Blues, haints and bayous: snippets from the Deep South: A dale of flowers, a neighbourhood of nightmares

The Dutch settlers called this area, ‘Bloemendaal’, dale of flowers. Their early farms that sprouted here must once have been pretty. But, then, the potato famine hit in Ireland, and boatloads of dirt poor and starving Irish men and women arrived on the shores of Manhattan where they were stopped short at every turn by signs meant just for them. Like the Jews, no one wanted the Irish to live near them or to work with them.

They tried everything. They were the first to line up for hard labour work on the new docks being built along the Hudson, then the railways, and the slaughterhouses built close to the water, close to the shipping. They offered themselves at hourly rates on less money than freed blacks were paid: a pittance, making new enemies in the process. They would resort to anything to earn a dime. And finally crime became the only means for many of them to survive.

They congregated along the docks where hovel tenements were hastily thrown up as cheap housing for dock workers, where flowers once grew. They formed gangs for protection. The area they lived in became known as Hell’s Kitchen. And was as desperate as Dante’s Inferno. It was the dirtiest, meanest, wildest neighbourhood in town. And, for over a hundred years, the Irish street gangs, ran many of the rackets from there.

We tracked down the Landmark Hotel. It is one of the oldest in the 'hood, and has stood on this spot overlooking the Hudson since 1868. This was a well known Irish hangout and the ghost of a young Irish girl who died upstairs is said to haunt the tavern still. As does the apparition of a Confederate soldier who was shot at the bar, yet who managed to stumble up the stairs until he fell dead into an empty bathtub at the top. Still on the second floor.

The bar was carved from one long piece of a beautiful mahogany tree, and like the tiles and the pressed ceiling are original. Little bits of Irish history adorn the wood panels. An Sciobairin, or Dear Old Skibbereen, is an old Irish folk song where a father tells his son the tale of his history, of the terrible potato famine, of having to flee the country after the Irish Rebellion, of trying to find a safer life. The plaque landed in Hell’s Kitchen.

During prohibition the Landmark was closed, it is said, for all of thirty minutes. For as long as it took to roll the barrels of whisky up the stairs, out of sight. George Raft, the actor, regularly drank at the speakeasy that quickly sprang up inside the tavern, bending all the laws, as usual. It was that sort of neighbourhood.

The Irish weren’t the only group hanging out in the hood. Puerto Ricans bought in as cheap labour lived here, too, and muscled their way through life the way the Irish learned to do. Further along from the Landmark Tavern, in a street once lined with grimy buildings and smelling like offal on days when the wind blew from the direction of the slaughterhouses, is the May Matthews playground. Still here today. It has a sign slashed across its wall graffiti: ‘We the people demand control of our communities’. Even today.

Here, on a mean drizzly night, late in August in 1959, a dozen or so members of different gangs, the Vampires, the Heart Kings, the Crowns, piled into a cab which dropped them at the gates of this playground, a known hangout for ‘white kids’. They were seeking to avenge a beating suffered by one of their friends. They had daggers, belts buckles, umbrellas. They came ready to fight. It started with words, but ended in death, when a young caped attacker started swinging his knife. Within minutes two youths lay dead in the playground and another was seriously injured. Seven were charged one of whom was the caped youth, who reportedly said: “I don’t care if I burn; my mother can watch.” Life was so cheap. Life was so hard. Life had come to this.

It is all like a scene out of the movie, West Side Story, and in truth, this is the neighbourhood, and these were the lawless street gangs, who inspired that musical. Much of the tale based on fact from these streets. And, that very night, just as the Capeman murders were happening, further up that street and around the corner and across the road, West Side Story was playing to an audience of theatre goers at the Majestic Theatre.

The street in front of the playground was once called Hooker’s Row. Strumpets, desperate for a coin, would hang off fire exit ladders, lean out windows and doors, or strut their stuff along the street, offering their wares to any passerby game enough to happen upon this desperate part of town. And where there were prostitutes, there were churches. To save the beaten souls. Many, still around today, though most seem to have been converted into off-Broadway theatres, restaurants or apartments.

Even the Actor’s Studio where Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro trained in method acting was once a church, over in the street behind. It operates still, run by Ellen Burstyn, Al Pacino and Harvey Keitel. Many actors lived in this neighbourhood; for like the Irish, it was all they could afford while studying their craft. And Broadway, a place of dreams, is just metres away.

As is the now trim brick-fronted site where Billy Haas’s Chophouse used to be, where Judge Joseph Force Crater took his young girlfriend out on the town one night for a chicken dinner and a twosome. Some believe he had links with some of the corrupt heavies at Tammany Hall. And that someone there had links with the underworld. Crater ate lobster as his appetiser, and after paying his bill the couple left. Judge Crater was never seen again, and became known in popular tales and comedy routines of the day as 'the missingest man in New York'. The Iobster and chicken may have been his last supper.

The site of the Market Diner was next on our route. We were there for its final moments. A great front end loader was crunching up the remnants of windows, doors and walls what had once been the headquarters for the Westies, one of the violent Irish gangs of recent times: the 1960s to the 1980s, before a big crack-down and clean up thereafter.

We called in at what used to be the Westies’ headquarters, the 596 Club. It is all spruced up now, and is called Mr Biggs Bar and Grill. Here, though, the Westies leader, Jimmy Coonan along with members of his gang murdered a loan shark, Ruby Stein. It was not a neat job. Stein’s torso was later pulled out of the East River. His finger, it was said, was cut off and saved by Jimmy so he could use it to fingerprint a gun he used in another murder so that Stein would get the blame. Those were the days.

Fingers were a signature sign-off for this gang. Tales are told by older residents in the hood that at times the 596 club had a glass jar behind the bar that held many such severed fingers. One rumour has it that once even a severed head was rolled along the bar top as if playing shuffleboard.

Today, though, the Westies have gone. The area is being cleaned up. Like much of Manhattan places of low rent and desperate living are quickly being done away with. The gentrification goes on. Here, now, are bijou restaurants topping Trip Advisor lists as the best places to eat in all of Manhattan. Here, too, Broadway goers happily have a night out before, or after, their theatre show.

Here, are off-Broadway theatres, many old churches who have found an easier way to survive, with rave reviews. And, here there still are some naughty gentlemen’s clubs, this one called Private Eye, just a hop, step and jump from where Cindi Lauper’s Grammy winner, Kinky Boots, is playing. A little bit risqué. A little bit renovated. A little bit of fun these days. Folk, though, still tend to call it, Hell’s Kitchen.