Prohibition-era New York’s favorite madam

Polly Adler was born in Russia in 1900 and immigrated to New York City when she was a teenager. But hers is no typical Ellis Island kind of story.

After toiling away in a Brooklyn corset factory, 24-year-old Adler found a more lucrative gig: supplying prostitutes, liquor, and an all-night party to top entertainers, politicians, and gangsters.

Adler created clubhouse-like brothels at different locations through the 1920s and 1930s. She ran a house of ill repute in the Majestic Apartments on Central Park West, as well as at other luxe addresses on the Upper East and Upper West Sides.

The famous and important of both sexes (Dorothy Parker was a regular) hung out and mingled. Mayor Jimmy Walker, Joe DiMaggio, and Dutch Schultz reportedly enjoyed the sexual services.

Adler was arrested more than a dozen times, exiting the madam business in the mid-1940s. She attended college, wrote her memoirs, and died in 1962 in Los Angeles.

The “Wolf of Wall Street”

David Lamar was kind of a low-grade Bernie Madoff. He earned his nickname partly by taking millions of dollars from private citizens, promising to invest their cash in stocks and securities, and then keeping the money for himself.

Falsely claiming to be a scion of a wealthy Georgia family, Lamar lived large. He mingle with politicians and financial bigwigs, pretending to be a legit finance guy.

But for three decades he would be in trouble with the law, indicted for grand larceny, hiring detectives to commit murder, hiring Monk Eastman’s gang to beat a man up, and impersonating a politician over the phone. 

He died penniless in 1934 in the Hotel Wellington in midtown. Three waiters who he had generously tipped during his days on Wall Street chipped in and paid for his funeral.

Lower Manhattan criss-crossed by wires

As this 1880s postcard reveals, New York streets in the late 19th century held messes of wires—telephone and telegraph wires like these as well as power lines.

The streets are much more attractive—not to mention safer—now that all the wires have to be buried underground. It’s a result of the Blizzard of 1888. That March storm dumped so much snow on the city, exposed wires and polls all over New York snapped like twigs, knocking out power and communication and paralyzing the city. 

The bad old days of Tompkins Square Park

In December 1986, the city unveiled plans for a massive renovation of Tompkins Square Park—new landscaping, new playgrounds, no more bandshell. The goal was to create more open space and make it a lot less sketchy.

Well, those plans didn’t go over well with community leaders, reported an article in that month’s East Village Eye. 

“Open space would break up the traditional uses for the park. As it is, all the people in the community have a little part they feel comfortable in,” one local told the paper.

“There’s the Ukrainian old men’s area, and the bandshell, used mostly by younger people. There are four different playground areas, divided more or less by age group. And there’s the part where older black men play cards. Tompkins Square is like a mirror held up to our community.”

Eventually the park did get its renovation in 1991-1992. But not without a fight, namely the riots in the late ’80s sparked by cops trying to clear encampments of homeless people—like “Dog Man” above.

When “Little Egypt” scandalized New York

In 1896, a young woman named Ashea Waba—who had adopted the stage name Little Egypt—was invited to do some belly dancing at a bachelor party held at swanky Sherry’s restaurant in Midtown.

Belly dancing had recently been introduced to America. Victorian-era audiences were shocked by the sexy stomach swiveling—so much so that the dance was given the nickname the Hootchy-Kootchy.

Normally the Hootchy-Kootchy was performed in belly-bearing skirts or pantaloons, like in the photo of Little Egypt at left. 

But  cops were tipped off that she would be dancing naked. The vice squad came to Sherry’s, and Little Egypt was arrested.

After a trial that made all the New York tabloids, she was cleared of violating any vice laws.

Little Egypt then launched a burlesque troupe of Hootchy-Kootchy dancers and raked in $500 a night.

She died in her West 37th Street apartment in 1908 of “gas asphyxiation.”

Girl gangsters of 19th century Manhattan

When you think of the criminal gangs of New York in the 1800s, ruthless young men probably come to mind.

But these gangs had female members as well, some of whom were notorious fighters.

There was Hell-Cat Maggie, a member of the Irish-American Dead Rabbits in the 1850s. Her home base was the Five Points slum, near today’s City Hall. Supposedly her teeth were filed into sharp points and she clawed rivals with brass fingernails.

Another was Sadie Farrell, aka Sadie the Goat. Reportedly she robbed East Siders by first head-butting them in the stomach. In the 1860s she joined the Charlton Street Gang, river pirates on the West Side.

