Help On A Commercial Permit

I've searched this site and Stamp Smarter but can't find anything on this. Nor can I determine when NYC began issuing these permits. Permit 177 must have been shortly thereafter. I did determine Henry Clews & Company was founded in 1877. I note this was annotated as personal mail using a commercial permit, which one would think violates the terms of the permit.

Can anyone give me some guidance on this?

Beecher & Wawrukiewicz cover the history of the permit system in their "U.S. Domestic Postal Rates" volume. (Appendix 3 in the 2nd edition). Short summary is that these started in 1904 and your 1c imprint would be c1905 or soon thereafter.

I suspect the "Personal" was added to every piece as hype to entice the recipient to examine the printed contents and there was nothing individualized about the contents of this mailing.

The survival rate of permit mail is naturally extremely low. Demand is also very modest, so IMO, the retail value would seldom exceed $5, especially without contents.

Much appreciated, John!

Your addressee may have been a Russian diplomat, who was stationed in New York from 1905 to 1911. He had been the Russian ambassador to Tokyo at the start of the Russo-Japanese war, and was part of the negotiations ending the war.

If it is our Roman Rosen, he was recalled to Russia in 1911, fled back to New York in 1918 after the revolution, and died in poverty after being struck by a taxi.

The address is at the corner of 14th and Broadway, Union Square.

Union Square is a historical location in NYC

Right. 853 Broadway is currently at the southeast corner of 14th and Broadway. I assume the location was "853" Broadway back then, as well. I don't think there was wholesale renumbering.

Unfortunately it is now a modern building, and not the one this cover was addressed to.