Selling the Lower East Side

The Early Bohemians

Fear of the Lower East Side fueled the imagination and curiosity of the city's wealthy and middle classes. The reading of sensationalist novels and journalistic accounts was a form of voyeurism. Some members of the upper classes (young, middle-class, well-educated men in particular) participated in anonymous late night forays downtown ("slumming") to drink, gamble, take drugs and engage in promiscuous sex. Others took up residence downtown as part of a thriving bohemian community. Although bohemians condemned the material conditions of Lower East Side poverty, many admired the "authentic" lifestyles of its inhabitants. 

From Hutchins Hapgood's The Spirit of the Ghetto.

Hutchins Hapgood, who wrote The Spirit of the Ghetto (1902) and Types from City Streets (1910), commented on the ghetto's easygoing atmosphere (as compared to middle-class society).

Links (click to follow)

Click here to buy Hutchins Hapgood's The Spirit of the Ghetto.

Click here to buy Hutchins Hapgood's Types from City Streets.

Images (click to enlarge)

     

Some art from Hapgood.

      

Read more from The Spirit of the Ghetto.

  

Another quote from Hapgood.

   

Hapgood from Types from City Streets.


____________________________________

The book upon which this web site is based,

Selling the Lower East Side,

is available directly through University of Minnesota Press
or order through Amazon.com

Site design © 2000: Kurt Reymers and Dan Webb.
(University at Buffalo, Department of Sociology)