Tuesday, June 7, 2022 – DRINKING ALCOHOL WAS SO COMMON EVEN BEFORE WE WERE A COUNTRY

By admin

GOOD NEWS!
THE COLORFUL ADIRONDACK CHAIRS ARE ALL SET-UP
AT THE FDR FOUR FREEDOMS PARK.
THE CHAIRS ARE MOVABLE AND YOU CAN
SIT UNDER THE SHADE OF THE LINDEN TREES.
A WONDERFUL WAY TO RELAX IN THE PARK!

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TUESDAY, JUNE 7,  2022


695th Issue

New York Drinks

Stephen Blank

We were a serious drinking nation from the start. In 1790, drinking-age Americans consumed an average of 5.8 gallons of pure alcohol each year. By 1830, consumption was up to 7.1 gallons. “By 1770, Americans consumed alcohol routinely with every meal. Many people began the day with an ‘eye opener’ and closed it with a nightcap. People of all ages drank, including toddlers, who finished off the heavily sugared portion at the bottom of a parent’s mug of rum toddy.” (W.J. Rorabaugh, “Alcohol in America”, The OAH Magazine of History) Lots of reasons: Alcohol was viewed as a digestive aid and a source of strength; with risky water in many areas, it was considered a safe alternative; and for many farmers, shipping higher value alcohol made more sense than moving corn or grain.  

 Barney Flynn’s.https://vinepair.com/articles/bars-taverns-19th-century-new-york-city/

But Americans were soon deeply divided about drink. In the 1820s and ’30s, a wave of religious revivalism swept over the country, leading to increased calls for temperance. In 1838, Massachusetts passed a temperance law limiting the sale of spirits except for commercial use. The law was repealed two years later, but it set a precedent for such legislation. Temperance societies, typically religious groups, sponsored lectures and marches, sang songs, and published tracts that warned about the destructive consequences of alcohol. They promoted the virtues of abstinence and asked folks to sign pledges promising to abstain from all intoxicating beverages. Maine passed the first state prohibition laws in 1846, followed by a stricter law in 1851. Other states joined in. Even the Federal government responded: In 1862 the US Navy abolished the traditional half-pint daily rum ration for sailors, a ration George Washington had demanded for his troops. 
 
New York City never followed along. Successive waves of immigrants – Irish, Germans, Eastern Europeans – enjoyed their drinks, opened saloons and built breweries. An 1883 map shows one 32-block section of the City bordered by The Bowery, Houston, Norfolk and Broome Streets packed with 242 “lager-beer saloons” and 61 “liquor saloons.”
 
This demands a bit more investigation. New York cocktail enthusiasts have found a mention of the booze-bitters-sugar “cock-tail” in 1806, in a newspaper from Hudson, New York. In Manhattan, famous bartenders embellished this morning pick-me-up, becoming well known across the country. New York City saloon owner “Professor” Jerry Thomas is considered “the father of American mixology”, because of his seminal work on cocktails, Bar-Tender’s Guide. Many content the City was the true home of the cocktail.
 
Still, I think the talk about early era cocktails in New York City is a bit high hatting. After all, the City was a beer (and lager) town. Much of this is due to the work of German immigrants, who arrived early in the century and brewed so much beer that it inspired a culture of bustling beer gardens and halls. The 1880s was a wonderful time to be a beer drinker in America. In New York City alone, some 8,000 saloons were open. Bear in mind, however, that while well off patrons could frequent more upscale cocktail bars, most saloons were grim sawdust and spit on the floor joints. And most drinkers, at least in public places, were men.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Free_lunch,_by_Charles_Dana_Gibson_(cropped).jpg

In New York City, the temperance movement failed to gain traction. In Albany, Republican reformers, speaking for rural and small-town churchgoers, had been trying for years to curb public drunkenness. They were also frustrated about New York City’s lax enforcement of so-called Sabbath laws, which included a ban on Sunday drinking. Finally, in 1896, Albany acted to control the sale of alcohol with the Raines Law.
• The cost of an annual liquor license was raised to $800 — three times what it had cost before.
• Saloons could not open within 200 feet of a church or school.
• The New York drinking age was raised from 16 to 18.
• Saloons could no longer serve free lunches.
• The sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited on Sundays except in hotels that served guests drinks as part of complimentary meals.

The Sunday drinking ban was widely loathed. Sunday was the only recreational day for many men who worked six-day weeks. But a loophole punctured the new law: Only lodging establishments that served complimentary meals could sell liquor on Sundays, so saloons obtained hotel licenses and rented out space above their taverns so they could serve alcohol with free sandwiches. Within a year, more than 1,500 new “hotels” had sprung up in New York. They served a cheap, inedible and often recycled creature called the “Raines sandwich.” To Eugene O’Neill it was “an old desiccated ruin of dust-laden bread and mummified ham or cheese” that was never consumed, but lived on, served to many tipplers over many months.

The Raines Act had intended to curb public alcohol consumption, but it unintentionally gave countless businesses more freedom to serve liquor, and this sandwich played a part. Ultimately, the loophole became part of a larger social push towards prohibition that led to the 18th Amendment in 1920.

