When Yiddish theater rocked the world

Well, the Lower East Side and parts of Europe, anyway. This is the front cover of sheet music published in 1920 by the Hebrew Publishing Co., then at 50 Eldridge Street (click on the photo to get a better look at their cool logo). If anyone reads Hebrew or Yiddish, I’d love to know the title and what it’s about. The artwork sure is beautiful.

Some sample lyrics and music below. Columbus, America, Uncle Sam, land dus freie….I tried to find a translation but came up empty.

New York bars that refused to admit women

Crazy, huh? Women have been socializing at city drinking establishments after social trends shifted after prohibition (though may not have wanted to, since many were rough, unwelcoming places). But it was still perfectly legal for a bar to refuse to serve, or even admit, a female—until a 1970 sex discrimination law took effect. 

From Knife and Fork in New York, a 1949 city restaurant guide by Lawton Mackall, here’s a partial list of old “male citidels.” 

Naturally, the movers and shakers at the Waldorf-Astoria, St. Regis, and other posh hotels got used to seeing chicks around. As the maitre ‘de of the Roosevelt Hotel told the New York Times in 1971, “the men are happy now, especially since the hot pants came in.”

“Night falls…but not in the City of Light.”

So reads this postcard depicting the world’s largest diorama—a block-long, three-story recreation of New York City from the Bronx to Coney Island. Built by Con Ed for the 1939-1940 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadow Park, it was one of the spectacular attractions that wowed millions of visitors.

The Fair’s theme was the boundlessly optimistic “World of Tomorrow.” The diorama was meant to illustrate how electricity would power the future: twinkling lights, air conditioning, a bigger, brighter, more affluent New York. This second postcard below shows the outside of the diorama, with two other great exhibits, the Trylon and Perisphere, to the left.

The pizza slice rule

In 1965, a slice of pizza ran you 15 cents. One subway token in 1965 also costs 15 cents. So the adage about the two prices paralleling each other throughout the decades seems to hold true. And now that a slice goes for $2.50 and even higher, we’re obviously in for a fare increase.

Photo from The New Inside Guide to Greenwich Village.

You think today’s stroller mom is bad?

This photo was taken at Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street in 1898, showing a fashionable new mother who seems to be wielding her carriage like a weapon. No wonder the man to her left looks concerned.

The most beautiful street in Harlem

Running alongside Amsterdam Avenue in Harlem is quiet Convent Avenue, easily one of the prettiest thoroughfares in Manhattan and my vote for one of the top five citywide (yeah, I’m talking to you South Portland Avenue and Montgomery Place in Brownstone Brooklyn). 

I think the southern end of the street, in the 130s and low 140s, is in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood. Once you cross over the 145th, it becomes Sugar Hill. Both parts are flanked by gorgeous row houses and churches. You’ll practically expect a hansom cab to trot by.

“P. J. Carroll: Horses to Hire”

You never really think that the boring local ads in your high school yearbook will one day act as a fascinating time capsule—taking readers back to the businesses that existed in your neighborhood and the services you and your family needed to live your lives.

This is the back page of the William Cullen Bryant High School yearbook, class of 1916, in Long Island City.

Fulton Street feline protects his turf

It’s tough out there on the mean streets of Clinton Hill. This little guy is the house cat at a local bodega, but he really likes sitting by that tire.

A cowboy club in the Village

When you imagine a 1930s West Village bar or club, a hole-in-the-wall speakeasy or dimly lit jazz joint probably comes to mind. But the popular Village Barn, in the basement of 52 West Eighth Street, had a hokey, country yokel theme, where, as a 1939 New York Times article put it, “the humor is rough and ready, the accents nasal, the costumes rural.”

The only clue to the hick theme in this 1936 New Yorker ad is the bit about live turtle races. Turtle races?

When the Village Barn closed in the late 1960s, it became Electric Lady Studios, where Jimi Hendrix, The Clash, and pretty much every other rock group recorded. Above ground was the late, great 8th Street Playhouse, which ran cult classics and revivals until it shut its doors in 1992.

The Dakota of Bedford-Stuyvesant

Built in 1889, the Alhambra—on Nostrand Avenue between Halsey and Macon Streets—is a Romanesque beauty: five stories, several turrets, a pointed roof, and 30 apartments (eight room in each!). This 1902 photo is from a Brooklyn Daily Eagle story, which reported that the building was sold to an investor for $300,000.

 

Here’s the Alhambra today. It’s still lovely, if a bit weathered, and it fits into a neighborhood loaded wit so many other architectural gems.