Product Description

From the lights that never go out on Broadway to its 24-hour subway system, New York City isn't called "the city that never sleeps" for nothing. Both native New Yorkers and tourists have played hard in Gotham for centuries, lindy hopping in 1930s Harlem, voguing in 1980s Chelsea, and refueling at all-night diners and bars. The slim island at the mouth of the Hudson River is packed with places of leisure and entertainment, but Manhattan's infamously fast pace of change means that many of these beautifully constructed and incredibly ornate buildings have disappeared, and with them a rich and ribald history.

Yet with David Freeland as a guide, it's possible to uncover skeletons of New York's lost monuments to its nightlife. With a keen eye for architectural detail, Freeland opens doors, climbs onto rooftops, and gazes down alleyways to reveal several of the remaining hidden gems of Manhattan's nineteenth- and twentieth-century entertainment industry. From the Atlantic Garden German beer hall in present-day Chinatown to the city's first motion picture studio—Union Square's American Mutoscope and Biograph Company—to the Lincoln Theater in Harlem, Freeland situates each building within its historical and social context, bringing to life an old New York that took its diversions seriously. Freeland reminds us that the buildings that serve as architectural guideposts to yesteryear's recreations cannot be re-created—once destroyed they are gone forever. With condominiums and big box stores spreading over city blocks like wildfires, more and more of the Big Apple's legendary houses of mirth are being lost. By excavating the city's cultural history, this delightful book unearths some of the many mysteries that lurk around the corner and lets readers see the city in a whole new light.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #125760 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-01
• Released on: 2009-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 269 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780814727638
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In its people and its real estate, New York maintains a complicated relationship with its past: though always moving forward, the city is also preoccupied with its grand old architecture, a refined sense of nostalgia and an idealized sense of times gone by. Still, few New Yorkers know much about the city's actual history. Historian and music journalist Freeland (Ladies of Soul) provides an excellent correction in this detailed exploration of Manhattan's lost leisure spots, from defunct 19th century Chinatown beer gardens to the earliest integrated theaters in Harlem. Along the way, Freeland unreels meticulous accounts of Manhattan's more fascinating and scandalous moments. New Yorkers past and present will learn much about parts of the city-buildings, neighborhoods, people and hot spots-long gone, or so transformed as to be unrecognizable. Focusing on five neighborhoods-Chinatown, Union Square/East Village, the Tenderloin, Harlem and Times Square-these stories provide a vivid cross-section of the city as a whole in ways a more generalized approach couldn't. Exceptionally well-written and researched, this volume will satisfy anyone curious about New York, or the way a modern metropolis builds and rebuilds itself to reflect the times.

Review

“Freeland’s affectionate, detail-packed tome about Manhattan’s forgotten pleasure centers—from dance halls to gambling dens—adds a lyrical song to the cacophony. Organized geographically and for the most part chronologically, the book explores eight neighborhoods—Chinatown, Chatham Square, the Bowery, the East Village, Union Square, the Tenderloin, Harlem and Times Square—via their entertainment centers, with the added hook that physical remnants of these historical hot spots still exist.”
- Time Out New York

“With an archaeologist’s eye and a storyteller’s wit [Freeland] roams from Chinatown to Harlem—concentrating on scenes of the city’s nightlife a century ago during the vaudeville era but also reaching back into the nineteenth century as he summons up forgotten neighborhoods and personalities who gave old New York its raffish vigor.”
- Wall Street Journal

“Exceptionally well-written and researched, this volume will satisfy anyone curious about New York, or the way a modern metropolis builds and rebuilds itself to reflect the times.”
- Publishers Weekly, starred review

“The richness of the New York stories he presents, in elegant prose, is more abundant than the actual brick and mortar that remain. His is a guidebook to the city’s history, to what it has bequeathed us, even as much may be lost.”
- Library Journal

“Reading this book is like going on a walking tour with a really knowledgeable guide, who knows not only what building to point out but also what stories lurk behind the front door.”
- The New Leader

About the Author

David Freeland is a writer who specializes in music history and popular culture. He is a contributing writer to the weekly New York Press, and his articles and criticism have also appeared in music magazines including American Songwriter, Relix, and Goldmine. He is the author of Ladies of Soul, a history of under-recognized female vocalists from the 1960s, and wrote the introduction, supplementary articles, and over 100 entries for Schirmer's reference work Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Popular Musicians. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

A Well-Researched Look Back into New Yory City History
If youre interested in the social history of NYC neighborhoods, and want a well-researched, and still very readable account, I recommend this book. It discusses neighborhood evolution in areas like Times Square, Chinatown and Harlem. (The book's title gives a hint of some of the stories it tells).

Its also has a great bibliography for those who want to keep on reading - there's no one book about NYC that could possibly tell the whole story.

The only negative I have is the poor quality of the photos -- there arent many of them, and in this paperback, theyre far from high quality (web sites like those of the NY Public Library, the Museum of the City of NY, and the NY Historical Society have some great on-line photo collections for those interested in better pictorial histories).

All-in-all, a very enjoyable read by a guy who did his homework.

Bringing vansihed social scenes back from the dead
I'm reading this book now and I'm finding it to be both interesting and an easy read.

The author takes you on time machine-like tours of selected social/entertainment scenes in mostly, I seems, 19th Century Manhattan. The historical social scenes revolve around specific structures & sites where at least some physical remnants still exist today. In reading about the histories of specific buildings, the reader ends up learning so much more than the mere architectural "brick & mortar" aspects. We learn about different ethnic and immigrant cultures that thrived and declined at different times and in different neighborhoods.

The chapters are organized by neighborhoods, and therefore also by the ethnicities of those neighborhoods. We start out with the German immigrant community in the Bowery area, then we go to Chinatown, then to Jewish immigrant life on Second Avenue and so forth.

There's a refreshing amount of heart & soul for what is essentially a history book. What you're left with is the realizeation that if you observe & learn, you can still find traces of previous centuries in everyday places.