Product Details

From Barnes & Noble

Truly "the city that never sleeps," New York City has been known for two centuries for its ceaseless pace. Of course, entertainment venues are ultimately as ephemeral as they are exciting; yesterday's nightlife hot spot becomes today's abandoned building. David Freeland's Automats, Taxi Dances & Vaudeville rescues these monuments of leisure from oblivion, offering us glimpses into the once-bustling world of Gotham's German beer gardens, nickel silent movie theatres, burlesque houses, and all-night diners and bars. This carefully researched paperback will appeal to history buff fans of authors like Luc Sante and Timothy Gilfoyle.

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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Library Journal

Historian and music journalist Freeland (Ladies of Soul) shows us the palimpsest that is Manhattan: a volume of tales, many obscured and overwritten by newer stories, with much early material lost forever, but with parts that lurk obscurely, not entirely erased. A seeker like Freeland, who set forth both along New York's pavement and into its archival material, can discover many old stories, ripe with adventure, colorful personalities, and triumphs and sorrow. Stoked by his knowledge of local cultural and musical history, Freeland sought to "bring out of hiding" New York's obscured places, the half-visible fragments, that testify to earlier eras of the city's history of entertainment and leisure. Freeland explains that because popular culture is ever shifting and changing, and operates beyond the status quo, its built environment falls prey to destruction sooner than does that of government and finance. From Chinatown (beer gardens, Chinese theater, gang warfare) to the East Village and Union Square (the "Jewish Rialto," rooftop movie-making) to Tin Pan Alley, Times Square (the Automat, taxi dancers), and Harlem (jazz and ragtime on 133rd Street), Freeland turns his readers into intrepid time travelers. 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. VERDICT Highly recommended for all urban history buffs, New York City visitors and residents, and all studying the colorful history of urban American popular culture. [See the Behind the Book, p. 108.]—Margaret Heilbrun, Library Journal

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Table of Contents