Ida Burger, called Ida the Goose, was a prostitute and Lady Gopher, part of the Gophers of Hell’s Kitchen. In the 1910s she was lured away to the Lower East Side’s Eastman Gang, led by Monk Eastman, but eventually went back to the Gophers after a bloody shootout.

The illustration above, from the New York Public Library, depicts tough chicks rumming it up at a Five Points tavern in the 1870s.

The NYPD’s infamous “Clubber” Williams

Alexander “Clubber” Williams was an NYPD inspector in post–Civil War New York City; as captain of the precinct on 35th Street, he’s credited with breaking up the fearsome Gas House Gang that lorded over the East 30s, then known as the Gas House District.

In 1876 he was transferred to a precinct on West 13th Street, where he’d have jurisdiction over a high-crime area centered around Broadway from the 20s to about 42nd Street thick with theaters, gambling dens, and prostitutes.

Remarking on his new assignment, he supposedly told a friend, referring to the protection money he was likely to receive from gambling operators and madams, “I have had chuck for a long time, and now I’m going to eat tenderloin.”

The name Tenderloin stuck for this seedy neighborhood. Formerly known by the fantastically colorful moniker Satan’s Circus, it was one of the city’s worst. Williams earned the title “Czar of the Tenderloin” for his rough and ready crime-prevention tactics.

Brought up on corruption charges several times over the years, Williams always beat the rap. And when accused of using excessive force, he replied, “There is more law at the end of a policeman’s nightstick than in a decision of the Supreme Court.”

In 1895, Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt had him retire. Williams insisted until his death in 1917 that he’d never clubbed anyone “that did not deserve it.”

Walkin’ about Wallabout

Wallabout is either a dressed-up name for the gritty area abutting the Brooklyn Navy Yard and sliced by the BQE. Or it’s a true neighborhood with a vibe distinct from Fort Greene and Clinton Hill to the south.

Whatever your take, Wallabout is a stronghold of Brooklyn history that’s worth a look. The name comes from the Dutch word Waal-bogt, which means a bend in the river. This bend is Wallabout Bay. Here, the British docked 12 prison ships holding captured Revolutionary War soldiers.

More than 11,000 men died on ships like the one in the engraving above. Some of their remains are entombed in the haunting Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in nearby Fort Greene Park.

Wallabout grew into a residential district in the mid-19th century, housing workers who toiled along Brooklyn’s thriving waterfront. These workers lived in wood frame houses, some of which still stand.

These 2- and 3-story houses, with lovely porches, are modest and charming—especially compared to the mansions up the hill closer to the Pratt campus.

In fact, historic Wallabout, which the Historic District Council defines as eight blocks roughly between Myrtle and Park Avenues, has the largest concentration of pre-Civil War wood frame homes in the city.

Wallabout has literary cred as well. Walt Whitman is believed to have lived in the nabe; his former home is supposedly 99 Ryerson Street (not pictured, since it’s covered in cheap siding).

1980s tabloid fodder: the Mayflower Madam

Back in 1979, 28-year-old FIT graduate Sydney Biddle Barrows decided that her fashion industry career wasn’t cutting it.

So the blue blood descendent (a Pilgrim ancestor came over on the Mayflower) embarked on a more lucrative career path: she started an escort service. 

The story was almost tailor-made for the New York tabloids. Called Cachet, her escort operation catered to mega wealthy, successful men. Barrows supplied attractive, well-groomed girls who she reportedly paid well and took great care of. 

Supposedly Cachet raked in a million bucks a year (this is 1980s money, of course).

Until 1984, that is, when she was busted. She spent a night in jail, plead guilty, and got off with just a fine—and a catchy new nickname.

But she never revealed the names in her so-called little black book. In subsequent years she co-wrote her autobiography, authored tomes on marketing, and has run a consulting business.

Harlem’s Mount Morris Park fire watchtower

One was at Ninth Avenue and 33rd Street. Another stood on Spring Street. In all, fire-prone 19th-century New York City was dotted with 11 fire watchtowers.

Made of cast iron, each tower contained a huge bell that a guard, positioned there at all hours, would ring whenever flames were spotted nearby.

The only fire watchtower still standing is in Mount Morris Park—aka Marcus Garvey Park. This unusual structure sits high on a hill known to Dutch colonists as “Slangberg,” or Snake Hill, in Harlem’s East 120s.

Completed in 1857, the watchtower was only used for a couple of decades, replaced by telegraph alarms.

But the cool old bell still rang regularly until 1905; residents asked the city to strike it twice a day to let locals know the time.