II. On the Town

In 1929 the Merchants’Association of New York published a little almanac that cataloged the city’s prodigiousness:
To begin at the beginning, a baby is born in New York every 4 minutes and 6 seconds —a total of 126,332 in 1928.

Using a twelve-hour day as a basis of computation, couples are getting married in New York at the rate of 14 every hour — a total of 62,424 getting married in 1928. Everybody can’t get married, however, and stay within the law, because in the population of 6,065,000 it is estimated there are 15,000 more females than males.

These 6,065,000 people are consuming food at the rate of approximately 3,500,000 tons a year, an average of more than 1,000 pounds of food being consumed or wasted by every man, woman and child.

These people use 2,659,632 quarts of milk a day, almost a pint a piece.

The Health Department estimates that they use 7,000,000 eggs a day.

Fifteen hundred freight cars are needed daily to bring the food that New York eats.

If placed together they would form a train twelve miles long.

More than 190 people in New York pick up the telephone receiver every second, on the average.

There are approximately 8,233,000 intra-City telephone calls every 24 hours.

In addition, the people make 508,000 commuting calls — calls within a 50-mile radius — and 34,383 long distance calls every day.

The city has 1,700,000 telephones in operation, almost one-fifth as many telephones as are in all of Europe. The 8,367,000 miles of wire in the City would string 35 lines between the earth and the moon.

To house the activities of New York’s residents and visitors, there were, on October 1,1928, 681,818 buildings, including 277,118 one-family houses, 143,534 two-family houses, 121,557 non-elevator apartment buildings, and 3,970 hotels and elevator apartments.

There are 89,263 garages and stables to accommodate their automobiles and horses.

There are still 50,000 horses in New York City.

New York’s largest building (the Equitable) houses 12,000 people every day.

The assessed valuation of the real property in New York is $17,133,817,310.

To support the City’s public activities requires a budget of $538,928,697.

The City debt is $1,881,740,963, requiring interest payments of over $75,000,000 a year.

The City’s tax levy in 1928 was $441,357,774.

[In 1986 – 87 assessed valuation of real estate was $55,089,444,700; the 1988 budget is $23,159,000,000; the city’s total tax levy is $13,525,000,000.. No debt is expected to be incurred in fiscal 1988.]

New York’s population travels. This is shown by the fact that on an average business day over 9,000,000 passengers are carried on subway or elevated street car lines and buses.

5,642,661 of these travel on subway or elevated and 2,949,305 on the surface lines.

Approximately 592,000 people are carried daily on the various bus routes.

The City has normally 23,628 taxicabs in daily service.

There are 4,702 miles of streets, of which 2,868.7 are paved and 1,833.3 are unpaved.

New York is a Mecca for Visitors.

According to the latest available count, more than 500,000 people come into New York over the railroads every business day.

Over 127,000 people who are not commuters come into the City daily through the railroad stations.

To accommodate its visitors New York has 250 hotels and 94,400 hotel rooms. At a pinch, the hotels can accommodate over 200,000 visitors.

New York has 800 theatres.

252 of these are devoted to the spoken drama.

548 are movie houses and are rapidly becoming talkies.

For the average visitor who will be satisfied with none but first class shows, 125 theatres are available.

675 of New York’s theatres belong to the neighborhood class.

The combined seating capacity of New York’s theatres is 850,993, divided as follows:

Legitimate, 338,140

Motion Pictures, 334,791

Neighborhood movies, 178,062

With exports valued at $1,769,684,571 the Port of New York in 1928 handled over 34 per cent of the exports of the entire nation.

Imported goods valued at $1,949,982,707, or nearly half the United States total, came in through the Port of New York.

The value of the products of New York City’s factories is equal to almost one-tenth of the value of the products manufactured by the entire country.

In 1927 — date of last census of manufactures — New York City had 27,062 separate factories in which were employed an average number of 552,507 wage earners.

These wage earners received $904,646,427 and turned out products valued at $5,722,071,259 — an increase of $397,657,647 in two years.

The New York City workman is exceptionally well paid. In 1927 he received an average wage of $1,637 as against an average of $1,298 paid in wages for the country as a whole.

— Facts about New York Today, compiled by the Merchants’ Association of New York, May 19, 1929

Stop in at the U.S. Assay office…and exchange your gold in any form valued at not less than $100, for money.

