Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1941-04-26
Silver Dollar
Saloons Draw
The Crowd
But Only in M e m orie S.
and Some Conflict
By DAMON RUNYON

W Silver Dollar saloons in this
treatise and lay them aside.
though we must say we have
presented few subjects that
brought as many letters from
readers.
Everybody seems TO remem-
Der a Silver Dollar Saloon some
where, though the most letters
recalled a silver-dollared estab-
lishment that was not a saloon
at all. 1t was barber shop.
This was the barber shop in
the famous Palmer House in
Chicago.
David ]. Evans. of the Lake
Court Apartment Hotel in West
Palm Beach. Fla, says he had
heard that the floor was COM
pletely paved with silver dollars
so he FASTENED there on the
occasion of his first visit TO
Chicago in 1882 TO verify the
story, a general practice among
Chicago visitors of that day,
such was the fame OF the floor.
MIR. EVANS says the dollars
A'I were there, all right, but
not in the numbers he had ex-
pected. He says the floor was
composed of marble slabs about
a foot square and at each inter-
section there was a silver dollar
firmly imbedded.s
He estimates that there must
have been about 1,500 silver dol
lars and thinks they were there
until the old hotel was torn
down years ago.
c. S. Cutler of Walnut Creek.
Cal. remembers that barber
shop. too, and says all the neck
yokes from his own Warren
County in Illinois made it
point 10 visit the place when
in Chicago TO see the dollars.
K. p. Vette is sure the bar
Der shop was the only tonsorial
parlor in the land decorated in
this manner and says il was
the largest room of the kind he
has ever seen.
MORRIS SPERGEL OF 17e6
w Nelson avenue, The Bronx,
New York. differs with George
NJ. Goldman on the number of
silver dollars in the floor of
Charley Smiths saloon in Essex
street. Manhattan Island. which
Mr.. Goldman placed at 2,750.
Mr.. Spergel says he used 10
live right across the street from
the saloon and that on occasions
when he rushed the GROWER to
Smiths for his father he counted
those dollars. He says they came
to exactly 500.
Mrs. Nan Won Mitzel of the
Peter Cooper Hotel, 100 East
Thirty-ninth street. says her
father had silver dollars In the
floor of his beer emporium in
Baltimore some 80 years ago
and that a song was sung about
them to the tune of TIA Ra Ra
Ra Boom De Ay," that went:
IN. J. Redding keeps store.
Wears has hair la pompddour,
.SdUer dollars on the floor
INCEST place IN Baltimore"
A ND now we come again 10
"A the memory of f. X. Mead.
executive news editor of the
Dallas, Tex, Times-Herald. who
placed the silver dollar saloon
in Denver on Arapahoe at Seven
teenth as against our recollec-
ton that il was on Lawrence.
and who also put the famous
Tortoni's restaurant on Curtis,
while we thought ii was on
Arapahoe.
We got quite a number OF let
tiers on this point. pro and con.
Jerry Bent of 120 West Sixty
first street, New York, an en-
tertainer, sends us a diagram
like one of those newspaper
sketches of a murder locale.
showing that Tortoni's was on
Arapahoe just west of Sixteenth
and the Silver Dollar on Law
renee near Seventeenth.
But he says you could 60 out
of the alley entrance of Tor
TOMS and arrive at the back
door of the Silver Dollar in a
straight line.
MR.. MEAD may be interested
Au in learning from Frederic
Tyson of IA West Seventy
seventh street. New York, that
the Silver Dollar saloon i'm
Manila which he wrote of is
still there. and Mr.. Tyson thinks
at the original location around
the corner of the Escolta on
Plaza Gait.
There are no saloons on Es-
Gotta any more, but plenty in
the side streets. Mr.. Tyson re-
marks that the odors about the
C,l,,1r D0IIa. &c ,.,l,,nl. NJ, Md