Volume 51, Number 11 · June 24, 2004
Babylon on the Subway
By Mike Wallace
The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square
by James Traub
Random House, 313 pp., $25.95
Ghosts of 42nd Street: A History of America's Most Infamous Block
by Anthony Bianco
Morrow, 370 pp., $25.95
In the 1890s, the bright lights of Broadway ribboned their way north through Union, Madison, and Herald Squares, illuminating ambling throngs of theater- and restaurant-goers, until reaching 42nd Street where, all at once, the Gay White Way winked out. Ahead in the gloom lay Longacre Square, lair of footpads by night, and by day the manure-redolent center of the city's horse and livery trades. In 1895, the impresario Oscar Hammerstein I crossed the frontier and planted a theatrical complex at 44th Street, but his foray failed, victim in part of an ongoing depression. In 1899 and 1900, the economy surging again, he erected two theaters on 42nd Street, this time barely ahead of a herd of leisure-time entrepreneurs thundering up from downtown, as New York's entertainment district whooshed into the square, bright lights and all.
Review, 5080 words
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