In the last year of his life, 1838, Hoboken patriarch Colonel John Stevens created the Hoboken Land & Improvement Company to manage his family’s real estate holdings, and in the decades that followed, the Company gradually developed properties on the main thoroughfare—first in the southern end of Washington Street and then uptown. Notable among its building projects was the Elysian Apartments, built in the late 1890s after an earlier set of apartments on the 1200 block was destroyed by fire. The new residential buildings, built with distinctive yellow bricks chosen by the architect, Charles Fall, were soon dubbed the “Yellow Flats.”
Hetty Green, known as the "Witch of Wall Street", 1905 ca.
Hetty Green circa 1905
But for four years, from 1904 to 1908, the Washington Street apartment complex favored by Hetty Green was also home to another accomplished American: Pianist and composer Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins, who had been one of the best known African American musicians of the nineteenth century. Born into slavery, and blind at birth, he had been hired out by his enslaver to a concert promoter, when his prodigious musical talents became clear. He was put on tour throughout his childhood and teenage years, and he became the first African American to give a command performance at the White House.
Following the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment that freed all enslaved people in the United States, the management of “Blind Tom” was eventually assumed by his former enslaver’s daughter-in-law, and Wiggins continued to perform on the concert circuit and in vaudeville. In 1904, after suffering partial paralysis, he retired from performing in public and moved with his custodian to the Yellow Flats in Hoboken. Neighbors were said to hear him playing the piano at all hours. He died in 1908, two months after a major stroke.
Interior photograph of the lounge at the YMCA, 1300 Washington Street, 1927.
YMCA lounge 20011260010
Photograph by Jean-Paul Picard
The "Yellow Flats"
Not long after the Yellow Flats were completed, Hetty Green moved in. The multi-millionaire, Gilded Age businesswoman and financier was described in the press as “the richest woman in America” and the “Wizard of Finance.” She was also an unsparing cheapskate, known for denying herself heat and hot water to save pennies, and for wearing the same black dress every day. When she moved to the Yellow Flats in Hoboken in 1898, she did so to avoid New York’s property taxes—though for years she willingly provided loans to keep the City of New York afloat, including a rescue during the bank panic of 1907. She remained a resident of the Yellow Flats until 1916, when she died in her son’s New York City home.
"Cyclone Galop"composed by Blind Tom (pseud. Thomas Wiggins). NY: Wm E. Marshall & Co. Copyright 1887 by Elise Bethune. 8pp folio printed sheet music arranged for piano. Engraved cover with portrait of Blind Tom.
Cyclone Galop sheet music cover
Interior photograph of the pool at the YMCA, 1300 Washington Street, 1927.
YMCA pool 20011260016
