Title: New York night : the mystique and its history /
Authors: Caldwell, Mark.
Publisher: Scribner,
Year: 2005
Subjects: Night Social aspects New York (State) New York History.; Street life New York (State) New York History.; City and town life New York (State) New York History.; New York (N.Y.) Social life and customs; New York (N.Y.) Social conditions; New York (N.Y.) Biography
Abstract: "From glittering opulence to sordid violence, from sweetest romance to grinding lust, critic and historian Mark Caldwell chronicles, with both intimate detail and epic sweep, the story of New York nightlife from 1643 to the present, featuring the famous, the notorious, and the unknown who have long walked the city's streets and lived its history. New York Night ranges from the leafy forests at Manhattan's tip, where Indians and Europeans first met, to the candlelit taverns of old New Amsterdam, to the theaters, brothels, and saloon prizefights of the Civil War era, to the lavish entertainments of the Gilded Age, to the speakeasies and nightclubs of the century past, and even to the strip clubs and glamour restaurants of today."
Contents: New Amsterdam noir : the dark nights of Dutch Manhattan -- Rattle watch nights : city streets after sundown, from Peter Stuyvesant to the early republic -- Hearthside and rushlight : old New York at home -- Broadway after dark : pleasures and hours of federal New York -- Bowery gals will come out to-night? : nighttime on the Bowery before the Civil War -- Under the rain of gaslights : from the Civil War to the gilded and gruesome 1870s -- Electric costumes and brass knuckles : glamour, crime, sports, and the commercialization of night in the 1890s -- Mr. Dieter vanishes, November 1923 : the Volstead Act, jazz, and Earl Carroll's Vanities -- From poorhouse to penthouse and back : at home, homeless, and on the town in mid-1930's -- When the lights went out : World War II, the 1950's and the suburbanization of night -- Full moon over the Stonewall : the gay epiphany, discomania, and the surfacing of hidden night.