  When the list was completed, Peggy had found over forty theaters built since 1890 and not currently listed as theaters in the classified phone book. Now there was nothing to do except visit each one to see if it was still there at all, and if there, to see what it was being used for. Checking the addresses against her city map and street-number guide, Peggy listed those that she would visit first. “I’ve started out with a group I think we can cover in one afternoon,” she explained to Amy. “And the district I’ve picked is not too far away from most of the off-Broadway theaters in Greenwich Village. I’d like it best if we could find a theater near where people are used to going, or at least in districts that are easy to get to by bus or subway.” “Don’t worry too much about that,” Greta commented from the depths of an easy chair. “If you can just find a place to put on the play, and if the play is good, people will come. Even if they have to walk, or pay tremendous cab fares. That’s one wonderful thing about New York. People love the theater, and they’re willing to go through all kinds of hardships to see a good play.” “The proof of that is the prices people pay to see a Broadway show,” Amy agreed. “Six and eight dollars a seat for some of them!” “And that’s at box-office prices,” Irene commented. “They pay twenty-five dollars to a ticket broker sometimes to see a really popular show. I think that the thing to be in this business is a broker, not an actress. That’s where the big money is!” “We’ll remember that when we get our theater,” Peggy said, laughing. “I’ll put aside a whole lot of seats in my name, and if the show’s a hit I’ll make a fortune on them!” “No theater, no tickets,” Amy said dryly. “And no show either. We’d better get going now.” The area that Peggy had decided to cover first was a section south of Fourteenth Street, and somewhat farther east than where they had been. This was an old part of town, in which the theater had once been centered even before it had moved “uptown” to Fourteenth Street. (Fourteenth Street itself is now very much downtown from the present theater district in the west Forties and Fifties.) This old district had seen wave after wave of immigrants come from various lands. Each nation had left its mark. There were Russian stores, Rumanian restaurants, Irish bars, Jewish delicatessens, Italian grocery stores, and Spanish shops of all sorts. “It’s like looking at a cross section of certain kinds of rocks,” Peggy said. “You know, the kinds that give you a million-year history of the earth and the kinds of life that have come and gone. Finding all these traces of different languages and peoples is sort of like geology.” “Yes,” Amy agreed, “and you can tell pretty well which groups came to the neighborhood first and which ones followed, and which are the latest. I’d say the Irish were first, and then the Rumanians and the Russians, a lot of whom were Jewish, and finally the Puerto Ricans. Look at that store!” She pointed to an old building with store windows lettered “CarnecerÍa,” which is Spanish for “butcher shop.” Over the windows was a faded old signboard which the present tenants had neglected to remove. Its gilt letters, nearly illegible, read, “A. Y. Ravotsky, Inc.,” and on either side of the lettering, carved into the wood, was an Irish shamrock and harp. “It’s like a one-stop history of New York!” Peggy said. “I’ll bet if you dug underneath it you’d find Dutch shoes and Indian arrowheads!” A few blocks’ walk brought them to their first address. There was no sign of a theater at all. In its place was a large, squat hospital; on its cornerstone appeared the date it was built—1912. “Well, that takes care of Hewett’s Theater,” Peggy said sadly, crossing off the name on her list. “Now let’s try the Emperor. It’s only two blocks away.” The Emperor Theater was now effectively disguised as a Greek Orthodox church, complete with a turnip-shaped steeple and a Russian signboard outside. The next theater on the list was a large and gaudy caterer’s hall, used for weddings, parties, lodge meetings, and dances, according to its poster. The next two on the list had also totally disappeared, giving way to a garage and an apartment house. “This is hardly encouraging,” Amy said. “I somehow feel already that we’re on a wild-goose chase.” “Amy, this is no time to get discouraged!” Peggy said. “Why, we’ve only gone to five places, and we’ve got nearly forty more on the list! And, after all, it’s not as if we were looking for a dozen theaters. All we want is one, so I don’t care if all but one prove to be shut or converted. And we have to see them all, just in case it’s the last one that turns out to be for us!” “That makes sense,” Amy agreed, “and I certainly don’t want to quit. It’s just that I wish we had hit it right the first time!” “You’re a lazy girl,” Peggy reproached her. “Do you know the way I feel about it? Even if we had found a good theater on our first call, I’d still want to see everything else on the list, just to make sure that we had the best one!” After some more walking, in which they found two more missing theaters and one that had been converted to a funeral parlor, they decided to stop for lunch in a delicatessen where sausages of every shape and size hung like decorations from the ceiling. They sat at a small table near open barrels of pickles, pickled tomatoes, and sauerkraut and stuffed themselves with corned-beef sandwiches on fresh, fragrant rye