In New York City, the ratification of the 18th Amendment set off a struggle between those determined to resist Prohibition and a dry movement determined to break that resistance. Dry leaders believed that if Prohibition could succeed in New York, it could succeed anywhere.

Propaganda for prohibition  https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31741615

Many New Yorkers saw Prohibition as a culture war of two differing visions of America, one representing the Protestant values championed by the dry movement, and another that saw a more urban and more ethnically diverse society emerging in the United States. But Prohibition was now enshrined in a Constitutional amendment, and many doubted it could be overturned. By the mid-1920s, attempts to enforce Prohibition had flooded the courts with tens of thousands of liquor cases, and had filled the jails to capacity. Judges expressed frustration and demoralization, and the officers of the NYPD resented being dragged into federal Prohibition enforcement efforts. Bribery and graft inserted themselves into the routine of enforcement, as did outbursts of violence stemming from the illegal liquor trade. But the courts provided no way around the new regime.
 
Instead, New Yorkers began looking to look for a political path out of the dry experiment. By the mid-1920s, New York would become the headquarters of political resistance to Prohibition as a generation of political leaders took increasingly public positions against the dry amendment. Mayor James J. Walker embodied the cosmopolitan air of 1920s. Governor Alfred E. Smith became the most prominent national political figure to stake his position as an opponent of Prohibition. Smith sought to reign in Prohibition enforcement in New York, most notably repealing the Mullan-Gage Law which called for local law enforcement agencies in New York to work with federal officers to enforce Prohibition. Fiorello LaGuardia rallied the wet cause. Mayor LaGuardia embodied immigrant New York just as much as Walker or Smith. His political leanings differed, as he was a Republican who opposed the Tammany Hall machine with fervor, but like Walker and Smith, LaGuardia was vocal in his opposition to Prohibition.
 
New Yorkers also voted with their feet, and frequented the increasing number of illegal liquor joints, “speakeasies”.  New York saloons and bars did not really close down with Prohibition. They went underground in basements, attics, upper floors, and disguised as other businesses, such as cafes, soda shops, and entertainment venues and many quickly became established institutions. Some said every legitimate saloon that closed was replaced by a half dozen illegal gin joints. Locked doors, passwords and hidden liquor supplies were one of the changes Prohibition brought. Another was the new role of women in this world. They were no longer just decoration – dancers, chorus girls or singers. Having been long banned from the saloons of the past, “regular” women found easy entrance into these new establishments.

1920s Speakeasy www.legendsofamerica.com/ah-prohibitionspeakeasy/

Just six months after Prohibition became law in 1920, women won the right to vote, and coming into their own, they enjoyed their newfound freedoms. The Jazz Age marked a loosening up of morals, the exact opposite of what its Prohibition advocates had intended. With short skirts and bobbed hair, they flooded the speakeasies, daring to smoke cigarettes and drink cocktails. Dancing to the jazz tunes of such soon to be famous jazz greats as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bojangles Robinson, and Ethel Waters, their powdered faces, bright red lips, and bare arms and legs displayed an abandon never before seen by American women.

Lady hides a flask during Prohibition, 1926 https://photos.legendsofamerica.com/nolocation/h75ae2ed#h75ae2ed

Quickly, both Prohibition and jazz music was blamed for the immorality of women, and young people were attracted to the glamour of speakeasies and began to drink in large numbers. The new era was described by Hoagy Carmichael: “It came in with a bang of bad booze, flappers with bare legs, jangled morals and wild weekends.”
 
New York City resisted temperance and fought against Prohibition. Eventually, under the leadership of President Franklin Roosevelt, another New Yorker, the 18^th Amendment was overturned. And, perhaps, too, the sudsy City was the home of some of the most delicious cocktails and famous bartenders in they world.

Smiling bartenders and customers celebrate the return of legal beer, April 7, 1933.Credit The New York Times

Thanks for lifting a glass,

Tuesday Photo of the Day

SEND YOU RESPONSE TO ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM

MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

PART OF EAST RIVER PROMENADE BEING RECONSTRUCTED TO BECOME ANDREW HASWELL GREEB PARK 

ED LITCHER GOT IT!

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff

Sources

https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/temperance-movement-new-york-city/
May 4, 2013
https://imbibemagazine.com/history-of-the-new-york-cocktail/
https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/temperance-movement-new-york-city/
May 4, 2013
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-20/new-york-in-the-1880s-was-crammed-with-beer-saloons
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/raines-sandwich
https://ourcommunitynow.com/promotions/the-raines-sandwich-how-one-disgusting-sandwich-helped-america-stay-boozy
https://spiritofyork.com/cocktail-history-manhattan/#
https://blogs.shu.edu/nyc-history/prohibition-era-new-york/
https://nypost.com/2013/11/23/prohibition-was-the-perfect-excuse-for-nyers-to-run-wild/
ttps://prohibition.themobmuseum.org/the-history/the-prohibition-underworld/the-speakeasies-of-the-1920s/

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