MAGICAL ESCAPE IS UP FOR GRABS
Houdini’s tricked-out Harlem home on the market for $4.6 million
IN 1898, Harry Houdini considered quitting magic.
At that point — more than a decade before his infamous underwater box escapes — the profession seemed like a financial dead end; he’d do 20 shows a day in rundown venues and barely scratch out a living. Houdini and his wife, Bess, who was part of his act, made ends meet by working as phony mediums. They lived modestly on the road and sent home much of their earnings to his mother, Cecilia, who lived in a tenement on the far reaches of East 69th Street.
Taking care of his mom was a responsibility that he could not shirk. Houdini’s father, a self-styled rabbi who himself struggled to support the family, made a promise to his wife on his deathbed. He vowed that their son Harry — born Ehrich Weisz — would “pour gold in your apron someday.”
A few years later, his son was able to buy a Harlem home that, today, is on the market for $4.6 million.
Just before the turn of the century, such an accomplishment seemed unlikely to Houdini himself: The magician was so desperate, he considered going to work for the Yale Lock Co. That was, until theater impresario Martin Beck caught his act — a hodgepodge of sleights of hand, disappearing birds, card tricks and handcuff escapes — in St. Paul, Minn., and saw star power in the young magician. He gave Houdini the best advice of his life.
“Houdini was told by Beck to get rid of the magic and to concentrate on escapes,” said John Cox, a magic historian who runs WildAboutHoudini.com. The scarves went into cold storage. Houdini gave his birds to a friend. (According to “The Secret Life of Houdini,” by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, the friend ate said birds.)
“Houdini [began breaking] out of jails to create publicity. He made cash bets [for $25] that he could escape any set of handcuffs,” said Cox. The magician never had to pay out a single wager.
“He did OK in America, but Beck’s idea was for him to go to Europe . . . so he could come back and be billed as a European star — whether he really was or not,” added Cox. “Then he did turn into a superstar. He became so successful in England and Germany that he toured there from 1900 until 1906.”
By the time Houdini returned to NYC on a break in 1904, he was solvent enough to purchase his own version of Graceland: a 4,600-square-foot townhouse on West 113th Street in Harlem, for the then-princely sum of $25,000. He moved his mother into the home with him and Bess, declaring it “the finest private house that any magician has ever had the great fortune to possess.”
The four-story home would become his headquarters for most of the next 22 years — the site where he would develop some of his greatest illusions and experience one of his greatest heartbreaks.
WHEN Houdini moved in, he did everything he could to turn the place into the ultimate magician’s lair. He commissioned two of his nephews to wire the house for sound. “He used it to do a mind-reading act,” said Houdini expert Patrick Culliton. “He would usher newsmen such as Ralph Pulitzer and Walter Lippmann inside, ask them to wait for him in the parlor, and [from] his office, he would be able to hear their conversations.” Then he would appear in the parlor and reference his guests’ chats as if pulling the information from thin air. “In one instance, the people were talking about Buffalo Bill. He greeted them and said, ‘I’m seeing a man riding a horse . . .’ ”
The bathtubs were said to be extra large to accommodate the full length of Houdini’s 5-foot-6 frame so that he could practice holding his breath underwater. (Previously, Culliton said, Houdini had been measured at 5-foot-4, but gained 2 inches, most likely, from hanging upside down as he escaped from straitjackets.) A secret door leading to the home’s garden level allowed Houdini, a notorious pack rat, to sneak in and hide away finds — such as countless sets of manacles and a prop electric chair — without his wife noticing.
Even the front door was an illusion: It appeared to open traditionally, but the hinges were in fact on the opposite side.
By all indications, the jewel of the house was the parlor, which Cox described as the magician’s “trophy room.”
According to an article published in 1925, the room was dark and mysterious, lit by a single Egyptian lamp reconfigured for electricity rather than candles. Ceiling-high shelves lined the room and were loaded with myriad books on witchcraft, theatrical history and mysticism, as well as treasures such as a jeweled cup given to Houdini by the Grand Duke of Russia, a vase from a theater where he broke attendance records and a magician’s wand gifted by the king of Belgium. Other wands from famous magicians were housed in a nearby case. A bust of Houdini, which was created to one day be placed atop his grave, had pride of place.
It was also the room where Houdini would take his “spirit photos” — double-exposure pictures meant to convince viewers that ghosts are floating in the air. “In one, taken inside the parlor, you could see Houdini cradling his own ‘ghost,’ ” said Cox.
The house was a haven for his family. Besides his mother, other family members would stay for extended periods. For a while, Houdini’s physician brother Leopold Weiss (the family changed the spelling of its name after moving to the US from Hungary) had a medical office on the first floor and lived there — once chasing off a midnight intruder who sliced him with a straight razor.
But after his mother died in 1913, Houdini couldn’t bring himself to stay in the house. So he and Bess moved in with his brother Theo in Flatbush for a year. Houdini even tried selling the home at a loss, unsuccessfully putting it on the market for $18,000. He and Bess, who never had children, moved back in 1918.
ALTHOUGH Houdini ranked among the most famous people in the Western Hemisphere, in Harlem he kept a low profile. Culliton said that Charles Bonnano, a neighborhood priest whose sister bought the house in 1927, told him that Houdini “looked like a shabby old Jew scrounging for bread. There was a female starlet who talked about a roustabout helping her with her bags — and it was actually Houdini.”
In 1926, home in Manhattan for a brief respite from his continual touring, a raggedly dressed Houdini called fellow magician Joseph Dunninger to drive him on some errands. As related in “The Secret Life of Houdini,” it was raining hard and Houdini asked that they double back to his town house. Dunninger complied and, upon arriving, Houdini stepped out into the downpour, stared at the building and began crying.
Back in the car, he said, “I’ve seen my house for the last time, Joe.”
A few months later, in October 1926, backstage at the Princess Theatre in Montreal, a student from nearby McGill University wanted to test Houdini’s “strong as steel” abdominal muscles. Before Houdini was prepared to take the blows, the student sucker-punched him multiple times. The shots resulted in a ruptured appendix and Houdini died soon after of peritonitis, an inflammation of the abdomen’s lining.
Bess sold the house the following year and disposed of her deceased husband’s effects. Books went to the Library of Congress, love letters from various women were returned to their senders and Houdini’s precious handcuffs, locks and keys were given to a junkman. A friend of Houdini’s said at the time that the magician would be “rolling over in his grave if he knew.”
Efficient as Bess was, she missed a few items. A pair of rare bell-lock handcuffs and an oversize milk can that Houdini had used for escape stunts were left behind when Rose Bonnano’s family purchased the place from Bess.
But, Cox said, the real treasure trove came out of a most unexpected place. “When they were tearing down a wall, [one of the later owners] discovered a stack of Houdini’s silent-movie posters. They might have been put in there for insulation. Those posters would sell for around $30,000 each.”
Today, the home has been divided into three apartments, but some Houdini touches still exist.
Last Sunday, the home was opened to prospective buyers. Joining them, Cox flew in from Los Angeles to see the place for himself. “It was once in a lifetime,” he said. “Houdini had the parlor’s tin ceiling painted black; it’s since been whitewashed, but, through peeling paint, you can see the original black. His bookcase is still there, though it had been moved.”
“The original tub” — the one where he would practice holding his breath —“is still there but it is now in the back yard and being used as a planter.”
The home would be the ultimate Houdini collector’s item, and one hope is that it might be bought by a magician such as Houdini fanatics David Blaine or Teller (neither responded to requests for comment).
“My dream would be to see [it] turned into a museum and to make it as close as possible to the way it was when Houdini lived there,” said Cox. “That would be really magical.”