Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 February 1914 — HAPPENING in the BIG CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HAPPENING in the BIG CITIES

Some Inside Facts About the “Great White Way”

NEW YORK. —Broadway is one of the longest and most remarkable streets in the world. It starts at. Bowling Green, amidst towering office buildingß and meanders off into the wilderness somewhere near Yonkets. Besides be-

ing noted for its night life, Broadway has more skyscrapers, cases, restaurants, actors, get-rich-quick-men. panhandlers and automobiles to the mile than any other thoroughfare in America. It also is the headquarters of the Forty-Second Street Country club, which meets every mild and sunny afternoon at Forty-second street and Broadway. „„ Broadway's principal industry is raising coin. In this art it has become quite proficient. Two classes of peo-

ple frequent Broadway. They are New Yorkers without money and out-of-towners with money and anxious to separate from it. At Bowling Green, Broadway is the very spirit of innocence. It runs past Wall street as if it were afraid of becoming contaminated. To add to its respectibility at this point Broadway nestles In its arms Trinity church, a religious institution which owns tenement houses on the side. Past office buildings that shoot high into the air, Broadway runs to SL Paul’s, where there is another church and graveyard. “How fortunate,” sigh the night-lifers, frequenters of another part of Broadway, “that all of the churches and dead ones are at the lower end." _ Ignoring the remarks of the gay TenderloinerS, Broadway dashes on uptown, liast more office buildings, now not quite so tall, until Astor place is reached, just above which Grace church is met. From a thoroughfare of office buildings, Broadway has now changed into a street of plain commercial atmosphere. To tell the truth, however, Broadway has a commercial atmosphere for its entire length, although in the vicinity of Forty-second street it is skilfully disguised as “gayety.” When you begin to see the names of theatrical booking agents, when the cases become more and more to the block, and the loiters on the corners greater and greater in number, you know you are then getting into the famous “White Light” district. Being gay along Broadway is a business. Some New Yorkers know just how to be gar, and thereby infect others with the brand of gayety that induces them to spend their money.