![]() ![]() “He’s considered the first commercially successful African-American illustrator,” Barton says. Simms Campbell, who went on to work at Esquire magazine for 25 years and have his work syndicated by other publications. Players picked three digits, and the winning number was determined by the day’s closing figure for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or by some other number tied to the stock market (as good a way as any to generate random numbers in the days before computers). They worked much like a modern Pick 3 lottery, Barton says. The men strewn across the compass rose in various states of inebriation (bottom right corner) would seem to suggest that this was true.Īll over the map-even inside the police station-people are asking each other variations of “What’s the number?”, a reference to illegal lotteries run by racketeers. “But since there are about 500 of them you won’t have much trouble,” the map reassures readers. One thing that’s not on the map: speakeasies. A “Reefer man” works the corner of Lenox Ave. The map advises readers that “nothing happens before 2 a.m.” at Club Hot-Cha, and suggests they ”ask for Clarence.” At the Cotton Club, Cab Calloway leads “one of the fastest stepping revues in N.Y.” Nearby, “Snakehips” Earl Tucker practices “that weird dance-the ‘Snakehips.’” Tucker pioneered the kind of fluid-then-halting moves later associated with hip hop (fortunately, they’ve been immortalized on YouTube, so you can see for yourself). “It’s pretty fantastic,” says Melissa Barton, curator of drama and prose for the Collection of American Literature at Yale University’s Beinecke Library. The map is filled with caricatures of famous musicians and dubious denizens of the nighttime scene, as well as helpful tips for partygoers. The map above, created in 1932, shows a thriving nightlife centered on New York jazz venues like the Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom. Prohibition may have put a damper on alcohol sales in much of the United States in the 1920s and early ’30s, but it didn’t stop the party up in Harlem. ![]()
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