There is no safer city in the world than New York. Newspaper headlines to the contrary are largely sensationalism, playing up crimes and accidents of the day generally out of all proportion to their number or real importance. Women alone, or accompanied by young children, may be assured of safety and comfort in New York.…

In small towns like “Gopher Prairie,” the visitor is spotted at once, either by speech or dress or manner, or by mere “newness,” as he steps from the train, as he treads the quiet streets.…In New York the most unfamiliar type is the New Yorker —that almost unknown, practically nonexistent specimen, the native born Manhattanite. It is he, rather than the visitor, who is curious; yet he, poor dear, claims no special distinction, moves in no separate aura, nor ventures criticism of the hordes of aliens which possess his city — looks askance at none, accepts all.

— How to Enjoy New York, Official Membership Publication of the New York Visitors’ Association Inc., 1925

New York may not be America but it is New York. And New York stands outside comparison. It is without doubt one of the most remarkable places existent now, and one of the most remarkable in history. It is a portent of this and the coming time, the towering apex of a growing pyramid of civilisation. At the same time it is not natural. In some respects it is grander than Nature, for there is more to marvel at in a skyscraper than in a mountain, and there is the illusion of more light flashing off its dynamos than from the revolving sun itself. It is a monument of human artifice.…

I walked the streets of New York a long while before I found poetry. There was majestic and glittering prose, but no glamour, no softness, no tenderness, no emotional relief even in the secret aftermidnight hours, sanctified by the sleeping, by the invincible stars and the quietude of the rivers.

—Stephen Graham, New York Nights, 1927

New York practically has no strictly American restaurants, with food cooked in the native manner and served in the simple home style. One of the hardest things to buy in New York is genuine American cooked and served foods. The few exceptions are some of the oyster houses, dairy lunch rooms and occasional tea rooms that specialize in southern dishes prepared by a negro cook.…In the leading houses the chef is French; in a considerable portion of the others, he is German, Viennese or Italian. The waiters are almost universally foreign. In fact, the main distinction between the American and the foreign restaurant is that the former professes to cater to the American taste, while the latter tends to exaggerate its foreign features and make the most of their advertising value.

— Rider’s New York City — a Guide-Book for Travellers, 1923

Nearly all Italian restaurants feature table d’hote dinners. Usually these include antipasto (the Italian hors d’oeuvre in which is included many small fish), minestrone or a thin consomme, spaghetti or ravioli (and with excellent sauces), chicken or steak, lettuce salad, and either caramel custard, spumoni, biscuit Tor- toni or apple cheese. The lunches are lighter versions of the dinners.

Among the Italian specialties that are excellent and not included on many table d’hotes are broccoli with browned butter and cheese or Hollandaise sauce, veal scallopine, gnocchi Romano, and zucchine.

Enrico & Paglierri — 66 W. llth St. Lunch, 85c; Dinner, $1.35 Week days: Saturday, Sunday and Holidays, $1.50 and a la carte.

Sardi’s, 234 W. 44th St. — Lunch, 8Oc to $1.25; Dinner, $1.50 and a Ia carte.

The French table d’hote is usually like the Italian. The a Ia carte is much better. Nearly all the food is good if the restaurant is good, and chicken cooked in any manner is always dependable. The best vegetables in the world are served at Longchamps.

Louis, 154 W. 50th St. — Lunch, 5Oc; Dinner, $1.10 Week days; Saturday, Sunday and Holidays, $1.25 and a la carte.

Longchamps, 19 W. 57th St., 55 5th Ave., 423 Madison Ave., 1015 Madison Ave., a la carte.

Charles, 138 6th Ave. — A la carte Dinner, Sunday, $1.75.

Rich, heavy but grand meats and gravies are served at these restaurants. Luchow’s have apple pancakes that are really dreams of apple pancakes.

Luchow, 110 E. 14th St. —Ala carte.

A la carte dinners include more strange foods than ever Fanny Farmer dreamed. If you order sukiyaki you can cook it at your table, which is quite a lot of fun. This food is nothing like Chinese.

Daruma, 781 6th Ave. — Lunch, 60c; Dinner, $1 and $1.25 and a la carte.

Henry’s Smorgasbord is an adventure. Fast three days before attempting a Swedish table d’hote dinner.

Henry’s, 69 West 36th St. — Lunch, $1.25; Dinner, $2.00.

Curry is inevitable. Ditto rice. Ditto atmosphere.

Ceylon Indian Inn, 148 W. 49th St. — Dinner, 85c to $3.00 and a la carte.

— Gotham Guide, 1926

The Hearthstone, 174 West 4th Street. One of the few places in the Village where you are sure of having home cooking. You are never turned out to make room for others. And Mrs. Lyons offers second helpings!

