HIST 3480: The History of NYC THE JAZZ AGE & HARLEM.

HIST 3480: The History of NYCTHE JAZZ AGE & HARLEM

THE JAZZ AGE & HARLEM

James “Jimmy” Walker (1881-1946)• “Beau James” was born in Greenwich Village; father

was a Democratic alderman and assemblyman.• Obtained a law degree from New York Law School• Worked as a songwriter in “Tin Pan Alley” (music publishers initially along West 28th Street) and had several hits, most notably, “Will You Love Me I December (as You Do in May)?”• Elected to the State Assembly in 1909 and the State Senate in 1914, where he came under the tutelage of Al Smith.• Sponsored legislation for 2.75 percent “near beer” during Prohibition, Sunday baseball, Sunday movies, and legalized boxing, all of which were popular in NYC.


James “Jimmy” Walker (1881-1946)• With Murphy’s death, a fight breaks out between Al Smith and Hylan, so Smith engineers Hylan’s defeat by Walker in the Democratic primary in 1925; Walker then defeats Republican Frank Waterman in the fall. • His headquarters become the new Casino nightclub in Central Park, which becomes a favorite of the New York elite.• His lax and detached governance allows the “tin box brigade”—corrupt Tammany appointees—to prosper.


Walker’s Mentor: “The Happy Warrior”Al Smith (1873-1944)

• Born in a Lower East Side tenement, Smith would always identify strongly with his working-class immigrant family roots (mixed Irish, German & Italian ancestry).

• Worked in the Fulton Fish Market as a teenager, but never graduated from high school.

• Rose up the ranks of Tammany, especially under the leadership on “Silent” Charlie Murphy, but gained a reputation as honest and incorruptible.

• Elected a member of the New York State Assembly in 1904, and served there until 1915; was elected Speaker in the 1913 session.

• Key figure in labor reform, especially after Triangle.• Elected governor of NY in 1918, serves from 1919-1920;

is reelected again in 1922, and serves from 1923 until 1928; strongly opposes Prohibition.

• Runs for president in 1928 but is beaten by Hoover in a landslide because of anti-Catholic sentiment and the country’s overall prosperity in the 1920s, which made many in favor of the Republican status quo nationally.


James Walker, “The Night Mayor”

Wins re-election against Republican candidate Fiorello LaGuardia in 1929, but a 1932 corruption investigation led by Judge Samuel Seabury and pressure from Governor Franklin Roosevelt forced Walker to resign and flee to Europe, where he married Betty Compton, a Broadway chorus girl and movie actress for whom he left his first wife, Janet.


James Walker, “The Night Mayor”

Judge Samuel Seabury interrogating Mayor Walker in 1932.

Walker in happier times


Pennsylvania Station – 1910• McKim, Mead & White design• Crown of the trans-Hudson tunnel• Eviscerates the Tenderloin• Modeled on the Baths of Caracalla• Demolition begins in October 1963.


Grand Central Terminal – 1913• The third train station to exist on the site.• Terminal for the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, the New York and Harlem Railroad, and the New York and New Haven Railroad. • Building happened simultaneously with electrification of train lines.


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Flatiron Building (1903)--Located at 175 Broadway at 23rd Street, standing twenty-two stories--Designed by Daniel Burnham, chief architect of the Chicago’s World Columbian Exposition (1892)--Initially called the “Fuller Building” for the building company that used it as its headquarters

Manhattan Life Insurance Building (1893)--Located at 64-66 Broadway, standing 348 feet--Demolished in 1964-65

Tower Building by Bradford Lee Gilbert (1889)--Probably the first to use a steel skeleton--Located at 50 Broadway, standing eleven stories


THE FIRST “REAL” SKY SCRAPERS

Singer Building – 1908• 47 stories • 149 Broadway• Tallest building to be demolished at the time (1968).• Site that is now 1 Liberty Plaza in the WTC complex• Architect: Ernest Flagg



Metropolitan Life Tower – 1911• 50 stories• 1 Madison Avenue• Served as the headquarters of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company until 2005.• Architect: Napoleon LeBrun



Woolworth Building – 1913• 57 stories• 233 Broadway• Architect: Cass Gilbert



Chrysler Building – 1930• 77 stories 405 Lexington Avenue• Architect: William Van Alen



Empire State Building – 1931• 102 stories• 350 Fifth Avenue• Tallest building in the world from 1931 until 1972• Architect: William F. Lamb



At the Beaux-Arts Ball of 1931, at least two dozen architects came dressed as buildings they had designed. They included, left to right, A. Stewart Walker as the Fuller Building, Leonard Schultze as the Waldorf-Astoria, Ely Jacques Kahn as the Squibb Building, William Van Alen as the Chrysler Building, Ralph Walker as the Wall Street Building, and Joseph Freedlander as the Museum of the City of New York.


Harlem and the Renaissance• Before 1900, most African Americans in NYC lived in two neighborhoods: San Juan Hill (now the area around Lincoln Center) and the Tenderloin . Neither were homogenously black (San Juan Hill a bit more so), and the the Tenderloin served as the city’s main vice district.• A large-scale race riot breaks out in the Tenderloin • Walter A. Payton• Afro-American Realty Co.


Harlem and the Renaissance• Southern blacks began moving to northern cities as Jim Crow regimes reasserted themselves in the 1880s and 1890s. • Before 1900, most African Americans in NYC lived in two neighborhoods: San Juan Hill (now the area around Lincoln Center) and the Tenderloin (mid-West 20s and 30s). Neither were homogenously black (San Juan Hill was a bit more so), and the the Tenderloin served as the city’s main vice district.• A large-scale race riot breaks out in the Tenderloin in August 1900 after a young black man knifes a white plainclothes policeman, who he perceived as harassing his girlfriend late at night outside of a saloon (the cop was trying to arrest her for solicitation as a a prostitute).• The race riot drives many blacks from the neighborhood, illustrating

the chronic instability of housing for African Americans in the building.• White property owners would only rent to blacks when their buildings

fell into a state of disrepair that was unacceptable to most white tenants. The shortage of available housing for blacks meant landlords could charge them more while at the same time not maintain the buildings.


Harlem and the Renaissance• Philip A. Payton (1876-1917), the “Father of Harlem”: This Massachusetts-born real-estate entrepreneur convinced several wealthy blacks to invest in the Afro-American Real Estate Company, which was charted in 1904, and bought a tract of land at West 135th Street and Lenox Avenue.• To raise more money, the Afro-American Realty Co. sold off three tenement buildings to a white management company, which promptly evicted the black tenants (whites would not live in the same building as blacks, as had been the case in the Tenderloin. In retaliation, Afro- American Realty purchased two adjacent buildings and evicted all the white tenants.• An economic downturn in the second half of the decade curtailed significant white real estate development in the neighborhood, and then the flood of Southern blacks during the “Great Migration” that started with World War I consolidated Harlem’s status as a mostly African American neighborhood.


Harlem and the Renaissance

Philip A. Payton, Jr.

HIST 3480: The History of NYC THE JAZZ AGE & HARLEM.

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