History in Starbucks: 910 Manhattan Avenue

This member of the coffee house chain, at 910 Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, was once the Chopin Theatre, named after the great Polish composer, something the surrounding Polish community could appreciate. The 500-seat house was opened as the American Theatre, hence the eagle on the top. It was always a second-run house.

There used to be a Burger King in the ground-floor space, which I guess is worse than a Starbucks, and then after that a Quest Diagnostics, which is better. Upstairs there was a billiard parlor, then a bingo hall, then a dance club.

History in a Starbucks: 1841 Broadway

Did you ever hear of the Automobile District? Me neither, but apparently it was along Broadway in the west 50s and 60s during the early part of the 20th century, including 1841 Broadway, now home to a Columbus Circle Starbucks. If you were in the auto game and didn't own a building along this stretch, you were nobody! In 1921, a company leased 1841, the then eight-story building that stood at the northwest corner of Broadway and 60th, to devote it "to the automobile trade." Don't know which company.

Had this Starbucks existed anytime between 1901 and 1935, coffee drinkers would have looked across the street at the long-slung Circle Theatre, a vaudeville house that was one of the most northerly Broadway theatres every built. During a theatre labor dispute in 1935, the lobby was blown up. Now that's entertainment! After that the theatre was sold and remodeled as a roller rink.

Can't be sure from an old photo I have, but it looks like, during the early years of the Circle, and presumedly before the auto era, 1841 was a restaurant. Would make sense. Even back then, I'm sure folks wanted to eat before and/or after the show.

History in a Starbucks: 1500 Broadway

The land on which this Starbucks now sits, at the southeast corner of Broadway and 43rd, once carried the Barrett House Hotel, where future playwright Eugene O'Neill was born on Oct. 16, 1888. If was only right he should be born in a Broadway hotel. His father was the actor James O'Neill, a once promising talent who became a hack, throwing away his career by performing the same money-making play, "The Count of Monte Cristo," across the nation, year after year. He was, in fact, playing the part in New York when Eugene was born.

The Barrett was only five years old when the O'Neills took a room. It was opened by two brothers, William C and Hooper C. Barrett. William died suddenly of blood poisoning following an operation in 1893. He was 46. By 1901, Hooper had lost control of the hotel and become a bankrupt. Hooper died in 1936.

The Barrett later became the Cadillac Hotel. There was a fire in its restaurant in 1937. The next year, there was a small fire of "undetermined origin" in a linen closet. Sounds like someone wanted to burn the hotel down. The eight-story building was finally razed in 1940. At the time, it was called "old" and a neighborhood "landmark." If Eugene O'Neill cared, he was still alive to see his birthplace come down.

History in a Starbucks: World Wide Plaza

There are at least two Starbucks in the World Wide Plaza complex, that giant highlighter in the sky that erupts upward from the Eighth Avenue block between 49th and 50th. I doubt many of the java sippers know they're sitting at the former site of Madison Square Garden—third edition, the one between the buildings which was actually on Madison Square, and the ugly eyesore we know today near Macy's.

The Garden lived here from 1925 to 1966. Some bad things happened here, like a rally for Hitler on Feb. 20, 1939. And some good things, like Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" is a poured-on dress to President Kennedy at his 45th birthday party, on May 19, 1962. Lotta boxing happened there. Lotta hockey. The Rangers started at this Garden. Whole lotta nothing happens there now, unless you count "Naked Boys Singing," which performs down the street.

History in a Starbucks: 47th and Broadway

I here continue my search for history and meaning in our fair City's many stupid Starbuck's franchises.

This Starbuck's, occupying a corner of the giant Morgan Stanley tower near Times Square, occupies land once owned by The Strand, a huge movie palace opened in 1914. It's architect was the Thomas Lamb, who built many of the theatres in Times Square, including the nearby Cort and Mark Hellinger. It sat 2,989 people. The Strand boasted a mix of stage acts and movies in the beginning.
The legit stuff was dropped in 1929, but brought back in the late '30s. The joint was renamed Warner Theatre in 1951. It was soonafter renovated and renamed Warner Cinerama.

In 1968, the theatre became a triplex. In 1987, the cinema finally succumbed and was torn down.

History in a Starbucks: 38 Park Row

Whenever Starbucks opens a franchise below 14th Street in Manhattan, the address can't help but be loaded with history. Case in point: 38 Park Row.

This is the Potter Building. It is the second to go by that name. The first, home to the New York World, went down in flames in 1882. Mr. Potter smarted up with his replacement structure. It's the first building in New York to have used fireproof cast and pressed terracotta in its ornamental facade. It was also the first to use a structural steel framework. And there it is, 124 years later, still standing.

