Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: Dashiell Hammett

The Lefourt Normandie Building was built by Garment District developer A.E. Lefcourt, on the site of the Hotel Normandie. Tchaikovsky stayed at the Normandie in the spring of 1891 to inaugurate Carnegie Hall. Nick and Nora Charles also stayed there in the novel "The Thin Man" by Dashiell Hammett. All but forgotten today, in his lifetime Lefcourt was known as one of the city’s most prolific developers of Art Deco buildings. Describing Lefcourt in a 1930 newspaper article, The New York Times said, "No other individual or building organization has constructed in its own behalf as many buildings as are in the Lefcourt Group." Lefcourt was born Abraham Elias Lefkowitz on March 27, 1876 to Russian-Jewish immigrants in Birmingham, England. His family immigrated to New York's Lower East Side in 1882 where Lefcourt grew-up in a predominantly Jewish and poor community. He began his career as a newsboy and bootblack. He and his wife began using the surname Lefcourt around 1900 but did not officially adopt the name until 1909. He became a prominent figure in the New York garment industry when he assumed control of his employer's wholesale business. His forays into real-estate began in 1910 with a 12-story loft on West 25th Street. He built many more structures in the area, heralding the beginnings of the new Garment Center. An entrepreneur, Lefcourt had numerous other business interests, including founding the Lefcourt Normandie National Bank, which eventually became a part of JP Morgan Chase. Notwithstanding his success and a net worth reported to have been as much as $100 million in 1928, Lefcourt's empire began to unravel during the Depression, with his company going into foreclosure and his buildings being auctioned off. In November 1932, at the age of 55, with creditors pursuing him and others accusing him of fraud, Lefcourt suffered a fatal heart attack in his Savoy-Plaza Hotel apartment. His estate was valued at only $2,500. Below is a view taken in May, 1920 from 2nd floor at corner of 37th Street. (Regal Shoe Store) looking north on Broadway, showing the east side of street and the Normandie Hotel at corner of 38th Street. The photo is in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

At the top of California Street sits the most stylish row of old apartment houses on Nob Hill. It starts at 1201 California, known as the Cathedral Building where Brigid O’Shaughnessy briefly stayed in in Dashiell Hammett’s book "The Maltese Falcon." (In the book the building is named the Coronet Hotel.) Part of the fascination with The Maltese Falcon is Hammett’s vivid evocation of the city of San Francisco and his interweaving of actual locations with imaginative ones likely based on real addresses. In this case, the Coronet is an imaginative address, chosen as a swank location for the smooth facade Brigid projects. Crime author Joe Gores, writing in 1975 for the City of San Francisco magazine, tracks down the actual locations and models of settings in The Falcon, and convincingly argues that the Cathedral Building was the model for the Coronet. The building was constructed in 1929 and is the work of the architectural firm of Weeks & Day who also designed the Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco and the historic California Theater in San Jose.