Versatile Gothic Hall

This wonderful engraving of Gothic Hall, at Broadway and Street in New York City, as it could be seen in 1851, is from a periodical called The American Review. In 1851, it was being used as a medical Depot by a Dr. Rogers.

Dr. Rogers was known for his Syrup of Liverwort, Tar and Canchalagua, a cough remedy which he advertised in 1852 with a laudatory poem which begins:

Unnumbered cures! Unrivaled sales! The common cry - "It never fails!" Proclaim North, South, and East and West Of all Cough-curatives - it's the best!

Dr. Rogers and some other doctors also sold, from Gothic Hall, something called the Porous Water Filter, because they felt that Croton water (from the 42nd Street Croton Reservoir, future site of the New York Public Library) was "injurious to health."

The Porous Filter ad lists Dr. J. Kearney Rogers [also seen spelled as Rodgers] (1793-1857) as one of its advocates: this Dr. Rogers was a distinguished physician, one of the founders of the New York Eye and Ear Dispensary. Perhaps the cough-syrup man was his son, or just shared the same name and wished to profit by the association.

Gothic Hall was originally known as Masonic Hall. It was built in 1826, by and for the Freemasons. When its cornerstone was laid in that year, thousands watched. The Freemasons spared no expense - Gothic Hall cost them $50,000 to build, and in the early years it was a grand building indeed. The front was 50' wide and 70' high, made of "eastern gray granite" with a large elaborate Gothic window 22' high and 10' wide. The upper gallery was decorated in the style of the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey (the Times says it is at Buckingham Palace, but I think they meant Westminster).

When Gothic Hall was torn down in 1856, A.T. Stewart's department store, the "Marble Palace," was built there and on the adjoining lots, with a street address of 280 Broadway (image at right).

Gothic Hall had come down in the world since the Freemasons had left it. It had not only housed Dr. Rogers' Depot, but had housed (at some point) "the biggest bowling alley in the world." Turner's shooting-gallery was there in the early 1850s; in 1852, a man coming out of the gallery let off his gun and accidentally shot a pedestrian. Dr. Rogers must have been one of several tenants, as he was also there at this time.

And by the time Gothic Hall was about to be demolished in 1856, the Times said that a canvas picture (of some unspecified salacious nature) was hung over the facade, in order to attract people "into [the] disgraceful exhibitions, of the free-love order, which of late were held there."

I was curious about this, and did a little delving into the New York Times on-line archives. I'm going to leave you with a little cliffhanger, and tell you what I could find out about scandalous goings-on in Gothic Hall - in Part the Second, later this week.

Sources

"Special Notices," New York Times, Jan. 26, 1852, p. 1. [poetic ad]
"Special Notices," New York Times, Sept. 7, 1852, p. 1. [ad for Porous Glass Filter]
"A Man Shot In Broadway," New York Times, Sept. 25, 1852, p. 6.
[Untitled], New York Times, Oct. 26, 1855, p. 3.
"Gothic Hall," New York Times, May 26, 1856, p. 3.

Image of Henry VII Chapel from Wikipedia, as is the image of Stewart's Marble Palace.