Join authors Eric Ferrara and David Freeland for a colorful journey through the Big Apple's lurid and illicit history of vice and crime. Explore the role that gangs and criminals played in the everyday lives of 18th and 19th century New Yorkers, and trace the origins of the ties between organized crime and the labor and entertainment industries.
Eric Ferrara, author of A Guide to Gangsters, Murderers and Weirdos of New York City's Lower East Side and executive director of the Lower East Side History Project, will explore over 100 years of wanton corruption in what was once America's most infamous vice district. From the rowdy gangs and even rowdier theaters of the mid-19th century, to organized crime's influence over the garment industry in the early 20th century, the Lower East Side was a "melting pot" of crime, violence and debauchery -- and a breeding ground for some of the most famous and powerful criminals in American history.
David Freeland is the author of the new book, Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan's Lost Places of Leisure, an exploration of the city's forgotten but still-visible entertainment sites. Using a section of his book as guide, Freeland will explore the connection between the criminal and entertainment worlds in New York's great vice district of the late-19th century, the Tenderloin -- which included the Tin Pan Alley of the young Irving Berlin -- and detail the complex relationships that made the neighborhood a thriving city-within-the-city.
New York City, NY; NYC