Being so close to City Hall, the Potter Building was chock full of lawyers. And where you find lawyers, you find scandal. The annals of New York history seem to be replete with stories of 38 Park Row legal eagles being indicted and jailed, or committing suicide before the authorities had a chance to do so.

In 1905, lawyer Herbert Valentine, with offices at 38 Park Row, shot himself in the head at the Hotel St. Andrew, Seventy-second Street and Broadway. Sometimes, lawyers cause other people to commit suicide. In 1915, "laywer-actor" (what the hell is that) Lorlys Elton Roger caused some women a whole lot of trouble. Already married in to a lady in Chicago, the serial philanderer set up house in Manhattan with one Ida Sniffen Walters-Rogers and her two kiddies. When Roger's first wife found out, he decided to go back to her, causing Ida to despair, poison her two children and attempt suicide with bichloride of mercury. She was successful in the first task, not so much with the second. Roger was divorced by his real wife and indicted as a white slaver. Ida was tried for the deaths of her kids and found insane.

A more curious bit of trouble for a 38 Park Row lawyer happened in 1902 when Mrs. Frederick L.C. Keating, wife of wealthy attorney Keating, started stealing a bunch of stuff for no reason, at places like B. Altman. When arrested by a detective, she denied having shoplifted, but then confessed. She blamed her transgression on "The Girl and the Judge," a play by Clyde Fitch she had seen on Broadway a few weeks before, in which the central character was an old mother who shoplifted. "Ever since I've been unable to keep myself from stealing anything I could carry away from the stores." Relatives said she was suffering from "nervous prostation."

History in a Starbucks: 164 Smith

This, the first Starbucks to blight Smith Street in Brooklyn, was once the site of Whalen Brothers, "The Universal Home Providers," "The Big Credit Store." (You can see it back there on the left side of the picture.) You could get furniture, clothing, carpets, everything here. And all goods would be "delivered in unmarked wagons!" Hot-diggety! They were also known for their "extraordinary" $3.95 Parlor Suit Sale. (What's a Parlor Suit?)

The Whalens weren't so nice, it seems. There was a sensational case back in 1885 where a washerwoman named Anna McAuliffe bought a set of furniture, valued at $80, on the installment plan. (Whalen heavily advertised these plans, which let you put $5 down on $100 worth of goods.) She paid all of it except $9, but since that portion was late, four burly men from the store came to her home to collect the goods. Mrs. McAuliffe, with her children present, began to fight over a chair a man was removing. The man called his buddies and they had a little fun by using the chair to pin the woman against the wall, laughing while they did it. Mrs. McAuliffe screamed, gave them a dollar and promised to pay the balance on Monday, and they desisted. But the lady felt pains in her abdomen. After being examined by a doctor, she (Jesus Christ!) died.

The men told police they had been "gentle." Both Whalen Brothers proved to be "out of town." There was a trial in 1886, but I couldn't discover the outcome.

History in a Starbucks

Recently, I wrote about a Starbucks that lives on Astor Place at the exact location where the Astor Place Opera House once was, and where, in 1849, a bloody theatre riot (yes, theatre riot) occured. Within a day of posting this item, another article appeared telling how a Starbucks now held the ground where mobster Albert Anastasia got slaughtered while sitting in a barber chair.

This got me thinking. Perhaps the unrelieved visual and spiritual torture of seeing our City pockmarked with kudzu-like chains such as Starbucks would be lessened if we knew something of the history that once took place at the addresses where, today, candy-flavored coffee products are dolled out. Hey, one must find one's silver linings where one can.

You've got to start somewhere, so I'm beginning with the Starbucks in downtown Brooklyn at 50 Court Street on the corner of Joralemon—a particularly busy franchise, as it happens.

On this spot once stood a Chemical Bank and Trust Company branch where, in 1952, was employed a 36-year-old teller named Martin G. Olsen. A judge would later term Olsen an "ordinary" man. But his behavior on Jan. 29 of that year was not ordinary. Leaving for his lunch break, he took with him a plain brown paper bag in which was not a sandwich, but $32,224. With that, a nationwide manhunt began, with the papers breathlessly following Olsen's nifty disappearing act.

By March, Olsen, still unfound, was indicted in absentia. Finally, in July, he was located on the other side of the country, in Los Angeles. The man said debts drove him to embezzle the cash. The money represented 10 years salary for the teller. He was sentenced to two and one-half years in a Federal Penitentiary by Chief Judge Robert A. Inch, who did not give an inch.

So, think, Starbucks flunkies, before you take that extra long lunch break.