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November 1988 | Volume 39, Issue 7
Uptown
Text Complexity Grade Level
9
In 1921 Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake brought an all-black revue called Shuffle Along to Broadway. Not only was it successful enough to spawn eight imitators in the next four years, but it also spurred a nightly white migration to Harlem that lasted throughout the decade. Long after Times Square went dark, Lenox and Seventh avenues were busy with noisy crowds of visitors, some slumming, some merely curious, some actually drawn to the music played by musicians of the caliber of Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington.
Connie’s, on Seventh Avenue at 132nd Street, is the first white outpost on the uptown colored frontier, the first stop on the route of the downtown night clubbers. A wide red canopy stretches from the doorway to the curbstone, and once he has strolled on this tented way, the host to a party of four should be prepared to kiss a fifty-dollar bill a conclusive good-by. While at Small’s Paradise the average check is only about $4 a person, at Connie’s it is more likely $12 and possibly $15.
Walk down one flight of stairs and you are in this rendezvous, so low-ceilinged as to be cavelike. Around the dance floor is a three-foot barrier built in the semblance of a village, miniature bungalows and villas, and here and there a spired church, through the tiny windows of which comes the gleam of midget lights.…The tables are set so close together as to create an illusion of intimacy, so close, in fact, that a man must trail the waiter to his seat with extreme caution lest he slide into some haughty young thing’s lap enroute.…
Harlem’s night life now surpasses that of Broadway itself. From midnight until after dawn it is a seething cauldron of Nubian mirth and hilarity.
As in the Cotton Club, mixed parties are not permitted at Connie’s. Colored parties with the necessary doubloons are welcomed, of course, but they look a bit lonesome, usually.…
— New York Daily News, November 1, 1929
Harlem has attained pre-eminence in the past few years as an amusement center. Its night life now surpasses that of Broadway itself. From midnight until after dawn it is a seething cauldron of Nubian mirth and hilarity. Never has it been more popular. One sees as many limousines from Park and upper Fifth Avenue parked outside its sizzling cafés, “speaks,” night clubs and spiritual seances as in any other high-grade white locale in the country. A brand of entertainment is directly responsible for Harlem’s present distinction. It has crashed the limelight and seems due to remain. When it comes to pep, pulchritude, punch and presentation, the Harlem places have Broadway’s night clubs distanced. Celebrities in all walks of life “make” the Harlem joints every night. You’ll likely see a Lady Mountbatten on the ringside of the Cotton Club, a