CALVIN COOLIDGE & THE BUNNY HUG (1922)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Vice-President Calvin Coolidge came to the Eastern section of Stuyvesant Heights one night late in 1922 to stump for the local Republican senator ahead of the mid-term elections. And in so doing, he would wind up in a nite club known for its bawdy dancing and raids on its illegal booze sales. It was the country’s first “working girl’s model dance hall,” The Arcadia. Dedicated specifically, at the time it was built in 1912, to “proper” dances for working girls, the hall – located at the corner of Halsey Street and Saratoga Avenue, across the street from Saratoga Park – had been supported by proponents who had lobbied successfully for anti-tango legislation, designed to outlaw “the turkey trot and other sensational dances.” For several years, the hall was a chaste facility which forbid “bunny-hugging” and tangoing, and kept a number of dance monitors on the dance floor to enforce these rules. You broke them once and you were kicked out for good – never allowed to return to the popular dance spot. Ten years later, though, it was the era of Prohibition, and the hall’s reputation had sunken somewhat in the estimation of its neighbors. Being the largest dance hall in the area, though, Vice President Calvin Coolidge would use it […]
