Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [514]
The Bowery came into its own during the depression as a plebeian recreation zone, one that rivaled, even outshone, the constellation of patrician venues around City Hall. Working people gravitated there after hours, attracted by the life and color, the array of services (including pawnshops, stage offices, butcher and grocery shops, and livery stables), and above all the vitality of crowds of people determined to have a good time.
The neighborhood was not all-inviting, however; the audiences at most festivities were white-only. The New York Zoological Institute, at 37 Bowery, had a sign reading: “The proprietors wish it to be understood, that PEOPLE OF COLOR are not permitted toenter, EXCEPT WHEN IN ATTENDANCE ON CHILDREN AND FAMILIES.” When one African American challenged the edict by driving up with his own family in a hired carriage, he was barred, punched, and ejected. The Emancipator, an abolitionist paper, seethed at “these savage proprietors and managers,” these “sordid knaves,” and wondered if they would “allow animals of color in their institute!”
Blackness, barred from the audience, remained near the heart of the Bowery’s art. “Negro delineations”—brief bits of burlesque, comic relief, and entr’acte songs and dances—grew ever more popular. At the Bowery Theatre, Hone noted, Jim Crow “is made to repeat nightly, almost ad infinitum, his balderdash song, which has now acquired the stamp of London approbation to increase its eclat.” In February 1843 these solo performances evolved into the depression era’s most remarkable innovation.
Four unemployed musicians, living in a Catherine Street boardinghouse, decided to pool their talents and work up a marketable routine. All had performed as blackface entertainers with circuses. Hoping to ride the coattails of a successful touring company, the Tyrolese Minstrel Family, the quartet called themselves the Virginia Minstrels. Their act featured presumed southern slave culture (“Virginia Jungle Dance”) and employed a heavy “nigger” dialect. Their eccentric movements, wild hollers, infectious music, captivating dancing, rollicking humor, and earthy jokes set Bowery audiences to whistling, shouting, and stomping their feet. From the second they strutted onstage at the Branch Hotel, the Virginia Minstrels were a sensation. They soon departed for an English tour, leaving behind a swarm of imitators. New York City had birthed the minstrel show—a baby that would soon reshape American popular culture.
Race was central as well to the career launch of the titan of the New York entertainment world, the era’s (and arguably the century’s) most important impresario, the master of humbug himself, the one, the only, Phineas Taylor Barnum. Barnum was yet another Connecticut Yankee who, loathing life on the family farm, had cast about for alternatives. He clerked for a time in a country store, learning the local arts of hard bargaining and sharp practices. He opened his own fruit and confectionery store. He became a lottery manager. In 1834 he moved to New York City, where he ran a boardinghouse, then a grocery on South Street. Finally, in 1835, Barnum discovered his true calling.
Barnum learned that in Philadelphia a Yankee showman was exhibiting a gnarled black woman who claimed she was 161 years old and had been George Washington’s slave nurse (with a 1727 bill of sale for herself to prove it). Joice Heth, toothless and totally blind, offered affecting stories about “dear little George,” but only meager audiences came. Barnum, convinced he could repackage Heth into a paying proposition, sold his grocery store, borrowed more money, and bought the rights to her for a thousand dollars.
Barnum quickly displayed a genius for promotion. He got up a promotional pamphlet, festooned New York with posters, and persuaded the papers to discuss Heth. Most intriguing, he invited doubt about the truth of her story, even hinted she was a fraud, sure that audiences would be as interested in testing their ability to discover the