace Exhibition of Art, Sciences, and Manufactures,  “…President Franklin Pierce opened the fair but the many artisans who had constructed the fair site and crafted the objects on display were not, as Horace Greeley observed, invited to share in the inaugural ceremonies in any appropriate or official way. Their products and processes were celebrated, but not their persons. By the 1850s industrialization had begun its impact…”

John V. Outcalt and Daniel Coger both came up in their trades during the 1850s and by the mid-1860s owned their own shops. They worked as they were taught and followed long-held traditions in a world that was rapidly changing. On the door steps of their shops they saw carriages replaced with trolleys, rail lines that ran to the state capital, sail competing with steam and metal replacing wood. The city directories indicate they had relatively long and stable business lives, but they were close to the end of the line.

These old photos intrigue us and make us yearn to know more. We have just a few details about their work-carpenter, builder, joiner, shipwright and where they worked. We want to visit their shops, the lumberyards, hear their stories and ask loads of questions. And we want to know the individual.

— Suzanne Ellison

*”The New York Artisan in the Early Republic: A Portrait from Graphic Evidence, 1787-1853” by Thomas J. Schlereth, Modern Culture, Vol.20, No.1.