Dance-hall days on 14th Street

Fourteenth Street near Union Square has gone through many incarnations. In the late 1800s it hosted New York’s theater district, home to theaters and music halls as well as piano and organ salesrooms.

You can see the Steck Pianos sign and a sign for Estey, an organ manufacturer, in this 1880s photo of 14th street. And the street car on the left has the word “theatre” printed on the front.

By the the turn of the century the area slid into more of a low-rent vaudeville and dance-hall hub. It must have been a colorful, slightly depressing place to visit.

The narrator of “The Princess With the Golden Hair,” a short story by Village writer Edmund Wilson, published in 1942, observed:

“In the restlessness of my after-dinner boredom, I began looking in on the dance-halls. The first one I visited was desolating and soon drove me out again. Sparse couples—uninterested hostesses and  elderly stolid men—were shuffling  or revolving to monotonous music under lighting that was glamorless and garish.

“I wondered whether they were all like that or whether there mightn’t be gayer places: was this the type of the popular recreation that a city like New York had to offer?”

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.”

A crowd forms on Sixth Avenue and 14th Street

“Ashcan School” artist John Sloan really had a thing for the Sixth Avenue El. Several of his paintings depict the El at Third Street or Eighth Street; Jefferson Market Courthouse can often be seen in the distance.

Here he highlights the next stop on the El, at 14th Street. It’s still a major shopping crossroads. Currently a Starbucks and Urban Outfitters occupy the Southeast corner, past the “Shoes” marquee in the painting.

The building across the street with the pointed turret is still there. Down toward Seventh Avenue looms the Salvation Army headquarters, also still in existence.

The greatest con artist of 19th century New York

Hungry Joe Lewis arrived in New York City in the 1880s and immediately began separating wealthy residents from their money via a game called Bunco (also called Banco).

Played with cards or dice, Bunco was kind of the late–19th century version of three-card monte.

The point was to let the rube win early on, encourage him to drop more dough . . . until he lost in the end because ultimately the game was not winnable.

It was played so often in New York at the time the term Bunco eventually became synonymous with fraud.

Hungry Joe’s most prominent mark was Irish writer Oscar Wilde, who visited the city in 1882. After “bumping into” Wilde near Union Square and convincing him to play Bunco, Lewis managed to get $5,000 out of the writer.

Hungry Joe earned a string of convictions for Bunco-ing various people. But he supposedly went straight after being released from prison in 1896. He died in 1902, known forever as “King of the Bunco Men.”

When trolleys cut through Union Square

Judging from the lack of automobile traffic on 14th Street, Broadway, and University Place—as well as the streetcar trolleys and horse and carriages—I’d guess this photo is from just about the turn of the 20th century.

It’s a great picture. There’s a statue at the southwest corner of Union Square, but it certainly isn’t Ghandi, who occupies that spot now.

Instead of Whole Foods we’ve got Automatic Vaudeville, a penny arcade offering a basement shooting gallery, peep shows, and phonographs in individual listening booths—kind of what the Virgin Megastore had for customers who wanted to sample music before they closed up shop last month.

And in place of Forever 21 is Brill Brothers, a men’s clothing store.

Where Macy’s got its modest start

$11.06. That amount was reportedly what Rowland Hussey Macy earned on the first day his new dry-goods store opened for business in a small building on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street in 1858.

But after that slow start, the R.H. Macy store began grossing tens of thousands of dollars a year. It became a full-fledged department store in 1877 and eventually occupied many storefronts along West 14th Street (like the one in the photo at left).

Fourteenth Street was a more upscale shopping district at the end of the 19th century. But even then, department store moguls could see that the future of retail was farther uptown. 

So in 1902, Macy’s packed it up and relocated to a colossal new store at Herald Square on 34th Street—its current quarters today.

This weekend, Macy’s is sponsoring its 33rd annual Fireworks Spectacular, this time over the Hudson River. Macy’s pledged the first show as a tribute to America’s Bicentennial, and it quickly morphed into an Independence Day tradition.

New York’s “fairy” wedding of the year, 1863

General Tom Thumb, born Charles Sherwood Stratton, was already an international sensation even before his celebrated New York City marriage. Three-foot tall Tom had toured the world with P.T. Barnum, who taught him how to sing, dance, and perform when he was a kid. 

On February 10, 1863, Tom, 25, married 20-year-old Lavinia Warren, also part of P.T. Barnum’s traveling sideshow. The wedding took place at Grace Church on Broadway and East 10th Street; the reception held at the Metropolitan Hotel, down Broadway on Prince Street.

Barnum milked the nuptials as best as he could. He sold tickets to the reception for $75 a head, displayed Lavinia’s hand-made wedding dress in a department store window, and hawked souvenir trinkets.

Thousands of New Yorkers crowded the streets outside the church while Vanderbilts and Astors watched inside. Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, who had a studio nearby, took photos. Newspapers ran stories about the “loving lilliputians” and their “fairy wedding.” 

Tom and Lavinia continued to tour with Barnum. They had no kids (much to Barnum’s chagrin), and the marriage lasted until Tom died of a stroke in 1883.

Breaking barriers at Carnegie Hall

In 1892, soprano Sissieretta Jones became the first African American to perform at Carnegie Hall. Reportedly she sang “Ava Maria” as well as selections from Verdi’s “La Traviata” at the year-old music venue.

She was no New York City novice though. Jones had already made a name for herself singing both arias and popular tunes at smaller halls, like Wallack’s Theater on Broadway and 13th Street and Steinway Hall on 14th near University Place. At Steinway Hall she got the nickname the “Black Patti,” after Italian opera singer Adelina Patti.

A few months before her Carnegie Hall debut, she performed at Madison Square Garden as part of the “Negro Grand Jubilee” for an audience of 75,000.

Jones became nationally and internationally renowned. But frustrated by racism at many music venues, she eventually formed the Black Patti Troubadours, a vaudville-like music revue that toured major cities for decades.

She died in 1933, reportedly broke, in her hometown of Providence.

Who is watching Lincoln’s funeral procession?

See the two little figures looking out the second-floor window facing south in the building on the corner? Supposedly it’s a young Teddy Roosevelt and his brother Elliot (future father of Eleanor); they’re viewing President Lincoln’s funeral procession. The future president would have been seven years old when this picture was taken on April 25, 1865.

That’s his grandfather Cornelius Roosevelt’s property on Broadway between 13th and 14th Streets; the procession is heading to Union Square.

Cornelius Roosevelt’s house was torn down and an eight-story terra cotta and brick structure put in its place in 1894. Called the Roosevelt Building, it stands at 13th and Broadway today.

A portrait of a New York City lady

She’s somebody’s daughter, or mother or sister. And she sure is wearing a heavy-duty crucifix on a chain around her neck. I wonder who held on to her photo for over a hundred years.

 The portrait was taken at Rockwood Photography, in Union Square. George Rockwood opened his studio in 1857 and competed with Civil War and portrait photographer Mathew Brady, who worked a few blocks away down Broadway.

There’s a nice site devoted to George Rockwood that features some of his portraits, plus a few great old photographs of Union Square.

As for this woman, she remains a mystery.