Tenderloin, Manhattan
40°44′56″N 73°59′17″W / 40.749°N 73.988°W
The Tenderloin was an entertainment and
The area originally ran from
.Etymology
The name became a generic term for a red-light district in an American city; San Francisco is among the other cities with a well-known "Tenderloin District".
History
Early in the 19th century, the major
By the 1880s, the Tenderloin encompassed the largest number of
The clientele of these establishments was not necessarily working-class: one set of seven sisters ran side-by-side
Other well-known venues in the Tenderloin included
The "Main Street" of the district was
Eventually, the processes which created the Tenderloin also served to dismantle it. Once again, theaters and hotels began moving uptown, and the brothels and dance halls and so on followed after them. As early as 1906, McAdoo noted that the northern boundary of the district had moved to 62nd Street, and the "New Tenderloin", as he called it, was now bounded by 42nd Street on the south. The movement, he said, "is rapidly depleting the ranks of the sporting vicious element in the Old Tenderloin".[3]
Crime
Crime was also a major aspect of the Tenderloin, which was considered to be the worst crime-ridden area of what was thought to be the most crime-ridden city of the United States.
Occasionally there would be organized attempts to clean up the Tenderloin, and reformist mayors, such as
Frustration at this state of affairs led to
Anti-Black mob and police riot
Aside from its commercial activities, the Tenderloin was also the home neighborhood for a large part of Manhattan's
In August 1900, an undercover police officer attempted to arrest a Black woman for
In popular culture
- The Tenderloin of the early 20th century is described from a police perspective in Behind the Green Lights, the memoirs of Police Captain Cornelius Willemse.
- Owen Davis set a series of stories for the Police Gazette in the dance halls and restaurants of the district, and often referred to that section of Broadway running through the district as "The Line". The stories were later collected as Sketches of Gotham (1906) under the pseudonym "Ike Swift". They chronicled the high jinks and low life of the Tenderloin as it was between the 1890s and World War I in a lively and memorable manner. Swift described the district so:
It may be that you -whoever you are or wherever you are- don’t know what it means to go “down the line”. But in New York -in order that we may start right- “The Line” means that part of Broadway where at night the lights burn brightest, and where the mob -swell and otherwise- move back and forth like the ebb and flow of the tide - hunting, hunting, ever on the hunt.
From Twenty-third street to Forty-second, and back again, and you have gone down The Line. Sometimes it costs you nothing for this innocent little amusement; this feast of the eyes; and then again it is liable to cost you a great deal.
It all depends on who you are, and what you are and how easy you are.
And there you are.
- The now-lost film Tenderloin was a crime film taking place in the Tenderloin district.
- The brothels of the Tenderloin, repeatedly raided by vice squad, were the setting for the 1960 musical Tenderloin by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, based on a novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams[14]
- The Tenderloin, at the turn of the 20th century, is the setting for one of author Victoria Thompson's Gaslight Mysteries, Murder on Sisters' Row.[15]
- The Cinemax television series The Knick featured the 1900 race riot in the season one episode "Get the Rope".
- The Ubisoft game The Division features an area on the map labeled Tenderloin.
- The TNT and Netflix series The Alienist centres on crimes committed in or linked to The Tenderloin. The series is based loosely on characters created by Caleb Carrin the novel of the same title.
See also
- John W. Goff
- Lexow Committee
- Charles Henry Parkhurst
- Tammany Hall
- Tenderloin, San Francisco
- Red-light district
- Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963), razed 2 full blocks to construct, from Seventh Avenue to Eighth Avenue and 31st to 33rd Streets.
References
- Notes
- ^ ISBN 0300055366., p.1161
- ^ a b c d Burrows & Wallace, p.959
- ^ New York City Landmark Preservation Commission. "23rd Police Precinct ("Tenderloin") Station House Designation Report", pp. 2–3
- ^ "Williams, 'Ex-Czar' Of Tenderloin, Dies". The New York Times, March 26, 1917.
- ^ a b Federal Writers Project, p.147
- ^ Federal Writers Project, p.164
- ^ Burrows & Wallace, pp. 1148–1149
- ^ Burrows & Wallace, p.1066
- ^ Burrows & Wallace, p.1163
- ^ Burrows & Wallace, pp. 1163–1165
- ^ Burrows & Wallace, p.1112
- ^ "CAPTURE OF ARTHUR HARRIS.; Tella Washington Authorities the Story of His Attack on Policeman Thorpe -- Former Record Good" (PDF). The New York Times. August 17, 1900. Retrieved July 19, 2015.
- OCLC 52514365. Retrieved July 19, 2015.
- ^ Tenderloin, Playbill. Accessed December 31, 2023. "A preacher campaigns to rid 1890s New York City of its red-light district, ultimately falling victim to an attempted frame-up by a tabloid journalist, in Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, George Abbott and Jerome Weidman's musical."
- ^ Google Books
- Bibliography
- ISBN 0-195-11634-8.
- ISBN 978-1-60354-055-1. (Reprinted by Scholarly Press, 1976; often referred to as WPA Guide to New York City.)
External links
- Origin of name
- New York City Police Dept. activities: cells in new Tenderloin station - Bain News Service - loc.gov
- Tenderloin - The Bowery Boys: New York City History
- The Tenderloin, a red light district that flourished between the Civil War and WWI - Manhattan Unlocked
- Tenderloin, the musical
- "Tenderloin" from Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Vol. 2, Book R.