CAN WE IDENTIFY THESE PEOPLE? (1911)
When Brownstone Detectives was recently questioned as to the possibility of identifying the people in this touring car from a 1911 short film – we took up that challenge.
Historical research has taken a decidedly good turn in recent years with the advent of Google Books, Ancestry.com, and a variety of other now available research tools, archives, and resources. What was nearly impossible just 10 years ago has become not only possible, but probable.
With the current box of tools available to us we can tell you everything there is to know about a variety of historical issues – we can investigate the history of your New York City property, track down historic photographs of your house and, often, its former residents/owners, determine how much people were paying in rent as your house’s boarders, and even discover the ages, occupations, and birth locations of almost everyone who ever lived in your house.
Taken a step further, these tools have also allowed us the capacity to take a photograph and, with the right clues, determine where it was taken, who was in it, and where they lived.
THE BEAUTY OF A RESTORED 1911 NEW YORK CITY FILM
Take, for instance, a lately discovered 1911 reel of New York City that has been floating through the ether-sphere over the past several years.
Shot by a team of cameramen with the Swedish company Svenska Biografteatern, who, according to the Museum of Modern Art, which restored the film, were sent around the world to make pictures of well-known places. In this film, the cameramen have made a movie, only three years before the outbreak of World War I, about the everyday life of the city recorded here — street traffic, people going about their business. And it has a casual, almost pastoral quality to it.
Watching this seven minutes and 45 seconds worth of old black & white footage is captivating. Stand-outs on the reel are the unloading of a ferry boat, pedestrians strolling near the Flatiron building, the activities of busy street corners, and two young men holding hands as they cross a bridge together.
One subject, though, that has always caught our attention – as much due to their weaving in and out of Broadway traffic in Manhattan as to where they were headed – is an affluent-looking family being driven in an open touring sedan by a black chauffeur. The footage of this crew consists of a full 40 seconds of their driving, beginning at about 3:59 in the video through to about 4:40.
The head of the family sits in the front seat with their chauffeur, holding his youngest child, a girl, while the man’s wife and three more people- a boy, a girl, and a young lady – ride along in the back seat.
It is apparent that everyone is quite aware that they are being filmed. The chauffeur and the boy, in particular, appear to often – sometimes continuously – look directly into the camera which was probably attached to a truck or vehicle in front of them. It is not known how they were selected to be the subject of this part of the film, but it is obvious that this segment was staged with their assistance.
Although, the man holding the girl in the front seat appears the picture of seriousness, everyone else presents varying degrees of less-than-serious sentiments. There is the curious (the mother, a daughter, and the son), the disinterested (the older girl in the back seat), and the downright bored (the girl on her father’s lap).
The stand-out in this segment was clearly the chauffeur who most certainly was the one running the operation – driving the car, giving hand directions, and simply enjoying himself at his own pace. You sense the ease at which he is driving the automobile, as well as the good relationship that he has with the family, which reflects a certain familiarity which leads us to believe that this is the family’s regular – possibly fully employed – chauffeur. At one point (4:05), he even appears to make a comment to the automobile owner. Then, he smiles broadly at his own joke.
“But who are these people?,” we often wondered, and would it be possible – given the tools at our disposal – to figure out who they were?
TRACKING DOWN THE PLEASURE RIDERS
Taking on this challenge, we started out by using the only real discernible piece of information that was available to us in the footage, and that was registration number on their automobile tag – New York License No. 65465.
From this clue, we investigated registration numbers for that year (these were often some of the minutia of everyday life that was published in newspapers back in the day). After just a few minutes, up popped, in Brooklyn Life magazine, an list of automobiles registered in Brooklyn in 1911 which contained an “E.M.F Touring Sedan” registered to one “F. Lochwicz” of No. “548 Eighth Street” in Brooklyn, New York.
That was enough to get us going. With this one small clue we would begin to build the story of the Lochowicz (Lochwicz/Lockawitz) family from the film.
Our next step was to try and find this family in 1910 Federal Census records. With the different spellings of a name, which likely originated in Europe, we hit a few roadblocks, but eventually their records began to emerge. They showed us that the “Mrs. F. Lochwicz” to whom the vehicle was registered, was indeed part of an affluent New York City family.
Listed as a “barber,” her husband, “Florian,” did indeed live at No. 548 Eighth Street in 1910 – along with wife, Antoinette (“Antonie”), 38 (in the back seat), daughter, Elsie, 6 (in the front seat on her father’s lap), daughter, Emily, 7 (in the back seat behind the chauffeur), son, Francis, 13 (in the middle back), and then an older girl seated in the back to the right. This young lady, who may remain a mystery, was not a child of the Lochowicz’s (she may have been the family’s servant, Mary Moriarty, who was 25 and, according to the 1910 census, was living with the family at the time) – as Antonie would end up having six children total, but, by 1910, only three (of the four she had had to that point) were still living. (Andrew, who was 1 year old in 1900, would pass away in 1901.)
Florian, although listed in records as a barber, did not make his fortune in cutting hair alone.
According to a descendant on Ancestry.com, “Aunt Nettie and Uncle Florian had a number of Barber Shops. One on Wall St., one on lower Broadway (which may have been where they were visiting on the day of the filming – ed’s note), and one in the Woolworth Bldg. During the depression Aunt Nettie lost all but the one in the Woolworth Bldg. She kept that one going until she was 82 years old.”
What we cannot see from the film is possibly the most interesting aspect of our research. That was the fact that, according to the 1915 New York State Census, Mrs. Lochowicz, who would have been 39 when the film was made, was about to give birth, that year, to another child. Yes, in the film, Antonie was pregnant. Arthur Florian Lochowicz would be born later that year.
HISTORIA EN BREVI
According to the 1900 Federal Census, Florian came to the United States from Germany in 1890. The same document tells us that by 1895, he had met and married Antoinnete. In 1896, they had their first child, Francis. By 1900, Florian owned a house at No. 513 4th Avenue in Brooklyn. And by 1905, he had purchased – and moved his family to – No. 548 Eight Street in the Park Slope just steps from Prospect Park.
Florian would enjoy his home on the Slope with his wife and family for about 13-14 years, at which point, in 1918, he would pass away. He left his entire estate, real estate evaluated at $5,000 and personal estate at $70,000, to his wife who became the executrix of his estate.
Antoinette would still be living at No. 548 (with son, Paul, born in 1918, around the time his father passed away, and Elsie) as late as 1940, according to the census of that year. Here occupation was listed as “owner” of “Barber Shops.” Yes, plural. So, maybe Antonie didn’t lose them all in the Depression, after all…
And this, our friends, is just the tip of the proverbial historic iceberg. 🙂
POSTSCRIPT
After performing this research, we found several others who had also been interested in tracking down the identities of this family, each of which found varying degrees of the information that we dredged up. This proves the first point of our article – that with the multiple reliable resources now available to do this type research, what was once thought virtually impossible is now, with just the right amounts of inquisitiveness, quite possible!
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Brownstone Detectives is an historic property research agency. Our mission is to document and save the histories of our clients’ homes. From our research, we produce our celebrated House History Books and House History Reports. Contact us today to begin discovering the history of your home.
