esteemed colleagues, respect

Irving D. Chais, Manhattan Doll Surgeon, Dies at 83

Irving D. Chais, who in his 45 years as the owner and chief surgeon of the New York Doll Hospital in Manhattan reattached thousands of heads, arms and legs; reimplanted fake hair shorn by scissor-wielding toddlers; and soothed the feelings of countless doll lovers, young and old, died on April 24 in Manhattan. He was 83 and lived in Manhattan.

In a cluttered, brightly lighted second-floor workshop at 787 Lexington Avenue, between 61st and 62nd Streets, Mr. Chais and two other doll doctors had hunched over operating tables (well, work benches) since 1965. Stacked nearby were boxes labeled “hands,” “fingers,” “wrists,” “wigs,” “German eyes,” “French eyes,” “American eyes.” Lining the shelves and piled in boxes were thousands of dolls, new and antique, from as far away as Afghanistan and China. Some were the size of a clothespin, others as large as a 4-year-old child.

1987, when a New York Times reporter wandered into the hospital, a 70-year-old teddy bear had recently been checked in, the victim of a dog attack. It was missing its nose, eyes and fistfuls of stuffing. It probably cost its original owner $5, but the current owner had agreed to pay $350 for its extensive surgery.

“We reconstructed the whole bear, and it looks fantastic,” Mr. Chais said at the time. “People get very attached to these things. Sometimes you have dolls and animals that have been in the family for five and six generations.”

The New York Doll Hospital had been in Mr. Chais’s family since the early 1900s, located at three other sites on the Upper East Side before moving into the walk-up at 787 Lexington. It started as a beauty parlor and wig store owned by a distant relative who had refurbished her own childhood dolls and was soon receiving requests from customers who wanted their own huggable toys repaired. Mr. Chais, who had worked in the family business since 1945, bought it from his sister Ann Lancet in the early 1960s and continued to run it until a month ago.

“From plush to plastic, we fix it,” Mr. Chais said in 1993, pointing out that he was as likely to be repairing a 19th-century automaton as a Barbie. He said a 90-year-old man had recently come in with a Popeye doll he really cared about. “It was like he was a 6-year-old kid.”

On Thursday Mr. Chais’s daughter Alison was at the hospital waiting for the last few dozen customers to pick up their repaired loved ones. The hospital will close by the end of May, she said.

“We’ve been in business since 1900,” Mr. Chais told The Times in 1990, “and never lost a patient yet.

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