Annie's Diary 1906 August 16th

August 16 – Thursday

We visited Macy’s store, it certainly is the biggest thing I have ever saw. As the saying in New York is – “You can buy anything there from” an elephant to a rat.

At the dinner table the subject of the tenderloin was brought up and naturally we Atlantians asked what part of this great city was called by that name. Cousin Nelson spoke up and said “Annie, I will take you to the tenderloin, after dinner, after dinner. And I certainly saw it, and realized then that it comprised the blocks between (blank) and (blank) streets, which are always crowded with people. In front of the Imperial Hotel we met Mr. Parker, of the firm “Parker & Firm” and Mr. Keep, and had a very nice conversation with them. As both of these gentlemen are Southerners, our conversation naturally inclined to the South and the discussion of it’s greatest and finest city “Atlanta”.

After leaving the Imperial Hotel, we went to the “Waldorf Astoria” and it was then that I fully realized the immense wealth of this city. It is simply magnificent throughout.

Editor's Notes:

Pictures above are of the Waldorf-Astoria and of Macy's.

The Tenderloin was a once-seedy neighborhood in the heart of the New York City borough of Manhattan; the term was coined in the late 1870s. This district was in Midtown Manhattan from 23rd Street to 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue to Seventh Avenue, much of which is known now as Chelsea and the Garment District. The northwest corner of the Tenderloin was Longacre Square, now called Times Square. The Tenderloin was also a red-light district. The vice-ridden area was notorious for its graft and prostitution. A vice officer liberally helped himself to illegal cash and boasted that his new assignment allowed him to switch from eating cheap, tough chuck steak to expensive tenderloin cuts. Soon, among police, “tenderloin” meant any vice-filled neighborhood where easy cash could be picked up; and, probably because "loin" has sexual connotations, the word "tenderloin district" quickly came to mean an area filled with prostitutes. Gambling, prostitution, saloons, and dance halls stayed open all night.