Cotton club harlem

The Cotton Club was a famous night club in New York City that operated during Prohibition. While the club featured many of the greatest African American entertainers of the era, such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway, The Nicholas Brothers, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, and Ethel Waters, it generally denied admission to blacks. During its heyday, it served as a chic meeting spot in the heart of Harlem, featuring regular "Celebrity…

ca. 1920s-1940s, Harlem, Manhattan, New York, New York, USA --- The night spot that best evokes glittering images of Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s is the Cotton Club. While literary urbanites appreciated Harlem Renaissance writers like Langston Hughes, more fun-loving New Yorkers were attracted to the neighborhood's vibrant cabarets. If you were white and well-heeled, you could enjoy African American entertainers like Louis Armstrong and Bill Bojangles Robinson at the elegant Cotton Club…

The Cotton Club in Harlem, new York — James Van Der Zee, was there in the early 60's. great venue.

Hot Chocolates, a musical jazz revue, started in Harlem nightclub, Connie’s Inn, before transferring to Broadway at the Hudson Theatre in 1929. Notably, Louis Armstrong made his #Broadway debut singing the soon to be hit Ain’t Misbehavin 🎶 Over the course of its run, this transformative production featured notable jazz performers Fats Waller, Edith Wilson, Cab Calloway, and many more!

National Gallery of Art

Ninety years ago, there were hundreds of illegal drinking spots in New York, and the speakeasies - which were often just a hidden room with barely drinkable booze - were mostly run by gangsters.

Cab Calloway performs at Harlem's Cotton Club in 1935.

One of hundreds of thousands of free digital items from The New York Public Library.

Thanks to an animated map acquired by Yale's Rare Book and Manuscript Library, we can get a sense of the vibrant nightlife of Harlem during this time in history. This original pen-and-brush map was drawn by Elmer Simms Campbell, one of the first commercially successful, and syndicated, African-American cartoonists in the country.

Join Michael Cannell as he lists several of the most popular mobster hangouts in 1920s New York, and check our his new book—A Brotherhood Betrayed.