bread dotted with caraway seeds, homemade potato salad, cole slaw, and pickles. Afterward, they felt much better, and more heartened for the rest of the day’s search. As they worked their way downtown, the neighborhood began to change once more, and the girls were unable to guess what might be the nationality of the dark, strong-faced people they now saw about them. The signs on the windows didn’t help either, being in a language they could not identify. It might have remained a mystery, had they not been stopped by a policeman who said, “What are a couple of nice-looking girls like you doing in the Gypsy section? This is no place to sight-see, you know. I’d advise you to take a guided tour.” “We’re not sight-seeing,” Peggy said. “We’re looking for an address—actually for an old theater. Maybe you can help us. We want to find the Burke Theater, if it still exists.” The policeman was puzzled until Peggy showed him the address, and then he smiled broadly. “Well, you might just as well forget it,” he said. “It might have been a theater once, but not any longer. The Settlement House has it now, and it’s the local boys’ club, complete with a gymnasium equipped for every sport. It’s done a lot of good in this neighborhood, I can tell you.” Peggy and Amy thanked him, and then asked him about the Gypsies. They hadn’t realized there were any in the city—or at least not enough to make up a whole district. “It’s not a large district,” he said. “No more than a thousand or so, at the most. At least that’s what they say, but it’s not easy getting them to hold still to be counted. They’re good people, once you get to know them. Only they speak a language nobody can understand, and their ways are different. If I were you, I wouldn’t hang around here much.” Thanking him, the girls left, not without casting a few glances back over their shoulders until they were sure they were clear of the area. The remaining theaters on their first day’s list were to the west of the Gypsy district, and these too proved to offer nothing. The district they now found themselves in was on the outskirts of Chinatown, and was half Chinese and half mixed-New-York. Of the theaters on the list for this part of town, one had been at one time a Chinese movie house, and was now a Rescue Mission. Signboards in rusty black with large white lettering warned sinners to repent, and offered soup and bread to anyone who attended the services. From inside, the girls heard some wheezy voices and an even wheezier organ sounding the plaintive notes of a hymn. Peggy realized with a start that this was the Bowery, the sinister, pathetic district inhabited by the poorest examples of humanity—those who had almost resigned from the human race. Looking about her, she saw tattered men in doorways, sleeping figures huddled under stairs, groups of tough-looking tramps standing idly on street corners. She was suddenly aware that she and Amy were the only women in sight. “Amy,” she said in a shaky voice, “I’m afraid we shouldn’t have come here! This is the Bowery, and you remember what the guide said about it when we took that bus trip. He called it the worst district of the city!” “Oh dear!” Amy whispered, looking nervously about her. “What should we do now?” “I think we’d better go,” Peggy said. “Chinatown starts right across the street, and I remember what the guide said about that, too. He said not to believe all the old mystery stories; Chinatown is just about the safest place in the city. The Chinese have practically no criminals among them, and any tourist is safe there. Let’s go!” Trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, and doing all they could to avoid the appearance of hurrying, Peggy and Amy crossed the street and turned into a narrow alley between two Chinese food shops whose windows were filled with things that neither girl could identify. Once more they were made aware of the sudden changeability of the city. In no time at all, they were out of the frightening streets of the Bowery and in the crowded, noisy, bright-colored center of Chinatown. The streets, so narrow that in some places the sidewalks were scarcely a foot wide, were lined with restaurants, gift shops, importing houses that specialized in tea and spices, and more of the oddly stocked Oriental groceries and markets. Somewhat shaken by their fear on the Bowery, they stopped for tea and rice cookies in a large Chinese restaurant, where they sat at a small table on a balcony overhanging the main street of the district. “I think we’d better stop looking for theaters today,” Peggy suggested. “Besides, it’s after five-thirty now, and almost time for dinner. Why don’t we look around some of the shops here, and then come back to this restaurant for dinner? We can look for theaters again tomorrow.” Amy agreed, but looked pained at the suggestion that they do more searching the next day. “I don’t know how you can stand it,” she said. “My feet are killing me from today’s walk. Why don’t we wait awhile?” “Because tomorrow’s Sunday,” Peggy replied firmly, “and it’s our last chance to get in a full day’s looking before next week. After-school hours just aren’t enough. If we really want to check out this whole list, we have to work weekends.” Amy sighed. “My worst habit isn’t laziness,” she said, “it’s picking the wrong kind of friends. If I had known, when we first met, how much energy you have, I would have refused to know you!” |
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