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Excerpts

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

New Amsterdam Noir<
The Dark Nights of Dutch Manhattan

What Happened at Midnight: February 25, 1643

From Stadts Huis to City Hall: The Dutch Night Englished

1679: Jasper Danckaerts's New York

Chapter Two

Rattle Watch Nights
City Streets After Sundown, from Peter Stuyvesant to the Early Republic

John Crooke's Orchard and John Hughson's Tavern: Race and Violence in Pre-Revolutionary New York

Before the Revolution: Evenings with the Yankee Aristocracy

Into the Dark: The Great Fire of 1776 and the Urban Underworld

John Street Overture: Theater in the Later 1700s

Secrets of the Tammany Wigwam: The City Tavern, 1790-91

Chapter Three

Hearthside and Rushlight
Old New York at Home

Drawing the Shutters, Keeping the Fire: New York Houses in the 1600s and 1700s Manhattan Season: Winter, 1800-1801

Old Mr. Dunlap: Greenwich Village in the 1830s

Chapter Four

Broadway After Dark
Pleasures and Horrors of Federal New York

Broadway Deluxe: Glamour in the 1840s

City Beat: The Moon in the Morning and the Sun at Night Hanington's Virtual Moon and the Dioramas of Monsieur Daguerre

"AWFUL CALAMITY--UNPRECEDENTED CONFLAGRATION!!"

The Great Fire of 1835

Mansion, Slum, and Boardinghouse

"DREADFUL MURDER ON ANTHONY STREET":
The Surfacing of the Criminal Underworld

Chapter Five

"Bowery Gals Will You Come Out To-night?"
Nighttime on the Bowery Before the Civil War

Bowery People: B'hoys and Sporting Men

A Sockdoliger in the Bellows-Mover:
The Bowery Steps Out in the 1840s

Sex and the Antebellum City:
Gay, Straight, White, Black, and Charles Dickens

Showdown at Astor Place, 1849

Chapter Six

"Under the Rain of Gaslights"
From the Civil War to the Gilded and Gruesome 1870s

By Owl Train to Harlem

Blazing City, Hidden City The Devil and Anthony Comstock:
Vice and Vigilantism in the 1870s

Woman in the Dark: March 31 to April 1, 1878

Chapter Seven

Electric Costumes and Brass Knuckles
Glamour, Crime, Sports, and the Commercialization of Night in the 1890s

Rialto Market: The Business of Entertainment After the Civil War

Blood Under the Gaslights:
Prizefighting and the Rise of Nighttime Sports

"Depravity of a Depth Unknown":
The Turn-of-the-Century Underworld

Century's End

Chapter Eight

Mr. Dieter Vanishes, November
The Volstead Act, Jazz, and Earl Carroll's Vanities

You Cannot Make Your Shimmy Shake on Tea:
Prohibition Unleashed

Supper Clubs: Benzine and White Rock at 3 A.M.

Jazz and the Jazz Age Night

Way Downtown, Way Uptown: Greenwich Village and Harlem

Nude and Stewed: The Story of the Bathtub Girl

Chapter Nine

From Poorhouse to Penthouse and Back
At Home, Homeless, and On the Town in the Mid-1930s

Hooverville Lullaby

Skyscraper Nocturne

Deco Defiance: Good Times in Hard Times

Mrs. Murphy's Parlor:
Radio Nights and Evenings at Home in the Depression

Harlem Once More: Floor Show at the Club Barron, 1937

Chapter Ten

When the Lights Went Out
World War II, the 1950s, and the Suburbanization of Night

Minsky Agonistes: Times Square at War Uneasy Summer:
1948, Drugs, and the Souring of Postwar New York

Postwar Blues: Lost in Beat Manhattan, 1950-1960

Nightclub Requiem:
Modernity, Crime, and the Nervous Streets of the Late 1950s

The Night They Busted Sophie Tucker

Chapter Eleven

Full Moon Over the Stonewall
The Gay Epiphany, Discomania, and the Surfacing of Hidden Night

Revolution in Sheridan Square:
The Stonewall Riots, June 27-28, 1969

The Return of Monsieur Daguerre: Postmodern Night, 1970-2004

Naked Broadway and the New Millennium

Epilogue

Spring 2004
Back to the Wooden Horse

Notes and Sources

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index