When he died in 1876, department-store magnate Alexander Turney Stewart was one of the wealthiest men in New York City.
He opened a succession of dry-goods stores in Lower Manhattan beginning in the 1820s.
But it was his “iron palace” at Broadway and 10th Street (in photo), the first store to have dozens of departments, that made him rich and renowned.
Which must be why greedy thieves decided to dig up his body two years after he was interred in a family vault at St. Marks in the Bouwerie and hold it for ransom.
This couldn’t have been easy. The vault, covered by a stone slab, was several feet in the ground.
Once the robbers removed another slab and entered the 15 foot–long vault, they still had to open the casket carry out the decomposed body.
The ghoulish crime netted the corpse-nappers $20,000 from Stewart’s widow, who then reburied her husband on Long Island.
The A.T. Stewart store was taken over by Wanamaker’s in the 1890s. Today, it’s the site of a massive apartment building called Stewart House.
Tags: " Gilded Age New York City, A.T. Stewart, crimes of New York, Defunct department stores, department store magnates, famous crimes in Manhattan, graverobbing in New York City, St. Mark's in he Bouwerie, Stewart House, Wanamaker's
Ephemeral New York 
April 2, 2010 at 5:01 pm |
[…] Alexander Turney Stewart died in 1876, he was one of the wealthiest men in New York City. Two years after he was interred in a family […]
November 4, 2010 at 3:07 pm |
The corpse robbery of millionaire merchant Alexander Turney Stewart, in 1878 from St. Mark’s cemetery was one of the great historical crimes in New York City. Michael Newton’s book, The Encyclopedia of Kidnappings, says that kidnapping a corpse involves less risk for the criminals than kidnapping a live person.
Stewart’s kidnappers were likely inspired by Jim Kenealy and his gang, who were caught in 1876 for dragging the casket of President Abraham Lincoln out of his tomb. Stewart’s corpse robbers sent his family coded ransom notes demanding $200,000 for the return of his body. The family paid the snatchers and Stewart’s body was reburied in Long Island. A New York Times article reporting on the body snatching gives a graphic and revolting description of Stewart’s empty casket: “When the outrage was discovered on Thursday morning the bottom of the casket was covered with liquid slime, and on the cover of the cedar box, on which the corpse was evidently laid… were several splotches of similar slime, evidently only recently dripped from the body.” There was a massive police investigation and many curios New Yorkers stood staring through the cemetery gates as investigators searched for clues.
May 31, 2011 at 4:50 am |
[…] “Boss” Tweed of Tammany Hall fame later lived there, as did department store millionaire A.T. Stewart, who bequeathed it to his business partner, William Libbey (yep, the castle’s name is a […]
January 9, 2014 at 8:21 am |
[…] shops at A.T. Stewart’s dry-goods store on Chambers Street and likes Arnold and Constable on Canal Street, where “they keep elegant […]
November 21, 2016 at 8:42 am |
[…] by Trench and Snook, the architects behind retail king A.T. Stewart’s Marble Palace at Broadway and Chambers Street and many of New York’s cast iron edifices, this […]
July 5, 2018 at 7:08 pm |
[…] his corpse7 from St. Mark’s Church in 1878, though. They held it for ransom (some reports say for $20,0008). Stewart’s poor wife, Cornelia Mitchell Clinch, decided to pay the thieves. She then moved her […]
October 21, 2019 at 5:35 am |
[…] store magnet A.T. Stewart had a marble palace of a home on Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, but by the time Demarest built his showroom, Stewart and […]
November 16, 2020 at 3:30 am |
[…] up shop in 1953 and departed what became known as the Sun Building (though before that, it was A.T. Stewart’s first department store, his “Marble Palace”), the beautiful clock is still with us on […]