![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/jewleystore574sixthavenueladiesmile.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAnd then there\u2019s this curiosity on the northeast corner of West 16th Street.<\/p>\n
Just four stories high, with a crowning cornice and a floor-to-ceiling show window across the second story, it\u2019s a tender jewel box that managed to survive intact on this stretch of the former Ladies Mile.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re a fan of the Gilded Age, you\u2019ve heard of Ladies Mile<\/a>\u2014an enclave between Broadway and Sixth Avenue and 10th to 23rd Streets where women of means could shop the fashions and furnishings on display in New York\u2019s \u201cpalaces of trade\u201d<\/a> like Arnold Constable, B. Altman, and Stern\u2019s.<\/p>\n On an average weekday, hordes of well-dressed women, some accompanied by maids and drivers, would pass this corner on their way to and from these grand emporiums. <\/p>\n With so much foot traffic, the corner made for the perfect place to construct a glittery jewelry store\u2014which the Knickerbocker Jewelry Company did in 1903.<\/p>\n The final building, completed in 1904, was rectangular-shaped, with the long end and its first floor show windows facing 16th Street (third image). <\/p>\n Architect Simon B. Eisendrath wisely made the most of the Sixth Avenue side, which sat directly in line with Sixth Avenue elevated train riders. The decorative elements and ornamentation conveyed style and class.<\/p>\n What was it like inside? A 1904 article in the Brooklyn Times Union<\/a> gushed over what it called one of the \u201cshow palaces\u201d of Manhattan.<\/p>\n The lights \u201cthrow in clear relief the magnificent chandeliers, the tinted posts looming up as did the Coliseum of olden times, an ivory and gold ceiling, the rotunda, with verd-antique<\/a> railings,\u201d reported the Times Union. <\/p>\n \u201cOut of town people never fail to visit this store to view the architectural beauties, the magnificent furnishings, the variety of jewels worthy of a king\u2019s ransom.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe basement is given up to art goods, the main floor to jewelry and gold goods,\u201d continued the Times Union, noting that the third floor featured an \u201cocularium\u201d where customers could have their eyes tested and fitted with glasses by a Dr. Freed, \u201camong the foremost oculists of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n Ladies Mile began to vanish by the 1910s, as department stores like Macy\u2019s relocated to Herald Square and Fifth Avenue in Midtown. <\/p>\n By 1905, the Knickerbocker Jewelry Company moved on from its jewel box as well, according to a Landmarks Preservation Commission report\u2014which doesn\u2019t note if the company opened a new store somewhere else in Manhattan or focused on its Brooklyn store across Fulton Street from Abraham & Straus<\/a>.<\/p>\n Perhaps the move was hastened by a robbery that same year. It was an inside job; police found $1,000 worth of jewelry in the East 13th Street home of an employee, according to the New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the depths of the Depression, a notice of dissolution of the Knickerbocker Jewelry Company was filed in 1931<\/a>. By 1940 (fourth image), the company\u2019s former store was occupied by a rug retailer.<\/p>\n Today, the jewel box houses a gym on its upper floors, At street level sits the old-school Hollywood Diner, luring in hungry and harried shoppers of contemporary Sixth Avenue\u2019s big-box stores and national retailers.<\/p>\n [Second image: Wikipedia; third image: 1896 painting by Alice Barber Stephens<\/a>; fourth image: New York Historical<\/a>; fifth image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services<\/a>]; sixth image: Wikipedia]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sixth Avenue above 14th Street is a hodge-podge stretch of Manhattan, with enormous buildings that once housed the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-358571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n