In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

207 On any day in 1905, any number of well-dressed, neatly groomed men—prosperous bankers, businessmen, and professionals—could be found in the sumptuous club rooms at 45 West Forty-Second Street. Depending on the day of the week and time of day, they might be reading in the library, smoking in one of the lounges, playing cards, bowling, or exercising in the well-equipped gymnasium. A few patronized the bar. Sometimes their wives and sisters might join them for dinner in the elegant dining room or for a dance in the palatial ballroom—though of late “stag” evenings, which brought men together for entertainments without the ladies, had become more popular . The men were members of the Harmonie Club, one of the oldest, most exclusive , and best-appointed social clubs in the city, with membership limited to 650 of those able to pay its high initiation fee and annual dues. Prospective members waited for places to open up. All the men were Jews, though this was seldom noted at Harmonie Club activities or even in the club’s official histories. Most were of German descent, and while English had become the club’s dominant language by 1905, one could still hear some older members conversing in German. One of the major topics of conversation that year must have been Harmonie’s impending move from its thirty-eight-year-old building on Forty-Second Street to new quarters on East Sixtieth Street. The old clubhouse, designed by Henry Fernbach, who was also responsible for Temple Emanu-El and Central Synagogue, had cost over $200,000 to build. In 1867, its three stories, plus basement and attic, and onehundred -foot front on the street impressed passersby. But as times changed, balls and “large entertainments” had fallen out of fashion. Now members’ own C H A P T E R 7 Jews and New York Culture 208 ■ e m e r g i n g m e t r o p o l i s residences were so large and opulent that most major family social events took place at home. The new clubhouse, a tall Renaissance palace designed by Stanford White and built at a cost of $875,000, omitted the ballroom and catered mostly to the men alone. It guaranteed that Harmonie remained the leader among the approximately thirteen Jewish social clubs in the city.1 The social scene in the heart of the immigrant district downtown differed strikingly. On East Broadway, Jewish men and women, not so elegantly dressed as Harmonie Club members, though perhaps with a certain bohemian flair, might be seen descending the steps to Goodman and Levine’s basement cafe. Opening the door, they were assaulted by the “smell of roast herring and cooked fish, sour borsht, fried pancakes, bad coffee, scalded milk, as well as odors so intermingled that it wasn’t easy to say which was which.” Many cafe patrons had the calloused hands of building-trades workers or factory operatives , but some at Goodman and Levine’s knew that they were really something else—literary men and women, members of a new and revolutionary generation of Yiddish poets. Braving “barely endurable” food, a haze of cigarette smoke, the owners’ hostile stares when the poets did not spend enough money, kitchen heat in the summer, and icy drafts in the winter, the young writers—and those who liked to be among writers—came night after night to discuss literary theories and gossip.2 Goodman and Levine’s was one of nearly three hundred Jewish cafes on the Lower East Side. Also known as “coffee and cake parlors” or “coffee saloons,” eastern European Jewish immigrant cafes actually served up more tea than coffee, along with food and a lot of talk. These were working-class resorts, but unlike the saloons that traditionally served as American workingmen’s “clubs,” they offered little alcohol and attracted an intellectual and artistic clientele that established their reputation as vibrant centers of debate on politics, art, and society. Unlike the working-class saloons and the upper-class Harmonie Club, the cafes attracted women as well as men. As one sympathetic if slightly scandalized observer exclaimed, “And where the cigarette smoke is thickest and the denunciation of the present forms of government loudest, there you find women!” Each cafe had its specialty. Radicals congregated at the Monopole on Second Avenue. Theater people met first at Schreiber’s on Canal Street and later at the Café Royale on Second Avenue, which...

Share