CHAPTER 7
Mr. Gluck bids fair to become christened the Santa Claus of America.
—NEW YORK AMERICAN
Leaving the “Cave” of the Hotel Astor for the thirtieth floor of the tallest building in the world felt like a major promotion for Gluck and his association. “From here he can keep an eye on every child in the world surely while he hammers on little horses and fashions speaking dolls,” one reporter imagined. “No newsboy on Park Row escapes him, and as for the children of commuters over in Jersey and the babies on the barges which tie up at the docks—well, to put it mildly, he knows their inmost thought.”
To help the group feel at home in its grand new headquarters—and attract additional visitors—Gluck borrowed the Joseph Kratina sculpture of Santa Claus from the Astor and displayed it in the office, inviting New Yorkers to come look at the bust made of five thousand children’s letters and to pick up a few fresh letters while there. Some forty new vice presidents—society ladies and leaders of groups as disparate as the Friday Afternoon Club, Bay Ridge Reading Club, and Women Probation Officers’ Association—moved about the new headquarters. These women oversaw much of the sorting and answering of the letters while Gluck continued to grow his list of “honorary vice presidents,” which now numbered more than one hundred, to include some of the most well-known names in the city. In addition to former New York governor Martin Glynn and Saks & Company founder Isadore Saks, Controller William Prendergast was now listed among the officers. Gluck apparently buried the hatchet with the man he had accused two months before of pompously announcing the Washington Market open so he could “see [his] name in print.” Now Gluck was happy to put his name in print.
The group’s volunteer leaders included seventy-five-year-old Sarah Barry. The Evening Mail’s Zoe Beckley, still Gluck’s chief cheerleader, lauded the recruitment of the matron. “Who says a woman, or a man either, has no place in the world’s work after youth is over?” Beckley asked about the “brisk, plump little women of the type that life’s troubles and disappointments enrich without embittering.” Gluck assured Beckley that he believed age an excellent indicator of experience. “I am for gray hairs every time,” he said.
Gluck took out ads in St. Nicholas Magazine and elsewhere promoting the group’s dazzling new headquarters. “Call and see how we play Santa Claus to poor children of two nations,” it urged. New this year, he secured a billboard at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifty-Third Street. Featuring an illustration of Santa and abutting a Budweiser beer sign, the billboard read: “Make some little kiddie’s heart happy for Christmas: We collect thousands of letters from the Post Office each year. Come get one and play Santa Claus, filling request direct.”
But the Santa Claus empire extended beyond the walls of the Woolworth. In addition to the executive office, Gluck opened a “field office” in the Hotel McAlpin, thanks to his continuing fund-raising for the US Boy Scout and its chief scout. On December 8, a Brooklyn office at the Hotel Clarendon opened under the direction of Mrs. Dearborn Adams, the fifty-two-year-old wife of a real-estate broker living on Sixth Avenue in Brooklyn. The proprietor, A. G. Wegge, provided the space to the group gratis.
Gluck claimed new branches in Cincinnati, Atlanta, Baltimore, Buffalo, and Boston. F. May Simpson, secretary of the Canadian branch, reported on November 28, at the group’s first 1915 session, that in its inaugural year the Toronto-based chapter had answered 2,783 letters. Margaret Lauriel Brown, the association’s national secretary, toured the United States on its behalf. She sent Gluck a telegram through Western Union from Chattanooga, Tennessee: “Have had successful trip all cities ready for Santa Claus.” The Santa Claus message spread.
Omaha introduced its own Santa Claus Association, partnering with the Omaha Daily News and a theater production to donate proceeds from the performance of a play called Puss Puss to the group. The Charleston, South Carolina, Santa Claus Association began publishing a list of “Santa Claus Assistants” and what each offered up to help the group: baseball gloves from Mrs. W. Way, toys from Louis Cohen, and a penny from Little Ann.
