40°44′56″N73°59′17″W / 40.749°N 73.988°W /40.749; -73.988
TheTenderloin was an entertainment andred-light district in the heart of theNew York Cityborough ofManhattan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[1]
The area originally ran from24th Street to42nd Street and fromFifth Avenue toSeventh Avenue.[1] By the turn of the 20th century, it had expanded northward to57th or62nd Street and west toEighth Avenue,[2][3] encompassing parts of what is nowNoMad,Chelsea,Hell's Kitchen, theGarment District and theTheater District.
New York Police Department CaptainAlexander S. "Clubber" Williams gave the area itsnickname[4] in 1876, when he was transferred to a police precinct in the heart of this district. Referring to the increased number of bribes he would receive for police protection of both legitimate and illegitimate businesses there – especially the manybrothels – Williams said, "I've been havingchuck steak ever since I've been on the force, and now I'm going to have a bit oftenderloin."[1][2]
The name became a generic term for ared-light district in an American city;San Francisco is among the other cities with a well-known "Tenderloin District".
Early in the 19th century, the majorvice district had been located in what is nowSoHo, called at the time "Hells' Hundred Acres", but as the city grew steadily northward, the theater district along Broadway and theBowery moved uptown as well, as did the legitimate and illegitimate businesses that were usually connected with show business. For some time, the city's"Rialto" theater district centered onUnion Square and14th Street, but theFifth Avenue Hotel broke new ground when it opened at23rd Street andFifth Avenue in 1859, beginning the expansion of the Union Square Rialto to 23rd Street andMadison Square. By the 1870s, the Fifth Avenue Hotel had many competitors in the area, and where the hotels were, theprostitutes followed.[2]
By the 1880s, the Tenderloin encompassed the largest number ofnightclubs,saloons,bordellos,gambling casinos,dance halls, and "clip joints" in New York City, to the extent that one estimate made in 1885 was that half of the buildings in the district were connected with vice.[5] Reformers referred to the area as "Satan's Circus",[1] and one anti-vice crusading minister, the Rev.Thomas De Witt Talmage, denounced the entire city of New York as "the modernGomorrah" for allowing it to exist.[5]
The clientele of these establishments was not necessarily working-class: one set of seven sisters ran side-by-sidebrothels in a residential neighborhood on West 25th Street, inviting their upper class customers with engraved invitations. On some nights only gentlemen in formal evening dress were allowed to attend, and the girls of these houses were as socially adept as they were sexually;[2] on Christmas Eve profits were given to charity.[6]
Other well-known venues in the Tenderloin includedKoster and Bial's Music Hall atSixth Avenue and 23rd Street, a concert saloon where inebriated customers could watch thecan-can being performed; the Haymarket, a dance hall on Sixth below 30th Street, where rich clients could dance with prostitutes, but not too closely, although they could take them into curtained-off galleries to have discreet sex, and sex exhibitions were on display in the balconies; West 29th Street, which featured an almost uninterrupted row of brothels; and the many gambling dens run byJohn Daly or theMadison Square Club ofRichard A. Canfield on West 26th Street.[7]
The "Main Street" of the district wasBroadway between 23rd and 42nd Streets, which was known as "The Line". In the mid-1890s, after the advent of electric lighting, the stretch of Broadway from 23rd Street to34th Street came to be called "The Great White Way" because of the numerous illuminated advertising signs there. This moniker was transferred toTimes Square when the theater district moved uptown.[8]
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 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.[3] To a certain extent,police corruption kept crime under control as it regularized the financial relationship between the police and the criminals, but the area was too large, and the pickings too easy, forstreet crime to be managed completely. In 1906,William McAdoo, who was the city's Police Commissioner in 1904 and 1905, wrote that the "Tenderloin [police] precinct, as every one knows, is the most important precinct in New York, if not in the United States, or probably in the world, from the amount of police business done there and from the character of the neighborhood."[3]
Occasionally there would be organized attempts to clean up the Tenderloin, and reformist mayors, such asWilliam Russell Grace andAbram S. Hewitt, would authorize raids on saloons and brothels, even those under the protection of "Clubber" Williams, but the effects were generally temporary: prostitutes would decamp to outlying areas, and return when the latest crusade was over. The net effect of these "shake-ups" or "shake-downs" was simply to drive up the cost of protection afterwards, making Williams even richer – he retired a millionaire – and putting more money into the pockets ofTammany Hall, which was deeply entwined in the graft and corruption connected with the district.[9]
Frustration at this state of affairs led toAnthony Comstock's anti-vice crusade, which operated withFederal authority from thePost Office and with the support of the New YorkChamber of Commerce and leading citizens such asJ. P. Morgan. Comstock's crusade knew no boundaries – he was as likely to target "smut" in the public libraries as he was sex-for-hire in the Tenderloin – but along with Rev. Talmage, he was able to get state legislation passed banningpool halls, even though they continued to operate openly.[10]
Aside from its commercial activities, the Tenderloin was also the home neighborhood for a large part of Manhattan'sAfrican American population,[11] especially in the downtown and western portion of the district: Seventh Avenue within the Tenderloin, in fact, became known as the "African Broadway".[3] This was a neighborhood of Blacks withmiddle class aspirations.
In August 1900, an undercover police officer attempted to arrest a Black woman forsoliciting.[12] The woman's boyfriend intervened and the officer struck him with a club. He then stabbed the officer with apenknife, and ran away. The officer died. At the officer's funeral, police and white gangs attacked African Americans, and burned their property while other police officers looked on. In defense, Black citizens armed themselves and formed the Citizens’ Protective League. Their appeals for justice to MayorRobert A. Van Wyck went unanswered, and the state and the Police Boards did nothing.[13]
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.