The Street in the '40s: so over
Back in the day, 52nd Street between 5th and 6th avenues was simply referred to as "The Street"—in fact, historian Arnold Shaw once noted: "If you flagged a taxi in NYC and asked to be taken to The Street, you would be driven, without giving a number or an avenue, to 52d between Fifth and Sixth avenues." Today Lost City looks back on that stretch, noting that "The Street" began with a row of speakeasies, jazz clubs, and eventually burlesque houses. Some called the block "Swing Street," but Billie Holiday is quoted as saying 133rd Street was "the real swing street, like 52nd Street later tried to be.”
A 1937 Life magazine spread documented the area (in this issue), noting, "nowhere else in the world will you find the amazing stratification that exists on a New York crosstown street" (their article criticized Walter Wanger for not going beyond the one block in his movie 52nd Street).
Life magazine's spread
In the '40s, New Yorkers declared "The Street" to be dead, by then filling up with strip joints; in 1948 Time magazine addressed the change, describing the stretch as: "where nightclubs in sorry brownstones crowd each other like bums on a breadline, an era was all but over. Swing was still there, but it was more hips than horns. Barrelhouse had declined. Burlesque was back... There was little jazz left on 52nd Street. Even the customers had changed. There were fewer crew haircuts, pipes and sports jackets; more bald spots, cigars and paunches."
See, New York, no one is ever happy with change! We won't even touch the '50s, when Variety declared the dancers on 52nd had all become "fat, flabby and fortyish."