This careful accounting in Charleston pointed to the thinness of the financial reporting in New York City. Gluck announced at the start of the 1915 season that he had refined the system, cutting volunteers’ work in half while reducing postage charges by a third. Yet the group’s fundraising efforts were more aggressive than ever. Although he asserted that the association had minimal overhead, directly connecting donors and recipients, in the same conversation Gluck would say, “We would like to have donations of printing, postage stamps, and money from those who are in a situation to give.”
Specifically, the group needed funds for 50,000 two-cent stamps, he explained on December 10—the same amount requested in the group’s first year. Nine days later, these needs doubled. “[W]hile no begging would be done in this year’s campaign, 100,000 two-cent stamps were needed to carry it to a successful finish,” Gluck told the Tribune, claiming the group was now $3,000 in debt.
Where was all the money going? The cost of the billboard, advertisements, and thousands of sheets of stationery must add up, but the New York newspapers did not report how much was donated or where it went. Instead, the reporters became more manipulative than Gluck himself in urging readers to donate. “What are you going to do to bring Christmas cheer to some little trusting bit of humanity who still has all faith in the good old saint?” the Brooklyn Times asked its readers.
Brooklyn’s assistant postmaster Peter Cleary wanted to do his part. With his post office just across the street from the Hotel Clarendon, he made the daily trip to the group’s new office himself in order to drop off the Santa letters. Cleary would have happily forfeited the cost of the missing postage, but that would break official Post Office Department law.
So he met with a handful of postal officials to devise a better idea to save the association money: They would pay the postage themselves. “Clerks to Pay Postage” and “P.O. Men Aid Santa” the Brooklyn papers trumpeted upon hearing the news. By Christmas Eve, the Brooklyn postmen had proved so generous they ended up with enough extra donations to purchase twenty-five dinners for needy local families.
Even with the Brooklyn postage covered, Gluck continued asking for more money. “Of course we do need some volunteer subscriptions to carry on the office end of the work,” Gluck told a writer for the Evening Sun. “Stamps and money to buy more stamps are our chief needs just now. It isn’t hard to find big-hearted persons who are glad to take over one or more of the kiddies’ appeals, but we are rather put to it to defray the expenses of postage.” A boy named Melvin Spencer took Gluck up on his offer, breezing into the Woolworth with three thousand stamps in hand, offering them up—only if he could lick and stick them himself.
On December 16, Gluck headed back uptown to the Hotel Astor. He was there to speak before the monthly gathering of the Theatre Assembly of New York, which held its meetings in the hotel’s Grand Ballroom. He peeked out on an ocean of elegant women (estimates ranged from 1,200 to 3,000 attendees), each with her beribboned hat set primly on her lap. Latecomers stood in the back, hats remaining atop their heads. Gluck could spot a scattered man or child—but no open seats—among the flow of well-coiffed hair and delicate faces. Women filled the box seats to the sides and the gilded balcony at the back, with the ballroom’s mirrored doors creating the impression that the group went on into the next room and the next. Gluck had quite an audience.
After the Theatre Assembly’s president, Mrs. J. Christopher Marks, welcomed the hundreds of society ladies in attendance, she introduced her husband, who opened the program of performances with an organ recital of his own. The attendees then enjoyed a series of acts from stars of current Broadway shows: cellist Hans Kronold and fully costumed actors from the comedy Hobson’s Choice and opera Martha. Marguerite Namara, a lyric soprano making her Broadway debut in the operetta Alone at Last, sang the swelling and heartbreaking ballad “Pretty Edelweiss.” Though the twenty-seven-year-old remained an up-and-coming performer to the New York City crowd, composer Franz Lehár specifically wrote the role for her, which would launch her long and prolific career of musicals, films, and serious operas. As she sang, the attendees must have sensed that before them stood a star. Gluck waited patiently in the wings.
Among those taking in the show was twenty-one-year-old Symona Fermer Boniface. With striking brown eyes and dark hair, she fit in with the theatrical crowd. She personally knew a number of those in attendance, and had since she was a child. The daughter of George C. Boniface Sr., a playwright and actor since the early days of Broadway, she grew up in the world of theater. Eager to follow in her family’s footsteps, both as a writer and actress, Boniface was nonetheless fiercely independent, having moved out of her family home to live in the center of the theater district before going off to Vassar College, where she was now finishing her final year.
