When Roosevelt went to war on New York pleasure domes
By Joseph Berger |
July 22, 2012, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
BEFORE there was Rudy Giuliani, there was Teddy Roosevelt. In the 1990s, Giuliani was New York's dogged crime fighter in chief, but just about 100 years earlier, Roosevelt had donned that mantle as a police commissioner and president of what was then the city's four-man, bipartisan Police Board. His campaign to wipe out everyday vice and corruption gained him a national reputation, one that, in contrast to Giuliani's, actually led to the White House.
Roosevelt needed no broken-windows theory to drive his crusade, just an outraged silk-stocking moralism, and fin de siecle New York City gave him plenty to be outraged about. The number of brothels in Manhattan was legion and the number of prostitutes estimated at more than 30,000. Casinos and opium dens were commonplace, and saloons stayed open on Sundays in brazen disregard of state laws. The police not only tolerated pleasure domes but skimmed the earnings.
Richard Zacks, in "Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York," tells the story of Roosevelt's two-year campaign with gusto, authority and wry observations. The reason Roosevelt's quest was doomed, this account makes clear, is that New Yorkers - then and now - like their vices neat. Sure, they did not favor police and political corruption, but would not stand for the abridgment of their pleasures.
Into that impossible contradiction barged Roosevelt, possessed of enormous intellect, physical courage and vaulting confidence, but also cursed with the relentlessness of a true believer and a thick streak of prudishness. For a time, he succeeded. Zacks depicts what he calls the colorful "midnight rambles" during which Roosevelt prowled the darkened city streets confronting policemen drinking in saloons or "cooping" (napping) while streetwalkers and their indoor cousins plied their trade nearby.
The effort to clean up Sodom and Gomorrah, however, was undercut by its own double standards, hypocrisy that fueled popular revolt. Patrician social clubs like the Union League and full-service hotels were permitted, by law, to serve drinks on Sunday, while working-class bars and immigrant beer gardens were subject to police hounding.
Eventually, Roosevelt wearied of the struggle and angled to get President William McKinley to appoint him an assistant secretary of the navy.
This well-researched narrative is dense with raffish vignettes, excerpts from Roosevelt's letters and newspaper lampoons of his righteous campaign. What the book could use more of is a deeper understanding of Roosevelt. Was he driven by puritanical zeal, fierce ambition or both? Other than a few intriguing tidbits - Teddy's brother, Elliott, died an alcoholic - Roosevelt never emerges with the psychological contours that might illuminate one of New York's most remarkable sons.
Roosevelt needed no broken-windows theory to drive his crusade, just an outraged silk-stocking moralism, and fin de siecle New York City gave him plenty to be outraged about. The number of brothels in Manhattan was legion and the number of prostitutes estimated at more than 30,000. Casinos and opium dens were commonplace, and saloons stayed open on Sundays in brazen disregard of state laws. The police not only tolerated pleasure domes but skimmed the earnings.
Richard Zacks, in "Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York," tells the story of Roosevelt's two-year campaign with gusto, authority and wry observations. The reason Roosevelt's quest was doomed, this account makes clear, is that New Yorkers - then and now - like their vices neat. Sure, they did not favor police and political corruption, but would not stand for the abridgment of their pleasures.
Into that impossible contradiction barged Roosevelt, possessed of enormous intellect, physical courage and vaulting confidence, but also cursed with the relentlessness of a true believer and a thick streak of prudishness. For a time, he succeeded. Zacks depicts what he calls the colorful "midnight rambles" during which Roosevelt prowled the darkened city streets confronting policemen drinking in saloons or "cooping" (napping) while streetwalkers and their indoor cousins plied their trade nearby.
The effort to clean up Sodom and Gomorrah, however, was undercut by its own double standards, hypocrisy that fueled popular revolt. Patrician social clubs like the Union League and full-service hotels were permitted, by law, to serve drinks on Sunday, while working-class bars and immigrant beer gardens were subject to police hounding.
Eventually, Roosevelt wearied of the struggle and angled to get President William McKinley to appoint him an assistant secretary of the navy.
This well-researched narrative is dense with raffish vignettes, excerpts from Roosevelt's letters and newspaper lampoons of his righteous campaign. What the book could use more of is a deeper understanding of Roosevelt. Was he driven by puritanical zeal, fierce ambition or both? Other than a few intriguing tidbits - Teddy's brother, Elliott, died an alcoholic - Roosevelt never emerges with the psychological contours that might illuminate one of New York's most remarkable sons.
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