Wednesday, January 12, 2005
McGurk's Suicide Hall
By popular accord, the very worst dive on the Bowery in the 1890’s was McGurk’s Suicide Hall, on the East Side just above Houston Street (the building is still standing), and it did not conduct its business in secrecy, since it possessed one of the first electric signs on the avenue. . . . . .Entertainment consisted of singing waiters and a small band; the customers were, as ever, mostly sailors. “It was said,” noted a contemporary, “that his business card reached every seaport in the world.” -- Low Life by Luc Sante.
The Hall got its nickname because of the many suicides which occurred there. In “1899, there were at least six, as well as more than seven attempts.” The victims were mostly the prostitutes who seem to be the main reason for the tavern’s existence.. It was a desperate place: none the less it became a morbid tourist attraction. I don’t know if the skull graffiti is a tribute to it’s past. I doubt it.
# posted by nick @ 6:57 pm 