The Pickwick Inn, 123 West 44th Street, is an eating place not to be missed, either for luncheon or dinner. Its customers say that they get more and better food for less money than anywhere else in town.

The Roosevelt, Madison Avenue at 45th Street. New York City’s newest and finest hotel with an unexcelled table in all its departments.

New York Exchange for Woman’s Work, 541 Madison Avenue. A choice restaurant for ladies, serving all meals. Cakes and fancy articles for sale.

Mary Elizabeth, Fifth Avenue and 36th Street. This dainty eating place is worth many visits by those who like discrimination in their choice.

Ye Cheshire Cheese, Seventh Avenue and 47th Street. Not a replica of Dr. Johnson’s old rendezvous in London, but serving a dainty meal worth trying.

Greenwich Village Inn, 5 Sheridan Square. Probably the smartest place in the village but with sufficient atmosphere.

Palais D’Or, Broadway and 49th Street. This institution is the old Palais Royal under new management. The old atmosphere remains, the music and cabaret is up to standard but prices are lower.

Little Hungary, 257 East Houston Street. Out of the beaten track but one of the downtown places that the traveler should not miss, particularly on New Year’s Eve.

— The Rand McNally New York Guide, 1926

Don Dickerman has…produced the Pirates’ Den [at 8 Christopher Street, where] the waiters are disguised as pirates of the 18th century, and except for their mild eyes and blameless mouths are a fearsome looking crowd. They stage scenes from “Treasure Island,” and ship brawls, they fire shots, break into outrageous talk, start old-fashioned disputes and clash cutlasses. The den is dark. It has its wonderful parrot. You drink cider from old mugs and stare at fullbodied sailors in cotton vests and corded breeches and knee boots with hanging leather flaps, at the walls of the smoky cellar hung with maps, toy-ships, fishes’ skeletons, whales’ vertebrae, picks from Cocos Island.…Suddenly there is a squall of thunder and lightning, and the band and its platform raised by pulleys begin to mount to the upper deck. The sound of a ship’s bell breaks through the noise of the mock storm. Voices are heard from various parts of the imaginary ship. “All quiet on the main deck, sir!”…“Forward light burning bright!”…“Prisoners safe in the brig!”

“Good kid stuff, don’t you think?” enquires Dickerman, admiring his own artifice.…

I think of the words of the poet “Come, be a child once more” as invisibly written over the portals of the Pirates’ Den. Not that New York people need the invitation.…

— Stephen Graham, New York Nights, 1927

…I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen by their first names, and lunched with them in dark, crowded restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee…

I took dinner at the Yale Club — for some reason it was the gloomiest event of my day — and then I went upstairs to the library and studied investments and securities for a conscientious hour.…After that, if the night was mellow, I strolled down Madison Avenue past the old Murray Hill Hotel, and over 33d Street to the Pennsylvania Station.

I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye.…At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others — poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner.…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925

Bronx Cocktail

The Juice of 1/4 Orange.

1/4 French Vermouth.

1/4 Italian Vermouth.

1/2 Dry Gin.

Shake well and strain into cocktail glass.

1/6 Dry Gin.

1/6 Glass Kirsch.

1/6 Glass Maraschino.

1/6 Glass Curaçao.

1/6 French Vermouth.

1/6 Italian Vermouth.

Shake well and strain into cocktail glass. Squeeze Lemon Peel on top.

2 Dashes Orange Juice.

2 Dashes Pricota.

1/2 Kina Lillet.

1/2 Plymouth Gin.

Shake well and serve in cocktail glass. Squeeze Lemon Peel on top.

1/3 Crême de Cacao.

1/3 Apricot Brandy.

1/3 Sweet Cream.

Use liqueur glass and pour carefully, so that ingredients do not mix.

1/2 Bacardi Rum.

1/2 Pineapple Juice.

1 Teaspoonful Grenadine.

6 Drops Maraschino.

The following cocktails are especially suitable for those countries where they make the best of Prohibition, and where the ingredients for making them are obtainable without much difficulty.

Crush 1 Lump of Sugar in a little water.

Crush 4 Leaves of Fresh Green Mint.

1 Dash Lemon Juice.

4 Dashes Orange Juice.

1 Glass Gin.

Shake well and strain into

cocktail glass.

Saturate 1 lump of Sugar with Raspberry Syrup or Grenadine.

1/3 Vermouth.

2/3 Hooch Whisky.

Shake well and strain into cocktail glass.

