New York Night: The Mystique and Its History

by Mark Caldwell

Who among us cannot testify to the possibilities of the night? To the mysterious, shadowed intersections of music, smoke, money, alcohol, desire, and dream? The hours between dusk and dawn are when we are most urgently free, when high meets low, when tongues wag, when wallets loosen, when uptown, downtown, rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight, male, and female so often chance upon one another. Night is when we are more likely to carouse, fornicate, fall in love, murder, or ourselves fall prey. And if there is one place where the grandness, danger, and enchantment of night have been lived more than anywhere else -- lived in fact for over 350 years -- it is, of course, New York City. 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. We see madams and boxers, murderers and drunks, soldiers, singers, layabouts, and thieves. We see the swaggering "Sporting Men,"the fearless slatterns, the socially prominent rakes, the chorus girls, the impresarios, the gangsters, the club hoppers, and the dead. We see none other than the great Charles Dickens himself taken to a tavern of outrageous repute and be so shocked by what he witnesses that he must be helped to the door. We see human beings making their nighttime bet with New York City. Some of these stories are tragic, some comic, but all paint a resilient metropolis of the night. In New York, uniquely among the world's great cities, the hours of darkness have always brought opposites together, with results both creative and violent. This is a book that is filled with intrigue, crime, sex, violence, music, dance, and the blur of neon-lit crowds along ribbons of pavement. Technology, too, figures in the drama, with such inventions as gas and electric light, photography, rapid transit, and the scratchy magic of radio appearing one by one to collaborate in a nocturnal world of inexhaustible variety and excitement. New York Night will delight history buffs, New Yorkers in love with their home, and anyone who wants to see how human nocturnal behavior has changed and not changed as the world's greatest city has come into being. New York Night is a spellbinding social history of the day's dark hours, when work ends, secrets reveal themselves, and the unimaginable becomes real.

Genres: New York, Urban

416 pages, Hardcover

First published August 28, 2001

Reviews

[Sir Michael Röhm · Rating 3 out of 5]

New York is known as the City That Never Sleeps, and Caldwell certainly makes an excellent case as to why that appellation is so valid.

He starts off at the very beginning of the new colony (known then as Fort Amsterdam), each chapter exploring a new, important decade or period of time. From bars to gangs to prostitution to the lives of the upper-class verses the lives of the lower-class (and their respective entertainment and venues) to the affect that technology had upon the New York Nightlife, Caldwell covers it all... at least up until a point.

While everything pre 1950s makes for compulsively readable classic about the American city to end all American cities, Caldwell runs out of steam around the 1950s, and even a bit before that. The Beatnik movement is only sparsely covered even though their world of jazz night-clubs certainly is worthy of research. The 1960s are almost completely glossed over, as are the 1970s and 1980s.

While the previous chapters had gone into depth about all manner of groups and their entertainments, from political bigwigs in Tammany Hall and its pseudo-secret society predecessors to Yiddish theater of the late 19th century and the speakeasies and jazz of the 1920s and 30s, the 60s and 70s are only covered by two major events - Stonewall and disco (primarily disco and the gay New York citizen). Caldwell himself is gay, and it makes sense that he would be interested in this subject, but there are other books devoted to both topics. His sudden focus on the gay movement is jarring and feels out of place with the tone of the rest of the book. Discos, for example, catered to straights as well as gays (and the only disco he gives much coverage to is Studio 54; while it was important in the history, there were dozens of other discos and clubs dotting NYC's landscape at the time and the focus given to it strikes me as a bit lazy, as everyone and their brother knows about th rise and fall of Studio 54). Glaringly absent in the 70s, especially, are the nascent hip-hop and punk scenes. Both were culturally important, but both are largely ignored. Gang life is likewise largely ignored, with a mention of the notorious Capeman murders to suffice. How one can have a book on NYC nightlife without mentioning the great CBGBs and Max's Kansas City is beyond me.

The book ends on an anti-climactic note, in post-Guiliani Times Square, with Caldwell visiting a strip club (a straight one, mind you), where Caldwell observes the sadness and desperation in the eyes of all participants.

I would definitely recommend the book for anyone interested in the nightlife between New Amsterdam and the 1930s. For anyone interested in events after that, another book is clearly needed.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard of this book while facilitating a video conference with Katherine Marsh regarding her novel, The Night Tourist. During the interview, she mentioned using this book as a resource. Listening to her describe her grandmother's stories about how NYC came alive at night, I was intrigued enough to purchase and read the book. Consequently, I also purchased a copy for my son and my brother. While certainly not easy to read, New York Night is a magical book.