New Century Same City

The other day I was visiting a friend, a retired dancer. She lives in an old
brownstone, on a quiet side street in what she thinks of as the West Village,
but is really more Chelsea. It is decorated in Victorian. We were curled up
under a blanket drinking wine with candles being the only illumination.
Outside, faintly, getting louder, we heard the clip clop of horse's hooves.
They went right past her apartment and faded out. A cop on patrol, but for
almost a second it was if we were in the New York of 1899 instead of 1999.

I began to think about the differences in the City. Then and Now.

New York at the beginning of the 20th Century:

*Niblo's Garden books 'The Black Crook' a balletic musical. The unprecedented
display of female flesh ...packed the house night after night...the sale of
men’s opera glasses reached an all time high.

*The Lydia Thompson Burlesque Company arrived at Wood's Museum (30th and
Broadway), four British Blondes who sang, danced, winked, leered, and satirized
conventional manners with raucous impertinence.

*Churchmen fulminated against 'French indecencies' and attempted to suppress
the 'leg shows' but they flourished...prompting moralists to pursuade the city
to require all theatrical and musical performing spaces be licensed and...
employment of 'waitresses' be banned wherever a curtain did not separate
performers from customers. Entrepreneurs of leisure promptly drove through this
loophole by a raised platform in the rear... and an open dance floor...singers
sat at tables between acts or danced with customers.

 New York at the beginning of the 20th Century:

“The Blue Angel”

“ The Paradise Club (33rd and Broadway)”

Pastor Guliani and the 60/40 rule



* From ‘Gotham’ Edward G. Burrows and Mike Wallace.