In town for Christmas break, she diverted herself with all things theater. But watching the theatrics on stage, Boniface may have wondered why these actors were up there, instead of her. Outside of several college performances and scattered writings, she took few stabs at joining her father’s profession. Her statement in the Vassarian yearbook captured the young woman’s outlook as adulthood advanced: “Symona is going on the stage one of these days, but before she does she believes in getting a broad education.” As she sat in the audience at the Hotel Astor, a man who would play an important role in this education strolled to center stage.
After a few enthusiastic words for the Actors Fund, Gluck described to the delighted crowd the workings of the Santa Claus Association. He explained that he was not there to ask the ladies in the audience for their money. There was something else they could do to greatly aid Santa Claus and for which they were particularly suited: Go to a show the next week. The success of the Kick In benefit the year before had led to several producers offering to donate the receipts from the earnings of a number of new shows this year. Over the next week leading up to Christmas, each respective performance would donate its earnings, selling tickets at the Hotel McAlpin’s field office. If they wanted to really delight the kiddies, they could go to every one of the benefit shows:
Gluck explained that each show could mean thousands of dollars toward the effort to bring Santa to the city—as long as an audience showed up. To thank the performers, Gluck invited the principals of all five shows to share in a celebratory luncheon in the dome of the Woolworth Building. In addition to these donations, several managers of movie theaters offered the receipts of screenings to the group.
Gluck’s Theatre Assembly presentation touched singer Marguerite Namara. Though Alone at Last could not offer up an entire benefit show, she passed the hat around to her fellow performers. The group together raised $13.25—not a vast sum, but it earned her credit as “a co-worker” of the Santa Claus Association in newspaper reports.
Also impressed with Gluck was Boniface, who approached the Santa Claus Man after his presentation to learn more about his work. She struck up a fast conversation with the impeccably dressed man two decades her senior and no doubt caught his interest immediately with her confidence, wit, and beauty. He invited her to come by the Woolworth to see the association in action. She accepted.
On the chilly morning of December 24, New York City postmaster Edward Morgan, the man whose permission launched the association in the first place, was busy as he always was this time of year. He worked at his desk in the General Post Office when a colleague alerted him that a visitor was here to see him. Waiting out on the vast front steps of the building, coat buttoned to the top and a fedora atop his head, was Gluck. He was joined by seventy-five of the association’s volunteers, themselves wrapped in their fine coats and hats. Among them was Symona Boniface, in ankle-length fur coat pulled up just under her nose to keep out the cold. Gluck had insisted she join them on the outing.
Morgan expected their visit. Gluck had called the day before to ask if they could pick up the latest letters in person. At the head of the members, Gluck greeted Morgan and then asked Sarah Barry to explain the reason for their visit. With that, she unveiled the massive present they brought Morgan and his men: a twenty-five-pound plum pudding, a gift of gratitude for his continued support of the Santa Claus Association. Barry explained that the pudding had been made with a special English recipe, which had remained unchanged for six hundred years, from the country’s Pemberton Hall. Morgan was delighted and promised to share it with the whole department—he certainly could not eat it himself.
As postmen dragged the ungainly gift inside, past the post office’s Corinthian columns, several other mailmen exited, carrying the latest batch of Santa letters, neatly stacked and bound into manageable piles. Gluck urged the group to arrange themselves in a semicircle with the post office’s grand pillars behind them. A photographer prepared to snap a few pictures in the same place where Gluck had stood with King Baggot the year before. The Santa Claus Man handed a few stacks to Sarah Barry, Mrs. Dearborn Adams, and the other main volunteers, and then gave a few stacks to Boniface, positioning her next to him at the head of the group and cocking his chin as the camera snapped.
That afternoon, Gluck announced that the organization had broken a new record. Santa had touched the lives of sixteen thousand families, and fifty thousand children throughout New York City—almost three times the number received just two years before. Gluck filled an entire scrapbook with the press clippings from 1915 alone, covering every aspect of the group’s work and fund-raising from almost every area newspaper. But Gluck had one more announcement to make, one that would dwarf the twenty-five-pound pudding.
