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

1. A Round for the Old Atlantic (The Atlantic Garden)

5 1 A Round for the Old Atlantic o N t h E Low E r Bowery, just across from the spot where an elegant Beaux-Arts sculpture announces the Manhattan Bridge, one of the city’s least acknowledged thoroughfares sits in repose. The “Chinatown Arcade”—words spelled in peeling white letters affixed to a red plastic sign—is largely hidden beneath the giant modern façade that squats above it, although traces of older, soot-covered brickwork remain near the sign’s edges. Inside, an air of discovery pervades the tight corridor, as pedestrians catch glimpses of wristwatch repairmen with tiny magnifying glasses affixed to headbands, Chinese pharmacists selling guidebooks on pointing therapy and moxibustion (oriental medicine therapies using, respectively, martial arts and mugwort herb) and rows of sturdy wooden drawers filled with roots and herbs. With a few restaurants thrown in, such as the long-surviving New Malaysian, the arcade is like Chinatown in miniature, a fascinating place that thrives despite the inattention of the rest of the city. Once known as the Canal Arcade, it was carved out of the plot left behind by the old Bowery Theater, which burned down for the fifth and final time in 1929. It is still possible to get a sense of the theater’s enormity by strolling through the arcade, crossing to the other side of Elizabeth Street, which runs parallel to the Bowery, and looking back. From there the nondescript structure provides a ghostly outline of the building that helped define Manhattan’s cultural life for a century. But the Bowery Theater is not the only numinous presence on this culture-steeped block. Immediately to the north of the arcade’s rear exit, on Elizabeth, stands a curious façade: two stories of russet-colored brick, topped with a small row of gothic arches carved in simple fashion. A quick stroll northward, toward Canal, offers a hint of something rounded behind the façade’s top edge, and from just the right spot near the southwest corner of Canal and Elizabeth that same curve appears to turn into a sharp peak. Then, obscured by tenements, it vanishes, leaving little suggestion of its purpose or history. 6 1.1. The Atlantic Garden during its vaudeville years, early 1890s. A round for the old Atlantic 7 Lost within a neighborhood that long ago abdicated its role as entertainment district, the peaked roof is a relic from days when German families crowded the Bowery on warm evenings, having crossed Chatham Square from their tenements on Catherine, Division, and other streets to the east. In long, spacious halls, the sides of which were decorated with trees, flowers , and other sylvan reminders of the home country, they would enjoy cold drafts of beer in “schooners” (dimpled glass mugs), while listening to the harmonious strains of female orchestras playing waltzes. Once the music stopped, everything would explode in an uproar of conversation, augmented by the twittering of birds suspended in cages overhead. The smells were pungent and appetizing—malted barley, tangy sausages, strong Limburger cheese—but nearly overpowered by the choking cigar smoke that rose toward vaulted ceilings in thick eddies. Waiters bustled past long, narrow tables carrying three schooners to a hand, and the entire atmosphere was one of frivolity and high spirits, of relaxation after long hours of toil. Popular throughout the second half of the 19th century, bier gartens were unique combinations of concert halls and taverns where New Yorkers could drink and socialize while enjoying first-class entertainment. Of these, the Atlantic Garden at 50-52 Bowery, next door to the Bowery Theater , was the largest and most famous, surviving in its original form for more than half a century. Tourists made it their first stop when approaching the dissolute charms of the Bowery, and as the neighborhood around it acquired an increasingly dangerous reputation in the 1890s, the Atlantic clung to its respectability. It was the only “clean” establishment on the entire thoroughfare, testified hard-boiled Inspector Thomas Byrnes during an 1890 investigation into Bowery vice (one of many): “The other concert halls are the resorts of women of questionable character and men who come to visit them.”1 But even with its clean image the Atlantic was far from secure, coming under frequent attack from police housed, conveniently, on Elizabeth Street. Still, it managed to survive through the perseverance of one man, the founder and proprietor William...