BROWDERBOOKS
Another review of Forbidden Brownstones has come in. It is by Lisa Brown-Gilbert for BestsellersWorld. It concludes:
I thoroughly enjoyed this adult-themed read; the story flowed easily, while the narrative provided as much food for thought, as it did historical tidbits. Additionally, as a character-driven story, I found myself engrossed from the story’s outset, as the interesting characters both historical and fictional, especially that of Junius, were brought into focus. I heartily recommend this book as well as the others in the series; they are all well worth the read.
To see the full review, go here. The book is available from Amazon and other booksellers (sometimes with delays), and from the author (i.e., me). It is no longer sold by the original publisher, Black Rose Writing.
The fate of my next book, a new edition (coincidentally) of Fascinating New Yorkers, hangs in the balance. Its compelling cover somehow got attached to the information for one of my published books and has to be replaced by that other book's cover. Then, maybe, that cover -- one of the best I've ever seen -- can be joined to the information for the new edition of Fascinating New Yorkers, which can then be published. If it sounds complicated, it is. I'm the author, and I can barely get my mind around it.
THE EVERLEIGH SISTERS: SHREWD, SCANDALOUS, SUCCESSFUL
They lived quietly in their well-furnished townhouse at 20 West 71st Street in Manhattan. They were sisters, two years apart in their forties, and liked to think that they looked ten years younger, which perhaps they did. Certainly they had been handsome in their younger years. There was nothing flashy about them; theirs was a quiet retirement that did not invite attention. Their favorite pastime: theater. They loved it and attended frequently. Its availability in New York was one reason they had chosen to live there, another attraction being its distance from Chicago. Their life in Chicago they had left behind.
They lived contentedly in New York for decades. The Roaring Twenties came and went, and then the Crash and the Depression, but their modest fortune was secure, and they went on seeing plays.
Their names on the 1913 deed to their Manhattan residence were Minna and Aida Lester, for long ago, and briefly, they had been married to two brothers named Lester. The marriages had not lasted long; Minna said that her husband was a brute who had tried to strangle her. Their maiden name was Simms. Sometimes they went by it, and sometimes by Lester. But they had a third name as well, never mentioned during the years they lived in New York: Everleigh. For Minna and Aida Simms were the Everleigh sisters, who under that assumed name had run the Everleigh Club in Chicago, the most exclusive, expensive, sumptuous, and notorious house of prostitution in the country. Yes, these seemingly respectable women were ex-madams who had left that life behind for one of tranquil propriety.
This, as it happened, was the dream of many a Manhattan madam: to retire to a quiet and very respectable community -- in their case, somewhere upstate, far from the fleshpots of Manhattan -- where their money would make them most welcome, and they could spend it shrewdly on worthy local causes, perhaps including a nearby college or seminary packed with well-scrubbed students as yet untried by life. But for Minna and Aida (who also spelled it Ada), coming from the toils of Chicago, Manhattan was their refuge, and theater their pastime.
Why am I, a committed New Yorker, concerned now with the Everleigh sisters, whose claim to fame was their dozen golden years in Chicago (1900-1912), cut short when the mayor shut them down, thus eliminating one of Second City's unique charms, surpassing anything of its kind in New York? The explanation: I received an e-mail from a writer interested in the connection between the Everleighs and Polly Adler, a famous madam in New York in the 1920s and beyond. Christened the Queen of Tarts, Polly ran a sumptuous house in Manhattan that was modeled on the Everleigh Club; I tell her story in chapter 14 of Fascinating New Yorkers. How they connected is what this writer wonders about. He thinks one possibility was the gangster Al Capone, a Brooklyn boy who transferred his endearing talents to Chicago. Polly mentions him favorably in her 1953 memoir, A House Is Not a Home, a bestseller that let her also retire to a life of tranquility.
This query from a fellow writer prompted me to search in my cluttered apartment for my Everleigh file. Long ago I thought of doing a biography of the sisters and researched them intensively. I finally found the file, a thick bundle of notes and clippings that was surprisingly comprehensive. Whatever there was to know about Aida and Minna, I had set out to learn. There are notes on deeds of property; my correspondence with the nephew in Charlottesville, Virginia, who took Aida in, when Minna died in New York; a genealogy chart of the Simms family that I created; and the richest prize of all, discovered only after patient toil: copies of the entries for them and their girls in the 1900 census. Thanks to the last item, I can confidently report what happened when the census taker visited 2131 South Dearborn Street in Chicago and recorded the occupants of what would soon become the most famous brothel in America.
The Everleighs were long remembered in Chicagoland. My father, an honest toiler in law and in no way a man about town or roué, told me about them without condescension or censure. This, of course, was the kind of story, not mentioned in the presence of women, that fathers passed on to their sons. Today the sisters may be remembered chiefly by historians, but they were shrewd businesswomen long before they could vote, and their story is well worth telling.
© 2021 Clifford Browder
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