As the group’s work wound down on Christmas Day and the piles of letters in the Woolworth office dwindled, suddenly the space began filling with reporters. Gluck stopped his volunteers and informed them he was going to make an announcement.
“Three years ago, in the rear of Paul Henkel’s chop house, we started the Santa Claus movement,” Gluck began. “This is now the largest organization of its kind in the world and thousands upon thousands of families have come to realize the true Christmas spirit. We will never know the ultimate good we did, as hundreds of families in this and other cities were benefited by being placed in direct contact with people who could do for them throughout the year—the opportunity for which was first presented by the unique, effective, and economic system of the Santa Claus Association.” Then he dropped his big news: “The peculiar nature of our work calls for a building of our own.”
Gluck had commissioned architects George and Edward Blum to create “the most unique building in America.” The two men’s firm had earned a reputation for innovative twists on the beaux arts style that had become familiar to New Yorkers, with materials like terra-cotta and tile, and their next project would be the Santa Claus Building. It would measure seventy-five feet wide on a plot one hundred feet wide, allowing for significant space and light. The exterior was to be made of white marble, treated in the classic manner, with long, simple lines. A massive arched portal, nearly twenty feet deep, would make up the front entrance, with a huge Christmas tree in the center, encircled by two sets of stairs. The façade would depict versions of Santa Claus from all the countries of the world, each created by an artist native to that country. Above them, the words “Santa Claus Association” would be engraved. A frieze about the base would depict dozens of children “in all their multitudinous moods.” But the most spectacular aspect of this rather spectacular façade would be the massive stained glass window, which would serve as the tree’s backdrop. Measuring thirty-five feet wide by fifty feet tall, it would depict Santa himself, dressed in traditional red and white as well as giving “the artist opportunity to portray the Christmas spirit in colors that will inspire.”
A stable of prominent artists would collaborate on the project. Painter and illustrator Maxfield Parrish, known for his idealistic illustrations of children’s books like the 1909 Arabian Nights and L. Frank Baum’s 1897 Mother Goose in Prose, agreed to submit design ideas for the exterior, as had sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who would supervise decorations. The sculptor was at the time living in Stamford, Connecticut, having left New York City in frustration after resigning from the organizing committee of the New York Armory Show of 1913. A decade later he would begin the fourteen-year project of creating Mount Rushmore.
A celebrity even scouted the building’s location. Douglas Robinson, perhaps the biggest realtor in the city, was tapped to find the site for the Santa Claus Building. He was an aggressive Scotsman who managed the Astors’ landholdings and led the effort to secure the blocks of Manhattan on which the Pennsylvania Railroad had built Penn Station. Now he could use his substantial connections to secure the association a prominent place in Manhattan.
The ground floor would house the offices of the association as well as other willing charities. It would include an auditorium where children’s plays would be performed year-round and lectures about education and childhood development would be given, along with a library of children’s books. On the second floor would be the Lilliputian Bazaar—a huge market where new toys from around the world would be sold or given away. Toy makers from around the country would display their newest products. “This department,” Gluck said of the toys, “is my hobby. I wish I had the time to play with them. . . . Personally I do not believe in ugly dolls and toy soldiers and numerous articles such as throw the child into a negative state of mind and depict destruction. I believe in things that spell construction.”
There would be a large-scale service kitchen and salon, allowing for the feeding of as many as one thousand people at a time, as well as a high-end restaurant and rooftop garden. It would be charity focused, but also extravagant. “The proposed Santa Claus Building will be a national monument,” he declared—a real-life Santa’s workshop, as well as a place of international celebration of the “Christmas spirit.” Even more than the Woolworth Building, the Santa Claus Building would blend spiritual ideals and consumerism into a true “Cathedral of Commerce.” But to be sure there was no confusion of what nation was bringing the gifts of Santa to the world’s neediest, Gluck concluded, “The building will be a manifestation of America.”
