As stars of Hulu’s comedy-crime-whodunit Only Murders in the Building, Martin Short, Steven Martin, and Selena Gomez live with other colorful residents in the fictional Arconia Building. However, there is one real-life luxury apartment building with a history of true crimes stories the three podcasters would surely have loved to solve. New York City’s legendary Ansonia, with its 17 stories and 400 units, began as an elaborate dream come true for William Earl Dodge Stokes. The millionaire turned away from his family mining business to set his sights on real estate and development, more specifically an impoverished pocket of boarding houses and taverns on the Upper West Side in the late 1800s.
The Parisian-inspired Ansonia, with its Juliet balconies, sweeping marbled staircase and opulent archway entry soon gave way to hidden secrets so dark and wild, they are fit for being the basis of any storyline for whodunit series such as Only Murders in the Building.
The Ansonia Was Home to Babe Ruth and a Criminal Hangout for Unsavory Characters
Season 2, episode 2 of Only Murders in the Building, begins with a tale of how the architect Archibald Carter built secret elevators and passageways within the Arconia. Officially opened in 1904 as a hotel, Stokes had an elevator installed at the Anosmia as well. For cattle. It seems he had a vision for the lavish abode becoming a self-sustaining Utopia. In 1907, the Department of Health stepped in to stop his collection of animals which included 500 chickens (fresh eggs were delivered daily to tenants), six goats and even a small bear.
Though famous people like Babe Ruth and box Jack Dempsey resided at the Asonia, it was also a hangout for criminal kingpins. It is said that Stokes encouraged racketeer Al Adams, a/k/a “The Policy King” or “Meanest Man in New York” to move right from his cell at Sing-Sing into the Ansonia. Two years later, Adams wound found dead in his suite from a bullet wound. The coroner ruled death by suicide, although he initially claimed it was actually a homicide committed by Stokes, no less, over an unpaid debt. Stokes, himself would become the victim of gun violence when his 22-year-old mistress shot him allegedly for not paying for a blackmail scheme. Stokes was shot three times in the legs but survived.
When Chicago White Sox first baseman Chick Gandil, along with the team’s pitcher met an ex-player representing gambling king Arnold “The Big Bankroll” Rothstein at the Ansonia to discuss throwing the World Series against Cincinnati it turned into the biggest baseball scandal in history known as the Black Sox Scandal. Under new ownership in the swinging 1960s, the once-famous, long-abandoned swimming pool (plus Turkish baths) was leased to Steve Ostrow, who transformed it into the Continental Baths. Visitors could participate in orgy rooms or be voyeurs to sex acts. The baths closed in 1977.
The sleuths from Only Murders in the Building may not go to such extremes as far as storylines go, but there certainly are motives for murder that could be picked from the Ansonia’s wild heyday.