Brooklyn’s Sands Street was called “Hell’s Half Acre” because of its red-light district reputation in the 19th century. I can’t find historical citations for this in the digitized Brooklyn Daily Eagle, however. Manhattan’s Chatham Square has also been called ““Hell’s Half Acre.”
Brooklyn by Name
by Leonard Benardo and Jennifer Wiess
New York: New York University Press
2006
Pg. 51:
Sands Street once had the reputation for being the red-light district of Brooklyn and carried the evocative name “Hell’s Half Acre.”
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E04EFDA1E39F932A0575BC0A9659C8B63
If You’re Thinking of Living In/Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn; On Cobblestone Streets, History Lingers
By DULCIE LEIMBACH
Published: August 31, 2003
In 1801, Jackson acquired some of the Sands land and built row houses, calling the area Vinegar Hill to attract Irish immigrants. (Manhattan also has a Vinegar Hill, near 135th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, another former bastion of Irish newcomers.) He also sold about 40 acres of his waterfront to the Navy for a shipyard in which many of the immigrants (including Italians and Poles) worked. At the time, Sands Street, which now runs through the Farragut housing project, was the home of bars and brothels, earning the nickname Hell’s Half Acre.
3 January 1880, National Police Gazette, pg. 15:
DEADLY DIVES
Some of the Dens Which Infest
Chatham Square.
FACTS FOR THE “FINEST.”
Concert Saloons, Museums, and Other
Resorts Which Make it a Sort of
HELL’S HALF ACRE.
Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.
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Above, Big Apple Corner at 54th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. Google Maps. Stolen and missing, 2021-2024.
Above, John J. Fitz Gerald, from the Aug. 15, 1931, Binghamton (NY) Press, pg. 14.
Listen to Robert Emmerich introduce "The Big Apple," a hit song from 1937. Music written by Bob and performed by Tommy Dorsey's Clambake Seven with Bob on piano. Lyrics written by Buddy Bernier and sung by Edythe Wright. Audio provided by Dorothy Emmerich.
Also listen to a 1937 "The Big Apple" song by Ozzie Nelson and his Orchestra. See a 1929 photo of John J. Fitz Gerald and a 1931 photo of John J. Fitz Gerald.
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