HIDDEN HISTORIES OF JAZZ AGE NEW YORK

New York City, a century ago.

Historian Goldman’s ambitious book takes a detailed dive into New York City over 10 years. He begins on New Year’s Eve in 1919, describing people partying before Prohibition took hold in this “consummate metropolis” and “home of modernity.” In 1920, the Gotham Book and Art bookstore was born at 128 West 45th Street. That same year, J. Edgar Hoover, a “rising figure” in the Justice Department, was “preparing his list of subversives to bust.” Beginning in the 1920s, more Americans lived in cities than rural areas, and, as Goldman notes, that was largely due to New York’s growth. In 1920, the city’s population had swelled to 5.6 million. There were three times as many vehicles on the road than five years earlier. Goldman writes, “Congestion had gotten so bad that one police commissioner proposed draining the East River and using it as a roadway.” A signature feature of the city arrived in 1923, thanks to the Neon Light Company; a year later, the first neon sign went up in Times Square, advertising a Willys-Overland coupe-sedan for $585 (roughly $11,000 today). The author sprinkles in profiles of notable figures “at the dawn of public relations,” including Dorothy Parker and Babe Ruth, and lesser-knowns like the entertainer Eva Tanguay. The 1920s saw the rise of Black nationalism and Marcus Garvey, the “Negro Moses” who was cheered by crowds and reviled by those who feared him. More women were entering the workforce, and the number of Jewish New Yorkers in the 1920s grew to almost 30% of the city’s population. Goldman also explores how New York was plagued by a rising hostility toward immigrants and Black people while it was awash with all kinds of new music, notably jazz. This complex city, he writes, was a rich site of “acceleration and deceleration.”

A fascinating and fact-filled look at Gotham in the Roaring Twenties.