— The Savoy Cocktail Book, 1930

The motion picture palaces, as they are not very exaggeratedly termed by their publicity representatives, are greatly favoured by transient visitors because of the varied and continuous nature of their offerings. Music, dancing, a popular comedian, all add their piquant sauces to the main dish of the motion picture. So popular, indeed, has this kind of entertainment become that the number of straight vaudeville houses in New York has dwindled to one or two.…Roxy, genial showman of the radio, knows how to put together a good programme, and his theatre is in exceptional good taste, for all its crimson and gilt. Even its monstrous organ, which takes three musicians to operate, seems to fit naturally into the large-scale personality of the theatre. The Capitol, the Strand, the Rialto, the Rivoli, to mention only a few of the cinema houses whose electric signs help make the Great White Way the scintillating thoroughfare it is, are also favourites. Luxurious lounges, collegebred ushers, ice-cooled air in summer, account partly for the popularity of these places.…

— Ethyl Fleming, New York, 1929

William Morris Houghton was Judge’s motion picture critic. Here is his rundown from the Christmas 1925 issue:
There is always a reverse side to every joy. That of seeing “The Big Parade” is no exception. It makes the movies that come after seem unusually thin and pale and unwholesome. So what 1 have to say about Cecil DeMille’s “The Road to Yesterday,” among others, should be read in the light of that fact. There is a train wreck in it that is amazingly realistic and must involve some very ingenious photography, but the cheap story-book reconstruction of ye anciente tymes, the almost incessant kissing and the use of the religious motif for melodramatic effect still affect my digestion. Please pass the soda mints.

The Knockout —Milton Sills well cast as a gentleman pug.

Go West — Buster Keaton and about three hearty laughs.

Compromise —Irene Rich deserves a better picture.

The Vanishing American — But not the 100 per cent. American.

Little Annie Rooney —Saccharinely yours, Mary.

A Regular Fellow —Very funny take off on the prince business.

The Dark Angel —A sentimental war picture beautifully handled.

Souls for Satan —So poor it’s funny.

The Midshipman —Annapolis as it ain’t.

Seven Keys to Baldpate — Douglas MacLean does this famous comedy very well.

Lights of Old Broadway…Marion Davies in the gay life of yesteryear.

Classified — Corinne Griffith and the three musketeers — Love, Virtue and Coincidence.

The Eagle — Valentine with Russian dressing.

Stage Struck — Our Gloria in engaging comedy.

Lord Jim — Not Conrad, but worth seeing.

Stella Dallas — Well cast drama full of flubdub.

The Big Parade — The almost perfect picture. Don’t miss it.

The following notices from The New York Times of the middle and late 1920s will be especially poignant to the modern Manhattanite. The prices that at first seem familiar to today’s tenant are in fact the yearly rental; the low figures are monthly.

Unfurnished — West Side

9TH ST, 17 WEST — Entire parlor floor, exceptionally large rooms; rent $2,500.

9TH, 66 WEST — High-class elevator house, 2–3 rooms; $45 – $75.

28TH, 344 WEST — Excellent apartments, rooms, bath; suitable artists’ studios; high grade, restricted, residential block; $60 – $65.

45TH St, 325 WEST, THE WHITBY, “A Home in the Heart of Things.” 1, 2, 3 rooms, kitchenettes or kitchens, now leasing for immediate possession; rentals from $85; grill, maid and valet service, barber; combining perfect service with excellent location; attractively furnished if desired.

SANFORD and REXFORD, 229 West 78th St. & 230 West 79th St. 5 Rooms 2 Baths, 6 Rooms 3 Baths, Electric refrigeration, enclosed radiators, six-burner white gas stoves and modernistic decorations, $2700 upwards.

131 RIVERSIDE DRIVE, North Corner of 85th St., 12-story fireproof building. 6 Rooms, 2 Baths. $2200 upwards.

698 WEST END AVE, S.E. Corner 94th St., 15-story modern fireproof building. 2 Rooms, $1250; 3 Rooms, $1500; 4 Rooms, cor. $2200.

3OTH, 201 EAST — 5 rooms, bath, elevator service day, night, $85–$100.

50TH ST., 185 EAST — If you want an ideal location, modest rentals and an end of the servant problem, inspect this new 9-story building; 1-room apartments with kitchen, each a home in itself, at $1,080 to $1,260.

50TH (16 BEEKMAN PLACE) — Entire floor, 2 very large rooms; river view; sunny; open fireplaces; private crosstown bus; $110.

LEXINGTON AVENUE, 740 — To let, 2 large rooms and bath, rental $50.