The media rapidly spread the word about the proposed building, with a bevy of names to describe the palace: “child wonderland,” “Santa Claus’s new home,” “all-year palace,” and “a building that should be to the main factory of S. Claus and Co. as the New York Sub-Treasury is to the National Treasury in Washington.” Many printed a large drawing of the proposed building. Across the country, papers lauded that Santa Claus was being “Recognized at Last!” “While the structure will be constructed for utilitarian purposes, it is intended to exemplify the spirit of Christmas,” the Hartford, Kentucky, Herald reported. “All effort like this should command commendation, and for the one simple reason, if for no other, that it tends to enrich the lives of children,” added a paper in Portland, Oregon.
Moviegoers across the country learned of the building as well. On December 30, among such news stories as the collapse of a $25,000 bridge in Spokane, Washington, and the examination of the liner Minnesota, which was suspected of being damaged in a war plot, the new Hearst-Selig News Pictorial clips included a cheerier announcement. “The only building in honor of Santa Claus in the world will be erected by the International Santa Claus Association,” it proclaimed, running illustrations of the building for thousands of viewers to see across the country.
Every detail seemed to have been carefully considered and provided to the press—except how it would be paid for. Just a week earlier, the Santa Claus Association sought funds to relieve its $3,000 debt. Now Gluck announced this new project that was expected to cost about $300,000 to complete with only the sketchiest plans for bankrolling it. “The idea is one which should lend itself to the hearty cooperation of the public,” Gluck explained. “We will probably begin a campaign to ask the mothers of America to contribute to its construction.” The organization emphasized its economic value, as a place to bolster the toy industry, but it would also be the most tangible tribute to the Christmas spirit.
“Where the money will come from is the simplest problem in the world,” concluded the Sun. “Everybody in the world—that is nearly everybody in the world—owes something to the old gentleman with the snowy beard and the capaciously filled red suit; and it is self-evident that the nearly everybody who can possibly afford it will be delighted to give something to the erection of a building in the gentleman’s honor, especially when the chiefest and mainest aim of the building is to make his system so perfect that not only nearly everybody but absolutely everybody will be a partaker of his undoubted blessings.” This boosterism for the Santa Claus Building made sense coming from the Sun. This was the same paper, after all, that eighteen years before had responded to an eight-year-old girl who feared that Santa might not be real with the definitive reply: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
One reporter predicted that such a national Santa Claus monument would conclusively relocate Santa’s headquarters to America. “What a fascinating wonder spot that New York temple to the children’s patron saint would become as it was made known to children from the center to the remote confines of the country,” he wrote. “It is as if we proposed to Americanize this world potentate among children; as if we were to acquire as our very own his court and retinue and his more direct and intimate consideration.”
Gluck may have drawn inspiration from the beaux arts style of the Hotel Astor, or the stunning new post office on Eighth Avenue, or the glistening new Washington Market. Whatever gave him the idea, like Woolworth, Hearst, and other accomplished men of this period, Gluck became convinced that a man captured the world’s imagination using brick, mortar, and marble. These detailed, spectacular plans in many ways eclipsed the Santa Claus Association itself.
A decade earlier, the suggestion that New York City could house a monument to Santa Claus would have been laughable. But likely so would the idea that the man who invented the five-and-dime store would erect the tallest building in the world—that it would be not just a tribute to its namesake, but a cathedral to commerce itself. It would have been difficult to imagine that New York City would usher the resources, talent, and will to create a monument to service and dedication in the form of the largest post office in the country, or transform the city’s reservoir into a shrine to knowledge in the form of a grand public library, or a “monument to movement” whose astrological mural 120 feet above ground elevated arrival and departure from the city into something magnificent.
But in 1915, all these were a reality, all of them not only spectacular but of such practical use that they had transformed the daily lives of the city’s population in ways both large and small. At a time when miracles actually happened, a Santa Claus Building providing needed assistance to the city’s young and poor, while celebrating and protecting the spirit of Christmas itself, would not seem that outrageous. At such a thrilling time in New York City, it did not seem ridiculous to trust the Santa Claus Man, but rather, ridiculous to doubt him.
