Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure

leondumoulin.nl: Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan's Lost Places of Leisure (): David Freeland: Books.
Table of contents

Yet with David Freeland as a guide, it's possible to uncover skeletons of New York's lost monuments to its nightlife. With a keen eye for architectural detail, Freeland opens doors, climbs onto rooftops, and gazes down alleyways to reveal several of the remaining hidden gems of Manhattan's nineteenth- and twentieth-century entertainment industry.

Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville

From the Atlantic Garden German beer hall in present-day Chinatown to the city's first motion picture studio—Union Square's American Mutoscope and Biograph Company—to the Lincoln Theater in Harlem, Freeland situates each building within its historical and social context, bringing to life an old New York that took its diversions seriously. Freeland reminds us that the buildings that serve as architectural guideposts to yesteryear's recreations cannot be re-created—once destroyed they are gone forever.

With condominiums and big box stores spreading over city blocks like wildfires, more and more of the Big Apple's legendary houses of mirth are being lost.

By excavating the city's cultural history, this delightful book unearths some of the many mysteries that lurk around the corner and lets readers see the city in a whole new light. A necessary resource for anyone interested in popular culture.

JSTOR: Access Check

For anyone who craves a glimpse of the glamorous city of days gone by, this is a trip well worth taking. Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.

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Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Chinatown Theater The Chinese Theater pp. The East Side, West Side, all around the town The author provides colorful background information for each location and his distress at their destruction is shared by the reader.

Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure

He paints a vivid picture of the city where "dime-a-dance" halls, jazz clubs, movie palaces, and Tin Pan Alley shaped its character. This is an extremely well researched book and the author has uncovered remnants of this history which still can still be found right under our feet.

Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure

Mar 10, Viviane rated it liked it. While I typically enjoy research books, especially of NYC, this one was such a boring read. Even the section on the Bowery put me to sleep. I didn't find this book's presentation of NYC neighborhoods and former buildings interesting enough, which is sad because I find this stuff incredibly interesting. The epilogue, where he tours of a burned out building for sale that was once the Nest Club, you can feel his nostalgia and passion for histo I'm into NYC history and Automats, so I picked this up. The epilogue, where he tours of a burned out building for sale that was once the Nest Club, you can feel his nostalgia and passion for history that made this book come to be finally come alive.

Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan's Lost Places of Leisure

I especially appreciated the maps. The descriptions were vivid and certainly made me want to walk around NYC with this book in hand looking for the clues and hints to the past.

Aug 17, Samantha rated it it was amazing. Feb 20, Kathleen rated it it was amazing. Charles Williams rated it liked it Sep 15, Josh rated it really liked it Dec 03, Andrea Dowd rated it it was ok Aug 07, Squirrel Circus rated it really liked it Nov 15, Laurence rated it it was amazing Jul 11, Christa Avampato rated it it was amazing Sep 04, Marla rated it it was amazing Mar 29, Rachel rated it it was amazing Nov 18, Creolecat rated it it was amazing Jun 25, Storyheart rated it liked it Aug 29, Randy Kinkel rated it it was amazing Dec 26, Dec 23, Barbara Finkelstein rated it it was amazing.

Excellent picture of entertainment in Manhattan not so long ago.