383 PARK AVENUE — 6 to 12 Rooms — 3 & 4 Baths, $4,500 to $12,000.

1111 PARK AVE — Fine families promptly recognized the desirability and value of these new apartments on the southeast corner of 90th Street. 63 out of 72 already occupied! 7-8-9 rooms still available; perfectly arranged, roomy, bright and susceptible to tasteful decorations. Rentals $4000 to $7200.

3 WEST 8TH ST. HOTEL MARLTON. — 2-room suites, including meals for 2 persons, $30 – $35 – $60 weekly: Full hotel service.

BACHELOR will share exclusive apartment gentlemen absolute independence assured; $9 [weekly].

…Sometimes all the owners of a cooperative apartment belong to the same social layer. But my lady of millions need no more associate with the other tenants in her house than you or I, fellow-pauper, with the people in the flat upstairs. Each apartment has its separate and private elevator; often, its separate and private entrance. If the lobby be cooperative, the proper retinue of liveried servants open the door, bow you in. Always in the background of this lobby stands a quiet man in quiet clothes; he is the detective, guarding the house against jewel-robbers. From the elevator doors of the richer and more expensive apartment, you step into a hall like that of any grand house; you must look out of the window to realize that you are dwelling with the eagle. The individual, modern decoration and furnishing of these interiors support a colony of prosperous craftsmen along Madison and Lexington avenues.

Final touch of strange luxury is the roof-house, the “cote”; sometimes merely a super-cottage surrounded by painfully cultivated gardens, but often a veritable mansion. Here, twenty inhabited stories above ground, the circle swings full turn; the tenant has achieved a detachment impossible to any dwelling set on the earth. There are no neighbors to his right and left; only the tinted air above Manhattan. Though hundreds of strangers dwell just underfoot, his only connection with his six million fellow-citizens is the opening to his private elevator-shaft. From any supreme elevation on the edge of this region - like the tops of the Heckscher Building or the Hotel Shelton —these roof-houses cut the sky-line in every direction. Once, standing by the pinnacle of the Heckscher, I glimpsed something which made me think that I was living in Mother Goose. Distrusting my eyes, I went into the broker’s office under the spike and borrowed a field-glass. It was all true. There, chewing her cud at the back door of a cottage cocked twenty stories in air, lay a Jersey cow!…

Who live in these compos- ite steel and cement palaces? All sorts, the one common factor being wealth. The Park Avenue Association has issued of late some interesting figures. The average net income along the Avenue is $75,000 a year. A mere $50,000 a year is bitter poverty. Its possessor can afford no more than $10,000 a year for rent; and that brings him only a flat. A really desirable duplex or triplex apartment will cost perhaps $35,000 a year. If the tenant prefers to buy a duplex or triplex, the initial cost and the decoration may come to a quarter of a million —to say nothing of furnishings.

— Will Irwin, Highlights of Manhattan, 1927

One was increasingly conscious of the speakeasy and of Park Avenue. In the past decade Greenwich Village, Washington Square, Murray Hill, the châteaux of Fifth Avenue had somehow disappeared, or become unexpressive of anything. The city was bloated, glutted, stupid r with cake and circuses, and a new expression “Oh yeah?” summed up all the enthusiasm evoked by the announcement of the last super-skyscrapers.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, “My Lost City, ” 1932

…We were somewhere in North Africa when we heard a dull distant crash which echoed to the farthest wastes of the desert.

“What was that?”

“Did you hear it?”

“It was nothing.”

“Do you think we ought to go home and see?”

“No —it was nothing.”

In the dark autumn of two years later we saw New York again. We passed through curiously polite customs agents, and then with bowed head and hat in hand I walked reverently through the echoing tomb. Among the ruins a few childish wraiths still played to keep up the pretense that they were alive, betraying by their feverish voices and hectic cheeks the thinness of the masquerade. Cocktail parties, a last hollow survival from the days of carnival, echoed to the plaints of the wounded: “Shoot me, for the love of God, someone shoot me!”, and the groans and wails of the dying: “Did you see that United States Steel is down three more points?”.…From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building and, just as it had been a tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza Roof to take leave of the beautiful city, extending as far as eyes could reach, so now I went to the roof of the last and most magnificent of towers. Then I understood —everything was explained: I had discovered the crowning error of the city, its Pandora’s box. Full of vaunting pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected, that the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed but that it had limits —from the tallest structure he saw for the first time that it faded out into the country on all sides, into an expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground.…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, “My Lost City, ” 1932